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A Greek student has died after shooting a fellow student and two passers-by at his college in Athens before turning the gun on himself. Police said the gunman's motive was revenge, saying he had left a note indicating he was tired of being mocked by fellow pupils. The wounded student is in a serious condition in hospital. The other two victims have minor injuries. The shooting happened at a vocational college in a poor district of Athens. A Dutch man has opened fire at a crowded cafe in Rotterdam, killing one person and injuring three others. Dutch police said bystanders wrestled the gunman to the ground and held him until officers arrived. A police spokesman said the man was a 46-year-old Rotterdam resident, but gave no further details. He said the motive for the early morning shooting was unclear, but may have begun with a quarrel in the cafe, where a talent contest was under way. The shooting took place at 0100 local time (2300 GMT), according to Dutch police. One person was wounded inside the cafe and three people were hit on the street, one fatally. Labels: gun technology WENATCHEE — Josh Ray always sleeps with a gun next to him. "I just feel safer," he says. Early Monday morning, he felt he had to use it to defend himself. The 25-year-old Wenatchee man says he was just falling asleep on his living room couch when "my door flew open and there was a man standing there in the doorway and he said, 'Freeze, police.' " Ray, who says he is an avid viewer of the television reality show "Cops," was not buying it. "I kind of got real scared and I jumped in the air and put my hands up but it took me only a couple of seconds to know that this guy's not a cop," Ray said. "I know from watching that show that if police are coming to someone's house, they announce themselves before they boot the door open, not afterwards." Ray called The Wenatchee World to say that he was never convicted of three misdemeanors, a statement that was published in stories earlier this week. The only charges listed for Ray in the The Washington State Patrol's criminal data base are the new charges pending against him. After the shooting he was booked into the Chelan County Regional Justice Center on suspicion of possession of less than 40 grams of marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of a legend drug, Ambien, a sleep aid. No other charges are pending against him in the WSP database. Ray said he had a pistol on the coffee table next to the couch, but when he jumped up, the movement put him closer to a semi-automatic rifle, which he grabbed. At that point, he said, Bates shouted, " 'Freeze' at least two more times and I pretty much said BS. Those were the only words I ever said to that man." Labels: gun self-defense The day that my US Green Card arrived in the post, I remember thinking to myself: “Oh cool, now I can go out and buy a high-powered semi-automatic assault weapon.” Approximately two millionths of a second later, I had another thought - actually it's probably best if I don't go out and buy a high-powered semi-automatic assault weapon, or any other kind of weapon for that matter. Knowing me, I would almost certainly shoot myself in the groin while loading it. Or my two-year-old son would get hold of it and execute his play date. Or someone would break into our house and I would scramble for the gun. but hesitate before pulling the trigger and then the intruder, being more experienced in such matters, would grab it off me. And by that time he'd be angry. Or I'd kill the intruder and then a blood spatter expert would declare at my trial that I'd shot him as he was turned away from me and I'd spend the rest of my life on Death Row. If anything, the recent shootings have inspired more Americans to buy guns, recession or no recession. In fact, all over the country they are stocking up on as many pistols, rifles, and shotguns as possible before the Obama Administration bans or taxes them. According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the FBI carried out more than 4.2 million background checks on behalf of gundealers from November to January (a check is required with every sale), up 31 per cent on the same period in the previous year. Interestingly, however, violent crime rates have at the same time been falling in Los Angeles, New York and other big American cities The experts are at loss as to explain why this should be happening. I have my own theory: people are buying so many guns that the criminals are simply running out of bullets. Or as one firing instructor explained to the Columbus Dispatch newspaper: “The ammo is being snapped up as soon as it comes in. People are in a frenzy. It's kind of like that run on Elmo dolls.” Labels: gun rights That belief, three groups of researchers report, is wrong. Their papers, appearing Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine, indicate that nearly every adult has little blobs of brown fat that can burn huge numbers of calories when activated by the cold, as when sitting in a chilly room that is between 61 and 66 degrees. PORTLAND — A judge has ruled that you can, indeed, "let it all hang out" in Portland and dismissed indecent exposure charges against a nude bicycle rider who did just that. In Portland, the judge said, cycling naked has been anointed as a "well-established tradition" and understood as a form of "symbolic protest." Judge Jerome LaBarre said the city's annual World Naked Bike Ride — in which as many as 1,200 people took part last June 14 — has helped cement riding in the buff as a form of protest against cars and dependence on fossil fuels. LaBarre then cleared Michael "Bobby" Hammond, 21, after two days of hearings. Hammond ran afoul of the constabulary June 26, when he stripped down and hopped on his 10-speed in an effort, he says, to show that he alone was powering it. Portland police, however, saw Hammond's two-minute ride through the Alberta Arts District as a stunt, not free speech, and arrested him, citing a city code that states it's illegal to expose genitalia in a public place in view of members of the opposite sex. A bystander recorded the episode, which was posted on the Web. As Hammond pulled to a stop, police began to question him. Hammond said he didn't think he was doing anything wrong. An officer told him to put on some pants or go to jail. "There are kids out there," the officer said. "I just want to ride my bike," Hammond says. "I'm wearing a helmet." The officer said that was nice, but that it was either pants or jail. "I am Jiverly Wong shooting the people." Those chilling words begin a disturbing, unhinged letter mailed to a Syracuse TV station -- along with Wong's driver's license, gun permit and photos of him posing with pistols -- last Friday, the day Wong massacred 13 people at a Binghamton immigrant-assistance center before killing himself. ... The letter unleashes a slew of bizarre, paranoid accusations against police officers whom Wong, 41, believed were persecuting him, repeatedly breaking into his room, stealing from him, causing him to lose his job and trying to stage a car accident with him 32 times. "Cop bring about this shooting. Cop must responsible. And you have a nice day," the letter ends. The missive -- whose outlandish claims are unsupported by any publicly known facts -- suggests Wong was deranged. His only known interaction with authorities came when he pleaded guilty to forgery in Los Angeles in 1992 and served 100 days. Police in Binghamton have also acknowledged they had received a tip that Wong had been smoking crack cocaine and was plotting to rob a bank before the shooting, although he was never arrested. Labels: deinstitutionalization, gun rights In a police affidavit, Poplawski's mother, Margaret, told police her son started stockpiling weapons after leaving the Marine Corps during basic training "a few years ago." Marine Corps records show that Poplawski enlisted in 2004 in Pittsburgh, entering boot camp at Parris Island, S.C., on Dec. 13. He was administratively discharged on Jan. 4, 2005, before he could complete marksmanship training or learn war-fighting skills. "This happens way too often. A guy might join for a day, and then when he does something criminal we get all the headlines about how he was a Marine," said USMC spokeswoman Maj. Shawn Haney. Poplawski later joined white supremacist and gun advocacy groups from his temporary homes in Florida and Jeannette. He began posting messages on "Stormfront," a white supremacist online forum, in September 2006. His writings on the site depict a young man growing increasingly angry toward blacks, Jews, multinational corporations and police officers. Posting under the moniker "Braced for Fate," he bemoaned "Zionist" control of the "federal government, mainstream media, and banking system," the nation's "drumbeat of miscegenation" and non-Jewish corporate leaders he viewed as "greedy, traitorous goyim." Poplawski wrote that he conducted surveillance of the Pittsburgh police during Super Bowl celebrations "to survey police procedure in an unrestful environment." He bragged about the German iron eagle tattoo emblazoned across his chest, the head of the bird emerging from his open-collared shirts, an image he thought expressed "freedom and nationalism." That image accompanies his "Braced for Fate" Web site moniker. A friend of Poplawski, Aaron Vire, 23, of Homewood, urged the public not to jump to conclusions. Vire, who is black, said Poplawski believed races should not mix sexually, but had no problem hugging black women. "If he was such a violent guy, why didn't he kill me and my fiancee?" Vire said. "He carried a gun. He could've done me right there. Instead, he gave me a ride home. "He was a complicated guy. I accepted him as that." And as others on the right side of the blogosphere have been pointing out with regard to Obama’s Capitulation Tour, his view of American history and the role of America in the world is exactly what you would expect from a red-diaper baby (“You may say I’m a dreamer!”). Everywhere Obama goes, he apologizes in his uniquely arrogant way for the presumed prior arrogance of the US, as he imagines it. But when Obama refers to the US, he does not mean himself, and he does not mean the US citizens who believe as he does. He isn’t apologizing for his country, he’s apologizing for those in his country who believe differently from him. Obama himself is never to blame for anything, foreign or domestic. He has inherited problems? Well, what President has not? It reminds me a little bit of my experience with him when he was president of the Harvard Law Review. You know, I hesitated to say a lot about this during the campaign because I really thought maybe it wasn't fair. That maybe, finally, when he got to be President, this would be a job big enough to engage and hold Barack Obama's sustained interest, because really, is there a bigger job out here? [...] [W]hen he was at the HLR you did get a very distinct sense that he was the kind of guy who much more interested in being the president of the Review, than he was in doing anything as president of the Review. A lot of the time he quote/unquote "worked from home", which was sort of a shorthand - and people would say it sort of wryly - shorthand for not really doing much. He just wasn't around. Most of the day to day work was carried out by the managing editor of the Review, my predecessor, a great guy called Tom Pirelli whose actually going to be one of the assistant attorney generals now. He's the one who did most of the day to day work. Barack Obama was nowhere to be seen. Occasionally he would drop in he would talk to people, and then he'd leave again as though his very arrival had been a benediction in and of itself, but not very much got done. Labels: 2008 presidential candidates Yet consider how the Iowa Supreme Court used the legislative enactment of these sorts of laws as part of its basis for deciding that the right to marry should be seen as encompassing same-sex marriage (some paragraph breaks added): Not surprisingly, none of the same-sex marriage decisions from other state courts around the nation have found a person’s sexual orientation to be indicative of the person’s general ability to contribute to society. More importantly, the Iowa legislature has recently declared as the public policy of this state that sexual orientation is not relevant to a person’s ability to contribute to a number of societal institutions other than civil marriage. See Iowa Code § 216.6 (employment); id. § 216.7 (public accommodations); id. § 216.8 (housing); id. § 216.9 (education); id. § 216.10 (credit practices). [Footnote: The legislature has further indicated the irrelevancy of sexual orientation by mandating sex education in the state’s public schools be free of biases relating to sexual orientation, Iowa Code § 279.50, and by securing personal freedom from violence and intimidation due to sexual orientation, id. § 729A.1. Likewise, numerous state administrative regulations indicate sexual orientation is not relevant to a person’s ability to contribute to society. See Iowa Admin. Code r. 191-48.9 (prohibiting discrimination in making or solicitation of viatical settlement contracts on basis of sexual orientation); id. r. 281-12 (preamble) (ensuring access to education meeting child’s needs and abilities regardless of sexual orientation); id. r. 281-12.1 (ordering equal opportunity in educational programs regardless of sexual orientation); id. r. 281-12.3 (ordering school boards to consider the potential disparate impact of student responsibility and discipline policies on students because of students’ sexual orientation); id. r. 281-68.4 (prohibiting discrimination in admission process to public charter schools based on sexual orientation); id. r. 282-25.3 (labeling denial of participation in benefits of educational program based on sexual orientation an “unethical practice”); id. r. 282-26.3 (prohibiting licensed educators from discriminating based on sexual orientation); id. r. 641-131.7 (allowing public health department to take numerous adverse actions against emergency medical care personnel who “practice, condone, or facilitate” discrimination against a patient on the basis of sexual orientation); id. r. 641-131.8 (allowing public health department to take numerous adverse actions against training program or continuing education providers who “practice, condone, or facilitate” discrimination against a patient on the basis of sexual orientation); id. r. 641-132.10 (allowing denial, probation, revocation, and suspension of authorized emergency medical service programs that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation); id. r. 645-282.2 (prohibiting licensed social workers from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation); id. r. 645-363.2 (providing that sexual-orientation-based discrimination by sign language interpreters or transliterators is unethical); id. r. 657-3.28 (providing that sexual-orientation–based discrimination by pharmacy technicians is unethical); id. r. 657-8.11 (same for licensed pharmacies, licensed pharmacists, and registered pharmacistinterns); id. r. 661-81.2 (prohibiting entrance of information regarding sexual orientation into Iowa law enforcement intelligence network information system in most circumstances).] Significantly, we do not construe Iowa Code chapter 216 to allow marriage between persons of the same sex, a construction expressly forbidden in the Iowa Code. See id. § 216.18A (“[Chapter 216] shall not be construed to allow marriage between persons of the same sex, in accordance with chapter 595.”). Rather, we merely highlight the reality that chapter 216 and numerous other statutes and regulations demonstrate sexual orientation is broadly recognized in Iowa to be irrelevant to a person’s ability to contribute to society. [Footnote: Other federal and state authority supports such a conclusion. See Kerrigan, 957 A.2d at 435 (relying on Connecticut statutes banning discrimination based on sexual orientation “in every important economic and social institution and activity that the government regulates”); cf. Frontiero, 411 U.S. at 687 (Brennan, J., plurality opinion) (interpreting congressional protections against gender discrimination as suggesting legislative determination such classifications are “inherently invidious” and implying significance of “conclusion of coequal branch of Government” in deciding whether to apply heightened scrutiny).] Those statutes and regulations reflect at least some measure of legislative and executive awareness that discrimination based on sexual orientation is often predicated on prejudice and stereotype and further express a desire to remove sexual orientation as an obstacle to the ability of gay and lesbian people to achieve their full potential. Therefore, we must scrutinize more closely those classifications that suggest a law may be based on prejudice and stereotype because laws of that nature are “incompatible with the constitutional understanding that each person is to be judged individually and is entitled to equal justice under the law.” Thus, although we do not interpret chapter 216 to allow same-sex marriage, we rely on the legislative judgment underlying chapter 216 to determine the appropriate level of scrutiny when sexual orientation is the basis for a statutory classification. Based on Iowa statutes and regulations, it is clear sexual orientation is no longer viewed in Iowa as an impediment to the ability of a person to contribute to society. Labels: homosexuality Labels: history Labels: 2008 presidential candidates Labels: 2008 presidential candidates Labels: 2008 presidential candidates The bill would see the FDA assume regulatory authority over cigarette makers. It would not allow the agency to ban tobacco sales outright, but would let it approve any new product coming to market. The FDA would have extensive authority over the way cigarettes are marketed - especially to youths. It would leave the door open to an increase in the current minimum age threshold to buy cigarettes of 18. The agency would also be allowed to ban flavored additives to cigarettes. It would levy a fee on tobacco companies to pay for the increased costs the FDA would face from regulating the industry. Earlier Tuesday, Kathleen Sebelius, who is Obama's nominee to be Health and Human Services Secretary, told a Senate panel that she also is a firm believer that the FDA is the appropriate body to regulate cigarettes. "I support the idea that the FDA will regulate tobacco," Sebelius said during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Health Committee. "The president has supported tobacco regulation within the FDA." Labels: drug laws For the past few months the media has been awash with articles discussing a new disease spreading across the USA-Mexican border, destroying lives and fueling the drug trade. The pathogen is the infamous “assault rifle” and the reason for the spread of arms is lax American gun laws, or so the American public is being told again and again. Finally two reporters from Fox News, William La Jeunesse and Maxim Lott, took the time to look into the figures behind recent politicians’ speeches and discovered that only 13% of firearms confiscated in Mexico were of US origin. While it was a breath of fresh air to read an honest piece of journalism, I was still not satisfied with the number. It seemed incredible that an organization that is able to smuggle up to $48.4 billion [PDF link] worth of drugs into Mexico and from there export them to the US with apparent impunity are forced to purchase 13% of their arms from US gun stores selling civilian legal semi-automatic firearms, rather than the global arms black-market where just about anything can be purchased if you have the money. To get to the bottom of this I engaged in some serious research and ended up reading up to 100 press releases and documents published by the office of the Procuraduría General de la República (Attorney General of Mexico) and US Government agencies. Labels: gun rights Mr. Poplawski attended Immaculate Conception elementary school and moved on to North Catholic High School. A spokesman for the high school today said that he was expelled, but declined to state a reason. Mr. Perkovic said his friend stopped attending classes so he could take get his General Educational Development certificate then join the Marine Corps. Records indicate that Mr. Poplawski was dishonorably discharged from the corps during basic training. Friends said he wanted out so he could rejoin his girlfriend. When that relationship failed, Mr. Poplawski moved for two years to Florida where he worked as a glazier, helping to asemble and replace windows. He returned here in 2006 or 2007. Mr. Poplawski collaborated with Mr. Perkovic on an Internet show that featured clips --- sometimes from local news broadcasts, other times video from around the town --- where they discussed politics. Mr. Poplawski lived with his mother and grandmother in Stanton Heights. Friends said his parents had split years ago and that his father "was totally out of the picture." Labels: gun rights Labels: cars
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More Proof That America Needs Tougher Gun Control Laws
So we can be more like those civilized and unarmed Europeans. From April 10, 2009 BBC:
From April 11, 2009 BBC:
And that's just the last two days.
I'm curious to know how much coverage the recent mass murders in the U.S. received in the Dutch and Greek media. I know that European news media like to pretend a lot of moral superiority to the U.S., so I would expect that they probably covered these very atypical tragedies in great deal. (When I say, "atypical": I mean that all the mass murders that will take place this year in the U.S. will have great trouble reaching 1% of all murders.)
Some Surprises At The Gun Show Today
I used to attend gun shows with some regularity, long, long ago. Not so much the last ten years. This is the first one that I have attended since Gun Salesman of the Year was elected--and what a change! There was actually a line to get in--and the place was so busy that it was difficult to get through the aisles without bumping into people. Ammunition was far more expensive than I remember it, from the last time that I was buying any large quantities.
One of the surprises is that I have always assumed that not terribly many people read this blog, since the SiteMeter down in the lower left corner suggests that I only get about 1000-1100 readers a day, worldwide. Yet an employee of the gun shop running the food drive/rifle raffle I mentioned a couple of weeks back, tells me that after I mentioned this on my blog, he estimated that about half a ton of food was donated by people identifying me as the source of their knowledge that Alpha Omega was doing this.
There has long been some question as to how accurately SiteMeter measures hits--with some reason to think that it underestimates low end operations, and overestimates high end operations. If my single mention of a rifle raffle can cause half a ton of food to be donated here in the Boise area, this suggests to me that I'm getting a lot more than 1100 readers a day worldwide. Wow! Thanks! (I must learn to use my power for good, not for evil!)
Another nice aspect to visiting a gun show is that you get a chance to look at a wider range of optics than you might find in a single gun store--or even several gun stores. I looked through the Barska 6-24x50mm scope--and I'm afraid that I wasn't impressed with the crispness of the image above about 20x. (Admittedly, as magnification goes up, the minimum distance that you can focus on declines--but even looking outside I wasn't impressed.)
I also had a chance to look through the Eagle Eye scopes, which if I believe this, use Czech made optics (although it doesn't say where the rest of the riflescope is made). One of them was a 10-40x50mm. Yes, that's right: 40 magnification, and while not as crisp at 40x as it was at 10x, it was still pretty surprising how good it was.
I also looked through some NCStar riflescopes--and one of the tactical scopes, a 6-24x50mm almost made me cough up the money (it was $160). The optics were really impressively sharp, even at the maximum power. Unfortunately, the dealer didn't have the 4-16x50mm in stock.
I had a chance to talk to someone with some knowledge of how the different scopes are made, and more importantly, who wasn't trying to sell me anything. He told me that many riflescopes use a screw and a spring to position the reticle. The screw moves the recticle in tension against the spring. The very best riflescopes, such as the Zeiss and Leupold, use two screws, apparently moving together, and are therefore much more repeatable. I confess, it has been long enough since I shot a rifle that I may not yet be a position to need optics that well made!
Who's At Risk?
When I was young, one of the very comforting ideas that helped me weakly support gun control was that for the most part, if you stayed away from criminals and druggies, you didn't have much to worry about. It may have even been true, once upon a time. Similarly, it is an article in faith in some gun control circles today that even if there are a lot of people who use guns in self-defense, a lot of them are criminals using them in defense against other criminals.
As I have been editing the Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog these five plus years, I have noticed that yes, some of the people using guns in self-defense I would not invite over dinner. There have been legal defensive uses that show poor judgment, where a little care might have precluded the need to shoot anyone.
There have been a few drug dealers who have shot people who were trying to rip them off--and while the police have not charged the drug dealers with a crime involving the shooting, they have charged them with drug violations.
But I have been surprised and gratified at how few such cases there have been. And even when the victim using the gun isn't going to win any citizenship awards, even non-violent criminals don't deserve to be victims of violent thugs. This news story from the April 10, 2009 Wenatchee (Wash.) World is one of those reminders:
Better in jail facing drug charges, then in the morgue, facing an autopsy.
There's Nothing Quite So Entertaining...
As watching a Brit suffer from cognitive dissonance over guns. Chris Ayres is the Los Angeles correspondent for the Times of London. This April 8, 2009 article, as usual, suggests that Americans are somewhat crazy because we allow ordinary people to own guns--and that safe gun ownership requires knowledge and skills far above that of a mere reporter:
Where's the cognitive dissonance? A bit later in the article:
The prospect that criminals are scared witless of armed victims doesn't occur to him. Instead, he ascribes the fall in gun crime in big cities to criminals not being able to buy bullets? Talk about looking for the most bizarre explanation, rather than the most obvious one.
Food Drive/AR-15 Raffle
I mentioned a few days back about how the Alpha Omega Services gun store in Nampa is taking non-perishable donations for a local food bank--with two items buying a raffle ticket for an AR-15 and 1000 rounds of ammo. A friend works there, and reports that last Saturday they received more than a ton of food--and they are approaching ten tons total. They now have some much that they are having to spread the benefits out to a variety of homeless shelter and rescue mission operations in the Treasure Valley.
Nampa's too far to drive with your food donations? The Fort Boise Gun Show at the Western Idaho Fairgrounds is Saturday and Sunday. You can bring your donations to join the raffle at the gun show. I'm planning to load up my backpack with canned food and be there Saturday morning. See you there! Help the hungry and go to the head of the line for an AR-15!
Yet Another Reason To Keep The Thermostat Down
This April 8, 2009 New York Times article indicates that if you stay cold, it is possible that your "brown fat" cells will activate, burning calories:For more than 30 years, scientists have been intrigued by brown fat, a cell that acts like a furnace, consuming calories and generating heat. Rodents, unable to shiver effectively to keep warm, use brown fat instead. So do human infants, who do not shiver very well. But it was generally believed that humans lose brown fat after infancy, no longer needing it once the shivering response kicks in.
I generally keep the thermostat set to 65 anyway, because I love Mother Earth! (And because I'm a cheapskate.) But I've just knocked it down a couple of more degrees. And because of where brown fat tends to accumulate, I may start wearing T-shirts, to expose more of my neck. Or maybe just skip the shirts entirely, at least when I'm working at home.
By the way, the author of that article is Gina Kolata. If the name is familiar--I had some nice things to say about her book about the 1918 flu pandemic several years ago.
Tragedy
I saw the news account in the April 8, 2009 Idaho Statesman of the Idaho Supreme Court ruling that a 12 year old could be tried as an adult, and my first reaction was shock and horror--even though it was for attempted murder and rape of a five year old. The decision, once you read it, makes a certain amount of sense. If tried as a juvenile, he would likely be released in his 20s--and this is a very dangerous and damaged kid.
Part of why I have become increasingly sympathetic to social conservatives is reading decisions like this, and seeing the enormous damage that results from a society where, even though there are laws that apply, they are nearly impossible to enforce with any regularity, because this kind of childrearing is now so common:First, Dr. Beaver was concerned that Doe?s poor language, concentration, and intellectual skills would preclude him from “communicat[ing] effectively with legal counsel in an adult proceeding.” Doe?s full scale I.Q. of 75 placed him in the fifth percentile of other children his age, which was “in the borderline mentally deficient range of intellectual skills and abilities.” When compared to other twelve year olds, Dr. Beaver concluded that “[Doe] is significantly immature and much more limited.” Second, Doe did not possess adequate socialization and, therefore, behaved inappropriately in various situations. According to Dr. Beaver, Doe demonstrated significant limitations in his ability “to interact appropriately with others and to participate within specific systems.” This, in turn, raised questions regarding Doe?s ability “to regulate and manage his behavior without being dangerous or assaultive to others.” Third, Doe had a significant drug and alcohol history for a child his age and showed symptoms of depression. Fourth, Doe had little familial support, structure, and supervision. Instead of setting boundaries and providing structure, Doe?s parents condoned his use of alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana. Additionally, it was not unusual for Doe?s mother, who was unemployed and on probation for possession of methamphetamine, to remain away from home for days – leaving Doe and his sisters without food.4
4 In fact, several child protection cases alleging neglect and abuse had been filed against Doe?s parents since Doe?s birth.
Inmates. Asylum. In Charge.
Bend, Oregon, is a lovely little town, and not particularly bizarre. Then I see news stories like this, and reminds me that there's another part of Oregon, and the reason that I can't seriously consider living there. This November 14, 2008 Associated Press story in the Seattle Times just makes me shake my head:
I have friends that live in the area. They tell me that residents often call the place "Pornland" because of the number of adult porn shops there--apparently, quite unusually high. And I've seen the "Keep Portland Weird" bumper stickers when I have been over there. They're succeeding.
Mental Illness & Violence
Unlike the man being held in Pittsburgh, the person who committed suicide after murdering thirteen people in Binghamton, New York, was clearly mentally ill, probably paranoid schizophrenic. From the April 7, 2009 New York Post:
The full letter is visible here. It reminds me of some of the graffiti that used to be done by a schizophrenic that I knew slightly in West Los Angeles in the 1970s, although she was obsessed with religion.
The forgery conviction is curious, since Wong had somehow obtained handgun licenses in New York State. While not as hard as New York City, police in the rest of the state have nearly unlimited discretion as to whether to issue such a license. A friend's uncle who lived upstate attempted to get a license for a third handgun, and was told that he had enough; they weren't going to issue another such license. Now, a forgery conviction alone would not preclude Wong from obtaining a license--since forgery isn't a felony in California--but considering how tough the Sullivan Law makes getting a handgun license, it is a bit strange that Wong managed to get one.
I am a little surprised that Wong's mental problems did not come to the attention of the authorities in New York some time back. I am even a bit more surprised to see that they received reports that he was "smoking crack cocaine and was plotting to rob a bank before the shooting" and did not go out and revoke his handgun license.
I'm not a supporter of New York style gun control laws--but what is so utterly amazing is that even when police enjoy nearly unlimited authority to control guns--they so seldom use that authority against people who give reasonable people reason to be concerned. I'm thinking of Thomas Hamilton, who murdered 17 people (mostly kids) in 1996. In spite of having a long list of complaints about Hamilton's creepy interest in little boys, and that Hamilton was not a member of a gun club (a legal requirement for handgun ownership in Britain)--the local police made no effort to disarm him.
Even when their authority is limited, I am astonished at the reluctance to follow the law, such as the recent case of Jeremy Hobbs, whose Idaho concealed handgun license was not revoked after he was charged with battery (a disqualifying violent misdemeanor)--and went on to shoot someone to death in a bar fight while awaiting trial on the battery charge.
If police won't use the authority to disarm those who give indications that they are dangerous--while putting major obstacles in the way of people who aren't a problem--why bother with the whole process?
Confused Young Man
I mentioned yesterday that the man being held for the murder of three police officers in Pittsburgh was reported to have a dishonorable discharge--which would have made his purchase or possession of firearms unlawful. More recent reporting is indicating that this was not the case, but it is still a pretty sorry account. From the April 7, 2009 Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:
Bounced out of basic training in just a few weeks? I wonder what caused this? As much as I like to think of neo-Nazi idiocy as crazy, it isn't really mental illness. A better description is that it fills emotional needs for some young people who don't have much else going on in their lives. If you haven't done anything in which you can take pride--well, heck, you can at least have pride in something that is an accident of birth--your race. German and French Socialists in the late nineteenth century argued that anti-Semitism was "the stupid man's socialism." (Some of us would argue tht socialism is the "the intellectual's anti-Semitism.")
And yet, the same news story contains this bizarre reminder of the complexity of human beings:
How dreadfully sad.
Naivete
I can't really summarize Protein Wisdom's observations about Obama's foreign policy naivete:[W]here Obama means conciliation, nations and institutions that are predisposed so to do will see only weakness in such symbolic acts as bowing before the House of Saud. It is naive to think otherwise. It is naive to think that American DVDs will play on British players. It is naive to search for the Austrian language equivalent of “wheeling and dealing.” It is naive to swallow the hype regarding AGW, or to believe that cap and trade can solve the imaginary dangers that CO2 emissions subject us to–though once again that is counterbalanced by cynicism regarding the ends. It is naive to believe that Hamas or Hizbullah are at all interested in a two-state solution. It is naive, albeit cynical, to believe that the government can direct automobile companies to produce automobiles that consumers will want to buy with the money that they won’t have as a result of the government growth initiatives that he wants them to underwrite.
I was surprised to find out that Obama's well known job as president of Harvard Law Review seems to have been rather a figurehead position:
I've described Obama as the Affirmative Action President--and this just adds more evidence to that.
I had a friend who worked for one of the aerospace firms in Southern California in the late 1970s, at a time when there was a serious shortage of qualified black engineers. (No surprise: the educational system in much of the country had made it difficult for blacks to get a decent education, both because of segregation and the generally poor quality of many urban school districts.) His supervisor's boss was one of those affirmative action wonders that were so common at the time: a guy who had not the faintest clue what any of the people who supposedly worked for him, actually did. But he was hired because of the color of skin, so that the company could fill in all the right forms for EEOC.
I saw a lot of that at the time: people with degrees from diploma mills who were paid to do nothing at all, except be the black Ph.D. with the job title of "systems engineer." (I'm serious about this being a diploma mill. This guy worked full-time for one of the aerospace companies, and somehow managed to complete a B.S. in Chemistry, a M.S. in Physics, and a Ph.D. in Cosmology, over a period of three years.)
I interviewed one young man who IBM had hired in Westlake Village straight out of college, and after 17 months, he had done almost nothing except read magazines. I spent a lot of time probing, because I wanted to make sure that he would come across well on job interviews. He had done perhaps two months of actual work, before being pushed aside to read. He was IBM's Hispanic professional in charge of filling EEO quotas. I have no idea whether he was capable of doing anything or not. I don't know if IBM knew it or not. What a waste.
And as bad as these affirmative action placeholders were, I saw something worse: minority professionals who were assumed to be incompetent because so many other minorities holding professional jobs were there only because of skin color. I remember one mainframe programmer that I placed at a job, a young lady from San Francisco. She knew what she was doing, and her references were positive about her skills. (After a while checking references, you learn to distinguish genuine enthusiasm from a reference who is saying good things who doesn't mean it.) But I noticed that while she had one job that actually gave her a lot to do, and where she had apparently been pretty effective, a subsequent job had made no real use of skills--except her skill as being a minority quota filler.
Slippery Slopes & Gay Marriage
When I ran for State Senate last year, it largely driven by State Senator Tim Corder's sponsorship of a sexual orientation anti-discrimination bill. As I explained during the campaign, one of my concerns about this was that the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court had used existing anti-discrimination laws with respect to housing and employment to argue that opposition to same-sex marriage was therefore irrational, and based only on bigotry. California's Supreme Court subsequently made the same argument.
Now I see from Volokh Conspiracy that the Iowa Supreme Court used similar reasoning to strike down Iowa's law defining marriage as "one man, one woman."A second relevant consideration [in deciding whether discrimination based on a characteristic should be closely scrutinized by courts] is whether the characteristic at issue — sexual orientation — is related to the person’s ability to contribute to society. Heightened scrutiny is applied when the classification bears no relationship to a person’s ability to contribute to society. The existence of this factor indicates the classification is likely based on irrelevant stereotypes and prejudice. A classification unrelated to a person’s ability to perform or contribute to society typically reflects “prejudice and antipathy — a view that those in the burdened class are not as worthy or deserving as others” or “reflect[s] outmoded notions of the relative capabilities of persons with the characteristic.”
Is this clear enough? A consistent public policy of "homosexuality is a bad thing, we'll make no compassionate accommodations to it" allows you to limit marriage to "one man, one woman." But if you pass laws that provide some protections to homosexuals against what I would agree is prejudice, you open your state up to having to go all the way to same-sex marriage.
Nor is it enough that Idaho has written "one man, one woman" into our state constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court in Romer v. Evans (1996) ruled that the people of Colorado did not have the authority to amend the state constitution to prohibit sexual orientation anti-discrimination laws. It would not take much for a federal court to overrule the people of Idaho in the same way and mandate same-sex marriage. As much as I would prefer not to, I think the safest strategy at this point would be for Idaho's legislature to repeal any laws that in any way treat homosexuality as anything but "the infamous crime against nature."
The Myth of Early Marriage
Over at Positive Liberty, Jason Kuznicki makes the claim that previous generations had no problem with very young sex, based on cherry picking the data:Consider the case of the great Revolutionary War hero and classical liberal, the Marquis de Lafayette. Lafayette, at 14 was engaged to his future wife, then 12. Two years later they married. As a wedding gift the 16-year-old was made a captain and given command of a company in the Nailles Dragoons when he turned eighteen, a command he accepted. At about this time Lafayette also became a father. Instilled with a belief in radical liberalism Lafayette recruited some friends and the band head to the American colonies to help end the rule of the British monarchy. At 19 he was made a Major General by the American forces. Under today’s laws General Lafayette would have been arrested after his engagement as a sex offender, given the age of his wife.
Jonathan Rowe, who also posts at Positive Liberty, has frequently argued that marriages as young as 13 have been so long accepted in Christianity as part of his defense that there's nothing intrinsically wrong about sex with young teenagers. (Rowe is homosexual, of course, so you have to expect that kind of an argument.) UPDATE: Jonathan Rowe says: "Rather I noted Judeo-Christian tradition DIDN'T seem to frown on marriage (and hence sex) with young teens (13-14) but that we generally know better know. "
Rodney Stark's book about the rise of Christianity points out that Roman law allowed marriage (not just betrothal) of girls as young as 12 years old--in a time when puberty was often delayed by poor nutrition. (And the law was not always followed.) Christianity, by strongly encouraging delaying of marriage until 18 or so, dramatically reduced both the physical and emotional trauma of too early sexualization of girls. Stark's view is that this is one of the reasons why Christianity grew so fast: marriages were less likely to cause physical damage that would impair later reproduction.
I've recently been reading a number of social histories of Britain, and while there are marriages in the late Middle Ages as young as 13, 16-18 is far more typical.
In Colonial New England, I've read that marriage age was typically late teens for women, early 20s for men. I have before me John E. Soule, comp., George Soule of the Mayflower and His Descendants for Four Generations, 3rd ed., (General Society of Mayflower Descendants, 1999). What happens when I look through it for marriage information? In some cases, there is no marriage date. In a few cases, we know that they married before a certain age because we know their marriage year, but there is uncertainty about the birth year. In many cases, we have a birth year, and a marriage year.
John Soule: first married at 22.
George Soule II: first married at 19.
Mary Soule: married at 22.
Elizabeth Soule: married at 22 or 23.
Patience Soule: married at 18.
Rebecca Soule: married at 31.
Sarah Soule: before 20.
Rachel Soule: 25.
Aaron Soule: before 35.
Benjamin Soule: 27.
Moses Soule: 32.
John Soule II: 26.
Joseph Soule: 32.
Josiah Soule: 25.
Joshua Soule: 26.
Nathaniel Soule: 27.
Sylvanus Soule: 25.
Jacob Soule: 23.
George Soule III: >29.
William Soule: >20.
Nathan Soule: >24.
Mary Soule: 19.
Sarah Soule: 38.
Francis West: 37.
Richard West: 29.
Martha West: 27.
I obviously haven't gone through the whole book, but I think this is enough to demonstrate that the notion of young teen marriages in the Colonial New England period isn't particularly defensible. Now, I've picked my own family tree because I have the data readily at hand. But these weren't necessarily a bunch of saints. Elizabeth Soule, for example, who married at 22 or 23 in 1667 or 1668, was fined for fornication with a Nathaniel Church in March 1662/3. Then she sued Church for failure to marry her, and won. "On 2 July 1667 Elizabeth Soule was again charged with fornication with no male partner named."
Obama, The Idiot
HotAir has the video of Obama referring to a language called "Austrian." If Obama had the education that used to be ladled out in competent public high schools in California, he would know that there is no such language. Austrians speak German. That's how a certain powerful speaker from Austria became Chancellor of Germany a few years back. But I'm not expecting someone as ignorant of history as Obama to know anything about that. This is the guy that thinks the U.S. invented the automobile.
Obama is beginning to make Ronald Reagan look like a master of minutiae. He really is the Affirmative Action President: a person in way over his head, who could not have been seriously considered for the job if he was white.
Will Someone Please Put This One To Bed?
I've long been intrigued by the curious way in which the DNC and Obama have fought to avoid turning over a copy of the long form birth certificate that would clearly establish that he was born in Hawaii. Now I see this bizarre claim that the photocopies of the birth announcements in Hawaii newspapers are a forgery, based on being a different font from the rest of the page!
I would ordinarily say, "That's silly. Who would do a forgery that bad?" The answer is: the same kind of idiots that forged Air National Guard documents from the 1970s using Microsoft Word to discredit Bush in the 2004 election.
So, here's a request: if you are somewhere that has the microfilm of the August 13, 1961 Honolulu Advertiser (and that's likely to be in an Hawaiian library only), could you please print out that page from microfilm, and verify that the original newspaper really does have Barack Obama's birth announcement on page B-6. I suspect that you will indeed find such a birth announcement, and then I can call nonsense on this claim. If you can't find it, I'll probably have to fly somewhere warm and tropical to check this myself.
Obama Really Wants To Sink The Economy
That's the only explanation for this crazy proposal in the March 25, 2009 Los Angeles Times:In the face of opposition from Congress, President Obama on Tuesday vigorously defended his proposal to scale back two popular tax breaks by limiting the ability of upper-income taxpayers to deduct home mortgage interest and gifts to charities.
1. While there are a lot of charities whose actual social benefit is not huge, there are many that do an enormous amount of good--and a lot of that money comes from people for whom a really bad year is one where they only make $250,000. I recall that McDonald's founder's widow Kroc gave some truly stupendous amount of money to the Salvation Army some years ago, and she's not alone. Bill & Melinda Gates have given a truly astonishing amount of money (okay, not so astonishing relative to their net worth) to fight AIDS in the Third World.
Obama's proposed budget pays for a major share of his proposed healthcare overhaul by capping the value of itemized deductions to a rate of 28%, in effect making the deductions worth less than under current law to couples who make more than $250,000 per year.
2. Does a person making $250,000 a year need the full house mortgage interest deduction? No, they don't. But knocking this down means that the guy who builds or buys a million dollar house (which in California is only a mini-mansion) can less afford to do so. Maybe he buys a considerably less expensive home. Reduced demand means reduced sales of existing houses, and reduced demand for building these absurd mansions--which means fewer people working on building them. You might make an argument that the house mortgage interest deduction creates an artificial demand for houses, and doesn't make much sense, but a proposal like this in a recession is a way to lengthen the weak housing market--and the weak job market.
3. This won't even reward Obama's backers--quite the opposite. Obama's big funders are going to have less money to contribute to his next campaign, while Republicans (who are overwhelmingly below the $250,000 per year figure) will be largely unaffected by such a change. Good for us, but it shows that Obama isn't even thinking like a proper Chicago politician.
There was a lot of talk before the election about what a smart guy Obama is. The more I see, the more he is beginning to look like the Affirmative Action President. A white politician with this thin of a resume of actual accomplishments, with this remarkable lack of either intelligence or cunning, would never have been seriously considered for the nomination. He got the job because of his color--not his abilities.
Is Congress Going To Add Another Drug To The War on Drugs?
One of the traditional arguments for decriminalizing marijuana is that there are other drugs that are even more dangerous that are legal, such as alcohol and tobacco. As I have pointed out in the past, it isn't immediately clear that this is correct; users of marijuana are at 40% increased risk of developing psychosis later in life. As I have repeatedly pointed out, while most people that drink alcohol don't have a problem with it, there is a big fraction of people for whom alcohol is a huge problem, leading to murder, rape, child molestation, drunk driving, industrial accidents, cirrhosis of the liver, and many other less substantial problems. (Many other intoxicants have similar problems, less commonly, because those other intoxicants are illegal, and therefore less frequently used.)
Now I see that Congress is voting on a bill to give the bureaucrats a lot more authority to regulate tobacco. From the April 2, 2009 Greensboro (N.C.) Telegram:WASHINGTON DC - The United States House of Representatives has approved a bill that would allow the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco and cigarettes. The bill now heads to the US Senate, where Senator Richard Burr is expected to lead opposition to the proposed law.
I heard Dr. Dean Edell discussing this bill yesterday, and being a liberal, Edell was really, really enthusiastic about it, suggesting that the FDA might use its authority to treat tobacco like other controlled substances. This account from the March 31, 2009 CNN Money indicates that the authority wouldn't go that far:
Officially called the "Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act," the bill passed by a vote of 298-112 and was sponsored by long-time tobacco industry opponent Representative Henry Waxman, D-California.
Of course, the Smoker-in-Chief supports it:
I generally support regulation of alcohol and other intoxicants because people do stupid things while intoxicated, and there is a sufficient body of evidence that intoxicants are a factor in creating mental illness. Not every regulation makes sense; there is often a point where increased regulation produces diminishing returns or the law of unintended consequences actually makes the problem worse. Prohibition is one of those reminders that some regulation might have done considerable good, but a complete ban was too much. Prohibition of distilled alcohol, but leaving beer and wine legal, for example, might have reduced alcoholism and some of the destructive social effects, without producing an entire criminal industry. Taxing cigarettes at $2 a pack can raise revenue and act as a slight discouragement to smoking; raising the tax to $20 a pack just creates an opportunity for criminal enterprises.
I don't have any enthusiasm for tighter regulation of tobacco, even though it is a vile habit, and causes an enormous number of premature deaths every year, because the hazard is largely confined to its users. (I haven't kept up on the claims and counterclaims about second hand smoke; it seems implausible that second hand smoke is more dangerous than those who are actually inhaling.)
What I am rather tired of is the claim that those evil conservatives are responsible for the continuation of drug laws. Liberals are now preparing to add another drug to the list: tobacco. I am even more tired of those who argue that marijuana should be legal (because it causes no significant harm), but alcohol and tobacco should be illegal (because those drugs do enormous damage). That's just potheads worshipping their idol.
A Thorough Analysis Of The Mexican Gun Situation
Over at The Firearm Blog is a very thorough discussion of the types of weapons being seized in Mexico--and it pretty clearly demonstrates that the claims made by Attorney-General Holder and Secretary of State Clinton are...to be charitable, deficient. A short excerpt, but you should click over and read the whole piece:
"Still Living At Home?"
A couple of fairly common taunts on various Internet discussion sites, are, "Will Mommy and Daddy be upset when they find out what you have been using the computer for?" And "When are you going to move out of your parent's basement?" The implication is that the ideas being spouted are childish or immature-and as a rather famous Dilbert strip points out, "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog."
The guy being held for the murder of three police officers in Pittsburgh is a sad reminder that there are people for whom those taunts are perilously true. From the April 4, 2009 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
If the dishonorable discharge is true, then Poplawski could not legally possess or purchase a firearm. Snowflakes in Hell points out that Pennsylvania no longer allows private firearms transfers for handguns. Comments on that article suggest that Poplawski was probably given an administrative discharge--not a dishonorable discharge.
Back From Oregon
Instead of just going to Bend to work, I continued out to the coast to visit my mother, brother, and sister who live in one of the small coastal cities there. I'll have some pictures in a day or two--but right now, I am exhausted. I left at 6:15 AM this morning, and arrived home about 8:15 PM. Adding to the exhaustion, I have discovered that I am too dense for the Jaguar's seat on long drives.
This is not the first car seat where this has been a problem. Remember that density of an object goes up with the cube in linear dimension, so a person who is 10% taller, all other factors being equivalent, will be roughly 33% heavier (1.1 to the third power), and have about 21% more buttocks area (1.1 to the second power).
It turns out that a lot of car seats are designed to give a bit in the middle of the bottom cushion--but not so much on the edges of the bottom cushion. The theory is that people who are fairly small in height and width are also pretty light--so if the seat gives a bit in the middle, they sink in on the test drive, and this gives that cushy feel that many people expect. If you are a good bit heavier, you are generally a good bit larger in all linear dimensions, and the weight is distributed across not just the middle of the cushion (which has a lot of give) but also the sides of the cushion (which are usually better supported).
On several cars that I have owned, including my 1978 Camaro Z28, my 2000 Impala LS, the Jaguar X-type, and to a lesser extent, my 2000 Corvette, I have found that, to my shock and amazement, I am apparently considerably heavier for my dimensions than the average customer for whom these seats were designed. I am not a body builder, by any means, but I seem to be much more muscular (and thus denser) for my height and dimensions than normal. (Which is not bragging--it's a bad sign about the average person's level of condition!) It is quite common for people to underestimate my weight by 20-30 pounds--and thus, I'm a good bit heavier for the amount of seat that I cover than normal.
As a result, I sink into the less supported part of the bottom seat cushion much more deeply than the average person with the same number of square inches, and after four or five hours, I started to develop pain in my legs just above the knees. Because my rear has sunk lower than normal, the seat cushion puts excessive pressure on the legs in this spot. After six hours in the car, I start to develop pain in my lower back, for reasons that aren't quite as clear.
Now, car makers know how to solve this problem. I can remember being astonished the first time I sat in a Mercedes. The seat was extremely firm--enough so that I am sure that more than a few "luxury" car buyers were so turned off by the first five minutes that they simply refused to consider it. But ride on a firm car seat for a while, and you start to appreciate it.
Back in the late 1970s, Chevrolet would (if you asked nicely, and were on good terms with your dealer) let you order their sedans with many of the special parts used for police cars and taxis (using the Central Office Production Order list, instead of the Regular Production Order list). At my encouragement, a couple of friends ordered up a Malibu and an Impala with the police car parts. Some of these were performance items: enhanced versions of the sport suspension; quicker shifting automatic transmissions; pursuit tires designed for continuous high speed travel. Some of these were durability enhancements for the peculiar needs of pursuit vehicles: stiffer engine valve train parts for durability; even heavier duty versions of the wheels, cooling system, and oil cooler.
One of the most unexpected parts was the heavy duty front bench seat in my friend Eric's Impala. The standard Impala had a steel bottom to the seat--but with cut outs where the driver and passenger bottoms would be--to make sure that the seat had some give when you first sat down in it.
The heavy duty bench seat that came with the 9C1 package had a solid piece of steel at the bottom of the seat--and what a difference it made! Probably because the average police officer (in spite of the nasty stereotypes of them as donut munchers) is in much better physical condition than the average Chevy buyer, those cutouts weren't there.
I drove Eric's Impala on a number of occasions for prolonged periods of time--and even if I was a little tired when I got into it, I was wide awake after I started to drive it. Like those stiff Mercedes seats, it actually made me more awake, and more alert than I would have been otherwise. At the same time, when I sat in the front passenger's seat, which was also correspondingly stiff--I would nod off immediately--probably for the same reason that a firm mattress lets you sleep so well.
I've done similar stuff before to some of the aforementioned car seats, using the densest foam rubber that I could find to reduce the play in the center of the bottom seat cushion, and the results, while not perfect, have at least been better. As an expedient, somewhere in eastern Oregon, I stuffed a rather stiff blanket under the driver's seat to reduce that sinking feeling. It wasn't perfect, but it did make some slight improvement.
Anyway, one of tomorrow's tasks is to figure out how to make a proper corrective assembly for the Jaguar's driver seat so that it handles dense driver's like myself. It looks like the frame will allow me to machine a couple of crossbars out of aluminum channel that will substantially reduce the opportunity for the unsupported part of the cushion to drop. If it works well, perhaps ScopeRoller will have a new product to sell!
