Is Arizona trying to outlaw some types of private self defense?

"'Patrolling to detect alleged illegal activity' while carrying any weapon would be felony" . . . .

An Arizona lawmaker has introduced a bill to revise the state's statutes on organized crime and fraud by defining "domestic terrorism" in such a way that members of the Minuteman Project or other border-patrol groups could be prosecuted and forced to serve a minimum six-month jail term. . . . .

My question is whether this law is so broad that it would make it a crime to hire guards at you store. I haven't read the law, but at least what this article describes would include this also. Would a concealed handgun permit holder be included? After all, would not a concealed handgun permit holder be said to be on guard for detecting illegal activity?

Thanks to James Marie for sending this link to me.

Consumer Reports magazine forced to retract report

Conducting a test at 70 mph and reporting it as low as 35 mph without a note about how high the speeds went, sounds pretty bad.

Consumer Reports magazine was forced yesterday to retract a damning report on infant car seats after the federal government said test crashes on the seats were conducted at drastically higher speeds than the magazine had claimed.

The revelation amounts to an embarrassment for the trusted consumer guide, and a relief to parents who were frightened about their babies' safety after the original report came out.

That report said most of the seats tested "failed disastrously" in crashes at speeds as low as 35 mph. In one test, it said, a dummy child was hurled 30 feet.

But the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said some of the crash tests were conducted under conditions that would represent being struck at more than 70 mph. . . . .

"Idaho Mayor Withdraws From Bloomberg's Gun Group"

An Idaho mayor has dropped out of Mayor Bloomberg's coalition against illegal guns, city officials said.

The mayor of Idaho Falls, Jared Mr. Bloomberg's coalition in October, but withdrew earlier this month because of pressure from constituents and what he told a local news organization was a sense that the coalition had an " agenda" of preventing guns from entering the hands even of law-abiding gun owners. The coalition is called Mayors Against Illegal Guns.

Mr. Fuhriman declined to comment for this article.

"I found there's probably a little more of an agenda coming from Mayor Bloomberg's office than I anticipated," he told Channel 3, KIDK, on January 2. "So as I looked into it, I could see there was a conflict with the NRA and some of the beliefs we have here in Idaho." . . . .

Registering and Regulating Churches as Lobbyists?

This is another not particularly surprising expansion of campaign finance reform. This wasn't aimed at churches per se, but at the attempts to get around the other regulations generally.

Under the House version of the Bill, a church or organization would be considered a “grassroots lobbying firm” subject to this law if the group attempted to influence the general public to voluntarily contact federal officials in order to express their own views on a federal issue. Furthermore, many large churches and ministries utilize mass media to communicate their message. Under this House Bill by Nancy Pelosi, these communications, as long as they are directed to at least one person who is not a member of the church, would fall under this new Bill. Finally, if the church spends an aggregate of only $50,000 or more for such efforts in a quarterly period, they are now required to register as lobbyists. Many ministries spend $50,000 or more a month for air time.

This could be a lot wilder ride for Republicans than Democrats in 2008

Morris thinks the leading Republican candidates – Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich – are "too flawed” to win the hearts and votes of conservatives in the early primaries.

Why are more women living without husbands?

Fox News has a nice discussion of this. With fewer women having kids, that is part of the explanation. I would like to really see how much of this is due to elderly women greatly out living their spouses. My guess is that there are a lot of 60, 70, 80, 90 year old women who are either unwilling, uninterested, or whatever in terms of getting remarried. Women so greatly out number men in those higher age categories, I would guess that it really makes a difference and that group has been growing a lot. Women are marrying later and my guess is that part of that is the result of no fault divorce laws.

Some of what is read into this finding is a joke. How do they know or prove things such as this?

At the other end, women are living longer as widows and, after a divorce, are more likely than men to delay remarriage, sometimes delighting in their newfound freedom. . . .

Interestingly:

Only about 30 percent of black women are living with a spouse, according to the Census Bureau, compared to about 49 percent of Hispanic women, 55 percent of non-Hispanic white women and more than 60 percent of Asian women. . . .

UPDATE: I finally got a hold of the New York Times article upon which this Fox News story was based. Apparently, women were defined as women from age 15 and higher. My guess is that few women from 15 to 20 are married. Presumably 100 years ago that was much higher. I am not sure that tells us anything about women not wanting or needing men. If you limited the survey to women 19 and older, clearly less than 50 percent of women would be without a man. When you combine that with the fact that women are living much longer than men, I am again not sure what to make of these basic numbers. A more meaningful statistic would be something such as women 19 or 20 to 75.

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives is in trouble both with and without these days

The BATFE is not a happy place to work these days. The government agency seems to be wracked with internal discord and charges of incompetence.

Denver Nuggets Player Tried to Get Concealed Handgun Permit after being Shot at

A Denver Nuggets player who was shot nine months ago and traded this week was one of two Nuggets in the process of trying to obtain concealed handgun permits. But apparently their desire to legally carry guns was not a response to the death of Denver Bronco Darrent Williams.

Guard Julius Hodge, who was traded Thursday to the Milwaukee Bucks as part of a multiplayer deal, and Nuggets forward Reggie Evans, began the process of trying to get permits about two months ago, well before the shooting death of the Broncos cornerback.

Asked about his application for a concealed weapons permit, Hodge said, "Who said that?"

Hodge did not deny applying for the permit but refused to answer questions about why he wanted to carry a gun. . . .

Bizarre Government Accounting Rules

Many have probably heard that Sarbanes-Oxley Act is driving firms to list their shares on foreign stock markets and not on the US stock exchanges.

From an Apple representative on the show floor: so if you have a Core 2 Duo Macintosh, you have a card capable of 802.11b, g, and - surprise, surprise - n. (Well, apparently n draft 2, which may or may not be like the final ratified standard come 2008, but will be supported in multiple Apple products.) And Apple’s going to distribute software to let you unlock the n standard in that card, which offers superior bandwidth for all sorts of data, especially and including high-bitrate video. Great news, right?

I’m not going to claim to understand this next part, which really just makes no sense to me at all, but the claim Apple’s making is that it _can’t_ give you the 802.11n-unlocking software for free. The reason: the Core 2 Duo Macs weren’t advertised as 802.11n-ready, and a little law called the Sarbanes-Oxley Act supposedly prohibits Apple from giving away an unadvertised new feature for one of its products. Hence, said the Apple rep, the company’s not distributing new _features_ in Software Update any more, just _bug fixes._ Because of Sarbanes-Oxley. . . .

it’s about accounting. Because of the Act, the company believes that if it sells a product, then later adds a feature to that product, it can be held liable for improper accounting if it recognizes revenue from the product at the time of sale, given that it hasn’t finished delivering the product at that point. Ridiculous.

An alternative to recycling cars and skeet shooting

This is pretty funny: A replacement for skeet shooting. I think that this is a new sport that could really catch on.