Defense Distributed Wins Case Against the Government

Technical specs for guns (3D-printed and otherwise) can now be online. A LANDMARK LEGAL SHIFT OPENS PANDORA’S BOX FOR DIY GUNS

He published 3D-printing instructions for a single-shot firearm. Called the Liberator. The federal government charged him with violating weapons export laws.. Instead of giving up (which his first lawyers advised him to do) he sued under the First Amendment to the Constitution. (Oh, and he fired those give-up lawyers.)

Instead, Wilson has spent the last years on an unlikely project for an anarchist: Not simply defying or skirting the law but taking it to court and changing it. In doing so, he has now not only defeated a legal threat to his own highly controversial gunsmithing project. He may have also unlocked a new era of digital DIY gunmaking that further undermines gun control across the United States and the world—another step toward Wilson’s imagined future where anyone can make a deadly weapon at home with no government oversight

The Wired Article is long, there are shorter versions of the story on other sites, but it is complete, including the reference to the Goliad flag.

While is isn’t a complete victory. (Wilson’s company got a unique license) it will be hard for the government to go after anyone else, since they basically admitted there were First Amendment issues with their original position. (Hat tip to Claire Wolfe.)

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The Coming War on Driving

Will it mirror the war on guns? Probably. The War on Driving to Come, by Charles C. W. Cooke, National Review

Will you be allowed to move yourself around? On your own schedule? Or will you only be allowed to travel as the .gov permits. Which will probably be only in car-pools.

Go read the whole thing.

This Year’s Election Makes Me Wonder About the Decline of Empires

A lot of people are familiar with Percy Shelley’s “Ozymandias,” but I think I really prefer the poem of the same name by Shelley’s friend, Horace Smith. Ozymandias Poem by Horace Smith – Poem Hunter

In Egypt’s sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desart knows:-
‘I am great OZYMANDIAS,’ saith the stone,
‘The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
‘The wonders of my hand.’- The City’s gone,-
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.

We wonder,-and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro’ the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

Nothing lasts forever. Eventually societies crumble under their own weight. I wonder if that is what we are seeing this year. The collapse of a great system under the weight of corruption, and incompetence. I don’t even like the 3rd party candidates.

CIA Spying on Senate (Illegally spying, that is)

The “intelligence services” are out of control. The director of the CIA maintained that the agency “did nothing wrong” until an Inspector General report said otherwise. Now he is apologetic. CIA Director Reverses Himself on Senate Spying | RealClear.

For months, CIA Director John Brennan stood firm in his insistence that the CIA had little to be ashamed of after searching the computers of the Senate Intelligence Committee. His defiant posture quickly collapsed after a devastating report by his own inspector general sided against the CIA on each key point of the dispute with the Senate.

Spying on Americans. Spying on the Senate. Lying about both. And mostly Republicans are keeping silent. (They love National Defense.) How about some Constitution defense?