Via Say Uncle we get this bit of ATF humor. Here is a teaser:

It has come to our attention that an opposable thumb commonly located on a person’s hand can be used in conjunction with a semi-automatic firearm, when placed in a belt loop, can cause said semi-automatic firearm to fire at a higher rate of fire than we originally intended for it to be allowed to fire at.

What happened here was that once machine guns were heavily restricted the ATF had to define what a machine gun was. Human creative being what it is the freedom loving "gun nuts" kept coming up with inventions that bypassed the definitions the ATF came up with. Just recently the ATF went almost absurd in their definition and some smart-ass took it to the logical conclusion. I actually have some sympathy for the ATF in this case. They didn't write the law they are just trying to make sense of it and give us definitions they can enforce to. It's the bigoted politicians that are at fault. Even if all the existing ATF people people did the right thing (most of them should find legitimate jobs) there would be others more than willing to take their place. We need to destroy them at their root--the politicians that encourage them by giving them laws, money, and guns.

It's fairly easy to define a crime when there is a victim. It can be done in terms of the actual injury. Was there more than $1000 of property stolen? Was the victim permanently injured? But try and define an "assault weapon" or a machine gun, prostitution, or recreational drugs (enumeration is possible but creative chemists come up with things not on the list) and they run into problems.

Laughter and humiliation may be the best weapon we have against these anti-gun bigoted politicians and their hired thugs. Let 'em have it with both barrels.

I’m not procrastinating, I still have 25 minutes.

Xenia Huffman-Scott
[Xenia was working on a Government worksheet before school that she thought was due the next period that had a question about Microsoft lawsuits. A friend of mine testified in one of the lawsuits and she was hoping I could give her a quick brain dump and she'd be, essentially, done. She was wrong. She had all of winter break to work on it and I told her to go do her own research as best she could with the available time. It turned out the assignment wasn't due until the next day but it would have served her right if had been just 25 minutes and she wasted two of those minutes talking to me.--Joe]

There is one very well known guaranteed cure for smoking--death. However another one has just been discovered--brain injury:

Scientists studying stroke patients are reporting that an injury to a specific part of the brain, near the ear, can instantly and permanently break a smoking habit, effectively erasing the most stubborn of addictions. People with the injury who stopped smoking found that their bodies, as one man put it, “forgot the urge to smoke.”

This is great news. We may be able to find or create a drug or other means to "flip the switch" and help people from implementing the "universal cure".

I find this very ironic--I always figured you must have had a dysfunctional brain to start smoking in the first place.

Search engines are a wonderful thing. I'm sure the felons at PNNL thought they were great and wonderful as they went searching for information on me (see for example the use of Google on this day).

But search engines are double edged swords. For example doing a Google search for Battelle fraud (Battelle is the contractor that manages Pacific Northwest National Laboratory--PNNL) yielded these pages (E835 and E836) in the Congressional Record:

• Dr. Laul is a nuclear chemist and a nuclear engineer, with a Ph.D. from Purdue University. He spent 15 years at Hanford working on nuclear waste and environmental cleanup problems, analyzing whether that site was suitable for permanent storage of high-level nuclear waste.

• Dr. Laul is also a whistleblower, and a friend of the taxpayers, who put his career on the line when he blew the whistle on fraud and mismanagement by Batelle, Inc., a DOE contractor. Five days after disclosing that Batelle inappropriately and illegally used equipment paid for by the Government, Batelle fired Dr. Laul, saying he had improperly disposed of a hazardous waste--a violation DOE later said Batelle used as an excuse to lay him off and silence him.

• After losing his job, Dr. Laul brought a False Claims Act suit against Batelle and won, resulting in Batelle reimbursing DOE $330,000. Today I submit for the Record an article describing the case and reporting on Dr. Laul's vindication, and thank him for the important and honest work he did on behalf of this country. Dr. Laul lost his job because he had the nerve to stand up for what was right.

You might say that's all well and good for the taxpayers. But if you read further you might have cause to change your mind about that:

U.S. government investigators agreed that scientist Jagdish C. Laul was fired for turning in his managers for fraud.

A federal appeals court agreed Laul could sue the Hanford contractor for whom he worked for wrongful termination.

The government made the contractor, Battelle's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory pay back $330,000 for double-billing lab equipment--and even recommended Battelle managers be criminally prosecuted for fraud.

But who picked up the $750,000 tab for defending Battelle against Laul's lawsuit?

U.S. taxpayers.

Laul's case is the most recent example of a system that allows private nuclear contractors to rack up huge legal bills fighting whistleblowers--even when the contractor's in the wrong.

Battelle settled with Laul in January to head off a federal jury trial in Spokane.

The cost of his case to taxpayers includes the $250,000 settlement paid to Laul; $400,000 in legal fees to Battelle's outside law firm, Davis Wright Tremaine of Seattle; and about $100,000 in legal work and other Battelle costs to fight Laul.

If Laul had won at trial, taxpayers would have paid that bill, too. That's because of a Cold War agreement in which the U.S. government promised to pay all legal costs of its nuclear weapons contractors when they agreed to run the government's weapons plants.

The agreement, called indemnification, is still in effect today. It applies to Battelle, which works on Hanford cleanup and other government nuclear programs.

Isn't that nice? Battelle paid $330,000 for the fraud which sounds like was the amount they had illegally charged the government to begin with. And the Federal government has to pay all the legal costs of Battelle's defense. So... assuming Battelle decides to engage in some illegal activity to increase their bottom line the worst case scenario is that Battelle comes out even in the end because the Feds are required to pay the legal bills. Best case is they get away with it.

In my case the Feds will, assuming I win, pay Battelle's legal bill and any settlement I get from them. Battelle is held financially harmless by the Federal government. Just so you know. Perhaps your congress critters would like to know that as well.

Continuing the search engine exploration... So what happens if we do a search for Battelle whistleblower? That was interesting... We end up with this story which with a little more searching results in this and digging a little deeper yielded this (UT-B means the partnership between the University of Tennessee and Battelle that manages Oak Ridge National Laboratory [ORNL]):

In my settlement, I made sure that DOE and UT-B explicitly agreed that I had won the case. There were two reasons for this. One was that I did not want UT-B to be able to claim that I "dropped the case" or any such thing. But the other was that back in 1995 at PNNL, following a settlement in which Battelle paid their fired former employee J. C. Laul a sizeable amount for a whistleblower case that Laul was very likely to win if it had played out to the last act (legally speaking), PNNL head and later ORNL head Madia characterized the payout as "a straightforward business decision with the best interest of the US taxpayer in mind". But as a Government Accountability Project lawyer pointed out, Battelle spent over $400,000 of taxpayer money defending against Laul's whistleblower action, plus the $330,000 it had to return to the government for the fraudulent action that Laul (accurately) reported. Madia stated that the message of the settlement was "Don't sue us [Battelle]", but of course the true message was "We will get away with whatever we can".

So what our search engines report for us with just a little looking is that Battelle has a history of making stuff up and firing people. I was telling Barb this new information and she said, "You would think they would learn." Well yes, but there wasn't much to learn and it's a different lesson than the one we want them to learn. They have learned they can commit criminal acts and the worst that will happen is they come out even in the end--guaranteed by the contract they have with the Federal government. There are more amazingly great terms in their contract that I'll save for another day. I wouldn't want you to burst a vessel from a blood pressure spike.

Here are some of the lessons being taught to Battelle. This is right after being dinged for the first fraud case I mentioned above:

Battelle is expecting to receive an "outstanding" rating for fiscal year 1999 from the Department of Energy for its performance in operating Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland.

The rating is to become final and be announced in late December.

Last year, Battelle also received an outstanding rating. Even though its 1998 score fell just barely shy of the number needed for the top rating, DOE awarded the outstanding rating because of Battelle's strong efforts in key areas.

This year, Battelle expects to be well above the minimum score needed for an outstanding rating, based in part on the lab's self-assessment, outgoing lab Director Bill Madia said Wednesday during a meeting with the Tri-City Herald editorial board.

The real problem here is that Battelle/PNNL has no incentive to be responsible for their actions. It's like a child that gets in trouble at school and the parents intervene in such a way the child is totally protected from any punishment. There is no downside for their misbehavior--there is only upside. That's one of the ways criminals are created. After sufficient criminal activity they eventually get caught and then they go to prison. Which is has been my end goal from the beginning in then case. The PNNL felons need to spend some time being rented out by the quarter hour to fellow inmates bidding the most cigarettes for a few years and perhaps then the behavior of their previous co-workers will improve.

The above is just the tip of the iceberg. Battelle has other "skeletons in it's closet" that are most likely to come tumbling out soon. I don't have enough details to really be comfortable in talking about it even if I was at liberty to discuss it. I have been assured that I will be among the first to know when the details become public.

I'll keep you posted.

Update: A reader pointed out one of my links was broken. That is fixed now.

Also worthy of update is another source that is more readable and has the potential to be less biased is the actual ruling of the DOE in Westbrook's case:

There is evidence in the record that suggests that the RIF sheets, which contained the objective information on which the termination selections were to be made, were not given serious attention, and were drawn up to favor a pre-selected individual. I have reviewed the criteria set out on the RIF sheets and find troubling inaccuracies and manipulation.

...

In my view, the Company’s use of this criterion [transferability of skills] to assess whether an employee is flexible enough to “satisfy” or “get along with” customers is so strained that it suggests a manipulation of the system to reach a predetermined result. .... That leads me to believe its use was an afterthought, one designed to downgrade Westbrook and target her for termination. As such, it detracts from Battelle’s position that the RIF was performed impartially with respect to Westbrook.

I received an email from my lawyer today about my lawsuit against Pacific Northwest National Laboratory:

We do have service on Battelle. It was served on 1/22/07.

Whoo hooo!! Full speed ahead!

Of course that is in "legal time" rather than in "Internet time" like what I'm used to.

I also received a phone call yesterday from someone that heard about my case. They had lots of interesting information about other illegal activities Battelle has been involved with. He is sufficiently upset about it that he is taking it up with some government officials. I shared what I could with him. I'm not sure his information will be that useful to me but I hope to soon be posting some of it here or on my PNNL.info website. He claims some pretty egregious and illegal stuff.

It's not too surprising I guess. I did have a guy at the lab tell me and another fairly new employee, "See this badge? This means the law doesn't apply to us." That same "fairly new employee" recently sent me email saying, "I can definitely atest to a pattern of illegal and unethical activities at the lab" and "I do think it is my obligation as a citizen to see justice prevail."

The guy I received a phone call from had first called over two weeks ago. I put him in touch with "fairly new employee" and that contributed to the update yesterday about his plans to talk to the GAO, Congressional oversight committees, and the DOJ in the near future.

I have some hints that my previous plans to avoid getting former co-workers involved may not be possible. Now might be a good time for some of my friends that still work there to get new jobs (hint, hint). Things will be much more comfortable for them if they don't have to worry about getting fired for reporting information that is embarrassing to Battelle after being deposed. Also I've been hearing rumors of business being a little tight for them right now. If certain government agencies become displeased with all the illegal activities Battelle has been engaged in then business could get much worse soon.

I've been working for several days on the log files requested in the interrogatories for the PNNL lawsuit (no, I'm not converting them to EBCDIC although I gave it a few seconds of thought just for the amusement value). I only had a subset of the logs they wanted in a reasonably well organized manner. They wanted more than what I had organized, some of which I didn't have, lots of logs weren't in my preferred organization, many of the websites were hosted simultaneously on two different servers at the same time for a while, and the logs came from at least four different servers. It's been a lot of work but I'm nearly done with that part of it.

I obtained more log files from my old web-hosting provider last night and although there will be a few tweaks to the numbers the following is pretty close:

• Websites: ~30
• Directories: ~170
• Files: ~170,000
• Size: ~6 Gbytes

I realize they asked for this mostly to cause me pain, almost for certain they won't bother to do their own analysis, their own internal email and testimony will make this irrelevant, but I have been wanting to organize this stuff for several years anyway. I want to finish my web log analysis program (NoDooce) and this data set will be very useful for both development and testing. And besides, being the Aspergers type, I actually enjoy this type of work. I hope they find some expert witness to look at everything, pay him outrageous amounts of money, and he has as much fun as I have had with the data.

This is just the log files. There are also hundreds of pages of notes, documents I have obtained, and emails. I can't wait to start digging into the stuff they have to supply to me.

It's a little large to put it in your pocket or hip holster but you could mount it on your starship or even your Humvee:

MOODY AIR FORCE BASE, GA. — The military calls its new weapon an "active denial system," but that's an understatement. It's a ray gun that shoots a beam that makes people feel as if they are about to catch fire.

The technology is supposed to be harmless — a nonlethal way to get enemies to drop their weapons. Military officials say it could save the lives of civilians and service members in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

The weapon is not expected to go into production until at least 2010, but all branches of the military have expressed interest in it, officials said.

During the first media demonstration of the weapon Wednesday, airmen fired beams from a large dish antenna mounted atop a Humvee at people pretending to be rioters and acting out other scenarios that U.S. troops might encounter in war zones.

The device's two-man crew located their targets through powerful lenses and fired beams from more than 500 yards away. That is nearly 17 times the range of existing nonlethal weapons, such as rubber bullets. Anyone hit by the beam immediately jumped out of its path because of the blast of heat. Though the 130-degree heat wasn't painful, it was intense enough to make participants think their clothes were about to ignite.

...

The system uses electromagnetic millimeter waves, which can penetrate only 1/64 of an inch of skin, just enough to cause discomfort. By comparison, microwaves used in the common kitchen appliance penetrate several inches of flesh. The millimeter waves cannot go through walls, but they can penetrate most clothing, officials said. They refused to comment on whether the waves can go through glass.

Early in my career as an electrical engineer I worked with millimeter waves some. I'm sure it will go through most glass although it is possible to make glass it won't penetrate. It is also trivial to make clothes that block it. That doesn't mean it's useless but it will cause adversaries to spend time and money to acquire and utilize the necessary protective equipment.

As it is currently shown it's vulnerable to a well placed bullet. My advice is to armored that spot a little bit better before going to production with it. Otherwise a single agitator could disable it and enable a crowd to riot (whatever).

I'm attempting to just make just one pass before moving on. We'll see. In any case I wanted the three erroneous assumptions in a place I could find them easily in the future.

Someone in the U.K. commented to a post by Kevin and Kevin engaged him in an email debate. I responded with my own email:

From: Joe Huffman
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2007 7:39 AM
To: nhpud AT[NOSPAM] hotmail.com
Cc: gunrights AT[NOSPAM] comcast.net (Kevin Baker @ The Smallest Minority)
Subject: You comment at The Smallest Minority.

You wrote:

It is unbelievable that there are people like you lot who can defend guns as 'harmless fun' or seriously state that 'guns make you safer'. If you weren't so dangerous the absurdity of it all would be hilarious.

I love how the topic quickly moves from your gun fantasies to your racial genocide fantasies in one swift paragraph.

I particularly like the idiocy of these comments.

"if you're not a young black male living in an inner city, your likelihood of dying by homicide (regardless of weapon) is about equal to that of someone living in Europe."

"if you remove the crimes committed by blacks and latinos, the U.S. violent crime rate is almost identical to that of Canada."

Like duh!! What a surprise eh? So if I remove the most deprived higher crime areas and people from the US figures and then compare it with the average in Europe (that includes all their deprived higher crime areas and population) it is 'roughly similar. Is there no amount of distortion of statistics you lot will go to to justify your idiocy? Let alone your thinly disguised prejudice against black people. Deny black people opportunities so the majority end up in poverty stricken neighbourhoods with little or no prospects and then when they act all dysfunctional, use this to justify your superiority and racial fantasies. I despair for humanity when there are dumb f***s like you walking the planet.

Boy am I glad I don't live next door to you guys.

PS Gun deaths have dropped from 368 a year to 163 since we banned handguns in the UK. You might want to follow our example and save 15,000 US lives a year by halving your gun deaths as well.

I have Just One Question for you:

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

Basically your error is due to three unstated assumption:

1. Crimes committed with guns are independent of those committed with other weapons or merely greater physical strength. They are not. Just because a criminal does not have easy access to a gun doesn't mean they won't use some other weapon such as a knife, rock, club, feet, or fists.
2. All deaths or injuries inflicted with a firearm are bad. They are not. Many homicides and injuries committed with a firearm are legally justified and some are even praiseworthy. These incidences must be subtracted from the "bad" category and added to the "beneficial" category.
3. Restrictions on firearms will reduce the detrimental uses of firearms more than the beneficial uses of firearms. Typically anti-gun people either ignore or severely misrepresent the number of innocent lives protected by firearms. When they do try to pretend to take beneficial uses it into account they only count killings of a criminal and ignore the cases where the mere brandishing of a firearm halted an attack.

I look forward to your answer to my question.

-joe-

At some point you have to decide whether you're going to be a politician or an engineer. You cannot be both. To be a politician is to champion perception over reality. To be an engineer is to make perception subservient to reality. They are opposites. You can't do both simultaneously.

H. W. Kenton
[Substitute "scientist" for "engineer", I am both, and "An Inconvenient Truth" (the phrase as well as the movie) just screams at me when I read this quote. Thanks to my son James for bringing this quote to my attention.--Joe]

Sounds sort of like cleaning up campaign finance to me. Different people but with the same world view--people cannot be trusted with freedom:

Chinese Communist Party chief Hu Jintao has vowed to "purify" the internet, state media reported on Wednesday, describing a top-level meeting that discussed ways to master the country's sprawling, unruly online population.

...

Hu, a straitlaced communist with little sympathy for cultural relaxation, did not directly mention censorship.

But he made it clear that the Communist Party was looking to ensure it keeps control of China's internet users, often more interested in salacious pictures, bloodthirsty games and political scandal than Marxist lessons.

In the process of organizing my log files and complying with the Interrogatories I came across what appears to be the home IP address of one of the PNNL investigators or someone they reported the results of the investigation from the previous day (see also the first day of investigation).

Tracing it through various websites reveals more evidence the whole thing was about guns. Among the evidence is they had a lot of interest in a picture of me with a holstered gun on my hip and interest in Boomershoot.

One has to wonder if it's because they care about what we think of them or if it's just because they want to add people to "the list".

Someone at the US Senate did a Technorati search for Schumer and came up with my QOD from Kevin Imel.

Domain Name		senate.gov ? (United States Government)
IP Address		156.33.63.# (U.S. Senate Sergeant at Arms)
ISP		U.S. Senate Sergeant at Arms
Location		Continent  :  North America Country  :  United States  (Facts) State  :  District of Columbia City  :  Washington Lat/Long  :  38.8933, -77.0146 (Map) Distance  :  2,072 miles
Language		English (United States) en-us
Operating System		Microsoft WinXP
Browser		Firefox Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050225 Firefox/1.0.1
Javascript		version 1.5
Monitor		Resolution  :  1024 x 768 Color Depth  :  32 bits
Time of Visit		Jan 24 2007 6:56:31 am
Last Page View		Jan 24 2007 6:56:31 am
Visit Length		0 seconds
Page Views		1
Referring URL		http://www.technorati.com/search/schumer?language=en&start=0
Visit Entry Page		http://blog.joehuffm...e DayKevin Imel.aspx
Visit Exit Page		http://blog.joehuffm...e DayKevin Imel.aspx
Out Click
Time Zone		UTC-5:00
Visitor's Time		Jan 24 2007 9:56:31 am
Visit Number		129,171

I object to the term "born" for any of those slimeballs.  "Hatched" is probably closer although most are turds so would more appropriately have been "shat".

Kevin Imel
Tuesday, January 23, 2007 2:47 PM
In an email to: LewistonPistol@googlegroups.com
[In response to an urban legend kind of email that mistakenly claimed the birth month and year for the following politicians were all the same:

Albert Arnold Gore
Jr., Hillary Rodham
John F. Kerry
William Jefferson Clinton
Howard Dean
Nancy Pelosi
Dianne Feinstein
Charles E. Schumer
Barbara Boxer
--Joe]

In this sense strict anarchy may be the highest conceivable grade of perfection of social existence; for, if all men spontaneously did justice and loved mercy, it is plain that all swords might advantageously be turned into plowshares, and that the occupation of judges and police would be gone.

Thomas H. Huxley

If I've heard it once I've heard it a thousand times:  We have a "consumer based" society and as such, the more we spend, the better the economy, yak, yak, yak.  One of our recent presidents (I forget which one-- it doesn't matter as it could have been any one of them) was convinced of this well enough that he made a public statement asking Americans to go out and buy something, so as to help the economy.

No, Grasshopper.

A capitalist society (that is to say, a free socisty) gets its wealth from one source and one source only-- People who dream of new things, get excited about them, figure them out, and put them into practice and/or production.  Simply put, wealth is a product of a winning combination: The creative human mind in concert with hard work and determination.  I will herein go so far as to call it love.

"Hah! you idealist fool" you say, "oil and gold are not produced by humans, and THAT's wealth."  I say, tell that to a frog.  To a frog, petroleum is a dangerous, smelly goo that is to be avoided, and gold is just harmless and worthless.  The human mind on the other hand, has dreamed up, invented and created ways to locate, extract, refine and, more importantly, make use of, oil and gold-- they were not resources before the creativity of the human mind made them so.  

Other than a base, stone-age existence then (actually, remove the stones from that scenario, because humans invented stone tools) real wealth can only come from imagination, creativity, invention and productivity.

What the aforementioned U.S. President should have said (if he'd had a smidgeon of a clue) was, "Dream, Oh People.  Imagine something, create something, find a better way and then build a business around it.  Either that or throw your support behind someone who is doing it or has already done it.  In so doing you will be helping yourself while serving Mankind."  To my admitedly limited recollection, the only politician I've actually heard speak that way was, of all people, Condi Rice.

The next time you hear someone decrying the distastefulness of our "Consumerism" you can correct the major error in their thinking by stating this obvious fact:  Production is a prerequisite to consumption.

Therefore what we have, to the degree that ours is more successful than others, is a society built on "Producerism".

I find it more than a little telling that the word "consumerism" is in the dictionary, but the word "producerism" is not.

Socialist societies get their wealth from consuming (consuming other people's property) by plunder-- extorting from their own (all for very good reasons of course) and from conquest and enslavement.  Socialists are unhappy, defective, paranoid, upside-down individuals-- they have no imagination, which makes them unable to see or comprehend anything other than extortion and fraud as the primary means of getting things done.  This would certainly explain their hatred (even self-hatred) for the wealthy.

Update:  I forgot blind luck.  In addition to extortion and fraud, a socialist sees blind luck as the other means of enrichment, as in "Winners of Life's Lottery", etc..

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.  But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God.  It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

Thomas Jefferson
[A concept that has served us well for over 200 years but the Muslims still have not learned. It appears they are slow learners. But then if you look at our recreational drug laws and gun laws we still have a lot to learn as well.--Joe]

I updated my personal website. It's pretty badass right now.

Xenia Joy Huffman-Scott
Updated Website
January 21, 2007
[Yup. It's very pretty.--Dad]

Acknowledging the existence of evil - not just evil people but evil itself - is a prerequisite to understanding and controlling it. Denying that evil exists, and that it is a proper metaphor for the worst kind of behavior, ensures that evil will prosper.

Cal Thomas
4/24/95
Column

I found it posted on Michelle Malkin's blog:

Trust me-- you'll want to read the whole thing.  You might also want to print it and hang it on your wall, framed, next to the Bill of Rights (you do have a copy, don't you?).  Though the term is over-used, I will say that this man was in fact a "Real American".  The kind of American that made America in the first place.

This man was more articulate at the age of 23 than I am at 48.  His parents, teachers, and home-town folk must be some pretty great people.  Now excuse me, I can't type anymore.

At $750 this is less than half of list price. Quantity 3 in XL for:

Threat Level IIIA Front & rear soft panels 

Front Plate - The 10x12-inch Model TK, K-47CL+ front plate is designed to stop 7.62x51 150 gr., 5.56 SS-109 62 gr., 7.62x39 all, inc API.

The only thing I know of that I lost is one Moody Blues CD I had ripped. I have it at home and when I get around to it I'll recover it also. I got off really lucky with no data permanently lost and only two evenings of my time gone.

Email is up and working again too.

A real backup plan must be implemented...

My former supervisor, the felon Bryan McMillan, at PNNL has a lawyer who requested a "huge number" (my lawyer's phrase) of items in their response to my lawsuit. The conclusion we may be able to draw from this is they don't plan to challenge the point of law about it being a wrongful termination to firing someone because they are a gun owner. The have chosen to go the route to try and make it cost me as much money as possible. Pursuant to that tactic they have requested a lot of financial data from me. With this data they can better judge what my ability is to sustain the legal battle. What they will find out is that our house mortgage payment is lower than most people's rent, we have no other debt, and Barb and I have very high paying jobs. In essence we can, with minor life style changes, sustain the battle until we retire ten or fifteen years from now. And that doesn't include all the donations I have received (click on the Make a Donation button here).

Assuming I win I'm paying everyone back with interest but we can't count on that so you should assume it's a donation. With a big thanks to some people from the Gun Club at Microsoft donations have covered about half of the legal expenses so far with promises of more as the bills come in. So for other side to try and make it too expensive for me to fight is going to be a losing tactic. All they can do is maybe slow down the inevitable and it actually improves the possibility for me to reach the desired end goal. I don't have the time right now to explain why that is but the basics are that as long as I win this particular legal battle the more money it costs both sides during the process the better chance I have of seeing the felons actually getting convicted.

Anyway... To prove the point that their game plan is to just drive up the costs, which ironically help me achieve my final goal, here is the list of requests (complete with typos) from the other side:

INTERROGATORY 1:  State your age, birth date, birth place, height, weight, sex, and Social Security Number. 

INTERROGATORY 2:  Have you gone under any other name or different spelling of said name?  If so, what name or different spelling?

INTERROGATORY 3:  List the addresses, with the dates, where you have resided during the past ten (10) years.

INTERROGATORY 4:  State the month and year you last attended any school, the highest grade or year completed, and the name and location of said school.

INTERROGATORY 5:  If you are married, please state your spouse's name and the date and place of your marriage.  If have been married more than once, state the names and addresses of previous spouse or spouses, if living, and the date and place of their death or your divorce.

INTERROGATORY 6:  State the names, addresses, and ages of your children, if any.

INTERROGATORY 7:  Set forth the amount of your earnings during each of the past five (5) years and your earnings to date during the current year. 

INTERROGATORY 8:  Are you claiming damages for lost earning capacity, lost wages or benefits?  If so, please state, with specificity:

a. The total amount of claimed damages;
b. How you calculated your damages;
c. All employers relevant to your claim and their addresses and phone numbers; and
d. All dates on which you were unemployed.

INTERROGATORY 9: If you have ever been self-employed, state each period of self-employment and the net monthly earnings of said periods.

INTERROGATORY 10:  Have you ever filed for bankruptcy?  If so, please state:

a. The dates and places at which any bankruptcies were filed; and
b. Whether the bankruptcy proceedings are still pending or whether they have been resolved.  If they have been resolved, please state the date of the dismissal, or discharge, if any.

INTERROGATORY 11:  State where you filed your last income tax return, and the year. 

INTERROGATORY 12:  Have you ever been previously involved in a lawsuit?  If so, please state when, where, the nature of the action, the disposition of the case, and the name of the attorney who represented you.

INTERROGATORY 13:  Please advise if you have in your possession or if you have access to statements made by any party or witness to this action.  (For purposes of this interrogatory, a statement is a written statement signed or otherwise adopted or approved by the person making it or a stenographic, mechanical, electrical, or other recording or transcription thereof which is a substantially verbatim recital of an oral statement by the person making it and reasonably contemporaneously recorded.)  If you do, please identify the name of the person making it, the time and place of its taking, the names and addresses of all persons then present and the name and address of the present custodian therefor.

INTERROGATORY 14:  Have you ever been admitted to a facility or hospital for the treatment of a psychiatric or psychological problem or condition?  If so, state:

a. The name and location of said hospital or facility;
b. Whether said treatment was in-patient or out-patient;
c. The dates of said treatment inclusive;
d. The names and addresses of both treating and admitting physicians, psychologists or care givers; and
e. The type and nature of the treatment received.

INTERROGATORY 15:  Give the names, addresses and telephone numbers of any persons known to you or your attorneys having knowledge of facts pertaining to this lawsuit.   This interrogatory is intended to include all witnesses known to you or your attorney or agents.

INTERROGATORY 16:  Have you ever pled guilty to or been convicted of a crime?  If so, state the nature of the crime, the date, and the ultimate disposition of the matter.

INTERROGATORY 17: Have you and/or your spouse/former spouse ever sought marriage counseling?  If yes, please state:

a. The name and location of where counseling was provided or sought;
b. The dates of said counseling inclusive;
c. The names and addresses of persons who provided counseling; and
d. The type of nature of the counseling received.

INTERROGATORY 18: Please state the date you were Adischarged@ from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory/Batelle?

INTERROGATORY 19: Please describe in detail the reasons given to you for your discharge, who gave them, and when these reasons were explained to you.

INTERROGATORY 20: Please state the name, address, and phone number of all places at which you have applied for employment since the date of the subject discharge.

INTERROGATORY 21: Please provide details of your current employment including job title, length employed, specifics regarding compensation, duties and if you have a written contract.

INTERROGATORY 22: Since the date of the subject discharge, please state approximately how many days or months you were unemployed.

INTERROGATORY 23: If the answer to the previous Interrogatory was in the affirmative, please state whether you have received any unemployment compensation.  If yes, please state the dates you received such compensation and the amount of each payment.

INTERROGATORY 24: During your employment at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory/Batelle, were you ever disciplined or educated as a result of what your supervisor determined to be improper conduct or deviation from the company=s policies or procedures?  If yes, please state the dates of such disciplines or educations, persons involved, and the nature and reason for the disciplines or education, persons involved, and the nature and reason for the discipline or education.

INTERROGATORY 25: For all employment held since your discharge from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory/Batelle, please state:

a. The names and addresses of each employer;
b. The name of your position and a brief job description for each position held;
c. The dates of employment with each employer;
d. Your salary or hourly wage for each position held.

INTERROGATORY 26: In addition the preceding Interrogatory, please list all income, of any type, which you have received since the date of your discharge from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory/Batelle.  State the source of the income, and the total income received from each source, including but not limited to, worker=s compensation benefits, unemployment benefits, Social Security benefits, income from jobs, and all income from any other source whatsoever.  If you received unemployment or worker=s compensation benefits which are the responsibility of more than one employer, state which employer is responsible for each amount of the benefit. 

INTERROGATORY 27:  Please identify by name and address each person consulted by you as an expert and whom you expect to call as an expert witness at the time of trial.  Additionally, as to such individuals so identified, state the subject matter on which the expert is expected to testify and state the substance of the facts and opinions to which the expert is expected to testify, giving a summary of the grounds for each opinion.

INTERROGATORY 28:  State whether or not you have received any reports of any kind concerning any aspect of your case.  If your answer is in the affirmative, state:

(a) What is the general subject of the report?
(b) The name, title or specialty, address and phone number of the person or expert or experts who made said report or reports.
(c) Who has custody of such report or reports?

INTERROGATORY 29:  Please describe and list each website maintained by you during the time of your employment at PNNL/Batelle and thereafter, including but not limited to the name of each website, its general subject matter, its URL, and the dates when such website was established.

INTERROGATORY 30:  Other than the websites described in your answer to Interrogatory 30, please describe and list each website where you have posted content of any kind or nature that could be viewed by other users of such website during your employment at PNNL/Batelle and thereafter, including the dates that such posts were made and the names and URLs of websites where such posts were made.

INTERROGATORY 31:  Of the websites listed in your answer to Interrogatory 31, please list specifically which websites you posted content referencing your employment at or information about PNNL/Batelle, including the dates of such posts and the name and URL of such websites.

INTERROGATORY 32:  For each post described in your answer to Interrogatory 32, please describe in detail the content of such post.

INTERROGATORY 33: While employed at PNNL/Batelle did you ever access the internet at work for a non-work related purpose?  If yes, please state the approximate dates of such access, the website you visited, its URL, and the purpose of accessing this website.

INTERROGATORY 34:  Please provide all facts to support the allegation in your Complaint that you were Acertified as a firearms instructor,@ including but not limited to the date of your certification and what agency or group granted you certification.

INTERROGATORY 35:  Please provide all facts to support that PNNL/Batelle knew that you were Acertified as a firearms instructor@ during your employment and/or that this influenced the decision to terminate you.

INTERROGATORY 36:  Please list the names of all the people present in May 17, 2005 meeting alleged in your Complaint, and describe what each person told you at this meeting, including the name and URL of the website(s) where it was asserted that you Areleased business and customer-sensitive information.@

INTERROGATORY 37:  Please list the dates and times that APNNL Investigators@ visited your Agun-related websites@ as alleged in your Complaint.

INTERROGATORY 38:  Please state the name of the AHuman Resources Specialist@ referenced in paragraph 3.9 of your Complaint, as well as the names of any others present at this meeting.

INTERROGATORY 39: Did you ever allow others to access the internet through PNNL/ Batelle owned computers?  If yes, please list the dates and times that you allowed others to access PNNL/Batelle owned computers and the name of such persons.

INTERROGATORY 40:  Please state the name of the manager referenced in paragraph 3.10 of your Complaint.

INTERROGATORY 41:  Please provide all facts to support your allegation that Afollowing [your] suspension, neither Plaintiff nor any of his co-workers, project managers, or program managers were asked any questions.@

INTERROGATORY 42:  Please describe in detail what was told to you regarding how you inappropriately and without authorization used PNNL computing resources, failed to comply with company standards, disclosed or used proprietary or confidential information without authorization, and were dishonest as stated in your Complaint at paragraph 3.14.

INTERROGATORY 43:  State the names of any others who were present at your meeting with Bryan McMillan described in paragraph 3.14 of your Complaint.

INTERROGATORY 44:  Please provide all factual support for your allegation that Athe proffered reasons for Plaintiff=s discharge are false and pretextual,@ as alleged in your complaint.

REQUEST FOR PRODUCTION 1:  Please provide legible copies of your income tax returns for the last five (5) years.

REQUEST FOR PRODUCTION 2:  Please provide legible copies of all transcripts or statements of any party or witness to this action.

REQUEST FOR PRODUCTION 3:  Please provide legible copies of all diaries, notes, memoranda, photographs, records, letters, or documents of any kind pertaining to the liability or damage claims of plaintiff.  This request for production is not meant to include materials prepared in anticipation of litigation, attorney work product, or confidential attorney-client communications. 

REQUEST FOR PRODUCTION 4:  Please provide true and accurate copies of all job applications you have filled out and submitted since the time of the subject discharge.

REQUEST FOR PRODUCTION 5:  Please provide legible copies of all resume or curriculum vitae which you have sent to an employer since the time of the subject discharge.

REQUEST FOR PRODUCTION 6:  Please provide legible copies of every record or document in your possession which is connected to, relates to, or is otherwise associated with your employment with defendant.  This request for production includes, but is not limited to, correspondence from or to defendant, written reprimands, performance evaluations, and any other documents received by you which relate to your employment with defendant. 

REQUEST FOR PRODUCTION 7:  Please provide legible copies of all reports, of any kind, including but not limited to reports of your experts, concerning any aspect of your case. 

REQUEST FOR PRODUCTION NO. 8:  For the websites listed in your answer to Interrogatory 30, please provide a hard copy of the log history of each website, from the date you began employment at PNNL/Batelle to date, showing who logged onto each website, at what time, and for how long. Please indicate on the log history, if it is not readily apparent, which entries you believe represent APNNL investigators@ and which represent you.

REQUEST FOR PRODUCTION NO. 9: For the websites listed in your answers to Interrogatory 30-32, please provide a hard copy of each posting made by you, from the date you began employment at PNNL/Batelle to date.  This request is intended to include posts in their original form as initially posted as well as any modifications, deletions, or additions made thereafter.  The hard copy may be from the website, from a back-up copy of the posting made by whomever maintains the server, or from any other means available to you.

What has happened and continues to happen in Monroe, N.C., illustrates an old truth: that words used in common by all men do not always have a meaning common to all men. Men have engaged in life-or-death struggles because of differences of meaning in a commonly-used word. The white racist believes in "freedom," he believes in "fair trial," he believes in "justice." He sincerely believes in those words and can use them with great emotion because to the white racist they mean his freedom to deprive Negroes of their basic human rights and his courts where a "fair trial" is that procedure and "justice" that decision which upholds the racist's mad ideal of white supremacy. On many desperate occasions when our constitutional rights were denied and our lives were in danger, we called on the Justice Department and the FBI to investigate the Monroe situation, to protect our lives and to restore our constitutional rights--in other words, to administer justice. And they always refused our request.

Robert F. Williams
Page 54; Negroes With Guns
[I'm really enjoying this book. Compare the above with the case where Second Amendment arguments in a gun manufacturing and possession case were not allowed. The Second Amendment does not mean the same to most of you and me that it does to the anti-gun bigots.--Joe]

Yesterday I received the interrogatories from the lawyer of my felonious former supervisor Bryan McMillan at PNNL. Among the list of things requested (according to my lawyer the 44 interrogatories and seven "requests for production" is a "huge number") was a HARD COPY of all my website log files from the day I started work at PNNL until the present. As I was organizing the log files (several Gigabytes of stuff) my hard disk died. I had back ups of all the log files up until a month or two after the termination (June 2005) but not for the last 18 months or so. I only had one copy of most of them. My email hadn't been backed up for several months either. I was up until 3:00 AM before giving up for the night.

Today I was able to recover nearly everything from the old drive with the only thing still potentially at risk was stuff I could recreate such as my website content (still up on my ISPs server). I haven't verified my email file yet but it seemed to copy just fine. Ry, his son, and I went to Fry's and bought a new hard disk and I'm now in the process of copying all my files to the new hard disk.

I'm glad I was able to recover the data. It would have been exceedingly difficult to explain a hard disk crash occurring only a few hours after getting a request for the contents.

And it's not like I don't want to comply either. It would be lots of fun actually. They want a hard copy of all the log files. I did a rough estimate and came up with over one million pages required using a normal sized font. Printed single sided that's a pile of paper over 300 feet high. And since when they lose the case they will have to pay all my legal expenses and hence will ultimately get stuck with the bill for all the paper and printing costs. And you know what would be even more funny? Driving a truck full of boxes of paper up to the door of the lawyer's office and telling them to unload it. And of course imagining them trying to find data of any use in a million pieces of paper would keep me laughing for a few weeks as well.

Unfortunately my lawyer said to just give them the data on a DVD and let them print it out if they wanted it that way. It seems my lawyer wants to spoil nearly all my fun.

Mayor Nagin, Chief Riley and the city’s attorney have repeatedly failed to communicate with our legal counsel, even for the most trivial of matters related to this lawsuit.

...

There comes a time when patience runs out and people need to be held accountable for what amounts to an arrogant disregard for the seriousness of this lawsuit and the rights of New Orleans gun owners.

...

The city’s behavior in this matter, and particularly that of Mayor Nagin and Chief Riley, has been deplorable, and it is time for them to behave like adults. Since the day the city began seizing firearms, Nagin and Riley have acted as though they are above the law. It is time they learned otherwise.

Alan Gottlieb
January 17, 2007
SAF FILES MOTION TO HOLD NAGIN, RILEY IN CONTEMPT