Politics – Page 160 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Ignoring the Problems

It’s somehow appropriate that the Mayor of Philadelphia, Michael Nutter, was chosen to give the counterpoint to Chris Cox’s piece in US News. In his call for a magazine ban & “assault weapons” ban, he uses a Philly example to justify the bans.

Since May 2006, eight Philadelphia police officers have been killed in the line of duty, six by gunfire. One, Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski, was felled by an assault weapon.

We’ve covered Liczbinski’s killers here before, and it’s time to hold Mayor Nutter accountable. Before becoming mayor, Nutter was part of the City Council since 1992. During the time he has been in office, these murderers were repeatedly put back out onto the streets even as they racked up an impressive 26 combined pages of criminal offenses, the most of which were Nolle Prossed. As shown in his criminal record, if the City of Philadelphia had put the trigger man behind bars for only the firearms charges, he never would have been on the streets to kill Liczbinski in the first place.

Of course, Nutter won’t answer for why Philadelphia keeps putting these killers back out on the street every single day under his leadership. Instead, he hopes some op-eds in favor of more gun control will keep his constituents from asking real questions about his record on crime.

Destroying Preemption in Pennsylvania

A Senate Bill has been introduced. NRA is not calling for action yet, just noting it. What’s interesting to me is that one of the sponsors of SB176 is Republican Stu Greenleaf, who is the committee chair for the Senate Judiciary Committee. Greenleaf lost his NRA endorsement after helping to sabotage Castle Doctrine with anti-gun amendments in the last session. I’m guessing his leadership position on this anti-gun bill means we can pretty much put him in the anti-gun column from now on.

What this means for Pennsylvania gun owners is that the party leadership of the Senate Judiciary Committee is now solidly anti-gun, despite the Republicans being in control of the Senate.

Holders DOJ and FOIA

DOJ is selectively complying with FOIA requests. Well, if they are even telling Republican Senators to take a walk, it’s hardly surprising they are stonewalling ordinary Joes.

Grassley Fires Back

In response to the giant middle finger from ATF, Grassley present the evidence his office is in possession of. The evidence indicates that ATF has been telling border dealers to proceed with suspected straw sales, and report information on the guns and buyers to ATF. This represented approximately 769 firearms, only 103 of which are now accounted for.

“In addition to these specific weapons, the indictment of Avila and other references approximately 769 firearms. Of those, the indictment refers to the recovery of only about 103 weapons. So, where are the other approximately 666 weapons references in the indictment? Why did the ATF not seize them?”

There is documented evidence that the gun that was used in the murder of CBP Agent Terry is one of the guns ATF lost track of. Grassley also smacked down Holder for stonewalling him:

The Justice Department’s reply asked that Committee staff stop speaking to law enforcement personnel about these matter. However, if not for the bravery and patriotism of law enforcement personnel who were willing to put their careers on the line, this Committee would have been forced to rely on nothing more than rumors in the blogosphere and a Justice Department denial to resolve these allegations. We need more than that. To be an effective check on Executive Branch power, we need cold, hard facts. We sill seek them from whatever source is necessary.

Unfortunately, the Justice Department’s letter suggested that my attempts to seek information about these matters might be politically motivated. I understand the Department needs to “protect … law enforcement personnel … from inappropriate political influence.” However, there is a difference between inappropriate political influence and appropriate holding officials accountable to the American people.

He goes on to note that the family of Agent Terry deserve answers, and encourages Holder to “come clean.” I’ve said before, when our opponents argue there’s not enough funding for ATF, because the evil NRA has seen to it that they are kept underfunded, that the reason ATF is on a short leash is because they have incompetent enforcers of our federal gun laws. I have no doubt there are many fine employees and dedicated workers in the organization. Indeed, the whistleblowers here would be among those, but the agency has suffered under poor leadership for years. That’s not our doing. It’s cultural, and it’s been that way since the moonshine business dried up for them in the 1970s.

Hat Tip to David Codrea’s examiner.com site for the Grassley Document.

Recklessly Killing More Pennsylvanians

The Pennsylvania State Police are warning that the streets will become more dangerous if a major reform law is passed. For once, it’s not just gun owners being picked on for basic reforms. Today, it’s bar owners. What’s got the panties of law enforcement in a twist? Surely if they are warning that our streets will be flooded with drunks, it’s got to be something dramatic, right? Like making it legal to hand out bottles of tequila instead of mints with the bar tab?

One part of the new bill would mean changes to “happy hour.”

Under current state law, bars and taverns are allowed to reduce their alcohol prices for no more than two hours per day. In the proposed bill, establishments would still be limited to 14 hours of lower prices per week, but would be allowed to divide up the hours in any way.

Bars would be allowed to hold a four-hour “happy hour” for Monday Night Football or for a Sunday afternoon NASCAR race, said state Rep. John Payne (R-Dauphin), the bill’s sponsor.

Oh the humanity! Our children will all be run over by drunks because a bar can offer happy hour specials for 3 hours instead of 2! Yes, the PSP is actually warning lawmakers off of this dangerous new proposal.

These would be the same PSP folks who raided Philadelphia bars & stole gallons of beer from lawful business owners because they didn’t know how to read beer labels.

The bars – which specialized in foreign beers and craft brews – were raided in March and more than 300 bottles of beer and two kegs were confiscated. A subsequent investigation revealed police conducting the raids mistakenly confiscated legal beers because they misunderstood the some of the labels and the state’s list of legal beers contained misspellings and other errors.

I’m not anti-law enforcement, I’m just anti-stupid. When the department staff can’t even read a beer label to figure out if it’s legal or not, I have less than full faith that they have done serious research or have fully documented facts and figures to back up their warnings to lawmakers about a minor alcohol sales reform bill.

Webb Out

Politico is reporting he’s not going to run for a second term as Virginia’s Senator. This leaves the door wide open for former Senator Macaca.

More on the Grassley Investigation of ATF

John Richardson has a lot of details. Basically the DOJ gave Grassley a big middle finger in response to inquiries. Not surprising, unfortunately.

Ed and Midge Split

Our former Governor is apparently separating from his wife of 40 years. Says the Daily News:

Their e-mail makes no mention of divorce or the cause for the split. But Rendell has long been the subject of speculation involving younger women, typically leggy blonds. Rendell most recently turned heads last May when he arrived at a typical Election Day lunch at the Famous 4th Street Deli with Dr. Kirstin Snow, a state employee and former Miss Pennsylvania.

As a woman accomplished in her own right (Midge Rendell is a Federal Judge), I think she’s probably better off without him.

Politics into a Language We All Understand

It can be hard for most people to grasp the problems with government spending because it comes in the form of numbers that no one person can really identify with in any meaningful way. You know that $459 billion is a lot of money. And it’s more money than you’ll ever see in your bank account (unless there’s one hell of a bank error in your favor), but just how that compares to trillions of dollars is out of the realm of the average person. So that’s why this video succeeds at putting the issue of the federal deficit in terms we can all understand: liquor.

Inspiring Confidence

Maybe we need an amendment to the FAA bill to deal with stuff like this.