From June, 2007.

Retired Marine and former Pan Am/Delta Pilot John Lovell is Top Gun at Subway Sandwich Shop

Plantation, Florida:
Last week police were called to investigate an attempted armed robbery: The 71-year-old retired Marine who opened fire on two robbers at a Plantation, Florida, Subway shop late Wednesday, killing one and critically wounding the other, is described as John Lovell, a former helicopter pilot for two presidents. He doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, and he works out every day. Mr. Lovell was a man of action Wednesday night.

According to Plantation police, two masked gunmen came into the Subway at 1949 N. Pine Rd. just after 11 p.m. There was a lone diner, Mr. Lovell, who was finishing his meal. After robbing the cashier, the two men attempted to shove Mr. Lovell into a bathroom and rob him as well. They got his money, but then Mr. Lovell pulled his handgun and opened fire. He shot one of the thieves in the head and chest and the other in the head.

When police arrived, they found one of the men in the shop, K-9 Units found the other in the bushes of a nearby business. They also found cash strewn around the front of the sandwich shop according to Detective Robert Rettig of the Plantation Police Department.

Both men were taken to the Broward General Medical Center , where one, Donicio Arrindell, 22, of North Lauderdale died. The other, 21-year-old Frederick Gadson of Fort Lauderdale is in critical but stable condition.

Mr. Lovell was a pilot in the Marine Corps, flying former Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. He later worked as a pilot for Pan Am and Delta Airlines.

He is not expected to be charged authorities said. ”He was in fear for his life,” Detective Rettig said, “These criminals ought to realize that most men in their 70′s have military backgrounds and aren’t intimidated by idiots.”

Something tells me this old Marine wasn’t ‘in fear for his life’, even though his life was definitely at risk. The only thing he could be charged with is participating in an unfair fight. One 71- year young Marine against two punks. Two head shots and one center body mass shot.

Outstanding shooting! That’ll teach them not to get between a Marine and his meal.

Florida law allows eligible citizens to carry a concealed weapon. Don’t you just love a story with a happy ending?

Addendum: from Snopes:

John Lovell was not charged by the police, as he acted in self-defense and held a concealed weapons permit to carry the gun he had on him that night. The surviving gunman, Frederick Gadson, was charged with felony murder (for the death of his accomplice) and armed robbery.

Happy ending indeed! Charged with the murder of his buddy. Bwahahahaha.

Old people don’t fight, they just shoot you.

Grandma replied, ‘Honey, my TV is my boyfriend. I can sit in my bedroom and watch it all day long. The religious programs make me feel good and the comedies make me laugh… I’m happy with my TV as my boyfriend.’

Grandma turned on the TV, and the reception was terrible. She started adjusting the knobs, trying to get the picture in focus. Frustrated, she started hitting the backside of the TV hoping to fix the problem.

The little boy heard the doorbell ring, so he hurried to open the door and there stood Grandma’s minister. The minister said, ‘Hello son, is your Grandma home?’

The little boy replied, ‘Yeah, she’s in the bedroom bangin’ her boyfriend.’

The minister fainted.

One year, I decided to buy my mother-in-law a cemetery plot as a Christmas gift….
The next year, I didn’t buy her a gift.
When she asked me why, I replied, “Well, you still haven’t used the gift I bought you last year!”
And that’s how the fight started…..

My wife and I were watching Who Wants To Be A Millionaire while we were in bed.

I turned to her and said, ‘Do you want to have Sex?’
‘No,’ she answered..
I then said, ‘Is that your final answer?’
She didn’t even look at me this time, simply saying, ‘Yes..’
So I said, “Then I’d like to phone a friend.”
And that’s when the fight started…

My wife and I were sitting at a table at her high school reunion, and she kept staring at a drunken man swigging his drink as he sat alone at a nearby table. I asked her, “Do you know him?”
“Yes”, she sighed, “He’s my old boyfriend. I understand he took to drinking right after we split up those many years ago, and I hear he hasn’t been sober since.”
“My God!” I said, “Who would think a person could go on celebrating that long?”
And then the fight started…

When our lawn mower broke and wouldn’t run, my wife kept hinting to me that I should get it fixed. But, somehow I always had something else to take care of first, the shed, the boat, making beer.. Always something more important to me. Finally she thought of a clever way to make her point.
When I arrived home one day, I found her seated in the tall grass, busily snipping away with a tiny pair of sewing scissors. I watched silently for a short time and then went into the house. I was gone only a minute, and when I came out again I handed her a toothbrush.
I said, “When you finish cutting the grass, you might as well sweep the driveway.”
The doctors say I will walk again, but I will always have a limp.

My wife sat down next to me as I was flipping channels.
She asked, “What’s on TV?”
I said, “Dust.”
And then the fight started…

My wife was hinting about what she wanted for our upcoming anniversary.
She said, “I want something shiny that goes from 0 to 150 in about 3 seconds.”
I bought her a bathroom scale.
And then the fight started……

After retiring, I went to the Social Security office to apply for Social Security.
The woman behind the counter asked me for my driver’s License to verify my age.
I looked in my pockets and realized I had left my wallet at home.. I told the woman that I was very sorry, but I would have to go home and come back later.
The woman said, ‘Unbutton your shirt’.
So I opened my shirt revealing my curly silver hair.
She said, ‘That silver hair on your chest is proof enough for me’ and she processed my Social Security application.
When I got home, I excitedly told my wife about my experience at the Social Security office.
She said, ‘You should have dropped your pants. You might have gotten disability too.’
And then the fight started…

My wife was standing nude, looking in the bedroom mirror.
She was not happy with what she saw and said to me, “I feel horrible; I look old, fat and ugly. I really need you to pay me a compliment.’
I replied, “Your eyesight’s damn near perfect.”
And then the fight started……..

I rear-ended a car this morning…the start of a REALLY bad day!
The driver got out of the other car, and he was a DWARF!!
He looked up at me and said ‘I am NOT Happy!’
So I said, ‘Well, which one ARE you then?’
That’s how the fight started.

You’re sound asleep when you hear a thump outside your bedroom door. Half awake, and nearly paralyzed with fear, you hear muffled whispers. At least two people have broken into your house and are moving your way. With your heart pumping, you reach down beside your bed and pick up your shotgun. You rack a shell into the chamber, then inch toward the door and open it.
In the darkness, you make out two shadows. One holds something that looks like a crowbar. When the intruder brandishes it as if to strike, you raise the shotgun and fire. The blast knocks both thugs to the floor. One writhes and screams while the second man crawls to the front door and lurches outside. As you pick up the telephone to call police, you know you’re in trouble.

In your country, most guns were outlawed years before, and the few that are privately owned are so stringently regulated as to make them useless.. Yours was never registered.
Police arrive and inform you that the second burglar has died. They arrest you for First Degree Murder and Illegal Possession of a Firearm. When you talk to your attorney, he tells you not to worry: authorities will probably plea the case down to manslaughter.
“What kind of sentence will I get?” you ask.
“Only ten-to-twelve years,” he replies, as if that’s nothing.
“Behave yourself, and you’ll be out in seven.”
The next day, the shooting is the lead story in the local newspaper. Somehow, you’re portrayed as an eccentric vigilante while the two men you shot are represented as choirboys. Their friends and relatives can’t find an unkind word to say about them.. Buried deep down in the article, authorities acknowledge that both “victims” have been arrested numerous times. But the next day’s headline says it all:
“Lovable Rogue Son Didn’t Deserve to Die.” The thieves have been transformed from career criminals into Robin Hood-type pranksters..
As the days wear on, the story takes wings. The national media picks it up, then the international media. The surviving burglar has become a folk hero. Your attorney says the thief is preparing to sue you, and he’ll probably win.
The media publishes reports that your home has been burglarized several times in the past and that you’ve been critical of local police for their lack of effort in apprehending the suspects. After the last break-in, you told your neighbor that you would be prepared next time. The District Attorney uses this to allege that you were lying in wait for the burglars.
A few months later, you go to trial. The charges haven’t been reduced, as your lawyer had so confidently predicted. When you take the stand, your anger at the injustice of it all works against you.. Prosecutors paint a picture of you as a mean, vengeful man. It doesn’t take long for the jury to convict you of all charges. The judge sentences you to life in prison.
This case really happened.

On August 22, 1999, Tony Martin of Emneth, Norfolk , England , killed one burglar and wounded a second. In April, 2000, he was convicted and is now serving a life term (edit: this part in error)…
How did it become a crime to defend one’s own life in the once great British Empire? It started with the Pistols Act of 1903. This seemingly reasonable law forbade selling pistols to minors or felons and established that handgun sales were to be made only to those who had a license. The Firearms Act of 1920 expanded licensing to include not only handguns but all firearms except shotguns.. Later laws passed in 1953 and 1967 outlawed the carrying of any weapon by private citizens and mandated the registration of all shotguns.
Momentum for total handgun confiscation began in earnest after the Hungerfordmass shooting in 1987. Michael Ryan, a mentally disturbed man with a Kalashnikov rifle, walked down the streets shooting everyone he saw. When the smoke cleared, 17 people were dead. The British public, already de-sensitized by eighty years of “gun control”, demanded even tougher restrictions. (The seizure of all privately owned handguns was the objective even though Ryan used a rifle.)
Nine years later, at Dunblane , Scotland , Thomas Hamilton used a semi-automatic weapon to murder 16 children and a teacher at a public school. For many years, the media had portrayed all gun owners as mentally unstable, or worse, criminals. Now the press had a real kook with which to beat up law-abiding gun owners. Day after day, week after week, the media gave up all pretense of objectivity and demanded a total ban on all handguns.
The DunblaneInquiry, a few months later, sealed the fate of the few sidearms still owned by private citizens. During the years in which the British government incrementally took away most gun rights, the notion that a citizen had the right to armed self-defense came to be seen as vigilantism. Authorities refused to grant gun licenses to people who were threatened, claiming that self-defense was no longer considered a reason to own a gun. Citizens who shot burglars or robbers or rapists were charged while the real criminals were released. Indeed, after the Martin shooting, a police spokesman was quoted as saying, “We cannot have people take the law into their own hands.”
All of Martin’s neighbors had been robbed numerous times, and several elderly people were severely injured in beatings by young thugs who had no fear of the consequences. Martin himself, a collector of antiques, had seen most of his collection trashed or stolen by burglars.
When the Dunblane Inquiry ended, citizens who owned handguns were given three months to turn them over to local authorities. Being good British subjects, most people obeyed the law. The few who didn’t were visited by police and threatened with ten-year prison sentences if they didn’t comply. Police later bragged that they’d taken nearly 200,000 handguns from private citizens.
How did the authorities know who had handguns? The guns had been registered and licensed? Kind of like cars. Sound familiar?

Since you’re gonna ask, yes this is a true story, with a single error, pointed out by the edit in brackets. Here is the snopes article on it: Snopes Bulletin Board: Gun Control

And a followup story from the Daily Mail. Notice the tone of the article: Daily Mail: ‘I don’t regret killing that teenage burglar’, says vigilante farmer Tony Martin (I wouldn’t be sorry either, for the record.)

Reblogged from Nice Deb:

Why is the Obama administration picking a fight with the Catholic church during an election year? It doesn’t make any sense. He’s got the bishops all riled up, and those guys are hard to rile up. He’s ticked off the Catholic church like no other President has ever done before. If Obama and Co think their assault on our religious liberties can be compared to the war in Iraq because the Catholic church opposed that, too, they’ve got another thing coming. The Catholic church may not have liked the Iraq war, …

nicedeb puts this post so succinctly, it isn’t possible to improve it. Check out what she’s saying here.

I’ll stop gloating about this game sometime.

Maybe tomorrow!

Thanks to BoilerClone at CycloneFanatic: Too Loud for KU Fan in Hilton… (Forum board for Cyclone fans).

In an important matchup, Kansas came into Hilton Coliseum with an unblemished record in Big 12 play, at 7-0. Well, it’s not unblemished any more. The Cyclones pull out a win (an upset? yes, you can say that, since they are ranked higher than us) to put Iowa State in sole possession of 4th place in the Big 12 conference. Pretty good for a bunch of transfers that no one else wanted, huh?

Keep it up, Cyclones. It’s a good win, and it will look good on your resume come Tournament Picking Time. But Kansas State is coming to Hilton on Tuesday, and they are gonna want some blood, after losing to Oklahoma today.

Highlights from the game. Babb’s “Dagger” shot is after 2:30.

He’s not Paul Rhodes, but “The Mayor” has his own style:

Another highlight link:

USA Today: ESPN Highlights ISU-KU 2012-01-28

I was having issues deploying an application using ClickOnce. I had migrated it to VS 2008, so I could convert it to work on 64 bit machines. The old configs had a lot of additional tags, and 2008 doesn’t like extra tags.

Do your cleanup like you should be, and we won’t have this problem, will we? See, your mom was right. If you clean up after yourself, life will be much easier.

Looking forward to it! One more year!

Well, she didn’t put it quite like that. What she actually said was…

“Dad, I have decided to work for Obama’s re-election campaign.”