The New York Times—a place full of people who pursued Journo Career Path #1—takes a look at the case of Amanda Lindhout, a wild and fancy-free young would-be journalist who saved up money from a waitressing job in Canada to fly off and report from Somalia, freelance. Hardcore! The she was kidnapped and held for ransom and "abused" for 15 months. Not so cool!

So the story is all, "on the one hand, [blah blah journalism training and preparation and a big news organization are all so important and you can't have amateurs running around, blah blah], and on the other hand, [obligatory nod to the pep of the young go-getters]." But all the wavering is unnecessary. To be a journalist, you don't need fancy training, or fancy technology, or a fancy news organization, or fancy "intelligence":

[Amanda Lindhout's] limited finances also restricted the number of armed guards she was able to hire. Journalists from large news organizations will hire up to 10 gunmen, a private army of sorts, at a total cost of $300 to $1,000 a day.

All you need to be a journalist are plenty of guns.
[Related. Pic via]

British magazine The Spectator is set to report tomorrow that Saif went on a shooting trip with Peter Mandelson (who has about a million government titles but is pretty much the power behind British Prime Minister Gordon Brown) and Cherie Blair (wife of former PM Tony) at the Rothschild estate in Buckinghamshire. He brought his own guns in, through the airport. Which seems a little edgy to us. The story is by former Daily Telegraph editor Charles Moore and continues with these intriguing titbits:

Now that Libya has made its strange bargain with the West, Saif has taken up our traditional upper-class sport with delight. Near Tripoli, he has laid down 40,000 partridges. Unfortunately, raptors have consumed about half of them, but Saif invited friends, including Flavio Briatore of Formula 1 fame, to a shoot there a few weeks back, with lunch in a desert tent, and the bag was about 300. More recently, Saif was shooting in Spain, the guest of Alejandro Agag. Mr Agag is a businessman - managing director of Queen's Park Rangers [a London soccer team], among other things - who used to be secretary-general of the European People's Party in the European parliament. He is a friend of Silvio Berlusconi and is married to the daughter of José Maria Aznar, the former prime minister of Spain (Tony Blair was at the wedding). Saif comes to England to shoot quite often, though I gather he has got into a bit of trouble about his guns with the airport authorities.

Let's hope he's not allowed to bring his guns into the US. His brother Hannibal has already pulled a 9mm pistol on police in France and attacked others in Italy with a fire extinguisher. If you've heard anything else juicy about Saif, his brother or any other dictator-offspring, drop us an email here.

Before 1995, according to the Roanoke County Circuit Court clerk's office, Virginia law required a psychiatric evaluation and documented explanation for why a resident needed to carry a concealed handgun. But by the time Hasan applied in October 1995, all that was required was a criminal background check and certification of a gun safety course. For some reason proof of having completed individual infantry training in the U.S. Army (next slide) was not enough for the Commonwealth of Virginia when it came to gun safety and Hasan had to take an NRA course as well. Above is the certificate of completion of an NRA "Personal Protection Course" that Hasan filed with the court. (You can read the entire application here.)

Here is his certificate of infantry training, submitted with the application. It was completed in 1988, when Hasan was 18 years old, which serves as definitive proof that he signed up with the army immediately after graduating from high school. His family has confirmed that timeline to reporters, but Virginia Tech, where he attended college, has said it has no record of Hasan participating in the school's ROTC program, leading some to believe he signed up after college.

Here is Hasan's fingerprint card. According to the application, he passed a criminal background check conducted by the Vinton Police Department.

A photocopy of Hasan's Virginia driver license. Note the address.

A Roanoke County Circuit Court clerk was able to tell us that he received the permit, but not the reason he specifed on his application for needing the gun. The obvious one, of course, would be that he's a soldier. The clerk is pulling the application form out of storage.

Hasan was born and raised in Virginia, and lived in Roanoke where his parents ran a restaurant. The concealed handgun permit was granted in 1996, not long after Hasan graduated from Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., and renewed in February 1998. It's unclear precisely when Hasan joined the Army—most reports say he signed up out of high school, but the Roanoke Times says he graduated from Virginia Tech in 1995 and that the school has no record of Hasan's participation in its ROTC or Corps of Cadets programs. In any event, we imagine it's fairly routine for soldiers to apply for, and receive, concealed carry permits.

Sen. Roger Wicker, the Mississippi Republican who sponsored the bill, boiled the issue down to that pesky Second Amendment:

Americans should not have their Second Amendment rights restricted for any reason, particularly if they choose to travel on America's federally subsidized rail line.

Wicker's reasoning, though rational from a right-wing point of view, seems to contradict his past stance on America's safety, like post-9/11 security moves:

It is no coincidence that our country has not been attacked since 9-11. Our initiatives to protect the homeland and aggressively take the fight to the terrorists have been factors in that success.

One of those initiatives was to ban firearms on Amtrak trains.

Considering the amount of vitriol that has infected town halls, awards shows, tennis matches and even Presidential addresses, the addition of guns to travel plans, which often bring out the worst in people, gives us chills. Luckily, the House will have a chance to shoot down this legislation.

[Add your own entries in the comments! I'm an ignorant agnostic.]


1. The Beastie Boys' Sabotage video


2/ John Goodman in The Big Lebowski


3. Exodus, Leon Uris


4. Uprising, the movie


5. Munich, the movie


6. Those Inglourious Basterds


7. Adam Sandler as Zohan


8. And then: "A terrorist could put a yarmulke on, say, 'Happy holidays,' and blow the place up." Not if these guys have anything to say about it. Anything involving somersaults, that is.

1.) "God, Guns, Guts, and American Pickup Trucks"
That's this guy's motto for his truck dealership in rural Missouri. He gives away a free AK-47 with each vehicle purchased. While being interviewed on CNN's American Morning, he made some compelling arguments for his business model:

"The only 911 call I need is chambering a round."
"There is a tremendous crime problem with people doing meth and these people – they've lost their souls."
"You don't have a problem with God, do you? I'm just curious…"
"We're a Christian nation."
"You don't think God wants us to defend ourselves? I'm confused."

2.) Paris Hilton: "I'm Not Retarded"

3.) Me: "Yes You Are"

4.) Barbara Walters' Speech Impediment
I've finally cracked the code to the cause of Barbara Walters' "accent." She says her R's backwards, so they come out as "raw" instead of "arh."

5.) Big Brother

I'm so obsessed with these turds. This sums up how I'm feeling right now:

6.) Gay Penguin Dramz
After a six-year relationship, Harry and Pepper, two gay male penguins living in a zoo in San Francisco, are no longer an item. Harry left Pepper for a woman. (A penguin one, not a human one.)

7.) And This

8.) Things Are Different in Canada

9.) Who Does Jon Gosselin Think He Is?
Remember when the father of eight said that he was sick of doing the show and sick of paparazzi? He's so sick of the celebrity life, that he just needed to get away from it—by sipping champagne on a private yacht floating in the French Riviera.

10.) Wrap It Up, Linda

Pastor Ken Pagano of the New Bethel Church in Louisville, Kentucky is having members of his church along with anybody else in the general, gun-owning public to come on down and hang out! Even better, the New York Times blog The Lede is covering it live, and writing it up quite excitedly ("12:30 p.m. We are just a few hours away from the bring-your-gun-to-church event here at the New Bethel Church in Louisville. Doors open at 4:30 p.m."). It reads like a Phish concert, except, the exact opposite. Notably, the church's insurance company opted out of insuring the church for the day:

The pastor, Ken Pagano, told us a couple of days ago that the church's insurance company was opting out for the day, and that there was some question about whether parishioners would have to leave their guns outside. But I just spoke with Mr. Pagano, and he said he had found new insurance coverage for the day. He would not say who provided it.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Other interesting things: the church is having a $1 raffle for a handgun today. When presented with statistics from an LA Times article regarding church shootings (especially an interesting one about the 18 that happened in 2008, as opposed to the 6 in 2007), Pagano noted that the security of the church was part of the reason he was holding the event in the first place: to encourage churchgoers to secure the church through private gun ownership.

The most recent high-profile church shooting was that of abortion doctor George Tiller. Law enforcement's on hand to make sure none of the guns brought in the church are loaded, but they can't check for concealed weapons (by definition).

Armed and Faithful Count Down [The Lede]
Southern California churches prepare in case gun violence shows up at the altar [LA Times]

It was four juveniles walking around with a toy gun, that they scored rummaging through all the crap Princetonians leave behind as they rush away for the summer. In other news, Princeton students are corrupting the youth with intoxicants!

Police believe the incident stemmed from a bigger problem of kids from town going on campus and rummaging through dumpsters looking for unused alcohol, which campus security says has been on ongoing problem.

These drunk kids wandering around with a "green toy handgun" and a half-empty bottle of Malibu that they filched from the trash caused the entire campus to be on full lockdown for 90 minutes. The lesson for Princeton students: Don't leave behind anything dangerous that could be used for mischief by your inferiors.

[CentralJersey.com. Pic via]

There's a recession on, have you heard? No longer can we afford our steroids and Gold's Gyms. It's all dumpster diving, "30 Day Shred" videos streamed over Netflix, and, to splurge, public workouts in liquor store parking lots:

Rex Weiner, 58, an unemployed screenwriter in Los Angeles, and his friend Victor Perez, 22, a manager at a liquor store, decided a few months ago that they wanted to get fit without spending a lot of money. He and three other friends sought a personal trainer to work them out in the parking lot in front of the Liquor and Food Mart, where Mr. Perez works...
[The trainer] says this is the first time she has trained anyone in a parking lot.

She will not last, with her mental weakness. America is turning inward, pursuing its destiny as a lean and hungry warrior nation. Why? Because the war is coming:

Purchases of guns and ammunition are surging across the country. Nearly four million background checks — a key measure of sales because they are required at the purchase of a gun from a federally licensed seller — were performed in the first three months of 2009. That is a 27% increase over the same period a year earlier, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

No one knows exactly what is behind the gun-buying craze. Some buyers say they are stocking up for themselves in anticipation of new gun-control laws, while others say they're worried about deteriorating public safety as the economy worsens.

Race war? States rights war? Tea party war? Nobody knows yet. Prepare for everything. Do yer pushups.

Wong was laid off and frustrated with his life in America, which is perfectly understandable. But he was also convinced that undercover cops were harassing him for years by spying on him with "ultramodern" cameras, flooding his house with chemicals, controlling his electricity remotely, trying to swerve in front of his car and make him wreck on 32 separate occasions, etc.

Police reportedly got a tip before the shooting that Wong was smoking crack, which would go a long way towards explaining this letter. Although he maintained his manners, throughout. If we can learn anything from this, it's not to go around giving guns to everybody. Because they might be crazy. [Pic: NYDN]

You see, Neil Strauss was out there just cold chillin with more vagina than one man could humanly handle, when one day Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, and Neil was like "Whoa: I totally need to write a book about various 'survival' tips, which maybe could make me some money!" So he got a passport from St. Kitts and moved his assets offshore and learned how to shoot a gun (imagine the indignity of dying by being shot by Neil Strauss) and also how to "can and preserve food." Now his book is coming, and it's all you'll need to survive no matter what happens. Don't go fucking with Neil, unless you're a lady that is!

Look at what happened in Mumbai: The terrorists went after the Americans and the Brits. I don't want something like that to ever happen to me.

Okay! Neil Strauss is like The Learning Annex of authors. Which is why he's much richer than all of us. [The Daily Beast; Pic via]

By late last week, Commercial Appeal executives were receiving as many as 600 e-mails a day, along with dozens of phone calls at home, at work and on their cell phones. Maps to their houses, with ominous warnings, had been posted online.

The editors of the Memphis Commercial-Appeal really, sincerely want all of you heavily armed wingnuts to know: we agree with you! On everything! Really!

— Wrong idea No. 1: The newspaper is against the Second Amendment that gives Americans the right to keep and bear arms...

This newspaper isn't soft on crime. We know that crime is the No. 1 issue that needs to be addressed in Memphis. We urge public officials to get tough on crime. We back Republican-led efforts to take a hard line on gun crimes and repeat offenders...

The newspaper isn't anti-gun.

See, intimidation free speech works! [Commercial Appeal]

Google has a squad of drivers who drive specially equipped cars down the streets of most cities in America. The ostensible purpose: Snapping streetside views to help Google Maps users find local businesses. But it's beginning to look like Larry and Sergey are secretly working on a real-time documentary of Americana to rival anything the Works Progress Administration funded in the 1930s.

Via the Smoking Gun, a Harley-Davidson lover shows off his purchase at a Rapid City, South Dakota gun store:

The scene after a Google Maps driver ran into a baby deer on a street called Five Points Road in upstate New York:

Google apologized for killing Bambi. So much for "don't be evil"!

Most recently the Sri Lankan-born, Brooklyn-dwelling, Bronfman-marrying musician was interviewed by Touré for The Daily Beast. And she started off laudably, bringing attention to the struggles in her home country and whatnot. But then, as always, the conversation devolves into a series of her trying to reaffirm to us—clinging Eminem style to an old and fading life—that she's entirely keepin' it real.

She says about the gunshots in her big, big hit "Paper Planes":

If you’re an immigrant you left somewhere and most of the time you fled a war. Gun sounds are a part of our culture as an everyday thing. If you’ve been exposed to gunfights and violence and bombs and war then I can use those sounds backing my thoughts, ya know? Look, I’ve been shot at so I’m quite comfortable with gunshot sounds.

Which, OK, fine. First off she must be utterly exhausted with that question, as scared and reverent reporters want to feel a little dangerous enjoying a song with such violent sounds in it. But maybe she should just stop answering it. Because every time she does, it just comes off a bit like she's boasting about some pretty horrible things which have nothing to do with her present life.

Also, she's so tough that she's just having a midwife-assisted, natural water birth. And she'd like to give you a small lecture about it:

You gotta embrace the pain, embrace the struggle. And my giving birth struggle is nothing when I think about all the people in Sri Lanka that have to give birth in a concentration camp as we speak, with no food and shelter and blankets and medicine and clean anything. I think I’m in a bit of a luxury situation. I have a midwife and I have my man. That’s kind of enough to get through.

All right, all right. We get it. Would you like some cave-aged Gruyere with that?

"Fidgeting in the area of the waistline" is the new "Protecting your family." [The Smoking Gun. Get well soon, Plaxico.]