You and Roman Polanski

You have something in common.

The Eye of Big Brother is poised to spot you, all day every day, even if you don't wear the modish ankle decor which Roman sports these days.* At least he knows he is a scorpion in a glass cage because he rapes little girls.

All you do is use the normal accessories of 21st Century life, cell phones, the Internet, etc. Turns out that Sprint/Nextel thinks it's quite nice to let the cops in on the secret of where you go, when you go there, and how long you stay. In case the cops get curious about why, the nice IT kids have whole departments to scoop clues to the government snoop -- emails, texts, google search terms, all that.

Do I hear in the distance, "Pitch forks, peasants, pitch forks."?

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*And , come to think of it, even if you live in a city which hasn't yet decided to circumvent all guarantees of the Constitution and install traffic surveillance cameras which permit the picking of your pocket without the inconvenience of courts and judges and such.

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H/Tip to Tam

EDIT: I need to add a credit.

Roman Polanski

I assume all of caterwauling Hollywood celebrates the release of this child raper to his palace in the mountains of the Gstaad countryside. Personally, I question the goodness of kowtowing to a fugitive who used his fame and money to lure a 13-year-old girl to a place where he could juice her up on champagne and then drug her preparatory to the rape.

Parents With Pitch Forks deserves jurisdiction in this case. If there is no such organization, there should be.

I have an idea

Let us amend the Constitution to permit any citizen to temporarily secede from the Union when government engages in conduct so asinine as to cause acute embarrassment. He or she would be required to resume citizenship only when a national poll results in a plurality agreeing that government has been returned to the hands of grown-up sentients.

(I have just consumed news reports of the congressional hearing on our narrowly averted night of horror at the hands of Michaele Salahi.)

St. Cloud AAR

The St. Cloud gun show is a winner, especially if you're able to stay at the MSM-owned and operated bed and (superlative) breakfast where you also get your second irresistible belt-stretcher of the Thanksgiving holiday. Thanks kids.

The show itself is good if somewhat small for the size of the community, just beginning to shake its reputation as a flea market and craft fair with shooting stuff on every third or fourth table.

I've mentioned before that I tend to like small shows if I'm in a buying frame of mind, and I left St. Cloud with a small sack of goodies and a couple of mongrels, each converted to .308 from their original weird Yurpeen calibers.

The MAS 1936 (never fired, dropped once, or other Frog joke of your choice) is not an ugly rifle to my eye. I don't mind the squared receiver , and somehow the forward-bent bolt just looks right to me. This one appears (arsenal refurbished) new and probably unfired since the .308 conversion back in the 50s 0r 60s. The conversion is supposed by some to be marginally sloppy, and I'll take the usual advice to start with very light loads.

The Mauser FR7, is kind of cute, looking like an assault rifle from the muzzle back about six inches. The rest is your basic obsolete Mauser cock-on-close as interpreted by the fusil grandees of Royal Spain.

It was $250 for the pair from a hobby dealer who was delighted to engage in the kind of old-fashioned bargaining that used to pervade the shows. He finally agreed to my "best" offer even though I was depriving him of the money necessary to buy his granddaughter a Christmas doll. Then, a few minutes later, he chased me down with two gun cases, no charge, just in case I got stopped by an officious cop on the way home. We shook hands again.

Why doesn't someone tell that Mathews guy that gun folks are among the nicest people you'll ever meet?

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Also found a cheap 10-round .45 magazine for my 1911s. And, wonder of wonders, four decks of small pistol primers at $2 per.

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It occurs to me that the Frenchy and the Spanyard contribute to the diversity of my veritable arsenal. Tell HuffPo.