THE FIRST CASUALTY: The sign is still out there at my neighborhood Convenient store, two days after everyone in the city -- including the guys next door at Fire Station 20 -- learned that Mayor Campbell plans to lay off 150 firefighters, not 235, and is proposing to close no stations.

The sign is a lie now, of course. But since nobody signed it, I guess nobody's responsible for correcting it or removing it. It can just sit out there, telling the neighbors something that isn't true but still serves the purpose of the folks who put it up... much like the "2,000 new city workers added in the 1990s" myth that the Mayor's Office apparently promoted to the Plain Dealer, which put it in an editorial and still hasn't corrected it.

Like the Mayor's chief of staff supposedly said to the Firefighters president, "This is war". And in war the first casualty is the truth.