Tab Clearing

Used AK buying checklist

General James 'Mad Dog' Mattis Email About Being 'Too Busy To Read' Is A Must-Read

 IRS apologizes for targeting conservative groups

 Why one cop carrries 145 rounds of ammo

Diane Feinstein's AWB Version 2

The much dreaded Assault Weapons bill was presented. I urge you to write your representatives and tell them in a nice polite way that criminals by definition break the laws and this will only hurt law abiding gun owners. If you are lazy like me Ruger makes it super easy by having a nice form letter ready to go and looking up your reps automatically. Seriously if you care about anything I say take the time to let our representatives know that you are against this.

Also if you have not already JOIN THE NRA.  They are not perfect but are big enough and strong enough to actually do something. Join some other organization(s) if it makes you happy but send the NRA some love first.

If your personal 2A preparations are not where you want to be I would think about working on it. Do not spend the rent money or max the visa but if you want it and can afford it then think about buying. Yes AR's that cost $650 2 weeks ago are going for 1,400ish BUT THEY ARE AVAILABLE. Cannot say that will be the case in 2 months.

Some folks might want to think about caches. I have heard 6" PVC pipe and end caps as well as PVC glue can sell out in a hurry. Spare parts and manuals (a weak point of mine) are good things to have also. The cleaning stuff to put a greased up gun back into action would be smart also.

This weekends coming purchase binge will take care of most of my lingering accessory needs. Thankfully the stuff we need (vs want) is not targeted thought the overall everything with or around a trigger buying binge is affecting things all the same. Sure there is more stuff I want thankfully these are wants not needs. Some will be purchased when available like ammo and other stuff might be indefinitely postponed depending on how things go.

Honestly I am getting pretty bored of talking about this all the time. Think it is time to talk about other stuff and begin to resume normal operations.

Midway is Pushing Partial Back Orders Out The Door

 I ordered a bunch of different AR parts from Midway a couple weeks back. A full BCG, a spare bolt, a couple receiver extensions and some other stuff. The stuff that was in stock shipped and the rest was on back order. I wasn't worried about exactly when it showed up as it was just spare stuff anyway. This morning I got an email. It is unchanged except that obviously my last name is not XXXXXXX.

-Email follows-

Dear Ryan XXXXXXX,

We have been holding some products for you, waiting for other items to arrive so we could ship your order complete.  However, we believe an Executive Order could be released any day prohibiting the sale of certain products such as high-capacity magazines and AR-15 parts and accessories.  Therefore we have done a partial release of your backorders to ensure that any of these items and other items we had in inventory waiting to ship complete are all on their way, in case such an Order is forthcoming.  You will receive a shipping notification shortly.  Other items on backorder, that we have not yet received, are not affected by this partial release.

We appreciate your understanding and your business.  We always put Customer Satisfaction first and believe this action is in the very best interest of our Customers.

Sincerely,

MidwayUSA Customer Service

-End-

Maybe they are just doing this to appease customer concerns or do they know something I do not? Thoughts?
 

What Did You Do To Prepare This Week?

Things were pretty crazy here getting used to having the new little one at home. All is well with child #2 but it is a lot to adjust to.  Still managed to get a few things done.

I sold a revolver to free up some cash and make room for a new gun. Leaning pretty hard towards a smaller stainless .357 magnum but we will see if something cool pops up. Then again I am going to re look what is on the gun/ defensive accessory list and maybe just wipe it out.

Spent some time more with the Solo Stove and think I've pretty much figured it out. Just got to fiddling with the Solo Pot 900. Pretty psyched about that combo.

This weekend a lot of time went into working on my systems. The EDC bag was totally stripped down. After taking all preparedness stuff out of it I reinserted a personal survival kit, one of those heavier space blankets, a cheapo first aid kit and a pouch for a steel water bottle. Need to pick up a bottle of water purification tablets to go in there and it will be good to go.Will probably talk about it this week.

The rest of the stuff plus a bit more went into a commercial hiking style backpack. I added a few more things and it is shaping into a pretty decent heavy get home bag/ bug out bag. Need to go over it again and plug a few small holes then things should be good to go. We will talk more about this once I finish the last little bit.

Coming up next week I am going to order a few odds and ends. Also plan to keep working my systems and talk about the stuff in my EDC bag. Speaking of EDC bags Teotwawki Blog is doing a series on them which should be interesting. May change mine a little bit based on stuff that comes up there. Also Wifey said I should go shooting so that will probably happen early this week.

What did you do to prepare this week?

A few things to share just to clear out some tabs:

Teotwawki Blog noted that CDNN investments has (had anyway) PTR-91's at sane prices.

They also linked to an excellent site Congress.org that makes it super easy to write all of your federal or state representatives in one shot (instead of looking them up and wading through their websites). So click on this link and tell them what you think about the current hysteria and the Second Amendment in general. If you are not sure what to say Ruger put together an excellent blanket letter. Send it to your federal and state reps today. I did and it took like 5 minutes.

Apparently 100k people joined the NRA in the last 18 days. I was one of those. If you are not a member join the NRA today. They are not as extreme (in a good way) as GOA but they actually have clout. Join GOA also if it makes you happy.

$19 30 rd AR mags IN STOCK. I can't vouch for this company or the mags but if you need AR mags at this stage in the game beggars cannot be choosers.

Guns For Me But Not For Thee

As Chris pointed out If armed security guards are ineffective, why do anti gun people send their children to schools with lots of them?

Why do their kids deserve to be safer than my kid or yours? 

How is it that some cops who get to carry all the time off work anywhere and public officials or rich folks who have armed security think I should not be able to have a weapon?

The only conclusions I can come to is that A) they think they are superior to normal folks and B) gun control is not about guns it is about control.

Also on another note if I ever get to rewrite the Constitution I will add an amendment that all elected officials are required to send their school aged children to the worst performing public school in the area they represent. Maybe then they would get serious about fixing education.

Interesting News

Israel shoots down a drone suspected to belong to Hezbollah.

Mitt Romney is ahead in the polls by 4 points after the first debate.

Fed: Recession kicked median household wealth to 1992 level

Here is the article. This is not suprising but still sort of depressing. What they fail to mention is that a buck is worth considerably less today than back in 1992.

I look at who benefited from this, the classic cui bono if you will. It is pretty clear to me. Big bankers and financiers made a killing. Politicians did well on campaign contributions from those folks as well as using the money flowing into their coffers to buy votes. Personally they also made a killing on insider trading their consistently and consistently lucky investment choices. Some normal folks did well, if just for awhile. Nobody was complaining when their homes went up in value 20, 30 or even 40%. Nobody was complaining when the construction industry was booming.

I realized in writing this that I have sort of looked at bankers in the wrong way. I think a bit too locally. The assistant manager of West lake Trust in Peduke, Iowa population 50,000 didn't wreck out economy. That guy gives people loans they come to the bank looking for. Now the big bosses at Citibank, B of A, WAMU, etc all on the other hand had to knew what was really going on. That is why they got rid of these loans like a kid playing hot potato. They made money hand over fist for years. When the game was up they dumped all the junk onto the public in a variety of ways both above and below board. After that we loaned them cheap money which they used to buy up the competion which was slightly worse off or couldn't get easy money friend loans.

Between politicians making laws, setting conditions (keeping interest rates artificially low for years) and supporting their friends in banking and finance a lot of the blame goes to our wonderful elected officials. Banksters knowingly gave bad loans which they repackaged to unrecognizability then sold as rock solid. They bought politicians to do them favors and provide mafia like protection. These two groups royally screwed normal everyday Americans out of tons of money.

I cannot however totaly absolve people of the choices they made or the situations those choices caused. Lots of folks used electronic/ paper gains in their homes to finance vacations, new cars or home improvements and such. Some of them are mad now because they are "underwater" and have to pay back the money they so prudently cashed out during the boom. Lots of normal folks made poor choices thinking that somehow the good times would never end and ended up in a bad spot. Others tried to get in on the game and lost too, by the time normal folks get into the game the smart money is already on it's way out. Normal folks are standing when the music stops in the proverbial game of musical chairs.

Today I may be more disenchanted, with the establishment for lack of a better word, than I have been since the height of this mess in 2008 or so. Not exactly sure what if anything I will do about it.

Friday Night Ramblings and Tab Clearing

I always knew that liberal dudes were weaker and generally less masculine but now there is scientific proof.

Apparantly CNBN did a hit piece of the venerable Remington 870. Hat tip to The Firearms Blog for the find. Maybe they could have been even more unamerican by bashing apple pie and cold beer.
Now for my take. I will even set aside the fact that the so called experts who testify about how pretty much every firearm is unsafe FOR MONEY and are trying to sell some new safety thing they invented.

The thing is that shotgun safeties, to the best of my knowledge are not so much safeties as trigger stoppers. To the best of my knowledge there isn't a shotgun out there that has a safety which blocks the sort of accidental impact based discharge that happened to the unfortunate fellow mentioned in the story. Sort of like many open bolt machine guns if you give them a good whack they will probably go off.

There is a simple and time tested way to handle this mechanical weakness. KEEP THE CHAMBER EMPTY UNLESS YOU ARE ACTIVELY USING THE GUN! For a shotgun this means that when you are done using it take the round out of the cylinder and stick it back into the tube or buttstock carrier.
I own a Remington 870 Express. With both short and long barrels it is a really versatile weapon equally capable of defending ones home or all manner of hunting and sporting. I have trusted it with my life in the past as a primary home defense weapon and would not hesitate to do so again in the future. As to my thoughts on reliability and usefullness the Remington 870 I won't sell the one I have and at some point will get another one.

I was at the store the other day picking up a couple things on my way home from work. The folks in front of me bought some stuff using WIC. Nothing really new about that. Overseas food costs are pretty high so they calculate eligibility differently and a lot more folks get it. I bought my few items and walked out to the parking lot. The folks who bought the stuff with WIC in front of me got into a car that was maybe a year old. Nothing crazy, I think it was a Ford Focus or something like that. I got into my 10 year old SUV with some minor cosmetic damage and drove home. Honestly it sort of made me angry. Why should I be subsidizing them? If they don't make very much money maybe they should be doing things like not buying new cars so they can afford food for their kids. I got to thinking. Given the state of our nation I don't really look down on folks who figure out how to work the system a bit in their favor. A few years back I did look down on them for being moochers. These days I sort of look at it that if you can get a little bit back it isn't a bad thing.
Ironically this year we qualify for welfare Earned Income Credit. A nuance of combat deployments is that since our pay is not taxed. Thus as far as my taxes are concerned it does not count. Since I deployed in February and was gone for a year our taxable income was pretty tiny for last year. Thus we get welfare Earned Income Credit. I wouldn't have thought of it but a pretty sharp contractor (ironically also a contrarian investor and survivalist) said I should look into it. This is something I had some real internal conflict about. It is pretty crazy that we qualify because my income fell into a different column on the stupid little piece of paper that is the W2. I make a decent living and we aren't in any sort of need. However me deciding to be a good guy and turning away free money is not going to fix the national deficit. We are putting the money into our house fund. I kind of look at it as a partial refund of all that money I put into SS and medicare
The man who committed 10 felonies in 9 hours was pretty impressive. Some folks are just bad and if this sort of thing happens when everything is normal toss in a power outage or a hurricane or a riot and well, it ain't pretty.

Well it is just about a done deal that Mitt Romney is going to be the Republican presidential candidate. I am almost entirely ambivalent about this. Got to purchase some more mags between now and November.
Heineken is pretty good and Jimmy Fallon probably has the best late night TV show these days.

That is all.

Reality Bites

It is interesting to me that I have never met an anarchist or a libertarian who is basically an anarchist that has actually been to a failed state. Talking about anarchy from a dorm room or college party house or a nice quiet farm out in the middle of nowhere is very different from actually seeing it. I am not saying there isn’t a person like that out there it is just that I haven’t interacted with one yet.

First of all anarchy is a very relative term. It is sort of like socialism in that it never truly happens, and when it does it is only for a short period of time. There is going to be some form of government clinging at the greased string of power until the last possible moment. Either that or some sort of  a thug stepping up to try and carve out his own little princely state, most likely a lot of thugs trying to carve out their own princely states. You can have bad government or ineffective government or illegitimate government but some sort of system will at least be trying to keep or take power.

Secondly it is really not something you want to be involved in. Between crime, general lawlessness and assorted thugs and former government entities vying for power there is often a lot of fighting. Basic rights such as property and relative (there is always some crime) safety which we take for granted would be gone overnight. Now granted there hasn’t been a civil war or riot or massive disaster of Katrina proportions in Idaho or Minnesota but ever indicator we have is that these events bring about the worst in people. Sure there are a few neighbors helping each other out and some good Samaritan will save somebody’s grandma but those are few and far between. My observation is that folks will typically do about whatever they think they can get away with in these situations. Also these situations are more likely to lead to another, even worse government, not a better government or a long term lack of government.

Look at how the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan. After the Soviets left the Afghan commies fought on for a few years (till the money dried out with the fall of the Soviet Union if I recall) and then a transitional type government was set up for about a week followed by the big players like Heychmar and Massoud and other smaller regional guys fighting it out for power. The Taliban came to power because they could do a few things. They made roads safe to travel (a relative term in tribal central Asia). They had a court system that, while very harsh, was quick to deal with problems and most people found it to be fair. In short they offered the basic securities of rule of law.

The honest truth is that a pretty bad government is, by any functional measure, better than this sort of situation or the government which stems from it. It is not nice to say and goes against a lot of American ideals but if you look at history it is true. Our revolution is probably the only time in history that a revolution led to citizen’s lives getting better in the long run.

I file Anarchy under a “be careful what you wish for because you just might get it.”

Thoughts?

I Get A Feeling of Peace

For the last couple of weeks there has been a lot of heavy stuff floating around in my head, worries about our economy and all sorts of stuff. For reasons I am not entirely clear on that has all just faded away and left a feeling of peace.

A lot of it is that I have figured out the answers to some heavy and dark questions. “What would I do if….” type stuff. The kind of stuff that, for a variety of reasons I do not talk about on here. I’m a person who can deal with just about anything once I wrap my head around it which sometimes happens quickly and other times it takes a bit longer. The speed of the OODA loop (so to speak) is definitely related to the necessity for action. Bigger, conceptual, but no less dangerous things take longer and can be mulled for a period of time.
It doesn’t hurt that I am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel on this deployment and that our long term plans are really starting to snowball (not the Dave Ramsey debt one as we don’t owe anybody money, just a normal snowball rolling down a hill).  We have a solid foundation and can put a good amount of energy towards whatever problem we decide to attack.

Where we are, where we need to go and what has to happen to get there is very clear to me. Certainly there will be delays, difficulties and complications but the path is clear. I am optimistically waiting to get moving forward.

Will I feel this way in a week or a month, I hope so but who knows. Sometimes I get down and worried so I guess this is the other side of that coin. I guess that I will enjoy it for as long as it lasts.

4th of July

Well it is the 4th of July. A pretty quiet day here. Obviously we need to maintain security, provide some basic services as well as maintain C2, however on the whole it is as light of a day as possible.No beer or fireworks but there was a pretty good spread of food which I vigerously ate my way through. I've got to hand it to our cooks. They really cook the heck out of what they are given. Having eaten in facilities that are outstanding and others which are horrible I can attest to their knowhow and care of preparation being the difference between something that will (or in extreme cases won't) fill your stomach and fuel you for a few hours and an enjoyable meal that raises your spirits. Those guys work insane hours in probably the least sexy job in the military and deserve more credit than they get. Anyway today leaves me somewhat reflective about a lot of things. I am not going to wax about history or philosophy. Birthday's are a great time for an azmith check. Our country isn't in a substantially different place than a year ago. However we were not in a great place, by any measure, a year ago. The drama in the Eurozone has at a minimum shown a possible direction we could be headed in. We probably have a lot more electronic money floating around than a year ago, but some time back those numbers started sounding like made up ones little kids would use to taunt eachother on the playground so I stopped paying attention. We are getting out of Iraq which is a good thing. I truly hope the best for that nation but the next chapter is going to have to be written by it's own citizens. We are also, at least in theory starting to phase out of Afghanistan. Probably for the best. By this point, a decade into this war, if we have not achieved a desired endstate it is time to take a good hard look at how much more blood and money we are willing to put into meeting our goals. The general concensus is not very much. The hard truth is that the Afghan government is going to have to stand on it's own feet pretty soon. We seem to be involved in Libya and I am not at all sure what to say about that one. Is there a way we can keep a good record of ordinance that is about to go past it's lifespan and just measure that up with a list of countries what have pissed us off? Some logisticial could just allocate the 500 scuds which go bad in a few months toward whomever is currently pissing us off. It would be cheaper than using newer ordinance.

I am concerned about the problems on our border with Mexico. Also the rise of no knock warrants against average people going wrong bothers me a lot. There has got to be some way cops can retain that tool they genuinely need but use enough discretion that normal, fundamentally decent, folks aren't getting killed all the time. If this keeps up a lot of folks may start to reevaluate their stance on cops. Cops might find themselves aweful alone in a big scary world if this keeps up for much longer.

I do not think all is lost. America is a big, strong country with a lot of productive power. Sort of like an exceptionally big/ strong man in a fight, even when we are getting the worst of it a solid punch landed can totally change a fight. A governing body that decided to fuel growth and took some (I'm not talking fixing every entitlement problem over night) reasonable steps to get spending under control could change things in a hurry. That would let us stop borrowing like crazy and be on a more even trading field with China. Businesses having the confidence to spend their on hand cash and people being willing to expand their businesses or start new ventures would radically change the employment situation. These problems could be solidly in our rear view mirror in a few years. I know that outlook is a bit rosy but I want to break us all out of the doom and gloom group think. Anyway I hope you have a good Independence Day

Random Thoughts on Dogma, Politics and War

Like all of you I have heard the phrase "people deserve the government they accept". Though I have deployed before for reasons that are not clear to me (probably age and maturity) I got to thinking about that phrase here. It is incredibly simplistic and fails to consider geography (a La Guns Germs and Steel) and its political and social implications. Simply put for reasons beyond anybodies control some places are just screwed. It is very simplistic and egotistical to think we as individuals have some direct role in our government being better than it is in some other places.

A lot of views people in the circles we are in talk about mesh closely with traditional Afghan tribal (really Pashtun) social codes. Here you can see the sum of this supposedly ideal individual behavior and how well it actually plays out. Not that it is the only factor but it is a big one.

Well I am going to get a bite to eat and then some sleep. Be happy you don't live in a country that actually sucks. If you are American be really happy.

Random Thoughts: Tunisia, Egypt, Revolutions and Stuff

There is sure some interesting stuff going on in Tunesia, Egypt and Yemen (and the broader Arab world) right now. Not really suprising. All those despotic dictatorships with lots of young unemployed or marginally employed teens and 20 something who are growingly educated or at least exposed to the outside world via technology are a recipe for disaster. Hopefully if they are successful they will be able to break the 'One man, one vote, one time' and military dictatorship back and forth that have rules the Arab world since it became free from it's colonial rulers 60 years or so ago.

In Thailand not so long ago some folks really tried to get a revolution going. They succeeded in shutting down the capital for awhile but were eventually foiled. Some said it was because they were not armed which has some merit. If security forces crack down you can't do much to resist without guns. However I would say that: A) while they had a vocal minority there was not sufficient backing among the population and B) the willingness of the security forces to put down a rebellion are more important than a few dozen or even hundred guns. We saw this with Eastern Europe. The combination of the desire for regime change reaching critical mass AND the refusal of tactical level Army and police units to crush the protesters is essential for this sort of grass roots reasonably peaceful revolution/ regime change under the model of the fall of the USSR and more recently Tunisia. If you have even a fairly big protest and the security apparatus is still down with the regime you get the massacres of the USSR in the 50's and 60's (there were a couple I can't recall of the top of my head and don't feel like looking up) or Tiannamen Square. A government that doesn't pull any punches or care what the international community thinks can crush a pretty determined uprising and use the secret/ political police to keep it crushed. Anyway onto other stuff.

I have had a heck of a week. My schedule was early, late and generally erratic. So ready for the weekend. No real big plans here. Just going to try to rest and relax, do some packing and take care of a few little things. Got a bunch of new gear which I will write more about soon. Also there are a few other interesting things floating in my head.

Anyway I hope you all have a great weekend.

I'm Back and Republicans Won The House

Our internet was down for a few days. I enjoyed spending extra time with the family and also was able to catch up some on my reading. During that time the Republicans won back control of the House of Represenatives. I am particularly happy that some Tea Party type folks won. Having a Paul in both the House and the Senate is going to be really fun. I anticipate at least double the long winded speaches nobody pays attention to and numerous bills which will never get out of commitee. Seriously though I think this represents a shift in a significant part of the "conservative"  side and that is a good thing. We have had about all of the crony capitalism this country can handle. If this newfound majority can do a few things to get governments hands out of peoples pockets while starting to get our deficite under control that would be great. If they can at least mount an effective defense against any more madness that would be OK too. Personally I have rather limited expectations. If they can manage to act fiscally conservative some good stuff might happen. Time will tell.

There is all kinds of stuff in my head but I worked a super long day and am beat. Thoughts are not cohesively forming. You will get a few good posts over the long weekend I am sure. Have a good night.

The Different Types of Liberterians

I think Naive is probably my favorite. These people don't know anything about the real world and think that if America cowers in the closet every asshat in the world who hates us will somehow go away. That just isn't reality. You can scare people into leaving you alone or kill them but just wishing they will go away doesn't work. The bizarrely hypocritical are fun also.

quote of the day

"People in the establishment tend to fail upward"
-Chris Hayes

Not going to say I agree with most of what this guys says but this quote is disturbingly true.

LIberals and Economics

I read an article today in the Wall Street Journal about a study done regarding how well people from various political parties understand basic economic principles. The study seemed somewhat biased, but has a fairly accurate, and predictable outcome. By biased, I mean it uses a couple liberal buzz words, and does an agree or disagree format, rather than a right or wrong format.

So thoughts,

Liberals aren't out to destroy the economy. Rather, they are trying to create controls. Pure capitalistic economies are boom (when actors are following their rational self interest) and bust (when actors are acting irrationally). This, depending on the foresight of the actors to understand at the time they are acting what is rational and irrational, leads to overall higher production and efficiency. However, that does not mean it is a perfect system. Markets aggressively self correct, and in a very real way, harm people. They distribute resources to those who are the best, and leave out the rest. Liberals want to control markets, harnessing the power of capitalism, while removing the negatives. This would lower the highs, but avoid some of the lows, while having a weakening effect on the overall economy.

Here is the problem. To achieve this purpose, they need two things. First, they need political clout. To get this, they have turned market economics into buzz words, and attached emotional ideas to them. The example is monopolies are bad. This is not accurate. Monopolies do some things well, such as using economies of scale to lower costs, and some things poorly, innovation. When Standard Oil was still a monopoly, the consumer price index was declining, and Rockefeller made more money after it was broken up than he did while it was a monopoly. However, understanding fairly complex micro economic principles, let alone macro economics (neither of which I claim to understand) is counter to the political economic goals of the Left. No one from either party wants the population to do overall economic analysis; they want us to stop with the reaction of either "unions are bad" or "monopolies are bad."

The second problem is the big one. To remove the negatives of capitalism, while keeping the positives, you need to understand what is the correct move at all times. Hindsight is 20/20, foresight is the bitch. The saving grace of capitalism is that if something is not working people are free to change. The down side is that when something is working, people are free to change. However, regulations minimize this effect. If the government decides you need to do something, and its a good choice, great! But if it a bad choice, you have to suffer while the political process figures that out (if they ever do).

In the end, its not about which works better; its what your goals are. Most modern liberals want economies to produce "fair" results, meaning similar pay for all. Purely capitalistic economies don't do that, they produce efficient markets. If the market isn't doing what you want it to do, than you consider it broken, and want to fix it. The problem is that while heavy regulation would mitigate some of the lows, it would also temper the highs, and remove the ability of people to adjust to changing circumstances. The free market is always working, whether we want it to, or not.

Miranda

The newest Miranda ruling came down recently, and the media has been in a flutter. My personal favorite is the Time article entitled Has the Supreme Court Decimated Miranda? The short answer is no. In fact, the long answer is no. In summation, the answer is no.

Miranda is valid law (although it defines the "Alice in Wonderland logic" Time claims is utilized by Van Thompkins, and I would say is the worst decided case in SCOUS history, ignoring its cases about the Commerce Clause from about 1938-1990). We have to understand what Miranda says, and what it doesn't. First off, Miranda is not the case which states that a criminal defendant has a right to silence. What Miranda says is two fold. First, police must inform a criminal suspect of their right to remain silent (and the right to have an attorney) prior to any custodial interrogation. Second, if a criminal suspect asserts his right to either, all interrogation must cease. One of the interesting things about Miranda is that the case was about overly aggressive interrogation tactics, yet the Warren Court (as was their custom) did nothing to limit the aggressive interrogation tactics which could be used on suspects. Rather, they said that when the guy says stop, you have to stop.

To waive those rights, you must do so knowingly and voluntarily. Knowingly means, you have to know and understand the rights (hence the Miranda warnings), and voluntarily means there cannot be overt coercion (hence why we are not allowed to water board suspects because they won't talk to us). While I have not read this case, I will give the benefit of the doubt to Time as to the facts (although their legal analysis could not be further off).

"Thompkins was arrested in connection with a fatal shooting that occurred outside a mall in Michigan in 2000. The police questioned him for close to three hours, but he remained almost completely silent, offering just a few one-word answers. Toward the end, an officer asked Thompkins if he had prayed to God to forgive him for the shooting, and he said 'yes.'"

While there is no mention of if he was told his Miranda rights, I am going to assume he was. If he wasn't this would have never made it to the SCOUS. Because he was told his Miranda rights, when he replied, it was knowingly. The only coercion was that he was asked questions for close to three hours, which is not overt coercion, so this is voluntary. Did he waive his right to remain silent? Well, he didn't have to say something, and he did. That is a waiver. There is no violation of Miranda. This is an easy case.

Today, police and prosicutors LOVE Miranda. Under Miranda, once someone has been informed of their rights, its game on. Until they say stop, anything they say is fair game. Furthermore, this is not a conspiricy of the conservitave members of the Court. This opinion was written by Justice Kennedy. Justice Kennedy is one of the justices responcible for Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the current abortion case. *Side note: Roe v. Wade was practically overturned by Casey, which implimented a new standard for judging abortion cases, while affirming Roe in spirit.*

Kennedy is not a conservative, so why is it important for him to be labeled as one? Liberals have controlled the Court since the Switch in Time that Saved nine, in 1937. Liberals have since used the Court to push every "progressive" goal they have, but which they are unable to get the other branches to buy into. However, the make up of the Court has changed. The Court is currently a 4-4-1 with the liberals, Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, in a tie with the conservatives, Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito. The tie breaker is Kennedy, the moderate, who is rather unpredictable. The reason liberals need this to be considered a conservative court is it motivates their base. Ask people if they think the SCOUS should have an equal number of people from both the major political parties on it, with someone in the center as a tie breaker, and they will say thats a good idea. Tell people that the evil conservatives control the Court (insert a reference to Bush), and you can panic them into doing what you tell them to.

In this case, the Court held that police can continue to question someone until they give an affirmative sign they want to remain silent (only answering a couple of questions from police is not an affirmative sign). The question is not how much did the majority want to chip away at Miranda; the question is how much did the minority want to expand it beyond the original ruling.

When the police question you, say, all together now. "I want an attorney." Don't just sit there... And if you choose to just sit there, actually remain silent. Its not hard people, if you are not going to say anything, don't fucking say anything.

"A government with the policy to rob Peter to pay Paul can be assured of the support of Paul."
George Bernard Shaw

Leadership Lessons From Dancing Guy

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High Five to Degringolade for finding this. I am 95% sure that is the Gorge in George, fun times.