Idiots in Charge

Inside this collection, Gregory offers more than 250 accounts of bumbling bureaucrats on both sides of political party lines:

-David Spellman became mayor of Black Hawk, Colorado on July 12, 2006, a week after pleading guilty to felony menacing and third-degree assault for pistol-whipping his wife with a handgun and firing three shots in 2005.

-County officials in Vermillion, Indiana were told by state homeland security officials in July 2006 to stop using the special emergency-only highway message boards to advertise their charity fish fries and spaghetti dinners.

-District 1 Town Councillor David Watson resigned from his position as council vice chairman on January 23, 2007, after unintentionally forwarding an e-mail to 18 members of the New Elementary School Building Committee. The e-mail contained nine embedded images of topless women under the heading 'This Is National Women's Breast Awareness Day.' The only other text in the e-mail read, 'Beats . . . Martin Luther King Day, doesn't it?'