Posts Tagged ‘Politics’

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

DOW RESEARCHER PRESENTS PLANS FOR MULE DEER STUDY

September 28, 2010

If only other agency’s from more state’s were this thoughtful, and informed. Yes, I know, Whitetail Deer are the number one game animal hunted, but, I am, and always will be a dyed in the wool Mule Deer fan!

KREMMLING, Colo — The Colorado Division of Wildlife is preparing for a large study of buck mule deer survival in Middle Park to improve the Division’s ability to manage deer populations around the state through more informed modeling and harvest decisions.

The study plan will be explained by lead researcher Eric Bergman at a meeting of the Blue Valley Sportsman Club on Wednesday, Oct. 6. The public is invited to attend the meeting which will begin at 7 p.m. at the Blue Valley Sportsman Club.

Management of deer populations has become more complicated since the state responded to mule deer population declines by moving from over-the-counter deer licenses to limited licenses in 1999.

During the initial two to three years of the study, the Division will establish a baseline by monitoring mule deer in Middle Park. Then the Division will temporarily adjust the allocation of hunting licenses in the area in an effort to change the ratio of bucks to does in the herd. During this period, Bergman and his team of researchers will monitor the population to assess how the license allocation actually affects the population of deer in the area.

“It’s extremely important for managers to know if there are differences between survival rates of bucks, does and fawns when we manage herds for different objectives,” said Bergman. “For instance, in some areas we may be managing for a post hunt ratio of 45 bucks per 100 does while in other areas we may be managing for a post hunt ratio of 25 bucks per 100 does. We’ve learned that we can effectively accomplish this, but we don’t know if the over-winter survival of bucks under these two conditions is different.”

Those who are interested in hearing more about the research project are encouraged to attend the meeting on Oct. 6. The Blue Valley Sportsman Club is located 11 miles south of Kremmling at milepost 128.1 on Colorado Highway 9.
More information about the Division’s mule deer research may be found at:
http://wildlife.state.co.us/Research/Mammal/Deer/

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Editorial, Opinion, Education, Hunting Fishing and the Great Outdoors, News, Politics | 4 Comments »

Draft DOJ Report Faults BATFE, But Not Gun Control

September 25, 2010

A draft report prepared by the Justice Department Inspector General’s Evaluation and Inspections Division calls into question the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives’ (BATFE) performance in carrying out the mandates of its Project Gunrunner program, established in 2007 to combat the trafficking of firearms to Mexico. The report also contradictorily suggests that BATFE’s ability to meet the program’s objectives might be enhanced by federal laws requiring the filing of multiple sales reports on long guns, and requiring some or all private sales of firearms to be screened by the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).

One contradiction is that the report complains that BATFE’s “focus remains largely on inspections of gun dealers and investigations of straw purchasers, rather than on higher-level traffickers, smugglers, and the ultimate recipients of the trafficked guns.” But requiring multiple sales reports on long guns and requiring private sales to go through NICS would mainly facilitate even more investigations of straw purchasers. And there’s another contradiction. If, as some claim, straw purchasers are the primary source of firearms bought in the U.S. for resale to the cartels, and that straw purchasers can defeat NICS checks, the smuggling of firearms from the U.S. to Mexico can’t be significantly reduced by requiring that private sales be subject to NICS. After all, a straw purchaser who can pass a NICS check can pass it regardless of whether the gun is being bought from a dealer or someone who is not a dealer.

Also, BATFE doesn’t follow up on most of the multiple sales reports it receives on handguns, so there’s little reason to think it would do things any differently with reports on long guns. Theoretically, more multiple sales reports and NICS checks would make it easier for BATFE to conduct commercial record traces on firearms, but as the report points out, “most trace requests that are submitted to ATF from Mexico are considered ‘unsuccessful.'” Only 27 percent of traces between 2007 and 2009, on firearms seized in Mexico, were successful.

BATFE traces are of such dubious value that, the report notes, “Mexican law enforcement authorities do not view gun tracing as an important investigative tool. . . . One Mexican official stated that U.S. officials talk of eTrace as if it is a ‘panacea’ but that it does nothing for Mexican law enforcement. An official in the Mexico Attorney General’s office told us he felt eTrace is ‘some kind of bad joke.'”

To its credit, the draft report correctly points out that Mexico requests BATFE to trace only about one quarter of the firearms that it seizes from the cartels, a fact which implies that a significant share of the cartels’ guns come from countries other than the United States. To put it simply, if the Mexican police recover a machine gun with Communist Chinese markings on it, they know it didn’t come from the U.S., and they are not going to waste time requesting a trace from BATFE. The Mexicans are interested in squashing the cartels, not in racking up trace numbers to spruce up BATFE press releases.

SOURCE

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Editorial, Opinion, Education, Gun Control, Hoplophobia, Immigration, Law, mysandry, Non Compos Mentis, Politics, Wordpress Political Blogs | Comments Off on Draft DOJ Report Faults BATFE, But Not Gun Control

“Nice Try, But No Cigar” For Brady Campaign’s Paul Helmke

September 25, 2010

“The NRA is wrong again,” said Brady Campaign president Paul Helmke on Tuesday, in his 176th (and counting) blog post on the left-wing Huffington Post website. Helmke was upset because of three things we pointed out in our annual “More Guns, Less Crime” fact sheet and Grassroots Alert last week.

First, the number of guns has risen to an all-time high. Second, for decades Brady Campaign has repeatedly predicted with unfettered confidence that more guns would necessarily cause crime to rise. But third, the nation’s violent crime and murder rates have instead fallen to 35- and 45-year lows, respectively.

Our fact sheet and alert didn’t say that crime has gone down because the number of guns has risen. And we didn’t even mention that crime has gone down in large part because in the 1990s many states adopted laws that NRA called for, to require violent criminals to spend time behind bars, to increase the length of violent criminals’ prison sentences, and to reduce their ability to obtain parole and probation (we’ll do that in next year’s fact sheet.  Thanks for the reminder, Paul).

All our fact sheet and alert pointed out was that, contrary to Brady Campaign predictions, an increase in guns didn’t cause crime to go up.

Nevertheless, Helmke whined, “The NRA is misleading again.”  The NRA is trying “to wave and shout and dance and steal the credit” for crime going down. NRA’s leaders “treat us as fools.”

Helmke didn’t deny that there is less crime. And he didn’t deny that there are more guns. Instead, he paraphrased some of Violence Policy Center’s hogwash, saying, “the average number of guns per owner has gone up, but the percent of American households with a gun? That’s right: it’s gone down.”

What Helmke didn’t mention is that polls measuring the percentage of households that acknowledge having at least one gun don’t accurately measure gun ownership by household or the number of Americans who own guns.

In its 1996 National Survey of Private Ownership of Firearms in the United States (NSPOF), the Police Foundation identified one of the limits of surveys attempting to measure gun ownership by household.

“For households headed by a married couple, 49 percent of the husbands report a gun in the home, compared with just 36 percent of the wives. Since this difference is far larger than can be explained by chance, it appears that many wives either do not know about their husband’s guns or are reluctant to discuss it with a stranger. The NSPOF estimates based on a respondent’s report of all guns in the household is 107.2 million working firearms. The NSPOF estimate based on a respondent’s report of his or her own firearms is 192.1 million working firearms.”

Similarly, criminologist Gary Kleck has noted that in his and Marc Gertz’s landmark survey of defensive firearm use, “50.1% of married men reported a household gun, but only 37.4% of married women did. . . . Fourteen consecutive General Social Surveys found married women to report household guns at lower levels than married men.”

Kleck added that a person is more likely to acknowledge that he or she own guns, than to acknowledge the ownership of guns by someone else in the household, but that while “it is most commonly a male who owns the household guns . . . . [M]arried women make up around 31% of the usual adult survey samples.”

Helmke also didn’t note (but Kleck did) that the percentage of people telling pollsters that they have guns in their homes dropped precipitously during the years of the Clinton Administration’s war against gun owners, from the 40+ percentage range, down into the 30s.

And there is one other, factor that Helmke didn’t take into account: The population of the country rises by about one percent, or three million, every year. Surveys began showing a decline in “household” gun ownership in the 1980s, but since 1985, for example, the population of the country has increased 30 percent, from 239 million to 310 million. That’s more than enough to compensate for the decline in “yes” responses to pollsters asking whether people have any guns in their homes.

So, we’d say we hate to be the one to tell you, Paul, but that wouldn’t be honest. We’re glad to tell you. There are more Americans owning more guns than ever before and, as we both agree, violent crime is way, way, down.

SOURCE

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Editorial, Opinion, Education, Gun Control, Hoplophobia, Law, mysandry, News, Non Compos Mentis, Politics, States Rights, Wordpress Political Blogs | Comments Off on “Nice Try, But No Cigar” For Brady Campaign’s Paul Helmke

Oh give me a F**king Break! : Judge clears way for California’s first execution since 2006

September 24, 2010

I sat on a jury, way back in the day. I was still in California and a proud citizen of said state at that time.

At the time I was an auto Mechanic, with a basic Associates degree, and an ASS in Automotive Technology. Somehow, I ended up the Jury Foreman.

We deliberated long, and hard. Our Jury was in fact multiracial, with a slight bias toward Asian’s. It wasn’t the verdict, but the penalty that caused us to deliberate for so long… One Juror, was a devout Catholic that was very opposed to any harsh penalty. Another just didn’t trust the government. But, after a week, we, the people, decided that this miscreant that we were Judging? Needed to die…

Two years later, USSC decided that they, knew better than we the people…

This total miscreant, “fell” from a tier in a California State Prison. I am no fan of the Aryan Brotherhood, but hey guys? Ya’ got that one right! Broken Clock Justice perhaps..?

READ ON


Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Economics, Editorial, Opinion, Education, Gun Control, Immigration, Law, mysandry, News, Politics, Uncategorized, Wordpress Political Blogs | Comments Off on Oh give me a F**king Break! : Judge clears way for California’s first execution since 2006

A Tale of Two Journalists : Make fun of Christians and Jews all you want, but thou shall not inflame Muslim ire.

September 24, 2010

Molly Norris used to have a life and a career in Washington, as a cartoonist for Seattle Weekly, an alternative paper. But not any longer. She has now — at the urging of the FBI — gone underground, forfeiting her identity and her job. Is Norris a criminal? No. She just had the poor judgment to draw a cartoon entitled “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day,” which led to the issuance of a fatwa — or Islamic death sentence — against her. Perhaps she had forgotten the 11th Commandment: Make fun of Christians and Jews all you want, but thou shall not inflame Muslim ire.

The fatwa was issued by imam Anwar al-Awlaki, a man The New York Times described in October 2001 as “a new generation of Muslim leader capable of merging East and West.” Al-Awlaki, who was born in the United States and headed a mosque in Virginia, is now conducting his dirty work from a hiding place in Yemen.

Barack Obama has remained silent on this matter, conspicuously so because only recently he lectured all of us on the freedoms afforded by this country. Of course that was in relation to the building of the Cordoba House mosque two blocks from Ground Zero. When it comes to the injustice that has befallen an average American like Molly Norris, he has nothing to say.

While some in the field of journalism are threatened with death for making a joke, others are rewarded for their hatred. Recall Helen Thomas, the poster child for women in journalism, who was canned after making incendiary comments at a conference celebrating Jewish heritage. Thomas’ statement that Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and “go home” to Poland, Germany, America and “everywhere else” was caught on tape so that not even leftists could defend her.

Even after her weak apology, no one would touch her with a 10-foot pole. No one, that is, except the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Next month the 90-year-old Thomas will be given a lifetime-achievement award at CAIR’s Leadership Conference & 16th Annual Fundraising Banquet in Arlington, Virginia. Clearly, her final flourish as a “journalist” was appreciated by someone.

SOURCE

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Editorial, Opinion, Education, Law, News, Non Compos Mentis, Politics, Wordpress Political Blogs | 3 Comments »

Profiles of Valor: U.S. Air Force CMSgt Etchberger

September 24, 2010

“Plausible denial” was the word in 1968, when some U.S. military personnel were taking the battle to the communist enemy in Cambodia and Laos as “civilians.” What was undeniable, and what finally became crystal clear decades later, was the heroism and selflessness that was exhibited by one of those men, United States Air Force Chief Master Sergeant Richard Loy Etchberger. In March 1968, a remote radar site in Laos, known as Lima Site 85, was attacked and eventually overrun. Etchberger, one of the defenders at that site, remained in his position despite heavy fire that had killed or wounded most of his comrades. Fighting with everything at his disposal, including calling in air strikes, he battled back. When med-evac helos finally came, he put his wounded comrades aboard first, braving enemy fire to get them up to safety before he himself was mortally wounded. Though he had received posthumously the Air Force Cross for his actions that day, Etchberger will now receive his full due: the Medal of Honor.

SOURCE

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Editorial, Opinion, Education, News, Politics, Profiles in Valor, Valhalla, War, Wordpress Political Blogs | Comments Off on Profiles of Valor: U.S. Air Force CMSgt Etchberger

Perjury in Black Panther Case?

September 24, 2010

We’re closer to the next election than we are the last, but the fallout from the Black Panther case percolates on. Recall that New Black Panther Party members stood outside a Philadelphia polling place in Nov. 2008 brandishing a billy club, shouting racial epithets and otherwise intimidating white voters. This week, the watchdog group Judicial Watch obtained internal e-mail logs from the Department of Justice that suggest that senior officials had a hand in making the decision to pull the plug on the case, contradicting sworn testimony by Thomas Perez, the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. Perez said in May that the decision was, “a case of career people disagreeing with career people.”

While it’s doubtful that Perez will be on the rack for these allegations anytime soon, the incident reveals both the difficulty of extracting information on how a slam-dunk case was dropped and the lengths to which Attorney General Eric Holder may be going in not pursuing certain cases based on race. It took a Freedom of Information Act request by Judicial Watch just to receive the logs and a summary of what particular e-mails stated, with a court ordering the disclosure.

SOURCE

Tags:, , , , , , ,
Posted in Editorial, Opinion, Education, Law, News, Politics, Wordpress Political Blogs | 1 Comment »

Democrats Run From Their Record: epic fail obama

September 24, 2010

How bad is it for Democrats? They’re running against their own programs. ObamaCare, cap-n-tax, you name it, they’re against it now. This situation reached absurdity when five Democrat members of Congress ran ads claiming to have voted “no” on TARP. The five are Frank Kratovil (MD), Dina Titus (NV), Mary Jo Kilroy (OH), Kathy Dahlkemper (PA) and Glenn Nye (VA). The inconvenient truth is, according to FactCheck.org, “None of the five lawmakers who are running these ads is listed in the roll call vote. That’s because none of them had taken office yet.” But if they had been in Congress, they would have been against it. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

“I still remember Sasha, when she was three months old … had meningitis, and she had to get a spinal tap, and they had to keep her [in the hospital] for three or four days. … I still remember that feeling of just desperation, watching the nurse take her away to provide treatment for her. But I was thinking, what if I hadn’t had insurance?” –Barack Obama at a “backyard discussion” in Virginia about health care

Obama lectures the press to leave his girls alone, yet turns around and uses them as a political prop whenever it suits his own leftist policy initiatives.

However, he does “take the blame” for public opposition to ObamaCare. “Sometimes I fault myself for not being able to make the case more clearly to the country.” He may think that if only he had talked more about it, voters would get it, but as the first provisions kicked in this week, it’s more likely that voters will now blame Democrats for every health care problem.

SOURCE

Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in Economics, Editorial, Opinion, Education, Law, News, Politics, Wordpress Political Blogs | 1 Comment »

The Recession Is Over? Yeah, right…

September 24, 2010

In case you missed the news, the recession is over. As of June 2009, no less. So say the economic sages at the National Bureau of Economic Research, the arbiter of these things. According to the NBER, the recession began in December 2007 and lasted 18 months — the longest since the Great Depression. That it’s over is good news, but there’s a “but.”

“On the other hand,” writes The Wall Street Journal, “the recession was only two months longer than the 16-month downturns of 1973-1975 and 1981-82, the two other most serious post-World War II periods of falling economic growth. The 2007-2009 downturn was painful but not extraordinary in historical context. What is different about this period is the relative weakness of the economic recovery.”

For years after 1982, GDP growth was at least 4 percent. Today, GDP remains below that of the fourth quarter of 2007. One difference is that in 1983, Ronald Reagan’s cuts in marginal tax rates were taking hold, while in 2010, the economy is bracing for trillions of dollars in tax increases in January. The current administration’s “recovery” policies have also been a major drag on economic growth, no matter how they may crow about their “success.”

Since January 2009, the economy has lost 3.2 million jobs, and the current 9.6 percent unemployment rate is higher than the 9.5 percent in June 2009 when the recession supposedly ended. U.S. household net worth fell by another $1.5 trillion in the second quarter, and is now $10.7 trillion less than at its high point in 2007. Foreclosures are at record highs.

Perhaps all of this is why some of the jobs now being shed are those of Barack Obama’s economic advisers. He may say on the campaign stump that Tea Party supporters are “misidentifying who the culprits are” for this economic trouble, but heads are rolling at the White House. “This is tough, the work that they do,” Obama said. “They’ve been at it for two years, and they’re going to have a whole range of decisions about family that will factor into this as well.” As in spending more time with family.

Lawrence Summers, chairman of the president’s National Economic Council, is heading back to Harvard. Apparently, the “Recovery Summers” is over. Other recent departures include budget director Peter Orszag and head of the Council of Economic Advisers Christina Romer. Meanwhile, Herb Allison, who took charge of the Troubled Asset Relief Program in April 2009, is stepping down. That leaves Treasury Secretary Timothy “Turbo Tax Cheat” Geithner as the lone remaining member of Obama’s original economic team.

We’ll say it again: In order to generate real economic growth, tax rates must remain level (or, even better, decline), regulation must ease and, in general, government must shrink. Of course, Obama and his refurbished economic team are unlikely to come to the same conclusion.

SOURCE

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Czar Wars, Economics, Editorial, Opinion, Education, Law, News, Politics, Wordpress Political Blogs | Comments Off on The Recession Is Over? Yeah, right…

We won, this time…

September 24, 2010
DISCLOSE Act Defeated in Senate

Gun Owners of America E-Mail Alert
8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102, Springfield, VA 22151
Phone: 703-321-8585 / FAX: 703-321-8408
http://gunowners.org

Thursday, September 23, 2010

The U.S. Senate today defeated the so-called DISCLOSE Act when it failed to garner the 60 votes necessary to overcome Republican objections to the bill. The final vote was 59-39.

Even though the exact same bill, sponsored by Chuck Schumer (D-NY), had been defeated just two months ago and was unlikely to pass, anti-gun Majority Leader Harry Reid (NV) brought it up for another vote to “stir up” his left-wing base.

Instead of protecting the most important type of speech protected by the First Amendment — political speech — with this bill Congress attempted to force groups like GOA to “disclose” the names of donors in certain political advertisements.

Since Gun Owners of America will never disclose its membership lists to the federal government, it could be prohibited from running radio or TV ads exposing a federal candidate’s voting record in the weeks leading up to an election.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (KY) aptly summed up the bill when it came to the floor in July:

“This DISCLOSE Act is not about reform, it’s nothing more than Democrats sitting behind closed doors [choosing] which favored groups they want to speak in the 2010 elections — all in an attempt to protect themselves from criticism of their government takeovers, record deficits and massive unpaid-for expansions of the federal government into the lives of the American people.”

With a lame-duck session of Congress looming after the election, anything is possible — including another attempt to push through DISCLOSE. So please stay tuned.

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Economics, Editorial, Opinion, Education, Gun Control, Hoplophobia, Law, News, Politics, Wordpress Political Blogs | Comments Off on We won, this time…

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »