Hempstead, N.Y.: All across the country, millions of unemployed Americans expressed relief and gratitude that Obama finally addressed their most important issue at last night’s Presidential debate: assault weapons.
“I’m glad Obama is finally tackling assault weapons,” said Barbara Rheems, taking a brief pause from brushing her teeth in the 1998 Honda Civic that has been her home for the last three years. “I think that’s the greatest concern facing our country.”
“Thank God Nina Gonzales had the courage to ask about assault weapons,” said Richard Smith, an unemployed construction worker, speaking from the cot in his mother’s basement. “I can’t think of a single more pressing issue.”
“Assault weapons terrify me,” said mother Gladys Castle, who was busy preparing an “Obama soup” made from pilfered ketchup packets for her three hungry children. “I’m afraid that at any moment they might burst out of closets and gun safes and start shooting people.”
“Well it’s about time someone dealt with America’s biggest challenge, which is reinstating the Clinton-era assault weapons ban,” said Tom Feller, who spoke to us from behind his homemade cardboard WILL WORK ANY JOB/HAVE CHILDREN TO FEED/GOD BLESS sign. “The fact is that Americans just don’t need a weapon that has any two of a folding stock, a pistol grip, a bayonet mount, or a flash suppressor, and it’s high time we moved to disarm ordinary Americans citizens who purchased such weapons in a completely lawful manner.”
A CNN poll of America’s unemployed showed that assault weapons were far and away the most pressing issue this election, with 78% citing them as their biggest concern, while those who said that their top issue was forcing Catholics to pay for contraception were a distant second at 19%.
Journalist shocked that all his fellow journalists are suddenly spewing vitriol at him and calling him a traitor because he’s decided to vote for Romney. Also confirms the overwhelming liberal bias in the newsroom.
Police arrest members of the Mexican Mafia prison gang across the state, including one police officer in Houston who was providing them guns.
This was not a random shooting, it occurred while officers were serving an eviction notice, so it’s not a classic “spree shooting” like Aurora.
It did not occur on Texas A&M campus, but rather a few blocks away (despite which, the active Twitter tag is #tamushooting).
Multiple other people have been shot; I read six, but that might not be accurate.
The shooter is in custody.
More details when they occur.
In the meantime, as Dwight has already implored CHL holders to do, “Carry your damn guns, people.” Also, here’s firearms instructor Karl Rehn on what to do when faced with an “active shooter.”
Update
We now have the name of the dead office: Brazos County Constable Brian Bachmann was killed in line of duty while attempting to serve an eviction notice.
Seeing reports of a second civilian death.
Update 2
Seeing reports that a third person has died, and also that the suspect has died. Not sure if those are one and the same. News reporting that the third person dead is the shooter.
Update 3
Sgt. Jason James, spokesman for the Bryan Police Department, confirms to The News: Three were killed during today’s shooting, including, as mentioned below, Brazos County Constable Brian Bachmann. Also killed, he says: a male civilian and the shooter.
Right now, James says, another female bystander is hospitalized at the College Station Medical Center; her condition is unknown. Also, says James: “An officer injured during the gunfight is hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries.” Two more officers, he says, were injured — “but not through the initial contact” with the gunman.
Update 4
The bystander killed was Chris Northcliff, 43. Suspect killed was Thomas Caffall, approx. 35, divorced.
Well, there’s been another law school dean stepping down because of a slush fund. Only this time it’s St. Louis University School of Law Dean Annette Clark and she’s stepping down not because of her own slush fund, but because University President Father Lawrence Biondi transferred more than $1 million in law school funds into his own slush fund. Without asking her. Or consulting her on the new law school building. And refusing to meet with a law school reaccreditation team.
I am very far indeed from intimate knowledge of St. Louis University, but if even half of what Clark alleges is true, something stinks to high heaven.
If I really, really wanted to make modern feminists look bad and out-of-touch, how could I do it? Well, I could create a fictional character that a New York City writer call Ann Romney a “traitor” for daring to raise children rather than getting a job. But suppose even that weren’t enough. Suppose that I really, really wanted to make people hate this character. How far would could I push it? How about I make her a narcassitic drug-addict! (The Frisky nails it as Linkbait.)
Speaking of loathsome liberals, how about this Internet Tough Guy of the Year berating a poor Chick-fil-A drive through attendant over gay marriage?
That’s some industrial strength stupidity right there, Mr. Adam Smith: videotaping yourself being King of the Douchebags and then putting it up on YouTube yourself. What possible go wrong? Beside, you know, your company firing you for being King Douchebag.
If you’re confused by all the twists and turns of convicted felon Brett Kimberlin’s story (don’t worry, I am too), this condensed version should get you up to speed.
But suppose you want to delve into the story of convicted felon’s harassment of Aaron Worthing in great detail? Well then, here’s the entire saga on one page! (Warning: That link may bring your computer to a crawl! You might want to try the version broken up across several web pages instead.)
A few more tidbits for convicted felon Brett Kimberlin and his associate Neal Rauhauser:
“No legitimate organization, and no law-abiding individual working in a professional manner, would retain the services of someone like Neal Rauhauser. Only someone with bad intentions would hire him.”
And rather than summarize the forest of link Stacy McCain put up, I’m just going to give you a link to his links. And here’s your receipt for my receipt.
Texas has a market that works just fine for electricity when government lets it: “California pretended to have a deregulated electricity market, but it was really a poorly designed, government-controlled system that eventually collapsed under its own weight. Texas’ economy is outperforming the rest of the country because we put fewer burdens on markets. This is why Texas has the most competitive and successful electricity market in the United States, if not the world. If we let it work, the world-class Texas electricity market will power Texas’ future.”
You know, if I were looking to save money, eliminating the state’s open meeting law is about the last thing I would cut. California at every level government needs more transparency, not less. (That probably true for the other 56 49 states as well.)
Finally, I want to note that Dwight has created a tag to track all mentions of the No Longer Golden State on his blog, so you can read his roundups on police incompetence, municipal corruption, and bankrupt locales such as Vernon, Bell, San Bernardino, Cudahy, Maywood, and Zalgo.
Dwight has been all over the story of Amado “Mayo” Pardo, owner of South Austin Mexican restaurant Joviata’s, who just happens to be a two-time convicted murderer (a third murder charge was dropped as part of a plea bargain for the first) and the accused leader of a heroin-dealing ring.
He’s also a noted fundraiser for the Democratic Party.
I have not been able to find any direct political donations at the state or national level for Pardo (and the Travis County website doesn’t seem to have a way to search for individual donations, only rank upon rank of PDFs), but Jovita’s seems to have been the site for numerous liberal and Democratic fundraising events:
The Statesman article mentions fundraisers for Democratic State Representative candidate David Rodriguez.
There are more, but you get the idea. If these people were just renting Jovita’s as a venue, fine and dandy. But if they were specifically approaching Pardo to hold fundraisers for them, perhaps a bit more due diligence was in order on the part of the Austin Democratic establishment? The Austin Chronicle named him “Mayor of South Austin” in 2009. Here’s their profile of him, also from 2009, in which discusses his reading Marx and his love for Cesar Chavez, but omits his two murder convictions. How could he spend two decades hob-nobbing with Austin’s liberal community and no one bothered to find out that not only did he have two murder raps, but the FBI believes he had been dealing heroin for 25 years?
Of course, Pardo hasn’t been convicted. Instead of a heroin-dealing convicted murderer and liberal activist, he may only be a convicted murderer and liberal activist…
Accused Plano bomber Anson Chi was denied bail at a hearing at which he testified on his own behalf. I don’t see anyone placing any sort of credibility on his claims that some of his wounds were due to being tortured by police while in the hospital. Various testimony adds a lot more to the “walking time-bomb” file:
[FBI agent Brian] Carroll described Chi as “anti-government, anti-technology, anti-big business, pro-environmentalist (and) slightly anarchist.”
“He said he was tired of armchair activists and wanted to have this in the bank to prove he was a real activist,” Carroll said.
One wonder what sort of “activism” Chi thought he was displaying. Anti-gas-pipeline activism? I fail to see how blowing up a pipeline would fight the Federal Reserve, the IRS, or genetically modified food (all noted Chi concerns).
Testifying for the defense, Chi’s parents said they were OK with him living at home if the judge agreed to release him and would notify police immediately if he broke any rules.
But the testimony also seemed to backfire.
His father, Swia Chenn Chi, said he often fought with his son and was so afraid of him he once called the police.
“If we don’t agree, he usually goes wild,” the father testified. “I was so afraid he would take the gun and point it at me … I wished the police would (have taken) his gun away, but they never did.”
The FBI said agents recovered two pistols and three shotguns from the family’s Plano house, in addition to bomb-making chemicals and hardware in a search hours after the explosion.
Chi’s father said he was upset with his son because he hadn’t worked for several years.
“He’s such a grown-up man,” Swia Chenn Chi said of his 33-year-old son. “He’s not handicapped but he doesn’t work so he makes me disappointed.”
An adult refusing to look for a job fits the Occupy mold a lot more than your typical Ron Paul supporter. It also fits in with Chi’s posting the “Disappointed Asian Father” images on his Facebook page, like this one:
In addition to the bomb-making materials and instructions, agents found three shotguns and two 40-caliber semi-automatic handguns at the Chi home. They found books on domestic terrorism and technological slavery. They also found $2,000 hidden in a spray can with a false bottom, as well as euros and Asian currency.
Carroll detailed Chi’s extensive travel in recent years, including trips to Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia. Records show that Chi crossed into Mexico 20 times on foot and that he was denied entry into Canada last year, Carroll testified.
I’m not a big fan of the IRS, and as a fan of small government I have a bit of sympathy for tax protestors. But that sympathy is tempered by the fact that the theories by which they deduce the federal income tax is unconstitutional range from the almost certainly wrong to the completely ludicrous. And further evidence that they’re mistaken is the frequency with which they end up in prison.
Chi also posted a copy of this well-known video depicting soccer fans overwhelming police over their excessive use of violence. I’m all for exposing and punishing police brutality, but when Chi comments “Watch the police (pigs) get what they deserve—oink!” once again he gives that Occupy-tainted whiff of throwback 1960s radicalism. Not everyone who called police pigs in the 1960s built bombs, but virtually 100% of the 1960s bomb builders (The Weatherman Underground, etc.) would be found among their ranks.
He also links to a 9/11 Truther video, which does not speak well of his credulity.
