Posts from — October 2005

My very own state senator, Durrell Peaden, MD [R-Crestview], has introduced legislation to overcome the Communist restrictions placed on gun-toting employees by businesses.

You won’t believe this, but for some reason Disney, Inc. doesn’t want people bringing guns to work, and Durrell and the NRA just can’t stand it.

Now, the proposed law makes employee leave their weapons locked up in their cars, but business are not allowed to force employees to leave them at home.

After being sued following workplace shootings, a number of businesses around the country have enacted policies that make it grounds for dismissal for an employee to bring a firearm on to the company’s property.

I don’t guess we have any problems that are more pressing in the state.

Let’s be clear on this point: the oil companies have been shutting down refineries for a decade. They haven’t tried to build any new refineries. The oil companies are responsible for the lack of refineries – not taxes, not regulations, not environmentalists – the oil companies. From the point of view of an oil company, more refining capacity means competition, which results in lower corporate profits.

If you know anyone who had to leave a pet behind in the affected area, both Pet Finder and Pet Harbor have searchable data bases of the rescued animals.

With over 600 confirmed deaths and another 1400 possible, hurricane Stan has managed to spread death and destruction through central America with heavy rains that caused flooding and mud slides.

An earthquake centered near Muzaffarabad, Pakistan may have killed as many as 3,000 people in Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan. The shallow magnitude 7.6 quake was felt from Delhi to Kabul and flattened entire villages.

Multiple aftershocks continue with some in the magnitude 5 and 6 range, which has caused people to stay out of buildings and in the street in spite of rain in the area.

[Editor: Warning Flash cartoon]
* fiore – Italian flower

That trailer is sitting on cleared ground that is going to erode in the rain; it isn’t tied down; it doesn’t have enough blocks under it. Someone is going to get hurt, and no one should be in it during a thunderstorm.

Level 3 wants a competitor to raise its price for data, so they are blocking traffic. That smacks of anti-competitive behavior similar to price fixing, and is definitely anti-Internet behavior, which should result in customers dumping Level 3.

There are rules that have nothing to do with government agencies. These rules are enforced by people honoring them and dealing with people who don’t by boycott.

™ ^{[Kevin Drum]}

The New Chair

Well, it’s okay, and a bit larger, but more testing is needed.

[Editor: Dot tests the new computer chair…everytime I get up.]

Friday Ark

A small wireless Internet provider, a networking class at the Naval Postgraduate School, and techies from all over managed to re-connect people while millions of dollars worth of government equipment sits gathering dust in warehouses.

Off-the-shelf you can get a satellite Internet connection for your RV. This is electronic so a solar-charged battery system can easily power it if nothing else is available.

FEMA had this kind of thing in a trailer that they towed in when they responded under Witt.

A trial court is venue at which the Facts are established. It is the lowest level of courts and the beginning point of all legal disputes. This is the one and only time that the facts are subject to scrutiny.

The Appellate Courts deal with the law and procedures in a case.

You cannot appeal a conviction because you are innocent, if a trial court has ruled you are guilty, you have to show that there was an error in the interpretation of the law or the procedures used in the trial. Appellate Courts don’t review the facts in a case beyond determining whether those facts were legally obtained.

This difference becomes important when you are looking at qualifications for judges. Just because someone is a good lawyer or a good trial court judge is not predictive of how they will perform as an Appellate Court judge.

The Supreme Court is only bound by the Constitution. While they talk about stare decisis, the Supreme Court is not obligated to abide by previous decisions. The Supreme Court is the most cerebral of courts and the least practical. The justices’ intellectual world is a construct based on a document written over two hundred years ago in a language that has undergone many changes. This is environment that is not kind to apprentices, nor to intellectual pretenders.

Happy! Happy! Joy! Joy! to one and all!

A small point of correction – if you read the labels and warnings you would already know this stuff was poisonous, acidic, caustic, or otherwise not suitable for ingestion. You can create your own little Haz Mat emergency by carelessly throwing something under the sink or practicing free-form chemistry experiments by mixing the contents of two bottle to increase the speed of cleaning the shower.

Obviously planned to prevent us from saying deeply insightful things about Harriet Miers, a woman who gave up a promising legal career to become a nanny. Now she is being cast out to the cold, cruel world to start over making a measly $194K+ per annum for the rest of her life. The inhumanity of it all!