Free In Idaho!

This being the first weekend of July, it must be time for the best car show of the year.  Why is it the best?  Well, besides hundreds of fantastic cars on display at the fairgrounds in Boise, on Saturday night they close off downtown and hold the Capitol Cruise… hot rods, customs, rat rods, and classics ONLY until dusk.  Best parade of the year!

“The Second Day of July 1776 will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. . . . It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires, and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”

–John Adams to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776

You know you’re in trouble when even Helen Thomas starts squirming.

(CNSNews.com) - Following a testy exchange during today’s briefing with White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas told CNSNews.com that not even Richard Nixon tried to control the press the way President Obama is trying to control the press.

“Nixon didn’t try to do that,” Thomas said. “They couldn’t control (the media). They didn’t try.

“What the hell do they think we are, puppets?” Thomas said. “They’re supposed to stay out of our business. They are our public servants. We pay them.”

Uh, Helen. Elections have consequences, as the good Mr Limbaugh is fond of reminding us. And when you elect a thug Marxist you get a thug Marxist. We told you so…. now, what are you going to DO about it? Where’s all that patriotic dissent and truth to power BS you lefties were so proud of during the last eight years?  I watched a tape of this and the rest of the “journalists” were just hanging their heads.  They looked like little kids in class hoping to be invisible.   And Gibbs is an arrogant sack.  He’ll get his one day.

It’s interesting that Helen Thomas is the one making a stink.  And it would be even more interesting but for the fact that I suspect she’s more upset about not getting to ask her own questions than that Obama’s control of the press is harsher than Nixon’s.  But it’s a start.

Hate crimes legislation = Special victims = Unequal justice

As it stands, the bill criminalizes any violent act perpetrated against someone because of race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.

In doing so, it makes crimes of things that are already crimes. Like murder. Is one person’s murder worse than another’s if the suffering is the same? This only creates special victims out of certain classes of people, a perverse form of reverse discrimination.

The hate crimes legislation people are going for it again. I thought we were entering a new era of equality and racial justice, of freedom and liberty, and uh, you know, hopenchange?  I didn’t believe them.  Did you?

This violates major swaths of the Constitution. It certainly twists the 14th Amendment’s “equal protection” clause beyond recognition. And it likewise impinges on First Amendment’s guarantees of freedom of speech and thought. And subjecting those guilty of state crimes to additional federal prosecution is double jeopardy.

The very idea of a “hate crime” is a sickening echo of the “thoughtcrime” for which people could be tortured or executed in George Orwell’s dystopian classic, “1984.” This is what Hitler and Stalin did — make victims of whole classes of people.

Wake up folks. Time grows short.

Why yes, there IS a Tea Party planned for Boise on the 4th of July.  Meet at the bandshell of Julia Davis Park, 5pm to 9pm.  Tea Party Boise.

“There is more political ignorance in America today than at any other time in my life. ”         -Rush  6/30/2009

“The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed – where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.“                9th Circuit Court Judge Alex Kozinski (2003)

For our Sunday Music this morning, how about an old Wintley Phipps tune “He Is Able“?

And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?

If you spend any time at all reading gun blogs and preparedness sites you’ve bumped into the idea of “the Golden Horde”… those disaster victims pouring out from the cities.  Ever wonder who they are?  Ever consider, they might be you? 

I took a couple rifles out to the desert this morning for a little “therapy session”.  It’s been a hard week, what with business and doctor stuff and all.  And, at the last CMP match I didn’t shoot my prones very well.  My groups weren’t bad, but I left them low and right instead of centered.  That really lowered my scores for the two prone targets.   This morning it was just me, my rifle, and a shooting matt.  Oh yeah, and a burrowing owl in the badger hole over there.  Spunky little guy.  The rifles didn’t seem to bother it, although it flew off every time I walked out to the targets, then came back after I got prone again.

 This morning I was working on slow prone.  Here’s my last target.  I put 15 from each rifle on it at 200 yards, slow prone, sling only, iron sights.  Counted my best 10 (what’s that old song?  “It’s My Target And I’ll Count How I Want To”).  91/100 with the AR and 80/100 with the M1A.  OK, I think I’m back on center.  I shot the M1A last and I’m a little less consistent with it.  The heavier rifles (this and the Garand) get my tremor going pretty good so by the end of a long string it shows on my target.  Working on building more strength, but so far I haven’t been able to cure it.  I don’t get to shoot with the “60+” guys until next year so I have to keep working on it.

The kids are coming for a week over the 4th… I’ll have to see if I can sneak out to the range some afternoon while they all do girl stuff and get in another couple hours of practice.   Maybe I’ll shoot the next CMP match a little more respectably?

Did you see this at NRA-ILA yesterday?

Effective, July 1, Nevada will no longer recognize Right-to-Carry permits from Utah or Florida.

A lot of folks here in Idaho have Utah concealed carry licenses as well as their Idaho license in order to legally carry in more of our neighboring states. As of next Wednesday though, Nevada once more becomes one of the “illegal zones”, just like the Peoples Republics of California and Oregon. Sigh. Of course, the only thing I used Nevada for was, uh, well, come to think of it I never used it for anything. No loss for me, but I feel sorry for the citizens subjects of HarryReidLand.

Someday, you’ll look at the reciprocity map and the only non-red states will be Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming…

UPDATE:  I received a reminder email from Mr Completely this afternoon, about the Gun Blogger Rendevous in Reno at the end of the summer.  Because of my Sweetie’s ongoing medical stuff (especially that enormous stack of bills) we won’t be going to Reno this year.  But any of you other folks who are going, please remember to check the new laws before you go to Nevada.  It’d be the pits to find out the hard way that the piece of paper in your wallet wasn’t worth anything in Nevada anymore (and I don’t mean the dollar bills).