Tuesday 03-08-16

Now a new reason to take and aspirin a day

Aspirin Reduces Risk of Prostate Cancer Mortality

Study assesses the impact of anticoagulants on men previously treated for p

Reference
Choe KS, Cowan JE, Chan JM, Carroll PR, D'Amico AV, Liauw SL. Aspirin use and the risk of prostate cancer mortality in men treated with prostatectomy or radiotherapy. J Clin Oncol. 2012 Oct 1;30(28):3540-3504.
 
Design
This study analyzed the associations between anticoagulant use and cancer outcome in men previously treated for prostate cancer.
 
Participants
Study participants are enrolled in the Cancer of the Prostate Strategic Urologic Research Endeavor (CaPSURE) Study, a longitudinal, observational registry of men with biopsy-proven prostate cancer. Patients from 41 institutions nationwide have been enrolled in this study since 1995. Data from 5,955 men with localized adenocarcinoma of the prostate, who were treated with either radiation therapy or radical prostatectomy, were analyzed in this study. Median age was 64 years. The percentages of patients with low, intermediate, and high-risk disease were 42%, 36%, and 22% respectively. After a median follow-up time of 70 months, 779 patients had died and of these 193 (25%) had died of prostate cancer.
 
Study Medication and Dosage
Of all the men studied, 2,175 (37%) had taken anticoagulant therapy. And of these, the majority (84%) had taken aspirin and about a fifth (21%) warfarin. Smaller percentages of participants had taken clopidogrel, enoxaparin, or a combination of 1 or more of these anticoagulants.
 
Outcome Measures
The risk of prostate cancer-specific mortality (PCSM) was compared between those men on anticoagulant therapy and those not.
 
Key Findings
Men taking anticoagulants had a significantly lower risk of dying from prostate cancer. At 7 years only 1% of those taking anticoagulants had died compared to 3% of those not taking anticoagulants. At 10 years these number had grown to 3% and 8%. Those taking anticoagulants also had significantly lower risk of disease recurrence and bone metastasis.
 
The impact of anticoagulant use was more pronounced in those with high-risk disease. In this subgroup, PCSM was 4% for those taking anticoagulants compared to 19% for those not.
 

Convincing a man who has been diagnosed and treated for high-risk prostate cancer to take aspirin may increase his chance of surviving for 10 years by a factor of nearly 5.
 

The data was further analyzed in a Cox proportional hazards regression model comparing aspirin use, other anticoagulant use, initial prostate-specific antigen (PSA), treatment modality, and Gleason score. This confirmed that aspirin use was independently associated with lower PCSM (HR: 0.43; 95% CI: 0.21–0.87). Use of other non-aspirin anticoagulants was not significantly associated with PCSM.
 
Practice Implications
Convincing a man who has been diagnosed and treated for high-risk prostate cancer to take aspirin may increase his chance of surviving for 10 years by a factor of nearly 5. For the average man who has had prostate cancer, taking aspirin will reduce his risk of dying from the cancer by 57%.
 
That aspirin might exert anticancer action isn’t a new idea; Kune et al first noticed a protective effect in Melbourne back in the late 1970s.¹ Their observations triggered a wave of animal studies and observational and clinical trials that now suggest aspirin protects against a range of cancers, but especially colon cancer.
 
There is still no consensus as to why or how aspirin affects cancer. It had been thought the effect resulted from aspirin's blocking COX-2 activity. Blocking COX-2 would block the inflammation that aids tissue recovery from injury, which also appears to aid and encourage tumor cell growth. A second hypothesis suggests that aspirin blocks production of NF-kappaB. Both explanations suffer a similar weakness. The doses of aspirin now shown to protect from cancer are so low that they are not adequate to impact either COX-2 or NF-kappaB.
 
A third possible explanation, favored in the current paper, is that aspirin affects platelets. Even low-dose aspirin impairs platelet activity. In metastasis, as cancer cells spread through the blood, they are typically surrounded by platelets, which may somehow aid them in colonizing new sites for growth. Aspirin may act through decreasing and impairing these platelets. This argument is supported by the lack of anticancer action seen with the other anticoagulants tracked in this study that do not impede platelet activity.
 
It is not a lack of understanding the mechanism of action that hinders aspirin use by my colleagues and our patients. It is more a matter of principle. In the practice of naturopathic medicine and other alternative and complementary practices, it often seems that we have drawn an invisible line between ‘acceptable’ natural therapies and ‘unacceptable’ drug therapies. Aspirin is often viewed as on the wrong side of this line, something that we, and our patients, may be reluctant to use. The perception is that it is simply not natural enough. As risk of injury from using low dose aspirin has been reported to be minimal, it is unlikely that objections are due to any dangers from its use.
 
Given the apparent magnitude of the benefits demonstrated in this study, it may be time to consider suggesting regular aspirin to a wider population of patients—in this instance, men who have been treated for prostate cancer.
 
Note: Aspirin use increases risk of bleeding, as it is an anticoagulant. It also increases risk of stomach ulcers in a dose-dependant manner. Individuals should consult their healthcare providers prior to beginning use of daily aspirin.
 prostate cancer

http://www.naturalmedicinejournal.com/journal/2013-04/aspirin-reduces-risk-prostate-cancer-mortality

 

Video: Americans Don’t Know Who Washington D.C. Was Named After

If you thought that Mark Dice couldn’t top his previous videos in exposing the American public’s alarming lack of knowledge about their own country’s history, then think again – numerous beachgoers in San Diego don’t know who Washington D.C. is named after.

Asked “who is our nation’s capital named after,” one African American woman responded, “Erm, OK, umm, see why you gotta ask me something like that, can I Google it?”

The woman desperately searches in vain for the answer before giving up.

 

When Dice asks the same question of another two women, one of them responds, “You have to tell us,” before admitting, “I have no idea.”

Another blonde woman does actually know the answer – George Washington – but then admits that she is not sure. “I don’t really care,” she adds.

A man with a surfboard states, “I’m gonna have to go with….yeah I don’t know,” before an older man gets the answer right before telling Dice that millennials are “not gonna have a clue”.

Easily the most cringeworthy exchange is between Dice and a man wearing an “I (heart) DC” t-shirt.

“Our nation’s capital is named after who?” asks Dice.

“I don’t know, I just woke up,” responds the man, adding that he doesn’t remember where he bought his shirt.

The man struggles to remember that the city is named after Washington, but then cannot recall his first name, lamenting, “It’s not coming….I’m just out of it.”

“Our nation’s capital is Washington D.C. and I don’t know who it’s named after,” states another African-American man.

“Some president, I don’t know, is it you?” his girlfriend asks Dice.

An older lady then tells Dice that Washington D.C. is named after “Lincoln”.

Perhaps the most depressing scene comes at the end of the video when a couple on vacation from Italy immediately know the answer and then express their amazement that many Americans are completely unaware as to who their first president was or that Washington D.C. is named after him.

 

http://www.infowars.com/video-americans-dont-know-who-washington-d-c-was-named-after/

Thursday 09-03-15

Glenn Reynolds: Lessons in disaster for the next Katrina

Who can you trust when disaster strikes? Not the media. And definitely not the government.

It’s been a decade since Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. What were the lessons? Here are a few:
1. The press did a lousy job.  Forget Brian Williams’ "huge lies." Though the press patted itself on the back afterwards, in fact, as American University Journalism Professor W. Joseph Campbell writes, “it’s instructive to recall how extreme and over the top the reporting was from New Orleans in Katrina’s aftermath.” Reports of wandering bands of rapists, a 10-year-old girl raped in the New Orleans Convention Center, claims that people were shooting at rescue helicopters, sharks haunting the floodwaters, bodies stacked like cordwood — all were false.
Though the extremism generated ratings, and satisfied the anti-American urges of the foreign press, it did real harm. New Orleans, a city battered by disaster, was portrayed as, in Maureen Dowd’s words, “a snake pit of anarchy, death, looting, raping, marauding thugs, suffering innocents, a shattered infrastructure, a gutted police force, insufficient troop levels and criminally negligent government planning.” Dowd used this portrayal to take shots at then-President George W. Bush, and I suspect a lot of the media pile-on was similarly motivated, but it had the effect of stigmatizing victims and, by playing up anarchy and danger, may even have delayed the arrival of aid, as rescuers feared to go in without armed escort. Overall, a horrible media performance.
As Campbell notes, a bipartisan Congressional report in 2006 observed, “If anyone rioted, it was the media.” Sad.

USA TODAY

After Hurricane Katrina old rules kept nurses away: Column

2. Crying wolf is dangerous. There are a lot of reasons why New Orleans didn’t evacuate in time. According to George W. Bush’s memoir, Decision Points, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco froze. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin (now in jail for corruption) was late in ordering evacuation of the city, despite warnings from "weather nerd” Brendan Loy. And the Bush White House and FEMA were notoriously late, Bush in particular being unwilling to federalize the issue and override Blanco’s inactive state government. But another reason why people didn’t evacuate in time is because the media engage in hurricane hype. When every story is treated as the storm of the century, people tune out. Some perspective, please? Oh, and reporters: We’ve all seen someone stand out on the beach as huge waves roll in, while telling everyone else to evacuate. It’s old news, and it sends mixed messages. A little common sense self-control in the media would go a long way toward making sure that serious warnings get the attention they deserve.
3. Be prepared, because basically you’re on your own. After Katrina hit — not only in New Orleans, but up and down the Gulf Coast — it took a lot longer than people expected for aid to arrive. Years later, when Superstorm Sandy hit New York and New Jersey, it once again took a lot longer than people expected for aid to arrive, to the point that I was prompted to call Sandy ”Katrina-on-the-Hudson.” (“Weather nerd” Brendan Loy even warned again that authorities, in this case, New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, weren’t taking the storm seriously enough before it struck. And as recently as this summer, the news was still running "horror stories" about the Sandy recovery, almost three years later.) Part of the problem is with people’s expectations. When roads are flooded, washed out, blocked by trees and power lines, etc., it takes a while to get them back in order. That means you need to be prepared to get by for at least a few days — and, much better, at least a couple of weeks — on your own. That means having extra food, water, medications, fuel, batteries, etc. on hand. It also means getting along with your neighbors. For a few days at least, and maybe longer, they’ll be all the help you have.
4. Really, when they tell you to evacuate, listen. And if you’re particularly vulnerable, or just disinclined to be a victim, pay attention to the news. You’re free to leave before orders are given, and if you do, there won’t be as much traffic, and conditions elsewhere won’t be as crowded.
5. This will all happen again. It was over seven years after Katrina that Sandy hit, but New York made many of the same mistakes. We’ve been fortunate not to have any really severe hurricanes since, despite post-Katrina predictions that heavy hurricane seasons would be the new normal. But sooner or later, a hurricane strikes, or a tornado, or a blizzard, and things break down. We think of them as unusual, but on any reasonable time scale they’re regular events. At both the governmental and the personal level, we need to think of preparedness for disaster as part of normal life. Because it is.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/08/30/hurricane-katrina-lessons-ten-years-column/71417520/

In this country we did deeper shelters

Panicked super rich buying boltholes with private airstrips to escape if poor rise up

Super rich hedge fund managers are buying 'secret boltholes' where they can hideout in the event of civil uprising against growing inequality, it has been claimed.
Nervous financiers from across the globe have begun purchasing landing strips, homes and land in areas such as New Zealand so they can flee should people rise up.
With growing inequality and riots such as those in London in 2011 and in Ferguson and other parts of the USA last year, many financial leaders fear they could become targets for public fury.
Robert Johnson, president of the Institute of New Economic Thinking, told people at the World Economic Forum in Davos that many hedge fund managers were already planning their escapes.

Video loading

WATCH THE INTERVIEW IN FULL HERE
He said: “I know hedge fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway."
Mr Johnson, said the economic situation could soon become intolerable as even in the richest countries inequality was increasing.
He said: "People need to know there are possibilities for their children – that they will have the same opportunity as anyone else.
"There is a wicked feedback loop. Politicians who get more money tend to use it to get more even money."

Getty

Hideaway: Rich people are plotting to escape to remote parts of the world

His comments were backed up by Stewart Wallis, executive director of the New Economics Foundation, who when asked about the comments told CNBC Africa: "Getaway cars, the airstrips in New Zealand and all that sort of thing, so basically a way to get off.
"If they can get off, onto another planet, some of them would."
He added: "I think the rich are worried and they should be worried. I mean inequality, why does it matter?
"Most people have heard the Oxfam statistics that now we’ve got 80, the 80 richest people in the world, having more wealth that the bottom three-point-five billion, and very soon we’ll get a situation where that one percent, one percent of the richest people have more wealth than everybody else, the 99."

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/panicked-super-rich-buying-boltholes-5044084


A lot of truth in a cartoon

Tuesday 07-14-15

School Threatens Parents That Pick Their Kids Up Late

Do you have kids? Do you have a job that you have to commute to? More importantly, do you have to drop your kids off at school every morning? I’m sure plenty of you are raising your hands right now. We all have busy schedules, and many of you face a daily race against time to get your kids to school, and to pick them up at the end of the day; and sometimes you’re either late or early. But how would you feel if a school threatened to take your kids away for being late? That’s what parents in Salem, Oregon are dealing with after the Swegle Elementary School told them that “Children must be picked up on time. If they are not picked up on time, we will call DHS [Department of Human Services] and you will then have to pick them up at court the next day,” and added that “Please do not drop your children off before [7:40 am]. There will not be any supervision. If children are dropped before 7:40 the staff will call the authorities.” So there’s no supervision, but someone will be there to call the cops. How sick is that? I know where I live the entire city turns into a giant traffic jam before school starts. I guess if you want to beat the traffic and get your kid to school early, you’re shit out of luck, and so is your kid. Check out what the horrified parents of these students had to say about this situation: On Thursday, Chelsea Eichenauer, whose 5-year-old son Mason will attend Swegle Elementary in the fall, posted the letter, dated June 24, on her Facebook page. She included the note: “Anyone else think this is crazy?! Way too extreme!” “My heart kind of skipped a beat a little bit, it’s pretty scary,” Eichenauer told KOIN News. “It would traumatize my little boy to death if he couldn’t come home one night.” Eichenauer didn’t respond to Yahoo Parenting’s request for comment. In response to Eichenauer’s Facebook post, fellow parents expressed concern. “If they would put your child through that scary of a situation (‘Oops, your bad mom is 3 minutes late. I’m taking you to the CRC center and you have to stay overnight with people you don’t know, kids you don’t know, and you can’t see your family until the morning’) think of what unimaginable things they could/would be doing to your child,” wrote one parent. Of course, now the principal of the school is backtracking on the policy, and I suspect, pretending that he had no idea about it. He sent a phone message to parents which said: “The school office staff sent the letter out without review and approval from the principal. The letter contained information on a variety of topics for next school year. It also included a statement about calling DHS if the parents were late picking the kids up. This was not the right message,” Remy said. “It should have said that parents should call the school if they will be late picking up their kids. If a parent calls and says they have car trouble or something, there is no problem. The school staff will supervise their child until someone picks them up. The scenario of calling DHS would only come into play in extreme cases, when the parents are not in contact with the school and the child has nowhere to go when the school staff need to go home to their own families in the evening.” You might notice that he makes no mention of what happens if parents drop their kids off a little early. Isn’t that equally insane and worth reconsidering? Oh well, I guess they’ll still “call the authorities” if parents show up 7:39.

http://www.thedailysheeple.com/school-threatens-parents-that-pick-their-kids-up-late_072015

Confederate Soldiers are American Veterans by Act of Congress

Sons of Confederate Veterans

April is Confederate Memorial Month where various commemorations held throughout the month, primarily in the South. In the other states I would venture to say that most have never even heard of it, a combination performance of historical revisionism, political correctness, and amnesia. But I am happy to report that we are seeing more events being held each year,and better attended.
The anti-Confederate smear campaign is becoming recognized for what it always was, a political campaign to denigrate Southern heritage. The ignorance of this was on the scale of your left arm not liking your right arm and then beginning a process of eventual amputation. But this would  include a period of cigarette burning and razor slashing to get the process rolling.
The country is thankfully waking up from this silliness. Veterans Today has made an editorial decision to dig into more of these suppressed historical events, especially those involving veterans. It will keep us busy for the rest of our lives.
I have begun working on my main Confederate Memorial  piece for VT focusing in on some of the archival gems and bombshells that most Americans know little or nothing about our War Between the States, or War of Southern Independence as
Despite the huge number of books written over the years the really good stuff is protected like the gold at Fort Knox, especially when it comes to school curriculums. I did not really begin learning about how much history had been suppressed and censored until my mid forties. The journey has so far turned into an seemlingly endless one.
But I wanted to get something up to get the educational ball rolling with a one issue piece.

The simplest item I always use to jerk the shorts up on a Confederate basher, especially a veteran, and even more so an officer, is to ask them it they knew that Confederate soldiers are officially American Veterans by Act of Congress.  They are usually stunned.

I then share with them the story below and then point out that when they think it is cute to bash Confederate soldiers they are making fools of themselves and embarrassing the Vet community as they are actually bashing all veterans. And if they can do it…then why not Vet haters.

Son of the American Revolution

I am happy to report that this sinks in very quickly with about 100% effectiveness. I follow up with a rundown on the disproportionate numbers that Southerners have contributed to all of America’s wars.
The front lines of our current military conflicts are filled with descendants of Confederate soldiers, many of whom are also descendants of Revolutionary War soldiers like myself.  See my earlier Sesquicentennial 150th Civil War anniversary article on just a few celebrity Confederate descendants.
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/02/14/our-civil-war-150th-anniversary-the-sesquicentennial-begins/
But I must admit that finding the great piece below by Colonel Ed Kennedy made doing this easy. It is short and sweet, and covers the early history up through 1958 when the final act giving Confederates legal equality with Union veterans was passed.

United Daughters of the Confederacy

Those of you who have Confederate ancestry, whether you are male of female, are eligible to be members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans or the United Daughters of the Confederacy. And of course a few folks might be eligible for both. I have been waiting for that gender lawsuit to happen, but the lawyers seem to have missed that one.
Ancestor denial had been epidemic in America but fortunately the Internet has made what was once a grueling process much easier.  SCV members are now doing DNA work to hook up with lost relatives, while others are finding fellow SCV men whose ancestors fought in the same unit as their Confederate ancestors. I am sure they are proud of the effort.
The process of discovering ourselves can be a rewarding one…most of the time. Professor Henry ‘Skip’ Gates of Harvard discovered that he was majority white, and seems to have adpated well. We met while shooting a segment for his PBS documentary ‘Looking for Lincoln’ and had a very interesting day.
The producers discovered in their research that the Sons of Confederate Veterans had never been formally included in any of the past productions on Lincoln and called us to inquire as to why. And of course the answer was that our perspective would refute the politically correct one, and so the sponsors preferred to leave us out.  Bottom line it was a question of getting funding, or not getting it.

Henry Louis Gates

This PBS production crew was different. The director was a gracious Belgian lady. She was real, a total professional, and looking for new material. PBS and brother Gates were our guests at the SCV annual Reunion in Concord, NC. It was, shall I say, a first time for everybody.
Prof. Gates left a different man after watching the the descendants of a black Confederate honored with a special presentation and standing ovation.  He had never heard the real story of these men  and thought they were a myth. His comment when leaving at the end of the day?… “Fellas, I was lied to?”
Enjoy this first Confederate Memorial Month cannon shot. More are on the way.
Jim Dean,  Heritage TV- Atlanta…Veterans Today

YouTube - Veterans Today -

Congressional Support for Confederate Soldiers

President William McKinley

At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a move in the North was made to reconcile with Southerners. President McKinley was instrumental in this movement. When the Spanish-American War concluded successfully in December 1898, President McKinley used this as an opportunity to “mend the fences”.
On 14 December 1898 he gave a speech in which he urged reconciliation based on the outstanding service of Southerners during the recent war with Spain. Remember, as part of the conciliation, several former Confederate officers were commissioned as generals to include former Confederate cavalry general, Wheeler. This is what McKinley said:

“…every soldier’s grave made during our unfortunate civil war [sic] is a tribute to American valor [my emphasis]… And the time has now come… when in the spirit of fraternity we should share in the care of the graves of the Confederate soldiers…The cordial feeling now happily existing between the North and South prompts this gracious act and if it needed further justification it is found in the gallant loyalty to the Union and the flag so conspicuously shown in the year just passed by the sons and grandsons of those heroic dead.”

The response from Congress to this plea was magnanimous and resulted in the Appropriations Act of FY 1901 (below).

Confederate Cemetery

Congressional Appropriations Act, FY 1901, signed 6 June 1900
Congress passed an act of appropriations for $2,500 that enabled the “Secretary of War to have reburied in some suitable spot in the national cemetery at Arlington, Virginia, and to place proper headstones at their graves, the bodies of about 128 Confederate soldiers now buried in the National Soldiers Home near Washington, D.C., and the bodies of about 136 Confederate soldiers now buried in the national cemetery at Arlington, Virginia.”
Remarks: More important than the amount (worth substantially more in 1900 than in 2000) is the move to support reconciliation by Congressional act. In 1906, Confederate Battle flags were ordered to be returned to the states from whence they originated. Some states refused to return the flags. Wisconsin still has at least one flag it refuses to return.
Congressional Act of 9 March 1906

We Honor Our Fallen Ancestors

(P.L. 38, 59th Congress, Chap. 631-34 Stat. 56)
Authorized the furnishing of headstones for the graves of Confederates who died, primarily in Union prison camps and were buried in Federal cemeteries.
Remarks: This act formally reaffirmed Confederate soldiers as military combatants with legal standing. It granted recognition to deceased Confederate soldiers commensurate with the status of deceased Union soldiers.
[Editor’s Note: I might also add here that the opening ceremonies off every Sons of Confederate Veterans Reunion always include a welcoming address by the commander of the Grand Army of the Republic descendent organization…jim dean]
U.S. Public Law 810, Approved by 17th Congress 26 February 1929
(45 Stat 1307 – Currently on the books as 38 U.S. Code, Sec. 2306)
This law, passed by the U.S. Congress, authorized the “Secretary of War to erect headstones over the graves of soldiers who served in the Confederate Army and to direct him to preserve in the records of the War Department the names and places of burial of all soldiers for whom such headstones shall have been erected.”

Remarks: This act broadened the scope of recognition further for all Confederate soldiers to receive burial benefits equivalent to Union soldiers. It authorized the use of U.S. government (public) funds to mark Confederate graves and record their locations.

U.S. Public Law 85-425: Sec. 410 Approved 23 May 1958

Confederate Iron Cross

 
(US Statutes at Large Volume 72, Part 1, Page 133-134)
The Administrator shall pay to each person who served in the military or naval forces of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War a monthly pension in the same amounts and subject to the same conditions as would have been applicable to such person under the laws in effect on December 31, 1957, if his service in such forces had been service in the military or naval forces of the United States.

General Robert E. Lee

Remarks: While this was only a gesture since the last Confederate veteran died in 1958, it is meaningful in that only forty-five years ago (from 2003), the Congress of the United States saw fit to consider Confederate soldiers as equivalent to U.S. soldiers for service benefits. This final act of reconciliation was made almost one hundred years after the beginning of the war and was meant as symbolism more than substantive reward.
Additional Note by the Critical History: Under current U.S. Federal Code, Confederate Veterans are equivalent to Union Veterans.
U.S. Code Title 38 – Veterans’ Benefits, Part II – General Benefits, Chapter 15 – Pension for Non-Service-Connected Disability or Death or for Service, Subchapter I – General, § 1501. Definitions: (3) The term “Civil War veteran” includes a person who served in the military or naval forces of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War, and the term “active military or naval service” includes active service in those forces.
Researched by: Tim Renick, Combined Arms Library Staff, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Member: Brigadier General William Steele SCV Camp 1857.
Edited By: Lt. Col. (Retired) Edwin L. Kennedy, Jr. Member: Brigadier General William Steele SCV Camp 1857.

YouTube - Veterans Today -

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/04/14/confederate-soldiers-are-american-veterans-by-act-of-congress/

07-13-15 Monday

The NEW American mindset

 

‘Offended’ flea market shopper calls 911 over Confederate merchandise

A shopper perusing the merchandise at the Redwood Country Flea Market was so offended by a vendor selling Confederate and Nazi historical memorabilia, the person actually called 911.

Wallingford, Connecticut police were dispatched to the flea market to investigate.

Confederate memorabilia. (Example)

The police chief William Wright tells News 8 “the reason no one was arrested was because the items were being sold on private property” — not to mention no laws were broken.

“There was a table set up with this material,” Wright says, according to Journal-Record. “It’s not criminally illegal, but obviously it offended this person. It causes some people a sense of being uncomfortable. Certainly the owner could preclude this merchandise.”

The town resident who called 911 said there were helmets with swastikas, images of Hitler and other historical Nazi items.

“I was shaking and almost vomiting,” he tells the paper. “I had to run. My grandmother had numbers,” referring to the digits the Nazis would tattoo on prisoners.

The caller complained that the Confederate items were “not authentic” and were replicas of flags and weapons.

He says the seller told him “he was selling so much he can’t keep it in stock.”

Jason Teal, president of the Meriden-Wallingford NAACP, was contacted to see what he thought.

“It’s difficult because it’s on private property and it’s considered free speech,” Teal says.

According to the paper, the complainant also called Mayor William W. Dickinson Jr., who promptly called Chief Wright.

“I had to check with the chief over what is actionable and what isn’t,” according to the mayor. “Unless something violates state or federal law, there’s no jurisdiction for government to do anything. We had to ask, is it something controlled by law?”

And the assistant regional director of the Anti-Defamation League in Connecticut sees a difference between authentic memorabilia and “cheap replicas” “used as symbols of hate.”

“It’s unfortunate that under the law people have the right to sell these things; but it doesn’t mean they should sell these things,” Joshua Sayles says.

“It’s not a crime but I would call it hate. People look at the situation in Charleston and say it’s down in the South. But this stuff is here in Connecticut.”

http://www.theamericanmirror.com/offended-flea-market-shopper-calls-911-over-confederate-merchandise/

New Army sidearm program advances

FORT BELVOIR, Va. (July 8, 2015) – The U.S. Army moved closer to releasing its long-awaited solicitation for a new, modern handgun system when it hosted a fourth industry day for interested vendors earlier today at Picatinny Arsenal, N.J.

The Army named the new weapon the “XM-17” Modular Handgun System. It will replace the current M9 standard Army handgun with a more state-of-the-art weapon system.

“More than 20 companies attended the event,” said Debi Dawson, PEO Soldier spokesperson.

Federal procurement restrictions do not allow the disclosure of the names of firms participating, she added.

The government presented changes to its latest draft solicitation for the XM-17 that were posted to the Federal Business Opportunities website on June 8 under Solicitation Number W15QKN15R0001, according to Dawson.

At the event today, among changes discussed was policy that now opens up the competition to rounds other than ball (full metal jacket) ammunition.

A representative from the Army Judge Advocate General’s Office discussed the decision in detail during the event.

Richard Jackson, Special Assistant to the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General for Law of War, told attendees that federal, state, local and military law enforcement elements routinely use expanding and fragmenting ammunition in their handguns due to the increased capability it provides against threats.

“Expanding the XM-17 Modular Handgun competition to include special purpose ammunition will provide the Warfighter with a more accurate and lethal handgun,” he said.

“Other types of ammunition allow the XM-17 Modular Handgun System to be optimized by vendors, providing a more capable system to Warfighters across the spectrum of shooter experience and skill level.”

Through the upcoming competition, the Army intends to replace the M9 with a more modern handgun system.

“Handgun technology has advanced significantly thanks to lighter-weight materials, ergonomics and accessory rails since 1986 when the M9 entered the Army’s inventory,” Dawson said.

“The Army is seeking a handgun system that outperforms the current M9 system. It also must be modular, meaning it allows adjustments to fit all hand sizes.”

The Army is encouraging Industry to optimize commercially available gun, ammunition and magazine components in order to provide a system for maximum performance.

Current plans call for the Army to purchase more than 280,000 of the new handguns from a single vendor. Deliveries are scheduled to begin in 2018.

The Army also plans to buy approximately 7,000 compact versions of the new handgun.

Dawson said that other military services participating in the XM-17 program may order an additional 212,000 systems above the Army quantity.

The draft solicitation spells out likely procedural and schedule details that responding vendors will have to follow to participate in the competition.

 

http://peosoldier.armylive.dodlive.mil/2015/07/08/new-army-sidearm-program-advances/

 

 

Is a mini ICE AGE on the way? Scientists warn the sun will 'go to sleep' in 2030 and could cause temperatures to plummet

• New study claims to have cracked predicting solar cycles 

• Says that between 2030 and 2040 solar cycles will cancel each other out

• Could lead to 'Maunder minimum' effect that saw River Thames freeze over 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3156594/Is-mini-ICE-AGE-way-Scientists-warn-sun-sleep-2020-cause-temperatures-plummet.html

Monday 06-01-15

Won't they ever learn?

Administration preps new gun regulations

The Justice Department plans to move forward this year with more than a dozen new gun-related regulations, according to list of rules the agency has proposed to enact before the end of the Obama administration.

The regulations range from new restrictions on high-powered pistols to gun storage requirements. Chief among them is a renewed effort to keep guns out of the hands of people who are mentally unstable or have been convicted of domestic abuse.

Gun safety advocates have been calling for such reforms since the Sandy Hook school shooting nearly three years ago in Newtown, Conn. They say keeping guns away from dangerous people is of primary importance.
But the gun lobby contends that such a sweeping ban would unfairly root out a number of prospective gun owners who are not a danger to society.

“It’s clear President Obama is beginning his final assault on our Second Amendment rights by forcing his anti-gun agenda on honest law-abiding citizens through executive force,” said Luke O’Dell, vice president of political affairs at the National Association for Gun Rights.

The Justice Department plans to issue new rules expanding criteria for people who do not qualify for gun ownership, according to the recently released Unified Agenda, which is a list of rules that federal agencies are developing.

Some of the rules come in response to President Obama’s call to reduce gun violence in the wake of Sandy Hook. He issued 23 executive actions shortly after the shooting aimed at keeping guns away from dangerous people, and some of those items remain incomplete.

“If America worked harder to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people, there would be fewer atrocities like the one that occurred in Newtown,” Obama said at the time.

“We can respect the Second Amendment while keeping an irresponsible, law-breaking few from inflicting harm on a massive scale,” he added.

Gun control groups have rallied around Obama’s call to action, zeroing in on polices that would keep guns away from the mentally ill and domestic abusers.

Congressional efforts to expand background checks and keep guns away from dangerous people have failed in recent years, but the legislative defeats won’t stop the Justice Department from regulating.

The Justice Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is looking to revive a rule proposed way back in 1998 that would block domestic abusers from owning guns.

As proposed, the regulation makes it illegal for some who has been convicted of a misdemeanor domestic violence offense to own a gun.

The ATF plans to finalize the rule by November, according to the Unified Agenda.
But gun rights advocates are concerned the Obama administration will use this rule to unfairly target certain gun owners.

“That could be a person who spanked his kid, or yelled at his wife, or slapped her husband,” warned Michael Hammond, legislative counsel for the Gun Owners of America.

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, Everytown for Gun Safety, and Americans for Responsible Solutions did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

But Everytown, a group financially backed by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, has argued that keeping guns out of the hands of domestic abusers can be a matter of life or death.

“American women are 11 times more likely to be shot and killed than women in other developed countries,” the group argues. “The high rate of domestic violence deaths in America is directly related to our weak gun laws. But we know that smart gun laws can—and do—stop domestic abuse from turning into murder."

The ATF is also looking to prohibit the mentally ill from owning firearms, which is attracting even more criticism from gun rights groups.

“The Obama administration is trying very hard to disqualify people from owning a gun on the basis that they are seeing a psychologist,” Hammond argued.

The NRA contends that many people who are mentally ill may not necessarily pose a danger to society — or as the gun lobby puts it, the policy “snares masses of mostly harmless individuals.”

Gun rights advocates argue it would be more effective to ban people on an individual basis, as opposed to banning all people who are mentally ill.

“A person who experienced a temporary reaction to a traumatic event or who has trouble handling household finances may well be treated the same as a violent psychopath,” the NRA wrote.

"Not only is this unjust and stigmatizing, it creates disincentives for those who need mental health treatment to seek it, increasing whatever risks are associated with untreated mental illness,” it added.

Aside from these issues, some gun rights advocates have also raised concerns about upcoming ATF rules that would require gun dealers to report gun thefts, provide gun storage and safety devices, and place restrictions on high-powered pistols, among other things.

“The Obama administration hates the Second Amendment, and it’s clear that every place where it can push, it will,” said Hammond. “This is an indication of an anti-gun administration trying to annoy us in any way it can."

http://thehill.com/regulation/243520-administration-preps-new-gun-regulations

This is great, history coming alive, I might visit just for this.

Williamsburg gearing up for first-ever musket ranges

Williamsburg, Va. – Soon you could be able to shoot an 18^th Century weapon in the heart of Colonial Williamsburg.

Colonial Williamsburg is the world’s largest living history museum and soon it will be getting even more hands on.
A common theme here is to have more entertaining and engaging and hands-on experience.
It may look like just woods now, but hopefully this fall it will be home to one of the area’s first-ever musket ranges. It’s just one of many proposed changes coming to Colonial Williamsburg.
In addition to a petting farm and an archeological simulation, guests could soon have the chance to feel like real-life colonial soldiers.
“We think that giving them the opportunity to handle the device, feel the weight of it, the noise, the smell, the recoil, it will provide a fun, enjoyable and of course, educational experience,” says
Shooting an 18^th century black powder musket would be one of the most hands-on experiences they’ve ever offered.
The range is subject to city approval and we hope, ideally to begin work on it in the fall. It would not be the type of environment that people associate with a modern day firing range.
In true colonial fashion, the range will be as historically accurate as possible with 6 to 8 lanes where guests get a one-on-one lesson in loading and firing the musket.

http://wtkr.com/2015/05/25/williamsburg-gearing-up-for-first-ever-musket-ranges/

Thursday 11-27-14

Happy Thanksgiving

Monday 4-15-13

Banished! Historic Don’t Tread on Me Flag Taken Down: “Too Partisan”

The city of New Rochelle, N.Y., has removed the historic Gadsden “Don’t Tread On Me” flag from a military armory, deeming the flag “too partisan” because it often is used by the tea party movement.


And in response, veterans groups have tapped the Thomas More Law Center to take up the fight.
It was after an official ceremony on March 21 at the New Rochelle Armory that a new American flag was unfurled to replace the previous weathered flag that flew at the location. Beneath the new American flag, the yellow Gadsden Flag was flown, as is common tradition on many military sites.
However, within a week of the ceremony, City Manager Chuck Strome ordered the Gadsden flag be taken down because of “unidentified complaints” that the flag was a symbol of the tea party movement.
Peter Parente, president of the United Veterans Memorial and Patriotic Association of New Rochelle, sent Strome links to the history of the flag so he decided to allow it to remain.
But the city council then stepped in, voting 5-2 to order the flag to be removed.
The five members who voted to uphold its removal were Democrats, while the two voting to reinstate the flag were Republicans.
That same day, the public works department removed the flag.
Now the flag fight is headed to court.

http://www.thedailysheeple.com/banished-historic-dont-tread-on-me-flag-taken-down-too-partisan_042013   Secrets of FBI Smartphone Surveillance Tool Revealed in Court Fight    A legal fight over the government’s use of a secret surveillance tool has provided new insight into how the controversial tool works and the extent to which Verizon Wireless aided federal agents in using it to track a suspect.Court documents in a case involving accused identity thief Daniel David Rigmaiden describe how the wireless provider reached out remotely to reprogram an air card the suspect was using in order to make it communicate with the government’s surveillance tool so that he could be located.
Rigmaiden, who is accused of being the ringleader of a $4 million tax fraud operation, asserts in court documents that in July 2008 Verizon surreptitiously reprogrammed his air card to make it respond to incoming voice calls from the FBI and also reconfigured it so that it would connect to a fake cell site, or stingray, that the FBI was using to track his location.
Air cards are devices that plug into a computer and use the wireless cellular networks of phone providers to connect the computer to the internet. The devices are not phones and therefore don’t have the ability to receive incoming calls, but in this case Rigmaiden asserts that Verizon reconfigured his air card to respond to surreptitious voice calls from a landline controlled by the FBI.
The FBI calls, which contacted the air card silently in the background, operated as pings to force the air card into revealing its location.
In order to do this, Verizon reprogrammed the device so that when an incoming voice call arrived, the card would disconnect from any legitimate cell tower to which it was already connected, and send real-time cell-site location data to Verizon, which forwarded the data to the FBI. This allowed the FBI to position its stingray in the neighborhood where Rigmaiden resided. The stingray then “broadcast a very strong signal” to force the air card into connecting to it, instead of reconnecting to a legitimate cell tower, so that agents could then triangulate signals coming from the air card and zoom-in on Rigmaiden’s location.
To make sure the air card connected to the FBI’s simulator, Rigmaiden says that Verizon altered his air card’s Preferred Roaming List so that it would accept the FBI’s stingray as a legitimate cell site and not a rogue site, and also changed a data table on the air card designating the priority of cell sites so that the FBI’s fake site was at the top of the list.
Rigmaiden makes the assertions in a 369-page document he filed in support of a motion to suppress evidence gathered through the stingray. Rigmaiden collected information about how the stingray worked from documents obtained from the government, as well as from records obtained through FOIA requests filed by civil liberties groups and from open-source literature.
During a hearing in a U.S. District Court in Arizona on March 28 to discuss the motion, the government did not dispute Rigmaiden’s assertions about Verizon’s activities.
The actions described by Rigmaiden are much more intrusive than previously known information about how the government uses stingrays, which are generally employed for tracking cell phones and are widely used in drug and other criminal investigations.
The government has long asserted that it doesn’t need to obtain a probable-cause warrant to use the devices because they don’t collect the content of phone calls and text messages and operate like pen-registers and trap-and-traces, collecting the equivalent of header information.
The government has conceded, however, that it needed a warrant in his case alone — because the stingray reached into his apartment remotely to locate the air card — and that the activities performed by Verizon and the FBI to locate Rigmaiden were all authorized by a court order signed by a magistrate.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, who have filed an amicus brief in support of Rigmaiden’s motion, maintain that the order does not qualify as a warrant and that the government withheld crucial information from the magistrate — such as identifying that the tracking device they planned to use was a stingray and that its use involved intrusive measures — thus preventing the court from properly fulfilling its oversight function.
“It shows you just how crazy the technology is, and [supports] all the more the need to explain to the court what they are doing,” says EFF Staff Attorney Hanni Fakhoury. “This is more than just [saying to Verizon] give us some records that you have sitting on your server. This is reconfiguring and changing the characteristics of the [suspect's] property, without informing the judge what’s going on.”
The secretive technology, generically known as a stingray or IMSI catcher, allows law enforcement agents to spoof a legitimate cell tower in order to trick nearby mobile phones and other wireless communication devices like air cards into connecting to the stingray instead of a phone carrier’s legitimate tower.
When devices connect, stingrays can see and record their unique ID numbers and traffic data, as well as information that points to the device’s location.
By moving the stingray around and gathering the wireless device’s signal strength from various locations in a neighborhood, authorities can pinpoint where the device is being used with much more precision than they can get through data obtained from a mobile network provider’s fixed tower location.
Use of the spy technology goes back at least 20 years. In a 2009 Utah case, an FBI agent described using a cell site emulator more than 300 times over a decade and indicated that they were used on a daily basis by U.S, Marshals, the Secret Service and other federal agencies.
The FBI used a similar device to track former hacker Kevin Mitnick in 1994, though the version used in that case was much more primitive and passive.
A 1996 Wired story about the Mitnick case called the device a Triggerfish and described it as “a technician’s device normally used for testing cell phones.” According to the story, the Triggerfish was “a rectangular box of electronics about a half a meter high controlled by a PowerBook” that was essentially “a five-channel receiver, able to monitor both sides of a conversation simultaneously.” The crude technology was hauled around in a station wagon and van. A black coaxial cable was strung out of the vehicle’s window to connect the Triggerfish to a direction-finding antenna on the vehicle’s roof, which had four antenna prongs that reached 30 centimeters into the sky.
The technology has become much sleeker and less obtrusive since then, but still operates under the same principles.
In Rigmaiden’s case, agents apparently used two devices made by a Florida-based company called Harris. One was the company’s StingRay system, which is designed to work from a vehicle driven around a neighborhood to narrow a suspect’s location to a building. Once agents tracked the signals from Rigmaiden’s air card to the Domicilio Apartments complex in Santa Clara, California, they apparently used another device made by Harris called the KingFish — a handheld system that allowed them to walk through the complex and zero-in on Rigmaiden’s air card in apartment 1122.
Although a number of companies make stingrays, including Verint, View Systems, Altron, NeoSoft, MMI, Ability, and Meganet, the Harris line of cell site emulators are the only ones that are compatible with CDMA2000-based devices. Others can track GSM/UMTS-based communications, but the Harris emulators can track CDMA2000, GSM and iDEN devices, as well as UMTS. The Harris StingRay and KingFish devices can also support three different communication standards simultaneously, without having to be reconfigured.
Rigmaiden was arrested in 2008 on charges that he was the mastermind behind an operation that involved stealing more than $4 million in refunds from the IRS by filing fraudulent tax returns. He and others are accused of using numerous fake IDs to open internet and phone accounts and using more than 175 different IP addresses around the United States to file the fake returns, which were often filed in bulk as if through an automated process. Rigmaiden has been charged with 35 counts of wire fraud, 35 counts of identify theft, one count of unauthorized computer access and two counts of mail fraud.
A PC5740 Air Card.

The surveillance of Rigmaiden began in June 2008 when agents served Verizon with a grand jury subpoena asking for data on three IP addresses that were allegedly used to electronically file some of the fraudulent tax returns. Verizon reported back that the three IP addresses were linked to an air card account registered in the name of Travis Rupard — an identity that Rigmaiden allegedly stole. The air card was identified as a UTStarcom PC5740 device that was assigned a San Francisco Bay Area phone number.
A court order was then submitted to Verizon Wireless requiring the company to provide historical cell site data on the account for the previous 30 days to determine what cell towers the air card had contacted and determine its general location. Verizon responded by supplying the government with information that included the latitude and longitude coordinates for five cell sites in San Jose and Santa Clara cities, in the heart of Silicon Valley.
In July, the government served Verizon Wireless with another court order directing the company to assist the FBI in the use and monitoring of a mobile tracking device to locate an unidentified suspect. The order directed Verizon Wireless to provide the FBI with any “technical assistance needed to ascertain the physical location of the [air card]….”
The government has fought hard to suppress information about how it uses stingrays, but in his motion to suppress, Rigmaiden lays out in great detail how the surveillance occurred and the nature of the technical assistance Verizon provided the FBI.
On the morning of July 14, 2008, FBI Agent Killigrew created a cell tower range chart/map consisting of a street map, plotted Verizon Wireless cell site sectors belonging to cell site Nos. 268, 139, and 279, and a triangulated aircard location signature estimate represented by a shaded area. On the chart/map, the total land area collectively covered by cell site Nos. 268, 139, and 279 is approximately 105,789,264 ft2. FBI Agent Killigrew used triangulation techniques and location signature techniques to eliminate 93.9% of that 105,789,264 ft2 area resulting in the location estimate being reduced to 6,412,224 ft2 represented by the shaded area. The shaded area on the cell tower range chart covers the location of apartment No. 1122 at the Domicilio apartment complex.
On July 15, agents with the FBI, IRS and US Postal Service flew to San Jose to triangulate Rigmaiden’s location using the stingray. They worked with technical agents from the San Francisco FBI’s Wireless Intercept and Tracking Team to conduct the real-time tracking,
According to Rigmaiden, the agents drove around the cell site areas gathering information about signal range and radio frequencies for each cell site sector. “The radio frequency information was needed so that the FBI technical agents could properly configure their StingRay and KingFish for use in cell site emulator mode,” Rigmaiden writes. “By referencing a list of all the radio frequencies already in use, the FBI was able to choose an unused frequency for use by its emulated cellular network that would not interfere with the various FCC licensed cellular networks already operating in the noted area.”
The next day, Verizon Wireless surreptitiously reprogrammed Rigmaiden’s air card so that it would recognize the FBI’s stingray as a legitimate cell site and connect to it “prior to attempting connections with actual Verizon Wireless cell sites.” The FBI needed Verizon to reprogram the device because it otherwise was configured to reject rogue, unauthorized cell sites, Rigmaiden notes.
On July 16, the FBI placed 32 voice calls to the air card between 11am and 5pm. Each time the air card was notified that a call was coming in, it dropped its data connection and went into idle mode. At the same time, it sent real-time cell site location information to Verizon, which forwarded the information to the FBI’s DCS-3000 servers, part of the elaborate digital collection system the FBI operates for wiretapping and pen-registers and trap-and-traces. From the FBI’s servers, the location data was transmitted wirelessly through a VPN to the FBI’s technical agents “lurking in the streets of Santa Clara” with the StingRay.
A stingray, made by Harris Corp. Image: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

At this point, the StingRay took over and began to broadcast its signal to force the air card — and any other wireless devices in the area — to connect to it, so that agents could zoom-in on Rigmaiden’s location.
“Because the defendant attempted to keep his aircard continuously connected to the Internet, the FBI only had a very short window of time to force the aircard to handoff its signal to the StingRay after each surreptitious voice call [and] the FBI needed to repeatedly call the aircard in order to repeatedly boot it offline over the six hours of surreptitious phone calls,” Rigmaiden writes. “Each few minute window of time that followed each denial-of-service attack (i.e., surreptitious phone call) was used by the FBI to move its StingRay, while in cell site emulator mode, to various positions until it was close enough to the aircard to force an Idle State Route Update (i.e., handoff).”
Rigmaiden maintains that once the connection was made, the StingRay wrote data to the air card to extend the connection and also began to “interrogate” the air card to get it to broadcast its location. The FBI used the Harris AmberJack antenna to deliver highly-directional precision signals to the device, and moved the StingRay around to various locations in order to triangulate the precise location of the air card inside the Domicilio Apartments complex.
According to Rigmaiden, agents also transmitted Reverse Power Control bits to his air card to get it to transmit its signals at “a higher power than it would have normally transmitted if it were accessing cellular service through an actual Verizon Wireless cell site.”
Once agents had tracked the device to the Domicilio Apartments complex, they switched out the StingRay for the handheld KingFish device to locate Rigmaiden’s apartment within the complex.
Around 1am on July 17, an FBI agent sent a text message to another FBI agent stating, “[w]e are down to an apt complex….” By 2:42 am, one of the FBI technical agents sent a text message to someone stating that they had “[f]ound the card” and that agents were “working on a plan for arrest.”
Agents still didn’t know who was in the apartment — since Rigmaiden had used an assumed identity to lease the unit — but they were able to stake out the apartment complex and engage in more traditional investigative techniques to gather more intelligence about who lived in unit 1122. On August 3, while the apartment was still under surveillance, Rigmaiden left the unit. Agents followed him a short distance until Rigmaiden caught on that he was being followed. After a brief foot chase, he was arrested.
Rigmaiden and the American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Frontier Foundation have argued that the government did not obtain a legitimate warrant to conduct the intrusive surveillance through the stingray. They say it’s indicative of how the government has used stingrays in other cases without proper disclosure to judges about how they work, and have asked the court to suppress evidence gathered through the use of the device.
U.S. District Court Judge David Campbell is expected to rule on the motion to suppress within a few weeks.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/04/verizon-rigmaiden-aircard/all/

Monday 12-10-12

How can someone so stupid get a drivers license?

Gun Control: Charles Schumer Makes A Move In The Senate To Deny Veterans The Right To Own Firearms

Kurt Nimmo: Prior to the anti-Second Amendment commentary of Bob Costas and Kansas City sports writer Jason Whitlock (who compared the NRA to the KKK), notorious gun-grabber Charles Schumer made a move in the Senate to deny veterans the right to own firearms.
Senator Chuck Schumer. Photo: David Shankbone.
Schumer raised a stink last week after Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., prepared to amend a $631 billion defense bill and prevent the Veterans Affairs Department from adding the names of veterans the government designates as mentally incompetent and unable to handle their finances into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. The system effectively shuts down their Second Amendment right to own a firearm.
“I love our veterans, I vote for them all the time. They defend us,” Schumer said. “If you are a veteran or not and you have been judged to be mentally infirm, you should not have a gun.”
Dan Gross, president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said that if the government deems you “unable to handle your own affairs, that’s likely to constitute a high percentage of people who are dangerously mentally ill.”
For Gross, Schumer and the VA, “infirm” not only applies to people who suffer from schizophrenia, but also from post-traumatic stress disorder. In recent years, the gun-grabbers have used PTSD as an excuse to deny gun rights to veterans.
[Related: CNN Anchor Piers Morgan Calls For Increased Gun Control and Said The 2nd Amendment Was Outdated]

“PTSD is only the beginning,” we warned in June. “There are any number of medical conditions the government will ultimately cite in order to restrict gun ownership.”
“We consider it an abject tragedy that so many of our veterans return home, after risking life and limb to defend our freedom, only to be stripped of their Second Amendment rights because they need help managing their compensation,” Chris Cox of the NRA said last year.
“We want to remove these stigmas for mental health treatment. It’s a combat injury,” said Tom Tarantino, chief policy officer for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, in response to the move by Sen. Schumer. “They wouldn’t be doing this if you were missing your right hand, so they shouldn’t be doing it if you’re seeking treatment for post-traumatic-stress-disorder or traumatic brain injury.”
In June, we wrote about how Obamacare will ultimately centralize medical records and “allow the FBI to troll a list of Americans for ailments such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to deny them their gun rights, in the same way that the Veterans Administration has already denied more than 150,000 veterans their right to bear arms,” according to Gun Owners of America.
The corporate media is cranking up the anti-gun propaganda machine in the wake of the tragic murder-suicide of NFL linebacker Jovan Belcher.
Ashley Fantz, writing for the military psy op CNN, quotes Dr. Scott Eliason who says that a “middle-aged man who is recently separated or facing pending estrangement from an intimate partner and who is depressed and has access to firearms” potentially poses a serious threat. In addition, “an older male who is the primary caregiver for a spouse who is ill or debilitated, where there is a recent onset of new illness in the male, depression and access to firearms” may commit murder.
[Related: Mystery Surrounding 1.2 Billion Rounds Of Ammo Solved]
Considering the government’s inevitable mission creep (especially in regard to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights) it is entirely possible “at risk” middle age non-veterans may also have their firearms ownership either denied or their firearms confiscated following the implementation of Obamacare and its sprawling database.
The antipathy of Democrats toward the right to own firearms is legendary and Obama now believes he has a mandate to attack the Constitution under the cover of Obamacare (as he previously attacked it under the mission to fight terrorism, as did his predecessor).
“The ObamaCare bill already contains language that will punish Americans who engage in unhealthy behavior by allowing insurers to charge them higher insurance premiums. (What constitutes an unhealthy lifestyle is, of course, to be defined by legislators.),” Gun Owners of America writes. “Don’t be surprised if an anti-gun nut like [noted gun-grabber and HHS boss Kathleen Sebelius] uses this line of thinking to impose ObamaCare policies which result in a back-door gun ban on any American who owns ‘dangerous’ firearms.”
http://marketdailynews.com/2012/12/03/gun-control-charles-schumer-makes-a-move-in-the-senate-to-deny-veterans-the-right-to-own-firearms/#HfpueGwtFVIj7S2Q.99
Got mad when i read what what the ADL wrote about the following articles, figured i would print what is closer to the truth (way closer in my opinion). 

http://www.adl.org/main_Extremism/oath_keepers_three_percenters.htm

What is a "Three Percenter"?

The Three Percent in 1775.
During the American Revolution, the active forces in the field against the King's tyranny never amounted to more than 3% of the colonists. They were in turn actively supported by perhaps 10% of the population. In addition to these revolutionaries were perhaps another 20% who favored their cause but did little or nothing to support it. Another one-third of the population sided with the King (by the end of the war there were actually more Americans fighting FOR the King than there were in the field against him) and the final third took no side, blew with the wind and took what came.
Three Percenters today do not claim that we represent 3% of the American people, although we might. That theory has not yet been tested. We DO claim that we represent at least 3% of American gun owners, which is still a healthy number somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 million people. History, for good or ill, is made by determined minorities. We are one such minority. So too are the current enemies of the Founders' Republic. What remains, then, is the test of will and skill to determine who shall shape the future of our nation.
The Three Percent today are gun owners who will not disarm, will not compromise and will no longer back up at the passage of the next gun control act. Three Percenters say quite explicitly that we will not obey any further circumscription of our traditional liberties and will defend ourselves if attacked. We intend to maintain our God-given natural rights to liberty and property, and that means most especially the right to keep and bear arms. Thus, we are committed to the restoration of the Founders' Republic, and are willing to fight, die and, if forced by any would-be oppressor, to kill in the defense of ourselves and the Constitution that we all took an oath to uphold against enemies foreign and domestic.
We are the people that the collectivists who now control the government should leave alone if they wish to continue unfettered oxygen consumption. We are the Three Percent. Attempt to further oppress us at your peril.
To put it bluntly, leave us the hell alone.
Or, if you feel froggy, go ahead AND WATCH WHAT HAPPENS.

This is a linkable version of the explanation at the upper right hand corner of my blog, Sipsey Street Irregulars (sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com). It was suggested by good friends that we needed a linkable version, so here it is as a straight-up post and also as an email to my private list. Feel free to circulate it far and wide. http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2009/02/what-is-three-percenter.html   Welcome to Oath Keepers

Oath Keepers is a non-partisan association of current and formerly serving military, reserves, National Guard, veterans, Peace Officers, and Fire Fighters who will fulfill the Oath we swore, with the support of like minded citizens who take an Oath to stand with us, to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, so help us God. Our Oath is to the Constitution
Our motto is "Not on our watch!"

If you, the American people, are forced to once again fight for your liberty in another American Revolution, you will not be alone. We will stand with you.There is at this time a debate within the ranks of the military regarding their oath. Some mistakenly believe they must follow any order the President issues. But you can rest assured that many others in the military do understand that their loyalty is to the Constitution, and understand what that means.
The mission of Oath Keepers is to vastly increase their numbers. We are in a battle for the hearts and minds of our own troops. To win that battle, Oath Keepers will use written and video testimony of active duty military, veterans (especially combat vets), and peace officers to reach, teach, and inspire our brothers in arms in the military and police to fulfill their oaths and stand as guardians of the Republic.
If you are currently in the military, are a veteran, or are a peace officer, please submit your written and/or video testimony on your oath, so you can help us win that battle for hearts and minds. Your submission may be anonymous.

What We Are Not

“written by Capt. Gregory Gooch (Rent.) in March, 2009″ who was is now a retired member of the Oath Keepers National Board.
We are Not advocating or promoting the overthrow of any government whether local, state or national. We want our governments to return to the Constitutional Republic which the Declaration of Independence and the

Constitution defined and instituted.
We are Not advocating or promoting violence towards any organization, group or person. We are determined to Keep our Oath to support and defend the Constitution.
We are not advocating or promoting the removal of any person from his or her elected office. We want all elected persons to live up to their Oath to “support and defend the Constitution” as it is written or to leave of their own volition.
We are not advocating or promoting that anyone in the Judicial Branch be removed or replaced. We want the Justices in the Judicial Branch to follow the Constitution as written without interpretation.
We are not advocating or promoting any particular form of government other than the Constitutional Republic which the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution defined and instituted.
We are not advocating or promoting the rewriting of the Constitution nor are we asking for an Amendment thereto. We are insisting on the Constitution being Enforced as it is written.
We are Not advocating or promoting any act or acts of aggression against any organization or person for any

reason including, but not limited to; race, religion, national origin, political affiliation, gender or sexual orientation.
We hope for a return to a Constitutional Republic free from fear and hatred. We hate only tyranny.
We are Oath Sworn Americans who want the Constitution returned to its legal and rightful place, intact, as the ultimate Law of the Land.

http://oathkeepers.org/oath/about/