Should Dorner Have Had Easy Access To Guns? His Own Answer: "NO!"

A former policeman, hunted for an alleged killing spree, has told the rest of the country that there should have been stricter background checks when he obtained class III weapons.

Maybe this time someone will listen.

Of course, it certainly won't be the NRA ... nor will it be the Christian Right. And even the MSM has shied away from Christopher Dorner's left-of-center views.

Several very particular (and some peculiar) points in Christopher Dorner's "Manifesto" have come out related to both gun control and the Christian Right.

While several minorities within the LAPD were singled out ("You are a high value target"), it was clearly the entire force that he felt destined to eradicate, since he could not find one who would help him clear his name.

"All the firearms utilized in my activities are registered to me and were legally purchased at gun stores and private party transfers. All concealable weapons (pistols) were also legally register in my name at police stations or FFL's. Unfortunately, are you aware that I obtained class III weapons (suppressors) without a background check thru NICS or DROS completely LEGALLY several times? I was able to use a trust account that I created on quicken will maker and a $10 notary charge at a mailbox etc. to obtain them legally. Granted, I am not a felon, nor have a DV misdemeanor conviction or active TRO against me on a NCIC file. I can buy any firearm I want, but should I be able to purchase these class III weapons (SBR's, and suppressors) without a background check and just a $10 notary signature on a quicken will maker program? The answer is NO."

His first encounter with racism happened in his early grade school years when someone called him the "n" word. He reacted by hitting the offending kid. For his efforts, the principal not only "swatted" his taunter, he also swatted Christopher, then:

"He stated as good Christians we are to turn the other cheek as Jesus did."

A bit of righteous arrogance on the part of the principal formed Chris' opinions about religion for the rest of his life (the Christian Right is going to have a field day with this one):

Problem is, I’m not a fucking Christian and that old book, made of fiction and limited non-fiction, called the bible, never once stated Jesus was called a nigger. How dare you swat me for standing up for my rights for demanding that I be treated as an equal human being.

The Dorner Manifesto

The entire Christopher Dorner "Manifesto" can be viewed HERE. It must be read in its entirety to get the full gist of the man - a man who is trying to clear his name.

A name is more than just a noun, verb, or adjective. It’s your life, your legacy, your journey, sacrifices, and everything you’ve worked hard for every day of your life as and adolescent, young adult and adult. Don’t let anybody tarnish it when you know you’ve live up to your own set of ethics and personal ethos.

At times rambling, but imbued with a pithiness that few would expect from a wanted man of his caliber, the manifesto has only been selectively quoted - cherry-picked, some might say - to give the impression of a man out of control. The MSM has focused on passages against minorities in the LAPD ("You are a high value target"). The larger context, however, shows that it was clearly the entire force that he felt destined to eradicate, since he could not find one who would help him clear his name.

The Manifesto will be analyzed to a great degree, but used by both sides of the political spectrum to advance their causes. Whatever the analysis, however, Dormer cannot be dismissed as someone who "snapped" or someone who simply "had a grudge."

Court of Public OpinionSeveral of Dorner's points are high on the list of public concerns: gun control, racism within the LAPD,and police violence. But the gun control issue with certainly hit hard and Christopher Dorner will be judged by his political affiliations as well as his call for greater gun control through universal (and more thorough) background checks. Whether or not his points will be considered those of a madman remain to be seen. Whatever the outcome of the manhunt, Dorner will not be allowed to state a coherent case again. 

Out Of Evil?: More Phelpses Leave The Clan And Reverse Course

In the simplified world of Megan Phelps-Roper, she is an outcast. She is, in fact, dead...to her family. Her shelter? It is the rest of the world.

Being the daughters of the most hated man in America and, some say, one of the most hated men in history (polls show him just below Hitler and Stalin, but above Quran-burning Terry Jones) Megan Phelps-Roper and Grace Phelps-Roper now have the sympathy of everyone They also have admiration for coming forth about their "captivity":

"In a city in a state in the center of a country lives a group of people who believe they are the center of the universe; they know Right and Wrong, and they are Right. They work hard and go to school and get married and have kids who they take to church and teach that continually protesting the lives, deaths, and daily activities of The World is the only genuine statement of compassion that a God-loving human can sincerely make. As parents, they are attentive and engaged, and the children learn their lessons well." - Megan Phelps-Roper

Perhaps the anomaly in the saga of Megan and Grace is that they both state that they still love their family - even their mother.

Shirley Phelps Roper is the second-in-command at Westboro. She has increasingly become the face of Westboro and does more active picketing than her aging father. She has even taken on her father's demeanor, smiling when chanting the most hateful slogans. And even though Shirley must have suffered the same wrath as her siblings, she seems euphoric at being considered the most faithful of her father's followers. Unfortunately, it's a following that is dwindling as time goes by and the children, like Megan and Grace, discover that not everyone in the world is sinner hated by God.

Other Phelps siblings have "escaped" from the grasp of "pastor" Fred Phelps: as far back as 1980, Nate Phelps and his brother Mark left the clan. Their sister Kathy was forced back and beaten after an attempt. Another grandchild, Libby Phelps Alvarez escaped several years ago (see interview below).

In a deposition concerning the manuscript of a book, Addicted To Hate, the whole unfettered story of the Phelps clan and Fred Phelps himself contains details so lurid and insane, that most would be hard-pressed to believe it:

• Phelps was long addicted to barbiturates and amphetamines
• Mark and Nate were forced into a "Fagan Operation" - requiring them to steal so that they could make their father's daily quota - ostensibly for selling church candy or light bulbs door-to-door.
• Phelps beat all of his children mercilessly and even starved out his daughter Margie (for one month)
• Phelps beat his wife extensively and ostensibly hacked off her hair when she was not "submissive enough"
• Nate was threatened by a police office (Phelps' friend) with "kneecapping" if he saw his girlfriend - of whom Fred disapproved
• Nate's girlfriend subsequently committed suicide as a result of the Phelps clan taunting
• Phelps' unethical law practices got him disbarred from the Kansas State Bar Association
• Phelps insisted that all his children have law degrees and that all their spouses have law degrees as well.
• Marriages were enacted only with Phelps' approval
• The Phelps clan was taught that Fred Phelps was their "portal to heaven" and they and they alone were going to heaven in this world. 

"It wasn't fantasy, it wasn't hyperbole," he [Nate] said. "He was cruelly, viciously violent -- physically, verbally and psychologically."

The Phelps clan refuses to comment on the recent defection of Megan and Grace. when they do comment, will it be with the usual "They're lying!"? 

Probably.

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The Face Of A Murderer? History Gets A Remake With The Discovery Of Richard III

It is said that history is written by the victors. If that is the case, the life of Richard III was certainly tampered with: his successor, Henry Tudor made sure that Richard would be remembered as a crooked (mentally and physically), evil monarch responsible for multiple murders, not the least of which were the "Princes In The Tower"

The Richard III Society has, since 1924, tried to set the record straight and trudged through portrayals by the likes of Basil Rathbone and Laurence Olivier with dignity and persistence. 

A persistence which is paying off.

The Society, with the help of public funds, has been able to unearth the remains of Richard (found under a parking lot) and through modern technology, has been able to reconstruct his face. Read the Society's journey HERE. For a detailed but short history of Richard, the wikipedia entry is fair and balanced.

Tweeting Towards Armaggedon: How Todd Kincannon's Reckless Tweets Will Bring About His Downfall ...Hopefully.

A reckless tweet from a reckless Republican is nothing new, but for Todd Kincannon, the above tweet was the last straw. He didn't think so, but he hasn't paid much attention to anything outside Twitter. 

Wonkette:

REPUBLICAN WHO TWEETED ABOUT TRAYVON MARTIN AS A DRUG-ADDLED GAY HUSTLER WOULD LIKE TO SHOW YOU HIS PENIS.

Anyway, Kincannon’s penis (HINT: IT IS A PICTURE OF HIS PENIS, SO BEFORE YOU COMPLAIN TO US, IT IS NOT SAFE FOR WORK) is … not our favorite. It is not as stumpy and scarring as Brett Favre’s rancid junk, but it is not the kind of cock we would like to show up on our telephone, or hitting us in the face, or ever, actually.

Todd Kincannon’s penis is small, and ugly, and by all means, you should go look at it. Todd Kincannon wants you to.

Marriage Equality Above, Marriage Equality Below, Marriage Equality To The Left. Just No Marriage Equality To The Right

It's all around us, now that Britain and France and U.S. states have marriage equality. The fight is tiring, but worth it.

The Right is in apoplexy, but can it be considered collateral damage?:



The "huge revolt" was within his own Conservative Party. The vote was 400 to 172. The "revolt" didn't do much damage to the rest of the House of Commons, but perhaps showed how many MPs were tied to the Christian Right. Sound familiar?

The Irrelevance Of "Screw You": Ann Coulter Panders To Paranoia

"Screw you!" she exclaimed. "You think we don't care about the children? You're the one who won't do anything about the mentally ill."

Does Ann Coultergeist know anything about Reagan's closing of the state mental institutions in California while governor? I think not. Then again, a rant for the sake of publicity coming from her is usually groundless.

The "Screw You!" was done specifically to promote Coulter's new fill-in-the-blanks book "Mugged: Racial Demagoguery From The Seventies To Obama" on Sean Hannity's FOX program.

It's interesting to note that Amazon's listing of Coulter's book pairs it up with Greg Gutfeld's The Joy Of Hate.

Screw You! Ann Coulter!!!

That's the reaction of much of the country to Coulter's scream, since answering back the Coultergeist is a lesson infertility: her hard-as-steel ego is impervious to reason, especially if it comes from anyone slightly liberal. The biggest fault in her rant came when she said:

"The only way to enforce a universal -- the last 0.1 percent of guns that are transferred by collectors and so on is to have universal gun registration," she added. "Universal background check means universal registration, universal registration means universal confiscation, universal extermination. That is how it goes in history. Do not fall for universal background checks."
The jump from registration to confiscation is the kicker, the pandering to paranoia.

I often wonder why gun nuts and the NRA balk at registration and licensing of guns like cars: cars are more lethal than guns in this country, but at least drivers are required to have registration, pass a driver's test, get a license, get plates and have insurance. So here's where Coulter's line of reasoning falls apart: does universal car registration automatically mean universal confiscation of cars? OK. Apples and oranges, you might say, but the fact of the matter is that no one had ever even intimated that registration would be used to confiscate guns. It's never, ever been discussed in Congress. Any confiscation would be done under the aegis of a crime.

Paranoia wins out!


Anti-gun control paranoia has seldom listened to reason. Just read this short bit of prose that promises to be as profound as a rock (emphasis mine)
I don’t carry a gun to kill people.
I carry a gun to keep from being killed.
I don’t carry a gun to scare people.
I carry a gun because sometimes this world can be a scary place.
I don’t carry a gun because I’m paranoid.
I carry a gun because there are real threats in the world.
I don’t carry a gun because I’m evil.
I carry a gun because I have lived long enough to see the evil in the world.
I don’t carry a gun because I hate the government.
I carry a gun because I understand the limitations of government.
I don’t carry a gun because I’m angry.
I carry a gun so that I don’t have to spend the rest of my life hating myself for failing to be prepared.
I don’t carry a gun because I want to shoot someone.
I carry a gun because I want to die at a ripe old age in my bed, and not on a sidewalk somewhere tomorrow afternoon.
I don’t carry a gun because I’m a cowboy.
I carry a gun because, when I die and go to heaven, I want to be a cowboy.
I don’t carry a gun to make me feel like a man.
I carry a gun because men know how to take care of themselves and the ones they love.
I don’t carry a gun because I feel inadequate.
I carry a gun because unarmed and facing three armed thugs, I am inadequate.
I don’t carry a gun because I love it.
I carry a gun because I love life and the people who make it meaningful to me.
Police protection is an oxymoron.
Free citizens must protect themselves.
Police do not protect you from crime, they usually just investigate the crime after it happens and then call someone in to clean up the mess.
Personally, I carry a gun because I’m too young to die and too old to take a butt whoopin’.


"I don't carry a gun because I'm paranoid." Right.

As a man who lived in one of the worst neighborhoods riddled with gang violence for over five years, I can safely say that I never thought of carrying a gun - ever. Paranoia never took hold. It did not take hold in the apartment building where I lived (even though there were 6 homicides in front of it during those years). We made our children as safe as possible (I started an after-school program, keeping them inside and aiding their education), but never promoted the paranoia that you see today in screams coming from the likes of the Coultergeist.

Ann Coulter has been irrelevant for years. Sean Hannity has been irrelevant for years. Only people who want to hear about paranoia listen to them.

Lauren Bacall Is Targeted On NRA Enemies List! And You May Be Too!

The NRA Enemies List is not exactly a "hit" list, but with the virulent anger of gun advocates against any form of gun control, it might as well be. Public figures have always been targets for "righteous assassination", but the latest list put out by the NRA is extensive enough to fill any paranoid malcontent's dream.

It's called the NRA-ILA National Organizations With Anti-Gun Policies list, and it's surprisingly extensive in scope and basically demonizes some of the most loved personages and organizations in the country. Granted, you wouldn't find any of these people at a dinner honoring Glenn Beck, but you have to wonder what the logic is in naming the United Church of Christ. Or the National Association of School Safety and Law Enforcement Officers.

Then again, anything considered "progressive"...

Anything or anyone.

The list of over 450 organizations, celebrities and media outlets demonstrates the innate paranoia the NRA has and enables throughout the country. They may be related (second cousins twice removed) to people who expressed a mild interest in gun control or worse, they may even be people who are actually FOR gun control (!) and as such should be lumped in with the Obamas who want to take our guns away and enslave us.

They are definitely not people who embrace guns as the only way of life (as it should be).

The list also shows its immense bias towards any personalities or organizations it considers "liberal demonspawn": it could have been put together by the likes of Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association or Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. Prominent progressives, teachers, psychologists, actors and cartoonists make more than half the list.*

Organizations - 133

Acronyms may (ironically) be too much for the NRA, so they spelled out organizations like the American Psychological Association and the American Bar Association, but made allowances for AARP and the AFL-CIO and the YWCA.

One seemingly odd entry is the American Firearms Association, but perhaps this is why:

"We reject the 'Armed Populace' doctrine of the NRA as misguided and unrealistic."

And while the NRA Organizations list doesn't look too racist, it does manage to include the Congress of National Black Churches and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference along with the NAACP. That may be enough.

And then there are the organizations with "American" in their names:

Ambulatory Pediatric Association
American Academy of Pediatrics
American Civil Liberties Union
American Academy of Ambulatory Care Nursing
American Medical Women`s Association
American Medical Student Association
American Medical Association
American Association for the Surgery of Trauma
American Trauma Society
American Federation of Teachers
American Association of School Administrators
American Alliance for Rights and Responsibilities
American Medical Association
American Bar Association
American Counseling Association
American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
American Academy of Pediatrics
American Association for World Health
American Ethical Union
American Nurses Association
American Association of Neurological Surgeons
American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences
American Firearms Association
American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
American Jewish Committee
American Trauma Society
American Psychological Association
American Jewish Congress
American Public Health Association
Americans for Democratic Action

Other Organization stand-outs: the Gray Panthers and the League of Women Voters.

Individuals and Celebrities - 203

Perhaps the reason Lauren Bacall's name stands out in particular is because she was involved in another list over 60 years ago: Joe McCarthy's list. The parallels are striking: the groups represented by individuals could have been culled from McCarthy's own notepad: Writers (8) fared better than actors (140) but not as well as NFL players (1). And the age of the invidious gun control personages is telling: 25 are above the age of 70, and some, like Nora Ephron are ... dead.

Some obvious and not so obvious:

Tony Bennet
Maya Angelou
Ed Asner
Alec Baldwin
Kevin Costner
Sean Connery
Pam Dawber
Fran Drescher
Sandy Duncan
Fannie Flag
Geraldo Rivera
Richard Gere
Hal Holbrook
Chaka Khan
Spike Lee
Bette Midler
May Tyler Moore
Jack Nicholson
Mary Lou Retton
Bonnie Raitt
Martin Sheen
Anne Rice
Neil Simon

Meryl Streep

Henry Winkler
Catherine Zeta-Jones

Oh, and Oprah (who's listed as an "entertainer')

National Figures - 29

Poor Ed Koch just missed knowing he was on the list, but C. Everett Koop must be proud since he's in the same group as Jimmy Carter.

National corporations - 43

"When you care enough to shoot the very worst" is evidently a sentiment the NRA would like to see on greeting cards. And it would probably like Ben & Jerry's to consider some kind of gun-friendly flavor ("Chocolate Bullet Hole"?), along with bullet-proof jeans from Levi's. Silly as these suggestions may seem, they and others might reach the ears of the companies' heads since along with the names of the companies, the names and contacts of their CEOs were also published. St. Louis University made this list - the only university to do so. One wonders why UC Berkeley was snubbed.

Media Outlets - 22
Journalists and Cartoonists - 35

The NRA list of anti-gun media outlets might be predictable if for one exception: Motorcyle Cruiser Magazine. And among cartoon titans, Gary Trudeau has been enshrined in the NRA's Hall of Horrors.

The Rest Of Us

Considering the size of the some of the corporations and organizations on the list (Southwestern Bell, American Medical Association and Sprint, e.g.), the NRA should have a hard time convincing the country that gun control is evil, but then again, it has persuasive pundits and personalities like Chuck Norris and Ann Coulter.