I don't know whether to be relieved or scared

This just in: The US will retain control of the Internet. I guess I shouldn't be shocked to see that the UN had been pushing for this since, for the rest of the world, the UN is a counterweigh to the evil, imperialistic US. But just think what would have happened if we had been stupid enough to give up something so vital to our national economy and defense to a kleptocratic organization as Scams-R-Us. Imagine the illegal kickbacks that Kofi "The Appeaser" and his friends would have been able to line their pockets with. Shudder!!!!

So, we can all sleep safe for right now, BUT, remember what last century's greatest president, James Earl Carter, did with the Panama Canal? That's right, he gave it away. So, just our luck, we will get another idiot president who will want to "play nice" with the international community (read: France) and give away our Internet.

P.S. I'm back from my vacation. I can see that the Cap'n filled in admirably for me while I was gone since he has much more in the brain department than I. I have often said that I got all the good looks and he got all the brains.

This judge needs to be on the Supreme Court

US District Court Judge Dee Benson has struck a blow for freedom and fairness: He refused to award left-wing civil rights lawyer Brian Barnard the nearly $70,000 Barnard requested for his successful shakedown of Duchesne City. Benson seems to have reasoned that since Barnard had imposed himself where he wasn't wanted, and didn't live, and forced the city to take down a Ten Commandments display on public land that the local populace supported, it was only fair that he receive 1% of the requested amount.

(For those not familiar with Brian Barnard, imagine that fat, dorky, humorless kid in 5th grade, who was made hall monitor for a day and decided then and there that he liked telling other people what to do so much he made a career out of it.)

Barnard, of course, is howling mad. Never mind the award is significantly higher than the yearly salary of the average Utahn -- Mr. Barnard is smarter and better than everyone else anyway, so he deserves it -- I'm sure he was counting on that money to finance more legal harassment of those icky Christers. Now he has to waste time and money on an appeal, when he could be suing some small town to make sure no one says "God" in public meetings.

I have decided I like Judge Benson. If President Bush needs someone for the Supreme Court, Benson would make a good choice based on this one decision alone.

This is what's known as "hush money"

Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson has spent $14,000 of city money to defuse a potential lawsuit caused by his bigoted comments that he actually didn't say, well did say, but was misunderstood, and besides it's all an evil Republican plot to discredit him, anyway.

The settlement came with the standard "this suit has no merit but we're going to pay the plaintiffs anyway" disclaimer. The two plaintiffs, Rocky's former secretary and former public spokescritter, are dedicated liberals who while sick of Rocky, didn't want to be accused of being Republican stooges. So they went along with the charade. Everyone will make nice, and the Salt Lake Media will do their part and promptly forget the whole thing happened.

Keep her away from the military, please

Captain Holly isn't a big TV watcher. Other than the Military Channel, Outdoors Channel, and occasionally ESPN, there's no such thing as "must-see TV". Even when I do feel like watching I'm often too busy to sit down and watch.

So it was with curiosity that I read a review for the upcoming Geena Davis series, Commander in Chief. Now obviously, any show about a female President that is produced in Hollywood will be heavily skewed to the left. But based on the description of the plot, this one can best be described as science fiction (I would have watched it tonight but alas, I was too busy).

Before pointing out the sheer stupidity of the plot, some background. Nigeria is a country about the size of Texas. It is Africa's most populous country, with some 120 million inhabitants. Roughly half of its population is either Christian or animist; the northern portion of the country is mostly Muslim. In recent years it has taken tentative steps towards western-style democracy.

It is also the pre-eminent military power in West Africa, with a large and capable army and air force. If I remember correctly we export about 10% of our crude oil from Nigeria, so it is a significant trading partner as well.

In short, it is not a tiny, tinpot African-backwater dictatorship. Got it?

One of the main plot lines in the show's premier was a "situation" in Nigeria, one that demands US military intervention. In a contrived effort to show how strong a woman president could be, we find that the US is threatening to send in Marines to teach those Nigerians a thing or two. And why are we risking war with such a large, important country?

Because a adulterous woman is going to be stoned to death.

Now, I'll say right here that I'm not a big fan of Sharia Law. But let me get this straight: The show's writers want me to believe that a woman president would be willing to send thousands of Marines into a large, populous, hostile, militarily powerful country in order to save a single woman?

Unbelieveable.

If that's so, then I'll never even consider voting for a woman president. Or Vice President. Or even Senator, Representative, or Dog Catcher. Keep those double-X chromosome types as far from the levers of military power as possible, please.

Does anyone in Hollywood even have a frickin' clue about military matters? It would take substantially more than a single MEU (a reinforced Marine battalion, the standard "on-call" floating unit) to pacify Nigeria, it would take several armies. Heck, we needed roughly eight divisions to subdue a weakened Iraq, a country with one-fifth the population of Nigeria. Yet in the show President Davis brashly summons the Nigerian ambassador and demands he release the woman. Or else the Marines will land.

I'd like to think that this some cleverly-disguised parody, but the writers appear to be serious. Didn't they see Black Hawk Down? Do they know what would happen if we tried to land an MEU into a hostile Muslim area of Northern Nigeria, some 500 miles from the coast?

It occurs to me that the type of people who wrote this script are the same ones who planned the aborted Somalia mission. Or the ones who gave President Clinton the idea he could have a Delta Force team infiltrate Afghanistan and kidnap Osama Bin Laden. In this light the script makes perfect sense. These people have never been in the military. Their perception of the military has been created by movies, not by experience, and so they have no realistic understanding of what the military can, and cannot, do.

Just as I keep my young daughters away from my guns, I think I'll keep Geena Davis and other left-of-center women away from the presidency. It's too dangerous to let them have control, especially for our Marines.

ROTFLMAO!

Speaking of deluded liberal fantasies, this one from Britain is hilarious. It seems that one pointy-head professor has done a study that shows, mind you, the US is the most backward and crime-ridden of all developed countries because it is so religious.

If this wasn't such obvious guffaw material I'd say it reminds me of the good old days of pedantic Soviet or Castroite "research" that showed the Proletariat were much happier without consumer goods or "excess" money. The esteemed professor, Gregory Paul, claims that US rates for murder (rates that have been declining steadily for the past decade, btw) are caused by the widespread acceptance of the Bible in the US.

And this from a man whose home country has an overall violent crime rate two to three times higher than America's.

He also associates suicides with religious fervor but conveniently ignores the fact that the US suicide rate is lower than Japan's or much of secular Europe's.

But the more significant fact he ignores is the demographic and cultural suicide that sensible and rational Darwinist Europe is currently engaged in. As Mark Steyn is fond of pointing out, in less than a generation the population of Europe will be lower than it is today, and their vaunted social welfare system that Professor Paul believes forms the basis for their moral superiority to America will collapse due to a lack of children.

Not only their welfare state but their culture will die too unless Europeans start heeding the Biblical admonition to "multiply and replenish the earth". Right now the children they didn't have are being replaced by those of religious Muslims who neither share their enlightened secular views nor value their secular society.

The greatest irony is that those who profess the strongest belief in Darwinism usually fail to heed it's central message: Species that successfully reproduce live on, species that don't, die off. Professor Paul and the Europeans can be likened to a species of animal that has spent so much evolutionary energy developing its gorgeous appearance that it has abandoned reproduction.

Such animals tend to go extinct, very quickly.

Rats are leaving the Sinking Ship

New Orleans police chief P. Edwin Compass has fallen on his sword (so to speak).

This is not as much a case of rats leaving a sinking ship as Mayor Nagin throwing the baggage overboard to keep it afloat. Chief Compass and his band of Keystone Kops have become a liability in the wake of Katrina, and like all good politicians Nagin knows the value of a scapegoat.

He also might be keeping an eye to the inevitable civil rights lawsuits that will be filed in the wake of New Orlean's illegal gun confiscation order. In the court order that was issued last week, the good Mayor claimed he didn't know about the order and didn't authorize it. Compass will end up taking the fall in court.

(h/t SayUncle)

Missing the obvious

Violent rime rates in the US have fallen to 30-year lows.

There are several explanations for this. Some credit the current "lock 'em up" strategy, others say it's because of more police, still others claim that increased vigilance caused by terrorism has contributed to the decline.

I've even read a study that claimed it was due to all those abortions performed on poor inner-city women back in the 70's and 80's. The authors said that in effect there is no new generation of criminals in the ghettos because they've all been murdered already.

But there's one important contributing factor that you'll never see mentioned. Anyone care to guess which one I'm talking about?

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Notice the graphic accompanying the story linked above. Notice that around about 1995 there was a sudden drop in crime rates.

Anyone know what else happened in 1995?

That year was a watershed for "shall-issue" concealed carry laws. Thanks to new Republican majorities in many state legislatures, pro-gun bills that had languished for years were finally passed. Prior to 1995, only 22 states had passed some form of liberalized concealed carry; in 1995 alone, some seven states (including Utah) passed the new NRA-supported laws, dramatically increasing the number of permittees nationwide. More importantly, the high-crime city of Philadelphia was brought under Pennsylvania's concealed carry law by the passage of statewide pre-emption legislation in 1995.

In short, some 50 million Americans were made eligible to carry concealed in the space of less than one year. I believe this created a "tipping point" that nudged crime rates into a free-fall. Although there were not enough permittees to create such a drop, there were enough criminals in "shall-issue" states that were so worried by the prospect of meeting an armed permittee they changed their behavior.

Even if you don't subscribe to that theory, one thing has been made abundantly clear by the recent drop in violent crime: The hysterical predictions by the gun-control lobby of road-rage shootouts and concealed weapon permittees killing each other over parking spaces have been proved false.

I nominate this guy for the Supreme Court

The NRA/SAF's petition for a restraining order has been granted.

Other than praising the judge for recognizing the seriousness of the situation and acting immediately to halt it, I have only two comments:

At the time of this posting at the GOA's website there's no mention of the restraining order. They do encourage you to help kill the lawsuit prevention bill, though.

At Say Uncle's, one of the commenters to this thread notes that the members of his local pistol club all said it was the GOA that filed the suit and the NRA was just along for the ride. This attitude helps explain the reason the GOA is still considered to be superior to the NRA: Some gun owners have criticized the NRA so often for so long that they automatically assume whenever anything good happens it must be due to the GOA.

If they actually read the GOA's website (as I do), they might think differently.

More on the GOA

Thanks to a gracious link by SayUncle, my previous post about the GOA v. NRA generated more than the usual comments. Publicola had a long and thoughtful comment that required a detailed response; so detailed that I decided to turn it into a separate post.

As a preface, I would like to state that I'm not anti-GOA and have no animosity towards the organization or any of its members. Heck, I probably agree with them 90% of the time, so it's not as if they were, say, a gun control group. Although I haven't linked to them from the Warren I do occasionally read their alerts to get details that sometimes are not included in NRA alerts. I consider the GOA to be a valuable resource, even if I don't wish to join.

Indeed, it's not an exaggeration to say that groups such as the GOA saved gun shows after Columbine in 1999. While the NRA was busy wheeling and dealing to keep weak-kneed Republicans (including my senator, Orrin Hatch) from rushing to vote for whatever gun control the Democrats proposed, the GOA kept their heads and held firm. Their "no compromise" attitude eventually helped to bring the NRA around.

But that doesn't mean that approach is the best every time, or even today. It was admittedly a low blow to compare them to the modern Democrat Party (sorry); it does seem to me however that the GOA is stuck in a siege mentality leftover from the dark years of the early 1990's. Every law is scrutinized as if there were something bad about it; the potential good of any law is automatically outweighed by any potential flaw, however minor it may be. Hence the GOA hand-wringing over a purely symbolic study of trigger locks that to them outweighs any benefit of eliminating the real danger of gun industry regulation via lawsuit.

Over the past few years there has been a massive yet subtle paradigm shift in American attitudes towards guns and gun ownership. Millions of Americans, mugged by the reality of 9/11 and now Hurricane Katrina, have reconsidered their support for gun control. When the S#*t Hits The Fan these people have decided it's much better to own a gun than to rely on the police, even though they probably still don't like the NRA. Consider them Gun Nuts in training.

A hypothetical example of these persons that I like to use is that of single mother in Philadelphia. Now this woman grew up in a household without firearms, she's never hunted in her life, she has little use for semi-automatic rifles, and she certainly doesn't really care about the "original intent" of the Second Amendment. Prior to today, if she voted at all she probably voted Democrat.

But she can see the value of small, concealable handguns, and she is quite appreciative of a system that allows her to get a relatively inexpensive permit to carry one while coming home from work late at night. Suddenly, the Second Amendment isn't so abstract. While she still might continue to vote for Democrats, she is becoming more skeptical of the concept of gun control because she sees now just who it really affects.

In my opinion, these new gun owners represent the leading edge of an increasingly pro-gun population. But while they might be taking baby steps towards a greater understanding of the meaning of Second Amendment, they're not gun activists by any sense of the imagination. And the quickest way to alienate them would be to push an extreme position such as repeal of the NFA.

The truth is, even if the NRA, GOA, SAF, JPFO, CCRKBA, and the other state and local members of the pro-gun coalition spent every penny they had to repeal the NFA or the GCA, it still wouldn't happen. It is simply too radical a step for the overwhelming majority of Americans to even consider at this time. The only result would be to divide and marginalize the gun community. A worthy long-term goal to be sure, but it probably won't happen for another generation. The public perception of, and conventional wisdom about, machine guns needs to be changed before such a major step can occur.

That's 70 years of anti-gun propaganda that must be overcome. We didn't get into this position overnight; we won't get out of it anytime soon.

But there are reasonable incremental steps that can be taken right away. As one who visits our National Parks regularly, I'm all over the idea of passing a law that allows Concealed Weapon permittees to carry in National Parks and Monuments. It's a royal PITA to have to stop, unload and lock up your gun before entering the park. Such a law would probably pass Congress, since less than a decade ago they wrote a similar exemption for CCW permittees in the Gun-Free Schools Act.

If you wanted to tinker with the NFA, you could start by repealing the FOPA restriction on the transfer of new machine guns. Once again, a small, targeted bill that would provide real relief yet not threaten too many outside the gun grabber community. While it's not as satisfying as the Supreme Court saying "Miller was wrongly decided", it's alot more realistic.

That is why I support the NRA as opposed to the GOA: The NRA seems to understand this, the GOA does not. Bold action is wonderful, but it's not a substitute for common sense and it certainly won't supercede reality.

Who's doing the "heavy lifting"?

Next to target shooting and hunting and arguing the merits of the .223 vs. the .308, the favorite activity of hard-core gun enthusiasts is without a doubt NRA-bashing.

For those Warren readers not familiar with the Gun Nut subculture, that's not a typo. The NRA catches as much grief from the right wing of the gun owner community as it does from the left wing of the gun control community ("the entire community is "left wing"; there is no such thing as a "right wing gun-grabber" -- Ed.). And leading the charge is the much smaller but much noisier Gun Owners of America.

Not without justification, of course. The NRA has often "gone along to get along", especially when the Congress was controlled by the Democrats. Back then their philosophy seemed to be "we can't stop it, so let's make it as gun-owner friendly as possible". Since 1994, they've stiffened their spine somewhat but their reputation as compromisers has lingered.

The GOA has exploited this to portray the NRA as perfidious turncoats and they themselves as the only "true" defenders of the Second Amendment. While it is true the GOA never compromises, they also never advance. The GOA will often kill a good pro-gun bill because it isn't "pure" enough. They seem to be under the delusion that the only reason all gun control laws were not repealed years ago is because of the spinless Republicans and their greedy NRA masters. An exaggeration, to be sure, but not far off the mark.

An example I am personally familiar with is Utah's concealed carry law, passed in 1995 with NRA support and GOA opposition. A representative of the Utah GOA affiliate branded it "gun control" because it required fingerprinting and background checks (necessary for it to even be considered) and refused to support it. Thankfully, they were ignored, and now after a decade some in the Legislature are seriously considering passing Vermont-style concealed carry, something that never would have happened back in 1995. Had we listened to the GOA in 1995, Utah would still have a "may issue" system, and there would still be only 3,000 permittees in the state as opposed to 65,000 today.

Even now, they are hoping to kill the important lawsuit pre-emption bill that recently passed both houses of Congress because it might be interpreted to require trigger locks. Their lack of foresight is astounding.

In the wake of Katrina, we see the same dynamic at work with individual members of the GOA. Because the NRA didn't file an immediate lawsuit after the gun confiscation order went out, some NRA-bashers accuse the NRA of lassitude or timidity or cowardice. The GOA is touted as the more dedicated defender of gun rights, even though they didn't respond any differently than the NRA, other than to issue a press release a few days earlier that was largely ignored by the MainStreamMedia. In their alert for that day on their website, they only dedicated a few lines to the confiscation after several paragraphs describing how to stop the lawsuit pre-emption bill.

But let's put last week behind us, and consider what each organization is doing now. The NRA has announced that they have sent an investigative team to New Orleans in order to interview the victims of the gun confiscation. The GOA has set up an information page and is promising to draft new legislation to prevent this in the future. Quite important, but the NRA will undoubtedly do the same thing and their bill will be far likelier to pass Congress.

Consider also the lawsuits that will be filed over the confiscation order. The GOA states it will only take gun confiscation reports from their affected members; the NRA is hoping to interview all confiscation victims. The GOA understandably wants to save its limited resources to help its members. The NRA is willing to help any citizen affected by the confiscation order. So which one is helping the average gun owner more?

Honestly, I really don't have a beef with the GOA. I appreciate the fact that sometimes they help keep the NRA honest. But I've seen enough of their backward tactics to decide that they don't deserve my support. They're kinda like the Democrat party, still living in the past, following the same outdated paradigms. They fail to realize that it's now time to move forward with steady, realistic steps, instead of standing still because something might go wrong in the future.

To put it simply, if you want to stop a gun control bill, join the GOA. If you want to pass a pro-gun bill, join the NRA. And if you're a gun owner in New Orleans, the NRA is your best friend right now. Unless you're a member of the GOA, you can't count on them.

UPDATE: More thoughts here.

I know who they're fighting for

Meryl Yourish asks some obvious questions in the wake of yesterday's suicide bombings. Most reasonable persons would know the answer right away, but some are more dense, willfully so. The Western Left and the UN have spent decades ignoring the unpleasant realities of Palestinian terrorism; it's just as easy to ignore Al-Qaeda terrorism, especially if it can be used to discredit George Bush.

For the Media and the Left, this was Manna from Heaven. With Katrina winding down, they can now go back to their "All Quagmire, All the Time" coverage. In fact, I'd daresay Al-Qaeda planned this operation with the goal of taking back the TV cameras from disaster coverage. They watch Al-Jazeera too, ya know.

What's next? Water is wet? Fire is hot?

Intact, traditional families are better for children.

As one who has watched the effects of easy divorce on friends and family, I can feel some vindication. But just as many ignore the signs of progress in Iraq, or the rank hypocrisy of the Senate Democrats, there will be plenty of people defending single-parent homes.

"Keep your booger hook off the bang switch"

The tragic result of improper firearms handling.

Finding Racism where none exists

While searching the archives of Pravda for evidence of negative reporting about Rocky I came across this item. It seems radio host and self-promoting rabbi Shmuley Boteach has accused Utah's KUTR 820 AM of cancelling his show because of racism.

Oh, please. I've listened (briefly) to Rabbi Shmuley's show before, and I can attest that it's painful. As in Dr.-Laura-Schlessinger's-failed-TV-show painful (I love her radio show, though). The cancellation may have more to do with his grating style than with any animus towards black evacuees from New Orleans. After all, KUTR is Utah's "Radio for Women" and is geared more towards fluffy programming for ditzy upper-middle-class housewives (my favorite liberal female columnist, Holly Mullen, hosts a regular show for them).

However, regarding the accusation of racism made by some evacuees because their camp has a curfew, that's just par for the course. I would dare say virtually all evacuee camps throughout the US have imposed a curfew, some for very good reasons.

Rockygate: The Saga Continues

While everyone has been absorbed by coverage of Hurricane Katrina, the scandal surrounding Mayor Rocky Anderson has continued.

The Salt Lake City Council is considering auditing one of Rocky's pet projects to determine if he followed proper procedures.

Meanwhile, the Deseret News allows itself to consider the heresy that Rocky's snotty personal style might just be hurting Salt Lake City's image (to which every resident of Davis County would respond: "Ya think?").

It's hard to say if the adoring Salt Lake Media have crossed the Rubicon and stopped treating Rocky with kid gloves, or if they're simply following the story because they can't ignore it any longer. The Salt Lake Tribune has remained true to the party line and studiously avoided mentioning anything about the audit. Time will tell. One thing is for certain: With Rocky, there will never be a shortage of material.

The Warren Will Never Forget

I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help you...

Captain Holly considers himself to be a gun blogger, although admittedly I haven't blogged much about guns lately (a quick check of my archives from a year ago will reveal that it was one of my favorite subjects).

That is going to change, however.

Corrupt and incompetent Democrat Mayor Ray Nagin's corrupt and incompetent Chief of Police, P. Edwin (has no moral) Compass has simply decided -- with the consent of his Whiny Overlord, no doubt -- that every gun in New Orleans will be confiscated, regardless of the circumstances. What's worse, the National Guard and Federal Marshalls are helping enforce this unconstitutional and illegal order at gunpoint. Dave Kopel has the appalling details (h/t Instapundit).

This means war.

This hits every nerve in my body and simultaneously pushes every one of my buttons. I am going to raise hell with every one of my elected representatives, starting with the local mayor up to President Bush himself. Today will be spent writing and sending as many angry but polite e-mails as I can.

This cannot be allowed to stand. It needs to be nipped in the bud right away, before other .Gov types get the idea that this is good disaster policy.

Contact your representatives immediately.

Vacation Photo-Blogging

I spent last week on our annual family vacation to the National Parks of southern Utah/northern Arizona. We had fun, the kids behaved well, the old van ran fine (it averaged nearly 22 mpg for the trip -- whoo-hoo!), gas prices were relatively reasonable (the key word here is "relatively"). Aside from the mouse that my son found in his bed at our fleabag motel the trip was without incident.

The view from Chessman Overlook at Cedar Breaks National Monument.

Looking east from Sunset Point at Bryce Canyon National Park.

Looking south across the Grand Canyon from Cape Royal.

I could post more, but you really should see it all for yourself, if you haven't already.

Blogging hiatus will continue

We will be out for another week.

I'm not sure if we should go, though. Everything seems to fall apart while we're gone.

Rest assured, we will eventually return. Hopefully, the whole world won't go crazy before then.

Katrina: Destruction on a Biblical Scale

We've been out of commission here this week, and so have missed the big story. But Michelle Malkin has been our #1 source for Katrina information, and should be yours, too.

Our favorite charity is LDS Humanitarian Services. The Holly household is fasting today and donating the money to them. Please consider them when giving.

A Prediction: Republicans Win in 2006

I'll just go out on a limb here and predict that when all is said and done, when all the final reports come in, when the public weighs the evidence and finds just who was responsible for the anarchy and looting and lack of effective response to Hurricane Katrina, the Democrats will not look very good.

This latest effort to "get" George Bush will blow up in the faces of the American Left, big time.

Oh, and I also predict Americans will get a big case of "compassion fatigue". The strident non-stop whining of the left, combined with the continuing bad behavior of many of the poor "victims" will cause many otherwise charitable persons to simply throw up their hands in disgust.

Remember, you read it here first.

UPDATE: I'm right on the money. Instapundit has this item:

I NOTICE that some people have seemed pretty unperturbed by the attacks on Bush.
Perhaps they had advance news of polls like this:

Americans are broadly critical of government preparedness in the Hurricane Katrina disaster — but far fewer take George W. Bush personally to task for the problems, and public anger about the response is less widespread than some critics would suggest.

Considering the media hostility, these poll numbers are pretty good.

Exactly. When there's a big crisis, people want leaders who are calm, confident, and who roll up their sleeves and get to work. What they don't want are whiny, finger-pointing politicians who make excuses for their own incompetence.

As the old saying goes, when you're up to your ass in alligators (quite appropriate for this situation) it's not the time to argue about who was supposed to drain the swamp.

If the Democrats and Media keep this up, they'll end up destroying any credibility they have with the public when it comes to natural disasters -- just as their constant carping about Iraq has destroyed their credibility with the public on national defense.

Keeping up with "Rockygate"

There has been a flurry of events in the Continuing Saga of Mayor Rocky Anderson, and I haven't been able to keep up. But I'll post the links for the enrichment of our Dear Reader(s).

Last Tuesday, there was a round of "he said, she said" articles.

Uber-Liberal Trib columnist Holly Mullen pens a tearful "how could you?" to Rocky.

Rocky finally realizes he should try to apologize before a lawsuit gets filed.

More to come....