The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
Just went outside to do a bit of a walk before lunch, and it’s like I moved to Tucson. Oh well, at least it’s a dry heat. When it tops 100 around here it usually comes with an ocean full of humidity. Actually, I guess 101 is pretty mild for a Tucson summer.
UPDATE: A quick check of the weather reveals it’s actually cooler in Tucson.
I can’t think of a better way to celebrate our nation’s independence than to buy a cool American flag for your Austrian pistol
:
Or perhaps celebrating the nation’s birth by blowing up a small part of it. I’ve always thought 4th of July at the Huffman household had to be pretty fun.
I don’t know too many boys my age that didn’t love Wonder Woman growing up. We were strangely attracted to her, before we even know anything about sex. Â Now it seems like they are making alterations to the classic. Personally, I’ll take the classic:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ROi9Isk_5I[/youtube]
What’s not to like? And for someone about the same age as my mother would be, she still looks pretty good. I guess these days, people don’t expect their superheros to be cheesy, fight for truth, justice, and the American way, and all that jazz. Now they have to be hip and fashionable.
These people are educators. They are teaching your children. Remember that as you read and cringe.
Four peaceful protesters, some dressed in full-length black and yellow bee costumes, represented the American Literacy Council and the London-based Spelling Society and stood outside the Grand Hyatt on Thursday, where the Scripps National Spelling Bee is being held. Their message was short: Simplify the way we spell words.
Roberta Mahoney, 81, a former Fairfax County, Va. elementary school principal, said the current language obstructs 40 percent of the population from learning how to read, write and spell. …
According to literature distributed by the group, it makes more sense for “fruit” to be spelled as “froot,” “slow” should be “slo,” and “heifer” — a word spelled correctly during the first oral round of the bee Thursday by Texas competitor Ramesh Ghanta — should be “hefer.”
Meanwhile, inside the hotel’s Independence Ballroom, 273 spellers celebrated the complexity of the language in all its glory, correctly spelling words like zaibatsu, vibrissae and biauriculate.
My guess is that these people are part of the movement to do away with red pens for grading, too.
When challenged by a 15-year-old on the issue, the principal said that if spelling bees were so important, the bees could just make up their own dictionary of new words that would be harder to spell.
It’s not news that James Bond actors have a history of being less than friendly to guns even as they make big bucks with their violence-fueled films. But now it seems that trend is expanding to even the props – sort of. It turns out that the James Bond Aston Martin up for auction is being used to fund a foundation that publishes anti-gun studies in conjunction with the VPC & the Brady Campaign.
A 1964 Aston Martin driven by Sean Connery in “Goldfinger†and fitted with twin machine guns may fetch as much as $10 million at a London auction as 007 fans and collectors battle for James Bond’s favorite car.
The silver DB5, also used in ‘Thunderball,†is the most famous of 007’s vehicles and has revolving number plates and an ejector seat. …
“All the factory-installed gadgets are in working order,†Max Girardo, a London-based specialist with RM Auctions, said in an interview. “You won’t be able to drive down the street and machine gun people, though, and you can’t actually eject your passenger.†These were achieved by special effects, Girardo said. …
Proceeds from the sale will benefit the Jerry Lee Foundation, a charity dedicated to solving social problems associated with poverty, particularly through crime prevention.
It’s interesting how a car outfitted with two prop machine guns is being used to as a fundraiser for a group that “studies” gun bans.
Here’s a sample of the colleagues who garnered a mention in their “Acknowledgements” of the linked studies: Judy Bonderman, Handgun Control, Inc.; Kristen Rand, Violence Policy Center; and Rebecca Knox, Handgun Control, Inc.
Though they did concede in their final report that there was really no good way to show that the Clinton Gun Ban was effective in achieving any of the stated goals, they also said that the resulting loss of novelty value for pre-ban rifles meant that gun owners would likely sell them to terrorists and mass murderers.
Happy Easter everyone. I hope everyone gets to spend time with their families this holiday. I am unfortunately either battling a nasty cold, or a mild flu, so hopefully you’ll holiday will be better than mine. Even if I had an Easter Ham, I’m so stuffed up I couldn’t taste it anyway.
Tam’s quote on this is pretty spot on:
If I had to guess which country was most likely to take the path of systematic genocide as a terrorism fix, Russia would be my candidate. They’ve killed their own people in boxcar lots within living memory and, unlike Germany, haven’t had to deal with fifty years of international tongue-clucking and scolding because of it. (Not that caring what others think has ever been a defining characteristic of Russian leadership anyway.) The Chechen separatist strategy doesn’t strike me as very bright, poking this particular bear with this particular stick.
If there’s any lesson in post-Soviet Russia, it’s that Moscow doesn’t need much of an excuse to start shooting Chechens.
I think we can all agree here:
Drawing nominations from English enthusiasts and those just plain tired of overused expressions, Lake Superior State University’s Word Banishment Committee has issued its list of words and phrases it deems time to be “unfriended.”
Among them: “teachable moment,” “czar,” “shovel-ready” and combinations of words such as “sexting,” “chillaxin’ ” and “bromine.”
I’m keen on eliminating the use of the word “czar,” but I sure do wish Obama would ban them from his administration. Also, the only thing that turned out to be “shovel ready” in this stimulus was any semblance of fiscal responsibility on the part of Congress. That’s been well and truly buried.
I figured this is the kind of holiday story that would warm the hearts of readers of this blog.
By now everyone realizes that the President is off dipping his toes in the sand of Hawaiian beaches and hitting up some of the Aloha State’s finest golf courses. In addition to renting out the three homes for Obama to vacation, paying for the cross-country flight for the First Family & their entourage, and all associated expenses, we’re also paying residents of Hawaii to kick it up in top hotels in Waikiki.
It’s a small world, and my Christmas Eve conversation with my grandmother turned up some interesting tidbits. It turns out that her yard man also does the maintenance in the area where Obama is staying. Part of his compensation includes housing in a modest apartment there on site. However, the Secret Service doesn’t want these staffers anywhere near the President. So they take over their homes & pay for them to stay in upscale hotels in Waikiki.
Boo-freakin’-hoo, right? Eh, not so much if you’ve ever spent much time in Hawaii.
While I’m sure the accommodations inside the hotel are nice, imagine being uprooted at the holidays from your home and put squarely in the middle of the hottest tourist destination of your state during the prime tourist season. Yeah, that doesn’t sound like quite as much fun, does it? (Also, for those of you not terribly familiar with the geography of Oahu, Waikiki is no where near Kailua.)
My grandmother swears that she’s sure everyone was okay with the visit and happy to leave their homes in support of the president, but she also says that as an Obama supporter who lives just west of Diamond Head – far away from the motorcades & insanity.
I don’t think I will be flying again unless I absolutely have to. There’s more here. It’s a very difficult thing for government bureaucrats to accept, but you can’t defend against this level of threat. If someone wants to bring down a plane, over a long enough period of time, they are going to succeed, and there’s little in the way of security measures that will work that don’t involve profiling, interviews, and various other highly intrusive security measures that the Israelis use.
But despite the fact that the bureaucrats are claiming the system worked, and then turning around saying it didn’t, one thing still worked, and that’s the citizen militia. That’s not the first time that’s worked for us either. But the bureaucrat cannot acknowledge that, because it means we don’t need them. No, they will ratchet up the security theater until we all feel well protected.