Last week, we looked at a troika of “gun rights” groups and their singular and plural records.

Last Tuesday, we showed you a fundraising letter for a group called Minnesota Gun Rights (MGR) that Minnesota Second Amendment activists have been getting.  In the letter – from “Minnesota Gun Rights” executive director Chris Dorr – the sky will fall if the reader doesn’t support the group.

Wednesday, we got a perspective from Iowa on the effectiveness of the Iowa Gun Owners (IGO), run by Aaron Dorr, the brother of MGR’s Executive Director – or, according to an Iowa legislator who’s seen it first hand, the lack of effectiveness.

Thursday we looked at the ties between the Dorr brothers and the scandal that rocked the Michele Bachmann campaign in Iowa – and to the National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR), a group that earned a reputation for having a big bark but not much bite for the relative impotence of its battle against the anti-rights onslaught in Colorado last session.  We also noted that “Minnesotagunrights.org” is actually registered in Van Meter Iowa.

Friday, we showed that an alarmist fund-raising letter aimed at Minnesotans from the NAGR’s Dudley Brown, that was wrong on nearly every possible point – almost too devoid of fact to have come from Heather Martens.

And today?

More on that in a moment.

In Defense:  Last week, a local Libertarian activist well-known for his involvement in the “Ron Paul” clicque takeover of parts of the MN GOP in 2012 posted the following on his Facebook page.  I won’t name the activist here; let’s call him “Paul Robertson” just to avoid confusion.

I’m adding emphasis:

I have met Chris Dorr and and have worked some of the people helping him on projects in the state. A recent hit piece from a Minnesota establishment blogger noted the connection Chris has to the National Association for Gun Rights.

I’m an “establishment blogger?”

Who knew?

I digress:

NAGR operations chief Dudley Brown is an effective political operative who, an as RNC Rules Committeemember, was a leader at the national convention fighting the establishment power grab. One gets onto the RNC Rules committee by earning the support of entire state and CD conventions, something that is impossible for sham groups to do.

And there’s the point, right there.

Forget for a moment that “Mr. Robertson” is referring to Mr. Brown’s role in the picayune rules battle at the last Republican National Convention that pitted “the establishment” against the thin coterie of Ron Paul delegates (a rules change I oppose, for what very little it’s worth).

The two responses to this are:

1. So What?:   The most we can take from “Mr. Robertson’s” statement is that Mr. Brown can organize caucusees into a group that creates a ruckus to no real immediate effect.
2. That’s What!:  Badda bing.  Re-read #1.

In party politics as well as gun politics, Dudley Brown of the National Association for Gun Rights would seem – by his record, even as emphasized by his local supporter, the pseudonymic “Mr. Robertson” – to be about making the big, “my way or the highway” policy pronouncements that drum up much noise but signify little-to-nothing.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with noise.  And Minnesota’s current gun-rights groups – MN-RKBA, GOCRA, and even the NRA (which for the first time in my 25 years of watching the issue in this state is finally starting to take an active role at the Capitol) create plenty of it.  Over this past session, they put thousands of people into meeting rooms, and mobilized tens of thousands of phone calls, emails and letters.  Minnesota’s legislators know where the people of Minnesota stand on the issue – which is why even though the DFL controls the legislature and the governor’s office, and their financial supporters are buying support in the mainstream media, the anti-rights agenda was humiliated this past session.

But there needs to be more than just noise.  If a group can’t deliver results at the Capitol in terms of bad policy shot down and good policy enacted, then why support them?

Minnesota’s gun rights groups – NRA, GOCRA/GOAL, MN-RKBA and the rest – have a record of not just making noise, but winning battles.  Of not just getting people riled up, but getting them focused in a direction that, in good times, expands the human right of self-defense.  Never forget – the battle for “shall issue” carry permitting lasted 10 years, from 1995 to 2005.  The goal was achieved not just by getting people riled up – but by focusing all that passion on results.  And frequently needing to do it against adversity; remember, the DFL controlled the legislature before 2002, and have held at least one chamber for all but two years in recent memory.  And we’ve had exactly eight years of conservative-enough governor in the past thirty (forget about Jesse Ventura).

The Challenge:   But there’s certainly a market for groups in any facet of politics, including Gun Rights, that lead with “death or glory”; “our way or the highway”.  Gun Owners of America (GOA) split off from the NRA 20-odd years ago because they thought the NRA wasn’t activist enough.  And they were right.  And the exodus of members concerned with gun rights spurred the NRA to more, more effective political activism.

But hard-line as they are, the GOA has actually had an effect on politics.  They’ve done things; mobilized voters, won some battles through their own lobbying and activism and shoe leather.

I’m not going to tell you what to think about “Minnesota Gun Rights”, the group we met last Tuesday via its alarmed-sounding fund-raising letter to Minnesota gun owners.

I am going to tell you to consider the evidence;

• “Minnesota Gun Rights” (MGR) is tightly related to “Iowa Gun Owners” – their directors are brothers, and both groups’ websites are registered in Iowa (here’s MGR, here’s IGO)
• As related by Iowa state representative Matt Windschitl – a pro-gun legislator – IGO has a record of being utterly useless in actually passing legislation, has actually hampered the passage of useful legislation, and claims credit for passing legislation in which they were utterly uninvolved.   You don’t have to believe me – listen to him yourself.
• The Dorr brothers were intimately involved in the scandal that has dogged Representative Bachmann – the payment-for-endorsement scandal that led to the resignation of an Iowa state Senator.  So someday if Chris Dorr testifies in front of the Public Safety committee, you think Doug Grow (of the Joyce-Foundation-sponsored MinnPost) won’t bring that up to discredit all gun rights advocates?   You think “Protect Minnesota’s” new PR guy Richard Carlbom won’t dangle that factoid in front of Tom Scheck and Pat Kessler?
• Both the Dorrs are closely involved with the “National Association for Gun Rights”, a group run by Dudley Brown.  NAGR – like Brown and the Dorrs – are closely aligned with the Ron Paul camp; that’s not a bad thing by itself, necessarily.  But it does tip you off to their “all or nothing” approach.   And whatever their political allegiance, while NAGR is long on uncompromising rhetoric, when it comes to the day to day politics of winning the legislative battle for our rights, their record gives the appearance of being all moo and no cow, or worse (to say nothing of willing to misrepresent current events and politicians’ positions here in Minnesota).

Let me be clear here, personally – when it comes to fighting the anti-rights orcs, as far as I’m concerned we should let a thousand lights shine.

But Iowa Gun Owners and the NAGR would seem to have a record of underdelivering on its overpromised rhetoric.  And MGR has no record at all, other than of association with the IGO and NAGR.

Ask yourself – should your hard-earned money be going to a run rights group that has an actual record of delivering people, votes, and policy?  Minnesota already has several of those.  We could use more – as many as it takes to get every possible Minnesota shooter to the polls, and toss every possible orc out of the Legislature and the Governor’s office.

Is there any evidence that Minnesota Gun Rights, Iowa Gun Owners or the National Association for Gun Rights have done anything documentably useful?  Bills passed (through their efforts)?  Lawsuits won?  Chambers packed?  Legislators elected?

I’m waiting to see it.

But it’s your call.

…then we need to see a lot more stories like this.

The only truly free society is the one where the government fears the people.

And government today – with police and prosecutors walking all over the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, with our government spying on us and siccing the Tax Police on dissenters, and putting virtually all civil political dissent on government watchlists – is trying to achieve just the opposite.

To:  Principled Libertarians
From:  Mitch Berg, Uppity “Establishment” Tea Party Peasant
Re:  Bamboozled

My Libertarian Friends,

I likely agree with you all on more than we disagree.  Some of you like to focus on the disagreements, which makes for fun rhetoric, but whatever; I would call myself a constitutional limited government conservative.  The battle to limit the power of government is a long, uphill slog – against the gleefully statist Democrats, and against a GOP establishment that has plenty of constituents that benefit from the Big State, as well as a crucially large Tea Party faction that is quite the opposite. 

Whatever.  It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

Anyway.

Now, one of you folks’s signature lines is that you’d rather be irrelevant at the polls than violate your principles.

And generally – and I say this with all due respect – Libertarians achieve that wish with flying colors.  Their irrelevance at the polls is legendary; most LP candidates are doing well to poll in full single digits – to the left of the decimal point, anyway. 

And the big “Ron Paul” takeover of the Minnesota GOP has had mixed results.  Some districts – like my SD65 – saw excellent efforts by solid candidates that turned out lots of new GOP voters.  Others – the 5th CD – turned out more like frat party gags gone awry, run by people who chuckle amongst themselves about the contempt they feel for the GOP and Republicans. 

As a general rule, Libertarians (with the Big L) are happy to remain magnificently above the scrums of daily life, gazing down on all the silly worker ants and their door-knocking and sign-pounding, focusing on big thoughts and dreaming of the utopia we’ll all share (from our neutral corners) once  you get those damn brainwashed sheeple to see the light. 

All is in its place, right?

So for the Virginia Libertarian Party, it must have seemed like Free Pot and Raw Milk day; someone gave them actual money to run a campaign. 

Of course, that “someone” was an Obama bundler. 

And the Libertarian candidate for Governor came in with a little over six percent of the vote.  And I’m going to hypothesize with little fear of contradiction that in and among the people who wouldn’t have voted anyway there was a preponderance of a couple of Republicans, maybe several, for every Democrat. 

Which was precisely why an Obama bundler rounded up all the money, of course – for the same reason that Liberals With Deep Pockets ® donated to Tom Horner.  To siphon votes. 

Now, many of you believe there’s no difference between the two major parties.  I reject that premise (while stipulating that the GOP has a ton of room for improvement, which is why I’m firmly in the Tea Party wing of the party, and have been since long before there was a Tea Party). 

But whatever it is you believe about the difference (?) between the two major parties, I gotta ask you; what do you think about having your movement and its principles co-opted in all their above-it-all grandeur to help solidify the control of the most gleefully, overtly statist of the parties?

“It’s not my fault” might be true and is still an evasion. 

Only Libertarians and Republicans in the comment section on this one, please; the kids have all sorts of other places on my blog to romp and play; comments re the Democrat point of view will likely be deleted without ceremony. 

I don’t do that often – but I am today.

It’s my blog.  Don’t like it?  Talk to the hand. 

Yesterday, we discussed a package that Minnesota gun rights activists have been receiving from a group calling itself “Minnesota Gun Rights”. 

I ran a bit of video from Representative Matt Windschitl, running down a group called the “Iowa Gun Owners”.

It was a pretty acerbic video. And it opened up some questions; what was the argument about? Who did what to whom?

And who are “Iowa Gun Owners”?

Blown Up: I called Representative Windschitl yesterday.  We talked for about a half hour.  The keystone of the conversation was an incident in the Iowa legislature in 2011.  As Windschitl relates, the GOP caucus was pushing a bill in both chambers to allow combat veterans who’d suffered from PTSD, and had that notification put into the national NICS databases (disqualifying them from gun purchases) an avenue to get their rights restored. 

There had been, earlier in the session, a debate about introducing “Alaska Carry” – legalizing carry without a permit, as in Alaska, Vermont and Arizona – and/or “Constitutional Carry” (making carry laws a part of the Constitution) in Iowa.  The bill had died…

…but the measure to restore veterans’ rights was alive and well, and had passed the Senate.   All it needed was to pass the House. 

Said Windschitl, “we took months to get everyone in on it.  The NRA, Aaron Dorr (leader of Iowa Gun Owners) – we were going to write some bridge language [to make the bill mesh with the Senate version for easy passage].

Then, says Windschitl, “an hour before the final debate on the bill [to restore veterans’ rights], a [junior GOP rep and IGO supporter] intorduced a “kill all” amendment reintroducing “Constitutional Carry”. 

The Speaker and the legislator spent hours on procedural maneuvering – attempts to suspend the rules and other parliamentary shenanigans, all of which failed. 

As did the prospects for either restoring veterans’ rights and “Constitutional Carry”, in that session. 

“It killed the bill”, said Windschitl. 

Came On Strong:  Windschitl – who describes himself as a strong Second Amendment legislator, and his record supports the claim – recalls first hearing about Iowa Gun Owners. 

“When I saw my first letter, I thought “all right”.  At that time, the NRA had been pretty much absent from Iowa”.  Windschitl noted that IGO’s tough rhetoric was attractive to legislators who wanted to mobilize some serious muscle to fight for gun rights in Iowa – a state that was very late to the table in liberalizing gun laws. 

But the honeymoon was short-lived, said Windschitl; “I saw all kinds of representatives get taken in – and get burned”. 

The  problem – one of the problems, anyway – was all that tough rhetoric meant exactly that; if they didn’t get everything they wanted, they wanted nothing.  If you supported them 99%, it was the same as opposing them. 

Windschitl isn’t the only one to notice this.  The left-leaning “Bleeding Heartland” blog, in a piece written by “DesmoinesDem”, notes (with emphasis added by me):

 Founded in 2009, Iowa Gun Owners is quick to bash Republicans and other groups it considers unprincipled. Its leaders have even labeled GOP State Representative Clel Baudler, a member of the National Rifle Association’s board, as “notoriously anti-gun.” How far out there do you have to be to consider the NRA anti-gun? Iowa Gun Owners refuses to get involved in supporting gun legislation that supposedly doesn’t go far enough in protecting the Second Amendment.

Windschitl – with a long record as a Second Amendment torch-carrier – notes that Iowa Gun Owners have attacked him.  “It’s like any hint of compromise means you’re out of the club!”.

And Nothing At All:  Of course, IGO isn’t the only group in politics that considers any effort focused less than 100% on principle as no effort at all.  It’s satisfying rhetoric, of course – but it also means that any time you don’t have absolute control of the legislature, you get nothing you want passed into law to form actual policy. 

Like losing the restoration of Second Amendment rights for veterans, over a doomed attempt to get a “Constitutional Carry” provision that was not going to pass under any circumstances. 

There are times, especially in politics, where perfect truly is the enemy of good enough. 

But for that to be an issue, you have to actually be trying for either. 

With that in mind, let’s go back to the video of Representative Windschitl from yesterday:

Here’s the transcript of the video:

“This morning I saw an email from a so-called Second Amendment organization. That organization, in a roundabout way, was trying to take credit for helping to get this [pro Second Amendment] bill to the floor and working it through the process. It’s not the first time this organization has done that. I want to be clear to Iowans – I want to be clear to anyone that’s watching this video right now; that organization’s executive director is Aaron Dorr; he’s the executive director of Iowa Gun Owners. Here’s the message; he did not lift a single finger to move this [pro second amendment] legislation forward. In fact, he never even chose to register on the original house file, House File 81. And he did not choose to register on this [pro second amendment] legislation before us now. The organizations that have brought this legislation to us today, to protect Iowans, are the National Rifle Association, the Iowa Firearms Coalition, the Iowa State Sheriffs and Deputies Association, and the Iowa Police Association. Those are the organizations that have spent time and effort to make sure we’re doing right by Iowans. So for those Iowans out there who have been getting these deceptive, misleading emails, rest assured – we are doing your business in an up front, honest manner…

 What happened there?

Windschitl told me the clip was “about a bill that would have made carry permit data private information, to prevent newspapers from  publishing the names of people with permits”. 

“There was no contact from Iowa Gun Owners on the bill.  No support at all”.   The newspapers – especially the Des Moines Register  – were pushing to stop the bill; newspapers love harassing the law-abiding gun owner.  Still, as the vote drew near, things were looking good.  The GOP caucus and the various other Second Amendment groups had the votes.  The bill was going to pass.

The night before the final vote on the bill, Windschitl was directed to a posting on the IGO Facebook page; “The Iowa Gun Owners took credit for the bill!” 

The next morning, the Speaker of the House – Kraig Paulsen, another Second Amendment stalwart – told Windschitl “you have the bully pulpit”, in Windschitl’s words.  

The results?  Well, you’ve seen the video.

Asked who were his points of contact from the Iowa Gun Owners, Windschitl responded “I worked with Aaron and Chris Dorr”.

Aaron Dorr, of course, is the president of Iowa Gun Owners.

Chris is Aaron’s brother.  And he’s the one whose signature is on the letter we talked about yesterday, sent to Minnesota gun owners on behalf of “Minnesota Gun Rights”. 

More about the Dorrs – and their two organizations – tomorrow.

I don’t “endorse” candidates on this blog or on my show. 

Partly because I’m not under the illusion that anyone cares what I think.

And partly because on the off-chance someone does care what I think, I’d much prefer they make up their own mind for themselves, rather than piggyback on anything I, or anyone, says. 

But if you live in Minneapolis, I’m going to urge you to vote for Cam Winton for Mayor.

If you’re a Republican in Minneapolis?:  Here’s the deal; 25-30% of Minneapolis is Republican.  The DFL vote is split six ways – or, perhaps most realistically, two ways (the DFL-endorsed Hodges and the well-funded Warner).  If every GOP voter in Minneapoliscomes to the polls and closes ranks and puts Winton as their #1 choice, he’s got a decent shot.

If you’re a conservative voter:  Winton’s no paleo.  He admits it up front.  He’s a former DFLer and it shows.  But Buckley’s dictum holds true; if you’re a good conservative, you vote for the most conservative candidate who can win.  There is no way around it – if there’s a more conservative candidate on the ballot, they are not in a position to win.  Seriously – who’s raised any money?  Who’s knocked a single door?  Who’s gotten any media?  Nobody.  Winton is not a movement conservative – but in the context of Minneapolis in 2013, it’s a miracle that someone even this close to conservative is on the ballot at all.  Winning would be a great step forward. 

If you’re a “Liberty” voter:  one of the biggest problems too many “liberty” voters have is that they have nothing analogous to the Buckley commandment; for too many of them, anything less than 100% agreement is disagreement.  Because Winton is imperfect on a couple of Libertarian issues, he’s not perfect “Liberty” candidate:

• He favors hiring more police.  The current fad among big-L libertarians is to distrust, even hate, the police.  I get that.  But Winton is running for office in a city that’s 60+% DFL and a fraction of 1% “Liberty” purists – and many of those DFL voters live in North Minneapolis, a place where abstruse Libertarian principle comes in way, way, way behing “stopping gangbangers from terrorizing the neighborhood”.   Public safety is one of very few legitimate jobs of government.  Follow-up question:  Who do you think is more likely to reform Minneapolis’ police department – a mayor from the establishment that made them what they are today, and is utterly beholden to the union that makes any reform via the DFL impossible? 
• He supports background checks at gun shows – provided they can not be turned into a confiscation list.  Which is both a palliative for DFL moderates who might be thinking about coming over and voting for him, and a statement with no teeth whatsoever; it’s impossible to make a background check anything but a confiscation list, ergo he has no plan.  And – more importantly – Minneapolis’ pre-emption statute prevents the City of Minneapolis, or any city, from imposing gun controls more strict than state law.  And let’s not forget – while Winton may favor background checks under conditions that can never occur in nature, every DFL candidate in the race favors outright bans; they will throw your guns into a smelter if they get a chance.  But either way, anything Winton or any of the other Mayor candidates say about gun control is completely irrelevant.  Tell you what – we elect him Mayor, I’ll undertake the job of convincing him he’s wrong on gun control.  Deal?   
• He supports modifying, rather than scrapping, the Southwest Light Rail:  The problem is, the mayor of Minneapolis has little influence over the project.  It’s the Met Council.  The SWLR is going to happen, barring a major change in state government – as in, a GOP (or, sure, “Liberty”, whatever) Governor and Legislature to completely gut the Met Council.  So – at election time, you want the mayor to piddle away potentially thousands of “moderate” DFL votes over an issue he has no meaningful control over, to win Minneapolis’ literally dozens of hard-line 100%-er Liberty voters? 
• His company is in the wind power business:  Lots of misinformation here; I’ve seen “liberty” people claim his company builds wind turbines and collects the big government subsidies.  It does not; it maintains existing turbines.  Someone has to – why not his company?  If you’re a Libertarian who opposes bike paths but rides ’em anyway because you already paid for ’em, sound off here. 

For some “Liberty” voters, it’s like talking to the wall – and that’s leaving out the ones who aren’t voting because they just want the whole system to collapse anyway.  For those that are left?  Incrementalism may be a dirty word, but incrementalism in the right direction is better than the wrong direction.  If that makes any sense to you at all, please vote Winton.  Or vote your principle and put the “liberty” candidate, whoever it may be, as first choice but put Winton second. 

For DFLers who care about Minneapolis:  Minneapolis’ current system is unsustainable.  There is no way for the current system to keep running the way it is.  Minneapolis is going to bankrupt itself – maybe later than sooner.  Not only can you not tax yourselves to prosperity, but in Minneapolis under the DFL machine you can’t even tax yourselves to competence.  The streets are terrible.  The schools have among the worst achievement gaps in the United States – worse than Philly or Detroit, for crying out loud.  The North Side is a shooting gallery.  And yet Minneapolis is laying off cops but proposing building a trolley from where people aren’t to where they don’t want to be, at exquisite city expense ($53 million a mile!), and socializing the city’s power system. 

If you’re a DFLer with some common sense – and I know there are a few of you out there – isn’t it time to say “enough?”  To stop the crazy train?  To run a city like a city, and not an excellent frat party for government hangers-on? 

I can’t vote in Minneapolis.  I wish I could.

…I don’t read legal filings for the sheer fun of it.

But this one’s worth it.

Rand Paul proposes a constitutional amendment barring Congress from exempting itself from laws. 

Like, say, Obamacare.

In the interest of helping this incident go viral, I’m re-posting this video.

It’s Richland County (South Carolina) Deputy Paul Allen Derrick, who – rejected by 23 year old Brittany Ball, described as a Marine – allegedly became enraged, went to his car, got his handcuffs and pistol, and proceeded to play cop with Ms. Ball.

Fortunately, the video was rolling:

I worked in bars for way too long, and this is ugly, depraved stuff even by my standards. Derrick tortures Ball, practically wrenching her arm out of its socket. He gropes her, too.

The good news, as it were? Sober on-duty cops were called, and they were able to put the law above the Thin Blue Line, and they arrested Derrick. He’s charged with assault and battery.

The bad news? It took a week for the sheriff to suspend Derrick.

(more…)

The peasants are running riot.

Vacationing senior citizens kept under armed guard in a hotel…

…to keep them from seeing all that shut-down federal land:

Vaillancourt was one of thousands of people who found themselves in a national park as the federal government shutdown went into effect on Oct. 1. For many hours her tour group, which included senior citizen visitors from Japan, Australia, Canada and the United States, were locked in a Yellowstone National Park hotel under armed guard.

The tourists were treated harshly by armed park employees, she said, so much so that some of the foreign tourists with limited English skills thought they were under arrest.

When finally allowed to leave, the bus was not allowed to halt at all along the 2.5-hour trip out of the park, not even to stop at private bathrooms that were open along the route.

“We’ve become a country of fear, guns and control,” said Vaillancourt, who grew up in Lawrence. “It was like they brought out the armed forces. Nobody was saying, ‘we’re sorry,’ it was all like — ” as she clenched her fist and banged it against her forearm.

It’s time for Real Americans to get out and fight this banana-republic tyranny with the only weapon that matters (until November of 2014); mockery.

Which brings us to a question:  I’ve been looking for a federal monument in the Twin Cities area that’s been closed by the Feds, with an aim toward getting the biggest group of people I can, with the most cameras possible, to do some “civil disobedience”.

This weekend turned bad, naturally.

But I’m looking for a federal installation.  Ideally a monument, but a recreational area will also work.

Ideas?

Last Friday, the income tax celebrated its 100th birthday. 

John Fund “celebrates” the birthday:

Critics warned a century ago that the new tax would ultimately be ruinous. The income tax “will tax the honest and allow the dishonest to escape,” the New York Times wrote.

That’s right; a century ago, the New York Times stood against big, rapacious government.

“Even those who approve the tax despite its faults cannot contend that the same sums could not have been raised more certainly, more equitably, and with less trouble to both payers and collectors by a stamp tax.” The Times warned that in any emergency the tax rates would be sure to rise and that “its unpopularity will grow with its life.”

Since then, with rare exceptions, the income tax has grown like Topsy, fueled in large part by the kinds of emergencies the Times worried about. As journalist David Van Edema put it: “The government, using Americans’ sense of patriotism and duty, [has] found new excuses to not only raise taxes, but widen the range of who would pay for them, and how.”

While critics will note that America was not a perfectly libertarian country before October 4, 1913 – slavery was certainly a blot on that particular escutcheon – it’s hard to explain to  modern Americans that up until the early 1900s, Civil War aside, the federal government paid for itself with import duties and taxes on alcohol, tobacco and the like. 

And along with the skinny government went skinny federal ambitions, and skinnier government control over the lives of Joe and Jane Citizen. 

To someone whose entire frame of reference involves looking at pay stubs and seeing money siphoned off to pay for other peoples’ mortgage insurance and farm subsidies and pensions and goodness knows whatever other crap that generations of politicians felt was more important than my own plans for the money, it seems incredible.  Almost incomprehensible.  Few of us can imagine anything else.

Which is what makes it so diabolical.

 When jobs that used to be done by a couple of guys in a government car are now done by SWAT teams in full battle rattle:

Miners in Chicken were surprised during late August by groups comprising four to eight armed EPA agents carrying Glock .40 S&W cal side arms in full battle rattle with signs in big letters loudly proclaiming POLICE who stormed into several mines near Chicken in a full out assault to . . . take water samples. The EPA gestapo, and that’s all one can term such a heavy handed goon squad were there to take water samples to see if the miners were in compliance with Section 404 of the Clean Water Act. Something in past years that was done by one or two unarmed State of Alaska DEC personnel along with a representative of the EPA without rancor.

If the situation were not so serious, and the threat to the miners so real, this could almost be laughed off as a joke. However, armed goons with .40 cal Glocks in full battle rattle are not a joke. This event marks a new level of federal oversight on Alaska’s federal lands. Lands which the management of were supposed to be the responsibility of the State of Alaska under the terms of Alaska’s Statehood Compact. This event is an outrage and sets an extremely dangerous precedent for future regulation activities by the various federal agencies in Alaska.

It’s not just a “too many feds” issue. 

The bigger problem is that it’s also a “they think that they need to act, literally, like stormtroopers to carry out their daily business – or at least they want you to think so”.

As you know, I am a Second Amendment activist.   This blog has always reflected this; indeed, the first post on this blog was a gun rights article.  It’s one of my most active topics. 

So consider that when I say this:  Starbuck’s CEO was right to ask gun owners to please not carry openly in his chain’s stores.

It’s his business – and annual “Starbucks Appreciation Days” aside, the vast majority of his chain’s clientele is going to be people on the political center-to-left – people who, rightly or wrongly, find firearms disconcerting. 

Bear in mind he’s not posting his stores to tell concealed carriers to keep their guns out; he’d just appreciate Real Americans not rattling the ninnies among the center-left masses who stop by every day for their Frangelicaccinos. 

That’s it. 

The Bill of Rights enumerates our rights to speak, publish, assemble, worship and keep and bear arms.  That means you have the right to give a pro-Vikings speech in front of a Packers bar, to march your Communist Re-Enactor club through a suburb full of Holodomor survivors, hold a southern Baptist revival meeting outside a mosque, or carry your firearms into a gathering of Vegan Nuns for Cesar Chavez.  Not only are none of them good ideas, all of them are just plain bad manners. 

Along those lines?  There is no genre in libertarian alt-media than the bobbleheads who film themselves walking down the road with an AR-15 slung over their shoulders, almost literally begging for a cop to pull over and ask what he’s doing, allowing the bobblehead the opportunity to lecture the cop on what the law really says.  The bobblehead is right – but it’s still stupid.

The Kenosha school district’s teachers vote to decertify their union in the third-largest district in Wisconsin:

Today, teachers in Kenosha, Wis., voted to decertify their union, the Kenosha Education Association, by a margin of nearly two to one. Only 37 percent of the teachers opted to retain the union in an election made possible by the labor reforms enacted under Gov. Scott Walker (R). The result goes to show that when workers have a choice on whether to join a union instead of being forced into one by law, they often choose to vote down the union.

It wasn’t even close; the margin of victory was very nearly as large as the “yes” vote total.

The Gun Grab Orc movement – led by DNC chairbeing Fran Drescher Deb Wasserman-Schulz – has been pleading “voter suppression” for their resounding defeat in Colorado this past Tuesday.

And they were right.  It was voter suppression that doomed the Senators Morse and Giron in the recall elections.

Their suppression of voters dissenting against them.  David Kopel writes at Volokh:

As it turns out, Morse and Giron sealed their fates on March 4, the day that the anti-gun bills were heard in Senate committees. At Morse’s instruction, only 90 minutes of testimony per side were allowed on each of the gun bills. As a result, hundreds of Colorado citizens were prevented from testifying even briefly. Many of them had driven hours to come to the Capitol, traveling from all over the state.

That same day, 30 Sheriffs came to testify. They too were shut out, with only a single Sheriff allowed to testify on any given bill. So while one Sheriff testified, others stood up with him in support.

Admirably, Morse had urged his Committee Chairs to be polite and courteous to all witnesses, and they were. But President Morse did not follow the standard practice of the Colorado legislature, by which any citizen who wishes to testify is allowed to be heard, at least briefly. The patient endurance of Colorado legislative committees which have heard hour upon hour of testimony on bills about gay rights, motorcycle helmets, and other social controversies is a tribute to our republican form of government.

This, Kopel argues, was a key facet in the recall:

When Morse shut that down, and Chairperson Giron went along, they crossed the double-red line of Colorado government. Had the seven gun control bills (one of which I testified in favor) been heard on March 4-6, instead of being rammed through committees on March 4, the recall might never have happened. It’s one thing to lose; it’s another to thing to lose when you didn’t even have the opportunity to present your reasoning.

Even Michael Paymar wasn’t that stupid. 

And Morse may have been an even bigger coward than Representative Heather Martens (emphasis added):

While the gun control bills were before the Senate in March, President Morse urged his caucus to stop reading emails, to stop reading letters from constituents, to stop listening to voicemails, to vote for the gun bills and ignore the constituents. Giron, presciently following this strategy, had allowed citizens to raise Second Amendment concerns at a single town hall meeting, and thereafter refused to discuss the issue at public fora.

The battle in Colorado turned on many issues;

• Blue-collar Democrats joining the GOP to flush the orcs – as they often do, even in Minnesota.  It’s hilarious; the Demcrats have always been the party of class warfare – but of all hot button issues, it’s the gun issue that is the most strongly divided by class, rather than partisan identification.  And the Democrats are the party of the patricians, every time.
• The Colorado GOP running a flawless campaign.  The Minnesota GOP needs to study this.
• The gun movement turning out the manpower (even as they were outspent by at least 7:1 – 8:1 in Pueblo).  As we’ve seen in Minnesota, passion and relentless work ethic defeats money – at least on this issue. 
• Outrage over the Democrats’ arrogant hijacking of the process to jam down an oppressive law that was against the spirit of democracy in Colorado – even a Democrat-led Colorado – at the behest of carpet-bagging east-coast plutocrats.

More of this.

When politicians suffer reverses, they do their best to spin them into…well, not as bad a loss.  It’s human nature, and it’s Politics 101; never let them see you sweat.

For example, here in Minnesota, after Representatives Paymar, Hausman and Martens’ gun grab bills imploded (during a session in which the DFL had complete control of the governor’s office and both chambers of the legislature), the gun grab orcs did their comical best to spin the results as a victory – with the criteria for “victory” all basically involving “doing the stuff people do in campaigns whether they win or lose”.

The Orcs – a term I used to refer to gun-control advocates, in the full sense that JR Tolkein intended for the word – are doing their best to spin Tuesday’s defeat in Colorado into something else.

It’s a lie, naturally.  Michael Bloomberg – the de facto leader of the Gun Grab movement in America today – bet big on this recall, spending $350,000 of his own money to try to keep the two seats.  The orcs outspent the Real Americans 6:1 in terms of officially-released spending numbers, and by some accounts that’s conservative; most of the orc money came from out of state, and much of that was laundered through local non-profits to make it look less lopsidedly carpetbaggy.

But make no mistake – for the Gun Grab movement, this was not just a defeat; it was a debacle:

…registered Democrats outnumber Republicans in the two districts where voters cast ballots (though Morse’s district is more of a swing district than Giron’s more Democratic-leaning territory). And the anti-recall side easily outraised the pro-recall interests. The Democratic losses are a reflection of the fact that enthusiasm was squarely on the opposite side of Morse and Giron.

“The National Rifle Association Political Victory Fund (NRA-PVF) is proud to have stood with the men and women in Colorado who sent a clear message that their Second Amendment rights are not for sale,” the NRA’s political arm said in a statement.

While the long-term significance of the election will assuredly be be debated, it’s hard to argue against the proposition that lawmakers in other states will have Colorado somewhere in their minds the next time a push to tighten gun laws begins ramping up.

In the larger debate over gun laws, Tuesday was another victory for the NRA and its allies, who earlier this year demonstrated the power they wield in the campaign to prevent the passage of tighter gun restrictions in Congress.

So let’s recap the year so far:  after being handed two grisly, horrible mass murders to exploit, the Gun Grab movement – on a raft of Bloomberg cash – managed to jam down some meaningless restrictions, none of which will have even the most obtuse effect on crime, on the law abiding citizens of a couple of coastal liberal cesspools, and Colorado.

In response, most of the rest of the country – including liberal cesspools (for the moment) like Minnesota – responded with an epic outpouring of grassroots dissent against the media narrative that Bloomberg paid for, leading to a raft of victories for freedom; sheriffs and legislatures throughout the country nullifying proposed federal laws in advance, the Illinois legislature facing down Orc governor Quinn, and finally Colorado.

UPDATE:  This has also been in the news; Public Policy Polling, the left-leaning polling firm that got the big kudos for being closest among the major polling shops in the 2012 election, suppressed its pre-recall poll that accurately predicted Giron’s stunning 12 point defeat:

Public Policy Polling (PPP) sparked controversy Wednesday after the left-leaning firm declined to release a survey it conducted last weekend that accurately forecasted the successful recall of a Democratic state senator from Colorado.

The survey PPP conducted, but did not release, showed Colorado District 3 Sen. Angela Giron (D) would be recalled by a 54 percent to 42 percent margin.

“In a district that Barack Obama won by almost 20 points I figured there was no way that could be right and made a rare decision not to release the poll,” Director Tom Jensen wrote in a post on the firm’s website. “It turns out we should have had more faith in our numbers because she was indeed recalled by 12 points.”

This is baked wind, of course.  It had nothing to do with “not being right”; it just didn’t sufficiently fluff the narrative – which PPP is still trying to get perked up:

“If voters made their decision based on the actual pretty unobtrusive laws that Giron helped get passed, she likely would have survived,” the firm wrote. “But the NRA won the messaging game and turned it into something bigger than it was- even if that wasn’t true- and Giron paid the price.”

Real Americans – the kinds from both parties that flushed Angela Giron on Tuesday – know the real truth; Chicago didn’t become Chicago overnight.  Every “unobtrusive” law that punishes the law-abiding and leaves the criminal untouched is just another step toward Michael Bloomberg’s dream.

I’m happy to note that freedom and liberty won a round last night.

The recall effort against two gun-grabbing anti-civil-rights fops in Colorado succeeded wildly last night.  Colorado state reps John Morse and Angela Giron were flushed from public life by their voters:

The election, which came five months after the United States Senate defeated several gun restrictions, handed another loss to gun-control supporters. It also gave moderate lawmakers across the country a warning about the political risks of voting for tougher gun laws.

You can tell it’s the NYTimes writing this piece; they think “moderates” in the west don’t already know better.  

The recall elections ousted two Democratic state senators, John Morse and Angela Giron, and replaced them with Republicans. Both defeats were painful for Democrats – Mr. Morse’s because he had been Senate president, and Ms. Giron’s because she represented a heavily Democratic, working-class slice of southern Colorado.

The Giron race ought to make outstate DFLers who supported the Paymar gun grab – I’m looking at you, Shannon Savick – sit up and take notice; Real Americans aren’t amused by your noodling.

Even better?  The avalanche of liberal money didn’t do the job (emphasis added)!:

While both sides campaigned vigorously, knocking on doors, holding rallies and driving voters to the polls, gun-control advocates far outspent their opponents. A range of philanthropists, liberal political groups, unions and activists raised a total of $3 million to defend Mr. Morse and Ms. Giron. Mr. Bloomberg personally gave $350,000.

There are so many upsides to this election.  The personal rebuke to The Nanny Mayor is in the top three.

Mr. Morse’s hand was on the tiller during much of that debate. A former police chief, he said he found himself in a position of not just rounding up votes, but actually explaining the mechanics of guns to fellow Democrats. He brought a magazine to show his colleagues how it worked. In an emotional speech in March, as the debate reached its peak, Mr. Morse stood on the Senate floor and spoke of gun violence and “cleansing a sickness from our souls.”

(Koff koff Jim Backstrom koff koff).

Cleanse this, ex-Legislator-boy.

And in this is a lesson that conservatives need to re-learn – and teach our idiot consultant class – every two years, rather than every 30; grass-roots activism works:

Angry constituents around Pueblo and Colorado Springs started to ask one another what they could do. In living room conversations and on Internet message boards for gun enthusiasts, the idea for a recall campaign against gun-control supporters began to jell.

“We’d never been to a rally or town halls,” said Victor Head, a plumber in Pueblo who borrowed money from his grandmother to kick-start the recall against Ms. Giron. “We’d never done much politically other than voting.”

Colorado is one of 19 states where voters can recall state officials, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, and no evidence of fraud or official misconduct is needed to gather the signatures necessary to schedule a special vote.

I personally don’t favor recall elections for anything other than fraud, official misconduct or criminal activity, as a matter of policy.

But then, attacking the Bill of Rights is official misconduct.

Anyway – two down.  Thousands of orcs to go.

 Some of you know my political backstory – I’ve written about it a time or two.  In 1994, disgusted by the GOP’s capitulation to Clinton on the 1994 Crime Bill along with George HW Bush’s reversal on taxes, I left the Republican Party and joined the Libertarians. 

Over the course of four years, I did what most libertarians do; thought big thoughts about liberty.  I also ran for office under the Big “L” banner – and did better than I thought I would.

But it was mostly thinking big thoughts.  Libertarians were big on debating principles, and even bigger on deriding those who, by their calculus, didn’t – or at least those whose principles weren’t drawn in as big, stark letters as their own seemed to be, to them and each other. 

I left the Big “L” after about four years.  I had – and have – principles. 

• One of them is “don’t screw up the country, and try to prevent other people from screwing it up too bad”. 
• Another?  A slight modification of Buckley’s Eleventh Commandment:  “Vote for the most acceptable candidate, from a fiscal, security and liberty perspective, that can win. 
• One last one?  “Perfect is the enemy of good enough”.  If I eschew imperfect candidates – say, candidate who champion my principles 51%-85% of the time – then I’m doing my little bit to make sure someone who agrees with me even less, as in “0-15% of the time” (that’s the current, extremist version of the DFL’s track record) is actually running things.  Raising taxes.  Vacuuming my personal info into “MNCare”.  The whole nine yards.

 And I figured there was a better chance of doing my part toward that end, and actually having some effect in the great scheme of things, by working within an actual party that had a chance of doing something useful than via endless navel-gazing in the Libertarian echo chamber. 

And so I left the Libertarian Party – partly because the party line on foreign policy and national security is (I’ll be charitable) simplistic, but mostly because the Big “L” Party is never, ever, going to have anything to do with passing actual policy into law; the most it can ever hope for is to serve as a spoiler, taking liberty voters’ votes away from the other parties, mostly the GOP.

And in 15 years of varying involvement – from observer to amateur pundit to even-more-amateur activist – the party has come a long way.  In 1998, Arne Carlson’s legacy loomed large in the party; today, it’s virtually gone, and good riddance.  It’s been largely squeezed out (everywhere but in the media’s consciousness) by an uneasy, sometimes fractious assembly of business conservatives (who may or may not care about social issues or liberty), Tea Partiers (who focus on the “limited government” aspects of “liberty”) and, over the past couple years, “Liberty Republicans”. 

These last came to the party in 2012 as an organizational juggernaut that acted about as “libertarian” as a North Korean synchronized dance team – at least in terms of taking control of party functions and sending people to Tampa.  The best of them – the ones in CD4 were among ’em – brought with them the pragmatism that led to a couple of really promising campaigns.  The worst of them – I’m not naming names – left us a display of nihilistic principles-over-pragmatism that bordered on onanistic. 

None quite as dismal, thankfully, as the recent resignation by a group of libertarian Maine Republicans, who resigned in protest over…

…convention rules?

Walter Hudson has an excellent piece over at Fightin’ Words on this whole deeply dumb incident.  And I think there are lessons for both of the “sides” of the debate in the GOP – especially the “Liberty” clicque’s penchant for walking away from it all when the “establishment” doesn’t carry them up to the front of the room on their shoulders:

The critical failure which informs this move manifests from activists’ perception of the party as a servant which ought to work on their behalf, rather than a vehicle which must be actively steered in a desired direction. If I had a nickel for every time I heard an activist whine about the party not treating them well, as if that were its purpose, I’d be set for life…This common sentiment from libertarian activists completely absolves them of any responsibility for changing the party. Instead, they proceed from the rather absurd notion that Republicans ought to advocate views they do not agree with in order to earn libertarian support. That’s not how politics works.

Or, in many cases, endless prate and gabble about how stupid – racist, homophobic, war-mongering – Republicans are for not folding like a Wal-Mart end table. 

And then there’s this line’s first cousin – the “Under Thirty” crowd.  The GOP, we’re told, must embrace the Ron Paul Agenda in whole because so many under-thirty conservatives and Republicans are so very libertarian.   More on this next week.    

Libertarian Republicans need to dispense with the notion that their “individual integrity” is defined by the party’s compliance to a libertarian agenda. Holding the reigns of power in a party office does not mean you “support” every little thing anyone in the party says or does. If resignation remains the default response to any deficiency within the party, it only enhances the victory of those who remain.

Yep. 

Principles – or at least saying you have them, as opposed to having to defend them against a lifetime of real-world experience – are easy.  Convincing other people about them is not.

No one has ever “learned their lesson” from an activist resigning in protest. The concept ignores political reality and smacks of a narcissistic valuation of one’s political worth. “Oh, you resigned?! Well then, let me completely realign my entire worldview in order to get you back,” said no party officer or elected official ever.

And the corollary of that truth, as I’ve been saying for years; political parties don’t “learn lessons”.  They respond to the will of those who show up. 

Which is why I, and my impure mutt’s-breakfast of conservative and libertarian and pragmatic beliefs keep showing up.

Read Walter’s entire article, if you would please.

It was twenty years ago this month that one of the most seminal essays in the history of the broad “Liberty” movement in American politics was published.

The essay was “A Nation Of Cowards”, by Jeffrey Snyder, in the fall edition of “The Public Interest”. And in those days just before the commercial dawn of the Worldwide Web, it was a sensation among people who supported the human rights enshrined in the Second Amendment.

Twenty years ago, I was pretty downcast about the future of the Second Amendment. Things did, indeed, look fairly dire. The nation had been through 25 years of nonstop anti-gun propaganda. Guns were banned outright, or subjected to extensive niggling regulations that made them effectively illegal for private citizens, in much of the country. Carry permits in most of the US were to some degree unattainable, the province of of the well-connected and the official.

And beyond that? The idea of “liberty” in conservative politics seemed to be ever less in fashion.

And then came “A Nation Of Cowards” – a fiercely intellectual demolition of the anti-gun-control arguments that did for the moral case against victim disarmament what Sanford Levinson’s “A Nation Of Cowards” did for the legal case; set the standard, and galvanized a decade and a half of activism that turned the battle around.

And today, we need the article more than ever.

And so I’ll reprint it in its entirety below. If you’re a lawyer for any publication involved, sure, whatever, send me a cease and desist, and I’ll take it down.

But until then, read it.

(more…)

Freedom-loving, energy-rich Northern Colorado is drawing closer to seceding from the rest of the Democrat-addled state:

“The concerns of rural Coloradans have been ignored for years,” William Garcia, chairman of the Weld County Commissioners, said in a statement. “The last session was the straw that broke the camel’s back for many people. They want change. They want to be heard.”

Three other rural counties — Cheyenne, Sedgwick and Yuma — also plan to place the 51st state referendum on the fall ballot. At least three more counties plan to consider the proposal this week at their commission meetings, said Jeffrey Hare, spokesman for the 51st State Initiative.

Known for its agriculture and oil and gas production, Weld is the largest of the Colorado counties exploring a break with the state after the legislature’s sharp turn to the left with bills restricting access to firearms and doubling the state’s renewable-energy mandate for rural areas.

I pondered this in Minnesota; a similar movement would be less a matter of the productive parts of the state “seceding” from Minnesota than of kicking Hennepin, Ramsey, Dakota, Anoka and Saint Louis Counties, and the Iron Range, out of the state.  And I suspect that’s a little constitutionally dodgier…

Forming a state isn’t easy: Even if the ballot measures pass, the Colorado state legislature would be required to amend the constitution to configure the state’s borders and refer a request for a new state to Congress.

Approving a 51st state would require a majority vote of both houses of Congress, although the Constitution doesn’t require the signature of the president, Mr. Hare said.

In other words, it won’t happen until the GOP controls both chambers (if then, given the performance of the Boehner caucus).  With any Democrat majorities at all, the idea would be dead in the water.  Can you  imagine what’d happen if Democrat parts of states didn’t have GOP regions to pay their bills for them?

“Again, folks say this can never happen. However, we are starting to hear from disenfranchised groups all over the country,” said a post on the 51st State Initiative’s website. “We are truly a divided nation. It is possible, if not likely, that we may not be the only group requesting from Congress the formation of a new state.”

The left-leaning media – meaning “most of the media” – is tittering and cavorting about the sparks that’ve been flying between New Jersey governor Chris Christie and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul. “GOP CIVIL WAR”, they bellow, as if it’s something new.

It’s not.

There are three different definitions of “Conservative” in American political life:

• Northeastern Conservatives: Comfortable with big government, socially moderate-to-liberal on social issues (defined broadly; it refers to education, welfare and immigration as much as abortion and gay marriage), assertive on defense, tolerant of massive intrusions in the interest of internal security. Their focus is less on shrinking government than on getting the best value for the tax dollar. Think Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and Chris Christie – or for that matter Norm Coleman. Don’t think Michael Bloomberg; he’s not a conservative in any way, shape or form.
• Western Conservatives: Favor aggressively limiting government. Generally socially libertarian (at least on a policy level; they may or may not be personally conservative), frequently vague on defense, favor law and order but opposing massive law-enforcement overreach. Favors shrinking government intrusions in the economy and personal life. Think the Tea Party and the pols that are aligned with it, including Rand Paul and, largely, Rick Perry.
• Southern Conservatives: Comfortable with big government, conservative on social issues, hawkish on defense and law-and-order. There aren’t many major contenders from the Southern school in this campaign.  Huckabee’s a southern-con.  You could make a case Dubya was one, too. 

So the Christie/Paul kerfuffle isn’t just a battle between candidates; it’s a battle between fundamentally different schools of American conservatism.

And after reading both of them, it’s clear; they’re both right.

Christie Was Right – Libertarians, when it comes to national security, frequently are lost in la-la land. I’ve long since lost count of the Ron Paul supporters who sincerely believe that Iran would be a great friend of the US if we just acted nice to them (and left the Israelis to their own devices with no further ado). Not a few libertarians are just as lost in the fog as Vietnam-era anti-war liberals when it comes to one of history’s great facts; societies that practice war eat societies that would eschew it for breakfast.

Sure – the relatively peaceful, relatively liberal democracies of the West did in fact eventually defeat the warmongering totalitarian Nazis, to pick an example – but only at staggering cost and dislocation.

If you accept that war happens, and that sometimes those wars come to us against our national will, and that it’s better to win them than lose them, then some form of effort to gain intelligence about ones’ enemies’ intentions is one of those things that one trades for, among other things, casualties. And don’t kid yourself – intelligence-gathering has been an incredibly intrusive force in Americans’ lives in the pasts; FDR ordered his intelligence and counter-intelligence services to read every single piece of snail-mail, every telegraph, and eavesdrop on every single phone conversation entering and leaving the United States during WWII.

And like winning wars, staying a jump ahead of your enemies is an ugly, messy thing; it’s the sausage you really don’t want to see getting made. Like fighting crime – there’s a trade-off between liberty and effectiveness. A perfect police state might, hypothetically, be crime-free (at the cost of being, in essence, a criminal state itself); a pure libertarian state might be “Crime-free” in that, having no government, it recognizes no crime.

Say what you will about libertarian purism; if you stop short of anarchy, then defending your society from those who’d harm you is the most direct justification to have a government in the first place. It’s one of the few really good reasons to have a government; without defense (and courts to enforce contracts), really, what truly useful purpose do they serve that the private sector doesn’t do better?  If government can’t keep the people safe from foreign aggression, why have it in the first place?  Even libertarians that aren’t anarchists largely agree on this, right?

If you think you prevent airplans from crashing into skyscrapers, or underwear bombers from blowing your kids out of the sky as they come home from London, happens by just squirting good-will at the world, you are completely nuts. 

But Wait – Rand Paul Is Also Right! – But then you’re also nuts if you believe that government doesn’t take a mile for every inch you give it, or that “Defending the Nation” is a static, unchanging thing. 

All of you national-security hawks who say “The FISA Courts, into which was have no visibiliity and into which there is exceptionally limited oversight, are ample protection of due process for Americans” have apparently forgotten the IRS scandal.  Or Fast and Furious.  Or the trampling of the Fourth Amendment, or the growing militarization of the police. 

In short, law and order conservatives who are pollyannaish about government are no less addled than those who are pollyannaish about the role of unilateral good-will in keeping the world at peace. 

“We’re from the government and we’re here to help” is no less a joke coming from the NSA than it is from the Fish and Wildlife Service.   Just as liberals would suspend the Bill of Rights to cut CO2 emissions, some conservatives – especially the ones that are comfortable with “the System”, and there is nobody who can grow more comfortable with “The System” than a federal prosecutor like Christie – are perfectly fine saying “would you trade the Fourth Amendment for getting that drug dealer out of your neighborhood?”

As to defense?  The libertarians are wrong, we need a strong one.  But the definition of “a strong defense” changes, and changes radically, over time.  Is it the right time to engage the American military in an endless counterinsurgency that might be better suited to intelligence and proxies to carry out (uh oh, now the Libertarians and Liberals will get upset) when the Russians and the Chicoms are taking the world in a much more convention direction again?

The point being that re-assessing what the nation’s strategy actually is, and how the military forwards it, and what kind of military we need to do the job isn’t “anti-military”. 

Above all?  Due process needs to be more than just an inconvenient speed bump for the authorities – or what’s the point of pretending to be a “representative Republic” anyway?

On the one hand, correlation doesn’t equal causation.

So I’ll restrain my end-zone happy dance at the news that gun crime in Virginia has plummeted as gun sales boomed:

Firearms sales rose 16 percent to a record 490,119 guns purchased from licensed gun dealers in 2012, according to sales estimates obtained by the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
During the same period, major crimes committed with firearms dropped 5 percent to 4,378.
“This appears to be additional evidence that more guns don’t necessarily lead to more crime,” said Thomas R. Baker, an assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University’s L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs who specializes in research methods and criminology theory.

See also: the rest of the freaking country.

Bit remember – correlation isn’t causation. Knowing that people who live near Mosquitos are prone to getting malaria doesn’t mean Mosquitos cause malaria. But that knowledge can help lead you to the cause. Mosquitos carry malaria.

Do more guns decrease crime? Not necessarily. But there’s enough patterns in enough places to give you an idea that there’s something to investigate that has to do with the availability of guns to the law-abiding.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails;

Minnesota court says I have no reasonable expectation of privacy in my cell phone records. Local police don’t even need a warrant supported by probable cause, they can fax over a fishing expedition request and the cell phone company rats me out. And if cops can get it, you know private investigators can get it, not to mention politically motivated bureaucrats looking for dirt on political opponents.

Why doesn’t a cell phone provider offer a Secure Option? For just $$$ per month more, all your calls will be encrypted, location and usage data will be scrubbed, there will be nothing for local law enforcement, hackers, hijackers, and even the NSA to snoop on.

Secret doesn’t have to mean illegal. Sensitive contract negotiations for the new quarterback. Corporate merger negotiations. Undercover cops. Political candidates discussing strategy with advance teams. Just plain cranky people who don’t like bureaucrats snooping on them. Sounds like a business opportunity.

Joe Doakes

The London Telegraph lists the world’s most “Libertarian” countries…

…where “libertarian” is apparently defined as “in terms of drugs, gay rights, prostitution and tax policies”. 

Y’know.  The liberties that really matter.

Dear Brit media:  there is more to “liberty” than torching up and waving your private parts around. 

It reminds me of those Americans who are leaping up and down about how “libertarian” Russia is…because they’re giving Snowdon asylum.

I expect conservatives and libertarians to be exercised over the news that the White House is establishing a “Nudge Squad” – a group of behavioral scientists who will work with the government bureaucracy to try to help shape citizen behavior:

“Behavioral sciences can be used to help design public policies that work better, cost less, and help people to achieve their goals,” reads the government document describing the program, which goes on to call for applicants to apply for positions on the team.

The document was emailed by Maya Shankar, a White House senior adviser on social and behavioral sciences, to a university professor with the request that it be distributed to people interested in joining the team. The idea is that the team would “experiment” with various techniques, with the goal of tweaking behavior so people do everything from saving more for retirement to saving more in energy costs.

The document praises subtle policies to change behavior that have already been implemented in England, which already has a “Behavioral Insights Team.” One British policy concerns how to get late tax filers to pay up.

On the one hand, it all sounds very Orwellian.  And it is; using the government to shape peoples’ behavior is a short and utterly undefineable step away from using it to shape peoples’ thought.

On the other hand?  Precisely what has the public education system been since its inception?