Scott Wong, at PhxBeat, explains that the black guy with the gun outside the Obama Health Care Town Hall meeting in Phoenix was just affirming his Second Amendment rights.

Neatly dressed in a white shirt, black tie and gray slacks, the man, who only gave his first name as Chris, also had a pistol holstered at his side as he engaged in heated debates with those rallying in support of Obama’s heath-care reform plan.

A Phoenix police spokesman said plainclothes detectives were monitoring about a dozen protesters carrying guns, though no one broke any laws or was arrested.

Arizona is an “open-carry” state, which means anyone legally allowed to have a firearm can carry it in public as long as it’s visible. A permit is required if the weapon is carried concealed.

“Because I can do it,” Chris said when asked why he brought guns to the rally at 3rd and Washington streets. “In Arizona, I still have some freedoms left.”

On Tuesday, MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer fretted over health care reform protesters legally carrying guns: “A man at a pro-health care reform rally…wore a semiautomatic assault rifle on his shoulder and a pistol on his hip….there are questions about whether this has racial overtones….white people showing up with guns.” Brewer failed to mention the man she described was black.

Following Brewer’s report, which occurred on the Morning Meeting program, host Dylan Ratigan and MSNBC pop culture analyst Toure discussed the supposed racism involved in the protests. Toure argued: “...there is tremendous anger in this country about government, the way government seems to be taking over the country, anger about a black person being president….we see these hate groups rising up and this is definitely part of that.” Ratigan agreed: “...then they get the variable of a black president on top of all these other things and that’s the move – the cherry on top, if you will, to the accumulated frustration for folks.”

Not only did Brewer, Ratigan, and Toure fail to point out the fact that the gun-toting protester that sparked the discussion was black, but the video footage shown of that protester was so edited, that it was impossible to see that he was black.

1:34 video

This time it’s reenactors battling over turf.

LA Times:

[T]hree years ago, a stranger rode in and vowed to shake up what he considered a moribund tourist trap. A showdown ensued between Tombstone residents who wanted to keep the streets as calm as possible and thespians with higher aspirations.

Stephen Keith, a onetime regular at Renaissance fairs who can hold forth on the similarities between the 1993 movie “Tombstone” and Wagner’s “Ring” cycle of operas, founded the Tombstone Huckleberry Players. They were not content to simply re-create the shootout under a tented space inside the O.K. Corral. Instead, hoping to build a crowd for a new late afternoon show, the actors would walk down Allen Street, performing skits in character and leading tourists to the performance space.

Keith acknowledged there was resistance. Locals, he said, with no theater experience didn’t like seasoned actors taking their favorite roles.

“Every old guy who retires and ties his white ponytail back and puts his name on his pickup truck comes here to be Wyatt Earp,” said Keith, 49, who plays Doc Holliday. “I know how to work a crowd. I’ve been in theater for 32 years. This is what I do.”

For more than a year, this town of 1,500 allowed the Huckleberry Players to do their act. But in November, a new mayor was elected, and he appointed Talvy to enforce the letter of the law.

Mayor Dusty Escapule said complaints were coming in from merchants at one end of Allen Street whose customers were being swept up by Keith’s troupe, and from rival gunfighter groups, who said the Huckleberry actors were pulling customers away from their shows.

So the City Council invoked a 1973 law that required a permit for streetperformances, and promptly turned down Keith’s application. In January, Talvy issued his first citation. Four of the players faced misdemeanor charges that could lead to a maximum $600 fine and two years in jail. ...

“You know, small-town politics,” one local woman finally said apologetically before reverting to character as a 19th century showgirl. Many cite the curse an Indian is said to have placed on the settlement more than 100 years ago—that there will never be two white men who live together here in peace. “It looks,” Escapule said, “like the curse is still in effect.”

The late “Macho B,” scientific research study subject

Remember the jaguar collared by the Arizona Game and Fish Department, a wildlife research coup trumpeted two weeks ago in news stories published around the country?

Well, as so often seems to happen when the experts go to work, the patient died.

Some news agency informed us yesterday that the collared male jaguar (now named Macho B by his former captors) was looking the worse for wear after his encounter with humanity. So they captured the poor jaguar all over again, concluded he was unwell, and after a thorough session of expert chin-stroking, euthanized him.

You or I would get in big trouble if we tried collecting a specimen of Pantera onca. Jaguar hunting is streng verboten because an unelected international committee of “experts” has placed every single representative of every jaguar population and subspecies on the sacred Endangered Species list, including the ones in the remote jungle wilderness that are not especially endangered at all.

There is no doubt that Arizona jaguars, though, are rare and in short supply, but, as this incident demonstrates, any numbskull with a degree from some state college extension and a badge can get permission from his federal chums for a little scientific research. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others, as George Orwell observed.

The Arizona Game Department’s ill-advised self-promotion in connection with the initial capture has also had the untoward effect of unleashing the animal loving, enviro whackjobs, resulting in protests and (naturally) a memorial service for the dearly departed tigre.

Arizona Game and Fish photo

Contrary to widespread reports of the big cat’s extinction in the United States, a live jaguar was photographed in Arizona in 2006.

Jaguars really do survive in today’s Arizona, as this news item from the LA Times confirms.

Erecting that border fence could have the highly undesirable impact of eliminating access to Arizona from their primary breeding source in Northern Mexico resulting in the real extinction in this country of one of our most exotic and charismatic big game species.

A jaguar was captured southwest of Tucson this week during an Arizona Game and Fish Department research study. The study was actually aimed at monitoring black bear and mountain lion habitats.

The male cat has been fitted with a satellite tracking collar and released. The collar will provide biologists with location updates every few hours and it is hopeful that this data will provide information on a little-studied population segment of this species. This is the first time in the U.S. that a jaguar has been able to be followed in this manner.

“While we didn’t set out to collar a jaguar as part of the research project, we took advantage of the important opportunity,” Terry Johnson, Arizona Game and Fish dept. endangered species coordinator, said in a press release issued by the department.

Arizona Game and Fish press release.

Hat tip to Reid Farmer via Karen L. Myers.

Yuma Sun:

The State Bar of Arizona is weighing whether to require new lawyers to swear they won’t let their views on someone’s sexual orientation affect their duty, a move foes said could force attorneys to represent clients whose view they find personally offensive.

Existing rules require an oath saying lawyers “will not permit considerations of gender, race, age, nationality, disability or social standing to influence my duty of care.” The plan being weighed by the bar’s board adds sexual orientation to that list.

Not signing the new oath, if it is adopted, is not an option: Attorneys cannot practice law in Arizona without being admitted to the bar.

The move has provoked severe objections from 31 attorneys who sent a letter to state bar President Ed Novak.

Tim Casey, one of those who is unhappy with the proposal, said it raises all sorts of issues. At the very least, he said, the wording “is so very vague it’s scary.” ...

Federal law and federal courts have spelled out that it is illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, religion, age and similar factors. The oath, Casey said, simply mirrors those laws, much in the in the same way that lawyers swear to uphold the state and federal constitutions.

Casey said any move to make sexual orientation one of these “protected classes” should be decided by lawmakers or courts, not by the board of the state bar. ...

Casey said he sees a broader agenda at work.

“There are people trying to make it difficult for professionals to exercise their religious convictions, their moral objections or their ethical objections in cases.”

So if a gay activist in Phoenix decides, for example, to sue the Catholic Church to force it to perform gay marriages, any individual attorney, regardless of his political, social, and religious views, could be forced to represent the complaintant under pain of penalties from the state bar.

According to the Washington Times:

Fort Huachuca, the nation’s largest intelligence training center, changed security measures in May after being warned that Islamist terrorists, with the aid of Mexican drug cartels, were planning an attack on the facility.

Fort officials changed security measures after sources warned that possibly 60 Afghan and Iraqi terrorists were to be smuggled into the U.S. through underground tunnels with high powered weapons to attack the post, according to multiple confidential law enforcement documents obtained by The Washington Times.

“A portion of the operatives were in the United States, with the remainder not yet in the United States,” according to one of the documents, an FBI advisory that was disbursed to the Defense Intelligence Agency, the CIA, Customs and Border Protection and the Department of Justice, among numerous other law enforcement agencies throughout the nation. “The Afghanis and Iraqis shaved their beards so as not to appear to be Middle Easterners.”

According to the FBI advisory, each Middle Easterner paid Mexican drug lords $20,000 “or the equivalent in weapons” for the cartel’s assistance in smuggling them and their weapons through tunnels along the border into the U.S. The weapons would be sent through tunnels that supposedly ended in Arizona and New Mexico, but the Islamist terrorists would be smuggled through Laredo, Texas, and join the weapons later.

A number of the Afghans and Iraqis already are in a safe house in Texas, the FBI advisory said.

Fort Huachuca, which lies about 20 miles from the Mexican border, has members of all four service branches training in intelligence and secret operations. About 12,000 persons work at the fort and many have their families on base.

Complete story.

An attack by small numbers of irregulars on a military facility with plenty of heavily armed, well-trained personnel in a remote location, where press access can be expected to be rigidly controlled by the authorities, would not seem to fit the profile of the conventional terrorist operation very well.

AP:

A wildlife biologist at Grand Canyon National Park likely died from the plague through his exposure to wild animals that can carry the disease, the National Park Service said Friday.

Eric York, 37, was found dead in his home Nov. 2. Following his death, about 30 people who came in contact with him were given antibiotics as a precaution.

While authorities were uncertain about how York became infected, officials said that the biologist was at a greater risk to the sometimes-fatal disease through his exposure to wild rodents and mountain lions.

Park Service officials initially said they suspected the plague or hantavirus, another sometimes-fatal disease endemic to the Southwest, because of York’s interests and hobbies.

Health officials in Arizona warned in September that the plague appeared to be on the rise and that more cases were likely after an Apache County woman was infected with the disease.

While Arizona health officials say the disease appears to be on the rise in the state, CDC spokeswoman Lola Russell said plague cases weren’t on the rise nationally.

Plague is transmitted primarily by fleas and direct contact with infected animals. When the disease causes pneumonia, it can be transmitted from an infected person to a non-infected person by airborne cough droplets.

Cases are treatable with antibiotics, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that up to 50 percent are fatal if the disease causes pneumonia. The Coconino County Medical Examiner has said York’s lungs were filled with fluid and his body showed signs of pneumonia.

The autopsy confirmed that the cause of death was bubonic plague. The disease is endemic to much of the Western United States.

Do you feel threatened by this?

Even Western states with strong hunting cultures, no gun control laws, and residents who overwhelmingly vote Republican contain suburban enclaves of liberal insanity.

Chandler, Arizona, a major suburb of Phoenix, is obviously just such a locality. One glance at the junior high school’s web-site indicates immediately that it sees its goal as producing Berkeley Breathed’s Lola Granola rather than Wyatt Earp.

And, in a fashion typical these days nation-wide, the liberal regime in Chandler intends to enforce its politically correct perspective with absolute ruthlessness via “Zero Tolerance” policies. Zero Tolerance, as enforced by American school systems, seems commonly to include “zero connection to reality.” Even a kid’s doodled drawing of a ray gun may be treated as a “threat,” resulting in serious disciplinary action.

East Valley Tribune:

An East Valley eighth-grader was suspended this week after he turned in homework with a sketch that school officials said resembled a gun and posed a threat to his classmates.

But parents of the 13-year-old, who attends Payne Junior High School in the Chandler Unified School District, said the drawing was a harmless doodle of a fake laser, and school officials overreacted.

“I just can’t believe that there wasn’t another way to resolve this,” said Paula Mosteller, the boy’s mother. “He’s so upset. The school made him feel like he committed a crime. They are doing more damage than good.”

Payne Junior High officials did not allow the Tribune to view the drawing. The Mostellers said the drawing did not depict blood, injuries, bullets or any human targets. They said it was just a drawing that resembled a gun.

But Payne Junior High administrators determined that was enough to constitute a gun threat and gave the boy a five-day suspension that was later reduced to three days.

The Tribune isn’t publishing the boy’s first name at the request of his parents. ...

In the letter, school officials… indicated there would be a zero-tolerance policy toward gun threats.

Chandler district spokesman Terry Locke said the school is not allowed to discuss students’ discipline records. However, he said the sketch was “absolutely considered a threat,” and threatening words or pictures are punished.

The school did not contact police about the threat and did not provide counseling or an evaluation to the boy to determine if he intended the drawing as a threat.

The Mostellers said their son has no discipline record at the school because they just moved from Colorado this year.

The sketch was one of several drawings scratched in the margins of a science assignment that was turned in on Friday. The boy said he never meant for the picture to be seen as a threat. He said he was just drawing because he finished an assignment early.

School officials issued the suspension on Monday afternoon and notified the student’s father, Ben. He met with school officials and persuaded them to shorten the suspension from five days to three.

That kids’ parents should sue the pants off that school district, and the school board should obviously discharge all school officials incapable of, or merely disinclined toward, distinguishing between drawings and actual physical objects.

State-enforced coercive egalitarianism has reached the level of paradox in Scottsdale, the Arizona Republic reports.

A Scottsdale bar owner said Monday that he will fight discrimination charges leveled by cross-dressing patrons and the Arizona Attorney General’s Office. ...

The dispute began late last year, when Anderson asked Michele deLaFreniere and other patrons to leave the nightclub because they had “freaked out” women customers by using the women’s restrooms.

When the transgender patrons tried to use the men’s room, they complained to Anderson that male patrons harassed them.

“It was determined that the safest course for the protection of all was to exclude these particular individuals because their conduct was creating tension at the nightclub,” Anderson said.

DeLaFreniere, who is chairman of the Scottsdale Human Relations Commission and a city employee, said it was a matter of discrimination and filed the complaint.

Anderson said he has no bias against transgender individuals, but could not afford to put in a third restroom specifically for that group.

It could be worse, I suppose, just imagine how many restrooms a bar owner would need to provide in Alexandria, where the opening of Lawrence Durrell’s Justine asserts that

there are more than five sexes and only demotic Greek seems to distinguish among them.

This year’s anniversary of 9/11 was commemorated by the state of Arizona with the dedication of its own memorial. The Arizona Republic reports the event:

You won’t find any names carved in granite at this memorial.

Arizona’s 9/11 memorial wasn’t meant to be a headstone. Instead, “Moving Memories,” as it is called, uses sunlight to illuminate timelines and phrases that capture the true experience of Arizonans on and around the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

It is designed to make sure future generations of children know not just about that moment but about the shock and the fear and the way the nation came together afterward as well.

“My personal hope is that in some way we can get across to people that September 11 and the events that unfolded were this terrible, horrible, tragic time, and also a time when this country came together like I have never seen before,” said Phoenix Fire Capt. Billy Shields, who served as chair of the governor’s 9/11 Memorial Commission. “There were no differences. . . . We were all just Americans, and we wanted to help.”..

Shields talked to The Arizona Republic about what makes it special.

• The memorial incorporates actual relics from the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the field in Shanksville, Pa., where Flight 93 crashed. A 2 1/2-foot-long steel beam from the 44th floor of Tower One of the World Trade Center sits on a concrete pedestal. Rubble from the Pentagon and a scoop of dirt from the Pennsylvania field are mixed into the concrete. Memorial designers did sun mapping and carved an aperture into the steel above the beam. Once a year, at noon on Sept. 11, the beam will be fully illuminated in sunlight.

• The primary motivation in the design of the memorial was educational. There are timelines not only of Sept. 11, 2001, but of the months and years that followed. Interspersed are phrases to help people understand the emotion of the time. The memorial commission also created curriculums for students in kindergarten through 12th grade that schools can use as learning modules.

• More than 30,000 people were involved in creating Arizona’s memorial. That includes people who participated in a historical study of the time and people who donated cellphones and bought specially made commemorative pins to fund the memorial.

• The memorial is moving and changing as a metaphor to what has happened to the world since the attacks. The memorial is circular with a concrete base. Above it is a steel visor with words cut in the metal. As the sun shines down, light projects the words onto the concrete. At different times of the day and year, different sections of phrases will come into focus.

“We didn’t want a graveyard,” Shields said. “(This) reflects the true experience of Arizonans in and around September 11.”

And here are some sample phrases intended to help Americans understand 9/11.

Presumably the crescent shape has some sort of educational purpose, too.

stikNstein offers some take-offs applied to other American memorials.

The news of this travesty is just starting to receive national attention.