Interesting paradox

You would probably guess Georgia, Mississippi, or West Virginia, but this is from Utah:

SALT LAKE CITY The Utah Court of Appeals is upholding a judge’s refusal to dismiss a sexual abuse allegation against a 13-year-old Ogden girl who became pregnant by her 12-year-old boyfriend.

The appeals court on Friday ruled that the law’s “rigorous protections” for younger minors include protecting them from each other.

The decision leaves the teens in the position of each being both a victim and a perpetrator in the same offense.

“The Legislature certainly may act to protect the health and safety of children, and may more vigorously protect those of more tender years,” Judge Gregory Orme wrote for a three-member panel of the court, which made its decision “with some reluctance.”

The girl’s Ogden attorneys, Randall Richards and Dee Smith, are considering an appeal to the Utah Supreme Court.

Richards pointed out that Utah law says minors under age 14 do not have the ability to consent to sexual activity.

“It’s a paradox,” he said. “How can they be old enough to commit an offense if they’re not old enough to consent to it?”

Juveniles who are 14 or 15 and have sex with peers can be charged with unlawful conduct with a minor but the law provides for mitigation when the age difference is less than four years, making the offense a misdemeanor.

Posted in Sex

Quote of the day–Henry David Thoreau

What men call social virtues, good fellowship, is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter, which lie close together to keep each other warm.

Henry David Thoreau
(1817-62), U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist.
Journal entry, 23 Oct. 1852.

What do you expect? They have mental problems

From CBC News on the Canadian gun registry program:

1995
Bill C-68, the strictest gun control legislation in Canadian history, receives Senate approval. It calls for harsher penalties for crimes involving the use of guns, creates the Firearms Act and also requires gun owners to be licensed and registered. At the time, the government says the registry would cost about $119 million, but the revenue generated by registration fees would mean taxpayers would only be on the hook for $2 million.

Feb. 13, 2004
Documents obtained by Zone Libre of CBC’s French news service suggest that the gun registry has cost $2 billion so far.

May 20, 2004
The Liberal government, just days before an expected election call, eliminates fees for registering and transferring firearms. Ottawa will also limit its spending on the gun registry to $25 million a year, spending which has averaged $33 million a year and reached as high as $48 million. Licensing of gun owners and firearms will continue.

June 2005
In the 2004 Report of the Commissioner of Firearms on the
administration of the Firearms Act, the Canada Firearms Centre estimates that the cost of running the registry for the year ending Dec. 31, 2004 was less than $100 million. The report says costs are continuing their downward trend and should fall to approximately $85 million beginning in fiscal 2005-2006.

You don’t need an accounting or psychology degree to figure out these anti-gun people have mental problems. Estimated to cost $2 million and it then comes in at 1000 times more at $2 BILLION. The Liberal government says spending on the gun registry has never been more than $48 million per year. This is AFTER it has been revealed in the previous nine years they have spent $2 billion–meaning that on the average they have spent over $222 million per year.

With that $2 billion they could have funded 1000 more cops or better yet it could have purchased guns and training for 2 million at risk people–such as the 14 women who were killed in Montreal in 1989 when they didn’t have gun to defend themselves with and woman hating Muslim extremist Gamil Gharbi started shooting them.  It was that incident that initiated the push for the gun registry.  Instead of taking the appropriate, time proven, path of providing a means for people to defend themselves they let their bigotry and mental disorders cloud their thinking.  At last report the gun registry, at a cost of $2 billion, has only been credited with solving one crime.  So what do the Liberals conclude is the correct answer?  Why of course!  It’s more gun control.  There is no need to have them answer Just One Question.  All you need is a body temperature I.Q. to come to the correct conclusion on these mental defects called Liberals.

Quote of the day–Publicola

“We’re from the government & we’re here to help you”. If you ever hear those words I hope you’ve already started your draw.

Publicola
http://publicola.mu.nu/archives/2005/12/10/another_case_of_government_internment_camps.html
[While succinct and insightful in the literal sense I must disagree.  If they are at your door when you start your draw you started far too late.  See Why Boomershoot for a more practical approach.  At an absolute minimum you should engage from a block away.  Preferable would be a different neighborhood, city, or state.  And if possible a different country–which is part of why I support the war against the Islamic extremists.–Joe]

Interesting twist on the cold war

Tell me again why we didn’t open the ANWR for more oil production.  Here is a important clue as to why we should:

PICTURE the families shivering in apartments without heating, factories grinding to a halt, frozen water pipes bursting in the depths of winter. Welcome to the new Cold War.

At 10am on Sunday, Russia is threatening to unleash the most powerful weapon in its post-Soviet arsenal: unless Ukraine agrees to a fourfold increase in the price it pays for gas, Russia will simply turn off the tap.

Nor is it just Ukraine under threat — the EU imports about half of its gas from Russia and 80 per cent of that comes through Ukrainian pipelines.

So when President Putin met Ivan Plachkov, the Ukrainian Energy Minister, in Moscow yesterday, there was more at stake than relations between the neighbouring states. Analysts fear the dispute could provide a foretaste of how Russia will use its massive oil and gas reserves as a foreign policy tool in future disputes with the West.

“Energy co-operation has replaced military might as the mainstay of Russia’s international credibility,” Chris Weafer, chief strategist at Alfa Bank in Moscow, said. “It is using its importance as an energy partner to pursue its geopolitical and foreign policy agenda.”

RFID blocking wallet

Radio Frequency ID–the chips they put in pets for identifcation (and some people want to put them in people) are everywhere.  They used for inventory control, shoplifting detection, and ID cards.  Here is how to make your own wallet that will block the remote reading of the devices in your pocket.

Whoops! They missed one

They should have taken care of this guy decades ago.  Apparently he was overlooked.  I’m of the opinion they should give serious consideration to correcting the oversight.  In any case that he is outraged is not something anyone should loose any sleep over:

The Palestinian mastermind of the Munich Olympics terrorist attack, which killed 11 Israeli athletes, says he is outraged at not being consulted for the Steven Spielberg thriller Munich. 

He also accused the director of pandering to the Jewish state and said the new film about the incident would not deliver reconciliation.

Mohammed Daoud planned the Munich attack on behalf of PLO splinter group Black September, but did not take part in, and does not feature in, the film.

“We did not target Israeli civilians,” he said.

“Some of them [the athletes] had taken part in wars and killed many Palestinians. Whether a pianist or an athlete, any Israeli is a soldier.”

They use the same sort of logic when they kill Israeli children–they would have grown up to be Israeli soldiers.

This is what happens in places without guns–Case VI

From Alberta Canada:

RCMP in Alberta have admitted they made a mistake in failing to respond to a 911 call made by a woman who was later found murdered in her home.

Brenda Moreside, 44, was found stabbed to death last February in her home in High Prairie, Alta., nearly 300 kilometres northwest of Edmonton.

The night she was killed, she called 911, complaining that her common-law husband was drunk and trying to break into her house.

She was told by police that they couldn’t come because the man was breaking into his own residence and damaging his own property. Moreside was found dead in the doorway of her home 12 days later.

“The lack of attendance in this particular case was clearly an error,” Supt. Marty Cheliak told a news conference in Edmonton Thursday.

Technically, she could have had a gun.  The problem is that the Canadian government has made it difficult, complicated, and time consuming.  “Just dial 911! It’s the government’s job to take care of your needs.”  It is possible that there was a gun in the house and he knew she didn’t have a clue as to how to use it.  Which is the reason my kids all took the NRA Personal Protection class.  If you really need to use a gun you need to use it NOW! So, the husband knew it was very unlikely she had a gun or that she didn’t know how to use any gun that might have been present.

In any case this Neanderthal knew he could break in and kill her without concern of having his attitude forcibly adjusted by small pieces of metal traversing his brain at Mach 2.5–which reminds me of a Greg Hamilton quote.

This is what happens in places without guns–Case V

From the U.K. and the News.Telegraph:

Police are searching for the man responsible for a the suspected abduction and sexual assault of a six-year-old girl who was taken from her bath and left naked in a nearby street.

“From her account, somebody has been brazen enough to enter her house, take her away undressed and then assaulted her in a manner which is clearly sexually motivated, and then leave her in this lane, in the dark, on her own,” he said.

“I consider that individual to be extremely dangerous and that is why I am keen to trace that individual and arrest him.”

The detective, who is leading the Northumbria Police inquiry, said examination of the scene and the victim indicated her account was true.

“I am satisfied that the report, as it was given to us, is real and is credible and we are seeking to trace a male who is not known to the girl, who has entered the house and taken that girl out to conduct a sexually-motivated assault,” Mr Napier said.

Invasions of homes while the residents are home are rare in the U.S. but common in the U.K.  Sociologists and criminologists researching the differences found that criminals feared getting shot by a resident more than being arrested by the police.  This pond scum lowlife knew he would not get shot while committing this crime even though the residents were present and awake.  The odds of surviving such a brazen crime in political jurisdictions where the right of ownership of firearms is recognized without being thoroughly ventilated by high velocity lead poisoning is about 50%.  It is an exceedingly rare criminal that is so stupid that they will risk those odds of such a catastrophic failure of their victim selection process.

Quote of the day–Felix Frankfurter

Modern totalitarianisms have been a stark reminder, but did not newly teach, that the kicked-in door is the symbol of a rule of fear and violence fatal to institutions founded on respect for the integrity of man.

Felix Frankfurter
Supreme Court of the United States
365 U.S. 167
Monroe v. Pape
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SEVENTH CIRCUIT
No. 39 Argued: November 8, 1960 — Decided: February 20, 1961
[This SCOTUS opinion was written before the “War on Drugs” began.  Current politicians and judges should take this “stark reminder” to heart.–Joe]

Bomb-sniffing wasps

Via Bruce Schneier comes this article in USA Today:

Scientists at a Georgia laboratory have developed what could be a
low-tech, low-cost weapon in the war on terrorism: trained wasps.

The tiny, non-stinging wasps can check for hidden explosives at airports and monitor for toxins in subway tunnels.

“You can rear them by the thousands, and you can
train them within a matter of minutes,” says Joe Lewis, a U.S.
Agriculture Department entomologist. “This is just the very tip of the
iceberg of a very new resource.”

The wasps are trained with sugar water by using
the classical conditioning techniques made famous by Pavlov’s dogs.
Rains says the wasps are sensitive to a host of chemical odors,
including 2,4-DNT, a volatile compound used in dynamite.

To do their work, five wasps — each a half-inch
long — are placed in a plastic cylinder that is 15 inches tall. This
“Wasp Hound,” which costs roughly $100 per unit, has a vent in one end
and a camera that connects to a laptop computer.

When the wasps pick up an odor they’ve been
trained to detect they gather by the vent — a response that can be
measured by the computer or actually seen by observers.

Lewis says the wasps, when exposed to some
chemicals, “can detect as low as four parts per billion, which is an
incredibly small amount.”

I admire the innovation in the research laboratory but I am
skeptical of success in the real world. The wasps apparently have to be
trained for each specific volatile chemical. The 2,4-DNT mentioned in
the article as being present in dynamite doesn’t exist in other
explosives such as ammonium-nitrate/fuel-oil mixtures. Ammonium nitrate
by itself doesn’t really have any volatile byproducts other than, in
some cases, ammonia which would result in the obvious problem with
false positives. Fuel oil sensing would also have similar problems with
false positives as well as being easily replaced with almost any
hydrocarbon including such things as diesel, alcohol, and powdered sugar.

The ATF as well as foreign regulatory agencies require plastic
explosives to be manufactured with a small percentage of volatile
chemicals such as Ethylene glycol dinitrate,
2,3-Dimethyl-2,3-dinitrobutane, para-mononitrotoluene, or
ortho-mononitrotoluene. This is to make it feasible to easily detect
the presence of the explosives.

It would be overly optimistic to assume terrorists would conform to
these requirement in the manufacture of their own explosives.

Quote of the day–Ry Jones

He’s clearly nuts.

Ry Jones
December 27, 2005
[Referring to this guy thinking government regulation could prevent abuse of a mandatory Universal Biometric ID and such a system was inevitable.  See also some of the on-line clashes I have had with him.  He is also my number one suspect as to the person that gave PNNL the ‘tip’ to look at my blog and websites and if true is probably a conspirator in this felony.  See about half way down on this page for more details.–Joe]

Another improvement in airplane security

The offense always has the advantage in security.  Defense only has to make one mistake.  TSA is now appearing to go on the offense.  It should result in a big improvement in security:

The Transportation Security Administration plans to train screeners at 40 major airports next year to pick out possible terrorists by engaging travelers in a casual conversation to detect whether a person appears nervous or evasive and needs extra scrutiny.

The new security technique, already in use at some airports, adds a psychological dimension to screening by trying to find high-risk passengers based on how they act at checkpoints or boarding gates.

Passengers who raise suspicions will undergo extra physical screening and could face police questioning.

State police Sgt. Peter DiDomenica called the program “an antidote to racial profiling” that focuses on “objective behavioral characteristics.” He said the program has curbed racial profiling “because we’ve educated people.”

Behavior detection is routine in security-conscious countries such as Israel, where air travelers routinely face aggressive questioning.

U.S. Customs officers have long asked arriving travelers questions, often in random order. If a person gives “stumbling answers,” that could indicate the person has fraudulent travel documents or plans to overstay a visa, Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman Kelly Klundt said.

Now if they would just do the research that I have been suggesting be done.

Thinking small

Jenny Price in the Washington Post is critical of anti-freedom lobbying groups for “thinking small“:

…what troubles me most is that the gun control lobby is pouring its
resources into battles that probably won’t save many lives — and we’re
losing even those.

The real problem is not that handguns aren’t safe or well-regulated
enough, or that you can’t sue and try to bankrupt a corrupt
manufacturer after someone you love has been killed. The problem is
that 65 million people in the United States own handguns.

And if the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, which leads the gun
control crusade, continues to assure us that it won’t try to outlaw
handguns?

Wouldn’t it make more sense to define the ultimate battle as one for a
national ban on handguns — the sole gun-control measure that promises
to save tens of thousands of lives? With an endgame that can actually
achieve the ultimate goal, perhaps we’d acquire the logical and moral
authority to win more of the smaller battles.

First off, I am extremely sorry for the tragic loss of her
brother to a someone using a gun.  But it wasn’t a gun that killed him,
it was someone using a gun.  That someone could have used a car, fire,
or a kitchen knife to do the same evil.  It’s the user, not the tool,
that is evil.

Going on to the more important points it is she, Ms. Price, that is
guilty of “thinking small.”  She has an extremely poor source of
information when she claims:

Of the 12,000 guns used to kill people every year, 160 are used in legitimate self-defense.

Ignoring that she confuses the number of guns used to kill people with
the number of people killed with guns (the same gun is often used to
kill several people) I suspect she got her number from the number of
initial charges of murder that were later dropped, or perhaps mixed up
the number of self-defenses in some small geographical area or short
time period and compared that to the number of people killed in the
entire nation during a year.  In any case even the most casual of researchers
can find far more than 160 cases of legitimate self-defense in a year. 
The real number, according to numerous studies, is somewhere between
one and three million per year–most of which don’t result in a shot
being fired and never make it into the news.

Hence, her error of “thinking small” has to do with her use of a very
small number for legitimate self-defense uses of firearms.  Many
of the other numbers she uses are distorted or misleading as well.

Add to that Just One Question
which puts to rest the false promise of banning weapons to improve
public safety and I think Ms. Price should have sufficient material to
expand her thinking on the issue before she writes another opinion
piece.

This is what happens in places without guns–Case IV

Imagine being in the other room as someone counts down to the moment he is going to murder another member of your household–and there is nothing you can do about it because of government restrictions on firearms.  It’s not just terrible nightmare–it happened:

ST. CATHARINES, Ont. (CP) — Terrified occupants of a southern Ontario home were forced to listen from another room as a gunman counted down before shooting a 29-year-old man to death on Christmas Eve.

The execution-style killing happened shortly after Shelston Broome was confronted by the three men in his home around 2:30 a.m. Saturday, police said.

Two other occupants in the home were forced at gunpoint to lie face-down on the floor and were pistol-whipped when they were slow to obey, police said.

Investigators said the gunmen then took Broome into another room and counted down before killing him as the two other people listened in horror.

The law doesn’t apply to certain people

I have a five hour drive to work at the beginning of the week and a five hour drive home at the end of the week.  Five hours of boredom–except my mind has lots of time to dwell on things.  This time I was focused on the bigots at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.  In addition to the stress of the excess of adrenalin in my system without cruise control I found myself traveling above the speed limit numerous times and ended up cutting about 20 minutes off the usual drive time.  I wouldn’t have mentioned this except after trying to sleep for a couple hours I decided to read a few blogs and immediately found Michelle Malkin has posted on something I can relate to.

It’s another example of where the law doesn’t apply to certain people but it does to others.  Currently PNNL is in defiance (or has flat out lied about the existence of certain documents) of several Freedom of Information Act and Privacy Act requests.  And they still employee the people that committed a felony against me–costing me hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost income and appears to have destroyed my career.  And that doesn’t even consider the adverse impact on national security due to the negative impact of losing my contribution on certain projects.

All the anger generated while driving may not have been entirely wasted–I thought of another way to put some pressure on them.  I have some meetings arranged for talk about more traditional methods in the next few weeks but in the mean time I can start preparing a non-conventional surprise for the felons.

Putting the pieces together

I have some very interesting friends.  Barb thinks I attract them some way or another.  Of course she doesn’t always describe them as “interesting”.  Sometimes when people start talking about things that maybe they shouldn’t be talking about it’s best to just listen and not say anything that might cause them to realize they are talking about something they shouldn’t be talking about.  The problem with this strategy is that you can end up with a lot of missing pieces.  Some fragments that don’t really make sense or that leave some very interesting questions unanswered.  I just got another piece to something that has puzzled me for years.  Here’s the additional piece from Antonin Scalia:

 I even accept for the sake of argument that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged.

The original “puzzle” was presented to me about eight or ten years ago by a casual friend while sitting in a hot tub at a party.  That bit of information will have to remain unpublicized.  He really shouldn’t have been talking about that.

Posted in Sex

People don’t really change

A friend in High School had a very unique personality.  Very smart and a wacky sense of humor.  He was just there for one year when we were sophmores.  We sort of kept in touch for a year or two afterwards but nothing after we went away to college.  At the High School class reunions another friend of his and I would talk and say to each other, “I wonder whatever happened to Ken…”  Around our 30th year reunion Ken made contact and we have exchanged a few emails.  Every year he and his family make a Christmas video and I can see his personality from nearly 35 years ago in those videos.  Here is his video for this Christmas.