Here’s a very quick introduction to the discussion about how security can mean trading away some liberty, but that TSA takes away the choice completely. To have such broad concepts broken down into 2 minutes, I like it.
(h/t Gary Leff)
Category: Politics
“F&F Was Not Botched”
I don’t know how many times she has to say it, but the mainstream media certainly doesn’t seem to be catching on.
How are Bloomberg’s PA Mayors Holding Up?
Most of tonight’s elections in Pennsylvania are municipal races, and many of the county governments don’t do any form of electronic reporting for their election results. Regardless, this is my attempt to keep up with those races where we can find information online. I’ll update this post regularly as we add more races.
Keep checking in for updates to this post.
Good News for Gun Owners
- Aliquippa Bloomberg Buddy Anthony Battalini lost his primary handily 2-1 earlier this year. So, clearly he’s out today. Aliquippa residents should let mayor-elect Dwan Walker to support their rights.
- Reading‘s Tom McMahon who welcomed Bloomberg’s bus tour is stepping down and did not run for re-election.
Bad News for Freedom & Liberty
- Parker City‘s Bloomberg-backed mayor William McCall was unchallenged today. He is a Republican who is standing against our rights.
- Whitehall‘s Edward Hozza managed to win both the GOP & Democratic ballot earlier this year, so he didn’t have any competition today.
- In Wilkes Barre, Tom Leighton who takes pride in his anti-gun credentials won re-election tonight. On the upside, his anti-freedom efforts are limited to MAIG activities since his failed campaign for a seat in the state legislature a couple of years ago.
- As mayor of Farrell, Ollie McKeithan, was unchallenged and will serve another term.
- Results in Montour County aren’t actually available right now, but since Bloomberg supporter Ester Cotner won her primary unchallenged on both sides with a whopping 13 votes – total cast – she will win again tonight in Washingtonville.
- Easton‘s mayor Sal Panto handily won re-election to continue advancing his anti-gun agenda.
We’re Not Sure
- In Freeland Borough, MAIG still lists a mayor who died more than a year ago on their website. In fact, they’ve been signing his name to ads & letters as recently as last month. More on this in a minute. In regards to the election, his wife was running and took the lead with 50% of the precincts reporting.
Holder Refuses to Apologize to Terry Family
Over at Real Clear Politics, they have a transcript and video of Holder’s testimony in this regard:
It is not fair, however, to assume that the mistakes that happened in Fast & Furious directly led to the death of Agent Terry.
Fast and Furious guns were found at the murder scene of the agent. How is it possible that Holder believe the operation can escape blame for this? The only thing that makes logical sense is that Holder is fatalistic about being able to stop the cartels from getting their hands on firearms, a position gun control advocates are often quick to criticize when such positions are espoused by gun rights advocates.
Holder is trying to have his cake and eat it too. If keepings guns out of the hands of criminals is an effective policy to protect law enforcement, and if Fast and Furious deliberately allowed weapons to be put into the hands of criminals, then he should admit responsibility and apologize to the family for the operation. If it is not effective at disarming cartels, then the gun control laws and regulations Holder is demanding won’t have any effect on the violence, will they?
Ultimately, like trying to put out a raging house fire with a garden hose, I would agree with Holder if his position is that disarming the cartels is a fool’s errand. But in that same analogy, Holder wants us to believe that throwing a bucket of gasoline onto the flame doesn’t make him responsible when those fighting the fire end up burned. We might ultimately agree on the fool’s errand, but I think it’s lamentable to take actions that clearly can only make the situation worse, rather than better, then try to evade responsibility for those actions.
More Testimony From Holder
He’s incredulous that the DOJ is being sued over the long gun reporting requirement. In response to Senator Feinstein:
I think that that regulation requirement is an extremely reasonable one. It has all of the features that you have described and I think significantly is totally consistent — it is exactly what we have been doing for years with regard to the sale of handguns. And the notion that somehow or other we are in litigation now, being sued try to do the very same thing that we have done with handguns for years with regard to weapons that are far more dangerous, is really beyond me.
I don’t understand how that can be opposed given the fact that this would provide ATF, other federal agencies with useful information in trying to stop the problem that has been the subject of so much discussion. Those that have been some of the harshest critics of ATF have voted against this very, very sensible regulation. The House tried – has voted to block it. And I guess over 270 members of — of the House voted against what I think as I said is a very reasonable regulation and one that is totally consistent, exactly consistent with what we’ve been doing with handguns for years. I think since the mid 80’s.
First, the real objection to this, for anyone who cares about the rule of law, is there’s just no power granted by Congress to implement this regulation. In fact, the Gun Control Act, as amended by the Firearms Owners Protection Act, specifically forbids the Attorney General from promulgating this kind of regulation. I wouldn’t care if the regulation was for handing lollipops to little children: we have laws in this country and the executive branch is bound to them. The Attorney General is not a dictator.
Secondly it seems ridiculous, when the ATF was unable to keep track of firearms that dealers were voluntarily reporting, how it’s going to help ATF to have many times the amount of data to process.
He’s in Trouble Now
Holder has been testifying before the Senate:
LEAHY: Well thank you very much and Attorney General Holder, would you please stand, raise your right hand. Do you swear that the testimony you’re about to give before this committee be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you God.
HOLDER: I do.
We know he has trouble in this area.
Election Day 2011 NRA Endorsements
Tuesday is Election Day! We’ll be heading out to vote tomorrow, and I hope you folks will be as well. (If you don’t live in PA, this post doesn’t really relate to you, but you can visit the PVF page for endorsements in your state.)
Did you know the NRA has issued endorsements in several of the judicial races? Yeah, you’d think as EVCs, we would have been told before Cam mentioned it on NRA News last week… Oh well, we know now.
For the Supreme Court, NRA supports J. Michael Eakin.
At the Superior Court level, NRA supports Vic Stabile.
For Commonwealth Court, NRA supports Anne Covey.
Polls open at 7am and close at 8pm. There will likely be absolutely no wait, so don’t tell me you don’t have time to go vote.
Gun Control Crowd Still Harassing Caren Merrick
Our opponents are telling Caren Merrick to release her NRA questionnaire, or they shall taunt her a second time. You can see why they are doing anything they can to turn the pressure up, because the polling in this district. But gun control is just not an issue that energizes people to get to the polls, no matter how much our opponents want to make it appear to work that way. They can get a lot of attention from a sympathetic media, but when it comes to putting people in the voting booth, they come up empty. Nonetheless, the Democrats are trying to scare voters on social issues in an election that looks increasingly likely to hinge on economic issues.
I guess after tomorrow we’ll see how things go. If you’re a gun owner in Northern Virginia, I’d go see whether Caren Merrick, or any of the other GOP Senate candidates need any help on election day tomorrow. This is going to be an important election for gun owners. Not only is lowering Virginia’s Brady score at stake, but so is giving Bloomberg a boost if he’s able to eke out some victories, and the Democrats are able to retain control of the Virginia Senate.
UPDATE from Bitter: I realize that some folks are confused by this post. Merrick is rated A- and running against an F-rated opponent. Winning in the state Senate is particularly important for gun owners, according to previous reports we’ve heard from Dave Adams with the VSSA. Anti-gunners have been harassing volunteers for this candidate because they claim she hasn’t released her NRA questionnaire to them in order to use to attack her.
It’s Time to Fire Joe Paterno
For those of you who don’t follow Pennsylvania sports, there’s really only one team that doesn’t completely suck and plays in something close to what the rest of the country considers real college football. It’s Penn State, and their head coach has been there since 1950 (though only as head coach since 1966). The man is revered in Pennsylvania. I don’t understand why, either. Joe Paterno has only got such a high number of wins because he’s been doing the job so long. He doesn’t have the highest percentage of wins, and earlier this decade, he led the team in a severe losing streak.
This weekend, conveniently on an off week for Penn State & released on a Saturday, the state AG’s office announced that one of Paterno’s now-retired coaches has been sexually assaulting very young boys for years. The charges aren’t just for minors, but for minors under the age of 13. The guy also had a charity set up for troubled young boys that served as his easy source of victims.
To make the news for Penn State even worse? Paterno knew and decided to simply tell the school’s athletic director once he heard from an eyewitness that his coaching staff was raping a boy who appeared to be about 10 in the stadium’s showers. The athletic director & a school vice president are now being charged with perjury and not reporting the incident to police. Yet, prosecutors seem to be ignoring the fact that Paterno and a graduate assistant in the football program also knew and did not report it to police, instead only reported it to college officials. (Granted, not reporting the crime seem to be only a summary offense. In that case, I believe that’s actually a better reason to use the charge – it won’t end someone’s life, but it will reiterate that they should have reported it.)
Of course, this is not the first time that Paterno has ignored the consequences of sexual assault allegations. When a player from another team was alleged to have sexually assaulted a woman, here was Paterno’s response:
“There’s some tough — there’s so many people gravitating to these kids. He may not have even known what he was getting into, Nicholson. They knock on the door; somebody may knock on the door; a cute girl knocks on the door. What do you do?â€
Here’s a hint: If a cute girl knocks on a door, don’t sexually assault her. (Though, it would seem the case against the player ultimately didn’t go anywhere, the accusations were fresh at the time he was asked.)
So, what do you do when someone tells you your former staffer who you allow to access your stadium & allow to attend games & coaching meetings with these young boys is seen raping them in the showers? Here’s a hint, Paterno: You don’t go to your boss and then leave it alone. You call the police. If your boss won’t do it, you do it. You follow up every damn day. You encourage the guy who actually witnessed the assault to go to the police.
I find this most appalling because I’ve seen local media & commentary applauding Paterno for his great response of not calling the police when he hears that young children are being raped by his coaching staff in his team’s showers. WTF?
I look back to my memories of the most popular coach I can recall in Oklahoma – Barry Switzer. (Please keep in mind that I was 9 years old when the guy resigned, so I’m having to go off news reports I’m finding now.) Switzer had to resign from OU (with a higher percentage of wins than Paterno, thankyouverymuch) after several players were arrested for various crimes and the NCAA launched an investigation into the program. Yet, Paterno is still at Penn State with full support after ESPN reported that in a six year period, 46 of his players managed to find themselves with 163 criminal charges. That comes out to more than three criminal charges per player in trouble in a few short years.
I don’t understand how this guy still has the support of the school, support in the media, and support of alumni. According to media reports, the Board of Trustees didn’t even entertain the question of whether Paterno should be forced to resign or retire. I come from a state that is far more serious about their college football, and I’m pretty sure that after this kind of record, we would be calling for the heads of everyone who knew and didn’t report it to law enforcement.
Joe Paterno’s career should end, and he should not be revered as some amazing football coach. He should be remembered as a guy who looked the other way while children were raped and assaulted on his watch. Of course, should he leave on his own terms, Pennsylvania taxpayers will likely be on the hook for a very generous retirement package to reward his behavior of looking the other way for criminals in his program.
UPDATE 11/8: The NYT reports that inside sources say Paterno’s time is up at Penn State. They are supposedly working on an exit plan now.
On State Defense Forces
Instapundit links to this Strategy Page story on state defense forces. They are a lot more common than you might think. While the National Guard is pretty clearly what our founding fathers would have considered a “select militia,” the various SDFs are the modern equivalent of what would be considered more traditional militias. Today most SDFs aren’d armed bodies, but serve as an emergency resource.