Sebastian – Page 1293 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Hillary Losing the Young Vote?

Eric notices she’s not doing too well among the young.Â Looks like she does best with the over 55 crowd.Â She would also appear to not be a college educated person’s type of liberal.

My theory on this is that younger, better educated people aren’t enamored with the whole idea of a woman president.Â To our generation, the idea that a woman could be president isn’t very revolutionary; we expect it will happen, and the idea isn’t novel. Aging women, who didn’t grow up with full societal acceptance of women in positions of power, really want to see a woman president in their lifetime, and Hillary is their gal.

Special Interests

This is a startling admission from the New York Times:

Â Thereâ€™s an attractive logic to this argument, except that, in practice, it runs into some nettlesome inconsistencies. For instance, the National Rifle Association is also a dues-paying group that aggregates the power of its members, as is the National Federation of Independent Businesses, and I doubt very much that Edwards or other Democrats would describe these as anything other than special interests. Just like the N.R.A., Big Labor tries to manipulate elections to gain access and favor for its members. That doesnâ€™t make unions a corrupting influence; as Andrew Stern, the president of the Service Employees International Union, always says, unions have been the greatest antipoverty program in American history. But it does make labor a special interest, whether Democrats like it or not.

Is it just me, or is that the first time you’ve ever seem anyone at the New York Times state that the NRA represents its members interests, rather than being a toady of the firearms industry?

Muffling Chelsea?

According to this AP article, Hillary Clinton doesn’t want the media talking to her kid:

But onstage, Chelsea never speaks; she stands next to her mother and applauds but utters not a single sentence and doesn’t even say hello. And reporters covering the campaign have been put on notice that Chelsea is not available to speak to them. An aide follows the former first daughter as she works the crowd, shushing reporters who approach her and try to ask any questions.

Seems kind of odd to me to have your child show up and campaign for you to just be a pretty face.

BBC Article

Both War on Guns and Armed and Safe have offered their takes on this BBC article.Â Â I have one as well:

Police commander Michael Anzallo says the capital has seen an influx of handguns from neighbouring states where there are fewer controls.

“The police department recovers more than 1,000 guns a year,” he says.

“The problem is easy access to firearms. Most of the motives for homicides are arguments or robbery related and the quick pull of the trigger means somebody’s life.”

This seems to be a common tactic; blaming the neighboring states.Â The way this is always presented suggests the gun law of the controlling jurisdictions are strict, and effective at keeping guns out of the hands of criminals, but that criminals can just cross over into another state and buy a firearm because of the lax laws there.

Given that most people aren’t aware of what current gun control laws actually are, this is an effective tactic to deflect the criticism that gun control will never work.Â Most people don’t know that it’s illegal to buy a handgun out of state, or that someone with a criminal history will fail a background check, and aren’t aware of the current laws about straw purchasing.

It’s effective to evoke images of a criminal heading to a Maryland gun store and picking up a gun because of the “lax” gun laws there, rather than explain the existing laws, or the black market networks through which criminals obtain firearms.

D.C. Gun Buyback

Ravenwood talks about Washington DC’s gun buyback program, and suggests a gun buyback program of his own that I could really get behind.

The Yearly PSA

Repeated again and again in communities everywhere.Â Don’t fire guns into the air, says Lynn Abraham.Â Probably good advice.Â We’ll never compete with Kentucky anyway.Â It’s not as big a problem as public officials like to make it out to be.Â I agree that it shouldn’t be done, but I have to wonder if this type of PSA (or is that PSH) is designed more to scare people about gun ownership, than it is to combat a legitimate problem.Â The kind of people who do this type of stuff are about as likely to care what Lynn Abraham thinks as they are to obey the gun laws which already make this activity illegal.

So Long 2007

2007 has been a pretty good year.Â Definitely better than 2006, which sucked.Â Best part of 2007?Â Starting a blog to impress Bitter and actually having it work!Â I hope everyone has a Happy New Years.Â Tonight will be spent consuming adult beverages with Bitter, ringing in the new year, so that tomorrow I can head back home to Pennsylvania.Â Hopefully my house is still there.

Back to Fairfax County

Bitter and I are headed back to Northern Virginia today in order to spend New Years there.Â Â Tomorrow I head back to Philly.Â Blogging will be light.

Libel?

Looks like there’s a troll on David Codrea’s blog that’s threatening a libel suit. For those of you who want a bit of background on libel law in the United States, you can read here:

And just what is malice when it comes to proving libel? Retired Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., who wrote the Sullivan decision, defined it as “knowledge that the [published information] was false” or that it was published “with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” In other words, public officials no longer could sue for libel simply by proving that something that had been broadcast or printed about them was false. Now they would have to prove that a journalist had knowingly printed false information while making little, if any, attempt to distinguish truth from lies.

The Supreme Court later extended its so-called Sullivan rule to cover “public figures,” meaning individuals who are not in public office but who are still newsworthy because of their prominence in the public eye. Over the years, American courts have ruled that this category includes celebrities in the entertainment field, well-known writers, athletes, and others who often attract attention in the media.

The burden on the plaintiff to prove libel is pretty high, even higher when dealing with a “public figure”, which arguably being a board member of Pennsylvania’s prominent state anti-gun group would make him, if this troll is who it seems to be. That’s not even mentioning we’ve all agreed this evidence is circumstantial, and not something you could take to court.

Also, being an IT professional, I’m well aware of how IP spoofing works, and if someone is spoofing in order to frame Dr. Reily, this is something that should be investigated. I’m a bit skeptical anyone would go through that much trouble. Spoofing an entire blog and numerous comments isn’t an easy feat.

Private Security Contrator NFA

Armed and Safe expresses some concerns about the contractor provisions on HR4900.Â One thing I’d urge folks to consider is that if security contractors don’t have to compete for very limited transferable Title II firearms, it should take some pressure off prices.Â I think it’s good to keep transferable Title II firearms in the hands of collectors, rather than having security firms gobbling them up.