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Link: WorldNetDaily: Sidewalk counselor's bones broken while on clinic duty.
"It is unbelievable that an officer would allow an attacker to go free after inflicting life-threatening injuries on an elderly gentleman, then threaten to arrest the witness to the crime," said Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue.
Santa brought Ayn some educational gifts this year. Among them:
Link: News: Mountain lion spotted in San Juan Capistrano | OCRegister.com.
SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO – It will likely be the biggest cat Jo Ann Merrell’s dog, Cody, ever chases up a tree.
If we ban guns, we'll be safe? Link: News: Man suspected of kidnapping Laguna Niguel resident with a barbecue fork | victim, suspect, boyne, niguel, laguna - OCRegister.com.
Police on Friday night arrested a man under suspicion of kidnapping and robbing a Laguna Niguel resident with a two-pronged fork as a weapon.
Will Baca issue them CCWs? Link: My Way News - LA Gang F13 Accused of Targeting Blacks.
There were even instances in which Florencia 13 leaders ordered killings of black gangsters and then, when the intended victim couldn't be located, said "Well, shoot any black you see," Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca said. "In certain cases some murders were just purely motivated on killing a black person," Baca said.
Link: Campuses push for right to carry handguns - State & Local.
Politicians and students activists across the state have pushed for legislation that would allow students, faculty and staff to carry concealed handguns on university campuses.
If this results in conversion, it won't be the first time. Link: News: State senate leader safe after carjacking | oakland, say, red, gun, robber - OCRegister.com.
SACRAMENTO -- Oakland police say a gun-wielding man has robbed California Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata of his government-issue car. The Oakland lawmaker was not harmed in the Saturday afternoon carjacking. Perata's spokeswoman says he got out of the car when the robber tapped on the window of his red Dodge Charger with a gun. The senator was waiting at a red light at 51st Street and Shattuck Avenue in North Oakland at about 1:45 p.m. Police say a second man drove the robber to the intersection in a two-door gold Chevrolet Camaro that also was stolen.
This is welcome news from UK, and not to look a gift horse...but my daughter would aggressively dispute the notion that toy guns are just good for boys. Link: BBC NEWS | Education | Toy weapons 'help boys to learn'.
Boys in nursery schools should not be discouraged from playing with toy guns and other weapons, the government says.
Vatican denies this, but...
Link: Pope's exorcist squads will wage war on Satan | the Daily Mail.
The Pope has ordered his bishops to set up exorcism squads to tackle the rise of Satanism. Vatican chiefs are concerned at what they see as an increased interest in the occult. They have introduced courses for priests to combat what they call the most extreme form of "Godlessness." Each bishop is to be told to have in his diocese a number of priests trained to fight demonic possession.
...Bond, Father Bond:
This weekend's search, which will canvas an area known to be a favorite spot of Burgess', is being coordinated by Trinity Search & Recovery. Volunteer searchers can register online at www.trinitysearch.org.
Link: News: Search for Donna Jou | burgess, jou, register, jacksonville, dvds - OCRegister.com.
The family of a local college student who disappeared in June after partying with a convicted sex offender she met online will search the Santa Monica Mountains near Malibu this weekend in the hopes of finding clues about what may have happened to the missing 19-year-old woman. The family is also looking for volunteers to help in the search.
WorldNetDaily has finally endorsed Hunter. Link: WorldNetDaily: Duncan Hunter for president!.
(WorldExaminer beat them to it on 3/3/07, although Thompson looks like a more realistic option.)
LAST DAY TO REGISTER TO VOTE IN CALIFORNIA GOP PRIMARY IS JANUARY 21, 2008 !!!
Link: The Swamp: Huckabee's muzzle control problem.
Suffice to say, if any of our hunting mates had pulled a stunt like Huckabee’s yesterday, we never would have invited them back. It’s the sort of behavior that drives safety-conscious hunters up the wall, because it reinforces a reckless, gun-totin’ stereotype.
Link: Gun crime on the rise as number of armed police falls | the Daily Mail.
Conservative police spokesman David Ruffley said: "Poor ministerial planning means police officers are being thrown into gun hotspots without being properly equipped." He added: "This is yet further evidence that this Government, despite imposing a ban on handguns and pledging to tackle violent crime, has presided over a steady increase in the everyday use of weapons on Britain's streets."
Link: Gun seized after Katrina? NRA wants you - Yahoo! News.
NEW ORLEANS - The National Rifle Association has hired private investigators to find hundreds of people whose firearms were seized by city police in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, according to court papers filed this week. The NRA is trying to locate gun owners for a federal lawsuit that the lobbying group filed against Mayor Ray Nagin and Police Superintendent Warren Riley over the city's seizure of firearms after the Aug. 29, 2005, hurricane. In the lawsuit, the NRA and the Second Amendment Foundation claim the city violated gun owners' constitutional right to bear arms and left them "at the mercy of roving gangs, home invaders, and other criminals" after Katrina.
BOISE, Idaho — Idaho law enforcement officials say they are "mortified" by a slogan chosen by the latest group of state police academy graduates. The slogan, "Don't suffer from PTSD, go out and cause it," was emblazoned on the Dec. 14 graduation programs for 43 officers who completed the Idaho Police Officer Standards and Training Academy's latest course.
Link: WorldNetDaily: Christmas shopping horror: Man, wife blasted by Taser.
A Wisconsin man is reportedly planning to take legal action after he and his wife were blasted by a police Taser as they were finishing their holiday shopping Christmas Eve at a mall in Madison.
Will Bush dare call them "vigilantes"? That's how he labeled my fellow minutemen. Link: WorldNetDaily: Terrorists' new mission: Protect President Bush.
JERUSALEM – Members of the most active West Bank terror organization are set to participate in security forces being deployed to protect President Bush during his visit to the Palestinian territories next month, WND has learned.
Link: John Lott's Website: Permit holder stops road-rage attack.
Here is another case where a concealed handgun stopped road-rage and saved lives.
Link: Wife found dead under family's Christmas tree - Times Online.
***, 63, a retired teacher, may have been battered to death with one of her husband’s golf clubs. ***, 66, a prominent amateur golfer, then apparently killed himself by driving a Smart car into a tree.
Link: MyFox New York | Christmas Shootings in Brooklyn, Bronx Leave 4 Dead.
Nine people were shot in separate incidents in New York on Monday and early Tuesday, police said. Four of the victims died and five others are wounded. Detectives are investigating.
At least (only "20 visitors") this wasn't the`San Diego Zoo. Q: Were visitors allowed in the locked buildings along with the employees? Link: My Way News - Human Role Not Ruled Out in Tiger Attack.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The big cat exhibit at the San Francisco Zoo was cordoned off as a crime scene Wednesday as investigators tried to determine whether a Siberian tiger that killed a visitor escaped from its high-walled pen on its own or got help from someone, inadvertent or otherwise. Police shot the 300-pound animal to death after a Christmas Day rampage that began when the tiger escaped from an enclosure surrounded by what zoo officials said are an 18-foot wall and a 20-foot moat. Two brothers who also were visiting the zoo were severely mauled.
....
About 20 visitors were in the zoo when the attacks happened about an hour before the 6 p.m. closing time, officials said. Employees and visitors were told to take shelter when zoo officials learned of the attacks, and some employees locked themselves inside buildings as they had been instructed to do if an animal escaped.
Albany's police chief says there are as many as five machine guns still unaccounted for in the ongoing probe of city officers who bought guns for their personal use.
Just got my daughter her first BB gun here:
Authorities believe the two suspects are responsible for a bold robbery that took place in the busy parking lot of a Wal-Mart at 27470 Alicia Parkway. A 41-year-old woman was standing next to her car when she was assaulted at 12:30 p.m. Thursday, .... allegedly jumped out of a truck being driven by his wife and threw the 41-year-old to the ground. .... allegedly hit the woman and pepper-sprayed her before grabbing her purse and taking off in the truck.
It's surprising how fast this global warming fascism has taken hold. When I think of global warming fascists, I think of the family down the street with kids in guvschool begging at our door for money to fight global warming. I think of the Smith Barney presentation I was invited to hawking "green" industries and carbon credits without any skepticism raised by the affluent audience. You have your own list I'm sure.
Link: WorldNetDaily: Hundreds of scientists reject global warming.
A new U.S. Senate report documents hundreds of prominent scientists – experts in dozens of fields of study worldwide – who say global warming and cooling is a cycle of nature and cannot legitimately be connected to man's activities.
What perpetuates this insanity? Maybe stuff like this email allegedly sent to harass a dissenting scientist:
At an earlier hearing, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., had confronted Stephen Johnson, administrator of the EPA, about a threatening e-mail from a group that includes the EPA. That e-mail from the American Council on Renewable Energy was addressed to Marlo Lewis, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and said, "It is my intention to destroy your career as a liar. If you produce one more editorial against climate change, I will launch a campaign against your professional integrity. I will call you a liar and charlatan to the Harvard community of which you and I are members. I will call you out as a man who has been bought by Corporate America. Go ahead, guy. Take me on."
Link: Muslim officials help secure dawn masses in Mindanao - INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos.
A Muslim official has brought in firearms from Maguindanao to secure Catholic churchgoers attending the traditional dawn masses.
Link: Vatican Newspaper Slams "Golden Compass" as "The Most Anti-Christmas Film Possible".
VATICAN CITY, December 19, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano added its voice yesterday to the condemnation of the newly released film 'The Golden Compass" and the book series on which the film was based. In a lengthy editorial on December 18, the paper said Golden Compass was "the most anti-Christmas film possible."
The sale, which would give the Chinese government a stake of about 9.9 percent in one of Wall Street's biggest investment banks, is the latest example of a foreign investor aiding a Western financial firm after the housing meltdown.
Link: Seacoastonline.com: Giuliani says he'd uphold the 2nd Amendment.
"I used the gun laws aggressively in New York. I had to, and it worked well," Giuliani said in response to a question asked during a brief campaign stop at Goss International on Monday. "As president of the United States of America, I would be honor bound to uphold the Second Amendment." This was not the first time Giuliani had been confronted with his well-known stand on gun control. In an analysis of the former mayor's position, John Velleco, director of Federal Affairs for the Gun Owners of America Group, indicated Giuliani had tried to extend his vision of gun control to the nation in the 1990s. Noting the mayor's current stance that states should have the right to choose whether to control guns and to what extent, Velleco said that position does not jibe with Giuliani's former positions.
And what about the 14th Amendment, Rudy? Crime went down in New York in part because of a crackdown on criminals. The 2nd Amendment (and the 14th) are legal guarantees of our right to protect ourselves when the government cannot control crime, or simply refuses to do so, or becomes criminal.
Fraud, corruption, mismanagement...when applied to UN "peacekeeping" these are euphemisms for genocide.
Link: U.N. Finds Fraud, Mismanagement in Peacekeeping - washingtonpost.com.
A U.N. task force has uncovered a pervasive pattern of corruption and mismanagement involving hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts for fuel, food, construction and other materials and services used by U.N. peacekeeping operations, which are in the midst of their largest expansion in 15 years.
Link: Senators: Lift gun ban in parks.
Forty-seven senators signed a letter to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne on Friday asking him to lift restrictions that prevent citizens from carrying their readily accessible firearms onto lands managed by the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Link: Majority in U.S. poll support gun ownership rights - CNN.com.
Nearly two-thirds of Americans say they believe the Constitution guarantees each person the right to own a gun, according to a poll released Sunday.
Link: NRA-ILA :: In The News.
After months of careful negotiation, pro-gun legislation was passed through Congress today. The National Rifle Association (NRA) worked closely with Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) to address his concerns regarding H.R. 2640, the National Instant Check System (NICS) Improvement Act. These changes make a good bill even better. The end product is a win for American gun owners. Late yesterday, anti-gun Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA), failed to delay progress of this pro-gun measure. The Violence Policy Center, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and other gun control and gun ban groups are opposed to the passage of this legislation because of the many pro-gun improvements contained within. The NICS Improvement Act does the following to benefit gun owners:
Continue reading "Senate and House Agree on NICS Improvement Act" »
Link: Putin Is Named Time 'Person of the Year'.
Time magazine on Wednesday named Russian President Vladimir Putin its 2007 "Person of the Year." The nod went to the Russian leader because of Putin's "extraordinary feat of leadership in taking a country that was in chaos and bringing it stability,"
Please remember the opponents of Putin (rhymes with protein) who are doing time now.
Link: Abortion Triples Chances of Future Low Birthweight Babies New Study Confirms.
Women who have had an abortion run three times the normal risk of having a subsequent low birthweight baby, suggests research in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
Link: Drunks force churches to cancel midnight mass | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited.
The move is reported by the Roman Catholic magazine, the Tablet. It said: "Gun crime, rowdy crowds leaving pubs and dangerous drivers have forced many churches to celebrate their first Mass of Christmas Day in the early evening of Christmas Eve.
Patergate scandal hits academia! Link: In the Course of Human Events, Still Unpublished.
More than 200 years after they were written, huge portions of the papers of America's founding fathers are still decades away from being published, prompting a distinguished group of scholars and federal officials to pressure Congress to speed the process along. Teams of experts have been laboring since Harry Truman was president in the late 1940s to compile and annotate the letters, correspondence and documents of George Washington, John Adams, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. About $58 million has been spent in the past 30 years alone. Yet, according to a study by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, the Washington papers will not be finished until 2023, with 54 volumes published and 35 more to go. The Adams papers, 29 volumes shy of the planned 59-volume set, will not be done until 2050.
This sounds like a very dangerous mall, and the story reminds us that turning malls into gun-free zones attracts not only suicidal terrorists or nutcases but also common criminals after mall bucks, especially at Christmas time.
Police think the case could be connected to a carjacking about 7:30 p.m. Aug. 7 in the parking garage at Nordstrom department store in which a 30-year-old shopper and her 2-year-old son were abducted as she was putting her bags in the car.
The police hit rate may actually be a lot lower than indicated in the NYT article, which omits some very important information. About the article, Dr Lott writes:
The one important piece of information that is missing here is the number of people that the police shot at. If you take the estimate that I have that only about 5 percent of confrontations between armed victims and criminals result in the victim firing a gun, a 17.4 percent hit rate would imply that fewer than one percent of criminals would be shot. It would be interesting for someone to explain how this hit rate varies across cities.
Link: John Lott's Website: Police hit rates on shootings as low as 17.4 percent.
But there is other important information missing from the NYT article, which quotes a few stats from 2005 as well as 2006. The article has this to say about LA police shootings:
NYT omits any discussion of what happened in Compton in 2005. Compton may technically be a separate city but is basically LA and it was 13 LA County Sheriff's Deputies who were involved in this rather spectacular shooting exposition:
I'm not sure I agree with applying hit rates of police to armed citizens. Police venture into battle in unfamiliar circumstances, while armed citizens are in a better position to know exactly what is happening and where, so properly trained citizens should have higher hit ratios than police (and also lower incidence of innocent bystander shootings). Armed citizens may have training on par with or perhaps even superior to police training (for example, see Front Sight video posted earlier).
Link: LibertyNews.org - Liberty and Freedom for All » Bill of Rights Day Roundup!.
Happy Bill of Rights Day Everyone! Lets start off the day with the Bill of Rights Institutes’ interesting facts:
Shotguns used were apparently issued under government permit. Even in this island nation which has traded so much freedom for "security" and which leads the international gun ban movement, multiple victim shootings still occur.
A man suspected of being responsible for a shooting rampage Friday that left two people dead and five injured at a sports club in Sasebo, Nagasaki Prefecture, was found dead Saturday morning....
....
According to the police, Magome owned three shotguns and an air gun, for which he had received permits from the prefectural public safety committee.
Link: Opposing view: Right-to-carry saves lives - Opinion - USATODAY.com. Wayne Lapierre writes:
It is fortunate but not relevant that Assam had a law enforcement background. All permit-holders undergo training, testing and background checks.
LaPierre is right. Sure, in Assam's individual case she probably drew on her LEO background (she ceased being an LEO in 1999), but there are plenty of permit-holders that train as intensively or perhaps more intensively than police or military.
For example, one of the great instructors at Front Sight, Scott Hoehner, admits in the video below that the Marine Corps never taught him to present from the holster. Front Sight's focus is on civilian self-defense, and students range from hardened Marines to brittle Grandmas. Below is a video of the school, where I train as a lifetime member. (I participated a bit in making some of the footage of this film several years ago.)
Link: Opposing view: Right-to-carry saves lives - Opinion - USATODAY.com.
Let's stop saying there's nothing new to say. The policy that USA TODAY derided in a 1994 editorial as "one of the most cockamamie clichés in the pro-gun lexicon" halted unspeakable carnage in a Colorado Springs megachurch on Sunday.
At least ten attacks over last four years. Link: WorldNetDaily: Church shootings on rise in U.S..
"Self-defense is not just a right, but a Christian duty. Jesus told his followers, 'if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one,'" said Cass. "Christians are not to be a soft target for the hateful and deranged. Church leaders have a duty not to allow a crazed gunman to come and shoot up their congregation. Thank God for security officer Jeanne Assam and for New Life Church's security preparations."
For your travel plans, this site has maps depicting status of open carry laws throughout the US. Link: OpenCarry.org - The Internet's Premiere Open Carry Resource.
Dr. Lott posts another prof's pseudonymous account of real risks to professors. Link: John Lott's Website: Arming Professors?:
... that this professor finds it necessary to write under the pseudonym of "Thomas Benton" when discussing the gun issue tells you something about academia.
Link: Gun Saint Society Honors Colorado Church Heroine.
The St. Gabriel Possenti Society, Inc. this week awarded Jeanne Assam of New Life Church in Colorado Springs its Medal and Certificate of Honor, Society Founder/Chairman John M. Snyder announced here today. Snyder recalled that during last Sunday's church services Assam, an armed private citizen voluntarily guarding the congregation, fired her weapon effectively to stop a reportedly anti-Christian madman. The madman apparently was bent on mass murder after he had killed two of the innocent worshippers.
