Splendid Isolation

Gun? What Gun?

From his lair deep in the Soviet Republic of Taxachusetts, Reader Mike L. sends me this report:

Christina Sumner of Roanoke said she was shocked and concerned there was a loaded gun left in her rental car.
Sumner rented a car from Enterprise in Roanoke on Feb. 2, and everything seemed normal at first. Then Enterprise called her a day later, telling her there may be a gun in her car.

Well now, this is an interesting situation.  Note the qualifier “may be” in the last sentence;   in other words, Enterprise didn’t actually know there was a gun in the car — or perhaps they did, but wanted to cover their corporate asses.

However, this poses an interesting situation.  What if you’d already found the gun in the car, but told Enterprise that there had to be some mistake:  you could find no gun nor indeed any evidence of a gun in the car? 

Of course, I would be deeply conflicted.  On the one hand:  a “free” gun.  On the other hand, it was just some Europellet delivery vehicle, and therefore of little interest to me, so I wouldn’t mind handing it over.  Also, it being a 9mm means that the erstwhile owner may have been a state or federal official — especially if it was a Glock — and given the latter’s reputation of losing guns, or leaving them in public toilets etc., it wouldn’t surprise me at all that this might be the case.  That might certainly influence any decision between “Oh yeah, here it is, come and collect it”, or “What gun? / Finders keepers, numbnuts”.

But it’s a damn good thing the “missing” gun wasn’t a Les Baer or Kimber 1911 .45ACP…

Talk about temptation.

Discuss, in Comments.

Leaker Buried

Via indefatigable contributor and Reader Michael L. comes this welcome news:

The former Internal Revenue Service contractor who leaked the tax records of former President Donald Trump to The New York Times as well as the tax records of billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk to ProPublica was sentenced Monday to five years in prison.

Somewhat harsh for this evil little weasel, you say?  I don’ theenk so, Speedy:

Prosecutors said that Littlejohn “weaponized his access to unmasked taxpayer data to further his own personal, political agenda, believing that he was above the law.”

The only way I’d feel better about this would be if the sentence contained the phrase “weekly whippings while incarcerated”, but no doubt someone’s going to have a problem with this.

And I’m not especially pissed off at whose data was leaked;  I’d feel equally angry if it was my data (not that it’s in any way as momentous as the tax data of the above Ryche Pharttes).

By the way, I’m getting really sick of the word “weaponized”, as in this case where “abused” would have served equally well or better.  It’s a betrayal of trust, not trying to take a life, FFS.

Another Brick In The Wall?

This is interesting:

Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a bill making Texas the first state in the union to give law enforcement officers the authority to arrest migrants who illegally enter the state.

I hope we have enough prison space, is all.

Or perhaps we could concentrate all these lawbreakers in, I dunno, camps of some sort?

Just thinking aloud here, Boss.

The “interesting” part is how the FedGov will react to this.