THIS JUST IN – AT 9:55 P.M. ET:  San Francisco, fighting to the last against materialism and contamination of the planet, may ban the sale of pets.  Even Lassie would be banned.  From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Sell a guinea pig, go to jail.

That's the law under consideration by San Francisco's Commission of Animal Control and Welfare. If the commission approves the ordinance at its meeting tonight, San Francisco could soon have what is believed to be the country's first ban on the sale of all pets except fish.

That includes dogs, cats, hamsters, mice, rats, chinchillas, guinea pigs, birds, snakes, lizards and nearly every other critter, or, as the commission calls them, companion animals.

"People buy small animals all the time as an impulse buy, don't know what they're getting into, and the animals end up at the shelter and often are euthanized," said commission Chairwoman Sally Stephens. "That's what we'd like to stop."

COMMENT:  Oh yes.  Have a problem, enact a ban.  That's the way of the left.  More creative thinking from the city that banned the USS Iowa museum because it might encourage pro-war thinking.

I assume San Francisco's resident intellectuals will find a way to explain this to elderly people who need their pets as companions.  But hey, who needs the elderly?

July 8, 2010