Oxymoron of the Day: BATFU Ethics

The man who recently departed as director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives ordered his staff to help with his nephew's high school homework, wasting the agency's time and violating ethics rules, an inquiry found Wednesday...

Fine received another anonymous letter Sept. 22 from a group that described itself as concerned ATF employees. The group argued that three ATF assistant directors also were mismanaging agency funds by commuting to work in government-owned cars, promoting relatives and arranging weeklong conferences for employees at resorts like the Hard Rock Casino in Los Vegas.

Looks like that kid'll make a fine BATFU agent, what with the ethics they're teaching him.

We actually ought to encourage this--every minute they waste is a minute they're leaving us alone.

Big Richard is Watching You

"By the time 2016 [rolls around], we'll have more cameras than Washington, D.C. ... Our technology is more advanced than any other city in the world -- even compared to London -- dealing with our cameras and the sophistication of cameras and retro-fitting all the cameras downtown in new buildings, doing the CTA cameras," Daley said.

And we all know how well they work in DC.

UK: Chips to Help Reel in Fish

Some customers are willing to have microchip implants as a means of paying in stores, a report out today says...Around 8 per cent of 13 to 19-year-olds were open to the idea of microchip implants...This compared to just 5 per cent and 12 per cent respectively for adults asked the same questions.

Any guesses on what per cent of these slave wannabes are open to the idea of sovereign individuals having an unalienable right to keep and bear arms?

This Day in History: October 12

On this day in 1776, British Generals Henry Clinton and William Howe lead a force of 4,000 troops aboard some 90 flat-boats up New York’s East River toward Throg's Neck, a peninsula in Westchester County, in an effort to encircle General George Washington and the Patriot force stationed at Harlem Heights.

Technical Difficulties

Been trying to post all morning--can't access Blogger--not just this site but all Blogspot sites.

Just got through after over an hour of trying. Will attempt a few quick posts, but am running out of time this morning and will attempt to post again this evening.

Ridicule No Substitute for Reality

Monday night on his show, [Stephen] Colbert aired a clip of Bellevue Republican Rep. Frank Lasee saying that Wisconsin should arm teachers in schools. Colbert concurred and took it a step further, arguing that teachers could also deal quality illegal drugs to students from their desks to make sure dealers don't sell on playgrounds. All with a straight face. Best of all, Colbert helped out Lasee by coming up with a winning name for his armed teacher plan: Chalk and Awe.

Ha ha. Armed adults protecting their young charges is a joke. Ha ha.

Or how about this:

The concept is almost as dumb as one coming from a Wisconsin state legislator over the weekend who suggested -- in the wake of the Amish school tragedy, no less -- that public school teachers and administrators be armed.

Belittle the idea. Tell people it's "dumb."

Stephen Colbert--now there's a guy who looks like he'd know what to do when the shooting starts. And I'll bet the anonymous York Dispatch editorialist would be equally competent. They offer nothing other than sanctimonious prejudice and smug, emotion-based opinion. They disregard the established fact that everywhere it's been tried, it's worked.

Thing is, with most Americans, the strategy of opinion shaping via emotionally-charged sound bites is effective. And elections are won by majorities.

Tammy Ducks Truth for All She's Worth

After a series of school shootings nationwide, Democratic congressional candidate Tammy Duckworth called Tuesday for "sensible" gun laws while accusing her Republican opponent, state Sen. Peter Roskam, of being a "rubber stamp" for the National Rifle Association...

"I have seen the effect of those weapons in military combat, and I can tell you there's no place for them in our communities or on our streets," Duckworth said, citing her experience in Iraq as a member of the Illinois Army National Guard.

Actually, Tammy, you never saw "those weapons" included in the expired federal ban, because it only pertained to select semiautomatic firearms. You've taken a page right out of the VPC playbook--intentionally confusing a public ignorant of the difference--one of the most effective PR lies the antis have dreamed up, but a lie nonetheless.

But everybody's supposed to roll over because Duckworth is a war hero. Today's "This Day in History" post should provide all the historical example we need that those who serve their country valiantly on the battlefield don't necessarily serve the cause of liberty with equal valor.

The Heirs of Liberty

Each morning, the 16,000 students in the Spring Independent School District in suburban Houston swipe their ID tags as they climb onto the school bus. A radio frequency tag tracks them, as it does when they arrive at school and as they leave the building.

Nearly 1,000 cameras watch them all day. Every visitor — parents, volunteers, the guy who fills the Coke machine — must surrender his or her driver's license to a secretary who checks it against a national database of sex offenders. This fall, nearly one in three schools literally trap visitors inside a "secure vestibule," a bulletproof glass room, until they're checked out.

From the people who bring us "gun free schools" come conditioning camps designed to produce inmates, not sovereigns.

And remember: Our enemies hate us because we’re free.

This Day in History: October 11

On this day in 1776, a British fleet under Sir Guy Carleton defeats 15 American gunboats under the command of Brigadier General Benedict Arnold at the Battle of Valcour Island on Lake Champlain, in what is now Clinton County, New York.

And ANOTHER "Senseless Child Gun Death"

A 3-year-old girl gunned down in her driveway after a trip to McDonald's was targeted in a callous attack by gang members, authorities said...

"He intended to kill her. This was a callous killing. It is beyond even what gangsters consider usual."

That does it. I'm getting rid of my guns right now. It's the only way.

Dan Rodricks' Nutty, Cheesy Blog

What comes from Wisconsin, full of cheese, and a little nutty on the outside?

No, it's not one of those nutty cheese logs you see at football parties.

It's the proposal to train and arm teachers to defend schools against violent wackos loaded with firearms.

What comes from Baltimore and is full of...well, we've already established that...

Another Senseless "Child Gun Death"

A 19-year-old man died early Monday in an apparent game of russian roulette, police said.

Police said that Juan Garcia, who had been drinking heavily...put the gun to his right temple and fired, but nothing happened...Witnesses told police that Garcia then put another bullet in the chamber and spun it and fired again...

If only they had disarmed you and me with some "common sense gun laws"...

When Babies Are Outlawed…

A woman used her 4-week-old baby as a weapon in a domestic dispute, swinging the infant through the air and striking her boyfriend with the child, authorities said.

…only outlaws will have babies.

This Day in History: October 10

General William Howe is named the interim commander in chief of the British army in America on this day in 1775, replacing Lieutenant General Thomas Gage. He was permanently appointed to the post in April 1776.

Because Just Being a Citizen Isn't Important Enough

Go ahead and check a box, any box, to tell these elitists what you think of servants who would rule.

UPDATE: Just to show I never ask anyone to do anything I'm not willing to do myself:


[Via Grandmaster Boom in KABA Comments]

"I've Heard ALL the Arguments..."

I've heard all the arguments over and over again for not only the right to bear arms but the unfettered manufacture and sales of all kinds of firearms -- even in the wake of tragedies such as Nickel Mines.

But my Sun mailbox is crammed with letters from the gun-obsessed with all the old arguments, including the one about how the Second Amendment guarantees us all the right to own guns, guns and more guns...

Your gun ownership makes you part of a well-regulated militia, that is, the National Guard. You must show up for training and exercises on a regular basis and, at the moment, be eligible for service in Iraq. That's what the amendment says: A well regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state, the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. What do you say? Are you ready to march on Tehran? [More]

Well, Dan, like most of your kind, you’re quick to offer an unfounded opinion, but are wrong on so many counts that pointing them out becomes an exercise in tedium. Good Lord, you represent yourself to be an informed professional, but you come off like a stupid, shallow child.

That’s because none of the stuff I am going to repeat here is new. It’s been around and available and used to expose your facile assertions as bunk for, in some cases decades, in others, centuries. But we continually point them out to your side ad nauseam, only to find you either haven’t been paying attention because you’re too fanatically locked into your subversive mindset, or you’re just too ignorant and lazy to look beyond your own self-imposed insulation.

Yet you say you’ve heard all the arguments. If that’s true, Dan, that makes you an intentional deceiver, because the documented truth is quite the opposite of what you represent it to be.

As for the militia of the Second Amendment being the National Guard, here’s what the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the United States Senate Ninety-Seventh Congress had to say:

Congress has established the present National Guard under its own power to raise armies, expressly stating that it was not doing so under its power to organize and arm the militia.

This understanding is codified under US Code, TITLE 10 - ARMED FORCES, Subtitle A - General Military Law, PART I - ORGANIZATION AND GENERAL MILITARY POWERS, CHAPTER 13 - THE MILITIA, Sec. 311. Militia: composition and classes:

(b) The classes of the militia are -
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.

Then we have the assertion that in order to claim the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, citizens must be members of a “well regulated militia.” No less an authority than Alexander Hamilton disagreed with you, writing in The Federalist No. 29:

To oblige the great body of the yeomanry, and of the other classes of the citizens, to be under arms for the purpose of going through military exercises and evolutions, as often as might be necessary to acquire the degree of perfection which would entitle them to the character of a well-regulated militia, would be a real grievance to the people, and a serious public inconvenience and loss...Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped…

I don’t expect you to pay any attention to this, Dan. I merely wanted to point out the obvious, and to put you on notice that an excuse has been taken from you. Now you really have heard some of the arguments, or at least had them made available to you. You do this again and we’ll all know you’re just a liar.

[Thanks to Mark P]

Un-American University

"What's depressing is how little people are pushing for gun control today. The public has grown numb about this kind of gun violence, and there is a sickening predictability to these shocking outbursts," said Jamin Raskin, a law professor at American University here.

What's depressing, Jamin, is how the legal profession, academia and the lapdog media recognize and reward an undisguised fifth columnist like you as a Constitutional authority.

I can almost forgive "authorized journalist" Virginie Montet. After all, she does write for a French news agency.

But you, Jamin. You're twisted, man. You're Orwellian--right down to operating out of "American University" in our nation's Capitol.

[Via Dan Gifford]

Well, It's Official

Monica Yant Kinney is ineducable.

This Day in History: October 9

On this day in 1775, just a few short months after commanding British soldiers during the Battle of Bunker Hill, General Sir William Howe writes to the British-appointed secretary of state for the American colonies, Lord Dartmouth, to inform him of his belief that the British army should be evacuated from Boston to Rhode Island. From there, British forces could move expeditiously to the southern colonies, without having to go around Cape Cod. As Lord Dartmouth had previously received reports that men were needed in the southern colonies from the likes of Josiah Martin, the royal governor of North Carolina, and John Murray, the royal governor of South Carolina, he ordered General Howe to send officers stationed in Boston to North Carolina to assist Martin in the southern campaign.

Rand Eggheads: "Gun Control" a Failure--We Must Fail Harder

Convicted felons and other people with criminal records have bought thousands of rounds of ammunition from gun stores in Los Angeles, even though such sales are illegal, according to a study released Thursday.

The Rand press release is here.

Here's what it boils down to: Gun control doesn't work. We need ammunition control.

It's not enough to keep a watchful eye on the 80 million or so gun owners and quarter billion or so guns in this country.

We need databases for every ammunition purchase. We need to be able to track the untold billions of rounds out there.

But we can't stop there.

We need to serialize and register primers and casings, and then track their purchasers. We need taggants in the powder so we know who bought which from which lot. The bullets themselves need to have some sort of identifier. And what can we do to make sure lead is traceable--no matter how many times it's remelted? Maybe something at the atomic level...?

Forget the failure in Canada, where bureaucrats wasted billions when they had promised only millions. By the time we're done, we're talking tracking trillions of individual components, which is a milieu the eggheads should find quite insulating as they promulgate their arcane machinations on the taxpayers' seemingly infinite supply of dimes.

And when they're all done figuring out their system and capitalizing the equipment and writing the software and generating the reports and staffing the agency and lobbying to fund it all--especially since the cost of this level of obsessiveness likely dwarfs the potential gross national product for the next few decades--and when they've multiplied everything by the square root of pi to once and for all determine out how many angels really can dance on the head of a pin, some troglodyte who couldn't pass 4th grade math will outwit the system, throw a wrench in their works and kill somebody with a gun that he stole using black market ammunition.

And the eggheads, undeterred, will pull out their slide rules, murmur amongst themselves in their grant-built ivory tower, and propose God only knows what as their next solution...

UPDATE: JR tells us a Los Angeles councilman wants to be on the leading edge of this foolishness. Figures.

[Thanks to Mike S.]