The Fort has been trying to recover from the lack of visitors during covid. It is also working with volunteers that know much about their area of interest, but not so much about other parts.
Consider power transmission. We have been working with power transmission since ancient Roman times. What is power transmission? It is how you transmit movement from one place to another.
In the modern era, we will convert running water, high heat or a dozen other things into electricity. That electricity is then transmitted over wires to a motor. At the motor, the power is converted back to motion.
Another part of the transmission of power, is the simpler physical transmission. Consider a water wheel. The wheel rides on an axle. The axle sits in bearings. When the wheel turns, the shaft turns. Anything attached to that shaft will also turn, doing work.
We are a society of instant gratification. You go to Amazon, click two buttons, and the next day that thing arrives at your door.
Your kid sends you a written message from a different continent, three times a day. You snap a picture of your cat, develop it, do some touch up, decide you can do better, reshoot the photo, edit, and share it with your 42 followers.
When I was doing photography, I stared developing my own film and processing my prints. That way, I could see what I shot within a day of shooting.
The courts are not instant gratification. Not even close.
The State of Illinois enacted a law that makes it a felony to possess what Illinois branded “assault weapons,” a term defined to include AR–15s. See Ill. Comp. Stat., ch. 720, §5/24–1.9(a)(1)(J)(ii)(II) (West 2023). “The AR–15 is the most popular semi-automatic rifle” in America and is therefore undeniably “in common use today.” Heller v. District of Columbia, 670 F. 3d 1244, 1287 (CADC 2011) (KAVANAUGH, J., dissenting); see also Garland v. Cargill, 602 U. S. 406, 430–431 (2024) (SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting) (describing “semiautomatic rifles” such as the AR–15 as “commonly available”). Petitioners sought a preliminary injunction against the enforcement of the law, arguing that the law violates their Second Amendment right to “keep and bear Arms.” The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit rejected petitioners’ request for a preliminary injunction, concluding “that the AR–15 … is not protected by the Second Amendment.” Bevis v. Naperville, 85 F. 4th 1175, 1197 (2023). According to the Seventh Circuit, the rifle selected by millions of Americans for self-defense and other lawful purposes does not even fall within the scope of the Arms referred to by the Second Amendment.Ibid. This Court is rightly wary of taking cases in an interlocutory posture. But, I hope we will consider the important issues presented by these petitions after the cases reach final judgment.
—Harrel v. Raoul, Denial of Cert, 603 U.S. ____ (2024) Statement of Justice Thomas
We knew that Sotomayor wasn’t the sharpest crayon in the box, I love how Justice Thomas cites to her opinion saying that AR-15s are in common use.
…does not even fall within the scope of …: That should have Easterbrook and Woods looking for a rock to crawl under. That is a strong rebuke, coming from the Supreme Court.
I am attempting to learn a new skill. Wood turning.
This is a Craigslist find. The cost was good enough. The motor and lathe chuck are worth more than I paid for it. So I wasn’t concerned about it working.
The lovely people we bought if from were ready when we arrived, s
Tuesday, I spent a few hours turning a log into a shaped spindle thing. It isn’t for anything, it is just practice.
Yes, I pulled that piece of wood out of the wood pile. Biggest issue? When I spun it up for the first time, the bark came off at speed. I wasn’t anywhere near the line of flight
I played with a bowl blank, was ok with what I was getting, decided I wanted to do something a bit better. Watched a half dozen YouTube videos.
That is my new bowl blank. It is two big, by far.
This morning, it was a fallen tree, the sort that kills kids. It was up high enough that kids will walk under it, it wasn’t stable. That is why it became a donor for the wood project.
Instead of my normal 20″ logs, I cut one thin. Or at least I thought it was thin. When I got the disk up to the shop, it turns out that it was a little to big to spin up.
The bandsaw did a good enough job cutting it down to a size I could mount.
Once mounted, I started roughing it to round. That was fun. The entire lathe was vibrating like mad. The roughing gouge peeled off chunks of wood.
It was fun watching the chips go flying. Well, until I turned around and saw that I had wood chips to the back wall, 20 feet away.
Once it was mostly round, the vibrations died out, and I started making it smooth and round. It looked like ribbons of wood flowing down a sluice gate.
The bowl like shape that I have there is smooth. I did an ok job. As they say, a grinder and paint make me the wielder I ain’t. In this case, a decorative cove and some sandpaper.
Unfortunately, it is too deep to turn unsupported. I’m going to cut part of off to make a top, then try again.
It is a learning curve. I’ll be up at the Fort at #4 on Saturday, I hope to use some of the skills I’m learning to make some spindles to repair some broken artifacts.
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR has thoroughly addressed the Court’s flawed reasoning and conclusion as a matter of history, tradition, law, and logic. I agree with every word of her powerful dissent. I write separately to explain, as succinctly as I can, the theoretical nuts and bolts of what, exactly, the majority has done today to alter the paradigm of accountability for Presidents of the United States. I also address what that paradigm shift means for our Nation moving forward.
—Harrel v. Raoul, Denial of Cert, 603 U.S. ____ (2024) Justice Jackson, dissenting.
I remember taking some classes back in the olden times, where they described the Republican form of government that was created for these United States. I seem to remember that the federal government was made up of three branches, the legislative branch tasked with creating laws, the executive branch, tasked with implementing those laws and has veto powers over laws passed by the legislative branch, and the judicial branch, tasked with resolving disputes about the meaning of the laws.
If the President decides that a bill that has passed congress is unacceptable, he can veto that bill. If congress strongly disagrees with his opinion, they can override that veto.
Once the bill has become law, the President, as head of the executive branch, implements the law.
If there are any disputes about the law, that goes before the judiciary for their opinion.
“That’s a nice business you have here, it would be a shame if anything happened to it.”
For years and years, I was told to shut up and sit down when the Supreme Court made a 6-3 or 5-4 decision. My side lost. Just shut up.
And once I lost, I was told that I couldn’t fight it anymore.
When the left loses at the polls, they run to the court. They can always find a judge to rule the way they want.
I am reminded of the gay marriage fight in California. The people of California were asked to make gay marriage legal in multiple referendums. The people voted “no” each time.
Finally, they got a referendum to modify the California constitution to codify that marriage was between a man and a woman. The voters approved and the California constitution was amended to add that definition.
The left screamed and took it to court. In court, they got a judge to say that the amendment to their constitution, don constitutionally, was itself unconstitutional.
The court literally said that the constitution was unconstitutional.
When the Dobbs opinion was released, the left protested, violently. When Bruen was decided, the left had a violent meltdown.
Every time they lose, it is always because the other side is cheating.
The left is the party that breaks with tradition, to give themselves more power. Then they scream for the very protections they dismantled, once they are out of power.
The odds of Joe Bidden being the next President of these United States is getting lower and lower as the MSM finally stops hiding his abuse.
If Trump were to win, I am afraid that they will burn this country down. It will make the “mostly peaceful protests” of BLM and saint Floyd look like a small corner protest.
They are currently claiming that the Supreme Court has said that the President can murder people and get away with it. That’s not how it works. But it was another 6-3 opinion, which means that the left will not accept the results.
Yesterday, I went up to the Fort at #4 to pick up Allyson and to play with the Lathe.
This time I took my chisels and was better prepared. I also took along some grease.
With a bit of patience, I got the lathe belted back up. About that time, Allyson arrived. She took on the task of pumping.
Since I brought up some grease, I was prepared to liberate some wear points. But, I was so excited, I just didn’t.
It took us a few tries, but we finally go things moving, and I was able to make chips. The squarish thing is slowly becoming round.
I checked the drive, and it was getting warm/hot. I stopped to get some grease into place. That seemed to have made a difference.
With that, I could try, try again. I could get it spinning. I can’t keep it spinning as I lose coordination. But for the time it is spinning, I was able to make wood chips.
VID_20240630_132537509
I hope you notice the 2A shirt and the Kimber 1911 on my right hip.
The goal is to make my shop a usable space again. I used to have around 8 square feet of workbench, of which 2+ were taken up with the bench vise.
The wielding table is outside. The hydrologic press is outside. The blast cabinet is outside. Normally, they are under tarps, but that isn’t a long-term solution.
Mind you, the cost of those three tools was about $50 in raw steel.
The shop is really two shops in one. There is the wood shop and there is the metal shop. The wood shop consists of jointer, plainer, table saw, freestanding drill press, shaper, mortising machine, small belt sander and 12-inch disk sander, two vertical bandsaws.
There is 8 sq foot of cabinet top for all of that, 4 square feet of which is taken up by my bench grinder.
The other cabinet is supporting my wood machinist chest.
Just what is —Harrel v. Raoul, Denial of Cert, 603 U.S. ____ (2024)? Chevron is the case where the Supreme Court found that the courts, both the Supreme and the inferior courts, should defer to “permissible” agency interpretations of statutes those agencies administer.—id..
The Chevron doctrine was another two-step framework. 1) Did Congress directly address the precise question, and was the congressional intent clear? 2) Is the statute silent or ambiguous with the specific issue at hand.
If the answer to both questions was “yes”, then the court was required to defer to the agency administrating the statute.
Like the two-step shuffle of pre-Bruen Second Amendment jurisprudence, the courts always found for the state. Is the puddle in my backyard navigable waters of the United States, as defined in the EPA? Congress did not precisely address puddles, and since this is a dispute, it must be ambiguous. EPA, do you think that puddles in his backyard qualify as navigable waters of the United States?
Well, yes. You see, that water flows into that ditch, that ditch flows into that stream (which is dry 9 out of 12 months), from there it flows into that creek, from there into that river. Rivers are navigable waters and this puddle is connected to it and contributes to it. If the owner of the property were to divert that water, they are effecting the river.
Now, that might sound like a made up example, it is not. It is a case from memory where the EPA took a homeowner to court for violating the Environmental Protection Act because they changed the contours of their backyard to eliminate a soft spot that got yucky a few times a year.
