Miscellany

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BANG, BANG, HALT!

Thursday January 27 7:28 AM ET
Policeman Accidentally Guns Down Colleagues

BERLIN (Reuters) - A Berlin police officer accidentally shot three fellow policemen with a machine gun during a training exercise, a spokesman said on Thursday.

The three were not seriously wounded and were being treated for gunshot wounds to their legs and arms.

The four officers, who work as elite bodyguards for the police department, were taking part in a training exercise on Wednesday when the incident occurred.

"It is not yet known what exactly happened," the spokesman said. "All we can say is that three officers were injured by shots fired during a training exercise by one of the guns."

In a separate incident in the eastern German town of Sangerhausen, police on Thursday said a 50-year-old police officer shot himself dead on Monday when his pistol went off accidentally.

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BY ALL MEANS, GET OUT THE VOTE!

The oldest [Hart's Location, NH presidential primary] voter was Maurice Varney, 86, [who said, immediately after voting] "I can't remember who I voted for," but added, "all you can do is take a guess at what [these] guys will be like."
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Source: www.abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/DailyNews/NH_monday131.html

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BUREAUCRACY 0, INGENUITY 1 (BUT IT'S STILL EARLY IN THE GAME)

One [of] the goals in the [South African] government's Firearms Control Bill is to improve the control of legal gun ownership and to use competency certificates as a prerequisite to the issuing of gun licenses.

The Democratic Party has called for changes to the draft Firearms Control Bill following a Sunday newspaper expose which claimed firearm competency certificates were being sold to [investigative journalists posing as] applicants without testing or training them.

"The investigative journalists on the Sunday Times are to be congratulated because they have demonstrated that passing a law is one thing, but making it effective in dealing with the endless ingenuity of human beings is entirely another issue," [Democratic Party Safety and Security spokesman Graham McIntosh] said.
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Source: http://www.bibim.com/anc/nw20000131/91.html

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OH ... WELL, IN THAT CONTEXT, IT ALMOST MAKES SENSE

Oslo: US President Bill Clinton [was] among nominees for the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize ...

Clinton was proposed by two Norwegian parliamentarians ...

"The United States has saved the world from Nazism, Communism and other totalitarian regimes this century," they said in a statement praising Clinton.

Other candidates may include Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. ...
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Source: http://www.timesofindia.com/010200/01worl22.htm

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FROM THOSE ZANY FOLKS WHO BROUGHT YOU THE TEA TAX

"When ... heart disease strikes, there are costs to the community ... and to the health service. A case can therefore be made for using taxation to compensate for the external costs of an atherogenic (artery-clogging) diet," [Dr. Tom Marshall of the University of Birmingham, UK] writes in the January 29th issue of the British Medical Journal.
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Source: http://www.reutershealth.com/eline/open/2000012804.html

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I CAN'T UNDERSTAND THEIR RELUCTANCE ...

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) - The Protestant leader of Northern Ireland's power-sharing Cabinet said today that a report confirms the Irish Republican Army has not begun to disarm, a finding likely to compel British authorities to withdraw the administration's powers.
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Source: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20000201/ts/northern_ireland_13.html

[Darn! There goes that Nobel Peace Prize, Bill! -- ed.]

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HEY! WHAT ABOUT AMENDMENTS 9 AND 10?

"Notwithstanding the appropriate caution reading into the Constitution rights not explicitly defined, the Court has acknowledged that certain unarticulated rights are implicit in enumerated guarantees. For example, the rights of association and privacy, the right to be presumed innocent, and the right to be judged by a standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt in a criminal trial, as well as the right to travel, appear nowhere in the Constitution or Bill of Rights. Yet these important but unarticulated rights have nonetheless been found to share constitutional protection in common with explicit guarantees. The concerns expressed by Madison and others have been resolved: fundamental rights, even though not expressly guaranteed, have been recognized by the Court as indispensable to the enjoyment of rights explicitly defined."
-- United States Supreme Court, majority opinion, Richmond Newspapers Inc. v. Virginia (448 U.S. 555, 1980)

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INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS DEAD IN TEXAS?

Student faces drug testing showdown
Father plans to hold out son over Lockney policy
By JOHN WISE
[Lubbock, TX] Avalanche-Journal

LOCKNEY -- Sometime today, local farmer Larry Tannahill expects to get a phone call from his son's junior high school.

When that happens, Tannahill will pick up his child and bring him home until further notice.

"I'm sticking with my original plan," said Tannahill, who has refused to sign a consent form that would allow the school district to screen his son's urine for drugs, alcohol and tobacco. "I'm gonna fight them." [...]

Of about 400 students subjected to testing, only one -- Tannahill's son -- is expected to refuse.
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Source: http://lubbockonline.com/stories/020300/loc_020300102.shtml
[emphasis added - ed.]

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NONE (BUT THE NRA) DARE CALL IT VICTORY

The shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado last spring have not, as advocates hoped, generated a dramatic shift in the fate of gun bills in most legislatures across the country, said Kelly Anders of the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Last year, fewer than 200 of the 1,100 bills on gun issues were adopted by legislatures, she said.
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Source: www.washingtonpost.com/wp%2Ddyn/articles/A22122%2D2000Feb7.html

Va. House Panel Kills School Firearms Ban
By Craig Timberg
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 8, 2000; Page A1

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SO WHAT DO YOU USE FOR FISH-WRAP IN TUCSON?

Tucson -- When this city's two daily newspapers recently banned classified ads for private gun sales, the response was fast and unforgiving.

"Be a newspaper, not a police officer!" said one letter to the editor. Another called the policy hypocritical. "Since automobiles kill many more people than guns, are you also going to reject classified ads from individuals trying to sell their automobiles...?"

The Arizona Daily Star and Tucson Citizen are not the only papers to get letters like these. Eleven others around the US also exclude such ads. [...]

Indeed, while the decision costs both Tucson papers advertising and subscription revenues - a combined $20,000 this year, according to one insider - the publishers call it a moral duty.

"The publishers felt that our advertising policies needed to be in alignment with policies that they've encouraged on our editorial pages," says Jim Rowley, vice president for the Tucson papers' shared marketing department. "They favor background checks for firearm purchases." [...]

Seattle Times publisher Frank Blethen says any uproar has long since subsided over the path charted by his predecessors.

"The philosophy then was the same as today - the use of handguns, especially in an urban area, doesn't serve any particular social purpose," he says, "and has a whole lot of downsides, either criminal activities, or gun owners not being careful enough in how they lock up their guns." [...]
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Source: http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2000/02/08/fp2s1-csm.shtml
Gun-ad ban hints at new media standards
Tim Vanderpool
Special to The Christian Science Monitor

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A REPUBLIC, IF YOU CAN KEEP IT

To hell with elections, in other words. This is now official US policy. State Department spokesman James Foley explained the new doctrine. "What makes a democracy is more than simply a clean and free and fair election," he mused, "We've seen evidence in the past, I believe, around the world of governments that were elected democratically not acting democratically or not acting in conformity with democratic principles and with respect for human rights and things of this nature. And so I don't think that elections themselves are the be-all and the end-all."
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Source: http://www.antiwar.com/szamuely/sz020800.html
February 8, 2000
Uncle Sam Says: "To Hell With Elections"
by George Szamuely

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WHICH EXPLAINS HOW THEIR HIT RATE (19 FOR 41) WAS SO 'HIGH'

ALBANY, New York (AP) -- West African immigrant Amadou Diallo, killed in a hail of police bullets, was shot several times while falling down and after he was lying on the ground, a medical examiner testified Tuesday.
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Source: http://www.cnn.com/2000/US/02/08/diallo.trial.02.ap/index.html
Coroner: Diallo shot several times after falling on the ground
February 8, 2000
Web posted at: 1:49 p.m. EST (1849 GMT)

[He was probably a lot easier to shoot once he was on the ground and had stopped jerking and flopping around. -- ed.]

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JACKBOOT JANET SEZ, "NOBODY GOES DOWN (UNLESS I SAY SO)"

U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno tried to ease public concerns [about several coordinated "denial of service attacks" on Web service providers] Wednesday by announcing that a team of agents is working the case. [...]

Reno said the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center is heading up the investigation with help from FBI agents in the field, specially trained federal prosecutors, state and local law enforcement agencies, and officials from the companies that were attacked.
- - - Source: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/tech/DailyNews/webattacks000210.html

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WHAT ABOUT THE 'TYRANNY' SCENARIO?

[...] The state Senate and Virginia voters must still approve it, but the House of Delegates today voted 72 to 27 for an amendment giving constitutional protection to hunting, fishing and harvesting game. [...]

At least five other states have a right to hunt written into their constitutions with few apparent problems, said Kelly Anders, of the National Conference of State Legislatures. Other states have considered similar measures.

"The right to hunt is implied by the right to bear arms," Anders said. "Unless you have a self-defense scenario, hunting is the only lawful use for a citizen to use a firearm."
[emphasis added -- ed.]

The proposal ran into opposition from constitutional purists, who argued that the right to hunt could be protected without adding to the state constitution.

"It's the Constitution of Virginia. It's life, liberty, property, freedom of speech," said Del. Robert F. McDonnell (R-Virginia Beach). "You're going to add to that the right to raise sheep and put a worm on a hook?" [...]
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Source: www.washingtonpost.com/wp%2Ddyn/articles/A37698%2D2000Feb10.html
Va. Amendment Would Guarantee Right to Hunt
By Craig Timberg
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 11, 2000; Page A1

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SOME BRITS STILL HAVE A PAIR?

Students at Leeds university last night banned their former president, Jack Straw, in protest at what they said were his anti-libertarian policies.

More than 600 students at the union's annual general meeting overwhelmingly voted to revoke the home secretary's life membership of the union, and to lobby the university to overturn his honorary degree. [...]
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Source: http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/politics/story/0%2C3604%2C135626%2C00.html
The Guardian
Protesters ban Straw from his old student union
Friday February 11, 2000

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