Jacob has the latest attack ad against Obama’s position on guns.
Category: Politics
Quote of the Day
From Michelle Obama:
“The way this campaign has been run is the way we need to be forever. Don’t trust bloggers or someone else’s opinion, because people lie.”
Well, I definitely don’t trust you, Michelle. You want my pie.
Massachusetts Health Care
Get it, or we’ll fine you. To me, the worst part of this whole fiasco is this type of system is likely to pass in other states. All thanks to that conservative of conservatives, Mitt Romney.
Ask Mayor Squidward
Our local news radio station, KYW 1060AM is hosting a Q&A session tomorrow with Mayor Nutter, and they were nice enough to put a form online so we can submit questions.  Here’s mine:
Mr. Mayor, when you took office, you swore an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States and of this Commonwealth. By restricting the rights of Philadelphians to own firearms for sport and protection, aren’t you violating that oath?
Go ask a question. Can’t hurt. Keep it short and polite, but tough. I don’t expect they’ll ask the Mayor any pro-gun oriented questions, but let the media know that gun owners are out there. Another one to think about asking him would be what an assault weapon is. If you’re from the Philadelphia area, definitely make sure to get a question in.
Undermining Liberty
This Telegraph article suggests that Libertarians undermine liberty:
Libertarian thinking is already a force in party politics, as one of the strands of thinking in both the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats. The objective of libertarian campaigners ought to be to strengthen those strands. The lesson from American politics is that when libertarians create parties, they end up undermining liberty by diverting campaigners’ efforts way from the mainstream. Perversely, the Libertarian Party in the United States has undermined liberty: if it becomes a noticeable minority party, the British equivalent will do the same.
Part of the problem, I think, is that we live in a world where you can get everything the way you want it, so I think there’s an expectation that the consumer culture has created that you can get your politics just the way you want it too, except it can’t really work that way. In politics, you have to build coalitions of interests, and being part of a coalition means you don’t get everything you want all of the time. If gun rights activists had their way, Fred Thompson would have been the Republican nominee, but as it was, it was an election for national security and national greatness factions of the Republican Party to assert themselves, and they wanted McCain. When you have to form coalitions with other interests, you can’t always get your way.
Perhaps one of the prices we pay in society for a decline in civic organizations, where politics happens on a smaller scale. Having to participate in a civic organization, where everyone is a volunteer, is a great lesson in the dysfunctions of people, and the limitations of the political process. With people more and more expecting politics to be like any other consumer product, the result could be a growing collection of small, ineffective parties that remove political capital from the main parties, leaving a lot of good ideas out in the political wilderness.
Public Smoking Bans
Looks like a town in California is proposing to ban smoking anywhere in public. I think it’s it’s unreasonable to speculate how soon it will be before gangs are shooting it out in the streets to protect their tobacco turf. You have to figure the next step after that is just banning it altogether. It’s for the lungs of the children, you know.
What They’re Teaching Kids These Days
Another Gun Blog talks about his sister’s high school civics class:
Apparently they (very briefly) studied the 15th, 19th, and 26th (voting rights) amendments and a handful of others but didn’t even focus on the 1st ten in the BOR. She had no idea what the 3rd, 9th, or 10th were (although most schools generally ignore those as much as they do the 2nd)
Of course they would cover the voting rights amendments. Today we worship the Goddess of Democracy. Rights?  Liberty? Freedom?  Bah! Outdated concepts from a bunch of guys that have been dead for 200 years. The elite have rejected repulican values and republican thought. Today we will worship, and pray to the Goddess that two wolves and a sheep get to decide what’s for dinner.
Talk About a Dodged Bullet
I may not always be a huge fan of Justice Kennedy’s juris prudence, but holy crap did we dodge a bullet when the Democrats in Congress rejected the nomination of Robert Bork.
It’s Not About Guns, It’s About Control
Did I say guns? I meant dogs. Eric has a follow up to the post we linked to yesterday.
“I think eliminating vicious dogs is as important to reclaiming our cities as controlling gun violence and making sure our young people are going to school,” says Yates.
Tyrone Yates is as big a proponent of gun control as he is rounding up people’s pets and exterminating them. You know, if you change two letters in his first name, I think you can come up with something more appropriate. Tyrant Yates — yeah, that’s better. I continue to be amazed that people will vote to keep power hungry politicians like this in office. And yet these are our big city politicians. It’s almost like people in big cities like having government run their lives.
A government that goes around invading people’s homes to snatch away family pets and exterminate them has crossed the line and lost any claim to legitimacy it might have. In sincerely hope that other politicians in Ohio aren’t interested in perpetrating a crime like Tyrant Yates proposes.
The Boy Scout Lawsuit
Good editorial in The Daily News talking about the lawsuit the Boy Scouts have filed against the City of Philadelphia, who are trying to evict them because they exclude gays. The Inqurer has run other editorials denouncing the Boy Scouts position, and arguing the city is justified in what it’s doing.
I take a bit of a conflicted position on it, in that I believe the Boy Scouts of America is wrong for excluding homosexuals and atheists from scouting, but I also think the city is wrong for punishing this particular troop because of the backwards policies promulgated by the national organization. The next thing you know, they’ll be punishing local shooting clubs because they don’t like what the NRA does… oh wait.
The kids in the Philadelphia Boy Scouts shouldn’t be made to suffer for the position of the national organization over which they have no control. This is political grandstanding, pure and simple, and it’s shameful. Scouting offers a lot of positive things to young boys, and in a city that’s in desperate need of giving young boys positive leadership, and keeping them out of trouble, it seems to me that this move is supremely short sighted on the part of the city politicians.
I understand their beef with the Boy Scouts of America. I even share it. But they are a private organization, and are free to exclude whoever they want. The Boy Scouts are not a hate group. They don’t preach discrimination, or notions that some people are better than others; they view homosexuality and atheism as immoral behavior and belief. I disagree with them strongly on this matter, but that’s what the national organization has decided. The city politicians should be free to denounce this all they want, but they shouldn’t go so far as punishing the boys of this local troop by canceling their lease.