My Sales Tax Prophecy Is Coming True!

Last week, I wrote:

You watch - this [the new 6% service tax] will all be put aside to jack up the sales tax. By Michigan Constitution, a sales tax hike must be approved by the voters.

Here is the scenario I envision - the Dems will come back in a week or two and offer to get rid of the new service tax, if voters will up the sales tax by 1 to 3%. Voters will get their chance to say "yes" or "no" in January 2008.

Now, hot off the press, this news out of our state capitol in Lansing:

House Speaker Andy DILLON (D-Redford Twp.) plans on revisiting the recently enacted sales tax on services with an eye toward giving Michigan voters a chance to change it to a 7 percent sales tax instead.

Dillon told the Off the Record panel this week that none of this is finalized, but he is clearly interested in exploring a ballot alternative to bring the voters into this budget deficit debate.

It's happening! The thieves are out to get us one way or another.

You Watch - It Will Come Down To A Higher Sales Tax

So, the State of Michigan is collecting $750 million in new taxes on people like palm readers and wedding planners.

You watch - this will all be put aside to jack up the sales tax. By Michigan Constitution, a sales tax hike must be approved by the voters.

Here is the scenario I envision - the Dems will come back in a week or two and offer to get rid of the new service tax, if voters will up the sales tax by 1 to 3%. Voters will get their chance to say "yes" or "no" in January 2008.

Of course, voters simply choose between a mousetrap and rat poison - either option stinks. They'll chose to approve the sales tax. Then, in January 2009 (after the November '08 elections), the Legislature will back stab the voters and re-instate the service tax - at a new, higher rate to match the new sales tax rate.

Michigan Legislators Still Debating How Much to Screw Citizens

The "Raise the Income Tax" meetings have stalled again.

Michigan is in red ink, and rather than cut meaningless services or cut waste (because obviously anything the government does is never meaningless or wasteful), they want to pass the cost on to the consumer - Michigan taxpayers.

Unfortunately for that analogy, consumers have a choice as to what they will spend their money on, and in what amounts. Tax payers don't.

By 7:00 a.m. a bill to raise the tax rate from 3.9% to 4.6% was still four votes shy of the needed 56 votes. The voting board showed only one one Republican joining 51 Democrats voting for the measure. One Democrat and two Republicans were uncommitted, as the board remained open after eight hours.

[...]

Without an agreement for a 2007-08 budget -- or an extension of this year's budget -- the state faces a partial government shutdown October 1.

The problem with this threatened shutdown is that most citizens see it as a blessing, not something to be frightened over.

Since 2002, Michigan has consistently been in the economic toilet bowl, and still has the weakest economy of any state. Businesses are fleeing at a record rate, and citizens are moving out of state to find work. So, what is government's solution? Raise the income tax. Like the Guinness beer ads would say: "BRILLIANT"!

Update

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a gun shop facing obstacles with the Southfield, Michigan city council. Here is an update. I'll skip the mindless "guns suck" comments featured in the article.

In a move that angered some in the community, the Southfield City Council on Monday gave Action Impact Firearms and Training Center the go-ahead to open on Eight Mile.

The council voted 4-3 to grant the facility special use to operate as a nonindustrial business in an industrial area after more than two hours of discussion. The planning commission gave its approval in May.

William Kucyk wants to use the former 9,900-square-foot Studio of Creative Design building at 25992 Eight Mile for gun sales and a shooting range. The facility will include 14 shooting range stalls, a retail area, 35-person classroom and office space on the .57 acre property.

Shall Not Be Infringed

From John Longnecker:

As always, I write for the Non-gun owner sovereign in America.

2008 Candidates, listen up – some of whom own guns or bodyguards. Or both!

If I had interested people stopping me on the street in response to my button, I'd reduce my answers to an intelligent few sentences. I could answer quite a few people this way.

Understand, also, that, in asking, many would want to learn more. I'd gladly make the time for them.

Looking at two recent polls showing popular interest in people having automatic weapons – 41% according to the CBS hit show The Power of 10, and a Zogby International Poll showing a 66% desire for no more gun laws – I'd say one thing: Americans aren't afraid of automatic weapons or even guns for that matter – they're afraid of abuses. Violent crime is an abuse and gun control is an abuse of process. Name your poison.

Reasonable people don't dislike guns, they dislike crime, and that includes the hundreds of thousands of the non-gun incidents of knifings, beatings, carjackings, rape, abductions of adults and abductions of children. Use of citizen authority can stop many, many of these. Why is it obfuscated and punished when non-gun violent crimes vastly outnumber gun violence? Because armed citizens can impeach the very concept of such go-nowhere anti-crime policies.

You've read my writing this before, and I'll post it again: The Founders did not need to anticipate weapons of the future, it was abuse of due process they feared in the government of the future, so they said that the force which backs citizen authority shall not be infringed. The word shall carries legal weight under our system – shall not makes the concept absolute.

There can be no such thing as a sensible gun law, because gun laws interfere with the force which backs the authority of citizens as supreme here.

Your citizen authority is an obstacle, so the move is on to dissolve it. Resistance to such adversity to the nation resides in intact families, privacy, how we educate our children, how we meet and handle violent crime and in other venues. Crime is an excuse for many of these strongholds of resistance to be eroded and pushed aside. No-fault divorce and rotten education content are as much a threat to citizen authority as gun control is.

[The trick is to suspicion and to criminalize more routine, honest behavior, including parenting, what we teach children as much as weapons and self-defense. As the Founders experienced, the PEOPLE wind up being criminalized. This constant moving of the goal posts was what the Founders fought and defeated. The rest of the citizenry who witness this today go along with it, not quite realizing that, sooner or later, they'll be next to be criminalized. RFID Chips and a National ID Card have quite a head start as two examples of this imposing suspicioning-of-all-citizens / criminalization trend undertaken by officials and hi-tech industries under color of fighting violence.]

Quote me on this: When it comes to fighting crime, no one can take your place as the first line of defense. The combination of personal authority and superior force trump anything officials can dream up as an absentee substitute, including hi-tech surveillance, no-fault divorce, punishing parenting, too many gun laws and no guns on campus.

If you had such an Ask Me About Shall Not Be Infringed button, what would you talk about, Guns?

Talk about Authority. Citizen authority.

And if they say those three words every liberty enthusiast loves to hear – take me shooting – commit to a date and make it your treat.

Because unwinding gun laws would begin to unwind so many abuses of due process, even for non-gun owners, the repeal of all gun laws would be good for the country.

Because the Legislature Said So

This commentary was written by Attorney Steve Dulan and featured in the Michigan Coalition for Responsible Gun Owner's newsletter. It's worth a read.

In a departure from our normal format, I'd like to discuss the recurring issue of the "why" behind firearms laws that comes up in so many of your questions that are submitted via the website. It is very common for a citizen to learn about some specific Michigan or U.S. statute that has to do with the regulation of firearms (sometimes the hard way) and then ask the question "Why is this the law?" The short answer that runs through my mind is a paraphrase of something that has probably been repeated by every generation of parents since humans invented language: "Because the legislature said so."

As the professor who teaches firearms law at the largest law school in the United States, and as someone who is often given the opportunity to discuss proposed laws with legislators and their staffs, I know that the real answer is more complex. Those of us who study law are often struck by the fact that most laws are basically responses to times in history when someone did something stupid or evil.

The history of gun law is no different. Someone does something horrible and a legislature reacts. The press essentially operates as a 4th branch of government by shaping public opinion, which in turn shapes voter behavior. Our elected representatives must respond to the will of the people, or find themselves looking for alternate employment.

For example., the first gun control law in the United States, the National Firearms Act of 1934 was passed soon after the repeal of prohibition, which had led to the rise of Al Capone and other famous gangsters, many of whom used "Tommy Guns" in the commission of famous crimes such as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in the 1920's. Coinciding with the debate in Congress preceding the NFA, there was a second wave of "organized crime" including famous names such as: John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson and Bonnie and Clyde. All of whom were killed during 1934 by agents of Mr. Hoover's new FBI.

The National Firearms Act created a tax of $200 on machine guns, silencers, and, short-barreled shotguns and rifles. (The law was framed as a tax act due to the complex relationship between the federal government and the States under our Constitution.) By the time the law was passed, prohibition had been repealed, Capone was in prison, showing the early signs of dementia brought on by syphilis, and the infamous bank robbers of the early 1930's were mostly dead, and the FBI had become a fairly effective, modern force in the war on crime. In other words, by the time the law responded to the perceived need, it was essentially obsolete. It is still in place, and machine guns and sound moderators are still stigmatized and prohibited outright in some states.

Many of the laws currently on the books in Michigan were similarly the result of previous legislatures responding to perceived threats, news accounts, or specific tragedies. In our democracy, the law is the result of debate, bargaining, and negotiation between legislators. As we're all aware, there will always be some legislators who are opposed to private ownership of guns. They either honestly (and erroneously) believe that taking away our gun rights will make us more safe, or, they are simply pandering to public opinion in an effort to appear to be doing something about public safety. The result is often bad law. Some of that law is still on the books. In fact, until recently, gun control law was a one-way ratchet that only took away rights, never moving towards freedom and common sense, only away from it.

The MCRGO has been on the front lines of the turn-around. We can be proud of the fact that the pendulum of law is swinging back toward common sense due to the efforts of the members and leadership of the MCRGO. The entire organization is working daily toward tying up the loose ends that still exist, some of them very significant. But, keep in mind that our success depends on electing the right legislators and county prosecutors and on being successful in debate and in court. Interest groups like ours, and legislators, must constantly prioritize and remember that politics is the art of the possible and that law-making is an imperfect process that sometimes results in an imperfect product. So, ultimately, the answer to the question of "why" a particular law is on the books does boil down to: "Because the legislature said so."

Steven W. Dulan, J.D. is a member of the Bar in Michigan and Colorado, a member of the Board of Directors of the Michigan Coalition for Responsible Gun Owners, an NRA Life Member, a former US Army Infantry Sergeant, a volunteer pre-deployment trainer of Squad Designated Marksmen for the Army Marksmanship Unit (AMU), Professor of Firearms Law at The Thomas M. Cooley Law School and Honor Graduate of the III Corps Armorer's School at Fort Hood, TX.

Gun Control Hitting Michigan

Coleman Young helped screw up Detroit. Now Coleman Young II wants to continue his father's legacy and spread the trouble to all of Michigan.

State Representative Coleman Young II (D), age 23, son of the late Mayor of Detroit, has introduced House Bill No. 5079 which would require that all handguns sold by Michigan FFL dealers on, or after, July 1, 2008, would have to be "ballistically fingerprinted."

The states have been called the "laboratories of democracy" because one state can learn from another's public policy successes or failures. This bill shows that Rep. Young has not learned from the failures of other states, and has not yet learned the value of your tax dollars. HB 5079 would repeat the costly mistakes of other states in relying on junk science. Furthermore, it would create a new, very expensive bureaucracy that would probably cost millions of dollars before finally being cancelled as useless.

So-called "ballistic fingerprinting" is currently in place in Maryland and New York.

In theory, a database of images showing the microscopic marks left on ejected cartridge casings and fired bullets from each handgun sold might provide a useful tool for law enforcement agencies attempting to match such items found at crime scenes with specific guns and their last known registered owners. However, in practice, there is little or no benefit to law enforcement, while the expenses are enormous.

The Director of the Maryland State Police Forensic Sciences Division, John J. Tobin, issued a report in 2004, 4 years after implementation of the MD-IBIS (Maryland Integrated Ballistics Identification System). In it, he stated definitively that: "There have been no crime investigations that have been enhanced or expedited through the use of MD-IBIS. Guns found to be used in the commission of crime are not the ones being entered into MD-IBIS. The program has been in existence four years at a cumulative cost of $2,567,633."

He also referred to the New York experience with the same type of system: "The New York State Combined Ballistic Identification System (CoBIS)...has compiled almost 80,000 cartridge case profiles. There have been no hits reported by CoBIS. The annual budget for CoBIS is approximately $4 million."

In conclusion, Director Tobin said: "The Program simply has not met expectations and does not aid in the Mission statement of the Department of State Police. It is recommended that this Program be suspended."

In January of 2003, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer issued a report entitled: Feasibility of a California Ballistics Identification System. The report concluded that there are significant problems with the technology of such systems and referred to the failures of the Maryland or New York systems to provide any help at all to criminal investigations in their states. Significantly, the report also referred to a report by ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms), entitled: The Crime Gun Trace Reports (2002) National Report, which indicates that Ballistics Identification Systems should be considered operable if it generates a hit rate of about 15% after 2 years in operation. Both New York and Maryland have failed in this regard after expending millions of dollars over several years.

According to long-term, comprehensive research by Professor John Lott and others, the reasons for the failure of these systems are many:

1. Criminals rarely buy their guns in gun shops.
2. There is no such thing as "fingerprints" or "DNA" in a gun. There are microscopic tool marks that are subject to change over time, particularly during the "break-in" period when a gun is new.
3. Unlike human fingerprints or DNA, the microscopic tool marks on gun parts such as extractors, firing pins and bolts are very easy to alter with hand tools and common abrasives such as toothpaste.
4. The best available software misses matches or "hits" false matches up to 68% of the time.

While ballistics evidence can be very useful in solving crime. The type of matching that works is when human technicians are matching a known case or projectile to a known gun. Searching a huge database of images for a match is an entirely different process and the technology simply does not exist to create such a system that would help our police officers do their jobs any better.

HB 5079 would leave all details to the State Police and fails to consider costs or effectiveness: "The Department of State Police shall promulgate rules...that establish the type or types of records that are sufficient for purposes of this subsection." If it were to become law, this bill would squander large amounts of money, waste the time of gun manufacturers, wholesalers, and buyers, creating a new potential technical violation for all dealers to be concerned with, all without any probable benefit at all for the People of Michigan.

A Reply From The NRA

A while ago I posted on NRA support for the NICS bill, co-sponsored by Carolyn McCarthy, D-NY, one of the most vicious of the anti-gunners in Congress.

I never heard from NRA about my response. I wasn't shocked... until today, when I received a response. It's a typical canned response, but I promised to share any response I received.

Dear Sir,

Thank you for your recent email.

The bill was originally introduced as HR 297. Pro-gun Congressmen asked that we help oversee the reconstruction of the bill to ensure no new gun control was added, and to help add pro-gun provisions. We were successful in both roles, and the bill was reintroduced as HR 2640.

When the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed H.R. 2640, "The NICS Improvement Amendments Act," by a voice vote, some gun owners were confused as to the exact scope and effect of this proactive reform bill. Let's look at the facts.

H.R. 2640 provides federal funds to states to update their mental health records, to ensure that those currently prohibited under federal law from owning a gun because of mental health adjudications are included in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). For many years, NRA has supported ensuring that those who have been adjudicated mentally incompetent are screened by the NICS.

In several ways this bill is better for gun owners than current law. Under H.R. 2640, certain types of mental health orders will no longer prohibit a person from possessing or receiving a firearm. Examples are adjudications that have expired or been removed, or commitments from which a person has been completely released with no further supervision required. Also excluded are federal decisions about a person's mental health that consist only of a medical diagnosis, without a specific finding that the person is dangerous or mentally incompetent. The latter provision addresses very real concerns about disability decisions by the Veterans Administration concerning our brave men and women in uniform. Remember that one of the Clinton Administration's last acts was to force the names of almost 90,000 veterans and veterans' family members to be added to a "prohibited" list. H.R. 2640 would help many of these people get their rights restored. H.R. 2640 will also require all participating federal or state agencies to establish "relief from disability" programs that would allow a person to get the mental health prohibition removed, either administratively or in court. This type of relief has not been available at the federal level for the past 15 years.

This legislation will also ensure-as a permanent part of federal law-that no fee or tax is associated with a NICS check a NRA priority for nearly a decade! While NRA has supported annual appropriations amendments with the same effect, those amendments must be renewed every year. This provision would not expire. H.R. 2640 will also mandate an audit of past spending on NICS projects to determine if funds were misused in any way.

It is also important to note what H.R. 2640 will not do. This bill will not add any new classes of prohibited persons to NICS, and it will not prohibit gun possession by people who have voluntarily sought psychological counseling or checked themselves into a hospital for treatment.

So why the confusion?

First and foremost, the national media elite is irate that NRA has been able to roll back significant portions of the Clinton Administration's anti-gun agenda and pass pro-active legislation in Congress and in many states. They are desperate to put a "gun control" spin on anything they can. The only real question here is--given the media's long-standing and flagrant bias on the gun issue-- why are some gun owners suddenly swallowing the bait?

Second, some people simply do not like the NICS. In 1993, Congress passed the Brady Act, including a mandatory five-day waiting period, over strong NRA opposition. Due to NRA's insistence, that waiting period was allowed to sunset in 1998, once the NICS was up and running nationwide. Now that the NICS is in place, it makes sense to ensure that this system works as instantly, fairly, and accurately as possible.

Also troubling to many is the fact that Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.) is a cosponsor of the bill. Carolyn McCarthy is among the most anti-gun Members of Congress. She has introduced another bill, H.R. 1022, which represents the most sweeping gun ban in history. But Rep. McCarthy is not the only co-sponsor of H.R. 2640. She was joined by some of the most pro-gun members of the House of Representatives in crafting this bill, including John Dingell (D-Mich.), Rick Boucher (D-Va.), and Lamar Smith (R-Tex.). A few years ago, when Congress passed a bill allowing airline pilots to be armed, one of the lead sponsors was anti-gun Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Ca.). Sen. Boxer's support of that legislation did not cause gun owners to oppose it.

Finally, some people have asked why the bill passed on a voice vote. The reality is that there's nothing unusual about passing a widely supported bill by voice vote. Even so, the House rules allow any House member to request a recorded vote on any issue, and in practice, those requests are universally granted. Despite having that option on the floor, no representative asked for a roll call on this bill.

Some gun groups argue that the catch-all term "other lawful authority" would include doctors, psychiatrists, or officials of the Veterans' Administration. They claim that those individuals could take away gun rights. This claim ignores a basic rule of statutory interpretation, which is that when a general term follows a list of specific terms the general term will only be interpreted to mean the same kind of things. This is the rule of ejusdem generis--"of the same kind." The example in Black's Law Dictionary is that if you see the phrase, "horses, cattle, sheep, pigs, goats, or any other barnyard animal," the term "barnyard animal" would normally mean four-legged, hoofed animals-no matter how many chickens, cats or dogs live in the barnyard.

Applying that rule here, "other lawful authority" would mean some kind of officer or panel that holds hearings like a court or mental health commission. It would not mean just any doctor that finds a patient is dangerous or lacks mental capacity. In the context of this regulation and statute, it implies a process created by a legislature, with due process protections such as the right to a hearing and right to be represented by an attorney.

And, as we have mentioned before, H.R. 2640 requires "relief from disabilities" as a safeguard for anyone who may have been unjustly adjudicated. H.R. 2640 is now pending in the Senate.

Rest assured that if the anti-gunners use this legislation as a vehicle to advance gun control restrictions, NRA will pull our support for the bill and vigorously oppose its passage!

Thank you again for your email. If you have any more questions or concerns, feel free to contact us at (800) 392-8683.

Gee, I Feel Safer

Police in Kalamazoo collected 120 guns with their buyback efforts.

Public Safety Chief Dan Weston said the buyback makes the city safer. "While it is impossible to know what violent crime(s) may be avoided because these firearms have been destroyed, we do know that these 120 weapons are no longer available to cause injury or death,'' he said in the press release.

Yep. That'll solve the violent crime problem. Especially when they offer amnesty for turning the gun in!

People can turn in weapons, ammunition and explosives to the police without penalty.

Residents can receive $25 for nonworking, single shot and or .22 caliber firearms; $50 for working handguns and multiple shot long guns; $75 for high capacity hand guns and $100 for assault weapons.

Of course, it was only open to residents turning in "unwanted firearms," not to criminals.

Residents can turn in unwanted firearms at two local events.

I'm glad they made that distinction. Although, I am a little confused. What was the point of this exercise?

The Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety is striving to remove firearms from the streets and keep them out of the hands of criminals.

How is Joe Citizen, by turning in his lawfully-owned weapon, removing firearms from the streets? Big Brother isn't pulling any shenanigans, is he?

Of course, Kalamazoo is in the west side of Michigan. Over here in Detroit, we did our gun buyback at a church... which, ironically, must have been in violation of state law - which prohibits guns at a church or other place of worship.

Invasion of the Refugees

Federal government incompetence is continually hurting my state.

Now a new one - the Bush Administration would like to place 15,000 Iraqi refugees in Warren and Sterling Heights. Warren is Michigan's third largest city and shares a part of Detroit's north border. Sterling Heights is directly north of Warren (and is Michigan's sixth largest city).

Warren is the home of Michigan's newest mosque, which opened earlier this year.

Democratic Mayor of Warren Mark Steenburgh complained right away, even appealing to President Bush to stop the madness.

Steenbergh said two-thirds of the applicants for refugee status indicated that they have relatives in the area.

"I've been told that these refugees will be given assistance in locating housing and in learning English," Steenbergh said in a statement.

"Will the City of Warren receive assistance for the burden placed upon our services with so many people set to arrive?"

Of course, in our politically correct, socially responsible world, the Mayor is called a racist.

"All the stuff he put in his press release is inaccurate," said Martin Manna, head of the Chaldean Chamber of Commerce. "It's all inaccurate. It smells of bigotry."

U.S. Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., called Steenbergh's statements "inaccurate and misleading."

I don't know if the mayor is racist or not, but I do know he is right - we can't absorb the costs associated with such a plan.

Of course, the Feds are denying there will be that many people transferred here. That's nice. But let me ask President Bush, why is your Administration bringing Iraqi refugees here to the US? Isn't part of your brainy war plan making Iraq safe for Iraqis?

How smart is it to bring people over to the worst economy in the United States, where citizens are losing their jobs right and left - and have been for two years? The jobs have already moved to China - how are the Iraqi immigrants supposed to get a job here?

The Warren Consolidated School District already doesn't have enough money to operate. They've drawn out of the rainy-day fund and let go a bunch of teachers when school got out in June. Now the school district is supposed to absorb these costs? There is nothing humanitarian about brining people into this situation, placing them on welfare because there is no work, and feeling like you've done the world a favor.

Backdoor Banning of Firearms

Much has been said across the blogosphere about the proposed OSHA changes to ammunition.

Here's a new, interesting piece of information (from packing.org):

Prominent anti-gun Senators Ted Kennedy, D-MA., Hillary Clinton, D-NY, and Barack Obama, D-IL., all are on the OSHA oversight committee.

Proposed OSHA Regulation Threatens

I wonder where the NRA, so-called guardian of our 2nd amendment freedoms, is when news like this comes out...

From the NSSF:
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the government agency charged with assuring the safety and health of America's workers, is proposing a regulatory rule affecting the manufacturing, transportation and storage of small arms ammunition, primers and smokeless propellants.

As written, the proposed rule would force the closure of nearly all ammunition manufacturers and force the cost of small arms ammunition to skyrocket beyond what the market could bear—essentially collapsing our industry. This is not an exaggeration. The cost to comply with the proposed rule for the ammunition industry, including manufacturer, wholesale distributors and retailers, will be massive and easily exceed $100 million. For example, ammunition and smokeless propellant manufacturers would have to shut down and evacuate a factory when a thunderstorm approached and customers would not be allowed within 50 feet of any ammunition (displayed or otherwise stored) without first being searched for matches or lighters.

This is why I live in Detroit instead of NYC

Unbelievable.

Reverend Billy says he wants the New York Police Department to get right with the Constitution.

The performance artist — a cross between a street-corner preacher and an Elvis impersonator (but blond) — was arrested on harassment charges last week while reciting the First Amendment through a megaphone in Manhattan's Union Square. On Monday, he donned his trademark white suit and returned to the scene of his alleged sin to demand that police repent.


Image © Associated Press






"It feels so good to be back on the very spot where I was denied my First Amendment rights by reciting the First Amendment," he told reporters over the din of an NYPD helicopter hovering overhead.

Reverend Billy, whose real name is Bill Talen, was joined by women in red choir robes who sang a hymn version of the amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech. Other activists distributed an amateur videotape of his arrest.

Eyes closed and hands raised, the pretend pastor whooped, "Bill of Rights-elujah!"

Talen, 57, has spent years using his mock persona as a fire-and-brimstone evangelist to rail against consumer culture — what he portrays as the Disneyfication of Manhattan. He was arrested this year on misdemeanor trespassing charges for protesting at a Starbucks; that case is pending.

His latest run-in with the law began after he turned up to support people gathering in Union Square last Friday for the monthly Critical Mass bike ride asserting cyclists' rights.

The NYPD has aggressively policed the rides, arguing that they can interfere with traffic and threaten public safety. Advocates for Critical Mass have accused police of infringing on the riders' constitutional rights to free speech and free assembly.

The video shows Talen preaching the "44 beautiful words of the First Amendment" to a visibly annoyed congregation of police commanders huddled a few feet away. At one point, an officer approaches and warns him that his sermon is breaking the law.

"What's the law?" Talen asks.

"Harassment," the officer answers.

When Talen persists, another officer comes up behind him and slaps on handcuffs. When being put in a police van, the satirist shouts, "We have a right to peaceful assembly!"

Talen was held overnight before being released without bail. A criminal complaint alleges he harassed police officers by approaching them and "repeatedly shouting at such officers through a non-electric bullhorn."

Civil rights attorney Norman Siegel, appearing with Talen on Monday, called on prosecutors to drop the charges.

"The arrest was a false arrest," Siegel said. "What Reverend Billy did last Friday night does not constitute illegal conduct."

Prosecutors declined to comment. The New York Police Department, contacted Monday evening, said it had no comment.

Mow Your Lawn or Do The Time

In the past, I've had neighbors that didn't take care of their yards. While I'd want my local government to enforce code, I'd never want neighbors to go to jail over something like an unkempt yard. Of course, I realized that no government would ever throw someone in the clink for keeping a yucky yard. This is the land of the free, right?

Wrong.

From the west side of Michigan:

A Newaygo County man could spend another weekend behind bars if he doesn't take care of his yard.

David Burch says he tried to seed the yard last fall but it wouldn't take root. This all stems from a contractor who failed to sod the yard in the first place. Now a judge is saying, do the yard or do the time.

"The people who work at the court, at the jail, thought it was funny," Burch said. "They said there had to be more. I said, 'No, it's just because I don't have grass growing.' They said, 'You're in here for that?'"

He claims he is not skirting the law. Burch said the contractor for his new house is responsible for the lawn. But a White Cloud city ordinance states otherwise.

"This has been in the courts for over a year," said White Cloud Police Chief Roger Ungrey. "I believe Mr. Burch has made an attempt. He did bring me in some receipts for grass seed."

But when it didn't grow, a county judge ordered the yard planted. It never happened. Again this April - no sprouts. Then, in jail, an inspiration. Burch is sodding his yard with donated turf.

"He has been working on it," Ungrey said. "However, he remains to this day noncompliant."

That is because the backyard must also be green.

But will the patchwork sod qualify as a lawn? "It's not your normal sod that you would have, that you would go to a sod farm and purchase," Ungrey told 24 Hour News 8. "So that remains to be seen. I can't answer that question."

Burch was back in court Thursday. The judge told him he has two weeks to complete the job. If not, it's another weekend back in jail.

And from Georgia:

A Gwinnett County woman's grass is high; there are cars in her front yard, and now the 21-year-old pregnant woman has gone to jail because of it.

It's part of a new clean-up initiative in Gwinnett County -- but Nicole Schandera's family has said that the clean-up has gone too far.

The broken down car in the front yard gives it away. Officers cited the owner of the house south of Snellville for high grass and weeds, improper outdoor signage, excess trash, and tree debris, among other things.

Family members admit there are some problems.

"I mean there's a little bit of stuff that needs to be done -- the grass needs to be cut, we need to get a car out of the yard, but half of the stuff on there is absolutely false," said Lewis Schandera, the woman's father.

Thirteen violations in all, and some that Lewis does not agree with.

"They wrote this car up as a junk car," he said about one car. "It's got tags and insurance, it's drivable -- my ex-wife's brother drives it everyday. There's not a single broken window on the house."

Lewis is taking pictures to try and prove his case to authorities, but what really shocks him is what happened to his daughter because of this.

"Seven months pregnant and they carried her to jail for code violations," Lewis said. "Seven months pregnant, (they) handcuffed her, hands behind her back put her in a patrol car with no A/C and the window down, and it was 90 degrees at 2:00 in the afternoon."

It took Nicole almost 12 hours to bond out of jail after her arrest. Now, family members say they are working on cleaning up the problems.

The family said they plan to get the car out of the yard this weekend, and they're going to mow the grass and cleanup. But the trip to jail is still hard for them to understand.

"We're tryin' to make progress, but I really don't see all that much," Lewis said. "There's some work, absolutely, but not enough to take my daughter to jail seven months pregnant."

It is an effort to clean up that Lewis said he feels has gone too far.

"Shocked," he said. "I could not believe it. I still can't believe it."

Gwinnet County police said a trip to jail is not a typical result. They said they always issue a written notice of violation first, then try to work with the homeowner to get things cleaned up.

England... Land of the Anti-Self-Defense Clowns

This lovely news out of England - but several Republicans and Democrats want to import it here as soon as possible.

First the story, then some analysis.

A shopkeeper has been fined £250 and given a criminal record because he fought back when he was attacked by shoplifters.

Jacob Smyth chased three youths out of his hardware shop in Penzance, Cornwall, when he was set upon. When he was kicked in the groin by one of the hooded youths who had stolen cans of spray paint Mr Smyth hit back.

Police issued fixed penalty tickets to the shoplifters but charged Mr Smyth and a colleague with assault.

Yesterday he pleaded guilty to assault at Truro Magistrates’ Court. He claimed after the hearing that he had been advised to plead guilty because otherwise he could have faced a six month prison sentence.

The court was told that Mr Smyth, a father of three, caught the youths stealing the spray cans in October last year. Two of them turned on him and he was kicked in his groin just weeks after a vasectomy operation. He retaliated and punched 18-year-old Craig Spiller to the ground.

Paul Gallagher, defending, said: “The court can only imagine what they intended to do with that spray paint. He could see the cans poking out of their pockets. He leant forward to get them and at that stage he was set upon.

“He did punch one of them to get him off. In the heat of the moment he kicked him once or twice. Initially he was acting in self defence. Frustration at the situation took over. The lads were interviewed and given fixed penalty notices by police but unfortunately for Mr Smyth ended up in court today.

“He was the one who was trying to do the right thing and get his stolen property back.”

Julian Herbert, prosecuting, said the “aggravating factor” of the case was shop staff “taking the law into their own hands”. Fining Mr Smyth £250 and ordering him to pay £43 costs, Angy Haslam, chairman of the magistrates, said: “The act was aggravated by the fact you kicked the victim on the ground. We feel it has been mitigated because you acted in self defence.”

Speaking outside court, Mr Smyth said: “I did nothing wrong. I was getting a good beating from this lad. I had no choice but to defend myself.

“We get shoplifters all the time one after the other. We call the police but nothing is ever done. We called them on this occasion and ran after the lads to try and get my property back but then they turned on us. “Am I not allowed to protect my stock and premises from thieves?”

Mr Smyth’s colleague Jason Pascoe, 34, has also been charged with two counts of common assault and will appear in court at a later date.

I don't really know what to say, other than what is it about governments that want a bunch of passive, crime-accepting citizens? Shame on those in the British anti-self-defense movement.

Second, the comments online (as of writing this post) are quite favorable (or should I write "favourable" since we are talking about Britain) to the shopkeeper and against the foolish government actions. The British take a lot of heat from the American pro-gun and pro-self-defense community. Stuff like this shows how much the citizenry realizes they have a right to self-defense, a right their government is denying them. Their leadership has betrayed them, sold them a "feel good" bill of goods that sounds good, but doesn't work. Sound familiar here in the USA?

Third, this kind of thinking is all over the USA as well. The Castle Doctrine laws, in part, are a response to this kind of anti-self-defense blatherskite. How ironic and tragic that the idea - a man's home is his castle - comes out of the English system.

Cloture-Voting Amnesty Traitors of S.1639

This video lists all 64 members of the Senate that voted for cloture on Senate Bill 1639 - widely considered an Amnesty Bill. Every senator who voted for it has his/her picture and phone number in this video.



Courtesy of Buck at fromthepen.com and Blogs for Borders.

Dirty Laundry and the CIA

This dandy was written by Josh Gerstein and published in the NY Post today.

This stuff happened 30 years ago. It's a good thing government no longer violates anyone's rights. Yeah, that's sarcasm dripping off of your computer screen.

The CIA is airing its dirty laundry from more than three decades ago by releasing the bulk of a key dossier on the agency's role in assassination attempts, kidnapping, and domestic surveillance efforts that may have been illegal or unauthorized.

The 702-page collection posted on the Web yesterday was the product of a 1973 call by the then director of central intelligence, James Schlesinger, for all agency employees to report any incident where officials might have violated the CIA's charter. The resulting compilation of alleged agency misdeeds was considered so sensitive that it was dubbed "the family jewels."

[...]

One action viewed as flatly illegal by some in the agency was the detention from 1964 to 1967 of a Russian defector, Yuri Nosenko. The records say he was kept at a safehouse in Clinton, Md., for more than a year before being transferred "to a specially constructed ‘jail' in a remote wooded area." CIA lawyers "became increasingly concerned about the illegality of the Agency's position," the documents indicate. Mr. Nosenko was eventually given better digs and a new identity.

Despite the misgivings among some at the CIA about wiretapping and physical surveillance aimed at journalists publishing classified information, the records show that some of the work proved quite successful. "Project Mockingbird," which involved snooping on two newspaper columnists, Robert Allen and Paul Scott, was "particularly productive in identifying contacts of the newsmen, their method of operation, and many of their sources of information," an agency memo said. A dozen senators, six congressmen, 11 congressional aides, and White House officials were pegged as leakers.

Other targets of the CIA's anti-leak efforts included a Washington Post reporter, Michael Getler, and a prominent columnist, Jack Anderson. Some of Anderson's "leg men" were also followed, including Brit Hume, who is now a Fox News anchor.

[...]

Some of the family jewels are remaining under wraps, as are details such as the location of the makeshift jail set up for Mr. Nosenko. "Even though this is a historical set of documents, some of the information remains relevant and needs to be protected," a CIA spokesman, George Little, said.

The agency also released more than 10,000 pages of analytical reports yesterday on China, the Soviet Union, and relations between the two countries.

Michigan Citizens - Give More Of Your Money To Fix Govt Budget Woes

Michiganders,

Do you want to go to a Tiger game? Do you want to go to the theatre and catch a movie? If so, you are rich and must be punished. That's right, you rich folk should be paying a luxury tax.

In fact, our Democratic Governor and our Republican legislature are seriously considering putting a $100 million a year tax on every ticket to professional sporting events, shows, concerts, and movie tickets in Michigan.

And that's great, because professional sports organizations grossly undercharge ticket prices. After all, an infield seat at Comerica Park costs $40 a pop. So, if I want to take my family, it costs $240, plus service charges on the tickets ($60), plus parking ($25). So, right now, it costs me (pre-food) $325 to go to a ball game. Under the new proposal, it will cost me $340. That's a good economic move during a recession, don't you think? No, I don't either.

Let's tell the Governor and her raise-the-peons-taxes buddies to back off.

Learn more - including how to defeat this tax proposal - at www.notickettax.com

GOA Analysis on HR 2640

McCarthy Bill Moves To The Senate
-- "Compromise" bill represents the most far-reaching gun ban in years

Gun Owners of America E-Mail Alert
8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102, Springfield, VA 22151
Phone: 703-321-8585 / FAX: 703-321-8408
http://www.gunowners.org

ACTION:

1. Please urge your Senators to OPPOSE the gun control bill (HR 2640) which was snuck through the House last week by anti-gun Democrats.
Some people are saying this bill is a positive step for gun owners, but realize this ONE SIMPLE FACT: Rep. Carolyn McCarthy and Sen.
Chuck Schumer are the lead sponsors of this legislation! These two have NEVER once looked out for your Second Amendment rights!!!

2. Please use the contact information below -- and the pre-written letter -- to help direct your comments to them, and circulate this alert to as many gun owners as you can. It is imperative that we remind gun owners nationwide that gun control DOES NOT work to reduce crime; that, to the contrary, gun control HAS DISARMED millions of law-abiding citizens; and that the answer to tragedies like Virginia Tech is to REPEAL the "gun free zones" which leave law-abiding victims defenseless.


Monday, June 18, 2007

The Associated Press got it right last week when it stated that, "The House Wednesday passed what could become the first major federal gun control law in over a decade."

It's true. The McCarthy bill that passed will DRAMATICALLY expand the dragnet that is currently used to disqualify law-abiding gun buyers. So much so, that hundreds of thousands of honest citizens who want to buy a gun will one day walk into a gun store and be shocked when they're told they're a prohibited purchaser, having been lumped into the same category as murderers and rapists.

This underscores the problems that have existed all along with the Brady Law. At the time it was passed, some people foolishly thought, "No big deal. I'm not a bad guy. This law won't affect me."

But what happens when good guys' names get thrown into the bad guys'
list? That is exactly what has happened, and no one should think that the attempts to expand the gun control noose are going to end with the McCarthy bill (HR 2640).

Speaking to the CNN audience on June 13, head of the Brady Campaign, Paul Helmke, stated that, "We're hopeful that now that the NRA has come around to our point of view in terms of strengthening the Brady background checks, that now we can take the next step after this bill passes [to impose additional gun control]."

Get it? The McCarthy bill is just a first step.

The remainder of this alert will explain, in layman's terms, the problems with what passed on Wednesday. Please understand that GOA's legal department has spent hours analyzing the McCarthy bill, in addition to looking at existing federal regulations and BATFE interpretations. (If you want the lawyerly perspective, then please go to http://www.gunowners.org/netb.htm for an extensive analysis.)

So what does HR 2640 do? Well, as stated already, this is one of the most far-reaching gun bans in years. For the first time in history, this bill takes a giant step towards banning one-fourth of returning military veterans from ever owning a gun again.

In 2000, President Clinton added between 80,000 - 90,000 names of military veterans -- who were suffering from Post Traumatic Stress
(PTS) -- into the NICS background check system. These were vets who were having nightmares; they had the shakes. So Clinton disqualified them from buying or owning guns.

For seven years, GOA has been arguing that what Clinton did was illegitimate. But if this McCarthy bill gets enacted into law, a future Hillary Clinton administration would actually have the law on her side to ban a quarter of all military veterans (that's the number of veterans who have Post Traumatic Stress) from owning guns.

Now, the supporters of the McCarthy bill claim that military veterans
-- who have been denied their Second Amendment rights -- could get their rights restored. But this is a very nebulous promise.

The reason is that Section 101(c)(1)(C) of the bill provides explicitly that a psychiatrist or psychologist diagnosis is enough to ban a person for ever owning a gun as long as it's predicated on a microscopic risk that a person could be a danger to himself or others. (Please be sure to read the NOTE below for more details on
this.)

How many psychiatrists are going to deny that a veteran suffering from PTS doesn't possess a MICROSCOPIC RISK that he could be a danger to himself or others?

And even if they can clear the psychiatrist hurdle, we're still looking at thousands of dollars for lawyers, court fees, etc. And then, when veterans have done everything they can possibly do to clear their name, there is still the Schumer amendment in federal law which prevents the BATFE from restoring the rights of individuals who are barred from purchasing firearms. If that amendment is not repealed, then it doesn't matter if your state stops sending your name for inclusion in the FBI's NICS system... you are still going to be a disqualified purchaser when you try to buy a gun.

So get the irony. Senator Schumer is the one who is leading the charge in the Senate to pass the McCarthy bill, and he is "generously" offering military veterans the opportunity to clear their names, even though it's been HIS AMENDMENT that has prevented honest gun owners from getting their rights back under a similar procedure created in 1986!

But there's still another irony. Before this bill, it was very debatable (in legal terms) whether the military vets with PTS should have been added into the NICS system... and yet many of them were -- even though there was NO statutory authority to do so. Before this bill, there were provisions in the law to get one's name cleared, and yet Schumer made it impossible for these military vets to do so.

Now, the McCarthy bill (combined with federal regulations) makes it unmistakably clear that military vets with Post Traumatic Stress SHOULD BE ADDED as prohibited persons on the basis of a "diagnosis."
Are these vets now going to find it any easier to get their names cleared (when the law says they should be on the list) if they were finding it difficult to do so before (when the law said they shouldn't)?

Add to this the Schumer amendment (mentioned above). The McCarthy bill does nothing to repeal the Schumer amendment, which means that military veterans with PTS are going to find it impossible to get their rights restored!

Do you see how Congress is slowly (and quietly) sweeping more and more innocent people into the same category as murderers and rapists?
First, anti-gun politicians get a toe hold by getting innocuous sounding language into the federal code. Then they come back years later to twist those words into the most contorted way possible.

Consider the facts. In 1968, Congress laid out several criteria for banning Americans from owning guns -- a person can't be a felon, a drug user, an illegal alien, etc. Well, one of the criteria which will disqualify you from owning or buying a gun is if you are "adjudicated as a mental defective." Now, in 1968, that term referred to a person who was judged not guilty of a crime by reason of insanity.

Well, that was 1968. By 2000, President Bill Clinton had stretched that definition to mean a military veteran who has had a lawful authority (like a shrink) decree that a person has PTS. Can you see how politicians love to stretch the meaning of words in the law...
especially when it comes to banning guns?

After all, who would have thought when the original Brady law was passed in 1993, that it would be used to keep people with outstanding traffic tickets from buying guns; or couples with marriage problems from buying guns; or military vets with nightmares from buying guns?
(See footnotes below.)

So if you thought the Brady Law would never affect you because you're a "good guy," then think again. Military vets are in trouble, and so are your kids who are battling Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD).
Everything that has been mentioned above regarding military veterans, could also apply to these kids.

Do you have a child in the IDEA program -- a.k.a., Individuals with Disability Education Act -- who has been diagnosed with ADD and thought to be susceptible to playground fights? Guess what? That child can be banned for life from ever owning a gun as an adult. The key to understanding this new gun ban expansion centers on a shrink's determination that a person is a risk to himself or others.

You see, legislators claim they want to specifically prevent a future Seung-Hui Cho from ever buying a gun and shooting up a school. And since Cho had been deemed as a potential danger to himself or others, that has become the new standard for banning guns.

But realize what this does. In the name of stopping an infinitesimal fraction of potential bad apples from owning firearms, legislators are expanding the dragnet to sweep ALL KINDS of good guys into a permanent ban. It also ignores the fact that bad guys get illegal guns ALL THE TIME, despite the gun laws!

So back to your kid who might have ADD. The BATFE, in an open letter (dated May 9, 2007), said the diagnosis that a person is a potential risk doesn't have to be based on the fact that the person poses a "substantial" risk. It just has to be "ANY" risk.

Just any risk, no matter how slight to the other kids on the playground, is all that is needed to qualify the kid on Ritalin -- or a vet suffering PTS, or a husband (going through a divorce) who's been ordered to go through an anger management program, etc. -- for a LIFETIME gun ban.

This is the slippery slope that gun control poses. And this is the reason HR 2640 must be defeated. Even as we debate this bill, the Frank Lautenbergs in Congress are trying to expand the NICS system with the names of people who are on a so-called "government watch list" (S. 1237).

While this "government watch list" supposedly applies to suspected terrorists, the fact is that government bureaucrats can add ANY gun owner's name to this list without due process, without any hearing, or trial by jury, etc. That's where the background check system is headed... if we don't rise up together and cut off the monster's head right now.

NOTE: Please realize that a cursory reading of this bill is not sufficient to grasp the full threat that it poses. To read this bill properly, you have to not only read it thoroughly, but look at federal regulations and BATF interpretations as well. For example, where we cite Section 101(c)(1)(C) above as making it explicitly clear that the diagnosis from a psychologist or psychiatrist is enough to ban a person from owning a gun, realize that you have to look at Section 101, while also going to federal regulations via Section 3 of the bill.

Section 3(2) of the bill states that every interpretation that the BATFE has made in respect to mental capacity would become statutory law. And so what does the federal code say? Well, at 27 CFR 478.11, it explicitly states that a person can be deemed to be "adjudicated as a mental defective" by a court or by any "OTHER LAWFUL AUTHORITY"
(like a shrink), as long as the individual poses a risk to self or others (or can't manage his own affairs). And in its open letter of May 9, 2007, BATFE makes it clear that this "danger" doesn't have to be "imminent" or "substantial," but can include "any danger" at all.
How many shrinks are going to say that a veteran suffering from PTS doesn't pose at least an infinitesimal risk of hurting someone else?

FOOTNOTES:

(1) The Brady law has been used to illegitimately deny firearms to people who have outstanding traffic tickets (see http://www.gunowners.org/ne0706.pdf).

(2) Because of the Lautenberg gun ban, couples with marriage problems or parents who have used corporal punishment to discipline their children have been prohibited from owning guns for life (see http://www.gunowners.org/news/nws9806.htm).

(3) Several articles have pointed to the fact that military vets with PTS have been added to the NICS system (see http://tinyurl.com/ytalxl or http://tinyurl.com/23cgqn).

CONTACT INFORMATION: You can visit the Gun Owners Legislative Action Center at http://www.gunowners.org/activism.htm to send your Senators the pre-written e-mail message below.

----- Pre-written letter -----

Dear Senator:

As a supporter of Second Amendment rights, I do NOT support the so-called NICS Improvement Amendments Act (HR 2640), which was snuck through the House last week.

This bill represents the most far-reaching gun ban in years. For the first time in American history, this bill would impose a lifetime gun ban on battle-scarred veterans and troubled teens -- based solely on the diagnosis of a psychologist (as opposed to a finding by a court).

You can read more about the problems with this bill by going to the website of Gun Owners of America at http://www.gunowners.org/netb.htm.

Gun owners OPPOSE this legislation, and I hope you will join the handful of Senators that have placed "holds" on this bill and object to any Unanimous Consent agreement.

Supporters of this bill say we need it to stop future Seung-Hui Chos from getting a gun and to prevent our nation from seeing another shooting like the one at Virginia Tech. But honestly, what gun law has stopped bad guys from getting a gun? Not in Canada, where they recently had a school shooting. Certainly not in Washington, DC or in England!

If you want to know some language that gun owners would support, then consider this:

"The Brady Law shall be null and void unless, prior to six months following the date of enactment of this Act, every name of a veteran forwarded to the national instant criminal background check system by the Veterans Administration or the Department of Veterans Affairs be permanently removed from that system."

Sincerely,

Unbelievable

Image © WND

I think I might have heard it all, now.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon blames the ethnic and religious violence in Darfur on global warming and insists more conflicts of this kind are coming because of climate change.

"The Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change," Ban said in a Washington Post opinion column.

As WND reported in 2004, the U.S. declared the rape, pillaging and slaughter of blacks in western Sudan by the Islamist Khartoum regime and its Arab militia allies genocide. The U.N. has described it as the world's worst current humanitarian crisis, with estimates of over 200,000 dead and more than 2.1 million displaced in four years.

In his column, Ban said U.N. statistics showed rainfall declined some 40 percent over the past two decades, as a rise in Indian Ocean temperatures disrupted monsoons.

"This suggests that the drying of sub-Saharan Africa derives, to some degree, from man-made global warming," the South Korean diplomat wrote.

"It is no accident that the violence in Darfur erupted during the drought," Ban wrote.

If you have the stomach to read more, you can find it here.