EckerNet.Com

Yeah, so I have a bunch of tabs stocked up again….time to do another deep thoughts post.

The Obama campaign bus has to have the biggest clearance ever on a vehicle. Because he’s tossed virtually every person he’s ever known for more than 20 minutes under that bus. Now he’s tossing Ludacris under it too. Why? Well because despite Obama’s claim to like his music, he is now pretending to be offended when Ludacris does…..well, what Ludacris does.

As most of you know, Thomas Sowell is one of my favorite political commentators….and here he offers a litany of random thoughts on recent events.

After about 230 years (in internet time) of blogging and entertaining us, Kim du Toit is hanging it up. Stop by to offer words trying to convince him otherwise. Fortunately, Gratuitous Gun Pics, Essays, Weekend Women, and his other content will remain online for viewing purposes.

So Minneapolis police officers get a medal for almost accidentally massacring an entire family of innocent people. Wow. Imagine what they would have gotten if they had actually killed someone. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time.

Wait a second….aren’t Democrats supposedly in favor of affordable health care??? Then why are they attempting to discipline Senator Coburn for continuing his profession of delivering babies, except that he’s doing it for free?!?? Anyone else notice a disconnect here?

The supposed “Slam Dunk Case for Pawlenty as VP“. I don’t know that I buy all of it. It is a bit disconcerting those that we may potentially follow up a RINO with a very very moderate Republican. It’s not exactly the “rebound” most conservatives are hoping for if we have to tolerate a McCain presidency.

What Democrats said about the surge back then….

In the wake of Heller, “gun-rights” activists are opening up new fronts all over the place. It’s about fucking time.

How is it that we’re supposed to trust Obama’s superior judgement, when he doesn’t even know which Senate committees he serves on?? Seriously? WTF??? Does he dress himself in the morning or does Michelle have to do that for him?? Perhaps a teleprompter tells him how to do it??

Yeah those convention protesters just want to do a peaceful march. Right……then why are they stocking up bottles of URINE???

The battle over the oil drilling ban may result in a government shutdown. Which didn’t work out too well last time Republicans tried it. However, this time they hold the presidency. So it might work out a little better if Bush uses perhaps the biggest weapon he has, the podium, to drive the point home that Democrats refuse to allow more drilling. Since it’s a smart political move, I’d give the chances of Bush actually doing it at about 50%.

Canadian study says police batons are more dangerous than tasers. Basically the summary is that batons are gonna seriously fuck you up, but you’ll live. With a taser you should come away unharmed….except that there is a small chance you’ll die. I think the end conclusion should probably be….stop resisting the police officer dumbass! But then again, if you are smart enough to reach that conclusion you probably aren’t committing a crime in the first place.

Because criminals follow the rules, that’s why they’re criminals….wait….I mean…

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement will be starting a new program that they are apparently calling “Operation Scheduled Departure”.  Basically the jist of it is that illegal aliens can turn themselves into authorities, they get a few weeks to settle their affairs and pack up their stuff, then ICE will put them on a plane home.  This is being offered as an alternative to potentially getting caught in a raid and languishing in the legal system for weeks.

The program is being ridiculed by “immigration rights” activists…

Immigrant advocates called it a laughable charade with little to no chance of succeeding without any carrots to offer self-deportees.

“It’s pure fantasy,” said Doug Rivlin, spokesman for the National Immigration Forum in Washington. “An attempt to entice people to sign away their rights and get out of the country as quickly as possible before even talking to a lawyer.”

If people truly wanted to leave on their own, they’d buy their own bus or plane ticket home without checking in with ICE first, Rivlin said.

…and greeted with very lukewarm dismal by enforcement activists

Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, the country’s largest anti-illegal-immigration lobby group based in Washington, said he’d have to concede that point.

The government would have to offer some kind of incentive to entice immigrants to sign up, such as telling them that by leaving voluntarily they would be allowed to apply to come back legally, Mehlman said.

Now wait a second.  Let’s look at the situation here.  The environment (both legal and employment) is getting increasingly hostile to illegal aliens.  So they face the real possibility of being picked up in a raid or other methods provided by state and local laws.  In that case they’ll be deported with little warning.  As a result many are choosing to leave voluntarily, but have to do so at their own expense.

So how is this program not a good idea that might do just work a little better than people think.

Personally I have to think immigration rights activists are just seeing a red danger flag, hence the opposition.  They’d rather use lawyers to tie up the legal system for years.  Here it is made simple.  And enforcement activists are likely playing it cool so as not to give the program a label of being endorsed by “evil” and “racist” “xenophobic” enforcement “fascists”.

Should be interesting to see how this program works out.  After all….what can it really hurt?

Heh neat!  A McCain ad that doesn’t piss me off and/or make my want to disembowel my laptop with an icepick.

Imagine that….if you get rid of the criminals, your crime rate goes down. All this new learning just amazes me, who would have thought that would work? Apparently Prince William County…

One of the wealthiest counties in America reports crime skyrocketing by 22 percent in the first quarter of 2008, while its neighbor saw crime plummet by 19.3 percent in the same time period – coinciding with a get-tough policy on illegal immigration.

So you have two adjoining counties. One cracks down on immigration and as a result their crime rate plummets. Meanwhile the other county does nothing and their crime rate skyrockets. While it’s only one quarter, it certainly is a hell of a coincidence.

But we’re repeatedly told that illegal immigrants are just nice hardworking people who just want jobs. Only they are already criminals by virtue of their being here. Plus should it really be a surprise that those that don’t give a damn what our immigration laws say, also don’t give a damn what the rest of the laws say either??

It’s not hard to find statistics that indicate that as the population of illegal aliens goes up, so does the crime rate. So it would hardly be surprising if the opposite is true as well. But it certainly makes one wonder just whose rights these supposed immigration rights activists are concerned about.

As many cities, counties and states start passing strict immigration laws, in order to compensate for the federal governments incompetence, it will be interesting to see the effect on crime rates. Although I won’t be surprised if longer term studies tend to reveal the same results as Prince William County is experiencing.

The ink on the Heller vs DC decision is barely dry, but it appears we’re going to be right back at it.

The plaintiff in the Supreme Court case that struck down Washington’s 32-year-old handgun ban filed a new federal lawsuit Monday, alleging the city’s new gun regulations still violate an individual’s right to own a gun for self-defense.

Dick Heller and two other plaintiffs argue that the city’s regulations are “highly unusual and unreasonable” in the complaint filed in U.S. District Court.

The lawsuit claims the District of Columbia continues to violate the intent of the Supreme Court’s June 26 decision by prohibiting the ownership of most semiautomatic weapons, requiring an “arbitrary” fee to register a firearm and establishing rules that make it all but impossible for residents to keep a gun in the home for immediate self-defense.

Ok I’ll try to give DC credit, because as I wrote at the time

My one major disagreement with the decision, and part of the focus of Breyer’s dissent, is that the majority doesn’t really indicate what degree of regulation states can use on the use of firearms. It would be nice to have some sort of guideline or I fear that we’ll be right back in this same spot in the future.

on the other hand (you have different fingers)….

However, on the plus side the majority did state unequivocally that any law that impeded the ability for law-abiding responsible citizens to use weapons, in common use at the time, for the use of self-defense of home and hearth, would be unconstitutional.

End result is that while DC isn’t really given a whole lot of guidelines, the one guideline they are given isn’t that difficult to follow. Weapons that are in common use are completely protected for self-defense use by law-abiding responsible citizens. Apparently DC has problems following that simple guidance.

Just to give you an idea of the intellect we’re working with…..I kid you not….

The regulations maintain the city’s ban of machine guns, defined in the law as weapons that shoot more than 12 rounds without reloading. That definition applies to most semiautomatic firearms.

Well let’s for kicks compare that to US Code (26 U.S.C. § 5845(b))

The term “machinegun” means any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.

Seems to be an awfully big disconnect there.  Clearly we’re not dealing with a high thinking individuals here.  OR apparently I’m just not understanding the big city learning going on here.

But considering DC’s inability to follow the law, I have to start wondering how many times the Supreme Court is gonna have to smack DC down before Scalia’s opinions start looking like this….

Heh A-hole!! Knock that crap off. Are you French or retarded? How can you possibly misinterpret what I just said?? I even had my grandson proof read it for me so I knew it made sense to your tiny intellect.

I said let them have the damn firearms, but do you do it?!? Nooooooooo, you got your head too far up your ass, to be able to understand a damn thing.

Now look, don’t make me tell you again.  If I have to write another opinion, I swear to God that I’ll pull this court over and really give you something to cry about.

An avalanche of woots has been released. If you don’t already have an F5 complex, you’re missing the fun.

Will Kevin finally get a Bag of Crap this time?? Will he once again have to depend on Prof. Rackmaster for a Flying Screaming Woot Monkey?? Tune in to find out.

I wrote last week about the E-Verify program and how important it has become in verifying that workers in the US are here legally. In fact, recent studies have shown that the combination of enforcement activites, and employers verifying their workers legality, have caused illegal immigrants to start leaving the country on their own. We were all told that reducing the the population of illegal immigrants was an impossible task, especially with the only two available options being either full amnesty, or rounding up all 12 million.

But now when even the meager tools we’ve been granted appear to be working. Politicians in Congress not only refuse to act to continue their use, but Democrats are now actively blocking their funding.

On Thursday, Senate staffers reported to FAIR that Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) is blocking the reauthorization of E-Verify in the Senate because he considers it to be a pro-business program that gives businesses a safe harbor. Since its inception in 1996, E-Verify has proven to be an effective and useful tool in protecting legal workers and the individuals who hire them.

All E-Verify does is verify that an employer is not breaking the law by employing an individual. But apparently the rule of law just isn’t fair for some Democrats.

You can let Senator Menendez what you think by calling him at the following numbers:

DC Office - (202) 224-4744
Newark Office - (973) 645-3030
Online Form

[Crossposted at True North]

Thursday morning myself and a fair number of other bloggers participated in a conference call with Congressman John Kline. The conference call was about Kline’s new effort to Stop The Pork, essentially to stop the madness and corruption that is earmarks. He’s got a petition at the site, that you can and should go and sign. Go on now, I’ll wait for you…….

Now I’m not gonna give you the summary of what was discussed. If that’s what you want, you can read the writeups by Chief, Janet, Gary, Psycmeister or the Lady Logician. I think they cover all the aspects of the call but one.

And that aspect was the most refreshing part and gives me hope that something might actually result from this effort. Partisanship while it does have value, also is a great inhibitor to causes that otherwise should have virtually unanimous support.

Now John never actually came out and said it, but reading between the lines and picking up pieces of comments it was obvious that he gets this is not a partisan issue. When he talked about building momentum from the original 12 legislators supporting this effort, to the current level of 50, he talked about how he didn’t feel momentum until Democrats started joining in. He also pointed out that this is a problem that really started under Republican leadership, but it has gotten out of control and has to be stopped.

Rather than retreating into a partisan shell, he admits were the initial fault lies. Rather than screaming, “but the Democrats do it too”, he has refused to request earmarks. Rather than slinging mud, he’s trying to bring Democrats into the fold so that this effort can take real momentum.

Bipartisanship, sadly has become less of a reality and more of a punchline. However, this is an issue that needs and most certainly deserves bipartisan support. Governmental waste and political corruption is something that should not be supported, or even tolerated, by either party. And it’s refreshing to see that John Kline is fighting against it in a way that hopefully pulls both sides together.

We can fight and scheme each others demise later, how about we get this out of the way first yeah? So regardless of your ideology or political affiliation, head on over to StopThePork.Com and help your self out (or at least your wallet) by helping John Kline out.

[Crossposted at True North]