No, Dan

The Washington Post  is praising congress persons for going out in public  despite their  Tucson panic.

(Personally, if I was a congress person I would be reluctant to show my face in public, but for reasons of embarrassment, not fear of getting shot.)

The critters are looking for a little better home defense, too:

Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) wants another layer. An aide said Burton plans to reintroduce a bill that would enclose the House's public galleries in something like Plexiglas, the kind of arrangement that shields liquor-store clerks.

Dan, don't you understand that liquor clerks are different from you and your colleagues?  They serve a useful social purpose.
.

Folks Shouldn't Mess with Sam's Mom

I have my doubts about single-action revolvers as basic home defense guns, but in Bea's case I'll keep them to myself.

Bea weighs 110 pounds and keeps a .45 Black Hawk convertible handy around the house. She's proficient, and I'd hate to be the clerk who eyeballs her svelte frame bent over the handgun case and volunteers that she needs that lady-like .32.

It's a delightful read, over at Stranded in Iowa's place. 

EDIT: In case you didn't  follow the links (BAD Reader. BAD.Go to your kennel.)  Bea happens to be 77 years old.  When she needs a little more .45 ammo, she polices  the firing line and reloads the cases.

I'll clean the house when it gets cold again.

At least the new plastic Ruger  22/45  goes bang every time you pull the trigger, and the rounds hold in a couple-three inches at 50 feet from a semi-steady braced position.  (Leaning on the truck is our bucolic version of bench rest shooting.) Thirty rounds of el cheapo 36-grain hollow points were fired. Not counting two trigger jerks, all but three or four of them punctured a beverage can of my choice.

The same trip to a piece of DNR land a couple of miles west of Camp J gave me the excuse to run New Dog Libby and see how she  works the brome and cattails. Not bad, but she did let a winter-killed deer distract her.

It isn't spring yet, but the sun is becoming slightly more arrogant, and a chinook  wind is aiding the illusion that winter at 43 North is tucking himself into the history books. It is a day when the Lords of Blast and Fire would not be denied.

All politics is local,

not to mention bloated.

The census snoopers credit  Smugleye on Lake with 341 residents as of last summer.

My SOL neighbors and I are supervised by 21 local officials, elected and appointed. That's one superintendent for every 16.23 citizens. It works out to something like  five houses per regulator, so  they could check us all every day,  just to make sure we aren't feeding the stray cat  or replacing windows without a building permit.

---

*This doesn't count cops. We  pay the county sherf to hold down crime in Smugleye.