techdirt:

I guess this isn’t that surprising, but as the big legal fight heated up this week between Apple and the Justice Department over whether or not Apple can be forced to create a backdoor to let the FBI access the contents of Syed Farook’s iPhone, all of the major Presidential candidates have weighed in… and they’re all wrong. Donald Trump is getting the most attention. Starting earlier this week he kept saying that Apple should just do what the FBI wants, and then he kicked it up a notch this afternoon saying that everyone should boycott Apple until it gives in to the FBI. Apparently, Trump doesn’t even have the first clue about the actual issue at stake, in terms of what a court can compel a company to do, and what it means for our overall security.

This isn’t another Trump-bashing post.  I’ve had my share, and it’s so easy.  But in this case, every other presidential candidate – every other presidential candidate – is close to being as bad on the issue, and lacks even a basic clue as to what’s at stake.

There is also misunderstanding within the field who purports to comprehend the technology of the issue.  This post at Zero Hedge is an example.

On the surface, this appears like valiant attempt by the CEO of the world’s most valuable company to stand up against the Big Brother state made so famous in the aftermath of the Edward Snowden revelations.

However, a quick peek beneath the surface reveals something far less noble and makes Tim Cook seem like you average, if very cunning, smartphone salesman.

According to the The Daily Beast’s Shane Harris, in a similar case in New York last year, Apple acknowledged that it could extract such data if it wanted to. But the real shocker is that according to prosecutors in that case, Apple has unlocked phones for authorities at least 70 times since 2008. (Apple doesn’t dispute this figure.)

As Harris observantly adds, “in other words, Apple’s stance in the San Bernardino case may not be quite the principled defense that Cook claims it is.”

To this, my oldest son Josh sends the following.

He doesn’t understand the subject matter. He’s in over his head and backing in to a predisposition.

Apple was unlocking phones years ago, when security feature such as system-wide encryption hadn’t been implemented. It was a different kind of “unlocking.” This isn’t a fight over keys to a single device. This is a fight over encryption, which the government doesn’t want any of us to have, because the government is run by political science and history majors.

Of note is the fact that any device from the 4th generation forward (beginning with 5s) is impossible – IMPOSSIBLE – to decrypt without the actual key, because Apple has moved encryption duties to a separate System On A Chip (SoC) that runs its own OS, is married to the device by UUID, and totally inaccessible.

The phone the FBI is freaking out over is a 5c, not a 5s.

The FBI doesn’t need the phone. They have what they need already. This is about encryption. The government needs an event they can point to and blame for encryption, and they’ve chosen this one.

This is the politics of control and power. To categorize it as a publicity stunt is disingenuous to the point of being dangerous.

Note that we’ve discussed here and here the weaknesses in random number generators and the ability to hone in on keys, but Apple has a feature that cuts the entire system off and erases data if this approach is tried beyond just a few random numbers.

Concerning this report, Josh also send the following.

The phone was in the possession of the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health in the hours after the attack. An idiot IT worker with the department performed a remote reset of the iCloud account attached to the device.

This disabled an assortment of services and functions on the phone, including automatic backups to iCloud, which the FBI seems to think would have been helpful, even though they’re also encrypted.

They’re fixating.

Bottom line.  The fedgov has not asked for Apple to break into this phone.  They have asked Apple to develop an approach that allows them to completely bypass all security, thus making them malleable to a FISA court ruling for any or all phones in the future.

All of your worst suspicions are true.  This is the government at its most totalitarian.

Over the weekend the family took a hike up Chimney Rock.  This is the flag flying half staff for the lion of the court, the one who single-handedly changed the arc of constitutional interpretation in America.

Via Uncle, 9mm is the best round for the 1911.

The 1911 is probably the most iconic handgun design ever. No pistol in history has done more – from battlefield to CCW to every single flavor of competition, there are 1911s. It’s just a great gun. It’s also at its finest when it’s chambered in a cartridge it wasn’t originally designed for: 9mm. Now, before you come burn my house down, hear me out because there’s a method to my madness. Yes, I know that it’s harder to make a 9mm 1911 run right than a .45. Yes, I know that the 1911 was originally designed for the .45 ACP cartridge, and that saying it’s better when chambered in 9mm is tantamount to heresy. But it’s heresy like Galileo’s heresy, because I’m actually right.

Let’s look at defensive uses first: we know for a fact that there’s no difference in terminal performance between .45 ACP and 9mm (cue the ballistards), so there’s no point in giving up 2-3 rounds of ammunition capacity, right?

We know that for a fact, do we?  So I didn’t preserve the original title of the post, which was 9mm is the best caliber for the 1911, since the definition of caliber is in units of inches (i.e., it’s English, not SI).  I corrected it for the author.

So wait, I hear the phone ringing.  Hello, [talky talk …].  Thank you sir.  Hey, that was John Moses Browning.  He said … ring, um, hold on.  Hello, [talky talk].  Thank you sir.  That was John Basilone.  Both Browning and Basilone said you’re wrong.

So there.

There is an interesting comment left at PJM:

Matt Walsh is one of the best Christian bloggers out there. This is what he wrote on facebook today commenting on the election. Strong words, but they should be heard.

Trump won South Carolina, a supposedly conservative Christian state, by a wide margin tonight.

A few quick reactions:

– Don’t rationalize this. He didn’t win because of Democrats. The man won Evangelicals. The man who — JUST THIS WEEK — praised Planned Parenthood, and who fishes for applause lines by cussing out his competitors and mocking disabled people, and who can’t name a book in the Bible, and who said he doesn’t need forgiveness from God, and who brags about sleeping with married women, and who said he’d love to date his own daughter because she has a hot body, and who supported the murder of fully developed infant children, and who blatantly lies and then lies again about lying, and who has encapsulated literally the exact opposite of anything that could remotely be considered a “Christian value,” won with the indispensable assistance of Christians. The anger I feel towards those Christians in this moment cannot be put into words. They should be ashamed. I will pray for them.

– Speaking of winning conservatives, Trump — JUST THIS WEEK — said he likes the Obamacare mandate. This was, according to conservatives, the most important thing to defeat not but two years ago. Now some of those same conservatives are voting for a big government liberal who says he supports the very thing these very people were sure would undo the Republic just a few months ago.

– If Trump wins the nomination, conservatism in this country is officially dead, and the country itself will be close behind it.

– Speaking of the country’s demise, Trump fans are gleefully ushering in tyranny. I am tired of hearing about their “anger.” They claim they are angry at the very thing they now embrace. They aren’t angry. They’re bored. They’re immature. They’re infatuated with celebrity and fame and money.

I am not a Jeb Bush supporter (this comment was left on an article having to do with Bush).  I have openly supported Ted Cruz, but that doesn’t matter now.  It appears that no one can win the nomination except Donald Trump.  Christians have had a lot to do with his success.

My oldest son Josh works with someone who told him when asked why he was voting for Trump, “we need money and Trump knows how to get it!”  So much for the Southerners aren’t dumb hicks like you think they are meme.  This was why it was one time required that you be a head of household and land owner to vote.  Trump won South Carolina partly because of dumb people.

But the commenter is right.  The biggest part of Trump’s success in the S.C. primary had to do with winning the evangelical vote.  I have to hand it to Trump.  He knows how to perform a magic show.  It’s like the magician who shouts “Look here, Obamacare is a disaster …,” noise and flashing lights, and in the other hand he is hiding what he doesn’t want you to see, that he wants a single payer health care system just like Obama.  “Look here, A WALL, and it’s going to be big and beautiful and we’re going to get Mexico to pay for it …,” the people go wild, flashing lights, and in the other hand he holds the truth, that wall has a gigantic door through which they can all pass back in.  “I’ll tear down the system …” flashing lights, and in the other hand he holds the truth, he wants to meet with these people in the oval office and make deals.

Oh, on that last one, it isn’t hidden.  He said so.  Well, to be honest, he said so about the other two as well.  But the idiots didn’t see it for the flashing lights, or they didn’t want to see it because they are members of a religious cult.  But on the biggest one, “Look here, I think abortion is horrible …,” flashing lights, but I’m pro-choice and Planned Parenthood has good people and does good things.

It’s on this last one that the commenter has fixated, and for good reason.  I recall a time when we preached about abortion, and my family picketed the only abortion clinic in our city, and when Christians cared.  Trump has said that Planned Parenthood has good people and does good things.  Listen to me carefully.  Everyone working for Planned Parenthood is evil (or at a minimum, very naïve and deluded), the organization is evil, and it does not do good things.  Moreover, if you give money to any part of it, it’s just like giving money to the United Way.  You designate your giving, and they say “thank you very much,” and readjust and reallocate their dollars so that it all works out the way they wanted it to with the general funds anyway.

Planned Parenthood is a child of Margaret Sanger, a well-known eugenicist, and ideological follower of Adolf Hitler.  She was evil and now suffers in hell with Hitler (the only happy part of this sad story).  Christians who support Trump are supporting a man who unashamedly says that these people are good and do good things, and has given his money so that they can pimp eugenics.

But I don’t care about Trump.  This is the important part.  After hearing all of that, Christians still voted for him.  After searching my memory, my heart and my mind, I can come up with nothing more than the Christian church in America has lost its soul.  It one time cared about doctrine, theology, and good teaching.  At one time in history, theology and philosophy were heard from the pulpit (in the North it would have been from W.G.T. Shedd and Charles Hodge, in the South from James Henley Thornwell and R.L. Dabney).  At one time in history, the church wasn’t anemic.  But those times have long gone.  The Christian church in America may as well not exist.

I feel sorry for this loss – the loss of our scruples and values.  And before it is responded that Trump says he’s a Christian, and said of the Pope that it is disgraceful for a spiritual leader to question a person’s faith, or asks the question can someone’s behavior discredit a profession of faith?, I have some very direct words for you.

I am not a Roman Catholic and don’t believe in the so-called “Chair of Peter.”  No man is my intercessor except the God-man, Christ Jesus.  So I won’t waste my time addressing anything about the papacy.  Who can judge another man’s faith?  We can.  We all can.  We make functional judgments all day, every day.  If you are a Christian, you and your daughter decide whether the man she wants to marry is a Christian because of Paul’s command that husband and wife not be unequally yoked.  As for the words of Christ, you have heard them before: “You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? (Matt 7:16, NASB).  So far from being forbidden from making judgments, we are commanded to judge.  Otherwise, how would be prevent ourselves from being “unequally yoked” (and please, before you cite Matt 7:1, go do some homework and read a dozen or so commentaries so that you understand what you are talking about, and include in your analysis a consideration of John 7:24)).

Works are not necessary for salvation.  But in the order of salvation (ordo salutis), there is still the perseverance of the saints.  We won’t be perfect until we are with Him, we will be in constant need of refreshing and repentance, setting our gaze upon the one who perfected our salvation.  But we who are Christians are being changed more and more to be like Christ.  Works aren’t the cause, but are the evidence of our salvation.

And finally note that I included forgiveness in the list above.  I attended seminary.  But the things I am saying are basic, child like stuff, the work of children’s Sunday School teachers.  If you are a Christian, you know what I’m saying is true.  And if Donald Trump is speaking the truth, he is not a Christian, and yes, I can indeed make that judgment.

“I am not sure that I have” ever asked God for forgiveness, telling the 2015 Iowa Family Leadership Summit that “I just go on and try to do a better job from there.

“I don’t think so,” Trump, who is Presbyterian, said in response to the question from pollster and summit host Frank Luntz. Trump was among 10 Republican presidential candidates at the daylong event in Ames, Iowa.

“If I do something wrong, I think I just try to make it right,” Trump said. “I don’t bring God into that picture. I don’t.

Doing a better job of anything doesn’t cut it.  Our works are as filthy rags, adding only to our judgment on that last day.  Salvation is by grace, through faith, lest any man should boast.  Either Trump is telling the truth, in which he has never sought forgiveness and is trying to work his way to heaven and therefore is not a Christian, or he is lying, for what reason I don’t know, and to what benefit I cannot fathom.

And yet the saddest part of all of this is still that the American church is officially dead.  I confess that I hadn’t seen this much change in the last two or three decades.  Perhaps I wasn’t watching carefully enough.  It was stealthy enough that I missed the death entirely.

News from the great Northeast:

First came the rat — and then, the rat-a-tat-tat.

A Harlem postal cop, startled early Thursday by a rambling rodent outside the W. 125th St. post office, accidentally fired his gun while investigating a building alarm, sources said.

Both the rat and U.S. Postal Service Inspector Neville Harper escaped injury in the 12:35 a.m. shooting that came after the rodent bolted suddenly from a pile of garbage, the sources said.

Harper was doing a perimeter search of the building with his service revolver drawn when the rat appeared and the gun went off, sources said.

I’ve heard of those guns that just “go off” with no one pulling the trigger, mostly from cops under investigation when their gun “goes off.”  But in this case, this particular gun “went off” when the rat bolted.  That must be some sensitive trigger (trigger pressure of, oh, I don’t know, a nano-Pascal?).  Those changes in air pressure when things move, you know.

And remember kids.  Only the cops can be trusted with guns.

WFLA.com:

HOMOSASSA, Fla. (WFLA) — School officials have identified the owner of a gun that was found at Rock Crusher Elementary school Tuesday morning.

School staff and detectives found out the gun fell out of a man’s pocket while he was dropping his child off. Roy Caffera said it fell through a hole in his cargo shorts.

When parent Monique Guertin heard about the gun at her child’s school, she panicked. “Yeah, it’s very scary,” Guertin said.

Citrus County school authorities said the weapon was discovered sometime after 8 a.m. in the area where parents drop off their children for a pre-care program in the back of the school.

“A parent noticed the weapon, contacted one of the employees. They came out, secured the weapon. They thought the weapon was a pellet,” Asst. Superintendent Mike Mullen said.

A janitor fired the weapon, trying to discharge the pellets. That’s when he learned it was a pistol.

That’s what I do too when I’m not sure.  If I’m not sure whether it’s a gun, I just pick it up and pull the trigger to see if I can dislodge anything in it.  If it fires, we all laugh, and laugh, and laugh.  As long as no kids get hurt.

News about boy-billionaire:

One booming business in Silicon Valley is security — but not the digital kind.

Insiders tell Page Six that the young tech billionaires are forced to hire armies of guards after threats from unstable users.

Sources told us that Facebook mogul Mark Zuckerberg has 16 bodyguards now working at his home.

“He has guards over at his place,” said a Palo Alto, Calif., insider, adding that tech moguls around town are all quietly upping security.

We hear that Zuckerberg’s 16-person detail are not all on the scene at the same time, but work in shifts.

Pro immigration, anti-gun nut Mark Zuckerberg wants to curtail your liberties, buy he wants his.  Because he is more special than you.  He has the money to hire 16 bodyguards, and you don’t.  And he doesn’t care that you don’t.  Just like when he conned his partner out of his share of Facebook.  His only statement to his partner was something like “you should have gotten a better lawyer.”  Oh, and if you have a Facebook account, Zuckerberg thinks you dumb.  Well, that’s not exactly the way he put it.

The Washington Post:

Senate Republicans clashed Wednesday over how to battle President Obama’s expected Supreme Court nomination as the White House left open the remote possibility that the president might sidestep a confirmation fight by making a rare recess appointment.

Obama has the option, while the Senate is in recess, of naming a replacement for Justice Antonin Scalia, who died Saturday. A recess appointee would serve until the end of the current Congress in January 2017. White House officials did not dismiss the idea that the president could use the recess maneuver if the Senate fails to hold hearings and a vote on the nomination Obama has promised to send to the Senate.

“Our intent is to nominate an indisputably qualified individual to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday. “And our expectation is that the United States Senate will fulfill their constitutional responsibility to give that individual a fair hearing in a timely up-or-down vote.”

[ … ]

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declared in the hours after Scalia’s death that his seat “should not be filled until we have a new President.” But since his statement Saturday, his Republican colleagues have not agreed on where precisely they ought to make their stand: Should they refuse to take any action whatsoever, responding to the demands of the conservative base? Or should they at least schedule hearings and procedural votes in order to blunt political attacks from Democrats?

The hand wringing is so dramatic, yes?  “Blunt political attacks from Democrats.”  Attacks.  Okay folks, listen up.  Relax.  Take a deep breath.  These aren’t attacks.  Attacks are what my son sustained in Fallujah.  Attacks are what happens when someone comes at you with a knife attempting to disembowel you.  Attacks are what happens when someone shoots a gun at you, and attack is when black thugs gang up on a notable and decorated Marine Corps veteran within six blocks of the White House and beat the hell out of him while they scream, “do black lives matter?”

You are not under attack.  You sit in comfortable chairs every day, rub shoulders with colleagues, go to the Congressional cafeteria and gym, and have your aids do all of the heavy lifting.  Your job is a cake walk.  Your strategy is this: You do nothing.

You don’t have hearings, you ignore overtures from the White House, you don’t give them the time of day, and you don’t respond to reporters when they harass you for not kowtowing to the communists in the executive branch.  There.  I’m glad I could be of help.

And all of these hand-wringing articles written by propagandists about “heavens, what are we to do,” yea, those, they are just so much end of the world propaganda.  Don’t waste you time with them, and don’t give them quotes to use against you.  Grow up, and don’t act like pansy-ass little girls.

Bloomberg:

With Hopkins’s approval, I spend three days observing from behind the counter at Westside Armory, on the condition I won’t risk driving away customers by interrupting to ask to quote them by name. On the floor, I listen to the sales patter and consumer comments. I observe diligence, for the most part, about following the rules. And yet I also witness some troubling slip-ups, including one that leads to a visit to the store by two agents from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. “We’re not perfect,” Hopkins says.

Yea, that’s right.  A Bloomberg hack was allowed in the building to write his propaganda.  One thing that struck me was the nexus of memes.

The persistence of demand for firearms in the U.S. becomes the subject of a get-together at the store with Stuart Anderson Wheeler, a visiting fellow big-game hunter who runs an eponymous business in London that manufactures bespoke hunting guns. Anderson Wheeler finds American gun culture perplexing, especially the shrill tone of the National Rifle Association. “I mean, all the talk of terrorism and shootings—it’s pretty extreme. Can they be serious?” he asks.

“They know what sells,” says Hopkins.

“I’m all for guns,” Anderson Wheeler responds. “But how many does a person need?”

“You Brits don’t have our traditions,” Hopkins says. “To Americans, owning a gun is a connection back to the settling of the Western frontier: cowboys and Indians and all that.”

“And fear,” says Anderson Wheeler.

The store owner and a hunter (not just a Fudd, but a British Fudd), engage in a bit of condescending snark towards American gun owners.  “Fear.”  “Extreme.”  “They know what sells.”  That’s right, Hopkins.  It’s the extreme language of the NRA or the NSSF which convinces us to buy guns.  If it weren’t for them, we’d just park our ass on the couch and watch sitcoms at night and football games on the weekend.

Truthfully, it’s folks like these who don’t understand how the NRA and NSSF is being dragged kicking and screaming into the twentieth first century.  They are even less informed than the progs, because at least the progs get the significance of their gun control schemes and why we buy guns.  Their (NRA and NSSF) irrelevance to the current trends is missed by the Fudds and the sellouts like Hopkins.

David Codrea noticed this (I couldn’t bring myself to read this far).

Like many FFL holders, Hopkins would have no objection to universal background checks for all gun transfers. 

David comments:

Anyone in the business who’s not leading in the fight against universal registration, especially now in the time of great need, and actually telling that to a Bloomberg reporter, deserves to have his business go belly-up as far as I’m concerned. And the FFLs who look forward to it as a new business opportunity are no better than damn kapos.

Yea, Hopkins just went from being a stooge to being an enemy.  Understand, Hopkins, that universal background checks will bring out the guns, and not in a good way, if you know what I mean.  That is a line that cannot be crossed by anyone.  It won’t happen, and your willing adultery with the Bloomberg position is most disappointing.  As for this particular shop, I would drive hours before I would do business with them.  I hope the good folks in Nevada read this article and adjust their business practices accordingly.

This issue has special interest for me, since my own employer prohibits the carrying of weapons in the work place, but also knows that it cannot prohibit the carry of weapons in the public parking lot adjacent to my place of work.

On a personal note, I’ve pressed this issue up the chain of command, to no avail.  They want to maintain, how do they say it, “a safe work place.”  So in order to effect this end, they prohibit self defense and show us those idiotic active shooter videos where they enact an active shooter event and show you what to do.

It’s embarrassing to watch it, and it’s even more embarrassing to work for a company where they show such juvenile rubbish.  So the recommendations?  Hide under desks and be very quiet.  If the shooter sees you, throw potted plants at him.  Run.  Run very fast.  Wait for law enforcement to show up 15 minutes later – after 100 people have already perished.  Then when the dust settles but people are still in mourning, the company gets to go to court or negotiate with lawyers over those 100 preventable deaths, and give away a billion dollar class action settlement.  That’s the way that would work out.  Only lawyers could dream up something so stupid.  All in the interest of a safe work place.  A jury will know what I’m talking about, because most of them have seen the same idiotic video.

So this case interests me.

A Universal Orlando worker who was fired after someone stole a gun from his car at work has sued his former employer.

Dean Kumanchik’s lawsuit was filed in Orange County Circuit Court on Thursday. According to a copy of the complaint sent by his attorney, Universal fired Kumanchik the day before Christmas. A ride technician who earned more than $30 an hour, Kumanchik had worked at Universal more than 20 years.

The lawsuit gives this account: A licensed concealed weapons holder, Kumanchik regularly took his gun to and from work and kept it locked in his vehicle. He parked in an area accessible to both employees and the public. In December, someone broke into his vehicle and stole the gun. He reported it to police. Upon learning what had happened, Universal immediately fired him.

Kumanchik’s lawsuit asserts that Universal violated an eight-year-old law allowing Floridians with concealed-weapons permits to keep firearms locked in their cars at work.

A Universal spokesman said the company does not comment on pending litigation.

Orlando’s big theme parks have previously claimed they are exempt from the law, however.

After the law went into effect, Universal cited an exemption for school property as a justification for its ban. Orange County Public Schools runs an alternative education program called the Universal Education Center on the property.

Claiming that exemption is “nonsense,” Kumanchik’s attorney Richard Celler said. “In our opinion the school they claim is some little building way out of the way, nowhere near the premises or parking lot where he was performing work.”

After the law went into effect, Walt Disney World cited an exemption for property owned by an employer who has a permit for explosives. Disney has such a permit for the fireworks used in its theme parks.

The notion of a “school” on the property is an accidental feature of the decision to fire the employee, and not the reason Universal has a policy against guns.  They reflexively fired him because of discriminatory policies, and then the lawyers hunted for some justification for what they did in the law.  They landed on the fortuitous wording of a “school” on the property (in some cataloged training literature or procedures, or maps they give employees), which is likely nothing more than a training center, something all corporations have.  A jury will know what I’m talking about.  I can guarantee you that the legislature didn’t have corporate training centers in mind when they used the word “school.”  My own state prohibits weapons on school property and playgrounds as well.  Do you think “playgrounds” includes pick-up games of football after work in the nearest open field?

One commenter has this to say:

Florida is an at-will employment state without the Covenant of Good Faith Exemption. That means employers do not even have to pretend to be fair when they fire you. You can do everything right, follow orders to a T, excel in every way, and the boss can give you the axe with no justification at all. Sucks to be employed in Florida, but Universal is within its legal rights.

He thinks he’s smart, but this isn’t even nearly right.  I’m an at will employee too, but the company cannot discriminate against, for example, the elderly, or black workers, or women, and claim that something like that is justifiable due to at-will employment contracts.  That’s why corporations offer attractive separation packages to workers in their 60’s rather than firing them outright and claiming the existence of at-will contracts.  The jury will know exactly what I’m talking about.  Universal fired this worker because of discriminatory attitudes concerning self defense and the second amendment.  Counsel had better be ready for this strategy during trial.

Associated court documents.