Congress basically cancelled everything today, so it’s not a fore drawn conclusion the SHARE bill is dead. That said, political elites are never more protective of their prerogatives than when they feel targeted, so I’m not saying everything is coming up roses either. This isn’t a good situation to be in. It was assassinations that brought us the Gun Control Act of 1968.
Under Rep. Barry Loudermilk’s proposal, members who are allowed to conceal carry a weapon in their home state would be able to in Washington. Loudermilk, R-Ga., said the problem is that the nation’s capital does not recognize concealed carry licenses from other states.
Scalise is majority whip, so he gets a security detail. If Scalise hadn’t been there, there definitely would have been bodies stacked. I get that because of DC’s gun laws, you can’t take a firearm into the District, but the solution to that is to trash DC’s gun laws for everyone, and then preempt them from regulating guns ever again. Those same whack jobs are out there among us peons too, you know.
Also, as for the shooting, it’s another example of how bad the situation is getting. Unlike Gifford’s gunman, who was out of his gourd, this dude doesn’t seem to be crazy and knew exactly what he was doing. I don’t lay this current situation at the feet of any person or group, except maybe social media, which I’m coming to regard as poison.
If you keep telling people you’re fighting fascists, that your opponents are literally Hitler, it’s OK to shoot them right?
So far The Experts seem to have done about as good a job predicting the snowfall accumulation from this storm as they did the election. I didn’t go into the office today because I expected when I woke up, it would be snowpocalypse. Of course, there’s still more storm coming, but it’s looking like a dud here so far.
Not that I’m going to complain. I wasn’t look forward to shoveling 2 feet of the wet, heavy stuff off my driveway this afternoon. In other news, I absolutely hate The Weather Channel’s policy of naming winter storms. I hate it enough I’ve been actively boycotting them for their sin against meteorology.
A monument dedicated to women on the site of the largest complex of buildings owned exclusively by women seems like it would be a great place to stop and pay some respect during the Women’s March, doesn’t it?
It was, if you define paying respect by climbing up the monuments to slap on signs, clothing, and hanging crap off of the outstretched hands. If respecting the property means stomping over flower beds, kicking the greenery up, pushing through the bushes, leaving trash strewn about, and apparently also smearing paint on statues, then sure, lots of respect was paid to the monument and buildings owned by women. (The paint apparently isn’t visible in the videos below because they were shot after signs were placed on top, but I’ve seen it mentioned by several who visited the site later.)
The buildings owned exclusively by women since the empty city block across from the White House lawn was purchased more than 100 years ago – before women could even vote in this country – and are home to the Daughters of the American Revolution. DAR is non-partisan and apolitical. I know women in the group who are far more conservative than I’ll ever be and far more liberal than I’ve ever been. And yet we have a few things in common – a sense of respect for American history and values, and we’re always volunteering for something in our communities.
In fact, the monument that was “decorated” by the marchers is dedicated to the founders who spelled out that DAR was supposed to be a community service organization. Our current goal for recorded service in our community is 19 million hours collectively doing meaningful service – not writing checks or showing up to a gala for a cause – in 3 years. The 19 number comes from the fact that our final year of recording hours will be the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment.
I’ve seen marchers defend the mess they left on sidewalks by saying that the City wanted to handle clean up so they wouldn’t have as many trashcans that could be a security risk. Assuming that’s accurate, this mess is not on a sidewalk. In fact, much of it is not even on concrete. It’s in bushes and dropped over gardens. It’s on private property that women have to pay to clean. So all those complaints about the gender wage gap? A man is on video calling for people to leave their trash that women who make less will have to pay to have cleaned. That flower he laughs about kicking out of the ground, sure it’s just one bloom. But those gardens are paid for by women. So much for respect.
Inside those halls, if the people in the video had any interest in history, they would find a museum that primarily runs exhibits relating to women’s connections to history and craft. They would find collections put together by volunteers and staff (paid by women) dedicated to documenting the rich history that covers this country’s recent immigrants to the Revolution’s minority patriots. They would find out about how a group of women raised money to plant entire forests in every state – many of which are still preserved public green spaces today. Instead of actually showing even a reasonable level of respect for those efforts, they spread paint on our monuments and leave their trash behind as a “shrine” for women to clean up. (At least a past national officer reported that the paint seems to have been water based and was removed without further damaging the statue.)
But I have to say that it’s not just the marchers who left their trash behind in an effort to force non-partisan groups into partisan political debates, it’s also the reaction afterwards. Needless to say, the images of this vandalism have been shared widely in various DAR groups online. Some of the liberal members of the group are trying to put a positive spin on the intention, but also recognize that this is a man who is organizing some level of vandalism on our statues and that it will require women’s funds to clean up. I have seen some who have asked their fellow marchers to contribute to those expenses by donating to the DAR’s building maintenance fund in recognition of the fact that it wasn’t appropriate to leave everything behind for a private, non-political group that wasn’t involved to clean up.
Then there are those members who participated who I’ve seen demanding women who share information about the clean up efforts be banned from the organization. Their argument being that DAR is non-political, so a post about cleaning up the trash and paint left on our property by a political march is considered political because it makes their cause look less than perfect. Newsflash ladies, every movement has a**holes. If you’ve been involved in real grassroots action before, you know this. Call them out on their bad behavior and do what you can to correct that image. Instead, they want to silence those who are expressing disappointment in bad behavior. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to believe that a shared American value should include that even when you’re passionate about an issue, trespass and vandalism of private property is inappropriate.
From a purely pragmatic viewpoint, this may make it harder to get passed, because states which have training requirements might object to having them bypassed. So we shall see how that fares in the sausage grinder. And then it has to survive the inevitable court challenges. That having been said, that the bill’s author is starting with that as the base is something I wouldn’t have expected even a couple of years ago.
Brian Anse Patrick died of cancer unexpectedly (for us) at age 62, of cancer. I ended up at the lunch table with him at the law seminar in Louisville this year, and if he was terminally ill, he certainly didn’t look or act it. I had met him several times at the law seminar, but I don’t think he was a reader, and never remembered meeting me previous years. But he was always really glad to meet someone who read his books and would strike up a conversation enthusiastically on those topics. His real area of academic expertise was propaganda.
Please, if you’re a 2A academic scholar, I would strongly encourage you to go into hiding until next week. We’ve already lost Don Kates. Now this.
Generally speaking, I’m pretty indifferent to the struggles of the glitterati, but the news that Debbie Reynolds died less than a day after her daughter, Carrie Fisher,  was pronounced dead is heartening. Carrie Fisher is an icon of my generation because she was, for a lot of us, their first crush. Even if it was irrational, you remember that. Carrie Fisher in the role of Princess Leia didn’t really do it for the young me, but Kathy Coleman in the role of Holly Marshall of Land of the Lost fame certainly did. I don’t want to jinx her. Please, Kathy Coleman, If you see 2016, RUN… just like you did from Grumpy and Alice. Don’t let it get you!
My paternal grandparents were sweethearts from childhood. They lived right around the block from each other in their South Philly neighborhood. My grandmother used to tell me stories of sitting on top of hidden liquor crates with my grandfather that her father was smuggling to Atlantic City on behalf of his employers (ever see Boardwalk Empire? My great-grandfather worked for Nucky). No one would ever suspect a family man traveling to the Jersey Shore for the weekend with the kids.
My paternal grandparents had known each other their whole lives. My grandfather had a couple of strokes in 1996, and a big one killed him that same year. My grandmother went very quickly downhill. She completely lost the will to live. I’ve come to think you get to a certain age, you can actually will yourself to die, or at least give up fighting the inevitable. Whatever cause of death she had on her death certificate, she died of a broken heart. So I can sympathize. I can’t imagine that kind of thing being in the public eye. Such is the price of celebrity.
Via Thirdpower, I have been informed that David Lawson, who along with his wife Colleen were co-plantiffs in McDonald v. Chicago, narrowly survived a house fire along with his mother. Sadly his brother and niece perished in the fire, and the home itself is a total loss. People are raising money for them. What an awful thing to have happen. I can’t even imagine.
I first met the Lawsons when they were bloggers, before McDonald v. Chicago. They had to take their blog down, and they couldn’t explain why. We didn’t find out until later, when the case was announced. Then it all made sense.
USS Oklahoma Memorial. There are not many veterans still alive today. The National Park Service, which administers the Arizona Memorial, has a program to return survivors to be laid to rest with their shipmates after they die. Today NPS is interring two survivors who have since died. One is a twin whose brother didn’t make it.
Twitter seemed to be much more about filling the niche of an RSS feed than a peer to peer content network. And Facebook is just as good for keeping up with commercial content (and somewhat better because it doesn’t have the message size restrictions, it has publishable calendars and native media storage).
Apparently there was a mass stabbing in Minnesota while I was incommunicado, which ISIS is taking credit for. Supposedly he asked at least one person if they were muslim before cutting them. Personally, I think it’s very courteous of jihadists to stop and ask whether their victims are muslims first. I very much appreciate being offered the time and opportunity to prepare my reply.
