Gun Control Issues

Gun Control Issues

Lots of bad mojo afoot when the Dems try to disarm law-abiding Americans. Then again, the Reps, at least at a federal level, have not done much to repeal the odious restrictions passed during the Clinton admin. Check it out.

FOXNews.com

Has the gun control (search) issue really disappeared? Some think that Democrats, chastised by the loss of the presidency of 2000 and the loss of the Senate in 2002, have learned the risk of supporting gun control the hard way. Some even argue that there is a more fundamental change in Democratic beliefs on gun control.

Yet, as Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi (search) recently said, Democrats (search) will wait and revisit the guns “when the issue is ripe.” . . . .

The lopsided coverage of the costs and benefits of guns in the media and the government ensures that the push for more regulations will not go away. In 2001, the three major networks -- ABC, NBC, and CBS -- devoted about 190,000 words’ worth of national television news stories on gun crimes but not one single story about someone using a gun to defend themselves or someone else. Even those who follow the news the closest are unlikely to know that when surveys of crimes committed with guns are compared with studies of defensive gun use, the best estimates indicate that people use guns defensively to stop crime 4.5 times more frequently than guns are used to commit crime. The only news network that carried any defensive gun stories that year was the Fox News Channel.

Update - Envrio Article Comment

Update - Enviro Article Comment

Back on April 6, I posted the following article:

Telegraph | News | Middle Ages were warmer than today, say scientists

"Claims that man-made pollution is causing "unprecedented" global warming have been seriously undermined by new research which shows that the Earth was warmer during the Middle Ages."

A comment was left by Tlaloc33:

Dr Simon Brown, the climate extremes research manager at the Meteorological Office at Bracknell, said that the present consensus among scientists on the IPCC was that the Medieval Warm Period could not be used to judge the significance of existing warming.

Dr Brown said: "The conclusion that 20th century warming is not unusual relies on the assertion that the Medieval Warm Period was a global phenomenon. This is not the conclusion of IPCC."

He added that there were also doubts about the reliability of temperature proxies such as tree rings: "They are not able to capture the recent warming of the last 50 years," he said.

and history shows that it was a wonderful period of plenty for everyone."

... except for the serfs, the inquisition, the bubonic plague, and the lack of indoor plumbing and McDonalds...

This information came from an article, a reprinting of which can be found here. First off, I would like to quote the paragraph immediately preceding the part referenced by the commentator: "The United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the official voice of global warming research, has conceded the possibility that today's "record-breaking" temperatures may be at least partly caused by the Earth recovering from a relatively cold period in recent history. While the evidence for entirely natural changes in the Earth's temperature continues to grow, its causes still remain mysterious."

Note a couple of things here:

1. The IPCC is the "official voice of global warming research." Hmmmmm . . . maybe we should treat this research and commentary with the same care that we treat cancer research coming from a tobacco company. When the "official" global warming guys say that global warming exists, it's just shocking and amazing, right?
2. They conceded the possibility that something other than SUVs has caused the current "warming." Actually, this should have gotten major play as it is huge news that, for the first time that I can find, the global warming folks have actually acknowledged that there could be reasons for the phenomenon other than man's activities. (Assuming, of course that one accepts that there is a warming in the first place. Hey New York, how was that winter you guys had this year?)
3. Check out these sites for more information:
   • http://www.vision.net.au/~daly/history.htm
   • http://www.globalwarming.org/index.htm
   • http://www.junkscience.com/foxnews/fn111700.htm
   • http://www.nationalcenter.org/TP38.html
   • http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/ten_facts_about_global_warming.htm
   • http://envirotruth.org/GlobalWarming.cfm

Death Tax Issues

Death Tax Issues

Hot damn! I might just go buy a lottery ticket if this actually makes it into law . . . the House has actually taken a step toward ending a tax. not reducing it. Not suspending it. Repealing it. 'Bout time.

FOXNews.com

WASHINGTON — House Republicans, fresh from winning a $330 billion tax cut on wages and investment income, earned another victory Wednesday when the House voted to eliminate estate taxes once and for all. . . .

Seth Goldman, president of Honest Tea in Bethesda, Md., said eliminating the estate tax will create "an entitled class" and suppress entrepreneurship.

"There are those who claim that an estate tax is un-American, but I believe that the idea of an inherited upper-class is un-American," he said.

I am curious as how Mr. Goldman defends the idea of taking a family's hard earned business value from the rightful inheritors of the estate as an "American" ideal. American was founded on the idea that when a man or woman works hard to create something of value, and wants to leave to his or her children, that it should be taken away, in whole or in part, because people like Mr. Goldman think it should be? I doubt the FF had that in mind when they drafted the documents that created our country.

Homeschooling Issues

Homeschooling Issues

David Limbaugh recounts the tale of the Bryants - a family from whom the local gov't threatened to remove the home schooled children unless they submitted to taking the public school standardized test.

David Limbaugh: Homeschoolers in the trenches

As more parents opt for homeschooling, public schools will grow increasingly nervous. Homeschooling's financial impact on public schools can be significant. If thousands of students are homeschooling in a school district, it stands to lose millions of dollars in revenue. And with every additional homeschooled student, the public education monopoly is eroded a little further, and control over children's academic and social development shifts away from the state and back to the family unit.

Reparations Issues

Reparations Issues

Dinesh D'Souza on how the West was the first and only culture that had "[a] movement to abolish slavery. There is no history of anti-slavery activism outside of Western civilization."

How the West grew rich - The Washington Times: Commentary

If oppression and exploitation did not make the West rich and powerful, what did? The answer is that the West invented three institutions that never existed before: science, democracy, and capitalism. Each of these institutions is based on a universal human impulse that took on a very specific institutional expression in the history of the West. . . .

None of this is to deny that the West, like every other culture, has shown itself to be arrogant and oppressive when it had the chance. Oppression and exploitation, however, were not the cause of Western success; they were the fruits of that success. Those who say America and the West have grown rich at their expense are simply wrong. The real cause of Western wealth and power is the dynamic interaction of science, capitalism and democracy. Working together, these institutions have created our commercial, technological, participatory society.

Relative Poverty Ideas

Relative Poverty Ideas

Brilliant. Jonah Goldberg serves a great analogy with which to skewer the Left when they talk about "income inequality."

Jonah Goldberg: Rich-poor divide shows poverty is relative

Many on the left -particularly those still in a Marxist haze -reject the idea that poverty should be viewed in absolute terms. But when you think about it, they have to. If we all agreed that many of the poorest people in America live with the material prosperity -cars, phones, air conditioning, the caloric intake of a Roman emperor -we associated with millionaires just a few generations ago, most of the liberal agenda would have to go out the window.

Of course, this is all easy for me to say. I don't live in poverty, relative or absolute. And many millions of people are struggling to make ends meet, put food on the table and educate their kids. But that's not because of income inequality. If Bill Gates doubled his income tomorrow, poor people would still have a hard time. Income inequality doesn't make people poor, it just strikes some people as unfair.

Hate Crime In Cleveland

Hate Crime In Cleveland

Let me say right off the bat that I think hate crime laws amount to thought police and are inherently bad ideas. If these kids actively chose to beat up another kid, send them away for the maximum allowed under the assault and battery laws, and any others you can think to put in the mix, but it seems just as hateful to beat up a kid, choke her, send her to the hospital, and make her require continuing medical care for her lunch money is just as brutal a crime.

Cleveland.com: Search

The victim was a student at Wilbur Wright, as were five of her assailants. Each of the at tackers received a 10-day sus pension, a Cleveland school official said.

SCOTUS Issues

Great News from the Dems

This website, part of the Democratic National Committe (DNC) is all about how and why the Dems should not let GW nominate Supreme Court Justices. The particular page this links to gives recent (within 5 yers or so) SCOTUS 5-4 decisions about issues many people consider important. But, for thinking people, it is as good a description of why we should hope that Bush gets to nominate some justices.

BTW - they talk about how the court may shift to the right when/if Rhenquist and O'Connor retire . . . actually, GW would simply be replacing one strong conservative and one mostly conservative with his choices for the court. Thus, it would only be if the Dems got their way that we would see a shift in the make up of and philosophy of the court . . . to the Left and toward legislation from the bench. Read on.

DNC: Supreme Court Watch

5-4: Our Rights and Values at Stake
Our most precious and fundamental rights are in danger as the Supreme Court hangs in a precarious balance. A look at recent 5-4 Supreme Court decisions shows how even a one-seat change can create seismic shifts that put American values at risk.