Laughing at Liberals has it here.  Multnomah County Chair Jeff Cogen admits passing these gun ordinances won’t make a difference to criminals.

“I believe the Second Amendment is an important part of our Constitutions, but like all the other parts of our constitution, like all the other bills and rights that are integral to our freedom, have to be viewed in context of peoples’ rights as well as their neighbors’ rights.”

That is just ridiculous. Municipalities, of course, have the ability to place time, place and manner restrictions on rights–for instance first amendment rights, such as when they allowed Occupy Portland to squash the rights of the Portland Marathon or allowed them to destroy the two downtown parks, but I’ve never heard that you having gun rights under the Second Amendment necessarily deprives someone else of their safety is an outrageous, dangerous and incorrect assertion. 

“People have the right to have to put in place reasonable limitations that keep the community safe.”

But do these ordinances do that?

“The notion that this won’t fix everything is absolutely true. We’re not going to pass this ordinance and suddenly have no gun violence.”

And then arguing from reductio ad absurdum, claims that these laws should be passed because why bother to have laws at all? 

“But the notion that criminals won’t look at this law and follow it, we shouldn’t pass it, that notion would undermine the notion of having any criminal laws at all.”

The ordinances would according this story,

It largely adopts language approved in late 2010 by the city of Portland in making it unlawful to fire a gun within the county. It also bans possession of a loaded firearm in public, makes failing to report the theft of a gun a crime and makes it illegal to allow a child to possess a gun without the owner’s permission.

In addition, it establishes curfews for minors, including a 7 p.m. curfew for juveniles who have been convicted of a gun crime.

The ordinance does not apply, among others, to those with concealed handgun licenses, hunters, people defending themselves, retired or off-duty law enforcement officers or those on their own property as long as they aren’t endangering others.

In fact, according to one man who testified at the hearing where the Board unanimously passed the new ordinances, it would make him an automatic criminal.

Portland resident Rick Gilmore told commissioners he would be violating the new law any time he slaughtered a hog or steer on his property off Northeast 53rd Drive.

“These proposals are aimed at regular citizens who try to do the right thing,” he said. “It will make criminals out of them.”

When Cogen said Gilmore would not be affected by the ordinance on his own property, Gilmore replied, “That’s what you say it will do, but what it actually says it something different.”

What the passage of these ordinances do, however, is highlight the political grandstanding of a far left political body which has little stomach for actually enforcing the laws on the books and locking up the criminals–young and old–who break them. 

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Animal activists are messing with OHSU’s Primate Center again. This time they’ve fraudulently identified themselves as OHSU officials and sent out a press release announcing the center’s imminent closure. Earlier tonight the University’s spokesman sent this missive to reporters:

Portland media members,

Jim Newman from OHSU’s press office here.
This afternoon we became aware of a press release sent out by an animal rights activist in the Midwest claiming that OHSU’s primate center may soon close.
I want to inform you that this claim is highly inaccurate. 
OHSU’s primate center, along with the nations’s six other federally-funded primate centers, remains open. As you may recall, the Oregon center is in the midst of developing a very promising AIDS vaccine candidate. The center recently made a series of discoveries that have advanced stem cell therapies. In addition, a gene therapy method based on OHSU’s primate center work may soon be available in the UK to prevent several diseases in infants  
The person who sent out the inaccurate release refers to Harvard’s decision this week to wind down operations at it’s Boston-area primate lab in two years. This was a financial decision made by Harvard University and a decision that only impacts that particular university. It has no impact on OHSU or any of the other six centers across the country.
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.  
Jim Newman

The closure of the Harvard primate facility apparently sent shock waves through the research community. This story contains a surprising quote from the director of the Oregon primate facility,

Outside researchers were taken by surprise, the Globe reports. Nancy Haigwood, director of the Oregon National Primate Research Center in Beaverton, called the decision “very, very, disturbing, disappointing, disheartening, shocking.” She said the decision will slow research and harm the careers of the center’s senior researchers.

OHSU’s Primate Center and scientists have been targeted for years by Oregon’s plentiful supply of professional animal and eco terrorists. Bankers have been hounded at home for their employers’ peripheral connection to a facility that uses animals to find cures for human diseases. And animal activists have taken undercover cameras to try and catch OHSU Primate Center staff mistreating animals. OHSU scientists have had their homes surrounded by these thugs who say they love fuzzy animals but terrorize humans. 

And the Monkey Wrenchers have struck again. 

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H/T Washington Examiner

The anti abortion protester was ordered to take down his website because his site made abortionists look as if they were on wanted posters. Sarah Palin, taking an artistic tool borrowed from a Democrat, put cross hairs on maps of congressional districts which made the left much, much later blame her for the shooting Congresswoman Gabby Giffords. But where’s the left on the Southern Poverty Law Centers hit list of supposed hate groups? Where does that fit in, exactly? 

After Floyd Lee Corkins burst into the Family Research Center’s HQ and shoot a janitor while waving Chick Fil A bags, Executive Director Tony Perkins took to the microphones in barely contained rage and accused groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center for giving a “license to shoot an unarmed man …by being reckless in naming organizations hate groups because they have a difference of opinion on public policy,”

And Perkins wasn’t wrong. Here’s the proof. The perp says he attacked the Family Research Center’s Washington DC headquarters because it was on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of so called “hate groups.” 

Morris Dees doesn’t like religious groups much it looks like according to his list. In fact, his group put a group of singing nuns on the list of hate groups. Read about it here. The American Family Association, a traditional values group, makes Dee’s list. He has a problem with religions that call homosexuality a sin, but oddly, the only Islamic or Muslim group named is the black separatist Nation of Islam. Dees tsks tsks Louis Farrakhan’s group for being anti Jewish, white and anti gay. No mention of any other aspects of Islamic groups which, as a tenet of faith, label gays infidels and treat them accordingly. He also curiously leaves off the group, La Raza, which literally means “The Race,” because, well, he, uh, just feels like it, I guess. And for the coup de grace, the group that defends the one collection of people who have been actual victims of genocide the Jewish Defense League is a hate group. Why? Because they don’t want to get a long with Arab Muslims who keep lobbing bombs at them. 

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The Boston Marathon bombings couldn’t be due to the terrorists radical Islamic beliefs, oh no. Now the left wants to find out if the older Boston Marathon bomber could have gone to the dark side because of head injuries from his amateur boxing career. 

Under this headline, “Why Boston Marathon Bombing Suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s Autopsy Should Include a Check for CTE” (chronic traumatic encephalopathy), Think Progress spiraled off into conspiracy theory land upon hearing doctors want to study the dead terrorist’s brain during the autopsy.

They pose this question which serves as the predicate for their piece,

Could the amateur boxing career of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the deceased suspect in last week’s Boston Marathon bombings, have had a role in the massacre?

The writer talks about the doctors wanting a look at the crazy guy’s gray matter only to then say,

Though both doctors doubt that CTE caused the behavior that led to the bombings, researchers shouldn’t overlook the chance to study Tsarnaev’s brain, they told the Boston Globe:

“Is it possible that some changes might have gone on in his overall functioning due to his boxing and potentially related brain disease? Yes,’’ said Stern, a BU professor of neurology and neurosurgery. “Anything is possible. But to then jump to the disease leading to well-planned behavior like this, I couldn’t go there.’’ […]

“We can’t think of their brains as being normal,’’ he said. “But there are too many people who do such bizarre and terrible acts that it’s unlikely it’s all due to one terrorist gene or disease.’’

Media accounts have chronicled rapid behavioral changes Tsarnaev experienced in his early 20s, and most have attributed those changes to his renewed commitment to Islam.

The problem with the radical left rag’s theory is that Tamerlan the Terrorists ventured into whackadoodle-land occurred AFTER he quit boxing, drinking, smoking and who knows what else. 

If this had been another era the left wing rag would have blamed this act of terrorism on another politically popular ailment. In the 80’s it would have been due to possible molestation by a pre school teacher, or perhaps a particularly nasty case of TMJ. Perhaps it would have been an overdose of sugar or too many Twinkies which were blamed for everything from kids acting out to murder in the 70’s. In the 90’s we would have blamed A-D-D, which morphed into A-D-H-D and…let’s not forget the crack babies which were going to wash over the land in the, huh, what decade was that again? 

Please don’t get me wrong. All of the above are real. But at the time they were reported they were virtual pandemics according to the gullible, science class failing media. They are, as we know now, the exceptions, not the rule. 

Could it be that the bombers actually did it for the reason the living one claims? Because they’re radical Islamists who kill the infidels for the umma. Could be, sparky.

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Anwar al Awlaki was an American Imam who used his position to inspire two of the 9/11 hijackers, the Fort Hood shooter, the Times Square bomber, Portland’s Christmas Tree bomber and untold thousands of Jihadis, now has two more jihadis to put on his resume: the Boston Marathon bombers.

Well, I’m sure he would put them on his resume if he were still alive. But Awlaki caught his limit in September 2011 by a special delivery predator drone. 

As you may recall from the recent Mohamed Mohamud trial (see a list of my posts here), the 19 year old Oregon State University student exchanged more than 150 emails to the notorious Imam and publisher of the online jihadi how-to guide Inspire Magazine. In fact he sought to write for the magazine and, indeed, did write for the Awlaki and his side kick Samir Khan’s OTHER jihad magazine called, “Jihad Recollections.” Khan met his end in the same drone attack that killed Awlaki. 

According to this report from NBC News:

[T]he brothers read the instructions in Inspire, an online, English-language magazine that terror monitoring groups say al Qaeda began publishing in 2010.

The magazine has twice included articles on building bombs with kitchen pressure cookers — the method investigators say Tsarnaev and his brother, Tamerlan, used in the Boston attack.

And the younger suspect also confirms their radical Islamic beliefs were at the root of their hatred for America.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has told investigators he and his brother acted alone, learned to build the pressure-cooker bombs over the Internet and were motivated by a desire to defend Islam because of “the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” said the source, who has received multiple briefings on the probe.

Even in death, Anwar al Awlaki still inspires deranged homegrown jihadis to “defend Islam” by killing innocents.

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This is why she screeched at lawmakers. This is why she looked and sounded drugged at the reception of the bodies. This is why she and the Obama Administration blamed the terrorist attack on the American mission in Benghazi on a video few had heard of, much less seen. 

Because she was lying.

A U.S. Ambassador died, his communications aide and two former US Navy SEALS working for a private security firm were killed. The fire fight that took the lives of the two special operators after the deaths of the Ambassador and his aide, last nearly eight hours but the Obama White House left them unprotected. In fact, the Secretary of State withdrew security before the attack, despite the fact that Ambassador Chris Stevens begged for it.

Here are the key findings of the Interim Benghazi Report issued by the U. S. House of Representatives’ five key committees involved. H/T Washington Examiner for the report. I’ve embedded it below. It’s searchable. I’ll be combing through it throughout the rest of the day to find interesting findings. 

But meantime here are their key findings:

Reductions of security levels prior to the attacks in Benghazi were approved at the highest levels of the State Department, up to and including Secretary Clinton. This fact contradicts her testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on January 23, 2013.

In the days following the attacks, White House and senior State Department officials altered accurate talking points drafted by the Intelligence Community in order to protect the State Department.

Contrary to Administration rhetoric, the talking points were not edited to protect classified information. Concern for classified information is never mentioned in email traffic among senior Administration officials.

Libya Progress Report Final 1 by Jennifer Peebles

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But no worries, US, Oregon and Portland taxpayers, it was only $232 million in loan guarantees down the rat hole this time around. And,

Incentives are a big reason Solopower decided to come to Portland. 
The U.S. Energy Department promised a $197 million loan guarantee, the city of Portland $5 million. Oregon is providing a $10 million loan and $20 million in tax credits.

For a grand total of $232,000,000 of loans and incentives. 

And what did Oregonians get out of it? We read over at KGW:

The company announced in 2011 it would open the Portland plant, which would offer 170 jobs and could grow to 500 positions. Officials said the average salary would be about $51,000.

And how many employees will be laid off? Twenty nine. Not 170. Not 500. Nope, 29.

There are a lot of well intentioned people in government but they’re horrible stock pickers and worse pickers of future technology because if they were they would have known,

Instead of making conventional solar panels, SoloPower pioneered thin sheets that could be rolled onto roofs. But the sheets are more expensive than panels

When will these politicos pay the price for wasting our precious resources? People go to work every single day (if they’re fortunate to have a job in this economy) and give over their taxes in hopes of just covering the basics of government. Instead, government gamblers head to the solar casino, put it on red and crap out.

Then they shrug and walk away.

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This letter was sent by Blogforce member Rees Lloyd to the Wall Street Journal’s Alan Cullison over its coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing case.

Greetings:

 While there are many questions, indeed, which surround the Boston Bombers,  including on the reporting of the WSJ, I raise but a simple one (or three, rather) to you:

 (1) The uncle who says he broke off relations with his brother’s family in 2009,  Ruslan Tsarni, is described by you in your group feature story  as working “as a legal consultant.”

 As an attorney, I am wondering, just what that is: a  “legal consultant,” as WSJ calls him?

 People who give advice on legal matters are not called “consultants,” they are called lawyers. As such, they are persons who must be licensed, and who are closely regulated by State Bar Associations in order to protect the public from being exploited by people who hold themselves out as being able to be consulted on legal matters, without bothering to become licensed to do so.

 In most jurisdictions, people who render legal advice without being licensed and therefore regulated, are guilty of “practicing law without a license.” That is a felony in some jurisdictions.

So just what is the work that the non-lawyer Ruslan Tsarni does as a “legal consultant,” as he is described by WSJ without explanation?

(2)  Also, how is it that under our immigration system, Anzor Tsarnaeve is able to enter and remain in the United States, with his family,  by grant of “asylum” on a claim he will be persecuted if he is forced to return to Russia; but, when it pleases him, he returns to Russia whereat he claimed he would be horribly persecuted if forced to return?

 Is there no penalty for such deception in asylum claims?  How is it that the family that he brought with him, all of whom were admitted under an “asylum” claim, is allowed to remain when he voluntarily returns to Russia, making the entire “asylum” claim appear to have been a sham to fulfill what your article says hid a long held “dream” of Tsaarnaeve to come to America, according to those who knew him, even when he was well-off as a government “prosecutor”?

 (3) Finally, how is it that WSJ, in headlines on the front page and in a banner sprawled all across page 2, proclaims that: “Turn To Religion Split Bomb Suspects’ Family”?

 Was it a turn to “Religion,” or a turn to “Islam”?

 Is even the WSJ so fearful of giving offense to Muslims that it would instead brand all “Religion,” or was it “Islam,” which was the cause of turning these immigrant beneficiaries of Americans generosity into murderous jihadist monsters so brave they set off bombs to slaughter even innocent little American children?

 Richard Dawkins and all the other self-proclaimed “Brights” of atheism must be smugly satisfied that it is “religion” which the WSJ blames for corrupting the minds of these nice immigrant Muslim boys, not the particular religion of Islam which, in fact, is that to which they turned and became rabid.

 The late Christopher Hitchens, the celebrated English Trotskyist atheist and prolific elitist blowhard who immigrated to America and made a fortune arrogantly preaching to us benighted Americans that religion is the root of all evil and Christianity its most evil expression of all, would no doubt rise up, if he could, to shout: “See, I told you so!”

 Rees Lloyd

California State Bar 

Rees Lloyd is a Veterans Activist, former ACLU attorney, civil rights attorney in private practice and nobody’s fool. He is a member of the Victoria Taft Blog Force.

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In the wake of the Boston Marathon Bombing, Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson wrote a useful column on what he sees are the failures of the left and the right to come to terms with radical Islamic terrorism. He was correct in calling out the left for refusing to acknowledge the “Islamic” part of terrorism, a fact dating back at least two decades in the United States that destroys their beloved notions of multiculturalism and relativism.

But in fairly criticizing the right for seeing all of Islam as a giant terrorist plot he missed one point: Islam’s public relations problem that stems from its silence.

Blaming the left and the right in this context is like blaming a mom and dad for the behavior of their adult child who long ago left the nest and now screws up on his own. Mom rationalizes and dad sees no redemption, but junior did it all on his own.

Where is the effort on the part of Muslims both in the United States and in Islamic countries to condemn the radicalism and the terrorist attacks that spring from their religion? The silence is deafening, while the rationalization and excuse-making of their apologists is palpable.

A gag-muffin-nobody named Amanda Palmer even wrote an erstwhile love poem to one of the two slime balls responsible for the terrorism in Boston that immediately went to the top of the hit parade’s list of all-time-worst-ever verses.

 Meanwhile, there isn’t a Christian in America who isn’t outraged at the base, vile and hateful anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church. Even if they don’t support gay marriage, they are offended and speak out against the grotesque views of Fred Phelps and his gang of thugs at Westboro, who announced plans to picket at funerals of bombing victims.

We saw Bostonians cheer the capture of Suspect No. 2 Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, spontaneously sing the Star Spangled Banner at a hockey game, watch Red Sox future hall-of-famer David “Big Papi” Ortiz — himself an immigrant — give a loud rhetorical finger to terrorists saying “This is our f****** city!” and more outpourings of traditional American verve, gusto and patriotism.  


Where was the Muslim community? Anyone see a large crowd outside a mosque waving an American flag and shouting, “USA! USA! USA!”? Or hear a condemnation of terrorism and what it’s grounded in from Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic Jihad, the Iranian mullahs or the Palestinian Authority? Or are they too busy killing Jews in Israel and planning future mass slaughter?

Lest we forget the orgy of celebration that took place in much of the Middle East over the Boston attack and how a good time was had by all.

Then there’s the Canadian angle. Barely a day after Boston, Canadian authorities announce the breakup of an al Qaeda-affiliated plot managed out of Iran by a couple of religiously-strict men with Middle Eastern names, Chiheb Esseghaier, a Tunisian, and Raed Jaser, a Palestinian carrying a United Arab Emirates passport, to blow up a train. Add it to Boston and the miles-long list of other terrorist plots with Islamic ties (Nidal Hasan and Fort Hood where 13 people died being one of the worst — calling it “workplace violence” is total hubris) and a pattern develops.

At best, Islam has a growing PR problem in America. At worst, maybe it’s time to follow longtime Democratic Party strategist and Jimmy Carter campaign manager Bob Beckel’s advice  (4:04 in the video, but watch the whole thing) and cut off all student visas for anyone from an Islamic country. Given the intensity with which he articulated that view, I’m guessing he had more politically incorrect ideas in mind too.

Among Democrats, however, Bob appears to be a lone wolf since no others are yet willing to speak the obvious, especially after they initially jumped the gun to pin the blame for Boston on tax protestors, the Tea Party, right-wing whites or anyone in the history of the universe other than Muslims.

Muslims in America have the same constitutional rights as the rest of us, which is absolutely as it should be with arguments to the contrary getting a smack down from me. But with rights come responsibilities including honoring what it means to be a citizen and an American.

Be a part of the solution including stepping up to what it means to be a citizen, or increasingly be seen as not merely a part of the problem, but the whole problem-ball of wax. That’s the message Islam in America must heed.

Hair-pulling progressives will decry this as hateful, but there’s a recently buried eight-year-old Boston boy who’ll never see nine who might beg to differ on what it means to be the victim of hate, Islamic-inspired hate.

 Scott St. Clair is a journalist, rhetorical pugilist, agent provocateur, aider and abbetor of James O’Keefe and a former competitive Highland piper. He says what he thinks, means what he says and doesn’t suffer fools. He’s also a member of the Victoria Taft Blogforce. His opinions are entirely his own, and you shouldn’t expect them to mirror yours.

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H/T to Andrew C. McCarthy, author of two books on terrorism and the point man for the Horowitz Freedom Center for the East Coast.

The Tsaraev parents brought their kids over to the United States , eventually dumped their bad seeds on the rest of us and left the country. We’re now finding out that the oldest, Tamaran, visited Russia, even went to Chechnya and that Russia asked the US to red flag him and check.him.for.terrorism. It’s surmised that Tamaran met up with some terrorist bad actors and/or radicalized while he was there for six months.

But judging from the names they graced their sons with, it could be that Dad did a little radicalizing of his “ethnic Chechens.” sons himself, starting with their very names.

As Andy writes here, 

Tamerlan is named after a legendary jihadist warrior andDzhokhar after a heroic leader of the breakaway Chechen republic — Dzhokhar Dudaev, killed by a Russian missile in 1996.

Nah. 

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Men and women in the military already know how valuable the FLIR thermal imaging is, but now the entire country knows. During Friday’s news conference with law enforcement after the capture of the terrorist, Oregon’s FLIR Systems got a big shout out for being key in helping apprehending the bad guy. 

                   
The following video shows the terrorist is still alive and warm. In retrospect, I wonder if this is why the law enforcement officials brought in the Blackhawk helicopters because they’re outfitted with the FLIR technology.

 

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