April 2007 – Page 14 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Why bother fighting crime…

… when you can just look like you’re fighting crime.Â That’s my take on Philadelphia Police Commissioner Johnson’s latest stunt of putting more police brass out on patrol for four hours a week.Â I’m not sure how this helps, but at least it’ll be four hours a week he won’t be begging for new guns laws, which won’t help either.

No doubt Commissioner Johnson will be carrying his service pistol with him on this public relations stunt, because the city is dangerous, after all.Â But that’s something he wants to deny us ordinary peons.

Modersky Gets 14 Months

It’s always hard to fight a crime epidemic when you associate with criminals.Â Just ask Mayor Street.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) â€” A man accused by prosecutors of orchestrating a plan to funnel illegal contributions to the campaign of Mayor John F. Street was sentenced Monday to 14 months in prison and ordered to pay more than $25,000 in fines and restitution.

Joseph Moderski, 70, of Bryn Mawr, was the only one of the four defendants sentenced to prison in the scheme. Street was not charged with any wrongdoing.

Thank god for term limits.

Turnpike Leasing – Pissing Off The Right People

I suspect the Governor may be doing right when I see things like this:

Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell’s initiative to lease the Pennsylvania Turnpike was instantly panned by the state Turnpike Authority and union workers who operate toll booths on that road. A majority of New Jersey residents oppose Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine’s idea to lease the Garden State Parkway to cut the state’s debt or lower property taxes, according to a January poll.

People from New Jersey, the Turnpike Commission and the toll workers unions are against it?Â Sounds like it might be worth a try if you ask me.Â Personally, I’d rather just rip the damned tolls up entirely, but I’m willing to give leasing a try for a bit.Â They certainly would have a hard time doing a worse job of maintaining the Turnpike than the Turnpike Commission currently does.

Slot Troubles

Several spurned suitors for a coveted license to operate a gambling establishment in PA are suing to have the deliberations opened up.

The rejected applicants will get a chance to make those points in person on May 15, when the state Supreme Court hears oral arguments on challenges to the slots licenses awarded Dec. 20 by state gambling regulators.

Their arguments were outlined in briefs dozens of pages long filed Monday with the court. Separate confidential briefs were also filed, containing information from the applicant’s files that the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board has withheld from public view.

The gaming board will have a chance to respond in its own briefs to the Supreme Court, which are due April 23. A spokesman said Tuesday that the agency is confident it will prevail in court.

“The board is sure that the record will support its decisions and that the process used to determine awards was not only designed to assure fairness to all parties, but was applied consistently by us throughout the licensing process,” spokesman Doug Harbach said in a statement.

The record they are so sure is fair that they don’t want to open it to public scrutiny?Â I smell a rat.

DeNaples, a politically connected businessman with interests in landfills, auto parts and real estate, was repeatedly allowed to skirt rules designed to allow competitors to critique each other’s plans, Matzel’s group said.

Changes to DeNaples’ application continued practically up until the gaming board’s vote, almost a week after the panel was to have stopped considering any new material, Matzel’s group said.

Nothing to see here.Â Please move along.

New Topic

I’m going to add a new topic called “Brewing”, because that’s my other hobby.Â Â I don’t plan on posting about it much, but every once in a while, I will.

We gun owners are often concerned about preparedness, especially during shit hits the fan situations.Â Beer making is all about preparedness and survival, because, let’s face it, life without beer isn’t really worth living is it?Â So it’s good to know how to make the stuff yourself.

Beer is civilization.Â Don’t believe me?Â Just look at the societies that won’t touch the stuff.Â I rest my case.

Comment Registration at Brady Blog

According to Pro-Gun Progressive, the Brady Campaign ~~is requiring registration for their blog comments. I suppose they got tired of the volume of pro-gun comments on it, and figured since we don’t like the r-word very much, this might keep us off :)~~ It doesn’t appear to me that the comments are still restricted. It seems to have the same WordPress style comment section as it had before

But seriously, it does look like registration isn’t restricted, but to be honest, I’ve never felt good about signing up for their mailing list or other such things. Who knows whether they count registrations or mailing list members for purposes of counting how much grass roots support they have. If a politician were told there are 20,000 people on the Brady mailing list, do you think they’d realize half of them might be pro-gun people “keeping tabs”?

I was amused at the volume of pro-gun comments when they opened them up, but I didn’t ever comment there, because I didn’t see much point. I mean, it’s not like Sarah Brady is going to come out and say “OK, I was wrong, now who wants to show me how you field strip this AR-15?”, or Paul Helmke will start asking for advise on a good reloading press.

UPDATE: Crap.. it got rid of my first update.Â Anyway, I said I rethought this, and decided that it’s not a waste of time to post over there, just in case anyone on the fence happens by their blog.Â I don’t plan to make a regular habit of it though.

UPDATE: Yeah, the comments work. I just submitted one. It goes into a moderation queue and has to be approved. You can see your comment, but no one else can. That’s how it was working before.

FakeRAID Sucks

Whoever decided that “FakeRAID”, which is a highly technical term used to describe the types of Serial ATA RAID apearing on some cheaper motherboards, was a good idea needs a severe beating.Â It appears that FakeRAID is just basically a BIOS hint, requiring the CPU on the machine to do the majority of the work with regards to creating and maintaining the array.Â I was trying to make Ubuntu do the FakeRAID thing on a server at work, but I think I’m just going to use the Linux software RAID, which seems to be the conventional wisdom these days anyway.

Now back to your regularly scheduled gun blogging.

NRA Not Quite So Confident?

Robert Levy wrote, Instapundit and SayUncle linked it.Â Â Levy asserts that the NRA’s actions make it appear that they want to derail Parker by pushing the D.C. personal protection act.

I understand why the NRA is doing this: Parker vs. DC could backfire on us in a big way, and a legislative remedy is the safer short term option. Â But I’m more open to Alan Gura’s argument that the Supreme Court is going to hear a second amendment case soon in any regard, and we might as well make the first case a good one.

I’m as nervous about the case as the NRA is, however, and even if Parker gets a favorable ruling, I’m really nervous about the aftermath.Â But to use warfare as an analogy, a general doesn’t always get to pick his battlefield, and this is quite likely where circumstance is going to demand that we roll the dice with The Court.Â I’m nervous but optimistic. Â I’d really like to understand why the NRA isn’t, and hear their point of view, their real point of view, not just the official line.

I’d Like to See This Tried in Texas

Bruce has the skinny on an attempt to charge 20 dollars for your Sunday cookout, all to fight global warming, of course.Â Â The best part is:

The local authorities plan to monitor compliance with the new tax legislation from helicopters, whose thermal sensors will detect burning grills.

Wow!Â I almost feel like this has to be a joke. Â Can people really be this stupid? Can they?Â The people that came up with this need to emigrate to Texas, and try it there, where I’m sure the population would be happy to give this the response it deserves.

How They Think Outside of Philadelphia

Berks County is close to Philadelphia, but does not border it.Â The County Seat is Reading.Â Â But they have a Sheriff who, unlike John Street and Ed Rendell, can face reality:

Berks County Sheriff Barry J. Jozwiak asked a panel of state lawmakers in Reading on Thursday to shoot down any legislation that would limit handgun purchases, claiming it would not curb crime or gun violence.

That had to have given the Philadelphia pols, and Mayor McMahon a heart attack.Â But it gets better:

Jozwiak, a Republican, said he opposed a bill that would limit people to buying one handgun per month.

Instead of passing new gun laws, Jozwiak said, police and judges should enforce existing laws.

â€œGun control does not reduce crime,â€ Jozwiak said. â€œIn fact, criminals prefer their victims to be unarmed.â€

Jozwiak even criticized a proposal that would require gun owners to notify police if their handguns were lost or stolen.

Supporters believe that would reduce instances of people buying guns, turning them over to criminals and then claiming that the gun was lost or stolen.

Jozwiak said such a law would punish honest, law-abiding gun owners who didnâ€™t realize that their guns were missing.

Sheriff Jozwiak isn’t alone:

State Rep. Jim Cox, a Spring Township Republican, said he would not support the one-handgun-per-month legislation because it chips away at gun ownersâ€™ rights and could lead to more drastic restrictions.

â€œI want people to have the sheer, unadulterated ability to defend themselves,â€ Cox said. â€œIf they want to go out and buy 20 weapons to protect themselves because there has been a crime wave in their neighborhood, I donâ€™t want to restrict them.â€

Why not?Â You know the criminals don’t have any problems doing the same. Â I’m glad to see once you get out of The City, politicians start having more sense.Â The City of Philadelphia continues to make guns the scapegoats for their crime epidemic, rather than, you know, criminals.