>Miserable, No Good Legal Ruling

>All right, fine, the Legal Eagles tell me it’s not actually as bad as it sounds; but it still stinks and sounds dreadful: our State Supreme Court, in a mentally inferior 3-2 decision (in extra innings after rain delays on a moonless night, maybe — look, you run your courts your way and we’ll… See, we’re Hoosiers), decided a long-standing common-law right to resist unlawful entry (et sequelae) by the po-leece needed to be swept away.

As a practical matter, it’s kinda pointless; if Johnny Law comes knockin’ unwarranted nor in hot pursuit and you bar the door, you’re gonna get your hinder parts handed to you no matter what; after this ruling, if in the said process of rump-handing he happens to notice any Laetrile or prostitution, De Law is now on firmer ground if/when you’re brung up on charges….

Yeah, alla that. But IMO, it’s not the fiddling technical details, of which you’ve got to be an Esq. and plugged into the local legal loop to parse in full and proper, it’s the spirit of the thing; especially in that policebeings don’t get a weekly mental download from the Courts and are often operating without a whole lot more information on the fiddly details than you and me. (They’ve got handbooks…written, mostly, by lawyers in Law French or whatever they call the jargon nowadaze. You can image the utility of this to the working Peace Officer). So there are a lot of cops out there who just heard the same news story you saw and are thinking, in the backs of their minds, that the State Supreme Court is okay with possibly a little door-kicking and/or some preemptive home visits to the hinky. Most of ’em still won’t (I suspect the degree of personal restraint exercised by most sworn officers is altogether surprising, were we to learn of it) but no population is entirely free from those who Do Not Quite Get It.

And for their sake as well as ours (but mostly for ours, mine especially), this ruling needs fought. When I find out who’s standing up to it, I’ll let you know and we can pass the hat or have a bake sale or something. Wave signs. Go on a hunger strike and chain ourselves to the polling place door! (Look, it kind of worked for the suffragettes and all they were after was a chance to pick their oppressors). Something. (“Fetch the Gura!” Or does he only do guns? Fine, we’ll have to go ACLU on ’em).

–And I want to know who sang lead in this ruling: he needs impeached. Or at least unlawfully entered upon by a policeman or two.

Claire, quit hitting the snooze button on the alarm clock!

>FCC Adopts "Net Neutrality"

>Interestingly, there’s some thought that the FCC may not have the authority to make “net neutrality” rules — oh, yeah, and those rules are anything but “neutral.” There’s already talk of a checkmate by Congress.

Always interesting to me that the worst enemy of the Bill of Rights is our own government.

>It’s The Most ______ Of The Year

>And another semi-local LEO has been nicked for DUI in a squad car. On duty.

When it comes to stressful, when it comes to “long stretches of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror” or, worse yet, hours of nail-biting tension, police work rates right up there with the toughest jobs. This is a well-nigh inevitable predictor of a few members of the group having seriously major substance-abuse problems; but I still wonder, do their peers hate these guys? If any group is in a position to know the signs, if any bunch is in a position to see the detrimental effects of habitual drunkenness, it’s police.

So they’re either “protecting” their over-indulging peers — “protecting” them right out of a career — or they really don’t care. I’d actually accept the latter, even though I’d rate it cold-hearted, but the problem is that a problem drinker with a gun, a badge and an official vehicle he racks up a lot of mileage in on the same roads as you and me is a much bigger problem for those around them than the drunk who toddles off the neighborhood bar or liquor store and not-quite-staggers back home.

Seriously, officers, if you have peers who drink to excess, don’t just look away; don’t make excuses. Either get them some help or rat them out to the brass. They’re a danger to those they are sworn to protect and they are a danger to you.

>We’re Doomed! Doomed!

>…Hell of it is, we probably are. Stansberry and Associates are creating controversy and turning a tidy profit by telling you about it as a way of selling subscriptions to their service; and since it’s prognostication, who’s to say he’s wrong? Trouble is, they have a mildly mixed reputation; when the first Google return for your name that isn’t you contains fighting words like “scam,” I gotta suggest the ol’ emptor might wanna grain of caveat or two.

On the other hand — the U. S. Dollar is in sad straits and fixing to become sadder, even with tough ol’ Ron Paul on course to be chairing the committee that has oversight on the bureaucrats who advise the Fed on– aw, we’re doomed: onions have fewer layers.

You do need to have half a year’s food set back (we’re three months shy at Roseholme) and water, too (OMG, we have maybe a month); and though it is flat over the long term, gold has the advantage of holding purchasing power while the value of cash money plummets. (There’s people swear by silver, which is way below the famous 16:1 ratio. Spin the wheel if you can afford it, I guess). And do those things not because doom is imminently imminent but because it is never all that far away; one winter storm, one tornado, one major illness or accident, one layoff can have you digging into your reserves and getting through — if you have them.

Interestingly, as talk of a Coming Collapse or Greater Depression-Like-Thingie (GDLT, you read it here first, folks) is bandied about, I’ve been reading a very apt “seminal book of libertarian thought” that few folks seem to have read: Rose Wilder Lane’s The Discovery of Freedom. (Go to Tam’s Amazon link, buy a copy. You won’t be sorry).

Ms. Lane’s thesis, at least in the early going, is that while Government may be inevitable, it is invariably self-destructive as well; for every “service” a government renders past the bare minimum takes away energy that could be put to productive use; Government must inevitably grow to survive (since it accrues layer upon layer); and although “…there is a natural limit to the amount of human energy that Government can waste…,” but “because men in Government are using…force, they have no means of knowing what this natural limit is.” [Lane, op. cit. p 54, italics in the original].

She opines that societies only grow and prosper when Government is kept small enough that productive effort is not hampered; once Government has got big enough to meddle in economic activity, real progress comes to an end and they coast on past glories, eating up more and more productive capacity in parasitic routine until things fall apart. Government is simply a very complex self-unpowering machine that happens to provide police and courts.

Like that. Only with a lot more steps between “go” and “stopped.”

>Semi-Freedom Of Expression?

>It’s just a little bit pregnant over at North Carolina State University’s Free Expression Tunnel, where some students are up in arms that free speech is, well, free. Mike Flynn tells the tale and has the links.

>Just Say No

>The Libertarian Party missed a chance in not drumming up a candidate for Marion County Prosecutor.

Carl “Wrong Circle Of Friends” Brizzi isn’t running, and good riddance to bad rubbish,* says I. The GOP found Mark Massa to run and he looked like a pretty good choice — until I saw his sleazy attack ad on the TV this morning. (Quick read: the Dem running against him once defended a guy charged with icky sex crimes, which Mark’s ad says is evidence he shouldn’t be Prosecutor; it seems Mark doesn’t understand that once you’ve arrested them, even sickos are entitled to a fair trial. IMO, a public hanging should follow, just as soon as they’re found guilty; but everyone gets his day in court. ‘Cos it could be your turn next and the police try to get this sort of thing right but they’re only human).

Well, okay, there’s always the Dem, right? And even when I loathe their principles, they’re usually earnest and hardworking little nitwits, especially newbies like Terry Curry… Yeah. Except he’s a gun-grabber. Thinks We The People have too many firearms (“even semiautomatics,” quoth he, Oh. The. Horror.) and he says it’s wayyy too easy for us to get more.

Y’know, it’s a pity the recently-resigned BMV director didn’t get nicked working a public loo in time to get his name on the ballot, ‘cos right now I’d vote for a man who hangs out at the bus station before I’d vote for Terry or Mike. At least his creepiness was only small-scale.

We could pick a better Prosecutor by opening the phonebook at random and leafing forward from that point ’til an attorney’s listing showed up.

Mike, repudiate that ad, fast and in public! Terry, learn the truth and say it loud: a firearm in the hands of any law-abiding citizen isn’t a crime.

Or forget my vote. I’ll sit that race out. And press for removal of whichever of you wins, on grounds of ignorance: clearly, neither one of you understands the State or Federal Constitution and you’re therefore unqualified for the office of Prosecutor. Maybe you two should shine shoes in the City-County Building and see if maybe you could pick up a little lawyer-talk that way!
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* Mind you, I suspect him of being kind to children and animals and I should not be in the least surprised to learn he loves his spouse, supposing he’s got one. But his taste in friends was lousy.

>All Four Rules

>Jeff Cooper’s Four Rules — or the NRA’s Three, or the U. S. Army’s old 14 — include exhortations to control muzzle direction and to know one’s target and what it behind it.

It’s 2010 and the word still does not appear to have reached every shooter. The linked story tells of a local man, in his own suburban front yard, who was stung by a small-caliber round from a long way away. He’s okay, other than pain and a slug stuck in the muscles of his back (he’s saving up to have it removed); things could have worked out far worse if he’d been only a little more unlucky.

Colonel Cooper tells us, “Be sure of your target and what’s behind it.” My father, teaching me to shoot using the 1950s bomb-shelter behind our semi-suburban house as a backstop, favored a more Socratic method:

“Okay, your target is on The Hill (as the shelter was known). Where does the bullet go if you miss?”
“Into the ground…?”
“What if you shoot too high, what’s on the other side?”
“The cornfield.”
“That cornfield’s not half a mile wide! A .22 bullet can go over a mile. What’s on the other side of the field?”
“Ummm…a pasture…?”
“Yes, and?”
“…and Mr. —–‘s farmhouse?”
“Yes. Yes, it is. You keep that muzzle down! You don’t touch the trigger until the sights are on the target. Bullets always land somewhere!”

In hindsight, I can’t fully imagine the degree of faith and worry that went into his teaching an 11-year-old child safe gun-handling; but he went about it in a way that stuck with me. My older sister and younger brother got similar sessions, too, and on more than one occasion. Kids didn’t shoot unsupervised and supervision always came with instruction.

Safety: it’s your business. Bullets always land somewhere.

Bonus Ijits: What goes “bang” and lives in a stewpot? Hint, it’s occasionally found at airports! There isn’t really a Rule for this, but if there was, it would be one word: Don’t. If you can carry a gun, you can have it in your luggage on the plane if you follow the clear guidelines to flying with guns. Within the basic TSA procedure, the rules are a little different for every airline but you can find them via the web. The TV station, journalists, f’pete’s sake! — even managed to find the TSA guidelines and add them to their news story.

>Not Shooting The Bastards

>I kinda support the not-shooting thing, for a number of reasons which I may not have explained clearly enough; or perhaps my adherence to the zero-aggression principle makes me an “idiot.”

Mind you, the simple notion that you don’t start fights but you’re free to end them is echoed by the late Col. Cooper, who replied to being told “violence only begets violence” with the observation that if he had anything to say about it, it most certainly did, and with overwhelming strength.

There are plenty of folks out there — most famously the “Threepers” — who are willing to draw their line in the sand and explain precisely where it is and what conditions consitute crossing it. By so doing, the very least damage they do is handing their opponents a road map. And depending on how one’s resolve and response is stated, it can even be a criminal act in and of itself. “Making terroristic threats” is one of those Homeland Security crimes you don’t want to commit, even if you were hoping to write your memoirs in jail. Not every Threeper has done so — indeed, most are more circumspect than their PR would suggest — but it’s why I view them as the frailest canaries in the coal mine. When they start to vanish, things are heating up.

There’s Reason One: ‘Cos it’s lousy tactics at best. “Hello? High Command? Mr. Rommel? Hey, we’re gonna be landing at Normandy, early in June…” No. Do Not Do.

Reason Two: ‘Cos “direct action” does not have a good track record. Weathermen? Made of fail. The various 20th Century assassinations of public figures? Huge fail; the most infamous one gave us LBJ and LBJ gave us, among other messes, Vietnam and the Great Society. You want a Euro-style Social Democrat government here, one way to get stuck with it is if some criminal starts taking potshots at Federal politicians: the survivors will get carte blanche. Shooting Archdukes has a proven track record of working out very badly. Check out the Balkans if you think I’m making it up. Heck, check out striking coal miners.

Reason Three: It’s not time. It doesn’t take much study of history of the American Revolution (or a quick read-through of The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress*) to grasp that to succeed, “direct action” requires a number of components. Among them:
– A degree of popular support — not merely dissatisfaction with the way things are but a willingness to take drastic steps to change them. I’m not seein’ that second thing. Oh, there’s a willingness to take some steps, but they are steps in the direction of rallies and voting booths and that may yet be enough.
– Adversarial attitude of the existing government towards the governed. Ours is maybe at 50%.
– Organization. The Continental Congress didn’t suddenly spring into being; it was built on a wide array of predecessor organizations. No corresponding group exists…yet.

The Statists have already “initiated force.” They were busy doing it when Mr. Wilson was polluting the White House. They were snubbed by massive noncompliance when they tried Prohibition. They were initiating force in the 1930s, when Garet Garrett tried to wake your grandparents up. The governmental structures and traditions of this country have ensured that it has been very diffuse force, ramped up ever so slowly; but as anyone who has watched materials testing knows, it doesn’t matter how slowly it is done: keep applying force and eventually there is a breaking point.

Quite often it’s a lot more force past the bending point than you’d expect. But if the force keeps on increasing, it is reached, as inevitably as water runs downhill or communism collapses. You don’t need to hurry it along. –And that’s Reason Four: ‘cos war zones suck. It’s been a hundred and forty-five years since any Americans had to live in one right here at home and we’ve largely forgotten what it’s like to be stuck in a post-Katrina wasteland that persists, waning and waxing, for years. I’m in no rush to open that can of worms, especially since I may end up having to choose between eating them and starving.

We’re not out of options yet. Why take any irrevocable steps before you’re obliged to?
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* Robert A. Heinlein. You should own a copy. Buy it via the Amazon.com link at Tam’s.

>Gun School?

>Yep. Tam’s taking another class; Peter Pan may’ve sung, “I won’t grow up, I don’t want to got to school,” but it turned out he had 1337 combat skilz anyway.

Grownups have to learn ’em, or maybe relearn them, which is why my roommate, with tens of thousands of hours on the firing line, has put herself in the capable hands of Louis Awerbuck. Every little bit more of correct drill you do, every morsel of information from the folks who have Been There and Done That you absorb, the better off you’ll be.

One of the basic benefits (and therefore often overlooked) is that any good class will instill and reinforce good gun-handling, a topic that has been much on my mind since I dropped a gun week before last. I’d had a little .32 repaired (a Star, a very pretty example of their 1911-inspired platform; like Tam, I’m fond of .32s but I confine my collecting to Star, Savage pistols and the occasional Astra) and the ‘smith had put it in the triangular gun rug upside down to the way I’d sent it. Opened it too casually and down it went, right to the (hardwood) floor.

You might say, “No worries, it’s steel and no self-respecting gunsmith would send back a firearm with one in the chamber!” True, but they’re only human — the fellow who fixes my Stars, he may be pushing “superhuman” — and it is Always Loaded. Oh, it’s not like I tried to catch it; one of the Minor Rules but an important one, Never Try To Catch A Dropped Firearm. Nevertheless, I treated a gun about like it was a slab of bread and darned near broke a toe in the process; and I’d’ve still been lucky if that was the only negative outcome.

The cure for that is more class time; barring that, more time on a range where the other shooters — or at least the guy(s) in charge — do not hesitate to call out bad gun-handling. Before you can think about hitting what you are aiming at, you’ve got to make safe handling skills your default behavior.

Which is a long-winded way of saying I have got to get to the range — any range — this weekend! And it’s about time I took another actual class; somebody’s got to be running a “Handgun 201” refresher.

>Even More On The DUI Inadmissibly Drunk Mess

>It would appear the scene where Officer Bisard killed one man and critically injured two others was very quickly crawling with high-ranking police officials, including Assistant Chief Darryl Pierce, Deputy Chief Ron Hicks and Homeland Security[1] Commander John Conley. They are, we’re informed, less high-ranking now, knocked down one entire step to Lieutenant.

Yeah, that’ll bring the dead guy back and make the injured ones whole, won’t it?

The amount of tap-dancing around the truth, kiester-covering, fan-dances and just plain sleight-of-mind that has surrounded this mess, predictable though it is, still amazes me.

Let’s stop a minute and talk about drunks and drink; like crime and guns, the presence of the second in no way implies the first. The number of individuals who enjoy a drink before or after dinner, or who have a few beers on a hot afternoon — or a chilly one[2] — vastly outmatches the folks who can’t face the day (or the night or the sunlight or…) without a drink or twelve. Alas, the vast majority of alcoholics I have known were functional alcoholics, in one case very high-achieving, and in a simpler time, if they could be kept away from the few examples of heavy machinery, most of them were not a danger to anyone but themselves. These days, “heavy machinery” is as common as, well, cars and the guy or gal with alcohol-slowed reflexes might as well be sweeping muzzle across all around them, finger on the trigger.

We need to treat drinking the same way we treat shooting. We need, not only to practice bottle safety ourselves but to call others on it, the same way you’d take a friend to task for careless gun-handling. Yes, “it isn’t loaded,” and neither is your pal; at least he doesn’t look it and don’t most people have three beers for breakfast? Like bad habits with firearms, alcoholism can sneak up on you, even if you’re not the one doin’ it, “Oh, that’s just Uncle Fred, don’t worry, he’s been doing that for years,” and he hasn’t shot a hole in the basement ceiling or plowed his car into a tree yet; he hasn’t toasted his liver or put an ND into the guy at the next lane…as far as you know.

Officer Brisard’s family, friends, co-workers, what did they know? Did they say, “Dave’s got a stressful job,” did they see him always drinking but rarely if ever appearing drunk? We don’t know; I do know that everyone I have known who was tripped up by a drinking problem — including an insanely lucky wrong-way freeway driver — was known to those around them as a serious drinker, but never really called on it.

And that’s not a good way to deal with it. The folks I’ve known who were drunks? One fired; one in serious trouble with the law and fired; one dead, killed by pickling his own liver against medical advice. One stopped drinking before he screwed up his life (y’know what sucks? Havin’ some poor slob of a friend sit ya down and do the whole embarrassing AA making-amends thing, pretty much strippin’ parts of his soul bare nekkid right there at your kitchen table and the only even slightly useful thing you can do about it is sit there and listen) and one, one, decided drinking all day was a bad plan, cut way back and is now a highly successful senior executive something-or-another; way back when, I’d often seen him unsteady enough I wanted to stop him driving but I didn’t want to make a scene: I let that guy drive off, unofficially tipsy as, well, Officer Brisard, and hey, he and everyone else along his route got lucky.

Maybe we’d better put a little less trust in luck. Maybe it would be better to speak up before things go badly wrong.
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1. A term that continues to give me cold chills. For those who still don’t get it, one of the prime goals of terrorism is to provoke an overreaction in the targeted entity, which will, by its negative impact on the public, greatly amplify the initial act. Mission accomplished, ya miserable bastids. What was he doing there, anyway, investigating the dire security threat motorcyclists pose to the Homeland?

2. Yuck. YMMV.