Too Lazy to Fail

Oleg Volk, propagandist for our side and pretty swell photographer, the founder of The High Road, has been the victim of a malicious takeover from a trusted admin:

In December 2002, I founded The High Road forum dedicated to the advancement of responsible gun ownership. Recently, it was discovered that in 2006, the volunteer forum systems administrator, Derek Zeanah of Statesboro, Georgia, changed domain registration to himself. After he was confronted, Derek locked out all other staff from accessing the Web server administration and would not share even backup copies of its content. After failed attempts to peacefully resolve the dispute, it has become necessary for me to initiate a lawsuit against Derek Zeanah for the return of thehighroad.org domain name and the forum database.

I am seeking and would greatly appreciate donations to help with the cost of litigation. You can use Paypal (olegvolk@gmail.com) or send a check to:
Oleg Volk 3112 Chambley Ct Hermitage, TN 37076

All donations shall be returned if the lawsuit is ultimately avoided. You can also aid me by re-posting this appeal on your blog, forum or web site. My legal position is already endorsed by almost all of The High Road staff as well as Rich Lucibella, the founder of The Firing Line forum.

So it turns out that Ray Boltz is gay.

Now, I know that many of you will disagree with my objections to homosexuality. That’s not the point of this post. I don’t approve of his lifestyle, and I think it’s disgusting that he left his wife and four kids because he suddenly decided he couldn’t pretend anymore, but that has very little personal impact on me.

What is personally significant about this for me is that I will no longer have to play Thank You for every. single. missionary. It must have been some unwritten rule among missionaries that they either sing or play this stupid song for every fund-raising presentation to a church.

Knowing that many churches still won’t play Disney movies at their daycares, I can only hope that folks will think “Oh yeah, isn’t the guy who sang that song gay now?” and never play it ever again.

Just saying.

Enzyte Scammer Gets 25 Years for Fraud

If customers complained, he said, employees were instructed to “make it as difficult as possible” for them to get their money back. In some cases, Teegarden said, Warshak required customers to produce a notarized statement from a doctor certifying Enzyte did not work.

“He said it was extremely unlikely someone would get anything notarized saying they had a small penis,” Teegarden said.

Ouch.

Randy Pausch was a Computer Science professor at Canegie Mellon who was diagnosed in 2006 with terminal pancreatic cancer. He passed away last night at home, with his family.

Brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want something badly enough. They are there to keep out the other people!

If you never got to watch the Last Lecture, I highly recommend that you find an hour this evening to give it a watch. Great stuff. Pausch will be remembered.

Of course, I’m pleased. It did not accomplish much in terms of practical, immediate gains for most of us, and even for those it immediately effects the fight isn’t over (expect news of significant delays in the permit process, draconian restrictions on weapon type, ammo type, liability insurance requirements, etc), but what makes it really significant is that the wholesale question of “Guns for civilians, yes or no?” is not a question that will be asked again. We may not have gained massive ground with Heller in terms of immediate lifting of infringing laws, but a line was drawn. Here. No futher. From this line we can push forward for victories in individual battles without the risk of losing the war.

Some have reminded us that the NRA was against this case moving to the Supreme Court, but is now one of the first to the microphones proclaiming what a great day it is for America. How dare the NRA swoop in as the champion of all of us, when they didn’t want to fight the battle in the first place? What these critics forget is that the decision was 5-4. As some have noted, we were just one heart attack away from a 5-4 ruling against Heller and a recognized individual right to bear arms. Maybe one slip of the tongue in the oral argument. Maybe one bad day for a Justice. That’s frighteningly close, and the ramifications would have been far-reaching and devastating. By opposing the movement of the case into the Supreme Court, the NRA was doing the safe–not irresponsible–thing. Gura and his team scored for us a huge victory, but to go for it required risking everything. Thank God it worked out in our favor.

It’s also been mentioned that had Gore or Kerry been President, the Second Amendment would be gone today. I don’t think that’s the case. The move by Heller’s representation to test the Second Amendment in the Supreme Court was ballsy enough as it was, and very nearly ended in disaster. Had the makeup of the Court been tilted–had, say, Roberts never seen nomination and a liberal elevated in his stead–I would like to think that any attorney not secretly hostile to his client and the ideas his client represents would never take a suicidal run straight to a catastrophic ruling against the individual right.

But it’s over. I’m glad it worked out. Celebrate tonight, because tomorrow there’s still work to be done.

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2008/jun/12/crime-report-cops-chase-germantown-home-invaders-n/

“I think there’s a robbery,” the female voice whispered on the Germantown 911 line. The call was made at about 2:50 a.m. from the home on William Brown.

The woman was upstairs while a group of men was crashing through a window, screaming that they were the FBI and demanding occupants tell them where to find the money. Inside the house was Jeffrey A. Land, who was staying at the house but is not the owner.

Land, 50, one of seven people in the house early Thursday, had gone to bed at about midnight, his Yorkie-poodle mix Sasha asleep in the bed with him. Suddenly, three men — one wearing a headlamp, one with a flashlight and the third with a handgun — were in the room.

“They identified themselves as the FBI,” Land said, adding that the intruders cuffed his hands in front of him before leading him downstairs with the other occupants of the house, who also were handcuffed.

Land initially thought, ” ‘They must be in the wrong house.’ It didn’t dawn on me that it was a home invasion. It was surreal.”

The invaders were in dark clothes, ski masks and gloves.

Similar to what happened in several other earlier home invasions, Land said one of the robbers demanded, “Where’s the money?” According to public records, Thoeurn Chan and his wife, Mon or Mom Hourn own the $652,000 two-story home. The couple 1/2 own two jewelry shops, Crown Jewelry and Handiwork Jewelry, in Memphis.

Mental exercise: You and your spouse are asleep in bed at 3:00 AM. You hear your front door crack and fall, followed by someone identifying themselves as law enforcement and demanding that you get on the floor. You’re an upstanding citizen with no criminal background. Your children are screaming because men with ski masks just poured into their bedrooms and are pointing weapons at them. You have a loaded shotgun by the bed. What do you do?

Part two: You decide to open fire on the intruders, and fatally shoot two of them before you are wounded and subdued. You find out later that they were, in fact, the police, and were supposed to be raiding the meth lab on 2nd Avenue instead of your house on 22nd Avenue. What happens to you?

A gentle reminder to readers that the postage rate has increased, effective today.

New Letter Rate: 42 cents
New Postcard Rate: 27 cents

Boy, it sure is a good thing that the post office doesn’t operate under a statutory monopoly or anything. It would sure stink if, for instance, they’d mandated that nobody can put anything into a box you place on your property except for a single organization. Man, it’d be REALLY odious if nobody could do urgent letter delivery without being required, by law, to charge at least twice as much as the federal monopoly. Good thing we live in a free capitalistic society!

The increase doesn’t affect most of us personally to any great degree. I pay only one bill every month by mail, the rest of them having long since allowed online payment. Where it stinks is at my job with the church, where besides the occasional congregation-wide letter, we send probably 20 to 30 envelope’s worth of routine correspondence every week. Most of these are bills that could not be easily tracked if not done as a formal paper check.

Postal service here in Jackson is a joke, too. Letters from one part of town to another may only take one day, or may take five. Checks that the church mails to vendors routinely take a week to arrive, with 20+ day deliveries not uncommon. More than a few times I have driven by a blue mail drop to find it packed to overflowing and driven back the next morning, to find it still absolutely full. I’m convinced that I have witnessed a mailbox go unemptied for three days. Church policy prohibits me from dropping mail (which is often financially sensitive) in the on-property mailbox, so I get to either deal with unreliable mail drop boxes, or make my way over to the post office every day.

Interesting fact: The USA is the only country on the face of the planet which enforces a monopoly on letter delivery at gunpoint.

From the Kinetic Church:

One weekend in early March, the trailer containing about 75% of Kinetic Church’s equipment was stolen; leaving our portable church with virtually nothing.

Over the past few week, our church has worked hard to recover from this difficult event. And yet, we still wonder about the people who stole our gear.

The “church trailer” billboard campaign is our intentional attempt to make contact with the people who took our church’s stuff. Our hopes of recovering our stolen property have faded but our dream of meeting our offenders has not.

If you know the people who stole our trailer, please ask them to watch our video message to them. It’s the reason for this entire deal.

The church posted billboards all over town, donated anonymously, to get the attention of the folks who took their stuff:

The hope was that the thief would visit the church website and see this:

I think the signs are probably a little sarcastic and bitter-sounding if the intent was to maximize the effect of the video, but overall I’m impressed with the attitude of the church. Jackson had a rash of church burglaries a few months back, and though I’d like to think that my first thought upon seeing about $15k of stuff missing from the sound booth would be to pray for the crooks, I doubt I could be that gracious at that very moment.

Here’s hoping the crooks take Dave up on his offer and come listen to what he has to say.

I do not think it means what you think it means.

In Wisconsin, a man is shooting at black-clad masked men who have surrounded his home. In the process, he is learning what Fee Simple means.

 On one of my throwaway email addresses I’m subscribed to the Brady Campaign’s emails. It typically goes something like this.

(Bill is passed defending right to carry)

Brady: Blood in the streets! Send money!

(Tragic campus massacre)

Brady: We don’t want to look opportunistic, but IT’S THE GUNS! (Send money!)

(Looming election)

Brady: We need to send the politicians a message! Send money!

U.S. Supreme Court Hears Arguments in District of Columbia v. Heller
The Most Significant Second Amendment Case in the Nation’s History

Dear Paul,

As I watched the presentations to the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, I was constantly aware how critically, and immediately, the Justices’ decision will impact gun laws that protect you and your family today, and in the future . . .

. . . from the Brady background check law and the federal machine gun ban to strong state gun laws in California, New York, Illinois, and many others.

Please help us defend these laws by making as generous a contribution as you can today to the Brady Gun Law Defense Fund.

As the Court deliberates over the next few months, your support is critical. We need to be prepared for the outcome, whatever that might be. This is no time to play wait-and-see.

A lot of politicians, and many citizens, think the Second Amendment limits our ability to enact common sense gun restrictions. This position got a lot of attention in Tuesday’s arguments.

However, it was clear to me from both questions and answers at the Supreme Court hearing that there is broad support from all sides for responsible regulation concerning guns. We need to stress this position to the American public before and after the decision is made in late June.

We are hopeful that the Justices’ ruling will uphold the right of people in communities like the District of Columbia to enact sensible gun laws they feel are needed to protect themselves and their families.

Even if the District’s ordinance is struck down, and regardless of how the Justices rule on the individual’s “right” to bear arms, their questioning clearly acknowledged the importance of and the need for reasonable regulations on guns.

One thing is certain — we have the support of many Americans like you on our side. In a recent Washington Post poll, a solid majority of Americans indicated they would support a law for their communities similar to the one in question in the Supreme Court case.

While I was in the courtroom, Brady staff and activists were at the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court carrying signs and speaking to the media. They were joined and cheered on by passers-by — school children, government workers, and tourists.

We will not wait for the Justices’ ruling in this case. We are, and will continue to be, on the offensive. Our voices — your voices — are making a difference!

Now is the time to contribute to the Brady Center as we get ready during the next few months for all the vital next steps that will follow the Court’s historic decision.

Please give generously today.

Sincerely,
Paul Helmke, President
Brady Center and Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence

P.S. Click here to see my remarks at the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court following the oral argument. But first, please make a generous tax-deductible contribution to the Brady Center.

Way cool. You can hear the audio of the session, as well as seeing the transcript as it’s spoken line-by-line, including portraits of the folks who are speaking.

Thanks to Kit for the link.

This was funnier in my head, but it’s hard to find an image on the web of Waldorf with his face scrunched in after being struck by Statler.

End of the line for CompUSA.

Consumer electronics retailer CompUSA said Friday that it will go out of business after the holidays following sale of the company to Gordon Brothers Group LLC, a restructuring firm. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.

Called it:

Circuit City, at least in my area, wasn’t able to differentiate enough to prevent hemorrhaging of customers when better prices and selection came along, and seems to exist nationally only as a shell of its former self. CompUSA appears to have held on longer, perhaps having a business model that allows for a comparable selection of consumer electronics, plus a greater corporate appreciation for the geek hobbyist (who desires to build his own computer from components) than Best Buy. But when was the last time you heard of someone building a computer from components bought from a retail store? The online retailer has taken away one of the last advantages CompUSA had, and now it dangles by a thread in the shadow of Best Buy.

“Based on changing conditions in the consumer retail electronics markets, the company identified the need to close and sell stores with low performance or nonstrategic, old store layouts and locations faced with market saturation,” is equivalent to saying “We can’t compete toe to toe with our competition, but we hope to survive by being everywhere that they aren’t.”

Which is the desperate plea of a doomed business model. I declare Best Buy the winner of the consumer electronics war of the previous ten years. We’ll see how the Best Buy vs. Wal-mart vs. The Internet war of the next decade goes.

http://wbztv.com/topstories/local_story_285113734.html

Kennedy underwent the hour-long procedure at Massachusetts General Hospital on Friday morning to repair his left carotid artery - a major supplier of blood to the neck and head. WBZ has learned that artery was 70 percent blocked.

Wait. This explains everything!