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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.
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My civilian gun defense use blog
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Gun Laws Don't Work
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Dissecting Leftism -- By John Ray
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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
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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
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I Am Always Amazed That These People Still Operate
The Communist Party, USA, of course, is banging the drum for defeating George Bush. What amazes me is that anyone associates themselves with such an organization with the 20th century's horrifying history. It would be like calling yourself a Nazi. Yet I'm sure that the Communist Party, USA still has a significant fraction of college professors as members.
The important point, however, is that while the CPUSA makes a point of not endorsing candidates, they do make this important point here: 1. The CPUSA is doing our utmost to help defeat Bush. We're deeply concerned about the great dangers of a second Bush term, as is the majority of the country and world and every major progressive organization. On a wide range of key issues (Social security, healthcare, reproductive rights, overtime pay, minimum wage, and much more), there are real, substantial differences between Bush and Kerry.
That's about as clear an endorsement without being an endorsement as you can imagine--"substantial differences between Bush and Kerry" and "refrained from fielding our own candidate...." Historically, the CPUSA has insisted that there was no substantial difference between the Democratic and Republican Party nominees, and has run their own candidate for President. But not this time.
2. The CPUSA does not endorse any candidate for President in the 2004 election.
We do not endorse the candidates of other political parties. We have refrained from fielding our own candidate so as not to distract from the main effort of defeating Bush and the ultra-riight extremist agenda.
Freedom Isn't Free
I was Air Force Appreciation Day in Mountain Home today. Mountain Home is a town that largely exists because of Mountain Home Air Force Base. It's largely a military town, and like much of the rest of America, recognizes and appreciates the sacrifice our military makes. They have a parade every year, and I believe that it is just a coincidence that it falls on September 11th this time around. I don't normally bother with parades--I've never quite understood them, but my wife is in a bagpipe and drum band that was in the parade, so I went along.
As you might expect, most of the parade was related to the military, and much of it was the rah-rah sort of thing. But one unit had a sign on their truck, one of those sobering reminders that this isn't a videogame, and that fighting this war has very real costs.
I guess this is why I get so angry with the rich leftists looking for ways to justify or excuse terrorism, and opportunistic politicians like John Kerry playing games with what is fundamentally a very serious matter. This is a serious business; good people are dying.
If John Kerry agrees with Bush that liberating Iraq was the right thing to do (as Kerry sometimes has said)--even if the WMD reasons turned out to be incorrect--then he should say that. If he is part of the Howard Dean wing that does not think liberating Iraq was the right thing to do, then he should say that (as Kerry sometimes has said). If he agrees with the decision, but thinks that the post-war situation wasn't well handled (as even Bush has admitted), then Kerry should say that. The problem is that Kerry keeps saying different things about this, trying to get votes from across the political spectrum. This is opportunism, not leadership.
The CBS Forgery Scandal Widens
CBS claimed that General Hodges confirmed that the documents were real. According to ABC: According to Hodges, CBS told him the documents were "handwritten" and after CBS read him excerpts he said, "well if he wrote them that's what he felt."
Oh yes, another little problem. From the Wichita Eagle:
Hodges also said he did not see the documents in the 70's and he cannot authenticate the documents or the contents. His personal belief is that the documents have been "computer generated" and are a "fraud". AUSTIN, Texas - (KRT) - The man named in a disputed memo as exerting pressure to "sugar coat" President Bush's military record left the Texas Air National Guard a year and a half before the memo was supposedly written, his own service record shows.
If this is what happens when professional journalists verify a document before running a story, how is this distinguished from the tabloids running "I'm having Bigfoot's baby" stories?
An order obtained by The Dallas Morning News shows that Col. Walter "Buck" Staudt was honorably discharged on March 1, 1972. CBS News reported this week that a memo in which Staudt was described as interfering with officers' negative evaluations of Bush's service, was dated Aug. 18, 1973.
Police Chiefs Speak Out On The Expiration of the Assault Weapon Ban
Oh yes! But not quite the way that you might expect. From the Fairbanks, Alaska Daily News-Miner: North Pole Police Chief Paul Lindhag said criminals possess the banned weapons anyway.
"If they're going to go out and commit murder or rob someone, do you think they're going to worry about a weapons violation?" he said.
Kenai Police Chief Chuck Kopp added that the history of violent assault in Alaska shows no weapon is preferred over another.
"If someone is going to harm somebody, the weapon of choice is whatever is available at the time," he said.
Wasilla Police Chief Don Savage said the ban doesn't change the overall number of weapons on the streets.
"Alaskans are well armed anyway, whether they have assault weapons or not," he said.
Fairbanks Police Director Paul Harris said "outlaws have always had outlaw weapons."
"We're outgunned," he added. "That's the nature of the business."
Something to Remember on the Third Anniversary of 9/11
Have you forgotten? This article from the International Herald-Tribune should shock you back in touch with the savage reality of the day: How many people jumped from the upper floors of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11?
Never forget. Never excuse. Do not sit idly by when leftists say that we brought this upon themselves.
Why Would Anyone Forge Documents Like This?
CBS is standing by the story, insisting that: "This report was not based solely on recovered documents, but rather on a preponderance of evidence, including documents that were provided by unimpeachable sources, interviews with former Texas National Guard officials and individuals who worked closely back in the early 1970s with Colonel Jerry Killian and were well acquainted with his procedures, his character and his thinking," the statement read.
It is possible that the story is true, but the documents were forgeries--you know, like the way Los Angeles Police Department seems to have "improved" the evidence about the O.J. Simpson case.
The fact is that written documents carry weight that witness statements about the past do not. Memories are notoriously fallible--especially thirty years later. I assume that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth crowd are telling the truth--as they remember it. I do not find it hard to believe that anger at what Kerry said when he returned to the U.S. may have colored memories of those veterans.
Kerry may well be telling the truth--as he remembers it. The need to make the past a bit more heroic than it really was is a recurring problem of politicians. It used to be said that a politician's childhood becomes more humble the higher the higher he seeks, and this is not simple dishonesty, but a tendency to misremember the past in ways that suit the politician's needs.
Written documents, however, carry a weight that memories do not. Hence the need to have a written backup for memories of those involved who have a negative story to tell about 1st Lt. George Bush. My guess is that whoever put these documents together is under 40, and has never seen a typewriter, and never used one--perhaps never even seen an original typewritten letter.
He doubtless thought he was being very clever running it through a photocopier several times to make it hard to tell characteristics of the original letters. But that should have been the first tipoff that something was amiss with this. The more important a document is, the more important it is to get a photocopy of the original--just to avoid these sort of questions.
CBS is staking its professional reputation on this. I sure hope so. I look forward to CBS being exposed as the dishonest, careless, and sloppy leftwing propaganda wing that it is.
CBS As The Empire's Death Star
Michael Williams points out that Rather's unwillingness to admit that there might be a problem with those 1972 Bush Air National Guard memos (produced with what must have been a very, very beta release version of Microsoft Word) has an uncanny similarity to the scene in Star Wars.
The French Government's Concern About Global Warming
Apparently, Chirac wanted to fly to Russia the slow way: PARIS (Reuters) - Determined to get a decent night's sleep, French President Jacques Chirac ordered his Airbus pilot to perform a 1,250-mile time-killing tour of France before heading to Russia to see Vladimir Putin last week.
Something in the back of my mind tells me that there was a French general during World War I who gave orders that his nap was not to be interrupted, with unpleasant results.
...
Instead of going east, Chirac got the pilot to fly north to the British island of Jersey, then south along France's Atlantic coast, then over the Pyrenees mountains and back up to his departure point in Paris, before heading eastwards to Russia.
My Favorite Sauce Becomes a Pesticide
In the Netherlands, farmers have found a new way to keep the bunny rabbits from eating the crops:
I had no idea bunny rabbits were so wimpy.
Spraying fields with the American sauce Tabasco sends the rabbits "three feet in the air" with shock and running for cover, said a spokesman for a local agriculture cooperative.
The Dutch animal protection society is happy with the spicy repellent, unworried by the possibility of burned bunny mouths.
"Preventive measures are exactly what we want. It's better than going into the fields with a shotgun," said animal welfare spokesman Niels Doorlandt.
Keep Your Eyes Cast Downward
You never know what you'll find: LONDON (Reuters) - A routine walk with his dog turned into a profitable excursion for one man, who discovered a 1,200-year-old gold penny during the stroll and now expects to sell it for thousands of pounds.
The coin was discovered on a public footpath beside the River Ivel in Bedfordshire, England. It is the first new Anglo-Saxon gold penny to come to light in nearly a century and the only known gold coin with the name of Coenwulf -- a king who ruled over the central English region of Mercia.
British Gun Control Law As An Entrepreneurial Opportunity
From Reuters: LONDON (Reuters) - Two criminals showed their polite side on Friday when they thanked the judge after he sent them to jail for six years each for converting hundreds of blank-firing guns into lethal weapons.
During debates, I've had gun control advocates call my concern about this sort of thing happening in America "ridiculous." Perhaps Americans just don't have the entrepreneurial spirit of Britons.
...
A factory in southeast London run by the two men converted over one gun a day into fully functioning arms during a 14 month period. The weapons were sold to criminals at 600 pounds ($1,071) a time, the court heard.
Bloggers Victorious!
Those professional journalists at CBS got hoodwinked by obvious forgeries; bloggers pointed out the problems--and now professional journalists are following in the wake of bloggers, and pointing out that these forgeries aren't even very competently done.
Federal Gunsmiths to the Indians
To my surprise, I found that many of the removal treaties with Indian tribes, some as early as 1818, and some into the 1840s, provided for the federal government to pay for gunsmiths to provide services to these tribes. Examples: October 12, 1837, Journal Of The Executive Proceedings Of The Senate Of The United States Of America, 1837-1841, 5:45; June 11, 1838, Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, 25th Cong,, 2nd sess., 605-606; Statutes at Large, 29th Cong., 1st sess., ch. 34; Statutes at Large, 30th Cong., 1st sess., ch. 118; Statutes at Large, 30th Cong., 2nd sess., ch. 106. There are many others.
This could be an interesting paper for some aspiring history student.
I Think A Better Name For This Office Is In Order...
From the Washington Times: D.C. officials will provide a program in which homosexual adults will mentor foster-care teens who say they are homosexual, the acting director of a newly created city agency said yesterday.
Governor McGreevey of New Jersey could certainly provide some guidance in this area!
"We are trying to do something good," said Wanda Alston, acting director of the Mayor's Office of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Affairs.According to Ms. Alston, D.C. Family Court officials would pair children as young as 15 with homosexual mentors, who would act as "good role models." Her office would recruit potential mentors, and the court would screen them and the children to prevent the youngsters from being victimized.
In that case, why not set up a mentoring program using straight people? I keep hearing from homosexuals that other than sexual preference, homosexuals are just like everyone else. So why does the mentor have to be the same sexual orientation? That should only be an issue if you are planning to do more than mentor them.
"We are not indoctrinating anyone [into a homosexual lifestyle]," Ms. Alston said. "The goal is not to address the lifestyle, but the individual. ... If [homosexual mentors] can help a person with their life and to assimilate into society, which is hard, that is the goal � to help them with their everyday life."
People This Stupid Shouldn't Be Voting
But then, who would elect California's legislature? A swift current kept divers out of the water this morning, suspending efforts to recover the body of a 4-year-old boy who was ejected into the San Francisco Bay during a traffic collision on the Hayward-San Mateo Bridge Tuesday afternoon.
...
The children were ejected from the van by the impact, but it was not clear exactly how, Oliver said. ``We don't know whether it was the door or window at this point,'' Oliver said.
...
None of the three children in the van -- the two boys who were thrown into the water and a 5-year-old boy -- were properly restrained in child-safety seats, Oliver said. California law requires children younger than 6 or weighing less 60 pounds to ride in a child-safety seat. It was not clear whether the children and the four adults in the van were wearing seat belts, the CHP officer said.
NPR Reporters, Showing Their Fairness & Humanity
If you want to read a distressing account of what happens when the parent of a dead soldier doesn't read from the script for National Propaganda Radio, go here. Why, if money is in short supply, doesn't the federal government defund NPR?
One of the Victims
Yes, I know that this isn't a typical user of drugs--but I do wish that advocates of decriminalization would be a little more realistic about the consequences. It would probably be a net win for the society--but there will be more cases like this: A six-week-old baby sick from cocaine and heroin addiction could die, and the hospital she is at is asking a judge not to let her live.
The parents of little Savannah were in court Tuesday.
Doctors say Savannah's prognosis is poor, and they do not expect her to live longer than a few weeks. She has been in a hospital unit since birth. Prosecutors say her mother, only came to visit her one time.
Prosecutors claim Savannah's mother took cocaine and heroin all during her pregnancy, causing catastrophic birth defects.
"She did have webbed hands which is another deformity to be caused by drugs," prosecutor Harriet Wells said.
The Billionaires Have Obviously Opened Their Wallets Wide
in their attempt to elect their buddy John Kerry.
A very professionally done video here tells us that there was no wreckage of an airliner at the Pentagon, claiming it was actually a missle. Rather than pick it apart piece by piece, I have only one thing to say. Visit here, and search down for "piece of aircraft wreckage" in the text. The image:
The Apparently Forged Air National Guard Documents
I've been reading various non-expert opinions about this, my inclination was that they were right--not because of the question about proportional spaced fonts (because I remember using an IBM Selectric with them in the early 1970s), but because of the superscript "th" on "111th" in the documents. There would have been a way to do that with the IBM Selectric--but it would have involved removing the type ball, putting in a smaller type face ball, rolling up half a space, then removing the type ball again. You could do it--but who would bother on a simple memo?
Now I see that real experts on the history of typography are being interviewed, and agreeing that this document is suspicious: "It was highly out of the ordinary for an organization, even the Air Force, to have proportional-spaced fonts for someone to work with," said Allan Haley, director of words and letters at Agfa Monotype in Wilmington, Mass. "I'm suspect in that I did work for the U.S. Army as late as the late 1980s and early 1990s and the Army was still using [fixed-pitch typeface] Courier."
The superscript matter, however:
The typography experts couldn't pinpoint the exact font used in the documents. They also couldn't definitively conclude that the documents were either forged using a current computer program or were the work of a high-end typewriter or word processor in the early 1970s.But the use of the superscript "th" in one document - "111th F.I.S" - gave each expert pause. They said that is an automatic feature found in current versions of Microsoft Word, and it's not something that was even possible more than 30 years ago.
This is probably the only way the Democrats can win the election now--by forging documents. What next? Are they going to produce videotape of Bush with sheep? Certainly, Hollywood has the expertise to create such a tape, and the Democrats have the morals to use it.
"That would not be possible on a typewriter or even a word processor at that time," said John Collins, vice president and chief technology officer at Bitstream Inc., the parent of MyFonts.com.
"It is a very surprising thing to see a letter with that date [May 4, 1972] on it," and featuring such typography, Collins added. "There's no question that that is surprising. Does that force you to conclude that it's a fake? No. But it certainly raises the eyebrows."
UPDATE: Over at Powerline there are a number of examples of why the documents are forgeries--and not even good ones, including kerning of the type (something that no typewriter of that era could do), not even a feeble attempt at faking the signature on the bottom, and many other obvious problems.
Not only are Kerry's operatives liars, they aren't even competent liars.
UPDATE 2: ScrappleFace is on it! CBS reporter Dan Rather today released the text of a recently discovered email from then-Lt. George W. Bush's Air National Guard commanding officer which casts more doubt upon the military service of the man who would become the 43rd President of the United States.
The revelation of the email comes just hours after questions were raised about the authenticity of typewritten memos from the same officer, shown yesterday by Mr. Rather on 60 Minutes.
According to the previously unseen email message sent in May 1972 by squadron commander Jerry Killian, Lt. Bush phoned Col. Killian because "his internet connection was on the fritz and he couldn't IM me."
...
According to Col. Killian's email, the young Bush wanted to go to Alabama to work as webmaster for a Republican candidate's website.
Mr. Rather said the authenticity of the 32-year-old email has been confirmed by several Nigerian officials who specialize in electronic funds transfer by email.
Mark of a Fanatic
One of the distinguishing marks of a fanatic is the inability to understand why someone else might not agree with him (or in this case, her). The wife of a Presidential candidate has made it very clear that anyone that doesn't agree with her husband's proposal is an idiot. Not, "has a different set of values about what is important." Not, "thinks the cost is too high." No: "idiot." There's nothing quite as dangerous as a person who thinks that there is only one legitimate way to think about a public policy issue:Teresa Heinz Kerry says "only an idiot" would fail to support her husband's health care plan.
Oh? You were expecting a Republican to be this narrow-minded? Try again.
But Heinz Kerry, the wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, told the (Lancaster) Intelligencer Journal that "of course, there are idiots."
Kerry's proposal includes health care subsidies for children, the unemployed, small companies and more; and government assistance to insurers and employers that keep premiums for workers down.
If Kerry is elected, Heinz Kerry predicts that opponents of his health care plan will be voted out of office. She says, "Only an idiot wouldn't like this."
I cringe a lot at the number of people who are uninsured right now. But I also know that for a lot of the uninsured, this is a matter of choice.
I have a good friend, someone who has been a six-figure engineering manager--who could be one again, if he chose--but right now, prefers being uninsured (and his children uninsured). He has decided that God will provide for his family and himself. I think this is a bit foolish--that there are good jobs with benefits available right now for him in the town where he lives, and that might be God's provision. But he has decided that he can't go back to living in what he calls "cubicle world," and he isn't doing so. His uninsured state is a matter of choice. I don't think it's a good choice, but unlike Kerry and other Democrats, I'm not prepared to force him to be insured.
Alcoholism & Depression Gene
It's been known for some time that alcoholism and depression tend to run in families--but one group believes that they have identified the specific genetic site of the trait, and that they are in the same place:
If scientists can identify the specific failure, it might be easier to come up with a specific treatment, and one a bit more precisely targeted than the drugs currently used for depression. A treatment for alcoholism--now that would be spectacular. I've seen way too many lives ruined by alcoholism.
Previous studies of twins and adopted siblings have suggested there likely are genes in common underlying alcoholism and depression, and that the two disorders seem to run in families. But the lead researcher of the new study says this is the first report of a specific gene that seems to increase risk for both disorders.
"Clinicians have observed a connection between these two disorders for years, so we are excited to have found what could be a molecular underpinning for that association," said Alison Goate, the Washington University School of Medicine researcher who led the study.
Follow-up research might help reveal the underlying biology that makes some people susceptible to alcoholism, others to depression, some to both diseases, and others to neither. Goate says a variation or alteration of the CHRM2 gene influences those four separate conditions.
Ignorant? Or Liars?
Professor Volokh points to this Chicago Sun-Times editorial that claims that the expiration of the assault weapons ban will allow people to carry machine guns: How ridiculous is the notion that private citizens should be able to tote machine guns? It takes someone with extreme positions like Alan Keyes to righteously argue that cause. Most Americans -- Democrats and Republicans -- are against claiming Second Amendment protections for these guns and support the federal assault weapons ban.
As Professor Volokh points out, the assault weapons law has nothing to do with machine guns. NOTHING. I've seen many similar examples of this sort of claim over the last 15 years. They are simply wrong. This is not a matter on which there is any debate. The assault weapon ban has NOTHING to do with automatic weapons. NOTHING.
So here's the question: are the editor writers so ignorant that they shouldn't be writing these editorials? Or are they intentionally lying? My experience dealing with respectable, mainstream journalists over the years suggests that they are as ignorant about this issue as they are about just about every other issue--but arrogant in their ignorance as well.
And the mainstream media wonder why so many Americans regard them as the equivalent of used car salesmen?
Is This News? Or a Satirical Piece From The Onion?
The first part is so shocking that I started to look for flaws in the claim: Continued immigration and a stubborn high school dropout rate have stymied efforts to improve literacy in Los Angeles County, where more than half the working-age population can't read a simple form, a report released Wednesday found.
Okay, at least part of this is because much of Los Angeles County isn't literate in English, right? I'm not so sure that this is enough of an explanation.
...
In the Los Angeles region, 53 percent of workers ages 16 and older were deemed functionally illiterate, the study said.
That percentage dropped to 44 percent in the greater San Fernando Valley -- which includes Agoura Hills and Santa Clarita -- but soared to 85 percent in some pockets of the Valley.
The study measured levels of literacy across the region using data from the 2000 Census, the U.S. Department of Education and a survey of literacy programs taken from last September to January.
It classified 3.8 million Los Angeles County residents as "low-literate," meaning they could not write a note explaining a billing error, use a bus schedule or locate an intersection on a street map.
The part that reads like satire is: Before he enrolled in a literacy class at the North Valley Occupational Center, Adolio Gonzales, 29, was intimidated by filling out job applications or even going to an amusement park.
He's not literate enough to go to Disneyland, and he wants to be a computer programmer? There's a bit of a gap that needs to be bridged there first.
"I didn't want to go to Disneyland because I thought it was so complicated," said the Reseda resident, who waits tables at a Carrows restaurant and wants to become a computer programmer.
Gonzales emigrated from Guatemala seven years ago and taught himself to speak English by watching television programs.
But he often found himself confused by the simplest task, and had trouble filling out an application at a fast-food restaurant two years ago.
"The application asked why I wanted to work for this company and I didn't know what to answer," he said.
UPDATE: Several readers have pointed out that the problem isn't just English literacy--but that large numbers of illegals are completely illiterate in Spanish as well. One reader told me that a "No Basura" sign he put on his recycling bins for the gardeners didn't work--then he discovered that they couldn't read Spanish either. His wife, who is fluent in Spanish, discovered that the gardeners could barely speak correct Spanish.
The Michelle Malkin Controversy
Michelle Malkin has pointed out a number of significant errors by some of her detractors--errors that I noticed as well, while reading some of the primary sources that are available on the web. I've tried not to be too strongly on one side or the other of this controversy, because while I think Malkin has made some very good points, I also suspect that she had perhaps overstated them to overcome the conventional wisdom explanation for the internment. But then there's this From Ms. Malkin: Update: Muller's lame non-response speaks for itself.
It really does. Muller's response is titled, "I Think I Got Her Gloat." And the significant factual issues that Malkin raises? Muller ignores them.
Malkin also points out that, The American Historical Association's statement on standards of professional conduct dictates that historians "must not be indifferent to error or efforts to ignore or conceal it."
Michelle Malkin may not be aware of the Bellesiles scandal. If she were, she would know that a lot of "professional historians"--including some very well-respected ones--did their best to protect Bellesiles from being exposed as a fraud as long as possible.
There are historians who take their professional duties very seriously. I would guess that it is probably a majority. But I sure doubt that it is a overwhelming majority. Political agitation now seems to be a more important function for a lot of "professional historians" than dispassionate pursuit of truth. Of course, once you have defined objective truth as simply a tool of class, race, gender, and sexual orientation oppression, what's this "truth" thing, anyway, but a parlor trick?
The Power of the Internet For Preventing Historical Nonsense
One of the pretty damning pieces of evidence that demolishes that Michael Bellesiles's claims that there were few guns in private hands in the early Republic--and that few Americans hunted--was an 1810 manufacturing census. It was a very incomplete census--as even Secretary of the Treasury Tench Coxe admitted. In many places, there is simply no data present for entire states--and not just with respect to guns.
Yet, this still showed that in 1810, the U.S. manufactured 14,349 "Guns," 5,614 "Rifles," and 22,890 "Other" firearms. There were 117 factories making guns. Gunsmiths produced $593,993 worth of goods--and this is a survey that included information from only ten states, leaving blanks for New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Delaware, Ohio, Kentucky, West Tennessee, Georgia, and all the territories. (pp. 11-12)
The more complete returns for gunpowder manufacturing showed 1,397,111 pounds of gunpowder--and at least two states and part of Tennessee showed only the value of the gunpowder produced, not the weight. (p. 33)
Lead shot? The report is extremely incomplete--only showing pounds produced for Pennsylvania. Nearly all of this would have been for either white hunters, or for sale to the government's Indian agents, who supplied both guns and ammunition to Indians as part of a number of treaties. Virginia made $2,040 worth of lead shot (no weight, however), and Louisiana Territory had two manufacturers listed as well (no weight, nor value). Our total standing army was a few thousand men--and yet Pennsylvania alone, with six manufacturers, made 575 tons of lead shot. That's a lot of a shot--for a population that largely did not hunt.
When I first found this census, as a result of writing the book Black Demographic Data, 1790-1860, I found it on a microfiche, hard to read, and almost as hard to find. Scoundrels like Michael Bellesiles, and other "professional" historians, can rely on the fact that the average layman just isn't going to know where to find these documents, or even that they exist. But the wonders of the Internet mean that Tench Coxe, A Statement of the Arts and Manufactures of the United States of America, for the Year 1810 (Philadelphia: A. Cornman, 1814), is available here, in full.
There's more to history than primary sources, of course, and you can get yourself in some trouble just stumbling into documents without understanding the context in which they were written, or for what purpose, or by who. I shudder to imagine the conclusions that a historian of the 35th century might draw about the pre-World War V world, if much of the surviving literature came from excavation of a neo-Nazi fallout shelter. Hmmm. Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. "Were they really stupid enough to explain their plans this way?" Mein Kampf? "What a poor tortured genius this man must have been!" Fahrenheit 9/11? "Why did they re-elect this evil bumbler in 2004 if he did these terrible things to America?"
Still, having access to primary sources on a massive scale makes it harder for the ideologically-driven "professional" historians to pull off frauds like Arming America. For that, we should praise the Internet, and the rapid spread of primary source documents.
How Smart Is Google's AdSense Advertising Program?
Pretty darn smart. I just added the advertising HTML to the top of my historical primary sources page--and the ads that appeared were for:
1. Richard Brookhiser's book Gentlemen Revolutionary;
2. a video game called "Revolution";
3. Overstock.com, advertising Colonial Spanish America; and,
4. a site that offers American Revolution essays.
Now, I'm not thrilled with that last ad, because it may encourage students to buy a paper--rather than just read those essays to get ideas. But I am impressed how well AdSense figured out which ads to run.
UPDATE: It's smart, but not a mind reader. My review of James Davison Hunter's book Culture Wars included an ad titled, "Meet Hot Gay Guys" along with one or two that were Christian-oriented. Hmmm. I suspect that the average reader of that review isn't going to be clicking the "Meet Hot Gay Guys" button anytime soon.
Assault Weapon Ban Renewal Dead?
From the Houston Chronicle: WASHINGTON - The fight to renew a favored ban on assault weapons effectively died Tuesday after the lead Senate sponsor of a bill to continue restrictions on the sale and manufacture of some semi-automatic weapons conceded defeat.
Yup. Those leaders know that Bush doesn't want that bill on his desk.
"Absent the president twisting arms, it's nil," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., of the chances to get a bill passed before midnight Monday, when the law expires.
President Bush has indicated he would sign an extension of the 1994 law if Congress got it to his desk. But Bush has not asked the House to pass it, and congressional Republican leaders, including House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, have refused to bring it to the floor for a vote.
I suspect that at least some Democrats and perhaps a few Republicans in Congress are now breathing a sigh of relief. Voting for the 1994 ban cost at least twenty Democrats their seats in the House of Representatives--and played a major part in putting Republicans in control of both houses. I doubt that anything has fundamentally changed since then. While a strong majority of Americans support the ban, my guess is that most of that "strong majority" think the ban applies to automatic weapons. A proper explanation of the law would, I suspect, knock the 68% in support down to 30-35%.
But while the ban enjoys majority support, this support is not evenly distributed. Especially in a lot of more rural parts of America, the ban is widely opposed both on principle (it isn't the type of gun, but the person holding it that matters) and because a fair number of Americans in those places either own an assault weapon, or know someone who does--and understand that such a ban makes no sense. Any argument based on functionality that justifies banning an AR-15 or an AK-47 justifies banning a Ruger Mini-14. Any argument that justifies banning a shotgun with a pistol grip or a folding stock makes just as much sense for a sporting shotgun.
If you haven't already contacted your elected representatives about this, it wouldn't hurt to remind them how you feel--but I think we can just count down the days until this idiot law whimpers, rattles, and dies.
Mark Steyn On Kerry Campaign Implosion
Steyn, as usual, captures the essential facts and then wraps them in a tasty pie crust: There was an old joke back in the Cold War:
If Swift Boat Veterans for Truth had drawn first blood, I would be irritated--and perhaps enough to see how much truth there is to their charges against Kerry. From the way that Kerry's campaign has handled these attacks, I assume that there is either enough truth to them that Kerry doesn't want his service records unsealed, or that Kerry's people are too stupid to respond to these attacks--in which case, they aren't competent to run the White House--a much harder job.
Proud American to Russian guy: ''In my country every one of us has the right to criticize our president.''
Russian guy: ''Same here. In my country every one of us has the right to criticize your president.''
That seems to be the way John Kerry likes it. Americans should be free to call Bush a moron, a liar, a fraud, a deserter, an agent of the House of Saud, a mass murderer, a mass rapist (according to the speaker at a National Organization for Women rally last week) and the new Hitler (according to just about everyone). But how dare anyone be so impertinent as to insult John Kerry! No one has the right to insult Kerry, except possibly Teresa, and only on the day she gives him his allowance.
But after more than a year of the Democratic Party's surrogates making outrageous charges against Bush--including the charge that he knew about the 9/11 attacks in advance, and ordered the Air Force to not prevent them--I can't have any sympathy for Kerry at all. Kerry certainly knows that a lot of these accusations of treason and deriliction of duty are false, and could have spoken against them. But he didn't.
Why should he, when we was the beneficiary of the attacks? Because these sort of lies encourage retaliation, and because they destroy the civil discourse required in times of national crisis, as this is. But it appears that winning was more important to Kerry and his cronies than the national interest. Fine. Kerry deserves it when others make accusations that are actually quite a bit less serious, and a lot more likely to be true.
More from Steyn: As for Bush, to be sure at one level his convention was a ''soft-focus infomercial,'' just as Kerry's was. But the infomercial came into sharp focus just often enough to clarify, piercingly, the differences between the parties. On opening night in Boston, the Democrats staged a tasteful, teary candlelight remembrance of those who died on 9/11. On opening night in New York, the Republicans put up one speaker after another -- John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Ron Silver -- resolved that those thousands of innocents shall not have died in vain.
Yup. This isn't an argument about income tax rates, or whether to develop Alaska's oil reserves, or whether judges can impose gay marriage on the states. We are engaged in a battle with a bunch whose ambitions are to make the entire world into, at best, Iran, and more likely, Hussein's Iraq. All the other disputes between left and right will have to wait.
I remember a couple of days after Sept. 11 writing that weepy candlelight vigils were a cop-out: the issue wasn't whether you were sad about the dead people but whether you wanted to do something about it. Three years on, the two conventions drew the same distinction. If you want passivity and wallowing in victim culture, the Dems will do. If you want to win this thing, Bush is the only guy running.
The Future?
It's hard to tell if perhaps there's a bit more to this story than this tabloid news account is telling us--but I'm hard pressed to see what additional detail would excuse the behavior of this guy: A JUDGE yesterday freed a man who had sex with a girl of 12 - and said it was her fault they ended up in bed.
The parents are either clueless, naive, or irresponsible.
Child protection groups were furious after Michael Barrett, 20, was handed a two-year conditional discharge for the attack.
MP Dan Norris accused the judge of "playing into the hands of paedophiles". Barrett met the girl in an internet chatroom and later twice had sex with her at her parents' home when he was 18.
But judge Michael Roach said she was a "willing participant" who instigated sex at the house in Greater Manchester last year when she went to his bedroom.
He said trainee croupier Barrett was not "predatory to children" and told him: "There was no sexual coercion. Her family allowed you to stay in their home. I trust you to behave yourself now."
...
Barrett first met the girl at a 2002 concert in London after contacting her via the internet and phone. He was invited to stay with her family, who did not believe the relationship "inappropriate", the court heard.
Then again, when we first moved here to Boise, there was news coverage of a couple who turned their nine year old daughter over to a old man they met in the natural foods store so that he could give her "therapeutic massages." This was in the news, of course, because the old man was being prosecuted for molestation. How can anyone be so clueless, even a couple of hippies? Hello! It's not 1968 anymore. Don't confuse that Coca-Cola commercial, "I want to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony" with reality.
Judge Roach has come under fire before for leniency with sex offenders.
Judge Roach: how appropriate a name.
In 2003 he spared Bristol pervert Gary Templar jail after he assaulted a girl of eight.
And he gave a doctor just one year jail despite a 20 year reign of assaults against eight women.
My Review of the Baader Planetarium Fringe Killer Won The Weekly Contest
Astromart.com gives a $50 credit for Anacortes Telescope & Wild Bird for the best product review that they put up each week--and this one by me won.
Overheard At A Boise Wal-Mart
My wife was in line, and heard the clerk tell the customer ahead of her in line, "Californians are like aliens. We know that they're living among us, but we have no idea who they are." My wife was briefly tempted to exclaim, "Beep, beep. Take me to your leader."
More About Chechnya
I've mentioned my loss of sympathy for the Chechnyan terrorist groups and their cause. That doesn't mean that there is no legitimate argument concerning Chechnyan autonomy or independence. It does mean that anyone that wants to be taken seriously while advancing those positions had better distance themselves from terrorist groups--and they better have done so several years ago, not yesterday, or tomorrow.
Here are some awful and unpleasant facts:
1. No respectable government (which excludes France) can be seen as kowtowing to terrorists. It is perfectly legitimate to look for a political solution to a political problem--but once you bring terrorists into the negotiations, you have made a terrible mistake, because it creates the perception that if you have a legitimate political goal, then murder non-combatants, and you can get to the table to discuss those goals. NO WAY.
2. If you want to make it impossible for the government to back down from its position, then commit crimes so severe that they enrage the population. This is what the Chechnyan terrorists have done over the last few years: they have committed crimes that make it politically impossible, even in a pretty authoritarian country like Russia, to back down. (And yes, Russian atrocities in Chechnyan probably made it impossible for Chechnyan terrorists to back down on their demands as well.)
At the start of the American Revolution, there were officers who wanted to make use of guerilla warfare against the British, and against Loyalists. Washington strongly rejected this approach, for fear that it would lead to the sort of irregular and brutal warfare that finally did take place in places like South Carolina. Mel Gibson's The Patriot fictionalized Banastre Tarleton's actions--but Tarleton was indeed a bad guy, committing crimes that were recognized as inappropriate by other British officers. Be careful what level of violence you start--it may become impossible to get the genie back in the bottle afterwards.
I Can't Believe The Democrats Are Still Pushing The Assault Weapon Ban Renewal
But make some time, especially if you don't have raving pro-gun Congressmen like I do, to let your Congresscritters know that there is no reason to renew the ban.
California Third District Court of Appeals Upholds Open Carry
Back in 1967, the California Legislature banned open carry of loaded firearms in cities. Amazingly enough, even that late, as long as a gun was carried openly, it was lawful to carry a loaded gun in California without a license.
The Black Panthers were at the time engaged in a form of low-intensity warfare against Oakland Police Department. Or was it the other way around? Different recollections of the events involved make it difficult to get too sure about who was stalking whom. (It's not like the Black Panthers were exactly a bunch of choir boys, however.)
Anyway, while the legislature was busily discussing the bill, the Black Panthers demonstrated their wonderful political acumen by walking into the state legislative session in which the bill was being discussed to demonstrate in favor of their Second Amendment rights--armed with shotguns, rifles, and handguns. According to at least one newspaper account, they were carrying a sawed-off shotgun--but perhaps the reporter wasn't familiar with riot guns.
Anyway, this piece of cleverness caused the bill to be immediately passed, with an urgency provision. There were a few conservatives who still protested that this bill denied the right to self-defense, but the left was already largely dominant in the state legislature, and Governor Reagan, at the time still a pretty liberal Republican (or perhaps, just that the times were still pretty liberal) signed it, and made some remarks that sounded a lot more like Michael Dukakis than Ronald Reagan.
The bill, as it sits today, with a few more revisions to it, is California Penal Code sec. 12031. At the time, everyone understood that the bill prohibited open carry of a loaded firearm in public areas of cities, and in public areas of unincorporated areas of counties where firearms discharge was prohibited. This provided a reasonable distinction between rural, unincorporated parts of Sonoma County (where I sometimes carried openly in the early 1980s) and urban, black, unincorporated parts of Los Angeles County (like Lennox).
The case before the California Third District Court of Appeals involved a person who was arrested for open carry of a loaded firearm in an unincorporated area where shooting was not prohibited: Conviction under a Penal Code provision criminalizing carrying a loaded firearm in public requires evidence the arrest took place in a city or another area where discharging firearms is banned, the Third District Court of Appeal ruled yesterday.
This really shouldn't have even gone to court. The statute's legislative history is clear, and while sec. 12031 is poorly punctuated, it seems clear enough to me.
The court overturned the convictions of James Edward Knight for possession of a controlled substance with a firearm, transportation of a controlled substance, possession of a controlled substance, having a concealed firearm in a vehicle, and carrying a loaded firearm, the last allegedly in violation of Penal Code Sec. 12031(a)(1). Prosecutors failed to establish that Knight was either in the city of La Canada in El Dorado County or in an unincorporated area in which firing the weapon would be illegal, Justice Ronald Robie said.
Robie, whose opinion was joined by Justices Vance W. Raye and M. Kathleen Butz, said the other convictions also required reversal since the evidence to support them was turned up in a search incident to Knight�s arrest for the violation of Sec. 12031(a)(1).
...
The statute provides:
�A person is guilty of carrying a loaded firearm when he or she carries a loaded firearm on his or her person or in a vehicle while in any public place or on any public street in an incorporated city or in any public place or on any public street in a prohibited area of unincorporated territory.�
Subsection (f) of the law defines a �prohibited area� as �any place where it is unlawful to discharge a weapon.� Sheriff�s deputies testified at Knight�s trial that they did not know whether the area where the defendant was arrested was in La Canada or not, and did not know of any ordinance that banned firing weapons in unincorporated parts of the county.
Robie conceded that the section, with its absence of punctuation, was �not a model of clarity,� but said the interpretation for which prosecutors argued would �require that we ignore and give no effect to the language in the statute �in any public place� which is repeated prior to the clause �in a prohibited area of unincorporated territory.��
The Chechnyan War
Winds of Change has a very detailed discussion of the Chechnyan war, including the links to al-Qaeda. I don't pretend to know enough about the history of this to know that it is all correct, but I at least don't see anything in it that I know is wrong, and it explains the brutality of the terrorist attacks.
Make no mistake about it: while the Russian behavior in Chechnya has often been reprehensible, they are fighting another arm of the same monsters responsible for 9/11. I hope that they are a little more careful in the future, but there is no room for negotiation with this bunch of monsters. They insist that this is a death-match between their version of Islam, and the rest of the world.
Here's Your Health Tip For The Day
My wife is just amazed at the number of ads on television for Viagra and similar impotence treatment drugs. The other night she exclaimed, "Perhaps too many guys are working too much."
I just ran into this interesting tidbit that might be of interest if you find yourself looking at those ads with a more than academic interest: NASAL DECONGESTANTS/IMPOTENCE
A number of other websites indicate the same thing:
Men who use nasal decongestants on a regular basis may suffer impotence, according to Adrian Zorgniotti, M.D., professor of clinical urology at New York University School of Medicine. (Modern Medicine 56:282-9, July 1988) Prescription drugs like Beta blockers and some antihistamines and decongestants can also cause temporary impotence.
What's the mechanism? Congestion in the nose, sinuses, and chest is due to swollen, expanded, or dilated blood vessels in the membranes of the nose and air passages. These membranes have an abundant supply of blood vessels with a great capacity for expansion (swelling and congestion). Histamine stimulates these blood vessels to expand as described previously.
Hmmm. I think I can see a connection between decongestants and impotence if they constrict blood vessels "with a great capacity for expansion." I presume that doctors prescribing Viagra and other similar drugs are thinking about the decongestant/impotence connection before pulling out the prescription pad--and especially I worry about the operations selling Viagra over the Internet.
Decongestants, on the other hand, cause constriction or tightening of the blood vessels in those membranes, which then forces much of the blood out of the membranes so that they shrink, and the air passages open up again.
Vanity Fair
Just returned from seeing this with my wife, my daughter, and my son-in-law. It wasn't a perfect film, but it was still pretty good. The pace is a little slow, so if you are looking for a shoot 'em up, you will be disappointed. I've haven't read Thackeray's novel myself. My wife read it for a Victorian literature class when she was in grad school, and while she doesn't remember all the twists and turns (it's a rather long novel, in the style Victorians liked), what she does remember suggests that the movie has been relatively faithful to the book.
There were a number of aspects that I rather liked. It is a powerful indictment of pre-Victorian England, a society with desperate poverty, largely based on laws designed for the benefit of a small number of landed aristocrats. The emerging bourgeois, as much as they would seem like a source of meritocracy, were still trapped in the need to move their sons and daughters into the lower rungs of the aristocracy--because wealth wasn't enough--even if you were wealthier than families with titles that went back to Henry II, but were now largely gone to seed.
Reese Witherspoon is one of these actresses that can seem to pull off screwball comedy Legally Blonde or serious tragedy, such as Vanity Fair. Here she plays a girl of modest means but great talents, who is seduced by the social climbing game the aristocrats imposed--with bittersweet results. She was apparently pregnant when they made the film, but Empire gowns hide a host of evils below the bustline, and it worked here--she was only obviously pregnant in one scene, where she was supposed to be pregnant.
It is a morality play, but you will find that people change--or at least, the people that you think of as good are more complex than you first imagine, and the bad ones surprise you as well--much like the real world, where few people are completely in one camp or the other.
Beautifully costumed. Beautiful sets. This film looks like it cost a lot of money to make. There were a few places where the accents prevented me from quite catching what someone said, and consequently, a plot twist or two that caused me ask, "What happened there?"
Aristocratic pre-Victorian Britain had a host of evils, caused by special privileges based on birth. Today, we seem to be falling into a society with some similar problems, but caused now by wealth. (Yes, I am thinking of the billionaire Democrats who dominate the society, like John Kerry.) Our Bill of Rights contains a number of procedural protections for individual rights based on the very logical notion that no individual would have the resources to fight on a level playing field with a government: the government has far more wealth, and far more resources to reward friends and hurt enemies.
For most Americans, this is still the case. But for people that can afford to spend tens millions of dollars defending themselves from rape or child molestation charges, the discrepancy in relative power just isn't the same. I'm not sure that this justifies changing the Bill of Rights--but it might be an argument against a system that makes individuals so wealthy that, like one of the characters in Vanity Fair, they are almost immune from the law, able to destroy people at will, just to satisfy their sexual desires.
This is one of the reasons that I can't take the Democratic Party seriously. For all their talk about "Two Americas," what they actually create is a society of incredibly wealthy leftists, almost immune from laws that the rest of us must follow, and ordinary people who pay high income tax rates so that the leftists can enjoy the benefits of municipal bonds exempt from federal and state income taxes.
