Not long ago, the gun control advocates Jim and Sarah Brady visited the White House. President Barack Obama reportedly told them that he was working on new gun control schemes “under the radar.”
It’s been said that guns have two enemies — rust and politicians. Rust never sleeps, and neither do those who would seek to restrict our constitutional rights. So let me tell you about a meeting you weren’t invited to, where those people were planning an attack on our rights that’s very much “under the radar.”
It happened in July at the United Nations headquarters in New York, at a meeting to draft of what they call the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty.
An Arms Trade Treaty doesn’t sound bad in concept — isn’t that what the U.N. is for? The problem, however, is what U.N. diplomats consider to be “arms.” To you and me, the word means tanks, fighter jets, missiles, that kind of thing. But look no further than the U.N. plaza to see what the silk-stocking set considers “arms.” There you will find a bronze statue of a simple .38 revolver — with its barrel tied into a knot.
Remember no other country in the world enjoys America’s constitutional right to keep and bear arms. This is why the vast majority of U.N. diplomats believe that an arms trade treaty must reach into your gun safe and mine. There is little question that this treaty would require additional restrictions on our Second Amendment rights.
Consider the comments of a spokesman from “Project Ploughshares,” a Canadian arms control group. “From a humanitarian perspective,” the spokesman told the Canadian Postmedia News “all firearms need to be controlled, and that’s the bottom line.”
This attitude has spooked even Canada’s government, which typically embraces a disarmament agenda. During the meeting, Canada put forth a panicky petition for a hunting rifle exemption in the treaty. Mexico immediately objected.
For an administration with a secretive itch for gun control, the situation is ideal. They can let the United Nations do the dirty work of drafting onerous new restrictions on civilian firearms, then package them inside a treaty with legitimate measures to control true military armaments.
The U.N. has scheduled the treaty to be finished in July of next year — just in time to go to the Obama White House for ratification.
That’s “under the radar” for you.
But one risk of operating under the radar is that you can’t see the moves of your opponents. This is not the first U.N. gun-control rodeo for my friends at the National Rifle Association. They know treaty ratification requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate. Thirty-four senators would have to vote no to block the treaty.
While the rest of Washington was fixated on the debt ceiling debate, the NRA quietly marshaled opposition to the treaty among pro-gun senators.
Fifty-eight senators have now called out the president on his plan. Led by Sens. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.), 45 Republicans and 13 Democrats have written two strong letters —one from members of each party — to President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. All the senators have vowed to oppose any treaty that restricts civilian firearm ownership.
What’s ironic is that the United States already has the world’s pre-eminent system for regulation of true military arms sales. If the rest of the world merely adopted the U.S. regulatory regime, there would be no need for an Arms Trade Treaty.
But rather than harmonize other nations’ patchy regulations on arms transfers, the diplomatic crowd would rather force Washington to hew to its utopian vision of global disarmament.
If this were only a partisan exercise in bashing Obama and the U.N., one could be forgiven for concluding it has no substance. But 13 Democratic senators clearly think otherwise — a sign that this debate is far from over.
Chuck Norris, an actor, martial artist and author, is the honorary chairman of the National Rifle Association’s voter registration program, Trigger the Vote.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/61942.html#ixzz1W7JHWWQ4
Ignorance of the law is no excuse. Unless you're charged with enforcing it.
http://twitter.com/#!/ComedianBlog/status/106459077302956032
Backdoor Nais, they don't want you to produce your own food
Salmonella traced to backyard chicken farms
The burgeoning trend of keeping chickens and ducklings in backyard farms may have brought a new problem home to roost: infections with salmonella.
By Carl D. Walsh, for USA TODAY
Backyard chicken farming has become a popular practice as people try to get closer to food sources.
Twin outbreaks of salmonella linked to chicks and ducklings bought for backyard farms have stricken 92 people in 20 states as of Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports.
The poultry were traced back to a mail-order hatchery in Ohio. The two outbreak strains, salmonella altona and salmonella johannesburg, have sickened 65 and 27 people respectively. Salmonella can cause diarrhea, fever, and abdominal cramps and more serious illness in the young and old.
Raising backyard chickens largely for egg production is a growing urban trend among people who want to get closer to their food, but CDC doctors warn that hobbyists may not realize how common it is for poultry to carry dangerous forms of salmonella.
The outbreak is ongoing and began in late February, says Casey Barton Behravesh, a veterinary epidemiologist with the CDC. The most recent person involved got sick on July 30.
The CDC is especially concerned about this outbreak because about 30% of those infected are children younger than 5.
The hatchery associated with the outbreak, Mount Healthy Hatcheries of Mount Healthy, Ohio, has hired a salmonella expert, and testing has found no illness in its breeder flocks, owner Robert O'Hara says. He says the problem might be at one of his suppliers but he has not been able to conclusively trace it back.
Salmonella is common in chicks, he says. "That's been going on since the beginning of time." What's changed is the number of novices raising chickens. "There's been a giant explosion of backyard flocks and unfortunately some people are raising them in their house for a certain period of time. You just can't do that. They're farm animals; they're not pets. Treat them as such."
He also thinks that children are seeing and handling chicks at feed stores which are selling to urban chicken owners and not washing their hands afterward.
With the growing popularity of urban and backyard chickens, it's important for people to know that live poultry can appear to be perfectly healthy and clean yet could be shedding salmonella.
Behravesh agrees the best way to reduce the risk of illness is to wash hands with soap and water after touching live poultry.
http://yourlife.usatoday.com/fitness-food/safety/story/2011-08-24/Salmonella-traced-to-backyard-chicken-farms/50128844/1
It is amazing how people, well never mind, what good does it do really? Look at the next two articles
Drop race labels to help realize MLK's dream
What a relief to finally see an opinion like defense lawyer Cheryl Stein's in a national forum such as USA TODAY. I heartily agree race relations would be vastly improved if we would drop all the labeling ...
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/letters/story/2011-08-25/Drop-race-labels-to-help-realize-MLKs-dream/50139988/1
Jesse Jackson slams Tea Party at MLK event
Jesse Jackson said Thursday that the Tea Party's tenets are reminiscent of state's rights philosophies used in decades past to oppose federally mandated integration.
"The Tea Party is not new," Jackson said at a luncheon honoring civil rights pioneers on Thursday. "It's just a new name for an old game."...
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2011-08-25/Jesse-Jackson-slams-Tea-Party-at-MLK-event/50142272/1
No comments:
Post a Comment