The Washington Times site has crashed, or so it appears, due to their own headline warning. As the news broke that Homeland Security has pegged “rightwing extremism” as a threat to the Obama administration, a variety of error messages have greeted us for several hours, including logging-on to the homepage. A quote from Nancy Pelosi about registering guns and the Washington Times’ editorial assessment of her statement, probably added to the traffic.
A second headline may be contributing to the problem, although I have brought the page up about two times out of three. An April 13th editorial said: ‘We want them registered,’ “Democrats are going after guns.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, announced last week that she wants to register guns. Her next move will be to try to confiscate them
Speaking on ABC’s Good Morning America, Pelosi said:
We don’t want to take their guns away. We want them registered
This Washington Times article explores how registering guns will diminish crime, and concludes that it will not. The question is then asked, “why the government wants to register the people’s firearms? History provides the answer:”
In countries from Australia to England, registration has been used to create lists of guns that later were confiscated by their governments. Despite Mrs. Pelosi’s assurances to the contrary, Americans’ fear that registration will lead to confiscation is well-founded. Indeed, Mrs. Pelosi’s own state of California already has used existing registration lists to confiscate so-called assault weapons just a half-dozen years ago.
Maybe I’m wrong and these astonishing news headlines didn’t bring down the site, but I prefer to believe I’m right, and who knows, I may be.
If “the people” did crash the site because of their interest in Homeland Security accusations and the Democrat desire to take our guns, then this is exactly the way important news should be met by “the people.”
America is not yet ambivalent about the Second Amendment. We are not ambivalent about terrorism being termed “man-made disasters,” while Homeland Security accuses conservatives of white supremacy and domestic terrorism. We are not yet ambivalent about the likelihood of our veterans turning to domestic terrorism.
The Washington Times has opined that Democrats want our guns, they have revealed a report that Homeland Security didn’t want in the public domain, although it is unclassified. Our government believes rightwing extremism is guilty of protecting our right to keep and bear arms, guilty of insisting on rule-of-law immigration, and if you can believe it, we are guilty of not accepting the first African American President. Congratulations to the Washington Times! You can read directly from the Homeland Security report here.
April 14th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
I’m not going to comment on the gun issue at this time.
I will comment on the technology issue since I have quite a bit of experience with managing a very large web site. If a site is getting hammered by a high volume of users trying to access it, then several system could become strained and they will all fail differently. From your brief description, it doesn’t sound like a bandwidth issue (pipes too clogged). You didn’t indicate the site was sluggish or completely failing to load, just that some errors were popping up. These could be any number of things, but most likely a database problem.
It is highly unlikely this headline caused a stampeding herd of such size for their site to go down. If you check other news agencies or an aggregatetor like news.google.com, they are not reporting on the WT story, and therefore there’s no reason to expect a spike of people beyond folks that normally go to the site.
April 14th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
I don’t “like” guns, but if the central (federal) governments keep tabs on guns, it’s for control, not to fight crime.
Let me say this which you won’t like- the US government is one of the biggest terrorist groups in the world, and they don’t want smaller groups to control their own lives, whether “left wing” or “right wing”.
They want all the weapons in their own hands, and none in yours.
It’s a control thing.
April 14th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
No doubt it pi$$ed off a lot of people who read into it much the way I did.
Its already being talked about on the major networks with plenty of good minds asking the same questions
April 14th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
This is a blatant smear, and prop for the coming destruction of america. to demonize the very body of this country is ludicrous. I am a USMC vet, I own guns, I am a true Christian (as opposed to the Oprah cult or mormons), oppose abortion, oppose illegal immigration, and love my country and freedom. From what that report says, I must be a candidate for being an extremist. How sad of the democrats, how sad the citizens will stand by and do nothing about our disgusting government. Vote these clowns out!!!! IMPEACH IMPEACH IMPEACH CHUCK NORRIS 2012!!!
April 14th, 2009 at 7:13 pm
Micky, yes this is getting attention, and well it should. I don’t think it will quickly go away.
Conservatives have a tendency to let the name calling just roll-off, but these people in the Obama administration are serious about the way they intend to “organize” this country. They’ve put us in a convenient little category now.
If we object to a policy, we are an extremist.
April 14th, 2009 at 7:15 pm
Lady Liberty Weeps: thank you for your service. Yes, voting these people out of office must be first on our list of extremisms:-)
April 14th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
Yea Maggie.
Its really funy how this happened right before the first time in a long time cons have hit the streets in protest.
This is equivalent to being rounded up and tossed in some camp for radical dissidents.
I’m really f*ckin pi$$ed.
The ones I really feel sorry for are the troops being portrayed as victims coming home to roost.
Who ever wrote this needs to put in the stockade right in the middle of town.
This person or persons need to be exposed and the whole thing needs to be flushed with an apology from that idiot president.
jeez, I feel like they’re gonna start issuing arm bands
April 14th, 2009 at 7:42 pm
Micky, just think about this, when they get our kids into their volunteer Army it may be similar to arm bands. When they make us register our guns, it may be similar to arm bands, when they get our medical history online, it may be like arm bands.
White supremacists get their own special design though.
April 14th, 2009 at 9:27 pm
Seems like they really want to start something, dont they ?
I’m trying to reel in myself here but I’m still ready to go full blown with saying that this deserves more attention than all other policies hes got out that mean to contain.
The economy, communications, media, nat sec. all combined dont seem as threatening as something like this getting a pass.
This is some really dangerous sh*t.
If it doesnt create an overload of paranoia on the left it creates a hell of a lot of anger on the right. Its almost a perfect recipe for instant anarchy.
April 15th, 2009 at 8:18 am
Maggie, now that some time has passed, have you uncovered any corroborating evidence that backs your guess that sites problems were actually related to the story. You know, something a real journalist would do? Seems like you are just spouting off again.
April 15th, 2009 at 11:31 am
IMPEACH IMPEACH IMPEACH CHUCK NORRIS 2012!!!
How can we impeach him if he hasn’t been elected for anything? Or did you want us to impeach him in 2012?
Anyway, you guys are so funny. My favorite quote of the bunch:
This is equivalent to being rounded up and tossed in some camp for radical dissidents.
that’s awesome.