Tag: politics

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I Don’t Know Why, But This Still Astounds Me…

First, I discover that in July of last year, Senator Obama asked a crowd of Iowans:

“Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?” the senator said. “I mean, they’re charging a lot of money for this stuff.”

The New York Times helpfully informs its “hip, urban” audience:

The state of Iowa, for all of its vast food production, does not have a Whole Foods, a leading natural and organic foods market. The closest? Omaha, Minneapolis or Kansas City.

Mr. Obama, perhaps sensing a lack of reaction from the crowd, moved along to the next topic. After all, he never claimed to be a farming expert.

Just a guess, but I’m willing to bet most Iowa farmers are more familiar with iceberg lettuce than arugula, and most non-farming Iowans shop at the local Fareway which probably doesn’t carry arugula. The NYT covers his faux pas with its glib “He never claimed to be a farming expert” line, but what he illustrated was that he had absolutely no feel for (and I’ll capitalize) Middle America.

And he still doesn’t.

Nor is he alone in this, apparently obviously.

I was also not aware that his latest “guns and God, xenophobia and bigotry” gaffe was reported by none other than his acolytes at The Huffington Post by someone who supports him and who paid $2,300 to see him at that posh Hollywood mansion appearance that was otherwise closed to the media. Not only that, but the piece written by Mayhill Fowler was submitted for editorial review! And Ariana Huffington herself, while on David Geffen’s palatial yacht in Tahiti (probably eating arugula in her salads), gave it the go-ahead!

I am reminded of Bernard Goldberg’s analysis of Eric Enberg’s CBS Evening News “Reality Check” piece from the 1996 campaign of then-candidate Steve Forbes’ “Flat Tax” proposal. The piece was so biased that it drove Goldberg to write an editorial on it that was published in the Wall Street Journal. That op-ed cost Goldberg his job at CBS, and his book Bias grew out of his experience. In Bias he wrote:

Jerry Kelly from Enterprise, Alabama, spotted the bias in the Enberg report. Jerry Kelly spotted the wise guy and the one-sidedness. And Jerry Kelly is a general building contractor, not a newsman.

Who didn’t find anything wrong with Enberg’s piece?

First off, Enberg didn’t.

His producer in Washington didn’t.

The Evening News senior producer in Washington didn’t.

Jeff Fager, the executive producer of the CBS Evening News in New York didn’t.

His team of senior producers in New York didn’t.

Andrew Heyward, the CBS News president and Harvard Phi Beta Kappa, didn’t.

And finally, Dan Rather, the anchorman and managing editor of the CBS Evening News didn’t.

Not one of them spotted anything wrong with a story that no one should have let on the air in the first place.

Here, nobody saw anything wrong with what Obama said, in Hollywood, on Millionaire’s Row, at a $2,300-a-ticket fundraiser.

Mayhill Fowler didn’t.

Marc Cooper, editorial coordinator for Huffington Post didn’t.

Amanda Michel, another HuffPo editorial layer didn’t.

Editor Roy Sekoff didn’t.

Ariana Huffington herself didn’t.

But millions of Middle Americans did, and they’re not newspeople or politicians.

This was not a story dug up by Obama’s opposition, this was a story released by his supporters – none of whom recognized the bomb that Obama had built and that they were dropping.

And what is apparently worse is the report that Obama’s “aides tell reporters he is privately bewildered that anybody took offense” – thus his “If I worded things in a way that made people offended…” non-apology.

What’s worse than that? Apparently a big chunk of the country thinks his characterization of rural America is correct, not just the “hip, urban” crowd and those who ride around on 425-foot yachts or pay $2,300 to see candidates in the multi-million dollar mansions of their most fervent supporters.

I said in a comment that I predict no matter who wins the Democrat nomination, the Presidential race is going to be the nastiest, dirtiest election this nation has seen since Andrew Jackson ran. Commenter Bilgeman, however, may have the right of it:

We can survive a Jackson campaign.

I’d be more worried about a repeat of the 1860 election.

The Great Divide between the Left and the Right in this country just keeps getting wider, and nowhere is that better illustrated than here.

Markadelphia Defends Obama’s Elitism

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This one deserved a post of its own. In response to yesterday’s Quote of the Day, Markadelphia responds:

About two weeks ago, Senator Obama was on Hardball and told the audience that he believed that marriage was defined as being between a man and a woman. There was little or no reaction to this comment, the “liberal” media did not cover it wall to wall for two days, and the gay community did not go ape shit.

Yeah, why is that? Could it be because he’s a Democrat?

Compare the reaction at that time with his most recent comment….hmm…we’ll come back to that in a moment.

So, why don’t we look at the FULL quote.

“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow those communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.

And it’s not surprising to me then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti immigrant sentiment or anti trade sentiment as to way to explain their frustrations.”

Based on the reaction he has received about the comment, I think his statement is quite accurate. The Qotd reaction (and Kevin’s) is quite typical of the “rock granite” stubborn refusal to look at who is actually fucking them over and continually blame the “other” which, ironically, is what Obama is describing. It’s a distraction from the serious issues of the day and it puts energy into something that will ultimately solve no problems–which works out perfectly for the people (Bush, Cheney and pundit machine) who supposedly are on their side.

I have a tradition of letting other people’s words say things if they can do it better than I, so here I will quote Marc Danziger, the “Armed Liberal” from Windsofchange.net on the full quote:

Here’s Obama’s original quote:

So, it depends on where you are, but I think it’s fair to say that the places where we are going to have to do the most work are the places where people feel most cynical about government. The people are mis-appre…I think they’re misunderstanding why the demographics in our, in this contest have broken out as they are. Because everybody just ascribes it to ‘white working-class don’t wanna work — don’t wanna vote for the black guy.’ That’s…there were intimations of that in an article in the Sunday New York Times today – kind of implies that it’s sort of a race thing.

Here’s how it is: in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, and they feel so betrayed by government, and when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn’t buy it. And when it’s delivered by — it’s true that when it’s delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama (laugher), then that adds another layer of skepticism (laughter).

But — so the questions you’re most likely to get about me, ‘Well, what is this guy going to do for me? What’s the concrete thing?’ What they wanna hear is — so, we’ll give you talking points about what we’re proposing — close tax loopholes, roll back, you know, the tax cuts for the top 1 percent. Obama’s gonna give tax breaks to middle-class folks and we’re gonna provide health care for every American. So we’ll go down a series of talking points.

But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

—

Obama believes that the people he’s discussing – poorer, gun-owning, church-going economic left-behinds in rural America are bitter and negative toward government because it hasn’t delivered.

There’s an alternate hypothesis, which is that they don’t think it’s supposed to. That there are a solid body of Americans who believe – with whatever justification or historical validity – that government’s role is to leave them alone. I’ll bet that people who believe those things tend to migrate away from major cities or never move to them, tend to go to church a lot, believe in guns, and in American culture. They are – wait for it – culturally conservative.

Marc thinks that liberals “can reach them, should reach them, and must reach them.

I disagree, because I’m one of the ones who believes that government’s role ought to leave me alone as much as possible. Here’s the Rev. Donald Sensing on the same point:

Let’s look at Obama’s laundry list of Pennsylvanians’ dysfunctions again:

  • bitterness
  • “Clinging to”

  • guns
  • religion
  • racism
  • chauvinism
  • anti-trade sentiment

    • Reading the full context of Obama’s remarks, it strikes me that he believes that all of these (presumed) symptoms spring from the fact that there is too little control of the economy by the federal government. Obama said that all of these dysfunctions began when the government let their jobs go away and then, through both Republican and Democrat administrations, did nothing to “regenerate” them.

    It is the lack of regulation of the economy, Obama believes, that makes people bitter, racist, religious, hunters, patriotic or protectionist. All these things are bad, and they all result from free-market, democratic capitalism. I know that many of you reading this will think I’m over-reaching here, but I stand my ground: Obama’s remarks are in fact as clear a declaration of cleaving to socialism as almost anything he could have said.

    Mrs. Clinton had a politically brilliant, though ideologically identical, rebuttal:

    “It’s being reported that my opponent said that the people of Pennsylvania who faced hard times are bitter; well, that’s not my experience,” Mrs. Clinton told an audience at Drexel University. “Pennsylvanians don’t need a president who looks down on them; they need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them, who works hard for your futures, your jobs, your families.”

    Coming from a hard leftwinger like Hillary, this statement is easy to parse: the presumed reason those jobs were were lost 25 years ago was lack of federal regulation of corporations. Since Hillary has already said she wants to force mortgage lenders to freeze rates of existing and future loans for five years, it’s not hard to imagine that she might propose one day to forbid companies from firing people or moving jobs elsewhere in the country or the world. I mean, she actually did propose, back in the day, that you and I not be allowed to choose our own doctor. What level of coercive regulation could possibly be considered a stretch for her to embrace?

    It has been commented exhaustively across the blogosphere and the MSM commenti that there’s not a dime’s worth of difference in the political ideology of Hillary and Barack. True that, and it’s Euro-style socialism through and through.

    But what I find especially disturbing in Obama’s remarks, that I have not seen in Mrs. Clinton’s ever, is the ideal of the “perfectibility of man.” This is the hoariest socialist doctrine of all, explicit in Marxism and later, Marxism-Leninism. This is an idea so utterly vacuous and foolish that not even the Euro socialist governments cleave to it, if they ever did, except in Eastern Europe, and then only when they were communist. Clearly implicit on Obama’s remarks is the idea that since racism, religion et. al., arise from the lack of government regulation, they can be expunged by more of it.

    • You remember the “perfectibility of man,” don’t you? Obama’s going to “heal our souls” – he’s the only candidate that can!

    You see, we can all become virtuous if only the government controlled our lives.

    Not only are Obama’s remarks a clarion call to socialism, they also objectify the people he refers to. He dismissed them as free, moral agents in their own right. Gosh, it’s no wonder those white people hate blacks and Hispanics, go to church and buy guns and feel angry – they can’t help it. The government has let them down. But with proper government regulation, intervention, activism (oh, just pick your own name), then they won’t be racists, religious, xenophobic, or own guns.

    It gets worse:

    “It comes off very badly,” Democratic strategist Kirsten Powers said of the small-town America remarks.” They are things that I think in a liberal world sound totally normal, and outside of that world I don’t know that he appreciates how it sounds. And it just sounds very elitist, and it sounds like he’s looking down on people.”

    Emphasis added. (I except WOC’s own Armed Liberal from Ms. Powers’ observation, but that a Democratic “strategist” said it is pretty revealing, I think.) That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

    Yes, it does come off very badly. But Markadelphia doesn’t recognize that. He continues:

    The people they should really be pissed off at are laughing all the way to the bank…..the people that have manipulated their bitterness and their honesty into votes.

    Several here lament long and hard about how liberals are “sheeple” who follow along with whatever their side says. To a certain extent and with certain people, this is true. However, the art of getting people to become sheeple has never been more perfected than it has with the “stupid rednecks in flyover country who believe in God, guns and country.” This recent flap is an excellent example.

    Thanks, Mark, for telling us what you really think of us pore, ig’nant, Jeebus-freak gun owners! You sound exactly like Obama! (I’m shocked, shocked, I say!) You too believe that “it is the lack of regulation of the economy that makes people bitter, racist, religious, hunters, patriotic or protectionist,” so what Obama said rolls off you like water off a duck’s back.

    It illustrates how the “fake outrage machine” works in this country.

    Trust me – the outrage ain’t fake.

    A bunch of people will now get angry at Obama for being “condescending” or the terribly false belief that he actually looks at people as Kevin says he does.

    So, by all means, let’s continue to debate, ad nauseaum, how Senator Obama is an “elitist” or a hater of America. Meanwhile, Bush Co will dance with glee as it continues to pull several layers of wool over millions of eyes.

    Mark? Bush isn’t running this year. And all three candidates with any chance for the office are elitists who believe that they know better than everyone else how to run our lives.

    Hillary Clinton thinks of Middle America the same way, but she’s (so far) been smart enough not to say so in public. And McCain? I think he believes he knows how to do everything better than anyone. Take his “comprehensive immigration reform,” his “campaign finance reform” etc., etc.

    You don’t go into politics unless you think you’re better than other people.

    Here’s a clue for you, Mark: All politicians “pull the wool” over the electorate’s eyes. It’s been that way from the beginning. In Barak’s case, the mask slipped – very publicly.

    KevinLeave a comment

    Quote of the Day.

    I found this one early Friday, but didn’t have a chance to post it. It’s via Kathryn Jean Lopez at National Review Online:

    It occurs to me that more and more that Obama is actually a political stem cell. He has the promise to become anything you want him to become and cure everything.

    I thought that was a particularly apt analogy.

    Until later that same Friday, when Barack (middle name shall not be mentioned) Obama let the mask slip in front of his San Francisco homies and said the words that whipped around the world in microseconds:

    It’s not surprising, then, they (small-town Pennsylvanians) get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

    Stem-cell? Not so much. Stereotypical liberal who panders to the hoi polloi for their vote? Yeah. Pretty much. Especially his absolutely typical non-apology:

    If I worded things in a way that made people offended, I deeply regret that.

    “Because I meant it, but I would have rather said it in a way that kept you from understanding exactly what I meant. I regret saying it, but it’s what I think about you stupid rednecks in flyover country who believe in God, guns and country.”

    The news media is right, Obama’s comments do give Clinton an opening – and a warning: Keep your true thoughts to yourself, and above all, keep bamboozling the base! If the mask slips, if the façade cracks, it can all come crashing down in an instant.

    Oh, and here’s the QotD:

    Bite me. Lave my nethers, neglecting not the ‘taint, you effete, snobbish, socialist, class-war-mongering whore. The condescension drips off of your words, but here’s the thing: telling people that you think they’re backwards, inbred whiny rednecks with hard-ons for guns and Jesus is not the way to win their votes. We get it: you’re all enlightened, and here to lead us po’, ig’nant, heavily-armed, toothless Jeebus-lovers to Ye Olde Hope Village d’Changeville, where we’ll all get a unicorn that poops sparkly marshmallow rainbows.

    Far a candidate who is promising to unite us, you’re certainly playing the whole “politics of Othering” vote-mongering, balls-deep.

    Ayup. I wish I could have said it half that well.

    UPDATE, 4/13 via Instapundit:

    Seizing Moment, Hillary Totes Bible to Gun Range

    Sensing an opportunity to portray Sen. Barack Obama as elitist and out of touch after his remarks about “bitter” rural Americans who cling to guns, God and xenophobia, Sen. Hillary Clinton stopped after church today at an indoor gun range, where she fired roughly 300 rounds through a handgun she said she carries concealed everywhere she goes.

    Her lower lip bulging from a dip of Skoal, Sen. Clinton put her Bible in her handbag, and drew out her own Para Ordnance Warthog .45 caliber pistol.

    You know it’s Scrappleface because a real authorized journalist would never get the details of the firearm right!

    KevinLeave a comment

    Tam on the 17th Amendment.

    All you ever needed to know about that particular example of cranial flatulence.

    Honestly, given the fact that the 16th (income tax) and 17th (popular election of Senators) Amendments passed in 1913 (both inarguably due to “progressive” influence) followed by the 18th Amendment (Prohibition) in 1919 and the 19th Amendment (women’s suffrage) in 1920, we have the briefest period of massive (and on the part of the first three, destructive) change to the Constitution since its ratification.

    Yes, I blame the Left. Yes, I think it was intentional.

    KevinLeave a comment

    Too Long to be the QotD, Too Good to Pass Up:.

    The press coverage of Iraq, the WoT, and conservatives generally seems to be getting worse almost by the day. I see an analogy between hunger and the story the lefty press is hankering for – the one that busts the “we’re making progress” idea wide open. Imagine a small animal in cover that would have to leave the cover and risk predation to get food. The species has evolved a sensible moderate fear of being in the open – too willing to leave cover, the animal gets eaten. Too unwilling, it dies of starvation. Over generations, a roughly sensible degree of willingness to leave cover evolves. But now suppose food becomes scarce. The value of staying in cover rapidly drops as starvation threatens, so the animal becomes more willing to leave cover in search of food – becomes reckless, even, if food is scarce enough. Recklessness in search of food becomes a better bargain as hunger increases.

    The reporter looking for the big story that finally, finally gets Bush – the story Chimpy McHitlerBurton cannot escape – that reporter is facing an increasing threat of starvation. 10 months and counting down. Time is running out. The animal must leave cover. The press must dispense with even the pretense of objectivity and go out into the open. I predict more and more recklessly open bias in reporting between now and January. They’re getting hungrier and hungrier. They’re staring starvation right in the eye… – “Hyperpotamus” in a quote at Confederate Yankee: MSNBC Games McCain Speech with Irrelevant “Breaking News”

    As I told him, he just described the end of Dan Rather’s career!

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    Want a Quick Overview on “Catastrophic Man-Made Global Warming”?

    I strongly recommend you watch the 50-minute film produced by Warren Meyer, the proprietor of Coyote Blog and Climate Skeptic. (Of course Warren can be ignored by the Catastrophic Man-Made Global Warming faithful – he once worked for Exxon, and admits it!)

    Warren offers multiple options for viewing his video. I just downloaded and watched the Windows Media version.

    Compare the information in his video to this 30-second “Public Dis-Service” commercial designed to frighten our children:

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU7BO35n47I&hl=en&w=425&h=355]

    I am now thoroughly convinced that “Catastrophic Man-Made Global Warming” is nothing more or less than the latest incarnation of Rachael Carlson’s “Silent Spring” and Paul Erlich’s “Population Bomb” – another excuse to politicize all aspects of life, and to frighten the population into giving unlimited power to government officials in order to “save us from ourselves.”

    As Richard Thripp at the YouTube site commented on the “Tick, Tick” video:

    Together we can obliterate self-sovereignty!

    That is the plan. And that is the Quote of the Day.

    KevinLeave a comment

    Quote of the Day.

    (S)he was a liar. She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality. – Jerry Zeifman, now-retired general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee who supervised Hillary Rodham when she worked on the Watergate investigation on why he fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation.

    Color me unsurprised. Leopards don’t change their spots, either. And now she has a creditable shot at the Oval Office.

    KevinLeave a comment

    You Will Never Find a More Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy

    (I wanted to post this on Tuesday, but illness and work has postponed it until now.) From the press conference held by Mayor Adrian Fenty and the rest of the D.C. team immediately after oral arguments in D.C. v. Heller. Fenty:

    I want to again emphasize that this case is public safety case. We have long had a law in the District of Columbia are banned in the city. Thirty years ago, as is the case today, handguns represent a disproportionate number of crimes in the District of Columbia. Everything from homicides to robberies to rapes.

    Well then, doesn’t that tell you that the BAN DOESN’T WORK?

    No, of course not!

    The fact that we have had a handgun ban has significantly curtailed the number of violent crimes in the city as evidenced by the fact that violent crime has steadily gone down since the law was enacted.

    Outright, blatant, unapologetic LIE #1. Here is a nice compilation of FBI crime statistics for the District of Columbia in one place. The law was enacted in 1976:

    Murder: 26.8/100,000
    Rape: 72.4/100,000
    Robbery: 1,003.4/100,000
    Aggravated assault: 378.8/100,000

    In 1980:

    Murder: 31.5/100,000
    Rape: 69.1/100,000
    Robbery: 1,400.6/100,000
    Aggravated assault: 509.4/100,000

    In 1985:

    Murder: 23.5/100,000
    Rape: 53.8/100,000
    Robbery: 835.5/100,000
    Aggravated assault: 712.0/100,000

    In 1990:

    Murder: 77.8/100,000
    Rape: 49.9/100,000
    Robbery: 1,213.5/100,000
    Aggravated assault: 1,117.0/100,000

    In 1995:

    Murder: 65.0/100,000
    Rape: 52.7/100,000
    Robbery: 1,239.0/100,000
    Aggravated assault: 1,304.7/100,000

    In 2000:

    Murder: 41.8/100,000
    Rape: 43.9/100,000
    Robbery: 621.3/100,000
    Aggravated assault: 810.0/100,000

    In 2005:

    Murder: 29.1/100,000
    Rape: 31.8/100,000
    Robbery: 658.4/100,000
    Aggravated assault: 789.1/100,000

    Yet Mayor Fenty expects us to accept that the handgun ban somehow caused crime rates in D.C. to “steadily decline.”

    Bullshit.

    Here’s a page that compares Washington, Arlington, and Alexandria – three cities in very close geographical location, but with vastly different gun laws. In 2005, D.C. (with a handgun ban and a population of 550,000) had 195 homicides. Alexandria, VA (right next door with a population of 130,000 and “shall-issue” concealed-carry) had 3. That’s a rate comparison of 35.4/100,000 for D.C. to (carry the one…) 2.3/100,000. But D.C. is supposedly safer because of its gun laws?

    That’s Fenty’s talking point!

    As mayor of the District of Columbia, I can attest that the majority of the residents of this city enthusiastically support the laws the council passed in the seventies, and want it to continue in order that crime continues to go down.

    I don’t think he really gives a damn what the residents of the city think. They very well might support such laws if they are stupid enough to swallow this kind of bilge as “fact.”

    Next up, Chief of Police, Cathy L. Lanier

    I have said many, many times as Police Chief of Washington, D.C. and after policing here in the city for nearly eighteen years, that the issue with handguns to me is very clear: a weapon that is easily concealed, that can be taken inside of schools, inside of churches, inside of government buildings, without anyone’s knowledge and be used, uh, and even high-capacity, uh rounds, capacity for a lot of handguns to create massive destruction is something that we don’t want in the District of Columbia.

    Yet you think a ban will (or has) stopped this? The national homicide rate in 2005 was 5.6/100,000. In D.C. it was 29.1. “But D.C. is a city,” you argue. The homicide rate in New York City in 2005 was 6.6. In Boston, 12.9. Orlando, 10.5. Washington, D.C. ranked #13 out of 353 different cities for homicide rate in the U.S. in 2005. but we’re supposed to believe that Washington’s handgun ban actually keeps handguns out of the hands of criminals there?

    I think the reasonable standard of the handgun laws in the District, which are not completely a ban, because there is licensed handguns in the District of Columbia for law enforcement, retired law enforcement, federal law enforcement, security agencies, so it’s not a complete ban on handguns,…

    No, indeed. It’s just a ban for anyone who is not an “only one.” It’s a ban for anyone who doesn’t draw a government paycheck. And Anthony Heller, who is a security guard, and who carries a firearm to protect judges is not allowed to have that same firearm at home to protect himself. He’s not “only one” enough. But he was the “only one” enough to have standing in the suit against the City.

    Yet you believe this is “reasonable.”

    ...but I think there is some reasonableness on where and when certain types of weapons can and should not be carried. A great example of that was I had to surrender my weapon when I entered the Supreme Court today as Chief of Police of the District of Columbia, and I have no problem with that. I think it’s reasonable.

    Tell me, Chief; would you think it would be “reasonable” to drop you – in full uniform, sans radio and sidearm – in the middle of the highest-crime district of the city at eleven o’clock at night? Would you feel safe?

    So, I think again, as a person who’s looked at the other side of the gun violence, and the accidents, and the suicides and all the other things that go along with handgun possession in the District of Columbia, I think the arguments today were very strong on our behalf, and I’m excited and looking forward to the outcome.

    Wait, how can there be suicides and accidents and gun violence if there’s a ban that’s working?

    Now Peter Nickles, D.C. Attorney General:

    Good morning. In my view the ultimate issue here is can the City impose reasonable regulation on a Constitutional right.

    A complete ban on private possession is “reasonable regulation”?

    There is no Constitutional right that is not subject to reasonable regulation. I think, in the rebuttal, my colleague, the former Solicitor General Walter Dellinger, he made the ultimate point, and that is do you want a legislature that can deal with the idiosyncracies and the difficulties and the details of this city as distinct from a rural community making policy decisions, or do you want a thousand judges around the country deciding what the Second Amendment means and how it should be regulated?

    No, we just want the nine Justices on the Supreme Court bench doing that – finally, after seventy years. We’ve already tried the “thousand judges around the country” crap.

    But I felt the Justices were obviously very interested, it was a very spirited argument and we look forward to the outcome.

    I bet you do.

    Walter Dellinger:

    It was a very interesting and lively Court this morning. Obviously everyone on the Court was interested in debating the great issues of history and Constitutional law. At the end of the day, I think however one resolves those great theoretical and Constitutional issues, we come down to the fact that this is an extremely reasonable law…

    If you happen to not live under it, or are protected by “law enforcement, retired law enforcement, federal law enforcement, or security agencies.” If you happen to live in a high-crime area and are just Joe or Jane Average, however, it’s not so reasonable. Ask David Souter how safe D.C. is.

    …because the District of Columbia really thought this through, and they allowed rifles and shotguns – they believe in the right of people to be able to defend their homes.

    Outright, blatant, unapologetic LIE #2. Rifles and shotguns are required by law to be kept unloaded, and disassembled or equipped with a trigger lock. A gun in this condition is known as “a club.” Alan Gura pointed this out during his oral argument. Amazing how the City somehow magically found this “loophole” in their complete ban on functional firearms in the home.

    They singled out handguns because they are as the Chief of Police said, a unique weapon because they are concealable and mobile. They can be taken on busses, on the Metro, into schools, into offices, into government buildings. They were responsible for ninety percent of the armed robberies in the year before this law was enacted and they were used in every single rape in which a weapon was used, it was a handgun, in the year before this law was enacted. The facilitate suicides, they are prone to accidents, and I’ve talked to the police officers of the District, and they tell me how concerned they are about concealable handguns when they have to execute a warrant or go into a scene at a home of a domestic disturbance and what the risk is to law enforcement.

    What? Thirty years after the ban went into effect the police are still concerned?

    Wow. That reasonable law has worked wonders, hasn’t it?

    We think this is a reasonable law…

    Did somebody change the dictionary meaning of “reasonable” to “counterproductive” when I wasn’t looking? Is this another example of right-wing language manipulation that no one told me about?

    …and that the decision ought to be overturned because it sets an absolutist position that if you have a weapon, a kind of weapon that is a lineal descendent of something that was in 1787 you absolutely may not prohibit that weapon at all. And we think, as the Solicitor General of the United States said today that that would put at risk prohibition on machine guns and armor piercing bullets which are a threat to our law enforcement officers. So we hope that when considerations are given to the reasonableness of this law and the alternatives that are allowed for self-defense, that this law will be sustained.

    Again, a complete ban is considered a “reasonable restriction”? Hunting ammunition for centerfire rifles will defeat police vests. Should all centerfire rifle ammunition be banned? Is that “reasonable”?

    It is in their world.

    Vincent Gray, D.C. City Council Chairman:

    As the Mayor indicated, homicides in the District of Columbia have gone down.

    Sure. There were 188 homicides in D.C. in 1976, and 195 in 2005. That equals “going down” in my book! The population of Washington D.C. has ALSO gone down, from 702, 000 in 1976 to 582,000 in 2005.

    Go on, pull my other leg.

    In a substantial part because of our ban on handguns.

    Then you ought to be able to prove that. But since you’re lying from the outset (and no one is calling you on it in public), why bother?

    I shudder to think that if we were to have this ban removed what kind of lawless behavior we would see in the District of Columbia.

    Ah, yes. Here’s the key graph of the whole thing: the “Wild West shootouts,” the “blood in the streets” that we always hear about – but never actually GET. D.C. already has “Wild West shootouts” and “blood in the streets.” What Mr. Gray fears is that the law abiding citizens will start acting like the criminals who already infest his city.

    In short, like most politicians, he doesn’t trust his own constituency. (Well, seeing that they’re stupid enough to reelect Marion “Bitch set me up!” Barry, maybe he’s on to something after all…)

    Frankly, if we were able to prohibit importation of guns into the District of Columbia, I think we would be even closer to zero homicides than we are now.

    So let’s see about chucking the protection against unreasonable searches? Wouldn’t that be “reasonable”? I mean, after all, it’s a public safety case, right?

    This is the semantic equivalent of “Communism hasn’t worked because it’s never really been tried.” The entire island nation of Great Britain has banned handguns. They have no adjoining neighbor nations. You have to either fly, take a ferry or the Chunnel to get there. And their handgun crime has never been higher than it is right now – more than double what it was when all legally registered and licensed guns were turned in by their owners. “If we were able to prohibit importation of guns” is the fantasy that all gun-ban supporters dream of. It’s the same as “If pigs could fly.” The philosophy cannot be wrong! Do it again, only HARDER!

    So I think a strong argument was made today, and I feel confident that when the Court considers this they will consider the District of Columbia’s law eminently reasonable.

    I hope not. I hope they slap you so hard your momma says “Ouch!” But I don’t expect that. I’ll settle for an unequivocal definition of the right to arms as an individual one.

    I really want to see the Ninth Circuit’s Hickman decision overturned.

    Fenty, answering questions from the media:

    As Mayor of the District of Columbia, more guns anywhere in the District of Columbia is going to lead to more crime, and that is why we stand so steadfastly against the repeal of our handgun ban.

    Even though in the entire nation we add 3-4 million firearms per year, but crime has been going down since the early 1990’s. Here’s a man firmly attached to his fantasy. This is the gun-banner’s mantra – guns are the cause of crime. They give off evil brain-altering waves that make people commit violent crime, suicide, and accidents. Guns are talismans of evil!

    Dick Heller was asked:

    Why does this case mean so much to you? Why was it worth taking to the Supreme Court?

    Heller answered:

    It’s a basic issue of our Constitutional right to our life and self-defense has been violated. And additionally, as a security officer, I carry a gun to protect government officials, but my life isn’t worth protecting at home, in their eyes.

    That’s it in a nutshell.

    And here’s the Quote of the Day:

    The ruling class doesn’t care about public safety. Having made it very difficult for States and localities to police themselves, having left ordinary citizens with no choice but to protect themselves as best they can, they now try to take our guns away. In fact they blame us and our guns for crime. This is so wrong that it cannot be an honest mistake. – former U.S. Sen. Malcolm Wallop (R-Wy.)

    Not one of the fine representatives of the City of Washington, D.C. could be properly tagged with the word “honest.” They wouldn’t know honesty if it bit them on the ass.