Filmmaker David Zucker voted for Senator Barbara Boxer in past elections. To make amends and do penance for his past transgressions, he had created this little video. Oh, and by the way, Carly Fiorina is being attacked by Boxer as being out of touch and supporting assault weapons (sic).
Call Me Senator from RightChange on Vimeo.
As a general rule of thumb political candidates don’t run negative ads against their opponents unless they are feeling pressed. Negative ads, while often effective, turn off a lot of voters. Studies have shown that it tends to lower voter turnout especially among independents. Actually, some candidates want this as it will improve the chances of them being elected. Only their loyalists will turn out as everyone else is repulsed by the negativity.
Incumbents don’t usually want to resort to running negative ads against their opponent for another reason. It gives the challenger more name recognition and transforms a “nobody” into somebody.
The timing of negative ads gives a clue as to how the incumbent is feeling about his or her chances. The earlier the mud starts to fly, the more trouble the incumbent is in.
Carolyn McCarthy who is finishing up her 7th term of office must be feeling the heat. She has started to go negative against her opponent Fran Becker. With luck, instead of turning off the independent voter, it will piss them off and they will vote for Becker. Let’s keep our fingers crossed!
On Tuesday, attorneys for the plaintiffs in the NRA’s lawsuit against the new Chicago gun law, Benson et al v. Chicago et al, filed a motion to dismiss Raymond Sledge as one of the plaintiffs in the case. From the motion:
RULE 21 MOTION TO WITHDRAW AS PARTY PLAINTIFF
NOW COMES Plaintiff Raymond Sledge, by and through his attorneys, and respectfully moves the Court pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 21 to dismiss him as a party plaintiff to this civil action, with the case to continue as to all other Plaintiffs. By email dated October 15, 2010, Plaintiffs’ counsel sought from Defendants’ consent to this motion, but Defendants’ counsel has not responded to that request
Mr. Sledge was a plaintiff in both the original complaint and the amended complaint. According to paragraph 35 of the amended complaint:
Plaintiff Raymond Sledge is a 53-year-old, African-American male, and a resident of Chicago. He has been employed for the last sixteen years as a teaching assistant at a public elementary school in Chicago.
I don’t know why Mr. Sledge requested to be dismissed as a plaintiff in the case. He was, however, the target of a mocking editorial in the New York Times back in July. The Chicago Gun Rights Examiner made note of that editorial here.
Given the workings of Mayor Daley and his machine one wonders if a none too subtle message was sent through an intermediary that if Mr. Sledge wanted to keep his job in the Chicago Public Schools he better drop out of the lawsuit. The unvarnished truth probably will never come out but one has to wonder.
Unlike in the Heller case, the Supreme Court did not immediately release the oral arguments for the McDonald case to my dismay. However, they are now available.
The oral arguments can be heard or downloaded here. This page also has the audio of Justice Alito reading the Court’s decision in the case.
I think they are worth downloading and saving.
Jim Piccillo is a Democrat running for Congress in the Tampa Bay area. Until two years ago he was a Republican whose main claim to fame was introducing then-Senator Joe Biden at an Obama rally as “John McCain.” He was a member of Republicans for Obama and volunteered in the Obama campaign.
Piccillo, who served in the 101st Airborne but did not see any combat, is emphasizing his military service. His latest ad shows him holding a M-4 and says he will “kick butt”.
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| Screen capture from Piccillo ad |
Florida’s 5th Congressional District is home to many veterans. I hope for Piccillo’s sake that one of those vets isn’t his old drill sergeant. If not, Piccillo will probably be reamed a new one for his poor trigger finger discipline.
The website FiveThirtyEight rates this seat as having a 99% chance of the Republican winning.
Michael Smigiel is a member of the Maryland House of Delegates representing District 36. This district lies on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and consists of Caroline, Cecil, Kent, and Queen Anne’s counties. He is also a practicing attorney.
One of his constituents who is also a client had applied for a handgun carry permit. Smigiel wondered how his constituents were treated by the Handgun Carry Permit Review Board so he applied for a permit. The video below is from his hearing before that Board. Mind you, he is a Delegate so his treatment is probably going to be much more cordial than for someone like Raymond Woollard. According to this thread on Maryland Shooters Smigiel’s experience is not typical.
Ilario Pantano, the Republican nominee for Congress from the 7th District of North Carolina is not your usual candidate. First off, he is a New York City boy running for Congress in eastern North Carolina. Second, he left Wall Street to re-enlist in the Marines after 9/11 and ended up leading a platoon of Marines in Fallujah. And third, he has some innovative ways to both fund raise and show his support for the Second Amendment.
This Saturday Pantano is sponsoring a Steel Challenge shooting match as a fundraiser for his campaign. And he is betting he can shoot better than his challengers.
WANTED: Patriots to help Pantano protect the Second Amendment and fire Pelosi and the Liberal Congress!
Come see if you have what it takes to out-shoot Pantano, your candidate for the U.S. Congress. Pantano needs your help to fix Washington, so come on out to the social fundraiser for an afternoon of fun, food, and guns!
Join us on Oct 24
WHO: Any patriot who thinks they can outshoot their next Congressman
WHAT: A fundraiser pistol match, $25 per entry. Bring your own guns/ammo.
WHEN: Sunday, October 24, registration begins at 11 AM. Match starts at noon.
WHERE: Ant Hill Range, Off Hwy 211 (Green Swamp Rd) near Southport, NC, in Brunswick County. Visit www.anthillrange.com
CONTACT: Joe Moran, 910-520-5982, JJRMoran@juno.com
REWARD! Your $25 entry fee is refunded if you can outshoot your next Congressman!
Lots of details on the steel challenge format are below the fold. And please print out the attached flier to hand out and invite folks!
This isn’t the first time that Pantano has held a Steel Challenge to raise money for his campaign. He did it back in the primary as well. According to the rangemaster at Ant Hill Range, Pantano is a pretty fair shot:
Was Pantano a good shot?
“Yeah, he was,” Moran said. “I beat him on the last match by about a half a second, but he beat everybody else there.”
Imagine that – a politician who when it comes to shooting does more than just shoot off his mouth.
Pantano is running against Blue Dog Democrat Mike McIntyre and he has made it a very competitive race. He has raised twice as much money as McIntyre in the last quarter and stands a good chance of beating him in this traditionally Democratic district.
Cognitive dissonance is a theory about human behavior that was developed by psychologist Louis Festinger in 1957. It refers to a situation where you have two incompatible beliefs or bits of knowledge which cause psychological discomfort. According to Festinger, when this situation occurs people seek to diminish it by changing one belief to bring it into conformity with the other.
So why on a gun blog would we even care about some psychological theory?
What if your Democratic Congressman who is endorsed by the NRA-PVF, who delivered the carve-out on the DISCLOSE bill for the NRA, and spoke at the NRA Annual Meeting finds himself in a tough race for re-election. In an effort to shore up his Democratic base he reaches out to a former President who is roundly despised by gun people and who implemented some of the worst gun control laws in recent memory.
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| At Biltmore Baptist Church, Arden, NC – 2008 |
I am speaking about Congressman Heath Shuler and former President Bill Clinton who will share a stage together Thursday in Asheville, North Carolina. Clinton is coming to Asheville to headline a campaign rally for Shuler in an effort to shore up the “base”. According to an article in the Asheville Citizen-Times, Bill Clinton was one of the people who encouraged Shuler to run for Congress in 2006 as well as holding a fund-raiser for him last year. The other person who pushed Shuler to run was Rahm Emanuel. The relationship between Emanuel and Shuler is or was so close that lefty blogger Jane Hamsher referred to Shuler as “Rahm Emanuel’s puppet”.
I realize that politics in western North Carolina suffer from a bit of schizophrenia. I still remember a classmate in graduate school who, in her mind, saw no conflict between being a big Clinton fan and supporting arch-conservative Jesse Helms.
That said, how is one to reconcile Shuler’s pro-gun views with Clinton’s anti-gun behavior? Frankly, I don’t know. All I can figure is that Shuler is determined to stay in Washington longer as a Congressman than he did playing for the Redskins.
The above was the title of a MSN Lifestyle interview with Paxton Quigley. They were interviewing her about her new book Armed and Female: Taking Control. Surprisingly enough, they played it straight and it was a good interview.
I got to meet Paxton at the Gun Rights Policy Conference where she was one of the conference speakers. Her book was one of the books given to us by the Second Amendment Foundation. She was kind enough to autograph one for the Virtual Step-Daughter.
The CalGuns Foundations has launched a new web portal dedicated to providing information about concealed carry in every county of California. They call it their Carry License/CCW Compliance and Sunshine Initiative. The goal is to make CCW-related information available to the law-abiding public in one central location and to prod local governments into compliance with California state law.
“Detailed information about carry licensing, or CCW (Carry a Concealed Weapon), has historically been kept out of reach by the local authorities who issue carry permits,” notes Calguns Foundation Director Brandon Combs. “Many Sheriffs don’t want citizens to see to the current reality of the right to bear arms in their county. It’s time that we hold these officials accountable.” As part of the initiative, Calguns Foundation and its network of volunteers requested from each of California’s 58 sheriffs carry license-related documents such as their policy, local forms, and application instructions as well as statements of “good cause” that lead to both granted permits and denials. “After reviewing a small sample of the records, we knew we had to make a real effort to clean up policies that violate state or Federal law across the state.”
The new web portal will have county-specific information including editable forms, contact information for each sheriff’s office, and all carry license-related local materials. There will also be county-specific discussion threads so that applicants and others can share information and experiences. The site will also have as it becomes available copies of each county’s accepted “good cause” statements with applicant information redacted.
Gene Hoffman, chairman of the CalGuns Foundation had this to say about the site:
“We want the public to know how each California sheriff determines ‘Good Cause’ and ‘Good Moral Character,’’ their only areas of discretion under existing law. There is a substantial public interest in this information since the right to bear arms hinges squarely on these standards, which currently vary from county to county,”…“We believe that after the McDonald v. Chicago Supreme Court case, the Second Amendment right to bear arms requires that “good cause” be interpreted as ‘self defense’ and ‘good moral character’ be interpreted as ‘not prohibited from possessing firearms.’ We have already filed a federal lawsuit entitled Sykes v. McGinness challenging the constitutionality of unfettered discretion in carry licensing in Sacramento and Yolo County.”
Concurrent with the roll-out of the CCW project, CalGuns has sued Ventura County for because Sheriff Bob Brooks decided to withhold certain public records in violation of the California Public Records Act. The complaint can be found here. Their attorney had this to say about the lawsuit:
“I am not sure what they are hiding, but Ventura’s suppression of records previously held by the courts to be public should concern all those who expect accountability from public officials,” said Mr. Jason Davis, who brought the case on The Calguns Foundation’s behalf. “This is the first in a potential string of lawsuits to be filed against local agencies should they continue to disregard the public’s interest in their carry licensing programs. Not only does the Act require these authorities to release the information, the very application Sheriff Brooks refused to produce reminds applicants that the applications are public records which could be disclosed upon request. It makes no sense for counties to fight losing battles in these tough economic times.”
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