Perri Nelson's Website 

Prepare for another assault on the second amendment

The Seattle Post Intelligencer has an article on gang related violence. What's interesting isn't the increase in gang related violence, but how the article presents the notion that guns are the problem rather than violent criminals with no regard for human life. 

The slaying of King County sheriff's Deputy Steve Cox is another harsh reflection of resurging gun violence and gang activity plaguing Seattle and cities around the country, law enforcement officials say.

Cox was shot and killed early Saturday as he interviewed witnesses in connection with a shooting and beating outside a party at a White Center home. The felon and gang member who apparently shot him, Raymond O. Porter, is thought to have killed another man in SeaTac Friday night.

"Gang members are more dangerous, they're more armed, than other criminals and that fact alone means we're going to run into more people and things like this," Sheriff's Sgt. John Urquhart said Monday.

"But I don't believe (Porter) killed Deputy Cox because he was a gang member. I believe he killed Deputy Cox because he was armed," Urquhart added.

Cox's death comes after a year in Seattle in which gun assaults were up by 25 percent, similar to national trends, according to law enforcement. Police say shootings are becoming much too frequent, whether gang-related or not. Even as deputies responded to the gun blasts that killed Cox in White Center, Seattle police were busy Saturday hunting for another shooter in Rainier Valley who wounded another man in an unrelated case.

"There is certainly much more willingness to use firearms and a willingness to use them on human beings," Urquhart said.

According to Sheriff's Sgt. Urquhart, the reason for gun violence is guns, not violent people. Never mind that Mr. Porter was a felon who didn't have a legal right to even possess a gun, you can bet that this will lead to a call for more gun control regulations to target those of us that possess them legally.

The article goes on to discuss the reasons for the surge in violence, and that's the last we read about guns in the article, but it's enough. The seed has been planted.

Russia promises to block extradition of Litvinenko's murderer

If British investigators find out who poisoned Alexander Litvinenko, they will block extradition. From the Chicago Tribune via The Olympian:

MOSCOW - Russia will not permit extradition of any suspect sought by British investigators probing the London poisoning of a former Russian spy and will take charge of all witness interrogations while Scotland Yard detectives are in Moscow, Russia's top prosecutor said Tuesday.

...

Fueling Russia's frustration is Britain's refusal to extradite Boris Berezovsky, an exiled Russian oligarch and a staunch Kremlin critic wanted by Russia on fraud charges, and Akhmed Zakayev, a Chechen separatist sought by Russian authorities for crimes committed during the civil war in Chechnya. Litvinenko was a close associate of both men. British authorities believe the charges against both men are politically motivated, an allegation Moscow denies.

So let's see... Victor Yushchenko, a charismatic Ukrainian is poisoned with PCBs during an election campaign in 2004. Yushchenko was an opponent of Russian policies. Investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya was murdered in October, and a "senior Russian political figure" links that murder to the death of Alexander Litvinenko and the poisoning of Yego Gaidar, another pro-westerner and Kremlin critic.

Both Alexander Litvinenko and Yego Gaidar had associations with a person of interest in the case, one Andrei Lugovoy, who met with Litvinenko on the day he was poisoned, and who left traces of radiation behind at Emirates Stadium on the same day.

Planes that traveled back and forth from Moscow to London were found to have traces of radiation, presumably from polonium-210, on board. According to the Daily Mail, two Russians that met with Mr. Litvinenko traveled on those planes.

Members of British Intelligence services have said that they are convinced the Russian FSB is involved in the poisoning.

Two more people that have run afoul of the current Russian administration are identified as being a potential reason why Russia promises to block the extradition of the murderer should he be identified, and British authorities believe the charges are politically motivated.

On his deathbed Alexander Litvinenko accused Vladimir Putin of having him poisoned. Russian authorities deny it, and claim to be cooperating, yet they have thrown a big roadblock in front of the murder investigation.

Just what is going on in Russia? Attempted murder and murder to silence political dissent sounds an awful lot like a return to the "good old days" of the cold war.

Earlier posts:

• Ex-spy's death to be treated as murder
• Russian security service 'led poison plot'
• Yushchenko, Politkovskaya, Litvinenko, and Gaidar?
• Radiation found on London-Moscow route planes
• Litvinenko victim of "state-sponsored" assassination
• Did Vladimir Putin have Alexander Litvinenko silenced?

Wednesday Hero

SFC. Paul Ray Smith
33 years old from Tampa, Florida
Bravo Company, 11th Engineer Battalion, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division

April 4, 2003
When you think of the word Hero, SFC. Paul Smith is the person you think about.
On April 4, 2003, Smith was setting up a temporary enemy prisoner of war holding area during the seizure of Saddam International Airport when his unit came under attack.
Smith kept his soldiers focused during the fight while engaging the Iraqi force of around 100 men with his M16, a hand grenade and an AT4 anti-armor weapon.
Smith tossed a grenade over a wall then he climbed atop the armored vehicle. Disregarding personal danger, he sprayed the attacking troops with .50-caliber machine gun fire. According to the Army, he told a soldier who accompanied him to "feed me ammunition whenever you hear the gun get quiet." He fired more than 300 rounds at the enemy before being mortally wounded himself.
For his action on that day, SFC. Smith was posthumously awarded the Medal Of Honor by President Bush,

becoming only the 3,459 serviceman to be awarded the honor since the Civil War.
His "conspicuous gallantry, above and beyond the call of duty," according to his citation, protected the soldiers in his platoon as well as other troops at an aid station nearby.

These brave men and women have given their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero.
We Have Every Right To Dream Heroic Dreams.
Those Who Say That We're In A Time When There Are No Heroes, They Just Don't Know Where To Look
This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. If you would like to participate in honoring the brave men and women who serve this great country, you can find out how by clicking here.

Blogs Participating In Wednesday Hero

Multi-million dollar franchise wants more public money

From the Seattle Post Intelligencer:

OLYMPIA -- For the second year running, the Seattle Sonics are pushing for a new publicly financed arena -- this time in Bellevue or Renton.

Why is it that multi-million dollar professional sports teams want somebody else to pay for their playgrounds? They already soak the public for the price of tickets, but they always want more. The Sonics want to tax people that don't even watch basketball for the privilege of having them stay and extort more money from those same people later.

Bellevue or Renton would need authorization from the Legislature to raise local taxes for a new arena; a subsidy Bennett says is necessary to keep the team in the region.

The Sonics' lease at KeyArena expires in 2010. The team has not said how much a new arena would cost, only that it wants the public to make a "significant contribution" to a new one.

The public already said "NO" in Seattle, with a loud voice.

Before selling the team this year, former owner Howard Schultz pushed lawmakers to approve legislation that would have given Seattle and King County authority to collect taxes to pay for a major renovation at KeyArena.

The negotiations broke off in the closing days of the legislative session. Lawmakers and Gregoire said they were not willing to consider any bill that did not include a public vote on the new taxes. The Sonics had said early on that the condition could be a deal breaker.

A public vote on taxes is a deal breaker? Only because they know that the public has gotten fed up with them. Only because they know that the public would tell them "enough is enough".

For those who complain that millionaires would end up the being recipients of public dollars:

"Poor people don't buy teams," she [Margarita Prentice, head of the Senate Ways and Means Committee] said.

The last statement says it all. How arrogant! How condescending! It's obvious that Prentice doesn't give a rip about her constituents. She's not alone among politicians either. Greg Nickels has said that if public money is used to build an arena for the Sonics in Bellevue or Renton that he's going to push for public money to subsidize Key Arena.

If that happens, we'll get taxed twice for the privilege of having spoiled adolescents that never bothered to grow up play basketball at public expense, whether we watch them do it or not. If professional basketball is so good for the region that it will pay for itself, let it. We don't need another extortionist pulling money out of our pockets.

Let the Sonics move to Oklahoma. As long as they don't ask us to pay their travel expenses too.

Cross posted at NWBloggers.com.

Ex-spy's death to be treated as murder

From the Associated Press, via the Seattle Post Intelligencer:

LONDON -- Scotland Yard said Wednesday it is treating the death of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko as murder.

The announcement came nearly two weeks after Litvinenko died in a London hospital; the rare radioactive substance polonium-210 was found in his body. Scotland Yard detectives are in Moscow as part of the widening investigation into his death.

"Detectives ... have reached the stage where it is felt appropriate to treat it as an allegation of murder," the Metropolitan Police said. "It is important to stress that we have reached no conclusions as to the means employed, the motive or the identity of those who might be responsible for Mr. Litvinenko's death."

It took two weeks? What, were they treating this as some bizarre form of suicide? There's plenty of evidence that the polonium came from Russia. There are traces of it at Emirates Stadium where one of the "witnesses" attended a match on the same day he visited with Litvinenko. Was Litvinenko at the match?

Earlier posts:

• Russian security service 'led poison plot'
• Yushchenko, Politkovskaya, Litvinenko, and Gaidar?
• Radiation found on London-Moscow route planes
• Litvinenko victim of "state-sponsored" assassination
• Did Vladimir Putin have Alexander Litvinenko silenced?

Live! Not from New York City! It's Open Trackback Wednesday!

It's hard to believe it's already Wednesday, but it is. Here's your open trackbacks post for today, Wednesday, December 6, 2006.

If you have an interesting post that you'd like to link here, please do. Ping the trackback URI and your trackback link will appear together with this post. Just be sure to follow the trackback policy.

Be sure to read the linked posts too. That's the whole point of Open Trackbacks after all.

Three Good Things: 12-05-2006

Holiday Parties, A quiet afternoon, Getting home safely.

The company I work for had its holiday party today. We took a cruise on Lake Washington aboard the Royal Argosy. I brought my camera and took a bunch of pictures. Here are two of them.

The cruise was fun, and I had a good time taking pictures. The food was pretty good too.

After we got back from the cruise, the afternoon at work was fairly quiet. No emergencies. No rush jobs. That type of day doesn't happen all the time, and occasionally it's nice.

Things weren't all rosy in Washington though. On the way back from the cruise, we were riding our bus Westbound on the 520 floating bridge. As we neared Montlake, we noticed flashing red and blue lights in the Eastbound lanes. It turned out that there was a pretty serious looking fender bender. A state patrol car was leading a tow-truck with a car on the hook. The car had some serious looking damage. Another state patrol car was following along behind, pushing a car with its bumper.

I felt sorry for the people that had been involved in the accident, but grateful that it wasn't me. As I drove home for the evening, I was heading Southbound on I-5. In the Northbound lanes there was a tremendous backup, and several state patrol cars with flashing lights, a fire truck and ambulance and what looked like several cars that had been involved in an accident. Again I felt sorry for the people that were involved, and grateful that I wasn't one of them.

Drive safe out there people.