Today is “Bad Website Day” over at Lawrence’s.
We’re talking really bad. Awesomely bad. Eyeballs bleeding bad.
So bad that I’m linking to his posts, rather than the websites themselves, just for your protection.
See how kind and caring I am?
Noted.
January 24th, 2012I hope they get tongue prints.
January 23rd, 2012LAT headline: “Gene Simmons look-alike robs stores in Sacramento“.
(First comment: “That’s Paul Stanley you morons.” How can you tell from that photo?)
Happy dance!
January 23rd, 2012The Supreme Court has handed down their decision in the case of United States v. Jones, the case involving attaching GPS tracking devices to vehicles.
The court held that, yes, attaching a GPS tracking device to someone’s vehicle is a search under the Fourth Amendment, and yes, this does require a search warrant. The decision is here.
Even better: it was a 9-0 ruling. (Five of the justices signed on to the majority opinion; the other four wrote a separate concurring opinion.)
Here’s preliminary coverage from Wired‘s “Threat Level” blog. I haven’t had a chance to review the full ruling yet; I may have additional links or commentary later.
Edited to add: Correction. According to the WP, there were two concurring opinions; I missed one in my quick skim of the ruling. Alito, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan signed on to one concurrence; Sotomayor wrote a second concurrence, and also signed on to the majority opinion.
Edited to add 2: Discussion at the Volokh Conspiracy. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Still wading through this, but part 2 makes a good point; the Court did not actually rule per se that GPS tracking requires a warrant, but that it is a search under the Fourth Amendment. Not all searches require a warrant (see Terry v. Ohio or Chimel v. California) but, in general, the types of searches that the Court has held do not require a warrant involve “exigent circumstances” and are highly limited in scope. I find it hard to see the Court applying an “exigent circumstances” exception to GPS tracking in just about any case.
ETA3: And one of Volokh’s commenters makes a good point: the police apparently had a warrant, but botched the execution of it (“The warrant authorized installation in the District of Columbia and within 10 days, but agents installed the device on the 11th day and in Maryland.”) and then tried to argue that they didn’t need no stinking warrant anyway.
Very interesting indeed, Mr. Bond.
January 22nd, 2012One might go so far as to say “Damn Interesting”.
Many of my friends and some bloggers seem to be regular followers of this site:
- Lawrence sent me a link a while back to the story of William Rankin, who spent 40 minutes inside a thunderstorm after ejecting from his F-8 Crusader. (I actually own a copy of The Man Who Rode the Thunder
, which is not easy to find.)
- Roberta X linked earlier today to the story of a motley crew of mountain climbers and other folks who were enlisted by the CIA to plant equipment on Nanda Devi in order to monitor Chinese nuclear tests. Basically; imagine climbing Mount Everest. Now imagine climbing Mount Everest with a bunch of heavy equipment, including an RTG.
- The most recent “Damn Interesting” posting is on a little known, and frightening event, in aviation history: the attempted takeover of FedEx flight 705 on April 7, 1994. (Speaking of “Gun Death“, Weer’d, there’s a prototype for you; though nobody was actually killed, it was a damn close thing…)
Obit watch: January 22, 2012.
January 22nd, 2012As opposed to last night, when he was apparently declared dead but actually wasn’t. (Good on Devon Edwards for standing up and taking responsibility, but I still feel sorry for him; especially since it sounds like they were taken in by a forged email and a dishonest source.)
Also among the dead: Philip Vannatter, LAPD detective. I know, you probably never heard of him. He led the Ron Goldman/Nicole Brown Simpson investigation and the Roman Polanski investigation, two of the LAPD’s biggest cases.
Rumor control update.
January 22nd, 2012Following up on the previous post:
Scary Yankee Chick was kind enough to leave a comment pointing back to her blog post on the same subject. (Thank you, SYC, and again I apologize for not following you more diligently.)
It looks like Stuff from Hsoi (who I also should be following more diligently) has done some research into this; not only has he not turned up much supporting this rumor, but he’s found a response from the NSCA pretty much debunking it.
I’m still open to discussion and additional information on this. I also still think being conscious about how you store your guns when traveling and what signals you’re sending to potential thieves is a good idea. But right now, I’m not seeing a whole lot supporting that particular rumor.
(Thanks again, and apologies, to Scary Yankee Chick and Hsoi.)
Holy…goat? Maybe. Kind of. Sort of.
January 22nd, 2012The German Sport Guns folks are putting out some interesting stuff. I’ve been tempted for a while to pick up one of their .22LR MP-5 clones (Mike the Musicologist has been pushing me to do so as well); they’re nice looking guns, I think they’d be a lot of fun to shoot, and I often see them at the gun show for reasonable prices. But I can’t find any practical use for them (other than “they’d be fun to shoot”) and I’ve got enough .22LR guns already, thankyouverymuch.
I do also kind of like the idea of an AK-47 clone in .22LR, but it has less appeal to me than the MP-5 clones. I’d rather have a full-on AK-47. (And that is on my list, just haven’t gotten around to it yet.)
New at the SHOT show, we’ve got the Mexican drug dealer line of guns from GSG: gold-plated AK and MP-5 clones. Yeah. Not on the list, but lord love GSG for trying.
On the other hand, American Tactical Imports (GSG’s US importer) is also going to be importing GSG’s .22LR version of the StG 44. This could be interesting; .22LR is a lot easier to find than 7.92×33mm Kurz, and I do have a certain interest in the StG 44 after reading Pale Horse Coming (in which the Audie Murphy clone uses one to great effect against a guard tower).
Also, if I’m going to be honest with myself, the wooden crate “handmade by a Amish community in New York state” pushes a button, too.
(Hattip: The Firearm Blog on both of these.)
Edited to add: Something occurs to me. You know what ATI/GSG could probably rake in the cash with? A Thompson clone in .22LR, complete with drum magazine. Especially if they sold it (and the drum) at a price that doesn’t make you think it is made out of compressed unicorn tears and ambergris.
However, I’d be willing to bet that the current owners of Auto-Ordnance might not take too kindly to that without some sort of licensing deal. Which I think actually raises an interesting legal question; to what extent is the physical look and design of a firearm protected by law? GSG was, after all, sued by H&K (“you suck and we hate you”) for trade dress infringement, but how long does trade dress protection last? Forever? The Thompson is, after all, an 84 year old gun…
Rumor control.
January 20th, 2012Before I left work today, my great and good friend Commvault Bryan told me about the latest “urban legend” he’d heard. He was kind enough to email a PDF discussing it; I’m not sure that posting the PDF is okay, but pretty much the same thing can be found on the TexasBowhunter.com forum.
Summarizing, the “urban legend” is that “gang members” are going around to shooting ranges, gun stores, gun shows, and other places where gun owners congregate. Once there, the gang members are marking the cars of gun owners, following their vehicles until they get someplace “safe” (for the gang members), and then breaking in and stealing their guns.
I have not previously heard of this happening, and I’m a little dubious. I could see this being a viable strategy if you were looking for long guns and watching for folks lugging cases; handguns are likely to go with the average gun owner out of the car, so that seems less likely to work.
The PDF and article mention “27 high end shotguns” being stolen from a sporting clays event. I’m not dismissing out of hand that this really happened, but:
- If I’m a gang member, I’m not looking for $6,000 Perrazi trap guns. Granted, 00 buck from one of those will still kill you dead, but if I had my druthers, I’d be looking for modern sporting rifles, not skeet guns. (And for those of you saying, “Well, you could sell or pawn the shotguns”, I have a feeling that the circle of people interested in those is a) limited, and 2) likely to know they’re looking at a stolen gun as soon as they pick it up and check the serial number.)
- Given the marking they show on the tire, I’m a little dubious that gang members would be able to pick up your vehicle and follow it. It just seems awfully small to keep track of.
- I suspect the traffic in the parking lot of most gun shows and ranges is high enough that someone tagging vehicles in this fashion would be noticed, and very probably stopped at gunpoint and held for police.
I’m not ruling this out completely, but it triggers my Snopes sense. Does anyone have any more information or verification on this?
In the meantime, a healthy dose of situational awareness never hurts. (I think Colonel Cooper said that once; if he didn’t, he should have.)
Quote of the day.
January 20th, 2012(This is much funnier if you sing it to the tune of “Immigrant Song”.)
Also:
Guilty. But that was nearly two hours in, and we still had a whole bunch of Ulfråsen Fribergsgatu to go.
(Hattip: the great and good Pat Cadigan on the Twitter.)
Today’s Bell update.
January 20th, 2012Former police chief Michael Chavez gets a pension of $117,942, and got a worker’s compensation settlement of $140,000. Former police chief Andreas Probst gets $160,649 a year on top of his $250,000 worker’s compensation settlement. Former police chief Dennis Tavernelli gets $169,027 a year on top of his $395,667 worker’s compensation settlement.
And:
Question: if the city and the police chiefs knowingly violated state law in that fashion, could they be charged with tax evasion?
Pancho’s Mexican Buffet.
January 19th, 2012The thing I always liked best there were the sopaipillas.
(Wow. They’re still in business.)
But I digress. (Thanks to the Atomic Nerds for the pointer on that.)
Anyway, speaking of SOPA and PIPA, I’ve seen a lot of people today asking the musical question: “If you were opposed to the Citizen’s United decision, then why were you not also opposed to Google changing their logo to signify opposition to SOPA/PIPA?”
It tastes so sweet.
January 19th, 2012Terrell Owens has signed with Dallas.
Well, technically, Allen.
The Allen Wranglers, that is, of the Indoor Football League.
In the FARK thread on this, I suggested that the Wranglers should also seek out Tiki Barber. But I’m going to throw it open to you, good people; what other notorious team cancers can the Allen Wranglers sign? And if they sign enough of them, will the suburbs of Dallas collapse into a black hole?
A show of support.
January 19th, 2012Today is the first anniversary of l’affair TJIC.
“Brad in MA” apparently originated the idea of commemorating this date by going out on and purchasing something Second Amendment related, which we think is excellent. Our great and good friend Borepatch elaborated on this idea some more by suggesting folks patronize TJIC’s company, Smartflix, which rents learning DVDs. We also heartily endorse this idea; Smartflix has an amazing selection of firearms related DVDs for rent.
On this day, I encourage you to consider both options. As for myself, I’ve already set up a Smartflix account, specifically as a response to the illegal and unconstitutional actions of the Arlington, MA police, and look forward to a long and pleasant relationship with the company.
I also wanted to make passing note of this tweet by TJIC about the firing of Boston PD officer David Williams for beating a suspect. As the article notes, Williams was previously fired in 1998, and rehired after winning an appeal in 2005.
As it happens, I am currently reading Dick Lehr’s book The Fence: A Police Cover-up Along Boston’s Racial Divide
I’m not far enough into The Fence to feel confident recommending it, but the story of Michael Cox is appalling and deserves to be better known.
It’s like, how much more black could this be? and the answer is none. None more black.
January 19th, 2012WCD did not go on strike yesterday because of SOPA and PIPA (though we did call our Congress slime and make our views known).
(By the way, we think the “Congress” app for Android is pretty spiffy.)
Basically, there just wasn’t much going on yesterday.
Today, we note the NYT‘s article on discussions of doing away with the leap second.
Also noteworthy: Penn State trustees discuss the decision to fire Paterno.
We have no joke here, we ust like saying “feral burros”.
Foodie things that bring a smile to my face.
January 17th, 2012- TJIC’s new site.
- The WikiTravel entry on Stavanger, Norway, which states “Stavanger is considered a great place for foodies, with a range of good restaurants”…and gives details on exactly two restaurants, one of which is vegetarian.
- The HouChron‘s report on the Houston branch of Uchi opening February 2nd “in the former Felix space in Montrose”, which promptly draws complaints from people in the comments that you can’t get good Mexican food in Houston any more.