Month: January 2012

Ron Paul Introduces Legislation to Repeal Section 1021 of the Recently Passed National Defense Authorization Act

Now that I’m back in Minnesota I’ve been scrambling to catch up on any news I may have missed these last two days. I was very glad to see the following released by Ron Paul:

Mr. Speaker: I rise today to introduce a very simple piece of legislation to repeal the infamous Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act, quietly signed into law by the president on New Year’s Day.

Section 1021 essentially codifies into law the very dubious claim of presidential authority under the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force to indefinitely detain American citizens without access to legal representation or due process of law. Section 1021 provides for the possibility of the US military acting as a kind of police force on US soil, apprehending terror suspects – including Americans — and whisking them off to an undisclosed location indefinitely. No right to attorney, no right to trial, no day in court.

Dr. Paul once again demonstrates that he’s the only presidential candidate, hell perhaps one of the only politicians, who actually gives a shit about the people. While Nobel Peace Prize winner and war monger Obama signed legislation that gave himself the power to indefinitely detain American citizens without so much as due process Paul is working to reinstate some of our most fundamental freedoms.

My First TSA Opt-Out

Unfortunately my record of bypassing the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) has been nullified. Last night flying out of Dayton, Ohio there were no scanner-free lines so I had to go through the sexual molestation instead.

Without any doubt I have learned that the pat downs performed by the TSA are done exclusively to humiliate flyers into submitting to those forsaken body scanners. How did I come to this conclusion? Besides my famous cynicism I paid careful attention to where the bad man was touching me and I can tell you taping something to your body and smuggling it in won’t present much trouble.

While the bad man felt around the collar of my shirt, my torso, arms, and legs he didn’t actually touch my groin or ass. Likewise I stashed a set of earbuds in the breast pocket of my shirt and the bad man failed to find them. Each time I’m submitted this this I’m going to try smuggling in larger items and see what I can get away with (do note that none of the items will actually be verboten, I do actually want to get on my plane). Honestly though if you stick the contraband down the front or back of your pants I doubt it will be discovered. If the item you’re smuggling is sufficiently small you could put it in your socks because they don’t pat down the bottoms of your feet.

I also noticed that no additional search is done of your belongings. My computer bag, laptop, carry-on bag, and coat went through the regular scanner but no additional search was done. Items that don’t show up on their scanners can be easily smuggled in by slipping them into a computer bag or coat.

Another thing I confirmed is that you aren’t required to buy the bad man dinner afterwards. Upon concluding his molestation I asked the bad man, “This is complimentary right? I’m not expected to buy you dinner or anything?” He chuckled and said no (I’m glad that the agent at least had a sense of humor, if he was a prude I’d have kept egging him on). After being given the all clear I walked forward, clicked my boots together, and raise my hand in the classic heil Hitler position, and said, “I have diligently followed the commands of the states.” Why did I do that last part? Because I’m an asshole and have to make at least some kind of scene.

Overall the pat down is a joke that doesn’t make passengers anymore secure. In fact the pat down shares that trait with the body scanners without actually having the potential to cause cancer.

Let me also close by encouraging all flyers to opt out of those body scanners. You may think the pat downs are humiliating or embarrassing but truthfully they’re only embarrassing for the bad man tasked with touching your naughty bits. As he’s patting you down he has to deal with the shame of being a jack booted government thug who is paid only to harass the flying public. When you see one of those body scanners be firm and say, “You’ll have to get a thug over here to pat me down because I won’t go through that scanner.”

Could You at Least Knock or Something

I guess the police are no longer satisfied with merely shooting dogs, they’ve not moved on to deer:

When Jeff Carpenter heard gunfire outside his rural Forest Lake residence before sunrise Saturday morning, he raced outside to find a man holding a shotgun.

“I was just glad I didn’t go out there with my gun. This thing could have got deadly,” said Carpenter, who had been burglarized recently and at first didn’t realize that he was looking at a city police officer.

On the ground nearby, Carpenter said, were two fawns that he and his wife, LeeAnn, had been feeding.

Perhaps the police should have knocked on the man’s door before slaughtering his deer. I’m sorry but if I hear gunfire going on outside of my fucking home on my fucking property I’m going to be a bit on edge. Me on edge with my LR-308 is not something you want to see. In fact the police put themselves in a horrendously dangerous situation by pulling such a boneheaded maneuver.

So why did the police show up and start firing guns on private property without so much as giving the courtesy of an announcement? Well the deer had collars:

But to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR), they were a potential danger. For weeks, the agency had been receiving reports of two deer with colorful collars — one pink, one orange — running in the vicinity of North Shore Trail near Forest Lake’s border with Scandia in northern Washington County.

“To have somebody put a collar on a wild deer, two of them in fact, I’ve never heard of it,” said Capt. Greg Salo of the DNR’s enforcement division.

My head hurts from slamming it against my desk. I was also unaware of the fact that the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) had powers similar to our president, they can order the execution of wild animals:

The DNR, thinking the deer were escapees from a private game farm and could introduce disease among wild deer, ordered a hit on them. The agency notified Forest Lake police in early January that the deer must be shot on sight, Salo said.

The lesson to take away from this story is don’t put collars on deer. By doing so the deer were essentially made targets for police officer with guns who don’t even announce the fact that they’re shooting animals on private property.

The Fifth Box

In regards to the insane number of tyrannical pieces of legislation that have been making their way through the United States legislature as of late Rick Falkvinge, the founder of the Pirate Party, wrote and article titled Do We Really Have To Prepare For The Fourth Box. The article refers to the common four boxes of liberty meme as explained in the article:

Soap box: A box you stand on in the street trying to explain your views to the public. Figuratively, building public opinion for your case.

Ballot box: Public, free, democratic elections. If the laws don’t work, and the elected representatives don’t get it, replace them.

Jury box: If no public representatives get it, neither the elected nor those available to elect, the second to last line of defense is the judicial system, which can overturn laws that go against the most fundamental rights.

Ammo box: If the system has been so thoroughly corrupted that the entire establishment is acting as one, and it is not possible to change the laws to safeguard fundamental liberties, then only one option remains.

As you can guess by the title of Falkvinge’s post he is questioning whether or not it’s time to ready the ammo box. Truth be told I was never really a fan of the four boxes of liberty meme because it left out the fifth option, agorism. Agorism, for those who don’t wish to read the entire Wikipedia article, can basically be summed up as a system of counter-economics where the government is entirely cut out of the transactions. The idea is simple, you starve the best by cutting off its life

  • blood

    • of tax money.

    In a sense agorism deals with government displeasure in the same way people deal with business displeasure. When you are unsatisfied with a product or service you receive from a business you stop giving them money (unless the government is compelling you to give them money of course). One can take agorism to absolute extremes or only practice is in a few key areas of their life. Those who work only for cash that goes unreported, own no property, and buy everything via the free market (often incorrectly called the black market by racist economists) you will pay no income tax, no property tax, and no sales tax. Of course such drastic measures are not within the reach of many such as myself but we can still practice agorism in little bits and pieces. Every time you work for cash that goes unreported or buy something from a friend and refuse to pay the accompanying sales tax to the state you’re participating in the philosophy of agorism.

    Practices in large enough amounts agorism can theoretically destroy a state. Without money to feed the police and military governments find themselves without enforcers making all their laws benign. Even if the government controls a country’s money it matters not if all goods and services are paid for using an alternative currency agreed upon by those performing transactions.

    For argument let’s pretend a large majority of the United States populace started practicing agorism. Instead of trading for United States dollars the people started trading with each other using gold, silver, copper, and .22 LR ammunition (since everybody has a stockpile of the last item). Most people are listed as unemployed and therefore have no income to pay taxes on. Without income people have no source of dollars and therefore buy their goods and services on the free market and report nothing to pay sales tax on. Those who did own property abandoned it to avoid paying property taxes. Basically dollars would become useless as people stopped accepting them for trade (this is how the free market chooses money by the way). Police and military personell would start abandoning the state as their dollars become worthless for buying food and the government would find itself unable to buy new military gear since weapons manufacturers would stop accepting dollars as well.

    Obviously the above scenario is far fetched but I presented it simply to explain how agorism can theoretically bring down a state.

    I’m not a fan of the ammo box. It requires the violent overthrow of the government, an act that is likely to only breed more violence down the road. Even if the government is successfully overthrown you will be left with mountains of dead bodies and likely warlords fighting one another for control over various territories. Once in a great while an event like the American Revolution does happen and a more free society is established but such an event requires the right people and I doubt we have those kinds of people today. I won’t go so far as to say violent revolution is never necessary, there are many instances where it is necessary, but I also believe there are other alternatives that should be examined before such a move is made.

    To win a war one must be creative. Even Sun Tzu, the man (or men depending on who you talk to) who wrote The Art of War, said, “Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.” The most desirable of victories are those obtained without bloodshed.

    Romney OK With Federal Agents Murdering Medical Marijuana Users

    I know the title of this post won’t come as a surprise to you guys but Romney really does take the cake for being a total dick (OK Santorum is still worse but not by much). A dying medical marijuana patient flat out asked Romney if he would arrest medical marijuana users and their doctors. Romney’s response? He doesn’t answer the question and then ignores the poor dying bastard:

    Romney did say he doesn’t support any form of marijuana but what he really should have said is, “If you think you’re in pain now just wait until I have you thrown in the slammer with Bubba. Hell I may just have some federal agents burst into your home and kill you right on the spot you stupid peasant.”

    Asked the same question but the same man got an entirely different answer from Ron Paul:

    Unlike Romney,Paul won’t use violence to enforce the erroneous drug war. What you put into your body is your own damned business whether you need the substance for medical reasons or are a recreational user.

    Remember the prohibition of marijuana is done by law and like all laws it must be enforced with the use of violence. By supporting the war on drugs you are literally agreeing that federal agents should be allowed to murder those who grow, sell, or use marijuana. Romney obviously has no quarrel with the idea of using federal agents to murder this sick guy and his doctor. It’s one reason in a million why I won’t vote for Romney no matter what.

    LR-308 Review

    It came to my realization that I’ve had my LR-308 for roughly one year now and so far haven’t actually written a review about the gun. Since I’m writing canned posts for your amusement I figured this is as good of time as any to finally write my review.

    For those of you who don’t know the LR-308 is DPMS’s AR pattern rifle chambered in .308. While many often refer to it as an AR-10 it’s truthfully closer to an SR-25. Like the SR-25, the LR-308 shares many common components with the AR-15 including the trigger group, buffer tune, and stock. The LR-308 also uses SR-25 magazines so you can get inexpensive quality magazines from Magpul (which works perfectly in my rifle) instead of having to track down the far more expensive proprietary magazines used by the AR-10.

    For reference this is a picture of my rifle:

    I know it’s not the best picture but it was taken with the camera on my iPhone is less than ideal light. Since taking this picture I’ve removed the Magpul pistol grip and replaced it with the original A2 grip. Unfortunately the storage compartment in the Magpul grip kept falling out every time I fired the gun. Some people may ask why I didn’t just continue using the Magpul grip without the storage compartment and to those people I can only reply that I’m somewhat obsessive compulsive and if something doesn’t work 100% I don’t want to use it at all. I’m not actually a fan of the standard A2 grip as I find it a bit small for my hands, which are more accustomed to the large grip of the Glock .45 pistols. In time I plan on swapping out the grip with a Hogue but for now I’m just leaving well enough alone.

    Beyond that I also replaced the standard DPMS trigger group. The stock trigger was extremely gritty and not at all uniform in its pull weight so I decided to replace it with a Geissele SSA. The SSA is an amazing trigger that breaks clean and requires little in the way of pull weight. Of course for the price they’re asking it should be making me breakfast in the morning as well but as they say buy once, cry once.

    You can also see that I attached a Magpul Angled Fore Grip 2 (I first purchased an first model Angled Fore Grip but the wings wouldn’t allow me to slide it one past the front sling attachement point). The vertical fore grips I’ve played with before have left me wanting whereas holding onto a Picatinny rail is nothing but an exercise in pain so I went somewhere in between. I have to say I really like the angled fore grip as it offers several different methods of gripping onto it and the angle is more comfortable to me than placing my hand against the hand guard flat.

    Finally I swapped out the standard DPMS charing handle for a BCM Gunfighter Mod 4. While the AR style charging handle ensures one will always have to remove his face from the butt stock to charge the rifle I can at least do it with one hand easier. I like the larger latch as it allows me to manipulate the handle while wearing gloves much easier than the stock one.

    Beyond the above mentioned modifications my LR-308 is basically a DPMS affair. The upper has a forward assit (which I’ll never use but it looks kind of neat), free floating quad rail hand guard, and a 20″ heavy barrel. What may not be apparent is the fact that the upper receiver is a flat top with an attached sight/carry handle combination. Why not fancy optics on a .308? It’s because I setup the rifle for use in 3-gun heavy metal division, which requires a .308 or larger caliber and iron sights only. I can always unbolt the carry handle and drop an optic onto the rifle if I so desired.

    Now that I’ve talked about the features of my rifle you’re probably wondering how it shoots. I one word beautifully. While I’m not sure on the maximum accuracy of the rifle since I only have iron sights and nowhere beyond 200 yards to shoot it I can say it’s more accurate than I am. Without issue the rifle holds 1 minute of angle at 100 yards (the best I can do with iron sights).

    Recoil is very mangeable. While my M1A SOCOM 16 isn’t very difficult to shoot I can say I notice the recoil on that rifle more than my LR-308. Most of this is probably due to the fact the M1A is a far lighter rifle but part of it is also likely due to the way an AR pattern rifle operates. Since the bolt goes straight back into the butt stock and is inline with your shoulder you don’t get the rifle attempting to pivot up at the grip.

    With all this said the rifle isn’t perfect. One ding against it is the sheer weight, the gun probably weighs between 11 and 12 pounds. This isn’t a big deal for a 3-gun competition since you’re only moving with your rifle for a few minutes at a time but carrying this monster around in the woods during deer season wouldn’t be a lot of fun. Most of this weight can be attributed to the 20″ heavy barrel. Although I fully admit the barrel is heavy it also doesn’t heat up to the point of throwing rounds as quickly as my M1A SOCOM 16 does (once you dump a magazine through the rifle the barrel has heated up an absurd amount).

    Beyond that there isn’t much to say. If you’re familiar with the AR-15 platform you’ll be right at home with this rifle. The only major difference is size, the LR-308 is scaled up to accomodate the larger .308 round. The controls including the magazine release, bolt release, and safety all function identically to a standard AR-15. Like a standard AR-15, the LR-308 also utilizes direct gas impingement, a system many mall ninjas revile for its lack of tacticoolness. Then again the people complaining about the gas system are also likely the people complaining about the rifle being a DPMS, a cardinal sin to the mall ninjas who feel the quality of the rifle directly correlates to the price.

    Those looking for a quality .308 that won’t bust the bank I can highly recommend the LR-308. While I admit it isn’t as wizbang cool as a SCAR 17 it also won’t cost you even half as much and you can actually find magazines for this rifle (with that said I really want a SCAR 17 so if you’d like to donate one please e-mail me and I’ll let you know where to send it).

    Iraqi Government Detaining Contractors

    This was bound to happen sooner or later. Now that the United States military has receded to the Iraqi Embassy, I mean left the country, the actual government of Iraq has started rounding up some of our mercenaries, I mean private contractors:

    Iraqi authorities have detained a few hundred foreign contractors in recent weeks, industry officials say, including many Americans who work for the United States Embassy, in one of the first major signs of the Iraqi government’s asserting its sovereignty after the American troop withdrawal last month.

    The detentions have occurred largely at the airport in Baghdad and at checkpoints around the capital after the Iraqi authorities raised questions about the contractors’ documents, including visas, weapons permits and authorizations to drive certain routes. Although no formal charges have been filed, the detentions have lasted from a few hours to nearly three weeks.

    The crackdown comes amid other moves by the Iraqi government to take over functions that had been performed by the United States military and to claim areas of the country it had controlled.

    I’m not surprised that the Iraq government has started to crackdown on these contractors considering the atrocities they were caught doing in the past. Still the fact contractors are being arrested at airports and checkpoints isn’t the most interesting news for me, it’s the fact we have contractors at airports and checkpoints outside of our Embassy. When Obama announced the end of the Iraq war I was quick to say we were probably replacing a large number of our troops with private contractors:

    I’m actually willing to bet money that we’re going to increase the number of mercenaries in the region which means we’ll still be dumping untold trillions into this ill-fated war.

    Too bad nobody took me up on my bet.

    Vermin Supreme Still Makes the Most Sense

    It’s kind of sad when you think about it. The Democrats are going to field Obama again while looking at the Republican Party candidates, with the exception of Ron Paul, makes one absolutely depressed. Remember those guys that have been appearing on our television screens for months now are the best the Republican Party could dig up (again I’m not counting Paul since the Republicans are doing everything they can to ensure he doesn’t win the nomination). More and more it looks like the race will be between Romney and Obama, something that makes me downright depressed. Consider that, a man who walks around wearing a boot on his head makes the most sense:

    At least he’s upfront and honest about being a fascist and a tyrant. He will also go back in time and kill baby Hitler with his bear hands and that’s pretty hard to ignore.