When thugs attack--one officer stands tall in the face of sixty cowards.

So once again, we have another law enforcement officer who is attacked and threatened with death by a crowd of lawless scumbags and gang-bangers, this time in Modesto, California.

A Modesto police officer had to pull his gun to keep a hostile crowd at bay early Sunday.

The officer sustained minor injuries in the southwest Modesto incident, said police spokesman Sgt. Brian Findlen. Police are not releasing the officer's name. The officer's dog was assaulted but not seriously injured, Findlen said. Police arrested several suspects in connection with the incident. A loaded assault rifle was found later at the scene of the struggle, which unfolded about 2 a.m.

Findlen said the officer pulled his gun only after other deterrents, including his police dog, failed to keep the crowd under control. "In a situation where you really feel that your life is in imminent danger, your options become very few," Findlen said.

Some members of the crowd told the officer that "he was not going to leave the scene alive," according to police.

The crowd of as many as 60 people included some known gang members, Findlen said. Police believe the group was gathered for a party in the 1700 block of Pelton Avenue. The officer happened upon the group when he was responding to another call in the area.

The officer saw several people assaulting one man, Findlen said. As the officer tried to break up the fight, the crowd's attention shifted from the assault victim to the officer. The crowd surrounded the officer. The officer sent his dog into the crowd in an attempt to stop the group.

The dog apprehended one suspect, who police later identified as 18-year-old Alfredo Espinoza of Modesto. As the officer tried to arrest Espinoza, the crowd pulled Espinoza away from the officer.

According to police, some in the crowd then challenged the officer to a fight. One suspect attacked the officer, police said.

The officer's two-way radio was broken during the struggle. The officer then used his gun to hold off the crowd as he tried to tell neighbors to call 911. Someone in the crowd had a police scanner, Findlen said, and told the rest of the crowd that other officers weren't responding to the scene. It was then that the officer was told he wouldn't be leaving the scene alive, according to police.

Backup units responded after calls from other residents.

Other officers responding to the scene stopped a vehicle and found Espinoza inside, Findlen said. The driver, 20-year-old Modesto resident Andrew Mitchell, and the passenger, 19-year-old Modesto resident Matthew Reyes, were arrested on suspicion of resisting and delaying a police officer, assaulting a police dog, and "lynching." Lynching is a law enforcement term that means forcibly removing a suspect -- in this case, Espinoza -- from police custody. Two police scanners were found in the vehicle.

Two other suspects were arrested at the scene of the struggle. William Rodriguez, 29, of Modesto was arrested on suspicion of assaulting a police officer, false imprisonment of a police officer and lynching. Junior Suarez, 19, of Modesto was arrested on suspicion of resisting and delaying a police officer and lynching.

During a follow-up investigation later Sunday morning, police said, officers found a loaded, banned assault rifle that police believe was used at the scene of the party. Gabriel Avila, 21, of Modesto was arrested on suspicion of possessing an assault rifle.

Detectives are continuing their investigation. Anyone with information is asked to called the Modesto Police Department at 572-9500 or Crime Stoppers at 521-4636. Tipsters also can text information to 274637. Type "TIP704" with your message.

The article doesn't mention the fact that Modesto is home to a large number of illegal aliens, and it's on us to wonder how many in that crowd of gang members were here illegally with the full blessing of California's sanctuary policies and Nancy "Illegal Aliens are Patriotic" Pelosi.

But legal or not, there's no way that a bunch of savages should ever feel brave enough to attack and threaten a police officer in this country, particularly when that officer is simply doing the job that he was tasked with doing. This officer stopped to break up a fight and assist a citizen who was under attack, and his thanks is an all-out assault on him by five dozen mutts who obviously felt as if they were the law in that neighborhood.

Well at least it ended somewhat ok, with a few of the thugs in custody and the good guy and his dog going home safe, but that neighborhood needs to be seriously tuned up, and I hope that the police department gets some balls and goes in there full force to clean up it's backlog of outstanding warrants, and that includes the thousands of local immigration violators who have refused to leave our country after being ordered out by an immigration judge. You fools want to act like animals? Fine--we'll cull the herd and deport or imprison you, your friends and your relatives, and we'll hammer you like a gong until you get the message and learn to show the proper respect to the laws and law officers of this country.

This sort of thing is bullshit, and while it's sadly common now, it didn't happen on a daily basis before the Liberals took over and changed the focus from criminal control to police control. The American Snivel Liberties Union whines about police brutality, but back when police were allowed to kick a few asses and "hold court in the alley", the thug culture understood it's place and didn't feel brave enough to run wild like they now do. Thanks for nothing, ACLU.

Oh--and note the latest example of the trend of gang members to carry police scanners and use them to monitor law-enforcement response to crime scenes. That's almost routine now and it represents more danger to the police officers and the citizen victims of these criminals. This is why I support laws that criminalize the use of scanners in the commission of crime or their possession by known criminals, just like I support laws that ban the use or possession of body armor by criminal offenders. The whiny-baby police-haters may cry, but I support any law that makes our police and our law-abiding citizens safer, and if it makes those who chose a life of crime less safe, well that's just too damned bad.

Liberal 9th Circuit bones America again on Illegal Alien issues

So let's see..

Two Mexicans are illegally in our country. The male Mexican gets deported back to their home country after racking up three criminal convictions here and the female Mexican follows him back. A child is born to both of them IN MEXICO and then they break up and the female sneaks back into the US again. The child is smuggled back here when she is five year old to be with the female Mexican, supposedly for a visit, but the female Mexican keeps the child. The male Mexican sues and the child is ordered returned, but on appeal, the 9th Circuit--the most-liberal and most-overturned Circuit Court in America--reversed the repatriation order, claiming that since she's spent so much time in America, she should be allowed to stay, even though both she and her mother are here illegally.

A Mexican girl residing illegally with her mother in Huntington Beach has the right to stay here while her father wages a custody battle from abroad because she is "settled" in her new country despite her lack of legal status, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The decision overturned a District Court judgment that would have sent the 11-year-old to live with her father in Acapulco. It was the first to address whether a child should be allowed to remain in the United States during an international custody dispute, to prevent further "distress."

The ruling by a panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals appeared to be a new interpretation of the Hague Conventions on the protection of children in cross-border disputes, establishing that a right of stability be considered, along with each parent's compliance with the law.

Ivan Nemecio Salmeron brought the action under the international conventions protecting abducted children. Salmeron alleged that the girl's mother, Geremias Brito, had kept their daughter in Orange County years beyond the few months' visit to which he had agreed in 2002.

Although Brito has lived most of her life in the United States and Salmeron spent eight years here before being deported for three criminal infractions, neither parent has legal U.S. residency. Their daughter was born in 1996 in Acapulco, after Salmeron's deportation.

Alleging domestic violence and infidelity, Brito left Salmeron and took her daughter back to Orange County in 2001. The child spent the summer of 2002 with her father in Mexico, but later remained in the U.S. during the five-plus years when Salmeron petitioned U.S. and Mexican authorities to intervene.

A U.S. District Court in Santa Ana ruled to repatriate the child in late 2007, and Brito appealed.

In reversing the decision, the 9th Circuit panel pointed to the Hague Convention provision opposing a child's repatriation if "a forced return might only serve to cause him or her further distress and accentuate the harm caused by the wrongful relocation."

Writing for the unanimous panel, Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt, an appointee of President Carter, observed that "It is never an easy nor a joyous task to resolve a dispute between parents that may determine the custody of their child, nor is the outcome ever fully satisfactory."

The judges, including appointees of Presidents Reagan and Clinton, noted the girl's good grades, bilingual skills, friendships and after-school activities such as serving as captain of her soccer team as evidence that she was settled despite her lack of legal status.

"I think it is a good precedent," Brito's pro bono attorney, Mark T. Cramer, said of the decision focusing on the best interests of the child.

"One of the things about this case that is key and important is that the mere fact that a child is not a legal immigrant in itself . . . [shouldn't] prevent the finding that the child is now settled."

Ira Mehlman, national media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said it was his organization's view that "they should all be sent back to Mexico and let the Mexican authorities sort it out."

"The fact that someone brings a child to this country doesn't entitle that child to stay automatically, and whatever harm comes to the child occurs because the parents knowingly violated the law," Mehlman said.

And now we get to support both the illegal adult Mexican female and her illegal Mexican daughter instead of just sending them back to their home country and letting the Mexican courts decide the custody issue.

Anyone remember a kid named Elian Gonzales? He'd spent most of his life here too--and legally--but he was ordered returned to a Communist country by the Clinton Administration, and Janet Reno sent armed officers to go snatch him away from his home and send him off to a life of poverty and oppression. Poor kid. If he'd only been an illegal alien in California, he'd undoubtedly still be here and probably have a pretty nice taxpayer-financed college education and a taxpayer-backed mortgage right now.

Betcha he's pissed...


Meanwhile back at the Lair...

Extra security precautions are now in effect as intelligence indicates that a sophisticatedly-charming and at times delightfully risque redhead has threatened to abscond with Lagniappe, who appears unable to resist her attentions and her offerings of doggie treats.

Got bolt cutters?

"Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?" "WOOF!"

So I'm enjoying a leisurely day at the reloading bench today, cooking up a batch of new .223 rounds, when Lagniappe comes down and tells me that he would like me to consider playing lawyer again on behalf of a unique but deserving client.

Well I despise the practice of law, which is why I gave it up, but as I've never had a referral from a dog before, naturally I'm curious to see what he has in mind.

Well it turns out that an old K-9 pal of his, Liberty, a German Shepherd belonging to the Warren, Michigan police department, has just been personally (dogally?) sued by some nutcase named Inez Starks.

WARREN, Mich. -- An Eastpointe woman who sued a Warren police dog was fined by a judge to pay $500 for frivolously naming the dog as a defendant. She was also fined another $500 for failing to appear in Macomb County Circuit Court for a February hearing.

Inez M. Starks, 55, filed a lawsuit in August against the city of Warren and several police officers for a 2007 incident outside of her daughter's Warren home. During the altercation, Starks claimed she was bitten in the buttocks by the Warren police dog Liberty.

Starks said she was bitten by the German shepherd April 7, 2007, outside of her daughter's home during a confrontation between police, her daughter and others.

Police went to the home after receiving a truancy complaint against Stark's daughter involving her daughter's child. During the visit police found the woman's brother, who had an outstanding warrant. The dog was brought in because the man started to flee.

The Macomb Daily reported that Starks, who was living across the street from her daughter at the time, said she came over to complain when a fight broke out, causing the dog to attack. Starks said she was bitten on her right buttock.

Starks claims the bite caused damage to her sacroiliac nerve, impairing her ability to walk and keeping her in pain.

But according to the police report of the incident, no evidence that Starks was bitten was found.

Judge David Viviano ordered Starks to pay the $1,000 fine by April 13 or her case will be dismissed.

According to the Maccomb Daily, even if Starks does pay the fine to have the case restored, attorney Raechel Badalamenti, representing the city of Warren, said the defendants will still ask the judge to dismiss the case.

OK, so this is at least interesting enough to get me to consider it. And I quickly made the following observations:

1. She claims to have been bitten, but there was no police report. How does a police dog that is always on a leash held by a police officer manage to bite someone without the officer seeing it or that person bringing it to the officer's attention"?

2. Most people bitten by a police dog have injuries that would be well-documented by medical reports. That's what police dogs do. Yet this plaintiff doesn't have those either? So she didn't even seek medical attention for this alleged "dog bite"?

3. Even if the dog did bite her, it would seem that she was only close to the dog because she'd decided to insert herself into a situation where her granddaughter, her daughter, and a man who was either her son or her brother were already in trouble with the police. Even Radden admits that she "got a little angry, got a little loud", which translates into: "began screaming like a hysterical, out-of-control loon" when you run it through the lawyer-speak filter. This is clearly an example of what we used to call "proof that stupidity is hereditary". Bottom line--if the police are dealing with someone who is not you, you need to stay clear. Inez, you may be--and probably are--a certified loser deserving of a trip to jail too, but right then and there it just wasn't your turn.

4. How bad is business to get lawyer Lawrence Radden to take a case like this? Of course the fact that he's stupid enough to file against a dog as a party suggests that he probably didn't graduate anywhere close to the top of his class. Probably a Michigan State University/Geoffrey Fieger School of Law grad, which would explain why he's hustling for crap cases like this.

5. Where did they ever find a process server to drop papers on a dog?

6. This allegedly happened almost two years ago but is apparently only just beginning now. Hello...? Timely filing, anyone?

7. Why isn't her lawyer named as a recipient of sanctions for the frivolous filing? He's the one who should be getting pounded as he's an "officer of the court" and presumed to know better.

Hopefully when/if she pays the fines, the judge still dismisses the case. Just based on what I've read, she probably didn't even get bit, but even if she did, she probably deserved it.

Oh--and I found out a bit more about her shyster, Radden (Michigan Bar # P39839)
Apparently he's a sole practitioner (which means that no firm would take him on and no one was even willing to partner with him to share office costs) and according to his internet ads, "Lawrence N. Radden practices in the following areas of law: Labor and Employment, Criminal Law, Police Misconduct, Police Brutality, Embezzlement, White Collar Crime, Personal Injury, Automobile Accidents, Slip and Fall, Dog Bites."

In other words, he's the kind of jerk who just goes after anyone presumed to have money. He's not skilled enough to handle contracts, wills, or commercial transactions so he just goes after the low-hanging fruit represented by typically nuisance-grade tort cases with government or businesses as the preferred defendants. Even most real lawyers look down on dirtbags like this guy.

He also doesn't pay his bar dues on time and gets suspended.


Oh--and here's a copy of the actual complaint. What a poorly-written piece of crap. Can you say "cut-and-paste generic form-letter filing"? Sheesh. He didn't even provide a narrative or an offering of relevant facts. But of course Radden is requesting a jury trial, so twelve citizens have to be bothered with this as well.

Frankly it's sleazy lawyers like Radden who give the rest of the legal profession it's bad reputation.

Additional source

Dinner and coffee...with death for dessert

So last night I left the Lair in Lagniappe's capable paws and headed down to Winchester for a delightful dinner with Nicki, blogger extraordinaire from The Liberty Zone and contributor/coven member at The Sniper blog. It was a good time, regrettably cut short by the closing of the coffee shop that we'd adjourned to after dinner, and the only downside came when we discovered that one of us (HINT: It wasn't me.) had left their car window down far enough to let the rain in while we were gone. Tsk! But never let it be said that I'm not sympathetic. I'm still snickering mind you, but I sympathize.

So I headed home after a totally relaxing and enjoyable 3+ hours. I was chuckling over all of the stories that she told me about Bridget and Poet, the other two members of The Sniper's coven (yes ladies, I know everything now...and so does Lagniappe.) and I almost didn't see something faintly flickering down in the ditch next to the road as I drove up the two-lane highway in the rain and fog. But I had seen something, so I stopped and turned around to go back and find out what.

Damn. There was a pickup truck down in the ditch on it's side, it's cab in the middle of a grove of trees. And the flickering was coming from a few small flame spots on the underside of the engine compartment. Not good. Not good at all.

I got my fire extinguisher out of my vehicle as I dialed 911 and called it in as I ran around the front of the truck and emptied it on the visible flames. It seemed to knock the fire out so I went around the other side to try to get to the cab, but owing to the terrain and the tree trunks, which were now splayed out around the cab like an abatis, I couldn't to the driver. I could see him in there though. The cab was mangled and compressed around the driver's side and one tree trunk was right through the left side of the cab where the driver was. As a former firefighter/paramedic and police officer, it was obvious to me that his was going to be one hell of a complex extrication that would require a lot of equipment, manpower and time. I alternated between giving the 911 center information and calling out to the driver to tell him that help was on the way. I don't know if he heard me, but if there was a chance, I wanted him to know.

Then I heard the familiar WHOOMP! sound of the puddled gasoline under the wreck flaring up and the orange glow was everywhere. With no tools or protective gear, there was nothing that I could do but get back away from the wreck and pray that the driver was already dead. I've seen people burn to death before and it's not something I'd wish on anyone. I scrambled out of the ditch and focused on moving some of the recently arrived bystanders back and enlisting the help of a couple of them to cut traffic on the road.

In a few minutes, local deputies showed up, followed by the local fire company. The fire was put out, and eventually a firefighter was able to make it down to the cab to confirm that the driver was in fact already gone.

I have my own opinions as to the cause(s) of the crash, and while I'm not privy to results of the blood test that'll surely be done, the smell of beer around the wreck coupled with the sight of the beer can in the dash cup holder were pretty suggestive. When are people going to learn that drinking and driving is a deadly mix? I'm sure that the rain and the fog didn't help, but why roll the dice against even worse odds by adding booze to the equation?

The plus side was that I at least got to say hi to several acquaintances among the police and fire responders. And I heard that another Sheriff's Deputy had wrecked en route (You're right, Nicki...two words) to this scene and required transport to the hospital.

As I stood there in the rain watching thirty or so other people trying to clean up one guy's mess, the beginning of an old Emily Dickinson poem came back to me.

Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me...

Awful nice of Death, stopping for this fellow in the middle of the night way out in the middle of nowhere like that. And once again it's clear that none of us have a guarantee of seeing tomorrow. I'm sure that the guy in the truck had no idea when he started his truck that he was taking his last drive. Any one of us--or all of us--could die today, either because we do something dumb, or because someone else near us does something dumb, or just because. So make good use of your time--today and every day--because you never know just how much or how little you have left.


EDITED: Turns out there were actually TWO people in the crushed cab of that truck...both dead.

Time to nuke Oakland

Yeah, I mean Oakland, California, home to socialist Nancy Pelosi, unreconstructed Communist Ron Dellums (former Congressman, now Mayor) and this bunch of liquor-drinking, welfare-check-getting, parole-violating, no-job-having pieces of shit who are out there cheering for their kindred scumbag Lovell Mixon, murderer of four husbands and fathers who were also outstanding police officers.

On the very day that our four heroes are being laid to rest, this pack of savages is out there marching on behalf of their murderer, taking pride in his actions and even defending Mixon for being the cowardly child-rapist that he was.

Asked about police allegations that Mixon was suspected in several rapes, including that of a 12-year-old girl, marcher Mandingo Hayes said, "He wasn't a rapist. I don't believe that."

Of course you don't Mandingo. (Who the hell names their baby "Mandingo" anyway?

And aside from his fat mama marching out there and proclaiming that her boy "isn't no monster", other relatives of his were also standing around waiting their turn to stay stupid stuff to the reporters.

Lolo Darnell, one of Mixon's cousins at the demonstration, said, "He needs sympathy too. If he's a criminal, everybody's a criminal."

NO, what he needed was a good kick in the ass when he was still young enough to be salvaged, and when he didn't get that, he needed to stay in prison so that the decent people--and even his own family members who are a long way from decent could be safe.

And am I the only one to notice that this so-called "march" is comprised of mostly able-bodied males and it's taking place during normal working hours? There's half of the problem right there. These cretins don't want to work like people are supposed to. They've only got time to drink, sling weed and breed another generation of babies that they have no intention of supporting...more babies who will grow up to be just like them and their new icon, Mixon.

Breitbart has two videos of these morons. Notice that the guy in the second one--the guy not at work--still seems to find the cash to buy big rings and megaphones, assuming of course that he didn't just steal both of them. They stand out in front of an office of some Socialist Party headquarters and blather on and on about how the police are some sort of "army of occupation" in an "African" community. They further complain about the police killing "black people" every day.




First of all, This isn't Africa and most Africans would be upset about the comparison. Contrary to stereotype, most people in Africa who have had access to the same educational and economic opportunities that these fools in Oakland had are upstanding members of the middle and upper classes and they run their countries instead of sitting around acting like punks like these Oakland losers are. And the police don't go around just killing black people, either. This isn't that kind of country and Oakland's not that kind of city, even with Ron "I'm a Sandinista" Dellums at it's helm. Here's a newsflash for you fools in Oakland...If the police shoot you, your color has nothing to do with it. It's usually because you were breaking the law and victimizing someone else and you chose to try to kill the police officers rather than let them stop you or bring you to justice. Your boy Mixon was the poster-child for that sort of thing--out on parole but still screwing up--raping young women and little girls, smoking dope and carrying guns. He finally got a little of what he earned, but we can't kill him enough times to balance the books for what he's done. Granted, if this really were the sort of socialist country that these marchers and people like Dellums advocate, we would be going after Mixon's family members and associates and killing them too. But this isn't that kind of country, no matter how much the scumbags that make those claims wish that is was.

I'm thinking that it's time to just wall that whole city of Oakland off. Take out the good folks--the ones who work, stay out of trouble and consider themselves loyal Americans--and just build a wall fifty feet high all around the city, leaving the remaining mutants to just hang out, kill each other off and build shrines to their hero Mixon out of old liquor bottles. If any of them try to get over the wall, we shoot them. If anyone outside tries to help them or support them, we toss them over the wall, too. Dellums can stay and be their mayor. Most of this crap is his fault anyway due to his stellar mismanagement and repeated failure to support the police.

We'll seal it up and let them go crazy for a while when the liquor and the crack runs out, and then we can just run some big pipes over the wall from the bay and fill it with water to the top of the wall. Problem solved. And maybe when we drain the water away, we can get the mess cleaned up by using prison labor from around the country. Let the other scumbags see what can happen when they get too far out of line, and then they can go home and tell all their friends.


Rest in Peace, my brothers. You deserve more support than you're getting from the people who depended on you to run their lives and solve their silly-assed problems. And when the mourning is over and it's time to get back to work, I hope that the remaining members of the Oakland Police Department are quick to get back out there and nail every one of those preening, dancing protesters who so much as drops a cigarette butt on the street. If there ever was a place that truly needed police-state policing, it's Oakland, CA from here on out.

Today's a new day.

Shaking it off, today's a new day. We're alive, still free (Obama's working on that, however), and Obama and his team of incompetents (Biden, Clinton and Geithner among them) are providing much amusement, even if they are ruining our country, our economy and our reputation abroad. So while I go look for something to blog about Lagniappe offers this poster for your enjoyment:

(He's got a thing for blondes.)

My apology to Israel

Public apologies for things being in vogue these days--like the seemingly never-ending apologies for slavery that continue to be made by people who never owned a slave to people who have never been slaves--I would like to apologize to to sovereign nation-state of Israel for the hooliganism of another one of our spoiled trust-fund kids, Tristan Anderson.

Tristan, for those not paying attention to the current wailings of the left-wing liberal bloc, is (was?) a 38 year old "professional protester" who basically roamed around the world bothering people in the name of leftist causes, until his chickens came home to roost in the form of a 40mm tear gas grenade to the head, fired by Israeli soldiers in response to rocks being thrown by members of Tristan's "peace" group.
Tristan and his pals had apparently decided that the Israelis don't have any right to protect themselves from Palestinian suicide bombers so they were in Israel trying to interfere with the construction of a wall intended to keep those bombers out. Sorry, but I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for Tristan. He chose to be a "useful idiot" for an evil people and he paid a price that he could have avoided simply by staying out of it.

Even lessening my sympathy more is the disclosure that Tristan was one of those idiotic tree-sitters who obstructed construction of new buildings at the University of California, Berkeley last year (He reportedly spent 21 months--almost two years--just sitting in a tree!) in addition to writing for Indymedia, the notorious cop-hating, America-bashing, openly socialist website. This is a guy who apparently did everything in his life except work for a living and mind his own business, and while I can sympathize with his family for their loss, I have to say that I'm not going to miss a guy who didn't produce anything and devoted his life to obstructing the productivity of everyone else around him.

Karma can be a bitch sometimes, but it does eventually come around.

Now of course his parents are demanding "justice", probably in the form of a big bag of cash. They are mad at the Israeli government, even though Tristan put himself into that situation on purpose and despite his conduct and intent, it was the Israelis who picked him up and gave him state-of-the-art medical care. I have to point out that he's in an Israeli hospital now, not a Palestinian one. Wonder why that is?

Oh yeah. He's no longer useful to the Palestinians and they can't afford to waste money on him. They need that money to buy rockets that they can fire at the hospital in Israel that's trying to save Tristan's life despite his criminal acts. But then only one side of that conflict in the Holy Land is humanistic and respectful of life, and that would be the nation-state of Israel, the people that Tristan was trying to prevent from protecting themselves.

So to my Israeli friends, I apologize on behalf of America for Tristan. Our overly-permissive culture created him and his wealthy, overly-permissive parents funded him and enabled him to travel to your country to cause trouble and ultimately interfere with the flight path of that tear gas grenade that had to be fired because of Tristan's group's conduct. Please forgive us, and if you should happen to accidentally whack a couple more spoiled American kids like him, no problem. We'll get over it so don't worry about holding back on our account. Do what you have to do, because we've still got a lot more Tristans or Rachel Corries than we need.

Dogs communicate on many levels.

So last night, Lagniappe is getting on my nerves. He's barking at things outside that don't warrant barking at (neighbors that he knows, walkers on the road, nothing, etc.) so I finally bring him inside. Then he starts pestering me. I'm on the computer trying to work, and he comes in, puts his nose under my arm, and flips my hand off the keyboard. I hate, hate, HATE it when he does that, especially because he'll do it over and over again until he gets what he wants. Usually he wants dinner but he already got fed and he just came in so he doesn't need to go back out. Finally I yell at him. "KNOCK IT OFF!"

Apparently I hurt his feelings, because he turned and slunk out of the room, then came back in a few seconds later, deposited one of his favorite toys on the floor next to my chair, then turned and walked back out again, all without looking at me.Now I felt like a heel, because he obviously felt like he had to make amends for something. And you have to know him to understand how serious things have to be before he parts with his toys. I took a break from work, went and found him where he was sulking on the stair landing (his little Fortress of Solitude), and said those magic words that make all things ok again in Lagniappe-land: "Come on, let's go for a walk."

He practically flew to the back door and launched into his Happy Dance as I took his leash off the hook. He lives for walks.

So we spent the next hour walking down the dirt roads, watching the sun set and just enjoying the evening together. That was all he'd wanted--just some time and attention. And looking at the stuffed possum that was still on my office floor when we got back, I realized that sometimes the loudest messages are the ones most softly delivered.

Bride-zilla goes to jail

I wonder if the wedding band played "Here comes the bride" on a banjo?

Seriously folks, it not often that someone who lives in West Virginia gets to laugh at anyone else for looking like an ignorant hillbilly hick, but Billy and Jade Puckett have just made that possible.

You see, this couple got married last week-end down in Texas. It is not known how many head of livestock were in attendance but it is known that after the reception, Billy Puckett was stopped by a DUI task force, allegedly because his passenger (that would be the newly-minted Jade Puckett) was opening and closing the car's door as they drove down the highway. Billy was subsequently arrested for DUI.

Now it could have--and should have--ended here, but Jade apparently wanted to get into the act too. She apparently "exited the vehicle" (cop-speak for "got out of the car") and proceeded to tell the arresting officers something along the lines of "take yer hands off'n my man!"

No actual idea what transpired, but Jade was apparently so obnoxious and belligerent that she was eventually arrested herself for being drunk in public. And since arresting officers aren't in the habit of driving prisoners home to change clothes, Mrs. Puckett wound up going off to the pokey in her wedding whites.

She pled guilty the next morning when she was presented before a judge--still wearing her wedding gown--and received a sentence of "time served".

Well there was a time when any citizen would have just died of embarrassment had such a thing happened, and most people would have just hushed up about it and let it blow over. But that was before all of these reality TV shows came along and totally de-stigmatized looking like trailer trash. Jade claims that she was so embarrassed about being jailed in her wedding dress that she...called press conferences--and even posed for new pictures in that wedding dress!

I guess she figured that if a welfare-cheat like Nadya "Octomom" Sulyman could cash in on 15 minutes of shame, a drunken redneck in a wedding dress might just be able to sell a few interviews or otherwise make some cash too.

Rumor has it that Jade and her new husband as so upset that they're fixin' to up and move right on out of Harris County, just as soon as they can arrange for a truck to pull their trailer away.

And here's a few tips for your next weddings, Billy and Jade:

1. Next time spring for a limo, or at least find some sober guy to drive you home.
2. If/when you encounter the police, be polite and respectful and do what they tell you, especially when they tell you to stay in the car. (JADE!)
3. If you both need to be drunk in order to marry each other and/or take care of traditional honeymoon business, it's probably not a good match. I'm just saying...
4. Oh, and Jade...sit up straight. Slouching in court is so un-ladylike.

What an insult to our troops--John Murtha gets Navy's Distinguished Public Service Award

OK, it's time to get political again. I'm pissed.

While we have many legislators in Congress who love and support our troops, I think that few readers here--or anywhere--would ever name that scumbag John Murtha (D)--PA as one of them.

This POS--the un-indicted co-conspirator from the ABSCAM Congressional Corruption scandal who is currently under FBI investigation again for corruption--made a cottage industry out of attacking President Bush on the Iraq war by demonizing our troops, in particularly calling our Marines in Haditha "murderers" when they were accused of killing civilians. Those Marines were all eventually exonerated and two of them, Marine Corps staff sergeant Frank D. Wuterich and former Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt, are now suing Murtha personally for libel, slander and invasion of privacy. Murtha's false and defamatory attacks on our military personnel made all of our servicemen and women look bad, in America and around the world, and Murtha apparently thought that it was worth it if it would help his party undermine the war effort and President Bush.

Screw him. Seriously, just screw that fat, corrupt and unpatriotic bastard.

But now that the Democrats are in charge again, not only are they unwilling to screw John Murtha, but they're sucking up to him and giving him a high award normally reserved for people who actually honor and serve our military and support it's mission.

Donald C. Winter, Obama's new Secretary of the Navy, just awarded Murtha the Distinguished Public Service Award--the highest award that can be given to a civilian--ostensibly for "exceptionally outstanding service of substantial and long term benefit to the Navy, Marine Corps, or as Department of the Navy as a whole."

This guy should have been tarred and feathered for his statements and conduct which harmed our Marines, the Navy and their mission, but partisan politics is now apparently stepping in and Murtha is being lauded for his actions, no doubt as part of an Administration/Democratic Party effort to shore up his standing with the voters in the next election.

Well this is total BS, and while I've been largely silent regarding the Obama team and the Democrats until now, I'm thinking that it's time for the gloves to come off, especially since the media that spent the last eight years savaging the past President and every member of his team is largely overlooking most of this one's goofs, flubs, and scandals. And this insult--the giving of this award to this man (Hell, that's like giving Bill Ayers an award for exceptional patriotism)--is totally unacceptable.

A nice list of Murtha's past anti-military statements was compiled by the Boot Murtha The list is too long to reprint here, but his anti-military comments go back to the Somalia operation in 1993.

Some of his better ones include:

"I said a year ago we can't win this militarily."
(Murtha, IHT, Nov. 21, 2005)
"All of Iraq must know Iraq is free -- free from United State's occupation."
(Murtha, Nov. 2005, Washington Times)

"I admit I made a mistake when I voted for war"
(Murtha, The Guardian, Dec. 2, 2005)

"So I've finally come to the conclusion that we've become the enemy, and that there's no alternative."
(Murtha, Dec. 12, 2005)

"We've become the enemy."
(Murtha, Jan. 5, 2006 during Arlington Forum)

"It [Haditha, Marines] is as bad as Abu Ghraib, if not worse."
(Murtha, May 2006)

"They [the Marines/Military] knew the day after this happened that it was not as they portrayed it. They knew that they (marines) went into the rooms, they killed the people in the taxi. There was no firing at all. And this comes from the highest authority in the Marine Corps, so there's no question in my mind,"
(Murtha, May 2006)

"... they [Marine] killed innocent civilians in cold blood."
(Murtha, May 17, 2006 at news conference)

"There was no firefight. There was no IED that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood"
(Murtha, May 19, 2006)

"They actually went into the houses and killed women and children. And there was about twice as many as originally reported by Times."
(Murtha, Reuters, May 19, 2006)

"Our troops over-reacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood."
(Murtha, ARAB WORLD NEWS, May 19, 2006)

"It's [Haditha, Marines] much worse than reported in Time magazine."
(Murtha, News.comAU, May 18, 2006)

BLITZER: The marines say they're still investigating. They don't know what happened yet. The pentagon says the same thing. How do you know what happened?

MURTHA: Wolf, you read the "Time" magazine articles. There are pictures, there are photos. You don't have to talk to the military about the proof.
(Murtha, on CNN/Wolf Blitzer, May 19, 2006)

"We can't win this."
(Rep. John Murtha, Congressional Record, June 15, 2006, p. H4028)

"We are causing the problem."
Rep.John Murtha, Congressional Record, June 15, 2006, p. H4028)

"American presence in Iraq is more dangerous to world peace than nuclear threats from North Korea or Iran."
(Murtha, June 24, 2006 South Florida Sun-Sentinel)

There are many more.

Not only should this award be withdrawn, but Secretary Winter needs to step down over this partisan tomfoolery. And Murtha... Well he's apparently lucky to have voters who are actually as stupid and racist as he says they are.

But the rest of America deserves better and Murtha needs to be run out of office...and out of Washington on a rail.



Additional information at:
This Ain't Hell
Boot Murtha
Patriots For America

Even the greatest sometimes must fall...

And Lagniappe demonstrated that today, in spades.

I had him out for a walk on the woods, and we were following a power line right-of-way, walking along a two-track road of sorts, when Lagniappe spotted a yearling deer and decided to go after it.

It was the deer's own fault, of course. It ran. Lagniappe chases anything that runs. It's what he does.

Well the young deer--a doe--ran into the brush to the left of the trail, then quickly doubled back to cross the trail, bursting out of the brush right in front of me, and I'm talking close enough that I had to step back to avoid getting hit. She bolted across the trail, leapt gracefully over a ditch filled with muddy water, and disappeared down the hill on the other side.

Meanwhile Lagniappe, already lagging somewhat behind for some reason, came exploding out of the brush just like the doe did, only he stumbled and tripped as he hit the trail. He executed an Olympic-quality face-plant into the mud of the trail--his muzzle hitting the ground like an airplane landing on collapsing nose gear--and then his momentum somersaulted him into the ditch where he impacted the water full-force and threw up a splash that would have made Shamu at Sea World jealous.

And me without my camera ready. That would have been the money shot, right there. I'd have won the hundred thousand dollar grand prize from that TV show, "America's Clumsiest Pets" and paid off my student loans. Sigh...

And to top it off, He stood up, shook the mud and water off of himself, looked at me as if to say "Uh, that didn't just happen..." and then proceeded to run off into the woods as if that deer wasn't already in the next county.

I called him back and he returned promptly, still dripping and muddy, so that I could shake my head at him and check him out to make sure that he hadn't hurt himself. Fortunately he was ok.

And to think that there was a time that this clown was the best that a police department that I won't name could find...What a goof.

Saved another one... New '03A3 comes home

OK, so this one's not exactly new. It's a compilation of parts from at least three different World War Two-era 1903A3 Springfield rifles, all of which had been consigned to the junk piles before I got hold of them.

It all began a couple of years ago when I purchased what was advertised as a display-only 1903 Springfield from a Fish and Wildlife auction. The rifle had been used for Hunter Safety classes and was reportedly rendered "non-firing" by having the firing pin ground off and firing pin hole in the bolt plugged.

Well I needed a cheap hobby gun to work on, since I was just sitting here all day, not doing anything other than wishing that I could go back to work, so I bought it for a seriously low-ball price.

As it turned out, the receiver was a low-number 1903 receiver that had been re-blued over significant pitting. That had somehow not been mentioned in the auction description. I was about to send it back and demand my money back when I noticed that all of the other parts on the gun seemed to be rather good-condition 03-A3 parts, including the barrel. Someone had rather clumsily hammered a 1903 rear sight base over the barrel and replaced the front blade with one taken from some mystery gun, but it was clearly a late-war Remington barrel. I gauged it and it registered less than 1 on both the throat and muzzle end. This was a new-condition barrel. Likewise, the stock was a very nice walnut C-stock that alone was easily worth more than I'd paid for the rifle. So there was some potential here.

I fixed the bolt by unplugging the hole and replacing both the firing pin striker and the extractor (it had been broken off too), and the project shifted to the back burner for a long while until I had the good fortune to come across a very nice (and very cheap) Remington 1903A3 receiver that had been taken off of a drill rifle. Now it was a crying shame, but at sometime back in the day, our government had taken thousands of these old Springfields and welded up the bolts and barrels, rendering them "permanently non-firing" and relegating them to display pieces good for training only. Many wound up in ROTC units and other ceremonial details, and when no longer needed, they were sold off or broken up--an ignominious end for many once excellent rifles.

The receiver that I got--a Remington to match the barrel--had been re-activated by cutting the old barrel, bolt and safety off and replacing the bolt and safety with new pieces. This one had a beautiful greenish parkerizing and only a slight shiny spot to show where the weld had been removed from the safety. I took this receiver and all of the other parts to a local gunsmith who, as a former Marine who served back in the 1950's, was quite knowledgeable regarding the Springfields. He checked the components over, pronounced them usable, and mated the barrel up to the new receiver, properly timing and headspacing it and checking it for overall safe function. After what seemed like forever,he told me that it was ready and I picked it up today.

Meanwhile, I'd acquired one of the old wood-grain plastic stocks that the Navy had put many of these rifles into back in the 1960's, the theory being that the plastic would be cheaper and less susceptible to warping in wet or humid environments than the wood stocks. Putting the rifle in this stock allows me to save the valuable C-stock while giving me a slightly lighter rifle that I can hunt with or take with me on camping trips without my having to worry about dinging it up. Plus it now has that neat and historically-accurate Navy look. I even finished it off with a blue web Navy-issue sling.

So now I have this rifle:As you can see, it fits in well with the other '03 Springfields while also standing out as a distinct and somewhat unique variation.


And like it's brothers on the rack, it's not only a good shooter, but a veteran whose wartime service to this country earned it a better end than to see it welded into a wall hanger or reduced to scrap parts. And while some people may say that it's not as sexy as one of those AR-15 rifles that Obama and Company plan on banning in the near future, it's at least as effective in the hands of a capable rifleman and it's a lot more historically significant, plus I can hike with it without alarming ever eco-freak bunny-hugger who sees it--these aren't all "scary looking" like those evil black rifles are, even though it can reach out just as far if not farther than most so-called "assault rifles". It also feeds off of the ample stock of .30-06 ammunition that I've squirreled away for the Garands and the Browning. Ammo shortage? Not here and not in that caliber.

Call me Old School, but this works for me.

A clarification on my last post

I just want to make it perfectly clear that I'm not in any way criticizing the officers of the United States Capitol Police for their handling of that guy with the gun on Tuesday. My post was initially meant to poke LE fun at USCP for their habit of trotting out their entire complement of crime scene stuff every time they get the chance. I have several friends on that department, including a couple whom I know read this blog, and they know that my teasing comes from a long-standing but good-natured rivalry between our respective agencies, specifically because of the fact that, because they are Congress' pet police, Congress buys them all the bells and whistles and toys that they ask for, including all of that crime scene tape and those little number placards, and they do their best to get every bit of that stuff out at the least opportunity, basically just to justify it's existence. For example, when the average police officer from the average department anywhere else in the country makes a traffic stop or contacts a citizen and the subject drops a dime bag of weed on the ground, that officer arrests the subject and testifies as to what they saw. That works, and the subject usually goes to jail on the officer's word coupled with the presentation of the bag of weed and the results of the chemical field test and/or a DEA analysis.

However, when the US Capitol Police makes the same contact--and you guys at USCP know this is true--the subject will be detained and the whole USCP mobile crime lab will get called out. When the court case comes up, there will be about eight officers subpoenaed, including at least four who are on the chain of custody for the weed (the norm is one officer, two if someone else does the field test) and about two dozen high-gloss photographs showing the small zip of weed from several angles and distances, the perpetrator, the closest street signs, the smiling officers who showed up in time to get subpoenaed, and usually a gratuitous but very well-done shot or two of the Capitol dome, just because. They like to use their cameras just as much as they do their crime-scene tape and number placards.

In fact, whenever I see them doing what they do, I'm reminded of that old story song by Arlo Guthrie--the one about Alice's Restaurant and the singer's arrest for littering:

And that's what we did, sat in the back of the patrol car and drove to the quote Scene of the Crime unquote. I want tell you about the town of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where this happened here, they got three stop signs, two police officers, and one police car, but when we got to the Scene of the Crime there was five police officers and three police cars, being the biggest crime of the last fifty years, and everybody wanted to get in the newspaper story about it. And they was using up all kinds of cop equipment that they had hanging around the police officer's station.
They was taking plaster tire tracks, foot prints, dog smelling prints, and they took twenty seven eight-by-ten color glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us. Took pictures of the approach, the getaway, the northwest corner the southwest corner and that's not to mention the aerial photography.

And that story song could have just as easily been inspired by the United States Capitol Police, because that's what they do every single time, to the never-ending amusement of the rest of us.

Granted, these cases almost never fail, because all of the officers will show up, each one looking neat and spiffy, the testimony will be delivered in a professional, grammatically-correct manner(and maybe two of the eight will actually testify while the rest just get paid to be there), and all reports and documents will be present and neatly done. There will be no flaws in the USCP aspect of the case and the bad guy will almost always plead out or get convicted. Of course the rest of us manage to get it right most of the time too, and usually with a lot less effort on our part. (It's really not that hard, Capitol guys...) But in the end, so long as the bad guys get convicted, it's really all good.

But that doesn't mean that the rest of us aren't going to needle the hell out of the USCP guys. We're cops and that's how we roll.

Now, that joking aside, I side with Capitol Police 100% as far as that actual arrest in Tuesday goes. Some people have suggested here and elsewhere that the arrestee, Timothy Whitfield, may have just been going to the range and gotten "caught up" by overzealous cops.

Negative. Not even. No.

I don't know what Whitfield's deal was but he isn't local to this area and there are no ranges nearby. He came all the way from California with these guns and his sword and drove about as close to the Capitol as he could. Then when questioned by a Capitol Police officer, he said things which raised enough alarm that he was detained and eventually arrested.

In short, the guy was a headcase. These people come from all over the country and turn up at the Capitol, the White House or some other government agency once or twice a month on average, usually asking to see the President and sometimes the are armed. We never hear about the unarmed ones because they don't make the news. They just get told to leave, or they get arrested for trying to climb the fences or some other silly thing and then they get barred from DC as a condition of release/probation. But the ones who bring weapons along with their delusions make the news, and they are dangerous. There are two dead US Capitol Police officers buried in Arlington Cemetery right now as proof. Officer Jacob Chestnut and Detective John Gibson were murdered on July 24, 1998 by a psycho named Russel Eugene Weston Jr, who walked into the Capitol with a gun and shot them when Chestnut saw the gun and tried to stop him. Likewise, Secret Service Police Officer Leslie Coffelt was shot and killed in 1950 when two Puerto Rican nationalists tried to assassinate President Harry Truman. He's also buried in Arlington. I've been to the graves of all three of these heroes and when it comes to stopping another nutcase or terrorist from doing what he came to do, I'm backing my brothers in blue all the way. I may have snickered a bit (ok, more than a bit) at all of their effort on Tuesday, but I'm also proud as hell because it was damned fine police work on the part of that initial officer, who obviously had his head in the game and realized that there was something wrong with Whitfield and then did something about it. Crisis averted and no one got hurt.

So good job, Capitol guys. That was excellent work and totally in character with the tradition of professionalism and the quality training that the USCP is known for.

Of course you still ain't got jack for jurisdiction, but even though all 2,000 of you are only "the police" on about a four block section of DC, you do those four blocks proud.



















My sincere apologies to the memory of Detective Gibson. I don't appear to have the photos of his marker. Next time I get to Arlington, I'll remedy that.

US Capitol Police arrest man for having guns in DC

So yesterday, I was walking down the street in Washington DC, minding my own business, when I saw a vehicle at the intersection of 3rd and Penn NW cordoned off with crime scene tape and surrounded by Capitol Police officers and a few news crews. Being me, I walked up and dipped in to find out that the police had just arrested the driver for having weapons in the vehicle.

Possession of any firearm or ammunition for one is still illegal in DC, with the exception of those few which are registered to residents.

So I took a few pictures and waited to see what the news would say this morning.

According to WTOP:

WASHINGTON - U.S. Capitol Police have arrested a man after searching his vehicle near the U.S. Capitol.

Capitol Police say 49-year-old Timothy Whitfield of Long Beach, California had two long rifles, three handguns and a sword in his sport utility vehicle that was stopped after 3 p.m. Tuesday at 3rd street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW.

Whitfield was interviewed by police and then arrested.

The charges include carrying a pistol without a license, possession of unregistered ammunition, and possession of an unregistered firearm. The charges are still pending.

Schneider says the vehicle has been cleared and police found no hazardous items. Pennsylvania Avenue between 1st and 4th streets has reopened.

So here are my pics. (Click on them to make them larger.) Note the fact that the police have every single item out of the car, each set up with a little number placard.




















I love the US Capitol Police--I really do--but guys, any other police department would have just taken the car somewhere to do that instead of doing it right out in the middle of the street. And was the crime scene tape and number placards really necessary? It's just an inventory search, guys. I know that you're bored and want to play with all the police stuff that Congress gave you the money for, but come on...

West Virginia musing

Ah, stereotypes...everyone loves 'em, usually because there's some truth behind them.

One of my favorites about West Virginia is the image of the typical resident sitting on his porch with a shotgun, yelling "Git off'n my land!" at anyone who passes by.

Now last night was nice and warm, so Lagniappe and I did our best to live up to that fine state stereotype as we sat out on the porch cleaning guns and linking machine gun ammunition.

Alas, we're not rude enough to tell people to get off our land, but we did wave to several neighbors who passed by, oblivious to the fact that we were assembling eleven-foot lengths of "carnage in a can", otherwise known as 240 rounds of .30, linked, mixed 4 M2 Ball to 1 M25 Tracer.

We've been running the reloading press heavy this past week, figuring that we might as well load up all of the loose components sitting around since everyone is panicking over the pending Obama gun bans. First I loaded enough for my matches and expected practice sessions, and then I put the remainder into links for the Browning. And I'm here to tell ya that after I clean and resize the brass, swage the primer pockets, trim the cases, put new primers in the cases, charge the cases with power, seat the bullets, put the bullets onto the links and fold the belts up into the cans, I have so much time invested that I almost don't want to shoot it now.

But it is fun to shoot. And Lagniappe agrees. Just look at that smile.

We packed four cans last night. We're ready for Deer Season.

Yep. You read right. Deer Season.

You see, Obama wants to ban all of the so-called "assault weapons". Well Lagniappe and I don't have any of those. We just have this "deer rifle". No nasty, dangerous "assault weapons" around these parts. Heck, I don't even know what an "assault weapon" is, do you? I think that someone said that it's a gun with a bayonet lug on it. Well this 1919A4 clearly doesn't have one of those, so it's obviously not an "assault weapon".


We're just a couple of deer hunters here, Lagniappe and I are. And all we have is this deer rifle. The Democrats always promise that they only want to ban "assault weapons" and that they have no desire to ban hunting guns. So we got rid of all of our "assault weapons" (whatever they are) and all we have now is hunting guns like this Browning.




Now I know that someone will say that we don't need a gun like that to hunt deer. But I beg to differ, and I offer this photo of the back yard of the Lair, taken just this morning. If the deer are going to come in squad strength, we need firepower sufficient to harvest them all.


Venison steaks, anyone? We're fixin' to have plenty.

Only in Maryland...

So what's going on in the little blue state run by illegal aliens and their apologists now?

How about 16 people getting arrested for fighting at a nonviolence concert.

I can't make stuff this ironic up, folks...

SILVER SPRING, Md. (AP) - Montgomery County police say 16 people were arrested after a fight broke out during a concert held to promote nonviolence and to remember a Silver Spring teen killed last year.

The free Stop the Violence youth concert was held Saturday night on Ellsworth Street in downtown Silver Spring in memory of 14-year-old Montgomery Blair High School student Tai Lam, who was shot to death in November.

Police say fighting broke out near the stage toward the end of the concert and at least one person resisted arrest. Police say 16 adults and juveniles were arrested for offenses such as assault and disorderly conduct.

And lest anyone forget, Tai Lam was murdered by Hector Hernandez, a gang member and one of those illegal aliens that the Maryland legislature works overtime to coddle and hide from federal authorities. In fact, Hernandez was charged only a few weeks prior with carrying a concealed weapon, but thanks to Maryland's sanctuary policies, he was released to get another gun so that he could murder an American who would doubtless be alive today had Hernandez been deported following that first arrest.

Does "hair of the dog" work for dogs?

So last night, I'm sitting up in the gun room, having an adult beverage in the form of a Southern Comfort & water while reading a book on the Great Mutiny of the Indian Army against the British. Lagniappe is lying on the floor nearby, watching me closely to see if I'll set the book aside and produce another dog biscuit or animal cracker for him. But this night it sucks to be him, because I'm out of both.

The phone rings, and I go downstairs to answer it and talk for a while. It's actually a fairly long call from an old acquaintance, so when I return to my book and my drink, the nice, academic mood has been pretty much wiped out. I sit down, pick up my book again, and have another sip of my drink. I notice that it's almost gone, so I finish it off and pour another. Normally I just have one but as I'm now starting over with my reading session, I may as well start over with the drink, too. And I just don't feel like I've already had one, despite the nearly empty glass suggesting otherwise.

It's at this point that I decide to go back down and get the phone and bring it upstairs with me, lest I be disturbed again. So I go down to get the phone, and as I reach the base of the steps to go back up, I hear something making a very familiar and distinctive sound:
Slup, Slup, Slup, Slup...

I race back up the stairs just in time to catch Lagniappe polishing off my second Southern Comfort.

And he wasn't even trying to be sneaky about it. He just stood there looking at me, licking his snout as if to say "Hey, this stuff's all right!"

Of course I hollered at him and he took off to go hide downstairs. Damn dog. And now it dawns on me why the last bit of that first glass tasted funny. Ew!

A minute later I realize that I probably should keep an eye on him since he just drank two people-sized alcoholic drinks so I call him to come back upstairs. I whistle and he comes running back up the steps, then stumbles or trips on the top one and bangs into the door frame as he comes into the room. He just looks at me for a second and then drops to the rug and sprawls out on his side. Great. He's trashed.

I resisted the temptation to get one of his toys and throw it down the hall for him to fetch. That would have just been mean. So I watched him for the next couple of hours, but all he did was snore. No word on whether or not he woke up with a headache this morning.

Guess I'd better put my beverages up out of the K9's reach from now on before I wind up having to enroll him in a 12-paw program.

I got yer "please" right here...

So if we can pepper-spray one arrogant Canadian, why can't we just get a crop-duster and spray them all?

A Canadian who demanded courtesy from a U.S. border security guard says he was pepper sprayed and held in custody for three hours for asking the disrespectful officer to "say please" when ordering him to turn his car off during a search.

"I refused to turn off the car until he said please. He didn't. And he has the gun, I guess, so he sprayed me," said Desiderio Fortunato, a Coquitlam, B.C., resident who frequently crosses the border to visit his second home in the state of Washington. "Is that illegal in the United States, asking an officer to be polite?"

The incident occurred on Monday at the Aldergrove border crossing, east of Vancouver, shortly after 12 p.m. Mr. Fortunato, a dance studio director, was traveling to his home in Blaine, Wash., to retrieve a wallet his wife had left during their most recent visit.

He said he was questioned by a border officer who demanded he turn off his car and, when asked to make the request more politely, threatened to spray him with his pepper gun if he did not comply.

"I just felt I should stand my ground about it. I should not be treated like that. No matter what kind of position you are in, if you want respect you have to show respect," he said yesterday. "I asked him three times and when I didn't turn the car off, because he didn't say please, he pepper sprayed me.... It was terrible. For half an hour or so I couldn't see anything."

Mr. Fortunato said after he was sprayed he was forcefully taken into custody by several officers. He was held for three hours before he was released without being allowed entry into the United States. Mr. Fortunato says he was dismissed with a warning to be more cooperative in the future.

A spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection said officers are trained on how to handle confrontation, and refusal to comply with a direct order is justification to use capsicum spray, also known as pepper spray, or other "soft techniques" such as physical holds.

"The combination of training and experience is what our officers use to communicate with passenger on a day-today basis. Our officers will give direct orders or commands to passengers, especially in situations where there may be a safety concern. It is the obligation of the passenger to be compliant with those," said spokesperson Mike Milne.

He added that officers order border passengers to turn of their vehicles when they want to take somebody from a car and, in such cases, further questioning would be conducted inside the building.

While he could not comment on the specific case, Mr. Milne said the use of force at a border crossing is very rare, very serious and subject to immediate review.

By his own admission, Mr. Fortunato is a stickler for courtesy and respect. The Portuguese native, who has lived in B.C. for 25 years and has owned his second home in Washington for three, pulled a similar stunt at the same border crossing about one year ago. In that case, he was ordered to wait hours to be questioned before being allowed to cross.

So let's review this, shall we?

OUR border. OUR country. Jackass who would like to come in decides to give our Customs and Immigration staff a hard time, basically for no reason other than just to be a jerk. When he's given a simple instruction--not a request, but an instruction--he refuses to comply, no doubt sitting there with a cheese-eating grin on his face as he dares the officer to either submit to his attempt at dominance or do something about it.

Well the officer, after repeating the instruction three times and being told "no" by Fortunato, does something about it. He controls Fortunato and forces him to comply.

Good for him. I support the officer 100% and if it were up to me, Fortunato would be barred from crossing that border for a year at least and required to write the officer a nice apology letter. I occasionally had to deal with assholes like this when I was on the street so I know what the officer was going through. I would walk up to someone's car after stopping them for a traffic infraction and I would tell them politely but firmly to turn the car off. It wasn't optional and it wasn't a request, but I still said "please" even though I wasn't asking. Most people complied, but every now and then, I'd get some arrogant SOB who wanted to show me that he's the one in charge on the side of the road.
"Why?" he'd ask.
"Because I told you to." End of discussion, right there. If I was feeling particularly conversant, I might have told them how I was dragged by a guy who didn't turn his car off one day several years ago, and how I was forced to shoot that guy. Ever since then, I've had a thing about peoples' cars running when I'm trying to conduct business with them. So all the cars get shut off now, for my safety and theirs. And when someone decided to challenge my simple instruction, "Officer Friendly" went away and "Officer you-aren't-going-to-like-what-happens-next" took over. Almost everyone got the message when my tone and position next to their door changed, but there were a couple who found out just how quickly I could open their door and turn it off myself. And I wasn't in the mood for writing warnings after that happened. Contrary to popular opinion in some loon quarters, police officers don't go to work every day hoping that they get to shoot someone. And when some tool decides to re-create the situation in which I've had to do just that thing...well you figure out how that goes over. And I'm not the only officer that assesses such actions as potential threats and responds according to training or past experience. Fortunato was lucky that he only got a face full of pepper spray.

You see, Fortunato, you aren't doing us a favor by coming into our country and we don't have to let you come in, even if you did buy a house here. We have some hard-working people on that border trying to keep the bad guys out--bad guys who would kill you personally in a heartbeat if they could--and here you are, trying to be an ass just because you have a case of "little penis syndrome".

Well now you know how it works. I'll bet that the next time one of our border police officers tell you to turn your car off, you'll do it. And I'll be honest in that I really don't care how my brothers on the border talk to you. All I care about is that they go home at the end of their shifts because they weren't distracted by some horse's ass, causing them to miss a clue that something very bad was about to happen.

You want to play games? Go to the playground. Preferably one back in Canada.

Nebraska pothead busted trying to smoke a cat

Admittedly my first thought was that I didn't know that Michael Phelps even had a cat.

But then I read on and saw that it was just some basic, garden-variety pothead from Nebraska--some punk that's so successful in life that he still lives in his grandparents' house.

A man who tried to mellow out his cat by stuffing her into a homemade bong is facing criminal charges — and catcalls from animal lovers.

Lincoln-area authorities cited 20-year-old Acea Schomaker on suspicion of animal cruelty Sunday after catching him smoking marijuana from a contraption that had a cat stuffed inside its 12-inch by 6-inch base.

Schomaker told Lancaster County sheriff's deputies the 6-month-old female named Shadow had been hyper and that he was trying to calm her.

The cat was taken to the Capital Humane Society, where she appeared to be in good condition Monday, executive director Bob Downey said.

"What the human mind doesn't invent, huh?" Downey said.

Schomaker did not return voice or text messages left on his cell phone by The Associated Press.

Deputies discovered the cat trapped in the device after responding to a domestic disturbance call at a residence that Schomaker shares with his grandfather, Sgt. Andy Stebbing said.

Deputies resolved the dispute and left the house, but they returned minutes later after discovering there was an arrest warrant on Schomaker that alleged possession of drug paraphernalia.

Upon re-entering the house, Stebbing said, deputies saw Schomaker smoking marijuana through a piece of garden hose attached to the duct-taped, plastic glass box, in which the cat had been stuffed.

"This cat was just dazed," Stebbing said. "She was on the front seat of the cop car, wrapped in a blanket, and never moved all the way to the humane society."

Schomaker was cited for misdemeanor animal cruelty and taken to the Lancaster County Jail on the arrest warrant. He was released after paying a $400 fine.

Now Schomaker faces new charges for possession of marijuana and paraphernalia stemming from Sunday's incident.

Stebbing said the animal cruelty charge could be raised to a felony if the cat dies or is found to have suffered injury.

Downey said tests would be done to determine whether the cat suffered lung damage.

"To the eye, the cat looks OK," he said. "It cowers in the back of its cage like it's a little bit afraid but, obviously, given the way it's been treated, that's not surprising to me at all."

Now what cracks me up is that every time I bash drug users--particularly potheads--I get a ton of replies (most of which get deleted for obscene language) from people who claim to smoke weed every day while holding down important jobs and living in expensive houses. Yet it's funny how none of the potheads in these stories seem to rise above a lifestyle characterized by unemployment and sponging off the family for a roof overhead. And for that matter, most every pot smoker that I've ever arrested was either some loser who would never make it to college or who was in college on the parents' dime and petrified that mom and dad would find out about the arrest. In fact they usually bawl about how their parents will stop paying their tuition if word gets back to mommy and daddy that their little scholar was smoking up the money meant for textbooks and lab fees. I can't recall meeting many successful adults who smoke marijuana. But that's because I tend to hang around with winners, and dope-smoking is the providence of the life-losers.

You know--the kind of losers who still live with Grampy and try to smoke the cat instead of getting a job.



EDITED TO ADD: Lagniappe just informed me that he's also 100% anti-drug but that he's all for smoking cats. He says that they should be marinated and smoked over hickory chips at about two hundred degrees for at least an hour.

Felons caught with guns? Alaska arrests warm my heart

Good job, police and US Attorney's office in Alaska. Indictments have just been handed down against Daniel Cox and Simon McCamy for possessing firearms.

Now as I'm a serious pro-gun guy, the thought of my fellow pro-gun Americans facing jail for such a thing would normally have me very upset. However in this case, since both Cox and McCamy are convicted felons, I very much approve.

The U.S. Attorney's office says Cox was found in possession of a firearm while in Anchorage last November, but has three felony convictions for drug misconduct, robbery and theft. McCamy was found with a firearm on three different occasions during a two-month period between last August and October, and each time is a violation after his previous felony conviction for driving under the influence. So now Cox is looking at ten years, and McCamy is looking at ten years times three--one hit for each occurrence. And I know that some of the whackos that infest the gun forums out there will not agree, but I hope they both get some time out of this.

You see, I'm one of those Americans who obeys the laws. I respect my fellow citizens and do not victimize or endanger them. I don't murder, rape, steal, rob people at gunpoint, deal or even use drugs, or habitually drive drunk. More to the point, I don't consider the small minority of people who do these things to be my peers or people that I want to see going around armed. Frankly, it's specifically because of people like this that I and other law-abiding Americans own guns. So for me to support the idea that these fools have some sort of undeniable right to own guns is ludicrous.

I have such a right. My friends and most people that I know have that right, too. It's the right guaranteed to us by the Second Amendment. But that right, like all of the others, is not absolute. It was written to ensure the right of the individual citizen to stand up with other members of his community against any threat to himself or that community, and it's generally accepted that it was meant as a defense against the tyranny of either a foreign government or our own if if becomes abusive, but I don't think that anyone would disagree that it was also meant to protect the right of the citizen to protect himself and his property from the garden-variety violent criminals that were as much a problem in the 1700's as they are today. I cannot imagine our Founding Fathers all agreeing that King George's troops should have an equal right to use firearms to oppress the citizens of the newly-created "America", and neither can I imagine them saying that the highwaymen and other career criminals who preyed on the traveler, the homeowner, or the shopkeeper in that day were entitled to that consideration.

To they contrary, I personally hold that such criminals, by their own actions, set themselves apart from the citizenry at large and become a separate and distinct class. They are not us any more. They are the enemy of every law-abiding American, just as King George's troops once were. As such, certain rights and privileges that belong to the law-abiding American citizen no longer apply to them. We as a nation decided long ago that it wasn't in this nation's interest to let felons vote or own dangerous weapons, as these people have proven that they cannot be trusted and they lack the honor, integrity and/or judgment to do the right thing. Now in recent years, the Democrats have chosen to return to many felons the right to vote, since that sort of person overwhelmingly votes Democrat, but there aren't many of us who want to give felons the right to own firearms, particularly felons who are felons because they've misused firearms in the past. As far as I know, practically the only people who argue for the right of the convicted felon to be able to own firearms are convicted felons themselves, and the odd-ball Libertarian fringe nutters, most of whom also think that Ron Paul is Presidential material.

But I don't support convicted felons owning guns. I don't see them as my comrades-in-arms, standing ready to oppose any threat from invasion or civil unrest when Obama's policies crash our economy and curtail our liberties, nor do I see them as members of my local Neighborhood Watch. (Yeah, I really want to ask the local career burglar to watch my house when I go on vacation...) I actually feel better knowing that said burglar and the local drug dealer can be tossed right back into prison just for being caught with a gun in their possession. To me, it's another tool for getting unrepentant scumbags off of our streets, and as I'm 100% anti-scumbag, I'm good with that.

So I support keeping criminals disarmed by law, and jailing those who decide to arm themselves in defiance of the law. To that end, I'm glad to see Cox and McCamy off our streets, and hope to someday see every other Cox or McCamy clone out there scooped up and jailed as well. Criminals who are in prison for ten years following a "felon in possession" hit can't murder my friends, rob my favorite stores, carjack my mother, sell drugs to my neighbor's kids, or break into my house. And criminals who go around unarmed because they fear going to prison for one of those ten-year hits are much less of a threat to the community and much less likely to injure or kill someone that I care about.

So let's keep those prosecutions rolling, in Alaska and in the rest of the country as well. The Right to Keep and Bear Arms belongs to every law-abiding American, and I will aggressively defend the right of every law-abiding American to do just that, but those who use guns to prey on law-abiding Americans got nothing coming as far as I'm concerned. They chose to forfeit that right and they have no one to blame but themselves.