Dave Kopel at the Volokh Conspiracy explains the rather startling conclusion: that permitting armed students and faculty on a college campus over 12 years leads to not one gun-related act of violence whatsoever.
And 26 acts of rape stopped in their tracks when the women pulled out their handguns.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/25/2016 00:00 ||
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#1
A pointed question...
"Professor, what sociable widget,
Positioned where coeds could reach it,
Blocks unwanted hookups
And town-on-gown stickups,
Promoting politeness collegiate?"
#4
Before todays 2nd Amendment "extremists", before there was a republic, and while the colonies were under the rule of the British Empire, those who wanted independence were labeled rebels and barbarians. They were opposed by the most powerful army in the l, armed colonial loyalists and German Hession troops. The odds the patriots were up against were far greater than Constitutionalists are today yet they succeeded.
And so can we.
Posted by: Unelet Protector of the Sith2424 ||
04/25/2016 11:24 Comments ||
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#5
Well, Unelet, I hate to be the one to rain on your parade---but, IMHO, they were different breed of men.
"I'm tired, and my tuchus is blistery,"
Complained a great student of History.
"The thing that pursues me
To tailgate and bruise me,
Refuting my views, is a mystery."
[SAHARAREPORTERS] If the past administration took the Boko Haram ... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality... for granted, making the disaster a justification for grand public treasury theft and even in service of a refusal to correct perception of tacit support for the group in conspiracy theories promoted to gullible and polarised citizens, the Muhammadu Buhari-led administration, despite its controversial handling of the economy, clearly takes its predecessors as a bad model for conflict management.
A prominent politician once told me that the war on terror failed under former President Goodluck Jonathan ... 14th President of Nigeria. He was Governor of Bayelsa State from 9 December 2005 to 28 May 2007, and was sworn in as Vice President on 29 May 2007. Jonathan is a member of the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP). He is a lover of nifty hats, which makes him easily recognizable unless someone else in the room is wearing a neat chapeau.Other than that he's pretty useless as the Boko Haram debacle shows.. because, aside from our popular ridiculing of the man as uncharismatic and clueless, he was "afraid of his service chiefs." This is interesting considering the involvement of heads of our security institutions in one of the biggest heists in the history of Nigeria, diverting funds voted for counterterrorism to their private causes and personal accounts. The region was thus allowed to be destroyed by the Boko Haram because the evil benefits these morally irresponsible public officers.
Quite unfortunate was the politicisation of counterterrorism, with the President even seeking to make it a Muslim agenda against his Presidency while conspiracy theorists in the north, indoctrinated by former Governor Murtala Nyako and even Malam Nasir El-Rufai, portrayed the spate of killings as a covert operation of some Christian organizations or personalities eager to decimate the dominating north and its politically overpowered Muslims.
I have always seen Boko Haram as a real conflict that emerged from our cultural flaws and thrived on our institutional lapses. It's not a conspiracy, it's a reality to which many of us are firsthand witnesses.
I campaigned against Jonathan possessed by rage over his deliberate refusal to serve as a unifying figure at that critical point of our polarisation and distrust, for even making policy statements as he jumped from one pulpit to another, home and Israel.
I don't think the past administration sponsored the Boko Haram, they just let it happen because of the billions allocated to our security agencies by the tricked and paranoid dispensation. Yet, the past few days, with the liberations of many towns previously sacked or occupied by the holy warriors as announced by the Nigerian troops, internally displaced persons have been reunited with the only place they call homes, giving another chance for them to breathe freedom again, and rebuild their lives.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/25/2016 00:00 ||
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h/t Instapundit
[PJMedia] Nate Silver, whose predictions for the 2012 presidential race turned out to be spot-on, has some bad news for the Trump-bashers:
Donald Trump has had a good run of numbers lately. While his victory in New York this week was expected, he got 60 percent of the vote, more than the roughly 55 percent projected by the polls. He appears headed for victories in Maryland and Pennsylvania, which vote on Tuesday. He’s gained ground in California and is narrowly ahead of Ted Cruz in the first public polls of Indiana. He’s added about 2 percentage points over the past two weeks in our national polling average.
You could push back against some of these details. Some of the California polls come from pollsters that have had a Trump-leaning house effect or that used an unorthodox methodology. The Indiana polls have Trump leading, but with only about 39 percent of the vote, which might not be enough if the rest of the vote consolidates behind Cruz. The national poll gains are small and may just be statistical noise.
But with Trump’s path to 1,237 delegates on such a knife’s edge, every percentage point matters. And it’s possible that Trump has moved a few voters into his column with a series of process arguments that he’s been pressing recently. The more restrained version, as you can see in a recent op-ed published under Trump’s name in The Wall Street Journal, is that the candidate who gets the most votes should be the Republican nominee -- that delegates shouldn’t upend the people’s verdict. In public speeches, Trump has taken the argument a step further, describing the GOP’s nomination process as "rigged" and "crooked."
Polling suggests that a majority of Republicans agree with at least the milder version of Trump’s argument...
#1
Why would this be the end of the line? He either gets the nomination or he doesn't. Doesn't mean any principled conservative would vote for him in the general election.
#2
In the general election a principled conservative, like the rest of us, must vote according to his calculation of what will do the least harm to the nation for at least the next four years -- whether voting for the Democratic Party's candidate or the Republican Party's... or withholding his presidential vote and just casting his vote for Congresscritters and state and local candidates and issues. Sometimes it's about winning the war amd getting to march in the parades, sometimes it's just about being the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike -- cold, wet, terrifying, but stubbornly refusing to let the ocean flood in.
#3
I feel like I've been putting my finger in the dike for a while, while the water goes from my ankles to my knees to my 'nads, and I don't think Trump brand grout is going to work, nor do I have any good expectations for Hillary Brand Flooding.
Our planet is doomed, Doomed, to go Forward, Not Backward, Upward, not Forward, and Twirling, Twirling, twirling towards Freedom... oh well.
#4
TW - The reason that the Republican party is in such a sad state is that they have been able to sell us terrible candidates on the basis of their not being as bad as the alternative.
[Breitbart] ""[S]ean, the things perceived as real are real in their consequences," Buchanan said. "The American people are looking at this and they say, you know, whether we like Donald Trump or not, the guy went out and has won this thing. Now, if by poaching and pilfering delegates here and there, Cruz and Kasich can hold Trump off from the nomination on the first ballot -- then then they take it, it will be like the heavyweight champion there with his gloves over his head and the award going to the guy lying on the canvas."
#1
Now, if by poaching and pilfering delegates here and there, Cruz and Kasich can hold Trump off from the nomination on the first ballot
They'll hand WH to Hillary. Any bets on how long before she starts referring to herself as "Mother of The Nation" in her speeches---and starts punishing disobedient children?
#2
That's Paleoconservative Patrick Buchanan? When was the last time he was right about anything?
I wish everyone would shut up about who has already won and just let it play out. The fact is, Mr. Trump has not yet won, or he would have crossed the magic number of delegates, and would be crowing about it. This is just trash talk, trying to get everyone else to back away and hand him the prize without him having to fight for it, and is profoundly disrespectful of the voters.
#3
McRaven is credited for organizing and overseeing the execution of Operation Neptune Spear, the special ops raid that led to the death of Osama bin Laden on May 2, 2011. CIA Director Leon Panetta delegated the raid to McRaven who has worked almost exclusively on counter-terrorism operations and strategy since 2001. [WIK]
On June 13 [2010], Bill McRaven replaced Stan McChrystal as JSOC commander. McRaven was a SEAL officer with a reputation as a deep thinker, based in part on his time at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterrey, California, where he designed -- and was the first graduate from - the special operations/low-intensity conflict curriculum. He turned his thesis into a book, SpecOps - Case Studies in Special Operations Warfare: Theory and Practice,in which he presented his own definition of special operations, one that paid homage to the direct action missions that were the forte of JSOC and the SEALs, but which ignored the unconventional warfare approach that was the specialty of Special Forces.
Admiral McRaven read both the tactical and political 'tea leaves.' Complicated by the Obama pull-out, the training of Islamic 'Host Nation' military forces had been costly and had not gained the necessary traction to attain victory.
Taliban and AQ [now ISIS] leadership and networks must be effectively dealt with. In spite of previous, highly publisized failures [Son Tay Raid and Desert One], vertical Envelopment operations such the highly successful 4 July 1976 Raid on Entebbe and the 4 May 1978 raid at Cassinga were re-examined and studied:
Direct Action (DA)
Either overt or covert action against an enemy force. Seize, damage, or destroy a target; capture or recover personnel or material in support of strategic/operational objectives or conventional forces.
Short-duration, small-scale offensive actions.
May require raids, ambushes, direct assault tactics; emplace mines and other munitions; conduct standoff attacks by firing from air, ground, or maritime platforms; designate or illuminate targets for precision-guided munitions; support for cover and deception operations; or conduct independent sabotage normally inside enemy-held territory.
#8
I liked him, a great officer. He is a tier one guy so it's not uncommon for them to focus on jsoc event and direct action over the special forces that truly shapes the environment prior to a DA mission. With that he would be an asset to any admin except for hillary's. She is a hack that will make make her decisions like her husband did, all based on public opinion polls.
Posted by: 49 pan ||
04/25/2016 15:53 Comments ||
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#11
I want to say I heard it on the radio yat are not sure.
When you and a Secretary of State have an irrational boss, it could tend to make you closer in order for a better result is my take on it. I will look to see where I got that.
[DAWN] SEVEN coppers were killed, allegedly by ’anti-vaccine myrmidons’, in Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... on Wednesday. The vaccination team was attacked in Orangi Town, where much of the population is Pakhtun.
Data released by the government and their INGO partners suggests a decline in recorded polio
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
04/25/2016 00:00 ||
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Long piece from Tablet, found with the help of a regular Rantburg reader on Facebook. Just the lede here...
The New York Times recently published a long investigative report by Eric Lipton, Brooke Williams, and Nicholas Confessore on how foreign countries buy political influence through Washington think tanks. Judging from Twitter and other leading journalistic indicators, the paper’s original reporting appears to have gone almost entirely unread by human beings anywhere on the planet. In part, that’s because the Times’ editors decided to gift their big investigative scoop with the dry-as-dust title “Foreign Powers Buy Influence at Think Tanks,” which sounds like the headline for an article in a D.C. version of The Onion.
Except, buried deep in the Times’ epic snoozer was a world-class scoop related to one of the world’s biggest and most controversial stories—something so startling, and frankly so grotesque, that I have to bring it up again here: Martin Indyk, the man who ran John Kerry’s Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, whose failure in turn set off this summer’s bloody Gaza War, cashed a $14.8 million check from Qatar. Yes, you heard that right: In his capacity as vice president and director of the Foreign Policy Program at the prestigious Brookings Institution, Martin Indyk took an enormous sum of money from a foreign government that, in addition to its well-documented role as a funder of Sunni terror outfits throughout the Middle East, is the main patron of Hamas—which happens to be the mortal enemy of both the State of Israel and Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party.
But far from trumpeting its big scoop, the Times seems to have missed it entirely, even allowing Indyk to opine that the best way for foreign governments to shape policy is “scholarly, independent research, based on objective criteria.” Really? It is pretty hard to imagine what the words “independent” and “objective” mean coming from a man who while going from Brookings to public service and back to Brookings again pocketed $14.8 million in Qatari cash. At least the Times might have asked Indyk a few follow-up questions, like: Did he cash the check from Qatar before signing on to lead the peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians? Did the check clear while he was in Jerusalem, or Ramallah? Or did the Qatari money land in the Brookings account only after Indyk gave interviews and speeches blaming the Israelis for his failure? We’ll never know now. But whichever way it happened looks pretty awful.
Or maybe the editors decided that it was all on the level, and the money influenced neither Indyk’s government work on the peace process nor Brookings’ analysis of the Middle East. Or maybe journalists just don’t think it’s worth making a big fuss out of obvious conflicts of interest that may affect American foreign policy. Maybe Qatar’s $14.8 million doesn’t affect Brookings’ research projects or what the think tank’s scholars tell the media, including the New York Times, about subjects like Qatar, Hamas, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and other related areas in which Qatar has key interests at stake. Maybe the think tank’s vaunted objectivity, and Indyk’s personal integrity and his pride in his career as a public servant, trump the large piles of vulgar Qatari natural gas money that keep the lights on and furnish the offices of Brookings scholars and pay their cell-phone bills and foreign travel.
Then again, maybe not...
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/25/2016 00:00 ||
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#2
In fact, Qatar is a US protectorate. The close Qatar-U.S. relationship was noted when former Arab League Secy-General Amr Moussa acknowledged (11-2012) that Qatar's powerful Prince Hamad Bin Khalifa had offered to "pay in full" to ensure the U.S. military presence in Qatar. Moussa added, "When he thought of protection, [he] saw that Americans are the only ones willing to provide it." Sheikh Hamad "told Americans that he will ensure their expenses are paid in full, so now he enjoys security." (Al-Arabiya, November 30, 2012) Today, the Qatar base is the fulcrum of US policy in the Gulf. Qatar has not only paid off Indyk, but the Clinton family as wel..
h/t Instapundit
Science, humanity’s greatest intellectual achievement, has always been vulnerable to infection by pseudoscience, which pretends to use the methods of science, but actually subverts them in pursuit of an obsession. Instead of evidence-based policymaking, pseudoscience specialises in policy-based evidence making. Today, this infection is spreading.
Two egregious examples show just how easy it is to subvert the scientific process. The campaign by Andrew Wakefield against the MMR vaccine, recently boosted by Robert De Niro’s support, is pseudoscience.
So is the campaign against glyphosate ("Roundup") weedkiller, which has now resulted in the European parliament recommending a ban on its use by gardeners.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Goodluck Jonathan
