Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review debate whether South Carolina Republicans did the right thing in nominating Mark Sanford to return to Congress. They also denounce the Obama administration for denying purple hearts for those wounded in the Ft. Hood attacks. And they react to the efforts of a Democratic state senator in New York trying to buy the Republican nomination for mayor.
Prospects look fairly bleak for sweeping gun control legislation in Congress but action at the United Nations and in several states may end up having the same effect.
On Tuesday, the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to approve the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). Supporters, including the Obama administration, contend this is designed to crack down on illicit arms trafficking, but critics say it’s really an effort to stamp out gun rights in the U.S. and beyond.
“It’s far beyond what it’s purported to do. It requires this country keep a national gun registry of gun owners. In addition, it could be used as a justification for banning semi-autos and banning handguns without any further legislation,” said Mike Hammond, chief counsel at Gun Owners of America.
“It could be interpreted as self-implementing and by an executive order Obama would simply ban all handguns using this treaty.”
Hammond says the ATT could also lead to microstamping, which would require tiny signatures to be on every cartridge fired and would be very expensive. He says the treaty will die in the U.S. Senate. Sixty-seven votes are needed to ratify any treaty and in recent weeks, 53 senators indicated their opposition to the ATT. But Hammond says that may not deter Obama.
“It has no chance of being ratified, but I expect to see an effort by the Obama administration to enforce it, even without ratification,” said Hammond.
As the UN presses forward with a treaty that had been successfully derailed for years, more U.S. states are implementing tougher gun control laws. The latest is Connecticut, where the Sandy Hook tragedy took place in December. Lawmakers there have agreed to a broader assault weapons ban, banning of large-capacity magazine and new registries for gun owners who already own larger magazines and weapons about to be banned. Hammond says bills like this show the true agenda of gun control advocates.
“Interestingly, at the federal level, we are opposing the national registry bill on the basis that it would create a national registry and all the liberals are running around saying, ‘Oh, no, no. No one said anything about registry, but low and behold, every state in the country where the anti-gun forces have the capacity to establish a registry, they have,” said Hammond.
Hammond notes that Connecticut already had some of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation at the time of the Newtown shootings. In fact, he asserts that those laws emboldened the killer and gave him a greater chance at success.
“The anti-gun policy didn’t work out very well for the kids at Newtown. All it did was telegraph to Adam Lanza that you can get your 15 minutes of fame, shoot up a classroom of first-graders and you don’t have to worry that there’s anyone there who’s going to shoot back. In effect, Connecticut’s laws were responsible for the massacre at Newtown,” said Hammond.
At the federal level, the Senate is gearing up for a likely debate on gun legislation. Hammond and Gun Owners of America are urging senators to vote against bringing the bill to the floor because of all the pressuring and favors Democrats may use to win votes on issues ranging from gun registries to a renewal of the assault weapons ban.
“I am cautiously optimistic that we may be able to get as many as 44 or 45 Republicans on board in opposition to the motion to proceed. If that happens, I would guess that a half-dozen red state Democrats are going to go with them. So we are cautiously optimistic that we will be successful in keeping gun control from coming to the Senate which by far would be the best outcome,” said Hammond.
“Otherwise, we’re just going to have a three-week Obamacare-type bribe-a-thon with Harry Reid offering amendments intended to destroy the opposition and offering amendments intended to buy off the votes he needs in order to pass the thing on final passage,” he said.
The House has been much quieter on the issue, but Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York is now pushing mandatory liability insurance for all gun owners. It would be a crime to sell a gun to anyone without this insurance and owning a gun without the insurance could lead to fines up to $10,000. Hammond was very blunt in his assessment of this bill as well.
“It’s clear what the intent is. First, the intent is to impose an insurance requirement which would take gun ownership out of the hands of the poor, out of the hands of the black,” said Hammond. “Incidentally, these are the same people who are whining about the one percent and yet they’re imposing an incredibly regressive requirement intended to take constitutional rights away from people who are poor, people who are black.”
“We react to it in this way: it is racist. It is classist. It is disgusting, and it won’t pass,” he said.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review applaud Virginia and Arkansas for passing photo ID requirements for voters. They also discuss the claim that evangelicals may have cost Mitt Romney the election. And they examine reports that President Obama will be forced to furlough 480 employees in the Office of Management and Budget.
President Obama is nominating more radical personnel for his second term than he did four years ago and some of the most aggressive parts of his agenda center on energy and environmental policy, according to a top Senate Republican.
Louisiana Sen. David Vitter is the top Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. He is vowing tough scrutiny of two top Obama nominees and says the Obama energy policy still suggests the president is fine with Americans paying much more for the energy we consume.
Ernest Moniz is Obama’s choice to lead the Energy Department, but some of his recent comments are resurrecting concerns that the Obama administration is seeking to force a transition to renewable energies by making our current energy patterns financially unsustainable. In an interview with the Switch Energy Project, Moniz says the problem is that it’s cheaper to release carbon emissions than to contain them.
“Ultimately, it has to be cheaper to capture and store (carbon emissions) than to release it and pay a price. If we start really squeezing down on carbon dioxide over the next few decades. Well, that could double. It could eventually triple,” said Moniz in the interview.
“Unfortunately, that’s the continuation of the basic position of the Obama administration. The last energy secretary, Secretary (Steven) Chu, had a simular comment right before he was appointed. He said the big problem in this country is gasoline prices weren’t as high as they are in Europe and they needed to be,” said Vitter. “I don’t think American consumers, particularly in this really weak economy appreciate hearing that. An all-of-the-above energy strategy should not be all-of-the-above only by putting the price of carbon-based fuels through the roof and really hurting the middle class.”
Vitter says a carbon tax is the “ultimate goal” of the Obama administration, but there is very little support for it in either party on Capitol Hill.
Obama has largely been frustrated in his legislative efforts on energy policy, but some of his top regulatory efforts have still succeeded through new regulations through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Vitter says this effort to raise energy costs could be implemented the same way.
“What they have done since the 2010 Republican takeover of the House is to shift to administrative action, go into administrative overdrive if you will, like at EPA, often going beyond their proper authority,” said Vitter.
Vitter says Obama has the right to choose who he wants to run the bureaucracy of the federal government, but he says lawmakers have a major responsibility to shed light on questionable policies and tactics by administration officials.
That’s one of the main reasons why Vitter is vigorously pressing against the nomination of EPA nominee Gina McCarthy, in particular an effort to get to the bottom of the Richard Windsor scandal. Windsor is the fictitious individual in whose dummy email account EPA officials formed critical policy positions apart from official government servers.
“For me, a lot of the questions will revolve around the complete lack of openness and transparency at the EPA. You mentioned this rampant email scandal. There have also been real abuses of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request when those come from the public. I think there’s been a concerted effort at EPA to frustrate the public getting valid information,” said Vitter, who says public exposure of what’s happening at the EPA is his number one priority as the ranking Republican on the committee.
Another practice that aggravates Vitter is known as sue and settle. He says the EPA essentially works with liberal environmental groups to have the groups sue the EPA to urge more liberal policies. Rather than take the matter to court, the EPA settle with its supposed agitator and move policy to a more radical position.
Nominees are also a problem. In addition to McCarthy, Vitter is staunchly opposed to the choice of Thomas Perez to lead the Department of Labor because of Vitter contends was an unequal enforcement of voting rights laws along partisan lines during the time Perez served in the Department of Justice.
McCarthy and Perez are not the exception but the norm right now, according to Vitter. He says Obama has nominated much more polarizing people to key positions since winning re-election.
“Overall, his new slate of nominees since his re-election are even further left, are even more radical than the first time around,” said Vitter.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Betsy Woodruff of National Review are pleasantly surprised to see twice as many Americans think the sequestration cuts were too small rather to big. They also fear border security will once again get the shaft as the Gang of Eight reportedly nears a big deal on immigration. And they’re horrified as a Planned Parenthood lobbyist tells Florida lawmakers that it’s still up to mothers and doctors whether babies born alive after a botched abortion should live or die.
