2010 – Page 75 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Killing for the Revolution

Now we know the motive of the Public Shooting Range Killer. Apparently he was plotting to overthrow the government, and was stealing his way into an arsenal. The Patriot-News is noting that “Rebel activity” is on the rise. Geez. No one tell Darth Vader. Peake is apparently pleading that he found Getgen dead, and merely took the rifle off of him. He’s also refusing to name the group he belongs to.

I’ll be surprised if this guy got more than one other person to buy into the notion of stealing and robbing their way to revolution.

My New Scourge: The Telephone

Maybe it’s because I’m a bit of a taciturn, but I really hate phones as a technology, and I get annoyed with vendors at work who prefer to handle things through phone calls rather than e-mail. I consider phones to be a total productivity killer in the workplace. Not that I have any particular love for e-mail — as technology goes, thanks in part to spammers, it’s fast becoming another obnoxious medium of communication, but it’s still better than a phone. These days my preferred method of communication is Instant Messaging, but it’s hard to get anyone over forty to use it.

Why pick on the phone though? Alexander Graham Bell didn’t invent it, after all, with the sole purpose of annoying people in the future, so I should be grateful. But the phone is like a crying child. It demands attention. Most of the time I ignore it, but shortly after, the dreaded blinking light indicating a message. Nine times out of ten this is a sales goober trying to sell me something I don’t need, so a quick key to delete it fixes the problem. But to get there I have to pick up the phone, hit the voice mail button, enter my code, go through the menu, and delete the message. If it’s something I’m currently dealing with, call back. There’s a very high probability that person will not be at their desk or otherwise able to answer the phone. Leave a message on their end. Get a call back. Rinse. Repeat. It amazes me there are still people who are fine with wasting time and energy in this manner all to avoid sending an e-mail.

I suspect they do this because people often don’t respond to e-mail. I know I am guilty of this sometimes, often not intentional, just forgetting to get back to someone. Other times I think there are some people that just like talking to a person via voice, because e-mail seems impersonal. But I find e-mail easier and less stressful to deal with than a ringing phone, or blinking message light. And that’s not even counting the amount of time it took to write this blog post complaining about it.

What’s your office pet peeve?

More Tree Huggers Pushing Lead Ammo Bans

Apparently the Center for Biological Diversity and the American Bird Conservancy are pressuring EPA to institute a nationwide ban on lead ammunition. If this is such an “incontrovertible fact” then how come California Condors aren’t showing any drop in their lead levels after California instituted such a ban.

Funniest Thing I’ve Seen All Week

A message from our President.

Baucus and Tester Will Vote “Yes” on Kagan

I can appreciate that Democrats in this Congress have been pretty pro-gun, and their grades will need to reflect that, but they also need to reflect their votes on Kagan to a large degree. There needs to be an understanding that what we’re fighting in the Courts are for basic, fundamental Second Amendment rights. Basically gun bans, and near gun bans. Sotomayor didn’t even buy into the idea that cities like Chicago and DC couldn’t ban guns, and it’s doubtful Kagan will either.

In other words, the justices Obama is nominating don’t believe in a SecondÂ AmendmentÂ right at all, despite it presence in the Constitution, and strong level of support for such a right among the population in general. Congress needs to be made to understand we’re serious about this. Republicans in particular need to understand that. It would be one thing if Obama was anÂ enormouslyÂ popular President, but he is not. There is no political risk involved with going against the White House. Close to 80% of Americans support the Second Amendment. Obama can only dream about approval ratings that high.

US News is the last place I’d expect to find reporting about an NRA memo, but they are. Contact your Senators and let them know to oppose her. Quite a bit is riding on this. At some point, the Heller and McDonald coalition on the Court will break, and that will be as far as we can take the right. I’ll be honest, I think it’s very unlikely we’ll get a pro-Second Amendment Justice out of this President, but we can at least send a message. At the least, he will need to take more a chance himself, on someone who’s record on the issue isn’t clear.

End of the Kodachrome Era

I guess Paul Simon is disappointed, because they finally did take his Kodachrome away, it having fallen victim to digital photography and the highly exacting and difficult chemistry required to process Kodachrome film. It’s a shame, though, because Kodachrome film has a high degree of color stability over time, and really does give “nice bright colors,” which is why it was often sought out by professional photographers. Some of the most famous pictures were taken with Kodachrome film, like this one, and this one.

Now there’s a gallery making its way around the blogosphere that shows some amazing Kodachrome photos from the Black and White era [Link removed because the Denver Post works with the scum of the earth], the late 30s, early 40s. These would be Kodachrome photos because that process having been introduced in 1935, and the color hues look like the film. You can see the rich color, and note that even after all this time, they still look very good; a tribute to the film’s stability.Â Ektachrome, the cheaper, easier to process color film technology,Â wasn’t introduced until 1942, and as any kid who grew up in the 70s can attest if they look at their kid pictures today, it’s not all that stable; the pictures lose their colorÂ truenessÂ over time.

But nothing is as stable as digital photos. Assuming we don’t have a collapse of civilization, and lose digital technology, kids 5000 years from now will be looking at pictures from this era that look exactly the same then as they do now. Kodak discontinued Kodachrome in 2009, citing lack of demand. There’s still one lab in the country who can process the film, and they will cease processing at the end of 2010. The last Kodachrome photograph has yet to be processed, but that will soon happen. It’ll be the end of an era when it is.

UPDATE: You can see here that different types of films can be simulated digitally.

Challenge to Obamacare Survives First Steps

See details over at Volokh. The lawsuit has survived the Government’s motion to dismiss.

UPDATE: More here from Ilya Somin

You know it’s going to be a doozie …

… when a rant from a prominent anti-gun group starts out like this:

The National Rifle Association has long perpetuated theÂ myth that Americans are under grave danger from hardened criminals who want to steal their property and exterminate their families.

Yeah, just the other night Wayne came crawling through an open window just to remind me people are out to kill my family, and I should check my gun just in case it’s a real predator.. And naturally, no tale about gun owners would be complete without the anti-gunners mentioning our patron saint, according to them, Timothy McVeigh.

Faced with a movement that is at death’s door, all they have left is anger and lashing out. I almost feel sorry for them. I also really think this passage is fun:

According to the FBIâ€™s Uniform Crime Report,Â only 87 Americans were murdered during burglaries in 2008, despite the fact thatÂ only one out of every three American households now has a firearm.

Think maybe those two things might have something to do with each other? Could be, since the US has a much lower rate of burglary while the homeowner is home than most of the rest of the world.

Problems on Kagan

The Hill notes that NRA seems reluctant to put their full weight against Kagan:, quoting from the head of another conservative group:

The group said Kaganâ€™s record shows â€œnothing to indicate support for the Second Amendmentâ€ and promised to count her confirmation vote as a â€œkey voteâ€ when compiling congressional scorecards.

But it has not waged the intensive grassroots campaign some conservative activists had hoped for. These activists believe the NRA is reluctant to strain relations with Democrats, such as Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who often side with gun owners in legislative fights.

From what I’ve seen so far, that full weight is behind it. NRA is urging membership to contact their Senators, and have several times. I’m not sure what kind of “grassroots campaign” that Steve Levey is expecting. This is pretty standard fare for a major vote. I’m also not sure how he can critique their strategy on the Hill, considering that his organization would seem to have no presence on it. The big problem is that 5 Republicans are defecting on the Kagan vote, and a lot of Democrats are sure to defect. Defeating a nomination is hard.

What Democrats are counting on is that NRA won’t be able to mobilize anger on election day over Court nominations. Maybe they are right, but in that case I don’t have a lot of faith we’re going to get broad and robust Second Amendment protections.

A Lie Repeated Often Enough …

Joe Grace and Phil Goldsmith, the two people behind CeaseFire PA, are trying their level best to minimize the damage potential of McDonald:

While support for the reporting of lost or stolen handguns grows, hundreds of Pennsylvania police chiefs have come out in favor of another reasonable reform to close a loophole in state law that allows state residents to sidestep law enforcement and obtain permits from Florida to carry concealed guns, even if their applications were denied in Pennsylvania.

This loophole lets people with criminal backgrounds get out-of-state permits to carry guns in the commonwealth, even after state authorities determine they shouldnâ€™t be allowed to do so.

None of those laws have been upheld on the merits. The suits were dismissed because of standing and ripeness. In other words, they have to prosecute someone for failing to report a gun before the law can be challenged. To date, none of the 45 cities and towns that have passed this law have prosecuted a single person under them — laws they claim are critical for prosecuting criminals.

There’s also not a single state that issues a license to carry a firearm that doesn’t perform a criminal background check on applicants. None. The idea that hardened criminals, with extensive records, are getting permits to carry from other states is just nuts. We could solve much of this problem with universal reciprocity, but you won’t hear them supporting that idea.