Sheriff Babeu Telling More Tall Tales

I've highlighted the false claims of Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu before.  He continues with his dubious claims as highlighted in this Arizona Republic article.  His claim is as follows,

Pinal County is "the No. 1 pass-through county in all of America for drug and human trafficking."

He also dished out this gem on Fox News, 

the sheriff told host Greta Van Susteren he's facing "one of the highest crime rates in America" and crime is "literally off the charts in Arizona."

But, the statistics dispute this,

An analysis of U.S. Census data and Department of Public Safety records shows 11 of Arizona's 15 counties have crime rates higher than Pinal County's. Residents of Maricopa County are victimized nearly twice as frequently as their neighbors to the south.

Pinal County records show violent crime plummeting over the past few years in every major category except homicides, where numbers are too small for statistical significance. Aggravated assaults in Pinal County decreased 29 percent since 2007. Armed robberies are down 41 percent. Border Patrol records indicate that illegal-immigrant apprehensions in Pinal County have declined every year since 2008.

With all of these  statistics, you would think Babeu would be claiming victory in the decreases in crime in his county instead of talking up how bad things are.

Here is another interesting statement,

"If this administration was truly committed to securing the border, they would have already implemented the . . . 10-Point Border Security Plan" advocated by Republican Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl of Arizona. That proposal calls for more National Guard units, fences and other deterrents.

Why was he not screaming this during the Bush Administration.  Afterall, that is where the emphasis on controlling the borders over terror started.  Also, it was at Bush's insistence that the Mexican government get stronger on the drug cartels.  Since then, nearly 40,000 Mexicans have been killed.  No wonder they are fleeing for the border.  However, it is a Republican rule that you can not criticize Bush for anything that started in his administration.

Babeu has aligned himself very strongly with Senators Kyl and McCain.  It would not surprise me to see him run for Kyl's Senate seat with Kyl's backing.  The quickest path to an election victory for a Republican is fear, and Babeu has been learning that tactic very well over the last couple of years.

The Myth About School Prayer

I've seen this little "poll," for lack of a better description, floating around Facebook.  Do you think they should put prayer back in school?

The question it is asking is flawed.  You see, prayer never left the schools.  There is no law anywhere, in any town, city, county, state, or federal level, that has banned prayer in school.  Nowhere.  The law simply doesn't exist.  Every child today, at any time, can legally pray at any time during the school day, as can any teacher, secretary, janitor, coach, or principal.  They can pray before a test, after a test, at recess, in the cafeteria, wherever.  That is what freedom of religion means.

What is NOT allowed is for any member of the school faculty to lead a prayer in which the children are required to participate.  That is what is in the Constitution.  That is what separation of church and state means.  Why should a Jewish kid, or a Buddhist kid, or even a Muslim kid have to be forced to listen to a Christian prayer in a public school?  Ask yourself, if they were to say a Muslim prayer, would you be OK with that?  Would you be OK with all the children going out to the playground and facing east to pray to Allah?  No, you wouldn't.  So why should it be OK for a Christian prayer.

Hasn't the bloodshed in Afghanistan over the Koran burning demonstrated how state sponsorship of religion is bad thing?

Hamid Kharzai has Blood on his Hands

Pastor Terry Jones got smart.  Rather than announce his big plans to burn a Koran, get his 15 minutes of fame, and back off at the last second like he did last year, this time, he just went ahead and did it.  On March 20th, Jones held a mock trial and presumably, the Koran was found guilty, so it was burned.  The media, for the most part, just ignored it.  Another religious kook who had his fame can easily be dismissed as just another bumbling idiot. 

Apparently that wasn't good enough.  Even the Afghan media even ignored it.  But, Hamid Kharzai decided he would just announce it in a speech and denounce the action.  Guess what happened then?  Dozens of innocent victims murdered by a crazed Muslim mob with their usual shouts of spewed religious hatred.  The religion of peace is going to have a more difficult time of it if Islamic leaders in the United States don't step up and take resounding stances against their fundamentalist brethren.  Even, then, as a society, we are passed the point of believing anything from any leader of Islam, whether abroad or locally.

Kharzai needs to bear some responsibility for lighting the fuse.  He had to know this was going to inflame people.  He is no ally to the U.S. if he can't keep his mouth shut.


Unfortunately, you don't hear a resounding condemnation of Jones from his Christian brethren either.  They aren't coming out in droves praising him, but the silence is deafening.

So, what is the lesson learned here?  Religion is intolerant, and apparently mute as well.  The silence says a lot about even moderate Christianity.  If they keep sitting on the fence, they are going to be pulling splinters out of their asses.

The Right to Bear Arms

The Second Amendment has always been a bit of an enigma for me.  While I've never been outright against it, I've always struggled with its meaning and wondered if it really wasn't a bit of an anachronism.  So, as a refresher, here is the Second Amendment (from Wikipedia).

As passed by the Congress:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

As ratified by the States:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Yes, the capitalization and punctuation differ.  As to which version is "official?"  I don't know.

There are many judicial debates surrounding the specific meanings of "well regulated militia."  Also, the meaning of "people," versus "People."  The two may well be intertwined.  Some may read People as being the United States as an entity, where the People refer to the government.  In other words, the right of the government to maintain a standing army, which would be described as a well-regulated militia.  Others would interpret "people" as being individual citizens of the United States in small collective groups that stockpile weapons, such as the "militias" often referred to in some of the more rural parts of Idaho or Montana for example.  Others just seem to dispense of the whole militia part and go straight to the right of an individual citizen to bear arms.

Many see the Second Amendment and defending the right of the citizens to rise up against their government in armed conflict.  Back in the day, when the average citizen could possess a weapon that was every bit as good as the military's weapons, this could easily be seen as a deterrent for the government to not to overstep its bounds.  But today, I think there would little argument that no matter how well armed the citizenry is, modern U.S. military weapons would have little trouble against an armed uprising.

Despite all of those various interpretations, I'm actually looking at the meaning of "Arms" (or arms).  What are "arms?"  They are not the things hanging from your shoulders, at least not in this context.  Arms, or armaments, are weapons.  These are not specific to projectile weapons.  Swords, knives, throwing stars (for you ninjas out there), staffs, etc.  But there are other arms as well, such as hand grenades, flame throwers, tanks with depleted uranium shells, Joint Strike Fighters with air to air missiles, and yes, even a nuclear bomb.  Was it the intention of our founding fathers to allow for an individual citizen of the United States to posses a weapon of mass destruction? 

As many of you know, I am an ardent defender of the First Amendment.  Despite my loathing of religion, whether organized or not, I am a strong believer in freedom of religion and I have often commented on freedom of speech as well.  While I may disagree with some of the abhorrent things people say (Westboro Baptist Church), I will defend their right to say it.  Just because someone is easily offended doesn't mean that the speech has to be restricted.  Having said all that, the courts have consistently ruled that there are time and place exceptions to free speech.  One classic example if yelling fire in a crowded theater.  That is not protected free speech.  A more recent example is the Westboro attempts to protest the funerals of soldiers who have died overseas or even the funerals of the victims of the recent Tucson shootings.  Just recently, the Supreme Court gave a victory to Westboro Baptist Church when the father a slain soldier sued them in an attempt to ban protests of military funerals.  The Court decided correctly, that Westboro has the right to protest a military funeral.  The father's case was over reaching.  Instead, Arizona (specifically Kyrsten Sinema D-15), proposed legislation that put time and place restrictions on the protests.  Not within x hundred yards of the property and not x minutes before and after.  These types of restrictions are often viewed favorably by the court because they don't infringe upon the right of the protesters, yet allow reasonable protections for the mourners.

So, what is the point of all that rambling.  Simple, at least in my mind.  I'm not familiar with what laws are in place today, but I am fairly certain that it is illegal to posses things like nuclear bombs, surface to air missiles, fully functional tanks with ammunition, etc.  And, I don't think many people are going to go to their congressperson and make a strong case that those restrictions are unconstitutional.  On the other hand, I think it is perfectly reasonable to allow the sale of handguns, hunting rifles, etc.  Both for personal protection and/or hunting, and just plain target shooting.  The real debate is the area in between.  Automatic weapons, extended clips, etc.  Yes, there is a percentage of the population that enjoys being able to fire those weapons for target practice.   Is it unreasonable to license and regulate shooting ranges and gun rentals for those people?  For some, it is.

For me, I recognize the right of an individual to bear arms.  But, as is the case with free speech, I believe there are reasonable "time and place" restrictions that need to be considered.  What those are, I don't know.  That is the battleground between gun control advocates and Second Amendment advocates such as the NRA.  By no means is this a black and white issue.

Dispelling a Global Warming Denial Myth

In what is likely to be several such posts...

This weekend, a friend said that volcanoes produce far more CO2 emissions than mankind ever has.  While I knew this statement to be wrong, I didn't have any facts to back it up, just general sciencey stuff that wasn't going to do much to alter the argument.

Basically, the type of pollutants put into the air by volcanoes tend to have a general cooling effect on the atmosphere, so the argument that volcanoes are a larger source of global warming is false.  Global warming continues regardless of recent volcanic activity.

This is not to say that volcanoes don't pump out CO2.  They do.  It is estimated that volcanoes will produce anywhere from 65-319 million metric tonnes of CO2 any given year.  Of course, large volcanic events can definitely jack up that number.  However, humans produce 29 billion tonnes of CO2 as a direct result of burning fossil fuels.  So, volcanoes are in the millions, humans are in the billions.  The argument doesn't hold up to facts.

It has been recognized by some climate scientists that a lack of volcanic activity in the early to middle part of the 20th Century may have contributed to warming back then, but the activity has picked up in the last 50 years or so.  Again, the reason being is that volcanoes pump out sulfur pollutants (which reflect sunlight back into space before getting to Earth) in far larger quantities than CO2.  The Pinatubo eruption back in the early 1990s did have a global cooling effect for several years.  Typical cooling effects tended to last a decade or more in ancient times, so the human effects of global warming quickly erased any cooling effects from Pinatubo.

March Madness Bracket

I've decided to name my March Madness bracket in my Parrothead Yahoo! league in honor of Kirk Cameron and his 3 pound lump of putty he calls a brain.  In defense of his Creationist beliefs, he cited the lack of any fossil evidence of  a Crocoduck as evidence against evolution.  Isn't it cute?

My New Favorite Bible Verse

Ezekiel 23:19-20 (New International Version, ©2011)

¹⁹ Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. ²⁰ There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.

That's just nasty.  Who new the Bible had such great smut and porn?  You know, that is so nasty, maybe we should have the Bible banned from any place where children could be exposed to such things.  Like  Harry Potter and Huck Finn because, well, those are nasty stories as well.