Author Archives: TMM

A basic principal to our criminal justice system centers around intent.  The increase in felonies, victimless laws, and other crimes in which no intent is required is becoming increasingly disturbing.  Thankfully someone else is noticing.

For centuries, a bedrock principle of criminal law has held that people must know they are doing something wrong before they can be found guilty. The concept is known as mens rea, Latin for a “guilty mind.”

This legal protection is now being eroded as the U.S. federal criminal code dramatically swells. In recent decades, Congress has repeatedly crafted laws that weaken or disregard the notion of criminal intent. Today not only are there thousands more criminal laws than before, but it is easier to fall afoul of them.

The article goes on to state how a man was arrested and served time in jail for much the same as selling a firearm.  His mistake was he hadn’t fully vetted the person buying the product.  He had no intent to break the law, he had a reasonable belief the transaction was legal, but that was not good enough.

The whole point of our legal system no longer centers around protecting the innocent but bringing in as many as possible.  Convicted felons have numerous rights stripped, including some that cannot even be restored through the courts.

It gets better though because those creating the laws and enforcing them are also confiscating the property of those they charge.  Then you have State Sponsored Criminals walking off with the confiscated materials.  How bad could this over criminalization be though?

Overall, more than 40% of nonviolent offenses created or amended during two recent Congresses—the 109th and the 111th, the latter of which ran through last year—had “weak” mens rea requirements at best, according to a study conducted by the conservative Heritage Foundation and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

(Emphasis mine.)  Do you really think that is by accident?  It certainly isn’t a coincidence.  What better way to control the public than by criminalizing all of them.  The government is continually driving that wedge of us vs. them.  Any law that is victimless, I.E. ownership and possession laws, do nothing other than criminalize many who would otherwise be law abiding.

Remember, the government is not your friend.

This young man had done nothing wrong.  These officer were out looking for a good time, nothing more.  Not to mention the fact that he quite obviously through his appearance and speech has down syndrome.  He was the perfect victim for these bored officers to abuse.

A bulge could be any of a number of things that do not include a weapon.  I can think of many which are health related.  I have a friend who has a bulge due to an insulin pump.  My dad had a bulge from his pain meds just before he passed away.  This doesn’t even include the idea that maybe clothes got bunched up, or they are concealing something they would just rather not have seen.

The idea that concealing something automatically provides a reason for law-enforcement to stop, detain, and search you is disconcerting on so many levels it’s not even funny.  Especially since a search is not legal unless you are being placed under arrest.

Looking at this from another point of view, what if that had been a legal concealed carrier?  That person could have been easily ventilated on the sidewalk by what appears to be Officer Roid-Rages yet another of cousins.

State Sponsored Criminal Count: 103, 140  Officer John Doe 1*, and Officer John Doe 2*

Because a bulge is the first sign you’re about to have a good time, well at least that’s what she said.

*If you find the names of the officers, please contact me. 

I received an alert this afternoon that actually took me by surprise.

A security firm revealed today that mysql.com, the
central repository for widely-used Web database software, was hacked and
booby-trapped to serve visitors with malicious software. The disclosure
caught my eye because just a few days ago I saw evidence that
administrative access to mysql.com was being sold on the hacker
underground for just $3,000.

This wasn’t idiot malware either where people are conned into a dialog box.

Web security firm Armorize stated in its blog that mysql.com was poisoned with a script that invisibly redirects visitors to a Web site that uses the BlackHole exploit pack, an automated exploit toolkit that probes visiting browsers for a variety of known security holes.

“It exploits the visitor’s browsing platform (the browser, the
browser plugins like Adobe Flash, Adobe PDF, etc, Java, …), and upon
successful exploitation, permanently installs a piece of malware into
the visitor’s machine, without the visitor’s knowledge,” say the
researchers. “The visitor doesn’t need to click or agree to anything;
simply visiting mysql.com with a vulnerable browsing platform will
result in an infection.”

This type of exploit is still easily defensible by using the proper browsing plugins, such as no-script, ad-block, and making sure they are a default deny state.  Remember that just because you trust  a site today doesn’t make it trustworthy tomorrow.  Be cautious and be aware.  Condition yellow applies to the internet just as it does in reality.

If you can do your web browsing through a VM you might want to do exactly that.  I did do that for a long time but eventually laziness won since it didn’t actually get me much in the way of extra security.  I’ve seen how easily something can go bad without doing anything questionable.  I had malware, which was thankfully caught, that tried to install itself when I clicked to look at a screen shot of an upcoming game on a Google image search.

If you’ve been to MySQL.com recently make sure to check your machine out.  I have a feeling this attack was targeted like it did because most of the people who visit that site are likely to have elevated privileges on other systems.  While most of those visitors will be security savvy, many also would have likely been trusting due to who the host was.

When asked why he had marijuana, prescription pills and drug paraphernalia in his patrol car, former Pasco deputy Marshall Todd DeBerry told investigators:

“All I can say is I’m a disorganized moron,” a report states.

Supposedly this man was not up to anything and this was just disorganization.  Yet there is something in the back of my head that says that there’s more here.

He rose to the rank of corporal until 2008, when he was reassigned to patrol deputy and suspended two days without pay for warning an informant of an impending raid, according to a report in his personnel file.

Coupled with the following:

DeBerry resigned from the Sheriff’s Office in February after he became ensnared in a criminal investigation. Authorities then would not provide any details about the allegations.

At least in this case the department in question is finally doing something about it.  Though I doubt the punishment will be anything substantial. 

State Sponsored Criminal Count: 102, Marshall Todd DeBerry

Because truthfully every cop car should just be a rolling drug dealer.  If you need your fix, just find a cop car right?

For those who have worked manufacturing explosives at Boomershoot.  You already know how miserable the elements can make that situation.  Even at the end of April, snow and sleet are not unheard of, high winds are common, and it can make manufacturing just down right miserable.

Well yesterday we took delivery of the new manufacturing facility and put it in place.

Joe oversaw the delivery of the container.  It took us a bit of figuring out of how to get it in place so we could finish leveling it properly.  After the containers was put in it’s temporary location we headed to town for lunch.  We had some other business to take care of in tow (which I’m sure Joe will explain later).  Let’s just say yesterday murphy’s law was in full force.

Ry learned that the High-Lift jack wasn’t stable enough to lift the container so we could move the tie’s.  The first time we lifted it, it shifted about a foot to the left.  At that point we hooked it up to the blade of the dozer and used the dozer to lift it.  Lastly we resorted to my floor jack for the finesse changes for height.

At this point we began the task of moving material between the Taj and Mecca.  Some people often ask me why I have a full size truck with a long bed.  This is why!

Twenty five, 50 lbs. bags of Ammonium Nitrate and the 55 gallon drum of Potassium Chlorate weren’t just going to move themselves.  Once we dropped those off I went back for the tables.  While gone Joe got some other interior work done.  When I arrived back he said, “Let there be light.”  And there was light!

That’s right the side of the container is wired with outlets and lights to aid in manufacturing.  The good news is for those who help make this stuff, no more standing in the wet and cold!

By the end of the day we were all exhausted.  It was in the high 80’s out there most of the time and all of the work was labor intensive.  But come spring it will all be worth it.  TMW is all giddy about not having to freeze and become soaking wet while making explosives.

Recently the FBI updated their UCS data to reflect the information including 2010.  For those who are new to the blog, earlier this year I ripped apart the scorecard against the 2009 UCS, as well as the 2006 census data.*

I spent this morning updating my spreadsheets to the 2010 UCS data.  Here’s the overall result:

While R² has increased, it is still inconsequential and shows absolutely zero correlation over the entire data set.  It is worth nothing though the overall score vs. crime trend has gone from being slightly negative to positive.  By looking at the plot, you can see that different scores are scattered across the entire field of crime rates.  So let’s look at just states who scored above 50.

Correlation decreased for all scores above 50, however it still shows a positive trend towards an increase in violent crime.  This trend though, like the overall chart is extremely weak due to the low R² value. 

Again a low correlation, however again it’s a positive trend for a higher score.  Still only three states, 15%, with a score above 20 had a crime rate below 300.  Those still were sitting toward the higher crime rates.  Again I normalized the data and examined the distribution confidence.

For this graph I took everything around the peak normalized value for 25% of each side.  In other words everything between the 25th percentile and 75th percentile is included.  Notice how it looks like a shot gun blast, though what is interesting is the cluster of points with low Brady scores.  That region includes 24 data points, of which only 8 have scores above 20.  The highest scores amazingly appear with that confidence range, along with every other score.

So as previously noted the Brady score means absolutely nothing.  Linoge has examined the 2010 UCR as the pertain to firearms.  He has also detailed other firearm related data from the CDC.

Seeing Linoge’s graphs, as well as mine has given me an idea for a couple more graphs that I want to create to help view trends in context with other data.  There’s another project for me to work on.

*You are free to repost these graphs, however I must request that you provide a direct link back to these posts. Some individuals seem to think that providing credit to those who put forth the effort to create these doesn’t really matter.  Please, don’t be that dick.  It takes a lot of time to organize the data and graph it. If you don’t feel it takes that much time, do it yourself. So if you want to use these graphs, feel free, please just provide proper credit.

So all the cool kids whipped out their knives earlier this week to show off what they normally carry.  I was busy, blah, blah, blah, but here’s my normal carry knives.

That is my primary knife, it’s a SOG Trident Tanto.  That thing gets put through it’s paces between opening stuff and work and general light use in the shop.  I don’t use it for heavy work in the shop because that’s what quick change utility knifes are for.  The above is kept sharp and I’ll use for food at restaurants that don’t give me decent cutlery.  I’ll use it for light skinning, though I have a couple other knives I prefer to use for hunting as the blades are easier to work with.

That is a SOG PowerLock EOD.  It is by far the best multi-tool I’ve ever used.  Some multi-tools have a weird feeling in your hand as you try to use the pliers, not these.  They are rock solid no matter the angle of the handles.  Those get used all the time at work for crimping, cutting, and other various wire work that I need to do.

I’m a bit partial to SOG since they’re made here in Washington.  I have a Buck that’s worn well, but nothing has taken the abuse like my SOGs.