Convicted rapist Mike Tyson has now weighed in on the Trayvon Martin case, and he thinks it’s a disgrace that George Zimmerman has not yet been shot. Two weeks ago Spike Lee tweeted what he thought was George Zimmerman’s address (it wasn’t) thereby unleashing a wave of terror on the elderly couple who lived there. Apparently after a few days, Mr. Lee apologized to the couple he victimized, but hasn’t regretted the gist of his action. Of course Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have expressed their outrage publically, with Jackson declaring that “blacks are under attack.” The black liberal columnists like Leonard Pitts and Eugene Robinson have written columns on it saying that this is just so typical of the black experience in America. Certainly everybody can be outraged at the death of an unarmed, black youth. And the Reverend Jackson is correct to say that blacks are under attack. But they have all picked the wrong case to rally around.
Here is the scenario that has their collective undies in a bundle. A “white Hispanic” (a term developed just for this story) was a neighborhood watch captain out looking to play hero. He had a concealed carry permit for the 9mm handgun he was packing. He ignored advice from the 911 operator to not follow Trayvon. A confrontation occurred and Trayvon wound up dead.
There are two obvious factors that have vaulted this case on to the front page. First, is that Mr. Zimmerman is white. Except that he isn’t. Like our president, he had one white parent, but his mother was Hispanic. (But for some reason we never refer to Mr. Obama as a “white-black” or a “white-African American.”) The second thing that stands out is that Zimmerman had a permit to legally carry a gun. This makes the case particularly attractive to liberals who have been predicting Wild West shootouts for years. When you’ve waited as long as they have for this to happen, you just can’t resist jumping on it with both feet, and so they have. But all of these people refuse to talk about the elephant in the room. This case is far and away, the exception rather than the rule.
Jesse is right when he says that blacks are under attack. But Jesse didn’t mention where that attack is coming from even though he knows very well. In the city that is home to both Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama, Chicago, there have been over 100 murders by gun this year alone. Over 70 of those murder victims were black males. Over a dozen were teenagers, with one as young as 14. If prevailing statistics bear out on these crimes, around 90% of the shooters will also turn out to be black. Blacks are definitely under attack, but from other blacks, not white Hispanics. And this ongoing black holocaust is not being perpetrated with legally carried guns either. The Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case is an outlier. It is a statistical aberration. But that didn’t stop a NY Times columnist from declaring that the problem was these legally carried weapons. In her column she linked to an anti-handgun web site that documented all the gun deaths where the shooter had a permit. The list was an attention getting 400 people including 13 police officers. And that does seem to be a significant number of victims. Until you realize that it’s over a five year period and covers the entire United States. If they keep the pace up, Chicago will surpass that number this year alone, and they are a single city representing less than 1% of our nation’s population. And there are a number of cities that can challenge Chicago on the matter of young dead black men: New Orleans, Philadelphia, LA, Washington DC, Houston and New York. I don’t have all the numbers to calculate it, but does anybody doubt that the ratio of black men killed by black men carrying illegal weapons, to the number of black men killed by white men with legal weapons is over 50 to 1? More likely it’s over 100 to 1. Where is the outrage? Why aren’t Jackson and Sharpton railing against the real killers of black youth? Because there is nothing for them down that road.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Monday, April 9, 2012
The New Center
We have a political situation that seems very familiar. Today noted liberal columnist, Leonard Pitts, declared that Ronald Reagan couldn't get the Republican nomination. This is hardly an original thought. In fact it appears to be a standard talking point amongst the Democrats these days. Obama himself said the exact same thing a few days ago and other liberal pundits have been pushing it for weeks.
This is all very reminiscent of 2008. You may recall that famous moderate Republican, Colin Powell, told us that year, that the Republicans needed to nominate a more moderate, centrist candidate like John McCain. He had run slightly to the left of G.W. Bush in 2004, or at least that's where everybody had him on the political spectrum. G.W. Bush wasn't really that far right to begin with. He had gone out of his way to compromise with Democrats and never so much as threatened a veto, always giving in on spending. But people still veiwed McCain as more moderate. And as always seems to happen in an election year, the messages were mixed. The left declared that McCain was just "Bush's 3rd Term." While moderates like Powell said that McCain was the moderate we needed to nominate.
And just about the time that McCain actually secured the nomination that Powell thought he deserved, Powell came out and endorsed Obama for President.
So for 4 years Republicans waited and told themselves they would not make the same mistake. By the time the Iowa caucuses came around, the positioning of Republican candidates had experienced a siesmic shift. The guy in 2004 that had been considered the conservative, Mitt Romney, was suddenly viewed as the moderate and everybody else was to his right. Romney has spent almost the entire time trying to convince voters that he REALLY is conservative, while the others took turns as THE conservative candidate. But Romney has prevailed, and he will most certainly be our nominee. So natually, it's time to "rehabilitate" Mr. Romney and portray him as a radical right-winger. I can't wait to hear who Colin Powell is endorsing.
This is all very reminiscent of 2008. You may recall that famous moderate Republican, Colin Powell, told us that year, that the Republicans needed to nominate a more moderate, centrist candidate like John McCain. He had run slightly to the left of G.W. Bush in 2004, or at least that's where everybody had him on the political spectrum. G.W. Bush wasn't really that far right to begin with. He had gone out of his way to compromise with Democrats and never so much as threatened a veto, always giving in on spending. But people still veiwed McCain as more moderate. And as always seems to happen in an election year, the messages were mixed. The left declared that McCain was just "Bush's 3rd Term." While moderates like Powell said that McCain was the moderate we needed to nominate.
And just about the time that McCain actually secured the nomination that Powell thought he deserved, Powell came out and endorsed Obama for President.
So for 4 years Republicans waited and told themselves they would not make the same mistake. By the time the Iowa caucuses came around, the positioning of Republican candidates had experienced a siesmic shift. The guy in 2004 that had been considered the conservative, Mitt Romney, was suddenly viewed as the moderate and everybody else was to his right. Romney has spent almost the entire time trying to convince voters that he REALLY is conservative, while the others took turns as THE conservative candidate. But Romney has prevailed, and he will most certainly be our nominee. So natually, it's time to "rehabilitate" Mr. Romney and portray him as a radical right-winger. I can't wait to hear who Colin Powell is endorsing.
Friday, April 6, 2012
Obviously, I'm The Problem
Asked about Mr. Obama's astounding belief that the Supreme Court overturning laws is "unprecedented," press secretary Jay Carney explains that we idiot bumpkins out here in flyover country just may not be up to the task of understanding the words coming from that enormous brain that is our President/Teacher.
"...the president was not clearly understood by some people because he is a law professor, he spoke in shorthand." said Mr. Carney.
Does this mean that one must attend law school in order to understand this president, or is he saying that law professors are simply not understandable? Or could it possibly be that our president said something that makes no sense, and is untrue, making the statement itself incomprehensible? I guess that makes two people I don't understand.
Here is the exact quote with which WE seem to be having a problem:
"I'm confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress."
I'm absolutely serious when I say that the only truthful words in that sentence is that this congress was democratically elected. It is neither unprecedented nor is it extraordinary for the court to overturn a law, in fact, that is their job. This law was passed pretty much along party lines by the slimmest of margins, not a strong majority. And by the way, are there some other laws that aren't passed by congress? But the biggest lie is where he says that he's confident the court will NOT overturn. If he actually believed that, he wouldn't have made this remark in the first place.
"...the president was not clearly understood by some people because he is a law professor, he spoke in shorthand." said Mr. Carney.
Does this mean that one must attend law school in order to understand this president, or is he saying that law professors are simply not understandable? Or could it possibly be that our president said something that makes no sense, and is untrue, making the statement itself incomprehensible? I guess that makes two people I don't understand.
Here is the exact quote with which WE seem to be having a problem:
"I'm confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress."
I'm absolutely serious when I say that the only truthful words in that sentence is that this congress was democratically elected. It is neither unprecedented nor is it extraordinary for the court to overturn a law, in fact, that is their job. This law was passed pretty much along party lines by the slimmest of margins, not a strong majority. And by the way, are there some other laws that aren't passed by congress? But the biggest lie is where he says that he's confident the court will NOT overturn. If he actually believed that, he wouldn't have made this remark in the first place.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Judicial Activism
The term "judicial activism" has been thrown around for the past 20 years or so. I'm not a lawyer, and I'm certainly not a constitutional scholar nor a former teacher of constitutional law like our President is. Never set foot in a law school in fact. But I do understand plain English, and I thought I knew what the Supreme Court's job is.
So during the current debate about how the SC is going to vote on Obamacare, we've heard all sorts of reasons why they shouldn't strike this law down:
1.) This is a major piece of legislation and it would be wrong to strike down such a significant law by a thin 5-4 decision.
2.) Ruling this law unconstitutional would be "unprecedented" since it was enacted by a "democratically elected" congress.
3.) Overturning laws, is itself, judicial activism.
4.) Overturning this law will create chaos and deny health care coverage to millions.
Liberal pundits and Presidents have all used one of these or some similar argument.
Excuse me, but ruling on the constitutionality of a law IS WHAT THEY DO! A friend of Cheif Justice Oliver Wendal Holmes once told him as they were parting and Holmes was headed back to work, that he needed to "Do justice!" Holmes replied, "That's not my job. My job is to apply the law."
The Supreme Court does not pick winners and losers. They are not supposed to assess the desirability of any law, just the constitutionality. Overturning laws is what they do. Was it judicial activism when they struck down separate but equal?
No, judicial activism is when a justice stands logic on it's head in order to arrive at the "right" conclusion. Here is a perfect example, and one that we've lived with for some 70 years now. In the 1930's when FDR was pushing the New Deal, he had some rather strange ideas about what was ailing the economy. One of those bizarre theories was that prices were too low. So he instituted minimum prices for everything. A farmer in a particular state was raising wheat (I think) and using it strictly for his own and his farm's use. He was not selling it across state lines. And that was significant because without interstate commerce being involved, the Supreme Court had no standing to even weigh in on the case. But they really, really wanted to support FDR, so they came up with the following logic: Even though the farmer was not engaging in interstate commerce, his mere production of the wheat would have an effect on the prices that were being charged in interstate commerce, so they let themselves in that side door and ruled on the case. THAT is judicial activism.
So during the current debate about how the SC is going to vote on Obamacare, we've heard all sorts of reasons why they shouldn't strike this law down:
1.) This is a major piece of legislation and it would be wrong to strike down such a significant law by a thin 5-4 decision.
2.) Ruling this law unconstitutional would be "unprecedented" since it was enacted by a "democratically elected" congress.
3.) Overturning laws, is itself, judicial activism.
4.) Overturning this law will create chaos and deny health care coverage to millions.
Liberal pundits and Presidents have all used one of these or some similar argument.
Excuse me, but ruling on the constitutionality of a law IS WHAT THEY DO! A friend of Cheif Justice Oliver Wendal Holmes once told him as they were parting and Holmes was headed back to work, that he needed to "Do justice!" Holmes replied, "That's not my job. My job is to apply the law."
The Supreme Court does not pick winners and losers. They are not supposed to assess the desirability of any law, just the constitutionality. Overturning laws is what they do. Was it judicial activism when they struck down separate but equal?
No, judicial activism is when a justice stands logic on it's head in order to arrive at the "right" conclusion. Here is a perfect example, and one that we've lived with for some 70 years now. In the 1930's when FDR was pushing the New Deal, he had some rather strange ideas about what was ailing the economy. One of those bizarre theories was that prices were too low. So he instituted minimum prices for everything. A farmer in a particular state was raising wheat (I think) and using it strictly for his own and his farm's use. He was not selling it across state lines. And that was significant because without interstate commerce being involved, the Supreme Court had no standing to even weigh in on the case. But they really, really wanted to support FDR, so they came up with the following logic: Even though the farmer was not engaging in interstate commerce, his mere production of the wheat would have an effect on the prices that were being charged in interstate commerce, so they let themselves in that side door and ruled on the case. THAT is judicial activism.
Monday, April 2, 2012
Keeping It In Perspective
So our former mayor has been blogging since he was removed from office, and it's more aggravating than ever. When he was mayor you only had to hear him when he had something official to deal with. Now we get to have him weigh in on whatever strikes his fancy. And what has stricken him recently is the Trayvon Miller slaying in Florida, along with the one in Slinger, Wisconsin. There are some similarities. Both victims were young, unarmed, African American men. They were both killed by gunshots from men who claimed self defense. So Citizen Dave has determined that it's the gun that is at fault, and wants to repeal the Concealed Carry law that only passed in Wisconsin last fall. His logic is that if the gun was not there, nobody gets killed. True. But this happy result does not extend to every situation. There was a case in Oklahoma earlier this year when a woman living alone with her infant, had her house attacked by two men trying to gain entrance. When the first one came through the door they broke down, she shot and killed him. For some reason the other guy left. So if there is no gun? Hmmm maybe it's not such a happy ending.
Then I see a column by a New York Times writer where she links to a list of 400 people who have been killed by people who held CC permits. This is supposed to get us outraged. She is playing off the fact that in the Florida shooting, the shooter had a CC permit. She of course portrays him as a cop wannabe who shouldn't have had a gun to begin with. And Citizen Dave offers up a bit of Catch-22 logic, saying that if you think you need a concealed weapon, then that just proves you are unfit to be armed. (You may recall from the book, that in order to be grounded as a pilot, you had to request so on the grounds that you were crazy. But if you asked to be grounded, that just proved you weren't crazy at all, because only crazy people would keep going up there flying missions.) Both of these clowns come to the conclusion that these particular guns need to be off the streets and these laws repealed.
The 400 people killed by permit holders is over a 5 year period, across the entire United States. I sent her this link http://homicides.redeyechicago.com/ which tracks the murders just in Chicago. They've already passed 100 for the year and that was before April. 90 of the victims were black. More than a dozen were under the age of 20, with one of them 14. They had six shot dead in one day. Chicago is bad, but are they unique? Hardly. A young black kid in Florida died when he jumped from two stories up to elude some mall cops who were chasing him. At his funeral a fight broke out with multiple guns and 14 people were shot, with two dead. Of course we don't know for sure, but who would like to bet me as to whether or not anybody had a permit?
For every one case where a permit holder is the shooter, there are a thousand where he is not. But nobody wants to take those guns away. All the effort is to take the guns away from permit holders only. And the truth is, that's a law that would actually be "effective," in that it would be followed, because these are people who respect the law.
Then I see a column by a New York Times writer where she links to a list of 400 people who have been killed by people who held CC permits. This is supposed to get us outraged. She is playing off the fact that in the Florida shooting, the shooter had a CC permit. She of course portrays him as a cop wannabe who shouldn't have had a gun to begin with. And Citizen Dave offers up a bit of Catch-22 logic, saying that if you think you need a concealed weapon, then that just proves you are unfit to be armed. (You may recall from the book, that in order to be grounded as a pilot, you had to request so on the grounds that you were crazy. But if you asked to be grounded, that just proved you weren't crazy at all, because only crazy people would keep going up there flying missions.) Both of these clowns come to the conclusion that these particular guns need to be off the streets and these laws repealed.
The 400 people killed by permit holders is over a 5 year period, across the entire United States. I sent her this link http://homicides.redeyechicago.com/ which tracks the murders just in Chicago. They've already passed 100 for the year and that was before April. 90 of the victims were black. More than a dozen were under the age of 20, with one of them 14. They had six shot dead in one day. Chicago is bad, but are they unique? Hardly. A young black kid in Florida died when he jumped from two stories up to elude some mall cops who were chasing him. At his funeral a fight broke out with multiple guns and 14 people were shot, with two dead. Of course we don't know for sure, but who would like to bet me as to whether or not anybody had a permit?
For every one case where a permit holder is the shooter, there are a thousand where he is not. But nobody wants to take those guns away. All the effort is to take the guns away from permit holders only. And the truth is, that's a law that would actually be "effective," in that it would be followed, because these are people who respect the law.
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