Ok, I've been asked enough times, here it is -- my view and analysis of "Bitcoin", which I have taken to calling "Bitcon."  That probably deserves an explanation....

Let's first define what an ideal currency would be.  Currency serves two purposes; it allows me to express a preference for one good or service over another, and it allows me to express time preference (that is, when I acquire or consume a good or service.)

All currencies must satisfy at least one of these purposes, and an ideal currency must satisfy both.

The good and service preference is what allows you to, possessing a dozen eggs from a chicken, to obtain a gallon of gasoline without finding someone who has gasoline and wants eggs.  That is, it is the ability to use the currency as a fungible intermediary between two goods and services, one of which you possess and the other of which you desire.  Without this function in an economy you have only barter and poor specialization, with it you have excellent specialization and a much-more-diverse economic picture.

Time preference is the ability to choose to perform a service or sell a good now but obtain and consume the other part of the transaction for yourself later.  With a perfect currency time preference has no finger on the scale; that is, the currency neither appreciates or depreciates over time against a reasonably-constant basket of goods and services.  Since technological advancement tends to make it easier to produce "things" in real terms, a perfect currency reflects this and makes time preference inherently valuable.  This in turn forces the producers of goods and services to innovate in order to attract your economic surplus from under the mattress and into their cash registers, since not spending your economic surplus is in fact to your advantage.  Today's fiat currencies intentionally violate the natural time preference of increasing productivity, but even yesterday's metallic standards did a poor job of representing it.  The problem here is the State, which always seeks (like most people) to get something for nothing and what it winds up doing instead (since getting something for nothing is impossible) is effectively stealing.

Unfortunately Bitcoin, as I will explain in detail, also does a piss-poor job of satisfying either of these requirements.

But before I get to that, I want to first demolish the argument for using it that is going around in various circles and media these days -- the idea that it is stateless (that is, without a State Sponsor) and this is somehow good, in that it allows the user to evade the tentacles of the State.

This is utterly false and, if you're foolish enough to believe it and are big enough to be worth making an example of you will eventually wind up in prison -- with certainty.

All currencies require some means of validation.  That is, when you and I wish to transact using a currency I have to be able to know that you're not presenting a counterfeit token to me.  Gold became popular because it was fairly difficult to "create" (you had to find it and dig it out of the ground) and it was reasonably-easy to validate.  The mass and volume were easily verified and other materials of similar mass and volume had wildly-disparate physical properties and could be easily distinguished.  (The recent claims of "salted" bars with tungsten notwithstanding!)  With only a scale and a means of measuring displacement of a known thing (e.g. water) I could be reasonably-certain that if you presented to me something claiming to be one ounce of gold that it in fact was one ounce of gold.  It therefore was "self-validating."

Likewise, dollar bills are reasonably self-validating.  I can observe one and if it appears to be a dollar bill, feels correct and has the security features I can be reasonably certain that it is not counterfeit.  The Secret Service can determine with a fairly high degree of certainty (and very quickly too) whether a particular bill is real as they can verify the serial number was actually issued and that a bunch of the same serial numbers are not being seen in circulation, but for ordinary commerce this is not necessary; the bill itself has enough unique features so for ordinary purposes it is self-validating.

Bitcoin and other digital currencies are different -- they're just a string of bits.  To validate a coin, therefore, I must know that the one you are presenting to me is unique, that it wasn't just made up by you at random but in fact is a valid coin (you were either transferred it and the chain is intact or you personally "mined" it, a computationally-expensive thing to do), and has not been spent by you somewhere else first.  

In order to do this the system that implements the currency must maintain and expose a full and complete record of each and every transfer from the origin of that particular coin forward!

This is the only way I can know that nobody else was presented the same token before I was, and that the last transfer made of that token was to you.  I must know with certainty that both of these conditions are true, and then to be able to spend that coin I must make the fact that I hold it and you transferred it to me known to everyone as well.

Now consider the typical clandestine transaction -- Joe wishes to buy a bag of pot, which happens to be illegal to transact.  He has Bitcoins to buy the pot with.  He finds a dealer willing to sell the pot despite it being illegal to do so, and transfers the coins to the dealer.  The dealer must verify the block chain of the coins to insure that he is not being given coins that were already spent on gasoline or that Joe didn't counterfeit them, and then he transfers the pot to Joe.  There is now an indelible and permanent record of the transfer of funds and that record will never go away.

This creates several problems for both Joe and the dealer.  The dealer can (and might) take steps such as using "throw-away" wallets to try to unlink the transfer from his person, but that's dangerous.  In all jurisdictions "structuring" transactions to evade money laundering or reporting constraints is a separate and unique crime and usually is a felony.  Therefore, the very act of trying to split up transactions or use of "throw-away" wallets in and of itself is likely to be ruled a crime, leaving any party doing that exposed to separate and distinct criminal charges (along with whatever else they can bust you for.)

Second, due to the indelible nature of the records you're exposed for much longer that with traditional currencies to the risk of a bust and in many cases you might be exposed for the rest of your life.  In particular if there is a tax evasion issue that arises you're in big trouble because there is no statute of limitations on willful non-reporting of taxes in the United States, along with many other jurisdictions.  Since the records never go away your exposure, once you engage in a transaction that leads to liability, is permanent.

Third, because Bitcoin is not state-linked and thus fluctuates in value there is an FX tax issue.  Let's say you "buy" Bitcoins (whether for cash or in exchange for a good or service you provide) at a time when they have a "value" of $5 each against the US dollar.  You spend them when they have a "value" of $20 each.  You have a capital gain of $15.  At the time of the sale you have a tax liability too, and I'm willing to bet you didn't keep track of it or report it.  That liability never goes away as it was wilfully evaded and yet the ability to track the transaction never goes away either!

Worse, most jurisdictions only permit the taking of a capital loss against other gains, and not against ordinary income taxes.  This really sucks because it's a "heads you pay tax, tails you get screwed" situation. This is the inherent problem that gold and other commodities have as "inflation hedges"; the government always denominates its taxes in nominal dollars, not inflation-adjusted ones.  The only currency against which there is no FX tax exposure is the one the government you live under uses and denominates its taxes in.  That is why the government's issued currency will always be the preferred medium of exchange irrespective of all other competing currencies.

Incidentally, all of this exposure which you take with Bitcoin is very unlike transacting a bag of pot for a $100 bill -- or a gold coin.  Unless you're caught pretty much "in the act" once the pot is smoked and the dealer spends the $100 the odds of an ex-post-facto investigation being able to disclose what happened and tie you to the event fades to near-zero.  

This never happens with a Bitcoin transaction -- ever. 

If that dealer is caught some time later, but still within the statute of limitations for the original offense, you could get tagged.  And if the statute of limitations has expired you're still not in the clear if you had a capital gain on the transaction. 

There isn't any way to avoid these facts -- they're structural in all digital currencies.  And they don't just apply to buying or selling drugs -- they apply to any act that is intended to evade a government's currency or transaction controls.  The very thing that makes Bitcoin work, the irrefutable knowledge that a coin is "good" predicated on digital cryptography, is the noose that will go around your neck at the most-inappropriate time.

Those who are using Bitcoin as a means to try to foil currency controls or state prohibitions on certain transactions are asking for a criminal indictment not only for the original evasion act itself but also the possibility of a money-laundering indictment on top of it, and the proof necessary to hang you in a court of law is inherently present in the design of the currency system!

Now let's talk about the other problems generally with all such currency systems in terms of an ideal currency and how Bitcoin stacks up.

First, the ability to use Bitcoin to express good and service preference.

Here the fundamental problem of wide acceptance comes into view.  This is the problem that the proponents of the system are most-able to address through various promotional activities.  Unfortunately it also leads to deception -- either by omission or commission -- of the flaw just discussed.  To the extent that the popularity of the currency is driven by a desire to "escape" state control promotion of that currency on those grounds when in fact you are more likely to get caught (and irrefutably so!) than using conventional banknotes is an active fraud perpetrated upon those who are insufficiently aware of how a cryptocurrency works.

Cryptocurrencies have a secondary problem in that because they are not self-validating there is a time delay between your proposed transaction using a given token and when you can know that the token is valid.  Bitcoin typically takes a few minutes (about 10) to gain reasonable certainty that a given token is good, but quite a bit longer (an hour or so) to know with reasonable certainty that it is good.  That is, it is computationally reasonable to believe after 10 minutes or so that the chain integrity you are relying on is good.  It approaches computational impracticality after about an hour that the chain is invalid.

This is not a problem where ordering of a good or service and fulfillment is separated by a reasonable amount of time, but for "point of transaction" situations it is a very serious problem.  If you wish to fill up your tank with gasoline, for example, few people are going to be willing to wait for 10 minutes, say much less an hour, before being permitted to pump the gas -- or drive off with it.  This makes such a currency severely handicapped for general transaction use in an economy, and that in turn damages goods and service preference -- the ability to use it to exchange one good or service for another.  What's worse is that as the volume of transactions and the widespread acceptance rises so does the value of someone tampering with the block chain and as such the amount of time you must wait to be reasonably secure against that risk goes up rather than down.

Then there is what I consider to be Bitcoin's fatal flaw -- the inherent design and de-coupling of the currency from the obligation of sovereigns.  Yes, obligation -- not privilege.

Bitcoins are basically cryptographic "solutions."  The design is such that when the system was initialized it was reasonably easy to compute a new solution, and thus "mine" a coin.  As each coin is "mined" the next solution becomes more difficult.  The scale of difficulty was set up in such a fashion that it is computationally infeasable using known technology and that expected to be able to be developed in the foreseeable future to reach the maximum number of coins that can be in circulation.  Since each cryptographic solution is finite and singular, and each one gets progressively harder to discern, those who first initiated Bitcoin were rewarded with a large number of easily-mined coins for a very cheap "investment" while the computational difficulty of "extracting" each additional one goes up.

That means that if you were one of the early adopters you get paid through the difficulty of those who attempt to mine coins later!  That is, your value increases because the later person's expenditure of energy increases rather than through your own expenditure of energy.  If that sounds kind of like a pyramid scheme, it's because it is very similar to to how the "early adopters" in all pyramid schemes get a return -- your later and ever-increasing effort for each subsequent unit of return accrues far more to the early adopter than it does to you!

The other problem that a cryptocurrency has is that it possesses entropy.  

Entropy is simply the tendency toward disorder (that is, loss of value.)  A car, left out in the open, exhibits this as it rusts away.  Gold has very low entropy, in that it is almost-impossible to actually destroy it.  It does not oxidize or react with most other elements and as such virtually all of the gold ever dug out of the ground still exists as actual gold.

Fiat currencies, of course, have entropy in both directions because they can be emitted and withdrawn at will.  We'll get to that in a minute, and it's quite important to understand.

Bitcoin exhibits irreversible entropy.  A coin that is "lost", that is, which the current possessor loses control over either by physically losing their wallet or the key to it, can never be recovered.  That cryptographic sequence is effectively and permanently abandoned since there is no way for the entity who currently has possession of it to pass it on to someone else.  This is often touted as a feature in that it inevitably is deflationary, but whether that's good or bad remains to be seen.  It certainly is something that those who tout the currency think is good for the value of what they hold, but the irreversible loss of value can also easily lead people to abandon the use of the currency in which case its utility value to express goods and service preference is damaged, quite-possibly to the point of revulsion.

This is not true, incidentally, for something like a gold coin.  The coin can be lost or stolen but unless it's lost over the side of a boat at irretrievable depth it can be recovered and the person who recovers it can spend it.  What constitutes "irretrievable depth" has a great deal to do with exactly how many coins might be there too -- what's impractical for one coin is most-certainly not when the potential haul reaches into the thousands of pounds!

I mentioned above about fiat currencies being able to be issued and withdrawn.  There is often much hay made about the principle of seigniorage, which is the term for the "from thin air" creation of value that a state actor obtains in creating tokens of money.  Seigniorage is simply the difference in represented value between the cost of emitting the token (in the case of paper money, the paper, security features and ink) and the "value" represented in the market.  There is much outrage directed at the premise of fiat currency in this regard but nearly all of it is misplaced because people do not understand that in a just and proper currency system the benefit of seigniorage comes with the responsibility for it as well, and it is supposed to be bi-directional.

That is, in order for time preference to be neutrally expressed, less the natural deflationary tendency from productivity improvement, the government entity issuing currency gets the benefit of seigniorage when the economy is expanding.  But -- during times of economic contraction they also get the duty to withdraw currency (or credit) so as to maintain the same balance, as otherwise the consequence is inflation -- that is, a generalized rise in the price level and the destruction of the common person's purchasing power.

That this is honored in the breach rather than the observance does not change how these functions are supposed to work, any more than the fact that we have bank robbers means we shouldn't have banks.  This, fundamentally, is why currency schemes like Bitcoin will never replace a properly functioning national currency and are always at risk of becoming worthless without warning should such a currency system arise, even ignoring the potential for legal (or extra-legal) attack.

Simply put there is no obligation to go along with the privilege that the originators of a crypto-currency scheme have left for themselves -- the ability to profit without effort by the future efforts of others who engage in the mining of coins.

Those who argue that state actors creating currencies get the same privilege are correct, but those state actors also have the countervailing duty to withdraw that currency during economic contractions associated with their privilege, whether they properly discharge that duty or not.

For these reasons I do not now and never will support Bitcoin or its offshoots, nor will I accept and transact in it in commerce.  I prefer instead to effort toward political recognition of the duties that come with the privilege that is bestowed on a sovereign currency issuer in the hope of solving the underlying problem rather than sniveling in the corner trying to evade it.

The latter is, in my opinion, unworthy of my involvement.

In a just world when someone swindles you they go to prison.  If the swindle is extreme and the loss similarly extreme, they should get the death penalty -- after a proper and fair trial, of course.

But we do not live in a just world.  We live in a world where plunder is the order of the day.  The recent Cyprus bank confiscation is both right and wrong.

It's right in that it's the correct way to resolve a bank, provided the capital structure is honored and both shareholders and bondholders are wiped out -- entirely -- before depositors are hit.

But it's wrong in that the government, including Brussels and the ECB, provided assurances that these institutions were financially sound and it turns out they lied.

Now the fruit of this poison tree is upon us.  Small businesses, which simply cannot operate without being over insured deposit limits in most cases at least some of the time, have been destroyed.  There are now reports from real companies coming in that 85% of these firms'working capital has been effectively seized. The correct word for this is theft.

This has and will force an immediate shutdown of these businesses and the loss of every single job associated with them.

I have no quarrel with someone losing an imprudently-made investment.  That happens all the time, and I lose money all the time when I make bad investments.  But this is not a matter of a bad investment.  It is a function of outright fraud committed by government agencies and false claims that they have repeatedly made, upon which these firms relied, and now they have been destroyed as a consequence.

You cannot at the same time have the government telling you that the banks are safe and sound and at the same time preparing to, or actually, seizing your funds.  That is felony grand theft and fraud -- period.

That is not confined to Cyprus.  Now Canada intends to put the same system in place.  Buried on page 144 and 145 of their latest budget document is the following ditty:

The Government proposes to implement a ―bail-in regime for systemically important banks. This regime will be designed to ensure that, in the unlikely event that a systemically important bank depletes its capital, the bank can be recapitalized and returned to viability through the very rapid conversion of certain bank liabilities into regulatory capital. This will reduce risks for taxpayers. The Government will consult stakeholders on how best to implement a bail-in regime in Canada. Implementation timelines will allow for a smooth transition for affected institutions, investors and other market participants.

Systemically important banks will continue to be subject to existing risk management requirements, including enhanced supervision and recovery and resolution plans.

But note that there is no recompense when that "enhanced supervision" fails.

When you deposit funds into a bank the cash the bank now has is an asset.  The deposit is a liability.  What they are talking about is you, the depositor, being the one who is tagged for that "very rapid conversion" -- that is, they're simply going to steal your money.  

This, coming in the paragraph before they claim to have enhanced supervision, is an all-on joke.  Either that supervision is an obligation of the government upon which you have a right to depend or it is an active and intentional fraud intended to lead you to leave money on deposit through deception when in point of fact doing so is not safe.

Which is it?

In the Euro Zone the answer is already known -- it's an active and intentional fraud that did lead you to leave your money on deposit through intentional deception.

Incidentally, the model here is the United States.  In the United States, if you remember, IndyMac bank was backdating deposits.  The OTS knew it and in fact one of their employees had been caught allowing the same thing to happen during the S&L crisis.  He not only kept his job after the S&L crisis he wasn't prosecuted this time either, and yet anyone who was over insured limits in Indymac got screwed.

In addition, Washington Mutual, which I reported on at the time in 2007, was paying dividends out of money they didn't actually have.  Once again, the OTS and FDIC did nothing and the firm eventually collapsed.

In the United States 12 USC §1831o requires bank regulators to take "Prompt Corrective Action" to prevent the exhaustion of bank capital and close the institution before that occurs.  These are not suggestions, they are statutory requirements -- requirements that were ignored in the United States and as a consequence real injury occurred to real people.

Now the same thing has occurred in Cyprus.  

These are not ordinary business failures where investors lose their money.  They are failures where the government has falsely certified health and soundness and, in many cases, where it has intentionally ignored practices such as backdating deposits that intentionally created a false appearance of health. The organs of these governments, including our government, have been willful and intentional co-conspirators with those who committed these acts.

And yet.... nobody has gone to jail.

Trust?

Honor?

Integrity?

Honesty?

The rule of law?

Forget it -- all you have left is the rule of the Jungle, and as it stands right now, given your choices and actions thus far, you're what's for dinner.

Oh look what we have here!

As a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who enforced firearms and ammunition cases while a severe local gun ban was still in effect, I am skeptical of the benefits that many imagine will result from additional gun-control efforts. I dislike guns, but I believe that a nationwide firearms crackdown would place an undue burden on law enforcement and endanger civil liberties while potentially increasing crime.

Yep.  And the statistics?

The gun ban had an unintended effect: It emboldened criminals because they knew that law-abiding District residents were unarmed and powerless to defend themselves. Violent crime increased after the law was enacted, with homicides rising to 369 in 1988, from 188 in 1976 when the ban started. By 1993, annual homicides had reached 454.

Remember -- this is the former DC Prosecutor.  He saw the crime increase first-hand.  He also saw the dilution of police response since they were both chasing phantoms and violating people's civil rights.  The people living in DC received a negative outcome from both.

And since Heller, which struck the ban?

Since the gun ban was struck down, murders in the District have steadily gone down, from 186 in 2008 to 88 in 2012, the lowest number since the law was enacted in 1976.

More than a 50% reduction in four years? 

Hmmmm...

My view is that an unalienable right is just that.  So-called "background checks" are unlikely to stop an actual criminal from getting a gun and encourage more crime.  Believe it or not I'd rather eliminate the Brady Law and indeed the Gun Control Act of 1968 entirely, because it would improve the traceability of firearms and reduce crime overall.

That is, if you're going to murder I'd rather you buy the gun legally (where you get your mug on a security camera along with a recorded serial number in the store's computer) so when you commit a crime with that gun we know where you got it and what the pathway was that it took to get to you.  In addition we would eliminate the anciliary crime you commit in stealing the firearm, which could be something so simple as a B&E or something as complex as an additional murder, as was the case at Sandy Hook.

While it sounds insane at first blush if we got rid of the background check and restrictions we would actually reduce crime since most of the stolen guns would no longer be stolen.  Further, there are times when someone legitimately discovers a "sudden need" for a gun (e.g. a woman who finds out that "nice guy" she was dating is really a dangerous stalker -- three business days, as is the case here in Florida, is a hell of a long time to wait when you think someone is intending to******or murder you!)

The counter-argument of course is that felons would be easily able to get guns.  But they get them easily now -- they just commit another crime in the process.  Further, if you're convicted of a felony and serve your time, including any parole that comes with it, under our system of justice you've "paid your debt to society." 

Or so we claim.

Reality is that since felony records are public if you have one you are permanently disabled in earnings capacity and thus will be living in crappier parts of town and making less money forever.  That's bad enough.  What's worse is that you now get to either choose to commit another felony (owning a gun) or you're a target for every thug who doesn't give a crap about the law and decides to rob you. And just like we've seen in NY, the crooks can and do use those public records to identify "targets" for their violence.

The paradox, therefore, is that our gun laws promote recidivism! 

That's backward from what we should be promoting.

Instead, let's look at the facts on the other side of this problem.  The jackass who shot two firefighters in NY had previously been convicted of killing his grandmother -- with a hammer.  He got his gun through a straw purchaser (who has since been arrested.)  The law didn't stop him from getting a gun, just as it didn't stop Lanza.

What would have stopped him is if we never let him out after his first homicide.  But we did.

This is similar to a case I wrote about a couple of years ago in Florida where a jackass killed a Marshal who was coming to serve him some papers.  He blasted him with a shotgun.  Needless to say he didn't buy said shotgun at Cabelas, so our much-vaunted "background check" did nothing.

But this guy was a two time loser, and once his name was out I was easily able to find him through a Department of Corrections search here in Florida -- all public, on The Internet. 

He was first arrested for carjacking and did time for it.  Then, after being released, he decided that sexual assault was a good idea and was arrested, convicted and imprisoned for that. 

We let him out again and this time he shot the Marshal. 

Those are two murders that shouldn't have happened as the opportunity should not have existed to commit them.  In neither case, just as with Lanza, were laws requiring background checks effective.  Nor will they ever be, because a criminal willing to use a gun in the commission of a felony is willing to commit a second felony to acquire the weapon.  In the case of someone willing to murder all the other crimes are free since he can only be hanged once.

We also have a serious problem with the mentally ill.  Reagan closed most of the State Hospitals and we have since listened to the liberal left that claims that it's "inhumane" to confine people who are seriously mentally ill in some fashion.

The problem with severely crazy people is that if you can control their insanity with meds then they feel fine while taking the meds and thus many of them will decide to stop.  Once they get off the meds they're insane and therefore don't realize they need to start taking them.  In addition many of these people play the "self-medication" game with alcohol, illegal drugs or they run around from doctor to doctor shopping symptoms until they get something "fun" to add to their daily routine -- at which point they're nuts as well.

This is a one-way trip to Hell and it's a difficult problem -- but one we need to talk about and address. 

There is no means to address this other than civil confinement of some sort, since you can't monitor where the pills go if someone is living on their own. The "minimum" might be some sort of group home where compliance with medication can be monitored and so can potential side effects.

The current process of requiring someone to be judicially adjudicated as unfit is a good one; judicial review in an open court is an important guardian against abuse.  But what has to go with that is civil confinement, not "simply" firearms disability.  The reason is obvious -- again, someone willing to commit a crime of violence, whether insane or not, will also commit whatever other crimes are necessary to obtain the weapons. 

We therefore can only hope to control this if those people are under confinement of some sort, and open-court judicial intervention is about all we have that balances civil rights in a reasonably-congruent fashion with public safety, all while respecting The Constitution.  It's not illegal to be crazy -- this only rises to the level of intervention if you're dangerous to others, and an open courtroom is the only way we can determine that in a form and fashion that is able to be examined to prevent abuses.

Unfortunately what happens now is that you pretty-much cannot get someone referred into the system and examined on this basis.  This problem is not limited to "Blue" states.  And the "pill mill" problem which Florida claims to have addressed (among a few other states) has in fact not been addressed at all. 

Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.

At the same time we must address psychoactive drugs and their effects on young people.  While the incidence of "rage monster" behavior side effects only presents in a tiny percentage of those who use these substances the fact remains that this risk appears to be unique to people under the age of 25 on these drugs.  

This is clearly-documented both in the prescribing information and from the history of these offenses stretching back more than two decades!

While mass-shooting offenses are a very small portion of the total number of homicides (under 1%), they are nonetheless something we must explore, understand and put a stop to where we can do so without violating unalienable rights.

Biden and Obama are as I write this standing at the podium with their presser to announce how they wish to attack the Second Amendment, attempting to impose collective punishment upon the innocent because someone else committed a series of serious felonies.

Obama says he wants to take steps "right now." 

But notice that there is no talk about the prescription drugs that virtually all of these mass-shooters are on. 

None. 

Yet that is the singular common thread between all of these incidents.

The premise that "if there is even one life that can be saved we have an obligation to try" is utter crap.  I can stop virtually all gun violence tomorrow.  You simply need to make me Fuhrer and I will direct the military and police to go into every home every day and stop every walker and car driver, searching you all -- every single day.  Damn the Constitution, full speed ahead!

That would be tyranny, and it is exactly the sort of thing that Obama is trying to enact.

As for the "Assault Weapons Ban" perhaps you can tell me why the police need these weapons if they are designed solely to "kill as many people as possible" as Obama asserts?

The truth is a different matter -- these weapons are very effective weapons of defense and any law enforcement official will tell you straight up that many felony offenders are jacked up on drugs and unlike in the movies one shot does not stop them -- sometimes ten shots do not stop them.

The people have every right to own and bear the same defensive weaponry that our police officers have and use on a daily basis.  Indeed, the seminal case Miller said exactly this; the very definition of weapons that are protected under The Second Amendment are those suitable for militia use. 

As such these weapons and full-capacity magazines are not on the table for debate, restriction or negotiation Mr. President.  Your own security detail thinks they're necessary and that's all the evidence anyone in this country needs, in addition to being the very definition of Constitutional constraint as expressed by well-settled law.

Obama wants to more-severely punish straw purchasers.  I'm ok with that, but why do we need new laws?  The law already provides for such punishment!  Can you not already try someone as an accessory before the fact if they are a straw buyer?  You sure can, under existing law.  Do so.

The real problem here is that the left, including Obama, refuses to lock people up for the felonies they commit and keep them locked up until they're not dangerous any longer.

As for the BATFE director, let's first find out exactly what happened with Fast And Furious and indict, try, convict and imprison everyone involved.

I'll be happy to talk about a BATFE director confirmation when all the accessories before the fact for the hundreds of murders that resulted from that criminal enterprise and both were and are employed within our government go straight to prison.

Look in the damned mirror first Mr. President and clean your own house, then come talk to we the people.

I'm done being nice.

And I'm doubly-done with the damned leftists in this country performing the moral equivalent of ritual human sacrifice of children to advance their gun-control agenda.

That's what I charge they're doing. 

And I'm going to back it up with mathematics, using just one of the common psychotropic medications used commonly today -- Paxil.

This is from the prescribing information for Paxil:

Clinical Worsening and Suicide Risk:

Patients with major depressive disorder (MDD), both adult and pediatric, may experience worsening of their depression and/or the emergence of suicidal ideation and behavior (suicidality) or unusual changes in behavior, whether or not they are taking antidepressant medications, and this risk may persist until significant remission occurs. Suicide is a known risk of depression and certain other psychiatric disorders, and these disorders themselves are the strongest predictors of suicide. There has been a long-standing concern, however, that antidepressants may have a role in inducing worsening of depression and the emergence of suicidality in certain patients during the early phases of treatment. Pooled analyses of short-term placebo-controlled trials of antidepressant drugs (SSRIs and others) showed that these drugs increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior (suicidality) in children, adolescents, and young adults (ages 18-24) with major depressive disorder (MDD) and other psychiatric disorders. Short-term studies did not show an increase in the risk of suicidality with antidepressants compared to placebo in adults beyond age 24; there was a reduction with antidepressants compared to placebo in adults aged 65 and older. 

That's a problem.  What's worse is this:

The following symptoms, anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility, aggressiveness, impulsivity, akathisia (psychomotor restlessness), hypomania, and mania, have been reported in adult and pediatric patients being treated with antidepressants for major depressive disorder as well as for other indications, both psychiatric and nonpsychiatric. Although a causal link between the emergence of such symptoms and either the worsening of depression and/or the emergence of suicidal impulses has not been established, there is concern that such symptoms may represent precursors to emerging suicidality.

And it doesn't end there:

Screening Patients for Bipolar Disorder

A major depressive episode may be the initial presentation of bipolar disorder. It is generally believed (though not established in controlled trials) that treating such an episode with an antidepressant alone may increase the likelihood of precipitation of a mixed/manic episode in patients at risk for bipolar disorder.

Now let's be frank: Mixed manic states are mental states during which all sorts of really ugly things happen, including panic attacks, agitation, impulsiveness, paranoia and rage -- all at extreme levels.

In other words, if you miss someone being bipolar and give them this drug you may precipitate a full-on Hulk-style "rage monster" sort of attack!

How often does something like this happen?

Activation of Mania/Hypomania:

During premarketing testing, hypomania or mania occurred in approximately 1.0% of unipolar patients treated with PAXIL compared to 1.1% of active-control and 0.3% of placebo-treated unipolar patients. In a subset of patients classified as bipolar, the rate of manic episodes was 2.2% for PAXIL and 11.6% for the combined active-control groups. As with all drugs effective in the treatment of major depressive disorder, PAXIL should be used cautiously in patients with a history of mania.

So if you miss a bi-polar person in your "analysis" before prescribing, it's more than doubly-likely that they will have a "rage-monster" episode than if not.

So let's assume we're not talking about bi-polar people -- that is, let's make the assumption that we properly screen for each person and perfectly identify all bi-polar people before we prescribe.

What is the expected number of people who will undergo some sort of manic episode, which includes the subset that will turn into rage-monsters and shoot up schools, movie theaters and other public places?

Answer: About 0.7% more that can be charged to the drug (the risk if you do nothing is 0.3%.)

Other similar drugs have similar risk profiles; Paxil is not particularly-remarkable in this regard. 

I note, and you should note, that 0.7% is a pretty low risk!  That is, 993 people out of 1000 can get a perfectly good outcome from the drug (or at least no harm) but that other 7 in 1000 have an outcome ranging from bad to catastrophically-bad.

Now let's assume for the sake of argument that we are 99% effective in physician monitoring of these patients.  That is, we're able to somehow confirm that they take the drug exactly as prescribed (no more or less), and we have enough time and physician resources to evaluate them on a regular and continuing basis.  This, incidentally, is a fantasy-land level of performance; no profession could possibly meet that standard of care, but we'll use it to make the point.

But this level of performance, which we can never meet, would provide that of the rage monsters we potentially create with these drugs we catch 99% of them before the episode escalates into something "bad."

That's 1% of 0.7%, incidentally, or 0.007% of the total users who (1) have the bad reaction and then (2) we fail to detect via monitoring.  In other words, those are the people who shoot up the schools, movie theaters and US Representatives.

The last figures I have are that in 2005 27 million people in the United States, or close to 1 in 10 of all persons, are on some sort of antidepressant carrying these risks.

So if 0.7% of 27 million people have a manic episode caused by these drugs -- that is, under perfect conditions where we catch every single bipolar individual first and never prescribe to any of them we will have 189,000 persons in a year who have a manic reaction to these drugs.

That's horrifying. 

But what's worse is that if we assume 99% effective surveillance by the medical profession -- that is, 99% of the time the doctor intercepts the person with the manic episode and modifies or terminates their use of the drug before something bad happens....

WE CREATE AND THEN FAIL TO DETECT, WITH NEARLY PERFECT PERFORMANCE (that we will never achieve) 1,890 RAGE MONSTERS EVERY YEAR WHO ARE MENTALLY CAPABLE OF COMMITTING A MASS HOMICIDE.

We're surprised that there are a few of these a year, when we create more than 5 of them each and every day with near-perfect performance -- and likely several times that many given the real-world monitoring that can actually be achieved?

We create these Zombies.

We prescribe the drugs to them.

We do this knowing that the risk exists and that at least one subset of that risk is materially higher for those under the age of 25 who are consuming these drugs. 

In point of fact, most of the rage monsters who have committed these crimes are under the age of 25 and either using or having recently terminated the use of these drugs.

Again I reproduce the information directly from the maker of Paxil:

There has been a long-standing concern, however, that antidepressants may have a role in inducing worsening of depression and the emergence of suicidality in certain patients during the early phases of treatment. Pooled analyses of short-term placebo-controlled trials of antidepressant drugs (SSRIs and others) showed that these drugs increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior (suicidality) in children, adolescents, and young adults (ages 18-24) with major depressive disorder (MDD) and other psychiatric disorders. Short-term studies did not show an increase in the risk of suicidality with antidepressants compared to placebo in adults beyond age 24;

Something changes around the age of 24 with these drugs and their interaction with the human mind.  We don't know exactly what it is, but we know that it happens.  We also know that these substances have a low but present risk of inducing mania -- and one of the many ways that mania may express includes rage.

Utterly nobody is bringing this element to the table in debate, but we must, as the rise of these incidents is directly correlated to the gross increase in the number of people, including most-especially young people, taking these drugs.  The number of users doubled from 1996 - 2005.

If you want to address a problem you must look at the data and follow it where it leads. 

Where it leads is into a horrifying mess of prescription psychotropic drug use among our youth and the rare but catastrophic side effects they sometimes produce.

I have friends who have versions of the problem in their families among older individuals; members of the family who doctor-shop for prescription on top of prescription and are mentally questionable to start with.  We're supposed to have some sort of reasonable check and balance on this and indeed Florida claims to have clamped down on the "pill mills" but I can tell you right now that this is utter and complete crap.  There is nothing preventing people from going to 10 different doctors until they find three or four that will write scripts and then abusing the drugs -- and when they run out "early" calling up for a refill -- and getting it.  It happens every damned day and if other family members try to intervene, including getting the physicians or the law involved (prescription fraud is supposed to be illegal!) they're blown off!

It's true that most of the crazy people in the world aren't violent, and that being crazy, standing alone, is perfectly legal.  It's also true that nearly all of the people who take these drugs won't become violent -- that's a side effect that only bites a tiny percentage of the people who take the drug.

But the risk of turning people into rage monsters and suicidal maniacs appears to be mostly confined to those under the age of 24 according to the drug companies own information and this information is strongly correlated with the actual real-world data on these incidents.

We must have a discussion about this as a society.  We might decide that out of the 27 million or more Americans taking these drugs that enough get benefit that we are willing to accept the occasional school or movie theater shooting gallery as the price of prescribing these drugs to those under the age of 24.

If so then we need to be honest about the trade-off we have made as a society and shut the hell up instead of dancing in the blood of dead children to score political points and destroy The Constitution.

But if not, and you can count my vote among the "No" votes in this regard, then we must ban these substances from those under the age of 24 until we understand what's different among that age group that alters the risk unless and except those persons are under continual professional supervision such as inpatient hospitalization.

Yeah, I understand this will cut into the profits of the big drug companies and thus is "unacceptable" to many political folks, not to mention that the media won't even talk about the subject due to the advertising they run on their networks on a daily basis for this drug or that.

But unless we want to keep burying kids we had damned well better have that debate.

Mr. Biden, Mr. Obama and the rest on both the left and right who are refusing to go where the data leads are all practicing the moral equivalent of ritual child sacrifice, fueling the pyre under the bodies of our kids with the Bill of Rights.

Stand up America and say in a loud voice: ENOUGH!

The lid isn't going to stay on this much longer folks.

First, we have this with General Ham, who apparently had a rapid-deployment force ready to go into action when he learned that the consulate was under assault.  Then:

General Ham then received the order to stand down. His response was to screw it,  he was going to help anyhow. Within 30 seconds to a minute after making the move  to respond, his second in command apprehended General Ham and told him that he  was now relieved of his command.

Got that?  It appears from this report that he was placed under armed arrest for attempting to rescue our people.

But it doesn't stop there; apparently General Ham is not the only member of the armed forces who attempted to respond as one would expect from Americans at-arms:

The Navy said Saturday it is replacing the admiral in command of an aircraft carrier strike group in the Middle East, pending the outcome of an internal investigation into undisclosed allegations of inappropriate judgment.

Inappropriate judgment eh?  Like, perhaps, deciding that he was going to go do his job when our people were under attack through an act of war by belligerents?

There isn't much that's "inappropriate" in my view under such circumstances in terms of rapid response, but the CIC (that would be Obama) apparently sees things differently.

Remember, ladies and gentlemen, we have a military that is under civilan control.  That means you and I are the final arbiters of what is and is not permissible military action, not the other way around.  We, and not they, make that decision.

The questions you must now ask yourself as we come into these next couple of weeks, culminating in the election, are:

• Are you are going to remain silent and by doing so consent to the murder of four in Benghazi?  If this is unacceptable to you then it is your duty as an American to do something about it.  What you choose to do about it is of course up to you, and I urge lawful actions, not lawless ones, but the fact remains that our military structure means that you, and not they, are ultimately in control.
  
  
• It appears that there were assets in the air that could have responded; are you going to remain silent knowing they were there and refuse to demand the public identification of the person or persons who refused to use them? It appears now that our men had designated the mortar team that was firing on them with a laser targeting device.  Such an act never takes place unless there are assets in the air able to hit what's been designated as the target and everyone else in the area can see the emission of energy used to "paint" the target.  We therefore know, assuming the reports of that "painting" are accurate, that some form of aerial fire support was available and was intentionally not used.  Again, you must decide if this is acceptable conduct.
  
  
• The predicate to all of this appears to have been the giving of heavy munitions to militants that may have been related to or connected with (or may have actually been!) Al-Qaida, which then "leaked" beyond where the people who gave those munitions intended them to go and be used.  Is it acceptable that our government gave heavy weapons to a publicly-sworn enemy of our nation?  There are multiple credible reports that the reason the Benghazi safe-house was hit was because the CIA was attempting to recover those weapons through what amounted to buying them back (that is, bribery.)  You must once again decide whether or not giving heavy weapons to known and declared enemies of the United State is acceptable under any circumstances, and if not, what you intend to do about it.
  
  
• This is not the first time we have armed belligerents on purpose; is that acceptable?  Specifically, "Gun Runner" or "Fast and Furious" armed belligerent Mexican Drug Lords when then used some of those guns to shoot a United States citizen.  They also, it must be presumed, used them to shoot a lot of innocent Mexican citizens.  The key question here is when we as Americans will have had enough of this crap -- it didn't start with Obama, but he sure as hell has taken to a new level of art.  Back during the Iran-Contra days we indicted and convicted 11 but then sat back while George HW Bush pardoned all of those who didn't manage to beat the charges on appeal.  Isn't that nice?

We have a lot of serious problems in this country folks.  Our economy is in the toilet, we have a central bank that is entirely out-of-control and a Congress that refuses to enforce the law that governs its operation (and has serially refused to do so for 100 years), we apparently are arming people who are sworn enemies of the United States and we sit back and we blow Saudi Arabian Kings who demand that the UN trash our First Amendment (and incidentally, Mr. Abdullah, go perform an anatomically-impossible act) instead of declaring him an enemy of our nation, never mind the obvious and well-documented monetary ties between his country and Al-Quaida, not to mention the 9/11 hijackers.

Some of our political candidates would like to argue over things like gay marriage, smoking pot and abortion, or promises to hand out more and more money to people in exchange for their vote.  Others still would like to argue over whether one religion is superior to another.  Others will bleat about how a vote that is not cast for one man is in fact a vote for another, although this is trivially proven to be mathematically false.

This is all small-ball and mental masturbation folks if, as is allged, a bunch of MANPADs that our government handed to Al-Qaida connected people start being used to shoot down airliners or our economy blows up as a consequence of unbridled, rampant deficits and QE-to-insanity.

We had damn well better wake the hell up as a body politic because if we don't you're going to wake up one of these mornings due to a GE Turbofan engine coming crashing through your roof, on fire and in pieces, and that will just be the beginning of a nightmare that will not end for years.  This assumes that we don't find ourselves in the middle of WWIII with mushrooms sprouting as the fruits across our "magnificent" plain.  That was the ultimate "solution" to the Depression and I'd rather not do it again, especially in a world where the loser can and probably will play "push button vaporization of your nearest city" rather than go down with a whimper.

Don't tell me that Romney is going to fix it, because I've heard exactly nothing from him on any of these matters thus far that leads me to believe he would do anything other than turn his head and, if the **** got really thick, pardon Obama and everyone in his chain of command that ultimately was brought up on charges over this crap exactly as George HW Bush did.

**** that.