Deficit, Schmeficit; Jesse Jackson Junior feels nervous:
Just last week, the House voted to slash its operating budget by 5 percent, or $35 million, as part of the GOP drive to reduce federal spending the cut the deficit.
Jackson wants that money restored, plus 10 percent, in order to augment security in the Capitol and in districts, where he said some lawmakers may need to hire security for constituent events and install surveillance cameras in their district offices.
“After the events of last weekend, it is clear that our district staffs are vulnerable,” Jackson said in an e-mail. “Members should have the resources and the latitude to take appropriate security measures in order to protect themselves and their staffs.”
Representative Jackson: there were over 430 homicides in Chicago last year; that’s seventy Tuscons, each one as bloody, horrible and ghastly as the one in Tuscon. There were 25 murders in December – more than four Tuscons, over the holiday season.
The people in your district are hunkered down against a three-year-long rash of gang warfare; more prosaic, perhaps, than an insane man shooting up a congresswoman and her constituents at a store, but really no less insane.
Hire an off-duty cop when you make your rounds of your constituents, if you still do that, and shush.
Lawmakers are also nervous about security inside the Capitol complex, despite the hundreds of armed police officers who already guard it each day and the extensive screening required for those entering Capitol Hill buildings
And those “lawmakers” are being just a tad dramatic. The Capitol has been like a maximum security prison – only for people coming in – for decades.
Let’s get something straight. Cowards like the scumbag in Tucson do NOT show up in places where there are uniformed police on every street corner for 4 blocks in any direction, armed with automatic weapons. Anybody who frets over the ‘lack of security’ around our nation’s Capitol and the office buildings is just another liberal loon, making sure they don’t let a good crisis go to waste…
Jr.’s just pissed because fiddy cent has a bigger posse.
“Representative Jackson: there were over 430 homicides in Chicago last year; that’s seventy Tuscons, each one as bloody, horrible and ghastly as the one in Tuscon. There were 25 murders in December – more than four Tuscons, over the holiday season.
The people in your district are hunkered down against a three-year-long rash of gang warfare; more prosaic, perhaps, than an insane man shooting up a congresswoman and her constituents at a store, but really no less insane.”
A rare taste of sanity–well stated Mr. Berg.
We could say the same thing about the mayhem in Minneapolis, although for my money, St. Paul is a more dangerous place starting to resemble the Dodge City of old.
The reaction to the Arizona shootings makes me one wonder what the current standards of decorum are. Flags flying at half-staff for wounded representatives of other states but not for teenagers gunned down on the sidewalks of our own cities? Presidential visits for memorial tributes should there be sufficient reason to scold the nation on its strident level of discourse? A week-long “national debate” conducted by the establishment media designed to advance the cause of gun control and deflect attention from the new Congress? What are the standards being set?
Were I a nutcase, watching current events from a Tuscon jail, I’d conclude that my crime paid off like hitting three sevens on a nickel slot. Was it wise for the President and his Party to send this message to the Arizona killer and other nutcases watching events?
The next “teaching moment” will be the endless and costly trial as the State of Arizona attempts to execute a killer who shot to death 5 people in cold blood in front of hundreds of witnesses.
It’s almost enough to make one boiling mad (note that any comments regarding boiling, shooting or any other language suggesting violence is being done strictly for rhetorical purposes and doesn’t constitute an endorsement of actions that could inflame sane or insane minds into rash and/or criminal acts).