Showing posts with label Washington DC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Washington DC. Show all posts

Thursday, July 03, 2008

July 3

Today I turned 37! I had a very nice birthday party at work and then me and my wife went to Busch Gardens and rode roller coaster and watched a spectacular fireworks show that lasted for 10 minutes! I was very impressed!

Tomorrow for the 4th of July, we are going to Washington DC to watch the fireworks in the Nation’s Capital! They will be shot behind the Washington Monument! I will be bringing my camera and will be taking lots of photos!!

Have a happy July 4!

RMStringer

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My BLOG: BOB's Thoughts...

Link - http://renigade.blogspot.com/

My Camera: Sony DSLR a200

My Pictures: RMStringer

Link - www.flickr.com/rmstringer

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Amethyst...


Amethyst, originally uploaded by RMStringer.

This was a big piece of Amethyst that was in the Smithsonian National Museum Of Natural History in Washington DC. I thought that it would be a neat photo. They have a great section on Geology as well as many other exibit halls. This rock weighed well over 500 pounds and is one of the few items that can be touched in the museum.

Exposure: 0.017 sec (1/60)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 35 mm
ISO Speed: 400

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Back Stairwell...


Back Stairwell..., originally uploaded by RMStringer.

I took this at the National Museum of Natural History. It is part of the Smithsonian Institute that is located in Washington DC. I love the colors that it was painted. The Totem Poll is located in the center and it is over 35 feet tall. I thought that it was a hard photo to take because of the height of the structure and the lighting located around the walls.

Exposure: 0.4 sec (2/5)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 18 mm
ISO Speed: 400

Light Trails 2


Light Trails 2, originally uploaded by RMStringer.

We were at DC last night and we saw several of the memorials. I was on my way back to the car and we came upon the cross walk. It was a really good area for doing this type of photography with the surrounding lighting and both directions of traffic. I used "Vivid Mode" for this shot.

Exposure: 20 sec (20)
Aperture: f/14
Focal Length: 18 mm
ISO Speed: 400

Light Trails 1


Light Trails 1, originally uploaded by RMStringer.

This was the first of the "Traffic Trails" set that i used to post. I used a long exposure time and it hight F/Stop. I love the tail lights that were going past where i was set up to shoot the photo. The lighting across the street as well as the traffic lights gives it an almost ethereal feel to the photograph. This series was taken between the FDR and the Korean Memorials.

Exposure: 20 sec (20)
Aperture: f/14
Focal Length: 18 mm
ISO Speed: 400

The Lincoln Memorial


The Lincoln Memorial, originally uploaded by RMStringer.

I shot this in Black and White as well as 16:9 High Definition Aspect Ratio. It was not a long exposure. I did use low F/Stop. I think that the B/W shows off the contrast in the marble that it was built with. I used a flash for this photo.

Exposure: 0.1 sec (1/10)
Aperture: f/5
Focal Length: 30 mm
ISO Speed: 400

Washington DC Photos...
















I took these yesterday while we were walking in Arlington Cemetery. The photos are of the JFK grave site. JFK, Jacqueline Kennedy, and two children are buried at the memorial. I have more photos to fallow this week.





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Thursday, November 22, 2007

Justices To Rule On D.C. Gun Ban

2nd Amendment Case Could Affect Laws Nationwide

By Robert BarnesWashington Post Staff Writer

The Supreme Court announced yesterday that it will determine whether the District of Columbia's strict firearms law violates the Constitution, a decision that will raise the politically and culturally divisive issue of gun control just in time for the 2008 elections.

The court's examination of the meaning of the Second Amendment for the first time in nearly 70 years carries broad implications for gun-control measures locally and across the country.

The District has the nation's most restrictive law, essentially banning private handgun ownership and requiring that rifles and shotguns kept in private homes be unloaded and disassembled or outfitted with a trigger lock. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit declared it unconstitutional last year, becoming the first appeals court to overturn a gun-control law because of the Second Amendment.

For years, legal scholars, historians and grammarians have debated the meaning of the amendment because of its enigmatic wording and odd punctuation: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Gun-rights proponents say the words guarantee the right of an individual to possess firearms. Gun-control supporters say the words convey only a civic or "collective" right to own guns as part of service in an organized military organization. The Bush administration said in 2002 that it supports the individual-rights position.

Robert A. Levy, a scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute who has spent years planning a challenge that would reach the Supreme Court, called the court's decision to take the case "good news for all Americans who would like to be able to defend themselves where they live and sleep."

"And it's especially good news for residents of Washington, D.C., which has been the murder capital of the nation despite an outright ban on all functional firearms since 1976," he said.
Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) has said the District's up-and-down homicide rate would have been higher without the ban, and that the law is a locally supported move to protect police officers, children and other victims of gun violence.

"It's the will of the people of the District of Columbia that has to be respected," Fenty said at a news conference with D.C. Attorney General Linda Singer and several D.C. Council members. "We should have the right to make our own decisions."

He added: "We believe the U.S. Constitution is on our side."

The two sides proposed competing constitutional questions, so the court wrote its own, saying it would determine whether provisions of the District's law "violate the Second Amendment rights of individuals who are not affiliated with any state-regulated militia, but who wish to keep handguns and other firearms for private use in their homes." The court will probably hear the case in March.

The court's last examination of the amendment was in 1939, when it ruled in U.S. v. Miller that a sawed-off shotgun transported across state lines by a bootlegger was not what the amendment's authors had in mind when they were protecting arms needed for military service.

Since then, almost all of the nation's courts of appeal have read the ruling to mean that the amendment conveys only a collective right to gun ownership. But two of them, the D.C. Circuit and the 5th Circuit, have endorsed the individual-rights view, and so have some legal scholars who normally take positions on the left.

Mark V. Tushnet, a Harvard law professor whose new book, "Out of Range," is a legal and historical examination of the Second Amendment, concluded that the legal arguments on each side "are in reasonably close balance."

There is scant evidence about the justices' views.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia have made statements that seem to show their sympathy for the individual-rights argument. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said at his confirmation hearing that he believed the court in its Miller decision "sidestepped" the fundamental question.

Levy and co-counsel Clark M. Neily III and Alan Gura worked for years to assemble a challenge to the D.C. ban that the courts would accept. Their plaintiffs are law-abiding citizens who want the weapons for self-defense rather than people appealing criminal convictions for possessing weapons.

The case is called District of Columbia v. Heller because of security guard and D.C. resident Dick A. Heller, 65, whose application for a permit to keep a handgun in his home was denied by the city.

A federal district judge ruled against Heller and other residents who brought the suit, but a three-judge panel of the appeals court overturned that decision. By a 2 to 1 vote, the judges ruled that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to private firearms and self-defense that "existed prior to the formation of the new government under the Constitution."

The petition filed by the D.C. attorney general said the appeals court is wrong for three reasons: It recognizes an individual rather than a collective right, the Second Amendment serves as a restriction only on federal interference with state-regulated militias and state-recognized gun rights, and the District is within its rights to protect its citizens by banning a certain type of gun.

The gun-rights lawyers said they agreed that even a recognition of an individual right could allow the government to make reasonable restrictions, but not the ban the District imposes.

Both sides acknowledge that the Second Amendment pertains to federal restrictions rather than to restrictions imposed by states and that the District's unique status presents something of a jurisdictional quandary. But Maryland and three other states filed a brief saying that all have a stake in the case, because allowing the appeals court ruling to stand would destabilize current law and "cast a cloud over all federal and state law restricting access to firearms."

National groups on both sides of the gun-control issue are jittery about bringing the case to the Supreme Court, because of the uncertainty about the outcome.

"We're nervous," said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "Anytime you go to the Supreme Court, you could end up with all sorts of gun laws being called into question."

The National Rifle Association was also initially skeptical about the case, but Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said he is more confident of a positive outcome for his group with Roberts and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. on the court.

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Dc Gun Laws...

This is off of the NRA's Website. This does not need to happen!!! Please help to not let this happen!!!


The Case For Reforming The District of Columbia`s Gun Laws

H.R. 1399/S. 1001, the "District of Columbia Personal Protection Act," introduced in the House by Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.) and Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) and in the Senate by Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.), would end D.C.'s prohibition on using guns for self-defense in one's home and conform other D.C. gun laws to federal laws, while retaining stiff penalties for illegal gun possession and gun crimes. It would do none of the things claimed by anti-gun groups.

The legislation is long overdue. In 1976, D.C.'s City Council thumbed its nose at Congress, the 14th Amendment's guarantee of "equal protection of the laws," and the rest of the U.S., and began conducting a social experiment of its own design against the city's law-abiding residents. The experiment, unlike anything known elsewhere in America, took the form of the Firearms Control Regulations Act, which required that firearms kept at home be rendered useless for protection by being "unloaded, disassembled, or bound by a trigger lock or similar device." It required that all privately owned firearms be registered, and prohibited possession of a handgun not registered with city police prior to Sept. 24, 1976, and re-registered by Feb. 5, 1977.

The results have been catastrophic. Since D.C. imposed its 1976 laws, it has earned the unfortunate distinction, "murder capital of the United States." D.C.'s murder rate had been declining before 1976, but it increased thereafter. Between 1976-1991, it rose 200%, while the U.S. murder rate rose only 9%. (FBI, D.C. Police)

  • The District's prohibition on possession of firearms for defense at home conflicts with Congress' stated purpose in passing the Gun Control Act (1968). Section 101 of that law states "[I]t is not the purpose of this title to place any undue or unnecessary Federal restrictions or burdens on law-abiding citizens with respect to the acquisition, possession, or use of firearms appropriate to the purpose of hunting, trapshooting, target shooting, personal protection, or any other lawful activity, and that this title is not intended to discourage or eliminate the private ownership or use of firearms by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes. . ." (Emphasis added.)
  • D.C. is the only jurisdiction in the U.S. that prohibits keeping firearms in an operable condition at home, for defense against criminal attack. The right to be secure in one's home is an ages-old right affirmed in law and court decisions, but curtailed in D.C.
  • The District should not criminalize self-defense when it cannot defend people. As legal scholars Robert J. Cottrol and Raymond T. Diamond have written, "[A] society with a dismal record of protecting a people has a dubious claim on the right to disarm them. . . . [I]t is unwise to place the means of protection totally in the hands of the state. . . ." ("The Second Amendment: Toward an Afro-Americanist Reconsideration," Gun Control and the Constitution: Sources and Explorations on the Second Amendment, ed., Robert J. Cottrol, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, School of Law, 1994, p. 427.)
  • The District should not criminalize self-defense when it is not legally obligated to defend people. The District of Columbia Court of Appeals has ruled that the city's police department is "not generally liable to victims of violent criminal acts for failure to provide adequate police protection. . . ." (Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1, 1981)
  • D.C.'s gun law forces law-abiding people to choose between protecting their lives and obeying the law. Former U.S. Senator Warren Rudman, after retiring from office, said: "Honest people don't have guns and criminals do. I think people have a right to protect themselves. I was outraged to learn that I couldn't legally have a gun in Washington. Despite the law, I kept one in my office and one in my apartment, because there were plenty of armed criminals roaming the streets of Washington." (Combat: Twelve Years in the U.S. Senate, 1996, p.40)
  • Allowing citizens to defend themselves at home deters criminals. A study for the U.S. Department of Justice found that 40% of felons have decided to not commit one or more crimes for fear their potential victims were armed. (James D. Wright and Peter H. Rossi, Armed and Considered Dangerous: A Survey of Felons and Their Firearms, 1986, p. 155.)
  • The District's prohibition against using firearms for defense against violent criminal attack increases the likelihood that crime victims will be injured by their assailants. National Crime Victimization Surveys show: "Robbery and assault victims who used a gun to resist were less likely to be attacked or to suffer an injury than those who used any other methods of self-protection or those who did not resist at all." (Gary Kleck, Targeting Guns, 1997, p. 171).
  • On July 11, 2006 D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey declared a "crime emergency" in the District. The move, in reaction to a recent surge in homicides, allowed him to quickly adjust officers' schedules and limit their days off. Ramsey has declared four "crime emergencies" since taking office in 1998.


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RMSTringer
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Sunday, October 14, 2007

Dc Metro Pics...

We started out trip to go to the Black Cat Club in West Falls Church and we took the Dc Metro to get to our end destination at U Street. We saw Tiger Army, Street Dogs and The Static Age.

The concert was very good and Street Dogs took the show. They had so much energy and stage presence. It was just incredible. The lead singer Mike McColgan was the original Dropkick Murphy's from Boston Massachusetts and we got to go and talk to him after the show. He was really down to earth and fun to chat with. The Street Dogs' drummer Joe Sirois was from The Mighty Mighty Bosstones. It was a really fun show and I am glad that i was able to go to it.















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L'Enfant Plaza





























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U Street/African-Amer Civil War Memorial/Cardozo






























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Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Fast Cars on the streets...

While were walking down The National Mall yesterday by The National Archive Museum, we saw police on motorcycles come and block the cross streets in a very big hurry. Unbeknownst to me, yesterday, the new Prim Minister of Brittan was in Washington for a visit. Now back to the road.

There was a line of cars that came screaming through the road, not stopping for any red or green lights heading towards the Capitol. There was a black Suburban followed by 2 Black Limos. I am almost certain that I saw Cheney in the backseat of the last one and then followed behind him was 2 more black Suburbans (Chevy) with all sorts of antennas and servalence equipment on top of them. They were no doubtable the Secret Service in the Black Suburbans (Chevy) and they were all in a very big hurry!!

What is your opinion?

The Train Ride Back...

Well, while we were waiting for the train to come into the station; it was late. That is the second time that has happened to me. The train got there, it was 30 minutes late. When the train finally got there and we started to load, they asked that women, children, and elderly load first which was ok. There was a Congressmen standing there that smelt like a brewery and started raising his voice. He stated the "Wow, What’s so good about Richmond? It’s not going to be hopping town this weekend, No NASCAR, No Nothing. I wonder if I a Congressman qualify as a child as we are all infants." He was riding in the Business Class of the train, I wonder why?

I am not sure who he was and I wonder why he had to ride the train home to the boring city that he represents. Very funny if you ask me.

What is your opinion?

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Washington DC Today, July 31, 2007

Me and my Uncle went to DC this morning via AMTRAK from Richmond. We left on the 6am train and arrived in DC around 8.20am at Union Station and proceeded to walk to the US Capitol. Then we walked all the way down to the Lincoln Memorial. We started our way back to visit some of the Smithsonian Museums and we walked about 6-8 miles! I am very tired, but it was really fun to get to take my Uncle somewhere that he has not been.

Here is the link to all the pics i took with my LG VX8600 1.3 mega pixel Cam Phone.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rmstringer/sets/72157601128970874/

Enjoy!


What is your opinion?

Monday, June 04, 2007

Moving Night Shot.


Moving Night Shot., originally uploaded by RMStringer.

I was trying to get a shot of the US Air force memorial from across the river. I was standing at the Ben Franklin Memorial and it was too far to shoot free hand. I tried anyway and moved the cam while the shot was taking. This is what happened.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

DC and Music...




I will have some new pics to post tomorrow our DC trip tomorrow. I will post all the pics on my FlikR page as well.

I am going to do a series on Hooverphonic and their music this week.

Our website is still down at the moment. i have ran into a problem with the hosting company and their customer service line is never answered! So i do not know if i will have the site up any time soon.






Tell Me What You Think...

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Days?...


WE are going to DC tomorrow to go and tour The White House and then The Capital. IT should be a very good tour for us to see. The weather is very nice today. I hate to be in the Fab today. I stepped outside and was like WOW, it felt very good. It is amazing how nice it is after we had snow on Saturday morning. It has been a very busy morning here at work…

Last night my right knee was hurting very bad. I hurt it about 20 years ago in a snow skiing accident I had in Winter Park Colorado. I tore my knee up, but I never had it fixed. So from time to time it acts up and hurts me. It started hurting when I got home from work and got worse thru the evening. Around 10pm, I have to put a rap on it and I slept with it on all night. It is a little tinder today. I only got about 4 hours of sleep due to this and the change over to days. It sucks. I am tired today.


DAYS ARE CRAZY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!




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Sunday, January 28, 2007

Washington D.C. at night


Looking down Pennsylvania Ave toward The Capital.


This is the Washington Monument at night.

WE took a quick trip to DC last night and i got some sweet pics using out Sony Cybershot 5.1mp with a 12x optical zoom on night mode with no flash. Some turned out very nice and a few sucked, but this was really the first time for em to use the night mode like that.

Here is a Pic of the Lincoln Memorial.



Dc is about 120 miles from our house and there was a Anti-War Protest going on! The police were out in FULL FORCE!! I have never see so many cops congregated in one place at one time. Wow!! Here a few pics from last night. We had a really good time walking around to the different monuments. The temp was cool, but not freezing! and there was still snow on the ground in some paces. The reflecting pool was drained as was the pools around the WW2 memorial. as always, the Korean War Memorial was breath taking, the realism and detail on the hulking statues are amazing and in my opinion, on of the very best War Memorials in DC.



This is a pic looking back at The White House and The Washington Monument from the Jefferson Memorial across the Potomac River. The White House is just to the left of the Monument.


Tell Me What You Think...

An Intimate Celestial Bond

If you want to Purchase any of my music(s), Please go to https://djrenigade.bandcamp.com/ 1st Track For The New Year! #DownTempo #RenigadeCi...