Here’s a good round up of some civil liberties abuses. Some excerpts:

Arizona brake repairman Randy Bailey, 40, faced the loss of his three-decades-old family business when Mesa city officials used eminent domain to condemn his shop so the land could be used for a hardware store expansion. This form of coercion and corporate welfare, pursued in the name of the public good, is commonplace.

Tax consultant Judith Roderick, 55, of Lacey, Wash., had prepared a land trust for a client who was later charged with growing marijuana. The Thurston County Narcotics Task Force seized Roderick’s home, her bank accounts and her business records during their investigation into whether she knew the client had used drug money to buy the land. Left destitute by the seizures, Roderick had to represent herself in court. It took over a year for prosecutors to decide they had no case.

Classic car restorer Dan Peruchi, 35, of Fort Worth, Texas, was driving a vehicle he had just purchased through West Memphis, Ark., when police stopped him. They seized $18,890 in cash Peruchi was carrying for car purchases because a drug-sniffing dog reacted as if some of the bills had once been in contact with cocaine.

No charges were filed against Peruchi, and there was no evidence of drug involvement. But he never got his money back.

Remind me to add property and cash to my cold dead hands list.

Yahoo News:

Just days before U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq, officials claiming to speak for a frantic Iraqi regime made a last-ditch effort to avert the war, but U.S. officials rebuffed the overture, Pentagon officials said Thursday.

An influential adviser to the Defense Department received a secret message from a Lebanese-American businessman indicating that Saddam Hussein wanted to make a deal, they said.

The chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service and other Iraqi officials had told the businessman that they wanted Washington to know that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction and offered to let American troops and experts do an independent search, said officials, who discussed the matter only on condition of anonymity.

The Iraqi officials also offered to hand over a man accused of being involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing who was being held in Baghdad, they said.

Iraq allegedly said it had no WMDs. Then why did Hussein act like he did? Oh yeah, because he was crazy.

On the news this morning, they stated that the CIA informed Perle not to pursue. Of course, this doesn’t mean that the meeting would have averted the war. Hussein had lied in the past and he would have done it again.

Quickest Update Ever: U.S. intelligence officials have told Fox News that reports of a frantic last-ditch effort by Iraq to avert an impending war were simply a facade by “third parties, charlatans and independent actors” aimed at preventing the U.S.-led invasion.

I like my handguns and I am used to the sights. I realize that night sights would be handy but I don’t like three dot sights. I prefer the Sigarms pumpkin on a post type sites and the standard Glock sites are good.

Anyone familiar with this product? If so, leave me a comment. Thanks.

If you feel the need to review the justifications for the war, and excellent summary is found here.

Some ado in the blogosphere about this essay by Kim regarding how the western male is being pussified. While I agree with the general sentiment, I take issue with some specifics he lists. But this isn’t a post about that, this is a post about real men.

Who are real men? A real man is someone willing to risk everything for the things and people he cares about, but still laughs at fart jokes.

I have a friend who goes by the nickname Money. He doesn’t have this nickname because he’s wealthy. He has this nickname because another friend can’t hear. One night, while they were working, Money said:

I hate when old people call me honey.

My other friend thought he said Money. It never occurred to him that it was odd for older people to call our friend Money. The nickname has stuck for about ten years now.

I have blogrolled Alphecca for a while now and have joked that he is my favorite gay gun nut. I said this not realizing that I had another gay gun nut on the blogroll. Eric from Classical Values is apparently gay and a gun nut too, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Some of my best friends are gun nuts.

I don’t pick favorites so now the title of my favorite gay gun nut is a two way tie.

No, I am not making this up. Rocket Jones details how the BATFE is targeting rocketry.

FoxNews:

Fox News has obtained a document believed to have been written by the Democratic staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee that outlines a strategy for exposing what it calls “the administration’s dubious motives” in the lead-up to the war in Iraq.

The memo, provided late Tuesday by a source on the Committee and reported by Fox News’ Sean Hannity, discusses the timing of a possible investigation into pre-war Iraq intelligence in such a way that it could bring maximum embarrassment to President Bush in his re-election campaign.

Yes, the Democratic leadership is concerned about the war (you can tell by how they let the $87.5B package go through) but only when it is politically beneficial.

GOP picks up a couple of governorships in the south. The decline of the Democrats continues and it doesn’t hurt my feelings much.

I have two today:

I want to beat the hell out of these people who preach hate and violence.

And

Depression is just anger without the enthusiasm.

No source for that one. Forgot where I read it.

Update: Via Buck, I found where I read it and it goes like this:

I’ve learned that depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.

Via Tom, comes this article:

The owner of a West Valley strip shopping center has been forced to continue leasing space to Peoria Justice Court, sparking the latest in a series of Valley battles over the government’s right to take over privately owned land.

Orsett/Columbia Ltd. is awaiting a ruling by the state Court of Appeals on a Pinal County Superior Court decision in July that backed the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.

In requiring the shopping center’s owners to give space to Peoria Justice Court at 75th Avenue and Cactus Road, the lower court ruled that public good overrides private property rights.

An Orsett official said the decision sets dangerous precedent.

“This means municipalities can identify a space they want and force a landlord to lease it to them,” said Mike Freret vice president of development for Orsett/Columbia Ltd. “It may mean that if the space they want already has a business owner in it, they could boot them out.”

There’s more abuse of eminent domain by local authorities listed in the article. The lesson here is never lease property to the government. Eminent domain has been abused for a long time but this case seems particularly hideous as the effort to do so is under the guise of saving the taxpayers a few bucks at the expense of someone’s property rights. But more hideous is that isn’t the reason. The real reason is so that the court won’t be inconvenienced by a move before thier permanent facilities are completed.

I hope the challenge is successful.

We knew Google was not allowing ad words involving guns. Now, Symantec?

Not what Dean expected, I imagine. Good thing for Dean he doesn’t have an (R) after his name.

Update: CJ asks Where’s the outrage?

If you want to read about (and see pictures of) just about the weirdest thing I’ve seen, head on over to Troy’s.

Check out the results of this blog survey. I’ve asked before is blogging dying?

Some stuff on the proposed McCain-Reed-DeWine-Lieberman gun show bill.

It does make the point that I’ve made all along: There is no gun show loophole. There is only the right of citizens to engage in lawful commerce with other lawful citizens.

Two Vegas politicians are on a list by investigators taking advantage of the Patriot act. I thought the act was for stopping terrorists not picking on corrupt politicians.

So, the $87.5B is going to Iraq:

One day after Americans in Iraq endured their worst casualties since March, the Senate approved the bill by voice vote, sidestepping the roll call that usually accompanies major legislation in an anticlimactic moment for which only a handful of senators appeared.

Yes, a voice vote. That way, we don’t know who voted for or against it. Spineless wheenies.

I thought he’d disappeared.

FoxNews:

Pilot Dave Weldon told The Associated Press on Thursday that he saw state firefighting planes on a nearby airstrip as he approached the mountains at 110 mph. He called down for help because his dispatcher had relayed reports of smoke in the area, but got no response.

That was around 5:45 p.m. A few minutes later, he spotted smoke from the fire, then only about 50 yards on each side and not spreading.

As he steadied his helicopter against wind gusts, Weldon’s concern mounted. Just before landing, he called for backup, asking another county helicopter to speed to the scene with its 120-gallon water dump bucket. And he urged the dispatcher to contact state firefighters and renew his request for air tankers.

The problem was that under state safety guidelines, no flights are allowed to go up into waning daylight. On Saturday, the cutoff was 5:36 p.m., said Capt. Ron Serabia, the CDF official who coordinates the 12 tankers and 10 helicopters now battling the 272,000-acre blaze.

The sun set that day at 6:05 p.m.

The helicopter with the dump bucket flew within five miles of the fire, before state officials told it to turn back. The air tankers never took off. Weldon was told crews would attack the fire in the morning.

“We were basically just offering our assistance fighting their fire, and they turned it down,” said Weldon, who with his partner delivered the hunter to law enforcement officials, who cited him for setting an unauthorized fire. “I was frustrated about it, but I wasn’t surprised.”

Awful.

Via Publicola comes this:

The Citizens Rule Book has such seditious documents as The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. It contains other similar information such as this quote from John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court: “The jury has a right to determine both the law and the facts.”

But to hear Paschall’s critics, his booklet is an attack on our system of government. Bruce DeBoskey of the Anti-Defamation League is alarmed that Paschall is making the book available: “He is using his official position to add legitimacy to an extremist philosophy that undermines our government.”

Apparently for critics such as DeBoskey, American government requires the people to do whatever they are told by a judge, no matter how outrageous and unconstitutional the judge’s position might be.

The government schools have spent billions to indoctrinate Americans to do only what some government leader tells them to do. Then, here comes Country Treasurer Paschall with his book of American constitutional law and quotes from the country’s founders saying we should think for ourselves. The shame of it!

“Shameful” is exactly the word applied to Paschall by an editorial in the Denver Post. The paper’s editorial asked: “[It is doubtful that] this man — who has been handing out free booklets on jury nullification, a corrosive abrogation of the rule of law and the fundamental concepts of American freedom — really represents the ‘party of Lincoln.'”

I’ve read about jury nullification in the past. Essentially, jurors can tell the judge and the law to fuck right off if they think a law is unconstitutional or just bad.

Power to the people.

Copies of the Citizens Rule Book are available for $1 here.

WATE:

Managers at the Newport Plain Talk newspaper want to find out who put KKK membership flyers in their newspapers.

Subscribers called the newspaper’s office after finding the flyers wrapped around newspapers with rubber bands.

The Plain Talk publisher said he didn’t know someone had added the flyers and whoever did it did not have permission.

This is the second incident involving the KKK flyers. Last summer, someone also added them to newspapers.

From the Sierra Times:

Lt. Larry Parsley, the Tennessee Highway Patrol Officer accused of clocking into work as a THP officer, then building houses for his own construction firm, has retired from the Tennessee Highway Patrol.

Beth Denton, spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Safety, Parsley said Parsley’s retirement would be effective Nov. 1. Parsley’s retirement came less than a week after allegations regarding his working a construction job while on the state time clock as a highway patrol officer.

Here is something in East Tennessee that is actually newsworthy and I find it on the Sierra Times? A quick search of local news outlets for Larry Parsley yields no results.

Update: I forgot WVLT. They did a story on it.

Jim, the SemiPundit, asks Are we paying the terrorists to shoot at us? Good question.

Would a militant whacko put a cap in Uday and Qusay to pocket $30M to fund future attacks? Good question.

Shotgun News:

The biggest victory for our foes – and the biggest defeat for gun rights – would be reenactment of the Clinton Gun Ban, which Sen. Feinstein is determined to achieve.

If the ban on “assault weapons” is attached to S. 659 in the Senate, and can’t be stopped in the House, NRA-ILA will kill the bill – I’m told, because “as important as industry protection is, it’s not worth letting the ban continue.” Amen!

Marin Independent Journal:

Schwarzenegger made few policy pronouncements, though he did vow to work with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., to reauthorize a federal assault weapons ban.

Armed Females of America:

The internet is buzzing with multiple theories of what will or will not happen during election year 2004 when the Clinton “assault weapons” ban is set to sunset and expire.

The Bush White House has publicly stated that they “support” renewal of the ban.

The Republican controlled House [federal] has stated that they will not pass an AW renewal [expansion] out of the House.

Many in the gun owning, civil rights community are feeling rather confident right now that the misguided 1994 legislation will expire.

I do NOT share that confidence. Here is why.

What most seem to have missed during the current debate is that the House did NOT pass an AW Ban BILL in 1994. The STAND-ALONE Assault Weapon Ban bill debated in the House was not enacted into law. So how did we get the ban?

It was attached as an AMENDMENT to that federal beast that gobbles up huge chunks of our money and liberty… the OMNIBUS BILL. In 1994 it was the OMNIBUS CRIME BILL

At first, I thought that there was no way it would be passed into law again. Now, I am not so sure. I hope not but those that oppose this legislation need to start becoming vocal now.

First, Iraqis were given better gun rights than US citizens. Now they get better tax rates?

Maybe those free-staters were wrong in picking New Hampshire.

Afghanistan has unveiled a draft of a constitution:

The draft starts by declaring that “Afghanistan is an Islamic Republic,” then later creates the posts of president and vice president, as well as envisioning two houses of congress.

The draft reflects the government’s desire to bring the country together under the banner of Islam, which is practiced by the vast majority of Afghans. However, the hardline Islamic law enforced by the former Taliban regime is not expected to be a part of Afghanistan’s future.

Good luck, guys. By my count, it’ll only be valid for about 200 years.

So, let me get this straight. Our local news station goes to random streets in the city with a radar gun and clocks drivers’ speeds? Isn’t there like news or something to be reporting?

Hell, if I saw them, I’d gun it just to be a smart ass.

A study shows that Oprah fans are more likely to be stressed.

After the Mrs. watches Oprah, I’m always stressed because I get to hear all about stuff I don’t care about and how it affects me.