Adolphus Busch IV, heir to the Busch family brewing fortune, resigned his lifetime membership in the National Rifle Association on Thursday,
writing in a letter to NRA President David Keene, "I fail to see how the
NRA can disregard the overwhelming will of its members who see
background checks as reasonable." (My emphasis) .... "The NRA I see today has undermined the values upon which it was
established," wrote Busch. "Your current strategic focus clearly places
priority on the needs of gun and ammunition manufacturers while
disregarding the opinions of your 4 million individual members."
How much more insane commentary will the members have to hear from Wayne LaPierre before there is a stampede out of the National Rifle Association? How many more cowardly retreats from voting for background checks by members of Congress before they awaken to the fact that 90% of the citizens of the US favor background checks? For whom do the craven Congress critters work? The citizens or the NRA? I think we know.
Don't be fooled by the smile and benign expression on his face.
Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes. I
don’t think there is anything to be gained by any Senator to vote
against continuation of this act. And I am fairly confident it will be
reenacted in perpetuity unless — unless a court can say it does not
comport with the Constitution. You have to show, when you are treating different States differently, that there’s a good reason for it.
That’s the — that’s the concern that those of us who — who have some
questions about this statute have. It’s — it’s a concern that this is
not the kind of a question you can leave to Congress. There are certain
districts in the House that are black districts by law just about now. And
even the Virginia Senators, they have no interest in voting against
this. The State government is not their government, and they are going
to lose — they are going to lose votes if they do not reenact the Voting
Rights Act.
Above is Justice Antonin Scalia's response to arguments in a case before the Supreme Court brought by Shelby County, Alabama, to dilute the Voting Rights Acts. How is the right to vote an entitlement? There's a history here that Scalia seems to have forgotten. Perhaps consideration might be given to strengthening the Voting Rights Act to include the entire country, as we heard many stories of attempts at voter suppression in areas outside the South during the recent election. Reducing the number of days for early voting, which results in long lines, 6 to 8 hours in some precincts, amounts to voter suppression.
Despite the low esteem with which Congress is regarded today, and despite Scalia's words to the contrary, it's still the duty of the legislative branch to pass laws in the country.
Anyway, I'll let Rachel Maddow on the Jon Stewart show have the last word on Scalia.
It sure looks as if we’re going over the fiscal cliff, but that may be the least of our problems. The debt ceiling is a much bigger and more dangerous issue, and it looks very much as if Republicans are set to destroy the full faith and credit of the United States if they can’t get their way.
Read the entire post. I wanted to add "stupid" to my title, but I refrained in the spirit of the season of peace and good will, but I suppose thinking "stupid" is in the same category as lust in the heart. Oh well. Mea culpa.
Paul Krugman is my favorite economist. Why
the president and Democrats in Congress don't pay attention to Krugman is a
mystery to me. He knows his subject, does the research and the math,
and speaks what looks like plain common sense to me. He should be Secretary of the Treasury, but, if offered the position (not
likely), he might not accept. A Facebook friend reminded me that Krugman won the Nobel Prize, which should count for something, however I fear certain citizens of the country view Nobel Prizes as a liberal plot, thus it counts for nothing with them.
Did anyone in the audience at the UN laugh out loud? How could they contain themselves upon seeing Netanyahu show a bomb right out of a Looney Tunes cartoon? My first thought was of Wile E. Cayote.
The Israeli Likud Party’s cover story for why it wants to draw the United States into a war with Iran makes no real sense. Prime Minister
Binyamin Netanyahu has been predicting an Iranian nuclear bomb since
1992 (a time when Iran had no nuclear program at all), and he has been
wrong for 15 years in a row. Minister of Defense Ehud Barak and other
Israeli officials have said publicly that Iran has not decided to go for
a nuclear weapon.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has given more than one fatwa or formal
religious ruling that making and stockpiling nuclear weapons are
forbidden in Islamic law. Netanyahu is in a position similar to
that of someone who wants to argue that Pope Benedict XVI secretly has a
condom factory operating in the Vatican.
Bibi makes the case for war with Iran on the same bases that he made the case for war in Iraq. By changing only one letter in the name of the country and using pretty much the same pattern of lies and misinformation which were successful in persuading Cheney/Bush to launch a war in Iraq, Bibi's script promoting an attack on Iran was written. Check out the 2002 video of Bibi's testimony before Congress, explaining the dangers of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, which were later proved to be non-existent.
