Month: January 2013

Executive Orders (E.O.), Federal Powers, and the Law (Gun-Control)

Published by Papa Giorgio

If an intruder has broken into your home are you going to pray that they leave your family alone and simply call 9-1-1 with the hopes that law enforcement will save you? How long will you have before police arrive at your home, office, wherever? In Atlanta, it’s 11 minutes. Nine minutes in Nashville. Quite a lot can happen in that span of time. And we know from the Supreme Court ruling that there isn’t a legal obligation for anyone else to protect your life. Are you OK with those odds? You may be, but I’m not, and I will resist the urge of anyone whose goal is to erode my right to protect myself and my family.

I am not willing to disarm the helpless and punish those who are law-abiding. They are the ones who fall victim to those who chose to flout the law. Guns are neither good nor bad. Motive is. Intent is. Character is. Inanimate objects have no such qualities. Let’s not risk more lives by pretending that “gun control” works. ~ The Dana Show

Conservative Daily News:

…As Richard Larsen, in his excellent article, says:

“The limits of presidential declarations, like the EO [Executive Order], were clarified judicially by the landmark 1952 Supreme Court ruling of Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer. By executive order 10340, President Harry Truman declared that all steel mills in the country were to be placed under federal government control. The Supreme Court ruled, however, that the EO was invalid since Truman was essentially creating, or making law, as opposed to clarifying the executive branch enforcement of an existing law.”  [emphasis mine]

So, is Obama going to “create” law? Is the law he “creates” going to infringe upon our constitutionally guaranteed right to keep and bear arms. History is NOT on Obama’s side.

Or does Obama understand the phrase, “… shall not be infringed,” and just wants his way?

In 1718 the “Puckle gun,” the first machine gun, appeared. (One could argue that the so-called “assault rifle pre-dated the Second Amendment.) The Colt revolver followed not long after and in the late 1800s the Gatling gun, which fired 200 rounds per minute, appeared on the market. The evolution of firearms was observable during the time that the Constitution was drafted; to argue that the Founding Fathers were unaware of, or not living through, the ever-evolving capabilities of firearms is blatant ignorance of both common sense and fact. Jefferson himself was a noted collector and in letters explained what technological capabilities he favored in pieces over others in his collection. ~ The Dana Show

Red State:

…Prior to the Civil War, the Bill of Rights only applied to the federal government and that first Congress dropped references to “as allowed by Law” that had been in the English Bill of Rights. The Founders intended that Congress was to make no law curtailing the rights of citizens to keep and bear arms.

The 2nd Amendment, contrary to much of today’s conversation, has just as much to do with the people protecting themselves from tyranny as it does burglars. That is why there is so little common ground about assault rifles — even charitably ignoring the fact that there really is no such thing. If the 2nd Amendment is to protect the citizenry from even their own government, then the citizenry should be able to be armed.

There are plenty of arguments and bodies to suggest that we might, as a nation, need to rethink this. The Founders gave us that option. We can amend the Constitution.

In doing so, we should keep in mind that in the past 100 years Germany, Italy, Russia, Japan, China, and other governments have turned on their people at various times and, in doing so, restricted freedoms starting often with gun ownership. You may think a 30 round magazine is too big. Under the real purpose of the second amendment, a 30 round magazine might be too small.

Regardless, as the President announces how he will curtail the freedoms of the second amendment, we should remember Justice Robert Jackson’s opinion in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943)

The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.

Politifact Tells Whoppers! 2012 Lie of the Year

Published by Papa Giorgio

Via Breitbart’s article, “Reuters Debunks Politifact; Fiat Will Build Jeeps in China”

On Sunday, Reuters reported Fiat and Chrysler, which Fiat owns, are on the verge of signing an agreement to produce Jeeps in China, and they may make the announcement as early as Monday at the Detroit Auto Show: 

Italian carmaker Fiat and its U.S. unit Chrysler are set to sign a new agreement with Guangzhou Automobile Group Co to produce the Jeep vehicle for the Chinese market, Il Corriere della Sera said on Sunday.

In an unsourced article, the Corriere said the head of Fiat and Chrysler Sergio Marchionne could announce the agreement at the Detroit auto show, which kicks off on Monday.

Under the agreement, off-road vehicles under the Jeep brand will be produced at GAC’s Canton factory, the paper said.

This report debunks the supposedly neutral fact-checking organization Politifact’s claim that Mitt Romney’s campaign advertisement during the 2012 that alleged Obama sold Chrysler to Italians “who are going to build Jeeps in China” was 2012’s “Lie of the Year.”

Politifact announced that Mitt Romney’s “Jeep” ad was its “2012 Lie of the Year” even though the ad was factually true. 

Romney slightly misspoke on the stump about Fiat’s intention to produce Jeeps in China, but reports about Fiat, which owns Chrysler, building Jeeps in China surfaced as early as 2010. And the campaign ad simply stated: 

Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy and sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China. Mitt Romney will fight for every American job.

Even liberal publications like Mother Jones and mainstream newspapers like the Washington Post conceded the advertisement was factually true or true on the merits. 

This is not the first time Politifact’s “lie of the year” has been completely debunked after the fact. 

In 2009, Politifact announced that former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s claim about “death panels” in Obamacare was its “Lie of the Year.” After Palin revealed what Rush Limbaugh said was a “hidden truth,” the Obama administration removed the so-called “death panels” from its initial Obamacare bill. And three years later, former Obama adviser Steve Rattner, in a New York Times op-ed, said the country actually needed “death panels” to ration health care.

…read more…

Here are some FACTS about death panels from an older post: Kirsten Powers says in this interview/debate that Bush made this law, Gateway Pundit has this correction:

Republican analyst Matt Schlapp corrected this latest lie [right around the 6:40 mark] by the Obama Administration. Bush vetoed the end of life provision that went into law in 2008.

[….]

RedState has more.

What The Hill’s Jason Millman forgot to mention in his article was that President Bush VETOED the 2008 bill and the Democrats, along with some “good-willed” Republicans OVERRODE Bush’s veto forcing him to sign the legislation into law. The bill dealt with doctors’ reimbursements and more, but the Democrats slipped in the end-of-life planning by opening up the Social Security Act, which I have stated many times is dangerous, because once changed, it is difficult to amend again and allows for tinkering with the Medicare fee schedule and covered services definitions and requirements.

The fact that the Obama Administration claimed that the Bush Administration supported the end of life provision is a complete lie. And, they know it.

Human Genome in Meltdown ~ Is the Genome Project Proving a Genesis Date?

Published by Papa Giorgio

Here is some awesome info via Creation/Evolution Headlines:

According to a study published Jan. 10 in Nature by geneticists from 4 universities including Harvard, “Analysis of 6,515 exomes reveals the recent origin of most human protein-coding variants.”  By recent they mean really recent on evolutionary timescales:

We estimate that approximately 73% of all protein-coding SNVs [single-nucleotide variants] and approximately 86% of SNVs predicted to be deleterious arose in the past 5,000–10,000 years. The average age of deleterious SNVs varied significantly across molecular pathways, and disease genes contained a significantly higher proportion of recently arisen deleterious SNVs than other genes.

The authors explained this in evolutionary terms as the result of “explosive population growth” and that “selection has not had sufficient time to purge them from the population.”  They claimed Europeans had more variants “consistent with weaker purifying selection due to the Out-of-Africa dispersal.”  The last paragraph assesses the impact of their findings:

More generally, the recent dramatic increase in human population size, resulting in a deluge of rare functionally important variation, has important implications for understanding and predicting current and future patterns of human disease and evolution. For example, the increased mutational capacity of recent human populations has led to a larger burden of Mendelian disorders, increased the allelic and genetic heterogeneity of traits, and may have created a new repository of recently arisen advantageous alleles that adaptive evolution will act upon in subsequent generations.

As for advantageous mutations, they provided NO examples.

Dr. John Sanford Interviewed About His Book, “Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome“

Continuing with Creation/Evolution Headlines post:

The findings depend on models and assumptions, but appear to support the thesis of John Sanford’s book Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome, which argues that the genetic load increases so rapidly that mankind could not have survived for tens of thousands of years, to say nothing of millions (see recent YouTube interview part 1 and part 2 [combined into one, above]).  How can such rapid rate of degradation be sustained over evolutionary time?

The authors seemed a bit baffled by their findings.  The following paragraph gives a hint of that (compare “expected” vs observed):

The site frequency spectrum (SFS) of protein-coding SNVs revealed an enormous excess of rare variants (Fig. 1a). Indeed, we observed an SNV approximately once every 52 base pairs (bp) and 57 bp in European Americans and African Americans, respectively, whereas in a population without recent explosive growth we would expect the SNVs to occur once every 257 bp and 152 bp in European Americans and African Americans, respectively (Supplementary Information). Thus, the European American and African American samples contain approximately fivefold and threefold increases in SNVs, respectively, attributable to explosive population growth, resulting in a large burden of rare SNVs predicted to have arisen very recently (Fig. 1b). For example, the expected age of derived singletons, which comprise 55.1% of all SNVs, is 1,244 and 2,107 years for the European American and African American samples, respectively. Overall, 73.2% of SNVs (81.4% and 58.7% in European Americans and African Americans, respectively) are predicted to have arisen in the past 5,000 years. SNVs that arose more than 50,000 years ago were observed more frequently in the African American samples (Fig. 1b), which probably reflects stronger genetic drift in European Americans associated with the Out-of-Africa dispersal.

…read more..

The 2nd Amendment Is NOT for Hunting ~ Walter Williams

Published by Papa Giorgio

Walter Williams article, “Why the 2nd Amendment”

Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., shootings, said: “The British are not coming. … We don’t need all these guns to kill people.” Lewis’ vision, shared by many, represents a gross ignorance of why the framers of the Constitution gave us the Second Amendment. How about a few quotes from the period and you decide whether our Founding Fathers harbored a fear of foreign tyrants.

Alexander Hamilton: “The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed,” adding later, “If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government.” By the way, Hamilton is referring to what institution when he says “the representatives of the people”?

James Madison: “(The Constitution preserves) the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation … (where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”

Thomas Jefferson: “What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.”

George Mason, author of the Virginia Bill of Rights, which inspired our Constitution’s Bill of Rights, said, “To disarm the people — that was the best and most effectual way to enslave them.”

Rep. John Lewis and like-minded people might dismiss these thoughts by saying the founders were racist anyway. Here’s a more recent quote from a card-carrying liberal, the late Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey: “Certainly, one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizen to keep and bear arms. … The right of the citizen to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America but which historically has proven to be always possible.” I have many other Second Amendment references at http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/wew/quotes.html.

How about a couple of quotations with which Rep.

Lewis and others might agree? “Armas para que?” (translated: “Guns, for what?”) by Fidel Castro. There’s a more famous one: “The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing.” That was Adolf Hitler.

Here’s the gun grabbers’ slippery-slope agenda, laid out by Nelson T. Shields, founder of Handgun Control Inc.: “We’re going to have to take this one step at a time, and the first step is necessarily — given the political realities — going to be very modest. … Right now, though, we’d be satisfied not with half a loaf but with a slice. Our ultimate goal — total control of handguns in the United States — is going to take time. … The final problem is to make the possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition — except for the military, police, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs and licensed gun collectors — totally illegal” (The New Yorker, July 1976)….

…read more…

See also: