Politics – Page 239 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Tim Pawlenty Steps up for 2012

According to Jim Geraghty, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty is really stepping up the pace on potential presidential ambitions. He has signed many top GOP consultants and created a new PAC to support other GOP candidates across the country this year and next year. Jim does have a few concerns about Pawlenty’s charisma, and it’s a fair concern given the rhetorical skills of Obama.

All good stuff, of course, but I was reminded of a conversation I had a few months ago with a top strategist for one of the Republican candidates of last year. He liked Pawlenty, but said he couldnâ€™t describe himself as a believer: â€œDo you see Tim Pawlenty being the guy who gets up on a stage in fall of 2012 and rhetorically wins an argument against Barack Obama? No matter how hard I try, I just canâ€™t see it.â€

As he points out, as much as Hillary and the GOP mocked his lofty rhetoric and pointed out the real problems of policies, Obama still won the primary and the election.

During the 2008 election, Gov. Pawlenty came to Pennsylvania as a surrogate on sportsmen’s issues. He warned about Obama’s history on gun rights when he helped kick off the Sportsmen for McCain coalition.

Whether you’re a gun owner or not, Pawlenty would be a huge improvement over the HopeChange we’ve got now.

Congratulations Bob Mensch!

With 80% of districts reporting, NRA endorsed candidate Bob Mensch has won the 24th Senatorial seat in a landslide victory. We have kept that seat in pro-gun hands. Bob’s district spans both Bitter and my EVC districts, plus a little bit of PA-15. so we couldn’t be more thrilled by this result.

UPDATE: Final tally 66% to 30%, with 3.5% going to the Libertarian. That’s a 36 point landslide!

Those Wonderful MAIG Mayors

Campaigning against Jersey City Mayor Healy. So much for law enforcement being on the said of the MAIG mayors eh? Look who paid for the ad.

Local Special Election Today

For those readers who live in Pennsylvania’s 24th Senatorial District, NRA has endorsed Bob Mensch in today’s special election to replace the seat vacated by Senator Rob Wonderling, who resigned to head up the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce. Be sure to get out to vote. Bitter is up there now helping his campaign with the get out the vote effort. Hopefully we’ll keep that an A-rated seat moving forward. Bucks Right has some interesting information on his opponent. She’s a lifelong hunter, you know?

Details on the Colosimo Case

Before we were largely speculating. Â Now we actually have some facts in the case. It seems Colosimo entered into a plea deal with prosecutors. Â We also have this:

The government’s plea memorandum said that on Aug. 4, 2004, a straw purchaser identified only as “Person #1” received money from “H.B.” and a male known as “Shiz” to purchase four firearms on their behalf at Colosimo’s.

H.B. accompanied Person #1 into Colosimo’s and provided money to Person #1 in the presence of a store employee, who recorded that the purchase had been made by Person #1.

None of the four firearms has been recovered. Assistant U.S. Attorney Tomika Stevens told Savage that prosecutors did not know if the firearms had been used in any crimes.

After that purchase, ATF agents set up controlled buys using informants for the purchases of six firearms between Dec. 8, 2005, and April 18, 2007, the plea memo said.

Those guns were turned over to ATF agents immediately after the purchases, which were set up and monitored by the ATF, court documents said.

On one occasion a cooperating witness, A.P., identified himself as the buyer, but Person #2, the straw purchaser, filled out the paperwork, identifying himself as the buyer. A Colosimo’s employee recorded the transaction in the straw purchaser’s name.

On another occasion, a government informant and Person #3 entered Colosimo’s together. Court papers said that the informant had told a Colosimo’s employee that Person #3, the straw purchaser, was buying a handgun for the informant because the informant could not buy a gun. The Colosimo’s employee recorded the purchase in Person #3’s name, court papers said.

Now those are better facts, but they raise some questions:

The person who recorded the straw transaction committed a federal crime. Was he or she prosecuted?
If ATF was conducting these stings since 2005, why was Colosimo’s allowed to remain operating for four more years, despite ATF having evidence that his employees were allowing straw buys?

What’s described here is most definitely a crime committed on the part of the dealer’s agent. At best, he’s not training his employees correctly, and at worst not being careful about hiring scrupulous employees. I’m sorry I ever stood up for this guy. This looks like strong evidence, and I suspect the prosecution is actually going rather easy on the defendant in this case.

Next Target For Heeding God’s Call?

In the latest Monica Yant Kinney column, we get some idea of what gun shop Heeding God’s Call might be going after next:

Emboldened by the victory, the curbside crusade continues. Heads up, Shooter Shop in Kensington: You’re next.

You don’t get the option of not standing up to these people.

UPDATE: Here’s Shooter Shop’s web site, and it looks like they even have a commercial. I don’t know, that deer head just screams “criminal hangout” to me! Seriously, what’s their beef? Other than this is a family business that has the audacity to try to run a legitimate gun business in Philadelphia? Let’s hope it’s a family that will stand up to these hateful people.

Colosimo Inc. Pleads Guilty

James Colosimo admits in federal court that illegal activity went on in his shop. His FFL has been revoked, and he is selling his inventory to other dealers. His shop will close.

Good riddance, I say. If the charges were true, we don’t need dealers who break the law. If the charges were false, we don’t need dealers who won’t stand up for what’s right.

A Living Constitution & The Right to Bear Arms

The Pennsylvania Constitution is an interesting beast. Â Most of us are well aware of its right to bear arms provision, which is one of the strongest worded for an individual right. That’s what we will examine here, through the various revisions of the Pennsylvania Constitution, and there have been many:

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has been governed by five constitutions between 1776 and 1968. Before that, the province of Pennsylvania was governed for almost a century by four successive constitutions, referred to as The Frame of Government.

The first Frame of Government 1682, also known as Penn’s Charter, was written by William Penn while he was still in England, and was repudiated by Pennsylvania’s Colonial Assembly. In the preface, Penn stated his political philosophy on government: “Any government is free to the people under it … where the laws rule and the people are a party to those laws.”

None of the four Frames of Government that defined Pennsylvania’s colonial Quaker government had any right to bear arms provision. That had its start in the Constitution of 1776:

XIII. That the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the state; and as standing armies in the time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; And that the military should be kept under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.

In the Constitution of 1790, the right to bear arms provision was changed to:

Sec. 21. That the right of citizens to bear arms, in defence of themselves and the State, shall not be questioned.

The Pennsylvania Constitution would undergo it’s next major revision in 1838, slightly changing the wording by changing “citizens” to “the citizens”:

Section XXI. The right of the citizens to bear arms, in defence of themselves and the State, shall not be questioned.

Move to the Constitution of 1874, you get some punctuation changes:

Section 21. The right of the citizens to bear arms in defence of themselves and the State shall not be questioned.

That language persisted through the Constitution of 1968, which is the current constitution the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania operates under. Pennsylvania has a living constitution, and multiple generations of revisions and conventions have chosen to preserve the right to bear arms as part of it. I would think that to even a living constitutionalist, this has to mean something.

Links Between Brady & MAIG Established.

With yesterday’s announcement that the Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner is working to promote Bloomberg’s MAIG coalition, I decided to a little bit of research on just who reached out to him on behalf of the NYC mayor. Turns out what I found supports the research by Carl in Chicago, but it comes straight from the mouth of Bloomberg’s Pennsylvania staffer.

Max Nacheman is cited as the Pennsylvania Mayors Against Illegal Guns Coordinator, and his background in politics is a page out of the who’s who of gun control advocates. It seemed awfully coincidental that the entire Bloomberg mayor’s group agenda is also supported by the anti-gun Brady Campaign. What is absolutely not coincidental is the connection that Max Nacheman brings between the two groups.

As Bloomberg’s representative for Pennsylvania, Nacheman is responsible for visiting towns and promoting the idea that they should pass illegal local gun ordinances. In May 2009, Max Nacheman spoke at the Lancaster City Council meeting in support of “lost-and-stolen” legislation and revealed the connection between MAIG and the established gun control movement.

Max Nacheman, Philadelphia, stated that he represents a National Coalition of Mayors, of which Mayor Gray is a leader, Mayors Against Illegal Guns and the Brady Campaign Against Gun Violence.

That’s right, Nacheman admitted that in his position with MAIG, he also represents the Brady Bunch and that they both seek to accomplish the same agenda.

Before Nacheman became a spokesman and organizer for both Michael Bloomberg and the Brady Campaign, he came to Pennsylvania as a student at UPenn. While he was there, he happened to study Religion and US Public Policy. Interesting, and just where have we heard of a project that involves religion as a justification for public policy?

Eventually, he started working with the Hillary Clinton campaign for the Democratic nomination for President. Clinton’s support of gun control is long established, though it is unclear if he ever worked specifically on the issue for her campaign. However, once Barack Obama secured the nomination, Nacheman opted to stick around to support anti-gun State Representative candidate Steve Rovner based on reported campaign expenditures. As a candidate, Rovner stuck out to Bucks County gun owners as one of the only candidates to embrace gun control group endorsements which he lined up after Max Nacheman started working with his campaign. Fortunately, not even Nacheman could save Rovner’s challenge to the incumbent.

Nacheman, interestingly, cites his address in the campaign reports as Bashing Ridge, New Jersey. Max would hardly be the first gun control advocate to cross the Delaware in order to blame Pennsylvania’s pro-gun culture for the crime and corruption of New Jersey and New York. We gun owners in Eastern Pennsylvania have grown used to seeing CeaseFire New Jersey’s Bryan Miller all over Philadelphia. Perhaps the next time Max Nacheman comes over to promote MAIG-backed illegal gun control ordinances, he can hitch a ride with Bryan Miller and offer to pick up the bridge tolls with Brady Campaign funds.

I Will Welcome Rendell’s Departure

Republican or Democrat, at least we won’t have Ed Rendell to kick around anymore after 2010, or maybe that’s the other way around. Go see Capitol Ideas for the Guv’s latest delusions of grandeur. HeÂ thinks we’re lucky to have Obama, and, of course, him. Because he gets this whole green thing. Unless, of course, by green you mean money. If the budget crisis of Ed’s making wasn’t proof enough that Rendell either skipped Econ 101 or slept through it, he also believes we’re not paying enough for milk. Price controls? What could possibly go wrong?

Hat Tip to Grassroots PA for the milk thing.