Just you wait, Henry Kravis, just you wait

We call keepsies!

Henry Kravis and pal Donald Bryant spent “tens of millions of dollars” to purchase a painting depicting “a skull and hairy testicles”, with an agreement to swap possession of the thing every year. Now Bryant won’t play anymore and, tired of waiting for his turn to appreciate the object of art, Kravis has sued. So it’s not what you probably thought: Bryant wants to keep the painting.

If a quiz is quizzical, what’s a test? Ask Henry.

Britain continues its mad rush to national suicide

They’re just a few years ahead of us, of course. I wonder who’s the greater risk to Britain, this Muslim terrorist or Mr. Justice Mitting?

Mr. Justice Mitting – sodomized at Oxford and proud of it

Judge: Muslim who is a self-admited “threat to national security” can’t be deported because he’s sad.

An Algerian terror suspect has been allowed to stay in Britain because a judge believes he may commit suicide if he is forced to go back home.

The 43-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, does not dispute he is a risk to Britain’s national security and is believed to support one of the terrorist groups which carried out the deadly attack on an Algerian gas plant earlier this month which claimed the lives of 39 hostages including six Britons.

He is also suspected of providing fake passports and travel arrangements to terrorists.

But in another blow for the Home Office, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac) has allowed the married man to remain on British soil today because deporting him would breach his human rights.

Making his ruling, Mr Justice Mitting - who recently allowed hate preacher Abu Qatada to stay in the UK - said: ‘We must look at the totality of the psychiatric evidence in the round.

‘We are persuaded by it that the risk that G would commit suicide, especially after arrival in Algiers, is very high.

 

A chart from AJ

My only complaint: doesn’t show the 23,000 – 36,000 flu deaths each year. Link to chart here. Check out tobacco, with its 529,000 deaths. Maybe the NRA should cut a deal with the government: guns and ammo will be taxed as heavily and the government will sit back, collect the loot and leave us alone. Works for the leaf growers. And booze.

David Mamet on governments and gun control

Fabulous thought-piece by a great film maker “Wag the Dog”, The Spanish Prisoner”, “State and Main”, and my favorite modern playwright. He warms up thus:

All of us have had dealings with the State, and have found, to our chagrin, or, indeed, terror, that we were not dealing with well-meaning public servants or even with ideologues but with overworked, harried bureaucrats. These, as all bureaucrats, obtain and hold their jobs by complying with directions and suppressing the desire to employ initiative, compassion, or indeed, common sense. They are paid to follow orders.

Rule by bureaucrats and functionaries is an example of the first part of the Marxist equation: that the Government shall determine the individual’s abilities.

As rules by the Government are one-size-fits-all, any governmental determination of an individual’s abilities must be based on a bureaucratic assessment of the lowest possible denominator. The government, for example, has determined that black people (somehow) have fewer abilities than white people, and, so, must be given certain preferences. Anyone acquainted with both black and white people knows this assessment is not only absurd but monstrous. And yet it is the law.

President Obama, in his reelection campaign, referred frequently to the “needs” of himself and his opponent, alleging that each has more money than he “needs.”

But where in the Constitution is it written that the Government is in charge of determining “needs”? And note that the president did not say “I have more money than I need,” but “You and I have more than we need.” Who elected him to speak for another citizen?

It is not the constitutional prerogative of the Government to determine needs. One person may need (or want) more leisure, another more work; one more adventure, another more security, and so on. It is this diversity that makes a country, indeed a state, a city, a church, or a family, healthy. “One-size-fits-all,” and that size determined by the State has a name, and that name is “slavery.”

The Founding Fathers, far from being ideologues, were not even politicians. They were an assortment of businessmen, writers, teachers, planters; men, in short, who knew something of the world, which is to say, of Human Nature. Their struggle to draft a set of rules acceptable to each other was based on the assumption that we human beings, in the mass, are no damned good—that we are biddable, easily confused, and that we may easily be motivated by a Politician, which is to say, a huckster, mounting a soapbox and inflaming our passions.

Then, guns:

Q. Who “needs” an assault rifle?

A. No one outside the military and the police. I concur.

An assault weapon is that which used to be called a “submachine gun.” That is, a handheld long gun that will fire continuously as long as the trigger is held down.

These have been illegal in private hands (barring those collectors who have passed the stringent scrutiny of the Federal Government) since 1934. Outside these few legal possessors, there are none in private hands. They may be found in the hands of criminals. But criminals, let us reflect, by definition, are those who will not abide by the laws. What purpose will passing more laws serve?

What possible purpose in declaring schools “gun-free zones”? Who bringing a gun, with evil intent, into a school would be deterred by the sign?

Ah, but perhaps one, legally carrying a gun, might bring it into the school.

Good. We need more guns in schools.

Anyone applying to purchase a handgun has, since 1968, filled out a form certifying he is not a fugitive from justice, a convicted criminal, or mentally deficient. These forms, tens and tens of millions of them, rest, conceivably, somewhere in the vast repository. How are they checked? Are they checked? By what agency, with what monies? The country is broke. Do we actually want another agency staffed by bureaucrats for whom there is no funding?

The police do not exist to protect the individual. They exist to cordon off the crime scene and attempt to apprehend the criminal. We individuals are guaranteed by the Constitution the right to self-defense. This right is not the Government’s to “award” us. They have never been granted it.

The so-called assault weapons ban is a hoax. It is a political appeal to the ignorant. The guns it supposedly banned have been illegal (as above) for 78 years. Did the ban make them “more” illegal? The ban addresses only the appearance of weapons, not their operation.

The individual is not only best qualified to provide his own personal defense, he is the only one qualified to do so: and his right to do so is guaranteed by the Constitution.

President Obama seems to understand the Constitution as a “set of suggestions.” I cannot endorse his performance in office, but he wins my respect for taking those steps he deems necessary to ensure the safety of his family. Why would he want to prohibit me from doing the same?

I think I’ll go over to Stamford

If it saves the life of just one duck …

Greenwich and Stamford are both conducting weapon surrender days, but Greenwich police offer only a hearty handshake of congratulations while Stamford’s paying fifty bucks. Heck, I’ve got an inoperable black powder muzzleloader (no worries about a high capacity magazine here!) and a couple of shotguns rusted to junk from years banging around in duck blinds. Turn those in for cash and I’ll be able to afford a nice AK-47. Competition – gotta love it.

A word to anyone contemplating giving up an old gun: would you please ask someone knowledgable on the subject to look at it before you take it to headquarters? I recently struck up a conversation with a nice young cop at a Southport gunsmith’s and he told me it broke his heart to see some old, incredibly valuable guns brought in by widows of gun collectors. He had to consign them for melting and it struck him, and me, as a shame. So get an opinion on value first – you could be losing out on thousands of dollars and you’d be making a big tough police officer cry – you don’t want to do that, do you?