Politics – Page 368 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Nutter Causing Waves With FOP

John Street is out as Mayor of Philadelphia. Michael Nutter is in.Â He started out pissing off the local FOP right before his inauguration.

Â The Fraternal Order of Police is angered by Mayor-Elect Michael Nutter’s choice for his cabinet. His selection was a defense attorney for a man accused of killing a police officer.

Nutter’s appointment of Everett Gillison to Deputy Mayor of Public Safety is drawing the ire of the Philadelphia Police Department.

“It’s a mistake, I know our officers out there aren’t happy,” FOP President John McNesby said.

While working as a public defender, Gillison represented the man who shot and killed Officer Gary Skerski in 2006.

I’ll be honest, I’m going to stand with Nutter on this one.Â Every man is entitled to a fair trial, and entitled to have the assistance of council in his defense.Â There might be other reasons for not liking Gillison, but the fact that he did his duty as public defender is not among them.

Trial Day

Today Greg Rotz is going to court to challenge the unlawful revocation of his License to Carry Firearms by Franklin County Sheriff Robert Wollyung. Rotz had his license revoked for carrying openly, an activity not forbidden by Pennsylvania law, in a place he had a legal right to be while armed.

I talked about this story previously here, here, and here. For the sake of all of us in Pennsylvania, we do hope he prevails. I will let everyone know the verdict as soon as I can find out.

UPDATE: It would appear from folks who attended his hearing that Mr. Rotz has had his License to Carry Firearms reinstated. Excellent! Sheriff Wollyung has a lot to answer for in regards to abusing his authority.

New Jersey Approves Photo Enforcement

Photo enforcement is the latest euphemism for using traffic cameras as a way to generate revenue.Â Governor Corzine, who himself has little regard for traffic laws, has signed the piece of garbage into law.

Assembly Transportation Chairman John S. Wisniewski (D-Middlesex) first wrote the measure with a complex set of requirements that would force localities to adopt one camera manufacturer’s specific technology. The initial draft mandated that: “the violation images are captured by a single, digital camera unit which produces a set of two images for each violation.” This would have excluded several vendors who use multiple camera setups and wet film to achieve the same result, but a subsequent amendment dropped the single camera requirement.

Someone check Wisniewskis portfolio or associations, and I’m sure you’ll find a link to the company that made that camera somewhere!

Local governments had lobbied heavily for the legislation as means of shoring up tight municipal budgets. To take advantage of the new ticketing program, they must submit a list of high-volume intersections to the state transportation department which has final approval over which locations can use cameras. Like Arizona, New Jersey’s proposed law would require each ticket to be “served by a law enforcement official.” This means that motorists may avoid paying a citation by dodging process servers for forty business days after the date of the alleged violation.

Tickets should not be about raising revenues for local governments, they should be about public safety.Â Any photo enforcement centered around raising revenues as an argument ought to be rejected, and the fact that the local government openly tout this reason is another example of government being arrogant and out of control.Â Sadly, I wish this was limited to The Garden State, but it is not.Â We have to remind these people who they work for.

I could do my own New Hampshire prediction …

… or I could just agree with everything Uncle says.Â Yeah, I’m lazy today.

Where’s The Outrage From the Left?

I guess it’s hard to get upset about police state tactics when there’s no easy way to blame George W. Bush for it:

“I’ve been (Garfield County Sheriff Lou Vallario’s) longtime supporter, but I tell you what, to send a SWAT team down there was just absolutely over the hill,” he said. “Inappropriate is not nearly strong enough a word. It was gross irresponsibility and stupidity. … Is this Russia? I don’t know what we’re coming to when they think your kid needs medical help and they send a SWAT team.”

You think? Tam has more. So does Uncle.

UPDATE: Other sources are indicating to me that the state isn’t entirely insane here:

A search warrant and order for medical treatment says there was good reason to believe Jon needed treatment. It states that two social services caseworkers tried to explain to Tom Shiflett they believed the boy needed medical treatment after observing injuries including a “huge hematoma” and a sluggish pupil. They offered to pay for treatment, and said they would have to obtain a court order for treatment if they couldn’t get Shiflett’s consent, the warrant says.

That would justify the warrant in my opinion.

“Shiflett shouted at this worker and advised this worker that if he obtained a court order, he better ‘bring an army,'” the warrant states.

A first responder with West Care Ambulance wrote in an affidavit that she and others in an ambulance crew also believed the boy needed medical treatment.

The responder wrote that paramedics left the residence for fear of their safety after Tom Shiflett refused to let them treat his son and became “verbally abusive” to the ambulance crew.

OK, that probably warranted sending out a few officers to serve the warrant, but the SWAT team?

I Wouldn’t Want to Be Ed Either

I pretty much agree with Tony Phyrillas that Ed Rendell has had a bad year.Â Any year that’s bad for Ed is good for us.

None of the governor’s initiatives made it past the Legislature. Rendell sought $2.5 billion in new or expanded taxes to pay for his agenda. He got none of it. Rendell proposed an $850 million energy plan, a multi-billion dollar plan to provide health insurance to the uninsured and a proposal to lease the Turnpike to continue sinking money into the stateâ€™s failed mass transit systems. He struck out on all three.

A personal plea for more gun control was shot down by the Legislature late in the year and Rendell couldn’t even get a smoking ban passed by the time 2007 ended.

Rendell squandered what political muscle he had going into 2007. My theory has always been that Rendell lied too often about property tax relief. While voters still liked Rendell and rewarded him with a second term, they stopped believing anything the governor had to say.

I guess I’m odd.Â I never believed anything he had to say. Â Read the whole thing.Â Also bad news for Ed Rendell’s gun control agenda, Representative Lisa Bennington, who voted against us in the Judiciary Committee last month, had decided to quit after her term ends, because the pace of reform is just too slow for her.

We should all pat ourselves on the back for this one.Â I for one am happy to help contribute to frustrating the anti-gunners out of the Pennsylvania legislature.

Gunning for Obama?

I think Obama’s success has more to do with Hillary Clinton’s deficiencies than Obama’s own strengths. Both Obama and John Edwards lack political and executive experience. Of course, so does Hillary Clinton, but more importantly Hillary lacks the political talents of her husband, and carries all of his baggage too. But that’s neither here nor there. What I mean to bring up is a post from this blogger, which mostly speaks highly of Obama, but tripped over my google alert with this:

Can he still blow it? Yes, he can. The institutional Democratic Party, which has been behind Hillary Clinton, and which destroyed Dean with John Kerry, remains intact. America is filled with gun nuts, and any one of them could turn Obama into Martin Luther King Jr. at any moment.

No one doubts I have strong disagreements with Obama on the topic of guns, as do the rest of us here, but why the implication that us “gun nuts” are out to kill the dark ones? If anything, “gun nuts” have a much stronger disdain for Hillary Clinton than we do for Obama, but I don’t think any of us “gun nuts” want either of them dead. We don’t call people who would do that “gun nuts” we call them plain “nuts”, “murderers” or “assassins”, thank you.

Open Primaries in Pennsylvania

Here’s a good CenterDaily article about the primary system in Pennsylvania.Â Originally my opinion on open primaries was negative.Â I felt that it was a freedom of association issue, and that the parties should be able to control who votes in their primaries.

I’ve since changed my mind, and decided that if the political parties wish to hijack the election apparatus of the state in order to choose delegates to their convention, then the state gets to set the terms under which its election apparatus gets used.Â If the parties don’t like this, they can go back to using a caucus system like they do in Iowa.

So I’ll get on board with making Pennsylvania primaries open, and while we’re at it, how about joining Super Duper Tuesday so that candidates will actually pay attention to us.

Why Not Ban Kite String and Rubber Bands?

Politicians in New Jersey are doubling their efforts to save its citizens from themselves.

Robinson Arms Controversy?

From Robinson Arms XCR Wikipedia Entry:

On January 1, 2008, Alex Robinson, CEO of Robinson Armament Co., announced his endorsement of Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney on the Robinson Armament Co. website. This has led to considerable controversy in the firearms enthusiast community, as Romney indicated on a December 16, 2007 interview on Meet the Press that he would sign a reauthorization of the expired Federal Assault Weapons Ban. This endorsement is seen as peculiar because reauthorizing the Assault Weapons Ban would make sale of the XCR to civilians in the United States illegal. The endorsement has led to calls for a boycott of Robinson Armament Co. in the firearms community.^[2]

Robinson Armament has released a statement about this.

Many of you are supporting one of the very pro-gun candidates. That’s great. The question is: What if Mitt, Rudi, or John get the nomination? I think this is fair question.

If one of the solid gun stance candidates do not win and we totally alienate the other candidates, where are we?

If we were all really smart and working together to make sure all the bases are covered, we would make sure that we have some people working with the candidates who have less than stellar pro-gun records. Just in case they make it.

The reason I’ve been working with Romney is that I knew early on that he would be a contender. He’s got a lot going for him that a lot of people like. Though gun control issues are the biggest issues for you and I, many Americans feel there are bigger and more important issues. I completely disagree. A candidate’s stand on the Second Amendment is a litmus test. Candidates who want gun control are typically for big government, want to tax us out of existence, and support lots of other liberal ideas.

Read the whole thing. I don’t know if I’ll be willing to join the call for a boycott over this, but it’s some pretty bad political reasoning. Alex Robinson should have a talk with Bitter, who worked in this issue in Massachusetts under Romney. He’s unreliable, and will throw anyone under the bus if the political winds change, and he thinks it’s politically expedient for him to do so. It would be one thing if Romney already had the nomination locked up, but he doesn’t. It’s still time to fight for pro-gun rights candidates.

UPDATE: One guy even wants to go so far as to cut up and destroy his SBR XCR.Â I’d be happy to take it off his hands if it makes him feel dirty.Â I might be convinced to join a boycott, but I won’t go so far as suggesting people destroy a perfectly good rifle!