Category: Things that matter

11 year old hero

The only thing missing from this story is a single hunk of metal, delivered mafia-style execution from very close range. Hail to the 11-year old boy who is the hero of the day at Disneyworld in Florida.

An 11-year-old boy helps police catch a child molester during his family’s vacation at Disney World.

. . .

“Well the beginning was pretty good until we ran into this little big bump”, says David.

That bump was convicted sex offender William Bishop who 11-year-old David and his sister ran into out by the pool at the Swan Resort on the property of Walt Disney World.

David says, “He was asking my sister some very strange questions like where are your mom and dad? Do they know where you are? Do they know you are going on the slide? Can you point your mom and dad out to me?”

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Legislation offered to set net-radio fees based on revenues

You might remember that I recently wrote about new use fees set for music played on Internet based radio stations. These fees were determined using costs and figures from the dot-com boom time when everything was overvalued by an order of magnitude or more. The new use fees were set so high that nearly all Internet radio stations would have to pay more than pre-tax earnings, effectively killing net-radio. A new bill has been put forward that would legislate the rate at 7.5 percent of revenues (the same as satellite radio broadcasters pay) instead.

A bill introduced in Congress today could nullify the new rates set by the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) which advocates say would put webcasters out of business.

Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) and Rep. Don Manzullo (R-IL) have headed the “Internet Radio Equality Act,” which aims to stop the controversial March 2 decision which puts royalty of a .08 cent per song per listener, retroactively from 2006 to 2010 on internet radio.

I’m not generally in favor of the government getting in and messing with private business affairs like this. Given the Copyright Royalty Boards unwillingness to consider realistic pricing schedules, however, this is the only way to get reasonable rates set that I can see outside of letting the current fees kill off net-radio. Then the CRB would have to reset fees far lower so the 2nd wave of net-radio stations could be created and actually get valid rates. (via slashdot)

[tags]New bill to legislate net-radio fees based on revenues[/tags]

Salon.com in favor of taking away Americans’ rights

There is a lot of good commentary on Salon.com, in my opinion, even though there is a massive liberal bias to what is published there. I recently paid for a subscription because there was enough on the site that I wanted to read but couldn’t that I felt it was worth investing a few dollars to be able to access it. However, the latest article I’ve read on Salon would sound to me like the creation of any of a large number of well known conservatives (also on video so you can hear it yourself) trying to restrict out rights and freedoms were it attacking any American right other than the 2nd amendment guarantee of our right to bear arms. But rather than the more well-known conservative grabs for restricting Americans’ rights that we’ve seen recently, this Salon article is a liberal call to repeal the 2nd amendment, claiming (in reference to the recent Virginia Tech massacre) &147;hitting the delete button on the Second Amendment surely would lower the odds against future mayhem.&148; Maybe I’m a moron, but I don’t see that ridding the US of the 2nd amendment would necessarily and assuredly lead to the reduction in odds of future mayhem. On the other hand, I do believe that allowing students with carry permits to actually carry firearms on campus would lead to fewer victims in future cases, simply because those most in danger are also best set up to defend themselves. But like I said – maybe I’m just a moron for thinking that.

April 18, 2007 | WASHINGTON — Fifteen unambiguous words are all that would be required to quell the American-as-apple-pie cycle of gun violence that has now tearfully enshrined Virginia Tech in the record book of mass murder. Here are the 15 words that would deliver a mortal wound to our bang-bang culture of death: “The second article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.”

Continue reading “Salon.com in favor of taking away Americans’ rights”

Tennessee House responds to V. Tech shootings

From the local newspaper:

NASHVILLE – In a surprise move, a House panel voted Wednesday to repeal a state law that forbids the carrying of handguns on property and buildings owned by state, county and city governments — including parks and playgrounds.

“I think the recent Virginia disaster … has woken up a lot of people to the need for having funs available to paw-abiding citizens,” said Rep. Frank Niceley, R-Strawberry Plains. “I hope that is what this vote reflects.”

So good news for those who appreciate the legal right to self-defense.

[tags]Tennessee repeals state/county/city government property firearms restrictions[/tags]

Rare show of clarity in Congress – No rush to new gun control

I’m not used to seeing this kind of reaction from the liberals, but Senator Harry Reid has suggested caution in any push for stricter gun control laws in wake of the Virginia Tech tragedy.

After the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid cautioned Tuesday against a “rush to judgment” on stricter gun control.

A leading House supporter of restrictions on firearms conceded passage of legislation would be difficult.

“I think we ought to be thinking about the families and the victims and not speculate about future legislative battles that might lie ahead,” said Reid, a view expressed by other Democratic leaders the day after the shootings that left 33 dead on the campus of Virginia Tech.

Yes, it will be difficult to get additional restrictions on firearms. There’s still that whole 2nd Amendment guarantee that needs to be protected. Sure, a few of the Senators have already started the gun control battlecries:

In the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, a few Democrats renewed the call for gun control legislation, and more are expected to join them.

“I believe this will reignite the dormant effort to pass commonsense gun regulations in this nation,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat who was a leader in the failed drive to renew a ban on certain types of assault weapons that expired in 2004.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., was one of very few lawmakers to refer on gun control in the early hours after the shootings. “There will be time to debate the steps needed to overt such tragedies,” he said on Monday, “but today, our thoughts and prayers go to their families.”

Hopefully enough of them realize the problems that this won’t gain traction though. Personally, I look at this from the other side – had just one student in that classroom been carrying a firearm, the number killed by this nut could well have been far fewer. Restricting guns might reduce law-abiding citizens from carrying firearms, but it won’t slow down the criminals too much. Considering that the shooter acquired the weapon over a month before the shooting, it seems likely that he planned this and therefore would have pursued other means of arming himself were he unable to buy legally from a gunshop. I don’t believe restrictions on firearms would have stopped this, and I don’t think it will improve student safety in the future.

[tags]Senate Majority Leader cautions against pursuing stricter gun controls in wake of Virginia Tech shootings[/tags]

Sony keeps showing hatred for customers

I’ll admit that I sometimes wonder how one company can hate potential customers so much that they would make their products non-functional and then tell customers to buy new hardware or wait for an update that is probably never coming. If you choose to invest your money in products from a company like this, might I suggest you have your head examined?

At this point, I honestly believe the smart thing to do is to download illegal copies of the movies or music that you want and then just send Sony a check for the amount of the product you would have purchased had it not been created in a manner as to make use difficult or impossible for customers who acquired it legally. That way Sony will still have your money and you’ll have a product that works.

YES ! It appears that Sony have done it again. In their zeal to make their DVD movies copyproof (yeah right) they have in fact made their latest releases unplayable on some DVD players, including my Sony DVP-CX995V DVD player. I recently rented “Stranger than Fiction” (2 copies) and “The Holiday” ( please no comments on my choice of movies) both by Sony Pictures. Both load up to the splash title screen and then load no further, then after about 60 secs the player turns itself off!

ALL my other DVD’s and new releases from other movie companies play perfectly

I called Sony Electronics help line and they said to call Sony Pictures 1-800-860-2878 which I did.

The following is a compression of our discussion:

Sony Tech: We know about this problem. Its our new copy protection that’s making these discs unplayable in some players including our own, we do not intend to change the copy protection. The only correction to this problem is a firmware update to your player. The electronics division know about this and should have given you this information.

If you hit Google and search for whatever movie or music CD you want followed by the word Torrent you should have no trouble finding what you are after. If that doesn’t pan out, try The Pirate Bay and enter the movie or CD name in the search box there. After downloading, use Google again and search for instructions on burning your movie or music to a disc if you don’t already know how to do that. At this point, you’ll have a functioning copy of the product without the restrictions that make it fail like the legal product does. Now you can send your check to Sony along with a nice letter thanking them for the wonderful movie/music you’ve downloaded. Plus, you’ll have a backup ready in case your original gets destroyed.

If all that doesn’t convince you, at least look at what Amazon customers are saying about problems and lack of help from Sony. (via slashdot)

[tags]Sony hates customers more than before, Sony shows the hatred of consumers, Sony encourages downloading of pirated material[/tags]

More blog-talk on impeachment

I still believe that the damage George Bush has done to Americans’ rights and freedoms far exceeds any good he’s done in protection Americans from further attacks. In part, that’s because I don’t believe there was a great chance of additional attacks on Americans in America – at least not for a long time after the 9/11 attacks and not many attacks nor much likelihood of success. In part I believe it’s because President Bush has caused harm to many more Americans by creating this war in Iraq and sending insufficient troops in with insufficient planning based on questionable intelligence (and that particular sentence is something that needs its own space for further discussion). Because I believe President Bush has harmed America more than served and protected America, I’ve been calling for impeachment for a long time, on this site and in my regular life when talking with others.

The whole federal prosecutors fiasco is causing more folks to talk about this, and some even have even written up why they believe this latest executive abuse will lead to impeachment in the near future. I’m not convinced it will happen – things still look to me like President Bush will complete his term in office – but I do like seeing more talk about this. Of course, the linked article is from a very liberal viewpoint, and a bit of the glee and edge could be removed to make the write-up better for me to point to, but I still think the view of this writer is at least worth reading, even if you disagree that President Bush should be impeached. I’m not sure I agree with everything said, but I think it does cover some important abuses, and I do believe more moderate or conservative politicians are going to start thinking about these same things.

About a year from now, pundits and instant historians will point back at the firing of the federal prosecutors and say, “That’s where the impeachment began.”

. . .

The attorney general takes an oath to uphold the constitution and execute the law. When controversial matters come up, his role, traditionally, is often to be the guy who says, “We can’t do that, it’s against the law.”

Gonzales took a different approach. He brought the ethics of a corporate lawyer to his office. He took it to be his job to find, or invent, a theory that would allow the administration to go forward. If the theory wouldn’t hold up in court, or made little sense, that didn’t matter. They could still maintain, with straight faces, that they believed what they were doing, on the advice of the attorney general, was legal and constitutional. If worst came to worst, they’d back off and move on, so long as the profit outweighed the penalty.

The most flagrant example is when Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld decided they wanted to torture people.

The article is a bit long, but if you’ve spent much time reading my stuff, you should have no issues getting through the article’s length.

[tags]Blog talk on impeachment, Why impeachment will finally happen[/tags]

Today in History – Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinated – April 4, 1968

On the eve of this day 39 years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated while standing on his balcony outside room 306 of lorraine_motel.jpgthe Lorraine Motel in Memphis, TN. King was shot at 6:01 PM and pronounced dead at 7:05 PM at St. Joseph’s Hospital.

Martin Luther King, Jr., (January 15, 1929-April 4, 1968) was born Michael Luther King, Jr., but later had his name changed to Martin. His grandfather began the family’s long tenure as pastors of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, serving from 1914 to 1931; his father has served from then until the present, and from 1960 until his death Martin Luther acted as co-pastor. Martin Luther attended segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen; he received the B. A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College, a distinguished Negro institution of Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather had graduated. After three years of theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he was elected president of a predominantly white senior class, he was awarded the B.D. in 1951.

And information from the Wikipedia article:

Friends lorraine_marker.jpginside the motel room heard the shots and ran to the balcony to find King shot in the throat. He was pronounced dead at St. Joseph’s Hospital at 7:05 p.m. The assassination led to a nationwide wave of riots in more than 60 cities.[18] Five days later, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a national day of mourning for the lost civil rights leader. A crowd of 300,000 attended his funeral that same day. Vice-President Hubert Humphrey attended on behalf of Lyndon B. Johnson, who was meeting with several advisors and cabinet officers on the Vietnam War in Camp David (there were fears Johnson might be hit with protests and abuses over the war if he attended). At his widow’s request, King eulogized himself: at the funeral his last sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church, a recording of his famous ‘Drum Major’ sermon, given on February 4, 1968, was played. In that sermon he makes a request that at his funeral no mention of his awards and honors be made, but that it be said that he tried to “feed the hungry”, “clothe the naked”, “be right on the [Vietnam] war question”, and “love and serve humanity”.


[tags]Today in History – Martin Luther King assassinated, MLK assassination[/tags]

Remember, all this security is only for your protection

Proving that our government continues to be incapable of protecting us, no matter how many rights or freedoms it strips away, we find that screeners at the Denver airport can identify a bomb only about 10% of the time, even when screening systems set off alarms. So, as almost always is the case, the human element breaks down. But then, that weakness of security has been known so long (and a shorter link to that article). The question is, how do we improve the weak link? I’m thinking hiring better people for the positions, training them better, cutting shift durations (repetition and boredom lead to reduced performance), and I’m sure other measures – all requiring more money.

Checkpoint security screeners at Denver International Airport last month failed to find liquid explosives packed in carry-on luggage and also improvised explosive devices, or IED’s, worn by undercover agents sources told 9NEWS.

“It really is concerning considering that we’re paying millions of dollars out of our budget to be secure in the airline industry,” said passenger Mark Butler who has had two Army Swiss knives confiscated by screeners in the past. “Yet, we’re not any safer than we were before 9/11, in my opinion.”

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screeners failed most of the covert tests because of human error, sources told 9NEWS. Alarms went off on the machines, but sources said screeners violated TSA standard operating procedures and did not hand-search suspicious luggage, wand, or pat down the undercover agents.

“The good news is we have our own people probing and looking and examining the system,” said Rep. Ed Perlmutter, a Democrat in the 7th congressional who sits on the House Homeland Security and transportation committees. “The bad news is they’re finding weaknesses.”

Actually, the fact that they are finding weaknesses is also good news. Having the weaknesses is indeed bad news. Finding them means we can develop means of improving on them, which is a good thing. Still – I can no longer take my keychain Leatherman when I fly, because it has a 1 inch knife blade, but people who actually want to inflict harm have a 90% chance of getting their bombs on with them. Way to protect us, TSA and Homeland Security!

[tags]Denver airport security screeners miss 90% of explosives[/tags]

My take on the attorney firings

Since I’ve just been critical of the Bush administration on a number of things, and ended by pointing out the handling of the attorney firings fiasco, I figured I needed to put something up about my take on the firings. I’ll start by saying I don’t care that the firings took place – that is the President’s right and the attorneys’ risk. I don’t care that we, as Americans, were told that these attorneys were fired for job related issues, even though that claim has been shown highly improbable and inaccurate. I am surprised that this issue has garnered so much attention, but I don’t feel the attention is unwarranted.

I do care that the President has the right to replace the attorneys for an indefinite time without Congressional review. Thankfully, that right is being reviewed and presumably removed. And I do care that this affair has shown us that our top law man, Attorney General Gonzales, seems not to be trustworthy nor heavily in favor of actually protecting the rule of law as much as advancing political plans. I understand that this happens all the time, but I want the Attorney General to at least appear to be strongly motivated to protect the law over protecting the party. That may be unrealistic, but at least some attempt to favor law over party politics is necessary for my continued support.

When Gonzales was first up for appointment, I listened to the review sessions. I read up some on his background. I tried to stay informed of topics discussed in Congress and Gonzales views on rulings of the law. I saw some minor things that I wasn’t in favor of (for instance, Gonzales is not a proponent of personal rights – a pet protection of mine), but overall he looked like a good candidate. I had no real complaints when he was approved and assigned US Attorney General. Since then, however, he has given a bizarre interpretation of the Constitution in at least one instance I know, and now looks to be less trustworthy and more politically motivated than law and Constitutionally motivated. It’s an unavoidable reality that people’s personal biases will come out in such situations, but I’m concerned Gonzales may be letting too much personal viewpoint into his work. It’s hard to explain, so I’ll not get too deep into that. I just am expressing a growing personal unease with Gonzales and the job he has done since passing Congressional review.

I’m not ready to call for his resignation as many, liberal and conservative (and, unsurprisingly, another liberal), in Congress are. But I am keeping a careful eye on his performance and his work so I can better re-evaluate him (not that my view will have meaning to anyone but me).

[tags]My opinion on Gonzales and the attorney firings of last year[/tags]

A possible restoration of rights and protections for Americans?

Finally we see a few members of Congress are growing the spines we need them to have to take back our rights and freedoms that have been slowly stripped away by President Bush, his lackies, and the until-recently roll-over-and-give-him-everything Congress. We have Senators questioning and harshly criticizing FBI Director Robert Mueller for the abuses of the PATRIOT act that have recently come to light. Members of the House Judiciary Committee look to be working to curtail the FBI’s record-gathering powers if these abuses aren’t fixed. Congress-critters, aware that since Karl Rove can’t even tell the truth under oath (premium content – I can post some of the information if requested, but it should be viewable via temporary pass), he and others in the Bush enclave shouldn’t be trusted to give believable statements in non-transcribed, non-recorded, non-mass media provided, not under oath questioning.

That means that subpoenas are authorized for certain White House advistors to require testifying under oath on the recent firing of several US attorneys general last year. It appears that the Congress-critters aren’t willing to accept Tony Snow’s “Executive Privilege is bad for Clinton and good for Bush” flip-flopping now. So maybe, just maybe, we’ll start to see our rights actually protected by our government rather than secretly stripped away via classified executive orders and Presidential signing statements which lack any legal force. Only time will tell.

Of course, I don’t expect this will lead to impeaching the man who is so committed to violating our rights, but I can always hope for that positive outcome.

[tags]Some in Congress may be growing enough spine to protect America from Presidential abuse[/tags]