Snarky Quick Hits

An Atlanta Man builds anti-homeless robot. That’s right…an ex-marine turned environmental engineer has built a robot that operates via remote control that patrols the grounds of his bar. Vagrants, drug users, and would-be thieves are chased off by the robot, who warns them with the owner’s voice that they are being videoed and that they’re trespassing.

A pizza guy in Des Moines Iowa was fired for protecting himself during a robbery. (See video here, full story here.) The pizza guy had a permit for his gun, but since it is against Pizza Hutt’s corporate policy to carry one, he was canned. Better a funeral than a PR disaster, right?

American gun shows and lenient gun laws are the primary source of weaponry for Mexican drug cartels, according to ABC News. Really? You don’t think drug cartels (which, you know, sell drugs) have the money or the contacts to buy guns from anywhere on the planet?

Mexico’s strict gun laws are being subverted by the easy availability of weapons in the U.S., the Mexican attorney general, Eduardo Medina-Mora Icaza, told ABC News. “The Second Amendment,” said the attorney general, “is certainly not designed to arm and give fire power to organized crime abroad.”

Since Mexico can’t police themselves, it’s suddenly our fault. Shoot fire, we’re already feeding, employing, and educating their citizens…let’s just go whole-hog and play policeman for them, too. (Someone needs to tell Mexican officials that mordidas are muy mal.)

We move ever closer to a totalitarian state with a recent 9th Circuit Court ruling that says laptops can be searched by customs agents without probable cause. Never mind that you are a U.S. Citizen; never mind that you may have no compelling reason to have your laptop searched. An inquisitive or industrious customs agent can pop the laptop open and look at your vacation pictures, your email, or anything else. In the particular case mentioned in the Ars Technica article above, the guy sounds like he was into child pr0n–this is inexcusable, but given the way it sounds, why were customs agents searching him to begin with? And why has this case been the one in which the precedent setting aside our Fourth Amendment has been established?