Archives for January 2013

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein unveiled new gun control legislation on Thursday, calling for a ban on more weapons than the original assault weapons ban and a 10-bullet limit on feeding mechanisms such as magazines.

Both issues are hallmarks of the gun control agenda outlined last week by President Obama, who also pushed for universal background checks.

Iowa Rep. Steve King is an ardent defender of the Second Amendment and a member of the House Judiciary Committee.  He says the latest gun control push from Democrats was totally, and sadly, predictable.

“The people that have stepped forward on this are the gun-grabbers.  They are the anti-Second Amendment crowd.  They are the opportunists that showed up the morning after the terrible tragedy at Sandy Hook,” said King.  “So the president is following Rahm Emanuel’s directive.  It’s a crisis that he doesn’t want to let go to waste.”

King rejects all of the main Obama priorities on guns and took special aim at the effort to reduce magazine capacity.

“If you’re going to reduce the number of rounds in a clip, where is the constitutional stop for that?  Do you do it at 10 rounds?  Seven rounds?  Six, five, four, one?  Or do you just say everything has to be a single shot?” asked King.  “Whence you go down this incremental encroachment upon our Second Amendment rights, I think they probably would not stop at machetes.  But that’s the direction they want to go.”

Rep. King is also ready to fight against the looming push for universal gun registration.  He says it’s unnecessary and completely impractical.

“That would mean that every transaction on guns in America would have to be approved by a federally licensed firearm dealer,” said King.  “That would mean that Christmas at the Kings would be outlawed unless one of us got a federal firearms license.  If we want to trade guns or buy one for each other, it can’t change hands without having the universal registration component of that.  So I’m concerned about that from a constitutional perspective.”

So how should Congress approach gun issues?  Easy, according to King.  Lawmakers should let the Constitution be their guide.

“First, we should reduce it all to something that’s constitutional and then we should do the things that are prudent, in that order.  Constitutional first, prudent second,” said King, who says the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee are very committed to protecting the rights of Americans to keep and bear arms.

“I would not expect a big bill, but there may be some little pieces that find their way before the committee, where they will get some pretty intense Second Amendment scrutiny,” he said.

King expects Republicans to stand firm in the face of a vigorous campaign from gun control proponents.

“The defenders of the Second Amendment, myself included, we’re not asking for more.  We’re just holding our ground on those things that we protected and achieved,” said King.  “I think we’ll be able to hold our ground and keep our weapons.  I would just take us back to what Judge (Andrew) Napolitano said.  I thought he made it very clear.  He said, ‘The Second Amendment isn’t about the right to shoot deer.  It’s a right to shoot tyrants.’

“We have that Second Amendment to protect us from tyranny.  As long as that restraint is there, we’re unlikely to see a tyrant take over this country,” he said.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are impressed by Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s skewering of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over Benghazi.  They also shake their heads as Clinton largely avoids the big questions on the terrorist attack.  And they have fun speculating which president will be added to the presidents race at Washington Nationals home games.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleasantly surprised to see Tiger Woods taking Phil Mickelson’s side in the tax debate and says he left California 17 years ago because taxes were too high.  They’re also stunned that Hillary Clinton would say it doesn’t make any difference whether the Obama administration  initially classified the Benghazi attacks as terrorism.  And they laugh as actor David Arquette says if Congress limits the number of bullets in a gun magazine, then that law should be reflected in Hollywood movies.

On Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed a clean, short-term extension of the debt ceiling, a move designed to force responsible action by Democrats and set the table for real spending cuts and reforms in a few months.

Some conservative critics aren’t so sure, suggesting this tactic gives President Obama what he wants for three months but doesn’t give the GOP any additional leverage when the debate resumes.

Iowa Rep. Steve King has been frustrated by the last-minute debt deals over the past couple of years and says he understands why some are skeptical over the latest strategy by Republican leaders.

King says he has a major reservation over the legislation but his hesitation has nothing to do with the short-term extension of the debt ceiling.  He says that approach makes a lot of sense.

“It would be easy to say it kicks the can down the road.  I could maybe step in on that and pile on, but I really don’t think that’s the intention at all this time,” said King.  “The effort is to sequence these things.  If we do not and the debt ceiling pushes on us and it gets delayed, it pushes us up against the sequestration requirement that we have.”

Sequestration is the package of defense and entitlement cuts that was mandated by law after the failure of the 2011 super committee to find common ground in addressing the debt crisis.

“The sequestration and the debt ceiling could get pushed into the continuing resolution, which is a hard shutdown of government March 27th,” said King.  “Those things need to be in a different order.  We need to deal with this debt ceiling when we can actually let the leverage of the debt ceiling work in our favor rather than against us.  So I give leadership credit for calculating that part.”

The part of the bill that bothers King is the demand that lawmakers in the House and Senate forfeit their pay until their chamber actually produces a budget.  The move is clearly aimed at the Democratic-led Senate which has not produced a budget since 2009.  King likes the idea in principle but says it’s simply unconstitutional.

“I’d like to do that.  I favor it from a policy standpoint, but when I go back and read the 27th amendment to the Constitution, it reads, ‘No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened,’ said King.  “It’s hard to argue that varying the pay does not include freezing it for as much as 20 months.  I’m begging them to respect the Constitution and find a way to get the same thing done without violating our oath of office.

“I haven’t dug in hard against it.  I want somebody to give me another argument, but I don’t want to have to suspend my lifetime of saying the Constitution means what it says and it means what it was understood to mean at the time of ratification” he said.  “The language is clear in the 27th amendment in my view.”

King also explained why he believes delaying the debt ceiling fight until after the continuing resolution is resolved offers his party much more leverage in forcing spending cuts and entitlement reforms.

“The bottom line is this.  Our leadership, after the election in 2010, made it clear they were not going to allow the government to be shut down.  I think by now they understand if you preclude a potential shutdown, whether it be initiated by the Senate, the president or in the unlikely event the House, if you take those off the table we don’t have leverage,” said King, who says leadership is now ready to stare down the Senate and President Obama on these key issues.

“That becomes a different posture and I think we can get there,” said King.  “I know the track record over the previous Congress doesn’t say so, but I’m listening to the tone and the words and looking at the body language and I’m encouraged that there is a lot of Republicans that are going to dig in.  I think this freshman class appears to be pretty strong here too.”

King is confident that the pay threat would motivate the Senate Democrats to move on a budget as well.  He says New York Sen. Chuck Schumer has already indicated Democrats are receptive to that.

“That tells me they’re already starting to accommodate.  (Schumer’s) comment was that they were producing a budget in secret.  Now they’re getting ready to talk about it publicly,” said King.

Forty years ago Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion through two landmark decisions, but the “plaintiff” in one of the cases says she is pro-life, never agreed to be involved in the case and was the victim of “lies,fraud and deceit” to promote a political agenda.

A Texas case known as Roe v. Wade became the more famous of the rulings, but equally important was a Georgia case known as Doe v. Bolton.  The woman known as “Mary Doe” in the latter case was later identified as Sandra Cano.  She says a crisis in her marriage ultimately led to her becoming a legal and political pawn.

Cano says despite having a horrible husband, she tried to stick it out because she firmly believed that marriage vows were for a lifetime.  The couple had three children, but a variety of problems led to the older kids being placed in foster care and the third given up for adoption.

As the marriage deteriorated further, Cano discovered she was pregnant again.  Around the same time she decided her marriage could not be saved.

“I had had enough of him.  He was in and out of jail at different periods in the marriage.  He didn’t provide, didn’t take care of me,” said Cano.  ” And when you’re not very knowledgeable and you don’t know how to care for yourself very much, I was dependent on others and trusted this one or that one.

“I went to Atlanta Legal Aid.  I said I have no money.  I said I need an attorney.  I said I want my children out of foster care and I want a divorce from my husband,” she said.  “Little did I know going to the legal aide was going to result in me being a plaintiff in abortion, which is something I’ve never been for, I’ve always been against.  I never sought an abortion, never sought to be a plaintiff in this case.  I was in the dark about it for a long, long time.  I think the public knows more about the case than I do.  I was never a participant.  I was never, in my mind, told, ‘You’re going to be a plaintiff on abortion.'”

Cano divorced her husband, gave birth in November 1970 and gave up that child for adoption as well.  She thought the story would end there, but a surprise was waiting just over two years later.

“In ’73, I was in my mother’s bedroom.  her and my stepfather were excited, ‘You won.  You won,’ and I’m thinking, ‘What have I won?'” said Cano.

As a pro-life woman who had never sought an abortion, Cano was profoundly devastated to know that she had unwittingly played a role in the fight to legalize abortion as a result of her earlier meetings with attorney Margie Pitts Hames.

“I carried the burden for a long, long time of thinking because of me abortion was created,” said Cano.  ” It was not a pretty picture to live with and the weight on my shoulders was tremendous.”

Cano then decided to find out once and for what her unintentional role had been in the abortion cases.  She filed a request to search through the records pertaining to “Mary Doe”.  That took her to the National Archives, where she came across an envelope marked “identity of Mary Doe”.  Cano thought she would find her answers right then and there, but things weren’t that simple.

“I’m thinking, ‘OK.  This is what I need.’  So I took the envelope and I was fixing to open it,” said Cano.  “That woman (at the National Archives) came and really quickly stopped me.  She said, ‘Oh, no no no, you can’t open this.’  I could have went to jail, federal prison for opening something that supposedly was mine.”

The next step was to unseal the records and a federal judge granted her request, a move that did not sit well with Cano’s former attorney and Doe v. Bolton litigator Margie Pitts Hames.

“I’d always thought she was a friend because she seemed like she wanted to help me,” said Cano, who adds Hames showed her true colors on that day.  “Margie was very upset.  I got a call from her daughter who (asked) why I wanted to destroy her mother’s life.  It’s not that I wanted to destroy her mother’s life.  There was a wrong done here, a terrible wrong.  My name had been used in something and I was digging and trying to get the result to prove to the world I don’t believe in abortion.  It’s wrong.”

Cano is now a vocal defender of the unborn and says she needs to speak out for two reasons, to explain the “lies, fraud and deceit behind the case connected to her and because of her ardent belief that all life should be defended.

“Abortion is wrong.  It’s so terribly wrong.  How can we play God and how can we take the life of an unborn child because it’s not convenient, we made a mistake or the timing wasn’t right.  In other words, the baby has to pay the price  for the sins of the mother and the father.  That’s not right.  That baby is entitled to life,” said Cano, who says adoption is an excellent option for anyone who feels they cannot care for a child.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are encouraged that the Pentagon publicly admits the rise of radicals in Mali is a threat to the West.  They also defend Phil Mickelson by railing against oppressive taxes and those attacking Mickelson for not wanting to give up 63 percent of his income.  And they applaud Prince Harry for his service in Afghanistan and for proudly killing Taliban fighters.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a towering figure in the civil rights movement and the fight for racial equality, but he was also a big kid at heart who would be both impressed and sad at where this nation is nearly 45 years after his death.

Monday is the federal holiday honoring Dr. King, who would now be 84 years old if he were alive today.  He was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968.  In connection with her uncle’s birthday, Dr. Angela Farris Watkins is releasing a new book of family memories entitled, “Martin  Luther King, Jr.: A King Family Tribute”.  Watkins is the daughter of King’s sister, Willie Christine King.

Watkins spoke at length about her childhood memories about Dr. King, but she also explained how her uncle would look upon the 45 years since his death with mixed emotions.

“I think he would be very proud of the progress that we’ve made but he would also be very saddened by the prevalence of violence,” said Dr. Watkins.  “He would want to continue writing, speaking, preaching about the power of nonviolence and the power of infusing love into our society and how much more power that offers us.  I think he would have mixed emotions, again some pride but also wanting to push us forward to be better.”

Watkins says her new book is meant to put a more human face on her uncle, who is often limited by history books to one aspect of his life.  Watkins says Dr. King was very unremarkable in many ways but had very strong character when it mattered most.

“It becomes important for us to understand who he was as a human being, to know that he really was a regular guy, that there was really nothing special about him as a person other than that he had a willingness and a commitment to make the sacrifices and provide the leadership that was necessary to effect that level of change,” said Watkins.

The book is a collection of reflections on Dr. King by many different family members.  Watkins has young but very vivid memories of her famous uncle.

“I had about four years with him.  He came over to my house for regular visits.  For me, he was somewhat of an adult playmate and I have some very fond and vivid memories of our time together,” said Watkins.

But her work on the book also led her to some discoveries into Dr. King’s strategies of combating violence, including his overture to the psychology community.

“I happened upon a speech that he gave to the American Psychological Association, where he charged psychologists with expanding the mission of psychology toward liberation and directing people to guard their behavior in a way that would be nonviolent,” said Watkins.  “What we see as his philosophy of nonviolence can really be considered as a really wonderful behavioral approach to our own personal issues as well as societal issues.”

Most of all however, Watkins wants Americans and others around the world, to know Dr. King was a regular guy with a big heart.

“It really is important that his family takes the responsibility for making sure that everyone knows that he really was an ordinary person and that he loved his family and his family loved him back,” said Watkins.

As President Obama is inaugurated for a second term, the Capitol Steps are looking back on his historic 2008 win and inauguration.  They take special interest in Oprah Winfrey’s role in promoting Obama and whether she should have taken a leading role in the administration in their fun parody, “Oprah-Bama”.  Our guest is Steps impressionist Mark Eaton.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Daniel Foster of National Review Online review the inauguration and applaud the greatness of the American system and the excellent music involved in the ceremony.  They groan as they prepare for another four years of President Obama and as Obama calls for American unity around his tired, partisan goals.  And they scratch their heads over the bizarre poem read at the inauguration.

Privacy groups are cheering the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) for announcing it will not renew its contract with the maker of the controversial body image scanners that allowed security personnel to see nude images of air travelers.

The TSA says the decision resulted from Rapiscan, which makes the scanners, being unable to develop software to alter graphic images of passengers into generic-looking figures.  These were also the machines using so-called backscatter technology that had health official worried about cancer risks for frequent travelers.

Mark Rotenberg is executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), one of the most vocal critics of the enhanced airport screening procedures that were implemented in late 2010.  He says this is a huge win for personal liberty.

“We think it’s an important victory for privacy.  We’ve spent many years trying to persuade the TSA and others that this was not an effective security technique and the costs to privacy were simply too high.  It appears now that the agency has finally conceded that that’s correct.  I think the benefit is that airline passengers in the United States will have a little bit more privacy without any loss of security.”

Rotenberg says his organization was part of a massive coalition committed to restoring rights and dignity to American travelers.

“There was a lot of political pressure on the agency, a lot of travelers objected,” said Rotenberg.  “There were lawmakers, scientists, privacy groups certainly.  I think the bottom line here was a sense that it just wasn’t appropriate for federal officials to be looking at the images of naked air travelers which is what these devices had made possible.”

There was one other major frustration with the backscatter technology, according to Rotenberg.  While the machines were very effective at giving TSA workers an intimate look at passengers, they were terrible at actually detecting banned items.

“I think there was a real question with the effectiveness of these devices and whether they really do provide better security than the metal detectors and visual inspection that the airlines and security official had done in the past,” said Rotenberg.  “We don’t think the answer’s clear.  The devices have a limited functionality.  They have not, at least according to the TSA, identified any materials that wouldn’t have been found through some of the other screening procedures.”

However, all this does not mean a return to metal detectors.  Scanner featuring the millimeter wave technology will still be used.  Those machines also capture graphic images but they are immediately filtered to look generic for the security screeners.  Rotenberg says the EPIC will work to make sure these machines are used responsibly as well, but right now his group is largely fine with them although he believes they would be best used for secondary screening procedures.

Rotenberg says the government will probably try to infringe on privacy again down the road, but for now citizens have won a major victory.

“The privacy issue is not going away.  The government has taken a number of steps over the last few years that do raise public concern,” said Rotenberg.  “I think the good news today, and the TSA has essentially conceded this, is that they can do airport screening without having to look under everyone’s clothes.  We think that’s right.  There should be security solutions that don’t require people in the United States to sacrifice their privacy.”