Paul M. Jones

Mayor Bloomberg opened a new front in the war over firearms when he went on TV to call on cops nationwide to walk off the job until politicians tighten gun-control laws.

“I don’t understand why the police officers across this country don’t stand up collectively and say, ‘We’re going to go on strike. We’re not going to protect you. Unless you, the public, through your legislature, do what’s required to keep us safe,’” Bloomberg said on CNN Monday night.

There are so many things wrong with this, I hardly know where to begin. And, is that fomenting civil insurrection? Via Mayor Bloomberg's comment that police should strike to get Congress' attention on gun control took the debate to the next level, and drew mixed reactions - NY Daily News.

More than twice as many people have been murdered this month in the president’s hometown of Chicago than were killed in the Aurora shooting.  They are just statistics for whom there will be no presidential visits or flags flown at half staff.

Don't they have gun control in Chicago? Via » Remembering Chicago’s victims - Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion.

If the government didn't invent the Internet, who did? Vinton Cerf developed the TCP/IP protocol, the Internet's backbone, and Tim Berners-Lee gets credit for hyperlinks.

But full credit goes to the company where Mr. Taylor worked after leaving ARPA: Xerox. It was at the Xerox PARC labs in Silicon Valley in the 1970s that the Ethernet was developed to link different computer networks. Researchers there also developed the first personal computer (the Xerox Alto) and the graphical user interface that still drives computer usage today.

According to a book about Xerox PARC, "Dealers of Lightning" (by Michael Hiltzik), its top researchers realized they couldn't wait for the government to connect different networks, so would have to do it themselves. "We have a more immediate problem than they do," Robert Metcalfe told his colleague John Shoch in 1973. "We have more networks than they do." Mr. Shoch later recalled that ARPA staffers "were working under government funding and university contracts. They had contract administrators . . . and all that slow, lugubrious behavior to contend with."

via Crovitz: Who Really Invented the Internet? - WSJ.com.

UPDATE:

Maybe not a great article after all; cf. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/wsj-mangles-history-to-argue-government-didnt-launch-the-internet/ (per Ed Finkler). Even so, Mr Obama's statement "Government research created the Internet so that all companies could make money off the Internet." is still incorrect for the second half. The initial impulse was not for companies to make money; that was at best a secondary and unexpected consequence.

UPDATE 2:

See this link via Alejandro Garcia Fernandez: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57479781-93/no-credit-for-uncle-sam-in-creating-net-vint-cerf-disagrees.

In the Dark Knight, when Batman chooses not to run over the Joker when he can, we are supposedly offered a number of valuable messages--the caped hero has not quite descended into the jungle of the vigilante; the rule of law and due process are upheld; saving the Joker ensures Batman is not the Joker; and even perhaps the misunderstood crime fighter senses a sick affinity with the similarly outcast crime perpetrator. But lost among the director’s messages is the simple fact that had Batman splattered the psychopathic mass murderer, dozens still alive in the remaining minutes of the film would not have been slaughtered. Or was that the director’s message--that Batman’s inflated sense of justice, his inability to terminate evil, ensures that evil will terminate others good but weaker than he?

via Works and Days » The Demons of the Modern Rampage Killer.

“He didn’t invent iron ore and blast furnaces, did he?”

“Who?”

“Rearden. He didn’t invent smelting and chemistry and air compression. He couldn’t have invented his Metal but for thousands and thousands of other people. His Metal! Why does he think it’s his? Why does he think it’s his invention? Everybody uses the work of everybody else. Nobody ever invents anything.”

She said, puzzled, “But the iron ore and all those other things were there all the time. Why didn’t anybody else make that Metal, but Mr. Rearden did?”

From "Atlas Shrugged." Via Kind of Timely. Atlas Shrugged. Fiction Meets Reality. | Points and Figures.

Barack Obama said that “someone” built the roads and bridges and Internet and he’s right. Someone surely did, and that someone, thanks to our progressive income tax system, was a rich person. The latest data from the CBO show that the wealthiest one percent pays more than 22 percent of all income taxes -- the money that builds all the infrastructure that “helped” them get rich. In fact, they pay a larger share in taxes than they earn of the total wealth. In other words, even if the government acted the way Barack Obama says it does, “millionaires and billionaires” pay more into our government than they get out of it. That number holds true for the richest 20 percent, which includes incomes as low as $273,000 a year -- the area where you will find nearly every small business owner. They paid almost 70 percent of all income taxes despite earning only 50 percent of all income.

via The Truth Behind President Obama’s Attack on Success : The Sundries Shack.

Authorities in central Florida say two men were trying to rob an Internet cafe when a 71-year-old patron began shooting his own gun, wounding the suspects.

Surveillance video shows two masked men entering the Palms Internet Cafe around 10 p.m. Friday. The Ocala Star-Banner (http://bit.ly/NvmmEg) reports one pointed a gun at customers while the other swung a baseball bat.

The video shows patron Samuel Williams pulling a handgun and shooting. He continues firing while the suspects fall over each other as they run out the door.

Nineteen-year-olds Duwayne Henderson and Davis Dawkins were later arrested and face attempted armed robbery with a firearm and criminal mischief charges. Both posted bail and were released.

Williams has a concealed weapons permit. Bill Gladson of the Marion County State Attorney’s Office says the shooting appears justified.

If guns were illegal, only the robbers would have had one. Good thing our civil right to keep and bear arms is recognized. Via Video shows 71-year-old man shooting 2 would-be robbers at Internet cafe in central Florida - The Washington Post.

Quoting President Obama:

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.  There was a great teacher somewhere in your life.  Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive.  Somebody invested in roads and bridges.  If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that.  Somebody else made that happen.  The Internet didn’t get invented on its own.  Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

See also "Elizabeth Warren." Via Obama to Americans: You don't deserve what you've earned | The Daily Caller.

UPDATE: An unexpectedly apropos podcast I'm listening to, via http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/05/schmidtz_on_raw.html:

Schmidtz: Maybe in your imagination all kinds of people helped me. Tell me at what point other people helping me made me your property. Because if there was no point at which I became your property, then excuse me, but I'm going to go home, and I'm going to take all of my toys with me. If you want some of my toys, if you want me to share my toys, treat me like an adult, treat me like a self-owner, and make me an offer. And you might make me an offer that I'm perfectly willing to accept. I might say--and this was the thing you were excluding--yeah, I want to be part of a community, I want a community that has a real infrastructure; in fact, I want to be part of a community where the roads are free. Not that I think that anything is really free; I realize that I as a taxpayer will be paying for the free roads. But the point is, I want to minimize transactions costs because I want it to be as cheap as possible for my customers to get to my store. And so I would rather pay for that in part of my taxes than have to put up a toll road and have my customers have to pay to get to me. So, yeah, I want public goods, even things that aren't inherently public.

Russ: Many goods aren't public goods that are provided.

Schmidtz: Yeah. So, I'm willing to pay for it; I regard my paying my share for it as a way of respecting me as a separate person; I'm in.

A recent Troy High School graduate was acquitted Thursday of all charges in his arrest for carrying a rifle through downtown Birmingham.

A jury in 48th District Court found Sean M. Combs, 18, not guilty of brandishing a firearm and disturbing the peace. Wednesday, Judge Marc Barron issued a directed verdict dismissing a charge of resisting and obstructing a police officer after Combs' attorney, James Makowski, argued that city attorney Mary Kucharek had not proven that offense.

"I think they came up with the right verdict," Combs said after his acquittal. "It took them a while, but at the end of the day, I think it was the right decision."

via Troy teen calls acquittal in gun case 'the right verdict' | The Detroit News | detroitnews.com.

The unidentified officer and a detective had arrived at the home to notify family members that Ellerbe had been killed. His body was discovered shortly after 6 a.m. Wednesday, face down near an alley.

The pitbull ran from the backyard of the home toward at least one officer, who pulled his weapon and shot the dog in the home's front yard, according to Ellerbe's sister, Latoya.

"They had told me my brother was dead and I'd come out back to cry on the porch and Tiger must have heard them. He ran into the front yard and the officer shot him," LaToya Ellerbe said.

via Henrico police shoot pet as they notify family of son's homicide | Richmond Times-Dispatch.