Category: News

  • American Jihad and the Seattle Times

    The following information is summarized from the STRATFOR GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE REPORT. Entitled “FANNING THE FLAMES OF JIHAD” by Scott Stewart, the report discusses al Qaeda’s attempt to galvanize lone wolf terrorism or leaderless resistance by reaching out to English speaking individuals already located within the U.S. and other English speaking countries.

    Information that is presented in an article such as this one always seems to be about New York City or somewhere other than Seattle. Everything discussed herein is happening right now in Seattle. You will not read about it until arrests take place or terrorists kill innocent people because of the legal and political repurcussions that occur when the media starts naming people or identifying radical mosques. The threat is more than just the threats that CAIR or some other “civil liberties” group will take legal action, however. (more…)

  • Otis McDonald & the Second Amendment in Chicago

    The United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) may have decided the most important Second Amendment case in history on June 28, 2010. A previous landmark 2008 gun case, DC vs. HELLER, held that the Second Amendment guarantees a personal right of self-defense. Yes, the U.S. Constitution actually means what the Founding Fathers thought they meant when they drafted it! The Bill of Rights only began to be applied to the states by means of the 14th Amendment, enacted after the Civil War to protect newly freed citizens from the tyranny of Southern regimes that deployed de jure force of law and de facto intimidation to perpetuate slavery.

    In MCDONALD VS. CHICAGO, the Court acknowledged that the 14th Amendment aims at prohibiting firearms restrictions enacted against Blacks and enforced by armed white mobs often via the noose-end of a rope! Otis McDonald, the 76 year-old African-American Plaintiff in the case, is a neighborhood activist targeted who boldly he stood up to thugs that lay claim to the streets of Chicago. (more…)

  • Can We Expand Air Force JROTC in Federal Way Schools?

    Federal Way High School ROTC Programs Build Character

    By Mark S. Knapp

    Federal Way School District’s retiring superintendent Tom Murphy gets kudos for obtaining results. But educators and parents tend to compare their local schools favorably to other schools. Just as most folks dislike politicians or lawyers but tend to favor their own local officials and personal attorney, most people deny that their own local schools may be failing their students. Raising the issue of an “achievement gap” can get a critic labeled as a crank or worse. (more…)

  • Ahmed Ressam’s Trial in Seattle & the International War on Israel

    Israel presently faces an indictment in the court of world opinion because of the allegation that the IDF deployed unjustified lethal force against “peace activists” when it boarded the MAVI MARMARA. Nine activists were killed including a U.S. citizen with dual Turkish citizenship. Would Tea Party activists armed with steel poles and grenades, knives and possibly guns be identified as peace activists? (more…)

  • The Violent Crime Rate in Seattle, Tacoma & Phoenix

    I recently suggested in my column, The Firearms Lawyer (see FEDERAL WAY MIRROR), that violent crime has increased in Phoenix. Apparently it has actually gone down! But Arizona’s violent crime rate is nevertheless still well above the national average and Phoenix and Tucson compare particularly unfavorably with most other U.S. cities!

    A recent Wall Street Journal story shows that crime has actually been going down over most of the U.S. “For the first quarter of 2010, violent crime was down 17% overall in the city (of Phoenix), while homicides were down 38% and robberies 27%, compared with the same period in 2009.”

    Despite the fact that the violent crime rate has gone down in Phoenix, the murder rate was 2.4 times the national average in 2003. The murder rate from 2008 to 2009 has dropped 26.2 percent. In 2003, Phoenix was ranked number seventeen in the U.S for violent crime with Tucson number eighteen. (more…)

  • Death & Lawlessness in the Sierra Madre Threaten U.S. Border

    There are 10 peaks over 14,000 feet high in the Sangre de Cristo range.

    I am intrigued by the fact that the inhabitants of New Mexico’s scarred spaces were the last to submit to North American law. After reading a biography of Kit Carson, I recently came across a travelogue titled “God’s Middle Finger.” The author decided to travel into the Sierra Madre, the jagged range that climbs to 11,000 feet through 900 miles of Northern Mexico — starting just south of Tucson, Ariz. (more…)

  • What Would John Adams Do?

    I cut my teeth as a Structural Ironworker but I love literature and philosophy. Standing on a steel I-beam forty stories above the streets of San Francisco with a load of iron swinging over my head taught me about what was important. (more…)

  • Municipal Governments Complying with Washington State Gun Laws

    http://www.pnwlocalnews.c…n/92228714.html

    Interpretation of Washington state gun laws | Firearms Lawyer

    By MARK KNAPP
    Reprinted with permission of Federal Way Mirror
    Apr 27 2010, 1:42 PM

    The Port of Seattle recently amended its rules to permit wearing a weapon in the passenger terminal outside of the areas where the metal detectors are located. The Port is just one municipality that has quietly conformed to Washington state’s firearms preemption statute.

    The City of Seattle is frivolously appealing King County Superior Court Judge Catherine Shaffer’s order to stop enforcing a city gun ban by Feb. 17, and to take down the “No Guns” signs that were posted at parks and community centers around the Emerald City. (more…)

  • Anti-Gun Bias at the New York Times

    The New York Times published the following article in August, 2006. Entitled States Expand Right to Shoot in Self-Defense, the article is a particularly trenchant example of media bias. Adam Liptak regularly reports on legal matters and covers many gun stories for the New York Times. We will be analyzing some of the bias and try to get the rest of the story when we have more time. (more…)

  • The Assault on Guns in Washington State: Sen. Kline’s Weapon Ban Hearings

    Linda Pillo, Bellevue Washington’s police chief, was named chief in January, 2008. She bested five other candidates from around the nation. Pillo, 53, is the first woman chief in Bellevue. She told the local Seattle news media that running a police department was “something she never expected to do when she started police work on Mercer Island after graduating from Washington State University in 1978”. She aspired to be a supervisor, however.

    At the Senate hearings on January 26, 2010, she showed the world how she rose so quickly through the ranks after joining the Bellevue department in 1986 and rising from lieutenant to captain, major, deputy chief, chief and now as a chief that chops wood and hauls water for left-wing trial lawyers like Adam Kline. Pillo sat in front of Washington State Senator Adam Kline’s judiciary committee and called everyone’s attention to studies conducted by the International Association of Chief’s of Police (IACP) and the anti-gun, Chicago-based Joyce Foundation. The two groups jointly sponsored “THE GREAT LAKES SUMMIT ON GUN VIOLENCE”. (more…)