The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
Jim Geraghty posts this observation from the RNC meeting where they are voting on a new chairman today:
Dear RNC: When all of your candidates for chairman are saying, “We have to get better at getting our message out,â€Â having no functioning wireless signal is a heavy-handed metaphor for failure.
The good news for gun bloggers is that NRA does a much better job about internet access and blogger relations at their annual meeting than either the RNC or DNC.
Uncle is doing a great job of keeping after Knoxville’s mayor who intends to run for Governor of Tennessee as a current member of Mayor Bloomberg’s anti-gun. Bill Haslam has somewhat backed off from his support of the iniatives publicly after the pressure placed upon him, but he still refuses to officially withdraw his support of their agenda by way of membership out of the fear that it will make him look like he gives a damn about what gun owners think.
Considering that Uncle’s site is in the top search results for even a generic search on Bill Haslam’s name, it shows just what kind of pressure a good campaign and local coverage via blogs can create. I discussed this last year in my presentation at the NRA meeting, and hopefully we’ll see some more results in Tennessee.
The more I look around a the tech leaders of today, the more disappointed I am. When I joined the tech field back in the mid 90s, you could not find a more cantankerous, individualist, and anti-authoritarian gathering of minds this side of a militia group.
But today tech leaders are  hosting flashy, celebrity studded, inaugural parties for Obama.  They are being hired by the campaigns of prominent progressive Democrats.  Over the past decade we’ve gone from Geeks with Guns, to Americans for Gun Safety.  Where we once hoisted the Jolly Roger to do battle with the man, now it seems that the man is increasingly us.  The tech field seems to have most decidedly joined the establishment, rather than standing apart from it. This is not the tech I knew.
My own personal anecdotal evidence bears this out as well.  Tech workers, particularly younger ones, are becoming increasingly progressive and pro-establishment, and less libertarian and individualistic.  Is this a natural progression of the industry?  Is it a generational difference?  I think a bit of both.  Perhaps paradigm shifting technological breakthroughs will always be the realm of out-of-the-box thinking non-conformists, which begs the question of which new breakthrough will attract the next generation of individualist malcontents.
This editorial in the WaPo is uses rather appropriate language:
For more than two centuries, it has been a wannabe among the great world capitals. But now, Washington is finally ready for its close-up.
No longer a jumped-up Canberra or, worse, Sacramento, it seems about to emerge as Pyongyang on the Potomac, the undisputed center of national power and influence. As a new president takes over the White House, the United States’ capacity for centralization has arguably never been greater. But it’s neither Barack Obama’s charm nor his intentions that are driving the centrifugal process that’s concentrating authority in the capital city. It’s the unprecedented collapse of rival centers of power.
This is most obvious in economic affairs, an area in which the nation’s great regions have previously enjoyed significant autonomy. But already the dukes of Wall Street and Detroit have submitted their papers to Washington for vassalage. Soon many other industries, from high-tech to agriculture and energy, will become subject to a Kremlin full of special czars. Even the most haughty boyar may have to genuflect to official orthodoxy on everything from social equity to sanctioned science.
It’s not good news for the country. Â The fact that we had a backwater Capital is something that’s made this country great. Â The day Washington DC becomes the center of life, commerce and culture in this Republic is the day we ought to think about hanging it up.
I’m going to guess the Google car hit its bag limit for this season.
The main road headed to the club is shut down, and traffic in the area is gridlocked. Â This is why. Â Officer Jones lives down my street and around the corner. Â I drove past his patrol car parked out front on the way to work many mornings. Â I did not know him, but he has a wife, and three young kids that often play along that corner. Â My heart goes out to his wife and his family. Â Law enforcement families know it’s a dangerous job, but I don’t think that can possibly prepare you for the call that tells you that your husband and father of your children won’t be coming home safe and sound. Â Keep the Jones family, and the Middletown Township Police Department, in your thoughts and prayers.
David at Random Nuclear Strikes received a response – if you could call it that – from Dan Cooper recently.
Shooters at Cedar Creek Sporting Clays shot up a bunch of fruitcakes recently. Before any anti-gunners assume that means that gays in NJ were forced to duck for cover, I should clarify.
Fruitcakes in particular were in the cross hairs Saturday as some 40 shotgun-toting marksmen gathered in Cumberland County for an unconventional target practice at the first-ever John DeBella Fruitcake Trap Shoot.
“Every year people make jokes about fruitcakes, how no one really eats them,” DeBella said. “Personally, I think that they don’t even make new ones each year — they just use the old ones.”
For years, the DJ at Classic Rock 102.9 FM (WMGK) said, he wanted to host an event that involves gunning down the dreaded confection.
They report that about 40 people showed up, including several from Pennsylvania.
Cedar Creek also built a catapult to launch the sweets from an elevated scissor lift. But the fast-flying fruitcakes proved particularly difficult to eliminate, so many were later set up on boards as stationary targets for shooters to blast away.
Somehow New Jersey ranges always end up hosting really great events. Even though we have far more gun owners on this side of the Delaware, we don’t really have much in the way of these kinds of fun events. (h/t Outdoor Pressroom)
As an IT manager, one thing that’s always driven me nuts is the fact that the password policy generally regarded by folks in the industry as “best practices” is actually pretty far from it.
Via Instapundit, this article about Sarbanes-Oxley compliant password policies being pushed by auditors is a breath of fresh air. Â My preferred policy would be infrequent password changes, combined with regular password cracking to root weak passwords out of the network. Â You do have to impose some degree of complexity in the password, otherwise people will pick ridiculously stupid passwords. Â But some IT people go to ridiculous lengths, and frequent password changes only compound the problem. Â The writing down or saving of passwords on the network is a far greater risk than the risk that someone will crack or guess your passwords. Â All this “security theater” about complexity and duration of passwords might make auditors feel good, but it does you no good if everyone is tacking their passwords under their keyboards. Â If I feel pretty good that a user has picked a good password he or she remembers, I don’t have a problem letting them keep it for a while. Â If you’re an IT manager responsible for network security, you should be trying to crack your users passwords on a regular basis.
Much like BDS, there exists NRADS – NRA Derangement Syndrome. Anti-gun advocates seem to believe that everything bad in the world is the fault of the NRA. It’s nice to see a paper willing to publish a pro-NRA response in Montana.
This past week The Gazette published a letter by Carol Mick criticizing the National Rifle Association for not policing its members. One of the examples she mentioned was the “hunter” from New York who shot a feral llama and attached his/her nonresident elk tag to it. Unfortunately, ignorance is not a criminal offense, no matter how much we might hope it would be. Perhaps Mick has information unavailable to me indicating that this knothead was an NRA member.
Her other example was of a friend purportedly shot by two hunters while the friend was in an orange tent “at twilight or darker.” The NRA then “got the two hunters off.” More information on this incident would be informative. The only way I was aware someone could “get off” from a possible criminal charge would be if they were not charged because no crime was committed, or they were found not guilty at trial.
The NRA has done more in the interest of firearms and hunter safety than any other group or organization in the country. NRA training is considered the gold standard for firearms and hunter safety. I understand that they are unpopular among those who don’t like guns or hunting, but attacking them for something over which they have no control seems to be a little over the top.
Larry Elliott
Billings