My brother was one of the people that helped catch the guy shooting up the logging equipment.  Here is his story:

From: Doug Huffman
Sent: Thursday, September 01, 2005 10:31 PM
To: Joe Huffman
Subject: Re: Were you and Nick one of the teams?

Hi Joe,

Yes,  Nick and I were there when he was arrested.  Also, it was tear gas
(CS) not pepper spray.  If you look at his picture, you will see his
left arm is in a sling.  He was on his hands and knees coming out of his
shelter, his right hand lifted off the floor and revealed his MAK-90 on
the floor, he moved his hand out, leaving the rifle on the ground.  Then
for some unexplained reason, he started to back up, his right hand moved
back towards the rifle.  Guy Cordle very nearly shot him in the back
with a 12 ga at that point, in a split second decision, he decided he
could stop the subject with a hard kick to the left arm right where it
connects to the shoulder.  That knocked him flat on his face and removed
his hand from the proximity of the rifle.  They took him to the ER and
they apparently put his arm in a sling.

I went with two deputies on Monday afternoon after he stole the coffee
with my GPS and compass.  We stopped at various points around the canyon
where he was and took GPS points and compass reading from the
directional antenna on a fish and game locator.  When you get too close,
the receiver would receive signal from any direction, so we had to be
back a ways and didn't take the receiver into the woods with us the next
morning.  I went home and plotted it out on graph paper, determined the
most likely point and programmed it into my GPS and set it to take us to
that location.  We went in the next morning at day break, Nick and I in
the middle with 5 others.  Nick was there to alert us if he was hiding
in the bushes, or behind a log.  Moving very slowly, we moved about 1/2
mile in 2 hours before he was located.  My GPS point was about 200 yards
off.  Nick was some help, but wasn't the one who made the find.  He kept
wanting to go east and the closer we got, the more intent and excited he
got.  We were probably 50 yards away from his shelter when we spotted a
platic bag hanging from a tree up on the  hillside to our right, that
was beside his shelter.  I am writing up a complete story, but it will
probably be weeks before I finish it.  The other dog team was the blood
hound we got from South Carolina.  Bruce Hanson and the bloodhound were
on the North side of the canyon, watching in case the subject made a run
for it that way.  There were  "snipers" on all sides of the canyon with
high powered scoped rifles.  They didn't have the authority to shoot on
sight, but would try to challenge and stop the subject if we drove him
out of the canyon.

... [unrelated material deleted] ...

Doug

The Miami Herald has the story:

Floods unavoidable, Army engineers say

The Army Corp of Engineers said recent studies on strengthening New Orleans' levee system, designed decades ago, had not made much progress.

BY PETER CAREY

Knight Ridder News Service

The levee system that protected New Orleans from hurricane-spawned surges along Lake Pontchartrain was never designed to survive a storm the size of Hurricane Katrina, the Army Corps of Engineers said Thursday.

The levees were built to withstand only a Category 3 storm, something projections suggested would strike New Orleans only once every two or three centuries, the commander of the corps, Lt. Gen. Carl A. Strock, told reporters during a conference call. Katrina was a Category 4 storm.

''Unfortunately, that occurred in this case,'' Strock said.

OLD TECHNOLOGY

Strock said the levee system's design was settled on a quarter of a century ago, before the current numerical system of classifying storms was in widespread use. He said studies had begun recently on strengthening the system to protect against Category 4 and 5 hurricanes, but hadn't progressed very far.

Strock said that despite a May report by the Corps' Louisiana district that a lack of federal funding had slowed construction of hurricane protection, nothing the Corps could have done recently would have prevented Katrina from flooding New Orleans.

''The levee projects that failed were at full project design and were not really going to be improved,'' Strock said.

`EVERYBODY KNEW'

Strock's comments drew immediate criticism from flood-protection advocates, who said that the Corps' May report was a call for action and a complaint about insufficient funding, and that no action took place.

''The Corps knew, everybody knew, that the levees had limited capability,'' said Joseph Suhayda, a retired director of the Louisiana State University's Water Resources and Research Institute.

''Because of exercises and simulations, we knew that the consequences of overtopping [water coming over the levees] would be disastrous. People were playing with matches in the fireworks factory and it went off,'' he said.

Suhayda, an expert in coastal oceanography, said, ``the fact the levee failed is not according to design. If it was overtopped, it's because it was lower in that spot than other spots. The fact that it was only designed for a Category 3 meant it was going to get overtopped. I knew that. They knew that. There were limits.''

NO SECURITY?

Some critics Thursday questioned the usefulness of levees, saying that all of them fail eventually.

''There are lots of ways for levees to fail. Overtopping is just one of them,'' said Michael Lindell, of Texas A&M University's Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center. 'There's a lot of smoke screen about `low probabilities.' Low probabilities just means 'Takes a long time.' ''

Strock said stopping the flow of water over the levees has proved to be ''a very challenging effort.'' Engineers have been unable to reach the levees and have had to draw up plans based only on observations from the air. ''We, too, are victims in this situation,'' he said.

In Louisiana, Army Corps officials said they hoped that one break, in what's known as the 17th Street Canal, might be closed by the end of Thursday, but that a second break in the London Avenue canal is proving more intractable.

Short sections of the walls that protected the city from Lake Pontchartrain caved in under storm surges, including an area that recently had been strengthened.

A fact sheet issued by the Corps in May said that seven construction projects in New Orleans had been stalled for lack of funding. It noted that the budget proposed by President Bush for 2005 was $3 million and called that amount insufficient to fund new construction contracts.

MONEY CRUNCH

''We could spend $20 million if the funds were provided,'' the fact sheet said. Two major pump stations needed to be protected against hurricane storm surges, the fact sheet said, but the budgets for 2005 and 2006 ``will prevent the corps from addressing these pressing needs.''

Acknowledging delays in construction, Corps officials in Louisiana said that those projects weren't where the failures occurred. ''They did not contribute to the flooding of the city,'' said Al Naomi, a senior project manager.

''The design was not adequate to protect against a storm of this nature,'' he said. ``We were not authorized to provide protection to Category 4 or 5 design.''

No matter where or how you live you have risks.  It could be a natural disaster such as tornadoes, floods, hurricanes, forest fires, earthquakes, mudslides, volcanoes, etc.  Or it could be man related such as crime, traffic accidents, air pollution, water pollution, etc.  New Orleans didn't just have a risk of some random future event that would affect a small percentage of the people.  They were actively fighting the water on a daily basis that threatened catastrophe for the majority of people living there.  They had no hope of holding things off for more than a few decades.  Read my post from a year ago.  They could not sustain the fight for much longer.  The Mississippi was/is depositing silt far, far faster than they could deal with it.  It was a huge expensive gamble either way.  To move the port to the natural location 100+ miles to the west or to stay.  Long term they have to move.  It might have been 20 or even 50 years before the wisdom of that decision would have been confirmed beyond any doubt.  But it would have been confirmed eventually.  

I said a year ago they should have quit the "game".  They should have packed up their stuff and left the playing field.  They should have dealt with reality on their own rather than having Mother Nature swat them out of the park with a clue-by-category-four.

Update: Michelle Malkin has another story on the levees from 1999 plus a fair amount of history on the topic.

Well... duh!  I couldn't have imagined a border guard that didn't have a gun while on duty.  Yet apparently they don't.  So a bunch of them walked off the job in protest:

OTTAWA, Sept 1 (Reuters) - More than 40 Canadian border guards walked off the job this week to demand they be issued with handguns, and a union official said on Thursday that others could follow suit unless Ottawa issues them with weapons.

The guards, worried by reports that a U.S. fugitive could be trying to cross into Canada, left their posts at crossings in Fort Erie and Niagara Falls, Ontario, on Wednesday, causing some delay to border traffic.

Canadian police are armed and the guards' union has been pressing for firearms for its members, saying they need better protection to do their jobs.

"Our members want to do the job of protecting the border but they need to properly protect themselves to do that," Ron Moran, head of the guards' union said in a statement.

"Until that happens, work refusals will likely reoccur."

A spokesman for Public Security Minister Anne McLellan, who has overall responsibility for border security, said a recent independent study showed there was no need to arm the guards.

"Arrangements are made with police to ensure that when an armed presence is needed, the police can be contacted to work with the border agents to address a situation," he said.

If the name Anne McLellan looks familar it's probably because she is the woman that implemented the $2 Billion boondoggle gun registry in Canada.

Joe, you're the gift that just keeps on giving.

Barb Scott
September 1, 2005
On Pacific Northwest National Laboratory "reconsidering" it's initial refusal to comply with Privacy Act and Freedom of Information Act requests for personnel file information on her husband, Joe Huffman.  Their "reconsideration" might have had something to do with certain "encouragement" Joe had been giving them via various "channels".

At 16:39 this afternoon I received a call from the person responsible for handling my FOIA/Privacy-Act information requests at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.  He said they had "reconsidered" my request for the rest of my personal file (or "Field File" as they prefer to call it) and it will go into the mail tomorrow.

Gee, I wonder what it was that caused them to "reconsider"?  I can only think of four different "blunt instruments" they might have seen coming their way that might have caused an "attitude adjustment" on their part.  I'll be checking on three of those "blunt instruments" tomorrow to see if any of them had something to do with it.  If all goes as planned I'll be able to share most of the results with everyone here sometime next week.

Barb had a rather apropos quip when she heard the news.  It will be the quote of the day tomorrow.

The title of this post is a near exact quote from the May 2005 Popular Science article.  I changed the quote slightly.  They said 'is' instead of 'was'.  At this point in time I figure New Orleans doesn't exist.  More quotes from the article:

It takes Scott Kiser only a split second to name the one city in the U.S., and probably the world, that would sustain the most catastrophic damage from a category-5 hurricane. "New Orleans," says Kiser, a tropical-cyclone program manager for the National Weather Service. "Because the city is below sea level—with the Mississippi River on one side and Lake Pontchartrain on the other—it is a hydrologic nightmare." The worst problem, he explains, would be a storm surge, a phenomenon in which high winds stack up huge waves along a hurricane’s leading edge. In New Orleans, a big enough surge would quickly drown the entire city.

...

Today, parts of New Orleans lie up to 20 feet below sea level, and the city is sinking at a rate of about nine millimeters a year. "This makes New Orleans the most vulnerable major city to hurricanes," says John Hall of the Army Corps of Engineers. "That’s because the water has to go down, not up, to reach it."

...

New Orleans has nearly completed its Hurricane Protection Project, a $740-million plan led by Naomi to ring the city with levees that could shield residents from up to category-3 storm surges. Meanwhile, Winer and others at the Army Corps are considering a new levee system capable of holding back a surge from a category-5 hurricane like Ivan, which threatened the city last year.

...

The category-5 levee idea, though, is still in the early planning stages; it may be decades before the new barriers are completed. Until then, locals had better keep praying to Helios.

Katrina was a category 4/5 storm.  I guess the locals didn't do enough praying and else figure out how to get out of town permanently months or years ago.  This wasn't any big surprise to the locals or anyone with a room temperature I.Q. that had studied the problem for more than a few minutes.

Barb and I will be donating some money to the relief effort and if someone knows of a volunteer organization helping with the Katrina mess that wants a middle aged guy with heavy equipment, computer, firearms, explosives, and/or farm-boy type skills--let me know.  I have some spare time on my hands right now.

From The Globe and Mail in Toronto:

Ontario to blitz gun shops

In an effort to stem a recent rash of gun violence in Toronto, the Ontario government announced it will begin conducting sweeps of gun shops to help reduce the number of illegal guns in the city.

"[We want] to ensure that we have safe standards in place," said the province's Attorney-General Michael Bryant at a press conference in Toronto Thursday.

However, Mr. Bryant said the sweep will be limited to businesses and not individual homes, as that is the purview of the federal government and the gun registry.

They are doing sweeps of the gun shops to reduce the number of illegal guns?  How about they "blitz" automobile dealerships to reduce the number of illegal cars on the roads?  Or tweaking one of my favorites, conduct raids on cosmetic stores to "stem the recent rash of prostitution" on the streets?

Give it up guys, you spent $2 Billion dollars on a failed gun registration system, and still you can't answer just this one question in the affirmative.  Harassing the gun store owners isn't going to be productive either.

A couple weeks ago I posted about a guy staying out in woods and damaging logging equipment.  The suspect is in the local county jail now.  I'm glad no one got hurt as it seemed likely at the time.  The suspect said he wanted to kill some cops.  I had done some brainstorming with my brother about this and hadn't come up with the solution they used although one would have thought that two electrical engineers would have been the first to thing of it.  From the Lewiston Morning Tribune:

Sheriff reels in Weippe suspect

By DAVID JOHNSON
of the Tribune

"He took the bait."

That's how Clearwater County Sheriff Alan Hengen Tuesday described the early morning arrest of 34-year-old David Pruss in the woods about one and a half miles northwest of Weippe.

"We knew he liked coffee."

Pruss, who'd been wanted for the better part of three months on a warrant for alleged malicious destruction of property and burglary, remained in the county jail at Orofino Tuesday night and could face additional charges, Hengen said.

The sheriff and his deputies had been chasing a suspect since early June who allegedly had shot up some logging equipment, broken into a number of cabins and buildings and otherwise eluded authorities.

Hengen said deputies learned that the suspect seemed to always steal coffee when he had a chance. So they placed a "signaling unit" in the bottom of a plastic can of coffee, and put the can in a building where the suspect had previously entered several times.

"We tried a lot of things, but that one worked," Hengen said. Within a week, the can of coffee was gone. Homing in on the signal from the coffee can, deputies were able to triangulate an approximate location, said Hengen, and Tuesday's predawn raid was organized. Two dog teams and 17 enforcement officers entered the forested area and closed in on the location, the sheriff said. They found a hut made of poles that were tied together and covered with pine boughs.

"We got him while he was sleeping," Hengen said. He said Pruss at first refused to come out of the hut and deputies used pepper spray. According to a press release from the sheriff's office, Pruss was "believed to have been reaching" for a Mac-90 assault rifle that was found underneath him. Hengen said a .357-caliber magnum revolver also was found.

"He had like a tent in there," Hengen said of the hut, which he described as about 6-feet square.

Deputies also found military and SWAT-type clothing, said Hengen, similar to clothing worn by a suspect that appears in a surveillance camera photo taken more than a month ago where logging equipment had been shot up. According to the press release, other items allegedly taken from the logging site were found where Pruss was arrested.

Pruss, formerly of Utah and Montana, came to Weippe about a year ago, according to residents in town. Authorities said he is thought to have ties to fringe militia groups. Hengen said earlier this month that he feared the suspect they were seeking was trying to lure his deputies into an ambush. According to the news release, Pruss "is believed to have told others his intent was to damage public infrastructure in order to lure Clearwater County Sheriff's Deputies into the woods for the purpose of picking them off."

Since the first week in June, Hengen's department had been investigating several burglaries and reports of property being destroyed. There had been damage to power transformers, phone pedestals, a small hydroelectric plant and the logging equipment, according to the news release. Several businesses and residences also had been burglarized, authorities said.

Total damage is estimated to have exceeded $100,000, Hengen said.

Weippe residents earlier this month voiced mixed thoughts about the suspect, some saying he was harmless and others expressing disgust that someone was shooting up logging equipment. Many people said they were locking their doors for the first time.

Hengen said the destruction of property seemed to trail off over the past few weeks and he thinks the suspect was "just trying to wait us out." Most of the logging equipment that had been damaged belonged to Kenneth Miller, whose equipment and vehicles had been located at a site in the Winters Creek area near Weippe.

In addition to sheriff deputies, Hengen said U.S. Forest Service personnel and members of Clearwater County Search and Rescue participated in numerous searches for the suspect.

Authorities ask that anyone finding more hut-like structures in the woods around Weippe call the sheriff's office and stay away from the structures. The same goes for any equipment, clothing or other stored items that might be found.

Okay, the computer just helped.  With numerous cameras both above and below the water of the swimming pool it detected a little girl had sunk to the bottom and wasn't moving.  It alerted the lifeguard who pulled her from the water less than 40 seconds later.  She has recovered.  The article is interesting, but the pictures are what really grabbed me.  Here is one just before the lifeguard grabs her:

I was reading some of the comments on the Wal-Mart shooting story.  I can't imagine the mindset this person must have:

By Roy Salazar (Submitted: 08/31/2005 9:03 pm )

The truth of the fact is, Mr. Moore killed a person from the side lines and that is not "self-defense"..., I call the murder. Mr. Moore should be prosecuted for the point blank murder of Mr. vigil and the ex-wife of Mr Vigil should be prosecuted for party to crime. An eye for eye is not justice in this country ( thats dark-age justice ). We have laws and we ( we, means all of us, the people ) should follow them. Otherwise, we are using double standards in the law and orders of the country. Furthermore, Wal-Mart should fire MS. Ex-wife for taking garbage to her work station and indangering the lifes of others.

Blaming the victim and the rescuer... It boggles my mind.  This cannot be a rational person.  It must be this is type of person that would send money to the VPC.

It starts out with the Wal-Mart shooting and gets better from there.  From Jewish World Review:

UCLA professor emeritus James Q. Wilson, a respected expert on crime, police practices and guns, says, "We know from Census Bureau surveys that something beyond a hundred thousand uses of guns for self-defense occur every year. We know from smaller surveys of a commercial nature that the number may be as high as two-and-a-half or three million. We don't know what the right number is, but whatever the right number is, it's not a trivial number."

...

A gunned-down bleeding guy creates news. A man who spared his family by brandishing a handgun, well, that's just water-cooler chat.

He gets all the facts right and he introduces them without it being just a bunch of numbers.  It's an excellent piece.

Dogs wear collars, wolves do not.  I am a wolf.  You can shoot me, trap me, poison me - even set my brother the dog on me. But you can not pat my damn head unless I say so.

Jay Loveless
1995

You loot, we shoot!

Employees at A.J.'s Produce Co.
A spray-painted bright-red warning for would-be thieves on the sides of the building on Chartres Street in the Bywater neighborhood of New Orleans.
From 2TheAdvocate.com
August 31, 2005

Joseph Farah on World Net Daily touches on something I have been wanting to address in depth for quite a while.  He doesn't go into the depth I want to but he does give people a hint:

Banning guns in workplace

I marvel at the ability of people who don't like America – at least the America envisioned by the Founding Fathers – to open up new fronts in their war on what makes our country uniquely free.

I had this thought again when I heard former Clinton administration Secretary of Labor Robert Reich say it's time to ban guns in the workplace.

 "Listen to the evening news and you're likely to hear a grisly story about a disaffected worker or estranged spouse or dissatisfied client arriving at a workplace and going ballistic," said the diminutive Reich. "It's all too common."

Anytime someone says, "It's all too common" I go on full alert.  What it means is they don't have the numbers to back them up and they are appealing to some sort of subjective standard--their personal standard.

Reich cites as evidence for this crisis, a pseudo-scientific study conducted by Dana Loomis of the University of North Carolina and published in the American Journal of Public Health. Let me dissect, for those who care, the extremely questionable methodology of this study, which purports to show conclusively that homicide is five times more likely at a workplace where guns are permitted than in those where guns are banned.

...

The study compared 87 cases where employees were killed at work sites in North Carolina between 1994 and 1998 and 177 comparable work sites where there were no murders.

Now think for a moment about the kinds of places – the kinds of businesses that ban firearms. Do you think of them as high-risk businesses? Do you think of them as convenience stores open late at night in urban areas? Or do you think of them as big corporations based in suburban settings where crime is low?

So, can we assume that the places where guns are permitted are already much higher-risk settings than where they are banned? Of course.

And Loomis makes no distinction about the kind of homicides that take place in these working environments. In other words, in his study, a high-risk, late-night convenience store held up by an armed intruder is no different than an office setting in which an armed worker draws a gun and shoots a co-worker.

Drawing on this flimsy, shoddy and politically driven research, people like Reich would presumably ban firearms in all businesses – banks, all-night 7-Elevens, maybe even gun stores, though my assumption is that they would eventually be banned altogether by the people promoting such ideas.

I have said this before and I will say it again: The only people safe in these so-called "gun-free zones," whether they are schools or businesses or churches, are armed criminals.

Criminals, by definition, do not care about laws. Only the law-abiding care about them. So, making more laws or rules and regulations that ban firearms in places only encourages violent criminals to do what they do – kill, rob, rape, maim.

There is nothing incorrect about what he says but if I had the time I would take it much further.  In almost all cases these sorts of "studies" fail to distinguish between justified and unjustified homicide.  Did Reich engage in this sort of bias as well?  What about other weapons?  Is there a high rate of injuries from people using other type of weapons in the same business that have high injury rates from people using firearms?  If so then there is at least one other factor in common with the high injury rate other than firearms.  And what about the percentage of attacks that were stopped before the police arrived in places that allowed firearms versus those that didn't?  Shouldn't that be true measure?  And I would ask Reich if he believe that policemen responding to an 'event' should leave their firearms behind.  After all, if the possession of a firearm by an employee is dangerous why isn't it dangerous for the policeman to bring a firearm into the situation as well?

As you might guess I watch at least some of my website log files pretty closely.  Yesterday and last night I started getting some hits referred from a new source.  It was Voice of the Taciturn.  He only mentioned my situation in passing:

National labs have a great way of dealing with those they perceive to be misfits and malcontents or just plain undesirable. Generally speaking, it involves getting the third degree, slapped up-side the head with policies you don’t get to read yourself so that you might try to fight back, and unemployment.

Not a big deal but interesting take on things in the greater context of his posting. 

However, there may be a big deal if things go as planned.  I believe there will be some significant news to report next week.  I've been spending a lot of time on this and I expect there will be some interest in the latest developments.  Barb says I should have sent a copy of one of the letters I sent yesterday to Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.  "Why?" I asked.  "To make them sweat.", she replied.  Barb isn't one to hold back when something irritates her.  I prefer to calmly sit back, perhaps go on vacation and watch as the realization of reality washes over my adversaries.  Maybe next week...

Wendy Cukier, President Coalition for Gun Control, and moonbat extraordinaire sent out a news release yesterday:

... international standards for marking and tracing, for import and export and for the regulation of firearms is essential to preventing the diversion of legal guns to illegal markets and the efforts over the last 8 years at the United Nations to combat the illegal trade have been important.

By all means, shouldn't we combat illegal trade and stop legal guns from getting into illegal markets?  It's just common sense, right?  Why are so many people opposed to common sense gun laws?  The only people opposed must be red-necked, knuckle-dragging, Neanderthals and criminals.  How could it be any other way?

That depends.  What's your definition of an "illegal market"?  The store in the state prison?  Okay, I won't argue that one today.  But what about those people prohibited from weapon ownership by the Weapons Control Act of 1938?  That law, passed in March of 1938, made it illegal for certain "undesirable" people to own weapons.  The state would provide for their protection, if they needed it.  In November of that same year there was a "spontaneous" riots against those same "undesirables" who had been disarmed.  It was called Kristallnacht, the "Night of Broken Glass."  The riot lasted for two days as the fire and police brigades stood by.  The morning after the riot was over 30,000 arrests were made.  The arrests were of the "undesirables" who were the targets of the riot and not the rioters.  The government was implementing it's first attempt at a solution to "the problem of the Jews".  By the fall of 1941 they were implementing the Final Solution to the Jewish question.  Any weapons delivered to Jewish people and other "undesirables" was a crime by that German law of 1938.  What about the shipments of arms into that market?  Would Cukier have supported that law?

One of the argument the moonbats make is that arming people just prolongs the conflict and makes a return to peace more difficult.  I'm sure that is true.  The 10 million dead from the Final Solution are very peaceful now.  That conflict (the extermination of millions) would have taken much longer had the victims been able to defend themselves better.  Wouldn't that have been terrible?

There were no 20th centery genocides without there first being a gun control law to remove the weapons from the target of the genocide.  Estimates vary but somewhere between 60 and 200 million civilians (men, women, and children, not just soldiers!) were murdered in the 20th century by government sponsored programs of extermination--all of them were victims of gun control.  How many millions will there be in the 21st century if we don't learn the lesson from the 20th century?

What Cukier (Kooker?  How appropriate is that?) apparently doesn't realize is that ownership of weapons is a right even more essential than freedom of speech or any other natural right.  Without the means to enforce your rights the others mean nothing.  The government can infringe upon them at will with virtually no recourse.  You cannot have a secure free state without the right to keep and bear arms.  This entire concept has been expressed succinctly as, "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."  This right shall not be infringed!  So, as Lyle in the comments section of this post, says, "... there's one legitimate gun law in America. It makes it illegal to write gun laws."  I think Lyle, while correct, is a bit narrow in his scope.  I would expand that to international scope.  Laws restricting personal weapons in any country are as revolting and without moral authority as laws authorizing slavery or genocide--which is what those weapons laws enable.

Michelle Malkin gives a good overview of the situation in New Orleans with links to pictures and video.  There is massive flooding with both airports underwater, the mayor estimates 80% of the city is underwater--some of it 20 feet deep, at least one major bridge was destroyed, etc, etc. 

Steve Sabuldowsky of BayouBuzz.com says:

Unless the two block breach in Bucktown is fixed, New Orleans which is already 80% flooded according to Mayor Nagin will destroy the City of New Orleans.  In my view, that includes the CBD and French Quarter.

...

New Orleans might not be able to survive the total inundation of water that is rising so quickly and causing so much damage.  With Slidell, St. Bernard and other cities and Parishes so completely devastated it will take more than a Marshall Plan to restore Louisiana to its glory.  It will take a miracle for the city of the Saints.

One of the commenter's to a previous post of mine asked, "Do you really think that it's possible that the entire city will be completely gone after this hurricane?"  Yes, it's possible.  It almost for certain will not be completely gone this time, but it is possible it will happen next time.  Next time could be next month, next year, or 10 years from now.  It won't wait 50 years, the technology just doesn't exist and almost for certain won't exist in time to save this city.  This time it will just be 20% (a number I pulled out of the air, or should I say water?) of the net worth of the city will be destroyed.  Someday, in the not too distant future, New Orleans will be a water and silt filled archaeological site.

Serious consideration should be given to only rebuilding enough of New Orleans to use the port temporarily.  Spend the money saved on building a new port where the Mississippi natural outlet is (something like 100+ miles to the west).  Move the people in the path of the new waterway out of there.  Then gradually over a course of days, weeks, months, whatever, allow the river to change it's course.  Then tell people in the firmest terms available that if they build below sea level they are asking for Darwin Awards.  If they persist then let them collect their awards.

Update: I'm not the only one talking about giving up on New Orleans.

Update2: Novel application of a shotgun:

People used axes, and in at least one case a shotgun, to blast holes in roofs so they could escape their attics. Many who had not yet been rescued could be heard screaming for help, police said.

But is this allowed under the "sporting purposes" criteria of GCA 68?

Wherever there is a jackboot stomping on a human face there will be a well-heeled Western liberal to explain that the face does, after all, enjoy free health care and 100 percent literacy.

John Derbyshire
National Review

Actually it was a small U-Haul truck.  They used the "shuttle" because the big moving van couldn't make it into the confines of where Ry used to live.  They called at 9:00 this morning to gain access to Ry's old home.  I had the key as Ry now lives in the Seattle area working for Microsoft. 

On Saturday I helped Ry prepare for the move by taking my Astrovan over and hauling things to the dump.  Ry's main objective was to get out of town before Barb could see all the stuff I set aside to bring home, then find and kill him.  But since she and Xenia were at yard sales all morning I figured Ry was safe.  And besides, a lot of that stuff is going to friends and relatives of mine that I'm certain will be pleased to get it.  Ry, his kids, and I worked all day Saturday to get things ready for the move.  It was a small place but there was a lot of stuff to do.  I left before it was quite all done.  Then later Ry stopped by pick up a few rounds of linked .50 BMG ammo and to say good-bye before his drive back to the Seattle area.

Yesterday Xenia and I went over to do some cleaning.  More cleaning needs to be done now that the stuff is moved out and we'll get it done before the end of the month so Ry doesn't have to pay another months rent on the place.

The movers arrived, called me for access and I was over there in 15 minutes.  It would have been only 10 but one of the dogs "marked" one of my shoes I was going to put on.  I pointed out the stuff to be moved and the room to stay out of because it contained my garbage can, vacuum cleaner, and a few cleaning supplies.  There wasn't much there and it was all packed and the small truck was rolling into town to the moving van by about 11:45.  I followed the truck into town from Ry's place.  A sadness washed over me as I watched the truck drive away with the last of Ry's belongings.  At Mountain View Road I turned south and they turned north.  I went on to UltiMAK to dump off the stuff Ry was giving to them and they headed towards the other side of town and the moving van that would deliver Ry's belongs to him--340 miles away.  I'm chatting on-line with him right now as I write this but I'll miss the talks until the early morning light in my living room and the impromptu trips to the range with my chemistry set to try out a new Boomershoot mix.

Heavy sigh... closure.

Ahhh.... It's nice to see editorial writers whacking the anti-freedom liberals with a clue by four--even if it is in Canada instead of the U.S.:

When we first read the headline in last Thursday's Sun - "Feds taking aim at gun violence" - we thought that there must have been some mistake.

Gun violence? What gun violence? We have a very expensive national gun registry that was put into place to ensure that every firearm in Canada can be tracked. We have cumbersome regulations in place that make it more difficult for Canadians to buy guns. We have armies of bureaucrats shuffling paper to and fro to make sure that everything related to guns in this country is all very above-board and law-abiding.

So there can't possibly be any gun violence in Canada!

...

Back in late 1994, when then-justice minister Allan Rock first unveiled the gun-control program, he declared, "This tough new gun-control program will improve public safety and also send a strong message that the criminal misuse of guns will not be tolerated."

Eleven years later, the Liberals are suddenly worried about gun crime because Toronto has been blitzed by gun violence. In a more sane country, Toronto would realize that the gun registry has been exposed as an expensive waste of money and would punish the Liberals for lying to them by voting them out. And the Grits would shut down their useless registry and put the money into actual police officers fighting crime.

As we said, these lessons are all going to go unlearned.

True.  The lessons will go unlearned.  But at least whacking them alongside the head a few times and giving them a special mention for When Prophecy Fails provides some satisfaction.

Update: American Realpolitik comments on this same editorial about the succession talk in western Canada inspired in part by the oppressive anti-gun laws imposed on them by the east.

One of these days the talking will be over and the citizenry of the United States will decide whether or not to remain free.

Dan W. Shoemaker

I commented on this sort of thing last September.  New Orleans had a miss then when Ivan came to town.  But it appears Ivan was a poor shot and minor caliber compared to Katrina--scheduled to hit tomorrow morning:

Hundreds of thousands of New Orleans residents fled inland on Sunday as Hurricane Katrina strengthened into one of the fiercest U.S. storms ever seen and barrelled towards the low-lying Gulf Coast city.

...

Katrina had a central pressure -- a measure of a storm's intensity -- of 902 millibars, which would make it one of the four strongest storms on record. The Labour Day hurricane of 1935 that hit the Florida Keys, killing some 600 people, was the strongest with a minimum central pressure of 892 millibars on landfall.

They are evacuating the city.  It's quite possible this will be the last evacuation.  The city is below sea level and it is only going to get worse as time goes on.  As I said last year:

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

This could be the end of New Orleans.  Interesting times we live in.

Update: I've been reading some of the articles about Katrina and New Orleans.  They are incredibly sobering. 

• L.A. Times
• CNN
• Biloxi Sun Herald
• Washington Post

A family member recently returned from Bolivia informs us that Bolivian gun laws may be the best in the world. There are none, and Bolivia gets by with a serious law against murder. Funny that no one in Britain or America has thought of that so far!

Jeff Cooper
From Jeff Cooper's Commentaries
Vol. 4, No. 9
August 1996

Does this guy Kane think we are idiots?  Rhetorical question alert--Or is he an idiot?  From the Washington Post:

"I'm committed to not violating the Second Amendment or infringing upon the gun rights of law-abiding citizens," Kaine, the lieutenant governor, said to a handful of supporters and local reporters who were on hand to watch him shoot. "I'm committed to protecting that constitutional right to hunt and fish. . . . I value the traditions that Virginians value."

Who, in their right mind, believes that while guaranteeing our rights to free speech, freedom of religion, due process, a speedy trial by a jury of our peers, etc. etc. the writers of the Bill of Rights were guaranteeing the people the right to "hunt and fish" with the Second Amendment?  (I think it was Rolf that pointed out that particular argument to me.)  As if they were anticipating a similar absurd claim the founding fathers wrote, "A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State..." as part of that guaranteed right.  As someone else once said, "It ain't about duck hunting."  If you still don't get it, here is a clue.

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master.

George Washington
Speech of January 7, 1790

Considering the source--probably not (according to Jihad Watch).  But it makes for interesting reading:

Los Angeles, Alta California - August 23, 2005 - (ACN) The USA mainstream media is "filtering" the news coming out of Iraq. It is not reporting on certain items deemed by the Pentagon to be detrimental to the morale of US troops or their families back home. Conspicuously absent are any reports on "Juba", a sniper who has been terrorizing US soldiers in Baghdad for months. Juba is the name given by US forces to a superbly trained insurgent sniper who has already killed at least 19 GI's including four US Marine snipers in one day.

As if our mainstream media would ever hold back any demoralizing news coming out of Iraq.

No US soldier has ever seen Juba. They only hear one distinctive shot from a Tabuk sniper rifle (An Iraqi sniper rifle based on the Soviet Kalashnikov but fitted with a long barrel and a muzzle brake. It uses the 7.62mm Kalashnikov cartridge) and the next thing they see is another GI slumping down dead. The hit is usually to the head but Juba also aims at gaps in the GI's body armor. He has been known to hit his mark from 300 yards which is the length of three football fields. Juba takes only one shot and then disappears.

If I knew a sniper was after me I can't think of a single center-fire rifle cartridge I would rather he used.  Accuracy and power are both pathetic with this round.

US troops who scramble to find Juba soon after he has struck find only his trademark that consists of a single 7.62mm Kalashnikov cartridge casing with a handwritten note. The note, in Arabic, says, "What has been taken in blood cannot be regained except by blood". The note is signed, "The Baghdad Sniper".

Juba is now a mythic hero to the Iraqi resistance. Word on the streets of Baghdad, from those who know Juba, is that his rifle is running out of space to add more "notches" that signify US occupation soldiers he has killed. Juba is now training an "elite" insurgent sniper squad that will target personnel coming in and out from Baghdad's Green Zone.

He's running out of room for notches?  I thought he had only killed 19 GI's.  What does he cut his notches with?  An out of control chain saw?

A particular worrisome development for USA based warmongers is a CIA intelligence report that says that a superbly trained Islamic sniper squad is on its way to the USA. According to the report, the Al-Ikhwan Al-Moslemoon (Muslim Brotherhood)is preparing to send a highly trained sniper squad to the USA that will target, at first, the lower and middle level leadership of the Islamophobic organizations that cater to the Zionists. This, we presume, includes the lackeys of the Zionists on radio and television. A few weeks ago, these puppets of Israel added insult to injury when they went on a vile tirade in support of the "toilet flushers" of the Holy Koran at Guantanamo. Many of these radio talk jockeys are not Jews but they act as mouthpieces for their employers who are. One of these virulent pundits for the Zionists said over the airwaves, "US soldiers at Guantanamo should have used the pages of the Koran to wipe their asses!"

And how did they come across a CIA intelligence report?  Yeah, right.  And all the major media outlets are owned or managed by Jews?  If that were so then I would expect the major theme MSM would be much greater support for war in Iraq and against Muslims instead of weeks of haranguing of GI's for minor offenses in the prison where Muslims are held.

If a "superbly trained Islamic sniper squad" does show up it might have the benefit of increasing the number of private citizen carrying firearms for protection.  And if they put a decent bounty on their scalps firearms instructors will see marked increase in their class sizes.  Would we lose some people?  Almost for certain the answer is yes, but their kill ratio would be much better with suicide bombers at the loss of unskilled button pushers instead of "superbly trained" snipers.

This editorial in the Seattle PI is surprisingly good.  I would have expected something in the PI to be more of the nature of "Give the government more money and power so it can protect us better."  It's not that way at all.  In fact he points out a change in passenger attitudes is a major deterrent to future hijackings:

A repetition of 9/11-style attacks became less likely, not because of increased airport security, but because of a change in passengers' responses to airline hijackings.

And he correctly points out how we ended up with 100% loss of our 4th Amendment when we travel on commercial airlines:

How did we get to this abysmal state of affairs? Because even in times of crises -- in fact, especially in times of crises -- politics plagues government security efforts. Congress and the bureaucracy have to show the nervous public that they are doing something, even if those efforts make little sense. Sixty-five percent of the funds spent on domestic homeland security goes toward aviation security alone, leaving many fewer resources for measures at ports, borders and on mass transit.

The public should demand that the TSA be abolished and airport security be reprivatized. Perhaps it would be a first step toward ending the paranoia that has resulted in excessive emphasis on airport security to the exclusion of everything else.

I only partially agree with his conclusions.  Before we reprivatized airport security we should research the alternatives.

...researchers concluded that the total 1992 cost of firearm violence was $112 billion when taking into consideration direct medical costs, lost productivity, and lost quality of life. This study also reported that each of the estimated 4.91 billion bullets sold in 1992 represented $23 in costs due to firearm violence, including $0.60 in medical and emergency services, $7.20 in lost productivity, and $15.10 in pain, suffering, and lost quality of life.

Coalition to Stop Gun Violence
From: http://www.gunfree.org/csgv/bsc_eco.htm (as of 11/12/98)
[They neglect to report on the benefits in lives saved, property protected, improved quality of life, and lack of tyrants due to those same 4.91 billion bullets.--Joe]