Standard Mischief

So now that Maryland lost their court case, and is suddenly a “Shall Issue” state, what does our side (the RKBA, pro-civil rights side) need besides over a thousand law-abiding people sending in their applications ASAP, return receipt?

How about taking someone along for the ride whose employer buys ink by the barrel or power by the megawatt/hour?

Hopefully, after carefully pointing out that there is no resident requirement for a Maryland Carry License, hopefully I’ve done just that. Hopefully. Not saying. Nope.

The only issue I see is it may be quite a boring story:

Week one: got the photos, fingerprints, references, paperwork, and the outrageous fee for exercising a core civil right all together. Mailed it in, return receipt requested.

Week two: Maryland failed in their plea to get a stay

Week three: The bank says my check was cashed

Week four: Nothing

Week five: Nothing

…

Week eleven: Nothing, and from my 1000+ other contacts, nothing either. MD state police says “there is a slight backlog”

…

Week twenty-six: Nothing. Except that Raymond Woollard (of Woollard v. Sheridan ) finally got his permit renewed. State Police say they are giving preference to renewals.

Week twenty-seven: Nothing.

…

Anyone with any ideas for “filler”, let’s hear them.

Oh, and credit for the “no residency requirement” goes to Patrick, who is (unverified) [see comments below] President of Maryland Shall Issue, in a comment left on this thread here.

Why, signing legislation into law using an “auto-pen”, of course!

I can’t seem to find a source to tell me whether or not this is a first for any sitting president, but this blog over at ABC at least admits that way back in 2005, an attorney that works at the pleasure of the President says doing it this way is entirely kosher.

The LA Times informs us that past Presidents, celebrities, and public officials have all in the past used the auto-pen, except that the reporter left out the fact that this was usually used to sign form letters and Christmas cards.

This little bit of mischief ought to be good for a few million in lawyer fees, you know, to stimulate the economy. Of course, the only way you’ll ever be granted “standing” in a lawsuit is to hope the government is willing to admit that they secretly spied on you.

Otherwise, we would all be in boxcars on the way to the re-education camps by now.

The TSA is busy blowing their own horn about the fact that the expected mass opt-out at the pedophile-scanners never really materialized. Of course It looks like the flying public said “no thanks” to even flying this week. Only the government would call that a success. I can’t see anyone in the media reporting hard and fast travel numbers, but Amtrak says Wednesday might have been a record day, and AAA is reporting that the interstates are going to be clogged.

Menwhile, if you think my “boxcar” comment was hyperbole, well you might be right, but Uncle reports that if you aren’t a model citizen, if you opt-out, if you remind the TSA agent that he isn’t above the Constitution, or if you have the gall to question the way the TSA keeps us all safe in your blog or other alternative media, they have a new made up name for you, “domestic extremist“.

Here in Maryland we can chose between a blackbox voting machine with proprietary software proven to be insecure or we can do a mail-in absentee ballot that is required to be filled in with a #2 pencil (for easy editing later).

We can chose between a former Governor who actually tossed us a tiny bit of gristle last time he was in office (but couldn’t actually tell us, because that would have just totally wigged out the fiscally responsible, middle of the road voters in the next county over), or “O’MoM” O’Malley, champion of the nanny state. (There was also someone from the largely ineffective and comical local branch of the large “L” Libertarians.)

I voted for Charles Lollar (an unknown to me African-American who didn’t spend many campaign dollars here in the most prosperous African-American majority county in the nation explaining exactly which party he belongs to). He’ll never beat Steny Hoyer, unfortunately.

All the judges failed to present a single argument of why they deserve to keep their jobs, so I voted no each time. They’re a shoo-in anyway.

A representive of the local Democratic party handed me a flyer asking for my vote for every single spending referendum, but otherwise failed to explain why we needed them. Somehow someone thinks we can just tax and spend our way out of the Great-Recession.

There was a wonderful amendment to the state constitution that would increase the dollar amount, below which you would not be given the right to a trial by jury in civil procedings. Here again, the party of the downtrodden and the poor; the party of the people urged us to price ourselves out of our own legal system. I guess our Federal Constitution guarantee of twenty dollars only overrides the state Constitution when the state wants it to. The new limit for the right to a jury trial is to be over $15 thousand dollars if the trial lawyer wing of the (D)s get their way.

Ugh.

And Laural gets the Quote of the Day with this:

“Until we get a “None of the Above” on the ballot, I can’t get behind the idea of showing up to vote just for the sake of showing up to vote.”

Hey, it looks like the FBI just left it there, stuck to the underside of someone’s car, without a warrant. I would assume abandoning something like that deliberately attached to someone else’s property would be forfeiting any ownership rights, although the FBI probably feels a bit differently.

I need to get into the custom law-enforcement only gadgets business. This thing looks like less than $200 in parts, (zip ties, magnets, a cut down mag-light for power, and a handy-talky packaged with a TNC and a GPS), and I’d retail it with special custom law-enforcement only features for say $2999 to the type of people who spend taxpayer dollars.

A slightly different design, less tactical (i.e. less black) would be marketed to hams¹ for say maybe $260. [youtube]

It looks like there’s a split decision in the circuses and so something like this warrantless tracking mischief might make it there to the supremes. Unfortunately, I don’t have any confidence that we won’t get another “bong hits 4 jesus” boner of a decision.² Until then, depending on where you live, it seems to be perfectly OK to publicly track the location at all times of you congressional-critters. So, anyone want to split the cost for one to be attached to my local rep’s private property?³

[h/t] Kevin (I wish you didn’t have such a god-awful comment system so I could leave a comment once in a while)

¹ Amateur Radio

² School kids don’t shed their rights to free speech at the schoolhouse door, instead, they are required to leave their rights at home just in case they run into the Principal out in public.

³ If anyone wants to search-fu up some homebrew plans, the magic word is “APRS” – Automatic Packet Reporting System.