Nom de plume: Rivrdog

Calling all legal beagles

I have a question for you:

Can the US Supreme Court ever take up any case "on their own motion"? Some lower courts can and do take up matters, even political matters, on their own motion, and issue rulings as a result of argument that Court hears.

Just wondering, because it seems that a thorough investigation in Keyna turned up not only eyewitnesses who have direct knowledge that Mrs Soetoro had her child Barack in a hospital there, but seem to have turned up a Kenyan birth certificate for him as well. That birth certificate contains the usual footprint on it, and has been certified by a British official as genuine. It seems, according to the eyewitnesses, that Mrs. Soetoro flew to Hawaii three days after giving birth, then registered Barack as having been born in Hawaii.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio's recent look at the HA "birth certificate" did not include this information from east Africa.

So, the question devolves to the SCOTUS then, which Court would have to decide the issue anyway, and decide it before the election, hopefully. The only way I see that happening is if the Court took the matter under advisement on it's own motion. From a forensic point of view, if the Court found that the Keynan birth certificate was believeable as a registered document, it could order Barack Obama to provide a copy of his footprint, and that would settle everything. If the footprint on the document matched that on the Keynan birth certificate, then the course is clear, and President Biden takes over immediately (and probably pardons Obama immediately). Of course, the SCOTUS would then have to decide what happens to all the legislation and Executive Orders that bear Obama's signature, and THAT mess could take some time to sort out.

Oh, and if you haven't guessed, no, in fact I DO NOT consider the appellations of "Birther" to be a pejorative as the Left wants you to believe. The cop in me see this as a mater of forensic science and law, nothing more. As a matter of science and law, impartial findings are expected, even if the matter is highly charged, politically.

As if...(updated)

Updated (030112 1852 PST)

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Dept of "the fix is in"

Just before noon, WND pulled the link to the live webcast. Tonite, the vid is on ABC....Fool me once, etc...shame on you WND.

Note that Sheriff Joe says there is Probable Cause to believe that the birth certificate is forged. Now we need to find the forger, give him immunity, and hire him a singing coach.

*********†*************************************************************************************To To memorialize Breitbart's passing, Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, AZ will hold a news conference at noon Pacific Time on the results of his LEO-grade investigation into whether Obama is actually, Constitutionally, qualified to be President. That news conference streams live here.

"Birther" stuff has generally been dismissed by the leftoid press, but this is a Law Enforcement Grade investigation, the same level of evidence which Arpaio would have to use to present to a Grand Jury.

What Arpaio seems to be doing here is challenging Obama directly to NOT put his name on AZ's ballot, and telling him that if he does, an Arizona Grand Jury will decide if he just committed a felony by doing so.

Interesting, very interesting.

And if Obama blinks? Mother of all Constitutional Crises.

Yeah, yeah. Joe Biden and all that. Not important. What happens to all the things Obama's officially done if he's been a fraudster all along? Obamacare? War? Printing trillions of dollars?

Folks, this WOULD trigger the Zombie Apocalypse. Bet on THAT. Bet also on a Second Republic if it's proven. The only thing that would save the present Republic would be the SCOTUS immediately declaring all process Obama enacted with his signature since his "inauguration" to be null and void, and Obama admitting that fact. I could see the first part, the SCOTUS part happening, but I couldn't see the second part, Obama's mea culpa, happening. Obama would bunker in.

Remember Blago? It's NOT in the Chicago playbook to admit wrong, ever.

The GOP sucks

Losers, just losers. They've got nothing to counter twiddledick Obama, and no, tweedledick Romney ain't the one.

While the world snoozed yesterday, we had an election here in Oregon, a by-election in the First Congressional District to replace the (D) whack-job David Wu (tiger-suit man) with another pol for the rest of Wu's unfinished term.

In that election, which rated only a 30-second blurb on Fox (Fox News, part of the problem) on Monday, the TEA-Party guy Rob Cornilles ran against a seasoned liberal Suzanne Bonamici (cut from the same cloth as Pelosi) and the liberal took the seat by 15%. The district is a gerry-mandered one, stretching across 4 counties, only one of which has any money (Washington County, a soccer-mom liberal suburb of Portland). Never behind in the polling, the DNC nevertheless funded Bonamici to the max.

The GOP? Glad you asked. They didn't raise a finger to help the struggling Cornilles (or see that a better candidate ran, Cornilles had some issues with his claim of "creating 500 jobs" - the figure was more like 6). Cornilles was outspent maybe 4-to-1. I'm not sure that he would have won even if the GOP had showered him with cash, since the seat has been good for the (D)onks for 40 years, but the Stupid Party didn't even try to win it!

Now we hear that this is the same RNC that is sitting on it's hands while Col. Alan West's FL district gets gerrymandered out of existence and he will go away.

See the trend? Want it in neon lights? How about Gingrich and HIS super-PAC thrashings going down while the RNC whistles Dixie (no, belay that, the RNC does not know how to whistle Dixie).

What we have here is a liberal GOP, at the National level.

Twiddledick and tweedledick, can you tell the difference between Obama and Romney? I can't.

It makes no nevermind, as they say in some rural areas. No nevermind. No difference. The Constitution died somewhere short of it's 200th birthday, for sure. We ain't defending it now, it's dead, and the liberals are even changing the history books so future 'Murcans can't even find out what the Constitution said, let alone meant.

You want a Constitution? Better buy a paper copy or 500 and squirrel them away, like you ought to be squirreling away arms and ammunition. You see, guns are the only things that Liberals are afraid of. Guns and the folks who can use them. As long as there are guns, there is a chance to restore the Constitution. BTW, in case you just got off the slow shuttle from the Planet Zargon, Romney is anti-gun. You still going to vote for him? I'm not. If you hold your nose and vote, then you only smell your own stink, and that is the stink of fear, of resignation. Go out with a bang. If enough do, it will make the difference. If all the Conservatives (and you know who you are, Romnoids need not apply) stay home in November, Obama gets four more (he will anyway, Romney would never beat him), but if we all go to the rifle ranges on Election Day, he gets the message. If, the day after the election, the Conservative Party establishment papers are filed in 50 States, he gets another message, and so does the GOP, which ceases to exist as of that moment.

So, RNC, if you can read this humble blog, consider the gauntlet that just hit you across the face: it just came off the right hand of a rifleman who is tired of your crap. Keep it, I shoot better with the glove off, anyway.

 

The Ruling Elites

...of both sides have been taking the US taxpayer to the cleaners on this airfare business for years. They all act surprised that we now claim to give a rip.

Sauce for the goose, etc.

The only solution is found in the refrain of the song "Tobacco Road":

"Bring dynamite,

Bring a crane,

Blow it up,

start all over again."

I wonder what would happen if I called for voters to stay home next Election Day, and go to their local rifle/pistol ranges instead. If every shooting range reported maximum usage all day long on Election Day, when most of them would usually have few shooters, it would send a message to Wahingtoon that could not possibly be mistaken for anything but that it's time for the elites to pack their carpetbags and go find other rocks to hide behind.

If, for some reason, the message didn't get through, we could repeat the action on Inauguration Day.

What if....

...when asked about our guns by someone who has no right to know that information, we gave disinformation instead?

Now, the disinformation most would advocate is to understate gun ownership. I've done that, I know lots of gunnies who've done that. When artfully done, it isn't even lying: "I have a few guns for hunting..." Note that you're not saying what you hunt....

Let's look at all sides, though.

What if we faced that same nosy person and instead of UNDERstating, we OVERstated: "I've got lots of guns. One can't have too many of them, you know. I've got guns for hunting game, guns for personal defense, and guns for defense of the Nation, if it ever came to that. Why do YOU ask?" "What guns do I have? I'd be delighted to give you a list, but I've never written that list up, it would take too long, and I'd much rather spend the time shooting some of those guns on the range, followed by spending my time maintaining them properly." "How much ammunition do I have? Well, that's hard to say, I guess it would depend on your definition of 'much' "

I saved the best for last. When pestered by someone to identify your collection, you say, "I have an extensive gun collection, one which contains guns of all types and descriptions which it is legal for me to own. As to ammunition for those guns, I have an ample supply. My supply of ammunition is sufficient to last me the rest of my lifetime should ammunition become in short supply for one reason or another. Don't YOU stock more than one roll of toilet paper in your house? Doesn't your pantry have more than one can of food in it?"

Of course, these expansive answers might lead to more questions, which can then be answered in a similar vein, "Where ARE all these guns and this supply of ammunition? Well, it's really not a good idea to keep all that in one place, is it? Remember what happened to General Short's Army Air Corps air fleet on Hickam Field, December 7th, 1941? I learn from mistakes that others have made, don't YOU?"

Yeah, I wonder what would happen if we were more open about our guns....

H/T to a thread on the Kel-Tec Owner's Group on Yahoo! Groups.

All Aboard?

This Train don't carry no gamblers, no day-traders, no White House disemblers.

This Train is bound for Glory-O.

This Train.

Apologies to Woody Guthrie. Here's the real set of lyrics.

This Train is loading at the station platform now. You know what you have to bring as baggage if you've been following this blog for long. If you need a refresher on defensive armaments, review Straight Case.

You pay for your ticket in Gold on This Train.

Cele-bration time, uh-huh!

Just pulled in with a pickup load of long-term food, will unload and store it tomorrow during the forecast cool, rainy weather.

Tomorrow begins the accumulation of the cash supply, to be finished by next Wednesday (don't even think about a rip-off, we're in Condition Red around the Schloss now, meaning sidearms for all and long arms no more than a few steps away, all in Condition One).

All else is in readiness, with the possible exception of a couple pounds more rifle and pistol powders I need to add to my list.

I'll probably troll through Harbor Freight tomorrow to see if I need any more tools.

Other than that, I'm set. Bring on the currency collapse. Bring on the civil unrest from the dope addicts not getting their SSI. Bring on whatever, except maybe the Zombie Apocalypse, and only that because I've not trained on real Zombies yet (but who HAS?)....

Oh, and the celebration bottle tonight is was Domaine Ste. Michelle (appelation: Columbia Valley), Cabernet Sauvignon, 2006. Very good bottle...the meal was T-bone Steak, grilled, very rare, and Pork Loin Steak, grilled, "white", together with steamed Broccoli and Spinach Tortellini, al-dente, al-Parmesano.

Now is the time to laugh at the lesser mortals, who, unprepared, go to Condition High Stress whilst I relax, having TOTALLY prepared....

Oops, I almost forgot...I could use another 10 gallons of stored DF-2 fuel for the M-35A2 to bring my bug-out plan to max range of 650 miles. Will do THAT tomorrow also (cursing at the $4/gallon he will have to pay for that fuel).

Want a side of anti-union sentiment with that plate of 2A defense?

...then go to visit Joe Huffman's blog, you won't find it here.

I am retired, as most readers know, from two public-service careers, the military and from working 25 years as a Deputy Sheriff. I earned, and draw pensions from my service with both governments.

I shouldn't have to detail what earning a pension with the military means: usually it means mortal combat, and it did in my case. It also means lots of training, with danger deliberately injected into it to make it real, and it means working hours with no limits.

Most of that goes the same for my job as a Deputy Sheriff, where I worked at the grunt-level for all 25 years. Yes, there were working hours, but finishing the job took precedence, and in my career, I put in thousands of hours of overtime, most of it paid, but some not. I earned my pension from that job, too, and yes, it is bigger than a standard patrolman's pension, but only because of the overtime. That pension is from the State PERS system, not by my fiat, but by the County's. When I started, the County had their own pension system for police and fire, but eventually merged it into PERS.

Did I belong to any unions? Not in the military, they're not allowed. As a Deputy, I was in a union from the time I finished my probationary period to retirement. At the start, that union was part of AFSCME and the AFL-CIO, one of the "oh-so-evil" public unions. We of Local 117 booted AFSCME and the AFL-CIO in a near-unanimous vote when said crooks in DeeCee failed to come to our aid and send a negotiator to help us with a new contract in the late '70's. We formed our own, "company" union, and while we had some difficult negotiations from time to time, our relations with the County were mostly okay. I even ran for and was elected to the union's Executive Board for several years, until the union voted in a leader I couldn't stand, so I stood down.

Did our union demand exhorbitant raises and benefits? By Lyle's standards, maybe, but we almost never came even with the cost of living increases, and I certainly don't now, as the State has with-held 4 of 8 years worth of COLAs in my pension from me, due to a legal dispute they lost in the State Supreme Court.

What about that "do-over" that some commenters over at Lyle's post want? I hear this all the time: "Let's just declare a new standard and toss out all the past contracts." There's just one problem with that idea: it's generally mouthed by communists and other dictatorial statists, not by entrepreneurs like Lyle.

Contracts are what individual liberty is built on. If you declare a "do-over" of all public labor contracts, what you are saying is that the Government can't be trusted to keep it's promises. Government needs trust to survive, period. At the point that Government fails to earn and maintain the People's trust, it is doomed to failure. The alternative solution to your "do-over" is re-negotiation of those contracts, with both sides coming to the table as equals, not, as in Wisconsin's case, with the unions sitting under the table at the feet of the State employers. There are even solutions for the "excessive pension" problems you see, Lyle. I'd take up to a third of MY State pension in irrevocable shares of a Real Estate Investment Trust. The State owns all sorts of land which they could put into that trust. I suggested it and didn't even get a reply to my letter.

So, Lyle, here are two suggestions. First, try to figure out a cost-effective way that governments may deal with their labor issues without breaking contracts, and propose it. Second, we who work for the governments are public employees, not public servants. By trying to put us in an underclass, you are no better than a feudal lord, Lyle, and as I recall our national history, we ran all of those lords out of our country at the point of our guns 235 years ago, then wrote a Constitution saying "never again" to that feudal system. Do you want a "do-over" on the Constitution, too, Lyle? What would YOUR Constitution look like, Lyle. Write it out and present it. Who knows, it might be worth further discussion.

Get with the times, Lyle. You make and sell fine gun accessories, but you might use some of the time off your employees earn for you to study our history, for you seem hell-bent on ignoring it.

Armageddon - Your town, your home

Put yourself somewhere on the fringes of the worst destruction in Joplin, MO.

You house is damaged, parts of the roof are gone, most of the windows are out, your vehicle is greasy-side-up next to where the carport used to be, BUT YOU SURVIVED!

You've done the obvious: accounted for everyone present, shut off the electricity, water and natural gas/propane supplies, you've done a basic inventory of what you have on hand, you've even sent scouts out to your immediate neighbors to assess their situations. Fortunately, the scouts have all come back and reported damage, but no casualties.

What do you do next?

You pull your shelter-in-place plan off the shelf, and put it into effect. Now, busy members of your family are filling all the water jugs they can find, the bathtub, etc., to have a water source. You go to your gun safe and pull out the ready weapons you've ALREADY fitted to your family, and trained, then briefed the family members on. You do a Weapons Check. You establish Weapons Contingencies (when to wear them, when to carry them, when to leave them out of sight).

You make provisions to take care of your provisions. Your electricity is out, and you don't expect it back anytime soon, so all your perishable and frozen food will have to be make less perishable, by cooking, drying, etc. You assign that duty to someone (maybe yourself, since it's REAL important). You have a generator and 5 days worth of fuel for it. You have a council with your family to get their feelings on running that generator, knowing that if the area turns lawless, running a generator tells the lawless element "there are good things here, just follow the motor noise to get to them".

Several fruitful hours pass, and you decide that your next major move will be to try to get a tarp over the damaged roof. You have the tarps, but only one ladder, and you will need a skilled crew to do it. You're considering your options on getting that crew together, when you hear a bullhorn. You peek out of the house, and you see emergency vehicles down the street. A coordinated group of people is going door-to-door, examining structures.

The group eventually gets to your house. What are they going to do and what authority do they bring with them?

Start by reading this. It will tell you about the marking system they will use to identify their inspection, and what those markings say when they put them on your house. No, you MAY NOT refuse entry to this inspection crew. If you do, you WILL be forcibly removed.

Now, who can tell you to leave and who can't? Do you have any right of appeal? What if you get a yes from one agency and a no from another? What do you do? (This happened in 1996, right here in Stumptown, in the Great Flood. The Fire Chief ordered a residential Marina evacuated, and the Sheriff refused to back him up, said everyone could shelter in place. I got to enforce the Sheriff's good news and tell the smoke-eater brass to pound sand).

Generally, the Sheriff of a County has that authority, and he/she is the only one who does. Unless you know the Sheriff well enough, personally, to know that if you ask, he/she will make an exception for YOU, you need to be ready to Bug Out. A possible exception to the Sheriff's authority is if the Governor declares Martial law and sends in the National Guard (never active-duty military, he doesn't control them). So, if an ACTUAL Deputy Sheriff tells you to leave, and that Deputy says it's the Order of the Sheriff, you MAY NOT stay. You grab your bug-out gear and hit the road, however you can, in your case, on foot. If you don't have an undamaged place to go to, you will be directed to a Shelter. Generally, you will be allowed to bring ONE small bag of personal possessions into the Shelter. You will NOT be allowed to bring weapons, and you MIGHT be searched.

I've run shelters. I was trained to do that in the military. The military has rules giving Shelter Commanders huge authority, and that's for a reason. In a shelter, you have a LOT of agitated people crammed together in a small space. Shelter-ees cannot have it like Burger King, their way. That's just the breaks. Roll with those punches.

Let's say that you have a summer place out in the boondox, and you know it's safe and sound out there. How do you get yourself and your Bug Out gear out to that place?

Any way you can, hoser. This is where your negotiation skills will be put to the test. Essentially, you need a vehicle large enough to transport you and your family, and your essential gear. However, if all you can get is a mini-mobile, you will have to use that and make several trips, even if they are hours each way. The person you get the vehicle from needs to know that, and YOU need to have a way to get their vehicle back to them when you're done with it. Fuel, etc are also up to you, but don't put the cart before the horse.

If, for example, that Pacific Subduction Zone major earthquake (with Tsunami) has just hit the PacNorWest, I would NOT be bugging out to the Coast, even if I called one of my friends there and got the news that my place had survived. The problem is, lots of places WON'T have survived, and the entire coastal area will be a disaster zone. It would be REAL difficult to get by down there.

You have to Bug Out to where you can make do until you can rebuild your home and your life. You need to have made some of those plans before Armageddon, don't you?

Get busy, you have a lot of work to do.

Lower the Portcullis! Raise the Drawbridge! Release the Hounds!

...but don't drain the swimming pool, it's your reserve water supply.

A modern version of the 'Henglishman's Castle, right here, brought to you by RNS.