The 2nd Amendment is once again under attack, this time by a bipartisan anti-gun coalition in the US House.
Rep. Peter King (R-NY) has introduced H.R. 2159 (aka “Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act of 2009″) seeks to give Obama’s gun ban enthusiast Attorney General Eric Holder sole discretion to decide who can and who cannot purchase a firearm. No trial, no hearing, just Eric Holder’s whimsical determination that a person might be involved in a terrorist act, now or sometime in the future, will be enough to keep an American citizen to exercise his/her constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
According to the NRA, “H.R. 2159 would give ‘the Attorney General the authority to deny the sale, delivery, or transfer of a firearm or the issuance of a firearms or explosives license or permit to dangerous terrorists. . . . if the Attorney General determines that the transferee is known (or appropriately suspected) to be or have been engaged in conduct constituting, in preparation for, in aid of, or related to terrorism, or providing material support thereof, and the Attorney General has a reasonable belief that the prospective transferee may use a firearm in connection with terrorism.’”
Not long ago, the Department of Homeland Security distributed a classified memo declaring virtually every conservative American and veteran a potential terrorist. So all of us considered “right-wing extremists” by the current administration are likely to find ourselves on Holder’s list of Americans who will be denied this constitutional right.
I seem to recall, in the not too distant past, liberals up in arms claiming President Bush was using fear of terrorism as an excuse to suspend Americans’ constitutional rights. (And Obama continues these very same practices today.) I guess these liberals consider it okay for a Democrat to trash the Constitution.
Many seem to think the GOP and conservatism are dead in the water after their dismal showing in last year’s elections, but Arkansas Democrats better prepare for a fight in 2010. Today, The Tolbert Report released the latest in a series of ads by the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) letting voters in the conservative Southern state know their Democratic representatives in Congress aren’t really representative of their constituency.
The ad takes on Rep. Vic Snyder from Arkansas’ 2nd Congressional District for his vote to send $800,000 to what is practically a private airport for Rep. John Murtha (D-PA). The airport serves a mere 20 passengers a day, with flights serving only one airport–Dulles in Washington, DC. It seems difficult to imagine Arkansas voters would voluntarily offer so much of their hard-earned money to serve the radical Murtha, but Vic Snyder thought this a wise investment for his constituents.
That’s not all the NRCC points out. Most would agree that Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-AR) would never stand a chance of being elected if she were running in Arkansas. Though the embattled Pelosi has a 39% approval rating according to the latest CNN/Opinion Research poll, the ad notes Snyder votes with the forgetfullying congresswoman 97% of the time.
It’s hard to believe a majority of Arkansans would have knowingly elected Snyder had they known he was determined to be a Pelosi puppet.
Some may not consider it surprising the NRCC is challenging Arkansas Democrats, but the state didn’t really seem to matter to the GOP in 2008. Not one of the three Democratic representatives and one Senator who were up for re-election last year ran against a Republican challenger, not one. This was a terrible oversight on the GOP’s part, because every one of those four Democrats were challenged by third party candidates who all made decent showings in their respective races. Snyder’s Green Party challenger took more than 23% of the vote. There’s little doubt a Republican challenger would have had a far greater showing, and might have even defeated Congressman Snyder.
The NRCC seems destined not to repeat the mistake of 2008. It previously released an ad against Arkansas’ 1st District Congressman, Marion Berry, challenging his “Blue Dog” status by pointing out his recent votes on the Obama-Pelosi “Stimulus” plan and budget.
Arkansas may not have been on the GOP’s radar in recent years, but it is now. The Dems better be ready for a fight in 2010.
This is the first of what I intend to be a weekly series.
It’s just impossible to write an original post on everything that needs covering, so each weekend I’ll post an excerpt from other blogs I follow of articles on issues that I simply couldn’t find the time to cover that week.
Haste Makes Waste: Feds Send Millions in Stimulus Checks to Dead People
The government is saying the error happened because they had to get things done in a hurry. Because of the perceived time pressure, the have sent millions of dollars in stimulus money to people like “Romolo Romonini, who died in Italy 34 years ago.”
Can you believe it? After creating the largest spending program and largest deficit in American history, President Obama warns us about something every Tea Party American knows: that the American Debt Load is unsustainable. Thanks for putting us in this position Mr. Obama!…
I’m so proud of Carrie Prejean. When asked her opinion about a current divisive political issue during the Miss USA pageant, she took the more difficult path of honesty. Some might have chosen the easier, more traveled path of evasiveness or outright dishonesty, but she chose the “road less traveled.” She gave her opinion in an almost apologetic way, stating clearly that she didn’t wish to offend anyone.
New York Times Reports Half The Story in Afghanistan
On today’s front page, the New York Times goes to every effort to recreate the narrative of Mai-Lai in Vietnam, only this time in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, they do so with only half the story. This much we think we know: One night last week, American forces in the middle of a drawn out battle with insurgent Taliban forces, launched an aerial attack on enemy targets. It appears many civilians were killed during the battle.
Pelosi, the CIA, and the Dems’ dangerous blame game
We had dueling press conferences this morning with Nancy Pelosi accusing the Bush CIA of lying to her about waterboarding and House GOP leader John Boehner defending the integrity of the briefers.
Pelosi had a particularly frozen look on her face throughout her presser as she repeated the “Bush lied about Iraq” mantra to justify her own inaction:
A Fox News Poll conducted by Opinion Dynamics Corp. offers some corroboration of what true conservatives have been saying about the Obama administration’s economic policies–it just won’t work. The poll asked Americans their opinions on Obama’s spending, government interference in private industry, how they view the current US housing market, and their thoughts on the condition of the US economy in general.
Though Obama likes to portray his spending hikes as “investments,” Americans aren’t buying it. The President’s semantics haven’t convinced the 78% who still consider it spending their money. Thirty-five percent of Americans believe Obama’s spending is “just about the right” amount needed in light of the current economic situation, but that’s a far cry from the 54% who are convinced he’s spending too much. And even though Obama has offered up a few token budget cuts in recent days, 60% say his policies are wasting too many tax dollars.
All in all, I think we can safely say a majority of Americans aren’t too happy with Obama’s “stimulus” package and budget.
Another interesting tidbit came in a question on government involvement in individuals’ lives. Though Republican turned Obama supporter Colin Powell recently opined that Americans want more government involvement in their lives, 71% of participants disagreed and believe less government is preferable.
And what about Obama’s attempts to “save” the US auto industry?
With Chrysler already in bankruptcy and GM rapidly advancing toward that end, Ford is the only US automaker who hasn’t accepted government money. In other words, Ford’s the only one Obama hasn’t “saved.” From the responses in the poll, Ford made the right call to forego the government cash. Only 1/4 of Americans would consider purchasing a Chrysler product today, 46% would still consider a GM product, but more than half–54%–would buy a Ford if they were in the market for a new vehicle today.
Looks like GM and Chrysler would have been much better off cleaning up their own mess if they want people to buy their cars!
The stock market won’t be getting much of a boost from individual investors based on the findings in the poll either. A majority of Americans believe it’s not a good time to buy stocks, 55% say they won’t buy stocks at the moment while 30% think it is a good time.
It appears Obama may have misjudged the “mandate” he thought he was given in November, because the folks aren’t buying his “Change.”
These numbers give me “Hope” there will be a “Change” in 2010 if the GOP runs a candidate who offers a real alternative.
Fox News reported yesterday that a majority of Americans now identify themselves as pro-life on the abortion issue.
Fifty-one percent of Americans consider themselves “pro-life” and just 42 percent say they are “pro-choice,” the first time a majority of the country has stated a personal objection to abortion since Gallup polls began tracking the data 15 years ago.
This is the first time since Gallup began tracking this issue that pro-lifers have overtaken pro-choicers! In fact, just last year the numbers were 50% pro-choice, 44% pro-life.
If you’re thinking this is simply a statistical anomaly, think again. Gallup’s own article indicates it considered this possibility when it explains these results were corroborated by two other polls yielding almost identical numbers–one was another Gallup poll, but confirmation also came from a Pew Research Center which showed an 8-point drop in those who believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
Republicans and right-leaning Independents are responsible for the dramatic position shift as Democrats’ and left-leaning Independents’ views remained virtually stagnant from last year. The following graph shows a 10% shift from pro-choice to pro-life among the former group in the study.
The poll also found a corresponding shift on the extent to which Americans believe abortion should be legal. Fifty-three percent of Americans now believe abortion should be legal under certain conditions, down slightly from last year. But it’s now a dead-heat between those who believe there should be no legal restrictions on abortion and those who believe the procedure should never be performed under any circumstances. With 22% holding the former position and 23% the latter. Until now, the left extreme heavily outnumbered the right on the legality question.
Gallup probed further with those who believe abortion should be legal in some cases, but not all. When asked whether they thought abortion should be legal in most cases or in only a few cases, the latter view won handily. The chart below shows those 37% of respondents favor legalization only in rare cases while those who prefer few legal restrictions make up only 15% of Americans.
Views on Legalized Abortion
Another interesting take on the graphic above is seen by combining the left extreme with those who believe abortion should be restricted, but only in few cases vs. the right extreme and those who believe the procedure should only be illegal in most situations. While only 37% of Americans stand on the left half of the spectrum, fully 60% place themselves on the right half .
Gallup also found both men and women who identify themselves as pro-life jumped 8% and 6%, respectively. This year, 49% of women and 54% of men identify themselves as pro-life vs. 43% of women and 46% of men in last year’s survey.
All three categories of religious preference used by Gallup showed gains in the percentage of pro-life Americans as well. Protestants identifying themselves as pro-life shot up 8%, Roman Catholics 7%, and those who categorized themselves not in either of these two groups (other/none) but consider themselves pro-life rose 4%.
This is great news for the pro-life movement in the US. But what will it mean on the political front?
Gallup says “With the first pro-choice president in eight years…Americans — and, in particular, Republicans — seem to be taking a step back from the pro-choice position. However, the retreat is evident among political moderates as well as conservatives.”
Personally, I believe this dramatic shift is a direct result of the radical changes President Obama and the Democrats in Congress are cramming down our throats. We saw the beginnings a conservative uprising immediately following the November election with groups like Rebuild the Party and Top Conservatives on Twitter springing up on the internet, and more recently the Tea Party, the 9/12 Project, and numerous other conservative activist organizations.
Sounds like great news for the Republican Party, right?
Not if it listens to the numerous calls that insist a move to the center is the GOP’s only hope for survival, like seen here, here, and here. There’s evidence the party may already have charted this course. Continuing to take this path will only make matters worse as the party continues to alienate true conservatives, and offers no alternative to the Democrats and their left-wing, Socialist agenda.
Rush Limbaugh‘s been saying it, Dick Cheney‘s been saying it, I and countless others have been saying it, the GOP needs to move back to its conservative roots if it hopes to recover from the thrashing it’s taken in the last two election cycles.
This Gallup poll should tell the GOP a move to the center will be committing suicide.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts directed employees earlier this month not to log onto the Drudge Report website with government-issued computers due to potential viruses on the site.
In an e-mail message sent May 4, Paul Harvey, an information-technology official for the Boston office, wrote that security specialists with the U.S. Attorney’s Office at the Department of Justice asked them “to reformat/reimage two computers because the user visited the drudgereport.com site.”
“Please avoid the Drudgereport website from the [United States Attorney’s Office] computers,” Harvey wrote.
Only when transparency benefits the Obama administration…or harms it’s political enemies.
That’s right, it’s becoming more and more apparent that Obama’s release of the classified “torture” memos was done purely for political purposes. Yesterday, the CIA turned down former VP Cheney’s request to release memos that show valuable intelligence resulted from “enhanced interrogation” techniques.
The CIA has turned down former Vice President Cheney’s request to release memos he says would show waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques” produced valuable information that saved lives.
CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano says an executive order signed by former President Bush forbids the agency from declassifying documents that are the subject of pending litigation. The memos Cheney wants released are the subject of two Freedom of Information Act lawsuits.
“For that reason-and that reason only-CIA did not accept Mr. Cheney’s request,” Gamigliano said.
What a crock! Obama could declassify the documents and release them just as he did with the memos he selectively chose to publicize. In fact, releasing them should resolve the FOI litigation. He could kill two birds with one stone.
The simple fact is, the released memos serve Obama’s purpose–to disparage the Bush administration, while those demanded by Cheney would undo the damage the President already inflicted. Therefore, Obama (who until now never met a Bush executive order he didn’t want rescinded), supposedly running the most transparent administration in history, only allows half the story to be told.
The federal government is spending $2.6 million to make sure prostitutes in China drink less on the job.
That’s the goal of a five-year study, bankrolled by the National Institutes of Health, designed to help lower HIV infections among China’s “female sex workers,” who are referred to in the study as “FSWs.”
Researchers will visit 100 houses of ill repute — a whole hamlet of harlots — to collect data on 700 prostitutes and 150 pimps and madams, referred to as “gatekeepers” in the study’s sterile abstract.
Government researchers are spending more than $400,000 in taxpayer money to hit the bars in Argentina.
The National Institutes of Health are paying researchers to cruise six bars in Buenos Aires to find out why gay men engage in risky sexual behavior while drunk — and just what can be done about it.
And they wonder why we balk when they demand more of our money!
At least that appears to be what the Obama administration is thinking now.
When this morning I read the President is now weighing the option of indefinitely detaining terror suspects I was taken aback. Wasn’t this man the same who, as a presidential candidate, steadfastly opposed every part of Bush’s strategy of dealing with detainees at Guantanamo? Who decried every action Bush took?
Responding to the McCain campaign’s criticism of his desire to extend constitutional protections to the residents of Gitmo in June 2008, Obama stated “…and I think, in fact, it’s the failed policies of the Bush administration and the unwillingness to look towards the future that is causing us so many problems around the world.” He was implying, of course, that Bush’s policies on the treatment of terror suspects jeopardized national security by creating anti-American sentiment around the world.
Now he’s going to continue a policy he so long denounced.
But this isn’t the only issue where Obama’s flipped to support a previously abhorred Bush policy now that he’s occupying the White House.
Late last month Obama was aboard a fast train Hell-bent to release more photos of detainee “abuse,” but switched yesterday when he announced the release of the photos would “…further inflame anti-American opinion, and to put our troops in greater danger.”
Too bad his mind wasn’t changed before the release of the so-called “torture” memos. Just four days prior to his reversal on releasing the aforementioned photos, he justified the release of the previously classified memos by claiming it would make the world like us more and we would therefore be more safe.
Photos bad, memos good according to Obama. A little contradictory, no?
Don’t forget his reversal on military tribunals either.
From the February 13, 2008 SFGate.com article on the pros and cons of tribunals in the cases of 6 terror suspects who faced the death penalty: “Obama said the men should be tried either in a U.S. criminal court or by military court-martial, either of which would ‘demonstrate our commitment to the rule of law.’ Both those systems are more protective of defendants’ rights than military tribunals, which allow evidence obtained through coercion and hearsay.”
Well, he didn’t really mean all that. Earlier this month, news broke that Obama’s going to fire the tribunal machine back up again. According to the NY Times, “The Obama administration is moving toward reviving the military commission system…” and “the first public moves could come as soon as next week.”
You remember, the tribunals that denied due process to those poor guys at Gitmo who chop off people’s heads and fly planes into buildings.
So, Obama’s general frame of mind when the Bush administration ran the tribunals was that they were bad, really bad. Not only did they fail to protect the rights of folks who…oh…cut of American’s heads on camera and kill thousands by flying planes into buildings, but they made other terrorists mad at us.
Now that he’s getting his mail at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., military tribunals are just what we need.
Something changed his mind. Maybe he thinks his middle name will make the tribunals more palatable to radical Islamic terrorists?
This adoption of Bush policies opposed by Obama on the campaign trail appears to be a developing habit. Keep your fingers crossed and maybe he’ll adopt one more and keep Gitmo open since no other country seems to want the abused terror suspects and we certainly don’t want them here.
Okay, that may be too much wishful thinking.
But, with so much of Obama’s change so closely resembling Bush policy in this arena, Obama supporters might just have to admit that maybe Bush was right on Gitmo and the detainees all along.
Dear American liberals, leftists, social progressives, socialists, Marxists and Obama supporters,
We’ve stuck together since the late 1950s, but the whole of this latest election process has made me realize that I want a divorce. I know that we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future generations, but sadly this relationship has run its course. Our two ideological sides of America cannot and just will not ever agree on what’s right. So let’s just end it right now while we can do it on friendly terms. We can smile, shake hands, chalk it up to irreconcilable differences and each go our own way.
So here’s a model separation agreement.
Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by land mass, each taking a portion. That’s going to be the difficult part, but I’m sure our two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be relatively easy. Our respective representatives can effortlessly divide other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate taste. We don’t like redistributive taxes so you can have those. You are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU. And since you hate guns and you hate war, we’ll take the firearms, the cops, the NRA and the military. You can keep Oprah, Michael Moore and Rosie O’Donnell. But you are going to be responsible for finding a biodiesel vehicle big enough to haul them around.
We’ll keep the capitalism, the greedy corporations, the pharmaceutical companies; we will keep Wal-Mart and Wall Street. You can have the homeless, the homeboys, the hippies and illegal aliens. We will keep the hot Alaskan hockey moms, the greedy CEOS and all of the rednecks. We’ll keep the Bibles and we’ll let you have NBC and Hollywood.
You can be nice to Iran and Palestine and we’ll retain the right to invade and hammer anybody that threatens us. You can have the peaceniks and the war protesters. When our allies or our way of life are under assault, we will provide them with security. You won’t have to worry about it. We will keep our Judeo-Christian values. You are welcome to Islam, Scientology, Humanism and Shirley Maclaine. You can also have the UN, but we will no longer pay the bill.
We will keep the SUVs, the pickup trucks and the oversize luxury cars. You can have the compacts, the subcompacts and every Subaru station wagon you can find. You can give everybody healthcare, if you can find any practicing doctors. We will continue to believe that healthcare is a privilege and not a right. We will keep “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and the national anthem, and I am sure you will be happy to substitute in their place “Imagine.” I’d like to teach the world to sing “Kumbaya” or “We are the world.” We will practice trickle-down economics and you can give trickle-up poverty your best shot. And since it so offends you, we will keep our history, our name and our flag.
Would you agree to this? If so, please pass it along other like-minded liberal and conservative patriots. And if you do not agree, just hit delete. In the friendly spirit of parting, I’ll bet you ANWAR which one of us will need whose help in about 15 years.
Sincerely,
John J Wall
Law student and an American
P.S. You can also have Barbara Streisand and Jane Fonda
The 2nd Amendment is once again under attack, this time by a bipartisan anti-gun coalition in the US House.
Only when transparency benefits the Obama administration…or harms it’s political enemies.
