I have not featured Nita Strauss in some time. She is usually the lead guitarist with Alice Cooper's touring band. She took some time off a few years back to record a solo album. Well, she teamed up with various vocalists (including Alice Cooper on one track), but today's song is an instrumental.
This song is "Momentum" by Nita Strauss from her 2023 album The Call of the Void.
They may learn from this experience. Homeowner shoots, grazes suspect during reported Jefferson County break-in - WVTM
A Jefferson County man fired a shot during a confrontation with two men who allegedly broke into his home Monday, grazing one of the suspects before both left the scene, authorities said.
Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office deputies responded Sept. 7, 2026, to the 2400 block of 1st Place NW after a report of a person down. The victim told deputies that two men had entered his home and refused to leave when he confronted them.
They refused to leave before a firearm entered the conversation, then they left. One was apparently injured before they left.
Jefferson County, Alabama is home to Birmingham. It is about 130 miles west of Atlanta, Georgia, about 120 miles southwest of Chattanooga, Tennessee, or about 70 miles northeast of Mobile, Alabama.
The two would-be, bad guys were arrested a short time later. Both were held on charges of second-degree burglary, and harassment. The guy driving the car was also charged with Driving Under the Influence.
Good Guys 2, Bad Guys 0.
This video came to me by way of Open Source Defense. And if you read this blog, you know that I like Professor Yamane's take on gun culture. I don't agree with him on everything, but I agree with him, more than I disagree with him, and I appreciate his perspective. And I think he has to be a cool professor, even if he tries to undercut that with the bow tie.
It is a podcast in video format, so you really need to listen, and not watch. That is important because the podcast is just over one hour long.
This is The Reload's video Teaching a College Course on Guns in America (Ft. Wake Forest's David Yamane)
Well, crazier than the Left already is. Black Man Causes Meme Explosion - by Juliette Ochieng
Woman kills her 3 kids, and pleads Not Guilty by reason of insanity. There is a trial.
The result: a mistrial. Eleven jurors - nine women and two men - considered her not guilty by reason of insanity, but there was one holdout, a man.
As it turns out, the man is black and the other jurors are white. And some of the white female jurors expressed their displeasure and exasperation with the man using … interesting language and tactics
Some of the memes are genius, some the thing the white liberals did were insane. Click thru.
He broke into an occupied dwelling in Alabama. Did he not expect to find an armed homeowner? From USA Carry: Mobile Homeowner Shoots and Kills Man Who Broke In Through a Window at 9:15 at Night, Police Say - USA Carry
A man broke into a Calgary Drive home through a window around 9:15 at night and the homeowner shot and killed him, according to the Mobile Police Department.
There is a homicide investigation going on, as there always is, but no charges have been brought against the homeowner, because Alabama is not Massachusetts.
Police are working the death as a homicide investigation. That word alarms people, and it should not. Every death by gunfire gets that label at the front end, including the ones that end with no charges at all. It describes the category of investigation, not a conclusion about the person who fired.
There are "news articles" on this incident from the local press, but they seem to be jumping to conclusions (Professional Journalists™ do that) about the word "homicide."
Self-defense is a human right.
Miguel Gonzalez is not the first person to name this a Lynching in progress
But in less than 24 hours, the modern lynching party was working to its legal extremes.
They are going after this man hammer and tongs.
Click thru for the memes, if nothing else. (Here is one unrelated to that post.)
Absolutely no one is shocked by this. Senior Baltimore employee under investigation sought to cut inspector general access, report shows
The tl;dr is as follows. The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) is investigating a "senior Baltimore employee," so far an unnamed employee. That employee demanded that the IT department cut the access of IG to the records in question.
The inspector general said this senior employee was the subject of two investigations.
One probe involved accusations that the employee wrote hundreds of emails that violated city policies.
Another investigation looked into allegations the senior employee created a hostile work environment.
This is a somewhat long-standing dispute, as there is one legal ruling from the middle of August, and possibly back to April, asking a judge to clarify the access that the OIG is supposed to have. Judge clears way for Baltimore inspector general to access city records
Baltimore City Solicitor Ebony Thompson asked the judge to clarify or reconsider her Aug. 14 ruling that the city must comply with subpoenas issued by the Inspector General's Office, as well as other issues dating back to April 10.
I'm accused to focusing too much on Chicago. Guilty. Chicago was home for a long time, and I miss the city that it used to be. Chicago corruption is infamous. Chicago Crime is running out of control. Chicago finances are a joke. But other Blue Cities have similar problems.
From The Other McCain: The Permanent Problem of Liberalism
Every time I use the word liberalism — as it has been commonly used in the United States for decades, describing the belief system associated with the Democratic Party — some pedant will invariably show up in the comments to scold me with a lecture about “classical liberalism” as if I’m an ignorant schoolboy in need of their tutelage, which I am not. Nobody needs to teach me about John Locke, Adam Smith, et al., whose books have been on my shelves for 30 years. Nor am I ignorant of the fact that most young left-wingers nowadays make a point of scorning liberals, instead referring to themselves as progressives or socialists.
Click thru for Friedrich Hayek, William Buckley, Andrey Vyshinsky and Eleanor Roosevelt, and more on why Democrats cannot, under any circumstances, denounce Hamas and terrorism.
The Right Way - Top of the News
Majority Leader Thune to Ride the Bench at Republican Gathering - IOTW Report
Another day, another fraud - The New Neo
Wombat-socho - Late Night With In The Mailbox: 09.11.26
Don Surber: Baghdad NYT, Bitter Old Women Against MAGA, and Infanticide in Massachusetts
Glenn Reynolds: Another Burger Review
EBL - First Blood : Why the Sheriff Hated Rambo
First Blood
AoSHQ: Morning Report 09.09.26
Pixy Misa at Ambient Irony - Daily News Stuff 11 September 2026: Sunken Scat Cat Edition
The Exploration Company has raised $450 million in series C funding in an attempt to show that Europe is not irrelevant. (Ars Technica)
And to explore space, maybe.
Flopping Aces - The Week in Radical Leftism, 09/11/2026 – Back to The Nation!
The Misremembered ’90s of The Backrooms
Good gravy, only The Radical Left can take a dark, cynical horror movie and interpret it as nostalgia.
Again from Wombat-socho - In The Mailbox: 09.11.26 (Afternoon Edition)
The Abbey of Misrule: Come Walk With Me
Defending The Wood Perilous: Unexpected Success
Gates of Vienna - News Feed 9/9/2026
Anthropic Worker Estimates 10% Chance AI Could Kill Humans by 2036
(NewsNation) — Several Anthropic researchers have raised concerns about the potential for artificial intelligence to become uncontrollable
Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog - LinkSwarm For September 11, 2026
The Republican Party held their first ever Midterm Convention in Dallas.
On the AfD’s shocking election win in Germany.
The Glibertarians - Friday Morning Links
Trump set to honor 9/11 victims, first responders at Pentagon on 25th anniversary
Vance Casts Midterms as Fight Over American ‘Birthright’
Small Dead Animals - Wednesday On Turtle Island
Conman Carney’s Canada: A Windsor council candidate. Another church fire. Corruption.
Stories You Won’t Find At Carney’s CBC: The tattoo. Blasphemy laws. Global warming scam. A protest. Sign of solidarity.
Wombat-socho again - In The Mailbox: 09.11.26 (Evening Edition)
Chicago Boyz: The Return of the Old Gods, 9/11+ 25 Years, Charlie Kirk One Year Later, The Rift Across Our World, and AfD and the “Brandmauer”
Dana Loesch: 25 Years Later
Political Hat - Quick Takes – Meanwhile, At College: Decolonial Orientations; Normalizing Tides Of Erasure; Racial Quotas
They are paying people to decolonize psychological oppression or something…
Woke melancholia? Williams College is going to teach about it!
Maggie's Farm - Wednesday morning links
Introducing the 1960s: The Beatles
The Brain's Concept Of The World Versus The Real World
Freedom Is Much More Important Than Democracy
J.J. Sefton at Ace of Spades HQ - The Morning Report — 9/ 11 /26
Robert Spencer: But as Yogi Berra said, it ain’t over ‘til it’s over.
25 Years Later, Yes, They’re Winning
Doug Ross - Larwyn’s Linx: Left-Wing Violence Is Still An Existential Threat To The Republic
The "Both Sides" False Equivalency Died on 9/10/25 Yuri Bezmenov
Infanticide in Massachusetts Don Surber
I leave you with Midweek Memes from GraniteGrok!, Wednesday Memes .. from MaddMedic, Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #4150 from 90 Miles from Tyranny, Friday's gifs from Wirecutter, and Bookworm Beat 9/11/26: The post-9/11 meme edition of madness from Bookworm Room.
The Price of Liberty brings us the news. How desperate will the hoplophobes and hoploclasts become?
A hoplophobe is a person who fears guns (or at least claims to). A hoploclast is one who hates guns. At least guns in the possession of anyone except a government, badged employee or a on-duty, serving combat-related person serving in the military.
The news is presented in a graphic. Click thru. Murder and non-negligent homicide is down 18.1%, robbery is down 18.5%, and aggravated assault is down 7.2%. This is based on the FBI crime reports from 2024 and 2025. This is during an age when gun sales, if not record-setting, are measured in the millions, every year. There are approximately 20 million concealed carry license holders nationwide, and 29 states have adopted Constitutional Carry.
This is all very good news. It is also difficult for people to believe, in a time when a news story about two or three people being gunned down by a madman is broadcast to all Fifty States within a half-hour (“Bottom of the hour” news alerts) or an hour (the next regular reading of the news).
We are left with the impression that violence, gun and other violence, is exploding at a phenomenal rate. We hear about these killings faster, more frequently, and often phrased in a way to push the hoploclastic agenda. But this is not the case, according to various government agencies.
And since this information is not likely to be told to anyone by the national media, I intend to spread it far and wide.
What could possibly go wrong? Anthropic Is Building a Predictive Surveillance System to Monitor Activists - The American Prospect
Job postings and interviews with senior security officials at Anthropic show that the frontier AI lab is building out an extensive monitoring system to keep tabs on activists who oppose the rapid development of artificial intelligence.
How are they finding people? Why through the press, media, social media, etc. In effect, they are spying on everyone looking for people who disagree with their business model.
The article is long, but here is where they reference their "Pre-crime" division, as in the Tom Cruise movie.
This kind of pre-crime policing, encouraged without due process, is referenced as an explicit goal by Anthropic’s security program manager in the podcast reviewed by the Prospect. “The goal would be transforming operations from reactive information to gathering proactive and predictive and preventative threat engagement and management,” he said, adding, “That’s the kind of operational maturity that makes sense for protecting high-value targets in any industry.”
They are not going to wait for people to actually break the law, they are going to sick the cops on them based on what they say, which is seems they have already done. You will be silenced, if you disagree with them.
Hat tip to The Loyal Moses Video They're Using AI to Arrest You Before You Do Anything. (I haven't watched all of the video)
Lindsey Stirling is an artist whose music I have loved for a long time. (At least a decade.) ARKAI is an "electroacoustic duo." One plays the violin, the other plays the cello. They apparently went to Juilliard together.
The music fits together very well.
This song is "King of Coins" by ARKAI & Lindsey Stirling. It was released 9 September as a video on YouTube. This is just the audio. I find most "official videos" distracting, and this one is more distracting than usual. It is easy enough to find if you are interested.
From Wombat-socho: Better Late than Never
This is the second government program I've seen this month, that is listed as ahead of schedule. The other program was also notably under budget. Surely this is a sign of End Times, or something.
Speaking of the Nevada Security Site Advisory Board, we’re going to be closing up shop at the end of fiscal year 2027 since the environmental management & remediation that we’re providing oversight for is almost done, a year ahead of schedule. I’m going to miss being on the NSSAB; it’s been very educational in quite a few ways.
At least some good news is coming out of government.
I'm not in the mood for remembering, but I do remember. Do people remember, or has the country as a whole decided to forget?
Page down for a song. It is hard to believe the September 11th attacks were 25 years ago.
This song is "I Remember" by Deadmau5 and Kaskade from the 2008 album Random Album Title. Like most dance music, it takes about 30 seconds to get past the intro.
Pixy Misa at Ambient Irony starts us off with Daily News Stuff 8 September 2026: No News Day Edition
There's no news today, almost as if everyone has been celebrating labour by not doing any.
Brave is prettier, smarter, and smells better than any other browser, says Brave. (Brave)
Okay, Brave's mom.
William Teach at Pirate's Cove - Weird: Deported Haitians Are Broke And Stranded
Wait, didn’t all the libs tell us Haiti was awesome?
Light Over Heat with Professor David Yamane - The New York Times is Afraid of Guns
So, it’s really no wonder that an institution committed to promoting the culture of fear would highlight a book that centers the culture of fear.
The Silicon Graybeard - European space business. Is it dead?
Is the European space capability stuck with turn of (this) century technology? We know that European Space Agency (ESA) has a couple of launch platforms, but nothing is reusable. Nothing has landed and been flown again even as test.
Women's Outdoor News - Concealment vs. Cover: Teaching Kids the Safety Skill That Could Save Their Life
Most kids know to hide during an emergency. What they don’t know, and what could make all the difference to their safety, is that not everything you hide behind will actually protect you. There’s a word for hiding: concealment. There’s a different word for being genuinely protected: cover. They are not the same thing.
Again from William Teach - Bummer: Salvadorans May Lose TPS
I must say, CNN really should have considered whom they were going to use as a sob story in the article
THE FIRST STREET JOURNAL - Obligatory Lindsay Clancy post. (Click thru for the image of the jury.)
Let me make it perfectly clear: I believe that Mrs Clancy deserves to be found guilty and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Meep at STUMP - 2026 World Suicide Prevention Day
Hey guys… the warning is in the post title. This is not going to be a “fun” post.
The Abode of McThag - Prepare For War With Whom
UK calls up 95,000 veterans.
They say it's just a drill, but I've noticed a couple articles about the normal British citizenry being more effective about the incoming tide of immigrants.
This is the Deep State cranked up to 11. FBI Followed Catholic Priests, Continued Richmond Memo Work After Removal Order: DOJ Report Finds
A new Justice Department report reveals that FBI personnel opened investigations into two Catholic priests, conducted surveillance tied to the Richmond Catholic Memo, and continued revising the memo after headquarters ordered it deleted.
The report reveals how an investigation into a violent extremist led to the surveillance of clergy affiliated with traditional Catholicism, though the FBI ultimately concluded the priests posed no national security threat. The report also sheds new light on internal disputes on the reliability of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Rule of Law? We don't need no Rule of Law at the FBI. We do what we damned well please.
Although an FBI review found serious analytical failures and directed that the staff be “admonished,” Richmond field office leadership defended the employees involved, and later gave them positive performance evaluations, according to the Weaponization Working Group report.
The new report, however, gives the final word: “The FBI personnel involved in the creation of the Richmond Catholic Memo have been terminated from their positions.”
Hat tip to Stately McDaniel Manor: The FBI Was Weaponized Beyond Imagining
They surveilled priests and parishioners and were caught red-handed. There was no legitimate reason to do any of that, no legal predicate, no reasonable suspicion that any crime was being committed. Former FBI Director Christopher Wray lied to Congress, pretending to be upset about it, and claimed that activity was shut down and that it was limited to only one field office in Richmond, VA.
Now we’re discovering it was worse than we thought.
I would like to say you can take that in both meanings of the word, but while I believe the State of Illinois should be described as a "state of panic," the politicians running the state, or running the state into the ground, are not panicking enough. From Chicago Contrarian: CTU’s CORE Caucus in a State of Panic as Political Setbacks Mount
CORE stands for Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators, and it is currently the faction in charge of the CTU.
The union faces public controversy, member-led litigation, and congressional scrutiny over its failure to release audited financial reports for five consecutive years. Following legal and political pressure, the CTU released backdated audits; however, serious questions remain regarding omitted data, missing financial transparency, and the massive allocation of union dues toward political activism rather than direct member representation.
Five years is a long time, not to release audited financial statements. I worked for Fortune 100 companies that could close the books on a year, by January 15th, and produce an audited financial report before the end of the first quarter. Chicago Teachers Union is less complicated than any of those businesses. So what is the problem?
The union is suing, and being sued by, the Illinois Policy Institute and the Liberty Justice Center. The CTU is claiming defamation, the other organizations are suing over the lack of financial transparency. But that is really just the sideshow.
Citywide, public support for the CTU has dropped significantly. An Illinois Policy Institute poll found that only 27.5 percent of Chicago voters hold a favorable opinion of the union, while 53.6 percent view it unfavorably. For every voter with a favorable view, two view the union negatively, and over 50 percent of voters report being less likely to support candidates backed by CTU money. This decline in popularity is producing a consistent trail of electoral defeats since Brandon Johnson’s election in 2023.
Click thru for details. The one that most caught my eye is that the budget for Chicago Public Schools, and by extension the CTU, keeps going up, despite the fact that enrollment has been going down for a number of years. And don't ask about test scores.
Do I expect anything to get better in Chicago education? No. I expect that the schools will still consume an ever-larger part of Chicago taxes, despite shrinking enrollment, and I expect that Chicago schools will fail to educate Chicago students.
Every year that Professor Yamane teachs (runs?) his seminar on the Sociology of Guns, he posts some of the student essays, if they grant him permission to do so. They are usually interesting. We have 2 such essays today.
The first meeting of the seminar is actually a field trip to a local range. (If I remember, they actually go in small groups, which helps with safety, and the length of time the students are just standing around.) Students must attend the field trip, but they do not have to shoot any of the firearms.
This essay is their reaction to field trip. The majority of students, even at a university in South Carolina, have no experience with firearms. A few identified themselves as having "a small amount" of experience, and only 2 identified themselves as having "significant experience with firearms."
First up we have Hannah: “The more we did it, the more natural it became”
My first time ever holding a gun was only a week before visiting the shooting range with my group. Before visiting, I was filled with anxiety. I wasn’t expecting this, even though I grew up in Florida and was constantly surrounded by talk of guns. Even holding one made me nervous because I had never touched one before.
Next, we have Robert: “The smell, recoil, and weight of the firearm quickly bring you to reality”
Entering the range today, I had very little prior experience with guns. My knowledge and perspective of guns were influenced by video games (Call of Duty) and the news. These video games fueled a small fascination with guns that was never fully realized.
Click thru for the essays in question.
This year students have been particularly reluctant to give permission. Cancel culture is a thing, after all. See The Best Student Essays I May Never Post, for the reasons.
Unlike years past, I am facing an interesting dynamic right now: The reflections were collectively the best set I have received, but the students are collectively more reluctant to share them than ever. If I don’t post as many range reflections as I have in previous years, this is why.
And you should be reading Light Over Heat with Professor David Yamane. It is usually an interesting read, even when the Professor and I disagree about something. We actually agree about more than you might think, but then I disagree with the NRA about a lot of things as well.
At least it was over something important. </sarcasm>. Argument over green chile enchiladas ends in deadly shooting | KRQE News 13
He shot his cousin, several times, over an argument about enchiladas. Wut?
Police said Ervin Gutierrez, 22, and Nathaniel Cavazos, 25, were at an an apartment, drinking at dinner and got into a fight over the heat of the green chile on enchiladas they were eating. After the fight, Gutierrez, 22, pulled out a handgun and shot Cavazos several times, killing him.
Gutierrez is charged with one count of murder.
I miss living in a civilized society. OK, so it has been stuck in drafts for a few days. It is still worth thinking about.
