The top justification for the massive invasion of privacy that is Britain’s CCTV system isn’t panning out:

Massive investment in CCTV cameras to prevent crime in the UK has failed to have a significant impact, despite billions of pounds spent on the new technology, a senior police officer piloting a new database has warned. Only 3% of street robberies in London were solved using CCTV images, despite the fact that Britain has more security cameras than any other country in Europe.

It is, however, a great way for CCTV monitors to get cheap thrills.

I don’t know which is worse, that the city of Cleveland requires a “music permit” and a “pool table permit,” or that failing to obtain one is a criminal offense.

In San Diego, a woman is pulled from her family and two kids, extradited to Michigan, and will likely spend the next nine years of her life in prison because 32 years ago she escaped from prison. She had been convicted of drug distribution. There’s no evidence she’s committed any crimes since she escaped. In fact, it looks as if she started her life anew, and had put things back together. I’d be pleasantly surprised if authorities showed her any mercy.

Meanwhile, there are now early reports that “D.C. Madam” Deborah Jeane Palfrey has committed suicide. She was facing 55 years in prison for the crime of matching consenting high-end prostitutes up with the consenting rich, powerful men who wanted to have sex with them. Moral crusader and Palfrey client David Vitter remains a member in good standing of the United States Senate.

Via Fark comes this quote:

The police spokesman said they are ever vigilant and on the lookout for wedgies here.

“You might get away with that in Lincoln or Omaha,” the spokesman said. “But we’re not going to allow wedgies in North Platte.”

This morning, I debated a rep from CSPI for the Retirement Living channel on the topic of public health.

I was hoping she’d bring up trans-fats. And she did, blaming your partially hydrogenated oils for some 50,000 deaths per year. I have no idea where they got that number, but I did point out that if it’s true, CSPI’s activism is partially to blame. Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the organization put public pressure on the fast food industry to adopt healthy trans-fats in place of animal fats. In response to one early study citing the dangers of trans-fats, one CSPI rep wrote in a newsletter, “trans-schmans!”

The restaurant industry caved, and now CSPI is demanding they switch back, at least when it comes to foods were other alternatives won’t work.

Should have video in about a week.

Eight-year-old boy suspended for sniffing a Sharpie. Sad little quote from the boy:

“It smelled good,” Harris said. “They told me that’s wrong.”

Kid gets arrested for trying to shock his buddy with a toy camera.

Parents magazine ranks the top “kid-safe” states. It’s too bad that most of the criteria for the rankings center around a state’s willingness to pass a bunch of laws telling parents how to raise their children.

Example:

Surprisingly, basic safety devices like booster seats and bike helmets aren’t required in most states — 31 fail to mandate one or both of them. “Having a law is essential, even if you wouldn’t dream of putting your preschooler in the car without a booster seat,” says Alan Korn, director of public policy for Safe Kids Worldwide, an advocacy group in Washington, D.C. “Not only does a law educate parents who might not be as safety-conscious as you, but it also makes it easier for you to handle protests from your kids. When my 7-year-old says he’s too big for a bike helmet, I just remind him that it’s the law. Argument over.”

God forbid you teach the kid to wear a helmet because it’s the rational thing to do. Maybe teach him something about risk and responsibility. No, instead, just tell him he’s gotta’ wear a helmet because the all-knowing legislature–the ones who make laws with processes like this–simply say so, and if he doesn’t do as they say, he’ll be breaking the law.

On his blog, a professional magician says he may have to discontinue a trick in which he borrows a pack of cigarettes from his audience. 

Reason:  The last time he tried the trick, no one had a pack.

(Hat tip: Jacob Grier)

Headline:

“Weight gain increases risk of variety of cancers”

Third paragraph:

“While the study suggests a link, there is no definitive proof that being fat in itself causes cancer.”

I’m not splitting hairs, here. It’s entirely possible, for example, that dieting is what makes being overweight so unhealthy. In other words, if overweight people just ignored their weight, and worked on staying active, they’d be much healthier than constantly altering their diet in an effort to lose weight, which they’ll inevitably put back on, anyway.

It’s what people like Paul Campos and other obesity hype critics have been saying for years. Yo-yo dieting is what’s dangerous. Obesity isn’t dangerous until you’re well in the “morbid” range. If they’re right, alarmist headlines like the one above are what are killing people, not love handles.

A new study from the Netherlands confirms the intuitive: The “obese people are going to bankrupt our health care system” argument is a canard. Even if government anti-obesity initiatives work (and there’s little reason to think the will), you aren’t going to save taxpayers or health insurers any money by causing more people to wither away in old age instead of dropping dead of a heart attack at 50.

This isn’t to say we should want more people to die at 50. And I’m firmly in the camp that excess weight only really becomes a health problem once you’re in the range of “morbdly obese.”

But it’s a common refrain in the public health crowd that condition X causes so many premature deaths a year, and that if we take (usually costly, usually freedom-inhibiting) drastic measures now, we’ll save the health care system X amount of dollars. I’ve never bought it. Extending lives into old age is generally going to mean more money spent on health care.

It’s at least an honest, colorable argument to say that the government needs to pass public health proposals to prevent unnecessary loss of life. I disagree with most of those arguments, but they’re at least arguments worth having. Arguing that extending lives will save taxpayers and consumers money on health care just doesn’t make sense.

A Mississippi lawmaker (and three co-sponsors) have introcued a bill that would….well, let’s just quote straight from the bill:

Any food establishment to which this section applies shall not be allowed to serve food to any person who is obese, based on criteria prescribed by the State Department of Health after consultation with the Mississippi Council on Obesity Prevention and Management established under Section 41-101-1 or its successor. The State Department of Health shall prepare written materials that describe and explain the criteria for determining whether a person is obese, and shall provide those materials to all food establishments to which this section applies. A food establishment shall be entitled to rely on the criteria for obesity in those written materials when determining whether or not it is allowed to serve food to any person.

Sandy Szwarc called the bill’s sponsor, who confirmed that he isn’t kidding. We’ve finally arrived. Now just wait until the first bill like this actually passes.

• I’d probably look at her the same way.

• Vermont moves toward decriminalizing marijuana.
• On the other hand, a legislator in Maryland wants to ban trans-fats state-wide.
• And more from the Nanny State: Washington State looks to ban smoking with kids in the car. The natural next step, of course, is to ban smoking in private homes where children are present. In fact, kids are exposed to a parent’s secondhand smoke far more in the home than in the car. They just have to condition us first.
• Kansas Nebraska cop seizes $65,000 in cash during a traffic stop. But the car’s owner isn’t charged with a crime. He wasn’t even give a ticket. Money excerpt (pardon the pun):
  

  “Chris is a very aggressive young deputy,” Hanson said.

  Investigators don’t know if they will be able to connect the money to a drug operation, Hanson said, but the important work already has been done.

  “The big thing is he grabbed 69 (thousand dollars) and took it away from them,” Hanson said of the money seized. “That’s going right straight to the heart of the matter.”

  Yep. Skipping all that “due process” stuff is certainly “going right straight to the heart of the matter.”

• What happens when you don’t pay for your “TV license” in the U.K.?
• Good to know we got that whole “democracy and liberal society” thing down pat in Afghanistan before moving on to Iraq.

First, tough guys don’t mess with politics.  And if they do, they don’t endorse Nanny Statist Baptist ministers.  I can see the PSAs now.  “Hi, I’m Chuck Norris.  And I’d like to talk to you about your waistline.”

But endorsing Huckabee isn’t even the worst of it.  One think I’m sure real tough guys certainly don’t do is go whining to a judge when someone parodies them.  Particularly when said parody is about being a tough guy.  Norris has pretty clearly benefited from the “Chuck Norris facts” meme.  In fact, he’s helped perpetuate it.  So it’s a little disappointing that once someone had the good sense to package the facts into a book, Norris decided to sue.

The book capitalizes on “mythical facts” that have been circulating on the Internet since 2005 that poke fun at Norris’ tough-guy image and super-human abilities, the suit said.

It includes such humorous “facts” as “Chuck Norris’s tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried” and “Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits,” the suit said, as well as “Chuck Norris can charge a cell phone by rubbing it against his beard.”

“Some of the ‘facts’ in the book are racist, lewd or portray Mr. Norris as engaged in illegal activities,” the lawsuit alleges.

Norris, who rose to fame in the 1970s and 1980s as the star of such films as “The Delta Force” and “Missing in Action,” says the book’s title would mislead readers into thinking the facts were true.

That extraordinarily lame last line I’d guess is an effort to get around the fact the book is an obvious parody, and therefore protected by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Hustler v. Falwell.

I don’t see this working out for Norris.  I doubt, for example, that a court is going to find that people might mistake for actual fact statements like, “Chuck Norris can play the violin with a piano,” or that, “Chuck Norris once visited the Virgin Islands; They are now merely called, ‘The Islands,’”  or, “Chuck Norris once punched a man in the soul.”  If Chuck Norris thinks people might actually believe this stuff, maybe Chuck Norris has spent too much time reading about Chuck Norris on the Internets.

Of course, all of this just proves that Chuck Norris is no Charles Bronson.  And he’s certainly no Bruce Schneier.

Hell, he’s barely even a Steven Seagal.

Honestly. What’s wrong with these people?

An elementary student in Marion County was arrested Thursday after school officials found her cutting food during lunch with a knife that she brought from home, police said.

The 10-year-old girl, a student at Sunrise Elementary School in Ocala, was charged possession of a weapon on school property, which is a felony.

According to authorities, school employees spotted the girl cutting her food while she was eating lunch and took the steak knife from her.

The girl told sheriff’s deputies that she had brought the knife to school on more than one occasion in the past.

Students told officials that the girl did not threaten anyone with the knife.

The girl was arrested and transported to the Juvenile Assessment Center.

No sense of judgment or propriety whatsoever.

Via David Harsanyi.

Saw the oddest thing at the gym last night. I really wish I had brought my camera, or had a cell phone camera on me. A guy walks in wearing Christmasy-red shorts, a short-sleeved shirt, and Santa shoes. He’s sporting a long white beard, a bowl-full-of-jelly-like belly, and pink cheeks. Yep. Dead ringer for good ol’ Santa Clause. At Bally’s. Working out. He chose a treadmill in front of a TV showing the Louisville-Rutgers game. He then spent the next hour working up a sweat–slight incline, and a brisk, mall-walk pace, towel tossed over his right shoulder, the white tails of iPod buds dangling around his neck. This really did happen. It was pretty surreal. Also, Santa is a sweater.

I bring this up because I entirely coincidentally saw this story today, which may well explain the weirdity last night. The U.S. Surgeon General has apparently had enough of fat Santas. You know, for the children and stuff.