Daily Archives: September 22, 2011

09/22/11

CONCEALED CARRY NOT A “RIGHT”?

By: Chad Kent
Chad Kent Speaks

Last week District Court Judge Cathy Seibel issued a ruling stating that New Yorkers do not have a Constitutional right to carry a firearm.

On that statement at least, she’s correct. New Yorkers don’t have a Constitutional right to defend themselves. They have a God-given right to defend themselves. The difference is huge.

Remarkably, that’s about the only part of her ruling that Judge Seibel got right. The sad part is the only reason she got that right is because she has a fundamental misunderstanding of the foundation of our government and the role she plays in it.

You see, New Yorkers can’t have a Constitutional right to defend themselves because the government cannot grant rights. Our rights are granted to us when we are created and they are a part of us as human beings – they are not subject to a judge’s decision. The only decision for a government to make is whether it will protect our God-given rights or violate them. Unfortunately, in this case it has decided to violate them.

Let’s take a look at a couple other aspects of her ruling that will demonstrate how misguided this judge truly is. According to Law.com:

Southern District Judge Cathy Seibel said she found persuasive the reasoning of the Illinois’ Court of Appeals in People v. Marin, 795 N.E.2d 958 (2003), that the overriding purpose of gun statutes should be to prevent innocent people from being victimized by gun violence. (emphasis mine)

Well… not exactly. The purpose of our laws is actually to protect and enlarge our freedom as citizens.

Judge Seibel might say, “Ok Chad, what legal basis do you have for a ridiculous theory like that?” Well, I did have to do a lot of research. But I was able find it in an obscure document called the “Declaration of Independence.”

The Declaration of Independence states that:

…all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men… (emphasis mine)

But if you really do want to do some research, you can go a little further back to John Locke – a man whose political writings had a major influence on our Founding Fathers – who said that the purpose “of law is, not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom.”

So the purpose of government and its laws is to protect my rights – not to protect me from myself – as Judge Siebel seems to be doing here.

She must be trying to save me from myself because she definitely isn’t trying to protect me from gun violence coming from someone else. Call me crazy, but if someone attacks me with a gun, I have a hard time understanding how it makes me safer to be completely unarmed.

Also from Law.com:

“As crafted, the statute seeks to limit the use of handguns to self-defensive purposes…rather than for some other use that has not been recognized as falling within the protections of the Second Amendment,” Judge Seibel wrote.

In other words, Judge Seibel assumes that these men want to use their guns for criminal purposes unless they can prove otherwise. So much for innocent until proven guilty I guess.

And she’s using air tight logic to come to that conclusion too. Someone who applies for a concealed carry permit is almost certain to already own a gun – so they aren’t trying to get a weapon. This judge assumes that these men – rather than just going out and committing a crime – are going go down to register themselves with the government… and then go out and commit a crime. It makes perfect sense!

Somehow it is a completely foreign concept for Judge Seibel that a normal, law-abiding citizen would want to carry a weapon to defend themselves and their family from the everyday thugs that we all know are out on the street. She immediately concludes that any concealed carry applicant must have a malicious intent for carrying a weapon – and allows that narrow-mindedness to skew her interpretation of the law.

Sadly this is just another example of a public official who has a fundamental misunderstanding of the role our government is intended to play. Too many of us today assume that because someone is in the government they must know something we don’t. That mindset couldn’t be more wrong – or more dangerous.

We have to start realizing that a significant majority of the people in our government do not understand their jobs, our Constitution, or the simple concept of freedom.

James Madison once said:

“The Constitution is a limited one, possessing no power not actually given, and carrying on the face of it a distrust of power beyond the distrust indicated by the ordinary forms of free Government.”

That distrust of people in power is healthy and serves to protect our liberty. We must maintain it if we intend to remain free.

09/22/11

Jon Stewart – Cheap Shots Are All He Knows

Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana is a good and honorable man. He is a conservative who strongly believes in fiscal responsibility. I am currently reading his new book Keeping the Republic. I highly recommend it.

Below you will see two videos from The Daily Show. In them, Stewart lumps Daniels in with all other Republicans instead of going over what the Governor stands for himself. That’s like calling all Democrats racist… 🙂

Every time the Republicans have even made anything resembling an honest attempt to curtail spending and balance the budget, they have been blocked by the progressives. I feel Stewart’s tactics are meant to denigrate and demean Daniels. Taxes are not the solution and this class warfare crap is tedious and tiresome. Typical Stewart cheap shots, interruptions, elitism and trap-door rhetoric.

What I hear on these videos is pretty much right and sounds like fiscal sanity to me from Daniels. Stewart is stoking the ‘eat the rich’ mentality. Either he is complicit or ill informed. Raising taxes on the rich, who already pay the largest percentage of taxes, does not work. It winds up being passed on to the masses. Go to a flat tax already! Cut taxes and it will fuel job growth.

From the Indiana Journal Gazette:

“Gov. Mitch Daniels had turned down The Daily Show with Jon Stewart numerous times over the years, perhaps rightly so. Wednesday night’s interview wasn’t the easiest or most comfortable for the governor, who joked at the end that he needed a dog for protection….. Daniels said he got a little defensive because Stewart was asking him to defend positions he hasn’t advocated. Stewart ended the interview by apologizing, saying it is difficult to get prominent Republicans on the show for these discussions and he was excited by Daniels’ reputation as a smart, fiscal conservative.”

09/22/11

Progressives Hate the 1st Amendment

By: T F Stern
T F Stern’s Rantings

Tolerance is fine as long as your opinion happens to fall in line with the left; isn’t that what Political Correctness is all about? This past week KPRC had one of its managers issue an op-ed piece railing against the use of the “Stars and Bars” on personalized Texas license plates. In essence it was his opinion that such a display would only serve to agitate folks who only see it as a sign of racial prejudice and bigotry.

When the world was young I was taught the Stars and Bars represented the Confederacy, a link to my ancestors and a proud “in your face” reminder that just because the South lost, they couldn’t kill the spirit. You’d never guess from such a statement my mother was born in New Orleans and kept her accent all these years, now would ya’?

In the past several years, something interesting occurred regarding the Stars and Bars. On the one hand, some rather heavy drinking Neanderthal red neck bigots chose to use that particular logo to emphasize their immaturity. Then on the other side were the carpet baggin’ progressives who wanted to rub it in a little more that the South had been defeated; don’t show that damned flag or anything resembling it in public ever again. Did I mention my mother was a died in the wool Southerner?

In order to make sure the Stars and Bars was removed from public view, it became part of the left’s politically correct black list; only folks who think Blacks should still be slaves would promote it and only folks who hate blacks would show it in public. You have to be a racist hate monger to even consider the Stars and Bars as anything but pure hate speech. That is what the current generation has been spoon fed so that is what they believe. Pure hogwash!

Never mind history, never mind Confederate Heritage or the Sons of the Confederacy and how that symbol continues to link generations back a hundred and fifty years. No, political correctness has been applied and the Stars and Bars is hate speech.

The issue at hand is the 1st Amendment:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Similarly, it has become hate speech to voice an opinion which violates another of the left’s favorite topics, homosexuality. I’m not talking about folks who go out of their way to insult some limp wrist panty waist who happens to sashay down the sidewalk in funny looking shoes; but if the shoe fits… No, just your plain everyday conversation in which an opinion is expressed, something to the effect, “I think homosexuality is a sin.”

Progressives have taken up the banner and so the use of the word homosexual, unless it is to compliment the Mayor of Houston, that kind of talk is now hate speech. Hey, we are progressives and we get to determine what is tolerated and what is hate speech.

Take for example a Fox News story by Lari Barager out of Ft. Worth, Texas, “Student Suspended for Saying Gay is Wrong.”

“Fourteen-year-old Dakota Ary spent most of the day Tuesday serving an in-school suspension. It was punishment for discussion in his German class at Fort Worth’s Western Hills High School.

“We were talking about religions in Germany. I said, ‘I’m a Christian. I think being a homosexual is wrong,’” he said. “It wasn’t directed to anyone except my friend who was sitting behind me. I guess [the teacher] heard me. He started yelling. He told me he was going to write me an infraction and send me to the office.”

Ary is an honor student and probably has read and understands the Constitution. Perhaps his German instructor should try reading it. Come to think of it, the “assistant principal (who) called Ary’s mother at work to let her know he was in trouble” should read it as well. Maybe the two of them could write on the black board, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Like it or not, progressives run our public schools, universities and fill many positions of power throughout government. This is no accident as Cleon Skousen pointed out in his book, The Naked Communist. Here are just a few of their goals in no particular order:

  • Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
  • Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
  • Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
  • Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
  • Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

    • How are they doing so far? Those who would destroy all that is good in America use the text of our Constitution; but only when it serves to advance their agenda. In actuality these folks hate the fact that freedom of speech applies to everyday conversations between individuals, conversations which depict them as what they are, progressives hell bent on “change.”

    This article has been cross-posted to The Moral Liberal, a publication whose banner reads, “Defending The Judeo-Christian Ethic, Limited Government & The American Constitution.”

    09/22/11

    Hate Week In New York: Starring the UN, the Palestinians, Durban III and Ahmadinejad

    By: Fern Sidman

    Autumn in New York City will never be the same. The traditional atmosphere that marks this time of the year such as cooler temperatures, changing leaves and post-season play for major league baseball, have been abruptly usurped by the menacing tone of geo-political realities. As most of us are already aware, the United Nations General Assembly will be convening for its annual session. In addition to hosting a veritable rogues gallery of assorted miscreants such as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and playing chief sponsor to yet another round of infamous Israel bashing as manifested in the Durban III conference, this year the international spotlight is on the unilateral Palestinian bid for statehood.

    Anyone with a modicum of political awareness is cognizant of the fact that the history of this “august body” is riddled with visceral bellicosity towards the target of its obsession, namely Israel, and has done little to conceal the fact that they have posited themselves as a sounding board for Palestinian apologists the world over. Clearly, the ultimate objective of the Palestinian Authority is not to secure an independent, sovereign state in the “West Bank,” East Jerusalem and Gaza, but to use the universal sympathy that they’ve garnered with their finely tuned propaganda machine to “liberate” all of “Palestine,” thus ridding the world of the bogeyman of the Middle East (Israel) and the Jews who call it home.

    Even as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has offered to hold direct talks with PA president Mahmoud Abbas at the UN General Assembly, the Palestinian leader remains adamant; eschewing any chance of obtaining a genuine peace by thwarting intense diplomatic efforts to avert a crisis over the move for statehood. The political implications of Abbas’ strategy would open the door for Palestinians to join UN agencies and become party to international treaties, such as the International Criminal Court, where they could take legal action to challenge what they term the “Israeli occupation” of their land.

    The scenario could be played out as follows: If as expected, the US vetoes this bid in the Security Council, or the PLO decides to back down on its plan for full membership in the UN, it can still submit a resolution to the General Assembly. A vote could be held within 48 hours of submission but would probably be delayed until after the general debate in late September or early October. This would give more time to negotiate a text that would have maximum support, from European countries in particular. Approval would require a simple majority of those present. There is no veto.

    The time is long overdue to neutralize the totalitarian antics and the devolution of venalities that has come to define the United Nations. The time is long overdue for the voices of dissent to be raised against the plethora of “Big Lies” that have been incessantly spewed forth by the “eternally victimized” Palestinians. The US must lead the way by tightly closing the purse strings on funding of the UN; by declaring in the strongest of terms to the 126 nations who are poised to legitimize a terrorist state that they too will be considered enemies of the US and to stop pandering to Islamic demagogues in the name of political correctness.