Snowflakes in Hell

… another example of how we shouldn’t worry too much about losing our civil liberties because of the war on terror, because we’ve already lost them fighting the war on drugs.  Also, the ACLU draws a lot of people’s ire from time to time, including mine, but they do good work a lot of the time.  This is one of those times.

If someone were to say that, you might think that they were a paranoid psychotic.  Well, it turns out they wouldn’t be.

She plans to start a survey for drugs in the wastewater of at least 40 Oregon communities.

The science behind the testing is simple. Nearly every drug — legal and illicit — that people take leaves the body. That waste goes into toilets and then into wastewater treatment plants.

“Wastewater facilities are wonderful places to understand what humans consume and excrete,” Field said.

I’ll bet guys are lining up to take her on a date!  When people are storing urine and feces in jars in their basement, because they really are out to get you, things certainly will have taken a turn for the surreal.

Hat tip to Joe and Bruce Schneier

I noticed this NRA press release that was put out Friday:

So, what can you do to counter this PR stunt? Of course, any type of pro-gun counter protest would be covered with the media’s typical anti-gun bias, if it was covered at all. But there is a way we can speak directly to the American people to set the record straight on gun bans, gun rationing, and other anti-gun proposals.

Through a massive and coordinated blitz of letters to the editor of our local newspapers in the days and weeks leading up to the August 28 demonstrations, we can speak directly to American citizens and our elected officials with the facts straight from the mouths of voting constituents.

This isn’t a bad idea, really, in the days and weeks leading up to the protests on August 24th, except for one thing. The date on the release says:

Friday, August 24, 2007

It’s a little late to get letters into the editor out for inclusion by next Tuesday. This release should have gone out weeks ago. Then there would have been time.

But the Pittman-Robertson funds that Uncle talks about here, aren’t necessarily an indicator, since they are a percentage excise tax on both guns and ammunition.  The increase could be partly, or mostly accounted for by the spike in ammunition prices.

This started out as a response to a comment by BadIdeaGuy, but I decided to turn it into a separate post. BadIdeaGuys pointed out:

There were more overdoses in Philly last year than gun homicides. Anyone seen an article on the drug problem facing Philly youth? My observation is that gun homicides occur largely in the “dealer class,” while the overdoses occur in the “user class”.

As much as I might recognize the drugs and violence are fairly intertwined, I think the drug war has hurt these communities more than the drugs themselves. I favor ending the drug war for this reason. Remove the black market incentive for drugs, and the violent black market in drugs will end.

You’ll still have the addict problem, but if you took all the money that goes into enforcing our drug laws (and it’s sizable), and put it into education and treatment, I think you’d find it money much better spent. It will help not having drug dealers shooting it out on the street corner, and it will also help not to send the message to young poor kids, with no hope and no opportunity, that the only way they can escape the poverty they live in is by joining a gang and selling drugs.

The drugs war, in my view, is a prime example of wealthy suburbanites supporting laws, under the illusion that it makes their kids safer from drugs, because they don’t live in the communities that are paying the price for maintaining that illusion. No doubt you’ll find support for keeping drugs illegal in virtually all communities, but the people I’ve encounterd who argue most passionately for it are middle class parents.

A group of gun dealers and a few state lawmakers are filing suit to keep PICS from shutting down for four days in September.  Rendell’s office had this to say:

“Although we understand that there is no perfect time to upgrade the system the simple fact remains that the system must be upgraded,” Rendell spokesman Chuck Ardo said.

Rendell is looking at possibly delaying the upgrade.  As an IT professional, I can tell you there’s no reason for a multi-day outage.  Any upgrade should be able to be completed in a few overnight hours, at worst.  At best, things like this can be done with no downtime at all.   Banks manage to do it, online retailers manage to do it.  I’m not suggesting this is a deliberate attempt to screw gun owners, but the PA State Police might want to consider hiring more competent IT help.

Hat tip to Rightwingprof 

Looks like the Army wants to replace the M24, M14 and Mk 11 sniper rifle with a single 7.62×51 NATO based semi-automatic system.

Hat tip to Dave Hardy.