If you work for or are considering working for Pacific Northwest National Laboratory keep in mind they play little word games in an attempt to avoid complying with the law.

At 11:24:36 today I got a call from Mr. Mike Talbot (see page 2 of the FOIA and Privacy Act request).  I had called him last Thursday after getting his response to my requests of July 21.  The letter said I already had my personnel file and therefore they weren't sending it to me again.  When I called last Thursday I told him the file I had received didn't contain my performance reviews and goals.  He said he would look into it.  The call from him today was the followup on that conversation.  He said, as I found out after I had talked to him, that my performance reviews and other information I was requesting was in my "Field File", not the "Personnel File". And because it was in the "Field File" it did not fall under the Privacy Act as per the contract Battelle has with the Department of Energy.

I don't care about the details of their contract, I don't care what they call the file, and I don't really care if it's the Privacy Act or Washington State Law that covers it.  I just know they are supposed to give me the information in those files.  Here is the applicable Washington State Law:

RCW 49.12.240
Employee inspection of personnel file.

Every employer shall, at least annually, upon the request of an employee, permit that employee to inspect any or all of his or her own personnel file(s).

RCW 49.12.250

Employee inspection of personnel file -- Erroneous or disputed information.

(1) Each employer shall make such file(s) available locally within a reasonable period of time after the employee requests the file(s).

(2) An employee annually may petition that the employer review all information in the employee's personnel file(s) that are regularly maintained by the employer as a part of his business records or are subject to reference for information given to persons outside of the company. The employer shall determine if there is any irrelevant or erroneous information in the file(s), and shall remove all such information from the file(s). If an employee does not agree with the employer's determination, the employee may at his or her request have placed in the employee's personnel file a statement containing the employee's rebuttal or correction. Nothing in this subsection prevents the employer from removing information more frequently.

(3) A former employee shall retain the right of rebuttal or correction for a period not to exceed two years.

I have the results posted from the August 7th Lewiston Pistol Club match.  As I stated before I came in 4th overall.  Acceptable--considering the lack of recent practice.

About 18:30 on August 19th (Friday night) Barb and I decided to go to the B-23 bomber that crash landed on Loon Lake and slid into the forest in 1943 for our 29th wedding anniversary.  We threw some stuff in the Jeep and drove to Riggins expecting to find a motel in either Whitebird or Riggins.  There were none.  The fire fighters had taken what the tourist hadn't.  We ended up finding an open spot in a campground just off the Salmon river about 12:30 AM on Saturday morning and slept in the Jeep.  After waking at about 6:30 we drove about 50 miles, mostly on one-lane roads, to Chinook campground.  We hiked ten miles round trip from Chinook Campground to the crash site and back to replace a missing geocache (B-23).  Barb had not been there before and was very impressed with the site.  The pictures are here.

On the way out we figured we should go through McCall to improve our chances of finding a motel.  We arrived back at the Jeep about 18:00 tired and sore.  From the Chinook Campground it took us only an hour to reach McCall. Again, the motels were all full except for a luxury suite for $225/night.  We drove to New Meadows.  Again, all full.  We called several motels in Grangeville.  Again, all full.  We drove north, dirty, tired, and getting hungry.  At Pinehurst we found a motel with a Vacancy sign.  We rang the bell and waited, and waited.  Finally a man appeared to tell us his "No" sign was broken.  We drove to Riggins and found a motel with two rooms available.  We were thrilled!  We showered and went to dinner.  It was about 20:40 when we walked into the restaurant.  Except for the cook and the waitress we had the place entirely to ourselves.  Riggins appears to close up early on Saturday nights.  It was great food and we went to bed tired and very happy.  It was a great day in the woods and one of our best anniversaries yet.

Analog Kid at Random Nuclear Strikes is putting on the rifle postal match I am participating in.  Here is my entry, 100 yards, .300 Winchester Magnum, Blackhills Match ammo.  Except for the sighter target you can see a higher resolution version by clicking on the image.

Temperature was 74 F, indicated altitude of 2300 feet above sea level and my calculator said to use a sight angle of 3.75 MOA.  I took two sighter shots and figured it was good enough:

Two sighter shots.

After the first shot on the real target (below, ball #1) I started aiming at the bottom of the circle which contained the number. 

Completed target.

The shots on balls 10 through 15 were done by the light of my van headlights.  It was about 20:15 when I fired my last shot and getting very dark:

Well...not really.  It's just that the TSA apparently has a severe case of rectal cranium inversion.  From CNN:

Infants have been stopped from boarding planes at airports throughout the United States because their names are the same as or similar to those of possible terrorists on the government's "no-fly list."

...

The TSA has a "passenger ombudsman" who will investigate individual claims from passengers who say they are mistakenly on the lists. TSA spokeswoman Yolanda Clark said 89 children have submitted their names to the ombudsman. Of those, 14 are under the age of 2.

It was Schneier's post that alerted me.  He is more polite than I on this topic.

Update: As one of the comments indicates it appears the TSA says to allow kids under a certain age to travel even if their name is on the watch list.  But if it's "in the fine print" the ticket agent is almost for certain going "to play it safe".

Diplomacy:  The art of saying "nice doggie" until you can find a rock.

Will Rogers

Anonymous adaptation
["Sight picture" refers to having the sights on your firearm aligned on the target correctly. -- Joe]

I scanned in the letter (page 1 and page 2) I received today.  Basically they said, "You have all the documents you are going to get."  But they did give me a link to a website with at least some of the Policies and Procedures Manual.  This was a big help.  It explains a couple of things.  It includes list of things that can result in First Offense Termination.  It includes "dishonesty" and "unauthorized disclosure, access, or use of information that is proprietary or confidential to PNNL or its clients".  Both of those items were in my termination letter and were totally unexpected and unjustified.  I was completely taken aback they said such things about me--particularly since they never confronted me and asked for any explanation about any such allegations.  It was only be including those things that they could justify a first offense termination.

It was also by going through this Policies and Procedures website that I was able to find out how they justified not sending my performance reviews.  I asked for my "Personnel File."  They did send me my "Personnel File."  What I was interested in was in my "Field File."  I see...

I'll post more as I learn more.  See also the new section at the bottom of the main page of the PNNL info site.

Or should that be "millimeters away"?  It's not a lot of progress but it's encouraging:

EDMONTON -- All Canadians should have the right to buy private health insurance to complement their care in the medicare system, the country's leading doctors' group says.

The Canadian Medical Association said, in essence, that a recent Supreme Court of Canada judgment, which struck down a ban on private health insurance in Quebec because patients were not ensured timely access to care, should apply to all Canadians.

In doing so, the CMA, which represents the country's 62,000 doctors, also clearly rejected the notion yesterday that there should be a medicare monopoly. It did so just one day after doctors gave their backing to the existence of a parallel, private for-profit health system.

...

Barry Erlick, a physician from Toronto, told his colleagues that buying private insurance would be a wise investment because the medicare system cannot keep pace with demand for services.

"Governments are failing my patients today," he said during the debate. "We are saying, 'Give our patients options to alleviate their suffering.' "

I had a chat with Don Kates yesterday.  Although he lives in Washington State he isn't licensed to practice there.  He suggested another "very gun friendly" lawyer to talk to for help on my case.

The Republic is in very bad shape - probably the worst since 1776 - but it does us all well to remember that the principles of the Founding Fathers stand as sound and irrefutable today as yesterday. We must bear in mind that "they" cannot disarm us. They do not have the legal power, of course, but neither do they have the physical power. An army may be defeated by another army, but the people of a nation cannot be, as long as they are aware of their principles and maintain their determination to observe them. We hope, of course, that "they" never presume to try, because "they" simply cannot do it. What the American people need is the viscera to tell "them" No! God grant that we still have the courage!

Jeff Cooper
Jeff Cooper's Commentaries
Vol. 2, No. 2
31 January 1994
[Those were very dark days in the mid-90's.  Most people forget how serious things were and how much they have improved. -- Joe]

It's only a clue, but it's a start:

The federal agency in charge of aviation security is considering major changes in how it screens airline passengers, including proposals that an official said would lift the ban on carrying razorblades and small knives as well as limit patdown searches.

The Transportation Security Administration will meet later this month to discuss the plan, which is designed to reduce checkpoint hassles for the nation's 2 million passengers. It comes after TSA's new head, Edmund S. "Kip" Hawley, called for a broad review in hopes of making airline screening more passenger-friendly.

Someone should do some serious research into the alternatives.  It won't be the TSA, of course, because they might find out they are irrelevant or even counter productive.

Call for a cop, call for an ambulance, and call for a pizza. See who shows up first.

Jeffrey R. Snyder
A Nation of Cowards
Published in the Fall, '93 issue of The Public Interest, a quarterly journal of opinion published by National Affairs, Inc.

I failed in my primary objective last weekend.  I wanted to get hoods over the locks and hasps to comply with the ATF.  Originally they said the locks and hasps I was using were fine but now I need to put the hoods on them.  Not that big of a deal except I needed a welder out in the middle of the field.  The welder I would have used was in use since it was on the back of a service truck being used in harvest.  Harvest will be over in a couple weeks and I'll go back and finish up that task. 

What I did get done was fixing some electrical problems and properly storing more of the thousands of pounds of Ammonium Nitrate I bought.  I had stored about 1200 pounds in six garbage cans under a tarp.  I rearranged things inside the metal shed and got that down to about 600 pounds stored under the tarp.  I destroyed several yellowjacket nests inside the shed.  Put out more mice and rat poison.  And finally--I don't know how many times I have bumped my head on the overhead flourescent light.  I moved it so I can stand upright even while wearing a hat.  More pictures here.

Gun owners compromised in England and now look at things.  The anti-gun owner bigots in England can't be happy with a total ban on handguns!  Now they are going after imitation guns:

Steve Walker of GCN said "...our position is clear. If it looks like a gun it should not be allowed."

Gill Marshall-Andrews, GCN's chair, said: "No one needs a realistic imitation gun - except perhaps a re-enactment society."

GCN is Gun Control Network.  Check out their objectives.  This is what you can expect if you attempt to compromise with them.  Who could imagine that two or more people outside of a mental hospital would insist there be a "Ban on the sale, manufacture and import of imitation guns and their possession in a public place."?  Why does the newpaper consider the rantings of lunatics newsworthy?

Any fool can make a rule
And every fool will mind it.

Henry David Thoreau
(1817-62), U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist.
Journals (1906), entry for 3 Feb. 1860.

Bruce Schneier reports on a new method of airport security:

Photograph from What-the-Hack.

My thoughts on airport security.

The results from the ISPC match I shot last Sunday are in.  I'll get them posted on the Lewiston Pistol Club website soon.  I came in 4th out of 10 which is in the top half.  I'm pretty pleased considering the lack of practice.  I did best in the clasifier (DVC: Vis = Power) and came in second--four Pepper Poppers and two IPSC targets at 10 (?) yards.  I shot all the steel and got all "A's" on the paper (eight shots total) in 5.37 seconds for a hit factor of 7.4488.

People and companies in Idaho do a lot of logging and mining.  That means we probably have more than our share of ecoterrorists.  I always questioned the sanity of these people operating in the forests of Idaho.  True, your chances of getting caught out in the woods a hundred miles from the nearest police station and dozens of miles from the nearest house are pretty slim.  But that also means a vigilante has little chance of getting caught.  Particularly since they have heavy earthmoving equipment on-site.  This viewpoint was reinforced recently when I heard a rumor.  Law enforcement had been spending thousands of man hours trying to catch someone.  The ecoterrorist claims he wants to kill some cops--specifically naming a couple of them that had been assigned to his case.  The ecoterrorist uses a rifle in some of his activities against the business interest. Hence the ecoterrorist has the means and intent to kill cops.  The cops are not happy with this.  If they find him and he shows even the slightest amount of aggression they will be justified in using deadly force against him.  But he is living in the woods and it's quite likely the ecoterrorist will see them coming and be able to get off the first shot or two before being seen--if he is seen at all.  Most body armor won't stop a rifle bullet.  This far from the nearest hospital a solid hunting rifle hit to an arm or leg will probably result in death.  And it would certainly cause permanent loss of function.  The cops are not at all happy about this.  The local law enforcement officer (LEO) is rumored to have had a conversation with the target of the ecoterrorist that went something like this:

LEO: If that guy disappears and there's no evidence I have to investigate it wouldn't bother me any.
TARGET: That's what we figured.  We already got the hole dug.

Note to ecoterrorists planning to operate in Idaho forests:  Get your sanity checked.

As most readers will already know the NRA has called for a boycott on ConocoPhillips regarding their filing of Federal lawsuit against a state law prohibiting companies from firing employees who keep guns in their locked cars on company property.  In many circles this creates some mixed feelings.  Shouldn't property owners (the company/stockholders/whoever) have the right to ditictate the conditions for the use of their property?  Good question.  An Yahoo groups email list I subscribe to (WA-CCW) had this posting from a lawyer which shed some new light on the topic:

From: wa-ccw@yahoogroups.com On Behalf Of Glenn Slate
Sent: Friday, August 12, 2005 5:53 PM
Subject: Re: [wa-ccw] Has the NRA gone too far?

So here is my not so professional thought about your questions of
competing rights.  I admit it is a little unusual and unpopular right
now, but I think we all will recognize the correctness of the following
position in time.

The biggest difference here is not property rights vs. RKBA, but human
rights versus corporate rights.  Corporations are formed by the state,
they are given almost all the rights of a person, but they are not a
person.  In a competing rights situation, the corporations rights should
usually loose, as they are granted, rather than guaranteed.

A corporation is formed by an action of the state, in WA that is an act
of the Secretary of State.  WA has a state level preemption, so the
Secretary of State cannot ban CCW.  So how can the secretary of State’s
office create an entity and grant it right that the SoS office does not
itself possess?  That is to say if the Secretary is forbidden by state
law from restricting CCW in WA, how could it create a corporation and
then empower that corporation restrict CCW?

The problem with this issue becomes even more clear when you realize
that corporations need not be owned by individuals.  There is typically
no restriction on a state agency’s owning corporate stock.  So if we
allow corporation to ban CCW, couldn’t the city of Seattle for a
corporation to say  mange all it’s parks and lease the parks to that
corporation.  If they did so, could that corporation ban CCW in parks
under a private property argument?  How about to manage leased  bridges,
roads, parks, sidewalks etc.  Of course 100% of the stock would be owned
by the city, but all action would be taken by the corporation.

So the most basic (and socially disturbing) question is where did the
corporation get it’s personal property rights from?

They were granted by the state.  If the state agency could not restrict
your CCW rights, then it should not be able to grant that authority to a
corporation it formed.
Of course all this is up in the air if that state has no preemption, or
if it has a stature allowing the formation of a corporations with all
the rights of a natural person.  There will be lots of variation state
to state.

This is an entirely untested (and totally unpopular )theory, as our
culture seems to want to build corporations rather than restrict them.
  SO I strongly advice none of you to be a test case using this theory
(or any other is you can help it).

Remember I am a lawyer, but I am not your lawyer and this is most
definitely not legal advice.

--
Glenn Slate  |  mail to:gslate@emarket-group.com  | 503-445-8030
Corporate Counsel / Vice President of Client Development
eMarket Group, Ltd.  <http://www.emarket-group.com/>
eMerchandise <http://www.emerchandise.com/>

I was the first or second tank in the column that liberated a major concentration camp, Magdeburg.... There was a horror beyond the horror of all the dying I had seen. I learned a lesson that day. There are worse events than battle. When they come to take you off to the camp, fight. And people who tell you that you will be better off in the camps than resisting are not your friends.

Arthur T. Hadley
The Straw Giant, 1971

The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the Determination of each citizen to defend it.  Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are constitutional rights secure.

Albert Einstein

I just ran across this headline as I was scanning the news:  Leading doctor says free NHS is unsustainable.

LONDON (Reuters) - The National Health Service is unsustainable and needs to be reformed, one of the country's most senior doctors said on Saturday.

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, Bernie Ribeiro, the new president of the Royal College of Surgeons, said healthcare should be paid for through a social insurance system.

"If we're going to have a health care system suited to the future, we've got to be prepared to invest in it," he said. "I don't personally believe that can be done out of pure taxation."

Ribeiro suggested a means-tested system where the poorest would pay nothing at all and other patients would take out insurance to cover a proportion of their costs.

"We're not a poor country, the working population is reasonably well paid, we could afford our workers to make an identifiable contribution towards health care -- not one hidden in national insurance and taxation.

"We seriously need to look at this again."

The Labour party vowed during the May election to continue free care for all through the NHS, which it created in 1948.

Britons tend to be very protective and proud of the health service which employs 1.3 million workers and spends over 76 billion pounds a year.

But an independent report in June 2005 said the service faced serious financial problems through poor management and doctors and patients have repeatedly complained of long waiting lists and over crowding on many hospital wards.

Socialism--The Road to Serfdom (which was written in 1944 and intended for the British audience).  And socialized medicine is just one of the steps down that path.  At least a few people are getting a clue after nearly 50 years.  The question is, is it too late to reverse the slide into the abyss?

I'm spending today and tomorrow doing a bunch of work on my explosives magazine and possibly some tests on my explosives mixture.  I need to get things taken care of earlier this year.

Neal Boortz (the link www.vicioussob.com works too) has some Muslim jokes on his web site.  They are here and here.  Some are pretty good.  My favorites are:

From the Muslim standup comic Goffaq Yussef:

• How many Palestinians does it take to change a light bulb. None! They sit in the dark forever and blame the Jews for it!
• A Palestinian suspect was being grilled by Israeli police. "Honest, I'm not a suicide bomber," he said. "I didn't say I wanted to blow myself up so I could sleep with 72 virgins. All I said was I'm dying to get laid!"
• A Palestinian girl says to her mommy, "After Abdul blows up, can I have his room?"

Bumper stickers:

• If you don't like the way I drive, stay out of the World Trade Center
• Driver carries only $20 worth of C4
• My kid and YOUR money go to Gitomo Bay.
• My 12-year-old can blow up your honor student

If it ever becomes time to shoot someone, shoot early and shoot often.

Greg Hamilton
Self Defense Instructor
Nov. 19, 1995