Another small aircraft strayed too close to the Capitol this week, causing yet another panicked evacuation. While there's nothing quite as satisfying as seeing the political elite pushing old ladies out of the way while scrambling for their lives, these careless pilots are doing serious harm to general aviation. They are not completely to blame, since the no-fly zone around D.C. extends out 15 miles. That's well outside the capital beltway. But just like clockwork, the useful idiots of the left come out to bash general aviation and talk about what a danger small planes are to national security.

One of those was none other than John Loftus, a former Justice Department prosecutor. During the last scare, Loftus said that we should have shot the single engine Cessna out of the sky. This morning he was calling all the talk shows around D.C. telling them that the government should take a "war on drugs" approach and start seizing airplanes. He thinks that the threat of taking people's airplanes away will make them think twice before straying too close to Washington. (It's worked so well for the war on drugs.)

Loftus blamed the problem on know nothing hobbyists that were just out for a stroll. Never mind that this was a corporate owned twin engine turbo-prop. When the facts weren't lining up the way Loftus wanted them to, he started rambling on about "spoiled rich kids" and "millionaire playboys" out riding around in their toys. The class envy was enough to make my blood boil.

General Aviation, while expensive, is not reserved for the super-rich. A single engine prop aircraft can be gotten for much less than a nice bass boat or luxury SUV. And your pilots certificate is only $3000 to $5000 away. (My Microsoft certification cost that much.) Class envy is a powerful tool, and the antis know it. They want to ban general aviation and they cannot do it without perpetuating the image of selfish rich kids playing with daddy's toys.

Loftus actually called pilots selfish, and claimed that one of these small aircraft could easily be filled with enough chemical weapons to kill 80,000 people. Of course so could your station wagon, and nobody sends out fighter jets when you get within 15 miles of the Capitol in one of those. You could pack 100 times as much chemicals or explosives into a Ryder truck.

Then there is the usual whines: "These people don't file a flight plan" and "They take off from airports that don't even have control towers." Oy, it's all been said before, and it's all meant to confuse the uneducated.

And just why should a person in a 1000 pound single engine plane file a flight plan? Imagine if you had to ask for permission and provide routing information to a government agent every time you wanted take the minivan out to visit grandma. People just coming and going as they pleased, imagine that.

Supporters of the Live 8 Cash for Africa concerts are miffed that the acts are a little too lily white.

One of my favorite sayings is "Never put anything in an email that you wouldn't feel comfortable reading aloud in court." Here's someone who should have heeded that advice.

Assemblyman Willis Stephens [a New York State Republican] says he thought he was sending the e-mail to an aide. Instead, he sent the note to nearly 300 people on an online discussion group that focuses on the community of Brewster.

The message included the comment that he was "just watching the idiots pontificate."

Well, at least now his constituents know what he really thinks of them.

Reader Phelps sends this article about Taser abuse. It seems pretty comprehensive, but here's a short highlight:

But for a weapon whose makers crow about its "stopping power," Tasers occupy a strange place in the police rulebook. Law enforcement officers learn what is called a "use of force continuum" to determine what means or weapons they may use in different situations. The "continuum" begins with simple police presence, then moves up to issuing commands, then the use of open hands, and after that, pepper or other chemical sprays, closed hands (including elbows and knees and other takedown moves), the use of a hard baton, and finally, the use of lethal force.

You might think Tasers would fit somewhere near the "lethal force" end of that list, right before a gun. Instead, however, many police agencies place Tasers immediately after the "issuing commands" force level - which suggests to officers that using a Taser is less serious even than a push or pepper spray. Which also means that if an officer asks you to produce your driver's license and you ask "Why?" rather than immediately complying with the order, there's a chance, in some jurisdictions, that you could, within their rules, be hit with a Taser for refusing the command. That's in part how Tasers have begun to be used, not as serious, life-threatening weapons, but as a bully's tool of compliance, something to get people in line - with sometimes egregious consequences.

Ravenwood's Universe is up to #8 on John Hawkin's quarterly Favorite 40 Blogs For 2005. I'm slowly crawling my way toward the top.

The EPA is claiming that the chemical known as C-8, which is used to make teflon and many other consumer products causes cancer.

"We believe there is a reasonable basis for some of those questions and that they need to be answered," said Tom Skinner of the EPA.

While on paper it may appear to be the difference of one word, if C-8 is moved from a potential cancer risk to a likely risk, some have said it could be the end for the widely used substance.

Teflon is used to keep food off of non-stick cookware, the rain off of raincoats, and the stains out of carpets. C-8 is also a major concern when it comes to threatening health and the environment, [NBC5's Lisa Parker] reported.

"It's so ubiquitous," said Jane Houlihan of the Environmental Working Group. "It's in every home. We're talking about pizza boxes, butter boxes, microwave popcorn."

The Environmental Working Group appears to be a black marketing organization for the organic foods industry.

Earlier this month, Senator Dick Durban took to the Senate floor and compared our soldiers to Nazis, Pol Pot, and the communists who ran the Soviet gulag. Durban's comments were picked up by the terrorist propaganda outlet, Al-Jazeera, and echoed throughout the Arab World. This prompted CNN's Wolf Blitzer to ask how he felt that terrorists were echoing his remarks. Durban replied, by blaming the Vast Right Wing Conspirators in the media.

"I think there were a lot of my critics who tried to blow these remarks up as much as they could and to run them in some aspects of our press over and over and over again. I think they bear some responsibility too. That speech might never have been noticed but for that activity on that side of the media."

So, it's not Durban's fault for saying what he said, it's the fault of the right wing media (Rush, Fox News, and the bloggers) for telling people what he said.

Walter Williams gets it. When talking about property rights and the great government land grab of 2005, Williams noted that the Fifth Amendment was not the only Amendment that applies.

I think the socialist attack on judicial nominees who'd use framer-intent in their interpretation of the Constitution might also explain their attack on our Second Amendment "right of the people to keep and bear Arms." Why? Because when they come to take our property, they don't want to risk buckshot in their butts.

The Founding Fathers intended that the individual right to keep and bear arms not be infringed. If it weren't for heavily armed private citizens, we would not have defeated the British during the the American Revolution. And those citizens were usually packing superior firepower than either army.

"Secondhand smoke is killing people. That is an emergency." -- Washington D.C. City Council Member Kwame R. Brown (D-At Large). Fearful that the bill will be killed in committee, Brown wants the full city council to immediately vote on an emergency bill to ban smoking on private property.

President Bush spoke to the nation on prime time television last night to address criticism to the War on Terror. He still hasn't said two words about illegal aliens pouring into our country. But some people are taking notice. Terrorist mouthpiece Al-Jazeera, had planned on running a "news" piece on how to sneak across our borders.

"It is insane policy to allow Al-Jazeera to film Arizona's unsecured border with Mexico and then broadcast it to the very people who perpetrated 9/11," [U.S. Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz.] said. Hssaini, who described himself as a Moroccan-born citizen of Canada working legally in the United States, dismissed the suggestion that his motive for coming to Arizona concerned something other than journalism. . .

"They are a legitimate news organization," said Jacqueline Sharkey, head of the journalism department at the University of Arizona. "There has been criticism in some of the ways they have covered the war in Iraq - just as there's been criticism of the way some of the U.S. media have covered the war in Iraq."

I tend to agree with Sharkey. Oh, I don't think Al-Jazeera is anything other than a two-bit terrorist propaganda network. But banning them from filming our loose border security doesn't solve anything. What Franks really ought to be upset about is that our borders are so insecure that al-Jazeera would even want to film there.

Smoking sure hasn't slowed this guy down much.

The front page of the old Wisconsin News on July 14, 1933, is dominated by three large photos showing Hubert Albert smoking his little brains out.

It was newsworthy because he was 5 years old at the time. The accompanying article says the Milwaukee boy started puffing at the age of 20 months - cigarettes, cigars, pipes, you name it. "He's not 6 years old yet, but he knows how to smoke - anything," the headline says. . .

Hubert, or Hutch as he likes to be called, is still alive today, in his late 70s, and in good health.

He kicked the habit around age 10 but took it up again when he joined the Merchant Marines at age 16. He smoked on and off throughout his life and even now enjoys packing his pipe a few times a day.

I'm not saying that smoking doesn't increase your risk of getting cancer. But considering how many people live long and healthy lives while smoking like a chimney (anyone remember George Burns?) it's hardly a causal relationship.

The Sacramento Bee is trying to locate some of the people named in their articles. They aren't having much luck.

A newspaper investigation of a former columnist for The Sacramento Bee could not verify 43 sources she used in a sampling of 12 years of her work.

Diana Griego Erwin resigned May 11 as she came under scrutiny about the existence of people she quoted. She has denied making up information, but Executive Editor Rick Rodriguez said the Bee should have been able to locate the people named in the stories.

"It kills us that we can't," said Rodriguez, whose comments were included in a story about the investigation published in Sunday's Bee. "We still hope they will turn up, but we're presenting the facts as we found them. Obviously, we feel strongly that we should have been able to find these individuals."

Here's a shocker. Aside from the DVD factor and high ticket prices, audiences also listed the poor quality of movies as reasons they stay away from the theater.

Asked why they are reducing their habit, one in three said they "prefer to watch movies at home" (the DVD factor) but 1 in 4 said "it costs too much to go to the movies," and 1 in 5 alluded to the "poor quality" of movies today.

There are only so many warmed over 1970s TV shows and movie remakes a guy can take.

On a warmer note, I saw George Romero's Land of the Dead this weekend. I thought the movie was pretty good, and a departure from typical zombie flicks. Instead of concentrating on Z-day, Romero focused on how people had adapted their lives to the zombie threat. They had set up post-apocalyptic cities and outposts that were fortified against attack, and just about everybody was armed. (No wonder I liked it so much.)

What kind of message does this send to kids?

A baseball team of 11- and 12-year-olds have been kicked out of a league in this Columbus suburb for one reason - they're too good.

The Columbus Stars were removed from their league last month because they were humiliating opponents. In some of their last games, the Stars beat the Red Sox 18-0, World Harvest 13-0, Sugar Grove II 24-0 and Sugar Grove I 10-2.

Other teams began complaining - and canceling.

Michael Mirones, board chairman for the Canal Winchester Joint Recreation District, pulled the Stars from the league and returned their $150 entry fee. He suggested the Stars play against better teams.

This not only penalizes the successful kids for being too good, but it tells the losing teams that rather improve their game, they should just take their ball and go home.

They should take a lesson from Olympic basketball, a sport that the U.S. has dominated for decades. Rather than give up, competing teams came back stronger each year. They went from suffering humiliating blowouts, to humiliating the U.S. team with fundamentals and good outside shooting. Not once did you see Olympic teams refusing to play the U.S., or telling us to go play against better teams.

Here's what happens when you elect a dentist to public office.

Some grade school students will have to visit the dentist if they want to collect their end-of-year report cards, under an Illinois law that goes into effect Friday.

School officials already require students of certain ages to prove they've received vaccinations and general health screenings. But now students attending kindergarten, second and sixth grades would be required to undergo dental checkups.

Nobody doubts the benefit of good oral hygiene. But forcing people to go to the dentist sounds like cruel and unusual punishment.

"The Supreme Court vacated that section of Amendment Five today, in their ruling that the government has the power to seize anyone's property for any reason, as long as they can trump up some bullshit "public benefit" line of reasoning. I think David Souter's home should be first on the list to be seized." -- Ravenwood, June 23, 2005.

"Could a hotel be built on the land owned by Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter? A new ruling by the Supreme Court which was supported by Justice Souter himself itself might allow it. A private developer is seeking to use this very law to build a hotel on Souter's land." -- Freestar Media, June 27, 2005.

From Say Uncle:

I would never burn a flag unless it was illegal to do so.

Owen Courreges points out that the town of Freeport is not only rejoicing at the Supreme Court's repeal of property rights. They're already drawing up the papers to start seizing property.

...officials in the beachfront town of Freeport, south of Houston, said they would move aggressively to condemn property owned by two seafood companies to clear the way for an $8 million private marina.

I wonder how long it will be before we have another Waco-like standoff.

Today's trash laying in, on, or near the road was:

• Orange construction cone - It must be the one that got away.

Statistics
Commute: It's the pedal on the right!
Door to door: 28 minutes

As if you needed more evidence that the environmental movement has been hijacked by wackos.

A wild idea to combat global warming suggests creating an artificial ring of small particles or spacecrafts around Earth to shade the tropics and moderate climate extremes.

There would be side effects, proponents admit. An effective sunlight-scattering particle ring would illuminate our night sky as much as the full Moon, for example.

And the price tag would knock the socks off even a big-budget agency like NASA: $6 trillion to $200 trillion for the particle approach. Deploying tiny spacecraft would come at a relative bargain: a mere $500 billion tops.

Maybe we should just bomb the shit out of North Korea and Iran. A little nuclear winter should give the Global Warming idiots something else to whine about.

"I cannot swallow whole the view of Lincoln as the Great Emancipator. As a law professor and civil rights lawyer and as an African-American, I am fully aware of his limited views on race. Anyone who actually reads the Emancipation Proclamation knows it was more a military document than a clarion call for justice." -- Senator Barack Obama, D-IL.

Of course he's exactly right. The Emancipation Proclamation only called for the freedom of slaves in Southern states. And given that the South had seceded from the Union, the order didn't actually free anyone. In fact, by the time Lincoln got around to proclaiming emancipation, the U.S. Congress had already banned slavery in Southern states.

Scientists are too busy asking themselves if they could, when they ought to be asking themselves if they should.

SCIENTISTS have created eerie zombie dogs, reanimating the canines after several hours of clinical death in attempts to develop suspended animation for humans.

US scientists have succeeded in reviving the dogs after three hours of clinical death, paving the way for trials on humans within years.

Pittsburgh's Safar Centre for Resuscitation Research has developed a technique in which subject's veins are drained of blood and filled with an ice-cold salt solution.

The animals are considered scientifically dead, as they stop breathing and have no heartbeat or brain activity.

But three hours later, their blood is replaced and the zombie dogs are brought back to life with an electric shock.

If George Romero's visions are at all accurate, I'm happy to report that I have enough guns and ammo to handle any zombies that cross my threshold.

NBA Player Chris Wilcox was busted for illegal handgun possession. Police found a gun in his car during a traffic stop reports WBAL. He's facing misdemeanor gun possession and up to 3 years in jail.

According to charging documents, the officer asked Wilcox if he had been drinking. After briefly hesitating, the charging documents reveal Wilcox nervously answered, "Yes, I had one drink." Collins reported Wilcox passed a field sobriety check.

Police said a K-9 team responded to the scene and the dog reacted to something in the car.

"The officer asked Mr. Wilcox whether there was something we need to know about in the car, and he indicated that he had a gun, and a search located the gun," Howard County police spokeswoman Sherry Llewellyn said.

The news blurb on the radio this afternoon said that the police used a "gun-sniffing dog". Given the amount of guns and ammo that have been in an out of my car over the years, the dog would almost always hit on my car. But then I live work and play in Virginia, where open carry is legal and concealed carry is accepted.

You know it's pretty obvious when even the Washington Post points out media bias.

When Senate Democratic whip Dick Durbin used a Nazi analogy to describe incidents of prisoner abuse at Guantanamo Bay, it wasn't much of a story at first.

Even when White House spokesman Scott McClellan called Durbin's remarks "reprehensible," "NBC Nightly News" gave the matter three sentences and the other network newscasts ignored it. The NBC and ABC newscasts covered Durbin's tearful apology last week, but the "CBS Evening News" took a pass.

"I just don't think it's that big a deal," says CBS anchor Bob Schieffer. . .

There was no such media reticence when Karl Rove said Wednesday that liberals wanted to offer the attackers of Sept. 11 "therapy and understanding." With Democrats castigating the White House adviser, major newspapers (including The Post) and the NBC and ABC newscasts jumped on the story.

Howard Kurtz does try to say that the bias cuts both ways. He struggles to make the claim that the right wing hacks (Fox News and the bloggers) are ignoring Bush's obvious blunders and shortcomings. He even calls the media fabricated "Downing Street Memo" a "high level British memo", as if there were no doubting it's authenticity or content.

You know, if I were going on a road trip to Pittsburg, the last place I'd park my luxury SUV is in the RFK parking lot. But then I'm not a naive Canadian* who just moved to town.

Security will be tightened around RFK Stadium after 12 vehicles belonging to Washington Nationals players and employees were broken into and Marlon Byrd's SUV was stolen from a gated parking area while the team was on a road trip. . .

The break-ins occurred the afternoon of June 20, while the Nationals were in Pittsburgh. Credit cards, CDs, clothing and other personal items were stolen from the vehicles, police said.

Byrd's black Cadillac Escalade remains missing.

"I don't understand how that can happen," the outfielder said. "We're gone and my car drives off the lot? And no one notices? And when we get back and I'm standing there looking for the car, no one knows that it happened? That just doesn't make sense to me."

Welcome to D.C. guys. I'm sure this will improve when the team relocates to Anacostia.

* I know, the players aren't really Canadian.

CNS News reports that the same politicians who supported mandating background checks on gun buyers are balking at the idea of checking for illegal aliens.

Dozens of U.S. House members who sponsored the nationwide instant background check system for gun buyers in 1993 or backed the expansion of that system in 2002, have shown no support for a similar database intended to identify illegal aliens trying to find work in the U.S. [...]

"A database this large is likely to contain many errors," said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) during a May 12 hearing on the Illegal Immigration Enforcement and Social Security Protection Act (H.R. 98). "Any one of [the errors] could render someone unemployable and possibly much worse until they can get their file straightened out."

But in 2002, Jackson Lee argued for the "Our Lady of Peace Act," (H.R. 4757), an expansion of the National Instant Check System (NICS) for handgun purchases.

"I strongly support this legislation," Jackson Lee said during the Oct. 15, 2002 consideration of the Our Lady of Peace Act. "A major problem with the instant check system has been the incomplete records of state and local governments."

If you find this hilarious, you know you're getting old.

Bigger, Stronger, Faster?

Fifty-four-year-old Jesse Sullivan "accidentally touched live wires while working as a utility lineman in Tennessee," reports Orlando's WKMG-TV. "He suffered severe burns, causing him to lose his arms."

We can rebuild him, doctors said; we have the technology:

Sullivan is the first to try out the most sophisticated artificial arms ever designed.

Surgeons attached his arm nerves to healthy muscles in his chest.

"So now when Jess thinks, close hand, the impulse is picked up by a transmitter, and goes to his hand," doctor Todd Kuiken said. "He thinks, closes hand and it does." . . .

By the time it's perfected, the cost of manufacturing the bionic arm is expected to be about $6 million, according to the report.

Boy, a dollar doesn't go as far as it used to. Back in the day, $6 million was enough to buy an entire bionic man.

Of course soon it may be cheaper to just let them die and turn them into zombies.

The SCOTUS is trying to put the file-sharing genie back into the box. They have basically ruled that there is no legitimate use for file sharing software. If you swap files, you must be breaking the law. This is a departure from the 1984 case that almost killed the VCR, where the SCOTUS ruled that since the VCR had substantial legitimate uses, manufacturers could not be sued for illegal misuse.

Internet file-sharing services will be held responsible if they intend for their customers to use software primarily to swap songs and movies illegally, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, rejecting warnings that the lawsuits will stunt growth of cool tech gadgets such as the next iPod.

The unanimous decision sends the case back to lower court, which had ruled in favor of file-sharing services Grokster Ltd. and StreamCast Networks Inc. on the grounds that the companies couldn't be sued. The justices said there was enough evidence of unlawful intent for the case to go to trial.

File-sharing services shouldn't get a free pass on bad behavior, justices said.

Change "file-sharing services" to "gun manufacturers" or and you'll see why this decision stings. When a thief uses a coat hanger to break into your car, you don't sue the guy that made the hanger. In an age where bolt cutters are considered "burglary tools", the test for whether or not a primary use is legitimate vs. illegitimate seems a little tenuous.

The same should hold true for file sharing. By this logic, other file sharing utilities could also be considered illegal - floppy drives, portable hard drives, online storage, instant messenger, and any other utilities that provide for the sharing of computer files.

The courts have ruled time and time again that the police have absolutely no responsibility for your safety. In case you have forgotten, the Supreme Court gave us a reminder yesterday.

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that police cannot be sued for how they enforce restraining orders, ending a lawsuit by a Colorado woman who claimed police did not do enough to prevent her estranged husband from killing her three young daughters.

Jessica Gonzales did not have a constitutional right to police enforcement of the court order against her husband, the court said in a 7-2 opinion.

City governments had feared that if the court ruled the other way, it would unleash a potentially devastating flood of cases that could bankrupt municipal governments.

Keep this in mind the next time some gun grabber tells you to just call 9-1-1 instead of trying to defend yourself.

School kids no longer learn the basics of math. All that can be done with a pocket calculator. Instead they are taught ethnomathematics, or social justice math.

In a comparison of a 1973 algebra textbook and a 1998 "contemporary mathematics" textbook, Williamson Evers and Paul Clopton found a dramatic change in topics. In the 1973 book, for example, the index for the letter "F" included factors, factoring, fallacies, finite decimal, finite set, formulas, fractions and functions. In the 1998 book, the index listed families (in poverty data), fast food nutrition data, fat in fast food, feasibility study, feeding tours, ferris wheel, fish, fishing, flags, flight, floor plan, flower beds, food, football, Ford Mustang, franchises and fund-raising carnival. . .

Partisans of social-justice mathematics advocate an explicitly political agenda in the classroom. A new textbook, "Rethinking Mathematics: Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers," shows how problem solving, ethnomathematics and political action can be merged. Among its topics are: "Sweatshop Accounting," with units on poverty, globalization and the unequal distribution of wealth. Another topic, drawn directly from ethnomathematics, is "Chicanos Have Math in Their Blood." Others include "The Transnational Capital Auction," "Multicultural Math," and "Home Buying While Brown or Black." Units of study include racial profiling, the war in Iraq, corporate control of the media and environmental racism. The theory behind the book is that "teaching math in a neutral manner is not possible." Teachers are supposed to vary the teaching of mathematics in relation to their students' race, sex, ethnicity and community.

Here is an update on last week's story about that 14-year old who was shot and killed while trying to commit an armed robbery. The press is excusing his actions and blaming the robbery victim, because the kid's rifle was unloaded.

The teenage boy fatally shot June 12 in Richmond's East End apparently was not as dangerous as he looked to the man who killed him.

Law enforcement sources involved in the case said Rodvon Daymetric Brown, 14, was carrying an unloaded, .22-caliber rifle when he got off his bicycle and approached a 47-year-old man sitting in his car at 24th Street and Fairmount Avenue around 11:40 p.m.

An ammunition magazine from an AK-47, also unloaded, had been duct-taped to the barrel of the rifle, giving it more of an appearance as a deadly assault weapon, the sources said.

The man inside the car, however, had a loaded, 40 mm semiautomatic handgun.

Gotta get me one of those 40mm handguns that the press keeps talking about. I bet it could down an airplane.

Richmond are consulting with prosecutors on whether to charge the man in connection with the shooting, which is still under investigation.

Police said the man who fired the fatal shots did not flee the scene, but called 911 and waited for police and medical attention to arrive.

Brown was a seventh-grader at Chandler Middle School who lived with his aunt and siblings in the 1400 block of North 23rd Street, just around the corner from where he was fatally wounded.

Family members had said the boy left the house that night to ride his bike because it had been so hot inside. A family spokeswoman had said Brown had never been arrested and was not known by his aunt to carry a weapon.

But last night, a law enforcement source said Brown did, in fact, have a record of arrests as a juvenile. The source did not provide details on the record.

The press hasn't yet said just how they expect the robbery victim to know the gun wasn't loaded. But they seem to reject the rules of basic firearms safety, which say that you should treat every gun as if it were loaded until you can prove otherwise.

Reader Mike A. asks:

You have had articles from time to time where people moved in next to a gun range, and then tried to force the range out. How long before those towns figure out that they can just take the gun ranges after this new supreme court ruling "for the good of the community"?

This is certainly a possibility. But doing so would require the cooperation of government officials. And those officials already have other ways of forcing gun ranges to close, such as imposing environmental regulations and noice ordinances. This is but another weapon in their anti-gun arsenal.

Then again, if the NRA (a/k/a the "gun lobby") is as effective as the gun grabbers would have us believe, wouldn't pro-gun legislators seize people's homes to build a gun range.

On another note, given the insanity of the property rights decision, it almost makes me wonder if we didn't luck out when the SCOTUS refused to hear any of the Second Amendment cases. They could have given us a 10 page essay on how the Constitution contained a typo and the Second Amendment really reads "shall be infringed".

I'm not a big fan of popularity contests, and didn't follow Discovery Channel's "Greatest American" vote. But I did catch the last 20 minutes of their live special where the winner was unveiled. It was worth it to see the big suck on Matt Lauer's face as President Ronald Reagan beat out Abraham Lincoln for the Greatest American Ever. Of course Lauer couldn't help but excuse the victory by pointing out that the voting was very close, and that Mr. Reagan had the benefit of having lived during voter's lifetimes.

To give you an idea of how meaningless the popularity poll was, Clinton was 7th, and W. finished 6th.

Here's a lawsuit waiting to happen.

An 86-year-old man with emphysema died minutes after Lakeland Electric cut off electricity to his son's home in the Polk County community of Kathleen.

John Howerton needed power to operate his oxygen machine. The utility cut off power over a disputed bill June 14. Richard Howerton had brought his terminally ill father home from a nursing home the day before.

When the power went off, the son scrambled to hook up a battery-operated machine. But it wasn't powerful enough to force oxygen into his father's lungs.

Richard Howerton's wife says she paid the electric bill on the Internet two days before her father-in-law died. A computer message said the payment would be posted in two days. It took four.

So, you're captured by terrorists in Iraq, held hostage for weeks, and then are lucky enough to be set free. What do you do next? You hire bounty hunters to track down and kill those dirty bastards, of course.

A hostage held alongside Australian Douglas Wood in Iraq has hired bounty hunters to track down his former captors, promising to eliminate them one by one.

Swede Ulf Hjertstrom, who was held for several weeks with Mr Wood in Baghdad, was released by his kidnappers on May 30.

Mr Hjertstrom has since claimed he shared information with US and Iraqi troops about Mr Wood which led to the release of the 63-year-old Australian engineers two weeks ago, after 47 days in captivity.

Now, he wants to find those responsible.

"I have now put some people to work to find these bastards," he told the Ten Network today.

"I invested about $50,000 so far and we will get them one by one."

(Hat tip to Spoons)

A gang of skinheads, neo-nazis, and Klansman exercised their First Amendment rights at Yorktown Battlefield in Virginia. CNN reports that about 125 of them showed up, and were met by counterprotests twice as large. And there probably would have been more counterprotesters, but it took place on Saturday leaving many Jewish groups unable to participate.

Then there were the pacifists.

About a mile away, a second counter demonstration was held. Organizers called it a "tolerance rally." Those participants said shouting at the Neo-Nazis only helps fuel the fire of Neo-Nazi hatred.

That's right, it's our fault that they hate us. Maybe we should ask ourselves why.

You may want to sit down for this one. The Washington Post reports that the government misunderestimated the cost of a public works project.

The engineering firms developing the plan to extend Metrorail through Tysons Corner told Virginia transportation leaders yesterday that the project as envisioned will probably cost $2.4 billion, a 60 percent increase over the previous estimate and a price that far outstrips the carefully negotiated financing agreement.

The extension is supposed to attract 15,100 new daily riders. That equals out to $158,940 per rider.

"A headline and article summary that appeared to indicate that Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist had either retired or died was inadvertently published on washingtonpost.com and through a washingtonpost.com RSS feed on June 23. The headline and summary have been retracted and no longer appear on the site." -- Washington Post Correction, June 23, 2005.

When the City Council lured the Montreal Expos to Washington D.C., they were concerned about having to fight property owners over land to build a new stadium. Yesterday's Supreme Court decision vacating private property rights is music to their ears. D.C. politicos are already saying the decision will give them a good negotiating position with stubborn residents who don't want to give up their land.

D.C. Council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) said that the ruling should give the city a powerful hand during negotiations with the 33 property owners at the ballpark site.

"It puts to rest the issue of whether the city has legal rights to take the properties," Evans said. "This strengthens our hand to get control of the property. Hopefully, it will encourage owners to settle with the District and accept a fair price and move on."

The District normally would have had to meet land-owners demands, or face a long expensive legal battle. Now that they already have the backing of the Supreme Court, they are free to low-ball residents. If the offer isn't good enough, tough luck. They can use police powers with relatively little due process. The courts will only decide how much the city has to cough up.

As for resisting the seizure D.C. is effectively "gun free", and Anacostia residents are sitting ducks.

If they are unable to pass a Constitutional Amendment banning flag burning, GOP lawmakers plan to use their powers of eminent domain to seize flags from private citizens to prevent them from being burned.

The proposed Constitutional Amendment would read, "The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States." But the Amendment process is lengthy and has a low probability for success. But yesterday's Supreme Court ruling, which found that private property could be seized as long as there was some sort of public benefit, gives lawmakers the power to act immediately.

Depending on their size and condition, the seized flags will be put to use flying over government buildings, and vehicles such as fire trucks. Flags that are no longer suitable for display will be disposed of in accordance with the U.S. Flag Code, �176(k) which states: "The flag, when it is in such condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem for display, should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning."

The Carnival of Cordite is up over at the Revolutionary War Veterans Association.

As many as 36 states are fudging their numbers to comply with the No Child Left Behind Act.

Speaking of grades, Larry Elder points out that a week after John Kerry's grades were released, more people still think Kerry had higher grades than Bush. Apparently the media isn't getting the word out very effectively.

Everybody is upset over the governments seizure of private property, but you hardly heard a peep when officials seized a couple's children over a disagreement on cancer treatment.

Democrats are upset that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has selected a Republican to be their new president. Senator Clinton and other Democrats sent them a nasty-gram.

It's that time of year again. Wild fires are raging through California and desperate homeowners are trying to protect their property. As homes burn and lives are destroyed, some residents recognize the value of the Second Amendment, and the definition of the word "militia".

On one street, residents formed a militia to prevent outsiders from invading their neighborhood.

Remember, the government has no responsibility for your safety.

"Someone is stealing city's parking meters" -- AP Headline, Kalamazoo, Mich., June 23, 2005.

"Motorists get tickets at meters installed after they parked" -- KWQC Headline, Chicago, Ill., June 23, 2005.

Like I've said before, simply carrying a large amount of cash is considered a crime. And the definition of large is relative. In this case, a woman was caught with cash in her bra. Is that suspicious? You betcha. Should it be a crime? No.

A woman who apparently stuffed $46,950 in cash in her bra before trying to board a plane to Texas for plastic surgery has sued a federal agency, demanding the return of her money.

The money was seized from Ileana Valdez, 26, after a security check at a metal detector at Logan International Airport on Feb. 3. Valdez told authorities she was heading to Texas for plastic surgery on her buttocks and breasts.

"I don't know why she was carrying it (the cash) in her bra," said Boston lawyer Tony V. Blaize, who filed the suit Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Boston on behalf of Valdez.

In her suit, Valdez said a male Drug Enforcement Administration agent told her she had a nice body and didn't need surgery - and then seized the cash, claiming it was drug money.

Actually, I think that stuffing it in your bra is perfectly reasonable. How else would you feel safe flying with nearly $50,000 in cash? I certainly wouldn't check it at the gate. Any number of people could open your suitcase and take it. Especially considering the TSA doesn't want you to lock your checked luggage any more. I also wouldn't put it in my carry-on and let some $10 an hour X-ray babysitter have access to it. The way they are pilfering lighters, charm bracelets, and even the Congressional Medal of Honor (and then selling them for profit), I certainly wouldn't trust them around any large amounts of cash.

So, why did she have the cash stuffed in her bra? Just maybe she was afraid that some over-zealous government agent would confiscate it and refuse to give it back.

Senator Dick Durban, D-IL, used the floor of the United States Senate as his stage to speak out against our troops. His comparison of our soldiers to nazis, Pol Pot, and Soviet gulags was entered into the official Senate record books. When asked to apologize, Durban stood by the remarks. Even fellow Democrats like Senator Harry Reid, D-NV, balked at the idea that the number two Democrat did anything wrong. Reid even blamed the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy for criticizing Durban:

The far right noise machine never stops. This is all a distraction by the White House...This is all an attempt to distract us from the issues before us. Let's focus on the issues not what he (Sen. Durbin) said.

But when Karl Rove - who doesn't even hold elected office - had the nerve to criticize Democrats for their soft reaction to the 9/11 attacks, Democrats went off the deep end. In a speech to the New York State Conservative Party, Rove said "liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers."

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid was outraged. The number two Democrat in the Senate calling our troops nazis is a non-issue. But we cannot stand to let a private citizen criticize one of our political parties. Reid immediately called for Rove's head on a platter.

"Karl Rove should immediately and fully apologize for his remarks or he should resign," Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, said in a statement. "I hope the president will join me in repudiating these remarks."

Is this really the image Democrats are going for? It is okay to call our soldiers Nazis but if you criticize the Democrat Party, you gotta go.

D.C. business owners are becoming disenchanted with Major League Baseball. To fund a new stadium for the Washington Nationals, the D.C. city council imposed a "baseball fee" on District businesses. Now that the bills have been mailed out, many of the businesses are balking.

Warren J. Cox, a principal in Hartman-Cox Architects, said he did not closely follow the stadium debate in the fall and was shocked last week when his accountant asked him to approve a $10,800 check to the District. He dashed off a letter to D.C. Council members saying he was paying under protest and was considering legal action.

"When I told my partners, they had apoplexy. That's a lot of money," Cox said in an interview.

The justification for using the threat of lethal force to seize money from businesses, was that Major League Baseball would bring a lot of revenue into the city. I guess that Nationals fans aren't lining up at Cox's door requesting his architecture services.

Adding insult to injury, D.C. is seizing more money than they really need.

Officials said yesterday that the city could end up with more money from the ballpark fee than is necessary because they may have under-estimated the number of companies that will be required to pay. Officials declined to say what they would do with extra funds.

I have a pretty good idea where the funds will go. (Into more vote buying schemes.)

The tax bills rekindled the debate in which some company owners complained last fall that the tax represents an unfair subsidy to Major League Baseball.

It's not a subsidy, it's legalized theft. Furthermore, Major League Baseball is a government protected monopoly, which means they have nothing to fear from Vince McMahon types starting up their own Xtreme Baseball League and competing with them.

As with most taxation, there is the usual clamoring to sock it to the evil, hated, rich. Keep in mind however, that this tax is on gross receipts not net profit. You pay based on how much total revenue to you take in.

Another point of contention is that the fee structure puts an unfair burden on smaller companies, said Barbara B. Lang, president of the Chamber of Commerce. All businesses that gross more than $16 million pay the same amount -- $16,500 -- no matter if they make one dollar more or $100 million more.

The city's largest companies should assume more of the burden, Lang said.

The keyword being burden.

Look, I have a pretty simple solution to all of this. If Major League Baseball insists on remaining a government protected monopoly and on demanding taxpayer funds to build new stadiums, they should lose their government protected copyrights. D.C. firms and small businesses should be free to print up Nationals T-shirts and other merchandise, and sell them out of their offices. They would pay no licensing fees and no royalties to the league. If they can have the shirts printed for $2 each and sell them for $20, that's $18 they get to keep. And it's all the more money they'll have available to pay D.C.'s Baseball Tax.

Congressional Democrats are demanding that private companies to provide health coverage, or else. Specifically being targeted is low-cost retailer, Wal-Mart. Long the ire of liberals and democrats, nearly 14% of Wal-Mart employees choose to not pay for group health insurance through the company. They either tag along on the policy of a spouse, or rely on taxpayer funded care.

Several congressional Democrats introduced a bill yesterday that would force states to report the names of companies that have 50 or more employees who receive government-funded health care, an effort to pressure Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in particular to improve employee health coverage.

In introducing the Health Care Accountability Act, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), Rep. Anthony D. Weiner (D-N.Y.), and Sen. Jon S. Corzine (D-N.J.) said they are concerned that large employers such as Wal-Mart are transferring responsibility for health care to government-funded programs such as Medicaid.

So they want companies held accountable for their employees health coverage (or lack thereof), in what amounts to a huge invasion of privacy and government meddling. And it's not the employers who are transferring responsibility to the government, it's the employees. They are electing to rely on government hand-outs, rather than paying their own way. Look I can either choose to drink from the taxpayer funded water fountain, or I can pay $2 for chilled bottled water from the Coke machine. But just because the government gives away water for "free", doesn't mean they can demand that Coca-Cola start giving away water because the lines at the water fountain are too long.

If the government doesn't want people signing up for their hand-outs (they actually advertise the unpopular programs), they should shut them down.

Wal-Mart said it provides health insurance to more than 568,000 of its employees. About 14 percent of its workers have no coverage. The rest rely on health care coverage from another source, such as a spouse or government program.

Some of the uninsured "may turn to state Medicaid programs which were designed to provide medical coverage at very low cost to relatively low-income residents, at better premiums and related costs than even Wal-Mart can negotiate," [Wal-Mart Spokesman Nate Hurst] said.

Once again, this is a failure of socialism. Giving away something for "free" always spikes the demand. We're seeing the same thing happen with "free" prescription drugs. When you insist on giving away "free" stuff, don't complain when people actually take it.

With private property rights being vacated by the Supreme Court today, the right to keep and bear arms looks pretty important right about now.

If you don't have a rifle already, I suggest you buy one. Molon labe, bitch.

"The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence." -- John Adams

"What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms." -- Thomas Jefferson

The Fifth Amendment used to read: "No person shall. . .be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." The Supreme Court vacated that section of Amendment Five today, in their ruling that the government has the power to seize anyone's property for any reason, as long as they can trump up some bullshit "public benefit" line of reasoning. I think David Souter's home should be first on the list to be seized. The Washington Post reports on this travesty of human rights:

The Supreme Court today effectively expanded the right of local governments to seize private property under eminent domain, ruling that people's homes and businesses -- even those not considered blighted -- can be taken against their will for private development if the seizure serves a broadly defined "public use."

In a 5-4 decision, the court upheld the ability of New London, Conn., to seize people's homes to make way for an office, residential and retail complex supporting a new $300 million research facility of the Pfizer pharmaceutical company. The city had argued that the project served a public use within the meaning of the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution because it would increase tax revenues, create jobs and improve the local economy.

Speaking for the majority, Justice Stevens writes:

The City has carefully formulated an economic development plan that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including--but by no means limited to--new jobs and increased tax revenue. As with other exercises in urban planning and development,12 the City is endeavoring to coordinate a variety of commercial, residential, and recreational uses of land, with the hope that they will form a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Writing for the dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Conner notes that the government now has unlimited power.

Today the Court abandons this long-held, basic limitation on government power. Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded--i.e., given to an owner who will use it in a way that the legislature deems more beneficial to the public--in the process.

...if predicted (or even guaranteed) positive side-effects are enough to render transfer from one private party to another constitutional, then the words "for public use" do not realistically exclude any takings, and thus do not exert any constraint on the eminent domain power.

In short, no one is safe.

Remember that nullification of property rights is one of the pillars of communism.

Karl Marx would be proud

"[The Proletariat's] mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property...

The distinguishing feature of communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.

In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property." -- Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto

Democrats are still recounting votes in Ohio, in an attempt to show that Bush didn't really win the 2004 election.

More than a quarter of voters, and more than half of black voters, experienced problems at Ohio polling places during the 2004 presidential vote, a Democratic Party report said on Wednesday.

But the problems were not enough to have changed the outcome in the state that put President Bush over the top in his battle for the White House with Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, it concluded.

The report cited long lines that discouraged voting, poorly trained election officials and difficulties with registration status, polling locations and absentee ballots.

Bush won Ohio by more than 118,599 votes. The margin of victory was higher than several other states like Minnesota (98,319), and Wisconsin (11,384). It was even somewhat close to the margin of victory in Pennsylvania (144,248). But Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania were all won by John Kerry, so those don't get recounted or disputed in any way. (Despite the fact that nearly 5,000 illegal votes were cast in Milwaukee.) Overturn any one of those states for Bush, and Ohio's 20 electoral votes don't even matter.

* All poll tallies via CNN

The good news is that Ravenwood's Universe has been listed on the blogroll over at Gun Places. The bad news is, they think I'm a chick.

I can assure you that I am all man, and there are hundreds of women that will attest to that fact. Okay, well, more like dozens. Okay, a few. Maybe, if you promise not to tell anyone. And no, I can't put you in touch with them without violating the restraining order.

Say Uncle has started an ecosystem of Gun Bloggers.

First Bush was blamed for a death in Chicago. Then he was blamed for a suicide in California. Now a man in Tucson has died, and it's all Bush's fault.

Alas the stolen election of 2000 and living with right-winged Americans finally brought him to his early demise. Stress from living in this unjust country brought about several heart attacks rendering him disabled.

Hat tip to Right Wing News.

The House of Representatives approved a Constitutional Amendment to ban flag burning, something they have been pushing for more than a decade. The Associated Press reports that with Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, the Amendment might actually pass.

The proposed one-line amendment to the Constitution reads, "The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States." For the language to be added to the Constitution, it must be approved by two-thirds of those present in each chamber, then ratified within seven years by at least 38 state legislatures.

The amendment is designed to overturn a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling in 1989 that flag burning is a protected free-speech right. That ruling threw out a 1968 federal statute as well as flag-protection laws in 48 states. The law was a response to anti-Vietnam War protesters setting fire to American flags at demonstrations.

No, no, no, no! Chipping away at the First Amendment is an idiotic idea. Flag burning, while detestable, should be protected free speech. Anyone who supports a ban cannot possible support the First Amendment.

As a patriot, I hate flag burning as much as the next guy. It's not surprise that it's unpopular. But unpopular speech is the exact kind of speech that the First Amendment is meant to protect. And as long as a person is burning their own flag and not causing a fire hazard to anyone else, the practice should remain legal. Throwing someone in jail for buring a red white and blue piece of fabric is tyranny, whether you make it legal or not.

And desecration is highly subjective. Proper flag disposal calls for burning, burial, or destruction of the flag thread by thread. Would the local VFW be subject to arrest for putting a haggard flag to rest?

This is a very slippery slope? What's next, bibles? Korans?

UPDATE: Neal says that a better Amendment would say that "neither the federal government, nor any state or local government can make any action a crime unless that action serves or conspires to deny to some individual their right to life, liberty or property through force or fraud."

John Stossel tackles the so-called "wage gap" between men and women. On average, women earn only 75 cents for every dollar than men earn.

Martha Burk, chair of the National Council of Women's Organizations, gave me this simple answer: "Because [men] like to hire men, John. They like to hire people like themselves and they darn sure like to promote people like themselves." In other words, men so love their fellow men that they are willing to pay a premium of, say, $10,000 on what would otherwise be a $30,000-a-year job, just for the sheer pleasure of employing a man. Nonsense. It's market competition that sets wages.

Men do care about money -- and that, not wage discrimination, is why men tend to make more of it.

"Women themselves say they're far more likely to care about flexibility," says author Warren Farrell. "Men say, I'm far more likely to care about money."

Martha Burk, in case you don't remember, made her mark on the women's movement by insisting that Augusta National Golf Club allow women to join. Just like she was wrong on that issue, she's wrong on this one. Men are far more likely to work longer hours, give up family comittments, and work in dangerous jobs. Women on the other hand are more likely to put family ahead of their career. They are also much less likely to give up their career to have babies.

Now, that men care more about earning money isn't really news. But what Stossel doesn't mention is that women should also share the blame for men's money grubbing attitudes. Aside from the obvious nesters vs. gatherers differences, men are predisposed to try to make more money simply to attract and please women. Women generally don't go for men who are broke all the time, and guys with lots of cash are much more likely to get the girl. (I'm speaking in generalities, so please girls don't yell at me saying you're not like that.)

In the immortal words of George Costanza, "bald men, with no jobs, and no money, who live with their parents, don't approach strange women".

Hey, most of us only have the 'After'.

Kids not only don't have to dress for P.E. anymore, they don't even have to go. Instead they can take Phys Ed while sitting in front of their computer screen.

Jan Braaten, the district's lead teacher for physical education and health, said her staff was leery of the idea at first. "It's kind of an oxymoron to have online PE," she said.

But Braaten and others who developed the class are proud of their creation and say it's drawing interest from around the state and beyond. Online phys ed is being offered this summer as well.

Online learning offers a way for busy students to shoehorn the state-required academic courses and the electives they want into their schedules.

Kim du Toit thinks that if people don't want their kids going to school next to a gun range, they shouldn't build their new homes and school next to a gun range.

A new elementary school is being built just down the road from the shooting range, and down the road a little more are dozens of new subdivisions. Some of the new neighbors are not happy about the location of the range.

The range has been there for years. They ought to be unhappy about the location of their new homes and the new school. Who the hell moves into a house and then starts bitching about the location?

"It will make me nervous when they are playing on the playground," said parent Dorian Nicolosi. "It does not sit well with me."

Nicolosi and two daughters live just down the road. Both girls will attend the new elementary school when it opens in the fall.

Some neighbors, like Dorian Nicolosi, are not happy about the range's proximity to a new elementary school.

"I don't think it should be anywhere near a school," she said. "It shouldn't be within five miles of school."

That'd be like me moving next door to Dorian Nicolosi and then asking him to move because I don't like living next to him.

"Oil may hit $100. Or not" -- CNN/Money Headline, June 22, 2005.

"Tom Cruise to sue water squirters?" -- The Bosh Headline, June 21, 2005.

He was squirted in the face with water, so I'm not sure what damages he thinks he's due. Maybe $200 for the shirt, assuming he doesn't shop at JC Penney.

UPDATE: Like I said, Tom Cruise doesn't really have a case. Yeah, squirting someone with water is "assault", but there are no real damages that they can claim. Cruise's lawyers must have told him that well was dry, because he's dropping his plans to sue.

"Beef People To Close Stores, Cut Jobs" -- Headline, Web Pro News, June 21, 2005.

The article talks about Winn-Dixie grocery stores doing some consolodating. Not sure why they refer to Winn-Dixie as "Beef People".

From the Everything Causes Cancer Department, the pleasure police are now warning us about grilled food.

High-heat cooking methods such as grilling and broiling cause meat, poultry, and fish to form potentially carcinogenic chemicals, especially if charring occurs. In addition, when fat drips on hot coals (or any heat source), other possible carcinogens are formed and are deposited on the meat by the rising smoke and flames.

I think it's much easier if you simply accept that fact everybody dies eventually. Once you get that out of the way, you can go about living by the General's motto:

Live the good life. Drink, smoke, gamble, feast, joke, fornicate and be tolerant of those who do. Take risks and thrive for the good challenge. Work hard and play hard without going over the edge. Live in the moment. Believe in moderation in all things, including moderation. Live it up!

I'd rather die fat and happy than live in prolonged misery.

She's fighting a losing battle, but Carol Schwartz is giving the D.C. City Council hell. To combat the District's proposed smoking ban, she's proposed an alcohol ban, based primarily on the exact same arguments. Schwartz probably has a stronger argument, considering nobody has ever been killed by someone driving under the influence of too many cigarettes.

With a wink and a smirk, D.C. Council member Carol Schwartz (R-At Large) introduced legislation today to ban all alcohol in the District.

Schwartz, the leading opponent of a proposed smoking ban in District bars and restaurants, applied the same arguments made by anti-smoking activists to defend an alcohol ban.

Imitation may be considered flattery, but Schwartz's tongue-in-cheek comments showed it can also be used as an effective political skewer.

"People are still free to drink at home -- for now," she said as she introduced her bill, the Worker Occupational Safety and Health Amendment Act of 2005, Part II, at today's council session. "I'm just legislating that liquor cannot be served in bars, restaurants and nightclubs because I don't want it to be served. I will allow teas, sodas and milk -- for now. And if the drinkers insist on drinking alcohol -- and they will -- they can just step outside on sidewalks with their flasks and drink." [...]

"We all know that bartenders and waitstaff are constantly harassed by drinking customers. Bouncers are even beaten up by drunks. I care about these workers and their safety," Schwartz said, while her colleagues chuckled and hid their face in their hands.

"Yes, I come to you a changed woman," Schwartz said, her voice oozing sarcasm. "It had just never occurred to me that I could simply choose to ban a legal choice for consenting adults in a private place where the public does not have to go and where workers do not have to work."

"I'm also now looking at some other legal choices to ban -- like driving or sex -- for they, too, can be dangerous to your health and the health of others."

After the council session ended a few hours later, Schwartz withdrew the bill, declaring, "I had a point to make and I made it."

Maybe she should be careful what she wishes for. After all, the Onion had no idea people would actually sue junk food companies for making them fat.

Guilty gas guzzlers are now able to buy pollution credits.

For $160 you can turn a Hummer H2 into a zero-emissions vehicle. No tools or mechanical ability are required.

That's the promise of a California company called TerraPass. It would cost less, of course, to turn a Chevrolet Cobalt into zero-emissions vehicle. That would only be about $40.

The idea is the latest implementation in the trading of "pollution credits." Those are the market-based innovations, introduced a few years ago, which allow smoke-spewing companies to buy and sell the right to emit certain amounts of pollutants into the air.

The stickers TerraPass sends its customers do nothing to stop pollutants from coming out of a car's tailpipe. Instead, the company offers its customers the chance to reduce pollutants from other sources, like power plants, in an amount equivalent to that produced by their car.

That way, you can drive your car while having no net effect on the amount of pollution in the air, the company says.

I have a better idea. Hummer drivers and liberal jet setters can just send me their money and I'll promise to walk around in the dark and not run the air conditioning all summer. If they don't send me any money I'm going to leave the lights on 24 hours a day and the refrigerator door open. Yeah, it's extortion, but so what. Send money now, or the environment gets it!

Remember Rosco P. Coltrane from Dukes of Hazzard? He used to walk around with a fake fire hydrant writing parking tickets to unsuspecting victims. Now Chicago is starting to look a little more like Hazzard County.

In Chicago, parking meters don't just expire. They can suddenly appear out of nowhere. . .

Motorists who parked downtown on a stretch of Illinois Street last week fell unsuspectingly into a parking-ticket trap. It is a trick Getting Around had not seen before, but one that we are happy to expose and terminate.

Among the drivers scammed was Chicago attorney Vince Tessitore, who at first felt lucky on Tuesday night to find a legal, meterless space to park his Jeep Cherokee on the north side of Illinois just west of LaSalle Street. But when a friend went to the spot to retrieve Tessitore's car about 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, a parking meter had been installed where the day before there was no meter.

And a parking ticket was left on the windshield.

The sneaky Loop traffic-control aide (Badge No. 30249) who wrote the parking ticket post-dated the citation as having been issued at 12:39 p.m. Thursday--more than 15 hours after the ticket was placed on the car. . .

Deroy Murdock says that the President ought to create a way for undertaxed liberals to give more of their money to the government.

President George W. Bush's bipartisan Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform should propose a measure to assist a neglected segment of society: the avowedly under-taxed. The H.O.T. Tax, or Higher-rate Optional Tax, would give those who think their levies are too low the ability to pay the steeper tax bills they say they deserve. This is the truly compassionate thing to do.

The H.O.T. Tax would offer relief to powerful Democrats and wealthy liberals who cannot stand it when Republicans cut their taxes.

Loyal readers of this web site may remember that this was covered years ago, with the Voluntary Tax Refund Forfeiture form (PDF). Liberals who don't want their tax cut simply need to fill out the form and mail it in. They don't even have to wait until April 15th if they don't want to. Alternatively, if they don't support tax cuts from their neighbors, I encourage them to go door to door distributing the forms. People are usually home around dinner time.

(Hat tip to Kim du Toit.)

Keep in mind that crime can happen anywhere, at anytime, to anyone.

Wanted: Stolen car. Make and model: Ford Crown Victoria. Owner: D.C. Police Department. Reported stolen by: Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey.

So goes the saga of car theft in the District, where even the police chief's department-issued car can get swiped just a block from his home.

The car was unmarked and contained no firearms, but there was riot gear in the trunk. Union officials claim that an ordinary officer would be disciplined for leaving his gear in the car, and that Chief Ramsey should also face disciplinary action.

Democrats once again blocked John Bolton's nomination to the United Nations, with Republicans unable to garner enough votes to break the filibuster. That prompted Liz Sidoti of the Ass. Press to editorialize (in the middle of a "news" story):

The setback left Bush facing stark choices - most of which could leave him appearing weak at a time he is facing sagging poll numbers and fighting lame-duck status six months into his final term.

Both the Washington Post and CNN actually managed to cover the story without using the F-word. They called it a "delay" and a failure to "end debate". (WaPo had run the AP version, but later switched it for their own story.)

Photo labs are refusing to print photos that look "too professional" out of fear of being sued for copyright infringement.

When Morgan's mother and a client recently took CDs with some of his shots to a printing lab, the photo technicians spurned them. They said that since the shots seemed to have been taken by a professional, printing the pictures might be a copyright violation.

The situation is not unusual, and it's getting trickier in our digital age.

Copyright law requires photo labs to be on the lookout for portraits and other professional work that should not be duplicated without a photographer's permission. In the old days, questions about an image's provenance could be settled with a negative. If you had it, you probably had the right to reproduce it.

Now, when images are submitted on CDs or memory cards or over the Web, photofinishers often have to guess whether a picture was truly taken by the customer - or whether it was scanned into a computer or pilfered off the Internet.

It should come as no surprise that women's tennis is more popular than men's tennis. The only thing that beats a nubile young pubescent girl romping around the court is a grunting and moaning nubile young pubescent girl romping around the court. But now the snooty tennis elite want to keep them from moaning and grunting.

Grunting noises made by female tennis players as they strike the ball are getting out of hand, and rules should be changed to crack down on the practice, Wimbledon referee Alan Mills has said, according to a report on Sunday.

Mills, Wimbledon's chief official for 22 years who retires after this week's tournament, which begins on Monday, told The Sunday Times he believed coaches were teaching young women players to grunt.

"I don't like it at all. Today there is probably more grunting than there has ever been," he said.

"If I was playing an opponent making so much noise, I think I'd just laugh. But it's what young players are being coached to do.

"Many of the non-grunting players are unhappy about the noise pollution and a kind of counter-grunt culture has emerged in recent years whereby offended parties ape their opponent's noises." [...]

One of the loudest of the modern grunters is defending women's champion Maria Sharapova, who, according to the paper, makes a 100-decibel grunt, roughly the same volume as small aircraft landing nearby.

So are those close to the sport deliberately trying to sell sex? Well if CNN is any guide:

(Click to see Sultry Maria Sharapova Photos)

I had to chuckle at the number two sports story of the day. Who needs basketball playoffs when you've got "Sultry Maria Sharapova Photos". CNN later changed the headline to something less chauvinistic.

It would seem that agents of the government don't like being video taped. That's right, the same people who install public video cameras to catch people loitering or speeding are trying to keep videographers out of public meetings. The confrontation was sparked when Bruce Bennett tried to tape a task force meeting to which his wife was assigned as a member.

The moderator of the meeting, Patricia Stevens, brought up the issue of the taping. Until Stevens discussed it, no member of the task force had mentioned it.

Stevens said she had an opinion from the Office of the County Attorney stating that the committee could, at its discretion, opt not to allow people to videotape the meeting. The taping, Stevens said, might make some people uncomfortable and not willing to be as forthcoming with their opinions.

The problem is, that Virginia law allows for the taping. Bennett was about shut down his camera and leave, until reporters told him he had every right to bring a camera.

A reporter from the Connection Newspapers informed Bennett of his rights under Virginia's Freedom of Information Act. Specifically, Section 2.2-3707 Paragraph H of the Virginia Code states: "Any person may photograph, film, record or otherwise reproduce any portion of a meeting required to be open to the public."

So Bennett stayed and kept filming, Patricia Stevens be damned. But then overstepping her bounds seemed to be a theme for Ms. Stevens.

Additionally, over the course of the meeting, Stevens suggested that an outside consultant may or may not need to be retained to assist with later proceedings. A member of the task force asked what type of budget the consultant might have.

Supervisor Joan DuBois (R-Dranesville) stated that the task force had no budget. However, she said that if the consultant needed money, something might be able to be arranged. She did not specify if any funding might include public funds.

I guess you get what you pay for.

A 14-year old Richmond (VA) boy tried to rob a man with a gun, and ended up achieving room temperature. Rodvon Daymetric Brown, a seventh-grader at Chandler Middle School apparently used a gun to try to rob a 47-year old man. The man shot Brown in what police are already calling justified self defense. After defending himself, the would-be victim even waited at the scene for Police to arrive. Of course then there are those who would consider the robber to be the victim. (emphasis mine)

Brown's family has a hard time believing the teen was carrying a gun, said Alicia Rasin, a crime-victim's advocate who was consoling family members yesterday. He lived with his mother, an aunt and siblings in the 1400 block of North 23rd Street, right around the corner from where he was killed, Rasin said.

"They just cannot see him having a gun," Rasin said. . .

Grief counselors were made available yesterday to Brown's schoolmates at Chandler. The teen's guardian called the school yesterday morning to report that Brown "was shot and killed as he walked home along Fairmount Avenue," school spokeswoman Treeda Smith said in an advisory sent to Richmond School Board members.

"I'm sick and tired of saying I'm tired," Rasin said of Richmond's latest homicide. "I'm tired of saying, 'When is this going to be enough?'"

I wonder why there was no reaction from the teen's father.

Captain's Quarters points out that the infamous "Downing Street Memos" that liberals say prove that Bush lied about weapons of mass distruction were fabricated by the media.

The eight memos - all labeled "secret" or "confidential" - were first obtained by British reporter Michael Smith, who has written about them in The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times.
Smith told AP he protected the identity of the source he had obtained the documents from by typing copies of them on plain paper and destroying the originals.

Today's trash laying in, on, or near the road was:

• Life Vest - And I thought carrying road flares was overkill.

Statistics
Commute: I wish it was Sunday, 'Cause that's my funday, My I don't have to runday...
Door to door: 25 minutes

Have you ever wished you were a shotgun? This makes up for KdT's dude pic on Friday.

Big surprise, the gun grabbers were caught in another lie. This time they've been forging the names of supporters and lying to Congress. Next time they claim to have the support of this sheriff or that police organization, think twice.

Kevin Baker points out that another gun grabber has been caught violating gun laws. A British gun control advocate was busted with a sawed off shotgun.

Say Uncle catches the Ass. Press spreading the lie that .50 caliber rifles "can bring down jet airliners from a mile away."

The U.S. Forest Service is shutting down gun ranges in Colorado, reports Publicola. It looks to be a concerted anti-gun effort.

Over at the Ten Ring, Denise reports on an unarmed Massachusetts woman who had no other choice but to cower in fear when victimized by a burglar. All she could do was hope and pray the burglar wouldn't harm her two children.

An armed robbery in "gun-free" Massachusetts went awry, and media hilarity ensued. Read about the "fully semi-automatic AK-47 long weapons".

John Lott points out that the Gallup Poll questions on concealed carry were indeed biased against guns.

PETA's dirty little secret just went mainstream. A month ago, the Center for Consumer Freedom purchased a billboard in an attempt to let people know that PETA kills thousands of animals a year, and has a much worse record for adoption than the local SPCA. Nobody was listening then, but now PETA employees have been charged with felony counts of animal cruelty.

On Thursday, two employees of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) were arrested on 31 felony animal-cruelty charges for killing and disposing of dogs and puppies in a dumpster. The Center for Consumer Freedom is calling on Americans to stop making donations to support PETA.

When Ahoskie police arrested PETA employees Andrew Cook and Adria Hinkle late Thursday, they found 18 dead dogs in a nearby shopping-center dumpster (including a bag containing seven dead puppies), and 13 more dead dogs in the PETA-owned van the two were driving. Police observed them throwing several dark-colored bags into the dumpster before the arrests were made.

This is not the first public mention of PETA's large-scale euthanasia program. In May 2005 the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) unveiled a giant Times Square billboard and a new website (http://www.PetaKillsAnimals.com). CCF had obtained official records from the state of Virginia showing the militant animal-rights group had put over 10,000 dogs and cats to death since 1998.

In 2003 PETA euthanized over 85 percent of the animals it took in, finding adoptive homes for just 14 percent. By comparison, the Norfolk SPCA found adoptive homes for 73 percent of its animals and the Virginia Beach SPCA adopted out 66 percent. PETA's required report documenting its 2004 record is currently over 4 weeks late according to CCF.

If this had been your or me, PETA would be having a press conference and fund raising campaign.

This is just sad:

In the Capitol basement yesterday, long-suffering House Democrats took a trip to the land of make-believe.

They pretended a small conference room was the Judiciary Committee hearing room, draping white linens over folding tables to make them look like witness tables and bringing in cardboard name tags and extra flags to make the whole thing look official.

Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) banged a large wooden gavel and got the other lawmakers to call him "Mr. Chairman." He liked that so much that he started calling himself "the chairman" and spouted other chairmanly phrases, such as "unanimous consent" and "without objection so ordered." The dress-up game looked realistic enough on C-SPAN, so two dozen more Democrats came downstairs to play along.

This would be funny if they didn't delve into moonbattery and start talking about impeachment.

The session was a mock impeachment inquiry over the Iraq war. As luck would have it, all four of the witnesses agreed that President Bush lied to the nation and was guilty of high crimes...

Cuckoo, cuckoo... Of course then there's the anti-Semitism.

The session took an awkward turn when witness Ray McGovern, a former intelligence analyst, declared that the United States went to war in Iraq for oil, Israel and military bases craved by administration "neocons" so "the United States and Israel could dominate that part of the world." He said that Israel should not be considered an ally and that Bush was doing the bidding of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

"Israel is not allowed to be brought up in polite conversation," McGovern said. "The last time I did this, the previous director of Central Intelligence called me anti-Semitic."

Where's Jim "Blame the J-E-W-S" Moran when you need him? Oh wait, here he is...

Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), who prompted the question by wondering whether the true war motive was Iraq's threat to Israel, thanked McGovern for his "candid answer."

Moran was one of the first Congressmen to blame Israel for Gulf War II. He even went so far as to apologize for his blaming of the Jews, right before he blamed them again. Even the Washington Post wondered how he keeps getting re-elected:

Challenging Moran should be the easiest job in America. After all, this is the congressman who -- you'll need a deep breath to make it to the end of this sentence -- grabbed an 8-year-old boy in a parking lot because Moran thought the kid had threatened him; borrowed $25,000 from a drug company lobbyist five days before agreeing to co-sponsor a bill that would help that lobbyist's client; took a $447,000 loan from a credit company four days before signing on to legislation that the company was pushing; got into a shoving match on the House floor with one colleague; threatened to punch another congressman in the nose; and just last year told an audience that there'd be no war against Iraq without the support of the Jewish community. Whew.

But I digress. Back at the mock impeachment hearings, the kooks were getting restless:

At Democratic headquarters, where an overflow crowd watched the hearing on television, activists handed out documents repeating two accusations -- that an Israeli company had warning of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and that there was an "insider trading scam" on 9/11 -- that previously has been used to suggest Israel was behind the attacks...

Conyers's firm hand on the gavel could not prevent something of a free-for-all; at one point, a former State Department worker rose from the audience to propose criminal charges against Bush officials. Early in the hearing, somebody accidentally turned off the lights; later, a witness knocked down a flag. Matters were even worse at Democratic headquarters, where the C-SPAN feed ended after just an hour, causing the activists to groan and one to shout "Conspiracy!"

Karl Rove, call your office.

Washington D.C.'s ban on "40s" and "Tall Boys" that I wrote about last year will never take effect. The Washington Post reports that the law has been struck down on appeal.

Opponents said the ban would devastate mom-and-pop stores that count on single sales for as much as 50 percent of their income in some months. But some neighborhood residents favored the action.

Jourdinia Brown, a neighborhood activist from Shepherd Park, said she remains concerned about the kind of activity that single sales could encourage along Georgia Avenue NW.

That's right, blame the beer.

In Virginia, Democrat Gubernatorial candidate Tim Kaine is using images of Charlton Heston and the NRA to show that he's no enemy to gun rights. On his website, Kaine says that he is a friend of the Second Amendment and that he "will not propose any new gun laws." The problem for Kaine is, his record speaks for itself.

For starters, the NRA calls his ad misleading, and is demanding that he pull it. Then there's this inconvenient fact:

Kaine drew the hostility of the NRA by using taxpayer money from his City Council Paygo account to send eight chartered buses to the Million Mom March, a gun-control rally in Washington in 2000. After being criticized for the use of public funds, Kaine raised private money to reimburse the city.

But his anti-gun record doesn't start and end with the not-even-close-to-a-Million Mommies. Conservative, Republican (there is a difference), part-time blogger, and full-time Commonwealth's Attorney who is not necessarily named John Behan, has the scoop on Kaine. (Behan is a UVA fan, but nobody's perfect.)

Now, let's take a look at Kaine's history.

- When Kaine last campaigned, in 2001, Sarah Brady's gun ban lobby (formerly Handgun Control Inc) endorsed him, saying that "Tim Kaine is the clear choice" in his race for Lieutenant Governor.

- In a Virginian-Pilot story dated May 25, 2001 about the Democratic candidates for Lt. Governor, Kaine said that he was in favor of gun control.

- In a Richmond Times-Dispatch story dated August 26, 1997, we see this: "Councilman Timothy M. Kaine suggested that the city team up with Fairfax and Norfolk, the other major urban areas in Virginia, and push gun laws together."

- In an story dated June 15, 2000, the RTD reported this: "Flanked by a group of gun-control activists on the steps of City Hall, Kaine said he will continue to promote what he called common-sense gun legislation."

- After a Lt. Governor candidate debate in 2001, the RTD reported that the "candidates differed on little during last night's debate, agreeing on issues ranging from abortion rights to support of gay civil unions and the need for gun control."

Don't forget that Tim Kaine tried to lead a lawsuit against gun-makers, saying he and other mayors "want gun makers to do two things: change the way they do business and hand over a bunch of money."

Of course this should come as no surprise. A real pro-freedom candidate would say something like, "I support the individual right to keep and bear arms, and will fight to ensure that the right of law-abiding citizens will not be infringed." But when asked about gun control, Kaine gets defensive, evasive, or uses doublespeak like "I will not propose any new gun laws." (As if it were the Governor's job to introduce legislation in the first place.)

Earlier this month, students from Aquin High School celebrated their high school graduation with a celebratory cigar. Their photo made the paper, so naturally the pleasure police are outraged. Kathleen Runte, principal of the school is apologizing for the photo, and in a letter to the editor entitled "Lessons learned from graduation cigars" she lashes out at the media for publishing the photo. (entire letter posted below)

Mea culpa! On behalf of the Aquin 2005 graduates, I apologize to those who were offended by the picture you published of them with their celebratory cigars. Even though cigars have a cultural history of denoting congratulations (i.e. birth of a child, etc.) the argument has been made that they are not the best choice for a high school graduation. I agree.

In fact, Aquin has an extensive educational program regarding the dangers of tobacco use and strong peer support for not smoking.

Our school has hosted the Relay for Life cancer fund drive for many years. This year, there are five teams participating from the Freeport Catholic Schools. The teams include more than 60 Aquin students (54 percent of the student body) who have worked diligently throughout the school year to raise funds for cancer research.

What began as an act of emancipation a few years ago became, over time, the thing to do. Even though graduation marks the end of a certain period of education, the students learned some lessons from this incident:

- A picture may not accurately summarize an event, but it is worth a thousand words.

- Don't engage in an indefensible action.

- Tabloid journalism sells newspapers.

- Cigar smoke stinks!

- Smoking a cigar is a good way to ensure that one will avoid smoking for the rest of one's life!

The Aquin graduates regret that your paper choice to pictorially symbolize a very solemn, spiritual and meaningful event in their lives by your questionable photo selection.

This experience will be added to many others as they learn to navigate through their adult lives. Permeating all of them, however, will be the gratitude for the continuing support of the Freeport community.

Kathleen Runte, principal

Aquin High School

Cuckoo, cuckoo. So according to the pleasure police moonbats, cigars are "indefensible", smoking one will ensure that you never smoke again, and publishing photos of cigar smokers is "tabloid journalism". Talk about melodramtic. On the other hand, this should be good news for all you cigarette addicts that want to quit smoking - just smoke a cigar.

Reverend Al Sharpton is lashing out at Consumer Advocate Ralph Nader for using the word that only blacks can use.

"Nader is not a racist by any stretch of the imagination," Sharpton told me yesterday. "He has a good track record. But he ought to be sensitive that he does not sanitize that word."

Speaking Wednesday night at a Washington fund-raiser to retire the debt from his 2004 presidential campaign, Nader complained that Democratic Party powerbrokers had kept him off the ballot in such Southern states as Georgia and Virginia - which reminded him of the oppressive Jim Crow laws that denied African-Americans equal rights.

"I felt like a [n-word]," remarked the 70-year-old white multimillionaire graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School. . .

"If Ed Koch had said what Ralph Nader said, we'd be marching," Sharpton noted. "This [scolding] doesn't rise to the level of a march. It rises to the level of a wrist slap."

Yesterday, Nader told me he was using the word in the same spirit as the Black Panthers of the 1960s - "as a word of defiance."

But Sharpton retorted: "He's not a Black Panther."

Democratic operative Harold Ickes - a former civil rights activist who lost a kidney in 1965 after being beaten to a pulp by white racists in Tallulah, La. - was also troubled by Nader's use of the epithet.

"It's not something that I would say," Ickes told me yesterday. "Having grown up in the 1950s and 1960s, I think it's not a word that whites can use."

If the word is really that bad, perhaps blacks should stop using it too.

From the Everything Causes Cancer Department, activists are targeting potato chips. The warning label nazis want consumers to be told that each bag of chips contains harmful cancer-causing chemicals.

Public health attorneys in California have potato chip makers in their sights for not listing a cancer-causing chemical present in many brands.

That chemical is acrylamide. It is an industrial chemical used in plastics, pesticides and sewage treatment that also can occur when starchy foods, such as chips, are processed at high temperatures. The World Health Organization has said acrylamide may be responsible for up to one-third of all cancers caused by diet, as demonstrated by laboratory animal studies. Acrylamide is already on California's list of chemicals known to cause cancer, but some chipmakers haven't listed it on their product packaging as required by Proposition 65 statute.

There you have it: Eat potato chips and die! It's one Goddamned unique ad campaign that's for sure.

Reuters is once again beating the drums about "record" high oil prices.

Oil prices set a new record of $58.60 a barrel on Friday, after the United States and other Western nations shut consulates in oil-producing Nigeria following a terrorist threat.

Of course when adjusted for inflation, oil prices are no where near the high prices reached during the 1970s oil crisis. But that wouldn't fit their leftist agenda.

I can think of hundreds of people who should probably glue their mouth shut. Come to think of it, they probably wouldn't be missed if they glued their nose shut too.

I must say, I wasn't expecting this:

The little guy is only 13 months old, and he can already sign his own name.

(Click to supersize)

Heh. Via Terpsboy.

(click to supersize)

Terpsboy is the King of Photoshop, but this appears legit and he usually marks the altered pics with his logo. Either way, check out where her rifle is pointed. Given the SA-80s they are carrying, the troops appear to be British.

Triumph the Insult Comic Dog vs. Michael Jackson Supporters.

(hat tip to Spoons)

I bought a new Springfield M1911-A1 two weeks ago. I finally got around to taking it to the range today, along with my Taurus PT945. First I shot about 50 rounds through the Taurus. I just had the extractor replaced and I wanted to make sure it was functioning properly. A spent casing used to "stove pipe" about once per magazine. In 50 rounds it didn't mis-feed once, so it appears to be fixed.

Before removing the target, I pulled out the Springfield and after spinning it on the table, I put a full magazine through it to get a feel for the trigger and how it fired.

I was satisfied with the pull, but couldn't quite tell where the rounds were going, so I pasted a fresh target. Two 7 round mags yielded interesting results:

Click to supersize

Out of 14 rounds, I shot 2 strays to the lower left corner. There was one wild round from each magazine but even they ended up grouped together on the lower left. It just goes to show that even my flinch is pretty consistent. If you count them all up, there are 2 strays, 3 in the triangle on the far left, 2 more a little high, and 7 through the main group.

It obviously pulls slightly to the left. Had I brought some tools with me, I would have tried adjusting the rear site to pull it back to the center. I never have been a great shot, mainly because I'm too busy to shoot regularly. For now I'm satisfied with these results, and adjusting the sites will just have to wait until next time.

UPDATE: My biggest complaint about the 1911 was that the rounds seem to eject straight up and back at me. Nothing like a hot .45 shell casing down the front of your shirt to keep you on your toes.

For the dad who's too busy to go off-roading - how about spray-on mud for his SUV.

Someone forgot to renew their domain yesterday.

Now why would the government want to spy on your internet surfing? Hmmm...

Data retention rules could permit police to obtain records of e-mail chatter, Web browsing or chat-room activity months after Internet providers ordinarily would have deleted the logs--that is, if logs were ever kept in the first place. No U.S. law currently mandates that such logs be kept.

In theory, at least, data retention could permit successful criminal and terrorism prosecutions that otherwise would have failed because of insufficient evidence. But privacy worries and questions about the practicality of assembling massive databases of customer behavior have caused a similar proposal to stall in Europe and could engender stiff opposition domestically. . .

McClure said that while the Justice Department representatives argued that Internet service providers should cooperate voluntarily, they also raised the "possibility that we should create by law a standard period of data retention." McClure added that "my sense was that this is something that they've been working on for a long time."

This represents an abrupt shift in the Justice Department's long-held position that data retention is unnecessary and imposes an unacceptable burden on Internet providers. In 2001, the Bush administration expressed "serious reservations about broad mandatory data retention regimes."

So if ISPs don't do it "voluntarily" they're going to push for a federal law mandating it. Of course I'm sure it could be easily defeated through SSL or simple encryption on each end - the same technology that masks your credit card numbers and personal information before you transmit it.

Otherwise it would be a hackers wet dream...

It has long been my contention that the WMATA is trying to drive riders away. While I've cataloged the widespread incompetance of Washington's rail system, the bus system appears to be just as bad. The WMATA is in charge of both.

Metrobus, which carries 500,000 passengers a day across the region, is a dilapidated system that suffers from weak supervision, old equipment and buses that travel in bunches, wrecking schedules and service, a panel of bus experts told Metro directors yesterday.

Thank God for bus experts.

"College towns lead in marijuana use" -- CNN Headline, June 16, 2005.

It looks like they are trying to tear down Madison Square Garden.

A Marine Harrier jet crashed into a residential neighborhood in Arizona. The pilot ejected to safety and nobody was seriously hurt, but this caught my eye:

The jet was carrying four 500-pound bombs and 300 rounds of 25-millimeter ammunition, none of which exploded.

Had this been a Buick, and had this happend on any number of prime time TV shows, it would have exploded 2 or 3 times.

Running from the cops is stupid enough, but trying to vault a wrought iron fence while handcuffed qualifies you as a runner up for a Darwin Award.

The incident happened last Thursday when a teenager under arrest for assault tried to flee police as he was about to be transported in a patrol car.

The teenager, who has since been identified as Cody Carlson, bolted from the car and tried to vault the fence with his hands cuffed behind his back.

Firefighters ended up having to cut out a section of the fence in order to free him, sending both Carlson and the fence to the hospital.

Cody lived and is presumably still able to reproduce, so no Darwin Award for him.

On the subject of Time Magazine's Gitmo Gulag article, Senator Dick Durban, D-Ill. had this (PDF) to say:

"If I read this to you and didn't tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe that this must have happened by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime - Pol Pot or others - that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that's not the case. This was the action of Americans and treatment of their own prisoners." -- Senator Dick Durban, D-Ill. comparing our soldiers to Nazis on the floor of the Senate, June 14, 2005.

Environmentalist wackos are going ga-ga over a hydrogen powered motorcycle.

While attention has been focused on developing pollution-free hydrogen-powered cars, Intelligent Energy and some others have turned instead to two-wheeled transportation.

The firm, which is relocating to Los Angeles from London, says the motorcycle's fuel cell develops the equivalent of eight horsepower, good for speeds up to 50 miles an hour. The cycle has a range of about 100 miles on a tank of fuel. Currently, a hydrogen fill-up would cost about $3, says the cycle's project director, Andy Eggleston.

Hydrogen is not pollution free. Disposal of the fuel cell aside, hyrdogen gas is generated through electrolysis of water. That is, water is broken down into hydrogen and oxygen gas using electricity; electricity that is largely generated from oil and other fossil fuels.

Explaining the Senate's apology for keeping lynching legal for 100 years, the media is blaming "southern conservatives" for blocking civil rights legislation. Here is an example of one of those "southern conservatives".

"Martin Luther King fled the scene. He took to his heels and disappeared, leaving it to others to cope with the destructive forces he had helped to unleash. And I hope that well-meaning negro leaders and individuals in the negro community in Washington will now take a new look at this man who gets other people into trouble and then takes off like a scared rabbit." -- Senator and former Ku Klux Klansman Robert Byrd, DEMOCRAT-WVa, in a 1968 speech.

A California principal is asking teacher to pass kids along to comply with George Bush's evil No Child Left Behind Act.

A high school principal asked teachers to reconsider the grades of failing seniors to help the school meet federal requirements under the No Child Left Behind law.

Saddleback High School Principal Esther Jones sent teachers a memo on Thursday asking them to reconsider the grades of 98 students, saying "please review your records for these students and determine if they would merit a grade of 'D' instead of a failure."

Jones added that the school needed 95 percent of its seniors to graduate to meet federal requirements. In fact, the school needs a graduation rate of 82.8 percent and will graduate nearly 84 percent of its 500 seniors on Wednesday, school officials said.

A resident's tree was taken hostage and is being held for ransom. (full article quoted below)

A 6-foot-tall bald cypress tree planted on a Berkeley neighborhood street has been stolen -- allegedly for purposes of pubic safety.

The man who planted the tree says he's received two ransom notes since the tree went missing about a month ago.

The notes say the tree will be returned if the man who planted it promises not to replant it in the same place. The tree-napper says the tree obstructs the views of drivers in the area.

The owner says he is in negotiations to free the tree.

"Rabid hyena gunned down after killing 9" -- Headline, Ass. Press, June 15, 2005.

A rabid hyena mauled 9 people to death and injured 15 more. It was such a menace that "hundreds of frightened villagers sought refuge at a primary school, and many are still too afraid to go home." But to the media elites, when police and wildlife rangers tracked it down and killed it, the hyena was said to be "gunned down".

The gun grabbers have a new poll out, and it shows that Americans oppose concealed carry by overwhelming numbers. According to the poll, only 1 in 4 Americans thinks concealed carry should be legal, and nearly 2/3 of people wet their pants at the thought of entering a public place where concealed handguns are allowed.

"These numbers from the Gallup poll speak for themselves: The gun lobby's agenda to permit the carrying of hidden, loaded handguns in public is extremist and out of the mainstream," said Jeri Bonavia, Executive Director of the Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort. "Lawmakers should know when they push for CCW legislation, they're going out on a limb for a radical policy that is not supported by the voters in their districts."

Other civil rights violations that had popular support:

Slavery

Segregation

Rounding up Jews and shipping them off in box cars

Progressive taxation

Banning the display of religious symbols

Conscription

Cold Dead Hands
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Do politicians wake up in the morning and say, "What can we tax those idiots for today?" Apparently they do in Alexandria, where Democrat Mayor William Euille said, "I was just sitting in my car at the intersection. I looked around at 15 or 20 other cars, and everybody had a cell phone." Now they've passed a $3 a month cell phone tax. (emphasis mine)

The City Council approved a new tax on cell phones as part of the fiscal 2006 budget. It will help make up some of the money that the city will lose after the real estate tax rate was lowered in order to provide relief to homeowners. Residents will see the new charge on their cell phone bills starting in September.

So Alexandria lowered their property tax rates and is losing money, right? They have to make up that lost revenue from somewhere right? That must be the case, because even the Washington Post headline declares: "Alexandria to Tax Cell Phones as Other Revenue Drops". Sounds serious, doesn't it?

Indeed, the Post reports as though Alexandria is losing money hand over fist:

Other measures passed to offset the real estate tax cut include a 20-cent increase in cigarette sales tax and a new entertainment surcharge on items such as movie tickets.

Taxing the growing number of cell phone users should help offset the losses created by a reduction in the real estate tax rate, Mayor William D. Euille (D) said.

Oh, woe is me. We cut the tax rate and now we're going to go bankrupt! Right? Wrong. It's all bullshit.

Check out Alexandria's dirty little secret when it comes to property taxes. If you want to know why they passed the property tax "cut", you need to look no further than press releases on their own government web site. (emphasis still mine)

For calendar year 2005, the overall assessed value of real property. . .increased 21.2%.

"This overall increase reflects the strength and health of the Alexandria economy, and the continued demand for both rental and owner-occupied housing in the City and other urban jurisdictions close to the District of Columbia," said Mayor William D. Euille. "The City Council recognizes the increased burden of the higher assessments on residents and will take this into consideration when reviewing next year's budget and the real estate tax rate," he said. . .

The overall value of the City's residential real property tax base increased in 2005 by 22.9%. New residential construction accounted for $206 million of the $3.03 billion increase; appreciation accounted for remaining $2.82 billion of the increase.

The average assessed value of an existing residential home (single family and condominium) increased 21.3% in 2005.

o The average assessed value for an existing single family home (single family detached and townhouses) as of Jan. 1, 2005, is $563,092, increasing 18.6% over last year's assessed value.

o The average assessed value for an existing residential condominium as of Jan. 1, 2005, is $287,765, increasing 28.8% from last year.

o Notably this year, the average high rise condominium increased 32.6% from $209,829 to $278,296.

They cut the tax rate a eight cents because housing assessments were increasing nearly 30% a year, every year. They even point out that "average assessed value of an existing residential home increasing 131% since CY 2000." That means that since the year 2000, tax bills have more than doubled.

The tax "cut" that the Post is referring to is the 8-cent cut in the tax rate (from 99.5 cents per $100 to 91.5 cents) that was just passed. The Washington Post called this a "revenue drop", but just last month they noted that tax bills will still rise by leaps and bounds.

"Alexandria officials trimmed the city's tax rate by 8 cents, but that will soften the increase -- still hefty at $418 on average -- only slightly"

How that qualifies as a "revenue drop" is a mystery that only liberals can understand.

The all-knowing, all-powerful BCS - who choose the college football "national champion" each year - are putting out a casting call for poll voters.

The new poll, which would be added to the BCS weekly rankings, would consist of former players, coaches, administrators and members of the media, the BCS said in a statement.

Harris Interactive, a marketing research and polling firm that operates The Harris Poll, "is in the process of contacting a random sample of individuals nominated by the conferences and Notre Dame to determine interest in participating in the poll," BCS coordinator and Big 12 commissioner Kevin Weiberg said in the statement.

Carin Constantine was a law student at George Mason University. She was given an F in her Constitutional Law class after failing the final exam. She suffers from migraine headaches, so she sued the Professor and GMU for violating her Constitutional right to keep taking the test over again until she passes. (It's right there in Article III.)

The courts threw out her case, but on appeal the 4th Circuit court said that she could sue under the Americans with Disabilities Act (also not part of the Constitution).

The Washington Post notes the lengths to which GMU tried to accommodate her disability.

After missing Lund's final exam in December 2002 because of migraines, Constantine was allowed to retake the test in January. About an hour into the exam, she recalled "everything got blurry."

After she flunked the exam, and therefore the course, Constantine pleaded her case with Lund, who said he would talk to the dean. After administrators ignored her calls and e-mails for months, she said, the university set a retest for June but suddenly moved up the date by a month and gave her no time to prepare. She flunked again, had to retake the class with a different professor and wound up getting a C.

So she failed the exam three times, and eventually retook the entire course and passed with just a C. Now she is suing, presumably to get the F off of her record. Sounds like something a lawyer would do.

Silver Spring Maryland is undergoing redevelopment, and that has some people worried. They think that incoming retail chains and franchised restaurants will destroy diversity. They fear that homegrown small businesses will be displaced by *gasp* evil corporate owned stores.

One resident votes with his pocketbook.

Crime novelist and Silver Spring resident George P. Pelecanos said he checks to see whether Silver Spring Books has the volume he needs before he goes to the just-arrived Borders. He stays true to Vicino Ristorante Italiano on Sligo Avenue, because the proprietor "puts out a better product" than the newcomers.

"People have to make a conscious choice," he said, and they're more likely to do so if they are of a certain age. "The people coming up -- kids, teenagers, people in their twenties -- they're programmed to go to those places," he said, referring to restaurants and stores run by large [evil] corporations.

So, he believes that books sold at a locally owned store are better than the books sold at Border's Books and Expresso. Right or wrong, it's his money. (I personally won't shop at Best Buy because of the dirty bastards that run the place.)

But then there are those that want to force diversity on people whether they like it or not.

Laura Steinberg, the outgoing board chairman of Impact Silver Spring, a nonprofit group funded in part by county grants, said there is a difference between voicing support for diversity and taking the steps necessary to maintain it.

On one level, she said, people need to think about the repercussions of choosing Starbucks over Kefa Cafe. On another, she added, residents of the new Silver Spring may need to assert more control over what happens next.

If you buy coffee or T-shirts from Starbucks, you need to think about what you've done. If you still don't get it, the government may need to "assert more control". That sounds like a threat to me.

So, the Senate apologized for not passing anti-lynching legislation sooner, and letting the issue fester from the 1880s to about 1960.

But guess how it is being sold by the Ass. Press and other cronies in the mainstream media. No blatant liberal bias here:

But the Senate, with Southern conservatives wielding filibuster powers, refused to act. With the enactment of civil rights laws in the 1960s and changes in national attitudes, the issue faded away.

(emphasis mine) By "Southern Conservatives" they really mean Southern DEMOCRATS. It was the DEMOCRAT PARTY who used the filibuster to block Civil Rights legislation all those years.

Today's trash laying in, on, or near the road was:

• Caution Tape - The yellow kind, that says "police line".

I guess there was nobody around to write them a ticket for littering.

Statistics
Commute: I could have turned the engine off and just pushed the car to save gas.
Door to door: 37 minutes

In Ireland a gang of armed raiders attempted to rob a post office. The robbery was foiled by the Irish police force and two of the thugs were sent home in body bags. But not everyone is pleased. Critics claim that one of the robbers was gunned down "in cold blood". They even go so far as to fall victim to Ravenwood's Law.

There is clearly a section of society that is outraged by the rise in crime and many people support a zero-tolerance policy. Yet it is too simplistic to suggest that these raiders had it coming to them. Wild West tactics never solved anything.

"Wild West" tactics seem to have worked perfectly to foil this robbery.

If you want see the irrational fear of guns on display you need to look no further than Maryland, where they are heatedly debating implementation of a Federal law that allows officers to carry guns nation wide:

Leah Barrett, executive director of the gun-control group CeaseFire Maryland Inc., said allowing officers to carry a gun anywhere at any time is "essentially dangerous."

"We have too many guns in this country and too many people carrying them," she said. "Accidents happen."

Yes, accidents do happen. But wrapping people in bubble-wrap and not letting them leave their house is not the answer.

(Via Say Uncle)

Now you know what those online dating photos (177k) really mean.

Captain Dennis Muhammad will be paid $15,000 to teach diversity training to the New Orleans Police Department. Muhammad's selection has sparked criticism because he also serves as the security chief for Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

At the press conference announcing the training, a rabbi and priest expressed concern about Muhammad's selection. Such concern is more than justified considering the history of Muhammad's boss, Louis Farrakhan. Here are just a few of the Nation of Islam's beliefs, as well as some of Farrakhan's disturbing statements:

• Whites are "blue eyed devils."


• Jews are "bloodsuckers"


• "Hitler was a very great man."


• Jews controlled the slave trade and currently control the government


• Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad believed that whites were created by an evil Black scientist and that there will be "The Great Decisive Battle in the Sky" when a space ship will kill all white people by bombing the earth


• Muhammad believed that white people should relocate to Europe and that racial integration was wrong

In addition, Farrakhan has met with dictators in Sudan, Libya and Iraq, before the war, and praised their governments while denouncing the United States.

Well if the guy can't teach Farrakhan to be any nicer than that, what makes him qualified to teach the NOPD?

After failing two years ago, Washington D.C. is once again going try to ban smoking on private property. This time Mayor Anthony Williams is supporting the ban. It looks like the smoke-nazis have enough votes to get an outright ban passed in bars and restaurants, but Councilman Carol Schwartz (R-at large) is pushing for a compromise which is nearly as distasteful.

Opponents of a total ban, including the chairman of the committee, council member Carol Schwartz (R-At Large), said the District is unlike other cities and states because it relies almost solely on the hospitality industry and that out-of-state competition is just a quick Metro ride away in Virginia or Prince George's County.

She appealed for a compromise that would protect freedom of choice for customers while moving toward an increasing number of smoke-free restaurants and bars in the city.

So it looks like D.C. is headed for either an outright smoking ban, or a social engineering project that would use taxpayer dollars. Smokers are just too small of a minority to stave off the temperance movement.

As a non-smoker, I stand solely on principle on this issue. I too hate going to bars and coming home smelling of smoke. But I realize that I have a choice. If it bothered me so much, I would simply go to non-smoking bars, or not go out at all. What I WOULD NOT do is use the police power of the government to force property owners to cater to my whims and personal preferences. It's not only selfish and rude, but it's anti-capitalist and anti-American.

Anti-smokers claim that there are no non-smoking restaurants or bars. Not only is this not true, it's irrelevant. All sizeable restaurants have a non-smoking section, and many are completely smoke-free. Assuming that the claim is true - that there is a huge demand for smoke-free restaurants that isn't being met - then open one. If I saw a huge demand for non-smoking bars not being met, I would open a smoke-free bar and rake in the dough. That's how free enterprise works.

Then there is the claim that secondhand smoke kills between three thousand and three million people a year. This is especially dubious since both the CDC and WHO have been unable to prove a causal link between passive smoke and cancer, despite trying to do just that. Both organizations set out with an anti-smoking agenda and were unable to prove a link between the two. And this claim having failed the personal choice argument is usually extended to helpless employees, forced to work in dangerous environments. But personal choice in where you work negates that as well. If you're allergic to cats and dogs you don't work for a pet store, if you hate fire you don't join the fire department, and if you don't like smoke you don't work in the service industry. Life is full of choices and you shouldn't blame other people for choices you've made.

But what is most astounding is how the pleasure police claim that the restaurant industry isn't hurt at all by compulsory smoking bans. As if a trumped up university study or majority rule is all the justification needed to nullify property rights. Come up with a study and all of a sudden you're empowered to tell people how to run their business or live their lives. That spells tyranny, and I refuse to support it.

The California Department of Justice is forcing the recall of .22 rimfire handguns because they have been re-classified as "assault weapons" under California law.

In late April, the California Department of Justice Firearms Division (DOJ) sent out 4320 disturbing letters demanding that buyers of the Smith & Wesson/Walther P-22 handgun, a .22 caliber target pistol, send the guns back to Smith & Wesson within 45 days for a retrofit or face criminal prosecution.

A DOJ Firearms Division agent contends these target handguns are "assault weapons" because they have a threaded barrel part used to assemble the firearm that could also potentially be used to accommodate a silencer or flash suppressor. . .

Despite the DOJ's allowing the firearms to be sold in California for nearly two years after discovering the threaded barrel, the DOJ has forced the manufacturer and purchasers to bear of the burden of modifying the firearm. DOJ did not seek immunity legislation for buyers (as has been done in previous similar situations), and it precluded the purchasers from registering the firearms as an "assault weapon," as DOJ had originally planned. (Since the P-22 is a handgun, it was registered with the state when purchased anyway, as all handguns purchased in California are.) Instead, DOJ threatened Smith & Wesson with an $11 million dollar Unfair Business Practice Act lawsuit if the company did not initiate this recall.

Despite the fact that the California DOJ "tested and certified the P-22 handguns as 'safe' for sale, and approved them to be sold for two years before acting", customers and the manufacturer will bear the cost of modifying the firearm. If the firearms are not retrofitted, consumers face criminal prosecution.

I submit the following as evidence; no comment needed. . .

According to a poll published in the current issue of Children's Magazine, 38 percent of French men questioned say they wish they could be pregnant instead of their wives.

And the poll finds many women would be OK with that. An even greater percentage of them say they would be up for the switch.

The same survey says 71 percent of the French men surveyed say they're prepared to take a yearlong sabbatical or put in a request to work part-time to be more of a hands-on dad.

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Remember the medical marijuana case, where the Supreme Court rewrote the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution? Basically they said the Fed can make all the laws they want, and the states have to abide by it because we're the Fed, and we know what's best for you. With the Interstate Commerce test basically vacated, Clarence Thomas noted in his dissent: "the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers".

Well, Kevin Baker points out that they are already using that decision as justification for other cases where the Imperial Federal Government fails the Interstate Commerce Clause.

Effective July 1st, Virginia will be a traffic camera free zone. The law authorizing their use is expiring and was not renewed by the General Assembly. If the state of Illinois is any guide, that is beginning to look like a really good thing. Up in the liberal mid-west, they take their revenue generaton highway safety very seriously. Omnibus Driver reports:

Beginning in July the State of Illinois will use speed cameras in areas designated as "work zones" on major freeways. Anyone caught by the devices will be mailed a $375 ticket for the first offense, but a second ticket will cost $1000 and comes with a 90-day license suspension. Drivers will also receive demerit points against their license, which allows insurance companies to raise their insurance rates.

I've noticed a trend whereby lawmakers are starting to increase point penalties as well as fines. While this is a moving violation which would warrant points, Virginia recently started charging points for HOV violations. If too many localities pile on the points, the whole point system will be so watered down that insurance companies will have no choice but to start ignoring them.

I wonder if this would work for those false complaints against Tom DeLay:

If Nashville's police union has its way, anyone who makes a formal complaint against a Metro police officer could face felony criminal charges if the department's internal investigators clear the officer of wrongdoing.

Link via Say Uncle.

Kevin Baker got a surprise in his Sunday Paper.

General Motors is losing money due to slumping sales, so they intend to lower prices, hoping that it will increase sales and revenue. Lower prices, higher revenue. Imagine that. You see it all the time in retail, usually around national holidays. It's a proven method. But if you substitute the word 'taxes' for 'prices', all of a sudden the politicians claim that'll never work.

Members of the irrelevant G8 conference are proposing an income distribution scheme whereby evil rich people pay extra for their airline tickets. France and Germany are pushing the measure, which would distribute the money amongst the poorer nations, presumably after it filters through several layers of corrupt bureaucracy. Oh and it will also solve Global Warming.

[British Airways] said the notion of the tax was "illogical". A spokeswoman said: "There is no justification for singling out airline passengers for an additional tax to fund development in the Third World."

She said it was hard to see why aid for small business in Mozambique should be funded in part by a family travelling from Glasgow to Malaga for a holiday.

A spokesman for easyJet said the proposal was "confused". "Why only target airline passengers - why not bus passengers?" he asked. "If you want to go after a particular industry why not go after the oil industry, where companies such as BP and Shell make record profits."

Yeah, don't go after us, we're just consumers. Take it out on "Big Oil", because we airlines won't be impacted at all by increasing oil prices. [/sarcasm]

But John Stewart, the chairman of Transport 2000, a pressure group, said the proposal was a step forward as the aviation industry was undertaxed.

"Aviation is a great contributor to global warming and it is African countries which will be the greatest sufferers from it," he said. "It seems there is a logic about a tax on aviation, which is a great polluter, to help those will be the top victims. It could be a Live Aid of the air."

Heh. Well, I would hate to see anyone go undertaxed.

For those of you keeping score on the cliches, thats:

Those greedy bastards at Big Oil

Global Warming, poor blacks hardest hit

The poor 'woe is me' airlines on the brink of bankruptcy

The rich air travelers not paying their fair share of taxes

Left-wing Conspiracy
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A San Francisco woman was afraid that her 12-year old son would be attacked by her family dog, so she locked him in the basement. The son, not the dog.

Maureen Faibish said she ordered Nicholas to stay in the basement while she did errands on June 3, the day he was attacked by one or both of the dogs.

She said she was worried about the male dog, Rex, who was acting possessive because the female, Ella, was in heat.

"I put him down there, with a shovel on the door," Faibish said in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle. "And I told him: 'Stay down there until I come back.' Typical Nicky, he wouldn't listen to me."

Nicholas apparently found a way to open the basement door.

She claims the female dog was in heat and the male had become aggressive. It sounds pretty fishy to me. In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Faibish said, "It's Nicky's time to go. . .When you're born you're destined to go and this was his time."

UPDATE: The more I think about this, the more skeptical I get. If I wanted to keep someone hostage, locking them in the basement and posting guard dogs might be a good way to do it.

TIME Magazine attempts to show just how horrible the treatment is at the Guantanamo Bay Gulag. I had no idea the torture was this inhumane. Check out the details of the escalated interrogation techniques. These were used on a prisoner who was intended to be one of the 9/11 hijackers:

Dripping Water or Playing Christina Aguilera Music: After the new measures are approved, the mood in al-Qahtani's interrogation booth changes dramatically. The interrogation sessions lengthen. The quizzing now starts at midnight, and when Detainee 063 dozes off, interrogators rouse him by dripping water on his head or playing Christina Aguilera music. According to the log, his handlers at one point perform a puppet show "satirizing the detainee's involvement with al-Qaeda." He is taken to a new interrogation booth, which is decorated with pictures of 9/11 victims, American flags and red lights. He has to stand for the playing of the U.S. national anthem. His head and beard are shaved. He is returned to his original interrogation booth. A picture of a 9/11 victim is taped to his trousers. Al-Qahtani repeats that he will "not talk until he is interrogated the proper way." At 7 a.m. on Dec. 4, after a 12-hour, all-night session, he is put to bed for a four-hour nap, TIME reports.

Another procedure called for "Invasion of Space by a Female", where the prisoner was "agitated by the close physical presence of a woman".

I had no idea that al Qaeda operatives were such wussies. They wouldn't last five minutes in a fraternity hazing ritual.

Mike Tyson's boxing career is over. Again. This weekend he lost to Ireland's Kevin McBride, whom Tyson was favored to beat handily. According to the AP, although Tyson was winning the fight on the score card, the tempo had changed and he gave up after the 6th round and refused to come out of his corner.

"I don't have the stomach for this anymore," Tyson said. "I most likely won't fight anymore. I'm not going to disrespect the sport by losing to this caliber of fighters."

So, the man who intentionally bit off both of Evander Holyfield's ears doesn't want to disrespect the sport. This wouldn't ring quite so hollow if Tyson had at least fought a clean fight before giving up.

Tyson was weary by the fifth round and, in the sixth round, he was penalized two points for deliberately head butting McBride and opening a cut over his left eye. The head butt came after Tyson appeared to try to break McBride's arm in a clinch like he once did against Francois Botha and after he hit him with several low blows.

At least he's not disrespecting the sport. For his defeat, Tyson got $5 million, most of which was snapped up by his creditors. McBride earned $150,000.

This is how it starts. Parents are being encouraged to have their children's eyes scanned and entered into a database for identification purposes. Then if your kid goes missing, it will supposedly be easier to identify him.

Children stand about a foot away from a camera that takes a picture of the iris, which stretches in the first six months after birth and leaves marks. After that, it doesn't change.

Parents get a driver's license-sized card that includes a picture and the iris scan. Then parents can decide whether to release the child's information to the national database or just keep the card.

It takes about 15 seconds for the iris to be photographed and about nine seconds to search the database for a match.

At least they are giving parents the option to hold onto the card and not enter it into the database right away. Still, I can't help but be wary that this may soon be compulsory, and implemented in government schools. Banks and local retailers are already turning to fingerprint scans as a means of identification for payment.

"Man charged with selling pot from ice cream truck" -- AP, June 10, 2005.

"Disguised as ice cream vendors, Cheech and Chong make--and subsequently lose--millions of dollars selling a batch of marijuana with an unusual side effect." -- Cheech and Chong's Nice Dreams.

Here we go again with the mythical trade deficit:

The U.S. trade deficit shot up 12 percent in April to $56.96 billion, reflecting a surge in oil imports to the second highest level on record, the government reported Friday. . .

The soaring trade deficits have translated into a major political headache for President Bush as critics contend his trade policies have failed to protect American workers from unfair foreign competition, resulting in a string of record deficits and the loss of more than 3 million manufacturing jobs since mid-2000.

The trade deficit just means we buy more than we sell. For instance, I had a $30 trade deficit with my dry cleaners last week. Leaving the grocery store this weekend, I looked at my receipt and noticed an $80 trade deficit. Does that mean my dry cleaner and my grocer are better off than I am? Of course not. I don't want to have to dry clean my own suits every week or milk my own cows to get milk. I pay other people to do that for me. Should the government step in and tell me that I can't buy milk and have to go produce it myself?

Dr. Walter E. Williams says that the trade deficit actually shows just how well our economy is doing.

The fact that foreigners are willing to exchange massive amounts of goods in exchange for slips of paper in the forms of currency, stocks and bonds should be a source of pride. It means America, with its wealth, rule of law and the sanctity of contracts, inspires foreigners to hold large amounts of their wealth in U.S. obligations. Their willingness to do so means something else: Trade increases competition. Ultimately it's competition, many producers competing for his dollar, that truly protects the consumer. What protects producers, at the expense of consumers, are restrictions on competition. The quest to restrict competition is what lies at the heart of the trade deficit demagoguery. When's the last time you heard a consumer complaining about his buying more from a Chinese or Japanese producer than that producer buys from him?

It's been my experience that trade deficits are nothing more than a way to talk down the economy and trash the current administration.

High speed internet is great, until it no longer works. Right now my DSL modem is nothing more than a glorified paperweight, and my troubleshooting ability allows for merely turning the thing off and back on again, and beating it against the desk. Neither method seems to be making the activity light stop flashing steadily and start flashing randomly like it should when it's receiving data. I can't even pull an IP address. I do know that the problem is with the DSL modem (or the DSLAM) and not on my end.

Fortunately, having a wireless laptop and living in an apartment complex gives me -=ahem=- creative ways of getting access to the internet. You wonder why there's so much spam in the world? By typing in the gateway address I even have access to administer the unsecured router of my borrowed internet connection. (Of course being an honest person, I'm not about to do anything malicious.)

Any way, I've put in an email support ticket to my DSL company. They don't send any sort of acknowledgement, not even the "Hey we got your message, don't reply to this email" email. There isn't even a mechanism to check the status of the trouble ticket without phoning them directly, which it says not to do until you've given them at least 24 hours.

The bottom line is that I've been without internet (except for this bootlegged wireless connection) all weekend, and I don't know when it will return. Depending on how long it takes for them to fix, blogging may be light next week.

What was life like before the internet? Oh yeah, we had BBSs.

UPDATE: ISP rep called today almost exactly 24 hours later. He had me unplug the DSL modem, wait 15 seconds, and then plug it back in. They're sending a real tech out on Tuesday to troubleshoot the DSLAM.

This rediculous 'Newspaper Loophole' thing is really becoming quite the anti-gun crusade. I had heard about it in the past, but now it seems to really be getting legs.

It's funny how whenever someone is hit or runover by a car, they don't trace the car back to see how it was acquired. I mean, how many of these cars were bought from unlicensed sellers posting classified ads?

A little prodding by Sean Hannity was all it took to send Rosie O'Donnell into a mental meltdown on ABC. The MRC reports and has an MP3 of the event:

Amongst O'Donnell's outlandish allegations, she claimed that "Christopher Reeve died without hope because of the religious -- separation -- lack of separation of church and state by this administration. . .

She repeatedly yelled that Hannity was "delusional" in denying widespread "torture" by the U.S. of prisoners and re-affirmed her charge that George Bush is "a war criminal," arguing that "he should be tried at the Hague." When Hannity pointed out how "50 million people are free because George W. Bush is President today," O'Donnell fired back: "And how many American poor children are dead, fighting a war that was never needed?" And when Hannity suggested Condoleezza Rice as a presidential candidate, O'Donnell clenched her teeth with her eyes bulging as she explained: "That's my head almost exploding. I think she's going to unzip herself and it's going to be Dick Cheney's twin brother."

"[The Iraq War] is the biggest fraud ever committed on the people of this country. This is just as bad as six million Jews being killed. The whole world knew it and they were quiet about it, because it wasn't their ox that was being gored." -- Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-NY.

But remember, there is no anti-gun bias in the media:

Since November 2001, a group called Iowans for the Prevention of Gun Violence has been trying to persuade newspapers to not accept classified ads for guns from people who are not licensed dealers.

Wednesday, its "Campaign to Close the Newspaper Loophole" announced the policy had been adopted by four more Ohio papers, including the Cincinnati Enquirer and its joint operating agency partner the Cincinnati Post, as well as three Iowa dailies and a Nebraska daily.

The group said since its campaign began, a total of 26 papers with a combined circulation of 5.8 million have changed their policy after being contacted by the group.

This is like refusing to accept ads for used cars because it cuts down on car accidents.

The estimated 48 Million people without health insurance may not have an excuse for much longer. Discount warehouse store, Costco, is planning to offer health insurance a la cart.

In a pilot program to be launched next month in Southern California, Costco Wholesale Corp., the low-cost bulk supplier of merchandise as diverse as breakfast cereal and motor oil, will offer family and individual health insurance coverage to its "executive" members. Company officials said the insurance is aimed at people such as contractors, waiters and students who are self-employed or cannot sign up for plans at work.

Company officials would not quote premiums but said the insurance would be 5 percent to 20 percent cheaper than policies individuals could buy on their own. About 18 million U.S. households belong to Costco, including 3.4 million that pay $100 a year for executive membership.

Costco competitor, Sam's Club, plans to offer discount programs for practices such as laser eye surgery and dental care.

When the war against driving with cell phones started, pundits pointed out that it's not the phone that's distracting, it's the conversation. We also pointed out that other activities like eating, reading, and fiddling with the CD player while driving are much more dangerous.

Now the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is saying that using hands free kits while driving is just as dangerous as talking directly into the handset.

The research adds to a growing body of studies that suggest hands-free cell-phone systems do not deliver the safety benefits automakers and legislators had thought.

But whether drivers use a handheld device or not, "phone use degraded both driving performance and vehicle control," said NHTSA's Elizabeth Mazzae, according to the paper.

Hands-free devices can give drivers a false sense of security, as research has shown that it is the act of conversation that leads to distraction and inattentive driver behavior, NHTSA officials have said.

Jeff Greenberg, director of Ford Motor Co.'s driving simulator, said "The preponderance of evidence suggests that long conversations while driving impair your ability to react to events. . .But it would be difficult to make rules about conversations in vehicles."

You can't spank your kids. Using red ink to grade their papers will destroy their self esteem. You can't give them homework because the books are too heavy to carry home. Now you can't even let your kid mow the lawn without being accused of some sort of child abuse.

Outdoor jobs in landscaping, groundskeeping and lawn services made the National Consumers League's list of five dangerous jobs for young workers for the first time this year, taking the No. 3 spot. . .

While fatality numbers are low in these types of outdoor jobs, work often involves the use of dangerous power tools and machinery, as well as hazardous chemicals and pesticides.

I guess McDonalds is out too, because it involves hot ovens, scalding grease, and don't forget those harsh cleansers and chemicals.

Your's truly started mowing lawns at about 10 years old. I gave that up when I was 12 to work a morning paper route. When I was 14, I got a real job working at an ice cream shop, where I not only scooped ice cream, but had to do the nightly bookkeeping and drop the deposit off after closing. When I was 15, I worked in deconstruction helping remodel a retail store. Despite using power circular saws and reciprocating saws I came through it with all 10 fingers and toes. At 16 I worked down at the oceanfront guarding against shoplifters and restocking shelves. It was the most boring job I've ever had. At 17 I worked for a landscaper and lawn maintenance company. Not only did we use power mowers and harmful poisons, but I had to drive a company truck pulling a company trailer full of company equipment.

Jobs like that didn't seem atypical. Several of my friends had similar "dangerous" jobs with lots of responsibility. In middle America it's not uncommon for kids to drive tractors or work on farms. Decades ago kids worked in factories or lied about their age to join the military.

I'm not saying all these things are right, but the way we coddle our kids today worries me. Could we have liberated Europe (twice) with people that had grown up whining about every little thing? "Sarge, my rifle is too heavy. Do I have to carry all these bullets around with me?"

Socialists are up in arms (well not really, they banned them all), when a court ruled that Quebec's ban on private health care is illegal.

"In sum, the prohibition on obtaining private health insurance is not constitutional where the public system fails to deliver reasonable services," the court found.

The case centres on a claim of Quebec doctor Jacques Chaoulli and his patient, George Zeliotis, who charged that the Quebec ban on buying private insurance ran afoul of both the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as well as the Quebec charter.

Mr. Zeliotis launched the challenge after being forced to spend a year on a waiting list for a hip replacement in 1997 because he was prevented from paying to get faster service. Dr. Chaoulli has also long argued for the right to set up his own private medical business.

The court ruled that since Canada's health care system is so bad, that to prevent people from buying private care violates basic human rights.

UPDATE: The AP adds:

The universal health-care system--while considered one of the fairest in the world--has been plagued by long waiting lists and a lack of doctors, nurses and new equipment. Some patients wait years for surgery, MRI machines are scarce and many Canadians travel to the United States for medical treatment.

In most Canadian provinces, it is illegal to seek faster treatment and jump to the head of the line by paying out of pocket for public care. Private health clinics have sprouted up even though they are technically illegal, though the provincial governments tend to look the other way.

After yet another BCS debacle, the AP pulled it's rankings from the BCS formula. Now ESPN has followed suit and is disassociating itself from the rankings formula. ESPN wasn't necessarily upset with football matchups being determined by complex computer formulas and popularity contests. They just wanted the voting to be out in the open for everyone to see. Since the Coaches votes will continue to remain anonymous, ESPN is taking their ball and going home.

"There will still be a coaches' poll, and it will be used by the BCS, but we don't have a comment on ESPN's decision," said Bob Burda, spokesman for BCS coordinator Kevin Weiberg.

The AP poll and the ESPN/USA Today coaches' poll had been the major components of the BCS rankings.

However, the AP said such use was never sanctioned and had reached the point where it threatened to undermine the independence and integrity of its poll.

ESPN had sponsored the coaches' poll with USA Today since 1997.

I'm sure this has nothing to do with ABC's losing television rights for the Fiesta, Orange, and Sugar Bowls to network rival FOX (starting in 2007). Although ABC and ESPN are both owned by Disney, I doubt ESPN would do anything to undermine the importance of the major bowls.

Have you ever wondered why some of your favorite shows aren't making it to DVD? Well, in the case of the hilarious WKRP in Cincinnati, MSN notes that it has to do with the Recording Industry Ass. of America.

Sadly, there's little chance of this late '70s sitcom about an edgy FM radio station ever making it to disc. The problem: The rights to all the contemporary hits played on the show have become prohibitively expensive. Syndicated versions broadcast in the '90s, in fact, stripped all the original songs from the show, replacing them with generic studio music -- and because DJs often spoke over the music, and cracked wise in reference to the songs, voice doubles were hired to redo dialogue. What's up with that?

So why was something that was okay to show in the 1970s not okay to show in 2005? To my knowledge, it's not because copyright law has changed. It's because you can't even whistle your favorite tune any more without some RIAA lawyer demanding 50 cents.

When I read about this a few days ago, I passed on commenting about it. Quite frankly, I think that I focus so much on the negative outcomes of police encounters that I sometimes sound anti-cop. In fact, I support law enforcement officers and respect the thankless job they do. While I'm cynical of how quick they are to use tasers or talk people into giving up their Constitutionally protected freedoms ("Sure, you can search my car for no apparent reason"), I also think they are too frequently put into tough spots, are underpaid, and underappreciated.

Still, I have to agree with Say Uncle:

My faith in them protecting me is minimized by the fact they won't protect each other:

A surveillance video shows that the partner of a police officer who was shot three times during a car stop last week in Brooklyn ran away and, for several minutes, failed to help the wounded officer, a police official said yesterday.

I wish the media would write more stories about the countless officers and firemen who do rush in and risk their lives to save others. Other than 9/11, when's the last time you've read about one?

"ABC reaches five-year extension with ABC" -- CNN/SI Headline, June 7, 2005.

(Screenshot)

Today's trash laying in, on, or near the road was:

• Pepsi bottle - And that's not Pepsi it's filled with.

You know, if I was going to risk a $1000 fine by littering I wouldn't leave a quart of my DNA behind.

Statistics
Commute: If you lived at work, you'd be home now.
Door to door: 21 minutes

Chicago is admitting that murder is decreasing "despite" an increase in the number of firearms "on the street" (whatever that means). Of course the whole thing is very dubious. They are counting "assault weapons" that are being seized, and clearly are using a very fluid definition of "assault weapon".

The decrease in murder has come despite what Chicago police say is an increase in the number of military-style assault weapons found on the street. They say they've seized 280 assault weapons since a federal ban on them expired last September. They say that's more than before the ban was killed by Congress.

"These are guns that can shoot up to 30 rounds with a couple pulls of the trigger," Cline said. "And it puts our police in grave danger out there. So, we'd like still to see some kind of ban, either by the state or federally."

Um, 30 rounds with "a couple pulls of the trigger" is an automatic firearm, which are NOT covered in the 1994 Clinton Gun Ban. Of course you come to find out that although seizures have increased, they've only increased by 28 guns from 262 to 290. (That's right, 262, even though there was a federal ban.) That's only 10% which could easily be due to a statistical anomoly, more rigorous enforcement, or the ever expanding definition of "assault weapon".

Besides if bans work so well, why is "gun free" Chicago finding any guns at all?

The Media Research Center reports that MSNBC is gleefully claiming that Newsweek has been vindicated by a single Koran incident.

Fill-host Witt teased at the top of the June 3 Countdown with Keith Olbermann: "Which of these stories will you be talking about tomorrow? A late-breaking admission from the Pentagon tonight. The details are released of Koran abuse at Gitmo, including details that a guard urinated through an air vent onto a detainee and his Koran."

Witt opened the show, next to a big "Koran Abuse" graphic, as tracked by the MRC's Brad Wilmouth: "Good evening, everyone. I'm Alex Witt, in for Keith Olbermann. It is take-out-the-trash night at the Pentagon. The Defense Department deep-sixing information it does not want covered by releasing it after 7pm on a Friday. Luckily for us, this newscast does not start until 8. Our fifth story on the Countdown, remember those allegations of Koran abuse at Guantanamo Bay? The Pentagon is confirming tonight that some of the more salacious details are true.

The idea that most of the world's oxygen comes from rain forests is all a big myth. The Los Angeles Times reports that massive burning means that the Amazon Rain Forest is actually causing pollution instead of helping clean it up. Most of the article deals with logging and 'save the rainforests' crap, but if you read down far enough you'll discover that even without the burning, we still wouldn't get any oxygen gain from rain forests.

Even without the massive burning, the popular conception of the Amazon as a giant oxygen factory for the rest of the planet is misguided, scientists say. Left unmolested, the forest does generate enormous amounts of oxygen through photosynthesis, but it consumes most of it itself in the decomposition of organic matter. . .

"Concern about the environmental aspects of deforestation now is more over climate rather than [carbon emissions] or whether the Amazon is the 'lungs of the world,' " said Paulo Barreto, a researcher with the Amazon Institute of People and Environment.

"For sure, the Amazon is not the lungs of the world," he added. "It never was."

Of course if you've been reading Ravenwood's Universe regularly you already know that the "lungs of the world" are the oceans, filled with plant plankton. Two-thirds of the earth's surface is water, and plant plankton dutifully converts carbon dioxide into oxygen. That is, when the whales aren't scooping them up by the truck load for food. It would seem obvious then, that the solution to global warming is to protect plant plankton by slaughtering whales. With an absence of predators, plant plankton will overpopulate and drastically cut CO₂ levels.

I'm going to go out on a limb and predict this will never catch on in the United States.

Macho man is an endangered species, with today's male more likely to opt for a pink flowered shirt and swingers' clubs than the traditional role as family super-hero, fashion industry insiders say. . .

"The masculine ideal is being completely modified. All the traditional male values of authority, infallibility, virility and strength are being completely overturned," said Pierre Francois Le Louet, the agency's managing director.

Instead today's males are turning more towards "creativity, sensitivity and multiplicity," as seen already in recent seasons on the catwalks of Paris and Milan.

Arnold Schwarznegger and Sylvester Stallone are being replaced by the 21st-century man who "no longer wants to be the family super-hero", but instead has the guts to be himself, to test his own limits.

"We are watching the birth of a hybrid man. ... Why not put on a pink-flowered shirt and try out a partner-swapping club?" asked Le Louet, stressing that the study had focused on men aged between 20 and 35.

Click here to start shopping for your flowered shirt.

Just how obsessed is the media with pigeon holing everyone into racial identity groups? Well the Ass. Press says that now that Judge Janice Rogers Brown has been appointed to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, Governor Schwarzenegger will have a "black seat" to fill on the California Supreme Court.

Absent Brown, the court would be left with a white woman, an Asian woman, two white men, and an Asian man and a Hispanic man. The court consists of six Republicans, one Democrat and is moderately conservative under Chief Justice Ronald M. George, a white Republican.

"I think he's going to look very hard for a qualified black nominee," said Jack Pitney, a Claremont College government professor. "It's a combination of equity and politics. The equity consideration is that African Americans deserve representation on all levels of government. The political consideration, the failure to name an African American, would subject him to criticism."

I'll play along and assume that Judges are supposed to represent the people rather than simply apply the law evenly and fair regardless of who you are. Apparently if you aren't black you can't represent black people.

For all the crying about "record high" gas prices (which are still cheaper than they were during the 1970s), just be glad that your car doesn't run on distilled spirits.

"On a per-barrel basis, gasoline is America's bargain liquid: 10 percent cheaper than bottled water, a third the cost of milk, a fifth the cost of beer, and less than 2 percent the cost of a bottle of Jack Daniels," the study said...

Compared with other standard expenditures, the increase in gasoline prices since 1982 is 25 percent lower than the increase in food prices, 50 percent lower than the rise in housing costs, 70 percent lower than the rise in medical costs and a whopping 80 percent below the rise in college tuition, the study found.

Of course they still gratuitously mention "last month's record high of $2.276" per gallon. Funny that the media never complains about the record high movie prices of $11 a seat.

MSNBC reports that the estimated 48 million people without health insurance are a burden to us all.

Health insurance premiums will cost families and employers an extra $922 on average this year to cover the costs of caring for the uninsured, according to a report released Wednesday...

Families USA says its study shows the problem is not restricted to the tens of millions of uninsured Americans.

Rather, the problem affects everyone, because the insured subsidize the cost of care given the uninsured. Most economists agree that some amount of subsidizing occurs, but the question has been how much.

But I thought these people went without health care. I thought they had to choose between eating dog food or getting medicine. Now I find out that they are receiving health care and that we are already paying for them.

So, if we are already paying for them, why the big push for socialized medicine? Why the big push to insure the uninsured if they are already receiving health care that the rest of us are paying for? It's true the managed care is cheaper than emergency care and that putting more people on the insurance rolls would keep them out of the emergency room for a non-emergency.

But it seems to me that you would get higher dividends by keeping non-taxpayers (like illegal aliens) out of the country and thus out of our health care system completely.

The anti-smokers are in disarray because Justice Department lawyers asked for a $10 Billion judgement against "Big Tobacco" instead of the expected $130 Billion judgement. Apparently the money was supposed to fund smoking cessation programs, to help smokers break free from their addiction.

"It feels like a political decision to take into consideration the tobacco companies' financial interest rather than health interests of 45 million addicted smokers," said William V. Corr, director of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. "The government proved its case, but the levels of funding are a shadow of the cessation treatment program that the government's own expert witness recommended."

Given the recent increases in tobacco sin taxes that cities and states are using to balance their budget, shouldn't they be happy that 45 million smokers are going to keep on puffing away? Personally, I'm happy the anti-smokers will have a lot less cash to spend on prime time commercials calling smokers idiots and morons. I've long thought those idiotic "truth" commericals were counter-productive any way.

Today's trash laying in, on, or near the road was:

• Pole - 4ft - steel - bent - If it weren't bent, it'd make a nice mock lightsaber.

Statistics
Commute: Happiness is no red lights
Door to door: 18 minutes

Robert Hayes makes the point that the Rebel Alliance is evil. Here is a taste, where he makes the point that the Ewoks were just hapless pawns of manipulative socialists.

In my world, there is a word for people who use trickery and deception to convince simple primitives of their own divinity, and then use that divine status to turn peaceful hunters into jihadists against a vastly superior foreign power that has never harmed them.

That word is "evil".

Read the rest for an interesting perspective on Lucas' world.

Say Uncle writes: "It seems the UN is alarmed that the equipment that was not used to not make weapons of mass destruction has been removed..."

The New York Daily News reports that Mayor Bloomberg "signed the so-called 'potty parity' bill yesterday, requiring more women's toilets in newly built arenas, bars, convention halls and movie theaters." Sounds like there is a toilet gap between men and women. But then you find out that parity no longer means equality.

For every toilet in the men's room, there must be two in the women's, according to the new law.

So they are striving for equal results rather than equal treatment. Women are not as advanced as men when it comes to their urinary tasks, so we get less bathrooms now. Don't think that this will necessarily increase the number of women's facilities. This is like Title IX for bathrooms, and the law of unintendend consequences will mean less men's facilities instead of more women's. If a bar owner has enough money for 6 toilets, he's going to give 2 to the men and 4 to the women to be compliant, rather than break his budget by increasing that number to 9 (3 men and 6 women). Adding that 3rd stall for men puts him 50% over budget.

Our only saving grace will be if the infamous "pee trough" counts as one stall.

The law will apply to some renovated buildings as well.

Geez, you can't even drink drink milk any more.

Children are urged to drink plenty of milk but a study published on Monday suggests that the more milk that kids drink, the fatter they grow -- and skim milk is a worse culprit than whole milk.

Say what?

A survey of more than 12,000 children aged 9 to 14 showed that those who drank more milk weighed more than those who drank less.

"Children who drank the most milk gained more weight, but the added calories appeared responsible," the team at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard University in Boston wrote in their report, published in the journal Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

But there was a surprising finding.

"Contrary to our hypotheses, dietary calcium and skim and 1 percent milk were associated with weight gain, but dairy fat was not," they wrote.

It could be that the youngsters drink lower-fat milk more freely. Thus, it may not be milk itself but the calories in milk that are to blame, said biostatistician Catherine Berkey, who led the study, in a statement.

I wonder if they looked at whether or not more milk was also accompanied by more cookies.

The AP notes that a sucking chest wound wasn't enough to stop one pizza delivery man.

It'll apparently take more than being shot to keep Thomas Stefanelli from making his rounds as a pizza delivery man.

He suffered a gunshot wound to his leg Saturday, but the 37-year-old continued to make four more deliveries.

He says he was shot by a man in a Halloween mask who was demanding money. Stefanelli says his cell phone wasn't working, so he drove to his next delivery address to call his boss.

He then made three more deliveries before being taken to a hospital.

This doesn't look good for Dr. Dean.

Three top fundraisers at the Democratic National Committee have resigned at a time when its chairman, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, has come under fire from fellow Democrats for controversial comments and his Republican counterpart has raised more than twice as much money.

He's a dummy, he's a dunce, he's just a mediocre C student. No, I'm not talking about George W. Bush, although the Kerry camp frequently portrayed him as such. No, I'm referring to Senator John F. Kerry, who once said of George Bush, "I can't believe I'm losing to this idiot". Well, Kerry FINALLY released his military records, and come to find out he got worse grades than Bush. Kerry graduated from Yale with a 76 average, 1 point lower than Bush's 77 average.

He received four D's in his freshman year out of 10 courses, but improved his average in later years.

The grade transcript, which Kerry has always declined to release, was included in his Navy record. During the campaign the Globe sought Kerry's naval records, but he refused to waive privacy restrictions for the full file. Late last month, Kerry gave the Navy permission to send the documents to the Globe. . .

The transcript shows that Kerry's freshman-year average was 71. He scored a 61 in geology, a 63 and 68 in two history classes, and a 69 in political science. His top score was a 79, in another political science course. Another of his strongest efforts, a 77, came in French class.

If this had been released during the campaign, Kerry would have been finished. Half of their strategy was to portray Bush as an illiterate moron, and Kerry as the intellectual statesman.

Today's trash laying in, on, or near the road was:

• Exit 54 - You've got to hit the guardrail pretty damn hard to send an exit sign flying 50 feet.

Statistics
Commute: Where you are going is more important than how fast you are going
Door to door: 21 minutes

Democrat Christine Gregoire will get to remain Governor of Washington reports Reuters. A judge found that there was no "fraud or intentional bias" when Gregoire kept asking for recount after recount until the votes came out in her favor and then suddenly stopped recounting as soon as she had enough votes to win the election. Okay, that's not exactly what he said.

Chelan County Superior Court Judge John Bridges said Republican Dino Rossi's supporters failed to show that Gregoire unfairly benefited from the counting of nearly 1,700 votes, including some from felons whose votes were not valid.

Out of 2.9 million votes, Gregoire "won" by just 129. After losing the initial count and losing the state mandated recount, Gregoire asked for a hand recount of the machine ballots, during which boxes of ballots were suddenly "discovered" in districts that leaned heavily toward Democrats.

Remember, "It's not who votes that counts, it's who counts the votes." Stalin would be proud.

Over at the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, Ken Mathison says that New York's hunters may be surprised to learn that the state's proposed .50 caliber rifle ban captures their rifled shotguns too.

Under state Penal Law, when you add a rifled barrel to a shotgun it becomes a centerfire rifle, and since virtually all shotgun barrels (smooth bore or rifled bore) are more than 50-caliber, they would be banned by this bill.

As if having a cold or allergies isn't bad enough, Espo notes that you have to register and show ID just to get a box of sudafed. Proponents of making the drug harder to get say that if you aren't running a meth lab, you have nothing to worry about when the pharmacist takes down your personal information.

They should tell that to students at Polk Community College in Winter Haven, Florida. A professor there was just arrested for allegedly using their personal information to steal their identity and open up lines of credit.

Or tell that to the 3.9 Million Citigroup customers whose personal information was lost in the mail.

Reader Mike A. writes to point out that even shark attacks are being blamed on Global Warming. A spear fisherman (who may or may not drive an SUV) was killed when a great white shark was attracted to blood in the water from speared fish. Vic Cockcroft from South Africa's Center for Dolphin Studies blames Americans and their love of greenhouse gases.

"The incidents of shark presence seem to be much higher around the coasts (than they used to be) ... There is evidence that our waters are warming up because of climate change, but whether this is making them more productive or not we don't know," Cockcroft said.

Since great white sharks enjoy temperate water (not hot or cold) global warming will eventually drive them all away.

State's rights took a huge hit with the Supreme Court's decision on medical marijuana. The 6-3 decision basically said that even though the marijuana was home grown, distributed locally, and didn't cross state lines, it can still be federally regulated by the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution. No matter which side of the issue you agree with, Justice Thomas summed it up beautifully in his dissent:

Respondents Diane Monson and Angel Raich use marijuana that has never been bought or sold, that has never crossed state lines, and that has had no demonstrable effect on the national market for marijuana. If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything--and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers.

Writing for the majority, Justice Stevens lectured the plaintiffs on the democratic process. He noted that "even more important than these legal avenues is the democratic process, in which the voices of voters allied with these respondents may one day be heard in the halls of Congress." In other words, if they don't like the law, they should get Congress to change it. This is where the Seventeenth Amendment rears it's ugly head.

Depending on which number you believe, there are either 10 or 11 states which support the use of medical marijuana. That means there are 20 to 22 Senators from states where the people or the legislature shows support for the issue. If the Senate were appointed by state legislators (like they were originally), the states would not be so removed from the federal legislative process. As it is now, not only do the states have no rights that the federal government cannot overturn using their loose interpretation of the Interstate Commerce Clause, but they don't even have a voice in federal politics any more.

"They have a direct line to God. And if you don't tune into their line, you're obviously on Satan's line." -- Senator Tom Harkin, D-IA, referring to Christian broadcasters.

Harkin also said of Justice Priscilla Owen: "This is not a person to put on the bench for a lifetime appointment. This person is wacko! She's wacko!"

Carnaby looks at the proposed E.U. Bill of Rights.

ARTICLE II-83 Equality between women and men Equality between women and men must be ensured in all areas, including employment, work and pay.

Equal pay for equal work, I suppose. But then you find out that some people are more equal than others.

The principle of equality shall not prevent the maintenance or adoption of measures providing for specific advantages in favour of the under-represented sex.

So everyone is equal, except when Affirmative Action (read discrimination) is needed.

If you read through their whole "Bill of Rights", you'll see that it's basically filled with socialist mumbo jumbo like "free" health care, and "free" placement services. But what really struck me is how different it reads from our own Bill of Rights. The European Union attempts to outline the priviledges that the government is granting to citizens. It even states "The Union therefore recognises the rights, freedoms and principles set out hereafter."

Contrast this to America's Bill of Rights, which limits not what the people can do, but what the government can do. Our Bill of Rights is filled with phrases like "Congress shall make no law" and "shall not be infringed". It seeks to rein in the power of the government, not enumerate the rights of the people.

It is because of that fundamental difference that the European Union (and socialism in general) is doomed to fail.

Movies don't even have to be good to be remade any more: Dukes of Hazzard, Poseidon Adventure, the Honeymooners, Batman, War of the Worlds, Bewitched, Herbie, the Longest Yard, etc, etc.

How many warmed over 1970s movies and TV shows can a person take?

Virginia policeman will not be allowed to arrest illegal aliens for immigration violations. In light of the September 11th attacks being pulled off by illegals with Virginia driver's licenses, you would think the state would do all that they can to address the issue. Instead, they are bowing to Big Immigrant.

The Virginia State Police have backed off a plan that would have allowed some officers to make immigration arrests, a prospect that had been fiercely opposed by immigrant rights advocates.

The state police chief, Col. Steve Flaherty, said last week that his department has decided against proceeding with an agreement with federal authorities that would have made Virginia the third state in the nation to adopt such a practice.

Watch out for the newspeak. When they say "immigrant" they really mean "illegal alien". There was never a plan for police to go out and round up legal immigrants. We are only talking about people who have already violated federal immigration law.

You never see police bowing to any other pressure groups. They don't refuse to arrest drug users because of hurting the feelings of drug legalization activists. It's interesting that they would choose selective enforcement for political reasons. Especially considering most of America supports cracking down on illegal aliens. It also makes me wonder just why the State Police is worried about their political image. Is the Governor or General Assembly behind this?

While state police were negotiating their agreement last year with Homeland Security officials, the Virginia legislature passed a bill giving local and state police slightly more power to enforce immigration law.

Immigrants panicked, despite the fact that the Virginia law was very narrowly drawn. It allowed police to arrest only convicted felons who had re-entered the country illegally after being deported.

So it only applied to convicted felons, and still they balked at enforcing the law. This is essentially a two-fer, catering to advocacy groups representing both felons and illegal aliens.

Police claim that crime victims and witnesses will be afraid to come forward out of fear of being arrested on immigration violations. Meanwhile the Salvadoran gang, MS-13, continues to plague the community. (And still people ask me why I carry a gun.)

The latest bit of class warfare from the New York Times talks about the "hyper-rich" and a disproportionate "concentration of wealth". And of course, it is all Bush's fault.

The Bush administration tax cuts stand to widen the gap between the hyper-rich and the rest of America. The merely rich, making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, will shoulder a disproportionate share of the tax burden...

The Times set out to create a financial portrait of the very richest Americans, how their incomes have changed over the decades and how the tax cuts will affect them. It is no secret that the gap between the rich and the poor has grown, but the extent to which the richest are leaving everyone else behind is not widely known.

Yes, the rich are getting richer, and so are the poor. The Times doesn't dispute that. Instead they talk about the "income gap", as if the government should be setting policy to keep people from making too much money. Indeed, they even make the point that it's the government's money to be divvied out, and the rich are stealing more than their fair share.

...some of the wealthiest Americans, including Warren Buffett, George Soros and Ted Turner, have warned that such a concentration of wealth can turn a meritocracy into an aristocracy and ultimately stifle economic growth by putting too much of the nation's capital in the hands of inheritors rather than strivers and innovators.

Did you catch that? President Bush is putting too much of our money in their pockets. Wealth is not finite. It can be created and it can be destroyed. Rather than encourage people to create their own wealth, the Times would rather destroy that of other people.

"By century's end, much of southern Louisiana may sink into the Gulf of Mexico. The Texas coastline, including Galveston, could soon follow." -- Houston Chronicle, June 5, 2005.

Forty-three of the fifty states are pushing for an internet sales tax. They are hoping that retailers will voluntarily install software that will tax each purchase and pay it electronically.

The proposal is for the new system to initially be voluntary. "So (unless) Congress were to act and make this mandatory, there would be no penalties," says Peterson. But there's a plus for businesses who do adopt the software. The states say the electronic system is so good, they'll designate participating businesses "audit proof."

So unless retailers volunteer to collect taxes on behalf of the government, they will be subjected to targeted audits.

"I would make the argument that America is safer when Democrats are in the White House, than when Republicans are in the White House." -- DNC Chairman Howard Dean, June 4, 2005.

Former candidate for President and Vice President John Edwards noted, "The chairman of the DNC is not the spokesman for the party. He's a voice. I don't agree with it."

"Africa is worth fighting for. Europe, in its present form, is not." -- British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who says that Britain will switch it's focus to ending Third World Poverty. Hopefully that means by bringing them freedom.

British lawmakers want to start charging drivers by the mile; as much as $2.50 a mile. Using GPS technology, they will know exactly when and where the loyal subjects drive.

Drivers will pay according to when and how far they travel throughout the country's road network under proposals being developed by the Government. . .

The rapid uptake of satellite navigational technology in cars is helping to usher in the new "pay-as-you-drive" charge much sooner than had been expected. Figures contained in a government feasibility study have suggested motorists could pay up to �1.34 for each mile they travel during peak hours on the most congested roads.

Lawmakers are promising to reduce fuel taxes so that it doesn't seem like a "war on motorists". Similar proposals in the United States have angered environmentalist wackos, who think the per mile tax ruins the incentive to drive more fuel efficient cars.

The California senate passed a bill to give driver's licenses to illegal aliens. To comply with federal law, the "licenses" will not be valid for ID, and must be marked differently than real driver's licenses. Proponents of illegal immigration claim that the illegal licences will be a boon for public safety.

"This bill is about public safety. Millions of Californians are in jeopardy every day" from illegal immigrants who lack driver training and insurance, said Sen. Richard Alarcon, D-Van Nuys, whose son was killed by an uninsured driver.

So the only thing standing in the way of illegal aliens going to driving school and buying insurance was a little, plastic, state-issued card.

This whiny op-ed at the Ithaca Journal faults the post office for not sifting through people's mail looking for butt-legged cigarettes.

The U.S. Postal Service should follow FedEx and the credit card industry and wash its hands of the dirty online tobacco business. If postal officials won't, federal lawmakers should heed [New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's] call and step in and do it for them.

New York decided to jack their cigarette taxes up to obscene levels, and now they think everyone else in the world should help them enforce their nutty laws.

Of course all of this is rooted in the problem of socialism. The pleasure police nannies know what's best for you, and they're going to enforce their temperance on you even if it kills you.

The high taxes on tobacco products do two things -- they attempt to offset the enormous health care related costs we all bear thanks to the lethal effects of this popular American drug; and they attempt to reduce the financial and human costs of smoking by reducing the number of people, particularly teens, who chose nicotine as their narcotic.

Bottom line: If you buy tax-free cigarettes, you're shifting the medical care burden to the rest of us taxpayers at the same time you're increasing the odds we'll all have to pay for your oxygen tank or your autopsy. And, of course, you're breaking the law.

Who said that it's the government's responsibility to pay for people's health care? If you don't want to pay cash for your health care, you buy health insurance. If you can't pay for a good or service than you go without. Worst case you rely on the charity of others to willingly provide you with assistance. What you don't do is use the threat of lethal force to make your neighbors pay for it. (Unless of course you are a socialist.)

These socialist do-gooders have not only assumed financial responsibility over your well being, but now they're using that as a reason to run your life. If we allow them to do this to smokers, over-eaters will be next. Then they'll be making you give up skydiving, telling you what kind of car to buy, and forcing you to eat broccoli.

It's time to tell these socialist medicine types to keep their laws off our bodies.

Oakland plans to join the list of cities who put photos of Johns on billboards.

City Council members in Oakland are planning to crack down on prostitution by posting photos on billboards of men convicted of trying to buy sex.

The billboards will have the headline, "How Much Clearer Can We Make It?"

The measure is part of a "shaming campaign" to crack down on prostitution. The city's interim police chief says officers arrest about 70 "johns" and prostitutes a week.

How much clearer can they make it that they are wasting taxpayer resources cracking down on what is the world's oldest profession, and essentially a victim-less crime?

Prostitution has been around as long as the institution of marriage. The idea that you cannot charge someone money for something it is perfectly legal to give away, is perplexing. What's more, if you film it and distribute it, it's called art and you can pay both parties.

Cracking down on prostitution will never eliminate it. Instead it will simply divert police resources away from real crime. Prostitution is a vice (enforced by the vice squad). Vices, in my opinion, whether they be prostitution, gambling, overeating, or drinking, are personal demons that people must fight on their own. They can draw their inspiration from God and family to help them resist temptation, or they can embrace their weakness and choose to live in sin. Either way, as long as their behavior doesn't deny anyone else of a right to life, liberty, or property, as a libertarian I feel that it should not be prohibited.

As if rampant crime, expensive parking, and traffic weren't enough to keep you away from downtown, environmentalist wackos want to charge people a congestion tax.

The mayor of London told dozens of world mayors that they could unclog city streets and fight global warming by charging hefty fees for driving in congested areas of their communities.

Mayor Ken Livingstone said making drivers pay a "congestion charge" to drive in central London has improved traffic flow and reduced the emission of "greenhouse gases" blamed for raising temperatures and changing weather patterns. The $9 fee has forced people out of their cars and filled city buses, subways and sidewalks, he told mayors assembled here Friday for the U.N. World Environment Day Conference.

Of course this is also a novel way to chase business owners away from downtown. Hopefully the fees will be high enough to make up for the lost sales, property, and income tax revenues.

Charles Hill notes that the over-reaction to Florida's self defense law seems a little bit racist.

Now I've always figured that the only good intruder is a dead intruder, and Oklahoma law tends to support this notion. I might have thought that Floridians would be happy about it, but apparently some of them aren't:

Chicago Alderman Dorothy Tillman, formerly of Pensacola, said the law will "lead to open war on black males."

"It's almost a way to eliminate people. Black men will be under the ground more than ever."

Okay, she's not all that Floridian. But what is she saying? Black males are more likely to be attackers or intruders or other nogoodniks than other people? Isn't that, um, sorta racist? And what were those other 100 people in this protest thinking?

Mr. Hill goes on to note that "if you've breached my threshold and thus qualified for a free rib-cage ventilation."

Monday is the 61st Anniversary of the WWII D-Day invasion. It should be a time to remember those that gave their lives to save Europe, Asia, and the World.

I think that when people think of World War II, they don't fully realize the scope of the war. It was a war that compares to no other in history. Just think about these facts (which I refuse to call trivia):

• It is called a World War, because it literally affected every corner of the globe.

• Tens of millions of people gave up civilian life to defend civilization as we know it.

• About 12 Million Americans served in World War II. About 400,000 never made it home. (Compare this to the 130,000 we have serving in Iraq, with less than 2000 casualties.)

• D-Day alone required the mobilization of more than 1 million Allied ground troops.

• Russia lost nearly 30 million civilian and military souls.

• Most private factories ceased normal production and began producing weapons and equipment for war. (You ever drive a 1943 Ford? If so, it's probably olive drab.)

• Many of those factories were packed with women, who were relatively new to the work force.

• Women took on untraditional roles working in steel mills, factories, and as mechanics.

• Women also joined the war effort taking on roles such as nurses, pilots, mechanics, and radio operators.

• Civilians back home were required to ration food and domestic goods because the war effort was using so many of our natural resources.

• To fund the war effort, much of people's discretionary income was voluntarily given back to the government in exchange for war bonds.

• The U.S. started the war with only 8 aircraft carriers.

• More than 100 carriers of different types were built during the war, and nearly 100 were still in commission at the end of the war. There were others still being built whose production had to be cancelled.

When you think of how the war impacted everyone's daily lives, the size and scope of the war seem unimaginable.

(Image via National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia.)

When the Italians would rather have Lira.

The euro fell sharply against the dollar on Friday after reports that an Italian minister said Italy should consider quitting the euro and returning to the lira.

Since there is a general lack of media coverage over these types of events, a reader over at KdT, emailed about Denzel Washington's generosity to Fisher House. (emphasis in original)

They have buildings there called Fisher Houses. The Fisher House is a hotel where soldiers' families can stay, for little or no charge, while their soldier is staying in the hospital. BAMC has quite a few of these houses on base but as you can imagine, they are almost completely filled most of the time.

While Denzel Washington was visiting BAMC, they gave him a tour of one of the Fisher Houses. He asked how much one of them would cost to build. He took his check book out and wrote a check for the full amount right there on the spot. The soldiers overseas were amazed to hear this story and want to get the word out to the American public, because it warmed their hearts to hear it.

You know, I could do that too. (Just as long as they don't try to cash it.)

UPDATE: The ever cynical Kevin Baker reports that it's mostly partly bullshit.

UPDATE2: The Denver Post picks it up.

(Via Quantico Shooting Club)

If DNC Chairman Howard Dean is trying to woo independent voters who lean Republican, this isn't how to do it.

[Dean] wondered who could expect voters to work all day and then stand in line for eight hours to vote. "Well, Republicans, I guess, can do that because a lot of them have never made an honest living in their lives," he said, drawing some surprised "oohs" from his audience.

Did you vote Republican? Then you must be a crook.

John Hawkins' other blog.

The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania reports on an insurance and life expectancy "study" due to be published this fall. The study, written by Insurance and Actuarial Science Professor Jean Lemaire, examines gun violence and concludes (surprise) that gun violence costs money and lives.

Lemaire tries to put a dollar value and life expectancy cost on the Second Amendment. Months of research show that men suffer more than women, and minorities (namely young black males) are hardest hit. So far, none of these assertions are really new. But then Lemaire takes a flying leap into gun control la-la land.

To put things in an epidemiological context, Lemaire points out that "among all fatal injuries, only motor vehicle accidents have a stronger effect [than firearm deaths]." Further, the numbers show that "the elimination of all firearm deaths in the U.S. would increase the male life expectancy more than the total eradication of all colon and prostate cancers."

So one impossible dream would have a greater effect than another impossible dream. I think I see where this is going. Notice too that he cleverly compares gun violence to a cherry-picked non-preventable death like colon cancer. If he'd used heart disease or deaths related to obesity the numbers wouldn't have worked in his favor.

Lemaire then absurdly tries to nip the critics in the bud by refuting the substitution effect before anyone even brought it up.

One objection to the idea that reducing firearm deaths would increase life expectancy and reduce insurance costs is the argument that guns are simply a means to an end -- and that people who are intent on violence, either toward themselves or others, will find a way to achieve that objective with whatever tools are available. This is called the substitution effect. "I don't believe that Americans are necessarily more violent than the Japanese or the Europeans," Lemaire says, "and certainly the history of the 20th century shows a lot of violence in other countries. I don't think violence is in the genes of the American people."

Japan "certainly provided more than its share of violence in the 20th century," he continues, "but at the dawn of the 21st century, Japan is among the safest countries in the world: Zero guns in Japan means zero crimes. It bears mention that Japan also has an extremely low rate of thefts, burglaries, etc., a counterweight to the argument by pro-gun people that guns at home reduce burglaries."

Heh. So Japan has zero guns and zero crime. That's probably news to Japan. Even if that was true (it's not) the correlation doesn't mean causation. If that were true, than Switzerland would have extremely high rate of crime to match their extremely high rate of lawful gun ownership. (Machine gun ownership at that.) Instead, Switzerland is an example of more guns less crime. At home in the United States, states with high rates of lawful gun ownership also enjoy less crime. If Lemaire's conclusion were true, Washington D.C., which has been "gun free" since 1976 would be the safest place in America. Instead it's a yearly contender for the murder capital of America. I challenge him to walk through Anacostia after dark.

He also writes as though crime were normally distributed and random. It's not. People who use drugs, prostitutes, or generally hang around areas where crime is concentrated are much more likely to be a victim. And those places usually have a lower concentration of lawfully owned firearms.

Not to be dissuaded, the Professor dives into non sequitur.

He cites a number of studies which show that, in the area of homicides, there is little or no substitution effect. One such study done in 1988 contrasts Seattle, Wa., and Vancouver, British Columbia - two cities nearly identical in terms of climate, population, unemployment level, average income and other demographic characteristics. But as a result of far stricter gun laws in Canada he writes, only 12% of Vancouver's inhabitants own guns, compared to an estimated 41% of Seattle residents.

The study finds "that the two cities essentially experience the same rates of burglary, robbery, homicides and assaults without a gun," Lemaire writes. "However, in Seattle the rate of assault with a firearm is 7 times higher than in Vancouver, and the rate of homicide with a handgun is 4.8 times higher. The authors conclude that the availability of handguns in Seattle increases the assault and homicide rates with a gun, but does not decrease the crime rates without guns, and that restrictive handgun laws reduce the homicide rate in a community."

If there were no substitution effect how does he explain the United Kingdom. After banning handguns, semi-auto rifles, replica guns, toy guns, and pellet guns, Britain has taken to calling for knife control to combat their skyrocketing crime rate.

The assertion that the mere presence of guns correlates to more gun crime is over simplification. To the uneducated, it may seem to make sense. By why then, don't police departments suffer disproportionate gun violence? My own home contains several guns. Why don't the evil mind control rays they emit take hold of me and cause me to go on a shooting spree?

What's more, Vancouver further north than Seattle. Maybe the changes in latitudes makes people more prone to violence. Yeah, it's a loony assertion, but then so is saying that the mere presence of guns causes crime.

The major differences between Seattle and Vancouver is that one is in America and one is in Canada. And America has a much more aggressive "War on Drugs" than does Canada. Seattle is like a mecca for American drug users, and in the 1980s President Reagan was busy escalating the war on drugs. Canada, on the other hand, sets up needle exchange programs where drug users can get fresh paraphernalia and use drugs without fear of arrest or prosecution. The program was born in (guess where) Vancouver in the 1980s. The American war on drugs translates into higher costs for drug users and fatter profits for drug pushers. That violent crime increases in response to a strict temperance movement was proven in the 1930s, and the 1988 crime rates no doubt reflect that.

The Professor doesn't call for an outright ban on guns, however. He's smarter than that. Instead he calls for prejudicial discrimination not unlike the ostracism that smokers face today.

He does see potential opportunities, however, in the area of how insurance companies can better price, and perhaps more equitably distribute the cost of, the risks associated with guns. "There is some evidence," Lemaire says, "including evidence from the Penn School of Medicine, that just owning a gun significantly increases your chance of dying -- even when you control for variables like neighborhood, education, and so on."

Silly me, I thought the chance of dying was already 100%. You could take his suggestion a couple of ways. Either charge higher prices to the young black men who are more likely to be caught up in violent crime, or charge law-abiding gun owners. Since this is probably not a call for insurance companies to discriminate based on race, he is no doubt suggesting that insurance companies push for a national gun registry, and charge higher rates for registered gun owners. It's nothing more than back-door gun control. Make it more expensive to lawfully own a gun, and you decrease the number of legally owned guns (which is the ultimate goal). That such a suggestion discriminates against the poor and minorities who may not be able to afford the cost of compliance seems to escape the Professor.

One logical thread to pursue concerns the risk calculations that insurance companies make in pricing life insurance policies. Demographics and lifestyle choices are the bread and butter of those kinds of calculations, but -- given recent personal experience -- Lemaire is a bit puzzled by the questions asked of policy applicants. "I just applied for life insurance last week," he says. "I am a scuba diver. [The insurance company] asked me 25 questions about my scuba diving habits. This is a sport that kills 100 people annually worldwide. Nobody asked me whether I have a gun in my house, yet guns kill 30,000 people every year just in the U.S. It is bizarre that no one thought to ask that question."

Gee, no anti-gun violence showing through there. Perhaps insurance companies don't ask because the two aren't related. (You can bet that if they could save money by asking, they would.) According to the CDC, 16,926 people died from falls compared to 11,599 murdered with firearms (2003 figures). Perhaps insurance companies should ask people whether or not they have bath-mats or how many stairs they have to climb each day.

And of course, there is the typical call for more funding and research.

He also sees room for further work in this area, both in academia and also within the insurance industry.

Sounds like another case of the research being tailored to fit predetermined results. I'm sure he's counting on grant money and ass-kissing from the gun grabbers and usual suspects in the media. (If you really want to get rich quick just write an anti-gun study and then wait for the anti-gunners to throw money at you with a bulldozer.)

In all of this, something that the Professor doesn't even consider is all of the lives saved by firearms. Americans didn't liberate Europe (twice) by pushing Germans out of windows. We used guns. And before we used guns we sent our guns to the British so that they could use guns.

At home, our police officers carry guns. Our soldiers carry guns. Our law-abiding citizens carry guns. And they use those guns to enforce the law. They use those guns to deter criminals who would just as soon cut your throat for the five dollars in your pocket. The criminals will always be armed, and if you aren't armed yourself you are a sitting duck (which, by the way, just happens to be policeman's slang for a convenience store clerk).

Over the past decade, the lawful carry of firearms has been encouraged nearly nationwide, and crime rates have been falling ever since. Guns save countless lives each day, most times without even firing a shot. A disarmed populace only emboldens criminals.

And those unreported, uncatalogued, self-defense numbers are what is missing from the statistics that Lemaire twists to push his beliefs. If he likes Japan so much, perhaps he should move there and quit treading on our Constitution.

An up-state New York man was caught allegedly stealing gasoline using a siphon hose. He might have gotten away with it, if he hadn't accidentally set himself on fire.

The sheriff's department says he was transferring the fuel from the truck to a gas can when he used a lighter to see how full the container had become. That sparked a fire that caused minor burns to his face and hands. The fire spread to a nearby forklift, which was destroyed in the blaze.

AOL is finally going to offer real high speed internet service. But it's going to be DSL.

To provide the one-stop shopping experience for high-speed Internet service, AOL is partnering with telecommunications wholesaler Covad Communications Group Inc., a California firm that leases phone lines from the regional phone companies, providing access to about 50 million homes.

AOL will handle all the branding, marketing and customer-service calls while Covad will provide the high-speed phone lines and modems.

The new service will cost $29.95. Currently, AOL's Netscape dial-up is only $10, while premium AOL subscribers pay a whopping $24.

While I have no love lost for Wackovia (who is notoriously anti-gun), I have to snicker at their capitulation to the City of Chicago (who coincidentally is also notoriously anti-gun). In wanting to do business with Chicago, the North Carolina bank was forced to reveal that at some time, some where in their past they had something to do with slavery - a practice that was legal in the South at that time.

Wachovia was more than happy to play political-correctness kissy-face with Chicago and issue a heartfelt apology to Africans, Americans, and so-called African-Americans. What strikes me as so bizarre is how an apology for slavery, coming from people who never owned slaves, going to people who never were slaves, could be viewed as sincere (or even relevant). Never mind the ironies that many whites had a hand in ending slavery, while many blacks had a hand in brokering it.

And of course, slavery has always been illegal in Chicago (to the best of my knowledge), so I can only wonder what are the city's real motives. If I had to guess, I would say that they are some day hoping to extort money from these companies, many of whom (like JP Morgan) have already coughed up millions of dollars in indirect reparations.

I wonder still if Chicago will choose to do business with these companies. After all, wouldn't they be benefiting from a company that benefited from slavery? Will they choose to pay a higher price to deal with a "non-slave" company that would ordinarily have lost the bid?

Lucky for me, I've already been granted amnesty.

Paparazzi photographer Galo Cesar Ramirez was arrested on a felony charge of assault with a deadly weapon after he allegedly rammed actress Lindsay Lohan.

After Lohan made a U-turn to evade Ramirez, he intentionally crashed his minivan into the driver's side door of Lohan's Mercedes Benz coupe, police said. . .

Lohan suffered a cut to her ankle and complained of pain in her neck and ankle, police said. Her passenger, who police did not identify, complained of pain in her head and wrist.

It is this kind of aggressive photography that was largely responsible for the death of Princess Diana. While the photographers are obviously at fault, readers of their tabloid trash should share some of the blame.

If the ignorant masses weren't infatuated with the who's who of Hollywood sexcapades, there wouldn't be that enormous financial incentive for these jerks to follow people around and harass them. It's one thing to admire an actors work on the big screen, but people who get wrapped up in celebrity weddings and all the manufactured glitterati need to get a life. I could care less which stars are having their birthday today, and wouldn't give two shits to know who made this month's People magazine list of the 50 most beautiful celebrities. And I pride myself on having never seen American Idol and generally not knowing (or caring) who wins or loses.

If I could sit down and have a beer with any actor living or dead, it would probably be the late George C. Scott, the man who snubbed Hollywood by refusing to accept an Academy Award. (An event which was later copied by Marlon Brando, in a shameless ploy to look cool too.)

After seeing what happened in Iraq, Libya gave up it's nuclear program. Perhaps Qadaffi didn't want to share that spider hole with Saddam. So what do the French do? They offer to send them nuclear technology.

France will "soon" offer Libya a cooperation agreement to help Tripoli develop its civilian nuclear energy program, the French foreign ministry said Tuesday.

"The principle of cooperation in the area of peaceful applications of nuclear energy is a given, but the content has yet to be defined. We're still in the exploratory phase," said ministry spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei.

"We will soon offer an agreement to the Libyans on what can be done," the spokesman told reporters.

France's ambassador to Tripoli on Monday handed Libyan Foreign Minister Abdelrahman Shalgham an official note announcing France's readiness to cooperate with Tripoli on its nuclear power projects, officials said.

Now, why would a country who produces nearly 10 times as much oil as they consume be so interested in nuclear technology?

If you have high blood pressure, you may not want to read this story by Neal Boortz. A first year sixth grade teacher, Matthew Lund, had a friend in the Marine Corp who was deployed to Iraq. As a class project, his students wrote letters to Sgt. Zach Richardson and several of the men in his unit. When Sgt. Richardson's tour was over, he wanted to visit the students and personally thank them for their letters. But it looks like school administrators would have none of that.

Lund filled out and submitted a "Resource Visitor or Guest Speaker Form" and submitted it to Principal Corbett. Lund says he never got the form back from Corbett. He says he asked the Principal about the form, and was told that she was not going to look at it.

Lund says that he realized his request to have Sgt. Richardson visit the school was going to be ignored by Ulrica Corbett. He made the decision to proceed with the plans for the visit, a visit that took place, or was to take place on May 23rd, one week before Memorial Day.

When Sgt. Richardson showed up at the Carson Middle School Lund took him to the school's media center to prepare to meet the students. At that point, according to Lund, Principal Corbett called him into the hall and told him that the Marine was not approved to be at the school. Lund told Corbett that the proper form had been submitted and had been ignored. Corbett's response was "that's your problem, not mine." Lund's version of the discussion with Corbett in the hallway suggests that Corbett harbored a great deal of hostility toward Sgt. Richardson and Matthew Lund. She told Lund that the students had not earned the visit from the Marine, and closed the discussion with Lund with the phrase "what part of what we just discussed do you not understand?" She then ordered Matthew Lund to escort Sgt. Richardson off the school campus.

Of course the school has their side of the story too. In a written statement, the Principal said that she asked Sgt. Richardson to leave out of "regard for the safety and welfare of our children".

In April, Undercaffeinated exposed the hybrid car's dirty little secret:

Honda Accord LX V-6 - $23,950; average MPG - 25
Honda Accord Hybrid V6 - $30,140; average MPG - 33

If you put 15,000 miles on your car a year, and gas costs about $2 a gallon, the hybrid saves you $300/yr.

It would take over 20 years to make the difference back.

Edmunds and USA Today are finally catching up.

When compared with the smaller, gas-thrifty conventional Corolla, the Prius wouldn't equal the five-year costs unless it were driven 66,500 miles a year or gas reached $10.10 a gallon.

Martin Scorsese's new film, the Departed, is set in South Boston, but it's being filmed in Brooklyn. The reason has little to do with the look and feel of the town. New York is offering heavy tax incentives to the movie industry in response to Canadian competition.

Boston's loss is New York's gain.

California Democrats are hoping to increase spending on government education by $1.7 Billion. Where will they get the money? They'll soak the rich of course.

The Democratic spending plan calls for increasing the state income tax bracket on couples earning more than $285,000 from 9.3 percent to 10 percent and to 11 percent on couples earning more than $570,000. The tax hike would generate about $1.7 billion a year for education spending.

"Above all else, Assembly Democrats believe that Californians deserve a budget that funds our schools and builds opportunity for our children," Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles, said. "That is why our budget is one that will provide our schools with far more resources for education than the one that the governor has proposed in his May (budget) revise."

If you go door to door and use a gun to extract money from people it's called armed robbery. But if politicians do it, it's called taxation.

Californiastan is considering experimenting with socialized medicine. The government provided coverage would apparently supplant your private insurance.

The state Senate approved a bill Tuesday to create a universal health care system overseen by an elected commissioner, although many of the details have yet to be worked out.

Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica, urged senators to send her measure to the Assembly so negotiations can continue, with no funding plan likely to be added until next year. Senators agreed on a 24-14 vote...

Kuehl's bill would replace private insurance plans as well as cover the currently uninsured.

Opponents estimate the plan will cost as much as $8 Billion a year. Five bucks says it's at least three times that amount.

You gotta love those experts:

Your question:
What types of food could you serve for a one-year-old's birthday party?

The expert answers:
What to serve at a child's birthday party depends on the timing of the party. If you're having your event around lunch time, serving lunch would be appropriate but not necessary.

Shamelessly stolen from Taranto.

The SCOTUS has repeatedly struck down laws that ban so-called "violent" video games, but that doesn't stop Illinois from trying. More shocking than their attempt to ban that which they do not understand, is their world view of the role of Government.

...supporters insisted the government has a duty to help parents shield children from violence and sexuality. "Don't let them become the monsters that we see in these violent games," Democratic Rep. Monique Davis said.

So to keep children from becoming "monsters", the government is threatening to fine retail employees $1000. Here's an idea, if a kid buys a game that you don't approve of, TAKE IT AWAY FROM HIM! And if these children still turn out to be "monsters", let's start fining the parents. (Or at least take away their refundable child tax credits.)

Geek points out that the NY State version of the Clinton Gun ban that expired last year is getting traction and looks like it will be passed.

In case you don't remember, the Clinton Gun Ban (which expired in 2004) banned guns that had a detachable magazine and two additional "scary looking" features like a flash hider, bayonet lugs, pistol grip, heat shield, or folding stock.

As states try to pass their own bans to "replace" the Clinton Ban, I've noticed that they are much more restrictive than the original 1994 ban. Specifically it seems they are dropping the requirement for two additional "evil features" to just one, in order to catch more guns. All other features aside, that pretty much makes any gun with a detachable magazine and a pistol grip illegal. That is a hell of a lot of guns.

It will be interesting to see what the law of unintended consequences flushes out.

Today's trash laying in, on, or near the road was:

• Wood - Two by fours; one by sixes; lots and lots of wood, and in the traffic lanes too.

Statistics
Commute: "Onion rings in the car cushions do not improve with time." -- Erma Bombeck
Door to door: 23 minutes

Why am I not surprised by this?

The ex-treasurer of a leading anti-gun campaign group appeared in court today accused of stealing nearly �17,000 from the pressure group.

Maureen Lynch, 55, is accused of the theft of �16,963 from Mothers Against Guns between March 23 and September 19 last year.

Detroit: Local Homeowner Shoots, Kills Intruder -- May 27, 2005.

San Diego: Pharmacy employee shoots, kills robber -- May 28, 2005.

Florida: 64-year-old widow fatally shoots intruder -- May 30, 2005.

Have you ever gone into a restaurant expecting to find Barbie dolls and gotten bar-b-que ribs by mistake? Mattel seems to think you might, so they are suing Barbie's restaurant and bar.

I'm reminded of a U.S. judgement against CBS, then owner of The Nashville Network (now Spike TV), who was suing TNN.com (an IT firm) for trademark infringement. In his ruling, the judge comically wrote:

Unlikely indeed is the hapless Internet searcher who, unable to find information on the schedule of upcoming NASCAR broadcasts or 'Dukes of Hazzard' reruns, decided to give up and purchase a computer network maintenance seminar instead.

Being that the two businesses were sufficiently different, CBS lost their case, and faced a motion for attorney's fees from the defendant.

Mark Steyn says that European Union "President" Jean-Claude Juncker is showing nothing but contempt for European voters who must ratify the proposed Constitution.

"If at the end of the ratification process, we do not manage to solve the problems, the countries that would have said No, would have to ask themselves the question again," "President" Juncker told the Belgian newspaper Le Soir.

Got that? You have the right to vote, but only if you give the answer your rulers want you to give. But don't worry, if you don't, we'll treat you like a particularly backward nursery school and keep asking the question until you get the answer right.

Meanwhile, James Taranto is hilariously critical of the New York Times gushing over the proposed Constitution: "a document similar in some ways to the Constitution that binds the United States." Taranto notes that it is "also dissimilar in some ways; for instance, it comprises 448 articles, 441 more than the U.S. Constitution."

Sony is going to try to copy protect their CDs again. After several botched attempts in the past, the latest round looks to be yet another miserable failure. A guest commenter notes that the First4Internet copy protection is just more of the same. Worse yet, it's implementation could harm your computer.

I've demoed First4Internet copy protected before. It uses all the usual tricks like an illegal table of contents, but the most annoying was a driver it installs when you autorun the CD. If you turn autorun off, you are safe. With no autorun, you can copy the disk with blindwrite, clonecd or many other programs. WITH the driver installed, a new service appeared that would crash intermittently. With it disabled, I couldn't burn ANYTHING, the CD-R drive appeared as a CD-ROM in Windows XP so burning software ignored it. The crash of the software was a memory leak. Sony should think twice about automatically installing software that looks like poorly engineered spyware.

The inherent problem with copy protection is that no matter how much you encrypt the content, it still must be decrypted in order for consumers to enjoy it. Even in relatively new digital media formats, like DVDs, the decryption algorithm can be easily unprotected if people are so inclined. In fact many quality movie copies come from people within the industry (like those Oscar screeners that end up being duplicated).

With music, you have a small content industry trying to bully a huge electronics industry into being the copyright police. But even if they could control both the content and the player, copyright infringement would still be rampant. Video game consoles like Xbox and Playstation can be easily modified to play copied discs. Where there is a will, there will always be a way.

Meanwhile, the general public will continue to pay the price for the lawless minority.

"I went back and reread the whole New Testament the other day. Nowhere in the three-year ministry of Jesus Christ did I find a suggestion at all, ever, anywhere, in any way whatsover, that you ought to take the money from the poor, the opportunities from the poor and give them to the rich people." -- Senator John Kerry, bible scholar and former Presidential candidate.

Kerry went on to point out that he got more Presidential votes than Bill Clinton.

"The fact is, 10 million more Americans voted for our idea of what we wanted to do than voted for Bill Clinton in 1996 when he was the sitting president of the United States," Kerry said. "The fact is, a million people volunteered. The fact is, across America we created an energy.

I'm sure Eagle's fans take comfort in knowing that Philadelphia scored more points in this year's Super Bowl than the Patriots did against St. Louis back in 2002.

The Washington Metro is "gun-free". That is, they ban the lawful carry of firearms on Metro property. But for some reason, that didn't stop an assailant from using a gun to rob a woman at the New Carrollton (Maryland) Metro Station on Tuesday morning.

Metro spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said a woman was robbed at gunpoint after parking her car in the garage on the Maryland Route 450 side of the station shortly after 5 a.m.

The victim was approached by a young black male who displayed a handgun and demanded her keys and her purse.

Prince George's County is already the car theft capital of Maryland (that one county has more car thefts than all of Virginia). Maryland and Metro's policy of creating victim disarmament zones seems to be a boon for the bad guys. Even in Virginia, where carrying concealed handguns is both legal and accepted, Metro stations are 'gun free' zones.

UPDATE: After consulting a few sources, it appears that carrying a gun in certain areas of the Metro *may* be legal in Virginia. Of course you would not be able to get out at a federal facility (like Arlington Cemetary or the Pentagon), nor travel into D.C. or Maryland (both of whom effectively ban the lawful carry of firearms). Your ammo could be considered an explosive or dangerous article, however, so I would be wary.

Over at Say Uncle, they are still fighting the good fight against the AP for putting out misinformation about the mythical "gun-show loophole".

The legislation would close a loophole that has allowed people to buy firearms at gun shows without going through the normal criminal-background check...

Background checks are already required for people buying guns at stores to ensure they don't have a criminal record that would bar them from possessing firearms. But those checks are not conducted on purchases at gun shows.

Any time or any place a gun dealer sells you a gun, they MUST conduct a federal NICS check. It doesn't matter if you are at a gun show, a flea market, a back alley, or the dealer's store front. If they don't do a background check, they are breaking federal law and could face revocation of their FFL license, fines, and imprisonment. In fact, even when you buy Class III firearms which require an extensive 6 month background investigation, fingerprints, a sign off letter from your local sheriff, and the signature and tax-stamp from the investigating ATF agent, the dealer still MUST PERFORM A FEDERAL NICS BACKGROUND CHECK prior to you taking delivery of the gun.

It is federal law, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you.

* Note: There are a few select states (like GA for instance) where a concealed carry permit is allowed to stand in for a NICS check. Illinois is not one of those states, and those few exceptions have nothing to do with gun shows or the location of gun purchases.

"Study: Cigarette makers targeted women" -- CNN Headline, May 31, 2005.

"How unfortunate that the industry used these findings to exploit women and not help them. Cigarette designs and ingredients were manipulated in an effort to make cigarettes more palatable to women and to complement advertising allusions of smooth, healthy, weight-controlling, stress-reducing smoke," Jack Henningfield of Johns Hopkins University and colleagues wrote in a commentary.

Henningfield apparently thinks that people go into marketing to help people. How delusional can you get? The primary function of marketing is to seperate people from their money. While it's easier to do so if you provide them a real world benefit, that isn't always the case (ie: extended warranties, undercoating).

You can't always blame the snake oil salesman. There is an old idiom that says, "a fool and his money are soon parted", and I think that the fool should share some of the blame.