Category: Current Events

St. Patrick’s Day, for the Irish, is usually a day for festive drinking, which is to say not that different from any other day. It’s just on St. Patrick’s Day, you drink wearing green. My immediate plans for celebration involve heading down to McDonald’s to get a Shamrock Shake. I’ll wait until later for a drink. When I was a kid, an anxiously awaited the arrival of the Shamrock Shake every year. I seem to recall for a while it was just a regular vanilla shake with green food coloring in it. Those were disappointing times. But now it’s back to its original goodness. Now that I’m an adult, I’m wondering what a Shamrock Shake would taste like if you added a shot of Jameson’s to it. Hmm.

Here’s an interesting question about Florida’s civil immunity law. When does it kick in? Florida, like many states, provides civil immunity to anyone who is involved in legitimate and lawful self-defense situation. But how do you define that? Does it only require the authorities not to bring charges? Does it require you be no billed by a Grand Jury? Do you have to go to trial and be acquitted?

If that answer is up in the air, I think we’ll find out what the answer is in this Zimmerman case.

The more I read about the shooting of Treyvon Martin by George Zimmerman, the more he sounds like a mall ninja to me. Here are some more facts:

Zimmerman described Martin as suspicious because he was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and walking slowly in the rain, police later told residents at a town hall.

A dispatcher told him to wait for a police cruiser, and not leave his vehicle.

But about a minute later, Zimmerman left his car wearing a red sweatshirt and pursued Martin on foot between two rows of townhouses, about 70 yards from where the teen was going.

Walking with a hood up slowly in the rain is “suspicious?” Sounds to me like the only thing this kid was doing that looked suspicious was walking while black. But we have another interesting detail, which I emphasized. Filling in the blanks a bit, I’m betting Martin probably cut through a neighboring property to get home faster because of the rain. That’s what set Zimmerman off to begin the confrontation, rather than just waiting for the police to arrive.

The only thing that gives me pause here is that the 911 dispatcher apparently sent someone out, which I wouldn’t think they’d do it the response to “What’s he doing that looks suspicious,” was “Walking slowly, in the rain, with a hoodie.” But it could also be the locals were aware of Mr. Zimmerman’s mall ninjary, and decided sending someone out to defuse the situation was the best course of action. Would a guy who states “These assholes always get away,” to a dispatcher be the type to start off his inquiry with, “Pardon me, kind sir, horrible evening out, but I’m wondering if I could assist you to find your way?” I tend to doubt it. Assuming the facts I’m speculating on are correct, what would your response be to a large man, not in uniform, aggressively approaching you “on foot, between two rows of townhouses?”

Zimmerman may very well claim self-defense successfully. Despite the machinations some, if Zimmerman was on the ground, with Martin on top of him and pummeling him, as one witness describes, duty to retreat would not enter into this case. That would make the fact that Florida is a castle doctrine state irrelevant. If the state can’t disprove Zimmerman’s claim of self-defense, then he’s not legally guilty of murder. That’s how “beyond a reasonable doubt” works. But regardless of what the law says, I’m in agreement with Clayton Cramer that Treyvon Martin didn’t need to die. George Zimmerman’s mall ninjary got someone killed. Avoidance is the number one rule of self-defense with a gun, and I have no patience for cop-wannabees inserting themselves into policing situations, without the right equipment or the right attitude, that results in dead teenagers.

If you live in the Mid-Atlantic area, New England, or the Eastern Shore of Virginia and North Carolina, NASA is going to be launching 5 suborbital sounding rockets in 5 minutes from its Flight Center in Wallops, Virginia. The project is to study the winds in the upper atmosphere. They will be releasing a chemical marker that will be visible to just about anyone in the viewing area. Those of you who are conspiracy theorists may want to ensure that your tin foil hat is securely fastened before viewing the chemtrails.

I’m looking for a place to watch this. The ideal place, that’s not terribly far, would be the Jersey shore, so I’m toying with the idea of heading over to Seaside Park and watching it from the Boardwalk. But I’m not sure I want to do a three hour drive in the middle of the night to Benny central. Though, given that’s it’s March, it’s probably only locals this time of year. The problem around here is trees. There’s not many places in Bucks you can get a good view in that direction without trees, and Bowman’s Hill Tower is closed at that time of the night.

UPDATE: Mission scrubbed for tonight. Maybe I’ll go to Virginia to watch it!

Libertarian “mouth foamers” actually tend not to be mouth foamers at all. They are often quiet, reasoned people; the kind of folks who will be happy to debate intellectually, and make everything they believe politically fit into a nice, simple intellectual framework. They will often passionately debate others for being inconsistent in their beliefs. They can be off-putting at times, but are  generally reasoned people. They often don’t have the qualities that make them useful in a political right, and they certainly are not the kind of folks who are willing to take a fight to the enemy, and battle them using the left’s own tactics. This is one reason libertarian thought gets no play in politics.

This did not describe Andrew Breitbart. Whether you’re on the left or the right, he was a muckraker in the grand tradition of an art pioneered by progressive writers in the beginning of the 20th century. Perhaps that is why the left so despised Breitbart; he represented an usurpation of some of their most effective tactics. He didn’t mind throwing the left’s hypocrisy back in their faces, and forcing them to look at themselves good and hard in the mirror. They hated him for it.

You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.

– Winston Churchill

My hope is that Breitbart has inspired more people to enter the political fight and become activists for liberty. Today, on Twitter, folks are asking people to find the most hideous and vile venom being spewed by the left, and retweet it. I believe that is a most fitting tribute to the man. Many of our opponents in the political sphere, especially in RKBA, are hateful, vengeful people. Make them look in the mirror and confront what they’ve become. Make them live up to their own standards. That’s what Andrew Breitbart taught us, and what Saul Alinsky taught a generation of leftists before him. Breitbart was liberty reflected in the mirror of the left’s tactics. Hopefully others will be able to step up and take his place.

The last surviving World War I vet has died at 110. It was a woman, that served as a mess steward. Apparently the last combat veteran died in May of last year, in Australia.

This is certainly progress:

For the first time in almost half a century, homicide has fallen off the list of the nation’s top 15 causes of death, bumped by a lung illness that often develops in elderly people who have choked on their food.

And all this has happened while we’ve been liberalizing our gun laws, and selling more and more guns. Kind of puts a damper on the narrative of the gun control busybodies doesn’t it?

I had never actually heard of this man before, but now that I am aware of his passing, I find it a sad note:

In 1942, a man named Gordon Hirabayashi was among a handful of U.S. Citizens of Japanese Ancestry to refuse to evacuate his home in Seattle to be herded into an internment camp.  For that “crime” he served one year in prison, and was not exonerated until four decades later by the U.S. Supreme Court, which finally acknowledged that the mass evacuation of and internment of Japanese Americans had been based wholly on prejudice and was without justification.

I hadn’t been aware there were some who resisted. I believe that what happened to Japanese-Americans during World War II was so heinous, they would have been completely justified in resisting the government with force of arms. Unfortunately, however, compliance was probably the path of least resistance. With racism widespread in mid-20th century society, and the Japanese having just bombed Pearl Harbor, I don’t think sympathy to this path would have been widespread, and they likely would have been crushed mercilessly. It would only have confirmed everyone’s bigotry. But would they have had the moral right? Absolutely.

One reason I’ve never been able to warm up to blogger Michelle Malkin is because she wrote this book, trying to justify what I think is not at all justifiable. It’s one of the things that made me very reluctant to identify with conservatives.

Bitter has been filling us in on the whole Iowa Caucus results, which I can only really sum up as the big mama elephant shouting “Shut up, quit complaining, and eat your Romney! There’s starving SoCo’s out there who have nothing but Santorum to eat!”

Forgive my absence today, but my career (the one that pays the bills) is currently is having to come first. I have some very positive developments I am working on. That’s all I can say for now, but I may be able to say more later.