Fire extinguishers could be removed from communal areas in flats throughout the country because they are a safety hazard, it has emerged.

The life-saving devices encourage untrained people to fight a fire rather than leave the building, risk assessors in Bournemouth decided.

There are fears that their recommendation, which has seen the extinguishers ripped out of several private, high-rise flats in the town, could set a national precedent.

This is a great example of the mentality that says that average, “untrained” people are inherently stupid and incapable of doing anything besides breathing and uttering single syllables.  People can’t be allowed to use fire extinguishers, cell phones while driving, firearms, the internet, or anything else they can possibly botch.

If a small fire starts in a trash can, or a grease fire starts on a stove, it obviously makes sense to evacuate the entire building and let half of it burn down while the fire department shows up.  Since most average people can’t hold a 5-pound canister by the handle and squeeze that handle while pointing a nozzle at the fire without endangering themselves, then it would stand to reason that it’s far better to clear out residents from hundreds of apartments - some of which may have children with no parents home - while the fire steadily consumes the structure.

With the government doing everything, why does anyone need to keep around a device that might save their own life or those of others?  Let’s get rid of public defibrillators, too.  The coroner is far better qualified to take care of the situation than any passerby.

In an interesting twist, I had mentioned this issue several days ago, though it didn’t end up as I had intended.

The agreement calls for the city to post a notice on its Web site that explains how gun owners can claim their firearms.

Gun owners must sign an affidavit claiming ownership of a gun but don’t need to present written proof, such as a sales receipt or serial number. A background check also is required to certify that someone claiming a gun can legally possess a firearm.

The note apparently hasn’t been posted yet.  However, their site is here - in case you’re looking for your lost firearm.  The city says they have 552 firearms stored and available for people to claim.  The NRA said the number should be closer to 1200.  It’s unclear what happened to the others, or how the seized firearms were counted to begin with.

When pressed on the fact that its confiscation efforts left its own citizens completely defenseless, the City cited a rather odd legal fallacy that keeps popping up for some reason…

In their lawsuit, the gun lobbying groups accused the city of violating gun owners’ constitutional right to bear arms and leaving them “at the mercy of roving gangs, home invaders, and other criminals” after Katrina.

In response, the city argued that federal law doesn’t apply to the plaintiffs’ claims against city officials “because the right to keep and bear arms has never been recognized as a fundamental individual right.”

Anyway, it sure is a good thing that New Orleans was able to provide protection for its own citizens after the storm, and none of their police officers ran away.

The National Rifle Association should continue to press this case and insist on getting a court order that the City not arbitrarily impose martial law over certain aspects of the Constitution.

The (slightly) stricter laws against naked short selling of stocks was a good start.

Working with the Fed and Treasury Department, the government has been extending credit and bailing out companies for a couple of weeks now.  Mostly good steps to control a bad situation. 

But Cox went a step further yesterday, announcing a ban on ALL short selling of stocks for about 800 financial institutions.

Now, forget the whole debate about the ethics of shorting stocks… it’s just a dumb move in a practical sense.  If Cox really thinks there’s manipulation going on, and there obviously is, then a complete suspension of short-selling is needed until things are sorted out.

Here’s the problem - you’ve suspended short selling on the SHORT SELLERS!  Investment banks like Goldman Sachs are really the bullies here, not the victims.  Sure, they were being shorted heavily by other institutions, but that’s a pretty recent event.

Let’s go back to the example I keep using when I post on this topic: Sirius Satellite Radio.  Nearly destroyed by government intervention (the FCC approval process) and then again by government inaction (the SEC ignoring naked shorts).   The company probably belongs at $2 a share or better, but it’s currently on the 99 cent value menu because of hedge funds and investment bankers short selling and manipulating the price.  Goldman Sachs is a huge participant in this.

While Sirius is up 2% today while Goldman Sachs is up 22%.

Why?  Because no one is allowed to short-sell Goldman.  But Goldman can spend all day long short-selling and manipulating Sirius XM and many other companies like it.

So here’s an idea.  We ought to make this short protection a two-way street.  If a company is to be protected from short sellers, that company shouldn’t also be allowed to engage in the practice against other companies.  Seems simple enough, doesn’t it?

Frankly, I can’t wait until we have a President McCain in the White House.  I have far more respect for his judgement and abilities in a crisis (financial or otherwise) than I do President Bush.  McCain called for Cox to be fired, and that’s exactly what should happen.

Well, sort of.  Actually, Kilpatrick is just hanging out for a night. What’s wrong with Detroit so that they don’t just show this clown the road?  Kilpatrick has stolen money from the citizens of Detroit and Michigan on multiple occasions, made death threats against reporters, engaged in comical levels of cronyism and even assaulted a police officer.  He has disgraced the Office of the Mayor, abused the political system and generally done the worst job that anyone could possibly do.  It’s possible he is even withholding information about the murder of Tamara Greene, who may have been rubbed out at the request of his wife.

In a particularly ridiculous episode, Kilpatrick even took a police motorcycle and went riding around the streets of Detroit on it.  No security, no official business…just Kilpatrick out for a ride, on city property.

Still, this nutjob is in charge of a major American city.  Why?  A recall attempt has been launched and Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm has begun going through the motions to have Kilpatrick officially removed, but these are steps that should have been taken long ago.

Kilpatrick has a long string of offenses, but his bond violation that saw him take a July 23 jaunt to Windsor, Canada, was the straw that broke the camel’s back and will land him in lockup for at least one night.  The terms of his early, fairly liberal requirement by the court meant that he would need to seek approval for any trips outside of Michigan.

In the meantime, according to the mayor’s office, Chief of Staff Kandia Milton will act as mayor in Kilpatrick’s absence.

Apparently the Mafia had left its old stomping grounds to go try its hand once again at business way down in Florida, and had raised the ire of authorities there in the process.

During a news conference Tuesday morning in Tampa, U.S. Attorney Robert O’Neil said, “When the Gambino family decided to establish a foothold and start committing crimes in the Tampa Bay area, it opened itself to law enforcement scrutiny.”

O’Neil added, “Law enforcement began to investigate them, and while investigating the crimes here in the Tampa Bay area, agents and detectives were able to gather significant evidence so as to additional crimes that had gone unsolved for years that had taken place all over the Tampa Bay area and elsewhere.”

Gotti Jr. has previously been tried three times, only to end up with hung juries each time.  Gotti’s insistence that he has “left the Mafia life behind” is a good try at a public statement, but largely falls on deaf ears, as he is currently married to Kimberly Albanese.  The authorities may not have any better luck convicting the son of “Dapper Don” this time - it’s not clear what witnesses they have and the mob is famously capable of getting jurors and judges on their payroll, or just “asking” them to give a favorable decision.

A gunman shot and injured three people at a campus computer lab at Phoenix College in Arizona on Thursday.  No law enforcement officers were present in the lab at the time, and the gunman fled, although a suspect was later apprehended.  Fortunately, no one was killed, although one person is currently in critical condition.

Why did this happen on the heels of recent, similar tragedies that left fatalities and many injuries?  This wasn’t a "deranged gunman", to be sure; it apparently stemmed from a disagreement which had turned violent.

This was not another Cho or Columbine-type incident.  But, after all the promises made by school administrators and college police around the country, wouldn’t it seem that something would have been in place to prevent this type of incident from recurring?

An image of safety is unsafe

Almost certainly the school was designated a "gun free zone".  The ubiquitous signs posted at the entrances of nearly every educational institution in the country have so far been ignored by every single individual responsible for perpetrating a massacre.  These types of measures are apparently totally ineffective and unenforceable by design.

At best, they give a sense of false security, but more likely mock the truth of real-life shootings.  They are a lie about safety that no one really believes, but is still inexplicably posted like some sort of magic talisman to keep the gunmen away.

Address the real danger

What kind of people actually commit these acts?

Seung-Hui Cho was clearly a case of mental meltdown.  George Hennard, perpetrator of the Luby’s massacre, was insane.  Virtually everyone in every mass shooting in United States history either had a history of mental illness, or a history of violence, and displayed plenty of advance warning signs.  These have not been everyday people who simply "snap".  Certainly, they have not been stable, law-abiding people who would survive any significant background check.

There is no question that we should carefully watch people who are suspected of being murderous nutcases.  That is in our universal interest - people who become dangerous as a result of mental instability are unpredictable and can often (as we have seen repeatedly) do some pretty terrible things.  People who are under the care of a mental health specialist should not be able to legally purchase a firearm - as Cho did.  In that case, the fault was with the background check system, which was originally set up as an amazing fix-all for this exact problem.  See how well it worked?

Police omnipotence

The most solid and sure way to stop someone from wielding force irresponsibly is to make sure that responsible parties wield the majority of the force.  Ideally, this means a trained authority figure of the state, such as a law enforcement officer.  However, due to finite budgets and the laws of physics, police officers simply cannot be everywhere at once.  They’re in very short supply, very high demand, and are extremely unlikely to be standing right next to you when violence occurs.

In the majority of shootings, particularly incidents on campuses, the police arrive in time to restore order and put yellow tape around the building.  Most cases involve a shooter walking around and executing people at will, before finally committing suicide - not being shot by police.

In short, if people are to save their own lives during a massacre situation, they are tasked with killing their attacker or being killed.

A better solution

One part of the solution to making these tragedies less prevalent would be to let people who already have Concealed Weapons Permits - meaning they can otherwise carry in banks, at work, in shopping malls, grocery stores, etc - do what they otherwise do everywhere else, and simply carry a firearm on a college campus.  This does not present any additional complications beyond what it already entails in normal life, and as a general rule, CWP holders have already established a comfortable method for maintaining concealment while not being a danger to anyone else.

The key word here is concealed - the only reason it seems like an odd idea to anyone is because they are not aware that many others are already carrying weapons in ordinary life outside of campus.

There are many odd myths about citizens who legally carry concealed weapons - that they’ll fly off the emotional handle and shoot each other during disagreements, that guns will just sort of randomly "go off" by themselves, or that people may decide they’re Rambo, and try to save the day in an idealistic fantasy.  This is mostly speculation and nonsense that simply does not square with actual statistics or the extensive, real-life research that has been conducted by law enforcement agencies over the years.

A pointless rule

No conceivable reason exists as to why this arbitrary prohibition is kept in place - there is no magical bullet shield on campus, the police are not any more efficient, and CWP holders do not become wholly different people once they cross a nonexistent boundary onto a college.

The largest organization currently working to provide students, faculty and staff the opportunity to exercise their commonsense, legal rights is Students for Concealed Carry on Campus .  Hopefully in the future, we will see a change in current policy, and an end to the unnecessary deaths that have resulted from decades of myopic legislation.

Four former officials of the Spitzer administration violated the state’s Public Officers Law when they sought to have the state police gather damaging information about State Senator Joseph L. Bruno’s travels on state aircraft last summer, according to a report released today by the State Commission on Public Integrity.

Two of the officials, Richard Baum, the former top aide to Gov. Eliot Spitzer, and William Howard, a former public safety adviser to the governor, have already reached settlements with the commission.

Cleaning house and taking names should really be high on the agenda for Albany. Unfortunately, David Paterson is an old hand of the Spitzer administration, and will probably continue the tradition. How long will the citizens of New York allow their state government to run out of control?

Glass breaks, paper flies — the loot’s gone hours before the waste company even arrives.

“They’re like an army out there,” said Johnson. “They’re in trucks. They’re on cell phones. It’s a business.”

With prices for aluminum, cardboard and newsprint going up and an economic slowdown putting added pressure on people’s pocketbooks, curbside refuse has become a hot commodity.

A truck piled high with mixed recyclables can fetch upward of $1,000; newspapers alone can grab about $600.

“These guys are becoming much more organized and much more prevalent,” said Robert Reed, a spokesman for Norcal Waste Systems Inc., a garbage and recycling company in San Francisco and other cities throughout Northern California. “This has nothing to do with the lone homeless man picking up cans. We’re seeing organized fleets of professional poachers with trucks.”

In case you’re curious, here is the music video…

Meehan appeared on CNN yesterday morning because of the controversy. He said that, “I believe 9/11 could have been prevented if we’d had a Republican president at the time.” Clearly he means if a Republican have been President during the 1990’s.

While he may be right on many points, this tasteless attempt at political expression should not be rewarded. Conservatives are better than this, and we should call for Meehan to pull down his billboards and not use the deaths of thousands at the World Trade Center to promote his lame music.

Florida Democrats have called the billboards a crass attempt at exploiting 9/11 for political and personal gain, and the Florida Republican Party issued a statement saying in party that “there are many ways to convey the importance of national security in this election without going to extremes.”

The song costs $5 to purchase from Meehan’s website. He’s also available for parties, meetings, and events.