A tempest in a rice bowl.

A four year court fight that has yet to be resolved and has cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees would not be news if we were talking about an antitrust case or a patent fight, but a lawsuit over rice?

It seems that a Chinese restaurant is paying a premium for the exclusive right to sell white rice in a Rhode Island food court and wants the Indian restaurant in the mall to stop putting rice on its menu. Of course, it happens that rice is a staple of the cuisine of both China and India and the Indian restaurant says you can't have Indian food without rice any more than you can have Chinese food without rice and so it dyes its white rice yellow. The prolonged court fight is the result.

Ironically, the Chinese restaurant doesn't have a problem with the Taco Bell in the food court serving orange rice with its burritos.

From the Boston Globe

On Presidents' Day, George Washington gets his "Due."

It took 82 years but finally someone noticed that George Washington is misquoted on the pediment of what, thanks to Hollywood, is the most recognized courthouse in the world.

Carved over the columns of the New York Supreme Court's Manhattan courthouse built in 1927, are the words "The true administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government." What Washington actually wrote in a letter to our first Attorney General, Edmund Randolph, was "The due administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government."

The steps and facade of this courthouse have appeared in a many movies as well as the TV series "Law and Order" so Washington's misquote is now part of our culture.

Maybe buried somewhere in the 1071 page stimulus bill is some money to create at least one job for someone who knows how to use a chisel.

In other news...

The BBC reports that Sussex police are reopening the investigation of the disappearance of 16 year old Emma Alice Smith, who was last seen riding her bicycle 83 years ago, in 1926.

With the typical Bristish knack for understatement, a police official observed that, "Given the years which have passed this is inevitably a difficult task."

Talk about a cold case!

How do you know when it is time to take away Grandma's driver's license?

80 year old Mary Feeny of Indianapolis gave us a hint when, fresh from her hairdresser, she backed backed out her parking spot destroying a gas meter in the process and then on through the wall of a building housing an architectural firm. In an apparent effort to extricate her vehicle from the architect's waiting room, Ms. Feeny reversed course thereby wiping out a bush and striking four other cars. She then drove back into the same building she had just left and after reversing course yet again, managed to hit two additional cars.

From WISH-TV.