constitutional issues

Liberals Afraid of Armed Americans

Mark Noonan20 Comments

Ah, the typical debate – from the LA Times:

On Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk is a bid to bar Californians from openly carrying firearms, legislation that could open a new front in the state’s decades-old gun control debate.

The measure, aimed at an increasingly popular tactic used by 2nd Amendment activists, would make California the first state since 1987 to outlaw the controversial practice of publicly displaying a weapon…

…Gun control advocates hope that California will now pave the way for the rest of the country to outlaw the practice.

“Openly carrying a gun with [an ammunition] magazine in your back pocket into Starbucks and other establishments creates a culture of fear and intimidation,” said Brian Malte, director for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. “It is irresponsible and dangerous.”…

I don’t know about you, but seeing someone openly carrying a weapon doesn’t intimidate me…by nature, criminals don’t want anyone to know they’re armed until they commit their crime.  Honest men and women legally carrying firearms, in my view, increases public safety:  it is highly unlikely that a criminal will commit a crime if some of the people in the area are clearly armed.  Criminals are not brave – they are cowards who prey upon the weak.  So, don’t be weak – be armed.

The liberal gun-grabbers, though, will never give up…somewhere deep inside them is a desire that all Americans be good, little slaves.  Disarming us is vital if liberalism is ultimately to gain full control of the United States.  Thwarted in one area, they’ll just try another…and they’ll keep at it and at it and at it until they have disarmed the American people.  Or, alternately, we stand so firm in defense of our liberty that it becomes the rock-solid law of the land that any law abiding citizen can carry whatever personal weapon he likes anywhere in the great Republic.

His Majesty, Barry I, Proclaims Amnesty

Mark Noonan11 Comments

From the New York Times:

The Homeland Security Department said Thursday it will halt deportation proceedings on a case-by-case basis against illegal immigrants who meet certain criteria such as attending school, having family in the military or are primarily responsible for other family members’ care.

The move, announced in letters to Congress, won immediate praise from Hispanic activists and Democrats who had chided President Obama for months for the pace of deportations and had argued he had authority to exempt broad swaths of illegal immigrants from deportation…

Much easier than mucking about with all that tedious law, Constitution and Congress stuff…can’t get amnesty legally?  Then just say it is so…presto, there it is.

It doesn’t matter if someone has a job or is going to school – if they are here illegally, then deportation is the only way to go unless there is a clearly enacted law which says otherwise.  As long-time readers know, I am in favor of comprehensive immigration reform which would include an amnesty provision…but that is not what our laws provide for right now, so the only thing our chief law enforcement officer can do is deport.

But that doesn’t lock down a certain segment of the latino population for 2012.  And what is more important – enforcing the law, or getting re-elected?  I tell you, there was no chance Obama would do otherwise…because like all liberals, he hasn’t the foggiest notion of what law is, nor what constitutes tyranny.

2012 can’t get here fast enough…

More Guns, Less Crime

Mark Noonan12 Comments

From the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

Virginia’s bars and restaurants did not turn into shooting galleries as some had feared during the first year of a new state law that allows patrons with permits to carry concealed guns into alcohol-serving businesses, a Richmond Times-Dispatch analysis found.

The number of major crimes involving firearms at bars and restaurants statewide declined 5.2 percent from July 1, 2010, to June 30, 2011, compared with the fiscal year before the law went into effect, according to crime data compiled by Virginia State Police at the newspaper’s request.

And overall, the crimes that occurred during the law’s first year were relatively minor, and few of the incidents appeared to involve gun owners with concealed-carry permits, the analysis found…

An armed population is a free and safe population – also, a more well-mannered population.  This is just natural.  If we’re armed, we can’t just be oppressed at will.  If we’re armed, criminals think twice about committing crimes.  If we’re armed, everyone minds their manners because they’d rather not accidentally insult someone who is carrying a gun.  Neatly stated by John Wayne in The Shootist:

I won’t be wronged, I won’t be insulted, and I won’t be laid a hand on. I don’t do these things to other people and I expect the same from them.

In the end there are only two types of people who don’t want an armed population – people who just don’t understand freedom and tyrants.

The Tea Parties, the Future of Liberty and Liberal Intentional Slander

tiredoflibbs90 Comments

After Barak Obama (the obAMATEUR to realists) became president in January 2009, he signed the infamous “stimulus package”, worth $787 billion, of liberal dream spending with virtually no Republican support (and rightfully so).  As it was rammed through with little reading or debate, we were told that it was “necessary”, “to keep unemployment under 8%”.  Practically overnight as one of its highest priorities, the federal government became the “Home Depot” by weatherizing government buildings and housing projects (excuse me “housing developments”).  Streets and highways with little or no need of repair would be broken up and repaved.  The DOT and other government agencies would spend millions on signs advertising the supposed benefits of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  I saw one of those signs first hand in Washington DC.  It stated that the park on Roosevelt Island would be receiving a generous “grant” to facilitate the involvement of local youth in the removal of “non-indigenous plants”.  To put it simply, local kids would be weeding the island.  This was going to save the economy and the country??

Then there were several “projects” and “studies” also financed by the ARRA.  One project, numbered 1R01AA01658001, titled “Malt Liquor and Marijuana: Factors in their Concurrent or Separate Use”.  This grant of $400,000 to a professor at New York State at Buffalo has the following official abstract: “We appreciate the opportunity to refocus this application to achieve a single important aim related to our understanding of young adults’ use of malt liquor, other alcoholic beverages, and Marijuana, all of which confer high risks for experiencing negative consequences including addiction.”  Wow, $400,000 to study something we already knew???  Other such “grants” followed, to ACORN, to the study of porn, to the study of fish migrations and mating habits of certain animals, etc. etc.

The cost of the stimulus was later revised to $862 billion (an underestimate of 10%).  If a private business made such a blunder in outgoing funds it would most likely go out of business.  But I digress…..  As a result of this boondoggle of liberal spending, the TEA Party was born.  It was by accident really that this organization was founded.  Thanks to Rick Santelli on CNBC and his rant against the stimulus package and a particular proposal to for it to also subsidize what he called the “losers mortgages”.  He proposed a ceremonial dumping of  of derivative securities into Lake Michigan.  A few hours later a website popped up with a call for a “Chicago Tea Party” and Santelli’s video rant. The video became viral across the nation.  Average Americans were furious about the massive new spending and the revelations about previous spending on those “studies” and “grants”.  This alone was not the sustaining factor in keeping the TEA Party movement alive but the fact that: Under President Obama, federal spending has been growing at an unprecedented pace.  We are adding $4.8 billion to the national debt everyday.  The long-term viability of Medicare and Social Security isn’t merely uncertain – as so many analysts would have us believe.  In fact their failure is is a sure thing without structural changes.  By adding massive new entitlements with the health care bill we are simply going to go broke faster.

The TEA party gained so much momentum so fast, it was a threat to the liberal establishment.  Immediately pundits, the obAMATEUR friendly media, the Democrats went into full gear with their baseless and usual smear tactics and attacks.

Susan Roesgen of CNN (once an anchor in New Orleans) was going after TEA Party enthusiasts at a Chicago rally, suggesting they were stupid and irrational (no objective reporting there).

Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post: “The danger of political violence in this country comes overwheminly from one direction – the right, not the left.  The vitriolic, anti-government hate speech that is spewed on talk radio every day – and, quite regurlarly, at TEA Party rallies – is calibrated not to inform but to incite.”

MSNBC’s Ed Shutlz (I KNOW NOTHING!!!): “I believe that the TEA Partiers are misguided.  I think they are racist, for the most part.  I think that they are clinging to their guns and their religion.  And I think in many respects, they are what’s wrong with America.”

Actress Janeane Garofalo: “This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up.  There are nothing but a bunch of tea-bagging readnecks.”

Comedian Bill Maher: “the teabaggers, they’re not a movement, they’re a cult.”

Democratic strategist Stece McMahon: “The reason people walk into schools and open fire is because of rhetoric like this and because of attitudes like this.  The reason people walk onto military bases and open fire is because of rhetoric like this and attitudes like this.  Really, what they’re doing is not that much different that what Osama bin Laden is doing in recruiting people and encouraging them to hate America.”

Chris Mathews claimed that the TEA Partiers are all “monochromatic” and “all white”.  A quick look and amateur and profession videos at rallies quickly proved this talking point wrong.

However, a Washington Post/ABC poll found that 14% of voters say the TEA Party is “most in synch” with their values; 20% say TEA Partiers are “most in tune with economic problems Americans are now facing”.

A most interesting poll came from TargetPoint Consulting which interviewed 500 attendees at the April 15, 2010 Tax Rally in DC Here are some of the results:

The TEA Partiers are united on the issues of debt, the growth of government, and health care reform

They are socially conservative on the one hand and libertarian on the other, split roughly down the middle.

They are older, more educated, and more conservative that average voters and they are “distinctly not Democrat”.

This brings us to the present day.  The President’s approval ratings are low and getting lower and Congressional Democrats are the lowest and getting worse.  Members of his party are running away from him (as seen in the November elections with declines of his speaking at their rallies).  Now with the debate on the debt limit, Americans are seeing that the Republicans have presented plans while the Democrats and the President have presented NONE.  The only thing liberal Democrats and their drones can do is continue to attack the GOP and the TEA party candidates who won in November who are doing what their constituents want – lower spending and reduce the size of the budget with has grown over 25% in just two years.  There is no way you can convince anyone that there a no room for cuts.  The liberal drones continue with their attacks of racism.  Andrew Brietbart has offered anyone who can prove racism at a TEA party rally with a cash reward.  With all the amateur and professional videos out there NOT A SINGLE ONE has captured anything close to the looney left’s claims (of course, the left now claims criticizing the Presidents failed policies is racism).

The Democrats are out of new ideas.  They continue to tout the same old ones that have failed time and again – more spending and more taxes.  When the President says we must live within our means he is not talking of cutting spending to match revenues, but raising taxes in hopes of raising revenues to match spending.  His mishandling of this debt limit and lack of leadership is showing among his Twitter followers (losing 30,000) and elsewhere, his support continues to dwindle.

When President Obama spoke before the United Nations General Assembly in September 2009, he declared that a world order that elevates one country or group of countries over others is bound to fail.  So he’s changing the order.  If his domestic policy priority is the redistribution of wealth, his foreign policy seems to be the redistribution of power.  The TEA Party has members of every race and creed is continuing to gain momentum and returning the conversation to limited government in scope and power.

The Coming (Ongoing) Constitutional Debate

tiredoflibbs35 Comments

When it comes to the Constitution, there are two main camps – the Constitutionalists and the “Living” Constitutionalists.   The Constitutionalists believe that the Constitution of 1787 can work at all times.  The Framers’ Constitution has guided this nation for most of the first two centuries and has rendered the freest, most prosperous, and most creative nation in the history of the world.

Then there are the liberals, who believe that the Constitution (and it interpretation) must “evolve” with the times and therein lies the problems we face today.  Proponents of the “21st century constitution” or “living constitution” aim to transform our nation’s supreme law beyond recognition – and with a minimum of public attention and debate.  Indeed, if there is an overarching theme to what they wish to achieve, it is the diminishment of the democratic and representative process of American government.  It is the replacement of a system of REPUBLICAN government, in which the Constitution is largely focused upon the architecture of government in order to minimize the likelihood of abuse of power, with a system of judicial government, in which substantive policy outcomes are increasingly determined by federal judges.  Rather than merely defining broad rules of the game for the legislative and executive branches of government, the new constitution would compel specific outcomes.

Forms of the Founders’ Constitution would remain – a bicameral legislation, periodic elections, state governments – but the important decisions would increasingly be undertaken by the courts, specifically the federal courts.  It will be the California referendum process writ national, a process by which the decisions of millions of voters on matters such as racial quotas, social services funding and immigration policy have been routinely overturned by single judges acting in the name of the Constitution – not the Framers’ Constitution, but a “constitution for our times”, a “living constitution”.

One of the liberals’ favorite argument for a “living constitution” is the “the founding fathers could not have predicted …. (insert favorite liberal cause or ideology here).  That is where they ignore the obvious.  The Framers put into place a means for the nation to amend the Constitution – to change it “with the times”.  This process has worked for over 200 years.  But this would put too much power into the hands of the people and not that of the politicians and their special interests (as we have seen in the last 40 years).  This process has been undermined time and again to the point where many “rights” have been granted through creative interpretation.

The Framers, through long experience of witnessing abuse of power, knew what they were doing when they wrote the Constitution, it amending process and its Bill of Rights, which specifically addressed situations and solutions to conditions that are not covered in the Constitution.  Too bad, MODERN liberals and their activists do not understand (or choose not to) these basic principles.  It is time that they did.

The Right to Work: A Fundamental Freedom

tiredoflibbs38 Comments

Now when you hear the words “Right to Work”, what comes to mind?

The right to work at any job no matter what age, sex, race, religion, etc. etc.?  Or, as to the liberals, the right to work as long as you belong to a union?

Well it seems to our “friends” in Washington (who claim to want to create jobs) may stop job creation in South Carolina, a Right to Work state.  South Carolina protects workers’ rights not to join a union nor to financially support a union (and their political cronies in Washington).

Boeing is a great American company.  Recently it built a SECOND production line for its 787 Dreamliner aircraft in South Carolina, creating over 1000 jobs there so far.  The other production line is in Washington State.  But the National Labor Relations Board, created in 1935, has taken exception to this decision by Boeing.  Washington state does not support the workers’ rights as does South Carolina.  The general counsel of the NLRB, on behalf of the International Association of Machinists union, has issued a complaint against Boeing, which, if successful, would require it to move its South Carolina operation back to Washington State.  This favorable decision (to the unions) would be an unprecedented act of intervention by the federal government that would appear on its face “un-American”.  But it is an act long in the making, and boils down to a fundamental misunderstanding of freedom.  What is it called when the government controls the means of production?  But I digress…..

It cannot be overemphasized that compulsory unionism violates the first principle of the original labor union movement in America.  Samuel Gompers, founder and first president of the AFL wrote that the labor movement was “based upon the recognition of the sovereignty of the worker”.  Officers of the AFL, he explained in the American Federationist, can “suggest” or “recommend”, but the “cannot command one man in America to do anything”.

Just after WWI, Gompers opposed various government mandates being considered in the capitals of industrial states like Massachusetts and New York that would have mandated certain provisions for manual labors and other select groups of workers: “The workers of America adhere to voluntary institutions in preference to compulsory systems which are held to be not only impractical but a menace to their rights, welfare and their liberty.

Fortunately, there are signs that voters are recognizing the negative consequences of compulsory unionism.  As we have seen in Wisconsin and Ohio, the state legislators have revoked compulsory powers of government union bosses.  Furthermore, the NLRB’s blatantly political and unconstitutional power play with regard to Boeing’s SC plant is sure to strike fair-minded Americans as what it is – a blatant power grab and its ability to determine where private companies can locate.  The attempts by the pResident and the Democrat Congess (before 2010 elections) at passing card-check and eliminating the unionizing secret ballot was another attempt at grabbing power for their special interest group cronies.

All American workers in all 50 states should be granted the full freedom to associate and not to associate in the area of union membership.

Gunwalker: It Always Was About Gun Control

Mark Noonan22 Comments

From Katie Pavlich at Townhall:

Democrat Representatives Maloney, Cummings and McCarthy, all members of the Minority on the House Oversight Committee chaired by Republican Congressman Issa, plan to hold a press conference tomorrow to announce new gun control anti-gun trafficking legislation in light of Operation Fast and Furious. The “Stop Gun Trafficking and Strengthen Law Enforcement Act,” is designed to “keep high powered firearms out of the hands of dangerous criminals, including Mexican drug cartels.”

It was back on June 17th, as the Gunwalker scandal really started to gain some traction, that I opined that the ultimate purpose might have been to justify a new round of gun control legislation.  The fact that the Democrats are advancing this new bit of gun-grabbing indicates that I was correct – the patent absurdity of enacting a law with “strengthen law enforcement” in the title is just an example of Democrat chutzpah.  My guess is that the attempt to do it right now is based upon a worry that they need something to deflect attention away from the scandal, or a conviction on their part that the scandal won’t catch on in the public mind.

Liberals are gun-grabbers, plain and simple.  They hate the fact that average Americans possess fire arms.  It flies right in the face of their ultimate desire to dictate every detail of our lives – from what sort of house we live in, to how we get around, to how the kids are raised, to whether or not we can worship God.  An armed population just gets in the way of all this – so, they seek by any means necessary to take away our weapons.  Do not be surprised that they cooked up a plan to provide guns to the cartels and then point to those weapons in cartel hands as a justification for gun control – this, to them, is just a clever tactic.  That people had to die because of it is no matter – certainly no matter to a party which has ruthlessly defended the murder of tens of millions via abortion.

Eternal vigilance will be the price of keeping ourselves armed – they’ll never give up.  The years will stretch on and issue after issue will come up, but our liberals will always, at some point or another, come back to an effort to disarm us.  Never let up for a minute in defense of gun rights – the slightest, momentary slip could cost us everything.