Category: Blogs

Back to our normally scheduled blogging shortly, even though I’m having so much fun with German cat blogging.  Took four years of German in high school.  I barely remember German grammar, and only remember simple words, and can construct only simple sentences with any degree of correctness.  Haven’t cracked open the German English dictionary I got for receiving the German medal since I went to Germany in 2004.

Yes, somewhere in one of the boxes in my attic is a large medal, meant to wear around my neck at high school graduation, that celebrates my achievements in German.  And I’ve used it exactly once (my German, not the medal.  The medal was dorky even for graduation), for a week in 2004, in Munich.

Effective today we will be changing the name of the blog.   As soon as I have all the graphics worked out, you’ll notice the title change.  I have decided that I am tired of blogging about guns.  Yes.  From this point forward, we will blog about cats.  Not only will we blog about cats, but we will blog about them in German, in an attempt to capitalize on an under served market; German cat lovers.  Now sometimes, we might blog about cats with guns, as in this example here.  The new name of the blog will be “Die Flederkatze,” a creative and witty variation on Wagner’s “Die Fledermaus.”  The tagline will be “Jede Katze ist wie eine Schneeflocke.”

I hope you all enjoy.

Firearms and Freedom finishes out its first year.  MArooned is two.

Last night I moved the Blog Bash, The Bitch Girls, PAGunRights and soon to be Countertop’s blog off of Dreamhost and onto my server.  I am unimpressed by Dreamhost’s lack of concern about a security breech on one of their systems.  They were unable to help me track down how the hackers got in, because they only keep logs going back five days, and they dumped their shell kit in there a week and a half ago.  Was it a weakness in WordPress?  One of the plugins?  A PHP weakness?  Apache vulnerability?  I’ll never know.

Dreamhost only charges like ten dollars a month, which means if they have to spend a few hours to help you with a security problem or a technical problem, they aren’t making any money off you.  Bad incentives.  One reason I’ve been self-hosted from the beginning is that I have total control over my server and security environment.  I can make sure everything is set up securely, that the versions are all current, that mod-security is running on Apache, and that my logs go back a month instead of five days.

Quality hosting is expensive, and it you want to have an environment that’s difficult for hackers, you either have to do it yourself, or pay good money for someone who knows what they are doing to do it for you.

Why does Mexico want to ban Americans from having guns today?  No doubt they remember what happens when you let a bunch gringos settle part of your country, bring their rifles with them, and then try to impose corrupt government upon them.  Blackfork has a multi-day feature running of “Remember the Alamo”:

1. Day One
2. Day Two
3. Day Three

Keep reading throughout the week.  He’s doing a post for every day of the siege.

My apologies for those of you who tried to submit a question to our board candidates.  I have fixed the problem with the form.

We’re happy to hear David Hardy is finished with his jury trial and will soon be back to blogging more regularly.  For those of you paying attention to the media, this was the trial he was defense attorney for.  Federal civil rights lawsuit against a rancher who turns illegals over to border patrol.  We will hope for a positive outcome with the jury.

UPDATE: I suppose I should clarify that Dave was representing the rancher.

I do not like that I have come to the point where I am informing folks that I reserve the right to moderate (polite way of saying delete) comments, but that is what I have added to the comment widget, shamelessly paraphrased from the Volokh Conspiracy Comment Policy, on every post.  Comments have gone downhill lately, to the point where I no longer really enjoy blogging.  As soon as this becomes an obligation rather than something I enjoy, I’m not liable to continue doing it for much longer.

I want discussion, and I don’t mind disagreement, even passionate disagreement, but we’re going with dinner party rules in the comments from now on.  I do not pay for the bandwidth, server, storage, and I don’t bum backup services off my friend Jason, to host a platform for nastiness.  If you want to disagree with me or other commenters, that’s fine, but I think it’s not too much to ask to make your case with civility and class.  That’s what’s going to be enforced around here from this point forward.  It’s a big Internet.  Everyone is entitled to a voice, just don’t ask me to pay for it if you’re going to be rude.

UPDATE: I should note that Robb has a special dispensation to not wear pants when he comments.  I didn’t say my dinner parties had to be completely boring :)

UPDATE: Randy Barnett is going without comments entirely.  No plans to do that here.  Prof. Barnett must have heard about Robb posting with no pants.