“What we’re really focusing is on group responsibility. If one of these guys should kill another gang member, we’re gonna come down with every bit of firepower we have, every prosecutive trick we know,” Weis said.

The heat could include towing gang members’ cars for parking violations, pulling them in for more parole visits or repeatedly pulling them in for traffic violations.

Weis also made it clear to the gang leaders that this will not be a pass on other criminal activity, emphasizing that the joint law enforcement effort will also use the racketeering statutes in their crackdown.

“If you buy a car for your mom, we’ll take that car. If you buy a home for your mother, we’ll take that home, as long as we can tie it to the proceeds of your illegal activity,” Weis said he told the gangs.

Seems to me all these things should be a matter of business for Chicago police. Rather than taking a soft approach, if I were police superintendent, I’d first put all police on a fuggin’ diet and a physical training program. Next I’d declare outright war on gangs. I’d spend every dollar of stimulus money that I could on increasing the ranks of police officers and equipment. I’d put mobile sniper towers in the west and south sides, implement roving swat teams patrolling neighborhoods, and I’d issue hand guns to every tax payer within city limits (now that’s gun control).

Instead of locking up gang members in cushy jails, I’d put them in tents inside razor-wire compounds and I’d put them on chain gangs repairing Chicago streets, cleaning graffiti, and picking up trash. They’d have to wear hunter-orange jump suits with the word “LOSER” on the back in big black letters.

Chicago needs a Sherif Arpaio…

To give you some context on what shapes my opinion (in no specific order and obviously not an exhaustive list):

• I have strong libertarian beliefs. I believe my personal freedom is extremely important and to achieve that I’m willing to fight for your personal freedom.
  
• I served in the U.S. Army
  
• I read a lot, on a broad range of topics
  
• I don’t limit myself to ‘friendly’ sources of information
  

Now some of my thoughts on WikiLeaks:

• Governments should be held accountable for their actions
  
• A republic is bound by the rule of law, which is rooted in the shared values and morals of the citizenry
  
• In a republic, journalism is the primary means of gaining insight into the workings and dealings of the government
  
• Journalism then, has a moral and ethical responsibility to be unbiased and thorough in investigating and revealing the workings and dealings of the government. Anything short of that and journalism becomes a part of or an extension to the government.
  
• The funding of journalism must either be 100% transparent, or 100% double-blind; meaning neither the donors nor the recipients know where the money came from or where it’s going. Since there’s no mechanism for the later, we must stick to the former; 100% transparency in funding. This should be obvious; if a particular group of journalists owe their very existence to a particular funding source, that dependency can become a lever for ideological manipulation (consider Soros or Murdoch/Koch).
  

Therefore I strongly agree with the premise of WikiLeaks, which is in part:

We believe that transparency in government activities leads to reduced corruption, better government and stronger democracies. All governments can benefit from increased scrutiny by the world community, as well as their own people. We believe this scrutiny requires information.

However, as I stated in a previous post, titled Collateral Damage In A War Of Choice (April 9, 2010), WikiLeaks has an established history of manipulating what they release and that defeats their stated purpose by removing transparency and adding a layer of deceit, regardless of how righteous they may believe they are acting. By editing or by cherry-picking what they leak, they completely destroy their credibility. By concealing their source of funding, they conceal their “owner/master.”

Only a free, unrestrained and unbiased press can effectively expose deception in government.

The original intent of the handgun ban was to make it more difficult to get a firearm in Chicago. Now, Mr. Sherman said, weapons are so much easier to obtain illegally that the gun laws only make it more cumbersome for citizens to register firearms.

“Why don’t I just do like these punks on the street have done,” he said, “and put my guns away and pull them out and use them when I want?”

Clearly, “gun control” in Chicago is more effective at preventing law-abiding citizens from owning guns than it is at preventing criminals from obtaining guns or using guns in violent crimes. When will gun control advocates realize it’s time to try something new?

Obama’s cabinet has the least amount of private-sector experience since at least Roosevelt.

That explains a lot…if you don’t know how American businesses work, how can you help American businesses recover?

Graph source: Originally from Investors.com, by way of Dinocrat.com

Hat tip: Maggie’s Farm

“As much as I might want to hire new salespeople, engineers and marketing staff in an effort to grow, I would be increasing my company’s vulnerability to government,” Michael Fleischer, president of Bogen Communications Inc., wrote in The Wall Street Journal.

It’s a sign of the (socialistic) times that small businesses are beginning to fear big government.

“It’s very hard work to run an organization, let alone one that’s constantly being spied upon and sued,” Mr. Assange said in the interview.

This completely removes any credibility wikileaks may have claimed. Julian Assange has no claim to any moral high ground at this point.

I also agree that the president should weigh in because this is a national issue, not just a New York City issue. Do I think it’s in bad taste to build a mosque near the site of the 9/11 attacks? Not in this case, not given the explanation for the mosque by Daisy Khan, Executive Director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement, one of the two organizations proposing the project:

It will have a real community feel, to celebrate the pluralism in the United States, as well as in the Islamic religion. It will also serve as a major platform for amplifying the silent voice of the majority of Muslims who have nothing to do with extremist ideologies. It will counter the extremist momentum.

…

The time for a center like this has come because Islam is an American religion. We need to take the 9/11 tragedy and turn it into something very positive.

But again, aside from the debate of propriety, they own the land they plan to develop on and they are within the zoning limits of the area. Therefore they have every right to build a mosque there. If we allow others to deny them that right then we lose a little bit more of what it means to be American, something we can’t afford to do.

Concerned about the young men loitering at the end of their street, Mr. Brown and Ms. Lee-Sebastian, next-door neighbors, decided to take the advice of the police and organize a block club with other residents of the 8100 and 8200 blocks of South Winchester Avenue.

The idea was that through phone trees, monthly meetings and heightened visibility, residents could keep one another abreast of what was happening and send a message to gangs and drug dealers that they were not about to hand over their block.

The violence in Chicago has reached a point where the leaders of the city, those elected to protect the citizens, have outright admitted they have failed at controlling the number of violent crimes. They are thus advising the citizens to take matters into their own hands, so to speak.

This is the perfect opportunity to allow law-abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons. I guarantee you that if the mayor allows members of block clubs to obtain CCW permits and handguns (you have to qualify these things when dealing with Chicago politicians), you’ll see a drastic decline in violent crime in those neighborhoods. All you need to do is post a sign on the corner indicating the presence of armed and organized citizens and the thugs will move on, peacefully.

Like Alderman Lane said: “I just feel that sometimes you have to stand up yourself.”

About 10,000 Americans died by handgun violence, according to federal statistics, in the four months that the Supreme Court debated which clause of the Constitution it would use to subvert Chicago’s entirely sensible ban on handgun ownership. The arguments that led to Monday’s decision undermining Chicago’s law were infuriatingly abstract, but the results will be all too real and bloody.

First I’ll tackle the touchy-feely “sensibility” of Chicago’s ban on handguns. The ban on handguns was ruled unconstitutional. The “sensibility” of the ban was not a factor even argued. The Supreme Court ruled that “the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the Second Amendment right recognized in Heller.” That seems pretty concrete to me — you want to ban guns, change the Constitution.

Second I’ll tackle the author’s expectation of “real and bloody” results. Washington, D.C. had a similar ban until 2008, when it was overturned by District of Columbia V. Heller. A year after lifting the gun ban in D.C., the murder rate dropped by 25 percent. That’s not very compelling evidence to cry bloody murder after the McDonald ruling lifted Chicago’s ban.

The empirical evidence shows quite the opposite in fact. If you want to increase crime rates, decrease the number of legally-owned guns. After Chicago enacted their ban in 1982, the next ten years saw murders increase by 41 percent; 2.2 times more than the national average for the same period. How does that indicate effective results of gun control or an ensuing blood bath once the ban is lifted? It doesn’t. It indicates that when you prevent citizens from legally protecting themselves you increase crime rates, plain and simple.

McDonald v. Chicago should be regarded as a strong victory for gun rights advocates as well as for constitutionalists and we’ll see in the years to come if there will truly be ‘real and bloody’ results.

Oh, for all those dunderheads who argue the Second Amendment is for militias, not individuals, here is one definition of the word ‘militia’ provided by the New Oxford Dictionary: “all able-bodied civilians eligible by law for military service.”

Stick that in your peace pipe and smoke it.

This is a great step forward for gun rights advocates but more will need to be done. Chicago’s mayor will undoubtedly take a page from DC’s book of impeding legal gun ownership through draconian registration laws and through the use of an intentionally strict and difficult CCW application and renewal processes.

It’ll be interesting to watch this one develop.