Category: News

In Arizona, a county rented some space for a court, and when it couldn’t come to an agreement with the land owner for a lease, it opened up a can of eminent domain and took it over.

“This means municipalities can identify a space they want and force a landlord to lease it to them,” said Mike Freret vice president of development for Orsett/Columbia Ltd. “It may mean that if the space they want already has a business owner in it, they could boot them out.”

Tom Irvine, who represented the county, said that’s exactly what it means.

Finally, the tyrants are feeling comfortable to explicitly state their belief that The State grants property rights. Soon, the Bill of Rights will also be recognized as retractable fiats issued by the Elect(ed).

Most important right, and it’s only in the Constitution indirectly. That oversight will cost us and our children.

Here’s a sordid story. In New Mexico, a twelve year old (misnomered in the story as a teen) puts some change in the school soda machine and gets two sodas. Woo! He’s a hero to his fellow students. When a teacher sees him, teacher says stop that. Student continues. Teacher disciplines student with two days of in-school, whatever that means. And suddenly Rio Rancho, which has nothing to do in the long autumn evenings until cable television reaches their hamlet, talks and talks about this.

Here’s the school district’s story:

Rio Rancho Public Schools issued a written statement: “On Monday a teacher observed Mason manipulating the soft drink machine at the school. The teacher advised Mason that getting two sodas for the price of one is the equivalent to stealing. When the teacher observed Mason doing the same thing again on Tuesday, she wrote him up.”

That sounds about right to me. Young Mason is taking something for which he did not pay, and worse, he’s doing it repeatedly and showing his friends how to do it. When the teacher said stop, young Mason did not stop. So discipline follows.

But witness poor Mason’s trauma:

The boy said the teacher called him a thief and accused him of trying to teach other students how to steal. He was written up, given a two-day in-school suspension and the incident will appear on his permanent school record.

“It makes me feel very sad that I’m going to be thought as a thief later on in my life,” Mason Kisner said. “Heck, I might not get in a good college or get a good job because on my permanent record it will say that when I was a kid, I stole.”

Someone should explain to young Mason that he’s being taught a lesson here, and that he should not game the system or steal or commit fraud, because it’s wrong and because it will eventually carry a longer sentence than two days of in-school suspension (do you suppose that means hanging him by his wrists in the main hallway?).

That someone probably won’t be Mason’s father, who’s too eager to jump into the tantrum:

“I’m flabbergasted, bewildered, dumbfounded. I can’t think of another word to describe how I feel about this incident,” said Edward Kisner, the boy’s father. “What kind of character is this showing Mason?”

. . . .

“I’m very disappointed I haven’t gotten a phone call from the school rescinding Mason’s suspension at this point,” said Edward Kisner. “You know, when you say you’re wrong, it’s not a sign of weakness.”

Obviously, he has no idea of character, but probably a good grasp of weakness.

(Link seen on Fark.)

• You complain about revisions to the cuts of cloth in Levi’s 501 blue jeans.
• You cover this for a major metropolitan newspaper with all appropriate indignation for the rights of the common man.

Buried in this Washington Post story about the now-canceled program by which Army units could disburse seized Iraqi funds to solve immediate problems, we have this nugget of wisdom from some flack who’s never worked an honest day in his life:

“Soldiers are not development workers. There is industry skill, a body of knowledge that goes with it. You can’t just say ‘There’s a pothole over there and get it filled’ and fix a country,” said Dominic Nutt, a spokesman for Christian Aid, a British humanitarian group.

Oh, indeed, I am sure there’s some spreadsheet-writing, wining-and-dining-bureaucrats, and tooling-around-in-dark-SUVs one must do before directing someone to fill the potholes.

Perhaps the appropriately named Nutt is a fan of such Top-From-The-Outside solutions that have been so effective in, well, in NGO theory. But those who fix the potholes do more for the people of the country than those who Fix The Country.

The most important things to remember about this story about the attorney gunned down outside the courthouse:

Dramatic television footage showed Curry, 53, of Simi Valley, trying to hide behind a tree as the man police identified as Strier fired several times.

…

Strier, a heavyset man with graying hair and glasses, calmly walked by stunned reporters before an off-duty sheriff’s reserve officer tackled him.

The media, defenders of Truth but not, apparently, an individual physically threatened man, filmed and watched this happen without coming to the poor shootee’s aid and then let the shooter walk by them before being tackled, not shot, by an off-duty sheriff’s reserve officer, someone who was not a full-time law enforcement officer.

So keep that in mind, when the media picture the mass of Americans as defenseless sheep, they’re projecting.

(Link seen on Ravenwood’s Universe.)

Addendum to my box cutters post:

You know all the box cutters found individually on planes throughout the country? Your paranoia shidoshi has a surprisingly simple explanation. Call it Occam’s Boxcutter if you will. Is it terrorists doing dry runs to see what they can successfully smuggle? Is it an underground of students out to humiliate the TSA?

Or is it simply honest Americans that suddenly discover that they have put their boxcutters in their pockets and suddenly find themselves committing a felony at 42,000 feet?

Believe you me, I would wipe my fingerprints off of it and put it in the seat beside me, too.

9-year-old arrested for waving toy gun. Cop’s gun on him. Taken down and cuffed. His mother busted for trying to point out to the cop that it’s a toy gun.

Sometimes I get the feeling that the cops think they have to shoot the elephant to keep we natives in line.

(Link seen on Drudge.)

Give a pint, get a pint.

No telling how they would reduce the BAC of the donor blood.

(Link seen on Drudge.)

Jeff Gordon of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch writes in his Tipsheet column:

LIFT WEIGHTS, RUN FOR OFFICE

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger got a warm reception when he presented medals at the 39th annual Mr. Olympia contest. He’s huge with the flex-and-pose crowd.

“Finally, I feel at home again,” he told a crowd of 6,000 in Las Vegas. “This is a terrific sport, and if it wouldn’t have been for bodybuilding, I wouldn’t have any of this. It’s a great foundation.”

Added Mr. Olympia founder Joe Weider, “Finally it’s beginning to dawn on the world that bodybuilders are smart. They develop determination. They don’t give up. They don’t lose. If they ever apply that to any profession . . . they can be a great success.”

Meanwhile, back in California, the southern half of the state was ablaze with brush fires.

Gordo, Non Sequitur does not play third line center for the Montreal Canadiens. You cannot even blame Schwarzenegger, or say he hasn’t done enough to stop the fires because he’s not even office yet.

I understand you media types, even you sportswriters, want to blame current Republican officeholders for unrelated problems that preceded their terms of office, but come on. Maybe you should go back to your normal job, which is blaming the current state of the Blues on the Brendan Shanahan tampering charge from 1991. Damn that Larry Pleau! How could he?

A county in Florida has made public suicide illegal.

It’s about time.

(Link seen on Fark.)

In an editorial in the Washington Post, Michael Kinsley’s latest piece bears the headline “One Reason Not to Like Bush” and he starts with a lead of:

Conservatives wonder why so many liberals don’t just disagree with President Bush’s policies, but seem to dislike him personally. The story of stem cell research may help to explain.

He offer some blah blah blah about Bush opposing fetus stem cell research and how Bush pretends to think it’s immoral, but:

None of this matters if you believe that a microscopic embryo is a human being with the same human rights as you and me. George W. Bush claims to believe that, and you have to believe something like that to justify your opposition to stem cell research. But Bush cannot possibly believe that embryos are full human beings, or he would surely oppose modern fertility procedures that create and destroy many embryos for each baby they bring into the world. Bush does not oppose modern fertility treatments. He even praised them in his anti-stem cell speech.

Got that? Kinsley starts putting beliefs into Bush’s head to make his point. Lookie der, lookie der, Bush cannot adhere to his principles because he has not specifically addressed this particular permutation! HYPOCRITE!

Finally, after some blah blah blah about Bush being a hypocrite and moral poser and not a very good one at that (undoubtedly, Kinsley would probably intimate, like you and me, wink-wink-nudge-nudge-say-no-more!), Kinsley finishes with:

This is not a policy disagreement. Or rather, it is not only a policy disagreement. If the president is not a complete moron — and he probably is not — he is a hardened cynic, staging moral anguish he does not feel, pandering to people he cannot possibly agree with and sacrificing the future of many American citizens for short-term political advantage.

Is that a good enough reason to dislike him personally?

Actually, if I were falling for the straw man Kinsley’s hung in effigy, I might still think it was a policy disagreement if I left out every impure motive he so applied so dilligently to the policy discussion.

As it stands, I can only summon forth a “Poor form, Peter” and continue to disregard Michael Kinsley as a serious thinker. Is it good enough reason to dislike him personally? But, Mr. Toohey, I don’t think of you.

The TSA strikes again, as in “swing and a miss!”

You think they’ll go after the harmless woman who brought a knife onto the plane to cut her apple snack? Perhaps it’s also against the law to eat an apple that’s not provided by flight staff on a plane, too. If not, maybe it should be.

(Link seen via Drudge.)

In his column today for the Chicago Sun-Times, Richard Roeper discusses the marketing creation “metrosexual.” He’s spot on when he says nobody but people who are selling something to men who want to be “metrosexuals” every really uses the term “metrosexual.”

However, he goes over the line with his clincher paragraph:

Uh, I don’t think so. And after I finish my Guinness tonight, moisturize and then read a few pages of The Devil Wears Prada before I watch “SportsCenter,” I’ll sleep well, knowing this whole metrosexual thing is just media-fueled nonsense. Hell, I don’t think I even know any metrosexuals.

Dammit, were I in Chicago, I might feel the need to defend my manliness by having a slap fight with him or downing a Budweiser just to prove I could. As it were, I shall finish my Guinness, read a chapter of The Dive from Clausen’s Pier, and ….

Uh oh.

Looks like there might be some awkward conversations at Thanksgiving when I come out of the walk-in closet.

Oh, wait, my beautiful wife dresses me, so I guess I am not a metrosexual after all.

With all the handwringing about Nathaniel Heatwole and his “hide the box cutter” stunt which has left him facing ten years in Federal prison for pointing out the folly that is the TSA and its passenger searches, I think it’s time to inject a little perspective into the anti-box cutter hysteria. I understand they were used in the hijackings on September 11, 2001, but it was a different world then. People expected that hijackers wanted to fly to Cuba, or wanted some political hostages released, or some ransom money. People did not know then that doing what a hijacker wanted was certain death, too.

Otherwise, no one would be hijacked by someone wielding one of these:

Not exactly a machete, now, is it? This is your garden variety box cutter favored by retail stockers and warehousemen everywhere. Note the less-than-shiny razor blade with almost a whole half inch of cutting surface exposed. This is not a piercing or stabbing weapon, folks. This is a little slasher, and it’s got far less than an inch of penetration power. No bad man is going to stick you in the heart or lungs with it, and it’s probably not enough to cut through your stomach wall if you’ve done any extra situps recently or have been eating a lot of fast food. Keep it away from your neck and you should be okay if someone pulls one in a fight. Granted, I’d rather be the guy with a case cutter if one of the two of us in the fight has one, but it’s not instant death, and it’s not even that intimidating.

Even if the bad guy pulls the razor out, he’s only exposing 1.5 inches of slashing blade, and it’s a hell of a lot harder to hold:

Of course, maybe when the press describes box cutter it means a utility knife. Utility knives come in all shapes and sizes, but they’re all designed to have a small, sharp cutting surface but also to be safe for people to handle. As a result, they don’t make that effective of a weapon, especially if you’re a terrorist with a plane full of resisting people.

So we, the people, know that the measures that strip grandmothers of their pinking shears and businessmen of their nail clippers are mostly cosmetic. That the TSA is making a show of security all the while telling us to please be quiet so that the TSA can fool the bad men into thinking the planes are secure. By taking away some of the most effective makeshift weapons available. This effort inconveniences air travellers and probably doesn’t even phase the bad men. It also could lead to prosecution of innocent people who make a small mistake.

When I was working in retail, the box cutter just became a part of the gear I carry in my jeans pockets. After each work day, I dumped it onto the dresser with my wallet, keys, and change. Every morning, including some upon which I did not work, I picked the gear up and put it into my pockets. If I were to do that today, on a day whereupon I was to catch a plane, don’t doubt the TSA would make an example of me.

So let this be a series of lessons to you. Our TSA is creating, for its own benefit, an illusion of security by isolating innocuous items and hoping against all hope that the terrorists continue to use things TSA screeners are looking for and that the terrorists are foolish enough to get caught with them. The TSA will ruin countless innocent American (not that Heatwole’s innocent, mind you) lives to make its point, which is not worth much.