January 19, 2005

Drug dealer loses loot and liberty Reuters - A crack cocaine dealer who forgot a backpack containing C$91,000  in a Winnipeg mall was arrested after he tried to reclaim the bag at the mall's lost-and-found... 4:02:48 PM

'The Jerk That Flirts With Death' In September the Daily Nebraskan, the student newspaper at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, published a column by Derek Kieper that argued against mandatory seat-belt laws: As laws become increasingly strict for seat belts, fewer people will respond positively by buckling up in response to the laws. There seems to be a die-hard group of non-wearers out there who simply do not wish to buckle up no matter what the government does. I belong to this group. . . . Telling me to wear my seat belt is the same as making sure I have some sort of proper education before diving into a swimming pool. If I want to dive in without knowing how to swim, that is my right. And if I want to be the jerk that flirts with death and rides around with my seat belt off, I should be able to do that, too. Today's Lincoln Journal Star reports the sad ending of the Kieper story: Kieper, a 21-year-old senior at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, died early Tuesday morning when the Ford Explorer he was a passenger in travelled off an icy section of Interstate 80 and rolled several times in a ditch. . . . Derek, who was thrown from the vehicle, was not wearing a seat belt. When you flirt with death, you run the risk that death has something more serious in mind. - Opinion Journal, Best of the Web 2:47:40 PM