Second Amendment March -- Washington, DC -- April 19, 2010

Schedule of Events:

The national event for Second Amendment March is scheduled for April 19, 2010.

We have reserved the grounds of the Washington Monument from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. that day.

So far, we have the following speakers scheduled. We are constantly working on this event, so be sure to check back!

Scheduled Speakers:

Larry Pratt has been Executive Director of Gun Owners of America for 26 years. GOA is a national membership organization of 300,000 Americans dedicated to promoting their Second Amendment freedom to keep and bear arms.GOA lobbies for the pro-gun position in Washington, D.C. and is involved in firearm issues in the states. GOA's work includes providing legal assistance to those involved in lawsuits with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, the federal firearms law enforcement agency.Pratt has appeared on numerous national radio and TV programs such as NBC's Today Show, CBS' Good Morning America, CNN's Crossfire and Larry King Live, Fox's Hannity and Colmes and many others. He has debated Congressman James Traficant, Jr. (D-OH), Charles Rangel (D-NY), Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), and Vice President Al Gore, among others. His columns have appeared in newspapers across the country.He published a book, Armed People Victorious, in 1990 and was editor of a book, Safeguarding Liberty: The Constitution & Militias, 1995. His latest book, On the Firing Line: Essays in the Defense of Liberty was published in 2001.Pratt has held elective office in the state legislature of Virginia, serving in the House of Delegates. Pratt directs a number of other public interest organizations and serves as the Vice-Chairman of the American Institute for Cancer Research.

Lt. Colonel Dave Grossman Col. Grossman is an Airborne Ranger infantry officer, and a prior-service sergeant and paratrooper, with a total of over 23 years experience in leading U.S. soldiers worldwide. He retired from the Army in February 1998 and has devoted himself to teaching, writing, speaking, and research. Today he is the director of the Killology Research Group, and in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks he is on the road almost 300 days a year, training elite military and law enforcement organizations worldwide about the reality of combat.

Kenn Blanchard is a former Marine Security Guard who has worked protective details for international celebrities and US diplomats. Later after becoming a federal police officer, he was detailed to protect a couple of families which morphed into another career path where he worked or taught firearms, tactics and protection. He is also a D.C.-area pastor who runs blackmanwithagun.com. Kenn has been involved in the struggle for the Second Amendment since the state of Virginia reformed its conceal carry law in the early nineties. He founded the Tenth Cavalry Gun Club, a national pro-gun organization for African Americans, and worked around the country after that to promote safe and responsible firearms ownership. He was involved in concealed carry reforms in Texas, South Carolina, Michigan and Wisconsin and has testified in the US Congress and in Maryland on bills or acts designed to prevent law abiding Americans from legal firearm ownership or concealed carry.

Suzanna G. Hupp is a former Republican member of the Texas House of Representatives and a recognized public advocate for the Second Amendment and an individual’s right to carry a concealed weapon.

A Friendswood, Texas, native, Suzanna Gratia (married name Hupp) was born on January 1, 1959. After she received a doctor of chiropractic degree from the Texas Chiropractic College in Pasadena, Texas, she owned and operated Cove Physical Rehab Clinic in Copperas Cove, Texas from 1987 until she sold the practice in 2000.

On Wednesday, October 16, 1991, Suzanna and her parents were having lunch at Luby’s Cafeteria in Killeen, when a man drove his truck into the restaurant and opened fire on the patrons. Suzanna instinctively reached into her purse for her handgun, but realized it was in her vehicle, as a new law was passed in Texas banning the carry of a concealed weapon. Suzanna escaped out of a broken window, but 23 unarmed others, including Suzanna’s mother and father, were killed at the hands of the gunman.

As a survivor of the Luby’s massacre, Suzanna has been quoted in U.S. News & World Report, The Wall Street Journal, Texas Monthly, Time and People magazines, in addition to appearing on CNN, 48 Hours, Today Show and World News Tonight, to name a few.

Hupp has since authored a memoir recounting her experiences in the massacre, entitled From Luby’s to the Legislature: One Woman’s Fight Against Gun Control, available December, 2009.

Richard Mack held office as Sheriff in Graham County, Arizona, and is a long-time crusader for freedom and individual rights as well as an author of several books on those topics. In 1994, Sheriff Mack also challenged the Brady Bill in the Supreme Court of the United States.


Michael Bane is the host of Shooting Gallery, a show on the Outdoor Channel that every week explores a different facet of the very wide world of shooting, from competition to law enforcement to self-defense to the men and women at arms who are defending this country.

From Michael's bio:

"I’ve been involved with guns and shooting literally my entire life. Most recently, I conceived and still manage the five-year-old NSSF Media Education Program, which has had a profound effect on the relationship between the firearms industry and the media. It also bought together the perhaps greatest group of firearms instructors of all stripes ever. That "critical mass" of instructors has been redefining handgun instruction, and I'm proud to have had a small part in that. I was part of the 3-person team who handled national media during the Maryland sniper crisis, which as emerged as a textbook example for the industry in dealing with flashfires. I've also handled crisis stuff for IPSC and USPSA. we're currently working directly with major companies on setting up their own media events and training their people to deal with media crises."

Suggest you bookmark their home site and check back often.

There are parallel events being planned as well. More on all as the news becomes available.

Word

Malone Vandam at New Paltz Journal sums it up:

***
...Obama’s foreign policy seems to be a layering in of Leftist wet dreams: He tells the world, effectively, that America is weak, America is guilty, America doesn’t listen, America is wrong, America has caused rather than solved problems, America has wrecked the peace rather than preserved it.

In other words, Obama is an artifact from the losing side of the Cold War, a typical empty vessel from a hard Left university environment filled up with twenty-years-passed-its-expiration-date KGB propaganda out of the can.

This makes for an atavistic foreign policy out of a parallel history of the Cold War, one that might have been written by a congental liar like Noam Chomsky, where the Soviet Union was, well, just that big place over there that didn’t really do anything, while it was the U.S. that was wreaking havoc with the world. Perhaps that is why Obama had no real interest in the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, because that real history conflicts with the old KGB narrative that saturates the Obama mystique.

Victor Davis Hanson set that off.
***

Now consider the consequences -- not just next year, but over the coming decades.

Had enough yet?

Codrea: Two Looks Inside Their Briefs

Please read both of these articles from David's Examiner column:

Chicago Gun Case Brief Shows Prohibitionists Unreasonable

Chicago Gun Case: Top Globalist Cops Say Keeping Americans Disarmed Is 'Reasonable'

Know your enemies.

(Illustration by Oleg Volk)

A Nation of Men, Not Laws

Read this NYT story on AG Holder's decision that ACORN can be paid additional taxpayer money.

Do you understand yet?

Powerline: A Caveat On The 'Global Warming' Emails

From Powerline:

I've written a lot about the East Anglia emails, here, here, here and here. I think the emails and other documents are damaging to the cause of the partisans of anthropogenic global warming, mostly because they stand exposed as exactly that--partisans, engaged in a political rather than scientific enterprise.

However, while I did mention it in the first post linked above, I haven't emphasized the email that has gotten the most attention, and even inspired t-shirts that say "Hide the Decline." Many have viewed this email as a smoking gun, showing that the climate alarmists have used "tricks" to hide the fact that global temperatures are declining rather than rising. Here it is [editor's note: in the illustration above]; click to enlarge.

On its face, the email seems damning. The problem is that the interpretation it is being given doesn't make sense. If it had been written in the last couple of years, then sure: it would be plausible that climate alarmists may have been jiggering their data to hide the fact that temperature has been flat or declining for the last decade. But the email was authored in November 1999. At that time, there was no decline to hide. 1998 was, by all accounts that I'm aware of, the warmest year of recent times. 1999 is precisely when alarmists could present the strongest case that the earth was warming (whether due to human activity, of course, is another question).

So I seriously doubt that this email has the significance that is being attributed to it. For what it's worth, though, the explanation that Michael Mann, a recipient of the email, gave to the New York Times doesn't seem to make much sense either:

Dr. Mann, a professor at Pennsylvania State University, confirmed in an interview that the e-mail message was real. He said the choice of words by his colleague was poor but noted that scientists often used the word "trick" to refer to a good way to solve a problem, "and not something secret."

At issue were sets of data, both employed in two studies. One data set showed long-term temperature effects on tree rings; the other, thermometer readings for the past 100 years.
Through the last century, tree rings and thermometers show a consistent rise in temperature until 1960, when some tree rings, for unknown reasons, no longer show that rise, while the thermometers continue to do so until the present.

Dr. Mann explained that the reliability of the tree-ring data was called into question, so they were no longer used to track temperature fluctuations. But he said dropping the use of the tree rings was never something that was hidden, and had been in the scientific literature for more than a decade. "It sounds incriminating, but when you look at what you're talking about, there's nothing there," Dr. Mann said.

Unfortunately, the leaked emails surrounding the one in question don't shed any further light on the question. So that's where it sits. But the bottom line is, I don't think the warmists were hiding a temperature decline as of 1999, because temperatures weren't declining then. Ten years later, it could well be a different story.

UPDATE: Small Dead Animals locates "hide the decline" in leaked East Anglia computer code; click to enlarge:

That's fun, to be sure, but the problem is that our knowledge of temperatures post-1960 has nothing to do with tree rings. What this episode shows, I think, is that tree ring studies are useless, which we also noted here. Is that significant? Absolutely: tree-ring studies are the main support for the AGW conclusions reached by the U.N.'s IPCC report, which in turn is the U.S. government's only basis for cap and trade, etc.

For the global warming alarmists, it's any port in a storm. Use data as long as it supports your fanatically-held position, delete it as soon as it diverges.

FURTHER UPDATE: It would be possible for the Obama administration to be more out of touch with contemporary science, but it wouldn't be easy:

Putting his prestige on the line, President Barack Obama will personally commit the U.S. to a goal of substantially cutting greenhouse gases at next month's Copenhagen climate summit. He will insist America is ready to tackle global warming despite resistance in Congress over higher costs for businesses and homeowners.

Obama will attend the start of the conference Dec. 9 before heading to Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize. He will "put on the table" a U.S. commitment to cut emissions by 17 percent over the next decade, on the way to reducing heat-trapping pollution by 80 percent by mid-century, the White House said.

The problem is that Obama knows absolutely nothing about the issue of climate, much as he knows little or nothing about the economy. I sincerely doubt that most Americans want to impoverish ourselves in order to satisfy a bunch of climate "scientists" who, we now know, happily sacrifice truth to political ideology and financial interest.

PAUL adds: The other problem, I think, is that Obama doesn't seem to know much about our system of government. He can't deliver on the kinds of promises he apparently intends to make without the cooperation of Congress. And even this session of Congress -- the most compliant he's ever likely to have -- hasn't felt like cooperating with him on this issue.

FINAL UPDATE: Climate Audit has, I think, the definitive explanation of "hide the decline." The decline being hidden is that reflected by tree ring data in recent years. The point, as suggested above, is that narrowing tree rings during a time when we know temperatures were rising proves that measuring the diameter of tree rings is a worthless way to measure world-wide temperatures. That's a big problem, since such proxy data are the basis for the alarmists' purported knowledge of temperatures in earlier eras. This also ties in with Keith Briffa's apparent manipulation of tree ring data to minimize the Medieval Warm Period, which we wrote about here.

Key point of all this -- Comrade Soetero and his Congressional fellow travellers are moving forward to cripple the US economy, despite the gaping hole in the rationale for any action.

Any questions as to why?

How To Escape From Zip Ties

CIII sends this link, noting "thought it would be good info to get out to everyone,considering it's what they'll probably be using when the metal ones are depleted."

Read and pass on, please.

CMP: More Greek HXP .30-06 Ammo Soon

From the Civilian Marksmanship Program:

MORE .30-06 HXP AMMO SOON: The CMP has been successful in acquiring another large quantity of HXP .30-06 ammo. We expect delivery in Jan 2010 and should have the ammo ready for sale by Feb or Mar. Until we actually receive and inspect the ammo, we will not know what packaging configurations will be available, but expect them to be the same as we have had for the past few years. We do not yet know what our final cost will be. We do know that the quantity is large enough to satisfy our customer needs for several years. We will not accept any pre-orders or establish a waiting list. Thanks for your support and patience.

Suggest you sign up for CMP emails for updates; if you snooze, you WILL lose.

Global Guerrillas: Standing Orders

From John Robb's Global Guerrillas; read each, think, adapt to your particulars, and pass on:

#1: Break Networks

#2: Grow Black Economies

#3: Virtualize Your Organization

#4: Repetition Is More Important Than Scale

#5: Cooperation, Not Competition

#6: Don't Fork The Insurgency

#7: Minimalist Rule Sets Work Best

#8: Self-Replicate

#9: Share or Copy Everything That Works

#10: Release Early & Often

#11: Co-Opt, Don't Own Basic Services

More as they become available, and if you are not yet convinced why Robb's site should be a bookmarked everyday stop for you, this recap/linkage of several topics should help convince you.

Repost: Let's Win

Last July, I responded to a question from Kevin Baker of The Smallest Minority as follows:

And the alternative [to voting] is...

what, exactly?

Be specific. And detailed.

Because I really want to hear it.

My reply:

Kevin:

The people in this country who truly cherish freedom in all of its manifestations (thought, guns, speech, religion, association, private property, etc.) had better darned skippy get used to the idea that we are a cursed minority and will be for the foreseeable future.

The simple formula is this:

- We're screwed

- There's gonna be a fight

- Let's win

Your posts on the courts and freedom issues in general mean that I don't have to make the case for "we're screwed" with you.

BTW, thanks for all that you have taught me through your writing.

So we move to "there's gonna be a fight".

Why?

Ain't no way that the transnational socialists can leave an armed, educated, defiant remnant intact to cut and slash at their Utopian schemes at every opportunity. The tranzis have to do everything in their power to disarm (literally, perhaps, but certainly educationally and psychologically; see generally Snyder, Walter Mitty's Second Amendment) everyone they can.

The reality is that the fight has been on for some sixty (or more) years.

You know that, per your writings.

So on to the fun part - "let's win".

Step one in "let's win" is to refuse any further collaboration in our demise. That's Billy Beck's point - delude yourself all you want with your participatory democracy fantasies, but leave me the hell out of it.

Withholding collaboration takes many forms, however. It involves getting physically, mentally, and emotionally prepared for the really hard stuff. Specific steps include the following:

Physical:

1) Fix teeth
2) Lose weight
3) Start walking at a fast pace regularly (1 mile 4x weekly)
4) Start working 25 yard jogs into your walks
5) Eat less and eat better
6) Get a complete physical
7) Stockpile any needed maintenance drugs
8) Start weightlifting by doing rifle dry-fire snaps (start with rifle at low ready, bringing up and dropping hammer just as sights align on light switch) 25 reps for strong side and weak side 3X/weekly
9) Integrate a light (20 lb.) pack into your walk/jogs
10) Bring one's spouse along as much and as quickly as possible.

Mental:

- read and assimilate the resistance canon (Heinlein, Ross, Vanderboegh, Bracken, Suarez, Royce, von Dach Bern, etc.)

- read and assimilate the economic canon (Hayek, von Mises, etc.)

- read and assimilate the political canon (DoI, USC, BoR, Spooner, DiLorenzo, Bovard, etc.)

Emotional:

- Get square with God as you understand Him. Even if atheist or agnostic, one needs a Larger Context in which to place the upcoming suffering and struggle.

- Sort the sheep from the goats in one's immediate circle. In some cases, that may mean divorce/separation, estrangement from children, parents, or other relatives, and the loss of friends. Better now than when the excitement has begun.

- For those remaining, get them up to speed on all fronts as much and as quickly as they can handle. Your associates' ability to digest all of the bitter medicine that they must swallow will no doubt be a source of frustration. Keep trying.

- Understand, at a profound level, how our lives as mortal creatures are both fleeting and as meaningful or as meaningless as we make them. Commit to yourself and to your ideals that you will spend the remaining days of your life wisely and in furtherance of those eternal truths.

Now, compared to that list, do you really think it matters whether one votes for McCain, Obama, Barr, or the write-in candidate of one's choice?

I respectfully submit that it matters not one whit.

Declare yourself into freedom, just as the Founders did 232 years ago.

Then do everything you can to defend that freedom, even unto death.

And I mean everything.

Remember too the cannibal's paradox - that the time spent in overcoming a taboo can so debilitate the prospective actor that the action taken fails for being too late.

Keep bashing on, amigo.

Yesterday, a commenter on this post asked:

OK, but what is the average John Q Public to do?

The list above is a pretty good start, and I would add the following elements upon further consideration:

Mental:

Psychological Toughening/Stress Inoculation: Start to wrap your brain around the fact that you will likely be committing multiple felonies, misdemeanors, and regulatory violations as part of your personal path to victory. Those folks who plan to survive in the new reality but currently pride themselves on being good, law-abiding citizens had best get over that silliness forthwith. After all, as Ayn Rand pointed out more than fifty years ago in Atlas Shrugged:

The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.

Look around and tell me that we have not crossed that legal Rubicon.

Given the current situation, 'tis best to get on with your new life as a criminal. As a warm-up exercise, I'd suggest violation of at least one malum prohibitum law per day -- be it speeding, tax avoidance, unauthorized concealed carry of a deadly weapon, removing the flow restrictions on showerheads and faucets, tossing a rock through an appropriate statist window, or any other of an almost-infinite number of other meaningless rules.

Embrace the life of a malum prohibitum criminal every day, and insist that others in your tribe do the same.

Logistics:

I am not going down the list path in this post, other than to remind you that you'd best be getting your "Six Bs" finalized before the the current "rip-your-face-off" suckers' rally ends in the financial markets.

What are the Six Bs?

Beans: Food for a minimum of one year for each member of your tribe.

Bullets: A bare minimum of a long arm capable of killing a man at 100 yards for every tribe member over the age of 10, along with a bare minimum of 1000 rounds of ammunition for each long arm. Every adult (16 and above) should also have a centerfire pistol and no less than 500 rounds of ammunition for the sidearm. Holsters, slings, and webgear will be essential as well.

Bandaids: Medical supplies to allow your tribe to survive disease and/or injury without reference to existing medical systems.

Brains: Training and reference works to operate and sustain all of the bean/bullets/bandaids elements above.

Balls: Courage and sheer willpower will be dispositive. Strengthen yours and that of each tribe member.

Buddies: You will need a minimum of 14 like-minded people to stand even a basic lookout watch on a 7/24/365 basis. Got real friends? You're gonna need 'em.

Location:

The bug-out/bug-in debate is handled ad nauseum elsewhere. My point here is that wherever you are, you'd best have a detailed plan (along with several back-up plans) for how you and your tribe are going to defend your space. Remember, too, that defending space (i.e., fixed positions) is how hajii has been dying in droves in Iraq and Afghanistan; many of the people coming to hurt you will have had experience in the "fix 'em and then kill 'em" tactics used by the .mil in those struggles. Ergo, best to have a "going mobile" component to your plan -- or, as a wise man once told me, "Don't plan on being where they know you live if you want to keep living."

When John Q Public is squared away on those items, I'll bet this blog's smart readership will have other "to-do" lists to keep the Public tribe moving towards victory.

And defining "victory"?

Easy.

1) Survive the first die-off.

2) Keep your kids alive.

3) Kill the enemy.

4) Keep fighting.

5) Stay alive.

Any questions?

Audentes fortunat iuvat.

Napolitano: Kiss Your Freedoms Goodbye

From Reason.com:

Kiss Your Freedoms Goodbye If Health Care Passes

Why we cannot afford to sit out this fight

Andrew Napolitano
November 16, 2009

Congress recognizes no limits on its power. It doesn't care about the Constitution, it doesn't care about your inalienable rights. If this health care bill becomes law, America, life as you have known it, freedom as you have exercised it, and privacy as you have enjoyed it will cease to be.

Last week the House of Representatives voted on a 2,000 page bill to give the federal government the power to micromanage the health care of every single American. The bill will raise your taxes, steal your freedom, invade your privacy, and ration your health care. Even the Republicans have introduced their version of Obamacare Lite. It, too, if passed, will compel employers to provide coverage, bribe the states to change their court rules, and tell insurance companies whom to insure.

We do not have two political parties in this country, America. We have one party; called the Big Government Party. The Republican wing likes deficits, war, and assaults on civil liberties. The Democratic wing likes wealth transfer, taxes, and assaults on commercial liberties. Both parties like power; and neither is interested in your freedoms.

Think about it. Government is the negation of freedom. Freedom is your power and ability to follow your own free will and your own conscience. The government wants you to follow the will of some faceless bureaucrat.

When I recently asked Congressman James Clyburn, the third ranking Democrat in the House, to tell me "Where in the Constitution the federal government is authorized to regulate everyone's healthcare," he replied that most of what Congress does is not authorized by the Constitution, but they do it anyway. There you have it. Congress recognizes no limits on its power. It doesn't care about the Constitution, it doesn't care about your inalienable rights, it doesn't care about the liberties protected by the Bill of Rights, it doesn't even read the laws it writes.

America, this is not an academic issue. If this health care bill becomes law, life as you have known it, freedom as you have exercised it, privacy as you have enjoyed it, will cease to be.

When Congress takes away our freedoms, they will be gone forever. What will you do to prevent this from happening?

We Can't Sit Back and Allow the Loss of Our Freedoms

We elect the government. It works for us. As we watch the Democrats' plans for health care take shape, we can only ask how did our government get so removed, so unbridled, so arrogant that it can tell us how to live our personal lives?

On Saturday November 7, at 11 o’clock in the evening, the House of Representatives voted by a five vote margin to have the federal government manage the health care of every American at a cost of $1 trillion dollars over the next ten years.

For the first time in American history, if this bill becomes law, the Feds will force you to buy insurance you might not want, or may not need, or cannot afford. If you don’t purchase what the government tells you to buy, if you don’t do so when they tell you to do it, and if you don’t buy just what they say is right for you, the government may fine you, prosecute you, and even put you in jail. Freedom of choice and control over your own body will be lost. The privacy of your communications and medical decision making with your physician will be gone. More of your hard earned dollars will be at the disposal of federal bureaucrats.

It was not supposed to be this way. We elect the government. It works for us. How did it get so removed, so unbridled, so arrogant that it can tell us how to live our personal lives? Evil rarely comes upon us all at once, and liberty is rarely lost in one stroke. It happens gradually, over the years and decades and even centuries. A little stretch here, a cave in there, powers are slowly taken from the states and the people and before you know it, we have one big monster government that recognizes no restraint on its ability to tell us how to live. It claims the power to regulate any activity, tax any behavior, and demand conformity to any standard it chooses.

The Founders did not give us a government like the one we have today. The government they gave us was strictly limited in its scope, guaranteed individual liberty, preserved the free market, and on matters that pertain to our private behavior was supposed to leave us alone.

In the Constitution, the Founders built in checks and balances. If the Congress got out of hand, the states would restrain it. If the states stole liberty or property, the Congress would cure it. If the president tried to become a king, the courts would prevent it.

In the next few weeks, I will be giving a public class on Constitutional Law here on the Fox News Channel, on the Fox Business Network, on Foxnews.com, and on Fox Nation.

In anticipation of that, many of you have asked: What can we do now about the loss of freedom?

For starters, we can vote the bums out of their cushy federal offices! We can persuade our state governments to defy the Feds in areas like health care—where the Constitution gives the Feds zero authority. We can petition our state legislatures to threaten to amend the Constitution to abolish the income tax, return the selection of U.S. senators to state legislatures, and nullify all the laws the Congress has written that are not based in the Constitution.

One thing we can’t do is just sit back and take it.

Nationalized Medical Care and Gun Ownership

From The Volokh Conspiracy (h/t to DW):

Health bill and gun ownership

David Kopel
November 24, 2009 12:16 pm

Today’s Washington Examiner has an article about the concerns that Gun Owners of America has raised about the health care bill which is currently on the Senate floor. I am quoted therein, and I think that GOA has a good point. The Examiner article concludes with a contrary quote:

“It is very clear they are misreading the bill,” said Igor Volsky, a health care researcher for the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. “All this bill does is define what a wellness program is. It is a broad definition, but it is not broad enough to net gun ownership.”

Let’s look at the bill. The rules for a “Wellness Program” begin on page 87. In brief, if you participate in a Wellness Program, you can get a health insurance premium discount of up to 30%. Stated another way, if you don’t participate in a Wellness Program, you will pay a substantial insurance rate penalty for not doing so. The definition of a “Wellness Program” begins in paragraph (B) on page 88:

“(B) The wellness program shall be reasonably designed to promote health or prevent disease. A program complies with the preceding sentence if the program has a reasonable chance of improving the health of, or preventing disease in, participating individuals and it is not overly burdensome, is not a subterfuge for discriminating based on a health status factor, and is not highly suspect in the method chosen to promote health or prevent disease.”

Pages 29–30 mention some of items that “Wellness and Prevention Programs” “may include.” The phrasing does not appear to exclude other items. In any case, the item for “Healthy lifestyle support” is broad enough to include almost anything.

This definition is extremely broad, and the assertion that it is not broad enough to encompass gun ownership appears to be incorrect. There is a very large body of “public health” scholarship which claims to show that gun ownership is a very large health risk to the family that has a gun in the home. I believe that much of this scholarship is of poor quality, and some of it is mere junk science. However, the existence of dozens of articles in public health and medical journals would almost certainly be enough for an anti-gun definition of “Wellness Program” by the Dept. of Health and Human Services to pass the deferential Chevron standard of review.

A regulation which said that a Wellness Program may (or “shall”) include a discount for not owning a gun (or not owning a handgun, or not owning a so-called “assault weapon”, or for not owning more than a certain number of guns) might be argued to be “overly burdensome.” But there’s no guarantee that a reviewing court would consider a mere discount for people who don’t own guns to be “overly” burdensome on gun owners.

Pages 29–30 of the Reid bill mention some of items that “Wellness and Prevention Programs” “may include.” The phrasing does not appear to exclude other items. In any case, the item for “Healthy lifestyle support” is broad enough to include almost anything.

To be clear: Senator Reid has a strong record on Second Amendment issues. When he was Minority Leader, he provided essential leadership for passage of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. I am certain that there was no intent by Senator Reid to do anything in the health bill to harm Second Amendment rights.

However, the bill would in fact make it easy for a HHS Secretary to write “wellness” program regulations which penalize some or all gun owners. I think it is politically unlikely that HHS Secretary Sebelius would immediately write such regulations. But since the Reid bill is intended to make permanent changes in American health care, no-one can predict what a HHS Secretary might do in 10 or 30 years, when political calculations might be different.

Solving the problem would be easy. Since Senator Reid has no intention of harming Second Amendment rights (or, presumably, of harming anything else in the Bill of Rights), there would appear to be little reason not to explicitly say so in the bill. An amendment might say something like: “No wellness program, nor anything else in this bill or any regulation, policy, or practice thereunder, may create any discount or any other incentive that discourages the ownership, possession, use, or carrying of firearms, air guns, or ammunition, or of any type or quantity of firearms, air guns, or ammunition. This aforesaid prohibition shall be broadly construed, and in case any conflict with any other provision of this bill, the prohibition shall control. Further, the prohibition on incentives against the exercise of constitutional rights shall also protect the exercise of each and every right in Amendments I through VIII of the United States Constitution.”

Undoubtedly a professional legislative drafter could write a better version of above. Explicit rights protection would prevent a future HHS Secretary from misusing the law in a way contrary to the intent of the sponsor, and contrary to what every advocate for the bill claims to want. At the same time, explicit rights protection would limit not one iota of what the bill’s advocates say they want to accomplish. Accordingly, one might expect that a rights protection amendment with strong and broad language would earn unanimous support if it were offered on the Senate floor.

Lind: 4th Generation Warfare Comes to America

Go to Mike's place and read this article from Robb's Global Guerrillas.

That's one of the OpFors.

Multiple threats from multiples axes of attack, ruthless, and filled with the foolhardy courage of youth and testosterone.

Can your tribe defeat their attack?

Tempus fugit.

Denninger: The FDIC Is Broke

From Denninger:

Yes, really.

Off the wire this morning:

FDIC Deposit fund had negative $8.2B balance in Q3

That's broke.

Bankrupt.

Kaput.

Gone. Poof. Dead. Rotting. A corpse.

Yes, yes, I know, Treasury has their back.

But let's not forget - The FDIC does not have a legal "full faith and credit" guarantee from the US Federal Government and Treasury.

It has a "sense of Congress" resolution, but not a formal, legally-binding guarantee.

I am not, by the way, predicting an actual FDIC failure to pay. Should such an event happen it would be tantamount to a declaration of revolutionary war (by the government about to be deposed!) as if there is one thing that would cause Granny to reach for her shotgun, it would be getting screwed out of her life savings after Sheila Bair and everyone else in our government has trotted out how their money is "fully safe" and that "nobody has ever lost a penny of insured deposits and never will" for more than 20 years, including lots of pronouncements of exactly that mantra over the last year.

Nonetheless this outlines the underlying problem the FDIC has - it has willfully and intentionally ignored the fact that banks have mismarked their "assets" to overstate their values, it has refused to demand that accounting be done on a strict "mark to market" basis by bank examiners, and indeed, it has backed the "extend and pretend" commercial real estate "rollover" provisions of recent months, all of which is manifestly unsound, intentionally misleading, a consequence of willful refusal to enforce 12 USC Ch 16 Sec 1831o ("Prompt Corrective Action"), and has led to enormous losses being absorbed by the Deposit Insurance Fund that should have never happened.

The result?

THE FDIC IS BROKE.

Let's put this in common-man terms:

YOUR SO-CALLED "DEPOSIT INSURANCE" AND THE SEVERAL TRILLION IN CITIZEN BANK DEPOSITS ARE BACKED BY THE SAME AMOUNT OF CAPITAL THAT AIG HAD TO BACK THEIR CREDIT DEFAULT SWAPS: BUPKIS.

Congratulations Sheila - is that your resignation I see in your hand or is that your promotion from Obama? After all, we all know that in Government the more you screw up and screw the taxpayer, the better the job you're offered.

One final question: Is the only thing preventing panic and bank runs the sheer stupidity of The American People?

Here's the FDIC "Quarterly Banking Profile" document to which Denninger refers.

And here is a snapshot of the key paragraph on page 13 of the 26-page .pdf document linked above (click to enlarge image):

$8.2 billion in the hole thus far, that is, with all the bank collapses still coming in Q409 still to be booked, for the government program designed to assure all Americans that they won't ever have a problem getting access to their bank deposits.

But look! Over there!

There's a new Grey's Anatomy spin-off starting to be webcast tonight!

National Health Care Realities

Over at The Smallest Minority, the same gent who gave us this superb post on the continuing socialist agenda shares his experiences with and findings on Britain's National Health Service (NHS).

It is appalling what the Brits have done to themselves.

Even worse, we plan to do much the same thing -- public option or no public option.

Read it all and pass it on.

Remember -- when this debacle is finished, the Bad People will have central Federal control over both

- your money (via their control of the finance/banking/insurance industries, along with the entire IRS Federal tax collection and enforcement mechanism),

and

- your life (via Obamacare).

At least a common stick-up artist used to give his victims a choice between their money or their lives...

Had enough yet?

Cloward-Piven Government

From American Thinker:

***
Cloward-Piven Government
By James Simpson
It is time to cast aside all remaining doubt. President Obama is not trying to lead America forward to recovery, prosperity and strength. Quite the opposite, in fact.

In September of last year, American Thinker published my article, Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis. Part of a series, it connected then-presidential candidate Barack Obama to individuals and organizations practicing a malevolent strategy for destroying our economy and our system of government. Since then, the story of that strategy has found its way across the blogosphere, onto the airwaves of radio stations across the country, the Glenn Beck television show, Bill O'Reilly, and now Mark Levin.

The methodology is known as the Cloward-Piven Strategy, and we can all be grateful to David Horowitz and his Discover the Networks for originally exposing and explaining it to us. He describes it as:

The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. The "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.

Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven were two lifelong members of Democratic Socialists of America who taught sociology at Columbia University (Piven later went on to City University of New York). In a May 1966 Nation magazine article titled "The Weight of the Poor," they outlined their strategy, proposing to use grassroots radical organizations to push ever more strident demands for public services at all levels of government.

The result, they predicted, would be "a profound financial and political crisis" that would unleash "powerful forces ... for major economic reform at the national level."

They implemented the strategy by creating a succession of radical organizations, most notable among them the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), with the help of veteran organizer Wade Rathke. Their crowning achievement was the "Motor Voter" act, signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1993 with Cloward and Piven standing behind him.

As we now know, ACORN was one of the chief drivers of high-risk mortgage lending that eventually led to the financial crisis. But the Motor Voter law was another component of the strategy. It created vast vulnerabilities in our electoral system, which ACORN then exploited.

ACORN's vote registration scandals throughout the U.S. are predictable fallout.

The Motor Voter law has also been used to open another vulnerability in the system: the registration of vast numbers of illegal aliens, who then reliably vote Democrat. Herein lies the real reason Democrats are so anxious for open borders, security be damned.

It should be clear to anyone with a mind and two eyes that this president and this Congress do not have our interests at heart. They are implementing this strategy on an unprecedented scale by flooding America with a tidal wave of poisonous initiatives, orders, regulations, and laws. As Rahm Emmanuel said, "A crisis is a terrible thing to waste."

The real goal of "health care" legislation, the real goal of "cap-and-trade," and the real goal of the "stimulus" is to rip the guts out of our private economy and transfer wide swaths of it over to the government to control. Do not be deluded by the propaganda. These initiatives are vehicles for change. They are not goals in and of themselves except in their ability to deliver power. They and will make matters much worse, for that is their design.

This time, in addition to overwhelming the government with demands for services, Obama and the Democrats are overwhelming political opposition to their plans with a flood of apocalyptic legislation. Their ultimate goal is to leave us so discouraged, demoralized, and exhausted that we throw our hands up in defeat. As Barney Frank said, "the middle class will be too distracted to fight."

These people are our enemies. They don't use guns, yet, but they are just as dangerous, determined, and duplicitous as the communists we faced in the Cold War, Korea, Vietnam, and bush wars across the globe, and the Nazis we faced in World War II.

It is time we fully internalized and digested this fact, with all its ugly ramifications. These people have violated countless laws and could be prosecuted, had we the political power. Not only are their policies unconstitutional, but deliberately so -- the goal being to make the Constitution irrelevant. Their spending is off the charts and will drive us into hyperinflation, but it could be rescinded, had we the political power. These policies are toxic, but they could be stopped and reversed, had we the political power. Their ideologies are poisonous, but they could be exposed for what they are, with long jail sentences as an object lesson, had we the political power.

Every single citizen who cares about this country should be spending every minute of his or her spare time lobbying, organizing, writing, and planning. Fight every initiative they launch. It is all destructive. If we are to root out this evil, it is critical that in 2010 we elect competent, principled leaders willing to defend our Constitution and our country. Otherwise, the malevolent cabal that occupies the government today will become too entrenched.

After that, all bets are off.
***

Don't forget Beck's latest overview on the situation, as well as that of Vandam.

This is not a drill.

Audentes fortuna iuvat.

Possession of Wood As A Felony

Hat-tip to the reader who sent this example of appalling government overreach with the following endorsement:

Pay close attention to the wood felony criminal provisions pertaining to gun stocks and handles. Who would have ever thought about taking our guns via the Farm Bill??? Better hope "Charlie Quintard" is not using banned wood for his arrows or his bow.....might take him out of the story due to a prior felony conviction. I guess if you are not committing at least a dozen felonies before lunch each day.....you must not be living right. :O)

And no, it's not another volley from the Obamites.

And yes, there was and is enough bi-partisan blame to go around.

Read it all, then answer this question:

How is your vote in 2010 going to affect this debacle in any way?

III Flag Update

Update:

1) With the exception of two orders requiring clarification, all pending orders have been processed and will be mailed tomorrow.

2) There are still several "honor system" folks to whom I sent flags pending proper tender by return mail who have NOT yet paid their tabs. Names and addresses will be published if no payment is received by November 30th.

3) There are not very many flags left. If you want one, order this week; if you snooze, you will lose. Order information here.

SNL's Most Recent Opening Sketch

From this past Saturday's Saturday Night Live episode, as posted by Denninger.

That's $798.9 billion dollars, to be precise, owed by the USA to the PRC as of 30 September 09.

And that Communist-owned piece of the US government debt problem is only a portion of the $12.011 trillion dollars owed by the FedGov to both domestic creditors and foreign creditors all over the world as of 19 November 09.

I wonder who's going to win Dancing With The Stars?

Société Générale et Des Autres: Prepare for Global Collapse

From the UK Telegraph:

***
Société Générale tells clients how to prepare for potential 'global collapse'

Société Générale has advised clients to be ready for a possible "global economic collapse" over the next two years, mapping a strategy of defensive investments to avoid wealth destruction.


By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Published: 6:12PM GMT
18 Nov 2009

In a report entitled "Worst-case debt scenario", the bank's asset team said state rescue packages over the last year have merely transferred private liabilities onto sagging sovereign shoulders, creating a fresh set of problems.

Overall debt is still far too high in almost all rich economies as a share of GDP (350pc in the US), whether public or private. It must be reduced by the hard slog of "deleveraging", for years.

"As yet, nobody can say with any certainty whether we have in fact escaped the prospect of a global economic collapse," said the 68-page report, headed by asset chief Daniel Fermon. It is an exploration of the dangers, not a forecast.

Under the French bank's "Bear Case" scenario (the gloomiest of three possible outcomes), the dollar would slide further and global equities would retest the March lows. Property prices would tumble again. Oil would fall back to $50 in 2010.

Governments have already shot their fiscal bolts. Even without fresh spending, public debt would explode within two years to 105pc of GDP in the UK, 125pc in the US and the eurozone, and 270pc in Japan. Worldwide state debt would reach $45 trillion, up two-and-a-half times in a decade.

(UK figures look low because debt started from a low base. Mr Ferman said the UK would converge with Europe at 130pc of GDP by 2015 under the bear case).

The underlying debt burden is greater than it was after the Second World War, when nominal levels looked similar. Ageing populations will make it harder to erode debt through growth. "High public debt looks entirely unsustainable in the long run. We have almost reached a point of no return for government debt," it said.

Inflating debt away might be seen by some governments as a lesser of evils.

If so, gold would go "up, and up, and up" as the only safe haven from fiat paper money. Private debt is also crippling. Even if the US savings rate stabilises at 7pc, and all of it is used to pay down debt, it will still take nine years for households to reduce debt/income ratios to the safe levels of the 1980s.

The bank said the current crisis displays "compelling similarities" with Japan during its Lost Decade (or two), with a big difference: Japan was able to stay afloat by exporting into a robust global economy and by letting the yen fall. It is not possible for half the world to pursue this strategy at the same time.

SocGen advises bears to sell the dollar and to "short" cyclical equities such as technology, auto, and travel to avoid being caught in the "inherent deflationary spiral". Emerging markets would not be spared. Paradoxically, they are more leveraged to the US growth than Wall Street itself. Farm commodities would hold up well, led by sugar.

Mr Fermon said junk bonds would lose 31pc of their value in 2010 alone. However, sovereign bonds would "generate turbo-charged returns" mimicking the secular slide in yields seen in Japan as the slump ground on. At one point Japan's 10-year yield dropped to 0.40pc. The Fed would hold down yields by purchasing more bonds. The European Central Bank would do less, for political reasons.

SocGen's case for buying sovereign bonds is controversial. A number of funds doubt whether the Japan scenario will be repeated, not least because Tokyo itself may be on the cusp of a debt compound crisis.

Mr Fermon said his report had electrified clients on both sides of the Atlantic. "Everybody wants to know what the impact will be. A lot of hedge funds and bankers are worried," he said.
***

Two other must-reads, both from Jim Sinclair:

The Day The Dollar Died

States Faced With Three Brutal Options in 2010: Inflation, High Taxation, or Default

Got preps?

Codrea: Holder Wants More Gun Control

David Codrea continues his invaluable work with this Examiner column on Attorney General Holder's admissions before the Senate Judiciary Committee on November 18th.

Read it all, then pass it to others.

Especially those who claim that the Obamites don't want tougher gun control.

Tempus fugit.

III Flag Update

Update:

1) Am back on a computer that I can use for non-biz purposes.

2) Last batch of flags are in; will retrieve, along with all orders to date, and package for dispatch on Tuesday.

3) Remember --- these may be the last III flags available at anything approaching a reasonable up-front layout and price. Get yours now.

Codrea: CNN Goes After Oath Keepers

Please read David's latest Examiner column, then pass it on.

Hey, CNN, here's the oath of office for a US Senator:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

Ditto for the House; see question 3 in this FAQ:

"I, (name of Member), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God."

And for a Supreme Court Justice?

"I, [NAME], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as [TITLE] under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God."

So then why the nonsense in the CNN piece about Oath Keepers not swearing to "...obey the orders of the President of the United States..."?

Because they did not want you or their other viewers to know that only enlisted personnel swear to obey Presidential commands.

Not Federal judges.

Not Representatives.

Not Senators.

Not military officers.

Now you know.

Israeli Soldiers Say 'No' to Land-for-Peace

H/t to FR for this piece from Reuters:

***
Soldiers' mutiny raises concern in Israel
Tue Nov 17, 2009 10:40am EST

By Jeffrey Heller

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voiced concern on Tuesday over a mutiny by pro-settler soldiers that raised fears of more rebellion in the ranks in any future land-for-peace moves with the Palestinians.

"Our security and existence depend on the Israel Defense Forces," Netanyahu told reporters. "If you promote disobedience, you will bring about the downfall of the state. There is no place for disobedience."

In an incident on Monday played down by the military as an aberration and described by some political commentators as a crossing of a red line, a handful of soldiers protested against the partial dismantling of a settler-outpost in the West Bank.

Their action prompted 15 right-wing legislators in the 120-member parliament to propose a bill that would bar the military from forcing troops to remove Jews from settlements in the occupied territory.

Two of the soldiers disobeyed orders and refused to secure the settlement site, which had been built without government permission and where police razed two buildings. They were sentenced respectively to 20 days and 14 days in jail.

Two other soldiers, who held up a sign at an army base in the West Bank saying their battalion would never evacuate settlements, also faced a disciplinary hearing at which each received a month-long prison term.

"The military ...must understand there are some soldiers who cannot implement these orders. It is like asking a man to strike his brother," said Rabbi Elyakim Levanon of the Elon Moreh seminary in the West Bank where some of the troops had studied.

"Stop the anarchy," countered a headline in Israel's biggest newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, above commentary urging the army to crack down hard on soldiers who disobey orders.

The military's chief of staff, Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenazi, told reporters he would do just that.

But Brigadier-General Avi Bnayahu, the military's chief spokesman, played down the significance of the protests.

"This is not a political tidal wave washing through the military and the matter has not spiraled out of control," Bnayahu said.

SETTLER-OUTPOSTS

Ideological divides run deep in Israel, especially over the future of some 500,000 Jews who live among 2.7 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas captured in a 1967 war.

But the military, to which Jewish men and women are conscripted at the age of 18, has long been seen as off-limits to political debate.

Soldiers who participated in the removal of settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005 were hand-picked and specially trained for the task. Troops uncomfortable with the mission were quietly excused by their commanders.

Politically-charged demolitions at some of the dozens of outposts erected by Jews in the West Bank without formal permission are usually carried out by police rather than soldiers, who are assigned perimeter security duty.

The latest mutiny followed a protest last month by conscripts, who disrupted their swearing-in ceremony by calling for continued Jewish settlement in the West Bank, part of the territory where Palestinians hope to create a state.

After that incident, two soldiers were sentenced to 20 days in jail and removed from their unit.

"No one should be surprised if the signs of protest within the military against the evacuation of structures and settlements only grow," wrote Alex Fishman, military affairs correspondent for Israel's biggest daily, Yedioth Ahronoth.

"After all, these soldiers were sentenced to only a few days of detention, as if they committed a traffic offence."
***

Anyone know how to say "oathkeeper" in Hebrew?

Conundrum

Two takes on the upcoming trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed:

Chicago Boyz: How Obama Is Bringing Martial Law To America

Powerline: Trying KSM - Why?

Just remember -- Team Freedom may well be prosecuted in this country by the same agencies currently (and half-heartedly) tasked against Team Hajji.

Or does someone seriously doubt that Team Freedom will be deemed by DoJ as "unlawful enemy combatants"?

Fun times ahead....

Robb: Open-Source Insurgency Through Software Tools

Go and read, then think.

Absolved: Nemesis - The Six Apostles

Go and read.

Beck: Just War Principles

From Billy Beck:

"In short, just war theory sanctifies the right of violent revolution within your own state if it is hostile to your well being. A bit of a sticky wicket there, eh what?"

Well, that goes both ways, Wendy. This is the part where the libertarians inclined to passivism must at least examine the value of war as a fundamental principle.

The necessity of war arises when people of evil intent join in a mass requiring a massed organization of the righteous in order to prevent the former from preying on the latter. This is a basic principle of human relations: there really are such things as bad guys in the world, and they really can get that big. The most important question here is organizational: how to meet them effectively. Certainly, no lover of freedom can abide forcing people into that against their will. Conversely, however, there is nothing wrong in individuals voluntarily agreeing to the project together in order to act for the value of freedom; no more than when they organize economically, through a division-of-labor economy, in order to produce refrigerators. Observe that the ethics drives the politics: the value of security against manifest military threat is the reason for the voluntary military organization of free people.

Understanding the basically military threat of the state, all of this applies to the matter of political rebellion. To reject the state is essentially an act of war, because of the state's radical claim on the use of force, and all else afterward is merely organizational.