At what point do people have the right to defend themselves: Paul Begala misquotes Joni Ernst and bizarrely misinterprets the rest of her quote

Iowa Republican Senate candidate Joni Ernst made this statement in 2012:

"I do believe in the right to carry, and I believe in the right to defend myself and my family -- whether it's from an intruder, or whether it's from a government, should they decide that my rights are no longer important."

Paul Begala, always one to misinterpret what someone says when it serves the right political cause, has this comment:

This notion -- that the Second Amendment gives citizens the right to fire upon federal officials, or their local police, or sheriffs or even U.S. military personnel -- is common among right wingers. But it's one thing to hear, say, goofball Ted Nugent honk off that way. (The Nuge, by the way, has boasted about how he avoided taking up arms in defense of his country during Vietnam.) It is another to know that someone with those loopy views is one step away from the United States Senate.

The Washington Monthly blogger Ed Kilgore has asked the right question -- the one any Iowa voter should be putting to Ms. Ernst: "Since you brought it up, exactly what circumstances would justify you shooting a police officer or a soldier in the head?" 

Good question, Ed. Is it OK to do so if, say, the Supreme Court stops the counting of votes so as to give the presidency to the candidate who got fewer votes? I don't think so. 

How about segregation? If ever American citizens were oppressed by their government it was African-Americans under Jim Crow. Thank God we had Dr. King and not Ms. Ernst leading the civil rights movement. . . .

Clearly, with just over a week to go before the election, we have officially entered the political silly season.  First, I should note that Begala misquotes Ernst in a small but very significant way.  Ernst talks about "a government" taking away her rights, not "the government" as Begala claims.  Begala’s misquote makes it appear as if she is referring specifically to our government, when she is obviously referring broadly to governments (including a foreign power).

In any case, Ernst isn't just talking about one right or even some rights that people have, but all rights.    She didn't say if the government takes away "one of our rights" or "some of our rights," but clearly "my rights."  Presumably, Begala would be upset if Americans tried to fight back against a foreign or domestic totalitarian government that would tried to take away all their rights.  But others would think that it is reasonable.  Begala asks bizarre questions of whether it is OK for us to shot federal officials if they take away segregation.  Seriously? Is this what Begala thinks anyone would define as all their rights?

Begala responded as shown in these Tweets (click on them to enlarge).

Again, the fact that she was referring to "a government," not "the government," seems important here.  In addition, she was not referring to losing just one right, but her rights, is also important.  Begala's misquoting her creates the wrong impression as referring to "a government" can obviously involve a foreign government taking over and taking away all her rights.  Begala did finally acknowledge that he had misquoted her.

UPDATE: Begala later acknowledged that Ernst had been misquoted and CNN changed the text of her quote.

Hillary Clinton: "Don’t let anybody tell you that it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs."

Hillary Clinton: Don’t let anybody tell you that it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs.
You know that old theory, "trickle-down" economics. That has been tried, that has failed. It has failed rather spectacularly.
You know, one of the things my husband says when people say "Well, what did you bring to Washington," he said, "Well, I brought arithmetic.”

So incentives don't matter?  In the Clinton world, the government creates jobs.

Tina Fey has problems correctly using a credit card (twice)

For someone who has made a career of getting people to think that conservatives like Sarah Palin are dumb, it is clear from these pictures that Ms. Fey has trouble knowing how to correctly swipe a credit card.  (Click on screen shots to enlarge.)  The first picture shows her swiping the card and the second is a close up of how she apparently believes the card should be swiped.  Indeed. Ms. Fey appears to a slow learner as the American Express ad shows her twice swiping the credit card the same way.

Now I realize that Tina Fey was possibly just swiping the card the way that the producer wanted her to swipe it, but for someone who convinced Americans that Palin had actually said that she could see Russia from her house, there is some justice in this.

Victoria (Australia) Police: Banning semi-automatic handguns won't take such guns off the street

This news article misses the point that even to the extent that a ban takes some guns from criminals, that is offset by the fact that victims are easier targets.  From The Age newspaper:

Banning semi-automatic handguns won't take such guns off the street, Victoria Police has told a federal inquiry into gun violence. 

Victoria Police told the submission such a ban "would most likely have little effect on the number of illegally held firearms in Australia". 

"The majority of semi-automatic handguns seized are from criminals who are prohibited persons," the submission says. "It is unclear whether a ban on semi-automatic weapons will diminish their ability to obtain such weapons." 

It also warns that a ban could make it more profitable to import such weapons illegally, potentially pushing the market even further underground. . . . 

"It is likely that 3D printing of firearms will increase, posing a significant risk to community safety and law enforcement agencies," the submission says. . . .

By the way, there has just been an attack where three people were killed in a shooting attack in Australia.  Again from The Age newspaper:

Two men and a woman are dead and a man has been arrested following a shooting and siege north-west of Melbourne that police say was triggered by a neighbourhood dispute.  

Police were called to the property, near Wedderburn and about 210km from Melbourne, about 8.30pm on Wednesday after reports of a minor dispute between neighbours. 

Fairfax Media can confirm that Peter Lockhart, president of the Wedderburn Historical Engine and Machinery Society, his wife Mary Lockhart, and Mrs Lockhart's son Greg Holmes died on Wednesday night. . . . 

Watch White House make an embarrassing attempt to explain away why them ordering paper for 9 million green cards tell us nothing about Obama's forthcoming executive action on immigration

A couple of days ago, news reports came out saying that the Obama administration is buying enough special paper to make 34 million green cards.  Here is an amazing video of Ed Henry and Major Garrett nailing WH Press Secretary Earnest on his unwillingness to answer a simple question.  This should be on every evening news broadcast. 

This is just too funny: Communists don't want to let people vote because popular vote would give poor too much power

From the WSJ:

Speaking in an interview with foreign media, Mr. Leung reiterated that the student demand for direct input from the public on candidates for the city’s top post was impossible. He said using a nominating committee as required by Beijing gives representation to a wide range of groups.
He warned that if candidates were nominated by the public, the population that earns less than the median monthly salary of $1,800 could dominate the process.
“If it’s entirely a numbers game and numeric representation, then obviously you’d be talking to the half of the people in Hong Kong who earn less than $1,800 a month,” Mr. Leung said.
Hong Kong has one of the world’s biggest wealth gaps and some of the world’s highest property prices, factors that have increased the frustration of young people. . . .

My newest piece at Fox News: "The truth about young black men and police shootings"

My newest piece at Fox News starts this way:

Tensions are still high in Ferguson, Mo., after the Aug. 8 police shooting of Michael Brown. On Friday, it was reported forensics showed Brown’s blood was on both the inside of police officer Darren Wilson’s car as well as Wilson’s gun. The gun had also been fired twice within the car. This evidence hardly squares with early witness accounts that Brown was shot with his hands in the air while he was surrendering.

With forensic evidence finally coming in, Officer Wilson’s shooting Brown is looking as if it were justifiable self-defense.  But that hasn’t stopped people from making it a racial issue. 

Over the weekend, the New York Times noted some black leaders, such as Congressman Elijah E. Cummings, D-Maryland, “often invoke voting rights and the death of Michael Brown, the unarmed black man shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., as a way to mobilize black voters.” 

About a week ago journalists at ProPublica and Slate further fueled the anger many blacks felt about the shooting. Slate’s headline read: “Black Teens Vastly More Likely to Be Killed by Police Than Whites Even After Adjusting for Crime Rates.” 

The incendiary finding got massive uncritical news coverage . . . .

Top of the page at Fox News.



The piece was the most read opinion piece at Fox New during the whole day.

Dad shoots, kills armed intruder who broke into Sarasota home at 5:40 AM

FOX 13 News

From My Fox Tampa Bay:

. . . Deputies said the homeowner, Chris Bane, heard glass breaking at about 5:40 a.m. He grabbed his gun and went into the hallway, where he came face to face with Calvin Yoder. 

"The burglar fired a shot and the homeowner returned fire, striking and killing the intruder," said Wendy Rose, a spokesperson for the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office. "Apparently the homeowner has been the victim of burglary recently so he was on alert, he was on edge, and as soon as he heard glass breaking he armed himself to protect himself and his 11-year-old child who was in the home." 

Rose said Bane's home had been broken into as recently as Sunday, but deputies aren't sure if Yoder was involved. 

Yoder, 22, has had several run-ins with the law; he'd been arrested at least five times and spent several months in prison. . . . 

"[Bane and his son] were both uninjured," Rose said. "Clearly they're shaken up and speaking to investigators." . . .

Serious voting problems in this election, fraud, illegal aliens registered, and errors favoring Democrats

Regarding Colorado:

James O’Keefe, the guerilla filmmaker who brought down the ACORN voter-registration fraudsters in 2010 and forced the resignation of NPR executives, politely disagrees. Today, he is releasing some new undercover footage that raises disturbing questions about ballot integrity in Colorado, the site of fiercely contested races for the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House, and the governorship. When he raised the issue of filling out some of the unused ballots that are mailed to every household in the state this month, he was told by Meredith Hicks, the director of Work for Progress, a liberal group funded by Democratic Super PACS.: “That is not even like lying or something, if someone throws out a ballot, like if you want to fill it out you should do it.” She then brazenly offered O’Keefe, disguised as a middle-aged college instructor, a job with her group. . . .

From Illinois:

Early voting in Illinois got off to a rocky start Monday, as votes being cast for Republican candidates were transformed into votes for Democrats.
Republican state representative candidate Jim Moynihan went to vote Monday at the Schaumburg Public Library.
“I tried to cast a vote for myself and instead it cast the vote for my opponent,” Moynihan said. “You could imagine my surprise as the same thing happened with a number of races when I tried to vote for a Republican and the machine registered a vote for a Democrat.”
The conservative website Illinois Review reported that “While using a touch screen voting machine in Schaumburg, Moynihan voted for several races on the ballot, only to find that whenever he voted for a Republican candidate, the machine registered the vote for a Democrat in the same race. He notified the election judge at his polling place and demonstrated that it continued to cast a vote for the opposing candidate’s party. Moynihan was eventually allowed to vote for Republican candidates, including his own race . . . . .

Illegals registered to vote in North Carolina:

The voter rolls kept by the State Board of Elections contain 145 names that belong to a certain category of ineligible voter – immigrants in the U.S. under a federal program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, according to elections officials.
Josh Lawson, an SBOE spokesman, said that election officials found out about the number Tuesday night, after the N.C. Division of Motor Vehicles ran a specific search for drivers with DACA licenses.
Letters from the SBOE will be sent to the 145 people asking for documentation that they are U.S. citizens, Lawson said.
More people who are ineligible because they are not U.S. citizens may be on the voter rolls.  Nearly 10,000 names on the rolls are tagged by the DMV as "legally present," according to elections and transportation officials. But that doesn’t mean that all 10,000 are ineligible to vote at this time. . . .

One of the Canadian shooters, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, recent convert to Islam, long criminal record

Michael Zehaf-Bibeau's name was apparently previously known as Michael Joseph Hall prior to converting to Islam.  He had been designated a high-risk traveler and that his passport had recently been confiscated.  Zehaf-Bibeau had a long criminal history with arrests for robbery, making threats, and various drug offenses.  He served time in prison on at least a couple of occasions (67 days for the uttering the threat), but he was still able to obtain a gun.  Apparently, he wasn't on the government's watch list of about 90 high-risk individuals and few under the radar.

This attack comes on the heels of another recent muslim convert who used his car to run over two soldiers in Canada, killing one of them.

Terrorist ideology inspired a recent convert to Islam to drive his car into two Canadian soldiers, killing one, before he was shot dead by police, authorities said on Tuesday.
Quebec police spokesman Guy Lapointe said the act was deliberate and that one of the two soldiers was in uniform. There were no other suspects. 

Public safety minister Steven Blaney called it a “terrible act of violence against our country, against our military and against our values” that was “clearly linked to terrorist ideology”. 

Police identified the dead military member as Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent, 53.
The suspect, Martin Couture Rouleau, 25, was known to authorities and recently had his passport seized, police commissioner Bob Paulson said. . . . 

Martin Couture Rouleau staked out the parking lot for 2 hours waiting for the soldiers.  He was apparently arrested in July, but was let go because he hadn't committed a crime and they did not view him as a threat to others.

Sadly, but not surprisingly given these two attacks on soldiers, the Canadian government is urging members of the military not to wear their uniforms when they are off duty.  In the attack today, the ceremonial guard who was in uniform was definitely targeted.

Possibly the weapon used in the attack was a shotgun.  Reports from the Chicago Tribune to the CBC indicate:

"He was wearing blue pants and a black jacket and he had a double barrelled shotgun and he ran up the side of this building here and hijacked a car at gunpoint," construction worker Scott Walsh told Reuters. . . .

In Jerusalem, an Arab terrorist rammed his car into a crowd, killing an infant and wounded several others.

A three-month-old girl, identified by her grandfather as Chaya Zissel, was killed and several US citizens and Israelis were wounded Wednesday evening when a convicted Palestinian terrorist from the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan rammed his vehicle into a crowd of people in the capital. . . .  

Eric Holder says failure to pass gun control is his biggest failure

Eric Holder: “I think the inability to pass reasonable gun safety laws after the Newtown massacre is, for me, something that I take personally as a failure, and something that I think we as a society should take as a failure.”

Given that passing legislation isn't supposed to me Holder's job, possibly this tells up part of the problem with this administration.

Obama adm starts process of soliciting vendors to produce 34 million "green cards," to be announced after November election

If this is even remotely true, there will be a flood of people who think that they will be able to get US citizenship for free.  Republicans might challenge all this in court, but with millions of people flooding into the country, no one believes that those millions of new people will be asked to leave.  It is clear that the Democrats will be wining a lot of elections in the future.  From the UK Mail:

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services plans to seek a vendor to produce as many as 34 million blank work permits and 'green cards' – the paperwork that authorizes illegal immigrants to live and work in the United States – as the White House prepares to issue an executive order after the Nov. 4 midterm elections. 

According to a draft solicitation published online, the government agency will look for a company that can produce a minimum 4 million cards per year for five years, and 9 million in the early stages.   

President Barack Obama has pledged that he will make a move on immigration reform this year. His original timetable called for a decision by the end of the summer.  

Republicans have decried the plan as an 'amnesty' for millions of illegal immigrants, including hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied minors who have come across the U.S.-Mexico border this year. . . . 

Are Democrats losing the women's vote?: Does Obama make women feel less safe?

Everybody values competence, and Obama's approach of never taking responsibility and blaming others might be wearing thin.  Obama surely hasn't show competence when claiming that he didn't know what was happening with everything with IRSgate, EPAgate, APgate, VAgate, NSAgate, Secret email gate, StateDepartmentgate, etc.    If women are generally more risk averse then men, possibly this incompetence 

Concealed carry permit holder stops robber who was threatening to hit him with a large stick

From Sylacauga, Alabama (Al.com):

. . . Police Chief Chris Carden . . . said in a news release that a man was walking near Beth Yates Park on West Spring Street Sunday at about 6:15 p.m. when he was approached by Hall, who threatened him with a large stick and demanded money. 

The victim pulled out a handgun and aimed it at Hall, who then fled the scene, Carden said. The victim was unharmed, and he returned home to give a detailed description to police of the man who threatened him. Patrol officers located Hall near Ogletree Plaza, matching the man's description. 

Carden said . . . "I'm also extremely proud of the victim whom I spoke with today and thanked for his service."

Home owner shots man who was breaking into home at 10:45 PM

From Lake Elsinore, California (The Press Enterprise):

. . . About 10:45 p.m., a woman called 911 to report a burglary in progress, Riverside County sheriff’s officials said in a news release. The woman said a man was trying to force his way into their home in the 100 block of South Torn Ranch Road and that her husband had armed himself with a handgun. 

Sheriff’s officials said the husband, who is in his 40s, warned the man that he was armed and would shoot if he continued. The intruder did not heed the resident’s warning, breaking a window, and the homeowner opened fire, according to sheriff’s officials. 

Sheriff’s officials said there is no known connection between the intruder and the residents. Sgt. Mike Manning said the intruder threatened the family and demanded to be let inside. He said the intruder was not armed. 

“The Sheriff’s Department is not seeking charges against the homeowner at this time,” Manning said in the release. . . .

Obama administration scrapped 16 aircraft that cost US taxpayers $500 million for $32,000, apparently didn't consider alternative

From Reuters:

A U.S. government watchdog agency is asking the Air Force to explain why it decided to destroy 16 aircraft initially bought for the Afgan air force and turn them into $32,000 of scrap metal instead of finding other ways to salvage nearly $500 million in U.S. funds spent on the program. 

John Sopko, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, asked Air Force Secretary Deborah James to document all decisions made about the destruction of the 16 C-27J aircraft that were stored at Kabul International Airport for years . . . 

"I am concerned that the officials responsible for planning and executing the scrapping of the planes may not have considered other possible alternatives in order to salvage taxpayer dollars." Sopko said in a letter to James that was dated Oct. 3 and released Thursday by his office. 

Sopko also asked if any other parts of the planes had been sold before they were destroyed by the Defense Logistics Agency. 

Sopko's office has been investigating the matter since December 2013 after numerous non-profit groups and military officials raised questions about funds wasted on the planes. . . .