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About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Last night I started to write up some of what Tanya Erzen said at the presentation she gave at my church the other night, which was about the two years she spent studying the “ex-gay” movement and how it fits into the agenda of the “Christian right”. But, man, was some of that stuff depressing and anger-inducing. So I decided to share some other things first, which fit in with the notion of churches (and individuals) practicing “radical welcome“.
I’ve written more about that here.
Feelin’ Lonesome Tonight?
It’s hard to follow all the investigations and the insinuations these days, on this site and others. But I have the strong sense that a monster is about to emerge from the swamp. The Republicans have decided they aren’t stonewalling for George any more.
Olbermann just used a different analogy. He said the Republicans were sick of being “the 300,” joining shields to protect the king. It’s a pretty visual analogy. (You can imagine Cheney as the hunchback on the goat trail, waiting to pounce and break a tie, and then turning his limo around in disgust.)
Like most “junkies” I’ve been listening for undertones in the standard right wing hacks. Scarborough has gone over to the enemy, Matthews was called “a liberal” by a wingnut last week, who’s jumping next?
I hated that analogy. If they’re the 300, that makes the rest of us the Persians.
Plus, this notion of beseiged Republicans annoys the heck out of me. They brought this upon themselves by blindly supporting that madman in the White House rather than by doing their jobs and acting like a co-equal branch of government. They put their political party ahead of their country. In my book, that’s unforgivable. It’s also not very 300-like.
try how the hell does someone inadvertantly carry a loaded firearm and additional clips into the senate?
“unfortunate” is not a word I would use…
i’m calling bullshit on this explanation…this ought to be raising a lot of red flags, but isn’t…surprise, surprise…meet the new boss, same as…
I don’t think it’s hard…
Webb hands off the gun to an aide as he gets on a plane. The aide forgets it’s in XXX????
There is a mindset about carrying loaded guns around. Now, I’ve done it myself, so this is not an anti-gun comment. But when you carry all the time, it IS possible to forget. YOu have to know the mindset.
i am not anti-gun either, nor am i an nra member, but this speaks to a much broader question / attitude, with which i do not find acceptable.
i’ve been around guns all my life. i’ve hunted and shot for pleasure and competition for many years. owned, still own, and use guns on a regular basis…I’ve never forgotten that I was transporting one….and I have never transported a loaded one.
granted, i’ve never carried a handgun, nor do i wish to do so. but to, purport to excuse the fact that someone could forget is beyond the pale. it is indicative, in my mind, of a rather cavalier attitude about such matters, and that is a mindset that i find discomforting.
if it is indeed. a prevalent opinion, there’s something seriously wrong with the mindset that enables it.
you may rest assurred that had it been you or i in that situation, we would be in custody and the excuse that it was inadvertant wouldn’t be playing very well.
still BS.
According to Jim’s parsing, he didn’t “hand” it to the aide, rather Thompson took it from one of their several cars which they had to swap around when Jim left for New Orleans. Now, Webb didn’t say this precisely, rather this is what I got from what he did say to reporters in the hallway.
One thing I find interesting about this story is that the aide was carrying a loaded gun and two full clips of ammunition. Since if the gun was loaded, it must have had another clip in it, and since 9mm handgun clips nowadays hold 17 rounds, that means the aide was carrying 51 rounds of ammunition. So he was ready for one hell of a shootout.
I guess it’s not just Republicans that take 24 too seriously.
Not necessarily so. There are still a huge number of 9mm semi’s with single-stack mags, 7-9 rounds — they’re MUCH smaller and flatter, easier to carry concealed. Also, a number of shoulder-carry rigs include a dual magazine carrier on the other side for the weight, and many folks who carry in belt holsters balance with a dual-mag rig on the other side. I do this myself, not because I expect to need the extra rounds, but just to keep my pants level. Nothing says “Pistol HERE” like pants that are two inches lower on one side.
I’ve never actually “forgotten” I was carrying, in the sense of “hey, how’d THAT get there?”, but there have been many times when I wasn’t directly focusing on having the weapon (sometimes it’s just another piece of the gear…) and I have walked into places I wouldn’t normally have carried it… just because my mind was on other things.
None of those places have had metal detectors, however; otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting at my own desk typing this. OTOH I don’t normally work in a place that HAS metal detectors… maybe that becomes just part of the furniture too.
I can see both sides of this as reasonable, actually.
Thanks for correcting me on this. I don’t really know anything about carrying.
Since we’re talking about guns, I might as well mention my recent experience, since I think it might have something to teach about policy. I am originally from New York and Massachusetts, but am living in Pennsylvania at the moment. Of course, New York and Massachusetts have strict laws when it comes to handguns, and I have always taken those as common sense. My thinking was, following Max Weber, that the state has a monopoly on violence, so there is no reason for civilians to own handguns, the sole purpose of which is to kill people. Add the argument that statistics show that gun owners are more likely to shoot themselves or someone in their own family than an intruder or attacker, so that gun ownership reduces personal safety instead of increasing it.
Well, after living in Pennsylvania, which has very lax gun laws, for a while, I decided to take advantage of the laxness and buy a handgun, just for fun, to experience the absurdity of the system. Then, something interesting happened. Owning a handgun came to seem normal. So the simple ownership of a gun has changed my position on gun control. I believe that this is the only change I have made on a major American political issue since I was sixteen, and I am now in my forties.
I believe that Britain has the strictest gun control laws around: it is virtually impossible to legally own a handgun there. That has created a big market for compressed air guns converted to using bullets. I do not think that that is the way to go. Modern handguns are admirable technological achievements, like MP3 players or cell phones, so it is understandable that people would want to own them. Thus, the state’s banning them would seem to sacrifice a legitimate individual right to a nebulous theory, namely, that controlling guns, as opposed to bringing up people so that they are not violent, is the way to solve our problems with violence.
I used to think that it was virtually impossible to own a handgun in Germany as well, but some Google searches proved that not to be the case. In Germany, the right to own a handgun without having an extraordinary need for self-defense is recognized, but one needs to rigorously demonstrate that one is qualified to own a handgun. That means going through a formal program teaching you how to handle guns and being vetted as an “upstanding citizen”.
I believe that the trouble with gun control advocates in the United States is that they want to follow the British, as opposed to the German, model. They believe that there is no legitimate reason for an ordinary citizen to own a handgun. The German approach recognizes that there are legitimate reasons, but since guns are dangerous, like automobiles, it requires that people demonstrate that they are qualified to own and hence use a handgun, in the way that drivers are required to demonstrate competence.
BTW, when it comes to hunting, I believe that the only acceptable reason to hunt is to acquire meat that you are either going to eat yourself or give or sell to someone else. Hunting for the sole purpose of killing an animal, which is what Cheney does, is no different than murder, and should be treated accordingly. Also, hunting is not the proper way to cull populations of species such as deer. The way to do that is to bring back the corresponding alpha predators, such as wolves or mountain lions. Since humans do not traditionally eat other predators such as wolves, big cats, or bears, hunting of all such species should be banned unconditionally.
The instructors in “carry” classes actually teach that there is no point in carrying a gun unless it is loaded. Again, it’s a mindset.
Webb hasn’t explained, so let’s not judge. But if the loaded gun was in some sort of briefcase that might have gotten stolen or ended up in the hands of a child, that’s negligence.
Listening to Scarborough, you’d think that only two Republicans abandoned the president.
But in fact, most of the Republicans decided to play “hear no evil, see no evil.” The headlines say “Republicans Abandon Bush” and in fact, a lot of them hid out on this one.
Yeah, see your point…
But the image of them trying to huddle together is still instinctually appealing.
History has never really examined the motivations of Xerxes. Isn’t all we know the history of Heraclitus? I’ll bet he wasn’t a nine foot tall guy!
And there was really nothing admirable about Spartan society. They were nuts who killed most of their young and lived off the slave labor of helots.
Now that I think of it, it’s a pretty good analogy after all.
There’s a post from Consortium News on TruthOut by an ex-military intelligence officer who was in Iraq. He was the “computer guy” there, and saw the torture. Memories of his experience continue to give him nightmares, according to this column. He recently attended a showing of a documentary film, “The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib,” for which he had been interviewed by the filmmaker. Janis Karpinski was in the audience, too. A panel with Ted Kennedy and Lindsey Graham spoke afterward, and Graham, not knowing Karpinski was there as he’d arrived late, proceeded to make some very foolish remarks. Not ready to sit quietly by, the retired colonel is now on record that she’s ready to elect someone, anyone, other than Graham from her home state of South Carolina. Touche!