Justin's Political Corner
Personhood Ohio, a far-right group attempting to outlaw all abortions by defining life as beginning at conception, is still attempting to get a “personhood” amendment on the state ballot after falling short last year. And the leader of the group, Patrick Johnston, is trying out a few creative fundraising efforts to raise money for Personhood Ohio’s outreach efforts.In a recent email blast, Johnston asked his fellow Ohioans to help support his personhood cause by buying some assault weapons from his personal collection. “I’m selling some of my favorite things — some powerful rifles and ammo,” the Personhood Ohio director wrote.
“I’m a firm believer that the Second Amendment protects the future of freedom, but not as much as justice for the preborn,” Johnston’s email continued. “The shedding of innocent blood will bring God’s wrath on the land — and then you can wave freedom goodbye. So protecting Ohio’s children is more important than securing your right to keep and bear arms.”
The personhood movement is struggling in states other than Ohio, too. Personhood advocates’ push to endow zygotes with the rights of U.S. citizens hasn’t won support from other Republicans or other anti-abortion groups. The Supreme Court has confirmed that personhood is “clearly unconstitutional,” and it’s failed to take hold in conservative states like Oklahoma and Mississippi. The one notable exception is North Dakota, where the state legislature passed a personhood amendment that will be on the ballot in 2014.
In many states, it takes longer to get an abortion than it does to purchase a gun. Twenty-six states require women to wait for an abortion, usually 24 hours after an initial counseling session
(via winningprogressive)
WASHINGTON — It’s been almost six months since the elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn., and the families of those victims are on Capitol Hill this week with a message for lawmakers who opposed legislation to tighten background checks on gun sales: Get used to us. “We’re here for the marathon that this is,” said Bill Sherlach, whose wife Mary was the school psychologist at Sandy Hook Elementary School, one of six adults and 20 children killed in the Dec. 14 attack.
(via truth-has-a-liberal-bias)
Charleston, West Virginia, has modest gun restrictions in a pro-gun state, but maybe not for long.If you feel unsafe at a public pool in Charleston, West Virginia, you may soon have the right to lie there on a towel with a handgun at your side.
For 20 years, Charleston has been an island of modest gun restrictions in a very pro-gun rights state. But its gun laws—including a ban on guns in city parks, pools, and recreation centers—are now likely to be rolled back, the latest victory in a long-standing push to deny cities the power to regulate guns.
Since the 1980s, the National Rifle Association and other groups have led a successful campaign to get state legislatures to limit local control over gun regulations. These “preemption” laws block cities from enacting their own gun policies, effectively requiring cities with higher rates of gun violence to have the same gun regulations as smaller towns.
Before 1981, when an Illinois town banned the possession of handguns, just a handful of states had preemption laws on the books. Today, 42 states block cities from making gun laws, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Even Illinois, which has long allowed its cities to pass gun control measures, is about to invalidate local restrictions on concealed handguns and ban any future local regulation of assault weapons.
Gun rights advocates argue that allowing cities to have their own gun laws creates an impossible situation for law-abiding gun owners, who cannot be expected to read ordinances for every town they might pass through.
The preemption campaign has racked up so many victories nationwide, it’s now focusing on holdouts like Charleston, population 51,000.
Charleston’s current gun restrictions include a three-day waiting period to buy a handgun, and a limit of one handgun purchase per month, as well as bans on guns on publicly owned property, such as parks and pools.
West Virginia Del. Patrick Lane crafted an amendment to an unrelated state bill, now passed, that will likely force Charleston to erase those restrictions.
“Crime could happen anyplace. You obviously want to be able to defend yourself and your family if something happens,” Lane said when asked why anyone would want to bring a gun to a public pool.
The NRA did not respond to requests for comment, but its website calls Charleston’s restrictions “misguided” and “unreasonable.” Its site has closely tracked the progress of the repeal of the ordinances, which it states “would have no negative impact whatsoever on Charleston.” The site has repeatedly criticized Charleston’s Republican mayor for “speaking out publicly against this pro-gun reform.”
It’s not clear what effect the spread of preemption has had on public safety. “It’s very hard to determine what causes crime to go up and down, because there are so many variables,” said Laura Cutilletta, a senior attorney at the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
But in Charleston, Police Chief Brent Webster says he’s worried about losing the city’s current restrictions, in particular the law banning guns at city pools, concerts, and sporting events.
“You will have some citizens say, ‘I can do that now, so I’m going to do that,’” Webster said. “I am greatly concerned.”
“When they’re diving off the diving board, is that [gun] going to be in a book bag? Is that going to be lying under their towel and an eight-year-old kid is walking through the pool area and picks it up?”
Two of the city’s former police chiefs also say they’re worried about losing the ban on guns in public places that attract kids.
“That has nothing to do with the Second Amendment right. It has to do with public safety,” former Chief Dallas Staples said.
Charleston’s mayor, Danny Jones, who’s fought to keep the gun restrictions, said the city now has no choice but to do what the state Legislature wants and roll them back. The Legislature packaged the rollback requirement with a popular measure giving Charleston more leeway in how it raises taxes.
“I’m still reeling from all this, because it’s going to affect us in a very negative way,” Jones told reporters after the law passed.
Keith Morgan, president of the West Virginia Citizen’s Defense League, a gun rights group, said the group been pushing for an end to Charleston’s ordinances for years, and that the change would protect law-abiding gun owners from a “minefield” of conflicting local laws.
Lane, the West Virginia delegate, also said that gun-owning commuters were put at risk as they traveled through different cities with different rules.
But neither Lane nor Morgan could cite an example of a gun owner being prosecuted for accidentally breaking the law during their commute, or by accidentally wandering into a city park. When Morgan himself once showed up at the Charleston Civic Center with a gun, he said, he was simply asked to leave, and he did. In lawsuits the West Virginia Citizen’s Defense League filed against gun ordinances in Charleston and Martinsburg, the plaintiffs cited their fear of potential prosecution.
The main burden of Charleston’s laws for gun owners has been the inconvenience of waiting three days to purchase a handgun, and only being able to buy one handgun at a time 2014 something that can be particularly troublesome “if you’re buying a present for your family and there happens to be a Christmas sale at the retailer,” Lane said.
Former Charleston law enforcement officers say the handgun restrictions, passed in 1993, helped the city tamp down on the drugs-for-guns trade that was rampant at the time. But since then, gun stores have sprung up right at the city’s borders, said Steve Walker, a former Charleston police officer and now president of the West Virginia branch of the Fraternal Order of Police.
“Honestly, I don’t know whether with them repealing it, it is going to help them or hurt them,” Walker said of the handgun restrictions.
State legislators said that city officials are overplaying their fears.
“I don’t see everyone with a concealed-carry permit deciding to go to a pool and carry a gun,” said Democrat Mark Hunt, a state delegate. “So what if they do? They’re law-abiding citizens.”
Charleston’s mayor said he has a plan if somebody brings a gun poolside: “We’re going to close down the pool.”
(via politiciansoc)
Alex Jones acolyte and car dealer brother land History show (via Raw Story )
Beginning in July, the A+E Network’s History channel will run a new series called “God, Guns & Automobiles” that features Alex Jones acolyte and shock jock Erich “Mancow” Muller and brother Mark, a car dealer in a small Missouri town. The dealership, Max Motors, has a reputation for mixing…
Gun Owners of America director Larry Pratt has been going-all out against immigration reform, warning that immigrants will “vote to take away our guns” and are “going to be probably just sitting around drawing welfare and voting Democrat.” He told radio host Steve Deace earlier this week that if a reform bill passes, “you can buh bye to your guns and buh bye to the rest of your freedom because this would be a country that had been californicated.”
In an action alert this week, GOA tells its members to call their senators and oppose immigration reform because if it passes “you could lose all your guns before 2035.”
“By 2035,” the alert warns, “the battle will no longer be about stopping the expansion of background checks. Most likely, it will be about stopping the government from coming to take your guns away.”
ST. LOUIS • Liberal CNN host Piers Morgan says he has banned conservative St. Louis radio host Dana Loesch from his show, alleging she was “glib” in a Twitter comment about the beheading of a British soldier.
The soldier was killed in London by a machete-wielding assailant, officials said today.
Loesch, in an apparent comment on criticism of gun owners by gun-control advocates, responded by posting on her Twitter feed: “Was the guy with the machete a member of the NRA? Asking for a friend.”
Morgan, who is British, responded via Twitter: “You think the beheading of a soldier is something to be glib about???”
A heated Twitter exchange ensued between the two, who have appeared on each others’ shows debating their opposing ideologies.
During the Twitter exchange, Loesch slammed Morgan for “calling me Nancy Lanza because I stood up for 2A rights,” referring to the mother of Newtown massacre shooter Adam Lanza. Morgan wrote that Loesch should “shut up with stupid political wisecracks” and “show some bloody respect.”
The exchange culminated with a Tweet from Morgan: “Can’t stomach @DLoesch goading Brits with her outrageous tweeting re beheaded soldier story. Unfollowed, and banned from my show.”
“Unfollowed” means you don’t subscribe to someone’s Twitter feed.
Loesch’s own Twitter profile later displayed the line: “Proudly banned from Piers Morgan’s TV show.”
Piers Morgan »> Dana Loesch.
I’m a member of the National Rifle Association and a former Army officer with assignments in the military police, artillery, and operations research and intelligence at the Pentagon.
I’m also Ted Nugent’s older brother.
Ted and I recently attended the NRA convention in Houston, where he delivered the gathering’s final speech and continued his ardent defense of the Second Amendment. Ted and I have hunted together for decades, and we legally own a large number of guns. We both understand that guns constitute deadly force, so safety is foremost in our minds. It’s part of responsible gun ownership.
And I agree with Ted that our constitutional right to bear arms should not be undermined. I want all those who are qualified to purchase a gun to be able to do so. But — and here is where I part ways with my brother — not everyone is qualified to own a gun, so expanded background checks should be a legislative priority.
I believe strongly that expanding and improving mandatory background checks will keep a lot of people who aren’t entitled to Second Amendment rights from having easy access to guns. As of today, a convicted felon can find a gun show or a private seller and buy a firearm without a background check. That loophole should be closed. Every gun transaction must include a thorough background check. Why would responsible gun owners want to protect people who threaten not only our safety but our gun rights?
The NRA has it wrong: Irresponsible gun owners are bad for everyone. If you shouldn’t have access to a gun, then there should be no way for you to access a gun! Can anyone argue with that?
Consider the mentally ill, one of the biggest threats to firearm safety. How do we preserve their rights to health privacy while keeping firearms out of their hands? It’s a huge concern, given the role mental illness has played in recent gun-violence tragedies. While some states have made progress, it’s far from universal.
But convicted felons, people with restraining orders against them and those with a history of mental illness can still find ways to purchase weapons. No one should stand for this.
The tragedy in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14, and the gun violence that claims on average eight children per day in the United States, require us to think differently about what the Second Amendment really means.
Enhanced background checks need not threaten the Second Amendment. Why are the NRA and the elected representatives who support it so slow to realize this? Or do they fear a slippery slope toward greater restrictions on gun rights? If they don’t want to burden a flawed system, they should be part of fixing it.
Reducing gun violence and protecting the Second Amendment is not an either-or idea. I challenge the NRA’s leadership to partner with groups such as Evolve, which I recently joined, that seek to protect gun rights while creating a culture of responsibility, safe gun use and prudent access to firearms.
Can we imagine an NRA capable of taking that on? Or are we doomed to the uncompromising philosophy driving everything the organization does? I want to be proud of being a member of a proactive NRA.
I attended this month’s NRA convention to better understand what the organization is thinking and advocating. Speakers such as Glenn Beck and my brother are extremely articulate and connect with that audience, while Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s executive vice president, excels at creating a strident stand-and-fight mentality that does not speak for the majority of gun owners. Ted and I have talked about these matters over the years, but more often lately. I concede that he is right on some points: In some instances, cities and states with less-strict gun laws have less violent crime. But that does not argue for arming America. Ted is someone who speaks in extremes to make his points. It reflects who he is, and it works for him and his audience.
h/t: Washington Post
Pete Santilli is the kind of person we normally wouldn’t cover here – an unhinged Internet ranter who exists somewhere to the crazier side of Alex Jones. Santilli’s broadcast – on which he details conspiracy theories on everything from 9/11 to Sandy Hook — doesn’t even have Jones’ audience: he describes himself as “a radio talkshow host ready to take my show to national syndication; that is, of course, if the FCC regulated AM/FM radio stations can handle my truth & honesty.”
But in the past couple of months, Santilli has attracted two major gun activists to his show: National Rifle Association board member Ted Nugent, who used the opportunity to call President Obama a Nazi, and Gun Owners of America director Larry Pratt, who worked with Santilli to flesh out his theory that President Obama is raising a private army to overpower the U.S. military. Pratt, in particular, is taken remarkably seriously among the GOP – he has been partially credited with taking down a background checks measure in the Senate last month.
So, we started paying attention to Santilli, and we learned pretty quickly what Nugent and Pratt felt perfectly comfortable associating themselves with. On his show last week, Santilli went on a disgusting, violent rant in which he called for the entire Bush family and President Obama to be “tried, convicted and shot” for “treason” (and in George H.W. Bush’s case “involvement with his cronies in the John F. Kennedy assassination”) and for Hillary Clinton to be “tried, convicted and shot in the vagina.”
He then went on to describe in graphic detail how he personally wanted to “pull the trigger” on Clinton – who he repeatedly referred to with a sexual slur – and watch her slowly die in revenge for what he believes was the faking of SEAL Team Six’s Bin Laden raid.ow about Hillary Clinton? That frickin’ assbag has not only been involved in drug trafficking out of Mena, Arkansas, okay? Not only that; and all these people try to have this plausible deniability thing, yeah sure, they’re removed, they’re just a bunch of politicians. Well, guess where they got all of the money to acquire the power that they have?
This ‘C U Next Tuesday,’ Hillary Clinton, has been involved in the killings of American troops. Namely, the mysterious suicide of the emotionally unstable Navy SEAL commander who just so happened to be involved in all of her dealings in the Middle East, okay. And he just mysteriously got suicided along with everyone else associated with the Clinton family. Miss Hillary Clinton needs to be convicted, she needs to be tried, convicted and shot in the vagina. I wanna pull the trigger. That ‘C U Next Tuesday’ has killed human beings that are in our ranks of our service.
I want to remind you that in Benghazi, Miss Hillary ‘the fricken’ biggest vagina on the face of the planet’ told troops to stand down and to not go in and interfere with the operation that they set up because they’re moving arms; Barack Obama is moving drugs through the CIA out of Afghanistan and Barack Obama needs to be tried, convicted, and shot for crimes against the United States of America. And if anybody has a problem with that, then you are an enemy of our state...
I want to shoot [Clinton] right in the vagina and I don’t want her to die right away; I want her to feel the pain and I want to look her in the eyes and I want to say ‘on behalf of all Americans that you’ve killed, on behalf of the Navy SEALS,’ … the families of Navy SEAL Team Six who were involved in the fake hunt down of this Obama bin Laden thing, that whole fake scenario - because these Navy SEALS know the truth, they killed them all - on behalf of all of those people, I’m supporting our troops by saying we need to try, convict, and shoot Hillary Clinton in the vagina.
The full clip:
h/t: Right Wing Watch
Rand Paul: UN has secret plot to ‘CONFISCATE and DESTROY ALL’ of America’s guns (via Raw Story )
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on Saturday warned President Barack Obama was working on behalf of “anti-American globalists” in the United Nations who were plotting against the U.S. Constitution. In a fundraising email sent on behalf of the National Association on Gun Rights, Paul alleged the U.N. Arms…
![(via Daily Kos: The latest edition of the fake wingnut “persecution of Christians” meme: Duck Dynasty)
We have yet another right wing-generated fake “persecution” conspiracy spreading aroundlike wildfire in the Dittohead World, and the victim this go around is the A&E hit show Duck Dynasty for allegedly attempting to edit out gun-related and end-of-episode prayer scenes, similar to what happened when NBC aired VeggieTales during its children’s block in 2006.
The offending falsehood that’s being spread around the wingnuttia universe, especially on Facebook.
Of course, none of this is true, but that won’t stop the so-called “persecuted [Conservative] Christians” from spreading the meme all over the conservative lie machine apparatus.
The always trusty Snopes.com:
attribution: None Specified
EDITORS’ NOTE: Story is screencapped because Snopes.com does not allow copy and pasting onto other sites.
Common Sense Conspiracy:
There is a vicious scam going around on Facebook today, and chances are, especially if you wound up stopping by on this article, you have heard about it. It’s the little Facebook page that says that the show Duck Dynasty is potentially going to be cancelled because “liberals and atheists” are complaining that too much praying and guns are shown on television during the program.We did our research and revealed that this was indeed a hoax. However, we didn’t really need to research it. Bottom line: liberals and atheists probably don’t spend a lot of their time watching Duck Dynasty. If they do, then they are probably not really atheists or liberals, unless they just simply find the show entertaining and not offensive.
Even the Glenn Beck-founded and conservative-biased TheBlaze debunked the rumors:
So what’s the truth?
There’s nothing to it, family member and Phil’s oldest (and non-bearded ) son Alan Robertson tells TheBlaze.
“The rumor that A&E told the Robertsons to tone down guns and prayer is not true,” Alan said in an email to TheBlaze, adding the description of “false” to the chatter. “We continue to partner with A&E to make a great tv show that reflects our family’s values.”
I, like most liberals/progressives, take zero offense to the gun usage and the prayers on the show.
Frankly, the cast of Duck Dynasty are MUCH better role models than Honey Boo Boo, Jon and Kate, The Duggars, and much of the Christian Right in this nation.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/9528a2de35735caf35bafff381d34053/tumblr_mmnxgkpu4A1r1vqpco1_500.jpg)
(via Daily Kos: The latest edition of the fake wingnut “persecution of Christians” meme: Duck Dynasty)
We have yet another right wing-generated fake “persecution” conspiracy spreading aroundlike wildfire in the Dittohead World, and the victim this go around is the A&E hit show Duck Dynasty for allegedly attempting to edit out gun-related and end-of-episode prayer scenes, similar to what happened when NBC aired VeggieTales during its children’s block in 2006.
The offending falsehood that’s being spread around the wingnuttia universe, especially on Facebook.
There is a vicious scam going around on Facebook today, and chances are, especially if you wound up stopping by on this article, you have heard about it. It’s the little Facebook page that says that the show Duck Dynasty is potentially going to be cancelled because “liberals and atheists” are complaining that too much praying and guns are shown on television during the program.Even the Glenn Beck-founded and conservative-biased TheBlaze debunked the rumors:
We did our research and revealed that this was indeed a hoax. However, we didn’t really need to research it. Bottom line: liberals and atheists probably don’t spend a lot of their time watching Duck Dynasty. If they do, then they are probably not really atheists or liberals, unless they just simply find the show entertaining and not offensive.
So what’s the truth?I, like most liberals/progressives, take zero offense to the gun usage and the prayers on the show.There’s nothing to it, family member and Phil’s oldest (and non-bearded ) son Alan Robertson tells TheBlaze.
“The rumor that A&E told the Robertsons to tone down guns and prayer is not true,” Alan said in an email to TheBlaze, adding the description of “false” to the chatter. “We continue to partner with A&E to make a great tv show that reflects our family’s values.”
Frankly, the cast of Duck Dynasty are MUCH better role models than Honey Boo Boo, Jon and Kate, The Duggars, and much of the Christian Right in this nation.
The Missouri Legislature on Wednesday sent Gov. Jay Nixon (D) a bill which would declare federal gun regulations unenforceable, according to the Associated Press.
The Missouri House voted 118-36 in favor of the measure on Wednesday. The state’s Senate passed the bill last month.
He’ll (Nixon) veto it, only to see the veto possibly get overridden.
h/t: TPM Livewire
