I've finally found one

I've found someone else making the point that the campaign for homosexual marriage is in part a campaign to extract benefits from employers. A commenter at ChicagoBoyz:

the current debate on gay marriage is at least partially fueled by the intertwining of health care and employee/family coverage. The controversial issue is portrayed as who should have access to the benefits as currently structured when the unspoken question is/could be whether the current arrangement itself is flawed.

We'll have more to post soon about health care, but read I owe my health to the Company Store in the meantime.

Another blog mirror

Anybody notice that a number of blogs are mirrored on "[yourblogurlhere[dot]ass[dot]otron[dot]org"? These mirrors will not load directly, but if you Google your own blog, links to the mirrors will turn up.

The Third World's Right Arm

Feces Flinging Monkey shows you the barest essentials of the Kalashnikov rifle. He offers a very good reason for us to know this. And if, God forbid, that reason is realized, the Kalashnikov and its variants will be the most likely piece you'd encounter.

What would Dagny Taggart do?

We are no particular fan of nor apologist for Martha Stewart. But the little we have learned about her (from hack sput CNN) tells me she's a genuine self-made woman with singleminded determination to succeed in a man's world, even choosing to pursue it over keeping her marriage.

Think about how a woman like that probably views herself. Mutual blogroller/rollee Feces Flinging Monkey opines that his compassion for Martha Stewart slipped a notch or two upon discovering that she turned down a plea deal that she could have afforded without wincing. Now she and her employees suffer needlessly.

Would Dagny Taggart cop a 200k/community service/parole plea to make the bloodsucking Feds go away? I don't think so. You can call it arrogance, if you like, or you could call it "give the fsckers an inch and they'll . . . " No delusions of heroism, nor angular faces, nor the swooning glowing-coals-of-cigarettes-in-the-darkness-like-the-flame-of-the-human-intellect required to visualize Dagny telling the Committee to shove their Certificate up their asses.

We submit that many of the abuses we suffer today, from

• physicians leaving practice because the malpractice insurance is unaffordable,
• to the class-action lawsuit invitations we receive from time to time because, for example, a 17-inch computer monitor did not measure exactly 17 inches,
  
• to the myriad nonsense warnings on consumer products,
  

is because somebody not so long ago ran the numbers and found that copping the plea, choosing not to fight the unfair charge, was cheaper. What does this have to do with Martha and the Feds? The commonality of tactics. Threaten, then offer a settlement. Make an example of the first guy and the rest of the herd goes quietly.

The first transaction may have been cheaper. But now, thanks to the first few guys to cave, the overall costs have been transferred to the rest of us.

Update: Ilana Mercer's column frames our concerns well. Also Jonathan Gewirtz at ChicagoBoyz.

Update the second: And we borrow a page from Kipling, courtesy of Eugene Volokh.

Another idea of mine stolen---before I even had it

We proposed a new service carbine cartridge here, based on the 5.45x39.5mm cartridge case (rather, a 6mm PPC case) opened up to take a 6.5mm bullet with a high ballistic coefficient, yielding a finished cartridge that will still fit in the AR-15 magazine and action but deliver lethality far beyond the 5.56's practical range. Aside from the new barrel, the AR-15 would need to switch to the breechbolt compatible with the 7.62x39mm case, and take a retuned recoil spring and buffer.

Am still way behind on my reading: it was on the API list four months ago. Alexander Arms has rolled one out, along with an AR-15 upper to shoot it. They call it the .26 Grendel. They use a Lapua match bullet with a BC going North of .53. Check the video at this last URL, where an Alexander Arms spokesman describes its performance.

Here's a discussion of the 6.5 versus 6.8mm Remington SPC. Because the SPC appears to rely far less on barrel length, and SOF operators will prefer short-n-handy and reach for a different weapon if the range goes beyond 400 meters, 6.8mm will be the new US service rifle cartridge if the 5.56mm is to be replaced. But a .26 Grendel upper, which was once Fûz's pipedream, now has become a commercial off-the-shelf item.

The US Army consideration of replacing of the AR-15 is also proceeding apace, and apparently the teams are talking to each other, because a 6.8mm XM-8 is in testing (scroll to post dated 9 March 04).