Politics – Page 127 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Congresswoman Maloney: F&F GOP Manufactured Scandal

Congresswoman Maloney, a top supporter of gun control, calls the Fast and Furious “scandal” a “Republican red herring.”

Yes, this operation was ill-conceived. Americans who are outraged at Terryâ€™s death rightly want to know whether it has been scrapped and whether Attorney General Eric Holder, who oversees ATF, is aggressively investigating Fast and Furious. I can report that the answer to both of those questions is a resounding yes.

But for Republican congressional leaders, one botched operation is not enough to serve their political goals. They need a scandal â€” and are desperate to create one.

When you have a dead Border Agent, killed with a gun that was deliberately allowed into criminals hands by the DOJ/ATF, I don’t think there’s anything manufactured about that controversy. I can’t tell you how much I find the “Bush did it too” excuse to be pathetic. It’s pretty clear at this point high level DOJ and Administration officials knew about the plan, knew what it was doing, and did nothing to stop it. This has done quite a lot to convince me that for people like Maloney the concern about gun violence is really baloney. All they really give a crap about is restricting guns as much as they can.

Anyone Had an Issue with Dick’s Sporting Goods?

From PAFOA, it would seem that they are enforcing New Jersey law over here in Pennsylvania. Some of our club members had an issue with Dicks in the same vein a while back, and they clarified this was not their policy. But it seems they are doing it again. Dicks is under no obligation to enforce New Jersey law outside of New Jersey. They are under obligation to obey federal law, but federal law only demands the person be 18 for “rifle or shotgun ammunition” and 21 for “handgun ammunition.” That might justify a license check, at most.

So the question them becomes why Dick’s is enforcing New Jersey law in Pennsylvania? The only thing I can figure is their corporate General Counsel is paranoid. But is his paranoia justified? This is New Jersey we’re talking about.Â Since Dick’s holds a license from the State of New Jersey for dealing in firearms and ammunition, I suspect the concern is that New Jersey authorities could dick with their license (no pun intended) if the powers that be become upset with their policies. It’s worth noting that dealer licenses in New Jersey are comparatively may-issue compared to other jurisdictions. A license can be revoked or denied if the State Police feel the dealer would “pose a danger to the public health, safety or welfare.”

But I’m not aware of any other big box retailers, like Wal-Mart being concerned enough to card New Jersey residents. But Wal-Mart wields a bigger stick than a smaller retailer like Dick’s. Has anyone else noticed this problem with retailers? I make a policy to buy ammo from sources that are known to support gun rights. Dick’s is not among them.

I’d Be Surprised if this is True

The Hill is claiming the NRA endorsement for Montana’s Senate seat is up in the air. It will be Tester against Denny Rehberg. Tester should generally benefit from NRA’s incumbent friendly endorsement policy, even though Rehberg has a very pro-gun record in the House. The only thing I could see complicating things for Tester is that he voted to confirm Sonya Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. Other than that, I would be surprised if Tester doesn’t get the endorsement, unless NRA is looking to send a strong message to Senators that votes for Court nominees that don’t support the Second Amendment won’t be tolerated. I would agree with that course of action, because I don’t think there’s anything more important that Senators can vote on right now than Court appointments.

The GOP Field

Tam wonders whether the GOP is trying to deliberately throw the election. By all historical accounts, given how poor the economy is, and how high unemployment is running, there should be no way that Barry wins a second term, yet I’m quite worried that’s exactly what’s going to happen. I’m normally willing to get behind someone in the primary by this point — in 2008, before he dropped out, it was Fred Thompson. Policy and temperament wise, Rick Perry actually seems to be the best of the lot, but his performance so far has just been disappointing.

I’d be willing to cast the “not-Obama” vote in the general election, and get behind the eventual candidate, even if it’s, and it pains me to say this, Mitt Romney. I don’t expect much from the next President, since I think the economy will still pretty much suck, and people still won’t have jobs. The next guy is likely to be a one termer too if Obama gets the boot, and I’d almost hate to waste someone good on a doomed presidency. So if Romney has to be the sacrificial lamb, so be it. We get to roll the dice again in four years with the Democrats, and maybe there’s a chance they’ll field someone who isn’t a total disaster. There are two things that are true, however, if Obama is re-elected:

Scalia and Kennedy will be 80 by the end of Obama’s second term. Thomas will be 68. The chances Obama will get to replace one of these justices is extremely high, and if he does, it’ll be a bloody miracle of we can save the Second Amendment. Best case scenario is that you’ll, at the least, be able to keep a gun in the home, but with all DC and Chicago’s ridiculous regulations being upheld.
Secondly, while Romney is responsible for socialized medicine in Massachusetts, as a Republican President he’ll be facing an awful lot of party pressure to sign an Obamacare repeal if it hits his desk. I don’t see any scenario where Romney could veto and not have a revolt within his own party on his hands. Obama will almost definitely veto a repeal, and the Republicans aren’t likely to have enough votes in the Senate to override.

So that’s kind of how I’m looking at it.Â To me the two things we want out of the next President are to put someone on the Supreme Court who will be a vote in favor of the Second Amendment, and to sign a repeal of Obamacare. The majority of Obamacare does not go into effect until 2014, but once it does, you’ll never get rid of it. I think the candidates we have now in the GOP field are going to be reasonable vessels for trying to achieve both those goals. It’s not perfect, but I can deal with a disaster of a GOP Presidency as long as those two goals have a reasonable chance of being achieved. Under Obama, there’s almost no chance of that.

Transparency Fail

Our Vice President is the Gift the Keeps on Giving:

â€œAt 1:00 PM, the Vice President will attend a meeting of theÂ Government Accountability and Transparency BoardÂ in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. At 2:30 PM, the Vice President will meet with representatives of the National Sheriffs’ Association in the Roosevelt Room.Â These meetings are closed press.â€

I swear, I couldn’t make this stuff up.

A Bold Prediction

Jacob thinks Obama will sign HR822 out of political expediency. I think it could happen, but if I had to put money on it, I think he’ll veto. He’s not going to betray a large number of urban Democratic legislators in places like New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, and his home state of Hawaii. While a signature might help to make NRA’s opposition to Obama seem more ridiculous, who he’s going to put on the Supreme Court is still going to drive opposition.

So I see Obama’s pressures favoring a veto. While it’s true that the anti-gun people can’t do much to him, he’s going to need urban legislators and the machines they have access to get people turned out to the polls for him. I don’t think he’s going to want to risk that those folks are less than enthusiastic about him headed to the election.

Let Them Eat Steak

Looks like our First Lady has had her Marie Antoinette moment:

Visiting an organic farm in Hawaii on Saturday, First Lady Michelle Obama said that â€œarugula and steakâ€ was her â€œfavoriteâ€ mealÂ andÂ expressed her view that American children need to â€œget their palates adjustedâ€ so they will begin eating properly.

Having been hoped and changed out of a job, it’s been a while since I had a nice steak. And have you seen the price of arugula at Whole Foods lately? Most people can’t eat as well as Michelle Obama because they simply can’t afford it. But I’ll be honest, what problem would you rather have? Our poor people starving because they can’t afford to buy food? Or our poor people getting fat because they eat too much inexpensive, processed food? This country tends to have a problem more with the latter, and I think that’s a good thing.

For Michelle, the problem really seems to be that the poor can’t afford to shop at Whole Foods, because those poor neighborhoods, after all, aren’t even likely to have a Whole Foods. What a tragedy. Are there really neighborhoods in America that don’t have a single place to buy fresh food? Even Wal-Mart has fresh food, though I know some cities have made a concerted effort to keep Wal-Mart out. It’s an evil corporation, after all.

Obvious News of the Day: Press Manipulated in F&F

From the Daily Caller:

Emails between senior Justice Department officials andÂ investigators in the office of Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley show thatÂ congressionalÂ staffers leading the investigation into Operation Fast and Furious requested information about Operation Wide Receiver â€” a Bush administrationÂ programÂ â€“Â and other similarÂ cases,Â more than a full month before the DOJ leaked information to selected media outlets on October 31.

Manipulating the press is pretty easy when the outlets are already in the tank. Outlets like the New York Times and Washington Post have only been happy to help deflect the blow of this scandal.

On Scott Brown & National Concealed Carry

On the eve of a House vote on H.R.822, the national concealed carry law, I have a few random thoughts on Scott Brown’s statement against us on the issue. As a former Massachusetts resident, and as someone who supported his run for the State Senate, it’s a bit disappointing, but it’s far more baffling from a political standpoint.

What He Doesn’t Gain
Typically, the easiest way to figure out why a politician does something is to figure out what he will gain. This may mean the support of constituent groups or access to new campaign donors. But, Sen. Brown seems to ignore the fact that Tom Menino isn’t going to run around campaigning for him in 2012. Gun control groups in Massachusetts won’t suddenly endorse him. He won’t gain any votes for his position because anyone who looks to this as a key vote will choose to back a more extreme anti-gun candidate. I doubt he’ll line up any new donors for his single position on the bill if he won’t even earn their votes for it.

In a best case scenario, he saved himself from direct attacks on this issue. However, it won’t stop Democrats for attacking him for his previous pro-gun votes. Taking this very specific gun policy off the table doesn’t take the entire gun issue off the table, and they will hit him for every remotely positive thing he has ever said or done to support the right to bear arms. In fact, Menino has made 2011 the year of attacking Scott Brown over his support of gun owners. Ever since Brown was elected, there have been discussions about the massive warchests Massachusetts Democrats have been building to boot him from office. In other words, appeasing them on this one issue isn’t going to stop his opponents.

The Very Odd Timing
He wrote a letter to Menino nearly two weeks before a House vote. That might make sense if he served in that chamber. He doesn’t. Given that it’s nearly the end of 2011, we don’t even know if H.R.822 will be on the Senate’s radar in coming months or by the election. In other words, he made a public declaration that gains him nothing in an election as campaign season starts to ramp up before it’s even an issue in the chamber where he actually has a voice and vote. What was the purpose in that?

What Gun Owners Should Do
Make it known that he’s needlessly pissed you off if you’re a Massachusetts voter. Remind him that he needs every vote he can get, and he has now put yours at risk. Remind him that Massachusetts has a very big problem with discretionary issue of the license to even own a firearm to law abiding citizens, so the state can’t be trusted not to abuse the rights of gun owners.

What He Loses
Here’s the thing, Massachusetts gun owners are used to having to make a choice between “actively hates my rights” and “sometimes surprises us with a vote in our favor.” But, with this being the only major issue up before the election, he’s running off gun owners who might have been preparing to volunteer for him or start talking to friends and family about they planned to vote for Scott Brown.

Unlike the frustrations we sometimes face in a state where gun owners always feel safe, many folks in Massachusetts are willing to get involved and help out for a political cause. I remember when some guys would take laptops & printers to their club meetings to get everyone to write up a letter & sign it for a political issue before a big vote. The club leaders would then gather the letters & coordinate to get them to the State House. He could have had that system working on his re-election. Now, there will probably be a few who are a little less inclined to do that in 2012.

The good news is that because this isn’t an actual vote in the Senate, he still has plenty of opportunities to do the right thing so that he doesn’t lose these valuable supporters. We should try to make sure he sees enough support to come around to the right decision.

Ben Franklin on Police

I’ve heard it claimed recently that the idea of a professional police force was a foreign one to the founding generation. While I wonder whether our founders would approve of the militarization of modern police forces, the concept of modern policing was not unknown to them. From the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin:

I began now to turn my thoughts a little to public affairs, beginning, however, with small matters. The city watch was one of the first things that I conceiv’d to want regulation. It was managed by the constables of the respective wards in turn; the constable warned a number of housekeepers to attend him for the night. Those who chose never to attend paid him six shillings a year to be excus’d, which was suppos’d to be for hiring substitutes, but was, in reality, much more than was necessary for that purpose, and made the constableship a place of profit; and the constable, for a little drink, often got such ragamuffins about him as a watch, that respectable housekeepers did not choose to mix with. Walking the rounds, too, was often neglected, and most of the nights spent in tippling. I thereupon wrote a paper to be read in Junto, representing these irregularities, but insisting more particularly on the inequality of this six-shilling tax of the constables, respecting the circumstances of those who paid it, since a poor widow housekeeper, all whose property to be guarded by the watch did not perhaps exceed the value of fifty pounds, paid as much as the wealthiest merchant, who had thousands of pounds’ worth of goods in his stores.

On the whole, I proposed as a more effectual watch, the hiring of proper men to serve constantly in that business; and as a more equitable way of supporting the charge the levying a tax that should be proportion’d to the property. This idea, being approv’d by the Junto, was communicated to the other clubs, but as arising in each of them; and though the plan was not immediately carried into execution, yet, by preparing the minds of people for the change, it paved the way for the law obtained a few years after, when the members of our clubs were grown into more influence.

What’s even more interesting in here is Franklin’s notion that the fact that the rich paid the same as the poor, rather than taking on more of the burden, would seem to be an endorsement of the ideas that are used to justify a progressive tax system. Ben Franklin is only a single founder, but as a lot, they tended to be more pragmatic, and a lot less ideologically strict than many ideologues today give them credit for.