End the War on Freedom

I appear to have attracted the attention of somebody at the Gestapo, er... Department of Homeland Security (www.dhs.gov). Found this in my logs:

n021.dhs.gov - - [26/Apr/2004:08:58:05 -0400] "GET /blog/stories/wacojustice.html HTTP/1.1" 200 8305 "http://www.billstclair.com/blog/0404.html" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98; (R1 1.3))"

n021.dhs.gov - - [28/Apr/2004:08:58:33 -0400] "GET /blog/0404.html HTTP/1.1" 200 33806 "http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=end+the+war+on+freedom+april+2004" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98; (R1 1.3))"

# I think I know what's wrong with my M1A, causing double fires or the hammer down on a loaded round. It isn't weak ammo or a clogged gas hole. When the action cycles, the hammer gets cocked long before the fired round is ejected and a fresh one loaded, and I'm always getting a fresh round loaded, so it must be that the hammer is being released. This is either because I'm not holding the trigger back long enough or, and this seems more likely from looking at it, whoever stoned (filed down) the hammer hooks to make my national match trigger went a little too far. That, coupled with lots of shooting, has caused it to not catch well enough. Here's the whole trigger group with the trigger pulled just as it is when auto-cocked right after firing:

And here's a close-up of the rear hooks engaging the sear lug: Note that there's not a lot of metal there to hold on to. When you let go of the trigger (below), both the sear and trigger lugs move back, and the hammer switches from rear hooks held by sear lug to front hooks held by trigger lug. That's why you need to hold the trigger back while the action cycles. Otherwise, the hammer hooks can slip out between the two lugs and cause a double shot. This is more likely to happen if you oil the hammer hooks or lugs. They're designed to work dry. It's also possible that some of the double fires are slam fires from too soft primers, but I doubt it, since I'm using milsurp ammo, which should have hard military primers. Also, that wouldn't explain firing a round resulting in the hammer down on a freshly-loaded cartridge. Anyway, I ordered a new GI hammer from Fulton Armory, and, since it looked like a good idea, a Buffer Technologies Recoil Buffer. I don't relish reassembling the trigger group again, ouch, but I managed it once when I first got the rifle; I can probably do it again. It'll be next Saturday at the earliest before the new hammer comes and I find time to install and test it.

# Kim du Toit - Judge Mugged - on the fine ironies of the mugging in DC of Supreme Court Justice David Souter. [kimdutoit]

# Charley Reese at Antiwar.com - The Basic Flaw in Neoconservatism - why the Busheviks will fail in Iraq. And a little reminder that the United States is not a democracy. [sierra]

# Neil Mackay at The Sunday Herald - The Pictures That Lost The War - stories are legion right now about the disgusting torture of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers. I'll link only to this one. [whatreallyhappened]

Grim images of American and British soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners, some in what was Saddam Hussein's own torture centre, Abu Ghraib, have not only caused disgust and revulsion in the West, but could have forever lost Bush and Blair the moral high ground that they claimed to justify the invasion of Iraq.

# Annia Ciezadlo at The Christian Science Monitor - Death to those who dare to speak out - somebody is killing scientists and intellectuals in Iraq who dare to express their political opinions. [whatreallyhappened]

Even under Saddam Hussein, Saad Jawad spoke his mind. The mild-mannered, political science professor was one of only four people who dared to sign a petition asking Iraq's dictator for a more democratic form of government.

Today, Dr. Jawad still speaks out. But like other university professors across Iraq, he is increasingly afraid that saying what he thinks - or saying anything political at all - could get him killed. "To tell the truth, at the time of Saddam Hussein, we used to speak to our students freely," says Jawad. "Ministers, for example, were criticized all the time. But now, a lot of people are not willing to say these kinds of things because of fear."

Over the past year, Baghdad's intelligentsia has seen a wave of killings: scientists, professors, and academics, executed in carefully planned assassinations.

# Mark Prigg at The Evening Standard - Self-chilling beer - what'll they think of next? Likely available in Britain before year's end. Click here for Samizdata discussion. [samizdata]

Slightly longer than a normal drink can, it simply needs a twist to cool its content down. It can, its inventors claim, cool a beer to the perfect temperature of 3C within three minutes.

The I C (Instant Cool) Can works by using water evaporation. The top half is surrounded by a layer of watery gel. The base contains a water-absorbing material in a vacuum, and a special heat-absorbing chamber.

When the bottom is twisted, a seal between the two halves is broken. The vacuum draws the gel, and the heat, into the base. The gel is absorbed by the material, the heat is absorbed by the chamber - and the drink gets cold.