Heard about this on the way in to work this morning:

ATLANTA — Alcohol was a factor in the death of a 25-year-old man who fell down a stairwell at Turner Field during the game between the Atlanta Braves and New York Mets on Wednesday night.

Justin Hayes of Cumming, Ga., suffered head injuries and was taken to Grady Memorial Hospital.

The investigation is “pointing toward drinking. Alcohol was a factor,” Atlanta police spokesman Ronald Campbell said Thursday.

Hayes’ parents said Justin Hayes had “a couple of beers.”

“According to his friends, he had a couple of beers like most people at a game,” said John and Cindy Hayes in a statement released Thursday. “They were leaving and having fun, and he did what he does at home — tried to slide down the railing. Unfortunately, he just slipped over.”

I don’t know about “unfortunately.” I think it would probably be more accurate to say “dumbassedly.”

“This was a tragic, horrible accident,” Hayes’ parents said. “Justin was a very strong Christian person, from a strong Christian family, who had never been in any trouble. He really cared about people and went out of his way to help anyone who needed it. We realize most parents will say that about their child, but that was honestly how he was.”

Oh yeah, and a moron.

But as of this afternoon, these were three highlighted comments on the ESPN story:

• Webbz15 (18 hours ago)They need to have guards by the gates so this cant happen.
• ScootD84 (20 hours ago)The big problem is that there are too many places to drink at a ball park. So a person can get shut off at one place and go to another vendor 20 feet away and get served. They should limit the amount of alcohol stands in a ballpark, but no team will go for that, because they will lose money. Its the responsibility of the fan to keep his limit down.
• kurt_slave (21 hours ago)Why cant they have an alcohol limit put on the ticket, and restrict people to a drink or 2.

No. No (except for that last line). and No.

There are 300 million people in this country, and many of them are stupid. Loving, caring, generous, Christian, drunk, stupid people. When they do stupid things, sometimes they die. We can’t just keep restricting freedom to keep idiots from offing themselves, because, damnit, those idiots will just find new and better ways to thin their Darwinian herd.

R.I.P., Dumbass.

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Filed under: Freedom Meets Darwin

One less moron in the gene pool:

A teenager was killed by a train in O’Fallon, Illinois Sunday afternoon.
…
People at the scene say the teen may have been attempting to race the train by skateboarding across the tracks.

No helmet law could have saved his dumb ass. Sometimes, kids just have to die. It is the way of the world.

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Filed under: Freedom Meets Darwin

Well, gun haters. Now’s your chance.

What? Too soon?

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Filed under: Politics is Personal, Freedom on Film, Freedom Meets Darwin

And I thought laws outlawing suicide were stupid:

The mayor of a Brazilian town is trying to bring in a law making it illegal for residents to die.

Mayor Roberto Pereira da Silva, of Biritiba-Mirim, came up with the idea because the town’s only cemetery is full.

He wants to bring in a law that would see relatives of people who die before their time face fines or even jail.

The law would make it an offence for the town’s 28,000 citizens to not look after their health properly.

Mayor Pereira da Silva said there was no way of expending the cemetery or building a new one, reports Agora Sao Paulo.

He said: “Eighty nine per cent of the town is rivers, the rest is protected because it is tropical jungle.”

The state government had promised to help build a new vertical cemetery - but nothing had been done.

Gym memberships have reportedly shot up since the mayor announced his plans, and more people are visiting doctors.

Nanny state health issues + environmental regulation = laws against death.

I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

Via Daily Dish.

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Filed under: Behind Every Law..., Freedom Meets Darwin, Profiles in Governance

With ZERO percent of precincts reporting in the Obama/McCain presidential contest in Florida, McCain wins by a landslide.

Bunch of freaking geniuses out there in America.

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Filed under: Freedom Meets Darwin, Mock the Vote

So there’s been another college campus shooting.

Just like Va Tech, the gun control crowd will undoubtedly cling on to this tragedy as a reason to restrict the sale, purchase, and ownership of firearms. I think it serves as a better example of how people have lost the creativity to do murder-suicide in some sort of original fashion. I mean, really. Shooting up a classroom full of kids? That is SO ’90s.

People die by gun violence every day. It gets attention in settings such as this because the killers and students are, how shall I put it, uh, not poor, inner-city minorities. Well, that, and the fact that whites (and we’ll include Asians on this one) seem to be better at accumulating body counts in a single act.

Other than that, its basically the same story: Bad person uses gun to kill other people, regardless of dessert.

My apologies if you are close to this or one of the other tragedies I mentioned. They are indeed tragedies and the mourning is quite real for those closely affected. But forgive me for not getting weepy over what amounts to another excuse for projected grief to spice-up a nation’s dull life. We have a much more deserving cause for national distress.

I’m not saying everyone should get a gun — nor am I against reasonable gun laws. But don’t take mine away because some nut-job went postal on some smart kids. That shit just doesn’t follow.

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Filed under: Behind Every Law..., Politics is Personal, Freedom Meets Darwin, Daily Rant

Really, the headline says it all:

D.C. Tax Office Servers Found in Alley

There could be a mundane explanation for how two computer servers from the embattled D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue ended up in a trash alcove behind the Ruby Tuesday restaurant in Columbia Heights. [ed. Really? There could?]

Building engineer Melvin Barnes found the three-foot tall, 50-pound servers sitting next to the dumpster on Wednesday morning.

The money quote:

“First of all, I’m upset because I gotta move ‘em,” said Barnes, recalling his first reaction. “I began to look at the stickers that were on the servers and I seen, ‘D.C. Government, Property of the Tax and Revenue’ and I thought, ‘Uh-oh.’”

The office is under investigation in a multi-million dollar embezzlement case in which 10 people have been arrested, including two tax office employees.

Uh oh indeed. As a DC taxpayer for the last 6 years, I’m glad that his first reaction to seeing 3 freaking servers with personally sensitive data on them was to say, “Aw, shiiit. More work for me!”  and then call the local news. Not the first reaction of most of the employees at the DC tax office, I suspect.

Hat tip, NTW.

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Filed under: Freedom Meets Darwin, Profiles in Governance

NYT Headline: FDA: Children Treated With Botox Died:

The popular anti-wrinkle drug Botox and a competitor Myobloc have been linked to some deaths and other severe side effects suggestive of botulism, the government warned doctors Friday.

…

Botox and Myobloc use botulinum toxin, which blocks nerve impulses to muscles, causing them to relax. (emphasis mine)

And the Captain Obvious Award goes to….

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Filed under: Freedom Meets Darwin

Imagine that you, like Austin Powers, were cryogenically frozen in 1967, only to be thawed out today. Now, imagine how little you would even begin to comprehend a news item like the following:

Scientists in Finland said they had replaced a 65-year-old patient’s upper jaw with a bone transplant cultivated from stem cells isolated from his own fatty tissue and grown inside his abdomen.

Which brings to mind…..markets in organ surrogates, anyone?

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Filed under: The Dismal Science, Freedom Meets Darwin, Pop! Goes the Culture

In 1989, the Berlin Wall came down — a momentous change that brought joy and hope to millions under the oppressive (yet lessening) yoke of communism.

Early today, masked gunmen in Gaza blew up a wall (shouldn’t they be bombmen?) letting thousands into that freest of free lands — Egypt:

Thousands of Gazans began crossing into Egypt and returning with milk, cigarettes and plastic bottles of fuel.

HAMAS destroys more walls before noon than the IRA does all day:

Two-thirds of the Rafah wall had been demolished by 10 a.m. and the crowd of Palestinians crossing into Egypt swelled into the tens of thousands.

The destruction continued as Palestinians used a bulldozer to tear down a section of low concrete wall topped with barbed wire to allow easier access for cars.

Islamic fundamentalists take note– Behold the Power of Capitalism:

Mohammed Abu Ghazel, 29, said he had crossed the border three times. He bought cigarettes worth $53 in Egypt and sold them for five times that in Gaza, he said.

People will not stand to be kept behind walls. Whether the obstacle is the Great Wall of China or the Tin Wall of Mexico — people will find a way to freedom. (And they’ll have an armload of Lucky’s to boot!)

Via Matt Welch

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Filed under: Consumerism Rulez, Freedom Meets Darwin