A D.C. Superior Court judge, who recently presided over a high-profile murder case, was robbed at gunpoint last Friday while walking with two others through an upper Northwest D.C. neighborhood.
Judge Ronna Beck was walking with her law clerk and the clerk's boyfriend when two men with guns approached from behind and announced a robbery.
Judge Beck, who recently presided over the trial of five men convicted in the South Capitol Street drive-by murders, did what the robbers wanted and was not hurt in the holdup.
In fact, all three turned over their valuables, telling police the men jumped into a car and fled east toward 16th Street.
Friday, August 10, 2012
Remember liberals, what goes around, comes around.
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Something we may be seeing more of in a year or two: gigantic blimps.
A next-generation airborne spy ship as long as a football field made a successful maiden test flight over New Jersey on Tuesday, according to Army Space and Missile Defense Command/Army Forces Strategic Command headquarters on Redstone Arsenal.The Long Endurance Multi-intelligence Vehicle is sort of a digital-age dirigible under development by SMDC and prime contractor Northrop Grumman. LEMV is designed to keep a 2,500-pound Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance payload aloft up to three weeks at a time, staring at an area or enemies from 20,000 feet with an "unblinking eye," according to company materials.
Here's some more background on recent heavy lift airships from Defense Industry Daily.
As usual, the big brains at Northrop Grumman have created the super duper version of a military airship. This thing can haul a total of seven tons, that being 14,000 pounds of fuel, payload and pilots. It can in principle stay in the air for weeks, particularly if they arrange for mid-air refueling. Its full of helium so it will be very difficult to shoot down. Helium doesn't burn. Its also designed so it can fly with no humans on board, land, drop payloads, pick things up, whatever, all under remote control or even under its own local control like a robot vacuum cleaner. World's biggest Roomba.As airships go this one is very interesting, it has a unique double-hull design that makes it much more aerodynamic and the hull apparently generates lift too when the machine is moving forward. Very, very cool.
Northrop Grumman says they are going to fly it around for a while before sending it on to Afghanistan to get shot at. Probably wise.
Now, this machine is like the ultimate Cadillac Eldorado with the mega tailfins, turbo-nitrous 500 cubic inch engine and the ten thousand watt stereo. Its got everything including a kitchen sink. Its -huge-. But, and this is where the real fun for us "citizens" comes in, compared to a drone or a spyplane, measured by flight hours per dollar, this thing is dirt cheap. I mean super duper give-it-away cheap. Assuming this machine makes itself useful in Ashcanistan, every city in the USA will want at least one for their cops.
There's a reason Goodyear still flies those ancient blimps at the Superbowl. Its because they offer a rock-steady camera platform and they cost almost nothing compared to a helicopter. Oh, and they can't actually crash either. If you shoot a missile into one the most you can do is make it come down rrrreeeaallllyyy slow, because the gas is held in many small compartments inside the big bag. You can't rip them all at once and the gas itself will put out any fire you can get started. Its helium. If you want you can use your airship to carry and launch smaller drones. Or cruise missiles. Or smart-bombs. Or even put a gun on it and drop artillery shells on things. With deadly accuracy, because it doesn't wiggle as it flies.
Take your crash-proof high tech airship, scale it down. Make it a drone. Stick a FLIR pod on it, maybe some side-looking radar. Now you've got every official peeping Tom's dream, the eye in the sky that sees in the dark, and they can afford to run it twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.
Yeah, I think we should get used to seeing something like this floating around big cities real soon. Just remember the Batman movie in Aurora Colorado and the Gurudwara in Oak Creek Wisconsin when they fire up the hype machine to sell this new surveillance toy. Big Brother watching you doesn't make -you- safer. It makes Big Brother safer.
Time to invest in some mylar window blinds and thick drapes. Tinfoil works too, so they tell me.
The Phantom
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Kirpan update II: Heart of a lion!
OAK CREEK, Wis., Aug. 7 (UPI) -- The president of the Sikh temple in Wisconsin where six members were killed tried to stop the gunman before he was gunned down, his son says.
Amardeep Kaleka told WTMJ, CNN affiliate in Milwaukee, that his father, Satwant Singh Kaleka, 65, used the ceremonial dagger all Sikhs carry.
"It's an amazing act of heroism, but it's also exactly who he was," Amardeep Kaleka said. "There was no way in God's green Earth that he would allow somebody to come in and do that without trying his best to stop it."
Probably some of the other men went after the shooter too. Hell, probably some of the women went after him. Maybe that's why he was -outside- the Gurudwara when the cops showed up instead of inside shooting kids.
HEY OBAMA!!! HEY BLOOMBERG!!! You think maybe Mr. Kaleka could have accomplished more with a Walther .380 than a blunt ceremonial dagger?
Anti-gunners make me sick to the stomach, they really do.
Oh and by the way, for our no-less full of it Canadian politicians, why are Sikhs the only ones who get a knife? Where's MY right to carry MY national blade? Where's my Skean Dhu? Where's my dirk?
The Phantom
Kirpan update: cops knew about the Batman guy too!
On Drudge today we find a report from ABC that the "Joker's" psychiatrist called the cops WEEKS before he finally slipped a gear and shot up the theater in Aurora.
The psychiatrist who treated suspected movie-theater shooter James Holmes made contact with a University of Colorado police officer to express concerns about her patient's behavior several weeks before Holmes' alleged rampage, sources told ABC News.
The sources did not know what the officer approached by Dr. Lynne Fenton did with the information she passed along. They said, however, that the officer was recently interviewed, with an attorney present, by the Aurora Police Department as a part of the ongoing investigation of the shooting.
Fenton would have had to have serious concerns to break confidentiality with her patient to reach out to the police officer or others, the sources said.
Serious concerns, no duh. Concerns like "Hey, this guy is crazier than a bag of weasels, he has a bunch of guns in his house and says he's going to kill a bunch of people!!!" What do the cops do? Nuttin'. Why? Because they -can't-. Also because they probably can't be bothered to buck the paperwork blizzard just because somebody -might- die.
And really, thank God for that. Because if they had the power they'd be pulling everybody who was even the least bit odd and chucking them in the slammer "just in case". Because you never know, right? We call that kind of thing "North Korea". Speaking as someone who has been considered slightly odd,
Again, Big Brother is not there to protect you. Big Brother is there to protect Big Brother.
So friends remember that, and remember that a knife is not what you bring to a gun fight. Kirpans are good, but nothing beats five aces like a Colt 1911.
The Phantom
Monday, August 6, 2012
Why do Sikhs carry the kirpan?
Federal investigators had "looked at" Sikh temple gunman Wade Michael Page more than once because of his associations with right-wing extremists and the possibility that he was providing funding to a domestic terrorist group, but law enforcement officials at the time determined there was not enough evidence of a crime to open an investigation, a senior U.S. law enforcement official said.
Yes friends, the now properly dead Mr. Page was sufficiently an asshole that the FBI actually went looking for a reason to bust him. But of course they came up empty because the guy hadn't actually -done- anything other than mouth off. So total protective power of the FBI, zippo. As expected, right?
But wait there's more! It turns out that more people than just the FBI were COMPLETELY USELESS for stopping this piece of dirt.
Both the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center had tracked Page for several years. The nonprofit organizations collect publicly available information on hate groups from Web forums, pamphlets and other sources.
There you go, total preventative value of Leftie busybody orgs watching this guy and wringing their hands, zippo. Big Brother watching you doesn't make you safer, kids.
Which is a big DUH no kidding! Because you can't predict when one of these schmucks is going to finally work up the nerve to walk his talk. It is in fact the very definition of UN-predictable, isn't it?
What finally stopped this clown? Getting shot to death by a cop. What could have prevented this massacre? Clownboy getting shot right away before the cops showed up, preferably by the very first person he pointed a gun at.
My suggestion to Sikhs everywhere is keep the kirpan for backup and upgrade to .45ACP for your primary carry. If your local city/state/province morons won't let you, DEFEAT THEM by voting for somebody who will.
The Phantom
Friday, August 3, 2012
Media bias: Its getting so you can set your watch by them.
There's no mention of Chick-fil-A on the front pages of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and the Boston Globe. The front pages of USA Today, the Dallas Morning News, and the Houston Chronicle have small headlines about the restaurant, while Chick-fil-A's hometown paper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, fits in a story below the fold under the heading, "Chick-fil-A Controversy." And the front pages of major news websites are quiet in their coverage as well.
Several hundred thousand people all over the USA spontaneously turn up to tell Rahm Emmanuel and Barack Obama to shove it where the sun don't shine... that's not news.
Utterly predictable. Also predictable, the Kiss-off protest in front of Chick-fil-A today -will- be front page news and all over CNN. You will be seeing pictures of men kissing in your national news tonight. Probably the same two on every channel, because they will be the only two that showed up. If you read tomorrow morning's paper, when you are done you will be less informed than before you started it.
But not if you don't buy it. Or turn on the TV. Which I for one am all over. I don't even get TV or the papers at all. Ever.
Because why the hell would I pay money to be lied to? Especially when I get the truth for free on the web!
The Phantom
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Talk about chickens coming home to roost.
Every DemocRat apparatchik in the USA is watching this and realizing that nobody is buying their hype. All they have in response is rent-a-mob and bussed in union thugs.
They are done like dinner.
The Phantom