It may not come as a surprise to many of my readers that I am just a little bit 'different' from most other people. Among my probable differences is that I get a thrill from seeing this in my sitemeter:

Domain Name		treas.gov ? (United States Government)
IP Address		199.196.144.# (Executive Office of Asset Forfeiture)
ISP		Executive Office of Asset Forfeiture
Location		Continent  :  North America Country  :  United States  (Facts) State  :  Virginia City  :  Dulles Lat/Long  :  39.0853, -77.6452 (Map) Distance  :  2,036 miles
Language		English (United States) en-us
Operating System		Microsoft WinXP
Browser		Internet Explorer 6.0 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; FunWebProducts; .NET CLR 1.0.3705; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)
Javascript		version 1.3
Monitor		Resolution  :  1024 x 768 Color Depth  :  32 bits
Time of Visit		Aug 24 2006 9:53:37 am
Last Page View		Aug 24 2006 9:54:37 am
Visit Length		60 seconds
Page Views		2
Referring URL		http://www.google.co...en&lr=&start=10&sa=N
Search Engine		google.com
Search Words		seattle university blog
Visit Entry Page		http://blog.joehuffm...ttle University.aspx
Visit Exit Page		http://blog.joehuffm...d3-01f14d508357.aspx
Out Click
Time Zone		UTC-5:00
Visitor's Time		Aug 24 2006 12:53:37 pm
Visit Number		95,929

The "Executive Office of Asset Forfeiture" with the U.S. Treasury Department. Doesn't that just warm your heart? It thrills me to be able to point out such an office exists and they are actively out there, hard at work, doing whatever it is they do, looking at my websites (they also visit Boomershoot.org).

I'm not paranoid but if I ever am I'm certain I'll be able to find plenty of justification.

They shouldn't be violating our 4th amendment rights to begin with so this issues should never have come up. But now it has and I have been sort of following this story. I probably wouldn't have commented on it but then he said:

Amin may not want his mother to know he has a penis pump, but he said he doesn't consider it an unusual device to own.

"It's normal," he said. "Half of America they use it."

Half of America would mean virtually all males. I don't think so. My guess it would be in the fraction of one percent range, but then Dr. Joe hasn't done accurate surveys on that particular topic.

I don't think he should be prosecuted over this since the public embarrassment would seem to be sufficient punishment. I mean, if you were so embarrassed by it that you didn't want your mother to know you had it and told security it was a bomb rather than a penis pump can you imagined the discomfort he is experiencing when the entire world can read about it and is making jokes at his expense?

Poor guy. Let that be a lesson to you. If are going to bring sex toys on the plane bring something that won't be mistaken for a weapon. The only sex toy I take on my airline flights is my spouse which no one has yet considered a weapon (no, I'm not going to go for the joke, my own "homeland security" would come down on me way too hard). But if you don't have one you might consider an anatomically correct inflatable sheep or something.

They are saying it needs a valve job. Apparently, mixing metaphors, they are unwilling to face the reality that it's time to remove life support from socialized medicine and let it die. But at least it is a step in the right direction. If they open the valve maybe the monster will bleed to death as citizens utilize the private sector.

I sort of hinted at this in my comment in response to Lyle's comment here but I'll elaborate a bit now.

One thing I find lacking in our current form of government is a counter balance to creeping government power. In my Utopian vision the only function of the Federal government would be to protect our union of states from foreign threats (purposely left vague to include regulation of immigration and other issues) and to prosecute state government officials who, under the color of law, violated the U.S. and state constitutions. Hence the Feds would not have it in their power to legislate restrictions on, or enhancements for, individual citizens because that would be the sole domain of the states. This would mean, for example, any state/city/local officials that passed and/or tried to enforce laws against firearms would find themselves being prosecuted for violation of the 2nd Amendment. And any effort to fund roads, education, or social welfare would also be categorically out of the scope of Federal jurisdiction.

If you were to squint and hold your head just right you could say that is what our current U.S. constitution says the current state of affairs is (the constitution doesn't explicitly say they are to police the state/city/local officials). But of course that's not current reality. We have a long way to go before reaching utopia. I'm pretty sure even the "Skycycle" I mentioned in my comment will be inadequate to make that leap.

The police can't protect you. You are responsible for your own safety. The police are reactive and show up to draw the chalk outline on the sidewalk and make a good faith attempt at finding your killer. It's too bad Mr. Woodhams and his family had to discover this on their own rather than the entire culture understanding the idiocy of banning the tools of self-defense:

The Metropolitan police have apologised for "any hurt" caused by their failure to prevent the fatal shooting of a 22-year-old father.

Peter Woodhams was shot in Canning Town, east London, on August 21st after confronting a group of youths and died later at Royal London hospital.

It later emerged that the TV engineer had been stabbed in the neck nearby exactly seven months earlier, but no-one was ever charged.

The victim's fiancee claims that police did not launch a thorough enough inquiry in January and Commander Rod Jarman admitted that an internal police investigation was needed.

"We will robustly deal with any failings in our investigation of the previous incident and make sure that those matters are dealt with," he said.

"I would also like to make my apologies for any hurt that that investigation may have caused the family."

In England there appears to be some thought given to the concept that all cultures are not just as valid:

Ms Kelly acknowledged that suspicions between communities were being fuelled by the events of 9/11 and its aftermath, as well as the recent arrests in Britain over an alleged plot to blow up transatlantic airliners.

"For some communities in particular, we need to acknowledge that life in Britain has started to feel markedly different since the attacks on 9/11 in New York and on 7/7 in London - even more so since the events of two weeks ago," she said.

But in an interview on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme earlier, she ruled out changing British foreign policy in response to the strong disapproval voiced by some sections of the community. "I certainly don't accept that it is the root cause of extremism, which I think is based on twisted ideology."

Ms Kelly questioned whether exaggerated respect for multiculturalism in Britain had driven communities apart, an issue already addressed by Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality.

"We have moved from a period of uniform consensus on the value of multiculturalism, to one where we can encourage that debate by questioning whether it is encouraging separateness," she said.

This is just a baby step but it is a step in the right direction. Ultimately they must realized that we must Destroy Their Culture.

Way back when I was a student at Command and Staff School, the class was treated to an all day session by a group of white-coated biology professors who told us all about the limitations and capabilities of "biological warfare." This session was very secret - evidently to the point where no one learned anything from it.

The professors in this case informed us that if biological weapons were to be used, no existing affliction would be involved - not anthrax or bubonic plague or typhus or anything else that anyone had seen before. The agent used would be a synthetic disease created in a laboratory and given a code name, such as "Q27." All members of the attacking population could be immunized against it, but the defenders would have no way of combating it since they would not know what it was.

The professors further pointed out that the symptoms of the disease could be manufactured to order and need not be permanently serious. The affliction would have to last only long enough to allow ground victory by the attacking force. These professors pointed out to the class how humane that was. Well, maybe, but anybody who chooses to use anthrax as a weapon does not understand biological warfare.

Jeff Cooper
From Jeff Cooper's Commentaries
Vol. 6, No. 3
March 1998
[Considering that Cooper is in his 80's and hence this class must have been at least 50 years ago the current state of the art might be "very interesting".--Joe]

...or maybe kryptonite.  Demanding clarity from a socialist is, universally, considered a personal attack.  Remember this next time you see a Leftist interviewed.  Here is just one of countless examples.  Its from 1994, the year of the deadly "assault weapon":

My position is that anybody who's in favor gun control is a fucking moron.

Jackie Mason
From Penn and Teller: Bullshit! Gun Control
See also Wikipedia.
[Actually, I can think of three other options. The gun control advocate could also be one or more of the following: 1) Ignorant, 2) Evil, 3) Insane. If you are a gun control advocate and are unsure as to your classification let me know and I'll help you figure it out.--Joe]

My main computer just died. It won't even get to POST. I'm virtually certain no data has been lost but I haven't really verifed that yet.

The biggest issue is that my email access will be significantly impaired until I get it repaired (it may still be under warranty). Email sent to me after about 21:30 Pacific Daylight Time is in limbo for now as well. Resend if you sent me something that needs to be addressed soon.

Update: It is still under warranty and although I have to take it back to Moscow, Idaho (300 miles from where I am now) it might be ready when I return.

In case you haven't seen it yet. It's 28 minutes spent worthwhile even if the language is a bit crude at times.

I will be using a sentence from it for the quote of the day tomorrow.

They want to return the world to a pre-age-of-reason/age-of-enlightenment world. That is where the split took place that put the muslim world as second rate to ours. They believe that their world, following the will of God, must be able to express that as also being the best world in all aspects. If not they must in the eyes of God being doing something wrong. Since they cannot compete with us in this world, they must destroy it to return it to a state when they were the best (their enlightnment during our dark ages).

Greg Hamilton
August 8, 2006 6:58 PM
From the email list: insightstraining @ yahoogroups.com

I had long misunderstood. I had only causally paid attention but I thought dark matter was just ordinary matter that was in too low of energy state to emit light or other radiation. Wrong. And now they have actually proved it's existence. What really got my attention was this:

The two galaxy clusters passed through each other at an incredible speed of 16 million kilometers per hour. As they did, the bulk of the luminous matter in the two clusters, which is in the form of hot gases, bumped into each other and slowed down. But the dark matter sailed ahead because it does not interact with normal matter the same way.

...

Sean Carroll is a cosmologist at the University of Chicago who was not involved in the observations. He says particle physics laboratories around the world are trying to capture dark matter in an effort to determine its properties.

"So there absolutely is a new particle that physicists get to go out there and find," he said. "That's great news because it tells theorists what to think about - to think about models for dark matter - and experimentalists what to do to go out there and look for that particle."

A completely new type of matter which composes the majority of the mass in the universe. Wow! There has got to be some science fiction stories enabled by this. Parallel universes come to mind...

This is like going through life thinking people like you were the norm and then one day having the majority of the population "coming out of the closet" and finding you actually were a very small minority.

You remember Jenny Price from the other day, right? I was just looking at who has been visiting me and saw this:

Domain Name		usdoj.gov ? (United States Government)
IP Address		149.101.1.# (US Dept of Justice)
ISP		US Dept of Justice
Location		Continent  :  North America Country  :  United States  (Facts) State  :  Maryland City  :  Potomac Lat/Long  :  39.023, -77.1993 (Map) Distance  :  2,059 miles
Language		English (United States) en-us
Operating System		Microsoft WinXP
Browser		Internet Explorer 6.0 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; DOJ3jx7bf; SV1; DI60SP1001; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)
Javascript		version 1.3
Monitor		Resolution  :  1280 x 1024 Color Depth  :  16 bits
Time of Visit		Aug 21 2006 7:30:47 am
Last Page View		Aug 21 2006 7:31:54 am
Visit Length		1 minute 7 seconds
Page Views		2
Referring URL		http://blogsearch.go...22&btnG=Search Blogs
Search Engine		blogsearch.google.com
Search Words		guns & "jenny price"
Visit Entry Page		http://blog.joehuffm...55-698f2960fb51.aspx
Visit Exit Page		http://blog.joehuffm.../Thinking Small.aspx
Out Click
Time Zone		UTC-5:00
Visitor's Time		Aug 21 2006 10:30:47 am
Visit Number		95,122

I wonder why the DOJ is interested in what bloggers are saying about Jenny Price. Did she get a credible death threat or something?

Very interesting...

I quietly declare war with the State, after my fashion, though I will still make use and get advantage of her as I can, as is usual in such cases.

Henry David Thoreau
(1817-62), U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist.
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (1849).
[I hope to expand on this theme in a blog post soon.--Joe]

I just made all my reservations for attending the Gun Blogger Rendezvous in Reno. There are already lots of people signed up that I'm looking forward to meeting. You don't have to be a blogger to attend, just have an interest in meeting some of the gun bloggers.

See you there?

Baby formula doesn't kill people. Islamic fascists kill people.

Ann Coulter
August 20, 2006
Terrorists win!

Islam, in and of itself, however, is an Allah-worshipping, Kamikaze Nation, exactly like pre-World War II Imperial Japan. It's Bible, the Koran, can be read like Hitler's Mein Kampf. It demands to rule the entire human race. Islam's only idea of freedom of religion is the freedom of Islam to rule everything. Islamic Political Parties should be no more trusted than neo-Nazi, White Supremacists and David Duke of the Ku Klux Klan have been trusted. Tragically, the only language Islam, like Hirohito's Japan, understands is violence. The measures Harry Truman took to end the war with Japan may prove tragically necessary with Islam.

Michael Moriarty
August 16, 2006
An Interview with Emmy-Winning Actor Michael Moriarty, Presidential Candidate

The other night at the Jim Stafford show Stafford asked how many people had ever been called various names. One of those names was "Democrat". A few people, perhaps ten, indicated they had been. Stafford commented sadly, "You find them everywhere." He then asked how many had ever been called Republican. Most of the probably 150 people in the crowd indicated they had.

Another hint of the political leanings of the area comes from reading some of the local history:

Thus the stage was set for a conflict between the settlers, mostly Republican and law-abidders, and the natives, mostly Democrats who liked the status quo.

The status quo was:

... government for the most part had ceased to exist with anarchy reigning over the county.

Some things never change I guess (I'm thinking of the cities of New Orleans and Washington D.C.).

Interesting:

The study by Hamburg Sex Researcher Professor Dr Werner Habermehl looked at the sex lives of hundreds of German women and compared them with their hair colour.

He said: "The sex lives of women with red hair were clearly more active than those with other hair colour, with more partners and having sex more often than the average. The research shows that the fiery redhead certainly lives up to her reputation."

He added that women who dyed their hair red from another colour were signalling they were looking for a partner, and added: "Even women in a fixed relationship are letting their partners know they are unhappy if they dye their hair red. They are saying that they are looking for something better."

Despite standing right beside the Muslim extremist who shot her and listening while he "ranted on the phone about Jews, Israel and the U.S. role in the war in Iraq and the Middle East" Ms Klein is concerned about all the wrong things:

Klein said she hopes the shooting will serve to renew local and national efforts to draft gun control legislation.

How and why Haq "was able to legally acquire two semi-automatic weapons in our state is still a very disturbing mystery to me," she said.

...

"Naveed Haq has wasted enough of my time," she said.

Huh? Haq is the reason she may not regain the use of her hand. His extremist religious beliefs are the reason he and millions of others want her dead. And she is distrubed because it's legal to purchase firearms? Had she purchased and carried a similar firearm she and others might not have been shot. She should exercise her rights, her brain, and before pushing for more useless gun control legislation answer Just One Question.

For reference see:

• The Seattle Times
• Seattle PI
• The Daily Herald

As pointed out by Denise, Jenny Price wrote another editorial. This time on gun owners instead of guns. I commented on her last one here. This one is about being "Targeted by Gun Nuts". At the time I suspected she visited my blog a week or two after I wrote that post because of what I saw in my log file, but one never knows for certain.

Jenny, if you visit again please answer Just One Question.

I think the most telling part of the editorial are the last two paragraphs:

...do you really want these people on these websites (and 40 million other people in the country) to have guns?

I can cite statistics, and I can tell you why the right to carry a 9-millimeter semiautomatic handgun with a 10-shot clip is not guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment. But the paranoia and bone-chilling hatred that spew from such sites as packing.org and freerepublic.com make for an equally — and unusually — effective argument for a ban on handguns.

She can cite statistics but can she do it correctly? Last time she had a terrible problem doing so. I've looked around a fair amount this morning and as near as I can tell she is off by about a factor of two, on the low side, with the number of gun owners in this country.

And if she can tell us why the 2nd Amendment doesn't guarantee us the right to carry a 9mm handgun with a 10 round magazine there are some others besides me who would be interested in her reasoning. For example:

• The Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 97th Congress, Second Session, 2/82
• The judges in U.S. vs. Emerson, 5th Circuit Federal Court
• The U.S. Attorney General

But then she could have done that this time but instead went for the emotional appeal and claims it's is an unusually effective argument.

I think the 2008 presidential election will be won or lost on environmental degradation and new thinking on the environment.

Fabian Nunez
California Assembly Speaker
August 17, 2006
California on brink of global warming breakthrough
[We are in the middle of WWIII (or IV) and this guy thinks "new thinking on the environment" will be the deciding issue of the next presidental election? The guy is a Barking Moonbat.--Joe]

I remembered as soon as I heard it, Barb and I mispronounce Missouri. It's pronouced mi-ZER-ah by the locals here. With that small error corrected we are doing fine (other than the marginal Internet connection).

Monday was spent in Branson. In the morning we visited the Titanic museum. We were quite impressed. But why such an extensive Titanic museum in the Midwest? I could see having it in New York City, Belfast, or even London, but Branson Missouri? Never mind. We liked it a great deal.

Monday afternoon we rode the ducks with "Captain Clyde." Very funny and pleasingly informative.

Monday evening we had dinner at the Shogun Restaurant and were pleased with both the food and the show.

After dinner we went to the Jim Stafford Show. He and his kids are very talented musically but the humor was disappointing.

Tuesday afternoon we visited the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum in Mansfield. I haven't read even one of her "Little House on the Prairie" books or watched one of the T.V. shows but still enjoyed the museum. Her daughter Rose Wilder Lane was quite impressive too and a large section of the museum is devoted to her. Rose is considered seminal force behind the Libertarian party!

Late on Tuesday afternoon we found our way deep into the "hills" to the home of Ozark Pyrotechnics owner Dave and his family. The highest point in the state is 1772 feet and the lowest is 230 feet above sea level so it's not really possible to have "hills" that qualify to our Idaho sensibilities. Dave is a self described hillbilly. If Dave and his family are representative of hillbillies then it is no insult to be called one. For hours Dave and talked about Boomershoot and his first effort at a similar event while Barb was entertained by the two girls:

Dave, knowing we were celebrating our 30th anniversary this week fixed us a wonderful dinner, complete with champagne, and put on a fireworks show for us. This wasn't just a few fountains, sparklers and firecrackers. This was a real fireworks show that required a call to the local sheriff and the fire marshall beforehand. Here is a picture of Dave with his idea of real fireworks (the biggest shells for us were 'only' four inches):

Update: I forgot to mention the fireflies! Barb and I had never seen fireflies before. We saw our first fireflies Tuesday night as we were preparing the fireworks. The dark haired girl in the picture above caught a couple and showed them to us up close.

It was such a cool way to celebrate our anniversary. Other people celebrate anniversaries by going to Hawaii or Europe. We visited hillbillies in the Ozarks and saw fireflies and our own private fireworks display. How many people can claim an experience like that?

The folksongs of the 1960s will never be written again because of President George Bush. He has hampered the liberties of my country in the name of September 11. Songs now can only talk of patriotism, they cannot mention peace.

Catherine Mayo
AN AMERICAN IN PAKISTAN: Value of dissent
March 18, 2003

[Mayo is the Barking Moonbat who urinated in the aisle of United flight 923 from London to Washington D.C. yesterday.--Joe]

The Democrats are the party of government activism, the party that says government can make you richer, smarter, taller, and get the chickweed out of your lawn. Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work, and then get elected and prove it.

P. J. O'Rourke
Parliament of Whores