The past is another country, they do things differently there

In 1935, in a town in New Jersey called Scotch Plains, there was a dispute over an eminent domain taking for the purpose of running a high-tension line that ended in the resisting landowner being shot and his wife killed by sheriff's deputies when they attempted to serve a court order on him in regards to his pastime of tossing metal onto the lines to short them out. That’s not the odd thing. The odd thing is that the 3 law enforcement officers were prosecuted for the shootings, and the prosecutor evidently wanted to throw the book at them. If anyone can find more details, I’d be grateful.

http://fultonhistory.com/newspaper%2011/New%20York%20Evening%20Post/New%20York%20NY%20Evening%20Post%201936%20Grayscale/New%20York%20NY%20Evening%20Post%201936%20Grayscale%20-%201300.pdf

http://fultonhistory.com/newspaper%2011/New%20York%20Evening%20Post/New%20York%20NY%20Evening%20Post%201936%20Grayscale/New%20York%20NY%20Evening%20Post%201936%20Grayscale%20-%201271.pdf

And if you have a Time login (I do not, so I don’t know if there’s resolution in this article)

http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,755065,00.html

Another reason not to make transfers hard

Megan McArdle points out one reason that some people might be served by being able to easily and temporarily transfer firearms to another person. This is a case where making it harder and more public to transfer firearms will hurt people.

Good night, good luck, most likely history will repeat itself in the morning

Seen on the intertubes

“This Syria mess reminds me of the July Crisis of 1914, with Obama playing the role of Austria-Hungary to Syria's Serbia.  But this time, Russia found another solution...”

The thing about that is, the Great War in our history was the result of one particular (incredibly unlikely, when you look at the chain of events that led to one particular Austrian Archduke getting bumped off) spark landing on one particular pre-laid powder train that led to into a magazine that had been stuffed full of history in the past century+. But it was neither the only spark that was struck, nor the only powder train laid – there had been a number of near misses in the previous two decades.

The war plans of today are not great clanking gear-trains that must be engaged well in advance and cannot be shut down once engaged lest the object of your plans fails to mutually disengage. But the decision-making process is still initiated well away from the front lines, by people who think they have all the answers, but are missing a few key questions.

Living in interesting times is quite definitely a curse.

References old–actions new

ECOMCON anyone? Not that this is exactly breaking news to anyone in telecom. Or who has a recently-updated smartphone.

The perils of modern life

I was going to come back to blogging with a comment on the 17th amendment, but xkcd struck me as more interesting today.

Constitutional Immunity

Proposed Amendment:

No person enjoying an office of governmental authority shall be immune to civil or criminal action arising from his actions in office except as specifically provided for elsewhere in this Constitution.

The power of lodging criminal charges and prosecuting the defendants of these charges shall be available to any citizen as well as agents of the government, subject to the procedures of the appropriate jurisdiction.

______________________

No more immunity, qualified or absolute; and to make sure ”prosecutorial discretion” isn’t abused, the citizenry can bring charges (through the Grand Jury process if necessary).

Nifty resource for following the court cases

Right to Carry Leaderboard - found while trying to locate more info on the recent oral arguments I just posted about

Alan Gura vs New Jersey

The audio of the oral arguments in front of a 3rd Circuit panel is posted ( Daniel J. Piszczatoski, et al v. The Hon. Philip Maenza, et al - Mueller having been grudgingly issue his permit and no longer being a plaintiff.)
In haven't listened to it yet (no time) but I've been given to understand that Alan Gura does his usual excellent job and the NJ AG it's a bit over her head.

Seen in the paper

Top article: "NRA wants armed cops in schools"
Above the fold: "Rumors promote patrols at high school"

The second article being about how the authorities are stepping up police presence at a school.

Dinosaur droppings

Why is it that I'm looking at /etc/hosts for troubleshooting in  2012?