Santa Claus visited a middle school in Michigan this week, and during the visit revealed how he can fly.
He uses marijuana.
Santa was given a citation for misdemeanor marijuana possession.
The pot was found in Santa''s street clothes, which Santa had left in a men's room.
Mrs. Claus, who was with her hubby to take pictures, was surprised and dismayed.
A police spokesman said, or so we've read, "It's going to be a long ride back to the North Pole."

OK. We've taken enough abuse about our ignorance regarding marijuana sales.
Some of you have expressed amazement that fully realized human beings such as we might not know what a "dime bag" is.
One reader went so far as to compare alcohol and pot, or grass, or weed, or ... OK, that's the extent of our knowledge of "street names" for Mary Jane.
So he says it should be obvious that a "dime bag" is $10 worth of marijuana in a bag.
Now comes this story from Florida, and we'll just see who the smartypants is.
A television reporter has reported that three third-graders in Orange County got busted for bringing pot to school.
The reporter reported, and we quote, "With a street value of about $10, the nickel bags of pot are far from the biggest drug seizure ever."
Note: $10, nickel bags. So maybe the pot was worth $10, the bag worth a nickel.
Anyway, the kids face felony charges of drug possession.
And we oppose that, just in case certain people are reading this. (WickedPaganNinja, that means you.)

As we reported earlier, a judge has ruled that drunks and addicts can serve on juries.
Court reporters, however, are another story.
One such reporter, Myrna Gay Parrish, 50, of Muskogee, Okla., was arrested recently after someone sharing an elevator with her reported that she smelled of alcohol.
Police who checked Parrish's workplace "recovered a glass in which she was sipping a straw that smelled like pretty rank vodka," according to a law enforcement source.
Parrish was supposed to be recording a preliminary hearing on her stenotype machine. But an imaginary source says police found that she had been typing over and over:
"All work and no play makes Myrna a dull girl."

Good news for drunks and other addicts:
A judge has ruled that it's OK for jurors to be drunk or high while in the box.
The ruling came on an appeal by a firefighter who had been convicted of stealing souvenirs from Ground Zero. The defendant, Samuel Brandon, 61, had been informed that a juror was drunk during his trial.
Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Ellen Coin refused to set aside the guilty verdict, even though she called such behavior by a juror "reprehensible."
She cited a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, which we strongly suspect was made when most (if not all) of the justices were in their cups.
Brandon faces up to one year in jail.

A tip to heavy drinkers everywhere:
When you show up in court to fight your DUI charge, it might be a good idea NOT to show up drunk.
Our advice is too late to help Michael Hanczyk, 42, a Pennsylvania man whose boozy breath, according to witnesses, could be smelled throughout a courtroom near Pittsburgh.
Hanczyk was contending that he was driving safely when he caused a multi-car accident by stopping suddenly, thus making any evidence, as they call it in legal circles, "fruit of the possum tree."
A breath test in court indicated that Hanczyk had a blood alcohol level of 0.296 percent.
Trust us. That's one drunk son-of-a-gun.
The judge ordered him taken to a hospital for a blood test, and the hearing was rescheduled.
A point in Hanczyk's favor: He wore a sport coat and tie to court. We think the tie was one of those classy ones with a picture of a bottle of Jack Daniel's on the front.

We all know the dangers of police work. Fighting crime. Facing down death every day and night. Finding the right doughnut shop.
But few of us really know the sacrifices law enforcement types make for us.
For example:
In England, drugs are suspected in the death of a veteran officer.
Yes, Todd the drug-sniffing dog is dead. Officials suspect Todd died of an overdose.
Todd, 7 years old, was in a field hunting drugs when he began showing signs of illness.
He was rushed to a hospital, exhibiting signs of amphetamine ingestion. Despite the best efforts of the hospital staff, Todd bit the big one.
According to highly spaced sources in the White House, President Bush will send condolences. (Yes, he has approved this message.)
And yes, even hardened journalist types are grieving Todd's passing.
Well, not us, of course. We have to maintain an objectivity about such things, in order to find truth and justice.
To that end, we must ask some probing questions: Did Todd OD from legitimate police work? Or, as some have suggested, did Todd get hooked on the very drugs he was hired to track down? Was his OD accidental? Or deliberate? Did he eat doughnuts, or did he prefer scones? Does England even have doughnuts?
And finally, was Todd the drug-sniffing dog named after Todd DeLaMuca, the nerd's nerd of "Saturday Night Live" fame?
Answers to these and other questions will be forthcoming.
Or we'll find out why. Or why not.

Who says getting old has to be miserable?
OK, besides you?
In Holland, they now have a sport we ancient folk can call our own: battery-powered electric scooter racing.
The first Dutch batter-powered electric scooter race was held this week, and the winning team was led by an 82-year-old guy. His team beat contingents from 12 other nursing homes.
The teams raced over a 250-yard course of speed bumps, wooden ramps and plastic slalom cones.
The oldies' carts, with a top speed of 7.5 mph, are equipped with comfortable seats, armrests, handlebars and shopping baskets.
According to the original report from which we filched, Holland has one of the highest life expectancies in the world, and demand for scooters is way up there.
Highest life expectancies? Holland?
Hold on a second. We're trying to put 2 and 2 together.
Holland. Tulips. Wooden shoes. Windmills. And ...
Marijuana!
People in Holland smoke a lot of pot. And they live a long, long time.
Thus, if a equals b, and c equals d, then pot must add years to your life.
So one can extrapolate that at least some of those seniors rushing headlong around that demanding course were higher than the space station.
And when they were finished, they zigzagged on down to the nearest convenience store to load their shopping baskets with munchies galore.
Now that's what we call a Dutch treat.

More dopes-on-dope news:
A Grand Rapids, Mich., man recently entered the Kent County Courthouse (reason unknown) and passed through the metal detectors.
Beep beep.
The man pulled keys out of his pocket and tried again.
Beep beep.
A security guard used a hand-held detector and it reacted to stuff in the 29-year-old man's front pockets.
The guy pulled some coins from said pockets, along with a little bag.
The guard says, "What's that?" The guy says, "It looks like weed."
It was, in fact, marijuana.
Then the man blamed his 12-year-old son for the whole mixup. He said he'd taken the bag from the boy, who found it while doing work in the yard, and put it in his pocket.
And forgot about it.
Yeah. Right.
The cops took the pot and let the man go, pending investigation.
In case you were wondering how much pot the guy had, the Grand Rapids Press reported that it was a "dime bag."
Which makes us wonder just how much pot they smoke over there, if everyone in town knows what a "dime bag" is.
I, for one, have never heard of such a thing. Dope fiends in the audience, please clarify.
Thanks.

You all know how it is. You're driving along, smoking pot, and a cop pulls up behind you.
You stay cool. Wave to the cop. Let the cop pass. Slow down. Take another hit.
At least that's the way marijuana aficionados have described such a situation to us.
But they apparently didn’t tell Barbara A. Hill.
Hill, 21, was driving with some passengers when Officer Lance Shupe pulled up behind her car.
When he tried to pass, Shupe said, Hill wouldn't let him.
Which is not very nice.
"Then … when I was turning into my office they honked the horn and gave me the one-finger salute," Shupe has been quoted as saying.
The "one-finger salute," for those who are not familiar, is similar to a Cub Scout salute, but with only one finger. A particular finger.
When Hill pulled into a convenience store, Shupe followed.
At the car window, Shupe said, he could smell burned marijuana, so he searched the vehicle. He found 3 ounces of marijuana, some methamphetamine and packing material.
Hill was the only one charged. She also faces a multitude of charges unrelated to the pot bust.
Shupe called the case "hilarious." Hill said only that she was unaware that Shupe was a cop.
Which seems defense enough for us.

Big news from the Big Apple: A survey shows that the number of adult smokers in New York City has declined by more than 100,000 in a year.
City officials give the credit to higher taxes and smoke-free bars.
In a related matter, hundreds of bars have closed, and reports of minor assault and destruction of property have soared.

Don't try this at home, boys and girls. But according to many, many doctors, many, many addicts have made the Internet their drug dealer of choice.

"It's easy," Brian Fidlin, a psychologist with Wisconsin’s Aurora Behavioral Health Services, was quoted as saying in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "You can sit in your living room and order this stuff and it comes to your door the next day in a box. You don’t even have to get in your car and travel to certain neighborhoods."

An addict identified only as John said he successfully ordered 180 Vicodin tablets in less than half an hour. "I went to Google and typed in Vicodin. All you need is a credit card that works."

On a bit of a downer note, the rate of overdoses apparently is rising as well.

Unlike the Milwaukee paper, we will not publish the names of sites that provide such drug services. We'll just keep them for ourselves.