Good news, and disgusting

Not on the same subject.

Good news:
ust got word from GI W. that former Marine Sergeant Jose Nazario has been acquitted by the jury in Riverside California.
Now, from what I've read, the legal clowns responsible for this case ought to be kicked three times 'round the courtroom, then disbarred. At least.

The bad: two more links(here and here) speaking on the past activities and current excuses of Bill Ayers and his spouse Bernadine Dohrn. Currently the slimy little excuses for abscesses on the ass of mankind are claiming 'they only wanted to damage property'. Right:

First of all, "that moment in the townhouse" he's talking about happened in 1970. Three of his confederates, including his then girlfriend Diana Oughton, were accidentally killed when the explosive they were building to Ayers specifications (Ayers was a bomb designer) went off during construction. As noted in Ayers' Discover the Networks profile, the explosive had been a nail bomb. Back when Ayers was being more honest about his intentions, he admitted that the purpose of that bomb had been to murder United States soldiers:

That bomb had been intended for detonation at a dance that was to be attended by army soldiers at Fort Dix, New Jersey. Hundreds of lives could have been lost had the plan been successfully executed. Ayers attested that the bomb would have done serious damage, "tearing through windows and walls and, yes, people too."

You do not make a nail bomb to 'damage property'; you make it to kill people. And this is one of the people Obama has counted on, and stayed close to, over the years and is currently claiming
A: no real acquaintance and
B: what he did 'wasn't too bad', and I was young then.
I'd close this with'Bastards.', but that just doesn't cover it. I'm not sure what would.

McCain actually picks somebody that helps his position

I'd suggest starting at the top at Ace and scrolling down for information about Palin and some of the reaction from the media weenies and Obama buttmonkeys.

And remember, while you're reading it, that popping noise in the distance is obamite heads exploding.

Speaking of passing on news and taking note of 'progressive'

thoughts on censorship, Sondra brings this to our attention:
But the implications for our democracy are troubling. To achieve their goals, political movements need to reach and influence tens of millions of citizens. Despite conventional thinking that the Internet helps spread information, such reach is actually impossible online.

Consider: In August 2007, there were about 100 million blogs. Of those that reached 100,000 people or more in a month, only about 20 focused on news or politics, according to ComScore Media Metrix, a company that measures Internet traffic. The most popular was Breitbart.com, with only 1.1 million unique visitors, or 0.4 percent of the 228 million U.S. adults 18 and older.
...
the larger problem: The overload siphons audiences and revenue from newspapers such as The Post and other outlets that can spread important information, forcing these media to shrink and to rely increasingly on advertising to stay afloat. These trends predate the Internet era, but they’ve gotten worse.
Translation: "People have too many sources to look at, and it's taking away from them reading US. And only WE have 'important' information, as in the stuff we actually want you to hear about, the WAY we want you to hear it."

And what's the favorite 'progressive' way to control what people do?
Rather than call for government regulation of technology itself, perhaps the best way to limit the avalanche is to make the technologies that overproduce information more expensive and less widespread. It could be done via a progressive energy tax designed to keep energy prices at a consistently high level (while providing assistance to lower- and middle-income Americans).
Taxes. What Bill Clinton tried to call 'contributions to the government'. Conveniently overlooking that it's not a 'contribution' when taken by threat of force. At least this bastard is open in saying "We should tax you to death on this so we can control you."
Bite me, you fascist jerk.

Our Lady of the Thong also points to this on Barack Don't Ask About Him Obama and his terrorist friend Bill I Stomp on the Flag Ayers; several links, check it out.

Few days ago mentioned a friend whose daughter

had a health scare. Well, so far as they can tell it wasn't a stroke, and there's no sign of a tumor at this point. So they're getting it set up for a neurologist to go over it, and probably(I'd expect) an MRI.

Throw a few good thoughts their way, if you would.

Something on the Olofson case

Wandered over to The War On Guns and found this, article he links to here.
The federal government allegedly suppressed evidence and edited a legal definition in a Wisconsin case against a man who ultimately was convicted of transferring a machine gun, according to an appeal document.

Considering some of the crap that's turned up in prosecutions over the years, I don't doubt it. And yeah, it should get him a new trial.

WoG also notes the current "We want more power to screw people over" power grab by BATFE, this one "We say that doing almost anything to a firearm makes you a manufacturer." Which is purely, from what I can see, being thrown out as a way to make it as difficult as possible for people to stay within the law, thus giving BATFE a way to find someone guilty of something when they want to mess with them.

As someone once said, just Damn!

I have been thinking about The Obamessiah's

'defense' stand, and something struck me. He speaks of working to 'end the production of fissile material worldwide'. Hm. I find in Wiki "Fissile" is defined to be materials that are fissionable by neutrons with low kinetic energy.

And that includes reactor fuel as well as the material for nuclear or thermonuclear warheads. Considering the ties Obama has to various enviroweenies and groups, what if it turns out he's including reactor fuel in this definition? Assuming he got it through, no more nuclear reactors for power generation, and the ones running now stop as soon as their fuel runs out. And if he includes the military in this(anybody think he wouldn't?) that means every nuke-powered sub and ship stops when the fuel runs out.

I have to wonder...

I would much rather talk about guns and knives and

pretty women, but with this crap going on, it just has to be mentioned:
A more personal view on the activities of Barack I Was Only Eight Obama's friend and terrorist Bill Ayers:
Obama’s answer: “The notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was eight years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn’t make much sense, George.” Obama was indeed only eight in early 1970. I was only nine then, the year Ayers’s Weathermen tried to murder me.

Hmmm, news people try to take pictures of people leaving a Democrat fat-cat meeting, and get arrested. Fits in very well with the Obama campaign trying to have people arrested by the feds for daring to speak uncomfortable truths, doesn't it? And trying to punish a radio station for talking about the same uncomfortable facts:
Christenson also stressed that the Obama campaign was invited to send a representative to appear on the show to balance the discussion of the newly-opened documents. But the campaign headquarters just down Michigan Avenue from the station refused the request. This is not the first time Obama's organization has sought to steer supporters to influence a broadcast outlet airing criticism.
Real friend of the 1st Amendment is The Obama. God help us all if he does get into the White House and has an Attorney General who'll carry his water.

On the non-political criminal side, we have this case of the immigration people doing their jobs:
Nearly 600 immigrants suspected of being in the country illegally were detained, creating panic among dozens of families in this small southern Mississippi town.

Alegria, 26, a Mexican immigrant, was working at the Howard Industries transformer plant Monday when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stormed in. When they found out she has two sons, ages 4 and 9, she was fitted with a bracelet and told to appear in federal court next month. But her husband, Andres, wasn't so lucky.

"I'm very traumatized because I don't know if they are going to let my husband go and when I will see him," Alegria said through a translator Tuesday as she returned to the Howard Industries parking lot to retrieve her sport utility vehicle.
Two disconnects here about the 'poor people just looking for work': "Alegria said through a translator", so apparently she speaks no English. And she had to retrieve her SUV, so apparently being an illegal alien has paid pretty well. And we have the compulsory statment
"We have kids without dads and pregnant mothers who got their husbands taken away," said Velez's son, Robert, youth pastor at the church. "It was like a horror story. They got handled like they were criminals."
That's because, you moron, they ARE criminals. I realize that's apparently a difficult thing for you to understand, but there it is. Deal with it.
One other thing about this, as Kim notes:
One worker caught in Monday's sweep at the plant said fellow workers applauded as immigrants were taken into custody. Federal officials said a tip from a union member prompted them to start investigating several years ago.
Things do come around, don't they?

And some thoughts at Volokh on The Obama's mandatory volunteerism, including this:
Speaking to an alternative weekly on the eve of his 1995 run for state senate, Obama said . . . that “these are mean, cruel times . . . .” He derided the “old individualistic bootstrap myth” of American achievement that conservatives were touting. Self-help strategies “have become thinly veiled excuses for cutting back on social programs, which are anathema to a conservative agenda,” he wrote in a chapter that he contributed to a 1990 book, After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois. (He also depicted leftist community organizing as a harder task than similar efforts by the Christian Right, telling a reporter in 1995 that “it’s always easier to organize around intolerance, narrow-mindedness and false nostalgia.”)
Awww, isn't he such a cute little bigot?

You know why I keep posting on things like this? Blame it on Rush. Back when I first started listening to him, in my pre-internet days, he was something of a breath of fresh air; there were so many bits and pieces in the news that were incomplete or horribly slanted that I'd not known of that he talked about, and filled in holes. Hell, sometimes filled in the actual facts. And it annoyed the hell out of the usual suspects.

This is my contribution to that. If I can have a small part in letting someone know about some of this crap they may not hear about on the 'official' news, I consider that a Good Thing.

And one more viewpoint on Barack He's Not A Terrrorist He's My Bro

Obama's friend Bill Ayers:
I know myself well enough to know that the odds would skyrocket that I'd get into a fist-fight, and even that I'd throw the first punch, were I to find myself face-to-face with a would-be cop killer whose motto is "Guilty as hell, free as a bird — America is a great country!" Even if he wasn't trampling on an American flag at that precise moment, I could no more break bread with such a man, or share a round of beers, or shake hands with him, than I could with Osama bin Ladin.

If Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dorn are what pass for respectable members of liberal Chicago society now, that's among the most shameful indictments I've ever heard of the honesty and integrity of that city's citizens.
...
Ayers was a twisted dollop of evil scum in the 1960s and 1970s, and he's still evil scum. It is absolutely inconceivable to me that someone who might become the president of the United States could call such a man "friend."

From Obama's ad on Bill AyersIt is wholly insufficient — a pathetic joke of an excuse — for Obama to "denounce Ayers' crimes" when Ayers won't denounce those crimes himself. A four-year-old child can understand that. Why can't Barack Obama? Or rather, why does Obama pretend not to understand it?

Preach it, Beldar.

I'd thought about going back to school when I retire,

but if the prices I'm seeing for OU are representative, that ain't gonna happen. Tuition $117.90,
'additional fees' $121.10, that's $239.00. Per credit hour. Which makes a 3-hour class $717.00. Not counting books and any additional fees or whatever they decide to tack on. Such as:

ADDITIONAL MANDATORY REQUIRED ENROLLMENT FEES PER SEMESTER

Fee Description	Semester	Amount
Health Fee	Fall/Spring	$74.00
Health Fee	Summer	$37.00
Cultural/Rec Fee	Fall/Spring	$12.50
Cultural/Rec Fee	Summer	$6.25
Academic Records Fee	Fall/Spring	$15.00
Academic Records Fee	Summer	$15.00
Academic Advising-Degree Seeking	Fall/Spring	$25.00
Academic Advising-Degree Seeking	Summer	$12.50
International Student Maintenance Fee	Fall/Spring	$50.00
International Student Maintenance Fee	Summer	$33.33

OTHER SELECTED COURSE FEES AFFECTING YOUR TUITION

Fee Description	Amount
Architecture Enrichment Fee	$12.00	per course
Arts & Sciences Enrichment Fee	$6.50	per credit hour
Atmospheric & Geographic Sciences Fee	$25.00	per undergrad course
Business Communications Enhancement Fee	$4.50	per undergrad credit hour
Business Undergraduate Enrichment Fee	$10.00	per undergrad credit hour
Chemistry Department Fee	$5.00	per course
Earth & Energy Enrichment Fee	$25.00	per undergrad course
Education Enrichment Fee	$3.00	per credit hour
Engineering Enrichment Fee	$13.00	per undergrad credit hour
English Department Fee	$1.00	per undergrad course
Fine Arts Enrichment Fee	$7.00	per credit hour
Full-Time MBA Fee	$1500.00	annual per student
International Student Health Insurance	$814.00	annual
Journalism & Mass Communications Enrichment Fee	$15.00	per credit hour
Nichols Center Fee - OKC	$40.00	per credit hour
Organ, Piano, Percussion Instrument Use Fee	$75.00	per course
SIAS Online Course Fee	$25.00	per course
MBA Enrichment Fee	$10-$30	selected courses ($50 cap)

That's what's show as of July. God knows what it is now, as the head of OU was once again bitching and whining that they need to raise tuition and need more money from the state.

Kim once described the diamond trade as a racket. So is college, it seems.

There's enough BS out of Denver and associated weenies

to just do some listing:
Union officials say their members are racists. You know, those officials who don't want secret ballots on union votes? Who keep spending members' dues on political crap the members don't want them to? Yeah, it's racism, sure.

Andrew Sullivan was one of the first bloggers I discovered when I went online. Read him a lot, until he became somewhat unhinged. Seems he can't keep the players straight at all anymore.

Obama & Co. just flat cannot stand actual freedom of speech, can they? How DARE anyone bring up inconvenient facts? As has been said, if the little bastard wants to send the Justice Dept. after people now, what'll he do if he's elected?

There's lots more, but I'm short of time. Short version:
"If you don't vote for Obama the Savior, YOU ARE A RACIST! And you are not allowed to say things the Obamessiah does not like!" Etc.

There are many Carbines,

but this one's mine, so keep your sweaty hands off.Having been able to hie myself off to the range for a while today, and firing this beast for the first time in a while, thought I'd write a bit about it.

I've mentioned it before: it's an Inland, made(near as I can tell) December '42 or January '43. It had the usual upgrades over time(adjustable rear sight, bayonet-mount barrel band, 'turn' safety and magazine latch for the 30-round mags), but seems to have held onto the original stock. The barrel is either the original, or a replacement from the same time the receiver was made. It made its way around the world, from the markings having served with the South Korean Army before finally coming back to the States, finally winding up with me.

This was the first of these I'd ever fired. First I'd ever really handled, for that matter. Kim has waxed poetic about them before, but I was still surprised by the 'handy' factor; it's the Model 94 of semi-auto war rifles: light, short, and reliable. And I was quite pleased with the accuracy it's capable of, better than I'd hoped for. There were two things I did to it: First, the thing shot high at 100 yards, as in about 6" high. Since the top of the sight blade, where it'd been filed down, was nice and flat I made a piece to match the blade angles and width and soldered it on; that way I was able to file it down to put the shots on at 100 with the rear sight on 100. The other thing I did to it was recut and polish the crown; whoever had cleaned it over the years had been careful, but there were a couple of tiny dings. Maybe fifteen minutes work to polish them out.

Once upon a time I wrote about modifying a handguard I picked up to allow forward-mounting a pistol scope on it. That actually worked out quite well, but there was always the chance of the handguard shifting a bit, so I finally decided to get a more solid setup. I looked around and settled on the Ultimak mount, which you see on it in the picture. Machined aluminum, doesn't weigh much and mounts solidly to the barrel, replacing the handguard. And has a Picatinny rail the full length. Took about twenty minutes to put it on, that long because I was using a level and rechecking to make sure it was aligned properly.

The sight you see above is a Millett Redot SP1. After the lousy experience with a Pentax red dot(PENTAX RED DOTS SUCK!!!), I went to Midway and browsed. An Aimpoint or Eotech was out of reach, so I started browsing with the following in mind:
Brand I'd heard of,
$100 or less,
At least four stars on customer ratings.
And this was the only one that met all the above. So I decided to give it a try(Midway stands behind their stuff, which helps). And it's been great. Mounted solidly, proper click adjustments, and once zeroed I haven't had to touch it. Eleven brightness settings, which lets you adjust for ambient light conditions. And it's very fast and accurate; I've been very pleased with it.

Put the magazine pouch on the stock just so there'd always be two handy, and there's a hex key for the sight bolts in it(just in case).

Nicle little rifles, they are.

I's kind of amazing to me that it's so amazing to so many

leftist jackassesliberals that people are bothered that a candidate for President has close acquaintance with people like this:
I was one of the first to write about Ayers (for which Alan Colmes denounced me as some kind of McCarthyite, though not in so many words) and I've been getting email ever since for my mule-headedness. Apparently the groupthink is so thick that at the Obama campaign they actually think this rightwing or Republican obsession is a weakness. How else to explain the stupidity of their Ayers' ad?
...
...Speaking of Manson's famous murders she exclaimed, "Dig It! First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, they even shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach! Wild!” In appreciation, her Weather Underground cell made a threefingered “fork” gesture its official salute.

Well, it seems puzzlement over the inability of others to get over this stuff extended to Dohrn herself. Fast-forward to 1993. In a predictably sympathetic profile in the New York Times, she said: "I was shocked at the anger toward me. I think part of it's reserved for women. You stepped out of the role of the good girl."
No, you moron, it has nothing to do with 'stepping out of the role'; it has to do with you being a bloody-handed, bloody minded terrorist who hates this country, you and your scumsucking hubby both.

I was listening to Sean Hannity for a while today(background noise) and he had some bigshot from the Clinton campaign on who basically said it was absolute garbage to have any concern about this; dismissed every bit of information(starting a campaign at their house, serving on boards, all the other stuff that's come out) as 'not worth talking about'. Hannity asked him "Would you serve on a board with Ayers?" "I serve on lots of boards, that doesn't mean anything." Then "Would YOU give a speech with Ayers?" Answer: "Depends on what the speech was about." He either could not or would not see that what Ayers & Dohrn did back then, and what they've continued to do, combined with Obama being so happy to suck up to them, is a problem for people.

Of course, he's much more progressive than I, probably smarter too. Just ask him.

Yeah, the PRC's infrastructure is SO much better than ours

that businesses ought to run right over there. Yeah.
Thousands of farmers, he writes, face ruin because their water has been cut off to guarantee supplies to the Olympics in Beijing, and officials are now trying to cover up a grotesque scandal of blunders, lies and repression.

Thus, while in the capital, foreign dignitaries have gushed over the millions of flowers in bloom and lush, well-watered greens around its famous sights, just 90 minutes south by train, peasants are hacking at the dry earth as their crops wilt, their money runs out and the work of generations gives way to despair, debt and, in a few cases, suicide.

This entirely man-made (or Chinese government-made) disaster is affecting about 31,000 people around Baoding, a city to the south of the capital. Many are said to have lost their homes or land

China, at that time, was rushing to finish canals to pump 300 million cubic metres of "emergency" water to Beijing for its "green" Games, ensuring a lush, sparkling host city would greet the world in August. Works included 300 miles of channels (pictured) and pipes cut into Hebei province, to take water from farming country already beset by drought and environmental strains.

Thus, as we noted earlier, Chinese provinces are not only going short of coal and electricity - to say nothing of food – to feed the Olympics (something picked up by American Thinker after Obama's facile comments) but water as well.

I wonder if Barack China Does Better Than Us Obama knows about this? Or, more accurately I think, if he gives a crap?

Can we declare the New York Effin' Times

an actor for enemy powers yet?
Over four years, the CIA paid the Tinners 10 million dollars, some of which was delivered to them in a suitcase stuffed with cash, the newspaper reported, citing unnamed officials.

In return the engineers delivered a flow of secret information that helped end Libya's nuclear weapons program, expose Iran's atomic efforts and undo Khan's nuclear supply network.
As Ace says, there was no reason for this being put out, other than the NYEffin'Times wanting to- again- screw over people who helped the US.

Kid pitches 'too well'? Well, we can't have THAT,

can we?
The fighting started this week when Coach Wilfred Vidro refused a directive by league officials to replace 9-year-old pitcher Jericho Scott, whose pitching they say is so hard, fast and accurate that it might frighten or discourage other players.
And it includes this from the legal mouthpiece for the league:
“The spirit of the league was community, family, well being, nurturing. It’s an extended family and it’s been disrupted,” said attorney Peter Noble, who represents Liga Juvenil De Baseball De New Haven, Spanish for Youth Baseball League of New Haven. The league is not affiliated with Little League baseball.

Translation: "This kid's good, and we don't want his team winning this way; it might upset the bedwetters, kids and parents."
Yeah, I am being judgemental. Due to crap like this:
Noble said they cancelled the game for fear the adults bickering would create an “unhealthy environment.”

“We didn’t want an escalation of the kind of tumultuous behavior caused by the coaching staff,” he said.
Translation: "Screw these kids! Who do they think they are, not doing what they're told? And the coach not bending over for us? Hah, we'll show them!"

Just bloody wonderful, isn't it?

Gee, what's a socialist to do when someone speaks facts

you don't like? Why, you try to shut them up, of course.
I cannot stress how outrageous the Obama campaign’s attempt to silence the creators of the Ayers ad is. Mr. Hope and Change is applying Chicago-style mafia tactics to intimidate those who want to alert the nation to Obama’s troubling ties to, and longtime relationship with, the unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist. Obama’s lawyers and minions are playing hardball with TV stations that have dared to air the ad. They have the gall to champion campaign finance integrity — even as Obama has just admitted hiding payments to his Chicago cronies at ACORN. The Obama campaign can’t cite anything false or defamatory about the ad because it is accurate and truthful. This intimidation campaign is of a piece with the left-wing MoveOn effort to bully GOP donors. Remember?
...
“The Obama campaign knows it can’t argue the facts of the link between Obama and Ayers, so it is instead resorting to a desperate campaign of intimidation and legal threats,” said Ed Martin, American Issues Project’s president. “The scary question this raises is if Barack Obama demonstrates this little regard for free speech from his opponents during the campaign, what could the American people expect from him as a president?”

“The tremendous amount of time, money and effort the campaign is expending to run its own ads on the Ayers controversy and dispatch its hired guns all over the country – during the Democratic convention – speaks to the fear they must have that this issue is resonating with American voters.”
Wow, amazing how well Barack You Can't Say That Obama learned from his various mentors, isn't it?

I haven't had anything to say about Biden because

we pretty much already know it: he another GFW liberal who thinks he's Einstein reborn and wants to control our lives. But ran across this on his foreign policy experience and thought I'd make note of it:
Fast forward a few years. Khatami left office in 2005 without implementing substantial reform. Between 2000 and 2005, in an effort to engage Iran, European Union trade with that country nearly tripled. Yet far from assuming a moderate posture, "the elected representatives in Iran" allocated nearly 70 percent of the hard currency windfall into military and nuclear programs. The November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate affirmed the fruits of such investment when it found that Iran had pursued a nuclear weapons program until 2003. Although Biden's embrace of engagement coincided with Iran's nuclear warhead work, he acknowledged no error. He told reporters on Dec. 4 that Bush had "misrepresented" the intelligence in a drive to war and declared the same day, "You cannot trust this president."

Such poor judgment was not lost on Iranian leaders. Indeed, one of Khatami's top aides suggested that they came to count on it. At a June 14 panel with Iranian journalists and political advisers, former Khatami spokesman Abdollah Ramezanzadeh explained, "We had one overt policy, which was one of negotiation and confidence building, and a covert policy, which was continuation of activities." He advised President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to soften his defiance, noting that: "During our negotiations and so long as we were not subjected to sanctions, we could import technology. We should have negotiated for so long, and benefited from the atmosphere of negotiations to the extent we could import all the technology needed."

Bush has been a polarizing figure, but most senators realize that partisanship should never trump national security. In early 2007, evidence mounted that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps was planning terrorist activities in Iraq. An August 2007 National Intelligence Estimate found that "Iran has been intensifying aspects of its lethal support for select groups of Iraqi Shia militants" and that "Explosively formed penetrator (EFP) attacks have risen dramatically." The next month, the Senate considered a bipartisan amendment to designate the Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization, an important step to aid nonviolent efforts to deny it funds and financing. Biden was one of only 22 senators to vote against it. "I voted against the amendment to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization because I don't trust this administration," he said. Distrust of the U.S. president is the nature of politics, but skepticism about foreign dictators and their Brown Shirts is the backbone of judgment.

No matter. Biden's political games have made him Tehran's favorite senator. As Gen. David Petraeus struggled to unite Iraqis across the ethnic and sectarian divide, Iran's Press TV seized on Biden's plan for partitioning Iraq and featured his statements with the headline "US plans to disintegrate Iraq." Biden's attack-dog statements about U.S. policy failures emboldened Iranian hard-liners to defy diplomacy. In the Dec. 7, 2007, official sermon, Ayatollah Mohammad Kashani speaking on behalf of Iran's supreme leader, declared, "This Senator [Biden] correctly says Israel could not suppress Hizbullah in Lebanon, so how can the U.S. stand face-to-face with a nation of 70 million? This is the blessing of the Guardianship of the Jurists [the theocracy] . . . which plants such thoughts in the hearts of U.S. senators and forces them to make such confessions." The crowd met his statement with refrains of "Death to America."

Yeah, he'd be just great as a Veep, wouldn't he?

Idiocy in Denver from the Secret Service

Loudly parroted in "They Saved Pelosi!"-type headlines.
DENVER—House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was briefly evacuated from her downtown Denver hotel on Saturday when a man carrying two hunting rifles and two pistols tried to check in to the hotel.

Secret Service spokesman Malcolm Wiley said 29-year-old Joseph Calanchini of Pinedale, Wyo., faces a charge of unlawful carrying of a weapon after police officers at the Grand Hyatt hotel noticed him carrying a rifle-type case while checking in. Calanchini did not have a concealed weapons permit, said Lance Clem, spokesman for the Colorado Department of Public Safety.

Unless there's one hell of a lot more to this than they're saying, I call bullshit. 'He didn't have a concealed weapons permit' to carry firearms in a gun case? Horsecrap. The Secret Service overreacted(not exactly unknown), the local authorities are standing with them, and some guy on a trip gets screwed over. Just bloody wonderful.

I first heard about this a few days ago, and at first

couldn't find anything on it(my search-fu sucks); happily, some other folks did find it. Having apparently hit a roadblock in the investigation of a double-murder, the OSBI sent out this letter
to everyone they could find a record of as buying a pistol similar to what ballistics indicates they're looking for. Basically "Please bring your gun in for testing. Or else." Or else?
The individuals who were "invited" to bring their guns in but didn't now will be included in the ongoing investigation, as well as people who were identified by former owners as having purchased that type of weapon recently, authorities said.

"We'll be checking on them," Jessica Brown, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, told the newspaper.
Oh, lovely. In effect, they're saying "We don't have a court order, and we can't force you to do this, but if you don't we'll look for ways to mess with you." Which is just certain to produce cooperation, now isn't it?

Which all ignores that replacement barrels are easy to find, same for extractors, firing pins, etc. Assuming the bad guy, if wishing to play games and bring the piece in, doesn't mess with it to change the markings, which is overall simple enough to do. I'll also note the end bit:
"If you no longer have possession of the Glock .40, please call ' '. Please be prepared to provide the name, address and telephone number of the person now in possession of the gun."
Considering there is no legal requirement to keep such records of a private sale- or gift- that's not going to go over well, either.

I tend to give law enforcement a great deal of leeway(sometimes too much), but I have to say I'd be one of the people saying "If you have a warrant to seize and/or demand to test-fire my gun, please let me see it." Not out of any desire to make things difficult(find the bastards who did this, and I'll happily drive down to lend a hand on the rope), but because this just doesn't seem like a good way to keep this investigation going.

And I've got a fair amount of sympathy for the people investigating this. It's the kind of crime that makes your skin crawl and inspires people to work long and hard to find the bad guys. And causes them to curse and consider drinking when faced with things like this:
Investigators have been searching for a "person of interest" in the case since mid-June. Described as a 6-foot American Indian, about 35, with long black hair, he was seen driving a white Ford or Chevy single-cab pickup truck on County Line Road around the time of the shooting.

Indian activists have said they aren't surprised police haven't been able to find him.

"That could be any Indian in Oklahoma," said Brenda Golden, an activist originally from Weleetka.

Authorities say the description is all they have to go on.

"There’s nothing we can do about that," Brown said. "That’s exactly what the multiple witnesses told us. We asked them to get more specific, of course, and that’s the best they could do."
And why is this working with what they've got so bad?
Golden, who now lives in Oklahoma City, said the fear of police persecution is one reason the large Indian community isn't talking.

"We're not going to get treated fairly," she said shortly after the murders. "Automatically people are assuming that this Indian did something wrong just because he was in the vicinity."

Police stress the Indian is not a suspect.

"He was just seen in the area close to the time the girls were shot and killed," Brown said. "That is such a remote area that that stood out to us."
Of course the investigators are all racists; they're cops and(mostly)white, aren't they? Etc. ad bullcrap. I may be doing Golden a disservice, if so I'll say so, but this sounds exactly like what comes out of the mouths of 'civil rights' race warlord poverty pimps like Jackson and Sharpton, and it does no good.

So this is something of a mess all the way around, and barring someone coming forward with information or a break(brought about by lots of footwork), it'll keep hanging for a while. Maybe a long while. Which is bad on a number of fronts. Among others, the people who did this need to become better looking, as soon as possible.