Website and automated forms processes, Copyright
2007, Matthew August LeFande.
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Website and automated forms processes, Copyright
2007, Matthew August LeFande.
All
rights reserved. No claim to original government forms
Fla. officer fired for leaving gun near kids
A police officer was fired after sheriff's deputies said she left her three young daughters home alone with a loaded handgun.
The oldest girl greeted Lake County Sheriff's deputies at the door late Wednesday wearing Marie Kasinger's bulletproof police vest.
Deputies said the 12-year-old called 911 and had been holding the gun for protection. The girl and her sisters had been frightened by a banging noise outside.
Fruitland Park Police Chief J.M. Isom collected Kasinger's badge, uniform and .45-caliber handgun from her Thursday at her Lady Lake home. Kasinger, 39, had worked for the police department for about three months.
"She just made a bad mistake," Isom said. "But it was a serious offense. Somebody could've been seriously hurt."
The 12-year-old girl told dispatchers her mother was out celebrating a friend's birthday, and that she and her sisters, ages 11 and 7, thought they heard a prowler.
Deputies found Kasinger's police handgun in a closet with one bullet in the chamber.
Kasinger was issued a citation for unsafe storage of a firearm, a misdemeanor. She was not arrested. A court hearing was scheduled for Aug. 17.
http://www.floridatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050729/BREAKINGNEWS/50729010
posted by Matthew LeFande 7:32 AM
matt@lefande.com
UK business owners, who have been broken into must replace damaged glass with a safer version so future burglars don't get hurt
Business owners, who have been broken into must replace damaged glass with a safer version so future burglars don't get hurt - it has been revealed.
The requirement came to light last week when the manager of the Pavilions tea rooms in Tamworth's Castle Grounds, Linda Rawlins, claimed she was told by the council to replace the glass in her door with 'special laminate glass' after a burglar caused £1,000 worth of damage.
The incident happened on Friday morning at about 4am when the twenty-one year old male caused criminal damage - which he was later charged with - without gaining full access to the tea rooms.
A bewildered Mrs Rawlins now says she just doesn't know what to do and is disgusted at a system that 'sees fit to protect these criminals.'
"It's becoming a regular thing here, happening two or three times a year and I just don't understand it," she said.
"Having to put expensive special laminate glass in, in case they cause harm to themselves is beyond belief - It's pointless when they shouldn't be doing it in the first place, and so frustrating," she added.
Mrs Rawlins claims that the start of the summer season is always when 'the trouble starts' and she is bewildered as to why.
"The money is collected during the day at the tea rooms, we don't sell alcohol or cigarettes and there is never anything of value in here so it's very disappointing to have such costly damage all the time. I don't understand it but I wish it would stop."
Councillor John Garner, portfolio holder for Environment and Community Safety said:
"We were made aware of the break-in yesterday and are visiting the tea rooms to make an assessment.
"Repairs of this nature should be made bearing public safety in mind.
http://www.tamworthherald.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=159693&command=displayContent&sourceNode=159423&contentPK=12909092
posted by Matthew LeFande 8:32 AM
matt@lefande.com
Buffalo gives cash to man hurt while driving illegally
The city of Buffalo could wind up paying tens of thousands of dollars to a man who was driving with a suspended license when he was permanently injured in an alcohol-related crash.
Under a settlement approved yesterday by Buffalo's Common Council, Richard Adam of Buffalo would receive 75-thousand dollars for injuries he suffered in the October 2001 crash.
Police say his alcohol level was double the legal limit at the time of the crash. Authorities say Adam was driving with a suspended license in connection with an earlier drunken driving incident.
Despite the nature of the 2001 crash, city officials say Buffalo could be hit with a one (m) million-dollar liability if the case goes to trial. That's because the city has admitted it didn't install some safety measures on the streets near the crash site until after the accident occurred.
http://www.wkbw.com/Story.aspx?type=ln&NStoryID=4989
posted by Matthew LeFande 5:29 PM
matt@lefande.com
Are You A Little Bit Foreign?
http://www.rrbbs.com/cgi-bin/bbs/thread.pl?2-1316
posted by Matthew LeFande 5:22 PM
matt@lefande.com
LAPD recruits computer to stop rogue cops
Dogged by scandal, the Los Angeles Police Department is looking beyond human judgment to technology to identify bad cops. This month, the agency began using a $35 million computer system that tracks complaints and other telling data about officers — then alerts top supervisors to possible signs of misconduct.
The system is central to a federal oversight program ordered by the U.S. Justice Department after a wave of abuse allegations in the 1990s cast doubt on the LAPD's ability — and willingness — to police itself.
"There definitely needs to be computerized management" of officers, said Andre Birotte, the LAPD's inspector general. "There have been concerns with all the scandals that have gone on within the department."
Community leaders hope the tracking system can help restore public confidence shaken by high-profile shootings and scandals involving the LAPD.
"I don't think any single thing will solve problems with the Police Department. But this could go a long way toward doing it," said the Rev. Cecil "Chip" Murray, an activist and former pastor of First African Methodist Episcopal Church, an influential congregation in South Los Angeles.
The system, developed by Sierra Systems Group Inc. and Bearing Point Inc., mines databases of complaints, pursuits, lawsuits, uses of force and other records to detect patterns that human eyes might miss or choose to ignore.
In the past, much of that data existed only on paper spread across various bureaus. That made it difficult to compile detailed performance profiles of officers and spot potential abusers.
Now, anyone whose conduct differs sharply from their peers' automatically gets flagged. That could mean a vice detective who fires significantly more shots than other investigators or anti-gang cops with a high number of excessive force complaints.
Safeguards have been built in to catch abuse that might be widespread within certain peer groups.
If the system pinpoints unusual conduct, it triggers an electronic message to direct supervisors, who must take a second look. The notices also travel up the command chain to a deputy chief as an extra level of oversight. Managers can access the system anywhere in the department through an internal Web site.
Depending on their conduct, some officers could be ordered to undergo more training or counseling. Follow-up investigations could lead to firing or criminal charges.
Other troubled police departments, including New Orleans and Miami-Dade County, have turned to such tracking systems. New Orleans recorded a drop in citizen complaints, and Miami-Dade saw a decrease in use of force reports in the first years after systems were implemented, according to a 2001 study by the Justice Department.
The technology could face its toughest test at the LAPD — the second-largest police department in the nation with nearly 13,100 officers, jailers, dispatchers and other personnel.
Portrayed on TV as dutiful and honest in the Dragnet and Adam-12 eras, the department has long struggled with allegations of brutality, even before the 1991 videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King.
Tension flared again this month when police shot and killed a 19-month-old girl and her father as he clutched the girl and fired dozens of rounds at officers. Police are investigating the standoff, which left relatives and activists outraged that officers didn't show more patience during the incident.
Some rank-and-file officers fear the tracking system could mistakenly tag hardworking personnel and hurt their careers.
"How many times do you have to get triggered before they slow you down, transfer you, and you get a bad reputation?" said Gary Ingemunson, independent counsel for the union that represents LAPD officers. "The subtle message is: stay in the middle of the pack. Don't stand out."
Union lawyers also argue that bad cops could game the system by curbing their activities just enough to avoid being detected, while good cops might hesitate in life-and-death situations due to concerns about getting flagged.
"A lot of hesitation could get somebody killed," Ingemunson said.
Police Chief William Bratton questions whether anything can end abuse and corruption by officers.
"Nothing will eliminate it," Bratton said earlier this year as the city announced that payouts from a corruption scandal at the Rampart Division would cost taxpayers nearly $70 million.
Claims that officers working in the rough division beat and framed innocent people resulted in scores of criminal convictions being reversed.
"As long as you have police officers, you always have the potential for corruption," Bratton said. "As long as you have human beings, there is potential for crime."
Others wonder whether computer algorithms can analyze something as complex as police behavior. They say no amount of number-crunching can account for stress, personal problems and psychological quirks.
"There are people who look wonderful ... and then do something out of the blue that's totally inappropriate," said Dr. Susan Saxe-Clifford, a psychologist who has worked with Los Angeles police. "We're working with people, not machines."
Los Angeles police have little choice about using the system, first recommended in 1991 by a special commission formed after the King beating that found major lapses in the agency's efforts to roust problem officers.
Critics lobbied for the system over the years but met resistance from the department and City Hall. Federal funds set aside for the program went unspent.
Meanwhile, accusations of abuse persisted. Last year, the department fielded nearly 6,500 complaints ranging from excessive force to racial profiling. About 14% have been sustained, with 1,400 still under investigation.
By comparison, there were 5,212 complaints in 1999, with 36% upheld after nearly all the investigations were completed.
The LAPD said it has made progress in countering abuse. Under the 2001 federal consent decree, it beefed up its internal investigations and established an ethics enforcement section that runs sting operations on suspected corrupt officers.
Department brass have tried to ease fears of the computer system, saying most of the cops spotlighted won't face consequences. Many could even receive commendations if the system shows them doing exemplary work.
What's more, the computer doesn't make a final decision but only gives a statistical overview for superiors to inspect, said Deputy Chief David Doan, who heads the bureau installing the system.
"A human being will analyze that and will be making that judgment," he said.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/surveillance/2005-07-25-lapd-cops_x.htm
posted by Matthew LeFande 8:02 AM
matt@lefande.com
Drug test biased against blacks, 7 ex-officers allege
Seven former Boston police officers, all African-Americans who were fired after testing positive for cocaine in drug tests using samples of their hair, sued the police department yesterday, alleging the screening technique is biased against African-Americans.
Rheba Rutkowski, an attorney at Bingham McCutchen who represents the former officers, said scientific literature indicates that the texture of African-American hair as well as the hair products they use could skew the results of a hair test. She also said hair tests are easier to pass if an employee has light hair, and that stray molecules can bind to African-American hair, altering the results.
''African-American hair is different from white hair because, among other things, it is coarser and thicker," Rutkowski said. ''In fact, those properties make it far more likely to yield a false positive on a hair test than white hair."
Officer Michael McCarthy, a Boston Police Department spokesman, said the department had not been notified of the lawsuit and could not comment on the allegations. But McCarthy said the department initiated the drug test in 1999 after ''extensive negotiations with the police unions. The unions had notice at that time if they wanted to raise an issue."
The test is an annual mandatory test given a month before each police officer's birthday. The mandatory hair test replaced a urine test. If officers fail the yearly hair test, they can agree to enter a drug rehabilitation program and are then subject to random urine tests. Several of the plaintiffs refused to participate in a rehab program.
The company that conducts the drug tests for the department, Psychemedics Corp. in Acton, said it has had no complaints from any of its hundreds of clients. The idea that ''drugs can get into your hair because of your race is a ridiculous concept," said Bill Thistle, senior vice president.
The public and private sector have increasingly used hair samples for drug tests, but they have drawn some criticism. Last year the Transportation Department and the Pentagon said they would not use hair, saliva or sweat tests to test federal workers for drugs because they were concerned about fairness.
Hair is typically clipped at an occupational medical center or collection site such as the workplace, placed in a container, sealed and shipped to a lab, where it is liquefied and tested for substances the body produces while processing drugs. Test results are usually returned in 48 hours.
Employers are turning to hair tests instead of urine tests because of a growing number of products that can mask or invalidate urine test results. The products, often sold on the Internet, have names like Clear Choice and Urine Luck.
The hair test cannot be altered, supporters say. When a person ingests drugs the substances travel through the bloodstream and accumulate in the hair, Psychemedics' Thistle said. Once there, the drug traces cannot be removed by shampoos, he said. They remain in the hair follicle for months, becoming incorporated in the hair strand.
Thistle said the test is ''extremely accurate." He said the company has various hair tests for marijuana, cocaine, and opiates as well as PCP and all have been cleared by the Federal Drug Administration. The company also tests officers in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
Nadine Cohen, an attorney at the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in Boston who also represents the plaintiffs, said the police department has been using a ''scientifically unreliable test and a racially biased test" to make decisions about the employment of police officers.
The seven officers were fired in 2002, 2003, or 2004 after testing positive for cocaine in the department's yearly mandatory hair screening. Rutkowski said that after they failed that test, the officers sought independent tests at their own expense and the results were negative for drugs.
''Some plaintiffs actually walked into Psychemedics and got independent tests there, and the results were negative," she said. ''So, some tested both negative and positive on the same day at the same lab,"
But the police department would not accept the new findings, Rutkowski said. In addition to the former officers, an African-American job applicant and the Massachusetts Association of Minority Law Enforcement Officers, are part of the suit against the department.
The job applicant, Claraise Bristow, 40, of Boston, was not hired for a position as a 911 operator in December 2002 after testing positive. Under the department's rules, applicants must submit to a drug test before they are hired. The suit was filed in Suffolk Superior Court and it also names the City of Boston.
The plaintiffs want their jobs back and to ''clear their names," Rutkowski said. ''They also want compensation for everything they have lost, including damages for having lost their reputations. They also want this practice to stop."
One of the officers, Shawn Harris, 36, of Boston, had worked for the Boston Police Department for more than three years when he lost his job in April 2003 after testing positive for cocaine.
He said that 48 hours after the police test came back positive he went to a diagnostics center in Cambridge and took another test at his own expense.
That hair test came back negative. He said he brought those results to the police department, but it would not consider them.
Harris and five other plaintiffs refused to sign a sheet requiring that they participate in a rehabilitation program and take random drug tests to remain on the force. Another officer signed the form so as to keep his job, but was fired after he tested positive at a later date.
''I refused to sign," said Harris. ''I refused to say I was a drug abuser because I do not use drugs. That's why I was terminated."
Angela Williams-Mitchell, 48, president of the Massachusetts Association of Minority Law Enforcement Officers, which has more than 350 members, said her members have complained about the test over the years. Many who have tested positive signed the police department sheet admitting wrongdoing and agreed to rehabilitation because they could not afford to lose their jobs, she said.
''This has been a problem from the time hair testing began," Williams-Mitchell said.
The other plaintiffs are Ronnie Jones, 49; Richard Beckers, 44; Walter R. Robinson, 39; William E. Bridgeforth, 49; Eugene Wade, 55; and George C. Downing Jr., 34. Several have left the state to look for other work, the lawyers said.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2005/07/27/drug_test_biased_against_blacks_7_ex_officers_allege/
posted by Matthew LeFande 7:58 AM
matt@lefande.com
Tree Terrorists v. Eureka California Police
Video of Police using pepper spray to remove trespassing protestors from timber company office.
http://www.newsfilter.org/user_submit/uploads/peppersprayprotest0-5012.wmv
posted by Matthew LeFande 7:37 AM
matt@lefande.com
Bin Laden Cocaine Plot Fell Through
Usama bin Laden tried to buy a massive amount of cocaine, spike it with poison and sell it in the United States, hoping to kill thousands of Americans one year after the Sept. 11 attacks, The Post has learned.
The evil plot failed when the Colombian drug lords bin Laden approached decided it would be bad for their business — and, possibly, for their own health, according to law-enforcement sources familiar with the Drug Enforcement Administration's probe of the aborted transaction.
The feds were told of the scheme earlier this year, but its existence had never been made public. The Post has reviewed a document detailing the DEA's findings in the matter, in addition to interviewing sources familiar with the case.
Sources said the feds were told that bin Laden personally met with leaders of a Colombian drug cartel to in 2002 to negotiate the purchase of tons of cocaine, saying that he was willing to spend tens of millions of dollars to finance the deal.
It was not clear where the meeting took place.
Bin Laden hoped that large numbers of Americans dying from poisoned coke would lead to widespread terror.
"They wanted to kill thousands of people — more than the World Trade Center," said a source.
Although the drug lords would have reaped millions of dollars in profits by selling the cocaine to bin Laden, they knew that if his plan succeeded it might effectively destroy the market for their coke in America for years, sources said.
But that was only one reason they declined bin Laden's offer.
The other was their fear of retaliation from the U.S. government once its citizens started to die from the drugs, according to sources.
Despite bin Laden's plan being thwarted, the DEA believes that al Qaeda continues to this day to traffic in drugs to fund a variety of its operations — including training, traveling and terror attacks.
In 2002, then-DEA Director Asa Hutchinson said, "The DEA [has] received multi-source information that Usama bin Laden himself has been involved in the financing and facilitation of heroin-trafficking activities."
"It is important we recognize that when money goes from the pocket of an American to buy drugs, it may contribute to the financing of unspeakable crimes of violence around the world," Hutchinson told Congress that year when he detailed the narcotics trade connection to al Qaeda and other terror groups.
In April of this year, Afghan tribal leader Hajji Bashir Noorzai, who was one of the most wanted drug dealers in the world and previously had been identified as bin Laden's major heroin supplier, was busted in New York City on federal criminal charges.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,163633,00.html
posted by Matthew LeFande 9:31 AM
matt@lefande.com
DC deadliest for teen drivers
Washington D.C. is considered deadlier for young motorists than any state, according to a recent survey.
The study, which ranked the states and the District of Columbia according to fatality rates among drivers ages 16 to 20, determined that approximately 127 fatalities occur for every 100,000 young motorists in the District of Columbia.
The study was conducted by the traffic safety group End Needless Death on Our Roadways (END) and the National Safety Council.
"Youth-related driving fatalities are an epidemic in the United States," said Dr. Thomas Esposito, the co-chair of END and Director of Loyola University Medical Center's Injury Analysis and Prevention Program, in a statement.
"Young drivers, their passengers and passengers in other vehicles are dying needlessly because many young motorists are not given proper guidance, or when unsupervised, choose to participate in unsafe driving behavior during their early driving experience," he said.
Following behind the District of Columbia as the deadliest states for teen drivers were North Carolina, Mississippi, Delaware and Louisiana.
New Hampshire reported the lowest rate of teen fatalities with 35.8 per 100,000 teenage drivers, according to the study, while Connecticut, New Jersey and Massachusetts also experienced a low rate of traffic fatalities among teenagers.
Drivers aged 16 to 20, who make up six percent of the driving population nationwide, are involved in 20 percent of all fatal motor vehicle crashes, according to END.
Russ Rader, a spokesperson for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), says that the lack of maturity in teen drivers and their penchant for taking risks is to blame for the high rate of accidents among young motorists.
"They think they're immortal and they don't recognize the dangers of risky driving," he said.
END and the National Safety Council, the groups that conducted the study, urge parents to enforce a stricter set of rules for their teens.
They suggest parents have a novice driver spend 30 to 50 hours of supervised driving with a licensed adult in the car. Parents should also restrict the number of passengers riding with a teen younger than 18 and deny driving privileges for any alcohol violations. Unsupervised nighttime driving between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. should be prohibited until age 18, they suggested.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/AUTOS/07/19/teen_drivers/
posted by Matthew LeFande 8:59 AM
matt@lefande.com
Prank order fills officers' tummies
There were two problems with the feast delivered to officers at the Devonshire Police Station in Northridge CA on Friday afternoon: Pizza and barbecue aren't the best match -- and nobody at the station had ordered food.
The station, the apparent butt of a practical joke, received the food after somebody identifying himself as "Officer O'Neil" ordered $400 worth of barbecue meat, salads and bread from the Outdoor Grill and $150 in pizza from Pizza Pazza to be delivered to the station.
Officer O'Neil doesn't exist, but there were plenty of hungry officers to take his place. And both restaurants donated the food to the station, creating an impromptu party, Devonshire Capt. Joseph Curreri said.
"There was too much food. The pizza, we shared that with a local fire station."
David Sainoz, manager of the Outdoor Grill, said the restaurant usually requires a credit- card number for such large orders, but figured that an order delivered to a police station wouldn't be a problem. "My boss took the order to the police station, and what a surprise. It was kind of strange."
The Police Department filed a crime report for the pranks, but Curreri said it would be difficult to trace the perpetrator through phone records because restaurants get so many lunchtime calls.
"This is the first time that has happened in the seven-plus years that I've been here," Curreri said. "It could be somebody that just bailed out of jail and is upset with us and wanted to stiff us with a large bill, and it could be somebody upset with the restaurants, or it could be kids just fooling around.
"We wanted to thank both of those establishments for their generosity in donating the food, and we want to get the word out to other establishments in our area: It's probably a good thing to verify large orders like this."
http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200~20954~2977698,00.html
posted by Matthew LeFande 7:32 AM
matt@lefande.com
No Consent
http://www.cafepress.com/dontconsent.26738615
posted by Matthew LeFande 7:54 AM
matt@lefande.com
Our Wars Over the War
Ever since September 11, there has been an alternative narrative about this war embraced by the Left. In this mythology, the attack on September 11 had in some vague way something to do with American culpability.
Either we were unfairly tilting toward Israel, or had been unkind to Muslims. Perhaps, as Sen. Patty Murray intoned, we needed to match the good works of bin Laden to capture the hearts and minds of Muslim peoples.
The fable continues that the United States itself was united after the attack even during its preparations to retaliate in Afghanistan. But then George Bush took his eye off the ball. He let bin Laden escape, and worst of all, unilaterally and preemptively, went into secular Iraq — an unnecessary war for oil, hegemony, Israel, or Halliburton, something in Ted Kennedy’s words “cooked up in Texas.”
In any case, there was no connection between al Qaeda and Saddam, and thus terrorists only arrived in Iraq after we did.
That tale goes on. The Iraqi fiasco is now a hopeless quagmire. The terrorists are paying us back for it in places like London and Madrid.
Still worse, here at home we have lost many of our civil liberties to the Patriot Act and forsaken our values at Guantanamo Bay under the pretext of war. Nancy Pelosi could not understand the continued detentions in Guantanamo since the war in Afghanistan is in her eyes completely finished.
In this fable, we are not safer as a nation. George Bush’s policies have increased the terror threat as we saw recently in the London bombing. We have now been at war longer than World War II. We still have no plan to defeat our enemies, and thus must set a timetable to withdraw from Iraq.
Islamic terrorism cannot be defeated militarily nor can democracy be “implanted by force.” So it is time to return to seeing the terrorist killing as a criminal justice matter — a tolerable nuisance addressed by writs and indictments, while we give more money to the Middle East and begin paying attention to the “root causes” of terror.
That is the dominant narrative of the Western Left and at times it finds its way into mainstream Democratic-party thinking. Yet every element of it is false.
Prior to 9/11, the United States had given an aggregate of over $50 billion to Egypt, and had allotted about the same amount of aid to Israel as to its frontline enemies. We had helped to save Muslims in Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, Kuwait, and Afghanistan, and received little if any thanks for bombing Christian Europeans to finish in a matter of weeks what all the crack-pot jihadists had not done by flocking to the Balkans in a decade.
Long before Afghanistan and Iraq, bin Laden declared war on America in 1998, citing the U.N. embargo of Iraq and troops in Saudi Arabia; when those were no longer issues, he did not cease, but continued his murdering. He harbored a deep-seated contempt for Western values, even though he was eaten within by uncontrolled envy and felt empowered by years of appeasement after a series of attacks on our embassies, bases, ships, and buildings, both here and abroad.
Iraqi intelligence was involved with the first World Trade Center bombing, and its operatives met on occasion with those who were involved in al Qaeda operations. Every terrorist from Abu Abbas and Abu Nidal to Abdul Yasin and Abu al-Zarqawi found Baghdad the most hospitable place in the Middle East, which explains why a plan to assassinate George Bush Sr. was hatched from such a miasma.
Neither bin Laden nor his lieutenants are poor, but like the Hamas suicide bombers, Mohammed Atta, or the murderer of Daniel Pearl they are usually middle class and educated — and are more likely to hate the West, it seems, the more they wanted to be part of it. The profile of the London bombers, when known, will prove the same.
The poor in South America or Africa are not murdering civilians in North America or Europe. The jihadists are not bombing Chinese for either their godless secularism or suppression of Muslim minorities. Indeed, bin Laden harbored more hatred for an America that stopped the Balkan holocaust of Muslims than for Slobodan Milosevic who started it.
There was only unity in this country between September 11 and October 6, when a large minority of Americans felt our victim status gave us for a golden moment the high ground. We forget now the furor over hitting back in Afghanistan — a quagmire in the words of New York Times columnists R. W. Apple and Maureen Dowd; a “terrorist campaign” against Muslims according to Representative Cynthia McKinney; “a silent genocide” in Noam Chomsky’s ranting.
Two thirds of al Qaeda’s command is now captured or dead; bases in Afghanistan are lost. Saddam’s intelligence will not be lending expertise to anyone and the Baghdad government won’t welcome in terrorist masterminds.
In fact, thousands of brave Iraqi Muslims are now in a shooting war with wahhabi jihadists who, despite their carnage, are dying in droves as they flock to Iraq.
A constitution is in place in Iraq; reform is spreading to Lebanon, the Gulf, and Egypt; and autocracies in Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Pakistan are apprehensive over a strange new American democratic zeal. Petroleum was returned to control of the Iraqi people, and the price has skyrocketed to the chagrin of American corporations.
There has been no repeat of September 11 so far. Killing jihadists abroad while arresting their sympathizers here at home has made it hard to replicate another 9/11-like attack.
The Patriot Act was far less intrusive than what Abraham Lincoln (suspension of habeas corpus), Woodrow Wilson (cf. the Espionage and Sedition Acts), or Franklin Roosevelt (forced internment) resorted to during past wars. So far America has suffered in Iraq .006 percent of the combat dead it lost in World War II, while not facing a conventional enemy against which it might turn its traditional technological and logistical advantages.
Unlike Gulf War I and the decade-long Iraqi cold war of embargos, stand-off bombing, and no-fly-zones, the United States has a comprehensive strategy both in the war against terror and to end a decade and a half of Iraqi strife: Kill terrorists abroad, depose theocratic and autocratic regimes that have either warred with the United States or harbored terrorists, and promote democracy to take away grievances that can be manipulated and turned against us.
Why does this false narrative, then, persist — other than that it had a certain political utility in the 2002 and 2004 elections?
In a word, this version of events brings spiritual calm for millions of troubled though affluent and blessed Westerners. There are three sacraments to their postmodern thinking, besides the primordial fear that so often leads to appeasement.
Our first hindrance is moral equivalence. For the hard Left there is no absolute right and wrong since amorality is defined arbitrarily and only by those in power.
Taking back Fallujah from beheaders and terrorists is no different from bombing the London subway since civilians may die in either case. The deliberate rather than accidental targeting of noncombatants makes little difference, especially since the underdog in Fallujah is not to be judged by the same standard as the overdogs in London and New York. A half-dozen roughed up prisoners in Guantanamo are the same as the Nazi death camps or the Gulag.
Our second shackle is utopian pacifism — ‘war never solved anything’ and ‘violence only begets violence.’ Thus it makes no sense to resort to violence, since reason and conflict resolution can convince even a bin Laden to come to the table. That most evil has ended tragically and most good has resumed through armed struggle — whether in Germany, Japan, and Italy or Panama, Belgrade, and Kabul — is irrelevant. Apparently on some past day, sophisticated Westerners, in their infinite wisdom and morality, transcended age-old human nature, and as a reward were given a pass from the smelly, dirty old world of the past six millennia.
The third restraint is multiculturalism, or the idea that all social practices are of equal merit. Who are we to generalize that the regimes and fundamentalist sects of the Middle East result in economic backwardness, intolerance of religious and ethnic minorities, gender apartheid, racism, homophobia, and patriarchy? Being different from the West is never being worse.
These tenets in various forms are not merely found in the womb of the universities, but filter down into our popular culture, grade schools, and national political discourse — and make it hard to fight a war against stealthy enemies who proclaim constant and shifting grievances. If at times these doctrines are proven bankrupt by the evidence it matters little, because such beliefs are near religious in nature — a secular creed that will brook no empirical challenge.
These articles of faith apparently fill a deep psychological need for millions of Westerners, guilty over their privilege, free to do anything without constraints or repercussions, and convinced that their own culture has made them spectacularly rich and leisured only at the expense of others.
So it is not true to say that Western civilization is at war against Dark Age Islamism. Properly speaking, only about half of the West is involved, the shrinking segment that still sees human nature as unchanging and history as therefore replete with a rich heritage of tragic lessons.
This is nothing new.
The spectacular inroads of the Ottomans in the16th century to the gates of Vienna and the shores of the Adriatic were not explainable according to Istanbul’s vibrant economy, impressive universities, or widespread scientific dynamism and literacy, or even a technologically superior and richly equipped military. Instead, a beleaguered Europe was trisected by squabbling Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox Christians — as a wealthy northwest, with Atlantic seaports, ignored the besieged Mediterranean and Balkans and turned its attention to getting rich in the New World.
So too we are divided over two antithetical views of the evolving West — Europe at odds with America, red and blue states in intellectual and spiritual divergence, the tragic view resisting the creeping therapeutic mindset.
These interior splits largely explain why creepy killers from the Dark Ages, parasitic on the West from their weapons to communications, are still plaguing us four years after their initial surprise attack.
http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200507150804.asp
posted by Matthew LeFande 7:53 AM
matt@lefande.com
Chicago officer charged with murder scheme
An officer on the police force for 14 years has been charged with arranging a murder in a scheme to collect on a $500,000 life insurance policy.
Officer Edward Leak Jr. was ordered held without bail after being charged Thursday with first-degree murder and solicitation to commit murder for hire in the shooting death of Fred Hamilton, said Cook County state's attorney spokesman Tom Stanton.
Hamilton, 35, a driver for a South Side funeral home owned by Leak's family, was shot nine times when he stopped to change a flat tire in February 2004.
Prosecutors say Leak hired two men to ambush Hamilton as part of a scheme to collect on a $500,000 life insurance policy he had taken out on Hamilton.
In addition, Hamilton had made an anonymous calls to the police department's Internal Affairs Division months before his death claiming that Leak was involved in insurance fraud, Deputy Police Superintendent Hiram Grau said.
Leak, 42, was arrested Thursday after an internal investigation by the police department and its cold case squad.
Two other men -- 44-year-old Alfred Marley and John Brown, 33 -- were charged last year with first-degree murder in connection with Hamilton's slaying and are being held without bail, Cook County state's attorney spokeswoman Tandra Simonton said.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/07/17/chicago.murder.ap/index.html
posted by Matthew LeFande 7:46 AM
matt@lefande.com
The Right to Self-Defense
On June 27, in the case of Castle Rock v. Gonzales, the Supreme Court found that Jessica Gonzales did not have a constitutional right to police protection even in the presence of a restraining order.
By a vote of 7-to-2, the Supreme Court ruled that Gonzales has no right to sue her local police department for failing to protect her and her children from her estranged husband.
The post-mortem discussion on Gonzales has been fiery but it has missed an obvious point. If the government won't protect you, then you have to take responsibility for your own self-defense and that of your family. The court's ruling is a sad decision, but one that every victim and/or potential victim of violence must note: calling the police is not enough. You must also be ready to defend yourself.
In 1999, Gonzales obtained a restraining order against her estranged husband Simon, which limited his access to their children. On June 22, 1999, Simon abducted their three daughters. Though the Castle Rock police department disputes some of the details of what happened next, the two sides are in basic agreement: After her daughters' abduction, Gonzales repeatedly phoned the police for assistance. Officers visited the home. Believing Simon to be non-violent and, arguably, in compliance with the limited access granted by the restraining order, the police did nothing.
The next morning, Simon committed "suicide by cop." He shot a gun repeatedly through a police station window and was killed by returned fire. The murdered bodies of Leslie, 7, Katheryn, 9 and Rebecca, 10 were found in Simon's pickup truck.
In her lawsuit, Gonzales claimed the police violated her 14th Amendment right to due process and sued them for $30 million. She won at the Appeals level.
What were the arguments that won and lost in the Supreme Court?
Winners: local officials fell back upon a rich history of court decisions that found the police to have no constitutional obligation to protect individuals from private individuals. In 1856, the U.S. Supreme Court (South v. Maryland) found that law enforcement officers had no affirmative duty to provide such protection. In 1982 (Bowers v. DeVito), the Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit held, "...there is no Constitutional right to be protected by the state against being murdered by criminals or madmen."
Later court decisions have concurred.
Losers: anti-domestic violence advocates and women's groups, such as the National Association of Women Lawyers, failed to establish that restraining orders were constitutional entitlements. If they had succeeded, the enforcement of such orders would have been guaranteed by due process. Failure to enforce them would have been grounds for a lawsuit against the police, a precedent that local officials feared would flood them with expensive litigation.
Public analysis of Rock v. Gonzales has been largely defined by these two opposing positions.
A third position cries out: Given the court's position that the police are not obliged to protect us, responsible adults need the ability to defend themselves. Thus, no law or policy should impede the access to gun ownership.
Responsible adults — both male and female — have both a right and a need to defend themselves and their families, with lethal force if necessary. If domestic violence advocates had focused on putting a gun in Jessica's hand and training her to use it, then the three Gonzales children might still be alive. After all, Jessica knew where her husband was. Indeed, she informed the police repeatedly of his location.
Of course, the Gonzales case — in and of itself — presents difficulties for the use of armed force by private citizens. Would the same police who believed Simon Gonzales was not dangerous have believed Jessica to be justified in picking up a gun to protect her children from him? Would the police have charged her for use of a weapon? Regardless, these sticky debates would probably be taking place in the presence of three living children and not three dead ones.
Nevertheless, most anti-domestic violence advocates strenuously avoid gun ownership as a possible solution to domestic violence. Instead, they appeal for more police intervention even though the police have no obligation to provide protection.
When groups like the National Organization for Women (NOW) do focus on gun ownership, it is to make such statements as, "Guns and domestic violence make a lethal combination, injuring and killing women every day."
In short, NOW addresses the issue of gun ownership and domestic violence only in order to demand a prohibition on the ability of abusers — always defined as men — to own weapons.
That position may be defensible. But it ignores half of the equation. It ignores the need of potential victims to defend themselves and their families. Anti-domestic violence and women's groups create the impression that guns are always part of the problem and never part of the solution.
The current mainstream of feminism — from which most anti-domestic violence advocates proceed — is an expression of left liberalism. It rejects private solutions based on individual rights in favor of laws aimed at achieving social goals. A responsible individual holding a gun in self-defense does not fit their vision of society.
In the final analysis, such advocates do not trust the judgment of the women they claim to be defending. They do not believe that Jessica Gonzales' three children would have been safer with a mother who was armed and educated in gun use.
The clear message of Gonzales bears repeating because you will not hear it elsewhere. The police have no obligation to protect individuals who, therefore, should defend themselves. The content of state laws does not matter; by Colorado State law, the police are required to "use every reasonable means to enforce a protection order." The Supreme Court has ruled and that's that.
In the wake of Gonzales, every anti-domestic violence advocate should advise victims — male or female — to learn self-defense. They should lobby for the repeal of any law or policy that hinders responsible gun ownership.
The true meaning of being anti-domestic violence means is to help victims out of their victimhood and into a position of power.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,162325,00.html
posted by Matthew LeFande 7:20 AM
matt@lefande.com
UK Guardian calls for surrender to terrorists
Author David Reiff suggests that we should negotiate with religious extremists intent on killing anyone not subscribing to their particular invisible man in the sky.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/comment/story/0,16141,1529853,00.html
posted by Matthew LeFande 12:56 PM
matt@lefande.com
Brookline MA denies Military Reservists Gun Permits
In the two years since he's been in the military reserves, the United States Army has trusted David Bardfield to carry and fire a weapon.
But the town of Brookline doesn't seem to have the same faith in the 28-year-old Army specialist.
Bardfield recently completed military police investigator course work at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri. Since 2003, he has been issued a military firearm on various occasions, including a handgun at Fort Devens in Ayer, where he worked on patrol. He also patrolled an Army base in Italy, where he was authorized to carry a pistol when he made his rounds.
But Bardfield has been waiting nearly four months for the town to grant him a license to participate in target practice to help sharpen his skills.
"It's very frustrating," said Bardfield. "I just want my license."
Bardfield said police told him last month that because his name appeared in a police incident report when he was a teenager, he is being denied a license - even though he was not arrested at the time.
He was 14 years old when he was picked up by police with a group of kids near Larz Anderson Park after one of the boys he was with pointed a loaded BB gun at a car. Bardfield said he was taken to the station and waited for his parents to pick him up.
But Bardfield said police told him last month that because the boy with the BB gun is now a Level 3 sex offender, his gun license was being denied "on the grounds I associate myself with felons."
Police said however, that Bardfield's license was not denied. Instead, they said his application was incomplete.
Brookline Police Capt. John O'Leary would not say what about his application was incomplete, but said police sent a letter to his lawyer on Friday letting him know what he must do to complete the application.
Bardfield's lawyer, Keith Langer, believes his client has fulfilled all license requirements.
"His [the chief's] position is that the application is incomplete, and it is our position that the state requirements have been fully satisfied as well as those additionally proposed by the Brookline Police Department," said Langer.
Langer said it seemed strange that someone who is authorized to have a gun under "U.S. Army standards" should be penalized because of a "non-incident" that occurred more than a decade ago.
Bardfield is not the only soldier who has complained of problems obtaining a gun license in Brookline.
In February, Kang Lu, a Chinese-born U.S. Army captain, sued Brookline Police Chief Daniel O'Leary because he was denied the right to carry a weapon. In May, the court ordered O'Leary to contact Lu, now an Army doctor in Washington, to determine the status of his residency because he now lives out of state, according to his lawyer. Lu has still not heard from the chief, his lawyer said.
"What was interesting about it was the judge, when he issued the order, he had crossed out the part about determining suitability, which I would infer means suitability is no longer an issue for the judge," said Jesse Cohen, Lu's lawyer. "I would infer means that we should be getting a decision that Captain Lu is in fact suitable."
Bardfield's lawyer said he sees a pattern.
"They [the Brookline Police] have a fairly well-established record" [of making it hard for people to get gun licenses], said Langer, and said the police are known to be "somewhat obstructionistic in their licensing practices."
In Brookline, there is one gun license for every 250 people, while in Newton, there's a license for every 99 residents. In Brookline, 24 percent of all applicants are granted a license while Newton approves 97 percent.
Bardfield said the problem of obtaining a gun license in Brookline is not new for his family. He said his brother was denied a license because police felt he was not a Brookline resident, because he was attending school at the University of Vermont. Bardfield said, however, that his brother spent half of the week at school and half of the week in Brookline working for their father.
For the time being, Bardfield says he can practice at the Boston Gun and Rifle Club as a guest of his sister who has a license - issued in Boston.
"I just want a target practice license because I'm in the reserves," Bardfield said.
http://www2.townonline.com/brookline/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=286146&format=text
posted by Matthew LeFande 12:51 PM
matt@lefande.com
Taco 911 Call
If it is what it is, then it is really something.
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/audio/taco911.html
posted by Matthew LeFande 7:57 PM
matt@lefande.com
Soldier survives sniper attack; captures, treats sniper
During a routine patrol in Baghdad June 2, Army Pfc. Stephen Tschiderer, a medic, was shot in the chest by an enemy sniper, hiding in a van just 75 yards away. The incident was filmed by the insurgents.
Tschiderer, with E Troop, 101st “Saber” Cavalry Division, attached to 3rd Battalion, 156th Infantry Regiment, 256th Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, was knocked to the ground from the impact, but he popped right back up, took cover and located the enemy’s position.
After tracking down the now-wounded sniper with a team from B Company, 4th Battalion, 1st Iraqi Army Brigade, Tschiderer secured the terrorist with a pair of handcuffs and gave medical aid to the terrorist who’d tried to kill him just minutes before.
With video goodness.
http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-976420.php
posted by Matthew LeFande 4:35 PM
matt@lefande.com
Ex-cons guarding schools in D.C
The Metropolitan Police Department has licensed private security officers in the D.C. public school system despite past arrests on charges of assault, cocaine possession and passing counterfeit money, according to a draft report by the D.C. Inspector General.
"There are contracted security personnel working in [public schools] who may pose a risk to the secure environment of students and staff," the draft document states.
"There is no assurance that all contracted school security personnel possess the requisite skills to ensure the safety and security of ... students and faculty," according to the report, which has not yet been finalized.
The Inspector General's Office refused to comment on the audit yesterday, saying its policy does not permit officials to discuss draft reports.
"When we issue a draft, it is only for the limited purpose for the recipients to respond to us, and we cannot comment on the report until responses are received and the final report is issued," interim Inspector General Austin A. Andersen said.
Lt. Jon Shelton, who heads the police department's security-officer management branch, said yesterday that the recent transfer of oversight of the security contract from schools to police has resulted in more scrutiny of officers hired to work in the schools.
"Nobody goes into the school unless I know they're going into the schools," he said.
D.C. school officials yesterday referred all questions to the police department.
Because it is a draft report, the audit contains conclusions that could change based on responses from the D.C. public school system and the Metropolitan Police Department.
But preliminary findings have exposed a breakdown in communications among police and school and security company officials.
According to the report, the inspector general researched the backgrounds of 30 security officers randomly selected from among 400 working in the school system for Watkins Security Agency of D.C. Inc. last school year.
Eight of those 30 officers, whose names were not released, had criminal histories, including four who did not make any mention of their arrest records on affidavits and employment documents, the report shows.
One security officer had been arrested four times: twice for distributing counterfeit money, once as a fugitive in connection with a previous arrest and another time for simple assault. That officer was convicted for delivering counterfeit money, a felony, in November 1998.
"Although MPD had access to applicants' criminal background histories during the pre-employment process, MPD did not share this with [D.C. Public Schools] or the contractor," the report stated.
The report also faults Watkins, the school system's previous security contractor, for not following up on character and employment references, performing credit checks or maintaining records of required training and drug tests.
Watkins officials defended the company's performance yesterday. The company said it performed internal screening and rejected many applicants, but relied heavily on the police department's decision to issue a security officer's license.
"Watkins did what they were supposed to do, which is hire people who were vetted, approved and licensed by MPD," said company spokeswoman Donna Henry. "MPD's job is to say this is a person who should or should not be watching our kids, and they have fallen short of that."
Lt. Shelton said that under city rules, a criminal background has not always automatically disqualified security officers from getting licenses.
For example, special police officers have been permitted to receive licenses as long as they have not been convicted of a felony within the past 10 years or a misdemeanor in the past five years, he said.
Lt. Shelton said some officers whose applications were rejected have been able to overturn the decision through an appeals process.
Assistant Police Chief Gerald Wilson said yesterday that he would not comment on specific findings of the audit until the final report is issued. In general, he said, security officers in the schools are "highly scrutinized."
He said police excluded more than a dozen private security officers working in the schools because they failed a written test or had criminal histories that would disqualify them under stricter regulations.
Concern over the background of security officers surfaced earlier this week after an armed guard for Hawk One Security Inc., the school system's new security contractor, was arrested for armed robbery on Saturday.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/metro/20050713-115625-5547r.htm
posted by Matthew LeFande 7:29 AM
matt@lefande.com
Felon with long rap sheet gets 99 years for stealing cellphone
A convicted Texas felon who went on profanity-laced tirades in court and told jurors he didn't care if they gave him life in prison was sentenced to 99 years for stealing a cellphone.
Jurors deliberated about 15 minutes before convicting Glenn Reed of robbery Thursday.
Reed, 31, was convicted as a habitual criminal because he had prior felony convictions for injury to an elderly person and robbery, which bumped the minimum sentence from five to 25 years. He also had 15 misdemeanour convictions dating to 1991.
Reed testified during both phases of the trial, swearing and telling jurors he didn't care if they sent him to prison for life.
"There's things I choose to do, like, if I go in a store and choose to take a Snicker's bar," Reed testified. "If you catch me, you catch me. If not, I'm going to go home and eat it up and go on about my business, dog."
At one point, he made an obscene hand gesture toward a retired Texas Ranger who testified against him. Reed had tried to rob the officer four years earlier but was overpowered by him.
In the cellphone incident, the owner had another phone with him and called the missing cellphone's number as he walked up the street. He could hear its distinctive Aggie War Hymn ring coming from Reed's pocket, so he followed him and demanded the phone back.
Reed gave back the phone but then hit the owner several times.
Prosecutors had offered Reed a 15-year plea deal before trial, but he rejected it.
http://www.canada.com/news/oddities/story.html?id=f785d4ed-9a10-4d75-8674-a16cb14027f7
posted by Matthew LeFande 7:52 AM
matt@lefande.com
Mother-son duo arrested in drive-by shooting
A 16-year-old arrested after a drive-by shooting Sunday had an unusual accomplice, police say: his mother.
Around 2 a.m., police said, a 45-year-old woman drove a car past a house in the 1900 block of West Regal while her son fired several shots.
They were both arrested later Sunday on suspicion of aggravated assault. Wichita police Capt. Randy Landen said the attack was likely a retaliation for unsettled debt.
He can't say it's the first case of a parent-child duo joining forces for a drive-by, but it's certainly a rarity.
"It's not uncommon for kids to be involved in the same kind of crime their parents were involved in; a lot of that is learned behavior," he said. "But this is just unique."
There were four people age 6 months to 39 years in the house, but none was hurt, Landen said. Three were sleeping, and the other reported being "missed by inches," Landen said.
The son placed a potato over the barrel of a .38 caliber revolver to help mute the sound, Landen said.
After the victims identified a suspect, Landen said, officers found potato remains with a bullet hole and gunshot residue in the floorboard of the woman's car.
Landen said the suspects probably picked up that trick from a television show, but it could have been a dangerous mistake.
"They're lucky it didn't cause the gun to explode," he said. "That's just absolutely silly."
When the barrel of a gun is blocked, the pressure created by firing a bullet can tear apart metal.
Detectives will talk with the district attorney's office about possible charges. Those could include additional charges to the mother if she pushed illegal behavior.
"Basically, she encouraged him to fire the weapon," Landen said.
"We're absolutely sure that she knew exactly what was going on."
http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/local/crime_courts/12110997.htm
posted by Matthew LeFande 7:35 AM
matt@lefande.com
Armed Citizen of the Week
Two burglary suspects were hospitalized Saturday after a 79-year-old homeowner said he opened fire on them after they broke into his Dry Ridge, KY residence.
The men, whose names were not available, were listed in serious and fair condition at University Hospital in Cincinnati, a nursing supervisor said. They were flown by medical helicopter after the pre-dawn shooting.
Gayle Martin, who lives alone, said he was awakened shortly before 5 a.m. by the sound of his back door being battered. He grabbed his .357-caliber Magnum handgun and went to check out the noise. He said he saw two men and figured they were going to rob him.
"They were in the house. They had just broke in. I didn't let them get any farther," Martin said. He started shooting and the men ran from the house. Martin said he did not recognize either man.
Sheriff's deputies arrived at Martin's house after receiving a 911 call from the residence at 4:55 a.m. They found the suspects, suffering from gunshot wounds, after searching the area.
Grant County Sheriff Randy Middleton called Martin lucky. "He's very lucky. They probably would have killed him."
Middleton also said Martin's marksmanship was impressive. "He's a good shot," he said.
Neighbor Nancy Collins, who has lived on Ellen Kay Drive for 30 years, said break-ins in the somewhat rural neighborhood are uncommon. "I felt safe on this street until now," she said.
She described Martin as a "very nice gentleman," who "stayed off by himself."
Deputies have not filed any charges in the case.
"We probably won't, because they were trying to break into his house," said Middleton.
Six hours after the shooting, Martin said he was feeling lucky that he wasn't hurt.
"I'm still a bit shook up," he said.
http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050710/NEWS01/507100361
posted by Matthew LeFande 7:28 AM
matt@lefande.com
UK Docs Want Kitchen Knives Banned
There is a menace lurking in British homes — the common kitchen knife.
Citing a rash of stabbings across Britain, three physicians wrote in a British Medical Journal article published in May that the large pointed knife beloved by chefs both professional and amateur was needlessly deadly and should be replaced by safer, blunter counterparts.
"The long pointed kitchen knife is an easily available, potentially lethal weapon, particularly in the domestic setting," wrote lead author Dr. Emma Hern of West Middlesex University Hospital in London.
Short knives, Hern and her colleagues Drs. Will Glazebrook and Mike Beckett wrote, generally caused only superficial wounds, but long pointed blades slip into human flesh in a way akin to "cutting into a ripe melon."
The doctors proposed a simple solution — outlawing pointed choppers and slicers.
"Government action to ban the sale of such knives," they wrote, "would drastically reduce their availability over the course of a few years."
Reaction from professional chefs in Britain was less than enthusiastic.
"Kitchen knives are designed for a purpose," the head of the Edinburgh, Scotland, Restaurateurs Association told The Scotsman newspaper. "It would be like asking a surgeon to perform an operation with a bread knife instead of a scalpel."
In America, where deadly weapons tend to be more sophisticated, leading authorities thought the proposed British ban was cute.
"Are they going to have everybody using plastic knives and forks and spoons in their own homes, like they do in airlines?" asked Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association.
"Can sharp stick control be far behind?" wondered LaPierre's erstwhile opponent, Peter Hamm of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
New York celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, not known for mincing words, was both blunt and sharp-tongued.
"This is yet another sign of the coming apocalypse," he said. "Where there is no risk, there is no pleasure."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,158032,00.html
posted by Matthew LeFande 7:26 AM
matt@lefande.com
New Va. gun law will change nothing
A new law went into effect on July 1 in Virginia that makes it perfectly legal for someone with a concealed weapon permit and a loaded gun to drive onto school grounds if the weapon remains concealed and its owner remains in the vehicle.
Since there are approximately 120,000 Virginians who already have concealed carry permits, this scenario may happen rather frequently.
The latest chipping away at ill-advised attempts at gun control in the commonwealth will likely have exactly the same outcome as the 1995 switch of one word in state law.
When the legislature changed "may issue" to "shall issue," taking away state officials' discretion and requiring them to issue a concealed carry permit to all who qualified for one, the ranks of Virginia's permit holders swelled from just 2,500 in 1994 to tens of thousands today.
But nothing happened. That's because people who bother to jump through the hoops and register with the state for a gun permit are not the ones we need to fear. Overwhelmingly, permit holders have proven themselves to be good citizens and responsible individuals who carry weapons for protection, not predation.
Judging by their past performance, the new law - which passed the House of Delegates 85-9 the state Senate 28-11, and was signed into law earlier this year by Gov. Mark Warner - will likely have similar negligible effects. Nobody will know which soccer mom is packing heat or which SUV is toting a gun along with the bookbags.
Of course, the Virginia PTA is outraged by even this modest restoration of Second Amendment rights. They should talk to their counterparts in Utah, where teachers, principals and other adults with concealed carry permits are not only allowed to carry loaded weapons onto school grounds, they can be kept in plain view inside their vehicles.
However, as Republican state Sen. Michael Waddoups - who sponsored Utah's much more lenient gun law - recently noted, there have been no incidents in which a firearm was inappropriately used on school grounds since the law went into effect.
Utah principals don't even know which of their employees carry concealed firearms because there are severe consequences if they are displayed inside. But the weapons are available if, God forbid, the employees ever have to use them.
That's the same lesson to be learned from Virginia's 11-year experiment.
Concealed carry permit holders are in effect a free security detail, making everybody in the vicinity that much safer.
This is no longer theoretical. Permit holders in Virginia have already proven they're not a threat to society as they go about their business. Their right to be armed if they so choose preempts local ordinances and has withstood several legal challenges.
Fairfax County was forced to back down from its ban on guns in rec centers and government buildings, but no gunfights have been reported in either.
It's a lesson the District of Columbia has yet to learn. Last week, the House of Representatives passed an amendment that would repeal provisions of D.C.'s highly restrictive 1976 gun law requiring even legal firearms in private homes to be disassembled and unloaded. In other words, completely worthless for defending against intruders.
Virginia Congressman Tom Davis, R-11th, chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, correctly called the measure "an unnecessary and potentially dangerous assault on home rule" last week.
But the D.C. gun law itself is both unnecessary and potentially dangerous to city residents.
It should be repealed, just not by Congress. If the City Council is ever honest enough to admit it doesn't work.
http://www.dcexaminer.com/articles/2005/07/07/opinion/editorial/15edit07guns.txt
posted by Matthew LeFande 3:55 PM
matt@lefande.com
House Votes to Repeal District Gun Restriction
The U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly yesterday to repeal one of the District's gun restrictions, prohibiting the city from spending funds to enforce a law that requires any firearms kept at home to be unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock.
The vote of 259 to 161 marked the third time since 1999 that the House has targeted the city's gun laws, which are among the most stringent in the nation. A broader repeal passed the House by a slightly narrower margin last fall but died in the Senate.
Gun rights groups said this measure's chances of clearing the Senate are greater because it is attached to a spending bill that Congress must pass to avoid a government shutdown.
Rep. Mark Edward Souder (R-Ind.), the measure's sponsor, said it marked "an extremely simple, common-sense . . . first step" toward freer gun ownership, allowing residents to keep loaded, assembled and unlocked weapons in their homes, just as D.C. business owners are allowed to do at workplaces.
The measure was included in the D.C. budget bill, which is part of a $68 billion federal spending bill to fund transportation projects, housing, the Treasury and other agencies. The House passed the bill last night, 405 to 18.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/30/AR2005063001793.html
posted by Matthew LeFande 7:16 AM
matt@lefande.com
