#IRS scandal: Democrats make clear where they stand on the 1st Amendment

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced a resolution condemning the Internal Revenue Service for trampling the Constitutional rights of Americans. (For example) It didn’t get very far:

Today, Senate Democrats placed a hold on Sen. Rand Paul’s recent resolution that condemns the targeting of Tea Party groups by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and calls for an investigation into this practice.

“This resolution is not about Republican vs. Democrat or conservative vs. liberal. It is about arrogant and unrestrained government vs. the rule of law. The First Amendment cannot and should not be renegotiated depending on which party holds power,” Sen. Paul said. ”Each senator took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, yet Senate Democrats chose to block my resolution and thus refused to condemn the IRS for trampling on our First Amendment rights. I am incredibly disappointed in Washington’s party politics and I am determined to hold the IRS accountable for these unjust acts.”

I’m not sure why anyone would find this surprising: as the party of arrogant, unrestrained government, the leaders of which think the Constitution is obsolete, well, of course they would shoot this resolution down.

It threatens their very reason for existence, after all.

via Stephen Green.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Reid gun bill criticized by radical conservatives at… the ACLU

“Post-constitutional”

From The Daily Caller via Ed Morrissey:

In an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller, a top lobbyist for the ACLU announced that the group thinks Reid’s current gun bill could threaten both privacy rights and civil liberties.

The inclusion of universal background checks — the poll-tested lynchpin of most Democratic proposals — “raises two significant concerns,” the ACLU’s Chris Calabrese told TheDC Wednesday.

Calabrese — a privacy lobbyist — was first careful to note that the ACLU doesn’t strictly oppose universal background checks for gun purchases. “If you’re going to require a background check, we think it should be effective,” Calabrese explained.

“However, we also believe those checks have to be conducted in a way that protects privacy and civil liberties. So, in that regard, we think the current legislation, the current proposal on universal background checks raises two significant concerns,” he went on.

“The first is that it treats the records for private purchases very differently than purchases made through licensed sellers. Under existing law, most information regarding an approved purchase is destroyed within 24 hours when a licensed seller does a [National Instant Criminal Background Check System] check now,” Calabrese said, “and almost all of it is destroyed within 90 days.”

Calabrese wouldn’t characterize the current legislation’s record-keeping provision as a “national gun registry” — which the White House has denied pursuing — but he did say that such a registry could be “a second step.”

You know there’s a problem with proposed legislation when both the NRA and ACLU are criticizing it.

As Ed points out, it’s not that the ACLU has become a staunch defender of the right to bear arms, but they have do have serious concerns on 4th Amendment grounds, the retained database contributing to violations of rules against unreasonable searches and thus privacy.  Over at Protein Wisdom, Jeff Goldstein thinks a national registry –a step enabling a future confiscation– is just what the Democrats have in mind:

That they were discovered here watering down language to open the way for the beginnings of a national gun registry means only that, should they now be defeated in their plan by strong arguments and sunlight, they’ll merely try again later, in some other way, using some other bill or some other crisis to reach their ends.

That is, if the full-frontal approach doesn’t work, they’ll return to the incremental approach — and with respect to their gun control aims, the contours to that approach are already quite clear:  empower the AG to expand the parameters for what is included in a background check, wherein a partisan agent is given the power to determine what group or groups of people come to constitute a potential danger; cross-reference ObamaCare, with its governmental access to health and prescription records, with other databases, using medical professionals and (they hope) mental health professionals to create the conditions under which they can argue for “sensible” prohibitions on firearms ownership; use Democratic majorities in various states to drive draconian gun control measures through the state legislatures on a party-line vote, then see which of those state laws stand up to court challenges and which do not; use agencies such as the CDC to lend an air of scientific and medical emergency to the “gun violence” “epidemic” — as if gun violence is contagious in any way other than through some strained sociological metaphor — then demand action to combat the crisis or “epidemic” (regardless of what the crime statistics show).

We are living in a time when our government is looking for ways to usurp our rights, pressuring them from every angle, waiting for us to “compromise” if only to make them relent.

Jeff also notes the same simultaneous push at the federal and state levels I wrote about the other day with regard to healthcare. He’s right: this isn’t the old Democratic Party, anymore.  Having been taken over by Progressivism and then the New Left, they’re now the party of “constitutional deconstruction,” stripping the parts they don’t like at the moment of any meaning, something those who care about constitutionalism must struggle against constantly.

Thus making “strange bedfellows” of conservatives and the ACLU, at least in this case.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Bloomberg’s dystopia: you may only defend yourselves with sticks and rakes

Still suffering from the ravages of Hurricane Sandy, the people of Staten Island, denied their Second Amendment rights, are reduced to neolithic means to defend themselves:

As CBS 2’s Dick Brennan reported Wednesday, when darkness sets in on Wavecrest Street in New Dorp, people say squatters make their move – crashing empty homes wrecked by the hurricane.

“They just go in there late at night when nobody is supposed to be looking, and they just flop in the house and sleep in there, wherever,” resident Steven Sumner said.

Residents said the squatters are most attracted to homes that have electricity.

But Sumner said it is not just the squatters, but the looters, too. They have tried to break into his Sandy-ravaged home next to the trailer where he has been living temporarily.

But he said he has managed to fight back, with many different weapons, including a cane, a baseball bat, two rakes, and a stick.

And if you think they’re effective, think again.

This is just the kind of situation the Founders had in mind when they wrote the Second Amendment, recognizing (not granting!) an individual’s right to arm himself for defense of life and property. It is the difference between the free citizen and the victimized subject. And the laws of New York City, the joys of which its liberal fascist mayor wants to impose on the rest of us, have turned the first into the second.

via JWF, who has a trenchant observation on Obama, Bloomberg, and guys like Mr. Summer.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

This just in: If you oppose gun control, you might just be an Antisemite

According to MSNBC, that is.

Background: loathsome nanny-state Mayor (1) Mike Bloomberg has been on a crusade since the Aurora and Newtown mass killings to take New York City’s extremely restrictive (and, in my opinion, unconstitutional) gun laws nationwide, spending millions of his own money to pressure (2) Congress and various state legislatures. In reaction, defenders of the right to bear arms have been very critical of Bloomberg, both on policy grounds and his overall infatuation with statism. (3)

On America’s “lean forward” network, however, it couldn’t be that you oppose Bloomberg because you believe in the right to bear arms or that, in general, government should stay out of people’s private lives. Nope. If you oppose Bloomberg, it must be because you hate Jews:

According to MSNBC contributors Mike Barnicle and Al Sharpton, opposition to New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s gun-control push is partly the result of anti-Semitism. “Let’s get down to it, Mike Bloomberg, mayor of New York City, there’s a level of anti-Semitism in this thing directed towards Bloomberg,” Barnicle argued on Morning Joe, “It’s out there.” “No doubt about that,” Sharpton responded.

“If he was not a big-city Jewish man and was from another ethnic group, in some parts, I think it would be different,” Sharpton continued. 

If you can’t win on the facts, fight with slander.

At PJM, Bryan Preston reminds us that both Barnicle and Sharpton are a bit lacking in the ethics department:

Mike Barnicle, who a few years back was caught plagiarizing, and Al Sharpton, who a few years before that built his career by accusing an innocent man of rape, have resorted to smearing those of us who think New York Mike Bloomberg should at least confine his overbearing nannyist instincts to the city that actually elected him.

So I guess we shouldn’t be surprised at this latest bit of poo-flinging.

It’s all they have left.

Footnotes:
(1) That Allahpundit has such a way with words.
(2) Or buy, judging by the results of the recent primary election in IL-2.
(3) And that’s putting it nicely. Michael Walsh comes right out and calls Bloomie a liberal fascist.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Obamacare: one picture is worth 20,000 pages of regulations

And this is just the start.

Via Steven Hayward, this photo shows the stack of regulations released so far for Obamacare – a stack seven feet high:

In his post, Hayward writes:

…the effectual truth of modern American government is that Congress no longer enacts laws in the meaningful sense of the word.  Instead, they pass wish lists, and delegate the actual lawmaking to unelected administrators.

Simple test: if Congress passes a statute–even one that is 1,600 pages long like Obamacare, but the law can’t go into effect as written, it is not really a law at all.  The simple proof is the photo here that Sen. Mitch McConnell’s office has released, showing the 20,000-plus pages of regulations issued so far for the implementation of Obamacare.  ”Regulation” is just a multi-syllabic word for “law,” after all.  The point is, administrators–the slightly nicer term for “bureaucrats”–now govern us much more than our elected lawmakers do.  One almost wonders why we have elections at all.  (Actually, many bureaucrats actually do wonder this.)

(Emphasis added)

That bolded portion is the key. Since the advent of the administrative state under the progressives, beginning under TR and Wilson, but really taking off under FDR, only occasionally slowing since, and now in a full-throated roar under Obama, Congress has ceded more and more of its lawmaking power to bureaucrats, chasing the progressive dream of an administrative state free of messy democratic politics and that obsolete Constitution. And this is only the start, not only of regulations under Obamacare, but the avalanche soon to come via Dodd-Frank, too.

Of course, while Congress gives away their duties to unelected mandarins, they continue to enjoy nice salaries and tremendous perks.

Nice work, if you can get it.

(h/t Jonah Goldberg)

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

A Warning from Ronald Reagan

Reblogged from International Liberty:

If you want some inspiration from Ronald Reagan, these brief remarks reveal his understanding of both economics of history (especially with regards to the other great president of the 20th century).

And this short video excerpt also gets me fired up to fight big government.

But maybe it's also time to share a warning from the Gipper. Here's a quote (which…

Read more… 129 more words

Spot. On. And while I don't think the administration is Socialist (though I'm convinced Obama himself is), their nanny-state progressivism is different only by degree. And the same can be said for New York and California.

#GunControl: More on State Senator Adam “Warrantless Search” Kline of Washington

Not only does he make a habit of trying to curb-stomp the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights, but he is also violating his own state constitution’s guarantee of the right to bear arms. (See section 24)

Via Clayton Cramer, who has much more.

PS: And this is a guy described as a “lawyer hyper-attuned to civil rights issues?” Yeesh.

#GunControl: Proof that Washington State Democrats don’t give a damn about the Bill of Rights

At least, State Senator Adam Kline (D – Seattle) doesn’t.

First go back and read my post from yesterday. The digest version is that Democratic state senators, including Kline, were following the post-Newtown party line on gun control and introduced a bill that would, among other things, permit the local sheriff to enter a gun owner’s home for inspection once per year without a warrant.

Naturally a furor resulted when this was discovered and the offending section was removed. Senator Kline went so far as to tell Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat:

I spoke to two of the sponsors. One, Sen. Adam Kline, D-Seattle, a lawyer who typically is hyper-attuned to civil-liberties issues, said he did not know the bill authorized police searches because he had not read it closely before signing on.

“I made a mistake,” Kline said. “I frankly should have vetted this more closely.”

In my original post, I voiced strong suspicion regarding Kline’s protestations that it was an accident, pointing out that progressivism disdains our founding documents and the philosophy behind them. But, in the back of my mind, I wondered if I was being too hard on Kline and his colleagues. Maybe it was just a simple error of oversight.

I shouldn’t have worried; it turns out I was right.

Via Bryan Preston look at what The Sure Things of Life found:

Senator Kline was a sponsor of an assault weapons bill in the 2009-2010 session which contained the EXACT SAME  PROVISION.  From Bill 6396:

“(5) In order to continue to possess an assault weapon that was legally possessed on the effective date of this section, the person possessing the assault weapon shall do all of the following:

 (a) Safely and securely store the assault weapon. The sheriff of the county may, no more than once per year, conduct an inspection to ensure compliance with this subsection;”

 And from a bill he sponsored in 2005, Bill 3475:

“(5) In order to continue to possess an assault weapon that was legally possessed on the effective date of this section, the person possessing the assault weapon shall do all of the following:

 (a) Within ninety days following the effective date of this section, submit to a background check identical to the background check conducted in connection with the purchase of a firearm from a licensed gun dealer;

(b) Unless the person is prohibited by law from possessing a firearm, immediately register the assault weapon with the sheriff of the county in which the weapon is usually stored;

(c) Safely and securely store the assault weapon. The sheriff of the county may, no more than once per year, conduct an inspection to ensure compliance with this subsection;“

Senator Kline didn’t “make a mistake”. 

No, he didn’t. He knew just what he was doing.  It seems subverting the 4th amendment is a bit of a hobby for Senator Kline. Maybe his voters should start asking themselves if they want someone in office who takes their liberties so lightly, before he goes after their other remaining rights.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

#GunControl: Washington State Democrats forget a little thing called the 4th amendment

Quick synopsis: Democrats in Olympia have heard their master’s voice from D.C. and have decided to “do something” about gun violence, even if that something does nothing but trample on the constitutional rights of Washington’s citizens. Hence a new gun-control measure was introduced in the legislature to “sensibly regulate” firearms and ban those assault weapons that aren’t really assault weapons but look scary. (1)

And it also gave local sheriffs the right to inspect your home without a warrant:

Forget police drones flying over your house. How about police coming inside, once a year, to have a look around?

As Orwellian as that sounds, it isn’t hypothetical. The notion of police home inspections was introduced in a bill last week in Olympia.

That it’s part of one of the major gun-control efforts pains me. It seemed in recent weeks lawmakers might be headed toward some common-sense regulation of gun sales. But then last week they went too far. By mistake, they claim. But still too far.

“They always say, we’ll never go house to house to take your guns away. But then you see this, and you have to wonder.”

That’s no gun-rights absolutist talking, but Lance Palmer, a Seattle trial lawyer and self-described liberal who brought the troubling Senate Bill 5737 to my attention. It’s the long-awaited assault-weapons ban, introduced last week by three Seattle Democrats.

Responding to the Newtown school massacre, the bill would ban the sale of semi-automatic weapons that use detachable ammunition magazines. Clips that contain more than 10 rounds would be illegal.

But then, with respect to the thousands of weapons like that already owned by Washington residents, the bill says this:

“In order to continue to possess an assault weapon that was legally possessed on the effective date of this section, the person possessing shall … safely and securely store the assault weapon. The sheriff of the county may, no more than once per year, conduct an inspection to ensure compliance with this subsection.”

In other words, come into homes without a warrant to poke around. Failure to comply could get you up to a year in jail.

The column’s author, Danny Westneat, points out that the offending section has been excised from the current version of the bill. And I’ll point out that a self-described liberal is the one who first spotted the worm in the apple.

But something smells about Democratic claims that they didn’t know the provision was in there, that it surely would have failed constitutional muster, and that it was the fault of an unnamed staffer. (2) More likely they knew very well that the bill included a warrantless search and thought they could slip it through. The fact is that progressives, going at least as far back as Wilson, and whether they know it or not, despise the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the theory of natural, unalienable rights on which they are based, because they stand in the way of progressives remaking society in their utopian vision.

This is also another example of the parallel track progressives are following on their anti-Second Amendment quest: Feinstein’s “assault weapon” ban is likely dead in D.C., but they’re trying to achieve much the same thing in as many state capitals as they can: New York, California, Minnesota, Washington, wherever Democrats are strong and there’s little chance of people paying much attention because the news is so D.C.-centric these days.

While I think the Washington provision would have been chucked out in court, it’s a reminder to us all that the price of liberty is unceasing vigilance — abroad and especially at home.

RELATED: I’ve been saying for a while that an assault weapons ban would be useless, and now it turns out a high-power sourced agrees with me — the US Department of Justice. Go ahead, call them bitter-clingers. Meanwhile, it yet another example that gun-free zones are a tragedy waiting to happen, Pirate’s Cove reports that Adam Lanza, the psycho who attacked the Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut, did so in part because it was an “easy target.” Res ipsa loquitur.

Footnotes:
(1) If you’re detecting a whiff or sarcasm and scorn in that passage, you’re not having hallucinations.
(2) They claim they just didn’t read the bill. Gee, where have I heard that before? If true, then they’re only incompetent, not malevolent.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

#GunControl: California Democrats aim for de facto ban via stifling regulations

“Never let a crisis go to waste” was Rahm Emanuel’s famous dictum from 2009, and California’s legislative Democrats, giddy at having a super-majority in the legislature, are showing they’ve taken that to heart. Last Thursday, they debuted a package of ten bills aimed at curbing a putative crisis in gun violence (1). As Josh Richman reports in the San Jose Mercury, these bills would create such barriers to firearms ownership that they would amount to an effective ban.

Put forward by a group lead by notorious progressive nanny-stater and State Senate President Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), these measures would:

• Require anyone wishing to buy ammunition to first get a permit by passing a background check, as Los Angeles and Sacramento already do.
• Ban the possession of a magazine holding more than ten rounds. (2)
• Ban  the sale, transfer, importation, or manufacture of any semiautomatic rifle that includes a detachable magazine. (Are there any that don’t?)
• Update the definition of a banned shotgun with a revolving cylinder to include the new technology of a shotgun-rifle combination.
• Prevent unregulated gun loans, with some exceptions, including hunting, in order to keep weapons from those who haven’t passed background checks.
• Require all handgun owners obtain a safety certificate every year, rather than the every-five-years requirement for purchases of new handguns.
• Prohibit anyone barred from owning a weapon from living in a home where weapons are kept and to expand the list of crimes for which convictions result in being barred from gun possession.
• Let the state Justice Department use money from the state’s Dealer’s Record of Sale system to eliminate the backlog of people identified as no longer allowed to own guns but not yet investigated and contacted by law enforcement.

I guess we can’t let New York have all the rights-trampling fun.

While I can see some point to the last item, I get the feeling most of these provisions would be overturned in court in the wake of the Heller and McDonald decisions for being so onerous as to be a violation of the Second Amendment. Surely, if passed, they’ll face court challenges and initiatives to overturn them at the ballot box.

And it should be obvious that none of these measures would have done a thing to prevent, for example, the Newtown school massacre. The Democrats are just standing on the graves of the dead of Newtown and elsewhere and waving a bloody shirt to claim moral authority. Disagree with them, and you must want people dead. The massacres are only an excuse, a cover for them to do what they’ve always wanted: advance the gradual disarmament of the citizenry in defiance of their natural rights. (3)

Senator Steinberg should ask General Gage how that worked out.

Footnotes:
(1) Hysterical leftist shrieking about gun violence aside, here are some facts. Oh, and here are some about gun violence in California that I recommended to Senator Feinstein. Senator Steinberg might want to read them, too.
(2) Don’t worry, David Gregory. We’ll never prosecute you, either. Besides, you can always print your own.
(3) Some, I’m sure, have the best of motives, thinking that gun bans really work and falling for the logical fallacy of “if it saves just one life, we must do it.” These people are just well-meaning fools trying to drag us all down that road paved with good intentions.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

The #guncontrol crowd’s portrait of a mass killer is all wrong

That’s the gist of a report from the Department of Homeland Security, working with local New Jersey police. The gun-control legislation passed in New York and introduced by Senator Feinstein in Congress, and all the demands of the gun-grabbing crowd, have nothing to do with reality:

This is what a mass killer looks like, according to a Department of Homeland Security analysis. He works alone. He uses a semi-automatic handgun. He’s a he. And he probably didn’t serve in the U.S. military.

That’s the conclusion of a November 28 analysis by the New Jersey branch of the Department of Homeland Security’s partnership with state and local law enforcement. The so-called intelligence “Fusion Center” sifted through data on 29 major mass killings in the U.S. since 1999, starting with the Littleton, Colorado school shooting. Its practical advice is to be more concerned by your co-worker with the bad hygiene who mutters about putting his “things in order” than by the war veteran in the next cubicle.

The basic pattern found by the New Jersey DHS fusion center, and obtained by Public Intelligence (.PDF), is one of a killer who lashes out at his co-workers. Thirteen out of the 29 observed cases “occurred at the workplace and were conducted by either a former employee or relative of an employee,” the November report finds. His “weapon of choice” is a semiautomatic handgun, rather than the rifles that garnered so much attention after Newtown. The infamous Columbine school slaying of 1999 is the only case in which killers worked in teams: they’re almost always solo acts — and one-off affairs. In every single one of them, the killer was male, between the age of 17 and 49.

They also don’t have military training. Veterans are justifiably angered by the Hollywood-driven meme of the unhinged vet who takes out his battlefield stress on his fellow Americans. (Thanks, Rambo.) In only four of the 29 cases did the shooter have any affiliation with the U.S. military, either active or prior at the time of the slaying, and the fusion center doesn’t mention any wartime experience of the killers. Yet the Army still feels the need to email reporters after each shooting to explain that the killer never served.

In other words, “wrong person, wrong weapon.” But that’s immaterial to the gun-control posse, since their objective is really to make it incrementally harder for law-abiding people to obtain weapons, until it reaches the point where no one will bother trying — a de facto ban. That’s why facts and truth don’t matter to them: the strategy is to go for the scariest looking weapons first and play on people’s emotions, as well as tarring (again, law-abiding) people who buy such weapons as themselves objects of fear. The goal is not public safety, but abolition.

Thankfully, this latest federal effort looks to be going nowhere, but the fact-free assault on our natural right to keep and bear arms goes on in the state capitals. We need to carry the fight and the truth there, too.

As Mr. Jefferson said: “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.”

via Ace of Spades, which has a picture you must see.

RELATED: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is rapidly becoming my new hero. Check out this video of him taking the Senate hearing on gun violence to school with facts and truth, all while being polite and respectful to the opposition. This is how you get the message across.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Did the Democrats accidentally reveal their #guncontrol agenda? — Updated

Interesting. Via Bryan Preston, a New York assemblyman posted a wish-list of things they wanted to include in the worse than useless gun control bill rammed through last week. Is this also the national Democrats’ goal?

1. Confiscation of “assault weapons”
2. Confiscation of ten round clips
3. Statewide database for ALL Guns
4. Continue to allow pistol permit holder’s information to be replaced (1) to the public
5. Label semiautomatic shotguns with more than 5 rounds or pistol grips as “assault weapons”
6. Limit the number of rounds in a magazine to 5 and confiscation and forfeiture of banned magazines
7. Limit possession to no more than two (2) magazines
8. Limit purchase of guns to one gun per person per month
9. Require re-licensing of all pistol permit owners
10. Require renewal of all pistol permits every five years
11. State issued pistol permits
12. Micro-stamping of all guns in New York State
13. Require licensing of all gun ammo dealers
14. Mandatory locking of guns at home
15. Fee for licensing, registering weapons

Meanwhile, the New York Constitution specifies the following oath in article 13, section 1:

Members of the legislature, and all officers, executive and judicial, except such inferior officers as shall be by law exempted, shall, before they enter on the duties of their respective offices, take and subscribe the following oath or affirmation: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the State of New York, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of ……, according to the best of my ability;”

Last I checked, the US Constitution included an amendment regarding the right to keep and bear arms, and it seems to me the law-abiding gun owners of New York have good reason to ask why their elected representatives seem so eager to violate it and their oaths, and why they apparently have such contempt for their voters and their rights.

Footnote:
(1) I think he meant “revealed,” as in garbage pulled by that sanctimonious, asinine newspaper in New York and the execrable web site Gawker.

UPDATE: Gayle in the comments provides a link to a Post article about efforts to organize a boycott of New York’s new registration requirements. Go for it, people! Meanwhile, toward the end of the article is an interesting mention of the Empire State’s equivalent to the Second Amendment — its much more strongly worded equivalent:

The organizers point to a little-known guarantee of gun ownership contained in New York’s own “Civil Rights Law,” which was ratified the same year as the Constitution .

The state statute says the right to keep and bear arms “cannot be infringed” — stronger than the Second Amendment, which says it “shall not be infringed.’’

Now, that’s a statute, not a part of the state’s constitution, but it seems to me that gun-rights defenders in New York have a strong basis for a court case at both the state and federal levels. (Also makes one wonder how NYC gets away with its near-total ban.)

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

High-ranking CBS staffer calls for destruction of Republican party

Well, at least he’s being honest about his biases:

The president who came into office speaking in lofty terms about bipartisanship and cooperation can only cement his legacy if he destroys the GOP. If he wants to transform American politics, he must go for the throat.

(…)

Obama’s only remaining option is to pulverize. Whether he succeeds in passing legislation or not, given his ambitions, his goal should be to delegitimize his opponents. Through a series of clarifying fights over controversial issues, he can force Republicans to either side with their coalition’s most extreme elements or cause a rift in the party that will leave it, at least temporarily, in disarray.

New tone?

That’s John Dickerson writing at Slate.  But he’s not just a frothing, nigh-ecstatic fan of Obama writing for a lefty web-zine.  As John Nolte points out at Breitbart, he’s also CBS’ political director:

Dickerson is merely being Dickerson, and  there’s no doubt he speaks for legions upon legions of those in the media today.

What is worthy of note, though, is that a CBS News’ political director is now comfortable openly calling for the destruction of the Republican Party. He obviously fears no admonitions from his colleagues or his employer. And why should he? Earlier this week, Bob Schieffer, a CBS News “living legend,” was perfectly comfortable publicly comparing the NRA to Nazis.

Ladies and gentlemen, your neutral, thoughtful Fourth Estate.

“Media bias?” What’s that?

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Biden: Obama Might Use Executive Order to Deal With Guns

Gosh, what are those words I’m trying to think of? They’re right on the tip of my tongue…. Oh, yeah! Now I remember!

“Tyranny” and “usurpation.”

“The president is going to act,” said Biden, giving some comments to the press before a meeting with victims of gun violence. “There are executives orders, there’s executive action that can be taken. We haven’t decided what that is yet. But we’re compiling it all with the help of the attorney general and the rest of the cabinet members as well as legislative action that we believe is required.”

Biden said that this is a moral issue and that “it’s critically important that we act.”

Biden talked also about taking responsible action. “As the president said, if you’re actions result in only saving one life, they’re worth taking. But I’m convinced we can affect the well-being of millions of americans and take thousands of people out of harm’s way if we act responsibly.”

There’s a problem, it must be solved, and we’re going to do something, danggit, even if it solves nothing and takes the Bill of Rights outside to be shot. (1) When a “pragmatic reformer” sees a need (even if it’s only a figment of his imagination, or a flat lie), he’s not going to let hoary old intellectualisms like natural rights and hard to understand pieces of paper get in his way. So what if they were crucial to the founding of this nation and its reason for existence? That was a long time ago, and times change!

And only a racist, mouth-breathing gun-fetishist would disagree.

Seriously, if Obama and Knucklehead Smiff Biden wanted to set off the alarms in the homes of every gun-owner and genuine liberal in America, they couldn’t have done a better job. No chance of getting tighter federal gun laws through Congress? No problem! Our Munificent Sun King (2) The president will just issue an executive order. So let it be written, so let it be done!

Two observations I’ll make about this. First, this is the result of the Congress ceding too much regulatory power to the presidency and bureaucratic agencies. From creating reasonable regulations needed to implement laws, it evolves into anti-democratic, anti-constitutional rule-by-decree. And inevitably there will come a president who does not respect the traditional boundaries and separation of powers that make an largely informal system based on mutual understandings, such as ours, work.

And when that happens, you get “I won” and decrees from the throne.

The second is –and I bet this leapt to to the mind of everyone reading this– the deep, bitter irony of an administration demanding gun control NOW!!!, when that same (mis)administration supplied thousands of weapons to drug cartels in Mexico, weapons that have killed hundreds — including school-age children. The administration is right, the United States does have a gun problem: it’s called Operation Fast and Furious.

Finally, while this may be another of Biden’s idiocies, or some trial balloon soon to be withdrawn, don’t rule out the possibility that this is a deliberate ploy by Obama to keep the pot stirred with yet another crisis, something else he can use to bash Republicans and polarize people in advance of the 2014 elections. That’s how an Alinskyite community organizer works: get everyone angry, bind your side tightly to you in that anger, and then use them to intimidate and browbeat the other side into submission. It worked in Chicago and it’s working in D.C.

And Obama is showing he’s learned his lessons well.

Footnote:
(1) With government-approved, government-owned firearms, of course.
(2) Thanks to Jim Geraghty for the apt description.

LINKS: More at Hot Air and from Aaron Worthing.

via The Tatler

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Pelosi: “All your income are belong to us! For great revenue!!”

All your money! Give it to me! MINE!!

It was inevitable. Having won a meaningless, crony-rewarding, counterproductive tax increase during troubled economic times that only serves to pander to the class-warfare crowd, the statists and redistributionists in the House, lead by Nancy Pelosi, want more:

Pushing back against the Republicans’ deficit-reduction strategy, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said this weekend that more tax revenues – not just spending cuts – must be a part of Congress’s effort to rein in deficits.

Pelosi said the tax hikes in the recent “fiscal-cliff” deal are a start, but don’t go far enough to generate the revenues the government needs to run the country effectively.

“In this legislation we had $620 billion, very significant … changing the high-end tax rate to 39.6 percent. But that is not enough on the revenue side,” Pelosi told CBS’s Bob Schieffer in an interview taped Friday.

Without offering many specifics, the California Democrat said she wants to scour the tax code for unnecessary loopholes and “unfair” benefits that help those – either companies or individuals – who don’t need it.

“Put it all on the table and see what is working,” she said. “Frankly, I’m fairly agnostic about what it could be. … But, you know, if it works for us, if it grows our economy, if it’s something that justifies its existence, it should be there.”

I’m actually not averse to reforming the tax code to eliminate a lot of loopholes and credits that constitute nothing more than subsidies to favored constituents by redistributing money taken from taxpayers. Best of all would be a flat tax at a low rate  that eliminates all such nonsense, or maybe a national sales tax in place of an income tax, so that you’re taxing consumption, not productive behavior or saving. It would be great for genuine economic growth. (But not both together, please! That way lies Europe.)

But, cynical me, I suspect that is not what Nancy wants. No, what she wants, like Rocco in “Key Largo,” is more.  More revenue, more of our money. There’s never enough. And she wants the power that comes with having more money to redistribute, to turn citizens into dependent clients of the State and the Democratic Party. She and her progressive brethren will take the money and then control who gets how much — and if they want to keep getting it, they’ll vote the right way.

The power to distribute money is the power to control.

And that’s really the point of it all, of ObamaCare, of huge deficits and debts, of cries of “fairness,” and of fiscal-cliff games and threats of chaos in the wake of sequestration: to justify ever higher tax rates on us all (1) and gain control over us by gaining control over our money. Nancy wants more.

She wants all of it.

Footnote:
(1) You did notice the shrinking of your latest paycheck, didn’t you?

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Rep. Jose Serrano reintroduces bill to repeal presidential term limit

Reblogged from Twitchy:

We're still a couple of weeks from the inauguration, but Rep. Jose Serrano (D-N.Y.) is already looking forward to 2016 and beyond. The congressman yesterday reintroduced a bill to repeal the 22nd amendment establishing term limits for the president.

https://twitter.com/Gabby_Hoffman/status/287735951751520256

https://twitter.com/NMarsala/status/287736141912887296

https://twitter.com/stilloldduck/status/287736287711084545

Even before that, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee would have to bring the bill to the floor for a vote.

Read more… 121 more words

Um... no. Just, no. If you want a "President for Life," Rep. Serrano, Venezuela may be more your style.

Don’t bother Senator Feinstein with facts; she wants her gun ban, and she wants it now!

Never let reality get in the way of a good fantasy, eh? (1) In the wake of a series of mass-murders this year, Diane Feinstein (D-CA) wants to ban the traffic and manufacture of vaguely defined military-style weapons. And yet the facts from her own state seem to show that increased gun ownership is one factor in a decline in crime:

Gun sales up, injuries down

The FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which records each time someone buys a gun, showed that background checks hit a record high of 16.5 million in 2011. Gun sales have been steadily on the rise.

A recent report (PDF) from the California Attorney General found that the more guns that have been sold in California, the fewer gun deaths and injuries there have been. According to the office of the Attorney General, gun dealers sold nearly 600,000 guns last year, almost double the 350,000 sold in 2002, according to figures compiled by department officials.

And gun-related injuries and deaths have gone down.

According to hospital records collected by the California Department of Public Health, the number of California hospitalizations due to gun injuries fell by nearly 4,000 a year to approximately 2,900, a drop of about 25 percent, the Sacramento Bee reported.

The attorney general’s office reported that the number of deaths from firearms fell from 3,200 a year to about 2,800, an 11 percent decline (PDF), according to California health department figures.

“Most of the drop in firearm-related injuries and deaths can be explained by a well-documented, nationwide drop in violent crime,” the Bee reported.

Despite this data, Feinstein still plans to introduce stricter gun ownership legislation.

While correlation doesn’t prove causation, this is yet another piece in a mountain of data indicating that gun ownership (including concealed and open-carry) leads to lower crime. The logic is straightforward: criminals are less likely to attack a target they think can defend itself. But Feinstein doesn’t care or even want to hear. (2) Don’t bother her with facts: she knows as an article of faith guns are bad and is determined to ban them, even if it leads to leaving good people defenseless.

For our own good, of course.

PS: If you’re interested in following a good Center-Right reporter and news site in California (we do have a few left), Katy Grimes in particular and Cal Watchdog in general should be on your list.

Footnotes:
(1) Kind of like progressives and economics, when you think about it.
(2) Kind of like the global-warming crowd and carbon dioxide, too.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Cult of Personality Watch: “The Gospel According to the Apostle Barack”

“He walks among us”

I truly thought this was satire when I read the headline, something Iowahawk would come up with.

But, no. It’s real, and the author is serious:

The book’s premise is God spoke to Professor [Barbara A. Thompson, Florida A&M], telling her that Apostle Barack Obama’s 155 speeches made between February 10, 2007 and January 20, 2009 had the answers to unlock the kingdom of “heaven here on earth.”

And this is from the book’s promo text on Amazon:

Yes, Barack had worked tirelessly on behalf of the American people, especially those who elected him in 2008. His followers needed to re-elect him to a second term, so that he could continue to accomplish the promises he made, thus, realizing his vision of America as a more perfect political union or “heaven here on earth” Then, as I began to contemplate ways to assist Barack in his 2012 re-election bid something miraculous happened. I felt God’s (His) Spirit beckoning me in my dreams at night. Listening, cautiously, I learned that Jesus walked the earth to create a more civilized society, Martin (Luther King) walked the earth to create a more justified society, but, Apostle Barack, the name he was called in my dreams, would walk the earth to create a more equalized society, for the middle class and working poor. Apostle Barack, the next young leader with a new cause, had been taken to the mountaintop and allowed to see over the other side. He had the answers to unlock the kingdom of “heaven here on earth” for his followers. The answers were repeated – over and over – in speeches Barack had made from his presidential announcement to his inaugural address. Those speeches or his teachings contained the answers to the middle class and working poor people living in a “heaven here on earth” For when the answers were unlocked and enacted, Apostle Barack’s vision of America would be realized.

I’ll wait here while you go hurl.

Out of all the observations and arguments over the direction of our culture, it’s the tendency of some, mostly on the Left, to eschew self-government in favor of a Leader who somehow embodies the spirit of the nation and can divine the “national will” that perhaps disturbs me most. Ronald Pestritto describes this in his discussion of Hegel’s influence on President  Wilson in “Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism:”

“People follow the world-historical individual because they see their own spirit in him. This leader has in him the vision of the people’s future. ‘Their fellows, therefore, follow these soul-leaders; for they feel the irresistible power of their own inner Spirit thus embodied.’ Wilson laid out a similar concept of democratic leadership in his essay ‘Leaders of men,’ … As Hegel explains, leadership is necessary in order to uncover and bring to the surface the people’s true will, which become increasingly manifest as history progresses. Underneath the apparent clash of subjective interests and passions, there is a true, unified, and objective will, Leadership finds this true will and points it out to the people.”

(“Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism,” Kindle edition, beginning at location 276)

Adjust for the religious framing of Professor Thompson’s work and Hegel’s talk of “spirit” and “will,” and I think you can see the family resemblance. This veneration of the leader and the paternalistic “knowing the people’s will before the people themselves know” is part and parcel of American progressivism, not just in Wilson’s time (and, to an extent, his predecessor, TR), but in the present day in his modern acolyte, Obama. Goldberg discusses this tendency extensively in his must-read, “Liberal Fascism,” and it’s an unhealthy one in a democratic republic, something far too many succumb to.

While people like Obama cloak their beliefs in words of democracy, at their heart they’re statist, elitist, and anti-democratic. At the extreme end of their politics lies totalitarianism, wherein, as Professor Thompson anticipates as “heaven on earth,” God and the State become one.

RELATED: Some earlier examples of the Obama cult of personality.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

(Video) A walk through a liberal time capsule

Bill Whittle recently spoke at Oberlin College, one of the most liberal of liberal arts schools, where he says he had a great time. His hosts couldn’t been any nicer.

But he was struck by something else, too: he was in a progressive time capsule. At various moments in his visit to Oberlin, he saw shocking examples of the intolerance of the supposedly tolerant campus Left, especially for anything that disagreed with their false dogmas, which haven’t changed in 60 years.

Gotta love that open-mindedness that lets you say and think whatever you want, just so long as you say and think the right things.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Two photos that should cost Barack Obama his job

The first from the ruins of our consulate in Benghazi:

(Click the image for a larger version)

Those are the bloody hand prints of an American, desperately fleeing for his life. They are the fruits of the Obama-Clinton policy of “smart power” and speak more loudly than any words can of the administration’s utter failure. (Courtesy of the Daily Mail via QandO)

Then there’s the home front:

(Courtesy LA Times. Click the image for a larger version)

That is a free man being taken away by police under pressure from an administration desperate to blame anyone but itself for the collapse of its Mideast policy. While he may have violated his parole, he was investigated because his speech made the government uncomfortable. My blog-buddy ST has already vented her outrage; my own feelings are a burning contempt for this open display of Chicago-style thugocracy — Benito nods in approval. And Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, is livid:

When taking office, the President does not swear to create jobs. He does not swear to “grow the economy.” He does not swear to institute “fairness.” The only oath the President takes is this one:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

By sending — literally — brownshirted enforcers to engage in — literally — a midnight knock at the door of a man for the non-crime of embarrassing the President of the United States and his administration, President Obama violated that oath. You can try to pretty this up (It’s just about possible probation violations! Sure.), or make excuses or draw distinctions, but that’s what’s happened. It is a betrayal of his duties as President, and a disgrace.

He won’t resign, of course. First, the President has the appreciation of free speech that one would expect from a Chicago Machine politician, which is to say, none. Second, he’s not getting any pressure. Indeed, the very press that went crazy over Ari Fleischer’s misrepresented remarks seems far less interested in the actions of an administration that I repeat, literally sent brown-shirted enforcers to launch a midnight knock on a filmmaker’s door.

But Obama’s behavior — and that of his enablers in the press — has laid down a marker for those who are paying attention. By these actions he is, I repeat, unfit to hold office. I hope and expect that the voters will agree in November.

Read it all. (h/t Blue Crab Boulevard)

If we weren’t so close to the election, I’d be calling for President Obama’s impeachment for dangerous incompetence and gross abuse of power.

But we don’t need Congress to clean house for us. As Glenn points out, we have an election in less than two months. Send these photos and the linked articles to anyone you know who’s still undecided. Make them aware of what’s happening.

A vote for Obama is a vote for American decline and to entrench “gangster government,” the thugocracy, and liberal fascism.

It’s up to us to put a stop to it.

LINKS: Twitchy — “This is not America.”  In 2008, I and others wrote about Obama’s contempt for free speech. Hey, my fellow citizens, we tried to tell ya…

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)