Must I start keeping count?

Yet another reason I won't get too worked up about GOP 'needs':

GOP U.S. Senate candidate Scott Brown has been all but abandoned by the same national Republican committees that pumped hundreds of thousands in campaign cash to former governors Mitt Romney and William Weld during their long-shot bids for U.S. Senate.

It's also noted that the GOP gave Dede Scozzafava nearly a million dollars in return for endorsing the democrat in NY-23 ..... hey GOP, how's Dede's ass taste now, huh?!

Seriously, Ted-fucking-Kennedy's seat is open to a special election and the national GOP is just sitting on the sidelines? Talk about a coup if you could win that one. Hell, if the republicans had any sense, I would think they'd spend upwards of 10 million in the effort to pick that plum off of the dems tree.

Oh, wait ...........

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Sorry

There's so much out there, and I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed ..... maybe tomorrow!

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JPFO Alert

Americas, Juan and Evita?
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I like guns!

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h/t Ace of Spades



Where can I buy the album?!

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JPFO Alert

Twenty years of fighting for your freedoms.
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I'm back

Jeebus, I'm glad the holidays are (almost) over! Christmas, the parents (and in-laws), a buddy was killed in a car wreck (bummer) and the like ..... now I just have to weather the New Years'.

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Merry Christmas!

To all, I wish you a merry Christmas, and a happy holiday season!

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JPFO Alert

JPFO sends birthday greetings to ABC's Diane Sawyer.

America is officially dead

Red State has this post on how the DemocRATs have officially killed America:

To change the rules of the United States Senate, there must be sixty-seven votes.

Section 3403 of Senator Harry Reid’s amendment requires that “it shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment, or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection.” The good news is that this only applies to one section of the Obamacare legislation. The bad news is that it applies to regulations imposed on doctors and patients by the Independent Medicare Advisory Boards a/k/a the Death Panels.

Section 3403 of Senator Reid’s legislation also states, “Notwithstanding rule XV of the Standing Rules of the Senate, a committee amendment described in subparagraph (A) may include matter not within the jurisdiction of the Committee on Finance if that matter is relevant to a proposal contained in the bill submitted under subsection (c)(3).” In short, it sets up a rule to ignore another Senate rule.

So what they've done is to pass a law that changes the senate rules. But to do that, senate procedure is that you must have 67 votes, which democRATs could never get. And since no one really has a chance to actually read this shit, no one knew about it until the democRATs had already passed Reid's amendment (via bribery and graft). And when republicans found out and called the democRATs on their bullshit, they ran away, like the little whiny, arrogant pieces of shit they are.

I'm not advocating this sort of action (yet), but I'll be surprised if a D from a red state doesn't take a bullet to the head over this.

Much more at Hot Air (plus video), and Gabe at Ace has a different opinion.

Update (already!) - best retort to Gabe so far!

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AGW shenanigans

So the AGW bubbas have been putting their feet on the scales, in more than one way:

"When Connolley didn't like the subject of a certain article, he removed it – more than 500 articles of various descriptions disappeared at his hand," Solomon wrote. "When he disapproved of the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred – over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions."

How's that for reasoned discourse, huh?

It sounds like the Wikipedia entry for global warming needs to be deleted, and let both sides have at it.

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saw this on Vox's site as well.
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JPFO Alert

Reforming a criminal congress - money and martial law.

WTF?!

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Seen at Ace's headlines sidebar, this bold fashion statement!

Those wacky Ausies! But the name is scandi. Here's something scandi that I can get behind:



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I stand in awe

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I found this at Kevin's site, but had to pass it along because it has an uberpost that really must be read:

An 80% energy cutoff [warm-mongers' goal by 2050 - me] goes beyond any mere economic calculation. It is a punitive measure of military proportions - to which one might subject a defeated enemy nation - for the purpose of collective penal subjugation.

I've never heard the goal described quite like that, but I think it does nicely.

We are soooooo fucked.

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AGW post of the day

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I found this link at Ace of Spades, which kind of goes through the process of how to create a 'consensus':

Few people understand the real significance of Climategate, the now-famous hacking of emails from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (CRU). Most see the contents as demonstrating some arbitrary manipulating of various climate data sources in order to fit preconceived hypotheses (true), or as stonewalling and requesting colleagues to destroy emails to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the face of potential or actual Freedom of Information requests (also true).

But there's something much, much worse going on—a silencing of climate scientists, akin to filtering what goes in the bible, that will have consequences for public policy, including the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) recent categorization of carbon dioxide as a "pollutant." - from first link in post

RTWT, including the links, but especially this one by Mr Michaels. In it he details how the East Anglia cabal simply didn't like to play fair, let alone scientifically.

I hope that politicians will realize that they've been duped (some willingly) .... alas, I;m not sure enough of them are that smart.

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Hee hee hee

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Found on Hot Air's headlines:



Merry Christmas!

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Sleep aids

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My wife is spending way too much money on sleep aids.

She needs to start playing the live stream of C-SPAN's senate coverage when she goes to bed.

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Reading the bills

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I've long thought that Republicans should be jumping onto the whole parliamentary procedure bugaboo of withholding unanimous consent on reading of all bills submitted to the senate, since Obama's agenda really needs to be stopped.

But they really need to take it to another level. The need to let the Dem leadership know that they intend to withhold consent on all bills, no matter now 'needed' the bill is. And they need to fully expect to have the Dems do the same thing whenever they aren't in power any longer.

Then, they need to start governing by submitting short, concise bills (with none of that flaky 'and other purposes'), that can be read in, say 30 minutes. Bills that attack the problem, not perpetuate it. 'Cause ya know, the more we hear about this sausage factory, the less we like it.

And how about you start with a Republican alternative to this health care reform clusterfuck. Be ready to have a member of the minority to withhold consent, so that the alternative can be read.

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An AGW experiment

I'm going to show my technical ignorance here, but bear with me.

The AGW fanatics contend that a system as complex and fluid as the earth's climate can affected negatively by the increase in one substance (CO2). I propose a simple experiment.

Take 3 clear, strong boxes that can withstand a complete vacuum (at least for a few minutes). The size of the boxes is flexible, but I'd say a cube at least a yd (ok, a metre!). Provision must be made so that all three boxes can be put outside and receive the same amount of sunlight. What we're building is three identical greenhouses.

Now, pull a vacuum on each of the boxes, refilling them with, respectively, with the same amounts of: 1-normal atmosphere (air) 2-atmosphere with double the normal % of CO2 3-atmosphere with triple the normal % of CO2.

Leave in the sun for a year, monitoring the temperature with the most accurate instruments available.

I'll bet that there's no discernable difference in temp between the boxes.

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More AGW crap .....

Another climate expert says that the temperature record is hopelessly flawed:

One of the conclusions is that urbanized temperature stations are almost a waste of time in climate study:

"For the purpose of assessing climatic change, a 'rural' environment needs to be carefully defined. Climatic temperature trends can only be assessed from rural sites which have suffered no major transformations due to changes in shelter or urbanisation, or from sites for which the records have been made homogenous. Urban environments usually suffer continual modifications due to one cause or another."

Wow. The study quoted is hard to get to, being a .pdf link embedded within a .pdf, so I'll link it here.

h/t Ace of Spades' daily AGW roundup ..... you are reading it, aren't you?!

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Gotta hand it to those Russkies!

The Russians fan the flames of schadenfreude over East Anglia's distress:

Climategate has already affected Russia. On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data.

The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory.

h/t Vox Day commentor zeno.

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The real problem with health care

Stolen from Kevin's site, this gem from Zombie Time:

Eccentricities aside, Dr. Sunderhaus has spoken the unspeakable, and by so doing has changed the frame of the health-care debate.

Because millions of Americans are secretly thinking the exact same thing as Dr. Sunderhaus and I: Why should we be forced to pay for the costs of other people’s irresponsibility?

Indeed.

My wife just mentioned that her mom was shopping for a supplemental Medicare policy. She got a packet from AARP and couldn't make heads or tails out of it.

Not anything like, oh, just paying your doctor bill?!

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Garbage in, garbage out ....

it doesn't help when you throw it into a garbage disposal. Via Hot Air, comes this video about the computer code the CRU used:



Shocking, no?

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A good, provacative post ....

Found at Robb's (Sharp as a Marble), this post:

Anyone convicted of a felony or convicted of misdemeanor domestic abuse or assault is not allowed freedom of speech or religion and must rely on the government to provide speech and religion for them.
(1968 gun control act)

Any speech or religions that are done in a scary tone or feel are banned. Any assembly that looks scary is banned.
(1994 Federal Assault Weapon Ban that went after mostly cosmetic features)

It's really pathetic that firearms owners are so discriminated against.

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Very cool .....

Saw this at Alan's site ..... a 1911 animation, that includes building the pistol:



Enjoy!

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Thread winner!

I'm not much of a football fan ...... I only really pay attention to college ball. So the BCS is a source of constant consternation to me.

But I saw a comment on Ace's blog that takes the cake!

Isn't the BCS that system where they take a bunch of polls and run them through CRU's global warming computers to determine who plays who?

You're welcome!

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I'm glad I steal from read other blogs

Borrowed (!) from Breda's blog:



Because, ya know, this is all a librarian has to do all day!

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JPFO Alert

An open letter to America's enemies.

Another AGW post from

Ace has really been tearin' it up on the AGW debacle:

Here's a lengthy excerpt, but my real suggestion is just to read the thing, and take a gander at the charts, where the Warmists attempted to quite literally "hide the decline" by covering/masking the tree-ring data showing plunging temperatures with other trend lines, so you simply could not see the tree-ring line, and they could claim, "Oh dear, oh dear, of course that green line was included, but darnitall, it just seems to have been printed behind some other lines. Sorry."

RTWT .... really! There's much more.

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JPFO Alert

How ObamaCare will destroy the 2nd amendment.

How to make your own hockey stick

Iowahawk as an amazing post about how hockey sticks are created:

Long story, but I do know a little bit about statistical data modeling -- the principle approach used by the main cast of characters in Climategate -- and have a decent understanding of their basic research paradigm. The goal here is to share that understanding with interested laypeople. I'm also a big believer in learning by doing; if you really want to know how a carburetor works, nothing beats taking one apart and rebuilding it. That same rule applies to climate models. And so I decided to put together this simple step-by-step rebuilder's manual.

And it's a great post! Now I have a simple understanding (Affliction not withstanding) of how the 'hockey stick' came about.

Also, Steve McIntyre at climateaudit.org, has the CRU emails in context, and that context is not too good for Mr Jones.

Plus, Anthony Watts shows how 'homogenizing' can be, uh, misused!

I would be remiss if I didn't give credit to Ace of Spades HQ for most all of these posts ...... you should be checking them out daily for their 'The state of Climategate Today' posts.

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It's not denial

For the record, I agree that the earth is gradually getting warmer, recent temperature declines not withstanding.

So I am not a Global Warming denier, I am an Anthropogenic Global Warming skeptic.

Yes, the difference is subtle, yet distinct.

Now, if I were to try to figure out why the earth is warming, I might start with that big fireball in the sky that actually provides the earth with it's warmth. I'm just sayin' .......

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AGW scienceyists could learn from these guys

Found at WND is this Big Government post:

There is ample reason to believe that this photograph supplied to news
organizations by the Associated Press has been substantially
color-enhanced, perhaps to convey a false impression of pollution
coming from a smoke stack from a purported coal-fueled power plant in
Kansas. Here is a detailed description of the evidence that the
original photo was either a black-and-white image, or a color image
which was converted to black-and-white, and then colorized for dramatic
effect.


This by a man who's job is to retouch photos. But there's more!
The evidence that this photo was originally a grayscale or black-and-white
image was arrived at with a simple Photoshop process. We encourage other
Photoshop enthusiasts and experts to recreate our work. (Here is the largest version of the image we could find)

1) Add a Hue/Sat adjustment layer directly above the original jpeg.
2) Drop the saturation percentage for both the Yellows and Reds Edit
category down to zero. Note how the image is now a perfectly even
balance of the Red Green and Blue. This is easily viewable in the Info
palette as you move the cursor over the image.

This is only possible if the original image is black-and-white or grayscale.

In a normal full-color image, there WILL be variances in the tone of the
blues and greens. The desaturating of the Yellows and Reds would not touch
the cooler colors. The other colors are not there.

This leads me to believe that this is a black and white image that has been
colorized!

Do you see what he did there?! He had a theory; did some
observation and experiments; published his results; invited peer-review,
and went through his methodology. Like real science!

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Reason #214

David Codrea has a forseeable response from the NRA:

NRA certainly has the right to decide which legal strategies it perceives as advantageous and eligible for their support, and in this case, it's helpful to know that if we get in trouble, they don't want us to come running to them to fix it.

RTWT

Sounds about right.

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Just a sign of the times

From Hot Air, I see this indication of more hopey-changey:

Except for some tax breaks that Republicans pressured Democrats into including — while loudly objecting to them — almost the entirety of the $787 billion package went to either these kind of politically-connected recipients, states looking to paper over bad budgeting, temp jobs, or economic interventions like Cash for Clunkers.

I think I'd rather they just put a match to all that money ..... might save some in the long run.

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JPFO Alert

The critical decision for the Bill of Rights.

Apologies

Feeling side-effecty today ..... maybe tomorrow.

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A great AGW treatise!

Via Kevin at Smallest Minority, comes this awesome post by Borepatch about Shenanigate©:

More than anything, Science relies on data. The most elegant theory is empty, if the data contradict it. The old saying is true: The Scientist proposes and Nature disposes.

Then goes on to in plain, easy-to-understand language, what the deficiencies are in the AGW camp.

A must read!

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Indeed!

Vox Day has the real skinny on current events:

What really happened is that Elin discovered text messages between Tiger and Amanda Knox proving that he had been involved with Knox, who had killed Kercher in a fit of jealousy over Kercher's parallel affair with Woods.

Of course, the really important news is glossed over (to date, none of the big 3 networks have said word one about ClimateGate).

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JPFO Alert

Would Ben Franklin have wanted to know you?

This is sad

A 21 year old man loses his life playing with a firearm:

“It was almost like a toy to them,” Sonya Cockrell said. “We both lectured him over and over about it. We just felt they didn’t have respect for it the way we felt like they should have respect for it. ... They were playing with a gun.”

Firearms are not toys, they're tools. It's sad that a man had to lose his life to drive the point home.

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More shilling for gun control

The NY Daily News has more FUD about weapons:

Manhattan prosecutors announced criminal charges against seven men who are accused of dealing cocaine, Ecstasy and 27 high-powered weapons, including assault rifles and semi-automatic pistols near Public School 98 on W. 212th St. The firearms ranged in price from $750 for a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver to $1,750 for a MAK-90 assault rifle.

I see what they did there! So a .38 caliber revolver is now a 'high-powered' weapon.

This is really getting ridiculous. I realize that it's NY, but sometime you need to be held accountable for your reporting. I can only hope that the NYDN is one of the first to fold in the MSM's decline.

I also note another interesting part of the story:

Authorities declined to reveal the origin of the guns.

"They were definitely used street guns," said Sgt. Patrick Mulcahy of the NYPD's firearms investigation unit.

You can bet that if they were from a dealer, or a gun show, they'd be crowing that to the heavens.

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Concealed carry win?! Updated!

Wow ..... university administrators are completely flummoxed by student attitudes:

“I honestly thought students would be against guns on campus, and we just haven’t heard that,” Strauch said. “The majority of the comments we’ve received from students is that they are in support of having concealed-carry remain permitted on campus.”

How about that, Mr Dumbass?!

Update!

The student leadership has spoken:

Author of the bill, CSU Junior Cooper Anderson said, "We wrote this bill because we felt that a student should have the right to self defense on campus. We don't believe that crime stops at a campus' borders."

(First off, be careful with that name!) Cooper, students have that right as a function of being alive .... it's only the government who wants to take it away.

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You mean criminals break the law?

A city councilman in Missouri has proposed letting citizens with CCW's carry in city buildings:

Raymore City Council member Jeff Cox is sponsoring an ordinance that would allow people with concealed carry permits to bring their weapons inside city owned and operated buildings. Currently the State of Missouri allows people with permits to carry concealed weapons inside city buildings as long as city ordinance doesn't specifically prohibit them.

The move comes after a February, 2008, shooting in Kirkwood, Missouri, when five people were gunned down during a city council meeting. Cox says that if others in the meeting had concealed weapons, the outcome may have been different.

Makes sense to me. The councilman correctly notes that the 'No Weapons' sign had no effect on the murderous bastard.

Yoo hoo ...... representatives ...... criminals don't care what laws you pass.

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Might have to start reading him

h/t Smallest Minority-

I've not been keeping up with things financial, since I don't really have any finances, and I'm waiting to hear from the disability people right now, but in the big picture I do feel that it's us against them. Karl Denninger makes it official:

The fact is that I can no longer, with a straight face, tell people they should "live to their obligations if they are able."

Not any more.

That implied part of the social contract only works when both sides of the bargain are acting in good faith in the main, and it is the rare exception to the rule when someone is behaving badly.

We need to wake up.

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Wonder when they'll learn. Updated!

Another Taser-use-gone-wrong tale, this time a citizen coming out of the hospital:

Police say while they were trying to put Buckner in the van, he got combative with Erlanger and Hamilton County corrections officers. They wound up shocking him with a Taser. Once they subdued him, officers then loaded the 53-year-old into the van.

But when they got to Moccasin Bend, Buckner was unresponsive. Officers drove him back to Erlanger. He was pronounced dead.

I gotta wonder about the training of the corrections officers, as well as the hospital security involved.

One thing's for sure ..... someone needs to make the authorities know that less-lethal is still lethal. I just hope it's not an expensive lesson.

Update: A witness comes forward, and disputes the narrative:

The witness tells us she was at the hospital that day, waiting on family member who was receiving treatment, when she saw a man being escorted out of the west wing door by a man and a woman.

The witness says she saw Buckner fall to his knees and the woman holding him began asking him, "Why are you doing this?"

More details come out, including the identity of one of the officers, and how he was on a hospital police force in the first place:

NewsChannel 9 has learned that Webb was fired from the Chattanooga Police Department in 2005 after he stunned a suspect in handcuffs.

I'm seeing this more than usual, since it's sorta in my area - stay tuned!

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Wow ..... just, wow

Just had to get this post from Ace reposted, because it's so awesome:

Primary Documents: Mike Huckabee's Letter to Prosecutor Objecting to His Easy-Breezy Clemencies: LOL, Dude

—Ace

No, seriously. LOL.

The objection by the prosecutor.

Huck's response -- or rather the response from his Deputy Legal Counsel, indicating Huck "laughed out loud" at the prosecutor's letter.

I'm glad that Huckabee is finished on the national stage ..... I was getting tired of his pandering to those who don't think about the fact that he's a former Baptist preacher turned politician.

See you soon!

Mike, I hope you're back in action soon!

I need to get my copy of Absolved!!

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Health care reform .... market edition

h/t Hot Air

Health care reform is a pretty big issue these days, but not because of the actual health care, but because of how it's paid for:

Instead of pursuing more third-party interventions, we should be removing third parties and reintroducing normal price signals for the health-care market. That would not only reduce costs, but it would also increase supply and make demand more rational:

I've embedded the video here, since I think it's a good one. Read the link for a look at how else this argument can be framed!



I tried to make many of these arguments to a newspaper reporterette who interviewed me a few months ago about the health care debate, but of course, my views didn't really 'fit' the narrative so I just got mentioned as a libertarian who thought the government should stay out. I'd actually be a bit more radical than the Reason piece would be.

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Gun control activists at it again

The gun control cabal reared their pointy heads to disrespect veterans:

Legislation allowing veterans classified as "mentally defective" to buy firearms is drawing sharp criticism from gun-control advocates, but proponents argue that it is not as risky as it may sound.

Yeah, it's not risky at all, considering the VA just sends names to the NICS bubbas without, you know, adjudicating anything.

The question on the 4473 is 'have you been adjudicated a mental defective'; I'm not sure I'd trust the VA with a call like that. What this bill would mandate is a judicial hearing, in front of an actual judge, where actual evidence is presented.

If I had to rely on someone's opinion of my sanity, I might not do so well!

And good on Sen Burr for calling that bitch Helmke out about the Ft Hood shooting.

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IF you don't mind, it don't matter

WWII vet in PA has a bit of a run-in with a sneaky home invader:

A World War II veteran says a woman who pretended her car had broken down so she could get into his Pennsylvania home grabbed two guns from his collection and engaged him in a shootout before jumping out a window with the weapons.

The report says Mr Kaighn wasn't badly hurt, though it doesn't say anyone was shot.

And trying to invade the home of a WWII vet? Victim selection FAIL!

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The Only Ones® defense

A Florida man has been arrested for pretending to be a police officer:

Claiming to be a police officer, a Davie man pointed a BB gun at a neighbor's face and threatened to blow his brains out, officials said.

I guess he thought his excuse would get him out of his scrape.

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JPFO Alert

Are you guarding the guardian?

What?

A man in AR was arrested, for being a 'certain' person?

Cotter authorities arrested Kenneth Gordon Elder, 22, on a charge of possession of firearms by a certain person, according to a Marion County Sheriff's Office news release.

A certain person - must have different rules in Arkansas.

Oh, that's right - they do. They elect governors who commute sentences of people who are serving 95 years after only 10, to have them continue their crime, and even execute 4 police officers.

But I'm not bitter or anything.

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Felons aren't supposed to have guns!

Down in Florida, a man is arrested because he used a firearm to defend himself:

The sheriff’s office was later contacted by Xavier Tyrone Moore, 34 of Pensacola, who stated that while standing in his front yard he was approached by the occupants of the Chevrolet Impala which lead to a verbal argument over drugs and threats were made to kill Moore. The argument escalated to gunfire and Moore admitted to defending himself with a firearm. Moore, who is a convicted felon, was still in possession of the gun.

I know the reason politicians and law enforcement give for disarming convicted felons, but srsly, why are felons disallowed from having firearms? Especially since firearms are so readily available on the black market? And felons get guns whether we want them to or not.

Does Moore give up the right to defend himself as a convicted felon? Because that's the message that we send to the felons who are actually trying to make a go of it in society.

Like David says, if you can't be trusted with a gun .......

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