One of the first things I learned as a prosecutor is that ethics required me to seek justice, not merely convictions. The actions of the prosecutor in this case plainly violate that rule. It is because of unethical violations like this that I finally resigned from the bar in disgust.
PCV-Scott May 13, 2009 US prosecutor admits error, hopes for 2d chance [The prosecutor admitted the “error” of withholding evidence from the defense attorney but the judge says the entire Boston office has a “dismal history of intentional and inadvertent violations”. In my fight with PNNL my ignorant belief that lawyers would behave ethically was quickly smashed. Even my lawyer, with over a decade of law practice, was surprised at some of the stuff they did. In the Weaver/Harris case the prosecutors withheld and tampered with evidence and the jurors believed they destroyed evidence. This is in addition to telling Weaver the court date was a month later than it was actually scheduled. But they were caught at least twice in that case and the defendants were found not guilty. Who knows how many times they got away with it in that case and others? We know that a tremendous amount of evidence was deliberately destroyed in the Waco case. David has more comments on the Boston case and other examples of prosecutor misconduct. And I, like him, will now shut up before I say something I would regret.–Joe]
Prepare yourself for airport security to get a little more personal. It’s the first publicly noticeable step in a multi-phase government plan to help keep air travel safe. New rules for air travelers.
Starting today, in addition to handing over a boarding pass and ID in the security line, passengers making reservations will have to provide their full name, just as it appears on the government ID they plan to use when boarding the plane.
Travel agent Nancy Nemecek said “when you make your reservation you need to give your name exactly, and that means first name, middle name, if that’s what’s on your ID, and your last name.”
It’s part of a Transportation Security Administration program being phased in called Secure Flight.
“Secure Flight”? You have to use your full name on the ticket and that makes the flight secure? Yeah, right.
Canada said they wanted all the guns in the country registered. The gun owners said, “Μολὼν λαβέ“. Canada said, “Okay, how about we waive the license fee and you get another year to register them?” The gun owners said, “Μολὼν λαβέ“. The registration law was passed in 1995. It’s now 14 years later and what is the story? See for yourself:
The Honourable Vic Toews, President of the Treasury Board, on behalf of the Honourable Peter Van Loan, Minister of Public Safety, today announced the re-extension of an amnesty and other measures that helps firearms owners comply with the law.
“This Government has, once again, extended the amnesty to continue to bring law-abiding citizens into our licensing system,” said Minister Toews. “We are preventing the pointless criminalization of non-restricted gun owners, who are working to come into compliance with our firearms laws.”
“Make no mistake. This amnesty actually serves to enhance public safety. When previously extended, the amnesty encouraged an increase of gun owners registering as licensed firearms owners, as did the other measures we are renewing today,” said Minister Van Loan.
The following three measures, which will encourage compliance and reduce the administrative burden on lawful firearms owners, are now in effect until May 16, 2010:
– Extending by one year an amnesty which allows individuals in possession of unregistered non-restricted firearms to take steps to bring themselves into compliance;
– Extending by one year the current fee waiver for firearms licence renewals or upgrades; and,
– Allowing eligible holders of expired Possession-Only Licences to apply for a new one within a year.
“Our effort to combat criminal gun crimes remains strong. We have introduced mandatory prison sentences for those who commit gun crimes and tougher bail rules for serious weapon-related offences,” added Minister Van Loan.
A Florida inventor who created a device to increase the rate of semiautomatic rifle fire has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear his lawsuit against the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which ruled the apparatus constituted an illegal machine gun.
William Akins, of Hudson, near Tampa, says the ATF at first approved his Akins Accelerator, then reneged after he went into production. A federal judge ruled for the ATF; the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling Feb. 4.
A great starting point for the background story is here.
My expectation is the SC will decline to hear the case.
Over the years I’ve been reading that a little bit of alcohol is good for your health. I, basically, don’t drink at all so it could be said that I was risking my health by not drinking. Not wanting to risk my health over something that was fairly easily remedied I decided maybe I would drink just a little bit every once in a while.
Red wine seems to get lots of nods from the medical researchers so I bought a bottle a couple months ago. I opened it up and had a small glass, maybe six ounces, tonight with my dinner.
I then started working on the mathematics for a nifty new way to do range estimation. I had an exceedingly difficult time doing the simplest of math problems. It wasn’t even algebra. It was simple ratios. Things that are normally intuitively obvious to me required that I work out several example in order to find the general equation. I think I finally got it but it must have taken me at least four times as long as normal and I don’t really trust my work.
No more wine for me except when it’s strictly a social situation. Why drink if it’s going to make me brain dead for the evening?
I’ve long been disgusted by Hollywood’s portrayal of sounds. Sounds in space, sound traveling at the speed of light, and the ridiculous sounds of gunfire made up in a studio. Even the news services will often do a time-shift, to synchronize the sound of a distant event with the video even though anyone who’s been alive long enough to understand what they’re seeing on TV knows that sound and light travel at different rates. I just, do, not, get why TV and movie people have to screw up reality so much. Far from adding anything, it subtracts from the final product.
For example, I think the long delay in the sound of a distant explosion at Boomershoot makes the experience more awesome. It adds to the perception of enormity. The movie, “Band of Brothers” is an attempt to show it like it really was, and for the most part they seem to have done a good job. Not when it comes to sound editing though. Super-sonic bullets whiz by, “whoosh-whoosh, zip, zip” and so on, and of course the sound always travels at the speed of light. It’s taking a serious subject and turning it into slapstick.
In the interest of universal understanding, I made this recording of .308 rifle fire from about 380 yards while setting up some rifles for Boomershoot. The camera is about 20 yards from the targets (yeah, I was holding the camera, but I was behind a hill from the gun and in radio communication with the shooter– completely safe). Each shot delivers multiple sonic effects or events. First is the “CRACK-hiss” (mini sonic boom) from the bullet. Take the sonic boom from a jet flying over, speed it up a few octaves, and you’ll have about the same thing. That bit is interesting in that it does not come from the gun, but from the bullet. You have no sense of the direction from which the bullet came. Imagine standing in the water on the shore of a lake and feeling the wake from a passing boat on your legs. From that sensation alone, you have no idea of where the boat came from, and little or no information about its direction of travel. The bullet’s wake, as sound, gives you no more information– just a “snap” that seems to come from nowhere. Next is the sound of impact, which is only audible in the first shot in this recording. Then comes the “boom” from the muzzle blast, followed by the reverberation in the surrounding hills and trees.
Note that the reverb almost seems louder than the crack-boom. That’s due to the AGC (Automatic Gain Control) circuitry, A.K.A. “compression” built into the camera. The initial crack drives circuitry into gain reduction, and the gain comes back up for the reverb. To get the relative levels of the events portrayed accurately, I’ll have to take a full-range stereo recorder into the field on another day and use its un-compressed level mode. If you have some nice speakers (and pretty powerful, as the dynamic range is quite wide) you’ll hear it as if you were actually standing there. Regular CD audio has a dynamic range of about 100dB, IIRC– close enough. This recording isn’t all that bad, though. Crank up the volume, use good speakers, and boost the bass to get the full effect (the mini electret mic on the camera isn’t great for bass response);
Can you name one time where the press has published a NRA letter or media release as if it were there own? I can’t think of one. In fact it’s hard to find instances where the media has published more than a few sentences of what NRA has to say on a topic.
A few weeks ago I piled on James Kelly with Kevin over the usual topic of gun control. I left the debate when Kelly admitted facts were irrelevant to his beliefs.
Secondly, if as Kevin earnestly believes, he has ‘statistically proved’ that more liberal gun laws actually make people safer, why can’t he show that the level of violence has not just fallen, but fallen to a lower level than in a comparable country that has had stringent gun laws for a prolonged period? As I’ve said repeatedly, that’s the kind of ‘statistical proof’ that would impress me, and it’s distinct absence is one of the reasons why most people in this country are secure in the knowledge that, at least on this one issue, we’ve got it right and countries like the US have got it disastrously wrong.
But Kevin showed that the U.K. violent crime rate dramatically increased after stringent gun laws were passed while U.S. gun laws remained “lax” and the supply increased while the violent crime rate went down. And if current trends continue it will only be a couple years before the official reports will show U.K. has more violent crime than the U.S. I say “official reports” because the U.K. government recently admitted they have been under reporting the numbers for years.
And furthermore Kevin pointed out numerous studies, including ones done in the U.K. that showed gun control laws, at best, did no good.
And what does Kelly say about Kevin’s post?
I will obviously never convince Kevin that those benefits exist, and he will doubtless continue to try to disprove their existence by resorting to a barrage of voodoo statistics, but I remain more than content that I am on the right side of this argument.
…the vast bulk of Kevin’s dissertation genuinely makes no sense to me at all.
He claims something would “impress me” then when given just that he says it is “voodoo statistics” and “makes no sense to me at all”.
He also takes the time to say that he didn’t read one of my posts because he didn’t like the title of the post:
I was also concerned at Joe Huffman’s semi-abusive blog post title, directed toward me personally. (Joe, incidentally, seemed astonished that I didn’t bother reading the contents of that post – did he seriously expect me to consciously choose to read a post entitled ‘What Was It That James Said That ****** Me Off’?) No-one with an ounce of self-respect would persevere with a ‘debate’ that had descended to that level.
That was “semi-abusive”? That was the reason he didn’t bother to read it? And he got the title wrong! It was actually “What did James say that pissed you off so much?”. Typical. He hears/reads what he expects/wants to hear/read rather than what was actually said.
And of course he refused to answer Just One Question with anything other than numbers that were easily demonstrated as wrong at which point he ignored it.
Kevin’s nuke from orbit was overkill for the pointy sticks and stones defense Kelly put up but it’s a great to have that post in the arsenal for next time.
Most people know that massive numbers of gun owners in Canada ignored the licensing requirements for long guns. And after spending about $2 Billion the Feds have been giving serious thought to scrapping the registry. Similar results are occurring in New Zealand:
Thousands of firearms remain potentially unaccounted for despite a police campaign for lifetime gun licence owners to renew or hand weapons in.
Police national manager operations Tony McLeod said nearly 50,000 people had not responded by the end of a campaign targeting lifetime gun licence holders to renew or surrender their weapons in 2002.
The Government scrapped the lifetime licences in 1992 for 10-year licences after David Gray killed 13 people in Aramoana in 1990.
Mr McLeod, who said there were about 225,000 licensed firearm owners with about 1.2 million guns in New Zealand, could not confirm how many weapons had since been retrieved.
He said police still actively pursued expired lifetime gun licence holders, but there was “also a process of natural attrition in relation to these”.
50K people who had originally registered with the state as gun owners are now openly defying the law. That is about 22% of the known gun owners defying the law. I wonder how many originally defied the law to register.
H. R. 2159 would allow the U.S. Attorney General deny people an ATF license for firearms or explosives without due process:
The Attorney General may deny a license application if the Attorney General determines that the applicant (including any responsible person) is known (or appropriately suspected) to be or have been engaged in conduct constituting, in preparation for, in aid of, or related to terrorism, or providing material support thereof, and the Attorney General has a reasonable belief that the applicant may use a firearm in connection with terrorism.’.
“Appropriately suspected”? Yeah, right. Like I donated money to his bosses opponent in the last election? Or he read Why Boomershoot?
Surely it there must be some sort of hearing and you are given a chance to see or respond to the evidence they used to arrive at the decision, right?
by striking ‘The Attorney General may, after notice and opportunity for hearing, revoke’ and insert ‘(2)’;
…
(1) in the 1st sentence of paragraph (1), by inserting ‘, except that if the denial or revocation is pursuant to subsection (d)(1)(H) or (e)(3), then any information on which the Attorney General relied for this determination may be withheld from the petitioner if the Attorney General determines that disclosure of the information would likely compromise national security’ before the period;
…
‘(b) In any case in which the Attorney General has denied the transfer of a firearm to a prospective transferee pursuant to section 922A or has made a determination regarding a firearm permit applicant pursuant to section 922B, an action challenging the determination may be brought against the United States. The petition must be filed not later than 60 days after the petitioner has received actual notice of the Attorney General’s determination made pursuant to section 922A or 922B. The court shall sustain the Attorney General’s determination on a showing by the United States by a preponderance of evidence that the Attorney General’s determination satisfied the requirements of section 922A or 922B. To make this showing, the United States may submit, and the court may rely on, summaries or redacted versions of documents containing information the disclosure of which the Attorney General has determined would likely compromise national security. On request of the petitioner or the court’s own motion, the court may review the full, undisclosed documents ex parte and in camera. The court shall determine whether the summaries or redacted versions, as the case may be, are fair and accurate representations of the underlying documents. The court shall not consider the full, undisclosed documents in deciding whether the Attorney General’s determination satisfies the requirements of section 922A or 922B.’.
No crime need be committed. The AG just has to have a bad feeling about you and you don’t get to see or respond to the evidence being used against you.
You can be pretty sure no one has been killed or injured with a gun used for laser tag and permanent injuries with paintball guns are exceedingly rare. But that isn’t really relevant is it? It’s the thought that counts:
The Christian Democratic Union and the Social Democrat Party agreed on Tuesday evening to reforms to Germany’s gun laws, which include a controversial ban on war games like paintball or laser-tag.
…
The draft law would also bar youths under the age of 18 from shooting high-caliber firearms at target practice.
…
The plan also contains provisions to impose hefty fines on the operators of war games like paintball, a game in which players use air-guns to shoot paint-filled ammunition at opponents. Lawmakers say the sport “simulates killing” and should be outlawed.
God grant that not only the love of liberty but a thorough knowledge of the rights of man may pervade all the nations of the earth, so that a philosopher may set his foot anywhere on its surface and say: This is my country.
Ben Franklin [Unfortunately just the opposite has happened. Anywhere I may set my foot on this planet is oppressed and there is no place that I can say I want to live with this system of government. Now that Cheerios are being considered a drug (and here) will the fields in which we raise the oats for them be treated like fields of opium poppies?–Joe]
If President Obama has ruled out a revival of the Assault Weapons Ban, he should at least use his political capital to redefine the issue of gun control. As a Chicago resident, he must be acutely aware of the toll of reckless gun use. As a party leader, Obama may be keen to renew an old party tenet through an electorally important lens. Perhaps even the term, “gun control,” should be overhauled. Democracies and, ultimately, the people, thrive on adversarial conversations on public policy. Despite disagreements on the efficacy or constitutionality of such restrictions, the nation is being done a disservice if at least one party doesn’t question the role of non-sporting guns in our society and their limited state of regulation. At the very least, the families of the thousands of dead due to gun violence deserve an honest debate.
Alex Levine
May 12, 2009 The gun control debate must be re-framed as a pro-security issue
[There are at least three things which Mr. Levine fails to recognize. 1) The anti-gun people lose big time from that view point as well; 2) The anti-gun people lose big time in any honest debate; and 3) The anti-gun people have been renaming their objectives, their names, and “reframing” the debate for decades and each time they were identified for what they were–wolves in sheep’s clothing and anti-gun bigots.
In my comment I asked Just One Question, but I don’t expect an honest answer.–Joe]
The state budget deficit has nearly doubled in the past two months, climbing past $15 billion, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger disclosed Monday.
The sober news comes a week before a May 19 statewide vote on a set of ballot budget-related measures that, if defeated, would push the deficit past $21 billion, Schwarzenegger warned in a letter to legislative leaders.
And as painful as it will be to most people I’ll still laugh because I’m not above saying “I told you so.” And I’ll have all the food, clean water, and the guns and ammo to defend it while the socialist “intellectuals” are unable to find a way to dispose of their own waste in a sanitary manner let alone find water or food fit for consumption. They can tell me, again, how important, how right, how justified they are in their cities as they cry themselves to sleep with an empty stomach, in their own filth, in the dark.
This is what America is all about. Regular, hard working people, getting together to have fun in whatever way pleased them. There aren’t very many other countries in the world that would let their citizens own, essentially, the same guns their military uses, practice shooting at what could be considered head-sized targets at hundreds of yards, and mix explosives in a shed for fun.
Boomershoot was a celebration of our freedoms. A celebration of trust between a government and its citizens. A celebration of challenge and skill. A celebration of us.
ErnestThing May 11, 2009 Boomershoot 2009 [Awesome post. But then I’m exceedingly biased. He’s giving praise to my “baby”.–Joe]
Full disclosure and disclaimer time. I work for Microsoft. The following opinion is my personal opinion and does not represent, to the best of my knowledge, the opinion of anyone in MS management.
Microsoft and Intel are taking it on the chin in Europe these days. On Wednesday, the EU is expected to bring down a heavy fine on Intel for its myriad anticompetitive activities at the expense of AMD. The Wall Street Journal reports it will be one of the biggest fines in the EU’s history.
The anticompetetition commissioner can fine Intel as much as 10 percent of its annual revenue. That would be a $3.8 billion fine based on 2008 revenue, more than triple the $1.16 billion charged to Microsoft for noncompliance in the EU’s long-running antitrust action against Redmond.
One has to wonder what percentage of the EU income is based on fines and what percentage is based on taxes. But most of all I wonder how long the EU would last without Intel and Microsoft products. I’m sure Intel and Microsoft could do without the EU a lot better than the EU could do without Microsoft and Intel.
I just wish Microsoft and Intel had the gumption and the means to demonstrate that to those commies.
