Inside sources claim the gun control community (Sarah Brady, et al) are urging D.C. Mayor Fenty to stay away from the Supreme Court and just try to rewrite the D.C. ban to allow very restrictive handgun licensing a la New York City.

Joe Waldron
May 18, 2007
GOAL Post 2007-Final Legislative Update from Olympia
[Exactly two months ago I said they should do this--If they were smart.--Joe]

One of the marvels of the United States has always been Her "Melting Pot" status, wherein people from all walks of life, from all around the world have come together to produce the most successful society in human history.

That's why it bugs me when I hear people who should know better discussing the political situation in Iraq, for example.  We hear about the various and disparate groups in that country having trouble coming to an acceptable "power sharing" agreement.  What does that mean-- power sharing?  That's something that might be arranged between one king or one dictator and another, or between rival gangsters, but in a free society?

No, Grasshopper!  In a free society all individuals have the same rights, so the term "power sharing" has no meaning.  That one race, religion or other demographic might outnumber another in a certain region is, rightly, of no consequence for the simple fact that they haven't the political power to trample on the rights of the minority.  If that ideal is not the foundation of their Constitution, then the Constitution needs a serious rewrite.

I am reminded of a quote from Ayn Rand (thanks to "The Smallest Minority" web site):  "The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities."

Its time more of the freedom-hungry people in Iraq understand and embrace this simple concept if they are to have any hope of realizing their dream.  It would be nice if more Americans understood it too.

I think that it is very unlikely that five justices on the Supreme Court are going to say that the Second Amendment means nothing. That’s what they would have to say to uphold the total ban on handguns that exists in Washington D.C.

It is also especially unlikely during the heat of the 2008 election—and that is when it is going to happen—because it would be a rallying cry for the whole pro-gun committee. Just like an abortion decision that overturned Roe v. Wade would animate the pro-choice folks. That kind of political turmoil is something the court is sensitive to.

Dr. Robert Levy
April 19, 2007
Interview: The Way of the Gun
Mother Jones
[Mother Jones is typically a left wing news magazine. Levy is the lawyer is driving the Second Amendment challenge to D.C.’s ban on guns. Also known as the Parker case. I think it should have been "community" rather than "committee" but still--Levy has his act together.--Joe]

Big Brother gets to watch you in return for the false promise of increased security. From our worlds airports:

Faces are blurred, but not chests or crotches. Snoerwang said that was necessary because otherwise "women could just hide things by stuffing them in their bras."

...

Snoerwang said the images generated by the machine were not like photographs.

"They're kind of futuristic. There's nothing sexy about it," she said.

What does "nothing sexy" have to do with making it acceptable? And to who? There are people that find animals and fecal material sexy. Want to bet that there won't be a culture of some sort of deviants built around these photographs? And there will be names attached to the photos as well. Names are checked on your ID just before you go into the machines. People watching the images will snap pictures with their cell-phones or other miniature image capturing devices and associate the picture with the name from their friend checking the ID.

It will do nothing to prevent determined people from getting weapons on board. It only will catch those that are careless. In the mean time airport security costs billions. The airplane security game cannot be won with the current assumptions. It's time we considered the alternatives.

Before bringing my blog back online I did some performance testing while it was hosted on my own machine. This included tests with all the links, sitemeter, etc. visible. Most of the testing was done early (as in midnight until 3:00 AM) on Wednesday morning. Can you tell from my Sitemeter graphic?

And hey! Nuclear Winter will stop Global Warming! It's a two-fer!

Kevin Baker
May 14, 2007 2:16 PM
[From the comments to the post To be civilized is to restrain the ability to commit mayhem. Which, by the way, is an excellent post. I kept thinking that someday I would write down my thoughts as expressed by Kevin in this post. But it would have been a far more feeble effort than Kevin's well researched masterpiece.--Joe]

No hair transplants for me. I would consider regrowing it though.

There is a demand for change. Never have the risks of inertia been so great for France as they are now in this world in flux where everyone across the world is trying to change quicker than the others, where any delay can be fatal.

Nicolas Sarkozy
May 16, 2007
Sarkozy Gets Off to a Fast Start as President of France
[He also said France needs to get back to work. Sounds good to me.  And from the same article:

Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, which claims links with Al Qaeda, threatened in an Internet posting on Tuesday that it would wage “a bloody jihadist campaign” in France in the coming days in reaction to the election of the “Zionist crusader,” Mr. Sarkozy.

Ditto what Tamara said.--Joe]

The short story is here. Despite some coincidences I do not believe it had anything to do with PNNL/Battelle. Here is the slightly longer story I told my web hosting company:

I believe I have the answer as to why there was high CPU usage. The blogging software I'm using (dasBlog) has some very inefficient code for dealing with what it calls "Comment Views". When viewing a single post without the comments, for the same CPU usage, the number of views is over 100 times faster than when viewing with the comments.

I did some code and configuration tuning and was able to improve the performance by a factor of 2 to 3 depending on how I was testing it. There are still lots of room for improvement and I decided to just turn off the comments until the performance is more comparable to the performance without the comments. This eliminates the CPU intensive view type entirely.

This CPU expensive view mode probably normally isn't a problem except with the robots come visiting. They view the posts in all their view modes.

Would you please enable my site again?

Thank you.

I was up until 4:30 this morning getting it ready to go back online in crippled form (comments are disabled). I still have work to do to get comment views more efficient and then I'll turn the comments back on.

I need to get to work now but I'll update the story here by tonight sometime. I'll fill in the Quote of the day posts tonight sometime too.

The guy's as popular in France's Muslim ghettos as a bag of pork rinds, which rates another thumbs up in my book. If non-assimilating misogynist welfare leeches hate him, he can't be all bad.

Tamara K.
May 9, 2007
My reaction to the Frog reaction to the Sarkozy win...
[Sarkozy has a big job ahead of him. But his election gives me hope for a world where the Islamic extremist demands for world domination are thwarted.--Joe]

An unarmed person is a slave, or is subject to becoming a slave at any time.

Huey Newton
[See also Negros With Guns and blog postings one and two. Of course Newton want to implement the slavery of communism in this country but that's a distraction from the truth of his statement above.--Joe]

We are at the point in time and terror where nothing short of a strong uniform policy of domestic disarmament will alleviate the danger which is crystal clear and perilously present.  Let us take the guns away from the people.  Exemptions should be limited to the military, the police, and those licensed for good and sufficient reasons.

Patrick V. Murphy
Former NYC Police Commissioner
HCI spokesman
[HCI, Handgun Control Inc, has become the Brady Campaign but the sentiment remains the same. Don't let them tell you they respect the 2^nd Amendment as a right for the people to keep and bear arms. If you have to be licensed, ask the government for permission, it's not a right. It's a privilege.--Joe]

Unquestionably, there is progress.  The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.

H. L. Mencken
[This is no exaggeration. I'm still smarting from the checks we wrote out for taxes on April 15th.--Joe]

France has neither winter, summer, nor morals - apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.

Mark Twain
[French jokes apparently go back a long time. Probably since there was a France. I had said no more French jokes for a year. But that was before I found out the pilot wasn't French.--Joe]