Oregon is ranked among the 14 worst states in the US with corruption problems

Actually, most of the 50 states didn't do very well in a recent investigation:

Oregon gets an F on holding officials accountable

SALEM — Oregon continues to take heat from government accountability groups for the influence-peddling scandal involving former Gov. John Kitzhaber and his fiancée, Cylvia Hayes.

A report released Monday by the Center for Public Integrity ranks Oregon 44 out of 50 states in terms of ethics and public records laws. It says state officials and lawmakers have failed to address profound weaknesses revealed by the allegations that forced Kitzhaber from office in February.

"For many, Kitzhaber's resignation is a thing of the past," the report says. "But the scandal that ensnared the former governor highlights a wobbly legal framework in Oregon's government, where good behavior is taken for granted rather than enforced."

The report, written by Lee van der Voo, a freelancer for The New York Times who covered Kitzhaber's resignation, blasts the Oregon Government Ethics Commission for being slow to respond to media reports that Kitzhaber and Hayes might have used their public roles to profit Hayes' private environmental consulting business. The couple remain under federal investigation. No criminal charges have been filed.

Oregon is among 14 states that received an "F" overall. The three highest-ranked states — California, Alaska and Connecticut — scored in the C-range. Thirty-three states got Ds. [...]

Read the whole thing, for embedded links and more. Reasons sited were budget cuts, which meant there were no funds for auditing or monitoring actions of politicians. How convenient.

The last integrity investigation was in 2012, when Oregon received a C- rating. So things have been getting worse. The following link gives a list of categories, and the individual grade to each, which leads up to the composite grade of "F", detailing Oregon's corruption problems:

Oregon gets F grade in 2015 State Integrity Investigation

I'm not surprised by any of it. But what is to be done about it? Nothing, I suspect.

     

Do we live in the "Post-Truth Era?"

It's a good question. The first article explains why the shooting of Walter Scott was a crime, and the wealth of evidence that supports that assertion:

The North Charleston shooting is not another Ferguson

[...] When I was a cop in Baltimore and I heard of some situation that got ugly, my first reaction was usually, "Thank God I wasn't there." Because nobody knows how they'll react. For that reason, most police officers are quite reluctant to criticize others forced to make split-second life-and-death decisions. Yet every police officer I've spoken to says that Scott's death was horrible and that Slager committed a crime.

In 1985, the Supreme Court ruled that police may not shoot at unarmed fleeing suspects, even felons. In line with that decision, shooting without an immediate threat is against the law in every state, and it's against department policy in every jurisdiction. It's also a violation of the most basic human right: life. Any innocent death is a tragedy, but it's worse at the hands of police. It's not too much to ask our civil servants not to murder us.

During his attempt to catch Scott, Slager fired his Taser. When that failed, Slager could have chased Scott or let him run away. But instead, Slager drew his gun and shot. This is why cops see this case so differently: The criminal was the police officer. And Slager was arrested and charged with murder. That is the way the criminal justice system is supposed to work. [...]

The article explains in detail the differences in this case, to many of the others that have been in the headlines in recent months. Of course every case has it's own facts, which is why it's so important to acknowledge them.

Contrast the above case with this next one, about a decorated an honored Boston cop shot in the face by a career felon. The felon was then killed in a shootout with other police officers. So who was the victim? You decide:




A Boston Cop Shooting and Our Post-Truth Era

[...] According to several Boston cops at the crime scene, people began calling them pigs, shouting “Ferguson…Ferguson” and “hands up…don’t shoot.” This despite the fact—the fact!—that an outside camera from a store next to where the shootout occurred captured the image of West emerging from the driver’s side of his car to instantly shoot Moynihan, who had not even drawn his weapon.

“This is where we are now,” one of the cops said. “Everyone has their own reality. Their own facts. The truth of the situation doesn’t matter. People want to believe what they think happened. Not what really happened. That’s the recent history of almost every encounter we have lately on the street.”

Sadly, it seems as if there is no longer any real history. Just momentary reactions to events that disappear like sky-writing with items like Twitter, texts, Meerkat, Snapchat, and Instagram. And in this, our snap-of-a-finger, Chernobyl-like culture, with almost daily explosions occurring only to be eclipsed in a single news cycle, email and Facebook can resemble the National Archives.

A majority of Americans are more aware of what happened in Ferguson last summer than with what occurred on a city street in Boston on Friday night or on too many streets and neighborhoods nearly every day. Know more about the life of Robert Durst than that of a parent who is afraid to let a child play outdoors in places where guns are more accessible than text books.

We have more tools at hand, literally, to make life easier and more productive than ever. We have Google, Wikipedia, iPads, iPhones, iTunes, YouTube, Netflix, and 600 cable channels. We can shop, pay bills, order food, and get nearly everything delivered, all of it with the touch of a finger on a device in the palm of our hand.

Yet we have a criminal justice system that seems unable to deal with proven violent career criminals like Angelo West who threaten lives every day. Our jails are crowded with those doing extended time for possession of drugs while those arrested multiple times for possession of handguns are often free to walk streets like time bombs eager to explode.

We are at the point where the immediacy of the moment crowds out any thought of reflection. Everyone has a smart phone and everything is recorded. One event spills into another. Conclusions come quickly at the near total expense of consideration of what just actually happened. Reality is self defined as the mob, any mob, writes its own history, never to be contradicted by the quiet statement of truth. [...]

The facts DO matter. Instant gratification of social media be damned.

There has always been people who jump to conclusions and make shallow assessments without looking more deeply. That's nothing new. What is new is that such people have access to social media, where they can instantly amplify their misguided opinions to the world. Ironically, that same technology can also make the facts of the situation be known more quickly, for anyone who cares to bother about the facts. In our technological world of instant gratification, people are often too willing to be lazy and treat their opinions like facts. People who don't care about the facts muddy the water for everyone, and do more harm than good.

These are just excerpts, please follow the links and read the full articles for the details, the complete picture.

I'm sick of hearing people talk about their unsubstantiated opinions as if they were facts. Our Brave New World is going to have to do better than that. For all of our sakes.

     

Thieves who offer Customer Suport to victims? It's called "Ransomware"

Just when you thought you'd seen it all:

'Perfect' ransomware is the scariest threat to your PC

Nothing spurs malware development like success, and that’s likely to be the case in the coming months with ransomware.

Ransomware has been around for around a decade, but it wasn’t until last fall, with the introduction of CryptoLocker, that the malevolent potential of the bad app category was realized. In the last four months of 2013 alone, the malicious software raked in some $5 million, according to Dell SecureWorks. Previously, it took ransomware purveyors an entire year to haul in that kind of money.

So is it any wonder that the latest iteration of this form of digital extortion has attracted the attention of cyber criminals? A compromised personal computer for a botnet or Distributed Denial of Service attack is worth about a buck to a byte bandit, explained Johannes B. Ullrich, chief research officer at the SANS Institute. “With ransomware, the attacker can easily make $100 and more,” he said.

What distinguishes CryptoLocker from past ransomware efforts is its use of strong encryption. Document and image files on machines infected with the Trojan are scrambled using AES 256-bit encryption, and the only way for a keyboard jockey to regain use of the files is to pay a ransom for a digital key to decrypt the data.

[...]

Honor among thieves
The CryptoLocker crew also know the value of maintaining good customer relations. “They’re honoring people who do pay the ransom,” said Jarvis, of SecureWorks.

“In most cases they’re sending the decryption keys back to the computer once they receive payment successfully,” he explained. “We don’t know what the percentage of people who successfully do that is, but we know it’s part of their business model not to lie to people and not do it.”

Moreover, in November, they began offering support to victims who, for whatever reason, fail to meet the hijackers’ ransom deadlines. By submitting a portion of an encrypted file to the bad actors at a black website and paying the ransom, a victim can receive a key to decrypt their files. “You have to reinfect yourself with the malware but once you do that, you can get a successful decryption,” Jarvis explained.

[...]

Ransomware Inc.
"It is inevitable that we will see a cryptographic ransomware toolkit,” he added, “maybe even multiple toolkits because it’s clear that there’s a business opportunity here for criminals.”

Moreover, that opportunity is likely to reach beyond the consumer realm and into the greener pastures of business. “Going after consumers is small fish,” said Bruen, of the Digital Citizens Alliance. “The next step is to conduct ransom operations on major companies. This has already happened,” he said.

“From an attacker’s perspective, there’s definitely a higher risk in getting caught because companies are going to throw more money at the problem than an ordinary consumer can,” he continued, “but the payoff from one of these companies—a Target or a Nieman Marcus—will be much larger.”

Current ransomware attacks involve encrypting select file types on a hard drive, but a business attack will likely choose a higher value target. “Cryptographic keys and digital certificates are ripe for ransom,” Venafi’s Bocek said.

"Whether it’s taking out the key and certificate that secures all communications for a bank or the SSH keys that connect to cloud services for an online retailer, keys and certificates are a very attractive target,” he observed. [...]

Welcome to the Brave new world. The orginal article has embedded links, and more details about the evolution of this software, the way it spreads, and it's potential future applications.

I've already come across a lesser "scareware" version of Ransomeware, that was mentioned in the article. It locked up one of my Linux computers, and wanted payment to unlock it, so this isn't just a Microsoft thing. I was able to get rid of it by uninstalling my browser, clearing the cache, and reinstalling Firefox. But what they are talking about in this article is much more advanced.

Scary stuff.
     

South Africa, black on black crime

South Africa police charged with dragging murder

[...] The video shows Mr Macia struggling with police after apparently parking his vehicle illegally.

Police officers then overcome the taxi driver and tie him to the back of a van by his arms before driving off.

Police Commissioner Riah Phiyega: "The behaviour displayed in the video... is to be abhorred"

Former South African President Nelson Mandela's wife, Graca Machel, joined hundreds of mourners at a Daveyton sports stadium on Wednesday.

Wednesday's emotional ceremony saw mourners, many wearing t-shirts and holding posters printed with Mido Macia's photograph, joining together to sing, clap and dance.

Graca Machel, who is herself Mozambican, told reporters: "As a society we are bleeding. We are grieving. We are in pain. We just don't know how to deal with the pain."

Sonnyboy Ndlovu, a witness to the dragging who was at the ceremony, told Reuters news agency: "The police are used to terrorising people here in the township, especially the Ethiopians and Mozambicans." [...]

During the Aparteid years, any crime by the white-controlled police against blacks made international headlines. When Apartheid was abolished, and blacks assumed majority rule and control of the police, crimes by police continued, I would read about them in SA newspapers on the internet. They were reported in South Africa, but no longer made international headlines. The international press was not interested in reporting black on black crimes by police.

So what made this case different? Someone recorded it on video with their cell phone, and it got shown on South African TV (the article has a link to that video). And Nelson Mandela's wife Graca Machel got involved.

There has been an ongoing problem in South Africa with crimes against black foreigners. When Apartheid was abolished, so were much of the border controls with neighboring countries, which allowed millions of foreign nationals to come streaming into South Africa, competing with South Africans for jobs in an already tight job market. Unfortunately, it continues to be a problem.

   

Climate Change Fraud Exposed. Scandal?

Viscount Monckton on Climategate: ‘They Are Criminals’ (PJM Exclusive)
The man who challenged Al Gore to a debate is furious about the content of the leaked CRU emails — and says why you should be, too.

This is what they did — these climate “scientists” on whose unsupported word the world’s classe politique proposes to set up an unelected global government this December in Copenhagen, with vast and unprecedented powers to control all formerly free markets, to tax wealthy nations and all of their financial transactions, to regulate the economic and environmental affairs of all nations, and to confiscate and extinguish all patent and intellectual property rights.

[...]

Worse, these arrogant fraudsters — for fraudsters are what we now know them to be — have refused, for years and years and years, to reveal their data and their computer program listings. Now we know why: As a revealing 15,000-line document from the computer division at the Climate Research Unit shows, the programs and data are a hopeless, tangled mess. In effect, the global temperature trends have simply been made up. Unfortunately, the British researchers have been acting closely in league with their U.S. counterparts who compile the other terrestrial temperature dataset — the GISS/NCDC dataset. That dataset too contains numerous biases intended artificially to inflate the natural warming of the 20th century.

Finally, these huckstering snake-oil salesmen and “global warming” profiteers — for that is what they are — have written to each other encouraging the destruction of data that had been lawfully requested under the Freedom of Information Act in the UK by scientists who wanted to check whether their global temperature record had been properly compiled. And that procurement of data destruction, as they are about to find out to their cost, is a criminal offense. They are not merely bad scientists — they are crooks. And crooks who have perpetrated their crimes at the expense of British and U.S. taxpayers.

I am angry, and so should you be. [...]

And how much exposure is all this getting in the MSM? Hardly any.

     

Do Californians too easily suffer too many fools?

Garrido claimed black box could speak his mind

OAKLEY, California (CNN) -- The black box sat inside a cabinet. Philip Garrido had given it to a friend for safekeeping, and that's where the friend kept it.

The black box has jacks for plugging in headphones. Philip Garrido claimed it could speak his thoughts.

"He feels he can speak to you and me and everyone else using this box," said Garrido's friend and former business client, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"He was a whack job, but he was a whack job who sounded like he had a really good heart," the friend added.

Garrido and his wife, Nancy, were arrested last month and charged on more than two dozen counts, including kidnapping and rape.

Authorities say the Garridos held Jaycee Dugard, 29, captive for nearly two decades in their backyard. Both have pleaded not guilty. Authorities have said Garrido, a registered sex offender, fathered Dugard's two children.

[...]

Three years ago, Garrido demonstrated the box for clients of his printing business. The clients, some of them at least, went along with his claims for the device.

"I didn't want to tell him you're a kook and you don't know what you're talking about," said Tim Allen, who owns a glass shop in Antioch.

Even so, Allen and several other former Garrido clients signed declarations saying the device worked.

"People believe in things. I didn't think it was my place to shoot him down," Allen said. [...]

Those statements I've emphasized in bold print, really reflect the culture in California, which places a lot of emphasis on "not being judgmental". I can understand that up to a point, but look where it can lead to when it's taken too far. Garrido's craziness was tolerated to the point where he was able to commit crimes and... do the things he did.

Could it be that sometimes a kook needs to be called a kook, and locked up if he's dangerous? There is too often a tendency too be overly concerned about damaging the self esteem of seriously disturbed people. What happened to Jaycee is sometimes the result.

One could argue that since Garrido was not criticized about the black box, he was thus encouraged to try to patent it and publicize it, thus attracting the attention of the police, leading to the rescue of Jaycee and her daughters. But you have to wonder, if his mental illness had not been so tolerated from the beginning, if it had been treated more as an illness than a self esteem issue, if he might have been prevented from kidnapping Jaycee in the first place?

I'm all for tolerance, but it needs to be tempered with good judgment too. Like so many things, it's a question of balance.
     

Interracial dating: was attack a "hate" crime?

Father wants son's beating treated as a hate crime

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Brian Milligan Sr. believes his son's race triggered a brutal attack on the streets of Buffalo, New York.

Armed with a chunk of concrete, several assailants beat Brian Milligan Jr. on the back of the head on August 18, leaving a 3-inch gash. They kicked him in the face, breaking his jaw.

Bloodied and bruised, the 18-year-old managed to walk five blocks to his grandmother's house before being rushed to the hospital.

Milligan's father believes several African-Americans beat his son, who is white, because he is dating an African-American woman. He wants police to treat the beating as a hate crime. He also has criticized what he calls a deafening silence from the community, police and the national media.

"If this was a black guy who was beaten by a group of white guys for dating a white girl, people would be up in arms," he said. "There's a double standard."

Buffalo police believe a group of about 10 to 15 African-American men attacked Milligan late at night, police spokesman Mike DeGeorge said. Police have made no arrests and are still investigating the motive, he said.

Milligan Sr. says he believes the attackers are the same "neighborhood guys" who threatened his son and his African-American girlfriend because of their interracial relationship. [...]

Follow the link and look at the pictures. Mulligan is seriously injured. Read the rest of the article. Mulligan's girlfriend has also been harassed and threatened for dating a white man.

[...] The story has touched a nerve with several members of Buffalo's African-American community, including a local pastor who leads a predominantly black church in Buffalo.

"At first, it didn't affect me the way that it would have if I heard it was a black teen attacked," said the Rev. Darius Pridgen, who spent years fighting for civil rights for African-Americans.

"But after I saw his father on TV pleading with the community to find the assailants, I decided I had to go after the people who beat this kid."

Pridgen said he felt that the community has turned a collective blind eye to the beating. So he gave a fire-and-brimstone sermon at the True Baptist Church on a Sunday after the attack, appealing to his congregation to help find the culprits.

"He didn't deserve to be beaten this way," Pridgen recalled saying at the service. "If you believe this, put your hands together."

If it was a black teen, Pridgen said, "We would have been protesting with flags and everything else."

Rod Watson also addressed the issue in his column in the Buffalo News. Watson, who is black, pointed out that interracial marriages are nearly 10 times higher than they were in 1960, according to U.S. Census data, but still those couples have a tough time being accepted by society.

"If blacks in Buffalo in 2009 are acting like whites in Selma in 1959, this society has big problems, despite electing a president who is himself the product of an interracial union," Watson said.

Judy Milligan, a community activist and Brian Milligan Jr.'s great-aunt, said she has been overwhelmed with support from her friends, both black and white.

Mary Woods, a member of Buffalo's African-American community, reached out to Milligan to offer her support.

"I don't care what color you are, when something like this happens, justice must be served," Woods said. "There had to be someone who saw something, and they should come forward." [...]

Thank God for sane, kind people.

I don't like the idea of "hate" crimes, because when does an attack like this NOT involve hate? Hate is hate, no matter the color of the person it's directed at. Most people understand that at a common sense level.
     

"We know some things but we can't talk,"

A report from the Boston Globe about the attacked Americans:

Victims ID'd in Beijing stabbing

BEIJING -- A Chinese man stabbed the in-laws of the US Olympic men's volleyball coach, killing one and injuring the other while they visited a Beijing tourist site near the main venue where Olympic competitions began today, officials said.

Beijing authorities say a Chinese man attacked two American tourists on the opening day of the Olympic Games, killing one of them before committing suicide.

The victims were Todd and Barbara Bachman, parents of former Olympian Elisabeth Bachman who is married to men's volleyball coach Hugh McCutcheon. Bachman's father was killed, the Associated Press has learned.

The assailant also stabbed and injured a Chinese tour guide with the Americans.

Chinese officials identified the assailant as Tang Yongming, 47, who comes from the eastern city of Hangzhou, and authorities said the man jumped to his death from the second floor of the tower after the attack.

[...]

Yesterday afternoon outside the Drum Tower, a popular tourist attraction surrounded by traditional alley-style hutong dwellings, some residents and shopkeepers said they heard that the Chinese man may have gotten into an argument with the American before stabbing him and that he never jumped outside the tower. Others said they heard about a suicidal jump. Because the alleged attack took place inside the tower, none of the local residents or store owners said they witnessed anything that triggered the incident other than ambulances with sirens arriving around 12:30 p.m.

"When I arrived to work at noon, nothing had happened," said a cleaning lady at a linen store.

Many neighbors declined to discuss anything about what they know or saw, amid the swarm of international media that arrived at the scene within a couple of hours of the alleged incident.

"We know some things but we can't talk," said one resident. Throughout this site, police officers were stationed, as well as neighborhood security volunteers who seemed to be watching closely who was talking to reporters. [...]

(bold emphasis mine) "Security volunteers"? There are several things about this story that give me the creeps... and I have a feeling there will be more to come.
     

More reasons for not visiting Portland, OR

I live in rural Oregon, but I'm not at all tempted to visit Portland. The following article by Takuan Seiyo at the Brussel's Journal gives me many reasons to feel that way:



Postcard from Zinnlandia

I am on the MAX Red Line light rail car going from downtown Portland to the Airport. Some things socialists do better. Among them are public transportation, recycling, French poetry readings, yoga, coffee, artisan food and arthouse cinema. Would it that the counterscale were not so much more loaded.

Two hefty women in Birkenstocks and Nordic sweaters sit on the bench in front of me. They are either academics or lesbians or both. Portland is a babe magnet for this kind of babes.

One of them, silver bangles jangling, is showing a souvenir purchase to the other. It’s a garden gnome, complete with a red cap and a Walt Disney tunic stretched taut over a rotund belly. The face, though, is less jovial than one expects on a gnome. An etched inscription on the base reads, “Howard Zinn.”

We are leaving Zinnlandia, after all – that great land of the Pacific Northwest, rich in good wine, including zinfandel, and other bounties of nature. Howard Zinn and his doppelgänger, Noam Chomsky, are to the coastal zones of this blessed land what St. Patrick is to the Emerald Isle. And, like Finlandia, Jutlandia and Hollandia, Zinnlandia too has much Northern European DNA.

Zinnlandia is in Amerikka – that racist, capitalist land of injustice, sexism, specieism, lookism, theism, militarism and homophobia. As a material and cultural Marxist, and skillful propagandist, Zinn – a master of sieving American history for its worst nuggets – is the perfect avatar for the self-flagellating white inhabitant of this land.

A Zinnlandian I met on this trip, a WASP physician endowed with the best education much money can buy, told me that he does not celebrate July 4th because the Declaration of Independence had been written by a slave owner and signed by other slave owners. He was just as hotly critical of the “racism” of Americans in dealing with the growing Muslim immigrant minority. The conversation unfolded over a bottle of Oregon Vino Pinko, with the likeness of a notorious Cuban mass murderer on the label.

Besides the pervasive lefty obtuseness as to the true nature of Che Guevara, there is one central paradox in this Zinnlandian, as there is in all of them. [...]

He goes on to describe his experiences in "Zinnlandia", and the history of crimes committed on the very train he is riding on. They all tie together. In the end, he compares Portland with many other cities he's visited. I enjoy the authors wit, but it's not a pretty picture for a Sunday. I think I need to go work in the garden now... thank God I live in the country.


Related Links:

Attracting a crowd means what exactly?

Anti-American "Art" at Portland Oregon Airport
     

Is Great Britian becoming a Nation of Hooligans?

I keep reading stories about gangs of "youths" in Britain, this story is typical:

Former soldier arrested for kidnap after his citizen's arrest on yob who pelted his home with eggs

[...] The trouble started on the evening of February 17 when Mr McCourt and his wife Maria heard a bang on the window of their £170,000 semi-detached home in Crawley, West Sussex.

Mr McCourt went outside to find two boys 'of about 11' throwing stones, mud and eggs at houses. He reprimanded them and told them not to come back.

But when he returned from work the next day, he found his wife in tears.

He said: 'She was absolutely terrified. She told me a gang of kids had been throwing things at the house all afternoon, and shouting all the names under the sun at her.'

When they came back later, Mr McCourt called the police on their anti-social behaviour hotline but couldn't get an answer despite holding for three-quarters of an hour.

He went out to look for a community support officer but couldn't find one.

At his wit's end, Mr McCourt grabbed one of the louts, led him into his house and demanded to know the boy's name, his mother's name and her phone number.

While he was trying to call the boy's mother, she turned up banging on the door, shouting and swearing.

He said: 'She said she didn't want me manhandling her son. I said if she'd brought him up properly, I wouldn't have to.'

Mr McCourt let the child go but minutes later police arrived and arrested him on suspicion of kidnapping. [...]

Is it any wonder that people are emigrating out of Britain in droves? What is wrong with British youths? Youth gangs are also responsible for a growing number of murders, including random, lethal attacks against Goths.

Is this the result of being taught to hate their own country? By a culture that tells them everything is meaningless, and there is nothing worth striving for? That is exactly what some people are saying.


Related Link:

An interview with Theodore Dalrymple
     

Austrian House of Horrors Revealed

It was in Austria, but it sure wasn't the Von Trapp family. More like a "trapped" family. We all have problems in our lives, but things like this help you remember, that there is often somebody worse off than you:

'House of Horror children never saw daylight'

Austrian Man Confesses to Keeping Daughter, Her Children Captive in Cellar

The links have photos, video, more information. I'm not gonna publish excerpts because, frankly, I'd rather not think about it anymore today. Yikes.

I hope the Mom and the kids get rich selling the movie rights. I can only wonder if those kids will ever be able to have normal lives, having spent their entire childhood in a windowless basement. Never seen daylight! Too bizarre.
     

"Dress for Arrest": a guide to un-success

Mug shots from arrest photos, of people wearing "message" T-shirts:



TOP 10 Shirts To Get Arrested In

If only all criminals came with obvious labels. It's not hard to see how most of these folks were heading for trouble. I felt a bit sorry for "Bambi" though, she's not wearing a message T-shirt, I don't think she belonged on the list. A good looking gal with a job, you have to wonder what happened that got her arrested, what her story was?
     

The Battle Continues for 2nd Amendment

Maynard at the Tammy Bruce Blog posted this a while back:

How the Left Plans to Take Your Guns

While dining out, he overhears a foghorn leftist justifying to her friend the confiscation of all guns from citizens. Among other things this woman claimed that collective rights usurp our individual rights. It has a kind of logic, yet Maynard points out how it's not even consistently applied:

[...] It's also worth noting the irony of how Leftists will interpret the Constitution very loosely when they want to invent a new "right", but they turn into super-strict constructionists when trying to control people they dislike. For example, where exactly do you find your Constitutional right to unrestricted access to abortions? Even those who favor a woman's right to choose (as I do) must acknowledge that the Constitutional argument is marginal. It's said to derive from the right to privacy, which also isn't enumerated, but is a generous interpretation of protection from unreasonable search and seizure (the Fourth Amendment). I heard Gloria Allred expalin that abortion rights were a product of the "Constitutional penumbra". I won't necessarily argue with that, but can't we have a little consistency here? Someone who finds meaning in the Constitution's penumbra ought to also respect the actual words. [...]

This is a popular tactic with the left, and the views Maynard overheard are worth noting since they are actively being used against all gun owning citizens to dilute the meaning and authority of the 2nd Amendment. It's worth reading the whole thing.


More recently, Maynard posted this:

The Second Amendment: Saved?

[...] In a 2-1 decision, a U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia has overturned the DC gun ban. The court ruled that the right to bear arms is "not limited to militia service, nor is an individual's enjoyment of the right contingent upon his or her continued intermittent enrollment in the militia."

In other words, in the opinion of this Court, the Second Amendment acknowledges YOUR right to be armed. You may think this is obvious and that any other opinion would have been a gross offence against common sense and decency. But, legally speaking, the question had been undecided.

This ruling does NOT end the issue. This is a regional court ruling. Only a Supreme Court ruling would settle the legal argument for the nation. [...]

Saved? No. It's a step in the right direction, but a future Supreme Court decision against gun owners could still be disastrous.





Related Links:

www.saveourguns.com

Second Amendment victory in D.C.

Crime Emergency in "Gun Free" Washington, DC