A company in New Jersey is coming out with a small, single-shot “Palm Pistol” which is intended to be easy for the elderly or disabled to use. While I do believe this market segment has a need for reliable self-defense, this just doesn’t seem like a good idea to me. A single shot just isn’t going to cut the mustard in many situations. Such a gun would certainly be better than nothing some of the time, but for just a little more money (less than $500) you can get a decent .380 semi-automatic which has a reasonable trigger pull, acceptable power (with hollow point ammunition), and low recoil. Those characteristics would provide a much better self-defense weapon for most of this market.
The controversial miniature figure, created by Seattle-based Will Chapman as part of his BrickArms military fighters line, is a bearded militant with a face-covering hood, a tiny toy assault rifle, a little grenade launcher and plastic bombs that can be attached to an explosives belt.
I wish they’d had these when I was a kid, because our good guys and bad guys were indistinguishable unless we painted them. Where can you get yours? Go to the BrickArms site. These are GREAT! While you’re at it, head over to Fireworks.com and add some bang to the action. (Disclaimer: firecrackers should only be used under responsible adult supervision. You could put an eye out or something.)
It took a genius from Harvard publishing a study in the British Medical Journal to tell us what radio talk show host Dennis Prager has been telling us for years. When I saw the announcement of this profound insight, I immediately thought to notify Mr. Prager, but see that he beat me to it.
Keep up the good work, sir (by whom I mean Mr. Prager, not the aforementioned Harvard genius). But, you know, your wisdom can’t possibly be worth much because you don’t have sufficient data to support your conclusion:
The study was only conducted in a single community, so it would take more research to confirm its findings.
(Aaargh! Why academics are so easily—and constantly—surprised by the obvious is a topic that would take volumes to cover. Maybe I can get a government grant to do a study.)
It’s not really news that the state of California is flat broke. It’s also not surprising—that’s what happens when you spend more money than you take in. California has some of the most generous social programs in the nation, programs it is increasingly finding it can’t afford. Now reduced-cost and free school lunches are on the block.
“Without quick action by the governor and the Legislature, districts will be forced to make a series of unacceptable choices to dip further into their own bare-bones budgets, serve less nutritious foods and not comply with California’s nationally renowned nutrition standards, or reduce cafeteria staffing,” Supt. Jack O’Connell said in a statement.
I know this will come as a shock to many truly compassionate people, but it’s not the government’s job to feed people, even children. That responsibility falls on parents. According to the Census Bureau (Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2005, Current Population Report, P60-231, August 2006, hat tip to The Heritage Foundation) almost two-thirds of America’s poor have cable or satellite TV, a third have cell phones in addition to traditional land lines, and so on. The list of monthly expenditures on what are, in fact luxuries, by the “poor” is quite long. Good grief! My wife and I have never been poor, but we couldn’t justify the cost of a cell phone in our budget until just a couple years ago. But we fed our kids, and so should all parents.
The entitlement mentality is bankrupting California and is pushing the rest of the nation down the same path. It was a renowned Democratic president that once exhorted the American people to ask what we can do for the nation rather than the other way around. It’s a shame we value his popular image more than his words.
Recent polls showed support for the death penalty surging to as much as two-thirds of the surveyed population.
Considering how bad the situation really is south of the border, I can only echo the old advertisement: Try it. You’ll like it.
Liberals, of course, are opposed to the idea. For one, Mexico has signed an international pact under which they are not allowed to reinstate the death penalty once it has been eliminated. (Yet another reason we should simply withdraw from the U.N., as our national sovereignty trumps any possible outside interest.) One law professor even states,
…the state cannot fall into the same criminal behavior as the criminals.
Statement like this betray the lack of underlying moral foundation on the far left. Every moral person agrees that governments can’t (or shouldn’t, at least) behave in a criminal manner. There are, however, crimes for which execution is morally justified. In such cases, it is less moral to allow the criminal to live than to mete out just punishment in the form of death. Unfortunately it is not likely that Mexico will return to rationality in this matter. It’s equally unlikely that the extreme violence that racks the nation will end anytime soon.
After studying famous cases of genocide, some geniuses have come to a startling conclusion: humans all have a dark side. Stunner! A cursory examination of human history yields the same obvious conclusion, but apparently this is news to some folks. (It wouldn’t surprise me if there were government funds somewhere behind this brilliant work.) Some of the statements would be comical if only they weren’t so widely believed. For example,
“You don’t have to be mentally ill or even innately evil or criminal. You can be ordinary, no better or worse than you or me, and commit killing or genocide,” said Harvard psychiatrist Robert Lifton, who has studied Nazi doctors.
This “expert” lumps killing and genocide together, not recognizing the fact that there are numerous situations in which killing is perfectly, morally justifiable. The two simply cannot be equated. But worse than this is the bald statement that those committing genocide are not “innately evil or criminal.” They are both. Genocide is universally recognized by all normative moral systems as both evil and criminal. Further, the Judaeo-Christian moral system upon which all of Western civilization, and our nation in particular, is based teaches us that we are all inherently evil. (This, too, comes as no big surprise to anyone who has children. The little beasts must be taught every bit of morality they ever learn—it isn’t built in.) Unfortunately we far too often fail to acknowledge this fact and, worse, fail to pass it on to each succeeding generation so it comes as a surprise when it is rediscovered.
In an interesting development, a group of India’s wealthy have filed a lawsuit against the government for failing to protect them from the terrorists in Mumbai.
It charged that the government had lagged in its constitutional duty to protect its citizens’ right to life, and it pressed the state to modernize and upgrade its security forces.
According to some reports (like this one), there were armed police forces in the area who simply cowered during the attack and refused to challenge the terrorists. So it does seem some, ahem, improvements are certainly in order. But the real problem is that the citizens of India have abrogated all responsibility for their protectiion to the government. Government police forces cannot, however, be omnipresent and so can’t prevent or protect from all such attacks. Individuals must be capable of defending themselves and must have the mindset to do so instilled within. A disarmed populace is nothing but a herd of sheep with no defense against the wolves that will inevitably attack.
The United Nations Commission on Human Rights has adopted a resolution to purportedly combat defamation of religion. The problem is, if you read the entire text, the only religion mentioned is Islam. Apparently we aren’t supposed to be able to discuss Islam in any but the most glowing terms despite the irrefutable fact that the majority of terrorism is carried out by Muslims specifically in the name of Islam. Fortunately for us here in America, we have something called the First Amendment.
The U.N. has become an increasingly useless organization. Rather than sending it significantly more of our tax dollars, as Obama would like to do, we should withdraw our membership and kick them out of our country.
A Philadelphia man was sentenced to life last week for the murder of Jason Shephard. You probably didn’t hear about it in the news, though. Why? The murderer, William Smithson, is gay. He kidnapped Shephard, drugged him, and tried to rape him. When Shephard fought back Smithson killed him.
Where’s the media outrage over this senseless murder? You won’t hear any because the liberal media only care about such crimes when the victim—not the perpetrator—is gay. This was a true hate crime. The perp should have received the death penalty.