Apparently General Electric Capital will no longer provide financial services to U.S. gun stores. General electric will however, continue to develop and sell powerful weapons systems to the U.S. government for delivering peace to citizens of other countries.
Category Archives: Gun Control
CNN and gun control
Is it just me or is CNN actively campaigning 24/7 in support of gun control? They really are becoming another Fox News in terms of their transparent bias and obvious agenda. For anyone with a brain, the establishment media is essentially useless as an objective news source.
Tuesday Afternoon Links
- Careful driving is not probable cause for the police to search your car. At this point, I’m pretty sure you can probably count on one hand the activities that are not probably cause for a search.
- Obama declares that his support for gun control is not about politics, but opposing gun control is.
- If you work at a company that provides free lunch, like Google, Yahoo, and Facebook, the IRS wants to tax it as income.
- MSNBC: All your kids are belong to us.
- RTP, Mouseketeer, Annette Funicello. This is a personal tragedy for most guys om their 60s and 70s.
- Wikileaks releases 1.7 million U.S. diplomatic records from 1973-1976. This, of course, means that facts will become known without first being sanitized through the Ministry of Truth, which really pisses off the U.S. government.
- North Korean advises foreigners to leave South Korea while they still can, but the U.S. says, no problemo, the U.S.can intercept North Korean missiles.
- Verizon is back in bed with the Feds to help them violate your 4th Amendment rights. You will recall that Verizon, along with AT&T and BellSouth, were part of the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping fiasco back during the Bush years. To their credit, Qwest was the only Baby Bell to refuse to cooperate with the NSA.
Monday Morning Links
Bailout agreement for Cyprus will close their largest bank and seize deposits greater than €100,000. Without the bailout it might have been the first country forced out of the Eurozone. No one wants to be first, you know.
The good news is the Dow Jones is back to what it was before the financial crisis. The bad news is that the value of the dollar relative to gold has fallen faster than the improvement in the Dow.
While the U.S. government looks for ways to restrict gun ownership in “the land of the free”, the CIA is busy shipping thousands of tons of military equipment to rebels in Syria. Because the U.S. unequivocally supports the right of people to rebel against tyranny (except in cases where the tyrants are friendly to the U.S.).
The military is asking Congress for money to expand the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The want $50M for a new building to house special prisoners. This would bring the total bill for upgrading the prison to $195M.
So much for Colorado’s plan to treat marijuana like alcohol. And that’s not to suggest that alcohol regulation is exactly a great example of government restraint. The real mistake was letting government think it had the power to control either one.
The costs of war don’t end when the war ends. We’re still paying beneficiaries from 19th century wars and billions for 20th century wars. And the costs of recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are rising.
Afternoon Links
- According to this New York Times article, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention claim 20,000 of the 30,000 deaths from guns in the U.S. in 2010 were suicides. It turns out that a bullet to the brain is one of the most effective ways to kill yourself. My question is, why the hell is the CDC tracking anything related to guns or suicide neither of which is a disease? Oops. I forgot. As a government agency, there are no bounds to its mission. Oh, and congratulations to the 50 million gun owning households that managed to make it through 2010 without any suicides.
- There will be no armed drones in the U.S., at least until they change their minds or violate their own rules. In terms of privacy, the FAA couldn’t care less.
- While the Obama administration continues to tout the successes of the CIA drone warfare program, such statements should not be taken to mean that such a program exists or doesn’t exist.
- Someday soon, you will be able to wear your computer. And not just on your wrist.
- Are republicans an endangered species? We can only hope. And we can only hope they take the democrats with them. Personally, I’d much rather we replace the current two party system with a myriad of much more narrowly focused parties. I can think of a couple. An anti-war party. A balanced budget party. A small government party (I mean a real small government party, not the Tea Party).
DEA wants warrantless access to prescription records
From The Agitator’s Morning Links:
The ACLU is challenging a claim by the DEA that it can access confidential prescription drug records in Oregon without a warrant. Basically, the DEA wants access to information already collected under Oregon state law.
In 2009, the Oregon legislature created the Oregon Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP), which tracks prescriptions for certain drugs dispensed by Oregon pharmacies, including all of the medications listed above. The program was intended to help physicians prevent drug overdoses by their patients and more easily recognize signs of drug abuse.
Yeah, right. The government is always watching out for “the folks” (a term coined by right wing statist icon Bill Reilly).
The State of Oregon sued the DEA in federal court to defend its right to require law enforcement, including federal agencies, to obtain the warrants required by state law.
Interesting that the Oregon government argues that the DEA should get a warrant to access personal information that the state collects without a warrant.
Today, the ACLU filed a motion to intervenein the case on behalf of several patients and a doctor whose prescription records are contained in the PDMP. Our clients are concerned that the privacy of their medical information will be violated if the DEA is allowed to search through prescription records without a warrant..
Sorry, ACLU, but that ship has already sailed. The privacy of their medical information was violated a long long time ago with programs like Medicare and the Drug War. Where were you then?
And for all you gun rights advocates, it’s probably inevitable that prescription drug information mining will eventually be used to identify people who have been treated with psychiatric medications as means to block them from buying a gun. According to Yahoo, even the NRA suggests people under mental health treatment are fair game for more gun restrictions:
[NRA President David] Keene said officials should focus more attention on a “devastatingly broken mental health system in this country,” if they genuinely want to end gun violence.
States are rejecting federal controls over health care, gun control, light bulbs, and marijuana
Came across an interesting opinion piece about nullification in the Augusta Chronicle. It carries the subtitle, “More citizens ignoring federal law — much like the federal government“.
Washington may have no one but itself to blame for the rise of the nullification movement – particularly the Obama administration, which has set the standard for ignoring the law.
Definitely not a flattering commentary on the federal government. going on to point out how Obama is increasingly leaning on the power of executive orders to bypass Congress and game the system around election time. Meanwhile, democrats continue their ardent support for Obama’s strategies because, as everyone knows, “it’s okay when our guy does it“.
Stephen Colbert addresses nullification
Well, in this case it’s being referred to as neutralization rather than nullification. As I posted yesterday, Alabama is considering a bill that would attempt to thwart federal gin control laws. As this segment from Comedy Central’s Colbert Report shows, it’s not just Alabama (in fact Colbert doesn’t even include Alabama):
Of course, Colbert’s comments are anything but flattering to the concept of state nullification of federal law and he follows up with guest, Cliff Sloan, who once having been a clerk to Supreme Court judge John Paul Stevens, makes the very compelling case that federal law trumps state law and if you don’t believe that all you have to do is ask anyone in the federal government. Furthermore, only the federal government (the Supreme Court, to be precise) gets to determine whether a federal law is Constitutional. No conflict there, right?
Now, if you want to hear something intelligent and thoughtful on the topic, I suggest you might want to look at this 48 minute video of Tom Woods whose credentials are also quite impressive.
Don’t have the time? I know. I don’t either. So what I’ve started doing is loading up my MP3 player with podcasts and listen to them on the drive to and from work which for me is about 25 minutes each way. There are plenty of websites with podcasts to choose from, but not all content is in audio format. Videos seem much easier to come by, so I convert videos to MP3s. Free converters are easy to find on the web. Tom Woods, of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, is probably one of the most interesting libertarian lecturers around. He covers numerous topics, he’s an enthusiastic speaker, and he’s funny. I recommend him highly. If you’d like help finding video to MP3 converters, let me know.
We need gun control because cops are outgunned!
Not.
Alabama considers federal gun law nullification
Alabama State Rep Mike Ball is proposing a law to protect firearms made and sold in Alabama from federal restrictions.
The article quotes Ball as saying:
“If a gun is manufactured in Alabama and it’s sold in Alabama, if there’s no interstate transaction, then why should the federal government be regulating it.”
The bill apparently attempts to short-circuit the Federal government’s view that the the Commerce Clause in the Constitution gives it jurisdiction over all human activity. This position has repeatedly been tested in court and upheld, so it is doubtful the Alabama law would stand up to challenge by the federal government.
But, if you’re familiar with the work of Tom Woods regarding nulification, you’re probably aware that such a law might prevent state and local law enforcement officers from participating in the enforcement of the federal law. The federal government has limited police resources and relies heavily on state cooperation. If enough states climb on the nullification bandwagon, the federal government would probably not be able to effectively enforce the law. We may soon see this in action as more states follow the lead of Washington and Colorado in legalizing recreational pot use.
And yes, this is the same Mike Ball I wrote about yesterday who introduced the ill-considered bill further restricting where sex offenders can live.