By now, the 79-year-old images of New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia swinging a sledgehammer and smashing a slot machine seem about as outdated as a newsreel or a typewriter.

However, not until you see the image of a handful of little-known people doing the same thing a few weeks ago in Albany, N.Y., do you understand the difference all those years make.

In 1934, the mayor of the nation’s largest city saw it as good politics to stand up against the immorality of the idea of giving hard-earned money away to gamblers in the futile hope of getting something in return. Today, people who oppose legal gambling on the same grounds are seen as oddballs. They wield sledgehammers without the help of any smiling politicians. And the gamblers who were getting rich in the old days are now

A colleague at work said his cable company called with the triumphant news he now has 20 new channels coming into his home. He might as well have gotten a call from the neighborhood thrift store telling him he now gets to keep lots of other folks’ useless junk in his basement.

He doesn’t want 20 new channels. Also, he is not happy that, in order to enjoy the sports he wants to watch, he has to subsidize all of the rest, including MTV3, E!, and a host of other channels he would prefer not to have a remote-control click away from his grandchildren.

The Canadian government just announced that it will force cable companies up there to unbundle their services, letting Canadians pick and choose — and pay only for — the

Copper thieves first hit my radar screen earlier this summer when they stripped the air conditioning unit of a church in my neighborhood, leading to an uncomfortably warm day of worship. At about the same time, my sister told me of the exact same thing happening to a church near her in the Los Angeles area.

That’s when I did some Google searches and learned of churches all over the place going without air conditioning and lights. But it wasn’t just churches. Businesses of all kinds, vacant houses and even streetlights were, and