With respect to crazed Canadian ciller Gregory Despres, the Ass. Press reports that the day after Despres slipped through the border (sans chainsaw and brass knuckles):

… a gruesome scene was discovered at the neighbors: The decapitated body of a country musician named Frederick Fulton, 74, was found on Fulton’s kitchen floor. His head was in a pillowcase under a table. His common-law wife was found stabbed to death in a bedroom.

Canadian police and U.S. customs officials didn’t know about the alleged murders when custom officials let Despres into the U.S., and he refused to turn back to face assault charges.

Not murders, only “alleged” murders. Maybe the killings were in self-defense. Or maybe Fulton cut his own head off, and his common law became so distraught she hid his head in a pillowcase, stuck it under a table, and then stabbed herself to death.

While a tiny number of dogs turn on their owners’ children, others help to save them.

Today’s Frisco Chronicle reports that the Animal Control and Welfare Commission is responding to last week’s tragedy by urging the city to require most evil, nasty pit bulls dogs to be spayed and neutered. The article also quotes Frisco P.D. Sgt. William Herndon as saying that aggressive animals brought before the city’s dog court are almost always unneutered males, as was one of the two dogs involved in last week’s tragedy.

The Commission categorically declined to recommend any new regulations targeting specific breeds, which commissioner Richard Schulke rightly warned would lead to “canine ethnic cleansing.” It also cites dog trainer Ron Cole (i.e., a guy who trains dogs, that is, not one who writes for the L.A. Dog Trainer) questioning whether the “pit bulls” involved in last week’s attack were pit bulls at all:

“The male certainly doesn’t look like a pit bull to me,” Cole said, noting that it more closely resembled an American bulldog.

The size of the dogs, roughly 80 pounds, is more consistent with them American Bulldogs than ordinary pit bulls, whose males normally range from 30 to 60 pounds. Still, the American Bulldog is a very close relative to the pit, and some may argue it’s a sub-breed of pit, so I have to wonder if the paraphrased portion of the above quote lost something in translation. I can’t imagine Cole would have said the male certainly doesn’t look like a pit bull but certainly does look like an American Bulldog.

If the dogs turn out not to be pit bulls after all, that sure isn’t going to look good for Frisco Chronicle columnist C.W. Nevius, an anti-pit, anti-gun-owner fanatic who only three days earlier wrote this:

Then there’s the old “you-don’t-even-know-if-it-was-a-pit-bull” argument. These people argue that there are mixed pedigrees and blurred breeds. You can count on someone sending along a link to the “find the pit bull” Web site, where photos of dogs that look like pits are mixed with some who are hard to identify. You are supposed to take the test and then marvel at how hard it is to say which dogs are pits.

You know what? It isn’t that hard. Owners identify their dogs as pit bulls all the time. So do shelters. There are characteristics, we can recognize them, and those dogs have certain tendencies that are dangerous. It isn’t poor training or bad owners mistreating them (although that dramatically raises the likelihood of an attack). It is the breed.

Perhaps, so, if the “breed” is defined such that any dog who (1) is an unneutered male, or (2) attacks someone is considered a “pit bull,” by definition. Then the brainiac sinks even lower by claiming as fact that pit bulls have an uncharacteristically low tolerance for pain, when of course the opposite is true. [Imagine what a short fight it would be in the ring if the first dog to experience any pain were to yelp and submit.]

Don’t miss the recent George Wills column on the Wright Amendment, an absolutely asinine act American Airlines advocates adamantly and arrogantly.

According to the prosecutors, anyway. We’re still waiting to hear what the jury has to say about it.

UPDATE: Oops.

As usual, Patterico catches the L.A. Times misreporting another fact, and guess what? That error just happens to favor the left. Imagine that. Yesterday, Times Staff Writer Maura Reynolds wrote the following:

California’s two senators — Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, both Democrats — opposed [Janice Rogers] Brown’s elevation to the federal bench. Before Bush came to office, the Senate traditionally considered opposition by home-state senators sufficient to block a nominee.

Not exactly. Before and after Bush came to office, the Senate traditionally refused to consider nominating any nominee who had been adversely “blue slipped” by both (or in some cases, one) Senators from his or her home state. Given that Brown was nominated to the DC Circuit rather than the Ninth, it’s far from clear that either of California’s Senators had any power to “blue slip” her, but it is clear that neither of them did. I called both California Senators’ offices this morning, and got rambling, incoherent answers from both. First I called Senator Thelma’s office, as she’s generally considered the sane of the two, but the lady who answered the phone immediatedly launched into a partisan tirade about how Senator Feinstein doesn’t get to blue slip anyone anymore because those Republican meanies won’t let them. Then I called Senator Louise’s office, and spoke to a man who was relatively rational but equally uninformed. He told me, after checking with someone else, that only Senator Thelma had the right to blue slip Brown, as Thelma was on the Judicial Committee [at least, that’s the committe I assume he was referrring to, though all he actually said was “the committee”), and Senator Louise wasn’t. It’s good to know that both Senators hire such helpful and knowledgeable staffs.

There has to be an innocent explanation for this. Maybe the saying “you are what you eat” is literally true, and Vivian Lieberman just liked to eat a lot of potato chips? Or perhaps some absent-minded mausoleum worker is scratching his head right now and thinking “Aha! I knew those potato chips tasted a bit stale…” Or maybe, just maybe, Vivian Lieberman really was all that and a bag of chips.