One might assume Mr. Brown thinks there should be some "common sense" restrictions on our rights guaranteed by the First Amendment:

In a highly unusual instance of a United Nations official singling out an individual country for criticism, Mr. Malloch Brown said that although the United States was constructively engaged with the United Nations in many areas, the American public was shielded from knowledge of that by Washington's tolerance of what he called "too much unchecked U.N.-bashing and stereotyping."

"Much of the public discourse that reaches the U.S. heartland has been largely abandoned to its loudest detractors such as Rush Limbaugh and Fox News," he said.

Mr. Brown forgets that in the United States we are not subjects of the politicians or "The Crown".  Here the politicians are the servants of the citizens.  But I guess that is understandable, the politicians here frequently forget it also.  This is why we have the Second Amendment--our other communication tool (as Ry once described the pistol on my belt next to my cellphone).

Thanks to Michelle Malkin for bringing this to my attention.

One of my children's favorite high-school teachers (and a former Marine and a Boomershooter), Mr. Kaag, wrote to tell me:

I know that you probably have the complete Heinlein in a jumble of various paperback and hardback editions, as I do.

Did you know that after The Master died, Virginia renewed all of the copyrights? The lady has a whim of steel---as the most popular Science Fiction writer ever, his publisher wanted to continue to print copies of the canon, and when they asked her for permission, she acceded. But, and here's the kicker, she politely required they put back in all of the stuff they had taken out because it wasn't "politically-correct", like the pro-gun parts of "Red Planet". So the Heinlein published in the last 5 years or so is all unexpurgated. You might want some new copies. There's a bunch more to "Stranger", for example.

And speaking of which, Virginia is no longer among us and the Robert A. and Virginia Heinlein Foundation has done a joint venture with Meisha-Merlin Books, and is publishing the complete collection of Heinlein, including some previously-unpublished articles and speeches, in a fine leather-bound collection for about $2500 on up.

Here's the URL: www.meishamerlin.com

I am saving up my shekels.

With a $2200 minimum entry price I'm going to have to pass but I'll do some drooling.

The National Firearms Assocation (Canada) explains why the anti-gun bigots at the UN are nuts:

As you have probably noticed, the UN methods of "eliminating the illegal circulation of small arms and light weapons" have been quite unsuccessful. This paper explains some of the reasons why that is so.

...

The Programme of Action suffers, in this writer's opinion, from a prejudice. It seems to have been written by someone who assumed that it is the availability of a weapon that causes violent criminal acts. That is an untrue assumption. If it were true, every nation would have to mount continuous campaigns to deter husbands and wives from quarrelling in the kitchen, because knives are readily available in every kitchen. That is not necessary because ordinary people do not become murderous criminals simply because a weapon is easily available.

...

Now let us look at the Programme of Action. It is unfortunate, but true, that attempts to deal with complex situations are usually coloured by the type of expertise available. In this case, the type of expertise available when the Programme of Action was drafted and then adopted was apparently administrative expertise, not likely to produce successful ways of dealing with situations that range from quasi-legal to flatly illegal. Administrative methods are good for dealing with legal transactions by persons firmly determined to stay within the law. They are remarkably poor at dealing with illegal ownership, illegal procuring, illegal sales, illegal trades of goods for goods, illegal shipments, smuggling, and other illegal transactions.

...

So--what are the actual effects of laws based on the British theory and the American theory, as opposed to the anticipated effects, now that we have had a few years to study them?

In the U.S., the latest FBI annual report statistics showed that the overall national violent crime rate for 2004 had decreased for the thirteenth consecutive year (starting in 1991), and had reached a 30-year low. As a check, the latest Bureau of Justice statistics showed that the overall national violent crime rate had reached a 32-year low in 2004.

The FBI data also show that in 2004, murder rates hit a 39-year low, robbery rates a 37-year low, and aggravated assault rates a 20-year low. All forms of violent crime have been steadily decreasing since 1991. Between 1991 and 2004, violent crime declined by 39 per cent, murder by 44 per cent, rape by 24 per cent, robbery by 50 per cent, and aggravated assault by 33 per cent.

Those are very good numbers, and the period from 1991 to 2004 has also been one with a steadily increasing number of states that feature mandatory concealed carry laws. Additionally, the American approach has been particularly good for women, as women are the preferred (even if not the most numerous) targets of violent criminals. Knowing that some women are able to protect human life from criminal violence has had a noticeable effect, reducing crimes against women. Causing violent criminals to fear women results in a desirable check on violent crime rates, as Paxton Quigley says in her excellent book, Armed and Female.

The British picture is quite different.

The British Home Office Statistical Bulletin, "Crime in England and Wales, 2004/2005," tells us that their national violent crime rate increased by 109 per cent from 1995 to 2004/2005.

Between 2003/2004 and 2004/2005, reports of "threat or conspiracy to murder" went up by 31 per cent in the "top nine [police] forces (those that did the best reporting)" and up 3 per cent in "other forces." Less serious woundings reports went up 25 per cent from the top nine and 12 per cent from the other forces. Possession of weapons reports went up 13 per cent from the top nine and 0 per cent from the other forces. Harassment reports went up 58 per cent in the top nine and 22 per cent in the other forces. Reports of sexual offences increased 17 per cent in 2004/2005, but this figure was confused by a change in the definition of "sexual offence" that occurred within the two reporting periods.

"Crime involving firearms" has been rising steadily since 1998/1999 (more than doubling), in spite of the total "elimination" of handguns imposed by a total ban on the private ownership and possession of handguns in 1995. One conclusion is inescapable: British violent criminals are experiencing no difficulty in acquiring and using as many illegal handguns as they want.

Read those figures and draw your own conclusions. In this writer's view, the American approach is working, and the British idea is failing.

Give yourself thirty minutes to an hour to read the whole thing.

No.  This is not via John Lott.  From NSSF via their June 5th news release--Gun Sales Rise as Crime and Accident Rates Fall:

NEWTOWN, Conn.--New statistics show that firearm and ammunition sales are on the rise, coinciding with steady downward trends in gun crime, suicide and accident rates, in the U.S.

...

According to figures from government and independent sources, firearm crimes, suicides and accidental fatalities, including accidents among youth, are all trending downward.

"Reductions in gun crimes and accidental fatalities have been documented for many years, even as gun sales and ownership in our country continue to rise," said Doug Painter, president of NSSF. "However, today’s anti-gun organizations rake in lots of cash by perpetuating the myth that more guns equals more bad news. Clearly, there is no relationship between gun ownership and firearm misuse."

Cybercast News Service: What do liberal environmentalists have against toilets that use water?

Ann Coulter: They admire the living situation of the earthworm and believe humans should emulate it.

This is why they adore primitive societies where people crap in holes behind their mud huts. They pray that these primitives never leave the mud huts -- unless it's to come clean their designer spa bathrooms "off the books."

Cybercast News Service: Do you think any of them has ever used the type of dry toilet that they advocate?

Ann Coulter: Well, that would certainly explain why they're so cranky all the time. Dry toilets are worthless. You can't even use them to destroy a copy of the Koran. And believe me, I've tried.

Ann Coulter
June 6, 2006
CNSNew.com
[There are a lot of things I disagree with Coulter about but she does have a wicked sense of humor and a complete lack of mercy for her victims.  I admire both of those traits.--Joe]

The Muslim extremists in Canada probably figure people should trust them too.  They only planned to do a few bombings and beheadings:

RAMPTON, Canada -- Some of the 17 men and youths arrested in a suspected terrorism plot had planned to storm the nation's Parliament, take politicians hostage and behead Prime Minister Stephen Harper unless their demands for a withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan and the release of Muslim prisoners were met, prosecutors said Tuesday.

...

In his comments before the judge, Batasar said the prosecution was contending the defendants planned to invade the Parliament building in Ottawa and take hostages to demand that Canadian forces leave Afghanistan; about 2,300 serve under international mandate with the Kabul government's consent. The defendants, according to prosecutors, planned to demand the release of unspecified Muslim prisoners and to bomb the Parliament building and decapitate Harper and other political leaders if their demands were rejected.

They say Islam is the religion of peace and if you don't agree with them they will kill you.

The two Muslims the Brits captured the other day were probably intending to use sarin in a train carriage:

Terrorists were planning a chemical attack in London similar to that on the Tokyo subway, police and the security services said.

MI5 agents suspect that al-Qaeda sympathisers intended to produce a nerve agent - probably sarin - and release it in a confined space, such as a train carriage, to maximise the number of casualties.

Just in case you don't know about sarin:

Initial symptoms following exposure to sarin (and other nerve agents) are a runny nose, tightness in the chest and contraction of the pupils. Soon after, the victim has difficulty breathing and experiences nausea and drooling. As the victim continues to lose control of bodily functions, he vomits, defecates and urinates. This phase is followed by twitching and jerking. Ultimately, the victim becomes comatose and suffocates in a series of convulsive spasms.

Sarin is a highly volatile liquid. Inhalation and absorption through the skin pose a great threat. Even vapour concentrations immediately penetrate the skin. People who absorb a nonlethal dose but do not receive immediate appropriate medical treatment may suffer permanent neurological damage.

Even at very low concentrations, sarin can be fatal. Death may follow in one minute after direct ingestion of about 0.01 milligram per kilogram of body weight if antidotes, typically atropine and pralidoxime, are not quickly administered. Atropine, an acetylcholine inhibitor, is given to treat the physiological symptoms of poisoning. Pralidoxime can regenerate cholinesterases if administered within approximately five hours.

It is estimated that sarin is more than 500 times as toxic as cyanide.

Death from 10 micro-grams per kilogram of body weight.  A 110 pound person (women and children would likely be on the train carriage) would have to ingest less than 1/2 of a milligram.  A baby aspirin is 81 milligrams--over 160 times as massive as a lethal dose of sarin.

And the Muslims want the British people to trust them?  When they start turning in people planning atrocities such as these then the trust can be slowly restored.

I wonder if he was wearing a glove?  And if he was, did it fit?  O.J. sex video:

LIFE STYLE EXTRA (UK) - A sex tape allegedly starring O.J. Simpson has been leaked onto the internet.

The home movie features a man with more than a passing resemblance to the star and two women.

However, Simpson's lawyer, Yale Galanter, has branded the tape fake.

He told America's New York Daily News newspaper "While my client may appear fully clothed in portions of the tape, the man having sex is an impostor.

"This tape is garbage and we can prove it. O.J. wouldn't do anything like this."

The man selling the film, David Hans Schmidt, stands by the claim that it is the sporting legend in the movie.

He said: "O.J. is welcome to say that's not him on the tape, just like he said he didn't murder Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman but there's no question in my mind the real O.J. is having sex on this tape.

England afraid to fly its own flag:

Following warnings by extremist Islamic group al-Muhajiroun, in which the group said that the red cross in the England flag symbolizes the 'blood thirsty crusaders' and the occupation of Muslims, some of the largest companies in England have ordered their workers not to wave the flags.

The flag has recently appeared in England on everything from bikinis to cars, and sold in endless versions in stores.

But the Islamic protest forced some corporations, such as cable companies NTL, and even the Drivers and Vehicles Licensing Agency to ban the flag in every form due to fears from reactions of Muslims.

The Sun tabloid newspaper has in recent days launched a campaign to bring back the flag, and has published a blacklist of companies preventing their workers from expressing their patriotism at work.

The Sun said that a large pub network has banned drinkers from entering with symbols of the national team.

The hero of the day is a two year-old toddler, who was thrown out with his parents from Leicester, because he wore the England team's uniform.

Blood thirsty?  I keep thinking of the  British aid worker Marget Hassan, director of CARE international who was killed by Muslim extremists in Iraq.  I keep thinking of the slaughter houses they found where the Muslim extremists made videos as they beheaded people.  Muslims have no high moral ground when it comes to "blood thirst". 

The people of England need to grow a spine.

We have long known they have mental problems. Bloomberg is just insisting everyone be aware of his mental defects:

..a ban on the use and sale of gun coloration kits, which are used to paint guns in "toy-like" colors, and the introduction of a one handgun every-three-month purchase limit.

I would have never guessed they would come up with a ban on paint as a means of gun control.  But then I keep making the mistake of thinking they are rational.

Update: The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms has something to say about Bloomberg too:

"Maybe somebody stole Mikey's crayons when he was young," Gottlieb suggested. "Or perhaps he was overcome by paint fumes as a youth. What else could explain this new phobia over firearms that just makes him purple with rage?

"Singing the blues about pastel pistols," he concluded, "is nothing but a political red herring."

The danger is the trust between the community and the police may be broken. The community feels very vulnerable.

Muhammad Abdul Bari
Muslim Council of Britain leader
Terror raid could 'damage trust' 
BBC News--June 6, 2006
[And I thought that trust was broken July 7, 2005 when Muslim extremists blew up trains in The Tube and a bus.  Trust, but verify.  That's my advice.--Joe]

There's a power struggle going on over control of the human consciousness.  We are a cell of health surrounded by plague.  It's not men's minds that are at stake, but their consciousness, their awareness.  This isn't a struggle over a market area.  Make no mistake about it.  This is a struggle over what's to judged valuable in our universe.

Dr. Larry Piaget
A character in The Santaroga Barrier by Frank Herbert
[There is great subtleness in this book.  There is vast room for interpretation as to who the "good guys" and who are the "bad guys".  Some call Herbert a prophet in this book.  I can see why.--Joe]

Verbal Target Indicator: Yelling without reason in a fight or when someone says something stupid like, "Hey, my gun is not loaded!" in a fight.

From the Greg Hamilton to English Dictionary by Meredith Robinson

There are a couple things that come to mind when I read this:

TORONTO (Reuters) - A group of Canadian residents arrested for "terrorism related offenses" were inspired by al Qaeda, had amassed enough explosives to build huge bombs and were planning to blow up targets in densely populated Ontario, police said on Saturday.

Mike McDonell, assistant commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, said the group had acquired three metric tons of ammonium nitrate -- or three times the amount used in the 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City -- as they sought to "create explosive devices."

The first thing I wonder about is will this cause people to walk up any?  Or will they just figure, "Oh, it's our fault for being in the mid-east, if we weren't there it would have happened."  People can't seem to realize that the Islamic extremists have been trying to convert the world to Islam by force for several hundred years now.  It's not going to stop anytime soon.

The second thing I wonder about is ammonium nitrate readily available in Canada?  If so I wonder if I can pick myself up a 1000 pounds or so for Boomershoot 2010 or whenever it is that I will exhaust my current supply.

There is a jar of red rain water in India that some are speculating may contain alien life:

As bizarre as it may seem, the sample jars brimming with cloudy, reddish rainwater in Godfrey Louis’s laboratory in southern India may hold, well, aliens. In April, Louis, a solid-state physicist at Mahatma Gandhi University, published a paper in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Astrophysics and Space Science in which he hypothesizes that the samples—water taken from the mysterious blood-colored showers that fell sporadically across Louis’s home state of Kerala in the summer of 2001—contain microbes from outer space.

Specifically, Louis has isolated strange, thick-walled, red-tinted cell-like structures about 10 microns in size. Stranger still, dozens of his experiments suggest that the particles may lack DNA yet still reproduce plentifully, even in water superheated to nearly 600˚F. (The known upper limit for life in water is about 250˚F.) So how to explain them? Louis speculates that the particles could be extraterrestrial bacteria adapted to the harsh conditions of space and that the microbes hitched a ride on a comet or meteorite that later broke apart in the upper atmosphere and mixed with rain clouds above India. If his theory proves correct, the cells would be the first confirmed evidence of alien life and, as such, could yield tantalizing new clues to the origins of life on Earth.

500x magnification

A few years ago I read a book in which the author(s) claimed to prove that intelligent alien life had an extremely small chance of existing.  They went through all kinds of different conditions that were "essential" for intelligent life or life of any sort for that matter.  A good friend of mine had recommended it to support his view that the Milky-way Galaxy and perhaps the entire universe was just waiting for humans to claim--no need to conquer it. 

I eagerly read the book but was extremely annoyed.  They made all these claims like "the temperature must be between X and Y degrees", and the radiation level must be below such and such a level.  Just because life as we know it requires these conditions doesn't mean all life has to require similar conditions.  In fact, why couldn't life have evolved that required high levels of radiation?  Why not life that used radiation as an energy source?  Why not life that thrived in boiling water?  In fact there is life that thrives in "boiling" water.  There are certain organisms that live near geothermal vents on the ocean floor at temperatures above the normal 212 F temperature of boiling water.  The water isn't boiling because of the great pressure but the temperature isn't killing them.  And there are microbes, which evolved rather rapidly by the way, that eat stuff that is toxic to nearly all other life.  So why not alien life that thrives in environments that are impossible all life forms we know of?  No need to just "push the envelope" some in a direction or two.  Life, given enough time, could have evolved that is completely outside our realm of experience.

Think of it this way--We are immersed in an environment with rather tight constraints on it.  The temperature ranges from about -70F to about 120F.  Water is present at least in small quantities nearly everywhere.  Ionizing radiation is rare.  Sunlight of a particular spectral content and intensity is common.  How much experience do we have with conditions outside that realm?  It would be difficult for a water based creature, such as a dolphin or whale, to imagine how life could function on dry land.  They just don't have the experience with it.  Or as one wag put it, "We don't know who discovered water but we know it wasn't a fish."  The same with us and other, totally out of the box, environments.

This jar of red rain water may be enough to break a few boxes.

Mr Blair has murdered more than 100,000 people in Iraq and the Iraqi people are an occupied people, illegally invaded. They have the moral and legal right to resist that occupation.

Why would that right be restricted to the poor, bloody infantry that Mr Blair sent into the streets of Iraq?

If the Iraqis have the right, as they do under international law and under any moral philosophy, to resist foreign invaders of their country (then) that must include the man who is giving the orders.

George Galloway
Friday May 26, 2006
The Guardian
Speaking from Cuba, where he earlier in the week shared a TV stage with President Fidel Castro.
[The irony of it all...happy with Castro while advocating the murder of a leader that helped save so many people from a murderous tyrant.--Joe]

Putting guns back on the street after they've seen the police station is just asking for more trouble.  Every single gun seized by the police should find its end in a furnace.  Anything less is nothing more than a contribution to the gun violence our nation is currently suffering from.

The Gun Guys
Your Gun Guys Daily Update (daily email)
June 1, 2006
[I understand now. He is in favor of the death penality on the first offense--for the gun instead of the criminal. The "Gun Guys" have mental problems.--Joe]

From Alan Korwin--tactics that work in the fight to defend the right to keep and bear arms.  As he says, "Easy, fun, and it helps save the planet by golly!"

I kept forgetting to post this.  A couple weeks ago Ry told us about a some changes announced at a company meeting at Microsoft.  One of the things he didn't mention that struck me the most was the reason Bill Gates didn't attend the meeting.  Bill had just finished up a CEO summit meeting he had hosted and he and his good friend Warren Buffet were going to play poker that afternoon. 

OMG. 

I wonder what the ante for one of those games is. Would it be $100K, $1M, or a penny?  What would it mean to the future of the world if both of them pushed all their chips into the center of the table?

Canada is resisting the identity card system required by U.S. law to enter our country:

Canada will not embark on an untested identity card system to meet U.S. border concerns, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said yesterday.

His government has told the Americans it prefers not to create such a card and wouldn't do so until the American government has convinced itself it is effective, Harper told reporters.

ID cards are not effective in solving the problems they are claimed to address.  Mandatory ID cards are a bad idea.

New Orleans is sinking.  Anyone who looked at the problem and had more than two brain cells to rub together knew that.  What wasn't known was that parts of the city are sinking at a rate of over one inch per year.

Add in the inability to get pumps installed in a timely matter (it's a tough problem, the Corp of Engineer's has my sympathy) and my advice is they should spend their money on abandoning the city.

Dr. Joe's cure for everything is more sex.  It also works as preventative medicine.  Jamie Fox uses it to prevent obesity:

Jamie Foxx has sex every day for 30 minutes to keep in shape.

The 'Ray' star revealed that daily love making is the best way to stay slim.

He said: "We should all do something for 30 minutes every day to get the heart pumping. I make love to stay in shape."

The discovery of sugar powder was a landmark event in the history of the Benson family.  In total significance, it ranked right up there with Pearl Harbor and catching our first mink.  For my brother and I, it certainly was the moral equivalent of our first piece of ass.

Ragnar Benson
Chapter 7, page 85
Ragnar's Guide to Home and Recreational Use of High Explosives
[Sugar powder is a substitute for black powder made from household sugar and potassium chlorate.--Joe]

I was almost asleep a few minutes ago and the phone rang.  Xenia was calling.  It must be one of three dire emergencies I thought.  Those were, not necessarily in the matter of importance to her: 1) Someone is hurt or is very sick or dead; 2) Her Internet connection is down; 3) Her website is down.

I was wrong.  She wanted to know if I had read her Live Journal recently.  "How recently?"  I had read the posting from yesterday sometime.  Nope that wasn't it.  She wanted to know if I had read it in the last 10 minutes.  "No, why?"  I couldn't imagine what was so important.  She told me she posted the email she got from her English teacher on her anthology that I quoted from the other day.

I was wide awake now.  Did I need to immediately drive home and be ready to dance on the English teachers desk with muddy boots when he showed up tomorrow morning?  I couldn't quite tell from Xenia's tone of voice.  It could be she was very happy with what he said and it could be she was smug with the knowledge that someone was going to get what they deserved for trashing the hard work of Daddy's little girl.

The important part is as follows (emphasis in the original email):

Xenia:

This just may be the most beautiful anthology I've ever read.

It is the boldest.

That's my girl he's talking about!

Update: This is the teachers blog posting on the topic.

Maybe the TV news people left something out that would make things a little more clear but the way it's spelled out now Mayor Kiss doesn't make a lick of sense:

"From the perspective of being mayor," he said, "I haven't looked at public safety in terms of whether there are initiatives we would like to take. At least an element of that is that we've had two recent shootings in which handguns were involved."

Kiss said it was possible that Burlington might seek a charter change related to guns or a member of the Legislature from the city might propose a bill.

...

Despite the likelihood of opposition, Kiss said it was timely to talk about handguns, given the recent shootings. "We could see where that went, without prejudging the process," Kiss said. I don't want to be afraid of bringing up issues that are sensitive."

He doesn't want to be afraid of bring up issues that are sensitive?  Okay then Mister Mayor, why don't you bring up reinstating slavery?  Never mind that should he start pushing for such a thing I would probably be among those looking for a clear shot to put a .30 caliber hole in his cranial vault.  That is if he wasn't almost immediately impeached and unable to get any job with a higher status than shoveling pig manure.  It would make about as much sense.  Vermont has one of the lowest crime rates in the country and among the most relaxed gun laws.  Why would he want to change what is working well?

I have Just One Question for you Mayor Kiss.

The felons at PNNL didn't allow me to see the evidence against me, confront my accusers, or present a defense of any sort but I didn't know such things existed in criminal courts of law of modern countries.  So this, from Ireland, really surprised me:

His lawyers had sought to have his conviction quashed after the Supreme Court last week overturned a 1935 law that made it an indefensible crime for any man to have sex with a girl under the age of 15.

I can see the point but one should always be allowed to defend themselves.  They could have been framed for example.  Their DNA could have been planted by someone else, the pictures could have been edited, whatever evidence is used should be subject to question.

Something like this even happens in the U.S. under certain circumstances.  The freedoms we take for granted are not as secure as you might think.

No greater wrong can ever be done than to put a good man at the mercy of a bad, while telling him not to defend himself or his fellows; in no way can the success of evil be made surer or quicker.

Theodore Roosevelt
[England, Chicago, Washington D.C., New Jersey, San Francisco, etc. please take note.--Joe]

The "armed populace at large" becomes the libertarian fantasy of some people, arrested in political adolescence, who have an extreme difficulty accommodating to public authority and giving the "consent of the governed". The fantasy is that this is a viable concept. The right to be armed outside of the law is a right and a fantasy that has to be maintained by defeating legislation. It succeeds because everyone else fails.

The Potowmack Institute
As revised on November 11, 2005
[They completely neglect to consider the concept of inalienable rights such as freedom of speech and other rights guaranteed by our Bill of Rights so it's no wonder they arrive at the wrong conclusion in regards to firearms.  Thanks to Lyle for pointing these guys out.--Joe]