Nordyke v. King Today

The case that will in all likelihood result in the Second Amendment being enforceable against States — that is, Nordyke v. King — is being argued before, amazingly, a fairly pro-2nd-Amendment triad of 9th Circuit judges today in San Francisco. I and many other Calgunners will be in attendance at this lovely federal courthouse.

C-SPAN is covering it — might be live, might not.

No cameras allowed in the courtroom (other than C-SPAN’s, of course), but I’ll see what I can do to get pix of the event up in the next day or so.

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Boomershoot Picture of the Day

Lounging happily with the .50 Barrett at Boomershoot 2007

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RNS Quote of the Day: 01/15/09

Outstanding.

Both this quote and the item described within the post it comes from.

My last holiday was to Southern Poland and the Czech Republic… Prague is a fine and utterly mental city. It’s brilliant. Unlike so many of the great cities of Central Europe it escaped being trashed by the Wehrmacht and/or Red Army. Great food, super service, cheap beer and lashings of oddities… Where do I start? The narrowest street in Europe. It is suitable only for (slim) pedestrians and has traffic lights. The Castle is great, and just down from it is St Nicholas’ Cathedral which is regarded as a masterpiece of the baroque… It’s the most sinister building I have ever been in. It looks like a set that Hollywood would reject as too OTT for a black-mass… Towering Saints torturing devils and cabinets full of bones and quite frankly if the organist had fired-up something like the Dies Irae from Verdi’s Requiem I’d have ran out the door screaming and I’m an agnostic with science qualifications.

Nick M. @ Counting Cats in Zanzibar

Hit the link and see what “dem crazee Czechs” have done now.

You will be amused.

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The Soundboard: Bivalve Mollusk Edition

In 2001, Les Claypool (formerly of Primus), Stuart Copeland (formerly of The Police), and Trey Anastasio (formerly of Phish) relased an album under the name Oysterhead titled The Grand Pecking Order.

I’ve always liked Claypool. Copeland has always been somewhat of a odd curiosity for me, and because I never really got into Phish, I’d only heard inklings of Anastasio.

But I bought the album anyway and am very happy to report that I holds a position on a very short list of Best Albums of 2001.

On this album, Claypool is, well, Claypool and Copeland just keeps kicking ass. Also, it seems that I am now going to have to buy more of Anastasio’s published works. After this album and his work I’ve heard with Dave Matthews and Phil Lesh, he is swiftly becoming one of my favorite guitarists.

Two of the reasons why are listed below

Psuedo Suicide

As well as

Oz is Ever Floating

I’ll have another snippet over Claypool, and others, posted up special for Inauguration Day.

Until then, Enjoy!

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Reality Bites

It is biting Hugo Chavez right in the ass these days.

President Hugo Chávez, buffeted by falling oil prices that threaten to unravel his efforts to establish a Socialist-inspired state, is courting Western oil companies again.

Until recently, Chávez had pushed foreign oil companies into a corner by nationalizing their oil fields, raiding their offices with tax authorities and imposing a series of royalties increases.

But faced with the plunge in prices and a decline in domestic production, senior officials have begun soliciting bids from some of the largest Western oil companies in recent weeks — including Chevron, Royal Dutch/Shell and Total of France — promising them access to some of the world’s largest petroleum reserves, according to energy executives and industry consultants.

I so dearly wish they’d turn him down while laughing their asses off in front of the world press.

You want to get rid of a dictator. Make him look foolish to his plebes. They will walk away.

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That explains a bit

When the Seattle School District fought and lost their case to keep their race-based standards for the assignment of schools they got two Booby Prizes. One was the satisfaction of being on the wrong side of civil rights case. The other was a $1.8million bill from the legal firm that represented the victor in that case, Parents Involved in Community Schools.

However, since the school district is, well, a school district, fully immersed in the “everyone is special/there are no losers” mantra of life, they believe that they too won the case and are trying to ditch said legal bill (which has since increased to just under $2million).

Seattle Public Schools and the law firm involved in the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court case over school integration both found something to like in a ruling over whether the school district must pay roughly $2 million in attorneys fees.

U.S. District Court Judge Barbara Rothstein confirmed that the parent group that brought the case, Parents Involved in Community Schools, was the prevailing party, something the school district disputed. That was a necessary step for the law firm, Davis Wright Tremaine, to collect fees.

The judge in the case made note that she thought the district should get a cut on legal fees, and the district is using said note to weasel their way out completely now. The judge has since asked for briefs on the “special circumstances that exist that would render an award of fees unjust in this case.”

So the Seattle School District denies the civil rights of hundreds of thousands of students over the period of multiple decades, and then fought like hell in the court system to keep said civil rights violations the status quo, most likely in the hopes of being able to outspend their opponents, are now going to claim poverty because they cannot keep their accounting books in order and are in the hole.

I’ve seen the salaries of the administrators and board. Oddly enough, one year without getting paid would cover this bill.

How’s that for a solution?

Posted in Academia and Other Nonsense | 1 Comment

There weren’t any terrorists at that school

Except for the ones that the UN was employing

The United Nations agency that administers a school in Gaza where dozens of civilians were killed by Israeli mortar fire last week has admitted to employing terrorists to work at its Palestinian schools in the past, has no system in place to keep members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad off its payroll, and provides textbooks to children that contain hate speech and other incendiary information.

A growing chorus of critics has taken aim at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in recent years, although momentum on Capitol Hill has been slow. But last week’s incident, which Israel maintains was prompted by Hamas operatives firing mortars at Israelis from a location near the school, has prompted some lawmakers to scrutinize the U.N. agency.

“Some” lawmakers. Because the Democrat leadership cannot bring themselves to fault the UN for anything.

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Bullet Trace in the Sky

One of the awesome things about Boomershoot is that weather conditions have generally been favorable enough (since I’ve been attending, anyway) for spotters to see bullet trace. You’re watching the bow wake of the bullet moving through the air, just like the bow wake of a boat on the water. It’s incredibly cool.

Why, it looks just like the billions-miles-wide bow wake on this fast-moving rogue star, here.

Holy Crap!

Josh has more.

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Boomershoot Picture of the Day

At Boomershoot 2007, there were some intrepid fellows who brought full-auto weapons. That was fun, but they didn’t hit much but dirt. They did, however, bring at least one precision bolt-action rifle with which to hit boomers. 🙂

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Right on time

Aside from the facts that it was introduced to Congress by a member of a terrorist organization and is patently unconstitutional (per Heller), HR45 probably looks very much like those “reasonable gun safety measures” we’re always hearing about from the Brady’s and VPC.

Being the paranoid bitter clinger I am supposed to be, I’m seeing this as the worst they can come up with so that they can slide something less obnoxious through followed by them saying “Hey, at least it isn’t HR45.”

Found via Uncle. You should follow his links as well.

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