Category: Blogs

For some reason a post meant to go up tomorrow went up today, even though it appeared to be appropriately post dated. Not sure what happened, but sorry for those of you sucking the RSS feed.

I was happy to hear that Brad will be helping to restore my credentials as a Pennsylvania blog by saying bad things about Ed Rendell.  Ed’s been getting way too much of a break lately from me, so I’m quite pleased to have Brad helping the blog get back on track in this regard.  While it was my intention for this blog to be the voice of a Pennsylvania gun owner, I also wanted to make sure I took the time to verbally flog state and local politicians who deserved it, which is a lot of them.

Brad’s already stated he’s not going to post a damned thing about Jim Zumbo :)

Back when I got the blog started, I decided to do an all day feature called Full Auto Day.  The entire Jim Zumbo affair, and the shooting and hunting communities response to it, has prompted me to start work on another all day feature called “Gun Control and Hunting Day”, where it’s my intention to highlight how gun control laws, both on the books and proposed, in the jurisdictions the anti-gun folks uphold as their models, has harmed the hunting communities in those states by making firearms difficult, or very risky to own.

I’m hoping that the feature will be seen by hunters, and help them understand that the same culture of urban sophisticates that wants to take away our black rifles, doesn’t really care what it does to hunting.  It’s all part of a lifestyle, way of thinking, and philosophy, that’s utterly repugnant to these types of folks.  None will be spared in the end.

Posting might be a bit light, as working out all the posts, along with the research, will take some time.  By all means, if you think you have something I should cover here, let me know via comment or e-mail.

There’s a lot of good stuff up over at Crime and Federalism:

Norm talks about his Unusual Day, where he has to convince the court he did not sleep with it.

Mike puts Plea Bargaining into Perspective:

Do you now see the problem with plea bargaining?  It has turned our system into one that is supposed to convict the guilty and free the innocent into a risk-management system.   It has turned lawyers into actuaries .  “Is going to trial worth the risk?”  is what lawyers ask clients.  Innocence has little to do with the decision to take a deal.

Back to Norm, who writes a fantastic argument against Soverign Immunity:

The state is our greatest legal fiction. I have never touched it, seen it, spoken to it or sensed its presence in any but a contrived way. Oh, I am aware that I live on a piece of Earth government by an entity known as the state of Connecticut. I have tussled with people representing it in court. I pay taxes to it. There is something we all recognize as the state of Connecticut. It is an expensive ghost we honor.

But it lacks the corporeal reality of James Tillman. It never weeps over injustice. It neither eats, nor sleeps, nor feels pangs of desire and despair. The state, you see, is a mirage of convenience. We need it to make life together possible.

Question: Why would a people who call themselves sovereign create a government that declares itself immune from the consequences of its own errors? The simple answer: We would not. But judges make it so.

And finally today, on the Vagaries of Federalism:

It is elementary that concurrent jurisdiction permits a state court to hear claims arising under state and federal law. But no principle of law permits a state to opt out of federal law under the common law bugbear of sovereign immunity.

If you don’t read regularly, you should.  Norm and Mike offer something very different than your traditional conservative approach to the issue of federalism. It’s important, as members of the shooting community, to keep in mind that the state wields tremendous power, and we should think carefully when we talk about “enforcing the laws on the books”.  Many of the laws that are on the books are unjust, and are enforced arbitrarily and capricously.  It’s important to get a perspective of the law from people who are defense attorneys, and regularly deal with these matters.  I don’t always agree with everything I read on Crime and Federalism, but their take on issues is far closer to my own beliefs than many law and order conservatives.  Remember that in our community, it’s easy to run afoul of the law without realizing it, and when the heavy hand of the state comes down on you, it’ll be people like Norm and Mike we’ll suddenly find are our best friends.

Snowflakes in Hell is now one month old. I can’t think of any better way to celebrate the conclusion of my first month by setting an all time traffic record.

1140 hits. 345 hosts. 487 Vistors. 600 Sessions. Not bad considering I was down for a few hours because of a power problem! Thanks to SayUncle, John Lott, The Bitch Girls, and Gun Law News for bringing me most of the traffic today. Especially to Uncle for sharing his Instalaunch by linking to me in his post. Thanks also to all the linkers and commenters over the past month. It’s encouraging me to keep it up. Thanks also to all the politicians out there for being such worms that we all have something to write, bitch and complain about, and especially to Al Gore for inventing the modern interwebs.

Countertop has decided to give the virtual finger to Blogger and start up again with a WordPress blog. I will have to adjust my link to his new location.

I like WordPress, but there can be problems with running the MySQL back end on your TV’s DVR.  It’s also a problem if you kick the trip button on the surge strip and reset your time several weeks into the future.  But these problems can be mitigated by not hosting your blog on whatever computers you have scattered around your house.

Time to make some more blogroll additions. I’m adding Tam’s site A View from the Porch, What Would John Wayne Do?, the Michael Bane Blog, Publicola, and finally Cam Edwards.

One thing that’s bothering me about gun blogging, is that I spend more time reading gun blogs to find things to post bout than I spend reading some of my other favorite blogs. So I will highlight them from time to time.

If I had to pick a favorite non-gun blog, I would pick The Belmont Club. It’s run by Richard Fernandez, a Filipino-Australian blogger, who is known on his blog as Wretchard the Cat. In my opinion, he’s one of the clearest thinking and well written invididuals when it comes to the current strugle we find outselves engaged in with radical Islam. Let me find a recent gem to share with you:

Yet the fault does not lie — at least fundamentally — with individual politicians. The world is in the middle of an epochal transition, a transition with various names. It has been known as a Clash of Civilizations; a shift from the Nation State to the Market State; the showdown between McWorld and the New Caliphate or the end times in advance of the Hidden Imam. But whatever the nomenclature, this epoch constitutes a challenge for which no Western leader as yet has clear answers. Not to the question of what to do with Europe’s burgeoning Muslim communities; nor to the deadly rivalry between Sunni and Shi’a across the Middle East; nor to the challenge of radical Islam the world over. Webb is right to expect “sound judgment, clear thinking, concern for our welfare” and guarantees of safety from President Bush. But what better satisfaction can he obtain from Pelosi, Obama, Murtha or Hillary Clinton, who may not only not know the answer, they may not even understand the question. Is there no balm in Gilead? None. But that doesn’t mean we can’t start to invent some. Both Iraq and 9/11 are examples of challenges posed by the new epoch that won’t go away. And they will not go away until freedom, at least as expressed as the absence the mental tyranny embodied by the toxic ideology embodied by radical theocracies, is widespread over the earth. Robert Mayer is right. And so is James Webb. Strategy and operational competence are meaningless without each other. A thumbs up for freedom. And two thumbs up for attaining freedom through learned competence.

That is from The lock and key. Also check out, The politics of “Surge”, The Shores of Tripoli, Enough Gas to Get Where?, and Using the Enemy’s Strength Against Them:

Although Muckian’s examples are drawn from Iraq, they might as well have been drawn from the Islamic insurgency in the Philippines. Here if anywhere, the assumption that terrorists are operating according to some strict Bolshevik discipline is wildly misplaced. An individual Muslim terrorist might have multiple associations with one or all of several organizations — the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Abu Sayyaf Group or the Jemaah Islamiyah. And be able to run from one to the other. Counterterrorism tactics which assume the enemy is pursuing the organizationally disciplined “People’s War” model may result in irrelevant “divide and rule” counterinsurgency schemes. For example, the Philippine government is attempting to negotiate a political settlement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, designating them a “peace partner”, providing their personnel with certain immunities and promoted “confidence building” measures among them. It’s a classic attempt to win over the “moderate” rebels and isolate the “radicals”. But the weakness of that approach was illustrated when it became known that the Jemaah Islamiyah had been training its cadres inside Moro Islamic Liberation Front areas. Because the insurgency was based on “narrative” rather than Bolshevik discipline the terrorists could move between organizational boundaries which were really only meaningful to the counter-insurgent. The Western policeman may stop pursuit at an organizational or international border, but a terrorist driven by narrative will walk right through it.

Great stuff. But Great stuff is the standard on this blog rather than the exception. I highly encourage everyone to make The Belmont Club a regular stop, because this stuff is 100x better thought out and more informative than any policy wonk you’ll read in the paper or any dullard talking head you’ll see on CNN or Fox.

I have attracted my first anti-gun person to the site! OK, it’s not Sarah Brady, but it’s a start. Considering how seldom anti-gun people appear in our community, I have to admit a vague admiration for folks brave enough to dive in.

UPDATE: Ooops… looks like WordPress messed up the link.  I responded to the dude.  I try to be nice, since we’re trying to persuade.  I also figure having a few anti-gun types come in to my site might help drive the traffic numbers too ;)   I know gun blog readers love a good debate.  The traffic whore in me would love him to come back!