Phoenix Acquired

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sun, 22 Jun 2003 12:00:00 GMT
We found Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix yesterday, but not at Barnes and Noble. They had a pre-sale display with the other four books, but were selling book five only to people who had pre-ordered a copy. So we went to the local Wal-Mart Super Center. Didn't find it on the shelves, but they had two copies in Customer Service. $16 and change for a $30 retail book. We started reading it aloud immediately.

H. R. 384, the "Enumerated Powers Act", was introduced by John Shadegg of Arizona in January. The last action was in March, when it was referred to the Judiciary Commitee's Subcommittee on the Constitution. It has five cosponsors, including Ron Paul. In these days of evolving Constitutional interpretations, this probably won't do much good, but it at least makes the tyrants invent something for each bill. [muth]

David Rogers at anti-state.com - Violence As Commodity - ignoring the morality of it, would a free market in violence work? Probably, says Mr. Rogers. [rrnd]

Roger Waters at GeoffMetcalf.com - Where We're Headed - written to initially sound like fiction. Unfortunately true today in Merry England, where it is a crime to defend yourself against criminals. [jpfo]

Vin Suprynowicz at the Las Vegas Review Journal - 'You're an officer of the federal government' - Congress authorized the arming of airline pilots, right? Well, sort of, but in reality very few of them will ever be armed. And the best of the lot won't submit themselves to the process required.

LTC Smith at AssaultWeb - Operation Iraqi Freedom: PEO Soldier Lessons Learned - analysis of weapons used in Iraq. [tle]

Shotgun: This was a very useful addition to the MTOE. The shotguns were used mainly as ballistic breachers. Therefore, soldiers felt the length could be greatly shortened. They removed the stock and local purchased pistol grips and would have preferred a "sawed-off" configuration.

XM107: The Barrett 50 cal Sniper Rifle may have been the most useful piece of equipment for the urban fight -- especially for our light fighters. The XM107 was used to engage both vehicular and personnel targets out to 1400 meters. Soldiers not only appreciated the range and accuracy but also the target effect. Leaders and scouts viewed the effect of the 50 cal round as a combat multiplier due to the psychological impact on other combatants that viewed the destruction of the target.

"My spotter positively identified a target at 1400 meters carrying an RPG on a water tower. I engaged the target. The top half of the torso fell forward out of the tower and the lower portion remained in the tower."
325th PIR Sniper

There were other personal anecdotes of one round destroying two targets and another of the target "disintegrating."

William Stone, III at The Libertarian Enterprise - The 0AI Hunters' Aide Program - a program to donate excess wild game meet to Libertarians in need. I couldn't find the "Hunters' Aide Program" link at oap.org. Guess Mr. Stone hasn't created it yet. [tle]

Winston Smith at The Libertarian Enterprise - Arsenal Uncovered: Linked to Extremist Movement - satirical future story when books are treated as guns are today. [tle]

Los Angeles -- A joint task force of federal agents and state police raided the home of a Santa Monica man Saturday, uncovering an arsenal of illegal books and other media.

"It's astounding," said Police Chief John Lynch at a press conference Tuesday. "I've never seen so many books in my life. It was a virtual library."

Chief Lynch described a entire room filled wall to wall with books and magazines. In one room officers discovered a computer, printer and thousands of pages of printing paper. The discovery of the computer-printer setup prompted evacuation of the neighborhood while EOD teams rendered the device inactive.

William Stone, III at The Libertarian Enterprise - Just How Stupid Do We Look?" - Mr. Stone dissembles a report of Hillary Clinton signing her new book by doing a little math on the reported statistics. She is reported to have signed 1000 books in 3 hours, that's 10.8 seconds per book. Not bloody likely. [tle]

Kuro5hin - Sad day... GIF patent dead at 20 - The U.S. patent expired on Friday. Others expire soon. Good news for folks who didn't burn their GIFs and replace them with PNGs. [picks]

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