New York Times

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Holder – Those Mean Conservative Bloggers Are Saying Bad Things About Me

December 19, 2011 by 4 Comments

In a New York Times political piece that charitably can be described as utter rubbish, Attorney General Eric Holder blames bloggers and conservative commentators for some of his troubles.

But Mr. Holder contended that many of his other critics — not only elected Republicans but also a broader universe of conservative commentators and bloggers — were instead playing “Washington gotcha” games, portraying them as frequently “conflating things, conveniently leaving some stuff out, construing things to make it seem not quite what it was” to paint him and other department figures in the worst possible light.

While it is hard not to portray the most devious and political Justice Department since Nixon in a bad light, I would disagree with Holder’s partial explanation of why bloggers portray him in such a negative way. As might be expected, Holder is playing the race card.

Mr. Holder said he believed that a few — the “more extreme segment” — were motivated by animus against Mr. Obama and that he served as a stand-in for him. “This is a way to get at the president because of the way I can be identified with him,” he said, “both due to the nature of our relationship and, you know, the fact that we’re both African-American.”

The bigger explanation according to Holder is that we are raving conservative ideologues who oppose him over his stands on the issues. Holder also feels that Republicans are after him as a payback for the way John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales were treated by their Democratic critics.

If it is ideological to want accountability for a program that has led to two dead Federal law enforcement officers and untold numbers of Mexican citizens, then I’m an ideologue as are bloggers like Mike Vanderboegh, David Codrea, Dave Workman, and others who have reported on Project Gunwalker.

Eric Holder needs to go if for no other reason than he is living in a fantasy world. What’s worse is the way Charlie Savage and the rest of the mainstream media excuses this behavior. It is the equivalent of the co-dependency between an alcoholic wife beater and a spouse who refuses to press charges despite repeated beatings. Both are sad, pathetic behaviors.

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Deconstructing A New York Times Editiorial

May 9, 2011 by 1 Comment

Sebastian at Snow Flakes In Hell does an excellent job in deconstructing an anti-gun editorial that appears in today’s print version of the New York Times.

The editorial deals with the so-called “no-fly” list and gun purchases. This is a secret list of supposed terrorists who are banned from flying. You don’t know how you got on the list, don’t know that you are on the list, and usually have no recourse for getting off the list. As you might expect coming from the New York Times, they want to ban anyone who is on this list from being able to purchase a firearm.

As Sebastian notes, he doubts that they would editorialize against any other part of the Bill of Rights in similar fashion. He then provides some examples.

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Rat-A-Tat Annihilators?

December 23, 2010 by

Editorials in the New York Times are known for their hyperbole when it comes to firearms. Today’s editorial entitled Cartel Gunmen Buy American goes even further. In an effort to bolster support for ATF’s proposed “emergency” and “temporary” semi-automatic rifle reporting requirement for multiple purchases, they use words like body count, carnage, war weapons, and gun lobby. However, after seeing one too many repeat showings of The Untouchables, they have outdone themselves.

…with use of high- power long guns more than doubling in the past five years as cartel gunmen turn to the rat-a-tat annihilators easily obtainable across the border.

Who writes this stuff? Moreover, who reads it without rolling on the floor laughing?

The rest of the editorial tries to make the case that “AK-47s and other battlefield assault rifles” are being sold by dealers along the Mexican border to the narco-terrorists and that it is only right-wing Republicans, cowed Democrats afraid of the “gun lobby”, and the National Rifle Association itself that stands in the way of “courageous” legislation that would make the proposed requirement law. They even ask Obama to ignore Congress and just issue an Executive Order. This, of course, would modify the Gun Control Act of 1968 and the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986.

We know, of course, that “battlefield assault rifles” are covered under the National Firearms Act of 1934 and require a tax stamp, background investigation, and that no new automatic weapons can be sold to non-LEO, non-military since the Hughes Amendment of 1986.  The bulk of the real automatic weapons in Mexico, if U.S. made, are coming from Mexican Army arsenals sold by corrupt and/or fearful Army officials. As for the full-automatic AKs, the fine hand of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez and Eastern Bloc gun merchants can be seen in that.

That’s the reality of the situation which is completely and obviously ignored in this editorial.

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The New York Times – Still A Shill For Gun Banners

November 27, 2010 by 2 Comments

The lead editorial in Friday’s New York Times was entitled Handguns for 18-Year-Olds? As one has come to expect from the Times, the editorial was full of the trite phrases and misleading statistics used by gun banners along with their own sense of righteous indignation.

Undermine public safety. Scuttle basic gun controls. Common-sense efforts. The deadly loophole. The gun lobby. Gun traffickers. Allow armed teenagers. Unlicensed sellers. Powerful semiautomatic weapons. Reasonable restrictions. The Times’ editorial may have left out one or two phrases from the approved lexicon of the Brady Campaign but that’s all.

The editorial starts with the accusation that the NRA “keeps coming up with clever new ways to undermine public safety.” It then launches into a litany of supposed sins committed by the NRA including opposition to the Lautenberg proposal to ban firearm sales to anyone on the FBI’s “terrorist watch list” and to a requirement for NICS checks on private sales of firearms between individuals.

The Times gets in a plug for Andrew Traver, Obama’s nominee to head ATF, calling him a “well-qualified career professional”. They bemoan opposition to him by “the gun lobby” saying his “sin” was merely to associate with “a police chief’s group that wants to reduce the use of handguns on city streets.” That it was funded by the virulently anti-gun Joyce Foundation is immaterial to them.

The meat of the editorial is an attack on the NRA for bringing the D’Cruz cases challenging the ban on the sale of handguns to legal adults under the age of 21 and challenging the Texas CHP law which sets 21 as the minimum age for non-military, non-veteran adults.

As a legal matter, both lawsuits should fail. In its recent Second Amendment rulings, the Supreme Court struck down complete bans on handgun ownership, but explicitly left room for limits on gun ownership and possession by felons and the mentally ill, and other reasonable restrictions like Texas’ age limitations. The Supreme Court has said nothing to suggest that the Second Amendment requires Americans to allow armed teenagers in their communities.

Beyond the dubious legal claims, the idea that young individuals ages 18 to 20 have a constitutional right to buy weapons and carry them loaded and concealed in public is breathtakingly irresponsible.

They then throw out statistics saying that 18-20 year-olds commit more violent crime than other age groups and imply that lowering the age to 18 will just put more weapons in the hands of this group. Of course, this ignores both the NICS check required for a purchase of any firearm from a licensed dealer and the training, background, and other requirements needed to obtain a Texas Concealed Handgun License. As an aside, private sales of handguns are permitted for 18-20 year olds in the State of Texas and 18-20 year olds can and do obtain Texas CHL’s if they serve or have served in the military. This, too, is ignored by the Times in their editorial.

The Brady Campaign jumped the gun with their amicus brief in D’Cruz v. McCraw and had to withdraw it. However, as this editorial illustrates, Big Media is more than willing to continue to be a shill and do the propaganda work for them. Some things just never change.

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Annie Oakley Does Not Exist

October 23, 2010 by

The New York Times ran an article this week contrasting real life police work with TV police work. After police-involved shootings, cops are often asked why they didn’t just shoot the weapon-wielding perpetrator in the hand or leg. Indeed, New York State Assembly Members Annette Robinson (D-Brooklyn) and Darryl Towns (D-Brooklyn) actually sponsored a bill earlier this year requiring police to shoot to wound if possible.
Two recent police shootings in New York City actually did result in shots to the legs which stopped a deranged man with a knife and a guy shooting at police respectively. However, as the article notes, this was more by accident than by design.

In fact, in the Thursday case at Pennsylvania Station, a second bullet fired by the officer missed the knife-wielding man and went flying into the pavement near the shooting scene.

Police officers, the article notes, are trained to shoot to stop the criminal by going for center of mass.

John C. Cerar, a retired deputy inspector who was the commander of the Police Department’s firearms training section, said officers are taught to shoot at center mass — which means the “head and torso” of a suspect like a man armed with a gun.

“You can’t just shoot to aim for a leg or an arm; it just doesn’t work,” Mr. Cerar said. “You are trying to hit the biggest part to the target, to stop the actions of the person using, or attempting, deadly physical force.”

He paused and added, “Annie Oakley does not exist.”

It is interesting to see the difference in reporting in the Times. The guy who covers the police beat recognizes the reality of the confusion, fear, and excitement inherent in violent encounters. Those who usually pen the editorials which involve firearms don’t have a clue. At least somebody at the Times gets it.

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New York Times is Still Fighting the Last War

July 11, 2010 by

Today’s New York Times ran an editorial entitled “The Hard Work of Gun Control”. While it was originally published on July 9th, they saw fit to re-run it in their Sunday paper just in case the elites didn’t read it the first time.

Like the dissenters in the McDonald decision, they are still fighting the Heller decision. It must have killed them to acknowledge that, “the law of the land is now that people have a constitutional right to a gun in their home for self-defense.”

They did concede that they thought Chicago’s new gun law was flawed and would likely be overturned.

Cities and states have a need to be extremely tough in limiting access to guns, but they need to do it with more forethought than went into the Chicago ordinance. Lawmakers there sensibly limited residents to one operable handgun per home, with a strict registration and permitting process. But residents are not allowed to buy a gun in the city. They must receive firearms training, but ranges are illegal in the city. Chicago lawmakers sloughed off on the suburbs the responsibility to regulate sales and training. As a result, more people will travel more miles to transport guns.

The law is likely to draw heightened equal-protection scrutiny from skeptical judges at all levels. Chicago would have been better off allowing gun sales under the strict oversight of the police department, which could then better check the backgrounds and movements of every buyer and seller. The District of Columbia passed a largely similar ordinance last year after its law was struck down by the court. But it permits sales at the few gun shops in the district, and a federal judge upheld that ordinance after it was challenged. It could stand as a model for other cities.

They thought the lawsuit against the new Chicago gun law was over-the-top.

It disputes virtually every aspect of the law as a violation of the Second Amendment and poses ludicrous hypothetical situations to show that everyone needs a gun. “If an elderly widow lives in an unsafe neighborhood and asks her son to spend the night because she has recently received harassing phone calls,” the lawsuit complains, “the son may not bring his registered firearm with him to his mother’s home as an aid to the defense of himself and his mother.” Putting granny in the middle of a neighborhood firefight is preferable to having her simply call the police?

I guess they never heard of the wait times for police response to 911 calls and that the police have no legal obligation to protect you.

They conclude with a call for “tough but sensible” laws and with a shot at Alan Gura and “the gun lobby”.

The gun lobby is going to attack virtually every gun ordinance it can find, if only to see what it can get away with now. (Last week, the same lawyers who brought the Chicago and Washington cases sued North Carolina, challenging a law that prohibits carrying weapons during a state of emergency.)

All I can say as a North Carolinian is “Go Alan!”