Jay, from my place of work, is a novice shooter and doesn't even own a gun.  At a real Boomershoot he would have to borrow or buy a gun then wouldn't really have much of a chance to even connect with one without a lot of help.  He had watched the video, read the articles and wanted to try it.  Ry and I made up some targets on the 19th and Jay showed up last Saturday on the 25th when Ry, Barb, and I were doing some improvements to the range. 

It all started out pretty normal with me giving him the safety instructions and doing some dry fire exercises with him.  The only thing a little unusual, up to this point, was him wanting me to shoot the first one.  He got way back and watched as I shot one.  He was a little concerned about his safety and wanted to see what the effect was on me.  Ry tried to comfort (I think that was what he was trying to do) and told him that Ry was the only person to ever get hurt shooting boomers.  He told Jay about getting hit by a rock at sufficiently high velocity that it pierced a hole through his cheek.  And that was due to him not being fully myelinated.  See Ry's glossary entry for incompletely myelinated for what this means.

Jay then wanted to know about the rocks in the target area where we had placed his boomers.  I told him that this particular shooting area didn't have any rocks.  I further explained normally we stayed 700 yards away from the boomers near rocks, but Ry, being incompletely myelinated, was about 10 or 15 yards away when he got his piercing.

I stayed around long enough for Ry to take some pictures as Jay started shooting and after a half-dozen shots or so Jay got is first boomer.  Barb and I got on the cat and went off to the normal shooting position about 350 yards away. 

I wondered about the combination of Jay and Ry out there together.  How was Jay going to handle this whole thing?  His normal demeanor, even at work, was something asymptotically approaching the timidity of a field mouse in the big city. Not only was he practically void of experience with guns, he had zero experience with explosives, and he was the only shooter that had ever not trusted our judgment on how close was safe.  I had given him about ten minutes of instruction and disappeared off into the distance leaving him with stranger.  A stranger who was the only person to have ever gotten hurt shooting boomers.  I decided he would be fine.  He came out here to have an adventure didn't he?

I had just barely got started working up on the hill when I noticed some smoke coming up from the boomer area long after the previous explosion had gone off.  I watched for a while but decided that it must just be the remnants of a fireball.  I further assumed that since Jay was continuing to shoot at boomers that everything must be under control.  I was correct on the first item but incorrect on the second.  Jay's adventure was started to expand into new areas.

As I watched Ry and Jay went over the top of the target berm into Alan's stubble field.  I watched with great interest now and considered calling them on the walkie-talkie but didn't think Ry was carrying it with him (I was wrong again).  After a half minute or so the smoke still hadn't subsided and then Jay came running over the top of the berm towards me.  I decided that was my “go“ signal.  I put the cat in 5th gear and went full throttle straight towards them.  The creek bed between us didn't have a good crossing point there but to go to the end of the field where it did would probably double the time it would take me to get there.  I knew I could get across one creek bank but was worried about the other side.  I figured that if I had to I could do a very quick modification with the cat to get across and then fix it up afterwards.  I didn't have to.  It was a steep climb but at a 30 degree angle or so in 1st gear the cat went right over it.  Even in 5th gear at full throttle the cat has a top speed of about five miles an hour.  And after slowing down for the creek bed crossing it probably took me nearly four minutes to get to the fire.

By the time I got there it had traveled west about 50 feet just a few feet from the base of a pine tree and it was blocking my direct path between the hay field I was in and the partially worked up stubble field that was on fire.  I had to cross an old fence row where the blade wouldn't even touch the ground where the fire was.  So I ended driving through the fire to get to the level ground on the other side of it.  The cat has steel on the ground and doesn't need a particularly high O₂ content to keep running. It was very smoky and rather warm as I drove through the fire and I hoped there weren't too many exposed oil and grease patches on the underside of the cat.  I turned around and would have normally went ahead of the fire to make a break but it was now at the base of the tree and I had to put that out.  I concerned that if I pushed through the fire I would pushed it into and up the tree more and into the nearby brush.  So I drove through it a second time to put the blade at the base of the tree (and in my excitement I got too close and cut the tree with the blade), stopped with flames and smoke coming up around me and had to find reverse, drop the blade, and drag it back through the fire while holding my breath.  The fire was cut to probably 1/10 it's size with just the one pass.  I touched up in the tree area then went back towards it's origins and finished off the hot spots.

After I had cleaned up Alan's field as best I could I stopped and chatted with Ry and Jay some.  I said I thought it would be best if they didn't do any more fireballs.  They didn't seem to have a problem my suggestion and I went back across the creek to work on the shooting positions on the hill.

It turns out the titanium used to ignite the gasoline we use for the fireballs was sufficient to also ignite what appeared to be green, wet grass.  Ry and Jay later had several more fires to put out but were able to do it without my help.  I did watch them from the distance however and hoped Jay was enjoying his adventure.  I wondered that since we attribute Ry's uncanny ability to have exciting adventures without even trying to him being incompletely myelinated that perhaps Jay is over myelinated.  It probably doesn't work that way, but often when driving cat you have lots of time to think about things and come up with crazy ideas at times.  I wondered if Jay had any crazy thoughts as he drove home alone that afternoon.  Most likely he just thought we were crazy.

Ry took some pictures but he dropped his camera when the big fire started and didn't get any pictures of me putting it out with the cat.

Last Saturday, the 25th, we went to the Boomershoot range to make some improvements before it got too wet.  It had been raining off and on for weeks and I was concerned I wasn't going to get the things done that I wanted too.

Ry took his camera and took lots of pictures.  And he wrote about it in his blog and put up his favorite pictures of the days events.  It was a rare treat for Barb to go out there when I was working on the Boomershoot.  She spent a fair amount of time on the cat with me.

Which was very nice.  She didn't pay much attention to the work I was doing however and that make it difficult for me to maintain concentration at times too.

We had lunch at my parents place and then dinner in Kendrick.  Except for the fire that almost got a tree it was a very pleasant and productive day.

What was that again?  Insanity is expecting a different result when nothing has changed?  Well, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence must be insane then.  This is a recent press release of theirs:

For more than 25 years, the District's handgun and assault weapon bans have helped reduce the risk of deadly handgun violence. The citizens of the District support these laws and should be permitted to determine for themselves the policies that govern their homes, streets, and workplaces. This attempted repeal is being brought by members of Congress who don't represent DC and who don't care about public safety.

For years D.C. has been the murder capital, or very close, of the U.S.   Just a stone's throw away in Virginia where it's legal to use the best available defensive tools the murder rate is much lower.  These lunatics want to continue with the proven failures of victim disarmament.

I don't know what data they base their risk on but it sure seems to me that someone is either trying to make a lot of money or they don't have a good idea of what their risks are.  The bottom line is that if you are a NRA member you can buy insurance to cover lawyer and liabilty costs if you use your firearm in self defense.  For a $100K benefit it cost $165/year and for a $250K benefit it costs $254/year.

It has been in the public news for a while then I heard other “whispers” and saw some photographs about it via other channels just recently.  Very cool stuff.  Set your phasors to stun...

... Xtreme Alternative Defense Systems (XADS), based in Anderson, Indiana, will be one of the first companies to market another type of wireless weapon. Instead of using fibres, the $9000 Close Quarters Shock Rifle projects an ionised gas, or plasma, towards the target, producing a conducting channel. It will also interfere with electronic ignition systems and stop vehicles.

"We will be able to fire a stream of electricity like water out of a hose at one or many targets in a single sweep," claims XADS president Peter Bitar.

...

The gun has been designed for the US Marine Corps to use for crowd control and security purposes and is due out in 2005. It is based on early, unwieldy technology and has a range of only three metres, but an operator can debilitate multiple targets by sweeping it across them for "as long as there is an input power source," says Bitar.

XADS is also planning a more advanced weapon which it hopes will have a range of 100 metres or more. Instead of firing ionised gas, it will probably use a powerful laser to ionise the air itself. The idea has been around for decades, says LaVerne Schlie, a laser expert at the US Air Force Research Lab in Kirtland, New Mexico. It has only become practical with advances in high-power solid-state lasers.

"Before, it took a laser about the size of two trucks," says Schlie. "Now we can do it with something that fits on a tabletop."

Apparently the South Koreans “can't stand” Bush and want Kerry elected.  They gave money to the Kerry campaign and when it became public Kerry gave it back.

The AP first reported this spring that Yi and other Kerry fund-raisers and donors had met with Chung, but at the time Chung was identified only as a diplomat. Yi resigned from Kerry's campaign after the story, and Kerry returned $4,000 in donations he had solicited because of concerns about their origins.

...

The U.S. officials said Chung had registered with the Justice Department as a friendly foreign intelligence agent on U.S. soil, and that his activities had raised concern he or his government had tried to influence the fall presidential election through "extracurricular activities."

I'm wondering who North Korea and China are donating money to.  Kerry already has the endorsement of communist and socialist organizations so one would think he would have the advantage over Bush for these two countries.

Time after time I have seen this happen.  But this is one of the few times I have seen it mentioned in the news.  I've been a counter protester when the pro-freedom people outnumbered the anti-freedom people 10:1.  A “gun violence educational” (it really was a group of people wanting to register and ban guns) presentation where all the people in the audience were firearms instructors.  This time the paper gives them lots of coverage as usual but also mentioned they only had nine people show up.  They pointed out that there was a big sign saying they didn't want any input from the pro-freedom side, and they include information in the article that shows they aren't even consistent -- are these military weapons as the speaker says?  Or are they different as an anti-gun web site (correctly) says.

NEW PORT RICHEY - Art Hayhoe can't fathom why a 10- year ban on semiautomatic weapons was allowed to expire this month.

...

``Who in God's name wants to sell civilians fully militarized weapons of war that are designed to kill as many people [as possible] as fast as possible?'' he said to an audience of nine.

According to information distributed by the Violence Policy Center, semiautomatic weapons are more accurate than machine guns and military assault weapons. The center is a national nonprofit organization that works to establish policies that reduce ``gun-related death and injury.''

Unlike machine guns and military assault weapons, which can fire bullets as long as the trigger is pulled and the ammunition lasts, triggers of semiautomatic weapons must be pulled every time a round is fired, according to the Violence Policy Center.

I believe the anti-freedom people are falling apart along the with the left in general and the press is finally starting to realize they have been lied to and the anti-freedom people are morally bankrupt.  Our job is to keep up the pressure up and push these people into political extinction.

Grisly news.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 21 — An Islamist group said today that it had beheaded the second of two Americans seized with a Briton last week, according to a Web site that has proven reliable in such matters.

The Islamist Web site said that the killing of the hostage, Jack Hensley, had been announced in a statement from the group and that a video of the execution would be posted later in the day. Western news agencies and the Arab news service Al Jazeera also carried reports of the killing, citing statements posted on the Internet.

"The lions slaughtered the second American hostage after the end of the deadline," one such statement attributed to the group said.

The families of Mr. Hensley and the Briton, Kenneth Bigley, had pleaded earlier in the day for officials to help get the men released hours after the group beheaded the other American, Eugene Armstrong.

The Islamist group, One God and Holy War, led by the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, posted an Internet video after midnight showing the decapitation of Mr. Armstrong, a 53-year-old engineer kidnapped from his home in the capital last Thursday. The group threatened that the other two men, also engineers, would meet a similar fate in 24 hours if its demands were not met.

[In Washington, a C.I.A. official said that the agency had assessed with "high certainty" that the voice of the man who carried out the beheading on the first videotape, showing Mr. Armstrong's death, was that of Mr. Zarqawi.]

I've heard of people wanting to nuke Mecca for this sort of thing.  There are other people suggesting even worse things on a global scale.  I think it's unlikely we will, or should, do either.  But either the U.S., the Russians or some other nation state will get very, very heavy handed if this sort of thing continues much longer.  After the election Bush will likely not be nearly so restrained.  The problem is that we don't have many options.   There is nothing to negoitate when someone insists you must convert to Islam or fight.  I've mentioned some of the things here before that have crossed my mind.  From the rational to the angry and vengeful.  There is another way that probably would work and would save Islam from being targeted for extinction one way or another.  If the vast majority of Muslims would publically denounce the beheading and the taking of innocent hostages.  The Islamic culture as a whole, must turn on the extremists that cannot tolerate non-believers and point them out to the authorities for capture or extremely close observation.  If they don't the civilized world will be convinced of the necessity to destroy the entire religion.

I used to have a Cat Stevens tape and really liked his music.  Kind of a shock to find out he converted to Islam.

Here's the story from the NY Times:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 - The Department of Homeland Security ordered a United Airlines jet flying from London to Washington rerouted to Bangor, Me., on Tuesday afternoon so it could intercept a passenger, Yusuf Islam, the musician formerly known as Cat Stevens, two government officials said.

Mr. Islam was "denied entry into the United States," said an official, and was in the custody of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. The plan on Tuesday evening was to deport Mr. Islam, who is a British subject, the officials said.

The officials, both of whom said they could not be named because this was a security issue, said Mr. Islam was a financial supporter of groups believed to be linked to terrorism. Mr. Islam's Web site lists him as a supporter of many charities.

...

After the interception of Mr. Islam on Tuesday, one of the government officials said, "He is not on a watch list for making verbal threats."

Mr. Islam was deported from Israel in July 2000 because he was believed to be a supporter of Hamas, the terrorist group.

What is probably most interesting to me is the different coverage given this story by different news outlets.  Compare the above to this one from ABC and The Associated Press:

WASHINGTON Sept. 21, 2004 — A London-to-Washington flight was diverted to Maine on Tuesday when it was discovered passenger Yusuf Islam formerly known as singer Cat Stevens was on a government watch list and barred from entering the country, two federal officials said.

...

The two federal officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, identified the passenger as Islam. They said Islam was denied entry on national security grounds, but had no details about why the peace activist might be considered a risk to the United States.

...

Islam, who was born Stephen Georgiou, took Cat Stevens as a stage name and had a string of hits in the 1960s and '70s, including "Wild World" and "Morning Has Broken." Last year he released two songs, including a re-recording of his '70s hit "Peace Train," to express his opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

He abandoned his music career in the late 1970s and changed his name after being persuaded by orthodox Muslim teachers that his lifestyle was forbidden by Islamic law. He later became a teacher and an advocate for his religion, founding a Muslim school in London in 1983.

He has criticized terrorist acts by Muslims, including the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the school seizure in Beslan, Russia, earlier this month that left more than 300 dead, nearly half of them children.

In a statement on his Web site, he wrote, "Crimes against innocent bystanders taken hostage in any circumstance have no foundation whatsoever in the life of Islam and the model example of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him."

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Islam issued a statement saying: "No right thinking follower of Islam could possibly condone such an action: The Quran equates the murder of one innocent person with the murder of the whole of humanity."

We always called her 'CC', but in the news they call her Celia.

A boy who said on the Internet that he planned to bomb his high school was turned in by the 16-year-old daughter of a university police officer who heads a cyber crimes unit, authorities said.

Authorities credited Celia McGinty of Moscow, Idaho, with foiling a plot to bomb Chippewa Valley High School outside Detroit.

Police said a search of 17-year-old Andrew Osantowski's home last week turned up instructions for making a bomb and videotapes of him with assault weapons.
...
She said Monday on ABC's "Good Morning America" that the boy -- who started at Chippewa Valley High School on August 31 -- was very specific about how he would take revenge on teachers and schoolmates.

She is sixteen now, and was only about five or six at the time, but it was after she got into some things that we thought were hidden fairly well in our bedroom that I had sufficient motivation to buy a gun safe.

Good job CC.

A very busy day for me.  I picked up Ry shortly after 0800 and went to the Taj Mahal to clean up the mess after the last Boomershoot, do inventory, and prepare for the next one.  Mice had destroyed a few minor things and made a mess.  I killed four of the eight we saw with my (gloved) hands by throwing them against the ground then stomping on them.  Ry was concerned I would injury my knee or something because of the vigor with which I stomped on them.  I also ended up killing a dozen or so yellowjackets that swarmed around us.  Very annoying.

We at lunch at Mom and Dad's and said hi to Doug.  Mom gave me some cucumbers and a couple cards for Xenia (who turns 16 tomorrow).  We borrowed a few things and went back to work.  We make a few targets for a Boomershoot Adventure for some friends at work who will be driving over next weekend.  We fixed up the geocache, It's a Blast, that was falling apart, took things back to Dad and zoomed home just in time for Xenia's birthday party.

A month or so ago I got some mail from the ATFE.  I am always apprehensive when I get something from them but that is based on zero real life experience with them.  The worst I can say about the material I receive from them was that it didn't apply to me.  Most of the time it is, “Hmmm... okay.  That makes sense.“  This time I was actually impressed.  I had decided to not say anything about it in public but then I found it on their web site so I decided to go ahead and talk about it.  They sent me some material put out by “The Fertilizer Institute” in cooperation with the ATFE.  It was about how to make our country safer.  How to prevent explosive materials from getting into the hands of the wrong people.  Hundreds of millions of tons of ammonium nitrate (AN) are used annually on our farms.  AN is the primary component of the “reactive targets” I build for the boomershoot as well as being used in the Oklahoma City bombing and numerous other international terrorist bombings.  With all that AN being used each year in 100's of thousands of locations how can you secure it such that a few hundred pounds (500 pounds could make a very serious bomb) doesn't get out?  Well... when I read the material presented it really clicked.  It reminded me of when I worked on a political campaign to oppose a anti-gun initiative (I-676) a few years ago.  The people on the phone lines would tell stories about the anti-gun people that would call and try to get information about our plans.  You only had to ask one or two questions and the anti-gun people would, figuratively, fall in heap on the floor.  If the lines weren't very busy then they would play with them for a few minutes and have more material for the story telling later that evening.  They would just ask something like, “What type of gun do you have?“  “What caliber is it?“  They would get answers like “Glock“ and “.357 Magnum“ (only revolvers shoot .357 Magnum and Glock doesn't make any revolvers).  Or “Shotgun, I'm not sure who makes it, but it's a 9mm.”  With a little bit of suggestive questioning you could get them to agree to the most incredibly outrageous things.  It was great sport making fun of the people that were trying to do us harm and now I realize that it can be more than just sport.  It can be a deadly serious means to save lives.  This is the brochure I received.  Growing up on a farm the questions and idle chatter that happens with other farmers and our suppliers which seem perfectly reasonable would throw my wife or kids for a total loop and would be a HUGE warning flag.  And that is just for someone with a fair amount of contact with a working farm and someone who grew up on a farm.  Here are the items from the brochure:

Stranger
Unfamiliar to area or to you.

Doesn't know much about farming/fertilizer
Doesn't answer questions about acreage, crops, soil composition, etc. in a specific, knowledgeable way.

Insistent about ammonium nitrate
Will not consider other products you recommend. Is only interested in ammonium nitrate.

Doesn't want product delivered
Insists on taking product now. Asks for it in bags, not bulk.

Hesitates/hedges when asked for information
Name, address, signature, photo ID, etc.

Acts nervous
Avoids eye contact. Seems jittery, uneasy, vague.

Pays in cash
Won't write a check or use credit. Has no credit account with your or other ag businesses in the area.

After reading this I also remembered a story about someone that flew from Israel back to the U.S. after delivering a paper at a conference.  The security people did a one-on-one interview with every single passenger.  It took about 10 minutes for each passenger and went something like this for this guy,

I see that you visited here for a week.  Please tell me the purpose of your visit.  Describe the topic of your paper please.  Give me the lecture you gave the conference on this paper. <listens for about two minutes>  Please explain to me what ““ means.

In short, they can ask very innocent questions and unless you actually were there for the purposes you claim you will quickly get into trouble.  In this case it's actually sort of a reverse vocabulary test.  The security agent will most likely not have the vocabulary of the paper presenter and expects to find words and phrases that are unknown to the average person.  The presenter, if they are the expert they claim to be, should be able to define the words and phrases in a manner that is consistent and sensical even to someone not skilled in that particular field.

Every group has their own language and culture.  You couldn't fake being in the military with another military person for more than about 30 seconds before they would find you out if they wanted to test you.  A chess player, a quilter, or football fan--if you don't belong to the group your vocabulary will expose you as a phony.

It turns out the reverse is also true.  If you speak the vocabulary you can gain the almost immediate trust of people that shouldn't trust you.  It's called “social engineering” in the security field and those are some of the most difficult attacks to defend against.

Hurricane Ivan could put much of New Orleans underwater.  Not just a few inches, but many feet.  In some places the water could be 20 feet deep.  How can this be?  How much rain is Ivan going to dump?  It turns out that the rain isn't the problem.  It's that New Orleans is below sea level.  The entire city was built on silt the Mississippi river has dumped over several thousand years.  That silt that is several miles deep.  That silt gradually compacts and “squishes out” and the surface drops.  If left on it's own the “big muddy” would replenish the silt to above sea level every few years as it overflows it's banks during high water times.  But levees were built to protect the city from the flooding.  Unfortunately it's only the battles of the first couple hundred years that can be won.  Eventually the “war” against the river will be lost.  Not only does the city continue to sink but silt from the river is dumped further and further out to sea (something like a thousand tons per day is dropped).  This decreases the slope for the river from New Orleans (and upstream) to the sea.  This means the velocity of the river decreases.  As the velocity decreases the river drops more silt in it's channel and furthermore it must be either deeper or wider to carry the same amount of water.  Everything is working against New Orleans remaining at it's current elevation.  This is not like Holland which is also below sea level.  The soil is much different and we have a river running through the city that is raising it's bed every day.

It will cost billions to put up a mediocre defense against the threat.  One could argue that we should just let the city deal with it on it's own or move.  The problem is that there is a tremendous amount of shipping that goes on through the Mississippi from the heartlands of the country to the rest of the world and New Orleans is the port that makes it all happen.  If left to it's own devices the river would have rerouted itself a hundred miles or so to the west years ago.  It's only the Corp of Engineers that have kept it within the current channels.  Will Ivan be the last battle?  Will this week start the journey for New Orleans to become a silt covered archeological site for some graduate students 50,000 years from now?  What will be the impact on our economy?  How will this affect the election?  Will Kerry claim Bush could have prevented it (hmmm.... I wonder what a small nuke would do to a hurricane out at sea)?

My belief is that long term the people and businesses of New Orleans should close up and move out.  Barring some extraordinary technological breakthroughs in earth moving (I'm talking raising an entire city from deep down under the water soaked earth) and/or lowering the sea this battle cannot be won.  It's better to surrender gracefully than to let the enemy annihilate you.  Spend the billions on salvage and rebuilding in another location, but surrender the current New Orleans to it's muddy grave.

Technically speaking, I'm part of the “intelligence community” in this country.  My involvement is very minimal and I really don't know how the reorganization recommended by the 9-11 commission would affect “our“ effectiveness from an insider viewpoint.  However, [Deleted on May 18, 2005 in an attempt to please PNNL management] a friend running for U.S. Congress asked me for my thoughts on the issue so I'm going to do my best.  My “position” inside the intelligence community contributes essentially zero to this.  My position would be the same even if I were still working on the “outside”.  [Deleted on May 18, 2005 in an attempt to please PNNL management]

The specific questions I was asked were:

• Would you favor consolidating intelligence-gathering into an agency independent of the Pentagon?
• Do you believe the chief of any such agency should also be independent of the White House?
• What one measure most needs to be enacted to make our nation more secure?

The U.S. intelligence agencies are tasked (and rightly so) with invading the privacy of people and countries who might wish to do us harm.  Information is a very powerful thing and extreme power needs to be carefully controlled.  The U.S. military is the primary consumer of the information because they are tasked with preventing harm to us.  So having them control the intelligence agencies seems to me to be a good idea.  Furthermore the U.S. military is specifically forbidden from acting against U.S. citizens (the National Guard is under the authority of the individual states) .  This is a very good thing.  Many other countries do not have this restriction on their military and this has lead to some very serious problems (genocide). 

But what about gathering information on people that are in our country already and wish to do us harm?  The FBI and other law enforcement people have to “jump through hoops” to gather information -- probable cause for search warrants signed by judges, that sort of thing.  The NSA and the CIA don't bother with such niceties (although I suspect they have their own internal controls).  As severe as I think the threat from terrorists is I still fear our own government more.  A look at history will show that more innocent, non-combatant, people have been killed by their own government that by the governments of others.  And the terrorists that confront us now do not have the capacity to kill millions (as much as they would like to).  I believe the wall between the law enforcement and intelligence agencies is a long term good thing even though short term is it seen as a hindrance to security.  The wall doesn't need to be complete, there should be information shared but it must exist and having the military in control of the intelligence side of the house is a good way (in my mind) to help keep an appropriate wall in place.

As to “What one measure most needs to be enacted to make our nation more secure?“ Security might be enhanced by deporting anyone professing Islamic faith.  But that would be a violation of the 1st amendment.  Security might be enhanced by eavesdropping on all electronic communication but that would violate the 4th amendment.  But the one thing we can do that will not infringe on anyone's inalienable rights is to enable preventive measures that would have stopped the 9-11 attacks and have stopped the attack on the school children of Russia the other day.  Enforce the restriction imposed by the Second Amendment on the states, cities, and agencies of the U.S. government.  The 2nd amendment says “... the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”  The 14th Amendment says the states, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States...“  The States and government regulations that prohibit adults from carrying firearms and other defensive tools in schools and on airplanes should be immediately abolished.  We don't want any more commercial airplanes used as guided missiles or our schools used as killing fields.  Allow people to defend themselves and the lives of other innocent people.  Enforce the 2nd amendment through the use of the 16th amendment.  Any government employee who violates the 2nd amendment rights of a citizen under the color of law should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

So.... to answer the questions:

• No.  I am not in favor of consolidating the agencies independent of the Pentagon.
• If such a consolidation were to occur I would want it to be independent of direct political control.  I think we learned that lesson with Richard Nixon.  If he had an first class intelligence agency rather than second rate burglars to spy on his political opponents he would have violated the rights of a lot more people and probably gotten away with it.
• Abolish all gun laws against law abiding adult citizens.