May 20, 2014

The Smokey Bear Gun Library ("adult" language)

It probably isn't as Mark Trail-twee as the Cabela's shrines, but the inventory came cheaper.

This guy in Wisconsin was a career game cop for the DNR. Over the years he busted hunters and took their guns, not because anyone had found them guilty of anything but because he accused them. This conforms to the letter of our tyrannical civil forfeiture laws, and Smokey would probably have endured to collect his pension except for one thing.

He kept them, if you believe the prosecutors. His excuse is that Wisconsin required him to have a home office, and that's where he stashed citizens' guns -- beginning in 2003, apparently.

I'm not going to take time to dig them out, but there are a number of TMR posts on the subject.  The general idea is that cops often have very nice gun collections assembled at astonishingly low costs.
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And even if this guy had turned them in to his boss cops, there's that annoying Constitutional mumbo jumbo:

"...nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."
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It just so happens that I'm working on position statements for my 2016 presidential campaign and decided to focus on crap like this after reading about government agents' lust for free stuff.  The platform plank is brief and applies also to the more formal confiscations by regular cops, game cops,  the IRS and its 50 state affiliates, and God knows who else in our multi-million corps of bureaucrats with badges. To wit:

CIVIL FORFEITURE:  Fuck no. If you want to take a citizen's stuff, convict him of something first.



May 19, 2014

When in doubt, Mr. Republican, channel Joe Biden?

A regal barbecue is laid on. Above the pit turns a fatted calf, USDA certified prime, dripping succulent juices into glowing hickory to the delight of the Republican crowd rallying in the Arizona ranch lands.

The guest of honor appears. He smiles, unzips, and sticks his man part into the white coals.

No, Mr. Candidate. It is probably untrue that 99 per cent of mass murderers are Democrats.

It is likely true that you arose in morning and decided it would be a good day to  advance the notion that the The Stupid Party really is.

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If my Republican friends feel raped by this little offering: Please try to relax. It is a legitimate rape, so you can't get pregnant. Todd Akin told me so.

If I'm wrong Christine O'Donnell can chant a special incantation of joy as she casts me into the coven cauldron.

Sarah Palin can waterboard me.








May 15, 2014

...And continuing our theme of ancient Mideast culture, I am reminded that there were two Salomes.

The one mentioned in the cave scrolls was a politician. This is the other -- the one who charged  quite a little more than a shekel bill in her garter to take something else off.






Excuse me. I've been spending my time lately with a bunch of Jews, whatever sect was responsible for squirreling away the Qumran scrolls by the Dead Sea somewhere around 2,000 years ago.

How can anyone be anti-Semitic? Those poor guys suffered under the same drippy rulers and laws we waspy Gentiles endure to this day..

"Whoever lays down and sleeps in the general meeting shall be expelled for 30 days and suffer reduced rations ten days."*

Suggesting that their rulers were capable of long, boring, meaningless assemblages  not surpassed until New England Congregationalists got going 17 centuries  later. Or, a little further along yet, about any U.S. congressional committee you care to name.

The sex laws are pretty interesting, too, but, after all, this is a family oriented blog. I limit myself to noting that if you married a woman whom you discovered to be unchaste, you were required to keep your mouth shut about it.

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*It's 4Q66, Fragment 10, quoted p.76, "The Dead Sea Scrolls,"  Michael
Wise et al, 2005, ISBN 978-0-06-07662-7