Tam says she is going to drive to summer camp so the TSA goons won’t grope her and steal stuff from her luggage. Goons seems to be an accurate description of TSA behavior I see here. The text of the story is here. It was all over a bottle of contact lens solution.
I’ll bet they wouldn’t bat an eye over five pounds of flour or powdered sugar which would, if properly applied, bring down any commercial passenger plane in existence.
Son James sent an IM to me today with this link:
A senior government official with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has expressed great interest in a so-called safety bracelet that would serve as a stun device, similar to that of a police Taser®. According to this promotional video found at the Lamperd Less Lethal, Inc. website, the bracelet would be worn by all airline passengers (video also shown below).
This bracelet would:
- Take the place of an airline boarding pass
- Contain personal information about the traveler
- Be able to monitor the whereabouts of each passenger and his/her luggage
- Shock the wearer on command, completely immobilizing him/her for several minutes
The conversation with James then went something like this:
James:
may be taken out of context or blown out of proportion depending on what sources you consider credible *shrug*
Joe:
My bet is I could smuggle a knife through security and get out of the bracelet before I ever got on the plane.
James:
oh yeah, there’s all sorts of ways you could subvert the bracelet
plus, the bad guys could figure out a way to set off the bracelets themselves, thus immobilizing any resistance!
Joe:
And something that is going to immobilize a Sumo wrestler is probably going to kill an 80 year old little old lady with a heart problem.
James:
yeah, basically the plan has FAIL written all over it
Joe:
Another way to defeat the bracelet would be to wrap it in aluminum foil. You would disappear off of the location monitoring device and no radio or laser could trigger the shock.
That the colonists cared little about the prospect of having their guns seized is not the only ahistorical concept underlying Petitioners’ repudiation of the Second Amendment. Redcoats and Patriots alike would have puzzled at Petitioners’ notion that the Revolution produced an exclusive governmental right to operate an organized militia. The “well regulated militia” of the American Revolution operated not merely beyond the control of, but in direct challenge to, the King’s governors.
Alan Gura
Robert A. Levy
Clark M. Neily III
February 24, 2008
Brief on Writ Of Certiorari To The United States Court Of Appeals For The District Of Columbia Circuit.
[Sometime I should make a list of all the absurdities in the belief system of the anti-gun bigots that contributed to the Heller case. It would make for very amusing reading.–Joe]
The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms laughs and points at Bloomberg caught with his pants down:
WHILE BLOOMBERG FRETS ABOUT OUR GUNS, NYPD CAN’T KEEP TRACK OF THEIRS
BELLEVUE, WA – Anti-gun New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg should “mind his own store before telling others how to operate theirs,” said the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, after an audit found that the New York Police Department lost track of dozens of guns in its own storage lockers.
“While this guy has been bullying gun dealers around the country about so-called ‘slip-shod’ operations,” chuckled CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, “his own police department seems to be slipping quite a bit on its own. Bloomberg needs to back off, shut up and get his own house in order before telling others how to operate.”
According to the New York Times, “nearly one out of three handguns and rifles that had been turned in to the police could not be immediately accounted for in a Manhattan property clerk’s office.”
“We’re waiting for Bloomberg to send a team of undercover vigilante investigators down there to find out what’s wrong,” Gottlieb said. “Can one of his infamous lawsuits be far behind?”
Bloomberg dispatched non-police “investigators” to run stings on gun shops in several states more than two years ago, ostensibly to show how easy it is to illegally obtain guns in other states. He then sued gun dealers in five states. This rogue operation landed the mayor’s office in hot water with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for jeopardizing on-going legitimate investigations. Ultimately the Justice Department warned the mayor not to pull that stunt again.
“If Mayor Bloomberg wants to find mismanagement of a firearms inventory,” Gottlieb stated, “he doesn’t need to send goon squads to Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia or anywhere outside of his jurisdiction. All he really needs is to do is visit the police property room in Manhattan and turn his lawyers loose.
“It’s a pity that Bloomberg can’t lose his arrogant attitude as easily as his cops can lose track of their gun inventory,” he concluded.
In some ways, the Supreme Court term that just ended seems muddled: disturbing, highly conservative rulings on subjects like voting rights and gun control, along with important defenses of basic liberties in other areas, including the rights of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The key to understanding the term lies in the fragility of the court’s center. Some of the most important decisions came on 5-to-4 votes — a stark reminder that the court is just one justice away from solidifying a far-right majority that would do great damage to the Constitution and the rights of ordinary Americans.
…
In other cases, like the gun-control decision, the rulings might have been more sweeping and more damaging if the conservative bloc had not needed the moderate-conservative Justice Kennedy’s vote to form a majority. One more conservative appointment would shift the balance to the far-right bloc.
If that happens, the court can be expected to push even further in a dangerous direction. It would most likely begin stripping away civil liberties…
New York Times
Editorial
July 3, 2008
A Supreme Court on the Brink
[Conservative justices threw out the D.C. handgun ban so that people were allowed to exercise a “new” right. And if we have more conservatives on the bench they would do “great damage” to the rights of ordinary Americans and “begin stripping away civil liberties”. What sort of mental problems do these people have? It’s worse than the Nazis who claimed Jews were vermin and literally spread disease like rats and fleas yet they were also in control of the banks and many governments. How can they not see they fail to keep their story straight even for an entire paragraph? It’s like something I would expect to hear from someone in a mental hospital.
I guess we don’t really have to understand them. We just have to defeat them.–Joe]
According to Dennis Henigan, vice president for law and policy at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, “The ruling gives a constitutional green light to a wide range of gun restrictions.”
One has to wonder what color he thought the light was when he claimed there was no individual right to keep and bear arms.
Find them here.
I skpped to the bottom and found something I expected by Justice Breyer:
The argument about method, however, is by far the less important argument surrounding today’s decision. Far more important are the unfortunate consequences that today’s decision is likely to spawn. Not least of these, as I have said, is the fact that the decision threatens to throw into doubt the constitutionality of gun laws throughout the United States. I can find no sound legal basis for launching the courts on so formidable and potentially dangerous a mission.
Simply because it will be disruptive to existing (unconstitional) laws Breyer thinks that is a valid reason to allow the D.C. ban to stand. Try that reasoning on laws which mandate where minorities sit on a bus or which drinking fountains they can use and see what people think.
In response to this (re: The Left)
“Ideological descendants of Marx and Rousseau now lead the Democratic Party and they have turned it into a disloyal opposition to an increasingly accommodating GOP.
…a pseudo-intellectual sinkhole filled with perverse, tried-and-failed ideas repulsive to the majority of Americans.”
“Tried-and-failed”… I must remember to use that one the next time I have to explain to some Lefty puke why socialism is a really bad idea.”
It won’t work. History will not touch a socialist. All past failures happened because the wrong people were in charge. It’s like trying to convince someone that his perpetual motion generator will never, ever work. He knows, from direct observation, that it came extremely close on his last try.
That no one else ever made it work is proof of nothing. There is a first time for everything, and our inventor knows, deep down, that he has the right idea. The right idea will work. Somehow it will work. It must. Then the major problems of the ages will be solved. Just… need…. to keep… tweaking.
The problem with the socialist and with the perpetual motion inventor is they both fail to understand basic laws of nature. Their theories violate those laws. End of story.
The perpetual motion inventor I can tolerate– he stays out of my face. I can laugh at him from a distance and he’ll leave me alone.
For the Framers, the lesson of such uprisings was that “the rebellion of a people against a government established by themselves is not justifiable, even in an extreme case, and can only result in dishonor to the state, and calamity and disgrace to those who participate in it.” 1 Josiah Holland, History of Western Massachusetts 299-300 (Springfield, Bowles & Co. 1855) (emphasis added). Thus, in the Framers’ experience, it was not the possession of arms for personal uses apart from militia service (or against the government) that preserved ordered liberty. It was the States’ access to militias and similar state-controlled forces to protect their citizens that was essential. Modern experience confirms that view.
Jeffrey A. Lamken
January 2008
Brief supporting petitioners of amici curiae American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League, Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, Ceasefire NJ, Central Conference of American Rabbis, Citizens for a Safer Minnesota, Methodist Federation for Social Action, Clifton Kirkpatrick in his capacity as the stated Clerk of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Educational Fund to stop Gun Violence, Freedom States Alliance, American Jewish Congress, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Gray Panthers, Gunfreekids.org, Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence, Illinoisvictims.org, Iowans for the Prevention of Gun Violence, Jenna Foundation for Nonviolence, inc., Karla Zimmerman Memorial Foundation, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, National Council of Jewish Women, New England Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence, New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, DC Statehood Green Party, North Carolinians Against Gun Violence Education Fund, Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence, Renée Olumbuni Rondeau Peace Foundation, Root (Reaching Out to Others Together) Inc., Union for Reform Judaism, Virginia Center for Public Safety, Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort, and certain individual victims and families of victims of gun violence.
[I suppose they are forced to believe that if they hope to remain consistent. But I’m appalled so many Jewish organizations could sign on to such a belief system. Hitler was elected. The government of Germany of the 1930’s and early 1940’s was established by the people of Germany. Don’t the people that advocate the above doctrine realize what they are saying? There is no case in which the state should be forceably overthrown. Whatever the state decides is also moral and acceptable. They are saying the German Jews, the millions of Russians, Chinese, Laotians, etc. who were murdered by their own government had no right to defend themselves. It was their duty to passively accept their own annihilation. These people have mental problems and must be defeated.–Joe]
It must be hard to keep moral up when they are being crushed. Even as they are waving the white flag they are saying they are going to win:
While the Brady Campaign is waving the white flag in the long-running debate on whether the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to bear arms or merely a state’s right to assemble a militia, it is hoping that losing the “legal battle” will eventually lead to gun control advocates winning the “political war.”
“We’re expecting D.C. to lose the case,” Helmke said. “But this could be good from the standpoint of the political-legislative side.”
I won’t consider the war over until we start putting some of these people, the politicians, and the police in jail over this deprivation of rights that has been going on for decades.
Snoqualmie Pass is getting snow today. Probably not so much that I can’t make it home on Friday but of interest because its so unusual for this time of year. It is snowing in Moscow Idaho (my home) and the Boomershoot site too. Maybe I should schedule Boomershoot 2009 for July 4th so the snow will be light enough the roads will be plowed and people can make it without snowmobiles.
Crank up those coal fired power plants and rev the engines in your trucks while waiting at traffic lights–we need to head off the next ice age.
Either Al Gore has crap for brains and/or his motivation is solely for political gain.
Update: Daughter Kim says not to blame Al Gore:
From: Kimberly
Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2008 11:10 AM
To: Barbara Scott; James Huffman-Scott; Joe Huffman; Xenia JoyI apologize for the snow it was my fault I cut the dogs hair yesterday
Update2: From my weather advisory email alert:
OROFINO/GRANGEVILLE REGION-
135 PM PDT TUE JUN 10 2008…SNOW ADVISORY IN EFFECT FROM 8 PM THIS EVENING TO 8 AM PDT WEDNESDAY ABOVE 3500 FEET…
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN MISSOULA HAS ISSUED A SNOW ADVISORY ABOVE 3500 FEET…WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM 8 PM THIS EVENING TO 8 AM PDT WEDNESDAY.
TOTAL SNOW ACCUMULATIONS OF 1 TO 3 INCHES ARE EXPECTED TONIGHT THROUGH EARLY WEDNESDAY MORNING ABOVE 4000 FEET AND OVER THE WHITE BIRD GRADE ON HIGHWAY 95. ELEVATIONS DOWN TO 3500 FEET…INCLUDING THE CITY OF GRANGEVILLE…CAN EXPECT TO SEE ACCUMULATIONS UP TO AN INCH.
A SNOW ADVISORY MEANS THAT PERIODS OF SNOW WILL CAUSE PRIMARILY TRAVEL DIFFICULTIES. BE PREPARED FOR SNOW COVERED ROADS AND LIMITED VISIBILITIES…AND USE CAUTION WHILE DRIVING.
This could mean certain types of crops in the area will be killed by the cold.
Something the global warming doomsday people ignore is that, typically, farm yields are better with abnormally warm weather than abnormally cold weather. Hence to be on the safe side of things we should try to push things in the direction of excess heating rather than risk excess cooling.
Son James sent me this link–British government vows tougher knife laws. My response was, “Its not Great Britain. Its not mediocre Britain. Its pathetic Britain.”
A small sample of the pathetically stupid:
Until now, warnings were given to most of those under the age of 18 found with knives. With the change, anyone 16 or over who carries a knife with a blade longer than 3 inches (7.6 centimeters) will be prosecuted. Those convicted face a penalty of up to four years in prison.
“Young people need to understand that carrying knives doesn’t protect you, it does the opposite — it increases the danger for all of us, destroys young lives and ruins families,” Brown said.
And a sample of the police state being implemented:
London’s new mayor, Boris Johnson, has also vowed to crack down on knife crime. His proposals include airport-style metal-detecting arches at train and subway stations. London police recently began an aggressive new program to search anyone they wish for knives without having to justify their suspicions beforehand.
I wrote this as a comment on thehighroad.org but figured it should have its own post. Someone started a thread about NDs at gun shows (smells like an anti to me, akin to the standard MSM interview wherein the conservative guest is asked, “What’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever done?”) Here’s my response:
I used to exhibit at gun shows. I always felt as safe at a gun show as anywhere else. Much safer than some places I’ve been. NDs at shows were always something you heard about, but never witnessed, kind of like Sasquatch and space aliens.If you ever find yourself afraid for your life, running into a gun show would be a good choice if available.
If you’re worried about safety, don’t drive to a gun show though– you’re vastly more likely to be injured or killed during the drive to and from the gun show than while you’re there. I suspect this would be true even if 3/4 of the people at the gun show were drunk and all the people on the roads that day were sober.
On that note; I go to my kid’s school football games (you know where this is going, right?) and at each and every game there is an ambulance, complete with paramedic crew, on location all during the game.
Ever seen an ambulance and crew on standby at a gun show? How about at a shooting match, where people are, you know, actually loading and firing guns?
Me neither.
Do NDs happen? Yes. Very, very rarely. Usually, they result in no injuries or serious property damage. Do people get killed falling down in their own homes? Yes, and it is a more common occurrence.
Carry on.
Under Civil Rights groups they support they list Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. I’m almost surprised the don’t list the KKK too. I’m certain one could make a better case that the KKK supports civil rights (of whites) more than the Brady Bunch supports civil rights for anyone. The Brady Bunch is like the KKK in a lot of ways.
The first and only thing that comes to mind is mental problems when I read something like The Racist Origins Of the Second Amendment. Pure projection. The truth is gun control has racist origins. Here is just a small sample of the evidence:
We cannot have freedom, we cannot have safety as long as these types of weapons are on our streets.
Michael Nutter
Philadelphia Mayor
May 27, 2008
Mayor Nutter takes gun control fight to Harrisburg
[Nutter is refering to “assault weapons”. What Nutter doesn’t understand or, just as likely fully understands but thinks we won’t, is that if the government is allowed to restrict these firearms the people will have neither freedom nor safety. Just ask some of the worlds other beneficiaries of gun control. Gun control has never delivered the promises made to the common person, only to the tyrants.–Joe]
Thomas Sowell hits another one out of the park. I’d heard about his recent article from R. Limbaugh. Here’s a snippet:
For people on the left, however, blacks are trophies or mascots, and must therefore be put on display. Nowhere is that more true than in politics. Nor do conservatives who were in the civil rights marches in the South, back when that was dangerous, make that a big deal.
The problem with being a mascot is that you are a symbol of someone else’s significance or virtue. The actual well-being of a mascot is not the point.
An article by Joseph P. Tartaro (who I saw at the NRA Convention but didn’t talk to) spells out what many of us have suspected. Bloomberg is an ignorant anti-gun bigot and beyond that is willfully ignorant:
NSSF noted that perhaps the mayor’s insults stems from his self-professed ignorance of our nation’s firearms laws and regulations, business practices of firearms retailers and the duties of the ATF. “I don’t know what the law is and what procedures are,” responded the mayor to a deposition question on illegally purchased firearms, NSSF quoted him. “I have no knowledge of what appropriate safeguards are for a dealer to comply with the law or what standard practices are in the arms business,” they quoted him.
In the same deposition Mr. Bloomberg admitted he did not know that ATF conducted inspections of firearms retailers. “I didn’t even know they had inspections,” the bewildered mayor offered and Bloomberg also noted that he did not know what a Federal Firearms Transaction Record, commonly known as a Form 4473 was or a NICS background check.
My web site about my “adventure” with Battelle’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory recently yielded contact with another victim of theirs.
I often thought it odd they would treat me so poorly with my expertise with explosives and firearms. Why not ease me out rather than treat me crap and not even allow me to defend myself against the allegations? Internal email and testimony during my lawsuit after I was fired revealed there were people on the inside that were quite concerned about that too. They had one or more meetings on how they might deal with “getting sniped at from 800 yards away”.
My latest contact who joined the club of being fired unjustly with any opportunity to defend themselves against allegations of wrongdoing by Battelle has expertise with botulinum toxin, ricin, Yersinia pestis, as well as all of the major chemical warfare agents, such as mustard gas, Sarin and VX.
In response to Joe’s earlier post (a very good one, Joe, by the way) I piled on a bit more:
Mr. Bachman,
Your stance, tone and alarmist tactics remind me somewhat of the Temperance Movement of the early 20th century. Invariably, the results of such crusades are in the long run vastly more destructive than the perceived “problems” they attempt to solve.
If you truly want to help improve general safety and quality of life, might I suggest you look into the principles of liberty upon which this country was built, and begin championing them? You may find it a much more enjoyable (and profitable) pursuit.
Sincerely,
Lyle…
Update 05/23/08: WSB-TV has pulled the offending video for now. Maybe they’ll post an edited version at some point.
