I did not have to ask Etonians Wolverine or Peregrine their opinion of capital punishment.  Let’s face it.  Like generations of Englishmen, these two Etonians adored punishment.  There was not enough of it.  Hence the world was going to the dogs.

Wolverine also linked his routine commission of capital offenses as a reason for him having enormous earnings.  “With big risks come big gains,” he’d chuckle. When I looked at the growing product line at Munitions Galore, Wolverine’s flourishing work as a spy was obvious to the discerning. 

Of course, idiots never notice anything.  Lots of lefties seem to view state-of-the-art weapons and military tech as manna from heaven.  As Wolverine stressed, ff  Senator BS and his crowd had their way, they’d spend the defence budget on freebies for bums.  Let America wander naked in a hostile world as her enemies sharpened their knives and our bums wallowed in free digs.

My lessons on lefty politics, I got from my servant mike.  One day I was letting him feed me a portion of his milkshake.  We lounged in front of the telly.  The silver-haired image of Senator BS flickered on the screen. He was raving before a cohort of college students.  It didn’t take mike long to feel the burn.  “Behold him,” sniped mike.  “The chap and his beloved parasites have the chutzpah to make out that a nation of stingy Babbitts is denying them free tuition, loan forgiveness, and free public transport.  These shameless mooches will have you accept as gospel that none of these indebted students without cars is thinking of themselves when they scream, let’s be honest for once, to force the despised Babbits and “billionaire class” to pay for their greedy fantasies.”   

If Senator BS or just about any lefties started talking about guns around mike, I’d flee.  He detested people who didn’t know how to unload a wheel gun or tell if a semiauto was empty, lecturing the public on the the evil of large-capacity magazines.  As a rule, they’d solemnly remind the ignorant that large magazines are disallowed when hunting deer.

Mike would respond that large magazines were a convenience to chaps going to plink targets, a hobby vastly more popular than hunting Bambi and her overpopulating associates.  Lefty friends of mikes were often surprised he didn’t care about using guns that held 15 or more rounds that he linked for plinking for home defence.  But mike happened to agree with Shane who noticed that even a gunfighter doesn’t need two six-shooters if he knows how to shoot well with one.  So, mike had an S&W Model 10 for the home. I’d advise against testing his accuracy. 

Wolverine and Peregrine, Irascible and Constant Lawless, Lord Caligula and company saw guns as a necessity when no grenades, .50 Cals, or SAWs were at hand.  They all admitted to sometimes having to conceal carry “tiny” pistols like a PPQ 9mm, but nobody serious about personal protection liked anything that small. 

Hence Munitions Galore was happy when it announced that, in addition to its growing line of Blond-Bomb explosives, more lethal goodies were coming. Thanks to work by Mr Wolverine Lawless, Munitions Galore was coming out with new options in Killer Bots. I had no idea that Wolverine was skilled as an engineer, but he was named on patents in several countries.

  Adverts for Wolverine’s Household-Cleaner model boasted that it could patrol a large home and its grounds.  If it encountered any “unauthorized” life, the boat used a lethal laser to deal with it.  The Household Cleaner would then feed the corpse into an ample incinerator that had a saw and mulcher to make sure that “even the tallest most corpulent corpses” could be forced to fit.  The incinerator turned the mulch into a fine ash that the Cleaner sprayed over a lawn or bushes to promote “life and growth.”  The adverts showed many pleased smiling naked women in bathrobes. Sometimes they reached out to fondle the robot.

Wolverine was especially proud, in videos, that the laser-enhanced incinerator cooked the mulch so hot that all traces of the corpse’s DNA disappeared.  Wolverine’s brags included the idea that not only did the Household Cleaner know how to remove security threats, but it also knew how to deal with vagrants on the owner’s property.  This latter feature Wolverine saw as his contribution to urban renewal.  As Wolverine puts it, “First bum clearance and only then slum clearance.”  You can tell that Senator BS was never going to win Wolverine’s vote.

Unsurprisingly, the Household Cleaner got somebody’s attention.  Not long after a few patents got issued, I got a visit from two G-men, one of them a tall, hard, well-scrubbed redhead.   She was the brains of the two, though her partner looked as if he spent most of his spare time lifting weights.  She asked me if I had any idea how to reach Wolverine. 

If I had known, I’d have told her.  I suggested she might start looking in Waynesville or the Mark Twain National Forest. She was antagonistic about looking for him in Mark Twain forests.  We believe he would be impossible to find there.  So, I suggested she visit the north side of Michigan’s upper peninsula.  She and her partner disliked that idea even more than the visit to Mark Twain.  “Are you trying to get us killed’ they asked.

I mentioned that a visit to the woods can’t be any riskier than going to a residence of Wolverine.  “Do you imagine he lives anywhere without several Household Cleaners?” I wondered out loud.   The G-men tracked the reference to the Cleaner immediately.  “Perhaps you, Crockett, have information on how Wolverine came to design this ‘Cleaner.’?”   The redhead told me she thought somebody might have stolen classified information from an intelligence agency.

I guessed they didn’t have much of substance on Wolverine, other than their G-man-ish hunches.   If they did have anything firm they’d pull his numerous clearances.  She wished me to know that nobody was accusing Wolverine of anything.  She and her partner wanted to get Wolverine’s thoughts on how many of the features in the cleaner came to mind.  Also, she’d like to ask him about where Peregrine Blonde-Bomb was getting ideas for his bombs.  Since neither Wolverine nor Peregrine had trained as engineers, but as classicists, she and her partner wondered about possible sources for their bright ideas.