This really sux. The A-Man will be missed.

I finally broke down and purchased a 9mm upper for my shorty AR. This is a Bushmaster SBR lower with a 7" Rock River 9mm upper attached.

(Click to Supersize)

Unfortunately, this one won't be getting to the range for a little while. I was told I didn'a need to purchase the 9mm hammer. Unfortunately though, the notch in the AR-15 hammer is catching the 9mm bolt and preventing it from closing. (see the upper left of the AR-15 hammer)

I know there are hammers out there that will supposedly work with both 9mm and .223, but I'll likely just install the 9mm hammer and keep the lower in that configuration. I already have a .223 lower and don't really see the need to shoot my .223 SBR upper any way.

(Logic would say that I could just use the shorty .223 upper on my other .223 lower. But since it's not registered as an SBR, the ATF doesn't see it that way.)

For those of you who are wondering, I purchased the upper from Adco. At $485, it's a pretty good deal considering it came complete with the 9mm bolt. I didn't come with a front sight as pictured, however.

FARK's photoshop contest reminded me of this old post..

Mrs. Buttinski

For a junior Senator that claims to have no Presidential aspirations, she sure does butt in to a lot of photo ops.

Best of Ravenwood's Universe, originally posted 05/09/2003.

You read articles like this and this, and you'd never know former Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell - who was just sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison - was a Democrat.

If you read this AP story, it's mentioned as the very last word on the very last line. The line that's sometimes cut for brevity.

"Facing the Giants", a movie about an underdog football team, was given a more restrictive rating by the MPAA for being too religious.

"What the MPAA said is that the movie contained strong 'thematic elements' that might disturb some parents," said Kris Fuhr, vice president for marketing at Provident Films, which is owned by Sony Pictures. . .

Which "thematic elements" earned this squeaky-clean movie its PG?

"Facing the Giants" is too evangelistic.

The MPAA, noted Fuhr, tends to offer cryptic explanations for its ratings. In this case, she was told that it "decided that the movie was heavily laden with messages from one religion and that this might offend people from other religions. It's important that they used the word 'proselytizing' when they talked about giving this movie a PG. . ."

The 1956 film, The Ten Commandments, which doesn't even have any football in it, was rated G. Despite the fact that it not only contained overt religious themes, but it included numerous Hebrews who indulged "their most wanton desires in an orgy of sinfulness".

The times, they are a changing.

When I was a kid I had to wear this guy's second hand clothes. When I grew out of them, they were shipped back up so that his little brother could wear them. Mom bought bargain basement cuts of meat and shopped at the day-old bread store. We couldn't even afford real butter, and we were considered middle-class.

Now-a-days, apparently the definition of poor now includes people who can't afford expanded digital cable with HBO, a DVR, and Hi Def.

Democrats also complained that the [telecommunications] bill did not commit providers to spread their services to lower income and minority areas.

[...]

Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Illinois, a black lawmaker who represents the South Side of Chicago, said he was co-sponsoring the bill because it would make it easier for minority entrepreneurs to get access to the telecommunications industry.

Rush said his constituents want relief from the high cost of cable. "We pay more for video services, for high premium packages, than any other group in America. And why is that? Because only on cable do we see people who look like us, speak like us, and who understand us. That is why we pay more for cable."

I don't know how it works on the South Side of Chicago, but down here in the South whites and blacks pay the same price for cable.

James Taranto nails it:

Republicans favor small government but embrace big government when they have the power to control it. Democrats favor big government but insist that it can work only when they have the power to control it. Politicians in both parties, then, seem to see government as a means to the same end: their own political power. Little wonder that voters are suspicious of government.

In the land of evil conservatives (a/k/a Virginia), the Washington Post reports that dental care is "Just a Faint Dream" for the area homeless.

Va. homeless choose between a long trek to the District or doing it themselves with a pair of pliers.

While D.C. sometimes seems a world away, it's actually just across the Potomac from Virginia. For those urban outdoorsmen that live in the burbs, they might try catching a slug ride into the city. Commuters are always looking for that coveted second or third passenger that gets them into the carpool lane.

Yes, they've actually added USB memory sticks to the myriad of tools offered with the Swiss Army Knife.

This may be getting nitpicky, but something seems wrong with this CNN report about the Predator drone:

Predators are not fast, cruising about 80 miles an hour. The rear-mounted propeller seems small for the size of the craft -- what amounts to little more than a snowmobile engine strapped to a glider. It can fly for 20 hours at a time with a range of 450 miles on 100 gallons of fuel.

Virginia Senator George Allen has introduced a national CCW bill. There was already a similar bill in the House.

In Howard County Maryland, 83% of restaurants and bars already prohibited smoking. But thats not enough for anti-smokers. They don't want anyone smoking, anywhere. Period.

And so, Howard County becomes just the latest Maryland county to violate private property rights and outlaw smoking in restaurants and bars. What's even more dispicable is that the government had forced restaurants to invest in seperate, ventilated smoking areas per a 1996 smoking ban. This may help explain why smoking was only allowed in 17% of area restaurants. By this time next year, those investments are all for naught.

Council member Charles C. Feaga (R-West County), who voted against the measure along with Council Chairman Christopher J. Merdon (R-Northeast County), said the ban was unfair to businesses that spent hundreds of thousand of dollars to create separate smoking areas.

"We promised people that if they put in the extra ventilation equipment, they would be okay. Now we're just cutting them off and telling them we know better than them about their business," Feaga said. "I just think that government is being too much of a Big Brother."

I had thought that people were generally pro-choice. But for some reason, when it comes to smoking there is no choice. If you want to enjoy a cigarette or cigar after a nice expensive meal, too bad. Smokers don't have any rights, and neither do business owners who want to tap that market.

As we slide down the slippery slope, future smoke bans will include cars (where children are present), private homes (where children and/or employees may be present), and eventually outdoors (where smoke is free to roam where anyone might be present).

So why should a non-smoker care what happens to smokers and their stinky habit? Well, here is just a sampling of my reasons:

This is my body. There are many like it, but this one is mine. And any sort of nagging bullshit about what I can and can't put into it is wrong. This week it's smoking, next week it'll be drinking and fast food. These whiny little piss-ants aren't man enough to walk up and tell you to your face, instead they use the police power of the government to try to run your life. If you think I shouldn't have that extra roll, why don't you come over and try taking it off my plate? I'd like to see you try.

It's all about freedom of choice. People have a wide selection of smoking and non-smoking restaurants from which to choose. But that's not good enough for some people. They want all restaurants to be non-smoking, just in case they some day want to eat there. Never mind what the property owner wants, his rights don't count.

Temperance leads to crime which leads to death. In New York City where a single packet of cigarettes cost $7, gangs are killing each other over the selling of buttlegged cigarettes. It's big business on the street, and fights can break out over selling on the wrong street corner or at the wrong price. Teenagers just trying to make a buck have been gun downed for undercutting the prices of the local street thugs.

Temperance leads to crime which leads to bigger government. Many of today's gun laws can trace their roots right back to the temperance movement. Prohibition of alcohol lead directly to the National Firearms Act of 1934, and the horrible RICO statutes wherein nearly anything can be prosecuted as a conspiracy to commit organized crime. Then there's the whole Drug Enforcement Administration which was stood up 30 years ago to arrest people for violating the various temperance laws. Currently the DEA has offices across the globe and costs Billions (with a B) of dollars to maintain.

Temperance leads to crime which leads to terrorism. With a huge profit motive and all these dollars flowing around, much of the money eventually finds it's way into the hands of terrorists. You may think that buying bootlegged smokes is a victimless crime and that you're only sticking it to the government, but you may be inadvertently funding the next terror attack. Terrorists need money to do what they do, and they aren't above using our own temperance laws against us.

Over-regulation leads to under-regulation. When prohibition of alcohol took affect, your average Joe didn't think twice about civil disobedience. Speak-easies popped up and alcohol was available for anyone with the money to buy it. The price went up, the quality went down, and any of the laws that controlled product quality or safety were moot. As neo-temperance takes hold people will gradually start to ignore anti-smoking laws. That is, when cigarettes are outlawed only outlaws will have cigarettes. When that happens, the government will be powerless to control what goes into cigarettes. They could become more harmful, even deadly depending on how cheaply they're produced. Laws governing the nicotine, tar, and carcinogens produced from tobacco will be worthless. And what about the children? There will be no way to limit access to cigarettes. All those age-limits that anti-smokers pushed through a few years back will be negated once cigarettes are sold in mass quantities on the streets. By over-regulating the product, they'll actually increase it's overall availability. The only thing between a child and a cigarette will be the conscience of the dealer.

Category:  Pleasure Police
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Lana asks: "What does the 9th amendment of the US stand for? Thanks for the answer in advance."

What Amendment IX means is that people have inherent rights granted to them by God (self defense, liberty, etc.) And just because those rights are not specifically enumerated (listed) in the Constitution doesn't mean they are denied.

A person has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. While those may be rights that we "protect" here in the United States, it is NOT a right granted by government. The founders of this nation recognized that those rights were inherent to all men. So much so, that the Amendment IX was included in the Bill of Rights to say that the "enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

Samuel Adams noted that:

Among the Natural Rights of the Colonists are these First. a Right to Life; Secondly to Liberty; thirdly to Property; together with the Right to support and defend them in the best manner they can--Those are evident Branches of, rather than deductions from the Duty of Self Preservation, commonly called the first Law of Nature--

The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man; but only to have the law of nature for his rule.--

I hope this helps.

Lawrence Kansas is considering a complete ban on talking in cars. Well, talking on a cell phone that is. Whereas most bans require a hands-free kit or ear bud, in the Lawrence ban not even hands-free kits would be allowed. Proponents of the measure say that it's the conversation that's distracting, not the phone itself.

You can ban cell phones if you want, but people are still gonna have accidents. The real problem with car accidents is the drivers. You ban drivers and the accident rate drops to zero almost immediately.

Of course all that assumes that people actually obey the ban. In New York, that's not the case.

A study of the New York state ban found that hand-held cell phone use by drivers dropped by about half during the first months following the ban. But one year after the ban had been in place, hand-held cell phone usage among drivers had climbed to virtually the same rate as before the ban.

In Washington, D.C., though, hand-held cell phone usage went down about 50 percent following its ban and has remained below pre-ban levels. But enforcement activity in Washington, D.C., is aggressive. Tickets for cell phone violations there represent 8 percent of all moving violations compared with 4 percent in New York, according to studies compiled by the institute.

The difference is that none of the drivers in D.C. are D.C. residents. The Washington City Council is uses fines as a back-door commuter tax. Besides once you find good parking in D.C., you never move your car again any way.

In related ban-news, the lovely Bitter reports that the City of Minneapolis wants to ban "strangers" from "walking in alleys".