Councilwoman Wants To Ban Toy Guns

Philadelphia Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller is concerned about the gun violence in this city.

Crowd: How concerned is she?

Why, she’s so concerned with the gun violence in this city she’s going to ban the sale of toy guns!

(Pause for laughter.)

Exactly, that’s not funny. Because, of course, it’s true! It’s buried in this Friday Inquirer City Council roundup: “Just how to determine which toy guns meet those characteristics will be discussed in hearings, Miller said. Her legislation includes detailed exceptions, including toys that are made of see-through plastic or have bright coloring.”

Hey, wait, that doesn’t even sound that awful. Oh no, has a City Councilwoman finally introduced stupid nitpicky legislation that’s well-thought out in advance and essentially bulletproof? Oh well. I guess I could complain about time wasted in hearings, but it’s not like that time was going to be used for something more important. I’ll have to investigate more.

The legislation isn’t up on the website yet, but hopefully the wording will be better than it was for the voluntary toy gun sale moratorium last fall, which began: “The City Council Of Philadelphia Calls Upon The Responsible Merchants Of Philadelphia – During These Troubling Times, With Gun Violence At An All Time High - To Implement A Voluntary Moratorium On The Sale of Toys Guns In The Philadelphia Stores.” (Other than that, it wasn’t that bad, surprisingly. Donna Reed Miller clearly does not want to be made fun of for this.)

For more restrained commentary on this issue, please head to the place where I first read about this, Domelights. An example: “I’m sick of ‘it’s society’s fault, it’s the gun’s fault, there ain’t enough jobs…..etc. etc.” Ha, how dare politicians attempt to end poverty and improve society.

Dead Dogs, Bad Cops & Thieving City Workers

Obligatory first sentence about media attention paid to Alycia Lane followed by a segue into a bullet-point list of recent people committing funny crimes. KYW 1060 does the same thing but sums it up with a headline: 3 Area High Schools Affected by Unrelated Incidents.

• Philadelphia police officer Malik Snell was arrested for allegedly being the getaway man for a home invasion. See, here’s who shoulda been punched! [Daily News]

• An assistant to Donna Reed Miller was arrested for extortion. Theresa Pinkett allegedly extorted $5,000 and a cell phone in exchange for providing assistance on real estate issues while providing constituent services for Miller. So… Theresa Pinkett is basically “taxes.” [Philadelphia Business Journal]

• The Turnpike Authority dropped a lawsuit against a pair of dead motorists it sued for damage to the roadway. Blah blah outrage blah blah blah. Whatever. I want to be able to sue Barbaro and he’s dead. [Phillyburbs]

• Iraq security firm Blackwater murdered the New York Times‘ dog. OMFG now the people will finally be pissed at Blackwater, not like when they killed humans. [Wonkette]

City Councilwoman’s Deep, Dark Secret

I’m still kind of confused by Stu Bykofsky’s Daily News column this morning. His column revealed that Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller has a horse in her backyard.

This wouldn’t be all that weird if she lived at, say, a horse track. But, no, Miller lives in Germantown. And has a horse. In her backyard.

Amazingly enough, city law doesn’t forbid horses, mainly for the reason that, ah, almost nobody owns a personal horse in this city. You can’t have farm animals — “any chicken, goose, duck, turkey, goat, sheep, pig, cow” (cow? —ed.) — but horses aren’t considered farm animals.

It’s actually Miller’s husband’s horse, but she declined to let Byko talk to him. But, of course, this isn’t the only time Byko has dealt with Miller.

Miller reminded me that I had called about a pony in her back yard 10 years ago. I had completely forgotten that.

The Shetland pony named Shera was a pet for her daughter Shakira, I reported at the time. The loyal pony was getting old and probably was going to be sent to the slaughterhouse.

So not only does she own a horse now, but the last one she owned she probably had sent to the slaughterhouse.

Stu Bykofsky | Hoofing it to G’town to nag a pol (again) [Daily News]