Crypto Cat
crypto.cat is a browser plugin and Macintosh application that enables Off-the-Record encrypted messaging (OTR). You can communicate with a group who all know your board name, or individually with any member of the board. It passes messages through a central server, by default, a server run by crypto.cat, but you source is provided if you want to run your own.
Appears to work. Neat.
How to Avoid Being Killed by Federal Law Enforcement Agents
Bob at The Truth about Guns. A federal agent explains his Use of Force (UOF) rules. My comment:
Good to know. Reinforces my rules of LEO encounters:
1) Avoid cops if at all possible. This can usually be done by impeccable practice of non-aggression, driving the speed limit, stopping completely at signs and lights, and staying in my lane except where marked safe to pass. When that stops being the case, this rule will change to "shoot on sight and go directly to 3."
2) Decide within the first few seconds whether to comply with the officer or kill the beast. This depends largely on whether it acts like an officer or a beast, and whether I think I have a good chance of successful extermination.
3) If the latter, do so, and then go to war on its entire criminal organization. This will likely amount to a death penalty for me. Hey. We all have to die sometime.
I hear a lot of cops say that they're going to go home at the end of their shift. Guess what? So am I. Don't try to stop me, and we'll get along fine. I consider imprisonment to be much worse than death.
I follow Jeff Cooper's gun safety rules, in particular, rule 2: never cover anything with your muzzle that you don't intend to destroy. That means if you point your gun at me, I assume your intention is to kill me, and I will respond appropriately. You'd better pay close attention. You won't get more than one lapse. And I will never forgive.
I would trust cops a lot more if you did a better job of keeping your own in line. I expect a cop who commits a crime on duty to go before a grand jury. If indicted, to a jury of his peers. If convicted, to prison, preferably in gen pop. Just like the rest of us. Sovereign immunity rightly breeds lynch mobs. I expect good cops to ensure that the bad ones are prosecuted, or to take care of the problem themselves, with extreme prejudice.
The reason cops don't ever back down is that their primary responsibility is to make a bunch of statutes, written by men, for largely their own personal gain, appear to be law. They ain't. They never were. They never will be. Stop treating consensual behavior as crime, honor your oath, meaning fully understand it, deeply ruminate about the constitutionality of every statute you are ordered to enforce, and look the other way when you encounter illegal but non-criminal activity (no victim, no criminal intent, no crime), and you'll regain the trust and respect that your profession used to have.
I know. That's all easy to say behind a keyboard in an air-conditioned room. Hence my primary reliance on rule number 1.
StartSSL
I've been using CACert.org for my free SSL certificate. Works fine, but warns new users that the certificate isn't signed by a known Certificate Authority. Today, while looking for a cheap certificate for somebody else, I found StartSSL. They provide a free, domain-validated (by email), SSL certificate, signed by an authority that is known to major browsers. I tested it in Firefox, Chrome, and Safari on my Mac. Yay! No more scary warnings for my visitors.
Quote
"The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence." -- H.L. Mencken
Your Right and Duty to Acquit
[plain version here]
If you serve on a jury in a criminal trial, the judge will likely tell you that his job is to interpret the law, and to inform you about it, and that your job is only to determine whether the defendant did the thing of which (s)he was accused. Wrong.
The judge is the referee of the proceedings. His job is to maintain order, and to ensure that witnesses are sworn in, and properly questioned and cross-examined.
The job of a jury is to protect citizens from the awesome power of the state. If the state does not prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, if the statute allegedly violated does not involve a real crime, if the punishment is too severe, it is your right and duty to acquit, denying the state the power to cage a human being like an animal.
Crime is the intentional harm of the person or property of a non-consenting sentient being. Period. If an action harms nobody, it is not a crime. If the person harmed consented to that harm, it is not a crime. If no harm was intended, it is not a crime. No matter how many people voted to criminalize that action, it is not a crime. As a juror, you have a right and duty to acquit a defendant so accused.
Defendants are innocent until proven guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt. If there is any doubt in your mind that the defendant intentionally caused direct harm, it is your right and duty to acquit.
Cruel and unusual punishment is forbidden by the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution. If you think the punishment is too severe for the crime of which the defendant is accused, it is your right and duty to acquit. If the judge is hamstrung by a mandatory minimum sentence, and you think that minimum is excessive, it is your right and duty to acquit.
Ours is a constitutional republic. Our governments have only the powers that are specifically granted by their constitutions. If the Constitution of the state in which the defendant is accused, or, in federal court, the US Constitution, does not explicitly grant authority to criminalize the alleged crime, you have a right and duty to acquit.
In federal court, this nullifies automatically every drug statute (drugs are not mentioned in the Constitution), every gun statute (Second Amendment: "..., the right of the people, to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed"), every licensing and registration statute (neither "license" nor "registration" appears anywhere in the US Constitution), and much more.
Prior restraint is the criminalizing of an action that might cause harm. If there was no actual harm to an actual person or their property, there is no crime. You have a right and duty to acquit.
To fully acquit a defendant, the jury must vote unanimously. But the defendant cannot be imprisoned unless the jury votes unanimously to convict. A retrial, with a unanimous verdict, is required for that. If you think the defendant is innocent, try to convince the other jurors to acquit. But if you can't do that, vote to acquit and cause a mistrial. Make the prosecutor go through another trial before he is allowed his punishment.
As a juror, you are the last protection an innocent person has against being caged like an animal. No victim? Punishment too harsh? Guilt not proven beyond a reasonable doubt? You have a right and duty to acquit. Do it.
For more information, visit the Fully Informed Jury Association at FIJA.org
Ohio
Feeds List for RSS Aggregator
A little while back, I added an RSS aggregator to Lisplog, the home-brew blogging engine I use. Today I went live with a new feature for the aggregator, a feed list. It's accessible via the feeds link on the right side of the news aggregator index page (in the "Navigation" section of the left column). I'll add OPML and a lisp list of feed URLs soon.
Quote
"If you want to introduce someone to libertarian thinking, encourage them to try this experiment. Spend a few days reading nothing but technology news. Then spend a few days reading nothing but political news. For the first few days theyll see an exciting world of innovation and creativity where everything is getting better all the time. In the second period theyll see a miserable world of cynicism and treachery where everything is falling apart. Then ask them to explain the difference."
-- Andrew Zalotocky, commenting on this
Absolved Intro from Vanderboegh
Mike Vanderboeth posts a long excerpt from the non-fiction introduction of his novel, Absolved, warning the powers that be of the horrors of fourth generation warfare, in an effort to give them a personal stake in avoiding it. Hopefully, this means that we'll finally be able to get his book, n years later.
Why We Can't Have A "Reasonable Discussion" On 2A
Karl Denninger - Nice exposition of why state infringements of any kind on any of the Bill of Rights are completely out of bounds.
The conversation quickly degenerated when he started with the "So you're for private ownership of nukes, right?" crap and "The Second Amendment was written in a time of muskets, so that's what it covers" nonsense.
I retorted with "So the First Amendment is about movable type, paper and ink -- hand-driven -- right?"
Ah, no answer.
Didn't think I'd get one, by the way, so rather than keep hammering that I instead pointed this out the following (and it took three tweets to do it @ 140 characters each):
The right to bear arms is not granted by the Constitution (no government can give what it does not have)2A recognizes the fundamental human right to self-defense, irrespective of the attacker's identity.
The Bill of Rights PROTECTS Rights, it does not GRANT them as government NEVER HAD THEM TO GRANT.
This is why we can't have a "reasonable" debate on this point with people on the other side of the debate.
