Skid Row in Los Angeles is a pretty frightening place, not only because of the lowlifes camping there, and making a mess with every kind of bodily waste, but because of ACLU litigation, and court decisions that have tried to make it illegal to enforce the law. Heather Mac Donald had a good article in the Autumn 2007 City Journal about clean-up efforts:

Crucial support came from the city attorney and the local councilwoman, both of whom bucked Los Angeles political traditions to fight for sanity in Central City East. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa broke with his own past as president of the ACLU of Southern California to back the cleanup.[The Reclamation of Skid Row by Heather Mac Donald, City Journal Autumn 2007]

Well, of course Villaraigosa is more enthusiastic about the exercise of the Mayor’s police powers once he’s got them himself. Remember Bill Clinton? He was a Sixties hippie who dodged the draft, loathed the military, and smoked dope.

In office, he bombed Serbia Iraq, and Sudan, threatened Haiti with invasion, and set fire to a commune. Villaraigosa’s sudden pro-law enforcement attitude is just a matter of the shoe being on the other foot.

In El Paso, a hospital is under lockdown conditions in order to protect a Mexican police commander from assassination by drug gangsters.

Doesn’t wealthy Mexico have any hospitals that can be made secure from criminals? Inquiring minds want to know.

In particular, why must American lives be endangered to do a favor for Mexico? The hospital will absolutely be a kill zone if the cartels decide to take the cop out. A dinky little singer was blasted in a Matamoros hospital in December for irritating some cartel guys, so murder among the scrubs is not an innovation in crime for Mexican gangsters.

Being generous to Mexicans makes even less sense when you remember that the Mexican army has invaded US territory literally hundreds of times over the last decade. That violation of American sovereignty should remind us that Mexico is an enemy, not a friendly neighbor. We owe them zero favors, to say the least.

Furthermore, as the article helpfully notes, US taxpayers are footing the bill for the wall of police protecting the hospital 24/7.

With Thomason Hospital still under lockdown to protect a Mexican police commander targeted for assassination, El Pasoans wonder whether the drug violence in Juárez is spilling to the U.S. side.

But El Paso Interim Police Chief Greg Allen said that the opposite might be true, and that it was improbable that Cmdr. Fernando Lozano Sandoval would be attacked while being treated at Thomason. [...]

The Chihuahua state police are paying Lozano’s medical bills, Belmonte said. But El Paso taxpayers are paying for the round-the-clock security at Thomason Hospital.

El Paso still is in the USA, right?

Many thanks to those who have written after James Fulford’s blog last night on my illness, sending their best wishes and prayers. I had follow-up surgery last week, doing some repair work that couldn’t be done earlier.

I’m back at my house now…and as the old saying goes,

There’s no place like home

Again, thanks to all who have been so generous.

“It’s disgusting. We have knifings. We have killings. And they’re taking me to court because I’m selling in pounds and ounces.”
That’s what Janet Devers, a lady who runs a vegetable stand in London, said about facing criminal charges for selling vegetables by pounds and ounces. She could wind up having to pay fines (possibly up to $130,000) and could lose her business:

Janet Devers, 63, was notified of the criminal counts with a 67-page letter that arrived in the mail, outlining 13 criminal charges relating to the “improper” pricing of goods as well as the offense of selling vegetables in bowls.

Obviously, this has something to do with the European Union, which, according to Section 128 of the Treaty on European Union

shall contribute to the flowering of the cultures of the Member States, while respecting their national and regional diversity and at the same time bringing the common cultural heritage to the fore.

But rather than blame the EU for the whole mess, those who don’t like the EU and forced metrication ought also to blame British leaders for allowing it.

The UK had been slowly going the metric route even before entering the European Economic Community (now European Union) but when the UK entered the EEC, metrication was a condition of membership in the club.

The British continued to postpone the acceleration of metrication but in 2000, the European Union’s “compulsory metrication policy” was enacted, prohibiting the use of non-metric weights and measures for sale of goods in Britain.

In 2002-2004, the famed “Metric Martyrs” case resulted in convictions, but that case got a lot of publicity and nobody had been prosecuted until Janet Devers’ scales were confiscated last September.

Confusingly, some EU officials have recently downplayed the law, stating that they never intended it to be a crime for pounds and ounces to be used in Britain and the whole issue had been invented by the British tabloid press. Nevertheless, the EU regulations do exist, and as currently drafted, in 2010 would prohibit merchants not only from selling goods in traditional imperial measures, but even to refer to them.
According to British opinion polls, over 90% of the public oppose criminalizing the sale of goods in imperial measures.