News flash:  States that govern according to conservative precepts – especially cutting taxes to spur growth – are doing better than “progressive” states.  Much, much better.  And yep, even government revenues benefit.

In the meantime, “closing the deficit” with taxes rather than growth is dragging “progressive” states down. And that’s presuming the tax hikes actually close the deficit, which is a dodgy proposition, given how tax hikes crush economic growth.

Question:  Which example do you suppose the MN DFL is emulating as they cackle madly over their word-processors today, cranking out bills by the pound?

John Edwards was right; there are two Americas; one that has to follow the regular laws, and one for the big people.

NBC’s David Gregory skates on his “30 round magazine’ pratfall.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

 It seems to me that if there was a clear violation of the law, then the Prosecutor should prosecute it. The arguments in mitigation (clean record) go toward the sentence.

Take it in another context – suppose I went to a school and threatened to shoot a bunch of schoolchildren with a .22 revolver, then claimed I did it to make a point about the silliness of the assault weapons bill. I have a clean record. I was making a political point. I only threatened them for a short time. I passed up other options to make my point. Should I get a pass as David Gregory did?

Or is the “break-the-law free” card only for Democrat VIPs?

Joe Doakes

Como Park

On guns?

It’s the VIP thing.

Here’s the Kevin Williamson piece we’re talking about in the 2PM hour.

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talkradio show – brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism, as the Twin Cities media’s sole source of honesty!

• I’m in from 1-3.  It’ll be my pleasure to welcome Kevin Williamson of the National Review to the broadcast.  Also Senators Dave Thompson and Dave Osmek.
• Brad Carlson’s show – “The Closer” – is on from 1-3 on Sunday.

(All times Central)

So tune in to all four hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of honest news. You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• Streaming at AM1280’s Website,
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• Check out our new UStream video and chat .
• Send us an SMS text message – 651-243-0390
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488!
• Podcasts are now available on the AM1280 page!  (Saturday show is #2 – Sunday is #3).
• And make sure you fan us on our new Facebook page!

Join us!

As tireless a defender of the Second Amendment as I am, I do much prefer the times when the lefty politicians waste their crises once and for all, and just leave us alone.

But we’re not there.  Not yet.

So as a bit of a weekend mental apertif, I though I’d run the two Second Amendment videos of the week.

They’re below the jump (because one of them seems to launch automatically)

(more…)

I’m going to give you all a little bit of homework.

Read this piece – “Risk, Relativism And Resources“, by Kevin Williamson, from National Review.   It’s a brilliant piece – and a beefy chunk of reading – on how risk-tolerance and risk-aversion affects peoples’ political choices.

Then tune in tomorrow, when I’ll be talking with Mr. Williamson on the Northern Alliance Radio Network, mostly (but certainly not entirely) about this piece.

And then think: how can we conservatives apply this to the task ahead of us – saving the country?

And I’ll also have David and David on the show:

No, not that David and David, although that’d be cool too.  No, I’ll have Senators Dave Thompson and Dave Osmek on the show as well!

Hope to see you then!

I’m not a huge Billy Joel fan.

But there are scads of artists out there that I don’t much care for that still manage to grind out a song or two that I love.

And for Billy Joel, that short list is pretty much “Captain Jack” (the live version; the studio original annoys me), “Only The Good Die Young”, most of the “An Innocent Man” album, watching people singing “Piano Man” at karaoke night getting beaten with pool sticks (which isn’t actually an endorsement of the song)…

…and “Say Goodbye To Hollywood.

So how do you make that song perfect?

Have it covered by Ronnie Spector, backed by the E Street Band, in a cover that I’d forgotten ever existed:

And for one moment, all is forgiven.

Three weeks ago: “Democrats think putting armed guards in schools is “cray-cray”, stupid”.

Today?  Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

No armed police in schools! That would be bad. For example…

Well, bad for the madman anyway.

Hat tip: instapundit

In related news, the White House is considering funding armed school guards.

I’m guessing that comes after a call from one union or another.  Can’t have non-union guards watching our kids, can we?

Three weeks from now:  “Democrats have always supported guards in schools, Winston!”

So last Wednesday, the entire State Legislature attended a “Policy Conference” at the U of M.

Check out the notice.  It’s “closed to the public”.

Inquiries to the U’s public relations contact were – is this surprising to anyone? – not returned.

This follows close on the heels of an event in September at the U with Governor Dayton; Dayton’s performance appeared addled – but the U of M didn’t videotape the speech (citing “expense”), and the media in attendance embargoed their own video of Dayton’s performance.

I’m not as clear on open meeting laws as I should be, but I have to wonder: has the U become a handy place for the DFL to skirt open meeting laws?

NRA membership is booming:

The National Rifle Association has gained more than 100,000 new members in the past 18 days, the organization told POLITICO’s Playbook on Thursday.

The number of paid new members jumped from 4.1 million to 4.2 million during that time.

“Our goal is to get to 5 million before this debate is over,” the NRA told POLITICO’s Mike Allen.

The number is a record.

Another record?  For the first time, I’m one of them.  After decades of being a Second Amendment activist, I finally pulled the trigger and joined.

“We are willing to talk to policymakers about any reasonable proposals and plans,” an NRA official said in the Playbook report, regarding the upcoming meeting with Biden. “However, the NRA is hearing not just from Beltway elites and the chattering class, but real Americans all over the country that are hoping the NRA is not going to compromise on any of the principles of the Second Amendment, nor are we going to support banning guns. But we’re willing to listen.”

We’ll listen – but we’d be deluded to expect much in the way of common sense.

By the way, the piece comes from “Politico”, which writes:

To join the NRA, one must pay $25. In return, new members may choose to receive a “Rosewood Handle Knife, Black & Gold Duffel Bag or Digital Camo Duffel Bag,” the Playbook report said.

Huh.  I got a member card, a subscription to one of the house magazines, a sticker, and  an NRA shooting cap.  And I paid $35.

Must have been a Black Friday special…

…I’d bet a ton of money that the word “bipartisanship” turns up a lot less often in the Strib’s commentary section Over the next two years.

On the one hand, the Minnesota Republican Party has just gone through its worst year since Watergate.  It’s way in debt (although reportedly plugging its way back toward daylight), it’s pretty completely out of power, and its influence outside the conservative Second, Third and Sixth districts is at a low ebb.

Stepping into – or over, really – that mess came Marianne Stebbins and the Minnesota “Ron Paul” campaign.  They played the caucus system like Yo Yo Ma plays the cello; they organized people down to the BPOU caucus level with a level of Operational Security cloaky-daggerism that’d put the Irgun Zvai Leumi to shame.  They won most of the BPOU and CD level offices throughout the state, and…

…accomplished, arguably, their only true mission; they sent delegates to Tampa to vote for Ron Paul; some of ’em were already bagging out on the Non-Paul parts of the party before the confetti was swept up.

To which some “establishment” Republicans replied “We need to eject all the Ron Paulites from the party!” – to which many others responded “well, not so fast”.  While some Ronulans were, indeed, at the party to stump for “Doctor” Paul and nothing else, others – particularly in many 4th CD BPOUs – worked hard with non-Paul Republicans to field good solid campaigns and create GOP activity in areas that hadn’t seen any in recent years.

More on that next week, I think.

Some Republicans – on both sides of the Ron Paul / Non Paul divide – divided the dispute up into “Builders” – people on both sides whose goal is to turn the MNGOP back into a vital force again – and “Destroyers”.

Oddly, a Facebook page called “MNGOP Builders” is, paradoxically, doing a bit of destroying; it’s picked at an awful lot of scabs, especially in the 4th CD (which just removed its chair elected last April on a Ron Paul-movement-approved slate that threw him bodily under the bus as the wheels came off his administration) and CD5 (which elected a slate of Ronulans that have essentially shut the party down in the district).  Oddly, in the battle between “Builders” and “Destroyers”, “MNGOP Builders” is doing plenty of “Destroying” itself.

Now that’s meta.

My friend, Nancy LaRoche – of True North, Freedom Dogs and a longtime CD5 GOP activist – broke the story of the vandalism in CD5.

One of Nancy’s targets, Corey Sax, responded with a blog post attacking “MNGOP Builders” and, oddly and mostly, Nancy.  To which Nancy responded with an acerbic riposte.

So to sum it up:  A party with little money got taken over by a movement with little popular traction, which took over a couple of districts with no GOP tradition (which led the GOP to perform better than expected in a number of districts with little GOP hope – again, more next week), which led to them being attacked by a Facebook Page with no identity and a lady with nothing in her record as an activist to be ashamed of, which led to a counterattack by a District Vice Chair with a long record of activism but representing a slate with little to show for its’ ten months in office, which led to a counterattack by Nancy, who has little patience for this kind of thing.

I think that covers it.

Me?  I’m going to find some Republicans – regardless of who they supported for President – who want to focus on the real enemy.

The Saint Paul City Committee.

No, that’s a joke.  The real enemy is the DFL who, in case you haven’t noticed, are hard at work f****ng up our state.

And in the GOP right now there are a slew of factions:  the Ronulans, the Tea Partiers, Fiscalcons, Socialcons, “Moderates”, pragmatists, Security Republicans and a few others.  And none of them – not even the Ron Paul faction – are strong enough to both change the party and win elections.  None.

One way or another, this party is going to be run – and this state is going to be saved – by a coalition of people from any and all of those factions who are focused on getting stuff done.

Or, y’know, not; it’s entirely possible the GOP will be taken over by people who argue to the death over the inconsequential as the state follows Greece and Portugal and California straight to hell.

I got a lot of emails yesterday about Slow Joe Biden’s hint that the President is going to start regulating guns by executive order.

I briefly got angry.  Then I remembered – it’s politics.

Obama won by appealing to the nation’s legion of addlepated and intellectually-overpraised – but he’s no dummy himself.

The talk of “gun control by executive order” is real enough – but it’s not the real order of business.

 Vice President Joe Biden revealed that President Barack Obama might use an executive order to deal with guns.

“The president is going to act,” said Biden, giving some comments to the press before a meeting with victims of gun violence. “There are executives orders, there’s executive action that can be taken. We haven’t decided what that is yet. But we’re compiling it all with the help of the attorney general and the rest of the cabinet members as well as legislative action that we believe is required.”

The threat is real – but it’s still a distraction.

The economy is sputtering; Obama is dealing with the slowest recovery in history, and even a few of the low-information masses who voted for him are figuring out that all is not as they were told. He’s got to dominate the narrative – and that means getting the masses of middle-Americans who underperformed for Romney to distract themselves with an emotional hot-button issue.

Which isn’t to say “fake” issue; Obama does want to ban guns, and if he can find a politically-palatable way to do it, he will.

The proper response is “go for it, and watch every single red-state Democrat go down in flames” – but to focus on what Obama is trying to distract from; the economy, the deficit, and the debt.

In other words, to walk and chew gum at the same time.

As this last election showed, 50.3% of our neighbors can’t.  It’s up to the rest of us to save the Constitution and the economy and the country.

I’ve said it before: being a Second Amendment supporter is a lot like the movie  Ground Hog Day.  You – or rather, your opponents, the gun-grabbers – just keep repeating the same memes, over and over again.

Over 25 years of being an activist, if I’ve heard…:

• “The founding fathers couldn’t have foreseen weapons today!”
• “You oppose gun control?  So felons should have guns, then?”
• “Gun owners must be compensating for something…”
• “Yes, I know you keep refuting the statistics, but the statistics I have prove that gun control lowers crime!”

Oh, yeah – another one is “it’s impossible for a normal human to tell what the Second Amendment actually means”.

Such is the tack of Linton Weeks, writing in an op-ed space at National Public Radio.

How can something apparently so simple — a 27-word sentence — be so confusing? What is so hard to understand about “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”?

As it turns out, after more than 200 years of intense scrutiny by people more versed in The Law than you and I — and in the face of seemingly endless American gun violence — the meaning of the Second Amendment continues to baffle and elude. In this case, the country’s Founders have left us to founder.

…

Is it a sweeping constitutional guarantee that individuals have unfettered access to guns, or a practical agreement that allows for citizen armies in times of extraordinary national need?

According to Weeks, the the answer is as imponderable is “what is the nature of God”, or perhaps “how does NPR consider itself unbiased?”.  And like all imponderables, one turns to the humanities:

Maybe it would help everyone to think about this complicated dictum in a more slant way, hold it up to the light and look at it from different angles, the way poets approach other tough concepts — such as love, hate and injustice.

A Tone Poem

After all, says U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey, poetry has the “ability to help us deal with difficult things.”

Follow the hilarity on your own time.

But Mr. Weeks’ piece is pretty clearly aimed at NPR’s core audience – liberals who consider themselves smarter than average, and are nonetheless low-information voters.

Because the Second Amendment has been analyzed for centuries – and especially for the past couple of decades – by two groups of people who make sense of words:  grammarians who work with words, and lawyers, who work with words that are written in the form of laws.

Grammar Got Run Over By Nena Totenberg

The Second Amendment – “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”, is two clauses.

“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state”, the first clause, makes no sense standing on its own.  It’s called a “dependent clause”.

“the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”?  That makes sense standing on its own.  It’s an “Independent Clause”.  The sentence really says “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be abridged, because a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state”.

Even a tone poet can follow that, right?

It’s Just Like Shakespeare Said

Of course, that leaves two words undefined:  “Militia”, and “people”, as in “right of the people”.

Of course, in the First Amendment, there’s no question what a “right of the people” means; it means religion, press, assembly and speech refer only to churches, newspapers, legislatures and broadcasters.  Right?

Of course not.  “Right of the people” refers to “the people, as individuals”.

But Let’s Cut The Crap

Mr. Weeks’ thesis – that the Second Amendment is an inscrutable bit of language – isn’t entirely without merit.  No less a legal luminary than Dr. Sanford Levinson wrote about this twenty years ago in “The Embarrassing Second Amendment“, noting that the Second is a singularly poorly-written bit of law.

Poorly.  Not indecipherably.

Levinson – a card-carrying gun-hating liberal – concludes that the Amendment means…

…exactly what we shooters have always said it means.  It’s a right of the people, not the National Guard.  And the fact that the Founders never envisioned the AR15 or the HK91 or the Glock is no more important than the fact that they never envisioned radio, TV or the Internet.

Levinson’s article led, indirectly and circuitously, to the Supreme Court saying…exactly that; that the Second Amendment is pretty clearly understood, in the Heller decision.

Which gives Mr. Weeks’ question a pretty cut and dried answer, albeit one that NPR would like to make sure doesn’t get much airplay.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

No less respected economist than Paul Krugman is recommending the US pay down its national debt by minting a Trillion-Dollar Coin. He suggests it be made of platinum because that’s really valuable. I say it should be rubber, not only because “rubber check” accurately captures its value, but because there’s precedent.

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

“Its exchange rate of eight Ningis to one Pu is simple enough, but since a Ningi is a triangular rubber coin six thousand eight hundred miles along each side, no one has ever collected enough to own one Pu. Ningis are not negotiable currency, because the Galactibanks refuse to deal in fiddling small change.”

Obviously, we won’t call it a Ningi, that sounds weird (and we’d owe Doug Adams royalties). We’ll call it a $1 trillion dollar coin. But why stop at one? Why not go all out and issue 16 trillion-dollar coins to pay off the entire national debt completely?

And while we’re at it, why not raise the minimum wage to $100 so we’ll all be rich? And throw in free cosmetic surgery, paid for by Obamacare.

Rich, handsome, debt free . . . now THAT’s the kind of Hope and Change I was looking for.

Joe Doakes

Como Park.

I’m afraid to ask an esteemed economist like Prostetnic Vogon Krugman how we’re going to pay for a trillion dollars worth of platinum – or what that’ll do to the world’s platinum supply.

Liberals complain that if people have the right to keep and bear arms, then angry, unstable people with no regard for human life will use them to kill people for no reason.

And they were right!

In a segment on Piers Morgan’s CNN program, sports columnist for the Daily Beast, Buzz Bissinger, shockingly states:

“I don’t care what the justification is that you’re allowed in this country to own a semi-automatic weapon – much less a handgun. But what do you need a semi-automatic weapon for? The only reason I think you’d need it is, Piers, challenge Alex Jones to a boxing match, show up with a semi-automatic that you got legally and pop him.”

Abby Huntsman (Huffington Post) : “I’d love to see that… [laughter] in uniform.”

Piers Morgan: “I’ll borrow my brothers uniform.”

Maybe the NICS database needs to screen for Obama voters and left-leaning pundits?

Or maybe teachers?

Katrina was bad.

Sandy was, in many ways, worse.

Six days after Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, President Bush’s presidency had been declared a failure and a disgrace. It was all FEMA’s fault, we were given to understand, and, by extension, Bush’s fault. It wasn’t the incompetence of local and state officials, or the levee collapse (a failure, by the way, that impartial observers lay at the feet of another government agency going back years, the Army Corps of Engineers). No, within a few days of the storm’s impact, Bush was an enemy of the people.

Compare and contrast:

Six days after Sandy hit the East Coast, most of the press had utterly lost interest in the human toll, though thousands of people went without food, water, gasoline, or electricity for the better part of two weeks. The Washington Times reported two weeks after Sandy, “Bodies are still being recovered in Staten Island. Chaos reigns in the streets of the outer boroughs. Residents have taken up arms — baseball bats, machetes, shotguns — as crime and looting soar.”

All they lacked was a Superdome.  And Anderson Cooper to trumpet the rumor mill to a gullible nation.

It took three days for the Red Cross to reach Staten Island — ditto for FEMA. For those without power or water, that’s a very long time. What happened to the “lean forward” strategy FEMA had supposedly put in place? What became of the prepositioning of supplies like water and blankets? Prepackaged meals and bottled water languished in Georgia and Maryland warehouses, reported Breitbart.com.

It’s simple; after election day, the photo op disaster was no longer of use to the narrative.

Read this piece in the MinnPost, entitled “House DFL opens session with priority of paying back $550 million to schools”

What’s missing?

It’s got the who, what, when, where, why and how (DFL, pay back the “shift”, or accounting gimmick that post-dates checks until after some future date, this session, at the Capitol, etc).

It’s got some quotes from DFL leaders:

Speaker Paul Thissen, sworn in Tuesday along with the rest of Minnesota’s legislators, said the ceremonial House File 1 would be a bill that returns roughly $550 million to the state’s schools. DFLers campaigned on the issue, but it hadn’t surfaced on many pre-legislative to-do lists.

And it’s suffused with the sense that all those DFLers are plugging away For The Children.

What does it not have?

Any reference to the fact that the GOP-dominated 2012 session passed a bill to pay back the shift last year.  Governor Dayton vetoed it.

Precisely so that the media would have this headline, this year.

Heck of a job, MinnPost.  You may take your place in the ranks of the Minnesota Praetorian Guard, doing your bit for the DFL.

To: PIers Morgan, who is English, rather than Gay
From: Mitch Berg
Re: Conservatives

Mr. Morgan

I’d say “Alex Jones represents conservatism in the same way Bill Maher or Mike Malloy represent liberalism”…

…but I suspect you don’t see anything wrong with either of them.

Which is, I guess, at least part of my point.

That is all.

To: General Stanley McChrystal (USA Ret)
From: Mitch Berg
Re: The Founding Fathers Had It Right

General,

Before I begin – thanks for your decades of service.

And, truth be hold, this post is less for you than it is for the rafts of liberals who’ve signed on as famboys this past 24 hours.

But the founding fathers knew that the military (as an institution, not as individual soldiers) is one of the things we needed to guard against to preserve our clvil liberties.  The standing army was every bit as big a boogeyman to the framers as the AR15 is to Andrew Cuomo.

And just as a cop or a county attorney or a federal prosecutor would love to toss the Fourth Amendment into the scrap heap (to the extent, let’s be honest, that it hasn’t  been), let’s just say your input is appreciated, but not really needed.

It’s not really against type, let’s just say.

That is all.

To: Bank Of America
From: Mitch Berg
Re: Just Right To Fail

Dear Bank Of America,

When you spent much of the past four years currying favor with the Obama Administration, and feeding the hand that fed you (not to mention buying up Countrywide, which was cozier with the left than most), I merely shook my head; it reinforced the “plutocrats are the biggest liberals” pattern.

But this?

Bank of America has reportedly frozen the account of gun manufacturer American Spirit Arms, according to its owner, Joe Sirochman.

In a Facebook post dated December 29, Sirochman wrote the following:

“My name is Joe Sirochman owner of American Spirit Arms…our Web site orders have jumped 500 percent causing our Web site e-commerce processing larger deposits to Bank of America. So they decided to hold the deposits for further review.

“After countless hours on the phone with Bank of America, I finally got a manager in the right department that told me the reason that the deposits were on hold for further review — her exact words were — ‘We believe you should not be selling guns and parts on the Internet.’”(emphasis added)

According to Unlawful News, this isn’t the first time Bank of America has targeted a customer involved in the firearms industry.

McMillan Group International was reportedly told that its business was no longer welcome after the company started manufacturing firearms – even after 12 years of doing business with the bank.

I had no choice in becoming a customer; my mortgage got sold to you.

I spent years boycotting stores in Minnesota that posted that law-abiding carry-permittees weren’t welcome – and ten years later, the signs are mostly gone.

What do you think five million of us nationwide can do?

That is all.

Today is the opening day of the legislative session.  And, as the media tell us with barely-concealed glee, the DFL has a Chicago-like stranglehold on all power in Minnesota this session.

So here are my fearless predictions:

Budget:  $40 Billion.

Taxes:  Broadly up, with a little window-dressing of “progressivism” to further the class war narrative.

Local Government Aid:  Like the alcoholic nephew that keeps hitting his parents up for money “for car repairs/bus fare/new clothes”, Minneapolis and Saint Paul and Duluth will be back begging for more money from the parts of the state that actually work to feed the monkeys on their respective backs.  Like your brother’s enabler of a wife, the DFL will go “oh, we can’t just cut you loose!”, and give them what they want.

Daycare unionization:  It’ll be rammed through like Roosevelt’s declaration of war.  All that union political support don’t come cheap; the purple shirts WANT RESULTS, capisce?  With a nod to Scorsese, (audio NSFW) “Day care providers don’t want to unionize?  F**k you, pay up!  Economy running slow?  F**k you, pay up!  Parents don’t want it, can’t afford it, and unionizing independent contractors makes no sense?  F**k you, pay up!” Look for Dayton to sic the state patrol on non-complying providers by the beginning of next year.

Election Law: Look for the 15 person vouching limit to be raised to eleventy billion.  Look for questioning a voter’s qualifications to be re-classifed a felony hate crime.

Gay Marriage:  The issue that put the DFL in office?

(Crickets)

The left, the media and the Obama Administration – pardon the redundancy – have done their level best this past month to resurrect the spectre of gun control aimed at the law-abiding civilian.

According to more and more polls, they’ve failed:

A recent Rasmussen Reports poll found that 54 percent of American adults would feel safer if their child’s school had an armed security guard.

And it seems Wayne LaPierre’s speech has exposed a vein of tough-minded pragmatism afoot in the country:

The same poll found that among parents of school-aged children, support for armed guards is even higher. Sixty two percent of such parents would feel safer with an armed security guard at the school, while 22 percent would feel safer if their child attended a gun-free school.

And some bi-partisan common sense:

And even as the gun banners seek to blame and attack NRA for the actions of a killer, Gallup’s poll reveals that NRA still has a 54 percent favorable rating among Americans. It is worth noting that, as of January 3rd, the Real Clear Politics average of President Obama’s approval rating is slightly lower, at 53.4 percent.

This is a big lesson for Second Amendment people; don’t panic.  And stay active.  It’s because of a generation’s worth of relentless activism that we’ve taught Americans – real Americans [1], anyway –  the truth about this issue.  America has grown up over the past forty years – from being led around on the issue by the in-the-bag media, to having independent thought and reasoning.

And there’s a lesson there for conservatives, the Tea Party and the GOP; people can learn the truth, and truth and reason can outflank the media.  But it takes time, determination, money, patience and courage.

The Second Amendment movement and all its component parts – and the NRA is the biggest single component, but by no means the only important one – has grown into the most successful grass-roots political efforts over the long term since the Abolition movement.   And it’s gotten there by relentless effort, and by realizing the battle is a marathon, not a sprint.  The rest of conservative America needs to remember that.

The orcs will never waste a crisis; there’ll be other atrocities, and the left will exploit them.  Now is no time for complacency.

But panic is equally out of place.

(more…)

Brian Rosenberg is the president of Macalester College in Saint Paul.  Macalester is, to put it mildly, a training ground for the regional “progressive” “elite”; the Twin Cities’ non-profits, MPR, and government – especially the DFL – are clogged with Mac grads of all ages.

Which is just fine.  They have that right.

But Rosenberg, with all due respect, would seem to be proof of Dennis Prager’s dictum, which I’ll paraphrase; it takes a university education to be this ignorant.

In the wake of Sandy Hook, Rosenberg has “taken a pledge”.  Like most pledges made in public (or at least on MinnPost), it’s smug, self-righteous and…

…and betrays what on the surface might seem like a brick-thick ignorance about how a representative republic works – but, when looking at Macalester’s record, might be better viewed as contempt for it.

(more…)

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I propose a poll:

Step 1: Are your children presently attending a school in St. Paul?

1A. Yes – go to Step 2.

1B. No – go to Step 3.

Step 2: Choose one

2A. While my children are attending St. Paul school, I want my children protected by people carrying guns, for example police officers. Go to Step 3.

2B. While my children are attending St. Paul school, I do NOT agree want my children protected by people carrying guns, for example, police officers. Go to Step 3.

Step 3: Thank you for taking this poll.

Joe Doakes

It was a moot point when my kids were in the schools; the high schools all have cops on the scene, and nobody asked the parents what they felt about it.

I wonder if anyone told Rachel Maddow?