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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (50054)	3/19/2012 10:47:00 PM
From: greatplains_guy	1 Recommendation Respond to of 71588

Holder in 1995: ‘Really brainwash people’ to be anti-gun Published: 10:21 PM 03/18/2012 By Matthew Boyle - The Daily Caller Attorney General Eric Holder supported using Hollywood, the media and government officials in order to “really brainwash people” into opposing firearm ownership, according to a 1995 C-SPAN video that emerged Sunday online. Holder, who was then the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, was addressing the Women’s National Democratic Club on Jan. 30, 1995. In his speech, he held up anti-smoking campaigns as a model for an anti-gun campaign. “What we need to do is change the way in which people think about guns, especially young people, and make it something that’s not cool, that it’s not acceptable, it’s not hip to carry a gun anymore, in the way in which we’ve changed our attitudes about cigarettes,” Holder said. Video of the speech was discovered by Breitbart.com. Holder explained that he wanted to use influential figures like then-Washington, D.C. Marion Barry and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, as well as widely watched TV shows like “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air” and “Martin,” to forward his anti-gun campaign. He sought to push that same agenda through public schools as well, “every day, every school, at every level.” Holder said these resources would be the driving force behind a campaign to “really brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way.” It’s unclear whether Holder still seeks to “brainwash” Americans into opposing gun ownership. Department of Justice spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler did not return The Daily Caller’s request for comment on the matter. The White House also did not return TheDC’s request for comment about whether President Obama agrees with Holder’s 1995 remarks. The revelation that Holder wanted to “brainwash” people into being “anti-gun” appears to be supported by what Congress and the American people have learned about Operation Fast and Furious. In Fast and Furious, the Obama administration’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives – in a program overseen by Holder’s Department of Justice – sent about 2,000 guns south to Mexican drug cartels. The Obama administration did this via “straw purchasers” who bought guns in the United States with the intention of illegally trafficking them somewhere else. Some have charged that Obama administration officials, including Holder, implemented Fast and Furious as part of a strategy to generate anti-gun outrage among the U.S. population. In a July 2010 email that surfaced in a congressional investigation, ATF Assistant Director Mark Chait asked Bill Newell, his agency’s lead agent in Phoenix to “see if these guns were all purchased from the same [dealer] and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales.” Statistics collected from the program eventually formed the backbone of that new long-gun reporting rule, which the administration implemented after Fast and Furious became a national scandal. The rule was upheld in a January ruling from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Also supporting allegations that Fast and Furious was a gun-control stalking horse are comments made by California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein during a November 2011 hearing. “My concern, Mr. Chairman, is there’s been a lot said about Fast and Furious, and perhaps mistakes were made, but I think this hunt for blame doesn’t really speak about the problem,” Feinstein said. “And the problem is, anybody can walk in and buy anything, .50-caliber weapons, sniper weapons, buy them in large amounts, and send them down to Mexico. So, the question really becomes, what do we do about this?” In his own written testimony in November, Holder complained that Congress “voted to keep law enforcement in the dark when individuals purchase multiple semi-automatic rifles and shotguns in Southwest border gun shops.” And on Sunday another sign of Holder’s anti-gun advocacy surfaced when the blog The Right Scoop published excerpts from a Washington Post op-ed Holder wrote shortly after 9/11, in which he used the terrorist attacks as a rationale to push for more gun control laws. South Carolina Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy told TheDC in February that he was prepared, but had no opportunity, “to prove to the Attorney General — which he already knows — that there are plenty of gun laws on the books right now … The notion that the fix is: ‘We just got to get Congress to pass more gun laws’ is just sheer sophistry. And I could have proven that.” dailycaller.com

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (50054)	3/21/2012 12:54:51 AM
From: Hope Praytochange	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

The NAACP Manufactures A Phony Crisis To Perpetuate Its Existence The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP, has gone to the United Nations — specifically the U.N. Human Rights Council — for, in the words of USA Today, "help battling what the organization views as forces attempting to push back voting rights." Those "forces" are laws being passed by various states that require a photo ID for voting. The NAACP move is so absurd and so self-destructive that one has to wonder why the organization has done this. According to the Freedom House 2011 assessment of freedom in the world, of the 41 members of the U.N. Human Rights Council, fewer than half are free countries. Ten are ranked "Not Free," and 12 "Partly Free." Among the "Not Free" members are Angola, China, Congo, Cuba, Jordan, Russia and Saudi Arabia. Those countries' elections, if they have them, are rigged, and prominent opponents are jailed, tortured and killed. To bring a human rights complaint before countries in which there are almost no human rights is truly absurd. That the alleged human rights violation takes place in the freest country in the world further elevates the level of absurdity. And when the alleged violation is a law that requires all voters, irrespective of race, creed or color, to show photo identification before voting, we have gone beyond the absurd and entered a modern Twilight Zone. The absurdity explains why what the NAACP doing is also self-destructive. It's one thing for a prominent individual or organization to make a mistake. But it is quite another to seem ludicrous, which is how the NAACP appears to everyone who is not on the left — and perhaps even to thoughtful leftists. Why, then, would the NAACP open itself to ridicule? According to NAACP President Ben Jealous, the reason is that "we are here today because in the past 12 months, more U.S. states have passed more laws pushing more U.S. citizens out of the ballot box than in any year in the past century." One can only say that if in the past 100 years fewer blacks were disenfranchised than in the past 12 months, all the claims about Jim Crow laws disenfranchising blacks must have been wildly exaggerated. But, of course, this too is absurd. As South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley pointed out, one needs a photo ID to obtain Sudafed. One therefore might as well argue that blacks and other minorities are disproportionately denied the right to purchase Sudafed because a photo ID is required. The counterargument that there is no comparison between the two because there is no constitutional right to Sudafed completely misses the point. The Sudafed example does not argue constitutionality; it argues against the claim that great numbers of people will not vote if a photo ID is necessary. If few members of racial minorities have been prevented from getting a cold pill because of the need for a photo ID, it stands to reason that the need for a photo ID won't prevent blacks and others from voting. The truth is that it insults the intelligence of blacks and Hispanics to claim that getting an official photo ID is too laborious, too demanding and ultimately disenfranchising. So, why is the NAACP going to the U.N.? Because the wonderful fact of American life is that most American civil liberties and civil rights organizations have little reason for their continued existence. The NAACP, therefore, has to justify its existence. Which it does by manufacturing crises (and hopefully garnering media attention). Without major eruptions of racism, its raison d'etre disappears — along with its funding. That is the real reason something as utterly innocuous as requiring a person to show a photo in order to vote is taken to the United Nations. It gets attention and makes supporters of the NAACP think their money is being used for the greatest electoral rights battle in a hundred years.