Friday, April 29, 2016
Thursday, April 28, 2016
DOJ ordered to seriously consider smart gun use [feedly]
Hook them to the Internet and give the government the key to unlock them if the cops can't get there before the crook kills you.
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DOJ ordered to seriously consider smart gun use
// Personal Liberty Digest™
President Barack Obama is quietly continuing his beleaguered gun control crusade this week, demanding that the Department of Justice begin taking a serious look at how widespread implementation of so-called smart gun technology might work.
DOJ, on Friday, will begin seeking public input about the viability of the technology, which is designed to render firearms incapable of unauthorized use, as part of the president's Plan to Reduce Gun Violence.
From Justice: "The President is directing the Attorney General to work with technology experts to review existing and emerging gun safety technologies, and to issue a report on the availability and use of those technologies. In addition, the Administration will issue a challenge to the private sector to develop innovative and cost-effective gun safety technology and provide prizes for those technologies that are proven to be reliable and effective."
According to Nancy Rodriguez over at the National Institute for Justice, the administration wants private sector participants in the challenge to prove to naysayers that smart guns are just as reliable as conventional firearms.
The president's strong desire to make smart guns a thing has many police organizations throughout the country worried that the DOJ will require officers to test the technology in the field in the future.
"Police officers in general, federal officers in particular, shouldn't be asked to be the guinea pigs in evaluating a firearm that nobody's even seen yet," James Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, told POLITICO. "We have some very, very serious questions."
Meanwhile, the National Rifle Association is concerned that once the president will mandate that all firearms available to consumers incorporate the electronics if it's determined that the technology is proven.
If that became the case, it isn't inconceivable that Americans may one day see a future where the 2nd Amendment could be eliminated with the flip of a switch.
The post DOJ ordered to seriously consider smart gun use appeared first on Personal Liberty®.
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I'm not the only one to see it this way.
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The $20 terrorist
// Personal Liberty Digest™
The $20 bill is getting a new face, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew announced last week. Relegated to the back of the bill is President Andrew Jackson. The new "face" of the $20 will be Harriet Tubman.
Spouting politically correct (and highly exaggerated) court history, CNN dutifully declared:
Tubman, who died in 1913 at the age of 91, escaped slavery in the south and eventually led hundreds of escaped slaves to freedom as a "conductor" of the Underground Railroad. After the slaves were freed, Tubman was a staunch supporter of a woman's right to vote.
"What she did to free people on an individual basis and what she did afterward," Lew said. "That's a legacy of what an individual can do in a democracy."
It's doubtful that Jackson would lament being removed from the front of the $20. He'd probably prefer to removed altogether rather than just be sent to the back. Jackson opposed central banks and fiat currency and considered his re-election as a mandate on shutting down the Second Bank of the United States, which he did when the bank's charter expired in 1836.
He once said, "If congress has the right under the Constitution to issue paper money, it was given them to use themselves, not to be delegated to individuals or corporations."
Jackson recognized that paper money was theft. Paper money, personal freedom and privacy are incompatible. Paper money centralizes power to the state and diminishes the individual.
So is Tubman a fitting replacement for Jackson, the politically incorrect slave-owning Democrat and former Indian fighter who signed a bill that forced Indians from their ancestral homes in the Southeast into "Indian Territory" in what is now Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears?
The left laud Tubman for her efforts to free the slaves, but they ignore an inconvenient truth. The right laud her for because she was a "Republican" and because she carried a gun, but they, too, ignore an inconvenient truth.
Tubman supported nullification of laws she believed unjust, as evidenced by her activities with the Underground Railroad in violation of the Fugitive Slave Act that required all escaped slaves be returned to their masters if captured and that all officials and citizens of free states comply with the law.
What were Cliven Bundy and the occupiers of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge if they were not nullifiers of oppressive, unjust and unconstitutional laws? Leftists, of course, called them terrorists.
Tubman believed in gun rights. She carried a pistol on her rescue missions, both as protection from slave catchers and to "encourage" weak-hearted runaways from turning back, which would endanger the group. That encouragement would doubtless have included shooting in the back any former slaves who declined to stay with her if she thought they would "endanger the group." That sounds very much how the military once treated deserters. (Now they are exchanged for five terrorists.)
"I had reasoned this out in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty, or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive; I should fight for my liberty as long as my strength lasted, and when the time came for me to go, the Lord would let them take me," she once said.
The views in that quote sound conservative or libertarian, not leftist, because leftists are always eager to surrender their liberty to the state. In fact, those words sound very much like something LaVoy Finnicum said before he was shot down while holding his hands up.
But truth be told, Tubman was little more than a terrorist because she conspired with and supported John Brown, the leader of the raid on the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry. She recruited for him and raised funds – soliciting from abolition-minded northern industrialists — for him and had even planned to accompany Brown on the raid but was prevented from it by illness.
Three and half years after Brown and six followers killed five men in pro-slavery Pottawatomie Creek, Kansas by hacking them with broadswords, cutting their throats and shooting them because they were suspected of being behind the sacking and burning of Lawrence, Kansas, Tubman was prepared to accompany Brown in his raid on Harper's Ferry. The raid was designed to secure arms that would be used to free slaves – by force if necessary – and arm slaves for a race war in a violent rebellion against southern slave owners.
During the raid, Brown's men killed a railroad guard, Harper's Ferry's mayor and a black railroad porter, injured eight other residents, kidnapped 40 townspeople and barricaded themselves in the armory.
In the ensuing battle to root them out of the armory, one Marine was mortally wounded and two hostages and 12 members of Brown's party were killed.
Had Tubman not been too ill to participate, she most likely would have been killed in the shootout or hanged along with Brown, and doubtless would be seen today in a far different light.
But given that President Barack Obama was nurtured at the feet of a terrorist (Bill Ayers) and himself uses fiat money to spread terror around the globe by killing women and children with U.S. drone strikes and military interventions, Tubman is a perfect choice to grace the $20 in today's America.
The post The $20 terrorist appeared first on Personal Liberty®.
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Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
Gun shop fights back, sues pitchfork mob [feedly]
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Gun shop fights back, sues pitchfork mob
// Personal Liberty Digest™
The owner of a Northern Virginia gun store is suing after anti-2nd Amendment fanatics, including state lawmakers, waged a public smear campaign in an attempt to force it to close shop.
The Arlington-based Nova Armory opened just last month. The store is the only licensed firearm dealer in the city and the gun shop currently closest to Washington D.C.
Unfortunately for the business, local anti-gun fanatics and the liberal state legislators who represent them began trying to cause it problems even before its doors opened.
In a letter to the property owner who leased space to the gun shop, seven Virginia state legislators urged her to renege on the deal.
The lawmakers— Dels. Patrick Hope, Alfonso Lopez, Richard Sullivan and Mark Levine and Sens. Barbara Favola, Janet Howell and Adam Ebbin— wrote: "Given its proximity to Route 50 with easy access to Interstate 95, this location could be the site for potentially nefarious and illegal activities such as enabling individuals to successfully obtain fraudulent Virginia drivers licenses to purchase firearms, illegally paying Virginia residents to buy guns, creating a 'black market' to sell firearms for cash or drugs, or become a magnet for robbery as was recently the case in a firearms store in McLean, Virginia."
Levine took abusing the gun shop to the next level.
In a social media post, he urged residents of the community to boycott the entire strip mall where the store is located, insisting the store's very presence puts people in danger.
Part of his nonsense post read: "Are you ready to pay for all the funerals of all the people that your guns murder? And provide reimbursement for all wrongful deaths you cause? If not, then please, we beg you, leave Arlington."
Nova Armory finally got fed up with the misplaced anger and decided to sue. The company names 64 individuals in a civil suit filed April 18 in Richmond City Circuit Court.
"They're trying to put [Nova] out of business. They've been doing unlawful things in an attempt to do that," Daniel L. Hawes, attorney for NoVa Armory, told local media.
The business is seeking $2 million in damages.
Related:
Lawmaker wants feds to harass small gun sellers out of business
Clinton vows to have your favorite gun makers sued out of business
Democrats want this job creator dead
Taxpayer advocate warns taxes could kill the 2nd Amendment
Here's a bill you'll want to write your congressman about
Credit Company Ends Financing For Small Gun Shops, Cites Mass Shootings
The post Gun shop fights back, sues pitchfork mob appeared first on Personal Liberty®.
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Monday, April 25, 2016
Sunday, April 24, 2016
Saturday, April 23, 2016
Time Traveler Running for President; Knows He’ll Win [feedly]
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Time Traveler Running for President; Knows He'll Win
// Neatorama
While some conspiracy theorists want to unveil the administration in Washington as the lizard people they are, and others want the truth about UFOs to be revealed, one presidential candidate wants to reveal government breakthroughs in time travel, teleportation, and travel to Mars. Seattle lawyer Andrew D. Basiago is running for president.
To be fair, Basiago has seen great leadership in action. He says he once traveled back in time to 1863 and witnessed Abraham Lincoln's speech at Gettysburg. He also says he's been to the future, 2054 specifically, so he has a notion of the historical pitfalls a commander-in-chief must avoid. One could even argue that his sojourn on Mars in 1981 is relevant foreign relations experience. After all, there were aliens.
Basiago says he's had conversations with both President Bush's, President Clinton, and President Obama literally decades before they served as president. They were given prior notification of their presidencies. And that's part of the reason Basiago went public about Project Pegasus a few years ago. "Our secret time-travel capability is informing things like the process by which we select the president," he explains, sounding every bit the reformer. "The cover-up has gone on for too long."
Read more of Basiago's platform and views at Inverse. -via Digg
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Friday, April 22, 2016
Chelsea Clinton vows her mother will kill the 2nd Amendment via Supreme Court [feedly]
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Chelsea Clinton vows her mother will kill the 2nd Amendment via Supreme Court
// Personal Liberty Digest™
Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton has made gun control one of her top campaign issues in recent months. And this week, her daughter informed supporters that that the former first lady will make putting an anti-firearm activist on the bench of the Supreme Court one of her first priorities if elected.
Chelsea Clinton made the remark during a campaign stop in Maryland.
"It matters to me that my mom also recognizes the role the Supreme Court has when it comes to gun control. With Justice Scalia on the bench, one of the few areas where the Court actually had an inconsistent record relates to gun control," she said.
Now that Scalia's gone, Clinton said gun control advocates could see better results with judicial attempts to dismantle the right to bear arms. But, she added, her mother is the only candidate running who has a rabid disdain for the 2nd Amendment.
"So if you listen to Moms Demand Action and the Brady Campaign and the major efforts pushing for smart, sensible and enforceable gun control across our country, disclosure, have endorsed my mom, they say they believe the next time the Court rules on gun control, it will make a definitive ruling," Clinton said.
"So it matters to me that my mom is the only person running for president who not only constantly makes that connection but also has a strong record on gun control and standing up to the [National Rifle Association]."
Related:
Scalia's death makes 2016 about gun control
Hillary seriously wants to take your guns away
Clinton has a plan for national gun confiscation
Clinton: Too many guns in American homes
Clinton vows to have your favorite gun makers sued out of business
The post Chelsea Clinton vows her mother will kill the 2nd Amendment via Supreme Court appeared first on Personal Liberty®.
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Thursday, April 21, 2016
Tuesday, April 19, 2016
Monday, April 18, 2016
Saturday, April 16, 2016
Friday, April 15, 2016
Lawmaker wants feds to harass small gun sellers out of business [feedly]
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Lawmaker wants feds to harass small gun sellers out of business
// Personal Liberty Digest™
As part of a reoccurring narrative from frustrated Democrats whose attacks on firearm ownership are thwarted by the Constitution, Virginia Democratic Rep. Don Beyer is urging supporters to help him attack the men and women whose livelihoods depend on firearm sales.
Beyer, it seems, is upset that the Virginia General Assembly has affirmed the legal right of gun stores to help Americans practice their 2nd Amendment rights after it refused to allow local governments to harass the owners of firearm businesses.
In a recent op-ed on ARLnow, the lawmaker wrote: "The arrival of two new gun stores in Northern Virginia in close proximity to families and schools set off a wave of concern from constituents."
Unfortunately, the lawmaker lamented, the irrational panic of anti-firearm activists just isn't yet powerful enough to eliminate Americans' constitutional right to bear arms. Worse yet, he noted, is that lawmakers in Virginia have generally supported residents' constitutional rights to bear arms at the state level.
This Beyer explained, makes it nearly impossible to shut down law-abiding business owners who sell firearms.
"Thanks to Virginia's Dillon Rule, state control preempts local authority. In these cases, it means Arlington and Fairfax Counties cannot prohibit these stores from opening, regardless of the overwhelming will of local families and schools," he wrote. "The power to stop this from happening rests with a gun-friendly General Assembly, which has refused to help, despite the efforts of Northern Virginia's delegation in Richmond."
The lawmaker said that he would like to be able to do more at the federal level to kill the small businesses— but he lamented that recent congressional actions make it difficult to get the Feds involved.
That's why Beyers has introduced legislation that would expand the power of the federal government to harass law-abiding gun sellers, hopefully causing enough hassle that jumpy residents in places like Northern Virginia will soon see those type of small business owners forced to shut down.
I'll let him explain:
Yesterday I introduced a bill, the ATF Enforcement Act, to undo … restrictions on the ATF's enforcement authority. The bill would also remove the requirement that the ATF's Director be confirmed by the Senate. Since 2006 lawmakers backed by the gun lobby have refused to confirm the nominees of both Democratic and Republican presidents. Only one Director has been confirmed in the last decade.
My bill would repeal these restrictions on the ATF and let them do their job of inspecting gun dealers and preventing criminals and people who are legally barred from owning guns from acquiring them.
It is not the role of the federal government to intervene in local zoning, but we can at least make sure that the federal entity charged with regulating the sale of guns is able to do so properly, without the insidious roadblocks which Congress has put in their way.
This is all really amusing, but it gets even better…
The lawmaker flatly admits that his scheme to give ATF agents more authority to harass the owners of upstanding businesses only because they sell firearms "will not solve the problem of gun violence…"
We know that. Because anyone who has ever shopped at a reputable gun store realizes that the men and women who make their livings selling firearms truly are the first line of defense against scumbags getting guns.
They run background checks and they report suspicious activity. Part of the reason they're so careful is because these small business owners are upstanding people who believe in the importance of flexing 2nd Amendment rights responsibly. Another reason is because selling a gun that turns up at a crime scene has the potential to ruin their businesses, and possibly their lives, if investigators find the weapon was sold illegally.
Guess which federal agency didn't have to worry about any of that when guns it dispensed were found near the lifeless body of an American Border Patrol agent a few years back? I'll give you a hint: It's the one Rep. Beyers believes is worthy of less oversight and more power.
Again… Unbelievable.
The post Lawmaker wants feds to harass small gun sellers out of business appeared first on Personal Liberty®.
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Shipwrecked silk dress survives 400 years under water - CNET [feedly]
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Shipwrecked silk dress survives 400 years under water - CNET
// Crave: The gadget blog
A 17th century gown excavated from a shipwreck looks like it could be put on and worn to the ball.
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Thursday, April 14, 2016
Drone Smashes Through 5th Floor Window And Smacks Guy In The Head -
Tuesday, April 12, 2016
Monday, April 11, 2016
Clinton vows to have your favorite gun makers sued out of business [feedly]
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Clinton vows to have your favorite gun makers sued out of business
// Personal Liberty Digest™
Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton is hoping to breathe new life into her sputtering campaign against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders by rallying raving anti-firearm types against his sensible past positions on the 2nd Amendment.
Despite all of his leftist economic positions, Sanders appears to pose a lesser threat to the 2nd Amendment than other Democratic presidential hopefuls in recent history.
Sanders caused a stir last summer when he told NPR's "Morning Edition" that the Democrats' anti-gun left is heavily driven by urban liberals who know little about firearms in the first place. And while he stated that he isn't against having a conversation about guns in America, Sanders said he would only support the most sensible positions on gun control.
In the time since Sanders made those remarks, Clinton has learned that many of the things she was counting on helping her build broad support among Democratic voters have been tarnished by her years of corruption and her out of touch demeanor. Being a woman, for instance, is no longer a more visible part of her persona than her ties to Wall Street cronies and lavish lifestyle. And her airport diplomacy while at the State Department evidently didn't yield enough photo ops to wallpaper over her email scandal and general disregard for the public trust.
Clinton is now attacking Sanders in just about the only place she still can on the left in an attempt to build support among anti-2nd Amendment Democrats.
Sanders, in 2005, voted in favor of a bill that shields gun manufacturers from liability for crimes committed with the products they produce. The law holds that using a firearm to commit a crime constitutes "misuse" of a product by the criminal.
Eugene Volokh, a law professor at the University of California Los Angeles, explained the law to Politifact thusly: "[It] basically put gun manufacturers in the same position that other product manufacturers are in. They're responsible for defectively manufactured and designed products but not for failing to prevent criminal misuse of their products."
The law, in other words, makes a lot of sense.
But Clinton, desperately grasping for something to call her own in this campaign, feels differently.
"I voted against it," Clinton said on CNN April 6. "President Obama voted against it. Because clearly it was an effort to bypass legal accountability. And so here we have this remarkable situation where you cannot question the liability or the behavior of gunmakers and sellers."
In an effort to undo the legislation, Clinton says she plans to first attack 2nd Amendment organizations like the National Rifle Association.
"What stands in the way is the most powerful lobby in Washington," she said.
"If you take them all — Wall Street, the drug industry, the fossil fuel industry — none is bigger or more intimidating. What they are afraid of is that there answers we can implement."
It's worth noting here that a big reason the gun lobby is so large (and rightly so), is that it protects a right actually written into the Constitution.
But if she can get that well-funded barrier to her assaults on the 2nd Amendment out of the way from the Oval Office, Clinton vows she will then put gun makers out of business with an avalanche of frivolous litigation.
The post Clinton vows to have your favorite gun makers sued out of business appeared first on Personal Liberty®.
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TV Dogs Learn To Fly - I've taught some monkeys to fly, so what?
Saturday, April 9, 2016
Friday, April 8, 2016
Thursday, April 7, 2016
Volocopter video
I have been keeping up with these guys for a few years. This is going to be big. You can loose several motors with no problem. No danger loading and unloading. Just shut down.
No cool down or run up. Very stable. Could be unmanned. Programmed to fly anyone to work or school while you sleep. Farmers can check their fields, heard cattle and crop dust. No pilot training required later, once drone rules and airspace are allocated. Need better battery or fuel cell technology which is coming. Could use solar and just land and recharge then go on from anywhere that has sun. Maintenance could be done by just about anyone. Motor change out would probably be four bolts and an electrical connector. Ten minutes at most. Everything, plug and PLAY. German engineered and built. Watch these guys.
http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/7/11388406/volocopter-18-rotors-manned-flight-evolo-germany
Self-driving truck convoy completes its first major journey across Europe [feedly]
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Self-driving truck convoy completes its first major journey across Europe
// The Verge
This morning, a fleet of self-driving trucks arrived in the Dutch port of Maasvlakte, completing a cross-continent journey that organizers say demonstrates the future of transport in Europe. The experiment is known as the European Truck Platooning Challenge, and involved trucks from six different manufacturers traveling in miniature convoys. A driver in the lead vehicle of each convoy sets the speed and the route, while the other trucks follow automatically, a Wi-Fi connection keeping their braking and acceleration (but not steering) in sync.
less congestion, fewer accidents, reduced fuel consumption
This isn't a fully-automated system, but it's a clear step toward this goal and has tangible benefits of its own. Platooning, as the method is known, could mean less congestion, fewer accidents, and reduced fuel consumption. A whitepaper from Dutch research firm TNO says that each truck in a platoon — both those following and those leading — uses on average 10 percent less fuel per journey. The same report notes that 90 percent of driving accidents are caused by human error, and although a full analysis of the safety of platooning has yet to be undertaken, the suggestion is that automation would lead to fewer crashes.
In the recently-completed challenge, trucks from firms including Daimler, Volvo, and Scania (a subsidiary of Volkswagen) competed, with each convoy setting off from a different location. The Scania group travelled the longest distance, driving more than 2,000 kilometers through Sweden, Denmark, and Germany to reach its destination in the Netherlands. The trucks did not travel in platoon for the entire journey — only on motorways when traffic conditions were "normal" — and each vehicle, even those following the lead truck, had a human driver on hand.
The technology is here; regulations are next
The Platoon Challenge has successfully demonstrated the potential of its technology, but now EU companies and governments have to tackle the fiddly details of regulation and implementation. Cross-border rules for self-driving trucks need to be established, and so does the protocol for setting up platoons. Can convoys be established in an impromptu manner mid-drive, for example, or will they always have to start and finish in the same location? Will drivers in following trucks be able to take a rest while their vehicle is chained to one in front?
The next step for those involved will be to discuss these matters in an informal meeting of the European transport council on April 14th. Companies and local governments in the US pursuing similar schemes will undoubtedly be watching with interest.
Verge Video: This is what it's like to ride in Daimler's self-driving semi truck
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Wednesday, April 6, 2016
Sunday, April 3, 2016
Do you remember how bad malfunction junction is in Birmingham?
Well Corridor X is about to open and I believe it is going to be worse.