Author: Kevin

Another KABOOM!

 

Late last month I put up some pictures of a KABOOM! in which a shooter’s .45-70 Marlin Guide Gun “spontaneously disassembled.”  Back in August I related the story of how I managed to accidentally dump some Unique powder into a nearly full bottle of 2400.

 

Well, it looks like someone managed to duplicate my mistake (or someone sabotaged his stuff on purpose) and he spontaneously disassembled a S&W 629 Mountain Gun by stuffing 18 grains of Unique into a .44 Magnum case thinking that he was using 2400.  The story comes by Sixgunner.com, but it’s not a permnent link, so I’m going to reproduce the whole post here:

I bought an S&W Model 629 Mountain Gun in 44 Magnum several years ago and it instantly became my favorite carry gun and companion. I liked it so much that years later I jumped on the opportunity to buy another one as a backup “just in case”. I soon developed a sentimental attachment to it as well. I have used and continue to use 7.5 grains of Unique as my standard load using commercial cast bullets. I have a couple of ammo cans loaded with bullets using that recipe.

 

 I have a small batch of “hunting loads” using 21.0 grains of Alliant 2400 and hand cast “tempered” bullets of my own making. Alliant 2400 is an excellent powder but it has been years since I actually loaded anything using it. I have two containers of A2400, a 5 pound container I use for storage and a one pound container that I used to work out of, both plainly labeled original “Allliant 2400” containers. At some point over the last few years I or someone else poured Unique into the smaller container labeled A2400.

 Last week I got out my old bullet mold, an original Ideal # 429421 and cast a batch of 250 grain 44 caliber bullets. I lubed and sized them to .429 and prepared to make up a batch of my hunting loads using 21.0 grains of A2400. The first thing that I noticed was that I could only get 18 grains of powder into a 44 magnum case. It was a very humid Florida day and I assumed that the humidity had somehow caused the powder to “swell up”. I told my new bride about the odd incident and how I know that I used to load 21.0 grains of powder while in Wyoming and Alabama but could only get about 18 grains in a case now that we live in Florida. All the time never suspecting that I had been using Unique powder instead of A2400. I have been reloading for over 30 years. I should have noticed. The two powders look nothing alike. Only a novice could possibly make such a terrible mistake, but I did.

 I went to the range early Saturday morning and fired of a few 22s with my S&W model 617 to limber up and then loaded my 44 magnum and mentally prepared for the jolt. My bride was about 3 feet to my left loading her 22 cal. Ruger and she said she felt the concussion rip through her body as I touched of the first round. Believe me, I had noticed it too and the fact that my sight picture had changed. I no longer had a rear sight on my Mountain Gun. As a matter of fact, I no longer had a top strap either and three of the chambers were gone. The barrel was barely hanging on to what was left of the top of the revolver. Miraculously, neither I nor my wife was hurt in any way. I searched the outdoor range for remnants of my gun that had been transformed into shrapnel but never found a single piece. I have no idea how much pressure is generated by 18 grains of Unique behind a 250 grain bullet but I have included a picture of the results on what was, at one time, a wonderful gun.  

 I disassembled the batch of defective rounds but on the outside chance that one of the batch got in with my low powered ammo  or that I have somehow done something like that before I am in the process of disassembling every 44 magnum round that I have. The Lord really looked out for us this time.

 The only other fact that might come into play in this incident is that I went through a divorce starting about 3 years ago and my first wife had control of my reloading equipment for about a year. I do not know who packed it all up but it was in storage for about 2 years. This was the first time I’ve used A2400 since before the divorce.

 I hope that you can post this on your website so that others may learn from my mistake.

Here’s the picture:

OUCH!  That was one very lucky couple.

 

Justification vs. Purpose



Steven Den Beste’s latest piece, Can I, May I, takes Kevin Drum (and the Left in general) to task over the “QUAGMIRE!” meme:

Appearance and reality. That’s what it’s all about. It’s a fallacy to assume that they are the same thing. The difference between them has become a major factor in politics and diplomacy during the last 3 years.

Sometimes appearances do ultimately matter more. If your enemies can control the perception of your success so that it is widely viewed as a failure, that can have severe consequences. Hence the incessant drumbeat of quagmire! quagmire! quagmire! played by those who want us to lose this war, or who have other reasons for wanting it to look as if we are losing this war.



In April, shortly after the simultaneous uprisings of Sunnis based in Falluja and of some Shiites led by al Sadr, Kevin Drum wrote a triumphant post:

War supporters are forever complaining that things are going great in Iraq and the only reason we don’t know about it is because of media bias. You know, that nasty SCLM wants us to lose in Iraq.

So here’s my question: it’s pretty clear that things have, in fact, gone to hell. We may eventually clean up Fallujah, arrest Muqtada al-Sadr, end the riots in Sadr City, and retake Najaf. But even if we do, it’s pretty obvious that Iraq is close to meltdown, we don’t have enough troops to keep order, and media reporting about all this has been perfectly accurate.



So how about it, guys (and you know who you are)? Are you going to step up to the plate and admit that the media has been pretty much right all along and things really do look pretty bleak? Or are you going to continue to complain that reporters are just ignoring all the good news about school openings and electric grid repair?

I am no regular reader of Kevin’s site, so I have no idea whether, in light of later events, he in his own turn “stepped up to the plate” and admitted that Iraq wasn’t actually all that close to meltdown.



Because it doesn’t matter. In the short term, the reality in Iraq didn’t actually matter; what mattered was how it was perceived elsewhere, especially by voters in the US. Contrariwise, in the long run, the perception didn’t matter; the reality of what was happening in Iraq can not ultimately be denied.

Unfortunately, the “long run” is made up of a lot of “short runs”. On July 13, Kevin no longer seems to be talking about meltdowns, but was still referring to the invasion of Iraq as “a mistake“. Why? Because he’s making another form/substance mistake, and confusing justification with purpose.



Leaving aside questions of 20:20 hindsight (it was not at all clear in March that the inspections had proved anything), and of historical revisionism (the US did not give UNSCOM detailed info about where to look, because UNSCOM leaked like a sieve), his basic point is irrelevant even if he is right about it:

The fact is that by March 2003 we didn’t have to rely on CIA estimates or on the estimates of any other intelligence agency. We had been on the ground in Iraq for months and there was nothing there. There was nothing there and we knew it.

Did the CIA screw up? Probably. Did it matter? No. George Bush invaded Iraq in March 2003 not because he was convinced Iraq had WMD, but because he was becoming scared that Iraq didn’t have WMD and that further inspections would prove it beyond any doubt. Facts on the ground have never been allowed to interfere with George Bush’s worldview, and he wasn’t about to take the chance that they might interfere with his war.

Whatever faults the CIA has, let’s not blame them for the war in Iraq. We all know exactly whose mistake it was.

WMDs were never the real purpose of the invasion. WMDs were the focus of the spotlight, however, because of serious diplomatic efforts to gain UNSC approval for an invasion. Within the context of the UNSC, the only way to justify an invasion was to claim that Iraq had not fully cooperated with UN inspectors. Which, despite what Kevin would like to pretend, Saddam’s government had not, even as late as March 2003.

But the public justification made in the UN had nothing to do with the real purpose, the real strategic goal which required the invasion. Kevin makes casual reference to that, when he says, Facts on the ground have never been allowed to interfere with George Bush’s worldview, and he wasn’t about to take the chance that they might interfere with his war.

Except that “facts on the ground” did not interfere or contradict the real purpose, which was to depose a corrupt dictator and to “nation build” so as to make one core Arab nation a better place for the people living there. By so doing, the goal was to infect the imaginations and aspirations of the citizens in other nations in the region, to “destabilize” the corrupt dictatorships in charge and to try to bring about long term change to the whole region. And that could not be publicly proclaimed at the time without deeply imperiling the strategy for the overall war.

Steven has much more to say on this, and it’s well worth your time, but this piece specifically reminded me of another cartoon I ran across this morning that says it all, perfectly:

Anybody Got a Room?

 

Rich from Seldom Sober will be making a pilgrimage from The People’s Republic of California to the People’s Republic of New York in September on his Blogs Across America tour, but he’s got some holes in his itinerary.  Specifically, he needs a hostel between his stop here in Tucson and his stop in Colorado Springs.  Any offers?  Then he needs another break or two in the trek between Detroit and the Big Apple.  C’mon, surely there’s some bloggers out there willing to give a fella a hand (and get a bitchin’ T-shirt out of the deal.)  Drop him a line if you can help.

 

Here’s the map of the projected route:

Tim Lambert has finally responded to my last salvo in the “Self Defense” exchange, and it’s a pretty good piece, too.  Unoriginally titled Gullible Gunners, episode IV, Tim makes a good case that not all cases of self-defense that we “gullible gunners” point to, actually are.  But, once again, Tim misses my point.
 
I’m going to make this post remarkably short (for me, especially on this topic.)  Tim concludes his piece by attempting to refute the example I gave in my last entry on this topic.  Tim writes:

Finally we turn to Brett Osborn. Baker claims that this is a case of the government prosecuting someone for an obvious case of self defence. Like all the killers who were convicted he stabbed the victim in the back. This doesn’t sound he was defending himself, but there were others present so he could have been defending them; we just don’t know for sure. In any event, it certainly isn’t an obvious case of self-defence. In this case we don’t know what the jury thought of the evidence because Osborn chose to plead guilty to manslaughter. Why?

Osborn decided that he could not face the risk of life imprisonment. “You see it in the paper,” Osborn has said, “that bloke Tony Martin who shot the kid who was burgling his house. He went to prison for years.

Osborn mistakenly believed that Martin had been convicted despite acting in self-defence. And the reason why he believed that was because of the activities of the “Tony Martin is innocent brigade(sic)”. If Osborn was really acting in self-defence then the jury would have acquitted him but Osborn was unsure of this because of people like Baker who argue that self-defence is legally risky in England. As a result Baker is now in jail.

I assure you, I’m not in jail.  Regardless of how much some would like to see me there!

The law and the results of the cases seem clear. Self-defence in Britain is lawful. There may be some chilling effect on people because of fear of being convicted for self-defence, but the people responsible for that are on Baker’s side of the question.

Not entirely, Tim.
 
Not even mostly.
 
Tim didn’t comment on the judge’s statement in that case:

Judge Shirley Anwyl QC said that she accepted that Halling could have been perceived to be “dangerous to others”. But she added: “With hindsight it is clear that Halling was presenting no real danger to anyone but himself.”

Yet hindsight – under English Law – isn’t supposed to factor in.  What the defendant actually believed at the time – regardless of the accuracy of that belief – IS. 
 
She continued:

“By your plea you have accepted that you intended real serious injury. Your use of violence was not wholly unpremeditated in that you did equip yourself with at least one knife. She added: “I am in no doubt about your genuine remorse and your appreciation of the appalling effect that the killing of Halling has and continues to have on his relatives and friends.”

But she sentenced him to five years in jail for it. 
 
Nor did Tim comment on the statement of Osborne’s lawyer:

“The law,” explains Harry Potter, the barrister who, with Charles Bott, would defend Osborn, “does not require the intention to kill for a prosecution for murder to succeed. All that is required is an intention to cause serious bodily harm. That intention can be fleeting and momentary. But if it is there in any form at all for just a second – that is, if the blow you struck was deliberate rather than accidental – you can be guilty of murder and spend the rest of your life in prison.”Moreover,” Mr Potter continues, “while self-defence is a complete defence to a charge of murder, the Court of Appeal has ruled that if the force you use is not judged to have been reasonable – if a jury, that is, decides it was disproportionate – then you are guilty of murder. A conviction for murder automatically triggers the mandatory life sentence. There are no exceptions.”

I pointed out to Tim that here in the States had someone like Mr. Halling forced himself into a home and been shot by the homeowner for it, said homeowner wouldn’t have faced prosecution regardless of the direction of the bullet travel, as Mr. Osborne would have been defending not only himself, but the other residents of the house.  There would have been no question that, in arming oneself and shooting at a home invader, serious injury was the intent, but here that’s generally OK.  In England it holds a serious risk of prosecution.   
 
The law in England saw fit to charge Mr. Osborne with murder for stabbing Mr. Halling.  He was at real risk of being convicted for it.  Tim holds more faith in the jury than I do.
 
Draw your own conclusion.  I know what mine is.  The “chilling effect” is real – something I’m glad Tim admits to.  The people responsible for the “chilling effect” are on the side of the State.  The ones on my side simply recognize it, and are trying to mitigate it here. 

D’OH!

Francis W. Porretto, Curmudgeon Emeritus, has started his own blog, Eternity Road, and I haven’t added it to my blogroll – until now.

Francis also promises an essay on the topic du jour, Anarchy as a system of government, which should prove as excellent as everything else he writes. From the blog:

For additional confusion, note that all States, large or small, young or old, powerful or weak, are in a condition of anarchy with respect to one another. None of them concedes the inherent legitimacy of any other’s coercive privileges. Their relations are based on the more pragmatic concession of not invading just yet.

Funny, isn’t it? Anarchy, supposed by many to lead inevitably to unacceptable violence and disharmony, appears unavoidable at the inter-State level. But we accept that tacitly, because up to this point, all the alternatives proposed or attempted have been far worse.

Hmmm… I need to think about that.

More on the Catholic Church and Institutionalized Pedophilia Pederasty 

The local lefty rag, The Tucson Weekly has an interesting report in this week’s issue: Moreno’s Admission. It seems that the Manuel Moreno, former Bishop of the Tucson Diocese gave a 2-hour deposition in June. Here are some excerpts from that article:

Moreno resigned last year after serving Southern Arizona for 21 years, a period during which Moreno settled 11 lawsuits alleging child molestation by Tucsonan priests for $14 million. During his tenure, Moreno also offered refuge to seminary classmates accused of sexual misconduct, like Patrick Ziemann (former bishop of Santa Rosa, Calif., who resigned in 1999 after accusations arose that he kept a priest as his personal sex toy) and Robert Trupia (nicknamed “Chicken Hawk” by his fellow priests). At the time of Moreno’s resignation, 17 more sex-abuse lawsuits awaited Tucson-area parishioners, inching the current Tucson Catholic hierarchy toward the once-unimaginable brink of bankruptcy.

—

In the course of the two-hour deposition, held in Pima County Superior Court, Moreno acknowledged, among other things, that he’d allowed priests he knew were child molesters to take kids on trips to Disneyland, where priests would then molest them.

This shocking revelation involved Kevin Barmasse and Juan Guillen, two priests who are listed as sex molesters on the Tucson diocese’s Web site. In the case of the former, (Calif.-based attorney John) Manly asked Moreno if he remembered a Los Angeles archdiocesan official pleading the following: “Manny, We’ve this problem with this new priest, Kevin Barmasse. He got picked up by the sheriff (for an incident with a boy in Long Beach). The attorney general wants him out of town. We’ll pay his stipend, but would you please take him?”

—

Moreno was unavailable for comment, but in his final years as Tucson’s bishop, Moreno expressed regret for condoning pedophilia with several letters and homilies to parishioners asking for forgiveness.

Nevertheless, even the moderate religion Web site Beliefnet.com called Moreno one of the nine worst bishops in the country, lambasting him for lording over a sex abuse-plagued diocese in which “officials protected one another, lied to a victim’s family, failed to counsel victims, destroyed statements, did not notify child protective authorities and were uncooperative with police.”

I don’t think Moreno was alone, obviously. The evidence says that this problem was nationwide, and the offending priests were shuffled around the country. The question then is, was this damage control, or active support of pedophilia? Or how much of which?

How does one condone such behavior? How does a high official of a church allow child molesters access to children? Hell, how does he allow them shelter?

To me the suspicion is that pedophiles entered the church, and over time rose to positions of power – power that allowed them to corrupt the church and give them and ability to prey on their flock with near impunity. This isn’t just a few bad priests with weak leadership. This is systemic abuse.

I Haven’t Done This in a While…

More political cartoons, this time with a Kerry theme.

First up, the limousine liberal:

By Mike Ramirez, the only good thing about the LA Times.

Next, a Kerry-for-President ad I can believe:

By John Deering of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Finally, two takes on the same idea:

By Jeff Danziger of Tribune Media Services

By Marshall Ramsey of Jackson, Mississippi’s Clarion Ledger

The Left still outnumbers the Right (and the realists) by about a 10:1 margin in political cartooning, but there are always some gems out there.

Off On the Wrong Foot, Aaron!

You begin your post with an assertion that is in error:

1) Because coercive aggression exists, it should be worked with rather than rejected out of hand.

No, because coercive aggression exists, it cannot be rejected, out of hand or otherwise. You deal with it, or you go to jail or you die. Those are about the only options open. Rejection isn’t on that list.

That’s the first, and most important problem I’ve got with the Anarchists – their ideal is based on the ability to dismiss, somehow, coercive societies. It is, as a commenter Doug Sundseth points out, equivalent to the argument that “socialism has always failed in the past, but that’s because it’s never been done correctly,” or universally, or whatever. It just says that coercive rule is inherently wrong, and wouldn’t it be terrific if everyone just rejected it.

But coercive government works, because people don’t choose death over it. And, realistically, that’s the only choice truly coercive governments offer – submit or die. And history indicates that coercive governments are more “successful” than free market governments because of their ability to concentrate force.

You wrote “(Y)ou can’t ever really make things better using coercive aggression, and usually the result is markedly worse.” Uhh…no. There has, to my knowledge, never been any government that was not based on “coercive aggression,” yet the lot of humanity has gotten better throughout history. The free market is better at it, definitely, but coercive governments work.

Further you add: “(T)he idea that cartelizing the functions of force, even on a limited basis, can create some net good is based on two false assumptions. First, that by assuming exclusive rights over these functions, you can eliminate competitors.” I wasn’t aware that all governments took exclusive rights to all functions. Some, certainly. But perhaps I misinterpret your intent. The second “false assumption” is: “(Y)our idea asserts that there is something noble in assuming sole responsibility for (wrongful) acts of coercive aggression.” Eh, what?

There’s that “ideal” thing again. You have two societies, one anarchic free-market, one coercive, even downright despotic. The despotic government taxes its people and drafts its young men, and builds a military and defeats the free-market society, kills its people and takes its goods. There’s nothing “noble” about this, but it’s a realistic assessment of history. Coercive governments are able to defeat anarchic societies. Anarchic societies are unable to effectively defend themselves. As you yourself noted, “A society that places voluntary moral limits on its behaviour precludes the necessity for a state,” yet there has been no society to date able to do that for any length of time.

I’m interested in reality, while you are concerned about ideal theory.

One further point. You wrote, “I wouldn’t be lauded for being a murderer if my only justifications were that I was applying my murderous ways uniformly and that I had driven all the other murderers out of town.” Who wouldn’t laud you? Define “murder.” What if you “murdered” only those other murderers? Would you not have taken upon yourself the job of “law enforcement officer?” Judge, jury, and executioner? Would not the families of the victims of the other murderers “laud” you? Perhaps reward you?

Guess what? You’re the new Sheriff. Or the new Chief of the tribe. So long as you “apply your murderous ways uniformly and drive all other murderers out of town” a lot of people would probably support you. You’d get to make – and enforce – the rules. Because people, in general, prefer the promise of security to the risks of freedom.

If you won’t do it, someone else will. See the problem?

As to your second assertion,

2) People who refuse to use coercive aggression (anarchists) are utopian and have “given up.”

that is partially in error. What I object to is that some self-proclaimed anarchists have detached themselves from the political process in the country in which they live because it offends their sense of rightness, but they refuse to recognize that by doing so they are not helping in any way shape or form. Instead, if anything, they aid in the (admittedly inevitable) decay of the system, hoping that the result will be a “truly” free-market anarchic society. I object to the utopian position, yes, but not all have completely “given up.” You wrote: “Right now, I am here attempting to persuade you and others to share my viewpoint; throughout the day I engage in mutually beneficial trade and commerce daily; I enforce my property rights frequently and encourage others to do the same with both my words and my actions.” I’m glad you are, and I’m glad you’re willing to use the existing system to protect your property rights, but if you refuse to vote – which Messers Kennedy and Lopez advocate – you have abandoned one method of protecting your property rights under that same system. That’s “giving up” IHMO.

I will leave the other comments to the commenters at which they were directed.

Revisiting Anarchy

Coming back to the last stopping point of our discussion, Kevin, a couple of things you postulated (correct me if I misrepresent you) and my responses:

1) Because coercive aggression exists, it should be worked with rather than rejected out of hand.

2) People who refuse to use coercive aggression (anarchists) are utopian and have “given up.”

1) The problem with coercive aggression is that it rejects the wisdom of the free market. Where the free market allocates the greatest total satisfaction to all parties, coercive aggression allocates satisfaction only to a select group at the expense of another group. Any coercive action always creates greater discord on a net basis than order, whether or not that discord is directly observable (and it usually isn’t). In summary, you can’t ever really make things better using coercive aggression, and usually the result is markedly worse.

Furthermore, the idea that cartelizing the functions of force, even on a limited basis, can create some net good is based on two false assumptions. First, that by assuming exclusive rights over these functions, you can eliminate competitors. Competition begets competition, Kevin, by cartelizing coercive force you only stimulate the competitive spirit in other coercively aggressive enterprises (note that I don’t dissuade from coercive defense of property). Second, your idea asserts that there is something noble in assuming sole responsibility for (wrongful) acts of coercive aggression. I wouldn’t be lauded for being a murderer if my only justifications were that I was applying my murderous ways uniformly and that I had driven all the other murderers out of town. Two wrongs don’t make a right, and the end does not ever justify the means. I refuse to become as guilty as those I oppose by sinking to their level.

2) Simply because I refuse to employ methods I detest does not mean I am doing nothing. I am merely “walking the walk” of my beliefs by refusing these methods. In addition, I do plenty to “deal” with the world on a non-utopian, every-day, realistic basis. Right now, I am here attempting to persuade you and others to share my viewpoint; throughout the day I engage in mutually beneficial trade and commerce daily; I enforce my property rights frequently and encourage others to do the same with both my words and my actions; I restrain myself according to a moral code (well, not always); and finally, when I confront a law that directly contrasts with my morals, I subvert it (i.e. if they banned Christianity, I would still worship). All of these anarcho-capitalist actions forward my philosophy in the world as surely as they benefit both me and the people I interact with.

By holding to my principles and refusing to compromise, even when it would be convenient or expedient, I prove that I am both realistic AND nonhypocritical.

And now some things said in the comments by others (again, correct me if I misrepresent):

1) Garvin says that since the optimum set of morals for an anarchistic society cannot be known, my theory is idealistic, incomplete, and unable to achieve its ends.

Thankfully Garvin, we have the free market to determine which is the most advantageous set of morals. Unfortunately, by legitimizing the use of coercive aggression, gov’t creates an incentive for people to be immoral (see welfare, Hitler, et al). A free society, on the other hand, necessitates moral rectitude because people are more directly held responsible for their own actions. Of course, with competing desires, there will be competing moral systems and some will work better for one than another. This is not a weakness, however, but a strength, since the “best” moral systems will logically be the most popular.

2) Doug points out that near-anarchist societies existed and failed. Wince asserts that anarchism doesn’t work well when you’re a bunch of Pre-Enlightenment cannibals.

Wince’s argument is pretty easy to refute, that the only anarchistic society to ever have existed was a bunch of cannibals. First and foremost, just as there is no perfectly socialist society, there will never be a perfectly anarchist society. Second, frontier life has always been anarchistic, and people were able to make very good lives for themselves and their descendants, coexisting peacefully with eachother and dealing with it in their own way when violence occured. Even Socialist California was once a free minded state, its citizens nearly lynching the Chief Treasurer of the United States when he came around peddling his fiat money over gold.

Doug seems to think that simply because there are societies that were at one time anarchistic and are now far less so, that anarchism is a failed experiment. This is wrong, firstly because you trying apply a method of comparison suitable for differing systems of coercive order to a concept that eschews any system of coercive order. It’s not comparing a Chevy to a Ford, it’s comparing an automobile to no automobile. Secondly, where anarchy does promise benefits (by saying it won’t get in the way), it most certainly does deliver them through the mechanisms of the free market and cooperative exchange. 19th century Germany, with its many competing city-states, was one of the most liberal and prosperous states of it’s time, and was a nexus of culture, scholastics, philosophy, engineering, and invention. Switzerland has been a cornerstone of freedom, private defense and trade since 1291, and its banks are more trusted than any in the world.

“The Vatican said it had no comment.” – There’s a Surprise

Cache of child porn found at seminary

VIENNA, Austria (AP) — A vast cache of child pornography and photos of young priests having sex has been discovered at a Roman Catholic seminary, officials said Monday, leading politicians and church leaders to demand a criminal probe and the resignation of the bishop in charge.

Bishop Kurt Krenn, who oversees the diocese, refused to step down, however, dismissing the images as a “childish prank.”

Child porn. “Childish prank.” That explains the Catholic Church’s handling of the molestation scandals, I suppose.

Leaders of the Catholic diocese of St. Poelten where the seminary is located, about 50 miles west of Vienna, spent much of the day in an emergency meeting.

The seminary’s director, the Rev. Ulrich Kuechl, resigned along with his deputy, Wolfgang Rothe, the diocese said after the meeting. It did not elaborate.

As many as 40,000 photos and an undisclosed number of films, including child pornography, were found a year ago on computers at the seminary, the respected news magazine Profil reported.

But it was just a prank.

It published several images purportedly showing young priests and their instructors kissing and fondling each other, and said others showed them engaging in orgies and sex games. The child porn came mostly from Web sites based in Poland, the magazine said.

It was my understanding that the Catholic church held homosexuality to be a sin.

Hannes Jarolim, a spokesman for the opposition Socialist Party, urged the Interior Ministry on Monday to launch a criminal investigation. Public prosecutor Walter Nemec said police were examining the material, which he said showed seminarians “in perverse situations together with their superiors.”

The Austrian Bishops Conference issued a statement pledging a full and swift internal investigation.

“Anything that has to do with the practice of homosexuality or pornography has no place at a seminary for priests,” it said.

Thought so.

Krenn, a conservative churchman, told Austrian television he had seen photos of seminary leaders in sexual situations with students, but he described the images as part of an elaborate prank that “had nothing to do with homosexuality.”

This is known as “cognitive dissonance.”

“Elaborate prank.”

And who was supposed to find it funny?

His nonchalance drew swift and scathing reaction across the overwhelmingly Catholic nation.

“Collecting child pornography cannot be dismissed as a prank,” said Thomas Huber, a Green Party politician.

In the mid-1990s, Austria was stung by allegations that Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer, who died last year, had molested students at an all-male Catholic boarding school two decades earlier. The affair had prompted Groer to step down.

A group of St. Poelten Diocese officials planned to ask the Vatican to remove Krenn as bishop, Austrian radio reported Monday. Martin Walchhofer, who supervises the alpine country’s seminaries, said Krenn ultimately was responsible and “must answer before the church and before God for all of this.”

Asked whether he intended to resign, Krenn said bluntly: “No.”

The Vatican said it had no comment.

Krenn, 68, issued a statement calling the accusations groundless while conceding that he “may have made some wrong personnel decisions” at the seminary. Rothe, the former deputy seminary chief, was a legal adviser to the bishop.

The Catholic Church has got itself some real problems, and they’re largely self-inflicted wounds.

There. Is. No. Defense. Of. Child Abuse.

Edited to add: This reminded me of this Chuck Asay cartoon: