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We have five (5) months to the election.

The presidential election continues to provide diversion, much like a car wreck.  Senator Obama has rejected his pastor, friend and advisor of over twenty years in what I consider to be odd circumstances.  For twenty years the Senator heard his pastor damn the United States and even accuse it of inventing the AIDS virus in order to destroy the African-American population.  Of course, the disease first attacked the homosexual and intravenous drug addict populations.  The pastor is not concerned with evidence; he proclaims that the US Government is capable of “anything”.  But, only anything evil, it seems.  The Bush administration has spent huge sums fighting AIDs, tuberculosis and malaria in Africa.  This is not for any direct benefit, indeed, the administration does not even get credit for doing so.  At some future date Africans may credit being alive to the generosity of the United States.  When the Twin Towers were attacked, the Masai tribe sent us a herd of cattle.  When Katrina flooded New Orleans, a group of AIDs patients in Africa took up a collection for us.  Senator Obama’s pastor does not give America this much affection.  The Senator spent months keeping him quiet and defending him all to no avail.  When it became obvious that the scandal would not go away Senator Obama could not reverse course and reject the pastor he has so publicly supported.  Then quite suddenly the pastor was speaking in very public, if friendly, venues.  Speaking from a prepared text he said very much the same things that Senator Obama had previously excused, and the Senator then expressed his outrage that America was being disparaged, and rejected his old pastor.  It just seems to me that he had to reject the man to stop the film clips.  He had already embraced the man after the old film clips, so he had to reject him for something new.  I think that by conspiracy or stupidity the pastor was induced to make a new speech damning America so that Senator Obama could reject him.  Of course, I am told by knowledgeable persons that if a political action could be explained by conspiracy or stupidity, that I should pick stupidity every time. 

There is concern that of the three leading presidential candidates (as of this writing) none can be said to be on our side.  If I were to rate them, I would say that Obama is the worst, and McCain the least worst.  If this were the only rating it would take little time.  However, Obama is the worst, but Clinton knows were the levers of power can be found, and how to use them.  McCain may be the least objectionable, but that is not by much and there is a rumor that he intends to serve only a single term.  He may not care what political opposition he stirs up.  Still, McCain will face a Democratic congress which will oppose all his actions as a matter of policy.

It is said that voting for the lesser of two evils is still evil, and only serves to move the debate in the direction of evil.  It is also said that the lesser of two evils slows the march towards evil.  The theory is that if votes are given to a third party this will give victory to the more evil, something we are trying to prevent.  Some daring spirits say that we should vote for evil in the expectation that there will be a vast revulsion against it, which we can ride to victory in the next election.  This assumes much and gambles a lot.  We must remember that Bill Clinton was handily re-elected and his Vice President nearly elected after him.

Of course, we can vote for a third party candidate.  Some say that this will teach the major parties a lesson.  We have endorsed a third party candidate for president before, the year Bill Clinton was elected.  I’m not sure that the major parties notice when we do so. 

This is not an easy year for political decisions.  I must agree with fellow WMSA Board Member the Learned Larry Swickard.  We must turn out in droves for the election in order to vote for other candidates.  We must have executive-proof legislatures and congress.  We must have mayors and school district members who are on our side.  We may spend every day of the next four years as if the Second Amendment is the Alamo.  The more elected persons who are on our side, the harder it will be for an executive to promote a project to hurt us.  I wish I knew what to say about the presidential race, but I do not.  I am told that waterboarding can fix that.

I see that the Asian Snakehead fish has been found in Arkansas.  This beast is often called “Frankenfish”.  It has lungs and legs and so can travel over land.  It has a voracious appetite and it is feared that it will destroy American sporting fish.  It is uncertain how the fish arrived in Arkansas.  One story has it that a fish farm had some, was told to get rid of them, and so tossed them out on land to die.  Then the air-breathing, walking fish began its odyssey.  It may be that the fish paid someone to smuggle it into the country like every other illegal alien.  There are proposals to stamp out the fish involving rules regulations and inspections.  The project might go faster if American fishermen were told of an opportunity to catch a unique trophy.  Militias come in all sorts.

I met a fellow who was proud of his solution to illegal immigration.  He said that they should all be put into dump trucks and dumped across the border.  He said that the only problem with his plan was that it was too radical.  It is not.  It has been done in the 1930’s when Mexican workers were loaded on boxcars and dumped in Mexico.  They came back.  The entire project was not consistent with “well known American humanity”.  The quoted passage is from the German surrender demand to the garrison at Bastogne.  The nazi commander threatened to destroy the town with artillery and implied that the effect on civilians would be our fault.  The nazis thought that humanity was our weakness, it turned out to be a strength.  An interrogator of those days told me that German soldiers were advised by their fathers to join the Infantry, be brave, get up on the front lines, and surrender to the first American they saw.  They surrendered in droves.  We should go with our strengths.  There must be a humane solution to illegal immigration, I cannot claim that I know what it is, but there must be one.

After practicing immigration law for 25 years the only thing I know for sure is that aliens are coming here.  It is not just for the money, it is not just for “well known American humanity”, they want opportunities for themselves and their children their own country does not provide.  Many immigrants carry the belief that they must let the government do as it pleases if they are to survive.  We need to make Americans of these people and by we I mean us.  If we explain the Bill of Rights to a citizenship class, it will be different than if the liberals do it.  If we are the image of an American citizen for them, we can make this work.

On “Cinco de Mayo” it was reported that the day commemorates a victory of the Mexican army over the French army.  Actually, it was Mexican militia over the French army.  This was well after winning independence from Spain.  I can recall no other country which can brag of driving out two different colonial powers.  We should be able to build on this.  The media will not mention militias even in this positive light.

Charlton Heston has died.  I met him briefly during the Proposition B battle in 1999.  It was more memorable for me than for him.  Although he began as anti-gun, he came over to our side with a vengeance.  He was a powerful advocate for our principles and will be missed.

In the Heller case the Supreme Court asked a number of questions regarding the Second Amendment.  They asked if there was a right to pistols, thinking they were lightly used at the time of the Bill of Rights, they asked if the right was confined only to persons in the Militia.  Of course pistols were used in the founding of this country.  Any reference book on weapons of the revolution has a chapter on pistols to include pocket pistols.  Militia of the time included the whole of the population.  Certain parts of the population were required to have militia weapons and appear for militia drill.  However, in times of emergency even the exempt persons were expected to turn out.  A party of this reserve militia served at the Concord Bridge during the opening battle of the American Revolution.  When the Confederate Army attacked Gettysburg, John Burns, a veteran of the War of 1812, took up his old musket and fought.  He was wounded three times.  When the Japanese occupied the Philippines the population spontaneously formed militia groups, even when they did not have guns.  Today the US Code at 10 US Code section 311 defines the organized militia, the National Guard and Reserves, and the unorganized militia, the rest of us.

Lawyers for Washington DC told the Supreme Court that militiamen did not really own their militia weapons because they couldn’t pawn them.  It would defeat the militia purpose if their guns were in pawn shops or seized for debt.  This worked to the benefit of militiamen.  In some state it evolved into a right to exempt the family rifle from debt collectors.  They also argued that a Boston law from the Revolutionary period which prohibited loaded firearms and gunpowder from being stored at ground level was the same as the DC law.  The Boston law was a fire safety law and does not evolve into a total prohibition of loaded guns anywhere in the house.

Rally Day was held on 29 April, 2008.  I had planned to use the Rally to focus on the Supreme Court case.  I had a recording of the arguments which I planned to play; things changed.  Recordings of the arguments were widely available elsewhere.  More importantly, there have been assaults on shooting ranges.  A range protection bill was languishing in the legislature and needed a push.  One advantage of being the absolute tyrant of a group of heavily armed persons is that I really must listen to advice.  The focus of the Rally was changed on two weeks notice.  Coincidentally on the day of the Rally Peter Lyskowski of the Attorney General’s Office reported that Washington State has become the 35th state to recognize the Missouri License To Carry.  Mr. L is in charge of reciprocity issues for the A.G’s office.  I do not trust these people out of principle, but I trust him.  He hopes to add a couple more states.  Missouri’s license is the most widely recognized in the country.

Missouri ranges have been sued and hit with crippling judgments and injunctions which shut them down.  One range was the target of false lead contamination complaints and when that did not work, a structure off the range was repeatedly shot in the apparent belief that this would be blamed on the range.  Investigation showed that the shots came from a spot off the range property.  I have heard of people who complained that bullets from a range landed on their property.  As proof they showed bullets they claimed to have recovered from their property, which were still loaded into cartridge cases.  Some complainants lie better.  All they have to do is lie, and we must spend thousands of dollars to protect safe places to shoot.  That is why we need range protection.

I checked the Brady website, in their “material” about the Supreme Court case on the Second Amendment it is clear that they are kicking Washington DC to the curb.  They focus instead on how “reasonable” other restrictions might be.  During the arguments our side was questioned on what restrictions might be constitutional.  The attorney said that a wide variety of restrictions might be constitutional; I would have done the same.  Those restrictions were not being argued that day.  Granting the possibility made it more likely the Court would rule for us.  The Supreme Court has accepted a case involving the Lautenberg amendment.  This law prohibits gun ownership by anyone who has ever been convicted of domestic violence, even if they were convicted before the law was enacted.  This has been challenged on constitutional grounds.  The Court accepts a small number of cases each year.  I cannot conceive of why the Court would take a case which explores the limits of the Second Amendment unless it had decided to rule in our favor in the DC case.  However, the Court can conceive of things I cannot.

There is a program on the fitness channel called “Shimmy”.  It purports to teach women how to belly dance.  When I ran across it (quite by accident and you cannot prove otherwise) I wondered what percentage of the audience was actually burned out old guys.  There is no obvious answer and it will require further research.

We shall overcome.

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