Monthly Archives: January 2013

Good Samaritan fatally shoots man attacking wife – Houston Chronicle

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A 44-year-old man was fatally shot as he was fighting with his wife and then attacked a neighbor when the Good Samaritan stepped in to help the woman Tuesday night in north Harris County.

Victor Daniel died at the scene about 8:50 p.m. in the 23200 block of Berry Pine near Woodiver, according to the Harris County Sheriff’s Office.

The wife told investigators he was physically assaulting her when the neighbor saw the attack and tried to stop it, deputies said.

Daniel then turned on the neighbor, hitting him with a brick. Deputies said the neighbor pulled out a handgun and shot Daniel.

via Good Samaritan fatally shoots man attacking wife – Houston Chronicle.

A martyr in the fight for free online access to research – Los Angeles Times

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They came from all over Silicon Valley, hundreds packing the pews of an old church to pay their respects to Aaron Swartz, the 26-year-old programmer and Internet activist who took his own life this month.

They didn’t just come to mourn a fallen comrade, they said. They came to carry on his fight. The memorial service held last week at the Internet Archive, a nonprofit group that occupies a former church in San Francisco, was as much political rally as solemn tribute.

“Aaron Swartz was not a criminal. He was a citizen and a brave soldier in a war which continues today, a war in which corrupt and venal profiteers try to steal and hoard and starve our public domain for their own private gain,” said Carl Malamud, a technologist and outspoken advocate for open access to information.

In death, Swartz has become a political martyr for the cause he championed in life: making scientific and scholarly research — much of it taxpayer-funded — freely available, not sequestered behind online pay walls out of the reach of the public.

via A martyr in the fight for free online access to research – Los Angeles Times.

Posted in: Law |

The Superversive: The Leaden Rule

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From Tom Simon, a Tolkien scholar and author:

Wisdom is not a quality much sought after nowadays. The word sounds uncomfortably elitist and anti-subjective. It will not do to say that one person is wiser than another, unless one is prepared to say that one belief may be right and another wrong; and that is just the sort of thing we have grown too mealy-mouthed to say. It is the culmination of our collective amnesia. For two centuries, Western civilization has been growing steadily more infatuated with ephemeral knowledge at the expense of enduring truth. Ancient folktales and traditional songs have been replaced by pop-culture references; philosophy has declined into ideology; and wisdom, as an object of desire, has largely been supplanted by technical know-how.

via The Leaden Rule.

Wizards of Smart Surprised by Shrinking Economy – The Rush Limbaugh Show

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From the priceless Rush Limbaugh:

RUSH:  I have a question, ladies and gentlemen.  The economic growth rate — reported, anyway — by our government, at the end of September, was 3.1%, at the end of the calendar third quarter.  So after September, of course, comes October, November, December.  That’s the calendar fourth quarter.  So from September to the end of the year the economy went from growing at 3.1% to contracting by 0.1%.  So the economy fell 3.2%.

Now, what happened between October, November, and December that might have had something to do with this?  Let me think.  October, November, even December you got Christmas and holiday season, that’s supposed to be big for the economy.  They told us, ladies and gentlemen, we were told that after Obama won reelection, the economy was gonna take off because uncertainty would be removed.  In fact, they said that one of the reasons the economy was sorta chugging, not really speeding along, was all the uncertainty over who was gonna win the election and what policies would then flow; but then after Obama won, that’s the end of uncertainty. Everybody would know what’s ahead and the economy would take off.

Well, obviously Obama won the election, and the economy tanked.  Hmm.  I wonder why. I looked over at TMZ, Entertainment Weekly, I didn’t see anything about the GDP contracting, by the way.  I’ve looked at the E! Entertainment website, a number of low-information sites, nothing there yet about the economy contracting.  The only thing that’s the big news over there right now is that Lindsay Lohan panicked on a first class flight to Los Angeles.

“Lindsay Lohan and her mom Dina took the last flight out of JFK last night and jetted to L.A. after being warned she’d be a wanted woman if she was a no-show in court this morning.  Lindsay — who is not just broke but deeply in debt — waited in her car at the airport until the last minute … then flew first class on American Airlines and landed at around 12:30 AM.”

TMZ broke this story.  This is huge.  Ahem.

“Lindsay had no intention of showing up in her lying-to-cops case and got a doctor’s note which was filed with the court.”

And then Kris Humphries is crying fraud regarding his so-called marriage to Kim Kardashian, and he’s refused a $10 million payoff.  This is the news over at TMZ and the E! Entertainment network.  Nothing about the economy yet over on those websites.  But the really big low-information news right now is that Lindsay Lohan is in court even as we speak.  It has ’em all captivated out there.

So I don’t know what happened between October and December to cause the economy to tank, but it did.

via Wizards of Smart Surprised by Shrinking Economy – The Rush Limbaugh Show.

Study: New E15 gas can ruin auto engines | WashingtonExaminer.com

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This week’s warm Washington temperatures had some thinking about rolling the Lawn-Boy out of the garage for the first cut of the year. And we all know what that means: Difficult starts due to E10 gas that gels when it sits.

Now, according to a new study, cars and truck may face the same fate thanks to President Obama’s demand for a higher ethanol in the new E15 gas.

The fuel industry’s American Petroleum Institute tested the 15 percent ethanol gas approved in 2010 and found it gums up fuel systems, prompts “check engine” lights to come on, and messes with fuel gauge readings.

“Failure of these components could result in breakdowns that leave consumers stranded on busy roads and highways,” said the industry report. Worse: API said the fuel problems–not found in E5 or E10 blends–aren’t always covered by auto warranties.

The industry prefers pure fuel to an ethanol mix, but the report isn’t likely to slow the administrations green push, according to a Washington auto lobbyist.

via Study: New E15 gas can ruin auto engines | WashingtonExaminer.com.

Latin American Herald Tribune – 17 Bodies Found in Well in Mexico

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Mexico has very strict gun control. Except when our ATF slips a few guns over the border, I guess.

Authorities in the northern Mexican state of Nuevo Leon have concluded the work of recovering and identifying a total of 17 bodies found in a well, officials said Wednesday.

All of the victims were associated with the band Kombo Kolombia.

The bodies, the last of which were recovered Tuesday afternoon, were found inside the well at an abandoned ranch in the town of Mina thanks to information from a band member who had escaped from the gunmen that abducted the group last week.

The bodies of the victims – 13 musicians, one of them a Colombian citizen; three assistants; and one sound engineer – have already been handed over to their relatives, the state Attorney General’s Office said.

The group performed at a private function at the La Carreta bar – in Hidalgo, a town next to Mina – on Thursday night, just hours before a group of roughly 10 gunmen showed up in four SUVs and kidnapped 18 musicians and crew.

via Latin American Herald Tribune – 17 Bodies Found in Well in Mexico.

Protect Our Gun Rights: Eliminate the ATF | The Truth About Guns

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In How to Ban Guns, the dailykos.com lays out the gun control equation: registration > confiscation > civilian disarmament. Agreed, only I put a few more >’s into the equation: registration > confiscation > civilian disarmament > police state > mass murder. Even if we disagree on the eventual outcome, it’s nice when an enemy of freedom puts their cards on the table—instead of wrapping their statist plot against the U.S. Constitution in misdirection, lies and half-truths. And here’s the thing: there’s a federal agency ready, willing and able to make it so: the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). In fact, they’re already doing it . . .

With all the hysteria over the Sandy Hook slaughter, the mainstream media has completely forgotten about Operation Fast and Furious. The ATF black bag job ran for ten months in 2010. During its course, the Bureau enabled some 2000 gun store firearms sales to known members of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel.

At least a few of these ATF-enabled firearms ended up in the hands of drug thugs who murdered U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Officer Jaime Zapata. Hundreds if not thousands of Mexicans have been intimidated, tortured, raped and/or killed by criminals wielding ATF-enabled firearms.

Contrary to the Bureau’s spin, Fast and Furious was not a “botched sting.” No attempts were made to “follow the guns.” No arrests were made until after Terry was murdered and the program was suspended, when the glare of public scrutiny forced the ATF to do something. The few gang members who had their chains yanked received light prison sentences in exchange for their silence.

via Protect Our Gun Rights: Eliminate the ATF | The Truth About Guns.

The Newtown Heckling Controversy – The Daily Beast

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Oh, my dear foolish David. I think part of the ethic of journalism is TELLING THE TRUTH. But I guess that won’t work for your agenda.

I don’t block Twitter followers. I think part of the ethic of journalism in the digital age is to be accessible to those who want to reach you – and, yes, criticize you. Sometimes the criticism takes the form of crude personal insult. That’s a cost of doing business. Other people take a lot more than I do without being discouraged, so I would have no excuse if I allowed myself to be discouraged either. But too much exposure to so much anger and ugliness does have its depressing effect. And I hope, I very much hope, that Neil Heslin does not have a Twitter account. This loving and bereft man deserves more and better from his fellow human creatures than he has received.

via The Newtown Heckling Controversy – The Daily Beast.

Review & Outlook: The State Tax Reformers – WSJ.com

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A new analysis by economist Art Laffer for the American Legislative Exchange Council finds that, from 2002 to 2012, 62% of the three million net new jobs in America were created in the nine states without an income tax, though these states account for only about 20% of the national population. The no-income tax states have had more stable revenue growth, while states like New York, New Jersey and California that depend on the top 1% of earners for nearly half of their income-tax revenue suffer wide and destabilizing swings in their tax collections.

via Review & Outlook: The State Tax Reformers – WSJ.com.

WaPo: MSNBC ‘reviewing’ Newtown ‘heckled’ video

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Maybe step one for NBC would be to stop lying. This is getting silly with them and the doctored videos.

That transcript comes from a look at the session’s full, 17-minute video, which is below. MSNBC excerpted a short bite that starts with Heslin saying, “Why anybody in this room…” and ends with the appeal from officialdom to “clear the room.” Accordingly, it skips over Heslin’s initial challenge to the public seated behind him: “I ask if there’s anybody in this room that can give me one reason or challenge this question…”

Those 18 words of context are crucial to the alleged heckling. They show that Heslin made a pointed attempt to rope in members of the Hartford crowd. His was apparently not an idle or rhetorical question.

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell votes in favor of the “heckling” interpretation. He said on last night’s show, “Heckling’s when you say something stupid from the audience. And when a speaker rhetorically or directly asks an audience why you need 30-round magazines and assault weapons, and you yell a response which is basically ‘I think the Second Amendment says I can have them,’ you have not answered the question about why you need them.”

Clever thing that O’Donnell has done here — redefine the term “heckling” to apply narrowly to what happened in that hearing room. In doing so, he bypasses a more common definition, one that doesn’t help his case quite as much.

via MSNBC ‘reviewing’ Newtown ‘heckled’ video.