New York Times’ commentator and part-time psychologist David Brooks is at it again. Brooks already provided the invaluable insight that Barack Obama’s chief weakness is his out-of-placeness at the Applebee’s salad bar (thus also demonstrating Brooks’ own bond with the commoner… so egalitarian is Brooks that he invented the notion of an Applebee’s salad bar just for us po’ folk). Now brooks turns his psychological analytical mind toward Obama’s financial backers:
The real core of his financial support is something else, the rising class of information age analysts. Once, the wealthy were solidly Republican. But the information age rewards education with money. There are many smart high achievers who grew up in liberal suburbs around San Francisco, L.A. and New York, went to left-leaning universities like Harvard and Berkeley and took their values with them when they became investment bankers, doctors and litigators. David Brooks - Obama
Attention: Seattle parks and other city property is now officially gun free! Woo Hoo!
The mayor’s get-tough approach is especially reasonable in an urban setting. The man charged with shooting three people at the recent Northwest Folklife Festival had a concealed-handgun license when he arrived for an evening of fun and games. Prosecutors say he had a history of drug addiction and schizophrenia, which should have prevented him from obtaining such a permit.Washington’s system of screening applicants for concealed-weapons permits is full of loopholes Editorials & Opinion | Gun free
I imagine a day gone by where the news media reported facts, as best they knew them, turned a critical eye toward the statements of authorities, ferreting out the truth behind the rhetoric, and presenting it to its audience to enlighten them.
I say “imagine” because it’s probably the case that the news media has never really lived up to such lofty expectations. Nevertheless today the news media seem to be more like that annoying guy who likes to start fights between people by misrepresenting what they’ve said about one another.
Case in point: Retired General Wesley Clark’s recent comments about John McCain’s qualifications to be president. To hear the news channels tell it, Clark challenged McCain’s patriotism and attacked his military record.
As an aside: according to the media, Clark is a surrogate for the Obama campaign, which is also not true: Clark is an Obama supporter. There’s no such thing as an unofficial surrogate. Either the campaign is sending out Clark to stump for Obama or they are not- and they are not. If Face the Nation decides to invite Clark on the show to discuss the candidates and Clark expresses his preference for one over the other, this does not make him a surrogate.
Of course, Clark said no such thing. In fact, Clark went out of his way to express his admiration for McCain’s service. What Clark did say was that none of McCain’s experiences directly tied to qualifications to be the chief executive of the country. Bob Schieffer, the show host interviewing Clark, made the statement that Obama has never “ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down.” Clark’s reply used that same phrase to make the point that riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is not a qualification for president.
Guess what: he’s absolutely right.
McCain’s actions in the Vietnam war, including his imprisonment and undergoing torture, may certainly say a lot about the man’s integrity- especially his refusal to accept an early release (POWs are bound by honor and regulation to be released in the order they were captured). That may inform how you consider McCain’s character, but character is not a qualification for president. There are many people in the world who have maintained their dignity and honor in the face of terrible events- but this does not make them all qualified to be president.
Below is the full clip of Wesley Clark’s interview on Face the Nation.
There’s nothing more annoying than listening to a 72 year old man spin himself to be a victim from these comments (almost as bad as claiming that “losing his grip” is an ageist statement). I was around in 2000 and I remember the real attacks on McCain’s history in the form of whispering campaigns about his mental instability and black illegitimate child… and those came from his own beloved Republican base (the same rotten teet from which he now seems to suckle in the vain hope of gaining their support). Grow up, you old cunt!
The Supreme Court today ruled the District of Columbia gun ban unconstitutional, unambiguously embracing an ‘individual right’ interpretation of the 2nd Amendment after decades (centuries, actually) of ambiguous decisions on the matter.
Those of you who have only read my recent posts on politics might assume that I’m anti-gun and disheartened by this development. In fact, I’ve long believed that a (limited) right to own and use guns should be an individual right. When trying to divine the ‘original intent’ of the authors of the Constitution there is evidence to support both sides of the argument (one thing we must remember is that there was more than one framer of the Constitution and they didn’t all have one mind). I choose to believe that the individual right interpretation is better.
Many gun control advocates accurately portray their motivations as trying to reduce gun violence. I say “accurately” because I believe that their motivations are in fact to reduce gun violence (right-wingers’ allusions to Nazi Germany notwithstanding). One commentator at RealClearPolitics succinctly expresses this viewpoint:
In his intemperate dissent in the court’s recent Guantanamo decision, Scalia said the defense of constitutional rights embodied in that ruling meant it “will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed.” That consideration apparently does not apply to a law whose precise purpose was to reduce the number of murders in the District of Columbia. E. J. Dionne - Originalism Goes Out the Window
First of all, it’s important to know that DC’s gun ban was the strictest ban in the nation. Handguns were banned outright, while long guns (rifles and shotguns) could be kept in the home only unloaded with a trigger lock (and perhaps, I’ve heard, partially disassembled). This implies that any firearm legally stored in DC (aside from those owned prior to when the 1976 ban went into effect) was useless for the purposes of security.
For the record, I disagreed with Scalia’s dissent in the Guantanamo decision, and in general I think he’s a douche. However, notice Dionne’s operative word here… “a law whose precise purpose was to reduce the number of murders…” Is purpose enough to justify a complete ban on firearms, though?
I’ve never been in DC longer than it takes to change flights (a couple hours in my case), but my understanding is that, despite the aforementioned total ban on handguns and practically total ban on other firearms, gun violence is still quite a problem in DC. A lot of this, no doubt, has to do with easy access to guns in the surrounding states such as Virginia. Nevertheless, this is a perfect example of what gun rights advocates are talking about when they argue that “if you make gun ownership criminal, the only people to own guns will be criminals”. Strangely, it seems the gun-wielding criminals in DC have decided not to adhere to the gun law there.
To Dionne’s point, I looked up some statistics on DC’s murder rate. Here is a chart I drew up based on data from here:
This graph shows the number of murders over time in DC per 100,000 inhabitants. The DC gun ban just overturned started in 1976. The murder rate in DC certainly seems to have decreased since its heyday in the 90s, but if anything can be concluded about the effect of the gun ban, it must be that it had little if any effect at all. The murder rate shot up astronomically and dropped down slightly less precipitously all while the same ban was in effect.
In fact, this is pretty much the conclusion at which ‘gun policy expert’ Jens Ludwig arrives in this Talk of the Nation show from last week.
I don’t intend to delve into a lengthy constitutional discussion on the matter… if you want that, go read the 160 page Supreme Court opinion. My question- if strict gun bans like those in DC have little impact on the murder rate, and if there is at least some reason to believe that the Constitution protects a right of individuals to possess (and bear, as necessary) firearms, why maintain such a strong position against private gun ownership? Do the likes of E. J. Dione really have to believe that DC v. Heller was decided solely on the partisan politics of Antonin Scalia in order to make sense out of the ruling?
