Zogby Online Poll claims that 50 percent of Voters would never vote for Hillary Clinton

I guess that I am a little dubious of this type of poll, though Zogby claims that these surveys are reasonably accurate. However, one thing to take into account is that some candidates may have low numbers simply because they are not that well known. People won't say that they would never vote for someone whom they don't know much about. That said, Hillary's numbers seem to be going up, not down, and at 50 percent, they are dangerously high. My guess is that this will be a very close presidential race. If Hillary wins, she will do so with only around 50 to 53 percent of the vote.

The online survey of 9,718 likely voters nationwide showed that 50 percent said Clinton would never get their presidential vote. This is up from 46 percent who said they could never vote for Clinton in a Zogby International telephone survey conducted in early March. Older voters are most resistant to Clinton — 59 percent of those age 65 and older said they would never vote for the New York senator, but she is much more acceptable to younger voters: 42 percent of those age 18-29 said they would never vote for Clinton for president. . . . .

On the other side, Fred Thompson has the fewest number of people who say that they will not vote for him among major candidates from both parties.

New Op-ed: On the benefits from Hunting

This piece appeared in today's National Review Online:

Do vegetarians benefit from hunting? Well, let’s just say that all those vegetarians who have adopted their non-meat eating lifestyles because they abhor harming animals might be in for a real shock. Farms actually depend crucially on the ability to kill animals that eat their crops. So vegetarians might consider whether the fine print under their organic labels actually contains the words “no animals were harmed in the making of this food.” . . . .

New Op-ed: Teachers Packing Heat?

This was in TCS Daily today:

Good intentions do not necessarily make good rules. What counts is whether the laws ultimately save lives. Unfortunately, too many gun laws primarily disarm law-abiding citizens, not criminals.

Banning guns from schools seems like the obvious way to keep children safe. But a teacher, Shirley Katz, in Medford, Oregon, is proposing the exact opposite and is stirring up debate across the nation. Recently the first round of a legal battle went to the teacher, since the judge would not accept the school district's claim that her case should simply be dismissed. . . . .

Caught Burglar Complains that Home Owners Forced Him at Gun Point to Clean Up Mess that He Made

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — A burglar in Montgomery chose the wrong family to mess with, literally. Adrian and Tiffany McKinnon returned home on Tuesday after a week away to find that thieves had emptied almost everything the family of five owned, Tiffany McKinnon said through tears.

"Tears just rolled down my face as I walked in and saw everything gone and piles of trash all over my home," she said.

Adrian McKinnon sent his wife to see her sister while he inspected the piles left behind. As he walked back into the sunroom, a man walked through the back door straight into him, Tiffany McKinnon told the Montgomery Advertiser in a story Thursday.

"My husband Adrian caught the thief red-handed in our home," she said. "And what is even crazier, the man even had my husband's hat sitting right on his head."

Adrian McKinnon held the suspect, 33-year-old Tajuan Bullock, at gunpoint and told him to sit on the floor until he decided what to do.

"We made this man clean up all the mess he made, piles of stuff, he had thrown out of my drawers and cabinets onto the floor," Tiffany McKinnon said.

When police arrived, Bullock complained about being forced to clean the home at gunpoint.

"This man had the nerve to raise sand about us making him clean up the mess he made in my house," she said. "The police officer laughed at him when he complained and said anybody else would have shot him dead."

Thanks very much for Rich sending this to me.

Another TV news story on defensive gun use

Andrew Breitbart has another interesting defensive gun use story "‘Hello, Hello’: Man Shoots, Kills Intruder After Parrot’s Alert". This time a "watch" parrot alerted his owner to a problem by repeatedly saying "Hello."

Another set of talks

Today I had a fun debate on the DC gun ban case at Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee. Richard Withers provided a useful defence of the case for the ban. There might have been a hundred plus people there. Tomorrow I give talks at Hamline University and University of Minnesota. Both of these last two talks will be on my new book, Freedomnomics.

Discussions on the debate today are provided here and here.

Interesting video news clips on defensive gun use stories

Andrew Breitbart has two interesting defensive gun use stories "Man Kills Second Burglar at His Business in Less Than a Month" and "Gun-Packing Granny Shoots Hefty Home Invader Clad Only in His Underwear." The second story is particularly amusing. Please visit this site if only to encourage him to keep on posting these stories. This type of news coverage could eventually have an important impact on the debate.

British Government Health Insurance System Makes Major Innovations in Dental Care: Dental Patients Pull Out Own Teeth

Who ever said that government systems stifle innovation:

Almost a fifth (19%) of those questioned said they had missed out on dental work because of the cost.

The research found 6% had even resorted to treating themselves because they could not find a dentist.

The 5,000-plus patients who were interviewed also spoke of taking out their own teeth or fixing broken crowns with glue.

One person in Lancashire said he had carried out 14 separate extractions. . . . .

Hillary Clinton listened in on illegal tapes of telephone calls

Republicans are focusing on an allegation in a recent book by two Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters, which suggests Clinton listened to a secretly recorded conversation between political opponents.

In their book about Clinton’s rise to power, Her Way, Don Van Natta Jr., an investigative reporter at The New York Times, and Jeff Gerth, who spent 30 years as an investigative reporter at the paper, wrote: “Hillary’s defense activities ranged from the inspirational to the microscopic to the down and dirty. She received memos about the status of various press inquiries; she vetted senior campaign aides; and she listened to a secretly recorded audiotape of a phone conversation of Clinton critics plotting their next attack.

“The tape contained discussions of another woman who might surface with allegations about an affair with Bill,” Gerth and Van Natta wrote in reference to Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton. “Bill’s supporters monitored frequencies used by cell phones, and the tape was made during one of those monitoring sessions.”

People's experiences with intrusive physicians

An unnamed friend of mine sent me this after reading my recent op-ed on physicians asking people about guns in their home:

The pediatrician asked what I'm sure was her standard list of questions for new parents. In my sleep deprived state I was not paying very close attention until guns were mentioned.

Pediatrician: "So, are there any smokers in the house?"
My wife: "No, neither of us smoke and none of the grandparents smoke."

Pediatrician: "Any pets in the house?"
My wife: "Yes, we have cat."
Pediatrician: "Okay" (presumably worried about Pit Bulls?)

Pediatrician: "Are there any guns in the house?"
My wife: (before I can say anything...) "Yes."
Pediatrician: "Do you have gun locks on them?"
Me: (jumping in and annoyed) "The question is irrelevent, don't you think? The kid is all of 5 days old."

The pediatrician was definitely caught off guard and quickly changed the subject while muttering something about it being a question to ask down the road.

Having had a law school seminar "taught" by someone from Handgun Control, Inc. who attempted to convince us guns were a public health issue, I was familiar with this battle.

I'm amazed (or maybe not) the pediatrican did not ask questions that would seem to me to be more relevant (and pressing) for new parents who have an infant in the house. Such as....

"Do you have a child seat for your car?"

"Do you place your baby on his back to sleep?"

"Do you have stairs in your house? And a child gate to keep them from falling down them?"

"Do you have a small plastic bath tub designed to bathe your an infant (rather than dropping the child in a regular bath tub full of water)?"

"Do you have covers on your electrical outlets?"

"Do you store household chemicals within reach of the child?"

"Do you leave small items around your house that your child could pick up and put in his mouth?"

Concealed Handgun Permit holders Extremely Law-abiding in Florida

1.28 million people permitted between 10/1/87 - 9/30/07
revoked for firearms related violation: 162

Stunningly bad results for African-Americans on state bar exams

"Currently only about one in three African-Americans who goes to an American law school passes the bar on the first attempt and a majority never become lawyers at all," says UCLA law professor Richard Sander.

In an article published in the Stanford Law Review, Sander and his research team concluded several thousand would-be black lawyers either dropped out of law school or failed to pass the bar because of affirmative action.

This is really distrubing.

Leading Meteorologists Calls Al Gore's share the Nobel Peace Prize "ridiculous"

ONE of the world's foremost meteorologists has called the theory that helped Al Gore share the Nobel Peace Prize "ridiculous" and the product of "people who don't understand how the atmosphere works".

Dr William Gray, a pioneer in the science of seasonal hurricane forecasts, told a packed lecture hall at the University of North Carolina that humans were not responsible for the warming of the earth.

His comments came on the same day that the Nobel committee honoured Mr Gore for his work in support of the link between humans and global warming.

"We're brainwashing our children," said Dr Gray, 78, a long-time professor at Colorado State University. "They're going to the Gore movie [An Inconvenient Truth] and being fed all this. It's ridiculous.

From Drudge Report.

Students for Concealed Carry on Campus push for Nationwide Protest

During the week of October 22-26, 2007, college students throughout America, organized under the banner of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, will attend classes wearing empty holsters, in protest of state laws and campus policies that stack the odds in favor of armed killers by disarming law abiding citizens licensed to carry concealed handguns virtually everywhere else.

Nelson Lund deals with what he thinks is the strongest argument that can be made in favor of DC's gun ban

This is worth reading:

Abstract

The District of Columbia forbids almost all civilians to possess handguns in their own homes. Rifles and shotguns are permitted, but they must be kept unloaded and either disassembled or secured with a trigger lock, making them useless for self defense. The D.C. Circuit recently held that this statute violates the Second Amendment.

One way to attack the D.C. Circuit decision is to argue that the Second Amendment protects the private possession of weapons only to the extent necessary to preserve in civilian hands a stock of weapons suitable for use while serving in the militia. Rifles and shotguns would be the most obviously useful weapons for militiamen to bring with them from home, and the D.C. statute permits civilians to possess rifles and shotguns, along with the ammunition these weapons require. Why does this not satisfy the Second Amendment?

This superficially plausible defense of the District’s statute was not adequately refuted in Judge Silberman’s opinion for the D.C. Circuit. This article demonstrates, largely but not exclusively on the basis of a careful linguistic analysis of the Second Amendment, that such a defense of the District’s statute is untenable.