This is really a hilarious legal argument. I have read a number of news reports on this recount battle because Barber's race was one that gun control advocates really pored a lot of money into. But there is only one article that actually mentioned that Barber's lawyers were only calling on 133 of the 240 ballots cast in the wrong precinct be counted. Barber's loss is a real blow for them. From the Nogales, Arizona newspaper:. . . Barber’s campaign is challenging 133 ballots it says were wrongly rejected because...
Sunday, November 30, 2014
Friday, November 28, 2014
This story shows that some humanity has survived the events in Ferguson. From Reuters:Since looting first erupted following the August police shooting of black teenager Michael Brown, nearly all the businesses in a 2 square mile area of this St Louis suburb have had to board up. One exception - a Conoco gas station and convenience store.At least a dozen stores have been set ablaze and others looted in Ferguson . . . .On Tuesday night, as police and soldiers took up positions in the parking lots of virtually every strip mall and big box store...
It seems that it would have been easy to stop the tracking down of the iPod, but fortunately, the kidnappers didn't understand that. That said, one wonders whether the publicity on these cases will make it harder to catch future criminals. From Fox News:The story of a 12-year-old girl's kidnapping fuels concerns about the dangers of the Internet—even as it demonstrates how today's devices can come to the rescue, Ars Technica reports. The Baltimore-area girl, identified in court as Jane Doe, communicated with several men...
Wednesday, November 26, 2014
From Howard Kurtz over at Fox News:The New York Times, whether consciously or not, has just endangered Darren Wilson’s life. With tensions running high in Ferguson over the lack of an indictment for Wilson’s killing of Michael Brown, the paper has published the officer’s approximate address -- the street and town where he lives with his new wife, who also is named. Given the racial animosity unleashed by Brown’s death, given the rioting and the looting and the stores that were set afire, how can a news organization make it easier for...
There is one way that Democratic Senator Schumer is correct here. If you accept that we have the highest tax rates in the world and a huge regulatory burden and that those are reducing investments and thus wages. then "yes" there is something that government can do: get out of the way, . . . As 2014 began, the parties were in stalemate. But, when government failed to deliver on a string of non-economic issues: the rollout of the Obamacare exchanges and the mishandling of the surge in border crossers, the ineptitude of the VA, the...
Friday, November 21, 2014
It would be interesting to know whether the Obama administration actually had the power to make this change. None of the media coverage on this change explains why neither the Clinton or Bush administrations had previously made this expansion and why it took six years until the Obama administration made this change. From The Hill newspaper:The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) is expanding background checks for firearm sales on sovereign Indian reservations as part of the Obama administration’s push to reduce gun violence around...
Thursday, November 20, 2014
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
I was in NYC yesterday to give a talk, and I had to get a taxi cab twice. Once to go to the Grand Hyatt (traveling from 7th Ave & 28th St. to 109 E 42nd St, about 1.3 miles) and then another mile trip. On the first leg of the trip, I flagged down several cabs, but I was told that the drivers were unwilling to travel to the hotel. They wanted to go someplace else. If I had said one of the airports, they would have been happy, but that isn't where I wanted to go. On the second leg of the trip, it took 40...
Saturday, November 15, 2014
President Obama doesn't seem to understand that there is a worldwide market for gasoline. If you lower the price in Europe, it will lower the price in the US. Oil companies will ship gasoline to the place where they can get the higher price and they will keep doing that until the prices in all the places are the same. From Bloomberg:“Understand what this project is: It is providing the ability of Canada to pump their oil, send it through our land down to the Gulf where it will be sold everywhere else,” the president said yesterday...
From the NY Times:The federal government has significantly expanded undercover operations in recent years, with officers from at least 40 agencies posing as business people, welfare recipients, political protesters and even doctors or ministers to ferret out wrongdoing, records and interviews show. . . . .At the Internal Revenue Service, dozens of undercover agents chase suspected tax evaders worldwide, by posing as tax preparers or accountants or drug dealers or yacht buyers, court records show. . . .“Done right, undercover work can be a very...
Thursday, November 13, 2014
Story developing at Colorado Peak Politics:Remember when it was concerning that Joe Salazar’s representative basically gave her blessing for an undercover James O’Keefe and his friends to commit voter fraud? This is why. Today, our sources tell us that allegedly a Denver Police Officer ballot with a signature cure turned up in Adams County. The only problem? The officer is saying he did not vote. Our source up north is further saying that many showing up on the cured list have moved away. . . .&nb...
With Gabrielle Giffords' gun control organization spending at least $1.5 million and launching what even the liberal Arizona Republic labeled as “base and vile" ads, Republican Martha McSally appears to have run the congressional race by 161 votes. There will be a recount, but the vote counters don't think that the result will be chang...
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
From Fox News:. . . McCauley says, and has sworn in an affidavit in federal court for the unsuccessful suit seeking to invalidate the law, that he was told by the administration not to answer questions from lawmakers about the law's effectiveness in curbing gun crime or stopping mass shootings. According to his affidavit from this spring's court case, the retired trooper was asked during a State House Judiciary subcommittee hearing, where he was called to testify, if the ban would have an effect on crime in Maryland. "As I...
The promise of 20% of energy from non fossil fuels actually requires a slower growth rate for those sources than has been true up until now. Meanwhile, the US has agreed to a dramatically greater reduction in carbon emissions.As part of its plan, the U.S. said Wednesday it would double the average pace of its carbon-dioxide reductions after 2020, eyeing an overall reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions of between 26% and 28% by 2025, compared...
At 2:57 into the video MSNBC host, Krystal Ball, asks what it is that Hillary Clinton believes:Hillary Clinton is meeting right now with David Plouffe trying to “define a rationale for her candidacy.” After decades in public life she apparently still needs a strategist to tell her what she is all about. . ....
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
An anti-gun state Senator in Missouri was caught carrying a concealed handgun with her at a protest in Ferguson Missouri. There is obviously no problem with her carrying, though in this case she was drunk, but it is interesting how she understands the benefit of having a gun for self protection. From KMOV:Missouri State Senator Jamilah Nasheed had a gun in her possession at the time she was arrested Monday night outside the Ferguson Police Department, according to Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson. Nasheed declined comment...
(Click on figure to enlarge.) Marcos Portnoi and Chien-Chung Shen at the University of Delaware have a new paper entitled: "Wireless-Delimited Secure Zones with Encrypted Attribute-Based Broadcast for Safe Firearms" From the abstract: This work presents an application of the highly expressive Attribute-Based Encryption to implement wireless- delimited Secure Zones for firearms. Within these zones, radio-...
(Click to enlarge, though the picture will be pretty blurry.)#1: Mall of Americas: 40 million#2: Times Square, NY: 37 million#3: Las Vegas Strip: 30 million#4: Faneuil Hall Marketplace: 20 million#5: Walt Disney World: 17 million#6: Disneyland: 14.7 millionOthersNavy Pier (Chicago): 8.6 millionSan Antonio River Walk: 5.1 millionFrench Quarter (New Orleans): 5 millionGrand Canyon: 4.4 millionIndependence National Historical Park: 4.1 millionYellow...
Jonathan Gruber: This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure that CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. Score the mandate as taxes and the bill dies. OK, so it was written to do that. . . .Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. Call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever. But basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass.And you know it is a second best argument. Look, I wish Mark was right we could make it all transparent, but I would rather have this law...
Monday, November 10, 2014
There are obviously many different ways to kill a large number of people. This attack is deadlier than any attack in the US. From the WSJ:A suicide bomber on Monday blew himself up during a school assembly in northeastern Nigeria, killing at least 47 people and showing how an Islamist insurgency is apparently drawing young, radical and educated people to its ranks. The explosion took place shortly after a morning assembly began at the Government Senior Science Secondary School in Potiskum in Nigeria’s northeastern Yobe state, said...
From CNN:Lately, Dan McMullen has been bringing an extra gun to his office in Ferguson, Missouri. McMullen runs Solo Insurance on West Florissant close to where looting and vandalism briefly broke out in early August after a police officer shot to death teenager Michael Brown. "I bring an extra gun now only because it has a bigger magazine," McMullen says. He began carrying it after tensions increased in the area following the shooting. He says he would never use it to protect his business, but he would use it to save his life. "So...
With Obama as president Republicans have more than doubled the number of state legislatures that they control. Interestingly, the 2012 election didn't slow this trend.Prior to the 2008 electionRepublicans in control of 14 legislatures (15 with Nebraska, which is technically non-partisan but is actually controlled by Republicans)Obama's election in 2008 had impact on the number of legislatures controlled by Republicans, but Democrats did pick...
Friday, November 7, 2014
My newest piece in the Wall Street Journal, co-authored this time with Brad Smith, starts this way:The “most expensive election in history.” Our democracy is being “bought and sold.” This election, “debased by money, shames us all.” These are some of the recent expressions of outrage about what the Center for Responsive Politics estimates to have been $3.67 billion spent for federal offices during the 2014 midterms. Two days before the election on “Face the Nation,” CBS’s Bob Schieffer asked viewers to name one item whose costs...
From My San Antonio:Attorney General Greg Abbott affirmed his support for allowing Texans to openly carry handguns at his first press conference after being elected governor. “Throughout the campaign I announced my support for open carry in Texas,” said Abbott when asked about the issue at the Texas Capitol. Abbott said Texas is one of only a handful of states that doesn't allow open carry of handguns. . . .Who knows how honest the Democrats' gubernatorial candidate in that race, Wendy Davis, also said that she supported...
Thursday, November 6, 2014
What was supposed to be an easy Democratic victory in Maryland ended up being a Republican landslide win by nine percentage points. In Illinois the Democrat was supposed to win, but the Republican won easily. In Kansas what were supposed to be a couple close races turned into Republican comfortable victories for the Senate and governorship. In Virginia, a race that no one thought would be remotely close turned into a late night...
While Obama doesn't believe that he is responsible for the latest wave election, Republicans are more than happy to give him the credit (though presumably they would have preferred never having the damage done to the country to begin with).To see how dramatic the change has been note that this change flips state legislatures that weren't flipped after the 2010 wave. The new state legislatures controlled by Republicans are:Colorado Senate (conceivable...
From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:An employee of Karsch's Village Market shot and killed a man who allegedly threatened him with a gun this morning . . . . The man caused a disturbance in the grocery store at 1730 Old State Road M about 10:20 am., said Capt. Ron Arnhart. The man appeared to be intoxicated. Two employees followed the man to the parking lot in hopes of stalling him until deputies arrived so he wouldn't drive drunk. The man pulled a handgun from his vehicle and pointed it at them, Arnhart said. One of the employees...
Wednesday, November 5, 2014
For some perspective, note that this tidal wave comes on top of the 2010 wave. One would have thought that the Republicans had already reached as high as they could after all the offices that they took in 2010. But they actually have one more governorship than after 2010 and more state legislatures.Republicans have picked up Colorado state Senate (possibly the state House), Maine state Senate, Minnesota state House, New Hampshire state...
Texas' 23rd congressional district: "GOP challenger Will Hurd appeared headed for a narrow upset victory over freshman Democrat Pete Gallego in a southwest border district that Republicans had made a national target" Hurd won by a 49.8 to 47.7 percent margin.Utah's 4th congressional district: "In Utah, Mia Love became the first black Republican woman — and first Haitian American — elected to Congress." Love won by a 50 to 46.8 percent margin.Senator from South Carolina: "South Carolina's Tim Scott on Tuesday became the first...
Monday, November 3, 2014
From the River Front Times in St. Louis:The owner of an Elicia's Pizza shot one, maybe both, of the gunmen who tried to rob the south St. Louis city restaurant early Sunday morning. . . . Even with a weapon trained on him, the restaurant owner -- who has a valid concealed carry license, police said -- managed to retrieve his own gun and start firing at the robber at the cash register, striking him in the leg and buttocks. The suspect collapsed outside the restaurant trying to flee. . . .Thanks very much to Tony Troglio for alerting me to this...
Saturday, November 1, 2014
My newest piece at Fox News that starts this way:Let’s say a stalker is threatening a female friend of yours. She asks you if she can borrow your handgun. She is trained and has no criminal record. Should you loan her your gun? If you live in Washington State, loaning her your gun may soon make you a criminal and will likely land you in prison. Suppose you are a Boy Scout leader. Once a year, the scouts take a trip to a local farm where the boys earn their firearm merit badges. If you continue to stick with this annual ritual you may...
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