Category: Government

Ken Blackwell has gotten himself into some trouble over some remarks he made about gay people.

Former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, a leading candidate for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee (RNC), is coming under fire Monday for making remarks this summer that gays and lesbians suffer from a “compulsion” that can be “restrained.”

Can we please get some Republican leadership who don’t talk about gay people like they belong in a leper colony?  Seriously.  There are bigger things to worry about than what’s going on in other people’s bedrooms.  One wonders whether Ken Blackwell considers how he would feel if someone suggested his attraction to his wife was a “compulsion” that must be “restrained”

This whole chairmanship race is turning out to be all the worst problems with the Republican Party on parade.

Today is the day of the Holder confirmation hearings, so I thought I’d share the message I sent to Senator Specter:

Dear Senator Specter,

I wanted to take a moment to thank you for being one of the few senators willing to raise serious questions on the nomination of Eric Holder for Attorney General of the United States.  As a competitive shooter and gun owner, I am very concerned about Mr. Holders stance on the Second Amendment, and I would urge you to vote “no” on his confirmation.  In addition, I hope that you will stand up for our Second Amendment rights in the 111th Congress by opposing bills that infringe on Second Amendment rights, particularly bills that ban certain classes of firearms.

Sincerely,

[Sebastian]

I never believed contacting your Senators was a waste of time.  It does help the politicians to know we’re out here.  Even Specter is softning his language on Holder a bit, as I suspect he sees the writing on the walls.  By the end of the day, Eric Holder will likely be confirmed as Attorney General.  God help us.

Radley Balko talks about Washington D.C. wealth boom:

If we look at household income, the picture grows starker. After the 2000 Census, the richest county in America was Douglas County, Colorado. By 2007, Douglas County had fallen to sixth. The new top three are now Loudon County, Virginia; Fairfax County, Virginia; and Howard County, Maryland. All three are suburbs or exurbs of Washington, D.C. In 2000, 14 of the 100 richest counties were in the Washington, D.C., area. In 2007, it was nine of the richest 20.

Radley points out in the article who’s expense DC is getting rich at, and the answer is yours.

For most politicians, there is only one principle: keeping your seat.  Everything else is subordinate to that.  There are a handful of politicians who will offer you support even at risk to their seat, because they legitimately share your interest, but those are very rarely going to number even close to a majority needed to pass or block legislation, and if they did, we wouldn’t really need an interest group twisting arms and representing us in Washington.

In keeping with the politicians principle of having no principle other than keeping his seat, when considing your one interest, which is competing among many for his attention, he will ask himself two questions.  “Can you bring money?” and “Can you bring votes?”  No two other things factor more in politics than those two things.  If you can’t bring those two things in any substantial number, he has no reason to weigh your interest very heavily.

I would encourage everyone to read Dave Kopel’s excellent article on the extent of NRA’s ability to bring votes to the table.  It turns out the number is roughly 3% for every 10,000 NRA members that reside in the district.  That’s actually pretty good.  No other interest group can claim anything like that.  But that number has its limits, and it’s not hard and fast.  When a politician doesn’t heed your interest, and you remove support, or even worse from his point of view, back opposition, you are basically taking a gamble.  If you unseat him, you greatly enhance your political reputation, and your influence over that seat.  If you lose, the politician who hangs on to the seat will likely tell you to get lost, both out of spite, and because you’ve demonstrated to him that you’re no threat.  You gave it your all, and he kept his seat.

Folks are giving a lot of crap both to me and NRA, because NRA does not take high risk gambles it doesn’t have to, and I have suggested that’s reasonable, rather than cowardly.  I suspect a lot of the disagreement also stems from differences in opinion on the urgency of defeating Holder.  I do think Holder will be bad for gun owners, but I’m reminded of something Glenn Reynolds mentioned a few days ago: “Just remember, conservatives — Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood got knocked off during the appointment process, only to be replaced by . . . Janet Reno.”  I am not optimistic there is a positive outcome to be had for a very high risk gamble.  Like a commenter said a few posts ago, this a far better fight for the “milita” to undertake, than for the “standing army” of the NRA.  We will need to preserve the standing army for what’s undoubtedly coming in the form of gun control bills in Congress.

Article today in the Wall Street Journal on the Holder hearings:

One of the most prominent conservatives on the Judiciary panel, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R., Utah), has already said he plans to support the nominee.

OK, so Hatch is a yes vote.  Not good.  Specter still seems to be wary of supporting Holder.

Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary panel, said he is awaiting Mr. Holder’s responses at the hearing before deciding on his vote on confirmation. In a Senate speech last week on Mr. Holder’s nomination, he said, “Sometimes it is more important for the attorney general to have the stature and courage to say ‘no’ than to say ‘yes.’ “

So where has the Republican Party come to when it has to depend on Arlen Specter to be its conscience?  By the way, you can contact Senator Specter here, and thank him for his questioning of the nomination, reminding him to vote no, and tell him gun rights are the reason.  We’ve also lost Bob Barr on the Holder deal.  Barr doesn’t have a vote on the Senate floor, but it doesn’t speak well for being able to defeat Holder.

Apparently despite originally being Chicago Public School’s superintendent, he also does a lot of anti-gun activism on the side.  Thank God the federal governments limited and enumerated powers don’t include education!  (*smirk* I can’t even say that with a straight face) Apparently Chicago Public Schools also have a 51% graduation rate.  That’s almost as much fun as Bill “The Education President” Clinton taking Arkansas from 49th in the nation to 47th.

They scrutinized a wood flute quite a bit, but let someone go through with the individual components, in powder form, of black powder.

The Republicans are gearing up to delay the confirmation of Eric Holder.  The 111th Congress is sworn in on January 3rd, 2009, and starts session January 6th.  It’ll be important to start hitting your local critter with letters and phone calls as soon as the 111th Congress is seated.   Defeating a nomination is difficult work, but Holder is bad enough we should give it the old college try, and there’s a lot of blue dog Democrats out there that claim to be sympathetic to our issue.  We should hold them to that.

UPDATE: I’ll put aside my differences with Senator Spector for now, since he’s one of the GOP senators that’s willing to start asking questions.

From Richard Fernandez:

The problem with government is that it doesn’t actually make any money. It only spends it. As such it is perpetually caught between the desire to get its hooks on cash and the necessity to leave some seed corn for future harvests. This is called public policy.

Blackfork notes that after many years of suggesting that pools kill far more kids each year than guns do, the federal government has actually started to regulate pools.  I think we need to stop giving them ideas.