29-year old Saleman Abdirahman Dirie, a Canadian citizen from Ottawa of Somali origin, was found deceased in his room at the Burnsley Hotel in downtown Denver, about four blocks from the State Capitol.

The cause of death remains to be determined, but the pound (.45 kg.) of Sodium Cyanide found by authorities next to the body may provide an important clue.

A suspicion person might conjecture that the late Mr. Dirie was visiting Denver in connection with some kind of plans related to the upcoming Democrat Party Convention, taking place August 25-28, and that the unlucky, or possibly maladroit Mr. Durie, while examining or otherwise manipulating the cyanide compound he had brought along for reasons of his own, met with an unhappy accident when he breathed in its vapors or somehow contacted the very dangerous chemical with his bare skin.

Mr. Dirie’s death (now being described as a suicide) somehow reminds me of the 2005 “suicide” of Joel Henry Hinrichs III, an engineering student with a Pakistani roommate who mysteriously chose to kill himself with a bomb containing the highly unstable and explosive compound triacetone triperoxide, in the very near vicinity of a football stadium where a game was being played with more than 80,000 people in attendance.

Fascinating, isn’t it, the way some people choose to commit suicide using very much the kinds and quantities of materials suitable for use in mass terrorism attacks in locations suspiciously close to suitable targets?

I should know better. Anonymity of the original source is always a dead giveaway that the item is a hoax.

Some alert classmates spotted yesterday’s “Denver vs. New Orleans” as hoax email which has appeared in several variant forms, and which is recorded on Snopes.

The moral is that one should always take the time to investigate these things, no matter how agreeable to one’s own prejudices and preconceptions a particular item may be. I get the dunce cap for today.

Hat tips, kudos, and thanks to Rodger Kamenetz and Stephen Frankel for the correction.

Donald Luskin posts a comparison, which has been making the rounds, between Denver (and its surrounding region)’s response to the current weather emergency and the behavior of New Orleans.

Up here, in the Northern Plains, we just recovered from a Historic event—- may I even say a “Weather Event” of “Biblical Proportions”—- with a historic blizzard of up to 44” inches of snow and winds to 90 MPH that broke trees in half, knocked down utility poles, stranded hundreds of motorists in lethal snow banks, closed ALL roads, isolated scores of communities and cut power to 10’s of thousands.

George Bush did not come.

FEMA did nothing.

No one howled for the government.

No one blamed the government.

No one even uttered an expletive on TV.

Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton did not visit.

Our Mayor did not blame Bush or anyone else.

Our Governor did not blame Bush or anyone else, either.

CNN, ABC, CBS, FOX or NBC did not visit – or report on this category 5 snowstorm. Nobody demanded $2,000 debit cards.

No one asked for a FEMA Trailer House.

No one looted.

Nobody – I mean Nobody demanded the government do something.

Nobody expected the government to do anything, either.

No Larry King, No Bill O’Rielly, No Oprah, No Chris Mathews and No Geraldo Rivera.

No Shaun Penn, No Barbara Striesand, No Hollywood types to be found.

Nope, we just melted the snow for water.

Sent out caravans of SUV’s to pluck people out of snow engulfed cars.

The truck drivers pulled people out of snow banks and didn’t ask for a penny.

Local restaurants made food and the police and fire departments delivered it to the snowbound families. Families took in the stranded people – total strangers.

We fired up wood stoves, broke out coal oil lanterns or Coleman lanterns.

We put on extra layers of clothes because up here it is “Work or Die”.

We did not wait for some affirmative action government to get us out of a mess created by being immobilized by a welfare program that trades votes for ‘sittin at home’ checks.

Even though a Category “5” blizzard of this scale has never fallen this early, we know it can happen and how to deal with it ourselves.

In my many travels, I have noticed that once one gets north of about 48 degrees North Latitude, 90% of the world’s social problems evaporate.

It does seem that way, at least to me.

I hope this gets passed on.

Hat tip to Maggie’s Farm and Seneca the Younger.