These Changing Times

Change...

No change...

I'm confused. What is it the controlling socialist elites want?

All Fired Up for Gun Control

Let me get this straight:

Yvette Cade chose a man who found "numerous sadistical ways to intimidate" her.

He kept a baseball bat under the bed. He poured gasoline on her and set her on fire.

So she's out there including a demand for gun control in her testimony?

What if a tormenter wants to ensure a defenseless victim, Yvette? What would stop him from filing abuse charges against her, maybe producing a self-inflicted scratch or bruise as evidence, and making sure she couldn't protect herself?

[Via KABA Newslinks]

At the Request of the Bush Administration...

Here I go grousing about what ought to be looked at as incremental progress. What an ingrate.

But I'm not even going to focus on how they could--if they wanted to--make the goal one of enforcing the Second Amendment in National Parks regardless of state law...that's not the purpose of this post.

Look at the great care taken to credit the Bush administration. See? Republicans--now matter how much they betray us--are different from democrats. They give us scraps and crumbs. And we can then tell each other how large the portions are, and how delicious they taste.

Forget the guy just sent in his solicitor general to sabotage Heller. This is the counterbalance, and makes it all better.

We're allowing ourselves to get sucked into political bipolar madness here, hell, many of us want to be deceived. So we have the depressed low with Paul Clement's brief, but now, rejoice, a cause for manic high!

Now go out there and vote McCain! Before it wears off.

Not Dead Yet

A small group of Senators derailed an important Second Amendment bill that was passed by the House by a 63-3 margin. House Bill 1261 was narrowly defeated in the Senate 14-17, but a procedural move is likely to resurrect the issue under a different bill number.

I've been trying to rally support for this because a South Dakota reader asked me to. NRA-ILA urges immediate action, as "Only one week remains in the 2008 legislative session."

About Those Domestic Concentration Camps...

Beginning in 1999, the government has entered into a series of single-bid contracts with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) to build detention camps at undisclosed locations within the United States. The government has also contracted with several companies to build thousands of railcars, some reportedly equipped with shackles, ostensibly to transport detainees.

What's been portrayed as the "fringe" of the "Patriot movement" has been clamoring for attention about this for years, complete with posting photos on the Internet. But they generally can't break it out beyond their circle--and are ridiculed as tinfoil hat militia kooks. The lefties get ahold of the issue, mention the dreaded Halliburton, and it makes the San Francisco Chronicle --as the subject of legitimate discussion and thought requiring congressional action.

Here's the thing: say it's all true, every word of it, (and with the way things are going, as well as recent government efforts to associate being a patriot with being a terrorist, nothing will surprise me any more), why is it the political left in general, and "Greens" (like authors Seiler and Hamburg) in particular, aren't the biggest proponents of the individual rights/insurrectionary theory interpretation of the Second Amendment out there? Have you ever met a Green who's not a statist gungrabber?

In truth, it strikes me as incredibly naive to think that there aren't efforts underway constructing facilities to be used if and when a national emergency is declared. In a society where people trusted their government (that is, in one where "civil defense" was treated and valued as a participatory partnership, rather than the Soviet "Homeland Security"/FEMA cattle-herding monstrosity conceived by the bureaucrats), you'd think such contingencies would be demanded and prepared for, with heavy and enthusiastic volunteer citizen involvement--why, we'd probably make a weekend fair out of it, complete with rifle matches and prizes.

Somehow though, and call me kooky, I just don't think that's the same vision shared by the feds.

[Via ZG]

Grading the Graders, Revisited

And, as I stated in my last post, the great state of Alaska scored 4 points out of a possible hundred, and ranked 44th out of 50. I guess we must be doing something right...

I found that the Brady's consistent top performer in terms of gun ownership legislation, The People's Republik of Kalifornia, is also the biggest offender in gun-related crimes.

The Mad Hatter looks at the relationship between Brady grades for states and "gun violence."

This Day in History: February 24

February 24, 1777
"set out at 8 o clock. Crossed 2 Very bad cracks before we got of. Foxes on ye Island. then I walked to ye Narrows with one Frost & Majr. Stevens, where we sounded the depth of the water, 7 fathoms in one place &c. and the width of the Chanel is 280 yards between ye two Islands, then rode to Sabath day point where we made a good fire, fed our horses & Eat some Vituals & then rode of in a Very great Snowstorm, wind at N. W. got to Ti about 5 o clock." -- Col. Jeduthan Baldwin