08:06 – The religious nutters social conservatives in the North Carolina Senate have passed yet another bill that attempts to do an end-run around Roe v. Wade and numerous other court decisions that have confirmed a woman’s right to have an abortion. Their intention is to render that right meaningless by making it impossible for a woman to find a medical facility that performs abortions. The NC House is almost certain to cooperate with the Senate in passing a law that puts severe new restrictions on abortion. Fortunately, our governor, also a Republican, has already said that he won’t accept any further restrictions on abortion, so presumably he’ll veto whatever bill eventually passes.
With numerous states passing laws that infringe on their citizens’ rights, perhaps we need a new amendment to the US Constitution that mandates that anything that is legally permissible for citizens in one state is also legally permissible for citizens in all other states. So, for example, the fact that Vermont puts zero restrictions on its citizens’ rights to keep and bear arms would mean that no other state could do so. Same deal on legalizing marijuana for medical or personal use. I like that idea. We could call it the Freedom Amendment.
09:04 – I just filled a batch of bottles of Herzberg’s Stain for the forensic science kits. The automated dispenser worked fine, although I had my doubts. The stain is rather viscous. It’s based on iodine in a saturated solution of zinc chloride. Zinc chloride is extremely soluble in water, so much so that a saturated solution at room temperature is about 85% zinc chloride and 15% water by mass. In other words, water is the solute and solid zinc chloride is the solvent. The solution is very dense. When I picked up a one-liter soda bottle with only about 200 mL of stain in it, it felt like a full bottle of water. Next up is a batch of bottles of Jenk’s Stain, which is similar to Herzberg’s but is based on a saturated solution of magnesium chloride rather than zinc chloride.
14:16 – Steve and Heather, our neighbors across the street and down two houses, are moving this week. The bank foreclosed and the house goes to auction next week. Steve shouted to me yesterday and asked if I had any interest in a big bookshelf they planned to get rid of. He thought I might want it for holding kit stuff. I went in to look at it and it was indeed big: 12’3″ (3.7+ meters) wide, 10″ (25 cm) deep, and 6’4″ (1.9+ meters) tall. There’s a total of about 78 linear feet (~ 24 meters) of shelf space. It’s solid wood. I’m guessing pine, but it’s heavy enough that it might even be oak. Barbara went over to look at it last night and said she thought it’d be good in the basement for storing kit stuff. (We have several hundred SKUs, many of which are stored in shoe-box size plastic bins on shelves.) So I went over today with a tape measure and several bins to check its suitability. Bins fit the shelves two-high, which means I can fit 200+ bins on the shelf unit.
I’d planned to go down to Home Depot this week and buy a couple of these $99 units, which provide about 20 feet each of double-wide shelving. Call it 40 feet each, which means it’d take two of them to hold as many bins as the shelves I got from Steve. When I asked Steve how much I could pay him for the unit, he said he’d been thinking $200. That sounded fair, so that’s what I paid him.
Steve, his son, and his future son-in-law hauled it over to our house and put it in the basement for me. I called Barbara to let her know to be careful when she pulled in the garage because the new bookshelf was sitting between where she parks her car and where I park my 4×4. She asked how I’d gotten it over here, so of course I told her I’d just picked it up and carried it over. Didn’t fool her for a minute.
14:52 – I see that Illinois governor Pat Quinn–a Democrat, of course–is attempting to gut a concealed carry law, despite opposition from his own party. He’s doing the same thing abortion opponents do: if a law permits something you don’t like, just make the law meaningless by placing restrictions on it that effective destroy the intent of the law. Abortion opponents attempt to make a woman’s right to an abortion meaningless by making it impossible to get one. Anti-gun people attempt to make concealed carry laws ineffective by placing restrictions on where a permit holder can carry, which is what Quinn is doing now. He wants to forbid permit holders from carrying anywhere alcohol is served. So, it’s legal for them to carry before they arrive at a bar, illegal to carry while they’re in the bar, and then legal for them to carry after they leave the bar. What are they supposed to do? Check their guns at the door? Concealed carry permits need to be effective anywhere. If you have a permit (which you shouldn’t even need to carry a weapon, or so says the US Constitution), you’re allowed to carry anywhere that you are legally entitled to be. That includes place like federal courthouses, airliners, and so on.
But Quinn isn’t satisfied with just that. No, he also wants to restrict permit holders to carrying one weapon and one magazine with at most ten rounds of ammunition. Now, I have no objection to reasonable limits. If he’d limited permit holders to carrying, say, 100 weapons on their persons, and no more than 1,000 magazines, each with no more than 100 rounds, I’d have had no problem with that. But I think it’d be better to just allow permit holders to decide what and how much they wanted to carry. I suspect all of them would have been reasonable. For example, even back in the days when I sometimes went heavily armed, I seldom carried more than three concealed weapons–a .45 Colt Combat Commander, a .45 Star PD, and a .45 MAC-10 submachine gun, with only two 7-round magazines each for the pistols and half a dozen 30-round mags for the SMG.
Dave, I’ll bet a cat couldn’t do this:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-07-03/beekeeper-dog/4795960
” perhaps we need a new amendment to the US Constitution that mandates that anything that is legally permissible for citizens in one state is also legally permissible for citizens in all other states.”
I respectfully disagree; we need to break up this empire; let NJ, MA and Kalifornia have abortion-on-demand-no-apology as their preferred method of birth control while also clamping down idiotically on firearms ownership. Let VT and TX and AZ continue with zero firearms laws and let VT also smoke doobies. Bust it up into like-minded regions, a loose confederacy of states. Obviously the Northeast Megalopolis would be one region; the Deep South another; the Left Coast yet another. We need to finally acknowledge that our cultural, ethnic and religious differences are just as valid as what we all may hold in common and set up a political system accordingly.
” I’ll bet a cat couldn’t do this:”
Cats are far more dignified and have far more self-respect than to be got up in a contraption like that.
Cats rule and dogz drool.
Well, of course we do. I’m an anarchist, remember? But this empire isn’t going to be broken up until it collapses of its own weight. In the meantime, I’d like to keep us as free as possible. States’ Rights are now a dream. Mr. Lincoln saw to that.
Agreed. And only now is the idol beginning to crumble. There is hope.
We can fix all of this with a federal balanced budget amendment. There will not be enough federal employees left to get anything done and the states will be left alone. Like they used to be.
“White House delays employer mandate requirement until 2015”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/07/02/white-house-delays-employer-mandate-requirement-until-2015/?print=1
You know, I do not know what is scarier, Obamacare or the fact that the President has the power to enforce or delay federal law at his leisure.
There will never be a Fed balanced budget agreement; that is a pipe dream. Even if there was, they’d find ways to circumvent it immediately and, per usual, corruption and malfeasance would be rife.
What is scariest of all is that this country is a runway train heading for a major wreck and it is immaterial what the President does or does not do; also scary is that vast millions still believe electoral party politics will somehow save us. As the numbers of actual voters continue to fall.
A corporate fascist oligarchy, until it finally collapses.
There will never be a Fed balanced budget agreement; that is a pipe dream. Even if there was, they’d find ways to circumvent it immediately and, per usual, corruption and malfeasance would be rife.
That may be true. The Great State of Texas has a strong balanced budget amendment and the officials here have managed to circumvent it by selling highway fund bonds. Texas spends about four billion dollars per year on roads. They have now maxed the legislature self set limit and the legislature is right now grappling with raising taxes to meet that amount in a special session. That and new abortion limits, no late term abortions and abortion doctors must have hospital privileges after an abortion doctor killed a woman in his clinic last year.
The problem is, there is no motivation *not* to pass stupid laws. We need consequences. Whoever votes for a law that is later determined to be unconstitutional is immediately removed from office, and banned from ever holding elected office again. Similar penalties for other idiocies…
That and new abortion limits, no late term abortions and abortion doctors must have hospital privileges after an abortion doctor killed a woman in his clinic last year.
The kicker in that bill, and probably in the NC bill, is to make abortion clinics meet outpatient surgical center standards. That would be like asking your local Burger Joint meet FDA drug manufacturing cleanliness standards when making a Big Mac, or asking RBT to meet the standards for shipping and handling large quantities of reagents for his business. It’s strictly intended to put them out of business.
The rest is not that problematic. Most OB/GYNs have hospital privileges or can get them quickly.
It’s all just a really bad joke now; I am trying to kick even paying attention to any of this crappy news anymore; the State is out of control and lurching toward a cliff and I don’t believe there is any way to stop it now. They’ll keep passing bad laws and either enforcing or not enforcing them, selectively, until they plummet over the edge.
This system is no longer sustainable and cannot stand.
If they are doing abortions which involve general anesthesia, is meeting outpatient surgical center standards that unreasonable?
Muslim Summer:
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2013/07/15-photos-from-tahrir-square-protests.html
Some of the protest signs in Egypt:
“Obama supports Terrorism”
“We know what you did last summer”
“Obama your *itch is our Dictator”
The kicker in that bill, and probably in the NC bill, is to make abortion clinics meet outpatient surgical center standards.
My wife has had two major uterine infections, one where she went into a coma and the other where she was running 106 F fever. Both required hospitalization for her of a week each. And those were both the result of hospital surgeries. I shudder to think about her having a D&C at one of these abortion clinics.
Actually, having a typical abortion done at a typical clinic is one of the safest procedures you could name.
Regarding gun control in Illinois, I lived there until ’62. The carry law was that Chicago cops had to carry at all times, even when off duty and out of uniform and saloons, bars and taverns were not excepted. Needless, to say most cop shootings occurred in their neighborhood taverns.
I wonder if cops will now be excluded.
Warning: Do not pull out your iPhone a video capture a cop drinking in a bar.
“Warning: Do not pull out your iPhone and video capture a cop drinking in a bar.”
Good way to get shot. Unless you can somehow sneak it. Also, you’re taking a risk video-taping them doing anything at all, apparently; they’ll attack you and arrest you on whatever specious charge they can dream up on the spot and then it’s all on you to get your phone back, if that’s even possible.
But what’s needed is public shaming of these “public servants” and that is one way to do it; plus get their names, addresses, email, phone numbers, shift schedules, etc., etc. and dump it all over the net, with pics and vids, if possible. Some great examples already exist of this.
Hasn’t that always been the case? Just about every concealed carry law allows individual business and organizations to forbid the carrying of weapons on their property. If you start going around town and looking you’ll find the overwhelming majority of most business open to the public have a sign or symbol on the door forbidding weapons. Most employers also forbid the carrying of weapons by employees. The only place you can conceal carry, it seems, is your own private property and perhaps some public right of ways like streets and sidewalks.
What Chad said. The CC laws end at the doors of organizations who prohibit them; however, without a scanner or frisk at those doors, who’s to know?
If you’re open to the public, you have no right to restrict what members of the public happen to carry concealed.
A restaurant, a bar, a department store, sure. Although they may try. What about a church, synagogue, mosque or state university library or gym? Then there are private corporations and suchlike who post signs prohibiting the carrying of weapons but no scanners or frisking at the entrances; they usually reserve the right to search briefcases and luggage and bags, but I don’t think they can make you ‘assume the position’ for a frisk. It would be interesting to see state and Fed laws on this stuff.
If you’re open to the public, you have no right to restrict what members of the public happen to carry concealed.
Tell that to the TSA. Airports are public, paid for by public funds. That makes them much more “public” than a privately owned business.
A private business can refuse service to anyone for any reason (except skin color or choice of towel on the head, but the owner can make up any reason). If they find you carrying they can demand that you leave. Refuse and you get arrested for trespassing and there goes your carry permit.
Lynn wrote:
“I shudder to think about her having a D&C at one of these abortion clinics.”
In Melbourne an anaesthetist infected 50 women with Hep C at an abortion clinic.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-15/hepatitis-c-doctor-appeals-sentence/4629176
“For example, even back in the days when I sometimes went heavily armed, I seldom carried more than three concealed weapons–a .45 Colt Combat Commander, a .45 Star PD, and a .45 MAC-10 submachine gun, with only two 7-round magazines each for the pistols and half a dozen 30-round mags for the SMG.”
How very careless of you! 🙂
Seriously, if I was over there I think I’d leave the SMG at home unless I was expecting *real* trouble, although carrying one might be a good way to score a date at the gun club.
My favourite story of yours is of the friend who emerged from the shower with a hand gun in a nylon holster. Not even I am that paranoid.
Bob’s right; those of us who are not felons or insane should be able to carry whatever we want wherever we want and not have to take any crap for it. Period. But we’re now at the slippery slope stage; they’ve abrogated various of our rights inch by inch over the decades like the frog in that pot of boiling wottuh. And now it’s gonna take a nationwide reboot to get things back on track again.
If they are doing abortions which involve general anesthesia, is meeting outpatient surgical center standards that unreasonable?
Yes. Dentists, plastics docs, and others do IV sedation and light generals without meeting surgicenter standards. It’s not just having the proper equipment, but a bunch of bureaucratic nonsense added. It also will drive up costs due to some of the added staffing needed.
Federal facilities have strict no gun policies. At a certain federal space facility I worked at, a guy got stopped for a random check. He had an unloaded shotgun in the trunk from hunting over the weekend. IIRC, he got his access revoked for a period of time, and therefore got to go home for a few week burning vacation (if he had it). Don’t know if he got fired. At my former employer, we couldn’t have any knives on premises (including your car). I questioned the policy mavens when this was announced and we got permission to have plastic knives from the local Chinese carryout when we at lunch.
Of course, the no-gun policy didn’t help when a civil servant decided to even some scores at work and shot a number of people, including himself.
Nah, if I were expecting real trouble, I’d be carrying my HS 10B riot shotgun, if not the Atchison. As Kenny Hackathorn used to say, about the only thing a MAC-10 was good for was having a gun fight in a telephone booth.
Gun-free Zone n. An area in which effective means of self-defense are prohibited, usually by government order. See: Free-fire Zone, Shooting Gallery.
Some people are lucky:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-07-28/negatives-found-in-garage-sale-worth-millions/922946
For Bob and others who are for one reason or another messing with Windows 8 and 8.1 Preview:
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/159803-windows-8-1-a-complete-list-of-changes-and-new-features
I have a theory about arms that goes something like this:
We have, primarily, natural rights, including the right to defense. From this springs the protections of the 2nd amendment.
We have the right to hire or convince others to help defend us, but in doing so, can not grant them special rights beyond what we have. Ex: if I can’t use deadly force to stop someone burning down my home, then I can’t hire the police to do it either. Their rights MUST be identical or LESS than the rights I have. I can not extend to them rights I don’t have.
This means… if the police, anywhere, have certain arms and munitions… then automatically, I have the exact same right, or GREATER. In no case should our domestic forces, hired by us, have arms that exceed ours.
This makes, possibly, the world a little more dangerous for cops (but perhaps not! Look at Kennesaw Georgia…. “Gun town USA”). Kennesaw mandated gun ownership… and their violent crime is down across the board, despite growing as a city… that has to be good news for police.
That’s certainly the libertarian view.
“… that has to be good news for police.”
Nope. It’s bad news for them, as currently constituted. Whether actual crime exists or not, their pay checks and power depend on a public perception that it’s there, it’s increasing, and it’s fearsome. Like our DOD depends on a constant list of “enemies” around the world.
Otherwise, sure, I agree with that libertarian view, especially as regards extension of rights we already possess but not an iota more, and of course, the weapons. Specifically, in my view, because our police and armed forces carry the current version of the M-16, so should we all, in the selective-fire capability. I’d probably go for the Colt hybrid that can also mount a receiver for .308 and attach a grenade launcher. Seriously.
Ryder, I come to the same conclusion by a different route:
What is moral for a group to do that is not moral for an individual? My answer: not a damned thing. For example, if it’s not moral for me to track someone down and kill him in retribution for some wrong he’s done me, then it’s not moral for the government to execute prisoners. (That’s in addition to the non-negligible practical problems with dishonest prosecutors and police.)
“…if it’s not moral for me to track someone down and kill him in retribution for some wrong he’s done me, then it’s not moral for the government to execute prisoners.”
In Ye Olde Germanic tribal codes it was legit to go whack somebody for stuff but it was preferable to get a money payment instead in compensation. Ditto their Anglo-Saxon colonists in Perfidious Albion. But in most “civilized” regimes, the execution of prisoners is a function of the State and has been for several thousand years.
Then we get into the whole capital punishment can of worms arguments; if the State is blatantly incompetent and corrupt, what then? And how come only poor whites and blacks and Hispanics get the juice, or the gas, or the gurney? We have wealthy and powerful bastards in and out of government who’ve destroyed whole economies, nations and peoples and are doing so even as we speak, but do we ever see them on a gallows? Wealthy aristos sent Captain Kidd out to rob stuff for them, with the documented approval of the English government; when he became inconvenient for various reasons, he was hanged in chains on the Thames and left to rot. Those same aristos went on with their lives of luxury.
Then again, how great is it when the State whacks the wrong guy? Which has happened a few times. And how about all the guys they find are innocent now through DNA tests? Etc., etc.
I’ve always wanted a Ma Deuce and 100,000 assorted rounds for it. Belted.
Sure, some’ll ask why I don’t wish for a 20mm or 25mm machine gun or a 30mm auto-cannon, but the old, reliable .50 BMG is enough for me. Oddly, with the scores of different automatic weapons I’ve fired through the years, I’ve put only 20 or 25 rounds though an M2. But I loved it.
I’m willing to take flying lessons for an A-10 Warthog. Assuming I can fit in the cockpit, which is probably a no-go, I’m guessing.
There’s pretty good evidence that Francis Drake was sent out with the Crown’s approval. Until he became inconvenient, at which point he was a pirate and always had been.
I really like the M2 .50 as well. I’ve fired more than “a couple dozen” rounds through it, but that’s just one of the benefits of wearing the green suit.
As for A-10s, ah, yes. The ground-pounder’s guardian angel, looking over his shoulder and just waiting to smite. I wouldn’t say No if someone were to offer me a squadron of armed Warthogs, I’ll tell you that. In fact, I’d form a mercenary unit on the spot to take advantage of them.
Now that I think about it… the best thing would be to steal an aircraft carrier that is not being properly used. Not the De Gaulle, I want one that works halfway reliably. Then grab some scout helis, a couple transport helis, and some attack helis, hire pilots and mechs and soldiers and… Sure, it would be a lot of work, but at least it would get me out of the house. The only trick would be finding someone who’d pay enough to cover the monthly bills, which would be non-trivial. I wonder if the shipping insurance companies would be interested in protecting their clients around the Horn of Africa or around Indonesia? (I was going to work in “smite the fuck out of pirates in crappy little rafts”, but that would seem redundant.)
Drake and the other “sea hawks,” like Ralegh, were all privateers or pirates as the situation warranted it and the Crown cooperated/encouraged or not. Heroes after the Armada and so long as they brought in the loot for Her Most Dreadful Majesty, always running short with the funds, but dogmeat when they didn’t. Ralegh eventually got chopped because his ventures in central American went sour, and that was after many years in the Tower and losing his only son down there.
We had some of the same situations over here in the colonies for a while, but eventually the actual pirates were hunted down one by one and done away with. They used to hang them on a pile of rock at the entrance to Boston Hahbuh known as Nix’s Mate; last I knew some of it was still there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixes_Mate
My former USMC son is a BIG fan of the M2. However, he LOVES the MK-19 belt fed grenade launcher. He was really impressed with its effectiveness in Iraq.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mk_19_grenade_launcher
We didn’t have one of them babies but one with a ten-round drum, and they would light off as fast as we pulled the trigger, sending 40mm HE or LE rounds downrange. I preferred my M-79 and carried that often with my usual M-60. I was tall and skinny as a rail but “tall” back then meant “big” so us tall boys became MPs and machine gunners. I have CRS syndrome and can’t recall the numerical designation of our auto grenade launcher…stand by…nope…can’t find the bugger.
Steve: I think that some people say “It depends on the group”. My approach says who hired who, and from where rights might possibly emanate. This is not a new idea, of course… natural law, and libertarian views that adhere to it, agree. I apply it in such a way as to answer, once and for all, our right to bear arms. What arms? As much or more than our domestic forces…
They are armed with something more? Then we automatically have that right at that very instant. No waiting for laws to change.
Also, for those that say “Well, Atomic weapons are arms”…. well… no. Not for an individual’s defensive use. If you can’t target a person that is violating your rights, then it’s not a defense. Blowing up your city because someone is breaking into your home is not a defensive act.
We probably ought to distinguish between police and armed forces; in general, cops don’t have much above selective-fire rifles, sniper rifles, and semi-auto shotguns. If they have something more, like some of the Homeland Insecurity toyz they’ve been buying with our tax money, then that is something over and above and not usual or customary.
Military troops, of course, have much heavier ordnance, but it is mainly designed for offensive operations and not personal defense.
Speaking of blowing stuff up; they just finished the fireworks here in Saint Albans Bay, and due to the pier being completely underwater, where they used to light them off, they ran them this time from the park right in back of us. The village was inundated with vehicles and people on foot; next-door neighbor sez usually around 3,000 or so. No one tried to park in my driveway for some reason; maybe due to the psycho war vet license plate frames on the old rust-bucket truck and a glimpse of me moving around inside. Everyone else had people parking on their lawns, blocking their driveways, walking across their yards; not here, LOL.
The fireworks lit up our back yahd like it was daylight; the launch platform was maybe a hundred yahds away through the trees out back and I had a nice vantage point all by myself from our laundry room upstairs. I was tempted to invite any one or two of the numerous nubile young women roaming around below to sit up here with me but discretion is the bettuh paht of valluh and all that. Jeezeum Crow, I aint’ seen that much primo feminine pulchritude in ages!
I think that the military is the same… it can only be justified as a defense… but the weapons they have, MUST be useable/targetable against a foreign aggressor… a nation state. Those are a different class of weapon, that can be targeted against a hostile populace… in a way that I could NOT target individuals violating my rights.
Now… if you see an army turn on a population… then, again, that population must also have the same rights to the same weapons. Of course that’s not going to happen on paper… those directing the army to suppress a population are also going to write the laws to reflect that… but they will be illegitimate.