One of the places I can be found arguing on a forum is the NJ Gun Forums, which is a pretty handy resource for shooting in the Garden State. One of the things I found there was this handy google maps mashup showing the location of our hidden rebel bases guns stores and ranges across New Jersey.
Category: Politics
Dick Morris on President Obama
Admittedly, he’s probably no fan of President Obama (given his ties to the Clinton’s), but his take on Obama’s problems versus President Clinton’s at about the same time is highly interesting. President Clinton returned to the center after ’94; can President Obama do the same if he loses a friendly Congress in ’10?
(Edit: I should have looked closer – while Dick Morris was a member of the Clinton White House team, he’s currently referring to Republicans as “we” in other posts.)
Bret Schundler finds his sword
Or was handed it… At any rate, he appears to have done the honorable thing and fallen on it.
On the other hand, that article has been … revised … since I first saw it. The initial version I saw included no mention of the contractors, and had a summation paragraph that stated that the reason the application was in flux at a late date is that Schundler cut a deal with the NJEA that Christie disavowed, having instructed Schundler beforehand that there would be no deal.
Update on the blind NJ man who shot himself
The judge ruled on August 19th that Steven Hopler may retain the firearms currently in his possession and did not revoke his FID card, as long as the firearms are securely stored and Mr. Hopler completes a firearm safety course and undergoes an alcohol evaluation. Mr. Hopler was not granted his request to have the prosecutor’s office return the other firearms that are in that office’s possession, though he may re-open his petition after completion of the court-ordered training and evaluations.
The original NY Times article from 1994states that Mr. Hopler is “totally blind”. In addition, it states:
Mr. Hopler’s appeal to State Superior Court resulted in a ruling in his favor. But Judge Reginald Stanton, sitting in Morristown, added some stipulations: Mr. Hopler cannot load the weapons, shoot them or even leave home with them. And he must make sure that the guns are secured when they are not on display
So it would appear that Mr. Hopler may have been in violation of the original judge’s order.
A proposed amendment to the US constitution (Updated)
I would like to suggest the following amendment to the US constitution:
No person shall be convicted of a felonious crime or subject to lengthy term of imprisonment or loss of civil rights, or ruinous fine, or a sentence of death, save that either:
1)The intent of the accused to knowingly commit the specific alleged crime be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in open court
OR
2)The felonious actions of the accused be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in open court to have resulted in actual bodily injury, actual physical harm, or death, to another person
The goal here is to require intent for non-injurious crimes; no more strict liability.
(Edited to add the italicized words – the accused must have either meant to commit a crime or the injury must have been serious enough to merit a felony indictment. Please pass the BATFE and Sen Lautenberg some Kleenex)
Who gets to vote?
My last post, I noted that (anecdotally)  the majority of parents in the Camden City school district were ineligible to vote for being immigrants or felons. Should this be?
I know a bunch of you out there are in favor of restoral of rights for felons after leaving the pen, because if they were too dangerous to have a gun, they shouldn’t have been let out. I agree with that.  If we allow them to have guns, why stop them from voting? “Because they’ll vote for the other side” isn’t a valid argument here. They’re out, they’re paying their taxes (even if they’re under the income tax limit, they pay property tax and sales tax, which are local taxes). Shouldn’t they get some input into the political process,once they’ve served their time?
How about for legal aliens? (If you’re here illegally, get your butt home and jump though the proper hoops. I have too many friends who have gone through the tortuous procedure to become a resident alien legally to feel any sympathy for the queue-jumpers). At least for local (city/county level) elections? There’s too many potential policy implications for state-level voting for me to feel comfortable letting non-citizens vote at the state level, and, of course, input into national decisions is a privilege of citizenship. At the local level, though?
The floor is open for discussion.
Another problem with “Vote the Bums out”
A friend of mine teaches in the Camden City NJ school district, and pointed out one interesting factoid: the majority of parents in his district can’t vote in school board elections, either because they are immigrants or because they are felons. That makes it rather hard for them to “vote the parasites out” if they are so inclined. And if you can’t threaten to throw the bums out, the bums don’t have to listen to you.
“Race to the Top” round 2 winners
The winners of the second round of the Federal “Race to the Top” contest turned out to be:
- District of Columbia
- Florida
- Georgia
- Hawaii
- Maryland
- Massachusetts
- New York
- North Carolina
- Ohio
- Rhode Island
New Jersey missed out on Ohio’s slot by 3 points of 500.
Governor Christie’s pretty bad week
Governor Chris Christie, the wunderkind of the New Jersey GOP, hit a major pothole this past week. New Jersey’s application for the Race to the Top federal education money failed by a handful of points to get NJ into the program. The proximate cause – as trumpeted by his political opponents – was a “clerical error” that had wrong numbers in a critical part of the application. The end result – New Jersey failed to make the minimum number of point to qualify by 3 points out of 500 or so. At first, the governor blamed Washington and the Dept of Education. The DoE then turned around and released a video of the NJ team’s conference that contradicted Governor Christie’s version of events. Claiming that the NJ Education Secretary had mislead him, the Governor then sacked Secretary Bret Schundler. Bret Schundler is now claiming that he told Governor Christie the truth and that he had the emails to prove it. In the meantime, the NJ Democratically-controlled legislature is making political hay after having been battered and bruised by Gov. Christie for most of the year. And the story’s not over yet…
Will this matter in the long run, though? The governor’s lost a major fight already; the property tax cap battle ended with his desired goal, a referendum on a hard 2.5% cap placed in the NJ Constitution, unattained. Instead, a loophole-riddled compromise law was enacted (municipalities may not increase property taxes more than 2.0%, save in “emergencies”, which include servicing debt…) On the other hand, one of the reasons that former-Governor John Corzine lost was that he was widely viewed as indecisive and unable to stand up to the Trenton special interest mobs. Governor Christie has famously claimed he’s governing as though he’s going to be a one-term governor, and has yet to flinch from a conflict. I doubt he’s going to back down from this one, either. In the end, New Jersey’s schools are a local concern, not a statewide concern. The NJEA may have made Chris Christie their #1 enemy, but they’re only one of his many targets. And by sacking Schundler, Gov. Christie is demonstrating he’s not going to put up with incompetence on his own team. Finally, he can come out fighting against the NJEA. Their intransigence on reform cost many more points on the application than the “clerical error” cost.
Plus, Gov. Christie’s team has demonstrated a command of new media usually found on the other side. In NJ, it’s the Democrats that are the dinosaurs. Christie is an amazing spontaneous speaker, and his powerful speeches, statements, and events pop up on Youtube almost before he’s done speaking. He has a knack for making his opponents looks like whiners. His opponents depend on control of the legacy media, and Christie is bypassing the gatekeepers (which is another reason they hate him).
Normally, New Jersey politics is, at best, a spectator sport for the parts of NY and PA that have TV and radio stations that serve NJ as well. But in this case, Governor Christie’s name has been brought up as a potential presidential contender in 2012. So, for those of you out there in the Lands of the More Free, what do you think? Is this playing in Peoria, and if so, how’s it being spun?
Edit:Â This was for the second round of funding, and the actual winners can be found here
Meet a guest-blogger
Hello out there in internet land. I’m Ian Argent, and I’ve been asked to guest-blog here while Sebastian and Bitter are enjoying some fun in the sun. First, some True Facts:
I was born below the Mason-Dixon line and lived in various exotic locales, being raised by globe-trotting, gun-owning hippies on an literary diet mostly composed of Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, WWII history books, and NOW propaganda. I’ll leave y’all to guess which had the most influence on me… I’m now an armed and conservative resident of The Great Garden State of New Jersey, and can be found arguing for the fun of it on message boards and comment sections across the internet.
In the next couple of weeks, I hope to entertain, inform, and find some sacred cows and try my hand at cow-tipping…