NOW It Gets INTERESTING

Via Of Arms and the Law, SCOTUS has granted certiorari on the Chicago gun ban /14th Amendment incorporation case.

Alan Gura is the lead attorney on the case selected for hearing:

The Court had three cases from which to choose on the Second Amendment issue — two cases involving a Chicago gun ban, and one case on a New York ban on a martial-arts weapon. It chose one of the Chicago cases — McDonald v. Chicago (08-1521) — a case brought to it by Alan Gura, the Alexandria, VA. lawyer who won the 2008 decision for the first time recognizing a constitutional right to have a gun for personal use, at least in self-defense in the home (District of Columbia v. Heller).

This is the suit that was filed (IIRC) fifteen minutes after the Supreme Court handed down its Heller decision.

I’m going to have to send a contribution to the Second Amendment Foundation.

Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day

This is why “gun control” won’t work. It is the culture that people are raised in that matters more th(a)n the tool.

No knives and no guns were used in Thursday’s fight. Just fists, feet and boards.

This is why “gun control” won’t work, because when people want to commit violence they will.

There are two types of violence or cultures of violence in this case.

There is the one displayed here: the culture of predatory violence. The strong take from the weak, might makes right.

Then there is the culture of protectionary violence. The use of violence to stop crime or greater violence from occurring.

When gun control laws –victim disarmament laws– are implemented all that is left is the culture of predatory violence. There will always be a stronger person, more th(a)n one person can handle IF the law abiding is deprived of effective tools.

Chicago shows what happens when decades of victim disarmament laws have been in place.

3 Boxes of BS, Does this look like your town?

Sound familiar?

I Knew They Couldn’t Stay Away

I Knew They Couldn’t Stay Away

A while back Kim and Connie du Toit stopped blogging, about ten months ago, in fact. At the time I knew that they’d not stay away long – they had too much to say, and too big a fan base to abandon.

Well, they’re back, but in a slightly different medium. Via email:

From the “Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Roam The Internet” department:

Connie and I have decided to explore this strange new technology called “radio.” Starting on Saturday October 3rd, we will begin a weekend Internet radio show on BlogTalkRadio.com.

The show will run on Saturday and Sunday evenings, at 7pm Eastern/6pm Central. You can find a BlogTalkRadio widget to listen to our “preview” show at our new site: www.kimandconnie.com.

I expect their new show to be as interesting, provoking, and fascinating as their blogs were.

Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day

All the same, that the dollar’s reign as the world’s dominant currency is drawing to a close is no longer in doubt.
– Jeremy Warner, The Telegraph, The dollar is dead, long live the renminbi

It’s not that bad.

Yet.

The Yuan is heavily tied to China’s ownership of America’s debt. If When the value of the dollar plummets, China will be hard hit, and they own so much of our debt that dumping it hurts them as much (or more) that it would hurt us.

Still, our doubling of the money supply will (must) eventually have an effect, and it won’t be good. And it makes me wonder how much longer oil will be valued in dollars versus another currency, such as the Euro.

Recipe Blogging

Recipe Blogging

It seems to be all the rage among other gunbloggers. I’m actually a fairly enthusiastic cook, but I don’t do anything really fancy. For my initial foray into recipe blogging, I will give you the simplest bread recipe I know: Beer bread.

Now I don’t drink, but I will use alcoholic beverages in recipes (white wine in my chicken & wild rice; red in salisbury bourguignon; beer in both marinades and in this recipe).

Ingredients:

3C Self-rising flour (must use self-rising, not all-purpose)
3Tbs sugar
12 oz beer – use something you’d otherwise be willing to drink.

1 regular size bread pan is required.

Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Mix the flour and the sugar in the bread pan. Pour in the beer, and stir until all of the dry components are thorougly mixed. The result should be a thick batter. Scrape down the sides of the bread pan so the batter is uniform across the bottom of the pan. Bake at 350º for one hour.

No kneading, no rising, not much to clean up, just bread. It’s heavy, but damned tasty. Last night I picked up a 2lb package of self-rising and a 24 oz. Bud. I also got three of those little disposable bread pans you use for banana bread and the like. Two lbs. of flour is right at six cups. I doubled the batch and it made three perfect mini-loaves. One was dinner last night. This morning I toasted some under the broiler in the oven. Give it a try.

UPDATE: Thanks to commenter Hammerbach, you CAN use all-purpose flour, just add 1-½ tsp of baking powder (not baking soda) and ½ tsp of salt to each cup of all-purpose flour to make it self-rising. Mix thoroughly before adding wet ingredients.

Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day

During the Bush years, we constantly heard the refrain, pushed especially by Paul Krugman, that the government was doing incompetent and corrupt things because conservative Republicans “don’t believe in” government. Put the government in the hands of true-believing liberal Democrats, and incompetence and corruption will virtually disappear.

This always struck me as foolish, in part because the problems with government competence and integrity are structural, not individual, and in part because it required one to believe Krugman’s fantasy that the Republican elite during the Bush years was dominated by wild-eyed libertarians intent on drowning the government in a bathtub, or something like that.

It’s amusing to get accused of anti-Democrat “partisanship” in the comments for a post whose theme is that when given power the Democrats are just as corrupt and incompetent as the Republicans.

– David Bernstein, The Volokh Conspiracy, Because the Democrats “Believe In” Government

Remind you of anyone?

Bueller?