A friend of SayUncle has been arrested, presumably on firearms charges, supposedly mostly on the say-so of his ex-wife. The pro-gun bias over at SayUncle is thick, and sometimes difficult to sift through for those who don’t agree politically, but if the stories he’s conveying are true, it’s still troubling.
For those of you not inclined to support gun rights, make the subject in question something other than guns and gun parts — for example, grow lights, books on growing plants and herbs indoors, etc. And recall that while you might not like many of the activities, most of them (possibly all of them) are still legal. Gun activists are known for pushing the envelope on legality in these areas, but most of the ones I know (including family members) are exceptionally careful about it, and I’m not sure they deserve quite that sort of intrusion (even if I still think the “jackbooted thug” rhetoric is a bit heavy-handed).
I’m reserving judgment until I have more details, but initially (assuming the stories are true), what’s going on looks an awful lot like a fishing expedition, at the spiteful behest of a bitter ex.
UPDATE: As it turns out, it looks like the friend in question turns out to have a felony conviction on his record. That would make all of his gun activities illegal. Looks like they’ve dropped the machine gun charges, but the felony thing means that the guy is pretty much screwed. To his credit, Uncle has apologized for raising the alarms prematurely, and has returned any money that people had donated.
March 24th, 2006
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Legal Issues |
no comments
This week, a Selmer preacher was found shot dead, apparently by his wife; and a Memphis couple that has been missing since March 15 has reportedly been found dead, apparently brutally murdered.
Condolences go out to the families, and especially to the children of the Selmer minister. I can’t imagine learning that Daddy’s dead, and Mommy killed him, especially at that young age.
March 24th, 2006
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News & Current Events |
3 comments
E. J. Dionne has a great insight into Bush’s bizarrely distanced take on his own administration’s ineptness.
March 24th, 2006
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General, Politics, Culture |
one comment
So the WaPo hired a 24 year old former Bush administration official to write a blog to apparently balance Dan Froomkin, a reporter who is occasionally sarcastic towards power. And since the GOP represents power right now, that must mean he is a damn, dirty, liberal. Turns out, though, that not only is the blogger probably a racist, he is most certainly a serial plagiarizer. The question now is how could they have not noticed all these things? Probably because they did not look.
Jim Brady appears to hate the liberal blogoshpere. Firedoglake lead a charge to get their ombudsmen to retract a false statement (something that still ha snot happened on the original post) and Brady went ballistic — even going so far as to invite one of the Firedoglake members to an online chat, stack it with right wingers, and allow a personal attack against her through the filters. I suspect, that this hire was just another example of the pettiness of Jim Brady. Brady went and found the most partisan blogger he could without drifting into LGF territory. The facts that he was a former Bush official and had nothing approaching the resume that would normally be required to work for an organ like the Post were just icing on the cake. I can practically see Brady rubbing his hands in glee and cackling when he came up with the hire. The fact that he was hiring a conservative blogger without doing the same for the left end of the spectrum was bad enough, but hiring this guy in particular would just rub the insult in. Jim Brady wasn’t going to be lectured to by any no-good liberals, by gum!
That is really the only answer that makes sense. I just cannot see how a quality organization falls down so horribly on the job and hires someone with so few credentials and such an obvious record of plagiarism - unless the hire was pushed through from above. It wouldn’t even surprise me if Brady knew of the history of personal attacks and what appear to be racists comment sin the blogger’s record. All the better to rile up the lefties, eh?
There were two ways that Post could have dealt with the Howell flare up. They could have acknowledged the problem and revised their policies and procedures to prevent it form happening again. Or they could have done what it appears that Brady did: allow his sense of ego get in the way. From the start, Brady tried to smear all the critics as vile and vulgar and baseless. As mentioned, he already went out of his ay to try and personally humiliate one of the people who kept pressing the Post on its response to the factual problems with Howell’s columns. And now it appears that he could very well have hired a plagiarist and a racist in his overwhelming desire to stick it to the liberals who would dare question him. The first way would have left the Post with more respect and its reputation intact.
The second way, well, we can see what the second way has apparently done.
March 24th, 2006
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Media |
14 comments
This is disgusting:
Former first lady Barbara Bush donated an undisclosed amount of money to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund with specific instructions that the money be spent with an educational software company owned by her son Neil.
Since then, the Ignite Learning program has been given to eight area schools that took in substantial numbers of Hurricane Katrina evacuees.
How slimy can you get? How do you get to the point where you are so ammoral and unethical that you don’t realize this is wrong?
March 24th, 2006
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Politics |
42 comments
