So that's a wrap for this week here at Alphecca. As usual (or usually,) I take weekends off so I'll see you all back here Monday morning for my "Weekly Check on the Bias." Thanks to all of you for stopping by! Keep those cards and letters coming... Have a great weekend.

I promise, this is the last post and it'll just be a bunch of quick comments...

I don't write about "gay issues" much and I won't now but the far-right conservatives can be just as schmucky as liberals. Here's a suggestion for douche-bag Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia -- go fuck yourself; we all know it will give you supreme pleasure. I'll leave it to others to explain how.

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According to this report in Reuters:

An unseemly clash for control has erupted among the three major U.S. television networks, Oprah Winfrey (news) and a leading publisher over competing plans to tell the sensational tale of teenage kidnap victim Elizabeth Smart.

The various media outlets have all pledged to treat her story with restraint and dignity. After all, the object of their attention is a 16-year-old girl from Utah who police say was sexually assaulted during nine months in captivity at the hands of a homeless street preacher and his wife.

But the media have been slinging public barbs and even accusations of treachery at each other as they maneuver to package and promote rival stories of Elizabeth's ordeal to their greatest commercial advantage.

These media outlets (including NBC, ABC, and CBS (which is about to vandalize Reagan's legacy) and all the other garbage-can outlets are promising to "treat her story with restraint and dignity." Yeah. As this whole starving catfish feeding frenzy is proving every minute. And shame on the parents of Elizabeth Smart for going along with all of this. I wonder if they've been offered money? Draw your own conclusions.

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Charles Krauthammer defends Gregg Easterbrook. I agree. At the end of a post last week I got over it too.

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And on a lighter note: From Space.com comes this report that ordinary ball-point pens work fine in outer-space:

NASA officials report all is well aboard the International Space Station as the handover between the Expedition Eight and Seven crews continues.

Meanwhile, European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Pedro Duque has been very busy with eight days of science experiments that stems from a commercial contract between ESA and the Russian Space Agency.

Duque has sent down a couple of entries for a diary that ESA has published. In his first offering Duque talks about a less critical element of life in space: how well ball point pens work.

Duque has discovered that "ordinary" pens work just fine in space and that the famous American versions that use a pressurized ink source may be a little overkill. In commenting on the ball point pen, he (unintentionally?) makes an interesting observation about the U.S. space program:

"Sometimes being too cautious keeps you from trying, and therefore things are built more complex than necessary," Duque writes.

My Bic is working just fine here on Earth too...

Okay, one last thing. As usual, the health-nazis pass smoking ban after smoking ban in state after state. It always centers on bars and restaurants. What these (mostly liberal) mutants want is to take away the consumer's power to choose where they go. Really! See, instead of passing a ban everywhere, if they really believed in democracy and capitalism (things that liberals don't) they would instead pass a law that simply says that bars and restaurants must clearly post in windows and ads whether they allow or prohibit smoking. Then, let market forces decide who stays in business and who goes under.

The corner saloon could decide that they WILL continue to allow smoking and attract those sorts of customers -- and employees, by the way. Potential workers DO have the right to decide whether they want to work in a smoky environment or not. Just as they have to decide whether to work in a coal mine or a paid fire-department and accept the risks that go with such employment.

But the health-nazis will have none of that. It's our way or the highway is their fascist mantra. And in cities that don't have such bans, many restaurants have chosen on their own to go "smoke-free" and done well. Terrific! That's their choice and they've attracted the customers they want. And others allow smoking and do well with their customers. What on Earth is wrong with letting consumers and establishment owners sort it out on their own and letting the "market" choose?

No, no, we can't allow that! That would harken back to when America was founded and people were able to think for themselves. Most Democrats and other liberals are incapable of doing that. They need the "nanny-state" to make decisions for them and protect them from the effects of evolution and capitalism and freedom of choice (unless it's killing viable babies.)

New York City's fascist Mayor Bloomberg banned smoking in all bars. From Steve Dunleavy of the New York Post:

The pub called Fiddler's Green on 48th Street, a durable Irish establishment owned by veteran saloon keeper John Mahon, is closing.

"We have just lost too many customers to this law, which I did not vote for, bar owners did not vote for, bartenders did not vote for, and the public did not vote for," Mahon said.

That's just the postscript of a story about another bar that burned down because of the smoking ban. Sound strange? As we are wont to say in the blogosphere, read the whole thing...

Always exit on a light note, that's what I say...

I've always been conscious of street names and have always refused to live on a road with a "bad" name.

From Reuters:

A British couple have been forced to move house because of the shame caused by the name of their street -- Butt Hole Road.

Paul and Lisa Allott sold their $250,000 bungalow in Conisbrough, northern England after living there for just 15 months, fed up with the constant leg-pulling.

Taxis and pizza delivery men would fail to turn up, thinking their order was just a prank, and they grew tired with groups of youths posing for photos by the nearby street sign with their buttocks bared.

Someone please tell me why a town council or planning commission would give a name like that to a street? Someone please tell me what the Allotts were thinking when they moved there? Didn't they know they would eventually have to have return-address labels made up? That when filling out a loan application they might have to list their home address? I'm surprised the street sign wasn't constantly stolen by kids...

My "Weekly thing" now appears on Monday mornings. While I check the obvious sources, I appreciate you readers sending me links to smaller paper stories and editorials about guns and related subjects that you think exibit obvious bias. I'll try to include as many as I can in the weekly report. And starting this week I'll be including mentions of blogger posts of interest on the same subject so send me links to those as well.

And let me just say that I am well aware of the garbage anti-gun editorial written by Richard North Patterson --of the Brady Bunch-- in the L.A. Times and I will be picking it apart on Monday in the weekly report. One reason I had thought of making Alphecca "just the weekly check on the bias" was to cut down on repetition but since that seemed unpopular, I'll do it instead by saving this stuff up all week and firing both barrels on Mondays.

Lastly, I still haven't decided yet what exactly to do with my Tarazet domain but Kathy Kinsley has kindly and generously volunteered to install Movable Type at the site so I can do something. Because I'd like to have another, non-political, non-gun blog. Something fun. Your suggestions are welcome although I'm leaning towards a blog dedicated to pet owners, or else chess and other strategy games (including computer games) lovers. Your thoughts?

Finally, a quick note of thanks to all who emailed birthday greetings to me (and to Alphecca.) You folks are great and it made me feel good.

From the AP:

Food companies already are required to put nutrition information on the backs of food packages, and nutrition advocates have been pressuring the government and the industry to impose similar requirements on the restaurant industry.

And:

Allison Whitesides, director of legislative affairs for the National Restaurant Association, said the industry group opposes mandatory labels on menus. It would be especially cumbersome for restaurants that serve different meals each day, she said.

"We're not a box, we're not a can," Whitesides said. "Cooking is an art. It's not an exact science."

Exactly. It's very easy for industrially produced supermarket food, created by machines in exacting amounts of ingredients and quantities to quantify the nutritional and caloric content of their packaged food.

It's a much different story in a restaurant (a real one, not Burger King) where new dishes are tried every night or so. Should the restaurant have to submit every dish they are purposing to feature to a testing laboratory? Does the chef now have to measure amounts and spices and such with beakers and scientific scales in order to ensure the dish they serve to someone meets the specifications they specified on the menu?

This is silly. You know what kind of restaurant you're going to (unless you're an idiot) and you know what to expect from the food you order. A salad is a salad and the baby-back-ribs are... Get the point? This whole stupid idea would just open the doors to the trial-lawyers suing some eatery because the slice of chocolate moose contained 100 more calories than advertised on the menu. Shame on whoever cut that slice! Shame on the short-order cook who didn't count-out each french-fry falling into the boiling oil!

Do we really want the International House of Pancakes to require those saloon-type pourers on their syrup bottles so we don't exceed the caloric specifications?

Once again we have our government and the trial-lawyers and liberals trying to regulate our lives to death. Why don't they all just moving to the other side of the Atlantic Ocean to the effing European Union? They love that stuff over there. That's one reason Europe is becoming a third-world continent; they are tribal babies who need big government to hold their hand through every common-day action in life. How pathetic.

While I'm not a hunter myself, I enjoy reading about it. I actually subscribe to Field and Stream just for these articles. Swen ought to be writing for publications such as these. Here and then here (read them in that order) are perfect reasons why.

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And if you like stuff like that, don't forget Craig at Boone Country who always has plenty on hunting and guns. A scroll through his blog and archives is time well spent.

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My Buddy Publicola has been busy. He has a pile of new posts up at the Shooters' Carnival and at his own blog, he explains why he doesn't like the NRA.

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The Fuz has been hunting and gathering too.

I'm not the only one celebrating a birthday today, Over at Across the Atlantic it's the Group Captain's Birthday too. Happy Birthday!

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Meanwhile, Gromblad at the Daily Discourse is suffering paranoia over the percentage of government employees visiting his site. I think I can assure him that every blog gets a bunch of visits from ".gov" mostly from, as he suspects, workers goofing off. Now if they all came from the CIA...

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Remember the Zodiac Killer? Les Jones does and has a round-up of the latest developements on the unsolved case.

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Say Uncle lists his favorite movies. I see so few movies these days (only an occasional one at the Drive-in) that all of mine are from long ago.

Just off the top-of-my-head, here are some I would recommend to people:

• Stage Door
• Take the Money and Run
• Airplane
• And Then There Were None (original, of course)
• Jacob's Ladder
• The Bishop's Wife
• What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?
• Blazing Saddles

I mentioned that this week is the "blogoversary" of Alphecca. I'm pleased with how this blog has grown over the months. For the year, I've had 114,000 visitors and 162,000 page views. I shudder to think that Glenn often does that in one day! I'm not sure I'd want that many people hanging onto everything I write -- I'd get the equivalent of stage-fright, blog-fright...

Supposedly, the Earth is being bombarded today:

A strong dose of space weather is forecast to hit Earth Friday, potentially disrupting satellite communications and posing a threat to power grids on Earth. The event also presents a nice opportunity for anyone to view sunspots, though safe viewing techniques must be employed to prevent eye damage.

The storm of charged particles was unleashed by a dark region on the solar surface called Sunspot 484. The huge spot, about the size of Jupiter's surface, has been growing for several days and rotating into a position that now points squarely at Earth.

It wrecks havoc with my ESP powers too. I'm trying to predict the winning numbers in tomorrow's Power Ball Lottery and nothing is coming to me as a premonition...

I happen to feel that way right now because it's my birthday (I can now say that I am "almost 50." Last night the head-honchos of the company I work for ambushed me at the local tavern and forced me (*heh*) to drink way too much. I feel awful this morning but I have to admit it was just what I needed since I was in a funk the last few days. This morning I'm feeling better about myself. Except for my stomach which is trying to do a "lap-dance" on itself...

Needless to say, now that I can log-on and post, I have no time this morning... There are a lot of items in the news I want to comment on but it will have to wait until tonight when I get home from work. I'll also get to the stack of emails that came in too, tonight. So I'll see you soon and in the meantime I'll just say "Happy Birthday" to me... Alphecca is one-year-old today. Thanks to all of you who stop by!

Alphecca is one of the many blogs hosted by Hosting Matters and needless to say has been affected by all of the Denial Of Service attacks coming from mutants in the Middle East. Hosting Matters has been working around the clock to thwart these actions. You can read more about it at InstaPundit and constant commentary at Winds of Change. Roger L. Simon has comments as does his readers including myself. The target of these coordinated attacks by Al Quida sympathizers is Internet-Haganah and you should all show some support over there, moral and financial.

Last week I mentioned the Democrat's new strategy on gun control in this post. Their new mantra is "gun safety" as a disguise for "common sense gun control" which was a disguise for plain-old "let's ban guns."

A new blog called "Rise of the Common Man" has much more on this.

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Ted at Rocket Jones seems to not have me on his blogroll anymore. How depressing! Ah...Bach. He's just moving things around. Now I feel better.

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Kinayda at Kins Kouch is -- I hope -- back with this post on Free Will and Determinism. Welcome back my friend. He's been posting only sporadically and I wish it was a lot more. I'm sorry for the loss of your friend but I'm glad you're back posting in the blogosphere. You're one of the good (and nice) guys.

Philadelphia Mayor John Street certainly has his problems -- finding his office bugged by the feds and further finding he's the main target of the investigation into corruption. Yet his constituency must think it's all a plot by Bush and other (in their paranoid imaginations,) racists. His poll numbers are actually going up! Eric at Classical Values is all over it like a thick wool blanket. (Again with the metaphors -- somebody stop me!)

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Steven Malcolm Anderson at Up With Beauty! explains why he left 'the left' but he doesn't have much use for most -- and especially G.W. Bush -- on the right. I have stated my disappointment with Bush many times here. He says there's plenty of blame to go around. A passionate post.

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I just noticed that Kelley at Suburban Blight has posted a rather sexy new picture of herself on the sidebar. If that doesn't make you want to visit, then go there for the same reason I do -- her fine blog writing.

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Robert Prather has a soldier's email that is suggesting that more troops are needed in Iraq. And more. Quite moving.

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My buddy Michael at the Discount Blogger bucks the trend of most of the blogospheric pundits by stating that our money sent to Iraq for rebuilding should be a loan. I'm not sure if I agree since we did -- after all -- cause most of the problems that now need rebuilding. Granted, this was probably (I'm still undecided...) an action needed to be taken (I think, maybe...) but Michael makes his points well and I suggest a read.

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I've blathered here before that I like Apple's iTunes a lot. It beats the crap out of that lame, worthless, rip-off Roxio Toast. Now, it's available for Windows users. My good neighbor Joy reports that it is a success!

My buddy Mike at Raising Sand is in complete agreement.

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Hey, can we just get back to guns here (I presume you're all asking)? Okay, my friend Les Jones has a review of the Walther .22 caliber handgun.

Well what the heck are you waiting for?

By the way -- Wednesday is my first-year blogoversary. On October 22 of last year, I started my lunatic rantings here at Alphecca.

And shame on me for not announcing that my friends at The Bitch Girls, just celebrated their first anniversary. We both started our blogs within days of each other and they have been wonderful friends to me, both visably, and through email. Bitter is the best web-friend I have. There's a reason why she's number one on my blogroll... One day (she's only a few miles down the road in Massachusetts) we're gonna' go spend an afternoon shootin' up a storm and making enough noise to wake the dead. Then we'll go drinking! And since I'm queer, she can actually relax and not worry about me saying or doing something stupid like many would... Happy Anniversary to The Bitch Girls. Now go there and relish it all and add them to your blogrolls and bookmarks.

Their gun-ban is working. NOT. Thanks to the pointer from Glenn Reynolds, we now continue to see what happens when you disarm the general population. From the Independent (UK):

Gun crime in England and Wales rose to record levels in the past year, with nearly 200 incidents every week.

There were 10,250 incidents, including 80 murders, involving firearms in the year to April, 276 (about 3 per cent) more than the previous year and double the number recorded five years ago.

Well, they've already taken away everyones' firearms. Airguns are next. Then lube-guns and weed-wackers...

This was part of the cover painting by Richard Powers for Fred Pohl's The Case Against Tomorrow. Don't know why but lately it's been on my mind...

Jay Manifold at A Voyage To Arcturus has started a Weekly Quagmire Watch. It's actually pretty funny when you see this cliche used by so many in the press gathered together in one place.

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And Jay Solo has the latest edition of the Carnival of the Capitalists. You should be reading it -- aside from the fact that it's interesting -- just to drive everyone on the socialist-left crazy!

Once again, it's time to dip the litmus paper and see how the media solution is going. And if that isn't the worst metaphor you've seen in a while, well, what blogs are you reading?

So each week I check out the links to stories and editorials on the Yahoo Gun Control Page. Things aren't too unbalanced this week.

Since I always try to use a photo with some significance to the news, you're probably wondering what a picture of Leslie Nielson holding a blaster in the movie Forbidden Planet has to do with anything. Well! I guess you just don't know everything, do you? China boldly sent an astronaut into space this past week to prove they could do what Americans and Russians did some 35 or more years ago. And according to this news story he was packing heat:

The astronaut aboard China's first ever manned space mission will be armed with a gun and knives in case the capsule comes down in hostile territory, a state-run newspaper said yesterday.

Or he runs into Dr. Morbius and his Krell-boosted imagination...

If I had to pick one editorial this past week from a newspaper that exemplified fairness, it would have to be this one from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about attempts by liberals in Missouri to stop the new concealed-carry law there. Here's a quote:

OPPONENTS CAN'T BE FAULTED for trying to get the state's concealed-gun law off the books the easy way, through the actions of a friendly court. But the best way to win may be the hard way: in the democratic arena.

Liberals sometimes get lazy, relying on the courts instead of getting their hands dirty with democracy.

Truer words have never been spoken about the liberal agenda of legislation through litigation. The editorial goes on in refreshing candor:

This editorial page fervently opposes the new concealed-gun law, which effectively lets people carry concealed guns just about everywhere. But just because a law is unwise doesn't make it unconstitutional.

St. Louis Circuit Judge Steven Ohmer, who issued a preliminary injunction suspending the law last Friday, said that the state constitution is so clear that a 10-year-old would understand that it bans concealed guns. The adults on the Missouri Supreme Court might find the issue a little more complex.

The state constitution guarantees citizens the right to bear arms, but states that "this shall not justify the wearing of concealed weapons." However, just because the state constitution doesn't grant the power to carry a concealed weapon doesn't mean that the Legislature can't grant that power.

The New York Times, the L.A. Times, and the Washington Post editorial writers could learn a lot from this un-credited author. He is saying (instead of ranting and raling against the new law as editors in the afore-mentioned papers would have done) that sometimes you just have to admit that a piece of legislation is constitutionally correct and that if you want to change it, do it the proper way by lobbying and winning the votes in the state house. Inspite of the stated desires of this writer, I placed this editorial in the neutral column in recognition of its objectivity. This is a model of proper thinking and a "how-to" for future journalists.

Which brings us to a "how NOT-to" by op-ed writer Bob Herbert in the New York Times. With whispers of dark conspiracies about hit-lists buried deep within the NRA website, he intones that the NRA has a list of celebraties and organizations that work or write or speak against the right to bear arms.

They do! It's a list of anti-gun foundations, organizations, and the contributors to those organizations. Is this really so strange and ominous? Shouldn't we, as Americans who believe in an unadulterated Second Amendment have the right to know who our foes are? So we won't patronize them or their supporters? So we won't vote for a legislator who doesn't agree with us? Or pay money to see a movie by a "star" who works against the fundamental principles of this great country's constitution?

What if the politics were different? Let's just say -- oh, I don't know -- that a liberal organization that supported abortion maintained a list of opponents... Would Bob Herbert feel this was all right?

Why gosh! Here's one now from Planned Parenthood of Pennsylvania!

So for all the blathering by Herbert and the New York Times, about this "story" of an NRA enemies list, which was also mentioned on NBC's Today Show, and even here on the MSNBC website, well, they don't seem to have a problem when a "liberal" organization maintains something similar. What hypocrites!

Well, you know how the press is. Oh wait! They have one as well!

Well, at least we can trust our educators not to engage in such things. Oops! They seem to have one too!

'Nuff said? This was a non-story blown-up by the liberal media.

So in other news, the AP reports that there might finally be enough votes in the Senate to pass the law shielding gun makers and distributors from frivolous lawsuits and prevent a filibuster by liberals:

Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, has 44 Republican co-sponsors for his bill to immunize gun manufacturers and distributors from lawsuits arising out of the use of guns in crimes.

And despite a threatened filibuster by some Democrats, the bill also has the support of 10 Democrats, among them Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota.

"It is a misuse of the civil justice system to try to punish honest, law-abiding people for illegal acts committed by others without their knowledge or involvement," Daschle said two weeks ago. He began promoting the legislation after gun supporters agreed to specify that firearms manufacturers and distributors would not be protected from lawsuits involving defective products or illegal sales.

I'm not sure how you can blame a manufacturer for an illegal sale by a gun dealer but at least this legislation now has a chance of passing. I'm sure Daschle was throwing a bone to his trial lawyer supporters. What worries me is that these lawyers will find every gun used everywhere somehow defective and proceed with litigation. Still, this is a good thing for our side.

Reader Jim G. kindly pointed me to this report from the Opinion Journal about a fun outing:

WEST POINT, Ky.--A casualty list from the Knob Creek Gun Range, which hosted one of the country's largest machine-gun shoots this past weekend, would look something like this: Two dozen old appliances. A dozen junked cars. Tens of thousands of rounds of spent ammunition. Zero people.

Aim: Having a blast.

These statistics will be disturbing to the myopic antigun crowd, which fails to recognize the millions of rounds fired safely every year, including the tens of thousands fired at this twice-yearly event that draws everyday folks from as far away as California and Florida.

The special draw here is to be able to go full auto--something heavily regulated since the 1930s--with some of the most impressive hardware on the planet. I knew this was serious when I walked through the main gate and the first range offered flame throwers for rent--$65 for regular grade; $125 a squirt if you wanted to upgrade to Napalm.

What do you think the chances are that your own local (probably liberal-biased) newspaper would have printed something like this? Author Mark Yost brings the thrill and excitement of an event like this to all his readers in one of the few papers (or should I say on-line sites) that still support our Bill of Rights.

Incidentally, a similar event is held each year in Maine, and in what must be a tweek at the nose of our young liberals, the local rock station does a live remote broadcast from there. You'll never hear a New York or California station doing something like that!

Hey! Have you ever wondered exactly what each state constitution has to say about the right to bear arms? Reader Pete Drum maintains just such a list here. Check it out.

Let's hope the Detroit Chief of Police knows the gun laws in Michigan. He apparently doesn't know the regulations regarding packing a gun in his airline luggage. From the AP:

DETROIT (AP) -- The Transportation Security Administration confiscated a gun belonging to Detroit's police chief after the weapon was found in baggage the chief had checked for a flight.

Police Chief Jerry Oliver "didn't declare the gun to the airlines and hadn't filed the necessary forms," said Detroit Metropolitan Airport spokesman Mike Conway.

Conway said the loaded .25 caliber Colt semiautomatic weapon was discovered by TSA officials while the luggage was being screened.

Oliver told Detroit television station WDIV that he wasn't aware of the regulations for declaring the gun in checked baggage and that he follows the necessary procedures when carrying his weapon onboard the flight.

"It was just one of those things," Oliver said.

Oh, ha-ha. Just one of those things. If it had been some average "Joe" running afoul of the 20 thousand gun laws in this country do you think he would have been allowed to continue with his flight? He'd be in a cell somewhere. I'm not sure how anyone can keep up with all the regulations regarding guns in some places and while I'm sure it was a totally innocent mistake, it does point out the double standard applied to some people.

Meanwhile over in the land down-under, you know, the one that forced law-abiding citizens to turn-in their firearms, there seems to be a crisis... From News.com in Australia:

THE NSW government should admit there is a gun crisis on the streets of Sydney and use all its resources against it, the state opposition said today.

In Sydney's latest gun-related crime, a man is in a stable condition after being shot last night during an argument in the south-western suburb of Narellan Vale.

NSW opposition police spokesman Peter Debnam said the government was failing to protect the community.

"Another overnight shooting ... highlights the need for the premier to finally admit there is a gun war crisis and throw the full resources of government into this battle," Mr Debnam said in a statement.

My favorite line from this story:

"Urban terrorists are not scared of the government's rhetoric," he said.

No fooling! They're not afraid of gun control laws, either. But the Austrailian government will never admit that.

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Anyway, I guess that's a wrap for this week's edition. I'll have plenty more during the week of course. Incidentally, if you'd like to know what my own personal favorite guns are, you can read about it here. I was the subject of David Strain's Sunday Seven yesterday.

Thanks for stopping by everybody!