Kilted ...

... to Kick Cancer.

Ambulance Driver is spearheading a drive to raise money for prostate cancer research through the Kilted to Kick Cancer campaign. Here are some facts about prostate cancer:

• About 240,890 new cases of prostate cancer will be diagnosed in 2011.
• About 33,720 men will die of prostate cancer in 2011.
• About 1 man in 6 will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during his lifetime.
• More than 2 million men in the United States who have been diagnosed with prostate cancer at some point are still alive today.
• Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in American men, behind only lung cancer.
• About 1 man in 36 will die of prostate cancer.

My dad recently underwent some newfangled targeted radiation treatment for prostate cancer, and by all accounts he's in the clear (doc said he's healthy enough that something else will kill him!). And as much as I regret admitting it, it's time for me to get checked as well.

Now, part of this campaign is for those involved to wear kilts and to post pictures on their blogs to raise awareness. I'm working on that, and the campaign runs through the month of September.

Until then, please consider donating.

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Apparently ...

... there's a new sheriff in town:

This started with a tip early this morning first to David Codrea and then to me that Melson's office had been cleaned out over the weekend and he was being transferred to a rubber room job at DOJ to keep him safely on the payroll and minimize his motivations to really lay the whole thing out for the Congress.

Melson's out, and US Attorney Dennis Burke has resigned.

Good fucking riddance.

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JPFO alert

Please use this valuable 2A awareness tool.

Thinky

Posted without commentary.

I've thought about this ...

... a bit more.

John Richardson over at No Lawyers - Only Guns and Money has a post about the northeastern firearms manufacturers and the adverse business politics in that area.

I commented.

And I thought a bit more about it last night. There are lots of southern states (all of them) that are clamoring for business. Why not start making some overtures to some of these states and localities about moving? I know that in Chattanooga, we've just recently gotten the Volkswagon plant (after lots of losses, btw) at the Volunteer Ammunition Plant Enterprise South site ... I think a big-name firearm manufacturer like S&W or Ruger would be most welcome here in the south.

And let's face it - there's nothing mysterious about manufacturing a firearm. They're mechanical items; make the parts correctly, put them together correctly, and it functions fine. Granted, the fit and finish is a bit different, but then it's the same problem with cars. You don't expect a Ford Fiesta to look and feel like a BMW 735.

And think ... if the government wanted to contract with a company to make, say, one million M3A1 grease guns, even the most average machine shops would be bidding.

Is the fit and finish of a Colt Python better than a Ruger GP100? Yes, but that simply doesn't translate into the northeast being the only part of the country able to supply sufficiently skilled employees to do the job. Heck, you could even put up some of your top gunsmiths while they trained the next generation.

My point is, it's high time manufacturers started voting with their feet. So come on down (south); the water's fine!

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Of course they don't;

then someone might make an informed decision:

Even shorter on hard facts, however, was Shukman’s report on a monster new wind farm off the coast of Cumbria, where a Swedish firm, Vattenfall, has spent £500 million on building 30 five‑megawatt turbines with a total “capacity” of 150MW. What Shukman did not tell us, because the BBC never does, is that, thanks to the vagaries of the wind, these machines will only produce a fraction of their capacity (30 per cent was the offshore average in the past two years). So their actual output is only likely to average 45MW, or £11 million per MW.

Reporters should really have a better grasp on applied mathematics, because even know what the guy's talking about, but it's written kinda poorly. What he means is that as the output goes down, the cost goes up.

But yeah ... greenies only look at the potential, rather than the actual benefit realized.

This sounds like ...

... good news to me:

New Jersey's highest court ordered changes Wednesday to the way eyewitness identifications are used in court, saying the current system is not reliable enough, fails to deter police misconduct and overstates jurors' ability to evaluate the evidence.

And they used actual scientific evidence!

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Another collectivist ...

... opines:

Mike Lawlor, undersecretary for criminal justice policy and planning for the state of Connecticut, joins the ranks of other public officials who are choosing to simply ignore those rights they don’t believe citizens should have.

And it would be way too much trouble to educate law enforcement on what the law actually says.

Much better to have those pesky proles adjust their behavior, so we can feel safer.

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This guy's too smart ...

... to be this stupid:

In his jurisprudence, Thomas may be best known for his belief in a “color-blind Constitution”; that is, one that forbids any form of racial preference or affirmative action. But color blind, for Thomas, is not blind to race. Thomas finds a racial angle on a broad array of issues, including those which appear to be scarcely related to traditional civil rights, like campaign finance or gun control.

I'll agree that campaign finance is puzzling, but gun control? Really?

The 14th amendment was about stymiing the post-civil war South from abridging black's civil rights, including the right to firearms.

Collectivists reach for everything.

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JPFO alert

JPFO reviews Gunfight.

This should come as no suprise ...

... what the state gives, the state takes away:

Thanks to a brain-dead state law foisted upon us by a Democratic state legislature (N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-288.7), every time the governor—in this instance, Democrat Beverly Perdue—declares a state of emergency, it is illegal from that moment onward to carry a concealed weapon until the state of emergency has been declared over

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This is what happens when you rely on the state for permission to exercise a fundamental civil right; you takes what you can get.

My advice to NC citizens? Carry how you feel is appropriate, and the consequences be damned.

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Wow ...

... just, wow:

The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Monday revived a suit against a police officer who shot and killed a handcuffed man after mistakenly drawing a firearm instead of a Taser.

A three-judge panel said the officer was not entitled to qualified immunity, so a lower court's grant of summary judgment in her favor was improper.

A jury could make other findings that would negate her immunity, like her history of confusing her weapons, the court found.

About a month after she first got the Taser, Noriega mistakenly placed her sidearm and Taser in the wrong holsters, and a week later she confused the two during a call, pointing a loaded Glock at her partner's head, the court noted.

A history ... of confusing her weapons; pointed ... a loaded Glock ... at her partner's head?

Wonder she hasn't been killed in the line of duty from friendly fire.

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