After Governor Martin O’Malley signed a new Maryland gun control law earlier this week, Beretta made it official – they are expanding to other states.

The new bill’s restrictions would stop the company from bringing in standard M9 magazines into their Maryland facility or warehousing them. This would make production of multiple products more difficult. Additionally, the company’s ARX100 would now be illegal because it’s an “assault weapon.”

The restrictions on Federal Firearm Licensees found in the new law would also impact Beretta’s manufacturing.

David Higginbotham of Guns.com writes:

And there is always the chance that this one bit of legislation might be the gateway to more restricitve measures.  With that in mind, Beretta released a statement appeared on their blog yesterday.  The message of the statement is clear: “The idea now of investing additional funds in Maryland and thus rewarding a Government that has insulted our customers and our products is offensive to us so we will take steps to evaluate such investments in other States.  At the same time, we will continue our current necessary operations within Maryland and we are thankful for and welcome the continued support of our employees as we do so.”

Beretta sees SB281 as an insult to their corporate presence.  As such, they’re not going to increase their support of a state that insults them.  The statement means they are staying and expanding out of Maryland.  The carefully worded declaration that they will “take steps to evaluate such investments in other States” leaves them some room, but the message I took away from my visit to Accokeek at the end of March was that Beretta has every intention of expanding the company elsewhere.

Hopefully, the planned litigation gets this law thrown out, but I suspect it will have to go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court before that happens so it could take a while.

Above photo by Jeff Quinton – Copyright 2009

If true this would appear to just be saber rattling right now, in my opinion. Of course, it could be an effective deterrent. Time will tell.

Defense News

At a dinner in downtown Washington Thursday, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel touted the Pentagon’s deployment of advanced weaponry, including the Air Force F-22 Raptor, to the Middle East.

[...]

It just so happens that satellite imagery of those F-22s in the Middle East has popped up on Google Earth.

Five F-22s have turned up on satellite imagery at Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates about 100 miles from Iranian territory. While it’s no secret the US has deployed the radar-evading Raptors to the Al Dhafra, this is the first time they have popped up on publicly available satellite imagery.

The satellite picture was taken about a year ago, however it appears to have been put on Google Earth in recent months.

An Air Forces Central Command spokeswoman based in the Middle East would not say whether the Raptors were still in the region. “We cannot confirm that they’re in the [area of responsibility],” she said.

[...]

The Google Earth images put the F-22s about 100 miles from Iranian waters and 140 miles from the Iranian mainland.

The stealthy jet can fly at speeds above Mach 2, according to an Air Force fact sheet, meaning it could reach the Iranian mainland is less than six minutes from Al Dhafra.

Al Dhafra is the premier UAE Air Force base. The US Air Force has built a strong relationship with its UAE counterparts and occasionally sends fighters to train at the Gulf Air Warfare Center there.

This is in my mother-in-law’s hometown of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. I’ve had kielbasi and other items from Kowalonek and Capital. I have yet to have anything from Luckie’s.

From the Downtown Shenandoah page:

 Annual Kielbasi Festival
and Kielbasi Making Contest
May 18, 2013 | 10am – 5pm

Featuring the Three Kielbasi Kings, Capital, Kowalonek, and Lucky’s, and of course no Festival would be completed without Mrs. T’s Pierogies.

Kielbasi making contest for those who still make their own. Contestants from all over enter to win the coveted PIG Trophy.

Polish Pottery, Matrushka dolls, Straw ornaments, and other Eastern European crafts.

Live Polka Band, food, crafts and games for the kids.

BBC America via Breitbart.com

To millions of fans, Star Trek is an entertainment, but to [ Benedict] Cumberbatch it’s more than that. To him it’s offering content that has topical and political relevance.

In the film there’s a debate among Starfleet personnel over how best to extract an enemy in a distant part of the galaxy — and whether that enemy should be subjected to due process.

The British actor says: “It’s no spoiler I think to say that there’s a huge backbone in this film that’s a comment on recent U.S. interventionist overseas policy from the Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld era.”

Associated Press

States should cut their threshold for drunken driving by nearly half— from .08 blood alcohol level to .05_matching a standard that has substantially reduced highway deaths in other countries, a federal safety board recommended Tuesday. That’s about one drink for a woman weighing less than 120 pounds, two for a 160-pound man.

More than 100 countries have adopted the .05 alcohol content standard or lower, according to a report by the staff of the National Transportation Safety Board. In Europe, the share of traffic deaths attributable to drunken driving was reduced by more than half within 10 years after the standard was dropped, the report said.

NTSB officials said it wasn’t their intention to prevent drivers from having a glass of wine with dinner, but they acknowledged that under a threshold as low as .05 the safest thing for people who have only one or two drinks is not to drive at all.

A friend of mine used to call MADD a bunch of neo-prohibitionists and you have to wonder if that’s the ultimate goal.

A quick roundup of who the above pictures are, starting at the top left:

Richard Griffin was appointed to the National Labor Relations Board via a recess appointment and still serves despite a court ruling that his appointment was illegal. The U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor Pensions (HELP) will hold hearings on Griffin’s nomination on May 16.

From his bio:

Richard F. Griffin, Jr. was sworn in as a Board Member on January 9, 2012, following a recess appointment by the President.

Mr. Griffin previously served as General Counsel for International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE).  He also served on the board of directors for the AFL-CIO Lawyers Coordinating Committee, a position he held since 1994.  Since 1983, he has held a number of leadership positions with IUOE from Assistant House Counsel to Associate General Counsel. From 1985 to 1994, Mr. Griffin served as a member of the board of trustees of the IUOE’s central pension fund. From 1981 to 1983, he served as a Counsel to NLRB Board Members.  Mr. Griffin holds a B.A. from Yale University and a J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law.

As the Workforce Fairness Institute points out:

Griffin, the former general counsel to the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) has served in a leadership role in a union that has been overrun by organized crime. According to Fox News, “The rap sheet for members of the International Union of Operating Engineers reads like something out of ‘Goodfellas.’ Embezzlement. Wire fraud. Bribery. That’s just scratching the surface of crimes committed by the IUOE ranks.”

Moving on – James Roemer was IUOE Treasurer and pleaded guilty in 2003 to fraud. Jamie DeRoss, an IUOE member, pleaded guilty to extortion in 2003. Kenneth Campbell was IUOE’s Business Manager and International Vice President. He pleaded guilty to charges of a conspiracy to embezzle funds in 2008. Martin Taccetta was a Boss of the Jersey Crew in the Lucchese crime family. He was charged with extortion and labor racketeering. Joel “Joe Waverly” Cacace (acting Columbo family boss) conspired with union members to get a paid no-show job for his son in 2003. ouis Moscatiello (Genovese crime family high-ranking figure) pleaded guilty to controlling three labor unions for organized crime in 2004. Andrew Merola, an IUOE Member, pleaded guilty to wire fraud and not showing up for work in 2010.

WFI Also points out that:

Earlier this year, the Washington Free Beacon reported, “According to the lawsuit filed by 10 members of Los Angeles-based IUOE Local 501, which represents workers in Southern California and Southern Nevada, Griffin participated in a conspiracy to manipulate the operation of Local 501 ‘through a pattern of racketeering activity.’ Griffin was served with the complaint and a court summons relating to the lawsuit at his Washington, D.C., home on Dec. 4, according to documents filed in court.”

A story in The Washington Post on the arrest of Jared Weinberg, a Washington Metropolitan Police officer arrested and charged with money laundering, features this piece of information:

Weinberg is among more than 100 D.C. police officers arrested in the past four years, said Kris Baumann, chairman of the police officers’ union.

The union official calls for better hiring standards, but there’s no indication it would have helped in Weinberg’s case. The charges against him are for activity before he became a member of the police force.

Additionally, DC is one of the top 10 departments by size in the country, with 3,800 police officers in 2011 (the last year I could find data for.)

Weinberg is charged with helping launder money for a drug trafficking ring in Pittsburgh. He was allegedly involved in this when he lived in the Baltimore area.

A New York Times story on both Greta Van Susteren and Megyn Kelly renewing their contracts with Fox News also points out that Van Susteren may move to an earlier time slot and that Kelly could replace her in the prime time slot at 10 p.m.

The article points out that Van Susteren may be making the move to spend more time with her husband, who was diagnosed with cancer. A source tells the NYT that the change isn’t likely “imminent” because of Kelly’s pregnancy.

The story also talks ratings as they pertain to Van Susteren, who is consistently number one in the time slot despite some slippage recently. Kelly had reportedly talked to ABC and CNN prior to the renewal.

Color me unsurprised.

DCist:

D.C. Councilmember Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6) is paying attention to events back in his native state of Texas. Wells today introduced a bill that would outlaw the production of firearms manufactured by 3-D printers, increasingly common devices that can construct machine parts designed on computers.

[...]

The District’s gun laws, which are among the strictest in the United States, permit residents to own—but not carry outside their homes—a wide variety of handguns, rifles, and shotguns that are officially listed by the Metropolitan Police Department. But 3-D-printed guns are of an entirely different sort.

“The end product is a cheap, functional and undetectable weapon that can be produced with nothing more than a home computer and 3-D printer,” Wells said in a news release. Wilson’s gun contains a few metal pieces, but most of it, including the firing mechanism, is made from hard plastic emitted by his printer. Wilson also dubbed his pistol a “wiki weapon,” in that many 3-D printer users share their designs with the rest of the Internet.

“An undetectable firearm constructed on your computer may sound like science fiction, but unfortunately, it’s already here and our laws have never contemplated this scenario,” Wells said. His bill, the “Undetectable Firearms Act of 2013,” would prohibit District residents with 3-D printers from following Wilson’s example.

In the painting, Jesus Christ is seen holding an AK-47 high in the air, as he simultaneously hugs a pot of gold, snuggling it close to his body. The Christian savior appears to be grimacing at a beggar who is on his knees, clearly in need of assistance (the man is raising his hand to Jesus and is wearing a rainbow wrist band).

This, in the artist’s view, is the conservative version of Christ: Uncaring, holding onto wealth and raising a firearm to the skies.