Holy S*)t! Or: Don't Buy Powder From People You Don't Know

I have, in the past, put up pictures of guns destroyed in "KABOOM!"s - incidents in which something went very wrong, usually involving handloaded ammunition. Well, here's a piece I think all handloaders ought to read. It starts off

Handloaders are a thrifty bunch, on the whole, when it comes to our reloading components. We may spend multiplied hundreds of dollars on our equipment over a period of several years, but when it comes to the components of our ammo, while we demand excellence in quality, we are bargain-hunters at heart.

Let me state that I have yet to meet any group of people who are tighter tightwads than shooters. In this case, the savings of probably less than $100 cost a man a very nice, very accurate sporterized Mauser, and very well might have cost him his health or even his life.

Please read Bargain Powder Hazards.

Quote of the Week:

Science may be the noblest endeavor of the human mind, but I believe (though I cannot prove) that the most crippling and dangerous kind of ignorance in the modern West is ignorance of economics, the way markets work, and the ways non-market allocation mechanisms are doomed to fail. Such economic ignorance is toxic, because it leads to insane politics and the empowerment of those whose rhetoric is altruist but whose true agenda is coercive control. - Eric S. Raymond

I Will Not Register. Ever.

South Africa has apparently chosen to create a huge new population of criminals by revising their licensing and registration laws, reports the Cape Times earlier this month.

Gun licence chaos looms, say owners

Fatima Schroeder
January 06 2005 at 06:48AM

Firearms dealers say that there is no way the government can hope to re-register the millions of legal guns in the country in the four years from January 1 that it has given itself.

Adding to the load will be the thousands of new gun licence applications that will be made to the Central Firearms Registry this year.

Well, apparently not, as it appears that the overwhelming majority of new license applications are being denied.

Since Monday, the 2.8-million firearm owners across the country could apply to renew licences for their 4.5-million firearms.

The Firearms Control Act, implemented in July, makes it compulsory for applicants to have a training test to gain a proficiency certificate before applying for a competency certificate. People must have a competency certificate before they may apply for a licence.

More of those "common-sense" rules, right?

According to gun dealers, only one firearm licence has been issued in the past six months.

So much for the "thousands of new licenses."

Of concern is that gun owners who do not have their licences renewed would be in possession of illegal firearms - a criminal offence.

Otherwise known as a "GOTCHA!" Disarm yourself or be a felon. No need for a door-to-door search. You know who was licensed, if they haven't turned in their registered firearms, go lock 'em up!

Andrew Soutar, chairman of the South African Firearm Dealers Association, said that many gun dealers had gone into liquidation.

The Central Firearms Registry had processed 69,000 licence applications a year until March last year under the old laws, which entailed less complicated procedures, he said.

At this rate, he calculated that it would take about 65 years to renew licences.

A law that's impossible to implement? That's no reason not to do it! While you're at it, let's repeal gravity!

Responding to a request by the Cape Times, Pretoria police communications official Mohlabi Tlomatsana released figures that showed more than 10,000 licences had been issued between July and November last year.

Tlomatsana acknowledged that the figure included applications made before the new law came into force.

Asked how many of those licences had been approved under the new act, he responded five hours later, saying that processing the request was "time-consuming".

Asked how many competency certificates had been issued in the last six months of last year, Tlomatsana said the question was "academic".

Gun dealers claim the police are reluctant to give the figures sought by the Cape Times as only one licence has been issued under the new act.

Can't imagine why they'd be closed-mouthed about it, then. Can you?

The South African Firearm Dealers Association completed a countrywide survey shortly before Christmas and 80 dealers responded saying they had not been informed of any licence approvals or issuing of competency certificates since the new law had been implemented.

The owner of Cavendish Guns, Dusty Millar, said applicants had battled to get firearm licences because the government had not put proper systems in place before implementing the law.

He said that because of the dearth of ranges and accredited trainers, applicants had struggled to obtain competency certificates in the six months after the law came into effect.

Millar said this was harming the firearm industry and six dealers in Cape Town had closed down since July 1.

"People are getting illegal firearms because it is more difficult to get a licence."

Fr. Guido Sarducci's Five Minute University course in Economics: "Supply and-a Demand. That's it." Supply always meets demand.

Osman Shaboodien, an instructor at Buccaneer Guns, shared Millar's sentiments.

"I don't think there's one dealer who hasn't suffered because of the new act. But it's not all doom and gloom. It's starting to look better purely because the training procedures are coming through."

Right. AFTER a large number of dealers have been put out of business, and the law guarantees that thousands of people currently licensed will be unable to renew.

But "it's starting to look better." For a government that wants to disarm its citizens.

If, however, the handling of applications for new licences did not improve, many firearm dealers would have to close down, Shaboodien said.

In a letter to the Cape Times, the Democratic Alliance's spokesperson on safety and security, Roy Jankielsohn, said the act could hit firearm owners and dealers as well as the tourism, film and private security industries.

Tlomatsana denied that only one approval had been issued under the new act, and said the procedures had been put in place.

The renewal deadlines are:

Those born between January1 and March 31 can apply during 2005;

Those born between April 1 and June 30 can apply during 2006;

Those born between July 1 and September 30 can apply during 2007; and

Those born between October 1 and December 31 can apply during 2008.

Meanwhile gun owners were responding positively to the 90-day firearms amnesty and had been handing guns in at police stations around the country, officials said.

While the police are not yet able to say what types of illegally held guns were being surrendered, they said people were taking advantage of the amnesty.

People with unlicensed firearms or ammunition can hand them in at any police station without fear of prosecution.

I'd LOVE to see a list of what gets turned in. The last time England tried it they got an anti-aircraft machinegun and some hand grenades.

Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula said the amnesty would run from January 1 to March 31, during which time the police would accept items brought in by people who no longer wished to be illegally in possession of them.

This particularly relates to people who have inherited or have been given firearms for which they do not have licences, people who may have kept ammunition after getting rid of a gun, or even security companies or other businesses that may have outdated equipment in their possession.

I will not license. I will not register. Period.

The ACLU Defines What is and What Isn't A Fundamental Civil Liberty

...and don't you forget it!
 
Found via Clayton Cramer's blog, Different River reports that the ACLU has decided to edit the First Amendment:

The ACLU is misquoting the Constitution, apparently in order to make a point that is actually false. They are claiming that “freedom of speech is the first freedom mentioned in the First Amendment,” when in fact it is the second. Here is what this page on the ACLU web site says, as of this moment:

It is probably no accident that freedom of speech is the first freedom mentioned in the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Yeah, it “no accident” – it’s next door to a lie. See the ellipsis there? Those three little dots, indicating the ACLU deleted something they didn’t think was relevant? Wonder what’s in that spot in the actual First Amendment? What’s in there is the actual “first freedom mentioned in the First Amendment.” For comparison, here’s the actual First Amendment, complete without ellipses, from the website of the National Archives and Records Administration

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

This is easily understood, though, as I found in this Reason Online interview of ACLU President Nadine Strossen. You see, the ACLU has taken it upon itself to define what is and what isn't a freedom or a "fundamental civil liberty." Here's what Strossen had to say:

...our view has never been that civil liberties are necessarily coextensive with constitutional rights. Conversely, I guess the fact that something is mentioned in the Constitution doesn't necessarily mean that it is a fundamental civil liberty.

See? Doesn't that just clear it all up?

No Nuance Here

Today's MSNBC piece by Howard Fineman wherein he announces the death of the "American Mainstream Media Party" ("party" in the political sense) is one of the most concise and cogent explanations I have seen for what the news media has become, and I think his declaration that the party was founded by the action of Walter Cronkite "step(ing) from behind the podium of presumed objectivity to become an outright foe of the war in Vietnam" is absolutely true. In fact, I keep expecting Peter Jennings to stand up any night now and declare the "quagmire in Iraq" lost and unrecoverable, (I know, he does pretty much nightly, but I mean blatantly in an editorial statement as Cronkite did after Tet) fully expecting that his declaration will cause an immediate loss of national support and a subsequent withdrawal in shame. (But then again, perhaps he actually reads his Nielsen numbers.)

When I read this paragraph though, it reminded me of something from much earlier last year:

Texas Gov. George W. Bush arrived on the national scene in the 1990s intent on dictating the terms of dealing with the AMMP — or simply ignoring it altogether. Already well-known as the son of a president, he focused on raising money and holding private chit-chats with donors and political supporters who would journey to Austin for off-the-record talks. His guru was not an image-making man (as Ailes had been for Nixon, and Deaver with Reagan) but a direct-mail expert, Karl Rove. Rove and Bush decided that most forms of "exposure" offered by the AMMP would be likely to do more harm than good. So why bother unless they could completely dictate the terms of engagement?

Back in April, PressThink did a piece on Bush's attitude towards the press, from which I excerpted this:

...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.

Fineman's piece illustrates that, not only did the Bush campaign have that policy and execute it, it was correct (and successful). Rather and CBS attempted a major "Gotcha" and had their asses handed to them by the new media - a voice that even four years ago would probably have not been powerful enough to be heard. To Mapes and Rather it didn't matter whether the story was true (though I'm certain they believe it yet) it only mattered that they would be believed, banking on CBS's reputation as "the Tiffany Network." But that credibility, previously only eroded, has now been completely washed away.

Regardless, the attack on Bush was, in the fevered imaginations of Burkett, Mapes, and Rather, "to represent the interests of a broader public." It was to save us Red-Staters from ourselves by convincing enough of us not to vote for Bush. Bush and his advisors understood from the outset the adversarial nature of the press and did its best to neuter it. Open attack was all that was left to the American Mainstream Media Party as the election drew near. All their other teeth had been effectively pulled.

Glenn Reynolds corrects Fineman on an important point, though:

Political parties aren't noted for their honesty or lack of bias, and when the media became a sort of political party (which it denied for years, but which is now so obvious that Fineman can pronounce its death) it became less honest, though it's not clear that the press was ever as disinterested as it sometimes pretended. That's why when Fineman writes, "Still, the notion of a neutral, non-partisan mainstream press was, to me at least, worth holding onto," I think he's wrong.

The reality of a neutral, non-partisan mainstream press would be worth holding onto -- if it had ever existed.

To that I say, "Amen."

OK, Now Some GOOD Political Cartoons

Even some by apparent lefties. First up, from the normally leftward-leaning Steve Benson of the Arizona Republic:

Even Steve gets Ra^therGate.


And here's the Las Vegas Review Journal's Jim Day's take on the same subject from November 29:

Robert Arial of South Carolina's The State is usually dependable. Here's his commentary on the Ukranian election:

Chuck Asay of the Colorado Springs Gazette has a bit of a zinger for the global warming enthusiasts:

Joe Heller of the Green Bay Press Gazette illustrates the kind of "aid" going to Indonesia out of the oil-rich, Muslim Middle-East:

And I'll conclude with four from my favorite political cartoonist, Mike Ramirez - the only good thing about the L.A. Times:

Art may be in the eye of the beholder, but I know what I like, and knee-jerk America-bashing isn't it.

But Rather Still Has a Job at 60 Minutes II

Color me shocked, but C^BS has fired four people over Ra^therGate. Danno wasn't one of them. Here's my favorite quote from the story, though:

"The combination of a new 60 Minutes Wednesday management team, great deference given to a highly respected producer and the network’s news anchor, competitive pressures, and a zealous belief in the truth of the segment seem to have led many to disregard some fundamental journalistic principles," the report said.

(Emphasis mine) Yet:

The timing of the story prompted charges of political bias against CBS News.

While the panel found that some actions taken by CBS News encouraged such suspicions, “the Panel cannot conclude that a political agenda at 60 Minutes Wednesday drove either the timing of the airing of the segment or its content.”

(Emphasis mine.)

Right. There's a "zealous belief in the truth of the segment" by the producer and the anchor, and it comes out "during a tight and hotly contested presidential race," yet the panel "cannot conclude" that the "zealous belief" pushing the story was "a political agenda."

I'm surprised they found justification to fire anyone, then.

But, I have to admit, it was more than I expected.

UPDATE: I just heard on ABC radio news that the report "found no evidence" of a political agenda. That's not what I read. "We cannot conclude" is not equivalent to "no evidence of."

Further update: You've GOT to check out Ravenwood's discovery. LOL funny.

"...Obvious, Tendentious, Simplistic, Wrong, Unfunny, Self-righteous and Annoyingly Small-minded."

Thus sayeth James Lileks in today's Bleat about today's political cartoonists. And with a few minor exceptions, I wholly concur. James has several links to excellent examples (a couple of which go to the Washington Post, which requires registration - three tries of Bugmenot to no avail.) So here are just a few examples of cartoonists I found that meet that description given above:

David Horsey of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

This was one of Lilek's examples, and a damned good one.

Chris Britt of Illinois' State Journal-Register.

Can't have a political cartoon set without some asshole opinion on "gun control." Apparently Mr. Britt missed the recent report indicating that decades of study of gun control laws has proven that, well gun control hasn't seemed to accomplish anything.

Mike Lane of the Baltimore Sun.

Apparently $350 million plus a carrier strike force isn't enough for Mr. Lane. We must also cancel the inauguration! Besides, if it isn't government spending, it really isn't charity. Putz.

Rex Babin of the Sacramento Bee.

Apparently there's absolutely no problem with Social Security! None at all! It's all smoke & mirrors, just like WMD! Bushitler just hates old people and wants to turn them into Soylent Green. Putz again.

Milt Priggee - independent.

And I can see why. Yes, Bushitler is responsible for all those horrible deaths. And there's no reason for them! No, if we'd just keep our warmongering to ourselves, the world would be beautiful, with fluffy bunnies and chocolate rivers! But the hundreds of thousands killed by Saddam are, well, not our business. We shouldn't interfere. It's not our responsibility.


And here's the most disgusting one I found:

John Darkow of Columbia, MO's Daily Tribune.

I see Mr. Darkow and Ted Rall have the same outlook. That's not to say that there aren't some good cartoonists out there, but "hate America" seems to be the theme for the vast majority of them. Perhaps if I have some time later, I'll dredge up a few good ones.

My Most Abject Apologies

I'm burned out. And right after such a nice link and compliment from Kim, too. I'm working ridiculous hours, and I just don't have the will nor the time to write much at present, yet I'm still getting over 500 hits a day on average. Thank you for your patronage, but as I said a couple of posts ago, January looks like it's going to be a mighty thin month.

Maybe tomorrow. I need to work, I just don't know if I'm going to actually go to work.

It's Saturday, and I'm in the Office

But that's OK. Others are taking up the slack for me, like Ravenwood's excellent fisking of a cliché-filled diatribe against the .50 BMG rifle.

Back to work...

(No, the kind that pays the light bill.)

England isn't Alone in its Idiocy, Obviously

Read this Packing.org thread (link now broken) about someone who states he came to the defense of an assault victim, and has now been charged for behaving defensively when the attackers came back. Read all the comments in the thread, as well.

And read Phelps's take on it too. (Link still good, 9/5/07) That's where I found the link originally. BTW, I concur with Phelps.

"No, Ace. Just you."

Thank You, Frank. Thank You Very Much.

Varifrank has lived up to his blog's name. Please read his righteous smackdown of some clueless EUnuchs, and enjoy.

I'm Not Posting Here, But I Leave a Comment at the Volokh Conspiracy?

Couldn't pass it up, seeing as the topic was about restoring the Constitution. They don't often open comments on VC posts.

Now we'll see if I draw any kind of response.

Now it's 8:30 and I've got to get up at 4 AM tomorrow (again.) G'night.

UPDATE 1/7: The Geek with a .45 adds his $1.97. Wince and Grim leave comments at the original post also.

Alphecca Rips Off A Righteous Rant

Jeff has just a bit to say about how South Africa is implementing its new firearm permit system - a system remarkably like those "common sense" ideas we hear a lot about from The Brady Bunch et al.

Go read his Rant On Gun Control.

(What posting I do for a while will be of the linking persuasion. I haven't had a lot of time to craft those Den Besteian-length opuses I tend towards.)

Too Tactical

JR of the Texican Tattler blog has posted an outstanding piece of humor pointed at the "tactical" crowd - the guys who run around in camoflage wearing drop-leg holsters and... other stuff. All the time. They're a source of humor to a lot of us, especially on message boards like AR15.com. I posted a link to the piece there, and as of now it's drawn over 2000 hits and 70 comments, all positive.

Who says gunnies don't have a sense of humor about ourselves?

So please, take a few minutes and read Tactical Tommy Goes to the Store.

Beverage warning!

UPDATE: The author of the piece is "alduro" from the message board The High Road. He has some other peices in a similar vein, but this one I think, is the best. Thanks to Justin Buist for the pointer. Credit where credit is due!

Happy New Year, Everyone

And in honor of this occasion, I've updated my blogroll. Originally I intended to keep it short, trying just to list those blogs I read regularly, but so many people put me on their blogrolls I felt ungrateful not to reciprocate. So, I've divided it up into those blogs I read and recommend, and those people who I just can't read regularly or I'd NEVER get anything done. (Please note, there's no preference in the order to anything, it's just the way I pulled each link off of Technorati, more or less. If you have me blogrolled and don't see a link to your site, drop me an email. I don't think Technorati gets everyone.)

Speaking of getting things done, this place is probably going to be quiet for a bit. I have three ongoing projects at work, two of which will have me out of town for significant periods this month. I'm at the "produce or die" point, so I must stop blogging and surfing and produce. I'm decompressing this last three-day weekend (when I really ought to be sitting at my desk doing work) but come Monday, it's a**holes and elbows.

"If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat"

Truer words... and the title of Hugh Hewitt's previous book. Carnaby Fudge is asking for just what I described a couple of posts down - some help from the Blogosphere in righting a wrong. The Democrats have done what Hewitt (and others) predicted: recounted until they got the count they wanted then declared victory, but Carnaby lives in Washington, and wants a revote. Stefan Sharkansky's blog Sound Politics has been covering the election theft electoral process and links to a new site, RevoteWA.com which is pushing a petition to get a revote.

To be honest, I'm ambivalent about it. After all, the Democrats have worked so hard to steal er, win the election. A revote might cause a landslide against them because of the disgust engendered by their blatant theft sticking to principles. Personally, I think the people of Washington should just bend over and spread 'em accept the legitimacy of their new governor. After all, she only wants what's best for them, and plans to see that they get it - good and hard.

But if you're a resident of Washington, and you're just a little PO'd about the election, you might want to drop by Sound Politics and get really PO'd. Then make a visit to RevoteWA.com to sign the petition.

Oh, and go by and read Ravenwood's The Number of the Counting Shall Be Three. I'd missed the Python reference, but he nailed it.

Now if Only Canada Will Get a Clue

Clayton Cramer links to this report that New Zealand has finally given up (at least for now) on its plan to attempt long-gun registration (again.)

Gun registration off the agenda - Hawkins
24 December 2004

The Government has finally abandoned the idea of registering firearms.

Police Minister George Hawkins confirmed today that registration will not be in a bill he is preparing to tighten border control of illicit arms trading.

Border control?? New Zealand is an island. Doesn't he therefore mean "gun smuggling?"

The legislation will bring New Zealand into line with international protocols on the control of weapons, parts and ammunition.

"International" = "U.N."

That doesn't give me the warm fuzzies.

The registration of all the guns in the country was recommended seven years ago in a government-commissioned review of gun laws carried out by Sir Thomas Thorpe.

Neither the previous nor the present government acted on the recommendation, and Mr Hawkins said today it was off the agenda.

What this peice doesn't tell you is that New Zealand tried long-gun registration before, and it failed miserably. They've had handgun registration since 1921, according to this Guncite page (and used it in 1974 to confiscate revolvers), but when they tried to expand their registration scheme to long guns in the 1980's they finally gave up in defeat in 1983, settling for registration of the then-new "evil military-looking rifles" only. They stopped trying to register other rifles and shotguns because they recognized that it was expensive, useless, and tied up to much police time and effort.

So of course somebody had to bring it up again.

"Police told the Government it wouldn't make very much difference, and they recommended that we did not register every firearm," he said on National Radio.

"Police advice was that most of the times guns are used illegally, they are illegal guns and they don't know about them anyway."

Halleluja! A voice of reason!

The chairman of the Council of licensed Firearms Owners, John Howat, agreed with the decision.

"There's no evidence, anywhere in the world, that registration systems assist police in generally controlling firearms," he said.

"It is incredibly costly. We don't want to go down that track, it's a waste of money."

As Canada has found to the tune of over a billion dollars - but they won't admit their mistake.

The Progressive Party's justice spokesman, Matt Robson, has advocated registration in the past and he did not agree.

He's a "Progressive" - of course he did not agree. Progressives can't be bothered with little things like reality.

"Without a firearms registration authority, without the proper registration of every gun in New Zealand, we leave ourselves very vulnerable," he said.

Vulnerable to what? The inability to disarm the proles before they come to string you up for violating their rights just one time too often?

Mr Hawkins will put his bill into Parliament early next year.

He said it would give increased powers to customs officials to search for and seize illicit weapons and ammunition.

Works really good with drug smuggling too, I bet. What's the street price for cocaine in Auckand these days?

Supply and demand, Mr. Hawkins. Economics 101.

It would allow New Zealand to sign the United Nations protocol on the control of trans-national organised crime.

Be still, my beating heart.

"Illegal arms getting into the Pacific isn't something we want to see, and we're playing our part as a responsible member of the Pacific group of nations," he said.

"We're very conscious that we have a lot of ports, a lot of yachts come to them, and we have to be ever vigilant."

You've got a fair amount of just plain coastline, too. Gonna put up a wall?

There are four different classes of firearms licence in New Zealand. The A category entitles holders to own and use rifles and shotguns. Other categories enable people to own and use handguns and military-style semi-automatic firearms under strict conditions.

Just not strict enough, apparently. That's the thing about gun control laws, they never appear to be good enough. There's always that "next step."

But it looks like New Zealand is going to skip back from at least one.

Never Pick a Fight with a Man Who Buys Ink by the Barrel

Er, has a blog?

And it all apparently started with the "Fisk," the line-by-line disassembly of some piece of "journalism." It was generally done by an individual, or at best disassociated random individuals, but now it's organized, collated and cross-referenced.

Exhibit A: Newsweek's The Birth of Jesus, an anti-Christian hit piece published in the Dec. 13 issue. In years past this, I'm sure, would have drawn several hundred to several thousand letters of outrage and protest from believers (and remember, I'm not one), and the editorial staff would have sifted through them all to find two or three to publish in the "letters to the editor" section. In a month or two. I'm sure at least one would have been a real doozy, too. Oh, someone might have written something that might have gotten published in some obscure religious magazine, two months hence, but it would have attracted the attention of a very small audience at best.

But not today. As Hugh Hewitt, an evangelical himself, national radio talk-show host and writer, explained in his recent Weekly Standard piece The Year of the Blog, "That was then. The blogosphere is now." He goes on to explain how two highly credentialed and religious men, Dr. Albert Mohler and Dr. Mark D. Roberts, wrote and published on-line separate detailed critiques of the Newsweek piece. Hewitt then interviewed both men on his radio program, and invited other bloggers to weigh in. The complete list of respondents is available here. Hewitt states:

What the blogosphere allowed to happen is the organization of dissent which is focused, credentialed, complete, and--crucially--publicized. No fair reader of Meacham's piece and the commentaries on it can conclude that Meacham produced good journalism. It is simply too one-sided, too agenda-driven, and too ignorant of serious scholarship to qualify as anything other than a polemic. The exposure of Meacham's folly doesn't guarantee that Newsweek won't stumble again, but it surely must give others in his position pause. The blogosphere has experts and megaphones. As Joe Carter of Evangelical Outpost concluded "the mainstream media is only able to retain their influence by convincing the populace they possess special skill and knowledge. But as the Internet continues to fill with . . . debunkers, the media continues to lose credibility, influence, and power."

Exhibit B: The Minneapolis Star Tribune and journalist Nick Coleman's direct attack on Scott Johnson and John Hinderaker of Power Line in his column Megaphones without oversight: Blog swarms, opinion storms, and brand destruction. The response to this piece was widespread and immediate, and it's all (or nearly all) collated at the aforementioned Evangelical Outpost. To quote:

The fact that such a large number of blogger wrote about the incident is rather extraordinary. But the true significance lies in the number of people who read about Coleman’s gaffe on these blogs. Together these sites have a daily hit count of over 350,000 while the Star-Tribune itself has a circulation of approximately 380,000. If we assume that ever(y) person who bought the newspaper today read Coleman’s column then we can deduce that for every three people who saw the piece slamming Power Line, two people read a defense of the bloggers. (Blog readership, however, has a great deal of overlap so that has to be factored into any conclusions that might be made about the overall site visits.)

Essentially, what we have are two “brands” going head to head for what Hewitt calls “mindspace” – the attention, respect, and trust of information consumers. At first it might appear that Coleman retains a slight advantage. He not only has more (potential) readers but he has them all in a central geographic location while the PL defenders are spread across the country.

But think about the implications from the perspective of “brand management.” Both Coleman and the PL crew live in the same city and both have their work accessible on the Internet. Yet Power Line was able to have a national effect and get their message across in a way that Coleman could only dream about.

The blogosphere is that megaphone Coleman is apparently afraid of, and he certainly got his blog swarm and opinion storm. What you see is thirty-nine uncut letters-to-the-editor. Each of those may have pertinent links to associated materials - something the dead-tree edition doesn't offer. Each offers a different bit of perspective. The difference now is that you no longer have to accept just the paper's opinion - you get, if you wish, multiple views. You get access to source materials when it comes to hard-news reporting, too.

Eric S. Raymond's post made a point that expands on Hewitt's above:

(The Mainstream Media is) most terrified of all at discovering how out of touch they are. In the past, your typical MSMer surrounded by other MSMers has believed that he is mildly “progressive", merely holding the opinions that all reasonable people hold and opposed by at most a tiny and dismissable fringe of kooks and rednecks. MSMers are more undone than anything else by the discovery that the mainstream of the American population is rejecting them in droves for Fox News, talk radio, and the blogs.

And, Eric warns,

It's a short step from this belief to Coleman’s flavor of quasi-paranoid ranting. Anybody who doesn’t think like the MSM cannot be authentic, but must instead be a paid or suborned tool of evil forces. Watch for this theme to show up more and more frequently in the next year as most of the MSM sinks ever-deeper into denial.

The old saying used to be "Never pick a fight with a man who buys ink by the barrel."

No longer is that necessarily true, and they're waking up to that fact. The gatekeepers have discovered that the whole damned wall is down. Of course they're afraid.

UPDATE 1/4: I found this interesting. Jack Kelly, writing in JWR on the topic of the decline of the news media concludes his piece:

Journalists tend not to like bloggers, because they report on errors we make. Dan Rather and former New York Times editor Howell Raines are unemployed chiefly because of the vigilance and tenacity of bloggers. (We journalists rarely turn the spotlights we use on business leaders and government officials on ourselves.)

People who work at journalism full time ought to be able to do a better job of it than people for whom it is a hobby. But that's not going to happen as long as we "professional" journalists ignore stories we don't like and try to hide our mistakes. We think of ourselves as "gatekeepers." But there is not much future in being a gatekeeper when the walls are down.

Hmm... I wonder if Mr. Kelly reads The Smallest Minority?

Negotiating in Ones Own Mind

Matthew at Triggerfinger.org has an excellent piece up fisking a recent Herald op-ed over the ongoing argument about the changing English law to give homeowners more latitude to use force in defense of themselves and their property. Please read both, but here's the money quote from Matthew's piece as a teaser:

This woman is engaging in one of the psychological compensation mechanisms for being in a helpless in a threatening situation: she is negotiating, in her own mind, with the burglars. If she agrees not to defend herself, so the reasoning goes, the burglars will surely agree not to hurt her. Thus, she fools herself into believing that she is safe without actually taking any precautions to increase her safety; taking precautions would require facing up to her fear, and to the fact that her government has forbidden her to own the only effective means of self-defense available to the average person.

It is exactly the same impulse that leads primitive cultures to make deals with invisible spirits or gods: those deals, however imaginary, offer a way to deal with things that are otherwise impossible to placate. It is better to sacrifice an ox to the sun god than to feel helpless waiting for the spring to come once again. And it is better to agree not to resist the burglars than to accept the fact that her government will not allow her to defend herself.

Read the whole thing.