Target Centermass

Category: General

  • London Terror Quickie and a TCm Status

    Britons will never give in to terrorists

    Bravo, Britannia!

    Bombers ‘could attack again’

    Courage, Britannia!

    British Police Refute Term ‘Islamic Terrorism’

    Ummm … Britannia, I hope this is just a matter of semantics or reservations about an ongoing investigation. I truly hope this barbarism will not be cloaked in political correctness.

    Now for the Target Centermass update: posting this weekend is questionable and glitches are to be expected. I really must upgrade the WordPress — I’m absolutely sick of the comment spam. That, and I’m hoping for a pleasant Saturday evening with the girlfriend at the ballpark.

  • Dropping off the Net

    I’ve got too much to do to blog tonight and I’ll almost certainly be on the road until very late tomorrow night. I’ll likely be able to blog some this weekend around the holiday festivities and anticipated large quantities of hot dogs. I’m also really hoping to be able to prepare a post for the first Carnival of Liberty.

    Now, back to the washing and packing and whatnot.

    Gunner out.

  • Has It Really Been a Year?

    This blog started with a fire command.

    That first post ended as follows:

    Well, let’s just see how it goes.

    And how has Target Centermass gone? Well, I’ve obviously found it rewarding enough to stick with it past my initial personal goal of a three-month trial. It’s been satisfying enough to leave behind Blogspot and actually fork over some money (twice, actually) for a domain to keep up my little self-indulgence.

    Traffic-wise, TCm hasn’t been an overnight success — or even an overyear success, for that matter. Still, I consider it a success to date, if only for the interaction with and attention I’ve enjoyed receiving from other bloggers I respect. It’s been a fun ride that I think I’ll continue for a while; thanks, John, Phil, Eric, JohnL, Chad, Alan, Scott, Raven, GuyS, and Damian (I reserve the right to update this list to catch anybody I’ve overlooked). Seriously, thanks. Y’all have made this a pleasure.

    Thanks again to the inspirations that got me blogging:

    In summation, happy blogiversary to me. What’s next?

    Well, let’s just see how it goes.

  • High Court Expands Home Seizure Right

    The U.S. Supreme Court has issued a ruling in the matter of Kelo v. New London. Their decision: a swift kick to the nuts of private property rights.

    A divided U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that local governments may seize people’s homes and businesses against their will for private development in a decision anxiously awaited in communities where economic growth often is at war with individual property rights.

    The 5-4 ruling – assailed by dissenting Justice Sandra Day O’Connor as handing “disproportionate influence and power” to the well-heeled in America – was a defeat for some Connecticut residents whose homes are scheduled for destruction to make room for an office complex. They had argued that cities have no right to take their land except for projects with a clear public use, such as roads or schools, or to revitalize blighted areas.

    As a result, cities now have wide power to bulldoze residences for projects such as shopping malls and hotel complexes in order to generate tax revenue.

    The libertarian in me cries that this is almost, so freaking atrociously almost, Dred Scott v. Sandford kind of horrible. I can, to a degree, see the need for the ability of government to seize land, given adequate compensation, for a strong public interest. I cannot accept that the government should have the power to essentially choose arbitrarily between private and non-related entities, stripping one of its property in favor of the other.

    Excellent collections of reactions around the blogosphere have been assembled by John Little, Michelle Malkin and Eric Cowperthwaite .

  • Just When the News Gets Ya Down

    Here’s a couple of feel-good type stories.

    Missing Utah Scout found alive

    Water, granola bars, and a cell phone video game. That’s what a Utah boy wanted after spending four days lost in Utah without food and water.

    Brennan Hawkins was found Tuesday near a lake, about five miles from the Boy Scout camp where he was last seen on Friday. Sheriff Dave Edmunds says Brennan was “a little dehydrated” and “a little weak” but is otherwise in good health. Edmunds says the boy was “extremely hungry.” But he says after he’d eaten, and after he drank a lot of water, he wanted to play a video game on the cell-phone of one of the rescuers.

    Lions save girl from kidnappers

    Three lions rescued a girl of 12 kidnapped by men who wanted to force her into marriage, chasing off her abductors and protecting her until she was rescued by Ethiopian police.

    The men had held the girl for a week in the remote south-west, repeatedly beating her, before the lions chased them away.

    “They stood guard [for half a day] until [police and family] found her and then they just left her like a gift,” said Sergeant Wondimu Wendaju inKefa province.

    Now, back to the regularly-scheduled doom-and-gloom.

  • Police Kill Man With Grenade at Courthouse

    That’s not a very good headline — it should be made clear that the police did not use a grenade to kill a man. Well, on the bright side, there’s one less nutjob in the Seattle area.

    A man carrying a hand grenade and shouting threats was shot dead by police Monday in the lobby of the federal courthouse.

    The grenade was inactive, but police could not see that as the man held it in his hand, Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske said.

    Witnesses said the man, wearing a backpack that he later strapped to his chest, tried to get past security and began shouting threats. Kerlikowske said the backpack contained a cutting board.

    The man “often frequented the courthouse as well as the federal building,” U.S. Marshal Eric Robertson said, adding he had a “disdain” for the federal government.

    The medical examiner’s office said it would not identify the man until Tuesday.

    In the lobby, a guard saw the man take the grenade out of his backpack, then try to walk across a ledge next to a pool that blocks public access to a secured area, Robertson said.

    Judges, jurors, employees and prisoners in the 23-story federal building were evacuated. Meanwhile, security officers tried talking to the man, but he refused to put the grenade down. He also carried a sheaf of papers, including some court documents and what authorities described as a living will.

    After about 25 minutes of negotiations with police, “the man made a furtive movement,” Robertson said. “At that point the officers had no choice but to stop that threat.”

    An officer with a .223-caliber rifle and another with a shotgun each fired once at the man, who fell to the floor still holding the grenade.

    Bomb squad members determined the grenade had been drilled out and was inactive.

    Luckily for the unidentified corpse, this is not grounds for disenfranchisement in the state of Washington, at least not in a gubernatorial election.

  • Turning to the Blogroll

    I’m not in the mood to blog tonight, as should be obvious from my feeble previous post. I don’t know why — it just ain’t there.

    I have been in the mood to read and surf, however, so I’ll just poach some goodies off my blogroll.

    Let’s open with Kevin Aylward at Wizbang! as he slaps around Congressman Conyers on the Downing Street memo.

    Rep. John Conyers, as predicted here 10 days ago, will hold one of his patented “fake hearings” on the Downing Street Memo Thursday afternoon at 2:30 p.m. EST. Pay no attention to the fact that the witnesses list is lead by the same lead witness (John Bonifz) who presented at his Ohio vote-rigging “hearing,” or that Conyers will trot out Valerie Plame’s husband, Joseph Wilson, who can regale the “hearing” with tales of yellowcake and book sales. Luckily for Wilson no members of the Senate Intelligence Committee will be present to bitch-slap him again. Given the lack of reporting about his cratered credibility, Wilson probably sounded like a great witness to Conyers.

    Now let’s turn to the favorite (and deservedly so) target of the day: Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and his pathetic loss of perspective on Gitmo.

    Let’s open with Paul at Powerline:

    Scott gave me credit for “anticipat[ing] the rabid foaming at the mouth” of Durbin and his partner in defamation Senator Leahy. In fact, however, I never expected that any U.S. Senator would express such absurd sentiments. I didn’t realize that leftist fever swamp extends so profoundly into the Senate.

    Just for the record (as if that matters to the left) Rowan Scarborough in the Washington Times reminds us of the following:

    Adolf Hitler – About 9 million dead
    Soviet gulags – About 2.7 million dead
    Pol Pot – About 1.7 million dead
    Gitmo – zero dead
    Gitmo – five instances of Koran abuse by prison guards
    Gitmo-15 instances of Koran abuse by prisoners.

    Then we’ll move on to Steve Verdon at Outside the Beltway, whose headline “What a Dick” really says it all:

    Apparently Dick Durbin doesn’t think much about the Holocaust, the genocide of the Khmer Rouge and Josef Stalin and its victims. Calling the detention center at Guantanamo Bay a death camp is just stupid.

    Chad at In the Bullpen chimes in with “Another Day, Another Nazi Comparison“:

    Over 13 million people died in the above mentioned camps throughout the years. The majority of those held in those camps were innocent whereas the vast majority of detainees in Guantanamo were found on the battlefields of Afghanistan. Can Senator Durbin not tell the difference?

    In an update, Chad turns his aim to liberal blogger Markos Moulitsas ‘Kos’ Zunigas and his site The Daily Kos (lack of link intentional). Dr. Rusty Shackleford of the Jawa Report comes out guns a-blazin’ at Kos (emphasis in original, and you should consider yourself warned that he really means it).

    You, Kos, are a certifiable idiot whose blind partisanship is disgusting and unethical.

    Warning: Graphic images follow.

    Speaking of Gitmo, Ace explains at length the justifiability and reasoning behind the detentions there. I particularly liked this nugget (emphasis again in the original):

    Okay. Let’s take you at your word.

    Given the fact that by your own admission that not only is the Global War on Terrorism not over, but we are actually losing this war, why the f*** are you constantly agitating to release enemy combatants so that they may rejoin their allies and kill more of our soldiers and citizens?

    Leaving Gitmo, over at Eric’s Grumbles Before the Grave (great banners, by the way), our caped crusader Eric has apparently found an arch-nemesis and has been waging a one–man war. For a moment, he almost seems to lose his edge, but not quite:

    I realize that I have gotten a bit personal with some on the left lately and have attacked them directly. If that offends anyone, I’m sorry you’re offended. But I’m not sorry for what I’ve said.

    In fact, Eric decides to adapt to the enemy’s tactics (EDIT: I doubt Eric will actually change course; he seems quite happy having actual facts on his side):

    Yep, just like the Left, I’m just going to make crap up out of thin air, allege that I have evidence to prove it, promise to tell you at some undetermined date in the future what my evidence is and insist that it’s worth “checking out”.

    Fight the good fight, Eric.

    Above all these important issues, you can never beat Scott at The Fat Guy for some good ol’ Texas-style common sense.

    Man, I do love my Blogroll so.

  • Just in Case You Haven’t Heard

    The Michael Jackson verdict was announced today.

    That’s all I have to say about that.

  • Texas Scottish Festival

    The girlfriend and I spent last Saturday at the 19th Annual Texas Scottish Festival and Highland Games in Arlington. We had a grand time watching the games, shopping and enjoying some of the wide array of food available. Nope, we decided against haggis.

    There were kilts aplenty, but only in Texas would someone opt for this outfit — kilt, hose and flashes, sgian dubh, cowboy boots and hat (click for larger).

    Texas Scottish Cowboy

  • Nothing Tonight

    The oncall pager owns me.