Thoughts From A Conservative Mom

Posts Tagged ‘2nd Amendment’

Self-defense is the ultimate “feminine protection.” Of course, gun-control nuts try to argue that the morally superior position is cowering in the corner, sans wallet, trying to dial 911 before you get shot.

The Oregonian reports:

Authorities arrested a would-be robber after he was turned away by a woman with a gun at a Vancouver Izzy’s Pizza restaurant Friday.

Wilbur Haisley, of Seattle, entered the restaurant on Northeast 78th Street shortly before 8 p.m. Friday, according to the Clark County Sheriff’s Office. A caller told authorities he had run up to a woman and demanded money.

But when the victim pulled a 9mm handgun from her waist, Haisley ran the other way. Sheriff’s deputies located him a short time later and arrested him for attempted robbery. Haisley was taken to the Clark County Law Enforcement Center, where he remained Saturday morning.

The victim had a legal concealed handgun license and will not face charges, according to the sheriff’s office.

She wasn’t a “victim”, precisely because she was able to defend herself!  Here’s what REAL victims look like:

Teacher shot and killed at Washington school

Fox News reports:

The final tally in the Senate was 63-37, with five Republicans voting in Kagan’s favor and just one Democrat, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, voting no.

A handful of mostly moderate Republicans broke with their party to back her: Maine Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, retiring Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire and Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar.

Hot Air observes:

Truth be told, though, the final margin here was kabuki in the same way that the final votes on ObamaCare were kabuki: Once the margin needed for passage was secured, everyone else was free to vote however they needed to in order to protect themselves at the polls. The GOP clearly didn’t want to risk a filibuster on someone as bland as Kagan, preferring to preserve the novelty of the nuclear option for maximum effect in case The One nominates a bombthrower next time, so people like Scott Brown got to vote no today even though I bet he would have been a yes had Reid really needed him. Speaking of which, why did Scotty B. vote no? Looks like he’s more worried about a tea-party primary challenge at this point than he is about pissing off centrist Massachusetts Dems in the general. Eeenteresting.

With Stevens gone, the oldest justice on the Court now is Ginsburg at 77. Which means it might be awhile yet before we get a truly atomic confirmation hearing involving The One trying to replace a Republican appointee. Apres Ruth, le deluge.

Kagan confirmed under stormy skies in D.C.

Latest Bizarre Obama Connection: Elena Kagan tied to Obama’s birth certificate

Constitution Is Endangered By Kagan Approval

Media ignores Kagan’s dangerous anti-constitutional positions

Kagan Worked to Make Constitutions More Compliant to Shariah Law

Liberals see Supreme Court as backup legislature

WHO has changed how the constitution is interpreted?

This woman is downright dangerous!

Previously on Big Peace we exposed Elena Kagan’s active support for Shariah Law.  During her years as Dean of Harvard Law School, from 2003-2009, she ran and greatly expanded the Islamic Legal Studies Program.  In publications and conferences, her program tolerated – indeed promoted – the Saudi-influenced introduction of Shariah law into national Constitutions.

To expand Harvard’s capacity to sell Shariah law, Kagan hired Noah Feldman in 2007, and in 2008 Feldman published his valentine to Shariah: “The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State,” which argues for democratically elected “Islamist” (aka Muslim Brotherhood) parties to take control of Muslim states in order to govern under Shariah law.  Kagan rewarded Feldman’s Shariah advocacy by giving him the endowed Bemis Chair in International Law on September 16, 2008.   His speech accepting the Bemis chair advocated an “experimental Constitution” that “embraces international institutions.” 

Two months after giving Feldman his Bemis chair, from November 12-14, 2008, Kagan spoke at and presided over a conference titled  The Constitutional Judiciary in the Muslim World: Its Influence on the Interpretation of Constitutional and Legislative Texts 1970 to 2008 .  To a large extent, the “Constitutional Judiciary” discussed in this conference was in fact the Shariah Judiciary, which was (and is, thanks in part to Feldman) being written into  national constitutions in Muslim countries as a guiding principle. 

Like Feldman’s book, this Conference was upbeat on the prospects of introducing Shariah law into Constitutions.  Feldman was said to have been the advisor in Iraq who insisted on putting a clause in the Iraqi constitution requiring legislation comply with Shariah law.  In the main, the conference participants appear to have treated the introduction of Shariah amendments into national constitutions as progress – a good thing.  

No mention of the Shariah laws against civil liberties, the lack of rights for women and non-muslims and apostates and gays, the requirement for violent jihad and so on.  Just a technical discussion of the mechanics of making Constitutions comply with Shariah law.

And that’s the problem.  We know that Elena Kagan has a “deep appreciation” of Islamic law and international law.  Americans are  increasingly skeptical that she has a similarly deep appreciation for the US Constitution.

Read more at Breitbart’s Big Peace

‘Enshrinement’ of sharia a major threat

Media ignores Kagan’s dangerous anti-constitutional positions

Constitution Is Endangered If Kagan Is Approved

A Filibuster of Elena Kagan is Justified

Consider this: Elena Kagan is a radical. Barack Obama and his allies in the left-wing media have made every attempt to paint Kagan as a “moderate,” but this truth is evident if you listen to her answers. She has a life-long history of extreme and radical left-wing political activism and her personal history clearly indicates that she will not hesitate to pursue Obama’s far-left wing agenda from the bench.

The Washington Times perhaps stated it best. In an editorial, the Times writes that Kagan “is too political, too leftist, too inexperienced and too disrespectful towards existing law to be confirmed for the U.S. Supreme Court.” Admittedly, we don’t know much about Barack Obama’s stealth nominee to the Supreme Court. She has little courtroom experience and almost no paper trail, but, as the Times put it, “What we now know about her should disturb fair-minded Americans.”

The tides in the U.S. Senate are shifting.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell earlier said that a filibuster of Kagan was “highly unlikely.” But now he has flipped, and said that a filibuster of Kagan is “possible.” The ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Jeff Sessions, told CBS News that a filibuster is “not off the table” and that it is “conceivable.”

Read more at Townhall.com

Filibuster Filigree

Media ignores Kagan’s dangerous anti-constitutional positions

Constitution Is Endangered If Kagan Is Approved

Barack Obama revealed his goal for the Supreme Court when he complained on Chicago radio station WBEZ-FM in 2001 that the Earl Warren Court wasn’t “radical” enough because “it didn’t break free from the essential constraints placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution” in order to allow “redistribution of wealth.”

Now that Obama is president, he has the power to nominate Supreme Court justices who will “break free” from the Constitution and join him in “fundamentally transforming” America. That’s the essence of his choice of Elena Kagan as his second Supreme Court nominee. She never was a judge, and her paper trail is short. But it’s long enough to prove that she is a clear and present danger to the Constitution.

Read more at Investors Business Daily

Elena Kagan is one of the most radical, unqualified individuals to ever be nominated to the bench.   The Family Research Council noted that she has “no judicial experience, never having litigated a case to verdict or trial.”

Discover the Networks, a reference guide on Leftist Radicalism, exposed that in her senior thesis at Princeton University, Kagan:

“…lamented that “a coherent socialist movement is nowhere to be found in the United States”; that “Americans are more likely to speak of … capitalism’s glories than of socialism’s greatness”; that “the desire to conserve has overwhelmed the urge to alter”; that “in a society by no means perfect,” no “radical party” had yet “attained the status of a major political force”; that “the socialist movement [had] never become an alternative to the nation’s established parties”; and that the Socialist Party had “exhausted itself forever and further reduced labor radicalism in New York to the position of marginality and insignificance.” Kagan called these developments “sad” and “chastening” for “those who, more than half a century after socialism’s decline, still wish to change America.”

During the hearing yesterday, Kagan asserted that the constitution was meant to be “interpreted over time”.  This is the key foundation of Progressive philosphy (introduced by Woodrow Wilson): that the constitution is a “living document” which must “evolve” over time, and judges are the ones who get to decide how. 

This is in direct contrast to how the constitution was originally designed by the founders: as the concrete law of the land, to be modified only by the people’s representatives (Congress) through the amendment process.  Judges were only to interpret the laws and the constitution as explicitly stated – not “legislate” from the bench by changing their “interpretation” to fit “modern” beliefs and attitudes. 

In a time when we need Constitutional Originalists who will honor the constitution as written - and leave it to the people and their representatives to change the laws as they see fit - Obama has appointed a judical activist who believes in an all-powerful judicial branch that can change the laws and reinterpret the constitution by judicial fiat. 

On Free Speech and Censorship:

In a brief for the United States v Stevens case, Kagan wrote,

“Whether a given category of speech enjoys First Amendment protection depends upon a categorical balancing of the value of the speech against its societal costs.” 

Translation: Speech is free if the government decides it has more value than ‘societal costs’.

In September of 2009 Kagan encouraged the Court to adhere to a new philosophy on the First Amendment that would allow the government to censor posters, pamphlets, and TV and radio content–and the Internet.  She essentially argued that “it’s fine if the law bans books because the government won’t really enforce it.”

On the limits of the “Commerce Clause“:

During her confirmation hearing, she dodged a question by Senator Coburn on whether or not she believed Congress has, under the commerce clause, the right to tell citizens what they should eat.  She said such a law would be “stupid”, but refrained from declaring that it would be unconstitutional.  If she thinks government potentially has the right to tell you what to eat (which is obviously NOT the intent of the commerce clause), where would this radical draw the line?

On Abortion:

During the Clinton years, Kagan “manipulated the statement of a medical organization to protect partial-birth abortion“:

The documents…show Miss Kagan’s willingness to manipulate medical science to fit the Democratic party’s political agenda on the hot-button issue of abortion. As such, they reflect poorly on both the author and the president who nominated her to the Supreme Court.

On 2nd Amendment Rights:

Elena Kagan said as a U.S. Supreme Court law clerk in 1987 that she was “not sympathetic” toward a man who contended that his constitutional rights were violated when he was convicted for carrying an unlicensed pistol.

Kagan…made the comment to Justice Thurgood Marshall, urging him in a one-paragraph memo to vote against hearing the District of Columbia man’s appeal.

The man’s “sole contention is that the District of Columbia’s firearms statutes violate his constitutional right to ‘keep and bear arms,’” Kagan wrote. “I’m not sympathetic.”

On the Homosexual Agenda:

While serving as Dean of Harvard Law School, Kagan’s administration demanded and forced Blue-Cross, Blue-Shield to cover sex-change operations as an “equal right” paid benefit, harming gender-confused students, as confirmed in 2006 and 2008 by Harvard Crimson newspaper articles.

Kagan also offered sympathetic ear to lesbian group Lambda’s Transgender Task Force demand to force all women to share public bathrooms and locker-rooms with cross-dressing men, which is now part of Harvard’s dormitory policy, according to the report.

“This is further proof Elena Kagan cannot be trusted to impartially rule on Obamacare or bathroom bills like ENDA,” said Chaplain Klingenschmitt.

On the Military:

As the Dean of Harvard Law School, Kagan tried to bar military recruiters from college campuses.  Family Research Council observed that “at the time, even Ruth Bader Ginsberg, one of the court’s most liberal justices, couldn’t find a way to justify Kagan’s position.”

As if all this weren’t enough, Judicial Watch now reports that the White House interfered with an independent New York Times investigation by trying to deny access to Kagan’s Brother Irving, a teacher at Hunter College High School:

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it has obtained documents from Hunter College High School regarding a White House effort to deny New York Times education reporter Sharon Otterman access to Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s brother Irving, who currently teaches at the New York school. Otterman requested and received permission from both the school and Irving Kagan to attend one of Mr. Kagan’s constitutional law classes before White House Deputy Press Secretary Joshua Earnest intervened.

“The Obama White House has no business interfering with independent press investigations of Ms. Kagan,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “These documents show that the Obama White House could care less about transparency on the Kagan nomination and is no friend of an independent media.”

How are the major networks covering this story?  With hogwash like this: “Elena Kagan shows off sense of humor in confirmation hearings”

She’d rule to restrict your 1st Amendment rights, your 2nd Amendment rights, and your 4th Amendment rights. But darn it, she makes us laugh, and that’s what’s most important in a Supreme Court nominee, right? Right? Apparently all the evening news broadcasts think so, because THIS is what they focused on. We have such a sorry, irresponsible journalism culture!

The Washington Times refers to the charade that now passes for confirmation hearings as “Kabuki theater”:

The hearings process for high court nominees has become ritualized to the point that it is almost useless. Nominees are extensively coached to avoid voicing a real opinion. There is no intellectual give and take. Spontaneity is largely absent. Anyone who can reasonably keep his cool and regurgitate platitudes for a few hours can enjoy a lifetime appointment to the most important judicial body in the land.

We know the intellectual milieu from which she has emerged. We know that her heart and mind are devoted to leftist causes and that she can be counted on to find rationales to further those aims in whatever cases come before the court.

When the president can nominate mediocre candidates for the high bench and expect the nominee to get through, it is proof that the confirmation process is broken. Ms. Kagan is a perfect example. She has no experience as a judge, a weak publication record, no evidence of being a leading legal scholar, and no reputation as a prominent intellectual. She does not deserve, and has not earned, such a high position of trust and authority. She certainly does not deserve the opportunity to have her offbeat opinions read into the law of the land.

WHO has changed how the constitution is interpreted?

Woodrow Wilson and the roots of Progressivism

The Case against Case Law

The Second Amendment is not that hard to understand — not if the person reading it has a lick of sense. I’ll prove it.

What does this sentence mean?

My over-exuberant neighbors having a wild party next door, my wife called the cops.

Not terrific English grammar but the meaning is clear enough. Cause: The noise made by the neighbors.  Effect: A telephone call to the authorities.

What does the Second Amendment really mean?

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,

(We are a new, free country. It is necessary to have a trained, weapon equipped, standing army to help keep us free. And because we will have a standing army),

the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

(if the army gets guns, so do the people, in case the army ever gets out of line.)

Cause: The government-controlled army has guns. Effect: The people, via constitutional amendment, demand, and are guaranteed, the right to weapons as well.

In short, the Second Amendment means what it says and it says what it means.

Read more at American Thinker

The Supreme Court’s rejection of Chicago’s handgun ban in McDonald v. City of Chicago is more than a recognition that the Second Amendment applies to the states as well as the federal government. The McDonald decision is a harbinger for the end of gun prohibition as an idea. The simple, undeniable truth is that gun control does not work.

McDonald brings the law up to speed with reality, where advocates of gun control have been wrong since the issue became a national discussion.

Strict gun-control policies have failed to deliver on their essential promise: that denying law-abiding citizens access to the means of self-defense will somehow make them safer. This should come as no surprise, since gun control has always been about control, not guns.

Three times in the last month, Chicago residents have defended their homes or businesses with “illegal” guns. In the first, an 80-year-old Navy veteran killed a felon who broke into his home. In the second, a man shot and wounded a fugitive who burst into the man’s home while running from the police. In the third, the owner of a pawn shop killed one of three robbers in self-defense, sending the other two running.

Read more at the National Review

Supreme Court extends gun rights nationwide

High Court’s Big Ruling For Gun Rights

Felipe Calderon received liberal plaudits for falsely claiming Arizona’s new immigration law uses racial profiling, but that wasn’t the only baloney the Mexican president peddled during his state visit. Over four minutes of his Thursday address to Congress was spent lecturing Americans to renew the federal Assault Weapons Ban that sunset in September 2004. His justifications for the ban were all garbage.

Mr. Calderon’s claim that 80 percent of guns used in Mexican crimes come from the United States is completely false. Most weapons seized in Mexico have traceable serial numbers that show they come from countries other than the United States. The 80 percent number reflects how many guns sent to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for tracing end up being from America. Most weapons seized in Mexico aren’t transferred to U.S. authorities, so that figure is meaningless for calculating overall totals.

It is offensive for Mr. Calderon to come here as our guest and make up facts to blame America for Mexico’s many problems. But it was more frightening to witness Democratic House and Senate members jump up and give a standing ovation when the foreigner called for renewing the Assault Weapons Ban. That’s a warning all American gun owners should heed.

Read more at the Washington Times

Now they’re emasculating our police force!

“I believe we are peacekeepers, not law enforcement, and that’s my goal.”

Why doesn’t he just come out and say, “Attention criminals, our ‘peacekeepers’ will no longer be using lethal force against you, so have a nice day (and please, pretty please, don’t shoot)!”

If you want to know how effective “peacekeepers” are, just look at the UN’s forces. When push comes to shove, like Rwanda, they’re basically REQUIRED to tuck tail and run! Here’s another argument for the 2nd Amendment if I ever heard one. If the cops aren’t allowed to use lethal force to protect you, then you sure better be able to defend yourself!

Portland’s new police chief made a point to carve out a new philosophy for the Portland Police Bureau that centers on peacekeeping after being appointed to the job by Portland’s mayor on Wednesday.

“We try and resolve every situation in a peaceful manner,” Chief Mike Reese said after Mayor Sam Adams fired former Chief Rosie Sizer and named him the new leader of the bureau. “I believe we are peacekeepers, not law enforcement, and that’s my goal.”

Read more at KATU News

Adams is reacting to several officer-related deaths in the Portland area under Sizer’s watch.  The first was James Chasse Jr., a schizophrenic who died of his injuries after a tangle with police.   (Everybody wrings their hands over his death, but nobody asks why such a disturbed individual in need of serious intervention and supervision was left to wander out on the streets in the first place – the result of our own relaxed laws on institutionalizing the mentally ill.) 

The second was Aaron Campbell, a young black man who was distraught over the death of his brother and whose family had told police was armed and suicidal.   When he reached for his waistband and started running away, police shot him in the back, fearful that he was about to seek cover and start shooting at them.   His family cried it was racism, and Jesse Jackson (always the opportunist), arrived to help inflame even more protests.  Local news reports repeatedly referred to the fact that he was shot in the back, often without elaborating on WHY. 

There have been other incidents, such as a homeless man who was shot after he kept approaching police with a knife, and a 12-year-old female gang member who was shot with a bean bag gun for physically assaulting a police officer (who was almost her same height). 

But the fact remains, when you start telling people that the cops aren’t going to use force, you remove their motive to comply and only serve to create MORE incidents like this, where people get hurt because they refuse to obey police, and officers are forced to react.

Obama has apparently taken a step to disarm America, according to a document that has been leaked. The step is strategic and very cunning: begin with the military.

Access the document here.

The document reveals a proposal to force all military personnel to register all firearms—even privately owned firearms that are kept in their private residences. It would force a regular inventory of all such firearms concurrent with the regular inventories of military weapons.

Soldiers maintaining privately owned firearms in their private residences, off base, would be required to keep their weapons in locked containers or with trigger locks, unloaded, and have the ammunition secured separately from the weapon in a locked container.

The proposal calls for a complete prohibition of concealed carry of any weapon—even folding knives with blades 3 inches and larger—while on base. This prohibition will override state and county permits for concealed carry.

Personnel will be required to request in writing for permission to keep privately owned weapons off-base. Privately owned weapons and ammunition kept on-base must be kept in a monitored room and can be accessed only with approval of a commander.

While all this is bad enough in itself, the fear is that once enacted, such regulations could be used as a precedent for civilian infringements as well. “If this arms law is good enough for the military.…” Let’s stop them before they have the precedent.

Read more at American Vision

These guys are about as “Christian” as Jim Jones. But the media elites who remind us ad nauseum that “not all Muslims are terrorists” (as if we didn’t already know that) won’t hesitate to smear ALL Christians as potential extremists, the same way they tried to lump the entire Pro-Life movement in with Dr. Tiller’s nutcase murderer.

Members of a militia charged with plotting to kill police were not Christian or a militia, a man acquainted with the group said Tuesday.

“This is a group that I would classify as neither a militia or a Christian group,” said Michael Lackomar, a member of the Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia. “They’re really a fringe group outside of anything we do.

“They’re more of a private army or a terrorist organization or really just a criminal organization.”

Federal authorities on Monday charged nine members of a group called the Hutaree militia with conspiring to kill a Michigan law enforcement officer and then kill other officers at the funeral.

The group says on its Web site that Hutaree means “Christian warrior.” Its home page said it is “Preparing for the end time battles to keep the testimony of Jesus Christ alive.”

Lackomar told CNN’s “American Morning” on Tuesday that five Hutaree members sought refuge over the weekend with a Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia leader because federal authorities were looking for them. Lackomar said the member of his militia advised the Hutaree members to turn themselves in so no one would get hurt.

Read more at CNN

Considering that Obama is no friend to 2nd Amendment gun rights for individual citizens or checks on federal powers, and his Democrat cronies make off-handed statements about “controlling the people“, this is very disturbing.

In the 80′s, the EPA asked for and received permission to arm agents due to the “danger in hazardous waste investigations”.  The condition?  That their agents be sworn in as US Marshalls.

Now, two more agencies are quietly arming themselves: the IRS and the Department of Education. 

Regarding the IRS, Tammy Bruce observes:

Nothing warms me up in the morning like the idea that the IRS is preparing a swat team equipped with pump action shotguns. I guess Urkel thinks they’re gonna have to start shooting at us to squeeze what we have left out of us? This at least certainly suggests the days of accountants fighting it out may be over.

The Kansas City Star reports:

Passage of the so-called “health care reform” bill in the House of Representatives this past Sunday, March 21 (I won’t even address the inferred unconstitutionality of Congress doing business on the Lord’s Day. See Article. I. Section. 7. Paragraph. 2.) drove yet another stake into the heart of America. For all intents and purposes, it is the health of the United States that is in dire need of healing. In fact, the US has been on extended life-support for decades. With its condition being rendered critical, and absent major surgery, its days are numbered. The passage of this bill only serves to further weaken an already frail Constitution. In fact, this one may prove to be the fatal blow. Lady Liberty may never recover.

The decision by Congress to socialize medicine in the US ranks among the most draconian, most egregious, most horrific actions ever taken by the central government in Washington, D.C. This bill rocks the principles of liberty and constitutional government to the core. It changes fundamental foundations; it repudiates historical principle. Oh! The same flag may fly on our flagpoles, the same monuments may grace our landscape, and the same National Anthem may be sung during our public ceremonies, but it is not the same America. The Congress of the United States has now officially turned America into a socialist state.

Read more at Tenth Amendment Center

For decades, using a tortured definition of “interstate commerce,” Congress has claimed the authority to regulate, control, ban, or mandate virtually everything – from wheat grown on one’s own land for personal consumption, to weed grown in an individual’s own home for the same purpose, to guns manufactured, sold and kept in state boundaries.

Today, Dave Freudenthal, the Democrat Governor of Wyoming Governor stood up and gave a resounding NO to this by signing into law House Bill 95 (HB0095), the Firearms Freedom Act. Wyoming joins Montana, Tennessee and Utah as the fourth state to make the act law.

Read more at the Tenth Amendment Center