Category Archives: Freedom

Quote of the day–Dmitry Orlov

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More interestingly, many Americans no longer even understand the concepts of loyalty and treason—again, not surprising, since for a few generations now they have been ruled by traitors, whose routine acts of betrayal are designed to benefit just about anyone—from Israeli arms smugglers to Afghani heroin dealers—except the people who supposedly elect them to office.


Dmitry Orlov
July 10, 2010
US Swaps Russian Spies for … Russian Spies
[Reading Kevin’s post, But What if Your Loyalty is to the Constitution? – Part III reminded me of the above quote in my collection.–Joe]

Encrypting mobile communication

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This is very interesting to me:

More than a million BlackBerry users may have key services in Saudi Arabia and
the UAE cut off after authorities stepped up demands on smartphone maker
Research In Motion for access to encrypted messages sent over the device.

BlackBerry’s Messenger application has spread rapidly in the Gulf Arab region
but because the data is encrypted and sent to offshore servers, it cannot be
tracked locally.

“Certain BlackBerry services allow users to act without any legal
accountability, causing judicial, social and national security concerns,” the
United Arab Emirates’ Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) said in a
statement.

…

India raised similar security concerns last week, and Bahrain in April warned
against using BlackBerry Messenger to distribute local news. As far back as
2007, France cautioned officials about using the services.

Indian security officials were concerned that BlackBerry’s encrypted data
could be used to coordinate acts against the state. They have clamped down on
mobile phone operators in the wake of 2008 attacks that killed 166 people in
Mumbai.

Sure, secure communications can “be used to coordinate acts against the state”. But secure communications can be used to secure the Jews in your attic too.

There is a lot of secure communications that goes on with Windows Phone 7 too. I wonder if any of it will run afoul of repressive government laws.

I may have to write an app for defeating such laws if things progress to far in that direction. It consumes more bandwidth but it’s possible to create communication channels that are essentially invisible while in plain sight and encrypt them as well. I’ve done this before with another app but sort of lost interest when we started winning the gun rights war in this country. I might have to fire up that project again.

Quote of the day–T

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You are all a bunch of bumbling morons. This is the information age, get a clue. You can’t keep people from doing things by innocuously passing laws as a band-aid or stop gap. In this day and age people are going to find ways to do things. You want to teach them something? Teach them to be responsible with firearms. THAT’S the key that’s missing in today’s youth. You want to know why kids blow up high schools? Because no one in this ‘nobody fails’ government will allow the two kids to duke it out behind the library in the third grade.

Unfortunately, by doing this, you folks have basically ‘screwed the pooch’ on an entire generation. I can only see one way to actually repair the damage, and this is it.

Step 1) Force everyone in the country to carry a handgun.

Step 2) Watch society get really polite, really quick.

In a couple of months all the psychos and gang-bangers will kill each other off and everyone will be happy.

Let’s just call that a win / win / win scenario.

– T
Referring to the Brady Campaign and “the Mayors coalition against private handgun sales”.
July 28, 2010
Complete and Utter Fools are trying to run our Government
[While there is more than a hint of truth in what he says I’m opposed to forcing everyone in the country to carry a handgun. I’m a middle ground sort of guy.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Dmitry Orlov

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The mid-1990s did not seem to me as the right time to voice such ideas. The United States was celebrating its so-called Cold War victory, getting over its Vietnam syndrome by bombing Iraq back to the Stone Age, and the foreign policy wonks coined the term “hyperpower” and were jabbering on about full-spectrum dominance. All sorts of silly things were happening. Professor Fukuyama told us that history had ended, and so we were building a brave new world where the Chinese made things out of plastic for us, the Indians provided customer support when these Chinese-made things broke, and we paid for it all just by flipping houses, pretending that they were worth a lot of money whereas they are really just useless bits of ticky-tacky. Alan Greenspan chided us about “irrational exuberance” while consistently low-balling interest rates. It was the “Goldilocks economy” – not to hot, not too cold. Remember that? And now it turns out that it was actually more of a “Tinker-bell” economy, because the last five or so years of economic growth was more or less a hallucination, based on various debt pyramids, the “whole house of cards” as President Bush once referred to it during one of his lucid moments. And now we can look back on all of that with a funny, queasy feeling, or we can look forward and feel nothing but vertigo.


Dmitry Orlov
February 13, 2009
Social Collapse Best Practices
[I had a conversation with a friend earlier this week and he was of the opinion (pharaphrasing) we went from “it was too early to shoot the bastards to it’s too late to do any good and it’s just a matter of riding things out as best we can as we auger into the ground”.


I can’t say that I have any factual basis to refute his assessment.–Joe]

Gun cartoon of the day

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The artist completely ignores all the issues of due process, inability to challenge your placement on the list, the criteria for being placed on the list, etc. It would appear the artist believes it’s “all about the profits of the gun industry” or some such thing.


As I said over in the comments at Sebastian’s place:



My model of his (and many other) claim of “gun lobby profits” and such things is that they can’t imagine individuals actually wanting a gun unless they are a criminal or they have been duped by the “evil corporations”. I could be wrong, but it seems to me a great number of them think in terms of “everything bad is due to capitalism” or even more general in that “freedom is the root of all evil”. Their vision of utopia is government planning and control of everything.


Because of this if they don’t get their way it cannot be “the fault” of the individuals. It has to be influence of the evil capitalists. Why do you think the “progressives” want to silence their opposition (most recently Fox News, in years past it was “Fairness Doctrine”)?


As one admitted Marxist told me, “I believe in the good of society over the good of the individual.” Society/Government/Intellectuals/The-Central-Committee should make the decisions. Capitalists with their influence are the only real threat to “Society” and they should always be suspect because their motives are money and not “the good of society”. Only those untainted by Capitalist urges can be trusted to be pure and good.


At least that is the way I see their delusions working.


The concepts of a “basic human right” and a “specific enumerated right” being denied by involuntary membership on secret lists somehow don’t make it past their filters.

Quote of the day–Ed Black

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Much of the unprecedented economic growth of the past 10 years can actually be
credited to the doctrine of fair use, as the Internet itself depends on the
ability to use content in a limited and nonlicensed manner. To stay on the edge of innovation and
productivity, we must keep fair use as one of the cornerstones for creativity,
innovation, and, as today’s study indicates, an engine for growth for our
country.

Ed Black
Fair Use Worth More to Economy Than Copyright, CCIA Says
President and CEO of CCIA.
September 12, 2007
[I’ve been doing some research into “fair use“. For the obvious reasons.

There may be other options as well as those I have seen discussed. I’ll report back if I find anything “interesting”.–Joe]

Boomershoot private party

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Some people from work followed me back to Idaho on Friday night.

Saturday morning we had breakfast at the Breakfast Club in Moscow with Tim, Barron, and Janelle.


Hiep and Priyanka walking into the restaurant. Photo by Sharath.

We drove to the Boomershoot site and I told them the history, told lots of stories and gave them a tour. They found some .50 BMG bullets and seemed quite thrilled. The picture below is from on top of the berm where the 700 yard targets are placed looking back at the hay field to the shooting line.


Janelle, Barron, Tim (just barely visible behind the grass), Hiep, Sharath, and Priyanka.

I gave them a safety briefing on the chemicals (which consists mostly of telling them not to eat, drink, or snort anything) I had the people from Microsoft weigh the chemicals and my staff mix the explosives and package it into targets:


Sharath, Priyanka, Hiep.


Janelle, Tim (barely visible–he doesn’t want his picture taken because cameras will steal your soul), and Barron.

We ate lunch then placed the targets in front of the large berm at the tree line.


Sharath, Priyanka, and Hiep putting stakes in the ground for the targets.

One of the targets had something special on it (see also here).

I gave safety and basic firearm instructions while Tim, Barron, and Janelle placed the targets on the stakes. Sharath had never shot a gun before. Hiep had only shot one once and that was after he had three years of military instruction in Vietnam. Priyanka shot a gun for the first time last September and then in March took her parents (visiting from India) to the range on her own and taught them to shoot.


Targets ready for engagement. Photo by Sharath.

We then got back a few feet and let the visitors shoot the targets. There were many smiles and much exaltation.


Joe and Hiep. Photo by Sharath.

Hiep once told me he didn’t think private citizens should possess firearms. Only the police and the military should have access. I should ask if he still thinks that.

Boomershoot is a tool for teaching people from all over the world the joys of guns and explosives–the joy of freedom.

How’s that health care working out for you?

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I heard two different stories on the “health care reform” yesterday. I had lunch with an old friend. He has his own small business and with the downturn in the economy he is slowing sinking. He is looking for a contract job writing software and may end up leaving the Seattle area for a few weeks to “go do some coding in Iowa”. The new health care regulations aren’t helping him any either. He pulled out his Group Health identification card and told me, “I was paying $1000/month for this until they passed the bill. Almost immediately it went to $1500/month.”

That evening I had dinner with some other friends. One of them told me about explaining to one of his employees just yesterday that he is now required to offer her health insurance. He told her, “I’m required to offer you health insurance. So I’m doing that now. But if you accept I’m going to have to cut your hours back to 20 per week. At that point I no longer have to pay your insurance. If you sign this other piece of paper saying you don’t want the coverage you can continue to work 40 hours per week.

She clarified, “So I could work 20 hours per week and not have health insurance or I could continue to work 40 hours per week and not have health insurance, right?” “That’s right”, he said. “Unless you can talk Ruth out of her raise. We just don’t have the budget for any additional expenses.”

As Sebastian rhetorically asks on a slightly different topic, “Who could have predicted this?”

Another step closer to GATTACA

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Entire human genome sequencing for $100.

My estimate is that the potential for GATTACA is only another decade away.

NRA versus Brady Campaign in an alternate reality

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I have been thinking about the Brady Campaign story that the Heller and McDonald decisions are really a good thing for their side. They claim it has, “Taken the extremes in the gun debate off the table, and given us the opportunity to decide what kind of gun restrictions make sense in our communities”.


This is based on the premise, as proposed in Chapter 3 of Half-Truth Henigan book Lethal Logic (I really need to finish up that review) that freedom activists use the slippery slope threat of a complete gun ban as justification for opposing all restrictions on firearms.


Okay… lets turn this around and see if it still makes sense with the tables turned.


Let us suppose that in some alternate reality there is an evil NRA and the the good guys are the Brady Campaign. The opposite of a complete gun ban is not what the Brady Campaign claims as “any gun, anyplace, anytime”. It is mandatory gun ownership, training, and subsidies. Suppose Washington D.C. and Chicago had the evil NRA’s dream of a mandatory hour a day instruction and/or practice in firearm use from age 5 on up. All guns, ammo, and ranges for the mandatory practice are supplied at taxpayer expense. Furthermore all people were required to purchase at least one each of a shotgun, bolt gun, semi-auto rifle, semi-auto pistol, revolver, sub-machine gun, heavy machine gun, and (with subsidies for those who needed help) a mini-gun. Other political jurisdictions varied in oppression with California only requiring one hour a week of practice and citizens over the age of 21 only have to purchase one handgun and one semi-auto rifle while Vermont implemented the good Brady Campaign ideals saying, “Do what you want, just don’t hurt anyone else or their property.”


Now suppose Alan Gura, still working for the Cato Institute, takes D.C. and Chicago to court and gets the mandatory purchase requirements for eight different firearms thrown out as violating the Constitution. The justices also say “This narrow ruling should not be interpreted as saying all mandated training or purchases of firearms is unconstitutional”.


Would the evil NRA be justified in saying this furthers their goals? Would it be reasonable to claim, “This has taken the extremes off the table and has given us the opportunity to decide what kind of mandatory gun ownership and training laws make sense in our communities”?


The answer is no. The U.S. Constitution is about limiting government. It gives enumerated powers to government and guarantees specific enumerated inalienable rights. In pushing the D.C. and Chicago government as far as they did the evil NRA was able to violate the rights of the people in those jurisdictions. Those governments had clearly gone beyond their constitutionally granted powers and was oppressing the people. What the ruling does is throw into question all requirements of firearm ownership and training because those requirements were a violation of constitutionally guaranteed freedom.


And, back in our reality, the Brady Campaign supported complete ban on firearms in D.C. was a violation of a guaranteed freedom. When that was overthrown it put into question all similar restrictions on freedom. It does not enable everything short of a complete ban.

Quote of the day–Sheriff Richard I. Mack

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Washington powercrats want to create an unarmed nation. It’s all pretty simple. They are uneasy about a gun-toting constituency that believes in a constitutional right and duty to resist oppressive federal government. They continually assume additional power not granted them by the Constitution. Efforts to repeal the Second Amendment are underway.

…

A day of reckoning is inevitable. Will guns be outlawed and taken away, leaving little vestige of constitutional freedom? Armed Americans (hopefully) will not submit willingly. On the other hand, a disarmed citizenry will have no choice but to behave like sheep. The pioneers of freedom who wrote the Declaration of Independence were considered traitors by a despotic British government, but they were not sheep. Neither did they intend their descendants to be.

Sheriff Richard I. Mack
From My
Cold Dead Fingers–Why America Needs Guns, Third Edition (“Final Chapter”), pages 156 and 157.
[This book was written in the mid 1990s. That was a very dark time for the future of gun ownership. Now, with gun control well on it’s way to the dustbin of history, freedom activists are considering moving on to issues such as food control. My work with gun control won’t be done until there are successful prosecutions of anti-gun politicians and law enforcement people for violation of 18 USC 242 and donating money to the Brady Campaign is as socially toxic as membership in the KKK is today.

I think my next cause will be the elimination of the TSA (A Security Theater) or the war on some drugs.–Joe]

Gun cartoon of the day

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The artist limits “the solutions” by posing “the problem” as he does. Just as we would, and should, if we pose the problem as a civil rights infringement problem. I’ve posted on this general topic before (and here).


As a wise engineering manager once told me, it is more important to define the problem than discover a solution. We can’t let the anti-freedom bigots define the problem.


Alan Gura spoke about this some with us bloggers at the NRA convention this year. He is of the opinion the NRA is an expert at legislation and lobbying but that in our current situation civil rights lawsuits are most effective. This is not to say that we can’t have two or more solutions to the same problem but that we should recognize the problem can be framed multiple ways and that depending upon the framing we change the solution set. And with those changing solution sets it may be that a different set of experts are needed.

Why are Brady Campaign supporters so violent?

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In the Facebook thread here a commenter points people at his blog post on the McDonald ruling:

Stern Dixon

Read my
log post on today’s Supreme Court ruling: http://wwwtoecheesecom.blogspot.com/
Yesterday at 11:35am

And the response? It’s typical:

Suzanne MacDougall Avila

to the
above poster, take your H&K 93, shove it up your ass and pull the trigger.
Yesterday at 12:46pm · 2 people
Sara L. Messenger

Sara L.
Messenger

Could
have said it better myself Suzanne, he has to be a nut.
Yesterday at 12:52pm
Sara L. Messenger

Sara L.
Messenger

You are
sick.
Yesterday at 12:56pm
Sara L. Messenger

Sara L.
Messenger

I am not
mad but, people like you who shoot off their mouths don’t need guns.
Yesterday at 12:57pm
Suzanne MacDougall Avila

Suzanne MacDougall Avila

Thank
you, Sara. He’s not even worth arguing with. He can take his filthy mouth and
his guns somewhere else.
Yesterday at 1:20pm

There is lots of other stuff worthy of comment in the thread as well. I particularily liked the irony of this one:

Richard J. Osborne

Repeal
the Second Amendment. It belongs on the scrap heap of history along with the
provisions of the Constitution that protected slavery.
Yesterday at 9:04am · 5 people

If they can repeal the Second Amendment then people could repeal the 13th Amendment as well. For some reason they can’t seem to grasp the principle of freedom.

Quote of the day–Wayne LaPierre

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We are practical guys. We don’t want to win on philosophy and lose on freedom. The end question is, can law-abiding men and women go out and buy and own a firearm? Today the Supreme Court said yes – anywhere they live!


This decision cannot lead to different measures of freedom, depending on what part of the country you live in. City by city, person by person, this decision must be more than a philosophical victory. An individual right is no right at all if individuals can’t access it. Proof of Heller and McDonald will be law abiding citizens, one by one, purchasing and owning firearms.


The NRA will work to ensure this constitutional victory is not transformed into a practical defeat by activist judges, defiant city councils, or cynical politicians who seek to pervert, reverse, or nullify the Supreme Court’s McDonald decision through Byzantine labyrinths of restrictions and regulations that render the Second Amendment inaccessible, unaffordable, or otherwise impossible to experience in a practical, reasonable way.


What good is a right without the gun? What good is the right if you can’t buy one? Or keep one in your home? Or protect your family with one?


Here’s a piece of paper – protect yourself. That’s no right at all!


Victory is when law abiding men and women can get up, go out, and buy and own a firearm. This is a monumental day. But NRA will not rest until every law-abiding American citizen is able to exercise the individual right to buy and own a firearm for self defense or any other lawful purpose.


Wayne LaPierre
June 28, 2010
Statement by Wayne LaPierre Executive Vice President, NRA and Chris W. Cox Executive Director, NRA-ILA Regarding U.S. Supreme Court Decision McDonald v. City of Chicago.
[SAF also has a statement. Tomorrow’s QOTD will come from it.


Expect the NRA and SAF to be racing to file cases within minutes or at most hours, from now. I’m placing my money, literally, on SAF.–Joe]

Quote of the day–James Madison

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Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

James Madison
[And this is why those that wish to govern us also attempt to keep the masses ignorant. It is only by enforcing ignorance that they can become our rulers.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Justice Antonin Scalia

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We are aware of the problem of handgun violence in this country, and we take seriously the concerns raised by the many amici who believe that prohibition of handgun ownership is a solution. The Constitution leaves the District of Columbia a variety of tools for combating that problem, including some measures regulating handguns, see supra, at 54-55, and n. 26. But the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table. These include the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home. Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.



Justice Antonin Scalia
June 26, 2008
District of Columbia, et al., petitioners v. Dick Anthony Heller, No. 07-290, Page 64
[It’s not the role of our legislators or the executive branch either. The only legal way for them to try is through a constitutional amendment and even that has some serious problems because the formation of the union was dependent upon those first ten amendments known as the Bill of Rights.–Joe]

Gun cartoon of the day

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The Million Mom March stated their beliefs as:

All Americans have the right to be safe from gun violence in their homes, neighborhoods,
schools, and places of work and worship. All children have the right to grow up
in environments free from the threat of gun violence. Gun violence is a public
health crisis that harms not only the physical, but also the spiritual, social,
and economic health of our families and communities. The availability and
lethality of guns make death or severe injury more likely in domestic violence,
criminal activity, suicide attempts, and unintentional shootings. It is possible
to reduce the number of deaths and injuries caused by gun violence with
reasonable, common sense policy.

With such a warped sense of what a right is, or can be, it is no surprise they didn’t last long. Now the Million Mom March essentially no longer exists (it’s “officially” part of the failing Brady Campaign) and the NRA is stronger than ever.

Who’s the moron now?

Quote of the day–Fred Hoyle

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I concluded, unhappily, I had been born into a world dominated by a rampaging monster called ‘law’ that was both all powerful and all stupid.

Fred Hoyle
[The most recent info about the TSA is what reminded me of this. But every waking minute of any day would also qualify.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Peggy Chenoweth

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In all of the years since I have become an amputee, I can honestly say that I have can’t think of a more upsetting and humiliating experience than what I endured at the hands of TSA at the airport.

…

No person should be subjected to this level of humiliation.

Peggy Chenoweth
May 31, 2010
Humiliation… And Now I’m Angry
See also the video from a local TV station on the incident.
[H/T to an email from Breda.

Read the rest of the story to find out they peered into her four-year old’s diaper because he talked to his mother. Your blood will boil.

I also have a story to tell soon when I’m not so swamped with things at work. It’s from a cousin of Barb’s who works with explosive as part of her job. It’s about the time she has spent in jail, how the TSA ignores her blasters license, how she has missed planes, it’s terrible and it’s all for show. And, unfortunately, it’s all my fault.–Joe]

Judge Faces Death Threats

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We learn from Bayoubuzz, via Michelle Malkin that U.S. District Court Judge Martin Feldman, who told Obama his power is limited, is now receiving death threats;



“Last night, Feldman served as a celebrity judge at a cooking contest at a school gymnasium in Uptown New Orleans. Due to the threats, Feldman was accompanied by a federal marshal security team.

It is a sad indictment of our society today that a judge with such a sterling record of integrity and service to his country would be subject to such threats. Feldman was appointed to the federal bench by President Reagan in 1983. Today, he is in the eye of a political hurricane unlike anything he has ever experienced.”


A sad indictment of our society today?  Not my society, thank you.  Leave me out of this.  This is about the Left.  And it’s not an “indictment” of the left so much as another in a very long string of verifications of the left’s mindset.  It’s also a vindication of the American Founders’ ideas.  See; they knew our government would try to seize power unconstitutionally.  That’s what happens as a matter of course.  That’s why they took steps trying to prevent it.  After having taken these steps, they also knew things would come to blows once in a while.  Those who lust for power simply cannot help themselves, and they routinely resort to threats and violence.  That’s what political power is at its fundamental level, after all– threats and violence for the purpose of taking our treasure and trampling our liberty.


That being said; an actual death threat most likely means that the person making the threat isn’t going to act.  Otherwise they’d just go for it without all the talk.


Judge Feldman; I hope you’re packing heat, and know how to use it.


He’s accused of being a tool for the oil industry.  I suppose anyone who favors liberty and human rights (asuming the judge does– I don’t know) is a “tool” for this, a “tool” for that, and a “tool” for any worthwhile activity, so long as that activity doesn’t violate anyone’s rights.  We’ll see if the good judge can make that argument with such clarity, or if he’ll cough, splutter and squirm like a Republican.