Just a few days ago I briefly mentioned that FishOrMan was coming out of the closet and doing things that I didn't have the courage to do. Such as this.  It didn't take long from my post about it for something to happen again.  His hearing date is Dec. 23^rd at 9 am Courtroom A, 2^nd floor of the Courthouse Annex in Spokane (I presume).

I don't really know FishOrMan and I only know the side of the story that he is telling.  But I know it's true there is no law against open carry in Washington State and the state Constitution says,  Article 1, Section 24:

The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself, or the state, shall not be impaired, but nothing in this section shall be construed as authorizing individuals or corporations to organize, maintain or employ an armed body of men.

I would like to think that FishOrMan is a modern day Rosa Parks who was punished for daring to not sit at the back of the bus, or the gays that were beat up simply for the sport of it.  For far too many years gun owners have been treated like crap and it's time we came out of the closet and demanded our rights.

Inalienable rights are not asked or pleaded for.  They are demanded and taken, by force if necessary.  The police and politicians must stop this unjustified attack on our unalienable rights.

Three goblins gain entry to house and ask maid, at pistol point, where child is. Maid says that she doesn't know. Mother walks into room. Goblins ask mother. Mother tells them same. Second maid sees goblins and screams. Crowd gathers to see what's happening. Goblins fire to scare crowd away. Big mistake - most neighbors are military or security types. Goblins retreat into house and attempt escape across roof and out into street. First goblin is shot in leg and promptly beaten to death. Second goblin is shot in leg, beaten, and left for dead. (Made it alive to hospital; unknown if he lived.) Third goblin manages to make it to police where he falls on knees and begs officers to arrest him. Neighbors unhappy about arrest since it ruined their scores on goblin catching.

Big difference in reactions between Americans and Guatemalans."

Thomas K. Graziano,
April 18, 1994,
Guatemala City, Guatemala

From Jeff Cooper's Commentaries
Vol. 2, No. 7
3 June 1994

As you can see there are now Google ads on my blog.  I decided I made a poor gamble and lost my 'bet' so now I need to “pay up”.  I can terminate them at anytime so if I get too annoyed with them I will do that.  With the latest news on the Second Amendment being considered an individual right by the Justice Department and there not being any evidence that gun control prevents crime I think I will try pushing for a removal of there no firearms or ammunition policy again.

The Justice Department just released a report that could give us a bunch of momentum in our fight to restore our lost civil rights:

...we conclude that the Second Amendment secures a personal right of individuals, not a collective right that may only be invoked by a State or a quasi-collective right restricted to those persons who serve in organized militia units. Our conclusion is based on the Amendment's text, as commonly understood at the time of its adoption and interpreted in light of other provisions of the Constitution and the Amendment's historical antecedents. Our analysis is limited to determining whether the Amendment secures an individual, collective, or quasi-collective right.

Wonderful news.  Now the not quite so good news:

We do not consider the substance of that right, including its contours or the nature or type of governmental interests that would justify restrictions on its exercise, and nothing in this memorandum is intended to address or call into question the constitutionality, under the Second Amendment, of any particular limitations on owning, carrying, or using firearms.

I haven't read the whole thing yet.  It's long, lots of history, and lots of detail. 

Now if we can use this to drive the anti-gun people into total oblivion.  I want them struggling to keep NBC (Nukes, Biological, and Chemical) restrictions.

I said Gregoire would “win“ the governors race.  It seems they just can't stop finding more ballots in King County:

With Washington state in the middle of a recount of its amazingly close governor's race, election officials in Seattle's King County entered a warehouse Friday and found a plastic tray containing 150 misplaced ballots.

The discovery brings the number of belatedly discovered ballots to 723 in the heavily Democratic county potentially enough to swing the election to Democrat Christine Gregoire.

I really, really, want to be wrong on this.  Gregoire is very anti-gun.

I'd like to believe that the anti's [anti-gun proponents] are emotional, but I'm cynical enough to think that their ultimate leadership is driven by a cold desire for power and a grandiose need to alter the architecture of society. ... The emotionalism is their rhetorical voice, which they have selected as the best way to move the public to their attitudes and beliefs.
   
Sean Flynn
5/14/98

I decided that since Google had gone public maybe they would be less openly bigoted against gun owners.  I wasn't interested in advertising with them but I thought perhaps I would feel comfortable with them paying me money to advertise on one or more of my web sites.  Boomershoot.org gets, by far, the most traffic so I applied with that site.  I got the following rejection.  Boomershoot.org apparently violates one or more of their policies (see the links below).  When I first got the rejection below I looked at the policy and it included pyrotechnics and explosives.  It no longer does.  Now the only infringement I might be violating is this one:

Sales or promotion of certain weapons, such as firearms, ammunition, balisongs, butterfly knives, and brass knuckles

Which, technically, boomershoot.org is not doing.  It promotes the use of firearms and ammunition.  But I'm not sure they see things my way.  I thought about my rejection for quite a while and considered organizing a boycott against Google (sort of like boycotting Microsoft, very tough to do).  I have helped with that sort of thing before and we were successful.  I did a quick search and found lots of other people already with the same idea for various reasons and decided it wasn't very feasible.

So I decided I would expose them for being bigots against free speech as well as firearms.  When I got around to posting a bunch of progun blog entries on my blog I sent them a message asking about putting AdSense on my blog.  To my surprise they agreed.

So now what do I do?  I had fully expected they would turn me down and I could publicly complain about them not even wanting people to talk about guns in a favorable manner.  I can't do that but I'm not entirely sure I want to help them get advertising dollars either.  I could turn them down and complain to them about their policy, but that is kind of silly because I certainly knew about their policy when I requested they consider my blog.

Comments and suggests are welcome.

-----Original Message-----
From: Google AdSense [mailto:adsense-support@google.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2004 2:05 PM
To: joeh@boomershoot.org
Cc: Google AdSense
Subject: Google AdSense Account Status

Hello Joe,

Thank you for your interest in Google AdSense. After reviewing your
application, our program specialists have found that it does not comply
with our policies. Therefore, we're unable to accept you into Google
AdSense at this time.

We did not approve your application for the reasons listed below. If
you are able to resolve these issues, please feel free to reply to this
email for reconsideration when you have made the changes.

Issues:

  - Unacceptable site content

---------------------

Further detail:

Unacceptable site content: Your website contains content that we do not
allow at this time. Please review our policies
(https://www.google.com/adsense/policies) for a complete list of site
content not allowed on web pages.

---------------------

For a complete list of AdSense criteria, please visit:
https://www.google.com/adsense/policies?hl=en_US
https://www.google.com/adsense/localized-terms?hl=en_US

If you would like to submit another website for consideration, simply
reply to this email and provide us with the URL. If this new website
complies with our program policies, we will help you start delivering
Google ads in minutes.

Please contact us at adsense-support@google.com if you have any
questions.

Regards,

The Google Team

The National Academies just today announced Data on Firearms and Violence Too Weak to Settle Policy Debates.

The group that produced this work was composed of: The National Institute of Justice, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Joyce Foundation, Annie E. Casey Foundation, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

Except for the National Institute of Justice and the Annie E. Casey Foundation the other organizations have a long distinguished history of being very anti-gun. I had never heard of the the Annie E. Casey Foundation so I did a little research and found these pages on their web site indicating they are at least midly anti-gun:

http://www.aecf.org/tarc/resource/show.php?object=example&id=241&topic_id=20
http://www.aecf.org/kidscount/indicator_briefs/teen_death.pdf

Yet when these organizations looked closely they had to conclude:

current research and data on firearms and violent crime are too weak to support strong conclusions about the effects of various measures to prevent and control gun violence

Of course this doesn't say “More Guns, Less Crime“.  It merely says, “We don't know what the effect of gun availability is on crime.“ 

If anyone, unless they are a top notch research scientist with unpublished work on this subject, continues to advocate gun control as a solution to reducing violent crime prior to new research coming out they are not only bigots, they are arrogant bigots. 

And the bigot posting comments under the name of MAD here and here has clearly established his or her position near the top of the list of arrogant bigots.

Read all the details here. 

San Francisco supervisors want voters to approve a sweeping handgun ban that would prohibit almost everyone except law enforcement officers, security guards and military members from possessing firearms in the city.

The measure, which will appear on the municipal ballot next year, would bar residents from keeping guns in their homes or businesses, Bill Barnes, an aide to Supervisor Chris Daly, said Wednesday. It would also prohibit the sale, manufacturing and distribution of handguns and ammunition in San Francisco, as well as the transfer of gun licenses.

...

Under the language of the measure, the ban would not apply police officers, security guards, members of the military, and anyone else "actually employed and engaged in protecting and preserving property or life within the scope of his or her employment."

If approved by a majority of the city's voters, the law would take effect in January 2006. Residents would have 90 days after that to relinquish their handguns.

One of the more interesting aspects of this is that the ban would be illegal because of state prememption on firearms laws so it couldn't really be enforced.  Another potentially illegal aspect--it's possible there is some sort of compensation scheme in mind which isn't mentioned in the news articles but if there isn't I also suspect there is a problem with taking of property without renumeration.  And of course there is that pesky 2nd Amendment issue.  But California hasn't been bothered by it for as long as anyone can remember.  And politicians, and liberals in particular, generally don't really care if what they want to do is illegal so I doubt that any of those things will slow them down any in their lemming like rush for the ocean (an urban legend by the way).  As pointed out in the article:

Washington, D.C., is the only major American city that currently bans handgun possession by private citizens. Andrew Arulanandam, director of public affairs for the National Rifle Association, said San Francisco would be remiss to use that city as a model.

"If gun control worked, Washington, D.C., would be the beacon. However, it's the murder capital of the United States," he said.

Technically D.C. is the only major American city that bans handguns, but IIRC Chicago only allows handguns if they have been registered and “grandfathered” since 1976.  So in essence handguns are banned in Chicago as well.  The end result is that D.C. and Chicago tend to alternate in terms of which city is “the murder capital of the United States”.  One must presume that San Francisco wants to join in the competition.

Update 19:30 12/16/2004: The Second Amendment Foundation came out with this press release.

No true survivalist would leave his wine cellar undefended in times of trouble. OTOH, the issues of TEOTWAWKI etiquette are worth considering. For example, while serving incendiaries to visiting marauders, I prefer a crisp, refreshing sauvignon blanc with just a hint of charred oak. The more robust reds go well with scatter gun affairs, and one shouldn't be afraid to serve an impudent, but amusing merlot for long distance encounters...

 Ward Dorrity
 Microsoft Public folder:
 SOC Emergency Gear and Disaster Survival
 March 17, 1999

I'm listening to Michelle Malkin on the radio and reading her blog on the difficulties the Federal Air Marshals are having with their boss Thomas Quinn. I agree the Marshals should be under cover. But that doesn't really go far enough. There aren't enough of them and we don't have enough money to protect a high proportion of our flights. As I have noted before there are better solutions, some with near zero cost, to in-flight security. And on the ground is this option if you want to spend money and effectively screen the passengers.

It probably won't be much if any cheaper than what they are currently doing but I do like what Bruce Schneier has to say about the security aspects of it.

In both Secrets and Lies and Beyond Fear, I discuss a key difference between attackers and defenders: the ability to concentrate resources. The defender must defend against all possible attacks, while the attacker can concentrate his forces on one particular avenue of attack. This precept is fundamental to a lot of security, and can be seen very clearly in counterterrorism. A country is in the position of the interior; it must defend itself against all possible terrorist attacks: airplane terrorism, chemical bombs, threats at the ports, threats through the mails, lone lunatics with automatic weapons, assassinations, etc, etc, etc. The terrorist just needs to find one weak spot in the defenses, and exploit that. This concentration versus diffusion of resources is one reason why the defender's job is so much harder than the attackers.

He then goes on to explain that security screener can also be an attacker against a terrorist defender.  By doing this the screener gains a big advantage and only has to find “one weak spot”.  It's great stuff and also has connections to this post I made.

Samizdata has a debate going on the potential benefits of a National ID card in the UK.  Although I didn't read every word of every comment it appears to me they all missed what I think are the fatal flaws of an ID card.  Some hinted at some of the minor flaws alright.

I really should reword my National ID Card Flaws essay to be similar to my “Just one question” post and be done with that debate as well.

Nothing says, "Please don't rape me." like multiple jacketed hollowpoints.

John Fogh
Insights Self Defense Instructor
February 23, 1999
Microsoft Gun Club Email Folder

I don't know how many times I've gotten into gun control debates but it's probably in the hundreds. Sometimes it will degenerate into a question of 'proof'. As long as the anti-freedom bigot can imagine some sort of reason, no matter how implausible, why the data could possibly be faulty or the conclusions erroneous they will claim that the pro-freedom position is wrong. Other times it will boil down to "I just don't want people carrying guns around". Some people just say, "I'm entitled to my opinion." Other times it will be "I don't believe your facts" (the RCOB moment this last one generates will be discussed some other time).

I've become very weary of these debates. Recently, unless it is a public or semi-public debate I rapidly loose interest and let it drop. Failing to convince (essentially no one will admit they were wrong no matter how badly they get "beaten up") just one person isn't worth the effort to me. A few years ago I came up with my "one question" response to bring the debate to a quick close but I tend to let myself get drawn into refuting their points rather than bring them to my playing field where they don't stand a chance of survival. I now want to present this "one question" in as much detail yet as succinctly as I can. Then I can just refer people to this post and be done with them.

There is only one real question (this is NOT the "one question") to ask, "Does gun control make the average person more or less safe?" Yes, we could debate what the 2nd Amendment really means. And we could debate how even if all guns were banned you would still have to reanimate your cold dead fingers before you could take it from me. But that is a distraction from the real question (again, NOT the "one question"), "Should firearms be restricted?"

There are essentially just two ways to look at the data--each has their weaknesses. You can look in one political or geographical area over two or more time periods where the gun laws are different. Or you can look at one time period in two or more political or geographical areas where the gun laws are different. There have been so many gun and weapon control laws passed over the years that there is no need to do any more experiments. The data is all out there. Researchers have written hundreds of papers and books on the subject.

My "one question" is this:

Can you demonstrate one time or place, throughout all history, where the average person was made safer by restricting access to handheld weapons?

There are three possible answers to this question.

1. "I don't know." In which case my response is, "Come back to the debate when you can answer 'Yes' or 'No'."
2. "No." In which case my response is, "Then you should be advocating the repeal of ALL gun control laws and I don't want to hear a single anti-freedom word from you on this topic again."
3. "Yes and here is my demonstration."

I have researched this fairly extensively and I can't find the data to support a “Yes“ answer. I have asked a lot of people this question and I haven't yet heard a "Yes" answer demonstrated. In October of 2003 the CDC released a study on this topic and couldn't come up with a "Yes" answer either. I'm not the slightest bit worried someone will be able to come up with a defensible "Yes".

If you are someone that has a "Yes" answer and believe you can conclusively demonstrate that then write it up and email it to me. Plan to have your work posted on a website of my choosing along with my comments. I will give you credit for your work or keep it anonymous--whichever you prefer. I will put links to those responses in the comments to this post.

Hint to potential takers--the U.K. versus the U.S. fails in a big way.  Look at before and after gun control was introduced in the U.K.

If you can't come up with a defensible "Yes" answer and still persist in supporting gun control then you are either a bigot or an ignorant bigot.  Prepare to be called that to your face if you persist.

Any comments to this post presuming to support a "Yes" answer will be deleted.

Done. I'll be referring people to this post in the future and severely reducing the time I spend debating.

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)

FishOrMan has recently been recently pushing the bleeding edge on coming out of the closet.  I've long advocated it in a round about way but I never had the courage to push it as far he has.  Thank you Jason.  Keep us posted.

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:

Eugene Econ, the instructor for the Boomershoot 2005 Precision Rifle Clinic, has given me the details and I have put them on boomershoot.org.  If he gets enough entries there will be a two day clinic this year.  You can sign up for Friday and/or Saturday.  The main Boomershoot 2005 event will be on Sunday May 1.  The precision rifle clinic always seems to fill up with a waiting list by early April.  Get your entries in early if you want to attend.

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.

Read about it here.

Xenia had her Christmas concert in the Kibbie Dome last night.  She had her view of things and she posted a few pictures too.  I took almost all the pictures and put the ones I like here.  It's tough for me to stay interested in just music.  My mind ends up wandering and I spent a lot of time thinking about ways terrorist might take advantage of a gathering like that.  Lots of the possibilities were very unpleasant.  Most of the music was pleasant though.  There were a couple schools that were just pathetic, but Xenia's school and the University of Idaho were really good.

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.