Ginny Simone of NRA News interviewed attorney Dave Kopel of the Independence Institute regarding how the 2012 elections impacted the Second Amendment and gun rights. It fleshes out his column from the Volokh Conspiracy and gives more detail.
It will be interesting to see if the Louisiana amendment setting strict scrutiny as the standard is exported to other states. I’d love to see something like that in North Carolina.
Cam Edwards interviewed Dr. A.M.R. Hawkins of Breitbart’s Big Government yesterday. They discuss Obama’s history of support for gun control and how he has the ability to seriously impact gun owners through court appointments, regulatory changes, and executive orders. It does not take action by Congress for him to do things like that.
Hawkins’ full article, Four More Years of Obama: Gun Control ‘Under the Radar’ No More, can be found here.
Katie Pavlich of Townhall.com was a guest of Cam Edward’s on NRA News last night. She discussed Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on Operation Fast and Furious. She makes a number of good points including how Eric Holder was claiming to be totally exonerated within minutes after the report was released.
Katie is always a good interview and she knows her stuff with regard to Project Gunwalker.
It was interesting to see the local news here in western North Carolina last night. The Inspector General’s report and Operation Fast and Furious were actually the subject of a report!
This past Friday, Ginny Simone of NRA News interviewed Chris Farrell of Judicial Watch. They are suing the Department of Justice to try and force them to release more documents related to Operation Fast and Furious.
Farrell said that President Obama has personalized this by bringing it into the White House through his claim of executive privilege. He says the only way to resolve this is to bring it before a judge through a lawsuit. He says that Judicial Watch is using the courts to force the issue.
From Judicial Watch’s press release:
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:12-cv-01510)) against the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) seeking access to Operation Fast and Furious records withheld from Congress by President Obama under executive privilege on June 20, 2012. Judicial Watch seeks the following records pursuant to a June 22, 2012, FOIA request filed with the Office of Information Policy (OIP), a component of the DOJ:
All records subject to the claim of executive privilege invoked by President Barack Obama on or about June 20, 2012, as referenced in the letter of Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole to the Honorable Darrell E. Issa, Chairman, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform of the U.S. House of Representatives, dated June 20, 2012. More specifically, the records requested herein are those records described by Deputy Attorney General Cole in his June 20, 2012 letter as “the relevant post-February, 2011, documents” over which “the President has asserted executive privilege.”
The lawsuit was filed yesterday, on September 12, 2012.
On August 6, 2012, OIP informed Judicial Watch that the Offices of the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General had determined that the documents responsive to Judicial Watch’s FOIA request should be withheld in full pursuant to FOIA Exemption 5 which protects “inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums or letters which would not be available by law to a party other than an agency in litigation with the agency.” Judicial Watch appealed the determination. By law, a response was due September 11, 2012. However, as of the date of Judicial Watch’s lawsuit, the DOJ had failed to respond.
Olympic Gold Medal winner Kim Rhode was interviewed by Ginny Simone of NRA News about her speech and appearance at the Republican National Convention. Rhode gave a short speech and then introduced a number of other Olympians that were supporting Mitt Romney.
From what Kim says, her role morphed from just doing a short speech to being the one who introduced the rest of the Olympians. She admits to being nervous as well as “a huge Republican”. Having watched her speech and presentation of the other Olympians, I think she did just fine.
John Popp of NRA News interviewed gold medalist Kim Rhode on her record-breaking win in London. Unlike some of the other media interviews which have tended to be a little superficial, this interview got into things like social media, the impact of her win on the shooting sports, and the positive attention it has brought to shooting. One of the interviews that Kim mentioned she will be doing is with Piers Morgan of CNN.
Ginny Simone of NRA News interviews Tom Mason of the World Forum on the Future of Sport Shooting Activities about the last day of the Arms Trade Treaty talks. They discuss the speech by the State Department’s Tom Countryman which said that consensus had not been found and the talks need to be continued later. In essence, the US can’t agree to it…yet. They also discuss the letter from Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) and 50 other senators saying they won’t support the treaty.
In a later interview with Tom Mason, Ginny Simone asks about the report that Russia and Canada both indicated they can’t support the treaty at this time.
H/T Weer’d Beard
Ginny Simone of NRA News interviewed Chris Cox, head of the NRA-ILA, about the UN’s Arms Trade Treaty yesterday. This interview was after Wayne LaPierre spoke to the delegates of the ATT talks and presented the NRA’s position.
Chris made some good points in this interview. Perhaps the best was when he said that “our freedoms shouldn’t be dumbed down to an international standard; the truth is that international standards need to be brought up to United States (levels).” Given that the ATT has countries like Iran in a leadership role I don’t see this happening. That said, Chris is correct.
Another important point that Chris made was that treaties hang around forever until such time as there is a President and Senate willing to ratify it. Unlike a bill passed in one house of Congress that dies at the end of that Congressional session if the other house doesn’t pass it, an international treaty hangs around like a Zombie.
Ginny Simone of NRA News discusses Day 4 of the UN Arms Trade Treaty talks with Tom Mason of the World Forum on the Future of Sport Shooting Activities. They discussed the organizational difficulties, the committees that will deal with the scope of the treaty as well as its preamble, the right to self defense (of the state and not the individual), and the refusal of many states to differentiate between military firearms and civilian firearms.
Dr. Ted Bromund of the Heritage Foundation has his summation of the day’s event’s here. Bromund says that Venezuela won “the crazy prize” for their rant against “imperialists”:
In previous sessions, Cuba, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia had all put in strong showings with speeches that were unprincipled and autocrat-friendly, but when it came to crazy, Venezuela lapped the field with a speech that will be tough to beat.
In a lengthy rant attacking the “maturity” of the assembled nations, it denounced the “imperial powers” for arming the Libyan rebels who overthrew Muammar Qadhafi, demanded that the world look seriously at controlling the “imperialists” (i.e., the U.S.) who had nuclear weapons, condemned foreign aid providers for insisting on the “downsizing” of governments, and stated that it needed arms to deal with internal threats (i.e., to continue to oppress its own population).
Ginny Simone of NRA News ends the first day of the Arms Trade Treaty Talks with a recap featuring Tom Mason from the World Forum on the Future of Sport Shooting Activities. The day was consumed with the argument of whether or not the Palestinians would be seated at the talks. For them, this is a backdoor method of trying to get recognition as a state. The United States was opposed to the seating of the PLO.
The other issue was when NGOs – non-governmental organizations – such as the NRA and the Second Amendment Foundation were to speak. They had expected to speak near the end of the talks but their participation has been pushed up to this week. As Ginny notes, it looks like that they want to get the NGOs in and out so they can do whatever they want to do. Mr. Mason tends to agree with her on that.
Dr. Ted Bromund of the Heritage Foundation provides his take on Day 1 here.
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