Unusal Allies

The ACLU and the NRA are allies in Texas over gun rights. Hard to believe, but true.
It seems there is a long tradition in Texas that it is legal to carry a gun, licensed or not, while "traveling". In fact the legislature of Texas has put it into their law code. They passed a bill in 1997 that removed the unlicensed carrying of a weapon as an offense while traveling. Then in 2005 they clarified what they meant by traveling by saying that anyone in a private vehicle who was not engaged in criminal activity or otherwise barred from possessing a firearm was “presumed to be traveling,” and thus exempt from restrictions on concealed handguns.

Terry Keel, a former member of the Texas House of Representatives who sponsored the bill, explained its intent in a statement entered into the record: “In plain terms, a law-abiding person should not fear arrest if they are transporting a concealed pistol in a motor vehicle.”

Seems pretty clear no?

Not it seems to District and County Attorneys in Texas. Their organization, the Texas District and County Attorneys Association, declared that the bill did not rule out arrests of otherwise law abiding citizens carrying a weapon. Their argument seems to be, as the D.S. of Harris County Texas said, “The presumption of innocence does not make the person innocent.” Now forgive me but I always sort of assumed "innocent until proven guilty" meant just that and that there had to be a real cause before someone could be arrested. (I know, I am a simplistic and idealistic soul at times.) But really, can the D.A.s just decide that they want folks arrested for something that the legislature had CLEARLY said is not a crime? It seems so in Texas at least. And this has brought the ACLU and the NRA together in Texas. (Actually they had been in contact before over the racial profiling of certain white males fitting a "bubba profile" being stopped for gun searches so the cooperation is more common than we think)

So for all of you folks who condemn the ACLU for never standing up for 2nd Amendment rights, here they are. And good luck to them.

Books

I am going to start this out by making a bold and perhaps dangerous assumption. That anyone who reads this blog actually reads. Books you know, literature. And by literature I don’t necessarily mean the old classics like say Moby Dick. (This frankly is one of the worst books I have ever read. How in the hell could anyone take such a GOOD story and make such a lousy book out of it? I have been told that if you read it as it was written, one chapter a every week or two it is ok. I have my doubts.) I just mean real books, something that an author has spent some real time working on. (Thus eliminating many romance novels and series like The Executioner.) As an avid reader I expect you probably have a book or two sitting around your house that you can pick up at any time and read it and enjoy it. Over and over. In fact, it is often as good the second, third, or fifteenth, time as it was the first time. When I was in Junior high (that is Middle School for you young folks) and High School Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings filled that spot. (I’m almost ashamed to admit that it has been probably 15 years since I last read them) Roger Zelazny’s The Chronicles of Amber took over for awhile later in High School and early in college. Now I don’t mean to say that these were all I was reading. I generally have three or four books going at any one time. And I don’t recall who said this first but I have always agreed with the statement that if a book isn’t good enough to read twice it probably isn’t worth reading once. (Samuel Clemons maybe????) (I can think of one real exception to that rule, Stephen Donaldson’s The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever I read those when they were first published. I still have the hard back books sitting in my house. They were very good and I cannot bring myself to reread them. I would tell you why but I am getting far enough off topic as it is.)

This whole ramble came up because the day before yesterday I picked a book up from under my couch and began to read it; and stayed up until I had finished it again. What is this book? Wm. Mark Simmons’ One Foot in the Grave. A vampire novel with a bit of a twist. He has some sequels out to it that I haven’t read even though I keep telling myself I need to. I recommend it.

If you are curious as to what other books I am reading at the moment, I am still battering my way through God’s War: A New History of the Crusades by Christopher Tyerman (900 pages of small print), E.E. “Doc” Smith’s The Complete Skylark, (which deserves it’s own post for a variety of reasons), Laszlo Szabo’s Fencing and the Master, and I just finished Terry Prachett’s Small Gods.

Let's see if it works.....

Well, folks, if you never see me again you will know that my latest experiment in self reliance failed miserably. (probably failed with a bang too)
I just rebuilt the brakes on my vehicle. Last week they underwent a not quite catastrophic failure. (only because no catastrophe occurred). It is kind of exciting though to push on the brake pedal and have it go all the way down with no appreciable slowing of the vehicle. but stopping was done and then later a very early in the morning drive was made from the parking lot where I left it to a place where it could sit till I got it fixed. I have just finished replacing the rotor, the caliper, the shoes, and incidentally repacking the bearing grease. IF it fails I will probably die in a smashing blaze of glory. IF not I'll be pack to post again later.

As a prelude to a future post, In what state are the NRA and the ACLU actually working together on a case? Answer: Texas. Where else? Why? Check back later.....

Interesting

I heard a bit of the Glen Beck Show last night. It isn't part of my usual listening routine so I was kind of curious as to what he had to say. The most amusing thing I heard was his reasoning behind being "the most hated man in the World" His thought went thusly, first he is an American and so is hated by most of the world now. In America he is a Christian conservative and as such is hated by all the liberal establishment folks and just plain liberals. TO make it worse, he is a Mormon, so the other Christians hate him too. Add to this the fact that he is a conservative who doesn't like the Republicans (his claim, not mine) and the other conservatives hate him. IF you add to this mix the fact that he is a white Anglo-Saxon male and the issue is decided. He is the most hated man in the world.
I thought it was kind of humorous. I checked out his web site and didn't find it as good. So your mileage may vary.

On a different road, I found a new interesting blog. Sort of the Opposite of Blue Girl, Red State although considerably less shrill than she has become lately. It is, A Red Mind in a Blue State His most recent post calls for the firing of Alberto Gonzales, not because he did anything illegal, but because he let a minor personnel issue turn into a major scandal. Recommended reading.