Posts Made By: James Brown

This is a herd of young elk hunkered down on a furiously windy day in the back open-space. These guys, gals and their symbiotic magpie hat-pals were about 60 or 70 feet away from our deck. The wind was shaking everything so much focusing was a bear, but I was able to shoot at a crisp 1/1600 second shutter speed.

Doug Matulis said:

...from the religion of peace and love!

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/03/22/al-qaeda-says-it-killed-american-teacher-in-yemen/

can someone shed some light on this, is this an act of Islamic peace or Islamic love?

Doug:

As you hopefully know, this heart-breaking murder was an act of barbaric terrorism. It was politically motivated. Read the article please. To suggest that blame can generally be laid on a religion, as you have done, is truly, genuinely, spectacularly stupid. I don't think you'd like it much if all of the murders committed by Christians in the USA were blamed on Christianity.

"Hundreds of youth activists and other protesters marched Tuesday through Taiz demanding justice for the Shrum. They carried photos of Shrum as they marched through the city's streets, chanting, "Yemen is not a place for terrorism. We love you Joel!"

Jim

Russ Carroll said:

at what this is:

I looks sort of like information coded on Legos. It doesn't really resemble DNA, so I'm going to guess a barcode message built with Legos.

Jim

Rod Kaufman said:

Reagan lawyers argue against conservative supreme court activism:
http://themoderatevoice.com/143221/sign-of-changing-conservatism-reagan-administration-lawyers-concerned-about-supreme-court-activism/
They're surprised? I'm not...

I read quite a bit of lefty opinion over the weekend that (a) assumed the mandate or entire law is toast, and (b) blamed this "travesty" on right wing judicial activism.

The more virulent lefties opined that after Bush v. Gore, Citizens United and the presumed loss of Obamacare the Supreme Court would have no credibility and be exposed as a shill for the tea party. What a hoot.

Anyone who has half a brain and knows anything at all about the Supreme Court should know the predicting outcomes based upon oral argument is risky. Also, this is a close case, reasonable justices could go either way. For the left to preemptively politicize this is just pathetic.

Citizens United was not a close case by the way as we explored at the time. It seems that the left has decided that they would rather play the cry-baby card and whine than understand the issues.

Jim

Rod Kaufman said:

Nice piece from Jeffrey...
http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/04/opinion/toobin-court-assignment/index.html?hpt=hp_bn7

Toobin got it right several days ago with his "train wreck" and "plane wreck" comments. I see that he has replaced that candor with his more typical hyper-partisan commentary.

As I mentioned at the time, Obama's preemptive attack on the Court was shameful. The President obviously knows enough about the Constitution to recognize that he was merely spouting unadulterated BS for consumption by those ignorant of our governing principles. Obama's speech after oral argument stands out in my mind as his single most embarrassing moment in office.

I'm not "outraged" like the right pundits. I'm disappointed though. I didn't think the President would play that card.

Jim

Hi Rex:

Wow, I did not know that Ron Wodaski's books are out of print. I image with Maxim DL and Photoshop CS and Ron's books were and are what I rely on for technical advice. As I am sure you know, there is also a ton of practical stuff available on many advanced amateurs web sites.

Maybe you could place a "wanted" ad here to pick up cheap copies of Wodaski's books from a disillusioned ex astro-photographer?

Jim

Jim

Mark Costello III said:

Yesterday's arrest of George Zimmerman for 2nd Degree Murder in the killing of Trayvon Martin got me to thinking about the different charges involving homicide. I think I know what 1st Degree Murder is, it includes a pre-initial desire to kill the victim, planning the killing as well as killing. But I don't have any real grasp on the differences between it and 2nd Degree Murder, Voluntary Manslaughter, and Involuntary Manslaughter. If criminal lawyers or other who know all the distinctions could respond, I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

Hi Mark:

I've never done criminal defense work, so I can't answer from personal experience, but you can look through the Colorado statutes here and see Colorado's actual definitions of 1st degre vs. 2nd degree vs. manslaughter etc:

http://www.michie.com/colorado/lpext.dll?f=templates&fn=main-h.htm&cp=

Unfortunately, the link is not direct. You have to click on "Colorado Revised Statutes" about three times then go to "Title 18" The definitions are in 18-3-101 to about 18-3-105.

Darian is correct, these things might vary from state to state, but I would be surprised if any state had a dramatically different statutory scheme from Colorado's. I believe that the distinctions between various types of murder arose a long time ago.

Jim

Rod Kaufman said:

Romney paid homage to the NRA today. Blasting Obama for an attack on America's freedoms, thundering away at him with righteous indignation.
Trouble is, Romney has done more to oppose gun rights than Obama!
He opposed the right to own an assault rifle, plainly stating the weapon is used only to hunt and kill people. (He must have been off his meds). Then, he falsely claimed the NRA had endorsed him in a previous election. Next, he backtracked and acknowledged it wasn't true.(Must have been back on his meds).
The NRA's response to these revelations? "Nobody's perfect"!!!
Bush! Bush voters!!!
http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/13/politics/romney-nra-speech/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

So Rod, do you actually think this election is going to turn on the issue of gun rights? Birth control? Warren Buffet's captial gains taxes? Ms. Romney's job resume? Class envy?

Wake me up when the Democrats are ready to talk about the economy.

Jim

Hi Floyd:

I like that one a lot!

Jim

Rod Kaufman said:

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/opinion/54019921-82/bagley-cartoon-facebook-lake.html.csp

Cute cartoon; still... even us moderates think it's pretty feeble for Obama to pat himself on the back too much for the work of the Navy SEALS and various covert intelligence teams. Even Arianna Huffington agrees with me, so I must be right. Also, suggesting that any other president or candidate didn't have the courage to make this particular call is really weird. Plenty of "I'm-ready-to-go-to-jail" uber-pacifist Catholic nuns would have made the call to kill Osama. Gandhi himself would have authorized this operation...


[COLOR="Blue"]"Mr Obama has faced criticism even from allies about his decision to make a campaign ad about the bin Laden raid. Arianna Huffington, an outspoken liberal who runs the left-leaning Huffington Post website, roundly condemned it.

She told CBS: 'We should celebrate the fact that they did such a great job. It's one thing to have an NBC special from the Situation Room... all that to me is perfectly legitimate, but to turn it into a campaign ad is one of the most despicable things you can do.'

A serving SEAL Team member said: 'Obama wasn’t in the field, at risk, carrying a gun. As president, at every turn he should be thanking the guys who put their lives on the line to do this. He does so in his official speeches because he speechwriters are smart.

'But the more he tries to take the credit for it, the more the ground operators are saying, 'Come on, man!" It really didn’t matter who was president. At the end of the day, they were going to go.

'In years to come there is going to be information that will come out that Obama was not the man who made the call. He can say he did and the people who really know what happened are inside the Pentagon, are in the military and the military isn’t allowed to speak out against the commander- in-chief so his secret is safe.'

Brandon Webb, a former SEAL who spent 13 years on active duty and served in Iraq and Afghanistan, said: 'Bush should get partial credit for putting the system in place.

'Obama inherited a very robust package with regards to special ops and the intelligence community. But Obama deserves credit because he got bin Laden – you can’t take that away from him.

'My friends that work in Special Operations Command (SOCOM) that have been on video teleconferences with Obama on these kill or capture situations say that Obama has no issue whatsoever with making decisions and typically it's kill. He’s hitting the kill button every time. I have a lot of respect for him for that.'

But he said that many SEALs were dismayed about the amount of publicity the Obama administration had generated about SEAL Team Six, the very existence of which is highly classified.

'The majority of the SEALs I know are really proud of the operation but it does become “OK, enough is enough – we’re ready to get back to work and step out of the limelight.' They don’t want to be continuously paraded around a global audience like a show dog.'

'Obama has a very good relationship with the Special Operations community at large, especially the SEALs, and it’s nice to see. We had the same relationship with George W. Bush when he was president.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2137636/Osama-bin-Laden-death-SEALs-slam-Obama-using-ammunition-bid-credit.html[/COLOR]

Jim