Left-wing fascism is alive and well and violent in Chapel Hill:

Campus police used pepper spray on student protesters angry over immigration issues who disrupted a speech by former Republican presidential candidate Tom Tancredo at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Hundreds of protesters denouncing Tancredo's tough stances against illegal immigration gathered at Bingham Hall on Tuesday evening, shouting profanities at the former Colorado congressman, who tried to speak about his opposition to in-state tuition for unauthorized immigrants.

Tancredo left after a protester broke a window and police shut down the event. He had been invited by a student group that opposes mass immigration and multiculturalism.

Sadly, there were some pro-immigration UNC students that wanted to hear Tancredo if only to debate his points, but the violence, profanity, and threats forced the cancellation of his speech.

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The Mexican police have captured another cache of weapons from a drug cartel, and their apparent instinct was to hype their find as being something more than what they captured, which the Daily Mail bought into entirely.

The "anti-aircraft gun" in the picture is an old M1919 in what appears to be an A4 configuration, and is mounted on a low-tripod for its designed use, allowing infantry to take on ground targets, not aircraft.

Far from the 800-rounds-per-minute claim in the Daily Mail, the cyclic rate of fire was rate of 400-600 rounds per minute, but because the gun was air-cooled and would overheat if fired continuously, it was fired in short bursts, resulting in a rate of fire that was much less.

This is as much an anti-aircraft gun as Margaret Thatcher is a Victoria's Secret model. Sure, all the basic parts are there, but pressing this configuration into a role it was never designed for is a recipe for disaster, and the over-hyping Mexican Police should be ashamed of themselves.

(Via Instapundit.)

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Via What Bubba Knows, a letter from a British blogger regarding the hundreds of TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party protests that are taking place today across the United States:

To all of my dear and beloved American friends;

Tomorrow is a day which shall be remembered as the day when Americans decided to retake their country from the left, from Marxism, from appeasement and cowardice. It especially should be a day when Americans finally stand up and take back their country from the thieves who sought not only their money, but their freedom as well. I expect nothing less from Americans who have proven time and time again that they cannot be beaten or intimidated.

For those of you here locally, there is a Raleigh Tea Party from 6:30PM to 8:30PM in downtown Raleigh at the state Capitol, and if you are one of the 299 million Americans that live outside of Wake County, you can find your local protest here.

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No, ABC News didn't put explosives in a gas tank, but they certainly stacked the deck in creating Diane Sawyer's "guns are bad, guns are useless" self-fulfilling prophecy, which AWR Hawkins deftly exposes at Pajamas Media.

The scenario is worth watching, if only to point out the flaws in the contrived scenario, starting with neophytes playing the role of CCH holders, the CCHs being forced to wear a holster in a position where they could not draw their weapon in a sitting postion (and would not think of carrying a weapon in real life simply for reasons of comfort).

And of course, ABC rigged an outcome where the only possible outcome was the death of students in the scenario, with the only question being "how many?"

In real life, of course, there is never just one possible scenario or possible outcome.

As I noted in a comment at PJM, what ABC News pointedly didn't run is what I would dub the "Virginia Tech" scenario.

Have a student with a concealed weapons hear shots in another classroom, draw his weapon, and cover the door. Then tell me how far the shooter gets through that classroom door, compared to rooms without a CCH.

Alternately, think about the possible reaction of CCH to seeing an agitated man pull a weapon or enter the hallway brandishing the weapon on the way to a classroom. Frankly, if I was a student or faculty member with a CCH and saw an agitated man pull a weapon as he entered a class room in front of me, my immediate reaction would be to draw my sidearm and draw a bead on the back of his skull and close the distance.

It isnÂ’t always that the CCH closest to the threat is immediately on top of it, or that in a mass shooting, the perp will always have the element of surprise on his side.

People who legally carry concealed weapons are not going to magically prevent attempted mass murders. There are simply too few of us in the general population, and well-meaning but ignorant people in positions of power make it far too difficult to carry in the very settings (schools, businesses, civic buildings) where such attacks are most likely to occur.

But just because a concealed carry permit holder can't be everywhere a shooting takes place or prevent people from always getting killed in these rampages doesn't negate their potential to alter or terminate a threat in some scenarios.

It's funny, but the same people who rail against concealed weapons because they are concerned about the rare instances of CCH permit holders becoming violent never seem to want to talk about the possible lives that could be saved by them.

It's almost as if they have an agenda...

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I was rather startled to pull up Memeorandum this morning to see that it was apparently Barack Obama, and not Captain Richard Phillips who benefited most from the sharpshooting skills of Navy SEALS off the African coast yesterday.

In the Washington Post, Michael D. Shear gushed in an article headlined An Early Military Victory for Obama:

For President Obama, last week's confrontation with Somali pirates posed similar political risks to a young commander in chief who had yet to prove himself to his generals or his public.

But the result -- a dramatic and successful rescue operation by U.S. Special Operations forces -- left Obama with an early victory that could help build confidence in his ability to direct military actions abroad.

Throughout the past four days, White House officials played down Obama's role in the hostage drama. Until yesterday, he made no public statements about the pirates.

In fact, aides said yesterday, Obama had been briefed 17 times since he returned from his trip abroad, including several times from the White House Situation Room. And without giving too many details, senior White House officials made it clear that Obama had provided the authority for the rescue.

"The president's focus was on saving and protecting the life of the captain," one adviser said. Friday evening, after a National Security Council telephone update, Obama granted U.S. forces what aides called "the authority to use appropriate force to save the life of the captain." On Saturday at 9:20 a.m., Obama went further, giving authority to an "additional set of U.S. forces to engage in potential emergency actions."

One of President Obama's favored cheerleaders in the Associated Press, Jennifer Loven, teamed up with Phillip Elliott to also sing Obama's praises in an article headlined Obama twice approved force to rescue hostage:

President Barack Obama twice authorized the military to rescue a U.S. captain who was being held by Somali pirates and whose life appeared to be at risk, administration officials said after Sunday's rescue.

The Defense Department twice asked Obama for permission to use military force to rescue Capt. Richard Phillips from a lifeboat off the Somali coast. Obama first gave permission around 8 p.m. Friday, and upgraded it at 9:20 a.m. Saturday. Officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations said the second order was to encompass more military personnel and equipment that arrived in the Indian Ocean to engage the pirates.

If is sounds like President Obama is being painted as a heroic leader for his role in this incident by his supporters in the media... well, yes, that's exactly what they are doing.

But as former Green Beret Master Sergeant Jim Hanson noted, Obama's heroic sign-offs were simple and perfunctory:

The standing authority gave them clearance to engage the pirates if the life of the captain was in imminent danger.

In other words, the decision to fire was an understood reactive measure by the on-scene commander to a provocative act taken by the pirates, not a proactive measure taken by the President.

In a crisis where an American citizen's life was on the line, President Obama got out of the way and let the professionals do their jobs. It's a nice change of pace from his Presidency thus far, but not screwing up shouldn't be grounds for exhorting him as if he had just planned and executed Operation Overlord.

So why is the media so eager to puff up the President's role in a matter in which he had no direct role or immediate authority?

It could simply be that the American media is hoping to latch on to a victory—no matter how tangential— for a President mocked overseas for non-scripted weaknesses, continuous gaffes of protocol, and his artless foreign policy naivety.

Barack Obama opted against the political suicide of not allowing the military to use deadly force to save the life of an American threatened by armed pirates. That doesn't make him Nimitz.

Instead, this too-eager response paints him him look like a politician drowning in a sea of incompetence, with his fawning press desperately tosses him anything they can to help him stay afloat.

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Captain Richard Phillips escaped from his Somali captors and threw himself off the lifeboat once more, and this time, Navy SEALS were lurking in the water to receive him.

The results were predictable:

Three of the pirates were killed and one was in custody after what appeared to be a swift firefight off the Somali coast, the official said.

Initial reports indicate Phillips jumped overboard for a second time and the military was able to take advantage of the situation.

With cartoonish predictability, the "progressives" at Think Progress found common cause and sympathy not with the Captain, but the pirates.

For the Children!

And of course, if it's evil, you-know-who must have been involved:

I think it's more than just a little bit funny that Bush is at the root of all the evil in the world and yet is a knuckle-dragging moron, but then, what passes for progressive thought these days is more about innuendo and groupthink than anything resembling logic.

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1 Look at it this way. There are now 3, soon to be 4, less mouths to feed in Somalia. If these pirates do not learn to bypass ships flying the American flag, there is going to be a lot more food available "for the children."

Posted by: Tregonsee at April 12, 2009 03:16 PM (bWe8L)

2 The last commenter you quote, Sayre, must use the same history book as Joe Biden and John Kerry. Biden talked about President FDR going on TV in 1929 to talk about the stock market crash. Kerry talked about going into Cambodia under President Nixon before Nixon was in office. Bush didn't come into office until Jan. 2001. How did Bush order the Ethiopians to invade Somalia four years before he took office? Ah, the stoopid is strong in that bunch.

Posted by: NevadaDailySteve at April 12, 2009 03:27 PM (tm2uO)

3 This is what it's all about. US Navy SEALS doing their job and a very brave merchant Captain doing his. Kudos to the SEALS and to Captain Phillips. As to the pirates, as they say in the deep south, ya'll have a nice day now, heah.

Posted by: Useful Noise at April 12, 2009 04:13 PM (EAhxE)

4 reading the comments on thinkprogress is repugnant, they've all setup a straw man of wingnuts that justifies saying things that so stupid and insulting. they have no introspection or ability to see things from any other direction then superior hippie.

Posted by: joe at April 12, 2009 04:34 PM (hUSia)

5 Correct, it was Slick Willy who sent us into Somalia, it was Slick Willy who refused the on ground commanders the needed resorces, hence Blackhawk Down. As the only current, China thanks to Bill Clinton is fast on our heals, Super Power not only should we attack and kill every pirate attacking a U.S. flagged ship but every other vessel as well. International good will.

Posted by: Greg at April 12, 2009 08:32 PM (dT2+/)

6 Greg: "Slick Willy" did not sent the Marines into Somalia. The Marine landing was ordered by George "big daddy" Bush when he had only 7 days left in office. The crisis was his idea of a Housewarming gift to the Clintons. Clinton had enough faults without blaming him for for something he did not start.

Posted by: Robert at April 12, 2009 10:06 PM (iM6ML)

7 The MSM's fan-mag approach to reporting on Mr. Obama gets more and more ridiculous. Obama didn't rescue Captain Phillips. Our Navy SEALs did. And they already had authorization to do so under the rules of warfare. The DOD asked Obama to verify that authorization three times before he stopped waffling and said OK. But it was a courtesy to Obama not a necessity in order to act. Secondly, we have got to stop thinking that we have to rescue every nation in the world from the results of its own depravity and foolishness. Somalia has descended into its present non-functional state on its own. Let them get themselves out of it. As far as pirates go, we have a long record as a nation of protecting American citizens from pirates. Think Tripoli, and "Perdicaris Alive or Raisuli dead," those of you who actually studied American history instead of wasting your time on "Gender Studies." Mr. Obama seems curiously uninformed about American history. He should remedy that. Marianne Matthews

Posted by: Marianne Matthews at April 13, 2009 12:28 PM (doHlr)

8 History has a strange way of of coming full circle. The only good pirate is a dead pirate: From the Halls of Montezuma, To the shores of Tripoli; {to kill pirates} ... Muslim pirates have harassed European merchants for centuries, do a quick search on Barbary pirates and youÂ’ll see a history going back to the sacking of Rome in 846. In our early American history, ransom and tribute payments to the Barbary states amounted to more than twenty percent of the U.S. government tax dollars. I believe as did, President Thomas Jefferson*, that our American temperament makes use physically, emotionally, and mentally resistant to blackmail. That we would rather destroy our property and fight pirates than pay bribes. Tyrants never fulfill their obligations under any treaty. President Jefferson sought to instill "an erect and independent attitude" into American foreign policy -- an attitude that was inconsistent with paying tribute because he had the intuition to know that the more Americans try to appease tyrants the more tyrants will sense weakness and demand more. It took the capture of more than a dozen American merchant ships and more than a decade of enslavement of the crews to strengthen our resolve and wean us from dependence on various European navies. The birth of The United States Navy marked the beginning of the end of tribute payments which were draining us of our life blood. We actually fought two Barbary Wars along the North African coast: the First Barbary War from 1801 to 1805 and the Second Barbary War in 1815. Our naval victories ended tribute payments by the United States. Bullies, cowards, and tyrants are cut from the same cloth. With Utmost Respect ~ Semper Fi, Hank * The Middle East and the Making of the United States, 1776 to 1815 by Speech by Michael B. Oren, Senior Fellow, The Shalem Center delivered at Columbia University, 3 November 2005. ** The Mariners' Museum : The Barbary Wars, 1801-1805

Posted by: Hank at April 13, 2009 01:20 PM (vLFF+)

9 Vice Admiral Bill Gortney on the topic: On NBC, he said the United States was trying to "disincentivize" pirates from attacking US-flagged ships, but added the United States hopes "that the tribal elders in Somalia would encourage young men to look for other livelihoods, realizing that the lack of opportunity is what drives them to piracy in the first place." Someone please make fun of the Vice Admiral for talking about the underlying causes of the piracy. As for the standing orders bit, yes they've had standing orders since Feb 2009 to use force to protect sailors lives, standing orders they did not have during the Bush admin. Credit and blame where credit and blame are due please.

Posted by: Jim at April 13, 2009 04:01 PM (3GzXA)

10 Jim said "they've had standing orders since Feb 2009 - - - standing orders they did not have during the Bush admin" Jim, please direct me to the area indicating this information to be true. I find it fascinating that Bush is now blamed for being too dovish.

Posted by: Rick at April 13, 2009 04:54 PM (FWmwx)

11 http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2009/02/us-navy-apprehe.html http://www.reuters.com/article/wtMostRead/idUKTRE4AI6M520081119 It's not a matter of blaming Bush for being too dovish it's simply pointing out the fact that the Bush admin took the pirate matter under consideration and then consulted with the UN before doing, nothing. In other words, Bush did exactly what folks on the right are complaining Obama would do. Except of course this administration acted, and acted before any US flagged ship was seized.

Posted by: Jim at April 13, 2009 05:32 PM (3GzXA)

12 Thanks Jim, I was only able to access the ABC item. It said nothing about standing orders to use force to protect sailors lives. I would think, at least hope, the military has continual standing orders to use force to protect sailors lives. That was my only issue.

Posted by: Rick at April 13, 2009 06:36 PM (FWmwx)

13 Sorry for the confusion Rick, I should have made my inital post more clear by saying "standing orders since Feb 09 to use force to protect sailors from the Somali pirates..." or something like that. Obama gave the US Navy to go to take action in the area. The Reuters link has some hilarious Bush admin quotes, things that if said by the Obama admin would get all sorts of negative response here. Things like: Calling it a "a very complicated issue," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino gave no hint of what, if any, action the United States might take following the hijacking earlier this week of a Saudi supertanker with a $100 million oil cargo. But she told reporters, "The goal would be to try to help get this ship to safety, secure the crew and then work with our international partners to try to alleviate the piracy problem, full stop." and But Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said the piracy problem requires a larger international effort to bring political stability and economic aid to poverty-stricken Somalia. "You could have all the navies in the world having all their ships out there, you know, it's not going to ever solve this problem. It requires a holistic approach," he told reporters. Even a systematic attempt to capture pirates in international waters would require "a more global, systematic agreement on how to deal with pirates once caught," Morrell said. At present, it is unclear who would hold or try them. and The president has been briefed about it, and ensuring the safety and well-being of the crew is of paramount importance in preventing or dealing with issues of piracy," Perino said when asked whether any unilateral or concerted response was planned for dealing with the problem. "We're working with other members of the Security Council, right now, to see if there are actions that we can do to more effectively fight against piracy and prevent it," she said. Perino said a key problem is that modern-day piracy is "much more dangerous, and they have ... a lot more weapons." CY would be going nuts if Obama talked about a holistic approach to the pirate problem!

Posted by: Jim at April 13, 2009 06:55 PM (3GzXA)

14 For the Liberals who want to know what might be causing Somalians to be desperate? European Shipping companies dumping toxic and radioactive wastes in their fishing waters might have something to do with it. But since you can't blame the US for that and the EU IS responsible, they won;t mention that little tidbit

Posted by: Dan Kauffman at April 14, 2009 02:37 AM (5ZsaL)

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With the noted exception of (nearly real) libertarian flamethrower Glenn Beck and a gaggle of significant conservative critics I can count on my fingers, the American media that helped elect Barack Obama continues to act as his greatest support system. They filter out missteps, explain away gaffes, bury calamities and write disastrous choices out of history so that Americans that view the news with an uncritical eye may be forgiven for thinking that our President is somehow competent.

After all the media says he's doing such a great job, right?

The foreign press, however, did not tie their credibility to playing up Obama as a leg-tingling "lightworker" as the American press did, and the salvos directed against Obama's ineptitude, his classlessness, and his arrogance have been epic.

The latest bombs dropped on Obama from Gerald Warner in the UK Telegraph is an example of the kind of commentary that are becoming all too common:

President Barack Obama has recently completed the most successful foreign policy tour since Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. You name it, he blew it. What was his big deal economic programme that he was determined to drive through the G20 summit? Another massive stimulus package, globally funded and co-ordinated. Did he achieve it? Not so as you'd notice.

Make sure to read to the final paragraphs for Warner's new nickname for our President.

Our oldest allies have taken the measure of our President, and find him sorely lacking. I'm sure our enemies noticed that even quicker than our allies. We can only hope that our foolish November decision to elect a slogan instead of a leader won't be a moral mistake.

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The falsehoods and untruths in Sir Harold Evans unhinged rant that I first noted earlier this week are even worse than thought, with him apparently making up statistics and attributing them to a Department of Justice study.

Can we call him Sir Beauchamp?

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Say Uncle pointed me this morning to the an absurd new meme that ABC's William Kates is attempting to spin, that massacres could be prevented if we just listened to comedians.

Yeah, really.

Ballistics reports showed Jiverly Wong fired 87 times from a 9mm Beretta and 11 times from a .45-caliber handgun. If he bought the ammunition online, he could have paid as little as $40 for the rounds he fired.

Friends say Wong complained that he only received $200 a week in unemployment benefits.

"Chris Rock says in one of his routines — have all the guns you want but charge like $1,000 for every bullet," said Jackie Hilly of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence. "I think if you raised the price, you would probably discourage the violence, but I don't think you would prevent it."

In other news, Eddie Murphy suggested that raising the price of cars to a minimum of $300,000 would increase carpooling while decreasing the number of people picking up transvestite streetwalkers.

But that's neither here nor there.

What I really want to know from ABC's Kates is just how much a massacre is supposed to cost. If Kates thinks the cost of the ammunition used in the massacre was too inexpensive, what would be an appropriate price to pay for the slaughter? If Wong paid $98,000 for the bullets he used in his massacre ($1,000/bullet x 98 bullets) would Mr. Kates have then found the cost in human lives acceptable?

Of course, we know that Kates and his allies couldn't care less about the specific cost of bullets used in this shooting or other gun crimes, because the cost is only secondary to their primary goal of establishing control over gun owners.

Gun laws have always been about establishing political control over a population and forcing them to rely on the government to protect them.

Can we think of any reason why typically left-leaning journalists and politicians might want to advocate for people being forced to rely on the government?

Yes we can.

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Frankly, it sounds like crap science geared towards a predetermined political verdict.

I think both the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration would consider a show trial that results in across-the-board convictions to be in their best diplomatic interests in dealing with the Iraqi government, who have rather foolishly (IMHO) decided to push the issue as a matter of national pride.

It takes only a layman's understanding of ballistics and metallurgy to see the obvious questions that the FBI laboratory seems to have failed to adequately answer.

I'm not giving Blackwater blanket immunity for their actions in Iraq by any stretch of the imagination, but there are certainly enough questions about the quality of the investigation and the forensic research thus far released, the forensic evidence being withheld under the rubric of religious customs, the chain of evidence, and prosecutorial political influence to cast serious doubt on whether there can be a fair trail for the accused.

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Harold Evans, editor and historian according to his bio, can now added "discredited crank" to his list of accomplishments, all thanks to a rant he published in Tina Brown's The Daily Beast.

The rant, Accomplices to Murder, attacks, well, nearly everyone as being an accomplice in the recent spate of mass shootings.

Indeed, Evans may have something when he accuses the society at large for creating an environment where such barbaric events are too commonplace. But Evans goes over the line in attempting to fix blame to certain people and groups in a rant howled into type.

Unencumbered by his former roles as a historian and editor, Evans has now descended to printing blatant falsehoods to support his position, acts which should result in a retraction of his article, and perhaps a re-evaluation of his relationship with the Beast.

He rants:

All these gun killings—43 in total—occurred over the last 26 days. All harvest profuse expressions of sympathy and prayers for the families and the communities. The detestation for the killers is universal. How could it not be? These are crazed and evil people. They merit our detestation.

But they are not alone in their guilt. The people who put guns into the hands have a share of that ignominy. Who are they?

The guilty are the gun dealers at flea markets and state shows who will sell any number of weapons to anyone—juveniles, criminals, nuts—without any background check or records.

By federal law, licensed gun dealers must have perspective purchasers fill out ATF Form 4473. Dealers then must check a government issued photo ID and then must call the FBI-run NICS (National Instant Criminal Background Check System) for a background check of the buyer.

This background check must be performed by gun dealers for all firearms transactions, at their primary business front location in a guns store, a flea market, or a gun show. There are no exceptions, and form 4473 specifically includes question #17 on the form that asks "Location of sale if at a gun show. (city, state)".

Only individuals who are not gun dealers may sell their private firearms without a background check according to federal law, though that varies according to the laws of individual states.

Mr. Evans flatly lies when he says dealers are not required to perform a background check, as direct links to the government web sites and documents above clearly shows. This lie is pervasive enough throughout his screed, and forms enough of the underlying thesis, to demand that the rant be retracted in its entirety.

But Evans is just warming up, and he is likewise deceptive when he implies the Mexican cartels are heavily-armed because of lax U.S. gun laws.

83% of the firearms captured by Mexican law enforcement in the past two years –more than 20,000—came from sources other than the U.S civilian market, and most come primarily from the international black market.

Mexican cartels are often armed with hand grenades, automatic weapons, and anti-tank rockets—weapons unavailable on the U.S market at any price.

But nowhere does Mr. Evans display his ignorance more than when he discusses the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban.

The assault weapons "ban" did not ban assault weapons. The popularity, sale, and ownership of semi-automatic military-style weapons grew over the ten-year course of the ban, all quite legally. Several American gun companies that build "assault weapons" exclusively grew over the course of the ban, and the already low rate of crimes committed with such weapons never deviated substantially from the roughly 2% that it was before, during, and after the ban.

The actual net effect of the ban was no reduction in crimes committed with the class of firearms covered in the ban, an actual increase in the distribution and popularity of so-called "assault weapons," and the creation of an entirely new class of ultra-compact and powerful handguns designed for concealed carry, which brought even more specialized gun manufacturers into existence.

The Department of Justice study Evans sought to cite as evidence of a drop in gun crime as a result of the ban also seems utterly irrelevant to his argument, and a bit of a purposeful red herring. We don't know precisely which report he refers to because he omits that detail, but by Evans' own description, the DOJ study was for automatic weapons, not the semi-automatics covered in the ban. Evans can't even plead ignorance of the difference in the terms, as he explains the difference between automatic and semi-automatic himself:

...semi-automatic fire (one trigger pull per shot but with magazines enabling the user to fire hundreds of rounds in a minute).

He knows the difference, but appears intent on conflating the terms on purpose. Is he being purposefully deceptive? It would appear so.

The only person "guilty" in this shameful display of collapsed ethics is one Mr. Harold Evans, who commits the journalistic sin of deceiving and misleading his readers, massacring truth along the way.

Update—A Nepotistic Beast? As "happyfeet" points out in the comments, the head of the Daily Beast, Tina Brown is married to Harold Evans.

Will she chose to retract her husband's sloppy rant, or risk the integrity of her latest venture and her life's work as an editor, along with Barry Diller's investment in her leadership?

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Treacher and Hot Air have caught the face of the liberal blogosphere with a bad case of foot-in-mouth, and a serious case of amnesia.

First, the cringeworthy tweet:

When we were out of power, we organized to win the next election. Conservatives, apparent, prefer to talk "revolution" and kill cops.

Last I checked, radical neo-Nazi conspiracy theorists aren't exactly in the conservative mainstream.

Kos' amnesia?

Left-wing progressive and Indymedia contributor Andrew Mickel is currently on death row for his 2002 assassination of Red Bluff Police Officer David Mobilio.

But unlike yesterday's reactionary murder of three Pittsburgh, PA policemen who responded to a domestic violence call that escalated into an ambush, Mickel purposefully planned his murder in advance, picking the time, the place, and the victim.

He was caught for the murder because of his desire to promote his crime in hopes of starting a violent revolution against the government.

Six days after the shooting, a manifesto appeared on more than a dozen Web sites operated by the left-leaning Independent Media Center.

It began: "Hello Everyone, my name's Andy. I killed a Police Officer in Red Bluff, California in a motion to bring attention to, and halt, the police-state tactics that have come to be used throughout our country. Now I'm coming forward, to explain that this killing was also an action against corporate irresponsibility."

Mickel, whom his parents compared him the Unabomber according to Wikipedia went to school at Evergreen State College, the same radical leftist institution that produced Rachel Corrie, an International Solidarity Movement (ISM) activist. The ISM works closely with terrorist organizations in Gaza, and Corrie was killed while apparently defending a terrorist smuggling tunnel.

Kos can make sweeping condemnations based upon alleged ties between his political opponents and criminals, but conveniently forgets the blood his direct peers spill.

I guess we should just be thankful Kos didn't tweet that he felt the same way about Pittsburgh police officers as he did contractors in Fallujah.

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The best minds progressive politics has to offer have apparently met on their little list and determined that—eureka!—it is the fault of the evil right wing neocon media that an unemployed sociopath ambushed and killed three police officers in Pittsburgh that were responding to a domestic violence call placed by his mother.

Explains the Neiwert:

We're gathering more information about Richard Polawski, the 23-year-old man who decided to kill three Pittsburgh police officers and wound three others because it appears he was afraid they -- at the behest of the Obama administration -- were going to take his guns away. (Dude, they definitely are now.)

Seems he was laying in wait in a carefully planned ambush:

Richard Poplawski, 23, met officers at the doorway and shot two of them in the head immediately, Harper said. An officer who tried to help the two also was killed.

Poplawski, armed with an assault rifle and two other guns, then held police at bay for four hours as the fallen officers were left bleeding nearby, their colleagues unable to reach them, according to police and witnesses. More than 100 rounds were fired by the SWAT teams and Poplawski, Harper said.

And he was paranoid about the Obama administration taking people's guns away -- even though, of course, there have been no indications of any such plans beyond NRA rantings:

Of course there have been no indications that the Administration wants to put in place additional restrictions or bans.

Not here, at http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/urban_policy/:

Address Gun Violence in Cities: Obama and Biden would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts the ability of local law enforcement to access important gun trace information, and give police officers across the nation the tools they need to solve gun crimes and fight the illegal arms trade. Obama and Biden also favor commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent.

All of those plans to further restrict the rights of Americans—and threaten the safety of police officers— on President Obama's official Presidential agenda have been previously been debunked. Police groups are against the repeal of Tiahrt Amendment, the gun show loophole is a myth, and the net result of the Assault Weapons Ban was to create and entirely new class of ultra-compact centerfire handguns, with no measurable impact on crime and an increase in gun availability and popularity.

The only reason to favor any of the measures Obama does above is the incremental encroachment of the Second Amendment, which has been a constant theme of his entire political career.

More of those "NRA rantings" have come from Attorney General Eric Holder, who said:

"As President Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons," Holder told reporters.

Holder said that putting the ban back in place would not only be a positive move by the United States, it would help cut down on the flow of guns going across the border into Mexico, which is struggling with heavy violence among drug cartels along the border.

Holder's statement was immediately downplayed by the White House, but it was never disavowed, as it an accurate reflection of Obama's official policy.

As for the story being spread by the Administration—including President Obama, AG Holder, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—that 90% of guns recovered from the Mexican cartels had their origins in the United States and therefore justify more gun control, that has also been exposed as a total lie.

The Mexican government only turns over to the U.S. government guns that they think had the possibility of being traced to America. The vast majority of the weapons they've recovered from the cartels in the past two years—more than 20,000—were from other sources including the Mexican military, and included weapons not available on the U.S. gun market at any price.

None of this, of course, is an excuse for this thug's ambush of police officers trying to uphold the peace. Not his job loss, nor his dishonorable discharge in Marine Corps boot camp, nor his Klannish (nearly progressive) hatred of Zionism, nor his psychological defects or fears.

Anger, is an emotion. It is apolitical and amoral, neither right nor wrong nor identifiable with a party affiliation. It is how a person choses to channel anger into action that defines him as good or evil or benign.

A person could channel his anger and fear of an Administration's clear desire to restrict Constitutional rights in a good way by becoming politically active and working to make sure others know of the infringements the President desires.

Or a person could use his anger and channel them into evil actions, such as murdering police officers... or use the story about those murders, along with willful lies and half truths, to attack others for a momentary political advantage.

Both are evil acts.

It's simply a matter of degree.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:22 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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By all accounts, there were 14 dead (including the shooter) and four wounded when police finally entered the American Civic Association in Binghampton, NY yesterday, at least an hour after a three-minute rampage had ended with the death of the shooter.

If autopsies determine that even one of the 13 victims died after the "golden hour" and could have been saved by police immediately entering the building and getting them medical care, instead of forming a perimeter and just waiting, then I hope the citizens if Binghampton call for Chief Joseph Zikuski's ouster.

Why do I have a CCH permit? Because when seconds count, police are just seconds 25 yards and several hours away.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:27 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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More information is already coming out about the man who went on a shooting spree inside the American Civic Association in Binghamton, NY today.

Jiverly Voong, 42, was a nationalized naturalized Vietnamese-American who has been in the United States for 28 years. He began his rampage at 10:31 AM, killing 13 others and himself by 10:33 AM. There is still some uncertainty about the number of people who were wounded during the shooting who are in area hospitals.

Voong is said to have used a pair of semi-automatic handguns in his assault, once chambered in 9mm and one chambered for 45 ACP (Kudos to the ABC News staff for using my rewrite of that paragraph to report the story more accurately; they had originally used a sentence that described the weapons used inaccurately as heavy caliber automatic pistols).

Police have no known motive for Voong's attack, but some media are suggesting that his recent layoff from IBM may have been part of the reason for the for the shooting. An account of last week's layoffs from WBNG suggests a thin motive for attacking the Civic Association:

Big Blue plans to layoff 5-thousand U.S. Employees today.

IBM headquarters has not responded to calls about whether there are cuts at the Endicott site.

Conrad says Alliance has been told layoffs are taking place in Global Business Services, Systems Technology Group, and Global Technology Services.

"We are hearing that these jobs will be eliminated here in the United States and the work shifted to India, China, Asia-Pacific and Latin America." says Conrad.

It is thin and perhaps irrational reasoning that would lead an immigrant to attack other immigrants for jobs that are leaving this country, if this was indeed Voong's motive. Sadly, that is all the motive we have at this time, and no motive could every justify such a senseless act.

I would caution Americans on the left not to use this senseless tragedy to push for more gun control (New York has restrictive gun laws that obviously failed here), just as I'd advise my fellow citizens on the middle and right not to blame the current or former Presidential Administrations for the recession that led to IBM's layoffs. Congress?

That's a point that may well be worth discussing...

Update: As they so often are, earlier media reports were wrong. Voong (formerly Wong) hated America, was obsessed with guns, and hated having poor English skills.

Illiteracy kills?

Zikuski said Wong was depressed about his poor English-speaking skills, which he was teased about, and his recent unemployment.

"He was terminated from his job at a place called Shop Vac, and he was very upset about that also," Zikuski said.

Zikuski told NBC's "Today" show that people "degraded and disrespected" the gunman over his inability to speak English well.

As a result, said Mayor Matthew Ryan on ABC's "Good Morning America," he was upset about his problems with the language.

This makes his decision to attack a room full of recent immigrants, many who we can assume also faced the challenge of adopting to a new language, even less understandable.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 06:00 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Breaking news is that the American Civic Association in Binghamton, NY today has been attacked. Casualty accounts vary depending on source, but it appears a minimum of 13 people have been killed and more than 20 have been wounded.

ABC News reports that the shooter committed suicide.

Please remember to take all early media accounts (including this blog entry) with a grain of salt until details are confirmed, and pray for the victims and their families.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:36 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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The solution to the expanding drug cartel violence in Mexico isn't for our anti-gun President and Attorney General to pass even more restrictive gun laws in the United States, but instead change Mexican laws to increase the flow of guns into the right hands in Mexico, paralleling the success of the Sawa or "Awakening" movement in Iraq that drove a similarly violent Sunni insurgency out of al-Anbar.

Read my latest, A Call to Arms in Mexico, at Pajamas Media.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:24 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I've said before that the anti-gun forces in this country must lie about the horrors of firearms, because reality won't to stoke a level of fear that would convince the American people to give up their Constitutional rights.

An anti-gun lie being pushed hard recently is that 90 % of the guns used to commit violent crime in Mexico come from the United States. Democrats favoring more gun control have been hammering that claim repeatedly, claiming the violence in Mexico justifies further restrictions here in the United States.

That lie, favored by our media, our Attorney General, and our President, is now circling the drain.

There's just one problem with the 90 percent "statistic" and it's a big one:

It's just not true.

In fact, it's not even close. By all accounts, it's probably around 17 percent.

What's true, an ATF spokeswoman told FOXNews.com, in a clarification of the statistic used by her own agency's assistant director, "is that over 90 percent of the traced firearms originate from the U.S."

But a large percentage of the guns recovered in Mexico do not get sent back to the U.S. for tracing, because it is obvious from their markings that they do not come from the U.S.

"Not every weapon seized in Mexico has a serial number on it that would make it traceable, and the U.S. effort to trace weapons really only extends to weapons that have been in the U.S. market," Matt Allen, special agent of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told FOX News.

So where are the 83-percent of guns coming from, if they aren't coming from the United States?

Shockingly, cartels that exist to smuggle large quantities of illegal drugs internationally also have the ability to smuggle large quantities of illegal weapons internationally as well. Who knew?

Well, anyone with the slightest bit of integrity.

The super-majority of firearms that have turned up in the hands of Mexican cartels came from black market sources, Central and South American revolutions, are smuggled in from Asia, or come from deserters of the Mexican military.

We should hope that President Obama's administration, members of Congress, and media outlets that reported the 90-percent lie will be as honest as Fox News was, and put this myth to rest.

I have hope, but not expectations.

Update: An interesting take on Mexico's gun laws and gun culture from the inside.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:43 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Republicans have now offered an alternative budget that is based upon a very simple truth that seems to elude both the President and Congress, that a nation cannot spend its way out of debt.

It proposes stopping all non-stimulative "stimulus" spending, freezing most discretionary spending for five years, and implementing a simple, common-sense tax structure so simple that even an Obama Administration appointee can figure it out.

Will Congress or the President embrace the entirely rational approach of lessening the growth of government spending in troubled times?

Of course not.

It took years of dedicated, concentrated self-deception for Democrats to finally reach the point where they could create a "reality-based community" so logically damaged that they could reassure each other that government-by-Ponzi-scheme was a viable economic model.

They will not let such a grand self-deception go down without a fight, and you can bet your last Yuan that the more brutal reality intrudes, the worse the cognitive dissonance of their fellow travelers will get.

Democrats will continue to spend money we don't have at an ever increasing pace until they are either thrown out of office or the country itself is bankrupted.

The President and his Congress are crashing.

It may be too late the stop the car, but if we can act quickly enough, strongly enough, we might be able to lessen the inevitable impact.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:47 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Via The Gun Source:

That NFA laws have been repealed through a long standing court battle in the 7th US Circuit Court. The president of TGSCOM had sued the federal government on the grounds that the NFA law violated the Second Amendment of the Constitution. After heated and lengthy oral arguments, TGSCOM is now able to sell fully automatic weapons to the general public without tax stamps and the additional background check. The one stipulation to the agreement is that fully automatic rifles will be treated like handguns in that they will require a purchaser of 21 and older, the firearm must be transferred in the state of their residence (same as handguns) and that the buyer must submit to all regulations in the state of their residence.

I'd been watching this in the court system and had hoped for this outcome, but frankly was surprised TGSCOM prevailed in such a manner, and with so little fanfare. Since I'm a registered gun writer because of my work for Pajamas Media I was able to order a Glock 18 machine pistol during a writer's only sale last night. With spare 33 round magazines, it will probably become my new concealed carry pistol.

Once I saw up the money from the Obama stimulus, I'll also be picking up the 100-round G36K for "squirrel and rabbit hunting" and the FN M249 Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) I've always wanted.

Frankly, I don't think I'd use it for hunting, but it might make parts of Durham accessible again.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 06:12 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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