If you aren’t reading SayUncle, why the hell not?

It’s definitely my favorite roundup of guns and politics news. I usually read the RSS feed and after realizing EVERY DAY I click on at least 50% of the entries and think “I should re-post this…” it occurred to me I ought to just point y’all straight at him.

So, consider yourself commanded: Add Uncle to your blogrolls or RSS or however you get your daily blog goodies!

*composes self*

Via Kit: LOOK!

Special Events :: Community Event
Justice Antonin Scalia: “Constitutional Interpretation”
2:00 PM University of Montana

Description:

The Judge William B. Jones and Judge Edaward A. Tamm Judicial Lecture presented by U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia.

Free and open to the public.

You better bet yer ass we’re going!

SCALIA!!!

In case you haven’t heard, Ron Paul endorsed… well, anybody but the major party candidates:

Earlier, Paul called the presidential elections a charade and said voters are faced with the “lesser of two evils.”

The majority of Americans, about 60 percent, are unhappy with their choices in the race, Paul said. He urged the three third-party candidates to bring all their supporters together to vote against the “establishment candidates.”

Mike just came in and pointed out something totally obvious that hadn’t yet occurred to me in this context: While Ron Paul may be pretty fringe-y, HE IS A FRIGGIN’ REPUBLICAN!

Obviously RP wouldn’t have been an “establishment candidate” had he won the (R) nomination, but it is a little ridiculous that he’s been playing the GOP game all this time and is now temper-tantruming against the two-party system.

Sorry, Ron. This is one time I can safely say you’re part of the problem.

1. I realized (a bit late) that not everybody knows that Patriots’ Day is celebrated on the anniversary of April 19, 1775 - the day the shot heard ’round the world was fired at Concord bridge. If you’re unfamiliar with the significance of Lexington and Concord, educate yourself here. (My dear Inconvenience would argue that the war began long before April 19, perhaps with the Boston massacre or HMS Gaspée affair - but we celebrate Patriots’ Day all the same!)

April 19 also marks the anniversary of the siege at Waco (1993) and the Oklahoma City bombing (1995), neither of which I find occasion to commemorate. I believe both of those events were clashes between two sides generally lacking in sympathetic characters.

Anyway, we observe Patriots’ Day with shooting and festivities to honor the American traditions of independence and marksmanship. Last year, the Inconvenience proposed (on a bridge!) and we followed it up with shooting. This year, we happened to have access to Tannerite, so we had a bit of fun with the effigy of a Redcoat. I of course have no intention of blowing up any actual subjects of the Queen. :)

2. I really hope you’re all watching John Adams, or making arrangements to procure the DVDs. It is simply incredible. I dare you to watch this - just the intro - and try to avoid coming away inspired:

The casting is brilliant, the script is excellent… it’s truly history come alive. It’s also caused me to have a bit of a crush on Thomas Jefferson (as if I didn’t already), played perfectly by Stephen Dillane. The Inconvenience has been pleading Hamilton’s case for months, but it’s falling on deaf ears… And the miniseries isn’t helping. I hate that sleazy little self-serving parasite. I’m totally on Team Burr.3. In addition to spending copious amounts of time fangirling over the founding fathers, I’ve also:

• Continued on in my position at the ice rink, with new and improved summer duties.
• Helped found the Palouse Sons of Liberty.
• Organized a team for and participated in the Relay for Life - for which, by the way, I also owe late donation thank-yous to JJ and Brody. :)
• Kept an eye on Heller, the elections, and other news and current events with the potential to affect our lives profoundly. Idaho Republicans will finally get around to holding the primary on May 27th (when it totally matters, hurrr…) - but there’s still an ongoing pissing match about the closed primary rule, so who knows - maybe I won’t even get to vote.
• Gotten rather involved in a potential lawsuit and am developing a cursory involvement in another… Don’t worry, I’m not in any trouble, nor is the Inconvenience. I’m just a fan of putting my time and money where my mouth is, and as much as I’d like to elaborate at this time, I can’t. Trust me… they’ll be intriguing stories sooner or later.
• Started talking about an entrepreneurial opportunity with a friend. This, too, is in the works, with more details to come once I have a clue what they are!
• Been running here, there and everywhere with this friend’s party and that friend’s shower and on and on… May is only going to be worse. Out of nine weekend days in May, I currently have plans for eight. *thud*

So anyway, those are my lame excuses for severely neglecting the politics, guns, and politics-as-pertaining-to-guns portions of this blog lately. Forgive me?

4. Don’t forget, those of you who have occasion to be on a college campus this week - the Students for Concealed Carry on Campus Spring 2008 “Empty Holster Protest” is currently in full swing. You can find details here, along with guidelines for safe, effective participation.

5. On a personal note, I’d like to congratulate Mike - my dear Inconvenience - on his new job, which he started today. He’s also preparing to graduate on May 10th with his B.A. in History, with a Political Science minor… and a 3.5 GPA! ‘Bout damn time one of us graduated. ;)

*Crosses fingers*

I think I have the new URL set up properly, the 301 redirect working, the feeds redirected (save LJ)…

The good:
- I was able to import all my old entries, pages, and comments.
- I got the key images redirected, and they’re working so far.
- I got threaded comments working on new entries.

The bad:
- Something is wonky with my LJ-crosspost plugin, so I don’t think that’s going to work for a while. Fixed!
- I don’t really have a good way to import my past tags, and I don’t care enough to try very hard. (The silver lining to this is I can now switch to using the integrated WP tag system rather than the plugin I was using.) Anyway, tags start over as of this post.
- I didn’t have a way to import the thread structure of past comments. That kind of sucks - it will make entries with a lot of replied comments look pretty scattered. Again, don’t care enough to lose sleep over it, especially since they’ll be working fine on all new posts.
- I still have to hunt down other images I’ve posted and change the URLs.
- I have to get all y’all to cooperate with changing your bookmarks, address books, and feeds. *bats eyelashes*

Anyway - I think we’re in business at www.politicsgunsandbeer.com!

I finally decided to work on moving PGB over to www.politicsgunsandbeer.com.

Love it or hate it, it’s gonna happen. Bear with me if construction kicks my ass for a bit.

If all goes well, the current domain will redirect to the new domain for a long time - but keep an eye out for when the new domain is up and running, ’cause you will want to update your links eventually.

Thanks, all!

It’s been a big day for my little blog. I was sitting in class earlier when about six comment moderation emails showed up all at once in my inbox. Hmmm, I thought. That’s a bit odd.

I knew SaysUncle and a few other folks were sending decent traffic to my Citizen, Arm Thyself post, so I figured that was it. Then another five emails showed up. Weird.

Anyway, one of those comments mentioned Instapundit, and I nearly had a heart attack. I got Instapundited!? Sure ’nuff, I went and looked, and there was a link to little old me.

My reaction was mixed:

Egotistical Thats-Why-I-Blog Me: Oh, hellz yeah. I own the internet.
Lazy Me: Oh crap, now people are going to expect me to actually post substantial content more than once every four months.
Capitalist Me: This would have been a really good day to have AdSense turned on. Whoops.
Neurotic Me: *refreshes SiteMeter stats every four seconds*
Humble Thats-Why-I-Blog Me: Oh, hellz yeah. I just helped get this major pro-gun, pro-self-defense message out there to thousands of people. That’s why I do this.

Anyway, I realize this Instalanche (thanks to my buddies at Arfcom for the props and the definition) is a one-day-ish kinda thing, but I do hope some of y’all decide to stick around. If you do, I promise to actually post substantial content more than once every four months. *wink*

It’s cute when my own blog tells me I’m posting comments too quickly, and to slow down. *facepalm*

They really ought to turn that off when the poster in question is a logged in administrator!

Major Andrew Olmsted, who posted a blog since May 2007, was killed in Iraq on Thursday, Jan. 3. Major Olmsted, who had been based at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs, began blogging after his unit was sent to Iraq with the mission of helping to train the Iraqi Army. No official details have been released on his death, but reports say that he and a second member of his unit were killed during an enemy ambush in Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad. Olmsted was determined to make a difference in Iraq. “The sooner the Iraqi government doesn’t need U.S. support to provide security for its people, the sooner we will probably be asked to leave.”

I wasn’t familiar with Major Olmsted’s blogging until I just stumbled across his final post. I cried like an absolute baby, especially over the last few paragraphs. Read it, but grab some tissues first.

Rest in peace, sir, and thanks for doing your part to bring the truth to those of us back home.

EDIT: I’ve now located Major Olmstead’s personal blog, which he had to discontinue due to military regulations about political activity. I’m perusing back entries, though, and it’s eloquent, thoughtful stuff. I wish I’d discovered him when he still had more to write.

Done: Switched the sidebar to the left side, fixed the color if text input in the comment box, fixed the footer width, added a header image.

To-Do: Maybe change up the header image (this one took me 2 seconds to make and I’m not in love with it… don’t hate it either, though), link the header image to take you back to the main page of PGB (have to dink with an image map to do so and I’m just not in the mood), maybe switch the sidebar widgets around a bit.

It’s getting there!

P.S. Just so you know, the picture of me in the sidebar is currently linked to the main page of PGB, so if you’re looking for a shortcut “home,” it’s there for now.