Irons in the Fire

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

from a really scary piece of work:
"...the authors conclude that an authoritarian form of government is necessary, but this will be governance by experts and not by those who seek power. There are in existence highly successful authoritarian structures--for example, in medicine and in corporate empires--that are capable of implementing urgent decisions impossible under liberal democracy. Society is verging on a philosophical choice between "liberty" or "life." But there is a third way between democracy and authoritarianism that the authors leave for the final chapter. Having brought the reader to the realization that in order to halt or even slow the disastrous process of climate change we must choose between liberal democracy and a form of authoritarian government by experts, the authors offer up a radical reform of democracy that would entail the painful choice of curtailing our worldwide reliance on growth economies, along with various legal and fiscal reforms. Unpalatable as this choice may be, they argue for the adoption of this fundamental reform of democracy over the journey to authoritarianism.

I do believe a fed has ticked off JPFO

just like he did Dave Codrea:
We at Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO) have recently become aware -- through what amounts to a rather circuitous and highly sinister threat from you, Mr. Meyer -- of a relatively new federal law that calls itself "The Court Security Improvement Act of 2007".

This perfect example of typical police state legislation -- which you pressured Ryan Horsley, a defendant in a recent BATFE case, into sending us -- says that whoever knowingly makes restricted personal information available about a "covered official", or a member of his or her immediate family, supposedly "with the intent to threaten, intimidate, or incite the commission of a crime of violence" against him, her, or it will be fined, imprisoned for no more than 5 years, or both.

And they're not happy about it.

And yet its agents strive to retain their anonymity and avoid responsibility for their acts. This reminds us of yet another morally questionable practice of many federal, state, and local police agencies: since when did American cops start wearing masks? Isn't it the badguys who wear masks, Mr. Meyer? Aren't they properly anxious to conceal their identities to avoid responsibility for their criminal acts?

Could government's masks be revealing something about government?

There is no room, Mr. Meyer, for secret police in an open society. No gun-toting government employee should ever be allowed to appear in public in civilian clothing, but should be required instead to wear a distinctive uniform on the job, complete with his or her name and badge number in six-inch reflective letters on the back and in three-inch letters on the chest. It should be a felony for any "law enforcement officer" to conceal his or her face, even with protective headgear.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Magazines, tweaking of

The good things about a detachable magazine are that you can carry spares already loaded to speed things up, and- depending on firearm- have them in different sizes. Bad thing is you can drop them or otherwise ding the feed lips which means either a bit of careful work with suitable pliers to repair them or, in bad cases, you toss it and buy a replacement.

Except when you're talking about an old or uncommon firearm. In which case there may be no replacement to find(at least at reasonable cost), or the replacement doesn't work. Which is the case here.

A while back I wrote about a High Standard Sport King .22 pistol. Marvelous thing, which came with the original magazine. The owner discovered two things:
Magazines are expensive, and
ALL the replacements he found and tried, did not work. Oh, they fit in perfectly, but the lips were different from the original. The cartridges were not releasing from the mag properly, which caused the bullet to enter the chamber while the case was still at a downward angle, which caused the slide to whack into it and bend the bullet a touch. Not good at all. So since he couldn't find an original, he took a replacement he'd bought and set to work.

The original mag has a 'tab' formed into each side that both guides the cartridge and causes it to 'snap' up as the cartridge is pushed forward, lining it up with the chamber. The replacement had straight lips, no tab. So he used a dremel and cutoff wheel to cut two tabs and shape them as close to the originals as he could. So far, so good.

Original on the left. Now came the tricky part: shaping the tabs. Which, he found, also included some careful shaving on the outside, as the replacement mag had an overlap along that section which made them way too thick & stiff. He finally, after a LOT of work and a number of ruined cartridges, got it right.

He's now put about a hundred rounds through it, and the only hitch is that sometimes the first round will try to jam when you chamber it; all the rest in that load cycle flawlessly.

Says it was worth every bit of it to have a working spare mag.

You may well have heard of the upset over Rep. Sally Kern

griping about the homosexual agenda, etc. Today there was a protest by various groups/people at the state capitol basically demanding she meet with them and apologize or resign. Only reason I'm saying anything about this is the leader of one of the groups said, near as I can recall, "I believe in the First Amendment, but not in hateful(or hurtful) speech"*. Which really, truly pisses me off. You, you effing liar, do NOT believe in free speech: you believe in freedom for speech which meets your standards. Screw you.

It will not surprise you to hear that he also then demanded that the Legislature immediately pass a 'comprehensive hate-crimes law to protect all Oklahomans'. Which is also bullshit. I think somewhere in the early history of this blog I once stated my opinion on this, but I'll cover it here to be sure:
I think hate crime laws are a very bad idea for two reasons. First, you presume to give someone extra punishment based on what you think, or believe, was in his mind at the time. Second, you're basically setting up some groups as 'protected species', which is a PROFOUNDLY bad idea("You struck Subject A, and that's bad, but you then struck Subject B, and that is worse!" "Why?" "Because Subject B is a ' ', and it's worse for you to assault him than it is the other guy.")

I also note that the head of one group said they were going to request a meeting with Rep. Kern, but didn't go to her office to do it: the did it in a group in front of the Capitol where they could have lots of cameras and reporters around.

Screw it. I've got guns to clean.

Forgot to mention, found Plumb Bob Blog yesterday on a link from Day by Day, he has some thoughts on the matter here.

*This is 'as best I recall' because I heard this stuff on radio news today, but after looking around a bit I couldn't find an article with the quotes, and I ran out of time. Did I mention guns to clean? Lots more fun that digging for this.

Monday, March 17, 2008

And in the corner of the Nanny State,

we have, first, Gary Pugh, director of forensic sciences at Scotland Yard and the new DNA spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers who says Primary school children should be eligible for the DNA database if they exhibit behaviour indicating they may become criminals in later life, according to Britain's most senior police forensics expert.
...
A recent report from the think-tank Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) called for children to be targeted between the ages of five and 12 with cognitive behavioural therapy, parenting programmes and intensive support. Prevention should start young, it said, because prolific offenders typically began offending between the ages of 10 and 13. Julia Margo, author of the report, entitled 'Make me a Criminal', said: 'You can carry out a risk factor analysis where you look at the characteristics of an individual child aged five to seven and identify risk factors that make it more likely that they would become an offender.' However, she said that placing young children on a database risked stigmatising them by identifying them in a 'negative' way.
Anybody want to bet that the same kind of thing that 'experts' say calls for kids to be drugged with Ritalin will also do as 'causing suspicion the child will become a criminal'? Or however they'll word it. Also note this:
'The number of unsolved crimes says we are not sampling enough of the right people,' Pugh told The Observer. However, he said the notion of universal sampling - everyone being forced to give their genetic samples to the database - is currently prohibited by cost and logistics.
So 'cost and logistics' is the only reason seen by those in favor of not forcing everyone in the damned country to give a DNA sample. Just bloody wonderful.

Second, Los Angeles PD actually has a 'Wrong Doors Unit' to repair damage done when they break into the wrong house. Like the guy at Reason said, I don't know whether it's good they're dealing with at least this aspect of it, or bad that it happens so damn often that they need a 'unit' for it. Also, I'm curious: he says that last year he did eight doors, but later on it says "Quite often, Jenkins said, wrong doors can get busted down in the early morning hours as armed officers clad in riot gear conduct raids." I don't know about you, but eight times doesn't quite match up with 'quite often', to me.

What the welfare state has done to Sweden. It's bad.

More later

Sunday, March 16, 2008

From the desk of Francis Marion

No idea where daughter found this

I do believe they have a slight training problem

over there.
The number of armed police officers accidentally shooting themselves – and other colleagues – has soared in the past five years.

Now, nearly half of all injuries caused by police shootings are the result of officers blasting themselves or a colleague, often during bungled training and demonstrations. (bold mine)

Which, of course, the GFWs are using to say "SEE! NOBODY is safe with guns around!"

Three of the NDs noted are:
• A diplomatic protection officer in Central London shot himself in the leg getting into a car in September 2007.
• A firearms officer from West Mercia Police shot himself in the leg and foot in January 2006 after his gun became caught in his clothing.
• An airport security officer from the Met shot the top of his thumb off when he put it in front of his MP5 sub-machine gun during training in 2005.

As to the third, I realize there's not a specific rule about "Keep your fingers out of the way of the muzzle(that's the hole in the loud end)", but damn...

Thanks to Sondra for pointing to this

The Freedom Microchip! (fixed)

Designed to be implanted in the foreheads of America's enemies by any Soldier, Sailor, Marine, Airman or General Citizen of the U.S.!

When implanted, allows the subject to immediately speak to/commune with Allah!

Comes in an exciting variety of dosages!

Possible side effects include:
Implantee may or may not get to choose size.
May contain precious metals
May or may not be painless.
Bleeding and swelling will occur at injection site.

It is suggested implantee be operating heavy equipment in close proximity to co-workers at time of implant.

Yeah, yeah, that'll teach me to blog when sick.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Steve is having qualms about shooting cute varmints

like prairie dogs. I never had a chance to go after any myself, but in the farming/ranching area where we lived for some years when I was a kid, the ranchers especially loved having someone come in and thin them out. There were occasional cows and horses with injuries from the holes, and they could flat strip an area to bare dirt.

I've mentioned my great-uncle Ray before, he's the one who went to Europe in WWII(the other, George, was in the Pacific). Ray loved hunting, and the land, and the animals, and when he shot something it was either for food or to protect his crop or buildings. The one thing I ever heard of that he actually disliked(four-legged, that is) was armadillos.

Not for carrying leprosy or other diseases, because of their digging. If you've never seen it, you'd be amazed the size of the holes they can dig. Fast. They'll also dig up newly planted trees to eat the roots(my grandfather hated them, too), and do other damage. What really set Ray against them, though, was the holes. Twice he hit holes he couldn't see in the hay or wheat and damn near had the tractor roll over on him, so he shot them every chance he got. In particular, right after the hay was baled he'd go out at night with a scoped .22 rifle and a spotlight, cruise through the fields slowly in his jeep and pop them.

I only went out with him once(only opportunity), and discovered an oddity about the things. We rolled up on one and it presented a nice stationary target. You'd think an animal would take notice of a jeep with three people in it and a bright light shining on it, but nooooo, it just sat there, digging. So I laid the crosshairs right behind the should and pressed. Bang. And it didn't move.

I mean, at all. I didn't even see a twitch. So it hit it again. And it twitched, but didn't move. At this point I was wondering if that damn scaly skin had some bullet-resistant qualities, and hit him a third time.

THAT time he moved. He jumped, spun around in a circle and took off running. Right at the jeep. Ran past notfour feet away, got about six feet past and rolled over, legs in the air twitching. I walked over and put in a finishing shot to make sure, and- since Dad had asked after the first two if I'd missed- looked at the left side. There was a nice group about an inch across, in the right place to put the shots right through the heart/lung area. I reported this amazing fact and Ray said he'd seen that before, that sometimes they just didn't seem to notice a lethal hit. Or two. In this case Remington hollowpoints.

He kept up his war on the beasts up until health wouldn't let him go after them anymore. Wish I'd been able to go down more and help him out with them.

Speaking of flashlights,

I did NOT need to see this today. Surefire G2 with an LED: 80 lumens output for 12 hours. Son has one of the standard G2 lights, I need to find if they sell the LED lamp assembly to put in the old light: if so, he'll love it. Same batteries but 12 times the runtime, damn.

Also, heard from him the other day. It's now hitting 90's in his area for highs. In March. Yuck.

Prosecutorial bad stuff going on?

Why, would they do that? From past knowledge, oh HELL yes.
Which brings up the rumblings that Tom Kirkendall is reporting on concerning the Enron trial. This is part of a pattern of possible misconduct Tom has been discussing for sometime. Part of the problem is that Enron prosecutors gave Skilling's lawyers only a composite summary of what Andy Fastow told the FBI. The prosecutors said that was ok because the interviews contained no exculpatory information. Yet Fastow's trial testimony was full of the sort of inconsistences that cast doubt on his credibility (see, e.g., this post). Was this stuff in the FBI reports?

Well, it seems not:

The brief reveals suppression of exculpatory evidence by the Enron Task Force of a massive scale. The entire brief is devastating to the Task Force's prosecution of Skilling and the late Enron chairman, Ken Lay. * * *

The implications of this brief reach far beyond the Skilling appeal. For example, the already-reeling prosecution of the four Merrill Lynch bankers in the Enron-related Nigerian Barge case would appear to be over -- the prosecution in that case not only withheld exculpatory evidence, but put on incriminating testimony from former Enron treasurer Ben Glisan that directly contradicted the exculpatory evidence that Fastow provided to Task Force prosecutors during his interviews. Other Enron-related criminal cases -- as well as plea bargains -- could well be affected.

Just freakin' wonderful, isn't it?

And, as the guy says, "...I'm still waiting for this to capture the attention of the press, which had been so rivited on Fastow's testimony at the trial." Of course, at the trial they got to cheer on hanging a Big Corporate Guy, whereas if they take note of this they'll have to at least talk about hanging the prosecutors for breaking the law so as to go after the BCG.

I've just got to take note of this post on Obama

that Insty pointed to, The Obama I know. It comes awful close to the kind of thing Ace(I believe) calls a tongue bath: He is wise, He is tolerant, He loves all, He appeals to all and so on. Including this bit:
In short, Obama's approach is insistently charitable. He assumes decency and good faith on the part of those who disagree with him. And he wants to hear what they have to say. Both in substance and in tone, Obama questions the conventional political distinctions between "the left" and "the right." To the extent that he is attracting support from Republicans and independents, it is largely for this reason.
Kind of interesting to contrast this with his 20-year attendance on a white-hating, America-hating pastor, isn't it?

Obama is, from the sound of it, playing word games

in the finest tradition of Clinton to try to both 'distance' or 'disconnect' himself from his idiot pastor's comments without actually saying bad things about him. You know, like maybe "My pastor has been saying some stupid things, blaming America for all ills in the world not caused by Israel. And I say flatly I disagree with those things, and I'm ashamed my pastor has said them." Which the media and Democrats would be demanding as the bare minimum(before boiling him in oil) for any Republican or conservative who was found to have been listening to this crap for years.
Q: What about this particular statement?
A: Obviously, I disagree with that. Here is what happens when you just cherry-pick statements from a guy who had a 40-year career as a pastor. There are times when people say things that are just wrong. But I think it's important to judge me on what I've said in the past and what I believe.
'Cherry-picking' my ass: the man has been saying these things for years, with Obama & Family sitting in the pews. And since he's attended regularly for a couple of decades, there's no damned way he could not be familiar with this garbage his spiritual leader has been spouting. And as for the people claiming "This is no big deal" and "This is distracting from important matters", I think Ace covers it nicely:
Excuse me, and I don't mean this to be offensive to any of you fine gentlemen in the least, but when you smoked so much tainted rock as to fall into a crack-and-Comet coma and awoke with light to moderate mental retardation and also strange bruises resembling alien sex-probes all over your body for which you can simply not account, did a strange man in black walk into your hospital room and beat you back to stupid with a moron-bat and/or brain-fuck you with the crazy-stick?
This man wants to be the President of the United States; commander of the entire Armed Forces and all, and you people don't think these attitudes matter? If you actually mean that, then the phrase 'useful idiots' definitely has a new group to cover.

As a side point, over at Classical Values he thinks the timing of this coming out, and the way it's being played, may well be bad for McCain in the long run, and quite possibly the Clintons have a hand in it.

If you want to check this out in more depth(recommended), go to Powerline and scroll down, they've got a bunch of posts on this. So does Ace. Right now I seem to be fighting one of the current forms of plague running around(probably invented by the CIA) so you'll have to run through them for yourself.

Friday, March 14, 2008

Ref the post about David Codrea being threatened,

my post and link here. Well, War on Guns noted this interesting post:
Well, the hits to the blog spiked yesterday and I found three (3) very curious hits in relation to yesterdays post about David Codrea being threatened. The three hits are direct links without referrer links.

Go take a look at it, see what you think.

Is there a time that Lautenberg has NOT been an anti-Constitutional

sonofabitch?
The Lautenberg-King measure specifically:

• Provides the Attorney General with discretionary authority to deny the transfer of a firearm or the issuance of a firearm or explosives license or permit when a background check reveals that the purchaser is a known or suspected terrorist and the Attorney General reasonably believes that the person may use a firearm or explosives in connection with terrorism;

Translation: Whomever he/she feels like denying.

• Includes due process safeguards that afford an affected person an opportunity to challenge a denial by the Attorney General; and

Translation: As long as they choose to fund said "safeguard".

Etc. I thought McCain should have been thrown out of office for violating his oath in crafting McCain/Feingold; what could the proper punishment be for this piece of walking crap?

A flagrum, maybe? The Romans only used it on slaves who'd been really naughty and such, but if this clown isn't being- at the very least- extremely naughty...

Have I mentioned that Oleg Volk

is a genius?

Gee, why would we have thought that nice Saddam

would have contacts with those religious nuts?

Mike- and a bunch of others, like Ace(here, here, here) have taken note of this. And the way the various media weenies are trying to spin it:
I had meant to post on this earlier. I am tired of the Clintonian claims about "no direct operational connection," which sounds an awful lot like "no sexual relations." Well, what does "sexual relations" mean? And what does "direct, operational link" mean? The very language itself screams there was in fact a link by denying only a specific, and quite unifying link and, by implication, allowing for links short of the "direct, operational" variety.

What with St. Patrick's Day coming up,

I thought I'd note these Fun Facts About Ireland:
* Ireland was founded in 432 AD by a group of masochists who actually ENJOYED leading bleak lives of hopeless despair. Many of their descendants would later emigrate to Chicago and become Cubs fans.

* In 1998 Danny O'Malley of Dublin created the first internet search engine to specialize in Irish-related information: Alcohoogle.

* Currently, every search term entered returns the Guinness home page.

* To prevent illegal immigration into the country, Irish Border Patrol members guard the country's beaches by hurling empty whiskey bottles at swimmers.

* The Irish possess the most unstoppable Special Forces in the world, which are capable of successfully invading any nation with at least one distillery.

* According to noted zoologist Jonathan Swift, the Irish - unlike rattlesnakes - really DO taste like chicken.

* Ireland has long been famous for the irritable temperament of its inhabitants. It used to be called Angerland, until St. Patrick realized that "ire" was a much more sophisticated-sounding word.

Go check out the rest of them.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

A general roundup

I did have something to write, but the current version of plague seems to be attacking, and I'm tired. So roundup it is.

You may have heard about the 800 dogs in a trailer, but if not...

Or the woman who sat on the toilet. For two frikkin' years.

Remember that note a couple of days ago about Chicago? It's the gift that keeps on giving. And it only took till the second paragraph to get to parties, but in an interesting order:
Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox, a Republican, was the latest high-profile critic to call for Mr. Kilpatrick's resignation, telling a Detroit radio station today that the mayor, a Democrat, is a liar who lost the public trust in using the race card at a Tuesday night State of the City speech.

A couple of comments on the soon-to-be-ex-Governor Spitter's hooker:
If I were not attached to Bitter, and I had the chance, I’d hit it like the fist of a wrathful god.
and
I don’t think she’s ugly, I just don’t think she justifies $5k.

For that price, she better have a dirtier mind than I do.

The nanny state taken to another idiotic level:
Fire extinguishers are being banned from blocks of flats – after they were branded a health and safety risk. The canisters could be dangerous if people use them without training, risk assessors said. And they could encourage people to stay and tackle a blaze rather than flee.

And if Obama doesn't at least lean toward his pastors' beliefs, why would he keep going to that church? And have his kids baptized there?

And of COURSE there wouldn't be any pressure in the 'encouragement', would there?

And another case of 'only ones' BS.

Maybe it's because of some of the clowns heading to the Dem convention?

Colorado Springs, CO ~ Applications for concealed-weapon permits have skyrocketed in Colorado, with the increase fueled by everything from heavily publicized mass shootings to routine renewals, according to the state's sheriffs.
...
He said he is not concerned about the growing number of legally armed people in the county. In fact, he said he believes law-abiding citizens make the region safer by getting the permits. "Actually, I wish it was a higher number, because I know from experience that offenders in the jail system tell me they avoid crimes against people because they know there is a very high concealed-carry rate," Maketa said.

It's nice to find there are some judges

who don't have their head up their backside:
“There is no doubt that the jury would find for the defendant,” Judge James Welker wrote in his memorandum decision. “In fact, it is likely that the jury would prefer the option of throwing the plaintiff down the steps of the courthouse.”

Oh hell, we need more like this guy.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

A troop getting the recognition she deserves

Like a Silver Star.

CAMP SALERNO, Afghanistan (AP) — A 19-year-old medic from Texas will become the first woman in Afghanistan and only the second female soldier since World War II to receive the Silver Star, the nation's third-highest medal for valor.

Army Spc. Monica Lin Brown saved the lives of fellow soldiers after a roadside bomb tore through a convoy of Humvees in the eastern Paktia province in April 2007, the military said.

After the explosion, which wounded five soldiers in her unit, Brown ran through insurgent gunfire and used her body to shield wounded comrades as mortars fell less than 100 yards away, the military said.

Well done, Specialist. And again, if we ever meet, I'll buy the drinks.

Tang, gluing of

I've been trying to get a couple of things done for Medieval Fair(April 4, 5, 6) and remembered to take a picture of this. 'This' being one of the most basic ways of setting a blade tang into a hilt. In this case the blade is about 4", the tang about 2.5". For a bigger blade I'd use a longer tang, for one this size this works quite well.

First you have to cut a slot or drill a hole in the material of the grip(I know, I know, I got in a hurry and forgot, I'll shoot my method on this next chance I get). Ideally it'll be just a touch wider and thicker than the tang: not a 'drive in' fit, because you want to leave space for the glue. In this case, epoxy.

The thing about epoxy is that as it cures it won't shrink or enlarge much, if any(depends on brand, your mileage may vary), so you can do something to increase the strength of the bond. Namely, notch the corners of the tang.

In this case, small notches. And after doing this, you hit the sides with some rough sandpaper to clean and roughen the surface, the better for the glue to grab onto. Then you mix up the stuff, and dribble enough into the hole so that, when the tang is fully seated a little is squeezed out. Then you set the piece aside. Epoxy is very good(when mixed & used properly) about giving a very strong chemical bond between materials, and what the notches do is this: the epoxy fills in the notches and as it cures stays there. Now, even if you don't get a good chemical bond for some reason, you get a very strong mechanical bond. As long as the stuff grabs onto the handle material, even if it doesn't 'grab' the steel it'll be locked into the notches, keeping the tang from pulling out.

Note: as long as the surfaces are prepped(cleaned and roughened) properly, I've never had this stuff not hold. The one problem I had was with horn scales glued and pinned to the sides of a full tang: I sanded the surfaces meeting the tang too smooth, and even the epoxy couldn't grab onto them.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Over at Uncle's place, he pointed to

this. You really need to read it.
Your message has been received loud and clear--along with your warning that you will not hesitate to come down and arrest anyone you suspect of violating this law. Before I give you my reply, I want to make it clear that my response is mine alone. Any retaliation is mine to face, and taking it out on the man who passed your message along at your direction will not be something you can now do outside of a brightly focused light.
...
I've also speculated that comments that may be perceived as threatening are invariably posted anonymously, and that trolls doing it could very well be agents provocateur attempting to bring discredit or worse to my site. Heck, they might even work for the DoJ--it's not like you guys don't hang out here at all hours.

But you apparently need to establish a plausible cover story. Let's see--the same mighty BATFU that sends armed invaders smashing into people's homes and businesses is just scared out of their jackboots over what's being said about them on... blogs, so they need to enlist a protector, that would be you, against "Homegrown terrorists". That would be people like me?
I've generally had a good opinion of the U.S. Marshall's Service; crap like this is cutting away at that.

In case you're interested in the Spitter situation

beyond "The arrogant bastard is getting some of what he deserves", here's a few things:

Ace has an interesting bit from a somewhat-famous madam:
"It's so easy not to not get caught," reformed Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss tells Radar, adding that she provided service to many a well known politician her day. "I saw many famous people—more famous than Eliot Spitzer—and you know what, you pay people right, you treat them right, you don't have a problem." The devil, she says, was in Spitzer's particular freak, which left the gals who are alleged to have serviced him describing the governor as "difficult," with demands that involved "things that, like, you might not think were safe."
and, as a side issue, some happenings in Detroit that do not make either the mayor or family or the police department look good:
When the mayor's wife, Carlita Kilpatrick, unexpectedly arrived at the mansion, she saw her husband and the strippers, according to the officer who reported about the party, Harold Nelthrope.

Nelthrope, who was not at the alleged event but learned about it the following day, "further stated that a fight ensued between Ms. Kilpatrick and a dancer and that the dancer received injuries requiring medical attention." Nelthrope does not say who told him about the alleged events.

The dancer -- believed to be Greene -- was taken to a hospital, " ... and the Executive Protection Unit confiscated all activity log sheets (from the police precinct that responded)," Nelthrope said.

And yet more from ace on Spitter here.

And Kim linked to this piece, which includes the following:
Given Spitzer's unfathomable stupidity -- and in light of the fact that he is now the victim of the kinds of overreaching police state tactics that he himself has endlessly championed and utilized -- this can only be regarded as an instance of an especially objectionable, arrogant, overweening, power-mad, vicious son of a bitch himself getting exactly what he has been delightedly happy to dish out to others.

Besides his general "I sit at Gods' right hand and give ~~orders~~advice" attitude, he is also, as I recall, very big on the 'disarm the peasants!' bandwagon. Which makes it even more fun. Though what this is doing to his family is horrendous to think on.

Hmmm, never thought of it that way before

Thanks to the daughter for finding this

Monday, March 10, 2008

Damn, there's a lot of pretty legs

in the Ukranian Army.

I've been thinking about the statement Gov. Spitter made,

and something about it bothers me. And no, generally I wouldn't have noticed this until, say tomorrow, but if you turned ANY news on you heard about it.

Here's the part that bothers me:
"I do not believe that politics in the long run is about individuals. It is about ideas, the public good, and doing what is best for the state of New York."
To me, that seems to be saying "I do not believe individuals really count: it is the Party and the Program that counts."

Thoughts?

You must respect the judge!

Even when they're a bigoted jerk.
In denying the Royal High School student delayed entry into the Marine Corps, Children's Court Commissioner Marilyn Mackel reportedly told Sage and a recruiter that she didn't approve of the Iraq war, didn't trust recruiters and didn't support the military.

Gee, and I thought judges were supposed to just go by the law.

Found at Insty

Sunday, March 09, 2008

Was out of town for a couple of days, and since I passed Cabela's

I of course stopped in to ~~drool~~ browse about. I was very good, and only bought a couple of things, this being one of them

It's a fairly new light of theirs. 3 watt led, 60 lumens output and it's supposed to run up to 6 hours on two AA batteries. 60 lumens makes it just a touch less bright than a Surefire G2; I've got no way to measure it, but it passes the 'make you scream and cover your eyes' test*. And it is a white light, no sign of the blue tint most led lights have shown until recently. Turns on at the tailcap, like so many now: turn it all the way down for constant on, back it off a half-turn and press for momentary on.

Since I find myself with a shortage of AA alkaline batteries a ' turn it on and leave it until dead' test will have to wait a day or two. So far I like it.

Oh, did I mention the price? $20.

*No, I did NOT point it at my eyes and key it; I'm comparing it on the wall to my Surefire.

Friday, March 07, 2008

Theo notes that the Brit Army snipers

are getting a new boomstick

And Blogger is bloggered, so can't post the picture. Full story here.

And PC pandering pretty much always leads to

crap like this:
Six times a week, Harvard kicks all the guys out of the Quadrangle Recreational Athletic Center at the request of the Harvard Islamic Society. This is to accommodate those female Muslim students whose faith won't let them work out in front of men.

In the old days, Harvard would have laughed if some Catholic or evangelical mother urged "girls-only" campus workouts in the name of modesty. Today, Harvard happily implements Sharia swim times in the name of Mohammed.

And when called on this, what do you get from a Harvard spokesman?
When I asked Harvard spokesman Bob Mitchell about this new Sharia-friendly policy, he denied that they were banning anyone. "No, no," he told me, "we're permitting women to work out in an environment that accommodates their religion."

By banning all men from the facility, right?

"It's not 'banning,' " he insisted. "We're allowing, we're accommodating people."
Yeah. You're 'accommodating' one group by banning another group, which you don't have the balls or the integrity to admit.

Anyone who thinks you can negotiate with Hamas

is a fool. And unless the Palistinian Authority actually does something to stomp on Hamas & Co., it's a waste of time and blood with them, too.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli government, which mounted a major offensive in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip last week but which pledged after Thursday's shooting to push on with peace negotiations with Hamas's secular rivals in the West Bank.

Friggin' IDIOTS. Hamas shoots rockets constantly into Israel and if the Israelis have the nerve to actually do something about it, whines about (you know it's coming) how they're the victims of Jewish aggression. Etc. And makes heroes out of murderers like this.

Thursday, March 06, 2008

Remember: this is one of the people Obama

has worked with:
The Weathermen claimed credit for 25 bombings over the next several years. They set bombs at the rebuilt Haymarket statue; a bathroom at the Pentagon; the Capitol barber shop; the New York City police headquarters; and a variety of other targets.

Dohrn's husband, Bill Ayers confessed that the bomb that killed the aforementioned Weather Underground members in New York was an anti-personnel weapon filled with nails and screws that would have killed or injured many at the Fort Dix dance. Ayers has recently, publicly acknowledged his feeling that his group should, in his opinion, have set off even more bombs.

And the miserable bastard is teaching at the University of Illinois.

And speaking of violent leftists, check this and this out:
Since writing previously, I've learned that the folks trying to screw up the liberalpalooza have their own website: Recreate 68.org. The site is set up to facilitate communications between protesters, and help them with planning. It includes a primer on 'Direct Action.' The first part is devoted to an argument over semantics -- trying to explain how Direct Action is different from terrorism. Then they assert that while it's not terrorism, 'it is violent:'

To say that it is violent to destroy the machinery of a slaughterhouse or to break windows belonging to a party that promotes war is to prioritize property over human and animal life. This objection subtly validates violence against living creatures by focusing all attention on property rights and away from more fundamental issues.

Oh, it's gonna be interesting in Denver.

Fr. Frog's Guidelines

are found here. Including
1) Beware of the man with one gun.
2) Fancy guns, sights, and gadgetry do not make up for a lack of marksmanship.
3) If you can't do it with a .30-06 you probably can't do it with anything else.
4) If you can't do it with a 2 MOA firearm you probably can't do it with anything else.
5) Sight picture and trigger control are life.
6) Practice, practice, practice!
7) A close miss is still a miss.
8) Smoothness first, the speed will come.
9) Inconsequential increments are meaningless.
10) Most gun writers are pathological liars.

and

Cooking

1) Don't overdo the seasonings.
2) An unwatched pot usually boils over.
3) Simple, hearty food, is the best--especially when shared with friends.
4) A day without red wine is not a complete day.
5) Fresh baked bread negates the cholesterol in butter.
6) Use fresh ingredients.
7) The most critical ingredient in a recipe you are working on is the one you ran out of last week.
8) Electric stoves keep cooking once the burner is turned off.
9) Homemade cinnamon buns are considered a health food.
10) Use real butter.

Had forgotten about these.

Just in case Warman or Kinsella happen to read this,

you two are pustules on the backside of a distempered dog. With the runs.

And the 'Canadian Human Rights Commission' is anything but.

An American who happens to have been born somewhere else

I can't remember where I first read this, I think either at Kevin's or the Geek's, but it's true. Here's one of them:
It took a full 14 years before Jamaleldine finally -- and radically -- changed his views on the Americans. It was on June 6, 2005, in the middle of the Iraq war, when he showed up at the US Army recruiting office in Little Rock, Arkansas, to enlist.

And the second time he was wounded:
It's really one of the most remarkable stories I've read of action in Iraq. When Jamaledine was shot, there were no medevac helicopters in the area. There were Apaches. But the Apache is a two seater--no room for cargo, or wounded. When the call went out--by a soldier who was himself wounded--that Jamaledine needed to be evacuated immediately, one of the Apaches landed on the scene and had him strapped in. This meant the co-pilot had to "hang on outside" for the trip back to the base. Both of the crew were risking their jobs, but they got Jemaldine out. The Apache's crew then rejoined the battle, with the co-pilot sitting in a pool of blood for the rest of the night.

This is something that needs to be pointed out to pointed out to the brain-dead jihadis and the 'mothers' who want their kids to become shahid: you may love death, you miserable beings, but we love life, including the lives of our troops. Who'll put their own ass on the line to save one another.

When asked what he considers his personal contribution to peace to be, Jamaleldine says that, first of all, he killed terrorists, thereby preventing them from setting any more bombs. How many terrorists? "A few." Second, he says, he and the other scouts applied so much pressure that, within a few months, the fee for setting bombs had jumped from $50 to $500 per bomb, making life more difficult for the enemy. Third, says Jamaleldine, they took weapons out of circulation that would otherwise have been used against the civilian population. Fourth, they captured some of the people behind the attacks, thereby weakening the network of terror. Finally, he adds, they managed to win over normal Iraqis, the peaceful ones, and convince them to cooperate.

Specialist, if we ever meet, the drinks are on me.

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Range report: TT33

Made it to the range today with a box of S&B 7.62x25 ball and a couple of targets. This is the first three magazines plus one round, total of 25 rounds at ten yards

I have to call those three high as my fault. Went through the box with no misfeeds, FTEs or anything else. As mentioned before, it handles the recoil of the cartridge very nicely, and I think either better light or some paint on the front sight would've kept two of those flyers in the black.

The one thing that gave me trouble is this is so similar to a 1911, but the differences sneak up on you. I kept trying to thumb the safety, for instance, when the safety on this one is in a far different place. And the grip is shorter, which made for a bit of fumbling and adjusting. One thing it does share with the 1911 is a good trigger. The Romanians spent some time putting the fire control group together properly: long take-up, then a clean, light break. I think this thing is capable of better accuracy at, say, 25 yards than I am.

Shut up. No commentary on that last needed.

Overall, a very nice pistol. I'll find some international orange paint to touch up the front sight, and I'm wondering how either handloads with the Hornady XTP bullet or the Wolf Gold hollowpoints shoot in it. 90-grain XTP at 1400-1500fps, that'd leave a mark.

Mr. Completely has started a new postal match

All information here.

Personally, I think he's out of his effin' mind. Hit the flies at 25 feet? Offhand? MAYBE with a scope(my current state of vision applies, your results may vary).

Remember the idiot reporter who wandered onto

the ladies' porch? Phelps has a couple of responses to the commenters:

wild schield

March 2nd, 2008 5:16 pm ET
america the land of gun nuts….way to go rednecks. I am so glad i live in europe now where this kind of thing is not tolerated even the least little bit..
….with the danish prime minister right across the street no less can’t wait to see those pics all over the news tommarrow

You better go outside. I bet a bunch of teenagers are burning your car.
...
Remember, Eurovictims, we are laughing at you, not with you.

Let's see how well gun ownership controls are working in Britain,

that star of the Brady Bunch and VPC dreams.

Not very well.
The rise of violent crime was highlighted yesterday when it was revealed that children as young as eight have been caught with guns.

The searches by police officers in Greater Manchester, which has been plagued by gang shootings, even discovered a machine gun hidden under the bed of a ten-year-old boy.

It is believed that some of the children had been asked to look after handguns for gang members because they are too young to be charged.

Others claimed the weapons belonged to their mother or father or other close relatives.

According to a senior police source, the ten-year-old kept the sub-machine gun in the bedroom of his house in South Manchester. It was not loaded.

But, but handguns are banned! And shotguns and rifles highly restricted! This is unpossible!

Lucy Cope, from Mothers Against Guns, said: "The consequences of an inquisitive eight-year-old getting their hands on a gun do not bear thinking about."

Professor Peter Squires of the Gun Control Network, which campaigns for tighter controls on guns of all kinds, said: "In the more troubling cases serious offenders will have given young children guns to carry because they are off the surveillance radar."
Uh, Ms. Cope and Professor? You're doing what Kevin refers to as "Do it again, only harder!" And it won't work any better in the future than it does now.

We do have to consider that it may be something reported as a 'sub-machine gun' as opposed to an actual sub-gun but in either case the fact remains that on an island, with handguns- let along automatic weapons- banned, and so much as a .22 rifle heavily restricted, they can't keep the crooks from getting guns. And yet people like Obama and Clinton & Co. think the way Britain has gone is THE way to go.

Morons.

It seems to be getting worse in Paris,

at least from the looks of this:
PARIS - Dozens of hooded attackers opened fire on police this weekend, wounding four officers, France's interior minister said.

Michele Alliot-Marie called the Sunday afternoon attack an "ambush," saying that about 30 people, some of them armed, were waiting for the officers in the southern Paris suburb of Grigny. The officers were responding to a call about vandalism of a local bakery.

'Ambush' is the right word. Planned, prepared and- I don't doubt- more of the same in the making.

Ran across a few things I've got to list

First, advise to tourists in Australia: 'Apex Predator' means exactly what is sounds like:

Next, it appears Colombia isn't going to back down from Chavez & Co.:
"Colombia proposes in the International Criminal Court to denounce the president of Venezuela Hugo Chavez for sponsoring and financing genocide," Mr Uribe said.
Mind you, the ICC will be nothing but a place to make the accusations 'official'; otherwise, the ICC will be the same teats on a boar hog it's always been.
Venezuelan troops were reported to have been moving towards the border. Colombia, which has armed forces twice the size of Venezuela's, has said it would not be provoked into mobilising troops in response.
Translation: "We're not going to do something flashy and give that jackass something else to scream about. We're already prepared, and if he steps over the line we'll kick his ass." However you put that in diplo-speak.

Anybody who goes anywhere and thinks they can roam about with no consideration for personal safety is asking to get hurt.
Last night however, the chief minister of Goa, Digambar Kamat, was reported as saying that foreign women who visited the state should take more responsibility for personal safety.

"Foreign tourists have to be careful," he said. "They can't just do these things and then blame the government for the consequences. You can't expect the government to provide police on the beaches after midnight."

He warned foreign women in Goa to avoid "insecure places" and to take "precautions", but declined to define either.

Mrs MacKeown, of North Devon, who was due to meet Mr Kamat, said it was the responsibility of the government to ensure the safety of visitors.

"If they are saying it's dangerous, then it's the government's responsibility to warn people," she said. "Instead, it's advertised as a hippy paradise."
Madam, an awful lot of 'hippy paradise' places turned out to be damned dangerous. I agree that a government has a responsibility to look to the safety of people, locals and visitors both; that does not mean they can make it completely safe. All around the world, teenagers and others tend to find out the hard way that 'popular destination' includes 'for predators who go after people like you. Especially young females who drink a lot'. No matter how nice the place.

Speaking of fidel's buttmonkey, here's some thoughts on what the monkey is hoping to accomplish, and why he's worried.

Back at home, some people in Congress are actually wanting to do something about the border:
The first initiative involves one of my favorite GOP Senate members, Jeff Sessions of Alabama. He is rolling out nearly a dozen different bills addressing specific border security and enforcement issues. The plan is to announce the campaign tomorrow.
Which is good. Especially when people like Reid are getting advice like this:
...A confidential study assembled for the Democratic leadership earlier this year urged them to start using tougher language. Democrats have focused on offering opportunity to immigrants, but the study by two think tanks urged them to begin speaking in terms of “requiring” illegal immigrants to become legal and about what’s best for the United States.
'Tougher language'. 'Speaking in terms'. Translation: "Say things to make the bigots and racists(D definition: anyone who doesn't want to do what we say) happy, you don't have to mean it."

I'll close with this post from Kim, on what'll happen if the Obamessiah wins.

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Just checked AIM,

no TT33 pistols as noted earlier; I must have gotten one of the last. Damn, glad I didn't take more time to decide. They've got CZ82 and 1895 Nagant pistols, and some 59/66 SKS rifles among other long guns. SOG and J&G both shows TT33's still in stock. SOG shows CZ52 pistols, also, only place I've seen them in a while.

Hmmm, Military Gun Supply has CZ52 pistols listed. They've got K31 rifles, too.

Ammo, AIM has a lot, Samco has the brass-case Yugo 7.62x39, in boxes or on strippers. Ah, they've got K31's too, Very Good and Special Select; the Excellent show sold out. Have some 59/66 rifles, too.

AIM also has this up at the top:
03/03/2008 Important Shipping Delay Notice
Due to high order volume we are currently experiencing a slight delay in shipping. Please allow for an additional 1-3 working days for us to process your order. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
Damn, you'd think people were buying a lot of stuff for some reason.

Roundup time again

Poor little fidelista buttmonkey Chavez is all unhappy because Colombia took out a FARC terrorist bigshot. In Ecuador. So he has one of his patented Adolf-like fits and sends troops to the Venezuelan border with Colombia, throwing in this bit of crap:
“The Colombian government has become the Israel of Latin America,” an agitated Chavez said, mentioning another country that he has criticized for its military strikes. “We aren’t going to permit Colombia to become the Israel of these lands.”

Got news for you, twinkie: if being the 'Israel of Latin America' means 'find the terrorists and kill them', they're already there. And if your little terrorist buddies and you push it too far, you might find out if Colombia has other things in common with Israel. Like being able to kick your ass. Hell, since you seem to have such a problem with Jews, maybe they'll(or are?) give Columbia some tips.
Further comment at Q&O.

Speaking of Q&O, socialist politician's socialist wife spreads bullcrap. Big surprise, huh?

It's been noted before, one of the big problems with face with the islamists is mothers who hope their kid blows himself up while trying to kill Jews. Or 'crusaders'. Or SOMEBODY. As long as they 'die for islam'. Friggin' idiots.

New boomstick for general issue to the Spec-ops people.

Gee, Obama sucking up to illegals? Whoda thunk it? And George Lopez can kiss my ass.

That's it for now.

Comrades! I got one!

TT33, that is

After trying that one out a while back, and doing ~~a lot of dithering~~some thinking, I decided to get one, having some of my tax refund available. So last week I hied myself off to the AIM site and ordered one(holy crap! I just looked at AIM to link to their pistols, and the TT33's are gone!), which came in yesterday.

It's just like the one I posted on, and in just as nice condition: good finish, bore is bright with sharp rifling, and a fairly amazing trigger for a military sidearm. Amazingly, it was not coated with cosmoline, just a heavy coat of oil inside and out, easy to clean off and replace with a known oil, and appropriate grease on the sear & hammer and frame & slide rails. Came with a holster(in quite good condition), lanyard and a spare mag. You can tell the difference between the original mag and the spare: the original slips in, locks, and slips out nicely, the spare binds some and will need some fitting. Ammo coming in, so should be able to fire it the next day or two.

Monday, March 03, 2008

On alertness and being the well-armed sheep*

One of the things just about every blog touching on self-defense, and every trainer having something to do with it, stresses is awareness. Of what's going on around you, who's around you and so forth.

Go read this at Xavier's. Being aware, and quickly figuring what to do, at the least kept them from being robbed: at most, injured and maybe killed.

I'd guess they saw a man with a kid and the magic box, and thought he'd be too busy with the kid to notice them 'till too late. I'll throw out a thought: a man, even a good-sized one, who's too preoccupied to take notice of what's around him will be seen as a better victim than a smaller woman who's seeing what's going on.

* I think it was Churchill who said something about democracy being two wolves discussing lunch, and a well-armed sheep arguing the point.
Correction: it was two wolves and a sheep discussing lunch; a republic is a well-armed sheep disputing the menu.

Dumbass Journalist Trespasses;

It being Texas, there are Consequences

Go ahead and read the CNN story. Then, assuming you want to read lots of PSH, read some of the comments; you'll find lots and lots of GFW weenies moaning about 'uncivilized' and 'barbaric' America, and how the rest of the world laughs at us. But the best summing up is this one:
I'm not American, and you people need to re-read the story. At no time does it say she POINTED the gun at the journalist. She simply had it in her hand. There was a stranger on her property and she went out to investigate. The gun was there in case she needed it. He ran off like most Europenas do at the first sign of conflict and that was the end of it. Big deal

Game, set, match.

I don't like working on ladders in the best of times

Which times do not include 35 degrees, gusting north winds and wet, soft ground.

You need the full timeline for this:
Yesterday evening it was almost 70, winds gusting out of the south at, on 35 or so(until the strong ones hit). Then it started pouring rain and the tornado sirens started blowing as the storms set up by the cold front moved through. No tornado, happily, the circulation didn't develop fully. Then the front came through with the same winds and gusts from the north. So I came home to find it had ripped some of the siding on one side of the house loose during the day. So I had to run to the store for screws & sealant, get out the ladder and the steel squares I keep for such things, set up the ladder and repair the mess. No way I was going to let it sit with the wind working on it all night, especially with a chance of some more snow.

So the siding is repaired, though a few spots will need extra attention tomorrow when it's warmer and the wind is down. A few years ago I bought a steel folding ladder, one of those you can set up as a stepladder or work platform, and set up as the latter it let me do the work with a reasonably solid base. Which doesn't change the fact I was standing on a ladder on wet ground in gusting wind on a cold day. Couple of years ago, after a lot of sleet and a little freezing rain, I discovered too late that I'd damn near frozen my fingertips on several fingers, and I may have frostbit them just a bit; as a consequence this kind of crap makes them stiffer and number than formerly. Especially since I can't wear gloves and handle the screws, etc. Which is why my first notice of something puncturing a finger was the red smears on the siding. Washed up now, bleeding stopped and feeling has returned to the digits in question.

Sometimes a house is just SO much fun.

Sunday, March 02, 2008

Oh joy, I hear the tornado sirens

sounding just south of me, and the weather radar shows a circulation moving through that area.

This is part of the line of nasty storms about to move through, but don't worry; later tonight, after the front moves through, the rain will be changing to snow. With highs tomorrow in the mid-30's.

'Tis the season, etc., bah humbug.

Wow, the VPC really has a blog*

Though they say nasty things about John Browning:
The patron-saint of all Gun Blobbers, John Browning invented numerous firearms and thus is the source of much of the world’s ills. Gun Blobbers idolize him because he represents someone who acted completely sane around firearms. We at the VPC Blog know this is a quality only to found in Law Enforcement Officers, thus his fanatics are deluding themselves.

Here is a sample list of his crimes:

Turned a lever-action rifle into an assault weapon. He probably used Black Magic in order to accomplish this feat.
From this, he designed the M1895 machine gun, and then the M2 machine gun.
The Browning Automatic Rifle. Truly a deadly assault weapon.
Created the the M1911 and Browning Hi-Power pistols, frequently used by gangsters.
He created six deadly pistol cartridges: .25 ACP*, .32 ACP, .38 ACP, .380 ACP, 9mm Browning Long, and .45 ACP.
And, worst of all, he created the .50 Caliber Browning Machine Gun cartridge.

If you haven't seen it already, check out all the goodness.

*Ok, so it's not actually theirs, but it makes as much sense as they do.

Kevin brought up antidepressants and campus shooters

here, and it brings a thought to mind: I wonder how many of these people were on ritalin at some point as they grew up? And considering the way some of this stuff can- sometimes permanently- mess with brain chemistry, could that be a contributing factor to later problems/medications/outcomes?

There's been a lot of stuff over time about the number of kids, almost all boys, put on this stuff,and problems/possible long-term problems from it. Which makes me wonder, if you've got a kid who was drugged with this stuff, often for years, growing up could that be a factor in later diagnosis of depression, etc.? And/or problems with the antidepressants prescribed?

Back when the kids were small, I worried about this crap because son was standard young male: problems sitting still, etc., and several times some teacher spoke to his mom(she had primary custody) about "I think it would be good for him to take ritalin". As it worked out, I always found out about this later and it was never a real threat; whatever problems I had with my ex, worrying about her folding up for some teacher with a drug fetish wasn't one of them. At all. I'd imagine the teacher(in some cases 'excuse for a') wound up fairly sorry she brought it up. But how many kids wound up being dosed because
A: some 'teacher' found handling drugged kids easier than active, questioning ones,
B: parents conditioned to 'go with what the teacher says' just said 'ok', or were browbeaten into agreeing. There's an awful lot of cases that have come out where some idiot 'teacher' called DHS or whoever and they both threatened the parents if they didn't agree to drug the kid(I will save the rant on that bullcrap for later),
and how many of those kids may be/are set up for real problems later by this stuff?

Considering how many kids have been/are on these drugs, it's a real worry.

Saturday, March 01, 2008

To take note of a couple of Oklahoma laws

passed or proposed that touch on the 2nd, I note these:
HB2513: The bill would allow students to carry firearms on campus if they are at least 21 and are licensed to carry a concealed weapon. "As long as students kept their weapons concealed, they could go into class with them," Murphey said. He said he decided that the bill was needed after the Feb. 14 shootings that left six dead, including the gunman, at Northern Illinois University and an attack in April at Virginia Tech in which a gunman killed 32 people.

Of course, one of the objections is Rep. Paul Roan, an Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper for 25 years, voted against the bill, saying such a law could greatly hinder law enforcement.

"You wouldn't know who the players are," he said. Because weapons now are banned, he said, police can tell if someone comes onto campus "with a gun for evil purposes."

No you can't, sir; you have no damned idea if someone has 'evil purposes' in mind or is just concerned with protecting themselves if some dirtbag decides to get his name in the media. And it doesn't do any good for the cops to 'know who the players are' when that means they find a bunch of dead students and teachers and a bad guy. When they finally get there.

Which is the reason for this bill: the cops always get there after pretty much everybody who will die, is dead. It may sound very nice to say "We need to know who the players are", but that is covered very nicely by "Some guy just started shooting at people, and a guy in class shot him. Yeah, we're in the classroom and we'll stay here 'till you get here." on the phone. Or simply the good guy setting his piece on a desk- unloaded if there's time- and saying "My sidearm's over there." Or something similar.

Second, a while back OK passes a law basically saying that employers couldn't fire someone for having a firearm locked in their vehicle. And some people are not happy about it:
ConocoPhillips Co. and other smaller employers in a court case contend the law constitutes "an unconstitutional taking of (their) property" and their right to exclude people from their property. That argument is in a new filing by the employers at the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. They want the court to uphold a decision of U.S. District Judge Terence Kern in Tulsa who struck down the law.
Now a couple of other groups are getting in on it:
Two major safety and security organizations - the American Society of Safety Engineers and ASIS International - joined the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence in filing a "friend of the court" brief urging the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals to affirm a 2007 federal district court ruling striking down Oklahoma's 2005 guns-at-work law as unconstitutional. In a suit filed by ConocoPhillips and others - ConocoPhillips v. Henry - the lower court held that the law, which made it a crime in Oklahoma for employers to bar guns from company property, impermissibly conflicted with the general duty under the federal Occupational Safety and Health Act for all employers to provide workplaces free from recognized hazards.

To me, the 'right to exclude people from their property' argument sounds like BS; they're not 'excluding people', they're telling people they can't have something in their vehicle. And the 'providing a workplace free from recognized hazards' is standard Brady Coalition to Ban Firearms and other nanny groups crap.

One more set of battles.

The aftermath of a screwed-up SWAT incident

The handwritten settlement reached this week that resolved the fallout over the shooting death of 18-year-old Peyton Strickland included just three main points, officials say.

They were: $2.45 million, headed to a scholarship fund; an apology, issued Wednesday; and an audit of the New Hanover County Sheriff's Office's Emergency Response Team. On Thursday, county officials said plans for the review aren't set but they are open to outside advice.
...
Attention turned to the office's Emergency Response Team on Dec. 1, 2006, when Cpl. Christopher M. Long mistook the sound of a battering ram for gunfire during a raid.

He fired through a door, killing Strickland, a student at Cape Fear Community College, who was wanted in connection with the robbery of video game equipment. Strickland wasn't armed. Causey said Wednesday that Long mis-evaluated the threat. A grand jury considered the case but chose not to indict.

On the face of it the most basic point is that the officer screwed up: he heard what he thought was gunfire and shot through a door. SERIOUS violation of basic firearms rules, the kind that generally has police and prosecutors trying to hang a citizen who does such. I dug around in some earlier stories and found this:
His gear included a hood, earpiece and helmet that he said muffled his hearing.
So part of his excuse(and I have to use that word) for shooting through a door is he had so much equipment on he couldn't hear very well. Wonderful.

Yes, I am being snarky. The biggest factor of this is a SWAT team was used when it wasn't called for. Again. And again, somebody wound up dead.

One of the reasons I get so damn tired of hearing about cases like this is I get tired of seeing things like that illustrated below:

A New Hanover County Sheriff's Department ERT member walks through Taylor Homes during a search for escaped inmate Joseph Corbett Wednesday afternoon.

I understand the armor, etc. But would someone please explain, in simple terms my mind can wrap around, why they're wearing masks? They're searching for an escapee, not undercover agents who need to keep their faces hidden, dammit: WHY do they have to hide their faces?

Dammit.

Threats to Prince Harry's life from the usual suspects

Thoughts of a crusade seem more appropriate lately.
Ran across this, which you may have already seen: it seems the islamist dirtbags have now decided that Prince Harry is an 'legitimate target' because he's 'acting tough', etc.

Considering these threats tend to come from the same goat-humpers who think it's a fine demonstration of faith to blow up kids in a school, or women in a market, or murder men who have the temerity to work as, say, police, their claims of upset don't exactly tug at my heartstrings. Do deal with a couple of things right off:
Omar Bakri Mohammad is a miserable, cowardly, chickenshit little offspring of a camel that was sold as a whore and a distempered mongrel. He wouldn't know a 'tough man' if- I take that back: he'd know a tough man because that'd be one of the troops ready to whack him. So your opinion, Omar, counts for less than the dog crap I had to scrape off my boot a while ago. Fuck you.

Rafiq Choudhry, 69, said: “The Royal Family is supposed to be neutral. If Prince Harry wants to be neutral he should not fight against Muslims.” Got news for you, dumbass: the Royal Family is NOT supposed to be neutral in facing threats to Britain, or civilization in general. And(to explain this because you're evidently too effing stupid to understand it on your own) he's NOT fighting against 'muslims'; he was fighting against a bunch of miserable excuses for men who think it's God's will to murder little girls for going to school, or their mothers for not dressing in a tent, or their fathers and brothers for not acting 'muslim enough' to suit the islamist assholes. So fuck you, too.

Britain really needs to get of its collective ass and
A: round up a bunch of the illegals and those aiding terrorists and prosecute and/or deport them, and
B: get their leaders off the "PC at any cost" throne.
The latter being just why so may of these child-murdering dirtbags keep doing and saying these things and getting away with them. Hell, they've got some of them living on welfare while calling for blood and death to the infidels, etc.

And do take note of this bullcrap:
Catherine Heseltine of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee warned that many might find Harry's "glorification" of war offensive. She said: "It is not the way to talk about a war where so many Muslims have lost their lives - men, women and children, innocent civilians. It is not an adventure, it is not exciting."
Madam, show me one place where he's said it was 'glorious'; and I'll bet it got real damn exciting at times, though not in the slanderous way you mean it. And the reason "... so many Muslims have lost their lives - men, women and children, innocent civilians." is because radical muslim terrorists and islamists murdered them; dirtbags you, you bitch, seem to want to defend. Anyone who can think that fighting child-murdering terrorists equals murdering innocents is a friggin' moron. And as big a bigot as you'll run across.

Whatever his faults- a being human he has them- the guy fought like hell to stay with his unit, and when unable to did service in another where he'd still be except for the information getting out. Harry, I ever meet you, the drinks are on me. And thanks for being one of those who put his ass on the line fighting the bad guys.

Friday, February 29, 2008

What was that line in 'Last Man Standing' about death

being the only cure known for being stupid?

Full story at Sailor Curt's place.

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