There has been a push in the political arena for a “stronger” 2nd amendment right. It started back in June of this year when the Supreme Court ruled that it was unlawful for the District of Columbia to have a ban on having a hand gun in the home. This is came as a surprise to many in the DC government who called a special session of government and created new laws “banning” guns again. In a new turn of events the House of Representatives have passed legislation to force the District of Columbia to repeal many of the banning laws set up by the DC government. For example this repeal will target the DC laws banning semi-automatic pistols, the requirement of having the firearm disassembled (or secured with a trigger lock in the home), the extensive process for getting a gun registered and licensed (multiple visits to the police station, ballistic testing, fingerprinting, not including the written test on the district’s gun laws). This bill has bi-partisan support and passed 266-152. Some opponents to this bill lost some of their ammunition two days later when the FBI report came out stating that the top 3 cities with the highest murder rate where the cities with some of the strongest gun restrictions (Detroit, Baltimore, and DC). The top 3 cities for robbery are Detroit, Philadelphia, and once again DC. This information is in contrast to a drop in violent crimes nation wide (it has never been lower since 1974). As I was investigating this issue I read on the NRA, (yes, I know they are bias, but they do have some good points), that during the presidential debates gun laws did not come up. I know that they were mentioned in the republican nomination debates (I think that republicans like their guns more then most democrats do). On a personal note; I think that Texas has a good policy. You are required to have a permit and pass a shooting test to prove that you know how to use a handgun safely. I would prefer that it would not cost so much (the permits and classes cost as much as a handgun sometimes). I believe that if you are using a handgun for personal defense you should have the right to keep it loaded and prepared in case the worst happens. I agree with the House of Representatives decision to change the over stringent laws on DC gun control. I see this as good example of the national government stepping in to defend the rights of a city population. Many have said that it just makes it easy for criminals to get guns, in truth when you make laws to disarm the public, you only disarm the good citizens, while enabling the bad citizens with power to do what they want.

Klein's posting

http://www.spectator.org/archives/2008/10/16/searching-for-obamas-95-percen

After looking into the background of Philip Klein I discovered (not much of a surprise) that he is more of a conservative. Believing mostly in a free market economy as well as a strong national defense He has a degree in history and economics. This does play strongly into his arguments about the tax points as well as his government history points. I believe that Klein started his blog well by quoting Obama, “We are going to cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans”. Klein uses this quote nicely as he tries to “discover” how Obama’s tax plan would effect the promised 95%. Klein does a good job by quoting responses from Obama’s advisers. I was impressed with Klein since he did not just quote the person but he states his questions behind the quote. Klein continues by asking for specifies, and did not make a quick post from one comment; he waited till he had multiple comments from the Obama campaign. Klein also has more then one source for his comments. Klein then goes on to test the information he received to see if he got the same numbers that the Obama campaign report. I also believe that Klein did a good job in waiting till the end to state his political opinion till the end. He also did a good job of not bashing “too hard” on just the Democratic Party but he also the attacked the Republican Party. I did like this blog because he did a good job of attacking a political point of view and not attack a person like many other political commentaries. So in my opinion I was impressed with Klein’s blog posting.

Michelle Malkin wrote this commentary on October 1st of this year about her concern that Gwen Ifill would not be a good moderator for the vice presidential debate. Malkin is a conservative columnist, book author and is a contributor for Fox news. The author states that Gwen has political interests for one political candidate over the other. I went to her web page (http://michellemalkin.com/ ) and found a more in-depth version of her Yahoo article http://news.yahoo.com/s/uc/20081001/cm_uc_crmmax/op_197578;_ylt=AueFtxhlf532sYLocRjYyoT9wxIF ). The website had a link which allowed the reader to see the video response of Gwen Ifill’s actual responce to Palin’s speech. The author makes a few arguments that are well stated, (the book deal, the article of the magazine, and the reaction after the speech by Ifill) but more would be better in my mind. One example of a good argument that she showed the reader was when she was quoting the Ifill’s comment on the Michelle Obama’s speech, and then contrasted that with Ifill’s reaction to the Palin speech. I thought this was a great way of proving her point. Malkin continues by showing quotes from the promotions for her book. The author goes on to tie this book’s success to a political bias which would interfere her role as a moderator. Malkin is an author of a book and can empathies with Ifill’s desire to have a successful book. I thought that the author’s argument on the article that was written by Malkin who wrote in Essence was a weak one. She should have tried hard to pick a stronger part of that article. Malkin goes on to show that Ifill claims that race also factors in her political opinion so a debate from an all white ticket vs a mixed race ticket would also cause her to be bias.