“Madness”

Mr. Herbert’s most recent contribution to misinformation “A Threat We Can’t Ignore” argues that several recent and unrelated murders by “right-wing hate mongering, hate driven, gun craze wackos” is merely the opening volley in an uncoordinated but thematically unified campaign of violence.
The NRA, a morally complicitous co-conspirator, is named by Mr. Herbert as knowingly inflamming the intellectually enfeebled by fueling their paranoia.
These people (potential terrorists all) are dangerously deluded in believing the Second Amendment was drafted to protect their rights, not permit their recreational shooting. This bit of “madness”, Herbert’s term, is being exacerbated and exploited by the NRA.

A signature specimen of Herbert’s hyperbole.

Not to further alarm Mr. Herbert but there are tens of millions of Americans who share that view. The Second Amendment has nothing to do with hunting and everything to do with the logic of liberty responsibly exercised.

Government is force (as Washington observed) and force hasn’t a conscience. Why would a free people forsake the means by which their freedom was won and may yet be preserved? (parchment barriers are so seldom respected by aspiring tyrants or social engineers with a messiah complex)

It pays to advertise

For those who have seen the huge billboard on the  side of a building in lower Manhattan or the story (Risque Business) and photo in the NY Daily News, a reasonable question might be what are they advertising?

The easy and incorrect answer would be Calvin Klein Jeans.

The topless young woman in the ad appears to be enjoying a digital exam, lumbar adjustment and tonsilectomy simultaneously administered by two shirtless young men. The three are in something of a pile on a couch. Another young man, shirt and pants undone, is lying on the floor in a sexually induced stupor.

Though none of them looks old enough to attend an R rated movie without parent or guardian, they are very much a part of an R rated culture, which is precisely what the ad is selling.

A failing grade

The non-racist, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, is also non-ideological, so argues a recent White House memo. She “voted with the GOP appointees on the District Court of Appeals 95% of the time”. Impressive!

Yet, decisively inconsequential, according to no less an authority than our non-ideological President Obama.

In a 2005 floor statement the then Senator Obama explained his opposition to Judge Roberts confirmation. Although conceding the nominee fit to serve on the highest court in the land by virtue of intellect, scholarship, experience and temperament then Judge Roberts lacked the correct values, appropriate concerns, necessary world view and capaciousness of empathy.

In other words a Justice Roberts was unlikely to agree with Senator Obama on those 5% of cases (the difficult ones) that really matter.