Radley Balko (who also has a FoxNews piece on how the Drug War is killing the Bill of Rights):

Rep. David Dreier’s new bill will not create a new national identification card.

Oh sure, it will add a magnetic identification strip and identifying photo to your existing Social Security card, and you’ll be required to present the new card for identification any time you want to apply for a new job. At that point, your prospective employer would then check the identification listed on your card against a national database which identifies eligible employees.

Via Insty.

Rice was confirmed as the first black, female Secretary of State. Perusing the lefty blogs, you’d think that the official party line for anyone with a D after their name was that Rice should not be confirmed. However, Rice got 13 nays. 12 were from Democrats. The remaining 32 Democrats voted yes. It seems there’s quite the disconnect between the blog party line and what their Senators actually do, no?

Passengers on a flight subdue an unruly man:

Passengers aboard a Southwest Airlines flight helped wrestle a fellow passenger to the floor Tuesday night after he tried to force his way into the cockpit, law enforcement officials said.

No word on whether tweezers or nail clippers were involved. I mean, if the guy had those, he’d have been unstoppable.

In an update to the FN Pistol non-controversy, the Brady Campaign has issued a press release urging congress to ban the gun. Nevermind that the gun isn’t available to the public, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms notes that the round is not armor piercing.

The anti-gunners always need a bogeyman, even if they must invent it.

Update: Apparently, someone from the Brady Campaign reports that they purchased one which I find odd. The FN page (which is now gone but here’s a google cache) says the pistol is for military and law enforcement only.

Update 2: Apparently, these are available for sale to the public. Where do I get one?

In Washington, gun owners packed a senate hearing to oppose gun control laws. One headline:

Dozens turn out in opposition to gun control bills

Another:

Hundreds turn out in opposition to gun control bills

Update: HL has a frontline report.

The Good:

Town councilors unanimously voted Tuesday night to reject a request that they support the New London Development Corp.’s use of eminent domain.

The Bad:

An editorial notes the transition from public use to public good.

The Ugly:

As if to prove it’s nothing but a land grab, Houston will take your land either by foreclosing on delinquent taxes or eminent domain. Doesn’t matter, we want your land. It’s for a good cause.

I noted before that Consumer Reports ranked Planned Parenthood’s free condoms lowest in their recent condom test. Meanwhile, J Bowen notes:

The Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the nation’s most frequent provider of abortions, is performing more of the procedures than ever — albeit in fewer clinics — and relying increasingly on the revenue generated from abortions, according to its Fiscal Year 2004 annual report.

Dave Halliday links to the online CR rankings and the PP annual report. He smells a lawsuit.

Weekly gun links are up.

Except that socially awkward bit. 20 Questions to a Better Personality:

You are a WRDF–Wacky Rational Destructive Follower. This makes you a Hacker.

Your thirst for knowledge can be damaging to your possessions–you like to take things apart, even if you then forget to put them back together. You demand respect and, no matter how much you are respected, seldom feel it is adequate. You are tenacious, and will stick to a task long after weaker minds have given it up.

Socially, you are awkward, and get into arguments and make people uncomfortable. One recommends counting to ten, holding back comments unless warranted, and listening more than speaking. Still, your no-holds-barred approach to socialization can be strangely endearing, as long as you are funny and self-deprecating.

You feel misunderstood, and you probably are.

Of the 81657 people who have taken this quiz since tracking began (8/17/2004), 2.6 % are this type.

I am no hacker, though I do take a lot of crap apart. Some of it even gets put back together. Via Jed.

AR or AK? Discuss. My thoughts are forthcoming.

Update: Or other? Some folks like M1s, SKS, and Fals.

Michelle Malkin reports that the Department of Homeland Security issued a green card approval notice on January 15, 2005 to a man who was killed at the WTC on 9/11.

These are the people charged with your security, folks.

When I was a kid, I liked to draw. I liked drawing spaceships, actually. I often would draw images of a massive armada of spaceships invading some planet. If a kid did that today, he’d no doubt be charged with war crimes:

Two boys were arrested for making pencil-and-crayon stick figure drawings depicting a 10-year-old classmate being stabbed and hung, police said. The children, charged with a felony, were taken from school in handcuffs.

The 9- and 10-year-old boys were arrested Monday and charged with making a written threat to kill or harm another person. They were also suspended from school.

This should be an issue that is dealt with by either the kids’ parents or by the school system. The fact the police are involved in this makes it absolutely ridiculous. And charging them with a felony?

Jackpot continues:

White House: Deficit Will Hit Record $427B

Now, how can we spin it? Oh, yeah:

The highest deficit ever was last year’s $412 billion. The administration official said the White House’s 2005 projection of $427 billion showed progress because it was less than last year’s gap when compared with the size of the growing U.S. economy — a key measure of the deficit’s potency.

Of course, by Democrat math that’s actually a cut, I suppose.

Pete links to Don’t Fear the Reefer.

Michael Bane will be doing it. Cool. Man, I should have delayed my Vegas trip a couple of weeks.

Lobbygow on the OwnerSHIFT Society:

Make way for the OwnerSHIFT Society™, a kleptocrat’s paradise, where local municipalities and well connected developers are eager to help homeowners and small business entrepreneurs achieve that special warm glow that accompanies sacrificing your hard-won dreams for the greater good – developer’s fees and sales tax revenues!

Sadly, this cronyist utopia is threatened by an upcoming SCOTUS case, Kelo vs. New London. Apparently some selfish, petty homeowners with quaint notions of “property rights” and neighborhood integrity are questioning the Old Boy Network’s god-given right to do whatever they damned well please.

He also links to No Land Grab, which notes that a number of cities and municipalities are filing briefs in Kelo v. New London to defend the practice of abusing eminent domain to take from one private party to give to another.

Also, reader John emails this article about Eminent Domain in California. When city planners attack:

Sacramento officials want property owners of rundown buildings, struggling businesses or empty lots along portions of K Street to create thriving shops there – or else.

In a proposal to be presented to the City Council today, property owners in the 700 and 800 blocks of K Street would have 90 days to come up with viable redevelopment plans. If they don’t, city officials will begin negotiating to buy the property, and as a last resort take the sites through eminent domain, said Wendy Saunders, the city’s director of economic development.

“We haven’t tried anything like this before,” Saunders said. “We’d like people who own the properties who would like to be developers to be given the first shot.”

Nice of them to give owners the option of developing or else. However, taking the land to give to other developers fails the public use test.

Or rather not at work:

Pat Freund has a job most people would envy. She spends her days at work reading the newspaper and finishing crossword puzzles, and earns about $100,000 a year for her troubles, including benefits.

But Freund isn’t content to put up her feet and watch the paychecks roll in. Rather, she is suing her employer, the state of New York, for not giving her any real work to do.

“It could have been a lot easier for Pat had she continued to sit in her office and do nothing, and continue to basically be the most avid reader that the state has employed,” says Sue Adler, the attorney representing Freund in her federal civil rights lawsuit. “But she decided that was not how she wanted to live out her years working for the state.”

Freund, who has been a New York State Liquor Authority employee for 25 years, says it all started in 2000. She believes her superiors were angered after she questioned the practice of colleagues attending Gov. George Pataki’s annual prayer breakfast. But instead of firing her, Freund says, her responsibilities were taken away.

Regarding the bigotry at AR15.com, Stormy comments:

I happen to be a Pink Pistols member, and I just wanted to point out that we tend to get a lot more harrassment from other GLBT-types for being gun owners then we do from gun owners for being homosexual. While there are certainly exceptions, it’s been my general experience that the gun community is far more tolerant than the stereotypes give it credit for.

In honor of this week being No Name Calling Week, we at SayUncle present the following:

Thin-skinned, no-humored pansy

Mantra-chanting, incense-burning, herb-sucking yahoo

Cheese-eating, cocoa guzzling yodeler.

Long-haired, fat-bellied, goofy-tattooed, 60s throwback, village people wannabe, biker freak

As you were.

Call up my gun store of choice to do a transfer on a WASR-10 and tell him I need a copy of his Federal Firearm License to do the transfer. His response:

It’s not coming from California, is it?

Heh.

Robert Douglas is back sporting a new AKM with info on how to build your own. A detailed must read for any AK junkies out there.

Head has the lowdown on cartridge sizes.

In a follow up to Maryland’s ballistic fingerprinting kerfuffle, the legislature has proposed repealing the law.

In Louisiana, the police can’t account for money and weapons confiscated in the war on drugs:

The audit’s findings show upwards of $200,000 have been misused by Chief Larry Caillier and former Major Ronnie Trahan.

Money Misused

$156,050 in private accounts
$18,801 holiday candy
$28,443 Christmas parties
1,870 old tickets

TV 10 reveals more about the investigation and why auditors say the department can’t account for missing drug money and weapons.

Nemerov explains the Brady Campaign’s scorecards.

And despite conventional wisdom, the US does not have the worst crime rate among leading world economies. That honor belongs to England.

Building AR15s is a disease. Once you start, you can’t stop. With that in mind, I found this signature file from an AR15.com post amusing:

Five years ago I started with a 20″ Gov’t Profile A2. After thousands of dollars and hundreds of configurations, I now own a 20″ Gov’t Profile A2.

The View From North Central Idaho, which is run by the same guy who does Boomer Shoot.

The guys from The Rant have moved to Unspecified Chatter.

HL has a run down of gun laws that have been proposed in Washington.

Jeff has the latest.

It’s OK to violate privacy rights, as long as it’s just a little bit:

The Supreme Court gave police broader search powers Monday during traffic stops, ruling that drug-sniffing dogs can be used to check out motorists even if officers have no reason to suspect they may be carrying narcotics.

In a 6-2 decision, the court sided with Illinois police who stopped Roy Caballes in 1998 along Interstate 80 for driving 6 miles over the speed limit. Although Caballes lawfully produced his driver’s license, troopers brought over a drug dog after Caballes seemed nervous.

I imagine most people pulled over are a bit nervous. I usually am since I’m typically pondering whether or not I’m going to get a ticket.

Caballes argued the Fourth Amendment protects motorists from searches such as dog sniffing, but Justice John Paul Stevens disagreed, reasoning that the privacy intrusion was minimal.

Of course, the courts have also ruled that the fourth amendment is invalid due to indoor plumbing and it’s invalid as long as everybody is stopped at a roadblock. So, why do we have the fourth amendment again? I mean, I’m just asking since it seems like we don’t really use it.

Fûz is pondering the upcoming NRA board of directors vote.

The correct way to say it would be nine out of ten Richmond area residents don’t know anything about gun laws. However, what they really say is:

Nine out of 10 Richmond-area residents support a proposed law that would close the so-called “gun-show loophole,” a newly released crime-and-safety survey shows.

The loophole allows unlicensed gun dealers to sell firearms at Virginia gun shows without making background checks of purchasers.

There is no such thing as an unlicensed dealer who can operate legally. A person who deals in firearms must have a license. These unlicensed dealers are regular people lawfully selling their private collections.

Kirk, given MD’s history of using lists to effectively ban guns, notes that the Assault Weapons Criminal Penalty Enhancement Act of 2005 is basically more of that nonsense.