"CREDIT CARD PROCESSING COMPANY REJECTS FIREARMS INDUSTRY"

It is difficult for me to understand what the "business" reason would be for this. I guess that I have never heard of the company that processes credit card transactions facing liability so that also seem out of the question. Not processing non-firearm transactions for companies involved with firearms? This seems a bridge too far. So is it just political?

CREDIT CARD PROCESSING COMPANY REJECTS FIREARMS INDUSTRY

National Shooting Sports Foundation

January 7, 2008

REFUSES TO PROCESS TRANSACTIONS . . . Citi Merchant Services and First Data Corp. are refusing to process any credit card transactions between federally licensed firearms retailers, distributors and manufacturers -- a move which will severely limit available inventory of firearms and ammunition to military, law enforcement and law-abiding Americans.

The first company to be affected by this decision appears to be firearms
distributor CDNN Sports Inc.
"We were contacted recently by First Data/Citi Merchant Services by a June Rivera-Mantilla stating that we were terminated and funds were being seized for selling firearms in a non-face-to-face transaction," said Charlie Crawford, president of CDNN Sports Inc. "Although perfectly legal, we were also informed that no transactions would be processed in the future, even for non-firearms. I find this very frightening."

To voice your concern to Citi Merchant Services and First Data Corp., please contact June Rivera-Mantilla at 631-683-7734 or her supervisor Robert Tenenbaum at 631-683-6570.

To change to an NSSF-affiliated credit card processing program, contact
Payment Alliance International at 1-866-371-2273 (ext. 1131).

Thanks to Dan Gifford for this information.

UPDATE: At least one person is dropping his Citi bank card.

Clinton's Muskie Moment, Or was it planned?

If it was not an Ed Muskie moment — Mrs. Clinton did not cry (or look like she was crying) — she was certainly on the verge of it after a woman asked her, at a round table discussion at a coffee shop here, how she managed to get out of bed and soldier through each day.

How will voters react to a candidate who cries about having a hard time in the campaign? If it was a man, he would be out of the race very quickly. With a woman, will people feel sorry for her? Do they think that she needs to show even more toughness?

Here is the big question. I hate to be really cynical about all this, but with the desire to make Hillary appear more human and likable is there any chance that her crying was planned? I guess that I wouldn't be surprised.


UPDATE: In the interest of fairness, here is Clinton's response to the concern that this display of emotion was staged. If you go to that link, Major Garrett has a video up of him asking her directly about this.

New Op-ed: BLOOMY'S BILLIONS: 'REFORMS' BOOST HIS '08 EDGE

CAMPAIGN-finance regulations keep on wrecking havoc with America's elec tions, entrenching incumbents and reducing voter turnout. Now they could help make Mayor Bloomberg our next President or at least give him great influence over who wins.

Bloomberg is reportedly talking of devoting $1 billion of his own money to win the White House as an independent - vastly outspending any conceivable combined outlays by the Republican and Democratic nominees, even if they forego public financing. . . .

Another sign of Global Warming: Snow Flurries Reported Along Daytona Beach Coast

As someone who grew up in Florida, this is pretty amazing. Snow along the ocean coast? This is a third of the way down the coast. The ocean also tends to mitigate temperature changes.

Snow Flurries Reported Along Daytona Beach Coast

POSTED: 7:17 am EST January 3, 2008
UPDATED: 12:28 pm EST January 3, 2008

Elsewhere in the state, temperatures dropped into the 20s in north Florida. The lowest temperature recorded in Florida was 20 in Cross City, about 90 miles southeast of Tallahassee, the National Weather Service said. Snow flurries were reported near the Daytona Beach coastline, the first in Florida since 2006.

For slightly more systematic evidence see this:

University of Oklahoma geophysicist David Deming, a specialist in temperature and heat flow, notes in the Washington Times that "unexpected bitter cold swept the entire Southern Hemisphere in 2007." Johannesburg experienced its first significant snowfall in a quarter-century. Australia had its coldest ever June. New Zealand's vineyards lost much of their 2007 harvest when spring temperatures dropped to record lows.

Closer to home, 44.5 inches of snow fell in New Hampshire last month, breaking the previous record of 43 inches, set in 1876. And the Canadian government is forecasting the coldest winter in 15 years.

Now all of these may be short-lived weather anomalies, mere blips in the path of the global climatic warming that Al Gore and a host of alarmists proclaim the deadliest threat we face. But what if the frigid conditions that have caused so much distress in recent months signal an impending era of global cooling?

Thanks to the DrudgeReport for the Florida link and Gus for the Boston Globe link.

Evaluating Michigan's Right-to-carry Law After 6 years

Dawson Bell, a reporter at the Detroit Free Press, has a very interesting news article evaluating Michigan's experience after 6 years with the law. While these articles are frequently seen six months or a year after a right-to-carry law has gone into effect, it is really extremely rare to see this type of analysis piece done after that point in time. Here is about half the article, but the entire piece is definitely worth reading:

Michigan sees fewer gun deaths — with more permits
January 6, 2008
By DAWSON BELL
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Six years after new rules made it much easier to get a license to carry concealed weapons, the number of Michiganders legally packing heat has increased more than six-fold.
But dire predictions about increased violence and bloodshed have largely gone unfulfilled, according to law enforcement officials and, to the extent they can be measured, crime statistics.
The incidence of violent crime in Michigan in the six years since the law went into effect has been, on average, below the rate of the previous six years. The overall incidence of death from firearms, including suicide and accidents, also has declined.
More than 155,000 Michiganders -- about one in every 65 -- are now authorized to carry loaded guns as they go about their everyday affairs, according to Michigan State Police records.
About 25,000 people had CCW permits in Michigan before the law changed in 2001.
"I think the general consensus out there from law enforcement is that things were not as bad as we expected," said Woodhaven Police Chief Michael Martin, cochair of the legislative committee for the Michigan Association of Chiefs of Police. "There are problems with gun violence. But ... I think we can breathe a sigh of relief that what we anticipated didn't happen."
John Lott, a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland who has done extensive research on the role of firearms in American society, said the results in Michigan since the law changed don't surprise him.
Academic studies of concealed weapons laws that generally allow citizens to obtain permits have shown different results, Lott said. About two-thirds of the studies suggest the laws reduce crime; the rest show no net effect, he said.
But no peer-reviewed study has ever shown that crime increases when jurisdictions enact changes like those put in place by the Legislature and then-Gov. John Engler in 2000, Lott said.
In Michigan and elsewhere (liberal permitting is the rule in about 40 states), those who seek CCW permits, get training and pay licensing fees tend to be "the kind of people who don't break laws," Lott said.
Nationally, the rate of CCW permits being revoked is very low, he said. State Police reports in Michigan indicate that 2,178 permits have been revoked or suspended since 2001, slightly more than 1% of those issued.
Another State Police report found that 175 Michigan permit holders were convicted of a crime, most of them nonviolent, requiring revocation or suspension of their permits between July 1, 2005, and June 30, 2006.
But even if more armed citizens have not wreaked havoc, some critics of Michigan's law chafe at how it was passed: against stiff opposition in a lame duck legislative session and attached to an appropriation that nullified efforts at repeal by referendum. . . .

I liked the title of the piece.

Some businesses in St. Louis let employees carry concealed handguns on the job

Other businesses that send workers on the road with cash have policies that differ from Domino's.

Deferring to state firearm law, the St. Louis Taxi Commission leaves the decision about allowing drivers to arm themselves up to the individual cab companies.

St. Louis' Harris Cab Company, in turn, leaves the decision to the discretion of the drivers.

"We don't prevent drivers (from carrying) because we want them to be safe," said manager Shermand Palmer. . . .

It is interesting that cab drivers, who I assume face more of a risk than pizza delivery men, let their employees carry guns. When it matters the most, they let their employees do it. Pizza delivery men are not as great of a target because they carry such limited money on them.

Thanks very much to AJ Troglio for this link and the other links on this story.

For those interested in limiting gun magazine sizes

With the assault weapons ban again being discussed in the presidential campaign (e.g., Mitt Romney), there are two facts to consider.

1) Here is a youtube presentation about how quickly guns can be reloaded.

2) As an empirical fact the reloading rate for guns is largely irrelevant because the number of murders each year involving more than a few bullets fired is extremely rare.

Supreme Court Takes on Another Death Penalty Case

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court said on Friday it would decide whether the death penalty can be imposed for the crime of raping a child, expanding its review of how capital punishment is carried out in the United States.

The nation's highest court agreed to hear an appeal by a Louisiana man who is the only person in the United States on death row for a crime other than murder. He is arguing the death penalty for child rape violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. . . .

There is an interesting economics point here that I wrote about in Freedomnomics. I think that the evidence strongly shows a deterrence effect from the death penalty, but the argument could be quite different for other crimes. If you already face the death penalty for rape, you might want to kill the victim to avoid witnesses. After all, what more can they do to you if you already face the death penalty? The reason that isn't clear is because committing what is considered an even worse crime will increase the probability of arrest and also increase the probability of being given the death penalty. The fact that this child rapist is the only person on death row thus makes it more likely that the possibility of the death penalty for raping a child did not appreciably increase the likelihood that he would have killed his victim.

If you make something more costly, . . . .

Here is a simple example of economics. If you increase the cost of concentrating on driving, people will drive more slowly, be less likely to change lanes, etc.. In this case, the advent of cell phones have raised the cost of people concentrating on driving.

Compared with undistracted motorists, drivers on cell phones drove an average of 2 mph slower and took 15 to 19 seconds longer to complete the 9.2 miles. That may not seem like much, but is likely to be compounded if 10 percent of all drivers are talking on wireless phones at the same time, Cooper says. . . .

In medium and high density traffic, drivers talking on cell phones were 21 percent and 19 percent, respectively, less likely to change lanes (roughly six lane changes per 9.2-mile drive versus seven or eight lane changes by drivers not on cell phones). . . .

Iowa Curse?: Not much for Democrats

There has been a lot of discussion about how poorly the Iowa caususes predict who will get party nominations. Since 1976 when the caucus has really begun to matter, when you don't have an incumbent Republican president running half the time the caucus correctly picked the eventual nominee. For Democrats, it has been either 4 to 2 to 3 to 2 depending on whether you count uncommitteds winning in 1976 over Carter. But given that the 1976 caucus gave Carter a huge boost, I would probably count it as a correct prediction.

Iowa Campaign: $200 spent for every voter

John Fund at OpinionJournal's Political Diary notes:

This year, with a couple of exceptions such as Rudy Giuliani and John McCain, candidates went beyond participation and virtually wallowed in them. The best estimates are that some $50 million will be spent by all the hopefuls on the Iowa caucuses this year, including $30 million in TV ads and salaries and expenses for at least 700 paid staffers.

That amounts to an eye-opening $200 spent for every voter who walks into a caucus. Of course, the winners in each contest will consider their money well spent. So too will the people of Iowa who will have gotten a healthy injection of cash into their economy, an inordinate amount of attention to their political opinions and pledges of undying devotion to their state's taxpayer-subsidized ethanol industry.

With all the political advertising, I wonder whether Iowa tends to have more TV and radio stations per capita than other states and whether it has increased after 1976 when Iowa started to get to be important. I might be interesting just to study the relative change in value of TV and radio stations in Iowa before and after 1976 relative to stations elsewhere.

Re-opening the debate to arm pilots?

Some are apparently questioning whether pilots should be armed. My friend Tracy Price looks at the arguments in a new argument.

In a recent interview, Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida stated: "The need for guns in the cockpit is just nearly not [sic] as acute as it once was. There are all kind [sic] of screening systems, there is now the reinforced cockpit door, there are air marshals, we now have a lots of checks and balances." Hearing this, some might ask, "Do airline pilots still need to be armed?" The answer is, "Absolutely — now more than ever."

Consider this: Arming pilots is not a new idea. In fact, airline pilots flew armed in large numbers from the dawn of commercial aviation to 1987 with no record of incident. When the federal government disarmed pilots in 1987, many pilots predicted cockpit takeover attempts — including the late Captain Victor Saracini, who, in horrible irony, was the captain of United flight 175 on September 11, 2001 when his Boeing 767 was hijacked and crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. It was the disarming of pilots in 1987 that inevitably led to the September 11 cockpit takeovers. . . .

Late breaking surge for Fred Thompson in Iowa

Thompson is all over the radio today (Hannity and Levin) and he is supposed to be on Hannity's show again tomorrow. Talk about a hint for who they think would be best. Peter Robinson has a nice discussion on Thompson here. Thompson might be surging at just the right time here.

UPDATE: Do you want some evidence that Thompson is doing better in Iowa? How about that someone felt the need to start pushing this rumor.

GOP presidential hopeful Fred Thompson said in an in-studio interview with KCCI-TV in Des Moines that there is no truth to rumors that his campaign will fold before New Hampshire if he doesn't have a strong showing in Iowa.

"That is absolutely made up out of whole cloth," said the former U.S. Senator from Tennessee.

Thompson said a rival campaign was likely the source of that rumor.

"Can you imagine such a thing in politics?" he asked.

DC Fires its Lead Attorney in the DC Gun Ban Case

I caution people against reading too much into this, but it is generally positive.

David Vladeck, a professor at Georgetown Law School, said Morrison's departure would be a major blow to the D.C. team that has been preparing the case.

"This is a case that requires an unusual amount of preparation because one of the issues comes back to, 'What did those folks who wrote the Bill of Rights really mean when they wrote the Second Amendment,' " said Vladeck, who is friends with Morrison and had been consulting on the case. "In addition to needing a good lawyer and appellate advocate, you need someone who has immersed himself in very complex historical sources. Alan has been doing that for two or three months by now. Whoever takes over this case will start many, many, many laps behind where we ought to be."

Even Coral can migrate

Global warming will increase plant life and rain forests. The more plants in areas that were previously frozen wastelands means more animal life can be supported. If significant global warming were actually going to occur (and unfortunately since 1998 the world temperature has stopped rising), it would mean more animal life and more animal diversity. When arguing with people about this they say that is fine in the long run, but in the short run there will be extinctions. The most obvious response to that is that animal habitat can move, and besides we are unfortunately only talking about a degree change over the next hundred years. Coral has often been pointed to as one type of life that can't move and will be harmed by any significant warming. But that too seems to be wrong:

While scientists have warned that global warming could devastate Australia's coral reefs, there's now evidence coral may be able to migrate to cooler waters.

After analysing fossils from a warm period 125,000 years ago, the scientists have concluded that coral may move south once more to escape warming oceans.

"Armed customer thwarts grocery robbery"

From the Indianapolis Star today.

Armed customer thwarts grocery robbery - Indianapolis Star

By Vic Ryckaert
vic.ryckaert@indystar.com
January 2, 2008

A 51-year-old man stopped a masked man from robbing a Southside grocery store and held him at gunpoint until police arrived.

Charlie Merrell was in checkout line at Bucks IGA Supermarket, 3015 S. Meridian St., when a masked man jumped a nearby counter and held a gun on a store employee at 5:17 p.m. Monday, according to a police report made public today.

While the suspect was demanding cash from the workers, the police report states that Merrell pulled his own handgun, pointed it at the robber and ordered him to put down his weapon.

When the suspect hesitated, Merrell racked the slide on his gun to load a round in the chamber, Officer Jason Bockting wrote in the report.

The suspect placed his gun and a bag of cash on the counter, dropping some of the money, police said. The suspect removed his mask and lay on the floor. Merrell held the suspect at gunpoint until officers arrived and took him away in handcuffs.

Merrell had a valid permit to carry the handgun, police said. . Police recovered an unloaded .380-caliber handgun from the suspect and $779 in cash, according to the report. Dwain Smith, 19, was arrested on initial charges of robbery, criminal confinement, pointing a firearm, battery and carrying a handgun without a license. . . .

Thanks very much to Darren Cooper and Scott Davis for sending me this link.

"Pizza deliveryman who shot robber had gun permit"

A Domino’s pizza deliveryman who shot and killed a would-be robber in Pagedale has a valid permit to carry a weapon and appears to have acted in self-defense, according to St. Louis County police.

UPDATE: This is disappointingly true:

The pizza delivery driver who fatally shot a robber last week could have faced discipline over the incident had he not resigned, a Domino's spokesman said Wednesday.

Although the driver was being praised by bloggers with comments such as "Score one for the good guys," many corporations, like Domino's, prohibit armed employees. . . .

I assume that at least part of this due to expectations of liability. This in turn effects insurance rules. If the legal set up were changed, I think that many firms would start to let employees carry guns.

Global Warming Petition

Scientists are being asked to look at a petition regarding global warming and consider signing it. The petition can be found here. The text of the petition is as follows:

We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.

The website also has a 12 page summary of the scientific research on global warming and a letter by Frederick Seitz, Past President, National Academy of Sciences.

Another (very long) review of Freedomnomics

Economist WIlliam Sjostrom has a very nice review of my book up on his website. It was very nice of him to take this much time to review it.

The short version: my doubts are small. Read it, read it, read it, and, oh yeah, read it.

Giuliani On Gun Control

Obviously this old youtube clip is relevant given the current primaries and Giuliani arguing that he supports gun ownership, but the reason for linking to this is that Giuliani is making the old argument about treating gun ownership like we treat cars. In fact, if we had the same rules for guns that we have for cars, we would be deregulating gun ownership. The reason is simple. You don't need a license to own a car on your own property. The various regulations on cars only apply once you take the car off of your property, but once you meet those regulations you can take your car anyplace in the United States. If guns were treated similarly, there would be no regulations, no licensing, no safety requirements as long as you kept the gun on your property. (By the way, you can transport a car off of your property, but you just can't drive it without the license.) The driver's license would be like a right-to-carry permit, but if the permit was like the driver's license, once you got it you would be able to take your gun with you any place in the US.

Why Romney's changing positions will be so harmful

Even conservative editorialists at places like The Union Leader in New Hampshire and The Boston Herald find his flip-flopping offensive.

It is not just issues like guns and abortion (this piece also hits him for his changing position on immigration). I have no problem with him learning on issues, but it is getting pretty obvious that Romney is an extremely poll driven candidate. Here is a decade ago arguing against cutting farm subsidies and here he is more recently saying how essential farm subsidies. Here he is saying that strict gun control helps protect Americans' safety, but now he is a defender of gun rights. (Personally, I am not sure that he knows what the current gun control laws are.) Here used to oppose Boy Scout policy on homosexuals.

The thing that is important is not what his stands used to be nor what they are now (though I am very bothered by his current stand on global warming), but that they change so much on so many incredibly different things. My book, Freedomnomics, has a long discussion about why it is difficult for politicians with these changing positions to get elected.

"more young black men in prison than in college" -- False

What Obama Got Wrong
Friday, December 14, 2007; Page A14

WHAT HE GOT WRONG: "I don't want to wake up four years from now and discover that we still have more young black men in prison than in college."

-- Barack Obama, rally in Harlem, Nov. 29

Obama has repeated this false claim to predominantly African American audiences, even after The Washington Post pointed out the mistake to his campaign. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 106,000 African American men ages 18 to 24 were in federal or state prisons at the end of 2005. An additional 87,000 were temporarily held in local jails in mid-2006. According to 2005 census data, 530,000 African American men in this age group were in college.

Black male college students outnumber black male prisoners even if the age group is expanded to 30 or 35. The Obama campaign has not responded to several requests for statistical data to support the senator's remarks, and it has not explained a similar claim that he made to an NAACP audience on July 12.

-- Michael Dobbs