The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
From a TN Count of Appeals:
There is no economic sliding scale for the right to engage in constitutionally protected activities. The richest and poorest among us, as well as those individuals in-between, all have the same rights under the constitution.
“Bill – can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same (licensed gun dealer) and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales. Thanks.”
Of course, evidence that they used Fast and Furious to make the case for the multi-sale reporting requirement is not evidence that the entire purpose of the operation was to gin up support for gun control. It’s hard for me to see why they’d request wiretaps if the sole purpose was driving up trace numbers. I think when all is said and done, we’ll discover that driving trace numbers from Mexico was just the icing on the cake. If I had to take a wild eyed guess on what the President is hiding, it’s probably evidence of perjury, and it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a some talk about how the higher trace numbers will just provide more evidence to support gun control efforts, whether the multi-sale requirement or a new assault weapons ban. Was the purpose of F&F only to make a case for gun control? Who knows. It wouldn’t surprise me, but I also wouldn’t be surprised to find out that this literally was an underpants gnome strategy of an investigation.
I mean, it’s ridiculous, but it’s also Government. But if all this was is a botched operation, the politically sensible thing to do would be to throw a few people under the bus and come clean about it. This was obviously something bigger, or none of the coverup makes sense. But what is the White House hiding? It’s hard for me to understand how people on the left aren’t interested in that question. If this was still the Bush Administration, I’d sure as hell be curious, and would want answers.
Dave Kopel does an excellent job of describing the scandal from the very beginning, starting off with Operation Wide Receiver under the Bush Administration, and continuing through to the current scandal, just based on the facts we know so far. This is vastly different from the spin you’re seeing in the media. The Philadelphia Stinkquirer is not exception here, carrying the water for the Administration by making this out to be a GOP witch hunt rather than legitimate oversight. You’re also seeing a lot in the papers about this originating under the Bush Administration, as if somehow that makes it better. Fine. Let’s get Bush Administration officials up before Congress. Get Gonzalez up there and hold him to account. I thought Bush’s DOJ was a cluster under Gonzalez too. What kind of morons do the media take us for that if they say “Bush did it too!!” we’re just going to slink back into our dumb, stupid redneck gun nuts bunkers and shrug it off.
Obama probably would never have claimed Executive Privilege if he didn’t have his lapdogs at the Washington Hoax, the Philadelphia Stinkquirer and the Paper of Making up the Record ready to try to make the scandal disappear for him.
If the Brady Campaign wants to know why we’re winning, I have a great example. An acquaintance from high school posted the other day an example of the trouble she faces as a young, cute realtor. Her face and phone number are plastered all over her city, so sometimes she gets highly personal obscene calls at any time of day or night. These callers aren’t what most people might experience with a heavy breather who might describe a few abstract things. They can call her by her name and describe what they would like to do to her face in detail.
On top of this issue, she has to worry if these people will try to take the harassment to the next level. If one of them calls to set an appointment to see an empty house, she could end up completely alone with a criminal and never know it.
Being from Oklahoma, she knows how to use a gun. She has a firearm she keeps at home because her husband is out of town for work. She was looking to sign up for a concealed carry class, and I heard she managed to get into one. But, it appears that the Oklahoma training requirement mandates range time. As this acquaintance is quite pregnant right now, she was understandably concerned about the impact the noise will have on her baby.
The anti-gun groups see nothing wrong in forcing her to potentially wait months until she can get a concealed carry license even though she received multiple phone calls in one night. They see no reason she shouldn’t have to take a class at her expense and delaying the process of getting a license even though she already knows how to shoot a gun. According to them, there’s no threat to her safety that’s bigger than the lawful ownership of a safely stored and handled firearm.
The reason we’re winning is because not only did she get into a class, but her post on that news had multiple people “like” it on Facebook – all women.
UPDATED: So another person has chimed in to discuss the process his wife had to go through since she also decided to get a carry license once she was pregnant. I do love Oklahoma sometimes.
Caleb offers some good advice to check your facts, using a recent Guns.com mistake as an example. I haven’t found commercial blogs to be any more thorough in terms of getting facts right than amateur bloggers. If anything, because amateur bloggers link more readily within the community, error is more likely to get pointed out by someone who has the correct facts, noticed and corrected. If your goal is to make money, Google won’t ding you for bad facts or rumor mongering. It may even be beneficial.
Looks like the electorate didn’t like the assertion of Executive Privilege. Given Obama’s struggles recently, this leads me to believe whatever is being shielded by the White House is worse than what he’s going to suffer for shielding it. Either that or he’s good enough friends with Eric Holder he’s willing to take the White House down to help him. Or Eric Holder has enough dirt on people. Who knows.
By maybe, or maybe not, appealing the decision by a Federal District Court tossing out gun prohibition in Chicago for non-violent misdemeanants. The fact that he’s making such noise about protecting Chicago’s gun laws tells me his office is seriously considering not appealing. This particular issue might not be a hill the Mayor’s Office wants to die on.
Ace of Spades has an interesting post on Independent Voters, who are turning away from Obama. If you want to understand why our political system is in such dire straits, you should go read it. Studies of independent voters show that the majority of them are closet partisans. In other words, they can be considered reliable votes for one of the two major parties, but for various reasons, don’t want to identity with them. There is, however, a large number of voters who fit the profile that Ace describes, and they constitute enough people to swing elections:
In other words, they have decided — they just think it makes them seem like smarter, more informed voters to claim they’re still deciding, so they won’t admit that. As they’re actually not very well informed voters — and I think they know this — this pretense becomes very important to them. They need some pretense to excuse away their complete disinterest in reading the news.
So they basically start insisting they want the candidates themselves to catch them up to speed, ignoring the fact that policies are spelled out on their campaign websites, and ignoring the fact that these positions are easily and readily discoverable, just by googling and reading.
In 2008, this cohort broke heavily for Obama, and in 2012 they will be an important component in the race. This is why political rhetoric today is so heavily geared toward the ignorant. Speaking of which, Ilya Somin has a video highlighting the problem of political ignorance.
Dave Kopel asks whether Obama’s assertion of executive privilege is valid. Instapundit has a few links on the scandal, including one from the Washington Post. Investors Business Daily has run an article stating that the Executive Privilege has the stench of cover-up. Wall Street Journal is running an op-ed. More from the Washington Post. Of course, the WaPo is also offering up some apologia on behalf of Eric Holder.
The only thing I can figure in all this is that Obama thinks taking this up a notch will result in him ending up the victor in the court of public opinion. This scandal was quite easily explained away as incompetence, but the invoking of executive privilege could lead many to question what the White House and Holder have to hide. If this was hatched by the Phoenix office, and everyone involved fired or relocated, then there shouldn’t be an issue with a document release to Congress.
A panel of perspective jurors seems none too thrilled about a felony trial over a small amount of coke. Of course, I can promise you none of those who answered that they would nullify ended up on the jury.