Warblogging
"Resistance to sudden violence, for the preservation not only of my person, my limbs, and life, but of my property, is an indisputable right of nature which I have never surrendered to the public by the compact of society, and which perhaps, I could not surrender if I would." -- John Adams
George Paine at Warblogging - I am an American, and I Want to be Free - a review of Patriot Act Redux. Warblogging is the home of The Index of Evil. Check it out. Added to my links page. [libertydogs]
Let me be very clear. The PATRIOT Act was bad. Very bad. PATRIOT Act Redux is much worse. Between the two PATRIOT Acts and Total Information Awareness the US government will have all the tools it requires to create a totalitarian police state right here in the United States of America. This cannot stand, this must not stand. We are Americans, we must be free.
Peter DeFazio at his House of Representatives web site - Defazio, Paul Introduce Bill to Repeal Bush's Blank Check for War - DeFazio's press release on H.J. Res 20, including the complete text of the bill: [landrith]
"Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,I sent the following to my Congress Critter, John Sweeney:
Section 1. Repeal of Public Law 107-243.
The Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 (Public Law 107-243; 116 Stat. 1498) is hereby repealed."
I urge you to cosponsor Peter DeFazio's H.J. Res. 20, which would repeal Public Law 107-243, rescinding the President's authority to make war on Iraq.
Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator, an evil man, but his regime is no threat to the United States. Let his people and his country's neighbors take care of him.
Laissez Firearm - Extended Report on Estate Reduced-Recoil 00 Buckshot - this is a couple of years old, so things may have changed in the world of tactical shotgun loads, but it sounds like Estate Cartridge makes a good one. I couldn't find it at Sportsman's Guide or Natchez, but Cheaper Than Dirt has the S.W.A.T. Buckshot load at $3.32 per 10 shells. That's nine "extra hard" .30 caliber pellets going 1220 fps. [survivalarts]
Alliance Defense Fund - Need for a search warrant trips social workers - an Ohio family sued social workers who entered their home, on threat of arrest, without a warrant and without their permission. They won. Far out! [geneice]
In a forceful opinion, US District Judge James G. Carr wrote: "Despite the Defendants' exaggerated view of their powers, the Fourth Amendment applies to them, as it does to all other officers and agents of the state whose requests to enter, however benign or well-intentioned, are met by a closed door. There is...no social worker exception to the strictures of the Fourth Amendment. ...Any agency that expects to send its employees routinely into private homes has a fundamental obligation to ensure that those employees understand the constitutional limits on their authority."
The court stated that because the Walshes refused consent, and because the anonymous complaint did not supply persuasive evidence of an emergency, the caseworkers had no option but to either "leave the [Walshes] alone and in peace" or seek a search warrant.
The court further ruled that the police did not have probable cause to detain, frisk, and threaten to arrest Walsh, since he was not breaking any law but merely asserting his "fundamental right to be left alone."
...
Anderson expects that as a result of the Walsh case, training policies will be revised for social workers not just in Erie County, but across the state of Ohio. "The caseworkers in the Walsh case admitted they had never been taught anything about the Fourth Amendment or search warrants. The feedback I'm getting is that agencies across the state have gotten a wake-up call on this issue."
Kevin O'Flynn at The Moscow Times - Group Lobbies for Guns to Prevent Terror Acts - RKBA in Russia? Cool. [smith2004]
Last fall's siege of the Dubrovka theater by armed Chechens sparked much debate on how the attack could have been prevented. A new organization believes it has the answer: Let the population arm itself.
That way, the group's members say, instead of accepting their fate, the hostages could have pulled out their legally registered handguns and fought off their captors.
"It would have been impossible to hold [hundreds of] people if one in 10 potential hostages were armed," said Andrei Vasilievsky, head of the newly formed Civil Arms Union, or Soyuz Grazdanskoye Oruzhiye, which is lobbying for all Russians to have the right to carry arms.
Less than a week after the end of the siege, Vasilievsky and his supporters sent a letter to the government, calling for the repeal of gun control laws.
KeepAndBearArms.com - A Second Amendment Case is Moving Toward the U.S. Supreme Court - Silveira v. Lockyer is a lawsuit challenging California's semi-auto rifle ban. It has been turned down by the Ninth District Court and is now headed to the Supreme Court. This is a summary and request for donations. [geneice]
