Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Different band, same old song

It's nice to be done with eight years of living under the repressive weight of George Bush and Dick Cheney's disdain for the Constitution, but don't breathe a sigh of relief just yet. Democrats are apparently no more reluctant than Republicans to jettison the Constitution when it suits them. Here's Rahm Emanuel speaking at a Brady Center event:

"If you are on the no-fly list because you are known as a possible terrorist then you cannot buy a handgun in America.... If you're on that no-fly list your access to the right to bear arms is cancelled because you're not part of the American family. You don't deserve that right. There is no right for you if you're on that terrorist list."

At least under the Republicans we could console ourselves by looking forward to the day when we could vote them out of office. But now we have voted them out of office, only to find that it might be a different band, but it's the same tired old song. Your rights end as soon as someone in the government decides you're not entitled to them any more. No due process, no right to confront your accusers (or even know who they are), no appeal.

Now what are we supposed to do?

2 comments:

Ross said...

Actually, you can appeal having your name on the No Fly List through Traveler Redress Inquiry Program (TRIP). You have to go through a background check and then your full name and birthday are excluded from the list.

At that point, you're good to go with buying a gun again. Though if you're you or me, you still have to go through California's nutsy rules (for handguns: on the roster, after taking the test and getting yourself registered, wait your 10 24-hour periods, another background check, mag limits, yadda yadda).

Ross said...

The real problem with what you quoted is that Holder is embarrassingly imprecise about the "No Fly List".

The No Fly List is just a list of the names and known aliases of suspected terrorists. Having the same name as one of those names or aliases does not mean that you are a terrorist, yet Holder doesn't make that distinction.

Not sure why, but Obama has delegated the AG job to someone who is not just less skilled than himself (which is usually a mistake), but is less skilled than the average well-informed citizen. Holder is no Gonzales (who needs to be criminally charged), but just seems to be incompetent. How he got Obama's trust is beyond me.