Politics – Page 135 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Quote of the Day

One of my responsibilities was to read the Patriot Act and bring the bank into compliance. Â Yeah. Â I read the whole damn thing. Â I saw every bit of infringement on personal liberty. Â I suddenly became a lot more interested in what my Congress critters were doing out there in the pretty building. Â Any idea that I had about the government being benevolent went out the window. Â Our response to being attacked by pure evil was not to vaporize them, but instead to gouge the freedoms of the citizens of this great nation.

I don’t just want to remember the victims of 9/11, but the monstrous response of the federal bureaucracy to it. Never let a crisis go to waste. If it was only Rahm that believed that, there wouldn’t be much of a problem.

Buy One Get One Free

Thanks to the generosity of some fellow bloggers and NRA friends in Arizona, we have three tickets for our Friends of the NRA dinner this Thursday to give away to the first three people who buy a ticket. So for the first three folks, if you can make it, and buy a ticket, you can bring a spouse, child, or friend with the freebie. If you bought a ticket in response to my previous post, feel free to chime in to the comments if you want one of those tickets. I’ll announce if/when the three tickets are spoken for.

Castle Doctrine Hysteria

From the Philly Inquirer:

When Gov. Corbett signed a law June 28 expanding the right to use deadly force outside the home, gun-control proponents predicted every thug would have a new defense to pulling the trigger.

It didn’t take long.

Just eight days after the new “castle doctrine” law took effect, it has been raised in the defense of a North Philadelphia man charged with killing a neighbor over $100 owed in the purchase of a pit bull puppy.

Of course, they are going to raise self-defense, since that’s one of the main defenses used against the charge of murder. That was true before castle doctrine, and it’ll be true after. The way they continue to describe the case, it looks like a pretty run of the mill self defense claim.Â In this case, Johnson was threatened by several men:

Cruz testified that Jetson Cruz asked Johnson why he threatened Samantha, then shoved him, and that “Lydell pulled a gun from his waist and started shooting.”

That’s likely going to hinge on whether he had a reasonable fear of imminent death or grave injury, rather than a duty to retreat. Multiple attackers against one can be reasonable under certain circumstances. The Inquirer is making mountains out of molehills here. This is a fairly ordinary self-defense claim, and I don’t think Castle Doctrine is likely to pay a big role in it, or a role at all.

Third Gun Linked to F&F

Fox has the details.

Republican Debate

I did not watch the debate, but Clayton took a look and analyzed the transcript. I’m not even really going to read the transcript, because paying attention this far out of being able to vote is just too depressing. If I had to put money on the primary, this will end up a race between Perry and Romney. I’m not sure how much of a dog I have in that fight. Truth is, I’ll get behind anyone who’s name isn’t Barack Obama in the general election, but neither Perry nor Romney get me excited. I’d generally give an edge to Perry, since Romney is a serial panderer who can’t be counted on. All politicians paint a bit with that brush, but some make a high art of it. Romney is that type of politician.

Reprise

Before Pennsylvania even had time to dry out from Irene, it looks like we just got creamed again with the remnants of Lee. This time, however, Central Pennsylvania got the worst of it, rather than us. But folks along the Delaware River are still in trouble, since the rains were quite fierce upstream. This picture was taken a few hours ago, and the river will not crest until tomorrow morning. The problem is, it’s rained so much here that the ground won’t take any more water, so it’s all going to end up in the rivers and streams.

We did OK here. The heavy thunderstorms moving through around 4AM woke me up, and we had rain heavy enough for a while to keep my sump pump pretty much constantly on, but no power loss, and the rains didn’t keep up long enough to pose a serious threat. It wasn’t like Irene, which was several hours of continuous torrential downpour.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the folks in Central Pennsylvania. You can see footage of some of the flooding here. Checked in with my dad, who’s out near Lebanon, and they came through OK, but since he’s active with the local fire department, spent all night pumping out basements and helping rescue stranded drivers.Â Capitol Ideas has video of the current state of the Susquehanna River, as well as continuing Twitter coverage of the situation in Central Pennsylvania.

McCain Calling for Hearings in F&F

I was wondering what was prompting McCain to go all “maverick”Â on us again, but perhaps it’s because he planned to call for hearings in Fast and Furious, and wanted to show he wasn’t anyone’s bitch.

Putting the Blame Where it Belongs

Bob Barr, who sits on the NRA Board of Directors, notes that it’s time to get some real leadership at ATF, but unlike the gun control groups, puts the blame where it really belongs:

Only after last yearâ€™s midterm elections did the president rise from his lethargy and submit a name to the Senate. It was a name certain to raise the ire of the firearms community; and not surprisingly, it did. Andrew Tarver, former head of the ATFâ€™s Chicago Field Division, has met with serious opposition from the GOP and the National Rifle Association because of his anti-firearms bias.

Yet, rather than working with his opponents to find a candidate on which both sides might agree, Obama has simply ignored the matter and allowed ATF to drift leaderless for nearly three years.

We’ve said Traver is unacceptable, but that seems to have fallen on deaf ears. Our opponents think ATF needs a solid director. I don’t think the rest of us disagree. But that requires a bit of give and take, and so far the Administration, and its allies in the gun control movement, only want to take. This is typical of their attitude, but it’s not helping ATF get adult supervision. Why is it so hard to find another nominee, who’s more acceptable?

Who Gets Gun Permits in the Garden State

Apparently city councilmen who are otherwise disqualified from owning a gun:

Camden Police Chief Scott Thomson signed off on two gun permits in July for a Camden city councilman with a criminal record that bars him from purchasing a firearm under state law, according to law enforcement sources and documents.

I should note this is probably just a permit to purchase, rather than to carry, which are issued by judges in New Jersey rather than police chiefs. Our opponents will tell us that New Jersey’s background check system is among the most thorough in the nation, but yet this still made its way through.

A Constitutional Crisis Over Abortion

I have to agree with Dave Kopel here, on the position of several GOP hopefuls that the 14th Amendment could be used to ban abortion:

Moreover, the next President is going to have to address a fiscal crisis that will devastate the United States economy soon if it is not solved. Dealing with the fiscal crisis is going to be quite difficult politically, in part because there are many millions of people who benefit from the current, and unsustainable, levels of federal spending. The tax consumers may be very highly resistant to any reduction in the amount of money that flows to them. So there will be no shortage of national division and acrimony. Thus, 2013 would be an especially bad time to precipitate a constitutional crisis over a social issue.

Aside from that, social conservatives ought to realize that the financial crisis, and coming fiscal crisis (if we do not get spending under control) is a greater threat to families and family values than any social issue we currently face.

What you’re seeing now, early in the primary season, is that the GOP hopefuls are wary of firing up the SoCon base against them, so they are pandering to it. Depending on libertarians to save you in a primary is not generally a winning formula, because libertarians eschew organization.