Jeez!
A double-hit from the NYT today. First there was Bob Herbert's loathesome op-ed tying gun owners to hate groups. Now they're giving prominent coverage to Sen. Frank Lautenberg's introduction of a bill to give the U.S. Attorney General (currently the virulently anti-gun Eric Holder) the discretion to deny gun purchases to persons on the terrorist watch list.
The TWL is secret, of course, and there have been some very odd people whose names have turned up on the list, from Ted Kennedy to Cat Stevens. And people whose names are on the list, or even just closely resemble a name on the list, have a damnably hard time figuring out what on earth is going on; they have to sue in federal court just to find out if they're on the list at all. It's a Kafkaesque situation that we ought not to have in the U.S. It ought to be easier for citizens to challenge the TWL.
Lautenberg's bill will probably not make it out of committee, thank goodness, but this crafty old gun-hater has gotten around that obstacle before, by offering a last-minute amendment on the Senate floor to a larger bill that the leadership wants passed without delay. And it could happen again.
Sorry, no link - posting from Blackberry.
A double-hit from the NYT today. First there was Bob Herbert's loathesome op-ed tying gun owners to hate groups. Now they're giving prominent coverage to Sen. Frank Lautenberg's introduction of a bill to give the U.S. Attorney General (currently the virulently anti-gun Eric Holder) the discretion to deny gun purchases to persons on the terrorist watch list.
The TWL is secret, of course, and there have been some very odd people whose names have turned up on the list, from Ted Kennedy to Cat Stevens. And people whose names are on the list, or even just closely resemble a name on the list, have a damnably hard time figuring out what on earth is going on; they have to sue in federal court just to find out if they're on the list at all. It's a Kafkaesque situation that we ought not to have in the U.S. It ought to be easier for citizens to challenge the TWL.
Lautenberg's bill will probably not make it out of committee, thank goodness, but this crafty old gun-hater has gotten around that obstacle before, by offering a last-minute amendment on the Senate floor to a larger bill that the leadership wants passed without delay. And it could happen again.
Sorry, no link - posting from Blackberry.
That is going to be scary... Lautenberg is an ass!
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