Morning Must-Reads

It's with a certain humor that I've scrolled through a lot of media this morning and one thing remains clear:

They hate us — people with guns — not guns!

Well, they hate them, too, but not as much as they hate us. My favorite is the HuffPo Headline: Democracy Weeps. Actually, it's mob rule that weeps...democracy prevailed. It turns out that America isn't governed by fake polling data and likes from the President, Vice-President and that "nasty little fascist" Mayor of New York City. Que'll surprise! Here's a round-up of hand-wringing from CNS and a sampling of tweets from those mental giants in Hollywood. Man...Bette Midler hates us? How will we survive?

There are some interesting reads, though. This from the New York Sun in an editorial titled "Blame Bloomberg:"

The problem is that the neither Messrs. Obama, Bloomberg, nor Biden believe in the Second Amendment. Nor do any of their partners in politics, such as Senator Schumer. Not one of them has protested the over-regulation of guns in New York or any other state. Mr. Cuomo just tightened gun prohibitions in a state where Mother Teresa couldn’t get a pistol permit. Not even the most law-abiding, well-trained individuals can carry a gun in New York. The Second Amendment is not in force here. So people look at Bloomberg-land and ask, where is he leading us? Where does he want to go? The way we interpret the decision of the Senate yesterday is that it is saying, “not one more inch in that direction.” Good for the Senate.

Well, d'uh! Go back and read the WSJ editorial of a couple of days ago, too:

These [Supreme Court decisions on Heller and MacDonald] are landmark rulings, defining the Second Amendment with more specificity as the Court has done for other parts of the Bill of Rights. Yet judging by the laws now being debated and in some cases passed, you'd think those rulings didn't exist. Liberal majorities are rolling over them as if they were op-eds from a third-rate think tank.

Because progressives don't believe in any part of the Constitution, to tell the truth. And while you're at WSJ, read "Gun Control Meltdown" from yesterday PM:

President Obama's gun control agenda was routed in the Senate on Wednesday, and Mr. Obama naturally blamed the National Rifle Association. The truth is that Mr. Obama invited this meltdown by assuming he could exploit the Newtown massacre to ram through a liberal wish-list that wouldn't have stopped the next mass murder.

Nice, short piece from David Boaz at the libertarian Cato Institute on "Who Killed Gun Control"...quick answer, Americans did!

In their book It Didn’t Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States, Seymour Martin Lipset and Gary Marx write, “The American ideology, stemming from the [American] Revolution, can be subsumed in five words: antistatism, laissez-faire, individualism, populism, and egalitarianism.” If political scientists Herbert McClosky and John Zaller are right that “[t]he principle here is that every person is free to act as he pleases, so long as his exercise of freedom does not violate the equal rights of others,” then we can expect Americans to cling to their gun rights for a long time.

Let's hope socialism continues to fail in the United States. Even the reliably antigun Christian Science Monitor has a better understanding of American political structure than the President of the United States, his hang-dog dimwitted sidekick Biden and apparently every liberal/progressive in the country:

Fifth and perhaps most important, James Madison still rules America. The Framers designed a bicameral legislature and the separation of powers specifically to prevent an automatic translation of public opinion into public policy. Supporters of the system say that it fosters deliberation and ensures the protection of minority rights. Critics say that it prevents passage of necessary legislation. 

At the moment, political progressives are especially disappointed in the system. They should remember, however, that it has enabled them to block conservative ideas that were popular with the general public. If the polls always prevailed, after all, America would have a balanced-budget amendment and a constitutional ban on flag burning. President Obama has frequently taken credit for making tough decisions that were unpopular at the time, implicitly acknowledging that poll numbers do not always translate into righteousness.

Remember, according to Gallup, 50% of Americans believe in alien abductions, but that's no reason for Congress to pass laws mandating puncture-proof kevlar underwear for all Americans! From Brother Massad Ayoob, "The President is a Sore Loser:"

A very angry Chief Executive declares that Senators who see reality and prevent what’s best described as “the tyranny of the (uninformed) majority” have somehow subverted the process. He then manages, with practically the same lungful of air, to spout bogus statistics and simultaneously accuse those who told the truth of willful deception.

Make that, "Sore loser and a liar in his own right."