Politics – Page 96 – Shall Not Be Questioned

DOJ & MMFA Collaboration: The Nature of Media Has Changed

I’ve read the Daily Caller story about the e-mails between DOJ and Media Matters for ~~A Socialist~~ America. I haven’t blogged about it until now because I just don’t think it’s the big deal a lot on the right think it is. You can read through all the e-mails here. In the past this might have been a big story, because the media operated on the pretense that it was objective. Does MMFA even make such a pretense? I don’t believe it does. They are partisan hacks, and fully admit to being as much. It’s not like they go through any great length to hide their biases, under the pretense of being objective.

So why is this a story? I would expect any Administration of either party to work with its relevant partisan media to spin stories. With the death of “objective” media, this is how things are going to be. What’s going to be the reaction when a Republican Administration is in the White House, and the left FOIAs documents that show the Administration working closely with the Daily Caller?

This would have been a story if they were seen in a cozy collaborative relationship with the Washington Post, or CNN, or any other outlet that still likes to pretend it’s an objective news outlet. That a partisan hack of a media outfit is helping out Administration flunkies is not shocking, it’s expected.

Misinformation About Louisiana RKBA Ballot Measure

There’s a lot of folks who seem to think this is gun control, because it changes:

Section 11. The right of each citizen to keep and bear arms shall not be abridged, but this provision shall not prevent the passage of laws to prohibit the carrying of weapons concealed on the person.

to:

Section 11. The right of each citizen to keep and bear arms is fundamental and shall not be infringed. Any restriction on this right shall be subject to strict scrutiny.

A bit further down on the original link above:

For a â€œRightâ€ to â€œnot be infringedâ€ there can be NO â€œrestrictionâ€ placed on it whatsoever. NONE. Privileges can have restrictions placed on them. â€œRightsâ€, as defined in the Declaration of Independence of 1776 cannot be â€œrestrictedâ€ in any manner, as they are â€œunalienable,â€ which means not â€˜alienableâ€™â€¦.not able to be taken away, transferred orÂ RESTRICTEDâ€¦!!

This was a fear of mine, that the uninitiated would have no idea what strict scrutiny meant, legally. Now we have that, and people latching onto the word “restricted,” and interpreting this provision as some form of gun control. Nothing could be farther from the truth. By demanding strict scrutiny in the constitutional provision, it is a detailed, specific instruction to the courts to give the right the highest protection the courts currently offer when considering the scope of fundamental rights. To date, most courts have adopted intermediate scrutiny so that they may engage in balancing tests to justify numerous restrictions on the right, and the Louisiana Supreme Court effectively gutted their RKBA constitution guarantee back in 2001:

“The State of Louisiana is entitled to restrict that right for legitimate state purposes, such as public health and safety.”Â State v. Blanchard, 776 So.2d 1165, 1168 (La. 2001).*

So really, this is a choice between any restriction the state wants to place, which is the current status quo, or any restrictions being subject to a very high level of scrutiny by the courts. Clearly the latter here would be far better.Â I really hope that people will spread the word and help relieve the ignorance at work here, especially if you know folks in Louisiana, or see people spreading this.

Unfortunately, the unscrupulous among us will also see a fundraising opportunity here, and will likely play on this ignorance to drum up support for their organization. But it’s very important that this get passed, both for the sake of Louisiana, and to send a message to the federal courts about how Americans expect their rights to be treated. If this ballot measure goes down in a sea of ignorance on the part of gun owners, the other side will be guaranteed to spin this as Americans believing that harsh restrictions on state power to regulate guns is just peachy.

* Source: Defend Your Right to Keep and Bear Arms in Louisianaâ€“Vote â€œYESâ€ on 2!

Oh, To Be a Low Information Voter

There are a handful of times when I wish my first thought about a campaign or candidate was not, “Hey I wonder how they feel about my rights?” I had one of those moments today.

A Supreme Court Justice candidate in Michigan is the sister of an actress from the West Wing. She managed to pull the key characters together to film a campaign video, and I hate to admit that it’s pretty funny – likely because it’s pretty light on politics and name dropping.

I loved the West Wing. I especially loved Ainsley Hayes who was a conservative alumna from an all women’s college in New England. It really was an enjoyable show, even given the obvious bias in the politics.

So, yes, I admit that with this video, it would kind of be tempting to be a low information voter. Fortunately, I don’t live in Michigan. I also can’t break myself of the habit of trying to find out more about actual candidate positions. (Hell, I even asked someone from Michigan if NRA usually grades in these races, but they said they didn’t think so. If you’re a Michigan voter, check the grades that should be posted soon to be sure!) Of course, I also doubt that if I was a low information voter that I would have watched West Wing at all or found any humor in the video.

Fast & Furious OIG Report

It was released less than half an hour ago. Just out of curiosity, I opened it and did a search for two words: inaccurate and false. In case you’re now curious about my findings, the two returned a combined 178 hits.

That means they appear about every 2.5 pages.

Doesn’t Obama promise us the move transparent Administration ever? Somehow, I don’t think that quite works out.

The Partisans Are Lined Up. What’s Next?

Currently we are a nation divided. Everyone would love to think that people think the deficit is currently driving us off a cliff, but while many Americans will agree with that, when it comes to doing something about it, they want low taxes and big government. If we were not a divided nation, this election would not even be close. But it is close.

Ilya Somin notes that this is not a historically unprecedented election, and that Obama and Romney are not doing any better or worse than other elections with similar economic indicators. He also notes:

Some of the models also take account of foreign policy events. While one can certainly make a case against Obamaâ€™s foreign policy, he has not presided over a large and obvious failure that can clearly be laid at his door in a way that swing voters â€“Â most of whom have very low levels of political knowledgeÂ â€“ can readily grasp.

This is why I don’t really get political with events like the fiasco that just happened in North Africa, which resulted in the death of several people including our Ambassador. I don’t think it’s a very useful political club. The voters we need to reach won’t likely pin that on Obama, largely because the media won’t pin that on Obama, and the low information voters don’t care enough to seek out better information.Â This is a highly partisan election. Those who follow politics are already set in their decision, and the result is still very close. We will be depending on these low-information voters to decide the outcome. Zombie, at PJ Media, calls them Honey Boo Boos:

Honey Boo Boos is a term I just made up for the last remaining undecided voters in America. As you may have read at the time, the infantile and atrocious reality TV showÂ Here Comes Honey Boo BooÂ eitherÂ surpassedÂ orÂ tiedÂ the viewership totals of both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions. That means millions of people are so tuned out of politics and so uninterested in current affairs that theyâ€™d rather watch a family of obese rednecks abusing their young daughter than learn even the most basic facts about the next president of the United States. These Honey Boo Boo viewers are what pollsters like to call â€œlow information voters,â€ but that descriptor is not complete: Honey Boo Boos are also lowÂ interestÂ voters whose political ideology is either easily malleable or absent altogether.

As Professor Somin often points out, these aren’t stupid people — their decision not to pay careful attention to politics is rational, since the odds of their vote influencing the outcome of an election are vanishingly small. But they do still vote. Collectively, these are the people who will be deciding the 2012 election. Therefore rhetoric in this election will be more ridiculous than in an election where it wasn’t close, because much of the messaging will be aimed at low-information voters who aren’t persuaded by ideological or policy arguments. You see ads saying, “Obama is a nice guy, but hasn’t done a great job as President.” Those are aimed at those types of voters, who will tell pollsters that they are disappointed in Obama’s job performance, but they still personally think he’s a good man, and so are undecided.

Somewhere along the line we started telling people that voting was a civic duty. That was the wrong lesson. Being informed and educated about the workings of your Republic is the civic duty, and voting follows as a natural consequence of being informed and educated.

Today is Constitution Day

The day we pay our respects and celebrateÂ a document we’ve never really taken that seriously. It was a radical document when the founders wrote it. Reconstruction era Republicans made it even more radical — so radical our ruling elite starting ignoring the parts of it that didn’t suit them. The progressives hijacked it for a time, and later decided they didn’t need to bother with it anymore.

Perhaps a better way to celebrate this radical document would be actually trying to follow it for once.

Protecting Borough Council

Anyone who’s ever been civically active in a small town, can tell you that Borough Council meetings are often flypaper for the drunk, crazy, or attention starved. Usually switching off their mic is enough to get them to go away and/or sober up. Security can be an issue for Borough meetings, but generally the presence of a few officers, who would be there anyway, is generally regarded by most small Boroughs as sufficient for keeping order.

That is, of course, unless you’re a small borough in New Jersey, in which case nothing less than H&K submachine guns will suffice. I have to agree with Tam this won’t end well.

NYSRPA Beats a MAIG Mayor

I’m starting to think the best way to deal with Bloomberg’s illegal mayors is to play whack-a-mole with them. When they express ambitions for higher political office, we squash them like bugs. We’ve have a reasonable amount of success spoiling the political aspirations of MAIG mayors here in Pennsylvania, and it looks like Jacob is managing to play whack-a-mole with MAIG mayors successfully in New York as well. This would be the strategy of waiting for the enemy to come to you, rather than engage in a costly and tiresome campaign of search and destroy. If we can make MAIG membership poison for seeking higher office, especially Republicans looking to win primaries, it’s one way to weaken Bloomberg substantively. *

* A note for our anti-gun friends, who seem to freak out on Twitter when I blog in metaphor: I am not speaking of literally going to war with Bloomberg’s Mayors, nor am I litterally speaking of search and destroy missions. I don’t even have the choppers for that (though I do have some loudspeakers that could blareÂ WalkÃ¼renritt).Â Also, I am not literally speaking of poisoning anyone, nor do I think Bloomberg’s Mayors are small, burrowing rodents with poor eyesight who need to be beaten over the head. I do not mean to insult moles, which are fine and honorable creatures, by suggesting that.

Quote of the Day

Sorry for the absence, but we had our Friends of the NRA banquet tonight, and for just our county managed to bring in an order or magnitude more warm bodies than the typical CSGV protest I’ve seen outside the White House, and these people were actually forking over hard earned cash to support youth shooting.

But today’s quote comes from Tam, who comments on New York City actually adopting the Big Gulp Ban, opening up the market for smuggling high-capacity drink containers:

… and best of all, even if you get intercepted crossing the Hudson with your illicit Styrofoam cargo and the NYPD opens up on you, it’s not like they could actually hit you (and the Palisades make a safer backstop for them than Fifth Avenue does…)

Zing!

Polling New Jersey Voters on Gun Control

Looks like someone has been spending money to poll New Jersey residents about gun control. The Garden State has among the lowest rates of gun ownership in the country, and people who don’t exercise their rights aren’t going to generally be that concerned with the rights of others. I think most people only support rights they view as affecting themselves positively, and care not a whit for rights values by others if they themselves don’t value them. The solution is to recruit more gun owners.Â You can see the press release from Rutgers here, which does have some encouraging signs:

Nearly two-thirds of New Jersey voters say controlling gun ownership is more important thanÂ gun owner rights. This represents a decline since 1999, when 73 percent preferred gun control over gunÂ owner rights. Today, 72 percent without guns at home say gun control is more important than ownerÂ rights, 31 points higher than voters in gun owning households.Â â€œThe stereotype is that those with guns want nothing to do with restricting their rights,â€ saidÂ Redlawsk. â€œHere, that also appears mostly true. While many with guns at home say gun ownershipÂ should be controlled, a majority thinks ownersâ€™ rights should trump. Overall weâ€™ve seen a small moveÂ toward the gun owner rights position over time.â€

It’s at least heading in the right direction.

Voters prefer to see the stateâ€™s gun laws tightened: 47 percent want stricter laws while 11 percentÂ want them more lax. Twenty-eight percent prefer the status quo. While a plurality would tighten laws,Â the percentage is down from the 58 percent who wanted stricter laws in 1999. […]

[…] Â â€œWhile New Jersey is less supportive of gun rights than many places, there has been aÂ conservative trend over the past decade,â€ noted Redlawsk. â€œMore people are concerned about violence.Â Most still want gun control, but the number favoring fewer restrictions has clearly grown.â€

Getting some of New Jersey’s laws overturned would probably go a long way to fixing this problem. The poll clearly shows once people are gun owners, their support for restrictions tend to drop. I’d also note that many New Jersey gun owners have little idea that the hell their state puts them through to exercise their right is highly unusual, and is not how things are handled in most other states.