The idiot Indiana judge Steven H. David and Mitch Daniels

David is a former chief defense counsel for detainees at Guantanamo Bay who praised the majority opinion in Boumediene v. Bush with this trite quote: “The most important thing that Boumediene held is something that I always thought was obvious … that in America, there are no law-free zones.” Or maybe he could explain why the official Steven David bio released by his office announced the fact that David is a member of the American Judicature Society, the leading institutional proponent of the Missouri Plan, and beneficiary of more than $1 million in contributions from George Soros’s Open Society Institute since 2000.
...
So, yes, Mr. David, apparently an enemy of the right to resist the minions of the state when they attempt to illegally enter your home, was appointed by Mitch Daniels, a much-rumored Republican candidate for the Presidency of the United States in 2012.
...

The single most important judicial issue in Indiana is the ongoing debate over the state’s method for appointing appellate judges. It’s not much of a debate, actually, thanks in part to Daniels. Indiana uses a form of the Missouri Plan, the commission-based method for choosing judges that was designed by Progressive Era lawyers to put “experts” in charge of judicial selection. The “experts,” of course, are lawyers. When the issue was in front of Daniels, he took the worst possible approach. In 2009, overwhelming majorities of the Indiana General Assembly (88-3 in the House, 35-15 in the Senate) approved legislation to kill that method in parts of Indiana. Governor Daniels vetoed it. …

Then, when Indiana had a supreme court vacancy to fill, he failed to say a single word about the state’s flawed judicial-selection process and dutifully appointed a nominee sent to him by the state’s nominating commission.

So, when considering Governor Daniels in your choices for the nomination, ask yourself: Is this the man you want appointing Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States?
I agree: this by itself ought to disqualify Daniels from the Stupid Party even considering him for the White House.

One last thing- this on globular warmering- before bed

Somebody pointed to this piece on a debate between Warmering True Believers and Skeptics. I'm just going to borrow one part:
Concluding the science sessions was one of the most senior figures in the Climate Industry, John Mitchell of the Met Office. Mitchell was review editor of Chapter 5 of the IPCC's most recent report (AR4) but hasn't been able to meet FOIA requests, despite the IPCC's pledge to keep all written expert comments on record for five years. "For my own part, I have not kept any working papers. There is no requirement to do so, given the extensive documentation already available from IPCC," Mitchell has claimed. This, like Climategate, was not mentioned.
...
"People underestimate the power of models. Observational evidence is not very useful," he said. "Our approach is not entirely emprical."
My, my, my... Since when does somebody else having records of THEIR stuff mean a scientist(apparently have to use the word loosely with these people) doesn't need to keep his OWN records of HIS work? And that last part is just, well, let's say 'revealing'. And boils down to "Our models give us the outcome we want, so we don't pay attention to that observing stuff. I mean, that's so old-fashioned, and anyway it didn't show what we wanted to find."

Ref hitting the range today,

besides the usual I(finally) remembered to print out and take along a target from pistol-training.com; in this case, 'dot torture'. First read about this site and this particular drill at Tam's; some good stuff there.

It's an interesting drill. I'd have done better if I'd done that BEFORE all the other shooting; as was, about halfway through my eyes were having trouble shifting focus from target to front sight, and it showed.

The Indiana Supreme Court says "Oh, that Constitution thingie

only counts when we like it."
Overturning a common law dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Hoosiers have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes.

In a 3-2 decision, Justice Steven David writing for the court said if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner cannot do anything to block the officer’s entry.

“We believe … a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence,” David said. “We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest.”

David said a person arrested following an unlawful entry by police still can be released on bail and has plenty of opportunities to protest the illegal entry through the court system.
To the Indiana Supremes majority: fuck you. And your mother. You miserable little pigs.
“We believe … a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence,” my ass; a police officer illegally entering my home is just like any other lawbreaker, period. These bastards have declared the police to be above the law because 'it's good for public policy'. Only if you like the peasants defenseless and subdued.

From the decision: In the 1920s, legal scholarship began criticizing the right as valuing individual liberty over physical security of the officers. Translation: "We want the police to be able to act in any way they choose without having to worry about that individual liberty or 'a man's home is his castle' thing; it offends us that they can't do this." Got news for you assholes: this country was in large part FOUNDED on that individual liberty idea; and we're not giving it up because some asshole lawyers don't like it.

From a comment at Tam's : Indiana: Less free than Midevel England.

My, my, some things are getting interesting

What with Obama basically saying "War Powers Act? Limit on my waging war? I'll keep us involved in Libya as long as I want to!", and Texas looking to make TSA subject to arrest for some of their molestations.

Richard the Turd Daley, besides the security detail(taxpayer supplied, of course) he's demanding, a $180k pension and he’s expected to earn up to $50,000 for a speech, AND he can cash in his $1.1 million campaign fund.


The City University of New York decided to fly the Palistinian flag at commencement. The excuse:“The City College flies all of the flags that are flown at the United Nations,” the Vice President for Communications Mary Lou Edmondson told me. “It has nothing to do with foreign policy.”
Slight problem with that:
...the United Nations doesn’t fly the Palestinian flag. It only flies the flags of its 192 member states.
So they tried to wiggle out of the hole:Update: CUNY’s City College VP of communications Mary Lou Edmondson emails this response: “I regret that I misspoke about the flags flown at the United Nations. At this time, in this 10th anniversary year of 9/11, we are focused on prominently displaying ten American flags in silent commemoration of the thousands of men and women who lost their lives.”
Translation: "You people are making too much noise for us to get away with this!"


One way to deal with a rapist who's also a loudmouth. Slight problem with damage to the furnishings, though.


Trentadue and the FBI had some interesting days in court, which brought out things like
In a sworn affidavit dated May 21, 2001, Ojeda outlined how the FBI handled information they did not want to see brought up in court:

The FBI also kept “zero files,” which were reports containing information that the FBI would not generally want disclosed to the defense and which were kept separate from a specific case file. These files were kept internally within the Bureau and typically were not turned over to the prosecution or the defense. Files would be assigned numbers bases on the type of offense or investigation involved, for example, a bank robbery would be assigned a particular number. A letter A after that number would mean highest importance. A zero after that number would mean that the report should go into the “zero” file.

which led to
Not only did Judge Waddoups deny the FBI’s Motion for Summary Judgment, Trentadue said, but he gave the Bureau until June 30 to do the following:

1. Confirm that FBI Information Director David Hardy told the truth in declarations he submitted to the court;

2. Describe the S-Drive and why it was not searched;

3. Explain why Evidence Control Units at Oklahoma City Field Office, FBI Headquarters and FBI Crime Lab were not searched; and

4. Describe how burdensome it would be to search OKBOMB case file entries for two weeks after the bombing for missing tapes?

Once Judge Waddoups gets the requested information/answers from the FBI, Trentadue said, he will revisit the motion to order the FBI to conduct additional searches.

So why IS the story of the 'Whack The Terrorist' raid so screwed up? More thoughts on the matter from Mudville.


And I went to the range today. More on that later.

When you can watch the shockwave approach

Possibly NSFW language at the end

Now THERE'S some advice:

Trust No One
Doubt it’s true? Go to any brand-specific forum and look around. Complaints abound. Sure, there are still some who drink the kool-aid, and even some who want to force the kool-aid down other people’s throats. But you’ll hear about broken rails and springs at Glock Talk, improperly assembled guns or poor finishes at SIGForum, or mag drops and feeding problems at MP-pistol.com. Not every day, but read about the problems people have experienced over the past few months and you’ll see that no brand is immune to mistakes.

Remember that sign at gun shows,

“I asked my broker what to invest in; he said ammo and canned goods.” ?

Remember when we actually thought it was a joke?


Found at Uncle

Sen. Reid is so full of crap

he should be standing in fields to fertilize the crops. "The founders wanted the government to tell business what state they have to go to!" my ass.

Oh, Mr. Omar bin Laden:

fuck you. In a civilized culture your father being a mass-murdering terrorist would shame your family; I suggest you consider that.

If the ninja-suiters don't have more self-control

and trigger discipline than this...
The Pima County Regional SWAT team fired 71 shots in seven seconds at a Tucson man they say pointed a gun at officers serving a search warrant at his home.
Being a standard-issue citizen with some slight familiarity with firearms, that sounds pretty bad; then it gets worse:
Jose Guerena, 26, a former Marine who served in Iraq twice, was holding an AR-15 rifle when he was killed, but he never fired a shot, the Sheriff's Department said Monday after initially saying he had fired on officers during last week's raid.
...
Three other homes within a quarter of a mile from Guerena's house, were served search warrants related to the investigation that morning. The addresses and the names of people who live in the other homes have not been made public.
I don't know about you, but that combination of things causes several suspicions to pop into mind.

Vanessa Guerena says she heard noise outside their home about 9 a.m. Thursday and woke her husband who had just gone to bed after working a 12-hour shift at the Asarco Mine, she said. There were no sirens or shouts of "police," she said.

Guerena told his wife and son to hide inside a closet and he grabbed the AR-15 rifle, his wife said.

The department says SWAT members were clear when identifying themselves while entering the home.

"Tucson is notorious for home invasions and we didn't want to look like that," said Lt. Michael O'Connor of the Pima County Sheriff's Department. "We went lights and sirens and we absolutely did not do a 'no-knock' warrant."
So they say. They also claimed he fired first. Maybe just confusion, maybe a no-knock they don't have the integrity to own up to. I'll let you read the whole thing, but I will point to this:
The family's 5-year-old son was at school that morning and deputies say they thought Guerena's wife and his other child would also be gone when they entered the home.
The thought. Ok, say you thought he'd be home alone; what were you after that demanded putting on the ninja suits and kicking in doors?


I realize as I type this that my attitude toward a lot of LE has really gone downhill; it wasn't that long ago that I'd have figured they made the raid this way for good reason, but I don't have much confidence in that anymore, I've read of too many wrong-address raids, too many that should not have been a 'dynamic entry' action in the first place.

Couple of weeks back Ayoob had that post on the possibility of a Mumbai-type attack in the US, and some people got a bit heated in the comments whacking on LE; his responses here and here. I do think he either misses or glosses over a couple of things:
1. I think few have a real problem with LE having a rifle in the car; they have a problem with average patrol officers in some places having a select-fire weapon. Especially when they lecture us that the commoners can't be trusted to own such.
2. Most agencies have indeed had a 'military-type' organization with sergeants and such; that isn't the gripe, it's LE acting like military units in their normal activities, arming up and acting like troops instead of LE officers.
3. Yeah, good cops do indeed have a problem with bad ones. But the bad ones generally couldn't get away with being bad as long as they do if so many of the good(at least better) ones didn't either turn a blind eye or actively protect them. It's been a big problem for many years.

He mentions the miserable excuse for a lawman in Chicago caught on tape beating on a female bartender. That guy had a past record that should have gotten him thrown off the force long before that incident, and even with that crap on tape it took a lot to get him canned. And I read far too many "She wasn't hurt that bad, he shouldn't have faced that serious a charge"-type crap from cops. Doesn't matter how badly she was hurt, or that she had whatever in her background: what he did was inexcusable and yet an awful lot of people with badges were making excuses for him. That kind of thing really screws with being able to trust the police.

I'll pass along something: one day at my old job I wound up riding to lunch in a LE unit with four officers, none of whom had less than 15 years on the job, I think all but one 20 or more; when you sit and listen to a group like that talking about the bad attitude the new officers have, it makes an impression.

4. This touches on the kick-in-the-doors actions: how many cases have been found of them not bothering to make sure they had the right address? Where they shoot the family yorkie or something for barking at them? Where the public is then informed- if you put it bluntly- "Yes, they fucked up, but they were following department guidelines so screw you; we're not going to punish them for fucking up." That does NOT cause people to look on you as Officer Friendly. Especially when it turns out the mess was over something that would've been much better handled by somebody watching the back while somebody in a proper PD uniform knocks on the door and says "We have a warrant to search."

Some of the comments Ayoob got were downright nasty, some were pointing out something like what I've noted above; dismissing them all equally doesn't help the case.


Speaking of shame and disgusting bastards, combined with either idiot politicians or politicians demonstrating their contempt for LE officers, what level of either one is required to invite this jerk to the White House during the same week that lawmen from across the nation, including Jones, make their annual trek to Washington to honor their fallen comrades at the National Law Enforcement Memorial. ?

So this is one of the people around Obama and Clinton

Somebody wondered who this Audrey Tomason is
since she's in that picture of the situation room, a few feet from Obama; they found some things out. Like her thesis on how to improve the world:
According to Ms Tomason’s “Apocalypse Equation” the “sustainable population” of our world can only be 1.5 billion human beings, as compared to the United Nations estimate of 7 billion we will reach on October 31st of this year, and the even worse figure of 10 billion estimated by 2100.
...
Ms Tomason states in her thesis that any population suffering an economic collapse and reverting to “Basic Needs” will be “ungovernable” and pose “tremendous risks” to the state leading to “wholesale breakdown of law and order.”

Ms Tomason further argues in her “Apocalypse Equation” thesis that since the collapse of civilization as we know it is “inevitable,” world leaders should consider the possibility of “mass genocide” to reduce our world’s population to a more “sustainable level commensurate with our Earth’s resources.”

The chilling genocidal scenario envisioned by Ms Tomason begins with a “limited nuclear conflict” targeted at major population centers, but designed to limit the fallout of radiation. Next would be the release of toxic chemical and biological agents she suggests could be blamed on “terrorist entities” to be followed by forced mass migration of populations to more “sustainable living environments.”

Ms Tomason envisions these “sustainable living environments” as being large population centers with mass transit systems where no personal vehicles would be allowed and the rural areas would be completely depopulated except for government run agricultural “systems.”
I'd be a lot more doubtful of this if it weren't for the fact that Cass Sunstein is one of Obamas' advisers. Like William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. Remember this from their plans?


So she fits right in with some of The Lightworkers' other advisers.

Prior to the initiation of these apocalyptic events Ms Tomason argues for the establishment of government run and protected “concentration camps” where “persons of worth” can be protected while the masses of their fellow citizens die by the millions and billions. Those deemed “persons of worth” would include scientists, doctors, technical specialist, etc.
And, of course, she has the proper dislike for western nations:
And the most critical fact facing our world today, as Ms Tomason’s thesis points out, is that the “oil boom” of the last century is not only over, the fight by nation-states to preserve our Earth’s dwindling supplies for themselves threatens global war on a scale never before seen in human history, and which, in fact, have already begun as the energy starved West continues to launch new wars to protect themselves from economic collapse.

...liberals own a get-out-of-jail-free card

that is license to update the Birth of a Nation if it advances the liberal agenda. Think Stu is an outlier? Need we mention what the Sly-mer said about Condoleeza Rice?
This is in reference to the both bigoted and stupid comment from one Stu Levitan, who thinks that gang-bangers will get carry permits. And that they're all black. And don't commit crimes like illegally carrying guns.

I think it would be fun to have 2 or 3 dangerous-looking black guys testify next week in support of concealed carry. The more gang-banger the better. Let the committee know EXACTLY who they'll be letting carry guns.

Yep. Because everybody knows that gang members don't carry guns now because it's illegal. Kind of like murde- ah, never mind that.

He really wishes you would.

I realize Disney Syndrome is rampant, but I'd still think

anyone going camping in someplace like Utah would know there are dangerous things out there?
Judge Dale Kimball on Tuesday ruled that the federal government was 65 percent responsible for Samuel's death, the state government 25 percent responsible, and the boy's family 10 percent responsible.

He awarded the family $1.95 million in damages.

His ruling said US Forest Service law enforcement officer Carolyn Gosse had been notified about an earlier bear attack but failed to follow regulations and inform Ives' family about the potential threat.

Added: just found further info, apparently the 10% is because the kid may have taken food into his tent. But this
During the trial, government lawyers argued that posted signs adequately warned the family of the potential dangers of bears.
is bullshit: there's a BIG difference between generic "Bears can hurt you" and "There was a bear attack here earlier."

If you know someone going to the U of Missouri,

take a look at some of what their money is paying for.
Mr. Pecinovsky, who has worked in the past for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), informed us about legislation that is pending in the state legislature. He said: “Here in Missouri, the Republicans who control the house and the senate are trying to push through a number of pieces of legislation that would really, really devastate Missourians.” He then informed us that State Senator Jane Cunningham (R) was “crazy.” Pecinovsky also described the dues requirements and initiation procedures of the Communist Party, and gave out his phone number several times, offering to stay as long as anyone wanted to talk to him about joining.

Prof. Ancel acknowledged that joining the Communist Party could cost students their future security clearances, make them less desirable to future employers, and potentially put them on federal watch lists. Still, she and Prof, Giljum invited this organization into class to recruit. Call me crazy, but I thought universities and professors were supposed to help students become more appealing to employers, not hook them up with questionable organizations that by their own admission could cost students their future livelihood.

In the same vein, the professors frequently used the class to mock and cajole Republicans and conservative policies. In one lecture, Prof. Ancel put up as part of the class notes a cartoon showing Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi saying, “I don’t believe in collective bargaining either.” She went on to compare Wisconsin’s Republican governor, Scott Walker, to a repressive authoritarian seeking to emulate dictators and fascists in their “repression of labor.” She then put up another cartoon called “Republican Workplace Bill of Rights,” which showed a number of employees gagged, blindfolded, and handcuffed. In another lecture, she blamed conservatives for what she perceived as media bias against unions, and stated: “The Republican party has done a great job of reducing class to a bunch of tastes, and demonizing liberals because their taste is different from ‘rednecks.’”
Yeah, everything in those videos was 'taken out of context' and 'edited', right.

When Father of Waters says "Get off my lawn!",

he means it.

The lottery

and why I don't participate

I don't think the first counts as politics, and even if it does

it pisses me off so bad I can't pass on it:
Last Thursday, one of our reporters, Kate Harrison, was following volunteers cleaning up debris in the heavily damaged Apison area when she was confronted by three veteran, high-ranking public officials who ordered her to stop taking photographs. The officials — Hamilton County Sheriff Jim Hammond, Chattanooga Police Chief Bobby Dodd and Hamilton County’s director of emergency services, Don Allen — clearly should have known that Harrison’s work was constitutionally protected. That they could occupy such high positions and not know, or care about, or respect the nation’s First Amendment rights boggles the mind.

Harrison also was commanded by emergency services spokeswoman Amy Maxwell not to publish any of the photographs she had taken, and later was threatened with arrest. (We published one of Harrison’s photos.)
...
In a similar incident on the same day, another member of our news staff — photographer Allison Carter — was threatened with arrest by a Catoosa County deputy sheriff if she did not cease photographing tornado damage at a Food Lion shopping center, and if she did not delete the pictures she had taken from her camera.
Now, the only really proper response would be "Fuck you; you want the lawsuit, arrest me." Put more politely, "I will not, and if you arrest me I'll see your names plastered in public for it at every possible occasion. THEN I'll sue you on top of that."


The other thing I wanted to say something about before I collapse is this piece from Tam on the "...we HAVE to..." idea:
Few years back I told someone that the idea of flat legalizing drugs is something I have strong sympathy for IF there were a couple of provisos, one of them being
If you screw yourself up on your favorite drug/s and can't take care of yourself, that's too bad but you do not get any help from the state; some church or private charity or your family wants to help you, that's wonderful but the public purse(i.e. Other Peoples' Money) will not be picked to take care of you.

Moskos seems to be one of those "I want people helped, but not by me giving my own money/time; I want the government to take over and spend OPM to do it. Because if you don't want to help like I FEEEEEL you should the government can take your money by force and use it" clowns.


One last thing, in the 'What the BLEEP?' category:
As the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives continues investigating the explosion at Aberdeen Proving Ground last Saturday that killed contractor Dr. Nanaj Bhamare, a friend of the worker has told Patch that Bhamare's body will be flown back to India for burial.
Ok so far, though I wonder why Aberdeen couldn't call on the EffingBI or Army EOD to take care of the investigation; then you get to this:
“They also requested our assistance due to the complexity of the explosives, fire scene,” Weber said of APG. “In addition to the explosion, then subsequent fire, the scene contained chem, bio-hazards as well as bloodborne pathogens, which ATF has better capabilities to handle.”
A: What the HELL was the guy working on/with?
B: when the hell did BATFE become expert on chemical and biological hazards?

Because I'm both sick of politics and very tired, (added info)

I present another episode of 'Survival Tips from IITF'.

In this case, fire starting. Something that'll store well, light easily and burn long enough to get damp small kindling started. Get yourself the following items:
Cotton balls(COTTON, no synthetics)
Petroleum jelly
Take a cotton ball. Get a good blob of jelly in a finger, smoosh it into the cotton ball and work it in. Get another ball and repeat.

That's it. Especially after it's sat a while, just touch a match to it and it's off. Matter of fact, know those fire starters you scrape with something sharp and they throw a shower of sparks? Those will ignite them, too. They burn smoky, but long enough to get small kindling started. And you can put a bunch of them in a baggie to store in the pack/toolbox/whatever. Few years back daughter was going on a campout with some friends and made up a few to take along, just in case. It rained- a lot- that weekend, and she said the only way they could get a fire going was with these.

I'll throw in that a while back I bought a package of those round cotton makeup-remover pads at the dollar store and tried this with them; wiped the jelly into the fuzzy side and folded it in half. Opened up, the sparker lit one right off.

Yes, I know some of you already know this, but SOMEBODY out there doesn't.

Added: Thanks to Bob, a very good idea: fire straws

Menino demonstrates why we call it Mayors

Against Guns.

Yeah, sounds like trying to distract and stonewall

to me, too.
"Today's incitement is an important step, but it is only a first step to serving justice on behalf of Agent Brian Terry," U.S. Attorney Dennis K. Burke said in a statement.

U.S. Attorney Burke, who announced today's indictment, was also the U.S. Attorney on a major ATF alleged gunwalking operation in Phoenix known as "Fast and Furious".(Emphasis supplied, MBV.

Terry's death is at the center of the so-called "gunwalker" controversy at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). Insiders say ATF used a controversial intelligence-gathering strategy called lettings guns "walk," and allowed thousands of assault weapons to hit the streets to see where they'd end up.

As CBS News has reported, two AK-47 variant assault rifles that ATF allegedly let "walk" were found at the murder scene of Agent Terry on Dec. 14. According to the indictment unsealed today, Osorio-Arellanes was part of an "armed group of illegal aliens that engaged in a firefight with Agent Terry and other border patrol agents...One of the group shot Agent Terry who died of the wound." Osorio-Arellanes was also wounded in the exchange and has been in federal custody on felony immigration charges.
That's from the news story: from the gentleman at Sipsey,
Burke, who served as Chief of Staff to Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano from 2003 to 2008 (described here as Janet's "long-time right hand man") and who was sworn in as the United States Attorney for the District of Arizona on 16 September 2009 (just in time to work on the Fast and Furious portion of the Gunwalker scandal), is famously quoted as saying that, in his expert opinion, an “iron river” of weapons flows from Phoenix to Mexico.

Well, hell, he ought to know since he facilitated the Gunwalker scandal from the U.S. Attorney's office in Phoenix.

Burke is not just some low-level USA, for he was also recently appointed to serve on the Attorney General's Advisory Committee (AGAC) which advises the Attorney General on policy, management, and operational issues at the Department of Justice and he was also selected to be the Chair of the AGAC Subcommittee on Border and Immigration Law Enforcement.

The timing of this indictment is no accident.
...
But now, after doing nothing but covering up for almost five months, the DOJ will say with this oh-too-convenient indictment, that it is a MURDER investigation that Issa and Holder are dabbling with so DOJ still can't cooperate with the subpoenas. What horseshit.

Now, if I was a hot-shot attorney, or I had the money to hire same, I would make sure that Osorio-Arellanes dumped his court-appointed defense attorney and got the very best lawyering possible. I just KNOW that the discovery phase of this trial, handled by a competent attorney, would blow the lid off the prosecution and the Gunwalker scandal, both at the same time.
Holder & Melson & Co. have to be having cramps now, can you imagine if some lawyer who'd actually dig into this said he'd represent this dirtbag? 'Discovery' of the contents of their bowels that just went into their pants, I'd imagine.

So the SEIU has made it plain that they're right tight

with the open communists.

As Tam says, 'This is my shocked face'.

And just imagine how much fun this will be

when the same level of idiot has control of your health care.

To a large segment of the German population:

Bite me, assholes.

They annoy me, too.

So our TSA and the Brit version are both

full of crap. And apparently less useful, since crap can be used as a fertilizer.
An American man is suspected of smuggling 80 weapons into the UK by hiding them in his suitcases.

Former U.S. marine Steven Greenoe, who holds British citizenship, apparently strolled through airport security in both Britain and America with dozens of handguns stashed in his suitcases on ten flights last year.

He is believed to have delivered them to criminal contacts in the North West of England.

On one occasion, Greenoe was stopped after officials at Atlanta airport spotted the firearms.

But incredibly he was allowed to board the flight after telling officials he worked as an international security consultant.

The revelations are an embarrassment for transatlantic security and for the UK Border Agency. (Ya THINK?)

Because Richard the Turd Daley is special

and the peasants should be thrilled to pay for what he wants.
Sneed has learned Mayor Daley is requesting a retinue of at least three — around the clock — Chicago Police bodyguards from his mayoral security detail to accompany him into the private sector!

† Sneed also hears whispers Mayor Daley, who retires May 16, wants two vehicles at his disposal; one for himself — and one for his wife, Maggie.
...
† A second Sneed source claims Mayor Daley initially asked for five bodyguards, but that may have included a number needed for constant surveillance.

A comment about 'martyr's sea'

that has to be shared:
I like the idea of a Martyr's Sea. It should be marked on all our nav charts. That way, whenever a U.S. man of war passes through the area, they could render appropriate honors. (Now all hands not on watch man the rail, starboard side. Stand by to drop trou. Execute. Now all hands, on my count, urinate. 3, 2, 1, execute. Stand by to recover. Recover. That is all.)

"Great work on that intel, but I still hope the AG

prosecutes you for it."
Holder's holding indictments over the heads of CIA interrogators -- the same ones who delivered bin Ladin to the SEALs.

Burlingame asked him about that, and said "I know you can't tell him what to do" (which isn't really true), and Obama said "That's right."

Then she asked, even if she couldn't order him to drop the prosecution of the interrogators who got bin Ladin, if he would at least offer Holder his opinion that there should be no prosecutions, he answered: "No, I won't."

Huh. Big Damn Hero, huh?

She went on to note that, last May, a Dallas US Attorney sought to indict CAIR officials (for terrorist ties and terrorist funding, of course), and Holder quashed those indictments.
Yeah, President Lightbringer really appreciates those doing the work, doesn't he?

"HOOOAH!"

"WOOF!"
"Fine, I'll take the camera, you can get video when I bite his ass."

So how's that "The pictures/a grave might make him a martyr" thing

working out? Not very well:
Radical Muslims are already calling the site of Osama bin Laden’s ocean burial the ‘Martyr’s Sea’, according to one of Britain’s leading Islamic scholars.

The US said the decision to drop bin Laden’s body into the North Arabian Sea was taken to avoid creating a shrine for the slain Al Qaeda chief.

But Abdal Hakim Murad, Muslim Chaplain at Cambridge University, claimed yesterday that the move could backfire on the Americans.
And just where did this dumping in the deep take place? Not all that damned far from Mecca; isn't that interesting?
So they not only did this, they then announced where. Bloody genius, I tell you!

We're probably lucky the Vinson didn't get orders to detour to the Red Sea for the funeral.

Hmmm, that's odd. I pulled up a Mapquest map of Saudi, and discovered that it doesn't show Mecca. al Madinah, but not Mecca; maybe they don't like unbelievers seeing where the place is? And, scrolling a bit north, I find that Jerusalem is labeled Yerushalayim.

One piece of corruption in LE, and one piece of sheer stupidity

While Gunwalker is going on, in North Carolina,
What I haven't made public (until now) is the work I've continued on this case, including the development of key witnesses against Booth and his allegedly criminal enterprises, and the even more frustrating obstruction of justice being carried out by corrupt BATF agents and auditors hoping to cover their tracks and preserve their careers. If you think that Operation Fast and Furious was a mess in Arizona, I can assure you that is every bit as bad here in North Carolina, and far more petty.

There is reputedly physical and documentary evidence that exists to bring charges to put Mr. Booth in prison for many years, but BATF agents and auditors in Greensboro are stonewalling the investigation with the help of at least one BATF employee in Fayetteville.



And the piece of sheer stupidity is in Wisconsin:
Grant County authorities have accused a 6-year-old boy of first-degree sexual assault of a child for allegedly playing "doctor" with a 5-year-old girl in September.

The case, which is plowing new legal ground in Wisconsin, calls into question when a child's act can be considered criminal -- particularly when it involves behavior some experts say is normal for children that age -- and who makes that determination.

Under state law, the boy is too young to be charged with a crime or in a juvenile delinquency petition, the equivalent of a criminal complaint for juveniles. Instead, prosecutors have included the allegations in a petition seeking protection or services for the boy. Such petitions are typically used by parents or authorities to identify children under 10 who need services to change inappropriate behavior.
"We need to make him think and act in approved ways, for his own good." Yeah, I'll really trust that.

From the idiot judge:
Judge Leineweber refused to dismiss the petitions, saying the relevant part of the sexual assault allegation is the mother's observations.

The boy needed only to have penetrated the girl and known she was under a certain age, he wrote, adding, "Even the most immature 6-year-old could appreciate these two concepts."
Hm. You'd think an adult trusted to wear that black robe would have enough working brain cells to prevent his making such an idiot statement; but you'd be wrong.

Ref the '25 minute blackout' during the raid

The video feeds of this op were likely transmitted via a drone circling overhead, an AWACS or similar aircraft in Afghanistan and another in the Arabian Sea, and surveillance satellites overhead. The odds that feeds from 79 operators, fed through multiple uplinks, was never seen or recorded simply isn't credulous.

Further, you'll note that Panetta chose his words very carefully. They did not have direct flow of information. That indicates that there were recording of the assault recorded on the flash-memory of helmet-mounted cameras, but these are just one more set of images—along with the three or more sets of photographs of Bin Laden's body—that the "most transparent Administration in history" refuses to show the American people.

Oh boy, and I thought Gunwalker couldn't get worse

In a second, equally explosive disclosure, a law enforcement source tells Fox News, that ATF undercover agents were acting as the straw buyers and purchasing guns using government-issued false identifications and then providing those guns to cartel traffickers to gain credibility in their undercover roles. In that capacity, the ATF "provided 2, 50 cal. machine guns to traffickers that are loose in Mexico and unaccounted for," the source said.
So ATF wasn't just letting- hell, helping- cartel buyers smuggle guns across the border, they actively made straw buys and GAVE THE GUNS TO THE SMUGGLERS. Said guns being taken across the border, which activity ATF and Justice have already lied about and said didn't happen.


From the House questioning:

Rep. Chaffetz: Now, this program was approved by the Justice Department, my understanding is, in January of 2010. I guess I'm struggling to understand why an operation as big and as large and as important as this has not come to your attention for more than a year after it was originally authorized. Can you help me understand that?

AG Holder: Well, I mean, you have to understand. Something that, as big—you described as "big"—in comparison to all the other things that are going on in the department at any one given time, might not seem quite as large. I have, as I said, 114, 115-thousand employees: the FBI, the ATF, the DEA—you know, a whole variety of things that we've talked about here today.

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Are we to understand, then, that we are being asked to believe that deliberately facilitating the illegal trafficking of thousands of firearms to brutal criminals in a neighboring country and important trading partner wasn't important enough to warrant the Attorney General's attention?

In one of the gag moments of this,

I have had to look into the eyes of widows, of mothers who have lost sons. I have felt their pain, and the notion that somehow, some way, we are less than vigilant, less than strong in our determination to keep the people who put their lives on the line every day to protect the American people, that we're not doing all the we can to protect them, is inconsistent with the facts, inconsistent with the people who serve in the Department of Justice.

Think Holder is thinking back to Bill Clinton 'feeling your pain', or is this just a progressive asshole thing to say? Kind of seared into their consciousness?

Hofmann's response:
Well, speaking of "inconsistent," Mr. Attorney General, is it not just a teensy bit "inconsistent" to hotly deny being "less than vigilant" about dangers to law enforcement officers--and then a few minutes later, explain that deliberately facilitating the trafficking of the guns used to kill those officers was too minor a matter to merit your attention?

Some thoughts from Froggy on the stories

from the White House:

The SEALs’ decision to fatally shoot bin Laden -- even though he didn’t have a weapon – wasn’t an accident. The administration had made clear to the military’s clandestine Joint Special Operations Command that it wanted bin Laden dead, according to a senior U.S. official with knowledge of the discussions. A high-ranking military officer briefed on the assault said the SEALs knew their mission was not to take him alive.

WRONG FUCKING ANSWER! If you order the SEALs to kill and not capture bin Laden then there is NO DECISION FOR THEM TO MAKE! They are following explicit orders of the President of the United States, but Obama does not have the sac to stand behind his decision and support the very people who are responsible for the only foreign policy victory of his Presidency. Sure, Obama is content to accept the congratulations from the media and his supporters for his "gutsy" decision, but when the rubber meets the road he says, "Hey thanks SEALs for killing bin Laden like I told you to. But you didn't expect me to stand behind you when my left wing media starts going after you as murderers? Oh you did? How cute."

and
Meanwhile, between NSC staffers, the WH Press Secretary, Homeland Security, CIA and a multitude of “Senior Administration Officials” on background, the story has morphed into various versions of events. While the political side of me sees this correctly as another manifestation of the incompetence of this Administration, this vacillation is causing real harm to the significance of our victory here and to the reputation of the SEAL Teams. Let me assure you right now that there is no such thing as a “Kill only “ mission. If that SEAL operator came through the door to find UBL with his hands up, compliant, and unarmed (including no evidence of a suicide vest) he would have taken a muzzle strike to the face, but not any rounds. He would have swallowed some teeth, been flex cuffed, and dragged roughly out to a marshalling area and then onto the helo. To start out with the story that UBL had used his wife as a shield while shooting at the assaulters and to devolve that into to a woman was wounded and UBL was unarmed and shot in the face is quite a large spectrum of “truth”. Add to that the false notion of the “Kill only” mission, and now you have the entire SEAL community being thrown under the bus as wonton killers of women and unarmed civilians.

Are Navy SEALs eager to kill terrorists and UBL most of all? Hells Yeah! But we would not be tasked with a mission profile that excludes the capture of the single greatest intelligence bonanza in the history of the conflict. Certainly we will exploit the intel collected on the target and soon, but if you simply want to kill somebody no matter what you do not send Navy SEALs across a sovereign border to do it. That is what Hellfire missilesand JDAMs are designed to do.

Ah, the integrity of professors,

The University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh has taken unspecified "corrective action" against Stephen Richards, a criminal justice professor, for encouraging students to sign a petition to recall a state senator. Not just encouraging to sign: This news item doesn’t make clear that he was accused of encouraging election fraud. “In the tape, recorded during a criminal justice class, Richards can be heard encouraging a female student to sign the recall petition even though she thinks she lives outside the district, and instructing students to sign using their campus address instead of their parents’ home address.”


Remember the mess at the Tucson school board meeting? It keeps on:
At a Tucson Unified School District school board meeting on Tuesday — which was a make-up for one canceled after students chained themselves to board-room desks on April 26 — riot police were called in to restore order after program supporters become restless during the public input section of the meeting.
Remember what this crap is all about:
...As we’ve previously reported, the district isn’t trying to ban the program outright. Instead, it wants to make a controversial history class — that calls for “death to the invaders” and was found to advocate overthrowing the U.S. government — an elective instead of allowing it to substitute for required history credits. That’s it. And the disturbing class would still be available to students.

But that’s not the rhetoric coming from the supporters. They’re trumpeting the message that the district is trying to eliminate the program altogether, a tactic used to stir up anger and action.
So a bunch of America-haters lie to try and force a class with this kind of outlook on all students; wonderful, isn't it? Gets even better; go look toward the bottom at who may be involved.


Ah, that "If you make less than $200k, you won't see a penny of your taxes go up" promise; really meant a lot, didn't it?
The Obama administration has floated a transportation authorization bill that would require the study and implementation of a plan to tax automobile drivers based on how many miles they drive.

The plan is a part of the administration's "Transportation Opportunities Act," an undated draft of which was obtained this week by Transportation Weekly.
And if you think they'll plan on taking the federal tax off gasoline since you'll be paying by the mile, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you. Not to mention the loss of privacy aspect.


What? The National Labor Relations Board lied about Boeing? Whoda thunk it?


Michelle Malkin's update on Gunwalker.


And, apparently having the energy problems and terrorism and taxes under control, Congress has a new way to waste time and pander.

And since I'm already pissed off at chickenshit politicians,

One of the documents shows Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer approved a wiretap application for suspects Operation Fast and Furious targeted in March 2010. The wiretap application process is lengthy and cumbersome, and often requires those applying to make strong case as to why they need it. So, Breuer would have been briefed in detail on Operation Fast and Furious before authorizing the wiretap.
...
The third document, an e-mail from Arizona-based U.S. Attorney Shelley Clemens to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official Richard Crocker and FBI official S. Annette Bartlett, shows that the Justice Department has begun scrambling to stop the gun “walking” practice since Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican, launched investigations into the program. “Yesterday, we received a directive from the DAG [Deputy Attorney General], instructing on DOJ’s policy regarding guns going south into Mexico,” Shelley wrote on March 10, 2011. The directive from the Deputy AG, as she Shelley quotes it, is: “We should not design or conduct undercover operations which include guns crossing the border. If we have knowledge that guns are about to cross the border, we must take immediate action to stop the firearms from crossing the border, even if that prematurely terminates or otherwise jeopardizes an investigation.”
...
Then, on Wednesday, before Issa released the three new documents, Grassley grilled Holder about the email from Clemens and the indications of a policy shift during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Grassley pushed Holder on the e-mail from Clemens. “If the ATF, as the agency keeps telling us, did not knowingly allow guns into the hands of traffickers, why was that directive even necessary? Why issue a memo telling people to stop doing something unless you think maybe they have been doing it?” Grassley asked Holder.
Holder's been saying he first heard of this 'a few weeks ago', which he evidently means to cover 'months ago, maybe years, but I'm not admitting that." Which this would indicate to mean that the lying bastard has perjured himself. At least once.

Let us not forget that this group includes the sorry bastard excuses for lawmen at BATFE who don't give a rats ass about the lives of their own agents and their families:
"When I made complaints against the ATF, they were completely ignored and whitewashed and they left the same people in place to operate Project Gunrunner," says ATF Tucson Agent Jay Dobyns.

Dobyns spent two years undercover with the Hells Angels. While he became a star witness in the prosecution of 15 members of the motorcyle gang on charges ranging from extortion to murder, he also became a target of their revenge.

"You are gonna spend the rest of your life running from the Hells Angels," he says they told him. "We know who you are, we know where you live."

The ATF office in Phoenix, specifically Agent-in-Charge Bill Newell and his deputy, George Gillette, promised to protect Dobyns, but Dobyns says they didn't. He says the Hells Angels threatened to rape his wife and behead his children. Weeks later, Dobyns says the gang burned down his house with his family inside. Miraculously, they escaped.

"They abandoned us, they ignored us," said Dobyns.

He filed a complaint against the ATF. Seeking to contain the damage, the DOJ Office of Inspector General investigated and concluded the agency acted "recklessly, needlessly and inappropriately."

That was in August 2009 against Newell, Gillette and the ATF officials in charge. However, no one was held accountable. Operation Fast and Furious, under the direct authority of the ATF Phoenix Office, was launched less than six months later. Dobyns says allowing the ATF to conduct another OIG investigation would be a mistake

"They do not care what the OIG says. They don't care what the OIG conclusions are."
This is a guy who did something nobody else had EVER done; and BATFE fucked up the evidence and the trials, and then basically left Dobyns and family hung out to dry. And then fucked him over further for daring to make noise about it.

But then, they don't care about the Mexicans and Americans dead with their help either, do they? Except as it affects their careers, of course.

I'm not feeling charitable tonight

To every muslim bitching about the 'martyred' pig-humping bin Ladin assuming ambient temperature: fuck you.
To every muslim whining that America has declared war on Islam: fuck you, too.
And to every gutless PC-at-any-cost politician who says we don't dare show pictures of this dead lower-than-pig crap terrorist because it might 'inflame' the muslim world: fuck you twice, and you need to get the hell out of that office you miserable excuses for Americans.

You're the same kind of assholes that don't want pictures like this
shown because it's 'too upsetting'; mostly because you're scared to death that people will fully remember what this picture means. Just like this one

and this one

You don't have the balls to tell the enemy to piss off, oh no, you're too 'sensitive' to the feelings of the barbarians and 'world opinion'(which mostly means chickenshit politicians and leftists like you) for that. So you pretend you're protecting us from upsetting the enemy.

And, like it or not, a lot of muslims ARE the enemy. Not all, by any stretch, but many; but you being the gutless bastards you are you play 'they're not REAL muslims!' games because you don't have either the brains, guts or integrity- maybe you lack all three?- to flatly speak the truth. Why, some sensitive liberal might call you names! CAIR might protest(never mind that CAIR supports terrorism)!

Damn the screaming barbarians who want us dead anyway. Damn the politicians who'd rather play games in hopes of buying votes. They'd rather see us dead than speak a nasty non-PC truth. They'd rather surrender to the opinion of people who murder our guys and defile their bodies and cheer it, they'd rather surrender to shit who murder children and celebrate it.

Damn every one of you.

'Dumb crook' doesn't really cover it, this is more like

'Really Effing Stupid Crook':
Police arrested a 41-year-old man after he called 911 and told officers that he was not given the correct change after buying crack cocaine from a drug dealer.

Just a thought:

The troops had to be sent in on a raid so as to have 'solid proof that bin Laden was dead'. But they refuse to display said proof because 'it might inflame enemy opinion...

Patterico has excerpts from yesterdays House Gunwalker hearing

and Holder is in trouble. And knows it.
ISSA: How about the head of the Criminal Division, Lanny Breuer. Did he authorize it?

HOLDER: I’m not sure whether Mr. Breuer authorized it. You have to understand the way in which the Department operates. Although there are operations, this one has become — has gotten a great deal of publicity.

ISSA: Yeah, there are dead Americans as a result of this failed and reckless program. So I would say that it hasn’t gotten enough attention, has it, Mr. Attorney General?
...
ISSA: Mr. Attorney General, do you take seriously a subpoena signed by the Clerk of the House?

HOLDER: Of course.

ISSA: After 14 days of waiting for a letter to be signed or acknowledged or responded to, we sent a subpoena signed by the Clerk of the House. 32 days later, last night, your people responded by giving us 92 pages representing 3 documents that were public records already.
...
ISSA: We’re not looking at the straw buyers, Mr. Attorney General. We’re looking at you. We’re looking at your key people who knew or should have known about this and whether or not your judgment was consistent with good practices and whether or not instead the Justice Department is basically guilty of allowing weapons to kill Americans and Mexicans. So will you agree to cooperate with that investigation both on the House and Senate side?

HOLDER: We’ll certainly cooperate with all the investigations, but I’m going to take great exception to what you just said. The notion that somehow or other this Justice Department is responsible for those deaths that you mentioned, that assertion’s offensive. And I want to tell you that –

ISSA: But what if it’s accurate, Mr. Attorney General?
Like he says, good to see Issa isn't backing off or giving Holder an easy out on this.

Grassley gives Holder a note:

A strongly-worded letter from Republican oversight members of Congress to Attorney General Eric Holder today came with an unusual handwritten notation at the bottom. Penned in blue ink by his signature, Sen. Charles Grassley's (R-Iowa) writes: "PS: You should check to see if you are getting accurate information from your staff. You might be ill-served."
And Sipsey Street had about the same thought I did when I read this, though he goes into much more detail:
"You may be ill-served" What a hoot! This is Grassley's tongue-in-cheek invitation to throw Melson and Breuer under the bus, and that's when the serious truth leakage begins because they'll use the Nuremberg defense, "I was only following orders." And they will have proof of it.

Grassley, knowing everything that he knows from the whistleblowers and leaked documents, has a very good idea of how involved Holder is in all of this -- up to his eyeballs. Worse, Holder knows that he knows. I'd be surprised that if, when he saw the postscript, Holder didn't ball the letter up and throw it across the room with a string of curses.

The only thing that can possibly, maybe, save Holder now is for the Gunwalker men, Melson and Breuer, to go happily skipping hand-in-hand like little kids down the path in Fort Marcy Park to their own perdition, following the Sicilian prescript that "Three men can keep a secret if two of them are dead."

Holder is toast and this is Grassley's way of reminding him of it. What he is really saying is, "Sooner or later we will have your subordinates under oath. Got a fall-back plan for THAT?"
I just thought "He's giving Holder an out, isn't he? A way to try to blame it on subordinates?" Then I thought "But what happens when the subordinates disagree?"

Lesson One for the day: if you can't see the street,

a bike may not be your best means of transport:

(thanks to Theo)


Also,
A man walks into a bar and orders a Bin Laden

Bartender asks, what’s a Bin Laden?

Man says 2 shots with a splash of water.



TEN OF MURPHY'S LESSER KNOWN LAWS

1. Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

2. Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.

3. Those that live by the sword, get shot by those who don't.

4. Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.

5. The 50-50-90 rule: Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there's a 90% probability you'll get it wrong.

6. If you lined up all the cars in the world end to end, someone would be stupid enough to try to pass them, five or six at a time, on a hill, in the fog.

7. The things that come to those who wait will be the scraggly junk left by those who got there first.

8. The shin bone is a device for finding furniture in a dark room.

9. A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.

10. When you go into court, you are putting yourself into the hands of 12 people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty.


Yeah, it's humor day.

The University of Kentucky hates gun owners

The University of Kentucky has fired a graduate student and former anesthesia technician, Michael Mitchell, for keeping a gun in his car a mile away from the university hospital where he was employed.

The university then proceeded to try to deny Mitchell unemployment compensation by claiming, unsuccessfully, that he was fired for misconduct. A hearing officer found against the University of Kentucky and in favor of Mitchell.

All this, despite the fact that Mitchell had a Kentucky concealed carry permit, believed he had fully complied with Kentucky law governing concealed carry, and therefore cooperated fully with police and university authorities.
Much as I dislike lawsuits, this sounds like a legitimate place for one: sue their ass off.

I'd hate to be the one who has to wash Holder's underwear

after today. This is the letter Grassley and Issa sent to Holder today(emphasis mine):
May 3, 2011

VIA ELECTRONIC TRANSMISSION

The Honorable Eric H. Holder, Jr.
Attorney General
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20530

Dear Attorney General Holder:

As Senator Grassley discussed on the phone with you yesterday, we are very concerned that the Department chose to send a letter containing false statements in response to his initial inquiry into the ATF whistleblower allegations related to Operation Fast and Furious. To be more specific, the Department sent a letter on February 4, 2011 claiming that the whistleblower allegations were “false” and that “ATF makes every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally and prevent their transportation to Mexico.” When questioned in transcribed interviews last week in Phoenix, agents with first-hand knowledge of ATF operations contradicted that claim.

Specifically, in response to that exact quote, they said the Department’s letter was “false” and could not explain how such a representation could be made to Congress in light of what they witnessed on the ground in Phoenix in late 2009 and 2010, prior to the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. In fact, according to these witnesses, there was a specific strategy implemented to not “make every effort” but rather to avoid interdicting weapons in hopes of making a larger case against higher-ups in the trafficking organization.

Therefore, we were surprised and disappointed to see the Department repeat once again, in slightly different language, its denial in a letter received shortly after your telephone conversation with Senator Grassley. Yesterday’s letter reads, in part, “It remains our understanding that ATF’s Operation Fast and Furious did not knowingly permit straw buyers to take guns into Mexico.”

The documents and information previously provided to you demonstrate that the ATF urged gun dealers to go forward with sales to known straw buyers despite the concerns expressed by at least one dealer that the guns would be transferred to the border and possibly used against Border Patrol agents. ATF and Justice officials assured that dealer that unspecified safeguards were in place to ensure that did not happen. Yet, guns from that case were found at the scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s murder and at crime scenes in Mexico.

In its latest denial, the Department seems to focus more on whether ATF knew guns were being trafficked to Mexico than whether the ATF knew they were being purchased by straw buyers. While it might be typical in Washington for lawyers to narrowly parse statements and argue over fine distinctions to confuse the issue, those are not the kind of answers that we believe the Justice Department should give to Congress when asked straightforward questions about such a serious matter as this one.

You were asked to please explain whether you deny that the ATF allowed the sale of assault weapons to straw purchasers, and if so, why given the evidence that was attached. The reply was not signed by you, did not explain whether you stand by the denial, did not explain why, and did not meaningfully address the serious issues raised by the attached emails between a gun dealer and the ATF.

We are extremely disappointed that you do not appear to be taking this issue seriously enough to ensure that the Department’s representations are accurate, forthcoming, and complete. We will continue to probe and gather the facts independently, as it has become clear that we cannot rely on the Department’s self-serving statements to obtain any realistic picture of what happened.

Sincerely,

Darrell Issa, Chairman Charles E. Grassley, Ranking Member
Committee on Oversight & Committee on the Judiciary
Government Reform United State Senate
U.S. House of Representatives
That, folks, is polite-speak for "You're a damned liar, we know it and we can prove it. And we're not going to stop digging into this."

And tomorrow Holder will be before Grassley in the Senate. Also under oath.

Assuming they didn't mess it up, imagine MHI: The Series

Correia says MHI has been optioned for a possible TV show

Probably cable, which means I'd have to either have someone record it for me or wait for disc, but still.

Shnork....hehehehe

From the VFR forum

A motorcycle patrolman was rushed to the hospital with an inflamed appendix. Went right into surgery, and the doc advised him all was well. However.

He kept feeling something pulling down in his crotch. Worried the doc might have had to do something he wasn't telling him about/admitting to, he pulled the gown up to see. There, down low, he found tape: two strips above his penis and one across his testicles. The kind of tape that doesn't come off easily. Written across the top strip was

GET WELL SOON, FROM THE NURSE YOU PULLED OVER LAST WEEK

Well, this would answer the 'How much courage?' question

The answer would be 'He didn't have any' if this is correct.
Q: You stated that President Obama was “overruled” by military/intelligence officials regarding the decision to send in military specialists into the Osama Bin Laden compound. Was that accurate?

A: I was told – in these exact terms, “we overruled him.” (Obama) I have since followed up and received further details on exactly what that meant, as well as the specifics of how Leon Panetta worked around the president’s “persistent hesitation to act.” There appears NOT to have been an outright overruling of any specific position by President Obama, simply because there was no specific position from the president to do so. President Obama was, in this case, as in all others, working as an absentee president.
I'd strongly suggest you read this piece. If this information is accurate, not only did Obama not want to make a decision(or maybe couldn't think of a way to make it that wouldn't cause a huge blowup), he was basically being ordered around by Valerie Jarrett. And was willing to sit around and let bin Laden get away rather than act.

In my initial communication to you of these events I described what unfolded as a temporary Coup initiated by high ranking intelligence and military officials. I stand by that term. These figures worked around the uncertainty of President Obama and the repeated resistance of Valerie Jarrett. If they had not been willing to do so, I am certain Osama Bin Laden would still be alive today. There will be no punishment to those who acted outside the authority of the president’s office. The president cannot afford to admit such a fact. What will be most interesting from here is to now see what becomes of Valerie Jarrett. One source indicated she is threatening resignation. I find that unlikely given my strong belief she needs the protection afforded her by the Oval Office and its immense powers to delay and eventually terminate investigations back in Chicago, but we shall see.

I have a question:

Why do we keep hearing about how Obama showed such 'political courage' and so forth in approving the operation?

Considering the target, and the reasons we were after him, how the hell much courage is required to say "You have his location? The teams have worked up for the strike? Approved." ?

Tornado in New Zealand Updated

That had to be a big surprise




Wave Theory: as in 'This wave is past, now watch for the next one':
Face and Payback. Things may tamp down a bit as lower level commanders hit the mattresses to preserve themselves until they know the extent of what we got from the compound. Others may want to get revenge for their commander directly or if they have access, they may pull the trigger on sleeper cells. Hard to know, but we should expect that with the killing of their figurehead – the enemy has an extra motivation to get revenge for losing face. Hope that they are too busy saving themselves to plan external operations in the near future – but be prepared for the fact that they can run operations as well as they did in 9/11 and they are a very patient lot.
According to this, the intelligence haul by itself would be worth the raid; be interesting to see what happens in the near future.


Bollywood vs. radical islam:



Also found at Theo's,




Stuff to do, but ran across this; what do you think?
Update: more here

I met a fairy today that said she would grant me one wish.

"I want to live forever," I said.

"Sorry," said the fairy, "I'm not allowed to grant wishes like that!"

"Fine," I said, "then I want to die after Congress gets their heads out of their asses!"

"You crafty bastard," said the fairy.

Ooooh, this might get interesting

"Tomorrow, Attorney General Eric Holder will testify before the House Judiciary Committee," an email sent this afternoon by the Deputy Press Secretary, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform announces:

Congressman Issa will press Attorney General Holder on the role of the ATF’s Phoenix office in 'Operation Fast and Furious', a botched gun tracking project which knowingly allowed guns into the hands of drug cartels leading to the death of U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.

The testimony will occur Tuesday 5/3/2011 at 10:15 a.m. at 2141 Rayburn House Office Building. It will be webcast live at www.judiciary.house.gov.
Holder under oath; that should lead to some interesting responses to Issa.

Note I did not say 'answers', I'd imagine he's likely to try to avoid many of those.

ATF comment period on multiple rifle sales

I'll just borrow from Uncle:

Looks like their attempt to restrict the import of certain shotguns is back. Only to rifles: Don’t let this go unanswered, comment on this proposal.

Under the 'Stupid, stupid STUPID!' label,

A group of deaf friends were stabbed at a bar in Florida after a woman mistook their sign language for gang signs.
...
The 45-year-old though the group was throwing gang signs at her, and responded by flashing gang signs back at them, cops said.

The group motioned for her to leave them alone.

Eventually, left the bar but returned with two members of her crew, 19-year-old and a 17-year-old who was not identified, cops said.
Yes, I removed the names, as it'd probably make these wastes of oxygen happy to have theirnames paraded around.
Ibanez allegedly pulled a knife and began stabbing Stewart and his friends.

Blackfive reminded me of something I should have said earlier:

To the intel guys, the pilots, SpecOps guys who worked up the information, tracked and waited and watched, planned and executed: thanks. If I ever meet any of you, I owe you a drink.

Another view on BATFE wanting to use 'sporting purpose' definitions

to ban imports of shotguns:
On page 4 the following statements are made: “The 1989 study then examined the scope of “sporting purposes” as used in the statute. The study noted that “[t]he broadest possible interpretation could take in virtually any lawful activity or competition which any person or groups of persons might undertake. Under this interpretation, any rifle could meet the “sporting purposes” test. The 1989 study concluded that a broad interpretation would render the statute useless.”

Wrapped up in this paragraph we have not only an amusing logical blunder but also the real crux of the problem. Authors have presupposed the answer (so-called circular reasoning) at which they must arrive, i.e., the statute must remain useful. Thus, all interpretations by ATF are biased to yield that result. It is not the responsibility of the ATF nor is it within the purview of their authority to ensure the continued usefulness of a statute, if in fact it is rendered useless by advances, common practices, evolution in sporting, or lack of wise crafting of the statute (such as the fact that nowhere in this discussion of “sporting purposes” is there any latitude given for personal protection and home defense under the second amendment to the constitution of the United States). This single paragraph renders the study itself as useless as the statute has become.
But if you work facts and reality, they can't grab at more power to disarm us peasants.

Appears I was incorrect; I thought Osama

had assumed ambient temperature at Tora Bora. Ah, well, I've been wrong before.

I tend to think not displaying the body and giving it a suitable funeral(bacon or hog guts in abundance) was a mistake; screw sensitivities.

I was up last night when Obama made his announcement; annoyed hell out of me. Podium empty, then he comes out of a door somewhere down the hall and strides to the podium, and proceeds to give a blank-faced speech. Looked like he didn't really care that Osama was dead, just a 'happy announcement' with no emotion showing(at least for the part of it I watched).

Ah well, he dead.

Oh, since it appears that info from Gitmo detainees helped lead to this, wonder if any of the usual suspects will shut up about Gitmo?

Added: To Pakistan: Fuck you. Sincerely, etc.

Well, this is a really cheerful thought

But the real threat posed by this historic, gathering flood may well lie several hundred miles to the south, where the Mississippi crosses the Louisiana border. There, as the Corps well knows but dare not discuss, this historic flood threatens to overwhelm one of the frailest defenses industrial humanity has offered to preserve its profits from the immutable processes of nature. This flood has the potential to be a mortal blow to the economy of the United States, and outside the Corp of Engineers virtually no one knows why.

So the rally for commies, unions and illegal aliens

flopped; couldn't happen to a nicer bunch.

And we're reminded that this should more properly be noted as Victims of Communism Day.

Well, it looks like 'proper safe storage', according to Pittsburg PD,

is "What only homeowners rich enough to satisfy our desires can afford." The kind of safe this clown would require, a lot of older houses would have to have the floor reinforced for the weight.

Detective Joseph Bielevicz, you can kiss my ass; you're just one more gun bigot Only One.

Looks like H-S Precision may be regretting

their little venture into "We have a FBI sniper endorsing us!" land.

And let it not be forgetten
Meanwhile, Lon is still walking around a free man, because using "I was trying to murder someone else and hit her by accident!" as your defense works a lot better for federal agents than it does for Ice Dog and Ray-Ray.

'Twist and Shout'

Sounds more like 'Twisting and Screaming' to me