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Which is which?

I'm glad I didn't post that example from anywhere near Wasco, CA, Jacksonville, FL, or Staten Island, NY.

Hey, I wonder who's in that black van outsi...

*^%^#%$^*@& NO CARRIER

Gun laws don't prevent gun violence as criminals are already breaking the law. However if one of the victims had been allowed to carry his weapon legally there might have been far fewer casualties.

One point I never see being brought up is the difference between an armed criminal and a person with a gun. Put quite frankly, the criminal is already less invested in maintaining a peaceful situation because he is armed and engaging in a criminal act. However, a person with a gun is still invested in maintaining peace in the situation, at least slightly moreso than the criminal, because up to that point, he is still a law-abiding citizen with a gun. Once Person With A Gun pulls that gun with the intent to maim or kill, that person may meet the criminal head-on in investiture, but will still be a step behind because he hasn't yet abandoned the notion of peaceable society with respect to worrying about bystanders, safety, and other factors that come with the operation of a dangerous and deadly weapon in the presence of others. The armed criminal has already abandoned that concern and has no need to control aim or reduce threat to onlookers. So our would-be hero is operating a day late and a dollar short, so to speak, crippled by lack of response and multiple areas of concern, and that's not entirely a bad thing.

I don't know of a single, sane, CC permit-holder ready to rush in and play Rambo in a situation like that, because, presumably, they understand the gravity of the situation. The minute the ability or desire to fire the gun trumps the concern for the safety is when responsible gun owner becomes not-so-responsible.

Because its not like you couldn't call the police if people are doing unsafe things with guns. In a lot of places there are laws about the safe handling of weapons.

And I'm sure the police and those laws were a great comfort to all of those victims of gun violence and rampage shootings, and 100% effectively prevented any deaths.

Gun laws don't prevent gun violence as criminals are already breaking the law. However if one of the victims had been allowed to carry his weapon legally there might have been far fewer casualties.

how about this for airport security: stop blowing up brown people and start working with countries other than china, canada, and mexico to ensure we're better global citizens...

Yeah tell the swedish cartoonist or the Dutch cartoonist Kurt Westergaard who get death threats for drawing political cartoons how they need to be better global citizens.... You cannot appease terrorists.

How about profiling some of those "brown people" coming from countries on the watch list instead of insisting parents remove leg braces from their 4 year-old?

We know which countries the vast majority of the people coming after us are either from or traveling to for training, but we are so damn politically correct we let the real terrorists board planes.

its like saying "The thieves choose the wrong van to break into when they burglarized an FBI SWAT team's van."

Burgled

There, I correctized it for you...

It's not that Verizon exposed "the wrong" 1200 emails, it's that Verizon exposed any email addresses at all.

It is a figure of speech - its like saying "The thieves choose the wrong van to break into when they burglarized an FBI SWAT team's van." Breaking into a vehicle is wrong, no doubt, but some vehicles are more worse for the burglar than others.

Similarly, the most likely people to raise a ruckus and thus embarrass Verizon about poor emailing procedures are security pros. Do it to a buch of joe sixpacks and chances are they won't even notice, much less publicize it.

http://www.news4jax.com/politics/3890292/detail.html "The software is not geared to count more than 32,000 votes in a precinct. So what happens when it gets to 32,000 is the software starts counting backward," said Broward County Mayor Ilene Lieberman. The article says that they'd known about the problem for two years and failed to fix it. http://abcnews.go.com/US/comments?type=story&id=2646802 Randy Wooten figured he'd get at least one vote in his bid for mayor of this town of 80 people even if it was just his own. He didn't. Now he has to decide whether to file a formal protest. http://backslash.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/01/191235 The Open Voting Foundation's disclosure that only one switch need be flipped to allow the machine to boot from an unverified external flash drive instead of the built-in, verified EEPROM There has been tons of mishaps with those machines reported on slashdot alone... I certainly don't blame them for throwing the book at them and fining them for all their worth. It certainly sends across the message that the voting system is not to be fucked with and hopefully it can help prevent situations like the above.

• Broward Co., FL - ES&S software on their machines only reads 32,000 votes at a precinct then it starts counting backwards (see this update): http://www.news4jax.com/politics/3890292/detail.ht ml
• # Guilford Co., NC - ES&S equipment "could report only about 32,600 early and absentee results". This seems very similar to the case above, (see this update) save that Guilford Co. uses optical scan for it absentee voting and may use the older Votronic system for early voting (although it would make a more consistent story if they used optical scan for all absentee and early voting).: http://newsobserver.com/news/story/1852104p-817980 2c.html
  

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Just don't tell him about the methamphetamines.

He was posting on his personal journal AND a LJ community about internal practices of the company and confidential documents. They fired him after watching him for a number of weeks posting various things like the pay scale and other sensitive information.

Of course, he's the type who thinks that the kids in Ocala should be able to seek legal assistance under the Comic Book Legal Fund because there was some sort of art involved so his own actions were somehow without ANY repercussions because he was using his own public soapbox. Regardless of the fact that he signed papers stating he wouldn't disseminate any confidential information as a term of his employment.

The 2004 election revealed many problems with electronic voting: lost votes, undervotes, overvotes, and votes rolling over into negative numbers. These links are taken from the group blog E-voting experts:

• Broward Co., FL - ESS software on their machines only reads 32,000 votes at a precinct then it starts counting backwards: http://www.news4jax.com/politics/3890292/detail.ht ml
• Wichita Co., TX - Nearly 6,900 of 26,000 total early votes had 'undervote' for President. Human error to blame. County has software problems that need ESS to fix before they can run ballots: http://www.timesrecordnews.com/trn/local_news/arti cle/0,1891,TRN_5784_3303816,00.html
• Lancaster Co., SC - Unilect Patriot voting machines were used and failed. Printouts of votes had to be taken from the machines memories and hand-counted: http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/local/1 0094349.htm
• Mecklenburg Co., NC - More votes registered than voters: http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/news/politi cs/10094165.htm
• Volusia Co., FL - Diebold optical-scan machines had another failure with 6 machines having memory card failures. "Ion Sancho, the elections supervisor in Leon County, said officials with Diebold told him that the new, higher-capacity memory cards tend to have more glitches than older cards.": http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/elections/orl- asecvolusiaglitches04110404nov04,1,3289659.story?c oll=orl-news-headlines
• Craven Co., NC - Software glitch forces a recount which changes the outcome in one race.: http://www.newbernsj.com/SiteProcessor.cfm?Templat e=/GlobalTemplates/Details.cfmStoryID=18297Section =Local
• San Francisco, CA - A glitch in the new tabulation software made by ESS to handle IRV/RCV voting (more here) stoped the counting and forced a recount of 81,000 ballots.: http://www.internetweek.com/allStories/showArticle .jhtml?articleID=52200321
• Sarpy County, NE - 3000 phantom votes show up after an audit reveals that some tabulation equipment counted votes twice. (Im not sure if this is optical scan or some other system they used optical scan in 2002): http://www.wowt.com/news/headlines/1161971.html
• Willacy County, TX - Human error in reading results reports causes presidential votes for John Kerry to be counted twice and subsequently misreported to the Texas Secretary of State.: http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/state/101 23432.htm?1c
• Columbus, OH - An error with an electronic voting system gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in suburban Columbus, elections officials said. Franklin County's unofficial results had Bush receiving 4,25

By definition, liberals are peaceful.

> Liberal activists are not exactly known for being the militant types

Sure...

A new city law in Brunswick gives police the power to halt protests during the G-8 summit now that the governor has declared a pre-emptive state of emergency in coastal Georgia through June 20... ... It's rare for governors to pre-emptively declare states of emergency, normally reserved for disasters such as hurricanes or tornadoes. However, Georgia Gov. Zell Miller issued a similar order for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.

Perdue's executive order applies to Glynn, Camden, Chatham, Bryan, Liberty, and McIntosh counties. It coordinates the Georgia Army National Guard, state law enforcement, and public health agencies under a single office to reduce response time to any problems.

The last time a governor used such an order was during the 1996 Olympics.

Perdue's declaration for the month surrounding the G-8 summit was done to coordinate law enforcement, including the Army National Guard, under a centralized command, said Harold Melton, the governor's executive counsel.

As for limiting public protests, "you won't see anything in there does anything close to that," Melton said.

Melton said the governor did not know that Brunswick planned to amend its law to allow for suspension of protest rights under a state of emergency. And Brunswick Mayor Brad Brown said he didn't know the governor had already declared a state of emergency until after the city adopted the legal change.

:-)