"Fun" with stereotypes

Liberal commentator Bill Maher had a knee-slappin' good time recently listing some supposedly "black" characteristics he thinks President Obama should demonstrate just because one of his parents happened to come from Africa:



Robert Byrd, that wily old Klansman, couldn't have stereotyped the President any better.

And we're supposed to be the racists? 

Off topic but interesting, at least to me

Presented for your reading pleasure in its unaltered entirety (but without the attached picture; we're not so cruel as to provide a means to publicly identify this person, however unlikely that possibility might be) is a personal ad we found yesterday on Craigslist:

"i dont know if i should be doing this i'm kind of fed up with me but any ways i cant stand retarded and anowing men and dumb and no one that does drugs and thinks there black or a wanna be. i dont work i stay home with my kids and my ex pays my rent and electric and takes my last two kids everyday for a few hours my other ones dont really have a dad at all i dont have contact with him cause he is a felon. so no drama there. i think i'm just board really posting that i cant have anymore kids. just looking for someone layed back and not anowing and i will tell you if you are i'm not romatic dont know why hate have sex dont know why just hate it and dont like to kiss but that can change you never know i've been in a lot of abusive relation ships so thats what i'm kind of used to and i do take control most of the time cause i've always have my ex always told me i'm like the man in the family. well someone had to be since he was a child. but anyways just looking hang out nothing more. when i get the time. whenever i get either my sister or mom to watch my kids but i usually can get away. thanks for reading hope no one thinks i'm lame."

You're lame, ma'am.

What unmitigated gall

There were not one but two front-page human-interest stories in Friday's Arizona Republic (apparently this sort of article is what passes for hard news over there these days) which described in detail all of the, you know, inconvenience that SB 1070 is causing all of the illegal aliens residing in this state, and how a significant percentage of them are preemptively leaving before the law becomes effective, which was kind of the point all along.

Infuriatingly, some of the undocumented people profiled in the first of the articles were actually willing to give their full names as well as list where their children go to school, almost as if they were publicly flaunting their illegal status one more time before hitting the road:

"Claudia Suriano is sitting with four fellow school volunteers at Brunson-Lee Elementary in Phoenix's Balsz district. She is among three who are leaving the state."

Back to her home country?  Hah.  Ms. Suriano and her husband (also an illegal alien) are simply off to New Mexico, where the city of Santa Fe has proudly been an official "sanctuary city" for illegals since 1999, and also now happens to be the burg whose oh-so-clueless business leaders are welcoming Arizona's illegals (all of them?) with open arms:

“'We are a sanctuary city and we welcome all people to Santa Fe,' said Keith Toler, executive director of the Santa Fe Convention and Visitors Bureau."

Good luck with your smug policy, Keith.  Once your liberal residents, who think they're doing something positive for their city (and egos) get a taste of the kinds of issues Phoenix and Los Angeles have been dealing with for decades, they'll change your tune for you in a hurry, of that we're positive.

Then, of course, in the second article in Friday's Republic all of us hate-filled racist peasants get enlightened as to just why one illegal couple decided to both break our laws as well as butt in front of millions of other people waiting to get here the right way: 

"Juan and Maria are aware of the irony of their decision. They moved to this country, in part, so their children could have a better life."

Funny thing, that reason.  Turns out those wonderful children for whom the couple just had to break our laws to benefit were formerly imaginary kids they didn't have when they arrived here fifteen years ago:

"Francisco, 12, his older brother and younger sister were born in Phoenix."

Which, of course, makes them built-in living excuses to justify sparing their parents any consequences for their being here in illegally since, oh, 1995 or so.  "Anchor babies", the kids are sometimes called, since they are callously used to gin up sympathy for the parents, just like Juan and Maria are attempting to do right here.  It doesn't seem to be working anymore, though, as approximately 70% of Arizonans (and roughly the same percentage nationwide) are in favor of securing our borders while at the same time making it difficult enough for undocumented people to find formal work that they just give up and home.  

Which, again, is the whole point of the law - not to jail people because they happen to appear browner than everyone else, but simply to turn up the legal heat to the point that it's no longer worthwhile for people here illegally to risk staying here any longer, and they end up self-deporting themselves, hopefully back to their home nations in order to change them for the better.  

After all (and this is a truly important point), these exact people are for the most part the hardest-working, bravest and most resourceful of the residents of those countries, and are the very people that are needed to change those tinpot, corrupt cesspools of failure into functioning democracies of their own that can finally provide a decent standard of living for all of their citizens, not just the powerful elite (yes, we're pointing directly at you, Mexico).

How are you going to denigrate this man's actions, Boss Daley?

An 80-year-old Chicago resident who is reported to be a Korean War veteran shot and killed an armed intruder at his home early yesterday.  The thug had apparently been trying to enter the back door of the home the man shares with his elderly wife when the incident occurred.

A clear case of successfully defending one's home, life and loved ones?  Indubitably.  Case closed.

The problem now, though, lies in the fact that the homeowner used a handgun to accomplish said trash removal, and that particular item has been outlawed for that town's residents since 1976 (although we see how much good the ordinance did in stopping the bad guy from getting his hands on one).  That law is still in force, although the Supreme Court is expected to rule against that unconstitutional ban any day now.

"Neighbors described the elderly couple, who both walk with canes, as pillars of the community in Garfield Park, where home invasions have been all too frequent."

We absolutely dare King Emperor Mayor-for-Life Richard Daley to allow his pet district attorneys to charge this man with a crime for daring to defy His Dishonor's edict on possessing a legitimate self-defense weapon, one which served the exact purpose for which it was manufactured, namely enabling a law-abiding citizen to save the two lives (including his own) which were being directly threatened by that home invader.  An attorney has already offered to defend the homeowner for free:

"'Self-defense isn't just a right, it's a duty,' said attorney Joel Brodsky. 'If this man is prosecuted for saving his own life it's not just a travesty, it's justice turned inside out.'"

Not to mention the fact that we really, really doubt that there are two law-abiding jurors in that town, much less 12, who would vote to convict this man of anything right about now.

Good luck defending your cherished freedom-robbing law now, regardless of how short a time it's got left to remain in effect, Mr. Daley.  We hope some of your corrupt monies were used to hire a stellar PR team.  You're going to need their assistance very soon.

Here's today's "Ray of Hope"

"The U.S. Constitution has become a popular document to read in Washington and beyond, thanks in part to the rise of the Tea Party movement, The Hill reports.

The pocket edition, which also includes the Declaration of Independence, shot up to 10th in March among top sellers at the Government Printing Office, the Washington-based publication said."

God bless 'em, the peasants seem to finally be waking up and realizing what's being done to them.

Let's hope it's not already too late for all of us.

Today's TASER Travesty

Officers with the Tybee Island, Georgia police (what's with the cops in Georgia lately, anyway?) are accused of using a TASER not once, but twice on an 18-year-old autistic man with a heart condition and then throwing him to the ground, breaking one of his front teeth in the process, simply because the teen was sitting on the curb with his head between his arms:

"[Clifford] Grevemberg's brother, Dario Mariani, says officers told him Grevemberg was being drunk and disorderly. He says he responded that the youth is a special needs child who has never had alcohol."

This sounds suspiciously like one of those all-too-often occurring incidents where a person didn't snap to as fast as the officers wanted, so the cops arrogantly decided to speed things up a bit by misusing a "less than lethal" weapon that was never intended to be deployed as a compliance tool.  How helpful of them.

"A police dispatcher said Sunday nobody was available to comment."

No, we imagine no one at the department will be willing to opine on this apparently maddening turn of events for quite some time, at least until the inevitable lawsuit is settled.

Speaking the truth

"The masses must never be controlled for the sake of the lunatic fringe. Remember "Don't Tread on Me"? Don't."

Rock star and freedom activist Ted Nugent, as part of an op-ed recently published in the Washington Times.

The whole piece is well worth a careful read.

A small correction

Our bad.  Jose Madrigal, the illegal immigrant accused of raping a woman in Edmonds, Washington last week, hasn't in fact been kicked out of our country on 4 previous occasions, as we stated here the other day.

He's actually been deported an unbelievable NINE times, and at least some of those followed serious felony convictions:

"Madrigal's arrest and immigration record includes a staggering number of contacts with law enforcement since 1989. That's the year he was convicted of theft using a firearm in California. 

He was deported a couple of times after that. Then in 1999, he was arrested for drug sales in both San Diego and San Francisco. Records show that he was deported three times that year between April and August.

He was arrested for drugs again in Stockton, Calif. in 2000. In 2002, he pleaded to third degree sexual assault in Denver. Later that year, he was deported again. And in 2003, records show he was deported three more times."

Why didn't ICE file felony charges against Madrigal at some point to give him some serious prison time after they knew that he was continuing to come to America to cause this sort of mayhem?  We don't (and may never) know, because "Immigration and Customs Enforcement has refused to comment on the case".

Yes, we imagine they wouldn't.  Nice work, fellas.

Secure our borders first, Feds, then we'll entertain talk about possibly granting yet another amnesty to the millions of people who rudely jumped the line ahead of everyone else and are here illegally.

Why is that seemingly simple concept so difficult for our "betters" on Capitol Hill to grasp?

The Jack-Booted Thug(s) of the Week...

... are the Federal and local law-enforcement officers who, ignoring the lessons of the Kathryn Johnston incident which occurred a few years ago right up the road in Atlanta (which caused three of that city's officers to end up in prison), served a drug warrant at the Polk County, Georgia home of 76-year-old Helen Pruett, during which the frail woman suffered the latest in a series of heart attacks.  Pruett is now in the local hospital's ICU and is listed in critical condition.

Yep, you guessed it.  Just like in the Johnston case, these buffoons managed to raid the wrong house, despite their apparently performing a "comprehensive investigation": 

"Police say they have had her [Marchelle Holl, Pruett's daughter] mother's home under surveillance for two years."

They sure did an outstanding job with all of that time with which to work, didn't they?  Just think how much of our tax money went towards funding this total debacle.

At least Polk County Police Chief Kenny Dodd is refreshingly stepping up to do the right thing, instead of acting like the majority of his colleagues in similar situations who cowardly hide behind the "we're investigating the incident" smokescreen until the press coverage blows over:

"Dodd says he has gone to the hospital to check on Pruett and apologize to the family for what has happened."

Thank you, sir.  We suppose it would be too much to ask the Imperial thugs over at the DEA to do the same thing.

Look - we don't like that people use illegal drugs, and never have and wouldn't ever use them ourselves.  It saddens and sometimes disgusts us.  It is now patently obvious, however, even to current U.S. drug "czar" Gil Kerlikowske, that 40 years and $1 trillion of our tax money has failed to make even a small dent in the usage rate of drugs in America:

"'In the grand scheme, it has not been successful,' Kerlikowske told The Associated Press. 'Forty years later, the concern about drugs and drug problems is, if anything, magnified, intensified.'"

Just like Prohibition, the government is never going to win this fight.  It's clearly time to quit pouring resources and money down this rabbit hole, not least because fighting this losing battle with ever-increasingly unconstitutional tactics regularly inflicts harm on innocent bystanders such as Johnston and Pruett (to say nothing of empowering the kind of murderous drug gangs that this posse supposedly had in their cross hairs).  Decriminalize drugs, penalize people who drive while using or who otherwise put other people's lives and health at risk, and let free adult individuals make the decision whether or not to be stupid and ingest poison.

It does happen to be their bodies to do with what they wish, after all.

There's been far too many of these stories lately

A 46-year-old illegal immigrant (who in the past 15 years has been deported at least 4 times) is now under arrest and charged with rape after an alert Edmonds, Washington police officer responded to a woman's scream for assistance and found the man in the middle of sexually assaulting her. 

"Documents say [Jose] Madrigal told police 'Sometimes we have control in our brains, but we make mistakes.'"

Rape is never a "mistake", pal.  Neither is the thoroughly incompetent way that our Federal government is mismanaging our sovereign borders, even after solemnly vowing to do better after the last illegal immigrant amnesty was granted in 1986.  The situation has purposely been left to fester for a host of reasons, the most prominent of which is the pathetic attempt by lawmakers to avoid any ridiculous claims of "bias" against certain racial groups for sealing our borders against all undocumented immigrants, and now we find ourselves in a massive quagmire that can only begin to be cleaned up when the spigot of people migrating here illegally is at last shut off.

Most illegal immigrants are not violent felons and are for the most part law-abiding, save for their obvious crime of being here without legal papers.  But this one was a brutal and remorseless thug, and now an innocent woman is harmed for life.

Secure our borders first, Congress and President Obama, then we'll maybe begin to hash out what to do with the people who already butted in line and are here when they're not supposed to be.

Which highly-placed government functionary is going to offer this victim an apology for diddling around with "vital" legislation such as controlling the amount of salt in our diets or mandating that electric cars are loud enough for their taste, instead of doing one of their few real jobs in making sure dangerous intruders to our country like this one are put out and kept out?

Extremely poor judgment

If you're an Iowa state trooper in plainclothes who is driving the governor around in an unmarked SUV that isn't an official police vehicle, if you feel that another motorist cut you off perhaps you should radio for assistance instead of trying to pull over the miscreant yourself by repeatedly trying to pull in front of the car to force it to stop in the middle of the interstate, a trick any other garden-variety mental midget road-rager might attempt to pull.  You just might be mistaken for one:

"Jessica Lown, a spokeswoman for the Iowa Department of Public Safety, said today: 'The trooper believed he was being cut off by another driver and he attempted to make a traffic stop. It’s not a typical law enforcement vehicle so the trooper had some trouble getting the driver pulled over.'

...


The Pacifica’s driver did not lead the trooper in a pursuit, but simply continued to drive."

We wouldn't have stopped either.

“'I wouldn’t say there was any immediate danger, that’s not been my impression,' Lown said."

Then why try to make the stop at all instead of letting local law enforcement do their jobs?  This situation could have gone sideways very quickly, all because a trooper rightly or wrongly got a little miffed over the driving skills of a fellow motorist and decided, despite the fact that he was unrecognizable as a police officer as well as in the middle of performing a different task than traffic duty, to use his police powers to chase the miscreant down and give him a little lecture.

The car's driver, Edwin Allen, who had his wife and two young children in the car, stopped immediately when flashed by marked West Des Moines police cruisers, no doubt relieved that the imbecile tailgating him the for the last few miles was finally going to get his comeuppance.  Imagine Allen's surprise when he found out that it was the governor's official car that was riding his bumper.

Allen was not cited in the incident, and has now filed a formal complaint against Trooper Michael Clyde.  I guess now we know why Clyde had been previously relegated to chauffeur duty.

No surprise there

President Obama's dear "Auntie Zeituni" Onyango, whom he and his advisers naturally had no earthly idea was living in this country illegally in the Boston area, has been granted asylum in the U.S. 

This ruling comes despite Ms. Onyango being present in the country for the past six years in blatant defiance of a valid 2004 deportation order, and despite her clearly not fitting the plainly-stated criteria for seeking asylum, which requires that the applicant prove "that they face persecution in their homeland on the basis of religion, race, nationality, political opinion or membership in a social group", which certainly isn't the case here. 

Actually, the American people apparently aren't going to be let in on just what is the case here:

"The basis for her asylum request hadn't been made public."

Of course it hasn't.  It's obviously a classified matter of national security.

How many other garden-variety immigration cases are sealed up as tight as this one?  Not too many at all, we'd wager.

We see once again how nice it is to be "connected" to the ruling elite of this nation.

Case closed

For those of you who have been following the saga of our vehicle being burgled last fall, we have a conclusion to the story.

The perpetrator, who was caught when the person to whom he sold our stolen laptop contacted the manufacturer to obtain a recovery disk, plead guilty to two felonies and was sentenced to 5 1/2 years in state prison.  We were given possession of our laptop on Friday afternoon.  All in all, a mostly satisfactory conclusion to a very annoying situation.  (Interestingly, the detective assigned to our case reports that vehicle thefts in the same general area have dropped by more than 50% since this fellow was nabbed.  He had apparently been quite the busy thief.)

Since we are quick to point out egregious police misconduct on this site, we feel it's only appropriate to also note when departments and officers do their job professionally and efficiently with an emphasis on serving the public, as personified in this case by Detective Watson.  To that end, we posted the following letter today to his chief: 

Alan G. Rodbell, Chief of Police

Scottsdale Police Department

8401 E. Indian School Road

Scottsdale, AZ  85251

May 15, 2010

  

Chief Rodbell:

My name is Douglas Hester and I am a resident of Scottsdale.  I am writing to let you know how pleased I am with the excellent service I recently received from one of your officers, Detective Reid Watson #1125.

I was the victim of a vehicle burglary at my home last fall which resulted in the theft of a laptop computer.  Approximately one week after this event I received an email from the laptop manufacturer requesting that I complete a survey regarding a recent interaction with their technical support department.  Since I obviously hadn’t contacted them for service concerning property that had been stolen from me, I called and ascertained that someone had tried to obtain a recovery disk for my laptop. 

I subsequently relayed this information to your Auto Crimes division.  Detective Watson then promptly and successfully used this data to not only recover my laptop, but also track down and apprehend the person who broke into my car (and apparently many others during this crime spree).  The suspect has since pled guilty to felony charges and will be spending some years behind bars thanks to Detective Watson’s hard work and perseverance.

Police administrators such as you are always the first ones to be contacted when things go wrong; it only seems proper, then, that you also be notified when one of your employees does an outstanding job serving our community.  Detective Watson is a personable and highly competent officer who is a true asset to the city of Scottsdale.  If there is an appropriate departmental service award I would be pleased to nominate him for it.

Thank you very much for maintaining such a professional, service-oriented police department.

Sincerely,

Douglas J. Hester

Excellent work, gentlemen.  Our sincere thanks for a job well done.

From the Department of Glaringly Obvious Headlines

"Other states mull own version of migrant law"

If Arizona's new illegal immigration enforcement law is such a bad idea, then why are lawmakers in nine other states now considering enacting the very same legislation?

It will be interesting to see if the city of Los Angeles expands its recently announced policy of refusing to do business with Arizona due to its new law to any state that enacts such a statute.  LA's burghers aren't going to make any headway in dealing with their already massive budget crisis by petulantly boycotting a significant percentage of the entire country (as well as the Federal government, Congress has an identical law currently on the books), that's for sure.  That city has enough financial problems without causing itself even more trouble by taking its commerce ball and going home.

It's not the same experience

The current death-spiral of health care in England has recently taken an even steeper angle as schools over there are now increasingly deciding that biology students (translation: future doctors) may no longer perform animal dissections, not out of any ethical concerns but rather the tired old saw of  "health and safety reasons":

"Schools are abandoning the practice of cutting up frogs, rats and animal organs which has been a mainstay of biology lessons for generations, out of concern for squeamish pupils and fears that they could turn their scalpels on each other. 

Many institutions now use plastic replicas or computer animation in place of practical dissection, but experts have warned that “sanitised” simulations will fail to equip the future generation of biologists with essential practical skills." 

Have there in fact been a rash of laboratory duels to the death using probes and forceps?  Of course not, but that fact doesn't seem to mean anything to the British nuts who are in charge of education.

The vital importance of specimen dissection in the field of biology, particularly human anatomy and physiology, cannot be overstated.  No substitute technique, however technologically advanced, can come close to replicating viewing the actual structures in situ.  We can emphatically state this based upon years of personal experience.

We're quite sure the average British subject will be just thrilled to learn their future doctors learned anatomy by viewing videos and handling plastic models because they were too "squeamish" to study the real McCoy.

Good to know

The relatively few "connected" residents of Southern California who are fortunate enough to possess a handgun carry permit will be heartened to learn that shooting an innocent bystander (one who doesn't even make so much as a "furtive movement") is now perfectly OK, at least if one happens to be a police officer in San Bernardino County:

"A district attorney's report says an officer who fatally shot a bystander at a California pizzeria robbery was legally justified.

Chino police Cpl. Claudia Lisner shot 23-year-old Daniel Balandran outside the restaurant on Feb. 1, 2009.

Balandran was leaving a McDonald's and walked into a gunbattle between officers and two robbery suspects.
...
The report says Lisner asked Balandran to show his hands, but he did not. Lisner kept hearing shots and feared for her life, and she shot him in the chest."

After all, if that sort of idiotic reasoning is good enough for the "special people", it's good enough for the peasants, right?

Part of why the justice system has such an image problem

Got a deadlocked jury in Suffolk County, Massachusetts?  No problem.  The DA's office there will just begin investigating the lone holdout juror, right in the middle of deliberations, until they come up with a reason to bounce her, thereby ensuring the suspect's conviction:

"Suffolk Superior Court Judge Margaret Hinkle removed Lurlyn Seigler, 50, from the jury for omitting information about her ex-husband’s criminal record on her juror questionnaire.

The ouster came after [Calvin] Carnes’ jury on multiple occasions declared itself “deadlocked” and “frustrated.”

Prosecutors began running the names of all the jurors through Boston police databases after a victim-witness advocate recognized Seigler while the jury was deliberating."

Mr. Carnes's attorney is now asking the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court for a new trial for his client.

"The justices questioned whether it was proper for prosecutors to do background checks on all the jurors without first informing Hinkle about their concerns about Seigler. Jurors were screened before they were impaneled" 

"We don't need from the judge the judge.  We'll just take care of this little matter ourselves, especially since this juror is the reason things aren't going our way in this trial."

It's unknown to us if the murder suspect in this case was actually guilty or not of the accusations against him.  It really doesn't matter.  The proper step here (particularly given the circumstances listed) would have been to declare a mistrial and start over, frustrating as that might be, instead of allowing this travesty of an outcome to come about.

Judge Hinkle should be ashamed of herself for allowing the DA to pull such a ridiculous stunt right under her nose.

Secure our borders first

Two cases which clearly illustrate that our out-of-control borders need to be put under some sort of reasonable control before there is any further talk of comprehensive immigration reform a total amnesty for illegal aliens already unlawfully residing here in America:

1.  An illegal immigrant from Guatemala who was deported eight years ago after serving a prison sentence (14 months.  Big whoop.) for sexually assaulting a girl who was under 13 in Ramsey County, Minnesota has been indicted by a federal grand jury in that very same state for the crime of "unlawful re-entry after removal".  Translation:  he's back, and out of an entire country of locations from which to choose he unbelievably returned right to where he previously committed his heinous crime against a young child.

2.  An illegal immigrant from Mexico who has been previously deported at least twice for felony convictions, one for sexually assaulting a minor in Washington state, has been apprehended in Yuma, Arizona after being caught in this country once again.

Are all people unlawfully present in America violent felons?  Of course not.  But a significant percentage of them are in fact dangerous criminals who prey on innocent citizens, and we need to shut off the open spigot that infuriatingly allows low-lifes like these two to simply turn right around and reenter this country after being booted from it before there can be any discussion of altering our nation's current immigration policies.

Off topic but interesting, at least to me

We had the following (paraphrased) polite conversation this morning with a U.S. Census worker who came to our door:

Worker:  Good morning.  I'm assigned to this block of residences and am following up on households that didn't return their Census form.

Us:  Hello.  I did return the form, and within the time limit specified.

W:  Well, I don't know about any of that, I'm just doing what I'm told.  This will only take 3 or 4 minutes.

U:  Very well, I'll give you the information I supplied on the form.  My name is Douglas Hester and one person lives at this address.

W:  But there are other questions to answer, such as if you're Caucasian or not...

U:  I respectfully decline to answer those queries.  My ethnicity has nothing to do with enumerating the population and everything to do with the gerrymandering of legislative districts, and in any event is none of the Federal government's business.

W:  Um, OK, I just have to let you know that we will probably come back up to five times because of your refusal to participate...

U:  What refusal?  I answered all of the pertinent questions.  Just because I won't play the fishing for unnecessary information game doesn't mean I didn't comply with the Census.  You or your coworkers are free to come back, however I will not supply any other information than what I gave you just now.  Have a nice day.

W:  Goodbye.

Infuriating.  Answer any and all intrusive and probing questions (no matter how irrelevant to the task at hand) that our "betters" decide belong on the Census form, or else you're "refusing" to comply with the process?  Sorry, we're not going to play that game.

The Census Bureau is in possession of all the information they can lawfully require under the Constitution, and therefore have received all the data they're ever going to get from us.  If you've got a problem with that, Rahm Emanuel, White House hack in charge of politicizing a historically apolitical event, you can contact us directly.

He's perfectly fit to possess and use a firearm, as long as he works for England far away in another country

British Army soldier Corporal Craig Harrison is now the owner of the record for the longest recorded successful sniper shot.  He took out two Taliban machine-gunners from a GPS-measured distance of 8,120 feet, or more than a mile and a half.

What an outstanding display of skill as well as steel nerves, since the hero fired the rounds while supporting fellow soldiers who were then under fire from those Afghans.

It's a true pity that once Corporal Harrison returns to civilian life in England he'll be forbidden to have so much as a single-shot .22 rifle in his home for hunting, sport or even self-protection (the most basic of human rights), as the Nanny-state dictators who currently run that country have decreed that their law-abiding peasants may no longer possess firearms in their homes or in public, no matter the reason.

This means, of course, that the criminals over there, who naturally don't give a fig about any laws, are the only ones who have guns and are free to use them on the disarmed peasantry without fear of any personal danger to themselves.

Can anyone else appreciate the insane hypocrisy present here? 

"Heckuva job, Barry"

It turns out that members of the crackerjack Obama Administration, whose oh-so-smart leader just loves to take shots at former President George W. Bush over his (admittedly poor) handling of the Katrina disaster, have been sitting on their collective hands doing nothing about the BP oil spill for the last ten days, even though the NOAA already had a pre-approved burn plan in place to deal with precisely this sort of calamity in that very area:

"Federal officials should have started burning oil off the surface of the Gulf last week, almost as soon as the spill happened, said the former oil spill response coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

...

'They had pre-approval. The whole reason the plan was created was so we could pull the trigger right away instead of waiting ten days to get permission,' [Ron] Gouget said. 'If you read the pre-approval plan, it speaks about Grand Isle, where the spill is. When the wind is blowing offshore out of the north, you have preapproval to burn in that region. If the wind is coming onshore, like it is now, you can't burn at Grand Isle. They waited to do the test burn until the wind started coming onshore.'"

The article quotes Mr. Gouget as estimating that 90% of the spilled oil could have been burned off (avoiding the far worse, and now sadly likely, prospect of most of it washing ashore) had someone in the Federal Government simply got off their rear end and ordered the response plan to be implemented in a timely manner.

The mainstream media absolutely crucified former President Bush over Katrina.  Let's see if those sycophants, some of whom actually wrote the jokes Obama delivered at this past weekend's White House Correspondents' Dinner while the disaster in the Gulf increased in magnitude (his own version of fiddling while Rome burns?) will hold their Dear Leader to anywhere near the same standard they applied to his predecessor.

Memo to today's immigration protesters

Gathering by the thousands on a Communist holiday to wave flags from various other countries and chant "Si, se puede" en masse isn't really going to garner you any sympathy from the average American, whether citizen or legal resident.

This goes double when some of you are bold enough to appear on news cameras and identify yourself as being here unlawfully while giving your real name in order to demand "rights" that you simply don't possess.

In other related news, a Pinal County, Arizona sheriff's deputy was shot and wounded last night by some otherwise law-abiding people who just want to come here to have a better life "a group of suspected illegal immigrants who apparently had been hauling bales of marijuana along a major smuggling corridor in the Arizona desert".

Arizona didn't pass their new law with the intent to discriminate against and harass law-abiding minorities.  The state enacted the bill because it is drowning in undocumented people (upwards of 500,000 in a state with a legal population of 4.5 million) who drive down wages, disproportionately drain state resources and, unfortunately, significantly contribute to the crime rate, despite assertions to the contrary.

The Federal government has completely abandoned one of its few clearly delineated responsibilities, all while dabbling in such unconstitutional topics as controlling the amount of salt in the diets of a free citizenry.  Therefore, it falls to the individual states to pick up the slack.