The Sun reports a spot of embarassment for British Intelligence:

A second-hand camera sold on eBay by a top MI6 agent held secret records used in the fight against al-Qaeda terrorists.

Names, snaps, fingerprints and suspects’ academic records were found in the memory of the digital device.

Alongside them were photos of rocket launchers and missiles which spooks believe Iran is supplying to Osama Bin Laden’s henchmen in Iraq.

And a hand-drawn graphic revealed links between active al-Qaeda cells — with terrorists’ names and occupations.

Meanwhile a document marked “top secret” detailed the encrypted computer system used by real-life James Bonds working away from MI6’s London HQ.

Among those named in the material was 46-year-old Abdul al-Hadi al-Iraqi, who was captured by the CIA in 2007.

The fanatical Iraqi Kurd, one of al-Qaeda’s highest-ranking lieutenants, is being held by the US at Guantanamo Bay.

The Nikon Coolpix camera was snapped up for just £17 on the auction website by an innocent 28-year-old deliveryman who lives with his mum.

He discovered the secret material as he downloaded pictures from a US holiday at his home in Hemel Hempstead, Herts.

A friend said: “He only bought the camera because he was going on holiday with his ex.

“He flew home early this month and downloaded his holiday pictures and saw some of rocket launchers and missiles.

“He knew he hadn’t taken them so asked friends about it and they suggested going to the police.”

The man walked into Hemel Hempstead Police Station to report the matter, but cops initially treated it as a joke.

Yet within days Special Branch, the team of specialist anti-terror officers based in every county force, descended on his humble terraced home.

They took away the camera and the family’s PC and spent £1,000 replacing them.

Officers banned the shocked family from talking to the media.

Legendary White Crane-style Kung Fu Master Pei Mei, it is said, killed twelve fully-armed Shaolin monks using only the blade from his broken pencil sharpener.

South Carolina Low Country Island Packet has a story indicating that the Zero Common Sense policies associated with America’s bed-wetting, nincompoop haute bourgeoisie have spread even to within a stone’s throw of the US Marine Corps’s recruit training depot at Parris Island.

A 10-year-old Hilton Head Island boy has been suspended from school for having something most students carry in their supply boxes: a pencil sharpener.

The problem was his sharpener had broken, but he decided to use it anyway.

A teacher at Hilton Head Island International Baccalaureate Elementary School noticed the boy had what appeared to be a small razor blade during class on Tuesday, according to a Beaufort County sheriff’s report.

It was obvious that the blade was the metal insert commonly found in a child’s small, plastic pencil sharpener, the deputy noted.

The boy — a fourth-grader described as a well-behaved and good student — cried during the meeting with his mom, the deputy and the school’s assistant principal.

He had no criminal intent in having the blade at school, the sheriff’s report stated, but was suspended for at least two days and could face further disciplinary action.

District spokesman Randy Wall said school administrators are stuck in the precarious position between the district’s zero tolerance policy against having weapons at school and common sense.

“We’re always going to do something to make sure the child understands the seriousness of having something that could potentially harm another student, but we’re going to be reasonable,” he said.

Pious blithering letter to parents from school dated 9/11.

Police report (!). These idiots actually called the police over this!

Principal McAden “clarified” today, defending the school’s insanity and asserting that the child was “not suspended for having a pencil sharpener. He had an exposed blade which created a dangerous setting for the student and other children. The student was suspended for one day for inappropriate behavior in the classroom.”

Dangerous? Maybe a legendary martial artist could do something effective with a weapon of the sort (especially in the Hong Kong cinema), but an elementary school kid is going to do what with a marginally-edged one inch piece of metal?

Prince George County, Maryland police violated a warrant they were serving for the questionable arrest of the wife of the mayor of Berwyn Heights by staging a SWAT team raid and carrying out an utterly unnecessary forced entry. Two friendly Labrador retrievers were shot dead, and two respectable people were manhandled and manacled for hours.

Baltimore Sun story.

The training and culture of law enforcement has gone outrageously astray in this country.

Remember the federal officers who came to collect Elian Gonzalez equipped with machine guns, wearing tanker helmets and loaded down with paramilitary gear?

Preposterously excessive force, a systematic kind of cringing cowardice expressed by the mentality that sends paramilitary SWAT teams armed with automatic weapons to kick in doors and make arrests of people who’d come down to the police department if contacted by telephone, the overly-prudential point of view that insists on strip searches and manacles for non-violent middle-class members of the public has become typical of today’s police.

It’s been going on for decades. I can remember marveling in Brookfield, Connecticut, years ago, stopping one evening at a fast food joint and seeing a local cop on his dinner break toting around one of those 9mm Beretta semiautomatics and five, count them, five! extra 15-round magazines on his belt. Has anyone ever actually fired upon a police officer in the 200+ year history of Brookfield? I wondered at the time. And was there currently reason to expect a Zulu impi to come over the hill and attack? Why would a local cop possibly need to be carrying 90 rounds of ammunition? That many cartridges are heavy.

I decided back in the early 1990s to get a Connecticut pistol permit. The process required me to stop by the local Newtown police station to pick up a form. Imagine my surprise, when I found the police barricaded away, inaccessible to the dangerous public of upper middle-class suburban Fairfield County, behind locked doors. One communicated with a secretary in a booth protected by bulletproof glass, passing papers back and forth in one of those sliding bank trays. Obviously, Newtown’s police officers led a life of constant fear.

I grew up in a family with many members who were working or had worked in law enforcement. The kind of men who became policemen in the old days were not afraid of criminals. They knew that they were tough and they knew just how uncommon men like themselves were. They knew most criminals are cowardly scum, and incompetent screw-ups to boot. The human being who will initiate violence is rare, and the human being who will initiate violence against a man in authority recognizably skilled at violence is even rarer.

The kind of men who used to become police officers were adequately armed with a .38 revolver or even just a nightstick. My father, working as a Marine Corps MP, and armed only with a nightstick, placed a dozen men under arrest and marched them off to the brig. He told them he knew perfectly well there were enough to them to overcome him, but he promised that he’d kill the first one or two who tried. They submitted to arrest.

The Texas Rangers used to boast of a necessary ratio of “one riot, one Ranger.” And the Pennsylvania State Police long had the same policy of sending a single State Trooper to suppress a civil disturbance or quell a mob.

Today, they send jack-booted Storm Troopers armed with machine guns to bring in 8 year olds.

Contemporary law enforcement culture is a disgrace and a genuine public hazard and it needs to change. They should dissolve every single SWAT team, get rid of every single item of paramilitary equipage, and –of course– end drug prohibition and the accompanying crime epidemic providing most of the excuse for the militarization of US law enforcement.

Joel Salatin is one of those slow food, energy conserving, tree-hugging whackos, but even he finds that in today’s over-regulated world everything I want to do is illegal.

Hat tip to Bird Dog.

A little overenthusiasm on the part of New Jersey’s State Legislature in drafting one more anti-gang measure may send a harmless 20-year-old sales clerk to jail for three years for BB-gun possession.

MyCentralJersey.com:

Caught speeding in Highland Park in April in his father’s Acura RSX, Ryan Narciso found out the hard way about a recent change in a New Jersey gun law that could send him to prison for three years.

The 20-year-old sales clerk at a shop at Menlo Park Mall and former Middlesex County College student had a pellet handgun in the car, according to an indictment filed last week in Superior Court, New Brunswick. …

Narciso’s father, an architect, bought the pellet gun at a garage sale a few years ago to fend off squirrels that made their way into the attic of the families home on Mount Pleasant Avenue in Edison, the father and Narciso’s lawyer, Amilcar Perez of Perth Amboy, said.

Under a new state law, Narciso’s possession of the weapon qualifies as a Graves Act offense. Narciso could face what prosecutors and criminal defense attorneys call a “hard three,” meaning three years with no prospect of parole.

But a state official Wednesday acknowledged that the draconian measure made its way into law by mistake.

The Graves Act, adopted in 1981 and named after Frank X. Graves Jr., the late state senator and law-and-order mayor of Paterson known for patroling the city, outlined mandatory-minimum prison sentences for anyone guilty of using a gun in the commission of a crime in New Jersey. A burglar caught with a handgun, for instance, faced a solid three years behind bars for the gun crime alone.

With little or no fanfare, lawmakers stiffened the Graves Act in the last session. They folded the amendment into anti-gang legislation that Gov. Jon S. Corzine signed into law in January.

Now, the simple unlawful possession of any firearm can bring mandatory penalties for anyone who pleads guilty to or is convicted of that crime alone.

a previous Rainbow Family Gathering

The US Forest Service unexpectedly canceled a week-long Boy Scout honor society service project planned since 2004 in favor of a suddenly “spontaneously announced” Rainbow Family “Gathering of the Tribes” at the Bridger-Teton National Forest in Western Wyoming.

The decision to pull the plug on the Boy Scouts in favor of the counterculturalists was made by Mark E. Rey, Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment in the Department of Agriculture.

The Boy Scouts’ event was part of a program of 5,000 elite boy scouts donating 250,000 hours of time for construction, repair, and reclamation work in five National Forests. The scout volunteers intended to camp out in Bridger-Teton, build a trail at Teton Pass and remove a quarter of a mile of obsolete sheep fencing as well as three miles of fenced enclosure at an altitude of 8000 feet.

WorldNetDaily reports that the Forest Service booted the scouts in favor of the hippies, rather than go to the trouble and expense of law enforcement.

The conflict arose with the Wyoming location and dates, because Rainbow Family participants announced they would meet in the same general location as the Scouting work was to take place. The Rainbow Family events are not organized, there is no official website, and the makeup of the assemblage varies. Their activities grow to a peak over the July 4th weekend and then taper off, but the cleanup from the estimated 25,000 people expected to invade Wyoming’s Sublette County, population 6,000, is expected to take the time the Scouts otherwise would have been doing repairs.

Mary Cernicek, a spokeswoman for the Bridger-Teton National Forest, told the Casper Star-Tribune federal officials will look for other work in another location to substitute for the Scouts.

“We’re heartbroken, but we’re committed to giving the Boy Scouts a good experience and providing them with the education and leadership skills they’re seeking,” she told the newspaper.

Bousman said it’s fairly simple: The Scouts applied for permission for their project, filled out forms, went through red tape, and got permission. Then came the announcement from Rainbow members they’ve chosen the same location.

Mark Rey, the federal undersecretary supervising the U.S. Forest Service, met with Rainbow Family members recently in Pinedale, and urged them to move their gathering, the Star-Tribune said. They refused.

Rey told WND he thought the decision to move the Scouts to somewhere else and leave the Rainbow Family alone was the best under the circumstances. He said the government allows the Rainbow Family to bypass its regular permit requirements in favor of an “operating plan” but the bottom line was that the government didn’t want to be arresting hundreds or thousands of people.

“They couldn’t be expelled without a fairly significant amount of law enforcement activity.”

But law enforcement activity took place anyway.

The Forest Service, for reasons it won’t divulge so far (probably drugs), made an arrest, a second individual was then arrested as well for interfering with the first arrest, and as the fedral officers led the suspects away, they were attacked with sticks and stones by a crowd of 400. Eventually more than 60 police were required to control the mob, and rubber skugs and “pepper balls,” i.e. paint balls containing pepper spray, were fired at the crowd. Ultimately five people were arrested, and the ACLU is threatening retaliation.

The Casper Star-Tribune blames the police.

Barnegat, NJ public schools were recently locked down after someone sighted a ninja in the woods.

You can’t be too careful.

—————-

Hat tip to Tom Helm.

The LA Times happily records the triumph of ressentiment over reality in the left coast’s open air asylum.

Across the state Monday, at 5:01 p.m., the moment that same-sex marriage became legal by order of the California Supreme Court, exultant gay couples raced to be first to partake in a legal ritual long denied them.

Claiming that anyone was denying homosexuals anything is a false and tendentious kind of phrasing. No one was stopping homosexuals from marrying. Homosexuals who think they can marry are in conflict with reality not their fellow citizens. Same-sex couples can no more marry than they can reproduce.

The homosexual political movement wishes to erect a coercive regime of equality by compelling everyone else to accept a changed definition of marriage and forcing everyone to participate in the recognition and celebration of such relationships. It is really as if there were a politically influential group of madmen who used their strength within the democrat party to pass a law or obtain a judicial edict requiring all the rest of us to address each of them as “the Emperor Napoleon.”

The Supreme Court of the State of California has no more authority to change the definition of marriage than it does to decree that 2 + 2 = 5.

In the 19th century, many people in San Francisco used to greet a local madman who styled himself Emperor of the Unted States with the title he desired, indulging his absurdities with a smile at their humor. Saluting the Emperor Norton was a voluntary proposition. In today’s California, that state’s citizens and businesses will be obliged by law to recognize the imaginary status claimed by large numbers of the deranged.

CBS:

Most children growing up in the US memorize the Pledge of Allegiance. But, in one Oregon elementary school, the kids won’t be allowed to recite it at an end of the year assembly.

The principal banned it that day so as not to offend Muslims.

One resident of Portland, Oregon was a little surprised when she received an e-mail from her stepson’s school principal.

The e-mail said that the children would not be reciting the pledge because of its reference to God.

The principal was named Pam Wilson, and all this occurred at the Capitol Hill Elementary School in Portland.

KATU.com:

The following is the full e-mail response that parent Briana Reese received from Principal Pam Wilson:

“The Pledge contains the words, ‘under God’ and we have many Muslim families here. So out of respect for the diversity of religious faiths practiced by our school community (parents and families) we decided that this year the students would memorize and sing the Preamble to the Constitution. At the rehearsal on Friday they did it from memory and to a wonderful song. It was very joyful and unique. I think you, and other parents, will really appreciate the creative and new way to open the program.”

In Winchendon, Massachusetts, a veteran who fired salutes on Memorial Day gave ten-year-old Bradley Geslak two empty discharged brass cartridge cases. (Little boys love these. I know, because, when I was that age, I treasured any empty cartridge cases I found.)

A teacher at Toy Town Elementary School saw the 4th-grader fondling one of his souvenirs at lunch the next day, confiscated the kid’s prized possession, and arranged for him to be suspended for five days.

Despite parent’s requests the school is refusing to give the kid back his souvenir, and has threatened to assign the child to a probation officer.

Worcester Telegram via Nancy Mathis.

We spent a lot of money and lost American lives defeating the Iraqi Army and conquering Iraq. We won; they lost.

But we immediately started treating the Iraqis not as a conquered and occupied enemy, but as an independent and sovereign nation which we needed to woo and court, and whose opinions, prejudices, and enactments we were obliged to honor. They shoot at US troops, then if they run into a mosque, we treat it as off-limits.

American troops don’t even have freedom of religious expression in Iraq. US authorities are enforcing Islamic law on our own troops.

AP reports:

An American service member has been removed from duty in Iraq following complaints that Marines were handing out coins promoting Christianity, the U.S. military says.

Sunni officials in the former insurgent stronghold of Fallujah said the coins were given to Iraqis at an entry checkpoint and had biblical verses written on them in Arabic.

A military statement said the service member was removed from his duties “amid concerns from Fallujah’s citizens regarding reports of inappropriate conduct.”

And how do you like this typical example of the insane perspective of the secular American left (which, at least, identifies the terrible, offending verse):

It doesn’t seem right for American soldiers to force a religion upon those who are still recovering from the grips of the Islamic extremist group, al-Qaida, but residents in Fallujah say the Marines are passing out coins quoting the Bible’s John 3:16.

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. John 3:16.“, is a scripture known by many Christians across the nation as the one that saved their soul. But in a military news story out of Fallujah, this same scripture is allegedly being passed onto Iraqi citizens as their residence status is verified by United States Marines guarding the city.

The Iraqi’s hand over their resident badges for authentication by a Marine at the Western Entrance of the city. Once verified, some Marines are handing out coins with the question “where will you spend eternity” on one side and the John 3:16 scripture on the other.

According to residents of the city, the coins are a “humiliating” attempt to convert them from their own faith over to Christianity.

Would we let the Germans in defeated, post-WWII Germany continue to enact and enforce racial laws? Would we hesitate “to humiliate” them by forcibly imposing our liberal and humanitarian values on them? We would, I guess, if nincompoops like George W. Bush and other liberals of today were in charge.

We actually needed to have humiliated them until they realized they were defeated and needed to change their ways, and were afraid to engage in violence against the US and US forces. We needed to convert them from from their barbarous and bigoted fanaticism. This is the same Fallujah where mobs hung up the bodies of Americans. They could use instruction in a lot of the ideals of Christianity.

Certainly, they ought to have been forced into accepting religious tolerance. And though the US Military, as an organ of the US Government, would not be entitled to convert them to Christianity as part of its operations, there is no reason we could not have allowed, and encouraged, every manner and form of Christian proselytizing and missionary work by US and European churches and denominations.

George W. Bush has internalized so much of the war-losing, incrementally-acting, enemy-appeasing perspective of the American left, he has conducted his military campaigns in the same self-defeating fashion as Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson. Like Truman, he’s been working with stalemate as his goal, and like Johnson, he’s allowed the enemy to retain safe havens, and also like Johnson, he’s frittered away the support of the public, and allowed the treasonous domestic elites to demoralize the American people and de-legitimize our own cause.

Daily Mail:

For nearly a quarter of a century, Lourdes Maxwell has celebrated the arrival of summer by putting a paddling pool in the garden.

This year, however, her two grandchildren and the children of her neighbours may have to find another way to cool off in the heat.

Miss Maxwell’s local council has decided that the pool – which is only 2ft deep – needs a lifeguard.

The 47-year-old divorced mother of three has also been told she must have insurance before she can inflate the toy outside her house in Portsmouth.