Politics – Page 136 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Labor Day – Celebrate Unions or Else….

It seems that the Left in Pennsylvania has decided that no one is allowed to discuss anything on Labor Day that doesn’t celebrate unions or involve planning for an outright class war on Republicans & the upper classes. This came out in force yesterday when Congressman Charlie Dent posted about his opportunity to meet with a local Marine who came home from Afghanistan and the Congressman was attacked for celebrating his safe return. (Click the image to enlarge.)

My first thought, “Why is Joe Hackett hating on our military?” Of course, it’s another Tim Daly. One that you might assume is a hardworking blue collar union guy based on his rhetoric. You’d be oh-so-wrong.

Tim Daly owns an advertising firm and lives in Yardley, Pennsylvania, a town with a median family income of more than $103,000 and homes with a median price of about $333,000 as of 2009. Yardley is a nice little place, so good for Tim Daly for getting his graduate degree and settling in a comfortable, fairly wealthy suburb of Philadelphia. In addition to not being an oppressed union worker, Daly is also decidedly not a constituent of Congressman Dent. (I’m not a constituent. I just follow him to see what he’s saying on issues I care about, not to pick fights about whether we are allowed to honor members of the military.)

Oh, but it gets better. Mr. Daly has some interesting allies that come to back up his attacks on the Congressman for honoring those who serve our country.

Wow. All of this hate just because Congressman Dent thought it would be great to celebrate with a local service member. But, Mr. Millar’s rants are apparently familiar to those in the Reading area.

According to The Pennsylvania Progressive, Millar, a self-proclaimed Marxist, has a reputation for using “irrational, intellectually dishonest logic” and was described this way in a debate last year:

He makes these leaps of logic with no foundation and impugns the character of others with no basis in fact. He then further impugned his own character by constantly interrupting Brown violating the rules of the debate and calling him a liar.

It shouldn’t be any surprise. According to the reviews on Rate My Professor, his students report that he regularly holds it against them in their grades if one disagrees with him and he spends his class time ranting about politics instead of teaching. One of the more positive recent reviews that says he is “average” notes that he will “inspire you to think like a communist.”

It’s absolutely disturbing that these people take pride in announcing that military members who put their lives on the line are not worth even acknowledging on a day they perceive to be about celebrating the downfall of the “upper class.” As Wyatt said on Twitter last night: “This Labor Day, remember those who don’t get the day off: our armed forces, police officers, and firefighters.”

Grenadewalker

This scandal is getting stranger by the day, as it’s revealed that the US attorneys released a man who confessed to making IEDs from black market grenades and converting semi-auto weapons to automatic weapons.. As Mad Saint Jack says, clearly we have to close the Grenadeshow Loophole.

Quote of the Day

From Dave Hardy:

As was suggested in comments to earlier posts, it’s becoming increasingly hard to deny the suspicious that the object of getting guns to the Sinaloa Cartel was … to get guns to the Sinaloa Cartel.

It makes you wonder if this operation goes beyond the simple explanations, like that it was meant to create a basis for more domestic gun control, and gets into a much broader purpose, that could develop into a major scandal. If the media weren’t completely in the tank, I might suggest this could be an administration destroying scandal.

Kate Pavlitch is reporting that senior administration officials were briefed on the operation. I keep wondering whether mainstream media outlets like the Washington Post and the New York Times are going to give up the charade that this was just good intentions gone sour, rather than push the idea there were never any good intentions in Fast and Furious, and that it accomplished exactly what it was intended to.

UPDATE: I should say, if this scandal gets into cloak and dagger territory, it will really speak to the incompetence of this administration. If you’re going to go that route, do you really want to leave a key component of your strategy in the hands of…. ATF? I’d like to think no one would be that foolish.

Feds Raid NM Gun Store

One has to wonder if this was a shop that was being encouraged by ATF to sell the very guns they are being busted for.

Official Oppression Charge Spotted in the Wild

It’s rare you actually see a prosecutor bring the charge of Official Oppression, but they have done it Philly. The offense? A police officer who was flagged down by a woman picked her up and raped her in the back of his cruiser. Other charges stemming from the incident include 5 counts ranging from indecent exposure to rape.

Government at Work: Losing Money Selling Booze

Capitol Ideas has reported on an Auditor General’s report on the PALCB’s wine kiosk program. This was a failed attempt to try to sell wine in supermarkets, which most other states do without losing a bunch of money. This boondoggle has now even reached the desks of Reason Magazine, who is also reporting on it:

When they are working, the kiosks dispense a limited selection of wines at limited locations and times (not on Sunday, of course!) to customers who present ID, look into a camera monitored by a state employee, breathe into a blood-alcohol meter, and swipe a credit card.

It’s a system only a bureaucrat could love, and as soon as these things started getting introduced, I thought it had “Fail!” written all over it. If you essentially say I have to take a drug test to buy something, you can bet I’m not going to buy it.

I’m glad this issue got the attention of Instapundit, because currently, privatization of the liquor monopoly is being held up by non other than our Republican Senate President, Joe Scarnati, so if you support ending the socialist liquor monopoly in Pennsylvania, I would advise contacting his office, and tell them you want the Senator to move the liquor privatization bill forward.

Consequences

Joe Huffman notes that there need to be consequences for government officials who break the law. I’ve always wondered why we imported the concept of sovereign immunity to the United States. I realize that this is derived from common law, and thus predates the United States, but the revolution upended a number of our legal institutions, yet we chose to preserve this one.

I can understand, for instance, why you shouldn’t be able to sue your legislator for passing a law that you don’t like, but it seems to me that we should have taken the concept and reversed it. Currently, government and its officials have immunity from suit except for where sovereign immunity has been waived. The Fourteenth Amendment (which, when you think about it in its entirety, was really quite radical in terms of how it restructured our federal system) waived this immunity under some circumstances for states, which brought us legal constructs like qualified immunity.

But it always struck me that you ought to be able to sue your government except where it says you can’t, and not the other way around. If I were constructing a legal system from scratch, I would use this as a concept, instead of Sovereign immunity. If the government is going to tell the people they can’t seek redress in the courts, the people ought to have a say about it.

The Chicago Way

One of the big reasons I never would have voted for Obama, even if he was a genuine moderate, is that he’s from Chicago, where the politics is so corrupt it makes Philly look good in comparison. The kind of tactics being used against Gibson Guitars, I think, are classic Chicago tactics. What did people think was going to happen putting someone from that machine in the White House?

B. Todd Jones to Take Over ATF

Obama is naming B. Todd Jones as interim ATF director. I thought Melson’s reassignment was going to mean Traver would be in, but I guess Obama decided he was too controversial. Good, in that case, since it means he’s paying attention. I’ve been able to find nothing worrisome about Jones. If anyone out there finds anything, let me know.

Here’s an interview with Jones on Minnesota Public Radio. He says he wants to refocus ATF on its core mission, which in his mind doesn’t seem to involve promoting unlawful trafficking of firearms to Mexico. This is a good thing. He also says he does not want this job full time. I don’t blame the guy. He will continue to serve as US Attorney for Minnesota. Sounds like he plans to do some telecommuting, so I think at best his role at ATF could be described as a part time job. This guy has certainly kept a pretty low profile, so I can understand why the Administration picked him.

Issa’s Response to F&F Reassignments and Resignations

From Rep. Daryl Issa:

While the reckless disregard for safety that took place in Operation Fast and Furious certainly merits changes within the Department of Justice, the Oversight and Government Reform Committee will continue its investigation to ensure that blame isn’t offloaded on just a few individuals for a matter that involved much higher levels of the Justice Department. There are still many questions to be answered about what happened in Operation Fast and Furious and who else bears responsibility, but these changes are warranted and offer an opportunity for the Justice Department to explain the role other officials and offices played in the infamous efforts to allow weapons to flow to Mexican drug cartels. I also remain very concerned by Acting Director Melson’s statement that the Department of Justice is managing its response in a manner intended to protect its political appointees. Senator Grassley and I will continue to press the Department of Justice for answers in order to ensure that a reckless effort like Fast and Furious does not take place again.

Seems he’s worried they are setting up some fall guys.