Democrats occupied the floor of the House of Representatives to demand that people on the federal “no fly” list be denied the right to buy firearms. But the no fly list is maintained by the incredibly incompetent TSA. Why should they get to decide whether you have your Second Amendment rights?
No Fly/No Gun
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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There was a time when America was (widely thought to be) great; that one was held to be innocent until proven guilty, when restrictions on behavior and rights were subject to adjudication instead of secret lists, and you had the right to face your accuser in court of law before being punished.
Liberals are blind to their own unjust practices; they need to see them performed by an opposite Other before they can begin to take them seriously.
Perhaps in their confrontation with the feared Trump they will comprehend their own enabling slide into totalitarianism.
Can President Trump become the irritating grain of sand that will stimulate liberals into restoring the now absent pearls of justice they once claimed to stand for, and once defended?
The Democratic Party’s sham House of Representatives demonstration was another shameful display of their indifference to the rights of the people.
The Upstairs Masters’ class of the Duopoly will not recognize nor take responsibility for the Blowback brought home to the under-represented people of the Downstairs Servants’ class by their perpetual wars for peace.
They bomb the “unworthy” victims’ homes into rubble and then cry about the Blowback of mass migration.
They kill families with the impunity and unaccountability of a tyrant, and when Blowback devastates families here, they propose disarming the victims of the Blowback they inspired.
They back NAFTA and the TPP in a surrender of sovereignty, and when the longtime unemployed disappear from the workforce, they celebrate the higher employment of a recovery.
Maybe in a Trump presidency the people will renounce the excesses of the Unitary Executive, which they were blind to under Obama. I wouldn’t count on it but it most certainly won’t happen under a Clinton presidency.
Well, of course a person on the no-fly list shouldn’t be allowed to buy guns. The real question is about the secret list itself. It needs to be monitored by someone other than the secret list-maker. If someone does get put on the list, they should be notified and allowed the right to defend themselves. It’s the government’s constitutionally mandated explicit responsibility to prove guilt if they’re going to restrict someone’s liberty.
You’re still living in the 20th century. Before 1 billion goatherds pledged themselves to jihad, to overrun the US with their cruel crooks and sinister staffs, to enforce Sharia Law, to close all the churches and turn them into Sharia offices, and to make everyone queue for goat meat. Back then, we had ‘innocent until proven guilty,’ and ‘the accused have the right to confront their accusers.’ Totally obsolete (as they were for Commies back in the day).
When confronting Commies or jihadists, we must have ‘guilty unless proven innocent,’ and there IS no proof they can possibly give of their innocence: everyone of the wrong colour and wrong ethnic group is a jihadist, by definition, so no proof of guilt is needed, and no (obviously fake) proof of innocence is acceptable.
And we cannot jeopardize those patriots who fearlessly (and anonymously) accuse jihadists by letting the jihadists confront them.
The Star Chamber for ALL Commies and jihadists. How could the US have been so stupid as to abandon that paradigm of dispensing justice?
“All I can say about this man, your honor, is that I can find no proof that he is not a Communist” – Joe McCarthy. (from memory – can’t find the original quote)
It certainly keeps costs down to dispense with that silly trial & go straight to the execution. Of course, the only person capable of handling such a role is my humble self. I already have a little list.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was on a terrorist watch list from the Boston FBI office. But they couldn’t identify him even after having hundreds of pictures and HD video of him, and had to go to the public for help.
So that’s an indication of how well these lists are managed.