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Labels: global warming
Never forget!
I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win
I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
Sorry, high pressure isn't included.
My nephew Shippy makes very pretty ceramic items. Click here to visit his online studio. Give someone one of these, and you can be sure that they don't already have one!
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Other blogs you may enjoy:
My civilian gun defense use blog
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Pete Drum's Web Page
Gun Laws Don't Work
instapundit.com
Dissecting Leftism -- By John Ray
A courageous Briton arguing for relaxing Britain's gun control laws
Right Thoughts
Final Protective Fire
Amitai Etzioni's Blog
Scrappleface -- Dangerously Clever Satire
Michael Williams -- Master of None
Another Conservative Blogger
A Group Blog By Iraqis
THE MESOPOTAMIAN: TO BRING ONE MORE IRAQI VOICE OF THE SILENT MAJORITY TO THE ATTENTION OF THE WORLD
Specializing in discussions of discrimination and affirmative action
An Iraqi dentist
Promoting children being raised by their own parents
A federal law clerk opines about the law
Michelle Malkin's blog
Impearls: a blog as electic and interesting as mine
Proving that the United States military does more than kill people and break things.
May not agree with this group on everything, but stopping the ACLU is high on my list
A conservative/moderate black blogger.
Another sensible American
Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Democratic Party
Music, Politics, Motorcycles
Maggie's Farm: Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
A blog dedicated to "Documenting Saddam Hussein's support of Terrorism"
The blog of one of my fellow bloggers on the Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog
J. Norman Heath's Blog--a circus rigger and Second Amendment scholar (really!)
Buckeye Firearms Association, for you Ohio gun owners and activists
Click here for a FREE NEWSLETTER on Ohio Gun Rights from Buckeye Firearms Association!
Another conservative.
Neocon Blues
Conservative Oasis
Other Idaho Bloggers
Bubbleheads is a retired submariner
An Idaho State University student. A Democrat. Someday, she'll start paying income taxes and change.
A retired Las Vegas stagehand, of all things.
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Global Warming--on Mars?
The March 2003 Astronomy has an article by Peter Thomas titled, "Mysteries of the Martian Poles." Among the other interesting aspects of the article is the repeated mention that the polar ice caps "are receding at rates up to 15 feet (4 meters) a year."
For those of you who love Mother Earth, and instead of taking classes in astronomy and chemistry, were busy taking "Gaea Worship: A New Paradigm in Environmentalism":
1. Our atmosphere doesn't reach Mars.
2. Mars is not part of the evil capitalist system.
3. If this isn't just coincidence, perhaps changes in solar output explain global warming on both planets.
It's Going To Be Very Quiet For Here A Couple of Days...
I will be in Dallas for the CounterAttack gun rights conference. (It's not too late to sign up, I think.) So don't expect any blogging until Monday. Both of my regular readers will just have to suffer!
"But What If a Criminal Takes Away Your Gun and Shoots You With It?"
It's a pretty rare event--so rare that a friend of mine used to have an outstanding offer of $50 to the first person who could give him a verifiable case of a civilian being disarmed by a criminal and the gun used against the owner. Well, someone finally brought such a case to my attention. An old woman with a handgun tries to protect herself from a drug-addict burglar. He takes away her handgun, and shoots her with it. So what benighted savage country did this take place in? The United States? No. England--where handguns have been completely banned for several years: An 81-year-old woman was shot dead by a burglar when she confronted him with a gun and had the weapon turned on her, a court heard.
Drug addict Stephen Burgess killed spinster Mildred Hope-Baldwin after he broke into her bungalow in Plummer Lane, Kegworth.
Nottingham Crown Court heard Burgess had burgled the house looking for cash to buy drugs - but was confronted by Miss Hope-Baldwin, who was carrying a handgun.
Timothy Spencer, prosecuting, told the jury: "Somehow - and we don't know precisely how - he overpowered her and took possession and control of the gun, a pistol.
Saul Cornell's October 1999 Constitutional Commentary Article
I found the text (with footnotes) at the Potowmack Institute's web site.
Cornell criticizes Standard Modelers for failing to consider contrary sources:The Standard Model suffers from the problem that mars so much law office history: a failure to adequately contextualize constitutional texts. To understand what a particular historical actor meant when he wrote about the right to bear arms requires scholars to immerse themselves in the surviving evidence from this period and to analyze published and unpublished sources, private comments as well as public statements. Indeed, in addition to the plethora of traditional textual sources, one must explore the political and social texts from this period. The behavior of the historical actors who wrote these texts must be read alongside their published statements.
It is thus rather amusing to see him make claims like:The people had a right to abolish their government and resort to armed resistance in defense of their liberties when the constitutional structures of government ceased to function. Even if some Anti-Federalists accepted the notion that certain natural rights might be judicially enforceable, few mainstream AntiFederalists would have accepted that revolution was such a right.
No doubt, the right may not have been judicially enforceable, but that doesn't make any less of a right. The right to the tools of revolution, however, would still be judicially enforceable. Concerning the right to revolution not being judicially enforceable, Cornell has a number of secondary sources that he cites for this claim. But I have primary sources that demonstrate that the right to revolution was widely held:Government being instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the whole community, and not for the private interest or emolument of any one man, family or class of men; therefore, whenever the ends of government are perverted, and public liberty manifestly endangered, and all other means of redress are ineffectual, the people may, and of right ought, to reform the old, or establish a new government. The doctrine of non-resistance against arbitrary power, and oppression, is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind. [New Hampshire Const. 1784, part I, sec. 10]
Maybe New Hampshire was run by a few radicals, out of the mainstream of Antifederalist thought (and yet, somehow, New Hampshire ratified the Constitution a few years later), but this is pretty persuasive evidence that at least some states were prepared to take the view that revolution was a right, and put it in writing.
Of course, Jefferson's famous statement is also pretty revealing, "What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." I guess Jefferson was also not just an Anti-Federalist (in spite of supporting ratification), but a radical Anti-Federalist out of the mainstream.
The debates in the Virginia ratification convention are also really clear on this. Both Patrick Henry, and those who argued against him, clearly assumed the right to revolution.
In response to Henry's description of a monarchist coup as an argument against giving the new central government more power, another delegate to the convention, H. Lee (of Westmoreland) responded:But says he, "The President will enslave you: Congress will trample on your liberties; a few regiments will appear; Mr. Chief Justice must give way; our mace-bearer is no match for a regiment." It was inhuman to place an individual against a whole regiment. A few regiments will not avail; I trust the supporters of the government would get the better of many regiments. Were so mad an attempt made, the people would assemble in thousands, and drive thirty times the number of their few regiments. We would then do as we have already done with the regiments of that king whom he so often tells us of. [Elliot, 3:181]
I am also not impressed with how Cornell uses the Test Act to prove that many Pennsylvanians were disarmed for failure to swear loyalty as evidence that "individual right" didn't mean what then what it means today. Cornell even admits that nearly all individual rights advocates agree that there are those that can be constitutionally disarmed today. Therefore, that Pennsylvania disarmed Tories during a war is hardly evidence to defeat the claim of an individual right.
Concerning the Antifederalist Dissent at the ratification convention, Cornell says:The key phrase in the first provision of the Dissent, which is generally overlooked, is the clause that allows individuals who pose a danger to the public to be disarmed. Anti-Federalists clearly read this clause in extremely broad terms.
I'm not sure who has "overlooked" this. I certainly haven't in my published work on this subject.The second provision, it is worth noting, bars Congress but not the states from placing restrictions on hunting. Rather than revealing an expansive individual right to bear arms, the Dissent reflects the strong states' rights conception of liberty defended by Pennsylvania Anti-Federalists. While Anti-Federalists in this state may have feared a distant government, they placed enormous faith in their state government.
No, it shows that the dissenters recognized the need for regulating hunting to maintain a sufficient game population. The only authority granted by these two provisions concerning gun regulation was for those who posed "a danger to the public." Hunting regulation is not gun regulation anymore than drivers licenses are controls on who may own cars.
There are many other examples available that demonstrate that if anyone is engaged in "law office history," it's Cornell.
Territorial Ambitions in Iraq
Yes, there are countries with territorial ambitions in Iraq--but no, this article isn't about the U.S.
German Complicity in Development of Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction: Why Schroeder is a Liar
Interesting article from Asia Times about the role that German companies have played in supplying materials and equipment for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction--and that Schroeder knows this:Friedbert Pflueger, foreign policy spokesman of the main opposition Christian Democratic parties and an embittered critic of Schroeder's and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer's Iraq policy, last Thursday accused the red-green coalition government of deliberately keeping the German and world public uninformed of BND (German foreign intelligence service) evidence and assessments on the continued existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). "If we trust our [intelligence] services, and I do, then we know that there exist weapons of mass destruction in Iraq," said Pflueger, and referred to a November 13, 2002, BND briefing of members of parliament's foreign affairs committee in which relevant information was disclosed. As a member of parliament, added Pflueger, he was bound by his secrecy oath not to pass on such information, but challenged Schroeder to make it public forthwith. This was necessary, he said, "so that Herr Schroeder cannot continue to spread the impression that the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is a figment of George W Bush's imagination". He said further that he would dearly like to know exactly how many different types of smallpox virus were in Iraq's possession as - during a November 13 budget committee meeting - Health Minister Ulla Schmidt had motivated her request for a several million euro allocation for the purchase of smallpox vaccine with reference to such Iraqi stocks. Well, Gerhard, why's your minister worried? Or do vaccine purchases fall into the category of economic stimulus for the pharmaceutical industry?
It does seem that Schmidt has asked for smallpox vaccine (and here's another source that confirms it), and some discussions of it in German, which only makes sense if they fear biological warfare--smallpox is otherwise extinct.
The SQL Worm
I don't write much about computers and the Internet--even though I was using it in 1971 (back when it was called the ARPAnet)--and I have worked for startups that played some part in creating the current Internet infrastructure--mostly because they bore me. But this article from the Independent about the rapid spread of the SQL worm virus caught my attention:The "SQL Slammer" computer worm that brought much of the internet to a halt last week spread worldwide in 10 minutes, making it the fastest such infection seen, security experts said yesterday.
Well, with that kind of efficiency, I guess we can say with some confidence that Microsoft didn't originate it.
In its early stages the number of machines infected by the worm was doubling in size every 8.5 seconds, according to a team led by David Moore of the University of California at San Diego.
"At its peak, achieved approximately three minutes after it was released, the worm scanned 55 million internet hosts per second. It infected at least 75,000 victims, and probably considerably more," said a member of the team.
South Gate, California City Government: Imagine Jerry Springer's Guests Get Elected...
An amusing little news story from the NBC affiliate in Los Angeles:In a dramatic ending to her tenure as mayor, Xochilt Ruvalcaba tried unsuccessfully to ram through millions of dollars in city loans and punched a fellow council member before exiting what will likely be her last city council meeting.
Ruvalcaba, one of three City Council members booted from office by voters last week after being accused of depleting city coffers of nearly $8 million, had called one last meeting to vote on several costly measures.
Vice Mayor Raul Moriel, Councilwoman Maria Benavides and Treasurer Albert Robles also were recalled.
Before a packed audience Monday night, the council's three outgoing members failed in their bid to award more than $1 million in low-interest federal loans. Earlier in the day, a Superior Court judge issued an order blocking the council from awarding the money.
They did succeed in promoting at least 12 employees, including four top officials in the city's department of public works.
At the end of the meeting, an amateur video tape caught Ruvalcaba in a shoving match with Councilman Henry Gonzalez which ended when the mayor hit him across the side of his head with a black purse and then punched him in the head.
I'll Be On The Air In Dallas Tuesday Evening...
On Ken Goldberg's "Law & Disorder" show, 105.3 FM, at 8:00 PM CST, to discuss the Bellesiles scandal, gun rights, and related issues, and of course, to promote the CounterAttack gun rights conference this coming weekend.
Britain's National Health Service
We used to hear a lot about how America needed socialized medicine, with Britain as the example. Interesting article here about the criticisms of a number of doctors who work for NHS:The NHS is "on the brink of implosion" with �40bn of Government squandered on bureaucracy, a leading doctor has claimed.
There might be some big government solution to health care problems in the U.S., but the traditional socialist model of the NHS doesn't seem to be it.
Cancer specialist Dr Maurice Slevin said: "I have seen at first hand the steady decay of a great public institution. The NHS is on the brink of implosion."
...
Dr Slevin said he was full of enthusiasm when he started working for the NHS 24 years ago.
But today it was clear that the quality of care delivered in Britain was "far below" that of other western countries.
He added: "Survival rates for most common cancers are shamefully inferior."
The pamphlet says hospital waiting lists have remained above one million even though funding for the NHS has risen by 45% in England since 1993.
Wasted
Too much of the new money going into the NHS was being wasted on a "proliferating bureaucracy".
"There are now nearly 270,000 managers, administrators and support people working in the NHS.
"And since 1995, the number of senior managers has increased by 48% and the number of managers by 24%. But the number of qualified nurses has only increased by 7.8%."
Gutsy Letter
The City of Los Angeles is considering a ban on .50 caliber rifles. Here's an interesting letter by the author of the foremost maker of such rifles exposing the dishonesty of LAPD, and their willingness to do whatever the political (in every derogatory sense of that word) leadership tells them to do.
