Disarming Old People.

Recently an article entitled Armed and Aging: Should Older Americans Face Tighter Gun Controls? came over the Facebook transom.

To her credit, the author tries mightily to pretends to be a balanced observer. She even includes a few quotes from older gun owners and some well-known facts about the reality of suicide. However, by the end I realized she simply has no grasp of the principles involved in the gun rights issue. She writes,

State lawmakers in California recently offered a unique solution that could appease both sides: the gun violence restraining order.

The statewide policy, which went into effect Jan. 1, 2016, is based on the domestic violence restraining-order system, in which concerned citizens can turn to the courts for help, said Frattaroli, who serves as associate director for outreach for Johns Hopkins’ Center for Injury Research and Policy.

No one with half a brain still functioning could think the California GVRO is a good idea. It is not just its obvious trampling of due process -- though that is certainly bad enough. The big problem is the enormous potential for abuse by angry, jealous or greedy relatives.

The penalty for a false accusation is a misdemeanor and, five'll get you ten, no false testimony will ever be pursued by a DA. This opens the GVRO to gossip being given force of law. On the victim's side, the penalties are being the subject of a false report of suicidal or homicidal intentions, losing his gun rights for up to a year (extensible to forever if the judge can be convinced he was right the first time) and being disarmed against those who would do him harm.

This from a group claiming it "promotes a positive view of aging."

Edited to fix link

The Banana Republic where the United States Used to Be

OK, maybe not quite that bad but still pretty bad. Corruption is to the Federal bureaucracy as air is to decent people but this is really an extreme example.

There is no way of getting around this: According to Director James Comey ... Hillary Clinton checked every box required for a felony violation of Section 793(f) of the federal penal code (Title 18): With lawful access to highly classified information she acted with gross negligence in removing and causing it to be removed it from its proper place of custody, and she transmitted it and caused it to be transmitted to others not authorized to have it, in patent violation of her trust. Director Comey even conceded that former Secretary Clinton was “extremely careless” and strongly suggested that her recklessness very likely led to communications (her own and those she corresponded with) being intercepted by foreign intelligence services.

Yet, Director Comey recommended against prosecution of the law violations he clearly found on the ground that there was no intent to harm the United States.

Nothing in the legal definition of gross negligence requires that the individual act with intent to harm. It requires there be a conscious, voluntary disregard of the need to use reasonable care. That is why is called "negligence" instead of something else. Hillary's actions clearly departed from the conduct expected of a reasonably prudent person acting under similar circumstances.

Read more at: FBI Rewrites Federal Law to Let Hillary Off the Hook

A final thought:

There are lots of people who think they're above the law. And then; there are those who can prove it, like the Clintons.

-- Martin McPhillips (via Billy Beck)

The Warrant Canary is Illegal in Australia

For those who don't know, a warrant canary is the periodic transmission of a statement along the lines of, "We have not received any warrant demanding your data." If the message stops being sent then the recipient(s) can assume such a warrant has been served. The idea behind this is that the gag-order that often accompanies such demands from law enforcement cannot prevent a person from not speaking.

Until now. In Australia.

Australian government minister: Dodge new data retention law like this

Warrant canaries can't be used in this context either. Section 182A of the new law says that a person commits an offense if he or she discloses or uses information about "the existence or non-existence of such a [journalist information] warrant." The penalty upon conviction is two years imprisonment.

In truth the warrant canaries were unlikely to work for long. In the current, fear driven environment there is little reason for law enforcement to restrain itself from coercing the target of a warrant into sending false canary messages. By outlawing even the attempt to use a warrant canary, the Australians are just being more honest about being a bunch of progressive schmucks.

I anticipate similar wording will be added to US law.

Forgive all Student Debt

A basic assumption about debt is that it will be paid back with interest at some predictable time in the future. Debt increases the money supply without an immediate corresponding increase in total good and services. It is only because it is repaid that debt does not debase the currency. Canceling a debt without permission from the investors is no better than stealing it outright.

According to this petition 86% of the $1.3 trillion of student debt is owed to the United States government. The petition encourages that government to forgive all the debt. Not just the public part -- which is bad enough -- but also the 14% that is not public. No mention of consulting the taxpayers who finance it. No mention of how much more the taxpayers will have to cough up to make the lenders right. Just eliminate any possiblity of the debt ever being recovered.

It is no surprise to me that the list of sponsors include the American Federation of Teachers and the Daily Kos. Both of those groups seem to believe that feeding their sick, elitist egos somehow justifies stealing from the middle class. First by wasting our taxes then by inflating the currency so our incomes are worth less.

The cycle of inflation and debasement has ruined civilizations in the past. The rules for that haven't changed; only the names of the criminals varies.

Get Your Stinking Ape Hands off of My Computer.

As my friend Christopher David once pointed out to me, hackers may be the most important of scumfucks as mankind heads into the future. For those who don't get why that may be true, this article may help you understand. In the process you may gain insight into how all the recent talk of "digital rights management" and "net neutrality" are really an attack on general purpose computing and the open networks -- such as the Internet -- they make possible.

Lockdown -- The coming war on general-purpose computing

Silk Road 3.0 Opens for Business?

According to this article a new Silk Road marketplace has opened up:

Silk Road 3.0 Opens for Business

I have no idea how long it will last nor I am I convinced it is not just a lure for entrapment of buyers. On the other hand, I don't think Silk Road sells anything I am interested in so that difference is probably moot. On the gripping hand, it may turn out to be an interesting example of how a free market responds to attempts to suppress it.

In reality, history is a process and has no side. That claim is just anthropogenic nonsense promoted by people who believe that their way of seeing the world is so righteous it doesn't need defending. Nevertheless, if history did have a side I like to think the DEA and FBI are operating on the wrong side of it.

Gotta Get Me Some More Zombie Targets

Mike Vanderboegh has some interesting thoughts on the popularity of apocalyptic fiction on the television and in popular literature.

One other thing that bears mentioning. Have you noticed that just as The Invasion of the Body Snatchers was a metaphor for communist infiltration in the 50s, that "zombies" resemble present day collectivists? They are ravenous, hard to stop, go around in bunches, cannot be negotiated with or reasoned with, only walled out or confronted with deadly force. It is no accident that zombie targets are far more popular at firearm ranges these days than bullseyes. Wanna shoot a collectivist and still be under the radar? Shoot a zombie target. Nobody objects to that, perhaps because they can't break the code. I mean, what is the functional difference, if any, between Nancy Pelosi and a flesh-eating zombie?

I never looked at shooting zombie targets as a political statement but, in retrospect, it makes sense. Perhaps it is time for gun owners to shoot more such targets while imagining the images represent the collectivist du jour. Shooting them in effigy -- so to speak.

If you can't nuke 'em from orbit, shoot 'em in the head. It's the only way to be sure.

Waiting for Enemy Action

There is a saying about how to tell the difference between accident, coincidence and enemy action. It goes something like:

• Once is happenstance.
• Twice is coincidence.
• Three times is enemy action.

Looks like the problem of voting machines switching attempted votes for a Republican candidate to the corresponding Democratic candidate has reached stage two. At least. Here is the most recent one:

'Calibration issue' pops up on Maryland voting machines

This incident was reported a few day earlier from Illinois' Cook County:

Cook County ballot box tries to cast GOP votes for Democrats

Calibration errors happen and, given the nature of government, it is unremarkable that they are not caught until a system goes into service. However, if such errors were really only errors they would be expected to favor each party's candidates in about equal numbers. That is not case here: In both of the recent reports the calibration errors have always favored the Democratic candidate.

A Dose of Reality on Net Neutrality

The Social Justice Wackos are at it again.

The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission said Friday that he and President Obama agree on the importance of protecting net neutrality.

"My position is unchanged," FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said at a press conference. "The president and I agree—and have always agreed—on the importance of an open Internet."

But net-neutrality advocates responded that as long as Wheeler supports allowing large companies to pay for special "fast lanes" on the Internet, he and the president are miles apart. [emphasis added]

That's founded on a great big steaming load of codswallop sliding down your throat.

Net neutrality had always depended on a type of digital barter. Sometimes this is referred to as "in-kind" or "balanced" transport. In effect it means if you carry N terabytes of data from my network and I carry something close to the same from your network, we are in balance. If I expect you to carry my N terabytes of traffic but do not offer anything in return I am imposing costs on you without any corresponding benefit. I am using your bandwidth without giving anything in return.

These idiots seem to think that bandwidth is cheap or free. It is not and just because it is denominated in bytes instead of dollars does not change that. A backbone provider has to lay thousands of miles of fiber, buy very expensive switches and routers and hire highly-skilled engineers to keep it all working. What the SJWs are trying to do here is pervert a perfectly reasonable form of barter between carriers into some kind of entitlement for operations like Netflix. However, in any fair transaction, you must give at least as much as you receive or the distortions cause at least one of the parties in the transaction to close up shop.

The Arrogance of Ignorance

It looks like law enforcement is pushing back against strong encryption they cannot get into.

FBI quest for smartphone data will fuel privacy battle

FBI Director James Comey said as much Thursday in a speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington, suggesting the agency might ask congress to force companies to provide what amounts to a “back door” to law enforcement to obtain password-protected data on targeted personal mobile devices.

Sigh...

I've argued before that there is no such thing as a backdoor that can only be used by law enforcement. A security hole is a security hole whether it called a "backdoor" or a "golden key". In fact, a deliberately planted backdoor -- as opposed to one resulting from design or programming error -- is worse because the bad guys know for sure it is there. To think that the Chinese or the Jihadis will not look for it and pick the lock is a sure sign of ignorance.

ETA: Another thought that occurred to me is that once the bad guys figure out how to exploit the government mandated "golden key" backdoor, the vendors will not be able to patch it without permission from the government!.

Bizzaro State of Massachusetts Maryland

Correction: An Anonymous comment corrects me: "This took place in Maryland, not Massachusetts." Text is edited to reflect this.

Patrick Wayne McLaw, an eighth grade teacher at Mace's Lane Middle School in Massachusetts Maryland, has been suspended under circumstances charitably described as mysterious.

Cambridge Mace's Lane Middle School Teacher on Administrative Leave

Early last week the school board was alerted that one of its eighth grade language arts teachers at Mace's Lane Middle School had several aliases. Police said that under those names, he wrote two fictional books about the largest school shooting in the country's history set in the future. Now, Patrick McLaw is placed on leave.

Aliases? Such a sinister word. Anyone with more than two brain cells left to rub together would call the false name an author uses a "pen name". Why would the reporter choose a baleful word to describe the man's nom de plume except to demonize him? Maybe it was just ignorance but the article has been updated at least once and the word is still used so, for the time being, I am going to go with it being evil over stupid.

Those books are what caught the attention of police and school board officials in Dorchester County. "The Insurrectionist" is about two school shootings set in the future, the largest in the country's history.

According to the Amazon page for the book the story is set almost 900 years in the future.

On 18 March 2902, a massacre transpired on the campus of Ocean Park High School, claiming the lives of nine hundred forty-seven individuals--the largest school massacre in the nation's history. And the entire country now begins to ask two daunting questions: How? and Why? After the federal government becomes involved, and after examining the bouquet of black roses that lies in front of the school's sign, it becomes evident that the hysteria is far from over.

Leaving aside any arguments about what human society will look like 900 years from now, that seems a pretty safe distance in time. So just what are the authorities afraid of? This is even more mysterious. According to a related article:

“The residence of the teacher in Wicomico County was searched by personnel,” Phillips said, with no weapons found. “A further check of Maryland State Police databases also proved to be negative as to any weapons registered to him. McLaw was suspended by the Dorchester County Board of Education pending an investigation and is no longer in the area. He is currently at a location known to law enforcement and does not currently have the ability to travel anywhere.”

So no firearms were found or even implied but, despite that, he is being held "...at a location known to law enforcement..." No charges have been mentioned nor is there any indication I can find that Mr. McLaw has been allowed to see a lawyer. For writing a book.

Just when I think I can see the bottom of the pit of human stupidity, someone shouts, "Challenge accepted!" and demonstrates that is goes even deeper into the darkness.

Driving While Distracted is OK if You're a Cop?

It certainly seems so in this case.

Police Officer Will Not Be Charged For Killing Napster Exec While Texting And Driving — Because It's Apparently OK For Police To Do That

Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy Andrew Wood will not be charged for fatally running over former Napster COO Milton Olin Jr. in his patrol car while the officer was typing a message into his computer.

The District Attorney's report on the incident is pretty clear about what happened:

The article continues:

The Los Angeles District Attorney's report into the incident says that even though it is illegal to text and drive, Wood was not negligent because police officers are expected to respond quickly to messages from colleagues.

For a long time I've accepted the fact that the Thin Blue Whine will always protect its own. That select group includes district attorneys and judges. I am not particularly happy about it but it is a fact of life. Still, the handling of this incident is pretty blatant. It is a dead certainty that if an unbadged person answered his email or sent a text message while driving and, as a result, hit and killed someone, he would be be charged with something. If not vehicular manslaughter then felony reckless driving.

Why is the DA refusing to prosecute this case? Like I said: That's just the way it is.

The Retard in the White House and Elsewhere

Remember when Joe Biden -- putative Vice-President of the United States -- recommended that gun owners discourage intruders by firing a shotgun in the air?

So did Jeffery Barton of Washington State but when he followed that advice, he was arrested for his trouble. At his arraignment he pleaded not guilty and raised what is now being called the "Joe Biden Defense". While that seems a little tongue-in-cheek to me, it is, in the clarity of hindsight, a predictable reaction to the utter stupidity and ignorance exhibited by Biden.

Now -- perhaps hoping not to embarrass the VP more than he does for himself -- the prosecutor is dropping the one count of illegal aiming or discharging a firearm.

New developments in 'Joe Biden defense' case

Clark County's prosecutor said Tuesday he will dismiss a firearms-related charge against a Vancouver man who said he was merely taking Vice President Joe Biden's advice on how to defend his property from car prowlers. Instead, the man will be prosecuted for obstructing a police officer.

Jeffrey C. Barton, 53, made international news when he told journalists: "I did what Joe Biden told me to do. I went outside and fired my shotgun in the air."

That is a reference to the vice president's answer to a question in February 2013 about home defense. Biden responded that Americans don't need to own semiautomatic weapons because a couple blasts from a shotgun will scare off intruders.

Of course the state being, typically, unwilling to let go of any opportunity to harass a peaceable gun owner will throw an obstruction charge against the wall.

However, the firearms charge will be replaced with a charge of obstructing a law enforcement officer, Golik said.

Golik said ethical guidelines prevent him from discussing specific reasons for the new charge.

"Based on (Barton's) conduct, we are going to pursue the obstruction charge," he said.

Ethical considerations? In this case is sound more like: We don't have a real reason to put him in jail so we will fall back on the obstruction charge.

And lawyers wonder why Dante spread them out all over the Inferno. There are so many appropriate places there for them.

CSGV Weighs In On Ferguson, MO

In the Flyweight class.

Gun Violence Prevention Group Calls For Accountability In Ferguson

Finally, we acknowledge the comparisons that many are drawing between what is happening in Ferguson and the armed standoff that took place at the Bundy ranch this past April. The dramatic differences in law enforcement response to the two events are difficult to ignore. Why are white pro-gun activists able to point loaded firearms at law enforcement and avoid accountability under the law altogether while unarmed, peaceful African-American citizens are met with a militarized police force and mass arrests? The most important idea in American political philosophy is that of equality. That principle has been sorely tested by these events, and must ultimately be vindicated by the rule of law.

The half-dozen or so active members of CSGV seem to operate from a position that government must have a monopoly-of-force over those in its jurisdiction. They may want government to be accountable to the "people" but, simultaneously, do not want those same people to have any means of enforcing that accountability beyond a sternly worded letter. Perhaps followed by an even more sternly worded letter. So, as a public service to those benighted controlists who cannot figure it out for themselves, I will try to explain.

Fortunately for me it is not hard.

It is not about race. If you try real hard you can get past the racialist bullshit. Once you do, it is not particularly difficult to understand the difference between Bundy Ranch and Ferguson. The men and women at the Bundy Ranch were able to prevail because the government forces did not have a monopoly on force. The "unarmed, peaceful African-American citizens" in Ferguson can be arrested en masse precisely because the government does have such a monopoly. The cops in Ferguson did not not pull off a coup d'etat. They are still under civilian control and are operating under orders from the government officials above them. This is exactly how the controlists at CSGV believe government is supposed to work. The situation in Ferguson is the CSGV fantasy writ large.

Typical of New Jersey?

Radley Balko make somes valuable observations in his Washington Post article about the Shaneen Allen case in New Jersey. Among them is this particularly salient set of points:

When I first posted her story to Twitter, a couple of progressive responders predicted that because Allen is a black single mother, the gun rights community would all but ignore her. But that hasn’t been true at all. In fact, Allen has become something of a rallying point for gun rights activists. She is being represented by Evan Nappen, an attorney who specializes in gun cases and is a gun rights activist himself. Some conservatives have similarly accused progressives of ignoring Allen’s case because she stands accused of a gun crime. It’s certainly true that her case has received much more attention from the right than the left. But Nappen says he has seen plenty of support for her from racial justice groups, too.

Despite the cynical expectations of the controlists, gun owners are coming to the defense of a "black single mother". This is no surprise to any honest observer of the pro-gun scene. The prozis will make a big deal of that fact that Dick Anthony Heller -- the plaintiff in Heller v D.C. -- is white but ignore that Otis McDonald of McDonald v City of Chicago is black and, last I heard, a registered Democrat. They will also ignore that NORML and the NRA were allies in protecting the Second Amendment rights of Medical Marijuana patients in Oregon (Willis v Winters). There is clearly a disconnect between perception and reality.

Ultimately, the most relevant fact in this case is that this happened in New Jersey. While not alone in this distinction, the system there is full of people who just plain hate peaceable, honest gun owners and want them all dead or in prison. It's as simple as that.

Oh, give me a home
Where the criminals roam,
Where the rapists and murders play;
Where often is seen
a discouraging scene
of graft and corruption displayed.

FedEx Charged for not Looking inside Customers' Packages

FedEx charged with trafficking drugs for Web pharmacies

This is another act in the progressive attack on freedom. Recently, credit card companies were pressured to refuse payments for people the government hates. Banks were similarly pressured to refuse or cancel their accounts. Now delivery companies are being pressured to refuse to deliver goods from businesses the state disapproves of.

The primary goal of this attack it not to prosecute the party allegedly engaging in the criminal conduct. It is to establish control via more compliant victims. This saves the government from having to pursue the real "criminals" (whether the activities in question should be illegal is a separate question) and lets it establish control using indirect means to strangle any business that displeases the Powers That Be.

FedEx is incorporated in Delaware and its headquarters is in Memphis, TN. The indictment is in the Northern District of California. I think this is significant in that high tech companies -- Telecoms, ISPs and hardware manufacturers -- in Silicon Valley will have to take notice. The warning is subtle but clear: Bend over when the government demands it.

The NSA Really is Watching Us.

By now I doubt anyone is really surprised at this.

The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control

H/T to David Codrea.

Gay Marriage?

I don't really get why so many people have such a problem with legalizing gay marriage. I get the "yuck" factor but I don't see it as an inherent evil nor do I understand how it will destroy civilization. Call me an optimist but I don't think Western Civilization is really all that fragile. Maybe that is just because I am not religious. I don't know.

Stripped of its cultural baggage, the civil institution of marriage is a contract -- mostly about the disposition of property. You can write that contract yourself -- it's called a pre-nuptial agreement -- or you can accept the default contract written by your state legislators. In the former case the property arrangements are usually pretty obvious. They are less so in the latter case but they are still there.

A large part of the problem arises because the state gets to define what is and is not a "marriage" and can even change the term of your agreement after the fact and without your consent. It then takes that definition, licenses it and hands out free shit based on it. The ideal would be for the state to get out of the business of defining "marriage" and only become involved when there is a contractual dispute. Once the government is only concerned with the civil aspects of the institution, the churches, synagogues, mosques, etc can perform the rituals according to their own customs.

The reality, of course, is that the individual states are not likely to give up control of marriage anytime soon. Until they do, they are, at the minimum, bound by the highest law of the land (AKA the Constitution and Amendments). Ideally they would operate from a sense of fairness towards all taxpayers but that may be too much to ask.

The Fourteenth Amendment promises equal protection under the laws to "[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof". It is a broad guarantee that forbids class-based discrimination by government absent a damned good reason. For example, denying a driver’s license to anyone who is legally blind.

There is a common-law rule of interpretation that powers delegated to the state should be interpreted as narrowly as the language permits. Rights should be interpreted as broadly as possible. The presumption must always be in favor of a right against the actions of government, or immunity against the power of government. (Thanks to Jon Roland for explaining this in term a dumb 'ol engineer can understand).

Gay people pay taxes. According to some sources they pay more taxes per capita than straight people. They also pay these taxes under the same threat of punishment as everyone else. They have no more choice about their taxes than you or I do. That means money taken from gays helps fund the county courthouse and the the clerk's office. It also helps pay the salaries of clerks, judges and justices of the peace. So how the hell can a state deny gays access to services they are being forced to pay for?

Legally and, I contend, ethically it cannot. The government wants to take money from its citizen to pay for a service. Then that government wants to turn around and refuse to allow part of that citizenry access to the service. It has a hell of lot of explaining to do. In fact, the gun controllers are way ahead of the marriage controllers in that regard and you probably already know what I think of the former.

None of the above allows for ridiculous notions like forcing a baker to make a wedding cake for a gay couple. In fact, while the judge may have been interpreting the state law as written, that decision is an insult to basic decency. A private business does have a right to refuse service to anyone for any reason as long as it is the business owner's free choice.

A common objection to gay marriage is that legalizing it would somehow allow a person to marry his dog or his toaster or a child. That is a desperate and foolish argument. The truth is that neither a dog nor a toaster is sapient so neither can assent to a marriage contract. A child after a certain age may be sapient but, until he reaches the age of consent, cannot legally agree to a contract.

May Your Frustration Grow Ever Larger

And may the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits!

Obama: Gun law inaction 'my biggest frustration'

President Barack Obama said Tuesday that it was “stunning to me” that Congress did not take real action to tighten gun laws following the late 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

“My biggest frustration so far is that this society has not been willing to take some basic steps to keep guns out of the hands of people who can do just unbelievable damage,” Obama said during a question-and-answer session hosted by microblogging platform Tumblr that came hours after a school shooting in Oregon.

Read the rest here if you really want to.

The EU Central Bank Divests Itself of Its Last Few Brain Cells.

Europe's Central Bank Is Paying Negative Interest Rates. What Does That Mean?

It means the inmates are running the asylum that exists where Europe used to be. Hopefully the productive class over there will see this as the idiocy it is and, where possible, start moving assets overseas. Those who cannot afford a foreign bank account may just start keeping their money in a mattress.

This is, allegedly, being done to stop deflation but the endgame is more inflation and a weaker Euro. However, inflation cannot trigger sustained growth. At best, it can cause an economic spurt by promoting bubbles that rely on loose credit practices. When the monetary pumping slows or stops those bubble activities go under. They simply cannot continue to fund themselves without a loose monetary policy to sustain them. In reality the only way to keep the bubble pump primed is to keep inflating the currency.

Despite centuries of history on how badly inflationary practices turn out, politicians still have not figured it out. On the other hand, maybe they have. After all, those in power are well-situated to enrich themselves and for decades have been kicking the debt into the future for some other "leaders" to deal with. By then the current crop of parasites will have retired to their villas and will be better insulated from the misery they helped cause.

I'd like to say the productive class deserves better but people do not always get the government they deserve. They do, however, get the worst government they will tolerate.