While waiting for the next snowfall,

predicted to arrive Tuesday night, I got all the pruned branches stacked out front for the big trash pickup; I know it won't be on time(Wednesday), but they'll do a makeup day a few days later, so got them out now.

Ok, looking around, Rep. Waxman(Socialist Jackass-CA) doesn't like the idea of oversight when it means looking at Obamacare:
"I am a strong supporter of congressional oversight, and I respect and support the Committee's right to seek information about the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. But I do not believe your oversight powers justify going on fishing expeditions or making extensive requests for internal e-mails and other communications where there is no evidence of waste, fraud, or abuse of any kind."
Response:
...As Upton noted in his response, the latest figures from HHS indicate that more than 700 such waivers have been issued. "Thus, HHS has apparently granted more than three times as many waivers as you cite in your letter," Upton said. "This fact alone underscores the dire need for oversight of the health care law, its effects, and its implementation by this Administration."


If this pans out, it'll be wonderful:
Scientists at Oxford University have successfully tested a universal flu vaccine that could work against all known strains of the illness, taking a significant step in the fight against a disease that affects billions of people each year.

The treatment – using a new technique and tested for the first time on humans infected with flu – targets a different part of the flu virus to traditional vaccines, meaning it does not need expensive reformulation every year to match the most prevalent virus that is circulating the world.
Of course, the idiots will be screaming because fewer people will be dying.


Want to have an idea why education in this state has been so effed up? The state Board of Education:
Among other things, the board voted to divert $18 million from the teachers’ retirement system last summer, violating an executive order from then-Governor Brad Henry. The board did not reverse course until former Democratic Attorney General Drew Edmondson issued a formal opinion declaring the fund shift illegal; violated guidelines over the use of federal stimulus funds and, after redirecting the funds for purposes authorized by the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, failed to provide correct reporting guidelines to schools using the money; and failed to approve a budget work program that complies with former Henry’s executive order 2010-26, issued last June.
Please note that crap like that first item, in the past, is a big part of how the teacher's retirement system got so badly screwed up, too.


In the investigation by Trentadue into the death of his brother after the April 19 OKC bombing, all kinds of things keep turning up:
The federal government attempted in 2005 to reach a deal with bomber Terry Nichols to take the death penalty off the table in his Oklahoma murder trial if he admitted to making a warning phone call to the FBI the day before the 1995 bombing, according to new documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.
...
They also corroborate Nichols' claims that the government tried to get him to admit to making an April 18, 1995 phone call to the FBI warning of the bombing. Nichols claimed he knew nothing of the call.
"What that indicates to me, there is a record somewhere of that phone call and the FBI needs to explain it," said Trentadue in an interview with KTOK News. "If the call was from one of their informants with McVeigh, clearly, they had knowledge of the bombing and didn't stop it."
I doubt we'll ever find out everything about this mess; too many people in Federal agencies have too much tied up in keeping things out of the public view. And some of it appears to be evidence of incompetence:
The explosives were discovered in 2005 in the crawl space of the Herington, Kansas home where Nichols had lived. The discovery came 10 years after Nichols' arrest and following a search of his home by federal agents in 1995. The explosives were not destroyed until 2008 by the FBI.


Well, isn't this just wonderful?
At the heart of the concern is intelligence indicating that Egypt has quietly carried out research and development on weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, chemical, biological and missile technology.

The research and development has continued virtually without pause over the past three decades, according to interviews with U.S. officials and a review of intelligence and other government documents by NBC News.
And with the administration making kissy-faces with the Muslim Brotherhood, this is just extra-special wonderful.


Well, well, well, remember Holthouse? Guy who said he'd gotten a gun and silencer and planned a murder? Guess what else he's done?
Experienced readers of Sipsey Street will recall that I have dealt with the subject of this serial libeler before here: "Meet David Holthouse, premier paid liar at the Southern Preposterous Lie Center."

That article mentioned that Holthouse and SPLC were being sued for libel by historian Guenter Lewy.

Well, lo and behold, SPLC and Holthouse apologized to Lewy and paid him some money to go away.
Such a wonderful source for information...


Back to federal- well, do you call it incompetence? Idiocy? Self-service dirtbags acting without care for the harm they do as long as it makes them look good? And(they hope) gives them more money to play with?
Well the word from Phoenix is that the SAIC Newell wanted to be able to track where these guns were going in Mexico. As such, the analysts have made pretty charts with lines showing where these guns have turned up. I am not sure how that stems the flow of guns South, especially considering these guns usually get recovered alongside dead bodies.

Fox News about a year ago did a good report to disprove the myth that most of the crime guns recovered in Mexico came from the US. This report was based upon evidence they obtained in part from ATF trace reports. However, with the recent flooding of guns being “walked” to Mexico by ATF (intended to be future crime guns) there is statistical evidence to demonstrate an escalated flow of guns going South from the US. The solution…….(Part I) take “data” to Congress to get more money, Agents and stuff to battle the flow of guns to Mexico….but actually spend it “wherever” .

Further, at the conclusion of this post:
“Rio Rico 2”. What happened in Rio Rico where 2 firearms were recovered?

________________________

Mike Vanderboegh answers: The murder of Brian Terry. Note that the origins of the scandal begin at least back in 2009. Note also the Justice Department approval of wiretaps. Do you recall what Senator Grassley wrote in his first letter of 27 January to Acting Director Melson about if the ATF had prior contact with straw purchasers that it would raise a number of serious questions? The fact is that coupled with the decision (by Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer) to get rid of Attache Gil and keep the Mexicans in the dark, this is where the cover-up began. It explains why the FBI has been mum on the murder investigation. They CAN'T give us details without the whole sordid tale coming out.

And the latest from Codrea on this mess.


On a more local level, the Camden PD is apparently run by fascist clowns who don't care about that pesky oath involving the Constitution:
In the federal lawsuit filed last week, Davila claims officers are required to approach random residents and ask for personal information and, in some cases, take photographs of the individual or even run a warrant check without probable cause.

Officers are required to document the encounters and are then evaluated on how many reports they take during a shift, the lawsuit alleges.

Believing the practice to be a violation of citizens' rights, Davila objected to the initiative in a March 2009 roll call after Deputy Chief Michael Lynch allegedly stated "no resident of the City of Camden should be able to come out of their home and not expect to be engaged by a Camden Police Officer," the lawsuit claims.
One of the things that pops to mind: did the PD run these randomly-stopped people through the Interstate Identification Index as well as a general warrant search? If so, they violated both NCIC police and federal privacy law as well as the other violations you can think of in crap like this.


Yeek!
Over the past 10 years, city cops fired 4,702 bullets, accidentally pulled the trigger 323 times, and missed 78 percent of their intended targets, according to data The Post culled from a decade's worth of NYPD annual firearm-discharge reports.
Which connects right back to Tam's post:
NYPD's Emergency Services Unit (which, among other functions, serves as their SWAT team) has managed to rack up three NDs in the past three months, including a rooftop sniper sending one flying while pulling security at a Madison Square Garden event and a cop on a raid in the Bronx shooting the suspect's father in the stomach.
Sounds like they need a training upgrade in NYC. Badly.


Let's see, a corporation is made up of stockholders, runs businesses where people are employed and thus get a paycheck, and now Obama says “Corporate Profits “Have To Be Shared By American Workers”? Uh, no, they don't, you socialist clown; they have to pay their employees the wages and benefits that have been agreed upon, nothing more.


NC Gun Blog looks at the problems with 'safe storage' laws.


And finally, when the Justice Department can't even deal with bogus domestic violence information, why should we expect them to deal well with anything else?

Tried something at the range today

I've been carrying Gold Dots for my defense ammo. I try to fire a magazine of them as the first ones so as to keep in practice with the amount of recoil and muzzle blast, but even handloading them Gold Dot bullets ain't cheap. Or even inexpensive. So did some digging around. I've got a bunch of 200-grain Berry's .45 hollowpoint plated bullets for loading practice ammo; they say to stick with mid-range loads but I decided to try them with a load comparable to the factory GD loads for that weight/type bullet.

I put 25 rounds of them downrange with no problems at all, and I didn't notice any more fouling in the bore than had after firing them with lighter loads. I'm going to have to make up some more and do some further trials, including shooting them over a chronograph to see if the velocity is coming up to what it should be, but so far it looks good.

From a comment on The decline of

male space:
...Of course, not only is the outdoors not designed or designed for men, but it is also being overran by asshole suburbanites who think it all ought to be made handicapped accessible and that wild animals shouldn't be allowed to kill morons.

Looks like both the Sheriff and the prosecutor in Pima County

need to become unemployed:
We are trying to hold a tea party on April 30th in Tucson. Already the blowback from some in leadership since January 8th has been to try and shut us down.

We were having a town hall/forum on mental health on Feb 18th and one by one the County Prosecutor and Sheriff have spoken to our speakers and intimidated them to the point where they will no longer speak. This really can’t happen.

We need help and want to make sure conservatives in our town don’t feel scared to speak out on issues they feel need their voice.

Apparently Sheriff Dupnik isn't only a dirtbag excuse for a lawman, that oath he took about upholding the Constitution doesn't mean squat to him. Same for that prosecutor.

Just bleepin' effing wonderful; another visit from the

North Pole in a couple of days. They just announced 6-12" possible over the northern half of the state.

I went to a literary-theme birthday party last night(hey, the lady is a librarian; she and her hubby were Arrol and Cordelia Vorkosigan) as Harry Dresden; at the moment I want to know who pissed Mab off, because I sure didn't do it.

Ref Project Gunwalker, one hell of an admission

LA Times confirms guns used in the gunfight where Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed came from sales being 'monitored' by ATF.

From Hardy: The spin is now -- this happened because we didn't have enough resources to do more. In other words, "give us more money and we won't ____ up again."
Yeah. Because it was lack of money that was behind this. Sure.

More from Codrea:

[A] former ATF agent told FoxNews.com on condition of anonymity that ATF Headquarters allowed guns to cross the border, for the reason that ATF wanted to glean more intelligence about who would come to possess the guns and what regions of the country they would end up in.

Naturally, ATF spokesmen are dismissing allegations that guns were intentionally allowed to go across the border. I have come to understand they aren’t supposed to do that with large quantities of firearms the same way they might with a small quantity of drugs. Too many things could go wrong.
Gee, ya think maybe?
Also,
A source who has been providing information that has consistently panned out in the ongoing “Project Gunwalker” investigation is claiming that Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice, Lanny Breuer, was party to the decision to overrule the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive’s representative to Mexico. Former attaché Darren Gil reportedly advocated informing the Mexican government of gun monitoring operations that resulted in “Project Gunwalker” allegations, and has since resigned his post, one sources say is now to be filled by current ATF Phoenix Field Division Special Agent in Charge William Newell.

Mike Vanderboegh at Sipsey Streeet Irregulars has posted a detailed background on Breuer along with his analysis of this latest allegation. Might this new allegation help explain why whistleblowers would want to avoid normal Department of Justice channels and seek Congressional protections?

If you want to go through all the Examiner pieces on this, go here.


From Sipsey Street,
Jeff Knox laid it out this way:

"There are actually four separate but connected accusations against ATF officials:

First, that they intentionally arranged to have hundreds of firearms "walked" across the U.S. border into Mexico.

Second, that they instructed U.S. gun dealers to proceed with questionable and illegal sales of firearms to suspected gunrunners.

Third, that they intentionally withheld information about U.S.-sanctioned gun smuggling from the Mexican government.

Fourth, that one of the guns ATF allowed or helped to be smuggled into Mexico was involved in the death of Agent Terry."

I would a fifth: that ATF, FBI, DHS and DOJ officials are covering up the true circumstances of Project Gunwalker, the decision not to inform the Mexicans, and the death of Brian Terry by threatening whistleblowers and others to remain silent "or else."
I'd suggest scrolling down from the top at Sipsey Street; lots of links and information, and on page 2(currently) is his take on the involvement of Breuer.

Another 'Why are anti-gun activists so violent'

situation is pointed to.

Note this part:
This time last year I had a gun, and a silencer, and a plan.
Now, I have to wonder: did Mr. Holthouse buy the gun legally? Did he fill out the paperwork and get his Federal license for the silencer and pay the transfer tax?

If he did, is BATFE investigating this murder plan? If not, is anyone going to investigate and find out if he still has the silencer stashed away somewhere. For that matter, if he didn't, he's admitting that all the gun-control laws he's so in favor of didn't do squat to prevent him from illegally obtaining a silencer for the purpose of committing murder. But he thinks there oughta be a law banning you from having a standard-or higher-capacity magazine.

In North Carolina sits a clown named Kevin Lacy,

their DOT's State Traffic Engineer. Who should be removed from that position and kicked out the door for this crap.
The N.C. Board of Examiners for Engineers and Surveyors, a professional licensing agency, is investigating an allegation in December against David N. Cox by Kevin Lacy, the Department of Transportation's state traffic engineer.

Lacy said an eight-page traffic analysis submitted by Cox on behalf of a North Raleigh neighborhood group appeared to contain "engineering-level work" done by someone not licensed as an engineer.

Cox and the North Raleigh Coalition of Homeowners' Associations offered the study in a failed effort to win state approval for new traffic signals at two intersections on Falls of Neuse Road. The city of Raleigh will start work this spring to widen a 1.3-mile stretch of Falls of Neuse.
"Be involved in your government! But if we don't like what you say or how you say it, we'll screw you over."


"Screw the rules, let's take care of him." In all the best ways.



David Cameron has criticised "state multiculturalism" in his first speech as prime minister on radicalisation and the causes of terrorism.

At a security conference in Germany, he argued the UK needed a stronger national identity to prevent people turning to all kinds of extremism.
Used to be that if you immigrated to a country you learned the language and obeyed the laws and became a citizen of that country; then MC became the thing and Britain(and us, and Europe) is paying the price. And, of course, the usual suspects are screaming "How dare you!" Including wityh this bit of bullshit:
Luton Labour MEP Richard Howitt, a keynote speaker at the counter-rally to the EDL demo in Luton, added: "The attack on multiculturalism surrenders to the far-right ideology that moderate and fundamentalist ideas cannot be distinguished from each other, and actually undermines respect and co-operation between peoples of different faith.
Dumbass, we can- and could- distinguish between those things; you did not want people to be allowed to do so, because it would hurt what you were trying to do. So you have sections of major cities where non-muslims can't safely go, and the police won't go unless in teams, and British laws aren't enforced if it might upset the muslims running the areas. And idiots like you want to make it even worse.



It was reported that Alternet, Soros’ Media Matters, and other progressives staged a conference call this afternoon where they mapped strategy to defend Planned Parenthood from the choices Planned Parenthood staffers made on tape.
...
The majority of the call was spent discussing ways to discredit Rose because of her funding. They surmise that some group which donates to her pro-life magazine is a group donated to by a group given money by the Koch Brothers. So says people who just cashed a $1 million-dollar check from George Soros.

For the sake of argument, assuming that the Koch Brothers (I had to Google them to see exactly what it is they do and how their name isn’t pronounced like the sobriquet for phallus but rather, the soda) were as ubiquitous in activism as George Soros is publicly, the greatest irony has befallen our senior fellows who hate big business and personal wealth so much: they are willing pawns in a battle between frillionaires. This alone virtually precludes any other potential criticism of their actions. George Soros is the only billionaire allowed. See, they hate personal wealth when it isn’t made out in $1 million dollar increments to their organizations.




I have to admit, might've been me as a kid


And more of Nanny Bloomberg's 'Do As I Say, Not As I Do' crap:
When Mayor Bloomberg came into office there was just one executive cook at Gracie Mansion to make the VIP feasts.

Today there are three - costing taxpayers a whopping $245,000 this year.

And despite the big spending cuts the mayor has ordered across every city agency, too many cooks won't be spoiling the broth at the city-owned mansion.



And that's all I've got time for right now. It's sunny, it's up to 24- almost yesterdays high- and have to run out for some stuff.

Well, it has seemed Obama wanted to screw over every ally we had;

this just kind of makes it blatantly official.
Information about every Trident missile the US supplies to Britain will be given to Russia as part of an arms control deal signed by President Barack Obama next week.

Defence analysts claim the agreement risks undermining Britain’s policy of refusing to confirm the exact size of its nuclear arsenal.

The fact that the Americans used British nuclear secrets as a bargaining chip also sheds new light on the so-called “special relationship”, which is shown often to be a one-sided affair by US diplomatic communications obtained by the WikiLeaks website.

Details of the behind-the-scenes talks are contained in more than 1,400 US embassy cables published to date by the Telegraph, including almost 800 sent from the London Embassy, which are published online today.
...
Although the treaty was not supposed to have any impact on Britain, the leaked cables show that Russia used the talks to demand more information about the UK’s Trident missiles, which are manufactured and maintained in the US.

Washington lobbied London in 2009 for permission to supply Moscow with detailed data about the performance of UK missiles. The UK refused, but the US agreed to hand over the serial numbers of Trident missiles it transfers to Britain.
Screw over allies on missile defense to make Putin happy, now this is in the open; no telling what all else Obama & Co. have done to polish up the commies.

To the moron in the Lincoln Navigator

'Starting to move' does not mean 'hit the gas!' when you're driving on packed snow. And until you figure that out, you're going to stay in that spot.

It should be noted

it's bloody snowing again.

Mike Vanderboegh’s Gunwalker Letter to Mexican Consul General

about Project Gunwalker; read it. I'm going to borrow two sections: first, from one of the shops involved,

"Let me tell you something about Carter's Country. They have been co-operating with ATF from the get go," says attorney Dick Deguerin who represents Carter's Country owner, Bill Carter.

Deguerin says the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms asked Carter's Country to complete transactions, even when sales people strongly suspected the weapons were headed to Mexican drug gangs.

"They were told to go through with what they considered to be questionable sales. They were told to go through with sales of three or more assault rifles at the same time or five or more 9 millimeter guns at the same time or a young Hispanic male paying in cash. It's all profiling, but they went through with it," said Deguerin.

The second, which ought to have the Mexican government screaming bloody murder(if they weren't already),
You should know that one ATF employee, Darren Gil, the ATF attache in Mexico City, tried to do the right thing. Though he was kept out of the "intelligence loop" by Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix, Arizona office, William D. "Bill" Newell, my understanding from other ATF agents who have now been contacted by Senator Grassley's office, is that Mr. Gil, when he learned by informal communication channels that this was happening, clashed with SAC Newell over whether your government should be notified. Newell insisted that there would be no notification of the appropriate Mexican authorities. Mr. Gil, I am told, did not take the word of a mere SAC when such an action involved possible violations of treaty and formal understandings between our two governments, contacted his superiors in Washington, D.C. In a meeting that I am told included the Deputy Attorney General, Deputy Director Melson of ATF and various subordinates, it was decided to keep the government of Mexico in the dark. Mr. Gil, in return for his honest attempt to prevent an effusion of blood as well as an international incident, was forced into retirement and did so on 31 December of last year. Here, in words of an experienced ATF street agent, is what I was told on 17 December 2010:

"Darren Gil, former attache to Mexico is an honest and honorable guy. He was forcefully removed from Mexico without warning in November in large part because he wouldn't sit silent on these matters. He will tell the truth if asked by competent authority. He retired Dec 31 because of all this."

And who is replacing Gil? Why, Newell, who was right in the middle of the mess, of course. Which, with information about what happened coming out, is either arrogance of a really amazing level, or some of that stupid Ebenezar spoke of.

And, just to add to the pressure, the family of BPA Terry is looking to sue the feds over their actions. You just know that there are a bunch of people with knowledge of the ins & outs of the BATFE project having stress-induced cases of the runs at the idea of being subpoenaed in this mess, by Congress or by the lawyers for the family. Not to mention the people at Justice(most misnamed in the case of these bastards) who were/are directly involved.

Words of wisdom from Ebenezar

"He's Black Council,", I said.

"Or maybe stupid," Ebenezar countered.

I thought about it. "Not sure which is scarier."

Ebenezar blinked at me, then snorted. "Stupid, Hoss. Every time. Only so many blackhearted villains in the world, and they only get uppity on occasion. Stupid's everywhere, every day."

From Changes

Further idiocy from Scotland:

"We have a new law you must observe. But we won't tell you how to obey it."

First, this being a crime

is pretty damn silly.

Second, you leftist jackass, 'muslim' is not a race.

*Rrriiiiinnnnggg, rrriiiinnnngg,**

'Hello?'

'Hi honey. This is Daddy, is Mommy near the phone?'**

'No, Daddy. She's upstairs in the bedroom with Uncle Paul.'

Brief pause

'But honey, you haven't got an Uncle Paul.'

"Oh yes I do, and he's upstairs in the room with Mommy, right now'

Brief pause.

'Uh, okay then, this is what I want you to do. Put the phone down on the table, run
upstairs and knock on the bedroom door and shout to Mommy that Daddy's car just pulled into the driveway.'

'Okay, Daddy, Just a minute.'

A few minutes later the little girl comes back to the phone.
'I did it, Daddy.'

'And what happened, honey?'

'Well, Mommy got all scared, jumped out of bed with no clothes on and ran around screaming.
Then she tripped over the rug, hit her head on the dresser and now she isn't moving at all!'

'Oh my God!!! What about your Uncle Paul?'

'He jumped out of the bed with no clothes on, too. He was all scared and he jumped out of the back window and into the swimming pool. But I guess he didn't know that you took out the
water last week to clean it. He hit the bottom of the pool and I think he's dead.'

Long Pause

'Swimming pool? ........... Is this 486-5731?'

'No, I think you have the wrong number........

Starting with local stuff, last night the town of Grove

in northeast OK hit 13 below, and it's currently -9. Which just flat sucks. Here it's a whole +7.

National stuff, hmmm... GE, that used to be run by one of Obama's appointees, gets big benefit from an exemption to new EPA rules. Yeah, Hope and Change, folks.


Insty says Canada needs a serious free speech movement; it also needs a bunch of Human Rights Tribunal clowns to be introduced to tar and feathers.


This will get even more interesting:
The federal judge who struck down the Obama administration's moratorium on deepwater drilling after the Gulf oil spill held the Interior Department in contempt Wednesday, and ordered the federal agency to pay attorneys' fees for several offshore oil companies.

U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman chided the department for its "dismissive conduct" after he overturned the agency's decision to halt any new permits for deepwater projects and suspend drilling on 33 exploratory wells after the Deepwater Horizon blast, which killed 11 workers and triggered the massive spill.

After Feldman overturned the government's moratorium in June, the agency issued a second nearly identical suspension.

"Such dismissive conduct, viewed in tandem with the reimposition of a second blanket and substantively identical moratorium and in light of the national importance of this case, provide this court with clear and convincing evidence of the government's contempt of this court's preliminary injunction order," he wrote.


Colonel Dinnalsyn would love this:
the pic and the weapon both(pic courtesy Theo)


When the media and Democrats
A: Give this as much coverage as they have lies about the tea party and
B: Condemn these people and their words as loudly and openly as they bitch about conservatives,
THEN I'll consider that they actually mean they want to take the nastiness out of political arguments.


Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack doesn't care if your engine is trashed, as long as he's giving subsidies to a 'green' industry:
The existing 10% ethanol-blend gas has problems, but the good folk at Popular Mechanics are concerned about what happens when a few drops of water get into the fuel tank when E15 is used:

How does water get into the fuel tank? It’s possible that water dripped into the tank at the gas station or ­refueling depot, or a stray raindrop or snowflake made its way into your tank or jerrycan, but most water infiltration is from condensation. As the temperature in a tank changes, air has to be vented in and out or the tank will bulge or split. Incoming air carries moisture. When the H2O in the gas gets above a critical percentage—its saturation point—all of the water and alcohol drops out and settles into the bottom of the tank. This is what chemists call phase separation; the various components of the fuel are no longer a homogeneous mixture.

Water in your fuel is bad and more ethanol in fuel can make this a real problem, especially for drivers in regions that experience large temperature variations – but that’s not the only issue with E15. Heat is a problem too. Ethanol burns hotter than regular gas and that’s bad news for your expensive catalytic converter:

General Motors biofuel implementation manager C. Coleman Jones said that the increased ethanol levels caused problems in at least half of the engines tested. E15 made engines run hot, compromised catalytic converters and even damaged cylinder walls. Jones added that E15 could leave motorists stranded on the roadside.

The new EPA-approved gas blend is bad for cars of a certain age, but that is just the beginning of a list of problems with ethanol:



Bishnu Shrestha, the Gurkha with the big knife and testicles, is being decorated. And rightly so.


The DBD comment on Valerie Jarrett:


Ref the Obamacare ruling the other day, sweet words:
Vinson brought down the whole house of cards when he found that a) the coercive "individual mandate" that would have required every citizen to purchase health insurance was unconstitutional and b) that without the mandate, as the administration itself argued, the law would be unworkable.

"Because the individual mandate is unconstitutional and not severable, the entire act must be declared void," he wrote.


The People's Republic of MA: Live Free or There indeed.


I'm now going to let the Security Staff out to defile the snow some more, and get the end of the driveway cleared. Hopefully, I'll be back.

Ref the 45th ID patch

Yesterday I sent to the 45th ID museum and asked if they'd heard anything about such a change occurring; this morning they advised have heard of no such thing. So hopefully the troop who said this was passing on nothing more than a rumor.

Oh HELL yeah!

From WotC, and I hope Kaylee smiles at him for this

Project Gunwalker is hitting the big time

Fox is reporting on it.

From this, Holder is in it up to his ears. And plans to stonewall and argue and probably declare he and ATF are somehow protected from being called before Congress on this.

Actually, if you've got time, go to Sipsey Street and just start working your way down; lots and lots of posts and links on this mess.

The Democrats may be trying to tack McCarthy's magazine ban

bill onto a FAA appropriations bill. MAY be; nobody is sure.

Since I mentioned the Security Staff earlier,

In the front yard
and using the driveway for a playground
"It's MY birdseed! Back off!"

And that hat & shemagh combo
Only problem with it for me is that if I cover my nose I wind up with the glasses fogging.

It's gotten all the way up to 15. It's kind of amazing, at this temp, how much melting you can get on the driveway when you combine residual heat from the warm days with sun being able to hit the concrete. Sublimation as well. Which is why I wanted to get as much cleared as I could, so this would clear the rest.

Really cold temps and really high winds

do not play well with windmills.

From a link in the comments,

Eric Sharp, another "I'm a gun owner

BUT-" clown.

Among the reasons I'm so glad some of my ancestors

got the hell out of Britain:
A SENIOR police officer has warned of the potential difficulties and costs of introducing licensing for air weapons in Scotland.
There are an estimated 500,000 air guns in the country, and all, except for the most dangerous, are unregulated.

Tom Ewing, the temporary Assistant Chief Constable for Fife Police, said any move by the Scottish Parliament to licence such weapons would have a "definitive impact" on police resources.
Not 'this is a bad idea', not 'this won't stop criminals', just "Hey, you'll make it difficult for us if you pass this!"

In case anyone was curious, the Security Staff

just curl up in the garage until there's a need to pee or something to bark at, at which point they come shooting out. I let them out with me while clearing the drive(not done yet) and they happily went bounding through the snow and checking all the smells. And slurping up bird feed the birds spilled; I guess the stuff is like sesame seeds for dogs.

Remember the Erik Scott murder killing by LVPD?

Thomas Mendiola, one of the Las Vegas police officers who shot and killed Erik Scott outside the Summerlin Costco last year, has been charged in a criminal complaint with unlawfully giving a handgun to a two-time felon.

The district attorney's office filed the felony complaint late last week against Mendiola, who has been with the Metropolitan Police Department since March 2009.

It's amazing how warm you can get at 5F

when you're working and out of the wind. Also, a while back Lawdog had a post on the shemagh; I'd picked one up at a gun show and son brought me one from Iraq. I found you can put on a cap, then tie the shemagh on and this will keep your head and face warm and keep the sun out of your eyes; very nice on a day like today.

Oh, Uncle mentioned this the other day; the ACLU has fallen afoul of some of the bullcrap disguised as law enforcement and anti-terrorist activity:
The Tennessee ACLU sent a letter to public schools warning them not to celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday. The Tennessee Fusion Center (H/T Uncle) put the communication on its map of “terrorism events and other suspicious activity”:
Rittgers says "Join the club; how do you like it?"
The North Texas Fusion System labeled Muslim lobbyists as a potential threat; a DHS analyst in Wisconsin thought both pro- and anti-abortion activists were worrisome; a Pennsylvania homeland security contractor watched environmental activists, Tea Party groups, and a Second Amendment rally; the Maryland State Police put anti-death penalty and anti-war activists in a federal terrorism database; a fusion center in Missouri thought that all third-party voters and Ron Paul supporters were a threat; and the Department of Homeland Security described half of the American political spectrum as “right wing extremists.”

Quick note: son says Fort Bliss got a whole 1.5" of snow

and the town is mostly shut down, as nobody local knows how to drive on it.

If this is true, it's PC idiocy of the highest level Updated

Just spoke with the son. He saw a troop with a Thunderbird patch
and asked him if was from Oklahoma. Talked a bit, and this troop told him there'd been a complaint that the Thunderbird has a 'too-close' resemblance to some racist symbol and that new troops in the 45th would no longer be issued this patch as a result.

I haven't found anything online, have fired a couple of e-mails off looking for information. Any of you heard anything about this? If not true, I want to let son know; if it IS true, I want to yell about it.

Loudly.

Update:
Yesterday I sent to the 45th ID museum and asked if they'd heard anything about such a change occurring; this morning they advised have heard of no such thing. So hopefully the troop who said this was passing on nothing more than a rumor.

Insty points to a piece on Frances Fox Piven

and her calls for violence and her professed shock when she's called on them, and some background on the damage she and her husband have caused in the past. I like that two of the comments are
A: "Beck should be a gentleman and not be rude", and
B: "BECK is full of vitriol and is at fault for stirring things up." Never mind his repeated calls to avoid violence, NOT to strike back when attacked and so on; apparently actually telling people what Piven says and calls for is the problem. In other words, from both comments, "You people should shut up and not cause problems!" Which would work out real well for people like Piven, huh?


EUnuchs, indeed, many of them.
Talks ended angrily when Italy accused Lady Ashton, the EU's foreign minister, of "excessive" political correctness because she refused to name any specific religious group as a victim of attacks.

Franco Frattini, the Italian foreign minister, demanded an EU response on the persecution of Christians after a New Year suicide bombing at a Coptic church in northern Egypt in which 23 people were killed.

The Egyptian bombing followed attacks in Baghdad and fears, expressed by the Vatican, of persecution leading to a Christian exodus from the Middle East.

Mr Frattini, backed by France, said it pointless to issue statements defending religious tolerance without any references to the specific minority, Christians, that was under attack.
I guess if you're not muslim you're not a 'proper' victim.


Saw this the other day:
According to our tipster, Jarrett was seated at the head table along with several other big-name politicians and a handful of high-ranking military officials. As an officer sporting several stars walked past Jarrett, she signaled for his attention and said, “I’d like another glass of wine.”

Garçon!

White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee, who was seated next to Jarret, began “cracking up nervously,” our tipster said, but no one pointed out to Jarrett that the man sporting a chestful of medals was not her waiter.
The woman cannot possibly be stupid enough to not be able to tell the difference between a waiter and someone in dress uniform; personally- considering the attitude of this administration toward the military- I have no doubt she did it deliberately. Miserable bitch.


So some states are taking action on the privacy front to stop doctors from asking about guns; sounds good to me. Especially when they say this
"We're not against guns, per se. What we're concerned about is proper storage and handling of firearms," said Louis St. Petery, MD, executive vice president of the Florida chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The Florida AAP chapter and the Florida Medical Assn. oppose the bill. "As written, the bill is absolutely unacceptable, and we will fight it," said FMA general counsel Jeff Scott.
and then you find out this:
Hammer also took issue with an AAP policy that says the most effective way to prevent firearm-related injury to children is to keep guns out of homes and communities. The policy also says, "We believe that handguns, deadly air guns and assault weapons should be banned."

"That's politics," Hammer said. "They are pushing their anti-gun politics on families who own firearms."
Yes, they are. And need to be told to piss off.


Ok, at the top of Drudge right now:
REPORT: US, EU discussing need for international military intervention to remove Mubarak... Developing...
gee, what happened to all that 'one country should not force another' stuff from The Lightworker? And I wonder just what genius(or collection thereof) thinks this is a good idea?

It's now up to a balmy 5F outside, so I'm going to see if I can clear more of the driveway. And put out some birdseed.

Tam is speaking of the current ice storm happening

in her neck of the woods, and it reminded me of something:
Few years back we had a nasty one(nothing like 2", thank your favorite Deity) here in cental/eastern OK, then one in which my neighborhood had no power for a week and others for longer. Once things had settled down afterward I ran by a surplus store over in Midwest City to look around(where I found the stylish milsurp longhandles I'm wearing now) and was talking to the owners about the mess.

They'd just moved into their home about a year before, and one of the first things they did was hire a tree company to cut things back fairly drastically, and take a couple of trees out, which caused extreme upset among some of the neighbors. Comments ranged from "You took too much off!" to one old guy having a fit: "That tree there has been growing for forty years!", etc. They'd lost power due to a line being broken down the street, but no limbs down; lots of the neighbors lost limbs, a few trees, and the old guy who'd been so pissed about them taking a tree down had a big limb through his kitchen roof.

When I moved into this house no attention had been paid to the trees in back for years; they needed some general cutting back and a bunch of stuff was up to-over the power lines. OKC does a big trash pickup once a month, and for about six months after, and a couple in the spring, I had effing huge piles of branches out front for them. In the ice storm I lost one branch, which didn't hit anything valuable. It's an ongoing task, but every year there's been some kind of storm that made me damn glad I've kept it up.

Here's a site I'd not seen before

Open Bolt Semi Auto Firearms

Keith, you do find some interesting stuff

And that's enough shoveling for one day

Hopefully I'll recover from the coronary in time to have some dinner. And my fingertips will thaw out, too.

This is officially the second worst snowfall mess

I've ever seen. THE worst was 1971, lived in Medford at the time and three counties got an even three feet overnight*; this isn't near that heavy, but as I recall the winds blew out with the storm on that one. Here, it's still blowing like bleep, makes it hard to do much; even with face covering you start getting cold pretty quick. I nearly froze a few fingertips some years back, and they start telling me about it when they're getting cold. As of this moment we're still a touch below the snowfall of the Christmas Eve blizzard last year, but we may pass it; and again, then the wind dropped off right about the time the snow was ending.

At this point I think I'll stay in until all the medium/heavy stuff has stopped. Speaking of which,
It doesn't do justice to what it's like to stand in this mess.

They just reported that in Boise City, up in the panhandle, wind chill is at -36. Damn.


*The official word from the NWS is that only one county, Harper, got that measurement; I know Dad went into a field, no drifts, and got an even yardstick from snowtop to ground in Grant as well. So the NWS can kiss my ass.

This video reveals a top-level Planned Parenthood worker,

the manager of Planned Parenthood of Central New Jersey's second largest clinic, making a secret deal with a pimp. Watch and listen as the Planned Parenthood manager, Amy Woodruff, advises the pimp how to make the trafficking of underage girls look "as legit as possible" (her words). Watch and listen as the manager advises the pimp how to ensure that his 14-year old victims of trafficking can still make money for him after secret abortions by performing sex acts "waist up" (her idea). Watch as she advises the pimp to instruct his girls to lie on the paper work about their ages, and identify themselves as "students" to get cheaper contraception and avoid mandatory reporting laws.
Let's see, ignoring the morality of helping keep underage girls as hookers, I wonder how may felonies this clown has committed? And if NJ will bother to charge her with any of them?

So Obama doesn't mind the islamist KKK

having a role in the new Egyptian government. Wonderful, isn't it?

That's about as smart as the guy radio just reported on who was just trying to get down May Ave. in a Corvette.

One more thing: Mayor Bloomberg isn't just a nanny-state socialist,

he's a friggin' idiot.
The operation was conducted as part of the Bloomberg administration’s effort to crack down on illegal gun sales nationwide.

Bloomberg said the operation cost $100,000 and came out of the NYPD's budget.
A: Bloomberg, despite your delusions you are NOT in charge of law enforcement nationwide,
B: If your little secret agents made illegal buys, I hope AZ prosecutes them. And if they can show you sent them to AZ to break the law, prosecute you as well.
C: Apparently you're under the delusion that everything in NYEffin'C is so under control that you can waste money from the PD budget, and take time away from, oh, clearing the streets and picking up the garbage and do this; every idiot in NYEffin'C who voted for you deserves what's happening to them. Problem is, the people who DIDN'T help put your conceited ass back in that chair are getting screwed, too.

The current phrase on KTOK is 'The Blizzard of '11'

Right now, my area, 8" on the ground and it looks like this:
It's light, so it's blowing all over. And it's currently 9 degrees, which made clearing the front porch and walk and part of the driveway just so much fun.

And they say the last wave is coming in, they're predicting another 2-4" through this area before it stops this afternoon. So once the fingers thoroughly thaw out I'll go back out and see if I can clear more of the driveway. Go around back and clear the back door, too.

One good thing: we got very little in the way of freezing rain and such, it pretty much started out here as sleet and went to snow, which has prevented a lot of problems.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to drink some tea, get ready, then clear those areas. Then I'm going hunting; I'm going to find whoever let Al Gore into the region and shoot them. Then I'm going to take Gore to some country I don't like and chain him down there.