Iowa's Own RKBA Amendment and UPDATE: SYG approved

The house debated and passed (60-38) the amendment before getting to the SYG bill. It's just a first step, and the earliest it could go to the electorate for ratification would be 2013.

The operative text is:"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed ." 


The absence of the supposedly qualifying phrase in the federal Constitution stands out, doesn't it?  Go Hawks! :)

There's more wordage, but it's stictly procedural.

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Timing of the stand-your-ground action isn't clear yet.

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EDIT:

SYG just passed.

And I've just learned there are dueling sources on the content of the constitutional amendment. The Des Moines Register now says:

Under a tweak to the amendment’s language approved during the debate this evening, it now bars the state from infringing or denying a person’s right to “acquire, keep, possess, transport, carry, transfer, and use arms” and would prohibit firearm licensing, registration or special taxation in addition to echoing the language of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.


It should all be sorted out by morning. See you then. Tired of damn near live-blogging this.











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Update: Theeeyyyrrr Back

The Great Democrat  Anti-Gun Skedaddle of '12 is over. The Flighty Forty said they  took their little hike to make a  point  That point being that the conservative/libertarian majority should be forbidden to act like a majority.

The pretext for the argument centers on whether Republicans told Democrats the gun bills would be debated today. He said. She said.

The stand-your-ground bill seems quite reasonable to me and gives cops all the room they need to investigate defensive use of deadly force. What they can't do under it is harass you or slap you in jail while they "investigate" for a few weeks, or months.

Link to the bill text upcoming.
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The case of the runaway hoplophobes

"Those guns are scary, aren't they, Fauntleroy? We must  run and hide."

Thus spake one Iowa Democrat house member to another this morning, whereupon all 40 Democrats skeddaddled rather than debate reasonable gun control. At this writing they're still missing,  and the 60 Republicans down there are sitting around, twiddling their thumbs.

At issue are one bill and one resolution scheduled for consideration today. The latter would begin the process of amending the state Constitution to guarantee certain firearms rights.

The bill is a stand-your-ground measure permitting the citizen to defend himself anywhere and remove our current "duty to retreat."

May I say a word or two directly to my Democrat friends? Thank you.

"Guys and gals, you weren't elected to pitch hissy fits and hit the mattresses. You're being paid to debate and vote, even on things which require a change of your dainty linen. This point may not be lost on your constituents on a Tuesday about eight months from now."

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My primary reaction, however, is an uncontrollable giggle. Life in the political monkey house, etc.

Gun theft by convenience

I probably wouldn't have bothered mentioning this one, but just as I was closing the story, an object lesson caught my eye. Note the address of the theft and, in the final paragraph, the home of one of the accused.

Lesson: don't let the stoner kid next door know you have a gun collection.
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Gun prices

Back in January I noted an internet+live auction of 500 guns in Aurelia -- classics, oddballs, plain junk.

Cleaning up bookmarks this morning I ran across the final sale prices. Some of you may find it interesting.
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Dear CNN, Fox, and MSNBC

Even devoted political freaks are tired of it. Our tolerance for drama contrived from the flimsiest "analysis" has been exceeded. And we haven't even come  to the big primaries yet.

Why don't you send all your anchors and common taters home for a while? After the votes are counted, tell us who won. Meanwhile put up some old Daffy Duck cartoons. See if we can tell the difference.

How not to use a gun

Taking the report at face value, we have a good little lesson for people just beginning to study the use of firearms for self-defense.

When you stand at your third-story window, high above the belligerent nincompoop yelling and stomping your car,  you are probably well short of the standard that justifies shooting.  This is one of the cases where calling the cops seems more reasonable. You can always keep the 10-22 handy in case the idiot follows through on his threat to kick in your door.

The accused claims he shot to scare, usually  a bad idea, and didn't mean to hit the  deceased in the chest. So maybe it's also an opportunity to sketch for your student  the path of a bullet flying at much of an angle from line of sight horizontal.  "She's gonna throw high, Bro."

The storm of death redux again

This is about the first excuse of the winter for the official mommydotguv weather forecasters to predict death and disaster. So far, I am amazed at the rhetorical restraint the NWS is showing. Reduced to a "takeaway" (what an odious word), the weather guys and gals  seem to be advising me that I have a reasonable chance  of surviving the next 72 hours. Ordinarily their red headlines make me wonder if my will needs changing.

This makes me feel good but also like a citified wuss. I don't really need to do much. Keep a few splits of oak handy to the fireplace.  Kick New Dog Libby out of the soft chair closest to said fireplace. Decide whether to go with chili, spaghetti sauce, or  barbecue pork loin in the crock pot.  Move the more dependable truck out into a clear area of the yard. (The truck is insured but the camper isn't, so the fall of an ice-laden oak branch thereon would be financially inconvenient.)

A couple-three hundred miles west of me, where the storm is worse,  lives a a better man. This guy -- an obvious  survivalist  --  got ready by positioning  the 4x4  pickup,  prepping his team of horses, getting his cows in a cuddly place, and -- I swear it's true --  hoping his shoulder pain lets up enough so he can go riding his colt through the wintry Armageddon. Ride 'em, Cowboy.

(sigh) Comparatively, Jinglebob makes me feel like I should be wearing white bucks,  lime green slacks, a pink silk shirt, and a yellow ascot, standing around a country club bar,  bitching about the servant problem.

From the days when she merely aspired to maidenhood

Offered in compensaton to readers bored with the previous post on dreary politics:

Or, if you like your girls with guns:

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And lest female readers feel slighted, a little light porn from a second perspective  is served. 

Ron Paul Weds Mitt Romney, they say

(Caution: Long and political, a reply to my oldest friend, the Iowa kid  now  running the philosophy department of a university in one of the New England SSRs.  Our political discussions go back decades. He cited a Seattle Times article addressing the gossip about a Paul/Romney alliance. The elisions represent strictly personal stuff,  along with a thing or two about your humble scribe which hardly anyone would believe anyway. Using your delete key at his point in time would not offend me.)

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Hi ....,

Can of worms. 

I'd be surprised to learn  Paul and Romney shook hands in a green room somewhere. (EDIT: meaning shook hands to seal a deal.)  However, I revert (counting coup) to a position I took back around Iowa Caucus time  when  Michele and the others floated the notion that Paul would become a third-party candidate and thus guarantee a second Obama term.  I wrote that it would not happen for a number of reasons, including his desire to keep Rand positioned for greater things in the GOP.  I'm sure  his personal agenda still includes a mighty desire to make his son White-House viable in '16 or beyond.

Paul's alleged kid-gloves treatment of Romney could rest on this premise: "Santorum will NOT become president. Romney MIGHT, though the odds are long. Therefore a non-aggression pact -- however tacit and muted -- with Romney is more likely to keep the Paul family name burnished in Republican circles."

One of the flaws in my reasoning is its assumption that a Romney who loses to Obama would continue to wield useful power in the party.  He might or might not. It depends on how well he can hang on to his support from Wall Street -- the debt industry, the Republican "Establishment"  -- after failing to oust Obama.

More immediately, the Romney perspective  by now must include the possibility of a brokered convention where even a handful of Paul delegates could be decisive. There's no reason for Mitt to further anger anti-statist thinkers and activists prior to the convention,  however much he might fear and detest them. Strange bedfellows, etc.

Even more immediately, analysis of this race won't be any easier after Michigan and Arizona. Absent a large surprise, we won't know a Hell of a lot more about the relative Romney/Santorum prospects than we do now. 

Aside: Rand's comment that he'd be honored to be asked to serve as No. 2 to Romney was stupid.

Elsewhere in the septic tank, Obama probably will win, but he's on thin ice. He might, therefore,  determine it politically unwise to bomb Iran and Syria -- and shit, for all I know,  another sandy draft choice or two to be named later -- before the second week of November.  (What, a closet Muslim bombing professing Muslims!  Why not? Muslims have been killing one another centuries. :) ) 

So have Christians, come to think of it. Maybe others, too, but I'm not too hip on the history of the Buddhist wars.

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I almost certainly won't go to Tampa. ... but my contacts in the RNC and among the campaigns are by now non-existent, so I couldn't get close enough to the real decision making processes to even hear them clearly.  Why spend three or four thousand or more to mingle with varnished hair and Florsheim wingtips? The better part of wisdom is knowing when one has transitioned from barely-was to complete has-been. Too, my resolve to avoid crowds larger than  50,000 people remains intact.

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Winter is making a last gasp in your old home land. We're facing a few days of general sky dumps -- snow, sleet, rain, but the long-range forecasters are beginning to remark on the growing power of the sun to usher in our annual hemi-global warming.  Bring it on. I'm tired of wearing socks. I want to go out in the fields and shoot dirt clods.  I want to launch the canoe and sneak up on yellow fluffy goslings  for photographic  purposes. I want to sit on my dock and catch  three perch for lunch. When all this occurs I'm afraid you'll have to stand in for me  as chief watch dog of the peoples' liberties.

...  has just become a National Merit  Scholar, a finalist. He's applying to the ... where he hopes to learn enough physics to explain the cosmos to Stephen Hawking. :)

...

Best,

Jim 

(This might be stripped of some of the personal content  and blogged; don't feel ambitious enough to try to dream up original content)

Hope and Change not having worked too well, His Ineptness desperately  switches to T and A.

Hello Eva. (This one is for you political freaks.)

And Hello again. (And this for all other leering old leches.)

(Waiting for our crack media to secure a reaction from Michelle.)

A new use for Labrador retrievers: Catching exotic pythons in the Everglades. Very cool.

The dogs can detect pythons from a distance and when they spot one they stop in their tracks and crouch. The pythons’ reaction is strangely poignant. Rather than striking when discovered, they curl up and hide.

But there are labs and then there are labs. The foundling under foot here, New Dog Libby, might be poignanter than the snakes. I can easily imagine her  stumbling over one, curling up and hiding.

(I tried to squeeze a pun in here but couldn't think one up.)

Sidebar cleanup

Breda (The Breda Fallacy) seems to have retired from blogging.

So has the always interesting Abby of Bad Dogs and Such. I miss her work as much as I do the hilarious Cranky Lit Prof, and if either of them is working under a new aka, I'd like to hear of it.

A guy hates trimming the blog list, but ...

Blog Birthday

You might want to slip over to Kead's place and wish his graceful blog a happy birthday. If you do you'll also be treated to a nice little piece of vintage gun porn.

(Kead's also goes on theTMR blog list with my apologies for not putting it there much sooner.)

Memo, Prime Minister to Minister of Colonies

I say, Cyril. Does this not verify our view on the inadvisability of  self-government by  colonials obviously unready to accept mature resonsibility?  Bearing in mind of course that our own English youth may sometimes over-enthuse about a sporting event. But further bearing in mind that they only rarely riot over shoes which might be worn at sporting venues. 


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More than 100 officers in riot gear were needed to disperse several hundred people who law enforcement officials said became unruly as they waited for the $220 Nike Galaxy Air Foamposite Ones to go on sale.

Vote for Larry Correia

It's a fearful confession to make on this Blogovia street corner, but I rarely read science fiction. Even Heinlein. (If you catch me quoting him, it just means I clicked over to BrainyQuotes to cherry pick a piquancy in support of a point I made lamely.)

I have nothing against the art form, and I may be the poorer for not liking it.  But to me it's like goat milk; however lovely it may be, I am sufficiently pleased to know others enjoy it.

Nevertheless, I'm more than than okay with Larry simply from reading about him and sometimes visiting his blog. He's one of us and quite capable of penning any one's quote of the day, e.g:

Every day, over a thousand writers of explody, action-adventure, gun-nut, monster-killin’, novels are maligned on the internet by stuffy literati critics for not being “real” novelists who write ham-fisted, navel gazing, message-fic about starving polar bears or some crap.  

You can click that for guidance on how you, too, may  "tell stuffy literati types to go screw themselves."


H/T Tam

Gas is cheap

You just put $75 worth of unleaded in your little car. You cussed the Arabs and the Africans and the Venezuelans and the Texans. When we get the pipeline from Athabasca you'll cuss the Canadians, too, eh?

Wrong targets, Bunkie. Your enemy isn't wearing a turban, a sombrero,  or a Stetson. He's wearing an Armani with real button holes in the sleeves. He's  carrying an alumni card from a great university and impressive  government identification documents.

He and his forebears arranged this fiasco more than 40 years ago when our masters thought it would fun to divorce currency from any objective standard. It happened to be gold, mostly for reasons traditional and sentimental. It could just as easily have been copper, lead, bauxite, or any other useful physical substance which is more or less scarce.

It isn't like we absolutely need another reminder of this, but it can't hurt.

Forbes writer Louis Woodhill offers some mathematical evidence. It's worth a look even if your eyes glaze over at a sequence of funny little symbols and more zeros right of the decimal point than you care to deal with.  Because? Because he arrives at a conclusion which has been pretty plain to libertarian types since we all decided that the difference between  Republicans and Democrats was about the same as that separating Gotti and Castellero.

"At this point, we can be certain that, unless gold prices come down, gasoline prices are going to go up—by a lot. And, because the dollar (and virtually all other currencies. J.) is currently a floating, undefined, fiat currency, there is no inherent limit to how far the price of gold in dollars can rise, and therefore no ultimate ceiling on gasoline prices..."


And gold prices aren't going to come down, are they? At least as long as our presidents and our congress are so gleefully in love with fiat money, the world's most overwhelming SuperPac.  Bridge to no where? Great idea, Senator. How much do you need?  

Right now, the threat posed by rising gasoline prices is not just to family budgets. An even greater danger is that the government will use escalating oil prices as an excuse to do something stupid.

That constitutes my major quibble with you, Mr. Woodhill.  The correct phrase would be, "as an excuse to keep doing something stupid."

Don't mess with old people

Somehow I doubt Jay Leone of Marin County, California, is about to get a nice congratulatory card from his Senator Boxer.

Mr. Leone is 90, seems fit , and is without doubt feisty. A burglar got in and shot him in the head.

Now, there are a lot of  possible reactions to that sort of affront, including trying to call 911 before you die. But Mr. Leone's was, "F---- you, you son of a bitch. Now it's my turn." Whereupon he got his SW .38 snubby and emptied it, hitting one Samuel Joseph Cutrufelli thrice in the stomach.


Burglar Sam is one of those rare Californians without a highly developed social conscience. If he had one he would have  reclined and quietly bled to death, dreaming his last dreams of aromatherapy and unleaded condors.


He survived to become an expensive public charge, accused of attempted murder and other sins.


So far no one has proposed indicting Mr. Leone for anything.  


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I recommend reading the story for its funny scatalogical deails and the grace with which reporter Gary Klien tells the tale of Mr. Leone's testimony.


H/T Nephew Mike

Learning Politics with Travis McGee

Our friend John D. MacDonald pauses in his narrative of the search for Bix Bowie's fate in the Oaxacan highlands. Travis and Meyer are interested in the scene, a high mesa marked with anthropological remnants of a tough and ancient people.  John D. permits Enelio, their bright new Mexican friend, to explain. (N.B. The term "priest" needs to be read in its meaning in Meso-American culture before the Spanish invasion. The priests were also the temporal masters -- the polticians, the Obamas, Santorums, Gingriches, and Romneys, among many other latter-day names.):

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"Here is how it was.  Five, six, seven hundred years ago, these mountain people who had been led into this place by the priests and the soldiers, they cimbed to that place that you see, and they made offerings of food, and they worshipped. They bult the temples and they dug the wells, carried the stones, made the pottery, cut the thatch. But the priests got too far away from the people. They thought they owned the people forever. They lost common understanding. So one day the people went up to the high places and killed the priests and killed the guards and pulled down the temples and never went back. ... They just got tired of slave life, of catering to the demands of priests for food and women and children to train, and tired of work that became more meaningless to them. They went up and killed them and put and end to it...".


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This little offering is not meant as an immediate call to hone the swords and hoist Mencken's Black Flag. It is a suggestion that authoritarianism has its ultimate punishments.

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From Dress Her in Indigo, the 1987 Fawcett printing, p. 95.

Investment paranoia

I foggily clicked through the trading numbers of a little stock I don't hate. They looked okay, so I scribbled a calculation of the dividend income compared to the zero-point zero-point-insult-giggle interest rate from my friendly home-town bank.

Decided the difference justified the principle risk. Started entering the order and noticed it hadn't traded in the first five minutes of  the Wall Street Daily Follies. Crap! More coffee. Or if I'd powered up the electric teevee I'd have been reminded.

Even Washington and Lincoln hate me.
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The Frontrunner Ron Paul (Caution: Adult Content)

Now will you forgive us for imposing Rick Santorum on you? Even though his primary campaign theme is a strict "One Climax, One Kid" rule?

The competent Ann Selzer has just published a poll of Iowa voters, and our "unelectable" Ron Paul whips every other GOPer in a face-to-face against His Ineptness Barack Obama.

I wouldn't break out the champagne just yet. The results seem to reflect more revulsion with President Obama and the other Republicans than any great enchantment with our offbeat ol' Grandpa Paul.  But a guy can be heartened to see hints of a friendlier attitude toward Constitutional government.

Paul beats the president by 7 points. Santorum beats him by 4 and Romney wins by 2. Poor Newt loses; Mr. Obama sends him home to Callista by 14 points.

From Hawkeye lips to God's ears, eh?

(There is rain on our parade. Paul's unfavorables total 41 points against Santorum's 33.  The others' hate numbers are worse, 51 for Mitt and 65 for Newt.  



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For a couple of reasons you probably want to read the whole thing, including links to the polling geekery. My brief report here is undoubtedly colored by a bias against hinging a presidential race on regulating the reproductive habits of every Joe and Sally Sixpack in the land. Likewise by disgust with the intense debate about how manly -- or bogus -- Mitt looks in his new starched and ironed jeans.  Too, my mind may still be fogged by the pleasant little fantasy  about going  rock climbing with Rachel.

Here ya go

This is what happens when the studio makeup dudes get their hands on a woman. Not terrible, of course, but she still looks better in climbing togs with face smudges.

New girl friend

It's been sickish around here for fully a week. Just a cold, bad enough to slow a fellow down to idle speed plus maybe a  hundred rpm or so. Yesterday I gave up and took to my bed -- couch, actually -- with the electric teevee on. The nap lasted close to 18 hours, broken only for the demands of biology,  human and canine.

It ended around 2 a.m with a cheerful awakening, the bugs either in retreat or on a tactical stand down, leaving me with an appetite an an attitude tolerant enough to actually focus on the flat screen where I saw most of:

Among Giants, c. 1998, from the Brits and featuring an actress to whom I've never paid attention.  She's an Aussie lass named Rachel Griffiths. Here she is Gerry, also an Aussie, a rock climber who hooked up with a crew of tower painters working in the  British Moors.  I spare you my plot summary. You can always Bing it if you want. But I foist upon you my view that Ms. Griffiths is a woman to behold, even though the skin magazines wouldn't be terribly interested. Not quite enough chin, nothing-much hair, an ordinary figure. So the attraction comes from what? I don't know and probably couldn't articulate it if I did. Probably just something unusually alive in her which the cameras can't help but catch.


In any case, I wish to thank Australia for producing her and the British film industry for bringing her to my  tellie.  For the latter it represents a great leap forward from The Barnicles of Wimply Street.


If you happen to be in my neighborhood, Ms. Griffiths ....

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Tally Ho. PUULLL. Splash One.

Out on a South Kalinky plantation, a gathering of gentlemen organized a live pigeon shoot. Well-sensitized and organized souls objected.

"We'll fix them," the SHARKs (SHowing Animals Respect and Kindness, /sigh/) resolved. Then they sent their little drone helicopter to spook the birds.  The hunt was off.  Well, almost off.


"Seconds after it hit the air, numerous shots rang out," (Senior SHARK Steve) Hindi said in the release. "As an act of revenge for us shutting down the pigeon  slaughter, they had shot down our copter?"

Steve, ol' buddy, we detect a surprised tone in your wail. Let us review:

A bunch of heavily armed  guys gathered for a a legal -- if admittedly obnoxious -- "sport."  They were loaded to knock small flying things out of the sky. You badly pissed them off by sending a small but noisy flying object into the sky. And you expected  what, you dingbat? An invitation back to the plantation house for a few chuckles over bourbon and branch?

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H/T Jon via email

Entertaining the Shieks

So that's what those guys do when they're not actually drilling.


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Half-staffing Whitney Houston

The teevee stations are getting entirely too much free programming fodder out of this one.

Whitney Houston was an entertainer, wildly popular among one set of Americans, and if her fans want to fly their flags at half-mast, more power to them. Those objecting to so-honoring a gifted junkie are free to two-block Old Glory this morning -- as are the folks who don't give a damn one way or another.

I think most of us were weary of the half-ass half-staff posturing slugs after about the third heated exchange on Fox or MSNBC, depending on where we go for our daily dose of idiocy.

I'll start listening again if someone will direct me to a good argument for allowing a successful politician -- say Christie or Obama, just for instance --  to decide which deaths are to be extraordinarily and officially mourned and which are routine, bury and forget.

Meanwhile I stick with a belief that we hire these clowns to administer their departments in a business-like fashion. Period. We're pretty much able to find our own source of grief counselling, symbolic gestures advice, etc. all by ourselves.

The perils of spell-check

Local Radio Bulletin:

"Storm Lake, IA (KICD)--An on the lamb fugitive from Storm Lake is apprehended in Corpus Christi, Texas..." 


Long way to ride a getway sheep.

Why We're Broke, Lutefish Edition

Star-Tribune*  owners should award a small bonus to the copy desk drone who wrote: "Twin Cities Chase a Desire Named Street Car."


The headline is happy, the rest of the story less so. It's about a quarter-million in Federal Reserve Cartoons  to be spent  by St. Paul studying a new street car scheme. That's on top of $1.2 million Sis-City  Minneapolis is pissing away   investing to "analyze" potential steet car "corridors."

Mind you, this million-five doesn't actually build anything except a pile of dusty paper which, if honest, will confirm close to a century of American experience that street cars aren't worth a damn unless they are paid for by people who don't use them. It is the Cabrini Green principle** applied to mass transit.

But, well, they're kind of neat. Nostalgic and Asethetic and Romantic. Who says so? None other than His Ineptness (speaking of Cabrini Green).

Two years ago, "the Obama administration decided that transit projects could be evaluated for economic development and social benefits rather than just ridership and costs."


Translation: If three city council members, two loud-mouth hippies who eventually got rich trading pork belly futures, and one politically-connected construction company think street cars are cute, we're gonna get street cars which, like Blanche DuBois, will always depend on the kindness of strangers.

But as an occasional visitor to Minneapolis and St. Paul,  I can look forward to my moment of drama. Step off the Lutefisk Trolly. Stand outside the big house all emoed up.  "Stella...Steeella!"

No, wait. "Lena...Leeena!"

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*The second most important newspaper in Minnesota, after The St. Cloud Times.

**"Build it and They Will Eff it Up at an Astronomical Cost to Innocent Tax-Paying Citizens Everywhere."

H/T to the author of the World's Greatest Travel Blog who is not responsible for any opinion which might have snuck into this blog entry despite it's intent to present a straightforward, objective, and dispassionate report of one of the great issues of the day.

Dum-de-DUM-dum

It's an unhappy little news item about a woman accused of large-scale animal neglect. She's been charged, and the surviving dogs and cats are being cared for. Not worth mentioning but for the phrasing of AP's final sentence.

"Six of the dogs are suspected of being pregnant." 

I hope Joe Friday gets to the bottom of this.

To Serve and Protect

When the SWAT team got to Mathew Corrigan's home in Washington, D.C., at 4 a.m., one of the boss cops asked Corrigan for permission to search his apartment. Corrigan declined. The officer remonstrated that his busy schedule made it inconvenient for him to secure a warrant merely to accommodate himself to the Fourth Amendment, or, in Officer Friendly's words:

"I don't have time to play this Constitutional bullshit."

The previous evening Mr. Corrigan, an Army reservist, felt depressed and called a "hot line"  hawking itself as a source of help for military people under stress. (it turned out to be the National Suicide Prevention Hot Line operating under an alias.)

The counsellor asked if he had firearms. Mr. Corrigan answered, "yes."  Some time later, the conversation ended and Mr. Corrigan went to bed. Meanwhile, the helpful hot liner alerted Washington cops who decided this threat to public order required a team of about 25 to 30  stormers in appropriate ninja gear.

With the Constitutional bullshit dismissed in the interest of administrative efficiency, officers entered the apartment, trashed it (very literally), took his  dog, killed  his tropical fish,  seized his three firearms, and hustled Mr. Corrigan himself off to a hospital as a possible suicide risk. Two days later the doctors released him as non-suicidal -- released him to the police who jugged him for about two weeks.

He went home and found that, among other things, those who serve and protect had denied him the small courtesy of re-locking his apartment. He found that the local EOD detachment had practiced its craft by slitting open and scattering virtually every package in his refrigerator, cupboard, and closets.

He is suing has for $500,000 plus costs -- drastic under reach, if you ask me. I suggest about ten times that, to be assessed personally against every cop involved, not to the taxpayers.

For the "John Doe NO. 1" officer,  the conscientious objector to Constitutional bull shit, I suggest:

-- That he be stripped of badge and gun, indicted, horse-whipped,  have "asshole" tatooed on his forehead, and be assigned as Mr. Corrigan's personal slave for the remainder of his natural life. (This will require amendment of the Constitution, particularly a narrow suspension of the bill of attainder bar. So be it. Let the Article Five festivities begin.)

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Two hat tips are necessary here. To Between Two Rivers -- who nominated TMR a  Liebster Blog (with words  kind enough to make me blush)   -- and to Robert's Gun Shop.

Speaking of P.O. Ackley

Following Parker O.s  work was just plain fun. Still is, for that matter.

He was king of the wildcat game in that inventive era after World War Two when American men (mostly) weren't afraid to dirty up their hands,  learn to read  micrometers and ballistics charts, and explain to their neighborhood machinist just what they wanted in their custom chambering reamers.

This was before the time of televison, so of course the guys couldn't just watch Sons  of Guns to learn all about which guns to buy and Top Shot to learn how to use them.

The aforementioned .22/.30-30 Ackley Improved was one of his creations, and I suspect even a space age  M4gery-style gear queer  might think it pretty sexy to loose  a 50 grainer at 3980  from a handy little Savage 99

Bear in the Air*

Joel finds himself somewhat worried about new FAA regulations which could arm every Barney Fife in the nation with his own sky spy surveillance system -- straight optical, thermal, and, when the technology is ripe, x-ray for seeing through your bedroom curtains.**

Me too, but it may be an opportunity for some tech-savvy lad to start working on a new, affordable,  man-portable air defense system. I'm thinking along the lines of a smart .22LR, 36-grain hollow point. With the proper digital internals  -- fire and forget --  it would be just the thing for neutralizing  cop-snoop-robots with a takeoff weight of six ounces, including the camera. I claim naming rights: The TMR Fourth Amendment Special.  (C'mon. It isn't that much more linguistically awkward than, say, the .22/.30-30 Ackley Improved.)

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*Objectionably young readers may not get this. It's from the 1970s era of the national 55 miles per hour speed limit. which (a) turned every driver in America into a criminal and (b) almost single-handedly created the CB radio industry. "Breaker breaker one-nine, Bear in the air mile post 69 makin' eights."  It meant a cop in a Cessna 150 was up there, timing you. It sounds best drawled out in Tennessean.

**Rick Santorum would love this X-ray bit. Seems the weather in Joel's desert empire  is miserable, giving him time to point out gaspers like this. Rick proposes to use this presidency to improve your sex life, apparently by making sure you get less.

Way too Early Squirrley

Woke up about 3:30. Followed usual pre-dawn routine anyway. Scan the AP and Reuters reports. Pour a cup of coffee.  Plug in teevee just in time to catch the intro to "Way too Early."

Barnicle (subbing for Annoyingly Smiley Kid Willie) all excited about the seas off Iran where Dinner Jacket's patrol boat passes close to U.S. war ship. Worries about accidental war. Teases that MSNBC will report later from the "deck of one of the battle ships" there in the gulf.

Battle ship turns out to be either a carrier or a tin can. Too bad. For a brief moment I thought maybe we had recommissioned the Iowa. No such luck, just teevee doing what it does best -- phucking up phacts

I know. Battle ships are so 1940s, and they cost like Hell. So what?  Romance is worth something. Like Amos (Andy?) said, "It's just the  yo ho ho of the thing." The price of admiralty. Great White Fleet.  Murder's Row. All that.

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About "accidental"  war as a result of opposing ships playing chicken. I urge one and all to refamiliarize him-or-herself with that accidental Gulf of Tonkin deal. It's pretty disheartening.

But at least we can be thankful that we don't have an LBJ top-kicking our armed forces any more. We're blessed in this era with a commander-in-chief far too moral to consider that a spot of election-year war might divert voter attention from  --ohhh, I dunno -- Solyndra, the flat national wallet,  record number of folks on food stamps, his flip-flop on super PACs and subsidized contraception.  Stuff like that.

Thank you for your kind attention. I am returning to my bed. Foetally. Thumb in mouth. Whimpering.

Let's go to the mall and be somebody

Travis McGee: A man with a credit card is a man in hock to his self-image.

Mine enemy grows older

The Commonwealth of Virginia is on the verge of repealing its one-pistol-a-month law, and the Washington Post is dribbling in its didies.

But to tell the truth, I'm disappointed in the Post. Once upon a time, any favorable mention of rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment gave it a fat oaken erection, and you had an exhilarating  fight on your hands to stave off hoplophobic rape.

Today, not so much. When an editorial resorts to a lame and frankly hysterical  question to make its point, you know the Cialis has worn off and your once-feared enemy has become a pansy, hardly worth your attention.

Does the Second Amendment guarantee a right to purchase dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of deadly weapons each month? 

Why, yes, in fact it does. If it were otherwise, Amendment One could easily be interpreted to  limit insipid editorials to one a month. Useful, perhaps, but unconstitutional and therefore out of the question.

As to this business of "hundreds or thousands" of illegal handguns per month, simple economics refutes the possibility. No private thug could afford it -- or find it a profitable venture. (Cf.  any respectable supply/demand treatise.)

In fact, the only major multiple-purchase thuggery we've heard much about these past few decades is that of Eric Holder, gun runner to the Mexican drug lords.

Gun room Monday

It's shaping up to be a .30-06 kind of day.  Thank the windy snow. It makes a warm gun room seem like a logical place to while away a  few late-winter hours,  fooling with rifles that shoot the only really necessary center-fire caliber.

I'll just wipe down the knockabout Stevens 110. The long-neglected 1903 makeover will advance with a bit of final polishing and fitting the Redfield peep so it will be ready for Jeff's bluing tanks.

Then on to the no-longer-a-mystery gun, the 1979 or 1980 Western Auto Revelation, a Mossy RM7 which followed me home from Minnesota a few weeks ago posing as an obscure Marlin turnbolt.  (The mystery story, complete with gun porn,  is here.)

It's already been fitted with a set of QDs and a nice cow-derived sling, leaving only the scope installation to be done and ready for my next grizzly hunt or TEOTWAWKI, which ever comes first.

There's a small quandary here. The Camp J arsenal has about four loose scopes on hand, and one of them is a NIB Revelation 4x32 from Rising Sun, Inc., a vintage piece which would give me a matched set, Revelation rifle, Revelation optics. Blecch, too cute, like mother-daughter matching pinafores. Besides,  it could well be a piece of crap.

Then there's the stainless Simmons 4 x 32 from the Chinese paddies. Naah. A two-tone  gun?  Who wants to present himself as a gangsta mall ninja?  Besides, the Simmons is almost assuredly a piece of crap. (Customary whine about the days when the Simmons marque meant something omitted.)

Leaving  two possibles: A new Tasco 3x9x40 and a clean old Weaver K4. Decisions decisions. The Weaver is the tougher and more patriotic choice, of course, but I'll  probably mount the variable. At 600 yards, nine power could be just what a fellow needs to distinguish between a turbaned terrorist and an odoriferous but otherwise harmless hippie in a do-rag.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to suspend the rules.

Quite properly, most writers in this corner of blogville consider it gauche to prattle on about personal good fortune. But we can make an exception when a man's grandson becomes a National Merit Scholarship finalist, can't we?

Well done, Son.

Populating my island

Dorothy would meet my standards of anarcho-capitalist nubility. She was quite a homemaker to boot and could easily whip out a black-and-gold sarong.

Oh it's brother Jimmy's turn to throw the bomb

Well, heck. I've thought of myself all these years as a simple libertarian, friendly, not too bullheaded about my ideas,  just a regular live-and-let-live guy who would shoot you only as a last resort.

Rigorous testing by the authoritative Christian Science Monitor reveals the black truth. 

You are an anarcho-capitalist.

You have sailed right past Paul's hard-nosed libertarianism and off into the uncharted waters of right-wing anarchism. You would be most happy living on a private island that you have declared a sovereign state, which, needless to say, won't be seeking to join the UN anytime soon..

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So be it. (The warmer the island and its nubility, the better.)

The Wisdom of Leonard Nimoy

Heather Mc Hugh, poet, writes:

"Once, on meeting Leonard Nimoy and his wife, I was gratified to find out...how literate they are. He advised me on the pronunciation of some words in the expression Alle Kunst ist umsunst Wenn ein Engel auf das Zundloch brunzet (which covers a multitude of sins and means something like: all skill is in vain if an angel pisses down the touch-hole of your musket."

(Via snail mail from my old pal Janna.)

Toward a badder Constitution

I would take a stab at  Ruth Bader-Ginsberg's lust to simply scrap the Constitutuon and replace it with one like, for  instance, Mexico's. But ASM826 -- Random Acts of Patriotism --  has pretty well nailed it.  Recommended reading.

Heckler and Kock malfs

Maybe the H&K geniuses sold too many plastic P30s to Greece, nothing down, pay as you shoot.

Or maybe something else made Moody's cut the HK credit rating to to Caa2/negative outlook. In English, that means buying into HK is about as safe as loaning money to your brother-in-law who plans to get rich with a Peoria worm farm.

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The same link gets you to the latest on Smith& Wesson's most recent rifle recall.

Any wonder some of us still prefer steel weapons built before Doris Day became a virgin?

What a sexy night it was

Santorum won big on purity platform. "God tells me that you must never wear a condom."

He was running against an Obama position. "Rubber it up, sucka. Don't sweat the money. Your homies gonna pay the drug store."

It's the  battle of the Trojan Whores.
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Geeky Malevolent Vampires

If you need someone to troubleshoot an SPS-10 radar, I'm you're man. Filament voltages checked and six-pound capicitors cheerfully replaced. I'll even climb the mast for preventive maintenance on the antenna and wave guide.

More lately, I have determined that modern electronic malfunctions are best thought of as supernatural phenomena.

When my iBook came home from the shop, the fresh hard drive corrected most problems, I assume because Rick's Computers down in Danbury has a pretty good -- but not perfect -- voodoo kit.  The old gal was smokin' hot on the web, but the Safari email program was still croaked.

After a week of messing with it to no avail I dripped a little fresh chicken blood on the keyboard and the GMVs fled. All is well, and I am serene.  Some might argue that downloading the latest Safari "fix" from Apple contributed to the solution. Maybe, but I remain skeptical.

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I don't expect anyone to be very interested in Cold-War era radar, but it's almost worth clicking the link just for an example of perfectly true but quite meaningless statements:

"The SPS-10 surface search radar had a shorter range than other shipboard radars."

Duhhh. The only other common ship radar was for air search,  aimed higher and looking for higher targets.
 

Maybe TMR should include weird porn. Anyway, the Google ferret in Warsaw might think so with his search term "disgusting girl afgan".


I doubt he found what he was really looking for.
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Loophole AAR (or) I chickened out

My God How the Money Rolled in. Quite a lot of my junk found new homes. Same with the dealer leftovers I was liquidating.

And I recall promising if the junk moved as well Sunday as it did Saturday, I would buy something deadly enough to make Boxer -Pelosi hearts go glurg.

The vision materialized late in the loophole when a dealer friend offered me an outstanding deal on two pretty old Browning Nomads. I thought about the new Bernanke/Obama/Geithner cartoons in the mad-money fund, sighed, thought about a family opportunity, and concluded, "Naahhh."  Could the end of my adolescence be drawing nigh?

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The manner in which the dealer junk moved interested me. Young guys bought the bubble-packed accessories -- tactical scope covers, P85 magazines,  anything painted camo, almost any macho thing you can plug-and-play.

Graybeards -- guys who obviously knew how to read a mike, which end of the screwdriver to hold, and what actually makes a cartridge go bang -- bought the swivel sets, odd reloading gear, and scope mounts.  There were only a few of the latter, and that makes me a little sad. It sort of confirms my feeling that the  country is becoming wanna-buy instead of can-do.

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it's hard to say enough about how well the Emmett County Ike Walton league runs this little show.  For one small instance: when I checked in Friday afternoon, the Ike-in-charge made sure the table location was satisfactory; he was willing to move things around to make sure we were happy. Then, about four of his club partners traipsed out to the truck and carried in most of my gear for me. I don't recall that ever happening before, and this is a public thank-you to them.

Sunday Morning Catch-All; Gun Show Loophole Editon

What a fine little show over in Estherville. Discerning buyers from miles around swamped my table and left happy with pounds and pounds of shooty (and otherwise outdoor-jockish) stuff which a partner and I were just plain tired of looking at. Why, I had to get up early this morning  to count the money Federal Reserve Cartoons.

If today goes as well I'll treat myself to something lethal enough to send the Bloomberg Bleating Society scurrying to the sanctuary of the nearest fern bar.

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Speaking of the Super Bowl, have you seen that Mayor Bloomberg is sponsoring a SB commercial demanding more common-sense gun control? I presume it includes a bleat for ending the mysterious gun show loophole. He probably heard that I reverse loopholed a Bubba-ed, trashed-out Winchester 37 and knows that it can be modified and sniper-scoped to bring down a Cessna 150 at nearly 50 yards. Too bad I'll miss the ad. My Super Bowl plan is to check the internet tomorrow morning to see who played, and, if my interest doesn't wane, who won. Just in case the subject happens to come up in conversation. Wouldn't want to sound ignorant.

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Politics: The anti-authoritarian idea is doing reasonably well in Nevada, considering Ron Paul is running against the Mormon Church, or, rather, the Mormon Church is running against him.

I wonder if he's trotted out that bit of recent history showing that the Government of the United States is the only outfit in the history of the world to lose money on a place peddling whiskey and whores?

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Thank you for your kind attention. See you after the loophole closes this evening.

Holy Loophole, Batman...

This one is close enough and typically good enough to move me to become an actual vendor. It helped that a bait shop which once tried to get big in the gun business turned over its entire remaining inventory to me. The deal offered was too good to pass up: "I just want to get rid of the (sterling merchandise). I'll split whatever you can get." (I won't actually take that much; the guy's a buddy.)

There will be bargains. My impulse is to announce the price as one-half of the lowest marked sale price, and those numbers were pasted on while we were still anticipating TEOTWAWKI  due to Y2K.

No guns occupy these particular swag boxes, but a half-dozen so-so quality scopes, a couple dozen Burris mounting kits,  many pounds of sling hardware, and miscellaneous RCBS loading accessories. Why, there's even a cassette of crow-call recordings. And some cute orange caps with built-in LEDs.

To this I add my own three bushels of miscellaneous ("I'm tired of looking at  it,") crap, and my 16 feet of hired table space will be jammed, barely leaving room for the three or four bait guns priced at something over 200 per cent of value. If I may say so myself, I'm pretty good at inventing stories about why my Stevens .410 single is priceless. 


("Waaahhll, y'see I got this here four-ten from a guy down Looziana way whose grandpa was wunna the deputies when they shot up Bonnie and Clyde. Now I can't actually prove this little rust spot is from Bonnie's own blood, but the fella told me...".)


No one believes it, of course, but some of them enjoy it enough to loosen up and take some of the other junk off my hands.

But then, knowing myself, I'll probably take the money around the hall and come back to my own table with a bag of other interesting but near-useless stuff, that is, stuff I am not tired of looking at. Yet.

I'm glad His Ineptness has not yet issued an executive order banning pointless hobbies.

And maybe I'll even find something shootable to loophole. I still want need something American to shoot up the big stash of .38 Special, and I don't give a diddly about which way the cylinder turns.

A merry stop to the Terry stop

The hits just keep on comin'.

A vigilent cop stood tall in defending the safety of Council Bluffs citizens with a righteous but, he figured, dangerous bust of a guy riding his unlighted bicylcle after dark.

Officer safety being paramount, he patted the Lance down because "it was dark and people in the neighborhood were known to have weapons."  Yep, a smidgeon of reefer and a ride to jail in defense of law-abiding  citizens everywhere.

The Iowa Court of Appeals told Officer Friendly he was full of it and vacated the pot-possession conviction.

It's almost like the Fourth Amendment followed us home for cuddling and warm milk.

Lo, the poor eaglet

I'm getting pretty damned tired of complimenting our semi-elected masters in the Iowa House of Representatives. I was comfortable in the days when truth required only occasional reporting that our solons personally didn't steal much compared to, say, the legislators of Illinois.

But this morning  --a day afer advancing a stand-you-ground bill  --- our guys struck another blow for liberty by saying it's okay to shoot at doves with lead shot.  That created another giggle as a horrified, but maladroit, Des Moines Register reporter tied himself in verbal granny knots to get the upcoming environmental Armageddon in his lede.

"A type of ammunition used in hunting that leaves lead remains in the environment and is linked in some studies to deaths in Eagles (sic) and other animals was approved this morning in a House vote."



Oh the egality!


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There's a background here that leads a fellow to suspect the lead ban debate doesn't have much to do with doves, eagles, or lead-poisoned children growing up to be important politicians.


Iowa got its first dove season in something like a century last year. The debate made the abortion controversy look like a polite chat in the Harvard faculty lounge. When it passed  the rivers rose with tears of  PETA-type anguish. 


The Iowa DNR was especially petatrified and, by administrative fiat, said hunters had to use high-price non-lead shells, making dove-hunting a sport of relative lairds and economically difficult to impossible for the peasantry.


Peasant voices yelled in lawmaker ears. The message was transmitted to lawmaker brains and processed into the takeaway, "Hot damn, but I got an election coming up in nine months." (Well, one or two of the more astute might have added, "Besides, where do a bunch of appointed DNR bureaucrats get off making a law of general applicability. That's what our General Assembly is for."


I know nothing of the alleged science behind the lead-shot scare, but I know something of  droop-ass bureaucrats anxious to wonk policy via end runs around constitutions (nodding to  Sir Winston). 


Anyway, I'll be checking the craws of all the dead baby eagles I run across, and if I find a bunch of cold-rolled No. 7 1/2s, I'll let you know.