I Want This Gun Control!!

Salute to the Pittsford Perennialist:  Some gun control I can give my ringing endorsement!!

Want to know why I'm in favor of this proposal?  Here's the numbers.

On Newtown, CT, and Policy

I ran across Larry Correia's statements on mass shootings and what makes people safe in Mark Shea's commentariat.

Larry Correia may truly be one of the most qualified of people to discuss the issue of how gun ownership and use affect criminal behavior, including mass shootings like what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary. I have seen nothing I think you would do better to read if you wish to be informed on the relevant issues, especially not anything I've written.

Assembly Not Required

Salute to Mark Shea.

Behold the People's Rights Amendment:

Section 1.  We the people who ordain and establish this Constitution intend the rights protected by this Constitution to be the rights of natural persons.

Section 2.  People, person, or persons as used in this Constitution does not include corporations, limited liability companies or other corporate entities established by the laws of any state, the United States, or any foreign state, and such corporate entities are subject to such regulation as the people, through their elected state and federal representatives, deem reasonable and are otherwise consistent with the powers of Congress and the States under this Constitution.

Section 3.  Nothing contained herein shall be construed to limit the people's rights of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, free exercise of religion, and such other rights of the people, which rights are inalienable.

Did any of you notice what was missing from Section 3?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.  Source

Most forms of "peaceable assembly" are corporations.  What this amendment allows the government to do is to presume that once you're standing with others in any sort of legally organized body or structure (other than government, itself), you do not have the rights of people.  Here's the article.

Halleluja, We're Being Attacked!

Read the American Papist's most excellent story here.

tl, dr? A couple of gay billionaires are spending millions of dollars to undermine the Church's teaching on marriage, family, and sex. They give it to organizations like Dignity, New Ways Ministry, and the like -- basically anyone who'll say, "We're Catholic, and it's time for the Church to deny truths she has guarded under the power of the Holy Spirit for millenia!"

Why is this good news? It means we're actually having an effect.

Make no mistake, though, we oughta be mad as hell that Catholic-haters are trying to remake Holy Mother Church into their own image.

Yet Another Blogrolled Video

This one came to my attention via Dr. Sanity (she's in the sidebar; I'm too lazy to look up the link right now).

This video is one of those XtraNormal videos of little to no artistic merit, beyond the dialogue. This one intends to be very informative on the subject of quantitative easing, and it by and large succeeds.

On the Reality of Gun Control

found this series of forum threads over at Art of Manliness:

Confessions of an AntiGunner, Part 1
Confessions of an AntiGunner, Part 2
Confessions of an AntiGunner, Part 3
Confessions of an AntiGunner, Part 4

I recommend them to all.

"I'm from the government, I'm here to help"

The cavalier use of brute government force has become routine, but the emerging story of how Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke forced CEO Ken Lewis to blow up Bank of America is still shocking. It's a case study in the ways that panicky regulators have so often botched the bailout and made the financial crisis worse.

In the name of containing "systemic risk," our regulators spread it. In order to keep Mr. Lewis quiet, they all but ordered him to deceive his own shareholders. And in the name of restoring financial confidence, they have so mistreated Bank of America that bank executives everywhere have concluded that neither Treasury nor the Federal Reserve can be trusted.

Mr. Lewis has told investigators for New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo that in December Mr. Paulson threatened him not to cancel a deal to buy Merrill Lynch. BofA had discovered billions of dollars in undisclosed Merrill losses, and Mr. Lewis was considering invoking his rights under a material adverse condition clause to kill the merger. But Washington decided that America's financial system couldn't withstand a Merrill failure, and that BofA had to risk its own solvency to save it. So then-Treasury Secretary Paulson, who says he was acting at the direction of Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke, told Mr. Lewis that the feds would fire him and his board if they didn't complete the deal. ...

The Wall Street Journal

The title of this post was described by President Ronald Reagan as some of the most frightening words in the English language. Gun owners and dealers have long known that the Federal regulators who oversee them are the enemy; it looks like bankers have now learned the same hard truth.

Angels and Demons

As anyone who heard about The Da Vinci Code could reasonably expect, Ron Howard and Dan Brown are again claiming that their latest project, Angels and Demons, is in no way anti-Catholic, and that our indignation at their portrayal of the Church is silly.

The Curt Jester skillfully skewers this conceit.

Pastor Johannes Lerle

Pastor Johannes Lerle is a Lutheran minister in Erlangen, Bavaria. For the third time, he has been sentenced to jail, this time at a bench trial, for the crime of Volksverhetzung, or incitement of the people. His sentence shall be one year in jail.

What did he do? He said that murdering unborn children (i.e., abortion), is no better than gassing Jews at Auschwitz. I consider this an obvious parallel. Unborn people are people, just as Jews are people. But Judge Erda Erdenhofner has construed it as denying the Holocaust!

I beg to differ. A law saying that an unborn person is not a person is every bit as bad as one saying a Jew is not a person. In order to accept abortion, one must depersonalize the unborn, just as accepting the Final Solution required depersonalizing the Jews, Slavs, homosexuals, handicapped, and Catholics who were its victims. It's not like we're talking about cattle or chickens, here; we're talking about people. (Although it's possible, albeit revolting, that he would have been commended for comparing a meat-packing plant to Auschwitz. Pamela Anderson would be proud of anyone who did that.)

You could suggest to Amnesty International that they add Pastor Lerle to their list of prisoners of conscience, but I wouldn't hold my breath. They have capitulated to the strident and bellicose purveyors and promoters of abortion on demand, and are unlikely to have the courage to defend somebody imprisoned for describing abortion as what it actually is, when they no longer have the courage to do so themselves.