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© 2013 The Sandwich Democratic Town Committee
Have you no shame, Mr. Reid? Have you no shame Mr. McConnell? Have we no shame, we the electorate, we the citizens of a country that grandly and sometimes grandiosely proclaims loudly and expansively our pride in “American exceptionalism”? Does “exceptionalism” mean that when our Founding Fathers wrote about our inalienable right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” they meant “except” when one of us loves guns so much we just have to have a military grade weapon loaded with a 100-round magazine?
“Why is the ban being dropped? According to Democratic leaders, it has no chance of passing — and if it were included, Democrats wouldn’t even be able to bring it up on the Senate floor for debate. Just bringing a bill up for consideration requires all senators to agree, and if just one objects, then it takes 60 votes to keep the process moving forward.” – NBC News
How does any American politician gather up the where-with-all to stand before broadcast media, to stand before the American electorate and with a straight face proclaim that he/she must strip a ban on private ownership of military-grade armaments out of a bill because its presence would cause a filibuster?
Photo by Yuri Gripas / Reuters.
Really!? There are not 60 out of 100 United States Senators, senators in an “exceptional” nation, who are willing to trade the mere act of purchasing a military weapon because they like them, because they have a supposed “right” to possess one, for the possibility that doing so would prevent 20 more 6-7 year olds from being murdered? Have you no shame?
Well, enjoy your “right.” Enjoy your political “realities” and parliamentary “procedures” and Senate “rules”. Enjoy them now, because the screams of the next child to be riddled by a hail of bullets from a military grade weapon someone purchased because they like them, will echo up and down the halls of heaven for all eternity.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren made her debut as a member of the Senate Banking Committee with a series of deceptively simple and direct questions to regulators before the committee that seemed to stun them. They apparently did not know how to handle well direct questions about taking those actors who were at the center of the financial crisis to trial. The real answer is evident in their gyrations; no one could cite a single instance in which their agency took a financier all the way to trial. Click the video icon to see a small snippet of the exchange. You can also click on this link to see the full 7 minute video on YouTube.
Toward the end of the presidential campaign Lou Cerrone (SDTC Vice Chair) and I made a journey up to New Hampshire to help with door-to-door canvassing for the President. As part of our orientation we were told that the time for regular registration to vote had passed. However, in New Hampshire someone may registration to vote at the polls on the day of the election, and thus cast a ballot.
Armed with information about how to do same-day registration we headed off to go door-knocking for the Obama campaign. On our route we encountered several enthusiastic supporters of the President who had not yet registered. So, we dutifully informed them of the procedure and required documentation for registering at the polls on Election Day. It wasn’t an easy process to complete but the people we spoke with claimed to have all the necessary documentation and understood what we told them they had to do. On we went to the next door, absolutely convinced that there was no way those people would actually register and vote on Election Day.
Boy, were we wrong! Although we have no way of knowing whether the people we met actually registered and voted at the polls, a story in today’s Globe revealed startling information. It turns out that approximately 14% of the votes cast in NH on Election Day were cast by people who registered to vote at the polls – 14%! There were 99,319 same-day voter registrations: “…the state saw a nearly 30 percent increase in the number of people who registered at the polls on Election Day.”
Some place in there are a number of lessons about canvassing, voting, and voter-friendly provisions to enable, not block, the ability of citizens to cast their ballots. Given the outcome of the election – both in NH and across the nation – I have to say I am really happy about being wrong.
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