Author Archives: Joe

Opening arguments to verdict in 10 hours

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Yesterday the court began jury selection for the Michael Williams murder trial.  At 15:38 today I received a call from Williams.  He told me the trial had just gone to the jury.  He said he had lots of stories to tell from the trial but I was busy at work and couldn’t take the time right then.  I told him I would call him back later this evening.  At 18:39, as I was about to leave work, he called me again.  The verdict was in–Voluntary Manslaughter.  This was in the case where the prosecutor insisted Williams was guilty of first degree murder.  Williams remains a free man while the judge decides on a sentence.  Williams is very happy about the result.  The family of the dead man, of course, is not at all happy and Williams had an armed escort to his car and out of the parking lot.

He is to email me more stories which I agreed to post.

Previous postings on the topic:

Papers!

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If it passes, as it almost for certain will, it will be with an English rather than a German accent this time when the police demand “papers”:

MOST Britons will be forced to have an identity card within five years after MPs defeated the Lords last night, despite a Labour backbench rebellion.

Moves to require people to buy ID cards when they request or renew a British passport were carried by 310 votes to 279, a majority of 31.

…

The Identity Cards Bill will now go back to the Lords, who had voted to decouple the issuing of ID cards from passports, blocking ministers’ plans to add millions of people to the identity register each year technically on a voluntary basis.

The Lords must decide whether to insist that passport applications stay separate from identity cards, amending the Bill again in a “ping-pong” with the Commons, or to give way, which is the more likely option.

Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, moved amendments overturning changes made to the Bill by peers, saying that the Government had made clear that it envisaged linking ID cards to passports as part of their phased introduction.

Applicants for residents’ permits and for visas from certain non-European Union countries and asylum-seekers would also be subject to compulsory registration of biometric data — fingerprints and iris scans — on the identity database.

See also my essay on the fatal flaws of universal ID cards and my Jews in the Attic Test.

VPC on Cheney

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Don’t ever expect them to be truthful.  In order to get their numbers up they included suicides, justifiable and praiseworthy homicides and woundings–bigots dancing in the blood:

WASHINGTON, Feb. 13 /PRNewswire/ — Saturday’s shooting of a fellow hunter by Vice President Dick Cheney was just one more addition to the more than quarter million Americans who have been injured by firearms during President George W. Bush’s tenure. From 2001 through 2004, the most recent year available, 252,076 Americans were injured by firearms according to federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data. From 2001 through 2003, the most recent year available, nearly 30,000 Americans a year were killed by firearms according to information from the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

…

Josh Sugarmann, Violence Policy Center executive director, states, “The Cheney shooting punctures the pro-gun argument that ‘knowing guns’ and ‘having respect for guns’ are enough to overcome the inherent hazards of firearms. Vice President Cheney’s victim is now just one more sad statistic in America’s annual gun toll.”

More research is needed

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Dr. Joe doesn’t need to be convinced but not everyone is certain yet:

It can help to reduce stress, soothe pain, cure insomnia, lower the risk of a heart attack and, as if that wasn’t enough, make your hair shine and your wrinkles vanish.

“Forget about jogging round the block or struggling with sit-ups,” says the UK National Health Service patients’ helpline, NHS Direct. The key for healthy living is, in fact, “a good bout of sexercise”.

Undertaking “regular romps” will bring a plethora of health rewards, from staying fit and burning calories to combating cancer, says the website.

“Orgasms even release painkillers into the bloodstream, helping keep mild illnesses like colds and aches and pains at bay, and produce extra oestrogen and testosterone hormones,” the site says.

“These hormones will keep your bones and muscles healthy, leaving you feeling fabulous inside and out.”

But Dr Melissa Sayer, an expert in sexual health, said the site made unproven claims.

Sounds like more research is needed.  I’m a research scientist…now where is my female assistant?  We need to get started on this right away.

Posted in Sex

This is what happens in places without guns–Case XII

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If this had happened in the U.S. where police officers are armed things probably would have turned out different.  But instead it was in the “gun free paradise” of London England:

LONDON (Reuters) – A female trainee police officer is seriously ill in hospital on Tuesday after being shot as she and a colleague tried to apprehend a suspected burglar.

Police said the incident occurred shortly before midnight when two officers, an experienced male officer and the 25-year-old female probation officer, were called to a burglary in the Lenton area of Nottingham and tried to stop a man nearby.

“The suspect produced a firearm and shot one of the officers,” a Nottinghamshire police spokeswoman said, adding the victim had not yet been named.

The wounded officer, who was wearing body armour, has undergone emergency surgery for a gunshot injury and is in intensive care in a serious condition.

No one has been arrested.

Quote of the day–Wayne LaPierre

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New Orleans was the first place in American history to disarm peaceable citizens, house-by-house, at gunpoint. And I promise you this standing here today: We at the NRA are going to make sure it’s the last place it ever happens.

Never again can Michael Bloomberg or Rebecca Peters or Mike Wallace, or the United Nations, or the Brady Center, or anywhere else say that honest citizens don’t need firearms because what happened in New Orleans proves beyond a shadow of a doubt what we’ve said all along.

The next time some arrogant politician looks at you and says, ‘Why does anyone need to own a gun?’ I want you to look them straight in the face and say this: ‘Remember New Orleans!'”

‘Why do you need to own a gun?’ Remember New Orleans!

‘Aren’t you just being kind of paranoid?’ Remember New Orleans!

‘Why does anyone need right to carry?’ Remember New Orleans!

‘What makes you think our government would ever try to confiscate your guns?’ Remember New Orleans!

‘Is the Second Amendment really relevant in the 21st Century?’ Remember New Orleans!

Wayne LaPierre
Executive Vice President
National Rifle Association
From speeches given:

Brady’s take shots at Cheney

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You knew it was coming.  Here’s the first I’ve seen:

“Now I understand why Dick Cheney keeps asking me to go hunting with him,” Jim Brady said in a statement. “I had a friend once who accidentally shot pellets into his dog — and I thought he was an idiot.”

“I’ve thought Cheney was scary for a long time,” Sarah Brady said. “Now I know I was right to be nervous.”

They do personal attacks so well.  They have lots of practice at it so it’s not surprising.  I can only think of two reasons for this; 1) They don’t like the results when they stick to facts, or 2) They can’t handle high school math.

Xenia’s murder trial

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Xenia went on trial for murder this weekend–actually there were three trials.  She was found not guilty in the first two by a votes of 10-2 and 9-3.  Barb figured with her brother on the second jury she would be found guilty for certain.  But I knew him better than she did.  There was no way with the ‘evidence’ given that he would vote for a conviction let alone try and convince other jurors.  Just before the third trial, as I was about to leave for the Seattle area, I gave her a handcuff key just in case they convicted her.  She was found guilty but didn’t need the key because she was able to squeeze out of the handcuffs.

It was a good performance.  I didn’t realize Ayn Rand had written any plays.  This was apparently her first and it shows it in many ways but it wasn’t really bad.  When Xenia got on the stand and told the court she had been raped by her employer ten years earlier on her first day at work and was proud to became his mistress from there after we gave each other “the look”.  Yup, just the part Xenia would like to play.  Check out the pictures Xenia has on her Live Journal.

A bias against self-defense part III

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It’s way too late for me to comment intelligently on the following newspaper clippings.  Michael Williams sister sent them last week.  I’ve read them all but was unable to comment on them due to my exceedingly busy weekend (more details later but it involving guns, explosives, and two murder trials unrelated to Williams trial).  If you are interested in this case go ahead and read them.  I’ll comment later after I have had some sleep.

Quote of the day–Ambrose Bierce

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Once Law was sitting on the bench
        And Mercy knelt a-weeping.
“Clear out!” he cried, “disordered wench!
        Nor come before me creeping.
Upon you knees if you appear,
‘Tis plain you have no standing here.”

Then Justice came.  His Honor cried:
        “YOUR states? — Devil seize you!”
“Amica curiae,” she replied —
        “Friend of the court, so please you.”
“Begone!” he shouted — “There’s the door —
I never saw your face before!”

Ambrose Bierce
The Devil’s Dictionary

Quote of the day–Frederic Bastiat

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Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.

Frederic Bastiat
1801-1850

Quote of the day–Jeff Cooper

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Taking a long view of history, we may say that anyone who lays down his arms deserves whatever he gets.

Col. Jeff Cooper

Boomershoot 2006 blogging part IV

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More Boomershoot blogging:

A quick history lesson

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If you want to fire an assault weapon, do what so many patriotic Americans do: Join the armed forces.

Does that sound familiar to anyone?  

That could have been Lenin rephrased, as in this case, where the party members were exempt from a weapons ban.  Or it could have been Adolf Hitler who said:

If any citizen wants to possess arms, let him join the Party.

But it was neither.  And it was said in todays newspaper, not by a despot known to have killed millions, but by the U.S. politician Del. Anthony G. Brown who is Martin O’Malley’s running mate for the governor of Maryland.  He also said this:

Assault weapons have one purpose and one purpose only: That is to kill human beings.

Of the thousands of rounds I have fired through my “assault weapons” no humans were killed as a result.  I have to conclude that either my guns are defective or Brown’s thinking is defective.  I don’t have to toss a coin on this one.  In a comparison between my rifles and Brown’s brain I’ll take my rifles as the better of the two any day.

Is this a trend?

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Another womans says she just couldn’t control herself and had to have sex in public:

RANDY Alana May was nabbed having sex in public by police THREE times in 30 MINUTES, a court heard yesterday.

Two of the romps were at a floodlit abbey in the middle of a town. The third was on land also owned by the church.

Officers first saw Alana, 25, with her pants down with a semi-naked man outside Selby Abbey, North Yorks. They ticked her off and told her to go home.

But they returned 15 minutes later and discovered Alana performing a sex act on the man against the 11th century abbey’s walls.

She was again told to go home. But just 15 minutes after that the pair were spotted having sex in church parkland.

Alana and the romeo were arrested. She said of the romps: “I couldn’t wait until I got home.”

She was fined £50 for outraging public decency. Her unnamed lover, who has no previous convictions, got a caution.

Posted in Sex

Quote of the day–Henry Kissinger via Paul Smith

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THE STORY that amused me most in 1998 came out of the Christopher Hitchens’ column in The Nation: “At a glamorous book launch given by Vogue for Katharine Graham, a Nation colleague of mine was introduced to Henry Kissinger. On hearing the name of the magazine, the doctor drew back. “The Nation? So I suppose you think I am a war criminal?”  Yielding to that fatal instinct that sometimes urges people to be laid-back and unpredictable, my comrade attempted a pleasantry and observed that in these post-Cold War days, the old mag was just as likely to describe – who knows? – Bill Clinton as a war criminal. Kissinger stared into his cocktail and said slowly and distinctly, `Mr. Clinton does not have the strength of character to be a war criminal.'”

From Paul Smith
January 13, 1999

Interesting kink

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They said they had this urge they couldn’t control.  Oh well… I’ll bet they will find a little more willpower the next time the urge occurs:

LONDON: In Argentina ‘sex’ is something which should be enjoyed within the four walls of the house, as if one intends indulging in it publicly, one is more likely to be put behind bars.

An Argentinean couple were recently arrested for making love outside a mayor’s office in broad daylight.

The man and woman, in their mid-30s, were having sex in a completely nude state on a bench by the Nahuel Huapi river in Bariloche, and when cops arrived to arrest them, they shocked them further, by asking the officers to let them finish what they were doing.

A crowd gathered and cheered the couple on, but the Mayor of Bariloche said he was shocked by the spectacle.

Not ashamed of the incident, the woman concerned told police that she had always fantasised about having sex outside the mayor’s office while politicians were working inside.

“They are otherwise two very respectable citizens but they told us they had this urge to have sex in public and that it was very strong and they couldn’t control it,” Fox News quoted a police spokesperson, as saying.

The couple were arrested on charges of disrespecting public space and indecent exposure.

Posted in Sex

Apology from Muslim friends of Norway and Denmark

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Very nice.

Quote of the day–Greg Hamilton

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In Pierce County [Washington] the way the prosecutor decides whether to press charges or not is to print out the arrest records of the people involved and weigh them… Scumbag dead, good guy still upright — good guy walks.  Scumbag dead, other scumbag still upright — scumbag gets prosecuted.  The guy is an IPSC shooter himself, he figures you are just cleaning out the gene pool when you shoot a scumbag.

Greg Hamilton
Self Defense Instructor
Nov. 19, 1995

A bias against self-defense part II

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Michael Charles Williams

I received two calls from Michael Charles Williams today.  I was driving to work the first time and couldn’t take notes but here is what I remember.  Where I could I found news stories that relate to what he told me:

  • Adams (the guy Williams shot three times) had a long rap sheet.  His associates have criminal records too.
  • Adams was partway into Williams truck through the window by the time the last shot was fired.
  • Today the prosecuting attorney tried to get the blood alcohol content of Adams (0.327–legally drunk in Idaho is 0.08) ruled inadmissible in court.  He failed.
  • The ex-wife testimony was ruled inadmissible. The prosecutor was virtually begging for it to be admissible and said he would “go all the way to the Supreme court” to achieve that.
  • There are no other witnesses that claim Williams “was looking for someone to kill.”
  • Detectives didn’t try to get fingerprints or other evidence off of the truck.
  • The first detective and Williams knew each other in high school 15 years prior and had a bad history between them.
  • The first detective had a good relationship with Adams family.
  • Williams had some handgun training in the military but no formal training on civilian self defense.
  • The gun was a “brand new” Springfield 1911 style compact in .45 ACP with “self-defense ammo”.
  • The prosecutor has a conceal weapons license.
  • The prosecutor once shot at, in error, a plainclothes police officer.
  • At my suggestion the defense attorney plans to call SAF.
  • Williams thanked me profusely for “helping” (not sure I have actually done much).
  • Williams said he sent a link to my previous blog posting to friends, family, and his private investigator.  My log files have confirmation of such traffic.
  • His sister is digging up more newspaper stories for me to put on the web and comment on.