Garden State Patriot

Rush Limbaugh has once again found himself in the crosshairs of an intolerant American left-wing. This time, however, the story is multi-layered and with a bit of intrigue.

A bit of a recap: Late last week, the news broke that Rush was a part of a group looking to buy the NFL’s St. Louis Rams. Like clockwork, the left went into full assault mode. Many of the usual suspects (think Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson for starters) came out front and center to oppose Rush’s bid and pressure the NFL to prevent him from owning the team.  More importantly, though, a number of media people began parroting quotes attributed to Rush. One problem: The quotes are totally unsubstantiated and Rush flatly denies making them. 

Here are the quotes:

• “You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray. We miss you, James. Godspeed.”
• ‘slavery built the South, and I’m not saying that we should bring it back.. I’m just saying that it had it’s merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.”

And here is what Rush had to say on this yesterday, including the threat of legal action.

This evening word came out that Rush was being dropped from the group leading the effort to buy the Rams.

This situation leaves us with two issues to contemplate. First, as Americans, is this the kind of society we want? One in which a person – merely for exercising their freedom of speech – can be shunned or even blacklisted from endeavoring to purchase a company? Is everyone to have every utterance they have ever made scrutinized and their freedom to engage in industry destroyed for having the gall to speak their mind? If we are provocative is that now going to be a litmus test of sorts; that if we *offend* someone or some group we are immediately disqualified from ownership? Frankly, I find that prospect quite chilling.

The second issue to contemplate is, what should Rush now do? In the clip above he hinted at legal action. Not only has he been smeared with false quotes, but now he clearly has been damaged. Personally, I think Rush should pursue a defamation law suitand hold those who started and perpetuated the quotes accountable. If he does not, it will just invite the left to continue these tactics. If he does not, people will continue to attribute these quotes to him and permeate the myth that Rush is a racist. I think the time has come to no longer allow the left to get away with these lowball tactics. They need to pay a price for their malicious attacks. And I believe Rush now has that opportunity. He shouldn’t let it slide.

What do you think? Should Rush sue or not? Vote here and, as always, discuss in the comment section.

And for more on this, check out Gateway Pundit’s coverage.

Cross-posted at Conservatives with Attitude!

Former Miss USA Carrie Prejean is seeking justice after being stripped of her crown. While ‘Miss California USA’ claimed she was in breach of her contract, Prejean’s suit contends that she was dropped because of her politically incorrect comments regarding gay marriage.

Here’s the story:

RANCHO SANTA FE, CA – Carrie Prejean’s attorney, Charles S. LiMandri announced today that the former Miss California USA is filing a complaint in the Superior Court of California against Miss California USA officials Keith Lewis and Shanna Moakler, and publicist Roger Neal.  The complaint cites damages to Miss Prejean including libel, public disclosure of private facts, religious discrimination, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and negligent infliction of emotional distress. 

Miss Prejean was fired from her role as Miss California USA in June of this year, following several months of controversy over her answer at the Miss USA pageant regarding same-sex marriage. Lewis claimed Miss Prejean’s termination was due to a violation of contract.  Miss Prejean’s complaint will refute that allegation, and demonstrate that both the chronology and factual evidence clearly show she lived up to all her contractual obligations, but was fired, harassed and publicly attacked solely due to her religious beliefs.

Charles S. LiMandri, attorney for Miss Prejean, released the following statement regarding the complaint:
“Over the past two months we have worked hard to provide overwhelming evidence that Carrie Prejean did not violate her contract with Miss California USA and did not deserve to have her title revoked by Keith Lewis.  We will make the case that her title was taken from her solely because of her support of traditional marriage. Keith Lewis has refused to clear her good name or even to admit any wrongdoing.  Therefore, Carrie Prejean is left with no alternative but to take her case to court where she expects to be fully vindicated.” 

Here again is that famous moment when the detestable little worm Perez Hilton sandbagged her:

We’ll be following this one and hope the truth comes out. If my instincts are right, I think Miss Prejean will indeed be vindicated.

Cross-posted at Conservatives with Attitude!

The nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court presents Republicans with a huge opportunity. Sotomayor represents the typical, very left-wing jurist Republicans and conservatives have decried over the years. A nominee who has a record and philosophy of activism, with public statements to back it up (for more on Sotomayor’s record, you can check out Michelle Malkin’s write-up)

When Sotomayor comes before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Republicans should approach the hearings with the intent to educate the American people on the proper constitutional role and function of a judge; that it is NOT their role to legislate from the bench. This is a debate that is long overdue and Republicans ought to embrace it.

Republicans need to, once and for all, put to bed the ideas put forth by the Left that one’s race, gender or economic circumstances in life have any bearing on one’s qualifications for the Court. They need to explain to the American people that the only role of a judge is to fairly apply the law. Justice, as the old adage goes, ought to be blind.

Republicans might not win the battle over Sotomayor’s appointment, but they should at least strive to win in the court of public opinion by convincing the American people of the destructiveness of the judicial activism and the need to return the the kind of constitutional jurisprudence our Founders desired.

Some may cringe at the thought of having a ‘litmus test’ when it comes to judges. However, there are two areas where Republicans ought to have one. First, any potential judge who has a record of activism (read: legislating from the bench) should automatically be disqualified. Likewise any potential judge who has a record of looking to foreign law in their rulings also should be disqualified.

Senate Republicans, particularly those on the Judiciary Committee, will be under considerable pressure to oppose this nominee and advocate for the positions I have outlined above. I can only hope that they will have the backbone to do so.

Cross-posted at Conservatives with Attitude! 

Senator, Laut…err…Lousenberg is the primary sponsor of legislation to close a so-called “gun show loophole.” The bill would do the following:

The Senators’ bill would close the loophole by requiring background checks on all sales at gun shows. The bill defines a gun show as any event where 50 or more guns are offered or exhibited for sale. In addition, the bill would require:

• gun show promoters to register with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), maintain a list of vendors at all gun shows and ensure that all vendors acknowledge receipt of information about their legal obligations; and

• federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs) to submit information, including the manufacturer/importer, model and serial number of firearms transferred at gun shows to the ATF’s National Tracing Center (NTC). No personal information about either the seller or the purchaser would be given to the ATF. Instead, as under current law, FFLs would maintain personal information in their files. The National Tracing Center would request personal information from an FFL only if a firearm becomes the subject of a law enforcement trace request.

In typical liberal style, Lousenberg used the events like the anniversary of the Columbine shootings and the Virginia Tech shootings to gin up emotion and support for his initiative.

With the anniversaries of the Virginia Tech massacre and Columbine shootings in the news, Sen. Frank Lautenberg will push again Tuesday to close the so-called gun show loophole that lets some gun sales go through without background checks of the buyers. In a statement to Whispers, Lautenberg said: “There is no rational reason to oppose closing the loophole. The reason it’s still not closed is simple: the continuing power of the special-interest gun lobby in Washington. My legislation would require background checks for every gun purchased at every gun show across America and would keep guns out of the hands of people who should not have them. Without this change in the law, anyone—from felons to fugitives—can buy a gun at a gun show, no questions asked. That needs to change.”

Interestingly, liberals like Lousenberg who push for anti-gun legislation don’t seem to be as interested in protecting us from criminals who cross our borders and commit violent crimes, let alone preventing terrorists from entering our country anywhere along our southern border (but I digress).

The Viriginia Tech killer, I might add, did not purchase his weapons at a gun show.

More to the point, however, the first thing to understand about this is exactly what is being referred to as a “loophole.” Wikipedia describes it as follows:

The “gun show loophole” is a term coined by gun control advocates to describe the legal sale of firearms between private individuals at gun shows in states where this is legal. When these sales take place at a gun show, some perceive a “loophole” in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), although these laws have never applied to individual-to-individual sales of personal firearms. United States federal law requires persons engaged in interstate firearm commerce, or who are in the business of selling firearms, to hold a Federal Firearms License and to perform checks prior to transferring a firearm, but there is an exemption for private sales by individuals who are “not engaged in the business” of selling firearms, or who only make “occasional” sales. Unlicensed private sellers are permitted by law to sell privately-owned guns at gun shows, or at any other location, in 24 states (as of 1998).^[9]

Senator Lousenberg and his anti-gun partners would like to have us believe that dealers are somehow skirting the law, but this is simply not the case. The law just does not require private individuals to have a license. And any dealer who tried to sell a firearm without a license would immediately be arrested and prosecuted.

Furthermore, very few of these private transactions actually even occur at gun shows. In an article by David Kopel of the Cato Institute, David explains:

Conversely, people who are not engaged in the business of selling firearms, but who sell firearms from time to time (such as a man who sells a hunting rifle to his brother-in-law), are not required to obtain the federal license required of gun dealers or to call the FBI before completing the sale.

Similarly, if a gun collector dies and his widow wants to sell the guns, she does not need a federal firearms license because she is just selling off inherited property and is not “engaged in the business.” And if the widow doesn’t want to sell her deceased husband’s guns by taking out a classified ad in the newspaper, it is lawful for her to rent a table at a gun show and sell the entire collection.

If you walk along the aisles at any gun show, you will find that the overwhelming majority of guns offered for sale are from federally licensed dealers. Guns sold by private individuals (such as gun collectors getting rid of a gun or two over the the weekend) are the distinct minority.

Yet HCI claims that “25-50 percent of the vendors at most gun shows are unlicensed dealers.” That statistic is true only if one counts vendors who aren’t selling guns (e.g., vendors who are selling books, clothing or accessories) as “unlicensed dealers.”

David’s last point is likewise quite important. Lousenberg has used the 25-50 percent statistic in his efforts to sell this bill. But he is clearly being disingenuous in this respect because, as Mr. Kopel points out, many of the vendors at gun shows are not selling guns.

Last but not least, very few gun crimes – a mere 2% in fact – are committed using firearms purchased at gun shows. Again, via Wikipedia:

A 1997 Department of Justice survey of 3,959 prison inmates found that only 2% stated that they had bought a gun used in a crime from a gun show.^[10] The remaining 98% were obtained from other sources, in which the criminal had no direct connection with a gun show. The most common sources (35%) were family or friends.^[11]

Considering the facts I have outlined, it is difficult not to conclude that this is just another effort by the left-wing to infringe on the right to bear arms and an utterly misguided attempt prevent gun crimes. Even if enacted, this legislation would do little if anything in this respect. But what it would do is set the stage for the next incremental step to prevent law-abiding citizens from exercising their 2nd Amendment rights.

Americans deserve an honest and truthful debate about gun issues, not the kind of demagoguery being put forth by the likes of Senator Lousenberg.

Cross-posted at Conservatives with Attitude! and Red County.

The Democrats are getting ready to push the next of their extreme anti-life agenda – The Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA). This act would essentially do away with several key restrictions:

1. FOCA will do away with state laws on parental involvement, on partial birth abortion, and on all other protections.
2. FOCA will compel taxpayer funding of abortions.
3. FOCA will force faith-based hospitals and healthcare facilities to perform abortions.

An article today in the St. Louis Post Dispatch speaks specifically to Point #3.

A proposed bill promising major changes in the U.S. abortion landscape has Roman Catholic bishops threatening to close Catholic hospitals if the Democratic Congress and White House make it law.

The Freedom of Choice Act failed to get out of subcommittee in 2004, but its sponsor is poised to refile it now that former Senate co-sponsor Barack Obama occupies the Oval Office.

A spokesman for Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said the legislation “is among the congressman’s priorities. We expect to reintroduce it sooner rather than later.”

FOCA, as the bill is known, would make federal law out of the abortion protections established in 1973 by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe vs. Wade ruling.

The legislation has some Roman Catholic bishops threatening to shutter the country’s 624 Catholic hospitals — including 11 in the Archdiocese of St. Louis — rather than comply.

Speaking in Baltimore in November at the bishops’ fall meeting, Bishop Thomas Paprocki, a Chicago auxiliary bishop, took up the issue of what to do with Catholic hospitals if FOCA became law. “It would not be sufficient to withdraw our sponsorship or to sell them to someone who would perform abortions,” he said. “That would be a morally unacceptable cooperation in evil.”

The only other option for the Catholic hospitals would be to ignore the law.

If this doesn’t detail just how extreme the Left is with respect to the abortion issue nothing will. Abortion is contentious enough in our society. The least we can do is have some common sense, RESPECTFUL, laws and restrictions in place. Certainly one of those ought to be not forcing those who morally oppose abortion to be forced to pay for them, let alone pressuring or forcing those in the medical community to perform the procedure.

But, alas, Barack Obama and the Democrats are too beholden to abortion-on-demand zealots to allow for that. There’s a word for this. It’s called “sick.”

Cross-posted at Conservatives with Attitude!

This is absolutely sick and abhorrent. Kudos to Assemblyman Donohue for bringing this to light. (h/t SaveJersey)

OCEAN CITY — Republican State Assembly candidate Michael John Donohue, in a Monday, Feb. 9 release, called on Gov. Jon Corzine to abandon a lawsuit filed by the state to force Catholic hospitals, among others, to perform abortions against their conscience.

Speaking over the weekend to a group of pro-life advocates in here, Donohue said the suit is a waste of taxpayers’ money.

“Current federal regulations allow health care providers opposed to abortion to not offer those services. Existing services are unaffected. Gov.Corzine’s lawsuit seeks to force people to perform abortions against their will and beliefs.”

Donohue suggested that, instead, the state should be spending that money suing the federal government to collect the costs incurred by the state related to illegal aliens.

“Instead of pursuing this radical far-left agenda, Gov. Corzine should instruct the Attorney General to sue the federal government for reimbursement of the costs New Jersey taxpayers shell out for illegal aliens,” Donohue stated.

“It costs the taxpayers of New Jersey over $2 billion a year for education, health care and incarceration of illegal aliens. This is a problem largely caused by the federal government. Let us stop suing the federal government to force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions and let us bring a lawsuit to recoup that $2 billion,” Donohue stated.

Cross-posted at Red County.

Does this look like someplace you would want to live or raise a family?

Well, that may well be a preview of things to come for New Jerseyans. Yesterday the legislature approved a measure legalizing the medical use of marijuana and Governor Corzine has promised to sign the bill. Essentially, this will just make it easier for recreational users to get their hands on it. In San Francisco, this has already happened where there is little oversight and law enforcement has shown little desire to address the problem as evidenced by the city’s police commissioner here:

Moreover, law enforcement has uncovered that cannabis shops often times are simply fronts for organized crime. See here for example.

The shops also tend to attract more crime. As such, a number of California cities/towns such as Oakley have banned them.

If you don’t want New Jersey to morph into San Francisco East, then start calling and e-mailing the Governor now and tell him “NO” to medical marijuana.

I knew this fight was going to be on the horizon, but I didn’t realize Governor Corzine would pounce all over it the very next day! But that is in fact what has happened. The Governor is already exploiting yesterday’s report by the state’s Civil Union Review Commission which urged the passage of gay marriage in New Jersey.

Gov. Jon Corzine said today New Jersey’s civil unions law “hasn’t done enough to narrow the gap” and same-sex marriage should be established in New Jersey “sooner rather than later.”

He urged the Legislature to “seriously review” a report released today by the New Jersey Civil Union Review Commission that said civil unions have failed to grant full rights to same-sex couples and urged the state to quickly enact same-sex marriage. The report likened denying same-sex couples the right to marry to racial segregation laws imposed against African-Americans.

As I mentioned yesterday, the commission’s membership is, at the least, suspect. Most of its members were predisposed to be in favor of gay marriage.

Moreover, make no mistake, the pro-gay marriage forces are already motivated to act in New Jersey. They see a golden opportunity in New Jersey as this would be the first state to actually pass a law codifying gay marriage – whereas other states have seen courts legislate the matter from the bench. Consider…

…Garden State Equality, a group campaigning to legalize same-sex marriage, has planned a rally for tonight in South Orange and another Thursday night in Collingswood.

So, those of us who oppose gay marriage need to respond now. Start contacting your state representatives. Write letters to your local papers. Make your voice heard.

New Jersey appears to be poised to be the next major battlefront in the ‘war’ over gay marriage. This from the AP:

CAMDEN, N.J. (AP) — A commission has concluded that New Jersey legislators should allow gay couples to marry, setting up what could be a spirited debate over whether the state should be the first to allow gay marriage by passing a law, rather than by court mandate.

In its final report, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, the state’s Civil Union Review Commission concluded that the state’s two-year-old civil union law doesn’t do enough to give gay couples the same protections as heterosexual married couples.

“This commission finds that the separate categorization established by the Civil Union Act invites and encourages unequal treatment of same-sex couples and their children,” the report says. The findings of the commission’s 13 members were unanimous.

Not surprisingly, the makeup of the commission has been called into question by pro-life advocates.

Gay marriage opponents criticized the report, saying the commission was made up of members who favored gay marriage and calling its recommendations predetermined.

“If you look at the membership of that committee, they’re all advocates. It’s an advocacy group,” Pat Brannigan, the executive director of the anti-gay-marriage New Jersey Catholic Conference, said Tuesday. “It doesn’t mean that that is the conclusion that society and people in general will come to.”

Steven Goldstein, the commission’s vice chairman and the chairman of Garden State Equality, New Jersey’s leading gay rights group, said that while there are some activists like him on the commission, it was a diverse group.

Six of the 13 members are members of the Corzine administration, which Goldstein points out went to court in 2006 to oppose gay marriage. The other seven are members of the public, including one Goldstein described as a “pro-life Republican,” AnnLynne Benson of Clementon.

Benson, who confirmed that she is Republican and opposes abortion, said Tuesday that her views about gays have evolved over the past 15 years or so as she has met more gay people. She said the point of the commission was not to wrestle with whether the state Supreme Court was right to allow civil unions in 2006, but whether the unions delivered on their intent.

Consider me a skeptic and a cynic, because I find the Mr. Goldstein’s defense of the commission membership hard to believe. And whenever I hear that a Republican, let alone a self-proclaimed pro-lifer, has ‘evolved’ in their views my antennae go way up.

But the bottom line is this: we now have a a recommendation from a state commission (bogus or not) that gays be allowed to marry – because they somehow conclude that their civil rights are being violated. I think I must have missed that part of the state constitution that said we all have a right to life, liberty and the right to marry someone of the same sex.

I will strive to have more on this issue in the coming days because it’s time to provide some real perspective and education on the matter. In the meantime, traditionalists in New Jersey need to start organizing and making their voices heard in opposion to gay marriage legislation.