Gov. Christie Should Not Get in the GOP Race

By Alan Caruba

Does anybody recall the frenzy surrounding the question of whether Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor and Fox News host of his own show, would toss his hat in the ring and seek the GOP nomination?

That same frenzy is occurring now regarding New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and, as a lifelong citizen of the Garden State, I would bet a bushel basket of its excellent tomatoes that he will not.

Why? Because he says he will not and I believe him.

There are, however, a lot of other very good reasons why he won’t plunge into the political maelstrom that is our system of selecting a presidential candidate.

If Gov. Christie were to announce as a candidate for the GOP nomination his brief record while Governor would come under intense examination and it would reveal that he is not the conservative savior that many perceive.

Putting aside his great rhetorical gifts, his no-nonsense approach to answering questions in town hall meetings and interviews, his saving sense of humor, and other attributes that have generated the appeals from some party insiders and members of the public, Christie is conservative-light.

Candidate Herman Cain, speaking on Fox News Sunday, has done his homework. According to an October 3 article in the Star-Ledger, New Jersey’s largest circulation daily newspaper, Cain noted that “Christie is far too liberal on gun control, climate change, same-sex unions, and immigration to satisfy Republican voters.”

Nor has his record as Governor gone unnoticed on the left. “Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland blasted Christie’s stewardship of New Jersey’s economy. He cited the state’s unemployment rate, among the highest in the country at 9.4 percent, and a series of downgrades to New Jersey’s bond ratings this year from the top credit rating agencies.”

None of these economic factors, unfairly attributed to Gov. Christie or not, bodes well for a run for the presidential candidate nomination. When one adds in the lateness of such an effort and the difficulties of raising huge sums of money for the campaign it suggests that such a move would not turn out well for him.

There is no question that Gov. Christie, a former U.S. District Attorney for New Jersey, has earned the gratitude of the state’s citizens for taking on the civil service unions that have bled it dry with cushy contracts featuring handsome pension and healthcare plans. Beyond that, however, many Garden State conservatives have winced to see his decisions in other areas of concern.

Many applauded his decision to withdraw the state from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative that would have required that a percentage of energy serving New Jerseyeans come from “renewable” sources, wind and solar power. However, in August Gov. Christie signed an act that would facilitate offshore wind power for use in the state. Had he signed an act to permit offshore drilling for oil and natural gas, the state and the nation would have been far better served. Wind power would only increase the cost of electricity.

Moreover, Gov. Christie is on record saying that climate change is “impacting our state.” This is a position that is 180 degrees from a town hall meeting the previous year when he declared himself skeptical that climate change is the result of human activity. He was right then, but has been getting very bad advice from his science advisors since then.

As a former U.S. District Attorney, it should come as no surprise that he supports a ban on assault weapons. Despite opposing a law that limits the purchase of hand guns to one per month, his newly appointed state Attorney General took an aggressive legal position to defend the former governor’s law. Gov. Christie favors gun control, a position that will not find favor among lawful gun owners and sportsmen.

Gov. Christie is squishy on the issue of illegal immigration, hewing to the liberal line that those who enter the nation illegally are simply “undocumented.” He regards state-by-state laws regarding illegal immigrants to be “a federal problem” that needs a “federal fix…I am not really comfortable with state enforcement having a big role.” Suffice to say that New Jersey, like other states, has a big illegal immigrant population.

If the Governor were to hit the campaign trail with a record like this, the other candidates would have a field day and many conservative voters would have second thoughts.

In sum, he needs to review and reinforce his conservative credentials and the 2012 race is far too soon to do that. Selfishly, I want him to remain the Governor and to serve a second term. Realistically, I think he would be torn to shreds if he got in now.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Editor's Note: On Oct 4, Gov. Christie announced he will not get in the race.

There is No First Amendment Without a Second Amendment

By Alan Caruba

When we celebrate the Fourth of July, let’s keep in mind that the first Americans won their independence from England with the force of arms. It was, in fact, a British effort in 1775 to confiscate military arms they believed were stored in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts that sparked the war.

The Founding Fathers were so aware of the need for an armed citizenry that, after ensuring freedom of religion, speech, press and the right to peacefully assemble in the First Amendment, the Second guaranteed their right to bear arms.

Wherever authoritarian regimes were established in the last century, they took away this right and then proceeded to kill those deemed enemies of the state.

At this point in American history, the Obama administration constitutes a threat to the Constitution in general and the Second Amendment in particular.

More than 80,000,000 Americans are gun owners.

Two of the organizations that have been fighting to protect these rights are the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA), both led by Alan M. Gottlieb. Three quarters of the SAF budget is devoted to defending rights pertaining to the ownership of guns and to carry them for self-defense.

In March, the Huffington Post had an article titled “Obama Looking for Ways Around Congress on Gun Policy” by Sam Stein. “Faced with a Congress hostile to even slight restrictions of Second Amendment rights, the Obama administration is exploring potential changes to gun laws that can be secured strictly through executive action, administration officials, say.”

Since then we have learned of a U.S. Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms program, Fast and Furious, that actually facilitated the sale and transfer of guns to Mexico. How demented is that?

In May in my home state of New Jersey the SAF won a decision against officials for the deprivation of civil rights under the color of law when they had ruled that an applicant for a concealed carry permit had not demonstrated a “justifiable need” for it. In point of fact, the applicant, Philip Muller, had been kidnapped by members of a motorcycle gang who threatened to kill him. They had, however, grabbed the wrong man.

Despite support by local and state police, action on his application was delayed for six months. Morris County Superior Court Judge David Ironson issued a directive that a permit should be granted. The case is still on-going with other plaintiffs that include a part-time sheriff’s deputy, an applicant who carries large amounts of cash in his private business, and a civilian employee of the FBI with legitimate concerns of an attack from a radical Islamic group.

Currently nearly thirty such cases have either been brought or joined by SAF to stop abuses of this most fundamental right of American citizens ranging from bans on interstate handgun sales, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s imposition of a $340 fee for a permit to keep a handgun in one’s home, and a Chicago ban on gun ranges open to the public. These cases cost between $60,000 and $80,000 each!

The greatest single threat to gun ownership right now is a United Nations “Small Arms Treaty” falsely identified as an “international arms control treaty” allegedly to fight terrorism.”

“In reality,” says Gottlieb, it is “a massive, global gun control scheme. It’s a sham. It’s a fraud.” If the U.S., under the Obama administration and with the consent of the Senate, were to sign on to this treaty, it would nullify the Second Amendment.

Suffice to say that the Obama administration wants to have the power to increase federal fees on guns and ammunition, to ban guns that are imported, to extend the waiting periods for permits, to ban the use of guns on all government property, and even to make it illegal if you own a gun and smoke!

Americans do not have to “justify” gun ownership. It is guaranteed by the Second Amendment. The reality is that enemies of this fundamental rights continue to wage an assault on it.

For information about SAF visit http://www.saf.org/ and CCRKBA at http://www.ccrkba.org/.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

The Lone Gunman

By Alan Caruba

In 1247, the Bethlem Royal Hospital was established at Bishopsgate, just outside the London wall. It was better known as Bedlam and was the first asylum for the mentally ill in England. By 1403 it had some prominent guests. Bedlam had become the generic name for psychiatric hospitals and, more colloquially for a disturbance of the peace.

There was such a disturbance on Saturday when Jared Loughner shot U.S Representative Gabrielle Giffords in the brain at point blank range. He then shot others including a Federal judge and a nine-year-old child.

There is something like 25,000 laws on the books concerning the purchase and ownership of guns and not one single one of them could have prevented what happened.

This is not a defense of guns. The U.S. Revolution began at Concord and Lexington when a group of farmers picked up their guns and shot at British soldiers. No one is going to un-invent guns and everywhere they were banned, tyrannies of every description occurred.

This is about the Jared Loughner’s who, in my lifetime, assassinated men like John F. Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. Some nine U.S. presidents have either been killed or attacked by assassins. In 1981, John Hinkley Jr., in an effort to impress the actress, Jodie Foster, nearly succeeded in assassinating Ronald Reagan. Earlier Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Gerald Ford were shot at.

Anyone who has been a reporter as I have been will tell you that every American city has a section that local residents fear to travel to or through. Murder occurs in every American city, large and small, every day. Usually it is a drug deal or robbery gone bad or a gambling dispute.

For reporters, the killing of someone prominent is a news bonanza. It overrides the usual buzz in a newsroom devoted to the more commonplace stories. There’s a reason the news channels are into full coverage mode and why, by the end of the week, when they have exhausted the few known facts of the Tucson shooting, they will return to a normal coverage of the news.

Here’s what you need to keep in mind. It’s not about gun laws. It’s not about Tucson. It’s not about Arizona. It’s not about political analysis and dialogue, so you can ignore the hypocritical ravings of MSNBC’s Keith Olberman and others eager to blame Rush Limbaugh or the Fox News Channel.

Loughner is Hinkley redux. Described by all who know him as “a loner” and rejected for military service, invited to leave the campus of a local college, more than a few people understood that Jared had a screw loose.

The closest you can get to understanding what happened is to rent Martin Scorsese’s brilliant film, “Taxi Driver.” There you will see Robert DeNiro’s portrayal of Travis Bickle, the archetype of every lone gunman. And yes, also in the film, you will find Jodie Foster.

The shooting was about mental illness. It was about paranoia. It was about schizophrenia. It was about all the other killings where innocent people were gunned down by someone hearing voices in his head.

Say a prayer for Rep. Giffords, but remember, they walk among us.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

The UN's New Scams

By Alan Caruba

In “Act of Creation”, a 2003 book by Stephen C. Schlesinger tells the story of how the United Nations was established.. At one point he writes that “The first person of any importance noted was Alger Hiss, the acting secretary general of the United Nations, originally appointed to that post on the recommendation of President Roosevelt and Secretary Stetinius.”

Hiss would later be revealed to be a communist agent of the Soviet Union, one of many in the Roosevelt administration. In 1950 Hiss went to jail for perjury, denying his guilt to the end.

All this and more became known with the publication of the Venona documents, a record of secret communications with Soviet spymasters that had been intercepted by U.S. counterintelligence during World War Two.

I cite this so you will understand that Roosevelt’s pet project, the founding of a new international organization, was largely shaped by communists within his administration. A previous effort, the League of Nations, advocated by President Woodrow Wilson after World War One, failed to deter World War Two.

The UN, through its International Atomic Energy Agency, has provided cover and time for Iran to create nuclear weapons, thus setting in motion a war that defies imagination.

A Global Government

Since its beginning, the United Nations has been all about establishing a global government. The inroads against individual national sovereignty have never ceased, pieced together in a fabric of international treaties that, in the case of the U.S., supercede our Constitution when signed.

Since its creation, it has vastly increased its authority through a whole series of agencies devoted to the environment, health, refugees, the seas, urbanization, and a host of other issues. A treaty about the world’s seas limits military action, mining rights, and other aspects of international law that Americans take for granted. It is waiting on approval in the U.S. Senate.

The U.N.’s Small Arms Treaty would nullify the Constitution’s Second Amendment right of citizens to bear arms while prohibiting firearm and ammunition manufacturers from selling to the public, any transfer of firearm ownership, and require U.S. citizens to deliver any firearm they own to the local government for collection and destruction.

In the last century governments worldwide have been responsible for the murder of an estimated 262 million of their citizens even when some had small arms. Most, however, were defenseless.

Most Americans are by now familiar with the UN’s Environmental Program that has been at the heart of the “global warming” hoax. It was based entirely on falsified computer models whose primary source was the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Great Britain and even U.S. government agencies such as NOAA.

In November 2009, thousands of leaked emails between the CRU and fellow conspirators in the U.S. revealed that they were doing everything in their power to prevent the release of their data bases while also denying the publication of data that debunked their machinations in formerly respected science journals.

Biodiversity, the New Scare

Seeing the collapse of “global warming” as an instrument to destroy industrialization by claiming the Earth was threatened by carbon dioxide emissions (a gas that is essential to the growth of all vegetation on the planet), the environmental conspirators in the UN have come up with a new global scare campaign; the claim that species and forests, et cetera, are disappearing so fast that the case for saving them is “more powerful than climate change.”

Elements of the UN report were made known on its annual International Day for Biodiversity in May. In a Washington Times commentary, E. Calvin Beisner identified this as a “familiar green tactic known as ‘science by press release.’” The thrust of this new global scam is an attack on the global economic system in order to put it under the control of the United Nations.

Get ready to hear from every direction that the rate of species extinction is now anywhere from one thousand to ten thousand times faster than ever before and, like “climate change” it is going to be blamed on human beings and their evil economic system. It will, of course, be based on computer models!

The United States has already fallen prey to the bogus “endangered species” racket, having passed a law in 1973 to protect them. Its true purpose is to stop any development, any agricultural activity, and any access to energy resources.

The Endangered Species Act is the reason the federal government now routinely shuts off irrigation water to farmers, ruining their farms and lives while driving up the cost of the crops they would otherwise be providing.

It is a splendid way for environmentalists to undermine the nation’s economy and security.

The United Nations has proven to be, not merely a huge failure regarding its mission to end war, but an international institution that has long since metastasized into a relentless quest for global government and, with it, the subjugation of humanity.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

The Most Duplicitous President

By Alan Caruba

I have lived through thirteen presidencies starting with Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the late 1930s. I have followed the events of their administrations, policies, and lives, and I have read widely in the history of the nation.

I do not think I have ever seen a more duplicitous President than Barack Hussein Obama. And that is saying a lot!

I hold that all presidents must lie and be good liars at that. Having the welfare of the nation in their care and an ever shifting host of threats to America’s interests and defense, all presidents—-and for that matter—-all leaders of nations, elected or otherwise—-lie to ensure the outcome they desire.

When I say “lie” in this context, I mean the shading of the truth, the telling of less than the whole truth, or the withholding of information in one fashion or another that is intended to influence decisions to achieve a particular political or strategic objective. The best presidents dedicated themselves to great enterprises such as the waging of wars of defense or resolving conflicts of one sort or another.

The worst presidents lied to the nation to protect their personal interests and, of course, the classic example is Watergate in which President Nixon engaged in a cover-up of a totally stupid and needless break-in of the Democratic Party headquarters in Washington, D.C. President Clinton, caught out in a foolish affair with a White House intern, lied to everyone until he no longer could.

President Obama, however, lies all the time and this is now so evident to the members of Congress that there are those in his own party who no longer trust him, even if they will not come out and say so publicly. Most certainly, the Republicans have no reason to trust him, but they have behaved with remarkable civility.

Well, there was one exception when Sen. Joe Wilson of South Carolina was unable to contain himself during one of Obama’s speeches to a joint session of Congress and cried out, “You lie!” He was right, but he apologized anyway.

It would be naïve to believe that all politicians don’t lie to their constituency, but some are more blatant about it than others. For the most part, the press protects them out of some unspoken belief that the people elected them and are in part responsible for the probity or lack of it.

There are ample examples when the lies and behavior become so egregious even this rule of thumb cannot apply and here too there are examples of members of Congress who have been sent to jail, censored, and generally abandoned by the electorate.

Two examples of Obama’s lies presented themselves this past week. One was the announcement that the United States would support launching talks on a United Nations treaty to regulate arms sales. Obama has repeatedly told America’s 90 million-plus gun owners that they had nothing to fear, but this reverses the Bush administration’s position which respected the Second Amendment and all its implications.

All the pretty talk about the Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty is just camouflage for gun control. It is comparable to Obama’s quick flight to Copenhagen to address the UN Conference on Climate Change, returning to the U.S. to tell Congress that there was “overwhelming evidence” to support global warming. He was laughed at when he said that. (To learn more, visit www.ccrkba.org)

The other example of Obama’s deceitful ways is the fact that the Interior Department, despite Obama’s call for offshore exploration and extraction of oil and natural gas in his State of the Union speech, has announced that no offshore energy exploration will take place in the Atlantic until at least 2014.

Obama is the most anti-energy president to hold office since Jimmy Carter who drove the oil industry out of America, leaving the nation vulnerable to oil rich regions such as the Middle East. (To learn more, visit www.ierdc.org)

Lying may not be an impeachable offense though surely it played a role in Nixon’s case and, to some extent, the proceedings against Clinton. A President can only be removed from office on conviction of treason, bribery, or other “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

As of this writing, it seems likely that President Obama will be politically neutered after the November 2nd midterm elections. When even solidly blue states like Massachusetts reject Democrat candidates, the writing is on the wall.

For now, I think we can expect to see Congress find ways to delay or dismiss Obama’s grand schemes to “transform” America. It doesn’t need transforming. It has been doing quite well, with some bumps along the way, without any more socialism, and without any more lies from the 44th President.

It Smells Like Fascism

By Alan Caruba

With growing rapidity, Americans are waking up to bits and pieces of news that all smell of fascism, defined as “a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.”

Let’s start at the top. President Obama is no ordinary political leader as this nation has long been accustomed to. He is the leader and focus of a cult. His supporters come to him asking that he provide them with a home or believing that he will ensure they will always be able to fill their car’s gas tank for next to nothing. He has deliberately encouraged this view of him, staging huge rallies during his campaign. Women swoon. Men weep.

Now, with virtually no coverage by the mainstream media, we learn that H.R. 45 is legislation, a “Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act of 2009”, that would strip Americans of the right stipulated in the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to possess and bear firearms. An estimated 90 million Americans own firearms and the vast majority do for the purpose of self defense. They are going to need their firearms if the Obama administration continues on its path to total control, not merely of the federal government, but over all fifty States.

I will not bore you with the details of this firearm act. Suffice it to say it exists to make the right and the process of ownership extremely difficult and, at the same time, authorizes government searches without warrant and the creation of a federal bureaucracy to monitor who owns guns. Not only is H.R. 45 unconstitutional on its face, there are literally thousands of firearm laws at the state level that ensures that law enforcement officials know who legally owns firearms.

The February 19 issue of The New York Times reported that “E.P.A. Expected to Regulate Carbon Dioxide.” Despite all the dancing around that the EPA and the White House are engaged in, the “fix” is in to expand the Clean Air Act to allow the federal government to extend control over every business, industry, and activity in American that generates carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.

This is pure fascism and it is not based in science as we all know by now that there is no global warming and CO2 plays virtually no role whatever, if any, in climate change.

The response is a growing movement among the states, all sovereign republics, to combat the way the federal government under the control of President Obama has moved to swiftly assert even greater control over what the individual states can and cannot do if they accept federal “stimulus” funding or any funding.

In a February 20 article in The Washington Times, David M. Dickson reported that, “worried the federal government is increasing its dominance over their affairs, several states are pursuing legislative action to assert their sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution in hopes of warding off demands from Washington on how to spend money or enact policy.” At least a dozen states are actively engaged in this effort and I predict it will spread to many others.

The Tenth Amendment states that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved for the States respectively, or to the people.”

This nation was not founded on, nor ever intended to be government by an all-powerful central authority. If you want an example of what that looks like, read about the former Soviet Union or the failed and defeated fascist nations of Germany and Italy in the last century.

Lastly, there was the recent proposal to reintroduce the so-called “Fairness Act” that would throttle talk radio and its ability to air a dissenting point of view from the Obama administration. You can read Rush Limbaugh’s rejoinder as published in The Wall Street Journal here.

That whiff of fascism in the air must not be ignored and must be opposed.

To learn more about H.R. 45, visit http://www.ccrkba.org/, the website of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.