The Smallest Minority

The Smallest Minority

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. - Ayn Rand

Liberty is an inherently offensive lifestyle. Living in a free society guarantees that each one of us will see our most cherished principles and beliefs questioned and in some cases mocked. That psychic discomfort is the price we pay for basic civic peace. It's worth it. It's a pragmatic principle. Defend everyone else's rights, because if you don't there is no one to defend yours. - MaxedOutMama

I don't just want gun rights... I want individual liberty, a culture of self-reliance....I want the whole bloody thing. Kim du Toit


I am Simon Jester
. . . and so are you






Wahabism Delenda Est











Hey, FEC!

BITE ME!
I'm a Member of
the McCain-Feingold
INSURRECTION!

Unorganized Militia Propaganda Corps




"Jeez, Kevin... calling you an asshole would be a huge understatement, wouldn't it?"
-Jack Cluth, The People's Republic of Seabrook
(Coming from you, Jack, it's an honor.)



email:
gunrightsAT
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INVITATION: If you have never shot a firearm, regardless of
your position on the right to arms,
and if you live near or visit the
Tucson, AZ
metropolitan area, I invite you
to go shooting for a day.

I will provide the arms, ammunition, targets,
safety equipment, range fees and instruction.

All you have to do is show up.

6 Takers To Date

DO YOU LIVE SOMEWHERE ELSE and want to try shooting?
Click HERE




Proud Gun-blogging member of the Pajamahadeen since May, 2003!

An Invitation to My Readers

Debates:

"The Commentary"
A OLD discussion on gun control between me and an Irishman living in London
Start here.
UPDATED! Now with archive!

Post #1 by Alex, a Guest
A multi-post discussion hosted here at TSM

My short exchange with
Professor Saul Cornell
of the Second Amendment Research Center

Best Posts:

The "Rights" Discussion:

What is a "Right?"

What is a "Right"? Revisited, Part I

Part II

Rights, Morality, Idealism & Pragmatism, Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

The United Federation of Planets

Is the Government Responsible for Your Protection?
Part I & Part II

1975 in Washington, D.C. vs. 2004 in Canton, Ohio

Go Ahead, Rely on the Government for Your Protection

The Other Side

Liberal vs. Conservative: Both are Necessary

The Mystery of Government

The Blog
that Ate Poughkeepsie


Updated and restated as:

Of Laws and Sausages

Militias

A Mistake a Free People Get to Make Only Once

The George Orwell Daycare Center

This is NOT What I Wanted to Read

TRUST

The Lying "News" Media, Pt. II

Say WHAT?

Bias? What Bias?

Agenda? What Agenda?

The Church of the MSM and the New Reformation

Let's See if I Can "Germinate an Intelligent Thought" Here

The ACLU Hasn't Changed its Tune

They Never EVER Stop

It is Not the Business of Government

Five Reasons Why It ISN'T

They Keep Making Better Fools

Five Month Investigation, 10 Tracer Rounds, Two Felony Convictions

That Sumbitch Ain't been BORN!

On Guillotines and Gibbets

England Slides Further Towards Bondage

Pressing the "RESET" Button

Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothin' Left To Lose

A Terrible Resolve

The Courts Will Not Save Us Trilogy:

The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions

"Game Over, Man. Game Over."

An Important Question

And the denouement:

Hudson Was Wrong

The Dangerous Victims Trilogy:

"(I)t's most important that all potential victims be as dangerous as they can"

Violence and the Social Contract

Governments, Criminals, and Dangerous Victims

In the same vein:

Those Without Swords Can Still Die Upon Them

The True Believers Trilogy:

True Believers

March of the Lemmings
Reasonable People

Also in the same vein:

Tough History Coming

The Culture Trilogy

Culture

Hubris

Weltanschauung

And its follow-on:

In Re: Culture

Technical Dissertations

Why Ballistic Fingerprinting Doesn't (And Won't) Work

Spin, Spin, Spin

Speaking of Teddy Kennedy...

This is the Kind of Thing That REALLY IRRITATES ME

Questions from the Audience?

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Monday, July 06, 2009
 
Quote of the Day
The new dumbness is particularly deadly to middle- and upper-middle-class kids already made shallow by multiple pressures to conform imposed by the outside world on their usually lightly rooted parents. When they come of age, they are certain they must know something because their degrees and licenses say they do. They remain so convinced until an unexpectedly brutal divorce, a corporate downsizing in midlife, or panic attacks of meaninglessness upset the precarious balance of their incomplete humanity, their stillborn adult lives. Alan Bullock, the English historian, said Evil was a state of incompetence. If true, our school adventure has filled the twentieth century with evil. -- John Taylor Gatto, The Underground History of American Education

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Sunday, July 05, 2009
 
"Whenever you see errors of that magnitude . . .

. . . you can almost always guarantee that government played some role."

The Ayn Rand Institute hosted a presentation by John Allison, chairman of the board of BB&T Corporation on "The Financial Crisis: Causes and Possible Cures." It runs about 86 minutes. Worth your time.

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A "boiling pit of sewage and death and destruction."

I was going to respond to this comment by reactive target Markadelphia a couple of days ago, but I discovered I didn't need to. John Stossell, one of the few in the legacy media who doesn't qualify as a "gerbilist" already has:
"Better" Health Care?

by John Stossell

President Obama says government will make health care cheaper and better. But there's no free lunch.

In England, health care is "free" -- as long as you don't mind waiting. People wait so long for dentist appointments that some pull their own teeth. At any one time, half a million people are waiting to get into a British hospital. A British paper reports that one hospital tried to save money by not changing bedsheets. Instead of washing sheets, the staff was encouraged to just turn them over.

Wow. That sounds . . . sterile. Then there was the recent case of a British patient in hospital for an abscess on her neck who took it upon herself to clean the ward she was in because it was filthy.

Obama insists he is not "trying to bring about government-run healthcare".

"But government management does the same thing," says Sally Pipes of the Pacific Research Institute. "To reduce costs they'll have to ration -- deny -- care."

Like the New Zealand hospital for all intents and purposes told a Samoan family that they should let their deformed newborn daughter die, and denied her care. The government went so far as to deny her a visa to travel to where she could get care. That child eventually did get to the U.S. for treatment, and has now returned home, still alive.

There's a difference between having the government insist on denying care, and the family making that decision. That difference is who's paying.

"People line up for care, some of them die. That's what happens," says Canadian doctor David Gratzer, author of "The Cure". He liked Canada's government health care until he started treating patients.

"The more time I spent in the Canadian system, the more I came across people waiting for radiation therapy, waiting for the knee replacement so they could finally walk up to the second floor of their house." "You want to see your neurologist because of your stress headache? No problem! Just wait six months. You want an MRI? No problem! Free as the air! Just wait six months."

As others have noted, in 2005 (the most recent data I've been able to find) Canada had 5.5 MRI scanners per million population, and 11.3 CAT scan machines per million. The U.S. had at that time 27 and 32 per million population, respectively. Canada's are still backed up for months. Here you can get an elective "heart-saver" CT scan for about $100, usually within a couple of days of calling to make the appointment.

Greedy bastards.

These machines are quite expensive, but you'll note that our hospitals generally have them. Canada's, not so much.

Polls show most Canadians like their free health care, but most people aren't sick when the poll-taker calls. Canadian doctors told us the system is cracking. One complained that he can't get heart-attack victims into the ICU.

In America, people wait in emergency rooms, too, but it's much worse in Canada. If you're sick enough to be admitted, the average wait is 23 hours.

"We can't send these patients to other hospitals. Dr. Eric Letovsky told us. "Every other emergency department in the country is just as packed as we are."

In the UK they decided to DO SOMETHING about long ER waits - they enacted a rule mandating that patients be seen within four hours of entering the ER.

Essentially, the government rejected our reality and substituted its own.

One response? Keep patients waiting in ambulances outside the ER, so the clock doesn't start. Another? Rush patients through the ER in order to meet the standard.

At least one doctor has said "Some patients may have died as a result. I don't think there's any question about that."

Australia is having problems with long ER waits as well. They followed the Mother Country's lead.

More than a million and a half Canadians say they can't find a family doctor. Some towns hold lotteries to determine who gets a doctor. In Norwood, Ontario, "20/20" videotaped a town clerk pulling the names of the lucky winners out of a lottery box. The losers must wait to see a doctor.

Ronald Reagan warned in 1961 what socialized medicine would lead to:
First you decide that the doctor can have so many patients. They are equally divided among the various doctors by the government. But then the doctors aren’t equally divided geographically, so a doctor decides he wants to practice in one town and the government has to say to him you can’t live in that town, they already have enough doctors. You have to go some place else. And from here it is only a short step to dictating where he will go.
How long before the Canadian government decides that this will be a good idea?

Shirley Healy, like many sick Canadians, came to America for surgery. Her doctor in British Columbia told her she had only a few weeks to live because a blocked artery kept her from digesting food. Yet Canadian officials called her surgery "elective."

"The only thing elective about this surgery was I elected to live," she said.

It's true that America's partly profit-driven, partly bureaucratic system is expensive, and sometimes wasteful, but the pursuit of profit reduces waste and costs and gives the world the improvements in medicine that ease pain and save lives.

"[America] is the country of medical innovation. This is where people come when they need treatment," Dr. Gratzer says.

"Literally we're surrounded by medical miracles. Death by cardiovascular disease has dropped by two-thirds in the last 50 years. You've got to pay a price for that type of advancement."

Canada and England don't pay the price because they freeload off American innovation. If America adopted their systems, we could worry less about paying for health care, but we'd get 2009-level care -- forever. Government monopolies don't innovate. Profit seekers do.

We saw this in Canada, where we did find one area of medicine that offers easy access to cutting-edge technology -- CT scan, endoscopy, thoracoscopy, laparoscopy, etc. It was open 24/7. Patients didn't have to wait.

But you have to bark or meow to get that kind of treatment. Animal care is the one area of medicine that hasn't been taken over by the government. Dogs can get a CT scan in one day. For people, the waiting list is a month.

So not quite a "boiling pit of sewage and death and destruction," but there's definitely some death there, some sewage, and I'm sure some destruction. And Fido and Fluffy get more prompt, more complete care than their human masters - and the only difference is who pays, and who makes the care decisions. Governments making decisions about who should live and who shouldn't, rather than the patients or their families, because government is paying the bills - with the money they extort from those patients and their families, unless those patients and their families don't actually, you know, pay taxes.

And innovation? Forget it. Directors Czars of Government programs aren't interested in risk-taking.

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Quote of the Day
Ordinary people send their children to school to get smart, but what modern schooling teaches is dumbness. It’s a religious idea gone out of control. You don’t have to accept that, though, to realize this kind of economy would be jeopardized by too many smart people who understand too much. I won’t ask you to take that on faith. Be patient. I’ll let a famous American publisher explain to you the secret of our global financial success in just a little while. Be patient. -- John Taylor Gatto, The Underground History of American Education

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Saturday, July 04, 2009
 
Happy Independence Day
The Unanimous Declaration
of the Thirteen United States of America

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
Snopes details the fates of many of the signers.

I'm going to the range.

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Friday, July 03, 2009
 
'72 Datsun: 11.55 Second 110MPH Quarter Mile

And all electric. I love American ingenuity. It does still "produce" pollution - the power plant they recharge from is almost definitely fossil-fueled, and the Lithium-Ion battery pack (and the lead-acid one that preceded it) both are the result of mining, but still, watching a '72 Datsun smoke a Corvette and a BMW M3 does something for my soul.

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The Mindset is More Important than the Tool
The Gun I Didn't Have

By Robert M. Engstrom

I was walking home a few weeks ago when two young men, one with a knife in his hand, blocked the sidewalk and demanded my wallet and camera. I’m accustomed to having a means of defense other than my fist and an umbrella at hand. I’ve been in Washington, D.C. for three months and had almost gotten used to not having a weapon handy. At home in Arizona, I regularly, and legally, carry a concealed pistol and reluctantly left my guns at home and trusted on instincts and awareness to stay out of trouble.

The hoodlum who tried to rob me was unprepared for resistance and expected compliance to his demands because thugs know that the District of Columbia’s firearm laws and security measures punish law-abiding people who might otherwise carry a defensive weapon. My umbrella didn’t survive the confrontation, but I left the scene with my wallet, camera and the punk’s knife, a cheap piece of junk that is now in a storm sewer.

Foolhardiness on my part and a bit of good luck protected me, but there have been a few nightmares of emergency rooms, lacerated livers, and worse since that night. Training, practice and preparation for carrying a concealed firearm helped me recognize the potential threat before the knife appeared, but having my .45 along that night would have eliminated the danger of the physical contact that ensued.
But without the proper mindset, the .45 wouldn't have been helpful, either. If you have to wander around D.C. carrying an umbrella, I'd recommend this one. Pricey, but what's your life worth?

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It's NOT About Gun Rights . . .

It's about unreasonable search and seizure:
ACLU files suit over gun rights

A New Orleans man is suing the city and its district attorney for refusing to give back a gun that police seized when he was arrested on drug and firearms charges.

The American Civil Liberties Union on Thursday filed the federal suit on behalf of Errol Houston Jr., who was arrested last year following a traffic stop.

The suit says the district attorney's office declined to prosecute Houston but has refused to return his .40 caliber firearm.

Houston claims Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro has instituted a policy that firearms seized during arrests will not be returned to their owners.

The ACLU says that policy violates Houston's constitutional rights.

Cannizzaro says his office decides on a "case by case basis" whether to return confiscated guns.
It's a FOURTH Amendment case, not a Second Amendment one. I'm sure they'd be doing the same thing if his car had been confiscated instead of his firearm.

I'm equally sure that the ACLU still hasn't changed its tune with regard to the Second.

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". . . and one of unprecedented fury."

From Victor Davis Hanson's latest, Obama II vs. Obama I, the concluding line:
There will be a backlash to all this, and one of unprecedented fury.
I can only hope.

Read. The. Whole. Thing.

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Quote of the Day
Exactly what John Dewey heralded at the onset of the twentieth century has indeed happened. Our once highly individualized nation has evolved into a centrally managed village, an agora made up of huge special interests which regard individual voices as irrelevant. The masquerade is managed by having collective agencies speak through particular human beings. Dewey said this would mark a great advance in human affairs, but the net effect is to reduce men and women to the status of functions in whatever subsystem they are placed. Public opinion is turned on and off in laboratory fashion. All this in the name of social efficiency, one of the two main goals of forced schooling. -- John Taylor Gatto, The Underground History of American Education
I can see I'm going to get a LOT of Quotes of the Day out of this book.

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Thursday, July 02, 2009
 
Almost Out of Time

Since it scrolled off the front page, and the last day to order is Sunday, July 5, I thought I'd repeat this one last time:

Kalashnikitty! An email from Eric:
I usually only do these twice a year, but got such a huge response and request for extra shirts last time that I'm doing a quick limited run for you all.

I will be taking orders until Sunday, July 5 and the order with my shirt maker will go in on Monday July 6. I should have the shirts in my hands and shipping out by the third week of July and they will ship out immediately by Priority Mail. Occasionally things get delayed or sped up depending on his inventory, workload, shipping issues, etc. - but I'm giving myself enough time this time to hopefully get around these occasional issues.

Here's the procedure for getting the shirts (this makes it a LOT easier for me to track and ship these things ASAP)

Email me (erickelly1@verizon.net) with the following:

1 - Number and sizes you want - sizes are Child's Medium, Child's Large, Adult Small, Adult Medium, Adult Large, Adult XL, Adult 2XL, and Adult 3XL.

2 - Your name and address

3 - How you would like to pay for them (Check, Money Order, Paypal)

Shirts now come in TWO colors - a light ash grey (very nice) and black - shirts are high-quality, long lasting, very soft. I've never gotten an email from any of my previous customers saying, "The shirt shrunk, faded, looks horrible after 3 months, etc." - these really are quite nice shirts.

(Ed. note: I got one of the black ones last time - very nice!)

Pricing - I have, in the past 8 years, never raised the price, even though my cost has gone up. And yet, I finally must do so by $1 per shirt - I've tried for the longest time to not do this, but the time is finally here :(

Any size up to XL is $21, 2XL is $22.50 and 3XL is $23.00

Black shirts are an extra $2.50 per shirt - please specify the color you want.

Shipping via 2-3 day Priority Mail with Delivery Confirmation is $5.00 for 1 shirt, and an extra $2.50 per shirt after that. (I am holding the line on shipping, though it has gone up as well - I'll eat the extra here for you guys!)

Check, MO, or Paypal is good for payments. If using Paypal, add 4% to the total payment, including the shipping.

** When you email me your order, include your full name and mailing address. I will email you back with the total.

Below are some pictures of the graphic and someone wearing one. Thanks again to everyone and spread the word!



As always, I'm not commercially involved in this. DO NOT SEND ME EMAILS TRYING TO ORDER SHIRTS. This is Eric's gig, I just give him advertising space.

Again, the contact info for Kalashnikitty is erickelly1@verizon.net. Please spread the news around!

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Oh FVCK No!

I'd heard grumblings about this, but didn't believe anybody'd be that stupid. I've about concluded that we need term limits on every elected office, and a stipulation that elected officials can collect no government retirement pay. I sure as FVCK don't want an American El Presidente for Life like we had with FDR.

You want to repeal a Constitutional Amendment? I'm all for repealing the 17th. (Hell, I'm all for repealing the 16th, but that has a snowball's chance.)

(h/t to Neo-Neocon who asks the pertinent question: "Is this why Obama supports Zelaya?")

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Quote of the Day - Day Late and a Dollar Short Edition
If I demanded you give up your television to an anonymous, itinerant repairman who needed work you’d think I was crazy; if I came with a policeman who forced you to pay that repairman even after he broke your set, you would be outraged. Why are you so docile when you give up your child to a government agent called a schoolteacher?

I want to open up concealed aspects of modern schooling such as the deterioration it forces in the morality of parenting. You have no say at all in choosing your teachers. You know nothing about their backgrounds or families. And the state knows little more than you do. This is as radical a piece of social engineering as the human imagination can conceive.

--

Before you hire a company to build a house, you would, I expect, insist on detailed plans showing what the finished structure was going to look like. Building a child’s mind and character is what public schools do, their justification for prematurely breaking family and neighborhood learning. Where is documentary evidence to prove this assumption that trained and certified professionals do it better than people who know and love them can? There isn’t any.

The cost in New York State for building a well-schooled child in the year 2000 is $200,000 per body when lost interest is calculated. That capital sum invested in the child’s name over the past twelve years would have delivered a million dollars to each kid as a nest egg to compensate for having no school. The original $200,000 is more than the average home in New York costs. You wouldn’t build a home without some idea what it would look like when finished, but you are compelled to let a corps of perfect strangers tinker with your child’s mind and personality without the foggiest idea what they want to do with it.

Law courts and legislatures have totally absolved school people from liability. You can sue a doctor for malpractice, not a schoolteacher. Every homebuilder is accountable to customers years after the home is built; not schoolteachers, though. You can’t sue a priest, minister, or rabbi either; that should be a clue.

If you can’t be guaranteed even minimal results by these institutions, not even physical safety; if you can’t be guaranteed anything except that you’ll be arrested if you fail to surrender your kid, just what does the public in public schools mean?

What exactly is public about public schools? That’s a question to take seriously. If schools were public as libraries, parks, and swimming pools are public, as highways and sidewalks are public, then the public would be satisfied with them most of the time. Instead, a situation of constant dissatisfaction has spanned many decades. Only in Orwell’s Newspeak, as perfected by legendary spin doctors of the twentieth century such as Ed Bernays or Ivy Lee or great advertising combines, is there anything public about public schools.

-- John Taylor Gatto, The Underground History of American Education
I'm looking forward to reading all of this.

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How's that Gun Control Working Out for You?

The Daily Mail reports:
The most violent country in Europe: Britain is also worse than South Africa and U.S.

Britain's violent crime record is worse than any other country in the European union, it is revealed today.

Official crime figures show the UK also has a worse rate for all types of violence than the U.S. and even South Africa - widely considered one of the world's most dangerous countries.

The figures comes on the day new Home Secretary Alan Johnson makes his first major speech on crime, promising to be tough on loutish behaviour.
"Loutish behavior"?? Would that be the kind of behavior that leads British police to give victims "spit kits" so they can collect DNA evidence from their attackers?
The Tories said Labour had presided over a decade of spiralling violence.

In the decade following the party's election in 1997,
Remember: all legally-owned handguns were banned after the 1996 Dunblane massacre
the number of recorded violent attacks soared by 77 per cent to 1.158 million - or more than two every minute.

The figures, compiled from reports released by the European Commission and United Nations, also show:

* The UK has the second highest overall crime rate in the EU.
* It has a higher homicide rate than most of our western European neighbours, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
And this is DESPITE THE FACT that the UK has "the toughest gun laws in the world" - laws that the government promised would "protect the public."
* The UK has the fifth highest robbery rate in the EU.
* It has the fourth highest burglary rate and the highest absolute number of burglaries in the EU, with double the number of offences than recorded in Germany and France.

But it is the naming of Britain as the most violent country in the EU that is most shocking. The analysis is based on the number of crimes per 100,000 residents.

In the UK, there are 2,034 offences per 100,000 people, way ahead of second-placed Austria with a rate of 1,677.



The U.S. has a violence rate of 466 crimes per 100,000 residents, Canada 935, Australia 92 and South Africa 1,609.

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said: 'This is a damning indictment of this government's comprehensive failure over more than a decade to tackle the deep rooted social problems in our society, and the knock on effect on crime and anti-social behaviour.
No, instead they kept pursuing "gun control" and civilian victim disarmament. As Say Uncle puts it: "Gun control - what you do instead of something."

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Kozinski Cleared

Say Uncle links to an Above the Law report that the investigation into 9th Circuit judge Alex Kozinski concerning material he had on a private computer (related previously here at TSM) has concluded with a unanimous decision (PDF) by the Third Circuit's Judicial Council. No misconduct occurred.

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Wednesday, July 01, 2009
 
Chuck's Coming!

Major Chuck Zeigenfuss, guest of honor at Gun Blogger's Rendezvous II and creator of Project Valour-IT, is planning to attend at "least part of the GBR IV." Excellent!!

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It's the End of the World as We Know It

This clip explains how we got to where we are today:

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Back Online

The Comcast service guy has come and gone. Yes, a subcontractor cut my cable, and then connected the other end to a spot where it shouldn't have been in the first place. Took the cable repair guy a couple of hours to patch and fix.

The DTs are starting to abate, now.

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Equus

Via Glenn Reynolds (I paraphrase):

The Roman Emperor Caligula made his horse, Incitatus, a Senator.

Minnesota just made the back half of one, theirs.

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Your Moment of Zen

The last one has scrolled off the front page, so here is another to help calm your nerves during these stressful times:

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Quote of the Day

Excerpted from the Investor's Business Daily op-ed Canada's Single-Prayer Health Care, and no, that's not a typo.
In 2007, a Canadian woman gave birth to extremely rare identical quadruplets — Autumn, Brooke, Calissa and Dahlia Jepps. They were born in the United States to Canadian parents because there was again no space available at any Canadian neonatal care unit. All they had was a wing and a prayer.

The Jepps, a nurse and a respiratory technician flew from Calgary, a city of a million people, 325 miles to Benefit Hospital in Great Falls, Mont., a city of 56,000. The girls are doing fine, thanks to our system where care still trumps cost and where being without insurance does not mean being without care.

--

It must be embarrassing to Canada that a G-7 economy and a country of 30 million people can't offer the same level of health care as a town of just over 50,000 in rural Montana. Where will Canada send its preemies and other critical patients when we adopt their health care system?
I strongly advise you to READ THE PIECE. It has some interesting information which I was completely unaware of.

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AZ Restaurant Carry Passes

From an email:
Some good news to start your Wednesday. The session ran all night!

SB1113 AZ Restaurant Carry passed the Senate 19-8 at approximately 6AM Phoenix time and will be transmitted to the governor. She has 10 days (not counting Sundays) to sign or veto it.
As far as I've seen, there's been very little PSH over this bill here, which I've been pleasantly surprised by.

Here's hoping Brewer signs it.

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Tuesday, June 30, 2009
 
Quote of the Day
Mr. Corti opines

'If you can't defend what's yours, where are we at?'

I'd say you were in the UK. - Robb Allen, When the Will is Present

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Another Sign of the Apocalypse

Al Franken has been declared the junior Senator from Minnesota.

If the Chicago Cubs win the pennant, I'm heading for the hills.

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Priceless!

Commenter DJ left a link to this in comments, with that title. He was right:

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