Safer in Afghanistan

For those of you unfamiliar with the Washington metropolitan area, here's a brief geography lesson.  Washington DC is surrounded by the state of Maryland (or, as the Vulture refers to the state in which he lives, the People's Republic of Maryland).  There are two PRM counties surrounding DC: affluent Montgomery County to the West, and HURTing Prince Georges County to the East.

PG County has always been a high crime place.  But now it's achieved the kind of milestone that has heretofore never been approached by any stateside jurisdiction - EVER!

Federal agents are embedding with homicide investigators in Prince George's County starting this week in a rare move as authorities scramble to react to a string of 13 killings that have occurred already in 2011.

"It is very unusual for us to bring in agents and embed them in our homicide division," said police spokesman Maj. Andy Ellis. "I can't remember us doing that since probably the mid-to-late '90s."

The county has been rocked by news of a homicide spike since New Year's Day. The county's 13 killings exceed the 12 U.S. military deaths that have occurred this year in Afghanistan as of Friday morning.

Yes, you read that right. There have been more shooting deaths in PG County in 2011 than fatalities in Afghanistan.

Please, explain to me again how the Great Society welfare state, gun control, and the War on Drugs have made our lives so much better. 'Cause I ain't seein' it.

Thug cops in the news

I've been characterized by the pro-bigotry crowd at Caput Penitus Culus and Texas FLDS as anti-law enforcement.  I think that's something of a mischaracterization.  I think it would be more accurate to characterize me as being strongly opposed to unlawful law enforcement.  What do I mean by that?  Here are three examples for your perusal.

Pittsburgh police Chief Nate Harper said three plainclothes officers have been reassigned during an internal investigation into the beating of an 18-year-old student violinist from the city's Creative and Performing Arts High School.

Police charged Jordan Miles, 18, with assault and resisting arrest Jan. 11 because, they said, he fought with the officers who thought a "heavy object" in his coat was a gun. It turned out to be a bottle of Mountain Dew.

Miles said he resisted because he thought the men were trying to abduct him and didn't identify themselves as police.

Miles' family and attorney said he was hit with a stun gun and hospitalized after the violent Homewood struggle during which a chunk of his hair was yanked out and a tree branch went through his gums.

"I was accused for something I never had anything to do with," said Miles, an honor student at CAPA. "I was completely innocent. They couldn't find anything."

This, unfortunately, is more the norm than you might think. If this kid had been some random gang-banger, there would have never been any newsprint "wasted" on his story. But because it was a talented honor student, the cops in question will receive a slap on the wrist. What they DESERVE is serious jail time for aggravated assault.

A different kind of unlawful law enforcement is practiced in Brooklyn.

A Brooklyn precinct is under investigation for manipulating statistics to make its cops look like better crimefighters, the Daily News has learned.

Two probes are centered around whether Bedford-Stuyvesant's 81st Precinct recorded felonies as misdemeanors and refused to take complaints from victims - all in an effort to drive down the crime rate, sources said.

And the allegations came from one of the precinct's officers.

Officer Adrian Schoolcraft shared his suspicions with the Internal Affairs Bureau and the Quality Assurance Division, the NYPD unit responsible for maintaining the integrity of crime stats.

Schoolcraft told The News the top brass are so concerned with numbers that one precinct lieutenant is known as "The Shredder" because he's often spotted destroying documents.

Refused to take complaints from victims? Whatever happened to "protect and serve"?

One usually associates fudging the numbers with companies like Arthur Anderson and Enron, NOT with the police. How many violent perpetrators are walking the streets of Brooklyn now because these corrupt jerks were more concerned with their numbers than with public safety?

Finally, there's the all-too-prevalent "cop mentality", that "us vs. them" attitude that many police have towards everyone else not wearing police blue.

An East Palo Alto police detective is taking heat in online forums for allegedly posting comments from his Facebook account that advocate shooting Open Carry gun advocates.

Detective Rod Tuason apparently made the remarks in response to a friend's status update, which joked that gun advocates who carry unloaded weapons in plain view as a political statement should start doing so in places such as Oakland, Richmond and East Palo Alto "and not limit themselves to hoity toity cities."

"Haha, we had one guy last week try to do it!" Tuason replied, referring to a Redwood City man who strolled into the Mi Pueblo Food Center in East Palo Alto on Jan. 27 with a gun on his hip. "He got proned out and reminded where he was at and that turds will jack him for his gun in a heartbeat!"

After several more comments in the thread, Tuason apparently joked that officers should shoot the advocates, who have made recent headlines throughout the Bay Area for sipping coffee at cafes and performing other everyday acts with visible weapons.

"Sounds like you had someone practicing their 2nd amendment rights last night!" Tuason wrote. "Should've pulled the AR out and prone them all out! And if one of them makes a furtive movement ... 2 weeks off!!!"

Two weeks off. The life of a human being who is simply demonstrating for his Second Amendment right to bear arms is of no importance. Only the lives of the men in blue are worthy of concern.

The arrogance is stunning. And altogether too common.

Three examples of unlawful law enforcement. And that's without any mention of the overt militarization of community police forces thanks to the War on Drugs.

If being offended by THAT kind of law enforcement makes me anti-law enforcement, so be it.

A racist, anti-freedom horror show

Judge Sonia Sotomayor is Il Duce's nominee for the Supreme Court to take the place of that moron David Souter. As one would expect, only the finest legal expert, selected on the basis of merit, not quotas, would be Il Duce's first Court nominee. NOT AT ALL.

Sonia Sotomayer represents all that is wrong with our judicial system. Her demeanor in the courtroom is that of a tyrant and a bully. She is anti-freedom, ruling against both freedom of speech and the Second Amendment.

But the one thing about Sotomayor that stands out? That would be her racism.

Oh, come on, Vulture! You really can't use one throw-away paragraph in one speech to label a person as a racist! But that's the thing: I don't. I couldn't care less about that speech. When I speak of Sotomayor as a racist, I'm talking about more important, more substantial things, like this:

As an undergraduate at Princeton, this nominee to the Supreme Court wanted the government to require the school to hire more Hispanic faculty members. At Yale Law School, she bemoaned a court ruling against racial quotas. She hasn't seen nearly enough affirmative action to please her, and as a judge has repeatedly cited her own special understandings as a Latina as a reason for putting more Hispanics on the bench.

So what's wrong with any of this? Nothing, if all she was doing was calling for an end to ethnic, gender or racial discrimination against people who are imminently qualified as faculty members or judges or whatever. Instead, she was calling for preferential treatment on the grounds that there is something better about one group than another, much the same philosophy once used to justify slavery, lynchings, segregation and all kinds of injustices against blacks in this country.

That's not enough for you? Try this: Sotomayor belongs to La Raza, Spanish for "The Race". Last I heard, excessive racial identity was a prime element of racism. And La Raza is an anti-American organization as well.

La Raza was condemned in 2006 by former U.S. Rep. Charles Norwood, R-Ga., as a radical "pro-illegal immigration lobbying organization that supports racist groups calling for the secession of the western United States as a Hispanic-only homeland."

Norwood urged La Raza to renounce its support of the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan – which sees "the Race" as part of an ethnic group that one day will reclaim Aztlan, the mythical birthplace of the Aztecs. In Chicano folklore, Aztlan includes California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and parts of Colorado and Texas.

Hey! I have relatives in Aztlan! And they don't speak Spanish! [/sarcasm]

And let us not forget Sotomayor's prominent position in the case of the firefighters denied promotion because no minority candidates passed the test.

With all of the heat generated from that dopey quote from that dopey speech Sotomayor gave in Berkeley, Il Duce's consigliere was called upon to set the ground rules for opposition.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs issued a pointed warning to opponents of Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court nomination Wednesday, urging critics to measure their words carefully during a politically charged confirmation debate.

"You have a nice face. It would be a shame if something happened to it..."

Face it, Il Duce has produced exactly the kind of Court nominee Team Elephant was screaming about during the 2008 Elections. Of course, in the interest of fairness, I have to point out that McCommie wouldn't do much better. Maybe we'd get "son of Souter" from him, if we were lucky.

This guy could have been our President!

That Frankenstein-looking moron John Kerry is still trying to attain relevance. It's a pity.

Kerry had this to say during hearings on the escalating violence on the Mexico-US border.

At Monday's hearing, committee Chairman Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said he had been shocked to see killings and beheadings "just a stone's throw across the Rio Grande from where we're sitting this morning."

Across the border, thousands of Mexican soldiers patrol Ciudad Juarez, which saw about 2,000 murders in 14 months.

Kerry called for a ban on the imports of assault rifles, such as the AK-47, into the United States. (emphasis mine)

Let me break this down for you.

1. The violence is occurring between rival drug cartels in Mexico.
2. The AK-47 is illegal in Mexico
   
3. The AK-47 is manufactured primarily in China and Russia.
4. The primary smugglers of AK-47's into Mexico are the Chinese.
   
5. What violence has spilled over the border has originated from Mexico.
6. Full-auto AK-47s are already illegal in the US.

So...given these facts, what do YOU think of Senator Lurch's proposal?

The fact is that "make guns illegal" is the default liberal answer to every crime question. The asshats at the SF Chronicle try in vain to support the Senator's claim by citing testimony of an official from the BATF (a patently unconstitutional agency largely responsible for putting the match to the Waco powder keg back in '93). William McMahon is quoted as saying, "Assault rifles bought in the United States are favorites among cartel gunmen, who find them effective for the urban warfare." Yet the best "evidence" to support this that the Chronic could roust to support their claim was the seizure of 60 weapons used in an April 2008 shootout that were traced back to the US. I don't want to burst your bubble, Chronic, but there are certainly a lot more than 60 guns in use by the various cartels.

The fact that the weapons utilized by the drug cartels are (a) already illegal in Mexico, (b) most likely from China, (c) already illegal in the US in full-auto mode (which, one would assume, is the preferred mode of the cartel "warriors"), and (d) illegally smuggled into Mexico, not legally imported (a not-too-subtle distinction lost on the dim-witted Senator), should be cause to make a thinking man reconsider requesting a total ban on a reliable weapon that "looks menacing".

It's a pity he's not a thinking man.

And to think he could have been our President! *shudder*

Making criminals of us all

In a recent post I casually mentioned a phenomenon that gets very little attention anywhere. In fact, the only other person I've heard mention it before is Ron Smith of WBAL in Baltimore. The phenomenon of which I speak is the passage of laws and regulations by Congress that are so vague you could drive a truck through the gaps. These vague laws are then passed to some faceless bureaucracy to implement. Hilarity ensues.

You'd be surprised at how much of our "law" has been implemented by turf-hungry careerist bureaucrats. Let me lay it out for you.

Congress passes the National Everyone Must Be Happy Act. Just as one would expect from the title of the Act, it's more vague than a mime with ADD. There aren't any details to speak of. Just "be happy, damn it!".

The Department of Feel Good is created to enforce this Act. "Happy" Czar C. Brazen Hubris tasks his department heads to define the policy and the definitions of what "compliance" is, the better to reward those who comply and punish those who don't. When their "little" document is finalized (at around 1,300 pages), the "law" resulting from the Act is now complete. Regardless of the intent of the sponsors of the original bill, the law, as implemented, may be 180 degrees different from that intent.

As a result of this little game, Congress get credit for passing "magnificent" bills like the Americans with Disabilities Act, No Child Left Behind, and, of course, the Assault Weapons ban. Note the resultant success of each of these Acts (/sarcasm).

It is the Assault Weapons ban that comes into play here. Of all the federal black hole gawd-awful agencies that could implement this steaming turd of legislative nonsense, it fell to the very worst - the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF). ATF seems to be the place where the very worst of schoolyard bullies eventually end up working. ATF would just LOVE to make criminals out of every gun owner in America. Think I'm kidding? You'll be of a different mind after reading this.

Savage's dispute with the federal agency stems from a recent project for which he sent a gun part he is developing to the federal government for review.

The part is intended to allow a certain type of gun to be used with a different size and less expensive ammunition. Savage, owner of Historic Arms LLC., said his part would convert the caliber of the guns to operate with ammunition that costs 1 or 2 cents per shell, instead of 25 cents or more.

He said such devices are fairly common. But he told WND he was stunned to get a letter from the BATFE stating that not only was his repair part a gun, it was a machine gun.

That conclusion came after the agency's testing bureau added some metal pieces, a length of chain, some duct tape and plastic wires to his gun part in order to make it fire a bullet.

Okay, follow me here. Dude invents an add-on part to allow guns to fire cheaper ammunition (great for target practice). ATF puts McIver to work on the gun and part. McIver creates a machine gun. Now dude is a criminal...just because some whiz kid could take additional parts never intended for use with either the gun nor the add-on part and rig a machine gun.

It gets better. There's the case of a poor soul whose weapon malfunctioned and shot three bullets with one squeeze of the trigger. He's doing 30 months in Federal penitentiary as a result.

"A gun that malfunctions is not a machine gun," Larry Pratt, executive director of GOA, said. "What the [federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives] has done in the Olofson case has set a precedent that could make any of the millions of Americans that own semi-automatic firearms suddenly the owner [of] an unregistered machine gun at the moment the gun malfunctions."

When U.S. District Judge Charles Clevert imposed the sentence, a commentary in Guns Magazine said, "It didn't matter the rifle in question had not been intentionally modified for select fire, or that it did not have an M16 bolt carrier … that it did not show any signs of machining or drilling, or that that model had even been recalled a few years back.

"It didn't matter the government had repeatedly failed to replicate automatic fire until they replaced the ammunition with a softer primer type. It didn't even matter that the prosecution admitted it was not important to prove the gun would do it again if the test were conducted today," the magazine said. "What mattered was the government's position that none of the above was relevant because '[T]here's no indication it makes any difference under the statute. If you pull the trigger once and it fires more than one round, no matter what the cause it's a machine gun.' No matter what the cause."

No matter what the cause.

Do you still think I'm exaggerating when I say they're trying to make criminals of us all?

Hallelujah! The 2nd Amendment upheld!!!

Who would have imagined it? In a day and age when our freedoms are encroached on a daily basis, a 5-4 Supreme Court decision not only struck down the odious DC weapons ban, but also affirmed that the Second Amendment applies to individual citizens!!!

Individual Americans have a right to own guns, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday for the first time in the country's history, striking down a strict gun control law in the U.S. capital.

The landmark 5-4 ruling marked the first time in nearly 70 years the high court has addressed the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. It rejected the argument the right to keep and bear arms was tied to service in a state militia.

A better wording of that last line would be: "It rejected the specious and unfounded argument...".

Just when I feel like there's no hope, that Der Staat and Das Überwachenden cannot be stopped, a ray of the sunshine of Freedom suddenly appears. By affirming that the Second Amendment applies to individual citizens, the Court has opened the door for the repeal of the majority of the over 20,000 gun control laws currently on the books nationwide.

Of course, I'm just cynical enough to believe this to be a temporary setback for the fascist elites. They'll find another way to make us vulnerable and anxious so that we clamber for their protective, Statist, hand of "protection".

Nevertheless, it's a great day for those of us on the side of Freedom.

Gun Control Stops Violent Crime -- NOT!

You probably know someone who thinks that all we need to eliminate violence in society is stricter gun control. Take away EVERYBODY'S guns, and, voila! Violent crime will be completely and totally eliminated, and we'll all sit around the campfire singing Kum Ba Ya forever.

Uh, yeah. Why don't we ask the Japanese how well it's working out for them?

A man plowed into shoppers with a truck Sunday and then stabbed 17 people within minutes, killing at least seven of them in a grisly attack that shocked a country known for its low crime rate.

The lunchtime violence in the Akihabara district, a popular electronics and video game area, sent thousands of people fleeing.

The assault, which occurred on the seventh anniversary of a mass stabbing at a Japanese elementary school, was the latest in a series of knife attacks that have stoked fears of rising violent crime in Japan.

---

But stabbings, once rare in the country, have become more frequent in recent years.

In March, one person was stabbed to death and at least seven others were hurt by a man who went on a slashing spree with two knives outside a shopping mall in eastern Japan. In January, a 16-year-old boy attacked five people in a shopping area, injuring two of them.

A spate of knife attacks also have occurred in schools, the worst on June 8, 2001 when a man with a history of mental illness burst into elementary school near Osaka killing eight children. He was executed in 2004.

Gun control? Did I say gun control? I meant knife control!

C'mon people! You can ban the tools of violence all the live-long day. But you'll never be able to ban the evil that lurks in the hearts of those who would kill their fellow man. Ban guns? Fine, they'll use knives. Ban knives? Fine, they'll use pesticides, or improvised explosives, or...

Don't you see? When you outlaw guns, you succeed only in taking away a means of defense from the law abiding. You'll never stop violent crime through disarmament. A .45 slug through the head? Now THAT will stop a violent crime!