Articles by Herschel Smith

News from Atlanta:

Officials at Georgia’s leading power provider faced tough questions Monday, a day after a massive power outage grounded travel at the world’s busiest airport for nearly 11 hours at the start of one of the biggest travel weeks of the year.

Georgia Power officials said the investigation continues into the cause of the fire-related outage at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. However, they said a piece of the utility’s switchgear in an underground electrical facility may have failed and started the blaze. A switchgear helps to manage the flow of power.

The utility had backup equipment, officials said, but it was in an adjacent room and was also damaged in the fire.

“We are doing what we can to make sure this never happens again,” Georgia Power spokesman Craig Bell said. “We truly apologize for the inconvenience.”

Well, it will happen again, somewhere.  He shouldn’t have promised that.

The outage hit about 1 p.m. Sunday, plunging the airport into darkness, grounding nearly 1,000 flights and leaving 30,000 people stranded. International flights were diverted to other airports. Planes sat on the tarmac for more than six hours.

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Videos posted on Twitter showed passengers using the lights on their cellphones to make their way through darkened concourses. Other photos shared on Twitter showed TSA officers carrying wheelchairs up stalled escalators.

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“The straight answer to that question is: We absolutely do” have a redundant power supply, Reed said. “But because of the intensity of the fire, the switch that accesses the redundant system was damaged, which caused damage to two systems rather than one.”

Bowers said the utility will work with the airport to prevent a repeat of such an event. Among the strategies the company may consider: encasing the cables in concrete [Ed: dumb idea] or putting the cables in separate areas.

“Our focus is on reliability and making sure this never happens again,” he said.

“Train” separation is a good idea, because it’s not redundancy if the trains aren’t separated.  But here’s the point.  Power outages will happen, darkness comes every day.  If you don’t have light, you’re disabled.

Do you carry a tactical light when you travel?  I do.  Always and everywhere.  I carry a tactical light when I travel through the neighborhood with the dog.

When we discussed what I called the unbiblical idea that exculpatory evidence is excluded from the court because it’s “hearsay” evidence, it occurred to me that we could add more discussion to this.  From R. J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law, pages 566 -567.

The Biblical law of testimony does not permit torture or coerced confessions.  Voluntary confession is possible, but two or more witnesses are required for conviction.  More strictly, confession is never cited in the law; its place in court was apparently only in connection with corroborating evidence.  Thus Achan’s confession required confirming evidence before he was sentence and executed (Joshua 7:19-26).  The voluntary aspect of Achan’s confession must be noted.  Biblical law preserves the integrity of the individual against forced confession; the right of citizens to be protected from the power of the state to compel their self-incrimination does not appear outside the Biblical legal tradition.

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The objection to self-incrimination means that a Christian must oppose the use of lie detectors as a matter do principle.  The lie detector reverses a basic principle of justice …

Another point of interest with respect to lie detector tests has been cited by a Christian police officer.  An innocent man may submit to the test in the hopes of clearing himself, but, once under the test, his total privacy is subject to invasion.  He can be asked about religious beliefs, political opinions, does he own any guns, and almost anything the examiners choose to ask him.  The result is a forced confession.

Like lie detectors, wire-tapping is a form of illegal invasion of privacy; it involves a form of coerced confession, a destruction of the integrity of communication, which makes it clearly immoral and wrong.

But America has long since defenestrated a Biblical notion of righteousness and justice, in its place having substituted the notion of the state as god, and thus you see today that Robert Mueller’s team has absconded with emails to which they have absolutely no right.  In a more righteous society, Mueller and his team would be held accountable for this immoral action.

Watch in the coming weeks.  You may see another picture of a CMMG .45 gun, with a slightly different barrel length.

The Herald-Tribune:

In 1949, the Soviet armed forces put a new, deadly assault rifle into general use, the AK-47. The Mikhail Kalashnikov design was soon disseminated around the world as a cheap, effective, durable military and police weapon.

America’s answer came fewer than 10 years later in a modification of the AR-10, a selective fire rifle first developed by Gosport, Indiana, native Eugene Stoner and two of his assistants at ArmaLite. A re-designed AR-10 was soon marketed to the military by Colt as the M-16, and was sold to the public as the AR-15.

Stoner died in 1997, during the 10-year period starting in 1994 when new AR-15s with certain features were outlawed for civilian use under the Federal Assault Weapons Ban. So, he wasn’t around to see the ban’s lifting in 2004. Since then, AR-15-style rifles have been a common denominator in several high-profile mass shootings.

Thursday was the fifth anniversary of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Twenty-eight people, including 20 5- and 6-year-old first-grade students, were shot to death.

There is no reasonable civilian purpose for this type of weapon. Unlike handguns, they offer no reliable accuracy at close range for home protection purposes. And, unlike bolt-action rifles and shotguns, they require little to no skill in the hunting realm.

This is a gun designed to kill as many people as possible as quickly as possible. Period.

The sad truth is that re-banning the AR-15 and the like won’t even begin to address the most prevalent weapon used in mass shootings: legally obtained handguns. That’s a much thornier issue. But, if we can’t even call the AR-15-style rifle a step too far, how do we imagine we’ll ever be able to address the larger gun problem in this country?

You learn something every day from the more educated gun owners, yes?  AR-15s are great at (presumably) moderate to long ranges for “killing as many people as possible as quickly as possible.”  But they “offer no reliable accuracy at close range for home protection purposes.”

Better work fast, men.  Your trusted battle carbine is no good for CQB.  By the way, Stephen Bayezes says hello.  As do hundreds of thousands of Soldiers and Marines who have relied on said weaponry for room clearing operations.

The State:

Four months isn’t enough time to get all the state’s business done.

When South Carolina lawmakers wrapped the 2017 legislative session in May, they had approved a plan to fix the state’s dilapidated roads, including a higher gas tax, and shored up the state’s pension system.

But some bills didn’t reach the finish line for one reason or another, so even before moving on to new business, the Legislature will have a lot to pick back up when they convene for the second half of the session in January.

Multiple bills affect South Carolinians’ ability to buy and carry firearms publicly. Last year, the S.C. House of Representatives approved two bills loosening the requirements for carrying a gun in the Palmetto State, only to see them get stuck in the state Senate.

One would allow anyone with an out-of-state gun permit to carry a concealed weapon in South Carolina as long as their state also recognizes S.C. carrying permits. The bill removes any requirement on the traveler to have passed a criminal background check or taken a firearm safety course. However, the traveler still must observe S.C. laws for carrying firearms while in the state.

The other bill would eliminate the need to have any permit to carry a weapon, either concealed or openly – a position proponents call “constitutional carry.”

Meanwhile, a Senate bill would do away with the so-called “Charleston loophole” by requiring a 28-day waiting period for a gun seller to complete a background check.

That loophole – a federal rule that allows a gun purchase to be completed if a background check takes longer than three days – allowed convicted Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof to purchase a handgun because a prior drug conviction was not reported to the seller within the three-day wait period. Another bill would require courts to speed up the reporting of criminal convictions for background checks.

Both of those bills remained in committee when the 2017 session came to an end.

The debate around all these bills started before this autumn’s mass shootings in Las Vegas and Sutherland Springs, Texas, and it’s unclear what effect those might have on S.C. lawmakers’ appetite for more gun legislation.

It remains sitting there, S.C. gun owners.  If the S.C. legislature doesn’t prioritize some form of open carry – with or without constitutional carry – it’s because they feel no pressure to prioritize it.

Events of recent months have given the progs a good excuse to delay this legislation.  Of course.  Not good in the sense that it has anything to do with open carry, but good in the sense that the optics are altered.

David Codrea:

“Cook Commissioner Richard Boykin … flew to New York on Thursday to discuss what he described as a ‘quiet genocide’ in Chicago’s black community with the U.N.’s assistant secretary-general for peacebuilding support, Oscar Fernandez-Taranco,” The Chicago Tribune reports.

His bright idea?

Foreign UN blue helmets patrolling American streets.

Specifically, he said this.  “Boykin said Chicago must “utilize every avenue” available to protect its people from gun violence, possibly including U.N. peacekeepers.”

Right.  So let me suggest this, smart guy.  How about returning the family unit to Chicago, including rejection of welfare and all other subsidies and handouts which have destroyed the inner city black population, and encouraging your young black men to find jobs and attend church services rather than walking the streets for their gangs?

Oh, you’re not willing to go that far.  I see.  The genocide you’re talking about doesn’t exist.  Genocide is when one people perpetrate death on another.  This is more correctly categorized as suicide.  That requires a whole different way of thinking, one with which you are unfamiliar.

By the way, I could only manage a belly laugh when I thought about the blue hats in Chicago.

World Net Daily:

US News:

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A federal trial that begins Monday will focus on whether police lied about the results of tests on discarded tea leaves found in a Kansas couple’s trash to get a search warrant ahead of a SWAT-style raid on their home in search of marijuana.

Robert and Adlynn Harte are seeking $5 million for economic losses, emotional pain, distress and humiliation and an additional $2 million in punitive damages in response to the 2012 raid on their Leawood home.

I won’t try to read the tea leaves in this case (sorry for the very bad joke).  But I do have a solution for this kind of thing.  Since the law enforcement officers, attorneys and judge who signed the warrant all participated in the unconstitutional actions against this family, they should all have all of their toenails pulled off, one by one.

Take video and send so that I can embed.

Mr. LEO responds to our article on the Grand Rapids Police Department:

LOL. Constant “oh those horrible police!!!” You people are completely clueless. Wanna guess what I took out of the back of the pants of a six-year old? A cocked .32 cal revolver his mama had shoved in there to hide it when she heard me coming around the corner. A COCKED REVOLVER – IN YOUR CHILDS PANTS! You people live in a world of ignorance and stupidity. It is very very sad.

Thanks for your visit.  It’s always a bit amusing when a LEO (or former LEO) visits this site.  The working assumption is normally that we’re a progressive anti-cop site (because you read a single article), or that we’re a conservative site full of readers who believe in state authority and want the cops to protect them but are having a difficult time swallowing the hard, necessary things a cop must do to actually protect the poor “sheeple” under his charge, sheep dog that he is.

But we know, as do you, that you aren’t charged to protect anyone, legally or judicially.  All or most of the readers on this site have multiple firearms, carry them, and are able and willing to present and deploy them if the need arises.  We don’t want or need your protection.  If something happens, we’ll call you to write the report.  But we won’t talk to you about it, because we know that the (unbiblical) US Code says that any exonerating evidence you learn from your conversation with us must be excluded from court as hearsay, and that only incriminating evidence is admissible.

As for the little wheel gun you took off the boy, hmm … let me ponder that for a moment.

Okay, I’ve pondered it, and here is my response.  I don’t care.  Not one whit.  Not even a little bit.

Either that lady had a right to it (God gives everyone the right and duty of self defense), or she didn’t (e.g., she stole the firearm in which case she and her boy should have become the slaves of the offended party until the debt was paid threefold).  I don’t know the details of the case as do you.

But most readers here believe in Herschel’s Dictum, and if we had met this lady somewhere and she intended us harm with the weapon (or without), we should have been ready to present and defend ourselves.  As should you.  You should assume that everyone is armed all of the time.  That assumption doesn’t turn me into a pathological time bomb.  Nor should it you.

Thanks again.  Your visit was at least mildly amusing.  Oh, and if you violated the constitutional rights of the person you talked about with the revolver, then you should have your toenails pulled off.

PJM:

Islamic State supporters issued a new Christmas-themed threat showing the National Cathedral in Washington in flames, with a camouflage-clad jihadist wielding a rifle standing in front of the Gothic structure.

The poster circulating among ISIS channels photoshops the photo of the church used on its Wikipedia page.

The text warning on the image is of a city just attacked this past week, though: “Wait for us: We meet at Christmas in New York… soon.”

The threat mirrors that on a poster of Santa with a case of dynamite overlooking Times Square, which was released just after Thanksgiving: “We meet at Christmas in New York… soon,” reads the text on that image.

Idiots.  Santa Claus has nothing whatsoever to do with Christmas or Christianity.  And the National Cathedral has nothing whatsoever to do with Christianity either.  They no longer believe in anything at all, and ISIS is wasting their time assuming that an attack on the National Cathedral would deter believers in America from meeting and worshipping on the Lord’s Day Sabbath.

However, it does bring up an interesting little dilemma for the National Cathedral, yes?  You see, they are leaders in the progressive community in gun control.  This sermon (posted on their web site) tells us everything we need to know.

I, for one, have decided to join forces with Dean Hall at the National Cathedral and all people of faith and good will who are saying now, in response to Friday’s tragedy, that enough is enough. We have been fed enough the stale bread of violence. We have been complicit too long in a system that allows such crimes to continue. 119,079 children and teens have been killed by gun violence since 1979, according to Marian Wright Edelman of the Children’s Defense Fund, more than the number of Americans killed in any of the 20th century’s largest wars. More than 10,000 Americans were killed by gun violence last year alone.

Dean Hall and I have decided to dedicate ourselves to the work of passing national legislation to ban the sale of assault weapons and ammunition in this country and I invite you, as a congregation, to join us and others for whom something snapped inside on Friday, as if we collectively all awoke from a very bad dream. While there are legitimate reasons to own a gun for sport and self-defense, there is no reason for civilians to own weapons whose only purpose is to kill large numbers of people. And while there is far more to be done to reduce violence in our nation and to care for the mentally ill, if we don’t begin with the most obvious first steps, how will we ever progress to more difficult challenges?

So there you have it.  The very people who have been threatened by ISIS believe they shouldn’t be allowed to defend themselves and should have to turn to the state for protection.  The National Cathedral has never once averred that congregants should carry, any more than they believe that men walking the street should be allowed to carry weapons.  Their tip of the hat to self defense is a lie.

If I was a congregant at the National Cathedral, I sure wouldn’t be attending there any more.  But then again, why would anyone be a congregant at the National Cathedral?  They don’t believe in anything.