Tag: You’re Doing it Right

Al Franken Apparently Understand the Fourth Amendment

I’ll admit after voting against the Thune amendment my opinion of Al Franken went from bad to worse. Well Says Uncle pointed to a piece that has bumped up my opinion of Senator Franken. Apparently the man understands at least on piece of the constitution, amendment four. His words on the subject:

Noting that he received a copy of the Constitution when he was sworn in as a senator, he proceeded to read it to Kris, emphasizing this part: “no Warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

“That’s pretty explicit language,” noted Franken, asking Kris how the “roving wiretap” provision of the Patriot Act can meet that requirement if it doesn’t require the government to name its target.

Good on him. It’s a small hope but there is at least some hope that he’ll gain an similar understandings to the rest of the constitution. Either way I won’t vote for the man until he understands the second amendment, but I’m certainly going to give him kudos where they are due.

Don’t Fuck with Honduras

Unlike our country the Hondurans actually take leaders going against their constitution seriously. When you’re a president of Honduras and you try to illegal extend your term expect their congress to send in the military to remove you from office. Furthermore if you are so fortunate to have gone through this series of events and only been exiled from the country don’t come back.

Well moron ex-president Zelaya returned to Honduras and decided to hide out in the Brazil embassy. Of course the legal government of Honduras isn’t happy with this and have surrounded the embassy and cut off their power, water, and food. They want their exiled president to be brought forth to face trail.

It’s nice to see a country that actually enforces their constitution very strictly. When they say a president can’t make a referendum to extend his term they fucking mean it.

Bloomberg’s Posse is a Little Screwed

So the NRA has a fact sheet on Bloomberg’s posse calling themselves the Mayors Against Illegal Guns. In this fact sheet is a list of mayors who have quit that is pretty long. Under that is a list of people who are not actually mayors of the localities as the group advertises. I count 28 names under that section which is quite a few incorrectly added names to their member role sheet.

This list is very complete and even has a section for mayors in the group who were convicted of crimes. I must say if Bloomberg wants to use his deceptively named group to attack the NRA he better start an offensive quickly. The NRA is curb stomping them with facts, which we know anti-gunners have a hard time with. Then again I think Bloomberg’s biggest failure here was the name he selected for his group. Although it did help initial membership by claiming it was against illegal guns as the groups true purpose is exposed many mayors are leaving. Don’t deceive your base membership, they won’t like it.

The NRA certainly is doing a good job with the fact sheet alone and pointing out the futility of Bloomberg’s posse and their crusade against guns.

Security Doesn’t Have to Cost Liberty

In memory of 9/11 Bruce Schneier reposted a previous post of his. In it he explains that so called security measures that came at the cost of individual liberty not only miss the point but also are unneeded. Things like the PATROIT Act and warrantless wiretapping won’t actually help prevent the next attack, instead they take away civil liberty and gain us nothing. Furthermore there are ways to implement security without taking civil liberty:

It’s easy to refute the notion that all security comes at the expense of liberty. Arming pilots, reinforcing cockpit doors, and teaching flight attendants karate are all examples of security measures that have no effect on individual privacy or liberties. So are better authentication of airport maintenance workers, or dead-man switches that force planes to automatically land at the closest airport, or armed air marshals traveling on flights.

Liberty-depriving security measures are most often found when system designers failed to take security into account from the beginning. They’re Band-aids, and evidence of bad security planning. When security is designed into a system, it can work without forcing people to give up their freedoms.

Likewise cries for more surveillance also miss the point. Have more data doesn’t always mean you have more usable information, in fact quite the opposite is true. If you gather too much data you’ll have to sift through tons of garbage to find a few good items:

Demands for even more surveillance miss the point. The problem is not obtaining data, it’s deciding which data is worth analyzing and then interpreting it. Everyone already leaves a wide audit trail as we go through life, and law enforcement can already access those records with search warrants. The FBI quickly pieced together the terrorists’ identities and the last few months of their lives, once they knew where to look. If they had thrown up their hands and said that they couldn’t figure out who did it or how, they might have a case for needing more surveillance data. But they didn’t, and they don’t.

More data can even be counterproductive. The NSA and the CIA have been criticized for relying too much on signals intelligence, and not enough on human intelligence. The East German police collected data on four million East Germans, roughly a quarter of their population. Yet they did not foresee the peaceful overthrow of the Communist government because they invested heavily in data collection instead of data interpretation. We need more intelligence agents squatting on the ground in the Middle East arguing the Koran, not sitting in Washington arguing about wiretapping laws.

And this my friends is the difference between the government’s so called security experts and somebody who intimately understands security. Just having more data isn’t a good thing, it’s a liability. Likewise adding bandages to previously exploited security flaws doesn’t accomplish anything either. Security is only effective if it’s placed in the design from the start.

I wish our law makers would realize these things instead of using their “we must do SOMETHING” mentality that we’ve conditioned them to do.

This is How it Should Be

Well my work trip has almost concluded. I’m sitting in Detroit for two hours awaiting my flight back to my secure bunker in Minnesota. My two co-workers, being experienced flyers, were able to get transferred to an earlier flight and are now gone leaving me here alone. Sounds like a rough first experience for flying huh? Well no. To make up for the fact they couldn’t get me on the earlier flight one of my co-workers handed me a pass to the Delta Sky Club lounge.

I’m sitting here enjoying free and unlimited wine, whiskey, food, and coffee. The seats are amazing and the place is unpopulated enough where I have a section to myself to do as I please. I must say if I could experience this every time I flew I’d fly a lot.

Anyways blogging should return to normal tomorrow. Now if you’ll excuse me my glass of Jim Beam is looking mighty low.

Why Would You Need a Gun

Well if you’re living in Alaska the answer may be huge fucking bears. Via The Firearm Blog I found a good article from Alaska. Greg Bush took his dog for a walk one day. That day a bear whom appeared to be starving to death charged Mr. Bush and his dog. Well Mr. Bush had his Ruger Redhawk in .454 Casull and put the poor beast out of it’s misery and saving his dog and his own life.

Be it two legged predators or four legged you never know when you’ll be attacked. This is why I’m a proponent of always carrying a gun with you. Must like wearing a seat belt you don’t carry a gun only when you expect to have trouble you carry it so if there should be trouble you’ll have a fighting chance to walk away with your life.

It also shows you should bring the right tool for the job. Although here in Minnesota my .45 ACP is enough for almost any threat it’s not going to stop a brown bear unless I’m lucky. If you live in an area, like Alaska, with very large bears you want to bring something with a ton of power like a .454 Casull. You must know your threat before you can effectively defend against it.

Bloomberg’s Group Looses Another One

Good news from the NRA ILA. Mayor Marlene Anielski of Village of Walton Hills, Ohio has left the deceptively named Mayors Against Illegal Guns. Apparently she was unaware of the organizations true objective, to stop firearm ownership in America, and has resigned membership upon learning it. Furthermore she and her husband are both life members in the NRA.

Good on you Mayor Anielski for leaving the group. And good on both you and your husband for being life members in an organization that isn’t deceptive about what it does.

Al Gore’s Apocalypse on Trial

Finally some potentially sensible news. The United States Chamber of Commerce want to hold a hearing on man made global warning, also known as Al Gore’s apocalypse. The are pushing to Environmental Protection Agency to do a similar case to Scopes monkey trial:

Chamber officials say it would be “the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century” — complete with witnesses, cross-examinations and a judge who would rule, essentially, on whether humans are warming the planet to dangerous effect.

“It would be evolution versus creationism,” said William Kovacs, the chamber’s senior vice president for environment, technology and regulatory affairs. “It would be the science of climate change on trial.”

Of course global warming is still a theory as no scientific evidence against it is usually allowed funding to the privilege of being published. As most of you know it’s not global warming itself I hate (although I don’t believe it) it’s the way it’s being treated as a religion as a means to make money. Al Gore is making a ton of money on programs like “carbon offsets” so he has an invested interest in global warming sticking around. The government can gain a lot of control via regulations meant to control global warming, and many companies stand to make lots of money off of “green” technology. On top of that all these people are working very hard to suppress anybody who has evidence against global warming. This not only makes me suspicious but it makes me believe the whole thing is a scam as no actual proof of it’s existence has been presented by a neutral source.

Until it’s treated as science, where everybody gets a say, it’s bull shit.

Wait what’s that? The Environmental Protection Agency, who also stands to receive a lot of funding due to global warming, is against the idea of a trial? Really:

The EPA is having none of it, calling a hearing a “waste of time” and saying that a threatened lawsuit by the chamber would be “frivolous.”

EPA spokesman Brendan Gilfillan said the agency based its proposed finding that global warming is a danger to public health “on the soundest peer-reviewed science available, which overwhelmingly indicates that climate change presents a threat to human health and welfare.”

Funny that, I’d like to see this peer-reviewed science that was reviewed by a party who doesn’t stand to make a ton of money on global warming. I’m waiting.