Corollary to The Rules of a Gunfight: Don't bring a hatchet to a gun fight.

I heard the following on tonight's Marketplace, and I consider it a good reminder to know your sources.

So, there's a publication called CFO Magazine. Every year, it gives out Excellence Awards to truly exemplary CFOs. Listen to who got the CFO Magazine Excellence Awards in 1998, 1999 and 2000: the WorldCom guy, the Enron guy, followed by the Tyco guy. And, what name was among the winners in 2001? Kenneth Lonchar, the former Veritas Software CFO without a Stanford MBA. But wait, there's more: CFO's Excellence Awards in 2001 were sponsored by accountants Arthur Andersen.

Figuring we had a leading indicator on our hands, we looked into the 2002 winners, but could find no record. A call to CFO Magazine confirmed its awards competition is on hiatus and may need to be retooled.

I know I have at least one occasional reader at the LA Times. This post if for you. If you have any influence whatsoever, and you want to help your employer out in a way that could make a hero out of you, work towards getting Tony Pierce hired to do an LA blog.

Totally off topic web weirdness. Some eBay users have been on the system so long that when you try to see when they first signed up, the system always reports today.

DC residents are taking to the streets to celebrate the capture of the sniper.

I suppose it is inevitable that when so many different agencies are involved in an arrest that someone will go to the press to air their dirty laundry.

 

Separated at Birth?

<--- May already be your Senator.              

                    May already be dead. --->

After taking a week off to "rest" The Daily Probe returns full force. I won't give away as much as I usually do, but I have to share my favorite headline with readers who just won't follow this link. Headline:

• Belafonte: Sniper Not Really Black, Either

But I thought that drinking alcohol was against Sharia.

When people ask me why I never bothered to practice, I will simply tell them to read this. It jives pretty well with the experiences I've heard from all my friends that went to work for big firms.

Will the last Republican to leave California please remember to safely turn off any remaining operational powerplants.

Big S Blog has a post equating the showdown over Iraq to a game of Texas Hold'em that is a good read. (And don't miss his post above about Rounders I would add that Croupier is another very good gambling movie, though it deals more with table games than it does with poker.)

[The information disclosed in this post was discovered below the redacting marks on The Washington Post's copy of the sniper's letter expressing frustration at the lack of communications. The letter was made available as a .pdf file. The Post, however, did not take into consideration the fact that Acrobat builds page files up out of layers, and does not produce a final flat file incuding just what is visible once the document has been fully rendered. You can see the underlying information by zooming into and out of the covered areas. On a slow enough PC, like mine, the original, non-redacted image of the letter shows up before the redacting stripes.

The Post redacted the letter by placing black stripes over text it did not want to publish, but it failed to remove the information fully from the underlying images. Through its incomplete understanding of how this common piece of software functions, the Post violated its promise to JLF and effectively released her name for all the world to see.

This looks like a good item for comp.risks.]

The credit card to which the snipers wanted money transferred was in the name of "Jill Lynn Farrell"? Who the heck is Jill Lynn Farrell? She had an account with Bank of America since 1974, so she should be at least in her mid 40's.

Anywho lists one Jill Farrell in Virginia, none in Maryland and none in Washington.

Lexis/Nexis lists no occurrences of "Jill Lynn Farrell" anywhere in the news file.

Ideas? [Link to sniper letter via QuasiPundit via InstaPundit.]

UPDATE: FORGET IT, my question was already answered. She is a bus driver who had her purse stolen a while back. Too bad the Post didn't really keep her anonymous.

CNN just can't miss an opportunity to demonize the cosmetic characteristics of certain rifles. In the linked article, CNN makes a point of mentioning that

The Chevrolet Caprice used by the sniper suspects was a "killing machine" with two holes in the trunk, one for the rifle, the other for the scope, ...

yet the graphic shows a typically scary looking idealized AR-15 with a carrying handle instead of a scope. If reports are correct, the rifle used in the shooting is a Bushmaster XM-15E2S A3, a weapon that, when equipped with a scope, does not have a carrying handle. I think the graphic portrays a carrying handle solely because that is how most people identify "scarier than normal" rifles, and if the graphic showed an AR with a low-mounted scope instead of the handle it would appear to be little more than a flat-black deer rifle.

Hell, maybe it is the carrying handle that scares the liberals the most, as it reminds them that weapons can be carried, and the carrying handle evokes images of "bearing arms" against an over-reaching state.

On a more technical note, the graphic is also misleading because it shows the form of an AR with full length handguards. The weapon that Muhammed used was of the "shorty" variety, having only a 16" barrel and the smaller, carbine sized handguards as seen in this Yahoo photo, though the description given in the Washington Times article above suggests that the rifle does not have a collapsible stock. Note also how the AR shown has no carrying handle.

Another obese airline passenger update, this one from Canada, eh?

The Canadian Transportation Agency has dismissed the complaint of an obese Calgary woman who argued her size was a disability and that airlines shouldn't make her pay extra for a larger seat. "Being unable to fit in a seat should not be enough evidence of the existence of a disability as many people experience discomfort in the seat," the agency said in a decision released Wednesday.

Calgary law professor Linda McKay-Panos, who described herself in documents as "morbidly obese," launched the process in 1997 after having to pay Air Canada for 1.5 seats because of her size.

Or, of course, it could be that the sniper is the otter and law enforcement is the duck. It's late and I'm cashing out for the night.

Quick summary where next two posts are going. Chief Moose's reading of the "like a duck in a noose" reference, through a quick googling of "duck, noose" lead me to a Cherokee story.

It is the story of a trickster, a boastful rabbit, who attempts to persuade an otter that he is capable of doing any task as well as anyone else. The rabbit attempts to hunt ducks as well as an otter hunts ducks, but after placing a noose over a duck's neck, the rabbit gets carried aloft by the startled duck. The rabbit falls into a tall stump, gets trapped there for a while, and then has to eat its own fur to survive while stuck in the stump. Eventually the rabbit tricks some children (and in some tellings their father) to cut a hole in the side of the stump, convincing the humans that it is a beautiful creature to look upon. Once the hole is created, the rabbit darts to freedom.

The analogy here seems obvious to the current situation. The rabbit, (sniper), slipped a noose over a duck and got picked up, (hunted civilians then placed on news all over world), then fell into a deep stump(feels trapped by current dragnet), had to eat its own fur(not sure about this element, not a perfect analogy), then finally escaped through trickery(sniper's dreams of escaping).

UPDATE:So, will the rabbits now sing with their pretty voices and gain their freedom? I wonder if this was a veiled threat to escape, or legal trickery?

Other tellings:

Here, here and here.

The Cherokee version is fairly close, but features Rabbit as the trickster figure. The story begins with an account of how Rabbit tricked Otter into thinking that he could do many of the unique things that Otter could do. Once he decided to catch some ducks the way Otter did, only he took a noose and made a sub-aquatic approach to his prey. "... he came up among the ducks and threw the noose over the head of one and caught it. The duck struggled hard and finally spread its wings and flew up from the water with the Rabbit hanging on to the noose. It flew on and on until at last the Rabbit could not hold on any longer, but had to let go and drop. As it happened, he fell into a tall, hollow sycamore stump without any hole at the bottom to get out from, and there he stayed until he was so hungry that he had to eat his own fur, as the rabbit does ever since when he is starving. After several days, when he was very weak with hunger, he heard children playing outside around the trees. He began to sing:

Cut a door and look at me;
I'm the prettiest thing you ever did see.

The children ran home and told their father, who came and began to cut a hole in tree. As he chopped away the Rabbit inside kept singing, 'Cut it larger, so you can see me better; I'm so pretty.' They made the hole larger, an then the Rabbit told them to stand back so that they could take a good look as he came out. They stood away back, and the Rabbit watched his chance and jumped out and got away."

All grammatical errors as in the version found here.

The Rabit, the Otter, and Duck Hunting.
As told by The Warrior based on James Mooney


The Rabbit was known far and wide for his boastful nature. To hear him tell it, he could do what anyone else could do. He was so good at this that he even was able to convince the Otter that he could catch and eat fish just as
good as him.

Now time went by, and the Otter meet the Rabbit again. Now it just so happen that the Otter was still a bit miffed about the fish. He had a plan to expose the Rabbit. The Otter looked at the Rabbit, and said to him. "You know, I sometimes eat Duck too!" So off to the river they went and found seven ducks, which they every so quietly were able to sneak up on. "You go first", cried the Rabbit, to which the Otter quickly slid into the water. He quickly was able to drag a duck under and return to the Rabbit unseen.

Now the Rabbit had not just been standing around watching. While the Otter was otherwise occupied, he had been striping bark from near by sapling and making himself a noose. He looked at the Otter when he returned and said, "OK, that is great, watch me!", and off he took into the water. Now the Rabbit did not have anywhere near the ability in water that the Otter had. And it was a struggle for him to reach the ducks un-noticed, but he managed to do so and came up among the remaining six ducks. He quickly fastened his noose around the neck of the closest duck. Startled, the duck began to struggle to get away and finally took of on his wings and dragged the Rabbit out of the water after him. Now it was the Rabbits turn to be startled. And boy was he. He held on to the noose and was taken high into the air. Higher and higher he went. All of a sudden, he lost his grip on the noose and down he fell into the middle of a old hollow Sycamore tree with out a hole in the bottom to get out.

Now the Rabbit was in a fix. He stayed in there so long that he had to start eating his own fur, as rabbits still do to this day when the are starved. Then one day, he heard some children playing and he began to sing in a weak little voice. The song he sang went like this. "Cut a hole and see me, I am the prettiest thing you ever did see"

Soon the children had returned with on of the fathers who cut a who so that the Rabbit could get out. He told them to stand back and see, and out he ran and took his leave.

I've come across rumors that the shooter might be an (part?)American-Indian. If the moccasin fits.

President Bush's high-tech backdrops are back and they still creep me out.

Could this be the missing French marksman?

I'm sure that this has been brought up in the past few weeks, but wasn't the sniper in Navy Seals called "God"?

And I thought I was cynical.

The Baltimore Sun offers all sorts of good details on the sniper related events of yesterday. It is reporting that the hard to understand message is due to the message to police being delivered via a pre-recorded tape played from a pay phone.[Link via Unqualified Offerings.]

There's something darkly funny about a DC media-introspective piece being titled "I Love Gridlock!" on yet another day in DC where the traffic is screwed all to hell by the events of a media hyper-sensationalized serial shooter.

More random thoughts:

On Sunday night, when Chief Moose first made his cryptic announcement about having the shooter call police at the number he gave them my first thought was that the shooter dropped a cell phone off at one of the shootings. My wife's theory was that the shooter provided the phone number to a voice mail box, along with the access code, providing a virtual dead-drop. I expanded this theory to include free-mail voice mail boxes, as offered by several web-companies, and many personals ads. In addition to offering anonymous/pseudonymous set-up, such systems offer the advantage of having many phone calls coming into a central number, providing cover for the sniper's call, before being split out to individual mailboxes.

Given the MCPD's latest announcement about garbled audio, I am liking her theory more and more.

UPDATE: My wife adds the following, "Message may have been hard to understand due to a bad recording, or DUE TO A THICK FOREIGN ACCENT from a shooter whose first language is not english."

It's been a long time, but I must again visit the topic of flying fatties. This time, however, the trouble isn't with the hurt feelings of some flying fatty, but with real physical damage caused to a woman shoved under her obese seatmate for an eleven hour tour of hell under a fatty.

Virgin Atlantic has paid a woman passenger £13,000 (US$20,289) compensation, after she was squashed by an obese person who sat next to her on a transatlantic flight.

Barbara Hewson, from Swansea, south Wales, suffered injuries including a blood clot in her chest, torn leg muscles and acute sciatica and remains in pain two years on.

The obese passenger had only been able to fit into her seat by raising the arm rest, which meant her body parts weighed down on Mrs Hewson.

Tips for flying fatties from NAAFA, which explicity recommend raising the armrest to screw your seatmate.

[From More Room Throughout Coach ]

Taking a page from the Jim Toricelli handbook, Amtrak has decided to withdraw its service guarantee program after it was unable to meet target customer service goals over the last two years.

The AP is reporting that a SWAT team has a white van surrounded in the Richmond Area (headline here, but linked story has different title, no more info. Of course, SWAT teams surrounding white vans has gotten to be a regular sighting in the DC area, so this might me another false alarm, but I hope it is the real thing.

Well, winter is coming early to the North this year.

Perhaps the sniper is just heading south for the winter. (And yes, I am aware of the "duck" joke/pun possibility using the crouch/water fowl meanings of the word in the context of a sniper heading south for the winter.)

Might the DC shooter be a bicycle biathlete.

Police were also investigating the possibility the shooter may have used a bicycle and toted his weapon in a backpack to and from the scene, a law-enforcement official at the scene said on condition of anonymity.

See also this post at FR.

My friend's daughter and another girl were jogging about 3 miles away from where the woman was shot at Home Depot in Fairfax. A bicycle rider with a rifle stock sticking out of his backpack passed them by. They stopped cold and stared at him. They called police and gave a full description. Shortly after the woman was shot. This could well be the guy and that means the police can create a full description.

A 16" barrel AR-15's longest dimension is just under 26" when broken into upper and lower assemblies. A Thompson Contender pistol (or carbine) is quite a bit smaller than that.

It could just be me, but I think that Reuters left a few K's out of this designer's name.

Spiking the Bell Curve.

Clayton Cramer discusses a disturbing increase in profound autism in California, as reported in the NY Times and Wired.

Quick summary: High tech enclaves draw together concentrations of high-functioning people, some of whom might have autistic tendancies, leading to an increase of profoundly autistic children. Historically such people did not find mates, but that is changing with the growth of geek on geek love.

A band of camoflage clad, rifle-bearing men stopped 280 pounds of pot from coming North across the US-Mexico border. Local law enforcement isn't happy with their actions, though, because the armed men don't belong to any police union. Link

Estrada questioned the approximately 18-hour lapse between the time the smugglers dropped the initial load and the time the Sheriff's Department was notified. He also questioned why Ranch Rescue members moved the bundles from the spots they were dropped to a place near the ranch house.

"Obviously they wanted the impact of this particular event to reflect favorably on their presence, and they wanted the media there before we got there," Estrada said. "It could have been handled much better."

And by that I take it to mean that the Sheriff could have gotten much better media coverage.

For some reason this story reminds me of Super Troopers, and I just have to wonder if the land owner or law enforcement don't like anyone busting mules from their team.

"Hank Hill" writes a witty attack on the sham diversity in The City of Evil entitled "Diversify THIS." The piece is short, and it is worth reading in its entirety, but here is my favorite part

Don’t believe me? Just ask the liberals. Even the Ithaca Times has picked up on the “no republicans welcome in Ithaca” vibe. In their recent “Welcome to Ithaca” issue they advised newcomers: “If you are Republican, get a thick skin. Ithaca has been liberal for about as long as anyone can remember, and …Republicans usually have a hard time here.”

In other words, even the liberals are admitting we are a minority.

Which got me thinking some more.

As any good liberal can tell you, minorities are always repressed and discriminated against by the majority. So, obviously, we aren’t just a minority. We are a REPRESSED minority.

White van drivers in DC facing suspicion from fellow motorists.

Suddenly, everyone driving a white van around the nation’s capital, especially one with a ladder rack on the roof, is being treated like Public Enemy No. 1.
...
The day police fingered a van with a ladder rack, “I had a lot of people give me funny looks,” said electrician Jim Mollenauer, who drives one. He even had a colleague ride with him to a Home Depot to experience the suspicious looks.
...
Then when police added white vans to the lookout list - not quite like Byrne’s, but close enough - Byrne found herself on the other side of suspicion. As she dropped her two sons at her mother’s townhouse, two neighbors stared at her, muttering.

“I was annoyed because I thought `Why is she staring at me?”’ Byrne recalled. Her husband told her it was the van. “I’m very aware of people looking at me now in the white van.”

The Corner revisits a NY Times editorial from 1994:

Diplomacy with North Korea has scored a resounding triumph. Monday's draft agreement freezing and then dismantling North Korea's nuclear program should bring to an end two years of international anxiety and put to rest widespread fears that an unpredictable nation might provoke nuclear disaster.

It gets worse after that, or better, if you enjoy seeing liberals being exposed as fools.

I may have misheard it, but I think I heard Congressman Jim McDermott (Idiotarian-Washington) speaking from Pyongyang last night on CNN about how we can trust Kim Jong Il.

I said it the other day on an FR thread and I will say it again here:

[Another poster]For some reason, officials and the media seem loath to tie these types of things together.

That reason: The coming national elections.

The media loathes tying this to terrorism because they fear it will drive voters to pull the lever for Republicans as a show of support for President Bush. [and the Bush Doctrine.]

I have no doubt that their tune will change after election day.

Now, why the police aren't talking about it, I don't know. I do know, from having lived there for a few years in the late 1990's, that Montgomery County Maryland is just about as liberal a place as you can find below the Mason-Dixon Line. I'm not willing to ascribe political motivations to the MCPD just yet.

I knew that the 13 year old boy sniper victim was saved by his aunt's quick thinking, but she was just one of many heroes that day.

I don't want to give away too much of Monday's Daily Probe, but its headlines kick ass.

• Helsinki Shopping Center Rocked by Explosion, Twisted Sister
• Bill Maher Calls D.C. Sniper "Courageous"
• Brolin Nearly Ready to Relinquish Money Over Streisand Dumbfuckery
• Rumsfeld Congratulates Carter on Winning "Nobel Wuss Prize"

There's more, a lot more, and it's worth checking out. (Sadly, no "News from Travistan" this week.)

As much as I loathe crappy public indroctinationeducation, I have hope for the future. I heard a piece on Morning Edition about a taste-testing of new school cafeteria menu items being conducted with a 5th grade class in Fairfax, VA. The kid's were brilliant, savvy, media-aware, capable of critically evaluating a situation and not afraid to express potentially unpopular opinions.

I doubt that they learned this any of this at school, at least not in the 5th grade. I figure kids are learning a lot of high end skills and information off of the web. A lot.

Example: I support a lot of my friends' and co-workers' PC's, VCR's, stereos, TV's ... you get the idea. I'm the tech guy, the engineer, the fixer and the installer.

Anyway, I got a call the other day for help from one of my coworker's kids, an eleven year old who had a question about setting up their wireless network. A good question. A high level question. A question I really had to think about to answer. A question that told me he really got it.

There is hope.

Hope for the next generation. Hope for the future.

Hope that we aren't going to lose entire generations to the squishy, fell-good pap offered up by soccer moms and NEAcolytes.

Hope that little up-and-comers will grow back the spines that government schools have been surgically removing since kindergarten. Hope that we might see future citizens who have more in common with our parents than they have with their parents.

Hope. A rare emotion on this page, for sure, but not a lost one.

OK, so I added the stains to the page, but the crossed out and fixed Zip+4 is real, as is the twice-folded, crumpled, bent, spindled and mutilated look of the paper on which the address is printed.

That pretty much sums up the investigation so far, though it might be appropriate to add some mustard stains to the Chief's shirt collar. Oh, that's right, he doesn't have a collar.

[Under normal circumstances will the Post Office even deliver mail to an address that has not so much as a name, "resident" or "current occupant" as part of the address?]

Iowa Workers Find 11 Bodies in Grain Rail Car

He said the rail car had been in Matamoros, Mexico just across the border from Brownsville, Texas, and had entered the United States on June 15. The car was held in Oklahoma until it arrived in Denison on Oct. 13.

A rail equivalent to Asians in container ships.

The Modesto Bee has a short article on a successful "Star-Wars" interception of a Minuteman II.

The Washington Times had an updated piece on the Houston MACFU last week.

HOUSTON — One of the biggest mass arrests in this city's history — 273 persons hauled in during a predawn raid in mid-August — has turned into a financial and emotional trauma for local law enforcement.

The police chief might go to prison for perjury. The captain who led the raid might eventually be fired. Twelve other officers have been relieved of duty. And the city faces millions in potential legal costs.

The 5,300-man Houston Police Department is in turmoil, many aligning themselves behind either Capt. Mark Aguirre or Police Chief Clarence Bradford.

Also, the Houston Chronicle did a piece a few weeks ago detailing the growing number of civil suits that the city faces by victims of the MACFU.

Senior Assistant City Attorney Robert Cambrice said the city has not been served with any of the lawsuits filed so far. He could not estimate what the liability for the city could be.

"Each case has to stand on its own," Cambrice said. "If a person claims to see a doctor or psychiatrist over this and other factors."

He added, "But no one was beaten, shot or clubbed."

Except perhaps Senior Assistant City Attorney Robert Cambrice, after his boss learned of the stupid things he was willing to say to a Chronicle reporter.

Unqualified Offerings Action Item

UO has a theory that the DC shooter has a (retail) work schedule that keeps him/her busy on weekends. UO provides a timeline of the shootings, and is asking managers in the DC area to compare the timeline to their work records from the past few weeks.

It would be pretty easy to discover if searched, but I wonder if an Astro would fit inside one of those Mitsubishi/Isuzu high cubes?

Yet again the DC sniper has struck in a place that I frequented when I lived in the DC area. I used to enjoy seeing "local" news of DC, it gave me a connection to my first home city as an adult. Now, from CT, news of DC just makes me worry about my friends and family that still live & work there.

Authorities, Deluged With Sniper Tips, Set Up Post Office Box

Great, I hope the Unabomber isn't reading this. Or the anthrax mailer.

Neighbors to the north?

On at least two occasions since the beltway sniper started terrorizing DC area residents, sports reporters at the Calgary (Alberta) Sun used "sniper" as descriptive praise for sporting acumen.

Quick, somebody get President Bush the news, he can't go to war against Iraq. He doesn't have the support of Lucas Shapiro!

Ithaca College student Lucas Shapiro told the crowd that the college's Student Government Association last week voted by a 3-1 margin to approve a resolution opposing a preemptive military strike on Iraq, on the heels of a similar resolution passed by Ithaca's Common Council.

It is acknowledged by the snipers at Sniper Country that the .223 is adequate for urban sharpshooting, except for shots that need to be taken through glass.

The D.C. sniper's (snipers') first shot hit not a person, but a window of a crafts store. Is there a message here? The internet experts on the art (craft?) of sniping make a point that .223 is not suitable for shots to be made through windows. The D.C. Sniper's first shot, presumably taken with a .223, passes through a window hurting no one, at a craft store.

So far as we know, not a single shot has 'missed' its mark since that first shot. Was that first shot truly off its mark?

Pure speculation time

Why no snipings on weekends?

• Religious observance.
• Poor work ethic.
• Lack of access to vehicle on weekend
• Out of town nookie runs.
• Lack of traffic to use as a cover.
• Football fanatic can't peel self away from TV.
• Allowing prey to get lulled back into a false sense of security.
• Sniper(s) has a weekend job.
• Travels extensively on weekend e-savers.
• Has to watch all the shows TIVO'ed while out sniping.
• Tend to "Honey do" list.
• Jet-cars, funny-cars, race-cars.
• Goes home on weekends to do laundry at parents.
• Appearing in community theatre production of "The Mikado."

More bizarre firearms that fire .224 diameter bullets:

A Glock 20 modified to fire the propietary .224 BOZ, a round designed to defeat body armor.

Remington XP-100, available in .223

Thompson Contender, available in .223

I made this one in response to an FR Thread about how Ol' Leaky put the kibosh on Senator Thurmond's hopes to have U.S. District Court Judge Dennis Shedd raised to the appellate bench.

[Based upon the Democrat's "Social Insecurity" flash-ad.]

Bob Strauss, a reader of Clayton Cramer's Blog, has a very creative theory on the appearance of white van's at so many of the D.C. area snipings.

While Fox News "breathlessly describes" the existence of (link courtesy Kim DuToit), Sniper Country responds:

For those new visitors of the site as a result of media attention, those who are "shocked" that something like this can exist, you need to become a little more educated on the shooting sports before you waste your efforts emailing vitriolic garbage [to] those who dedicate their time to the site. We understand your current mental plight and we share your anger over the current situation, but you show your ignorance when you spout vehemence at us because Sniper Country exists. The information found here on Sniper Country can be found in many places; historical works, novels, and factual articles on military and law enforcement sniping efforts. Most of all, the information found within can be read in any work dealing with long range competitive target shooting or learned at any range. There is no secrets to shooting at long distance nor is there any threat by posting this information. Any hunter or competitive shooter is able to hit a target at distance. But only a psychopath would go forth to harm his fellow citizens as is currently happening in Maryland. If you are one of those weak-minded individuals who are unable to differentiate between the tool and the person pulling the trigger, you are also most likely one of those equally weak-minded persons who has to desperately find blame in others for the actions of one troubled and hateful soul. To put it plainly, you cannot blame this site, books, the world wide web, recorded history, or any other form of the written word for the actions of a sick and twisted criminal who chooses to use his ability to harm others.

Advantage: Sniper Country

Hillary Clinton is going to be touring wine country in her carpet-bagged state of New York. I just found out that Bully Hill Winery is going to be doing a commemorative bottling to mark the event.

Remember Joel Mowbray, the reporter from NRO that was intimidated by some state department officials after he challenged the wisdom of the Saudi Visa Express program? Well, it turns out he was really on to something, and his latest piece on the 9/11 terrorists' Visa Applications is darn right shocking.

According to expert analyses of the visa-application forms of 15 of the 9/11 terrorists (the other four applications could not be obtained), all the applicants among the 15 reviewed should have been denied visas under then-existing law. Six separate experts who analyzed the simple, two-page forms came to the same conclusion: All of the visa applications they reviewed should have been denied on their face.

Some lesser known .223's

Ruger No. 1-B single shot falling block.

Savage Arms Model 24F combination rifle shotgun

UPDATE: Yes, I should have made it clear that these guns are available chambered for other rounds.

It would appear that an additional benefit of owning a VW TDI is that by avoiding gas stations for weeks at a time you can lower your exposure to sniping zones.Yes, I'll burn in hell for this joke.

On a more serious note, has the type of vehicle that each person was filling/cleaning been analyzed?

Bullwinkle tie-in?

Chief Moose has had to share the news this week with National Squirrel Awareness week(whatever the hell that is...).

Moose and Squirrel, there's a sick joke in there somewhere.

I have no idea how this anti-registration article made it into USA Today, but I am glad it did. Alan Gottleib calls gun-grabbers to task for their failed, and expensive, rhetoric.

This is pitiful.

Pondering: Was the Maryland spree-shooter (terrorist?) inspired to show off its shooting skill after Ari Fleisher made that crack about a single bullet being cheaper than one-way airfare?

I don't know how the local DC telemedia is covering these shootings, but my local TV and radio news seem to be entirely ignoring the idea that this might be terrorism.

The headline says it all:

Wesleyan holds lecture on disability issues at non-accessible site

Coming soon to a suburb near you?

Apparently the FAA feels that airlines are not yet bleeding enough cash, so now it wants to create a new seat standard for commercial carriers. The estimated cost for the proposed changes is $519 Million dollars, creating a projected saving ofwith a project saving of 114 deaths and 133 serious injuries in the 20 years after the rule takes effect.

So, around $5,000,000.00 a life (when you include a conservative 5% for the time value of the money over the 20 years.)

Of course, no mention is made of the additional highway deaths that will be created by forcing passengers to buy/not buy tickets based upon the higher prices that this rule making will dump in their belted laps.

The FAA is supposed to have this up for public comment, but I don't see it yet on its webpage.

My thanks go out to "Jasmel," who posted the fix for my template/503 problem here. For the record, in case any other bloggers are facing the same problem:

OK..... HERE IS THE FIX

I have a custom template so this is how I got it to work again.

Step 1. Click on Template (to edit your template)
Step 2. Copy all of your old template into your clip board. (Ctrl A, then Ctrl C)
Step 3. Click on "choose a new template" (top right)
Step 4. Choose any template there (I took the first one)
Step 5. It will take you to a page that says "Done
Your template change has been made."
Step 6. Click "template HTML view"
Step 7. Now paste in your ald template over the new one

Your done!!!

Go back and "Post" your next blog and you will be happy to see that everything will be working just fine.

Again with the fix...

Temporary, trying to fix template

Still I get the " Error 503: Unable to load template file. We're working on this. Please try back later.[more info]" error from blogger when I try to post. I successfully post only every 10th time or so, and often only after placing a second, blank but for a space (" ") post.

I guess I never should have spent the bucks to upgrade to ad-free blogspot...

Splitting Headache

"It feels like someone has been pounding spikes into my head."

[I stole her rock and roll.]

Error 503: Unable to load template file. We're working on this. Please try back later.[more info]

Arrrgh!

Resume padding is one thing, but this is ridiculous.

Fashion week again, this week in Milan.

The AP runs a lengthy article about some patents that ebay might be infringing upon, but somehow author Bob Porterfield manages to avoid actually listing the patents at issue. I wonder if he even bothered to find out which patents are at issue, or if his editor took them out of the article fearing that readers might actually go look at the facts for themselves?

BTW, I think that this is the patent at issue: Facilitating internet commerce through internetworked auctions, based upon Mr. Woolston's earlier (filed November, 1995) Consignment nodes, which is based upon an earlier filed application from April, 1995 (Application serial number 08/427,820).