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NRA fears politicization of the Justice Department

Friday, May 4, 2007

Via Americablog, we learn that the NRA is opposing a proposal to ban gun sales to suspected terrorists. There’s nothing really surprising about the NRA taking that position. They’re nothing if not consistent. They’ll probably get their way. After all, this is the Administration that barred the FBI from checking gun records of people who were detained as potential terrorists. Illegal detention yes, poking your nose into gun ownership, no.

In a way, you have to admire the NRA. At least they stick to their guns, so to speak, and protect their made up Constitutional rights. That’s more than most of us do for our real Constitutional rights.

Something in the article made me come up short, though. If ever an Administration gave its all to the NRA, it would be the present one. You’d think the NRA would cut it a bit of slack. But no. They’ve got a fresh new reason to resist federal intervention in the sacred rights of terrorist gun buyers:

“Right now law enforcement carefully monitors all firearms sales to those on the terror watch list,” said NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam. “Injecting the attorney general into the process just politicizes it.”

Really, in light of recent news, that’s like rubbing salt in an open wound.

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In which I almost agree with Bush

Thursday, May 3, 2007

Ooh. That was scary. For one brief moment I found myself almost agreeing with George Bush about something.

Bush has threatened to veto newly passed hate crimes legislation that would extend hate crimes protection to gender and sexual orientation.

The White House, in a statement warning of a veto, said state and local criminal laws already cover the new crimes defined under the bill, and there was “no persuasive demonstration of any need to federalize such a potentially large range of violent crime enforcement.”

I actually have some sympathy with the argument that federal criminal law has tended to trespass on what should be a state domain. Even Alexander Hamilton pretended to agree that, in the ordinary course, it should be up to the states to take care of the administration of criminal laws.

There has, over the course of the last 40 years or so, been a tendency for Congress to federalize what were previously solely state matters. Any time there is a perceived crime problem, (e.g., drugs, gangs, etc.) Congress passes another criminal law, usually jacking up penalties, and often making only a passing gesture toward establishing a basis for federal jurisdiction. Not only is the trend constitutionally troubling, but it is often a waste of federal resources. It is questionable whether the federal government does a better job than the states in battling street crime, for example.

As I said, I almost agreed with Bush on this, but not quite. In keeping with his normal pattern, he has chosen to oppose the exception, while he would certainly endorse the rule. History has shown all too well that, at least when we are not ruled by a right wing cabal, it is the federal government that has protected minorities, while it is the state governments that have afflicted them. Crimes motivated by hate are precisely the sort of crimes that the have been a primarily federal responsibility since the end of the Civil War. The first Civil Rights Statutes were designed to prevent hate crimes. There are a lot of crimes that we should probably de-federalize (and you can bet Bush would oppose touching a single one) but we should definitely not relieve the federal government of the responsibility of preventing hate crimes.

By the way, I fully recognize that the reason Bush gave for opposing the legislation is only a fig leaf, his real reason being his desire to play to his right wing religious base, which wants to preserve its own right to persecute gay people, while enjoying protected status themselves under current hate crimes legislation.

So anyway, I feel better. For a while there I thought I might be coming down with something.

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I’ll have Spam, Spam, Spam and Spam

Thursday, May 3, 2007

I am still finding my way around in the big wide world of the real internet. My old blog was on .Mac, and while this current platform is far more flexible, there are some disadvantages, one of which I discovered today.

I discovered today that spam is not restricted to email-it also infects comments. Today I got two spammed comments. One got through (I’ve since removed it), and one got caught by WordPress. I’m concerned that the number of spam comments might breed here like they do in my in-box a work.

I did a bit of research, and there are ways to deal with it. At the moment, I’m going to just watch the situation, but if it gets out of hand there’s a plug-in that I can install that should take care of the problem, but it requires a commenter to do a bit more work.

On another front, my wife pointed out that I referred to the blogger at Joe Courtney Watch as anonymous, when I myself am now anonymous. At my old site my name was part of the URL, but here it’s not, so I will be putting something up soon identifying myself.

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Update: Fickle Potheads abandoned Rob for Joe

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Proof, if any were needed, that there is still a need for the Fourth Estate, despite the rise of the bloggers. Yesterday I made reference to a blog post at a site called Joe Courtney Watch that attacked Joe Courtney for being a “Friend of Potheads”. The gravamen (that’s a legal term, you can look it up) of the complaint against Joe was that he was given money by a group that supports the rationalization of laws against marijuana.

I confined myself to a bit of snark, but Ted Mann of the Day committed journalism and did a little digging. (I am not implying that he did so as a result of my post by the way, it was clearly coincidental) The result? The post in question has been updated as follows:

Addendum:

Thanks to the work of The Day’s Ted Mann it has been shown that former Congressman Rob Simmons (R) accepted $5,000 from the group during his 2004 campaign against Jim Sullivan. In the interest of fairness and openness it is worth pointing that fact out.

Ladies and Gentlemen, this lonely Connecticut Republican blog is not going far. Real Republicans don’t do fairness, never mind openness. I do give them credit for falling back on the passive voice, though. That’s in the rich Republican tradition, as in “mistakes were made”.

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Juvenile in the White House

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Our 12 year old president:

[quicktime]https://ctblueblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/Bush and Condi.mov[/quicktime]

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Proactive

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Finally, folks on the left are getting proactive. There are a number of commercials set to air to attack Bush once he vetoes the Iraq Spending Bill. Here’s one:

However this ends, at least the grassroots won’t be caught flatfooted. All we need is for the folks in Washington to keep their newly grown backbones.

Note: Updated to correct grammatical error

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Pathetic Republicans on the attack

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

I embark upon blogging today with some trepidation, as I have just returned from the Seahorse restaurant, where my wife and I enjoyed the early week special ($21.99 for two meals and a bottle of wine, a mere $12.00 if you forego the wine). Unfortunately, my wife did not pull her weight, so far as drinking the wine was concerned, so I had to pull double duty. If this is somewhat disjointed, well, you have been warned.

The same wife who failed so miserably in the wine department sent me this link, to a website called “Joe Courtney Watch”. Sad, really. Anyway, it appears that Joe Courtney is a “FRIEND OF POTHEADS”. Far be it from me to defend potheads. I personally have never touched the stuff. Well, hardly ever. ( A free CTBlue T-Shirt, if I ever have them made, to the first person who can identify the literary/dramatic/operatic reference in the previous sentence) I have some vague recollections of having been in the same room when the substance was being used, but of course I spurned it when offered. Or if I didn’t spurn it, I didn’t inhale. Anyway, like Alberto, I really can’t recall. And if I do recall, I only remember that quite often there were cookies. That’s my story, such as it is, and I’m sticking to it. Anyway, it’s good to see that the anonymous author of Joe Courtney Watch has his or her eyes on the really important issues. Why worry about Iraq, global warming or health care? It’s really more important that we give people long prison sentences for smoking dope.

It must be difficult being a Republican these days. When your party has turned everything to shit, it’s pretty hard to come up with a positive reason to support your own side. It must be pretty painful to be reduced to suggesting (in another post to which I refuse to link) that the Democrats are too cozy with lobbyists. One would think that Republicans should at least wait until all the indictments are in, and all their Congressmen safely in jail, before they trot out that line of attack. It must be particularly lonely work for Republicans in rational states such as Connecticut. If you make the trek to this site, check out the blogroll.

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Now that’s more like it

Monday, April 30, 2007

Tony Snow is back, and he’s showing Dana Perino how it’s done. You may remember that I recently remarked that Dana just wasn’t a very good liar, an absolutely necessary skill for anyone chosen to be press secretary for this administration. Today Tony shows how it’s done, by claiming that Bush never made a connection between 9/11 and Saddam.

Needless to say, he pulls it off like a pro.

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Hard to believe but true: Gonzales even worse than we thought

Monday, April 30, 2007

In any sane world this should be the final nail in Gonzales coffin:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales signed a highly confidential order in March 2006 delegating to two of his top aides — who have since resigned because of their central roles in the firings of eight U.S. attorneys — extraordinary authority over the hiring and firing of most non-civil-service employees of the Justice Department. A copy of the order and other Justice Department records related to the conception and implementation of the order were provided to National Journal.

In the order, Gonzales delegated to his then-chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, and his White House liaison “the authority, with the approval of the Attorney General, to take final action in matters pertaining to the appointment, employment, pay, separation, and general administration” of virtually all non-civil-service employees of the Justice Department, including all of the department’s political appointees who do not require Senate confirmation. Monica Goodling became White House liaison in April 2006, the month after Gonzales signed the order.

The existence of the order suggests that a broad effort was under way by the White House to place politically and ideologically loyal appointees throughout the Justice Department, not just at the U.S.-attorney level. Department records show that the personnel authority was delegated to the two aides at about the same time they were working with the White House in planning the firings of a dozen U.S. attorneys, eight of whom were, in fact, later dismissed.

The initial draft of the order contained a complete delegation of authority to the “young puppies”, as one source refers to Goodling and Sampson. But some persnickety lawyer at the Office of Legal Counsel thought that might be unconstitutional, and for some reason they decided to care, and inserted a provision requiring Gonzales to rubber stamp the decisions.

In order to make sure that Paul McNulty, who was apparently suspected of integrity, did not oppose the plan, regulations were changed so that he could be kept out of the loop.

This is remarkable on several fronts, not the least of which is the fact that Gonzales was apparently so willing to participate in his own emasculation. Say what you want about slimeballs like Cheney and Rumsfeld, at least they have some self respect (after all, someone has to respect them).

Filed in Republican Corruption | | Comments (1)

Proving the obvious

Monday, April 30, 2007

School systems throughout our land are finding that children will enthusiastically engage in exercise if a computer tells them what to do instead of a gym teacher:

Children don’t often yell in excitement when they are let into class, but as the doors opened to the upper level of the gym at South Middle School here one recent Monday, the assembled students let out a chorus of shrieks.

In they rushed, past the Ping-Pong table, past the balance beams and the wrestling mats stacked unused. They sprinted past the ghosts of Gym Class Past toward two TV sets looming over square plastic mats on the floor. In less than a minute a dozen seventh graders were dancing in furiously kinetic union to the thumps of a techno song called “Speed Over Beethoven.”

…

It is a scene being repeated across the country as schools deploy the blood-pumping video game Dance Dance Revolution as the latest weapon in the nation’s battle against the epidemic of childhood obesity. While traditional video games are often criticized for contributing to the expanding waistlines of the nation’s children, at least several hundred schools in at least 10 states are now using Dance Dance Revolution, or D.D.R., as a regular part of their physical education curriculum.

Which is all to the good. Whatever works.

What caught my eye was this:

In a study last year, researchers from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., found that children playing Dance Dance Revolution expended significantly more energy than children watching television and playing traditional video games.

To paraphrase Hamlet’s pal, Horatio, it needs no researcher, come from the Mayo Clinic, to tell us this. Could they really have done a study to “find” that you burn more calories vigourously dancing than sitting in front of a computer? In the law biz we’d say you can take judicial notice of a fact like that.

We can only hope that the “finding” was actually a “taken for granted” within a wider study. If not, I would like to offer my services, as I feel fully capable of finding other such facts. It is well within my powers, for instance, to prove that water is wet and it’s warmer, on average, in the summer than in the winter.

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