I get the beach ball of death when I empty the trash on my new 10.7 Mac. Even in safe mode

Question

When I attempt to empty the trash I get the progress bar with message on how many items to empty and I get the barber pole lines but it never really starts to empty. I just have the beach ball of death. Everything else on the MacBook Pro comes to a halt (if you wait about 5 minutes an app selected to quit might quit). You can click on the X to stop emptying trash and it says it's stopping but it keeps showing the marching progress bar and the beach ball keeps spinning.
Running 10.7. 8 gigs ram 2.0 ghz i7. 15".
The only way to shut down is force quit holding down the power key. Tried it in Safe Mode with same results.

Answer 1

I had the same problem.
Your advice solved my problem.
Thank you for the original post. And the two updates.
I nominate you for "15 Points." 5 for your helpful answer. And another 10 because it was correct.
Apple's Support Community needs more people like you.
If I had posted a question and no one answered, I'd say, "the **** with it."
Instead, you came back - not once but twice - to provide updates.
Again, thank you.