Must get a few things done this morning, then will return to the “musings” I began the other day. Meantime, here’s some linkage … Never thought I’d see it, but here’s one pot-legalization initiative I hope falls on its corrupt, crony-capitalist face. What goes around comes around. Amazon is opening its first physical book store. The best cities for surviving the zombie apocalypse. Feel free to disagree. Is the USDA silencing scientists? Love (in a not-so-loving way) Conquest’s third law of politics. A happy (though also mysterious) dog tale via Shel in comments.
Category: Official thuggery, bad prosecutions, and bad law
Cop shoots murder victim’s mother in the leg; misses dog. EU Parliament votes to protect Snowden against U.S. extradition. Reforming school policing. While The Atlantic fails to ask some basic questions, its heart is definitely in the right place. It’s all part of the school-to-prison pipeline. And good old “zero tolerance.” 🙂 Everything you need for household repairs. Cannabis fights liver cancer. I’m not sure why even some good, aware people continue to be surprised that there is no justice from the Department of Justice.
Amish man sues to buy firearms without photo ID. Those secretive, usually warrantless stingray units? Turns out they can record the content of phone calls; not just act as a locator. (H/T MJR) Liberalthink: We MUST have the $15/hour minimum wage even if it puts people out of work. The news just gets more dire for Obamacare’s race to the bottom. Kevin Wilmeth asks, “How cool is Marilyn Williams?”, who defended her home with a precision air rifle (aka “sniper rifle” to the media). I’m not sure how the term “social justice warriors” (SJW) came into such popular use. But…
Just now. 74 to 21. I posted about Orwell, Rand, and CISA last week. The data in question would come from private industry, which mines everything from credit card statements to prescription drug purchase records to target advertising and tweak product lines. Indeed, much of it is detailed financial and health information the government has never had access to in any form. The bill’s proponents said the data would be “anonymized”. Cisa would create a program at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) through which corporations could share user data in bulk with several US government agencies. In exchange for…
Or did the gods invent Mondays in the first place just to spite us? Winter arrived yesterday evening and today we took our first dogwalk in it. That is, I stomped along determinedly while the dogs, in their rain jackets, stared at me aghast and demanded, “Can we go home now?” While winter here in the NorthWET doesn’t involve six-foot drifts of snow or 30-below temperatures (ah, fond memories of Wyoming and Minnesota!), it tends to arrive as suddenly as if someone up there dropped it on our heads. Cold needles of rain are here to stay. —– And of…
It’s just talk so far. And European talk, at that. So take it FWIW. But if banks impose negative interest on customers, controls on withdrawals won’t be far behind. NSA-proof wallpaper? Faraday cages for all! (H/T Laird in comments) We must have common-sense sword control NOW! Fedjudge says DEA raids on legal dispensaries in California are against the law. The more news and studies that emerge about Obamacare, the more horrible that horrible program looks. (When companies can manage to get around federal regulations, this is the way humane and profitable health care gets done.) Peter Schiff writes an eloquent…
I really do. But sometimes the combination of Orwell and Rand becomes too obtrusive to bear. To wit: the CISA blowup. The gloriously bipartisan Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015, sponsored by freedom-loving Republican Richard Burr (NC) and — guess who? — our old friend Dianne Feinstein (D-Control Freak) would “allow” tech companies to “voluntarily” share information about their customers with the federal “security” apparatus “so it can be analyzed for signs of lawbreaking – be it computer related or not.” Companies that “volunteer” would be given legal immunity against angry customers. But as the linked article in The Register…
Funny; “job stress” never caused me to get drunk and bite anybody’s you-know-whats. A bad day at work ever had that effect on you? A bad year? (H/T jed in comments) Speaking of the you-know-whats: Nicki gives a “gun owner who favors gun control” a kick in his. Medical costs going up-up-up? Well, we all know they have been. But more recently, if these stats are correct, medical costs have stabilized. Medical insurance costs, OTOH … Be sure to register that drone you get for Christmas. Did Congress pass a law about this? Article fails to mention such. ADDED: Some…
“Mommy, am I going to die?” Cop shoots four-year-old after he showed up to “help” her injured mother. Clearly all in a day’s work for this callous dude. Missed the family dog, though. Drone defense on a budget. “I want one,” says MJR, who sent the link. White House aide shoots at her cop boyfriend. Much has been made of the fact that this babe is a “special” assistant to Obama, but apparently in WH parlance, “special” is as in “rides the short bus.” Barfetta Barvetta Singletary. Don’t ever ask that woman out on a date. Per Shel in comments,…
Irwin Schiff, the father (or perhaps grandfather, as Forbes observes) of the modern tax-resistance movement has died in prison. His son Peter tried to get him a compassionate release, but the feds kept the poor old man in his cage. I had the privilege of meeting Irwin Schiff in the 1980s. It was my job to drive him around for a series of local appearances in the city where I lived then. He was a very nice man, an inspiration, and — whether you think his theories were right or wrong — a brave man of conviction.* *Tragically, that’s “conviction”…