Congresswoman Shot, Left goes on Witch Hunt

Jared Loughner: The Real Face of Responsibility

Yesterday’s shooting at Representative Gabrielle Giffords’ Congress on Your Corner in Arizona is a horrible and tragic event that should never have happened.  However, it did and therefore we must deal with it.

The shooting is a tragedy which should be uniting us in support and defense of the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.  It should be bringing all of us together in support of our way of life and our representative Republic form of government.  After all, Giffords’ event, an elected representative speaking with constituents, is the foundation of our Republic.

How are many on the left responding?  Instead of putting politics aside and coming together, they’re using it as yet another opportunity to divide America using crass and sickening political theater.  Arizona State Senator Linda Lopez only hours after the shooting, before any definite information was available, went on national television with accusations that the shooter was an “Afghan” veteran influenced by the TEA party movement.  Then Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik ended his press conference with a tirade blaming conservative media for filling the American people with vitriol.  It should be noted Sheriff Dupnik also believes Arizona’s recent law calling for enforcement of federal immigration law is “stupid” and “racist.”

The left-wing media and blogosphere are filled with accusations against Sarah Palin because of a marketing piece which had a target on Giffords’ congressional district (not on Giffords’ face as is being implied).  These accusations are utter nonsense.  First, Democrats and leftists have used similar marketing tactics in the past, not to mention even more disturbing depictions of former President Bush by the left, yet those blaming Palin for the shooting don’t bother to mention any use by the left of these types of marketing tactics.  Second, either the people making these accusations are such complete idiots or they believe others are such complete idiots that they can’t distinguish between a political advertising marketing tactic and an actual death threat.  If you truly believe a target on someone’s district was an actual death threat then you need to be locked up in the same sort of padded cell where the gunman belonged!

This is only one person responsible for yesterday’s shooting: Jared Loughner who pulled the trigger.  Apparently another suspect, known to authorities, remains at large.  Yet, Sheriff Dupnik, citing the advice of “legal counsel,” refuses to release photos or a complete description of this person so the public can be on the lookout for him. [Update: The Pima Sheriff’s Department finally released a photo of this person-of-interest.  Update to the Update: Pima Sheriff has cleared the person of interest.]

So what’s the picture of Loughner that’s emerging?  We now know he wasn’t an “Afghan” veteran or a veteran at all.  He applied for military service and was rejected.  The military won’t say why, citing privacy reasons.  However, the disjoined ramblings from his YouTube videos give us a pretty good clue.  We also know he’s been arrested for possession of illegal drugs.  It looks more and more like he is a demented leftist radical anarchist pothead.  Despite this, many on the left and the mainstream media continue to either openly or subtly blame the TEA party movement and conservative media.  It’s obvious they’re taking Rahm Emanuel’s advice to not let a good crisis go to waste and seek to use the tragedy as the springboard for censorship of conservative media, silencing of anyone who disagrees with their agenda, and very likely “gun control” as well.

The TEA Party movement – a movement and a mindset, not a political party – is about government accountability.  “TEA” is an acronym for Taxed Enough Already.  The movement consists of people from a wide spectrum of political beliefs.  They are united in a belief that government should act within its Constitutional bounds and those within government, both elected officials and bureaucrats, should be accountable to the people who pay the bill (the American taxpayers).  Acts of violence against the government are completely counterproductive to the aims of this movement, which seeks to restore Constitutional order.  Therefore, it’s pure absurdity to claim, as the left does, the TEA party and conservatives are agitating for violence.

Let’s look at the other side.  What do they have to say?  Many on the left, including some who’ve been right next to Obama, are calling for an overthrow of the system, such as self-described Marxist-socialist Van Jones’ “bottom up, top down, inside out” revolution. Frances Fox Piven, who many in the administration and many radical leftists hold up as a mentor, is calling for a violent uprising against the American system.  Obama once told left-wing activists, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.” Another left-wing guru, political cartoonist Ted Rall, calls for the left to engage in violence against the right.  The often cited “bible” of leftists and one of the books from which Loughner says he found inspiration, the Communist Manifesto, is filled with calls for violence against the bourgeoisies and government officials.

Don’t get me wrong – unlike the left, I don’t want to restrict any of their speech; I want the cockroaches exposed to the light of day so we can clearly see them for exactly what they are.  My point is to expose the outright lies of the left in claiming conservatives are “inciting violence” when in fact it’s those on the radical left who are consistently and clearly calling for violent uprisings.

Is it because so many on the left are calling for open, violent uprising that they are so convinced conservatives are doing the same?  As someone who pays very close attention to conservative media, I can find absolutely nothing which even comes close to the left’s repeated and unequivocal calls for violence.  Conservative media talks about things like restoring honor, returning to the Constitution, taking personal responsibility, government accountability, the importance of integrity, and so forth.  I must not have the “Manchurian” programming, since I’m completely missing any calls to violence, “coded” or otherwise.

It’s time for Americans of all political persuasions who might disagree on policy, but agree on the basic framework of the Constitution and the representative Republic to stand together.  We simply cannot allow radicals to collapse our Republic.  We must find the common ground of the Constitution on which we can unite.  We can agree to disagree without being disagreeable.

We honor the memory of those killed when we stand up for the Constitution in the face of the real radicals, like Jared Loughner, who seek to destroy our Republic.

The Constitution, Not International Law

As the NRA pats itself on the back and the media pontificates about today’s Supreme Court decision in favor of the Second Amendment, as usual they miss the real story.  The important story today is the Constitution held on by only one vote!  The Constitution is supposed to be the supreme law of the land, yet it’s under attack like never before in our history.  We came very, very close to losing the Constitution today and no one seems to care!

Don’t think it’s a big deal?  Look at the dissenting opinion in today’s judgment.  Appeal was made to international law with the ridiculous argument that other “democratic” nations don’t hold that their citizens have a right to keep and bear arms.  It doesn’t matter what other nations hold as law – our law comes from the Constitution, period!  As Justice Roberts pointed out, Japan is a “democratic” nation, yet it doesn’t hold its citizens have a right to trail by jury.  Perhaps there’s something to that dusty old Constitution after all?

This appeal to international law is a growing and dangerous trend.  Supreme Court nominee Kagan is merely one of a chorus of liberal “progressives” who hold that we need to turn to international law to interpret our law.  The entire reason we have a Constitution is precisely because our founders took issue with prevailing international law.

Once we go down the road of international law, particularly in the form of UN treaties, we literally throw out the Constitution and our cherished rights.  Under international law we lose many of the individual rights which make our nation a representative Republic and would instead turn our country into a socialist state where the power rests with the “ruling class” and not with the people.

Under current pending treaties, if they’re ratified, the Second Amendment and First Amendment would disappear.  There’s currently a UN small arms treaty (supported by the Obama administration) which would effectively make it a crime in the United States to own firearms.  Additional, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (also supported by the Obama administration) would effectively make all children wards of the state with parents only being charged with clothing, feeding and providing shelter – other than that, parents would have almost no rights to raise their children as they see fit.  Most people don’t understand that by the Constitution, once we ratify international treaties, they become the law of the land and trump the Constitution.  The Constitution was written like this as our founders never in their wildest dreams imagined we’d be stupid enough to negotiate away our sovereignty.

Despite all this, incumbents are being reelected by wide margins in the ongoing primaries.  They’re proved time and again they have no interest in changing the status quo – and in fact most favor the sprint towards socialism.  Survey after survey shows dissatisfaction with Congress by wide margins, yet voters keep electing the same people and expecting change.  It’s moronic and beyond understanding!

The stakes are too high and the consequences too dire to keep sitting on the sidelines!