Conscription is Slavery!
"British Airways canceled three flights to the United States on Thursday and Friday. The pilots refused to fly with armed marshals. The only way to get from London to America these days is to fly to Mexico and walk across with everyone else." -- Argus Hamilton
From Human Cost of War (QuickTime video):
Lies: The real weapons of mass destruction.
From kaba:
"Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim. If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait forever." -- Lord Thomas Macaulay
From The Federalist:
"Diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments." -- Frederick the Greatand:
"Sometimes the best way to convince someone he is wrong is to let him have his way." -- Red O'Donnelland:
"Strange, isn't it? While we spend men and money to fight for freedom in other lands, the courts and Congress continue to nibble away at it here at home." -- Lyn Nofzigerand:
"Without allegiance to the Constitution it doesn't matter one hill of beans which party is in power!" -- Chuck Baldwinand:
"Let's put it this way: you don't hear the word usurpation in Congress for the same reason you don't hear the word fornication in Las Vegas. When a vice becomes popular and profitable, it loses its proper name." -- Joseph Sobranand:
"The big story today: Las Vegas got three inches of snow. It's official, hell is freezing over." -- Jay Leno
# David Palermo at SpaceRef.com - QuickTime VR Panorama of NASA Spirit's Landing Site on Mars - a QuickTime Virtual Reality version of the panoramic view I linked to yesterday. Worked for me in QuickTime for Windows. Kule. [pournelle]
# The High Road - The Gospel According to John (Moses Browning, that is...) - hilarious fun for 1911 fans. I saved a copy here. [madogre]
# Debra Ricketts and Claire Wolfe at The Claire Files - Microsoft Anonymous: The 12 Steps - how to get over your addiction to Microsoft products. Hehe. [clairefiles]
A terrible addiction grips the world. It invades the most respectable middle-class homes and offices. It causes untold havoc. Yet, in this era when enlightened people understand that even coffee drinking ("caffeine use disorder") can be a serious disability, this addiction goes unrecognized and untreated.
We speak of Microsoft addiction -- a dependency that costs its victims billions, first to buy the products to feed their habits, then in damage done by opportunistic viruses that prey on MS-weakened systems.
...
Until now, the future has looked bleak for the ordinary victim hooked on Microsoft. But today, thousands are breaking free -- and so can you! -- thanks to the 12-step program of Microsoft Anonymous.
Follow these steps and, though you may never be fully cured of Microsoft addiction, you will walk the road of recovery.
# Charlie Fisher at Bush in 30 Seconds - Child's Pay - a QuickTime ad making it crystal clear what GW has done with his deficit spending. Not that he's alone, but he's done a lot. Low bandwidth version here. More ads at bushin30seconds.org. Don't miss Outpost 7's In My Country and Fred Surr, Ted Page, & Janet Tashjian's What are we teaching our children? and David Haynes' Desktop (hehe). Watch 'em all. The low bandwidth versions are about 1.5 megs. [script]
# GeekWithA.45 - Lives, Fortunes, and Sacred Honor - the Geek pledges $50 to the legal defense fund of every person charged under an unconstitutional gun law. Until the laws go away or he runs out of money. [geekwitha.45]
Let's take these bastards on.
Let's just see who has more resolve.
Let's just see who's pile of gold runs out first.
Let's just see who has more gumption, more tenacity, and more guts.
Let's just see who the last man standing really is.
I'm betting my fortune, my honor, and perhaps someday my life that it'll be We The People.
What about you?
# Edgar J. Steele - Who Was that Fat Lady? - commentary on the Supreme's refusal to consider Silviera v. Lockwood. And, being himself, he manages to blame it on a Jew. Still, a good article other than the last sentence.
It's over.
The fat lady has sung.
Elvis has left the building.
The great American experiment finally fizzled on December 1, 2003, when the US Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from a 9th Federal Circuit decision which gutted the Second Amendment. It was a nice run - over two hundred years - but all good things must end...I guess...at least, that's what they say.
We all know how saying nothing sometimes can be among the most profound of statements. Ask any husband.
Nowhere is silence so profound as when offered by the Supremes. And, never has their silence been so overwhelming as on December 1, 2003. That's when the US Supreme Court issued its ruling, refusing to hear an appeal in the case of Silveira vs. Lockyer. That made Silveira the law of the land, you see.
# Melinda Pillsbury-Foster at Liberty for All - Bush Whacking: A Strategy for Taking Libertarianism to the Mainstream of American Politics while excising the Neocons from the body politic - how to bring liberals into the Libertarian Party. Not all liberal ideas are bad, they just haven't learned that market means work better than income redistrubtion (theft by another name) as a way to accomplish what they want. [smith2004]
The beginnings of an answer to the first question can be found in the unbalanced makeup of the Libertarian Party in its first years of existence. We left the Republican Party. Our attitudes contained a deep hostility to most things we perceived as Liberal. Not that Liberals were right about very much, but neither were they necessarily wrong about everything. They wanted to do good things with Other People's Money; they wanted to ensure blacks and women had an equal share in the profound possibilities of the American dream. Unfortunately, being socialist, they wanted to use collective tools to achieve those goals and those tools could not work.
The tools promoted by present day Liberals are socialist. Our tools, the kind that promote freedom are tools that affirm individualism. It was an easy mistake to make. What we did was attack Liberals for using the wrong tools.
...
Pause for a moment and consider the present form of the Libertarian Party. It is a top down hierarchal organization that consumes the capital (credit and resources) created at the local level, returning less and less over time to activists. It asserts a right to determine the course of events, thus denying that right to activists. This is a bad model. It is identical to the model of government familiar to Americans today. It separates the creation of wealth (Credit for political success) from those who control that capital. National acts as a bottle neck for information, money, and resources, spending as it sees fit. Regrettably, it has also become an intentional filter with an agenda that has nothing to do with individual liberty.
The freedom alternative is to reformat National as a networking point that simply allows activists to contact each other and directs inquiries immediately to the most local unit for further contact, keeping a record for reference. This could be accomplished with a website with menus of contact numbers and downloadable resources for information, training, literature, and graphics provided as samples from what has been created from the local level. Activists could rate the materials provided, providing educated insight to those coming after them and in this way also familiarize themselves with those who are geographically distant. Think of the system we see on Amazon.com. Open sources carried the message of trust and honesty. It cannot be stymied, blocked, or suborned by issues of internal management.
The first model says individuals cannot be trusted to act; the second model says they can.
# Julie Carr Smyth at The Plain Dealer - Concealed weapons compromise is reached - it looks like Ohio will soon have shall issue concealed carry permits, thanks to a strange "compromise". [smith2004]
The compromise hinges on allowing broader access to gun-permit records. Under the deal, journalists would be able to get complete lists of permit-holders, rather than single names - but access would still be denied to the general public.
Hohenwarter contended that the years of battles have resulted in a good bill.
He noted that the bill requires sheriffs to issue permits to qualified applicants. And, he added, "It's got background checks in it, training and requires a permit. There may be some hoops you have to jump through that some might not like, but this is a process."
# Nicki Fellenzer at Armed Females of America - Collectivism will kill us! - and how! Written by someone who knows; Nicki's family escaped from the Soviet Union. [armedfemales]
I won't lie to you. I'm scared. Something dark and evil is taking over this country, and it's not "the liberals" or "the conservatives," Democrats, Republicans or any other political party.
We are sinking into a collectivist mire of destruction. We are giving ourselves over to socialism, to tyranny and to the lies and manipulation of those who are attempting destroy every last vestige of liberty -- every last individual right -- to turn us into a world society, into a collective band of compliant automatons.p
What for?
Maybe when you beat every last shred of individuality out of a person...
...when you force them to devalue themselves, to forget who they are, to abandon their love and respect for self, for their achievements and for their capabilities...
...human beings become easier to control.
# Paul Craig Roberts at LewRockwell.com - Jailing the Innocent - on the proliferation of prison sentences for ridiculous paper "crimes". [lew]
A country that goes out of its way to imprison the innocent has no business preaching democracy to the world.
# Sharon Harris at LewRockwell.com - They Pry Them from Our Cold Dead Fingers - an argument for the separation of school and state based on a story about the right to keep and bear arms. Clever. [lew]
# Leonard M. Scruggs at LewRockwell.com - Why the Cherokee Nation Allied Themselves With the Confederate States of America in 1861 - a discussion of The Cherokee Declaration of October 1861, by which the Cherokee nation joined the Confederacy in fighting against Lincoln's aggression. [lew]
"Whatever causes the Cherokee people may have had in the past to complain of some of the southern states, they cannot but feel that their interests and destiny are inseparably connected to those of the south. The war now waging is a war of Northern cupidity and fanaticism against the institution of African servitude; against the commercial freedom of the south, and against the political freedom of the states, and its objects are to annihilate the sovereignty of those states and utterly change the nature of the general government."
# Aaron Russo for President 2004 - Sign Petition to stop the coming draft - I don't think the referenced legislation will go very far, but it can't hurt to make our disgust with it known. Conscription is slavery! [smith2004]
# Massad Ayoob at Backwoods Home Magazine - Firearms handling refresher: Part I: Handguns - a longish article with lots of good practical advice about safely handling handguns. Shotguns will be covered next in the series.
# Massad Ayoob at Backwoods Home Magazine - How to shoot a handgun accurately - more practical advice from the master. Bottom line: practice, practice, practice.
Today, with more than 45 years of handgunning behind me (yeah, I'm old, but I started early, too) I realize that you actually can cover this topic in a fairly short article. The reason is found in the classic statement of Ray Chapman, the first world champion of the combat pistol. "Shooting well is simple," Ray said, "it just isn't easy."
I'll buy that. It's true that the handgun is the most difficult of firearms to shoot well. There's less to hang on to. There's a shorter radius between the front and rear sight than with a rifle, meaning a greater unnoticed human error factor in aiming. You don't have that third locking point on the shoulder that you have with a long gun's butt stock.
And few handguns have the inherent mechanical accuracy of a good rifle.
That said, though, you can get the most of your handgun's intrinsic accuracy by simply performing marksmanship basics correctly. If the gun is aimed at the target, and the trigger is pressed and the shot released without moving the gun, then the bullet will strike the mark. That simple. We need a few building blocks to construct this perfect shot, however. Let's build the structure brick by brick.
# Kim du Toit - Range Report -- Thompson/Center Encore (.223 Rem) - Kim got a single-shot carbine for Christmas. He wanted .243, not .223, but they didn't have it. It shoots well with just the iron sights, cheap ammo, and Kim's old eyes. It'll be a real winner of a varmint gun with a scope and good ammo. [kimdutoit]
The Encore's trigger is an absolute dream: a tiny amount of take-up, and a feather-soft but crisp 3lb. pull (approximate). No need for a trigger job there. The recoil, of course, is practically non-existent.
...
Cost was just under $500. Additional barrels cost about $250, and are available in almost any caliber, from .22 LR up to and including the .45-70 Government.
# Jim Taylor at Gunblast - First Deer with a 454 - an account of a 17-year-old memory. [gunblast]
The gun used was a 7 1/2" Freedom Arms 454 Casull. The load was the Keith #454424 cast of Lyman #2 alloy, sized .452" and lubed with Paco's Apache Blue. The bullets were loaded in Remington .45 Colt cases over WW296 and Federal #150 primers. The average velocity over my chronograph was 1531 fps. I carried the gun in Bianchi X-15 shoulder holster.
The hit was about 3" behind the shoulder, angling down towards the rear, through both lungs and the liver. Entrance and exit wounds were full caliber. There was almost no bloodshot meat.
The date was Nov. 11, 1986.
