Imagine if there were more gun control laws in Illinois (I know it’s hard to imagine)! Imagine if Mr. NIU Homicidal Maniac had not had access to those dangerous handguns. What could have happened? Well, since he had a shotgun too, I guess the only way for that make a difference is if we take shotguns away too, but as we all know, gun control advocates in America aren’t after shotguns, they are only after those nasty handguns that nobody “needs” anyway. But foor the sake of argument lets imagine all guns are illegal. Now Mr. Graduate Student goes homicidal, but oops, he just can’t figure out how to get guns because they are banned, and besides that would be illegal. Oh wait, he would get them anyway because a) he is homicidal, b) he is intelligent and c) he doesn’t care if having guns is illegal because he is getting ready to kill people!

Now, imagine if just one student at NIU had been licensed and trained to carry a firearm. How many lives might have been saved?

In almost any other state a school shooting would have had at least a marginal chance to bring about positive change, but in Illinois it’s just going to mean more of the same impotent laws that only effect those that do not break the law (i.e. those not shooting people at schools). In the end it isn’t just an issue of safety, but of freedom. America is supposed to be a land where the balance is in favor of freedom with the belief that social safety will be a result of that. Somewhere along the line American’s started depending on the state to take care of them. Is Everybody Stupid?

Add CCTV for enforcing this law and it would be perfect!

California’s Govenor Schwarzenegger signed a bill, effective as of January 1, that banned smoking in personal automobiles if anyone under the age of 18 is in the vehicle. However, the only way to get a ticket for this offense is to be pulled over for a moving violation, such as speeding or making an illegal turn.

I don’t know, my neighbor’s house is still pretty close, and he smokes when he works in the yard!

On October 9, Belmont, California, city officials passed a law banning smoking in apartment buildings, though smoking is still allowed in single-family dwellings and their yards, as well as units and yards in apartment buildings, condominiums, and townhouses that don’t share common floors or ceilings with other units…

Thank goodness they quit smoking!

The Food and Drug Administration has announced that Pfizer’s smoking-cessation drug Chantix is under investigation due to reports of dangerous side effects…The complaints included 55 reports of suicide, 199 reports of suicidal thoughts, 417 cases of depression, and hundreds of reports of anger, aggression, hallucination, and homicidal thoughts.

Just in case you thought it was just us.

United Kingdom: The revised Highway Code for the Department of Transport (National) that was released on Spetember 28 now lists smoking while driving as a distraction, which means that police and lawyers can cite it in court when looking to convict for a traffic offense. Other driving distractions on the list include eating or drinking, turning on a radio, inserting CDs or tapes, arguing with passengers, trying to read a map, and playing loud music.

Just in case you thought Americans were the only stupid people on the planet.

England: Six police officers in full riot gear stormed the Copper Pot pub on September 8 after an enraged cricket fan lit a cigarette in protest when the bar’s TV’s channel was changed from the England v. India cricket game to a football game. Pub staff, after asking John Vaughan to extinguish his smoke, hit the bar’s panic button, which summoned the local authorities. Despite police involvement, no arrests were made and Vaughan peacefully left the premises.

Is Everybody Stupid?

Taken From The News Section Of The Spring 2008 Issue Of Cigar Magazine

Taken from God’s War by Christopher Tyerman

The Christian Problem Of Misinterpretation:

“…The language was especially striking, with its persistent emphasis, not only on St. Peter, as was usual in his calls to arms, but on Christ Himself: ‘the example of our Redeemer and the duty of brotherly love demand of us that we should set out hearts upon the deliverance of our brethren. For as He offered his life for us, so ought we to offer our lives for our brothers.’ Gregory hoped he cold ‘with Christ’s help carry succour to the Christians who are being slaughtered by the pagan’; preferable even to dying for one’s  country, ‘it is most beautiful and glorious indeed to give our mortal bodies for Christ, who is life eternal’. He called on the faithful ‘to defend the Christian faith and serve the heavenly king’ thus ‘by a transitory labour you can win and eternal reward’.”

The Muslim Problem Of Obligation:

Unlike Christian concepts of holy war, to which the Islamic jihad appears to have owed nothing, jihad was fundamental to the Faith, described by some as a sixth pillar of Islam. In theory, fighting was incumbent on all Muslims until the whole world had been subdued, but it was a spiritual as well as military exercise from the start, and a corporate not individual obligation.”

There is an interesting article in the Winter 2007 issue of Cigar Magazine about Red Lion, P.A. Red Lion was a small town that in the early part of the 20th century produced 400,000,000 cigars per year, or about 20% of all U.S. made cigars! These were not premium cigars by a long shot, but they were the life’s blood of this little town.

Red Lion’s cigarmaking community kept on innovating, and the little town had more than one thousand brand names being produced. In reality though, those brands had little differentiation. “They were basically all the same cigars,” Frutiger confirms. “In my grandfather’s factory, we had sixty-three labels for the same cigar.” He also notes that, on the day Charles Lindbergh landed in Paris in 1927, three Red Lion cigarmakers were staked out in Washington to lay claim to new brands, Lucky Lindy, World’s Greatest Flyer, and Our Flyer–all the same cigars from the respective factories, with new names and packaging.

1904 W. A. Lahr - Porto Rico Leaf Tobacco Co.