Debate Ethics 101
 

Why, are you going to heckle?

Israel
 

How closely is anyone else watching this? There are developments that have been notable over the past few days, including:

The heavy use of pilotless drones to the point that targets in a target-rich environment (also crowded with civilians) are apparently being constantly monitored and identified. The Isrealis are claiming that they have attacked 7 different groups of rocket launchers during or immediately after launching a rocket, which implies at least that the entire area is under heavy surveillance. In at least 2 of the cases I've read about, the Palestinian eyewitnesses are corroborating the Israelis' accounts.

Is the future of warfare really unmanned assault platforms?

Hello

Debate Ethics 101
 

Yes, you've persuaded him to dislike Kerry.

If Bush doesn't step up his debate performance, he's going to lose. He can't bring 30 minutes of material to a 90 minute debate, and he can't look as disturbed as Al Gore in the 2000 presidential debates.

Israel
 

Ronald Reagan invented that.

Gun control (register or don't)
 

No, I think a posse of gun toting yahoos is scary by any stretch of the imagination. 30 people (none of whom are police officers) walk into your office with .45s strapped to their legs and you'll shit your pants, I'll guaranty.

And this isn't the wild west. Why would anyone need to carry a gun into a Falls Church municipal building? The city is one of the safest on the Eastern Seaboard. The police station is right there. There is very little chance that one is going to need to defend oneself with deadly force while waiting in line to pay your car tax. There is only one reason to strap one on and visit city hall: to make trouble. (Either as an overactive NRA "dammit I'm going to take my gun anywhere" guy, or to shoot up the place. Either way, I say call the cops - the first guy isn't going to be happy unless you do, and the second guy, well, needs to be arrested.)

Seriously. Some people get so riles up about protecting there god-given right to blast the shit out stuff they can't take a minute to step back and ask themselves if they are stepping over the line. So the police are called if someone with a gun walks in the door. BFD.

OTOH, I suppose it is worthy of note that until recently Falls Church was the laughingstock of even Northern Virginia because their police force drove a fleet of Volvos (donated by the only in town car dealer - Don Beyer Volvo [Don Beyer later unsuccessfully ran for governor]). But lest they be thought too liberal, Falls Church exists as a seperate city solely to keep out black people from the local schools.

Gun control (register or don't)
 

Nope, I wouldn't bat an eye, particularly in the context of the city council meeting, and at least as long as nobody unholstered their gun (in which case I'm laughing as I imagine the rest of the people in the meeting, including the city council and Sgt. at Arms, unholstering their guns too). In context, this was a completely obvious political statement from people I simply do not see as scary. It would seem that very few people in NoVa would seem scary to me.

I'd hope that most of the 30 walked in with a giant smirk to let everyone know that it was all in fun (to make a political statement). If these guys so much as glared at anyone on the way in, it would have made them suspicious or even dangerous, and they would have rightfully been stopped (armed civilian, glaring at anyone on the way into a government building is pretty, uhm, suspicious).


Not at all correct. The reason they went there was to exercise both their first amendment right to speech, expressly in the form of exercising their second amendment right to bear arms. It was so obviously political that its laughable to suggest otherwise. I'd love to see if they all wore their "gun yahoo NRA" tee-shirts or something. Its ironic that the only reason they even felt an urge to carry weapons into City Hall in this manner is because City Hall had suggested that carrying a weapon into a government building was enough to prompt suspicious such that the police should be called and the bearer of arms interrogated. Again, constitutional and legislative rights are at issue here. Some people would like to target people just for being black. Its not right. Similarly, targeting people merely for bearing an arm, as authorized for many/most people, is simply not a good idea.

How 'bout this for you and Atticus. If we list a series of particulars that *may* make a gun-bearer suspicious, do you think the particulars would differ in any way from things that would make any other person suspicious? How about, talking to oneself, appearing distraught/agitated/lost/threatening/interested in young children etc...? See where this is going? I'm sure the library workers had an inkling when to call the police already, without being told to call the police for every single person who walks into a library with a gun.

In any case, the second guy doesn't need to be arrested, particularly when they have committed no crime. People who don't like the state's guns laws are free to move somewhere else. Ironically, almost anywhere else similar is not going to be as safe. Weird that.

I'm not trying to be insulting here. But why is this "making trouble" when any other form of expression that comes to mind is protected by, at most, one fewer of our Amendments?


I'd imagine there was already an officer present at a city council meeting, but I can't guarantee it. Given the orders passed out by the city administrator (to confront and verify the legality for each and every person bearing arms into a municipial building), I'd imagine it probably was a bit nerve-racking. I don't remember if the article mentioned whether he ran all 30 names.

And it doesn't surprise me about their reason for being a city. Lots of places find lots of ways to do stuff like that, not just targeted at blacks of course. Just one more reason for me not to move there.

Hello

Debate Ethics 101
 

Joe Sixpack likes the fact that Bush shows emotion (i.e "Why am I stuck here with this pompous ass with a cribsheet").

Joe Sixpack also does not like the fact that John "botox" Kerry's face is so frozen he can barely smile.

Gun control (register or don't)
 

Laughing? Usually it's the other people in the room laughing when you get a woodie from one of your fantasies.

Gun control (register or don't)
 

I'm not sure whether I'm trying to say what you think I'm saying. I was a babe in arms when it happened, but I thought it was a noncontroversial statement that the 911 dispatchers accidentally coded the "man with a gun" calls as low-priority calls (notwithstanding multiple identical reports in that case?), meaning the SFPD didn't get upstairs until after Ferri had begun shooting and people were already dying. In fact, I think the result of the investigation was SF spending recockulous amounts of dough to modernize 911. But I'm prepared to be wrong about that; S.F. was a distant metropolis to young Atticus Grinch when that shit went down.

I remember thinking that spending money to modernize 911 wouldn't have changed the particular code error, but whatever. It was a shitty situation all around. A nutjob with a gun can change a lot of lives before the SHFM posse comitatus can take him down.

Damn liberal media.
 

On the other hand, he's a choirboy compared to Elliott Abrams.
 

Gun control (register or don't)
 

I wasn't living in the city at that time. Did he get the gun lawfully?

Debate Ethics 101
 

Joe Sixpack doesn't think a lot about Botox, but Republican elitists who dream of winning over the common man do.

Damn liberal media.
 

your story being featured nationally probably does show media bias, Cuzzzzzzz, guess what JFK's local paper went for Bush....

http://www.lowellsun.com/Stories/0,1...442984,00.html

etc.

And I'm pretty sure this won't get the coverage the big Crawford story received.

Gun control (register or don't)
 

Say if you were working the front door at the school in Breslan. Bunch of guys heading towards the door with guns...can you call right away or do you need to wait for something more?

See this is where this stuff is so screwed up. The next John Mohammed can walk into a theatre or school or city hall with a gun out?