Getting a second opinion

It's encouraging to hear Dr. Paul's perspective on this, as the amount of poor-quality non-information regarding swine-flu from the media is not only omnipresent, it is likely to interfere with those actively seeking accurate information and contextual relevance.

It's a delicate situation, and I prefer to err on the side of caution, which has the combined effect of inducing a very uneasy feeling in my gut, but there's little to be done about it at this point; it's here, and it's contagious, although the relative lethality of the strain is still open to interpretation due to the standard of medical care in Mexico.

SurvivalBlog is running daily updates regarding swine-flu et al., and there is (as always) no shortage of excellent information there about steps that concerned individuals can take to minimize the risk of exposure.

Today's practical advice: wash your hands frequently, wipe-down the doorknobs and frequently-handled objects in the house with a sanitizing agent, and try not to touch your face when out and about. Stay healthy, and stay alert.

The week in review

I wandered out of my den this last week (all the way up to Portland, in fact), and I'm forecasting at least another six weeks of bureaucratic incompetence, hysterical hand-wringing, and breathless hype regarding, well, everything.

Some days, it just does not pay to go outside.

Caturday Night Special, Episode 0x28

Who are you people, and what have you done with the Ninth Circuit?

I am certain that every so often, the Ninth Circuit does something like this just to throw the rest of us off-balance:

... The County does little to refute this powerful evidence that the right to bear arms is deeply rooted in the history and tradition of the Republic, a right Americans considered fundamental at the Founding and thereafter. The County instead argues that the states, in the exercise of their police power, are the instrumentalities of the right of self-defense at the heart of the Second Amendment. This argument merely rephrases the collective rights argument the Supreme Court rejected in Heller. Indeed, one need only consider other constitutional rights to see the poverty of this contention. State police power also covers, for instance, some of the conduct the First Amendment protects, but that does not deny individuals the right to assert First Amendment rights against the states. (15)

Once the County actually addresses modern incorporation doctrine, it relies on general assertions that run afoul of Heller. For example, the County declares that “the English common law tradition does not recognize an individual’s right to possess a firearm as a fundamental right.” Heller plainly contradicts that statement because it says that “[b]y the time of the founding, the right to have arms had become fundamental for English subjects.” 128 S. Ct. at 2798. The County also claims that Heller “nowhere concludes that an individual right to possess firearms for personal self-defense is a fundamental right.” But that misses the point. If Heller had indeed held that the right to keep and bear arms was a fundamental right as we use the term in substantive due process doctrine, then the issue would be foreclosed. The point is that language throughout Heller suggests that the right is fundamental by characterizing it the same way other opinions described enumerated rights found to be incorporated.

... We therefore conclude that the right to keep and bear arms is “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.” Colonial revolutionaries, the Founders, and a host of commentators and lawmakers living during the first one hundred years of the Republic all insisted on the fundamental nature of the right. It has long been regarded as the “true palladium of liberty.” Colonists relied on it to assert and to win their independence, and the victorious Union sought to prevent a recalcitrant South from abridging it less than a century later. The crucial role this deeply rooted right has played in our birth and history compels us to recognize that it is indeed fundamental, that it is necessary to the Anglo-American conception of ordered liberty that we have inherited. (17) We are therefore persuaded that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the Second Amendment and applies it against the states and local governments. (18)

(Pages 4476-4496)

In a peculiar turn of events, the County prevailed on the ordinance, so it may not appeal the decision, which leaves the State in an awkward position without further review inside the court-system. (Eugene Volokh also adds that this is only one of three cases currently under-way to provide access to incorporation regarding the Second Amendment.)

This is by far my favorite quip regarding the case:

"What an pyrrhic victory for the gun grabbing county executive. She got the gun shows banned from county property, but accidently got the 2nd amendment incorporated in the process..."

Oops. Sometimes, when the stars are aligned and the Keynesian animal-spirits are near, even the Ninth Circuit can get it right.

When in doubt, empty the clip

- Bee warned: there is a fungus among us.

- The logical and inevitable consequences of nationalized health-care.

- Speaking of logical and inevitable consequences: it seems that doing anything except bleating for help to the State (which may or may not respond within three hours) will not only get one murdered on one's doorstep, but will cause the State to deny your family compensation due to its negligence while simultaneously awarding those with sports injuries and "human rights" (read: taxpayer-funded narcotics).

- I have reason to suspect that Zimbabwe has finally exhausted its ink and paper reserves.

- In other news, water declared "wet", and human vision is mysteriously impaired at night; IMF is indicates that it will continue to forecast improvement in order to boot-strap the manufacture of confidence-based goods.

Caturday Night Special, Episode 0x27

A public-private joke, no doubt

If ever a picture was worth a thousand words, this was it.

Consider yourselves thoroughly terrorized

According to this test, I might be harboring thoughts that might be considered subversive to the directives of the Politburo. In fact, you're probably under scrutiny just for reading this capitalist pig-dog tract; consider yourself on notice, and on half-rations of government-issue vodka and cigarettes for the next month.

I wonder if the League of Shadows is hiring...

Hat-tip: Elusive Wapiti

Stuff your tea and crumpets

The Sons of Liberty they ain't:

But a funny thing happened en route to a visually pleasing Tax Day protest. The National Park Service said the tea party protesters didn't have the proper permit to dump their bags.

So instead of a raucous visual demonstration, all that was left were images of the tea party packing up their boxes of tea on a cold, soggy day in D.C.

Doh!"

We have a million tea bags here, and we don't have a place to put them because it's not on our permit," said Rebecca Wales, lead organizer of D.C. Tea Party.

Fight the power, folks, but next time check your permits before acquiring 1 million tea bags.

I've had a few brief discussions amongst friends and acquaintances over the last week or so regarding the April 15th Tea Parties; I remained largely ambivalent about the protest until today, as I was only mildly curious about the turn-out both locally and nation-wide.

I have to say, I am not impressed. When you folks get serious about this, you know where I am.

The Nature of Evidence

John 20:19-29 (Amplified):

Then on that same first day of the week, when it was evening, though the disciples were behind closed doors for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace to you!

So saying, He showed them His hands and His side. And when the disciples saw the Lord, they were filled with joy (delight, exultation, ecstasy, rapture).

Then Jesus said to them again, Peace to you! [Just] as the Father has sent Me forth, so I am sending you.

And having said this, He breathed on them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit!

[Now having received the Holy Spirit, and being led and directed by Him] if you forgive the sins of anyone, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of anyone, they are retained.

But Thomas, one of the Twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came.

So the other disciples kept telling him, We have seen the Lord! But he said to them, Unless I see in His hands the marks made by the nails and put my finger into the nail prints, and put my hand into His side, I will never believe [it].

Eight days later His disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Jesus came, though they were behind closed doors, and stood among them and said, Peace to you!

Then He said to Thomas, Reach out your finger here, and see My hands; and put out your hand and place [it] in My side. Do not be faithless and incredulous, but [stop your unbelief and] believe!

Thomas answered Him, My Lord and my God!

Jesus said to him, Because you have seen Me, Thomas, do you now believe (trust, have faith)? Blessed and happy and to be envied are those who have never seen Me and yet have believed and adhered to and trusted and relied on Me.

To paraphrase the Wizard's First Rule, people will believe what they want to believe, with or without evidence, and only rarely will it change, for it requires fundamental change within. Nowhere are we more ignorant of this as a whole than as it applies to our own nature as Man; in fact, history is little more than a chronicle of our inability to learn from our mistakes, and it is said that while history doesn't repeat itself, it certainly rhymes.

He is Risen. I wish you and yours a happy Sunday.

Caturday Night Special, Episode 0x26

Over 200,000,000 served

"A republic, if you can keep it."

Did anyone really believe that Pelosi or the Obama administration would not pursue this?

The ball is in Congress's court to craft a compromise in reinstating regulations on assault weapons, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) acknowledged Tuesday.

During an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America," Pelosi said that the Congress will work to find some middle ground between the previous ban, which expired in 2004, and the precedent laid by the Supreme Court in a ruling enumerating more concrete gunowners' rights last term.

"We have to find some level of compromise," Pelosi said, citing 53 victims of gun violence nationwide in less than a month. "And we have to rid the debate of the misconceptions people have about what gun safety means."

I'm not going to re-hash the arguments against this here, again, now; this is merely the latest in a long list of "a long train of abuses and usurpations", to quote some scholars that are, for lack of less delicate terms, passé.

We have lost it, ladies and gentlemen. The republic is gone, and the coming days will confirm this assertion in ways that we cannot imagine. Yes, that sounds melodramatic, but who among us could have imagined the Great Depression in 1928? Or the horrors of the First World War in 1912?

Considering the still-active frenzy of firearms-related purchases, is there an expectation that there will be widespread compliance with a nation-wide registration movement? In the fevered dreams of Beltway politicians, perhaps. Perhaps light sweet crude will fall to a permanent $5 per barrel, and perhaps Obama will unleash his unicorn-cavalry and cleanse the globe of nuclear arms forevermore, leaving pot-pourri and Skittles in their wake.

Perhaps it's time for some real change.

Caturday Night Special, Episode 0x25

Too clever by half

"Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future."

ATTN Tauntaun Fanatics! Due to an overwhelming tsunami of requests from YOU THE PEOPLE, we have decided to TRY and bring this to life. We have no clue if the suits at Lucasfilms will grant little ThinkGeek a license, nor do we know how much it would ultimately retail for. But if you are interested in ever owning one of these, click the link below and we'll try!

And you thought they smelled bad on the outside!

(Wampa Repellent sold seperately.)

The Eye of the Hurricane

"I believe it is peace prosperity for our time."

World leaders on Thursday heralded the G20 summit as the day the world “fought back against the recession” as they put on a show of unity that lifted global markets and mapped out a new future for financial regulation.

Gordon Brown, UK prime minister, host of the summit, said the meeting marked the emergence of a “new world order”, as he unveiled what leaders claimed was a $1,100bn package of measures to tackle the global downturn, including support for lower income countries and a $250bn plan to boost the international money supply.

The Dow crested above 8,000 today, and gold is almost below $900 per ounce: opportunity knocks.

Carving away the self-lauding double-speak, the various appointed representatives agreed to inflate the the money supply, which as has been mentioned before, does absolutely nothing to alleviate market-correction or compounding failure that is systemic to the fiat-currency banking structure. Indeed, the only thing that continued government-endorsed credit-expansion does in a correction is prolong the correction, and this will be no exception.

It would seem that Chamberlain's ghost still haunts Downing Street.

"There was no comment from the White House."

Yet another of minion of Caesar balks at rendering unto the State:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Health and Human Services nominee Kathleen Sebelius recently corrected three years of tax returns and paid more than $7,000 in back taxes after finding "unintentional errors"—the latest tax troubles for an Obama administration nominee.

The Kansas governor explained the changes to senators in a letter dated Tuesday that the administration released. She said they involved charitable contributions, the sale of a home and business expenses.

Sebelius said she filed the amended returns as soon as the errors were discovered by an accountant she hired to scrub her taxes in preparation for her confirmation hearings. She and her husband, Gary, a federal magistrate judge in Kansas, paid a total of $7,040 in back taxes and $878 in interest to amend returns from 2005-2007.

Best quip thus far:

"We know now that Obama really isn't Jesus... Jesus could build a cabinet."