Israel was not created in order to disappear – Israel will endure and flourish. It is the child of hope and the home of the brave. It can neither be broken by adversity nor demoralized by success. It carries the shield of democracy and it honors the sword of freedom.
John F. Kennedy
I should have looked up their IP address (85.94.131.189) before sending my latest response. The guy sent the email from Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The ATF probably isn’t that interested.
Read from the bottom up.
—–Original Message—–
From: Joe Huffman
Sent: Friday, November 03, 2006 7:41 AM
To: hood_gangstarr@XXXX.com
Cc: ATF Intelligence Division
Subject: RE: bombNope. I don’t know much about any of that stuff.
There are some people that do know a lot about that sort of thing though. I put them on the Cc: line. They even have a website. Check it out: http://www.atf.gov
-joe-
—–Original Message—–
From: hood_gangstarr@XXXX.com
Sent: Friday, November 03, 2006 7:23 AM
To: Joe Huffman
Subject: RE: bombMaybe just to remove doors locks and also it would be good to remove doors from it’s hinges as well. Do you know how to make that thing like napalm?
—–Original Message—–
From: Joe Huffman
Sent: Friday, November 03, 2006 7:11 AM
To: hood_gangstarr@XXXX.com
Subject: RE: bombWhat type of doors? Sliding glass doors will disappear with an ounce of high explosives. The bank door to the vault is going to take many pounds and careful placement of several bombs.
Wood? Metal? What is the door frame made of? Do you want the door blown off it’s hinges? Or is removing the locks sufficient?
-joe-
—–Original Message—–
From: hood_gangstarr@XXXX.com
Sent: Friday, November 03, 2006 4:02 AM
To: Joe Huffman
Subject: bombhi man,
can u send me some “recipe” to make a bomb out if stuff i have at home. i need some small bomb of size that could blow doors or something.
send me that if u can, thx
There are two things which cannot be attacked in front: ignorance and narrow-mindedness. They can only be shaken by the simple development of the contrary qualities. They will not bear discussion.
Lord Acton
[Keep this in mind when dealing directly with the anti-gun bigots.–Joe]
Someone could get me this movie for Christmas if they wanted.
The trailer, one minute and one second:
The abridged, 11.7 minute version:
And the Christians are Kuffars [infidels], and you may say to yourself, “No, no, no, they’re innocent!” No kuffar is innocent!
Interesting point of view. He (or she) says the Democrats are too moderate. The Democrats have abandoned the left.
A truly left party would call for universal health care. It’s criminal to live in the richest country in the world and have 46 million people – 15 percent of the population – without health care. The last time Democrats controlled the executive branch, the Welfare to Work program passed. This bill created a slave class, eliminated union jobs and didn’t help anyone get off welfare.
…
Democrats merely represent a different sector of the elite. Most people are oblivious because elections focus on marginal issues. It’s no wonder that rich people have seen their wealth explode while working peoples’ wages have stagnated. What’s the moral? Don’t get involved in petty democratic politics. Forget the Young Democrats. Get involved in activism that matters, which is mostly activism that works outside the system. Remember, rights are not given; they are taken.
So what rights do they suggest should be taken? A “right” to health care? A “right” to a job? And what activism “outside the system” do they endorse? It’s interesting to speculate. Whatever the answers are I’m certain the “rights” and activism they support are not the same as mine.
Many thanks to Say Uncle for the pointer.
Overview for the laymen is here.
More porn means less rape. Porn is implied. The actual variable is Internet access.
Violent movies reduce violent crime.
Previous studies measured aggression in the laboratory but not what happens in the real world. These researchers seem to have found ways to get the data from the real world. Bravo for them. I’m skeptical but only because it’s what I want to believe. It reduces the justification for interference with the free market. Let’s see if other researchers can duplicate and/or confirm their work. I’ll be doing my part–especially with the porn.
When a legislature undertakes to proscribe the exercise of a citizen’s constitutional rights it acts lawlessly and the citizen can take matters into his own hands and proceed on the basis that such a law is no law at all.
William O. Douglas
Associate Justice U.S. Supreme Court
April 17, 1939 to November 12, 1975
[Nice words but in practice there are certain complication in the implementation.–Joe]
More research on one of my favorite hobbies:
LONDON — People aren’t losing their virginity at younger ages, married people have the most sex, and promiscuity has no firm link to sexually transmitted diseases, according to the first comprehensive study of sexual behaviour.
The British study was published Wednesday as part of a series on sexual and reproductive health by the British medical journal The Lancet.
Experts say the findings, which go against many stereotypes of sexual health and behaviour, will be useful not only in dispelling popular myths about sex, but in shaping policies that will help improve sexual health across the world.
…
We did have some of our preconceptions dashed,” she said, explaining they had expected to find the most promiscuous behaviour in regions like Africa with the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases. That was not the case, as multiple partners were more commonly reported in industrialized countries where the incidence of such diseases was relatively low.
“There’s a misperception that there’s a great deal of promiscuity in Africa, which is one of the potential reasons for HIV/AIDS spreading so rapidly,” said Dr. Paul van Look, director of Reproductive Health and Research at the World Health Organization, who was not connected to the study. “But that view is not supported by the evidence.”
Prof. Wellings says the results imply promiscuity may be less important than factors such as poverty and education — especially in the encouragement of condom use — in the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases.
…
The study also found that contrary to popular belief, sexual activity is not starting earlier. Nearly everywhere, men and women have their first sexual experiences in their late teens — from 15 to 19 years old — with generally younger ages for women than for men, especially in developing countries. That is no younger than 10 years ago.
Still, there are considerable variations across countries. In the United Kingdom, for example, men and women tend to lose their virginity at ages 16½ and 17½ respectively. In comparison, men and women in Indonesia waited until they were 24½ and 18½ respectively.
So… just how good do you think those security checks at the TSA checkpoints are? How poor of a job would they have to do before you would say, “We need to figure something else out. This just isn’t working.”? Suppose they let 10% of the knives and explosives through. Or may be 25%. Surely if 50% of the people could get guns and explosive through you would say they should be fired, right? Well… the real numbers are:
Federal authorities have launched an investigation to determine who leaked test results showing security screeners missed 90 percent of the explosives and guns agents attempted to sneak past checkpoints this month at Newark Liberty International Airport.
The probe was launched by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration after The Star-Ledger, citing information from federal security officials, reported Thursday that screeners failed 20 of 22 covert tests and also violated standard operating procedures at the busy hub.
Don’t you just love it? The government agency gets caught not doing the job they said private enterprise was too incompetent to handle what is their response? Why it’s, “You weren’t supposed to know that! Who told you?” They are going prosecute whoever it was that let us know they are playing Keystone Cops to the extent they succeed only 10% of the time. Just like Christopher Soghoian said, it’s “security theater”.
It’s time to consider alternatives to airplane security.
This type of sensational journalism contributes nothing to an already emotion-filled debate and only serves to mislead and confuse the issue. The simple truth is: You cannot legislate against insanity. Unfortunately, Ackerman and others have a problem grasping that fact.
Larry Whitmore
Executive Director
Canadian Shooting Sports Association
Cannot legislate against insanity
October 30, 2006
Toronto Star
[It is my opinion they cannot grasp that fact because they too have mental problems. The writers of our constitution did in fact attempt to legislate against insanity. It’s called the Second Amendment. And as Chuck Schumer, Dianne Feinstein, et al. plainly demonstrate it wasn’t entirely successful.–Joe]
Today, Amendment II Democrats pledges itself to helping take back America from the Republican Party and giving it back to the people. We will settle for nothing less than a Democratic House and Senate in 2006. And, at the same time, there is a golden opportunity for pro-RKBA Democrats to dramatically change firearms policy within the Democratic Party itself from the ground up. All we have to do is join together, stand up on our hind legs, and exercise our First Amendment rights if we want any hope of affecting real change within the party of Jefferson, Kennedy, and F.D. Roosevelt.
Can anyone name a U.S. political party that openly says, “We are opposed to the people having the right to keep and bear arms.”? Certainly there are individual politicians that work to subvert it and are openly for gun control. But they don’t dare make it a party platform.
We are making progress. We just need to drive the remaining bigots into political extinction. Once the gun issue is under control we can working on the next greatest threat to our freedom. My vote probably would be to set our sights on the war on some drugs or the income tax.
The powers that be took a good run at deep-sixing this report. There’s such a strongly held consensus among industry and DHS that RFID is the way to go that getting people off of that and getting them to examine the technology is very hard to do.
Jim Harper
Cato Institute fellow
October 30, 2006
From Feds Leapfrog RFID Privacy Study
Thanks to The Smallest Minority for the pointer.
Mandatory viewing for daughter Xenia (her fiancé is in the army and probably will be going to Iraq next spring).
I used a statement from security researcher Christopher Soghoian for the quote of the day a couple days ago. He said airport security was really “security theater”. Even before I had made that post the FBI had raided his home:
Soghoian … came home Saturday morning to find his door forced open, “a rather ransacked home, a search warrant taped to my kitchen table, a total absence of computers — and various other important things.”
It’s not that he’s trying to compromise airport security. It’s that he’s pointing out that airport security already is compromised, or, as his site used to read, “The TSA Emperor Has No Clothes.”
They should have arrested whoever came up with the stupid “security” procedures at the airports for wasting taxpayer money. But that’s not the way it works. I’m reminded of something $g(Joe Waldron) told me a long time ago about dealing with the police:
Once they have decided they want to talk to you the worst offense you can commit is “contempt of cop”.
I remember when “The Pill”, as it is called, came out in the 60’s. It changed a lot of things. I doubt the male version will have as big of effect but it’s still interesting:
Men concerned about contraception may soon be able to use the male equivalent of the Pill, without the potential side-effects of a drug based on altering the balance of sex hormones.
Scientists have developed a chemical contraceptive that temporarily blocks the development of sperm but does not interfere with testosterone levels.
Trials on laboratory animals have shown that the contraceptive effect is reversible and that there are no apparent long-term side-effects. Human trials of the new male contraceptive could begin within the next few years.
The biggest change I predict will be the child support issues that arise when the man thinks his female sex partner is using some sort of birth control when in fact she was careless or even deliberately not using something. The man now has a means to protect himself from unwanted pregnancies of that sort while still preserving his options for a child at a later date.
I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
Up From Liberalism
[I was reminded of this by Kevin’s posts here and here. Read the comments too.–Joe]
Barb and I visited the exhibit at the Pacific Science Center. Very interesting. It wasn’t overwhelming or awesome. It was more like somber reverence. To actually be looking at documents that were written over 2100 years ago put me in a very somber mood.
From what I could tell there weren’t any big revelations in the documents. A lot of them were copies of known works of the existing Bible. Others were rules for “purification” and other standards of behavior for a particular Jewish sect.
It was worth my time and money to see them since it was only a 30 minute drive and $20.00 to get in the door. Knowing what I know now I probably wouldn’t travel a 1000 miles and pay hundreds of dollars to see them. But then I’m an atheist and don’t consider the documents to be the word of god(s) either.
Update: I forgot to mention the indignity of attending. There was a big sign just before you went in the building but after you had paid for your ticket that said no firearms or knives. It even said mandatory search of bags. I had to find a locker across the way to put my knives and my handgun in. There was no search of my person and I’m pretty sure there were no metal detectors so I probably could have defied the sign and gotten away with it.
But what was the reason? Did they think someone was going to go off the deep end and shoot a 2100 year old scrap of parchment? Oh, I forgot, they don’t need a reason.
One of my “hot buttons” is when people choose the wrong measurement for optimization.
I did that with Boomershoot 2005 when I tweaked the explosive mixture such that I got good results with a rim-fire .22. It turned out that the typical center-fire bullets had great difficulty detonating them.
This metric problem was one of my points in this post.
I heard of one software company that gave raises out based on the number of lines of code produced by the software developers. This adversely affected the designs, implementations, and even style of the code produced.
Another well known anti-virus software company paid bonuses for quickly finding solutions to new computer viruses. One enterprising employee became well known for finding figuring them out. Of course he didn’t tell management that he had created these same viruses and released them into the wild.
Gun control advocates rejoice and claim they were right when deaths and injuries due to bullet wounds decrease after a restriction on firearms is passed into law. They do that even if violent crime, injuries, and deaths increase. They ignore that many of those deaths and injuries are justifiable or even praiseworthy shootings that stopped criminal attacks.
Another one is that windmill manufactures work toward greater efficiency. In most cases this is the wrong measurement. The only case that this is important is if land space or wind is in short supply. If you have lots of land that can host windmills then the correct metric is cost per kilowatt-hour over the lifetime of the windmill.
Some of the first mass produced solar cells were for use in spacecraft. Area and weight were at a premium and hence efficiency was one of the proper metrics to use in the design. That is not true for the side of the shed I used for mixing and storing explosives over a quarter mile from the nearest usable power line. I have lots of area and I don’t care if it takes ten times as much area as the more efficient but twice as expensive solar cells to generate the same power. This is now being realized by the manufactures.
Examine every metric carefully. Think about the unintended consequences. Think about what is really important to the target audience. It can make a huge difference.
Clayton claims that that the recent court rulings on allowing gay marriage, “… is likely to make the legal situation for homosexuals more difficult, not easier.” He also predicts that these court rulings will help get Republicans to the polls this election.
I agree with this latter point but disagree with the first. I think gay marriage as well as equal rights for gay is here to stay. It is an idea whose time has come. The worst anti-gay politicians can do is slow down the inevitable. The reason is because there have not been any dire consequences happen that are attributable to acceptance of gays in society. Just as gun owners right to carry weapons for self defense were gradually recognized in state after state without “blood running in the streets” so it is with gays and the recognization of their rights.
It will be scary for some, just as it was with people carrying firearms in public, but eventually the fear will subside and most people will accept it.
According to Ross Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers University:
Democrats have run up the white flag. They have evidently concluded that curtailing the right of gun ownership is a nonstarter, especially if they intend to pursue victory in 50 states.
He speaks of “curtailing the right” as if it were a good thing. Would he speak so highly of curtailing the right of free speech? Or curtailing the right of due process? And he calls this running up the white flag? How about reluctantly acknowledging that the public will tolerate few further infringements of their right to gun ownership?
And this point total ignores the reality of those infringements being useless in terms of furthering public safety.
Get a grip on reality man. The Democrats needed a clue-by-four but at least most of them now avoid leading with their chin with their crazy ideas to restrict this particular inalienable right.