As I noted the other day www.boomershoot.org gets lots of hits from people looking for bomb building help.  For the most part I just ignore the hits although I do look at most of them.  This morning however I saw one that was very interesting to me.  I’ll be keeping the details non-public to avoid tipping off future bomb builders but ask me in person sometime and I’ll tell you the details.  The bottom line is that even though I have seen thousands of these hits I have never bothered to contact law enforcement about them–until today.  I went to https://tips.fbi.gov and gave them all the information.

Tonight when I have access to my log files again I’ll be doing a graph of the number of hits per day I have been getting over the past year.  That might be interesting to the FBI as well.  There might be some sort of other ‘interesting’ information I can mine out of the log files also.  I’ll need to think about it some more.  There are some pretty nifty tools here at work I have access to as well that might help in visualizing the data.

Update: I once did send an email to Israel police based only on the log files.  Below is my graph of the hits per month of people doing a search for bomb building help for the year of 2004 so far.  Note that December is only about half over and if it continues at this rate it will be about 800 hits.

Update 2: I had an error in my script for counting the number of hits.  Also I’ve updated the graph to include hits through December 17th.

I’m now convinced that the U.S. government know the searches done by TSA are forbidden by the 4th Amendment.  Check out this story.  John Barlow was removed from a plane after TSA found a small stash of recreational drugs in the bottom of his bottle of Ibuprofen which was 3/4 full of the original contents.  They arrested him and after receiving a $25K bond let him out.  The clincher for me is that rather than actually give him his day in court they are stalling and trying to make it too expensive for him to continue the battle.  For example:

Since I was arrested, I have had to go to California four times for hearings on the suppression of evidence in this matter, every one of which was “continued”, either at the government’s request, or because the government has refused or failed to produce the evidence we subpoenaed on grounds of “national security.”

It’s a lot like when the “assault weapons ban” was challenged in court.  Janet Reno claimed that the challengers didn’t have standing in court because the Feds hadn’t charge anyone and didn’t plan to either.  Hence, the law stood simply because no one was allowed to challenge it.  In talking with people that dealt with the ATFE I was told that the policy in regards to Federal gun laws was that no one would be charged with a violation of a gun law unless there was a major felony involved as well as the simple gun law violation.  My take on that was that they didn’t want a “poster child” for the gun rights people to take to the Supreme Court.  And so it is, I suspect, with this case. 

The TSA, a government agency, is searching a million or more people each day without search warrents.  It was bad enough when the FAA required airlines to do this, but at least it wasn’t a government agency doing the searches.  Now it is a government agency.  Never mind that it’s a total failure in terms of detecting “bad stuff“. And I believe it is just as much a violation of our 4th Amendment rights as it would be if the FBI were to put up road blocks around all cities and searching everyone on those roads to improve “national security“.  From the actions of the Feds in this case, I think they know it too.  It’s time they face reality and consider other options.  Legal and effective options. Not just billion dollar options that make some people feel good and implement a police state.

From ABC News:

French training exercise leads to explosive mistake

It was supposed to have been a harmless exercise, but police at Paris’ main airport managed to send a package of plastic explosive winging around the world and were still looking for it on Saturday.

Fortunately, “it is no more dangerous than a bar of chocolate,” said a source at the military’s information department.

Gendarmes at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport placed the 150 gram block of explosive in a bag on a conveyor belt to find out whether their sniffer dogs were able to detect it.

During what was described as a “lapse of attention,” a baggage handler put the suitcase with checked luggage being sent to an aircraft hold.

Police said the explosive could have been placed on any of about 80 flights.

Airlines were alerted but officials said the explosive represented no danger since it does not react to shock or fire and did not have a detonator.

The military source described it as “totally inoffensive”.

Over at Jihad Watch, they put an Inspector Clouseau spin on it.  Very cute.

And I think I will quote their “totally inoffensive” line if I ever get caught carrying some plastic explosives onboard a plane.  And no, you don’t get to use my guns, explosives making equipment or my wife while I’m in prison for 25 years either.

A long, long time ago when I was going to high school in Orofino I lived up on top of the hill to the Northwest of town.  Sometimes on the way to school it would be a bright sunny day up on top and we would be greated by a river of fog in the valley below.  A similar thing happened today when Barb, Nancy (Barb’s sister) and I went to Clarkston to do some shopping.  I had to stop and get some pictures.  All those years ago I never got a picture of that wonderous sight.  In part because it was a fairly common occurance.  You don’t take pictures of everyday things very often.  You’ll see essentially the same thing soon so why bother?

It had been a while since I had seen that sort of image and I had a camera with me today.  Here are the results.  A sample to get you interested:

Eugene Econ, the instructor for the Boomershoot 2005 Precision Rifle Clinic, has given me the details and I have put them on boomershoot.org.  If he gets enough entries there will be a two day clinic this year.  You can sign up for Friday and/or Saturday.  The main Boomershoot 2005 event will be on Sunday May 1.  The precision rifle clinic always seems to fill up with a waiting list by early April.  Get your entries in early if you want to attend.

Over at the Belmont Club there is a better response than mine to the article So what do you do when your home is burgled? He quotes a passage from George Orwell’s 1984 and notes the similarities.  Another book is applicable here as well. F. A. Hayek was trying to warn Briton about the hazards of socialism because of what he saw in Nazi Germany when he wrote The Road to Serfdom.  Hayek argues that when the government takes responsibility for the welfare of the people they will create more problems than they solve.  The socialist mind will conclude the reason the government failed is because didn’t have enough power given to them.  They will obtain the additional power and things will continue to worsen and again they will say it wasn’t a problem with the concept of government control it was that they didn’t have enough.  The cycle continues and no matter how benign and well intentioned the initiators the concentration of power attracts the attention of the worse sort of people–the Hitlers and the Stalins of the world.  Ruthless and driven they will seize the power given to the government and will abuse it.  The only way to prevent that from happening is to not give the power to the government in the first place.

How ironic, both Hayek and Orwell wrote while in the U.K. as warnings for the British people and now those people are facing the very thing they were warned about 60 years ago.

Read about it here.

Xenia had her Christmas concert in the Kibbie Dome last night.  She had her view of things and she posted a few pictures too.  I took almost all the pictures and put the ones I like here.  It’s tough for me to stay interested in just music.  My mind ends up wandering and I spent a lot of time thinking about ways terrorist might take advantage of a gathering like that.  Lots of the possibilities were very unpleasant.  Most of the music was pleasant though.  There were a couple schools that were just pathetic, but Xenia’s school and the University of Idaho were really good.

The author of 101 Things To Do Before the Revolution and Don’t Shoot the Bastards (Yet) has a blog!  The last I had heard she was offline and didn’t know when she would start writing again.  The first two entries (here and here) I read were enough to convince me that she hasn’t ‘lost anything’.  She’s now on my list of things to read each day.  She also has some new books out.

It was pointed out to me by Kirk in the comments to my last post that the bill where they banned butane lighters on airplanes was about 3000 pages long.  Almost for certain no single person read the entire bill and probably only a few realized the idiotic restriction was in there.  The idiots were the people that put that provision in to begin with.  Some of the others I can almost express a little bit of tolerance for.  But 3000 pages?  That should have taken them a year to go through with a magnifying glass, to debate it, to revise it, and think about all the consequences.  It affects the entire world and they allowed a vote without everyone having read the entire thing?  Before they are allowed to vote on a bill they should have to pass a quiz on it that had at least one question from every page just to make sure they really knew what they are voting on.  If they don’t pass with a ‘C’ or better grade (no grading on the curve either) then they don’t get to vote.  And their “report card” would be posted on their website when they run for reelection.  If they are flunking out by mid-term they get booted out of office, stripped naked, tarred and feathered, and get a ride out of D.C. on a rail.  The governor of their state would then appoint a replacement.  If the replacement failed at the end of the term both the replacement and the governor get “the treatment“.  Okay, maybe that is a too extreme and would never get accepted by a majority of the voters.  We can drop the feathers to get the support of the animal rights people.

I am nearly dumbstruck.  I can hardly believe people smart enough to get themselves elected would be this stupid.  The Intelligence Reform Bill that just past the House had a provision to ban butane lighters from carry-on. 

Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota had pushed for the change for more than a year after learning the Transportation Security Administration allowed them on planes.

“When I found out that they had explicitly, in their rule, said you could take two butane lighters and four books of matches on board, I thought, ’What have they been drinking?”’ Dorgan said. Matches still are allowed.

Can’t you just hear the Mujahideen?  “Oh no!  What are we going to do?  They won’t let us take butane lighters on planes anymore!  We might as well give up Islam and become capitalist Christians!”  And another one says, “But remember–we can take our big capitalist cigars onboard airplanes we just can’t use a butane lighter with them!“  And still another one says, “They must think that we are so stupid that if we don’t have a butane lighter for the fuse for the semtex we will bring two rocks onboard to bang against each other to get a spark!  Don’t you wonder how these people ever managed higher math?  Oh, I forgot, they didn’t!  We had to give them algebra!“

The stupidity of this action is so great that I can hardly calm myself to enumerate the issues with this.  I console myself with the knowledge that the two Senators quoted above are both Democrats.  They were already on my list for political extinction.

1. The obvious–if matches, and presumably non-butane lighters, are still allowed what have they accomplished?
2. The can’t even find knives, guns, and bombs people get past the screeners.  How are they going to stop a butane lighter from getting past security?  The plastic and liquid are almost completely transparent to x-rays and the metal portion is smaller than a quarter and could easily be hidden by a handful of coins.
3. If you can’t enforce a law you should never pass the law.  It breeds disrespect of the law in general, the politicians that created it in particular and it makes life more difficult for the people that are supposed to be enforcing it.
4. This will be a moral booster to the Islamic extremists.  This will be a joke they tell each other and their children about the stupidity of their enemy.

I once had a reader comment:

I don’t think I’d be _too_ upset to hear that Congress, the White House, and the Supremes had been vaporized.

I’m beginning to wonder if maybe he didn’t have a valid point.

Barb got me another book on tape to listen to on my long commute (she does this frequently–I love it and she knows me well enough to seldom ‘miss’).  This time it was Hillary’s Choice.  I haven’t finished it yet but so far it is fabulous.  I never really understood what the big deal was with Hillary. Why were people so impressed with her and why did so many people hate her?  As I was telling Barb the other day Hillary was an absolutely driven person from a very young age.  She was a top scholar from her first contact with school.  She was interested in politics from a young age and was first politically involved with the Republican party.

All this was very interesting to me and I’m looking forward to hearing some more of the tape tomorrow on my drive home.  Then tonight I read an opinion piece by Peggy Noonon on why and how she thinks Clinton will run for president in 2008.  It fits so well with what I’ve been hearing on tape that it was like a key turning an expensive and well oiled lock.  It really clicked with what I had been hearing.  Here is a sample of what Ms Noonon has to say:

Three reasons. The first is that she knows another attack on American soil is inevitable and wants to position herself politically as The Wise One Who Warned Us.

Second, she knows that a woman perceived as a liberal has no chance at winning the presidency while a woman perceived as a tough, pragmatic moderate does. So she is tough where Mr. Compassionate Conservative is soft (immigration), or is vulnerable, after a coming attack, to charges that he was soft (homeland security). She can’t lose on this one. Security can always be better, and after America is attacked again anger and finger pointing will be widespread.

Third, Mrs. Clinton knows the Democratic Party as a whole is to the left of the electorate. She is used to this. It is the story of her life. The electorate in Arkansas were always more moderate than Gov. and Mrs. Clinton, and President and Mrs. Clinton for that matter. She knows how to operate in such conditions. She does not intend to go down in flames as a leftist when she runs for president. This will take guile. She has guile.

We live in interesting times.  Yes, I know–a Chinese curse and all that.

Belgium, the Netherlands, Massachusetts, and now Canada have approved it.  New Jersey, New York, California, and other states in the U.S. are working towards it via the courts and the legislature.  Even though several states had initiatives on the topic last election and the gays were just pulverized by the voters I think it won’t be long before there will be several states that have approved it and perhaps even other countries.  I’m quite thrilled by this for a number of reasons.

1. It’s the right thing to do.  I think marriage is a good thing.  It stabilizes relationships through a deeper commitment.  If a couple of any gender combination wants to make such a commitment then I see nothing but good coming from that.
2. It will give the politicians something to fight about other than things like gun rights, welfare, Social Security, national security, and taxes.  If they can expend their emotional rhetoric on gay marriage rather than on other things then maybe we get them to be more rational on the other topics.
3. It will inevitably bring up the full faith and credit issues on licenses–such as concealed carry licenses.
4. It will level the playing field on some of the special privileges given to same-sex couples.
5. It will demoralize the Islamic extremists.  They need to realize that we are not going to be adopt their religion as our law as demanded by Osama bin Laden.  They need to know that they are loosing ground on a daily basis.  This will either demoralize them or further motivate them and cause the sleeper cells to expose themselves.  Either way we win.

If I could dance I would do a “happy dance”.  As it I’ll just try to visit the Taj and blow something up in celebration soon.

I’ve mentioned this before and my friends have heard me tell stories of all the media bias about guns I have personally experienced but LGF has a post that shows the two sides of a recent story in very plain detail.  If you are going to form opinions from the news and act upon them be sure to do your research.  Check out Google News.  Put in a few keywords and do a search on the news for your topic.  Read what the papers in different countries say about the same event.  Even just different paper in this country have huge differences in perspective.  It can be very enlightening.

Over in Kim duToit’s forum there is a post about the people in the UK and their anti-weapon hysteria.  The comments to the post have been going on for sometime and drifted to airport security.  And about how “free speech” in a airport will get you thrown into jail.  I started to make a little comment there and it grew into a rant that is better placed here.

Chris Byrne commented (minor spelling error corrected):

FREE SPEECH? IN AIRPOTS?

Joking about bombs, terrorism, security, or weapons will get you thrown in jail in an airport. Including on a t-shirt.

No, I’m not kidding, joking, or exaggerating for effect.

Technically you are right.  Joking about bombs or weapons can get you in trouble.  But I wear my Boomershoot shirts through airports without problems.  They have images and words like this:

2005 (not yet airport tested)
2004
2003
2002
2001

And the next time I travel it will be with a Boomershoot coat (that’s Ry, not me).

And of course I almost (I was legal in Chicago when I spent a week there once) always travel with a firearm (legally) in checked baggage and books and papers on improvised explosives in my carry-on computer case (not to mention all the stuff on the computer itself).  As my “get out of jail free card” I carry my ATFE license type 20 (license to manufacture high explosives).  Sometimes I even deliberately salt my computer case with explosive components.  I’ve been ‘sniffed’ for explosives more times than I can count and once (March 20, 1998 in St. Louis) the blind security agent even ran her white swab over several of the books on explosives without noticing the titles of the books.  Not once have I tested positive for explosives.  Not once have I been questioned about explosives or my choice of shirts.  Ask me face-to-face about some of the other tests (some unintentional through just plain forgetfulness) of airport security I have been involved in.  In each and every test they have failed.  In one case even when they knew I had one of these in the case and they knew where it was in the case!  They couldn’t see it on the x-ray.

The only reason we are spending nearly $2 Billion dollars a year (and this doesn’t count the wasted time of the passengers) on screeners at the airport is to make some people feel good.  It does NOTHING to make us safer.  It’s all about “doing something”.  And what it does is erode the U.S. Constitution.

With all due respect to Michelle Malkin, she and others are calling for the resignation/impeachment of Norm Mineta, I think they are wrong.  They aren’t thinking big enough.  They should be calling for the abolishment of the entire TSA.  Show me again where the U.S. Constitution says the Federal government is authorized to stick their nose into this.  Show me again where Mineta Minions are exempt from the 4th Amendment.

They are now testing the concept of putting people about to board a bus through “prison style” weapons checks.

Passengers travelling through a bus station will undergo prison-style weapons checks from today after police installed a metal scanner to cut knife crime.

The metal scanner, which is the same technology used in prisons to detect people carrying weapons, will be deployed at Hammersmith Bus Garage in west London as part of a week-long police trial.

Operation Blunt, part of the Metropolitan Police’s anti-knife initiative, could be rolled out across other London boroughs if the trial is a success.

I grew up on a farm where we had a few cattle.  Some breeds of cattle have horns.  When we had an animal growing horns we would dehorn it before the horns got big enough to hurt us or other cattle.  From our standpoint this worked well.  We could work with the cattle and do the basic things necessary such as vaccination, castration, feeding, moving and butchering without worry that we would get injured by their weapons.  You still needed to be careful, if they were to pin you against a tree or building or something they could do serious damage, trampling, and kicking was something to be concerned about too.  But those were relatively easy things to avoid compared to horns.  Of course this meant we had to put more effort into defending them from their natural enemies such as dogs (of all types) and large cats.  But it was a good tradeoff for us. 

What I don’t think the UK subjects realize is that they are becoming cattle.  Their government is increasingly becoming their owner and as such is perfectly free to shear (as you would sheep), castrate, and butcher at will.  And of course it is quite apparent that the UK government regards the natural predators of the ordinary UK subject (subjects with criminal behaviors) as just as important as the non-criminal subjects.  If a UK subject does any sort of preparation to defend themselves from predators then they are subject to the same sort of punishment as the predator.  Just as we regard all animals a equally valuable from the standpoint of meat production they regard the lives of all their subjects equally valuable.  The UK government is treating their subjects as cattle and is in the process of “dehorning” all of them.  The people of the UK need to be liberated or else used as a bad example for the rest of the world as they reap the consequences of their tolerance for such an oppressive government.  Because they gave up their firearms several years ago and we are pretty busy now with the war against the Islamic extremists so I’m inclined to say there isn’t going to be anyone that’s going to help them.  That means they are just going to have to be a bad example for the rest of the world.

Barb’s mom Joybelle, as I reported earlier, died on November 30th.  The funeral was December 4th.  The obituary in the paper does a good job as far as it goes.  Some of the highlights:

Building memories and caring for people was more important to her than acquiring things.  Education and learning were her life’s work whether it was teaching children in the first and second grade, reading to her children and grandchildren or helping in the community.  Her legacy to education and learning is evident in the numerous degrees her children and grandchildren have earned or are earning in education, physical therapy, computer science, business, pre-med, science, social science and political science.

Some of the things which aren’t explicitly said are the following:

• Her determination to stand up to the prevailing thought when she believed them wrong.
• Her sense of humor.  She would make some dry comment with a straight face and an innocent look that would fool half of the people listening making it all the more funny to me.
• I sometimes joked that I never believed any of the mother-in-law jokes until I actually had a mother-in-law but I can’t complain about her.  She and I would never have been best friends due to our completely different approaches to things (she was very intuitive, I am very factual and concrete) but we never had a fight in the 30+ years I knew her.  She never was a problem in my relationship with her daughter or anyone else.
• After ‘retiring’ in addition to the volunteering for various public causes she “made the rounds” to her kids and helped with the grandkids for a month or more at a time before moving on to the next.
• I can’t think of a single time that she declined a request for help from us in any way.  She let us stay at her place any time, she fixed us countless meals and she took care of our kids when we needed help such as when I was working on my master’s thesis. Even after her stroke which left her paralyzed on her right side she insisted that she would live with her daughter Nancy, who had some health problems at the time, and help her with her kids.  Barb had to force Joy to confront her own health situation (the stroke had affected her mind to the point she didn’t realize how handicapped she was) by asking her to show how she could help by standing up out of her wheelchair.
• She gave our kids so many books we sometimes thought we would be buried under them.  This started before we had our first child because she was afraid some of her favorite children’s books would be out of print before we had children.

Her funeral was the first one I didn’t find myself my attention drifting.  Katie did such a wonderful job of being ‘right on’ with her comments about Joy that I was very impressed.  Joy probably would have been a little bit embarrassed by all the praise Katie and others heaped on her, but it was all deserved.