Ted Cruz Responds To The 4th Circuit Ruling

CPAC or the Conservative Political Action Conference is going on now in Washington, DC. It is where the leading lights of the conservative movement show up to see and be seen. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is one of those people.

In an interview with radio talk show host and author Mark Levin, Cruz discussed the fallacies of the majority opinion in Kolbe v. Hogan. He eviscerated the logic (or illogic) shown by Judge Robert King in the majority opinion.

Watch and listen:

Durbin’s “Stand Your Ground” Hearings

Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL) is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights. As mentioned before, he plans to hold a hearing on so-called Stand Your Ground laws. He has entitled his hearings, “‘Stand Your Ground’ Laws: Civil Rights and Public Safety Implications of the Expanded Use of Deadly Force”. This hearing is scheduled for tomorrow at 10am.

The witness list for the hearing has been published.

Sybrina Fulton
Miami, FL


Lucia McBath
Atlanta, GA


William N. Meggs
State Attorney
Second Judicial Circuit
Tallahassee, FL


Ronald S. Sullivan, Jr.
Clinical Professor of Law, Director of the Criminal Justice Institute
Harvard Law School
Cambridge, MA


John R. Lott, Jr., Ph.D.
President
Crime Prevention Research Center
Swarthmore, PA


Ilya Shapiro
Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies
Cato Institute
Washington, DC

Sybrina Fulton really needs no introduction as she got more than her 15 minutes of fame during the George Zimmerman trial.

Lucia McBath was the mother of Jordan Davis who was killed in a confrontation in Jacksonville, FL by Martin Dunn. Mr. Dunn is charged with 1st Degree Murder in the case. Ms. McBath is concerned that Dunn will try to claim self-defense under Florida’s “stand your ground” law.

Willie Meggs is the State Attorney (or DA) for the 2nd Judicial Circuit which includes the Tallahassee area of Florida. He is a well-known opponent of the Florida “Stand Your Ground” law and has called it “the dumbest law ever put on the books.”

Ronald Sullivan is a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. About the only thing I could find about regarding either Trayvon Martin or “Stand Your Ground” laws is that he spoke to a pro-Martin demonstration held by the Black Law Students Association at Harvard. He will also be a speaker on a panel  discussing “Guns, Violence, and Children” at the American Association of Law Schools conference in January 2014.

John Lott, of course, needs little introduction as he is one of the leading pro-gun researchers.

Ilya Shapiro is a Fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute. The Cato Institute has made Durbin’s enemies list. In an article posted in August, Shapiro practically demanded Durbin include him in the list of speakers at this hearing.

This is unacceptable. Senator Durbin, care to invite me to testify at your little hearing? I rather enjoyed discussing Citizens United at the kabuki theatre you ran last year—though you seemed more interested in accusing me of being a pawn of the Koch brothers (with whom I have no beef, but who were actually suing Cato at the time)—and would be happy to have another tete-a-tete with my fellow University of Chicago Law School alum.

What will make this joke of a hearing even more interesting is that the Ranking Member for the Republican side is Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). While Durbin will rail on about the Koch Brothers, ALEC, and conservatives, I expect Cruz will be up to the challenge.

“Jumped-Up Refugee From A Zoning Board”

The title of this post comes from a description of Sen. Dianne Feinsten (D-CA) made by Tam in a post back in February. I loved it then and I especially love it now that DiFi is all butt hurt over the eloquent thrashing she took from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday.

Ted Cruz asked DiFi whether she thought Congress could likewise limit the right of the people under the 1st and 4th Amendments as she is seeking to do with her Assault Weapons Ban of 2012. As you can see in the video below, DiFi gets all huffy about it. Three male Democrats also have to jump in because it seems that they are worried that a woman can’t make a strong enough argument or so it would seem.

After the committee business meeting, DiFi had to run to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer to wrap the mantle of victimhood across her shoulders. She said, “Well, I just felt patronized. I felt he was somewhat arrogant about it.” CNN is still playing the clip below of DiFi whining about her treatment as I saw just this morning on TV in a local McDonalds.

Did DiFin really say she put her fingers in the wounds of George Moscone and Harvey Milk? Hmnm. I wonder when DiFi will get around to telling people that fellow Supervisor Dan White didn’t use an AR or an AK or even an FN-FAL to murder them. No, Dan White used a S&W Model 10 in .38 Special – a plain old everyday revolver then used by police forces around the country.

20 years in the Senate and 9 years as the accidental mayor of San Francisco still doesn’t make one a expert on Constitutional matters. Nor does it seem to engender any real respect for it either. She is, and will always remain, what Tam described her as – a meddling harpy and a jumped-up refugee from a zoning board.

Ted Cruz At The Senate Judiciary Committee Hearings

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is the junior senator from Texas and a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In his comments and questions today at the Judiciary Committee’s hearing on gun violence (sic) he brought out that the bill proposed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) is concerned with cosmetics and not functionality. It is a message that most Americans are not getting. I think Cruz is correct when he asserts the average American thinks of full-auto firearms when the term “assault weapon” is used.

I Like The Cut Of His Jib

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is the junior senator from Texas and the former Solicitor General of Texas. He was responsible for organizing the amicus brief from 31 states in support of Heller in DC v. Heller.

Today he fired back at Sen. Dianne Feinstein and her Assault Weapons (sic) Ban of 2013.


Washington politicians shouldn’t be taking advantage of recent tragedy to try to push an aggressive gun control agenda. Real assault weapons—machine guns—are already functionally illegal, and they have been since 1934. This proposal would have done nothing to prevent the terrible murders in Newtown, but it would limit the constitutional liberties of law-abiding citizens. And gun control doesn’t work – the empirical data overwhelmingly demonstrate that strict gun-control laws consistently produce more crime and more murders.

The Second Amendment exists to ensure that law-abiding Americans can protect their homes and families, and I look forward to helping lead the fight to defeat this bill and to protect our constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

I’m glad we have such a strong Second Amendment advocate in the Senate.