05:10 PM CDT on Friday, July 7, 2006
By PAT DOORIS / kgw.com


A Northeast Portland man is suing basketball superstar Michael Jordan and Nike founder Phil Knight for a combined $832 million. Allen Heckard filed the suit himself, June 29th in Washington County Court. Heckard says he’s been mistaken as Michael Jordan nearly every day over the past 15 years and he’s tired of it.

“I'm constantly being accused of looking like Michael and it makes it very uncomfortable for me,” said Heckard.

Heckard is suing Jordan for defamation and permanent injury and emotional pain and suffering. He’s suing Knight for defamation and permanent injury for promoting Jordan and making him one of the most recognized men in the world.

Heckard stands just over six feet tall. He is not six foot six like the real Michael Jordan. But Heckard says many people seem to miss that. He does share a bit of resemblance to the real Michael Jordan. Heckard has a shaved head, an earring in his left ear, and is in good shape from working out, and yes, playing basketball.

“Even when I go to the gym I'm being accused of playing ball like him (Jordan), said Heckard."

Most people would consider that a high compliment.

"Yes...don’t get me wrong it’s definitely a positive thing, because Michael, like I say is one of the best ball players that I've known to play the game. But then again, that's Michael and I'm me. So I want to be recognized as me just like Michael's being recognized as Michael."

Dressed in blue Air Jordan tennis shoes, Heckard might seem to be actually trying to look like Jordan but Heckard doesn’t see it that way.

"They're very comfortable shoes to play ball in,” said Heckard. “I play a lot of basketball and any other shoes I try to play in tend to hurt the bottom of my feet."

“I got a right to buy Nike or Adidas or what ever, so I chose the Nike because its a good shoe for me to play ball in,” he said.

Heckard agreed that not everyone thinks he’s a famous basketball player, but insisted a lot of people do mistake him for Jordan.

"I figure if I'm out in public and around a lot of people at least three or four times out of a crowd ...and like I was at the Blues Festival and you could see people they was pointing at me," he said.

Some might wonder how he decided to sue Knight and Jordan for $416-million each. "Well, you figure with my age and you multiply that times seven and ah, then I turn around and ah I figure that's what it all boils down to."

The question remains – is the occasional confusion with an admired celebrity worth $800 million.

“Well,” said Heckard, “You never can put a value on a person's life. You know you're taking my lifestyle away from me. So you know...we'll let the ball bounce like Michael does...where it’s supposed to fall."

***All I can say is....yeah, ok, whatever dude....whatever...***

Do you ever wonder why people are either a Republican or Democrat, Conservative or Liberal? I remember one time I asked a girl I worked with at my first job what she was. She hesitantly told me she was a Democrat. When I asked her why, she looked at me like I asked a retarded question and stammered, "well because my parents are" , like political party affiliation is the same as ethnicity. You are born what you are because you're parents are. If that were true, I would be giving into my German roots and praising Hitler just because my grandfather believed in the Nazi values.

It is true that people are influenced by how they grow up. But most free thinking people learn to think for themselves when they reach adulthood and believe whatever they want. It's called college.

My grandparents (the other ones) and the entire clan on my father's side are old-school Southern Baptists and ultra-conservative. Naturally, I always said I was Republican when I was a kid because my family told me I was.

It wasn't until I got into my senior year of high school when I took a political ideology test in AP Government when I found out what my beliefs were. I fell within the Reagan Conservatism area of the chart when the test was graded. The kids who found out they were liberals were shocked. They too, had grown up like me.

The town I went to high school in had a median income of $150,000 and if you lived in a $250,000 house, you were living in the slums. One of the biggest Baptist churches in Texas resides in my hometown and people flock to Republican meetings. I don't remember ever hearing about the county Democrats.

Despite that fact, many of my friends and classmates grew up to be liberals. I went to the classmates website and found Q&A's for a lot of my classmates and found that information out.

So how do people come to believe what they do? Is it through life experiences, brainwashing, or pure ignorance to what each of the Parties actually stand for?

Where do you stand and why? How did you become a democrat or republican? A similar test like I took in high school can be found at: http://www.okcupid.com/politics.

See where you fall!

Funny story my husband told me last night:

He's a police officer and was working at a Juneteenth parade that was going on on his side of town. This event was proudly sponsored by our county's Democratic Party.

He told me that it had nothing to do with the Juneteenth celebration despite the "reasoning for it". It was just a parade of cars (with Democratic campaign posters attached) throwing candy at the people.

CANDY FOR VOTES.

The Dems. were standing in a group close to my husband chatting it up. He told me they were really friendly until he asked, "Hey where are the Republicans today?". He said they just turned their backs and walked away.

Sniff. What a way to try to win over voters.

Now I know my husband really knew that the Pubs weren't going to be out at the Juneteenth party because the attendees are not part of thier base, but ratHer, just pawns of the Left. But what if he WERE a democrat wanting to know how come the Republicans wouldn't come out? I guess dems hear the word "Republican" and run the other way.

Well I know they aren't getting my vote come November, but if they were, I would at least know I got a Tootsie Pop out of it.

A Note From my Favorite Political Columnist:

The long-anticipated book "Godless: The Church of Liberalism" was finally released this week. If The New York Times reviews it at all, they'll only talk about the Ann Coulter action-figure doll, so I think I'll write my own review.

"Godless" begins with a murder at the Louvre and then takes readers on a roller-coaster ride through the Church of Liberalism in a desperate game of cat and mouse in which the hunter becomes the hunted — with a twist at the end you simply won't believe! It's a real page-turner — even the book-on-tape version and large-print edition! Who knew a book about politics could make such an ideal gift — especially with Father's Day just two weeks away!

The main problem with "Godless" is that I had to walk through the valley of darkness to find it. You will have to push past surly bookstore clerks, proceed past the weird people in the "self-help" section, and finally past the stacks and stacks of Hillary Clinton's memoirs. If all else fails, ask for the "hate speech" section of your local bookstore. Ironically, if you find "Godless" without asking for assistance, it's considered a minor miracle.

This is not a book about liberals. I stress this in anticipation of Alan Colmes hectoring the author to name names. (For people who resented being asked to "name names" during the 1950s, these liberals sure aren't shy about demanding that conservatives do the same today.)

It is a book about liberalism, our official state religion. Liberalism is a doctrine with a specific set of tenets that can be discussed, just like other religions.

The Christian religion, for example, frowns on lying and premarital sex. That is simply a fact about Christianity. This does not mean no Christian has ever lied or had premarital sex. Indeed, some Christians have committed murder, adultery, thievery, gluttony. That does not mean there's no such thing as Christianity any more than videotape of Rep. William Jefferson accepting cash bribes means there's no such thing as congressional ethics rules.

Similarly, the liberal religion supports abortion, but that doesn't mean every single liberal has had an abortion. We can rejoice that liberals do not always practice their religion.

"Godless" examines a set of beliefs known as "liberalism." It is the doctrine that prompts otherwise seemingly sane people to propose teaching children how to masturbate, allowing gays to marry, releasing murderers from prison, and teaching children that they share a common ancestor with the earthworm. (They haven't yet found the common ancestor ... but like O.J., the search continues.)

The demand that their religion be discussed only with reference to specific individuals — who is godless? are you saying I'm godless? — is simply an attempt to prevent us from talking about their religion. This tactic didn't work with "Slander" or "Treason," and it's not going to work now.

It's not just that liberals ban Reform rabbis from saying brief prayers at high school graduations and swoop down on courthouses and town squares across America to cart off Ten Commandments monuments. The liberal hostility to God-based religions has already been copiously documented by many others. "Godless" goes far beyond this well-established liberal hostility to real religions.

The thesis of "Godless" is: Liberalism IS a religion. The liberal religion has its own cosmology, its own explanation for why we are here, its own gods, its own clergy. The basic tenet of liberalism is that nature is god and men are monkeys. (Except not as pure-hearted as actual monkeys, who don't pollute, make nukes or believe in God.)

Liberals deny, of course, that liberalism is a religion — otherwise, they'd lose their government funding. "Separation of church and state" means separation of YOUR church from the state, but total unity between their church and the state.

Two months ago, the 9th Circuit held that a school can prohibit a student from exercising his First Amendment rights by wearing a T-shirt that said "Homosexuality Is Shameful."

Even the left's pretend-adoration of "free speech" (meaning: treason and pornography) must give way to speech that is contrary to the tenets of the church of liberalism on the sacred grounds of a government school.

How might the ACLU respond if a school attempted to ban a T-shirt that said something like "Creationism Is Shameful"? We'd never hear the end of warnings about the coming theocracy.

In fact, students are actually required to wear "Creationism Is Shameful" T-shirts in Dover, Pa., where — thanks to a lawsuit by the ACLU — the liberal clergy have declared Darwinism the only true church, immunized from argument. Ye shall put no other God before it. Not one.

Liberals believe in Darwinism as a matter of faith, despite the fact that, at this point, the only thing that can be said for certain about Darwinism is that it would take less time for (1) a single-celled organism to evolve into a human being through mutation and natural selection than for (2) Darwinists to admit they have no proof of (1).

If only Darwinism were true, someday we might evolve public schools with the ability to entertain opposable ideas about the creation of man.

COPYRIGHT 2006 ANN COULTER
DISTRIBUTED BY UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE
4520 Main Street, Kansas City, MO 64111

I was honestly one of the people who didn't know until the END of the workday that we had killed Zarqawi. But I do have an excuse! I was at....work where TV's aren't on all day.

Nevertheless, I was elated when I called my husband on the drive home and he gave me the news.

Obviously, this goes down as a huge victory for the Bush Whitehouse, the Iraq quagmire, and most importantly, our troops. But in every situation such as this, the kooks come out of the closet.

Not withstanding one moment to quash the celebration, we have the usual suspects out saying the predictable: "well it's about time Bush did one thing right", "this doesn't solve anything", "you still haven't gotten bin Laden yet,"...yada, yada.

Ok, I'm going to ask the million dollar question: (feel free to answer) What is WRONG with these people? It's obvious that if these people were really in support of our troops and our country (maybe not the reasoning for our going to war) they would be celebrating in triumph. How come this isn't a big deal to some people? It wasn't even the main headline in our newspaper here in Texas....Texas.

Aren't these the same people who yet even a week ago were undermining the troops and war effort by demanding to know why we can't catch Zarqawi and Co.? And now that we do...who cares? Er?

It's amazing how the "deck of cards" of people to catch amazingly turns into a game of Old Maid.