Eric Holder - Criminal AG?

And just maybe there will be time for Holder to be pardoned by an outgoing President Obama!

Barbara Boxer is a ....

....big fat idiot.

The Obama Administration Lies Systematically

So says Seymour Hersh in this interview in The Guardian. Here is the full quote:

The Obama administration lies systematically, he claims, yet none of the leviathans of American media, the TV networks or big print titles, challenge him.

"It's pathetic, they are more than obsequious, they are afraid to pick on this guy [Obama]," he declares in an interview with the Guardian.

"It used to be when you were in a situation when something very dramatic happened, the president and the minions around the president had control of the narrative, you would pretty much know they would do the best they could to tell the story straight. Now that doesn't happen any more. Now they take advantage of something like that and they work out how to re-elect the president.

I say that if this is news to you, then you have not been paying attention. He finishes interview by saying:

"The republic's in trouble, we lie about everything, lying has become the staple." And he implores journalists to do something about it.

I say that will happen when we see the skies crowded with swine.

Richard Cohen Gets It Wrong - Again.

Richard Cohen spouts off about gun violence in his latest column appearing in the Washington Post.

Using the literary device of a mystical visit from his deceased grandfather, Cohen parrots the long discredited views of liberal gun grabbers:

"“No, boychick, the scourge of your times is the weapon. The scourge is not realizing that it’s all terrorism. What’s the difference between being shot in Chicago and being shot in Nairobi? Dead is dead. Believe me, up here we know that.”"

What a good way to trivialize and conflate important issues of domestic crime and international Islamic terrorism all in one sentence.  good job Mr. Cohen.

"“Okay, but what about the Second Amendment?”

“Hoo-ha! This I’ve been waiting for. The Founding Fathers didn’t mean for everyone to have a gun. They wanted a militia.”

“That’s a matter of interpretation, Grandpa.”

“Not for me it isn’t. I play pinochle with some of the Fathers. They’re sick at what they see. Bang! Bang! No militia. People shooting up playgrounds, movie theaters, the Navy Yard. Ya think that’s what they wanted? They wanted guys with funny hats and muskets.”"

Where to start? Every discredited notion about the 2nd Amendment is on display here.  Yes, the founders did mean for everyone to have a gun, because everyone was expected perform militia service, providing their own arms to do so.  Also, the 2nd Amendment does not just protect the right to own muskets, but for firearms in common use, just as the 1st Amendment protects the right for me to write this  post, not just to print broadsides using block printing presses.

"“Easy. Write that all this is terrorism. To fight terrorism, Americans will permit anything. The government can read your e-mails and listen to your phone calls and know where you go in the car and probably how long you take in the bathroom. "

Sadly, all to true, with extra emphasis after the Snowden leaks.  But this is also a wake-up call to a new tactic from the gun-grabbers: portray law-abiding gun owners as terrorists, a dangerous extension of government fears of resurgent right-wing extremist groups.

"“This is bigger than some show. Listen! Pay attention. Start with that Wayne LaPierre, the head of the NRA. Whenever he’s on TV, have those special-effects geniuses in Hollywood make him look like a terrorist. Call him Mullah Wayne. Get the idea across. And when that happens, the courts will say, hoo-ha, we’ve got to reinterpret the Second Amendment. The justices, they’ve got their finger to the wind, too, believe you me.”"

Yep. Here we go: demonize the NRA, or at least its leader, because we all know that only the NRA stands in the way of "reasonable" gun laws.  The American people want guns controlled more tightly, if not eliminated from society.

I think that what we see here is a liberals wet dream: he would love for this to happen, and is publishing it to inspire anti-gun organizations to use this tactic to smear all gun owners. But this entire column, and the shifting tactics it outlines, is also an admission of failure: the gun grabbers traditional arguments have utterly failed to get stricter gun laws enacted. They're on the ropes and flailing about to find something that works.

I think that the gun control train has already left the station, with most passengers and crew  carrying concealed weapons.  While the NRA is always portrayed as the chief obstacle to "common sense" gun laws, the reality is that there are many millions of concealed carry permit holders, most of whom are not NRA members, who believe very strongly that they wish the right to keep and bear arms to be even less infringed than it is today.

An Old Study Making the News

This study has been making the rounds as if was new.  It is not: it was published in 2007, but that does not make its conclusions any less valid.  This is definitely one that the gun-grabbers wish had never been published.

The Truth About Gun Control

This is what the gun-grabbers think, and why they want to ban guns.  Guns, to them, can act on their own to create "gun violence". How can we debate with people that do not deal in reality?

Gun Control Lies

Most arguments on hears for gun control are either lies, or based on lies.  Sacred Cow Slaughterhouse lists these lies in this outstanding post.  Here is one part of the post that I wish had been more effective in California this year:

This is very clearly an attempt to ban guns (oh, right--you don't actually want to ban guns. See above).  It's just a dishonest attempt.  But go ahead, tell me why X rounds is "enough," and what task it's enough for, and your credentials for making that statement.  You can't answer those questions, because you're lying.

What you mean is, "I want to find ways to make it tough for people to own guns."

- See more at: http://www.michaelzwilliamson.com/blog/item/how-gun-control-supporters-lie-to-themselves-each-other-and-us#sthash.4ARx0ZQS.dpuf

The Death of Gun Control

Gun Control is dead, at least this article, and Bill Maher say it is dead.  A sentiment that I fervently wish is true, but I'll wait for confirmation.

Classical gun control has been diffacult to sell in the political marketplace lately, however, and there is a reason for this. The gun control movement cannot gain traction because of this: trust.  We gun-rights advocates do not trust the anti-rights side at all.

The history of gun control laws is to set up a legal framework to regulate some aspect of gun ownership.  It is modest at first, and maybe everyone agrees that it is "reasonable".  But later, usually after some horrific shooting event that that the previous regulation failed to stop, the previous framework is expanded to include more types of guns, or to exclude more types of people, newly defined to be criminal enough to deny firearms. We are seeing this play out in the California legislature even as I write this.  A bill, SB 374, that would ban an entire class of firearms, awaits Governor Browns signature. This bill expands the definition of "assault weapon" to include rifles that were never intended to be included in the original assault weapon category, rifles that have no military resemblance at all, rifles that anywhere else in the United States are considered ordinary sporting and hunting rifles.

History has also shown that the anti-rights side of the issue does not know what the word "compromise" means.  To the anti-rights side "compromise" means "shut up and give me every new regulation I want, and just be glad I left you something".  That is not compromise, that is a dictate.  An example of true compromise might have been this: vote for Manchin-Toomey background checks, and our side will support National Concealed Carry Reciprocity.  Compromise: each side gives up something to get something they deem valuable in exchange.  The anti-rights side does not understand this concept.

From my reading of the bill text, Manchin-Toomey was not the stinker that the NRA claims, but that is not the point.  The point is, the anti-rights side has acted, and continues to act as if their point of view is the only point of view that matters.  They act as if the tens of millions of gun owners in this country should not have their concerns, needs, and desires accounted for in any legislation. They act as if gun owners do not, and should not, count.

If we gun-rights advocates have learned not to compromise, to never give an inch, it is because we have learned it from the gun-grabbers.