By Steve Chapman
http://www.townhall.com
February 6, 2013
I recently started Victor Hugo's novel "Les Miserables," which most people seem to prefer in movie or musical theater form if only because those take less time. You can get the story in under three hours instead of taking who knows how long to plow through the 1,232-page Penguin edition.
No, I'm not fishing for sympathy. Having this mountain of pages to climb gives me great peace of mind. I like starting books, and I like reading books. What I don't like is finishing books, and with "Les Miserables," that won't be a problem for a while.
Finishing a book means the end of something pleasurable -- otherwise I would have tossed it aside long before. It also fills me with dread and terror, because it means I have to decide what to read next.
For years I avoided "Les Miserables," partly because it seemed like the reading equivalent of Jean Valjean's 19 years as a galley slave. But then my daughter gave it to me for Christmas, and I have a firm policy of reading any book my kids give me.
Besides, what's so great about skinny books? As a friend of mine says when people ask him why he reads mammoth volumes, "If you really like a book, why would you want it to be shorter?"
No one, after all, seeks out ski mountains because they have short runs. No one wishes Beethoven had done three-minute symphonies. No one exercises in hopes of achieving an abbreviated lifespan.
One- or two-pound books spare me, for a while, the most painful part of my reading regimen: indecision. When I reach the end, I'm tormented by all the options before me: Fiction or history? Biography or memoir? Contemporary or 19th-century? American or British? I can't sleep soundly till I decide how to spend the coming weeks or months.
Yes, months, because after a youth spent gobbling down books like a starving goat, I have come to understand the wisdom of taking ... them ... slowly. It's not much of an accomplishment to have read every important author if most of what they wrote escapes you afterward.
So I try to pay attention to every word and sentence, underlining the ones that grab me. And I don't read books once. I read them twice: stopping every 50 or 100 pages to go back and read them again.
Given my inadequate capacity for retention, it's the only way I can remember what I've read for more than 72 hours. And if I really want to remember it -- well, there's no law against reading the same volume three times.
The first time through, I'm reading the book. The second time, I'm living in it. The third time, it's taking up permanent residence in me.
This approach has other attractions. My greatest fear in life is being stuck somewhere with nothing to read. I once boarded an eight-hour nighttime flight only to find that my overhead reading lamp was broken and every other seat was taken. Oh, and the in-flight movie was "Inspector Gadget."
Now I take not only a book but my own reading light -- with spare batteries. If you don't mind re-reading, one book is all you need.
Even my hour-long daily commuter train ride is agony without a supply of printed words. Once in a while, an accident on the tracks ahead will delay us for an hour or two. Major inconvenience? No, exceptional reading opportunity.
Writer Joe Queenan recently published a memoir, "One for the Books," in which he claims to have read 6,128 of them in his 62 years, or more than 100 a year, with plans to finish another 2,137 before his life story reaches The End. I haven't kept up with him so far, and I have no ambition to try.
In fact, my goal is to read only a dozen or so books each year, and read them slowly and carefully. A book read that way doesn't sit on your shelf. It percolates in your soul.
I'm of the view that anything worth doing is worth prolonging and worth revisiting over and over. The best books are like the best romances: They last as long as you live.
Mind if I stop now? I have some reading to do.
Thursday, February 07, 2013
Letter from the West Bank
Ramallah, West Bank — It’s difficult not to like Salam Fayyad. The prime minister of the Palestinian Authority has an avuncular demeanor and old-fashioned professorial charm. He boasts a doctorate in economics from the University of Texas at Austin and remains loyal to the Longhorns. He speaks in charmingly accented, rapid-fire English. In a spacious conference room in the palatial government complex where he maintains his offices, he is generous with his time, answering questions from me and other members of a delegation of American national-security professionals on a wide range of issues.
One need not agree with everything Fayyad says to appreciate that he is the kind of Palestinian leader with whom Israeli leaders could make peace — if Israeli leaders could negotiate with him, and if he could deliver a majority of Palestinians willing to accept a compromise solution to the conflict. Fundamentally, here’s what that would mean: Palestinians would have to unambiguously recognize Israel’s right to exist within secure borders. In exchange, Israel would do everything possible to facilitate the development of a free and viable Palestinian state.What are the chances that Fayyad can achieve that? Roughly zero to none.
Fayyad has few supporters in the West Bank — and even fewer in Hamas-controlled Gaza. He was not elected prime minister; he was appointed in 2007 by Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas who claimed the power to do so on the basis of “national emergency.”
As for Abbas, he was elected to his position in January 2005. His four-year term ended in 2009. New elections have been postponed indefinitely. Similarly, the Palestinian Legislative Council, which sits in Gaza, was elected to a four-year term in January 2006. The following year, Hamas staged a bloody coup against the P.A. in Gaza. New legislative elections also remain unscheduled.
American and European diplomats value Fayyad’s skills and trust his integrity. So long as he is prime minister, they feel better about pouring in aid — more per capita than to any country in Africa, Asia, or Latin America — that keeps the P.A. afloat. Israelis respect Fayyad, too. You do understand that all this makes him less popular — not more — with the broad Palestinian public?
Of course, popularity is not the only source — or even the primary source — of power in the Palestinian territories. But Fayyad does not command a militia. And, presumably because he is seen as a moderate, he receives no financial backing from such oil-rich Muslim countries as Iran and Qatar.
Hamas leaders — who do receive support from both Iran and Qatar — openly detest Fayyad. Finally, though Fayyad was appointed by Abbas, he is not close to Abbas, who, in addition to heading the Palestinian Authority, leads the Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization which holds the reins — more or less — on the West Bank.
Halfway through our conversation, Fayyad asked not be quoted, so I’ll respect that. But I’m revealing nothing new if I say he gets that Hamas’s openly declared threat to exterminate Israel is not conducive to peace processing. He understands, too, that there is a desperate need for political reform and institution-building in the Palestinian territories. He has been working toward that goal determinedly, if not entirely successfully.
As we leave the prime minister’s offices, we see that demonstrators have gathered outside, mostly civil servants peacefully protesting the fact that it has been a long time since they have received their paychecks.
Ramallah, the de facto capital of the West Bank, lies six miles north of Jerusalem in the Judean Mountains. By the standards of non-oil producing Middle Eastern countries, it is neither depressed nor depressing. Buildings are of white Jerusalem stone with red tile roofs. There are mosques with tall minarets and green domes; palm trees and stone walls; modern hotels and good restaurants that serve cold, locally brewed beer. A fair amount of new construction is underway, but there also are empty lots, strewn with rubble. In some of them, goats graze.
Ramallah may not be the ideal Palestinian city of the future, but, as it happens, an attempt to build that metropolis is underway on hilltops less than six miles to the northwest. It’s called Rawabi and it’s the first planned city in the West Bank, a project that will cost $1 billion, most of which is coming from Qatar. The first residents are to begin moving in within a year. In five to seven years, it is to have homes for 10,000 Palestinian families, as well as a commercial center, a cultural center, medical facilities, stores, cafes, and a giant amphitheater.
Bashar Masri, the elegant and eloquent entrepreneur behind this project, acknowledges that, to succeed, Rawabi will need businesses and jobs — high-tech would be his preference. That will require foreign investors confident that their money will not end up in the foreign bank accounts of corrupt officials. It would help, too, if Rawabi and all of what Masri calls Palestine were to enjoy not just peaceful but cooperative relations with the little start-up nation to its west.
Both Masri and Fayyad favor that outcome — of that I have little doubt. But with Palestinian power divided between a jihadist Hamas and a vacillating Fatah, and with Islamists who are committed to Israel’s extermination ascendant throughout much of the Middle East, I have no idea how they get there from here.
— Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on national security.
Wednesday, February 06, 2013
Why Would Any American Need an AR-15? Zetas, That’s Why
Sen. Feinstein: tell Arizonans how a seven-shot pistol can hold off 20 butchers on their land at night. They're waiting.
February 6, 2013 - 2:38 pm
The key rhetorical question that some who want to limit our Second Amendment rights, like Piers Morgan, keep asking is: “Why does any American need an AR-15?” They ask that question because they clearly cannot imagine any circumstances under which that would be necessary. Unfortunately, however, there are many Americans who live along the southwestern border of the United States who know the answer to that question.
Their answer is in part directly due to the enforcement and immigration decisions made by the very administration that is seeking to outlaw their right to own these types of weapons.
In 2010, I met former Arizona Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever. He talked about the many problems he faced in his county with illegal border crossers and drug smugglers — Cochise County is directly on the Mexican border. Dever, who was tragically killed in an auto accident in 2012, knew many of the ranchers and others who own property along the border and have been attacked, burglarized, threatened, assaulted, and murdered by the dangerous predators crossing into the United States from Mexico.
Those include Robert Krentz. Krentz transmitted a radio message to his family about an illegal alien on his 35,000-acre ranch shortly before being murdered. Police reports said officers followed the trail of evidence 20 miles south, into Mexico, leading Dever to believe the shooter was a scout for a drug smuggling organization.
The ranch, which the Krentz family started in 1907, was within the congressional district represented by former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who testified recently in favor of the so-called assault weapons ban proposed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).
This is a problem all along the Arizona border, not just in Cochise County. One rancher in Arivaca, Arizona, Jim Chilton, told NBC News on January 25 about the dangerous drug smugglers that use his land “at will.” His home has been burglarized twice, and he and his ranch hands are constantly on the lookout for armed smugglers. He told NBC:
Can you imagine riding a horse through here on your own land and running into a guy with an AK-47 and 20 or 30 guys behind him dressed in camouflage and carrying drugs?
Chilton’s neighbor David Beckham told NBC that he finally moved his family away from his ranch because of the dangerous and numerous run-ins they’ve had with Mexican smugglers. Smugglers have even fired shots at him “while he walked his land with a U.S. Border Patrol agent.”
Both Chilton and Beckham complained about the lack of border enforcement by the Obama administration. According to the story, both the ranchers and Border Patrol agents say that the “smugglers crossing the border now are more heavily armed and confrontational than in years past.”
CBS News reported on January 13 about another Arizona rancher, John Ladd, who owns a 14,000-acre ranch along the Mexican border where his family has lived for five generations. His land is constantly crossed by drug smugglers because, as Ladd says, the southern side of the border “is all controlled by the cartel now.” At night, he and his family have to lock their doors:
You got guns laying around. You got guns in the truck. You worry about your mother, your dad, your wife. You want to live like that? I’m a rancher. I don’t want to live like that.
These problems are not limited to Arizona. Texas has similar problems. The Houston Chronicle reported in January that Texas law enforcement officials say smugglers have gotten more aggressive, and “once they are apprehended, they fight back.”
Just how vicious are these smugglers? That is an easy question to answer given the many news reports that have covered the brutal kidnappings, tortures, and murders — including beheadings — perpetrated by the drug cartels that control large parts of northern Mexico and are responsible for the trafficking of drugs and humans into the United States.
Just two years ago, 72 Mexicans who were attempting to cross over into United States illegally were “lined up and executed” on a remote Mexican ranch only 90 miles from the border by the Los Zetas drug gang for refusing to work for the gang. Over the past five years, there have been close to 50,000 drug-related murders in Mexico.
The drug cartels are not only armed with automatic weapons and machine guns supplied by corrupt Mexican officials and defecting members of the Mexican military, but they were also supplied with what Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) is calling “assault weapons” and other high-capacity weapons: civilian versions of AK-47s and AR-15s, semi-automatic pistols with large magazines, and the .50-caliber rifles that are used by the U.S. military for their sniper teams.
These are the kind of weapons carried by Mexican drug smugglers who have shown no compunction whatsoever about using those weapons to kill. I doubt that an Arizona or Texas rancher out on one of his ranges who is confronted with such highly armed and dangerous smugglers would find much comfort in Vice President Joe Biden’s admonition that all they need to defend themselves is a short range, double-barrel shotgun.
When faced by a vicious member of a murderous Mexican drug cartel carrying a semi-automatic pistol with a high-capacity magazine, I doubt they would be happy to only be carrying a pistol limited to the seven rounds allowed by New York’s new law, because the government believes no American needs a high-capacity magazine.
In fact, a high-capacity magazine and an AR-15 might be the only thing standing between a rancher and his family and being assaulted or murdered by those who are crossing our border illegally. This problem has been exacerbated by the unwillingness of this administration to fully police our border, to stop illegal immigration, or to clean up the mess they made with the most reckless law enforcement operation in the history of the Justice Department, Operation Fast and Furious.
Somehow, I doubt that Sen. Feinstein, who wants to ban these types of weapons, will soon hold a field hearing in Cochise County.
Israel and the Ever-Elusive Muslim Unity
Posted By Robert Spencer On February 6, 2013 @ 12:55 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 7 Comments
http://frontpagemag.com
It was a momentous occasion: the first visit to Egypt by a President of Iran since the founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in Egypt Tuesday to an enthusiastic welcome from Egypt’s President Mohammed Morsi and top Egyptian officials. Yet underneath the kisses and expressions of mutual regard, the visit revealed yet again how deep the divisions are in the Islamic world – and why Sunnis and Shi’ites may only be able to unite on the basis of their mutual hatred of Israel.
Then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said of the Islamic world in January 2007:
“There’s still a tendency to see these things in Sunni-Shia terms. But the Middle East is going to have to overcome that.” Rice’s statement, of course, was staggeringly naïve, and manifested a deep ignorance of the region, as well as of Islam. No one should be surprised that six years later, Sunnis and Shias still haven’t “overcome” their tendency to “see these things in Sunni-Shia terms,” and chances are that in six hundred more years, they still will not have done so, for the Sunni-Shi’ite divide goes back to the earliest days of Islam, and yet in fourteen hundred years has not burnt itself out, but still rages today as fiercely as ever.
And so it was that as Sunnis and Shias war against each other in Iraq and Pakistan, the Shi’ite President of Iran touched down in Sunni Cairo and was almost immediately scolded by Ahmed al-Tayeb, the Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar University, the foremost institution in Sunni Islam, for Iran’s meddling in Bahrain. Almost seventy percent of Bahrainis are Shias, but the king and the ruling elites are Sunnis, and in Bahrain’s version of the “Arab Spring,” the “pro-democracy” protesters were Shias who wanted either closer ties with Iran or for Bahrain to be annexed outright by the Islamic Republic, in line with Iran’s claim that it is actually an Iranian province.
But al-Tayeb told Ahmadinejad to back off, and to recognize that Bahrain was a “sisterly Arab nation” – i.e., within the Sunni Arab, not the Shi’ite Persian domain. And according to a senior al-Azhar cleric, Hassan al-Shafai, al-Tayeb and Ahmadinejad quickly began squabbling about Sunni-Shi’ite theological disagreements. His assessment of the meeting was far from positive: “There ensued some misunderstandings on certain issues that could have an effect on the cultural, political and social climate of both countries. The issues were such that the grand sheikh saw that the meeting … did not serve the desired purpose.”
However much he got mired in theological issues with al-Tayeb, however, Ahmadinejad still had another hope for Islamic unity: mutual hatred of Israel. “The political geography of the region will change,” he asserted, “if Iran and Egypt take a unified position on the Palestinian question.” He expressed the hope that the people of Gaza would allow him to pay them a visit: “If they allow it, I would go to Gaza to visit the people.”
Why wouldn’t they? Iran already crosses the Sunni-Shi’ite divide to fund Hamas; billboards in Gaza proclaim: “Thanks and gratitude to Iran.” The Sunni-Shia split, according to Islamic tradition, goes all the way back to the death of Muhammad. According to the Sunnis, he left no instructions as to who should succeed him. According to the Shia, he chose his son-in-law, Ali ibn Abi Talib, who was then passed over three times as caliph, leader of the Muslim community, until finally he got the job, only to be assassinated five years later. When Ali’s son Hussein was killed at the battle of Karbala in 680, the Sunni-Shi’ite split became definitive, with both sides considering the other heretics and violence remaining a constant of their interaction.
A few examples: In the year 754, plans to enthrone the Shi’ite Jafar As-Siddiq as caliph, thereby ending the split, were disrupted when a Sunni, al-Mansur, murdered Jafar and took the caliphate himself. In 972, Shi’ite Fatimids conquered Sunni Egypt, and continued fighting Sunnis until they ruled much of North Africa and the Middle East. In the 1040s, the Sunni Zirid revolt against Shia rule began in North. In 1169 the Sunnis Nuraddin and Saladin seized Egypt, finally ending Shi’ite Fatimid rule. But the Shias saw victory in Persia in the early 1500s, when they violently suppressed Sunni religious authorities and took control of the country. In 1514 and again in 1623, war broke out between the Sunni Ottoman Turks and the Shi’ite Persian Safavids. The Safavids captured Baghdad in 1624; the Ottomans recaptured it in 1638.
And so on and on, until the 1980s, when Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-controlled Iraq fought a protracted war against the Iranian Shi’ite mullahcracy, and our own day, when there is ongoing violence between Sunnis and Shia in Pakistan, Iraq and elsewhere.
But there are always those whom the Qur’an designates the worst enemies of the Muslims: the Jews (cf. Qur’an 5:82). Morsi’s remarks about Jews being “descendants of apes and pigs” (a Qur’anic reference, cf. 2:63-65; 5:59-60; and 7:166) has gotten widespread attention recently, and a rebuke even from the Obama White House, which has otherwise been warmly supportive of the Morsi regime, even as it becomes ever more brutal toward its opponents and ever more ruthless in its determination to hold absolute power.
In Iran, however, Morsi’s words would not have caused, and did not cause, any concern. Ahmadinejad reads the same (or nearly the same) Qur’an that Morsi does, and he no doubt also thinks that the Jews in Israel (and elsewhere) are the descendants of apes and pigs. Clearly Morsi, who said in the same 2010 remarks that there should be “no negotiations” with the Zionist entity, is only held back from tearing up the Camp David Accords and going to war with Israel by the prospect of losing American aid. Iran, meanwhile, has been busy forging trade agreements with states that don’t care about the U.S. sanctions (including our “ally” Turkey); thus one focus of Ahmadinejad’s visit may have been talks about how to shore up the Egyptian economy so that it could survive without American aid, and Egypt would be free to join Iran in a renewed jihad against Israel.
The necessity for that jihad is one thing they can agree on.
Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.
Then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said of the Islamic world in January 2007:
“There’s still a tendency to see these things in Sunni-Shia terms. But the Middle East is going to have to overcome that.” Rice’s statement, of course, was staggeringly naïve, and manifested a deep ignorance of the region, as well as of Islam. No one should be surprised that six years later, Sunnis and Shias still haven’t “overcome” their tendency to “see these things in Sunni-Shia terms,” and chances are that in six hundred more years, they still will not have done so, for the Sunni-Shi’ite divide goes back to the earliest days of Islam, and yet in fourteen hundred years has not burnt itself out, but still rages today as fiercely as ever.
And so it was that as Sunnis and Shias war against each other in Iraq and Pakistan, the Shi’ite President of Iran touched down in Sunni Cairo and was almost immediately scolded by Ahmed al-Tayeb, the Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar University, the foremost institution in Sunni Islam, for Iran’s meddling in Bahrain. Almost seventy percent of Bahrainis are Shias, but the king and the ruling elites are Sunnis, and in Bahrain’s version of the “Arab Spring,” the “pro-democracy” protesters were Shias who wanted either closer ties with Iran or for Bahrain to be annexed outright by the Islamic Republic, in line with Iran’s claim that it is actually an Iranian province.
But al-Tayeb told Ahmadinejad to back off, and to recognize that Bahrain was a “sisterly Arab nation” – i.e., within the Sunni Arab, not the Shi’ite Persian domain. And according to a senior al-Azhar cleric, Hassan al-Shafai, al-Tayeb and Ahmadinejad quickly began squabbling about Sunni-Shi’ite theological disagreements. His assessment of the meeting was far from positive: “There ensued some misunderstandings on certain issues that could have an effect on the cultural, political and social climate of both countries. The issues were such that the grand sheikh saw that the meeting … did not serve the desired purpose.”
However much he got mired in theological issues with al-Tayeb, however, Ahmadinejad still had another hope for Islamic unity: mutual hatred of Israel. “The political geography of the region will change,” he asserted, “if Iran and Egypt take a unified position on the Palestinian question.” He expressed the hope that the people of Gaza would allow him to pay them a visit: “If they allow it, I would go to Gaza to visit the people.”
Why wouldn’t they? Iran already crosses the Sunni-Shi’ite divide to fund Hamas; billboards in Gaza proclaim: “Thanks and gratitude to Iran.” The Sunni-Shia split, according to Islamic tradition, goes all the way back to the death of Muhammad. According to the Sunnis, he left no instructions as to who should succeed him. According to the Shia, he chose his son-in-law, Ali ibn Abi Talib, who was then passed over three times as caliph, leader of the Muslim community, until finally he got the job, only to be assassinated five years later. When Ali’s son Hussein was killed at the battle of Karbala in 680, the Sunni-Shi’ite split became definitive, with both sides considering the other heretics and violence remaining a constant of their interaction.
A few examples: In the year 754, plans to enthrone the Shi’ite Jafar As-Siddiq as caliph, thereby ending the split, were disrupted when a Sunni, al-Mansur, murdered Jafar and took the caliphate himself. In 972, Shi’ite Fatimids conquered Sunni Egypt, and continued fighting Sunnis until they ruled much of North Africa and the Middle East. In the 1040s, the Sunni Zirid revolt against Shia rule began in North. In 1169 the Sunnis Nuraddin and Saladin seized Egypt, finally ending Shi’ite Fatimid rule. But the Shias saw victory in Persia in the early 1500s, when they violently suppressed Sunni religious authorities and took control of the country. In 1514 and again in 1623, war broke out between the Sunni Ottoman Turks and the Shi’ite Persian Safavids. The Safavids captured Baghdad in 1624; the Ottomans recaptured it in 1638.
And so on and on, until the 1980s, when Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-controlled Iraq fought a protracted war against the Iranian Shi’ite mullahcracy, and our own day, when there is ongoing violence between Sunnis and Shia in Pakistan, Iraq and elsewhere.
But there are always those whom the Qur’an designates the worst enemies of the Muslims: the Jews (cf. Qur’an 5:82). Morsi’s remarks about Jews being “descendants of apes and pigs” (a Qur’anic reference, cf. 2:63-65; 5:59-60; and 7:166) has gotten widespread attention recently, and a rebuke even from the Obama White House, which has otherwise been warmly supportive of the Morsi regime, even as it becomes ever more brutal toward its opponents and ever more ruthless in its determination to hold absolute power.
In Iran, however, Morsi’s words would not have caused, and did not cause, any concern. Ahmadinejad reads the same (or nearly the same) Qur’an that Morsi does, and he no doubt also thinks that the Jews in Israel (and elsewhere) are the descendants of apes and pigs. Clearly Morsi, who said in the same 2010 remarks that there should be “no negotiations” with the Zionist entity, is only held back from tearing up the Camp David Accords and going to war with Israel by the prospect of losing American aid. Iran, meanwhile, has been busy forging trade agreements with states that don’t care about the U.S. sanctions (including our “ally” Turkey); thus one focus of Ahmadinejad’s visit may have been talks about how to shore up the Egyptian economy so that it could survive without American aid, and Egypt would be free to join Iran in a renewed jihad against Israel.
The necessity for that jihad is one thing they can agree on.
Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.
Calling out Ray Lewis on CBS interview
Ray Lewis once again dances around issue of Super Bowl XXXIV murders
Posted by Mike Florio on February 4, 2013, 9:46 PM EST
Pro Football Talk
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com
When attending the Super Bowl, it’s difficult to watch much/any of the pregame coverage.
There’s a specific portion of the Super Bowl XLVII pregame coverage that was difficult to watch for other reasons.
As the network televising the game, CBS had an opportunity to conduct a one-on-one interview of Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis. And the assignment predictably went to Shannon Sharpe. Not only was Sharpe a former teammate of Ray’s in Baltimore, but Sharpe also was the teammate who loudly defended Lewis in the days preceding the Super Bowl they won together, a year after Lewis was accused of double murder following Super Bowl XXXIV in Atlanta.
CBS knew that the network would be killed (no pun intended) if Sharpe avoided the murder case entirely. So Sharpe raised it, but he also slow-pitched a softball question on the subject.
Said Sharpe, “A couple of weeks ago, the family of the incident in 2000 — and I’m paraphrasing — but it goes something like this: ‘While Ray Lewis is being celebrated by millions, two men tragically and brutally died in Atlanta. Ray Lewis knows more than Ray Lewis ever shared.’”
The obvious question should have been, “Ray, what happened that night?” But that’s where Sharpe flipped an underhand eephus to Ray. Instead of being direct on the still-unknown issue of what transpired, Sharpe gave Lewis an open-ended question that allowed the subject of the interview to dictate its content.
“What would you like to say to the families?” Sharpe asked.
“It’s simple, you know,” Lewis said. “God has never made a mistake. That’s just who He is, you see? And if our system — this is the sad thing about our system — if our system took the time to really investigate what happened 13 years ago, maybe they would have got to the bottom-line truth. But the saddest thing ever was that a man looked me in my face and told me, ‘We know you didn’t do this, but you’re going down for it anyway.’” (Actually, something much closer to “the saddest thing ever” is the two dead guys.)
“To the family, if you knew — if you really knew — the way God works, He don’t use people who commits anything like that for His glory,” Lewis said. “No way. It’s the total opposite.”
Whoa. Time out. Is Lewis saying that the fact that he went on to win a pair of Super Bowls and to become a great football player means he necessarily didn’t do anything wrong? That bad men never rise to positions of prominence and public praise?
Ray needs to read a few history books. Or maybe just one. For centuries, murderers and maniacs have become kings and emperors. They have enjoyed plenty of glory, to the detriment of the objectives of God.
Ray also incorrectly assumes that glory bestowed by man equates to true glory from God. Time and again, I wrestle with the notion that God cares about the outcome of a football game. Maybe I’m too much of a cynic.
Or maybe I’m simply on constant watch for false prophets while covering a sport that could easily give rise to them.
Consider Matthew 7:20-23. “[Y]ou will know the false prophets by what they do. Not everyone who calls me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only those who do what my Father in heaven wants them to do. When the Judgment Day comes, many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord! In your name we spoke God’s message, by your name we drove out many demons and performed many miracles!’ Then I will say to them, ‘I never knew you. Get away from me, you wicked people!’”
I’m not saying Ray is a false prophet. I’m just saying that his suggestion that success in football constitutes proof of his innocence is one of the absolute strangest things I’ve ever heard in my entire life.
Sharpe then pointed out that Lewis paid a financial settlement to both families.
“The one thing that I said that, because my name was used the wrong way, money is the last thing I’m worrying about,” Lewis said. “But if money will help those kids out — and not just those kids — any kid that I can help, any family that I can support, I support. So don’t just take that family and say, ‘I gave money to that family.’ Because I’ve gave money to thousands of families, time and time again, just to find a different way to help someone through a rough time.”
Ray’s words do what the lawyers in the crowd would call “opening the door.” In all fairness, he should now authorize the release of every pleading, order, deposition transcript, and other document created via the litigation that resulted in what he’s now describing as an act of charity. If he paid those families simply out of a sense of altruism that has prompted him to help “thousands” of other families, why did he have to be sued and questioned under oath and pursued through a court process before he agreed to pay?
And how much did he pay?
And what did he say under oath when asked the question his friend and former teammate failed to pose: “Ray, what happened that night?”
Ray, what happened that night?
To his credit, Boomer Esiason of CBS expressed instant skepticism after the interview concluded. “It’s a complex legacy that we’re talking about here,” Boomer said. “This is a guy that was involved –”
“How’s it complex?” Sharpe said, interrupting Esiason with a clearly defensive tone.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” Boomer said. “Because he was involved in a double murder. And I’m not so sure that he gave us all the answer that we were looking for. He knows what went on there. And he can obviously just come out and say it. He doesn’t want to say it. He paid off the families. I get all that. That’s fine. But that doesn’t take away from who he is as a football player. And I appreciate you going down there and asking him that direct question. I’m not so sure I buy the answer.”
We don’t buy it, either. But the question wasn’t nearly as direct as it should have been.
Ray, what happened that night?
Now that football season is over, we’ve got plenty of time to wait for an answer.
New Robert Spencer book due March 25
Not Peace But A Sword: New Robert Spencer book coming March 25
My twelfth book, Not Peace But A Sword: The Great Chasm Between Christianity and Islam, will be published on March 25 by Catholic Answers. It is especially timely in light of the decision, under media and Islamic supremacist pressure, of the Roman Catholic bishop of Worcester, Massachusetts to drop me from speaking at a conference there. This is because the book explores the similarities and differences between Christianity and Islam, the nature of the dialogue that has gone on between the two so far, and the prospects of such dialogue in the future. What happened to me in Worcester unfolded rather like a scripted illustration of what I explain in the book.
Here are some advance reviews:
"Dialogue with Islam may be the order of the day, but what exactly should we talk about? Before we can discuss what we, as Catholics, might have in common with Muslims, we had better be aware of the defining differences as they are understood by Muslims themselves. This is the invaluable service Spencer provides in this book, which directs our attention to what the Islamic revelational texts actually say and how they are understood by the majority of Muslims today. With his usual clarity and insight, Spencer gets to the essence of the problems that anyone who thinks we can talk our way out of the challenge Islam presents must face. Catholics need to know this material." -- Robert Reilly, author of The Closing of the Muslim Mind
"Robert Spencer is a careful observer of Islam and a courageous voice on behalf of Christians. In his new book, Not Peace But a Sword, he shows Catholics how to take Islam seriously without falling into alarmism, hatred, or bigotry. He provides a needed corrective to the misinformation and disinformation propagated by so many media today." -- Scott Hahn, author of The Lamb's Supper, Understanding the Scripturesand many other books
"In Not Peace but a Sword, Robert Spencer carefully examines the multifaceted challenge posed to Christianity by an increasingly militant Islam. His case is calm, lucid, accurate, and uncompromising in its presentation of the facts of history. He provides an honest and unflinching account of the roots of Christian/Muslim tensions, a robust defense of Jesus Christ and Christianity in response to Muslim claims, and a sobering wake-up call to all Christians everywhere that objects in the mirror are closer (much closer) than they appear." -- Patrick Madrid, author of Envoy for Christ: 25 Years as a Catholic Apologist and host of the "Right Here, Right Now" radio show
"As Robert Spencer clearly shows in this much-needed book, a great many Catholics know only a Disneyfied version of Islam. While Christians in North Africa and the Middle East are being exterminated in the name of Islam, Catholics in the West still cling to the dangerous illusion that Muslims and Christians share much in common. But beneath the surface similarities, as Spencer ably demonstrates, lies a deep and possibly unbridgeable gulf. This is must reading not only for Catholics but for all Christians." -- William Kilpatrick, author of Christianity, Islam, and Atheism: The Struggle for the Soul of the West
Tuesday, February 05, 2013
Mickelson was right on taxes
Pro golfer Phil Mickelson has gotten a lot of flak for his recent comments about threatening to make "drastic changes" in his life due to state and federal tax increases. Never mind that he later backed off, saying he should have kept his thoughts to himself and apologized to those he "upset or insulted."
Mickelson was telling the truth. If there's anything that should upset or insult Americans, it's just how much of their money the government takes. Mickelson estimates that more than 60% of his earnings are snatched in federal and state taxes (he lives in California). Should a private citizen, no matter how successful, really owe the government more than half of what he or she makes? Intuitively, this cannot make sense to anyone who believes in the principles of hard work and personal responsibility.
But Mickelson's comments reveal something far more profound. He was talking about an increasingly complex tax code that also reserves special punishment for small businesses, working families and even the little guys. The rich, like Mickelson, can hire high-priced lawyers and accountants to compute their taxes and take advantage of loopholes. Or, they can pick up and move. The middle class is not quite so fortunate; most cannot simply pick up and move to a better economic climate.
A high income-tax state like California is not just driving away successful men and women like Mickelson, but driving businesses out, too. This ultimately results in even less tax revenue, which sinks California's economy even more.
Massive state government spending leads to higher taxes. More taxes lead to less government revenue because overtaxed businesses and higher income individuals depart for more business-friendly states. This vicious cycle hurts average citizens and the most vulnerable alike.
From the payroll tax hike surprise that most workers found in their first paycheck of 2013 to Medicare tax increases to raising top tax rates to nearly 40%, Washington has made life more difficult for most Americans. When companies raise prices to pass the cost of the corporate income tax -- now the highest in the developed world -- on to consumers, these "hidden taxes" hit fixed-income families the hardest.
I have never seen it quite so bad for job creators. Today, many are being punished for just doing business. Confiscatory taxes. Suffocating regulations. Stifling energy costs. There is only one way to create the jobs we need: we must put our fiscal house in order. Our nation must lower tax rates to be more competitive and to incentivize businesses to invest and job creators to grow their businesses. Pro-growth policies will lead to more businesses and more jobs; these jobs will create more taxpayers and government revenue.
After the unfair treatment Mickelson received from partisans and the press, we won't likely hear from him again soon on economic policy. That's unfortunate, because his frank talk on taxation is the kind of discussion America needs.
Fran Tarkenton is founder and CEO of OneMoreCustomer.com, NFL Hall of Fame quarterback, and member of the Job Creators Alliance.
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from outside writers, including our Board of Contributors.
from outside writers, including our Board of Contributors.
Obama, Gun Violence & Fort Hood
Why in his litany of recent massacres does he continue to omit the shootings at Fort Hood?
Since the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14, 2012, President Obama has made eight public statements regarding gun violence. His most recent remarks took place on Monday in Minneapolis.
In those remarks, President Obama has not only deplored the gun violence that took place at Sandy Hook but the gun violence that has taken place over the past couple of years in Tucson, Aurora, Colorado and Oak Creek, Wisconsin. He has also made reference to gun violence in cities such as Chicago and Philadelphia.
Consider these remarks made by President Obama on January 16, 2013, which are fairly representative of his statements over the past few weeks:
The right to worship freely and safely, that right was denied to Sikhs in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. The right to assemble peaceably, that right was denied shoppers in Clackamas, Oregon, and moviegoers in Aurora, Colorado. That most fundamental set of rights to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness — fundamental rights that were denied to college students at Virginia Tech, and high school students at Columbine, and elementary school students in Newtown, and kids on street corners in Chicago on too frequent a basis to tolerate, and all the families who’ve never imagined that they’d lose a loved one to a bullet — those rights are at stake. We’re responsible.
Well, what about the right of our military personnel to carry out their oath to defend our Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic? Surely that was compromised on November 5, 2009, when Nidal Malik Hasan shot and killed a dozen military personnel, one civilian and one unborn child at Fort Hood. Surely these 14 people were also victims of gun violence.
And yet President Obama has not once seen fit to mention those who died at Fort Hood during any of his public remarks on gun violence over the past seven and a half weeks.
Now I am not the first person to mention Obama’s omission. Following the vigil in Newtown in which Obama spoke of Tucson, Aurora and Oak Creek, Mark Levin pointedly asked, “What happened to Fort Hood? How come he didn’t mention Fort Hood?”
But the fact that Obama still hasn’t uttered a word about Fort Hood in this entire discussion about gun violence nearly two months after the fact, it is a question worth asking once more.
From where I sit, there are two reasons that Fort Hood does not traverse President Obama’s lips and both of them open a can of worms for the White House.
The first reason is that, to this very day, the Obama Administration does not recognize the massacre at Fort Hood for what it was — a terrorist attack. They deemed it an act of “workplace violence” despite the fact that Hasan screamed “Allahu Akbar” as he slaughtered his fellow soldiers. They deemed it an act of “workplace violence” though he carried business cards bearing the inscription, “S of A — Soldier of Allah.” They deemed it an act of “workplace violence” despite his contact with al Qaeda in Yemen’s representative Anwar al-Awlaki; a man the Obama Administration saw fit to kill with a drone nearly two years after the Fort Hood massacre.
If Fort Hood was an act of “workplace violence,” then the attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 was the biggest act of workplace violence in American history. Yet to characterize 9/11 as an act of “workplace violence” is to utterly miss the point. So long as Obama insists that the Fort Hood massacre was nothing more than an act of “workplace violence,” he sullies the memory of those who died on November 5, 2009.
Nevertheless, it is important to remember that the death toll at Fort Hood could have been much, much higher if not for two Killeen police officers who shot and paralyzed Hasan. This brings me to the second reason Obama does not mention Fort Hood. Unlike Tucson, Aurora, Oak Creek, and Newtown, the assailant was subdued by people carrying guns. Although police officers were responsible for stopping Hasan, Obama sees guns as the problem, not part of the solution. Thus it isn’t in his interest to mention Fort Hood when discussing gun violence.
If President Obama really wants to have an honest national conversation about gun violence, it would behoove him not to sweep the Fort Hood massacre under the rug. But since when do demagogues want an honest conversation about anything, especially where it concerns our liberties?
New York's 'SAFE' Act: The 'Rape' of the Second Amendment
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February 5, 2013
New York's 'SAFE' Act: The 'Rape' of the Second Amendment
By Michael Filozof
In January, the New York State Legislature passed the Orwellian-sounding "SAFE" (Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement) Act. The act was debated in closed session without committee hearings, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed it into law within an hour of its passage -- after waiving the required three-day public comment period. Cuomo bragged that New York now has the "toughest assault weapons ban" in the country but claimed that the law respects the Second Amendment and preserves the rights of "hunters and sportsmen." The former is true; the latter is a bald-faced lie. Even if you do not live in New York, you should be very worried, because the SAFE Act is a harbinger of what Democrats in the federal government will do nationwide if they can.
The SAFE Act is far worse than you might imagine. Harold "Budd" Schroeder, member of the NRA Board of Directors from New York, described the law as "the rape of our gun rights." That is no exaggeration. The law is as harsh as (or harsher than) the gun laws of some European nations that do not have a Bill or Rights or a Second Amendment.
The most widely reported provision of the law is the total ban on the sale of military-style rifles classified as "assault weapons," effective Jan. 15. The provision forever prohibits anyone other than a law enforcement agency from acquiring such weapons, including the popular hunting and target variants of the AR-15 rifle. Current owners of such rifles must register them with the state by 2014, and the registration must be renewed every five years. This gives the state a list of persons from which to confiscate them in the future, and the five-year renewal provision gives the state an excuse to find ways to deny ownership once every five years. Current owners of such rifles may never sell them to another New York State resident in the future.
Shockingly enough, in many ways the "assault weapons ban" is actually one of the statute's lesser infringements on the Second Amendment. The statute criminalizes, potentially criminalizes, or places under state surveillance even the most innocuous, banal, and pedestrian forms of gun ownership, and it restricts the right of self-defense.
The new law prohibits the sale of any quantity of ammunition by anyone other than a licensed dealer and requires that such dealer perform a criminal background check on the purchaser and forward the purchaser's name, address, age, and occupation, and the quantity, caliber, and make of the ammunition, to a State Police database. Thus, the ammunition database creates a de facto universal long gun registry. A hunter who purchases a box of five 12-gauge deer slugs may think that his purchase is innocent enough; however, it will have the effect of informing the State Police that he owns a 12-gauge shotgun, enabling them to confiscate it in the future if they so choose.
The purchase of large quantities of ammunition will likely set off alarm bells at State Police headquarters. But what is truly sinister about the ammunition registry is that no one actually knows "how much" will be deemed "too much" -- because the law does not prohibit the purchase or ownership of any specific quantity of ammunition. Thus, one may become the target of a police investigation for engaging in a perfectly legal activity. Since many gun owners have vowed to defy the "assault weapons" registration, it is highly likely that the State Police will use the ammunition database as a means to discover and confiscate unregistered rifles.
The ammunition registration is crucial to the law's confiscation scheme. The law affirmatively requires that a person's firearms must be confiscated if any order of protection is filed against him -- no matter how bogus the complaint may be. It also requires that a "mental health professional" (including a physician) who believes that an individual is a danger to himself or others must report his diagnosis to the police for purposes of firearm confiscation. Such a diagnosis is highly subjective and could be easily politicized. (For instance, in the 1964 presidential campaign, a group of psychiatrists "diagnosed" conservative Sen. Barry Goldwater as insane.) But the law exempts such "professionals" from civil liability; thus, any "mental health professional" who believes that all gun owners are "nuts" could initiate the confiscation of a person's firearms, and the gun owner is forbidden to file a civil suit to challenge the "diagnosis."
The SAFE Act also severely infringes on the right of self-defense from criminal predation. Although Article 35 of New York Penal law allows the use of deadly force in the event of a home invasion, the SAFE Act restricts the ammunition capacity of all centerfire guns to seven rounds. If you possess a magazine loaded with more than seven rounds in your own home, you are guilty of a criminal offense.
So suppose a criminal with a stolen handgun and an illegal 15-round magazine invades your home. If you shoot at him with more than eight rounds (seven plus one in the chamber), you will be criminally charged, and your magazine (and possibly your firearm) will be confiscated and destroyed without compensation, because you have now used it in the commission of a crime. Beyond that, since a handgun permit in New York is not merely a permit to carry, but a permit to possess, after you have been charged with the crime of shooting at the home invader with a high-capacity magazine, your permit will be revoked, and all of your handguns will be confiscated.
The seven-round magazine limit effectively bans or severely restricts the use of perhaps 75% of the firearms designed in the past 100 years. Seven-round magazines simply do not exist for common firearms such as the 13-shot Browning Hi-Power pistol, first manufactured in 1935, or the 10-shot Ruger 10/22 rifle, five million of which have been manufactured since the 1960s. The M-1 "Garand" rifle, adopted by the U.S. Army in 1936, was designed exclusively to use an eight-round "clip," which will now be considered an illegal "high capacity ammunition feeding device." Although the Act "grandfathers" existing ten-round magazines, it forbids owners to put more than seven rounds in them, and it requires lawful owners of magazines capable of holding more than ten rounds to sell them out of state, surrender them, or destroy them. This is clearly an unconstitutional deprivation of private property, in violation of the Fifth Amendment.
The law also prohibits the private "sale" or "exchange" of any firearm to any person unless a licensed dealer performs the "sale" and a background check. The politically correct law exempts parents, spouses, children, stepchildren and "domestic partners." Thus, the divorced Cuomo may legally give his live-in girlfriend Sandra Lee a firearm without a dealer transfer and background check, but if a serial rapist and murderer (such as the notorious "Bike Path Rapist" Altemio Sanchez , who terrorized women for three decades while the cops put the wrong guy in prison) is on the loose, you may not give a shotgun to your sister for self-protection. You may give your live-in gay lover a firearm, but you may not give your brother or nephew a .22 rifle on Christmas Eve. The law does not clarify how long someone must be in possession of a firearm before such possession is understood to be an "exchange"; thus, it is possible that lending a rifle to your brother-in-law for deer season without a dealer transfer and a background check could be construed as an illegal "exchange." You would then be a criminal, and the gun used in the "crime" could be confiscated and destroyed.
Finally, the SAFE Act requires that gun owners report any "loss or theft" of a firearm or ammunition to the police within 24 hours. Failure to do so is a criminal offense. Read literally, a deer hunter in Saranac Lake who drops a single 12-gauge slug in the snow and cannot find it is a criminal unless he reports the loss to the police.
The New York SAFE Act is one of the most breathtakingly brazen assaults on the Constitution and on individual liberty in the history of the United States. Cuomo has gleefully thumbed his nose at the Supreme Court's Heller and McDonald decisions in 2008 and 2010 affirming the right to keep and bear arms. The intent of the law is to suppress and criminalize the common use of firearms, including guns not defined as "assault weapons."
The SAFE Act must be resisted on all levels. I urge firearm manufacturers, like Remington and Kimber, to leave New York State as soon as possible and stop paying taxes to a government that seeks to suppress the right to own their products. Firearms wholesalers and police supply outfits should boycott New York State law enforcement agencies. Gun manufacturers should refuse sales and warranty service to police agencies in the state. I strongly counsel residents of other states who value liberty to avoid New York at all costs. Avoid tourist trips to New York City; the law has made a mockery of the Statue of "Liberty." Residents of other states should avoid moving to New York under all but the most dire circumstances, and New York residents should begin making plans to leave as soon as possible.
New York has the highest taxes in the nation. Twenty-five percent of the population is on Medicaid. It has the highest rate of union membership in the nation. It is ranked as the least "business-friendly" state in the country. There is nothing to be gained in New York (unless you are on welfare). Nothing.
Above all else, remember that even if you do not live in New York, you cannot be complacent. The gun-banners are coming after you next.
The SAFE Act is far worse than you might imagine. Harold "Budd" Schroeder, member of the NRA Board of Directors from New York, described the law as "the rape of our gun rights." That is no exaggeration. The law is as harsh as (or harsher than) the gun laws of some European nations that do not have a Bill or Rights or a Second Amendment.
The most widely reported provision of the law is the total ban on the sale of military-style rifles classified as "assault weapons," effective Jan. 15. The provision forever prohibits anyone other than a law enforcement agency from acquiring such weapons, including the popular hunting and target variants of the AR-15 rifle. Current owners of such rifles must register them with the state by 2014, and the registration must be renewed every five years. This gives the state a list of persons from which to confiscate them in the future, and the five-year renewal provision gives the state an excuse to find ways to deny ownership once every five years. Current owners of such rifles may never sell them to another New York State resident in the future.
Shockingly enough, in many ways the "assault weapons ban" is actually one of the statute's lesser infringements on the Second Amendment. The statute criminalizes, potentially criminalizes, or places under state surveillance even the most innocuous, banal, and pedestrian forms of gun ownership, and it restricts the right of self-defense.
The new law prohibits the sale of any quantity of ammunition by anyone other than a licensed dealer and requires that such dealer perform a criminal background check on the purchaser and forward the purchaser's name, address, age, and occupation, and the quantity, caliber, and make of the ammunition, to a State Police database. Thus, the ammunition database creates a de facto universal long gun registry. A hunter who purchases a box of five 12-gauge deer slugs may think that his purchase is innocent enough; however, it will have the effect of informing the State Police that he owns a 12-gauge shotgun, enabling them to confiscate it in the future if they so choose.
The purchase of large quantities of ammunition will likely set off alarm bells at State Police headquarters. But what is truly sinister about the ammunition registry is that no one actually knows "how much" will be deemed "too much" -- because the law does not prohibit the purchase or ownership of any specific quantity of ammunition. Thus, one may become the target of a police investigation for engaging in a perfectly legal activity. Since many gun owners have vowed to defy the "assault weapons" registration, it is highly likely that the State Police will use the ammunition database as a means to discover and confiscate unregistered rifles.
The ammunition registration is crucial to the law's confiscation scheme. The law affirmatively requires that a person's firearms must be confiscated if any order of protection is filed against him -- no matter how bogus the complaint may be. It also requires that a "mental health professional" (including a physician) who believes that an individual is a danger to himself or others must report his diagnosis to the police for purposes of firearm confiscation. Such a diagnosis is highly subjective and could be easily politicized. (For instance, in the 1964 presidential campaign, a group of psychiatrists "diagnosed" conservative Sen. Barry Goldwater as insane.) But the law exempts such "professionals" from civil liability; thus, any "mental health professional" who believes that all gun owners are "nuts" could initiate the confiscation of a person's firearms, and the gun owner is forbidden to file a civil suit to challenge the "diagnosis."
The SAFE Act also severely infringes on the right of self-defense from criminal predation. Although Article 35 of New York Penal law allows the use of deadly force in the event of a home invasion, the SAFE Act restricts the ammunition capacity of all centerfire guns to seven rounds. If you possess a magazine loaded with more than seven rounds in your own home, you are guilty of a criminal offense.
So suppose a criminal with a stolen handgun and an illegal 15-round magazine invades your home. If you shoot at him with more than eight rounds (seven plus one in the chamber), you will be criminally charged, and your magazine (and possibly your firearm) will be confiscated and destroyed without compensation, because you have now used it in the commission of a crime. Beyond that, since a handgun permit in New York is not merely a permit to carry, but a permit to possess, after you have been charged with the crime of shooting at the home invader with a high-capacity magazine, your permit will be revoked, and all of your handguns will be confiscated.
The seven-round magazine limit effectively bans or severely restricts the use of perhaps 75% of the firearms designed in the past 100 years. Seven-round magazines simply do not exist for common firearms such as the 13-shot Browning Hi-Power pistol, first manufactured in 1935, or the 10-shot Ruger 10/22 rifle, five million of which have been manufactured since the 1960s. The M-1 "Garand" rifle, adopted by the U.S. Army in 1936, was designed exclusively to use an eight-round "clip," which will now be considered an illegal "high capacity ammunition feeding device." Although the Act "grandfathers" existing ten-round magazines, it forbids owners to put more than seven rounds in them, and it requires lawful owners of magazines capable of holding more than ten rounds to sell them out of state, surrender them, or destroy them. This is clearly an unconstitutional deprivation of private property, in violation of the Fifth Amendment.
The law also prohibits the private "sale" or "exchange" of any firearm to any person unless a licensed dealer performs the "sale" and a background check. The politically correct law exempts parents, spouses, children, stepchildren and "domestic partners." Thus, the divorced Cuomo may legally give his live-in girlfriend Sandra Lee a firearm without a dealer transfer and background check, but if a serial rapist and murderer (such as the notorious "Bike Path Rapist" Altemio Sanchez , who terrorized women for three decades while the cops put the wrong guy in prison) is on the loose, you may not give a shotgun to your sister for self-protection. You may give your live-in gay lover a firearm, but you may not give your brother or nephew a .22 rifle on Christmas Eve. The law does not clarify how long someone must be in possession of a firearm before such possession is understood to be an "exchange"; thus, it is possible that lending a rifle to your brother-in-law for deer season without a dealer transfer and a background check could be construed as an illegal "exchange." You would then be a criminal, and the gun used in the "crime" could be confiscated and destroyed.
Finally, the SAFE Act requires that gun owners report any "loss or theft" of a firearm or ammunition to the police within 24 hours. Failure to do so is a criminal offense. Read literally, a deer hunter in Saranac Lake who drops a single 12-gauge slug in the snow and cannot find it is a criminal unless he reports the loss to the police.
The New York SAFE Act is one of the most breathtakingly brazen assaults on the Constitution and on individual liberty in the history of the United States. Cuomo has gleefully thumbed his nose at the Supreme Court's Heller and McDonald decisions in 2008 and 2010 affirming the right to keep and bear arms. The intent of the law is to suppress and criminalize the common use of firearms, including guns not defined as "assault weapons."
The SAFE Act must be resisted on all levels. I urge firearm manufacturers, like Remington and Kimber, to leave New York State as soon as possible and stop paying taxes to a government that seeks to suppress the right to own their products. Firearms wholesalers and police supply outfits should boycott New York State law enforcement agencies. Gun manufacturers should refuse sales and warranty service to police agencies in the state. I strongly counsel residents of other states who value liberty to avoid New York at all costs. Avoid tourist trips to New York City; the law has made a mockery of the Statue of "Liberty." Residents of other states should avoid moving to New York under all but the most dire circumstances, and New York residents should begin making plans to leave as soon as possible.
New York has the highest taxes in the nation. Twenty-five percent of the population is on Medicaid. It has the highest rate of union membership in the nation. It is ranked as the least "business-friendly" state in the country. There is nothing to be gained in New York (unless you are on welfare). Nothing.
Above all else, remember that even if you do not live in New York, you cannot be complacent. The gun-banners are coming after you next.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2013/02/new_yorks_safe_act_the_rape_of_the_second_amendment.html at February 05, 2013 - 06:55:05 AM CST
Paul Harvey's Triumph
In the four and a half hours of ceaseless spectacle that was Super Bowl XLVII — even the Roman numerals are excessive — there were only two minutes that made you stop and truly listen.
The spot stuck out for how thoroughly un–Super Bowl it was. It’s a wonder that CBS didn’t refuse to air it on grounds that it wasn’t appropriate for the occasion. It was simple. It was quiet. It was thoughtful. It was eloquent. It was everything that our celebrity-soaked pop culture, which dominates Super Bowl Sunday almost as much as football does, is not.
All the fantastic glitz and sometimes hilarious vulgarity that define the events around the Super Bowl — the halftime shows and the ads — can’t make up for a desperate poverty of expression. No one has anything to say and, in any case, wouldn’t know how to say it. Not Paul Harvey. His speech is a little gem of literary craftsmanship. It shows that words still retain the power to move us, even in a relentlessly visual age driven from distraction to distraction.
Harvey picks up the story of creation: “And on the eighth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a caretaker’ — so God made a farmer.” It goes on to describe characteristics of the dutiful farmer, punctuating each riff with the same kicker: “God said, ‘I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk the cows, work all day in the field, milk cows again, eat supper, then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board’ — so God made a farmer.”
In its pacing and its imagery, the speech is a kind of prose-poem. Delivered by Harvey, who could make a pitch for laundry detergent sound like a passage from the King James Bible, it packs great rhetorical force. Listening to it can make someone who never would want to touch cows, especially before dawn, wonder why he didn’t have the good fortune to have to milk them twice a day. In short, it is a memorably compelling performance, and without bells or whistles, let alone staging so elaborate it might challenge the logisticians who pulled off the invasion of Normandy.
That was left for Beyoncé. Someday a cultural historian will write the definitive history of the Super Bowl halftime and how it morphed from a showcase for the likes of the Grambling State University marching band to a platform for gyrating pop stars. (Michael Jackson started the trend in 1993.) Beyoncé dressed like she was headed for a shift at the local gentlemen’s club, and put on a show that was an all-out assault on the senses. She was stunning and athletic, as well as tasteless and unedifying.
The Harvey ad was schmaltzy rustic romanticism, to be sure, but it celebrated something worthy. It was uplifting rather than degrading. It spoke of selflessness and virtue in moving terms.
The farmer is patient. He is willing “to sit up all night with a newborn colt, and watch it die, then dry his eyes and say, ‘Maybe next year.’” He is ingenious. He can “shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire.” He is hard-working. He “will finish his 40-hour week by Tuesday noon and then, paining from ‘tractor back,’ will put in another 72 hours.” He is a family man. He bales “a family together with the soft, strong bonds of sharing.”
Harvey’s speech has such resonance because what he describes aren’t agrarian qualities so much as stereotypically American qualities. They represent what we want ourselves to be like — even if God didn’t make us farmers.
— Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review. He can be reached via e-mail: comments.lowry@nationalreview.com. © 2013 King Features Syndicate
Monday, February 04, 2013
Partying with SB MVP Joe Flacco means parents, pop
NEW ORLEANS -- Joe Flacco has just hit the "trifecta."
He has won the Super Bowl. He was named the MVP of a 34-31 victory vs. the San Francisco 49ers. And he has a life-changing announcement to make to his family.
It's 12:40 a.m., hours after the 47th AFC-NFC Championship game, and Joe walks into Huck Finn's on Decatur St., a three-room French Quarter sports bar tucked away from raucous Bourbon Street. Tonight the bar hosts a private party for Joe's family and friends, 60 of them flown here at Joe's expense the week of the biggest game of his life.
Wearing a long sleeve grey shirt, blue jeans and grey sneakers, Joe pushes open the door, grinning. The party cheers his arrival, and before he can hug his wife, Dana, chants of "M-V-P, M-V-P" fill the bar. Outside, Ravens fans in purple jerseys crouch and peer through the window panes as an unassuming bouncer stands guard at the door.
Joe dishes out dozens of hugs, each female guest turning their face to the chest of the 6-foot-5 quarterback from New Jersey. Joe takes pictures too, and signs autographs for children who bring footballs and jerseys.
He's starving.
Its 12:50 a.m., and Joe makes his way slowly to the buffet line in the second room, where a bed of jambalaya, penne pasta in alfredo sauce and blackened chicken breasts lay waiting. Joe fills his plate and returns to the main room. Nine televisions mounted into brick walls are tuned to ESPN and NFL Network, and partygoers down free beers and chat as Chris Berman breathlessly relives the Super Bowl. Joe and his wife Dana gather their four parents around the table.
An announcement, whispered in a loud and crowded room: Dana is pregnant with the couple's second child.
Joe's mom, Karen, is quietly thrilled. She spends the rest of the night spilling the beans to those close to her.
Joe digs into his plate, shoveling home mouthfuls of Cajun cuisine as guests walk up to shake his hand and offer congratulations on the Super Bowl victory and MVP award. Somebody hands Joe a soda in a hard plastic cup. Behind him, on a red brick wall, rests a black and white picture of Hank Aaron, breaking his bat on a baseball. Above and to the left of the 1957 NL MVP hangs a picture of Babe Ruth, young, skinny and draped in a Red Sox uniform, taken some years before he won the 1923 AL MVP award as a Yankee.
Joe hears his name boom from a familiar voice. It's Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis on the largest television in the room, interviewing with ESPN's Sal Paolantonio minutes after the game. Cheeks bulging with food, Joe's head pops up to look at the screen.
Paolantonio asks the former Super Bowl MVP, "What about Joe?"
Says Lewis: "I told him last night, 'you want to become elite? You go win the Super Bowl."
There's that word again: Elite. It's what Joe called himself in an offseason media interview. Sports journalists scoffed at it at the time. How could Joe Flacco, a quarterback who's never been to a Super Bowl, who's never been to a Pro Bowl in four NFL seasons, be elite?
Its 1:12 a.m. Joe scrapes his plate clean and heads back to the second room, where Ravens center Matt Birk and guard Gino Gradkowski give him hugs. Joe stops and chats for a few minutes, but everybody wants a piece of him. More autographs. More pictures.
Is Joe enjoying this party he's thrown, or is it becoming a chore?
"I guess it's a little of both," says his dad, Steve. "We have a few more people here than just our family. But he's enjoying himself."
Its 1:27 a.m., and Joe raises his voice for the first time. He tilts his head back and yells at no one in particular: "I'm not taking any more pictures, and I'm not signing any more autographs!"
Then Joe signs five more autographs, smiling as he does it.
Karen and Steve give Joe his space. She wears a pants suit adorned with a homemade pin picturing a quarterback, No. 5, dressed in black and purple. Steve is wearing khaki pants, a long sleeve blue polo, black, red and white Jordan sneakers, and a grey Super Bowl XLVII hat.
Steve Flacco is 5-foot-11, and he knows what you're thinking: "Everybody asks me, how tall is your wife?"
She's only 5-foot-6, and the couple struggles to explain how their three sons all ended up taller than Steve. Steve is a former mortgage broker who now assists Joe in non-football matters. Last week, Steve told the New York Times in a phone interview, "Joe is dull. As dull as he is portrayed in the media, he's that dull. He is dull."
It's a description backed up by Flacco's post-Super Bowl beverage choice, but Steve says he was joking … sort of.
"I'm kind of teasing when I say that," Steve says. "What they didn't print was me saying that we like who Joe is, that he's exactly what we want him to be. I say he's dull, meaning that he's not infamous."
Explains Karen: "He's not going to be anybody's P.R. nightmare."
Its 1:35 a.m. and the party is thinning. Parents are taking exhausted kids to bed. Joe wants to leave and he's saying his goodbyes. "Where's mom?" he calls out. He shouts across the room "Dana!"
Mom gets a long hug. She doesn't know how long Joe and Dana have known Dana was pregnant. Their first child is 7½ months old, and Karen says the couple told their parents they were expecting that child after a 2011 Thanksgiving night victory over the 49ers in Baltimore.
"It's a 49ers tradition now," Karen beams. "He's hit the trifecta. Somebody asks me if Joe was going to go win the lottery tonight. I said, 'He already has.' "
Joe and Dana leave the party, exiting through a back door at 1:40 p.m. Karen says the husband and wife, married in June 2011, are going to bed. Joe has a press conference in the morning, then a trip to Disney World for the MVP parade, then a flight to New York to film the Late Show with David Letterman, all according to recent Super Bowl MVP tradition. There will be questions about his personal life, offers for commercials, and there's the small matter of an expiring contract with the Ravens. Joe will soon be a very well-paid pro athlete with a public persona.
His dad has a vision: Joe is no longer Joe Flacco, Dull NFL Quarterback. He's Joe Flacco, Comically Dull MVP.
"I figure we can have a real good time with it," Steve says, laughing. "We can do a whole thing. It'll be like a Don Rickles act. He can make fun of himself.
"His public personality is that he's dull, but professionally, he's anything but. Especially after tonight. Tonight kind of punches the ticket for him."
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