Liberty Speaker Series - Guns, The 2nd Amendment, and You

"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

Sounds simple, doesn't it?

The Bill Of Rights is a list of ten rules to protect citizens from their government. If the government gets to have a militia, then the people get to have guns.

So why the controversy about gun rights?  If crazies, outlaws, and criminals have guns, shouldn't the populace be allowed to defend itself?  That's the subject for our next Liberty Speakers Series. We're getting together at the Radisson Hotel at 2540 Meacham Boulevard in north Fort Worth, 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, August 2nd.

(BTW, I scheduled this event before the mass-murder in Colorado.  I'm not intending to exploit the issue.  But folks, it's now possible to make a gun with a 3D printer.  They're not going away.) 

We have a great trio of speakers from two great organizations.

Scott Harmon is a Political Event Volunteer Coordinator with the National Rifle Association. He (and his family!) have worked tirelessly for years to protect the 2nd Amendment, publicize threats to your gun rights, and to educate the public about the pressures that are brought to bear on lawmakers in Washington and Austin. Scott comes to us highly recommended by the NRA's national office. After a few telephone conversations, it's safe to say that this won't be Scott's last speaking event for a Libertarian audience (Hello, Dallas County !) Scott makes some of us sound like Marxist Vegetarians. You don't want to miss hearing Scott Harmon talk about your gun rights, especially in today's political climate.

David Stroud is the First-Vice President of the Texas State Rifle Association, an organization founded in 1919 to protect (and expand) the rights of Texas gun owners. David got into the TSRA to participate in some of their competitive shooting events, liked what he saw, and began working in various administrative and leadership jobs in the organization. David will talk to anyone, anywhere, and any time about gun rights. He once took the TSRA booth to the Texas State Democratic Convention. Now that is commitment !!

Larry Keilberg is head of the National Association For Legal Gun Defense, an organization that provides legal aid for anyone who fights back against a criminal.  (Larry and his management team are a recent addition to this event.)  All members of the NAFLGD have an automatic $10,000.00 defense fund at their disposal should they be involved in a defense-related incident.  Their team of lawyers (Fort Worth based, BTW) is at your disposal. 

After we hear from Scott, David and Larry talk about their organizations, their importance, the latest threats in the state and national legislatures, they'll be taking some questions from you.

This will be an oustanding evening with some great speakers for a great liberty-minded audience. Hope to see you there ! Thursday, August 2nd, 7:30, at the Radisson Hotel at I-35 and Meacham Boulevard.

Cough Drops - The Mandate

I hope everyone has enjoyed the media firestorm about whether the government should be able to force the Catholic Church to provide birth control pills to its employees. 

I also hope that you'll take just a few minutes from your busy day to enjoy this bit o' brilliance from Reason magazine:



Here's a modest proposal from the great Virginia Postrel about selling birth control pills over-the-counter:

Making the pill available over the counter could reduce the amount of outrage and invective available for entertaining radio audiences, spurring political fundraising and otherwise amusing the American public. But the medical risks are quite low....

Birth-control pills can have side effects, of course, but so can such over-the-counter drugs as antihistamines, ibuprofen or the Aleve that once turned me into a scary, hive-covered monster. That’s why even the most common over-the-counter drugs, including aspirin, carry warning labels. Most women aren’t at risk from oral contraceptives, however, just as most patients aren’t at risk from aspirin or Benadryl, and studies suggest that a patient checklist can catch most potential problems....

Aside from safety, the biggest argument for keeping birth- control pills prescription-only is, to put it bluntly, extortion. The current arrangement forces women to go to the doctor at least once a year, usually submitting to a pelvic exam, if they want this extremely reliable form of contraception. That demand may suit doctors’ paternalist instincts and financial interests, but it doesn’t serve patients’ needs. As [a 1993 editorial in the American Journal of Public Health] noted, the exam requirement “assumes that it would be worse for a woman’s health to miss out on routine care than it would be to miss out on taking oral contraceptives.”

Hit this link to read the whole thing. 
From Nick Gillespie:

Can't legislators agree that those of us who are, say, over 18 years old, are adults and if we can buy condoms without a prescription, we should be able to shop for birth-control pills on our lonesome too? And a host of other drugs?

And this young woman, Sandra Fluke, claims that birth control for her three years of law school is an intolerable burden, and that other people should be forced to pay for it.  She claims that it will cost her $3,000.00 for three years. 
Bullshit. 
Can we not do the charitable thing, and put a damn condom machine in her dorm room? 

California - fighting fitted bed sheets !!!

California, whose debt is so great that I fear it will soon sink into the Pacific, just can't find enough evils to legislate against:


BILL NUMBER: SB 432 INTRODUCED
BILL TEXT


INTRODUCED BY   Senator De León

                        FEBRUARY 16, 2011

   An act to add Section 6714 to the Labor Code, relating to
workplace safety.
 
LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST


   SB 432, as introduced, De León. Workplace safety: lodging
establishments: housekeeping.
   Existing law establishes the Occupational Safety and Health
Standards Board within the Department of Industrial Relations and
requires the standards board to adopt and enforce all occupational
safety and health standards. Under existing law, a knowing or
negligent violation of any standard is a misdemeanor.
   This bill would require the standards board to adopt a standard
relating to housekeeping in lodging establishments, as specified.
   Because this bill would create a new crime, it would impose a
state-mandated local program.   The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local
agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the
state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that
reimbursement.
   This bill would provide that no reimbursement is required by this
act for a specified reason.
   Vote: majority. Appropriation: no. Fiscal committee: yes.
State-mandated local program: yes.


THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA DO ENACT AS FOLLOWS:

  SECTION 1.  Section 6714 is added to the Labor Code, to read:
   6714.  (a) The standards board shall, no later than September 1,
2012, adopt an occupational safety and health standard for lodging
establishment housekeeping. The standard shall apply to all hotels,
motels, and other lodging establishments in California. The standard
shall require all of the following:
   (1) The use of a fitted sheet, instead of a flat sheet, as the
bottom sheet on all beds within the lodging establishment. For the
purpose of this section, a "fitted sheet" means a bed sheet
containing elastic or similar material sewn into each of the four
corners that allows the sheet to stay in place over the mattress.
   (2) The use of long-handled tools such as mops or similar devices
in order to eliminate the practice by housekeepers of working in a
stooped, kneeling, or squatting position in order to clean bathroom
floors, walls, tubs, toilets, and other bathroom surfaces.
   (b) The standard established pursuant to this section is not
subject to a permanent variance pursuant to Section 143.
  SEC. 2.  No reimbursement is required by this act pursuant to
Section 6 of Article XIII B of the California Constitution because
the only costs that may be incurred by a local agency or school
district will be incurred because this act creates a new crime or
infraction, eliminates a crime or infraction, or changes the penalty
for a crime or infraction, within the meaning of Section 17556 of the
Government Code, or changes the definition of a crime within the
meaning of Section 6 of Article XIII B of the California
Constitution. 

I found this at Overlawyered. 





 

How to get people off the fence in the War On Drugs

You might remember this video of the Columbia Missouri SWAT raid, the one where they bust in, terrorize the family and shoot the dogs for a trifling amount of weed? 

....and maybe wishing they would have the balls to try that idiotic stunt in some more upscale neighborhoods? Maybe try breaking into some well-connected politician's residence in the name of The War On Personal Freedom? 

Well, it finally happened.  Here's the Cato Institute:

The SFPD and DEA found no piles of marijuana money at 243 Diamond St., one of six addresses raided simultaneously in San Francisco that morning. Instead, they found Clark Freshman, who rents the penthouse at the two-unit building. Freshman, a UC Hastings law professor and the main consultant to the television show Lie to Me, was put into handcuffs while in his bathrobe as agents searched, despite Freshman's insistence that they had the wrong place and were breaking the law…

Soon they may be called defendants in a lawsuit. A furious Freshman has pledged to sue the DEA and the SFPD for unlawful search and seizure of his home…

[Officer] Biggs describes 243 Diamond as a "two-story, one-unit" building in the warrant. There's no mention of Freshman or Larizadeh's son-in-law or seven-months pregnant daughter who were detained in the downstairs unit that morning. But property records — and a quick visual scan of the property — reveal it to be a three-story, two-unit building. That mistake alone may be enough to invalidate the search warrant.

Here's the San Francisco Examiner on what will probably happen next:

But Peter Keane, dean emeritus of Golden Gate University's School of Law, says there appears to be a problem. "There's been cases like this in the past where police have a warrant to search [a single residence], then they get there and it's a multi-unit building and they search the whole building. In those cases, people have sued and collected substantial settlements. I think whomever is representing the government better get out his checkbook."

I disagree.  The people of San Francisco shouldn't have to pay for this lawsuit.  Most of them would probably say that they don't approve of our version of Sharia Law.  The thugs who broke the door in and tied up the family should have to pay.  Here's a parting shot from someone who is no longer a neutral party in The War On Personal Freedom:

"I've been on the fence for years about the legalization of drugs ... and now I'm a victim of this crazy war on drugs," says Freshman, who pledged to sue until "I see [the agents'] houses sold at auction and their kids' college tuitions taken away from them. There will not be a better litigated case this century."

They really, really, need to stop doing this.  No matter how much we want to save and create jobs for narcs and SWAT teams.  No matter how much we want to support the private prison lobby, the counseling industry, the parole officer cartel, the urinalysis industry, the Department Of Homeland Security, the people trying to stamp out Afghan Opium production, and the people we're paying to ride around and monitor probationers' ankle bracelets.  They can eventually find other jobs where people WANT their services. 

And isn't it about time that we end the monopoly that the Mexican Drug Lords are enjoying?  Haven't we screwed up that poor country enough? 

So, good luck, Clark Freshman !  Sue 'em until that have a bright, radioactive glow. 

Lawyers to go on hunger strike due to lack of business

Recent law school graduates are going to stage a hunger strike to protest the lack of jobs in their profession. 

Can you imagine how popular that would be if the starving lawyers were on a webcam?  Go here to watch a damn divorce lawyer starve himself to death.  Hit this link to watch a politician saw his arm off.  Click here to see an IRS agent slowly die from carbon monoxide poisoning.   

The picture of the vicious attack dog came from here.

The Weekly Radley - A Brief Lawsuit

From the sheer undiluted greatness that is Radley Balko, in reference to the Above The Law website.

It defies commentary. It can't be condensed. The entire thing must be read from beginning to end. Hit the 2nd link. Read the comment field at your own risk.

Aw, what the heck. Here's the opening paragraph:

Let’s get the boring stuff out of the way. Albert Freed (pictured) won a trip to Hawaii (not pictured). As part of the vacation celebration, Mrs. Freed bought her husband some new Hanes brand briefs. But Mr. Freed is a husky gentleman, and apparently the new trunks couldn’t contain all of his junk. He sued Hanes, claiming they made “defective” underwear.

I'm sitting in Starbucks, laughing out loud. I'm crying. What in the hell would possess someone to drag something like this into court? Here's some more:

A question for the guys out there: How long would it take you to correct a problem involving sandpaper and your ----? Don’t you think ----- chaffing is something that requires immediate attention and decisive action?
And while we’re here, how long does it take for you to notice your stuff hanging out where it is not supposed to be?

Please forgive me for not filling in the blanks. My mama sometimes reads this stuff.

Hit the second link. Imagine this guy in court. Imagine the look on the face of the court reporter.

I love being alive. I love the internet.

Here's that link one more time.

Oh, He's A Lawyer

My friend Dr. Ralph (in a somewhat bizarre context), has asked why people often say "well, he's a lawyer" or "she has a law degree", as if that gave moral authority to the argument opposed by the attorney in question.

Do people ever say "well, he's a bricklayer" when they're trying to discredit a bricklayer's argument?

Then, there are the lawyer jokes. And the Shakespeare quote, often seen on bumperstickers: "First, let's kill all the lawyers".

I've actually given this some serious thought. A functioning court system for the enforcement of contracts is a vital part of any free market/capitalist system. It doesn't work without lawyers.

Attorneys are alone (I think) in being required to work a certain number of hours per year for those who ordinarily couldn't afford the services of an attorney.

Several years ago, we had problems with an alcoholic neighbor. We complained to the police. The neighbor pressed charges against us. We had friends in a downtown law firm who represented us at no charge. They just liked us. They liked my wife.

Blah, blah, blah. So here's where lawyers get a bad rap. I work in the shipping, freight and logistics industry, and therefore I'm qualified to comment on these issues:

1) Every lawsuit, criminal trial, or custody hearing has a winner and a loser. Both sides are represented by lawyers. The loser generally comes away from the event with a white-hot hatred of the victorious attorney. This doesn't go away.

2) Whether this is an accurate stereotype or not, lawyers are perceived as being mercenary. They'll argue side A or side B, depending on who is paying the tab.

3) We often elect lawyers to public office. This gives them the opportunity to write laws. These laws are often written to guarantee business for....lawyers.

4) The United States is one of the few nations that allows lawyers to charge a percentage of the plunder, rather than a flat rate. This makes for some staggering paydays.

5) Hillary Clinton has a law degree.

6) I used to manage a retail establishment on Camp Bowie in Fort Worth. We closed every night at 9:00. One night around 9:10 p.m., a drunk lawyer started banging on the windows, wanting inside. We explained that we were closed. He explained that he was a lawyer, and that he wanted inside. It deteriorated from there. He slid his business card between the doors, and told us we'd be hearing from him in court.
I called his mega-law firm (where he was a junior scribe or something) every day for about a week, asking if I was going to be sued. I enjoyed it more than I should have. Not my finest moment.
But I wouldn't remember the incident if the guy had been a butcher, baker, or candlestick maker.

That's my take on the problem. I could be wrong.