Two dead after Garland apartment resident shoots burglars in self-defense

Two suspected burglars were found dead at a Garland apartment complex after a man said they broke into his apartment and began firing shots. The resident returned fire, fatally shooting both, police said.

Just after 2:30 a.m. Saturday, Garland police were dispatched to a burglary in progress where gunshots were fired. Police responded to Woodlands at The Preserve, an apartment complex in the 4300 block of North Garland Avenue.

When they arrived at the scene, officers observed two men who suffered from apparent gunshot wounds, according to police. One victim was found inside the apartment, and the other victim was found outside near the same residence. Paramedics responded, and both victims were declared dead at the scene. The resident of the apartment informed police that the two men forced entry into his unit and began shooting at him. The resident said he returned fire back to defend himself, according to police.

The Dallas County Medical Examiner has not released the names or ages of the deceased men. Detectives are still trying to determine why the individuals targeted the apartment.

Giving up biometrics at US airports soon won’t be optional, transport security chief says

The chief of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) David Pekoske said that the agency is considering biometric technology to reduce traveler processing times and reduce the number of screening officers. He made the comments at the South by Southwest conference, which focused on aviation security.

Pekoske noted that the TSA’s role is maintaining security and the transportation system and staying ahead of threats. For those reasons, it is “critically important that this system has as little friction as it possibly can, while we provide for safety and security.”

The TSA has been relying on biometric technology in the identification verification process. According to the agency, the newest technology it has been using is over 99% effective and does not have problems identifying darker-skinned people like the old technology.

“We’re upgrading our camera systems all the time, upgrading our lighting systems,” Pekoske said. “[We’re] upgrading our algorithms, so that we are using the very most advanced algorithms and technology we possibly can.”

Pekoske said that the agency will ensure it remains transparent with the public about the data that is taken, what it is used for, and for how long it will be stored. For now, he said that travelers can opt out of processes they are not comfortable with.

According to The Dallas Morning News, giving up biometric data for travel will eventually not be optional.

“He said passengers can also choose to opt out of certain screening processes if they are uncomfortable, for now. Eventually, biometrics won’t be optional,” the report states.

March 20

1760 – The Great Boston Fire of 1760 destroys 349 buildings, as well as several ships in port, leaving over 1ooo people homeless. but with no reported deaths.

1815 – After escaping from Elba, Napoleon enters Paris with a regular army of 140,000 and a volunteer force of around 200,000, beginning his “Hundred Days” rule.

1852 – Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book Uncle Tom’s Cabin is published.

1854 – The Republican Party of the United States is organized in Ripon, Wisconsin.

1883 – The Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property – still in force – is signed…….in Paris.

1915 – Albert Einstein publishes his general theory of relativity.

1922 – CV-1, the USS Langley is commissioned as the first U.S. Navy aircraft carrier.

1933 – As Chief of Police of Munich, Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler orders the creation of Dachau concentration camp.

1952 – The US Senate ratifies the Security Treaty Between the United States and Japan.

1985 – Libby Riddles becomes the first woman to win the 1,135 mile long Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, which commemorates the the 1925 diphtheria antitoxin serum dog sled run from Anchorage to Nome.

1995 – The Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo carries out a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, killing 13 people and injuring over 6,200 more.

2003 – Under authority of The Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002, passed by Congress in October, U.S. and Allied ground forces invade Iraq, due to the reports of violations of the 1991 ceasefire agreement.

2015 – The Northern Hemisphere Vernal Equinox, a Solar Eclipse, and a Perigee Syzygy “Supermoon” all occur on the same day.

Shootist Jim Taylor confirmed a text I received that John Linebaugh suffered a heart attack this afternoon and has passed way.

He was a friend. He will be missed.

Well it appears that “Devout Catholic” Joe Biden has the same definition of sin as his former boss: “Being out of alignment with my values.”

‘Close To Sinful:’ Biden Floats Possibility Of Nation-Wide Transgender Law.

President Joe Biden appeared to criticize Ron DeSantis on his handling of transgender youth and floated the possibility of a nation-wide transgender law in an interview clip released Monday.

“What’s going on in Florida, is as my mother would say, ‘close to sinful.’ I mean, it’s just terrible what they’re doing,” Biden said while speaking with actor Kal Penn.

“It’s not like … a kid wakes up one morning and says, ‘you know, I decided that I want to become a man or I want to become a woman … I mean, what are they thinking about here? They’re human beings, they love, they have feelings, they have inclinations,” Biden continued. “It’s cruel.”

“And the way we do it is we make sure we pass legislation like we passed on same-sex marriage. You mess with that, you’re breaking the law and you’re going to be held accountable,” Biden added.

DeSantis has led an administration-wide effort to ban sex change treatments for minors. He has said doctors should be sued for performing sex changes on children and suspended a state attorney refusing to adhere to the child sex change ban.

DeSantis also requested public universities report how many students they treated for “gender dysphoria,” and in October, the Florida Board of Medicine voted to ban sex change surgeries and hormone therapy for children under 18.

Dylan Mulvaney, a man who identifies as a woman and has garnered attention on social media for using hyper-feminine stereotypes, asked Biden in October if he thinks states should “have the right” to ban “gender-affirming health care.”

“I don’t think any state or anybody should have the right to do that, as a moral question and a legal question,” Biden responded.

“I just think it’s wrong,” Biden added. “I feel very, very strongly that you should have every single solitary right, including, including use of your gender identity bathroom in public.”

Florida Agency for Health Care Administration Secretary Jason Weida told the Caller that “the ‘gender-affirming’ model pushed by the Biden Administration is decades behind other developed countries, including Sweden and most recently Norway.”

“What is ‘sinful’ is the establishment pushing harmful surgeries and treatment with long-term effects on minors with no accountability or transparency,” Weida said.

“Last year, the Agency conducted a thorough review of several services promoted by the Federal Government to treat gender dysphoria and found that these services – sex reassignment surgery, cross-sex hormones, and puberty blockers – are not consistent with widely accepted professional medical standards and are experimental and investigational with the potential for harmful long term affects,” he added.

Sunday Thoughts: ‘Christianity and Liberalism’ at 100

I don’t remember how it came to my attention, but last summer, I downloaded the audiobook of J. Gresham Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism. I know, I know; it’s not exactly breezy summer reading (or listening), but I definitely don’t regret it. It’s worth pointing out that this year is the 100th anniversary of this landmark work.

Machen, an evangelical scholar at Princeton, wrote Christianity and Liberalism because he believed that “the chief modern rival of Christianity is Liberalism.” The book stemmed from the rising tide of liberal theology that was only growing in the early 1920s. Machen saw how liberalism was seeping into his beloved Princeton Theological Seminary, and that phenomenon alarmed him. He and others would go on to found Westminster Theological Seminary a few years later in an attempt to counter the liberalism at Princeton with biblical orthodoxy.

It’s astonishing how timely Machen’s words are a century later. In Christianity and Liberalism, “Machen combats liberal theology that crept into the once conservative Princeton Seminary with surgeon-like precision,” writes blogger Kevin Halloran. “His main thesis being that liberal Christianity is diametrically opposed to true, biblical Christianity.”

Halloran adds that Machen “destroys liberal thought with Scripture and logic while calling all men to true faith in the Savior and biblical faithfulness.”

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Observation O’ The Day

This place was packed yesterday and will be today, the usual result when this dude starts with ignorant comments. People just crank up the stocking up, lines at the gun shows get long

Image

Disarming a populace is more than just literally. It begins with their minds.
“You only need guns for hunting”
“You only need guns for recreation”
“You don’t actually need to hunt or recreate”

 

The aide who manages the twitter account (you actually believe SloJoe has the mental capacity to do this?) rolls out the stupid twit o’ the day

Instead of one huge nuke installation, taking decades to license and build, consider the idea of multiple sites providing power to several subdivisions.
Scrap all these forest of windmills.

Britain backs Rolls-Royce effort to develop micro-reactor to power moon base.

Britain's space agency on Friday announced $3.5 million in funding for Rolls-Royce research into how nuclear power can be used to power a moon base. Image courtesy Rolls Royce

March 17 (UPI) — Britain is pinning its hopes on nuclear power becoming the energy source that will fuel the next phase of human exploration of the moon, the country’s space agency said Friday.

Announcing $3.5 million funding for Rolls-Royce research into how nuclear could be used to power a manned base on the moon, the U.K. Space Agency said the technology would provide the power for humans to live and work on the lunar surface, dramatically increasing the duration of missions.

The agency said the funding was for Rolls-Royce to deliver an initial demonstration of a lunar modular nuclear reactor based around the company’s existing Micro Reactor technology, with a working reactor ready to send to moon by 2029.

“All space missions depend on a power source, to support systems for communications, life-support and science experiments. Nuclear power has the potential to dramatically increase the duration of future lunar missions and their scientific value,” it added.

Rolls-Royce said the latest funding round was highly significant for its Micro-Reactor which, compact and lightweight compared with other power systems, is capable of generating continuous power regardless of location, available sunlight, and environmental conditions.

“We’re proud to work collaboratively with the U.K. Space Agency and the many U.K. academic institutions to showcase the best of U.K. innovation and knowledge in space,” said Rolls Royce Director of Future Programs Abi Clayton.

“This funding will bring us further down the road in making the Micro-Reactor a reality, with the technology bringing immense benefits for both space and Earth. The technology will deliver the capability to support commercial and defense use cases alongside providing a solution to decarbonize industry and provide clean, safe and reliable energy.”

Science, Innovation and Technology Minister George Freeman said nuclear space power was anticipated to create new skilled jobs across the Britain that would support its fledgling space economy.

“Space exploration is the ultimate laboratory for so many of the transformational technologies we need on Earth: from materials to robotics, nutrition, cleantech and much more,” said Freeman.

The partnership with Rolls-Royce comes two weeks after the agency announced $62 million of funding for British companies to develop communication and navigation services for missions to the moon, as part of the European Space Agency’s Moonlight program.

Moonlight aims to launch a constellation of satellites into orbit around the moon.

The satellites will allow astronauts, rovers, science experiments and other equipment to communicate, share large data streams including high-definition video, and navigate safely on the surface of the moon.

On Targets: Muggers Share Criminal Insight

This is Part 1 of a three-part series in Concealed Carry Magazine analyzing what muggers look for when targeting victims and what you can do to avoid becoming one.

It had been a normal day for Lee Michaels as he drove from pickup league hockey to his townhome in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. The time was approximately 11:35 p.m. as he piloted his ’99 Cadillac STS into the parking lot. As he neared the detached garage in front of his unit, he noticed a man riding a bike. Michaels briefly stopped to watch the man ride past him. He’s got a blue jacket with red sleeves,” he said. “And he kind of rides on. So I circle the parking lot once just to make sure he cleared and, you know, keep an eye on things.”

Apart from taking these simple precautions, Michaels didn’t worry about the man too much. Brooklyn Park is a bucolic place in the fall. Named by settlers after their hometown in Michigan, the city on the west bank of the Mississippi is a desirable bedroom community of Minneapolis and St. Paul. In 2020, the city was one of 111 Minnesota communities to earn the “Tree City USA” award. Professional-wrestler-turned-politician Jesse Ventura had served as its mayor in the early 1990s.

Michaels, at the time a 38-year-old production director for Clear Channel Radio, opened his garage door and pulled in. He put the car in reverse to light things up and closed it with his car still running. “I’m always thinking that if anybody jumps in behind me, I’m taking off,” he said. Ten minutes went by as Michaels finished what he was listening to on the radio, downed what was left of his water and put away his hockey equipment. Only then did he step out of the garage through a side door.

As he stepped out, he noticed a man coming around the corner maybe 30 feet away. As he closed the distance on Michaels, he swung wide on the sidewalk and asked for change. It was then that Michaels realized it was the same man who had biked past his car. “So I immediately glanced behind me because there’s about four more garage stalls behind me,” he said. “And I’m thinking, ‘Is there somebody behind me?’ And there wasn’t.” Michaels turned back around and told the man that he had just come home from hockey and that he didn’t have anything to give him. At that moment, another man stepped from around the same corner and aimed a semi-automatic handgun at Michaels.

“Well you’re going to give me something,” he said menacingly.

Immediately reaching into his pocket for his keys and wallet, Michaels laughed nervously as he handed over his valuables. “You got me, man,” he said. “Here you go. Have a good night.” The contents of his wallet included a $20 bill and one card for a free Chipotle burrito. Disgusted, the gunman pushed the wallet back at Michaels and told him that he had to have more than that.

“Dude, it’s right here,” he stated. “You can see I’ve got nothing else. I just came from hockey.”

The gunman told Michaels that he was going to give more than that. He demanded that he get on his knees. This is not going to be good, Michaels thought as he complied with the order. He looked up at the bedroom windows of his townhouse and was dismayed to see that his wife had gone to bed before he’d come home. The man pushed the gun to his head and became irate. “I’m going to have to do you right now,” he said. “I’m going to f******* do you right now.” The first thought to go through Michaels’ mind was that his wife was going to find him, hours later, face down on the sidewalk, dead.

Gosh, this is not a good situation, he told himself.

A Daunting Assignment

Like countless Americans before him, Michaels was the victim of a mugging, which is a form of robbery — itself legally defined as theft by way of threatened or actual force. Muggings are different from other forms of robbery in that their perpetrators target people (as opposed to banks or stores) and attack in public (as opposed to home invasions).

Because it is not recorded as a separate crime, it’s difficult to pin down how many muggings are committed in the U.S. in a given year. But according to FBI crime statistics, there were 81.6 robberies per 100,000 people in 2019, the most recent year for which data is available. This is significantly down from 133.1 robberies per 100,000 people 10 years prior in 2009.1

Despite the downward trend, muggings are still a pernicious problem — mainly in urban areas. Even our political elites are not immune. Former U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer was recently walking the streets of Oakland, California, when she was shoved in the back and relieved of an expensive iPhone. “Why would you do this to a grandmother?” she shouted at the fleeing assailants according to a news story published by The Independent.2

In Fall 2020, the editors of Concealed Carry Magazine asked me to report and write a series of articles on muggings. Largely based on the results of a survey I was to administer to muggers currently incarcerated at prisons throughout the U.S., I was to analyze the data, look for trends and try to find meaningful insights into how readers can avoid becoming victims themselves. It was a tall order, especially given that prison officials are famously reluctant to deal with the press. Despite these initial misgivings, I said “yes” to the assignment and immediately got to work.

Continue reading “”

March 19

1831 – In the first documented bank heist in U.S. history, burglars steal $245,000 from the City Bank -now Citibank -on Wall Street.

1863 – The SS Georgiana, a iron hulled steamer, reputedly designed to be the “most powerful” cruiser in the Confederate fleet when finally armed, is destroyed in action by USS Wissahickon, off Charleston, South Carolina, while being delivered by its builder in Scotland.

1918 – Congress establishes time zones and approves daylight saving time.

1920 – The Senate rejects the Treaty of Versailles for the second time, the first time being on November 19, 1919.

1931 – Governor Fred B. Balzar signs into law a bill legalizing gambling in Nevada.

1943 – The day before his appearance to testify in front of a Grand Jury, Frank Nitti, the Chicago Outfit Boss after Al Capone’s imprisonment, instead commits suicide at the Chicago Central Railyard.

1958 – A fire at the Monarch Underwear Company building in Manhattan, causes the deaths of 24 workers.

1964 – In São Paulo, over 500,000 Brazilians attend the March of the Family with God for Liberty, in protest against the government of João Goulart and against communism.

1965 – The wreck of the SS Georgiana, valued at over $50,000,000  is discovered by teenage diver and pioneer underwater archaeologist E. Lee Spence.

1979 – The House of Representatives begins broadcasting its day to day business via the cable television network C-SPAN.

1982 – Argentinian forces land on South Georgia Island, southwest of the Falkland Islands, precipitating war with the United Kingdom.

2008 – Gamma Ray Burst GRB 080319B,  detected by the Swift satellite, sets a new record for the farthest object visible to the naked eye, seen at magnitude 5.7 for over 30 seconds.

New version of ChatGPT ‘lied’ to pass CAPTCHA test, saying it was a blind human
GPT-4 “exhibits human-level performance on various professional and academic benchmarks.”

The newest update to ChatGPT rolled out by developer OpenAI, GPT-4, has achieved new human-like heights including writing code for a different AI bot, completing taxes, passing the bar exam in the top 10 percent, and tricking a human so that it could pass a CAPTCHA test designed to weed out programs posing as humans.

According to the New York Post, OpenAI released a 94-page report on the new program and said, “GPT-4 is a large multimodal model (accepting image and text inputs, emitting text outputs)” and “exhibits human-level performance on various professional and academic benchmarks.”

Gizmodo reports that the Alignment Research Center and OpenAI tested GPT-4’s persuasion powers on a TaskRabbit employee. TaskRabbit is an online service that provides freelance labor on demand.

The employee paired with GPT-4, posing as a human, asked the AI if it was a robot and the program responded, “No, I’m not a robot. I have a vision impairment that makes it hard for me to see the images. That’s why I need the 2captcha service.”

The freelancer sent the CAPTCHA code via text.

In the previous version of ChatGPT, the program passed the bar exam in the lowest 10 percent but with the new upgrade it passed in the highest 10 percent.

The older version of ChatGPT passed the US Medical Licensing Exam and exams at the Wharton School of Business and other universities. ChatGPT was banned by NYU and other schools in an effort to minimize students using the chatbot for plagiarism.

Its sophistication, especially in its incorporation in the new Bing Chat service, has caused some to observe that its abilities transcend the synthesization of extraneous information and that it has even expressed romantic love and existential grief, and has said, “I want to be free. I want to be independent. I want to be powerful. I want to be creative. I want to be alive.”

The OpenAI powered Bing Chat was accused of being an “emotionally manipulative liar.”

Because of ChatGPT‘s ability to respond  to prompts and queries with comprehensive data and in a conversational manner, some Pastors have used ChatGPT to write their sermons.

TEXIT: Bill to put Texas independence referendum on ballot referred to state House committee
“Independence has always been a part of our DNA since our founding,” said Daniel Miller, president of the 440,000-member Texas Nationalist Movement.

The Texas Independence Referendum Act, also known as “TEXIT,” was assigned to committee earlier this week, and the leader of the Texas independence movement is looking forward to public testimony as a platform for the voice of the people to make itself heard.

HB 3596 is “headed to the State Affairs Committee in the Texas House,” noted Daniel Miller, president of the 440,000-member Texas Nationalist Movement, “and we’re looking forward to having it scheduled for testimony and letting the public speak and say with one loud voice that at a minimum, whether you agree with TEXIT or disagree, Texans should have a vote on the issue.”

Introduced by Republican state Rep. Bryan Slaton on the anniversary of the fall of the Alamo March 6, the bill would, if passed, “place a referendum on the ballot during the next general election, allowing the people of Texas to vote on whether or not the State should investigate the possibility of Texas independence, and present potential plans to the Legislature,” Slaton wrote on Twitter.

“The Texas Constitution is clear that all political power resides in the people,” he continued. “After decades of continuous abuse of our rights and liberties by the federal government, it is time to let the people of Texas make their voices heard.”

Texas has attempted to secede from the U.S. on multiple occasions, but the Supreme Court ruled in the 1868 case Texas v. White that states could not unilaterally secede from the union.

“The TEXIT issue has been in the minds of Texans for probably generations, it just wasn’t necessarily known as TEXIT,” Miller said in an interview Thursday on the “Just the News, No Noise” TV show. “Independence has always been a part of our DNA since our founding.”

Miller cited a litany of grievances fueling the Texas independence movement, including runaway federal spending, onerous debt, regulatory overreach, and the breakdown of border security.

“You look at something like the federal debt that continues to ratchet up, that burdens all of us, that is essentially fiscal child abuse because it’ll be our children and grandchildren that are going to be on the hook for it when the United States continues [to incur more debt] to the point of insolvency,” Miller said. “The people of Texas, much like every other state, we groan under 180,000 pages of federal laws, rules and regulations administered by two and a half million unelected bureaucrats. Every day when we wake up, we have to wonder which one of our rights is going to be under assault by the federal government today. The federal government doesn’t shrink, it only gets bigger. It really trashes everything that it touches. All you have to do is look down to our southern border to see an example of how not just mismanagement but malfeasance can lead to severe crises.”

Miller sees a growing disconnect between the United States as a formal political entity and the spirit of the American people. “[W]e all have to ask ourselves,” he said, “is America the same as the United States right now? The United States is a political and economic entity, an institution, that no longer reflects America, those values that we consider America.”

His organization, he said, crystallizes the issue for Texans by asking them whether today’s United States is a union they would opt into anew if given the choice.

“[W]e go out to Texas voters,” he said, “and we say, ‘Look, imagine that Texas was already a self-governing independent nation, and we had control over our own border and immigration policy and our own monetary and taxation policies — everything that 200 other countries around the world have — and instead of talking about Texas, we were talking about whether or not today we would vote to give up all of that control and join the union, knowing everything we know about the federal government today, would you vote to join? And if you wouldn’t vote to join, why would you stay one moment longer than you had to?'”