Still Waiting for Waco Justice
I had grown complacent of late, having not remembered for a while that "Bill and his boys killed 82 people at Waco--22 of them innocent helpless little children." L. Neil reminded me, and the whole thing came back in dying color.
I had an idea a while back that I almost wrote down, but couldn't bring myself to share, but it's back with a vengeance, so I've gotta get it off my chest. I doubt I can let Waco rest until every federal agent on the ground on April 19, 1993, and everyone in each chain of command, including Janet Reno and William Jefferson Clinton, is tried for crimes against humanity, and until those who are found guilty by a jury of twelve are executed for their crimes. I'm not going to hold my breath for this to happen, but there's no statute of limitations on murder, so we've got 20 or 30 years before the vermin die of natural causes. I can wait.
Once we manage to bring them to trial and convict a good number, say one or two hundred, we've got to come up with a suitable method of execution. No needle in the arm in the privacy of a penitentiary for these mass murderers. It's gotta be good.
Jim Babka at American Liberty Foundation - "Intruder" to air three times on Saturday - The "Intruder" ad, which you can view here, will show three times tomorrow between noon and 3pm EDT on Fox New Channel.
Dave Kopel at National Review - No Choice: "Weapons-effect" paralysis - the sheeple are convinced that putting a weapon into the hands of a regular citizen somehow turns him into a homicidal maniac. Somehow wearing a uniform and a badge mitigates this affect. My personal experience is exactly the opposite. When I'm holding a weapon, I'm much more likely to control my anger than when I'm not. This article stoops to using statistics. Usually a bad idea. [firearmnews]
If guns facilitated the transformation of ordinary people into killers, it would be reasonable to expect to find ordinary people killing victims all over the country. They are not. Instead, we know that the best predictor of violent behavior by a person is not proximity to a weapon, but prior violent behavior. As criminologists Don Kates and Dan Polsby have detailed, "perpetrators of homicide are anything but ordinary people...It is...an extravagant falsification of reality to claim, as some researchers have, that such individuals 'would be considered law-abiding citizens prior to their pulling the trigger.'"
Jeff Smith at the Tuscon (Arizona) Citizen - Gun ban puts state employee's life in danger - Arizona is an open carry state, and concealed carry permits are easy to come by, but it is illegal to bring a weapon into a state office building. This will be a real problem for Shannon Flynn, when her father gets out of jail in two years. He promised that he would come after her when he got out. [trt-ny]
The simple point is this: Our entire system of law and justice is based upon the presumption of innocence until guilt is proven. This translates into the simple truth that for our society to work, we must trust one another. That means our government - an extension of ourselves - must trust us. Until an overt criminal act is committed and guilt is proved, it is unlawful and immoral to limit the freedom of any innocent citizen, especially a right so basic as defending one's own body.
There is nothing innately unlawful about carrying a hunk of metal that contains a handful of brass cylinders holding a combustible powder. No more than it is wrong to carry a sharp tool for, say, peeling an apple.
But in state offices today, none of the foregoing is permitted. Carry any to work, and you could get fired and jailed.
Refactorit "is a powerful tool for Java developers who expect more from their standard IDE. With Refactorit, a developer can take source code of any size and complexity, and rework it into well-designed code by means of automated refactorings such as Rename Field/ Method/Variable/Class/Package, Extract Method or Move Type. In addition, Refactorit provides a comprehensive set of smart query functions that make it possible to analyze and track large volumes of code. Refactorit may be used as standalone tool or installed as an add-in to IDEs like NetBeans, Forte, JDeveloper, and JBuilder." It's at release 0.8. I haven't tried it. [meat]
