Gun manufacturer HS Precision Rifles is using an endorsement from Lon Horiuchi to market its products. Horiuchi is the federal agent who shot and killed unarmed Vicky Weaver while she was holding her infant daughter at Ruby Ridge. Sounds like a good way to piss of your customer base.
Here’s an exceptionally stupid, jingoistic commentary on “buying American.” Except that instead of coming from some populist paleoconservative publication, it’s from the “progressive” Mother Jones. The author actually interviews an economist who explains why the “buy American” argument is mostly crap, and that manufacturing output in the U.S. actually increased (technology takes far more jobs than outsourcing ever could). But she still can’t resist the urge to “applaud” when she finds some American-made wax paper. The conclusion is something of a non-sequitur, too.
Nicholas Kristof on the horrific practice of acid-throwing in parts of Asia. Kristof is by far and away the New York Times’ best columnist. I don’t always agree with him, but he’s intellectually honest (he actually changed his position to support sweat shops after an extended stay in Asia). And there’s no columnist anywhere who’s better at reporting and exposing human rights violations in the developing world.
Northern Virginia has no acorns.
Two steps forward, one step back. Swiss voters vote to continue giving taxpayer-bought heroin to addicts, but reject a measure that would legalize marijuana.
French appeals court says stores can sell Sarkozy voodoo dolls, but “must carry a notice saying that pricking them harms the president’s dignity.”
Happy Birthday, Bloody Mary. A little odd that the drink would be invented just as alcohol prohibition was dying down. Most modern cocktails were invented during prohibition, a way to dilute the nastiness of black market booze. If you have a good Bloody Mary recipe you want to share in the comments, please do! I have one of my own, which I’ll try to post later this week.
Yet more collateral damage from sex crime hysteria.
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TheAgitator.com
Are these sex offender sentences done by juries or by monkeys throwing darts at a conviction board? I mean, seriously, convicting the kid (16) for having sex with a 13 year old is one thing. It’s another ball of wax to make him register as a sex offender for 10 years when the kid is obviously a minor and he had consensual sex.
Ridiculous.
Horiuchi was also involved in the Waco incident whereby one FBI sniper initially made a statement that Horiuchi was firing and later on retracted the statement.
Shell casings were found at Horiuchi’s position but the investigation took the platform that it would be nearly impossible to match up to the rifle. (of course, its perfectly okay to apply the same failed, unproven “science” on us, advertised as 100% effective in solving crimes when being sold to bill makers)
The acid story makes me worry. We can not stop issues like this, and the government passing an ‘internation violence against women’ thingy will not help.
One thing I can say is I can see myself, just for fun, torturing the ex-husband in this case for weeks on end. WTF is wrong with people?
You can pretty well count on the fact that any law named for a kid who had something horrible happen to him is a ill-conceived piece of crap.
I was going to mention the Horiuchi / Waco connection as well. I follow a lot of gunnie blogs, and you don’t know the half of the outrage.
And RE: Nando’s comment, often the jury is just given the question of guilt or innocence, (and often under the instructions that they have to convict if they find that the facts are A, B, and C) and the judge then sentences and decides if the person has to register. Even then, the statutes don’t always allow the judge the discretion — if the jury found them guilty of a particular violation, then they have to register. Period.
Remember, zero tolerance means zero thought.
Mother Jones = Economic idiocy.
For further evidence they employ Kevin Drum. His forays into econo-blogging are simply excreable.
I don’t agree with the premise underlying the buying American article but it’s not “exceptionally stupid” by any means.
Sadly our “justice” system allows a man who is found NOT GUILTY of charges to still be sentenced for them provided he is simultaneously convicted of another charge. This is truly a sick perverted system. Even if the jury does their job (occasionally it happens) the judge can still sentence him as if he were guilty of all charges.
I can’t remember if I saw it here or at Reason Hit & Run, but I remember seeing a piece a month or two ago talking about how laws named after someone are almost universally bad (whether it be child or adult).
Re: HS Precision Rifles’ use of Horiuchi’s testimonial.
I couldn’t find it on the site. Perhaps they’ve taken it down.
I dunno, the Amber Alert law seems okay. All it does is use various information systems.
Of course, one problem is that police often ignore the guidelines in calling an Amber alert. For example, issuing an Amber alert when it is a parent abduction in a custody dispute could often fail to meet all the criteria for calling an alert (one fo the criteria is that the child must be in imminent danger of death or injury).
Are you joking? Let me see, an article that violates two of the most well established and widely held views in economics, specialization of labor and comparative advantage.
There are two reasons we don’t consume things only within a 20 mile radius (or even 200 miles) anymore and why such attempts to push us in that direction are stupid.
Seriously if this were a good idea why not let the states impose tariffs and trade restrictions on each other? Why not let cities and counties do it? It restricts trade, raises prices, and has negligible effect on employment. Always has, most likely always will.
So, yeah its exceptionally stupid.
Oh and I bet the complete jackass that wrote that article bemoans the poverty in other countries. Talk about needing a smack upside the head with a clue-by-four.
From the sex-offender article, some moron:
“There just is no higher purpose for government than keeping the public safe,”
Umm, no the highest purpose of government is to ensure liberty (and to follow the Constitution). But hey, I had to dig that up in that old piece of crap, the Declaration of Independence, you, shmucky-politician-boy, probably know better.
It is not in dispute that people who rape small (pre-pubescent)children are nearly always afflicted with a serious illness that makes the likelihood of reoffending off the charts unless properly monitored. Logically, this justifies registries, online mug shots and ankle-monitors. However, as was sadly inevitable, the tough-on-crime monkeys have extended this to apply to people that do completely normal things (or at worst show some poor judgment) that are frowned upon, but pose no increased risk of reoffending over any other person. Of course those same monkeys have undermined any efforts for the public to understand that some (most) “sex-offenders” aren’t “kiddie diddlers.”
Prohibition wasn’t a good time for the cocktail. There was a shift toward drinking spirits instead of beer and wine, but availability was poor and many of the best bartenders either left the business entirely or moved to Europe. The real bursts of creativity came in the 1870s as bartenders started playing with vermouth and up to the dawn of Prohibition. I believe you’re right that more non-alcoholic mixers came into play during that era, but overall Prohibition was marked more by forgetting cocktail recipes than by creating them.
The people in the sex crime article seem to be talking past one another.
The people who want these kids labelled as “sex offenders” are the ones who had a child who was actually sexually assaulted. The ones who cry for lenience are the ones whose children were involved in consensual, yet still illegal sexual encounters.
The issue seems to be less of one of hysteria over sex offenders, than one of making sure that people who are convicted of such crimes are actually guilty of harming someone else.
“The issue seems to be less of one of hysteria over sex offenders, than one of making sure that people who are convicted of such crimes are actually guilty of harming someone else.”
Did I miss an “equals” sign in there some place? The fact that we recognize it as hysteria seems to suggest that some people are not guilty, or are not as guilty, or some shade of grey, whereas the system only allows for black and white.
Wow… not much Bloody Mary love, I guess. I don’t have a recipe per se (I’m a throw-a-little-of-this-throw-a-little-of-that kind of Bloody Mary mixer) but I will say that my one must-have ingredient is celery salt. There are two things in this world that just aren’t the same without celery salt sprinkled on top: hot dogs and Bloody Marys.
There is something about mixing the words “sex” and “teenager” that causes all the civilization in our society to vanish; it causes people to start grunting loudly, pounding their chests, and to dispose of rational thinking in favor of primal, ape-like instincts.
I am not certain that anyone should have their lives ruined for having consensual sex with a teenager, but I am damn sure that a sixteen year-old boy should not have his life taken away from him because he had sex with a 13 year-old girl (especially, but not only, since she lied about her age).
Man, these were the most bummer morning links ever.
Re the lack of acorn production this fall. I live in SE Virginia and we had a bumper crop of acorns from our 3 pin oaks this season. You couldn’t walk in the yard without stepping on them and getting hit in the noggin. Our neighborhood squirrels have had quite a feast!
As of this date no news stories show up on the Horiuchi-HS Precision connection save for the Nazi-leaning (literally) American Free Press. So much for both mainstream and “conservative” media.
Leftists are economic nationalists, I don’t see why you’re surprised
by the MJ article. Don’t you recall Chucky Schumer (he had a perfect SAT score) trotting out Paul Craig Roberts (featured Counterpunch columnist) to denounce free trade?