Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Two weeks ago, the Roanoke Times published an online database of registered concealed handgun permit holders in the paper’s community under the sanctimonious guise of “Sunshine Week.” The database included both the names and street addresses of some 135,000 Virginians with permits to carry concealed weapons. Columnist Christian Trejbal patted himself on the back for making it easy to snoop on the neighbors: “I can hear the shocked indignation of gun-toters already: It’s nobody’s business but mine if I want to pack heat. Au contraire. Because the government handles the permitting, it is everyone’s business.”

[...]

After an uproar among gun-owners, including domestic violence victims licensed to carry, the Times finally decided to yank the database. Trejbal seems not to feel much remorse: “Did we make it easier [to obtain the information]? Yes. But it’s still a public record.” Let’s review: He published a list he knew contained inaccuracies. His paper admits the decision endangered gun owners. He compiled a convenient shopping list for criminals — and smacked law-abiding gun owners in the face with his comparison of their choice to exercise their rights with sex offenders.

Public disclosure of concealed carry licenses varies from state to state. Eighteen states protect permit holders’ privacy from public view. Virginia is one of 17 states that make licensee records public. If information is public, does it make it right for a newspaper to publish it? The media exercise discretion all the time in withholding the names of minors or rape victims. Why should the privacy of law-abiding concealed handgun permit holders be treated with any less concern?

Moonbat sympathizer Bob Fitch posted more photos on Indymedia, including one of tolerant left-wing radicals blocking access to military recruitment tables and another of Capt. Griffin being escorted out of a campus building by university police.

The unhinged group behind the anti-troops movement at UC Santa Cruz is "Students Against War." The leaders on campus, according to a SAW press release, are:

Sam Aranke - 714-458-2471 - saranke@ucsc.edu
David Zlutnick – 805-698-6228 - dzlutnic@ucsc.edu
Janine Carmona - 707-496-3530 - jgcarmon@ucsc.edu

UPDATE: SAW has removed the contact information from its press release and is now lying about the fact that it made the info publicly available on the Internet. I am leaving it up. If you are contacting them, I do not condone death threats or foul language. As for SAW, my message is this: You are responsible for your individual actions. Other individuals are responsible for theirs. Grow up and take responsibility.

UPDATE II: SEE HERE NOW.

The capitulationist chancellor's contact info:

Denice D. Denton
Office of Chancellor
200 Clark Kerr Hall
University of California
Santa Cruz, California 95064

Assistant to the Chancellor:
Jessica Fiske Bailey
Phone: (831) 459-2058
Email: jfbailey@ucsc.edu

Michelle Malkin has responded to my post on UC Santa Cruz Chancellor Denice Denton's suicide. Quick recap: Malkin called Denton a "capitulationist chancellor" after Denton failed to expel or punish students who angrily protested and kicked military recruiters off campus. She posted Denton's office address, number and email (the latter were her assistant's, and all of this was available online) and encouraged readers to "take a stand" and contact her. Late last month, Denton killed herself. I summed up the situation and said this:

While no one is suggesting that her readers pushed Denton over the edge, Malkin has said nothing about the chancellor since her suicide. It might become her to apologize for smearing an academic, and directing people to direct their outrage to her office, in what were the final troubled months of her life.

Making Malkin angry is like shooting orca in a barrel, and lo and behold, this made her angry.

The blog of the libertarian magazine "Reason" is titled "Hit and Run."

They can run, but they cannot hide. And I'm not going to let them get away with their latest hit.

This sounds eerily similiar to what John Kerry said about the Swift Boat Vets. Malkin's rebuttal, if possible, is even lamer than Kerry's was.

Weigel accuses me of "smearing" Denton because I simply asked people to take a stand and quoted from a San Francisco Chronicle article reporting that the capitulationist administration knew about the anti-military activists' plans weeks in advance and had hoped that they would be rained out.

I'm convinced that Malkin misses the irony here. She didn't smear Denton - she merely called her a capitulationist. In her mind, implying that Denton wanted to bring down our military and welcome the terrorists to Santa Cruz with open arms and carrot juice is a perfectly neutral characterization. Why else would Malkin use it again in an an attempt to rebut the charged that she "smeared" Denton?

Weigel accuses me of throwing around charges of "treason" and "traitors," neither of which I used in any of my blog posts on the anti-recruiting brigade at Santa Cruz. "Seditious," yes. Treasonous, no.

That's a clever bit of parsing. Malkin didn't use the T-word in her Santa Cruz posts. (She reserves that eloquent phraseology for the New York Times). She accused UC Santa Cruz (the whole school) of "hating our troops," characterized the anti-war students being part of an "anti-troops movement," called the actions "sedition," and, yes, called Denton a "capitulationist." How in the world did I peg Malkin as a "reckless labeler"?

Weigel attacks me for not saying anything about Denton's suicide. Crikey. If I had said anything, his ilk would have jumped all over me for not having the compassion to keep quiet about her various scandals and corruptocrat ways and let her loved ones mourn in peace.

I was unaware I had an ilk. Perhaps that's the terminology you pick up writing for VDare.com.

I can't speak for my ilk, but I suggested Malkin should apologize because, for that brief, frantic moment when the terrorists almost took over Santa Cruz, Malkin thought Denton was worth going after. She blogged it for two days; it was a fairly important story, and you'd think crack correspondent Michelle Malkin was following it. It seemed strange that one of the villains of the story could kill herself and Malkin wouldn't care. But apparently she'd stopped seeing UC-Santa Cruz as a threat to America; she'd moved on to fresh outrages. Like any good hit and runner (the auto vehicular type, not the Reason type), she heard the bump under her tires and hit the gas pedal.