The Brady Campaign to take away guns was fined $12K for making illegal corporate contributions to Democrats.

Matthew White sums up Naifeh’s actions:

To those of you who count yourself as pro-2nd Amendment but vote for a Democrat to represent you in the House, remember this incident. Even if your Democrat shares your views on guns, he will vote for Jimmy Naifeh to be Speaker. And Naifeh is no friend to gun owners, as this ordeal demonstrates. For many years it wasn’t the case, but guns are now a partisan issue in Tennessee. As long as Democrats run the House, your views won’t be represented.

Social conservatives tend to be a bit, uhm, stodgy. I find that annoying. In the first episode of why the right is losing me, it was the right’s fear of sex. What’s rather ironic to me about this is that they tend to take the nanny approach, which they abhor democrats for doing, to this sort of thing. I really don’t think it’s healthy to be so concerned about sex.

They also lose me because of their fear of dudes getting married. There’s a proposed constitutional ban on gay marriage here in Tennessee. I have not doubt that it will pass. I had a little discussion in the comments section here with Bill and Jeff, who oppose gay marriage.

First, I won’t even address the argument presented that it should be banned because the Bible says so. Using the Bible as justification for law is illegal and asinine. The basic gist of the other bullshit argument against allowing gay marriage (summarized by Rob Huddleston here and used by Bill in the comments section mentioned above) is:

gays have the same equal rights as everyone else (the right to marry someone of the opposite sex)

In my quick perusal of the constitutions of the State of Tennessee and the United States, I see no right to marry enumerated. In all honesty, I fail to see why the .gov is involved in marriage at all, other than to the extent they may provide contract remedy. After all, from the state’s perspective, a marriage is just a contract between two people. In the eyes of individuals and churches, it obviously has more meaning. Though I question how sincere Americans are about that meaning given our high divorce rate and 52 hour long Las Vegas marriages. But I digress.

The issue is not about the right to marry someone of the opposite sex. What gay person wants to do that? Framing the issue in such a pointless manner does not treat the issue seriously and is disingenuous. Married people enjoy certain benefits, such as: special tax consideration, survivorship to an estate, the legal authority to make decisions for loved ones who can’t make their own decisions, etc.

Gay people should be entitled to those same benefits. They are denied the benefits that other married people enjoy because they have matching sets of genitalia. And they’re denied those benefits because people think two dudes kissing is icky. And that is not right.

Of course, none of the gay people I know actually want to get married anyway.

Update: And as the former owner of a lesbian poodle, I don’t buy the arguments that homosexuality is not supported in nature. There are gay dolphins and lizards that are exclusively gay. They even reproduce.

Seen at Pete’s:

Still, it’s remarkable that the organizers of a major conservative conference apparently could not find a single person who was willing to publicly defend the war on drugs.

Here it comes again:

Ten East Tennessee counties are included in a list of road improvement projects planned for the next three years. Tennessee Dept. of Transportation Commissioner Gerald Nicely presented the list to lawmakers Wednesday.

More road closings? More traffic delays? Who knows. And whatever happened to Gov. Bredesen’s plan to clean up TDOT?

Head notes that Bushmaster sent a letter to Maine congress monkeys regarding the various firearms bans the state is proposing:

Bushmaster Firearms of Windham sent a letter to the committee last week saying the bill “would require Bushmaster to move out of Maine immediately.” Richard Dyke, Bushmaster’s chairman, said in the letter that the state would then lose the taxes on $60 million in annual sales, the annual payroll of more than $7 million for 91 employees and nearly $34,000 in property taxes.

91 jobs lost won’t be good in election year.

WITH REPUBLICANS LIKE THESE, WHO NEEDS DEMOCRATS?

In Australia, the plan is to let all pit bulls die off:

RSPCA national president Hugh Wirth applauded Mr Carr’s bid to breed American pit bull terriers out of existence in preference to slaughtering the dogs, a plan that drew a public outcry when proposed overseas.

Update: More at Yahoo!, including referring to dogs as killing machines.

Isn’t it ironic, don’t ya think?

If I had one. California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown is a judge the Democrats are filibustering. Here’s a look at some her positions:

Denounced as “the triumph of our own socialist revolution” the 1937 Supreme Court decisions upholding the Social Security Act, the National Labor Relations Act, other key New Deal programs, and state minimum-wage laws, while likening those decisions to the bloody Russian Revolution of 1917.

Called for the Supreme Court to return to its pre-1937 pattern of sweeping away many federal and state economic regulations by imposing severe limits on Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce and by reviving long-dead precedents such as Lochner v. New York, a now-infamous 1905 decision that conservative legal hero Robert Bork (among many others) has denounced as an “abomination.”

Portrayed the federal government as a “leviathan” that is “crushing everything in its path” and fostering “a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible.”

I oppose the effort to end the filibuster but may have to make an exception.

Adam Groves notes:

[State Senator Tim Burchett (R-Knoxville)] campaign website (which expires before his 2006 reelection campaign) directs you instead to the website of the Tennessee Democratic Party.

That’s pretty funny.

The Geek tells us that Bolton isn’t too bad:

He’s a surprising choice, really. Bolton is unashamedly pro-gun. He has gone to bat for gun owners and the Second Amendment, and has not hesitated to look foreign tyrants in the eye while giving them the classic “from my cold, dead fingers” speech.

In 2001, Bolton defended American gun owners by stating our country would oppose any UN effort to regulate non-military firearms or any effort that would “abrogate the constitutional right to bear arms.”

Because of his stand, Bolton is credited with destroying any hope other nations had of achieving a consensus on gun control.

Excellent. Just shave the facial hair, dude.

Personally, I think both. Heartless Libertarian puts her ridiculous assertion to the test:

Now, the listed maximum range for the .50 BMG cartridge is 6,765m. But that’s how far the bullet will fly if fired at the optimum ballistic angle, under perfect conditions, on flat ground. You’re not going to be hitting anything smaller than maybe a specified 100 square yard patch of ground at that range. Maximum effective range-the range at which you can aim at something and hit it hard enough to damage/kill it-is listed as just over 1,800m. Still a long ways, but nowhere close to 4 miles (6,400m).

I guess it’s possible that she may have confused the term radius with the term diameter? Nah, she’s just a liar.

Rich is back and sums up the month of April.

Update: The bill was killed in subcommittee. Naifeh won. How do we get this guy impeached?

Naifeh on the guns in bars bill:

I will do all I can to stop this bill

And that includes cheating to get what he wants. Also, Espo takes the KNS to task for leaving out the, you know, actual important part of the story.

Bill Hobbs, who also has a good round up, says:

Everyone at WSMV involved in producing their story last night should be ashamed. They produced an inaccurate, false and biased report. The truth is out there, thanks to blogs – but no thanks to WSMV.

Yes, they should be.

Update: The TFA is on the story too.

Looks like it:

He noticed an anti-DeLay ad for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that stated, “The Truth About Tom DeLay – Learn about DeLay’s many scandals and help us clean up the House! dccc.org.” Greene attempted to purchase a similar ad that stated, “Truth About Nancy Pelosi – Learn about Pelosi’s many scandals and help us clean up the House! RightMarch.com”

“That’s all we did,” Greene told Cybercast News Service. “We took the liberal ad and changed the words to make it a conservative ad.”

But Google refused the ad.

Here’s a screen shot of the ad’s refusal notice.

Revenge is dish best served cold. And when that’s not an option, a flaming barrel helps.

Ravenwood notes that the bill would require Maine citizens to turn in assault weapons and machine guns, in addition to .50 caliber rifles.

Update: Gun owners showed up in large numbers to protest the ban:

Dozens of the 80 or so people who crammed the hearing room wore stickers opposing gun control, and the 22 people who testified against the bill over the course of several hours far outnumbered the handful of people who spoke for it.

That gun lobby at work.

Giving Up & Giving In. A gun blog whose operator I would presume is in Tennessee since there are a lot of Tennessee links from his site. Go on, get over there and read.

That’s Mass. blogger Bruce’s slogan. I dig it. He notes the odd case of Boston getting settling a $5M involving the death of a college student killed by police who used pepper-pellet gun. Boston is then going to attempt to recoup some of the money by suing the maker of the pepper-pellet gun. The manufacturer is FN (who are in the news a lot lately for their FiveseveN pistol). As Bruce notes:

Let me see if I understand this correctly.

1) The weapon that was used to fire the fatal shot was negligently discharged into a crowd by an untrained, non-certified officer, at the direction of his supervisors, acting as an authoritative representative of and on behalf of the City of Boston.

2) The weapon fired a projectile precisely as it was designed, marketed, and implemented to do so.

3) And now the City of Boston seeks to recoup $2 million dollars from the manufacturer of said weapon.

Sounds about right.

Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, has (or had, I haven’t watched the show in years) a black pit bull named Sookie (that I am spelling phonetically) that accompanied him in his adventures. I recall one particular episode where Steve found some feral pigs and Sookie attacked them. Of course Sookie would as catching hogs is one of the things pits were bred to do (the other being fighting other dogs). Now, Australia (quickly turning into a bedwetting state) is looking to ban pit bulls:

Pit bull terriers are to be banned in Australia’s biggest states after a series of vicious dog attacks put people in hospital.

New South Wales premier Bob Carr on Tuesday branded the breed “killing machines on leashes” that should be exterminated.

The ban comes after a five-year-old boy was seriously injured by a pit bull when he was walking home from school in Sydney. A 75-year-old man is also recovering in hospital after being set upon by two pit bulls.

Carr said laws would be introduced later this year to ban the sale, acquisition, breeding or giving away of pit bull terriers, American pit bulls, Japanese tosas, Argentinian fighting dogs and Brazilian fighting dogs.

WATE writes:

Colleges would no longer be required to notify local law enforcement if a rape occurs on campus under a bill passed Monday evening by the Tennessee House.

Amendments call for colleges to inform victims of the availability of sexual assault programs.

The bill is scheduled for consideration Tuesday by the Senate Education Committee.

I can’t fathom a reason why this bill would be good. It would also be nice if WATE could have told us who (or how many) voted for it, who wrote it and who sponsored it.

Blake wonders the same thing.

Jen Chung reports that Pataki and Bloomberg are trying to take control of Ground Zero from its developer through eminent domain. Disgusting.

An article, entitled The Taking of Free Will, notes the increase in popularity of RFID tags:

In October, 2004, the FDA approved an implantable microchip for use in humans. A tiny subcutaneous RFID tag, now made by several American companies like Applied Digital Solutions, VeriChip, and Digital Angel are mass-producing RFID chips and stocking chip warehouses and implantation centers. Upper level governmental officials are getting “chipped” to demonstrate public acceptance of the technology, and they are very quick to highlight the humanitarian uses of tracking devices in humans.

Children and pets should be chipped in case they get lost. Chipping children will help to locate kidnapped kids. Chipping senior citizens gives hospitals immediate access to their medical records. Many millionaires and their children are chipping themselves for security reasons. Large herds of cattle and sheep are implanted to assist ranchers and farmers with efficient tracking. Security, medical and emergency applications seem to be call of the corporations and their government backers when it comes to the new branding technologies, but for American citizens it is, first and foremost, an outrage, unthinkable, immoral, and for many it is demonic.

Also, related to guns is this:

And gun owners – heads up! On April 13, 2004, Applied Digital Solutions announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, VeriChip Corporation, has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with FN Manufacturing [makers of the FN FiveseveN that is drawing so much anti-gun scrutiny – ed.], a leading gun manufacturer, to develop a first in the world of firearms. Their objective is an integrated” User Authorization System” for firearms using VeriChip RFID technology. You shall be chipped in order to keep and bear. You had to know that was coming considering the 30-year, non-stop efforts to deny you of your 2nd Amendment rights.

I realize that RFID is a useful tool but if we get to the point where it is mandatory, I’ll be particularly worried. Even as the parent of a small child who can see the benefits of having her chipped, I am loathe to actually doing so.

Wendi C. Thomas, who apparently views the comparison of the Schiavo case to gun rights as valid, also writes:

On Saturday 8-year-old Acquiria Ralston and her twin sister were playing with a shotgun in their South Memphis home. The gun went off and Acquiria was killed.

[snip]

First: It’s hard to say who or what is responsible for the girl’s death.

Her parents weren’t home when the shooting occurred; if they had been perhaps the sisters wouldn’t have been able to get the gun.

So, it’s actually not hard at all to say who is responsible for the girl’s death. Her parents are entirely responsible for 1) leaving an 8 year old unsupervised and 2) leaving a shotgun where the child could get to it.

If Tennessee law required that every gun sold come with a child safety lock, perhaps the girls wouldn’t have been able to fire the gun even if it’d been left in their toy box.

First of all, almost every gun I ever bought came with a safety lock without that being mandated into law. Those locks do a fine job of keeping my ammo boxes locked and my gates closed. Do you really think someone that is so irresponsible as to leave a gun and ammunition out where an unsupervised child can find it is going to be responsible enough to put the lock on the gun?

If guns (and the need to arm oneself) were as rare as a palatable plan to repair Social Security, Acquiria still might be alive.

That is one lame-ass political jab. And if they were that rare, crime might be out of control.

Without a single culpable party, blame often gets tossed around like a hot potato until the potato cools and we lose interest.

No, there is a culpable party. More:

Despite pontification about a renewed commitment to a culture of life following Schiavo’s death, in America, there is no such culture.

If there truly were a culture of life in America, you’d see the same people who rallied around Schiavo’s parents railing against the gun lobby, which has given more than $17 million to federal candidates in the last 16 years. During that same period gun control advocates gave just $1.7 million to federal candidates.

And what exactly do gun rights activists have to do with death? The NRA’s program to educate children about gun safety has saved more lives than any gun control measure ever has. And here’s the fact the annoys anti-gun bedwetters: the gun lobby is the sum of its millions of members.

The NYT notes that congress is mucking around in establishing rules for driver’s licenses:

Congress is moving quickly toward setting strict rules on how states issue driver’s licenses, requiring them to verify whether each applicant for a new license or a renewal is in this country legally.

A House and Senate conference now taking place has included the requirements, which apply to all 50 states and other jurisdictions that issue licenses, in a supplemental appropriations bill for Iraq, aides involved in the process said on Monday. The draft legislation will be completed in the next few days and is all but certain to pass.

Another level of bureaucracy, just what we need:

State officials complain that the new requirements will add a costly, complicated burden to the issuance of driver’s licenses, which has been their responsibility for almost a century. Civil rights organizations and privacy advocates say that they are concerned that a standardized driver’s license would amount to a national identification card and that a central database would be vulnerable to identify theft.

Yes, I think it would be. But we already have national IDs for all intents and purposes.

There have been a few cases of Iraqi reporters being treated, well, badly:

A photographer for a Baghdad newspaper says Iraqi police beat and detained him for snapping pictures of long lines at gas stations. A reporter for another local paper received an invitation from Iraqi police to cover their graduation ceremony and ended up receiving death threats from the recruits. A local TV reporter says she’s lost count of how many times Iraqi authorities have confiscated her cameras and smashed her tapes.

Most incidents appear to involve the police.

Bill Hobbs points to a site called VolPols which is set up to:

Coming soon to the blogosphere near you: VolPols.com, a nonpartisan central clearinghouse for news releases from Tennessee state legislators and state government, and a free hosting service for legislators’ weblogs. VolPols.com will handle all design and technical issues for legislators’ blogs.

Sounds like a good idea. In case that’s not good enough, here’s my offer: Any and all Tennessee legislators or other politicos (regardless of political affiliation) are welcome to blog here or forward me releases. I will post anything sent, without editing, provided it comes from a local politico (and that can be verified). I will attribute the post to the politico. And it’s free.

We need more blogging legislators.

Update: Bubba reports (in comments) that Bill Hobbs owns the site. Wonder why the Hobbster was being, uhm, less than forthright about that? Bill has stated it’s his site in the comments section at his site. There’s nothing wrong with him doing that (in fact, I think it’s a great idea) but it would have been nice of him to disclose the fact he owns instead of linking to it and calling it interesting.

Bubba also says that he got notified of the new site via email. I didn’t. Bummer. Guess I’m not one of the cool bloggers. Heh.

Getting crowed in Tennessee! Bubba welcomes a slew of members into the Rocky Top Brigade. Welcome aboard, all.

On CCW in Louisiana:

Concealed handguns haven’t been as bad — or as good — as forecast

[snip]

Legislators and former Gov. Mike Foster OK’d the law amidst predictions that more than 40,000 gun groupies would line up for permits in the first year alone — instantaneously transforming the state into the wild, wild West.

Reality has proven far less dramatic.

Louisiana State Police have doled out just 19,920 permits over the years, and refused to grant another 504 to those who applied for one but did not pass legal muster.

Annual reports of the concealed-handgun unit detail five shooting incidents involving permit holders — including one in 2003 on the Baton Rouge City Public Dock. In two cases, someone was injured; none was fatal.

“It’s worked exactly like I thought would,” Foster said. “Law-abiding citizens have gotten permits so they can protect themselves, and we’ve really had no problems with it.”