Comey for President

Posted on Saturday 31 December 2005

James B. Comey is emerging as a stud Republican. This is a guy who had solid Republican credentials and was the number 2 man at the Department of Justice. According to the New York Times, Comey refused to go along with the spy program. (more…)

dan @ 8:59 pm
Filed under: Politics
When a story is too good to be true: 12/ 30/ 2005

Posted on Saturday 31 December 2005

The Little Red Book story was a hoax. It was reported today that it was a fabrication. (more…)

dan @ 1:43 pm
Filed under: Politics
Find that horse for me

Posted on Saturday 31 December 2005

There is an apocryphal story story about a boy who is placed in a manure pit and starts digging. He is an Optimist, and when asked why he is digging, he says “With this much manure, there must be a pony in here, somewhere”. Newsweek (more…)

dan @ 9:25 am
Filed under: Politics
Ja, shure, you betcha

Posted on Friday 30 December 2005

Cheap Monday is selling anti-Christian jeans. The Swedish company markets jeans that feature a skull with an inverted cross.

When I was young, growing up in a fundamentalist church that was formed because the Calvinists around us were not strict enough, tight jeans were the tools of the Devil. They didn’t need no stinking logo. In the early 60′s, the fashionable shirt was one that came to ‘V’ in the front and back and was intended to be worn out of the pants. They were forbidden in my household because the ‘V’ pointed at the crotch. Some kids in our church had them, and my mother fulminated privately against those parents who were so permissive. I remember my brother finally getting one in green/grey paisley, but that was after he went away to college. It should be noted that there were other arguments against moving the fly on a pants from the side to the front and then going from a button fly to a zipper fly. But the Devil won every time.

dan @ 9:25 am
Filed under: Personal andPolitics
Der Spiegel hoes down intelligent design

Posted on Friday 30 December 2005

Der Spiegel has an interview with Daniel Dennett up about intelligent design and evolution. It is a pretty good read. Check out the website for a European view of the US. It is interesting.

dan @ 8:15 am
Filed under: Politics andScience
Remember those advertisements for Kool cigarettes?

Posted on Tuesday 27 December 2005

Remember those adverts for Kool cigarettes, where it was implied that you were a cool person if you smoked Kools? This clerk is probably not such a Kool smoker.

STATE LINE, Idaho — Confronted by a masked man who pulled an apparent handgun and demanded money, a tobacco shop clerk pulled his own .40 caliber handgun and shot the intruder 10 times, killing him, a Kootenai County sheriff’s officer said Tuesday.

Ka-ching.

Kool thinking, but 10 times?

I’m thinking about this, and I think the would-be robber was prone for at least 7 of those rounds.

Killed was Joseph Kalani Hatchie, 47, of Otis Orchards, Wash. Sheriff’s Capt. Ben Wolfinger said Hatchie entered Lew’s Smoke Shop shortly before 8 p.m. Monday, wearing a gray ski mask.

The masked man aimed his weapon at the clerk’s chest and demanded money, Wolfinger said.

The clerk told sheriff’s deputies that he reached under the counter for a bag, came up instead with his semiautomatic and started firing.

When deputies and medics arrived, Hatchie was lying dead on the floor.

The weapon found with Hatchie turned out to be an air-powered pellet gun that looks identical to a Walther P-9 semiautomatic, Wolfinger said.

Right off hand, that whole “looks like a gun” thing didn’t work for Mr. Hatchie.

While Mr. Hatchie was probably prone for at least 6 shots and maybe 7, unless the first few .40 caliber rounds hit him in the extremities, there is a high degree of probability that those first rounds would have been fatal.

But 10 rounds? That clerk needs to find a new line of work, because the current one isn’t in his best long term interests.

dan @ 9:19 pm
Filed under: Politics
The beat goes on

Posted on Tuesday 27 December 2005

The New York Times has a great article about an American company, Freeport, and the mine they have in Indonesia. (more…)

dan @ 9:57 am
Filed under: Politics andTechnology
David Horsey

Posted on Tuesday 27 December 2005

David Horsey is the cartoonist for the Seattle Post Intelligencer.

David Horsey

dan @ 7:23 am
Filed under: Politics
NSA apologist

Posted on Monday 26 December 2005

This is a good example of the apologia banging around the ‘net about the people at the NSA who blew the whistle on the snooping. (more…)

dan @ 12:42 pm
Filed under: Politics
Yoo can too

Posted on Monday 26 December 2005

The Washington Post has a profile of John Yoo, the Administration lawyer who argued that because a state of war exists, (more…)

dan @ 11:24 am
Filed under: Politics