Politics – Page 317 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Not Everyone’s Happy

Are you retarded?

Palinâ€™s first veto was used to block legislation that would have barred the state from granting benefits to the partners of gay state employees. In effect, her veto granted State of Alaska benefits to same-sex couples. The veto occurred after Palin consulted with Alaskaâ€™s attorney general on the constitutionality of the legislation.

Well, if the gay bashing wing of the GOP is pissed that Palin supports same sex couples, I’m even more tickled pink about McCain’s choice.Â The gay issue is going to kill the Republican party in a generation if they don’t mellow in the issue.Â There’s a significant generational gap, and younger Republicans tend to be supportive of gay’s being equal members of society.Â I think gay marriage is probably a bit too far out there for most people, even though I personally have no problem with the idea, but the GOP needs to jettison the gay cooties wing of the party before they kill it.

The GOP’s Future

Countertop on Sarah Palin:

Like Bobby Jindal, in her short period in office, she has rocked the boat and brought real concern to the entrenched powers that be. Whats most surprising about this though, is unlike Jindal who is going after Democrats – Palin went after Republicans. Heck, she even went after family members – and has drawn the scorn of the state party who were unable to stop her as she took down their most powerful member – Frank Murkowski who famously appointed his daughter to fill his Senate seat.

And in that respect, in an election where the Republicanâ€™s biggest liability isnâ€™t Iraq but Ted Stevens and the Alaskan Bridge To Nowhere, McCain took his maverick mantle by the reigns and just signed up the Anti Stevens to help him root out the corruption endemic in DC.

Compare that to Barack â€œCorrupt Chicago Democratic Political Machine Championâ€ Obama.

I think McCain hit this one out of the park.Â She will be a powerful addition to his ticket, whereas I think Obama is going to increasingly find that Joe Biden is an albatross who doesn’t know when to shut his pie hole.Â If McCain is looking to reshape the Republican Party with the likes of Palin, Pawlenty, and Jindal, the GOP could have a bright future.

The GOP has suffered greatly under George W. Bush and his merry band.Â I’ve watched the Philadelphia Suburbs go from leaning pretty Republican, to tilting Democrat, largely because Philadelphia area GOP types don’t like Bush’s brand of conservatism.Â McCain is someone people around here can get behind, and if the future beyond McCain is made up by his VP short list, that might be a reversable trend.Â Whether it will be enough to overcome the Lightworker’s momentum remains to be seen.Â Obama’s success around here will depend on the extent to which he can lash McCain to the deck of the sinking USS George W. Bush.

McCain Picks Sarah Palin

It’s Palin! She’s an excellent choice.Â Excellent.Â Her politics are exactly where McCain needs his VP choice to be, and the fact that she’s a woman will help with jilted Hillary supporters.Â And she’s a hell of a lot better looking than Joe Biden.

UPDATE: Well, that didn’t take long.

De-Americanizing Political Science

Apparently there is a movement of academics to de-emphasize teaching political science from an American perspective.Â Now we can have even more highly educated people who have no understanding or respect for how our political system functions!

More Bluenosing

This time it’s John Tester, who should know better.Â Blue dogs need to start growing a pair and, rather than cowtowing to their party’s anti-gun leadership, stand up for their constituents.Â It’s one thing to be all rah rah Dems on other issues that are important to Montanans, where Barack Obama might be their man, but it’s another to try to downplay the gun issue when there’s just no doubting his record.

The last time pro-gun Democrats allowed party to trump principle, back during the vote on Clinton’s Assault Weapons Ban, it helped usher in the 1994 Republican Revolution (which the Republicans promptly squandered, but that’s nother rant).Â Blue dogs should want the gun issue to die, but the way to kill it isn’t to get the Lightworker elected to the White House.Â Blue dogs should follow in the footsteps of Oklahoma Representative Dan Boren, who has refused to shill for Obama.

Sportsmen for McCain

As I mentioned before we went to Blackwater, Bitter had to bail out at the last minute to attend the launch of Sportsmen for McCain, which was held at a club near Scranton.Â She ended up shooting the breeze with Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty for quite a bit, and was impressed with his depth of knowledge of our issue.Â As a possible VP pick for McCain, he would certainly be OK with me, but speculation is currently leaning toward Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.Â Palin would also be an excellent choice.

Hasta La Vista Tax

Both Another Gun Blog and No Looking Backwards have covered California’s “Hasta La Vista Tax” which taxes people over a certain income for leaving the state.Â Rich flight has created a serious revenue problem for California.

There’s a good case to be made that this law is unconstitutional, because it interferes with the common law right to free movement and travel.Â There is a pretty strong body of law which would speak against such a law’s constitutionality.Â Anyone subject to this tax probably has a good case to take into the federal courts.Â California has no respect for the second amendment, it’s hardly surprising they don’t respect unenumerated rights as well.Â Anything’s fair when it comes to soaking the rich, I guess.

More Nonsense from New Jersey

Bernard Bell is the associate dean at Rutgers Law School, and thinks that there should be strict liability for gun owners:

A move toward absolute liability would ideally be accompanied by private insurers’ willingness to insure gun owners against such liability. Such insurance should be separate from standard homeowners’ insurance, so that homeowners who do not own guns are not required to subsidize those who do.

The cost of insurance would reflect the expected cost of compensating gun injuries to innocent people. Individuals would then have the incentive to weigh the cost of injuries to others in deciding whether to purchase or keep firearms.

And insurance companies might well offer incentives, in the form of lower rates, to gun owners who engage in practices that decrease the likelihood of accidental injuries, such as trigger locks, safe storage and regular courses in maintenance and use of handguns.

Gun control people everywhere are thinking up ways to get around Heller, in order to discourage people from owning guns, and especially discouraging people from using them in self-defense.Â Sadly, most of this stuff is probably not going to get the scrutiny they deserve from the courts, which is why the political fight is still paramount.

I wonder if Professor Bell is open to the idea that these liability issues should be applied equally to the police and military?

A Case Against One-Gun-A-Month

New Jersey Assemblywoman Joan Quigley asked the question:

I introduced that bill in the spring of 2006. If it had actually become law on the day it was introduced, Mr. Braico would have been able to accumulate 33 handguns between then and now. I fail to see how that’s an unreasonable restriction on his civil rights. And I do wonder what he might have done with all those deadly weapons.

An intrepid gun owner in The Garden State provides her with an answer:

When I first bought my XD-40 handgun, it was quite a large caliber, and so expensive to use for target practice. As my self-defense instructor told me, a large caliber is necessary for “stopping power” in self-defense situations. However, I immediately bought a smaller, inexpensive weapon – a .22-caliber Browning Buckmark – for target practice, just to save money. There, already, were two guns in one month.

However, both of those guns were too large for my wife to operate, so we bought a Lady Smith revolver, which is specially designed for the smaller hands of a woman. At that time, we discovered that the XD-40 jams quite a lot (a design flaw, I believe, but certainly a problem in a self-defense situation), so we bought a large Ruger six-shooter as a more reliable alternative to the XD-40.

The point is we bought more than one per month, for good reason.

I would say if the XD-40 jams a lot, it’s either a specific problem with the gun, or his wife is limp wristing it.Â The XD line are generally pretty reliable from what I’ve heard.Â But it’s a great way to point out why the one gun a month issue is a problem.Â The burden should be on the people advocating it to prove it reduces crime, of which there is currently no evidence whatsoever.

Hat Tip to Cemetery’s Weblog

Careful Over There

A Pennsylvania man gets busted for having a loaded gun in his car.Â He has an LTCF in Pennsylvania, but not for New Jersey.Â My bet is he forgot he had the gun in the car.Â I do not normally keep loaded guns in my car, but I do often keep my range bag in the car.Â You don’t know how often I’ve had to turn around because I suddenly realized I had hollow tip .22LR rounds in my vehicle, which is a serious crime in New Jersey.Â Gun owners would be wise, before entering New Jersey, to do a complete vehicle search of their cars to ensure there is no hollow point ammunition floating around in it.Â Definitely check to make sure you don’t have a firearm in the vehicle.

New Jersey laws are designed to do one thing: put firearms owners and shooters in jail.Â Keep that in mind when traveling over the river where the second amendment does not apply.