Only Cops Should Have Guns... Not!
# compufused.com - Teaching the Kids Safety - video of a d.e.a. agent telling a group of kids that he's the only person in the room trained well enough to handle his unloaded Glock .40. He then proceeds to shoot himself in the leg. And continues as if this weren't a problem. Yep. Only cops should be allowed to have guns. Not! [claire codrea lrtdiscuss publicola]
# Emiliano Antunez at The Price of Liberty - Living In America 2029, A Workers Paradise - a short story elucidating the wages of socialism and empire. It ain't pretty. [price]
Karen appears at the door of her manager's dimly lit office. He shuffles through some papers and hands her an envelope with a couple of grease stains on it. As Karen leaves the restaurant she opens the envelope and reads the numbers on the check stub.(Gross Pay $750 Federal Withholding $187.50 FICA $112.50 State Income Tax $75 Medicare $37.50 Special Deficit Reduction "Contribution" $22.50 Net Pay $315.00. She worked thirty hours this week (the maximum allowed by law). Wow, she thinks her parents never made that kind of money at a menial job like hers.
...
Karen walks the three miles from the bus stop to her home every day since she can't afford the extra bus fare. Soon she'll be home, a room seventeen feet by twenty-three feet located in a house shared by 4 families. Karen shares her room (which costs $1400 monthly in rent) with her grandmother who receives $595 from social security monthly, and her mother. Her stepfather (Karen's father was killed in the Iraq War in 2006) is serving with the Navy in Iran and sends his $550 in combat pay every month (the US Military is now drafting people up to the age of 55)...
# Dave Shulman at LA Weekly via Alternet - The Pleasant Probation of Tommy Chong - an interview with the man Ashcroft jailed for selling water pipes. [claire]
"I'm as clean as a whistle," he says. "I never did smoke that much pot; never was a big pothead. I was more of a weightlifter. Maybe once in a while, you know, after a hard day of shooting or something like that, I'd kick back. But you can't exercise and be high. It's impossible. You can't do a lot of things when you're high. Like, you can't shoot a movie. You can't be an actor in a movie. I know, because I tried all sorts of ways of being in character, and the best way is to be totally straight. The best way in life is to be totally straight. Because the body has incredible combinations of chemicals that will react just on sight, taste, touch -- just on your senses.
"That's why people that have an education, you know, that's why they spend time in art museums, or reading good literature or listening to good music. Because it affects the body's chemistry in such a way that it produces a very mellow high that you can never reproduce with any kind of drugs. You can't even come close to that. Maybe heroin, maybe, is the closest. And this is what you learn as you live. But on the other hand, pot is the best recreational substance for teenagers, athletes, people who have naturally high adrenaline. Because the pot takes the edge off the adrenaline, and it also clears your mind of it, and then you can see things a lot clearer."
# James Bovard at LewRockwell.com - Gun Nuts at 30,000 Feet? - the few, the proud, the t.s.a. air marshalls (with my apologies to any Marines reading this). [claire]
What escalates this episode beyond a mere bizarre anecdote is the fact that the TSA hailed its marshals as models. Several days after the incident, Thomas Quinn, the national director of the air marshal program, asserted, "The federal air marshals did a very good job. They did exactly as they're trained to do." This makes stark that all the onus will be placed on airline passengers when TSA employees lose control of themselves and threaten to kill people. Problems are caused only by people who disobey the commands of federal agents.
Even though the air marshals are unreliable, the Bush administration has slowed down the congressionally mandated program to authorize pilots to carry guns. Though it went through the motions of setting up a program, it did so in a way to discourage pilots from participating. One pilot, Tracy Price, complained, "The TSA has very intentionally and successfully minimized the number of volunteers through thinly veiled threats and by making the program difficult and threatening to get into."
# Bob Schulz at We the People - IRS: Gut Schulz v IRS; DOJ: Court's Opinion Threatens Tax System - On January 1, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that i.r.s. summons have no force of law unless supported by a federal court order. The i.r.s. and Injustice Department goons aren't happy with this ruling, so they've appealed it. It means they would no longer be able to imprison people or steal their property without due process. Can't have that.
# Kim du Toit - Range Report - Mosin-Nagant M44 (7.62x54mmR) - Kim discovers that his new old rifle shoots better with the bayonet removed. A lot better. [kimdutoit]
# Bram Cohen - BitTorrent 4.0 is now available. [wes]
