Any right not exercised is a right lost.  If you do not speak out and address an injustice, you have abridged your freedom of speech.  If you fail to meet your friends for any reason except you don’t want to, you have abridged your freedom of assembly.  Let us say you refuse to file a complaint against a police officer who mistreats you because of fear of reprisal, you have given up your right against unreasonable search and seizure.

This extremely well thought out position on why we should make use of all of our rights was brought to you by Sean D. Sorrentino’s father.  Mr. Sorrentino is apparently becoming more active in the Second Amendment rights movement, and explains his decision to open carry his sidearm.   

From Tam:

Where the hell do you get off thinking you can tell me I can’t own a gun? I don’t care if every other gun owner on the planet went out and murdered somebody last night. I didn’t. So piss off.

What she said!

From JayG, who is Stuck In Massachusetts:

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. And lefty activists.

Jay is referring to the new street in Tehran that is named after an American activist* who learned a tad too late that flesh and blood loses to an earth mover in motion every time.

*activist, moron, Darwin Award winner, whatever.

I looked behind me and saw only one set of footprints. Jesus looked at me and said “The sand people travel single file. To better hide their numbers.” —Salamander, Gunblogger Conspiracy

 ….even when I knew the car had dope, the guy was dirty or whatever, it wasn’t worth my integrity and our rights to cross the line for one bad guy.  — Captain Tightpants in his comments about the Casey Anthony verdict.

I tend to feel about this in the same way I felt about the OJ Simpson verdict.  My gut tells me the accused was guilty, but that the jury was correct in not convicting based on their guts.  Better that a few guilty villains walk free than to see a single innocent man be convicted because the bar was set too low or someone compromised themselves to make a case.  We make things hard for police and prosecutors on purpose.  To paraphrase Alan, only in a police state are things easy for the police.


As always, my thoughts and prayers go out for our police.  As much as I complain about the law and how it’s handled here, I’ve seen way too many places where it’s applied the way the local strongman wants it applied. usually to the detriment of but a few.  The sheer number of good men and women who are willing to give up the better part of their youth in order to keep me and mine safe while we sleep is a testament to the underlying strength of our culture.  There’s a reason the last line in my nightly prayer is “Dear Lord, protect those who protect us.”

Two of these today, dealing with the community response to flooding in my hometown:

“For the rest of the country, that is kind of mind boggling. But … that’s how we are in North Dakota,” –Senator John Hoeven of North Dakota

“It’s one thing to go and visit somebody and stay in their house and enjoy their hospitality for a couple of days. It’s another thing to move in indefinitely and wonder, have we overstayed our welcome?” — Pancoast, Minot North Dakota

The people I grew up with and around are reaching out to one another and helping.  It doesn’t seem to matter if it’s family, friend, or total stranger.  Growing up, the mantra I had pounded into me was “Never ask for help, but never fail to give it without being asked”.

Contrast that to the denizens of New Orleans after Katrina who also had days to prepare, had to be rescued by a massive operation after failing to either leave or provide for themselves, and in some cases had to be removed from ‘temporary’ shelters by court order.


Now imagine what a different picture we would have seen if people from the parts of New Orleans that were not flooded had opened up their homes, garages, trailers, and hearts to the citizens of the flooded portions of the Crescent City.  

If this is the plan that they went with, what plan did we reject?  — John Stewart, Comedy Central’s Daily Show, talking about Operation Fast and Furious 

H/T to John Richardson at No Lawyers – Only Guns and Money 

From Larry Correia, after doing a masterful fisking of an article about people who haven’t made a mortgage payment for years:

I never claimed to be perfect. I claimed to be a grown up.

I may have that translated to Latin and used on my coat of arms.

I’m not naming or linking to the invertebrate. I suspect the resulting Bredalanche has him furiously massaging his prostate with a turnip twaddler while wearing his dead grandmother’s nightgown and sniffing his uncle’s dirty, piss-stained y-fronts in ecstasy. You can find him fairly easily. 

— CalvinsMom, at The Transmogrifier Files writing about this. 

Just for the record, I do this blog under the Creative Commons license.  Of course, you still should attribute anything you take from my pile of brain droppings back here, and if I object to how you’re using it, I’d appreciate it if we could have a rational discussion about it, instead of calling me names.   I promise to reciprocate.

Technology is wonderful, just so long as we keep the retarded politicians (but I repeat myself) out of our business.  Let them shovel shit instead.  With some training in shit shoveling, maybe they could be of some small service to humanity.  I’ve done it.  It can be quite important at times. — Lyle at The View From North Central Idaho

 This, Ladies and Gentlemen, is wisdom for our age.