Democrat Senators Signed Letter Asking IRS To Crack Down On Conservative Groups

The letter here:

http://www.independentsector.org/uploads/Policy_PDFs/LettertoIRS501c4s_021612.pdf

Dated Feb 16, 2012.

Looks interesting.

Update: Took down the question mark at the end of the title.  We can pretty well see this for what it is in light of the IRS data from the last few days.

Like the saying goes: “once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, and three times is enemy action”.

Update 2: From nonprofit group Independent Sector, their context for the letter:

• Democratic Senators letters to the IRS
  • On March 12, 2012 a group of seven Democratic senators sent a letter to the IRS calling on the agency to adopt a bright line test to define a purpose “primarily” related to social welfare activities, as well as require 501(c)(4) organizations to document social welfare activity on Form 990s. The letter was a follow up to their February 16 letter to the IRS, which urged the agency to investigate abuse of the tax code by 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations.

That first part is this letter.

These two parts are the lead-up events to it, as Republicans asked about selective enforcement, and Democrats complained about the Citizens United decision in order to target conservative groups – which we’ve had verified over and over for the last few days.

• Senate Democrats convene task force to craft response to impact of Citizens United
  • A group of seven Democratic senators, led by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), announced on March 13, 2012 that they are convening a taskforce to craft a new legislative response to what they see as the harmful impact of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. The taskforce said it intends to pursue all available legislative and administrative means to disclose to the public who is influencing American elections.

• Senate Republican letter to the IRS
  • On March 14, 2012 a group of Senate Republicans sent a letter to the IRS questioning recent allegations of selective enforcement on tax-exempt organizations and requested a detailed analysis of the agency’s process for the approval and renewal of a tax-exempt designation under tax code Section 501(c)(4). The group is led by Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT), ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee and Senator Rob Portman (R-OH).

Smoke, fire, all that.

Wonder if any of these fine senators were leaning on the IRS?

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Boehner’s now wondering who should go to jail.  He’s got a whole new group of people to look at.

Defense Distributed’s Plastic Liberator

A friend of the blog sent this news story a few days back – from the UK Register:

Plans for fully 3D-printed gun go online next week
The Liberator pistol causes political panic

Defense Distributed, the pending non-profit that plans to make 3D-printed weaponry available for anyone with such a printer, will release the blueprints for a fully-working plastic firearm next week.

The UK Register is pretty open about their bias in the story, which they at least try to make funny, but it’s on the level of McNugget jokes.  But they do point out that Democrats have never seen anything they don’t wish to control.

“Security checkpoints, background checks, and gun regulations will do little good if criminals can print plastic firearms at home and bring those firearms through metal detectors with no one the wiser,” said Congressman Steve Israel (D-NY) in a statement.

“When I started talking about the issue of plastic firearms months ago,” Israel said, “I was told the idea of a plastic gun is science-fiction. Now that this technology appears to be upon us, we need to act now to extend the ban on plastic firearms.”

HotAir today has a story citing that ol’ Chuck Schumer, who’s never met a ban he didn’t like, and demands total control over you groveling peasants who need to kneel before his Ruling Class dictatorial power – because it’s what’s good for you – also wants to ban it.

Bloomberg’s own pet news agency even criticizes Schumer and thinks they need to forget about plastic guns and ban the rest first.

Should we light our hair on fire about plastic guns made with 3D printers?

Too late for Senator Charles Schumer. The combustible New York Democrat is encouraging hysteria over the prospect of criminals using 3D printers to manufacture firearms, possibly to assassinate the president. “We’re facing a situation where anyone—a felon, a terrorist—can open a gun factory in their garage ,and the weapons they make will be undetectable,” Schumer said. “It’s stomach-churning.”

Bloomberg’s own people don’t care about actual criminals, though:

…If you’ve got the skills, you can already make a gun in your basement, and there are less complicated ways to do it than using a $10,000 3D printer and computer set-up. Why would bad guys bother making comic book firearms when they can go online and order anything from a Glock 9 mm pistol to a Bushmaster military-style semiautomatic rifle with 30-round ammunition magazines?

Perhaps the evil doer wouldn’t want to leave a credit-card trail. Then he pays cash at a Main Street gun shop, a weekend gun show, or to the criminal down the block who sells black market firepower from the trunk of his car. Or the crook steals or borrows his gun.

Point being, ban real guns first.  Get the “dangerous ones”, then ban all the rest.

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The plastic Liberator pistol is a very interesting thing, and not just in its mechanics.

Perhaps the most interesting is what’s in the name.  A Russian professor of mine that taught Chekhov explained that Chekhov’s names always were indicative of the character; and names are often very, very important.  Going a very long way back in history, true names were a method to power over someone – either due to knowing someone and being able to identify them in a time before pictures, or out of a very early belief in names as a form of magic.  Here, too, in a very fascinating way, the name was chosen for a reason, and is very indicative of what this pistol really represents.

Here with the plastic Liberator, we have all that liberty and liberation connotates, that this will free the information and free the people to have the tools to arm themselves against tyranny.  We also have its historical antecedent, the FP-45 Liberator pistol:

It was made on the cheap, and made to be distributed to resistance fighters.

It had abysmal accuracy, but the purpose of the pistol was very specific.

It was made to shoot occupying forces up close and personal.  It was made to shoot Nazi dictator thugs at extreme close range.

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Some computer geeks at The Verge yammer on about the convergence between “crypto-anarchists” and guns, but for them, history doesn’t exist before the Palo Alto labs, apparently.

Cyberculture icon Stewart Brand’s famous notion that “information wants to be free” has been an almost ubiquitous refrain ever since utopian-minded hackers began populating computer networks in the 1980s. Today, 3D printing has given the phrase a whole new meaning, allowing raw data to become real world weapons with the click of a button. Cody R. Wilson, the antagonistic founder of Defense Distributed, is taking that idea to its logical — and hugely controversial — extreme.

Except it’s not an extreme at all…

(DefCad’s) his reasoning, he claims, isn’t really about the Second Amendment at all — it’s about technological progress rendering the very concept of gun control meaningless.

“It’s more radical for us,” he told Motherboard in “Click Print Gun,” a recent mini-doc about the dark side of the 3D printing revolution. “There are people all over the world downloading our files and we say ‘good.’ We say you should have access to this. You simply should.”

If this all sounds very similar to the good gospel spread by Brand and advanced by progressives and activists like the late Aaron Swartz, you’re hearing it right. But even without the context of Wilson’s operation, firearms and freedom of information share a strangely similar history, an oft-overlooked ideological confluence between hackers and gun advocates that seems to be gaining momentum.

Except it’s not extreme at all, as guns existed well before computers…

If you go back before 1934, there were no restrictions on guns except if you were black or another wrong color/status.  There were restrictions on people, and that’s what was understood.  Guns aren’t dangerous, criminals are dangerous because they don’t restrict themselves to any laws or social mores.  Guns weren’t dangerous to the people in power, freed black former slaves with guns were dangerous, because guns are tools of power.  Today, as then, it’s not the guns that are dangerous – Schumer and his ilk are surrounded by security with guns and send their kids to schools with guns and will come after you with guns – it’s you being armed that’s dangerous to his power.  Guns are just a tool, as they always have been.

Guns used to be made by smiths, but anyone with access to some basic tools and a bit of skill can make them.  Zip guns have been made out of virtually nothing for decades.  Submachineguns are relatively easy to make, and some famous SMGs were even made in facilities as simple as bicycle shops.

The next leftist dictator-tyrant argument is then to control ammo and powder, which has a few major flaws.  Namely, their enforcers use them, and their enforcers provide criminals with guns and ammo, so the criminal argument goes right out the window.  Of course it isn’t about criminals, it’s about making you into a criminal so they can tell you how to live and make you live the right way.  It’s never about the guns, it’s about the control.  Components to make ammunition aren’t impossible to come by, and conventional ammunition is only needed once – until an armed instrument of the state has his tools liberated.

The entire concept of homemade guns isn’t extreme.  Going back a few decades, not only could you buy a machinegun by mail, no matter who you were, but you could build whatever you liked.  There was a great heyday of gun manufacturing in the early 20th century before regulations started becoming overwhelming.  John Moses Browning was designing his greatest works in the early 20th Century – from pistols to machineguns, many of which are still in use today.  Consider that the M2 heavy machine gun is something that’s been in service for nearly 100 years.  It’s not that there aren’t more designers for weapons with better ideas, it’s that government regulations have limited the marketplace and made it more difficult to experiment.  Government has stalled technological development – developments that used to be made in mechanic shops when designers and engineers and skilled craftsmen got together and designed new tools.

There were virtually no regulations or restrictions on firearms for a hundred years or more, with the exception of those laws meant to target blacks, American Indians, and other specific groups that the majority wanted to oppress; and a few local laws.

Defense Distributed to some degree is just bringing things back to how they were for generations.  Before, the government trusted citizens and so it didn’t restrict citizens, soon, the government simply won’t be able to restrict citizens; and if they do restrict enough, there will be tools of liberation available.

Ted Cruz at NRA-ILA Leadership Forum

Very much worth watching.  He hits on the fact that Obama hasn’t enforced gun laws, yet still wants more gun laws, and that Obama cut school safety funding.

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HotAir has a good roundup of other quotes from the NRA-ILA Leadership Forum.

Manchin And Toomey Still After Your Rights

From Newser, the Black Tie yacht drunks are back and still after your rights, peasant:

(Newser) – The push for stricter gun laws might not be quite so dead after all in the Senate. The New York Times reports that efforts are “quietly” underway to get something done on background checks and illegal trafficking. Joe Manchin and Pat Toomey, the co-sponsors of the background-check bill that got yanked last week, say they have been talking to colleagues to get rid of some objectionable loopholes. One potential compromise would allow a person who lives in a rural area to sell a weapon to someone without having to find a sporting goods store to facilitate.

So they’re admitting that they’re targeting “urban” people?  At least they’re getting more honest about their racism.

Looks like that’ll be a 14th Amendment violation for lack of equal protection under the law.

A separate initiative to crack down on illegal trafficking, which includes buying a weapon for someone who can’t legally own one, is being spearheaded by Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand and Republicans Kelly Ayotte and Chuck Grassley.

That last name is very interesting.  Chuck Grassley has been the spearhead of the senate move against Obama’s Fast and Furious program wherein the ATF gave guns to the Mexican narcoterrorist cartels.  He’s well aware of how anti-gun this administration is, he’s seen how the Department of Justice has held back and said nothing about Fast and Furious, and he’s well aware of the violent hatred of the Constitution demonstrated by this adminstration when it used the ATF to undermine the Second Amendment in order to push for gun control and oppression of citizens.  He’s very knowledgeable on the subject.

The story notes this at the end:

Gun-control supporters are working on a national campaign to put pressure on those in the “no” camp.

Yup.  They never stop.  Ever.  They have a need to destroy your rights.  It’s what they do, it’s all they do, and they will never, ever stop until they have their boot stamping on a human face forever.

The Internet Sales Tax Push

From WSJ:

Every time Congress has taken a serious look at proposals to boost Internet sales taxes, it has rejected them. That’s probably why pro-tax Senators are trying to rush through an online tax hike with as little consideration as possible.

As early as Monday, the Senate will vote on a bill that was introduced only last Tuesday. The text of this legislation, which would fundamentally change interstate commerce, only became available on the Library of Congress website over the weekend. And you thought ObamaCare was jammed through Nancy Pelosi‘s Democratic House in a hurry.

You should always worry about measures that are rushed through, and you should always worry about taxes.  Time to call and email those senators again.

For Senators curious about what they’re voting on, it is the same flawed proposal that Mike Enzi (R., Wyo.) introduced in February. It has been repackaged to qualify for a Senate rule that allows Majority Leader Harry Reid to bypass committee debate and bring it straight to the floor.

Yup, rushing it through, no committee debate, no discussion, no time for input.

Mr. Enzi’s Marketplace Fairness Act discriminates against Internet-based businesses by imposing burdens that it does not apply to brick-and-mortar companies.

Almost every bill these days has an Orwellian name.  There is nothing “fair” about this act.

For the first time, online merchants would be forced to collect sales taxes for all of America’s estimated 9,600 state and local taxing authorities.

New Hampshire, for example, has no sales tax, but a Granite State Web merchant would be forced to collect and remit sales taxes to all the governments that do. Small online sellers will therefore have to comply with tax laws created by distant governments in which they have no representation, and in places where they consume no local services.

Meanwhile, New Hampshire’s brick-and-mortar retailers will bear no such burden. They will not be required to collect taxes on the many customers who drive across the Maine and Massachusetts borders to shop in New Hampshire. Bill sponsors say it would be too big a hassle to force traditional retailers to ask every walk-in customer where they live, but these Senators are happy to impose new obligations online.

What this does is it creates barriers to competition for the online marketplace.  It’s cronyism – the physical stores are having government be their thug enforcer.

Right now, internet companies have the advantage of reduced taxes, and they have a broad customer base, as they have access to any customer with internet access.  Brick-and-mortar stores have the advantage of specific taxes (no use tax), no shipping charges, and they allow customers to actually see what they’re buying before they purchase it.

Brick-and-mortar stores have the added cost of maintaining a store; but only suffer online disadvantages if they don’t expand their business online.  Some online businesses have already dominated certain markets, but with the viability of searches and search engines that will help the consumer seek out the best price, all they have to do is offer the best product at the lowest price.  That’s capitalism.

What the brick-and-mortar stores want now is to force their online competitors to suffer the myriad of regulations that exist throughout the nation.  Making a medium-sized online business (something like OpticsPlanet, for example) know every state, city, township, county, municipality and local district’s tax status might be possible, but it will drive their prices up as they hire lawyers.  Making a little business comply with the same regulations is an exercise in using government to destroy competition.

It’s noteworthy that Walmart and Amazon are supporting this bill.  While a lot of times I’m willing to voice support for Walmart, that’s when they recognize that their best interests and their customers’ interests coincide and follow their customers’ demands.

In general, that’s the case, because Walmart usually exemplifies free markets.  In this particular instance, however, Walmart has looked at its balance sheet and decided that it’s in its best interest to use government force to crush its competitors.  Walmart does provide a lot of good for its customers, but ultimately Walmart is only a creature as moral as the system it exists in.  When it recognizes the demands of customers and represents them, it does well and is as moral as its customers who drive it; when Walmart exploits the governmental system that lets it collude with the IRS to destroy competitors, it’s as villainous as the vampiric politicians who enable it.

Any Internet seller with more than $1 million in annual sales would be forced to serve all of the nation’s tax collectors.

Note that says “$1 million in annual sales”.  That doesn’t mean $1 million in profit.  A company could barely be breaking even after expenses and find itself destroyed by the taxation burden and regulations it now has to wade through.  The red tape would be monstrous.

This bill, and all federal bills like it also tax citizens in addition to state-based use taxes.  The citizen is already hit for taxes if they buy things out of state when they do their end-of-year state taxes (there’s often a “minimum use tax” whether or not you bought anything online), and now they’ll be hit for taxes from the business.  This is a federal bill to make you pay more taxes for products, taxes which most every state is already assessing you for.

This rush to tax is an attempt to overturn the Supreme Court’s 1992 decision in Quill v. North Dakota that forcing businesses to collect and remit taxes to jurisdictions where they have no physical presence was too big a burden.

Noteworthy from Quill v North Dakota:

In Quill Corp. v. North Dakota, the Supreme Court ruled that a business must have a physical presence in a state for that state to require it to collect sales taxes. However, the court explicitly stated that Congress can overrule the decision through legislation.

The power to tax is again the power to destroy.

The WSJ piece ends with this:

Some of our conservative friends are backing this Internet tax raid as a way to raise revenue to avoid more state income-tax increases. More likely the new revenues will merely fund larger government.

They aren’t conservatives.  They’re RINOs.  Raising taxes reduces the benefits for producers, and increases the demands on consumers.  People will make less money per unit, so they will make fewer units; people will pay more per unit, so they will buy fewer units.  Volume will decline, consumers will suffer, and all but the chosen winner businesses and the redistributor politicians will suffer.  “Revenues”, a polite way to say government taking from you (while giving you nothing that you need), will not be increased.  It will simply fund more pet projects of worthless “representatives” who will seek to bring home pork barrel projects to get themselves reelected.  This is Bastiat’s example of everyone plundering everyone.

If you want to steal from the people of the US in order to line your filthy thieving nest with taxes that destroy businesses, this is one way to do it.  If you’re a scum-sucking almost-obsolescent whip-and-buggy maker who wants to make sure no one can be more successful than you and that their businesses are destroyed so you can feast on their carcasses, this is a great tool to use government force to destroy their success because you’re too lazy to earn it yourself; all the while screwing over your customers because you’re too weak to make an honest buck.

It’s forcible redistribution, government finding the winners and crushing them at the behest of the losers and subsidizing the losers that harm the consumer.

And they call it “fairness”.

Hitler Finds Out Gun Control Failed in the Senate

The filibuster part could just be changed to straight up failed, as apparently the parody was made early.  Still hilarious.

NRA President David Keene on Senate Gun Control Stall

From Washington Examiner:

The head of the National Rifle Association mocked President Obama’s Rose Garden “tantrum” after losing the gun control fight in the Senate, charging Thursday that Obama suffered the worst defeat of his presidency because “he bit off more than he could chew.”

David Keene told Secrets that the president and his team misplayed their hand because they don’t have a sense of the public’s attitude toward gun control. “They just can’t gauge the public reaction to what they do because they don’t have any sense that the public has feelings different than they do,” said Keene.

“He thought and his folks thought that Newtown changed everything. Newtown was a tragedy but that doesn’t change people’s basic values and feelings,” added the NRA president.

Fact is, people are opposed to it.  The culture of the nation is opposed to having the government chip, chip, chip away at our rights.  This is the Country Class telling the Ruling Class “no”.

The loss devastated the president, who ranted about the NRA’s power during his Rose Garden address after Wednesday’s vote.

Keene, however, saw it differently. “It was the biggest legislative defeat he suffered but that does not justify the unseemly picture of a president of the United States throwing a public tantrum.”

Keene is spot-on here.  Obama was mad and ranting, calling the NRA and the pro-rights lobby “liars”.  Mind you, this is the same president who had the ATF send guns to Mexican narcoterrorist cartels and then claim executive privilege to hush it up.

Keene said that many lawmakers who voted against the background check expansion felt that if it passed, gun control advocates would simply return to the issue to chip away more at the Second Amendment, so they decided to “just stop it now.”

All you have to do is listen to what the Democrat anti-rights activists say:

They do not stop.  They will not be happy until everyone is disarmed and doing exactly as they say.

Keene had a good way of handling the leftists who want to “compromise” by sticking in just the tip, baby:

In a way, Keene signaled that to the sponsors of the Senate compromise, Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey and West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin. Keene recalled that he took a day off last week to fish for trout on the Missouri River in Montana. “Unfortunately, I took my cellphone with me and my cellphone rings in the midst of my float and it’s Joe Manchin, who’s talking about how reasonable his idea is. And finally I said, ‘Look, I’m in the middle of the Missouri River, I’ve got a trout on the line. I don’t agree, you will have to make your own decisions, and I hung up. You have to keep your priorities straight.”

There is no compromise, and there’s no use in talking to someone who just wants to stick in the tip a little bit, baby.  No means no.

May as well go fishing.

Senate Stalls Gun Control

Good roundup at HotAir to start.

The Manchin-Toomey “wrote it on our yacht” background check-prelude to registration bill went down 54-46, failing to get the 60 votes to pass.

The AWB goes down 40/60. Remember a few weeks ago when Reid claimed they didn’t have even 40 votes for it? He wasn’t kidding. They barely ended up with that much. It’ll be a few minutes before the roll is up, but assuming Republicans voted against it unanimously, that means no fewer than 15 Democrats joined them.

It’s a good start to stalling the tyrannical aspirations of government.

Bloomberg as quoted by HotAir:

Today’s vote is a damning indictment of the stranglehold that special interests have on Washington. More than 40 U.S. senators would rather turn their backs on the 90 percent of Americans who support comprehensive background checks than buck the increasingly extremist wing of the gun lobby.

Why is it that anti-gun tyrants love using the number 90% so much?  They make up numbers saying guns are going to Mexico at a rate of 90%, and they claim 90% of people support draconian checks as a step towards registration, confiscation, and obliteration of gun rights.  Do they just love targeting minorities of 10%?  Oh, that’s right, they do.

Incidentally, only 4% care about gun control as opposed to every other issue.

Gun-ban propagandist, hypocrite who said he’d shoot his rivals, and fraudulent journalist who was kicked out of England Piers Morgan whined on:

Soon he’ll fade back into obscurity once the schtick of having a lying Brit who threatened violence and lectures down to Americans wears off.  Oh, and it has.

They showed they care about America’s dead and the liberties we fought for, and won’t be swayed by political propagandists dragging grieving families around as political props.

Meanwhile, from the Washington Times, Obama plays the blame game, and says those who oppose him are filthy liars who need to be sent to the gulag:

President Obama angrily blamed the defeat Wednesday of his centerpiece gun-control proposal on lies spread by the National Rifle Association, calling it “a pretty shameful day for Washington.”

“The gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about the bill,” Mr. Obama said in the White House rose garden about 90 minutes after the vote. “It came down to politics.”

No, they didn’t.  Obama has been quite open about his loathing of the Second Amendment and the Constitution in general, and he views it as an obstacle to his grand utopian dream that would be so much easier.  See, the left knows what’s best for you, and they’re going to give it to you by force if they can.

There’s also a certain type of projection on the left.  They accuse others of lying while they do.  The NRA warned of true objectives.

“They claimed that it would create some sort of big-brother gun registry, even though it did the  opposite,” Mr. Obama said. “This pattern of spreading untruths … served a purpose. A minority in the U.S. Senate decided it wasn’t worth it. They blocked common-sense gun reforms, even while these families looked on from the Senate gallery. It’s not going to happen because 90 percent of Republicans just voted against that idea.”

Of necessity, to work, it had to create a big brother gun registry – which would be either an amendment or a future bill when this one was found.  There was no secret that Democrats were pushing for a big-brother gun registry.  But, as Levar Burton would say, don’t take my word for it – take NY Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer’s:

There’s that 90% statistic again, too.  They just love it.

And again, the “families” are being led by Democrat propagandists.  I say “families” because Mark Mattioli isn’t represented, nor are many other Newtown families who don’t hold the same opinions as those who are politically aligned and campaigning for the Democrats’ rights-control schemes.

“You’ve got to send the right people to Washington,” he told voters. “That requires strength and it requires persistence. I see this as just Round One. Sooner or later, we are going to get this right. The memories of these children demand it.”

The American people and those who’ve fought for liberty don’t want their tyranny.

We did send the right people to Washington.  We sent Ted Cruz and Rand Paul.

But do note what Obama said in there.  The meaning is clear.

…requires strength and it requires persistence. I see this as just Round One. Sooner or later, we are going to get this…

He uses some of the Newtown families as props, and it seems many of them are willing props – but he doesn’t care about them any more than he cared about the hundreds of dead children in Mexico murdered by his Fast and Furious program.

Also remember what Joe Biden said:

And lastly, but not least, the Assault Weapons ban and the limitation on the size of magazines, let me say this as clearly as I can: this is just the beginning.

And Joe Biden today:

“We’re going to get this eventually,” Biden said. “If we don’t get it today, we’ll get it eventually.”

The gun ban anti-rights movement is not out for safety, they’re out for your disarmament, which has horrific long-run consequences.

I see this as just Round One. Sooner or later, we are going to get this…

…let me state this as clearly as I can: this is just the beginning.

We’re going to get this eventually…if we don’t get it today, we’ll get it eventually.

And the anti-gun anti-rights movement will never stop.

The Gun Control Sellout Begins

There’s too much to cover, so this is just going to be another news roundup.

Pat Toomey, was riding on Joe Manchin’s yacht, the “Black Tie” and getting all boozed up with his fellow Ruling Class goon to come up with a way to screw you out of your rights…

Senator Mark Kirk said the following to reporters about gun control and background checks and in particular the so called bi partisan deal reached by Senators Toomey and Manchin, “You guys really ought to go out to National Harbor and see the Black Tie, which has been much of the reason for much of the bipartisan cooperation around here. Sometimes alcoholic beverages might be served and ties might … get loosened.”

So there you go. Your elected officials getting liquored up on a a mega yacht conspiring to infringe on your inherent rights.

…is now being praised by Bloomberg’s Mayors For Citizen Disarmament.

The filibuster to prevent any gun bill from getting to the Senate floor ended because 16 Quislings RINOs agreed to go ahead and vote for “discussion”… which will be the same vote that comes along later when a “reasonable” “common sense” bill that’s wholly unconstitutional and is a compromise between you and the government that wants to strip you of your rights.  In other words, just the tip, baby.

The Second Amendment is not up for discussion unless they want to repeal it.  Which they do, but they know they’ll never get the states and the public to agree on it.

Text of the Orwellian-titled bill here.

And if you think the House is going to stop anyone from disarming you for the good of the state’s power, today crying carrot Speaker of the House John Boehner said he doesn’t need Republicans to pass bills in the House.  For those of you who’ve had a long day and miss this – the point is he’ll just pass Democrat bills.

Of course the media’s been doing their part, from citing Al Qaeda as a source saying we need more gun control (Yeah, why didn’t AQ try using guns against US citizens?  But why did they do it against unarmed people in Mumbai?  Rifle behind every blade of grass, get off my lawn, etc., perhaps?) and then CNN was profusely thanked by Democrat anti-gun Senator Joe Manchin for their neverending propaganda during the Sandy Hook massacre:

Berman: Senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia, you’ve been working around the clock for a compromise deal. I think you have a very busy few weeks ahead of you still.

Manchin: We appreciate your support, too, this is very, very important.

And just to throw in the last of this garbage in with the pile, Joe Biden doesn’t think you should own guns, because you think it’s like owning a Ferrari… which begs the question, what’s wrong with driving a Ferrari?

“It used to be we were dealing almost exclusively with hunters,” Biden said on MSNBC. “There’s a whole new sort of group of individuals now who, I don’t know what the numbers are, that never hunt at all but they own guns for one of two reasons: self protection or they just like the feel of that AR-15 at the range.”

“They like the way it feels. You know, it’s like driving a Ferrari,” he said, raising his arms as if shooting a gun.

To those who have fought for it, freedom has a flavor the protected will never know.

That rifle is a tool of freedom, and without it, freedom dies.

“That rifle on the wall of the labourer’s cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.”

- George Orwell

Freedom is mighty nice, but it’s sad that freedom can only be maintained with tools.  Yes, clown, you’re not dealing with hunters.  You’re dealing with free men.  You’re dealing with people who own guns for self protection from government because reason doesn’t work against a ruling class that thinks they know what’s best for us and decides to dominate us.

Biden is a buffoon, but because he has no filter on anything that he says and speaks as though he has a political version of Tourette’s, he is actually identifying a big section of the Second Amendment crowd.  They (we) own AR-15s for self-defense because that is the critical function of the Second Amendment – to protect against oppressors large and small.  High-speed low-drag gear is cool, but that’s a far second place compared to what it defends.

Rand Paul is right.  And his final sentiment in that piece is one echoed here:

Our rights are not subjected to polls. Whether it is popular or not popular, I took an oath to the Constitution, and I am prepared to stand with other senators or alone to protect the freedoms that our Founding Fathers fought to preserve.

Illegal Alien Jumps Border Fence Behind McCain & Schumer

From the National Review & HotAir:

Funny.

…except for the ABC story at HotAir that says apprehensions are down.

Mira, the way the Border Patrol works is that if they catch them, they’re apprehensions.  If they get away, they’re listed as gotaways.  Pretty simple so far.  If there are overlapping stations, they may or may not count them as gotaways for the station, because it doesn’t look good for stations to state they’re letting illegals through.   So they may pass them off to other stations either to attempt apprehension, or to call them someone else’s gotaways, or the record of the gotaways may be passed back.  Stations do things different ways, some list gotaways to show that they’re being overrun and need additional resources, others don’t list gotaways so they can say they have the area under control.  It all depends on local management and how they feel about the situation; and different directives from DC on what constitutes what.

From what I’ve heard and seen, and from plenty of open sources as well, the border is in fact not under control, and there are in fact significantly larger numbers of aliens crossing, being apprehended, and getting away.

No small part of this is due to the fact that smuggling operations were able to listen to Obama’s statements that the Border Patrol would have reduced hours for agents – and reduced time in the field means reduced time to apprehend aliens, means more time during shift changes, and means less time to cover remote areas far from the actual station headquarters.  Just like any rural law enforcement, officers have to show up for work and then drive to where they’re needed – and often times they’re needed far from where they start their workday.

None of this is news to anyone who’s ever worked anything as simple as a delivery route, or set up a military watch or patrol of a perimeter, or just thought about it for a few minutes.  Folks have other things to do, so they typically aren’t thinking about law enforcement operations – but in this case, there’s been a cause and effect from Obama saying “reduced hours” and alien/drug smugglers knowing exactly what that means to them.

Aliens also know that Obama’s promises of ramming amnesty down the throats of American citizens is good news for fence-jumpers.  All they have to do is get in before the deadline and they get a claim to your tax dollars.