Those who prefer to drink their lattes packing protection on their hip turned out at Starbucks across the country on the first day of a "buycott" organized by gun owners -- countering the Starbucks boycott called this week by the National Gun Victims Action Council.

The issue of Starbucks allowing gun owners to openly carry their weapons in states that have "open carry" laws has been simmering for years. The new boycott, which launched Tuesday, aims at persuading Starbucks to join a growing list of retail chains, including Peet's Coffee, California Pizza Kitchen and IKEA, which prohibit guns even when they're otherwise legal.

"Starbucks allowing guns to be carried in thousands of their stores significantly increases everyone's risk of being a victim of gun violence," Elliot Fineman, head of the Chicago-based council, said in a press release announcing the boycott.

Most of the visible action Tuesday seemed to be on the buycott side of things, though, as gun groups across the country urged their members to show up at Starbucks -- not necessarily with their weapons -- and spend.

Joe Huffman, a Seattle software engineer who writes a gun blog based in his native Idaho, reported that he and his friends spent $131.64 at the Starbucks in Seattle's main shopping district Tuesday.

"I wasn't carrying a gun. I did have a jacket on that had an [National Rifle Assn.] life member patch," Huffman said in an interview. "I wanted to demonstrate that even though they're under a lot of pressure, we're very appreciative of them standing up against those people."

Starbucks' position is not only smart, it's correct. They allow concealed carry in states / cities that allow concealed carry. In other words, they follow the law.

For everyone yelling and screaming about this kind of thing, ask yourself this: what law would you allow Starbucks to ignore if you want them to ignore this one? Maybe keep those pesky negroes and gays out? How about charging them more so they won't come?

What about not collecting sales tax?

How about having them ignore onerous food safety standards?

See, it's funny how we won't sacrifice those laws and regulations, yet when it comes to gun, everyone turns into a bedwetting douchebag.

The facts are simple: if the law says it's legal, Starbucks not only shouldn't be deciding what goes on, they have no right to. The law doesn't end just because you walk into a store, and if the law says I can carry, then I can carry. End of story.

I'm glad they're standing up to the gungrabbers and I'm damn proud to be a long time and regular Starbucks customer.

Bronx state Sen. Ruben Diaz is crossing state lines today to protest the legalization of gay marriage in New Jersey. Should he rally against the issue in another state? Do you support it?

To which I replied...

I support gay marriage. In fact, in my ideal world, the state (meaning the government) would be out of the marriage business entirely. No more tax breaks, exceptions, exemptions, etc. You want to marry? It's between you and your church / community / etc.

That being said, would we be talking about this at all if Diaz went to New Jersey to PROMOTE gay marriage? I don't think so, and I don't think a lot of people would be telling him to "mind his business." In fact, I'd bet he'd be getting a ton of support for "standing up" and "making his voice heard."

You can't have it both ways, folks.

And, honestly, I don't think you can possibly disagree with me if you're a rational adult.

One sign the economy hasn’t been “fixed” is evident in the fact that Obama is now saying he didn’t realize how bad the problems were in the first place:

President Barack Obama said Tuesday he wishes he knew the full extent of the economic crisis when he took office, if only so he could have let Americans know just how tough the coming years would be.

“I think we understood that it was bad, but we didn’t know how bad it was,” Obama said in an interview with KIRO in Seattle. “I think I could have prepared the American people for how bad this was going to be, had we had a sense of that.”

Rewind to October of 2008 — how much more could Obama have prepared the American people?

I think everybody knows now that we are in the worst financial crisis since the great depression.

Sheriff Biden said the same thing in 2009.

There is, of course, a simple answer. This was the worst economy since the great depression for getting elected purposes. When it required the person claiming he could fix it (lest he become a "one term proposition") to actually fix it, then it was beyond the scope of what he understood.

Now don't get me wrong; I don't believe the President can fix the economy by himself, but that being said, how much worse than "the worst financial crisis since the great depression" would allow you to have a proper perspective on the scope of the problem?

Those are your words, Mr. President, not ours.

Critics of a bill that would give law enforcement new powers to access Canadians' electronic communications are aligning themselves with child pornographers, Canada's public safety minister says.

"He can either stand with us or with the child pornographers," Vic Toews said of Liberal public safety critic Francis Scarpaleggia during question period on Monday, after Scarpaleggia asked about a bill expected to be tabled Tuesday.

Yeah because God knows advocating against expansive government search powers is exactly akin to supporting kiddie porn.

What a jackass.

It generally feels pretty gimmicky to say, "What if so and so said this?" in discussions of race, because the context gets warped. In this case, though, because we're talking about an Asian man who has time and again encountered racism in his career (Lin used to be called a "chink" when he played college ball), it seems more apt than usual. What if an Asian sportscaster heralded the arrival of a new black basketball star by writing about how all the women were going to love his big penis? What if an Asian director introduced Spike Lee at the Golden Globes as "Spike 'Superfly' Lee"? What if an Asian anchor, famous for his antagonistic racism, went on ESPN to say that the only reason Tiger Woods is popular is because he's black? We already know what would happen with that last one: The anchor would be fired and written off as a bigot—Limbaugh was. I'll be shocked if Mayweather faces any similar repercussions.

As a champion of the underdog, I've found watching Lin's rise to fame fun and, at times, thrilling—and this is from someone who doesn't even like sports. But as a person of color, watching Lin become famous has also been a sad reminder of the intolerance found within the black community, and how often that intolerance goes unchecked because of society's racial conventions. I'm not asking anyone to look at Jeremy Lin and see Jackie Robinson, who famously broke professional baseball's color barrier. But I'd estimate that Lin is a lot closer to Jackie Robinson than Floyd Mayweather, Jr., will ever be.

Amazing and well-said. This is a great article for anyone who's been paying attention not only to Jeremy Lin's ascendence, but the casual racism being flung about by a certain element of society without any repurcussions for doing so.

A new study conducted by the Pew Center on the States shows that almost TWO MILLION dead Americans are on active voter rolls, and almost THREE MILLION people have active registrations in more than one state. In all, the study said, approximately one out of every eight voter registrations in the United States are either invalid or have “significant inaccuracies.”

As David Becker, director of Election Initiatives at the Pew Center on the States, said, “These problems waste taxpayer dollars, undermine voter confidence, and fuel partisan disputes over the integrity of our elections.”

If that’s not a wide open door to voter fraud, than what is?

I love how people keep saying that voter fraud isn't a problem, and use that specious argument as a reason to not have voter identification laws in place.

Three million people have multiple registrations, and two million deceased are on the rolls. That's 5 million votes. Consider that in the 2008 presidential election, 133 million people voted.

That's 4%.

But really, 4% can't affect an election, right?

Yeah. It only would've changed the results of 12 presidential elections, including 4 in the past 50 years.

But hey, totally not a problem. Just whistle past the graveyard.

Gov. Jerry Brown wants to hit California's highest-income taxpayers with billions of dollars in new taxes, and is jousting with other groups with their own tax-the-rich measures over which, if any, will win voter approval.

But the number of Californians with $500,000-plus annual incomes declined dramatically from 2007 to 2009 as the state's economy stagnated, leaving fewer to tax, the California Taxpayers Association points out in a compilation of data from the Franchise Tax Board.

The latest FTB statistical report covers the 2009 tax year, and Cal-Tax points out that it listed just 98,610 California tax returns with adjusted gross income of $500,000 or more, down nearly a third from the 146,221 in 2007. Data for 2010 are not yet available.

Those 98,610 tax returns were just over a half-percent of the 14.6 million returns filed for 2009, but they accounted for 18.8 percent of the taxable income and 32 percent of the income taxes paid that yea

The article claims that lower incomes are a possible explanation for this trend, but that there is no hard data for that assertion. They're right; there is no hard data for it.

But there is, however, hard data that the tax bases in lower-tax states as well as the migration pattern of people from high tax to low tax states has accelerated over the past few years. The largest population growth, as California loses high end tax payers, is in states that have no state income taxes, and the economies of those states are doing just fine.

Funny, that.

While the Sacramento Bee tap dances around the issue, we all know what it is. People won't work for free and won't put in sweat equity solely for others. The golden eggs have stopped rolling in.

Want to see the principle in a proper examined and tested theory? It's called the Laffer Curve. Read about it and then try and argue that isn't what's happening here.

“I can’t believe in 2012 the federal government is raiding Amish farmers at gunpoint all over a basic human right to eat natural food,” said one of them, who asked not to be named but received weekly shipments of eggs, milk, honey and butter from Rainbow Acres, a farm near Lancaster, Pa. “In Maryland, they force taxpayers to pay for abortions, but God forbid we want the same milk our grandparents drank.”

The FDA, though, said the judge made the right call in halting Mr. Allgyer’s cross-border sales.

“Intrastate sale of raw milk is allowed in Pennsylvania, and Mr. Allgyer had previously received a warning letter advising him that interstate sale of raw milk for human consumption is illegal,” agency spokeswoman Siobhan DeLancey said.

Neither the FDA nor the Justice Department, which pursued the legal case, provided numbers to The Washington Times on the cost of the investigation and court fight.

Fans of fresh milk, which they also call raw milk, attribute all kinds of health benefits to it, including better teeth and stronger immune systems. Raw milk is particularly popular among parents who want it for their children.

In a unique twist, the movement unites people on the left and the right who argue that the federal government has no business controlling what people choose to consume.

Between cases like this and the federal government sticking its nose into state drug laws, it's becoming de rigeur for the feds to just say they have the power to do something for the benefit of society, then to do it, regardless of that pesky tenth amendment.

And while this farmer was allegedly selling his product across state lines, there have been numerous cases in multiple states of farmers who did no such thing and were still pressured to shut down their operations over safety concerns, which begs the obvious question: If I assume the risk for something, who in the hell are you to tell me I don't have the right to do so?

If I want to skydive, should the feds come and stop me because it's dangerous? Of course not, because I take the risk. If I choose to consume raw milk, isn't that another example of me assuming a risk?

Or are you not even allowed to assume a risk anymore in the nanny state?

RICK SANTELLI: While the vandals are on the street corners, the Tea Party conservatives they’re working state houses, the governorships, the mayorships, the Senate, the House. See, they understand, they’ve read the Constitution. If you want to make a difference, don't go break windows, okay? Break some phony arguments that things like austerity are going to put you in the hole. What put you in the hole is borrowing 38 cents of every dollar you spent. That’s what put you in the hole, pure and simple. Everything else is political spin.

Yep. Yep. And yep.

Lieberman added that that although the administration has not made any move to push forward the liberation of Syria, “The encouraging news is that the Pentagon is putting together plans to make that happen if the president decides to order it… We always use the phrase in regard to Iran that every option is on the table. In this case with I would say in regards to Syria America ought to take the position that every option is on the table except doing nothing because doing nothing means hundreds of more Syrians are killed, and it means that Iran… will achieve a strategic victory or us and all the rest of the countries in the Middle East that are their enemies.”

In his final comment he said, “I think it’s time for the administration to act.”

Sure because the last two times we did this it worked out so well, right?

Iraq fell into chaos hours after the troops that were there left, and Afghanistan is run by a corrupt piece of crap that we installed who's continuing to keep Afghanistan a massive narco-state while we stand guard.

When the hell are we going to learn that we are not the police of the world?

Scratch that. I already know the answer.

Never.