aubreyturner.org

David Kopel picked up an old post of mine on Condoleeza Rice’s position in regards to the Second Amendment.  This, in and of itself, wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t been linked by Glenn Reynolds. 

A one-line indirect link from Instapundit through The Volokh Conspiracy nearly killed the squirrels and broke the rubber bands that run my puny little webserver.    The good folks at Dreamhost rebooted the server, which had been wedged by the traffic spike, and everything appears to be back up now.

Update: Here’s some more information on her position from a follow up post.

Update the 2nd:  Behold the awesome power of the Insta-Volokh-alanche:

It seems that just about everything you could ever think of is somewhere out there on the Internet.  Curious about what condemned murderers eat for their last meal?  Consult Dead Man Eating, which is a compendium of last meal requests from death row inmates around the country.  They also have a section for readers’ last meals.

It got me to wondering, though.  For whatever reason you’re on death row and it’s your last meal.  You’re not going to see tomorrow.  What would you request?  I know for sure I wouldn’t give a damn about Atkins at that point, so I’m thinking along the lines of the following:

I wonder if they would allow a Partagas or Macanudo to be slipped in?  I know the damn smoking nazis have made the prisons non-smoking, but it’s not like you have to worry about dying from smoking at that point. 

Update:  I should have looked over in the right-hand sidebar and the smoking question would have been answered. 

lorenzo morris
texas
november 2, 2004
fried chicken and fried fish, french bread, hot peppers, apple pie, butter pecan ice cream, two soft drinks, either Sprites or Big Reds and a pack of Camel cigarettes and matches. The request for the Camels was denied.

Damn, that’s harsh.

I mentioned previously that there’s a hunting guide in East Texas who signed up for my gun show announcement list who just doesn’t seem to “get it.”  He’s tried three times now to spam the announcement list, even after being told that it’s an announcement-only list and he can’t send stuff to the list.  Last night I sent out an announcement to the whole group about the updates to the gun show listing.  His reply (in ALL CAPS no less) was to ask if there are any gun shows in the DFW area this week.  I was tempted to reply by asking him if he was intentionally being daft to yank my chain, given that the freakin’ list is on the web page. 

At least I know who not to engage if I ever want a hunting guide. 

Unfortunately, I won’t likely be attending any gun shows for a while.  One section of my fence has gotten so bad that I can’t put off replacing it much longer.  My dog, the canine escape artist that she is, has learned how to get out through the loose boards in the gate.  Fortunately she hasn’t gone farther than the front yard (and then comes back to whine at the gate to be let back in), which is an improvement over her initial escape where she was found on the highway over a mile away from the house.  I guess after nearly a year with me she’s finally settling in.

I got an estimate today for just over $1200 to replace an 80-ft section (which includes the gate).  That includes replacing the posts and all labor.  I was estimating it would cost me about $500 for materials if I did it myself without replacing the posts, which turned out to be in worse shape than I’d realized (after I cleared some of the junk in the yard I found that a couple of them had rotted at their bases).  So I suppose that the estimate isn’t too far out of line, given that they’ll be using better materials (I’d priced the cheaper pine fence sections at Lowe’s) and given the amount of labor involved.  So my choice is either several days of labor wrestling fence posts and fence sections into place (and more time cursing over the fact that the gate is slightly unlevel) or a few seconds to write a check.  Hmm…  That wasn’t a hard choice after all. 

I’ve just finished updating the DFW Gun Show list with updates for 2005, plus a couple of new listings this year.  There are five shows between now and the end of the year (including one this weekend at Big Town).  There are presently 19 shows scheduled for next year, with the possibility of more to come as promoters announce their schedules.

The owner of a ranch in Texas has created a system that allows people to shoot a .22 rifle via the Internet.

A controversial Web site, www.live-shot.com, already offers target practice with a .22 caliber rifle and could soon let hunters shoot at deer, antelope and wild pigs, site creator John Underwood said Tuesday.

The idea of a remote controlled gun does not leave me with a warm fuzzy feeling.  It appears that for now he’s got it set up in a controlled area with an attendant.  But it would seem to me that to be able to actually hunt with it you’d have to give the user more control over a larger area, which would seem to make it dangerous if the person on the other end was malicious or stupid and aimed indiscriminately.  At a minimum, I could see him taking a big liability hit if a trespasser got shot during hunting season by an Internet user.  He’d better have some serious warning signs at the edge of the property.

Under Texas law, a “peace officer” or a “magistrate” can demand identification and the CHL holder must give them both the license and the CHL if carrying.

GC §411.205. DISPLAYING LICENSE; PENALTY. (a) If a license
holder is carrying a handgun on or about the license holder’s person
when a magistrate or a peace officer demands that the license holder
display identification, the license holder shall display both the license
holder’s driver’s license or identification certificate issued by the
department and the license holder’s handgun license. A person who
fails or refuses to display the license and identification as required by
this subsection is subject to suspension of the person’s license as
provided by Section 411.187.

It recently occurred to me that while I know who the obvious peace officers are, could there be other, not-so-obvious peace officers defined under Texas law?  Given that Texas law is a strange beast, it wouldn’t surprise me if this was the case, so I consulted the relevant state law on the topic.  It turns out that there are a lot of peace officers included in the law, and some of them are a bit strange, like “(34) officers commissioned by the State Board of Dental Examiners under Section 254.013, Occupations Code, subject to the limitations imposed by that section.”  I’m sure there’s a perfectly good reason for this, but it leaves me with the mental image of a bunch of dental cops running around.  We’re the dental police and we’ve got a report of insufficient flossing.  You’re going to have to come with us.

Anyhow, there’s some good news in the statutes, since agents of the rat-bastard alphabet soup Federal agencies are considered special investigators under Texas law and are specifically excluded from the status of peace officers, which means there is no duty or obligation to show them a CHL or announce that you’re carrying.  I couldn’t find the reference any more, but I recall an incident at one of the Texas border checkpoints (located quite a ways from the border) where the CHL holder announced the fact and the agent drew on her.  Her companion in the car reached for his own concealed weapon, but didn’t draw.  Fortunately, the other agent calmed the first one down and no one got shot.  Perhaps this was a lack of training on the part of the Border Patrol at the time, or perhaps it was someone from a state where the citizens have no legal carry options.

Given the general attitude of our would-be masters in Washington, I’m not sure how Federal agents would react to an announcement that you were carrying.  I would be very reluctant to surrender a legally concealed weapon to a Federal agent.  In fact, Texas statute only gives peace officers the authority to disarm a CHL holder who is legally carrying (see link for Government Code, § 411.207) (and even then, the officer has to give the weapon back after the incident, unless the person is a threat or is under arrest).  I wonder if the Feds have gotten any training in dealing with armed citizenry?  It wouldn’t hurt for them to know the laws of the states they’re operating in (although I’m under no illusion that they give a rat’s ass about state laws, though).

Has anyone else noticed on that U2 iPod commercial that Bono is saying, “Uno, Dos, Tres, Catorce” at the beginning?  In English that comes out as “One, Two, Three, Fourteen.”  I’m not sure whether he’s doing it on purpose (for some arcane political reason that hasn’t been made known to us yet) or if he just didn’t realize it was supposed to be “cuatro.”  It bugs the hell out of me every time I hear it, though.

Some people are too stupid to be allowed to live.  Unfortunately, they usually take someone else out instead of themselves:

Murder charges were filed Monday against a 19-year-old Waxahachie woman who authorities said tried to commit suicide a week ago by crashing her vehicle on Interstate 35E in Lancaster but killed another woman instead, the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department announced.

Sgt. Don Peritz, a sheriff’s spokesman, said Lindsey Alyn Crumpton was southbound on the interstate at 10:37 p.m. Nov. 9, between Bear Creek and Parkerville roads, when she drove her 1995 Ford Explorer across the median and into oncoming traffic.

The Explorer struck a Chevrolet Impala driven by Kristina Kelly Bartlett, 47, of Corona Del Mar, Calif. Both drivers were pinned in their vehicles after the head-on collision, Peritz said.

“Crumpton told law enforcement officials at the scene that she intentionally drove her Explorer into oncoming traffic in an attempt to commit suicide,” Peritz said.

The irresponsibility and callousness of this act boggles the mind.  To intentionally involve someone else in a suicide attempt, and then to end up killing them instead of yourself is so stupid as to approach the level of evil.  I hope she survives and then gets life in prison so that she can have a long time to contemplate her actions.  Although someone so self-absorbed and irresponsible is likely to blame someone else, rather than accept any herself.  Still, I can wish for a bit of suffering on her part, given that it’d be richly deserved after what she’s done.

As I mentioned in my last post, batteries suck, especially the puny rechargeables in my Tungsten T3.  I was digging around for some kind of portable backup so that I could keep using the T3 when I wasn’t near an outlet.  While Googling around, I came across this exercise in bad taste.  It’s a USB powered desktop Christmas tree.

However odd that may be, though, the prize for most inappropriate use of USB power has to belong to the USB powered vibrator.  I know some people get really attached to their laptops, but this is going just a tiny bit too far.