This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: DC Government

  • Soldier gets his guns

    We wrote the other day about LT Augustine Kim who had his guns confiscated by the DC Metro police when he was caught transporting them in a totally legal manner under Federal law back to his home in South Carolina from New Jersey. Well, the mighty District of Columbia property clerk, Derek Gray, sat in judgement of the young LT’s property last week, and at the prompting of two Senators and his Congressman determined that the District would send his weapons, which have languished in a storage locker somewhere for nearly two years, according to Emily Miller at the Washington Times;

    Lt. Kim pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of possessing an unregistered gun, and that charge was dismissed in May 2011. Since then, Lt. Kim’s lawyer, Richard Gadiner, had failed to get the attention of Mr. Gray, who refused to respond to his repeated requests for a hearing.

    That changed after The Washington Times published a story about the case last Monday. The long-time firearms lawyer had never known the city to set up a hearing within a matter of days. Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, spoke with Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier on Thursday. Fellow Palmetto State Republican Sen. Jim DeMint and Rep. Tim Scott have also been engaged. “When you get two senior U.S. senators and a member of Congress calling the chief of police, it makes a difference,” Mr. Gardiner explained.

    Yeah, well, the District is so anti-gun, they’ll do anything they can to keep guns out of the hands of responsible gun owners – they disregarded the federal laws and arrested Kim anyway, so more laws won’t make the gun Nazis in DC treat law abiding gun owners any differently. Kim is lucky that they’re sending his guns to South Carolina, otherwise, I’d expect him to be arrested as soon as he exited the property room with them.

  • Injured vet loses guns to DC thugs

    ROS sends us a link to Emily Miller’s article in the Washington Times about Lt. Augustine Kim who was traveling between his parents’ house and his own home in South Carolina when he stopped at Walter Reed for an appointment two years ago when Walter Reed was still in DC.

    Apparently, there was a clerical error in regards to his driver’s license that he straightened out over the phone the next day. But the officers asked Kim if they could search his car;

    The lieutenant agreed because his guns were properly locked in a case in the trunk, in compliance with federal firearm transport laws. Mr. Kim was handcuffed and told to sit on the curb during the search.

    He recalled that the officers inspected the collection and “were upset about the fact that I had the AR-15, which D.C. considers to be an ‘assault weapon.’” The model of rifle is illegal in the District, but not in his home state.
    The officers then told Mr. Kim he was in violation for the carrying firearms outside the home (in his vehicle) in the District. The nation’s capital does not acknowledge the right to bear arms, so there are no carry rights.

    “I told them I had been under the impression that as long as the guns were locked in the back, with the ammunition separate, that I was allowed to transport them,” Mr. Kim told me in an interview. “They said, ‘That may be true, however, since you stopped at Walter Reed, that make you in violation of the registration laws.” It is illegal to possess a firearm anywhere in D.C. other than the home.

    So they hauled his ass off to jail facing $20,000 in fines and up to 20 years in prison on the four felony charges;

    The veteran spent a “few hours in the drunk tank,” then was moved to the central jail. It was cold on the steel slab, so he asked the police guard for a blanket. “He was surly with me and sarcastic. He said, ‘Oh you want blankets? Well they’re back ordered,’” Mr. Kim recalled. “I remember thinking, we treated detainees in Afghanistan better than this.” He didn’t get much sleep that night.

    So, for some reason, the prosecutor offered Kim a deal and Kim accepted one misdemeanor charge of one unregistered gun. But the MPD won’t return his guns to him;

    On Monday, MPD spokesman Gwendolyn Crump said the department “notified the respondent’s attorney last week of his right to a hearing concerning the return of weapons.” Mr. Gardiner said that he did not receive a letter. The spokesman did not respond to my inquiry about the date the letter was sent.

    Why does he need a hearing? The prosecutor released the property, so it’s not theirs. They need to just give back the injured veteran’s property, that they confiscated wrongly in the first damn place.

  • DC: Be the best crime victim you can be

    That Supreme Court decision a few years back hasn’t taught the District of Columbia, our nation’s capitol, anything in the way of respecting people’s rights. Emily Miller at the Washington Times who spent more than six months and spending hundreds of dollars to qualify for a permit to own a handgun in the District, reports that in a community meeting about the 40% increase in crime in the first two months of this year with councilwoman Mary M. Cheh, crime victims confronted the councilwoman with questions about the difficulty of purchasing weapons. The response;

    Paul Quander, the District’s deputy mayor for public safety and justice, responded that crime victims should give the criminals what they want. Mr. Portman protested, saying, “But how do you know you’re going live and survive? You’re completely at their mercy.”

    Mr. Quander thinks victimhood is preferable to self-defense. “The problem is, if you are armed, it escalates the situation,” Mr. Quander told residents. “It is much better, in my opinion, to be scared, to be frightened, and even if you have to be, to be injured, but to walk away and survive. You’ll heal, and you can replace whatever was taken away.”

    Spoken like a true Liberal who has never been mugged. the video of the complete waste of time;

    Thanks to ROS for the link.

  • DC bills Feds for Occupy costs

    According to the Washington Times, D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray has billed the National Park Service for the costs the District has incurred because of the Occupy DC hippies;

    “Our citizens cannot be expected to pay for the consequences of a decision in which they have no say,” Mr. Gray said in the letter.

    While many cities across the globe have seen protesters take to the streets, the Occupy groups have camped on federally controlled land since October and racked up city costs in overtime, public sanitation and park and street maintenance and cleaning, Mr. Gray said in his letter to Director Jonathan B. Jarvis.

    “In neither case was the District Government consulted on the legality or appropriateness of long-term protestors inhabiting these respective locations,” the mayor said.

    The mayor has a point. If the NPS hadn’t been so willing to allow these hippie fucks to live in the national parks over the last few months as bases to launch their mishavior like blocking traffic and invading private spaces and encouraging bad behavior that needed to be policed and cleaned up afterwards, it probably wouldn’t have lasted this long.

    And that $1.6 million could have been spent for the truly needy instead of the intentionally itinerant.

  • Firefighters deployed to “protect” kids with jobs in DC

    You know you’ve kind of lost the war against crime when you have to send unarmed firefighters into the worst neighborhoods of the District of Columbia in order to protect young people who are returning from their city jobs programs on payday (Washington Times link);

    [U]nion officials question why the Gray administration would send firefighters to some of the city’s worst corners and perhaps put their safety at risk.

    “They are going to send unarmed, untrained firefighters out into some of the most dangerous areas,” said police union Chairman Kristopher Baumann.

    A Metropolitan Police Department email obtained by The Washington Times shows firefighters will be deployed at 14 spots across the city – sometimes until 4 a.m.

    Of course, they could send out cops, who are armed, if the unions didn’t fight the city at every turn whenever they try to increase police presence on the streets. Of course, by “on the streets” I mean cruising around in the air conditioned police cars – the ones with their red parking lights flashing to warn criminals of their presence. The only time I ever saw a Metro cop out of their car was when I saw one walk from the curb to the take-out window at Popeye’s on H Street once.

  • Balanced Budget Amendment: Is It Really That Hard?

    Demonstrating a spectacular lapse in sound judgement, Jonn has granted me guest-poster privileges for this holiday weekend. I’ll try not to abuse the honor too much. By way of introductions, I go by Cortillaen, pronounced core-tih-lane; I have not yet had the honor of serving, though that is scheduled to change come this September courtesy of the United States Marine Corps; and yes, I tend to be rather loquacious despite all attempts at brevity. On to matters, Jonn granted me posting privileges primarily in regards to a post from my blog, which he will hopefully be commenting upon once he returns.  I’ve taken some time to tidy it up a bit, give it a proof-read, and expand a couple sections for clarity’s sake.

     

    You’ve probably seen the proposal for the supposed Balanced Budget Amendment around the net. It sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? We could finally rein in government spending, get rid of the deficit, maybe even start paying down the national debt. If only that were so. Ever read the real thing? It’s a pile of crap, and by “crap”, I mean “exceptions, loopholes, and all the usual legalese crap”. Yes, that is an intentionally recursive definition. It illustrates exactly how little I think of the proposed BBA. I. Hate. It.

    (more…)

  • Strange Bedfellows?

    Senators move to authorize Libya mission

    Sen. John F. Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, who is Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, and Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, who is the ranking GOP member on the Senate Armed Services Committee — and, coincidentally, the last two losing presidential nominees — are co-sponsoring the resolution, which would grant Mr. Obama “limited” authorization to continue using force.

    A curious development, to be sure. The House seems to be  moving, however slowly, to cut off funds for the non-hostilities in Libya while at the same time these two are attempting an end run.

    I don’t understand the reasoning behind this move at all.

    “This is not a blank check for the president. This resolution authorizes the limited use of American forces in a supporting role,” Mr. Kerry said in a floor speech to the Senate. “It says specifically that the Senate does not support the use of ground troops in Libya. And it authorizes this limited use of American forces for a limited duration — it would expire in a year.”

    The White House has rather pointedly gone to great lengths to avoid even dealing with Congress and now this?

    The White House has not actually sought congressional approval but repeatedly has said it would “welcome” it if Congress acted, and has pointed to Mr. Kerry’s resolution as a good step.

    Sure! “I don’t much care what you think, but if you want to agree with me that’s a good step.” The Great Unwashed will never understand anyway.

  • This is why DC doesn’t have a voting member of Congress

    The residents of DC send complete knuckleheads to Congress whenever they get the opportunity to vote, that’s why they have no vote in Congress. When they thought they were getting two Senate seats when Clinton took office, DC residents had a straw election to prepare for the event – they elected Jesse Jackson who isn’t even a resident of DC to be their senator.

    Take this complete moron Eleanor Holmes Norton that is their non-voting delegate to the House of Representatives. With all of our economic woes, wars with no end in sight, homeless lining the streets, she wants us all to dance away our troubles;

    The Office of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today revealed two Norton efforts that she believes respond to the recent insistence of people to dance on the National Mall, an indication, she says, of public frustration with the underuse of the Mall for people-related activities. The Congresswoman, in conjunction with “So You Think You Can Dance” producer and judge Nigel Lythgoe, the Dizzy Feet Foundation and the Larry King Cardiac Foundation, will host National Dance Day on Saturday, July 30, 2011, on the National Mall.

    Yeah, the Park police shut down the Mall for a lot of these types of activities because of the criminal element that the events attracted. A workmate tells me that a woman was sexually assaulted in front of her family on the National Mall a few years back.

    So what inspired her to advance this new project and why would I mention it on a Milblog? Adam Kokesh and Medea Benjamin;

    Norton said she was glad that police showed restraint and avoided arrests of people dancing at the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday, but understood the frustration of some tourists who were cleared from the Lincoln Memorial for a period of time. A lawsuit, which would-be dancers lost in the U.S. Court of Appeals in 2011, and the arrests of dancers at the Lincoln Memorial last week have not stopped the desire of people to dance on the Mall, however.

    Now that’s inspirational. The Footloose Remake reaches Stage Two.

    Thanks to Suzie for the tip.