Year: 2009

Toomey Announces

He has formally entered the race:

“We can stop the bailouts and the spending stampede; we can reduce the burdens on taxpayers; and we can unlock the ingenuity and job creation potential of our great nation once again,” Toomey said in his remarks. “I am running for the U.S. Senate because I believe the economic stakes for our country have never been higher. The people of Pennsylvania deserve the very best from their leaders in Washington – but that’s not what they are receiving.”

It’s change I can believe in.  I anxiously await Alren Specter’s next attack ad, which will no doubt inform Pennsylvania voters that Pat Toomey’s involvement with the Second Bank of the United States lead directly to the real estate bubble and, eventual panic of 1819.

Hat Tip Instapundit

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Philadelphia Area Tea Parties

It’s Tax Day, which means it’s time to start thinking about attending your local tea party.  Bruce is going to his, with a sign that’s made of WIN.  The Philadelphia Tea Party is on Saturday April 18th, at Independence Mall, on Chestnut Street between 5th and 6th Streets, from Noon to 2PM.  Speakers will be:

  1. Dom Giordano – Talk Show Host, WPHT-AM
  2. Don Adams – writer, teacher, public affairs consultant
  3. Christine Flowers – Attorney and Columnist, Philadelphia Daily News
  4. Scott Rutter – Decorated veteran and Townhall.com columnist
  5. Scott Wheeler – Executive Director,The National Republican Trust PAC (GOPtrust.com), columnist at Newsmax.com.

If Philadelphia is too far for you, there will be a Bucks County Tea Party, at Washington Crossing, from 1 to 3 on Saturday.  In addition to that, there are numerous Tax Day Tea Parties happening all over the country today.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds has some interesting thoughts on the Tea Party Movement in today’s Wall Street Journal.

UPDATE: More from Glenn here.  I think his reader Dusty really gets the significance.  To me, what the Tea Party Movement represents is a “silent majority” deciding to no longer be silent.  People like us, who have jobs, who have families, and generally haven’t had the time to be heavily involved in politics, are starting to realize that the problems of the country will not fix themselves; that ignoring government only makes it worse.  What I suspect, or perhaps hope, is that people who want government to leave them the hell alone are finally waking up and making noise.  That’s the first step.  After this, we need to organize, and throw the bastards out.  And keep throwing them out until we get the government we want.

UPDATE: 4000 in DC.  Treasury yanked their permit to protest outside at the last minute.  The atmosphere is described as “electric.”

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Wither Newspapers

From Blackfork in Texas:

In the future, when I try and describe what a ridiculous thing newspapers were, I guess I’ll mostly say they were good for crossword puzzles and for puppies to pee on while you were housebreaking them.

Years ago, newspapers actually used to be outwardly partisan.  You can still see this today in papers that have titles like “Daily Republican” or “Times-Democrat” in them.  At some point, Newspapers decided to start selling nearly the same thing as objective news.  Except it wasn’t.

I think the reason for the decline of newspapers is fundamental, and not necessarily the result of bias.  But I suspect whatever replaces the newspaper will be biased, but will be up front with it.  Personally, I think that’s a better way to do news anyway.  It’s almost impossible to report news without the reporter’s own biases, experiences and ignorance coming through.  Best to be up front about those, I think.  It’s why blogs work.

We need someone to generate raw news, but what good is raw news if society can’t have a reasonable conversation about it?  Whatever replaces the newspaper, it’ll certainly be better than having that conversation only happen between journalists in editorial board meetings.

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NRA Ballots – Did You Get One?

You’ve heard us talking about NRA voting for months, but what if you didn’t get a ballot? Do you think you should have received one? Are you pretty confident you’ve kept your membership up for 5 years straight with no lapses or upgraded/purchased a life membership in advance of the ballot mailing?

We just got word that someone who we sponsored as a life member upgrade didn’t receive a ballot even though he qualifies for one. Not good. If you are in the same boat, today is the last day to request a replacement ballot.

You need to call 1-800-672-3888, choose option 6, and then dial extension 3700. They will promptly send you a new ballot. You will need to return it ASAP since they need it in hand by April 26. Call today – don’t delay!

UPDATE: Nevermind. Apparently someone in the Secretary’s office is giving out false information. Yesterday was the deadline, regardless of what I was just told less than an hour ago by the same office about how they would process requests submitted today.

Of course, the guy who is now answering that extension also tried to convince me that more than 550 people work in the Secretary’s office and “any one of them could have answered the phone.” Um, no. I do NOT appreciate being lied to. There are not that many staffers in the Secretary’s Office, and their phone systems don’t randomly transfer a call to the Secretary’s Office to say, Competitive Shooting. Apparently, the Jim Land’s staff thinks I’m dumb enough to believe that calling a specific extension could get any random staffer to pick up – even the Federal Affairs staff in the DC office!

So then he lectured me on how tight they must run clean, tight elections and they can’t have any room for error. Oh, really? How about misstating to the membership about how many votes they have?

Yes, something I purposely chose not to bring to light earlier is how the division that handles elections incorrectly told the membership about how many people they could vote for depending on which section of the voting information they read. The ballot itself says you can vote for 26 people (25 regular seats, plus filling the rest of a term emptied by a resignation). However, as an observant commenter here noticed, on the page facing the ballot, they warn members they are only allowed to vote for 25 candidates.

You could say it’s a typo and no big deal. However, you can also say that given the typo is on the official report of the nominating committee, it’s a means of denying members their 26th vote. I guess it depends on how much you hate NRA as to how you see it. Considering that their biggest problem for disqualified ballots are people who vote for the wrong number of candidates, it’s not exactly a minor issue. (Last year there were almost as many disqualified ballots for the wrong number of votes as the difference between the last winner and first loser. In other words, enough to potentially swing an election.)

So, those clean, tight elections? Yeah, so much for that. Giving out false deadlines, denying a 26th vote to members, and then lying about how many staff are in your division…not clean nor tight.

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Total Bans on Juvenile Possession

Professor Volokh takes a look at the issue of under-21 possession on possessing any firearm in New York City.

Would the right to keep and bear arms not fully apply to under-21-year-olds, the way some constitutional rights today don’t fully apply to under-18-year-olds (consider the right to sexual autonomy, the right to marry, the right to abortion, which could be limited through certain kinds of parental consent laws, and likely the right to bear arms itself)? Or does the right apply to all adult citizens — unless otherwise disqualified by reason of felony conviction or the like — under today’s age of majority, regardless of what the age of majority was at the time? Or has the right always extended to everyone 18 and above, regardless of the age of majority for other purposes?

I’m going to guess, as with most rights, some restrictions will be permitted while others will not.  At the very least, I would imagine it would be unconstitutional to ban all juvenile possession of arms, for any purposes.   But it’s a good question to start asking.

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Those Urban Gun Blog Readers?

Looking through Google Analytics today, satisfying my curiosity about the makeup of my audience, I am surprised by where my readers come from.  Out of roughly 30,000 returning visitors in the past month, they come from the following states:

State Visits Percentage
Pennsylvania 3,385 11.40%
Virginia 2,315 7.80%
Texas 2,218 7.47%
California 1,837 6.19%
New York 1,609 5.42%
Ohio 1,293 4.36%

What’s more interesting is that if you look at my top locales for those top states:

Locale Visits Percentage (of state visitors)
Philadelphia, PA 407 12.02%
Fairfax, VA 327 14.43%
Austin, TX 286 1.80%
Los Angeles, CA 310 16.88%
New York, NY 795 49.41%
Columbus, OH 323 24.98%

This is just a small example.  But I was surprised to find the city of my largest readership is actually New York City, representing half of my total traffic from the State of New York.  Philadelphia is the number two overall city.  The number two city in California for readership is none other than San Francisco.  Austin won in Texas, but all the big Texas cities were pretty well represented.  Number three city overall?  Wasington D.C.  Not too surprising, really, considering how much I blog about politics.  Traffic is mostly from federal government sources, defense contractors, and the Brady Campaign.

A lot of my readership is urban.  Considerably more so than I would have expected.  How’s that for breaking down stereotypes?  We’re talking about return visits here too, not just people who happened across the site on a Google search, so these visits can be reasonably called readers.  I’m not complaining.  People in New York City, Washington D.C. and Philadelphia are exactly the kinds of folks we need to be reaching.

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