Reason Rebuttal

I guess Sam Jackson made a stupid Obama video the antis really like.

Reason, being a libertarian group that doesn’t much care for the Republicans or Democrats speaks up.

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ONN Fake but Accurate

The Onion New Network is a comedy site…but I’ll add that I first read about John Wayne’s faithful encounter with his wife Lorena Bobbit in the Weekly World News.

I think they may be on a real story here!

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The Plot Thickens

On that boy shot by his dad during a B&E Attempt:

Tyler Giuliano had no trouble with the law. The teenager loved flying small planes as a Civil Air Patrol cadet and seemed happy as he played an online game with friends Wednesday night. But hours later, authorities say, Tyler was outside wearing a black ski mask and wielding a knife when he was shot by his father, who thought he was a prowler.

No immediate charges were brought against Jeffrey Giuliano, a popular fifth-grade teacher, in the slaying of 15-year-old Tyler, who was gunned down in his aunt’s driveway next door to his own home in New Fairfield around 1 a.m. Thursday….State police said the shooting happened after Jeffrey Giuliano got a call from his sister next door saying that someone might be trying to break into her home in their neighborhood of attractive colonial-style houses. Giuliano grabbed a handgun and went outside to investigate, troopers said.

He confronted someone in a ski mask and opened fire when the person came at him with something shiny in his hand, police said.

When police officers arrived, Tyler was lying dead in the driveway with a knife in his hand, and his father, in a T-shirt and shorts, was sitting on the grass. Detectives informed the elder Giuliano several hours later that he had shot his son, Vance said….Police were investigating whether the father’s gun was registered.

So Dad is a teacher in Connecticut, the older neighbor was the kid’s Aunt. The “Shiny Object” was a knife. Also sounds like Dad did everything right. Maybe you could say he should have called 911, but it was a “maybe robbery” at the time of the call, and Dad had a gun, so why bother the Police on what COULD just be one of those odd bumps in the night. Also Dad didn’t know it was his boy until police examined the body, which says he didn’t manipulate the body after he shot him.

The fact that the kid had no criminal record, and was in the CAP means nothing, as for the kid’s character or respect for the law.

This story is a CRAZY mess!

**UPDATE** I quoted it, but forgot to mention it, but the Police haven’t yet figured out if the pistol was registered? Here’s more stupidity of the registration system. The records are probably like Massachusetts which are all electronic, and they had the gun in hand, as well as the owner. So they have the owner’s name and address, as well as the gun’s model, make, and serial number. Why can’t they get the registration (or a solid case that the pistol was never registered) within hours of the records office opening the next morning?

Registration has no purpose except to aid in future confiscation!

Posted in DGU, Guns, Safety, Self Defense | 6 Comments

The Butler Did It!

Interesting:

A Vatican tribunal has thrown out some evidence gathered in the investigation of the pope’s butler, who is accused of stealing the pope’s papers and passing them off to a journalist in the worst security breach in the Vatican’s recent history….Gabriele faces up to four years in prison if he is convicted of aggravated theft. He has already confessed, saying he leaked the documents to shed light on what he called the `’evil and corruption” in the church, and asked to be pardoned by the pope.

I think we all know these letters have something to do with the Catholic Church sex abuse scandals. Unfortunately Vatican City is a sovereign nation run by the Catholic Church, so even tho he’s a whistle blower, he’s a whistle blower against the Pope, and he won’t see any leniency from that.

Posted in Politics | 4 Comments

“Gun Death” Offroad Vehicles

This is really as much of an Anti-Rights, not Anti-Gun story, as much as it is a “Gun Death?” story.

Police in a growing number of U.S. cities are trying to silence the roar of dirt bikes and all-terrain vehicles on their streets this summer.

Two people were injured in Wilmington after an accident between a station wagon and a Kawasaki dirt bike on Aug. 17.

John J. Jankowski, The News Journal

Two people were injured in Wilmington after an accident between a station wagon and a Kawasaki dirt bike on Aug. 17.

Packs of illegal riders who flout traffic laws while doing wheelies and other tricks on city streets are “an enormously challenging problem for us,” Baltimore police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said.

Baltimore police last week seized 15 dirt bikes and ATVs from a self-storage facility, including six that had been stolen and three with obliterated serial numbers.

Philadelphia police have made several sweeps in the past year to confiscate more than four dozen unlicensed dirt bikes and ATVs.

The crackdowns come as crashes have injured or killed some riders.

I’d give the “Anti-Freedom” argument as this is nothing but authoritarians making illegal acts more illegal, rather than just just enforcing the law. You see stealing things and reckless driving are already illegal, as well as taking vehicles that are not suited for road use on public roads.

Still these deaths are not “Gun Deaths”, so why are these anti-gun politicians looking to crack down on them? I thought only “Gun Death” counted!

h/t Wallphone

Posted in Gun Death? | 1 Comment

Play Me Out: Muddy Waters

King of the Electric Blues!

Posted in Music | 1 Comment

On That State Police Junk Scientist

This is a huge mess!

Chemist Annie Dookhan was ‘‘Superwoman,’’ a colleague at a Massachusetts state crime lab used to joke. She seemed unstoppable in her quest to please prosecutors, police and her bosses, testing two to three times more drug samples than anyone else, working through lunch and not bothering to put in for overtime.

‘‘The kind of person, if you owned your own business, you would want to hire her,’’ a supervisor would later tell police.

Beginning about four years ago, suspicions arose about the way she seemed to plow through so many cases so fast. After that, a supervisor complained he never actually saw her in front of a microscope. But her superiors let her work on.

Now, the startling explanation has come spilling out: Dookhan told investigators she faked test results on drug samples and cut other corners.

She faked data, and she fabricated her Resume. Now cases are being thrown out. Now the law of averages says that many of the people being let free are possibly innocent of the crimes they were convicted of…but many probably aren’t.

The big take-away is that the state really doesn’t give a shit, and let this wound fester. Just the fact that they let somebody put a falsified degree on a resume is enough to show extreme laziness on behalf of the state. I’ve had to fax in my college transcript to jobs to verify my resume was legit, and I’m sure most accredited schools have systems where enrollment and graduation can be quickly verified by employers.

And this is the STATE OF MASSACHUSETTS, not some little 10 employee start-up business. You don’t think the state has a monster HR division that spends most of their time justifying their own employment?

And that’s not even getting into the fact that she was cooking the books under the nose of her supervisors, and not in a “ooops I messed up that Assay, well I’ll just adjust the numbers”, but in a way where people were both amazed at her workload AND surprised that they didn’t see her working very hard!

Carry your damn guns people, the state just left the barn doors open overnight!

Posted in Biology, Politics, Safety | 3 Comments

More Black Market Economy

Tax stuff enough, people will smuggle it

A joint US-Canadian investigation found C$200,000 (£125,600) of cheese and other products were illicitly brought over the border into southern Ontario.

The smugglers sold large quantities of cheese, which is cheaper in the US, to restaurants, it is alleged.

The other two men charged were civilians, one a former police officer.

This is one of the reasons why I’m cautious of the battle-cry of legalizing Marijuana that is “Legalize it and tax it!”, often the legalizing of the drug is promised massive tax revenue. Still you tax that weed too high people will just continue to buy it illegally. Its not like this was ILLEGAL cheese! It was just cheaper cheese!

Posted in Food, Politics | 2 Comments

Beard Beer

Honestly not as strange as it sounds:

A local brewery went rogue to find yeast for a new batch of beer.

Rogue Brewery used a sample from the beard that Brewmaster John Maier has been growing since 1978.

As a joke, the brewery sent in the sample for testing. Then after hitting a wall while looking for a new yeast strain, they found out that the strain they had sent in was perfect for making beer.

Yeast is one of those ubiquitous organisms, and I imagine those who work with various strains of “domesticated” yeast in a non-laboratory environment, like bakers or brew masters might have their own body cultures be closer to those strains. I mean many of these yeast-using culinary traditions were started by simply exposing foodstuffs to the air, so why wouldn’t some be living in a beard?

Interesting gimmick too!

h/t Pissed

Posted in Biology, Food, Random | 2 Comments

A Bizzare DGU

I wonder if there is more to this.

A man fatally shot a masked teenager in self-defense outside his neighbor’s house during what appeared to be an attempted late-night burglary and then discovered it was his son, state police said….A woman who was alone in the house believed someone was breaking in and called the teen’s father, who lives next door, and he grabbed a gun and went outside to investigate, police said.

The father confronted someone wearing a black ski mask and black clothing and then fired his gun when the person went at him with a shiny weapon in his hand, police said….No charges have been filed. State police are investigating. An autopsy on the boy is planned.

Sounds like a legitimate defensive gun use, but man that is a STRANGE set of circumstances. Kid was attempting to break into his neighbor’s house while wearing a ski mask, and when his Dad, armed with a gun, confronts him, the kid charges and was shot.

I can’t say I’m too broken up by the loss of the kid, that’s one of those REALLY stupid things everybody should know NOT to do, and then to do anything but A) Run away, or B) take off the mask and take the punishment Dad feel’s fit, are the most logical things to do when caught.

Maybe he didn’t think his Dad had the stones to shoot? Well if that’s what he thought he was wrong…

Posted in DGU, Safety, Self Defense | 4 Comments