When I was young, there were giants in the earth.
One of them, Richard “Racehorse” Haynes, died this morning.
He was one of the greatest criminal defense lawyers ever. He represented John Hill in his first and only murder trial. (And the Chron is wrong: the case ended in a mistrial, not a hung jury.)
I should have worn waders today.
(Fun fact: “Knee Deep In the Schadenfreude” was Starship’s working title for “We Built This City”.)
Local elections are coming up. I’m not sure what’s on the ballot for Austin specifically and Travis County in general. But in Lakeway, where I’ve been spending a lot of my time, three city council seats are up. Also, the city is considering a proposition to issue $23 million worth of bonds so they can build a new police station.
The new cop shop is kind of a big deal. I haven’t heard a lot of opposition to it, but most of the people I’ve been around in Lakeway are police or police supporters. I’ve been down and toured the current police station, and it is small and cramped and crowded: there’s no room to grow. On the other hand, the figures I cam up with for a certain property owner I know came out to around %6 a month more in property taxes. This is someone who is on a fixed income: six dollars here, six collars there, pretty soon you’re talking about City of Austin property taxes.
Reasonable people can differ on the merits of the proposition and the candidates. But here’s the problem: Lakeway’s mayor, Joe Bain, who is active on NextDoor (and has a blog on the city website) decided he’d be smart.
“John Smart” on NextDoor, to be exact.
…
The mayor has confessed and deleted the account.
I’m not currently on NextDoor, but looking over their rules, Mayor Bain’s behavior is a pretty clear violation. I had thought that NextDoor actually did some validation on signups to make sure you were a real person and lived in the place you signed up for. (I know, I know, silly me: expecting a website on the Internet to do validation.) The one person I’ve heard from so far who is on NextDoor says they didn’t go through any validation process, but they used an invite code provided by their local neighborhood association. Maybe that bypasses the validation?
The first question this leads to is: how did he get a fake NextDoor account? Was someone else…helping him out?
The second question: how is this going to impact the election? Early voting started Monday. I can’t vote in Lakeway, but if I could, I’d be looking cynically at Mayor Bain’s endorsed candidates. Perhaps it is time for some new leadership? (I’d also be thinking about my support for the new cop shop. But honestly, I’d probably end up voting for it anyway.)
…I am enjoying reading about Fyre Festival so, so much.
And festival-goers are reporting feral dogs, cancelled flights, and other attendees starting fights with locals.
— Iron Spike (@Iron_Spike) April 28, 2017
It’s the feral dogs that really make a good music festival.
That reminds me. (adds Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus to his Amazon wish list.)
William N. Finley IV’s Twitter feed: Finley was boots on the ground at Fyre Festival and is quoted in many pf the stories I’ve seen.
Questions, so many questions: could Ja Rule and Kendall Jenner be prosecuted for fraud? Would this have been a justified use of a MOAB? And is it true that United Airlines was an official Fyre Festival sponsor?
Jonathan Demme passed away yesterday. Which is a damn shame, because I wanted to ask him why he thought it was a good idea to remake “Charade” and “The Manchurian Candidate”.
But I suppose I have to give him a pass for those. “The Silence of the Lambs” is a faithful adaptation of the book, and a great movie it its own right.
And not that he ever needed it, but he would have earned a lifetime pass from me for “Stop Making Sense”.
Come to think of it, “Swimming To Cambodia” was a swell movie, too.
And I actually saw “Swing Shift” when it was in theaters, but I was unaware of the whole editing controversy, and really don’t remember the movie well at this distance. It might be worth a re-watch, but I think I want to see “Melvin and Howard” and “Handle With Care”/”Citizens Band” first.
Easter Sunday, a group of us went shooting at the KR Training range. Because what better way is there to celebrate the resurrection of Christ than to shoot off guns? Hey, didn’t the man say “If you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one?”
(Also: KR Training, official firearms trainer of Whipped Cream Difficulties.)
While we were out there, the actor we’ve hired to play Karl mentioned that you can get AR pattern lowers (and uppers) in pistol calibers…that take Glock magazines. Here’s an example. (Not endorsed by WCD: I have no experience with the company or product.) Since most folks who are serious Glock users have a bunch of magazines around, this is an attractive idea. Even more so when you know that you can get magazine extensions for those standard Glock magazines and load up even more rounds.
My mind immediately went in a particular direction, but I’m going to come at it from the long way around. Because that’s just the kind of hairball I am. Let’s start with the question: what calibers do Glocks come in?
I can almost visualize a .380 ACP Glock AR carbine (or an AR pistol). The vision I have of it in my head is that it would be a kind of cute plinking gun…that shoots relatively expensive ammo and doesn’t have a fun switch. It reminds me of the old MAC-11, but even less useful. (Though the AR platform carbine would perhaps be more reliable.)
9mm seems to be where the AR/Glock action is, and for good reason: 9mm ARs are fairly popular in various places, 9mm ammo is relatively cheap, and this seems like a very practical pistol caliber carbine. Perhaps even more so if you pay for the tax stamp and make it a short-barreled rife. I think a lot of folks are looking at these, even without the SBR tax stamp, as good home defense weapons: easier to handle, point, and shoot than a pistol, without the possible over penetration issues of 5.56.
You could make the same argument for .40 S&W, except that the ammo isn’t as cheap as 9mm. and I don’t think it has the same following that the 9mm carbine has in the tactical community.
.45 ACP could be an interesting build. I don’t see a lot of tactical operators talking about operating tactically with .45 ACP carbines. But I don’t hang out with a lot of tactical operators, either. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.
.45 GAP? Well, that’d be weird. The Winchester ballistics calculator on my phone says that .45 GAP will drop a little less and have slightly more velocity at 50 yards. But my impression is that .45 GAP is a dying caliber (even though Glock still chambers guns in it) and is maybe a little more expensive than .45 ACP by a few dollars a box for comparable ammo. However, I haven’t shot or bought .45 GAP, so don’t take that as gospel truth. Check prices at your local dealer or online ammo vendor.
.357 SIG? Ah. That’s the first place my mind went. I remember .357 SIG being touted as having a flatter trajectory than the .357 Magnum, but the same punch at range, higher capacity, and the ability to actually feed it in auto pistols. That same Winchester calculator (which only goes out to 50 yards on the iPhone) does show slightly less drop and a slightly lower velocity for the .357 SIG at 50 yards. If I can find a better calculator, I’d love to run numbers out to 100 yards.
Apparently, I’m not the only person who has this thought. there’s an interesting discussion over at Better and Better where Matt G mentions much the same idea (and also responds to a question from your humble blogger about the current role of the police shotgun).
And finally: 10mm? Why not? I like this idea, too. It reminds me of Jeff Cooper’s “Thumper”. I could see a SBR version of this working perhaps as a compact police carbine, but more so in Cooper’s original conception: a personal defense weapon for tank crews and other people who need something they can carry and deploy in tight quarters. I think I’d pick a 9mm or .357 SIG version for my daily use. But if I was in an appropriate military position, I’d build up a few 10mm ARs for experimental purposes in the sandbox.
More crankery after the jump.
I have no joke here. I just wanted to say:
Tell us about the rabbits, United!
(United Airlines: the Lennie of aviation.)
..the cops are crooks and the gun dealers are too. The mimes are food for the bums underground! New York, New York!
(Sorry, had to shoehorn that in somewhere.)
Anyway, more indictments in the NYC bribes for gun licenses scandal. NYT version here, but I prefer the NYPost version Mike the Musicologist sent me.
So, wait. The cops were being bribed with hookers? Because I’m thinking, if I’m a crooked cop, I can just go out, flash my badge, and get my own hookers. But maybe there’s less risk of an IA investigation if you let someone else procure the hookers for you. Trade offs.
Dunn and Espinel…
Should I feel bad for Valastro? On the one hand, he’s a party to a massive scheme to shake down citizens for exercising their rights. On the other hand, he’s trying to run a gun store in Queens: can you blame him if he felt like he had to go along to get along? On the gripping hand, he’s a retired cop who decided to run a gun store in Queens, instead of someplace in free America.
Here’s that website for you. Note the URL. I wonder how much that cost him.
(Also: someone please tell me the “Broadway shows” Villanueva got tickets for included “Hamilton”.)
Have to go back to work now. Will update later if I see any more revolting developments.
Damn it all to hell and Hong Kong.
Robert M. Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, passed away yesterday.
I’ve written before, but sort of in passing, about Zen. It was a huge influence on me as a young man, and continues to be an influence on me today.
I really feel sorry for this poor kid and his family, which is why I’m avoiding cheap jokes and political agitation.
I did get to wondering how many other people have been killed in track and field events over the years. Wikipedia does not have a list, but this article claims “25 reported cases of people being struck by thrown objects in high school track and field from 1992 to 2012”, resulting in four deaths. Not included in that figure is the December 2014 death that prompted the article. I’m not clear if that figure includes the 2012 death of a German offical who was hit by a javelin, or if those figures are US only. I also turned up a 2013 report (which I won’t link to, because it is from the Daily Fail) of a Houston high school athlete who was killed by a discus. (Oddly, it aparently hit him in the hip, not the head, and he died of unspeciied complications about a week later.) I assume this 1997 report is included in the stats above.
Tomorrow is promised to nobody, so keep your eyes open.
Erin Moran, for the historical record. I’m not linking to the AV Club obit because it’s ugly and below their usual standards.
Albert Freedman died a few weeks ago, though the NYT didn’t report his death until Saturday.
Mr. Freedman was a television producer in the 1950s. He specialized in televised game shows: the most famous of the shows he produced was “Twenty-One”.
And now you see where I was going with this, don’t you? Yes: Mr. Freedman was the person who recruited Charles Van Doren and fed him answers so he could defeat Herbert Stempel, leading to the “Quiz Show” scandal.
(I kind of knew in the back of my mind that Charles Van Doren was still alive: I remember when that New Yorker essay was published, though I don’t think I read all of it. What I didn’t know until I looked it up: according to Wikipedia, Herbert Stempel is also still alive.)
Kate O’Beirne, National Review writer and editor. Lawrence sent this to me: I’m not a regular NR reader, but their obit makes her sound like someone I’d enjoy having a holiday dinner with if I didn’t have anywhere else to go.
Sherry Cook is retiring May 23rd.
Ms. Cook, if you didn’t know, was the executive director of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, the agency that enforces the state’s liquor laws. (And yes, I recognize the…irony?…in having someone named “Sherry” in that role. Onward!) She’s been in that post since 2012.
Why retire now?
But the thing that seems to have really upset people?
Cook was grilled last week during a House General Investigating and Ethics Committee hearing about, among other things, a flyer that depicted Cook and other top agency officials holding or drinking Lone Star Beer as they rode on a plane on their way to a liquor administrators conference.
According to the Tribune, Cook told lawmakers that the flyer was an “inappropriate use of our time” and agreed it was a misuse of state resources to exchange emails about creating it.
You get the feeling that this would have kept on, if she hadn’t rubbed her travel in the faces of her employees? Seems like an important safety tip or two: if you’ve got to go to conferences, make them someplace not exotic, like Buffalo in January. Or if you do have to go somewhere exotic, complain the whole time. Don’t make up a flyer with shiny happy beer drinking people on a plane to Cali.
Kevin O’Brien, who blogged under the pseudonym “Hognose” at WeaponsMan, passed away yesterday.
I wasn’t a personal friend of Hognose, and I was a relative newcomer to his blog. I think I found it by way of a link from Tam last year. But this is a huge loss to the gun blogging community.
Hognose was an ex-Special Forces guy (the obit linked above goes into more detail on his service) who wrote a great deal…and I could stop there, because he often turned out three or more posts a day. Substantial posts, too, not stuff that was quickly tossed off.
And he wrote on a wide variety of topics. He wrote a lot about historic and contemporary military weaponry, drawing from his SF background. He also covered military history, contemporary military leadership, and politics (mostly as it related to the military).
He was interested in historical arms in general, but especially obscure Czechoslovakian arms (military and sporting) and was working on a book about Czech guns. He wrote a great deal about the problems with the VA system. He covered defensive shootings (and sort of picked up the “When Guns Are Outlawed…” mantle from Weer’d). Hognose and his brother were building their own plane; hr wrote quite a bit about the build process, and some about aviation in general. He was on Kathleen Kane like a fat man on a Chinese buffet.
The list goes on. He was eclectic. And if he said something, he was good about backing it up with sources.
My hope is that his family leaves the blog up, or at least makes the content available for download. We are already diminished by the loss of Hognose as a blogger; it would be worse if the valuable information he provided over the last five years was irrevocably lost as well.
You’ve still got time, if you haven’t been out yet.
Longer post to come at some point in the (hopefully) near future, but here’s my 2017 BAG gun:
Savage Model 11 Scout in FDE. Purchased new in box through GunBroker at…well, a hefty discount off of MSRP, and much less than I’ve seen it elsewhere.
(The book is H.W. McBride’s A Rifleman Went To War. I’m not a big WWI buff, but a lot of people I respect have cited McBride’s book as being a valuable work. And damn, the guy could write: there’s something I want to pull as a quote of the day in almost every chapter.)
Bonus, since I never posted it here: my 2016 BAG gun.
Smith and Wesson Model 19-4 in .357 Magnum with the round butt and 2 1/2″ barrel. Sort of the ultimate snub-nosed revolver. The holster came with it, too. Tam has a good post up about the Model 19, though she’s writing about a diffenent variant than mine.
(Book: Standard Catalog of Smith & Wesson, 4th Edition, of course.)
…I love you, tomorrow, BAG Day is only a day away.
My BAG Day gun actually showed up at the FFL on Monday. With all the personal stuff going on, I decided to pick it up early, rather than wait until Saturday. (I know I kind of bent the spirit and the letter of BAG Day, and I could have waited, but things got kind a little sideways for a while.)
If I can, I’ll try to get at least one good photo tonight and throw it up for tomorrow. A longer post on my Jeff Cooper fanboy-ism will probably have to wait.
(Is it “fanboy” or “fanboi”? Or is it both, and “fanboi” is the diminutive, more insulting version of “fanboy”?)
(In case you were wondering: the family member who was in the hospital was discharged yesterday and is currently recovering comfortably at home with their dog.)
I can see myself totally rocking the “I’m Too Old For This Shit Division” wiht my Model 29 in a shoulder holster. As long as I can remove the sports coat between strings.
(As I’m sure Tam knows, Texas in the summer is just a little hot, even for a lightweight sports coat.)
And I’m kind of crossing divisions here, but those who have seen me in person will testify to my theoretical capacity to grow a truly magnificent porn stache.
Dan Rooney, of Pittsburgh Steelers fame, and former ambassador to Ireland.
As Lawrence noted in a comment yesterday, it looks like Judge Sheila Abdus-Salaam’s death is being considered a suicide. I didn’t want to say so at the time, but that’s what I was afraid of.
Some wisdom from other, better people:
@Popehat "That means nothing."
It doesn't take much to hide depression, especially when hiding it seems of paramount importance.— Angela Kershner (@AngieNK) April 13, 2017
/3 I've written about it before. about what it feels like, about how to seek help, and how to help others. https://t.co/Xz2YLNPTN6
— ReaccomodatedPopehat (@Popehat) April 13, 2017
The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
Firings after the jump.
J. Geils, of J. Geils Band fame. Remember “Centerfold”? I used to have that on a 45 somewhere.
(Kids, ask your parents about records.)
My brother mentioned Charlie Murphy‘s death yesterday, and I’m embarrassed to admit: it rang no bells with me until I read the obit and realized, “Oh, yeah, the ‘True Hollywood Stories’ guy from ‘Chappelle’s Show’.” (I didn’t watch the show first run, but Lawrence has some DVDs that we’ve been watching from time to time.)
And I think this is worth noting for news value:
I don’t want to speculate, but it doesn’t seem like the authorities suspect foul play at the moment.
For a long time now, the policy of the Travis County DA’s office has been to present all cases involving police shootings to a grand jury for review, no matter what the circumstances where.
That was the case, for instance, for Austin police officer Carlos Lopez, who a grand jury no-billed 11 months after he shot and killed a gunman who was randomly shooting inside the downtown Omni hotel. The gunman had already shot and killed taxi driver Conrado Contreras by the time Lopez arrived.
It also happened with Austin police Sgt. Adam Johnson, who a grand jury declined to indict in 2015 for shooting and killing a man in downtown Austin who was standing in the middle of Eighth Street firing a rifle at police headquarters, and had already sprayed several government buildings with gunfire.
She will only take cases to grand jurors if she thinks the shooting was unlawful or if facts about what happened are in dispute.
Unlike predecessors, who have viewed grand juries as independent reviewers best equipped to determine whether to indict an officer, Moore said she also will issue an opinion, with help from the new Civil Rights Division she has established, and provide a recommendation “as to the legal sufficiency of a case.”
Bad idea, as I see it.
There are a lot of problems with the criminal justice system, including grand juries. Jurors sometimes aren’t much more than rubber stamps for the DA’s office. But at least they are independant. At least grand juries offer some kind of outside review, flawed though it may be. This is going to backfire badly on DA Moore the first time a shooting that didn’t get reviewed blows up.
I’m baffled by the NAACP’s support for this: you would think they’d want the additional scrutiny, but perhaps the DA was persuasive. The support of the police union makes a little more sense:
The people who have spoken to our CPA classes and that have been involved in shootings have said that there is some stress involved in waiting on the grand jury verdict. But they downplayed that specific part of it. Yes, the aftermath is highly stressful (and the department has good programs in place to deal with it). But it seemed to me that they felt the grand jury verdict was just the end: by the time that came in, they’d already been cleared by Internal Affairs and the Special Investgaions Division, and had usually moved on to other assignments.
(I can’t recall a case in…well, ever, where APD ruled a shooting okay and a grand jury indicted. Maybe the Kleinert case mentioned in the article, but I’m not clear on what action APD took in that case. In the most recent case that I know of where there was any controversy – the naked 17-year-old – the grand jury no-billed but APD fired the officer anyway.)
Dorothy Mengering, David Letterman’s mother and sometime “Late Show” correspondent.
This broke kind of late in the day yesterday. I’m a little behind because of that, and because I was distracted by the situation I alluded to in a previous post. (They’re still doing well, but still in the hospital being observed. Thanks for asking.) Also, Alabama isn’t part of my usual beat, though I was sort of vaguely aware the governor was embroiled in a controversy.
Even better:
The NYT also has a summary of events. The whole thing seems to have started with former advisor Mason, who was also having an affair with Governor Bentley. Which, you know, consenting adults, their thing, not my place to pass judgement and all that. But former Governor Bentley apparently decided it was a good idea to use his office and state resources to try to cover up the affair, and to intimidate people who knew about it. Funny thing is, that didn’t work out too well for him: there are supposedly copies of text messages and recordings of phone calls between the two circulating on the Internet. (I haven’t gone looking for those. While I take pleasure in the downfall of a tax-fattened hyena, even I have my limits.)
When will people learn: the cover-up is almost always worse than what’s being covered up?
Remember BATFE’s secret slush fund?
I could see maybe, possibly, someone making an argument that the NASCAR suite and Vegas trip were for legitimate investigative purposes. I wouldn’t buy that without a lot of supporting documentation, but I can see someone thinking that.
Giving money to “the school of one of the agent’s children”, though? I think someone’s going to prison over this.
(Speaking of going to prison, flaming hyenas watch to come.)
(Also, I think I need a BATFE tag. Should it be a subset of “Guns” or “Law’?)
I intended to throw this up yesterday, but got overtaken by events. A close family member had to go to the hospital and ended up being admitted. (They’re doing fine now, thank you for asking, but I expect they will be in for a couple more days at least.)
Anyway, with slightly less than a week’s advance notice: April 15th is National Buy a Gun Day. And while the pressure might be off for the moment, why not go out and buy a gun to celebrate (or commiserate) over recent events?
Even better, BAG Day falls on a Saturday this year, to make your BAG shopping just that much easier.
“Are you celebrating this year?” Yes, I am. This year, I actually had something I wanted as a combined BAG/birthday present for myself, and planned to pick it up on BAG Day. However, while I was checking GunBroker, I found a pretty good deal on the item in question, put in a bid…and, shockingly, won. (I believe this is actually the first contested GB auction I’ve won, as opposed to “buy it now” deals.) I’m hoping it gets to my FFL before Saturday; the weekend promises to be busy, so it might be the Monday or Tuesday after BAG Day before I can throw up pictures. I will give a hint, though: I am indulging my inner Jeff Cooper fanboy.
If you can’t buy guns, buy ammo. If you don’t want to do either, well, you might throw a few bucks in the direction of the blogger McThag. He recently went through a difficult personal legal entanglement which could have cost him his right to keep and bear arms. Fortunately, he’s free and clear of that now (the whole story is on his blog) but he’s somewhat in the hole for legal expenses and could use a hand from those so inclined.
As always, I would not ask you to donate if I hadn’t already done so.
(Hattip to the great and good Erin Palette for first making me aware of this.)
Don Rickles: NYT. LAT. AV Club.
Joe Harris passed away on March 26th, though the NYT didn’t get around to reporting it until a week later. Mr. Harris was a commercial illustrator who is credited with creating the original Trix rabbit. Later on, he joined Total TeleVison, a company that produced Saturday morning cartoons. There he created Underdog.
Yeah, the animation may not have been great, but it did have one of the best cartoon theme songs ever.
Question for the huddled, wretched masses yearning to breathe free: what are some of the other great cartoon theme songs? Off the top of my head, I love the themes for “SuperChicken” and “George of the Jungle” (I have been known to quote the “SuperChicken” theme at work.) Oddly enough, I also have fond memories of the “Hong Kong Phooey” theme (and when are we going to get a live action “Hong Kong Phooey” movie?). Am I just a sucker for good theme songs wrapped around bad animation?
I’m seeing reports from reliable sources (and CNN) that Don Rickles has passed away, though I’m not seeing anything link-worthy.
If I get a chance, I’ll update later today: otherwise, it may be tomorrow before I’m able to throw up a good round-up.
My birthday is coming up soon. As always, I do not expect any of my loyal readers to get me presents.
However, if someone felt inclined: please do not buy this book for me. Thank you.
(Seriously. I have nothing against Jesse Sublett: he seems like a pretty cool guy. But I don’t care much for the food at either Threadgill’s location. And one of the worst aspects of Austin culture is the incessant nostalgia: or, as Lawrence likes to put it, “the burned-out old hippies who constantly talk about how they went to the Armadillo, dropped acid, and saw Shiva’s Headband.” Said it before, I’ll say it again: if the Austin Chronicle and other people had their way, this town would be a 1970s music theme park.)