According to this article from The Hill -

Furious senior House aides are demanding committee action against a website that has posted their bank account numbers, signatures, home addresses and children’s names that are included in financial disclosure documents.

Some are demanding legal action against the website LegiStorm, which since February has been posting congressional documents online as a way to increase transparency in government. Aides have brought their complaints to the House Administration Committee and the clerk of the House.

But things don’t appear to be so dire when you read the response from Legistorm -

- The U.S. Congress wrote the law that requires disclosure of personal finances to aid in the fight against public corruption.

- Congressional staffers were the ones who voluntarily filed what they did in their personal financial disclosures. In a handful of disclosures, a tiny fraction of the total, staffers included unnecessary personal details like investment account numbers and children names. Their signature is the only detail that they now most complain about that is required.

- The Congress made these documents public. It did so after a one-month review process that concluded, apparently, that nothing was wrong with their disclosure.

- Neither the House nor the Senate require any form of identification to access this information. Anybody can access it without talking to a single person and by simply entering a fake name into a computer.

- We have voluntarily gone to significant lengths and costs already to scrub the most sensitive of information released due to staffer slipups and ethics committee oversight. This includes investment account numbers and Social Security numbers. We did so without delay.

- We have voluntarily provided various security measures such as user registration and authentication, a legal warning (one that is not present on two other heavily trafficked web sites that have for years provided member of Congress disclosures), and a human response system to make sure that automated bots cannot access the data.

So, instead of simply exposing the government documents to the world (which I would have no problems with) they have gone above and beyond what is required and attempted to clean up some of the mess which the Hill is complaining about.

Every time the government proposes new intrusions into its citizens private lives we hear the supporters repeat the mantra - “If you are innocent then you don’t have anything to hide”. It is high time that we turned the tables on the people who are behind the laws and regulations that infest our daily lives. They certainly seem to be doing alot of squirming and spreading alot of FUD about LegiStorm — I wonder what they are trying to hide from us?

Legendary actor, civil rights leader and political activist Charlton Heston passed away today, at the age of 84. He died at his home with Lydia, his wife of 64 years, at his side. Mr. Heston was loved by his two children, Fraser Clarke Heston and Holly Heston Rochell, and his three grandchildren, Jack Alexander Heston, Ridley Rochell and Charlie Rochell.

From Yahoo

El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa wants more guns - not for his deputies, but for citizens. “Offenders in the jail system tell me they avoid crimes against people because they know there is a very high concealed-carry rate,” Maketa told The Gazette.

Read the rest of the story here

HatTip to Say Uncle

… and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

“Seize Everything” certainly doesn’t look like they were particularly describing the things to be seized.

I fear that we are in for some dark times to come.

Joe Huffman has an update, apparently the ATF agent in charge is no stranger to the gun community.

The crucial question in the colonists’ minds, wrote John Dickerson in 1768, was ‘not, what evil HAS ACTUALLY ATTENDED particular measures — but what evil, in the nature of things, IS LIKELY TO ATTEND them.’ Because ‘nations, in general, are not apt to THINK until they FEEL, . . .therefore nations in general have lost their liberty.’ But not the Americans, as the Abbe Raynal observed. They were “an ‘enlightened people’ who knew their rights and the limits of power and who, unlike any people before them, aimed to think before they felt.”

He is making the comparison with the American Revolution and the lack of action by the German people when Hitler came to power. The Germans felt the impact of real, physical tyranny. The Founding Fathers anticipated the arrival of it and took action before it could irreversibly take hold.

At what point are we now? I am not sure, but we may be closer to the tipping point than any of us expect.

All I can say is that George Orwell’s view of the future continues to come true. A bit slower than 1984, but still on target.

GunBloggers uses the web.py framework, so it was simply a matter of creating a new class just for the top stories, and a new template to wrap the data in the RSS feed XML format.

Next up is The Firearm Blog, who focuses on firearm technology instead of politics. The articles range from gun reviews like this one on a black powder AR-15 to this video of a MG shooting down a RC airplane.

The most recent addition is New Jovian Thunderbolt, I came across this one when this article on using headspace gauges was link to by another GunBlogger member. This is another site with many gun review articles like this one on survival guns.

A Kent man who shot and killed a suspected intruder inside his home Saturday was armed with his own handgun when he walked in the door and found the stranger inside his home, police said.

Who else’s gun would he have? Its pretty hard to ‘take a gun away’ from someone else when you don’t have one yourself.

A man and woman came home to their condo on Kent’s East Hill at 6 p.m. Saturday to find another man inside. The 28-year-old homeowner used his own gun to shoot the suspected intruder, said Kent police spokesman Paul Petersen.

Suspected intruder? He caught the guy robbing his home — there is no suspected about it!

It’s unknown why the homeowner had a handgun, Petersen said.

Why? Its pretty damn obvious why! To protect himself against murders and thieves. Its a good thing he did, isn’t it? Otherwise you might have another unsolved murder to solve.

Police aren’t releasing the homeowners’ names. The dead man, believed in his mid-20s, has not been identified.

Neighbors reported four to five gunshots, but there were no witnesses other than the homeowners, Petersen said.

After the man was shot, he ran through a broken sliding-glass door and died in the backyard. He was carrying a bag that contained some stolen property from the couple’s home, Petersen said.

Nowhere in this article do they call the burglar what he is. They call him a ’suspected intruder’, and only at the end mention that he was carrying a bag with stolen items. Isn’t that the definition of burgling? I have a problem with the PI ‘reporter’ who wrote this, as well as with the Kent Police spokesman who wonders why the guy had a gun?