Proves yet again liberals are the real violent, hateful, 

close minded people.

Kaul: Nation needs a new agenda on guns

This time, the debate has to be about more than not offending the NRA's sensibilities.

2:59 PM, Dec 29, 2012   |  Donald Kaul suffered a heart attack back in July and discontinued writing his weekly column for the opinion website OtherWords.org. Depending upon how you count, that was Kaul’s second or third retirement. Today, Kaul announces that he’s ba-a-a-ck. This time, he’s only promising to write when events move him and not to be pinned down by a weekly column. — Opinion Editor

I’m glad I retired five months ago.

Think of it: I was spared writing about the presidential election, an event so vacuous it made reality TV seem interesting. If there was any serious discussion of an important national issue — global warming, obesity, transportation policy, the morality of drone attacks on civilian populations, the environmental consequences of fracking, existential implications of the designated hitter — I missed it.

Instead, we got a campaign of misrepresentations, exaggerations and outright lies. The Republicans were by far the worst offenders, but President Barack Obama didn’t cover himself in glory either.

I was happy with the result of the presidential election, but I didn’t regret not covering it. And I was entirely content to go on not writing about things. (If I could make a living at that, life would be perfect.)

But then Newtown happened. A misanthropic young man who never seemed particularly violent killed his mother then broke into an elementary school and massacred little kids, teachers and the principal.

And the very air changed. The holiday season suddenly turned somber. You looked at the small children around you differently, as fragile, precious gifts to be cherished and, above all, protected.

Obama struck that note in his moving speech at the memorial service. Speaking for us all, he said: “We can’t tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change.”

Nice words, but somehow not enough. Not nearly enough.

That’s when I figured I should write a column about it. During my 50-year career, every time some demented soul would take a semiautomatic gun and clean out a post office, a school or a picnic, I’d get up on my soap box and let loose with a withering diatribe about guns, the National Rifle Association and weak-kneed politicians. Did it about 75 times, give or take.

And in every case the main effect was a spike in gun sales.

Still, I thought I’d give it one more shot ... er, chance.

Obama’s speech was fine as far as it went, but it didn’t go very far. Neither have any of the other responses I’ve heard.

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said she was going to introduce a bill to ban the sale and importation of assault weapons. Great, but the bill wouldn’t apply to weapons already out there, and in defining illegal weapons, it listed more than 900 exceptions.

Nine hundred!

The thing missing from the debate so far is anger — anger that we live in a society where something like the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre can happen and our main concern is not offending the NRA’s sensibilities.

That’s obscene. Here, then, is my “madder-than-hell-and-I’m-not-going-to-take-it-anymore” program for ending gun violence in America:

• Repeal the Second Amendment, the part about guns anyway. It’s badly written, confusing and more trouble than it’s worth. It offers an absolute right to gun ownership, but it puts it in the context of the need for a “well-regulated militia.” We don’t make our militia bring their own guns to battles. And surely the Founders couldn’t have envisioned weapons like those used in the Newtown shooting when they guaranteed gun rights. Owning a gun should be a privilege, not a right.

• Declare the NRA a terrorist organization and make membership illegal. Hey! We did it to the Communist Party, and the NRA has led to the deaths of more of us than American Commies ever did. (I would also raze the organization’s headquarters, clear the rubble and salt the earth, but that’s optional.) Make ownership of unlicensed assault rifles a felony. If some people refused to give up their guns, that “prying the guns from their cold, dead hands” thing works for me.

• Then I would tie Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, our esteemed Republican leaders, to the back of a Chevy pickup truck and drag them around a parking lot until they saw the light on gun control.

And if that didn’t work, I’d adopt radical measures. None of that is going to happen, of course. But I’ll bet gun sales will rise.

The birds and the bees? Natural law and same-sex civil marriage

By Bryan Cones| 0 Comments | Print | Share

While some have wondered why Pope Benedict felt the need to mention same-sex marriage around Christmastime, few will wonder why Chicago's Cardinal Francis George went on the record in Sunday's Chicago Tribune on the matter:Two Illinois legislators will introduce same-sex marriage legislation this week in the lame duck session of the Illinois General Assembly. Last week,250 Jewish and Christian clergy signed a statement in support of the legislation; George was not one of them.

George rightly points out that Catholic doctrine's opposition to same-sex sexual expression is rooted not in scripture or tradition but in an appeal to "natural law," a system of ethics first proposed by Aristotle but modified for Christian use by Thomas Aquinas. The nice thing about natural law is that it doesn't appeal to sectarian or confessional doctrine to justify its conclusions but on what is determined through the use of 'reason" to be "natural" to human beings as rational animals--though it often requires belief in a divine creator as the source of natural law. Principles or goods derived from natural law can be things as basic as the duty of self-preservation or the care of children. What it isn't, however, is looking at nature for examples of "good behavior"--for example, monogamous pairing among bird species is not a natural law argument--or at least not a good one--for monogamous marriage among human beings. You can always find a counter-example in nature; same-sex sexual behavior, for example, is commonly observed among animals.

It's a bit tricky to connect the civil and religious institution of marriage in all its complexity to natural law, though. George argues that "marriage comes to us from nature. That's based on the complementarity of the two sexes in such a way that the love of a man and a woman joined in a marital union is open to life, and that's how families are created and society goes along. … It's a matter of reason and understanding the way nature operates." So, for George, natural law includes marriage (a religious and civil institution created and governed by various human laws), the "complementarity of the sexes" as something built into creation (we'll have to assume he means biological and not gender roles), that this relationship is "open to life" (all the time?), and, finally, "that's how families are created and society goes along" (all societies?). That's quite a bit to expect from natural law, and it also assumes a common understanding of "reason" and "the way nature operates." Good luck with that in our pluralistic culture. (By the way, I'm sure George could give a much more erudite and sophisticated account of his natural law argument against same-sex marriage--this is a newpaper story after all.)

Also quoted in the story is a scholar from the "other" side, Bernard Schlager, executive director of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, Calif: "On sexual ethics, nature is neutral," he says. "We're moral beings. We may look to nature for some aspects of how we are in our lives, but we answer to a higher standard. Sexual behavior is an expression of human love."

The big question, however, is simply: Is that an adequate description of marriage as we now practice it? Is that an adequate description of how marriage has always been practiced across cultures? Or, to put it another way, have human societies across cultures agreed that George's description is, indeed, the "natural" definition of marriage? That's what natural law is supposed to do after all. We could ask the same question of Schlager: Is sexual behavior always an expression of human love? Both may argue that in the most moral situation, the answer to those questions is yes. For George it is simply definitional: "When we get behind the church and behind the state, you've got a natural reality that two men or two women … cannot consummate a marriage. It's a physical impossibility."

Obviously George's is by no means a universal definition of marriage, nor has sexual behavior within marriage always been an "expression of human love": For most much of its history, marriage has been defined as the union between a man and one or more women that functioned as much to assure paternity and property transfer as to express human love. Nowadays, at least in the West, but beyond as well, marriage has become more a special form of friendship that may or may not include procreation (or even sex for that matter); when it is "open to life," it usually results in far smaller famllies than it once did. While it's certainly true that men and women "naturally" come together sexually and produce children, the way societies have organized that biological function have varied, and by and large they continue to recognize as "married" couples who were never able to procreate--in fact, the church has long insisted that such marriages cannot be dissolved. Over the years and in many cultures, that has sometimes been a very unpopular position.

In the end, I'm not sure that natural law is all that helpful in the matter of same-sex civil marriage; when it comes from the mouth of a public religious figure, it ends up looking like a religious argument passing itself off as a neutral rational argument anyway. If anything, I think it better to distinguish between what is a sacrament within the Christian household and what is a contract in the civil realm. Each has its own appropriate arguments. Once we dismiss prejudice against gay and lesbian people as legitimate arguments against their civil marriage (and George, to his credit, says that "nobody should be disdained or persecuted because of their sexual orientation"), all that's left is the question of whether a civil marriage requires both a male and female partner (regardless of their willingness and ability to procreate). That's a question voters, courts, and legislatures are now deciding.

Within the churches, however, we have another set of questions that we ought to be asking, the first of which is simply: Why do we celebrate marriage in church at all? What has marriage to do with the reign of God? Is it indeed a kind of friendship? Does it require a commitment to at least attempt to bear children, or if not able to, to adopt or rear them in some other way? We might start by asking married couples and those who wish to be married to answer those quesitons themselves. We might be surprised by the answers we get.

Kwanzaa is a ridiculous, racist holiday

Ann Coulter

             Political Commentator

Is it just me, or does Kwanzaa seem to come earlier and earlier each year? And let’s face it, Kwanzaa has gotten way too commercialized.

A few years ago, I suspended my annual Kwanzaa column because my triumph over this fake holiday seemed complete. The only people still celebrating Kwanzaa were presidential-statement writers and white female public school teachers.

But it seems to be creeping back. A few weeks ago, House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., complained about having to stick around Washington for fiscal cliff negotiations by accusing Republicans of not caring about “families” coming together to bond during Kwanzaa. The private schools have picked up this PC nonsense from the public schools. (Soon, no one will know anything.)

It is a fact that Kwanzaa was invented in 1966 by a black radical FBI stooge, Ron Karenga — a.k.a. Dr. Maulana Karenga — founder of United Slaves, a violent nationalist rival to the Black Panthers. He was also a dupe of the FBI.

In what was ultimately a foolish gamble, during the madness of the ’60s, the FBI encouraged the most extreme black nationalist organizations in order to discredit and split the left. The more preposterous the group, the better.

By that criterion, Karenga’s United Slaves was perfect. In the annals of the American ’60s, Karenga was the Father Gapon, stooge of the czarist police.

Despite modern perceptions that blend all the black activists of the ’60s, the Black Panthers did not hate whites. They did not seek armed revolution (although some of their most high-profile leaders were drug dealers and murderers). Those were the precepts of Karenga’s United Slaves.

United Slaves were proto-fascists, walking around in dashikis, gunning down Black Panthers and adopting invented “African” names. (That was a big help to the black community: How many boys named “Jamal” are currently in prison?)

It’s as if David Duke invented a holiday called “Anglika,” which he based on the philosophy of “Mein Kampf” — and clueless public school teachers began celebrating the made-up, racist holiday.

Whether Karenga was a willing dupe, or just a dupe, remains unclear.

Curiously, in a 1995 interview with Ethnic NewsWatch, Karenga matter-of-factly explained that the forces out to get O.J. Simpson for the “framed” murder of two whites included: “the FBI, the CIA, the State Department, Interpol, the Chicago Police Department” and so on. Karenga should know about FBI infiltration. (He further noted that the evidence against O.J. “was not strong enough to prohibit or eliminate unreasonable doubt” — an interesting standard of proof.)

In the category of the-gentleman-doth-protest-too-much, back in the ’70s, Karenga was quick to criticize rumors that black radicals were government-supported. When Nigerian newspapers claimed that some American black radicals were CIA operatives, Karenga publicly denounced the idea, saying, “Africans must stop generalizing about the loyalties and motives of Afro-Americans, including the widespread suspicion of black Americans being CIA agents.”

Now we know that the FBI fueled the bloody rivalry between the Panthers and United Slaves. In one barbarous outburst, Karenga’s United Slaves shot to death two Black Panthers on the UCLA campus: Al “Bunchy” Carter and John Huggins. Karenga himself served time, a useful stepping-stone for his current position as a black studies professor at California State University at Long Beach.

Karenga’s invented holiday is a nutty blend of schmaltzy ’60s rhetoric, black racism and Marxism. The seven principles of Kwanzaa are the very same seven principles of the Symbionese Liberation Army, another charming legacy of the Worst Generation.

In 1974, Patricia Hearst, kidnap victim-cum-SLA revolutionary, posed next to the banner of her alleged captors, a seven-headed cobra. Each snake head stood for one of the SLA’s revolutionary principles: Umoja, Kujichagulia, Ujima, Ujamaa, Nia, Kuumba and Imani — the exact same seven “principles” of Kwanzaa.

Kwanzaa praises collectivism in every possible area of life — economics, work, personality, even litter removal. (“Kuumba: Everyone should strive to improve the community and make it more beautiful.”) It takes a village to raise a police snitch.

When Karenga was asked to distinguish Kawaida, the philosophy underlying Kwanzaa, from “classical Marxism,” he essentially said that, under Kawaida, we also hate whites. (Kawaida, Kwanzaa and Kuumba are also the only three Kardashian sisters not to have their own shows on the E! network.)

While taking the “best of early Chinese and Cuban socialism” — excluding, one hopes, the forced abortions, imprisonment of homosexuals and forced labor — Karenga said Kawaida practitioners believe one’s racial identity “determines life conditions, life chances and self-understanding.” There’s an inclusive philosophy for you.

Kwanzaa was the result of a ’60s psychosis grafted onto the black community. Liberals have become so mesmerized by multicultural nonsense that they have forgotten the real history of Kwanzaa and Karenga’s United Slaves — the violence, the Marxism, the insanity.

Most absurdly, for leftists anyway, they have forgotten the FBI’s tacit encouragement of this murderous black nationalist cult founded by the father of Kwanzaa.

Kwanzaa emerged not from Africa, but from the FBI’s COINTELPRO. It is a holiday celebrated exclusively by idiot white liberals. Black people celebrate Christmas. (Merry Christmas, fellow Christians!)

Ann Coulter is an author and political commentator.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/12/30/kwanzaa-is-a-ridiculous-racist-holiday/#ixzz2GW2s2BzH

Joyce Lee Malcolm: Two Cautionary Tales of Gun Control

After a school massacre, the U.K. banned handguns in 1998. A decade later, handgun crime had doubled.

By JOYCE LEE MALCOLM

Americans are determined that massacres such as happened in Newtown, Conn., never happen again. But how? Many advocate more effective treatment of mentally-ill people or armed protection in so-called gun-free zones. Many others demand stricter control of firearms.

We aren't alone in facing this problem. Great Britain and Australia, for example, suffered mass shootings in the 1980s and 1990s. Both countries had very stringent gun laws when they occurred. Nevertheless, both decided that even stricter control of guns was the answer. Their experiences can be instructive.

In 1987, Michael Ryan went on a shooting spree in his small town of Hungerford, England, killing 16 people (including his mother) and wounding another 14 before shooting himself. Since the public was unarmed—as were the police—Ryan wandered the streets for eight hours with two semiautomatic rifles and a handgun before anyone with a firearm was able to come to the rescue.

Nine years later, in March 1996, Thomas Hamilton, a man known to be mentally unstable, walked into a primary school in the Scottish town of Dunblane and shot 16 young children and their teacher. He wounded 10 other children and three other teachers before taking his own life.

Enlarge Image

David Klein

Since 1920, anyone in Britain wanting a handgun had to obtain a certificate from his local police stating he was fit to own a weapon and had good reason to have one. Over the years, the definition of "good reason" gradually narrowed. By 1969, self-defense was never a good reason for a permit.

After Hungerford, the British government banned semiautomatic rifles and brought shotguns—the last type of firearm that could be purchased with a simple show of fitness—under controls similar to those in place for pistols and rifles. Magazines were limited to two shells with a third in the chamber.

Dunblane had a more dramatic impact. Hamilton had a firearm certificate, although according to the rules he should not have been granted one. A media frenzy coupled with an emotional campaign by parents of Dunblane resulted in the Firearms Act of 1998, which instituted a nearly complete ban on handguns. Owners of pistols were required to turn them in. The penalty for illegal possession of a pistol is up to 10 years in prison.

The results have not been what proponents of the act wanted. Within a decade of the handgun ban and the confiscation of handguns from registered owners, crime with handguns had doubled according to British government crime reports. Gun crime, not a serious problem in the past, now is. Armed street gangs have some British police carrying guns for the first time. Moreover, another massacre occurred in June 2010. Derrick Bird, a taxi driver in Cumbria, shot his brother and a colleague then drove off through rural villages killing 12 people and injuring 11 more before killing himself.

Meanwhile, law-abiding citizens who have come into the possession of a firearm, even accidentally, have been harshly treated. In 2009 a former soldier, Paul Clarke, found a bag in his garden containing a shotgun. He brought it to the police station and was immediately handcuffed and charged with possession of the gun. At his trial the judge noted: "In law there is no dispute that Mr. Clarke has no defence to this charge. The intention of anybody possessing a firearm is irrelevant." Mr. Clarke was sentenced to five years in prison. A public outcry eventually won his release.

In November of this year, Danny Nightingale, member of a British special forces unit in Iraq and Afghanistan, was sentenced to 18 months in military prison for possession of a pistol and ammunition. Sgt. Nightingale was given the Glock pistol as a gift by Iraqi forces he had been training. It was packed up with his possessions and returned to him by colleagues in Iraq after he left the country to organize a funeral for two close friends killed in action. Mr. Nightingale pleaded guilty to avoid a five-year sentence and was in prison until an appeal and public outcry freed him on Nov. 29.

***

Six weeks after the Dunblane massacre in 1996, Martin Bryant, an Australian with a lifelong history of violence, attacked tourists at a Port Arthur prison site in Tasmania with two semiautomatic rifles. He killed 35 people and wounded 21 others.

At the time, Australia's guns laws were stricter than the United Kingdom's. In lieu of the requirement in Britain that an applicant for permission to purchase a gun have a "good reason," Australia required a "genuine reason." Hunting and protecting crops from feral animals were genuine reasons—personal protection wasn't.

With new Prime Minister John Howard in the lead, Australia passed the National Firearms Agreement, banning all semiautomatic rifles and semiautomatic and pump-action shotguns and imposing a more restrictive licensing system on other firearms. The government also launched a forced buyback scheme to remove thousands of firearms from private hands. Between Oct. 1, 1996, and Sept. 30, 1997, the government purchased and destroyed more than 631,000 of the banned guns at a cost of $500 million.

To what end? While there has been much controversy over the result of the law and buyback, Peter Reuter and Jenny Mouzos, in a 2003 study published by the Brookings Institution, found homicides "continued a modest decline" since 1997. They concluded that the impact of the National Firearms Agreement was "relatively small," with the daily rate of firearms homicides declining 3.2%.

According to their study, the use of handguns rather than long guns (rifles and shotguns) went up sharply, but only one out of 117 gun homicides in the two years following the 1996 National Firearms Agreement used a registered gun. Suicides with firearms went down but suicides by other means went up. They reported "a modest reduction in the severity" of massacres (four or more indiscriminate homicides) in the five years since the government weapons buyback. These involved knives, gas and arson rather than firearms.

In 2008, the Australian Institute of Criminology reported a decrease of 9% in homicides and a one-third decrease in armed robbery since the 1990s, but an increase of over 40% in assaults and 20% in sexual assaults.

What to conclude? Strict gun laws in Great Britain and Australia haven't made their people noticeably safer, nor have they prevented massacres. The two major countries held up as models for the U.S. don't provide much evidence that strict gun laws will solve our problems.

Ms. Malcolm, a professor of law at George Mason University Law School, is the author of several books including "Guns and Violence: The English Experience," (Harvard, 2002).

The left has set up thousands of fake twitter accounts to attack conservatives and conservative causes. One guy alone had 500 twitter accounts that was exposed. They do this to overwhelm the opposition and get the conservative twitter account shut-down by reporting them for spam.

I lost 12 twitter accounts because of this very tactic  Remember Twitter was founded and is controlled by people in San Francisco. One of the most liberal whacked out cities in the world. 


http://www.redstate.com/goppolitx/2012/06/29/to-silence-opposition/

RS

MEMBER DIARY

To Silence Opposition-

By: Politix Fireball (Diary)  |  June 29th, 2012 at 09:00 AM  |  0

RESIZE:AAA

To Silence Opposition

The liberal’s assault on free speech continues. Attacks on conservatives– ordinary citizens who are only using Twitter as a platform to share their opinion. The cruel reality is that the liberals are determined to silence us and they obviously do not have plans to stop. They want us off of Twitter. They won’t stop at minimizing our voices, they want total domination of the social network.

They not only bully, but they feel they may suspend as well. Well over one hundred accounts have been sent to #TwitterGulag in the past couple months. The process they use is relatively simple. Nearly everyone on Twitter has used the ‘block’ button. These leftists discovered that it’s easy to suspend conservatives by getting a group together and mass spam-blocking and reporting those they hate to Twitter. Often a liberal will drag the prospective victim into a conversation. Then another leftist joins. The conservative replies, is retweeted and the rest of the gang pounces, report-spam/blocks and the account is sent to #TwitterGulag. A reply trap is also used on some. The liberal will ‘randomly’ pick a conservative to tweet to, then when the conservative replies the leftist will turn it in to Twitter for excessive mentions and the user will be suspended.

This began quite some time ago. Remember the days when #tcot took over hashtags like #IlikeObamaCare and #Gen44? This made the leftists furious. And in April they struck back by mass suspending conservatives. I didn’t really notice it until the Chris Loesch issue. These liberals wouldn’t even let a husband defend his wife when she was attacked and threatening comments were made! After this the suspension issue was publicized and #TwitterGulag became a common term for free speech suppression against conservatives on Twitter. At least one account suspended at that time for fighting alongside Chris Loesch in defense of his wife was not reinstated until this month.

During interviews for this article I learned much more about how these suspensions occur and how conservatives are silenced. Most reasons for suspensions have something to do with one of the following:

• Tweeting about Obama using the #Obama hashtag or @BarackObama and attacking his liberal policies that are destroying our country.
• Pushing for the reinstatement of another account (Chris Loesch’s in particular).
• Defending Rush Limbaugh on the hashtag #StopRush and encouraging his sponsors to stay loyal.
• Defending a fellow conservative blogger.
• Confronting the Socialistic, Communist leaning Occupy movement.
• Sharing one’s conservative stance on the leftist attack on women, #UAWOW, #WLF, etc.
• Criticizing the union’s failed policies and tweeting to the #wiunion hashtag.
• Taking a stand against Islam.
• Any trending or popular hashtag is dangerous when the liberals think they’re beginning to look bad; nothing like losing a battle to cultivate the desire for revenge in a leftist.
• Getting into conversations with any of the following leftists, @Lizardoid (or #LGF), @BlazePhoenix_, @Shoq, @GottaLaff, @KeithOlbermann to name a few.

These people with suspended accounts were not threatening people or other accounts. They were just voicing their opinion and the leftists hate them for that.

There are a couple ways that accounts can be suspended.

1. The report-spam/block button. Instead of using the standard block that most of us would use on a disagreeable liberal these suspension teams orchestrate mass report-spam/block on an account to have it suspended.
2.  Reply trap. The leftist will tweet an account in hopes that the admin will reply. If there is a reply they can file a report with Twitter and/or spam-report/block you.
3.  Physically report the account to Twitter. Contacting @Spam and/or filing a ticket against an account.

The liberals love to target particular conservatives and have them suspended repeatedly. The same patterns are reoccurring. Reinstated then suspended; again and again. I have seen some accounts suspended four, five times. Sometimes after reinstatement the admin doesn’t even have time to tweet before the account is suspended. Reinstated by Twitter and suspended again in ten minutes with no new tweets and no changes made to the account in any way has occurred.

At other times the ‘spam reporting team’ follows the administrator to the next account (often the victim’s backup). They don’t seem to mind that the administrator hasn’t been spamming anyone or violating any Twitter rule. They don’t care that the person has been simply voicing his/her opinion. Liberals only want to silence another conservative voice, another patriot who wants to share an opinion is to be taken out of public view.  For tips on how to avoid #TwitterGulag please see my list here.

Suspension Cases

One of the most startling things is the discovery that it’s possible to be suspended with no tweets, no excessive following (accounts that followed ten or less conservative and Republican celebrities). The accounts did not break any rules. No reason given for the suspensions below, which must have been victims of spam-report/block:

@EaglePatrol1:

@EggPatrol1 (now reinstated):

@EggPatrol3

@EaglePatrol6:

This clearly shows that there is more to this suspension than one of the theories the liberals are circulating saying conservatives are suspended because we attack the liberals and annoy or spam them. The accounts shown above did nothing.

For the most part leftists disregard these suspensions and brush them aside as irrelevant. It’s easy to understand. They are not victims and if it means opposition is silenced they naturally would not find a problem with it.

One conservative account @inGodwetrust76 replied to @utaustinliberal and was spam-blocked. The conservative hadn’t been spamming. One tweet to the liberal, then the angry leftists admits to spam blocking the account:

Though now reinstated @PinkySinclair did suspend @mrgeology.  Thankfully @mrgeology was reinstated quickly.

A discussion with a lib then the B & R is used and somebody is sent to #TwitterGulag (I worked to get him reinstated).

My Suspension

On June 13th I was pulled into a discussion with a liberal after tweeting numerous tweets to the hashtags #LiberalismIn4Words and #ConservatismIn4Words when I was suspended.  To my knowledge @PolitixFireball is the largest account ever suspended for political opinion, free speech and disagreement with a liberal.

Below is the bulk and main line of our discussion:

During the process of posting another tweet I received a message that I was suspended. Pink ribbon appeared, disappeared and didn’t appear again for over an hour:

@StumblingBlock blocked @PolitixFireball:

An hour and a half after my suspension I was able to get reinstated. Twitter forced me to admit that I was at fault if I was to have @PolitixFireball reinstated:

I did not make unsolicited replies. The leftist @StumblingBlock, started the entire episode when he angrily replied to my tweets. He also mentioned me a total of 27 times while I replied to him only 19 times. Who should have reported who?

@utaustingliberal had contact with @StumblingBlock about the time @inGodwetrust76 was spam-blocked and before @PolitixFireball was suspended. They both had contact with conservatives, each other, and blocked conservatives at approximately the same time:

@utaustinliberal connection with @StumblingBlock.

How They Work

From those with guilty consciences these tweets were posted:

@BlazePhoenix_

@BlazePhoenix_ congratulates @Lizardoid.

@Lizardoid:

Spam-block/report for reasons other than spam:

Racial issues reported for spam, instructions on how to report someone and anti-Obama reported for spam.  These aren’t ‘spamming’ issues.  This is disagreement in beliefs.

The three screen shots above came from Twitter Gulag Spam Blockers.

@Lizardoid condones block and report in this April screen shot taken from Diary of Daedalus.

Although it has not happened to a great degree some account have been completely banned from Twitter because they were suspended so many times.  Not an account disobeying Twitter rules, but an account attacked and ruined because automated leftist run accounts suspended it time after time.

As mentioned earlier there are a variety of people responsible for these suspensions. They come from different liberal groups who support leftist ideals. Most are loosely (a few closely) united with the goal to silence opposition. Some conservatives on Twitter would suggest that there is a deeper reason for these suspensions. The leftists certainly do not hurt Obama and his administration with their actions– quite the opposite and it is likely that this is at the heart of this.

But it goes beyond the suspension of relatively obscure conservatives on Twitter sharing their personal views. There is an agenda. The entire purpose is to silence anyone who does not laud what is deemed ‘politically correct’ and is not supportive of the current Obama administration. Recently we have learned of other ways liberals are seeking to silence alternative new media. Red State’s Erick Erickson and other bloggers received surprise visits from law enforcement after being falsely reported for committing violent crimes.  Someone (believed to be the same person in each case and likely to be instigated by Brett Kimberlin Bomber turned left-wing activist) called 911 impersonating the particular blogger claiming he had killed his wife.  The SWAT team then shows up at the family’s home.  Of course this was illegal and could easily have led to the death of a family member in one of those households. Quite a dirty trick which shows how the leftists are playing this year: win at all odds, forget the means and casualties.

To many it may seem these events are widely dispersed, but these attacks are increasing.  Suspensions on Twitter are little more than another front for the left to terrorize.  We are supposed to praise Obama and the socialistic policies of this administration or we risk the attack of liberals on us; offending leftists has already lead to life threatening situations for the bloggers mentioned above.  Similar tactics and not only unethical, but cutthroat, activities have been taking place on our favorite social network– Twitter.  Many of those who have been targeted are on the grassroots level, but it is clear that others who are better-known are experiencing attacks not dissimilar.  There is even a possibility of a direct tie between the suspensions and Kimberlin.  Are any of us safe?

The patterns are interestingly similar.  By now it has become well-known that these liberals don’t appreciate being criticized.  If you haven’t noticed this read their statements below.

From @Lizardoid:

Lizard recommends B & R for those he deems ‘Phsyco Stalkers’ aka conservatives, libertarians and patriots who don’t agree with him.

From @Shoq:

These people want free speech on their side, but when we speak out because we don’t agree with their political views they call it ‘stalking’ and ‘trolling.’  I have had my own share of ‘fans’ since getting on the internet.  In April a liberal  asked me to name the four accounts I had interacted with that were his in the last month and warned me that if I blocked he would be back with another of his fifty or so accounts.  Ohh…and he loves Google.  Okay, I haven’t done anything (except post political tweets).  The above liberals are obsessed with those that allegedly ‘stalk’ them (doubtless we all have these issues), but those doing the spam-report block appear to be doing exactly what they cry against and blame conservatives such as you and I for doing!!

I would recommend that you read this article by Patterico.   Interestingly enough his detailed experiences with SWATting shows that those who are attacking us ruthlessly on Twitter are using the similar tactics and even have interaction with those responsible for these swattings.  To justify their attacks on us they use the ‘stalking’ accusation.  They, in truth are the stalkers and cyber bullies trying to push around and shut us up.  Both the people behind the swatting and those who are part of these suspension teams.

But it goes beyond tactics.  Neal Rauhauser is a good friend of Brett Kimberlin.  Earlier this spring there was close Twitter correspondence between Rauhauser and Charles Johnson, the latter is well-known for his denial of #TwitterGulag despite strong evidence showing he’s a part of it.  So right here we see a loose connection through tactics and friends.  Those that were targeted also give a connection.  The best known suspended account was Chris Loesch, who has connections with Breitbart.com,  a primary group that the SWATters and stalkers have gone after.

An LGF contributor did brush away the SWATting issue as a conspiracy trumped by right-wing bloggers themselves.  Really?  Why would anyone pull a prank like that?  We are not insane and I would not even wish that on my enemies. Others claim it hasn’t occurred at all. They forget that there would be police records I suppose.

Now it seems the liberals are even spying and attacking each other.  One blogger released an interesting group of sound bites.  According to this, @Shoq admits he has 500 accounts used in the #StopRush effort.  It would be easy to also use these accounts to suspend conservatives as well as bully Rush supporters.

Where will these liberals stop? It has yet to be seen. These activities appear to be increasing and the heat of a summer election presidential election year has not yet arrived.

Cases of conservatives being suspended from Twitter have not been going away.  We need to prepare for this summer.  Much of what I have seen points to the idea that there will be an even greater onslaught of suspension activity happening in the future.  Probably even endeavoring to reach higher profile accounts and conservative celebrities.  They won’t stop suspending and intimidating us because they seek to silence us.

But we will not be stopped. We will persist in our cause.

Cross-posted on my blog and Tun Tavern Patriots

Tags: #stoprush, #TwitterGulag, @BlazePhoenix_, @Gotta

WILL BANNING GUNS STOP HOMICIDES? STATS FROM ENGLAND AND AUSTRALIA SHOW…

• Posted on December 28, 2012 at 9:18am by  Mike Opelka
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The debate on gun control is only gaining momentum. On Thursday, Senator Diane Feinstein outlined her plans to introduce sweeping legislation that includes fingerprinting and registration of all those who currently own so-called semi-automatic “assault” weapons.

Those in favor of a total ban on firearms often point to countries like England and Australia where firearms are banned or virtually impossible to possess. A look into the statistics might offer some clarity, though, about how safe such a move actually makes a country.

Let’s start at home. From 2009 to 2011, homicides overall declined slightly according to a 2011 Centers for Disease Control (CDC) report, with a corresponding drop in homicides by firearms.

In fact, the report says homicide is not among the top 15 leading causes of death in America. (As recently as 2009, the CDC reported that homicide was in the top 15 at #15.) Instead:

• Accidents (unintentional deaths) were #5 and Suicide (intentional harm) has held solid as the 10th leading cause of death for several years.
• The stats from 2009 show that homicides totaled 16,799, with 11,493 of those attributed to guns.
• During that same year, motor vehicle deaths were nearly triple that of gun-related deaths — 34,485 vs. 11,493.
• Death from accidental falls totaled 24,792, almost double the firearms homicide total.

The stats for gun deaths have actually shown some significant declines in the past two decades.

Image: National Institute of Justice

Looking at the above graph, it is worth noting that deaths caused by “other guns” has been relatively flat since 1985. The assault weapons ban was in place from 1994-2004.

And what about the argument most often made by the Left quoting the success of oppressive gun laws in countries like Australia and England? A recent opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal by Joyce Lee Malcolm shows that argument to be hollow: “After a school massacre, the U.K. banned handguns in 1998. A decade later, handgun crime has doubled.”

Malcom’s article details what happened after Australia banned many guns following a 1996 mass murder of 35 people by a madman with assault rifles. The country tightened registration laws, banned assault rifles, pump-action shotguns, and also forced a buy back of more than 600,000 guns. What effect did this have on crime?

“A 2003 study published by the Brookings Institution, found homicides “continued a modest decline” since 1997. They concluded that the impact of the National Firearms Agreement was “relatively small,” with the daily rate of firearms homicides declining 3.2%.”

During the same period in America, deaths attributed to firearms dropped by nearly ten times the decline seen in Australia. Restricting or confiscating handguns seems to have had almost no effect on homicides in Australia and the stats also show that the law had no real effect on suicides.

“Suicides with firearms went down but suicides by other means went up,” Malcom notes.

And what about the oft-cited British gun laws? Have they done the job?

Restrictive gun laws have been around for almost 100 years in England, and Malcolm reports that getting a permit requires proving to police that you have a “good reason” for needing a gun. Self defense is not considered to be a good reason in England. Following a 1987 shooting in the British town of Hungerford, the Brits enacted stricter controls. And in 1998, a near-total ban on gun ownership followed another mass shooting. Were these moves a success?

Within a decade of the handgun ban and the confiscation of handguns from registered owners, crime with handguns had doubled according to British government crime reports. Gun crime, not a serious problem in the past, now is. Armed street gangs have some British police carrying guns for the first time.

There is little doubt that the Senate will soon put forth new legislation regarding gun ownership, especially as it relates to so-called assault weapons. However, those making the argument that banning guns has worked in places like Australia and England might be advised to check the statistics or risk looking foolish if they encounter someone armed with the facts.

(H/T: Weasel Zippers)

Additional Blaze coverage on the firearms debate:

• Will Cain: Separating Emotion From Facts In The Gun Control Debate
• Senator Diane Feinstein Posts Proposed ‘Assault Weapons’ Legislation 

Follow Mike Opelka on Twitter @stuntbrain