Tag: Politics

It’s a Good Idea, It’ll Never Pass

Here’s an interesting bill presented to the Senate. I posted previously about how many states are making it illegal to video tape police officers while they’re on duty. Well H. Con. Res. 298 seems to be a desire to establish a law barring federal and state governments from making it illegal for a citizen to record an on-duty police officer:

(3) members of the public have a right to observe, and if they choose, to make video or sound recordings of the police during the discharge of their public duties, as long as they do not physically or otherwise interfere with the officers’ discharge of their duties, or violate any other State or Federal law, intended to protect the safety of police officers, in the process of the recording.

It makes sense and therefore probably doesn’t have a chance in Hell of passing. After all it will go against national security… according to the abusive police.

Ah, Arrogance and Stupidity All in the Same Package

How efficient of North Korea:

North Korea has promised a “physical response” to joint US-South Korean military exercises this weekend.

Yes that’s certainly a good idea. I’m sure the United States, who have been looking for practically any excuse to go to war with North Korea, and really shaking in their boots over this threat. Yup. No seriously can’t you tell how scared America is of the big and powerful North Korea?

Send Out the Lawyers

So apparently Professor John Abraham of St. Thomas college put up some kind of online rebuttal to a person who I’ve mentioned previously, Christopher Monckton. The rebuttal is over Mr. Monckton’s presentation on Al Gore’s Apocalypse, which is actually very interesting to watch (I have a video of it embedded in the previously linked page). Well being British and still being willing to sling insults (however childish it may be but alas I haven’t watched either Professor Abraham or Monckton’s rebuttal to that video). Apparently according to the Red Star (which means you need to take it with a grain of salt) Monckton said the following:

For his part, Monckton has fired back in a YouTube interview clip, calling Abraham “a wretched little man,” the University of St. Thomas “a half-assed Catholic bible college,” and its president, the Rev. Dennis Dease, “a creep.”

The one thing I really do like about the British are their insults. So what is the rebuttal to that onslaught? Well St. Thomas is calling in the lawyers:

St. Thomas officials have defended Abraham’s efforts, and the school’s lawyers have gone beyond that. In a letter to Monckton, St. Thomas attorney Phyllis Karasov threatened legal action if Monckton does not “immediately cease and desist making any further disparaging or defamatory comments about the University of St. Thomas, President Father Dease, Professor Abraham, the Archdioceses of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, or anyone else associated with the University.”

This is the reason I’m so skeptical about this whole Al Gore’s Apocalypse thing. If somebody criticizes the “science” (and I use that term very lightly) behind global warming climate change lawyers are called out. Also it appears as thought St. Thomas University doesn’t understand the first amendment and the freedom of speech. For instance I can call St. Thomas University a shitty Hell hold that would be better off turned into a crater in the ground that continue to be used as a college. I can also say all their administrative staff are total assholes and can go sodomize themselves with retractable batons. It’s called the freedom of speech and insults are covered under it.

When a Problem Isn’t a Problem

Google’s been getting some flak for recording MAC addresses and unencrypted data from unsecured wireless access points while cruising around in their little street view cars. Several European countries have blown this completely out of proportion as have 37 states in this country.

Google has been very forthcoming with information including the fact that they were running Kismet in their vehicles. Kismet was being used to record the MAC addresses of wireless access points which were than tagged with GPS coordinates. The idea behind this is pretty simple; each access point has a unique MAC address. If you know the location of these wireless access points you can determine your location through Wi-Fi instead of having to rely on aGPS. The main advantage is you can have location based services with devices that have Wi-Fi cards but no GPS (for instance most laptops). By default Kismet saves all unencrypted data so Google obtaining this information isn’t so much nefarious as just forgetting to change the default settings.

Truth be told very little information is going to be gleamed from this data because the speed at which they were driving around put them in and out of range of most access points pretty quickly. Of course there is another thing to note here.

If you have an unsecured wireless access point and somebody is grabbing your data it’s your fault. Wireless data is broadcast out for all to hear. Treat it like yelling, if you and your significant other get into a yelling argument you can’t blame your neighbors for hearing what you two were screaming at each other. Wireless data is the same way. If your wireless signal enters my property then I have every right to eavesdrop on it. If you don’t want me to be able to do this you need to encrypt the data or shield your house well enough where your wireless signal isn’t entering my property (or in Google’s case public property where there is no expectation of privacy).

Instead of wasting time with this case I’d love to see these State Attorney’s deal with some real issues.

Ireland Wising Up

It appears Ireland is wising up:

THE new home defence bill has shifted the balance of rights back to the house owner “where it should always have been”, say gardaí.

The Association of Garda Sergeants (AGSI) and Inspectors also said it was ridiculous to suggest the bill provided a “have-a-go charter” to homeowners and said the current situation, which legally demands a house owner retreat from an intruder, was “intolerable”.

Assuming a criminal’s life is worth less than the rightful owner of a home? That’s just crazy! Now people are going to shoot their friends when they come over! It’ll be blood in the streets! Death will be everywhere! Dogs and cats will be sleeping together! At least that’s what the anti-gunners are going to say about this.

It’s nice to see Ireland is looking at making criminals a lower form of life than law-abiding citizens. If only Britain would figured that out.

They Needed a Law for This

The Senate went and passed a bill being touted as the “libel tourist” bills. What this bill does is prevents a person in the United States from having to acknowledge a libel lawsuit in another country. It seems a popular way to shut somebody up is the file a libel lawsuit against said person in a country where you are most likely to win.

The strange thing is I didn’t realize our country would force somebody to acknowledge such a lawsuit. I figured if somebody from a foreign country sued you over something that violated the Bill of Rights you were under no obligation to acknowledge that lawsuit while inside of our borders. Apparently that wasn’t the case.

Gun Owners of America and Partisanship

I’ve been ripping on Gun Owners of America (GOA) quite a bit recently. My main beef with them is that they seem to spend all of their time bitching about the National Rifle Association (NRA) instead of doing something to eliminate gun control laws. Recently they’ve been going on about the NRA’s potential endorsement of Harry Reid who voted for the Brady Act back in 1993.

The problem? Well Kay Bailey, a Republican, voted for the same act. Why does that matter? Because she has an A rating from GOA. This seems to prove the point that GOA isn’t a second amendment organization but a conservative organization. They spend time talking about non-second amendment related issues and take those into account when grading politicians. The NRA on the other hand usually focus almost exclusively on gun rights.

I wouldn’t have a problem with GOA if they didn’t spend all their time whining and claiming they are the only no compromise second amendment organization out there. But to top it off they do that while bashing the NRA who actually work to get shit done.

Once again I state if you’re disenfranchised with the NRA please send your money to an organization that gets things done such as the Second Amendment Foundation.

A Ban by Any Other Name

McDonald vs. Chicago struck down the unconstitutional firearm ban in that forsaken city. Now that they’re little ban has been struck down the officials who run that prison city are looking at ways of banning firearms without actually banning them.

As Snowflakes in Hell points out they’re doing it using the same method they used to ban them in the first place, the city gun registration system.

In order to obtain a permit to purchase a firearm you must fill out five pages of unintelligible paperwork, have vision good enough to obtain a driver’s license (sorry those of you who are blind or otherwise have poor vision you don’t have any rights), show up between the hours of 8:30 and 15:30, and pay a $100 fee.

Yup it’s so easy! Well so long as you can fill out paperwork, have good eye vision, don’t have a day job, and have enough money! Obviously those who work during the day, have less than ideal vision, and the poor need not apply. Likewise if you are in any of the three mentioned categories of people please go kill yourself now as you have no right to self-defense should an attack chose to kill you later. You’ll be saving yourself, the attacker, and the police a lot of time.

Also as a person with horrible vision without my glasses I can tell you that you can see an attacker just fine unless you’re practically blind. Without my glasses I can’t read anything on my laptop screen when the laptop is on my lap with my right eye. With my left eye I can’t read the title of any book on my bookshelf which is no more than 10 feet away. Even with my horrible vision I can see people well enough to shoot them at self-defense ranges if they are attacking me.

Needless to say I know what it’s like having bad vision. So even if you’re vision isn’t correctable to a point you can drive there is absolutely no reason you shouldn’t be able to own a firearm.

Hell I’ll Do That for Free

Random Nuclear Strikes has another post showing how incompetence of our government when it comes to money management. It seems our government paid $92.86 to destroy a single firearm. The kick in the teeth is the fact that they paid to have 1.4 million firearms destroyed.

I have a proposition for our government. Should you come across another 1.4 million guns you no longer want (or more, or less) I’m offering my services to take them off of your hand for free. That’s right instead of having to waste $92.86 dollars per gun to dispose of them you can give me the firearms at no cost to you. It’s simple, it’s easy, and best of all it’s free! I’ll also ensure the firearms I do not want find good homes (don’t worry I’ll ensure background checks are completed and everything). Yup that’s right I’m going to be green on this and recycle those arms that I do not want.

So donate today to Christopher Burg’s Home for Wayward Guns.