“Unforgivable Stupidity”: Rep Louie Gohmert Shows How Not To Respond To A Tragedy
In the wake of tragic gun violence, most politicians realize the decent, responsible thing to do is send sympathies to those affected while leaving politics out of it. Others aren’t as sensible.
After the Columbine massacre, for example, then-Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) blamed science textbooks for the murders: “Our school systems teach the children that they are nothing but glorified apes who are evolutionized [sic] out of some primordial soup.”
In 2007, after the Virginia Tech massacre, Newt Gingrich blamed liberals for supporting “situation ethics,” adding, “Yes, I think the fact is, if you look at the amount of violence we have in games that young people play at 7, 8, 10, 12, 15 years of age, if you look at the dehumanization, if you look at the fact that we refuse to say that we are, in fact, endowed by our creator, that our rights come from God, that if you kill somebody, you’re committing an act of evil.” Gingrich, explaining the VT tragedy, went on to condemn Halloween costumes and the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law.
And this morning, after the slayings in Aurora, Louie Gohmert weighed in with some stupidity of his own.
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said Friday that the shootings that took place in an Aurora, Colo. movie theater hours earlier were a result of “ongoing attacks on Judeo-Christian beliefs” and questioned why nobody else in the theater had a gun to take down the shooter.
During a radio interview on The Heritage Foundation’s “Istook Live!” show, Gohmert was asked why he believes such senseless acts of violence take place. Gohmert responded by talking about the weakening of Christian values in the country.
“Some of us happen to believe that when our founders talked about guarding our virtue and freedom, that that was important,” he said. “Whether it’s John Adams saying our Constitution was made only for moral and religious people … Ben Franklin, only a virtuous people are capable of freedom, as nations become corrupt and vicious they have more need of masters. We have been at war with the very pillars, the very foundation of this country.”
“You know what really gets me, as a Christian, is to see the ongoing attacks on Judeo-Christian beliefs, and then some senseless crazy act of a derelict takes place.”
I see. So, in the mind of this strange Republican congressman, a madman killed 12 people because of … the separation of church and State? The First Amendment is to blame for a shooting spree in a movie theater?
If decency had any place in American politics, this would be an immediate career-ender for the ridiculous congressman from Texas. Some political missteps are simply unforgivable.
Update: Gohmert also wondered aloud why no one else in the theater was armed, complaining that the victims should have shot back.
By: Steve Beneb, The Maddow Blog, July 20, 2012
“Absentee Owner”: New Bain Questions To Dog Romney And They Are Not About Seamus
Though much of the nation’s attention has shifted to the tragic overnight violence in Aurora, Colorado, the political world will apparently move forward. Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney had already scheduled a campaign event in New Hampshire, and his staff alerted reporters this morning that their plans have not changed.
With that in mind, there are new questions about the candidate’s controversial private-sector background that deserve answers. The Boston Globe has this new report, for example, noting Romney’s ongoing ties to Bain Capital after his departure in February 1999.
Interviews with a half-dozen of Romney’s former partners and associates, as well as public records, show that he was not merely an absentee owner during this period. He signed dozens of company documents, including filings with regulators on a vast array of Bain’s investment entities. And he drove the complex negotiations over his own large severance package, a deal that was critical to the firm’s future without him, according to his former associates.
Indeed, by remaining CEO and sole shareholder, Romney held on to his leverage in the talks that resulted in his generous 10-year retirement package, according to former associates.
“The elephant in the room was not whether Mitt was involved in investment decisions but Mitt’s retention of control of the firm and therefore his ability to extract a huge economic benefit by delaying his giving up of that control,” said one former associate.
So, on the one hand, we see Mitt Romney telling voters, “I was in Utah full time. I had no responsibility for management at Bain Capital.” On the other hand, we see evidence that Romney was not in Utah full time and had quite a few responsibilities for management of Bain Capital.
In the meantime, David Corn has a new report on Bain, during Romney’s tenure, investing millions in a pair of companies that specialized in outsourcing high-tech manufacturing.
As for the still-hidden tax returns, the number of Republicans urging Romney to disclose more materials continues to grow.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, July 20, 2012
“No Comment”: The National Rifle Association’s Bizarre Colorado Response
The National Rifle Association’s nightly online newscast, “The Daily News,” opened Friday with the unavoidably prime news of the day: the movie-theater horror in Colorado.
Its report on what anchor Ginny Simone termed “the unthinkable tragic shooting that shocked the country today” lasted 35 seconds. It concluded with word that, “at this hour the NRA is telling all media, including the NRA Daily News, that its policy is that it will have no comment until all the facts are known in this case.”
She then segued to a report about ongoing United Nations negotiations on a global arms treaty to regulate trade in conventional arms. That segment, making clear the anchor’s own outrage with the negotiations, lasted more than 10 minutes.
It was thus far easier to bash the U.N. for its audacity in trying to curb arms sales to wayward nations and faraway criminals than to wonder if there just might be a link between Friday’s tragedy and the easy access to firearms in this country.
The U.N. talks result from years of lobbying by human-rights groups and also mark the Obama administration’s decision to reverse Bush-era policy and to support the negotiations involving 200 nations.
However, amid opposition from pro-gun legislators, the administration has backed off its support of what some see as a quite important provision to also cover trade in ammunition.
The thrust of the U.N. proposal involves a wide range of weapons in a worldwide market thought to be as much as $60 billion a year. The U.S. is the biggest exporter in a system in which only a minority of governments regulate arms dealers, with a variety of regional and multination arms embargoes seen as generally ineffective.
The Christian Science Monitor has put it the overall context succinctly: “While the U.S. and a few other countries have relatively tough regulations governing the trade of weapons, many countries have weak or ineffective regulations, if they have any at all. The result is that there are more international laws governing the trade of bananas than conventional weapons, like AK-47s.”
As far as the NRA newscast was concerned, the “news” was that “the treaty may be in trouble of being approved by July 27, a deadline set by the U.N.”
That didn’t surprise the report’s primary interviewee, former Bush-era U.N. ambassador John Bolton. He proceeded to belittle the slow-moving ways of the organization and added that “August is a sacred month in New York,” with few working at the U.N.
But Bolton fretted that an inability to come to a resolution by month’s end could thus mean that President Obama might swoop in during September, prior to the annual convening of the General Assembly, and influence the final result.
Simone then turned to the NRA’s primary correspondent covering the talks New York, Tom Mason. He’s an official of the World Forum on the Future of Sport Shooting Activities. She opened by indicating that Mason had told her that “panic has definitely set in at U.N. headquarters. They realize time is running out.”
Both Mason and Simone derided many elements of the treaty and the views of proponents. Those included linking the internal arms trade with violence against women.
Simon cited unidentified nations she terms “some of the worst human-rights abusers in the world” that were involved in the talks. She wondered how the treaty “will stop the killing and rape of people with no chance to defend themselves.”
The U.N. agenda, she said, is “to disarm people,” implying it would leave the defenseless even more so.
Both Mason and the anchor alleged a de facto media conspiracy of silence in covering the talks.
With one of several rhetorical questions, Simone asked him, “Is it fair to say civilian ownership and ammunition are very much on the hit list?”
“Yes, very much so,” said Mason.
The duo concluded with a broadside against the UN’s record in dealing with human-rights abuses, with Mason claiming, “They’ve never really thought this concept through of stopping human rights abuses.”
“But they have thought about how they can erode the Second Amendment in the U.S.,” he said.
Not mentioned was that the treaty is all about international transfers of weapons, not their internal domestic regulation.
By: James Warren, The Daily Beast, July 22, 2012
“A Line In The Sand”: Sen Ron Johnson, “High-Capacity Magazines Are A Constitutional Right”
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) drew a fairly strict line in the sand on Sunday with respect to the coming debate over gun control, suggesting that there is a constitutional right to buy high-capacity clips and magazines.
“Does something that would limit magazines that could carry 100 rounds, would that infringe on the constitutional right?” host Chris Wallace asked Johnson on “Fox News Sunday.”
“I believe so,” Johnson replied. “People will talk about unusually lethal weapons, that could be potentially a discussion you could have. But the fact of the matter is there are 30-round magazines that are just common. You simply can’t keep these weapons out of the hands of sick, demented individuals who want to do harm. And when you try to do it, you restrict our freedoms.”
High-capacity magazines were banned under the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, which President Bill Clinton signed into law in 1994 and which expired 10 years later. Since then, gun control advocates have focused their attention on them in their efforts to curb gun-related violence.
Opponents of restrictive gun laws have responded by arguing that incidents of violence involving high-capacity magazines are actually quite rare, and that shootings involving handguns are far more common.
When former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) was shot in Tucson, the topic finally received national attention. The man who has been charged with killing six people in the attack, along with wounding Giffords and 12 others, used a high-capacity magazine to fire off more than 30 shots before reloading.
James Holmes, who allegedly killed 12 people and wounded 58 others Friday morning in an Aurora, Colo. movie theater, reportedly used a high-capacity magazine to fire off multiple rounds without having to reload.
The office of Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) told The Huffington Post on Friday that he would be making a renewed push for legislation that would ban high-capacity magazines.
Johnson is a conservative member of the Republican Party. But support for high-capacity magazines, even in the wake of the Aurora shooting, extends far beyond him. Former Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.), a moderate Republican who is running for Senate, said Friday he opposes a ban on these magazines, despite having voted for the assault weapons ban in 1993 and co-sponsoring a reauthorization bill in 2008.
By: Sam Stein, The Huffington Post, July 22, 2012
“Politically Worrisome”: What Are The Worst Things We Could Find In Romney’s Tax Returns?
Mitt Romney’s campaign is taking heat for declining to disclose more than the two most recent years’ worth of his tax information. Even conservative commentators such as The Washington Post’s George Will and the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol are saying it’s past time to come clean. Of course, members of Romney’s team, unlike their friends on the outside, presumably know what the documents would reveal, so we should probably assume that they have fairly good reason not to release them. Could the criticism Romney would suffer over the contents of the returns be worse than the criticism he’s getting for not disclosing them? Here are some guesses about legal — but potentially embarrassing — things in Romney’s tax returns:
Profits from the financial crash
The vast majority of American families lost wealth in the housing bust of 2007-09 and the financial crisis that came in the middle of it, and millions lost jobs or earnings. But it was possible for a canny or lucky investor to profit from the chaos — especially for a wealthy individual with access to unusual financial products. Maybe Romney made a lot of money through bets on skyrocketing foreclosures or well-timed investments in bailed-out banks. There’s nothing wrong with smart financial planning, but making money on the crash could be awkward for a politician. There’s a tension between promising to make things better and profiting off human misfortune.
A low tax bill because of the crash
There’s also the possibility that Romney’s investments lost some value during the crash years and that he combined this with aggressive exploitation of loopholes to pay a strikingly low tax bill. One rumor was that he managed to pay nothing in taxes, something his campaign has denied. But would paying $2.75 really look all that different from paying $0? A super-low tax bill would turn Romney into the poster child for President Obama’s very popular “Buffett rule” proposal, which aims for a minimum tax level on high-income individuals.
Swiss bank amnesty
We know from the tax documents Romney has released that he once had a Swiss bank account, a fact that the Obama campaign has played up in ads. But his 2010 tax return did not include a Report on Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts form (“FBAR” to accountants) detailing his offshore investments. In 2009, the Swiss government began to relent on its traditional banking secrecy rules, and banks turned over information about tens of thousands of American tax scofflaws to the U.S. government. To help deal with the crush, the IRS staged a limited-time amnesty in 2009 for American citizens with previously non-disclosed foreign accounts to pay their back taxes without penalty. It’s possible that earlier tax documents or the 2010 FBAR would show that Romney took advantage of the amnesty. While legal, this would amount to a problematic confession of past wrongdoing.
None of the above
The possibilities are endless. Romney’s vast wealth has already provided plenty of campaign fodder — from his car elevator to his proposed $10,000 bet with Texas Gov. Rick Perry during a debate — so almost any additional details about his finances would add fuel to the fire. But the most likely candidates for compromising revelations could relate to the 2008-09 period. Romney isn’t disclosing his 2006 or 2007 taxes, but by his own two-year standard he would have had to if he had won the 2008 Republican nomination. That makes the time between his presidential runs — a period that coincides with major upheavals in financial markets and bank secrecy practices — far and away the most likely window for something more politically worrisome than a reputation for reticence.
By: Matthew Yglesias, The Washington Post, July 20, 2012
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