Apr 11, 2013
Good news and bad news... the good news is 68 Senators have decided that the epidemic of gun violence in this country is a worthwhile enough matter for the U.S. Senate to at least talk about it for a while. The bad news is this is what passes for good news nowadays.At yesterday’s unveiling of the background check deal, Senator Joe Manchin said “all personal transfers are not touched whatsoever.” No matter what you think when you hear that, when a criminal who wants a gun hears it, they think “Good, there’s a way around it.”
The deal will exempt “person to person” transfers. I remind you that conservatives consider corporations to be persons. Will they exempt a transfer from the “person” named “Remington Arms Company, Inc.? Oh, and of course conservatives think that fetuses have “personhood.” If a woman would fail a background check, can the seller just claim that they were actually selling the gun to the fertilized egg in her womb?The chief lobbyist for the NRA says that they are “unequivocally opposed” to the gun control bill. Well that’s the most positive thing I’ve heard about it so far. The NRA says it will break its standard policy and will score Senators on procedural votes such as the final cloture motion. The NRA wants this bill dead. It’s not good enough for us, but it’s still way too good for the NRA.
Yesterday Rand Paul made a speech at Howard, University, a historically black college. Rand claimed that he had always supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It’s bad enough that Rand Paul has to assure people that he has always supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And it’s far, far worse that he has to lie to do it. Rand’s problem is with the parts of the Civil Rights Act that require private businesses not to discriminate. In Rand Paul’s world, the biggest “civil right” that people should have is the right to deny the civil rights of other people. Paul told the crowd that recent GOP efforts at voter suppression were no big deal. Well, they obviously weren’t enough to win, but that wasn’t for a lack of trying. He said that people who compare the recent ID laws to the voting abuses of the past, “demean the horror of what happened.” And by saying that, Paul is trying to demean the horror of what the GOP is doing right now!
Rand, what is your point? That black people should embrace the GOP because these days the Republicans can’t do as much harm to African Americans as racists could do in the past?*Thank you Benny B!
