The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
If you’ve never volunteered for a campaign before, I strongly suggest 2012 as the year to start. Why?
Because when Rick Santorum is polling within 2 points of Barack in a state like Pennsylvania, you know that knocking on doors and making calls is going to result in awesome rants against the administration. If anything, you’ll be assured good laughs.
Looks like the Philadelphia Police have their own little scandal involving firearms:
Officer Anthony Magsam was in a world of trouble. It was August 2009, police sources said, and the young cop with high-ranking relatives in the Police Department had just tearfully confessed to stealing parts from two automatic weapons from the department’s Firearms Identification Unit.
You can probably tell from the part I highlighted where this is going. Rather than reporting the crime, they transferred him to another unit and swept it under the rug. He was apparently (badly) swapping the automatic parts out of guns and replacing them with semi-auto parts, presumably to take them home and convert his personal firearms to automatic weapons. I’m guessing no one told this guy the receivers are different.
Police officers are permitted to have automatic weapons, but only those issued under the authority of a state or local agency. If the Philadelphia Police didn’t issue it to him, it’s a crime to possess otherwise. Police can’t convert their personal weapons to fully-automatic anymore than we can.
Dave Hardy is reporting that ATF would appear to be handing out promotions for those involved in Fast and Furious. This is bad news for the whistleblowers, since Dave points out, “One of the men directly culpable for this project is now in a position to slit their throats (a la OPR). They seem to be telling their agents to be very careful what they say, and to whom.”
When my company’s 401k plan got cancelled, I had to roll everything over into a Traditional IRA. I thought the transfer of money would happen through ACH, since I had to give them the financial institution’s information. But a few days ago I got a check in the mail, made out to the bank I got the IRA with, for an amount larger than I’d ever seen on a check before. So I found out what address to send it to, filled out the deposit slip, and went over to the Post Office to get it where it needs to be.
I got every piece of tracking on that thing that they would allow with a PO Box destination. I don’t trust the Post Office with that kind of responsibility. It made me think whether people like Obama and his supporters on the left would feel nervous putting most of their retirement savings into the hands of the US Postal Service. If the answer is yes, then why do they trust them with our health care? Does the government magically become more competent when they are asked to manage the health care system as opposed to delivering the mail? The latter tasks seems to be a lot simpler to me, yet I’m still nervous entrusting them with my life’s savings.
Surprisingly, they come down on Holder much harder than many other media outfits, and suggest it’s time for the Attorney General to be more forthcoming about how this happened, and this is the real shocking quote coming from the Inquirer, “Finally, [Holder] needs to explain how the administration went from wanting to ban assault weapons to supplying them to drug lords.”
In the mean time, the Washington Post and the New York Times are both busy carrying the water for the Administration, and trying to turn this into a discussion about our gun laws. I noticed the media is now more willing to come down on Fast and Furious, now that I think it’s clear who they plan to make the scapegoats. It seems unbelievable that an operation like this was concocted at lower levels, rather than directed from above, but both the WaPo and the Times don’t seem to want to acknowledge it. It’s rare that I offer kudos to the Philadelphia Inquirer, but in this case they deserve it.
I hate the GOP, and I hate my choices. So with the Democrats, I can either have my money, and my kids’ money, spent so fast that our head spins, or, under the GOP, I can deal with stupid Internet snooping bills that invade my privacy and force ISPs to spend huge sums of money watching what everyone does. Let’s not even, for a moment, think about what this will do to the performance of high speed connections, where services will have to be forced through proxies, in order for their behavior to be logged. I propose an amendment to this bill, suggesting that Congress’ and the White House’s internet connection get tapped too, and the logs opened up to anyone who wants to look. Think it’ll pass then?
I should note that Rep. Sensenbrenner (R-WI), Rep. Chaffetz (R-UT), and Rep. Issa (R-CA), all voted against this stupid, stupid bill. The rest of the GOP fell in line. The GOP is still for big government, they are just for different big government than the Democrats.
I’m pretty sure that’s the mindset we’re headed towards with stories about fathers and grandfathers being run off of public areas or reported to the police for taking pictures of their own family members. When a raving lunatic woman gets in a man’s face screaming at him for no other reason than he’s taking pictures of his grandchild in his care at the park, where is the media report about a crazed woman attacking men with families?
I love how the local media jumped on the lynch mob bandwagon without actually asking police for more details about the incident that may have given them a clue there’s no probable cause or actual reason for suspicion.
But what really caught my attention was from the related stories. I somehow missed that NJ has a bill that would ban anyone from taking pictures if minors were in it and their parents didn’t feel like it was a situation where their child should be photographed. The punishment? Three to five years in prison and/or a fine up to $15K.
The bill’s sponsors freely admit that it’s completely unconstitutional, but they just want to do something about those perverts who take pictures in public places where minors run around freely. Like this person. Or this one. Or this one.
When it gets the point where I can go through the galleries of scrapbooking sites to find moms who have pictures of their children posted with other minors in the background and declare that in New Jersey, they could face five years in prison if lawmakers get their way, something has gone terribly wrong in our society.
I think what also bothers me is that if the mother in the initial story who screamed at the grandfather truly believed he was a threat, she handled the situation in the wrong way. There’s such a thing as asking questions – questions like “Which one is yours?” – that would give you ammunition if you really did need to call the cops. If you can tell them that a man is truly behaving suspiciously – running from polite contact, admitting that he has no children on site, and he actually does something creepy to or around one of the children, then there’s room for them to investigate. That might actually lead to a situation where a potentially dangerous person is removed from the park, and possibly put behind bars if they discover illegal activities. If I were a mother, I would think that is a far better solution than running around a park screaming at men for no other crime than they have a penis and are caring for their own children or grandchildren. But then again, that might be my sanity getting in the way.
Or the change? Maybe Apple needs to develop an iGovernment app. Couldn’t be worse than Congress, could it?
Seems this isn’t the first time this cop lost his cool. Follow the link, as the video is not embeddable. This suspect had an illegal gun, but this guy still really needs to find another line of work. Police work is not something he’s cut out for.
“Don’t (expletive) move. Let me see your (expletive) hands,†Harless shouted. “I’ll kill every one of you (expletive). There’s a (expletive) gun in this car. You (expletive) move, I’ll shoot you in the head.â€
Harless also threatened to send the suspects “to the grave†if they moved, adding, “I will shoot you in the face and I’ll go to sleep tonight.â€
If this officer ever does have to shoot someone, even if it’s legitimately self-defense, the statements appearing in these videos are going to greatly complicate his life unless it’s a cut-and-dry clean shoot, which is not often the case.
I also suggest this guy isn’t too good about controlling the situation. In what universe does a guy have a gun in a car illegally, and you don’t pull him out of the car and cuff him as soon as you realize it? Wouldn’t you at least want to remove the gun? Does he maybe want the suspect to pick up the gun, so he has an excuse? You really have to wonder.