There are lots and lots of silly opinion pieces and editorials, long on outrage, short on facts. The NY Times Editorial Board provides possibly the dumbest one of the day
Tough Talk and a Cowardly Vote on Terrorism
Investigators now believe that what initially seemed a workplace shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., was a well-planned attack by a married couple with at least some contact with Islamic extremists.
The evolving situation has forced Republican leaders and presidential candidates to contort themselves: talking tough on terrorism, yet ignoring the fact that the two were armed to the teeth with two .223-caliber assault rifles and two 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistols, and hundreds of rounds, all purchased legally.
Armed to the teeth! Legally purchased. Wait, wouldn’t this be part of that whole “Islamophobia” liberals write about?
While the nation suffered through the shock of another bloody massacre, on Thursday every Senate Republican except Mark Kirk of Illinois voted against legislation to prevent people on the F.B.I.’s consolidated terrorist watchlist from purchasing guns or explosives.
The measure has been introduced repeatedly since 2007. The Government Accountability Office has documented that over years of congressional blockage, hundreds of suspected terrorists on the watchlist bought guns.
Why didn’t Democrats pass it in 2009 or 2010, when they owned Congress and the White House?
No matter. The House speaker, Paul Ryan, issued his party’s weak defense of arming potential terrorism suspects on Thursday morning: “I think it’s very important to remember people have due process rights in this country, and we can’t have some government official just arbitrarily put them on a list.†Mr. Ryan’s Senate colleagues demonstrated that they are more worried about the possibility that someone might be turned away from a gun shop than shielding the public against violent criminals.
Got that? It’s weak to actually allow people their Constitutional right of due process.
How well has the No Fly List worked?
- Children, even ones under the age of 1, have been on it
- A marine returning from Iraq, David Brown, was on it
- Senator Ted Kennedy was on it and had trouble flying
- John Lewis, US Representative, was on it
- David Nelson, the actor best known for his role on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, is among various persons named David Nelson who have been stopped at airports because their name apparently appears on the list
- US Senator Ted Stevens’ wife Catherine has been stopped because they thought she might be Cat Stevens
Those are just a smattering of the problems with the list. Nelson Mandela, and even Nuns, are on/have been on the no fly list. Liberals used to complain about the No Fly List, decrying it as un-Constitutional, arbitrary, and just wrong. It can be darned near impossible to find out if one is on it, till one takes an evil fossil fueled flight (well, tries to), and very hard to get off it. Oh, wait, look
The No-Fly List Is UnconstitutionalThe federal government’s no-fly list, which prevents those suspected of terrorist ties from boarding flights in the United States or flying through American airspace, is reported to include more than 20,000 names—a number that metastasized after the Sept. 11 attacks. There’s a low evidentiary standard for getting on the list. Once on, it’s not only difficult to get off but almost impossible to find out why, exactly, one was added in the first place.
That was the Editors blog for the NY Times back in 2014.
Perhaps the NY Times Editorial Board can answer the question “would this have stopped any of the “mass shootings”, including the recent one in San Bernardino?” Oh, and another question: “will the NY Times freak out when Muslims who have not done anything wrong other than going to nations which are hotbeds of Islamic terrorism are denied the right to purchase firearms due to being on the no fly list?”
Crossed at Right Wing News.
