Well, it’s been 3 years since I started letting the voices in my head fill up these blog pages.  Almost 1350 posts, and almost 1300 comments in 3 years isn’t too shabby.  I have no idea how many people have been here since I started this in 2008, but the number of daily visits is slowly but steadily climbing, so I must be doing something right. Or you all are stopping in to see what the freak is up to. Either way, I’m having a good time.

Since I started doing this, I’ve moved one kid out of the house, continued at my day job, and somehow stayed sane.  BooBoo is now a little bruiser that is running us ragged, Girlie Bear is about to become a teenage girl, Little Bear starts high school at the end of the summer.  Irish Woman has been through 4 companies but kept the same job.

I’ve met a lot of really good people through this blog and the GBC, and I’ve even met a few in the real world.  I’ve become friends with people from the other side of the globe, and I’ve gained a lot of new perspectives from reading y’all’s work.

For all that, and for putting up with my rants, ramblings, whines, and especially my bad jokes, thank you.

The Supreme Court today made a pretty interesting ruling in regards to where federal power ends and the power of the states begins.  The Justices specifically mentioned that an international treaty should not be the basis for restricting a citizen’s rights:

But the Supreme Court, in a unanimous opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, said Bond “has standing to challenge the federal statute on grounds that the measure interferes with the powers reserved to states. … (A lawyer appointed to defend the law, once the administration withdrew) contends that for Bond to argue the national government has interfered with state sovereignty in violation of the 10th Amendment is to assert only a state’s legal rights and interests. But in arguing that the government has acted in excess of the authority that federalism defines, Bond seeks to vindicate her own constitutional interests.”
Kennedy said, “The statute … was enacted to comply with a treaty; but (Bond) contends that, at least in the present instance, the treaty cannot be the source of congressional power to regulate or prohibit her conduct.”

I’m not a lawyer, and I’m sure that someone with a lot more knowledge of the law and how this decision will be interpreted and applied has more insight into this.  But to me this says that the Supreme Court unanimously believes in a distinct limit on the federal government’s power under the 10th Amendment.  It also limits how a treaty can be used against us.

There’s been a lot of talk about how the 10th Amendment is dead, and for sure it’s not as robust as it could be.  But a unanimous decision, including justices appointed by the current administration, just affirmed that there is still some life in the old girl.  That could have a lot of ramifications.

Also, there’s been a lot of shouting about the U.N. treaty on small arms and how it could be used as a back door to force through gun control legislation.  The Supreme Court seems to have shot that down before it became a problem.  If a law based on an international treaty for chemical weapons can’t be used against someone who chemically burns someone, then it would seem to me that an international treaty that restricts the private ownership, shipment, and sale of firearms could not be used as the basis for gun control laws that curtail our 2nd Amendment rights.

I’m looking forward to seeing analysis from someone who knows what they’re talking about, and to see how this is applied.

Fox News is reporting that Apple Computers has filed for a patent for a system that would automatically disable the camera portion of their devices at public events.  Basically, if someone doesn’t want you taking a photo or a video of something, they put up special infrared sensors.  The system notices the Apple device, and instructs it to shut down its camera.  The proposed use of the system would be for concerts and such where photography isn’t supposed to be happening. 

My guess is that if this is shown to be effective, you’ll see similar systems in other mobile devices.  And then you’ll see these things mounted on a lot of things that people don’t want you to take pictures or video of:

• A police cruiser
• A policeman’s equipment belt
• TSA checkpoints
• Political speeches
• And basically anywhere that non-controlled media have taken pictures and video of government officials that are embarrassing

Sorry, Apple, but I refuse to buy a device that has a remote kill switch in its functionality.  Yes, I know, it already has one, and Apple can brick my iPhone anytime it wants to.  But to give that ability to any jackboot who wants to make sure there is less evidence of wrongdoing is out of bounds.

Thanks, but no thanks. If this functionality is in any of the future Apple mobile devices, I’ll go with someone else.  Closed systems and liberal politics I can take. Giving anyone else control over what my device can and can’t do?  Not so much.

Cracked has a good round up on the horrors of moving yourself, and I have to say that I not only laughed at what they wrote, but also at the memories of every family move we made when I was growing up.

My step-dad worked for the Air Force as a civilian until he got fired for chronic stupidity.  After he and my mother got married when I was 13, we moved 7 times by my 17th  birthday.  Since there was money to be made in moving yourself at the .gov’s expense, all of these except one were done by putting everything we owned into his RV, his Jeep CJ-5 on a hitch, and the back of my mother’s station wagon, securing it all with strapping tape, then wedging the cats, dogs, and kids into the back of the RV and driving like a madman to get wherever we were headed.

Of course, the sentence in the article that really caught my eye in the Cracked article was this:

Buy a folding chair, a packet of no-doze and a gun. Camp out in front of your moving van; shoot everybody that looks like they need a shower.

You see, my introduction to handguns was my stepfather parking the family caravan behind the seedy hotel we were staying the night at, taking me to the construction area in the next lot over, letting me fire a few rounds from his .41 Magnum revolver, then putting me on guard duty next to the RV for the night.  What he expected to tell the cops if my 16 year old self had put a couple of rounds into the interesting characters who stopped by during the night is beyond me.  I did this for the 3 nights it took to drive from Grand Forks, North Dakota, to Pittsburgh, California.  By the last night in Lake Tahoe, I was ready to do anything that got me arrested, because at least I could sleep in jail.


Needless to say, as an adult, I have been resistant to any idea that included me using a U-Haul.  Every move I’ve ever done was done with a moving service, and I’ve never regretted it or fussed about the expense.  

Scientists are now predicting that solar activity may be low for the next decade or so.  They believe that this will cause lower global temperatures, with all of the consequences such a thing can bring.

Forgive me if I don’t panic.

When I was a child, the ice age was on its way back.  As a teenager, we were all going to die in a post-apocalyptic nuclear winter.  As an adult, I was told that the planet would grow so warm that millions would starve from the drought and coastal flooding.

Now we’re back to lower than normal temps.

I’ll wait until I start to see blizzards in May again, and the Ohio freezes solid enough to walk on before I start to give credence to this new theory.