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Monday Roundup: Out, Out Damn Spot!

May 4, 2009 By Trey Garrison 4 Comments
  • I’m glad they got a voice of reason into this look at how the Lege is stomping all over both parental and teenager rights. Because who cares more about a kid — a mere parent, or some semi-pro political tool? (And what a surprise to find State Sen. John Carona’s fat fingerprints all over the worst of the bills.) Of course, the unintentional (or is it?) effect of all this is to raise up young adults who think their every decision as an adult is subject to permission from elected. Which, now that I mention it…
  • I missed something in Tanya Eiserer’s story on Friday that Grits certainly didn’t miss: “Eiserer’s story concludes with an especially fascinating account that suggests Sundquist’s lying wasn’t just malfeasance by a single officer but actually part of a pattern attributed to his entire unit.”
  • This is going to be fun. After all, if the product isn’t intended to cross state lines in manufacture, sale or us, how can the federal government justify regulating it under the interstate commerce clause? (I think you know what product I’m talking about.)
  • Stupid Flu Reactions: This weekend the softball team waved instead of high-fived. Cashiers at Kroger wore rubber gloves or lathered in hand sanitizer. No surgical mask sightings. What did you see?

Filed Under Creepy Guys in the Park, Guns, Media Driven Panics, Police, Politics, Zombies

Wednesday Roundup: Vandelay! Say Vandelay!

April 29, 2009 By Trey Garrison 11 Comments
  • Props to the Dallas Morning News and Austin Statesman for backing better compensation for wrongful convictions. Next up should be criminal charges for prosecutors who withhold exculpatory evidence or otherwise knowingly prosecute an innocent.

Filed Under Capitalist Superheroes, FAIL, Guns, Liberty, Politics, The DFW

Jimmy Carter Won’t Just Shut Up and Go Away

April 27, 2009 By Trey Garrison 10 Comments

Jacob Sullum, also a journalist based in Dallas and a friend whom I embarrassed with my entry-level poker playing at a game he hosts, talks about Jimmy Carter’s latest inanity regarding my second favorite subject. Here’s a taste:

In a New York Times op-ed piece, former President Jimmy Carter presents revival of the federal “assault weapon” ban, which President Obama supports, as a no-brainer, since the guns that were covered by the expired 1994 law are “designed only to kill police officers and the people they defend.” Evidently, if you aim one of these firearms at a home intruder, a prairie dog, or a paper target, instead of firing a bullet it harmlessly unfurls a little flag that says “Bang!” Having polled himself and his hunting buddies, Carter reports that “none of us wants to own an assault weapon, because we have no desire to kill policemen or go to a school or workplace to see how many victims we can accumulate before we are finally shot or take our own lives.”

Read the rest here.

Filed Under Guns, The DFW

Thursday Roundup: I Shall Call It the Fing-Longer!

April 23, 2009 By Trey Garrison 3 Comments

“Her last job at a chicken shack paid $139 a week, barely enough to cover her cellphone bill.” This is odd. It’s been my experience that literally every stripper is a business major working towards her MBA and/or law school, not someone who would make questionable choice with personal finance. I’m perplexed, and this requires some research.

Taking the mob contracts Americans won’t take?

Far be it from me to point out how silly all some religious beliefs are. Or maybe not. This lady says her kid shouldn’t have to follow the school dress code and tuck in her shirt because of a Bible verse that says absolutely nothing about tucking in shirts but something about being modest. But whatever. Then it gets weird. The lady is sooo religious that she doesn’t go to church regularly because she doesn’t have a nice dress. What what?

This is getting a little silly with how the city keeps changing its story and paying five figure invoices for studies it claims don’t exist.

I’m not sure there is much left to argue after the case offered by three college professors about how ridiculous it is that constitutional rights are prohibited on college campuses.

Filed Under City Owned Boondoggle, Culture, Fort Awesome, Guns, Life, Politics, The DFW, The Market

Thursday Roundup: Curfews, Questions & Quality Control

April 16, 2009 By Trey Garrison 5 Comments

Jim Olvera leads off the op-ed page of the DMN today in stellar fashion, arguing that Dallas doesn’t need a daytime curfew for juveniles, because 1) all the reasons cited just don’t add up, 2) you’re going to perpetuate the cycle of failure by criminalizing these kids, 3) police already have the tools to fight truancy without needing the jail them. I’ll go Mr. Olvera three more: 1) We don’t need to drill into the heads of young people that they need permission from government to go outside, 2) some police will use this as a tool to harass younger looking adults or as an excuse to initiate illegal searches, 3) this is America, not some freakin’ people’s republic. Daytime curfews? Are you kidding me?

Robert Guest hit a tea party yesterday. He asks a pointed question: Watching the fervor of anti tax conservatives always makes me wonder why fiscal conservatives embrace big government social conservatism (prohibition for example)? Why is it evil for the government to tax and spend billions, but not evil to arrest pot smokers? I don’t get it. It’s two sides of the same coin to me. And I’ll add that War on Drugs Robert alludes to, like a lot of the other things that conservatives back, is likewise a costly, wasteful fiscal endeavor.

Finally, now this is just bad. It’s not an off-the-cuff, live quote, but a written sentence from a news story:

A critical question is whether any constitutional rights are gained from a state legislature stripping the rights of private institutions to decide at their discretion whether they want to permit concealed handguns on their premises (which the vocal majority does not), in order to allow individuals to supposedly more freely express their Second Amendment rights.

I can’t begin to list all the grammatical and logical errors in this sentence. It goes to show the mental gymnastics people will go through to avoid simple truth. But since when are state universities “private institutions?”

Filed Under Guns, Media, The DFW

School Lockdown Over a Loaded Cell Phone

April 9, 2009 By Trey Garrison Leave a Comment

Via an alert … TGvian? (Will Tim send me a cease and desist? Let’s say “reader” and play it safe):

Look, you want schools to err on the side of caution, so I’m not saying the lockdown was wrong once they got the report. But people are going a little gun hysterical when a kid carrying a cell phone prompts a school lockdown because a visitor (one who clearly has crappy eyesight) at the school feared the student had a gun.

And handcuffing the kid was way over the top.

A DMN commenter had an interesting observation: If someone yells fire in a crowded theater when it was only an usher’s flashlight and it caused the kind of anxiety and fear among theatergoers that a lockdown does for these kids, would there be any liability for his recklessness? Should there be for the kind of person who can’t tell a cellphone from a handgun?

Filed Under Guns, The DFW, The Market

Tuesday Roundup: BATFE Burns Another Dealer, Seig Health!, Urban Core Meltdown & More

April 7, 2009 By Trey Garrison 2 Comments

The Texas Observer has a definitely-worth-your-time investigation into the BATFE’s railroading of a Plano gun shop owner. Now, for those who don’t know, the BATFE is the bottom run of federal law enforcement, where the worst of the dregs wash up. This is an agency that goes after gun dealers for “not keeping proper records of gun sales” because — and I do not exaggerate — sometimes buyers will write the abbreviation for a state rather than the full state name on forms. It appears as though now the BATFE has helped put a man in jail for an arson he didn’t commit. Good stuff. (Hat tip: Unfair Park.)

First they come for smokers, now they’re coming for transfats. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

And Mr. Obama’s wise decisions touch down like a tornado in Fort Worth.

I don’t know what it will take for Dallas to reverse this trend — I have my doubts a park along the Trinity (with or without tollroad) and a half a billion empty convention center hotel will help — but it doesn’t auger well for Big D in the long run.

And now: The 5 Most Popular Safety Laws That Don’t Work

Filed Under City Owned Boondoggle, Creepy Guys in the Park, Culture, DISD, Guns, Liberty, Media, Politics, The DFW

Tuesday Roundup: Hotels, Eyewitness IDs, Bipartisan ‘Truths,’ Your Rights, and Other Things You Can’t Rely On

March 31, 2009 By Trey Garrison 12 Comments

A month ago I placed the likelihood the bond market won’t reach the city of Dallas’ goal of 5.5 percent — which is what they need to make the city-owned convention center hotel happen — at 70 percent. Looks like I may have called it. Also — tax issues aside — thoughts on whether campaigning in churches on a Sunday is just plain tacky?

lineup-bigIf police chiefs and prosecutors are interested in justice, why is it they want to block attempts to change the use of a procedure that has been proven so horribly unreliable? (From the story: Faulty eyewitness IDs have been the leading cause of wrongful convictions. Eighteen of 19 exonerations in Dallas County involved a bad eyewitness identification, an investigation by The Dallas Morning News found last year.)

I missed this Friday, but kudos to the DMN for running this: a deconstruction of some of the myths about health care that are disguised as truth, such as American health care underperforms the broken socialized medicine system of the UK, that prescriptions drive up health care costs, and so on. Couple these facts with the reality that the vast majority of the costly medical care problems in America are entirely driven by lifestyle — crappy, death row style diets (see below), booze, smoking, and lack of exercise — and you can see there’s not really a crisis at all.

Once and for all please someone explain to me: Why are constitutional rights and the rights guaranteed by Texas law suspended when you set foot on a college campus?

Three rules to live by: 1) Never, ever give consent to search your car or your home. 2) Never invite the police into your home without a warrant. 3) And as Robert Guest underscores, never, ever speak to the police without a lawyer. Guest explains in his own inimitable way, but the short answer why is: it can never help, and almost always hurts.

Just for — I don’t know, morbid curiosity? — here’s a list of the last meal requests for prisoners on Texas’ death row going back to 1982. It’s oddly compelling. What is it about French fries, by the way? Seems the most common request. So it makes me wonder — what would your last meal be?

Filed Under City Owned Boondoggle, Guns, Media, Police, Politics, The DFW

Someone Explain To Me…

March 25, 2009 By Trey Garrison 2 Comments

…why Mexico’s problems should serve as a reason to curtail the civil and Constitutional rights of American citizens, please.

Because I don’t get it.

Better solution: legalize drugs in the United States, tax and regulate them, and you take the money out of the drug cartels’ hands. Prohibition only does one thing: it protects and enriches the monopoly the drug cartels have.

Update: Per an alert commenter, here’s a great take on the subject from an American who lived in Mexico and sees through the MSM propaganda.

Filed Under Guns

More On (get it?) Chazz Redd

March 24, 2009 By Trey Garrison Leave a Comment

My secret blog love Bethany Anderson has a list of other potential city council candidates, using the Chazz Redd qualifier.

Here’s a sneak peek.

Full list here.

Filed Under Bethany Anderson, Guns, Humor
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