Month: July 2019

Trump Criticizes Straw Bans, While His Campaign Sells Trump-Themed Straws for $15

Plastic straws are now an issue in the 2020 campaign, and on this narrow policy question, President Donald Trump is the pro-freedom candidate.

Yesterday, the president’s re-election campaign rolled out brand new Trump-themed plastic straws that are guaranteed to irritate environmentalists.

“Liberal paper straws don’t work. STAND WITH PRESIDENT TRUMP and buy your pack of recyclable straws today,” reads the sales pitch for the straws on Trump’s 2020 campaign website. Despite a 10-pack going for a whopping $15, the merchandise appears to have already sold out.

Trump spoke out on the issue today.

“I do think we have bigger problems…[but] you know, it’s interesting about plastic straws. You have a little straw, but what about the plates, the wrappers & everything else that are much bigger and made of the same material?” Trump said when asked by a reporter whether he supported banning plastic straws.

Opponents of straw bans can’t afford to be choosy with their allies, but it is sad to see plastic straws—once a noble symbol of resistance to government tyranny—being appropriated to re-elect a president who thinks the Bill of Rights is just one more invoice he doesn’t have to pay.

Trump is not wrong to point out, in his own meandering way, that straws are a small portion of overall plastic consumption. Data from litter surveys and beach cleanups find that straws are far outpaced by things like candy wrappers, cups, and cigarette filters.

When Starbucks stopped topping some of their drinks with their traditional cup-and-lid combo, they ended up replacing them with strawless lids that used more plastic.

Trump’s campaign is also correct in pointing out that “liberal paper straws” are a poor substitute given their propensity to dissolve in drinks or crumple when being poked through lids. These deficiencies are why plastic straws replaced paper ones to begin with.

However, the Trump campaign, while being good on straws, also lends credence to another bogus environmental panic by advertising their Trump-themed straws as “BPA free.”

BPA, short for Bisphenol A, is a chemical often found in plastics. A number of studies raised some concerns that its presence in food packaging could be hazardous to human health, which in turn fanned alarmist calls to ban the chemical or boycott products that contain it.

Both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the European Food Safety Authority have found that at current levels of exposure, BPA poses no health risk to consumers.

The plastic straw is a helpful and cheap drinking utensil that has been unfairly maligned as an environmental menace. Keeping them legal should be a matter of sound science, not an attempt to win another battle in a toxic culture war.

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UK Holds Crisis Meeting After Tanker Seizure As Armed Aircraft Protects US Cargo Ship In Gulf

British officials are scrambling after two UK tankers were captured by Iran in one dramatic day in the gulf — or rather we should clarify that the Stena Impero is UK flagged but not owned by a UK company (the owner ‘Stena Bulk’ is based in Sweden), while the Mesdar is Liberian flagged but is in fact owned by a UK company.

However, Iranian state media is denying that the Liberian flagged, UK-owned tanker captured is still being held, with new reports that it may have been released, per the following wire updates: 

Norbulk Shipping UK says Liberian registered vessel Mesdar was boarded by armed personnel at approximately 17:30 BST on Friday.

…Norbulk says armed guards have left and the vessel is now free to continue to voyage, crew safe and well.   

The two tankers seized Friday, via The Telegraph.

UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt voiced that Britain is “extremely concerned” by the “unacceptable” seizure of the two vessels IRGC forces in the Strait of Hormuz. “I will shortly attend a COBR meeting to review what we know and what we can do to swiftly secure the release of the two vessels,” he said in reference to a Cabinet Office Briefing Room over the major crisis, which is equivalent to the National Security Council’s ‘situation room’ meetings. 

“Their crews comprise a range of nationalities, but we understand there are no British citizens on board either ship,” Hunt continued, according to the AP. “These seizures are unacceptable. It is essential that freedom of navigation is maintained and that all ships can move safely and freely in the region.”

Meanwhile the UK Chamber of Shipping also said it “condemn unreservedly” the capture of the British-owned vessel, and it remains unclear the precise order of the pair of tankers’ capture; however, news first broke of the Stena Impero’s capture late in the day. 

Addressing the crisis, President Trump told reporters at the White House, “We have a very close alliance with the United Kingdom. We always have.” 

And in an early indication that Trump will be content to let the UK take the lead on this crisis (also considering there was no threat of war), the president said: “We’ll talk to the UK… We heard about it. We heard it was one. We heard it was two,” according to CNN. 

“This only goes to show what I’m saying about Iran. Trouble. Nothing but trouble,” Trump stated. “It goes to show you I was right about Iran.” The president added, “We have a lot of ships there that are warships.”

On that point, a breaking CNN report notes the US military has significantly stepped up patrols in the Persian Gulf following news of the tankers’ seizure.

Specifically American aircraft are said to be escorting an unidentified US cargo ship: 

The US is taking measures to protect a ship near where two British tankers were seized by Iran.

According to a US defense official with direct knowledge, at this hour, the US military is monitoring the transit of US commercial cargo ship through the Strait of Hormuz using armed aircraft overhead. The US will not say the location or other details, but the transit typically takes six to eight hours.

The US cargo ship is reportedly traversing the same narrow, dangerous waters near where the prior two vessels were captured by IRGC operatives. 

Crucially, all of this comes just as UK officials have announced authorties in Gibraltar will detain the tanker ‘Grace 1’ – first seized early this month by UK Royal Marines – for another 30 days. 

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Y2qent Tyler Durden

Anti-Vaping Researchers Claim E-Cigarettes Cause Heart Attacks Before Smokers Try Them

Last month the Journal of the American Heart Association published a study that claimed “e-cigarette use is an independent risk factor for having had a myocardial infarction.” Based on data from the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH), the researchers found that vapers were twice as likely to report heart attacks as subjects who had never smoked or vaped. In a blog post, study co-author Stanton Glantz, a longtime anti-smoking activist who directs the Center for Tobacco Research Control & Education at the University of California, San Francisco, described that finding as “more evidence that e-cigs cause heart attacks.”

But according to Brad Rodu, a tobacco researcher at the University of Louisville, most of the e-cigarette users who reported heart attacks had them before they started vaping, which makes Glantz’s causal inference logically impossible. In a July 11 letter to the journal’s editors, Rodu noted that Glantz and his co-author, Dharma Bhatta, “failed to account for detailed information in that survey on (a) when participants were first told that they had a heart attack and (b) when participants first started using e-cigarettes.”

When Rodu and University of Louisville research economist Nantaporn Plurphanswat looked at that information, they found that most of the 38 vapers who reported heart attacks “were first told that they had a heart attack many years before they first started using e-cigarettes.” In that group, “heart attacks preceded first e-cigarette use by almost a decade on average.” When Rodu and Plurphanswat ran the numbers without the subjects who started vaping after they had heart attacks, they found that “vapers were much less likely to have had a heart attack, not twice as likely.”

In their study, Bhatta and Glantz acknowledged that “we cannot infer temporality from the cross-sectional finding that e-cigarette use is associated with having had an MI,” and “it is possible that first MIs occurred before e-cigarette use.” But instead of using the information provided by the survey to address that issue, they did a secondary analysis limited to subjects who had their first heart attacks in 2007 or later. They chose that year because it was when “e-cigarettes started gaining popularity on the US market.”

Of course, that does not mean all 16 of the subjects in this sub-sample had heart attacks after they started vaping. In fact, Rodu and Plurphanswat found that it was the other way around in “more than a third” of those cases, as they noted in a follow-up letter yesterday. (They did not report the precise numbers because of limits on how PATH data can be used.) Even ignoring that crucial point, Bhatta and Glantz’s secondary analysis did not find a statistically significant association between vaping and heart attacks.

When USA Today reporter Jayne O’Donnell asked Glantz about the glaring problems with his study, he bragged about being “a for-real rocket scientist,” dismissed Rodu as a “tobacco industry apologist” because his research is supported by unrestricted grants from several tobacco companies, and claimed he and Bhatta would have found a statistically significant association if only the sample had been larger. But he conspicuously failed to address the puzzle of an effect that precedes its purported cause.

Rodu’s interest in tobacco harm reduction long predates his receipt of industry funding, which he says he felt compelled to accept because government agencies refused to fund his research on smokeless tobacco as a safer alternative to cigarettes. In an interview with O’Donnell, New York University public health professor Ray Niaura, who said he does not think a connection between vaping and heart attacks has been established, vouched for Rodu, calling him a “fastidious scientist.”

Glantz, it’s fair to say, is a bit less fastidious. He has been slamming e-cigarettes as an evil tobacco industry plot for years, and he has repeatedly tried to cast doubt on the indisputable fact that they are much less hazardous than the conventional kind.  “E-cigarettes should not be promoted or prescribed as a less risky alternative to combustible cigarettes,” Bhatta and Glantz write, “and should not be recommended for smoking cessation among people with or at risk of myocardial infarction.”

That conclusion is based on a study that considered only one of the risks posed by smoking and even then managed to imply equivalence only by ignoring obviously relevant information. “The main findings from the Bhatta-Glantz study are false and invalid,” Rodu and Plurphanswat write in their July 11 letter to JAHA. “Their analysis was an indefensible breach of any reasonable standard for research on association or causation.”

In their July 18 letter, they add: “Their inclusion of a secondary analysis is evidence that Bhatta and Glantz knew that many current e-cigarette users had a
heart attack before they started vaping. The results of their secondary analysis confirm that their study results are false and invalid.” They conclude by urging the journal’s editors “to take appropriate action on this article, including retraction.”

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“American Race Hustle” Is A Sure-Loser For Dems; Kunstler Warns Of “Walking Time-Bomb” Epstein

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

And so the four horsepeople-of-color arise, at once the glorious avatars of Wokesterdom in all their incendiary wrath, and the butt of ridicule among a pretty big chunk of everybody else in this land. I speak of congresswomen Omar, Tlaib, Pressley, and AOC, a.k.a. “the Squad,” riding a reconn mission to the precipice of that great cliff of electoral catastrophe – in advance of the political party that is apt to follow them over the edge in 2020, like so many suicidal lemmings.

source

Charges of “racism” have been twanging around the Federal District all week as if a throng of medieval re-enactors had taken over the place and were putting on a colorful pageant about ergot poisoning, with the townspeople afflicted by creeping incubi, crawling succubi, winged demons, murderous furies, and other agents of Satan. I have often noted that our president is the genuine article of a supernatural figure himself, being both a Golden Golem of Greatness and a Twitter troll of the highest degree. Last week, the four Squad gals pointed their fingers and ululated at him — “racist! racist! —expecting perhaps that a bolt from on-high might strike him dead, but it only prompted him to more keyboard villainy, challenging them to fly back to whatever infernal hellhole they came out of. For three of them it was the good ol’ USA, parts of which are, let’s face it, rather hellhole-ish these days.

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The American race hustle is getting kind of old and it’s a sure loser for the Democratic Party. Why they can’t move beyond it and engage with the many other mighty matters of our time is one of those abiding mysteries of life, like why the birdies sing, or why the Mets can’t get decent relief pitching. I daresay that in my lifetime this country has bent over backwards to assist, accommodate, and uplift the demographic that styles itself nowadays as people-of-color. None of that has managed to abolish significant economic inequality. But, really, what else can be done? Spend trillions more promoting fatherless households? (The Wokesters might like that, seeing as how much they detest people of the male persuasion.)

The main “ask” these days is to allow Mexicans and Central Americans to cross the border as they please and receive a menu of benefits provided gratis by the US government, and thus from US taxpayers. The arguments for that from Wokesterdom range from bad faith to completely insane, yet they are now being retailed at the highest level of presidential election politics. Every candidate in the first Democratic “debate” raised a hand in favor of providing free medical care to illegal border-jumpers. I wonder how that sits with the Americans who now pay $12,000 a year for health insurance with a $5,000 deductible.

Of course, this policy of unfettered illegal immigration does not economically favor the sizable demographic of poor Americans, many of whom are people-of-color. In theory, the border-jumpers are taking away an awful lot of jobs. But I think the argument there is that 300 years of slavery gives bonafide US citizens-of-color a pass on manual labor – so it is not against their interests to ally with the open border advocates – while both groups have an interest in getting any free stuff the government may offer.

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The white liberal masochists allied with this crusade, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, may have reached their own red-line for pain and suffering under the reigning twisted thought-regime. Last week, AOC attempted to tar Madame Pelosi as a “racist.” The day will come — if it has not already — when Madame P will have to usher the Squad into the House cloakroom and tune-up each member with thirty inches of re-bar, good and hard.

The Squad, meanwhile, is giving aid and comfort to the shock troops of Wokesterdom, the AntiFas, a devoted member of which last week attempted to shoot up and firebomb an Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Tacoma. The perp, one Willem Van Spronsen, 69, was gunned down for his trouble, but left a “manifesto” detailing his allegiance to the Wokester party line. Another Wokester gang in Aurora, Colorado, marched on an ICE building, took down the US flag, and raised the flag of Mexico. Bad optics, I’d say. Imagine how the video footage of that will play in Michigan and Pennsylvania when election season rolls around.

Also meanwhile, the party’s pathetic attempt to revive the walking dead narrative of RussiaGate is not working too well down on Jerold Nadler’s House Judiciary Committee. The chairman apparently discovered that his star witness, Robert Mueller, might have to answer some embarrassing questions about the conduct of his investigation — like, why did it go on for two years when his chief deputy, Mr. Weissmann, was informed from the get-go that the main predicate document was a fraud? So, Mr. Mueller’s turn in the witness chair keeps getting postponed clear into the August recess. I doubt the former Special Counsel will ever sit in that hot-seat. If I was him, I sure wouldn’t do it voluntarily. Oh, did anyone notice the House staged an impeachment vote on Wednesday? It flopped too.

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Finally, there is the walking time-bomb known as Jeffrey Epstein, Democratic Party poohbah and impresario of an underage sex racket featuring the “Lolita Express” airplane service to his private “Orgy Island” in the Caribbean, with auxiliary party shacks in New York City and the New Mexico Desert. Rogue reports have been styling Epstein’s doings as an international blackmailing operation associated with the CIA and other Intel outfits, including the UK’s MI6 and Israel’s Mossad, for the purpose of keeping international bigshots on a short leash. Who knows? At the center of it all is former President Bill Clinton, listed twenty-six times on the Lolita Express’s flight manifest — though the ex-Prez said last week in a statement that it was only four times. (Consider the source.)

A raft of unsealed documents in the matter has been court-ordered to drop any day, and power-players all over the world — especially in our nation’s capital and on Wall Street — are rumored to be chewing their fingernails down to the nubbins as they wait for it.

What a cargo of wickedness is borne by the garbage barge called the Democratic Party as it chugs out to sea toward a sickening, slightly radioactive orange sunset for what is looking like its final voyage.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2JIlxLL Tyler Durden

Anti-Vaping Researchers Claim E-Cigarettes Cause Heart Attacks Before Smokers Try Them

Last month the Journal of the American Heart Association published a study that claimed “e-cigarette use is an independent risk factor for having had a myocardial infarction.” Based on data from the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH), the researchers found that vapers were twice as likely to report heart attacks as subjects who had never smoked or vaped. In a blog post, study co-author Stanton Glantz, a longtime anti-smoking activist who directs the Center for Tobacco Research Control & Education at the University of California, San Francisco, described that finding as “more evidence that e-cigs cause heart attacks.”

But according to Brad Rodu, a tobacco researcher at the University of Louisville, most of the e-cigarette users who reported heart attacks had them before they started vaping, which makes Glantz’s causal inference logically impossible. In a July 11 letter to the journal’s editors, Rodu noted that Glantz and his co-author, Dharma Bhatta, “failed to account for detailed information in that survey on (a) when participants were first told that they had a heart attack and (b) when participants first started using e-cigarettes.”

When Rodu and University of Louisville research economist Nantaporn Plurphanswat looked at that information, they found that most of the 38 vapers who reported heart attacks “were first told that they had a heart attack many years before they first started using e-cigarettes.” In that group, “heart attacks preceded first e-cigarette use by almost a decade on average.” When Rodu and Plurphanswat ran the numbers without the subjects who started vaping after they had heart attacks, they found that “vapers were much less likely to have had a heart attack, not twice as likely.”

In their study, Bhatta and Glantz acknowledged that “we cannot infer temporality from the cross-sectional finding that e-cigarette use is associated with having had an MI,” and “it is possible that first MIs occurred before e-cigarette use.” But instead of using the information provided by the survey to address that issue, they did a secondary analysis limited to subjects who had their first heart attacks in 2007 or later. They chose that year because it was when “e-cigarettes started gaining popularity on the US market.”

Of course, that does not mean all 16 of the subjects in this sub-sample had heart attacks after they started vaping. In fact, Rodu and Plurphanswat found that it was the other way around in “more than a third” of those cases, as they noted in a follow-up letter yesterday. (They did not report the precise numbers because of limits on how PATH data can be used.) Even ignoring that crucial point, Bhatta and Glantz’s secondary analysis did not find a statistically significant association between vaping and heart attacks.

When USA Today reporter Jayne O’Donnell asked Glantz about the glaring problems with his study, he bragged about being “a for-real rocket scientist,” dismissed Rodu as a “tobacco industry apologist”  because his research is supported by unrestricted grants from several tobacco companies, and claimed he and Bhatta would have found a statistically significant association if only the sample had been larger. But he conspicuously failed to address the puzzle of an effect that precedes its purported cause.

Rodu’s interest in tobacco harm reduction long predates his receipt of industry funding, which he says he felt compelled to accept because government agencies refused to fund his research on smokeless tobacco as a safer alternative to cigarettes. In an interview with O’Donnell, New York University public health professor Ray Niaura, who said he does not think a connection between vaping and heart attacks has been established, vouched for Rodu, calling him a “fastidious scientist.”

Glantz, it’s fair to say, is a bit less fastidious. He has been slamming e-cigarettes as an evil tobacco industry plot for years, and he has repeatedly tried to cast doubt on the indisputable fact that they are much less hazardous than the conventional kind.  “E-cigarettes should not be promoted or prescribed as a less risky alternative to combustible cigarettes,” Bhatta and Glantz write, “and should not be recommended for smoking cessation among people with or at risk of myocardial infarction.”

That conclusion is based on a study that considered only one of the risks posed by smoking and even then managed to imply equivalence only by ignoring obviously relevant information. “The main findings from the Bhatta-Glantz study are false and invalid,” Rodu and Plurphanswat write in their July 11 letter to JAHA. “Their analysis was an indefensible breach of any reasonable standard for research on association or causation.”

In their July 18 letter, they add: “Their inclusion of a secondary analysis is evidence that Bhatta and Glantz knew that many current e-cigarette users had a
heart attack before they started vaping. The results of their secondary analysis confirm that their study results are false and invalid.” They conclude by urging the journal’s editors “to take appropriate action on this article, including retraction.”

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San Francisco Judge Overturns Illegal Warrant Used to Monitor Journalist’s Phone

A judge has revoked a search warrant that the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) illegally obtained to monitor a journalist’s phone. With the warrant’s recension, officers must also destroy all evidence obtained from its use.

San Francisco Superior Court Judge Rochelle East ruled that the warrant violated California’s Shield Law, which protects journalists from being held in contempt when they refuse to name a source. The law also excludes related items from being subject to search warrants.

The reporter, Bryan Carmody, drew the fury of the SFPD earlier this year when he disseminated a leaked police report surrounding the February death of Jeff Adachi, the city’s former public defender. (The document said that Adachi had been with a woman who wasn’t his wife in an apartment filled with “cannabis gummies” and “empty bottles of alcohol,” among other embarrassing details. The rather salacious and irrelevant contents raised suspicions that a faction of the SFPD was looking for retribution against Adachi, who was known for relentlessly criticizing the police.)

Subsequently, officers obtained a warrant to monitor Carmody’s phone for “subscriber information, call detail records, SMS usage, mobile data usage and cell tower data” from February 22 until February 23, as well as further “remote monitoring” on the phone “day or night.” In May, after Carmody declined to provide his source, armed officers barged into his apartment with sledgehammers and raided his apartment, taking the electronic equipment that Carmody uses to run his news operation. The warrant used for that search currently remains intact, though it likely also violated California’s Shield Law. Carmody’s attorney, Tom Burke, is engaged in a legal battle to quash that one, too.

East says the cops did not inform her that Carmody was a journalist when they requested the wiretap warrant. In Thursday’s hearing, the police sergeant who obtained the warrant reportedly testified that he was unaware of Carmody’s line of work. (It’s worth noting that the journalist maintained a police press pass for 16 years.) Police Chief William Scott blamed his staff in May for failing to identify Carmody’s profession, eliciting the ire of the San Francisco Police Officers’ Association, who said it was Scott that nefariously neglected to note his status as a journalist.

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Extremely Dangerous Heat Wave Will Impact 200 Million Across US This Weekend

A dangerous heat wave is expected to hit much of the United States this weekend – stretching from the Plains and Midwest all the ay to the East Coast, according to the Weather Channel. 

The National Weather Service has issued excessive heat warnings, watches and heat advisories in the Plains, Midwest and much of the East to warn residents of the dangerously hot conditions over the next few days.

Excessive heat warnings are issued when afternoon heat indices are expected to be dangerous, if not deadly, for those with prolonged exposure to the heat. Overnight temperatures may not drop far enough to bring relief from the heat, particularly in larger cities, which tend to “hold in” heat more than rural areas. –Weather Channel

As Dagny Taggart details, via The Organic Prepper blog: 

AccuWeather estimates that more than 87 million Americans live in an area where a daily record-high temperature could be set on Saturday, and says more than 200 million in the eastern two-thirds of the nation will swelter in very hot and humid conditions into this weekend.

Here’s what you need to know about this heat wave.

As of the time of this writing, the National Weather Service’s latest update (which is valid through Sunday, July 21) stated the following:

…A dangerous heat wave is building in the central and eastern U.S…. …Severe weather and flash flooding are both possible for the Upper Midwest this evening… An upper-level ridge is building over the southeastern U.S., setting the stage for what will be a miserably hot and humid weekend for millions of Americans.

The sprawling area of high pressure will drive hot and humid air north and east from the Gulf through the Northeast. Daytime temperatures will soar into and through the 90s from the Plains eastward, and overnight minimums in the 70s and 80s will provide little relief. Heat Advisories, Excessive Heat Watches, and Excessive Heat Warnings are in effect for the Plains, Mississippi and Ohio Valleys, and the Eastern Seaboard.

Dozens of record high minimum temperatures are forecast to be set across the eastern U.S., and a handful of record high maximum temperatures will be challenged. The heatwave is expected to persist through the weekend across the east, but a cold front ushering in cooler air will march across the U.S. as an upper-level trough begins to build near Hudson Bay.

Scattered thunderstorms are expected along fronts moving through the north-central U.S., a few of which could be severe and produce heavy rainfall. Slight Risks of both severe weather and excessive rainfall are in place this evening for parts of the Great Lakes region, with more storms possible across the Upper Midwest tomorrow. (source)

Our advice? Stay indoors and keep cool…

Taggart offers more a bit more valuable advice: 

Here’s how to stay safe in extremely hot weather.

Until temperatures cool down a bit, strenuous physical exercise and manual labor should be avoided or limited if possible. At least try to avoid them during the hottest part of the day. Frequent breaks from the heat are also highly recommended.

Drink plenty of water and avoid alcohol, especially while outdoors or in places that do not have air conditioning. Seek shelter in cool places.

Check on young children and the elderly frequently, as they are at heightened risk of heat-related illness.

Avoid walking pets and barefoot on paved and concrete areas during the late morning and afternoon hours as these surfaces can become hot enough to cause severe burns to paws and feet.

Do not leave children, elderly or disabled people, or pets in cars – even for a few minutes (and even if the windows are open). According to the National Weather Service,

Meanwhile, thunderstorms are expected throughout the Midwest, which Taggart notes: “could be devasting for the region – and our food supply.” 

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Z3h4bE Tyler Durden

San Francisco Judge Overturns Illegal Warrant Used to Monitor Journalist’s Phone

A judge has revoked a search warrant that the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) illegally obtained to monitor a journalist’s phone. With the warrant’s recension, officers must also destroy all evidence obtained from its use.

San Francisco Superior Court Judge Rochelle East ruled that the warrant violated California’s Shield Law, which protects journalists from being held in contempt when they refuse to name a source. The law also excludes related items from being subject to search warrants.

The reporter, Bryan Carmody, drew the fury of the SFPD earlier this year when he disseminated a leaked police report surrounding the February death of Jeff Adachi, the city’s former public defender. (The document said that Adachi had been with a woman who wasn’t his wife in an apartment filled with “cannabis gummies” and “empty bottles of alcohol,” among other embarrassing details. The rather salacious and irrelevant contents raised suspicions that a faction of the SFPD was looking for retribution against Adachi, who was known for relentlessly criticizing the police.)

Subsequently, officers obtained a warrant to monitor Carmody’s phone for “subscriber information, call detail records, SMS usage, mobile data usage and cell tower data” from February 22 until February 23, as well as further “remote monitoring” on the phone “day or night.” In May, after Carmody declined to provide his source, armed officers barged into his apartment with sledgehammers and raided his apartment, taking the electronic equipment that Carmody uses to run his news operation. The warrant used for that search currently remains intact, though it likely also violated California’s Shield Law. Carmody’s attorney, Tom Burke, is engaged in a legal battle to quash that one, too.

East says the cops did not inform her that Carmody was a journalist when they requested the wiretap warrant. In Thursday’s hearing, the police sergeant who obtained the warrant reportedly testified that he was unaware of Carmody’s line of work. (It’s worth noting that the journalist maintained a police press pass for 16 years.) Police Chief William Scott blamed his staff in May for failing to identify Carmody’s profession, eliciting the ire of the San Francisco Police Officers’ Association, who said it was Scott that nefariously neglected to note his status as a journalist.

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J.M. Davis Arms and Historical Museum

J.M. Davis Arms Museum building.

Located near Tulsa on Route 66, the J.M. Davis Arms and Historical Museum amazes and overwhelms. With 12,000 firearms on display, it offers the largest collection of guns you can see at any museum.

But it’s not just a firearms museum. Boasting 50,000 total artifacts, the Davis Museum has plenty to engage the members of your party who aren’t interested in guns. For example, there are 1,200(!) beer steins, plus 19th century parlor musical instruments, a large collection of saddlery and riding gear, and lots of displays about outlaws and lawmen.

The museum building is owned by the State of Oklahoma, so there is no admissions charge. A voluntary donation of $5 per individual or $10 per family is encouraged. The museum is in Claremore, Oklahoma, a small town that is now part of the Tulsa metropolitan area. Parking is free and extensive.

The Davis Museum displays the largest collection of beer steins in the western hemisphere. (Rose City Art).

The museum’s collection was donated in 1969 by J.M. Davis, a businessman and long-serving mayor of Claremore. Starting in the late 1920s, Davis had displayed his growing firearms collection at his hotel and coffee shop, enticing travelers on Route 66, which ran from Chicago to Los Angeles.

The museum reflects the time period when Davis was doing his collecting. It is incredibly deep for 19th and 20th century American and European firearms up through about 1969. The eighteenth century has some representation, and there are some guns from the seventeenth century, and even a Chinese hand cannon from 1350. But where the museum excels is from 1800 onward. The World War I era is particularly strong.

Over a hundred rows of firearms are on display.

With well over 100 rows of displays, the Davis Museum takes a while to visit if you’re going to look carefully at everything.

The majority of firearms exhibits are pegboard hangings, grouped by manufacturer, nationality, or type. So, for example, you can study large collections of Harrington & Richardson handguns, Mauser rifles, or Spanish handguns.

The Davis Museum isn’t the only place where you can see a lot of Winchesters or Remingtons, but for American manufacturers that are no longer in business, and haven’t been for decades, the Davis Museum may be the best place to view their products.

The signage and text on many of the manufacturer-grouped displays is sparse. It could be enhanced with more information about what a particular manufacturer or series of models contributed to the evolution and use of firearms.

Some of the most interesting displays focus on particular types of forgotten arms. Some of these, such as blunderbusses, were popular during their glory days. Others were obscure; for example, in “folding trigger” handguns, the trigger could be flipped forward and upward, thus reducing the risk of accidental discharge in a time before trigger guards became near-universal.

The quantity of firearms curiousa is larger than I’ve ever seen in any other museum. There excellent displays of disguised guns, miniature guns, and “suicide specials” (inexpensive, small, and not necessarily well-made handguns commonly carried for self-defense in the late 19th century). There’s also a “cemetery gun”—a tripwire-activated swivel gun used to deter grave robbers in England in the early 19th century.

If you want to focus on the mainstream, you can peruse the rifles and shotguns that were sold en masse via the mail-order catalogues of Sears Roebuck or Montgomery Ward. Not to mention flare pistols, toy/cap guns, and boys’ .22 rifles (very popular in the first half of the 20th century).

As the signage explains, firearms can be used for good or ill, depending on the user. This is reinforced by displays on guns used by lawmen and outlaws, including three handguns owned by the notorious 1930s bank robber Pretty Boy Floyd.

The staff is friendly and enthusiastic. If you on Route 66, the Davis Museum is worth a stop. And if you have a high interest in firearms and their history, the Davis Museum merits a trip on its own.

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J.M. Davis Arms and Historical Museum

J.M. Davis Arms Museum building.

Located near Tulsa on Route 66, the J.M. Davis Arms and Historical Museum amazes and overwhelms. With 12,000 firearms on display, it offers the largest collection of guns you can see at any museum.

But it’s not just a firearms museum. Boasting 50,000 total artifacts, the Davis Museum has plenty to engage the members of your party who aren’t interested in guns. For example, there are 1,200(!) beer steins, plus 19th century parlor musical instruments, a large collection of saddlery and riding gear, and lots of displays about outlaws and lawmen.

The museum building is owned by the State of Oklahoma, so there is no admissions charge. A voluntary donation of $5 per individual or $10 per family is encouraged. The museum is in Claremore, Oklahoma, a small town that is now part of the Tulsa metropolitan area. Parking is free and extensive.

The Davis Museum displays the largest collection of beer steins in the western hemisphere. (Rose City Art).

The museum’s collection was donated in 1969 by J.M. Davis, a businessman and long-serving mayor of Claremore. Starting in the late 1920s, Davis had displayed his growing firearms collection at his hotel and coffee shop, enticing travelers on Route 66, which ran from Chicago to Los Angeles.

The museum reflects the time period when Davis was doing his collecting. It is incredibly deep for 19th and 20th century American and European firearms up through about 1969. The eighteenth century has some representation, and there are some guns from the seventeenth century, and even a Chinese hand cannon from 1350. But where the museum excels is from 1800 onward. The World War I era is particularly strong.

Over a hundred rows of firearms are on display.

With well over 100 rows of displays, the Davis Museum takes a while to visit if you’re going to look carefully at everything.

The majority of firearms exhibits are pegboard hangings, grouped by manufacturer, nationality, or type. So, for example, you can study large collections of Harrington & Richardson handguns, Mauser rifles, or Spanish handguns.

The Davis Museum isn’t the only place where you can see a lot of Winchesters or Remingtons, but for American manufacturers that are no longer in business, and haven’t been for decades, the Davis Museum may be the best place to view their products.

The signage and text on many of the manufacturer-grouped displays is sparse. It could be enhanced with more information about what a particular manufacturer or series of models contributed to the evolution and use of firearms.

Some of the most interesting displays focus on particular types of forgotten arms. Some of these, such as blunderbusses, were popular during their glory days. Others were obscure; for example, in “folding trigger” handguns, the trigger could be flipped forward and upward, thus reducing the risk of accidental discharge in a time before trigger guards became near-universal.

The quantity of firearms curiousa is larger than I’ve ever seen in any other museum. There excellent displays of disguised guns, miniature guns, and “suicide specials” (inexpensive, small, and not necessarily well-made handguns commonly carried for self-defense in the late 19th century). There’s also a “cemetery gun”—a tripwire-activated swivel gun used to deter grave robbers in England in the early 19th century.

If you want to focus on the mainstream, you can peruse the rifles and shotguns that were sold en masse via the mail-order catalogues of Sears Roebuck or Montgomery Ward. Not to mention flare pistols, toy/cap guns, and boys’ .22 rifles (very popular in the first half of the 20th century).

As the signage explains, firearms can be used for good or ill, depending on the user. This is reinforced by displays on guns used by lawmen and outlaws, including three handguns owned by the notorious 1930s bank robber Pretty Boy Floyd.

The staff is friendly and enthusiastic. If you on Route 66, the Davis Museum is worth a stop. And if you have a high interest in firearms and their history, the Davis Museum merits a trip on its own.

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