Nothing like this ever happened before guns were invented

New York Daily News columnist Mike Lupica lays the blame for Steve McNair's death squarely where it belongs: with America's gun culture.

Meanwhile, the benighted sorts over at Taki's Magazine insist that McNair's death had something to do with his decision to carry on an extramarital affair with an emotionally unstable 20-year old woman. Someone needs to bring these people into the 21st century!

Mr. Lupica also wisely reminds us that America's gun collectors, hunters, target shooters, and self-defense practitioners collectively murdered Yetunde Price, the half-sister of tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams. Pay no attention to the reprobates who would say that Ms. Price's death might have been the result of her decision to choose, as her new boyfriend, a known gang member just out of prison on charges of assault with a deadly weapon and illegal firearms possession, and of the boyfriend's decision not to get Ms. Price to a hospital promptly after she caught a bullet intended for him.

Mr. Lupica noted that the pistol used to kill Mr. McNair was a semiautomatic. Perhaps, in a future column, he will tell us the type and caliber of gun used to kill Julius Caesar.

Somehow, it's just not the same

Audie Murphy and 50 Cent share the distinction of having suffered more gunshot wounds than any other film actors.

Chump change you can believe in

Obama continues spending like a drunken Congressman. What depression recession?

Ahmadinejad: Neda's death is 'suspicious' - CNN.com

"CIA spokesman George Little responded, 'Any suggestion that the CIA was responsible for the death of this young woman is wrong, absurd and offensive.'"

Nah, they'd never do anything like that!

Stars and Stripes accuses U.S. military of censorship in Iraq - CNN.com

From the story:

CNN has been denied embed requests on occasion but never because of the past conduct of individual journalists.

Indeed. It is difficult to imagine an organization more servile to the regime than CNN.

Navy Vet Who Foiled Israeli Attack Honored

42 years later, the cover-up of the attempted massacre of USS Liberty continues. The truth is slowly leaking out.

Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen (18 March 1893 - 4 November 1918)

Rapper Dolla contracts lead poisoning, dies

Our cultural firmament is made darker by the extinguishing of this potty-mouthed idiot bright young star.

I'm too broken up to continue. Please excuse me.

Use a Gun, Go to College

Student who shot classmate to graduate, no jail time

Sadly, I don't believe we've heard the last of this sociopath.

Government-Run Health Care

Somehow, I'm supposed to be thrilled with the prospect of a similar system to this for me and my family.

Leni Riefenstahl, Call Home

Flickr pretend photographic adoration of the Leader is something new.

From My Cold, Dead Hands

Obama, Calderón: Assault-gun ban could curb border violence





I don't own one of these and I don't know anyone who does, but drop me a line if you know where I can get one cheap before these two buffoons heads of state get their way and ban them. My wife and I will have to park both our cars on the street to get it in the carport, but if it saves one life, it's worth it.

Proposition 1D

I have no interest in California's Proposition 1D, a falling-out among thieves over shares of the loot. But Andrea Urton's letter (Proposition 1D bad for young children, San Jose Mercury News, April 12, 2009) struck a responsive chord with me.

California's budget is in deep, deep trouble. Proposition 1D would divert tobacco tax money from its "for the children" pretext commitment to the state's General Fund. California's off-highway vehicle (OHV) community will be familiar with this phenomenon, as their OHV registration (Green Sticker) fees have for years been used for every purpose but that for which they are legally and exclusively earmarked -- the construction and maintenance of OHV recreation areas.

Ms. Urton is Associate Director of EMQ FamiliesFirst in Campbell. No, I don't know why "FamiliesFirst" is run together like that; probably someone thought it was trendy. Her organization is 91% tax-funded, so she has a vested interest in the Prop. 1D squabble. I don't know if she has ever protested the persistent raiding of the Green Sticker fund.

Ms. Urton wants to know "What is wrong with our society that we would even consider disrupting... the values of investing in our children, keeping them safe and facilitating family strength come before anything else?"

Ms. Urton apparently hasn't noticed, but we've been doing just that for decades. Welfare, no-fault divorce, mandatory public "education", Section 8 housing subsidies, glorification of unwed maternity, a tax code that all but forces mothers into the workforce (for their own "liberation," of course), and a host of other intrusions into personal and family life, all work to undermine the very values Ms. Urton extols.

Of Pirates Large and Small

Of Pirates Large and Small

A discourse concerning Somali pirates, and their American, British, and Ethiopian counterparts.

The Audacity of Nope

NATO refuses Lyndon Baines Obama's request for combat troops.

Is it possible that someone finally checked a map and realized that the North Atlantic is some distance from South Asia? Or are the bureaucrats of this long-obsolete organization hoping to shake down the Avatar of Change™ for additional consideration somewhere down the line? I'd feel a lot more comfortable if NATO, on this their Historic™ 60th anniversary, had voted to disband.

A Few of My Favorite Things

A Few of My Favorite Things
Originally uploaded by Daryl Davis

A cheerful little, "Up Yours!" to all the self-righteous, meddlesome, Nanny State prigs out there. You know who you are.

I so need one of these

Ebony Wholeplate Camera

For those who think limiting guns to government employees will keep them out of the hands of criminals

Killer freed by jail guard

Anita Kay Vestal, a 32-year old married mother of four recently hired by the Swain County, NC, Sheriff's Office as a detention officer, decided to indulge her romantic fantasies by helping an accused killer of two escape from jail.

The futility of the government's wars

Fugitive U.S. marshal found dead in Mexico

Deputy U.S. Marshal Vincent Bustamante was found dead in Juarez. He was shot multiple times in the head, in what is being called an execution-style slaying. Bustamante was on administrative leave from the Marshal's Service following his arrest for stealing Marshal's Service firearms and other government property. A bench warrant was issued for Bustamante's arrest after he failed to appear for a court hearing last week. A 17-year veteran of the Marshal's Service, and a former El Paso Police officer, Bustamante leaves behind a wife and two children.

Prohibition corrupts. In 1924, corrupt Prohibition Agent Wiley Lynn murdered the Marshal of Cromwell, Oklahoma, the legendary Western lawman Bill Tilghman. In 1932, Lynn attempted to assassinate Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation agent Crockett Long. In the exchange of gunfire that followed, both men and an innocent boy were mortally wounded.

Prohibition breeds violence. The violence today in Juarez is the violence of Chicago in the 1920s.

While the gun-grabbers gleefully blame gun-rights advocates for the recent massacre in Oakland, they ignore the fact that Lovelle Mixon legally could not own or possess a firearm. They blame a non-existent "gun show loophole," while they ignore the fact that corrupt government employees with access to guns -- law enforcement officers and military personnel -- have always been prime sources of weapons for criminals, even in the unregulated time prior to the National Firearms Act of 1934 and the Gun Control Act of 1968.

The War on Poverty has brought us generations of dependent, entitlement-minded layabouts who supposedly don't have money for their own food, shelter, education, medical care, out-of-wedlock children, etc., but who (like the unemployed Lovelle Mixon) nonetheless have money for tattoos, bling, flashy chrome rims, and gazillion-watt car stereos to blare the latest profanity-laced, bass-driven rap opus into every home, school, church, and hospital they pass. The Vietnam War was, in a way, nearly as destructive to this country as it was to Vietnam, a country that never attacked or threatened the United States. Our wars of choice in Iraq and Afghanistan (yes, even Afghanistan is done on pretext) already have spent us into penury, yet no end is in sight.

No more war.

"Heckuva Job, Timmy!"

Geithner is on his way out at Treasury, as evidenced by Obama's vehement denials.

Next up: Larry Summers