HoodaThunk?

The General Assembly in Virginia has convened for 2012, as I alluded to in this post, and there are several bills that have been introduced for the session that relate to 2nd Amendment protections. Thanks to the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL) we have a pretty good rundown of what they are and where some of Virginia’s most prominent defenders of our right to keep and bear arms stand on them. You can view the NRA’s list in its entirety here and view the VCDL’s Bill Analysis Summary here (PDF format).

As any long-time reader knows, I’m a firm supporter of American citizens’ right to keep and bear arms so legislation affecting that area is of great interest to me. I’ll be watching several of these bills as they come through the GA. Of particular interest to me are:

HB 20: Emergency Services & Disaster Law; shall not be interpreted to prohibit carrying, etc., of firearms. This adds the legal carrying, transportation, sale, or transfer of firearms to the list of things that cannot be limited or prohibited during a declared state of emergency. Thumbs way, way up – I approve and I absolutely want to see this passed.

HB 25: Concealed handgun permits; confidentiality of permittee information. This explicity prevents any clerk of the court from disclosing information contained on a concealed handgun permit (CHP) application. Again, given the situations that have occured where personally identifiable information on these CHP applications have been simply broadcast into the public domain, I feel we need to rigidly code this into the law and lock it down.

HB 237: Criminal history record information checks upon handgun purchases; dissemination of information. This bill would cease the practice of running background checks against both the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) and against the Virginia-specific system and rely on the NICS instead for long gun sales. This cost and time involved in maintaining the 2 system-approach is not justified by the performance of the systems and I think we can just use the national one.

HB 364: Criminal history record information; record check to be performed on prospective transferee. The myth-that-shall-not-die, the so-called “gun show loophole” is still on the Dem’s agenda and it’s every bit as bogus today as it ever has been. It is nothing more than an attempt to prepare the ground to outlaw any and all private sales or transfers of firearms and this bill should be put down as quickly and with as much predjudice as can be mustered.

SB 323: Handguns; eliminates prohibition on purchasing more than one in a 30-day period. Virginia has a law that limits the number of handguns a citizen may purchase to one per month. Arbitrary and useless. It should be repealed/lifted and this bill does that. Pass it.

I would suggest if you’re interested in these matters that you follow the links and get up to speed on the bills. Then make a point of contacting your elected reps and express your desire for them to vote on these bills as you’d like to see.

So the issue of bringing Metro to Loudoun County is quite the hot topic in many circles these days and it’s been suggested that I should be talking about it. Now, before I do, please allow me to repeat what I wrote in my “About” page:

This is my blog, which means I write about what interests me. I do appreciate debate so long as it’s rational and pertinent. I don’t condone ad hominem attacks and I won’t allow them here in the comments, directed at me or otherwise.

Lastly, there are some issues that will be big in the news that won’t interest me at all. Rather than ask why I’m not writing about this or that, start your own blog and you write about it. Send me the link to your blog and we can reciprocate links on our blogrolls.

 

I certainly do appreciate questions on matters and am happy to engage in reasonable debate on a variety of issues. However, I don’t have the time or the interest to write on every topic. Since this one’s been recommended, however, I’ll give it my go.

As with just about any topic that has any controversy at all, you’ll find the extremes where 1 group of people are ecstatically in favor or this or that and the other side where people are vehemently opposed. The Metro system’s plans to come out into Loudoun County is no different. In order to understand where I’m coming from on this, a little history is in order. I moved to this area in the mid- to late 1980′s when the airline I was working for transferred me to their Dulles hub operation. As I was getting to know the area I would occasionally run down into DC, usually on the Metro’s Orange line out of Dunn Loring, and I heard all kinds of people telling me confidently that they were going to extend the Metro all the way out to Dulles. It was a project that would be started any month, now. In 1988. Twenty-four years ago. You’ll notice there’s no Metro to Dulles, yet.

Years have passed and plans have been debated and made and we finally have construction begun on the Silver Line. The line will extend from the Orange Line, just west of the East Falls Church station, out to Route 772/Ryan Road in Loudoun with stations in Tyson’s Corner (4 of ‘em), Wiehle Avenue, Reston, Herndon, near the intersection of the Dulles Toll Road and Route 28, Dulles Airport itself, and one on route 606 just past the airport. Supporters of the line tout the ability to ride all the way into DC and beyond on the system without having to drive through the nations’ 2nd-worst traffic picture, park in the some of the worst parking situations I’ve ever seen, and generally endure the nonsense of navigation in DC. Detractors talk costs and the concept that there won’t be sufficient ridership for “10-15 years” to warrant even having the line. The suggestion that I write on the topic seemed to suggest that I’d be on the detractor side of this equation.

Well, I certainly see the point of the cost. The fact of the matter is that Loudoun County, wealthy as it may be, has struggled to find the cash necessary to fund the things we all say we want and, especially, the things we need. The localities that are seeing the Metro stations are being told they have to pony up the money for contruction and operations. I even suspect that the real reason Loudoun is getting those last 2 stations – technically, the Silver Line doesn’t enter Loudoun at all until it gets past Dulles Airport – is so the planners of the line had an excuse to hold out a hat to Loudoun and tell us to ante up. Detractors also, explicitly or implicitly, don’t want the Metro coming out here because it will bring more of the dreaded development. And, you know, those… those… those… people actually need services when they move here! Things like police cover and firehouses and schools and stuff. And, well, some of those detractor clearly don’t want that.

But, as someone who drives on Route 28 and the Dulles Toll Road 5 days a week, I’m really amazed at the notion that there’s insufficient ridership to justify the Metro. Apologies to those who make that claim, but… bullshit. I’m driving at hours of the day when the traffic is down because there are so many people out here who are traveling in toward the city. The evidence that there are plenty of potential riders is right there in front of my eyes Monday through Friday and to tell me that there isn’t is just ignoring reality. Sorry, but that argument is just dead wrong. Now, if they are constraining their comment to just the 2 stations in Loudoun… that there’s not going to be 250,000 riders boarding up at Ryan Road every weekday, well ok. There’s likely not going to be the kind of ridership the Orange Line terminus at Vienna is seeing, at least not for a while. But is that really a reason to not build the transport infrastructure today? We should wait the 10-15 years until the population of Ashburn and surrounds has that level of density that we need the public transport before we start buying the track and breaking ground?

Another argument I keep hearing is for Express Buses and how they’re so much more efficient and better and more cost-effective. I’ve ridden the buses, folks, and it might be a wonderfully comfortable seat, but you know what? It’s in the same traffic as I’m in in my car. The only difference is I’m not at the wheel. And it takes 6 times longer to make lane changes. When there’s an accident on the toll road, or Route 7, or Route 66, those buses are every bit as stuck as I am in my car and when the traffic is crawling at 5-10 mph, it doesn’t matter that I’m sitting in a comfy seat 6 rows back from the windshield or behind the wheel of my ride, I’m crawling. But no, no, they say, we’re talking about buses on dedicated lanes, zipping back and forth between Loudoun and wherever. Great! Where are those, again? And if this is a proposal to start building such things, where are these express, dedicated lanes going to be on the inside of the Beltway? Or are we just not going to go all the way in?

I’m concerned about my taxes, just like everyone else and I don’t want to see Loudoun get fleeced for something we’ll not be getting much value out of. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding the position being taken by people who don’t want Metro out here and they’re not actually calling for the entire Silver Line to be torpedoed. If that’s the case, someone on that side of this debate needs to be a bit more specific about what they’re proposing because simply keeping the status quo and shrugging off the massive traffic issues we have isn’t acceptable, either. So, unless someone has a real proposal on the table that I can look at and judge accordingly, I’m in favor of building the Metro out as planned.

In the past few days a video has surfaced of some of our Marines in Afghanistan taking a moment to offer their opinion of the several Taliban fighters they’d just killed, expressed rather eloquently in the act of urinating on their corpses. In this current world of hyper-sensitivity to anything that might appear the slightest bit disrespectful of anyone who has sworn to destroy us or die trying, the President, several members of the administration, and some high-ranking military officials rushed to declare this action, “deplorable,” “outrageous,” or something to that effect.

Let’s get this out front: I don’t approve of what the Marines did in that video. (And I have no reason to think that the video is faked or anything like that.) It’s unethical and it’s not honorable behavior for an American warrior to engage in. Period, full stop. It should not be celebrated in any way and the rest of our warriors, in every branch, should be expressly told that it’s not acceptable. But… it’s hardly an action that came unprovoked. It’s hardly an action that’s hard to understand. And it most certainly is not an action that demanded the near-bedwetting, handwringing, stampede to grovel out an abject apology and promise swift retribution over.

Rep. Allen West (R-FL) sent an e-mail to The Weekly Standard on the matter and his words are getting quite a bit of attention. The e-mail is short and every part of it is critical to discussion so, here it is:

“I have sat back and assessed the incident with the video of our Marines urinating on Taliban corpses. I do not recall any self-righteous indignation when our Delta snipers Shugart and Gordon had their bodies dragged through Mogadishu. Neither do I recall media outrage and condemnation of our Blackwater security contractors being killed, their bodies burned, and hung from a bridge in Fallujah.

“All these over-emotional pundits and armchair quarterbacks need to chill. Does anyone remember the two Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division who were beheaded and gutted in Iraq?

“The Marines were wrong. Give them a maximum punishment under field grade level Article 15 (non-judicial punishment), place a General Officer level letter of reprimand in their personnel file, and have them in full dress uniform stand before their Battalion, each personally apologize to God, Country, and Corps videotaped and conclude by singing the full US Marine Corps Hymn without a teleprompter.

“As for everyone else, unless you have been shot at by the Taliban, shut your mouth, war is hell.”

I’m going to take a moment from the main point to address something that I just can’t let go, embodied in that last line. I get West’s frustration on this, to have to listen to people blow things like this completely out of proportion, people who have sat silent while much, much worse has been done to our people. It’s tempting to even agree with him completely, like Erika Johnson at Townhall.com does, and point a rigid finger at these imbeciles with a hearty, “shut it!” But, as an American who never wore a military uniform and most certainly never been shot at by the Taliban, I have to say the arrogance expressed in that 1 line is amazing coming from someone who claims to support our free nation. This is same rhetoric I get from militant feminists who haughtily claim that unless I’m a woman, I’ll just never understand. Or the race-baiters who turn their noses up and sniff that I just don’t get it because I’m white.

I know wrong when I see it, Congressman, and I don’t have to have bullet holes in me to say so.

Like the Marines’ actions, however, the Congressman’s comments weren’t unprovoked. Where were these people who have developed a sudden case of the vapors when these Islamists sawed Daniel Pearl’s head off? Or displayed those Blackwater employees’ burned corpses on a bridge, as Congressman West asks? Where are they during the stories of the Taliban’s brutality against the people of Afghanistan, people who want nothing more than what we supposedly want: to live our lives free and in peace? They’re nowhere to be found, and the reason for that is simple. They don’t get to feel all superior by denouncing the Taliban or Islamists that have expressly announced they want to kill as many Americans as they can. They don’t get the mighty rush of puffing their chests out and gleefully pointing to fellow Americans, shrieking, “See? See? No one’s any better than anyone else! Except me, because I can see that and I’m sooooo brave that I’ll write about it on Huffington Post!”

I don’t like what the Marines did and they shouldn’t get a pass on it. But in the context of war and what’s been done to people on our side of it, it’s small potatoes. Congressman West’s commentary stems from the realization that many of us have regarding the people who are fluttering about, each trying to sound more apologetic than the other. They lack common sense perspective and they are inherently unfair to our own side. As I said, I know wrong when I see it.

Howie Lind won the election for the 10th District Chair in 2010, taking over from outgoing Chairman Jim Rich. The election of that chair was a little contentious and occured amid some other controversy which the 10th District appears to be good at generating. Overall, however, in the almost 2 years of Mr. Lind’s stewardship, I can find very little to be all that incensed about. He’s been a decent Chairman and I can only hope that whoever picks up where he left off does as well. From the letter Mr. Lind sent:

Dear Friends,

If you want to hear God laugh, tell Him your plans. 

Last year I announced in several venues that I intended to run for reelection as your 10th District Chairman.  That was my intention.  I had the campaign planned out; I had my priorities set. Then two of my four daughters became engaged, and will be married this year.  Then my job responsibilities changed.  During Christmas, as I reviewed the family responsibilities that I had before me, and as I looked at the increased demands facing me at the job, I realized that I simply didn’t have the time to serve you – the great patriots of the 10th Congressional District – in the way that you should expect your Chairman to serve.

So, today I am announcing that I will not seek reelection.  I will, however, stay through May, when you will elect a new Chairman.  I have asked John Whitbeck — very well known and respected throughout the 10th and a recent candidate — to run and he has agreed to do so.  He has my support. 

Finally, let me tell you that it has been the great honor of my political life to serve you as Chairman.  I have forged so many great friendships.  I have come to know so many of you as the bedrock of our Party and our country.  You make the nation strong.  You make freedom work.  I don’t know what the future holds; perhaps I will be able to return in some capacity to politics in the years ahead.  But regardless, you each individually have my thanks and gratitude; may God bless you and may God continue to bless our Republic.
 
Thanks,

Howie

Good luck in your future endeavors, Mr. Lind.

Actually, it’s downloaded to the Kindle, but… well, you know.

In 2007 when the previous Virginia senate elections were held, the Democrats held a 4 seat majority in the 40-seat senatorial house of Virginia’s General Assembly. Tradition and rules in the VA senate say that committee assignments should reflect the basic makeup of the senate’s division in terms of how many seats are accorded to the majority party and how many the minority. With a 55% majority, that means that any committee with 20 members, the split would be 11 Democrats, 9 Republicans. In anything smaller than that, the difference should have been 1 seat.

Needless to say, it didn’t turn out like that. Many – if not most – of the committees were stacked with almost 2-to-1 majorities of Democrats. Well, fast forward 4 years to the opening of the General Assembly in 2012, after a 2011 election that saw the Republicans take 2 additional seats, bringing the split to an even 20 seats per party. The last time that happened, there was a Democrat in the Lt. Governor’s chair and, as the tiebreaking vote, the Democrats got to call the shots about how the Senate would be organized for the next 4 years. This time, it’s Bill Bolling – a Republican – that’s the tiebreaker.

So, guess who’s grumbling and complaining and all outraged that the GOP is 1) deciding how the Senate is to be organized and 2) taking solid majorities on the committees? Yes, the Democrats, and their friends at the Washington Post are making sure to give them the cover to be that way, in spite of the situation being just the flip side of what they’ve imposed in the past. Once again, Dems, you’re being held to the same standards you created. Enjoy it.

And let’s be sure to give the proper attention to the facts that the WaPo tries to bury at the bottom of the story:

Sen. Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment (R-James City) contended on the floor of the Senate that Republicans were, in fact, being more magnanimous with committee slots than Democrats had been when they took power in 2008.

Four years ago, Democrats gave themselves a total of 96 committee seats and gave the Republican minority 72. This year, Norment said, the GOP was giving itself 93 seats and giving Democrats 74.

Complain and spin it any way you like. The facts are you Dems in the Senate are better off than you gave the Republicans these past several years.

That’s uanimous, folks:

The Supreme Court has rejected the Obama administration’s argument that it can dictate who churches hire as ministers or clergy in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The Obama administration unsuccessfully argued that the government can dictate who churches hire, as long as it also subjects secular employers to the same dictates regarding who they hire (so-called rules of general applicability). Taken to its logical conclusion, this argument would allow the government to ban a church or synagogue from hiring based on religion (defeating the whole purpose of religious freedom, which is to allow churches to promote their own religion) or sex (preventing the Catholic Church from having a male priesthood). No Supreme Court justice bought the administration’s argument, made on behalf of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The Supreme Court unanimously found that such government control over who churches can hire would violate the religion clauses of the First Amendment.

Good decision. Curious, isn’t it, that none of the lawyers in the US Attorneys’ office nor the allegedly constitutional-law-knowledgeable President had the grasp of this situation to have seen it coming? I mean, considering that all 9 of the sitting Justices bought their arguments in the least? Elections have consequences, my friends, and you should remember the direction this Administration is trying to take things when the time comes to make up the mind on election day this year.

In 2010 the voters of Oklahoma were presented with a proposed amendment to their state constitution that would ban all state courts from using international or cultural laws to arrive at rulings in cases before them. A US District court has now ruled that this amendment violated the US Constitution’s 1st Amendment protections:

An amendment that would ban Oklahoma courts from considering international or Islamic law discriminates against religions and a Muslim community leader has the right to challenge its constitutionality, a federal appeals court said Tuesday.

The court in Denver upheld U.S. District Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange’s order blocking implementation of the amendment shortly after it was approved by 70 percent of Oklahoma voters in November 2010.

Muneer Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Oklahoma, sued to block the law from taking effect, arguing that the Save Our State Amendment violated his First Amendment rights.

The intent of the authors of that amendment and of the 70 percent of OK voters who cast their ballot in support of it is pretty clear: courts are supposed to be guided by US and State law. You know… the laws that we, the citizens of the United States through our elected representatives, write and pass ourselves as opposed to laws written and passed by people who are not US Citizens and do not necessarily hold our values.

Now, there are some issues I’m taking with the arguments advanced by the defenders of this amendment. The amendment’s text actually reads in part, “The courts shall not look to the legal precepts of other nations or cultures. Specifically, the courts shall not consider international law or Sharia law.” When arguing before they court, the backers of the amendment said the intent is to ban all religious laws, and that Sharia was just named as an example. Hey, I consider myself a backer of this kind of amendment, myself, but the clear language of this amendment makes their arguments factually untrue. The law says “[s]pecifically…shall not consider…Sharia law.” Sounds like more than an example to me. Still, the 1st line quoted from the amendment makes the general statement about religious law so the specific mention doesn’t make it more likely that Sharia would be affected than any other.

US courts – at every level – should be relying on US-passed laws for the basis of their rulings and nothing else. To have a judge consider laws passed in England or Italy when making a ruling is a travesty of justice. The people involved in the court case deserve to be judged by laws passed here in this country and none other. The District Court made a point of noting that the backers of the law couldn’t point to an instance where an OK court had applied international law or Sharia law in a case, implying that the amendment was a protection against a non-existent threat. I’d counter-argue that I don’t need to wait until my kitchen is on fire before I buy a fire extinguisher. It’s perfectly permissible to law down the rules within which the court must act so that everyone – defendants, plaintiffs, and judges alike – know in advance the playing field upon which they must hold the contest. To suggest that they can’t because no judge in OK has ever done it is simply wrong in my opinion.

As to anyone who might be happy about this amendment getting struck down, I’d like to pose a question. When the day comes that you’re in court for something and the judge pulls out a piece of Roman Catholic law or a Papal Bull to form the basis of his ruling, are you going to be as happy with that? If the Supreme Court were to do the same when the subject of Roe v. Wade comes up, will you support the court’s looking to non-US legal precedent and law then? I’m guessing not. If that’s how you feel, then we should be on the same side and be looking for the courts to concede that the people have the right to constrain them to using US law alone for their rulings.

Update: In reading that last paragraph again, I feel it’s necessary to clarify to whom I’m speaking. I’m talking to people who are happy the amendment was struck down because they don’t think we need to explicitly constrain judicial scope to US law only, not people who think the amendment should have been struck because it was badly worded. Which it was.

Your public school officials’ thought processes on display:

Angry parents called for an apology after a Georgia elementary school set a math assignment that used questions about slavery and beatings, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Parents of third grade students at Beaver Ridge Elementary School, Norcross, were outraged after their children brought home a math worksheet featuring questions such as “Each tree had 56 oranges. If eight slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?”

They were also asked, “If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in one week?”

Christopher Braxton, whose eight-year-old son was given the worksheet, told WSB-TV he was “furious” when he read the homework.

“Something like this shouldn’t be imbedded into a kid of the third, fourth, fifth, any grade,” another parent, Terrance Barnett, added. “I’m having to explain to my eight year old why slavery or slaves or beatings are in a math problem. That hurts.”

School officials have floated the excuse that teachers were just trying to incorporate history into the math lessons. Riiigghhtt. Here’s an idea for our clearly sense-challenged Elementary School teachers: how about you teach history in history class and teach math in math class. The entire point of elementary education is to instruct the students in the basics of the subject in question. By mixing history and math – and what’s next, chemistry during penmanship? – you dilute and confuse both subjects.

But, seriously, is anyone buying that “explanation?” In 3rd grade, students aren’t learning any serious history and they lack the vocabulary and other foundations to even discuss the matter of slavery, let alone grasp its true significance and origins. No, these teachers did this precisely to get the kids to ask their parents about it – or set up the question for themselves the next day so they can start indocrinating the kids into their viewpoints on history in each and every book and subject they open.

It’s crap, plain and simple. The teachers at those low grade levels should be teaching the basics, and that means just the facts of the subject at hand. Math should be about math and nothing else. History about history, science about science and that is that. If they can’t see their way clear to stay focused, then perhaps teaching isn’t the career path for them.

The 9/11 attacks happened just over a decade ago. While no one was proposing building towers again before the dust settled, there was absolutely no argument that the building should be done. After making sure to recover the fallen and clearing the site to prepare it for building, the building should commence. Ten years later, we’re still waiting for the building to be completed. The original World Trade Center‘s 2 tallest buildings took just 5 years to complete, and that was from 1966 – 1971.

Even with improvements in technology and technique, we’ve managed to complete just 1 of the proposed towers.

Have a look at what it looks like when people mean it about constructing a building. This is a 30-story tower built in China. Total time of construction? Fifteen (15) days.

You just have to wonder what’s the holdup here when you see that it can be done much faster.