I’m not going to characterize this or say anything about it. But I had to share it with you. From TPM Reader PH …
I read about your scary childhood experience and I had to leave work due to the sick feeling in my gut. The sick feeling has been building, maybe since Sandy Hook, but your story forced to write about something I had never written about before.
I accidentally killed my best friend when I was 15. Shot my best friend of eight years a week before we started high school. I was sitting in his room holding his rifle across my legs as he talked about how he had looked it up in some collectors guide and it was worth more than when he got it (Christmas or birthday or something). All the sudden there was a gigantic explosion and the rifle flew off my legs and I looked over as my friend fell over holding his gut and the whole world was tinted a hazy red.
Louisiana Rep. John Fleming is the latest House Republican to call for providing President Obama short term debt limit increases — if only so the GOP can keep hounding Democrats about government spending for the next two years. But as much as he’d like to extract a price from Obama, he subtly explained to reporters how Republicans might ultimately let their hostage go. Read More
I’ve been thinking of writing some version of this post since the days immediately after the Newtown shootings. It overlaps with but is distinct from the division between people who are pro-gun or anti-gun or pro-gun control or anti-gun control. Before you even get to these political positions, you start with a more basic difference of identity and experience: gun people and non-gun people.
So let me introduce myself. I’m a non-gun person. And I think I’m speaking for a lot of people. Read More
GOP memo brags: We gerrymandered so well we won the House even though we got fewer votes!!!
House Republicans are huddling right now to strategize and soul search at their annual retreat, in Williamsburg, VA. Presumably over the next two days they’ll settle upon a strategy for confronting President Obama over the debt limit and the need to fund the government at the end of March.
If you’re wondering where John Boehner comes down on these questions, I think this is a decent clue.
That’s Boehner’s deputy chief of staff David Schnittger promoting an article by former Denny Hastert spokesman John Feehery. Supposedly RTs don’t equal endorsements on Twitter, but Feehery’s advice won’t sit well with House conservatives. Read More
To get you ready for the big holiday weekend in DC, photo highlights of the 2009 inauguration.
Back in the summer of 2009 we had the first glimmer of the coming politics of the Obama era in the raucus and whackadoodle townhall meetings when Tea Partiers, occasionally bearing assault weapons, turned out to fight the onslaught of health care reform. And I’m starting to think that we’re heading toward something similar with guns (and possibly, though we haven’t gotten to it yet, over immigration reform).
Here are some stories just over the last few days hours.
Texas AG invites gun-loving New Yorkers to move to Texas.
Mississippi Governor and House Speaker wants to use the pre-Civil War (and unconstitutional) theory of ‘interposition and nullification’ to nullify federal gun laws within the sovereign state of Mississippi.
Tennessee state Rep. wants to arrest federal agents who try to enforce federal gun laws in Tennessee.
Texas Congressman threatens impeachment over potential Obama executive order.
NRA attacks President and President’s daughters in new gun ad.
So where do you think this is going? Share your thoughts with me and I’ll print responses here at the Editor’s Blog.
You already know that immigration reform and gun control are two of the major Obama agenda items for the second term, but the White House is insisting that climate change will be one, too. There’s just very little objective evidence that’s true in the sense most people understand it.
There’s a difference, of course, between making an issue a major priority and advancing major legislation on it. It’s partly semantic, but not entirely. A president can elevate an ignored or latent issue by making it a major priority and still get tangible things done short of major legislation. But we’re well past the point now where we need to raise awareness on climate change or introduce it into the national political conversation. Read More
A lot more clarity now from Al Franken’s office about his position on an assault weapons ban. A newspaper report in Minnesota initially made it sound like Franken was declining to take a position on the issue. But his office released a subsequent statement responding to the President’s new gun control proposals.
The key part: “I also support the principle that we should reinstate a ban on assault weapons, and I will carefully review any proposal to do that. We need to make sure we don’t have weapons out there that are really designed for the battlefield, and not for hunting.”
Full statement here.