Author: Kevin

I KNEW Someone Would Say it Perfectly.

By now, I’m sure, the entire blogosphere has heard about the FEC’s consideration of regulation of the internet under the McCain-Feingold Incumbent Protection Bi-Partisan violation of the First Amendment Campaign Finance Reform Act. Instapundit, for example, points to Ed Morrisey’s of Captain’s Quarters observation that

McCain and Feingold have managed to foster real bipartisanship — they’ve gotten liberal and conservative bloggers alike to detest them. Jerome Armstrong at MyDD, Atrios, and DailyKos all agree — this legislation has become a serious threat to political speech, and John McCain and Russ Feingold have become two of the most dangerous politicians to American liberty since Huey Long.

I’ve withheld comment, mostly because if I started writing about it I was afraid the increase in my blood pressure would cause red streams to shoot from my eyes, and it’s difficult to get blood out of a keyboard.

However, The Everlasting Phelps has saved me from arterial rupture. His post on it is short, acerbic, to the point, and precisely expresses my position on the topic. Please read. Add a “Ditto” for me.

UPDATE: The Geek says it well, too, and wants to start has started a conspiracy blogger movement.

Now I’ve got to add a flag to my left sidebar.

(Done!)

Further Update: Kim du Toit echoes Phelps – “FUCK YOU!” Phelps’s was more emphatic, though.

One More: Mike of Feces Flinging Monkey is the creator of the graphic:

…except on those principles themselves.”

(Still quoting others for post titles…)

Anarchangel has an excellent post up on just that topic: the differing first principles between our gun-culture and the anti-gun culture. Quote:

Here’s the thing, pro-gun and anti-gun people are arguing from a different set of first principles. There can be no useful debate betwen two people with different first principles, except on those principles themselves.

ProGun people believe that the gun is a useful tool with no inherent motive, and no inherehnt dangers, excepting misuse. Additionally, guns are examples of elegance in mechanical engineering, which many take pleasure in. Finally they are a source of enjoyment through the practice of the skill of marksmanship. But guns are jsut inanimate object; dangerous if muisused, but so are knives, screwdrivers, chainsaws, cars.. well really just about anything. A gun is an inanimate object, just like any other two pound chunk of metal.

Anti-gun people operate from a completely different principle. They believe guns are inherently wrong. They equate guns with assault and murder, and conflate a causal relationship. They believe that if anyone would have a gun, they must have a valid justification for it, and that they (the anti-gun people) must judge the validity of this justification. They believe that the desire to carry a gun is in iteslf a pathology, and therefore no-one who wishes to carry a gun should be trusted to do so.

It’s just another way of stating the philosophical schism between those of us who understand the concept of violent-and-predatory vs. violent-but-protective, and those who only see violence vs. non-violence. It is very much a matter of first principles, and it is why one of my earliest posts on this site was Is the Government Responsible for Your Protection? The only way to reach the other side is to debate those first principles, and the only way to do that is to get the other side to look at the harsh realities versus their philosophical ideal.

I’ve tried pretty hard to do that in many of the essays over there on the left under “Best Posts,” just as I did in the six months I spent posting in the Gun Dungeon of DemocraticUnderground.com. Just before they tombstoned me, I got nearly the greatest compliment a writer like myself could have. There was the following exchange at the end of what was to become almost my last thread there:

khbaker
Aug-27-02
Reply to post #20
21. Oh, I’m willing.

Your side finds guns just as animated, potent and totemic as my side does, if not more so.

Oh, certainly. At least the “totemic” part, anyway.

Considering the kind of comments that turn up here from Gun Huggers on a regular basis, I don’t think a cautious, intelligent advocate such as yourself can afford to…….

I will readily admit (and have, I believe) that we are often our own worst enemies. The number of “people with less than 100 posts” who come in here and hurl invective certainly make points for your side of the argument. But have you spent any time in the talk.politics.guns newsgroup? Your side is abundantly represented by the slavering gun-phobic there. I don’t bother with it because it is essentially a flame-fest of the far fringes attacking each other through the anonymity of the internet.

You know why I like this forum so much? Because it represents a good cross-section of the gun-control demographic – the people who “believe in gun control” but who aren’t really involved in it, and who don’t really think about it. The moderators do a good job of keeping at least the gun freaks out of the board. Instead, the groups represented are the moderates, and the gun haters. The moderates I think I can reach. The gun haters make excellent illustrative examples. They generally sound so reasonable until you expose them. The gun freaks? Yes, they frighten John Q. Public. Hell, I find them a bit discomforting. I find skinheads and the KKK discomforting too, but that’s insufficient reason for a general restriction of free speech and search-and-seizure rights.

I think I represent something you don’t see a lot – the reasoned, logical fanatic (as I defined it to CO Liberal in another thread, “fanatic: won’t change the subject, and won’t shut up.”) Or, the “cautious, intelligent advocate” as you put it.

You want to discuss emotional wellbeing? Hell, I’m up for it.

Paladin
Aug-27-02
Reply to post #21
22. Cut Yourself Some Slack

This issue needs a lot more “advocates” and a lot fewer “fanatics,” on both sides.

I think you fit in the “advocate” category. As I’ve said before, I also think you fit in the “pain in the ass” category, but you’ve exhibited your emotional wellbeing by considering that a compliment…..

khbaker
Aug-27-02
Reply to post #22
23. I LIKE being a PITA

It’s tough to ignore a nagging pain.

And I am, most certainly, an advocate. But, as CO Liberal and I have discussed, I’m also inflexible. I have a position I’ve taken after research and due consideration, and I’m not moveable on that position. So, my advocacy is to get others to consider that position, and accept it. If being a PITA is required (and it seems to be,) that’s what I do. Like I said, I won’t change the subject, and I won’t shut up.

Cappurr
Aug-27-02
Reply to post #23
24. Dear PITA

Don’t shut up. I wildly disagree with most of your positions on this subject, but you are a damn fine advocate. And you make me think. And that is important.

They booted me on Sept. 3 after I had achieved 1819 posts.

Making them think. It’s why I now blog. (Won’t change the subject. Won’t shut up.) But boy do I miss that target-rich environment!

I Got Yer Specific Evidence RIGHT HERE!

Tuesday I wrote a piece that mentioned Ed Kilgore’s Talking Points Memo column denigrating any relationship between the Bush Doctrine and the current anti-Syrian activism in Lebanon. Here’s what Mr. Kilgore, policy director of the Democratic Leadership Council, had to say:

This may surprise some of you, but I rarely if ever get any email from Republicans. But TPM gets email from the whole world, and today I received quite a few from people wanting to know why I wasn’t posting anything about Lebanon. Not having any particular thing to say about the happy contingency of the apparent collapse of the pro-Syrian government there, I didn’t worry about it much, until I got an email referring to this event as part of a “democracy domino.” And then I got it: those insistent correspondents were suggesting that I, as a Democrat, was indifferent to the latest triumph of Bush administration foreign policy.

Now I am aware the State Department made the appropriate noises, as its predecessors would have done, after the Hariri assassination, about Syrian dominance of Lebanon, and I also know the Bush administration has been generally hostile towards the Syrian government, as has been U.S. policy for as long as I can remember. But it literally never crossed my mind that Bush’s fans would credit him with for this positive event, as though his pro-democracy speeches exercise some sort of rhetorical enchantment.

—

Barring any specific evidence (provided, say, by Lebanese pro-democracy leaders)that Bush had anything in particular to do with Syria’s setbacks in Lebanon, I see no particular reason to high-five him for being in office when they happened.

Well, how about this piece from today’s Los Angeles Dog Trainer Times?

This week, tens of thousands of anti-Syrian demonstrators in Beirut forced the resignation of the pro-Syrian government of Prime Minister Omar Karami. Many are already starting to compare the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon to the Rose Revolution in Georgia and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine.

It would be the height of hubris to claim that all these developments are due to U.S. action alone. Pressure has been building up in the Middle East pressure cooker for decades; the long-suffering people of the region do not need any outside prompting to list a long litany of grievances against their dysfunctional governments. But it was the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent democratic elections there that blew the lid off the region.

“It’s strange for me to say it,” says Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, who would never be mistaken for a Bush backer, “but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq.”

“Now with the new Bush administration,” confirms former Lebanese President Amin Gemayel, “we feel a stronger determination in liberating Lebanon and in promoting democracy in the Middle East.”

That evidence specific enough for you, Mr. Kilgore?

(Buffing My Fingernails,) I’m Not Surprised.

I found this English skills test via Hell in a Handbasket and had to take it. Here are my results:

Actually, I did!

If You Read Anything Today, Read This

(Via Ipse Dixit)

Jon Stewart had Nancy Soderburg, ex-Clinton aide and author of The Superpower Myth: The Use and Misuse of American Might. But Stewart managed to get her to all but admit that the thesis of her book was in error. And he got her to openly admit what most Democrats loudly object to when accused of:

Well, I think, you know, as a Democrat, you don’t want anything nice to happen to the Republicans, and you don’t want them to have progress. But as an American, you hope good things would happen.

James Taranto’s Best of the Web in today’s Opinion Journal has the full transcript. Read the whole thing. And pay particular attention to this Soderburg quote and its context:

There’s always hope that this might not work.

UPDATE: I’ve expanded on the post Bittersweet Triumph below, as I’ve found some additional commentary on just this topic by Steven Den Beste. Read also this piece by Steven from December, 2003. One of the (many) pertinent quotes:

America was the most important battlefield for the transnationalists. Without political victory in America, they had no hope of success overall. Their only hope was for the “American Street” to lose heart, to become dejected and depressed, to be defeated in spirit. Transnationalists tried to push defeatism and doubt and feelings of failure, but also knew that this was futile unless American actions were met with failure. After the 9/11 attacks didn’t make Americans lose heart, they hoped that each successive major action by America might be the one which might deflate these brash, confident, overbearing unilateralists. Thus they found themselves in the position of hoping that America would face defeat.

Hysteria in a News Piece? Don’t be Ridiculous!

Talk about hyperbole as “just the facts, ma’am” reporting!

The Arizona Red Daily Star has a piece in today’s online edition on Arizona House Bill 2666. Here’s how it opens:

The House of Representatives voted Tuesday to let people carry weapons – including guns, grenades, rockets, mines and sawed-off shotguns – into schools, polling places and nuclear plants if they claim they’re only trying to protect themselves.

I kid you not.

Where can I pick up a case of grenades and a few rockets? (And isn’t a sawed-off also a “gun”?)

Now THAT’s stellar reportage!

There’s also this obligatory quotation from the sheeple:

“I don’t see any benefits to allowing anyone to carry a concealed weapon,” said Kendal Morgan, whose son attends University High School.

“You have a lot of characters running around out there that shouldn’t be carrying weapons,” he said.

Carol Mack, whose daughter attends Cienega High School, said that while she is an advocate for gun ownership, she doesn’t think concealed weapons belong on high school or university campuses. “If you’re afraid to go to a college campus without a weapon, I think we need more security,” she said.

Yes, these people believe that the State is wholly responsible for their protection. Mr. Morgan, are you unfamiliar with last week’s Tyler Texas incident? Ms. Mack, aren’t you forgetting Columbine?

How do people go through life denying reality?

Guns for Me, But Not for Thee.

Reader “tarponbill” sent me a link to this Illinois State Journal-Register news story.

Anti-gun activist arrested after firearm found at home

A Springfield woman who began lobbying against gun violence after her son was shot to death in 2002 was arrested last week when police allegedly found an illegal gun and drugs in her home.

Color me shocked. [/sarcasm]

Annette “Flirty” Stevens, however, said Monday she’s innocent, and the arrest is an attempt by police to get her to give up information about unsolved crime in the city.

The handgun, which had a scratched-off serial number, and drugs allegedly were discovered Friday morning inside Stevens’ home in the 2500 block of South 15th Street. Authorities said they obtained a search warrant for the residence as part of an ongoing investigation of a recent series of drive-by shootings. No one has been hurt in the gunplay.

Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives assisted in the search.

No reports of stomped kittens, though.

Although police declined to get into specifics, Stevens has a “close connection” with one of two feuding groups involved in the shootings, Lt. Rickey Davis said Monday.

Stevens, 47, who is free on bond, admitted she does know some of the people allegedly involved in the drive-by shootings. But she said she only knows them because her interest in stopping gun violence – sparked by the shooting death of her son Jericko Clark, 20, on July 13, 2002 – has her in the neighborhoods talking to the youths.

She said the police wrongly believe she is the ringleader of the shootings, and they think she has information to solve those cases, as well as others, including the December murder of Andre Ayers, 22, who was shot as a procession of cars wound through the city’s east side.

Well, the presence of drugs and a gun with the serial number removed would seem to lend some credence to the idea that perhaps old “Flirty” knows more than she’s saying.

“This is a blatant attempt to try and undermine me,” she said Monday night. “… They can’t solve these crimes, and I’m familiar with these individuals, so they’re going after me because I socialize with all of them.”

Davis said detectives working on the drive-by cases – which already have resulted in four arrests – began taking a closer look at Stevens after her name came up in interviews with witnesses and informants.

“Basically, she has a close connection with individuals that have been involved in one side of these two groups that are feuding,” Davis said, declining to elaborate.

After finding the handgun and drugs, police arrested Stevens at her job.

Stevens said she believes the search warrant was obtained illegally. She said no drugs were found in her home. And as for the gun, she admits to having it in the house. But she said it belonged to her son. She didn’t find it until six or seven months after he died. Not knowing what to do with it, she wrapped it up, put it in a drawer and forgot about it.

What, the Million Mommies didn’t run a “gun buyback?”

Contacted later, Davis said he had no comment on Stevens’ statements.

Since her son’s death, Stevens has become involved in the anti-gun-violence movement. She helped establish and is president of a Springfield chapter of the Million Mom March, an organization that aims to prevent gun violence.

Last fall, she appeared with other anti-gun advocates at a Statehouse news conference to urge federal officials to renew a ban against semiautomatic assault weapons.

Jonathan Lackland, Midwest regional director of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, the march’s partner organization, said he was shocked to hear about Stevens’ arrest.

He wished to withhold comment on the case until he learned more about it, but he did say he knew Stevens was dedicated to the cause.

“I know Miss Stevens, and I know her character,” Lackland said. “I know after the death of her son, it really prompted her to jump full force into activism in terms of gun-violence prevention.

Perhaps then she might have started a little earlier and kept her son from having a pistol with the serial number scratched off? She didn’t keep HIM from getting a gun, but she wants to keep everybody ELSE from having one?

“She has been a staunch supporter of gun-violence-prevention measures,” Lackland added. “She has lived by (the theme of) ‘I don’t want anyone to go through the pain and misery I have gone through. I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.'”

Stevens has not been formally connected to any crime directly related to the drive-by shootings. But Friday’s discoveries could lead to her being charged with defacing the identification marks on a handgun, manufacture/delivery of a controlled substance and having no valid firearm owner’s ID card, police said.

This now makes TWO of the significantly-less-than-a-Million Mommies who’ve gotten into legal trouble over firearms. Back in 2001, Barbara Graham – another mother who lost a son – got 10 years to life for shooting and paralysing a young man who had nothing to do with her son’s death.

I really shouldn’t, but the word “schadenfreude” just rolls trippingly off the tongue at times like this.

Matt at Stop the Bleating! has a little different take on this topic.