truTV: Not Reality. Actuality.

Rules! Derek Ogley, 70, had just been discharged from Tameside General Hospital in Ashton, England, in November, but doubled over in pain in the waiting room (eventually diagnosed with pancreatitis). Nurses informed Ogley's family they would have to call 999 (the UK's 911) or drive him around to the emergency entrance about three minutes away, because, since he had been discharged, rules prevented them from treating him.

The Texas Ethics Commission ruled in November that a public official in the Lone Star state, receiving money as a gift such as from a lobbyist, need disclose only that he received "a check" or "currency" and need not reveal the actual amount of money. Said the district attorney in Austin, who was outraged by the ruling, it is now "perfectly legal to report the gift of 'a wheelbarrow' without reporting that the wheelbarrow was filled with cash."

Rules! Sixty years after Indiana abolished gambling and wrecked the economy of the resort town of French Lick, the state brought it back, allowing casinos, but they had to be located on water and not the state's dry land. Developers of the French Lick Springs Resort thus spent $382 million on a plush "riverboat" casino on a manmade lake barely larger than the boat, and it opened in November.

Questionable Judgments: North Carolina state Sen. Sam Ellis's bill to change a section of state law that actually gives an enormous right to rapists failed in committee this year, with the result that some rapists may inevitably go free. If a rape victim chooses to carry her baby, and then place it for adoption, state law requires that both parents agree to the adoption in writing, with no exception for babies conceived by rape. Thus, rapists might withhold their consent, thwarting the mother's wishes, unless she agrees not to press charges for the rape. According to a September Raleigh News and Observer story, at least three women have recently been in that situation.

The Los Angeles County child-support agency, on the losing side of a June California Court of Appeal paternity decision, asked the state Supreme Court to officially not tell anyone about the decision, so as to discourage additional paternity challenges. (Normally in America, if a man acquiesces that he is the father of a child, he is permanently responsible for child support, until adulthood, even if a DNA test later proves he is not the father. Going against the grain, the appeals court overturned Manual Navarro's paternity order based on a DNA test, and the agency petitioned the high court in August to "de-publish" that decision, fearing that other "fathers" might get negative DNA tests and thus stop paying support.) (Update: The state enacted a statute in October permitting such paternity challenges.)

An AFSCME union Local filed a grievance against East Haven, Conn., mayor Joe Maturo recently for violating the city's labor contract by personally doing the civic task of reaching down into a storm drain and repositioning the drain cover, which Maturo noticed had become dislodged. According to the Union, if a cover comes loose, the city is required to call out exactly four Union employees, three of whom would get time-and-a-half and be guaranteed four hours' work. Said union president John Longley, "It's not about the money; it's about our work." (Maturo, a licensed electrician, was a longtime union member, himself.)