Okay. Okay. Call us gluttons for punishment.

But we spend a lot of time reading the enemy’s propaganda so you don’t have to.

And no one is more inimical to the Second Amendment than the New York Times.

So it caught our attention when, on April 26, the Times published an op-ed by a lady who moved out of New York City six years ago, took up hunting so she could write a book, and now purports to speak for all hunters. [“I Hunt, but the NRA Isn’t for Me,” by Lily Raff McCaulou]

Gun control laws pose no threat to hunters, she reasons, because “hunting could continue as it has for more than a century, with rifles and shotguns.”

Setting aside the pesky matter of the Constitution, Lily may want to consider whether anti-gun regimes like Canada, England, Australia, and –- oh, yeah, Nazi Germany — have disarmed citizens trying to defend themselves and their families –- and simply left it at that. [Hint: They haven’t.]

Make no mistake:

If Senator Chuck Schumer’s legislation to allow the Obama administration to disarm anyone by simply placing their name on a list is passed into law, granola-eating book-writing hunters-of-convenience will not be exempted.

If the UN Treaty to register gun owners is signed and ratified, Starbucks-guzzling “vermin-hunters” will have their names listed as well.

And when BATF trolls ObamaCare’s federal database for “prohibited persons” with ADHD, PTSD, and Alzheimer’s, obsessive-compulsive New York-expatriates-on-Zoloft won’t be able to keep their shotguns by claiming they just want to use them to shoot Bambi.

But the New York Times op-ed interested us for another reason:

It embodies the talking points which anti-gun Leftist politicians are using to run for election in “red states.”

Take Montana Senator Jon Tester. Tester was the “deciding vote” in favor of ObamaCare. And he refuses to cosponsor the Thune-Vitter reciprocity bill because it protects “constitutional carry” states (like, ahem, Montana).

So Tester can hardly run in pro-gun Montana on his gun record.

So what does he do?

He attacks his pro-gun opponent for the Senate seat, Congressman Denny Rehberg, because Rehberg opposed locking up massive amounts of Montana lands as wilderness areas.

Argues Tester, Tester’s anti-gun record in the Senate is irrelevant to his position on firearms (!).

Rather, liberal anti-gun Democrats like Tester claim that they should be viewed as “pro-gun” because they side with Leftist environmentalists to lock up million of acres of federal land “where Bambi can prosper.”

There are a bunch of problems with this logic, but the most obvious is a lawsuit currently being appealed in Michigan which, if successful, would totally ban hunting in wilderness areas. This is the most recent in a slew of litigation brought by liberal environmental groups (i.e., those groups allied with Tester) to ban hunting in a lot of the country.

And, ultimately, if Obama is successful in appointing more and more anti-gun federal judges, one of the anti-gun suits will prevail.

So, as more and more fake “sportsmen’s” groups try to convince gun owners that anti-gun extremists are really pro-gun, and vice versa, remember this: Caveat emptor. “Let the buyer beware.”

Because what “red state” Democrats are trying to sell you is not something you want to buy.

by Michael E. Hammond, former General Counsel Senate Steering Committee 1978-89 and a Dunbarton, New Hampshire resident.

It would be nice if the future of federalism did not rest on what Anthony Kennedy had for breakfast –- if Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell did not spend all of December, 2009, giving Harry Reid back-to-back votes on issues which allowed Reid to buy off swing senators.

But we are where we are. So…

THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION HAS ONE ARGUMENT STANDING ON BEHALF OF THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF OBAMACARE: 116 BILLION.

That is the amount of cost-shifting Obama now claims occurs as a result of treating uninsured individuals.

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From the diaries

In the eleven presidential elections since the birth of modern conservatism, five GOP nominees ran as moderates –- and were perceived as moderates. All lost, with the single exception of George H. W. Bush in 1988, and he was arguably running for Ronald Reagan’s “third term.”

Conversely, all six GOP candidacies which were framed and perceived as conservative won.

So it is of concern that the TV’s White House-wannabes who crowned Mitt Romney the victor last October now are trying to hand him the scepter.

But for the commentators who derive smirky satisfaction from predicting bad outcomes and making those predictions self-fulfilling prophesies, shame on you.

None of your predictions are going to make a moderate stand-for-nothing nominee who is more pro-mandate than Barack Obama the victor in November.

Romney’s central narrative is that he, unlike Obama, is a “businessman.”

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From the diaries by Erick.

Remember the arguments that Obama couldn’t conceivably win reelection if unemployment was over 7.2%? Or that the GOP had a lock on the Senate because they just had to defend 10 seats? Or that Democrats could never pick up the 25 House seats necessary to gain control?

And, by implication, that all of these good things would happen while Republicans sat on their lazy rear ends?

Still believe that?

And it’s not like winning would have required uncommon genius.

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From the diaries by Erick

We don’t have all the specifics. But it is pretty apparent that Obama’s “deal” on contraceptives is a trick.

As to Catholic institutions, Catholic hospitals and universities would pay insurance companies premiums, which would pay for contraceptives and abortifacients. Evil doesn’t become good because it’s laundered through a third party.

But, says HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, premiums would go down because, inter alia, you would not have to provide health services to those pesky babies who would have been born, had you not aborted them.

But if this was a theological defense, it would have applied, whether or not contraceptives and abortifacients were specified in the insurance policy.

Incidentally, the 98-99% contraception usage figure which is being thrown about unchallenged?  It is from the virulently pro-abortion Alan Guttmacher Institute.

Finally, what about individual Catholic or fundamentalist or other employers who have religious objections to abortions and contraceptives? The “deal” would throw them under the bus.

Unlike some in the Catholic hierarchy, I vigorously fought against ObamaCare and predicted the abortion-related problems they are now facing.  Am I now to go to prison for exercising my conscience? And does the First Amendment apply any less to my religious beliefs.

by Michael E. Hammond, former General Counsel Senate Steering Committee 1978-89 and a Dunbarton, New Hampshire resident.

I was the sole general chairman of the New Hampshire campaign of Pat Buchanan in the winter of 1995-6.

I was alone because my co-chairman, faced with unmoving single-digit poll numbers, had fled for the Dole campaign.

I remember Pat’s consternation about our seemingly stagnant poll numbers.  And yet, when New Hampshire voters began focusing on the election, those polls became meaningless.  Just a few weeks before the primary.

The “pitch fork” brigade carried New Hampshire.  And I am convinced that had there not been shenanigans in South Carolina, a GOP under a Buchanan banner would have defeated Clinton and rewritten history — unlike — the sleazy stand-for-nothing Dole.

So — what do you want to know about New Hampshire?

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IN WHICH I OFFER MY EXCLUSIVE “PITCHFORK RATINGS”® FOR DEBT LIMIT SCREW-UP PARTICIPANTS

Over the past few weeks, I have written, on this site, about topics like “the current law baseline” and “the history of sequestration.”

The Far Left has taken a different approach: One commentator uses the word “crazy” to describe people who disagree with him at least four times a night -– frequently in the presence of token conservatives who should defend us, but don’t.

If you want my opinion, in the debt limit debate, “crazy crazy crazy” beat out “the history of sequestration.” We won the argument, but lost the debate. Two of our brightest stars, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, have suffered at the hands of the same narrative.

We often forget that it was ObamaCare “what brung us to this dance.” And the reason why ObamaCare was so powerful was that it reminded us that the other side was not only wrong on the issues, but morally corrupt.

So, in that spirit (and, I know, I know, conceding that “the graphics are lame”) I offer:

MY EXCLUSIVE “PITCHFORK RATINGS”® FOR DEBT LIMIT SCREW-UP PARTICIPANTS

BARRY OBAMA

RATING: –E -–E -–E -–E –E   5 PITCHFORKS (OUT OF A POSSIBLE FIVE)

BIGGEST MISTAKE: Thinking he could turn water into wine.

Last year, it was that you could “keep the insurance you currently have.” This year, it was that slashing defense, immunizing entitlement benefit levels, increasing taxes, borrowing $2 trillion, and postponing domestic discretionary cuts was somehow “balanced.”

He knows he’s lying. We know he’s lying. He knows that we know he’s lying. And we know that he knows that we know he’s lying.

Yet Obama somehow thinks that, if he talks down to us in a nagging tone, it will magically become the truth.

If that worked, Anthony Weiner would be president.

It is no coincidence that Obama’s ratings plummet every single time he opens his mouth.

My recommendation for securing reelection: Go on a one-year “family heritage tour” of Indonesia, Kenya, or, better yet, Timbuktu. Preferably, someplace without a phone.

NANCY PELOSI

RATING: –E -–E -–E -–E -–E   5 PITCHFORKS (OUT OF A POSSIBLE FIVE)

BIGGEST MISTAKE: Denouncing herself and thinking no one would notice.

Watching multi-millionaire Nancy Pelosi rail on about “millionaires and billionaires” was like seeing a drunken society maven accidentally set herself on fire.

Ultimately, people like two-faced fop Robespierre are usually carted off to the guillotine. Or, at least, they face a “reasonable, common sense” measure like the dunking stool.

So how is it that Pelosi isn’t underwater?

What Republicans should have done is to secure a trademark on the “Millionaires and Billionaires®” brand. Then they could sue the Democrats for every sentence that came out of their mouths. The Dems would, literally, have nothing to say. It would be like a “curse jar,” but for idiots.

JOHN BOEHNER

RATING: –E -–E -–E -–E –E   5 PITCHWORKS (OUT OF A POSSIBLE FIVE)

BIGGEST MISTAKE: Showing up at a nuclear war with a nail file.

Who’s crying now?

The Beltway Bawler has given us all something to cry about.

After his caucus initially denied him the opportunity to “give away the store,” he tried to sneak the inventory out the back.

He cowed his quivering subordinates into supporting Boehner 3.0 by cursing at them. And now that two out of every three Americans believe the “deal” will make the economy worse, his endangered Republicans are stuck to it.

Oh, and the exclusive rationale for making a bad deal — that, otherwise, the stock market might plunge 500 points and the U.S. might be downgraded to an AA rating? Guess what happened there?

HARRY REID

RATING: –E -–E -–E -–E -–E   5 PITCHFORKS (OUT OF A POSSIBLE FIVE)

BIGGEST MISTAKE: Dropping out of Toastmasters.

For the next month, mercifully exiled to Searchlight, Nevada, where his beloved roses and pomegranates will now, presumably, shrivel up and die under his care, just like the economy.

Biblically, pomegranates represented fecundity. Let’s hope that’s not the case here.

MITCH McCONNELL

RATING: –E -–E -–E -–E –E   5 PITCHFORKS (OUT OF A POSSIBLE FIVE)

BIGGEST MISTAKE: Negotiating backwards.

Just when Obama had expressed a willingness to make enormous fake cuts in exchange for the debt limit increase, McConnell hatched a plan to let Obama raise the debt limit himself, in exchange for small fake cuts.

Did he not understand that the point of “negotiation” is to bring the other side closer to YOUR position?

Up until now, McConnell’s bad ideas could be filibustered, and Boehner could be pressured not to bring them up. But, with the tax-increase committee, McConnell’s bad ideas now have super-powers.

He’s like the “radioactive spider” of politics –- except, instead of biting Peter Parker, he bit Charles Manson.

PAUL RYAN

RATING: –E -–E -–E -–E   4 PITCHFORKS (OUT OF A POSSIBLE FIVE)

BIGGEST MISTAKE: Justifying the tax-raising commission with a crazy baseline theory.

Whenever I came up with a brilliant, but crazily convoluted legislative scheme, the late Senator James McClure would flash his Cheshire cat grin and tell me it was “too cute by half.”

He was always right.

Ryan got GOP freshmen to vote for the tax-increase committee with a convoluted theory about the “current law baseline,” but didn’t know enough parliamentary procedure to realize that he had given the committee the power to make whatever assumptions it wanted.

Whether it’s destroying Medicare reform by announcing your plan prematurely –- or creating a committee with evil super-powers -– Ryan has demonstrated something fundamental about himself:

He is smart, but not wise.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

RATING: –E -–E -–E -–E   4 PITCHFORKS (OUT OF A POSSIBLE FIVE)

BIGGEST MISTAKE: Thinking they could burn off their own grass roots. Dismissively calling their own readers “Hobbits.”

Note to WSJ: You understand the Hobbits were the good guys, right? Soooo, what would that make you?

Fresh from waging war against the forces of good policy in order to defend Portfolio Castle, Steve Moore of the WSJ went on TV to explain that, although the Journal blasted conservatives for not supporting Boehner 3.0 (which was the prerequisite for Boehner 7.0, which was signed into law) (WSJ, 7/27/11, p. A14), it was now clear that the market imploded because the Boehner 7.0 cuts weren’t massively larger.

In other words, with Portfolio Castle in smoldering ruins, the WSJ has belatedly concluded that they should have used the molten tar, catapults, and guns.

BILL O’REILLY

RATING: –E -–E -–E -–E   4 PITCHFORKS (OUT OF A POSSIBLE FIVE)

BIGGEST MISTAKE: Broadcasting.

“Always wrong, but never in doubt.”

Spent his time pushing to raise the debt limit because otherwise the stock market would tank. How’d that work out for you?

Proposed a national sales tax on top of that. Then, on Thursday, issued a goofy apologia that he had (erroneously) thought the stock market would go UP.

And, yet, he’s still on the air, offering even more bad advice. Which brings me to my final point: For “natural selection” to work, there are some errors which need to result in extinction.

by Michael E. Hammond, former General Counsel Senate Steering Committee 1978-89.

IF PAUL RYAN, RON REAGAN, OR MITCH McCONNELL HAS CONFUSED YOU, READ THESE SEVEN (LONG) SENTENCES

Normally, I think it’s a waste of my time to debate the merits of a bill the day after it’s passed; however, there is so much really confusing information being circulated on the super-committee, that I find it necessary to clear the air.

First of all, Paul Ryan thinks he is being sooo clever by arguing that the use of the current law baseline would require a tax increase to be huge in order to be large enough to trump the baseline assumptions and count toward the $1.5 trillion mandated savings.

Ryan’s argument has a lot of problems, but, since I have only seven sentences, let me point this out: There are NO limits to what the super-committee can do under section 401(b)(3)(A)(i), particularly since all points of order are statutorily waived, and the committee may, for instance, change all of its economic assumptions, thereby rendering Ryan’s argument moot.

Ron Reagan’s argument that a super-committee bill which raises revenues can be filibustered or amended is based on a misreading of section 402(e)(2), which allows the House to “blue-slip” (kill) a Senate-initiated revenue bill and section 404 (which is routine boilerplate). A giant tax increase cannot be filibustered or amended in the Senate, and the Speaker cannot keep it from coming up in the House.

Finally, Mitch McConnell argues that his stellar appointments will insure that the super-committee cannot vote out tax increases. But, given that Harry Reid and Barack Obama are equally adamant about including tax increases –- and given that the trigger ($800 billion in defense cuts) is much too big to pull -– and, finally, given that McConnell has lost his lunch money to Obama again and again and again -– who do you think is going to win that argument?

by Michael E. Hammond, former General Counsel Senate Steering Committee 1978-89.

The final straw for me was a syndicated columnist who, today, compared conservatives’ opposition to John Boehner’s debt limit proposal to the murder (“fragging”) of American officers by their own troops in Vietnam.

As it turns out, most of my ROTC class missed Vietnam by a year. But we spent four years enduring the physical assaults and (actual) spit of the “Barack Obamas” of our generation, plus the prospect of being assigned to some of the most dangerous jobs in the world and the reports of our fellow lieutenants who died when their own troops rolled grenades under the bunks.

We were surely far from perfect. But I didn’t deserve to have students try to rip the uniform of the United States off my body. Our contemporaries, whatever their flaws, didn’t deserve to be murdered. And I don’t deserve, now, to have our fears treated with gleeful scorn by a woman whose greatest sacrifice for this country, I’m guessing, was breaking her heel on the way to the protest rally.

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(1)  House Republicans are walking into an enormous trap. The Boehner plan is sufficiently similar to the Reid plan, in virtually all important respects, that its passage will lead to the following compromise:  

•  The adoption of Boehner’s ten years of sham cuts,which will be ephemeral beyond fiscal year 2012. Even John McCain said tonight that Gramm-Rudman (whose “sequestration” provisions are the enforcement mechanism for Boehner) became worthless because Congress just started declaring emergencies.
• A commission which will report out large tax increases which cannot be filibustered. The “deciders” on the commission will be six Pelosi/Reid people and one squish Republican, who will be corralled into submission by:
• A “trigger” which will make the pressure currently being applied to Congress seem small by comparison.

(2) Unless you can guarantee that it will go to the states, a guarantee of a losing vote on the balanced budget amendment is worthless.

(3) Dick Morris is correct that if Tuesday comes and goes, with only a shut-down of unessential government agencies, the American people will see Obama’s fear-mongering for what it is.

(4) Furthermore, as 2008 taught us, the GOP can sell all of its principles and spend the better part of a trillion dollars and the stock market will still continue to fall –- particularly since Standard & Poor’s is about to downgrade the U.S. for being too timid in debt reduction.

(5) Finally, Obama is currently reeling from his poor stewardship. For Republicans to capitulate and give him a “compromise” will reset him on a glide path to reelection. The liberal media is currently “spinning” that Republicans have won, but, after they lose, their surrender will be reported for what it was.

by Michael E. Hammond, former General Counsel Senate Steering Committee 1978-89.