March 18, 2016 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

I'll start off with a bit in the self-defense department, but the rest are general interest or current events stuff for today.

• It's Friday, so time to check out Active Response Training's Weekend Knowledge Dump. Another slew of good articles. Two that jumped out at me in particular were "A Burglar’s Universal Search Pattern – How a Burglar Robs Your Home in 8 Minutes" and "Nobody Ever Recounts a Defensive Gun Use As, 'I Knew That Day Would Be Horrible.'" 
• "Three Most Common Firearms Stoppages And What To Do About Them: Guns for Beginners"--The Truth About Guns. The stoppages are, of course, (1) failure to feed, (2) failure to eject, and (3) failure to go into battery.

And now some current events and political commentary:

• "Mysterious white powder spills on Eric Trump's wife after she opened letter sent to their apartment which demanded his father drop out of the race"--Daily Mail. As Scott Adams has suggested, the MSM is trying to set up a situation of political violence. 
• "Breaking: Multiple Explosions Targeting Law Enforcement Officials In Indiana…"--Weasel Zippers.
• "France: Jihad Infecting Army, Police"--Gatestone Institute. Although apparently a small number, a report of Muslim police officers refusing to protect Jewish synagogues, some that have become radicalized, and incidents of military personnel "defecting" to terrorist organizations.
• "FBI: Student Who Went on Stabbing Spree at Univ. of California Campus Was Inspired by Islamic State"--The Blaze.
• "Did FBI Agents Lie About LaVoy Finicum's Shooting?"--The Atlantic. More information on whether the FBI agents involved in the shooting lied and removed evidence from the scene. According to the story, the four FBI agents involved in the shooting were part of the bureau’s elite Hostage Rescue Team (HRT). 
• "Syrian Kurds declare their own federal region in the north of the war-torn country in defiance of peace talks in Europe"--Daily Mail. More information at the American Interest, "Kurds to Declare 'Federal Region' in Syria." The Kurds are on the ascendancy, and I don't think there is much Turkey or Iran can do to stop it. 
• "Mass rallies as Brazil political crisis deepens"--AFP.
• "Hillary Has an NSA Problem"--Observer. Some of the emails from Sidney Blumenthal (not a government employee) to Hillary Clinton contained information--including whole paragraphs--lifted directly from NSA reports classified Top Secret / Special Intelligence and under the NSA's GAMMA compartment: i.e., some of the most secret information produced by the Agency. 
• "Immigration: the mother of all issues"--The Washington Examiner. In addition to being an issue wrapped with jobs, national security, law and order, and national debt, the author notes that immigration is an existential issue:

When politicians want to import tens of millions of new immigrants it can look like Washington is trying to remake the electorate. This isn't pure fantasy. In 1996, Bill Clinton's White House instructed the Immigration and Naturalization Service "to streamline the naturalization process and greatly increase naturalizations during 1996." Sure enough, Hispanics more than doubled as a portion of the electorate for Clinton's 1996 reelection, according to exit polls.

Conservatives won't win any fights — over guns, marriage, taxes, spending, health care, or anything — if the U.S. electorate is remade in the image of California.

Deeper than the issues, and even deeper than the structural political questions, is the nearly existential question that Trump raises. "IF WE DON'T HAVE BORDERS," Trump tweeted in November, "WE DON'T HAVE A COUNTRY!"

• "Ann Coulter: GOP Voters Deliver Subtle Message—Die, Donor Scum!"--V Dare. The majority of Republicans back either Trump or Cruz. "The combined vote for Trump and Cruz is a ringing chorus of what this party wants: a wall, deportation, less immigration and no job-killing trade deals."
• "How an obscure adviser to Pat Buchanan predicted the wild Trump campaign in 1996"--The Week. 

[S]ooner or later, as the globalist elites seek to drag the country into conflicts and global commitments, preside over the economic pastoralization of the United States, manage the delegitimization of our own culture, and the dispossession of our people, and disregard or diminish our national interests and national sovereignty, a nationalist reaction is almost inevitable and will probably assume populist form when it arrives. The sooner it comes, the better… [Samuel Francis in Chronicles]

• "The Power of the Purse"--Ricochet. The author writes:

... New initiatives are hard to push through. But it is not so difficult to undo things. One simply has to turn off the spigot by refusing to appropriate money for them, and that is what Mitch McConnell and his colleagues promised and failed to do.

One could respond that they could not risk a government shutdown (though they claimed, while running for office, the opposite). But this response makes no sense. It is the President who shuts down the government by vetoing the budget. “Never mind that,” one could then reply. “They would get the blame. They have gotten the blame every time they tried.”

This, too, is true – but it ignores one thing. Every time they tried they lost their nerve and backed down. Cowards who back down always get the blame. Think about it. Can you think of a single instance in which a man has taken a bold, brave stance and then later backed down in which he did not become an object of contempt?

This matter is more important than it might seem. The truth is that modern liberty depends on the power of the purse. All of the great battles in England in the 17th century between the Crown and Parliament turned ultimately on the power of the purse. The members of Parliament were elected at least in part with an eye to achieving a redress of grievances, and that redress was the price they exacted for funding the Crown. Our legislature has given up that power. Our congressional leaders claim – once the election is over – that they have no leverage. If that is really true, then elections do not matter, and a redress of grievances is now beyond the legislature’s power. Absent that capacity, however, the legislature is virtually useless. Absent that capacity, it is contemptible — and let’s face it: the President and those who work under him have showered it with contempt.

There is a lesson to be learned from the current mess: Congress needs to reassert in a dramatic fashion the power of the purse, and the Republicans need to start keeping their promises. To do that, however, they will have to show a bit of backbone.

And, finally, some other stuff:

• "Peel your banana backwards and other simple but surprising tips which will make YOUR life so much easier"--Daily Mail. Some useful life hacks.
• I missed this on Pi Day, but better late than never: "Pi pops up where you don’t expect it"--The Conversation. There is a certain beauty to mathematics. 
• "Picture of Pluto further refined by months of New Horizons data"--The Conversation. More than just a hunk of ice. "Pluto is geologically active! I doubt there’s a single person on Earth who would have expected to see that!"