Ski forecast in hell: packed powder base, inches of fresh powder on all slopes.  That’s no more surprising than finding that Senator Dianne Feinstein and I agree on something. (I quote the entire article below.)

Few things are more vital to protection of civil liberties than government transparency. Though I most often oppose her conventional and predictable statist positions, she is fairly aggressive in guarding against unnecessary government secrecy.  The current and previous presidential administrations have expanded federal opacity to dangerous levels.  Kudos to Senator Feinstein for demanding better…at least in this case.

The CIA’s internal watchdog claims it accidentally deleted its only copy of the controversial “torture report” outlining the agency’s use of enhanced interrogations techniques, the latest wrinkle in the saga over the report’s publication.

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s 6,700-page report has not yet been made public by the Obama administration and has been at the center over a years-long fight to make the report public. There are other copies of the report at other federal agencies.

Former Chair and current ranking Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein has been pushing for the report to be released while Republican Chairman Richard Burr has opposed even distribution of the full report to the executive branch, let alone the public.

Yahoo News first reported Monday that the CIA inspector general had “mistakenly” deleted both the electronic and hard copy of the report. Yahoo reported that officials deleted the uploaded version of the report and then accidentally destroyed a disk that contained the report.

Other agencies have been given copies of the report but the development has alarmed Feinstein, who immediately wrote to CIA Director John Brennan and Attorney General Loretta Lynch calling for the IG to be given another copy “immediately.”

“Your prompt response will allay my concern that this was more than an ‘accident,'” Feinstein wrote pointedly to Brennan and Lynch.

The error comes just days after a federal appeals court Friday rejected efforts to release the full version of the report, upholding a lower court decision that said the report is a congressional record exempt from disclosure laws.

The committee released a 500-plus-page summary of the report to the public in 2014, but the American Civil Liberties Union sued to obtain the full version.

This evening I discovered why seed consumption has tripled from the bird feeders.  A pair of Monk Parakeets have discovered the stash.  They are voracious, raucous, verdant scoundrels.  I like them here; they fit right in.

Late Saturday afternoon, so Jenny decided that all work stops for the day so that petting can begin.

One of my many objections to “progressivism” is its belief that government – the state – acts as a force for the public good superior to the “ordered anarchy” (the libertarian term for it) of individuals and markets unencumbered by the state.  The arguments of progressives and statists, to even pretend any semblance of validity, must assume that the state behaves with objective disinterest to a degree greater than the society it governs.  The flaw in this theory lies, or course, in the actors who maneuver the instruments of the state: human beings.

In December, two prominent New York state politicians were convicted on corruption charges.  They were assessed fines and sentenced to prison terms.  Justice fairly and rightly served, no?  No.  State laws in New York – which almost rivals Illinois in the breadth and depth of its political corruption – provide that both men (one Democrat, one Republican) receive their state pensions in spite of their criminal convictions:

“Despite their criminal convictions, two of New York’s former top lawmakers won’t be suffering financial hardship.

“Both former New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and former Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos will be receiving sizeable pensions.

“The New York State Comptroller’s Office said Silver will get a monthly pension of just over $6,000. Skelos will receive just under $8,000 per month.

“Both men retired from their top political jobs just after their December 2015 convictions on federal corruption charges.

“Silver’s pension will add up to $79,222.68 per year. Skelos will get $95,831.52 per year.”

These pensions are funded by New York taxpayers.  In spite of their criminal behavior, Silver and Skelos are still subsidized while in prison and for the remainder of their life by the very constituents they betrayed.

They are not alone.  More than a dozen other criminal politicians in New York are being subsidized by taxpayers:

“…New York’s pension system is paying out about $531,000 per year to 14 other former state lawmakers and officials who have been convicted of a crime.”

To my progressive/statist readers I ask: where in the private sector, which you are so quick to belittle and control, will you find convicted criminals who are provided retirement benefits courtesy of taxpayers?  You will not.  Only those who control the levers of the state can grant themselves such grotesque and illiberal booty.

We owe no allegiance to any government or state which so criminally burdens us.  Those who have forgotten who they serve deserve nothing but scorn and rebellion from those so ill-served.

Tuesday morning I bid farewell to three old friends who stood by me until well into my 59th year: my remaining wisdom teeth.  Only one truly needed removing, for being ‘hyper erupted’ due to lacking an opposing tooth, but experts recommended the others be let go, also.

I was a good boy for three and a half days, following all inhuman instructions and guidelines – soft food only, no tobacco or alcohol, dreary medication regimen (except for the codeine pills – I’d have to be writhing in pain first, and I wasn’t) – but tonight, being Friday, I rebelled against that dental tyranny, and indulged in my lovely routine of Scotch and smoke.  At my age, I don’t suffer fools or foolishness lightly.

One of the few remaining targets of prejudice, sanctioned by state and private entities, are gun owners and gun-rights organizations.  Evidence of this seems increasingly common; indeed, I find examples almost every week.

The city of San Francisco recently imposed restrictions on legal gun businesses so severe that the last gun store in the city had to leave.  Now the city council of Daly City, California, has refused to allow a gun store to open in that town, even though the proposed business met all requirements of the city charter and had received approval from the town’s planning commission.  Council members voting against the business had no standing law or ordinance on which to base their decision; the 3-2 majority and some residents simply didn’t like the type of business.  This is a perfect example of prejudice: unfairly disfavoring and burdening one type of people or group based upon ideological preferences – burdens not impartially applied to other businesses.

The National Rifle Association (of which I am a member) has for years held an annual outdoor sports show at the huge Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.  The show is scheduled again for February.  The NRA pays Harrisburg police officers to provide security.  This year, Eric Papenfuse, the Democrat mayor of Harrisburg – who has publicly proclaimed his personal dislike of the NRA – imposed preposterously onerous demands of the NRA: a 60% cost increase and a $250,000 grant to the city.  The NRA declined, but made what seems like a very reasonable counter-offer – a 33% increase in pay and a $25,000 grant to the city.  Instead of accepting, Papenfuse rescinded all offers and refused to allow the hiring of Harrisburg police for security.  No other group using the Harrisburg facility has had such demands made of them.

The NRA has produced television ads for the show.  The ads include brief images of guns, as one would expect for an outdoor sports event.  Comcast told the NRA it will not broadcast the ads unless all images of guns – even shooting ranges! – no matter how innocuous or fleeting, are removed.  About 200,000 people are expected to attend, many to see guns used for hunting and sport shooting.

By doing so, Comcast is imposing censorship of a right established in the U.S. constitution, and one enjoyed by tens of millions of Americans.  And of course, countless movies and TV shows which include guns and gun violence are broadcast over the many channels carried by Comcast.

As is my habit, I have tried to construct a logical argument for why this is not selective prejudice.  I can think of none.

Kudos to Arizona Governor Doug Ducey for appointing Clint Bolick to the state Supreme Court.

Bolick, often described as a jurist who stands for “the little guy,” is one of the most principled and independent thinkers appointed to any state court in years.  Though derided by the left as a dangerous conservative (ThinkProgress calls him “The most Chilling Political Appointment You’ve Never Heard Of”), Bolick has taken stands against conventional positions of the left and the right (he is vocal in his condemnation of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, for instance, and he suffered criticism from John McCain for opposing taxpayer-supported funding of a professional sports stadium – another reason I like the man.)

He made his name defending small, independent business owners – and aspiring business owners – against government oppression and injustice (the primary source of the left’s hatred of him), and against government abuses of civil forfeiture.  For these, he has won my admiration and gratitude.

When statists opppose a jurist so vehemently, my first instinct is to suspect that we have a worthy man or woman. I can only wish that men and women like Bolick will fill the Texas courts for generations to come.

An interesting story about the day that Boris Yeltsin toured Clear Lake, Texas.  How you goin’ to keep ‘em on the communal farm, once they’ve seen a big honkin’ Texas grocery store?

(The store is still open, under a different name.  I can almost see it from my office window.)

“It was September 16, 1989 and Yeltsin, then newly elected to the new Soviet parliament and the Supreme Soviet, had just visited Johnson Space Center.

“At JSC, Yeltsin visited mission control and a mock-up of a space station. According to Houston Chronicle reporter Stefanie Asin, it wasn’t all the screens, dials, and wonder at NASA that blew up his skirt, it was the unscheduled trip inside a nearby Randall’s location.

“Yeltsin, then 58, ‘roamed the aisles of Randall’s nodding his head in amazement,’ wrote Asin. He told his fellow Russians in his entourage that if their people, who often must wait in line for most goods, saw the conditions of U.S. supermarkets, ‘there would be a revolution.”’

………………….

“In Yeltsin’s own autobiography, he wrote about the experience at Randall’s, which shattered his view of communism, according to pundits. Two years later, he left the Communist Party and began making reforms to turn the economic tide in Russia. You can blame those frozen Jell-O Pudding pops.

‘“When I saw those shelves crammed with hundreds, thousands of cans, cartons and goods of every possible sort, for the first time I felt quite frankly sick with despair for the Soviet people,” Yeltsin wrote. “That such a potentially super-rich country as ours has been brought to a state of such poverty! It is terrible to think of it.”’

In response to my post about the new open carry law in Texas, I am asked: “as you say that you will most likely continue carrying in a concealed manner, what, in your view, is the advantage of openly carrying?”

My fundamental reason for supporting, even celebrating the new law is that it expands personal liberty; convenience or “advantage” matter far less.  Indeed, this for me is sufficient in itself to justify the law.  If citizens of good standing may carry handguns for self-defense – and I believe strongly that they may, for reasons both constitutional and of natural right – then I believe no government may dictate how a citizen chooses to do so.

If I choose to carry concealed more often than not, my decision is made for reasons of discretion, convenience and propriety, not disagreement with the law.  (I don’t believe that open carry is appropriate in some situations, and I wouldn’t usually carry openly simply to make a statement.) Whether I carry openly infrequently or not at all, I stand for the right to do so.  There are many activities and freedoms which I choose not to engage in, but which I oppose the state denying me.

Before anyone accuses me of being a “gun nut,” let us recall that state governments have altered and eliminated gun rights for the purpose of political and civil discrimination.  The prohibition against carrying handguns – openly or concealed – is the last enabled relic (that I am aware of) of old Jim Crow laws and “Black Codes” in Texas state law.  The prohibition is racist in origin and purpose, and thus a standing example of government oppression.

The ban was originally established by Republicans during Reconstruction, to prevent Confederate veterans from continuing the rebellion.  When Democrats gained control of Texas government in 1871 (a dominance they kept until the 1990s), they expanded the ban in place to provide for easy – and selective – prosecution of blacks who might have the audacity to carry a gun.  Clayton E. Cramer, who has a written a book on the subject, summarizes:

“’Throughout much of American history, gun control was openly stated as a method for keeping blacks and Hispanics ‘in their place,’ and to quiet the racial fears of whites,” Cramer wrote for the Kansas Journal of Law and Public Policy in 1995. “The former states of the Confederacy, many of which had recognized the right to carry arms openly before the Civil War, developed a very sudden willingness to qualify that right. One especially absurd example, and one that includes strong evidence of the racist intentions behind gun control laws, is Texas.’”

For a rather supporting viewpoint from the left on this subject, please read this article in The Daily Beast.  I found it interesting that the NRA (of which I am a member) once supported gun laws which unjustly oppressed the rights of black citizens; fortunately, they long ago shed themselves of such positions.

Seen in this light, the Texas legislature has not newly allowed anything; it has repealed a ban on a right that – if justice and equality are our measures – never should have been enacted in the first place.  A liberty which stood from the Founding (and from Texas statehood in 1845) until Reconstruction has been restored in Texas.

The open carry law also removes the possibility of prosecution for accidental or inadvertent display of a legally concealed handgun.  I think this was rarely prosecuted, but it imposed a burden on licensed citizens that I believe was unjustified.

Lastly, convenience.  Clothing and situation can make concealment difficult or unwieldy, especially with dress suitable for Texas summer temperatures.

Two questions of my own: on grounds that meet the tests of logical reasoning, how can these be seeming contradictions be reconciled:

1. Private, commercial and religious groups may not, by law, refuse to participate in activities to which they object, such as gay marriages,* even on grounds of religious objections, but may refuse to participate in laws providing for the legal right to carry handguns, based on any or no reason at all.  (Even in Texas, businesses may refuse, with no justification required, to allow either or both concealed and open carry.)
2. Why are some state-issued licenses, such as driver’s licenses and marriage licenses, observed by all states (the Full Faith and Credit clause, along with the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision establish this, though some important issues remain unresolved), while some states refuse to recognize handgun carry licenses by other states? (The most egregious example: days ago, the Attorney General of Virginia unilaterally – without consultation with or approval of the state legislature, and without consulting the other states themselves – nullified that state’s recognition of handgun carry licenses issued by 24 other states.)

*For the record, I support the right of gay people to marry, based on the same principles that guide my positions on gun rights: faith in individual liberty, fairness and equality.

I supported Mr. Abbott in his campaign for governor, and he’s given me several reasons to be glad I did.  On this issue, he stands with the majority of the citizens he represents.