Friday night I picked up Xenia's boyfriend John in Colfax and brought him to Moscow to see her concert.  On the way he, nice guy that he is, starting talking to me.  He brought up the governors race and expressed his pleasure that Rossi was winning and had picked up a few votes in the second recount.  I told him that I expected the Gregoire would win.  Four years ago during The Florida Election I read about how the Democrats had a special team, sort of an election SWAT team that was dispactched to close elections and had a near 100% success rate in converting a narrow loss into victory.  I told John I expected that since the national Democrat party was involved with the big money to recount the vote that Rossi was screwed.  Their “SWAT“ team is almost for certain engaged and racking up a “body count“.

Michelle Malkin is now telling us that my fear is coming true.

In Massachusetts, a man was sentenced to a year in prison for shooting a coworker who was busy knifing him--for the second time--even though the Massachusetts Supreme Court admitted that "it is possible that the defendant is alive today only because he carried the gun that day for protection."

    From the book "Lost Rights", page 221.
    by James Bovard
    MA SC quote from Commonwealth v. Lindsay,
    396 Mas. 840, 489 N.E. 2d 666, 669 (1986)

I just stumbled across a web log for criminal justice in the U.K.  It has so much interesting information in it that I might find myself obsessed.  Sort of like watching the emergency crews at a accident scene.  It's a tradegy and there's nothing you can really do but see the mess the victim is in.  This site is filled with stuff like this:

• Independent: Don't worry about armed burglars, says Met chief
• Observer: Victims do have rights, but so do criminals
• icNetwork: Top lawyer backs burglar protection
• Mirror: Burglars have got rights too
• Telegraph: Burglars have rights too
• Scotsman: Government 'Sending Out Mixed Message over Tackling Burglars'
• Guardian: Goldsmith on burglars' rights

And:

• Telegraph: Under-18s face knife ban
• Washington Times: Knife-buying age to rise in Britain
• Evening Standard: Move to ban under-18s buying knives
• Guardian: 'No knives before 18' proposal
• icNetwork: Bereaved families in knife campaign
• icNetwork: Blunkett's knife plan condemned
• Scotsman: 'Make Knives Equal Guns' Say Stabbing Families
• Independent: 'Make knives equal guns' say stabbing families
• BBC: Victims' families knife law call

I've just barely begun to read the material and I'm all the more of the opinion that the U.K. is headed for disaster and the better option for crime control is to give enable the potential victims to give the universal hand signal for “GO AWAY!”.  Of course Kim du Toit has a reasonable approach as well:

...shoot the fucking goblin in the heart, at least twice, with a .45 pistol.

That is what Greg Hamilton calls, “the universal hand signal for LIE DOWN!”.

As I noted the other day www.boomershoot.org gets lots of hits from people looking for bomb building help.  For the most part I just ignore the hits although I do look at most of them.  This morning however I saw one that was very interesting to me.  I'll be keeping the details non-public to avoid tipping off future bomb builders but ask me in person sometime and I'll tell you the details.  The bottom line is that even though I have seen thousands of these hits I have never bothered to contact law enforcement about them--until today.  I went to https://tips.fbi.gov and gave them all the information.

Tonight when I have access to my log files again I'll be doing a graph of the number of hits per day I have been getting over the past year.  That might be interesting to the FBI as well.  There might be some sort of other 'interesting' information I can mine out of the log files also.  I'll need to think about it some more.  There are some pretty nifty tools here at work I have access to as well that might help in visualizing the data.

Update: I once did send an email to Israel police based only on the log files.  Below is my graph of the hits per month of people doing a search for bomb building help for the year of 2004 so far.  Note that December is only about half over and if it continues at this rate it will be about 800 hits.

Update 2: I had an error in my script for counting the number of hits.  Also I've updated the graph to include hits through December 17th.

I'm now convinced that the U.S. government know the searches done by TSA are forbidden by the 4th Amendment.  Check out this story.  John Barlow was removed from a plane after TSA found a small stash of recreational drugs in the bottom of his bottle of Ibuprofen which was 3/4 full of the original contents.  They arrested him and after receiving a $25K bond let him out.  The clincher for me is that rather than actually give him his day in court they are stalling and trying to make it too expensive for him to continue the battle.  For example:

Since I was arrested, I have had to go to California four times for hearings on the suppression of evidence in this matter, every one of which was "continued", either at the government's request, or because the government has refused or failed to produce the evidence we subpoenaed on grounds of "national security."

It's a lot like when the “assault weapons ban” was challenged in court.  Janet Reno claimed that the challengers didn't have standing in court because the Feds hadn't charge anyone and didn't plan to either.  Hence, the law stood simply because no one was allowed to challenge it.  In talking with people that dealt with the ATFE I was told that the policy in regards to Federal gun laws was that no one would be charged with a violation of a gun law unless there was a major felony involved as well as the simple gun law violation.  My take on that was that they didn't want a “poster child” for the gun rights people to take to the Supreme Court.  And so it is, I suspect, with this case. 

The TSA, a government agency, is searching a million or more people each day without search warrents.  It was bad enough when the FAA required airlines to do this, but at least it wasn't a government agency doing the searches.  Now it is a government agency.  Never mind that it's a total failure in terms of detecting “bad stuff“. And I believe it is just as much a violation of our 4th Amendment rights as it would be if the FBI were to put up road blocks around all cities and searching everyone on those roads to improve “national security“.  From the actions of the Feds in this case, I think they know it too.  It's time they face reality and consider other options.  Legal and effective options. Not just billion dollar options that make some people feel good and implement a police state.

From ABC News:

French training exercise leads to explosive mistake

It was supposed to have been a harmless exercise, but police at Paris' main airport managed to send a package of plastic explosive winging around the world and were still looking for it on Saturday.

Fortunately, "it is no more dangerous than a bar of chocolate," said a source at the military's information department.

Gendarmes at Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport placed the 150 gram block of explosive in a bag on a conveyor belt to find out whether their sniffer dogs were able to detect it.

During what was described as a "lapse of attention," a baggage handler put the suitcase with checked luggage being sent to an aircraft hold.

Police said the explosive could have been placed on any of about 80 flights.

Airlines were alerted but officials said the explosive represented no danger since it does not react to shock or fire and did not have a detonator.

The military source described it as "totally inoffensive".

Over at Jihad Watch, they put an Inspector Clouseau spin on it.  Very cute.

And I think I will quote their “totally inoffensive” line if I ever get caught carrying some plastic explosives onboard a plane.  And no, you don't get to use my guns, explosives making equipment or my wife while I'm in prison for 25 years either.

I don't know why everyone does not share my delight with explosives. If they don't, it has to be some abhorrent character defect.

Ragnar Benson
From: Ragnar's Guide to Home and Recreational Use of High Explosives
Page 110, Copyright 1988.

A long, long time ago when I was going to high school in Orofino I lived up on top of the hill to the Northwest of town.  Sometimes on the way to school it would be a bright sunny day up on top and we would be greated by a river of fog in the valley below.  A similar thing happened today when Barb, Nancy (Barb's sister) and I went to Clarkston to do some shopping.  I had to stop and get some pictures.  All those years ago I never got a picture of that wonderous sight.  In part because it was a fairly common occurance.  You don't take pictures of everyday things very often.  You'll see essentially the same thing soon so why bother?

It had been a while since I had seen that sort of image and I had a camera with me today.  Here are the results.  A sample to get you interested:

Over at the Belmont Club there is a better response than mine to the article So what do you do when your home is burgled? He quotes a passage from George Orwell's 1984 and notes the similarities.  Another book is applicable here as well. F. A. Hayek was trying to warn Briton about the hazards of socialism because of what he saw in Nazi Germany when he wrote The Road to Serfdom.  Hayek argues that when the government takes responsibility for the welfare of the people they will create more problems than they solve.  The socialist mind will conclude the reason the government failed is because didn't have enough power given to them.  They will obtain the additional power and things will continue to worsen and again they will say it wasn't a problem with the concept of government control it was that they didn't have enough.  The cycle continues and no matter how benign and well intentioned the initiators the concentration of power attracts the attention of the worse sort of people--the Hitlers and the Stalins of the world.  Ruthless and driven they will seize the power given to the government and will abuse it.  The only way to prevent that from happening is to not give the power to the government in the first place.

How ironic, both Hayek and Orwell wrote while in the U.K. as warnings for the British people and now those people are facing the very thing they were warned about 60 years ago.

The author of 101 Things To Do Before the Revolution and Don't Shoot the Bastards (Yet) has a blog!  The last I had heard she was offline and didn't know when she would start writing again.  The first two entries (here and here) I read were enough to convince me that she hasn't 'lost anything'.  She's now on my list of things to read each day.  She also has some new books out.

It was pointed out to me by Kirk in the comments to my last post that the bill where they banned butane lighters on airplanes was about 3000 pages long.  Almost for certain no single person read the entire bill and probably only a few realized the idiotic restriction was in there.  The idiots were the people that put that provision in to begin with.  Some of the others I can almost express a little bit of tolerance for.  But 3000 pages?  That should have taken them a year to go through with a magnifying glass, to debate it, to revise it, and think about all the consequences.  It affects the entire world and they allowed a vote without everyone having read the entire thing?  Before they are allowed to vote on a bill they should have to pass a quiz on it that had at least one question from every page just to make sure they really knew what they are voting on.  If they don't pass with a 'C' or better grade (no grading on the curve either) then they don't get to vote.  And their “report card” would be posted on their website when they run for reelection.  If they are flunking out by mid-term they get booted out of office, stripped naked, tarred and feathered, and get a ride out of D.C. on a rail.  The governor of their state would then appoint a replacement.  If the replacement failed at the end of the term both the replacement and the governor get “the treatment“.  Okay, maybe that is a too extreme and would never get accepted by a majority of the voters.  We can drop the feathers to get the support of the animal rights people.

I am nearly dumbstruck.  I can hardly believe people smart enough to get themselves elected would be this stupid.  The Intelligence Reform Bill that just past the House had a provision to ban butane lighters from carry-on. 

Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota had pushed for the change for more than a year after learning the Transportation Security Administration allowed them on planes.

“When I found out that they had explicitly, in their rule, said you could take two butane lighters and four books of matches on board, I thought, ’What have they been drinking?”’ Dorgan said. Matches still are allowed.

Can't you just hear the Mujahideen?  “Oh no!  What are we going to do?  They won't let us take butane lighters on planes anymore!  We might as well give up Islam and become capitalist Christians!”  And another one says, “But remember--we can take our big capitalist cigars onboard airplanes we just can't use a butane lighter with them!“  And still another one says, “They must think that we are so stupid that if we don't have a butane lighter for the fuse for the semtex we will bring two rocks onboard to bang against each other to get a spark!  Don't you wonder how these people ever managed higher math?  Oh, I forgot, they didn't!  We had to give them algebra!“

The stupidity of this action is so great that I can hardly calm myself to enumerate the issues with this.  I console myself with the knowledge that the two Senators quoted above are both Democrats.  They were already on my list for political extinction.

1. The obvious--if matches, and presumably non-butane lighters, are still allowed what have they accomplished?
2. The can't even find knives, guns, and bombs people get past the screeners.  How are they going to stop a butane lighter from getting past security?  The plastic and liquid are almost completely transparent to x-rays and the metal portion is smaller than a quarter and could easily be hidden by a handful of coins.
3. If you can't enforce a law you should never pass the law.  It breeds disrespect of the law in general, the politicians that created it in particular and it makes life more difficult for the people that are supposed to be enforcing it.
4. This will be a moral booster to the Islamic extremists.  This will be a joke they tell each other and their children about the stupidity of their enemy.

I once had a reader comment:

I don't think I'd be _too_ upset to hear that Congress, the White House, and the Supremes had been vaporized.

I'm beginning to wonder if maybe he didn't have a valid point.

Barb got me another book on tape to listen to on my long commute (she does this frequently--I love it and she knows me well enough to seldom 'miss').  This time it was Hillary's Choice.  I haven't finished it yet but so far it is fabulous.  I never really understood what the big deal was with Hillary. Why were people so impressed with her and why did so many people hate her?  As I was telling Barb the other day Hillary was an absolutely driven person from a very young age.  She was a top scholar from her first contact with school.  She was interested in politics from a young age and was first politically involved with the Republican party.

All this was very interesting to me and I'm looking forward to hearing some more of the tape tomorrow on my drive home.  Then tonight I read an opinion piece by Peggy Noonon on why and how she thinks Clinton will run for president in 2008.  It fits so well with what I've been hearing on tape that it was like a key turning an expensive and well oiled lock.  It really clicked with what I had been hearing.  Here is a sample of what Ms Noonon has to say:

Three reasons. The first is that she knows another attack on American soil is inevitable and wants to position herself politically as The Wise One Who Warned Us.

Second, she knows that a woman perceived as a liberal has no chance at winning the presidency while a woman perceived as a tough, pragmatic moderate does. So she is tough where Mr. Compassionate Conservative is soft (immigration), or is vulnerable, after a coming attack, to charges that he was soft (homeland security). She can't lose on this one. Security can always be better, and after America is attacked again anger and finger pointing will be widespread.

Third, Mrs. Clinton knows the Democratic Party as a whole is to the left of the electorate. She is used to this. It is the story of her life. The electorate in Arkansas were always more moderate than Gov. and Mrs. Clinton, and President and Mrs. Clinton for that matter. She knows how to operate in such conditions. She does not intend to go down in flames as a leftist when she runs for president. This will take guile. She has guile.

We live in interesting times.  Yes, I know--a Chinese curse and all that.

Belgium, the Netherlands, Massachusetts, and now Canada have approved it.  New Jersey, New York, California, and other states in the U.S. are working towards it via the courts and the legislature.  Even though several states had initiatives on the topic last election and the gays were just pulverized by the voters I think it won't be long before there will be several states that have approved it and perhaps even other countries.  I'm quite thrilled by this for a number of reasons.

1. It's the right thing to do.  I think marriage is a good thing.  It stabilizes relationships through a deeper commitment.  If a couple of any gender combination wants to make such a commitment then I see nothing but good coming from that.
2. It will give the politicians something to fight about other than things like gun rights, welfare, Social Security, national security, and taxes.  If they can expend their emotional rhetoric on gay marriage rather than on other things then maybe we get them to be more rational on the other topics.
3. It will inevitably bring up the full faith and credit issues on licenses--such as concealed carry licenses.
4. It will level the playing field on some of the special privileges given to same-sex couples.
5. It will demoralize the Islamic extremists.  They need to realize that we are not going to be adopt their religion as our law as demanded by Osama bin Laden.  They need to know that they are loosing ground on a daily basis.  This will either demoralize them or further motivate them and cause the sleeper cells to expose themselves.  Either way we win.

If I could dance I would do a “happy dance”.  As it I'll just try to visit the Taj and blow something up in celebration soon.

Over in Kim duToit's forum there is a post about the people in the UK and their anti-weapon hysteria.  The comments to the post have been going on for sometime and drifted to airport security.  And about how “free speech” in a airport will get you thrown into jail.  I started to make a little comment there and it grew into a rant that is better placed here.

Chris Byrne commented (minor spelling error corrected):

FREE SPEECH? IN AIRPOTS?

Joking about bombs, terrorism, security, or weapons will get you thrown in jail in an airport. Including on a t-shirt.

No, I'm not kidding, joking, or exaggerating for effect.

Technically you are right.  Joking about bombs or weapons can get you in trouble.  But I wear my Boomershoot shirts through airports without problems.  They have images and words like this:

2005 (not yet airport tested)
2004
2003
2002
2001

And the next time I travel it will be with a Boomershoot coat (that's Ry, not me).

And of course I almost (I was legal in Chicago when I spent a week there once) always travel with a firearm (legally) in checked baggage and books and papers on improvised explosives in my carry-on computer case (not to mention all the stuff on the computer itself).  As my "get out of jail free card" I carry my ATFE license type 20 (license to manufacture high explosives).  Sometimes I even deliberately salt my computer case with explosive components.  I've been 'sniffed' for explosives more times than I can count and once (March 20, 1998 in St. Louis) the blind security agent even ran her white swab over several of the books on explosives without noticing the titles of the books.  Not once have I tested positive for explosives.  Not once have I been questioned about explosives or my choice of shirts.  Ask me face-to-face about some of the other tests (some unintentional through just plain forgetfulness) of airport security I have been involved in.  In each and every test they have failed.  In one case even when they knew I had one of these in the case and they knew where it was in the case!  They couldn't see it on the x-ray.

The only reason we are spending nearly $2 Billion dollars a year (and this doesn't count the wasted time of the passengers) on screeners at the airport is to make some people feel good.  It does NOTHING to make us safer.  It's all about “doing something”.  And what it does is erode the U.S. Constitution.

They are now testing the concept of putting people about to board a bus through “prison style” weapons checks.

Passengers travelling through a bus station will undergo prison-style weapons checks from today after police installed a metal scanner to cut knife crime.

The metal scanner, which is the same technology used in prisons to detect people carrying weapons, will be deployed at Hammersmith Bus Garage in west London as part of a week-long police trial.

Operation Blunt, part of the Metropolitan Police’s anti-knife initiative, could be rolled out across other London boroughs if the trial is a success.

I grew up on a farm where we had a few cattle.  Some breeds of cattle have horns.  When we had an animal growing horns we would dehorn it before the horns got big enough to hurt us or other cattle.  From our standpoint this worked well.  We could work with the cattle and do the basic things necessary such as vaccination, castration, feeding, moving and butchering without worry that we would get injured by their weapons.  You still needed to be careful, if they were to pin you against a tree or building or something they could do serious damage, trampling, and kicking was something to be concerned about too.  But those were relatively easy things to avoid compared to horns.  Of course this meant we had to put more effort into defending them from their natural enemies such as dogs (of all types) and large cats.  But it was a good tradeoff for us. 

What I don't think the UK subjects realize is that they are becoming cattle.  Their government is increasingly becoming their owner and as such is perfectly free to shear (as you would sheep), castrate, and butcher at will.  And of course it is quite apparent that the UK government regards the natural predators of the ordinary UK subject (subjects with criminal behaviors) as just as important as the non-criminal subjects.  If a UK subject does any sort of preparation to defend themselves from predators then they are subject to the same sort of punishment as the predator.  Just as we regard all animals a equally valuable from the standpoint of meat production they regard the lives of all their subjects equally valuable.  The UK government is treating their subjects as cattle and is in the process of “dehorning” all of them.  The people of the UK need to be liberated or else used as a bad example for the rest of the world as they reap the consequences of their tolerance for such an oppressive government.  Because they gave up their firearms several years ago and we are pretty busy now with the war against the Islamic extremists so I'm inclined to say there isn't going to be anyone that's going to help them.  That means they are just going to have to be a bad example for the rest of the world.

Barb's mom Joybelle, as I reported earlier, died on November 30th.  The funeral was December 4th.  The obituary in the paper does a good job as far as it goes.  Some of the highlights:

Building memories and caring for people was more important to her than acquiring things.  Education and learning were her life's work whether it was teaching children in the first and second grade, reading to her children and grandchildren or helping in the community.  Her legacy to education and learning is evident in the numerous degrees her children and grandchildren have earned or are earning in education, physical therapy, computer science, business, pre-med, science, social science and political science.

Some of the things which aren't explicitly said are the following:

• Her determination to stand up to the prevailing thought when she believed them wrong.
• Her sense of humor.  She would make some dry comment with a straight face and an innocent look that would fool half of the people listening making it all the more funny to me.
• I sometimes joked that I never believed any of the mother-in-law jokes until I actually had a mother-in-law but I can't complain about her.  She and I would never have been best friends due to our completely different approaches to things (she was very intuitive, I am very factual and concrete) but we never had a fight in the 30+ years I knew her.  She never was a problem in my relationship with her daughter or anyone else.
• After 'retiring' in addition to the volunteering for various public causes she “made the rounds” to her kids and helped with the grandkids for a month or more at a time before moving on to the next.
• I can't think of a single time that she declined a request for help from us in any way.  She let us stay at her place any time, she fixed us countless meals and she took care of our kids when we needed help such as when I was working on my master's thesis. Even after her stroke which left her paralyzed on her right side she insisted that she would live with her daughter Nancy, who had some health problems at the time, and help her with her kids.  Barb had to force Joy to confront her own health situation (the stroke had affected her mind to the point she didn't realize how handicapped she was) by asking her to show how she could help by standing up out of her wheelchair.
• She gave our kids so many books we sometimes thought we would be buried under them.  This started before we had our first child because she was afraid some of her favorite children's books would be out of print before we had children.

Her funeral was the first one I didn't find myself my attention drifting.  Katie did such a wonderful job of being 'right on' with her comments about Joy that I was very impressed.  Joy probably would have been a little bit embarrassed by all the praise Katie and others heaped on her, but it was all deserved.

The following email exchanged occurred during the last few days:

-----Original Message-----
From: PainfulQuestions@XXX.com
Sent: Thursday, December 02, 2004 11:23 PM
To: Joe
Subject: Since you have experience with explosives...

would you like to take a closer look at the photos from the Pentagon security camera and help settle the dispute over whether the flash is from an explosive or from jet fuel?

Here is a video here that can help you understand why there is a controversy:

http://911sb.org/911CommissionReport.wmv

You can find that video, and more infor, here:

www.HugeQuestions.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Joe
Sent: Friday, December 03, 2004 7:43 AM
To: PainfulQuestions@XXX.com
Subject: RE: Since you have experience with explosives...

I looked at several of the presentations and I didn't see the security camera with a flash.  Could you give me a direct link to that image or video?

Thanks.

-joe-

-----Original Message-----
From: PainfulQuestions@XXX.com
Sent: Friday, December 03, 2004 10:38 AM
To: Joe
Subject: Re: Since you have experience with explosives...

Sorry, I assumed you knew about those security videos. They have been creating controversy around the world for years. This is why "French Fries" became "Freedom Fries".

In case you never saw this, the site in France that started this controversy is still available: http://www.asile.org/citoyens/numero13/pentagone/erreurs_en.htm

That web site scrolls left to right, not up and down.

The issue has since been looked into more deeply by people around the world. The security camera videos I refer to, along with an analysis of them, can be seen in the videos here:

http://reopen911.org/pictures_and_videos.htm

Look near the bottom of the page for:

         To download the free Internet Version
         of "Painful Deceptions" DVD click on
          the following links

Then watch those videos. Prepare yourself for the possibility that some of our government officials might be dishonest. Those videos should help you understand the anger towards the USA that you find in Europe.

That video is available in DVDs if you want higher quality, and for as low as $10 with shipping included at:
http://www.EricHufschmid.net/PainfulQuestionsBook.html

Jimmy Walter is also selling the DVD at 888-Investigate, along with books, in at attempt to cover some of his advertising costs.

Eric

-----Original Message-----
From: Joe 
Sent: Sunday, December 05, 2004 10:13 AM
To: PainfulQuestions@XXX.com
Subject: RE: Since you have experience with explosives...

I got a chance to review one of the videos that gave some pretty good shots of the Pentagon.  In terms of the fireball I don't see anything suspicious about it.  The fireballs that I produce are done with one to four gallons of gasoline and one to four pounds of explosives.  Take a look as some of these.  Go through them frame by frame and you will see the fireball does actually expand.  As long as the fuel supply is increasing the fireball with increase in size.  In the case of a plane smashing into a solid object it seems entirely reasonable to me that a fireball starts shortly after the exposed fuel ignites and then as the rest of the fuel is exposed as the tanks are flattened and ripped apart the fireball grows in size.  And consider that some of my fireballs are 30 to 40 feet across with only four gallons of gasoline.  With thousands of gallons of jet fuel much larger fireballs should be expected.  But depending on how it is dispersed and ignited the fireball could be almost any size from non-existent to several hundred feet across.  You will also see that the flame appears to be white hot and actually causes the video camera to adjust the exposure compensating for the brightness to the point that the surrounding landscape turns dark although it is during the middle of the day.

In the case of explosives, properly oxygen balanced explosive mixtures do not generate a fireball at all. There may be very short flash but not a fireball. TNT, by itself, produces a fireball because it has a shortage of oxygen.  Or in other words an excess of fuel.  As the fuel gets exposed to the air it will produce a fireball.  What is usually done is that another compound is added to achieve oxygen balance.  That is why "fuel oil" or diesel is added to ammonium nitrate.  During detonation the AN produces excess oxygen and by adding a fuel the oxygen can be used to increase the heat and hence the pressure of the detonation.  The increased heat also means the reaction is easier to initiate and it propagates easier.  The reason this is important is because I would expect any missile to have an efficient explosive and not have excess fuel to produce a fireball.  Hence if there is a fireball it would have to come from the target not the missile.  Since I doubt the Pentagon was struck in an office containing a tank of some sort of fuel I have to conclude it came from the object that struck it.  Hence, a plane containing fuel is an entirely plausible explanation for the fireball.

I can't explain everything in the video but many of the things are out of my area of expertise.  I can tell you why I would put the gravel on the lawn however.  Heavy trucks were going to be hauling debris away and new material in.  If the ground had any significant amount of moisture in it the repeated truck crossing would have softened soil and they would have gotten bogged down and stuck.

With the selected set of evidence presented in the videos I can see why people would have some questions.  But I don't see anything I consider conclusive evidence that anything other than a commercial jet struck the Pentagon.

Here are some specific fireball videos to demonstrate my points:

http://www.boomershoot.org/2003/SundayFireballDemo.wmv
http://www.boomershoot.org/2003/Kim.avi

Or for a fairly complete collection of my fireball videos see this page:

http://www.boomershoot.org/general/fireball.htm
If you have any other questions about this feel free to ask.

 

-joe-

I don't think he got the answer he expected.  And I doubt he will stop selling his DVDs and books.  But at least I didn't bolster his crackpot ideas (there were lots of unbiased eye witnesses that saw the plane slam into the Pentagon).

I keep seeing references to the problems with airport screening and decided it was time to finish my essay on airplane security.  I also added some material to the problems with existing security.  This was inspired by an article I had run across some time ago but never got around incorporating until now.  I now have an answer, but not really a solution, to the concerns over explosives being brought on board.  Read the essay if you are interested in that aspect.

To help get more notice of my thoughts on the subject I also posted a couple links in the comments section of Bruce Schneier's blog posting about airplane security.

200 pledge willingness to carry out suicide attacks against Americans, Israelis.

TEHRAN, Iran, (AP) - Some 200 masked young men and women gathered at a Tehran cemetery Thursday to pledge their willingness to carry out suicide bomb attacks against Americans in Iraq and Israelis.

The ceremony was organized by the Headquarters for Commemorating Martyrs of the Global Islamic Movement, a shadowy group that has since June been seeking volunteers for attacks in Iraq and Israel.

A spokesman, Ali Mohammadi, described Thursday's group as the "first suicide commando unit," though another official has claimed members already have carried out attacks in Israel.

"Sooner or later we will bury all blasphemous occupiers of Islamic lands," Mohammadi said.

...

Thursday's ceremony included the unveiling of two-meter (6-foot) stone column commemorating a 1983 attack on U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon as "the biggest suicide bombing operation against global blasphemy."

Another article says this:

The group, which has no links to official organizations, in September also placed a symbolic gravestone at the cemetery for two Palestinian suicide bombers who carried out a twin bus bombing that killed 16 Israelis earlier this year.

...

The group said more than 25,000 "martyrdom seeking" volunteers have so far signed up and one of its members said the registration drive would continue.

Why do they want to kill us?  It's not because we took (actually we purchased it) their oil.  It's not because we attacked Iraq.  It's not because we support the existence of Israel.  It's because we engage in 'global blasphemy”.  If you or I blasphemy then we deserve to die.

Typically www.boomershoot.org gets about 10 hits a day from people doing searches (such as on google) for bomb building help.  Just before the 4th of July it jumped up to about 15 or 20 per day then it went back down.  So far this month (part way through the 3rd day!) it has had 76 hits.  The hits I took the time to lookup are coming from the US, the UK, Australia, and Israel.  The one from Israel I sent to the Israeli police.  I probably should do the same for some of the others but it's a fair amount of work to find the proper LEO contact and explain.  And at 25 or 30 a day I simply don't have enough time to do that.  I suppose I should try to automate part of the process.  I could build up a collection of LEO contacts in various countries and have a form letter to send out.  A simple application could watch the log file and send me an email that I just have to forward on with minor tweaks for exceptions that come up such as a geographical location that I don't have a LEO contact for yet.

On the other hand it's not illegal in this country to ask for information on building a bomb as long as you don't have the intent to acutally build a bomb.

Heavy sigh...

It's been an expensive experiment.  Very expensive.  What the anti-freedom people claimed would only cost $2 Million (Canadian) is now $2 Billion (Canadian).  Read the timeline here of the failing gun registration scheme.  It may even bring down the liberal government.  A snippet follows:

Jan. 7, 2004

Prime Minister Paul Martin says the gun registry is under review. "We are committed to gun control and we are committed to the registration of weapons, but at the same time, common sense dictates that there have been a number of problems," says Martin. "They will be looked at and dealt with."

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.

The problems they speak of are, in a large part, due to the resistance of the gun owners.  Any American politicians considering gun registration in this country should keep in mind the U.S. has far more gun owners who will put up far more 'resistance' than the Canadians.

From the UK Telegraph:

"We are conducting random stop and search under current anti-terrorist legislation," began the constable, addressing me through my open side window. "Would you mind if we searched your vehicle? We're training these new community support officers."

Although a little worried about being late for my meeting, I agreed to the search. I unlocked the doors and they went through my car and its contents: my overnight bag, my washbag and glove box. Next, they gestured towards my briefcase. As I lifted the lid I pointed out to them a Victorinox Swiss multi-tool, contained in a small webbing case, and a small collapsible baton, contained in another piece of webbing.

It is perfectly legal to buy both of these items. The penknife I carry because I find it useful for many small everyday tasks - cutting through packaging, opening bottles. The baton I bought to keep at home for security reasons. I live in a rural part of Suffolk that, although relatively crime-free, is policed very sparsely. I often hear people outside the house at night and I feel more comfortable with the baton inside the front door. A week or so before, I had discovered my young daughters playing with it and had locked it in my briefcase for safekeeping.

The community support officers reacted immediately. They behaved as if they had never seen a penknife before, pulling out the bottle-opener, the corkscrew, the thing that gets stones out of horses' hooves. "This device has a locking blade," said the constable. My goodwill towards the police began to give way to alarm. I reached for my mobile to call the lawyers and explain that I was going to be late but the constable stopped me. "Turn that phone off," he said. "You're about to be arrested for possessing offensive weapons and carrying a bladed instrument in public. You'll be allowed one call when we get you to Charing Cross police station."

I asked the constable whether this was, in his opinion, a valuable use of police time and resources. This was when the policemen and the PCSOs started to become hostile. "You've committed an offence, mate, and you'd better get used to the fact that you're going down for six months," said one policeman.

There's more but the tone doesn't change much.  Tell me again.  Why are the politicians there still breathing after they started taking guns away from the people?  It seems to me the people in the UK are relearning the hard way some lessons from the 20th Century originally taught by schoolmasters Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Mao Tse-Tung and Pol Pot:

Lesson No. 1: If a bureaucrat, or a soldier sent by a bureaucrat, comes to knock down your door and take you someplace you don't want to go because of who you are or what you think-- kill him. If you can, kill the politician who sent them. You will likely die anyway, and you will be saving someone else the same fate. For it is a universal truth that the intended victims always far outnumber the tyrant's executioners. Any nation which practices this lesson will quickly run out of executioners and tyrants, or they will run out of it.

Lesson No. 2: If a bureaucrat, or a soldier sent by a bureaucrat, comes to knock down your door and confiscate your firearms-- kill him. The disarmament of law-abiding citizens is the required precursor to genocide.

Lesson No. 3: If a bureaucrat tells you that he must know if you have a firearm so he can put your name on a list for the common good, or wants to issue you an identity card so that you may be more easily identified-- tell him to go to hell. Registration of people and firearms is the required precursor to the tyranny which permits genocide. Bureaucrats cannot send soldiers to doors that aren't on their list.

Lesson No. 4: Believe actions, not words. Tyrants are consummate liars. Just because a tyrant is "democratically elected" doesn't mean that he believes in democracy. Reference Adolf Hitler, 1932. And just because a would-be tyrant mouths words of reverence to law and justice, or takes a solemn oath to uphold a constitution, doesn't mean he believes such concepts apply to him. Reference Bill Clinton, among others. The language of the lie is just another tool of killers. A sign saying "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work Makes You Free) posted above an execution camp gate doesn't mean that anybody gets out of there alive, and a room labeled "Showers" doesn't necessarily make you clean. Bill Clinton notwithstanding, the meaning of "is" is plain when such perverted language gets you killed. While all tyrants are liars, it is true that not all political liars are would-be tyrants-- but they bear close watching. And keep your rifle handy.

In an article out of Scotland with the title of So what do you do when your home is burgled?  Is this incredible statement:

To this end it is perhaps important not to dwell on the situation involving Mr Martin because, regardless of the appeal procedure he successfully went through to secure his freedom, in many ways the law still points to his particular attack on the intruders who entered his home as a pre-meditated assault. He had previously been the victim of a number of burglaries within his home and as a result of this he was effectively prepared for further intrusion and reacted as such when his farmhouse was broken into again.

I'm aghast!  If you prepare for further intrusions into your home you are guilty of “pre-meditated assault”?  And what is it if you have your life insurance paid up and you get in a car accident and die?  Is it suicide?

So what is it you think this “expert” advises people to do if they are the vicitim of a “hot burglery”?  Get this.  He advises:

...the victim should adopt a state of active passivity.

I'm of the opinion that giving them the universal hand signal for “GO AWAY!” is more effective.

Free Muslims against Terrorism are asking all people to sign a petition.  This is very encouraging to me.  This does not mean we should let our guard down in the slightest.  It only means we may be getting some allies. The complete petition is below.  I found it via Jihad Watch:

Sign Petition to Punish Religious Leaders who Preach Violence and Justify Terrorism

November 30, 2004
Freemuslims.org

Sign Petition to Punish Religious Leaders who Preach Violence and Justify Terrorism

The Free Muslims Against Terrorism (Free Muslims) have partnered with progressive Arabs and Muslims to hold religious leaders accountable for justifying violence and encouraging terrorism.

The Free Muslims are petitioning the UN Security Council and the United States government to establish an international tribunal to prosecute religious leaders, including clerics who issue “fatwas” which are religious opinions, edicts, rulings and conclusions that incite violence and justify the use of terrorism. These religious leaders are especially dangerous because some of their followers consider their opinions to be gospel.

This petition is a follow up to the recently adopted UN Resolution 1566 that reads in part:

“…[A]ll members of the Security Council to consider and submit recommendations… on practical measures to be imposed upon, individuals … involved in or associated with terrorist activities…bringing them to justice through prosecution or extradition, freezing of their financial assets….”

It is crucial to hold these religious leaders accountable because most terrorists who kill in the name of Islam rely on the fatwas and conclusions of these religious leaders to convince themselves that they are going to heaven after their death.

The Following is an example of a Fatwa that encourages terrorism:

• Sheikh Yousif Al-Qardhawi issued a Fatwa permitting the killing of “fetuses” (unborn) Jews, because (according to him) when Jews are born and grown-up they will join the Israeli army. Furthermore, on September 3, 2004, (at the Egyptian Journalist Union) Al-Qardhawi issued a fatwa to kill all American civilians working in Iraq. And on July 3, 2004, he issued another fatwa permitting the killing of Muslim intellectuals as being apostates, claiming that Islam justifies the killing of such apostates.

These extremist clerics continue to issue fatwas that incite terrorism under the false umbrella of Islam. Join us in stopping these religious leaders by signing this petition requesting the U.N. to create an International Tribunal to prosecute them.

This petition has been organized by Dr. Jawad Hashim (Iraq’s former Minister of Planning), Lafif Lakhdar (A Tunisian Intellectual), and Dr. Shakir Al-Nabulsi (A Jordanian writer and author). The Free Muslims Against Terrorism has joined this effort and we seek 20,000 people to sign this petition. More than 3000 people have already signed.

All people are invited to sign this petition by sending your name, profession, country of residence and nationality to Jmhashim@hotmail.com and cc: President@freemuslims.org. Write “petition” in the subject line.

For more information Visit www.FreeMuslims.org

If anyone ever complains about the U.S. not fighting WW III by the rules of war remind them of all the weapons and fortifications found in Mosques.  Michelle Malkin has the most succinct posting on this topic I've seen so far:

BAGHDAD - A mosque raided by security forces in southern Baghdad contained a workshop to rig suicide car bombs, with seven vehicles ready for terror attacks, an Iraqi Defense Ministry official said Sunday.

Car bombings and remote-controlled roadside blasts have become routine in the Iraqi capital in recent weeks, including a blast Sunday that wounded two U.S. soldiers...National guard forces raided the Sunni Muslim Al Yassen Mosque in the southern Baghdad area of Abu Dshir on Saturday, said Gen. Saleh Sarhan of the Defense Ministry. In addition to seven cars rigged with explosives, the guardsmen found 30 rocket-propelled grenades, high-powered rifles, mortars and remote control detonators, Sarhan said.

Churches loose their special status once they are used by enemy combantants.  Converting them into a SCAD (Smoking Crater of Ash and Dust) is fine with me.  If it saves just one American life it will be worth it.

I got a call from Barb about 6:30 this morning.  Joy had just died.  Barb and her sisters had spent the night at the nursing home with their mother and were with her when she died.

See also Xenia's posting.