[heavy sigh] Another one. I could not make this stuff up if I spent weeks on it:

From: Robbie [@ hotmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2007 11:28 AM
To: Joe Huffman
Subject: MAKIN A BOMB!!! :D

Hey M8,

 

Sorry To Bother You Like This But Im Lookin For A Recipie To Blow A 5" Hole In A Concrete Wall. I Was Wondering If You Could Help Me Out? I Live In Great Britian (Scotland #1) And Live Next To A Builders Yard So Materials Wont Be A Great Issue. I Want The Bomb To Go Off While Im There But Back A Bit Obviously. Ive Got Around £20 ($40 or so). It Needs To Be Quiet So I Wont Be Scene And I Want It To Be In A Bottle Or Bag Etc.

Cheers M8 If You Can Help.

 

Rambo Emm 2oo7

 

"Where Ya From Niggah? West Side Niggah!,
Where Ya From Niggah? East Side Niggah!,
Where Ya From Niggah? North Side Niggah!,
Where Ya From Niggah? South Side Niggah!"

 

---

From: Joe Huffman
Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2007 11:43 AM
To: Robbie
Subject: RE: MAKIN A BOMB!!! :D

Quiet bombs aren't something I have any experience with.

 

-joe-

---

From: Joe Huffman
Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2007 12:39 PM
To: new.scotland.yard@met.police.uk
Subject: FW: MAKIN A BOMB!!! :D

I received an email from someone asking for help building a bomb in Scotland. It's probably nothing to worry about but that's your decision to make not mine.

 

I have attached an Excel spread sheet with information from my log files for http://www.boomershoot.org. It was this website where he got my email address.

 

I'm not sure but I suspect he came in via two different locations on two different dates. The IP address in his email is the same as that shown in lines 8 through 44 off the spread sheet which are today's visit. But there is something odd about that. He didn't click on a link on another web page to visit that web page (http://www.boomershoot.org/general/BombHelp.htm). He went directly to it as if he typed it in or clicked on it in an email. Hence it may be that the earlier visit, as shown in lines 2 through 7 of the spread sheet from the same ISP are related. Those lines show someone did a Google search for "making a bomb", found my web page, and then made it a "Favorite".

 

I know Microsoft will also be glad to help with the Hotmail account if that would be useful.

 

Below you will also find the header from the email which might be of potential use. Further below you will see his email and my response.

 

Don't hesitate to contact me if I can be of any further help.

 

 

Joe Huffman
Moscow, Idaho USA

Cell: 208-301-4254

---

From: Ann [ @met.police.uk ]
Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2007 4:54 PM
To: joeh@boomershoot.org
Subject: RE: MAKIN A BOMB!!! :D

Thank you for your e-mail. It has been forwarded to the Anti-Terrorist Branch-Intelligence Unit.

 

E-Mail Office

New Scotland Yard

From a letter written by the National Park Service:

"Right to carry" laws do not protect visitors from wildlife. Most weapons carried for protection from wildlife are not adequate for that purpose. Untrained individuals attempting to protect themselves from dangerous animals often exacerbate the situation.

So I guess when a mountain lion is chewing on your head they want you to use just your bare hands or improvise weapons on the spot like sticks and stones. And I presume struggling and screaming won't exacerbate the situation either. Maybe those National Park bureaucrats are of the type that think just because a proposed solution is "all natural" it's better.

Tam says, "Making Atlas shrug".

For people that haven't read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged the following is probably mostly gibberish but explaining here would be a distraction.

As Tam points out Senator Clinton is one of those rare politicians that:

...has the sheer stones to come right out in front of a national audience and baldly, openly, and without euphemism say "I want to steal your shit."

If Senator Clinton becomes President Clinton then I can seriously believe it's time to looking for and/or creating Galt's Gulch. It might be time for the people that have never before gone on strike to finally do just that. It might be time to forcibly demonstrate to the socialists and communists of the world that theft and redistribute of that booty does not and cannot make "the people" better off. It might be time to demonstrate that you can, after a fashion, force labor but you can't force someone to think.

The only question I have is; Who is our John Galt?

Do you know why prisoners can escape? Because they have more time.

You have the time, the motivation, and the smarts to devote to this case. The other side is at a disadvantage.

Matthew J. Bean, P.S.
February 7, 2007
Regarding Joe Huffman versus Battelle (PNNL).
[This was after he expressed some surprise at my level of preparation in the case and I said I had been thinking about these things for over a year and a half and have been looking forward to the day when I could execute on them.--Joe]

I have to admit I have a rather small sample compared to theirs but from my research this study is way off the mark:

On average, most women say they would have no problem abandoning sex for over a year if it meant they could get their hands on a new wardrobe. Two percent of the 1,000 women in 10 cities surveyed were ready to abstain from sex for three years in exchange for new duds.

When asked whether giving up sex for a month would be worse than losing a loved piece of clothing, 61 percent said they’d rather give up getting down and dirty. 48 percent, taking part in the survey by consumer products giant Unilever said their favorite article of clothing was more reliable than their man in giving them confidence and making them feel sexy.

"Some people say clothes make the man, but the right clothes can even replace him," fashion designer, stylist and TV personality Carson Kressley from the reality TV show "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" said in a statement accompanying the poll.

Battelle is the company that manages PNNL (technically, I'm suing Battelle, not PNNL) and several other DOE national laboratories. One of those labs is Oak Ridge. It doesn't sound like Battelle is in the middle of it, just on the edge, but there are some people being prosecuted for fraud in connection with contracts administered by Battelle.

I got some interesting information from my lawyer today. I turned over the interrogatories I had been working on. Interesting quote from my lawyer, "Interrogatories are the punishment you get for filing a lawsuit." I didn't see it that way. I actually enjoyed it. Apparently it showed. My response was composed of 12 CDROMs (about 250,000 files) and over 300 pages of paper. He said he expects it will be one of the best responses the PNNL lawyers have ever seen. We reviewed some of the CD content and he got this big smile on his face. "Their lawyers would be able to retire on the billings they could charge for this." My lawyer said he will not be able to retire on his billings because I did all the work.

He saw the PayPal donation button on my PNNL.info site and with a big smile said, "I wonder if they (the PNNL lawyers) will donate to your case? Let's see, if we donate $10,000 that could result in $250,000 in additional billings..." I wonder if that would be considered unethical?

Yes, I know, it's taxpayer money that will be used to pay the lawyers and any settlement that might be reached. But I got a call from someone today that has been working on that issue and believes he may be able to turn off that spigot. I'm not convinced he can but I'm working with him on it.

I managed to find a letter I thought I had lost from a different lawyer that contained some information which shut off an escape route for the felons. I gave this lawyer a copy and explained the significance.  He laughed and said that it might be very useful.

We talked quite a bit about the lawyer they chose; Jerome R. Aiken of Meyer, Fluegge & Tenney. What's most interesting about this guy is that his claimed areas of practice are:

• Agricultural Law
• Appeals
• Consumer Protection
• Product Liability Law

My lawyer only does employment law and has been doing it for 13 years.

On the felony issue--the PNNL felons (not all on this list were involved and some that were are not on the list) could refuse to testify on points that could incriminate them. But that refusal to testify can be used against PNNL. My lawyer would love to have them "take the fifth". If they don't refuse to testify then that gives them two other options. They can tell the truth and risk the criminal charges from their confessions and still damage PNNL's case, or they can lie. Barb is betting they will lie. But they might be surprised what an experienced trial lawyer can do to a liar. And if we can prove perjury, in addition to the penalties imposed by the court, they could lose their security clearances.

A long time ago I read The Art of Cross Examination and loved it. I can't find my copy so I ordered another one tonight. I need to get through it before the depositions start in April. I also downloaded an audio version of Win Your Case: How to Present, Persuade, and Prevail---Every Place, Every Time.

I wonder if Mr. Jerome R. Aiken will read Being underestimated by the enemy. It's a little unlikely, even though it is one of those 250,000 files on one of those 12 CDROMs he will be receiving in a day or two. But one thing he probably will read, because it was on one of the 300 pages of paper, is this:

One of Huffman's co-workers, who must remain anonymous (for fear of retribution from PNNL), knew Joe Huffman far better than McMillan and Hevland. In a meeting a few days after the firing, he told Huffman, "They haven't got a clue as to what they stepped into."

I'd love to see his face as he reads that.

Two last bits of sweetness... 1) my attorney's female receptionist has a Concealed Pistol Permit and 2) my lawyer wants me to teach him to shoot.

The Deacons forced the Klan to re-evaluate their actions and often change their undergarments.

Roy Innis
As related by Ken Blackwell
["The Deacons" refers to armed black men who used firearms to defend themselves against the KKK as told in the book: The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement.--Joe]

I can imagine situations where the search for a W.C. Fields quote was a valid use of the U.S. Department of Justice resources but the odds are a bit low. People need to realize the power of the internet flows in more than one direction:

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; SV1; DI60SP1001; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)
Javascript		version 1.3
Monitor		Resolution  :  1152 x 864 Color Depth  :  32 bits
Time of Visit		Feb 6 2007 5:24:26 am
Last Page View		Feb 6 2007 5:24:26 am
Visit Length		0 seconds
Page Views		1
Referring URL		http://search.yahoo....e=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8
Search Engine		search.yahoo.com
Search Words		w c fields quote
Visit Entry Page		http://blog.joehuffm...e DayW C Fields.aspx
Visit Exit Page		http://blog.joehuffm...e DayW C Fields.aspx
Out Click
Time Zone		UTC-5:00
Visitor's Time		Feb 6 2007 8:24:26 am
Visit Number		132,224

Same-sex marriage supporters introduce measure requiring heterosexual couples to have children. If you are going to insist that the purpose of marriage is the rearing of children then to be consistent you should be opposed to marriage between heterosexual couples that are unable or have no plans to have children.

Some people had that one coming.

I could speculate but it would be as much wistful thinking as anything. Here is the target they found. Here is what I know about who did the viewing:

Domain Name		senate.gov ? (United States Government)
IP Address		156.33.24.# (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		Internet Explorer 6.0 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; InfoPath.1)
Javascript		version 1.3
Monitor		Resolution  :  1280 x 1024 Color Depth  :  16 bits
Time of Visit		Feb 5 2007 11:43:54 am
Last Page View		Feb 5 2007 11:43:54 am
Visit Length		0 seconds
Page Views		1
Referring URL		http://www.google.co...&hl=en&start=10&sa=N
Search Engine		google.com
Search Words		castle doctrine idaho
Visit Entry Page		http://blog.joehuffm...Is What We Need.aspx
Visit Exit Page		http://blog.joehuffm...Is What We Need.aspx
Out Click
Time Zone		UTC-5:00
Visitor's Time		Feb 5 2007 2:43:54 pm
Visit Number		132,033

Majority rule only works if you're also considering individual rights. Because you can't have five wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for supper.

Larry Flynt
[I could have imagined myself quoting Larry Flynt--but never with this sort of subject matter. It's not the first time Mr. Flynt has surprised me either. It might not be the last.

Other people have slightly different versions of this, with a punch line something like "...finding a well-armed sheep". Individual rights are only guaranteed when the minorities have a means of defending them; i.e. the right to keep and bear arms guarantees the rest.--Joe]

Michelle Malkin says:

You ask the hard questions. No softball chit-chat drivel. Get down to brass tacks.

Literally, Diana Sawyer asks Syrian dictator Assad, "Do you have an iPod? What's on it?"

I am not going to hide how much guns disgust me. I think they are one of the, if not THE, most vile contraptions on earth.

To give you an idea how much, I wrote three papers in college on guns and gun control in one semester. I cannot begin to tell you how many extremely heated discussions I’ve had with friends and family about guns.

While I strive to understand how anyone can think that any one person should hold that much power - the ability to intimidate and/or take someone’s life with a gun. I can’t deny an individuals constitutional right to bear arms, no matter how painful it may be for me to accept.

But as far as I am concerned, no one needs a gun at all. Not you, certainly not me. Not good people. Not bad people.

The general public has no reason to own firearms such as semi-automatic guns or assault rifles and should be completely banned and destroyed, along with all the other types of guns (as far as I am concerned).

There is no excuse, nor any reason, why guns should be allowed in homes with children. The two simply do not mix, and it is completely irresponsible parenting.

Don’t try the “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” argument with me. I really despise that saying. Power changes people and guns provide more power than any one individual was meant to have.

Woody Bass
February 4, 2007
Are guns too accessible?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
[Interesting argument. I don't think I have heard that one before in relation to gun ownership, "power changes people and people weren't meant to have that much power". It's sort of a "it's not natural" type of argument. My favorite response to that is, "You're right, if people were meant to run around without clothes we would have been born that way." Other possible arguments in this case could made be against cars, knives, clubs, antibiotics, and computers. Even the Amish could be made out to be "too powerful" with the right argument.

It's also interesting that he "despises that saying" but doesn't refute it.

He's got mental problems.

I didn't get into it with him. I just left a comment with Just One Question for him and let it go at that.--Joe]

I could only read part of Kevin's post. After a couple paragraphs I couldn't think straight. My mind was running wild with rage. Here's a taste of what I read:

Witnesses to violent street crime should try to 'distract' attackers by honking their car horns or even 'jumping up and down'. That's according to Labour's Police Minister.

The extraordinary remarks by Tony McNulty prompted an immediate, angry response from law and order experts, who described him as 'irresponsible'.

The standard police advice to people who witness violent behaviour is that they should not get involved and immediately call 999.

But in an interview with the BBC's Jeremy Vine, Mr McNulty said concerned citizens should 'try some distractive activities' instead.

This is in the U.K. and it's unlikely I would be going there and even more unlikely now. But if someone was attacking someone in my family the only jumping up and down I would do would be on top of the attacker. If that wasn't "distracting" enough I'd disassemble them as rapidly and as violently as I possibly could. Then I would get myself and my loved ones out of the country as quickly as I could before I had to repeat the process on any of the police that tried to arrest me.

I think some people need to read A Nation of Cowards.

On the one hand, the guns were there to help capture the imagination of the people. But more important, since we knew that you couldn't observe the police without guns, we took our guns with us to let the police know that we have an equalizer.

Bobby Seale
Co-founder of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (later shorted to just The Black Panther Party)
Also important to note is that the organization was primarily socialist in nature.

First the bad news. I received an email today from the guy that keeps trying to put his anvil into orbit at Boomershoot. He signed up early and was planning to attend and just discovered he won't be able to make it.

The good news is that he is sending someone else in his place who is bringing the anvils.

One more bit of news is that I've ordered the portable toilets. I ordered three of them this time since the attendance is going to be the largest ever. And in keeping with the theme of the .50 caliber area being called "The Ghetto" I told Terry to put one of the toilets in the ghetto area. That's right, we will have segregated toilets this year--separate and unequal.

[People in The Ghetto will have a better people to toilet ratio than those in the main area and there will be no enforcement of the segregation.]

Update: I've been sent a picture from Boomershoot 2007 that shows we had three toilets last year.

There are three signs that you are getting old. The first one is you start losing your memory. I don't remember the other two.

Thanks Bruce, Da Squirrel Hunter. In addition to the late night pictures of outhouses you point out that I'm losing my memory.

Even though I have never built a bomb (ignore all the people that keep asking me for help building one) I know a little about them. Tam gets the sarcasm right and now I'm going to fill in a few technical details for you clueless types:

• Hollywood does not do reality. Putting the time remaining until detonation in large numbers on a bomb is a Hollywood gimmick to increase tension in the story.
• Lights do not serve any purpose on a bomb other than to draw attention to it.
• If someone's intent is to hurt people or property drawing attention to the bomb is probably counter productive.
• Conventional explosives can only directly injury and kill via three different mechanism:
  • High speed projectiles, usually metal, that have been accelerated by the explosion
  • Overpressure which ruptures the lungs of the victims. You must be very close and sheltered from the high speed projectiles for this to matter
  • Acceleration of the victim. The various body parts are accelerated at different rates and the victim is torn apart or the victim can be thrown into an object that hasn't been accelerated; i.e. they are thrown against a concrete wall
• Bombs can cause indirect injuries such as the structural failure of a bridge, building, dam, dangerous chemical container, or starting fires (non-trivial but possible). Falling glass from the building above you is a big one to be concerned about.
• Surprisingly small amounts, fractions of a pound, of properly placed explosives can do amazing things to structures without the explosion hurting people just a few feet, even inches, away.
• Surprisingly large amounts (hundreds of pounds) of improperly placed explosives can do virtually nothing to structures and people who are relatively close by.
• Hollywood does not do reality. There are no safe ways to disarm bombs in general. Anything you can come up with I (or any other competent electrical engineer) can defeat such that either my bomb will detonate when I want it to or you make a bigger explosion than mine in order to destroy my bomb.
• Hollywood does not do reality. Fireballs are not an inherent part of explosives. It takes additional effort to create a fireball.  I've spent a lot of time figuring out how to make them (see also this page). It takes a lot of fuel to get something very interesting. The picture below used two pounds of explosives and four gallons of gasoline and I was clearly safe less than 50 feet away.

If you see something suspicious there are two things that are important; 1) How large is it? 2) What is it's placement?

Here are the evacuation distances based on the size of a bomb. Those are worst case distances based in part over the concern of broken glass from the windows between you and the bomb and on the buildings above the sidewalks. A few licorice string sized objects properly placed would be more effective in taking out a bridge than a car fully loaded with explosives driving across the top.

If the placement is very near some important structure such as a bridge or fuel tank one should be more suspicious than if it is in the middle of the Safeway parking lot.

Blinking lights on a flat panel attached to non-interesting structures are either not a bomb or evidence of a very stupid bomber. In either case it's not something to shut down a city's transportation about. Stupid bombers, with the exception of suicide bombers which aren't bombers but bomb delivery vehicles, are very rare because Darwin is very severe in his thinning of that herd. I just wish Darwin would thin the herd of stupid politicians as severely.

Sometimes people ask me if maybe I'm a little paranoid with all the guns and training and concern about the loss of our constitutional guaranteed freedoms. I point out that the guarantee isn't worth the paper it's written on without a means of enforcement. Which is what the guns and training is about--a last ditch enforcement mechanism. I can see where someone could make a case that I'm being paranoid but I think I can make a pretty good case that there are politicians that really are out to, and have, destroy our freedoms.

But no matter how good a case you make against me it doesn't compare to this type of stuff:

Huffman Aviation, a front for FBI Division 5 and British Intelligence, have hired two known assassins, Robert Cain and Joe Kelso to put together a team that will target outspoken American citizens.

Of course it gets worse. Huffman Aviation is a stooge company with financial links to Keathing 5 bank dick Senator John McCain and Hillary (noted Republican gay-in-the-closet) Clinton Rodenhurst. Cindy McCain has large financial interests in Huffman Aviation.

P.S. Current CIA operative Harvey Hemmett has testified to Congressional investigations that he was part of the government team along with Israeli Mossad who trained Mohamed Atta at the Venice, Florida flight school...

...

Zionist Benjamin Netanyahu, who is not even an official member of the Israeli government, is blackmailing Bushfraud vis a vis using Bush's homosexual sex and financial fraud, election fraud, criminal fraud, telling Bush either you do this in Iraq and Iran or else.

...

Sandy Berger not only took NATO nuclear codes but he was involved with a Mossad team in Thailand transferring nuclear triggers and other sensitive nuclear information on NATO with the help of Adnan Khashoggi disguising these uranium and nuclear materials as textiles sending through China to Israel. Treason of the highest proportion.

Financing Sandy Berger was Marc Rich, the Bush-Clinton Crime Syndicate fixer.

Attorney General Gonzales is covering all of this up for the Bush-Clinton Crime Syndicate.

It was then Vice President Al Gore, Jr. who tried to have Marc Rich arrested in 1993 and was prevented from doing so by the Israeli Mossad and the Bush-Clinton Crime Syndicate that then dumped Vince Foster in the park that was working with Ambassador Leo Wanta, former FBI Director William Sessions and General Vernon Walters.

Bush plans to use Azerbaijan air bases to attack Iran possibly as early as this Wednesday...

I think someone forgot to take their meds.

It's an excuse to party. Or at least that is what Robert Sandler suggests as he comments about the Mayor's conference on combating "illegal guns":

The mayor noted the additional "problems" more police would bring to the city. More police, for instance, would mean more arrests for an already grievously overcrowded prison system. This is already burdening the city with costs it can't afford in addition to more court costs for prosecuting the criminals.
Which means the mayor is not against crime or criminals. He does not want a safer city. He wants to save money. The easy way to do that is with another gun law-- which he will not enforce.
Or perhaps, it's something completely different. An Anti-gun Summit is a good excuse to get away from doing the jobs the 140 mayors were hired to do--and party!

It's sounds as plausible as anything else to me. It's certainly not about making people safer.

Ignorance is the Mother of Devotion.

Robert Burton
[I have no idea what Burton was thinking of but it makes me think of socialists and gun control advocates.--Joe]

James and I finished up the last episode of Star Trek: Enterprise last night. James has been harping about the "space tourists" nearly throughout the entire series. On Monday when we watched In a Mirror Darkly: Part 1 and In a Mirror Darkly: Part 2 James changed his tune and gushed, "Best episodes of the series!" and "Hoshi rocks!" He even wanted to watch the opening credits and listen to the theme music a second time.

Going through the episodes a second time with the commentary it was kinda fun to watch Hoshi carefully and see the hints of her scheming, in addition to her bed hopping, throughout the two part story.

And then there's the satisfaction of getting rid of the rodents in the process. Via Say Uncle and Ninth Stage:

Initial reports are a little ambiguous but if the Wikipedia entry is to be believed I don't have reason to faint as I was initially inclined (violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics is a very big deal in my world view).

Still, it is perhaps as big a deal as electronics. And since Maxwell's Demon is very much like the very first electronic device, the diode, the analogy works pretty well. If the analogy holds, as things scale, then the analog of the integrated circuit will be mind boggling let alone the analog of the multi-core, multi-CPU, desktop computer.

I would say that what is dangerous about this situation is not the fact of having a nuclear bomb. Having one, or perhaps a second bomb a little later, well, that’s not very dangerous.

Where will it drop it, this bomb? On Israel?

It would not have gone 200 metres into the atmosphere before Teheran would be razed.

French President Jacques Chirac
In an interview on January 31, 2007 with Le Nouvel Observateur, The New York Times, and the International Herald Tribune.
[If the device could only be delivered by air and all the probable recipients of said device were 99+% sure it wouldn't arrive intact then I might actually welcome Iran launching such a device for the very reason that it would give Israel (and others) a immediate reason to get into the glass making business. But that's not how it would work out. If Iran builds or acquires one or more bombs they will make sure the odds of successful delivery are relatively good. It could arrive by land, air, or sea. And it will be Jews, Christians, and "The Great Satan" who will have to first deal with a great excess of glass. Therefore, logically, Iran must not be allowed to build such a device. Our country doesn't have the political will (until after the first one or two glass making exercises occur) to ensure that so I hope Israel does have the political will. My expectation however is that Iran will get to throw the first punch and we will then throw the next 20 or so. As usual, by failing to act early more lives will be lost on both sides.--Joe]

You've heard that freedom isn't free in the context of our military defending our freedom but there are other instances where this is also true. Zendo Deb points this out in her post Deacons for Defense and Justice:

The Deacons for Defense and Justice did not plead to be given their rights. They did not beg to be taken seriously. They made sure they were taken seriously. They took action and fought for their rights, and they defended themselves, their families and their communities from oppression and violence.

This ties in well with the book I just finished reading, Negros with Guns which Ry (I borrowed the book from him) suggested be required reading in school. I agree.

The basics of the lesson to be learned is that thugs and tyrants don't give up power and thuggery just because you ask nicely or because the legislature or the United Nations says they should. They do it because of the threat, or in worst case the actual use, of force. I've said this before but it's worth saying again:

Inalienable rights are not asked or pleaded for.  They are demanded and taken, by force if necessary.

Washingtonians are not stupid. We are aware that gun laws have failed miserably wherever they have been tried. Anyone who knows how to visit the FBI Web site can tell you that the most dangerous places in the United States often are the places with the strictest gun laws. Gun laws overseas have been no more successful. Asking the Legislature to give us more is a colossal waste of time and an insult to our intelligence.

As Say Uncle points out:

Admitting you have a problem is the first step.

Kevin and Zendo Deb contribute their thoughts on this article too.

I've been pushing the similarities between the gay rights movement and the gun rights movement for some time now and trying to get some cross pollination (so to speak). I even have gotten some attention from the press for my efforts:

Gays take up self defense; Organization teaches safety, protection with handguns (Lewiston Morning Tribune)
Pink Pistols chapter begun in Moscow to protect gays (AP version of the above story)
Pistol-packing proponents of gun-owner tolerance (Seattle Times editorial)

I believe putting guns into the hands of lesbian, gays, bisexuals, transsexuals, etc. (LGBTs) is a very powerful meme. In addition to helping save lives that tend to be at higher risk (from "gay-bashing") here's what it does for us:

• It helps fracture the alliance between anti-gun bigots and the Democrats (or between the LGBTs and the Democrats--whichever way you want to look at it)
• It gets guns in the hands of more voters (and the LGBT community tends to be more politically active than the straight population) who are motivated to keep them and carry them
• It helps fracture the stereotype of gun owners as being rednecked, racist, gay hating, KKK types

We need to encourage this alliance as much as possible. And the alliance we have now is a fragile one. It only takes one jerk to undo a lot of work and we need to police our own to maintain this alliance. 

The anti-gun bigot that runs the so-called Freedom State Alliance website paid my blog a visit today:

Host name: adsl-75-34-22-226.dsl.chcgil.sbcglobal.net
Date: 1/31/2007
Time (UTC): 20:32:29
IP Address: 75.34.22.226
Page: /2006/10/26/Imitation+Is+The+Sincerest+Form+Of+Flattery.aspx
Referral: http://www.freedomstatesalliance.com/wordpress/wp-admin/
User agent: Mozilla/5.0+(Windows;+U;+Windows+NT+5.1;+en-US;+rv:1.8.1.1)+Gecko/20061204+Firefox/2.0.0.1

It's nice to know he stops by every once in a while.

Our daughter Kim called me today. She was having a really rough day. She and her fiancée were having problem with the bank and problems with their van which caused cascading failures in other aspects her life. I could hear it in her voice before the first word was out of her mouth. I asked what was wrong and as she started explaining she started crying. A few seconds later I closed the door to my office and started crying with her.

She is 20 years old and hundreds of miles away and although I was able to help solve some of her problems more than anything I wanted to hold her on my lap and rock her just like she was two years old and had skinned a knee or had some other minor injury. I suppose those feelings will still be there when she is 40 and I'm in my 70's.

"Mission"

Translation: To stay alive when "scumbags" threaten your life.

From the Greg Hamilton to English Dictionary by Meredith Robinson
[As a private citizen your job is not to capture, punish, wound, or execute the scumbag. Your job is to make sure you and any innocent life you have taken responsibility for come out of the encounter in the best possible condition. Keep in mind the encounter is not just the few seconds or minutes in which you are face to face with the scumbag but can extend for years into the future including future encounters with the same scumbag (it is an ex-boyfriend that wants you dead?) with civil as well as criminal trials--which may have you as the defendant. When you are in "the situation" you will likely only have fractions of seconds to think about your decisions so you will need to think about what sort conditions will warrant what sort of actions. It's going to be a rare case that you will want to restrain from pulling the trigger when the scumbag is at contact distance with a knife in hand and rare that you will want to pull the trigger when he is 20 feet away and running away. But there are exceptions and the time to think about those exceptions is long before you get into that situation.

When you are in a situation where there is no applicable ready made plan you need to keep your decision logic extremely simple. Hamilton, a professional self-defense instructor, captures the essence of that decision logic here. Concentrate on the mission and do only what is required to accomplish that mission. With days and weeks to think about it afterward you and others may come up with better things you could have done. If you do only those things that are relevant to that mission the results may not be optimal but they probably won't be that far off.--Joe]

Once I had all the log files organized and added the new ones I received from my web host I did a little more looking just for the fun of it. And right off the bat I found something that gave me the giggles. The main website investigator (probably Michael Sutherland) for PNNL used the machine "puck.pnl.gov" as he or she committed their felony. My search in a friend's 2005 log files resulted in this little gem:

Machine name: puck.pnl.gov 
Date: 6/22/2005 
Time (UTC): 20:18:50 
IP Address: 130.20.128.81  
Referral URL: http://www.mywebsearch.com/jsp/GGcres.jsp?id=IBdHb4UNDrsJ&su=http%3A//www.mywebsearch.com/jsp/GGweb.jsp%3Ffr%3D20%26searchfor%3Djoe+huffman+sorry%26ptnrS%3DZSzeb001%26st%3Dbar%26nsa%3D0&u=http%3A//www.kennedysailor.com/faq.htm&searchfor=joe+huffman+sorry

This visit took place early on the afternoon of June 22, 2005 about two and half weeks after I was fired. The funny part is the search string they used: "joe huffman sorry".

It's a little bit ambiguous what they were looking for. Were they to see if I said something about being sorry for my contribution to what had happened? Or were they sending me a subtle message that they were sorry?

I was never sorry for anything I did. I wasn't the one committing a felony. And if they were "sorry" that was a pretty sorry attempt at apologizing and it doesn't cut it. I'll believe they are sorry after they have spent a few months being rented out by the quarter hour to fellow inmates to the guy with the most cigarettes.

This book, even though I hate the title, addresses one of my hot buttons:

One of the great myths of alternative medicine and the health food industry is that natural things are better than artificial or synthetic things because natural is natural and Mother Nature wouldn't want to hurt us. Wouldn't she just? Plants and animals have had many millions of years to evolve ways of protecting themselves against predators and competitors for resources. Humans have had about 100,000 years of hunting and gathering to evolve natural resistance and about 10,000 years of agriculture to breed out the nastiness, and these times are just not long enough to make much difference. We are surrounded by plants and animals which can do us great harm if we are not careful about what we eat, and also by a myriad of fungi which delight in making safe foods unsafe.

People, with great pride, will say something to effect of "It's all natural" as if that proves the goodness of something. To date my best response to this sort of idiot talk is, "Botulism is all natural too." But, being idiots, they will insist that even natural poisons are good too because that is how you control insect pests or some such thing. They just don't get it. If "all natural" poisons exist as well as "all natural" food/drink/shampoo/whatever then there must be a continuum. Hence by saying some food is "all natural" does give us any information about it's fitness for consumption.

I would like to suggest they have a n