Second Amendment News Roundup for 12/18/08

Focusing on guns, politics, and news of interest, here is today's Second Amendment News Roundup:

Michelle Malkin reports that the Ohio government worker who pilfered through Joe the Plumber's private records has resigned, and 2 of her coworkers have been fired.

Mike McCarville passes along the stunning news that Obama's approval rating is the highest ever, despite the corruption and scandal. Looks like Chicago is not the only place in America that's been dumbed down.

JR says he opened his email box this morning to find baffling news about Obama's new plans for economic stimulus...where is this money coming from?

From Alphecca:
*Sen. Tester (D-SD) says NO to new gun control
*Require Women to Carry Guns

Say Uncle points to an article that opines on the Obama choice of Rick Warren to give the invocation at the Inauguration.

Sebastian posts Bitter Bitch's thoughts on the pros and cons of being everything to everyone, Obama-style.

Texas Fred has the story of a Georgia judge who threw a Muslim woman in jail for refusing to remove her head scarf at a security checkpoint.

Live from the Upper Texas Gulf Coast says he never would have expected THIS. Take a look.

Notoriously Conservative has a MUST-read on the national debt, along with a graphic that shows the debt from 1940 to the present.

Insight on Freedom provides essential reading on the Fairness Doctrine and its connections to Socialism.

From Western Rifle Shooters Association:
*A look at the circumstances leading to the Chinese 'insurrection' at Tienanmen Square
*The REAL Great Depression--and it's not the one you think!
*When Johnny Comes Marching to YOUR Home

From Codrea's War on Guns:
*Tyranny in Tennessee
*National Geographic spouts B.S. on guns
*Update on The Bastard's shenanigans in Indiana
*Criminals for Gun Control--in Gun Rights Examiner

Traction Control says that sometimes a hug isn't enough.

Nicki posts essential reading entitled, 'Lack of Regulation???'

Dustin's Gun Blog reports alarming news that increasingly citizens who are pulled over for speeding are being disarmed to boot.

Bear on a Bicycle provides a good read entitled, 'Thoughts on Thoughts--Tools and Weapons.'

John Lott has a truckload of evidence implicating mischief on the part of the Minnesota Canvassing Board, which apparently is determined to give the election to Al Franken. This will change forever Minnesota's reputation for 'clean' elections.

Tam says there is a petition going around in an attempt to 'save the rifles.'

OpenCarry.org has all of the news and political alerts concerning open carry around the country. Just click and start scrolling. There are many other forums in their discussion area as well.

Second Amendment News Roundup for 8/6/08

Focusing on guns, politics, and news of interest, here is today's Second Amendment News Roundup:

From David Codrea's War on Guns:
*The Quote of the YEAR
*Over at Larry Hincher paradise (Virginia Tech)
*One of the 'only ones' claims his gun just up and fired on its own..'it just went off'

Armed and Safe comments on his appearance on 'Gun Nuts' last evening, and makes further remarks about the issue that was discussed.

Sebastian makes an important clarification to the answer he gave to my question I called in last night to 'Gun Nuts--The Next Generation.'

Squeaky has the entire show from last night, in case you missed it.

Western Rifle Shooters Association (h/t to David at War on Guns) posts Mike Vanderboegh's riveting entry entitled, 'Birmingham--Race and Armed Defense of Individual Liberty and the Republic.' This is the MUST-read of the day!

The Editors at National Review have written a great editorial today on keeping up the pressure on Congressional Democrats concerning oil drilling. Read it all.

World Net Daily has this entitled, 'Energy Freedom.'

Rush Limbaugh comments on Obama's plan to rob oil company stockholders to pay each American $1000 bucks, and also cites that Obama has been getting heckled of late.

Gateway Pundit is reporting that the GOP revolt in Congress over the Democrats' refusal to deal with oil drilling may last right up to the Democratic National Convention.

Roberta X provides good reading today on 'Dead Tree Opinions.'

Syd at Front Sight, Press takes apart the Chicago Tribune over its views on gun rights.

Murdoc comments on plug-in hybrids.

Say Uncle responds to the comments of a bird-brain who criticized the John McCain ad on the 'I should have been a rock star' candidate.

It looks like Nicki at The Liberty Zone is ready to bail on Blogspot and make the jump to a new domain. Her new digs are HERE (www.thelibertyzone.com). That's a great pic too, Nicki!

Traction Control has another must-read entitled, 'So You're a Young Liberal Democrat?'

John Lott shows us in great detail that Barack Obama knows absolutely nothing about economics. Read it all.

Take a look at THIS interesting item over at Days of Our Trailers.

Texas Fred has a breaking story about how thieves are using the Internet to redirect traffic to websites under their control.

Reject the U.N. comments on the story we cited yesterday that the Democrats in Congress are set to sign a treaty that will allow the U.N. to take American oil from the rich crude oil fields in the Arctic Region of Alaska.

An Ol' Broad's Ramblings hammers President Bush over his statements on China today. Frankly, the Bush family (George the First and Second) have never had a very enviable position on China. Remember, it was George the First who did nothing about Tienanmen Square.

Chi-Coms Jail Thousands, Restrict Reporter Access

The Chinese Communists have rounded up political dissidents estimated to be in the thousands prior to this year's Olympic games. These persons have either been jailed or harassed into silence by the government.

In addition, foreign journalists who have traveled to the country to cover the Olympics have found that they are being denied access to hundreds of websites on the Internet.

This is life in modern Red China.

It is not much different than in the days prior to the Tienanmen Square incident where hundreds of brave Chinese students faced down the massive Red Army in an attempt to get the government to ease restrictions on human liberty.

But the Chi-Coms crushed the protests, resulting in the slaughter of innocent civilians and the imprisonment of others.

The Communist government to this day still persecutes and imprisons political dissidents, which prompted a popular CNN reporter recently to refer to the Chi-Coms as 'the same old gang of goons and thugs they've always been.'

Chinese government officials reportedly state that the reason for their purge of dissidents prior to the Olympics is to avoid the 'embarrassment' of having protests during the games.

It should be even more of an embarrassment for the Chi-Coms to know that the whole world has watched as they have proved once again that they are still totalitarians who hate human liberty.

Frankly, the Olympics this year are a joke. No one who values human life and liberty should feel compelled in the least to watch the display simply because 'they are the Olympics.'

I sure won't be watching.

Contrary to the words of President Bush, who stated that the games were 'nothing more than a sporting event,' meaning of course that politics should not play a role, the Chi-Coms have made sure that the event is all about politics...and their mode of operation to squelch free speech, free expression, political dissent, and Internet access for reporters.

What would the President do, for example, if in four years the Olympic Committee decided to go to Poland and hold the 'Auschwitz Skeleton Olympics?'

A massive swell of human rights protests would ensue all over the world, and rightly so.

And thus, how is going to Communist China to hold the Olympic games any different?

For more on this human rights fiasco, click HERE for a Washington Post special report. And click HERE for the complete Breitbart story on Internet restrictions for foreign journalists in China.

The Chinese Show Their True Colors

The world is truly fortunate that the Chinese are hosting the Olympics. Never since Tienanmen Square have the true colors of the Communist regime been on full display for all to see.

Despite all of the so-called 'progress' made in China with the introduction of capitalism into its system (albeit with clear anti-capitalistic restrictions on speech and other human rights), the nation is still held firmly in the grip of totalitarianism along with all of its concomitant suppression of human rights.

No greater example of this can be found than China's present treatment of Tibet, the Buddhist monks, and its reaction to the nations participating in the Olympics that protest the regime's oppressive actions.

The problem is that the West routinely capitulates to Chinese demands. Google and Microsoft betrayed their country when, on condition of doing business in China, they agreed to the regime's demands that freedom of expression be suppressed.

And the most that the West can seem to muster in response to China's barbaric treatment of Tibet is a verbal slap on the wrist.

As usual, this is not enough.

George the First set the tone for this travesty when he refused to react forcefully to the manner in which the Chinese regime reacted to the brave students who protested Communism in Tienanmen Square nearly 20 years ago.

Our non-action was wrong then, and it is wrong now.

China is still home to thousands if not millions of citizens, many of them the most intellectually astute in the country, who detest the regime and believe that democratic ideals and human liberty are the height of human progress.

We owe it to these stalwart souls to give a clear signal that we are on their side.

Cauldron Still Boils Under Chinese Surface

Very little has changed in China with regard to free speech and political dissent since the 1989 Tienanmen Square Massacre. Last week a political dissident by the name of Chen Shuqing was sentenced to four years in jail after being convicted in a Chinese court for 'inciting subversion.'

Chen had written extensively on many foreign websites about the need for freedom and constitutional rule in China.

China has a constitution that supposedly grants the freedom of expressing political opinion, though it rarely, if ever, upholds such liberty.

For example, in order for Google, Inc. to do business in the Communist nation, it had to agree to censor its search engine results within the country, deleting all references to the Tienanmen Square Massacre and to Taiwan's independence.

Google's highly unethical, un-American, and anti-Constitutional practices in China remains a thorn in the flesh to those of us who use the corporation's services. We happen to question whether such policies should be legal for an American corporation.

Although China had agreed to ease some of its restrictions on freedom of the press and freedom of speech in anticipation of the 2008 Olympics, human and media watch groups say that the country is cracking down on political dissent and the growing social unrest within its borders.

A Paris-based liberty watchdog group called 'Reporters Without Borders' says that 30 journalists and 50 Internet users have been arrested and detained in China, some remaining behind bars for nearly 20 years.

The group also ranks China a dismal 163rd out of 167 countries on its press freedom index.

Reporters Without Borders condemned the harsh sentence of Chen, referring to the actions of the Chinese government as 'appalling.' Even the lawyer representing Chen, Li Jianqiang, had his license to practice law suspended for a year due to his defense of cases involving freedom of the press.

The U.S. squandered a golden opportunity to use the 'bully pulpit' of the Presidency to defend the student dissidents who were summarily slaughtered, imprisoned, and oppressed by their own government during the 1989 Tienanmen Square incident.

Chinese university students by the tens of thousands took to the streets in 1989 to demand liberty. One cannot forget the one male student facing down a Chinese military tank with its huge guns pointed at him.

The standoff did not last long.

After attempting in vain to silence the protesters with fear tactics, the Chinese government lowered the boom on its own citizens, most of whom were the brightest young intellects in the country. Using its mighty military arsenal against unarmed dissidents, China crushed the pro-liberty demonstrations with massive bloodshed.

President George H.W. Bush maintained a low profile in the wake of such a tragedy.

Many believe that Bush the First placed expediency above principle when he refused to come to the defense of the student dissidents. After all, Bush had established close friends within the Chinese government early in his career as a foreign diplomat.

One cannot even begin to fathom Ronald Reagan doing such a thing had he been President. In fact, it is a near certainty that had Reagan still been in office a very different scenario would have developed, possibly leading to a human rights showdown with the Communist country, much as he had done with the Soviet Union.

With Bush the First's capitulation to the Chinese government, the student dissidents were essentially left hanging out to dry all on their own.

Bill Clinton was no better than Bush the First. In fact, one of the driving forces of the Tienanmen Square uprising, Chai Ling, was appalled that President Bill Clinton went to China in 1999 and saluted some of the very same soldiers who killed many of her friends during the 1989 protest.

The thing that oppressive governments never learn is that the thirst for liberty never dissipates but only grows the more a society is oppressed. And since 1989 the student movement that burst forth demanding liberty has been publicly silenced but not destroyed.

In fact, the cauldron of unrest still boils just under the Chinese surface, and the Chinese government knows it.

This is the reason that despite their reassurances, the government still cracks down harshly on all political dissent.

And for this reason, American corporations such as Google are complicit in the Chinese oppression of its people. It almost goes without saying that Google and others like it deserve to be harshly condemned.

For a complete annotated pictorial of the Tienanmen Square Massacre, click here:
http://cryptome.cn/tk/tiananmen-kill.htm