Meet the new council, same as old council?

Basic civility is absent in these chambers

The end of one thing is usually the beginning of something else. That’s especially true of election cycles, but sometimes, as the French say, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”

If we remember our high school coursework, that means “the more things change, the more they remain the same.” Sadly, that’s true for the Westminster City Council.

As evidenced by Wednesday’s marathon bitterfest, the results of the Nov. 8 election haven’t produced a more congenial group of folks at the helm.

Two are fatally hurt in Placentia crash

PLACENTIA (AP) – A child and two adults were fatally injured when a sedan driven by an allegedly drunken driver crashed into a passenger van and other vehicles in an Orange County intersection, police said.

The crash occurred around 8:45 p.m. Wednesday in Placentia, police said in a statement early Thursday.

Arriving officers found that several victims had been ejected from the van.

Firefighters pronounced a man and woman dead at the scene.

Three people with serious injuries were transported to UCI Medical Center and two children were taken to Children’s Hospital of Orange County, where one of them, a 10-year-old girl,

In a meeting that lasted five hours, the council at first took a ton of abuse from members of the public, then turned on each other.

The topic was whether to cancel the Quang Tri monument project, but the topic sometimes hardly matters.

The “rules of conduct” adopted to try to impose some civility were as effective as the League of Nations was in preventing