truTV: Not Reality. Actuality.

Budget Relief for the California Government: A homeless transient, Steven Butcher, 50, was convicted of starting fires in the Los Padres National Forest near Santa Barbara in 2002 and 2006 (the latter which burned 163,000 acres) and in November was sentenced to nearly four years in prison. When Butcher gets out, he can work on the other part of his sentence, as he was also ordered to pay back the state for the fires' costs, in the amount of $101 million.

Britain's association of police officers complained to the Daily Telegraph in November that bureaucratic requirements are "emasculating" law enforcement, offering as one example the Home Affairs Department's insistence that a seven-page form be submitted for any surveillance work, even if the "work" is merely observing via binoculars.

Robert Christianson, 64, was arrested in October upon his arrival at Tampa International Airport, based on a hold requested by Canadian customs officials. Christianson was being sought only on two warrants: allowing a dog to run at large and having no license for his dog.

In October, the local government council in Worcester, England, ordered Bill Malcolm to take down the 3-foot-high, barbed-wire fence he had installed to deter the thieves who had broken into his storage shed three times in the previous four months. According to the Daily Mail, the council said it feared the government would be sued by a wounded trespasser.

The Texas criminal justice system continues to astonish. In August, federal judge Orlando Garcia of San Antonio ordered a final-hours' stay of execution for Jeffrey Wood based on serious concerns about his sanity, that the Texas state courts had somehow summarily dismissed. Judge Garcia said substantial evidence supported at least holding a hearing on the issue but that state law seemed to require the inmate to prove his insanity first in order to obtain a hearing on whether he is insane. That, said Garcia, is "an insane system."

Two of Oregon's unique public health markers clashed dramatically for resident Barbara Wagner this summer when she was informed that the universal medical care available to everyone in the state (but with certain service restrictions) would not pay for her expensive lung cancer drug (because her five-year survival likelihood was poor), but was told, at the same time, that the state would pay for any necessary drugs under its Death With Dignity Law (i.e., suicide).