Red’s Trad­ing Post Videos. They’ve posted two new video ads defend­ing them­selves against BATFU harassment.

Ryan Horsley’s got guts and he’s artic­u­late. He’s defend­ing a way of life and a fix­ture in his com­mu­nity from destruc­tive invad­ing par­a­sites, and he shouldn’t have to stand alone.

We gun own­ers are quick to pass judg­ment on deal­ers who don’t stand up to intim­i­da­tion, like those who caved in to Bloomberg’s law­suits. We need to be equally as quick to sup­port those who refuse to roll over. This guy goes one step fur­ther and swings back defi­antly.

WarOnGuns will def­i­nitely keep an eye on fur­ther developments.

[Via charel­ton­hest] [The War on Guns]

Who Could Have Fore­seen the FBI’s Fail­ure in Over­see­ing Itself?.

Mem­bers of Con­gress, includ­ing Repub­li­cans as well as Democ­rats, are dis­mayed that the FBI has failed to ade­quately super­vise itself to pre­vent mis­use of “national secu­rity let­ters” demand­ing phone, email, and finan­cial records. A recent report from Jus­tice Depart­ment Inspec­tor Gen­eral Glenn Fine revealed, among other abuses, that the FBI was keep­ing incom­plete records of NSLs and assert­ing “exi­gent cir­cum­stances” that did not exist. The leg­is­la­tors who voted to give the FBI the author­ity to uni­lat­er­ally grab what­ever records it thinks might be use­ful for inves­ti­gat­ing ter­ror­ism are amazed at the lack of proper oversight:

“I just want to con­vey to you how upset many of us are who have defended this pro­gram and have believed it is nec­es­sary to the pro­tec­tion of our coun­try,” Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Dan Lun­gren, Repub­li­can of Cal­i­for­nia, told Valerie E. Caproni, the bureau’s gen­eral counsel.…

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Dar­rell Issa, also a Cal­i­for­nia Repub­li­can, said he was “shocked” by the bureau’s trans­gres­sions and sug­gested that they might have bro­ken the law.

“If what was done was done by a private-sector indi­vid­ual, wouldn’t the F.B.I. be arrest­ing them?” Mr. Issa asked. “Wouldn’t the U.S. attor­neys be pros­e­cut­ing peo­ple who played fast and loose with these rules?”

How to pre­vent such abuses? I’m just think­ing out loud here, but what if some­one out­side the FBI, maybe even in a dif­fer­ent branch of gov­ern­ment, reviewed these record demands before busi­nesses were required to com­ply with them?

Kerry How­ley con­sid­ered the NSL scan­dal ear­lier this week.

[Hit and Run]

There’s an even bet­ter way to pre­vent abuses by the FBI: if there is no FBI, it can’t be abu­sive. This would have the added ben­e­fit of bring­ing the FBI into com­pli­ance with the Con­sti­tu­tion, which makes the FBI’s very exis­tence illegal.

Most dig­i­tal con­tent not sta­ble: archivists. Archivists say the domes­tic dig­i­tal for­mats avail­able to the aver­age con­sumer, such as stan­dard CDs and DVDs, are not sta­ble and were never intended to be used for long-term storage.

[…]

Far­rell says a dig­i­tal black hole is loom­ing over the infor­ma­tion age, because most of the mate­r­ial the provin­cial archives receives comes from the pub­lic. He says if we’re not look­ing after our dig­i­tal records prop­erly, there won’t be any­thing for the archives to save.

[…]

Noël is con­vinced that a safe and fool­proof way to save dig­i­tal mate­r­ial is right around the cor­ner, but until then, it’s up to every­one to do what they can to pre­serve their dig­i­tal doc­u­ments. He says if you want to pre­serve your visual and audio mem­o­ries, make copies of copies on dig­i­tal, but always keep the ana­log orig­i­nals. [CBC News]

The poor longevity of dig­i­tal stor­age is some­thing I’ve been warn­ing about for a while. If your orig­i­nal source is dig­i­tal, it’s best to make an ana­log copy if at all pos­si­ble. For exam­ple, pro photo labs can make a slide from a dig­i­tal photo for around $5.

Escape from UK-run prison in Iraq. Eleven detainees escape from a UK mil­i­tary prison in Basra, most of them by “swap­ping” with vis­i­tors, the army says. [BBC News]

Appar­ently British sol­diers don’t read Dick­ens.

Ron Paul in the Polls. With vir­tu­ally only inter­net atten­tion, Ron is already at 2% in the lat­est CNN pres­i­den­tial poll, tied with Hagel, Gilmore, and Brown­back, and ahead of Huck­abee, Tan­credo, and Thomp­son. My pre­dic­tion: a steady increase in his poll stand­ing. (Thanks to… [LewRockwell.com Blog]

That would be nice, but I’m not hold­ing my breath. The mar­gin for error in that poll is 4.9%, mak­ing Ron Paul’s 2% pretty mean­ing­less. Also, social­ist war­mon­gers Rudy Giu­liani and John McCain have (sur­prise, sur­prise) an enor­mous lead.

Wash­ing­ton, D.C. Dis­cov­ers Con­sti­tu­tion. Friday’s big news, which broke a bit late for H&R:

A fed­eral appeals court over­turned the Dis­trict of Columbia’s long-standing hand­gun ban Fri­day, reject­ing the city’s argu­ment that the Sec­ond Amend­ment right to bear arms applied only to militias.

In a 2–1 deci­sion, the judges held that the activ­i­ties pro­tected by the Sec­ond Amend­ment “are not lim­ited to mili­tia ser­vice, nor is an individual’s enjoy­ment of the right con­tin­gent” on enroll­ment in a militia.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Dis­trict of Colum­bia Cir­cuit ruled that the city can­not pre­vent peo­ple from keep­ing hand­guns in their homes. The rul­ing also struck down a require­ment that own­ers of reg­is­tered firearms keep them unloaded and dis­as­sem­bled. The court did not address pro­vi­sions that pro­hibit peo­ple from car­ry­ing unreg­is­tered guns out­side the home.

The deci­sion marks the first time a fed­eral appeals court has struck down a por­tion of a gun law on Sec­ond Amend­ment grounds.

That’s huge. And one angle you prob­a­bly won’t hear: This is the direc­tion DC pub­lic opin­ion has been mov­ing toward for some time. Only one month ago Mar­ion Barry, DC’s statesman/punchline who now holds a city coun­cil seat, pro­posed a halt to the gun ban.

[Hit and Run]

I’m actu­ally sur­prised that the gov­ern­ment ruled against itself this way–that’s a very rare thing. I’m not sur­prised that the peo­ple who actu­ally live there have been mov­ing away from the gun ban, though. After all, they’re the ones who have had to live with its consequences.

Also unsur­pris­ing is the NRA’s oppo­si­tion to the suit. Despite its media-created rep­u­ta­tion as “pro-gun extrem­ists,” the NRA is actu­ally the largest and most influ­en­tial gun con­trol orga­ni­za­tion in the coun­try. They don’t want the Sec­ond Amend­ment to be upheld, because if gun con­trol laws go away they’ll no longer have an issue with which to con mil­lions of suck­ers into send­ing them money.

Mac­world: News: France bans cit­i­zen jour­nal­ists from report­ing vio­lence.

The French Con­sti­tu­tional Coun­cil has approved a law that
crim­i­nal­izes the film­ing or broad­cast­ing of acts of vio­lence by peo­ple
other than pro­fes­sional jour­nal­ists. The law could lead to the
impris­on­ment of eye­wit­nesses who film acts of police vio­lence, or
oper­a­tors of Web sites pub­lish­ing the images, one French civil
lib­er­ties group warned on Tuesday.

The coun­cil chose an unfor­tu­nate anniver­sary to pub­lish its deci­sion
approv­ing the law, which came exactly 16 years after Los Ange­les police
offi­cers beat­ing Rod­ney King were filmed by ama­teur video­g­ra­pher George
Hol­l­i­day on the night of March 3, 1991. The offi­cers’ acquit­tal at the
end on April 29, 1992 sparked riots in Los Angeles.

If Hol­l­i­day were to film a sim­i­lar scene of vio­lence in France
today, he could end up in prison as a result of the new law, said
Pas­cal Cohet, a spokesman for French online civil lib­er­ties group
Odebi. And any­one pub­lish­ing such images could face up to five years in
prison and a fine of €75,000 (US$98,537), poten­tially a harsher
sen­tence than that for com­mit­ting the vio­lent act.

[Pri­vacy Digest: Pri­vacy News (Civil Rights, Encryp­tion, Free Speech, Cryp­tog­ra­phy)]

The tim­ing with the anniver­sary of the Rod­ney King beat­ing is actu­ally quite appro­pri­ate, as I have no doubt that the increas­ing ubiq­uity of minia­ture still and video cam­eras played a major role in the French government’s deci­sion. I’m sure the last thing they want is for the gen­eral pub­lic to know what their own thugs are up to.

Death by Emer­gency Plan. A strange cul­ture of emer­gency has taken over this coun­try, and the slight­est provo­ca­tion trig­gers it. It could be an expected ter­ror­ist or just an old-fashioned weather warn­ing. The offi­cials are quick to swing into action, and tell you what to do.

The prob­lem is that these demands are often based on noth­ing other than gov­ern­ment plans that are not in your best inter­est. It behooves all of us to think care­fully about gen­uine pre­pared­ness, which might often involve buck­ing the sys­tem and telling the emer­gency nazis to mind their own business.

[…]

The best approach to an emer­gency is sim­ply to let peo­ple make their own judg­ments about how to stay safe. Instead, we have devel­oped a sys­tem whereby a cen­tral plan goes into effect that applies to every­one. This is why evac­u­a­tions tend to be manda­tory these days, and why you are not allowed to res­cue your own chil­dren from danger.

This brings us to the final pre­sup­po­si­tion of emer­gency man­age­ment in this coun­try: offi­cials assume that you are their prop­erty. You have no rights, no free­dom of choice, and no voli­tion of your own that should be respected. Your one job is to obey them, and at least if you are killed, they can have brag­ging rights that they got every­one to go along.

At some point in the com­ing years, you will prob­a­bly face this prob­lem. There will be some emer­gency in which you will be told to put your life or that of your chil­dren in the hands of experts, who pre­tend as if they know what is best for you. Chances are that they don’t, and this emer­gency will be the time when you need to think seri­ously about fun­da­men­tal val­ues. Is obe­di­ence to author­ity more impor­tant than life itself? [LewRockwell.com]

Urban Hor­rors and the Legions.

Sub­ject: Urban soldiers 

Jerry

Here is a fas­ci­nat­ing short piece on urban vs. rural
recruits who join our mil­i­tary. It says some­thing about edu­ca­tion. I sus­pect
it also says some­thing about the col­lec­tive g of rural vs urban pop­u­la­tions,
but I will leave that to the reader.

Ed

Why is any­one aston­ished? Rural schools are a bit closer to the cit­i­zens.
But it’s another data point. The Repub­lic is slowly suc­cumb­ing to the
lib­eral view of the world. Unions, bureau­crats, reg­u­la­tions, any­thing but
free­dom and respon­si­bil­ity. And the beat goes on…

[Chaos Manor Mus­ings]

Here’s an amus­ing exam­ple of a “con­ser­v­a­tive” (right-wing social­ist) com­pletely miss­ing what the Amer­i­can Repub­lic was sup­posed to be all about. The founders of the Repub­lic didn’t have nearly as much to say about unions (which they would cer­tainly have approved of, so long as they were vol­un­tary), bureau­crats, and reg­u­la­tions as they did about the stand­ing army that these recruits are joining.

The Found­ing Father repeat­edly, loudly, and often warned that the exis­tence of a stand­ing army was inher­ently destruc­tive to a republic–a warn­ing which, hav­ing been ignored, has been proven com­pletely cor­rect. Iron­i­cally, one of the his­tor­i­cal exam­ples that they learned from and tried to avoid repeat­ing the mis­takes of was the Roman Republic–source of the “legions” whom Jerry Pour­nelle writes so approvingly.

The paper­work upgrad­ing my Ama­teur Radio license from Tech­ni­cian to Gen­eral class finally went through. Over the week­end I had set up a portable antenna and radio on the roof of my apart­ment build­ing and was able to hear peo­ple broad­cast­ing from loca­tions as far away as Japan and the East­ern Caribbean, but none of them could hear me.

Unfor­tu­nately the stuff I had to learn to pass the test leaned towards stuff that I’m very unlikely to ever care about (for exam­ple, how a trans­former is con­structed) and glossed over such details as how to trans­mit so that peo­ple can actu­ally hear you.