While the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is preparing to run ads featuring a Bush impersonator over Independence Day weekend, Freedom Watch is preparing its own ad to run against 16 vulnerable House Democrats.
Two of the Democrats on that list are Chris Carney and Paul Kanjorski.
The ads will be on the radio this weekend and sound something like this:
“We are struggling. Businesses are struggling. More and more Americans are losing jobs. What is Congressman Chris Carney doing about it?” a narrator asks in the ad targeting Rep. Chris Carney (D-Pa.)
“Chris Carney voted five times against environmentally safe domestic energy production, voted against American energy independence… But Chris Carney stands in the way … while we cut back on gas and groceries, family outings and summer vacations.”
Here's the video ad that Freedom Watch is also running
On the issue of energy, it seems Rep. Chris Carney may be finally stepping out of the political sandbox of personal insults and into the public arena to debate the issue.
Carney put out a press release on the topic last week and commented further in today's Times Leader story.
Carney points to three legislative measures he supported in the past week. The first would suspend any further deliveries of oil to the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The second bill would work to curtail speculation on the price of oil. The third bill would provide $1.7 billion for mass-transit grants.
While Carney had previously criticized Chris Hackett for supporting "Big Oil," it appears Carney may have flipped on the issue as he now is open to and would support attempts to increase domestic oil production.
There's no word out of Carney's camp whether Carney will take Hackett up on his challenge to sign "American Energy Pledge".
It will be interesting to see on the topic of energy if Carney can stick to his platform or whether he'll revert back to simply criticizing Hackett's personal finances. With a story today again highlighting that Hackett has assets valued at 10 to 20 times what Carney has, it would only seem only natural for Carney to continue to make it a campaign issue.
The Supreme Court handed down its landmark decision in District of Columbia v. Heller this past week. While the Court’s decision has been lauded by supporters of gun rights and decried by those who fail to recognize that the opinion still allows some gun control regulations, the most striking aspect of the Supreme Court’s opinion is the legal stance taken by those in dissent. The four Justices who dissented – Souter, Breyer, Ginsburg, and Stevens – usually take a position that views the Constitution as a “living document.”
This living document, they regularly argue, allows for the creation of new rights and standards that the Founders and the drafters of the 14th Amendment never envisioned. For example, the drafters of the 8th Amendment would not have envisioned a constitutional problem with the execution of child rapists – nearly all felonies were punishable by death at the time of adoption of the amendment. Yet, in the Heller decision, these Justices decided that they would become strict originalists and conclude that at the time of the 2nd Amendment’s adoption, it was not meant to protect the right of individuals to use guns for non-military purposes (i.e. hunting and self-defense).
While an argument can be made about the original intent of the 2nd Amendment, there can be little debate that modern society – the American public over the course of the last 100 years – would view the 2nd Amendment as granting an individual right to use guns for hunting and self-defense. What is startling about the position of the four Justices in dissent is that it exposes their lack of a clear and consistent overarching view of constitutional interpretation. Their dissent reveals that they decide cases based on what they feel - not on what the law is. The dissent arguably could have written a dissenting opinion that still found the DC law constitutional under a living document philosophy, but they choose not to. Their failure to do so is even more evidence of a lack of a clear approach to constitutional questions.
This lack of a clear philosophy means that the four Justices in dissent are simply acting as legislators – making decisions based on the current political climate rather than on a principled view of the law.
Whomever our next President is will likely have the opportunity to appoint at least one Justice to the Supreme Court. Let’s hope that he appoints someone with a clear philosophy rather than someone who views themselves as the ultimate decider of what is right (in their eyes) rather than what the law is.
Ed Rendell suggested last night that he would be interested in serving in Barack Obama's cabinet if Obama was elected President. Rendell once again reiterated that he has no interest in being Obama's VP, but mentioned he wouldn't mind serving as Obama's Secretary of Energy or Transportation once he finishes his second term as governor.
After the Heller decision yesterday, I figured there would be some good Editorial comments on the subject in today's papers.
Furthermore, I expected the New York Times to be most critical of the decision, but their Editorial this morning far exceeded anything I expected.
The Editorial takes two primary issues with the decision. First, that the majority's interpretation is wrong. Second, the decision will be detrimental to public health.
The interpretation argument is an issue unto itself, but the Times' concern that the decision will result in increased homicides is unfounded.
Some selected passages from the Editorial:
"The Supreme Court on Thursday all but ensured that even more Americans will die senselessly with its wrongheaded and dangerous ruling striking down key parts of the District of Columbia's gun-control law."
"This is a decision that will cost innocent lives, cause immeasurable pain and suffering and turn America into a more dangerous country. It will also diminish our standing in the world, sending yet another message that the United States values gun rights over human life."
Maybe the Times is relying upon the 1991 study in the New England Journal of Medicine by Colin Loftin, Brian Wiersema and Talbert J. Cottey. In their study, Loftin and company concluded that the restrictive licensing of guns result in a prompt decline in homicide rates. The study looked at the 9 years before the D.C. gun ban and the 9 years after and found:
"In Washington, D.C., the adoption of the gun-licensing law coincided with an abrupt decline in homicides by firearms (a reduction of 3.3 per month, or 25 percent) and suicides by firearms (reduction, 0.6 per month, or 23 percent). No similar reductions were observed in the number of homicides or suicides committed by other means, nor were there similar reductions in the adjacent metropolitan areas in Maryland and Virginia. There were also no increases in homicides or suicides by other methods, as would be expected if equally lethal means were substituted for handguns."
Striking, isn't it? Except for the fact that the causal relationship has been proven untrue.
The Loftin study failed to use per-capita statistics which was particularly important due to D.C.'s declining population at the time. From Dean Payne's analysis of the Loftin study:
"Loftin suggests that the District's 1976 restrictive handgun licensing, effectively a ban on new handguns, prevented an average of 47 deaths per year. Inexplicably, the report fails to mention the rapid shrinkage of the District's population, or the rising population of the surrounding community in Maryland and Virginia. When homicides and suicides rates are expressed as per-capita rates, any apparent post-1976 benefit enjoyed by the District vanishes."
Furthermore, Washington D.C.'s homicide rate per 100,000 climbed after the District implemented their strict gun regulations. The rate was 10.6 in 1960 and stood at 35.4 in 2005.
Even by comparison to other larger cities, Washington D.C. is much worse.
However, the New York Times provides no data or statistical measure to back their alarmist claim that homicides will begin to drastically climb as a result of the Supreme Court's decision in Heller. The Times simply relies upon emotional appeal and their disdain for any reasoning which supports gun rights.
The reaction to yesterday's Supreme Court decision in the District of Columbia v. Heller sounded pretty similar across the region:
U.S. Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Nanticoke - “For the first time in history, the Supreme Court has finally acknowledged a freedom which many of us have always known – that our Constitution protects the right for Americans to bear arms. I joined many of my colleagues in expressing this opinion to the Court. Protecting one’s individual liberty is a fundamental American right, as the Supreme Court today recognized.”
Republican congressional candidate Lou Barletta – “It is a great day for the Second Amendment. It is a great day for Americans. I believe this decision was proper.”
U.S. Rep. Chris Carney, D-Dimock Township - “Today’s Supreme Court ruling is a victory for responsible gun owners everywhere. The Second Amendment applies equally to us all. The right to bear arms is paramount, and no local, state or federal government should be able to compromise that right.”
Republican congressional candidate Chris Hackett – “This ruling protects the individual freedoms guaranteed in the Second Amendment, which for 32 years has been denied to Washington, D.C., residents. The Court has kept laws intact that are meant to protect citizens from unnecessary gun violence, but also guaranteed the individual rights that are explicitly written in our Constitution."
The Millionares' Amendment was effectively struck down today with the Supreme Court's decision in Davis v. Federal Election Commission.
From a Politco story on the campaign ramifications for the ruling:
"The law is unlikely to have a significant political impact in individual campaigns. Self-funded candidates, in general, already have poor political track records.
But it will have an immediate effect on several high-profile congressional races that involve candidates that have poured in millions of their own money.
For example, Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) had been able to fundraise with fewer restrictions against Republican Sandy Treadwell, a multimillionaire who already has poured in nearly $1 million of his own money. Now she will have to abide by the normal fundraising limits.
Other candidates that have triggered the Millionaires' Amendment include Republican Chris Hackett, running in a competitive race against freshman Rep. Christopher P. Carney (D-Pa.), and GOP businessman Mike Erickson, running for the open seat of retiring Rep. Darlene Hooley (D-Ore.). Both have each already spent more than $790,000 of their own money in the primaries alone."
It seems an agreement on the budget could be reached sooner rather than later. One sign that this could happen is that both sides are continuing talks and no one has yet to walk away from the table.
House Republican leader Sam Smith noted that it could be possible for the House and Senate to vote on budget bills Monday and have them signed by the Governor on Wednesday. This would seemingly avoid the furloughing of state employees as Rendell previously stated he would not do so if he perceived a budget deal to be close.
The Democrats' plan to dip into the rainy day fund has been taken off the table after Wednesday's negotiations, but a hiccup in the agreement is how to make up for the projected surplus shortfall due to the economic downturn.
Erik Arneson, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R-Delaware) said, "Calling it a framework is a generous description, but it is not entirely inaccurate."
Even a budget that was two-days late would still be an improvement for the Rendell administration.
There's a confidence beginning to brew in the Barletta camp, and this became quite apparent when Barletta challenged Congressman Paul Kanjorski to debate 11 times before the fall election.
The Barletta proposal would consist of six summer debates to be aired on WILK radio. Each debate would last roughly 30 minutes and focus on a single issue.
Following the summer debates would be five hour-long, public debates in the fall. Each debate would be held in a different county (Carbon, Columbia, Lackawanna, Luzerne, and Monroe) to ensure the candidates covered the region.
Kanjorski campaign spokesman Ed Mitchell responded by signalling there would be debates between the two candidates, but didn't specify if Kanjorski would agree to Barletta's proposed framework.
This is an interesting move by the Barletta camp for two reasons. First, Barletta's legitimacy as a candidate seemed to be improving drastically everyday by simply doing nothing. That series of Kanjorski follies exponentially improved Barletta's odds and everyone seemed to take note that Kanjorski may indeed be doomed. Barletta's internal polling even had him with a lead in the race and several outlets noted the seat was indeed vulnerable. This series of debates may be a way for Barletta to further get his name out to the constituency and, in the process of doing so, increase his campaign cash for the all important fall months. Secondly, in the Hazelton mayorial race, Barletta was criticized by his opponent for failing to debate her. Therefore, this appears to be an furthered effort to break that perception of Barletta.
From Steve Corbett at WILK Radio discussing Chris Carney and Paul Kanjorski:
"Although Carney looks more and more like a Capitol Hill opportunist, Kanjorski is particularly losing credibility through his silence and political hustling. If I can recognize their slick manipulation, and I’m a Democrat, who knows how Republicans and independents view their cavalier abuse of power."
"Local Values" is a blog that focuses primarily on Northeast Pennsylvania politics and public policy. The blog will evaluate and comment on topical events using the principles of: federalism, fiscal conservatism, judicial restraint, and the protection of individual liberties and freedoms.
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