Apparently the Lakota tribe says it’s breaking away from the United States.
Wow, can you believe it? Some common sense from the British government, which is telling educators to let boys play cops and robbers, or Army, or cowboys, even if that means using a toy gun.
Children’s Minister Beverley Hughes said: “The guidance simply takes a commonsense approach to the fact that many young children and perhaps particularly many boys, like boisterous, physical activity.”
“Although noisy for adults such imaginary games are good for their development as well as good fun.”
But Steve Sinnott, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said: “The real problem with weapons is that they symbolise aggression.
“The reason teachers often intervene when kids have toy guns is that the boy is usually being very aggressive. We do need to ensure, whether the playing is rumbustious or not, that there is a respect for your peers, however young they are.”
Chris Keates, general secretary of the The National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) union said: “Many parents take the decision that their children won’t have toy weapons.”
Research by Penny Holland, academic leader for early childhood at London Metropolitan University, has also concluded that boys should be allowed to play gun games.
She found boys became dispirited and withdrawn when they are told such play-fighting is wrong.
Of course, as a parent I make sure my kids get constant exposure to the Eddie Eagle program as well. The last thing I want is for my child to think that a real firearm is just the same as a toy. We have a lot of Nerf guns in our house, and frankly I like the fact that it’s pretty darn easy for the kids to differentiate between the two. All the same, Andrew knows that he is not to play with any “toy gun” that he finds laying on a yard, playground, etc. It’s far better to let an adult check it out than to risk hurting himself or someone else.
I had a great picture of the tree and the stockings hung over the fireplace, and I can’t find the &*!$ing card reader so I can export the pictures from the camera to the computer. Trust me though, it’s a nice picture. 
I’ll be back in full force on Wednesday, but in the meantime, have a very Merry Christmas and thank you so much for stopping by.
The tree is up. The ornaments have been hung. And pictures are forthcoming.
Not doing a heck of a lot while I’m on vacation. It’s pretty much an opportunity to get caught up on all the chores and errands I’ve neglected to do over the past year or so. I’m still posting over at On Tap, and the plan is to return here once the holidays are through. I might be around now and again before the 2nd, but I’d say that’s probably when we’ll fire up the old blog again.
Until then, here’s Hillary’s Christmas commercial. Yes, it’s real. And yes, it http://www.hillaryclinton.com/video/87.aspx”target=”_Blank”>speaks for itself.
What brings me out of blogging hibernation? A post on sex toys. I know, I know.
But this story bugs me, and for one big reason. It’s this quote:
“Laws are made to protect the public,” he said. “Sometimes you have to protect the public against themselves.”
In this case, he’s saying we need to protect the public against evil sex toys. I’m sorry if I just think there are more important things for the Alabama Citizens’ Action Program to worry about, like poverty, drugs like meth, heck… even divorce rates.
I could go off on a two page rant, but maybe I’ll save that for On Tap.
For some time now, I just haven’t felt like blogging. The kids are getting bigger, and when I’m at home I’m enjoying spending time away from the computer and with the twins (not to mention Andrew and Harrison, and especially Elaine).
At the same time, I’ve been doing this fairly steadily since 2003… and it seems like such a waste to stop blogging entirely. I enjoy writing about the nanny state stuff, but I want to do more than just provide quick links, and frankly I don’t have time to write a thought-out 400-600 word piece every day.
I need my co-blogger back. 
So, I’m not going away. But I’m also probably not going to be doing much with this space for the rest of the year. I’m heading back to Arkansas in a couple of weeks to help my mother with some things, and that’ll take up some time. Holidays are always busy regardless, so I hate to say I’m going to get back at it right away and then fail as I’m crunched with work and personal stuff.
So bear with me if you’d like and I’ll kick things back up around the first of the year. Ideally I’d like to do one or two big posts a week and provide some quick links the rest of the time. We’ll see how well that works out.
Info here. Full coverage tonight on “Cam and Company”.
I meant to post something earlier, but I was hanging out with at least three veterans. Fairly sure there were four, but definitely three that I know of.
I was able to sneak away for a couple of hours yesterday to do some shooting… this time of a photographic nature. I wanted to get some pictures of the fall leaves before the colors disappeared.
You have to take your nature shots where you can find them. On the other side of those trees is the Capital Beltway, all 8 lanes of it.
That was taken in Old Town Alexandria. It would have been a much better picture had the flag not been wrapped around the pole, but what are you gonna do?
Over at Bitter’s place (here’s the permalink), she’s found a story from my/our neck of the woods. The gist of it is the local D.A. is prosecuting the owner of an adult video store for selling adult videos.
The Staunton grand jury indicted a Manassas man and his company Thursday on 16 felony obscenity charges concerning adult videos that were sold in October at After Hours Video, according to Staunton Prosecutor Raymond C. Robertson.
The six-person grand jury spent Thursday morning viewing parts of 12 videos bought at the Springhill Road video store from Oct. 15 to Oct. 18. It was the second time the grand jury convened within the last month.
Krial, the owner of 12 adult businesses in Virginia and Maryland, said in the past he has caught flak from communities but has never been criminally charged in connection with video sales. He labeled the Staunton indictments as “ludicrous.” Asked to elaborate, Krial said, “It is what it is. Everybody’s going to have their day in court.”
The opening of Krial’s Staunton business on Oct. 7 has spawned the Citizens’ Task Force Against Pornography and also generated a petition drive supporting After Hours Video. Thursday night, Krial said more than 800 people had signed the petition that’s being circulated at the Springhill Road store.
Rick Hudson, a free-speech expert and an attorney with the First Amendment Center in Nashville, said Robertson will have a tough time making the obscenity charges stick.
“They’re fairly hard to prove,” he said. “It has to be something really out of the ordinary.”
The story doesn’t mention the names of the videos, and I probably wouldn’t print them either. I do have some sympathy for the community if they don’t want the stores in their area (and with 800+ signatures, sounds like there’s a decent grassroots effort there), but these are just your garden variety porn, I think it’s going to be a hard case for the prosecutor to win.
Somehow it’s appropriate that my first link to Daily Kos in quite some time would happen on Halloween. But Kos did find a cool story about a guy who’s doubling gas mileage of cars while increasing their horsepower.
Now, not being that mechanically inclined, my main concern about citing this guy as a superhero is that I don’t know how many bio-diesel cars our country could support. Obviously we have the capacity to support a lot more than are on the roads now, but at some point we’re going to reach the point where supply of biofuel is maxed out, and that’s going to happen a lot sooner than we run out of potential drivers.
Still, the idea of biofuel has always intrigued me in a low-level sort of way. And if nothing else, Kos is right that ingenuity is still alive and well in America.
Somehow it’s appropriate that my first link to Daily Kos in quite some time would happen on Halloween. But Kos did find a cool story about a guy who’s doubling gas mileage of cars while increasing their horsepower.
Now, not being that mechanically inclined, my main concern about citing this guy as a superhero is that I don’t know how many bio-diesel cars our country could support. Obviously we have the capacity to support a lot more than are on the roads now, but at some point we’re going to reach the point where supply of biofuel is maxed out, and that’s going to happen a lot sooner than we run out of potential drivers.
Still, the idea of biofuel has always intrigued me in a low-level sort of way. And if nothing else, Kos is right that ingenuity is still alive and well in America.
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For parents who must know where little Johnny is at every moment, comes the GPS jacket.
Using Google Earth maps, users can watch the jacket wearer move. The movements are updated every 10 seconds.
But they don’t need to be online to find out where the person is. Users can also receive alerts to their e-mail or cell phone when the jacket leaves the boundary, meaning parents could potentially receive alerts whenever their children skipped school, left the neighborhood or went to their boyfriend’s house — so long as the child was wearing the jacket.
As you can imagine, the jacket was originally designed for mountain climbers and other folks who might actually need something like this. Though I will confess to debating about whether or not to threaten my 16-year old with this purchase.
There are now 755,000 people on the terrorism watch list.
This is a perfect example of bureaucracy in action.
To doff our caps towards Tim Wakefield. Arguably my favorite playor on undoubtably my favorite team, Wake’s been left off the roster for World Series. And how does he react?
I just don’t think it’s fair to the other 24 guys on this team that I go out there and maybe I pitch well and maybe I don’t, and then I’m not available for the rest of the series. It’s not fair for the rest of the 24 guys in that clubhouse for me to put them through that.”
With class.
KDFW in Dallas has suspended reporter Rebecca Aguilar for an ambush-style interview of an elderly armed citizen.
In the comments, several folks correctly noted that there’s no way this interview aired without the knowledge of several other employees. Based on my experiences in local television news, the following people had to have known about this interview before it aired.
- the photographer who filmed the interview
- the producer of the newscast in which the interview aired
I don’t know how big a shop KDFW has, but I’m guessing there was a seperate editor who put the story together. I would also be shocked if the Executive Producer or News Director did not see the interview before it ran.
I’m glad to see her suspended for this, but this was a failure of the newsroom as well.
The mother of missing toddler Maddie McCann (the young girl who disappeared from her hotel room in Portugal) reportedly thinks the reason people aren’t expressing more sympathy for her is because she’s too hot.
I have no idea what this person even looks like, though I vaguely remember her being on the cover of People magazine a few weeks ago. And I do have some sympathy for her, though I have a lot more sympathy for her kids. Why?
Because despite the fact that the press doesn’t really mention it anymore, she and her husband left their kids alone.
That op/ed above says it was “a mistake”. I’d argue negligance, but even if you want to say it’s a simple mistake… the fact is the media, and the McCann’s, have been loathe to discuss the fact that this was purely preventable. Avoiding the “bad” facts in order to make a story more palatable is disgusting.
Actually, I think there are many things with this story that disgust me, but trust me, none of them have to do with the “hotness” of Mrs. McCann.
Lest we forget that those on the right can also exhibit nanny-state tendencies, I give you the story of Ben Daly on Leakey, Texas.
The Leakey School Board on Monday night voted unanimously against allowing a high school senior to keep his long hair.
Ben Jamin Daly, 18, says he is growing his long locks because his religion, Rastafarianism, prohibits him from cutting it.
But apparently board members don’t agree with Daly, who called the decision an injustice.
“I thought right is right, but obviously, I’m wrong,” he said.
Daly was represented at the meeting by Fleming Terrell, an attorney for the San Antonio chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
“We really didn’t know what to expect,” Terrell said. “We didn’t know where the board stood. I tried to give them a good idea where the law was, where the policy was.”
Terrell said she will review Daly’s options and see what steps, if any, to take next.
But Daly and his father vowed to keep fighting.
“He was born here, raised here,” said John Daly, the student’s father. “He wants to graduate and enjoy his senior year. I mean, that’s a big deal. It’s not over.”
In the meantime, Daly will continue to be taught in isolation and will not be allowed to participate in school activities.
It was not known when Daly would have to cut his hair.
What year is this? 2007? And we have school districts that are isolating kids because of long hair? Good Lord, it’s like Footloose come to life!
And by the way, I don’t think religion should even come into play here, Rastafarianism or not. I just don’t see how a school board can dictate the length of your hair.
Sorry for the lack of nannyness lately. It’s not that the stories aren’t out there, I’ve just been working on other things.
Anyway, looks like Philly may be amending their trans-fat ban soon. While I’m all in favor of freedom of choice, it seems awfully stupid to me that you’ll allow small bakeries to be exempt while forcing larger companies to comply. Just get rid of the stupid ban and let me choose to eat what I want.
Fresh off the heels of Michael Graham’s column about the American Academy of Pediatrics asking kids about the gun-owing habits of their parents…
The AAP has filed a friend of the court brief arguing in favor of keeping the D.C. Gun Ban in place.
Those wacky doctors and their anti-gun ways.
I confess, I was looking forward to this weekend in the same way that Rosie O’Donnell looks forward to attending fat camp. It’s not something you enjoy, but it’s something that’s gotta be done.
But with my wife out of town and me taking care of the kids, it turns out the weekend wasn’t so bad after all. In fact it was pretty darn awesome.
Even though I work evenings, I don’t get to see nearly as much of the kids as I’d like, and I had a chance to spend some quality time with each of the kids. James and Catherine decided they wanted to watch “Dumbo” yesterday morning, and I think we’ve seen it 5 times now. It’s pretty cool that they enjoy a classic like that just as much or more than the computer generated Pixar flicks.
I’m trying to figure out when I can get back to Houston to see Mom again… I’ve got a speaking engagement in New Jersey in two weekends, and after that it’s the annual Halloween Party at our house. I haven’t seen Elaine during the weekend in 3 weeks now, so I’m also suffering a bit from Wife Withdrawl Syndrome. At least she gets home tomorrow.
According to this story, the Brady Campaign urged the District of Columbia to change its gun laws rather than seek an appeal to the Supreme Court in the Parker/Heller case.
Helmke, of the Brady Campaign, said the group suggested to Washington that it
rework its gun laws rather than press on with an appeal. A broad Supreme Court
ruling on the Second Amendment could jeopardize a variety of laws, including
waiting periods for handgun sales and California’s machine gun ban, he said.
That’s the first time I’ve heard Helmke admit that.
Although I think this story actually applies nationwide.
Thanks to guidelines issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics and supported by the commonwealth, doctors across Massachusetts are interrogating our kids about mom and dad’s “bad” behavior.
We used to be proud parents. Now, thanks to the AAP, we’re “persons of interest.”
The paranoia over parents is so strong that the AAP encourages doctors to ignore “legal barriers and deference to parental involvement” and shake the children down for all the inside information they can get.
And that information doesn’t stay with the doctor, either.
Debbie is a mom from Uxbridge who was in the examination room when the pediatrician asked her 5-year-old, “Does Daddy own a gun?”
When the little girl said yes, the doctor began grilling her and her mom about the number and type of guns, how they are stored, etc.
If the incident had ended there, it would have merely been annoying.
But when a friend in law enforcement let Debbie know that her doctor had filed a report with the police about her family’s (entirely legal) gun ownership, she got mad.
She also got a new doctor.
In fact, the problem of anti-gun advocacy in the examining room has become so widespread that some states are considering legislation to stop it.
That state, by the way, would be Virginia if I’m not mistaken.
After some prodding from my buddies Jim and Marshall, I’ve decided to start a new blog to catalogue the “deals of the day” we cover on Cam and Company.
You can check out the blog here: http://thedealoftheday.blogspot.com/
I thought about incorporating the deals in this blog, but I really do want to keep this mostly about the nanny state stuff. Also, I’ve been neglecting On Tap, but I’m going to start blogging over there again. The things I post there will generally be non-political… kind of a repository for the general stuff on my mind.
And of course, every now and then you’ll still be subjected to kid pictures here.
One more note: I’ve changed the contact email, from cam-at-camedwards-dot-com, which was getting inundated with spam, to camedwards-at-gmail-dot-com. If you’ve tried to email me through the web page over the last couple of months, I apologize for not getting back to you. This should hopefully take care of most of the spam.