A verrry interesting discussion on pressthink, posted yesterday, discusses whether or not the press has a right to investigate stories that they view to be in the public interest.
This looks like yet another obvious attempt by the current administration to (a) tar the media with the "liberal" brush and (b) deflect the President from having to answer embarassing & revealing questions.... yet it appears to be more successful than most. Can Bush effect a power coup by simply telling the media they are less influential than they think they are?

One other interpretation of this thesis that just occurred to me -- is that Bush is bashing the press, which never wins any popularity contests, precisely because he does indeed know that the press fills a vital function and that if it became more popular, it might be more emboldened to do its job properly. And even before 9/11, this administration wasn't winning any Freedom-of-Information awards. There's evidence both ways on this one. Discuss amongst yourselves.

"You assume I give a shit." Why does this surprise the media?

Jay Rosen identifies the growing horror of the liberal mainstream media, which is apparently discovering that GWB represents their worst nightmare: a sitting President who does not regard their propaganda machine with the proper amount of awe and terror.

In fact, he doesn't give it much regard at all. Nor is there any reason that he should, as degraded and perverse as what passes for the media establishment has become at the dawn of the 21st century.

The Emperor has no clothes, boys and girls. Get used to the chilly drafts.

For my own part: no, I don't consider the media to represent the public. Big surprise there: nobody does, actually. I mean, does anybody here think that, say, Eric Alterman wrote What Liberal Media? because he thought that pushing the media to the Left would make it less mainstream? I take the position that it doesn't matter what your political affiliation is: you're likely to see the press as a funhouse mirror distortion of your own beliefs.

The whole mess goes to the heart of considerations I've had about the nature of news media, which has been revealed to even the casual consumer as a morass of lies, obfuscations, and manipulations by the simple fact of access to the real facts for Joe Average American to make his own mind up about. No Average Joe has to wonder what Condaleeza Rice said to the 9/11 Commission, the transcripts are public knowledge, to the word. If you really wanted to know what people on the street in Iraq were thinking, 30sec search would turn up a list of Iraqi bloggers, any of whom are 5min of email and half a planet away, available for any question you might want to ask. If you want to know about the military side of operations in Afghanistan, you can go hit bloggers from there.

In short, if you can read this LJ, you've got wider, deeper, more 1st-hand access to the news as it happens than ever in the history of mankind have reporters or journalists. You can pick up the phone and call anyone listed in the phone book (and if you're cunning enough, even get to mock Fidel Castro). If you don't feel like collating the info yourself, you can surf the net more easily than surfing channels and find someone who, over time, earns your respect for their ability, like Glenn Reynolds, Steve Antler, or Wretchard. But even from one of your primary sources, you can always surf and find corroboration or invalidation, seek out different opinions (typically delivered directly in their Comments links), and generally prove that the world is not strictly push, but that you have the power to pull as much, as deeply, as you like.

The thesis of that article is that President Bush is dealing with the press less by trying to out-play them than by dealing them out of game. Bush stated to one journalist ?You?re assuming that you represent the public. I don't accept that. I agree with both the tactic and the view of Big Media it is based on.

--

I think that the majority of American citizens are more likely to believe Bush than Big Media in any dispute if no other facts are known. As Rosen says, journalists might ask themselves how they got to this state.

Elite media hates Bush because he calls them on their B.S., and aims to identify with 'normal people', the hoi polloi that intellectual-types quietly despise.

So when Bush tells them "You're assuming that you represent the public. I don't accept that", they - needless to say - don't particularly like that, or realize its probably true. And Mark Steyn deconstructs why the numbers show that 'normal people' - despite what the media tries to tell us - agree.

With the air gushing out of John Kerry's balloon, it may be only a matter of time until political insiders in Washington face the dread reality that the junior senator from Massachusetts doesn't have what it takes to win and has got to go. As arrogant and out of it as the Democratic political establishment is, even these pols know the party's got to have someone to run against George Bush. They can't exactly expect the president to self-destruct into thin air.

Snipers were issued with a modified version of the venerable Lee-Enfield .303 rifle used by British Empire troops since the Boer War half a century before. The sniper model had a small telescopic sight and a heavy barrel, but otherwise was little different from a million others lugged by Allied infantry in two world wars.

Robertson could group 15 rounds in a space smaller than his fist at 300 metres, hit a target the size of a man's head at 600 metres, and was confident of hitting a man from 800 to 1000 metres if conditions were right.

--

They call Korea the forgotten war, but the old digger can't forget it. "Every battle happened yesterday," he says, his voice serious. "When people are trying to kill you, it concentrates your mind. You don't leave it behind."

--

Snipers often had to shoot in cold blood - rather than in the heat of an enemy assault - but that didn't make them murderers. They were doing their sworn duty, under legitimate orders and the conventions of warfare, against an armed enemy trying to kill them.

Still, sniping is the dark art of conventional warfare. In America's gun culture, it attracts a fringe celebrity status that supports a growing list of books and websites. Australians are more ambivalent.

--

The Chinese had a proverb: Kill one man, terrorise a thousand. It was true, and it meant that each day, with each death, his job grew more dangerous.

All snipers were hated, good ones were feared. The better he shot, the more desperate enemy officers would be to kill him to stop the loss of morale. This is the sniper's dilemma: the more enemies you hit, the more return fire you attract and the more likely you are to die. Call it a Catch .303.

MADRID, Spain (AP) - Spain has completed the withdrawal of its peacekeeping troops from Iraq, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said Tuesday.

"No Spanish member of the Plus Ultra II brigade remains in Iraq," Zapatero told Parliament in a debate on his decision to withdraw the 1,300 troops.

The Plus Ultra brigade is the name for the Spanish contingent, which was stationed in the south-central cities of Najaf and Diwaniya.

Zapatero said the only Spanish military personnel who remain in Iraq are logistics experts assigned with shipping home military equipment. He said these people should be out of Iraq by May 27.

...a reporter says to the president: is it really true you don't read us, don't even watch the news? Bush confirms it.

And the reporter then said: Well, how do you then know, Mr. President, what the public is thinking? And Bush, without missing a beat said: You're making a powerful assumption, young man. You're assuming that you represent the public. I don't accept that.

Which is a powerful statement. And if Bush believes it (a possibility not to be dismissed) then we must credit the president with an original idea, or the germ of one. Bush's people have developed it into a thesis, which they explained to Auletta, who told it to co-host Brooke Gladstone:

That's his attitude. And when you ask the Bush people to explain that attitude, what they say is: We don't accept that you have a check and balance function. We think that you are in the game of "Gotcha." Oh, you're interested in headlines, and you're interested in conflict. You're not interested in having a serious discussion... and exploring things.

Further data point: The Bush Thesis. If Auletta's reporting is on, then Bush and his advisors have their own press think, which they are trying out as policy. Reporters do not represent the interests of a broader public. They aren't a pipeline to the people, because people see through the game of Gotcha. The press has forfeited, if it ever had, its quasi-official role in the checks and balances of government. Here the Bush Thesis is bold. It says: there is no such role-- official or otherwise.

No reason but to kill

From all indications, Congress intends to let the 10-year-old ban on military-style assault weapons expire on Sept. 13. Unless, of course, public demand that the ban be extended reaches such a pitch that Congress dare not do otherwise.

That's why it is important to make the public aware of the ban's pending expiration through such events as the news conference held by New Yorkers Against Gun Violence in White Plains on Tuesday to mark the fifth anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colo.

Congressional Republicans showed their intentions in March when they voted down their own bill to give immunity from lawsuits to gun manufacturers after Democrats added an amendment that would have extended the assault-weapons ban at the same time.

Westchester County Executive Andrew Spano, who supports the ban, cited FBI figures that listed one in five law-enforcement officers slain in the line of duty between 1998 and 2001 as killed with assault weapons. Indeed, a protective vest offers no protection against such weapons.

Now, according to this site between the years of 1998 and 2001 (inclusive) there were 229 officer deaths by firearm, not 211. And according to this table the number of police deaths, at least for the last couple of decades (and excluding the 72 killed in the Twin Towers in 2001) has been apparently unaffected by the relative explosion in the mid 1980's of "assault weapons" (as defined by the law) into the general populace. They're trying to make it sound like the presence of "assault weapons" has somehow added 41 deaths that otherwise would not have occurred. The evidence does not support this. But that's the conclusion you're supposed to draw. "Ban 'em, and these cops would have lived!"

"Whether you have a right to bear arms or not," Spano said, "you do not have a right to endanger society with assault weapons."

Westchester District Attorney Jeanine Pirro said she "strongly" supported the right to bear arms,

"but there is no legitimate reason to have an assault weapon other than to kill as many people as possible in a very short period of time."

She's right. No reason whatsoever.

Voting to extend the ban means opposing the National Rifle Association, which lines up congressional support like target cans on a fence, as well as taking on the rest of the gun lobby. Without the support of public outrage, few in Congress have the fortitude to do that.

If the existing assault weapons ban expires, I personally do not believe it will make one whit of difference one way or another in terms of our objective, which is reducing death and injury and getting a particularly lethal class of firearms off the streets. So if it doesn't pass, it doesn't pass.

It will be a new topic in what has become to the press and public an "old" debate.

Although handguns claim more than 20,000 lives a year, the issue of handgun restriction consistently remains a non-issue with the vast majority of legislators, the press, and public. The reasons for this vary: the power of the gun lobby; the tendency of both sides of the issue to resort to sloganeering and pre-packaged arguments when discussing the issue; the fact that until an individual is affected by handgun violence he or she is unlikely to work for handgun restrictions; the view that handgun violence is an "unsolvable" problem; the inability of the handgun restriction movement to organize itself into an effective electoral threat; and the fact that until someone famous is shot, or something truly horrible happens, handgun restriction is simply not viewed as a priority. Assault weapons - just like armor-piercing bullets, machine guns, and plastic firearms - are a new topic. The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons - anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun - can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.

Efforts to stop restrictions on assault weapons will only further alienate the police from the gun lobby.

Until recently, police organizations viewed the gun lobby in general, and the NRA in particular, as a reliable friend. This stemmed in part from the role the NRA played in training officers and its reputation regarding gun safety and hunter training. Yet, throughout the 1980s, the NRA has found itself increasingly on the opposite side of police on the gun control issue. Its opposition to legislation banning armor-piercing ammunition, plastic handguns, and machine guns, and its drafting of and support for the McClure/Volkmer handgun decontrol bill, burned many of the bridges the NRA had built throughout the past hundred years. As the result of this, the Law Enforcement Steering Committee was formed. The Committee now favors such restriction measures as waiting periods with background check for handgun purchase and a ban on machine guns and plastic firearms. If police continue to call for assault weapons restrictions, and the NRA continues to fight such measures, the result can only be a further tarnishing of the NRA's image in the eyes of the public, the police, and NRA members. The organization will no longer be viewed as the defender of the sportsman, but as the defender of the drug dealer.

Efforts to restrict assault weapons are more likely to succeed than those to restrict handguns.

Although the majority of Americans favor stricter handgun controls, and a consistent 40 percent of Americans favor banning the private sale and possession of handguns, many Americans do believe that handguns are effective weapons for home self-defense and the majority of Americans mistakenly believe that the Second Amendment of the Constitution guarantees the individual right to keep and bear arms. Yet, many who support the individual's right to own a handgun have second thoughts when the issue comes down to assault weapons. Assault weapons are often viewed the same way as machine guns and "plastic" firearms - a weapon that poses such a grave risk that it's worth compromising a perceived constitutional right. (See op-ed above for a textbook example of this. And the right isn't perceived, dammit.)

Although the opportunity to restrict assault weapons exists, a question remains for the handgun restriction movement: How? Defining an assault weapon - in legal terms - is not easy. It's not merely a matter of going after guns that are "black and wicked looking."

Passing a law like the assault weapons ban is a symbolic - purely symbolic - move in that direction. Its only real justification is not to reduce crime but to desensitize the public to the regulation of weapons in preparation for their ultimate confiscation.

Illegal Arms Shipment Seized En Route to U.S.

A Turkish ship headed for New York — and stuffed with thousands of AK-47s and other Kalashnikov assault rifles — was seized en route in Italy, authorities said Tuesday.

The ship's deadly hoard of more than 7,500 terrorist-grade rifles and machine guns worth more than $6 million was discovered illegally hidden under piles of properly labeled arms in several massive cargo containers, Italian officials said.

The ship MS Adnan Bayraktar, which bears a Turkish flag, had come from the Romanian port of Constanta and was on its way to a stopover in New York when the bust was made, the authorities said.

Documents showed the cargo containers were ultimately headed to a large U.S. company based in Georgia.

Officials refused to identify the business, citing security concerns and the ongoing investigation.

"We know that the [ship's] destination was North America, but we don't effectively know if that's where the [suspect] arms were going," one customs official told Italian state television.

The ship's cache of combat-style weapons was uncovered several days ago during a routine customs inspection at the Calabrian port of Gioia Tauro in southern Italy, officials said. They said they didn't reveal the bust at the time because of the continuing probe.

The weapons were confiscated by the Italian authorities because of problems with the ship's customs forms. For example, the arms had been described on some of the forms as "common guns" instead of assault-style.

The smuggled firearms included the lightweight combat Kalashnikov rifles, AK-47 assault rifles and SKA and Mauser rifles, authorities said.

The weapons' bayonets were still affixed to them, as were cartridges that can hold up to 30 rounds, they said.

The AK-47s had been tampered with so they couldn't be rapidly fired, but the modification was one that could easily have been reversed, authorities said.

The assault weapons are a favorite with terrorists: Usama bin Laden sported one in the now-infamous footage of him taken after 9/11.

AK-47s also have been the weapon of choice for some infamous military-minded wackos, such as the teens who shot up Columbine HS in Littleton, Colo., in 1999.

The United States has banned such military-style semiautomatic weapons since 1994. The law preventing them from being manufactured, imported or sold here expires in September.

(A few seconds of silence, then a hushed whisper)

"Take your time..."

BOOM! (and the sound of an ejected cartridge)

(one or two second delay)

"YEAH!"

"Great shot, Lewis!"

(General sounds of celebration and congratulations)

In a nutshell, the Euros still choose to be ruled. They even pervert a Constitutional Democracy and surrender individual sovereignty to some body outside their control. They still don't trust themselves or they don't want the responsibility.

Mr. Heller:

I followed the link back to your site, and found your contact information.

I must say that I find your phillipic misguided at best, regardless of the ad hominem attacks: LaPierre in jackboots, "oily Dick Cheney." (Ooh! Clever, that.) At worst (and I suspect the latter) it's merely intentionally vicious with no intent to be anything other than vitriol. That's your perogative, of course.

I've perused a bit of your archive. It's pretty obvious that your politics are anti-Bush and anti-Republican, but precisely (or even generally) what you're FOR has eluded me.

So, if I understand it correctly, you hate the NRA because they're a front for the eeeevil Republicans? If there's more to it than that, it wasn't apparent.

I'm sympathetic toward Mr. Mauser and the loss of his son, but how is the NRA responsible for Harris and Kleibold having a (that's ONE) Tec-9 pistol, a Marlin Camp Carbine, TWO sawed-off shotguns, and knapsacks full bombs? Would it have been the fault of the NRA if Mr. Mauser's son had been killed with a duck gun identical to the one Sen. Kerry uses and professes to want to protect?

Here's a link (ten seconds on Google to find) detailing the weapons carried by the pair:

http://columbine.free2host.net/weapon.html

As I said, I'm sympathetic to Mr. Mauser's loss, but his anger is misdirected.

As is yours.

I included you in the article, I believe, when I said that some NRA members were no doubt horrified by the hurtful barbs hurled at Mr. Mauser. I thank you for displaying your sensitivity... to me, at least.

PH

Mr. Heller:

You're welcome.

It's almost certain that you've received a volume of hate-mail from gun owners over your piece, and that you hold that hate mail as simply more evidence that gun control is an obvious "right thing to do," but in relation to your "No Reason Allowed" assertion, I hold that it is the gun CONTROL groups that are guilty of that. We've "compromised" for years - "compromise" being defined as "giving up only half of what the other side wanted to take."

As someone said, we gun owners have been the victims of a decades-long slow-motion hate crime. We're tired of it. Some of us are pretty angry about it, and most are not as willing to discuss the subject any longer. (And some people have a way with words. Others not have way.) So, I'll apologize for them even though it's not really my place to do so. Yes, the comments made toward Mr. Mauser were wrong and inexcusable, but Mr. Mauser in his grief has picked the wrong target. Its understandable. As H.L. Mencken said, "For every problem there is a solution that is simple, obvious, and wrong."

You might find it interesting that I believe the NRA is not protective ENOUGH of the right to arms. I believe the NRA to be too WILLING to "compromise," and the only reason the recent Senate bill protecting firearm manufacturers and dealers from lawsuit was killed after the "Assault Weapon" (scare quotes intentional) Ban extension was added was because people like me held their feet to the fire.

It's difficult, I admit, being on the side defending the right of people to possess weapons when one maniac with a handgun can run wild, but for me it's a matter of the rights of individuals and their corresponding responsibilities. I do not want to live in a society where government acts as parent and citizens are merely children to be told what to do. It's a philosophy I can defend well, but it requires people to THINK. I'm greatly in favor of that, though most people seem to want to avoid it. You attempted to include me in your article under the blanket heading of "No Reason Allowed." I assure you, I reason quite well.

But merely FEELING is so much easier, isn't it?

The first steps to understanding Columbine, they say, are to forget the popular narrative about the jocks, Goths, and Trenchcoat Mafia...and to abandon the core idea that Columbine was simply a school shooting. We can't understand why they did it until we understand what they were doing.

--

Harris and Klebold would have been dismayed that Columbine was dubbed the "worst school shooting in American history." They set their sights on eclipsing the world's greatest mass murderers, but the media never saw past the choice of venue. The school setting drove analysis in precisely the wrong direction.

"I would hope that American consumers would be properly skeptical about the objectivity of a group whose stated purpose is to lobby for a specific position - in this case about gun control and gun-related legislation and activities."

Craig Drobnick of Marysville wears a bracelet of black anodized aluminum. The words etched in the metal say: Todd Drobnick, KIA 23 Nov. 03, Mosul, Iraq.

KIA means killed in action, and in a way, Craig's brother was.

A senior manager in charge of a team of translators working for San Diego defense contractor Titan Corp., Mariner High School graduate Todd Drobnick dodged 15 attacks from small-arms fire, rocket propelled grenades and homemade bombs during his last seven months.

When he died, in a head-on collision with a petroleum truck near Mosul, he wasn't a soldier. But the 35-year-old, fluent in Russian and Arabic, a veteran of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, was buried with full military honors and posthumously awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star.

The accident that claimed Drobnick's life killed another linguist working for Titan. They were the 12th and 13th Titan translators to die in Iraq -- felled by attacks from insurgents, accidents or illness -- since major combat operations officially ended last spring. The 14th, last week, was Emad Mikha, who had managed the meat department in a supermarket in Pontiac, Mich., before he signed up with Titan to take advantage of his proficiency in Arabic.

--

In San Diego, Titan executives declined to comment on their linguists program. One explained privately that the company had no desire to appear as though it was seeking publicity from the tragedies. Indeed, this is a sensitive time for Titan. Lockheed Martin Corp. has offered to buy the company for $1.66 billion, but allegations that Titan made illegal payments to foreign officials have threatened to nix the deal.

The Titan Web site doesn't put a sheen on its translating jobs, which pay up to $108,000 a year, most of that tax-free: "12-hour shifts and in excess of 60-hour weeks in order to provide continuous contract linguist support that this 24x7 operation requires; must be familiar with the local culture, conduct oneself in accordance with local customs, and deal unobtrusively with the populace; must be willing and capable to live and work in a harsh environment."

Gun violence more likely to kill kids in Alabama

By Emily Eisenberg
Medill News Service

WASHINGTON - In Alabama, a child is three times more likely to die from gun violence than a child in the Northeast, an expert at the Harvard School of Public Health says.

Decreasing this grim statistic is not just a matter of getting rid of guns, but it is treating them as a public health issue, said David Hemenway, director of Harvard's Injury Control Research Center.

The Centers for Disease Control reported in January that most deaths under the age of 40 are caused by an accident.

The most common cause of accidental death in the United States is automobile accidents. The second most common cause of these deaths is firearms.

"Where there's more guns, there's more gun homicides; where there's more guns, there's more gun suicides," said Hemenway.

"I wouldn't expect it any other way," said Florence Police Chief Rick Singleton. He said the problem with weapons is the way "people handle and treat them."

Hemenway, while presenting the findings of his new book, "Private Guns, Public Health," said government should regulate guns the way it regulates traffic. Guns differ from almost all other consumer products because there is no regulatory agency in charge of managing their manufacture and distribution, he added.

Since the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration was established several decades ago to make automobiles safer, automobile fatalities have decreased 80 percent. The Harvard School of Public Health reported a regulatory agency would have a similar impact on firearm deaths.

Because the trafficking of illegal firearms between states is such a large problem, Hemenway said that such a regulatory agency should be at the federal level rather than with the states.

"There are lots of things we could do, lots of policies that wouldn't affect people's ability to own guns for hunting," Hemenway said.

He said federal regulation of firearms licensing and childproofing are some possible ways to address gun danger from a public health standpoint.

Alabama, like many other states in the South, is among the states with the highest levels of gun ownership in the country. The Rocky Mountain region also has high levels of gun ownership, while the northeastern part of the nation has a relatively small amount of guns.

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence's annual report card gave Alabama an "F" in keeping kids safe from guns.

"Alabama does not require child-safety locks to be sold with guns, does not hold adults responsible for leaving loaded guns around children and does not have any safety standards for handguns," the Brady Campaign said recently. A spokesman at the organization said it strongly supports Hemenway's suggestion for a federal handgun regulation agency.

Organizations like the National Rifle Association argue that the regulations the Brady Campaign proposes would decrease gun-owners constitutional rights, but a spokesperson at the NRA was not available for comment about Hemenway's findings.

Labels: fisk, GFWs, media

Politics is a profession founded on hypocrisy. This we all know. But, at the same time, we also need a politics that somewhere within it has a shred of uncompromised decency and more than a little courage. Neither of these qualities is self-evident in the Democratic Party today. There's not a lot in the Republicans either, but it at least is measurable even if it still is in short-measure.

Bush-Hate, racism, calls for the death of Republican cabinet members, snide innuendo, joy at the death of Americans in Iraq, the endless political thumbsucking of the 911 Commission, and there's more on the way, much more. It's a tired, sick and crazed political party that is so greedy and hungry for power that it will do anything, including selling this country down the drain, to get it back. I'll have no more to do with it. I'm not the only one.

The Word of the Day for Apr 13 is:

pertinacious \per-tuh-NAY-shuss\ adjective

1 a: adhering resolutely to an opinion or purpose b : perversely persistent
2 : stubbornly unyielding or tenacious


Example sentence:
The professor spent much of the class hour in debate with a pertinacious student about gun control.

Did you know?
If you say "pertinacious" out loud, it might sound familiar. That may be because if you take away the word's first syllable, you're left with something very similar to the word "tenacious," which means "tending to adhere or cling." The similarity between "pertinacious" and "tenacious" isn't mere coincidence; both words ultimately derive from "tenax," the Latin word for "tenacious," and ultimately from the verb "tençre," meaning "to hold." But "pertinacious" and "tenacious" aren't completely interchangeable. Both can mean "persistent," but "pertinacious" suggests an annoying or irksome persistence, while the less critical "tenacious" implies strength in maintaining or adhering to something valued or habitual.

AIRHEADS

NOTE: I continue to do my best to listen to Air America and am hereby coining the phrase "Airhead" to refer to persons making dopey comments on Air America Radio. Feel free to use this term as needed. I will issue Airhead Alerts as appropriate on this web site.

This post compilation meme is structured like the Carnival of the Vanities but concentrates on the best posts from the history of weblogs. Post submission criteria are very simple. The post must be at least 2 months old and the submitter must think it is a very good post. How easy is that?

Note that a post does not have to be submitted by its author so readers and lurkers with or without their own weblogs may contribute.

To outsiders, INTJs may appear to project an aura of "definiteness", of self-confidence. This self-confidence, sometimes mistaken for simple arrogance by the less decisive, is actually of a very specific rather than a general nature; its source lies in the specialized knowledge systems that most INTJs start building at an early age. When it comes to their own areas of expertise -- and INTJs can have several -- they will be able to tell you almost immediately whether or not they can help you, and if so, how. INTJs know what they know, and perhaps still more importantly, they know what they don't know.

INTJs are perfectionists, with a seemingly endless capacity for improving upon anything that takes their interest. What prevents them from becoming chronically bogged down in this pursuit of perfection is the pragmatism so characteristic of the type: INTJs apply (often ruthlessly) the criterion "Does it work?" to everything from their own research efforts to the prevailing social norms. (Guilty!) This in turn produces an unusual independence of mind, freeing the INTJ from the constraints of authority, convention, or sentiment for its own sake.

INTJs are known as the "Systems Builders" of the types, perhaps in part because they possess the unusual trait combination of imagination and reliability. Whatever system an INTJ happens to be working on is for them the equivalent of a moral cause to an INFJ; both perfectionism and disregard for authority may come into play, as INTJs can be unsparing of both themselves and the others on the project. Anyone considered to be "slacking," including superiors, will lose their respect -- and will generally be made aware of this; INTJs have also been known to take it upon themselves to implement critical decisions without consulting their supervisors or co-workers. On the other hand, they do tend to be scrupulous and even-handed about recognizing the individual contributions that have gone into a project, and have a gift for seizing opportunities which others might not even notice.

In the broadest terms, what INTJs "do" tends to be what they "know". Typical INTJ career choices are in the sciences and engineering, (Guilty!) but they can be found wherever a combination of intellect and incisiveness are required (e.g., law, some areas of academia). INTJs can rise to management positions when they are willing to invest time in marketing their abilities as well as enhancing them, and (whether for the sake of ambition or the desire for privacy) many also find it useful to learn to simulate some degree of surface conformism in order to mask their inherent unconventionality.

Personal relationships, particularly romantic ones, can be the INTJ's Achilles heel. While they are capable of caring deeply for others (usually a select few), and are willing to spend a great deal of time and effort on a relationship, the knowledge and self-confidence that make them so successful in other areas can suddenly abandon or mislead them in interpersonal situations.

This happens in part because many INTJs do not readily grasp the social rituals; for instance, they tend to have little patience and less understanding of such things as small talk and flirtation (which most types consider half the fun of a relationship). (Also guilty!) To complicate matters, INTJs are usually extremely private people, and can often be naturally impassive as well, which makes them easy to misread and misunderstand. Perhaps the most fundamental problem, however, is that INTJs really want people to make sense. (Absolutely, positively guilty!) This sometimes results in a peculiar naiveté, paralleling that of many Fs -- only instead of expecting inexhaustible affection and empathy from a romantic relationship, the INTJ will expect inexhaustible reasonability and directness.

Probably the strongest INTJ assets in the interpersonal area are their intuitive abilities and their willingness to "work at" a relationship. Although as Ts they do not always have the kind of natural empathy that many Fs do, the Intuitive function can often act as a good substitute by synthesizing the probable meanings behind such things as tone of voice, turn of phrase, and facial expression. This ability can then be honed and directed by consistent, repeated efforts to understand and support those they care about, and those relationships which ultimately do become established with an INTJ tend to be characterized by their robustness, stability, and good communications.

INTPs are pensive, analytical folks. They may venture so deeply into thought as to seem detached, and often actually are oblivious to the world around them.

Precise about their descriptions, INTPs will often correct others (or be sorely tempted to) if the shade of meaning is a bit off. While annoying to the less concise, this fine discrimination ability gives INTPs so inclined a natural advantage as, for example, grammarians and linguists.

INTPs are relatively easy-going and amenable to most anything until their principles are violated, about which they may become outspoken and inflexible. They prefer to return, however, to a reserved albeit benign ambiance, not wishing to make spectacles of themselves.

A major concern for INTPs is the haunting sense of impending failure. They spend considerable time second-guessing themselves. The open-endedness (from Perceiving) conjoined with the need for competence (NT) is expressed in a sense that one's conclusion may well be met by an equally plausible alternative solution, and that, after all, one may very well have overlooked some critical bit of data. An INTP arguing a point may very well be trying to convince himself as much as his opposition. In this way INTPs are markedly different from INTJs, who are much more confident in their competence and willing to act on their convictions.

Mathematics is a system where many INTPs love to play, similarly languages, computer systems--potentially any complex system. INTPs thrive on systems. Understanding, exploring, mastering, and manipulating systems can overtake the INTP's conscious thought. This fascination for logical wholes and their inner workings is often expressed in a detachment from the environment, a concentration where time is forgotten and extraneous stimuli are held at bay. Accomplishing a task or goal with this knowledge is secondary.

INTPs and Logic -- One of the tipoffs that a person is an INTP is her obsession with logical correctness. Errors are not often due to poor logic -- apparent faux pas in reasoning are usually a result of overlooking details or of incorrect context.

The energy expended trying to blame this failure on someone--George Tenet, Louis Freeh, Condoleezza Rice, or whoever--goes beyond mere regular partisan bashing. It seems to me to express an underlying conviction that of course someone could have stopped this - it's only a question of who. For the commission, especially, it's an unacceptable answer; they simply cannot turn to a frightened American public and tell them that it's really too bad, but we live in a scary world.

Picknicking for Peace

by John M. Bennett, Feb. 2, 2001

Because the tone of political discourse in this nation has become rather hateful, I decided to ask two friends, one very liberal, the other very conservative, to join me for a quiet lunch in the country. I thought a peaceful setting and the sociability of sharing food would help us discuss our differences with civility.

We found a pretty spot near a stream that had very little trash along the banks. An old sofa and a pile of tires nearby were overgrown by vines, so the splendor of nature was virtually unspoiled. Leslie, the liberal, and Conrad, the conservative, followed me toward a large willow tree whose trunk had been elaborately decorated with primitive engravings and paintings. "Why don’t we set up under this tree?" I said.

"I’m a lesbian!" Leslie exclaimed.

"I ain’t no homo!" Conrad replied. They glared at each other.

"Maybe we should have some food before we start the discussion," I suggested.

Leslie glared at me now. "Do you have a problem with my sexuality?" she demanded.

"No, I was just wondering where we should sit."

"I ain’t no homo!" Conrad said, who was also glaring at me.

"Okay, I guess that’s all straightened out. Should we sit under this tree?"

Leslie punched me in the shoulder. "It’s none of your business how I express my sexuality, and your homophobia is interfering with my happiness!

Conrad took a few steps away from me and reached under his jacket. "You one of them homophobiacs?"

"Easy, Conrad. I’m just trying to figure out where we should eat. Should we take a vote?"

"Why bother?" Leslie said. "You two men have already decided, and Conrad has a gun. My rights have been violated before I even had a chance." She fell to the grass and began sobbing.

Nobody had a better location to suggest, so I spread a blanket next to Leslie and brought out the food. Since Conrad and Leslie seemed a little touchy, I decided to serve them. When they had their sandwiches, potato salad, and chips, I went to the ice chest for drinks. I noticed that Leslie had pulled out a calculator and was furiously calculating.

"How many potato chips did Conrad get?" she asked me.

"I didn’t count them, Leslie. Would you like some more chips? And would you rather have a Coke or iced tea?"

"I want to know how many potato chips the men got!"

"Okay. Conrad, count your chips, would you please? Coke or iced tea?"

Conrad didn’t answer. He was staring at something in the tree. "Be right back," he said. He ran off to his truck, ran back with a rifle. "There's a crow up there."

"Uh, that’s kind of a big rifle for crow, isn’t it?"

"Thirty-aught-six," he agreed. "It’ll splash a crow from here to kingdom come." He looked away from the tree to give me an Eastwood squint. "You trying to say I can’t own a gun?"

"Not at all. Just seems kind of heavy for shooting crows at a picnic. Besides, there are some houses over that way." I pointed to a neighborhood across the stream.

He didn’t quite aim the gun directly at me. "You can have my gun—"

"Easy, Conrad, I don’t want to pry your cold dead fingers off of anything, I was just saying—"

Leslie punched me in the shoulder again. "You know why people like you want to shoot crows?"

"But I’m not shooting any crows."

"Shut up! You want to shoot crows because they’re black. You can’t get away with shooting black men and raping black women, so you kill crows as a symbol of your hatred."

"But I don’t hate black people. I don’t even hate crows. I just want to be sure you have enough potato chips and something to drink."

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

Leslie fell to the ground, sobbing. "You killed him, you killed him! That poor, innocent, harmless, beautiful, tolerant, gentle, wise creature of the open sky and the lofty breezes."

I handed her a glass of tea. "It's okay, Leslie. I think he missed."

"It doesn’t matter! Shooting at a bird is just the same as killing a person. It’s like he killed me!"

Conrad had gone back to his truck to stow his rifle. "Conrad? Could you do me a big favor and apologize to Leslie for making her feel like you killed her?"

"I ain’t apologizing to no lesbo. And I ain’t no homo!"

"I know, Conrad, you’re a manly man with mediocre shooting skills. Still, I think it would be nice—"

Someone’s hand was in my pocket. I spun around to see that Leslie had lifted my wallet and was pulling out a twenty-dollar bill. "What are you doing?" I asked.

"I’m going to a fundraiser for the beached whales after the picnic, and I need some money."

"But I was going to buy groceries. And I need some gas to get home."

Leslie glared. "Gas is evil." She took the rest of my money and handed back my wallet. "Besides, don’t you even care about the beached whales? They’re smarter than people, you know."

"It’s not that I don’t care, I’m just not personally acquainted with this particular whale."

"Can’t be that smart a whale," Conrad added, "if he can’t swim well enough to miss an entire beach."

"It’s a she, not a he!" Leslie punched me again before she continued to Conrad. "Why do you always assume that the male is the dominant one in every situation? It’s a she-whale and her baby, or it could be her and her baby if she decided to reproduce, which is entirely up to her."

"I get it," Conrad said. "It’s okay for a slut whale to act however she wants, but if she’s a respectable married whale that goes to church, she’s got no rights."

"I get it," Leslie replied. "A male whale can nail as many female whales as he wants, but if a female whale has just one partner, she’s a slut."

We seemed to be losing the spirit of civility, so I tried to change the subject. "Conrad, did you count your potato chips yet?"

He made a fist and smashed his potato chips into a pile of chiplets. "Looks like about half a million."

Leslie began sobbing. "I only got sixty-four. I’ve been discriminated against by more than one hundred thousand percent." She shoved her calculator in front of my face. "See? The numbers are right there, and you can’t deny it. Besides, it’s solar-powered. I don’t believe in batteries."

"I’m sorry, Leslie. Please take my chips. You can have my sandwich, too."

Conrad punched me on the other shoulder. "What do you got against guns anyway? You some kind of wimp? You trying to make me feel second-class?"

"I’m sorry, Conrad. I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad. I own a gun myself, you know."

"Is there sugar in this tea?" Leslie said, gagging. "White sugar? Do you know how they treat those poor, oppressed farmers who grow and harvest the sugar cane?

"I’m sorry, Leslie. I won’t buy any more white sugar."

She snorted. "So you’re going to starve the sugar farmers so you can feel like you’re making a difference?"

"I’m sorry. I’ll buy more white sugar."

Conrad punched me. "You buying that foreign sugar? What about all those poor American farmers growing American sugar who are going hungry just so you can save a few pennies?"

"I’m sorry. I’ll buy more sugar from them, too."

Leslie punched me. "So you care more about your sweet tooth than you do about the beached whales?"

"I said I’m sorry! I’ll make some caramel and send it to the damn whales!"

They both stared at me in shock. "God," Leslie said. "You’re just full of hate and anger, aren’t you?"

Conrad nodded. "Can’t talk to someone like you who takes everything as some kind of personal attack."

"I’m sorry. I’ll try to be more civil. Would anyone like more potato salad? Another sandwich?"

Conrad jumped up and pointed. "Look at that. There’s an ambulance and a bunch of cops pulling up to that house. Looks like they’re taking a body out."

"Probably some hateful, fat, white man who had a heart attack from too much white sugar," Leslie suggested. "No great loss."

"Probably some homo lesbo who died of homo-AIDS," Conrad countered. "No great loss."

I could see that several of the people gathered around the house were pointing in our direction. "Listen, friends, maybe we should be going."

While I packed the picnic gear, Leslie calculated the effect of potato chip discrimination on her earning potential, and Conrad tossed empty beer cans from his truck into the stream. As I loaded the stuff in the car, I felt a large splat on top of my head. A crow was just flying away, cawing bitterly.

Before I could wipe it off, several police cars arrived. The officers surrounded me, guns drawn, chests puffed out for the television cameras that had followed them. "Don’t move!" their leader yelled. One of the cameramen shook his head, and the leader had to repeat himself several times before they got the sound just right. The cameraman finally nodded, and the leader continued. "You been doing some shooting around here, have you?"

"Not me. You see, Conrad was shooting at a crow—"

"With those houses nearby?"

"Yes, sir. I tried to warn him—"

"So you knew there was a danger to innocent people, and you did nothing to stop it. Is that right?"

"That’s not right! I was trying to stop him, but Leslie distracted me—"

"Ho, ho, ho! Disrespect and denial. Looks like someone’s going to spend his jail time in anger management and sensitivity training classes."

"Disrespect and denial? But I didn’t shoot—"

"You have crow crap on your head. That’s all we need to know. Take him away!"

As I sat in the car, handcuffed, hungry, waiting for the cops to finish their interviews, Conrad tapped on the window. "Sorry you got busted, wimp. Thanks for the chips."

A few seconds later, Leslie finished her interview, and she tapped on the window, too. "You know what your problem is? You never listen to other people. I’m going to tell the whale that you hate her."

I couldn’t be sure, but as they drove me away, I thought I saw the reporters trying to get a statement from the crow. I was satisfied. We had definitely made progress.

Listened to Dr. Rice’s testimony today while cleaning, doing puzzles, coloring – the usual morning routine. I thought she did okay. But the 9/11 commission has changed my view of the administration. I now believe that if Al Gore had been president, he would have invaded Afghanistan right away, fortified the cockpit doors, issued an executive order that made the CIA and FBI share intel, grounded all planes the moment “chatter” started mentioning “a winged victory, like the bird of righteousness,” and subjected all young Arab males to full-body searches in airports. Pakistan would have come around to our point of view right away.

Yep.

When someone tries to use a strategy which is dictated by their ideology, and that strategy doesn't seem to work, then they are caught in something of a cognitive bind. If they acknowledge the failure of the strategy, then they would be forced to question their ideology. If questioning the ideology is unthinkable, then the only possible conclusion is that the strategy failed because it wasn't executed sufficiently well. They respond by turning up the power, rather than by considering alternatives. (This is sometimes referred to as "escalation of failure".)

And how is a woman to exercise her presumed inherent right to lethal force against a rapist if she's denied any means with which to do so?

Restrictions on weapons might make self defence more difficult in some cases, but they can also make it easier in others.

(Y)ou asserted that the statement "self defense in the UK is illegal" is "practically true". If you acknowledge that you can defend yourself without a weapon, then surely you must concede that your statement is false?

The law there seems to be one based on "proportional response" - e.g., stabbing someone who isn't armed with a weapon is "excessive force." So is bashing them over the head with a brick. There are many of these cases, and they've lead us to the conclusion that private citizens in Britain had best not resist attack, or face prosecution for usurping the authority of the State in its monopoly on the legitimate use of force.
--
The appearance is that, as I said, the government guards jealously the legitimate use of force. Proles should not overstep their restrictions.
--
Do you find the law prohibiting honest citizens from carrying any weapon suitable for self-defense, while the law ostensibly allows you a right to defend yourself somewhat schizophrenic?

The jury is supposed to take your "instinctive" response to being attacked into account, but if you use a weapon in your defense you're immediately assumed to have had it for offensive purposes. Am I misunderstanding the (il)logic here?
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Tim, the law prevents anyone from carrying anything for self-defense. A knife, pepper spray, a club, a taser, anything.

As the law has (apparently) been interpreted (and I believe it was intended) the presumption on the part of the Government is that if you carry a weapon, any weapon, you are guilty of the intent to do criminal bodily harm. Yet the law gives lip service to the concept of the right to self-defense.
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Is there or is there not a right to self-defense? English law says there is, yet its laws concerning weapons make self-defense, for all intents and purposes, a lost cause. The facts are that possessing, much less using anything that the State considers a weapon makes you a criminal in its eyes. It does not seem to legally recognize any legitimate use of force by any non-government actor.
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There are no "offensive" weapons. They're just weapons. Or tools. (A hammer makes quite an effective weapon. So, apparently, does a walking stick .) A knife can be a tool or a weapon as well. Pepper spray or mace can be used to disable a victim as well as an attacker . Same for a taser, or an axe handle. So too for firearms.

It's not the weapon that carries the intent - it's the user. Yet the UK government has seen fit to tell the entire population "You're not trustworthy. You cannot be trusted with any weapon, because of the chance you might use it to inflict bodily harm upon another."

At the same time, it tells them that they have a right to inflict bodily harm upon another in defense of themselves - all the way up to homicide in the case of rape - but that the infliction of harm must be restricted to a reasonable level.

Who gets to decide what was reasonable? A JURY. Which means, if you use force effectively in your own defense, especially if you used any weapon in that effective defense, you stand a very good chance of being charged with excessive use of force, and placed on trial. After all, seems to go the reasoning, if you were able to effectively defend yourself, if your attacker is wounded and you are not, or if your injuries are less serious than his, you weren't in real danger and/or you de facto used excessive force.

That high risk of prosecution effectively chills the right to self defense. Who wants to risk court? Just the costs, not to mention the possibility of conviction? The inability to have or use a weapon in your defense also chills the right. If you are overmatched, what use is resistance?
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I've said that, for those so willing (a firearm is) the BEST TOOL FOR THE JOB (of self-defense). But as Mr. Lindsay demonstrates, it's hardly the "only way." Your conclusion that my "argument is logically flawed" is based on your fallacious understanding of my argument.

I think your arguments would be more persuasive if you could actually come up with a case that supports the position that self defence is not allowed.
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Kevin, you seem to be equating self defence with guns. This is doubly wrong. First, guns are far more frequently used for offensive purposes than for defensive ones. And second, guns are not the only means for self defence.
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To explicitly answer your question: No, I do not find the law to be schizophrenic. Restrictions on offensive weapons do not make it impossible to defend yourself.
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Restrictions on weapons might make self defence more difficult in some cases, but they can also make it easier in others (because the attacker does not have a weapon). The net effect could be to make it easier or harder on average. It certainly isn't to make it impossible.
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Even if there are some rare situations where a gun is the only possible means for defence, it does not make the statement that "self defense in the UK is illegal", since that is a general statement describing all situations. (Emphasis mine.)
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Despite learning that Lindsay had chased the robber out of his home and stabbed him in the back four times, in the comments and on his blog Baker continued to insist that self defence was illegal in practice in the UK. His argument was that England's "laws concerning weapons make self-defense, for all intents and purposes, a lost cause". His argument is badly wrong for two reasons.

1. Using a weapon is not the only way to defend yourself.
2. If the law disarms attackers, then it can make self defence possible where it would have been impossible if the attacker was armed.

Baker's response on the first point is to focus on cases where a weapon might actually be the only way to defend yourself...

(Y)ou asserted that the statement "self defense in the UK is illegal" is "practically true". If you acknowledge that you can defend yourself without a weapon, then surely you must concede that your statement is false?

Section 3 of the Criminal Law Act 1967 provides that a person may use such force as is reasonable in the circumstances in the prevention of crime, and the question of reasonableness is subject to the amplifications contained in such cases as R v McInnes and R v. Palmer. It has been held that "if a jury thought that in a moment of unexpected anguish a person attacked had done only what he honestly and instinctively thought was necessary, that would be most potent evidence that only reasonable defensive action had been taken."

One of the most important limitations on the use of weapons is of course that they cannot be carried or used to injure other people.

You claimed that what I was implying was: "Honest citizens should never use a weapon in self defense, and the government is honestly doing everything it can to disarm everybody so that you can successfully defend yourself in your unarmed state." I never said anything like "Honest citizens should never use a weapon in self defense". Kindly refrain from stuffing words into my mouth. I do not appreciate it.

Nice of you to admit that last point. Big "if" there at the start, though. Because what you are saying here by implication is "Honest citizens should never use a weapon in self defense, and the government is honestly doing everything it can to disarm everybody so that you can successfully defend yourself in your unarmed state."

You continue to insist that "laws against weapons have essentially no effect on the access to weapons by criminals", claiming that the English experience somehow illustrated this. You then write extensively about the violent crime rate England. But this is not even relevant to your claim, since it includes violence done without weapons.

In 2000, England had about 4,000 with-gun robberies while the US had 170,000 After allowing for six times as many people in the US, the rate is still seven times higher in the US. This hardly proves that the laws made the difference, but the evidence is not on your side.

I also note that you did not comment on the Kleck quote I gave. Do you concede that the "overmotivated criminal" is a fallacy as Kleck argues?

Like noncriminals, however, criminals do many things that are casually or only weakly motivated.
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(I)t is not all impossible for crime prevention efforts to be achieved among the more weakly or temporarily motivated criminals who make up the large part of the active offender population.

"Okay, I'm thoroughly depressed now. Have we passed the point of no return? Are we on the verge of another Dark Age?" - Sarah

"Worse than any other aspect of our situation is the sense of hopelessness that pervades even the most ardent devotees of freedom." - Francis Porretto

"Like you, I am practically out of ideas. Every day we get the choice between slavery and rebellion, and so far, most folks ok with slavery." - Robert

"The main difference between Bush and Kerry, WRT civil liberties, is what size boot they use when tromping in one place, vs. some other." - jed

"Answers? I don't have answers. I think I'm probably in the same boat as most of you. If there was a real fight, I'd fight, but in the meantime, what? Just watch?" - mostlycajun

"At the moment, I don't intend to have children, and I don't have any ideas. About the only thing I'm certain of is now is not the time to give up drinking." - LabRat

"This is why I'm religious: there is no hope for freedom anywhere in the world any longer." - Sydney Carton

"We're on the road to totalitarianism right now, and voting the same people into office is not going to turn us from that path. At best it will slow us down slightly, though I'm no longer convinced of that." - Dennis

"What is the answer? Wait for the collapse of Social Security to bring down the beast and then be ready to fight off every other ...ist to restore this country to the intent of the original founders." - Ken

"Though it may seem Pollyanna-ish, I believe that we have reached or are nearing the nadir of the current trough, and the upward side of the catenary approaches." - Mark Phillip Alger

"The side for liberty is winning." - Doug

ap•a•thy
Function: noun
Etymology: Greek apatheia, from apathEs without feeling, from a- + pathos emotion
1 : lack of feeling or emotion : IMPASSIVENESS
2 : lack of interest or concern : INDIFFERENCE

The overwhelming majority of the populace, I believe, is ignorant and apathetic. They might sense the loss of their freedoms, dimly, but they don't know and they don't want to know.

Violent revolution is a nasty prospect. Alongside the unpleasantness of it, there is also this: most revolutions in history have intensified tyranny, rather than ameliorated it. Alternatives are certainly welcome.

Civil disobedience is less nasty for everyone but the disobedient. Though most people don't have the courage for it regardless of how valid it appears, in every generation there are a few who'll put their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor on the line to defend some principle of justice. But successful civil disobedience has a list of necessary preconditions that can be hard to meet. The carnage among the courageous few is enough to make one think...and back away.

I'm coming to the conclusion that it's better to live outlaw like I did when I was a kid than to bother acting like I'm a citizen. The law seems to do nothing beneficial, and I've always been willing to break it.
--
There's no need to respect the laws that don't respect you, or fear the gov- just embrace freedom and accept that you COULD be imprisoned or killed, but you'll live freer than almost anyone before that happens. It's worth it, to me.

There is a third way, and it can be applied to many of the usurpations of power that occur in American society: passive resistance, sometimes also called passive non-compliance. It is much less risky to its practitioners than civil disobedience, and it doesn't usually set the streets awash with blood. More, it has a good record of success, although when it wins, it doesn't always win everything one has hoped for.

I predict that the Bush administration will be seen by freedom-wishing Americans a generation or two hence as the hinge on the cell door locking up our freedom. When my children are my age, they will not be free in any recognizably traditional American meaning of the word. I’d tell them to emigrate, but there’s nowhere left to go. I am left with nauseating near-conviction that I am a member of the last generation in the history of the world that is minimally truly free.

So long as speech was protected, Americans could claim with some justice that we were in some sense free. If Tuesday's Supreme Court decision prevails, we will not be able to call ourselves even partly free. We will be a people in chains. Chains forged to protect incumbents from having their records in office publicized in the press as they stand for election. Chains forged to increase the power of the Old Media, granting their journalists and editors the last word on political campaigns. Chains forged by (and for) men to whom "the people" are not only not sovereign, but are a force to be fastened down and made to do as they're told by those who know better.

It is literally true that the U.S. Supreme Court has entirely liberated itself from the text of the Constitution.

We are free at last, free at last. There is no respect in which we are chained or bound by the text of the Constitution. All it takes is five hands.

Where have I said a gun is the ONLY way?

Please, point it out.

I've said that, for those so willing it's the BEST TOOL FOR THE JOB. But as Mr. Lindsay demonstrates, it's hardly the "only way."

Example: Someone confronts me and demands my wallet (with an implied threat of physical injury if I do not comply.) Instead of yielding up my wallet, I punch him in the mouth and knock him out. Doing so, I break my hand. I am injured, but I have not lost my wallet. I have successfully defended myself, even though I did not avoid injury. I have done something else - I have prevented a crime of violence (robbery edited from the original) through the legitimate use of force. My punching him in the mouth is not assault, it's self-defense. If I am able to call the police and the mugger is apprehended, (hopefully before he recovers consciousness) I have aided in removing a violent criminal from the street (until they put him out on bail ten minutes after arraignment.) If I then testify against him and put him in jail, I've done a bit more effective job (unless he gets a sentence of probation.) Regardless, I've not only defended myself, I've defended society by resisting violent crime and attempting to remove a violent criminal from the general population.

Now, repeat the exercise above with the assailant holding an (illegal) knife, and me with only my hands and feet with which to defend myself.

Then add my wife and my two grandchildren to the equation.

One of the most important limitations on the use of weapons is of course that they cannot be carried or used to injure other people. (Emphasis added)

All weapons are offensive and weapons cause violent crime, therefore we must do everything in our power to disarm our populace in order to prevent violent crime!

And how is a woman to exercise her presumed inherent right to lethal force against a rapist if she's denied any means with which to do so? What weapon is she left with? Foul language? Mean thoughts? Rapier wit?"

Restrictions on weapons might make self defence more difficult in some cases, but they can also make it easier in others.

The federal tax code today covers 17,000 pages and requires over 700 different forms. The IRS estimates Americans spend 5.1 billion hours annually merely preparing their taxes. The Tax Foundation estimates that those wasted hours drain some $194 billion annually from the U.S. economy. All of that comes before Joe Taxpayer forks over his first dime.

The federal criminal code is just as bad. Thomas Jefferson wrote that the U.S. Constitution gave Congress the power to criminally punish “treason, counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States, piracies, and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations, and no other crimes whatsoever.” Yet the federal criminal code today spans some 1,400 pages, and that’s just the “pocket edition.”

The Federal Registry, which records all of the regulations the federal government imposes on businesses (all of which carry the force of law), now exceeds 75,000 pages. The Office of Management and Budget estimates that merely complying with these regulations — that is, paying lawyers to keep educated on them, interpret them and implement them — costs U.S. business another $500 to $600 billion per year.

There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on the guilt. Now that’s the system!

"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag and begin slitting throats."

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."

"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under."

"I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time."

"The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable..."

"The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind."

"Most people want security in this world, not liberty."

"I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone."

"The public, with its mob yearning to be instructed, edified and pulled by the nose, demands certainties; it must be told definitely and a bit raucously that this is true and that is false. But there are no certainties."

"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule."

"Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it."

"It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office."

"I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant."

"I'll spare your life for one year," the King said. "If in that year you teach my horse to sing, you will go free. If not, your sentence will be carried out."

Later in the stables the condemned man, chained in the stall, was brushing the horse and crooning in its ear when a stablehand came up. "Why'dye make sooch a harebrained bargain?" he asked.

"A lot can happen in a year," the man replied. "The King could die. The horse could die. I could die. And who knows? The horse might learn to sing."

Thanks.

That essay really stirred things in me that had been lying dormant. I felt the urge to write something, but I knew it would be REALLY long and it would be a massive amount of work to put together. Then Francis Porretto at that same time started his eight-part series "Tyranny and its Fringes," which wasn't what I was really looking for, but was rich fodder.

I, too, have been looking to the Judicial Branch to bail us out of the mess we're in, but the more case law I read the more disillusioned I am, as Randy Barnett was. The Scalia quote is what tore it for me.

My position on gun laws was "this far and no further until the 2nd Amendment is legally recognized as an individual right, and incorporated under the 14th Amendment's 'privileges and immunities' and 'equal protection' clauses."

Well, I understand now that Hell will probably freeze over before that happens. The NRA believes that through a slow, steady, incrementalist approach they can achieve this. The Silviera group thought that the NRA was chicken a full-court press would force the Supreme Court's hand. The NRA thought that the Silveira group was dangerous. It's apparent to me that they're both tilting at windmills. They want to overturn a century of precedent. It ain't gonna happen. The honest judges are constrained by bad precedent (see Kozinski) and the less honest are more than happy with the law as it stands. AND THAT'S NOT GOING TO CHANGE.

Damn, now I have to blog this....