It’s bad enough that cops enforcing speed limits have quotas. But think about the implications if Federal Air Marshals have quotas. And there’s evidence that some of them do have quotas to meet. It’s time to consider some alternatives and scrape the TSA efforts.
Category Archives: Freedom
A step in the right direction
The criticism is right on but the proposals are only a step in the right direction. The optimal won’t currently pass political muster so one has to go with the baby step:
This approach would begin with the fundamentally different assumption that the function of aviation security is to identify and isolate dangerous persons, not dangerous objects per se. The challenge is to keep bad people from causing harm, either in the terminal area or to the planes themselves. The TSA currently devotes the lion’s share of its airport resources to only one of these threats: preventing would-be hijackers from boarding planes with weapons. Far less money and effort is spent on securing airport terminal lobbies and the ramp areas where planes park and on keeping airline tickets out of the hands of known and suspected terrorists.
Heredity or environment?
She appears to have taken after her father. That’s my girl!
Quote of the day–Ayman al-Zawahri
The war with Israel does not depend on cease-fires … . It is a Jihad for God’s sake and will last until (our) religion prevails…from Spain to Iraq. We will attack everywhere.
Ayman al-Zawahri
Second in command to Osama bin Laden
July 26, 2006
As quoted in the Jerusalem Post
[This is entirely consisted with Osama bin Laden’s letter to America. This extremist culture must be destroyed worldwide.–Joe]
Gay marriage in Washington State
The ruling has come out. No gay marriage in Washington State for the time being.
I’m all in favor of gay marriage but it needs to be approved by the majority of legislature and/or the people. The people working this issue have more foundation to lay before they can erect the institution.
Gun rights advocates can learn from this. Going to the courts to resolve your issue can backfire. If you don’t win you can make things worse.
Quote of the day–Robert A. Heinlein
Of course, the Marxian definition of value is ridiculous. All the work one cares to add will not turn a mud pie into an apple tart; it remains a mud pie, value zero. By corollary, unskillful work can easily subtract value; an untalented cook can turn wholesome dough and fresh green apples, valuable already, into an inedible mess, value zero. Conversely, a great chef can fashion of those same materials a confection of greater value than a commonplace apple tart, with no more effort than an ordinary cook uses to prepare an ordinary sweet.
These kitchen illustrations demolish the Marxian theory of value–the fallacy from which the entire magnificent fraud of communism derives–and illustrate the truth of the common-sense definition as measured in terms of use.
Mr. Dubois
Instructor of History and Moral Philosophy
A character in Robert A. Heinlein’s book Starship Troopers
Page 90
[Do not think for an instant that Marxism, the most thoroughly tested and failed political philosophy in human history, is dead. It should be but millions of people still yearn for it. It’s a mind numbing addictive drug that gives an initial euphoria and the illusion of well-being but ultimately it destroys initiative, your economic health, and then your life.–Joe]
Government stupidity
One could argue that the “government stupidity” is redundant, but please don’t bring up that argument this time. The following example provides more material for illustrating your point today:
The U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security said while in Edmonton on Tuesday that certain types of travel will be exempt from new regulations on border crossings between Canada and the U.S.
While speaking to legislators and business leaders from both sides of the border at the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region’s annual summit, Michael Chertoff said a “practical approach” is necessary.
“In particular, we will not be, for example, including in this set of regulations a requirement for passports for ferries or private watercraft, recognizing that this is a particular form of transportation that we don’t want to interfere with,” said Chertoff.
Security, defensive security in particular, is only as good as it’s weakest link. If a passport requirement for travel between the U.S. and Canada provides some sort of security advantage (I question that it does, but that is why the requirement was put in place) then having an exemption for ferries and private watercraft is of dubious wisdom. Does this mean that terrorists don’t know how to board boats? Does Mr. Chertoff think they are all scared of the water?
I suppose it’s possible that the water routes have some sort of different security mechanism that provides as good as or better security than checking your passport as you drive across the border. But I doubt it. Most likely they don’t have the facilities and resources to deal with all the crossings.
Take a look as places like Detroit, which is actually directly north of parts of Canada. End to end Lake St. Clair is only 25 miles long and provides direct access into Detroit from Canada. Personal watercraft can easily cross that gap in 45 minutes. It’s just not possible to interdict all the water skiers, fishermen, and people just crossing the lake to eat dinner in the city and ask them for their passports without pissing everyone off. Similar claims could be made about Lake Erie, and in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
And what’s the point with passports anyway? Does someone think having “good ID” somehow makes everyone safer? Here is a case where fake ID is saving lives.
The bottom line is that passports cannot improve security. The reason our government is requiring passports, in some cases, is to make some people feel more secure. Real security depends on hunting down those that try inflict violence upon us and capturing or killing them. Exactly the solution Israel is implementing now.
Thanks to Bruce Schneier for his no passports needed for water traffic and the fake ID saving lives posts.
Quote of the day–Robert A. Heinlein
Anyone who clings to the historically untrue–and thoroughly immoral–doctrine that ‘violence never settles anything’ I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedom.
Mr. Dubois
Instructor of History and Moral Philosophy
A character in Robert A. Heinlein’s book Starship Troopers
Page 26
Going on the offense
You cannot defeat your enemy unless you take the offense. We are opening up another offensive front:
Former U.S. representative Bob Barr of Georgia filed a $400 million lawsuit against New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg yesterday, claiming Bloomberg’s attempt to crack down on gun dealers was “careless, willful and clearly illegal.”
The lawsuit, filed in Cobb County Superior Court in Marietta, Ga., came in response to a federal lawsuit filed by Bloomberg in May alleging that 15 firearm brokers in five states, including Georgia, were “rogue gun dealers.”
…
Barr’s lawsuit alleges that Bloomberg made misleading statements to the national media that were defamatory toward Smyrna, Ga., gun dealer Adventure Outdoors.
“We didn’t start this fight. They did,” Barr told a cheering crowd in Marietta’s city square. “But we intend to finish it and win.”
Bloomberg’s lawsuit claims that the dealer sold 21 guns over a seven-year period that were used in New York crimes. The shop’s owner, Jay Wallace, said his name has been “trashed in the public eye of the nation.”“I’ve run my business with honesty and integrity, and I take pride in being part of the firearm industry,”he said.
The announcement took on a patriotic tune as flag-waving supporters cheered the news of the lawsuit and danced.
“We will fight to prove the Constitution of the United States is still intact, and that Mr. Bloomberg’s fight to abolish the Second Amendment must and will fail,” said Edwin Marger, a lawyer who filed the lawsuit with Barr.
See also the press release that Cam Edwards received.
I’m hoping to open up a new offensive front of my own soon. Sometimes things move far, far slower than one hopes.
Quote of the day–Walter Russell Mead
In the last five months of World War II, American bombing raids claimed the lives of more than 900,000 Japanese civilians — not counting the casualties from the atomic strikes against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is more than twice the total number of combat deaths that the United States has suffered in all its foreign wars combined.
On one night, that of March 9-10, 1945, 234 Superfortresses dropped 1,167 tons of incendiary bombs over downtown Tokyo; 83,793 Japanese bodies were found in the charred remains–a number greater than the 80,942 combat fatalities that the United States sustained in the Korean and Vietnam Wars combined.
Walter Russell Mead
The Jacksonian Tradition and American Foreign Policy
[Thanks to Kevin Baker for pointing this out. The Barking Moon Bats and the Muslim extremists should be reminded of this every time they whine about the civilian deaths in the MidEast. If you really piss us off you will have something to complain about.–Joe]
Quote of the day–Ehod Danoch
We will win because we are good and they are evil. We will win because we always came in peace and they came with a call for the destruction of the state of Israel.
…
If the international community will not make an end to the Hezbollah, we will make an end to the Hezbollah. We are after the terrorists and we will be after them until Israel will be 100 percent, from all the world, secure.
Ehod Danoch
Israel’s general consul to the Southwest United States
July 19, 2006
Las Vegas Jewish community told Israel to prevail in current war
[Like no other country on this planet, Israel knows what we are dealing with in this world war. Just as Hitler wanted to kill all the Jews so do the Islamic extremists. Israel, you’ve got the ball, now run with it and don’t stop until you’ve won.–Joe]
Quote of the day–Dante Alighieri
The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.
Dante Alighieri
[I’m thinking of the current war against Islamic extremists… WW III or WW IV depending on how you keep count.–Joe]
Similar conclusions
Ry and I have talked about this type of thing until the wee hours of the morning many times. It always came down to destroying their culture or engaging in some really nasty stuff. It turns out we weren’t the only ones that came up with those conclusions. This is from 2003:
A Pew poll finds 40% of Americans worry that an US city will be destroyed by a terrorist nuclear attack. James Lileks thinks the annihilation of a city is a dead certainty and will only mark the start of a long, wearying struggle against Islamists armed with nuclear car bombs.
…
In stark contrast, the nuclear threshold against a terrorism may be crossed once they get the capability to attack with weapons of mass destruction. Unlike the old early warning systems, designed to gauge Soviet intent, the intelligence systems of the War on Terror are meant to measure capability. The relevant Cold War question was ‘do they intend to use the Bomb?’. In the War on Terror, the relevant question is simply ‘do they have the Bomb?’ This puts the nuclear threshold very low.
…
This fixity of malice was recognized in President Bush’s West Point address in the summer of 2002, when he concluded that “deterrence — the promise of massive retaliation against nations — means nothing against shadowy terrorist networks with no nation or citizens to defend.”
…
Because capability is the sole variable of interest in the war against terrorism, the greater the Islamic strike capability becomes, the stronger the response will be. An unrepeatable attack with a stolen WMD weapon would elicit a different response from one arising from a capability to strike on a sustained and repetitive basis. The riposte to an unrepeatable attack would be limited. However, suppose Pakistan or North Korea engineered a reliable plutonium weapon that could be built to one-point safety in any machine shop with a minimum of skill, giving Islamic terrorists the means to repeatedly attack America indefinitely. Under these circumstances, there would no incentive to retaliate proportionately. The WMD exchange would escalate uncontrollably until Islam was destroyed.
…
The so-called strengths of Islamic terrorism: fanatical intent; lack of a centralized leadership; absence of a final authority and cellular structure guarantee uncontrollable escalation once the nuclear threshold is crossed. Therefore the ‘rational’ American response to the initiation of terrorist WMD attack would be all out retaliation from the outset.
…
It is supremely ironic that the survival of the Islamic world should hinge on an American victory in the War on Terror, the last chance to prevent that terrible day in which all the decisions will have already been made for us. That effort really consists of two separate aspects: a campaign to destroy the locus of militant Islam and prevent their acquisition of WMDs; and an attempt to awaken the world to the urgency of the threat.
I wish Israel well in their efforts to exterminate radical Muslims from their neighborhood. It’s a start down the appropriate path. The alternate paths are far too uncomfortable for me.
Quote of the day–Michelle Malkin
They want to destroy Israel and kill all Jews. That’s the truth. Got a solution Katie? We’d all love to hear your perky plan.
Michelle Malkin
Vent–July 18, 2006
On Katie Couric saying “We heard from many people that the news is just too depressing… I believe we can be a little more solution-oriented.”
[“Don’t be surprised if Katie’s “solutions” are socialistic, involved the loss of personal freedoms, and masquerade as “news”. Malkin introduces Couric to a cluebat.–Joe]
Quote of the day–John Hinderaker
It would have required courage to hang out with the Mahdi Army, if there were any likelihood that a member of the Iraqi “insurgency” would regard a representative of the New York Times as an enemy.
John Hinderaker
July 15, 2006
Power Line post commenting on this picture.
Quote of the day–Ehud Olmert
The murderous attack that took place this morning was not a terror attack. It was an act of war by the state of Lebanon against the state of Israel within its sovereign territory.
The government of Lebanon, of which Hezbollah is a part, is trying to undermine regional stability. Lebanon is responsible and Lebanon will bear the consequences of its actions.
Ehud Olmert
Prime Minister of Israel
July 12, 2006
Chicago Tribune
I want to make clear that the event this morning is not a terror act, but an act of a sovereign state that attacked Israel without reason. The government of Lebanon, of which Hezbollah is a part, is trying to shake the stability of the region.
Ehud Olmert
Prime Minister of Israel
July 12, 2006
New York Times
[Regardless of which quote is more accurate (the Times Online of the UK agrees with The Chicago Tribune) the spirit is the same. This is war.–Joe]
Quote of the day–Alan Korwin
Faced with genuine horrific physical abuse and cold-blooded murder of captured human beings by Muslim jihadis in Iraq, Amnesty International was strangely silent, prompting some observers to question their neutrality.
Joining in the lack of response were typically outspoken Jimmy Carter and the International Red Cross. Joint statements from Arab defense leagues and Muslim anti-defamation groups were not made. The United Nations has scheduled no hearings, and has thus far proposed no sanctions.
In stark contrast, U.S. use of humiliation tactics similar to college-fraternity pranks, to get prisoners to reveal information, were broadly denounced as grotesque affronts to humanity, barbarous criminal abuse and violations of human rights, by the now silent critics.
The U.S. procedures involved putting underwear on a person’s head, leading a prisoner around on a leash, and taking sexually explicit photographs, none of which lead to physical harm or death.
U.S. authorities, bowing to world opinion, court martialed and imprisoned some of the prison guards involved in the college-prank styled interrogations. A search for the Islamist insurgent perpetrators of the horrific murders has not yielded any suspects.
Alan Korwin
Writing under the pen name of The Uninvited Ombudsman
July 9, 2006
Page Nine — No. 7 (an email list posting)
The war on knives
Thanks to Ry for pointing this out.
Now that the war on legal guns is won (the war on illegally owned guns cannot ever be won). The Scots have a new tool for their war on the knife culture:
METAL detectors that look like gardening gloves could save lives by taking knives off Scotland’s streets.
The gloves conceal hi-tech gadgetry which officers will unleash this weekend on people suspected of carrying switch-blades and other knives.
Seven pairs of the specially-designed gloves, costing about £200 a pair, will be tried out for a month in Strathclyde and central Scotland. The battery-operated gloves allow officers to scan an individual for weapons with the fingertips or the palms of the hands. If metal is found, the glove, which is made from stab-proof Kevlar, starts to vibrate at the wrist.
Scottish police have already been issued with 1,000 hand-held scanners as part of the Safer Scotland campaign, but they have decided to give the gloves a try as they allow for people to be searched more discreetly. The manufacturers also say the glove enables police to carry out covert searches as only the wearer is aware when a knife is detected.
Karyn McCluskey, the deputy head of the Glasgow-based Violence Reduction Unit, said: “We are constantly looking at utilising new technology to detect weapons and take them off the streets of Scotland.
“It’s important we look at innovative ways of tackling violence, and we are confident that these gloves will allow officers to search people in a safe and efficient manner.”
This enrages me.
“Tackling violence”? All they are doing is shouting to the world that they have mental problems.
“More discreetly”? “Covert searches”? “Allow officers to search people in a safe and efficient manner”? In the U.S. we have the 2nd Amendment to enforce the 4th Amendment against violations like this.
A different approach
There’s the good news that this animal was killed:
MOSCOW — Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, responsible for modern Russia’s worst terrorist attacks, was killed Monday when a dynamite-laden truck exploded in his convoy, Russian officials said.
Federal Security Service head Nikolai Patrushev told President Vladimir Putin that Basayev had been killed overnight in a special operation conducted by Russian forces in Ingushetia, the area of southern Russia that borders Chechnya. Patrushev’s meeting with Putin was shown on Russian state television.
Basayev, 41, was behind some of Russia’s worst terror attacks, including the seizure of a Moscow theater in 2002 in which dozens of hostages and militants died, the 2004 school hostage taking in Beslan that killed 331, and the seizure of about 1,000 hostages at a hospital in Budyonnovsk that killed about 100.
…
The Interfax news agency quoted Ingush Deputy Prime Minister Bashir Aushev as saying that Basayev’s body had been identified “through some of the fragments, including his head.”
Then the part that is most interesting to me is this line buried deep in the article:
Basayev was the most notorious of the Chechen warlords, eluding Russian forces for years despite Kremlin vows to hunt him down and an offer of $10 million and plastic surgery to anyone providing information leading to his death.
Do you notice anything a little different from what we are doing when we put a reward on a terrorist’s head? The Russians don’t waste time with the things like Club Gitmo. It’s, “If we find him we are going to kill him.”
I just hope they follow up on my suggestion for dealing with this type of vermin. It was the Russian school children incident that inspired me to come up with that disposal method so I think it would entirely appropriate for them to implement it with the fragments of this scumbag.
Quote of the day–Khaled Mashal
Today, Israel is really terrorising our people … Israel and America, which talked too much about this terrorism in past are the worst, severest and ugliest examples of terrorism.
Khaled Mashal
The exiled supreme leader of Hamas
UK Times: Uncompromising message from exiled Hamas leader
July 10, 2006
[I’m sure Mashal can back up this claim with hours of video tape of Americans and Israelis doing more severe and ugly things than the beheadings of civilians, bombings of civilian aircraft in-flight, the torture and killings of school children, and violent, brutal, aircraft hijackings for the destruction of skyscrapers filled with innocent civilians.–Joe]