Category Archives: Freedom

Just So We’re All On The Same Page…

Posted on by

…regarding the police chiefs out there (who, we are told, have come out against the Second Amendment): Every law enforcement officer is required to take an Oath, affirming said officer’s commitment to the Constitution of the United States.  Here is one example taken at random.  I’m sure you can find many others:

“I swear (or affirm) that I will support the Constitution of the United States, and that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to the State of Maryland and support the Constitution and laws thereof; and that I will, to the best of my skill and judgment diligently and faithfully, without partiality or prejudice, execute the office of police officer according to the Constitution and laws of this State.”

Notice the first clause– support for the U.S. Constitution.  Taking an Oath not only suggests or recommends, but it requires individual judgment and individual commitment to the U.S. Constitution when deciding to follow a particular order or enforce a particular law.  It requires, in this case, that the sworn individual understand the Constitutionality of an action before taking that action.  Why else take the damned Oath?

The Nuremburg defense doesn’t cut it here.

On the matter of law enforcement officers who have taken the Oath, and who then actively lobby against our Constitutionally protected civil liberties:  Words fail me at the moment, but I’m envisioning a physician who takes the Hippocratic Oath and sets out thereafter to murder his patients.

To you chiefs of police out there who are on the fence:  Be reminded that some of us actually take our civil liberties seriously.  Just sayin’.

Update 09/21/07:  Another reminder for our friends in law enforcement (and to law makers as well).  I use this example only because it is so well known, though there are plenty of other examples: In early 1942 there were a whole lot of German officers and government agents who were as cock-sure of themselves as anyone could be.  Their degree of swagger was quite an impressive sight to behold.  Only a few years later however, many of them were fugitives from justice, while others were swinging from ropes (things can change in short order, and being on the right side of Liberty is good insurance).  As Joe points out in comments, there is this little thingy we call 18 USC 242.  Not that it would be needed as the Constitution already spells out the law in plain English, but here we have teeth, out in front of the brain, as it were.

Another example of TSA’s uselessness

Posted on by

Box Cutter Sails Through Airport Security

At least TSA put on a little bit of a show for their Security Theater. They make him pour out his coffee.

A good sign

Posted on by

I’ve been corresponding with a 13 year-old kid that started out saying he wanted to make bombs but there was enough information that indicated he had no intention of hurting anyone or their property. He was just using the wrong word for his desired activities. Rather than ignore him or turn him in to the police in his area I politely declined to help and suggested he attend Boomershoot 2008 since he lives in Idaho. Tonight, after six emails from him in 36 hours, he asked:

Can you give me the URL for the website of pain full pics of pipe bomb retards?

I recently told a friend of mine i made small explosives for recreational uses, and he said “oh yeah i should come to your house and we can make a pipe bomb”

I told him he was being stupid and, before he made explosives needed to do his homework. I told him id try to find the page i saw and show him how dumb his idea really was.

Cool. Maybe he will make it to adulthood.

This (WARNING! Extremely graphic!) is the link.

And speaking of bombs–if you are a suicide bomber intent on taking out some of our boys in the sandbox with itchy fingers on their “.50 caliber sniper rifles” keep (more extremely graphic material!) this in mind.

Unobscuring Kip Hawley

Posted on by

TSA head Kip Hawley (http://www.kiphawleyisanidiot.com/) attempts to explain the reason for the three ounce limit on liquids and why the rule is reasonable. He is deliberately obscure in places:

“This is something we thought a lot about. There’s a whole classified section to the answer, but in the unclassified part we are limited to discussing, with 3-1-1, the major focus was first, to stop assembled bombs,” he said.

“The nature of liquid explosives is that they are very volatile, unlike military-grade explosives that react predictably. With homemade explosives, while the benefit is that they are made of easy-to-get ingredients, the downside is that you get widely different results for the same quote-unquote recipe.

“If you’re going to use these explosives in the aviation context, you have to be very precise in the mixing because, as we found in the testing, minor variations in formula have a very dramatic effect on whether or not the explosives are successful.

“So 3-1-1- eliminates the ability to assemble the ingredients in a laboratory, using expert people to provide a finished bomb for somebody to use on a suicide mission on an airplane,” he said.

On a plane, mixing up a bomb in a suitable container “isn’t like mixing a beverage,” he said, adding: “This stuff is very volatile; it is very obvious; you can smell it a long way away. It’s very corrosive.”

The volatile stuff he’s talking about would be the acetone used to make acetone peroxide. And yes acetone is very smelly. I have never made acetone peroxide and have no plans to. It’s called “Mother of Satan” for a reason.

The “very corrosive” stuff would be nitric and sulfuric acids used to make nitroglycerin; probably the most well known of all liquid explosives.

Yup. Mixing up either of those explosives without being noticed would be difficult on a plane. The acetone in particular is very noticeable. Finger polish remover is frequently acetone. So if someone starts working on removing their fingernail polish don’t be surprised if you see the flight crew getting a little excited about finding the source of the smell.

The problem with the whole explosives testing thing is that there are lots of things made out of stuff they don’t, and essentially can’t, test for that make the whole exercise just A Security Theater. That money would be far better spent on finding the bad guys before they ever got to the airport. But don’t expect Hawley to tell you that. It’s not his job to tell you his job is a sham. His job is to make you feel safer. Do you feel safe yet?

Quote of the day–Mac Johnson

Posted on by

The Founding Fathers systematically democratized the powers of society through the Constitution and Bill of Rights. They democratized the power of law through the right to vote. They democratized the power of wealth through the right to private property (since repealed by environmentalists and courts). They democratized the power of ideas through the right to free speech (since repealed by McCain/Feingold). And they democratized the power of violence (or the capability to commit it) through the right to bear arms (since repealed by “gun control”).

The four great powers of man: law, money, thought and violence were thus divided among the people and not reserved exclusively to the connected, the rich, the approved, and the enlisted. That’s the basis of our Republic. That’s America. And that is, apparently, a total surprise to liberals. 

Mac Johnson
Court Rediscovers 2nd Amendment, Liberals Fear Other ‘Rights’ May Soon be Found
March 15, 2007
[Liberals just got pwn’d in this very case. The D.C. lawyers messed up and the lawyers for the good guys just nailed their scrotums to the wall.–Joe]

The French are trying to grow a spine

Posted on by

People need to start talking about it in the open and France is actually doing it. Good for them.

Quote of the day–John Gilmore

Posted on by

In most of Europe, phone companies don’t record the phone numbers when you call, and they don’t show up on your bill.  They only tick off the charges on a meter.  Now, I was told that this is partly because the Nazis used the call records that they used to have, to track and identify the opposition after taking over those countries in World War II.  They don’t keep those records any more.

John Gilmore
March 28,1991
A transcript of remarks given at the First Conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy
[Interesting perspective. I hadn’t really thought of it but phone records could be thought of as violating my Jews in the Attic Test.–Joe]

U.K. wakes up?

Posted on by

Why didn’t they see it coming before realizing our sex lives are our own business?

But this suggestion from the government’s sisterhood also demonstrates the migration of individuals’ control over their lives to the state and beyond. As more power and decisions are passed to Europe – without our consent – so politicians have to find something to busy themselves with, and what better challenge than 60 million people who fornicate, drink to excess, smoke, eat too much salty and fatty food and harbour all sorts of antisocial and criminal intent?

This is a presumption of a historic scale and arrogance which is best seen in the systems set up under Tony Blair to scrutinise every movement, communication and transaction we make. But at least we now understand the extent of the takeover. According to a YouGov poll released with Liberty’s report ‘Overlooked: Surveillance and Personal Privacy in Britain’ last week, 60 per cent of us believe we live in a surveillance state and only one in five trusts the government to keep our personal details confidential. Unless controlled, a government of long standing is by nature leaky, incompetent and greedy for ever more power.

Although it is often true it is “better late than never” I just wonder that if in this case it is too late to avoid a disaster.

But at least they are seeing and saying the right things:

It is argued that we have the Data Protection Act and the information commissioner, but despite the latter’s agitation, nothing has stopped the 500,000 interceptions of private communication each year, the total surveillance of motorways, the building of the ID card data base, the creepy children’s database and expansion of the police DNA database.

The Canadian system hasn’t worked perfectly, especially since 9/11, but Canadians shudder at what is happening in the UK, at the abandon with which we allow government more and more control over our lives and our futures.

A revolution of thought needs to take place. The personal information of innocent people, their digital footprints, their movements, as well as the things consenting adults get up to must not be allowed to become the property of the state or the subject of regulation by a lot of po-faced, reformed dope-smokers who can think of little but the improvement of their fellow human beings.

Kitty litter bombs

Posted on by

Via Michelle Malkin.

I’ve been reading every article I can on the materials these two guys were playing with. They are claimed to have had the following in their car:

  • Three pieces of PVC pipe cut into various sizes, 1 foot or less, filled with a mixture of
    • Potassium nitrate
    • Karo syrup
    • Cat litter
  • Safety fuse, 20 feet.
  • Electric drill
  • .22 caliber ammunition
  • Gasoline, 5 gallon canister
  • Laptop computer reflecting visits to the following Web sites
    • A video file that shows Qassam rockets firing
    • Hamas information
    • A discussion of martyrdom
    • M-16 rifle photos

Except for the pipes and the stuff all mixed up you might find that in one of my vehicles sometime.

It is claimed the cat litter was used to “bind the ingredients” but I’m not buying it. Karo syrup doesn’t need any help “binding”. If you put enough cat litter in the mixture it would make it easier to handle–including putting it in the pipe. But if you add enough litter to make it easy to handle I keep thinking it would interfere with the desired reaction–unless you were just trying to make a 4th of July type “fountain” or “smoke bomb”. With a good detonator (blasting cap) and with no, or a limited amount, of cat litter it might go boom but it’s not going to be all that impressive.

If it were just the above items and it were up to me personally I would give them a stern warning for traveling with the pipes filled with the mixture. If they had a car accident it might catch fire and make the situation much worse. It’s not going to go boom and rip the car apart or anything but it’s not something you should do either.

If the mixture will actually explode then it would be a violation of Federal Law in regards to transportation of explosives since I doubt they had the proper placards, packaging, licenses and/or permits, storage magazine, and an hazardous materials endorsement on their drivers license.

But it wasn’t just those items. There was one more thing that changes the entire flavor of the case:

In July, Mohamed posted a video on YouTube that explained how to transform a toy remote controlled car into a detonator, Hoffer said. The 12-minute video is narrated by a man speaking Arabic with an Egyptian accent. It shows no face, only hands.

“Mohamed admitted he made and uploaded it,” Hoffer said.

The video’s narrator says it’s meant “to save one who wants to be a martyr for another day in battle,” Hoffer said. The narrator also mentions a previous example that used a remote controlled toy boat. Federal agents searched the New Tampa home of Megahed’s family and found a remote controlled toy boat, Hoffer said.

But what does that mean?

The judge asked if there was a definite link between the two, and Hoffer said no.

Exactly! Does the video mean he was intending to be “a martyr for another day in battle”? Was he going to try to detonate the material remotely for an evil purpose? I detonate explosives remotely using supersonic lead pellets and I could see doing it by a radio controlled device too (it’s been a common fantasy of mine and others to fake shooting a reactive target with an ordinary iron sighted handgun from 500 yards then tease those that can’t hit a target with their scoped rifles).

Summing up I am in near complete agreement (an extremely rare event) with CAIR:

Ahmed Bedier, director of the Central Florida office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, was quick to distinguish between Megahed and Mohamed.

“It’s obvious there are two separate individuals with different charges and different allegations,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the two individuals end up having separate cases altogether.”

He defended Megahed, saying it appeared he “just happened to be in the car.” But he had harsher words for Mohamed.

If he could talk to Mohamed, Bedier said, “I’d say, ‘Wake up!’ “

He added, “Muslims don’t get a second chance when they dabble with things like this. Not only will this have consequences on him, but it will have consequences on most of the Muslims in this country.”

Update: Ry reminds us we can’t believe everything we read in the media.

Update2: Ahh… now things are making more sense:

In the trunk, deputies found four small sections of PVC pipe, at least three of which were stuffed with a “potassium nitrate explosive mixture” of potassium nitrate, Karo syrup and kitty litter, Hoffer said. He said the kitty litter served as a binder to keep the substance from coming out of the pipes, which were not capped.

[…]

Both men are charged with transporting explosives without a permit, relating to the stuffed PVC pipes deputies have described as pipe bombs. Hoffer conceded in court, however, that the devices, while explosive, were not pipe bombs and were not “destructive devices” under the law.

Allen maintained that the filled PVC pipes couldn’t do much damage because there were no caps and no metallic material that could serve as shrapnel.

Sounds more like smoke bombs than pipe bombs to me. Worst case they could be incendiary devices. My bet is that if the defense plays their cards right they can beat the explosives charge.

Time for a Quorum Amendment

Posted on by

Listening to the radio on the way to work, I heard that a small town school bond levy in Idaho had passed by an approximately 70:30 vote.

Let that sink in for a moment…70:30 approval.

The next thing I heard was that the voter turnout was 30 percent.

If my math is correct, 70 percent of 30 percent comes to 21 percent of eligible voters who approved the levy.  21 percent of the people wanted the levy, and the other 79 percent either opposed it, figured it was a forgone conclusion, didn’t care enough to vote, or didn’t know about it (the latter leaves me wondering who was in charge of publicizing it).

In a very small town where the school district is possibly the largest single employer, how many of those 21 percent who approved the levy do you suppose were school district employees, the families of school district employees, and contractors to the school district?

Forget how you would vote on something like this– you could be on either side of it, depending on the particular issue.  Looking at it conceptually; how is it that 21 percent of the people, most of whom are the direct recipients of the tax revenue, are able to impose taxes on 100 percent of the people?  Is that outcome consistent with the idea of democracy, or of a free society?  No and no.

Why don’t we have a quorum rule for something like this?

Gingrich on war on terror

Posted on by

Lots of sobering material in this video.

I wish some national leaders would reframe the issue for what it is rather than a politically correct phrase. It’s not a “War on Terror”. It’s a war against religious fanatics.

We must destroy their culture to win. If we don’t win everyone loses.

At least Newt gets it. But I suspect he is right–we will have to lose an American city before we as a nation will take their threat seriously. And losing a city will be a much bigger loss than just the city and it’s people.

Public servants

Posted on by

Does it ever strike you as odd that some of our servants demand that they have a monopoly on certain types of weapons?

I keep thinking that they must have either forgotten they are servants or intend to change the relationship.

Cop Threatens to Fabricate Charges, Then Lies

Posted on by

I found this at Say Uncle.

The video pretty well speaks for itself (the audio anyway– there’s not much to see).  Full transcripts are provided also.  I  truly did not believe what I heard the first time through: The cop actually threatened to fabricate charges against an innocent man because he dared to ask questions.  The cop then lied to a fellow officer, saying the motorist had been weaving and had failed to signal (he was driving perfectly and the signal indicator is clearly visible in the video).

Cops have to put up with a lot of really insane crap.  Having worked in the late-night music scene for many years, I’ve seen cops put up with the most outrageous behavior from people, and do it with amazing patience.  LEOs need to present a far more calm demeanor than the average person.  This cop on the other hand is a fight picker– a frustrated, undisciplined prick with a chip on his shoulder, and that is a disaster in the making.

The fact that our LEO said what he said, knowing he was being recorded, suggests he had reason not to worry much about being disciplined for it.  On the other hand, it seems the recording taken from his cruiser has turned up missing.  Put those two facts together and what do we have?  Was he contemplating the destruction of his victim’s recording?

Understand that when you’re out in the middle of the night this sort of thing is far more likely.

On a broader point: Our foolish “war on drugs” has led to far more abuse, as cops are looking out for drug deals and the like, with full knowledge of current forfeiture laws.  In this environment, “probable cause” has morphed from that-which-is-required-to-obtain-a-warrant-from-a-judge, into whatever-the-cop-decides-at-the-moment-is-cause-for-a-warrantless-search.  As with much of our Leftist speak, “Probable Cause” has taken a meaning opposite to its original.  It is now used to enable the exact abuse it was intended to prevent.

My experience with city and county law enforcement (north Idaho/Eastern Washington) has been pretty good over the years, and in most cases, very good, even when I was clearly in the wrong.  Lets hope it stays that way.  You get one retarded mayor or one bad sheriff at the next election, and things could go to hell fast.

Doublespeak from an airport police chief

Posted on by

First a refresher course.

I don’t know if he actually believes this or not. Maybe he does and just doesn’t have a good imagination. Or maybe it’s just that it’s part of his job to comfort the sheepeople even if he knows he isn’t telling them the complete truth:

Chief Troyer has been a driving force behind all of the airport security changes that has especially been focusing on removing items from people’s luggage that could be used to make explosives.

But we get this doublespeak and I just get annoyed with him:

“I don’t necessarily see it as being stricter as it is begin responsive to the threat,” Spokane International Airport Police Chief Pete Troyer said.

Whatever. The guy is just an actor in a security theater. What can you expect from someone like that? He reads his lines and he entertains the public.

Quote of the day–Albert Einstein

Posted on by

Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.

Albert Einstein

Social engineering and Security Theater at it’s finest

Posted on by

Via Bruce we find, once again, that if you look and act like you belong you can belong:

The skit had been approved by ABC lawyers, but it had been assumed they would be stopped at the first checkpoint, hundreds of metres from the President’s hotel.

Instead, they were waved through the first checkpoint, then a second that had sniffer dogs. They eventually stopped in sight of the hotel.

The ABC later released a statement saying the team had no intention of entering a restricted zone and had been wearing mock “insecurity passes” that stated the convoy was a joke.

“It was a piece testing APEC security and the motorcade looked pretty authentic,” the Chaser source said.

“They approached the green zone, and they just waved them through – much to their amazement, because the sketch was meant to stop there with them being rejected.

“They were then waved through into the red zone, but rather than go all the way through they made the call to turn around.”

“Apparently that was the first time the police realised it was not authentic and they swooped in and arrested everybody.”

This is the funnest part to me:

“The police only detained the Chaser motorcade when it was turning around and after Chas Licciardello emerged from a car dressed as Osama bin Laden.”

Good security is extremely difficult. It only takes one weak link to break the chain. But had APEC security been part of a Hollywood movie it would have been in the series The Keystone Cops. Again, from real life:

LAST week, a butter knife was a handy dining implement. This week, it seems, APEC security staff have declared knives and forks as potential terrorist weapons.

On the same day police won a court battle to stop protesters marching down George Street through the APEC security zone, it emerged yesterday that at least one cafe near George Bush’s hotel has been ordered by police not to set outdoor tables with silverware, lest it fall into the wrong hands.

And office workers in Bridge Street’s AMP tower have been told to stay away from the windows, draw the blinds and not to look at helicopters.

[…]

“On Monday an APEC security officer asked us to limit our outdoor furniture. He said if you are setting a table, don’t set it with knives and forks because they can be used as a potential weapon by terrorists.”

[…]

On Tuesday night, about an hour before Mr Bush arrived at his hotel, a police officer approached a Herald reporter and demanded to see what he had written in his notebook.

He told the reporter other police in the area might make similar demands. Two minutes later another officer made the same request.

Security Theater at it’s finest.

Quote of the day–Ray Ozzie

Posted on by

I fear we are partying like it is 1984.

Ray Ozzie
Microsoft Chief Software Architect
September 6, 2007
Company Meeting 2007–Changing the world
[Ozzie talked about growing up in the 60’s and being in fear of “the man” and how the personal computer was believed to help restore power to the individual. He asked us to make sure private things could be kept private even when we are putting more and more information into “the cloud”. It was good stuff. I had planned to write up a big post on the meeting last night but got wrapped up in expressing my “sympathy” to Robyn.–Joe]

Jason is back in the news

Posted on by

Nephew Jason Scott lost his arm to an IED in Iraq nearly two years ago. He’s back in the news as the first recipient of a scholarship here:

Amputees from the military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, patients at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., for the past year have been watching the progress of a new structure as it emerged from what used to be the hospital’s deeply sloped backyard. They are excited, anticipating the opening of the 31,000-sq-ft Military Advanced Training Center, which will help them resume productive lives.

Quote of the day–John Gilmore

Posted on by

The whole conference has spent a lot of time talking about ways to control uses of information and to protect peoples’ privacy after the information was collected.  But that only works if you assume a good government.  If we get one seriously bad government, they’ll have all the information they need to make an efficient police state and make it the last government.  It’s more than convenient for them – in fact, it’s a temptation for people who want to do that, to try to get into power and do it.  Because we are giving them the means.

John Gilmore
A transcript of remarks given at the First Conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy, March 28,1991
[See also my Jews In The Attic Test.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Mac Johnson

Posted on by

But the deeper reason behind the hysteria over the decision is that for decades the left has been able to make the Constitution into whatever it wanted. The actual words did not matter. When words — even just 27 words — mean exactly what they say, then the power to dictate law from a “living” Constitution disappears and liberals are reduced to trying to persuade people that they are right — a daunting task. When a court can decide that the 2nd Amendment must be respected, the left is on a slippery slope indeed. Who knows what amendment might be rediscovered next? Personally, I vote for the 10th. Regardless, if the trend is allowed to continue, it will be a disaster for the dictatorial left. Thus, I predict the decision will be appealed.

Mac Johnson
Court Rediscovers 2nd Amendment, Liberals Fear Other ‘Rights’ May Soon be Found
March 15, 2007
[And, as was recently reported and commented on in various places, Johnson was correct in his prediction–it was appealed.–Joe]