Category Archives: News

China calls for American gun control

Posted by on December 21, 2012 No comments

They should tend to their own house before claiming the moral high ground. Take away guns, as the Chinese government has done with its people, and evil men use whatever weapon is at hand.

A series of attacks at schools in China beginning in March 2010 have left 21 dead and about 90 injured.  Weapons used in the attacks included knives, a hammer, a cleaver, an axe, and one of those dreaded box-cutters made famous on 9/11.  The most recent attack, in which 22 primary school students were injured, occurred on the same day as the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut.  Teachers at the school defended themselves and their students — with brooms.  (And thank God they did, instead of waiting for police, or this demonic individual might have stabbed more kids.)

My point:  It’s a fantasy to believe that disarming the public will put an end to evil acts by evil people.  And disarming the American public isn’t likely any time soon — there are too many in circulation already (some of them courtesy of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives), and too many in the hands of people who shouldn’t have them for law-abiding citizens to give them up.

Pre-Crime

Posted by on December 15, 2012 No comments
The response to the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut was a predictable jerk of the knee.  We don’t own a gun, although I took the training course to qualify for a concealed-carry permit when we lived in mid-Missouri five years ago.  I don’t have a problem with people owning them (and if we’d stayed in Columbia, Missouri, I would have given serious thought to buying one).  Given that the guns were purchased by and registered to the alleged shooter’s kindergarten teacher mother, the only change that would have helped in this case is a near-total ban on private gun ownership.
 
The big story to me is not the response of anti-gun activists, it is the growing call for an aggressively proactive approach to screening and treatment for mental illness.  Sounds like a practical solution until you consider that homosexuality was considered a mental illness not that long ago, and in the mid-19th century some physicians considered the desire of some African-American slaves to run away from the masters an illness.
 
In our enlightened modern age, the medical/pharmaceutical community officially considers resistance to authority figures a disease called Oppositional Defiant Disorder.  Rant too long and loud against the government and one of these days you may be medicated against your will–for the good of society, of course.
 
We’re seeing what could become the beginning of police Pre-Crime detection, a la Minority Report.

“The Taliban is on the inside of the building”

Posted by on October 13, 2012 No comments

That’s the money quote from this bit of testimony at last week’s congressional hearing on the Benghazi attack:

What democracy hath wrought

Posted by on March 10, 2012 No comments

Saddam Hussein is starting to look good by comparison:

More than 90 Iraqi students have been stoned to death for their Emo haircuts by religious extremists in Baghdad in the past month after an interior ministry statement dubbed it devil worshipping.

Iraq’s Moral Police released a statement on the interior ministry’s website condemning the ‘emo phenomenon’ among Iraqi youth, declaring its intent to ‘eliminate’ the trend.

‘The Emo phenomenon or devil worshipping is being followed by the Moral Police who have the approval to eliminate [the phenomenon] as soon as possible since it’s detrimentally affecting the society and becoming a danger,’ the statement read.

Saddam was no prince, but he kept a lid on stuff like this.

Americans of both major parties have trumpeted the spread of democracy in the Middle East, thanks to our benevolent intervention (and about 110,000 deaths).  But what anyone with a brain could see was that self-determination in a predominantly conservative Shia Muslim nation would result in sharia as the law of the land.  And Iran’s new best friend.

It’s hard to believe that the giant brains who have overseen the foreign policy for George W. Bush and Barack Obama didn’t see this coming. Regardless of our opinion of the federal government, total idiots just don’t rise to that level.

Perhaps not coincidentally, it’s estimated that the number of Christians in Iraq has dropped over the last ten years from about 850,000 to 345,000 — and fewer every month.

Wind farms…bad?

Posted by on February 6, 2012 No comments

This winter in Illinois seems warmer than usual. We’ve discovered the reason — all those huge propellers along I-39!

[W]ind farms can actually alter the climate according to a new study by a group of American scientists.

The team from the University of Illinois found that daytime temperatures around wind farms can fall by as much as 4C, while at night temperatures can increase.

The research indicates that the warmer nighttime temperatures allow plants — which are typically crops, at least here in Illinois — to breathe more. And this is…bad?