wanusmaximus

Atheism vs Theism may seem like a battle of wits involving only science, and debate. The real truth is far deeper and darker than this, and anyone who considers discussing atheism with a "person of faith" should consider this:

It is generally common for atheists to consider that the arguments against religion boil down to science, the facts, debate, etc. It puzzles many why someone when faced with all the evidence for evolution for example would still choose to ignore it. I think that many atheists are ignoring the REAL issue, the true reason why it is hard for someone to reject their religion.

Andrew Buyalos, guest columnist

First of all, let me begin by saying that Elilta Habtu submitted a well-written and well-researched article in Thursday’s paper. I was impressed at her determination to go through the process of obtaining a concealed carry weapon permit for the sake of the column. I do, however, wish to dispute some of her findings.

As a CCW permit holder, I am legally able to carry a concealed handgun for my personal protection in all but a few places. I am a current student at this great university, and have been a lifelong hunter as well as an avid participant in the shooting sports. My love of hunting and target shooting has led me, through experience and a hunter’s safety course, to be very comfortable and safety-conscience when handling firearms.

Elita Habtu, guest columnist

For the safety of the students and faculty at Virginia Tech, I hope Ken Stanton is wrong in his prediction that our state legislature will pass legislation this January that will force universities to allow concealed handguns on campus (CT, “Concealed Carry is Coming to Virginia Campuses,” Nov. 8).

After a new law passed earlier this year allowing Virginia residents to satisfy the “training” requirement for a concealed carry permit by taking an online course, I was curious to see how easy it is to obtain a permit online. My first step was to complete an online training course from the Concealed Carry Institute. Let it be clear that I have never touched a gun, never mind fired one. The closest that I have ever been to a gun is when being under attack in Norris Hall on April 16, 2007.

(CBS) In a case that raises questions about online journalism and privacy rights, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a formal request to an independent news site ordering it to provide details of all reader visits on a certain day.

The grand jury subpoena also required the Philadelphia-based Indymedia.us Web site "not to disclose the existence of this request" unless authorized by the Justice Department, a gag order that presents an unusual quandary for any news organization.

(BBC) More than 7,000 swords have been seized in Dublin by Irish police.

The swords, along with some air rifles, were seized in the north inner city of the Republic of Ireland's capital.

Police based in Bridewell carried out raids at a number of premises in the area on Monday, but details have only just been released.

Two men in their 20s were questioned over the seizure and have since been released without charge, pending a file to the Director of Public Prosecutions.

The swords were of different length and specification, an Irish police spokesperson said.

Hundreds of swords still in boxes while scores more with blades ranging in size from one to four foot long were put on display by police.

Other weapons included carved handle and decorative oriental knives, ninja and samurai style axes and other accessories.

The sale and supply of such swords were outlawed on 1 September.

The crackdown was part of Justice Minister Dermot Ahern's efforts to limit knife crime on the streets, but does not apply to hand-carved swords made before 1954.

Mr Ahern's spokesman said: "The minister has been on record in recent years about the dangers posed by samurai swords. They have been used with very damaging effect on our streets.

"Because of that he introduced legislation banning the swords.

"The seizure of such a vast quantity of samurai swords should reduce significantly any threat these swords might have proved to the public."

Anyone illegally in possession of samurai style swords faces up to seven years in prison. The penalty for possessing a knife in a public place was also increased from one to five years in the new legislation.

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At every range, shooters from the following list of archetypes can be found. The more you think about it, the more you will realize you have seen these people. The question is, which one are you?

1. Grampa and Cody

Typically an older white guy and his sniveling grandchild (or similar junior relation). Grampa is trying to teach Cody (or Jody, or Brody, or whatever crap name the kid has) how to shoot with a 1950’s era Lakefield or Cooey .22 rifle and an empty tin can lying 10m away on the ground. Cody’s soccer mom and sensitive new-age dad aren’t too keen on this idea, but the old man overruled them. Claimed they were coddling the little brat (true) and this will be a valuable experience (doubtful). Grampa smells of rye and seems a little unsteady on his feet, and insists on holding forth about his views on how a) kids today are all idiots, b) how much better things were in the old days, c) the evils of Communism, or d) the proper place of a woman. He occasionally interrupts his diatribe to yell such helpful advice as “squeeze the trigger, dammit! Like I showed you!” without ever having bothered to explain to Cody how iron sights work. Will grudgingly dole out one round at a time from his pocket, with instructions not to waste it. In the 30’s (or whenever the ancient bastard grew up) people only made 23¢ a year and couldn’t afford to miss a shot, or they’d catch The Polio. Cody, for his part, couldn’t hit the ground with a handful of thrown rice, is close to tears, and wishes he were at home with his XBox.

(San Antonio Express-News) Jarrette Schule was cutting down trees on his rural property Tuesday in Comal County when he noticed a green metallic tube on the muddy ground.

“I had never seen it before,” said Schule, a 34-year-old Web developer. “I looked at it, and it kind of looked like a missile launcher.”

Schule took a closer look. It was a long, forest-green metal tube. A decal on it read: “Guided Missile and Launcher, Surface Attack.”

The discovery was the start of a surreal journey for Schule. Somehow, an unarmed anti-tank weapon — or a very good fake — wound up on his land at Beck Road and Kirk Lane in the Hill Country, miles away from a military installation.

The launcher was deep in the wooded property far from the road, in an area he was familiar with.

“I don’t know if it fell out of something or if somebody just dumped it,” Schule said. “There’s some crazy whitetail hunters around here. Maybe they’re going overboard?”

Schule’s property in Comal County is vacant, and he didn’t want to leave a missile launcher unattended. So he loaded it in his truck and took it to his house in the North Side neighborhood of the Ridge at Lookout Canyon.

Touching and moving the launcher was a mistake, even if it was unarmed, a spokesman for Fort Sam Houston said. Old military ordnance can be dangerous.

But Schule spent Tuesday afternoon calling the FBI, Homeland Security, the Sheriff’s Department — every agency he could think of. He was stuck in a bureaucratic limbo.

“Everyone was handing it off to everybody else,” Schule said.

He was surprised at the amount of work it took to get the military to pick up its lost missile launcher.

Schule initially was nervous when he found the weapon. But as the hours passed, he did what most guys would do — marvel at the mind-blowing awesomeness of finding a missile launcher. He posted photos on Facebook and called his buddies, saying: “Guess what I found?”

Schule called the military police at Fort Sam. But their jurisdiction doesn’t extend off the post. Schule’s information was passed along to an Army criminal investigator, who visited Schule on Wednesday morning — about 19 hours after he started making phone calls.

The special agent walked into the house and saw the launcher sitting on the dining room table.

“She said this is the first time she ever encountered anything like this,” Schule said. “I got the impression it was kind of a big deal. Doesn’t happen every day, I guess.”

The decal on the launcher has a 13-digit “National Stock Number,” which is used to identify military equipment. The stock number is a match for launchers that fire Dragon surface-to-surface missiles, according to a database maintained by the U.S. Defense Logistics Information Service.

The launcher was built in December 1996. The Dragons, first manufactured in the 1960s, last were used in combat in 1991’s Operation Desert Storm. They were replaced by the Javelin missile system and finally discontinued in 2006.

Military officials were unable to say Wednesday who last had the launcher and when it was lost. The launcher has a serial number that can be used to track the chain of custody. That will be part of the military’s investigation, said Phil Reidinger, spokesman for Fort Sam.

At Schule’s house, he and the Army investigator had to wait for about three more hours for an ordnance disposal team from Lackland AFB to confiscate the weapon.

The team arrived at about 1 p.m. Wednesday and retrieved the device, ending a crazy experience for Schule.

“I thought just driving down the road, someone would just know that I had a missile launcher in my truck,” Schule said, laughing. “You think that way about the government.

But really, you have to make an effort for them to come get their missile launcher.”

LEBANON, Pa. —  A mother of three who gained national notoriety after she openly carried a loaded handgun to her daughter's soccer game was shot dead along with her husband in what appeared to be a murder-suicide.

Meleanie Hain, 31, and Scott Hain 33, were pronounced dead shortly after 8:30 p.m. Wednesday at their 1 1/2-story brick home in Lebanon, a small city about 80 miles west of Philadelphia.

The couple's three children home at the time but weren't hurt, police told the Patriot-News in Harrisburg. They were taken to stay with friends and relatives.

Some neighbors told the Lebanon Daily News they heard or saw the children — a 10-year-old boy and girls aged 2 and 6 — running from the house and screaming "Daddy shot Mommy!" shortly before the 911 emergency center was alerted at 6:20 p.m.

Debbie Mise, who lives nearby, said she heard a strange sound following by the screams of the children.

"I heard something heavy drop or fall, and then right away I heard the kids screaming, but I thought they were playing," Mise said. "It was loud. But it didn't sound like a pop."

Lebanon Police Chief Daniel Wright said Thursday that the case is classified as a "death investigation" involving two adult victims, but that no one outside the home nor any of the children is suspected of killing the couple. Detectives were still at the scene late Thursday morning, he said.

Wright said he did not plan to release any additional information about the case until after Lebanon County Coroner Dr. Jeffrey Yocum conducts autopsies on Friday.

Details about the shootings and what prompted the violence remained unclear Thursday morning.

Neighbor Mark Long said the Hains had been having marital problems for about a week. He said Scott Hain had left home on Tuesday, and Meleanie Hain didn't know where he was, but that he returned Wednesday.

Another neighbor, Brian Witmer, said he saw Scott Hain mowing his lawn around 3:30 p.m. Wednesday.

"There was nothing out of the ordinary," he said. "He didn't seem strange at all."

Scott Hain worked as a parole officer in neighboring Berks County, the News reported. He was formerly a guard at the Camp Hill state prison, according to the newspaper.

Meleanie Hain made headlines after she attended her then 5-year-old daughter's soccer game in a park on Sept. 11, 2008, with her 9mm Glock pistol in plain view holstered on her hip, upsetting other parents.

The county sheriff, Michael DeLeo, revoked her gun-carrying permit nine days later.

Hain successfully appealed the permit revocation, although the judge who restored the permit questioned her judgment and said she had "scared the devil" out of other people at the game.

Hain sued DeLeo in federal court, alleging that he violated her constitutional rights and prosecuted her maliciously when he took the permit away. She said that because of his actions her baby-sitting service had suffered, her children had been harassed and she had been ostracized by her neighbors in Lebanon, which has about 25,000 residents.

DeLeo said at Hain's appeal that he revoked her permit after fielding the parents' complaints. He said he based his decision on a state law that prohibits certain gun permits from being given to anyone whose character and reputation make him or her a danger to public safety.

After Hain sued DeLeo, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which says it tries to reform the gun industry through sensible regulations, offered to defend him for free.

"It is a case that calls out for common sense," Brady Center attorney Daniel Vice said then. "It's ridiculous to bring a gun to a child's soccer game."

A court hearing on Hain's $1 million lawsuit was postponed in May after an attorney in the case was involved in a traffic accident.

A seven-year old boy was at the center of an Albemarle County courtroom drama yesterday when he challenged a court ruling over who should have custody of him. The boy has a history of being beaten by his parents and the judge initially awarded custody to his aunt, in keeping with child custody law and regulation requiring that family unity be maintained to the highest degree possible..

The boy surprised the court when he proclaimed that his aunt beat him more than his parents and he adamantly refused to live with her. When the judge then suggested that he live with his grandparents, the boy cried and said that they also beat him.

After considering the remainder of the immediate family and learning that domestic violence was apparently a way of life among them, the judge took the unprecedented step of allowing the boy to propose who should have custody of him.

After two recesses to check legal references and confer with the child welfare officials, the judge granted temporary custody to the UVA Cavaliers Football Team, whom the boy firmly believes are not capable of beating anyone.

(Washingtontimes.com) The White House is collecting and storing comments and videos placed on its social-networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube without notifying or asking the consent of the site users, a failure that appears to run counter to President Obama's promise of a transparent government and his pledge to protect privacy on the Internet.

Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the White House signaled that it would insist on open dealings with Internet users and, in fact, should feel obliged to disclose that it is collecting such information.