Creativity in living is not without its attendant difficulties, for peculiarity breeds contempt. And the unfortunate thing about being ahead of your time [is that] when people finally realize you were right, they'll say it was obvious all along.
— Alan Ashley-Pitt
Everyone knows that microwave-cooked food isn't as nourishing, right? Because microwaves destroy vitamins? I've heard that one lots of times, and I'm sure you have too.
Turns out that not only is it not so, but the shoe's on the other foot. You see, microwaves don't destroy vitamins. What destroys vitamins is heat, and duration of heat. Microwave ovens cook food more quickly than traditional cooking methods, and so they actually destroy less of the vitamins.
If you want to destroy the nutritional value of your vegetables, don't microwave them — boil them to mush. You know, the traditional vegetable-cooking technique.
Looks like the Bush Administration is determined to do as much damage as it can in the month and a half or so it has left.
Some highlights:
[FBI] Agents will be allowed to use informants to infiltrate lawful groups, engage in prolonged physical surveillance and lie about their identity while questioning a subject’s neighbors, relatives, co-workers and friends. The changes also give the F.B.I. — which has a long history of spying on civil rights groups and others — expanded latitude to use these techniques on people identified by racial, ethnic and religious background.
The administration showed further disdain for Americans’ privacy rights and for Congress’s power by making clear that it will ignore a provision in the legislation that established the Department of Homeland Security. The law requires the department’s privacy officer to account annually for any activity that could affect Americans’ privacy — and clearly stipulates that the report cannot be edited by any other officials at the department or the White House.
The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel has now released a memo asserting that the law “does not prohibit” officials from homeland security or the White House from reviewing the report. The memo then argues that since the law allows the officials to review the report, it would be unconstitutional to stop them from changing it. George Orwell couldn’t have done better.
(Emphasis above mine.)
One last-minute change Mr. Bush won’t be making: He apparently has decided not to shut down the prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — the most shameful symbol of his administration’s disdain for the rule of law.
Mr. Bush has said it should be closed, and his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and his secretary of defense, Robert Gates, pushed for it. Proposals were prepared, including a plan for sending the real bad guys to other countries for trial¹. But Mr. Cheney objected, and the president has refused even to review the memos. He will hand this mess off to his successor.
So, what, now the Vice-President is telling the President what to do?
A lot of the provisions in this article are qualified with "we expect". How firm those expectations are, or what they're based on, is not stipulated.
[1] Presumably other countries that don't have inconvenient qualms about extracting confessions via torture. If — IF — we actually have enough evidence against them to try them, then why aren't we trying them here in the US? And if we DON'T have enough evidence to try them even under the no-due-process rules passed by this administration for accused terrorist suspects, then why are they still imprisoned? One of the historical legacies of the second Bush administration will be the creation of the idea of classes of people so dangerous that they cannot be allowed free, yet so innocent that they cannot actually be charged with anything.
[2] Literally seconds before posting, I realized I'd typoed the subject as "Parting shits". Innocent typo or Freudian slip...? You be the judge. (Though I note in defense that the legend has completely worn off my i and o keys.)³
[3] No, I don't fully touch-type. So sue me.
NYT article pointer credit to MSgt ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
wcg.
Remember how Barack Obama promised during his campaign that he supported the Second Amendment, and only wanted "reasonable restrictions" and "common-sense measures"?
Well, he's been President-elect for three days, and his change.gov site has this to say on the subject:
Address Gun Violence in Cities: As president, Barack Obama would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts the ability of local law enforcement to access important gun trace information, and give police officers across the nation the tools they need to solve gun crimes and fight the illegal arms trade. Obama and Biden also favor commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals who shouldn't have them. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent, as such weapons belong on foreign battlefields and not on our streets.
We knew it was coming ... and here it comes. Bend over.
Let's take those points in order, shall we?
What the gun control lobby says: The Tiahrt Amendment hampers local law enforcement by denying them access to BATF gun trace data.
The truth: The Tiahrt Amendment does nothing to deny gun trace information to law enforcement agencies. It does deny NON-law-enforcement parties the ability to go on "fishing expeditions" through BATF trace data for political ends. (Most firearms traces performed by the BATF are not related to criminal use of the firearm in any case — one of the most common reasons for BATF traces is to find the legal owners of recovered stolen firearms. Many persons are named on BATF trace forms merely because they were witnesses to a crime involving a firearm.) It also enforces a pre-existing provision that National Instant Check System records be promptly destroyed as already required by law, restricts disclosure to third parties of Federal records of lawful gun purchases, and forbids (again) the BATF from creating a computerized Federal gun-owner registry (again, something that has been illegal since 1986).
An interesting and telling detail: The gun control lobby's "point man" against the Tiahrt Amendment has been New York City Mayor Bloomberg. But when Kansas Representative Tiahrt offered to negotiate technical modifications to the language of the Tiahrt Amendment to the extent necessary to address legitimate law-enforcement needs, Bloomberg broke off negotiations. He wasn't interested. Because Bloomberg doesn't care about law enforcement needs; he wants to use the data in his quest to be able to sue firearms manufacturers for criminal misuse of legally purchased, non-defective firearms. The City of Chicago wasn't interested in law enforcement either; they wanted a list of every person in the US (not "in Chicago", note, or even "in Illinois") who owned more than one handgun.
What the gun control lobby says: Criminals can go to gun shows and buy guns without having to pass a background check.
The truth: Two kinds of gun sales occur at gun shows — dealer business sales, and private person-to-person sales. A buyer purchasing a gun from a dealer at a gun show must pass a NICS check and fill out a Federal form 4473 exactly as though they had walked into the dealer's store, and the dealer must report that sale to the BATF and must retain the Form 4473 for twenty years exactly as for an in-store purchase. A buyer and seller making a private person-to-person sale must still comply with all applicable state laws regarding person-to-person transfers. That means that it is legal to make private person-to-person sales at a gun show if and only if private person-to-person sales are already legal in that state, and while no Federal paperwork is required for person-to-person transfers, buyer and seller must still comply with any applicable state laws.
In short, there is no gun-show loophole.
Interesting detail: Recently a Boston yellow journalist attempted to "prove" the existence of the "gun show loophole" by travelling to New Hampshire to buy a gun at a gun show there. The dealer wouldn't sell to him because he wasn't a New Hampshire resident. So he had a friend who lives in New Hampshire purchase a gun for him. The gun never actually left the friend's possession; if the friend had then given the gun to said journalist, it would have been an illegal straw-man purchase. The journo then bragged in print about how he'd shown how flawed the law was and proven the existence of the loophole, although the truth was he didn't actually understand the straw-man law well enough to understand he hadn't actually broken it.
But he had the intent to violate the straw-man law, and the BATF has a poor sense of humor about that. End result: Journo and friend are both under BATF investigation on Federal firearms charges.
So, just where was this loophole, exactly....?
California currently has a bill in the legislature that would mandate that all handguns sole in California be "smart guns" that can only be fired by their authorized owner. This is what's usually meant when gun control advocates talk about "childproofing" guns.
There turn out to be a few problems with the idea, though. You see, the technology to do it doesn't exist. The one company that's backing the legislation knows that the technology doesn't exist, but they're hoping to get the letgislature to pay for them to develop such a technology which they can then market for other purposes. In short, they want the State of California to fund their R&D. Law enforcement agencies hate the idea and have been uniformly opposed to it, because no mechanism has been proposed which (a) cannot be defeated, (b) will work reliably, especially under adverse conditions, and (c) "fails safe". In fact, it's not possible even to define what "failing safe" is with such a technology. If the "fail-safe state" leaves the gun fireable, then it can't prevent unauthorized use; all a gun thief need do is break the sensor or remove the battery. If the "fail-safe state" leaves the gun unfirable, citizens or police officers with "smart guns" could end up dead because their sidearm wouldn't go off when they desperately needed it to.
What the gun control lobby says: "These weapons belong on foreign battlefields." "The preferred weapon of criminals and drug gang members."
The truth: What the gun control lobby calls an "assault weapon" actually refers mostly to a set of cosmetic features that have no significant effect upon the actual functioning of the gun. Some, like pistol grips on rifles, have no functional effect other than to make a rifle more comfortable to hold. Ventilated barrel shrouds, another feature frequently spoken of in tones of fear and hysteria, are a totally cosmetic feature on anything but a fully-automatic weapon (that's "machine gun" to you). Manufacturers of cheap guns put ventilated barrel shrouds on them to increase their appeal to the Rambo-wannabe set. "High-capacity magazines"? How is a pistol with a 12-round magazine more deadly than one with a 10-round magazine? Is there some natural repulsive force between magazines that makes it impossible for a criminal to carry, say, three ten-round magazines instead of two fifteen-round ones?
Or how about flash hiders? The fear-and-loathing story is that flash hiders conceal a shooter's location. They do no such thing. What they actually do is help to prevent the muzzle flash of a rifle from dazzling the shooter at night, particularly in automatic fire. That might become relevant when there are midnight gun-battles with fully-automatic weapons in the streets of L.A.
Now, a muzzle brake? A muzzle brake looks almost identical to a flash hider, and reduces recoil forces by redirecting gases at the muzzle. So, in simplistic terms, it makes it easier to shoot a more powerful rifle. But a flash hider is on the list of features that make a rifle an "assault weapon", while a muzzle brake isn't. Go figure, huh? Still think there's any actual logic behind this "assault weapon" stuff?
And what's this about "fully automatic"?
Well, you see, the gun control lobby would like you to think that any ugly black gun is a machinegun that will fire indefinitely as long as the trigger is held down. But it just ain't so. A civilian-legal AR15 works just like a Browning or H&K semi-automatic hunting rifle: You pull the trigger once, you get one shot. Pull it again, you get another shot. Lather, rinse, repeat. "But doesn't that mean you can just spray bullets like a firehose?" you ask. Well, sure, you can just point in the general direction of the target and yank on the trigger as fast as you can. We shooters call that "spray and pray". Because divine intervention is about the only factor that's going to put your rounds on target. In the words of Major John C. Pilaster, "Two hundred misses per minute isn't firepower. One hit is firepower."
The fact is, ever since 1934 it has been illegal to buy, sell or transfer an automatic weapon in the United States without paying a BATF transfer tax, and you must have a Federal Class III license from the BATF in order to do so. Only one murder has ever been committed in the US with a full-automatic weapon legally purchased after 1934; and that was a police officer who murdered his wife with a Thompson submachinegun that he purchased for police use. All of the rare crimes committed since then with automatic weapons have one thing in common: the weapons were already illegal in the first place. What is making them even more illegal going to do? Criminals don't obey laws. That's why we call them criminals.
"The preferred weapon of criminals and drug gang members"? Oh, please. When was the last time you saw a gang member standing on a street corner with an AK47 stuffed down his pants?
The "assault weapons ban" is bullshit, pure and simple. Many politicians who support banning "assault weapons" can't even explain what they think one is. It's an attempt to separate out a group of guns, demonize them, and ban them — then move on to the next group. That's a process that won't end until every type of gun actually useful for hunting or self-defense has been banned. At which point the gun control lobby will say, "Well, the guns you have left aren't any use for defense or hunting anyway, so what do you need them for?" And if you think I'm kidding, that the gun control lobby would never take your deer rifle — hey, if it could penetrate a bulletproof vest (which something like 99.9% of centerfire rifle rounds will) and has even a low-power a telescopic sight (which, at this point, over 90% of hunting rifles do), it's "a deadly sniper rifle". Hand it over, bud.
Why can't the Democratic Party learn from experience? The last time the Democratic Party lost control of Congress, it was largely because of voter backlash against one gun control law after another after another. But here we go again, not even in office yet, and Barack Obama and Joe Biden are already starting to talk up the new gun-control laws they're going to pass. When they say "common-sense measures", they mean keeping guns out of the hands of people who shouldn't have them ... and they don't think anyone should have them. It's like a knee-jerk reflex — "Hey, we're in power! BAN TEH GUNZ0RZ!"
This, by you, is "change"? From here, it looks like "Democratic Party Business As Usual."