Ill. treasurer tosses stinky furniture

The newly elected Illinois treasurer thinks his office really stinks. Or at least it did, until he cleaned house. Alexi Giannoulias (D) replaced $6,000 worth of furniture left in his office by his predecessor, Judy Baar Topinka (R), a smoker and dog-lover, the Chicago Sun-Times notes. Giannoulias’ spokesman told the paper the furniture “smelled like smoke and dogs. Some of the stuff was pretty bad. … It needed to go.”

Duncan M. MacDonald’s voter registration nearly landed his best friend in the doghouse. See, MacDonald is an Australian shepherd-terrier mix, and his owner, Jane Balogh, signed her dog up to vote using a phone bill and his paw prints. Balogh agreed to perform community service to avoid jail time for the stunt, which was designed to show that Washington state’s voter registration laws are lax, reports The Seattle Times .

On a visit to a high school, New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D) broke out a teenage putdown to avoid a reporter’s questions about a scandal dogging his administration. “Get a life, buddy,” the famously brash governor told TV anchor and reporter Justin Moss, according to The Associated Press . Moss had asked Spitzer three questions about top Spitzer aides who tried to discredit the state Senate’s top Republican.

Even Colorado wildlife experts can’t tell the state’s official fish apart from a close relative, the Rocky Mountain News writes. In a decades-old effort to restock greenback cutthroat trout, officials have actually been boosting the population of Colorado River cutthroats in several areas instead. The two species of fish are so closely related, officials must rely on DNA tests to tell them apart.

A potential nightmare for Pennsylvania hunters lasted all of a night. The sportsmen were worried when the state police announced they would stop processing criminal background checks for four days on the eve of the hunting season for Canadian geese and doves, The Philadelphia Inquirer reports. As it turned out, it took the police only 18 hours to update their files, adding 48 million records of crimes committed before 1981. The secret to their success? “Everyone brought their A game,” the state police commissioner said.

It’s been 92 years since anyone’s announced the starting line-up of West Virginia University’s football team at cross-state rival Marshall University, but West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin III may get the honors at Saturday’s “Coal Bowl,” according to the Charleston Daily Mail . Manchin, who went to WVU on a football scholarship but grew up in Marshall’s hometown of Huntington, plans to attend, but wouldn’t predict a winner. The last time the Mountaineers visited Huntington, it was 1915 and West Virginia won 92-6.