So Napolitano got permission to say 'terrorist'

again, probably to take some heat off. I'm sure some True Believer in the One pointed out that to an awful lot of hicks like me calling terrorist attacks a "man-caused disasters" and calling the war an "overseas contingency operation" is friggin' stupid; the kind of thing done by people far more worried about words than actually doing things("Doing things? That's so icky!")

But we can take reassurance that she also "...acknowledged an "increased presence" of homegrown extremism and called for increased cooperation on local, state and federal levels to thwart any potential attacks.
Unspoken was whether people pissed about taxes and military veterans are still considered man-made disaster creators. But it makes a good excuse for more control over the peas- er, people.
Asked whether homegrown terror risks have become a bigger threat than those overseas, Napolitano demurred.
"You actually want me to answer that question? And let the cover slip?"
"I don't know that you can rank them one or two," she said. "Both exist; they both must be dealt with. They are both things that we are concerned about and they're both things that we want Americans to be prepared about."
That's just very reassuring, isn't it?

For those who might still have starry thoughts socialized medicine,

Some truths about the NHS:

1) If your treatment is considered "not an emergency" (by which I mean you are not gushing blood or whatever) you will go onto a very long waiting list.

2) Because of 1) the government got snappy and decided to set targets for waiting list times. Hospital managers came up with a novel solution: Secret waiting lists to get onto waiting lists. This meant they didn't have to improve care, but the governments figures improve. Everyone who matters is happy. In the NHS, patients don't matter.

3) Killer hospital acquired infections like MRSA are endemic in NHS hospitals.
And so on.

Further along, he hits on the double-bind they put you in: if a medication/treatment is deemed 'too expensive', you can- at least sometimes- pay for it yourself. BUT, if you do, anything they decide is 'related' to the condition, you have to pay for; because even though you still have to pay for NHS, you can't use it for that.

I can't find the link right now, but a few months ago there was a story from Britain about a woman with cancer who was basically told "It's not cost effective for us to pay for the medicine you need, so hurry up and die." And when she checked into paying for it herself she was told, as I recall "If you do, you get no further treatment under NHS for anything; but you still have to keep paying for it."

Yeah, having the government in complete charge of health care will be just so bloody wonderful...

I have to wonder, have any of the people just drooling at the thought of being in charge of this considered some of the fallout if it happens? Like what happens when someone is told their parent can't have treatment for 'cost-effective' reasons, or their kid can't have it, and the people involved decide to visit, with blood in their eye, the people in charge?

And I promise you, it WILL happen; if someone told you "Your child cannot receive the treatment that would save them because it's too expensive/whatever the excuse is and the board won't approve it", how would you take it?

Well, it IS a good question...

The things Theo finds to ponder...

I can't vouch for part A, but

part B sounds familiar.

Women, Men and drinks: Who they and you are

Part A: Women

Drink: Beer
Personality: Causal, low-maintenance; down to earth.
Your Approach: Challenge her to a game of pool.


Blender drinks:
Personality: Flaky, whiny, annoying; a pain in the ass.
Your Approach: Avoid her, unless you want to be her cabana boy.


Mixed drinks:
Personality: Older, more refined, high maintenance, has very picky taste; knows EXACTLY what she wants.
Your Approach: You won't have to approach her. If she's interested, she'll send YOU a drink..................


Wine:
Personality: Conservative and classy; sophisticated yet giggles.
Your Approach: Tell her you love to travel and spend quiet evenings with friends.


White Zinfandel:
Personality: Easy; thinks she is classy and sophisticated, actually, she has NO clue.
Your Approach: Make her feel smarter than she is...this should be an easy target.


Shots:
Personality: Likes to hang with frat-boy pals and looking to get totally drunk... and naked.
Your Approach: Easiest hit in the joint. You have been blessed. Nothing to do but wait, however, be careful not to make her mad!


Tequila:
No explanations required - everyone just KNOWS what happens there.



Part B: Men

Domestic Beer:
He's poor and wants to get laid.


Imported Beer:
He likes good beer and wants to get laid.


Wine:
He is hoping that the wine will give him a sophisticated image to help him get laid.


Whiskey:
He doesn't give a damn about anything but getting laid.


White Zinfandel:
He's gay


Tequila:
Leave the place. Now.

I once wrote about losing my appendix, and what would have happened

to me not that long ago(think ugly, messy death in most cases). I've sat at times and wondered how someone working at a pharmaceutical company feels when some asshole politician accuses them of all kinds of naughtiness ' just so you can make money'; never mind the years of time and literally God-knows-how-many man-hours of research and testing that went into creating that drug, that doesn't count when the grandstanding politician(all too often 'corrupt' and 'stupid' also fit) wants to play "I feel your pain."

Geek posted some thoughts on the matter. Here's a sample:
One of my kids has had pneumonia twice. One hundred years ago, when such a diagnosis in a child was a virtual death sentence, what would I have paid then for the bottle of pink bubble gum flavored antibiotic goo we give kids today? I'd have mortgaged the house and gone into debt, if need be. How many bottles of pink bubble gum flavored antibiotic goo had I slugged down as a kid, vanquishing one potentially fatal disease after another?

It's not just another abstract life saved from dying horribly of Stupid Shit (r)(c)(tm). It's my very concrete life saved from dying horribly of Stupid Shit. It's my wife and kids saved from dying horribly of Stupid Shit. It's the misery of any of us losing any of the others that is avoided.

No, these cures were not shat from the sky like manna. They did not come from government largess, nor did they come from some central agency responsible for the discovery and distribution of cures. Such things have been tried, and they've all failed, miserably. Not only do they not generate new cures, but they cannot even effectively distribute old ones.
Read it when you can. And next time someone bitches about "Why do drugs cost less in Canada/Mexico/wherever? It's the greedy companies ripping us off!", kick them somewhere sensitive. Like in the ass, where their brain resides.

A story of a sorry excuse for a peace officer and the sorry excuses

who tried to get rid of evidence to clear him.
What they didn't know was that they'd been rear-ended by the son of a police officer who was on duty, and dad was about to get involved.

Lawless was standing at the counter of the store, at Comly Road and Roosevelt Boulevard, smiling and chatting with the clerk, when she was grabbed from behind and violently pushed back with a police officer's gun in her face.

"He hit me with his left hand, and he had his gun in his right hand," Lawless said. "He pushed his gun into the left side of my neck. It caused a scrape-type bruise on my neck."

After a chaotic struggle, Lawless was arrested and charged with assaulting the officer.
Be easy to say "Is she telling the truth?" except for one thing:
...But in cases in which it's a defendant's word against a police officer's, the benefit of doubt often falls to the cop(there were multiple witnesses, but they didn't count either apparently).

Except when there's video.

Once surveillance video from the store's four security cameras was released, the case against Lawless collapsed, and disciplinary action commenced against the officer, Alberto Lopez Sr. A lawsuit against the city is likely.
I should bloody hope so.

Bad enough that he did what he did; he then lied about it- repeatedly- on sworn statements and before a judge(gee, I wonder why no prosecution for perjury?) But on top of that
Then, according to the Internal Affairs report of Ruiz's statement, Officer Lopez told him to "do himself a favor and get rid of the camera tapes."
So add trying to destroy evidence. And, on my reference to the other sorry excuses for police officers,
Ruiz told investigators that Lopez mentioned erasing the tape again after other officers arrived. He said that police visited him at the store twice the next day and asked him whether he would erase the tape. He also said that they had advised him to "help the cop out and testify for the cop."
And, as to the other people in the 'Justice Department' of Philadelphia,
The District Attorney's Office reviewed the case and declined to prosecute Officer Lopez in December. Eight days later, he was reissued his weapon and returned to full duty.

But he may yet face discipline from the Police Department.
Oh, wow, I'm sure he's really sweating over that.

So, in front of multiple witnesses this clown
Assaults a woman,
Knowingly, falsely charges her with a crime,
Tries to get rid of evidence,
Makes false statements under oath,
and not only is he not prosecuted, he's on full duty and 'may yet face discipline'. No wonder Philadelphia has crime problems, if their cops are assaulting people, committing perjury and trying to destroy evidence to protect each other; they don't have any time left to mess around with actually chasing crooks.

I hope Lawless sues the ass off Lopez and the Philadelphia PD, and pushes- if possible- for him to be prosecuted for his lies under oath. And how about some action against the other officers who tried to get rid of evidence?

'Only Ones', no kidding.

Thanks to Sailor Curt for pointing to this miserable display of abuse of power.

'Human Rights Watch' my ass

You might remember that this group was caught doing fundraising in Saudi Arabia a couple of weeks ago, saying the money would go to “battle . . . pro-Israel pressure groups.” And a lot of people raised hell about it.
As criticism of her remark poured in, Ms. Whitson responded by saying that the complaint against her was “fundamentally a racist one.” And Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, declared that “We report on Israel. Its supporters fight back with lies and deception.”

The facts tell a different story. From 2006 to the present, Human Rights Watch’s reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict have been almost entirely devoted to condemning Israel, accusing it of human rights and international law violations, and demanding international investigations into its conduct. It has published some 87 criticisms of Israeli conduct against the Palestinians and Hezbollah, versus eight criticisms of Palestinian groups and four of Hezbollah for attacks on Israel. (It also published a small number of critiques of both Israel and Arab groups, and of intra-Palestinian fighting.)
...
In response to the rocket war and Hamas’s violent takeover of Gaza in June 2007, Israel imposed a partial blockade of Gaza. Human Rights Watch then published some 28 statements and reports on the blockade, accusing Israel in highly charged language of an array of war crimes and human rights violations. One report headline declared that Israel was “choking Gaza.” Human Rights Watch has never recognized the difference between Hamas’s campaign of murder against Israeli civilians and Israel’s attempt to defend those civilians. The unwillingness to distinguish between aggression and self-defense blots out a fundamental moral fact—that Hamas’s refusal to stop its attacks makes it culpable for both Israeli and Palestinian casualties.

Meanwhile, Egypt has also maintained a blockade on Gaza, although it is not even under attack from Hamas. Human Rights Watch has never singled out Egypt for criticism over its participation in the blockade.
...
In the Middle East, Human Rights Watch does not actually function as a human-rights organization. If it did, it would draw attention to the plight of Palestinians in Arab countries. In Lebanon, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are warehoused in impoverished refugee camps and denied citizenship, civil rights, and even the right to work. This has received zero coverage from the organization.

In 2007, the Lebanese Army laid siege to the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp for over three months, killing hundreds. Human Rights Watch produced two anemic press releases. At this very moment, Jordan is stripping its Palestinians of citizenship without the slightest protest from the organization.

Pushing a big tax break for trial lawyers;

why am I not surprised?
Federal legislation that would afford trial lawyers a special tax break faces an uncertain future, says one of the chief lobbyists for the nation's trial lawyers.

The proposal would allow attorneys to deduct fees and expenses up-front for filing contingency-fee lawsuits. The proposal amounts to about a $1.6 billion tax break for plaintiffs' attorneys, estimates indicate.

"Everyone wants to do it, but the problem is there is not a tax vehicle yet," said Linda Lipsen, American Association for Justice (AAJ) Senior Vice President of Public Affairs.
Let's see, lots of lawyers in Congress, trial lawyers give lots of money to politicians... what could go wrong?
"You cannot have a stand alone bill to help lawyers … so we have to tuck it into something," she said.
Translation: "We need to hide this so people don't see it until too late."
Another challenge facing the legislation is its cost, Lipsen acknowledged, noting that Congressional rules require that any tax break be paid for by new revenues.

"The problem for us, unfortunately, is there is no money," she said. "It costs a couple billion… so we're going to have to find what they call a 'pay-for' so that we can make it budget neutral and get it passed. This is going to be tough because there is no money."

Even so, she said senior congressional officials want to press forward with the legislation.
Anybody have any doubts that these clowns in Congress will amazingly 'find' enough of our money to pay the trial lawyers off if they're allowed to?
And who are the "Let's do it!" clowns in Congress?
Legal Newswire notes that this tax break for ambulance chasers “has the support of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y.,” all of whom are eager to raise taxes of non-trial-lawyers.

In fairness, we should note that not only Democrats are behind this: The free-market Washington Legal Foundation reports that Senate co-sponsors include Republicans Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Mike Crapo of Idaho and Mel Martinez of Florida, all lawyers. The chief sponsor is Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter, another lawyer, who belongs to whichever party is convenient.
A wonderful group, huh? A group which, if they all took a long dive in a shallow well, wouldn't be missed except by the people who've been buying influence with them all these years.

Ace pointed to another mess in California: Water

It's been a problem in many areas for a long time, and continuing a enviroweenie tradition lack of water is now driving farmers off their land in the name of saving a friggin' smelt.
Last December, fresh restrictions meant to protect the fish were imposed, effectively shutting down the spigots and starving the Central Valley farmers of water.

Those in Fresno County saw their monthly allotments evaporate, virtually overnight. Here's how Mr. Allen recalls it: “When it came time to get my initial water allocation in January, we were told it would be zero. In February, my heart was pounding. Zero again. March, same thing. April, zero.” By that point, most of his crop of winter wheat had already withered and died.
And the enviroweenies are just so sensitive to your pain, of course, but:
“The farmers may be facing hardship, but so are the fishermen and the fish,” says Carolee Krieger, president of the California Water Impact Network, a lobby group based in Santa Barbara on the Pacific coast that fought for the restrictions.

If water pumping resumes in the Delta, more wildlife will be endangered, she argues. “The smelt is a bellwether and it's a very important marker for the health of the whole estuary.”

As for impact on humans, “it's really sad that there is unemployment, but we're all in an economic downturn,” she says, noting that stocks are so low, salmon fishing hasn't been allowed in California for nearly three years.
Translation: "Screw you nasty farmers, we think the smelt is more valuable."

And among the results of "Save the smelt no matter the price",
Mendota, population 10,000, was once famous as the “cantaloupe capital of the world.” Today, it is the jobless capital of America, with an unemployment rate of 41 per cent.

And, as usual when the enviroweenies are involved(or in California, in charge),
There is also talk of short-term solutions, such as diverting water from other areas to the San Joaquin Valley or rebuilding the pumps so they don't kill the fish.

Environmental groups still maintain that's not enough, and that any form of diversion is ultimately damaging and unsustainable.
Repeat: "Screw you farmers and people, we're worried about the smelt. And anything else we can claim as a reason to drive you out."

Nigerian has shotgun, needs stock, can't buy one;

so he takes care of it himself.

Nice piece of work. Now he needs a recoil pad; 12-gauge recoil on that handle... that can't be comfortable.

Safety recall on some SIG P238 pistols

Arthur, in comments on the Mosquito, pointed me to this link:
SIG SAUER, Inc. has initiated a Mandatory Safety Upgrade pertaining to our new Model P238™ pistols. We have determined that a small number of P238 pistols may have safety levers that are not manufactured to factory specifications. Under certain conditions, it may be possible for the lever not to be completely engaged in the safe position. In this condition, the gun will not fire when the trigger is pulled. However, when the safety lever is moved to the off position, the hammer may fall, with the remote possibility that the gun could fire unintentionally, thus creating a risk of injury or death.
The factory page on this matter is here with full information; if you've got one of these, make sure if yours is one of those needing the fix.

Things I did not know about Ernest

Or Jim Varney, to use his real name. In Oklahoma he did a bunch of commercials for Braum's dairy stores, and then did some movies. Ernest Scared Stupid was his Halloween movie, and the kids loved it; it was so dumb in places it was awful(deliberately), even the kids- who were little- thought so and didn't care, because it was funny as hell.

He died a few years ago. Ace posted some information about him I'd had no idea of, including
While Varney is best known as Ernest one thing that most people do not know about him is that he was a trained Shakespearean actor and classic theater remained a love of his throughout life. He did a lot of standup, appearing on The Tonight Show and was a close friend of Robin Williams from their touring days. People that knew him say that unlike the characters he played he was extremely smart with a near photographic memory. He also gave a lot of money to youth drama programs, financed a Shakespeare theater in Tennessee, and was very active with the Make-A-Wish Foundation, visiting several hundred terminally ill children as 'Ernest'. By all accounts he was a decent, humble man who was happy with the success that he eventually found.
Another one of those people you never think to dig into, and have no idea what all you don't know.

In light of the idiocy from PayPal noted earlier,

I'll point you to the runaround Uncle had with them.
Their response is the same. I try a few more times because it’s funny:

Say Uncle: So, what’s the point of a reply form/email address if no one’s going to read it?

PayPal Monkey With Typewriter: Same exact response

Say Uncle: Whatcha wearing, sexy?

PayPal Monkey With Typewriter: Same exact response

Say Uncle: Are you retarded?

PayPal Monkey With Typewriter: Same exact response
I've heard of some real difficulties with them, but this just takes the cake.

Lots of guns do come with better sights now,

as Caleb points out, but this reminded me of something.

Friend, a while back, bought a Sig Mosquito, their .22 semi-auto pistol. The thing came with three front sights for adjusting elevation, and all were plastic; you could snap one out and snap the other in. Seemed like a cheap way to get around needing to adjust. As for the rest...

First time he took it out, it seemed that about 3-5 times out of every magazine the extractor wouldn't, which caused a jam, which caused cursing, etc. Ammo didn't matter, except that with most it wouldn't fully cycle; only one that would reliably do so was Remington Golden Bullet. So he called the customer service number and spent about 20 minutes on hold. The guy who finally answered was very polite and got him a return number and e-mailed a shipping label so he didn't have to pay shipping(very nice). Two weeks later it was back.

Now it extracted very reliably, but was even more ammo sensitive. He found that what it ran best with now was Federal 36-grain hollowpoints, BUT- only if he only loaded eight rounds in the magazine. If you loaded ten, you'd have to cycle by hand to eject the first two, and after that worked fine. Yes, he traded it off at the first opportunity and swore never to look at another one. I've heard SiG centerfire pistols are very good; apparently all their QC goes into them...

So PayPal is so anti-gun that they'll screw over Soldier's Angels

because of it:
Coincident with the Gun Blogger Rendezvous Raffle, Soldiers' Angels had also started a fund drive for other projects that same weekend. PayPal put a stop to that. Here's Patti Patton-Bader's official statement:

Online donations through PayPal are a huge part of our fundraising. They shut down our entire account-not just the raffle button—for twelve hours right in the middle of an email fundraising push. Looking at the Terms of Use, we couldn’t understand where we’d gone wrong, but we had to immediately remove the raffle so we could get back online ASAP. This just breaks our hearts because we were so excited about the tremendous fundraising impact the Gun Blogger Rendezvous raffle was already having.

(My emphasis). The "tremendous fundraising impact"? In the short time (3.5 days) the PayPal button was live, they had 42 participants and 109 tickets sold.

As noted above, we're still 43 days out from the Rendezvous. I just found out about this Wednesday. (Post is updated to keep it at the top of the blog for the moment.)

And not only did the contributions for the raffle stop coming in, ALL contributions to Soldier's Angels via PayPal were cut off for twelve hours.

Because PayPal is anti-gun.

That's it. No more PayPal. Not for buying or donating, NOTHING. They've been crapping on gun owners for years, and now this. That they'd completely cut off Soldier's Angels because of their dislike of us nasty gun owners...

To borrow a phrase, "You DO know who designed that?": Colt 1908,

also known as the Baby Browning, known in the Colt catalog as “Colt Automatic Pistol, Pocket Model, Calibre .25, Hammerless,”For the history on this little thing, go here(which is where I stole the picture from). It was designed around the cartridge(which JMB designed, too), as a 'stick it in your vest pocket/ladies muff just in case' pistol. I had a chance to shoot one last time I went to the range, and I liked it.

Take a look: the thing has a thumb AND grip safety, and being based on the 1903 an amazingly small number of parts, and even with the time it'd been around the one I handled was wonderfully fit(finish I'll get to later). And there really are sights! You just can't see them, and I include from firing position in anything except perfect light. There's a channel the length of the slide with a tiny little blade at the front and a tiny notch at the rear; why, I have no idea since even in good light if you're in a hurry you can't see the damn things. This is the classic of the pocket pistol: so small and light(for the time) you can always have it handy, and intend for up-close-&-personal self-defense. It's 4" long, 3" tall and a touch less than 3/4" thick, smaller in length & height than a Ruger LCP or KelTec P3AT, though about the same weight due to the steel frame. And the cartridge, of course.

Ah, the .25acp. What people really mean when they say mouse gun. In ball it's a 50-grain bullet- ten grains heavier than a .22lr- which is moving, in CCI Blazer(what the owner had), at a blistering 760 feet per second. Although CCI says their Gold Dot is blazing along at 900. In either case, not what you'd want to trust as your primary defense cartridge if you could get anything else; I'd assume a premium hollowpoint like the GD would expand somewhat, but still...

The thing was fun to shoot. Little recoil or noise, and it went bang every time with no malfunctions of any kind. Accuracy was about what you'd expect(from me at least) with a 'sight radius' that short; it's a good thing it points as well as it does. The biggest problem I had was getting a proper grip: the grip safety worked with no problem no matter how I held it, but if you stuck it in a pocket and grabbed, I almost always wound up with a grip that threw my shots to the left.

I have no idea what the going prices are on these, but I wouldn't mind having one; it's just so damn cute. If someone made it in .22 so ammo didn't cost so much, now THAT would be fun.


On the finish: it suffered from buffitis. Which is cause by
Finish is worn.
Somebody decides to refinish it(a worth aim, I think).
Said somebody decides to use a buffing wheel and goes to town and effs it up.
Seriously.
Buffing wheels are wonderful tools, when you know what you're doing and have the right wheels and compounds. If you don't, you'll screw it up; you'll round-off sharp edges, may actually sharpen rounded spots, and can damage or wipe out the markings on the slide and frame. Which is why a couple of gunsmiths use bad language when referring to these tools. I've done a lot of buffing on knifes, blades and guards and pommels; I would be very damn careful thinking about using a buffer on a gun. You need the right size, shape and material of wheels and have to know exactly what you're doing and how.

Buffing wheels come in sisal, loose-sewn cotton, stiff-sewn and/or glued cotton, and felt. And felt comes in soft, medium and hard. Any of them, used incorrectly, can screw up what you're trying to do, and do it fast. And they generate heat from the friction; early on I screwed up the heat-treatment of blades a few times and had to re-do that part of things, then polish it again. On the types and sizes, I once read of a man talking to a gentleman who worked at Colt for many years, finishing and polishing pistols; he said he had more than 30 different size, shape and consistency wheels and appropriate compounds just for revolvers.

So if you have an old one and decide to refinish it yourself, I have no problem with that; but take your time and find out exactly what do do first. There's a good chance you can do a lot of it- maybe all- by hand with wet/dry paper and appropriate backing. And if you hand it off to somebody else to do, make sure they don't consider "I'll just hit it with the buffer" to be the proper technique for everything.

Lawdog reviews the last Transformers movie,

and sums it up nicely:
No, ladies and gentlemen, the one impossibility that I simply could not wrap my mind around was that pair of white jeans.
Yup. At the end, after the long foot chase through the desert, battle all around, diving and crawling and running, with the primary hero looking like he'd been run through a badly-adjusted chipper, and Fox still had neat clothes, no visible scratches or smudges, and her damn lip gloss was still neatly applied.

I know they planned on lots of shots of her pouty lips helping bring in the teenage boys, but DAMN!, people...

I should note that he also opines on one of the idiocies of movie-making nowadays. I'll throw in, Uh, Mr. Movie Maker? On the occasions I see music videos, I DO NOT LIKE IT when you change scenes or angles every 1.5 seconds through the whole damn thing; why the hell do you think I'll like it when you do that through most of the damned movie?

A perfect illustration of why so many people just don't trust the cops

is found here; take note of this part:
They took about 30 minutes trying to figure out if there was a way that they could charge me with a crime (the discussion was recorded on the dash cam's voice recorders). Matthew read me my Miranda rights. I asked what I was being arrested for and he stated "failure to notify". There were about 5 officers and patrol cars on the scene and a couple of the other officers chimed in and said I something to the effect of "you should know better because you took the CCW training class." I guess I missed the part of the class where you are put in a felony stop situation in fear of your life by an overly aggressive officer who does not listen to a word you are saying. Keep in mind, that I was not charged with nor was I arrested for any other offense than "failure to notify".

After conferring with his lieutenant, Matthew claimed that I failed to "promptly" notify that I have a CCW permit and that I had loaded firearms stored in my vehicle. Matthew later filed a complaint stating that I failed to inform him within 51 seconds of being detained that I had a CCW permit and loaded firearms legally stored in my vehicle.
This, and the crap the prosecutor pulled, and the attitude of one of the judges, is a fine illustration of why so many people consider the justice system to be badly broken, and just why, as noted in the title, so many will not trust the police. They can, and many will, do that to you just because they can. Or maybe they decide you're not being submissive enough and need to be taught a lesson. There are lots of good cops out there who won't do this kind of crap to you, but it only takes one to screw your life around.

And, as has been noted before, they can do this knowing the charge is bullshit and suffer no penalty; whereas you
are arrested, handcuffed, searched and taken to jail,
your car is searched and impounded(and it'll cost you to get it out),
you have to make bail in most cases,
and even if the higher-ups are honest and throw it out you've had to go through all the above AND have an arrest on your record. Whereas if the higher-ups are like the clowns he had to deal with, you have to hire a lawyer, go through the trial and hope the jury doesn't buy the bullshit.

How 'bout cartoons this morning?

Seems more and more true: Barack Hussein Obama is Jimmy Carter II,

who never met a dictator he didn't like.
The ousted president of Honduras reportedly asked President Obama to revoke the diplomatic visas of members of interim President Roberto Micheletti’s de facto government.

Manuel Zelaya, who was removed from office on June 28 and has now retreated to the mountains of Nicaragua to organize a “resistance,” according to the Central American News Agency, reportedly sent a letter to Obama asking him to ramp up the pressure on the interim government and calling for the “revocation of visas” to those involved in his ouster, and the freezing of bank accounts.

The Zelaya letter reportedly names officials against whom the ousted president wanted action taken, including General Romeo Vasquez Velasquez, the head of the armed forces who was fired by Zelaya on June 25 for refusing to use the military to press forward with a referendum deemed illegal by the country’s highest court.
...
State Department spokesman Ian Kelly confirmed at Tuesday’s news briefing that four diplomatic visas had been revoked by the U.S. Kelly did not name names, but the deputy foreign minister of Honduras’s de facto government confirmed that one of the visas belonged to Judge Jose Tomas Arita Valle, the chairman of the 16-member supreme court who signed the ruling ordering the detention of President Manuel Zelaya.
Damn, isn't that nice? Obama giving orders to make Chavez' buttmonkey happy, even if it means spitting on the people of Honduras? Words from Miguel Estrada:
Yes, obviously the way to stand up for the rule of law is to punish the judge who signed the arrest warrant—before the supposed coup—by revoking his visa. Because, you know, we as a country must think it a terrible thing when judges enforce the law against the executive branch. (If only Jefferson had thought of this!) And punish the members of the country’s congress, too, while you are at it, even though no one could reasonably dispute their democratic credentials. This is the same Congress that was elected before the “coup.” This petty retaliation is as shameful as it is pointless.
This looks more and more like either A: Obama wants a marxist dictatorship in Honduras, or B: he doesn't have the integrity or humility to say "I made the wrong decision early on, Honduras obeyed their Constitution and law and we will respect that." Because, ObamaDeity knows Obama doesn't make mistakes(or admit it when he does).


And, speaking of Chavez,
Swedish-made anti-tank rocket launchers sold to Venezuela years ago were obtained by Colombia's main rebel group, and Sweden said Monday it was demanding an explanation.

Colombia said its military found the weapons in a captured rebel arms cache and that Sweden had recently confirmed they originally were sold to Venezuela's military.

The confirmation strengthens Colombian allegations that Hugo Chavez's government has aided the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and exacerbated tensions between the neighboring nations over an imminent agreement to expand the U.S. military's use of Colombian air and naval bases.
No surprise; there's been solid links shown before between Chavez and this group of terrorists. And yet Obama seems to be quite fond of the bastard...