Maricopa County Sheriff Joseph Arpaio has been much in the news lately, thanks to his reactions to the Minutemen Project. But this one makes me think he's not all that bad: Inmates March To New Jail In Pink Boxers:

"This isn't a publicity stunt, this is their normal wear," Arpaio said. "What do you want me to do, put them in tuxedoes to move them?"

Oh yeah, there's a picture. Just make sure you aren't drinking at the time, or you may spew all over your screen.

I hope to continue this new tradition of just writing up about my weekly experiences/impressions on Friday night. This is my recess night. Everyone has gone to bed, and I don't have to get up early in the morning, so I smoke a pipe or two and catch up on reading some blogs and doing some blogging myself. This is why you should see more activity here during weekends.

An experience this week reminded me of another of my odd beliefs: a certain large cross-section of the human race will always require something to witch-hunt. That is, many people will always need something or someone to fear and/or persecute. Maybe eventually we will evolve out of it, but I don't see it happening in my lifetime, or many generations yet to come, for that matter.

Back in the days of yore, it was actually witches (or suspected witches, I should say). The Nazis had the Jews and eventually pretty much everyone else, the KKK have African Americans (and Jews), and recently some witch-hunting has been going on against perfectly innocent Arabic Americans. Which brings me to the point: the terrorism of the past few years has opened up the witch hunt to include anyone whose (note to Ms. Ficara) face you don't immediately recognize.

A few months ago one of my co-workers was actually detained by a property owner. We work for a company that is contracted to the local C.P.S. to provide extra meter readers, so we don't wear C.P.S. uniforms. We do have our own uniform, which includes a bright yellow shirt that can be seen from several blocks away--not exactly the kind of color you would wear to sneak into someone's backyard to commit some mischief. We also wear ID badges that include our photo along with the logos of both our company and C.P.S. Our meter reader was not allowed to leave the property until both our manager and the police were on the scene to assure the whacko that this guy was, indeed, only a meter reader. Why do I equate this with the witch hunt? Because of what the whacko said: "We got a war going on. How do I know who's in my backyard?" (Once more, note to Ms. Ficara). Now how does a war against terrorists have any relation to some poor guy standing in your yard, wearing a uniform, holding a handheld computer, and looking at your meter?

A similar, though less dramatic, event happened to me this week while running an OMR route. I had stopped to check the map and see which way I was supposed to turn at the end of the street, when I heard someone yell. He ran up to my truck on the passenger's side--the truck was already in drive and all I had to do was accelerate, and besides, lots of people have legitimate questions. The most popular questions, among people who don't realize their meter is automated, are "Do you need to get into my yard?" or "Did you get my house?" But this guy said, "You searching for RF?" (The handheld unit has a rubber ducky antenna to pick up the signals). I told him exactly who I was and what I was doing, and the entire time he kept looking all around the inside of my truck, trying to find something. "Okay, just checking," he said. "Lots of strange stuff been going on around here lately." I don't know what kind of nefarious activity he could be expecting from someone who was just driving down the street holding a radio out the window. I was dying to ask him what kind of stuff, but he had just a little too much of the whites of his eyes showing, if you get my drift. "Oookay," I replied, and went on my way. The guy seemed to be solidly in the paranoid freak category.

On a lighter note, we had our weekly "safety meeting" this Thursday. This one was on "proper conduct" or something like that. One of the rules was "no unauthorized firearms." My first question was, "How can we get an authorized firearm?" Well, the rule made it sound like this was possible. Only my immediate supervisor--a fellow gun nut--thought it was funny. Heck, most of time I'd be happy to just have some big ol' clunky .38 Special security guard revolver, except that it would be getting mighty heavy by the end of the day.

First, a disclaimer: I don't work for this Kinder Morgan company, so much of what I'm about to say is based on my own experience where I do work.

Interesting article here about what they call "automated meters," and what we refer to as "OMR's." But I have a few problems with it. First:

Last year, an error-prone meter reader's mistakes led to some Casper-area customers, including City Councilwoman Lynne Whalen, receiving bills of over $1,000 because they had been undercharged for several months and their accounts needed to be caught-up.

This is almost certainly incorrect. If their bill had to be "caught up," it was not due to an error on the part of the meter reader. It was because the meter was either impossible to find, locked inside a back room with no access provided by the property owner, or guarded by a rabid 1500-pound Rottweiler (or a computer glitch, which I have also seen happen). Meters that have to be "caught up" are that way because they haven't been read in a long time. Second:

When a meter cannot be read manually, meter readers estimate how much gas has been used at that residence, Long said.

Wrong. Experience leads me to believe that this spokesman has never actually been on the street/in the back-alleys/walking all over somebody's godforsaken 17 1/2 acre estate looking for meters and actually reading them. If I were ever caught entering a read that I didn't actually get from a meter, I would be terminated. The estimating is done by the billing folks, by averaging several months worth of older bills. (This "spokeman" was just covering his own backside and blaming it on the peons.) Third:

Estimating gas usage does not happen often and Kinder Morgan tries its best to make sure gas usage is not estimated for two consecutive months, he added. But sometimes it is necessary.

I know of several meters that haven't been read in at least several months, because no one knows where they are. This particularly applies to gas meters. Electric meters are usually mounted on the wall of the house somewhere, but gas meters can be anywhere. And by anywhere, I mean it could be right against the house, somewhere in the back yard, somewhere out in the mosquito-infested Cambodian jungle of an alley behind the place, or even on someone else's property. The old guys who have been doing it for 30 years know where they are, but due to seniority they never read those routes--they only do the easy stuff. There are also "lost" electric meters. They are usually temporary meters that were never removed after construction was completed. I found one of these once, sealed up nice and tight between two adjacent privacy fences in a space just wide enough to house a meter on a pole. Due to its position, I was unable to read it.

The "automated meters" still have lots of problems. On larger properties, it is still necessary to know where the meters are so that a "line of sight" can be established to pick up the signal. If the property is large enough, and it has a nice, big brick house with the meter in the back, forget about it. There's too much distance and too many brick walls between you and the meter, and you can't pick up the signal.

Crimson Trace makes laser grips for SP's?! I didn't know that. I'll have to check that out.

I actually had an idea just like those "Speedstrips" several years ago, and handmade a few for myself. They fit in the pocket a lot more comfortably than a round speed-loader.

An update over at Lest Darkness Fall.

I guess I would be remiss in not mentioning this little gem: Officer Accidentally Fires Gun While Going to the Bathroom in San Antonio:

Officer Craig Clancy, whose been going to the bathroom for many years now, took the appropriate steps to relieve himself. Unfortunately, as he began to pull down his pants his gun fell off his waistband and fired off two rounds as it hit the tile floor.

I'm almost positive these guys carry Glocks. How could an impact with the floor have caused it to fire? That's not supposed to happen. Not only that, but how in the heck did an impact with the floor make it fire twice? My guess: when it started to fall he tried to catch it. Since he was off-duty, maybe he was using a non-regulation holster that didn't fasten the weapon in securely? There should be lots of questions about how this happened. And yes, I noticed that All Headline Staff News Writer Christina Ficara did not use the correct version of "who's."

Update--9:10PM: Oddly, I was unable to find anything about this at the San Antonio Express-News website. But I did find this at the website of WBBH in Ft. Myers, FL (?):

SAN ANTONIO--This is a story they'll be telling around the San Antonio Police Department for a long time.A police spokesman says an off-duty officer was at a San Antonio auto auction house yesterday when nature called.Officer Craig Clancy strolled to the appropriate facility and was lowering his trousers when his pistol fell from his waistband. When Clancy fumbled for the falling firearm, it went off -- twice.One of the bullets nicked a bit of floor tile into the leg of a man who was washing his hands nearby. That man was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment.Police internal affairs is investigating.

This makes a lot more sense, and fits my earlier assumption. So, if the latter story is correct, this means that not only does Ms. Ficara not know the difference between "whose" and "who's" (where do they get these people?), she is guilty of anti-gun bias at the worst, or, to give her the benefit of the doubt, sloppy journalism. Well heck, she misspelled "who's" so I guess sloppy investigative journalism is to be expected. Glocks don't "fire off" two rounds from being dropped, but they will easily fire two rounds if someone gets his finger inside the trigger guard while trying to catch it when he drops it. Maybe it was headed for the bowl and he was trying to save it before he had to reach in and...extract it. Heh. He should've just let it fall, rinsed it in the sink, and done a thorough cleaning when he got home. But perhaps I've assumed too much.

This will be one to watch. I'm amazed that a mere pizza guy was able to get a CHL in New York. I thought you had to have special connections or something like that. It sounds promising that the police are already saying it's justified. This is another job I held in the past (pizza guy, that is, not mugger), although I was in a much safer part of the country and during the 8 years I worked there, none of our guys were ever mugged. The closest it came to any such thing was when one driver stopped to use a payphone at a stop & rob in the wrong part of town for a white guy to leave his car. He was followed back to his vehicle by a small gang of punks who "issued verbal threats." Fortunately, they were too far away to actually touch him when he opened his door and pulled his deer gun out from behind his seat (a Thompson-Center Contender). They swiftly backed away and left the scene. (Point is, it wasn't for money. You got it, it was "racially motivated.")

The photo of the attacker doesn't exactly make him look like a model citizen, either.

The History of the Battle of Flowers Parade:

The idea for the first Battle of Flowers Parade was conceived early in 1891 by the wife of a congressman who had seen a similar parade in Spain. She suggested to her friends that a flower parade should be held in San Antonio each year on April 21 in memory of the fallen heroes at the Alamo and to commemorate the victory at the Battle of San Jacinto, April 21, 1836, where Texas had gained its independence from Mexico. These ladies formed the Battle of Flowers Parade committee, enlisted the support of fellow community leaders and the planning began. The first parade had an actual 'flower battle' with half of the fresh-flower-covered carriages, floats and bicycles going in one direction and the other half going in the opposite direction, tossing fresh flowers at each other as they passed.

By 1895 the parade had developed into a weeklong celebration. The first queen and king were added in 1896 and a princess, duchesses and other attendants were added in 1890, but parade royalty was 'hit and miss' until several years later when local organizations took over their selection. In 1901 the parade included its first horseless vehicle. By 1915-16 the parade had grown so much in scope that the floats could no longer be decorated with fresh flowers and artificial flowers were used. In 1976 the tradition of association members wearing yellow dresses and yellow hats on parade day began. In 1991 to celebrate the parade's centennial anniversary, former association presidents arrived in carriages and tossed flowers at each other and spectators as was done in the first parade. Today it includes some 40 flower-covered floats, dozens of military, college and high school bands, cavalcades, horse-drawn carriages, antique cars and giant, helium balloons. The Battle of Flowers Parade has been held every year since its beginning except during war times and originated what we now call Fiesta San Antonio.

Many businesses in San Antonio have given up on keeping this as a normal workday because of the high number of people who call in "sick." My employer is one for whom this is an official holiday. So that's why I'm home during the day on a Friday. As for myself, I've never been to anything involving Fiesta, and I don't plan on ever going. For me, San Antonio is a place to work and to stay as far away from as possible at all other times.

This article at The Masthead is an example of what I mean by a "pernicious truth":

If you've remained nonplussed as they took down Dan Rather and four of his Black Rock colleagues, if you haven't the slightest interest in acquainting yourself with the blogosphere, don't move an inch. You won't have to. Bloggers will be knocking on your door any day now. Or knocking it down.

To many of you, bloggers are a presumptuous rabble-amateurs elbowing their way into the publishing world. You may not know them, but they know youyour face, your manners, your prejudices, your conceits.

They're your readers. And, God help us, they've become the one thing we've always begged them to become ...

Engaged.

I'm just a schmuk with an inconsequential personal blog. I'm not the guy these people should be worried about. But there are plenty of others who are the ones they should be worried about.

This from KFYI in Arizona:

"Patrick Haab is a free man. Haab, 24, was arrested April 10 by Maricopa County sheriff's deputies at a rest stop along I-8 after Haab had held seven illegal immigrants at gunpoint. Haab said he thought he was in danger. After looking at the evidence, Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas concluded Haab was making a citizen's arrest, stopping people he saw violating federal law. The real saving grace for Haab was that one of the illegals was a coyote - a human smuggler - which is a federal felony. Thomas says if the men weren't here illegally, Haab would be facing felony charges of his own. Thomas is repeatedly cautioning people not to start rounding up immigrants at Home Depot. He says actions like that will be dealt with severely."

Or, "just because we couldn't nail this guy doesn't mean we won't try to nail the next one." Maybe those deputies should check out some of these guys.

This from the JPFO:

"Good news! At the urging of freedom's friend Len Savage, Rep. Phil Gingrey of Georgia's 11th congressional district has introduced H.R. 1603, 'The Fairness in Firearm Testing Act.'

This brief, clearly worded bill would require the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives to video-record ALL tests it conducts on firearms and to make copies of the unedited recordings available to owners of the tested items and defendants in cases involving those items.

Gingrey's bill was directly inspired by the JPFO documentary _BATFE Fails the Test_ (http://www.jpfo.org/batfevideo.htm). That documentary contains the first -- and so far only -- footage showing the BATFE trying to frame an innocent owner of a semi- automatic rifle.

Gun owners have been aware of such dirty ATF tricks for decades. But not until Len Savage delivered this explosive footage and JPFO made it available to the world did higher- ups in the U.S. Justice Department and Congress finally begin to believe us.

If Rep. Gingrey's bill passes as written, the ATF will have a much harder time destroying American lives. If the bill _doesn't_ pass (or gets weakened), then the ATF and a compliant court system will d everything they can to make sure We the People never again witness how that agency operates behind the scenes.

JPFO cannot and does not take a stand on any particular piece of legislation. We are an educational, not a political, organization. But we hope every reader will watch this bill carefully. (...go to http://thomas.loc.gov and search on 'Fairness in Firearm Testing.')

Watch who signs on as a co-sponsor. Watch who works to get the bill out of committee -- or who connives to keep it from ever reaching the floor of Congress. Watch who compromises, who sells out, who tries to weaken or twist the bill's language, and who stands firm. Watch which representatives vote for it and which vote against it.

Then you'll know, without a shadow of a doubt, which members of Congress are true friends of liberty and which only give lip service.

No reason why every single senator and representative shouldn't support proper conduct by a government agency, right? No reason at all.