Obama About to Act on Gun Control

The Huffington Post

The steps could include ordering stricter action against people who lie on gun sale background checks, seeking to ensure more complete records in the federal background check database, striking limits on federal research into gun use, ordering tougher penalties against gun trafficking, and giving schools flexibility to use grant money to improve safety.

At the same time Obama is vowing not to back off his support for sweeping gun legislation that would require congressional backing - including banning assault weapons, limiting the capacity of ammunition magazines and instituting universal background checks - despite opposition from the influential gun lobby.

"Will all of them get through this Congress? I don't know," Obama said at a news conference Monday.

"My starting point is not to worry about the politics," he said. "My starting point is to focus on what makes sense, what works."

Now, this is the same Obama who promised to close Guantanamo and end the lobbying system in Washington D.C., so excuse me if I'm not unreservedly optimistic. Yet, it sure does seem like the momentum is moving in the right direction.

What do you think?  Please leave a comment.

Olbermann Gets on Obama

Last December, while Bush was still a lame duck, Physio Prof wrote a very humorous piece entitled Open Letter to Keith Olbermann.

Comrade PhysioProf demands that you hold Obama’s feet to the fire with the same critical rigor that you have Bush’s. If you do not, you will establish yourself as nothing but a political hackfuck just as bad as Bill Kristol.

Today I remembered it when I saw this video. (h/t Delaware Liberal)

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What's your opinion? Do you think Keith Olbermann is living up to Physio Prof's hopes and expectations? Is Obama slacking off on some of his campaign promises? I've been saying all along it's too soon to judge, but this is making me wonder. What about you?

Please leave a comment.

Ali al-Marri Held Indefinitely in America

The New York Times published an opinion the other day about the case in which, for more than five years, the Bush administration has been holding Ali al-Marri, a legal resident of the United States, in near isolation under President Bush’s reprehensible enemy combatant doctrine.

Mr. Marri was arrested in Peoria, Ill., in December 2001 on criminal charges. In 2003, while his criminal case was pending, Mr. Bush designated him an enemy combatant, and he was moved to a Navy brig near Charleston, S.C. For 16 months, Mr. Marri was held incommunicado. During his detention, he reportedly has been subjected to treatment that borders on, or actually is, torture.

That doesn't sound like the America I grew up in. Do you think some of this Executive power will be diminished with the new administration? I certainly hope so.

The Witness L.A. site put it a bit plainer.

Intolerable is exactly the right word. It has been intolerable to have our democracy highjacked by an administration so drunk on its own unchecked executive power that it has crossed a line, the crossing of which, as British historian Andy Worthington put it, “.. cannot be accepted in a nation, like America, committed to basic human rights and the principles of its Constitution.”

REASON NUMBER 4768 THAT WE ARE HAPPY OBAMA WON: Because we will soon have a president who will not repeatedly fill us with shame and dread by imprisoning people without due process.

What do you think? Were the many questionable detentions that took place in the wake of 9/11 justified? Did some hidden good come from them? Were we perhaps spared other attacks as a result of these policies?

Does so much Executive power inevitably get misused? What if Mr. Marri had been a gun enthusiast? If he and his family and friends had been armed to the teeth, legally, would that have made a difference? I read today about how an armed citizenry is what's preventing tyranny. How would that work exactly?