Respectfully Submitted by Lawrence Rafferty (rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
When it comes to the Second Amendment and guns, it seems that President Obama can’t make anyone happy. Ever since Obama announced his candidacy for the Presidency, the NRA has screamed that Obama will be taking away the guns. This scare tactic continued when Obama defeated John McCain for the Presidency. Just what has Barack Obama done to make the NRA and gun owners frightened for their guns? The simple answer to this question is nothing. The head of the National Rifle Association, Mr. Wayne LaPierre actually admitted recently that Obama has done nothing to attack gun owner’s rights to bear arms, but claims Obama’s inaction against guns is actually a conspiracy to take away guns!! ‘ “[The Obama campaign] will say gun owners — they’ll say they left them alone,” LaPierre told an audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Friday. “In public, he’ll remind us that he’s put off calls from his party to renew the Clinton [assault weapons] ban, he hasn’t pushed for new gun control laws… The president will offer the Second Amendment lip service and hit the campaign trail saying he’s actually been good for the Second Amendment.” “But it’s a big fat stinking lie!” the NRA leader exclaimed. “It’s all part of a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and destroy the Second Amendment in our country.” ‘ Raw Story
Now, before anyone thinks I am making this stuff up, the linked site includes a video clip wherein Mr. LaPierre verbalizes this alleged reverse conspiracy. Mr. LaPierre makes a point of throwing in the necessary names of alleged liberal co-conspirators to rev up his base. ‘ “Sotomayor, Kagan, Fast & Furious, the United Nations, executive orders. Those are the facts we face today… President Obama and his cohorts, yeah, they’re going to deny their conspiracy to fool gun owners. Some in the liberal media, they are already probably blogging about it. But we don’t care because the lying, conniving Obama crowd can kiss our Constitution!” ‘
The lying, conniving Obama crowd as Mr. LaPierre labels them has not done anything to harm the Second Amendment rights that the NRA claims to be at risk. I was interested in the last few words of LaPierre’s quotation above. The phrase “kiss our Constitution” appears to lay claim that the NRA and its followers own the Constitution and its protections. I could have sworn that my law school Constitutional professors taught me that the Constitution protects all citizens, but maybe I heard them wrong. But, I digress.
As the Raw Story article suggests, President Obama has actually taken heat from his own supporters over his alleged conspiracy to not take away the guns. NPR Does Mr. LaPierre provide any evidence of this bizarre claim? None that I could find. Maybe you will have better luck than me in finding evidence of presidential actions to hide President Obama’s intentions and/or actions of stealing legal guns from their owners.
I have to admit that if you read the comments section of the NPR article that details how the Left is disappointed with Obama’s inaction on gun control, you will read almost nothing except gun owners claiming that Obama’s words of inaction are actually code words that the End is Near and the Sky is Falling for gun owners! Just what will it take gun owners to ask Mr. LaPierre for evidence of his wild claims? I, for one would love to hear his answer to that question. I understand that candidate and President Obama may have stayed away from the 2nd Amendment issues for political reasons, but where is the evidence of this alleged conspiracy? I would think Fox News would be sending Bill O’Reilly’s reporters all over the country to uncover such a heinous conspiracy.
If Mr. Obama has not written any executive orders or supported additional legislative steps to control or take away guns since he has become President, just what is the basis for these wild claims? I realize that the NRA has a financial interest in getting gun owners scared into buying more guns, but are there other, underlying reasons why the gun owners are frightened so easily, when the facts do not support the NRA’s claims?
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence Rafferty (rafflaw)- Guest Blogger
Additional sources: Gun Owners of America; NRA-ILA; Pajamas Media;
Note: just to make it clear, in real life, I actually do not know where Gene keeps his adult diapers, and I do not plan on rubbing chili pepper on them. That was not a real threat up above, but merely a hy-po-the-ti-cal to provide Gene an example to work with.
Woosty remains feline,
Now I’m scared again…
Bron said:
You’re an extremist Bron (and a hypocritical one at that, since you don’t want a free market, you want a market biased towards corporations) – as in most cases, the best solutions is not an extreme, but a blend of different systems in appropriate places. The Founding Fathers understood this – that’s why we’re a Democratic Republic, not a Democracy – and certainly not the plutocracy that following your philosophy would result in….
anon Quixotic,
You keep talking about how Professor Turley is a civil libertarian and implying that I’m violating people’s civil liberties – here’s how my dictionary defines civil liberties:
As I am not an arm of the government, I fail to see how I could possibly violate someone’s civil liberties?
As for anonymity:
Since no one I “outed” was identified by name (or email address), I couldn’t have violated anyone’s anonymity.
Looks like for all of your pathetic whining, I haven’t done the horrible things you’ve accused me of. What does that make you? I’d say it makes you a lying POS, but maybe that’s just me – or maybe you’re just an incompetent moron who doesn’t know what he’s talking about…
Okay Gene,
You keep telling me about Locard’s principle and starbucks. And clearly I just don’t understand.
Please tell me one more time how a truly anonymous post to this specific forum cannot be made from my nearby Starbucks.
Please outline, according to Locard’s principle, exactly what records are made, and how that will inexorably lead the authorities back to me.
If it helps any, assume the following:
I drive to a best buy and using cash, I buy a new usb wifi adapter.
I take my year old laptop runing windows 7 and that adapter and drive to a starbucks 20 miles away — I confess I live in the 5th largest city in the united states a land locked desert hellhole of 4 million sprawled over 250 square miles.
At that starbucks, I order a double espresso. It arrives in a paper cup. This galls me to no end, because espresso, even at Starbucks, should be served in a ceramic, or glass cup. I put in my usual American’s amount of sugar, and cream, and spying some Europeans looking at me from the balcony against the snow capped peak of one of the countries few mountains topping 14,000 feet, I chug back that espresso in one gulp, flagrantly tossing the paper cup into the trash.
I install the wifi adapter, connect to their wifi, click yes on their terms of service, and visit this page.
I leave the following, threatening note: “Gene H.,I know where you keep your adult diapers, and I plan to go there tomorrow night, and rub chili pepper over all of them.
I then leave the Starbucks, and laughing maniacally, ten miles down the road, and I throw the new wifi adapter into the ocean.
So Inspector Retǻrd, how exactly is that post not anonymous?
anon Koch toady,
You’ve mistaken me for someone who doesn’t think you’re simply a paid troll or a random jackass. Also, “Expert”, we’ve covered the whole “go to Starbucks” strategy and you still apparently don’t understand Locard’s principle. You can call me whatever you like (as your opinion means absolutely nothing to me or most people I would suspect), but that won’t change the fact you’re simply not nearly as bright or as invisible on the Internet as you think you are. If you use the Internet and somebody wants to find you bad enough and has the resources, they will find you eventually.
“This comment will also have an affect on every man reading the blog – it just wont scare them… ”
———————————————————
fear is overated and under-efficient …. 🙂
rafflaw,
“I want to echo what Elaine mentioned earlier. Chris Christie is a Liberal????”
I haven’t heard back yet from Bron. He hasn’t provided his reasons yet for his claim that Christie is a liberal. So it goes…
“…..requires protection of the trolls, zombies, and sockpuppets.”
Having said that, I do think the identity of whistleblowers and others who post anonymously need to be protected. That is NOT the same as outing trolls, zombies and sockpuppets by username. Usernames are still anonymous.
A couple of thoughts.
One is that the Gravatar bug, as I’ve explained above, means that usernames are no longer anonymous and can be correlated through their email address. This is true even for people who have never created a Gravatar account.
The email address field says “Email (required) (Not published)”, but the truth is, the privacy leak is, that a simple, very unique, practically unique (though not completely unique) mathematical coding of the email address IS published.
So if you publish at several blogs, say you’re Gene H / geneh@gmail.com here, but you’re GenePak97 / geneh@gmail.com at the Moran Support Blog that third parties can completely determine that Dribbler87 is Gene H here.
And with that, there are other techniques, like befriending Gene H here, that can be used to get Dribbler87’s actual email address, and use that to embarrass Gene, or whatever.
For this reason and others I have explained above, and that the lawyer explained and the developers explained, the Gravatar issue is real.
This is one reason I have suggested to Professor Turley that he, as a civil libertarian, approach WordPress and Gravatar and ask them to fix the bug, OR to remove the “(Not published)” or even the email field entirely from his templates. And to warn commenters that their usernames and email addresses are vulnerable to attack. (As I linked above). And to tell people how to make their email address more secure. (Add random letters to it.)
And this brings up the other insight.
Having said that, I do think the identity of whistleblowers and others who post anonymously need to be protected. That is NOT the same as outing trolls, zombies and sockpuppets by username. Usernames are still anonymous.
Protection of whistleblowers and others who post anonymously almost certainly, and perhaps regrettably, requires protection of the trolls, zombies, and sockpuppets.
If the moderator of the forum doesn’t like certain commenters, moderation, banning, devowelization, shading, voting down, and many other techniques can be used to protect the forum, while protecting the speech.
I want to echo what Elaine mentioned earlier. Chris Christie is a Liberal????
Elaine,
Nice windows!
anon, I am in agreement with the premise and policy of allowing anonymous posting. For a variety of reasons, all of them pragmatic, I prefer to have a username myself. Most, if not all, the guest posters know my name and address and I do not really care. They are responsible with what knowledge they have.
Having said that, I do think the identity of whistleblowers and others who post anonymously need to be protected. That is NOT the same as outing trolls, zombies and sockpuppets by username. Usernames are still anonymous.
If the Professor asks anyone to be a guest front pager, he requires posting under one’s real name. Should he ask me, I would consider it and probably consent, but would need to weigh the implications before deciding.
@OS:
Simplest way to be anonymous on the Internet.
Download and use the Tor/Firefox bundle:
https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en
Simple way to be anonymous on the Internet
1. Goto starbucks.
2. Attach to their wifi
3. Make your post
Repeat 1-3, rinse, cycling on Starbucks, Burger King, Culvers, McDonalds, Barnes & Noble, Mall food zoos, airports, libraries….
4, Withdraw $20 from your ATM. Go to best buy, by a USB wireless adapter.
On occasion, at intervals you prefer, buy a new USB wireless adapter to change your MAC address.
Alternatively:
5. Use a ethereal and determine one or more MAC addresses on your network.
6. Change the MAC address of your adapter to one of the sniffed MAC addresses.
Repeat 5-6 at intervals you prefer.
And other ways to be anonymous on the Internet:
Java Anon Proxy
I2P
TOR
and many many other ways.
@Otteray Scribe,
Intriguingly, just 44 minutes ago, the EFF published this:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/09/newspapers-public-discourse-and-right-remain
September 30th, 2011
On Newspapers, Public Discourse, and the Right to Remain Anonymous
Commentary
by Jillian York and Trevor Timm
In a recent Washington Times editorial titled “Internet trolls, Anonymity and the First Amendment,” Gayle Falkenthal declared that “the time has come to limit the ability of people to remain anonymous” online. She argued that any benefit to online pseudonyms has long since dissipated and anonymous commenters have polluted the Internet “with false accusations and name-calling attacks.” Newspapers, she wrote, should ban them entirely.
This argument is not only inaccurate, it’s also dangerous: online anonymity, while allowing trolls to act with impunity, also protects a range of people, from Syrian dissidents to small-town LGBT activists and plenty of others in between.
Unfortunately, many newspapers have already banned anonymous comments, and while not all have offered an explicit reasoning for their policies, “civility” is often cited as justification in discussions on online anonymity.
There’s much more there and it’s all beautiful and I would be surprised that anyone in this forum defending Kesseler, including Kesseler, would disagree with any of it.
/As an aside to the problem here, what York and Trimm left out was that newspapers have done much worse than eliminate anonymous communication, they have done much much worse, they’ve made all of that communication facebook communication.
You do not really want me to have you write that on the blackboard 100 times, do you?
There is no anonymity on the Internet
There is no anonymity on the Internet
There is no anonymity on the Internet
…
There is no anonymity on the Internet
And yet, it moves.
anon, repeat after me, rinse and repeat again:
There is no such thing as true anonymity on the Itertoobz. Also, there is a difference between catching a zombie or sockpuppet and outing a user by real name.
You do not really want me to have you write that on the blackboard 100 times, do you?
Yes, however, you are trivially wrong on the technical issue, with proof via Starbucks and McDonald. And that’s long before TOR, and long before MAC spoofing or DNS poisoning or other techniques.
You can write it on the blackboard 100 times, and you would be wrong each time.
And on the other issue, as I said, there are things that communities should not put up with. One user scraping and exploiting privacy leaks to out the others is one.
I’m a member of many online communities, and I’ve never seen this behavior by a regular member of the community condoned or defended.
If there is any outing of sock puppets like that, it has always been from the owner of the blog or community who has known access to the registered emails, and IP addresses and the like. The rest of us use the other typical techniques, by noting that both GeneH and HGene always misspell the word “logik”, or “diapre”, or by accidental revelation.
If Professor Turley was worried about anonymous sockpuppetry, there are other measures he could take, including required email verification of all email addreses.
As I’ve said, if Kevin Kesseler had asked Professor Turley ahead of time of his intent and his actions and his goal and the impacts, would Professor Turley have said, sure, go ahead, it is okay to do this on my blog.
anon, repeat after me, rinse and repeat again:
There is no such thing as true anonymity on the Itertoobz. Also, there is a difference between catching a zombie or sockpuppet and outing a user by real name.
You do not really want me to have you write that on the blackboard 100 times, do you?
@OS,
I think there are somethings that no one should do, even if it is possible to do them.
Outing anonymity on a “free speech” blog is in there.
Wearing white after labor day is not.
Gene, Gene, The Dancing Machine:
anon,
If you’re going to bat for the Koch troll army’s right to remain anonymous on a system where there simply is no guarantee of anonymity?
You’re going to bat for corporatist enemies of the Constitution and democracy, in short, fascists. So please, mention the Koch Brothers again and how battling their influence on the system is somehow bad. It’s really funny.
Sad, by this logic Professor Turley today and you just announced your backing with Al Qaeda.
http://jonathanturley.org/2011/09/30/did-obama-just-assassinate-a-u-s-citizen-aulaqi-killing-raises-questions-over-presidential-powers/#comment-273033
Gene, I have to admit, you are such a pathetic sad parody of a liberal, your logic is so wrong, your bullshit so strong, that I have real suspicion you are a Koch false flag operation.
Gene, my pointing out you’re an idiot does not make me a fascist.
Gene, my arguing that commenters on a “freespeech” blog should not be trying to out anonymity by scraping the blog, does not make me a corporatist enemy of the constitution even if it helps the minions and bots of the Koch brothers.
Gene, Professor Turley’s insistent on due process, even when that helps al-Aulaqi, does not make him an Al Qaeda supporter.
Gene, your continued dribbling does not help that rash on your chest.
“It used to not involve undisclosed privacy invasions and building up of databases and lists. That was left to the FBI and COINTELPRO….”
**************************************
Lets see now, how that logic works out. There are those that say anything government can do, the free market can do better and cheaper. Well, at least part of that is probably true. Then there are those who say that the government should take care of virtually all things. Hmmmm…at least part of that is true too.
But then there are those who say government should not do things and neither should free marketeers who seek to profit off building a better mousetrap.
My head hurts.
anon,
If you’re going to bat for the Koch troll army’s right to remain anonymous on a system where there simply is no guarantee of anonymity?
You’re going to bat for corporatist enemies of the Constitution and democracy, in short, fascists. So please, mention the Koch Brothers again and how battling their influence on the system is somehow bad. It’s really funny.