A Self-Inflicted Gun Wound
Why is Attorney General Eric Holder backing away from an assault weapons ban?

After fierce resistance from the gun lobby and its allies in Congress, Attorney General Eric Holder has dialed back talk about reimposing a federal assault weapons ban to help curb the spiraling violence in Mexico.

But his comments roused the gun lobby. The National Rifle Association quickly sent out “action alerts” to its members. Sixty-five House Democrats signed a letter saying they would oppose any new ban—as did Montana’s two Democratic senators, Max Baucus and Jon Tester. “Senators to Attorney General Holder: Stay Away From Our Guns,” read a press release sent out by Baucus’s office. In addition, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid both shot down the idea that Congress would take up any new assault weapons ban this year.

Could it be that Holder has finally read far enough in the Constitution (hell, its only the second amendment, don’t have to read far) to get to the part about:

the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

See, reading IS fundamental, just like they said.

Uh, this is not good:

Why it matters that the Army was on the streets of Samson, Alabama

Now that the Army has conceded that 22 military police soldiers were dispatched from Fort Rucker to Samson, Alabama, in the wake of the horrific mass murder there, local officials are coming out to take responsibility for inviting the military presence and to thank the troops for their assistance. While local reaction to the presence of troops seems overwhelmingly to be one of gratitude, and the small-scale deployment was almost certainly well-intentioned, the actions likely violated federal law. It was also a step in the wrong direction.

Indeed.

Clinton: US shares blame for Mexican drug wars

Headline like that really gets your hopes up that finally, someone in power might actually tell the truth about drugs. But then you read further, and the cold fish of reality- the reality that she’s a politician, and a Clinton to boot- slaps you upside the head. Again.

“I feel very strongly we have a co-responsibility,” Clinton told reporters, adding: “Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade.”

Huh, lets see. What are some other exports from Mexico to the US?

Crude oil …US$30.3 billion (15.3% of Mexico to U.S. exports, up 31.8% from 2005)
Car parts & accessories … $21.8 billion (11%, up 5.7%)
Video equipment (e.g. DVD players) … $14.6 billion (7.4%, up 38.3%)
Passenger cars … $14.2 billion (7.2%, up 31.2%)
Other complete & assembled vehicles … $9.6 billion (4.8%, up 20.2%)

Funny, I don’t hear of anyone fighting in the streets over Ford minivans and cheap dvd players, so maybe our “insatiable demand” isn’t the problem. The problem, of course, is that these products are legal, while drugs are not. That is the complete and total rebuttal to our “responsibility” in Mexico’s drug wars. If we truly gave a shit about their wellbeing then we could end the problem over the weekend. Legalize it, tax it, and move on.

And as an aside, Hillary, does it ever cross your mind WHY we have an “insatiable demand” for drugs? If you need a hint, I quote to you from Mark Sandman and Morphine:

Someday there’ll be a cure for pain
That’s the day I throw my drugs away

Just perhaps, if you and the rest of your Beltway thugs hadn’t fornicated the economic pooch, leading to rising unemployment, drastic loss of peoples retirement savings, and hadn’t sent thousands of young Americans off to die in some fucking desert we shouldn’t give a shit about, maybe, just maybe, you wouldn’t have so many people getting high.

I’m just sayin’.

From Obama’s op-ed to those attending the G-20:

But I also know that we need not choose between a chaotic and unforgiving capitalism and an oppressive government-run economy. That is a false choice that will not serve our people or any people.

“Unforgiving capitalism”? WTF is he talking about? Capitalism isn’t the problem, greed is. When the financial industry (who elected Obama, don’t forget) gets their lobbyists to write the laws, allowing them to stand common sense and economic reality on its head for a short-term gain, thats the problem. We’re supposed to sympathize with the people who had all their money “invested” with Bernie Madoff? Really? Here’s a group of people who looked around at all the options available to invest, and found one guy who promised returns 10 or 20 times higher than whatever anyone else was paying, tossed all their money at him, and then surprise surprise Gomer Pyle, it’s a con? The only way to get that return on your money is to sell something illegal- which of course you can only do with the governments help (see War On…well, fucking anything). And these people, deep down, knew that. So we’re supposed to wring our hands for Kevin Bacon’s greed? This is the mentality that poisoned our economy from the top down, the notion that if making 5% on a loan was good, then repackaging that loan to 30 people down the line is, well, 30% better! Who cares that 4th grader with a sidewalk lemonade stand can see its a scam that will eventually eat itself, since its not based on anything other than what sustained Madoff- a pyramid scheme that only takes a small handful of “bad loans” to default to trigger a complete meltdown.

Ok, how about the “oppressive government-run economy” bit? Uh, what the hell do we have now? Our health care costs are staggeringly high, with 40% of each dollar going to administrative costs- because the health care, insurance and pharmaceutical companies wrote the fucking laws to make it so. Or a tax code that is completely arbitrary and numbingly complex, that rewards companies for off shoring jobs and gutting businesses, until the point that the company withers and dies, at which point we toss billions and trillions of unprinted taxpayer dollars at them, because they are “too big to fail”. Or gobs of dollars down a black hole called the defense department, off the books, even Congress can’t see the details, paying for useless weapons systems and military bases in any country with more than a handful of brown people- or oil.

So yeah, Obama, really hope you mean it, but it seems to me that you’re just a hyped-up version of the same “bidness of America is bidness” jackals that got us to this point. Because until he- and the rest of DC, and the media, begin to understand that the business of America is people, then we’re going to continue to rot until we’re all speaking Chinese or watching endless Bollywood epics.

The memos are a confession. The memos could not be clearer: This was the legal groundwork of an attempted coup. I expected massive front page headlines from the revelation that these memos exited. Almost nothing. I was shocked.

These memos gave the Bush administration’s [lawless] practices the veneer of legality.”

Wheat fungus threatens global crops

A devastating strain of stem rust (Puccinia graminis), a fungus that infects wheat, is moving out of Africa towards wheat growing regions on other continents. Called Ug99, it was identified in Uganda and classified in 1999. This week, experts are meeting in Ciudad Obregón, Mexico, to discuss how to tackle the rust, which is currently found in Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan, Yemen and Iran.

Then, in the mid 1980s when there was plenty of food produced, there was little interest by donors to invest in agricultural research. Due to funding reductions, CIMMYT could not maintain its rust research project in Kenya and the programme was closed. Ug99 to a great extent is the consequence of taking money away from agricultural research.

The Top 10 Craziest Sex Laws in America

Heh.

EFF Urges Court to Block Government’s Ploy for Cell Phone Location Information
Law Enforcement Must Get a Warrant Before Seizing Records

Philadelphia – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged a U.S. appeals court Monday to block the government’s repeated attempts to seize cell phone location information — a record of where the cell phone user travels throughout each day — without a warrant in violation of communications privacy statutes and the Constitution.

“The government argues that federal law requires judges to approve their applications for location information from cell phone companies — even if the police don’t have probable cause to obtain this sensitive information,” said EFF Civil Liberties Director Jennifer Granick. “Courts have the right under statute — and the duty under the Constitution — to demand that the government obtain a search warrant before seizing this private location data.”

Remember when this nation operated under a rule of law?

Nah, me either.

What if we’re not looking into the portal of another Great Depression, but we’re looking into the abyss of another Dark Age instead?

What if it’s time to think like a Roman?

Mom given ticket for reviving son

LONDON, March 22 (UPI) — Disability activists say they’re backing a British mother given a $145 parking ticket when she stopped to revive her severely disabled son.

“We are so appalled we struggle to find words,” said one aid official.

I certainly hope the next we hear of this is the mother being released without charges after beating key members of the Richmond Council with a tire iron.