The Best Tools are Scary-Looking

How much more joy can I stand? My Pana Hands third hand device for my Panavise arrived yesterday.

This is a pretty neat item. Constructed of a very nice cast base, alligator clips, and flexible pipe, it attaches directly to a Panavise and allows you to hold up to 4 things in place at a time.

The people who make it pack it in a nice box and include candy with it. Call it smart promotion. Call it entrapment. It worked on me. I was quite pleased to receive a packet of Starbursts with my tool.

Ufortunately, I’m not the only one here who likes Starbursts. As you can see, the Pana Hands caught a thief trying to purloin them, and it was in the process of administering punishment when I took this photo.

Do not ask me why a male over the age of 4 owns a stuffed animal. I have friends. They like to have their fun. That’s all I’m willing to say.

I think the menacing appearance of the Pana Hands is the best part. Even when it’s idle and the work area is dark, it’s there to scare burglars and children with its Dr. Octopus impression.

You can put a similar third hand device together for less money if you’re willing to order parts from Banggood and so on. I didn’t want to wait weeks and deal with whatever problems might arise from trying to match parts from different vendors. They sell assembled kits. I don’t know if any of them fit the Panavise. Do I really want to deal with Chinese shipping and mysterious return policies to save twenty bucks? No.

Today I plan to open my old Dremel up and see if I can use the Panavise to position it so I can solder a broken wire on the armature. I don’t know whether I can pull it off, but sometimes the process is more important than the result.

You can buy new Dremel armatures for $35.00, and that would be cheaper than a new Dremel. They’re very expensive now.

I looked at other hand-held rotary tools, and it appears they’re all junk, except for overpriced high-end tools and the offerings from Proxxon. I don’t want to blow $90 or whatever on a second Proxxon.

Rotary tools should be on everyone’s short list. Duct tape, impact driver, rotary tool. If you have these things, maybe 85% of life’s annoying challenges will succumb to your efforts.

I used a Dremel to cut a bed frame once. That’s how great these small tools are. I had a bed frame with sharp pieces of angle iron (actually steel) sticking out where I managed to drive my feet into them from time to time. I’m thinking the thickness was about 3/16″. I had like 4 tools at the time. I got out the Dremel and some cutting disks and cut the corners off the frame. It would have been hard with a tool like a saw.

Dremels drill, grind, cut, and polish. They probably do other things I haven’t thought about.

If I can get the Dremel working properly, maybe I’ll let the Pana Hands use it on the squirrel. I don’t like to be harsh, but someone has to make an example of household tortfeasors.

God’s Patience is not Infinite

I just had some disturbing news.

If you’ve been reading the blog for a while, you may know that the pastor of my last church was arrested for molesting his niece over a period of years. He was supposed to be tried today, but he got a continuance until August 20. That will be one year to the day from the first morning I woke up in my new home, far from Miami.

The charges indicated that she was less than 12 years old when he started. As I understand it, she told a friend of hers last year, and somehow things escalated. A friend of mine says the pastor confessed in front of the church last summer, and he was arrested in September.

Prison is bad at its best, but it is said to be worse for child molesters. If you’re a child molester, everyone feels morally superior to you, and they feel entitled to mistreat you.

The pastor and his wife were not good to me. They didn’t just reject me. They were nasty about it. The pastor accosted a friend of mine in the church parking lot long after I left and started screaming at him. He got way too close, and my friend threatened to give him a beating.

That’s what things were like.

The church was a cult. When members fell out with the pastors and left, everyone else was discouraged from talking to them. When I left, I found out which church friends were real. The others cut me off and even unfriended me on Facebook, as if merely seeing my Facebook posts would poison their minds.

I told people the church was going to dry up and disappear. At best, I said, they would end up meeting in someone’s living room. The pastors had terrible pride issues. They did things to drive people away, and they got angry when members made suggestions.

The “house prophet” kept “prophesying” that the church would grow, we would get a new building, we would see miracles, this one would have twins, that one would be healed of cancer, and so on. A real prophet would have told them they were blowing it.

Obviously, the church did not survive the arrest. It ran on fumes for a bit and then expired.

Today I found out things have gotten even worse. The pastor’s wife has brain cancer. She is said to have only weeks to live, and I am also told her mind is going. I also heard that the molestation started when the victim was six.

A friend of mine called and told me. I said, “It’s like that family is being destroyed.” He said the person who told him had said the same thing.

It’s like they’re being erased from the planet. What is happening to them is astounding.

Their son is a mess. He’s a petty criminal, and he has all sorts of emotional problems. He ridicules Christianity. He seems to be included in the destruction.

Their daughter seems okay. She married a very nice guy. He’s a preacher. They live over a thousand miles away.

I know what their problem is. They don’t confess. They and others in the church got mad at me when I talked about the connection between misfortune and a lack of repentance. They were 21st-century charismatics. They only wanted to hear about money and miracles. People accused me of blaming others for their problems. Actually, that was correct. We do cause our problems, including cancer and other diseases. But people don’t want to hear it. They want to hear that nothing is their fault.

My mother’s sins made her sick and killed her. She smoked for 50 years, and she died of lung cancer. Using addictive drugs is a sin. AIDS is almost always caused by sin. The sin of gluttonizing puts people in motorized wheelchairs, blinds them, and costs them their feet. It ought to be obvious that sin causes problems. It also prevents God from fixing our problems and healing our diseases.

Many times, I’ve asked God if I should pray for the pastor and his wife, and the answer has always been “no.” The reason? They won’t listen. Their problems are caused by their own decisions. They’ve decided to close their ears, so praying won’t help them. They don’t need miracles. They need to have their minds changed so God’s power can flow through them. God doesn’t change people’s minds. He applies persuasion, but he doesn’t interfere with our free will. His name is Jehovah, not Geppetto.

A person only has so much prayer time, and if you waste it on the proud and stubborn, you will neglect people who can actually be helped. Satan sends us time-wasters who don’t really want to change.

You would expect Christians to do better than this. I’m not surprised that the church failed, because that was obviously inevitable. I’m surprised that this couple’s lives are being completely destroyed. Even a Christian who is off course will usually get a fair amount of help from God. I’m shocked at how little help they’re getting.

Sure, he’s a pedophile. But God helps pedophiles that open up to him and repent. His wife may be brassy and difficult, but she’s not an axe murderer. Whatever their failings are, they acknowledge God. Apparently, it’s not enough to protect them from catastrophe.

We should be afraid of God. Look how badly things can go when we toy with him.

I’m so glad God has helped me to receive correction. He saved me incredible suffering by teaching me about confession and repentance. I didn’t figure it out. I was an idiot who loved sin. He had to show me. I was doing my own thing, screwing my life up as much as possible. I would have continued had he not given me knowledge I didn’t deserve.

I can’t say it enough. Hell isn’t full of sinners; it’s full of people who don’t listen. Heaven is packed to the rafters with sinners. It’s full of murderers, thieves, whores, sodomites, and every other type of transgressor. It’s full of guilty people who confessed and repented. Hell is full of people who thought they knew best. And many of them are very, very nice people who treated others well.

Pride and denial may not take you to hell, but they can bring hell up to meet you while you’re here on earth. They caused Job’s problems.

Scary stuff.

I don’t think I’ll ever pray for my former pastors again, but I will be praying for the people they bamboozled and abused. The Bible says that when the dragon was cast out of heaven, it drew a third of the stars along with it, with its tail. I know a lot of people who have been misled by preachers, and there is more hope for many of them than for their former pastors.

Profligate Mendacity

Today is Jim Comey’s day on the hot seat, and I have to get something out of my system. It’s something I’ve probably said before.

When Hillary Clinton was “investigated” regarding her intentional mishandling of classified information and her illegal, deliberate use of a private email server, Comey’s report said she was “grossly negligent,” which was kind, since the legal definition of negligence doesn’t include intentional behavior. Demoted FBI agent Peter Strzok changed it. The new phrase: “extremely careless.”

“Gross negligence” is a phrase lawyers use. They could use other terms to mean the same thing, but lawyers like to stick to specific, traditional phrases others have used before them.

Strzok isn’t a lawyer, but he works with the law every day, and he surely knows the legal importance of many phrases, including “gross negligence.” Also, he has been exposed as a fervent supporter of Hillary Clinton. He is very, very hostile to Donald Trump.

Strzok was worried about the Espionage Act of 1917, codified as 18 U.S.C. § 793. Under that law, what Hillary did would ground criminal prosecution if her acts were the result of “gross negligence.” Strzok wanted to avoid publishing a report about his idol which essentially said, “Clinton committed criminal violations of 18 U.S.C. § 793.”

What does “negligent” mean? It means “careless.” If you have a duty to exercise care, and you choose not to, you’re negligent.

What does “gross” mean, in legal terms? It means extreme. There is no real difference between “gross” and “extreme.” If I lend my car to someone I know has had 4 beers, I’m negligent. If I lend it to someone who has been smoking PCP all night and has a bag of hand grenades slung over his shoulder, I am grossly negligent.

Add it up, and you get this: “extremely careless” equals “grossly negligent,” but “gross negligence” is a phrase used in a statute Hillary Clinton violated, and “extreme carelessness” isn’t. Strzok chose to say something legally damaging–he had no choice about that–in a way that would smell less like fresh meat.

When Peter Strzok says Clinton was “extremely careless,” he’s like a criminal attorney who says his client is “fully culpable” for a murder while rejecting the word “guilty.” It’s a choice of words that sounds different but means the same thing.

Jim Comey determined that Hillary Clinton was grossly negligent, and an FBI agent who supported her bid for the presidency disguised his conclusion. This happened in July of 2016, at a time when Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president was in full swing.

Extreme carelessness is gross negligence.

That’s what I wanted to say.

Things are a Little too Perfect

The upstairs workbench is coming along nicely.

Today I received my Bondhus folding hex wrench kits, plus a Real Avid gun cleaning mat with little plastic parts compartments. The mat is a few inches shorter than the top of my workbench, so it covers most of it. Really nice.

I haven’t put the bench to much use yet. I’ve worked a lot ON it, but I haven’t done a whole lot WITH it.

That’s not completely true. Part of the bench’s purpose is to store tools in a handy way. It certainly does that. Today I had to rewire a couple of fluorescent fixtures and install LED tubes, and everything I needed (wire stripper, wire cutters, pliers, LED headband) was hanging on the pegboard. I’m so glad I’m not walking up and down the stairs every time I need a screwdriver or a pair of pliers.

Here’s a shot of the bench as it now stands. The mat is under the new Panavise. You get the idea. I can work on stuff in the vise, and if I drop something, it will hit the mat instead of denting the bench. The vise has a parts tray, and if I fill that up, there are the compartments at the end of the mat.

I still need a nice drafting chair so I can sit at the bench with a beer and watch Youtube.

I also need to set up a charging station. I have a Jobmax, a Panasonic drill and impact driver, an electric screwdriver, and an action camera. I have to work something out. Ten years from now, there will be true universal chargers that work with every major brand of power tool, but as of today, if you use 7 different brands, you pretty much need 7 chargers and 7 wall sockets. Time to dig out another power strip and look for a cheap shelf sort of thing.

My unbelievable Chinese workbench came with a power strip that charges USB devices. These people thought of everything.

I bought another item from them. A stainless table.

My dad can’t figure out the microwave at this house. I got one which resembles the one he’s used to, and I put it on the counter. Problem: it sucks a lot of power. When he turns it on while he’s toasting bread, the breaker pops. I needed a table or cart across the room from the toaster so I could put the microwave on a different circuit.

I bought a stainless Seville Classics table with rubber feet and two wire shelves. It’s as nice as the workbench. It weighs over 50 pounds. The shelves are solid. The top is beautiful. It doesn’t wobble. It’s even NSF approved. I stuck it next to the pantry, and I’m hoping the socket behind it has nothing to do with the toaster’s circuit.

Even if the breaker still blows, now I have three new horizontal storage areas, and I cleared a lot of junk off the counter.

The stainless table doesn’t have a particularly homey look. I thought about it, and I decided to go with it. My dad makes messes, and I need things that can take abuse. I also want things that can be cleaned easily. I’m a man, so a commercial-looking table won’t bother me.

This table will hold a thousand pounds. Not sure what that’s all about. Maybe some day I’ll use it as a shop table.

I will probably get to use the Panavise tomorrow. My set of “third hands” will arrive, and I want to use it to hold my old Dremel while I try to repair a wire on the armature. That will be sweet, even if I can’t fix the Dremel.

The table is great. There are cheaper ones on Amazon, but the reviews are lukewarm. The reviews for the one I got are like, “My GOD. I never knew a table could be this wonderful.”

I’m pooped. Carrying the table into the house and putting it together alone were more exertion than I expected. Then I had to go get a ladder and fix the fluorescent fixtures.

It’s time to sit in the indirect glow from my workbench light and relax. Maybe a little Forged in Fire.

I am trying not to think about the things I still have to do to get my machine tools up here and get the real workshops set up.

How Intuit Lied to Mess With Your Civil Rights

The other day I explained why tech gangsters were morally wrong to attack gun buyers, sellers, and manufacturers, after using us to make them rich. Now I will explain why Intuit’s new policy of rejecting certain firearms transactions is completely dishonest.

Intuit does credit card processing. Credit card commerce is convenient, and convenient is what our leftist masters want gun sales to not be. Inconvenience will discourage many sales, they hope.

News stories don’t give many details, so one has to guess what Intuit actually did. We know they reversed many gun-related transactions and left buyers and sellers in very awkward positions.

Intuit claims it is yielding to pressure from its “banking partner,” whoever that is. It says the partner does not want to take part in certain types of transactions unless the related credit card transactions take place face-to-face. In other words, ALL online firearms transactions are banned.

Intuit is trying to make us think it’s afraid online transactions will cause guns to go to people who haven’t been checked out. They’re lying.

Intuit attempts to bury firearms transactions in a sea of other sales it won’t allow. Intuit’s propaganda statement mentions things like alcohol, tobacco, and pharmaceuticals.

Here’s why that is dishonest: every gun sale, apart from certain curio and relic sales (generally old creaky weapons sought by collectors) involves a FACE-TO-FACE background check. If you buy a gun online from Cabela’s or a Gunbroker vendor, he can’t just pop it in a box and mail it to your house. He can’t even mail a C&R gun unless you have a federal C&R license. Any gun a you buy, as a non-licensed individual, has to go to a federal firearms licensee. If it’s a non-C&R gun, that licensee can’t be you, and he will be required to do a background check, in your presence, with identification, before he can release the gun to you.

If you’re a C&R licensee, you’ve already passed a background check. The BATF checks C&R licensees out.

Is there a background check for tobacco products? No. Is there a background check for pharmaceuticals? No. Is there a background check for alcohol? No.

My dad gets a ton of pills every year from an online supplier. They dump the bottles in flimsy bags and mail them to his house. We pay his copayments with credit cards. I pretend to be him, and I place the orders. Is that a felony? I don’t know. I confess. No one cares.

Would you like some free gout pills? Hide outside my house and wait. Eventually they will appear in my unlocked mailbox. If you want them bad enough, I can’t keep you from getting them. You won’t be able to get the guns I buy online, though, because I have to go pick them up and pass background checks.

My dad is demented. He can’t order his own pills. There is no way in hell I’m going to put him in the car and force him to swipe a card several times a month, and I don’t even tell him to come sit with me when I order pills online. I don’t tell him I’m doing it. His pills arrive, and he has no idea how it happens. Lock me up.

Is there a gout pill online loophole? Yes. Does Intuit know about it? Yes, and I guarantee you, they’re not doing anything about it.

Old people across America buy huge amounts of prescription drugs online, every day. I promise you, Intuit isn’t going after them. We would have heard about it. Intuit doesn’t really care about prescriptions. Every day, elderly spouses place prescription orders for their husbands and wives, logging on with their credentials. Intuit will never stop them.

It’s dishonest to compare laxatives and whiskey to guns.

Intuit is lying.

Intuit can’t even blame lawyers. There is no threat of litigation. No lawyer is going to waste his time suing Intuit or related companies because a nut passed a face-to-face background check and then killed someone with a gun Intuit helped him buy. Even tort lawyers, scum-sucking, malignant, prosperity-destroying tapeworms though they be, have their limits.

How many sensational murders have we seen? How many of the guns that were used were bought with credit cards? How many times have American Express or the other card companies been sued? Leftist nuts don’t even bother suing them. It’s a waste of time. It would be like suing the mint for printing the dollars used in a cash transaction.

Intuit knows it’s going after responsible sellers who obey the law. They went after Gunsite. This is a respected firearms training organization that also sells pistols. The Gunsite people made Intuit’s people understand that Gunsite only sends guns to licensees who are then required to do background checks. Intuit didn’t care.

I rest my case.

Are you a felon? Want to buy a gun without a background check? Here’s what you do. Go to your criminal buddies and tell them you want a gun. Someone will eventually offer you a stolen gun for less than a store would charge, there will be no background check, and there will be no waiting period. If you think you can buy a gun from an online retailer without a background check, you’re in for a big disappointment. Even if Intuit does everything it can to help you buy a gun, you’re SOL.

There is no “online loophole.” You can buy guns ILLEGALLY over the web, by avoiding legitimate retailers who process credit cards. You can hook up with random dirtbags on the dark web, meet them in parking lots, and give them cash. But you can’t go to a website belonging to Bass Pro, Bud’s Gun Shop, or even Gunbroker and use a credit card to have a firearm shipped to your house illegally. Not possible.

In reality, if Intuit wanted gun transactions to be safer, they would encourage the use of credit cards, because credit card transactions leave trails and drive people on both ends to do things by the book. No criminal wants a credit card record to tie him to a firearm. Intuit isn’t trying to make gun sales safer. It’s trying to prevent them from happening.

Intelligent people have been predicting this kind of thing for years. Conservatives and Christians are being pushed out of the marketplace. Here’s my new prediction: when the Mark of the Beast (our future means of participating in a cashless economy) arrives, you will have to get rid of your guns in order to get it.

Intuit is disgusting. I seriously hope they lose business over this attack on our civil rights.

There; I Fixed That for You

In case anyone is wondering, I can tell you why it’s wrong for Google and the other leftist-controlled tech giants are wrong to use their power to censor Second Amendment supporters and starve their businesses.

Many people are upset because the Googsters are punishing users who support the private ownership of firearms. What’s happening isn’t new, nor is it limited to Google. Paypal will not let you use its service to buy firearms. Ebay sells parts but not guns. These policies are pretty old.

By the way, Google just banned the channel for Brownell’s, an old and respected firearms-related company that appears to have nothing to do with the black rifle fad or politics. If Elmer Fudd were real, he would have a Brownell’s account. It’s not a scary company. Google banned them anyway. The account reappeared later, but it’s disturbing that the ban ever happened.

Years ago, Google had no problems with guns. I used to use Google Shopping to look for firearms deals. At the time, it was the best game in town. Google killed firearms ads, and now there are other sources that are as good or better. Google lost business, and gun sellers worked around them.

Google’s new Youtube restrictions are a lot like their Google Shopping firearms ban. Channels that disseminate useful information about guns are disappearing, but in the past they were very common. A huge amount of content is still present. Google hasn’t been able to remove everything overnight. If you see what’s still available, it shows that whatever Youtube may look like in the near future, it has been a prolific disseminator of gun-related content.

People who are angry about the censorship like to talk about freedom of speech and the First Amendment. They’re wrong. Google isn’t bound by the First Amendment. If they want, they can announce a new policy saying all videos have to be about chickens, and it won’t conflict with the First Amendment at all. The Constitution guarantees (supposedly) our freedom from GOVERNMENT censorship. It doesn’t control private companies.

Somehow, we feel that the tech snowflakes are wrong, but we can’t seem to articulate a good reason. I’ll tell you the reason. They’re wrong because they have always been against us, yet they used us for years to build their businesses and get us to rely on them, and now that they feel secure, they are abandoning us.

Gun people helped build Google, Youtube, Paypal, and a bunch of other tech companies. We all know these companies are run and staffed by sissies from America’s coasts. They never wanted to do anything for us, but they whored themselves out anyway because they needed us. They wanted income. They wanted market share. They knew excluding us would prevent them from gaining market dominance, so they choked back their rage and worked with us. Now they’re fat and cocky, so they think they’ll be okay after they stab us in the back.

Is what they’re doing illegal? No. At least I don’t think so. It’s still wrong. It’s still “evil,” to use a word Google self-righteously used in its old corporate motto.

Remember that motto? “Don’t be evil.” Google got rid of it recently. Does this mean they decided it was okay to be evil? No. It probably means they realized how fatuous and naive it sounded.

Imagine if God had told the Jews, “Don’t be evil,” and vanished. What a worthless admonition it would have been. No guidelines. No description of evil. It would have been a catastrophe.

Who decides what “evil” means? “Don’t be evil” is something a two-year-old would say. It means nothing. It’s not surprising that leftists would use it as a motto, because they love claiming moral authority without providing any substance. Conservatives know that righteousness requires thought and effort. It involves close decisions and hard choices. Leftists like to march with banners and wave rainbow flags, but they don’t like being pinned down and asked for real guidance. Their purpose isn’t to fight evil. It’s to be admired. You may sound righteous and intelligent when you say something like, “Don’t be evil,” but as soon as you have to defend your remark and define it, you start to look just as confused as everyone else.

Google’s motto was idiotic, but one would hope that it reflected a sparkle of sincerity. One would hope that the Googsters would ask themselves about the righteousness of using people and then throwing them away. One would hope that they would understand the ugliness and cruelty of deliberately choking off a huge segment of the population, based purely on political differences. It’s not like we’re being denied access to Waffle House when Cracker Barrel is right next door. We’re being denied access to important, unique services.

The posture of the tech overlords is a confirmation of the right’s perception of dismissive leftist elitism. Flyover people are not human beings to be listened to and respected. They are livestock, to be controlled and ridiculed. All the brilliant, correct people are on the coasts. In between, there are only filthy potato eaters. Truck pull watchers. Bible believers. Their beliefs and desires are infantile, and they have no right to govern themselves or participate in the marketplace of ideas.

To the tech overlords, we are like dementia patients. You don’t ask permission when you change the circumstances of a demented person’s life. You go in, wrap him in a wet sheet, shoot him full of Valium, and do what you want. Take his guns. Take his car keys. Block his favorite TV channels. Change his menu. Whatever you want. You are correct to do it, because you are RIGHT.

In the classic novel The Time Machine, the world consisted of two groups. Below ground lived the hairy, brutal morlocks. They concealed themselves in their tunnels. Above ground lived the eloi. They were feckless vegetarians who lived on fruit and vegetables that appeared mysteriously in their midst. From time to time, the morlocks snatched a few of the eloi and ate them. The eloi lived in a fool’s paradise, and the morlocks were realists who controlled the system.

It seems like we live in a funny inversion of the eloi/morlock scheme. The pampered, perfumed eloi, who live in apartments and think food comes from stores, are trying to control the morlocks, who make the country function. The eloi want to force the realists to live by rules based on a distorted perception of the world.

We’re out here growing crops, mining metal, pumping oil, and manufacturing important products. We’re in military bases and on ships around the world, protecting the eloi so they can organize riots and throw urine on the police. They’re in cities drinking $6 coffee and working at jobs with titles like “diversity counselor” and “pet aromatherapist.” They’re working at colleges, teaching real courses like “The Sociology of Miley Cyrus.”

We have effete, utterly unproductive people like Camille Paglia and Joy Behar, trying to explain the world to cattle ranchers and wheat farmers.

Economists love to tell about the impossibility of an island on which everyone makes a living doing laundry for the others. Imagine an island populated by Andy Warhols. Who would make canapes and clean up after parties?

I guess it would be Andre Leon Talley. They could ferry him in. He needs the money.

The contempt, misplaced and nonsensical though it is, is very real, and leftists have proven themselves ruthless enough to act on it. They don’t just promote their toxic ideas through talk. They gag the rest of us and even make it impossible for us to buy and sell.

It’s legal. They can do it. Is it ethical or kind? They don’t care. The left has never been kind, and leftists jeer at ethical consideration. One of leftism’s big draws is that it frees cruel people to mistreat others in the name of “higher” ideals.

If you want to throw red paint on someone or burn down a business without remorse, you need to become a leftist. It’s hard to find justification for such things in conservative or Christian organizations. You won’t see NRA members or Operation Rescue volunteers wearing masks and turning over police cars, but things like that are common among organizations like BLM, Antifa, Occupy Wall Street, and the Environmental Liberation Front.

Back when the tech lions were scared tech kittens, we fed them, with the best of intentions. Now they’re big and strong, and they can do what they’ve wanted to do all along. They don’t realize they’re creating a dystopia. You can’t embark on a policy of oppression without developing a malevolent heart that will never stop looking for new targets. Malice is habit-forming, and so is denial. If you mistreat conservatives and Christians at work every day, you will also mistreat your loved ones and friends. You won’t be able to turn it on and off.

We have laws banning monopolies. A monopoly is a single entity that controls a market niche. We don’t have laws banning ideological monopolies. If every Internet company belongs to a larger leftist cabal–pretty much true–there is nothing we can do. One wonders if there is a way to address the problem. I think that if these companies were all controlled by the Catholic Church or the Assemblies of God, legislators would be looking for a solution.

In truth, we probably need laws (I hate to say that) similar to the laws that govern hotels and transportation companies. Some services are so important, they have to be available to everyone. Holiday Inn can’t ban gun shop owners, and Delta Airlines can’t ban Republicans. Maybe the tech despots need a little bit of the regulation they want to impose on the rest of us.

The Googsters and their ilk don’t get a pass just because what they do is legal. Oppression is oppression, regardless of the source.

I Need Elves

Now that I’m done writing important things for today, I will relax. With more writing.

I am still working on my indoors workbench. I got myself some Stanley pegboard hangers and installed them. They’re on the flimsy side, unlike the hangers that came with the workbench. That makes them look “off.” What can you do? Life isn’t perfect.

The hangers came with little plastic anchors that hold the steel hangers in place. One problem with pegboard is that the hangers tend to come out with the tools. Anchors prevent this from happening. Kudos to Stanley. Now they need to make their hangers heavier.

The pegboard hanger market is wide open. Almost everything made is junk. I’m not buying anything else until I find a good solution.

I have sad news to report. As much as I love my new Bondhus hex wrenches, I am getting new ones. The explanation is simple. Bondhus puts its wrenches in little plastic holders. You have to do a lot of pushing and pulling when you use them. Pull a wrench out. Find out it’s too big. Push it in. Pull another out. It sounds unimportant, but during a long session involving different screws, it gets old.

My solution: more Bondhus hex wrenches.

I have an old Craftsman folding hex wrench set. The wrenches are set in a handle, like pocketknife blades. If you fold out the wrong one, you just fold it back in and pop another one out. Bondhus makes something similar, but you get three sets. You get metric, standard, and Torx. Small, convenient, and tough.

I hate Torx fasteners. There is no reason for them to exist. Generally, in my opinion, they are used to make things hard to work on. I really believe that. If you buy a set of “tamper-proof” driver bits, it will include Torx bits. That tells you something. I hate spending good money for something and then finding out the manufacturer has sabotaged me in order to get me to pay someone to fix it.

When I work on my own property, I’m not “tampering,” but screwing with my property so I can’t fix it fits the definition pretty well.

The folding wrenches won’t replace the L wrenches I already have. The long wrenches have ball ends which are very handy. Ball ends let you turn fasteners when you can’t insert wrenches parallel to the fasteners’ axes. Sometimes I’ll need the long wrenches. Most of the time, however, the folding sets will do the job.

I also learned I needed a workholding device. I will tell you how I found out.

The other day I sold my dad’s NordicTrack ski machine. He can’t use it, and it was in the way. It’s sad, but sometimes I have to do things he doesn’t want me to do. There was no way he would have agreed to sell it, because he feels compelled to hold onto things. I put it on Craigslist anyway, and now it’s gone. AHHHHH.

The machine had a cheap electronic monitor on it, to provide pulse info and so on. It didn’t work because my dad didn’t change the batteries. It was corroded inside. I took it off to work on it, and it slid all over the workbench. It was very annoying. I wanted it to work for the guy who bought the bench, and he was on the way in his truck, so I didn’t need the bother of fighting with a slippery monitor. I also had problems when I tried to fix my Dremel’s armature.

You can screw a vise to a workbench, but it wouldn’t be appropriate for me. I want to have the workbench top clear most of the time, and I don’t need the solidity of an attached vise. I have such a vise in the workshop if I need it.

I found a thing called a Panavise. It’s a crazy vise that opens to 9 inches. The jaws are held on a ball mount, and the mount can be moved around and fastened in position. The jaws have rubber on them, so they would have worked fine on my dad’s plastic monitor.

You can screw or clamp a Panavise to a table, but they also make a base which is a weighted tray. You attach the vise to it and rely on the weight to hold it in place. This will work 99% of the time. The tray has little compartments for parts. SOLD! It ought to work very well for me.

Bonus: you can buy an attachment with four long flexible arms with alligator clips. It fastens to the base. The arms reach up to the vise and help you hold little things like wires. I need that. Obviously.

I haven’t sprung for the arm thing, but I’m getting the vise.

Panavise makes a special kit for soldering. I like the special clamp for circuit boards, but the other stuff seems gimmicky and useless. The full kit includes a solder iron holder and a tip cleaner. Every decent soldering iron comes with these things. The clamp is sold separately. I will consider it.

I also needed something to hold guns while I work on them. I learned this while working on my new rifles. I decided to get a Tipton Gun Butler. This is like the little housecleaning trays maids use. It’s a rectangular buckety thing with a handle in the center. It has two V-shaped mounts you can set up at the ends. You rest the rifle in the mounts, and you keep your cleaning stuff in the bucket. Yes. I want it. It’s cheap, and I think it will be perfect for me. It arrived today.

My previous gun cleaning kit was a cardboard box half-soaked with Hoppe’s No. 9 and Break-Free CLP.

As I think I mentioned previously, I also ordered a gunsmith’s mat. This is a rubbery mat you put down on a table when you work on a gun. The one I bought is just the right size for my bench, and it has a few plastic compartments for parts. I would want this even if I didn’t have guns. It’s okay to beat up the surface of a bench you made from raw lumber, but I don’t want to destroy a nice factory hardwood top prematurely, and I will really need those part bins. Also, the hard bench top can damage things, so a cushion is desirable.

Speaking of bins, I have discovered plastic bins that attach to pegboards. I plan to get some. I hate watching small parts slide off of workbenches. I hate having no place to put small parts I’m not ready to throw out or put away. A few little plastic bins would be very helpful.

I hate to say it, but a rolling tool chest is under consideration. I’m pretty sure I can get a good price on Harbor Freight’s new “Series 2″ chest. The first version was very good, and the new one has drawers that open farther.

I’m disgusted with the companies that make expensive boxes. Look at Youtube, and you will see people comparing Snap-On to Harbor Freight. The verdict? Harbor Freight gives 90% of the performance for 15% of the price, and 90% is more than you need. And Snap-On is manufacturing in China now! You’re not even supporting America when you let them gut your retirement fund.

You can get SIX Harbor Freight tool carts for one Snap-On. Not four. Not three. SIX!

I spent $400 on a gigantic Milwaukee rolling chest, and it has been phenomenal. It’s tough. It’s practical. You can stand in the bottom drawer. It has a power strip built in. If Milwaukee can do it, so can everyone else. A similar Snap-On product sells for…sit down…$2600. The Snap-On is 6” shorter and has a couple more drawers. It probably has some features the Milwaukee doesn’t. Good luck convincing me those features are worth $2200 plus shipping.

A rolling tool chest may be overkill for my little work area, but a total piece of garbage with much less capacity will run me about a hundred bucks, and Harbor Freight will fix me up for life for about $230. Tempting.

Harbor Freight boxes aren’t just very good “for the money.” They’re very good, period. Not great. Very good. And very good will do.

I wanted a farm, and now I have one, along with a big house. That means I find myself using tools a lot. I actually need the things I’m buying. I still need other stuff, like a trailer, fencing pliers, and post-hole diggers.

This sure beats spending money on things like golf and fishing, which are inherently frivolous. You can use a couple of poles to feed your family, but no one needs a seagoing boat and big-game reels.

Life is good, especially with tools. I will continue to report as my techno-arsenal grows.

Self-Esteem is Just Mind Candy

I suppose I should take a brief break from writing about frivolous things and say a few words about God.

I know I will repeat ideas I have talked about in the past. I will probably repeat facts, too. These things are inevitable. My memory is not great, and apart from that, the things I’m going through today are related to the things I have gone through before.

Satan is real. The other fallen angels are real. Demons, the offspring they created with human women, are real. Human beings didn’t make these beings up in order to create the false impression that they understood the universe and had some control over their destinies. That’s something modern scoffers say in order to create the false impression that they understand the universe and have some control over their destinies.

Egotists who think they’re smarter than the ancients dismiss everything people believed prior to our enlightened age, in which we study at the feet of the body-modified sages of Instagram and Coachella. They don’t know what they’re talking about. The ancients got a lot of things wrong, but they weren’t stupid, and they were right to believe in the supernatural.

Supernatural manifestations haven’t stopped. Most Americans don’t talk about them, but that has more to do with embarrassment than observation. Put 10 educated Americans in a room, get them to loosen up, and several will tell you about their supernatural experiences.

People will tell you supernatural events don’t happen. Cash prizes for proof of supernatural events and abilities exist, and they haven’t been claimed. Skeptics will say this proves the supernatural doesn’t exist. Here’s a problem with this childish argument: if supernatural events take place, there is no reason why they have to be provable. Example: I saw a spirit in my dad’s house in Miami; I saw it clearly, in detail. How can I prove that? I can’t make it come back and pose for a camera. Many people have seen and heard spirits. Jesus has appeared to people in a visible form. If he appeared to everyone on earth tomorrow and didn’t allow photography, there would be no proof of his appearance. Would that mean it hadn’t happened?

Can you prove you’ve ever eaten a hamburger? Can you prove you’ve played checkers? Proving things is not easy, when eyewitness testimony alone is not considered proof.

A long time ago, one of my relatives was in a house where a child was sick. He had a fever. Back then, people didn’t believe in giving water to people with fevers. The child kept begging for water. There was a glass of water in the room. My relative saw the glass jerk toward the child. The child’s mother said, “Give it to him. He’s going to die anyway.”

I can’t prove it, any more than I can prove Jesus (or Socrates or Genghis Khan) existed. I think it’s true, because the story came from a male relative who was not interested in God or the supernatural, but if you want proof, I can’t help you.

Satan is real, and he has many angels and demons who work for him, trying to harm human beings and take us to hell. He works against us every day. We are always surrounded by spirits we can’t see, and they have a great deal of influence on us. If you’re not led by the Holy Spirit, you serve the demons that consider you their workplace. You may not be a serial killer or a witch, but you are a slave to your flesh, and in various ways, you work against the spread of the gospel of the kingdom.

I don’t care who you are. There are demons around you and, except in rare cases, inside you, and you are targeted for destruction. Satan’s crew knows your name, and they are working on you right now. They are with you as you read this.

A huge part of Christianity consists of getting rid of the demons that rule you and replacing them with the Holy Spirit. Jesus was all about demons and the Holy Spirit, but carnal people taught by demons have turned Christianity into a set of rules and/or a niceness contest. They cut the supernatural aspect out of it so successfully, there are many churches in which you can be a respected cleric and teach that Jesus, heaven, and hell (all purely supernatural) don’t exist.

Christians who do believe in demons generally think they’re rare. They think a person who has a demon levitates, lifts cars, beats up policemen in groups, tells the future, and reads people’s minds. That’s like saying every person who has a car drives in the Indianapolis 500. A typical person who is under demonic control has many demons (not just one) and does things like overeating compulsively, smoking cigarettes, beating their wives, feeling morally superior to other people, gossiping, procrastinating, fornicating, lying…nothing sensational. Just things that disgust the Holy Spirit and drive him away.

Most people, including most Christians, are under demonic control. Demons don’t make us 100% evil. They simply corrupt us enough to make us useful.

Demons also bring things like illness, dementia, depression, and psychosis. Even when natural causes seem to be present, demons are often involved.

Jesus intended for us to confess and repent. Modern Christians don’t do these things. We go to church largely for the purpose of protecting our sins. We want to go on sinning, but we don’t want to go to hell, so we go once a week and try to get forgiveness, not realizing how bad that looks to God.

If you don’t confess, you deny you need God’s help, and generally, he will honor your decision and back off. If you don’t repent, even if God helps you, the help may not last. Demons have God’s permission to harm rebellious people. You may get a healing or some other kind of help from God without repenting, but it will probably be temporary.

Getting rid of a demon is like a divorce. If you want to keep your ex-wife out of your house, you have to take the keys away from her.

The evangelist Lester Sumrall rose to fame after casting two demons out of a Filipina named Clarita Villanueva. He had to fast to get them out, and then they returned. He had to go after them a second time. No one should assume demons can’t come back.

Think of all the “false healings” we’ve seen from TV preachers. They claim they’ve cast things out, and the people they’re working on say they’re healed. Then later they turn out not to be healed. Is the problem that they weren’t healed, or is it that no one followed up with teaching on repentance?

We are supposed to confess and repent, and we are supposed to do it continually, every day. In the Bible, we see Jesus casting demons out of people, but we don’t see the follow-up. We don’t read the stories of people who didn’t repent, or who backslid, and then had their demons come back. We have the idea that once a demon is cast out, we’re done with it. Not so. Jesus told us they come back, and they can bring other demons with them.

We were given the practice of communion to keep ourselves clean. Paul said people get sick and die because they don’t do communion properly. That means demons–the spirits that make people ill and kill them–come back to them. The purpose of communion is to confess and repent so demons are kept away and the Holy Spirit is kept close.

When you do communion, the cracker and the wine aren’t what matter. They’re not magical. What matters is the honest, deep, ruthless soul-searching, confession, and repentance that are supposed to precede the eating and drinking. When you eat the cracker and drink the wine, you’re just indicating that you’re one with God. It’s an affirmation. If you haven’t repented, your affirmation is fraudulent.

These truths have become more important to me with time. I have learned that confession and repentance aren’t just about feeling bad and trying to seem holy. They’re about gaining power and peace.

Jesus had perfect victory, even when he was on the cross. He had as much peace as a human being can have on this earth. He had no demons. He never grieved the Holy Spirit. He had all of God’s help. Most of us only get a small fraction of our inheritance. He got the works. We should be getting more than we are.

Our modern gurus fill us with poison. They tell us to feed our egos. “Don’t beat yourself up.” “Love yourself.” Loving yourself is “the greatest love of all.” The woman who taught us that drowned in a bathtub, surrounded by trash and drug paraphernalia. They tell us self-examination is “judgment,” and they say “judgment” is bad. They get this half-truth from Jesus himself, and even people who are against Jesus use it.

Popular wisdom says that if you criticize yourself, you will be depressed and lack the magical panacea, self-esteem. Self-esteem fixes everything. It’s the testosterone of the mind. It gives you strength and energy. It opens doors. Unfortunately, self-esteem only works in the short term, like heroin and cocaine. In the long term, it enslaves you to demons and makes you arrogant and unteachable.

God has been helping me criticize myself, and I’m here to tell you, it’s not depressing at all. It doesn’t weaken me. I feel great after I do it. Don’t you feel good when you get things off your chest? Hiding things is stressful.

When I was young, I suffered from depression. I found a book that explained how depression worked. It was caused by irrational thoughts. I would sit and think about what a loser I was. I would tell myself things would never get any better. I told myself things that weren’t true, and I believed them. The book was right about that, although the author didn’t know demons were behind the thoughts.

Back in those days, when I criticized myself, it sapped my strength. I lost motivation. I felt terrible. If that’s true, why does it make me feel so good today?

The difference is clear.

In the past, I insulted myself without a constructive purpose. The demons I listened to weren’t trying to improve me. They just wanted me to live in defeat and die unfulfilled. They exaggerated and made up my problems, and then they offered no solutions. They told me no solutions existed. That was their strongest tactic. It worked on Anthony Bourdain.

When I criticize myself now, I do it in the presence of God, guided by him. He doesn’t tell me to say stupid things, like, “I’m worthless,” or, “My life will never be any good.” He tells me to admit fault, ask for forgiveness, cast out the spirits related to my sins, and ask for change through the Holy Spirit.

When God moves me to criticize myself, he will get me to say things like, “I haven’t been praying enough.” “I mistreated this or that person.” “I get angry at this type of person for no reason.” “I have been lazy.” He gets me to open up about problems he can fix for me. When I’m honest, he can deliver me from the spirits that drive my faults, and he can increase the Holy Spirit’s influence in me.

When you confess, repent, and cast things out, peace comes back to you. You feel better. Things work out better. You find yourself winning instead of losing. A lot of the things the poisonous secular gurus promise you come to you, and they’re real. They’re not fake goods that don’t last.

The last church I belonged to had an allergy to self-examination. The very mention of it made them angry. They loved pride. They didn’t understand that pride and excuses bring weakness, turmoil, and defeat. Confession and repentance bring healing, victory, and relief from nagging problems. God uses nagging problems to tell you that you need to repent of things.

God doesn’t seem to have much pity for the proud, regardless of what happens to them. I don’t pity them much, either, so perhaps I’m right.

Jesus told us we had to be born again. The process is like gutting a house and rebuilding it. If you want to have your house remodeled, you don’t scamper around telling the contractor everything is fine as it is. You look for things you want to change. You have to be very critical. “I hate this wall.” “I need a window here.” “The kitchen is too small.” If you tell him the house is already perfect, he’ll leave, and nothing will change. If you want to be born again, you have to admit you’re a mess, and you have to be willing to part with a lot of your existing personality.

We don’t teach these things, so we don’t live in the supernatural. God doesn’t do all that much for us. Miracles aren’t commonplace, as they should be. Prophecy is hard to come by. Biblical figures who obeyed God had great supernatural help. You can see it all through the Bible, from Genesis to the Revelation. Somehow we think God changed his ways in about 300 A.D. He didn’t. We did.

It should be uncommon for a Christian to have an incurable disease, but it happens to many or most of us. Confession, repentance, and deliverance are keys to power, and we reject them.

God has been very helpful, showing me these things and helping me to comply. I have confessed some really revolting truths about myself. I don’t feel condemned at all. I feel stronger and more confident. It works. It will work better in the future, because God will make me better at it.

My prayer time is very strange for me now. A couple of times a day, I confess, repent, and cast things out. When I do this, my insides start gurgling. It’s not my imagination. I feel things moving around, and I hear sounds. Physical things a doctor (or anyone sitting near me) could confirm happen. Spirits set up housekeeping in people’s bodies, and when they are disturbed, it causes physical reactions.

I could put my phone on my stomach and record these things. They’re not subtle.

I can’t make my insides gurgle at will, any more than you can. It’s not me. It only happens when I’m spending time with God.

I hope God is showing a lot of other people these things. The world is full of defeated Christians. The situation needs to change. Evil keeps getting stronger, and we seem to do nothing but tread water and hold onto excuses.

I Really do Have a Screw Loose

I had a little fun today. The rain we’ve been having for about a century has dried up somewhat, so I got to take the Savage A22 out and shoot. It now has a Nikon Prostaff 3×9 on it. I wanted to check the scope, and I also wanted to see what I could do with Remington Golden Bullets.

Golden Bullets attract a lot of criticism. They’re dirty, and they have a reputation for failing to fire, plus poor accuracy when they actually go off. Remington started selling “new and improved” Golden Bullets at some point, but some people say they’re still crap. Golden Bullets would be a godsend if they worked well, because they’re cheap hollowpoints. Hollowpoints are more humane when you hunt small animals. They do more damage. It would be good to have a cheap round that works equally well for practice and hunting.

I set up my folding table in the pasture, along with my cheap Caldwell front rest and my new rear bag. I’m not sure a rear bag is a big help. A front rest or bipod makes a huge difference when you’re trying to be precise, but I can hold the butt of a gun pretty well without a rear bag, and rear bags are something of a pain to use.

I’ll show you my target. I used it for a lot of things, so there are many holes. Only two groups are important to this blog post.

I started shooting, and after I found the paper and got sighted in, I shot 6 holes that connected (right side of target, halfway up). That’s pretty good. Maybe 7/8″?

People say they shoot 1 MOA with .22 rifles at 50 yards, and that’s a half-inch group, but people lie a lot, and they shoot groups of very few rounds (as few as three) and then bury their bad groups. I shot a 3/8″ group today at 50 yards, and the the next shot opened it up. I won’t go around saying I shoot 0.75 MOA (3/8″ at 50 yards) with Golden Bullets.

The .22 LR round is not inherently accurate, compared to an insanely accurate round like the .17 HMR. Also, .22 rounds are manufactured cheaply, so it’s not like you’re getting match-grade ammunition when you shop. I don’t know what the cheap-ammunition potential of the .22 is at 50 or 100 yards, but I’ll bet it’s not over half an inch at 50 yards for 5 rounds.

I was quite happy with 6 rounds that connected, so I kept shooting, thinking I was onto something. My groups went nuts. It was bad. I didn’t know what was going on. I thought I had screwed up my trigger technique. One thing was certain: it wasn’t the scope. I had used blue Loctite to hold the scope base screws in place. I was sure I didn’t have to check. But I did.

The scope base screws were loose. All four of them.

I tightened the bases down and shot again, aiming at the little cross at the top left, by the Caldwell logo. As you can sort of see, the group (9 shots) was pretty tight.

After that I had to drive back to the house for something, so I called it a day.

I should add that I had two failures to fire, and I could not find firing pin marks on the rounds. I need to investigate that.

What did I learn?

1. The Nikon is very nice. I paid $89, and I feel like I got a good deal. The glass is clear. I’m not sure I’ll be able to focus on anything closer than 50 feet, though. I may have to read the manual. I hate doing that.

2. Remington Golden Bullets are not that bad when used in rifles. I think I can get near-half-inch accuracy at 50 yards from a bench, so I should be able to do an inch or less at closer distances when shooting animals. That’s good enough for most squirrels.

3. Golden Bullets are more than adequate for pistol practice at 7 yards. I want ammunition that will stay under one inch at that distance, because otherwise I won’t be able to tell flyers from bad shooting, and a round that will do 1 MOA at 50 yards will definitely do one inch at a seventh of that distance. Golden Bullets are more accurate than I am, and if you want to learn anything while you’re shooting, you need a gun and ammunition that will shoot better than you can.

Now I have to decide on a sighting distance, stick to it, and learn how to adjust my aim for shorter ranges. I read that squirrel hunters should zero their scopes at 75 yards. Interesting article. Something about the error being fairly small at a wide range of distances.

I don’t look forward to sighting a .22 at 75 yards, because I’m not sure it will group well enough to allow me to figure out where to move the reticle. Five clicks left…four clicks down…three clicks right…two clicks up…I’m afraid I’ll go nuts chasing problems caused by the ammunition itself. One nice thing about a really accurate rifle is that you always know how many clicks to move.

I’m going to lighten the Savage’s trigger. I think I wrote about that. New springs for the A22 and my .17 HMR are on the way. I love a light trigger. As long as it’s safe, it can’t be too light for me.

Tomorrow I hope to do some pistol shooting, and I want to shoot the Marlin 60 with the new peep sight. I have to try to maintain a serious practice schedule. Everyone gets rusty between sessions.

In a few months, I hope to be a much better shot.

If You Can’t Find Guilt, Create it

The other day I talked to my dad about the Manafort witness tampering thing. He has dementia, but he was a top-notch attorney in his time, and even though he can’t cope with current situations, he can still remember things from the distant past.

Anyway, I told him about the factual allegations Bob Mueller’s team put forth with regard to the new indictment. Basically, they say Manafort contacted some people who were potential witnesses, and one person hung up on Manafort before Manafort could say anything, because that person assumed–ASSUMED–Manafort was going to try to persuade him to do something illegal. The indictment doesn’t allege any facts that constitute illegal behavior, and that’s really something. A federal prosecutor got someone indicted without alleging that that person did anything illegal!

My dad was surprised. He pointed out that attorneys talk to their adversaries’ witnesses all the time. For example, they depose them.

There is nothing illegal about talking to a witness after you’ve been charged with a crime. It’s a bad idea, as Paul Manafort could tell you, and a judge may forbid you to do it in advance, but there is no law against it. The things alleged in the indictment appear to be legal. Of course, journalists being what they are, it may be that Judge Ellis told Manafort not to talk to witnesses and no journalist thought it needed to be mentioned.

I decided to look up the elements of federal witness tampering. Elements are items in a legal checklist. For example, if you want to prove negligence, you have to prove the defendant did four things. Those things are elements. If you only prove three, you lose.

Here you go:

(b) Whoever knowingly uses intimidation, threatens, or corruptly persuades another person, or attempts to do so, or engages in misleading conduct toward another person, with intent to—

(1) influence, delay, or prevent the testimony of any person in an official proceeding;

(2) cause or induce any person to—

(A) withhold testimony, or withhold a record, document, or other object, from an official proceeding;

(B) alter, destroy, mutilate, or conceal an object with intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding;

(C) evade legal process summoning that person to appear as a witness, or to produce a record, document, or other object, in an official proceeding; or

(D) be absent from an official proceeding to which such person has been summoned by legal process; or

(3) hinder, delay, or prevent the communication to a law enforcement officer or judge of the United States of information relating to the commission or possible commission of a Federal offense or a violation of conditions of probation?supervised release, parole, or release pending judicial proceedings;

shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

Let’s make it short and sweet. Mueller has to prove Manafort 1) CONTACTED people and 2) SUCCEEDED in delivering communications to them, in which he 3) TRIED TO INFLUENCE their cooperation with the court. That’s a fairly accurate summary which is easy to swallow.

You can see Mueller’s problems. He hasn’t alleged that Manafort succeeded in delivering barred communications to anyone.

A. The man mentioned in the indictment hung up, and he didn’t say Manafort tried to influence him.

B. Mueller hasn’t alleged that he knows what Manafort said to other individuals, so he hasn’t alleged facts that would prove Manafort tried to influence anyone.

When you write an indictment, you’re supposed to allege facts (not conclusions without facts) which, if proven, ground a guilty verdict. Alleging that someone committed murder, for example, doesn’t cut it. You have to say something like, “Defendant was observed striking the decedent in the head with a sling blade while eating biscuits with mustard.”

The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure say an indictment must contain a “plain, concise, and definite written statement of the essential facts constituting the offense charged.” Manafort’s team has already responded to the new indictment with a motion. I don’t know the contents, but I’ll bet it cites the lack of essential factual allegations.

Here’s what Mueller can convict Manafort of, if he succeeds in proving only what is contained in his factual allegations: Manafort contacted some witnesses. That’s not illegal.

Because Mueller has the one-sided, ridiculously unfair grand jury process on his side, and because he is known for coercing and ruining the lives of people who don’t cooperate, Mueller now has the tools to go fishing and back up his indictment. He got Manafort’s acquaintances to give him their phones, without warrants. They had seen the financial and personal devastation other innocent people had suffered at Mueller’s hands, so presumably, they would have done nearly anything to get him off their backs.

He filed a sleazy indictment without evidence, and he is using the threat of financial catastrophe and similarly weak indictments to scare people into letting him root around in private records to see if he can back his charges up.

This is not how the law is supposed to work. The authorities are supposed to have evidence that you’ve done something wrong before they search you. The feds don’t show up at your house, carry off your electronics and files, look at the contents, see if you’ve broken any laws, and then charge you. That would be unreasonable search and seizure. They’re supposed to wait for evidence of a crime and then use that evidence to ground warrants and indictments.

When Bob Mueller is around, the Fourth Amendment doesn’t work. He denounces you without evidence, and then he uses his own denunciation to force people to provide the evidence he needs. Welcome to 17th-century France.

Man. You can see why the Founding Fathers made things so hard on the government. They knew what we were up against. They knew US citizens would be tormented and abused by generations of heartless, ambitious, unethical bureaucrats.

I’m very glad no one I care about or know well has been charged with a crime that could require me to be a witness in the future. Imagine what could happen, if a friend of mine got a prosecutor like Mueller.

My sister was charged with some felonies. Thank God the State’s Attorney’s office didn’t work like Mueller’s office. No one sent me subpoenas, asking for all of our emails. No one called me in to “talk to me,” trying to get me to lie so they could charge me with my own felonies and force me to tell them everything I knew.

Maybe I had information they could have used. Maybe my sister sent me emails saying she was guilty. The prosecutor didn’t bother me, because like most prosecutors, he wasn’t overfunded and completely ruthless. We have to try to punish crime, but it’s not worth it if we make large numbers of innocent people utterly miserable.

Ken Starr didn’t act like this. I don’t recall any special prosecutor acting like this. Imagine the misery Ken Starr could have caused, had he chosen to coerce everyone who had knowledge of the Vince Foster, Whitewater, and Monica Lewinsky affairs. Leftists like to talk about the large number of indictments Mueller has produced, as if this proves Trump and his associates are evil people. It looks like all it proves is that Bob Mueller likes indicting people.

Bill Clinton committed perjury on camera, and he was not indicted.

I’m always glad I got out of practicing law. When I was practicing, I didn’t think much about the suffering of defendants. I filed motions and so on, and I didn’t consider the way it felt for people on the other side. I clerked for a patent lawyer who sued a disabled vet who stole some photos in order to advertise collectible Disney stamps over the Internet. I wouldn’t want to be involved in anything like that again. In many cases, simply being sued or charged is as bad or worse than losing a case.

I’ve been sued several times, and it’s no fun, especially when you’re innocent and your troubles are mainly due to your adversary’s lack of ethics.

Unless the judge short-circuits things, Mueller will get all the evidence he wants, and then he’ll find out whether Manafort did anything an ignorant jury will think is wrong. If so, he’ll prosecute him as hard as possible.

If Manafort is guilty, he will probably go to prison for breaking the law while trying to get rid of charges that never would have been filed had he not be associated with the Trump campaign. No murderers will be taken off the streets. No kids will be protected from drug dealers. No corrupt presidential campaign will have been exposed. Mueller will get a scalp no reasonable person cares about.

Even if the judge dismisses the indictment, which was apparently drafted without evidence, Mueller wins, because he has used his insinuations to get evidence which could lead to a better indictment.

I would really like to see Mueller held accountable for his scorched-earth tactics. He sets a scary example for other prosecutors, especially in an age when the criminalization of conservatism is very real.

Parts Known

I keep having days when I get up, look at the news, and find it hard to believe I’m not dreaming. My dreams are more plausible than actual events I read about.

I went to Drudge today and read about Anthony Bourdain. He is dead. He hanged himself at age 61. The article Drudge linked to didn’t say much, but other articles provide more details.

I thought Bourdain was an elitist, if a self-doubting one, and some of his political pronouncements were typical, fashionable, ill-considered New Yorker prattle, but as a food show host, he was engaging and even likeable.

He seemed like a seeker to me. I don’t think he was a closed door.

There are certain prominent leftists who, even if shrill and unreasoning, seem to have the potential to come to God (or at least the GOP) and escape the bicoastal peer pressure vortex. We have seen individuals like this change course and come out as conservatives and even Christians. Something about Bourdain made me think he was likely to wake up one day. Now that can’t happen.

I don’t know his religious beliefs. He was known for drug abuse and wild living, and he lived in a godless environment, so my best guess is that he was an atheist. He comes across as Jewish, too. Let’s see if I can find anything.

Okay. He was a Jew. His father was Catholic, and his mother was Jewish.

He has said he did not believe in a higher being. He visited the Western Wall, and a religious Jew, perhaps a yeshiva bucher, accosted him, asked him to repeat some words, and said something like, “You are now bar mitzvah’d.” Here is his response:

“I never felt so much like I’m masquerading as something I’m not. I’m instinctively hostile to any kind of devotion. Certainty is my enemy. I’m all about doubt, questioning oneself and the nature of reality constantly. When they grabbed hold of me and in a totally non-judgmental way, you know God’s happy to have you, ahh man my treachery is complete.”

Not good. Tragic.

That there was hope for Bourdain is evinced by his remarks concerning the left’s vicious, condescending, unreflective persecution of “flyover” people. Here is a quotation from his exclusive interview with Reason.com:

The utter contempt with which privileged Eastern liberals such as myself discuss red-state, gun-country, working-class America as ridiculous and morons and rubes is largely responsible for the upswell of rage and contempt and desire to pull down the temple that we’re seeing now.

I’ve spent a lot of time in gun-country, God-fearing America. There are a hell of a lot of nice people out there, who are doing what everyone else in this world is trying to do: the best they can to get by, and take care of themselves and the people they love. When we deny them their basic humanity and legitimacy of their views, however different they may be than ours, when we mock them at every turn, and treat them with contempt, we do no one any good. Nothing nauseates me more than preaching to the converted. The self-congratulatory tone of the privileged left—just repeating and repeating and repeating the outrages of the opposition—this does not win hearts and minds. It doesn’t change anyone’s opinions. It only solidifies them, and makes things worse for all of us. We should be breaking bread with each other, and finding common ground whenever possible. I fear that is not at all what we’ve done.

The truth was gnawing at him, but he made a fatal choice before it had time to work its way through.

It’s hard to imagine what could make a spirited, extremely successful, highly admired man of 61 to put a belt around his neck and die. Depression is always irrational, though. People always think there has to be a reason, but individuals with what appear to be relatively trouble-free lives kill themselves every day.

Little voices tell them things are worse than they are, and the biggest lie they tell is that things will never be any better. People listen. Without the countervailing voice of the Holy Spirit, all we have to battle the round-the-clock murmuring of demons who don’t need sleep are our own objections. A depressed person is like a sole suspect who is interrogated by tormentors working in shifts. He gets tired, and his abusers are always fresh and energetic.

Mr. Bourdain’s actions have probably assured that he will never see his God-fearing friends again.

Hell is a serious matter. No matter is more serious. It’s astounding how much suffering we are permitted to bring down on ourselves in fleeting moments of recklessness.

Famous tweeters are wishing him rest. How inappropriate. Right now, there is nothing he would not give to be back here with all of his problems.

The other story that got my attention is about the University of West Alabama. This is a government-run school. As a government-run school, it is bound by the Bill of Rights. If UWA suppresses the civil rights of its students, it can be sued, and the state and the feds can come in and force the administration to bend the knee and repent.

UWA passed a speech code for text messages and other electronic communications! Unbelievable. Do the administrators live under a rock? How can they think they can do this?

More amazing: they did this in Alabama, which is not known for its leftist ethos. It shows that education is infected–gangrenous–all over America. Educators are completely out of touch with the decent people who trust them to mold their children’s hearts and minds. If it can happen in Alabama, it can happen anywhere. How did the people of Alabama let things get this far?

Here is what the policy bans:

Examples of cyberbullying and cyber harassment include, but are not limited to, harsh text messages or emails, rumors sent by email or posted on social networking sites, and embarrassing pictures, videos, websites, or fake profiles

“Harsh text messages or emails.” The government can’t ban those. It’s way too vague. If you text people telling them their children are dead, and it’s not true, yes, that’s a crime, but angry and insulting words are protected by the First Amendment. If UWA’s unconstitutional policy were applied nationwide, most celebrities would be put on trial for their tweets about Donald Trump.

Imagine what life would be like if one American couldn’t send another American a text reading, “Leave me alone, you idiot.” Courts would be so busy prosecuting texters, they would have time for little else.

“Embarrassing pictures.” Who defines “embarrassing”? Do they mean revenge porn? I’m all for banning that. I’m for bringing back obscenity laws, generally. But people end up in all sorts of situations which are embarrassing and yet legitimate topics of public discourse. What if a student photographs another student who fumbles during a football game? Should he be expelled? What if a student records an insane instructor calling conservatives filthy names and publishes it so something can be done? That has happened more than once, and it’s important that students be encouraged to continue exposing deranged teachers.

UWA bases its Orwellian code loosely on an existing Alabama statute. Under certain circumstances the statute makes a criminal of a person who:

Directs abusive or obscene language or makes an obscene gesture towards another person.

or

Communicates with a person, anonymously or otherwise, by telephone, telegraph, mail, or any other form of written or electronic communication, in a manner likely to harass or cause alarm.

Obviously–I don’t even have to check–the state can only get away with enforcing this law in extreme situations. I can go to Alabama right now and drive around giving people, including the police, the finger, and if I am arrested, I will eventually prevail in court, and I am likely to motivate the legislature to change the law. The law is poorly drafted, overbroad, and vague, and the UWA code, which draws strength from it, is even crazier.

UWA’s Committee for Snowflake Coddling looked at a law which has been challenged many times–a law which people involved in education should consider threatening and even oppressive–thought it didn’t go far enough, and made it worse!

Everyone understands the importance of limiting genuinely harmful communications that have no legitimate purpose. I get that. But Alabama already had a law for that purpose. UWA wasn’t satisfied. They wanted to shackle people and back the shackles up with the threat of inflicting permanent damage on their lifelong earning potential.

When I was a student at Columbia University, I knew a young lady named Cathy. I’ll tell you what I was told about her. I did not witness it; it’s what I was told. One of the Columbia University Lions–a football player–had sex with Cathy in a dorm room. Unbeknownst to her, several other football players were hiding in the closet with the door ajar, enjoying every moment.

If this happened today, video of Cathy would probably be on the Internet, and it would almost certainly have been exchanged via email.

Things like that have to be banned. Everyone understands that. But we all know UWA isn’t setting its sights that high. If they were, they would have been satisfied with state law. In all likelihood, they want to go after everyone who says a girl is fat. They want to go after anyone who uses the accurate term “illegal alien,” calls Bruce Jenner a man, or says, rightly, that gay relations are sinful. Anyone who supports the Second Amendment via electronic means will do so at his peril.

Maybe I’m wrong, but what are the odds? We’re talking about a demographic that provides puppies and coloring books to students traumatized by the results of a fair and legal presidential election.

In order to be true to its mission, a modern university has to be more accepting of controversial speech than the rest of us, not less. Galileo was controversial. Darwin was controversial. If they weren’t hypocrites, educators would be using the power to censor speech very sparingly. They appear to want a tool for swatting people who disagree with them.

Since I have brought up Orwell, I’ll bring up a very prescient term he used: “doublethink.” He knew exactly what modern leftists would be like.

Doublethink means cognitive dissonance. It means believing two or more contradictory things, simultaneously. Doublethink is in play in many areas of leftism. It’s in play when universities, which sponsor all sorts of offensive speech and behavior, pass draconian speech codes which give them the leeway to censor nearly anything they want.

It’s amusing that universities sponsor debate teams while chilling speech.

If a private college with an unusual mission passed a speech code, I wouldn’t be nearly as amazed. If a hypothetical Billy Graham University rejected government money and told its students they couldn’t say “heck,” well, okay. But a secular government school? Come on.

Cognitive dissonance will increase. Those who rule us will get crazier and crazier, and their skulls will get thicker as their ability to listen and change wanes. Get ready for it. It may be hard to believe that things can get any worse, but it has happened elsewhere, and Americans are no better than Cambodians or the Burmese.

If, in the mind of a leftist not currently confined to an institution, a boy with boy parts and boy DNA can be a girl, no absurd conviction, and no cruelty it is used to justify, are impossible.

Human beings don’t believe what reason tells them to believe, even when the truth is obvious. We believe what we want to believe, and our desires are becoming less and less compatible with the safety of those who disagree with the rising left.

Rifles Finally Ready for Rodent Ragnarok

Good things are happening. By my somewhat mundane standards.

I got my workbench set up, and I have been ordering stuff to complete it. I got a set of metric and standard Gearwrenches for about $40. Can’t beat that price. That’s about $2 per wrench, and I already have some Gearwrenches, so I know they’re pretty good. I also got metric and standard Craftsman ignition wrenches. Seems like they’ve gotten pricey, but there is always someone on Ebay…

I still don’t have enough pegboard hangers, but they will be here shortly.

Anyway, the workbench is functional, and I have a little plastic table next to it. Today the peep sight I ordered for my Marlin 60 arrived, and I decided to install it. I also decided to put my new Nikon scope on my Savage A22.

By the way, I had a great experience with Gander Outdoors. It’s related.

A lot of people hate Gander because a guy named Marcus Lemonis owns it. After Trump correctly (if generously) said there were fine people on both sides at the infamous Charlottesville rally, Lemonis said something about how he didn’t want anyone who agreed to shop at his stores. Okay, we get it. You hate racism, and you love all the puppies and kitties and warm fluffy bunnies. Anyway, a lot of 2A people now hate Lemonis, so going to his store is a big sin, like buying a Smith & Wesson was after they agreed to install “Hillary Hole” locks on their guns.

Lemonis put his foot in his mouth, and he is probably wrong about politics in every conceivable way, but it’s not a great idea to judge someone by what he says right after a notorious murder. People say smarter and more accurate things after they’ve had time to think.

I shop at Gander for a few reasons. For one, I started before I knew about Lemonis. Also, the prices are great. I can pretty much match Internet prices at Gander. Also, I don’t have a lot of choices. I have some very bad mom and pop joints. I also have Wal-Mart, which is limited. I have Rural King, which has no selection. I also have Dick’s, which is where Satan shops.

The crazies who run Dick’s decided to melt down all their black rifles after David Hogg shook his rattle at them, more or less, and then they went further and decided to hire pro-gun-control lobbyists. No idea why they would do that. Why try to get laws passed to limit what you can sell? You can just stop selling things you don’t like. Whatever the plan is, Dick’s appears to be legitimate 2A poison, so I am reluctant to walk in the door.

I’m thrilled that they’re destroying their guns, because it will be a big boost to manufacturers. People will still want black rifles, and a bunch just disappeared, so other sellers will place orders to replace them. The net effect is added profits for the manufacturers, added profits for other sellers, and a big hit for Dick’s.

Journalists are telling us Dick’s is doing very well. That’s probably true, because Dick’s is inhaling other businesses. When you’re buying up other companies, one would expect your sales to increase. The question isn’t whether Dick’s is doing well but how well they should be doing. A whole lot of people won’t go near the place, and they will be developing relationships (moving market share) with other retailers.

Springfield and some other arms companies cut Dick’s off. Springfield makes very popular, very nice pistols. Dick’s losing Springfield is like a grocery store losing Pepsi. I think they will suffer in the long run.

Here’s another reason I shop at Gander: because I joined their loyalty club, I get small discounts on nearly everything, and I also get a steady stream of 10%-off codes and free shipping offers. Their prices are already very good, and when you throw in a discount and free shipping, the deals are too good to ignore.

The other day they sent me a 20%-off code. I decided to get a Remington Bucket of Bullets. It’s good to have a few thousand .22 rounds on hand, because the .22 is an extremely useful tool, and we will probably have ammunition droughts in the future. For all I know, I may be shooting crows to ward off starvation some day, and ammunition may be more precious than rubies. A Bucket of Bullets contains 1400 rounds at an attractive price. The shells are Golden Bullets, which are not highly regarded, but they are good for nearly all purposes, and they are excellent for pistol practice.

I ordered the shells and two other things, and then I could not get Gander’s site to digest my code. I called them up and talked to Tamisha, who could not have been sweeter. She looked my products up and learned that the discount could not be applied to the shells. I noted that it would have been helpful if the site had told me something about this instead of just rejecting my code over and over, and she agreed. She gave me the discount anyway. In the end, I got the club price, plus a 20% discount on that already-discounted price, plus free shipping.

I love these people. I don’t care if Marcus Lemonis has George Soros’s baby. I want to send Tamisha a pie.

To get back to today’s adventure, I had the peep sight for the Marlin, and I also came across some “free” rings for the Nikon scope. I bought a UTG BugBuster scope a while back, and it came with quick-detach rings. For some reason I no longer recall, I used a one-piece base instead, and yesterday, I remembered that I had the rings. I had been shopping for rings for the Nikon, and now I had them.

It was pretty glorious. I put the wooden Marlin down on my non-marring plastic table and used my Grace gunsmithing screwdrivers and my Bondhus hex wrenches to take the Marlin’s scope off, remove the factory sights, and install the new Tech-Sights peep apparatus. It looks beautiful, and if I can hit squirrels with it, it will redeem the Marlin. I just want to be able to nail the little creeps consistently within about 75 feet.

The UTG rings fit the Weaver bases I put on the A22, and they worked fine with the Nikon scope. That rifle should be murderous now. The trigger is great. Because it’s a Savage, the barrel should be very accurate. The Nikon scope should be clear and tough. God help anything smaller than a hog that gets near me when I’m holding the Savage.

Of course, I now see that I must have a gun vise. I had a hard time holding the guns while I was working on them. I already have a gunsmith’s mat on the way, and it will fit the workbench beautifully and reduce dinging and scratching, but I also need a vise. I wanted the mat anyway because it will be very useful for just about any task, whether or not a gun is involved.

If I understand things correctly, a gun vise is just a sort of rectangular plastic bucket with two padded vertical forks. You plop your gun in the forks and go to work. Maybe I’m wrong.

I’m super happy with my .22’s now. The Marlin should be great for times when I don’t want a scope. The Savage will be there when the situation calls for glass. The Nylon 66 is around, just for fun. And then there are my pistols.

I still want a Colt Woodsman, just because, but things are looking good right now.

I can’t say enough good things about the Savage A22. Looking into the guts of a Marlin 60 and then opening up a Savage A22 is like seeing Jerry Lewis in his underwear and then watching Arnold Schwarzenegger pose. The Marlin is a kid’s first gun, if you don’t like spending money on your kid. The Savage is a real rifle. It has an adjustable precision trigger. It shoots every type of .22 Long Rifle ammunition known. It can be dry-fired without snap caps. It’s drilled for Weaver mounts instead of coming equipped with a mere dovetail. It has a synthetic stock that will last forever.

Hard to criticize.

Even if you put every known aftermarket part on the Marlin to improve it, you will still end up with improved junk. It will still have two sheets of mystery sheet metal instead of a receiver. And if you want the best trigger for it, you’ll have to fork out around $80 and rely on one vendor: a guy who doesn’t answer his email.

To make things even better, Savage sells a lighter spring for the A22’s Accu-trigger, and I have one on the way. Actually, I have two. I have another Savage.

The Marlin is a friendly, light little gun that feels great in the hand, but it has serious problems, and it has been royally outclassed for only about 20% more money.

We will see how the squirrels feel about the Savage. New ones show up to replace the ones I kill, so I should have no problems finding rodents to practice on.

Mass Hatred of Trump Approaches Threshold of Psychosis

Trump Derangement Syndrome makes me long for the days of Bush Derangement Syndrome. I have never seen a politician treated so unfairly.

Two interesting items from recent news stories:

1. Leftist “journalists” are seriously suggesting the First Lady’s short absence from public view was due to wife-beating injuries,

2. Robert Muller, the new Torquemada, is trying to get Paul Manafort jailed simply because he texted potential witnesses.

During her divorce from Donald Trump, Ivana Trump, who was working hard to get money out of her then-husband, said something about an episode of rough sex that left her feeling violated. It was pretty vague, and it came from a woman whose husband cheated on her with a younger woman. She no longer stands by the story. From this, we accelerate to, “Trump beats Melania and hides her from the public.”

I understand why Trump, who is still much more transparent than secretive Obama, limits his exposure to hostile journalists and political opponents. There is no way for him to win with these people. When he does something dumb, they are ruthless, they never stop criticizing, and they lie and exaggerate about it. They never forgive. When he does something fantastic, like forcing Kim Jong-Un to negotiate, they tells us it’s actually a bad thing. When he does nothing at all, they make bad things up.

One day God will remove his remaining children from the earth, because there will be no point in leaving us here. The majority of the people of earth will have become so vicious and dishonest, we will be unable to reach them no matter what we do. What Trump is going through reminds me of this.

God told me this, and I love repeating it: “Hell isn’t full of sinners. It’s full of people who don’t listen.” God doesn’t give up on people because they sin. He gives up on them because he knows there is no longer any point in trying to change their minds. The existence of vile people is vexatious to God; he only tolerates it because an acceptable number of those people will eventually be changed. When the investment of suffering ceases to generate an acceptable return, the investment will stop.

The same principle applies in secular affairs. There is no good reason to keep working on someone who is determined to hate you and who doesn’t care about the truth.

As for Robert Mueller, he is “asking” Manafort acquaintances for their cell phones, and he is trying to get Manafort jailed for witness tampering. A lawyer who hates Trump, Paul Rosenzweig, looked at Mueller’s filing and said the allegations didn’t support charges of witness tampering. Manafort contacted some people, and he gave one of them a “heads up.” That’s what Mueller, Manafort’s worst enemy, said to the court. That’s all he could come up with.

Here is an excerpt from Rosenzweig’s article on the matter:

Study that exhibit and you will see that Manafort was successful in speaking to one witness (Person D1) for exactly 1 minute and 24 seconds. He attempted three other phone calls that did not connect and he sent two WhatsApp messages—one a link to an article describing his indictment and the other saying “we should talk.” When asked about the contents of the conversation with Manafort, according to paragraph 14 of the FBI declaration, Person D1 said that “Manafort stated that he wanted to give Person D1 a heads-up about Hapsburg” and “D1 immediately ended the call because he was concerned about the outreach.”

And that’s it. Really. The other part of the allegation is that someone else, Person A, reached out to Person D2 and told D2, in a series of texts that “P” (presumably Paul Manafort) was trying to reach D1 to brief him and that “Basically P wants to give him a quick summary that he says to everybody (which is true) that our friend never lobbied in the US, and the purpose of the program was EU.” A month later, Person A reached out directly to D1.

When D1 heard from Manafort, he, without evidence known to Mueller, felt that Manafort was trying to tamper with him. He shut off the conversation before it started, so he has no way of knowing what Manafort wanted to say. His subjective guess can’t be grounds for action against Manafort.

If I call you on the phone, and I say I need to talk to you about someone we don’t like, and you hang up because you think I want to plot to murder him, it doesn’t make me guilty of conspiracy.

When I first saw the tampering story, my first thought was, “Manafort is an idiot.” Then I thought about Mueller, and I thought, “I’ll bet he doesn’t really have anything.” Looks like Trump critic Rosenzweig, who actually did some research, has a similar impression.

Here is what real witness tampering looks like: “Let’s get our stories straight! They can’t prove anything if we stick together! Here’s what I’ll say happened!” Merely contacting a potential witness is not tampering. “But Manafort used encrypted methods to contact his cronies!” Doesn’t matter. Still not tampering, unless you have some solid information about the content of the communications.

Similarly, real obstruction of justice looks like this: you get in trouble for using an illegal private email server, and then before handing everything over to investigators, you pay a firm to wipe the hard drives clean. But that’s tangential.

The potential witnesses are afraid of Mueller, with very good reason. He can’t use the rack or the thumbscrew to coerce people, so he looks for ways to push people to commit new crimes so he can make them his slaves. They don’t want to be set up with bogus charges of obstruction, perjury, or anything else. They just want him to go away. They gave him their phones not because they had been properly subpoena’d, and not because Mueller had solid grounds to compel them, but because they were afraid of going near a toxic prosecutor who turns innocent people into defendants. The fact that they gave Mueller the phones suggests they know there is nothing incriminating on them. Had there been, they would probably have hired lawyers and resisted.

Engaging with Robert Mueller is like giving Hannibal Lecter your home address.

I read an interesting statement the other day. Someone claiming to be knowledgeable said investigators and prosecutors don’t ask suspects to come in and talk because they think the suspects have information. They ask them to talk because the investigating is done, and they want to see if they can get the suspects to lie and be charged with new crimes.

You may think people who get indicted must be guilty of something. It’s important to remember the presumption of innocence, which frequently turns out to be factually correct.

Indictments don’t come from committees of fair-minded experts. They come from grand juries. A prosecutor stands in front of a bunch of ignorant people and tells them so-and-so violated this or that law which they don’t understand, he doesn’t give the accused a chance to respond, and then he pushes the jurors to indict. Grand juries decisions don’t have to be unanimous, making wins easier for people like Mueller, and they have a very low standard of proof: probable cause.

It’s tee-ball for prosecutors.

In a trial, prosecutors and defense attorneys choose jurors. This is very important. You can make a very nice living simply helping lawyers pick jurors, because biased jurors help lawyers win. A jury of black racists selected by Johnny Cochran and his buddies let O.J. Simpson murder two people without consequences.

Guess who picks grand jurors? Prosecutors and defense attorneys, right? NO. Just prosecutors, with some help from judges. Potential defendants, a term which includes anyone Bob Mueller wants to question, have no protection. Before your case even gets to the jury, the prosecutor gets to stack the deck. Getting groundless indictments from grand juries is considered very easy.

Many states don’t use grand juries, precisely because the whole business is rigged against defendants. They use preliminary hearings at which defense attorneys get to speak.

Prosecutors aren’t always fair. George Zimmerman’s prosecutors perjured themselves in their efforts to get him charged. That case didn’t involve a grand jury, but it demonstrates the point. Things like that happen.

Mueller’s end run around the warrant process was brilliant, albeit unethical, cruel, and frightening. In our justice system, prosecutors aren’t supposed to be able to get materials they’re not legally entitled to, from people who haven’t been shown to be guilty of anything. If Robert Mueller calls you tomorrow and tells you he wants to read your diary, and he says the full weight of the law is behind him, you can tell him to drop dead unless he shows you a warrant or threatens to charge you with a crime you have already committed.

Mueller probably could not have forced any of these people to produce their phones. The judge probably would have rejected his requests for warrants. A prosecutor can’t say, “I want to search Bob’s house to see if he did anything wrong.” He has to say, “Here is strong evidence that Bob’s house contains evidence of wrongdoing,” and a judge has to agree. Digging around without probable cause is called “fishing,” and if Mueller asked for warrants, he would probably be told he was going on a “fishing expedition.” Through intimidation and abuse of power, Mueller bypassed the judge and the constitutional protections of the defendant and his acquaintances.

Cops do this kind of thing.

“Let us search your car.” “No.” “Okay, we’ll stand here all night until we get a warrant, and then if we find (or plant) anything, we’ll say you didn’t cooperate.”

“Answer some questions.” “I want to talk to a lawyer.” “Okay, but you’ll sit in jail over the weekend.”

Imagine how Mueller’s people could pressure innocent people.

“Give us your phone. Please.” “No.” “Okay, but we’ll charge you with obstruction. Can you afford a criminal lawyer? Do you like owning your own house?” “I’ll send you my phone.”

Constitutional rights mean nothing if you can’t use them without being punished.

Mueller probably did what he did because the judge doesn’t like him. The Judge, T.S. Ellis, has stated that he thinks prosecutors are out to “get Trump.” Mueller probably realized he wasn’t going to get rubber-stamp warrants out of Ellis, so he avoided the constitutional process and got them through intimidation. The judge can’t do anything about it. He is aware Mueller undermined him deliberately, and I’m sure he doesn’t like it. I hope that works in Manafort’s favor. Ellis may be looking for some payback for the disrespect. If he is, he will find a way to get even.

I don’t even care if Manafort is guilty of the trivial things he is charged with. What Mueller is doing is much worse. I hope Manafort gets off and Mueller retires permanently before he can ruin more lives.

I know people who have gotten away with wife-beating, murder, and rape. I’m over it. I don’t care about a man who failed to observe obscure, rarely enforced laws regulating people who deal with foreign governments.

I am very grateful to Trump. Look what he subjects himself to every day. He is a very special man. I couldn’t begin to deal with the persecution he, his family, and his associates endure. The more torments are heaped on them, the more I like Trump.

It’s great that we have a billionaire president. Leftists use lawsuits to impoverish or intimidate innocent conservatives and drive them from office. They got rid of Sarah Palin (did nothing wrong, Newt Gingrich (later proven innocent), and Tom DeLay (later exonerated) that way. Trump doesn’t give a crap about lawsuits. When you’re worth 9 billion dollars and have incredible earning power, you can afford to lose a stack of $10 million lawsuits, and it won’t affect your standard of living in the slightest.

Leftists have a pathological disdain for conventional morals, and that includes the truth. They seem to think being honest and playing by the rules are for the naive and weak. They don’t understand the damage they themselves sustain because of their malice and dishonesty. It’s tragic. They are dragging themselves and their children down into defeat. They are headed for a paradigm in which it is no longer possible to help them because they have a policy of denying fault. God wants to change everyone, including the BLM, Occupy Wall Street, and Antifa crowd. But he can only help people who are not impervious to truth.

They are pushing God to withdraw his missionaries from this infected planet, and they will eventually succeed. Eventually God’s children will go to be with him, and after that, Satan’s children will be forced to join their own father, permanently.

I wonder what will turn out to be more sickening: the insane abuse we see heaped on Donald Trump now, or the repulsive fawning the next Democrat president will receive.

And so is Pizza Law

I was just thinking about the gun forum where I caused a stink by saying I was able to do my job.

Someone I knew started a forum, and I joined because I thought he was a decent guy. At some point, gun laws were being discussed, and random people who didn’t know very much started trying to tell me I needed to consult an attorney in order to understand a federal firearms law. I told them I was an attorney, myself, and that I would not have any problems figuring things out.

You wouldn’t believe the storm of bile I brought down on myself, simply for saying I was able to do my job! It’s as if I worked at Firestone and caught hell on a forum for saying I could change a tire. I was egotistical. I was naive. Unbelievable nonsense, from people who had no idea what they were talking about. You don’t have to be a “gun attorney” to understand a gun law, but you do have to be an attorney in order to tell an attorney his business.

There is a well-known Florida attorney who specializes in firearms law. He wrote a book, and he has a website. If I recall correctly, they were pushing me to rely on him instead of my three years of postgraduate education. He seems to be doing Florida a great service, and he’s probably a fine lawyer, but I was no slouch, either, and–sorry to say it–firearms law is far from cerebral. The areas in which I practiced required more brains, not that I’m claiming they were cerebral, either. I don’t need this man’s help to read a statute.

Law is not that hard. If you have an IQ of 140, which is common, you can probably be a fine Supreme Court justice.

Lawyers hate reading things like that. They want people to think they’re brilliant. Your dentist is probably smarter than your lawyer.

Here’s another interesting fact: there is no Florida specialty called “firearms law.” The whole idea is a bit of a joke. You can’t go to the Florida Bar and get certified as a firearms lawyer, but you can be certified in recognized areas like elder law and aviation law. Here is a list of the certifications the Bar provides. You can bill yourself as a gun lawyer and do fine work related to gun laws, but it’s not a real specialty.

A “firearms lawyer” is really just a criminal attorney who deals with cases involving alleged violations of certain gun laws. No one goes into “firearms law” in order to do civil trials. Gun-related cases are about criminal charges. People represented by “firearms lawyers” are criminal defendants. If you’re a “gun attorney,” you should also be a qualified criminal attorney. You should be able to defend rapists and purse snatchers with complete competence before you branch out into “gun law.”

You can proclaim yourself a firearms lawyer and study the law on your own until you become a legitimate expert, but it’s still not a recognized specialty here. Also, even if you are a gun-law expert, you may not know much about guns.

I know a guy who was considered to be a firearms lawyer. The word “expert” was tossed around. He’s no longer an attorney, but he was promoted as a gun lawyer when he was active. This was a person who never spoke of hunting in my presence. I never heard of him competing in any shooting matches. A person who knew him quite well said she shot as well as he did when he took her on her first trip to the range. I don’t think he had a serious gun collection. The only gun I ever heard about was a carry pistol.

Was he really a gun-law expert? No idea. There is no exam. If you Google him, you will see him mentioned in connection with “firearms law.” People seem to have accepted him as an expert, without investigating.

Lay people can’t evaluate professionals. They take their claims at face value. When we say so-and-so is a good doctor, we mean he’s polite and not too expensive. When laymen say another guy is a good lawyer, they may mean he won an easy case for them or even that he must be good because they saw him on TV.

Do you know how Fox and CNN get their legal “experts”? It’s hilarious. You call the networks and say you’re willing to appear for nothing. Bang. You’re an expert. My sister was all over CNN and Fox for a time. She had a PR agent who hooked her up.

Call Fox and CNN today. Tell them you went to the Duke University School of Law, you work in Manhattan, you’re an expert in constitutional law, and you like being on TV. They will take you seriously at first, believe me. I’ll bet they won’t even check your background. I seriously doubt they called my sister’s former boss. They might have gotten an earful.

There is no way to prove the guy I knew was or was not an expert, without an extensive history of court opinions from cases in which he participated. There is no real training or oversight for “firearms lawyers,” unless there are a few ridiculous CLE courses out there. You can’t go to law school and “major” in gun law. There is no such thing as a postgraduate course for gun lawyers. Every person in Florida who claims to be a firearms lawyer is self-educated and self-anointed, and because there is no certification process, there is no easy way to know if they know anything.

I might become a “firearms lawyer.” I can sit here and read case law for a month. I’ll buy a couple of CLE’s. After that, I’ll know as much as anyone.

Lawyers love making up new legal fields. There is a glut of lawyers, and most lawyers are not very good, so it pays to have a niche and pretend you can do things other lawyers can’t.

Maybe I’ll make up a legal field. I want to be the first expert in pizza law. Did you burn the roof of your mouth at Chuck E. Cheese? I’m here to get you MO’ MONEY MO’ MONEY MO’ MONEY!

What I’m trying to say is that laymen shouldn’t get the idea that there is a big guild of highly trained gun lawyers out there, who have special skills other lawyers don’t have. A smart attorney–and I stress the word “smart”–can pick up any field of law with a certain amount of homework. Because gun law is part of criminal law, which is very simple as law goes, it should be particularly easy for people in other fields to get up to speed.

A dermatologist can’t walk into a hospital and do a lung transplant, because medicine is much harder than law, but any clever lawyer can look at a common statute about a simple subject, and the surrounding case law, and make an intelligent decision.

Here is my advice concerning gun lawyers: stay away from them. If a criminal lawyer can’t get business without advertising a dubious specialty, there may be something wrong with him. Hire the best criminal attorney you can afford.

Googling around, I see that gun lawyers are using “gun trusts” to scare people and drum up business. Something to do with “NFA devices.” This means guns and devices that have to be licensed by the BATF. I would stay away from such things. We raise hell when we have to do background checks, fearing that the FBI is making lists of our guns, and then some of us go ahead and file “NFA device” paperwork, INSURING that the feds keep records on us. I dunno ’bout that.

Of course, many of us tweet, Facebook, Instagram, and blog pictures of our guns every chance we get, so maybe there is no point in discussing privacy.

At least one website says gun trusts are a crock. Don’t ask me. I’m just a lowly litigator. Here is a link.

I’m billing all of you for this, and if you’ve read this far, you already owe me. Email me for Paypal information.

Mossberg’s Crazy, Legal, Short-Barreled Shotgun

I saw the craziest thing during my breakfast routine. The BATF has cleared the general public to buy short-barreled (“sawed off”) shotguns.

Because of weird quirks in federal firearms law, it is legal to sell a smoothbore shotgun with a barrel shorter than 18″, as long as it is (and always has been) fitted with a pistol grip. You can’t buy the same shotgun with a buttstock and replace it with a pistol grip unless you want to go to prison.

The Mossberg company sells a gun called the Model 590. It’s the typical Mossberg pump, with a little pistol grip and a very short barrel. It will hold 6 rounds of ammunition. Of course, the amount changes depending on the length of the shells.

A long time ago, someone told me it was impossible to control a 12-gauge shotgun without a buttstock. This is completely wrong. I put a laser on a Saiga 12 and fired it from the hip, and I had no trouble hitting what I shot at. It looks like the Mossberg is no less controllable.

Here’s a video that starts out with a man shooting the Mossberg held at his side, more or less. He doesn’t fall down. The gun doesn’t fly out of his hands. He doesn’t have problems holding it on target. Later on, he shoots a dummy at 7 yards and puts the pellets right where he wants them.

The man in the video either runs or works for Gunblast.com, which is a very nice site. They do excellent gun reviews.

Would I buy this gun? Of course. Because it is a gun. But other than that, would I recommend it? I don’t think so. The capacity is very low. Miss six times, which is something that happens every day in shootouts, and you’re done. Sit down and wait for Enrique the MS-13 Dreamer to walk over and plug you. You can reload it, but by the time you find the first shell and pull it out of your ammo holder thing, your brains will be on the wall behind you.

Also, it’s a pump, and pumps are stupid. They’re slow, and it’s very easy to screw up and fail to chamber a round properly.

Me, I will continue to rely on the 31-round, 100% reliable Eastern Bloc rifle, shot from the folded state. If I miss someone with that 6 times, I will still have 25 tries left, and if I carry a magazine with me, I’ll have another 30 rounds I can load in three seconds.

“If pumps are so stupid, why do the cops and the military use them?” I don’t know. Probably because committees choose their weapons. They also use the .308 for sniping, and it’s inferior to other well-known choices. They used revolvers when criminals were using Glocks.

“Pumps are more reliable than semiautos.” In what way? Semiautos fire chambered rounds just as well, and they chamber rounds just as well, only much faster, without requiring you to take your mind off your target. If your semiauto has a malfunction, so what? Yank the bolt handle and keep shooting.

Time for a tangent. Why do movie guns jam irreparably? You know what I mean. The bad guy pulls his trigger, the gun doesn’t go off, he pokes around at it like a confused monkey, and then he throws it away and reaches for a knife or something. What kind of gun jams so badly you can’t clear it?

I’ve been on Gunbroker a lot, and I’ve never seen this: “My AR-15 jammed while I was trying to shoot up a tractor pull in the name of Allah, so I am forced to sell it for parts. Barrel and furniture are fine.”

Movie bad guys don’t just put their jammed guns down. They throw them. Why is that? I hate watching actors throw valuable guns or slide them on concrete. They don’t act like it bothers them. Let me tell you something. If you took the cheapest gun I paid for (or even a gun you just took from Enrique) and dragged it across your driveway, I would have kittens. No one in his right mind throws or drags a gun he paid for.

Actors don’t pay for their guns, and sometimes they’re not even guns. They use replicas and dummy guns. Bruce Willis doesn’t care about the finish on an M4 his studio paid for, and he definitely doesn’t care about the finish on a fake Glock made of black plastic.

Actually, that sounds like the description of a real Glock.

If your AK-47 jams while you’re working things out with a burglar, you don’t throw it away and go after him with a throw pillow. Clear the jam and resume hostilities.

Am I wrong? I have never seen or heard of a jammed semiauto that couldn’t be cleared in a hurry. Is there some special case where a shell folds up and wraps itself around a gun’s internals? I’m not omniscient, but it sounds unlikely.

The Mossberg looks like fun, but I don’t see it as an intelligent choice for self-defense. I don’t see any real advantages, unless you live in a house with 18″-wide hallways and really need a short gun.

If you really need a short gun, buy an AK pistol and put a vertical foregrip on it for control. This is illegal, but you can always take the extra grip off before the cops arrive. Even if you live in Massachusetts, they’re not going to think to ask you if you used an illegal grip, and turning you in for an NFA violation will be the last thing on a wounded burglar’s mind.

Can you even have an AK-47 in Massachusetts? I don’t know. I know MS-13 members can have them. Not sure about law-abiding citizens.

Yes, the Mossberg shoots a larger pattern than a rifle, but it may be as small as three inches and won’t be bigger than maybe 8, so you still have to aim, and if most of your 8″ pattern misses, the few pellets that hit the burglar may not do much harm.

In order for a shotgun to work, you need at least one pellet to hit your guest in an important place, and if most of your pellets are off to the side, the ones that hit are probably going to land in areas that aren’t vital.

If you get a center-mass hit with a 12 gauge, the mess will be incredible. No doubt about that. But it’s like betting your life savings on one lottery ticket. I would rather shoot 31 30-caliber bullets at someone, getting 31 chances to aim, than shoot 30 or so 30-caliber shotgun pellets at someone with two or three shots and only a few chances to aim.

Is the Mossberg good for defending a vehicle, because you would be shooting through a small window at short range and probably wouldn’t miss? No. It’s a pump. Do you really want to have to swing your elbow around, racking a shotgun while confined in the front seat of your car, behind the steering wheel? Of course not. You want a semiauto.

I was just looking at an article by an “expert.” Experts used to tell us not to give water to fever patients. They also told us to eat trans fats. Anyway, an expert has cited the “intimidation factor” of a home-defense shotgun. Really, dude? Really? That’s irresponsible. What burglar looks at your gun and says, “I only give up for shotguns”? What criminal looks at an AK-47 and feels good about facing it?

Criminals are stupid and sadistic, and many are crazy or on drugs. Many will shoot back at an armed homeowner. Google the stories and see. If you think the scariest gun wins, you’re dreaming. The gun that wins is the one that incapacitates fastest and most reliably, period. Also, the gun that wins is the one that doesn’t run out of ammunition during the fight.

I’ll tell you where I saw the “intimidation” remark. It was on the Chuck Hawks site. Really dumb. I love the site, but they dropped the ball this time. I hope no one took their advice seriously. It’s like they channeled Joe Biden.

The writer cites unnamed “experts” who favor the pistol as a home defense weapon. I am shaking my head. He, himself, says a pistol won’t damage your home as badly as other guns, and it won’t “overpenetrate.” Oh, man.

What’s worse, when you’re trying to avoid being raped? Two holes in your drywall, or 6? No intelligent person thinks about things like this.

Second thing…there is no such thing as “overpenetration.” The idea is that a bullet will go through a perp or a wall and hit your kid, or, worse, your new TV. You know who doesn’t worry about overpenetration? Cops. They shoot what works, and you should, too. An “expert” once pointed out that a round that won’t go through a wall may not go through a criminal, either. Believe it or not, things like clothing and skin slow bullets down a lot.

Many “experts” test cartridges on ballistic gelatin, which has no skin and no clothing. Ballistic gelatin doesn’t wear leather jackets or heavy metal belt buckles. Ballistic gelatin rarely uses PCP. It doesn’t hide behind drywall.

At least when it comes to pistols, the FBI’s official position is that you want a big caliber and huge penetration. They came to that conclusion after some of their agents fared very badly in the famous Miami Shootout. Rifles are somewhat different because of higher velocities, but still, you want tissue damage. The cops shoot M16’s in cities, and they don’t use rat shot or rock salt. The theory, I presume, is that the small chance of hitting an innocent person is greatly outweighed by the danger of being killed by a criminal your mouse gun failed to put down.

Overpenetration injuries in police shootings are very rare. They have happened, and there have been lawsuits. The cops still use guns that “overpenetrate,” even after having lawyers flung on them. What does that tell you? It tells me, “Use serious ammunition and try to point your gun away from innocent people.”

The article’s author also says that when it comes to home defense pistols, he prefers revolvers. I just don’t know what to say. Six shots, and then a lengthy reloading process. Meanwhile, your enemy has 18 rounds in his Glock, and he may have two magazines in the pocket of his saggy pants.

Semiauto, semiauto, semiauto. That’s my motto. And try to stick with long guns. Eastern Bloc rifle in the house (and under a truck seat), and Glock everywhere else. If you have to use the Glock, if possible, use it while making your way to the rifle.

Guess I’m wandering.

The Mossberg 590 Shockwave is a neat gun, and it shows how clever gun makers can find ways to make our silly gun laws look even sillier. That being said, I can’t see handicapping myself intentionally by using one for self-defense. Reasonable minds may differ, but I am right.

I hope.