Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Posted by Richard on July 27, 2012
Ari Armstrong today proposed a simple and elegant way to increase security in movie theaters (and other public venues):
They could place a large, obvious sign right outside the entrance with the following text:
Armed, off-duty police officers who carry their guns into this theater get unlimited complimentary movie entry and concessions. Please see management for details.
The marginal cost of filling an extra seat in a movie theater is zero. The marginal cost of giving the armed officer free popcorn is what—a quarter?
I think it’s a great idea, but offer one caveat: The average law enforcement officer spends far less time at the range than the average private citizen who carries concealed, and as a consequence is a far poorer shot. A recent report on California police shootings (sorry, I don’t recall where I saw it) found that cops missed their target half the time.
Still, the deterrent effect alone would be significant.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: gun control, gun violence, self-defense | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on July 27, 2012
Congressman Mike Kelly (R-PA3) delivered such a rousing five-minute speech on the floor of the House yesterday that he received a standing ovation. Check it out.
[YouTube link]
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: congress, economy, regulation | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on July 26, 2012
Within hours of the Aurora, CO, theater shootings, New York’s fascist mayor took time out from his efforts to control what New Yorkers may eat or drink to wave the bloody shirt and call for more gun control laws.
Earlier this week on CNN, he came within a few syllables of calling for a nationwide strike of police officers to promote gun control.
He’s now backtracked after it was pointed out that a police strike would be illegal in New York (and in most other places).
Such a strike will never happen anyway. Unlike the (politically appointed) police chiefs and union leaders Bloomberg pals around with, most rank-and-file law enforcement officers oppose civilian disarmament because they know that armed law-abiding citizens help their efforts to prevent violent crimes and to apprehend the perpetrators.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: gun control, gun violence, self-defense | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on July 26, 2012
The online headline of the day was on a Doug Patton column at the GOPUSA site:
100 Million Gun Owners Didn’t Kill Anyone Last Week
The column begins with this quote:
“Laws that forbid the carrying of arms…disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.”
– Thomas Jefferson
After reminiscing about how, as a youth, he came to learn about and own guns, Patton says:
None of us has any way of knowing whether James Holmes, the shooter in Aurora, Colorado, is simply an evil genius putting on an act in court or if he is a loon who really believes he is Batman’s nemesis, the Joker. We don’t know if his father ever taught him how to use firearms, or if he got his knowledge from watching TV and movies, and playing violent video games.
What we do know is that a society that once lived in reality has evolved into a culture wallowing in fantasy violence, ruled by people whose goal is to disarm the good guys, leaving us all at the mercy of the bad guys.
We know that, like so many communities today, Aurora, Colorado, did not allow law-abiding gun owners to carry their weapons into the theater that night. Perhaps if they had, someone might have been able to stop Holmes before he killed a dozen innocent people and wounded scores of others.
Note: I believe it was purely the policy of the theater owner, Cinemark, not Aurora law, that forbade weapons in the theater.
Even in states that allow concealed carry of firearms, politically correct business owners can forbid the possession of such weapons in their establishments. A sign on the door of the Von Maur department store in Omaha, Nebraska, announces that guns are not allowed. On December 5, 2007, 19-year-old Robert Hawkins read that sign as follows: “Even our security guards are unarmed! Come on in and shoot us!” So he did, killing eight people and wounding five others.
Read the whole thing.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: gun control, gun violence, self-defense | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on July 25, 2012
In clear violation of the Constitution and fundamental human rights, the state of Maryland requires a “good and substantial reason” for the issuance of a concealed carry permit. In a case challenging the constitutionality of that restriction, U.S District Judge Benson Everett Legg ordered the state to process permit applications without requiring a reason, but originally issued a stay of his ruling. Now, he’s going to lift the stay in two weeks because it’s “not warranted.” The Second Amendment Foundation, which together with a Baltimore resident filed the suit in 2010, is delighted:
“There is no good reason for the state to continue violating the constitutional rights of its citizens just to maintain this burdensome and arbitrary system,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “As Judge Legg originally observed, the Second Amendment’s protections extend beyond the home.”
While it is possible that the state may file a motion with the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals to impose a stay of Judge Legg’s order, the trial court precedent is an important one. It established that the Second Amendment right to bear arms does not stop at the door of one’s home.
“No citizen should be required to give a ‘good and substantial’ reason in order to exercise a constitutionally-protected civil right,” Gottlieb observed. “In his order today, Judge Legg noted that the state has pointed to ‘little in the way of truly irreparable injury that is likely to result should their request for a stay be denied’.”
The judge also noted, “If a stay is granted, a sizeable number of people will be precluded from exercising, while the case is argued on appeal, what this Court has recognized as a valid aspect of their Second Amendment right. In the First Amendment context, the Supreme Court has stated that ‘loss of First Amendment freedoms, for even minimal periods of time, unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury’.”
I’m delighted, too.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: civil liberties, gun control, human rights, second amendment | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on July 22, 2012
For the benefit of those who may care, I’ve arrived safely at home after tonight’s Rocky Mountain Blogger Bash, and it’s not even 1 AM. There were about a dozen of us, and a grand time was had by all. AFAIK, no arrests, no illness, and no untoward incidents.
If you’re a blogger in the Rocky Mountain region and didn’t show up, we probably talked about you (we definitely talked about Stephen, Jeff G., Jerrilyn, Nick, and some others I don’t recall in my current inebriated state). You might want to show up next time to defend your honor (such as it is). 🙂
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: blogger bash, rocky mountain blogger bash | 2 Comments »
Posted by Richard on July 21, 2012
Rocky Mountain Blogger Bash sqrt(e) is tonight at 7 PM.
Where: The Old Mill Brewery, 5798 South Rapp Street, Littleton, CO (nice place, good food, good beer, private room, convenient to light rail)
We’ve got the “birthday room.” It’s not too late to RSVP at this Zombyboy post. Or you could just show up. And maybe buy a round of shots?
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: blogger bash, rocky mountain blogger bash | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on July 20, 2012
Commenting on the mass murder in Aurora, CO, Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert asked, “… with all those people in the theater, was there nobody that was carrying that could’ve stopped this guy more quickly?”
No, there wasn’t. Because the Cinemark Century 16 theater has “no firearms” signs posted, so the honest, decent people who might otherwise be carrying a weapon left theirs at home or in the car. Cinemark reportedly aggressively enforces a “no firearms” policy at all its theaters.
Criminals, terrorists, and madmen of course aren’t deterred by “no firearms” signs. That’s why mass killings almost always take place in “gun-free zones.” Mass murderers may be crazy but they aren’t stupid — they seek out unarmed victims.
In places that are not “gun-free zones,” like the Palms Internet Café in Orlando, FL, would-be robbers or killers risk having their activities interrupted by an armed good guy. WOFL FOX 35 reported (and has the must-see surveillance camera video):
Two men who deputies say tried to rob a Marion County Internet café were both shot by one of the patrons.
It happened just before 10:00 p.m. Friday at the Palms Internet Café located at 8444 SW State Road 200.
When Marion County deputies arrived they found patrons outside the business who told them that two men in masks – one armed with a baseball bat and the other with a handgun – barged into the business. The robbers told the approximately 30 patrons to get on the floor, and they demanded money.
Investigators say Samuel Williams, one of the customers, pulled out his own handgun and shot the robbers. Both robbers began running toward the front door, and the patron fired several more shots as they fled.
Mr. Williams, the hero, is 71.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: gun control, gun violence, self-defense | 1 Comment »
Posted by Richard on July 20, 2012
It’s hard to say which was more contemptible this morning, before the corpses had even been carried to the morgue: New York Mayor Bloomberg waving the bloody shirt and beating the drum for gun control, or Brian Ross and ABC News scouring Tea Party web pages looking for someone with the same name as the Dark Knight shooter so they could attempt to tie that group to the killings.
I guess I’d give the nod to Ross and ABC’s Good Morning America. Although it was crass and exploitative, Bloomberg was openly advocating for an agenda he’s never made any secret of. Ross and ABC, on the other hand, pretended to be reporting news while actually attempting to harm the Tea Party movement, which they see (rightly) as the enemy of their secret leftist agenda (not that they’ve done a very good job of keeping it secret lately).
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: gun control, gun violence, media bias, tea party | 1 Comment »
Posted by Richard on July 20, 2012
Dexter Johnson, on the IEEE Nanoclast blog, reported a possible breakthrough nanotechnology treatment for the hepatitis C virus:
Researchers at the University of Florida (UF) have developed a nanoparticle that has shown 100 percent effectiveness in eradicating the hepatitis C virus in laboratory testing.
The nanoparticle, dubbed a nanozyme, consists of a backbone made from gold nanoparticles and a surface with two biological components. One biological component is an enzyme that attacks and destroys the mRNA, which provides the recipe for duplicating the protein that causes the disease. The other biological part is the navigator, if you will. It is a DNA oligonucleotide that identifies the disease-related protein and sends the enzyme on course to destroy it.
Y. Charles Cao, a UF associate professor of chemistry, and Dr. Chen Liu, a professor of pathology at the UF College of Medicine published their research online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (“Nanoparticle-based artificial RNA silencing machinery for antiviral therapy“).
The basis of the work is mimicking the biological process of RNA interference, which researchers in the past have used effectively in the laboratory for treating HIV. In the UF research the nanoparticle mimics the function of RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC), which mediates the RNA interference process.
Current hepatitis C treatments do attack the replication process of the virus but they are not entirely effective and only help about 50 percent of the patients treated with them. Cao and Liu along with their team wanted to see if they could improve upon that percentage. The researchers claim that their treatment (in cell culture and mice) led to a near 100 percent eradication of the hepatitis C virus without bringing on any side effects caused by the immune system attacking the treatment.
I have a good friend for whom this research could matter — a lot. So in the words of Glenn Reynolds, “Faster, please!”
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: health, medical research, nanotechnology | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on July 19, 2012
Law prof William Jacobson noted that Obama’s attack on entrepreneurs was an echo of an earlier anti-capitalist, anti-individualist rant by Elizabeth Warren. Honest injun! (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.) He has video of Warren’s rendition and Obama’s take, along with a Romney response and the Romney internet ad I posted earlier. And he thinks this could cost Obama the election:
This collectivist view of our economic system is alien to the vast majority of Americans. It is beyond class warfare, which is the envy of others who are more successful. Obama has attacked success, not just the successful.
…
Obama has hitched his wagon to an alien ideology touted by a tainted candidate who might be too liberal even for Massachusetts.
I don’t think this is going away. It is a theme handed to Romney on a silver platter, a silver platter built, of course, on roads the rest of us paid for.
It is a game changer. And we have Elizabeth Warren to thank for it.
Update: Paul Mirengoff quotes Pat Sajak as follows:
It’s as if President Obama climbed into a tank, put on his helmet, talked about how his foray into Cambodia was seared in his memory, looked at his watch, misspelled “potato” and pardoned Richard Nixon all in the same day.
Ooh, I like that! Let’s hear it for Pat Sajak!
(HT: Instapundit)
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: anticapitalism, business, entrepreneurs, obama, romney | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on July 19, 2012
The Chicago Tribune’s John Kass has answered the President’s contemptuous chiding of entrepreneurs in a personal and moving way:
When President Barack Obama hauled off and slapped American small-business owners in the mouth the other day, I wanted to dream of my father.
But I didn’t have to close my eyes to see my dad. I could do it with my eyes open.
All I had to do was think of the driveway of our home, and my dad’s car gone before dawn, that old white Chrysler with a push-button transmission. It always started, but there was a hole in the floor and his feet got wet in the rain. So he patched it with concrete mix and kept on driving it to the little supermarket he ran with my Uncle George.
He’d return home long after dark, physically and mentally exhausted, take a plate of food, talk with us for a few minutes, then flop in that big chair in front of the TV. Even before his cigarette was out, he’d begin to snore.
The next day he’d wake up and do it again. Day after day, decade after decade. Weekdays and weekends, no vacations, no time to see our games, no money for extras, not even forMcDonald’s. My dad and Uncle George, and my mom and my late Aunt Mary, killing themselves in their small supermarket on the South Side of Chicago.
There was no federal bailout money for us. No Republican corporate welfare. No Democratic handouts. No bipartisan lobbyists working the angles. No Tony Rezkos. No offshore accounts. No Obama bucks.
Just two immigrant brothers and their families risking everything, balancing on the economic high wire, building a business in America. …
Read the whole thing. Please!
And watch this Romney internet ad on the same subject:
[YouTube link]
I’ve never contributed to a Republican presidential candidate (only congressional candidates, and those mostly via Club for Growth). But I’d contribute to the Romney campaign if my contribution could be earmarked toward airing that ad on TV.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: anticapitalism, business, entrepreneurs, obama, romney | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on July 18, 2012
If this pans out, it could be the most important breakthrough in the fight against malaria since the introduction of DDT, saving literally millions of lives:
Researchers report they have found a way to kill malaria in mosquitoes by genetically modifying a bacterium commonly found in the insect’s mid-gut, according to a new study.
The bacterium, called Pantoea agglomerans, can be modified to secrete proteins that are toxic to the malaria parasite, but are not harmful to humans or the mosquito itself. In fact, the bacterium is so specific to targeting malaria that it does not even affect other bacteria in the mosquito’s gut, according to the researchers from Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute, who conducted the study.
Of course, it will be bitterly opposed by the same luddite environmentalists who got DDT banned 40 years ago — and thus sentenced tens of millions of inhabitants of tropical regions (mostly Africans) to death.
There are some 300 to 500 million reported cases of malaria each year, 90% occurring in Africa. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), about two and a half million people die of the disease each year, again, mostly in Africa, the majority of them poor children. Indeed, malaria is the second leading cause of death in Africa (after AIDS) and the number one killer of children there (with about one child being lost to malaria every thirty seconds). Many medical historians believe malaria has killed more people than any other disease in history, including the Black Plague, and may have contributed to the collapse of the Roman Empire. Malaria was common in places as far north as Boston and England until the twentieth century. Two thirds of the world lived in malaria-ridden areas prior to the 1940s.
That devastation all but stopped during the time that DDT use was widespread, around 1950-1970. Indeed, the discovery that DDT could kill malarial mosquitoes earned Dr. Paul Müller the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1948. DDT, a chemical pesticide synthesized by Müller in the late 1930s, was initially used against houseflies, beetles, various farm pests, and typhus-carrying lice on the bodies of World War II soldiers and civilians. America and England soon became the major producers of the chemical, using it to fight malaria-carrying mosquitoes, especially in tropical regions.
In all, DDT has been conservatively credited with saving some 100 million lives.
… In what is now Sri Lanka, malaria cases went from 2,800,000 in 1948, before the introduction of DDT, down to 17 in 1964 — then, tragically, back up to 2,500,000 by 1969, five years after DDT use was discontinued there.
Read the whole thing.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: environmentalism, health, medical research | 1 Comment »
Posted by Richard on July 15, 2012
The Democratic Party is home to a number of Jew-hating 9/11 conspiracy theorists. This one is a state-wide candidate and has a national leadership role (emphasis added):
During a radio interview today, M.D. Alam, a Democrat activist running for Missouri secretary of state, defended his reported claim that 9/11 was a Jewish holiday and his questioning of why no Jews were killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Sept. 11, 2001, however, was not a Jewish holiday, and estimates conclude at least 200 to 400 Jews, including five Israelis, died in the World Trade Center attacks.
In the interview, Alam also defended “Loose Change,” a series of online videos arguing the 9/11 attacks were planned and conducted by elements within the U.S. government.
Alam is national chairman of the Democratic Party Asian American Caucus and is founder of Missouri’s Democratic Party Asian American Caucus. He was a manager in Missouri for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.
Alam was speaking today on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” on New York’s WABC Radio.
WND has the audio of the interview.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: 911 conspiracy theory, democrats, moonbats | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on July 13, 2012
… is from Glenn Reynolds:
OUTSOURCING: Lawmakers are angry that the US Olympic Team uniforms are made in China, but to me the real issue is that they’re terrible. They look like something from an SNL skit about America becoming a gay military dictatorship.
What he said.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: fashion humor sports | Leave a Comment »
