Month: December 2009

Delegate Scott Lingamfelter: Just another big-government Republican.

From today’s Richmond Times-Dispatch:

Del. L. Scott Lingamfelter is getting in on the fight over the flying of the American flag.

The Prince William County Republican plans to submit a bill for next year’s General Assembly session that would require homeowners associations to allow combat veterans decorated for valor to fly the flag in any manner permitted by federal law.

[…]

Lingamfelter joins a group of supporters that boasts the White House, Democrats including Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and both of Virginia’s U.S. senators, as well as Rep. Eric I. Cantor, R-7th, the second-ranking Republican in the House.

[…]

Lingamfelter hasn’t finalized the language of his bill, and he noted that he’s open to broadening its scope to include more than just decorated veterans. He also said he’s open to associations decreeing requirements for residents’ flag display.

“Just don’t tell them they can’t do it,” he said.

In terms of Barfoot’s specific situation, Lingamfelter said it’s possible that the association will allow the matter to quietly go away.

“But I’m not going to quietly go away,” he added.

Similarly, he said that he has never faced a situation in which someone objected to his display of the red, white and blue.

But if it had happened?

“It would have only happened one time,” Lingamfelter said.

Okay, this need to be broken down line-by-line (with some reorganizing of the text for increased brevity):

Del. L. Scott Lingamfelter is getting in on the fight over the flying of the American flag.

The Prince William County Republican plans to submit a bill for next year’s General Assembly session that would require homeowners associations to allow combat veterans decorated for valor to fly the flag in any manner permitted by federal law.

Lingamfelter hasn’t finalized the language of his bill, and he noted that he’s open to broadening its scope to include more than just decorated veterans.

Lingamfelter is still “open” as to who will be covered by his proposed edict, but the congressional proposal only covered Medal of Honor recipients. What about those lowly combat veterans that only managed to get a Silver or Bronze Star (sarcasm!)? What about those that only receive a Purple Heart or Distinguished Serve Medal? What about those that didn’t serve in a combat? What about reservists and National Guard members? What about the families of all of the above? What about an average person that didn’t serve in the military at all? Will all of these people be protected by these edicts (which, interestingly, doesn’t seem to be part of the powers of Congress, at least not in my copy of the United States Constitution)?

I do find it funny as well that all these Republicans are jumping on a bandwagon to create a protected class of individuals that are exempt from the rules of a homeowners association (HOA), an organization that they entered into a contract — voluntarily — with. No one forces you to join a HOA, you make that choice when you decide to move into a particular neighborhood. You choose to give up your rights, while presumably of sound mind, when you enter into a contract with the HOA.

And notably, for Republicans, when it comes to protecting a certain class of people under hate crime legislation, then it’s totally unacceptable to create a class of individuals that are treated differently in the eyes of the law. Or so they would want you to believe.

[…]

Lingamfelter joins a group of supporters that boasts the White House, Democrats including Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and both of Virginia’s U.S. senators, as well as Rep. Eric I. Cantor, R-7th, the second-ranking Republican in the House.

We call them “statists” here.

[…] He also said he’s open to associations decreeing requirements for residents’ flag display.

“Just don’t tell them they can’t do it,” he said.

And here comes the lying (or the opening of one’s mouth and proving of one’s own ignorance).  The veteran in this case was never told that he couldn’t fly the flag. He was told that he could not erect a flag pole. So, Mr. (or Delegate, or King of Virginia) Lingamfelter, you have now shown yourself to be a liar or completely ignorant.

In terms of Barfoot’s specific situation, Lingamfelter said it’s possible that the association will allow the matter to quietly go away.

“But I’m not going to quietly go away,” he added.

Of course not, you’re a politician, they never go away — quietly or not.

Similarly, he said that he has never faced a situation in which someone objected to his display of the red, white and blue.

But if it had happened?

“It would have only happened one time,” Lingamfelter said.

And what exactly does that mean? Is King of Virginia Lingamfelter saying he would result to violence if someone told him he was violating an HOA rule? Or is he saying he would just use his power as a legislator to exempt him from any rule that he feels like violating?

Questions, questions.

Great Ann Coulter column.

From December 9th but somehow I missed it:

In Tuesday’s primary election, Massachusetts Democrats chose as their Senate nominee a woman who kept a clearly innocent man in prison in order to advance her political career.

Martha Coakley isn’t even fit for the late Teddy Kennedy’s old seat. (What is it about this particular Senate seat?)

During the daycare/child molestation hysteria of the ’80s, Gerald Amirault, his mother, Violet, and sister, Cheryl, were accused of raping children at the family’s preschool in Malden, Mass., in what came to be known as the second-most notorious witch trial in Massachusetts history.

Read the whole thing.

http://www.anncoulter.com/

My agnosticism towards the tea party movement validated once again.

Does anyone consider this rhetoric attractive? (The Free Lance–Star):

Members of the Tea Party faction of the Republican Party and questions about health care greeted Rep. Robert J. Wittman (R-Montross) at a gathering Tuesday night in his hometown.

“Where in the Constitution is government charged with protecting people’s health?” asked Catherine T. Crabill, a maverick Republican who, despite being shunned by Wittman and state GOP leaders, came close last month to winning the seat Wittman once held in the House of Delegates.

“My frustration is that we don’t want any government-run health care. The Constitution is the only thing that will save us from this death spiral that the country is in,” Crabill said.

“Some elected officials are committing treason by not upholding their sacred oaths. Do you intend to uphold your oath of office and fight to make sure that your elected colleagues uphold theirs?” she asked Wittman, who promised he would.

I’m still laughing about how the constitutional scholar, Catherine Crabill, is making comments about what’s in the United States Constitution when she’s apparently unfamiliar with the Article III, where the founders went to the trouble of specifically defining the crime of treason:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

The Congress shall have power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

And why did Madison et al. decide to be that specific regarding the crime of treason? Consult Federalist No. 43:

As treason may be committed against the United States, the authority of the United States ought to be enabled to punish it. But as new-fangled and artificial treasons have been the great engines by which violent factions, the natural offspring of free government, have usually wreaked their alternate malignity on each other, the convention have, with great judgment, opposed a barrier to this peculiar danger, by inserting a constitutional definition of the crime, fixing the proof necessary for conviction of it, and restraining the Congress, even in punishing it, from extending the consequences of guilt beyond the person of its author.

But that nut Catherine Crabill wants to prosecute people for political disagreements (and probably execute them). This is the same thing that the crazies on the left wanted to do for George Bush et al. for the Iraq War and the USA PATRIOT Act.

And then we have this one:

“The federal government is gang-raping the people,” said Mark Carpenter of Acorn, a Westmoreland County community–not the controversial Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

Do I need to expand how absurd, vulgar, and bordering on obscene that comment is? Does this idiot need someone to explain to him what the crime of rape is, much less the crime of gang-rape?

I must admit I’m conflicted here.

For two days the Richmond Times-Dispatch has run stories about a battle in Henrico County between a homeowners association (HOA) and a Medal of Honor recipient regarding the veteran’s flagpole (today’s story here).

Now, if this was a state or local government prohibiting the flying of a flag (or the flagpole, depending on who you listen to), this would be a no-brainer and I would be agreeing with the vet. Anyone that knows me, or even reads my blog at all, should know that I think and believe if it’s your property, you should be able to do whatever you want with it. If one of your neighbors doesn’t like it, maybe they should make you an offer you can’t refuse (the monetary kind, not the dead horse kind) for the parcel of land.

However, this is a homeowners association. When you move into a subdivision with an HOA, you agree to the rules that they have been established and any rules they might establish in the future.

That’s your choice. No one forces you to move into that subdivision. By moving into that neighborhood, you’re giving up rights and privileges that you might otherwise have. You agree to abide by their rules, as absurd as they may be.

Thoughts?

Mike Huckabee: I commuted the repeated felon’s sentence because the justice system is racist. Oh, and I don’t know jack about the constitution.

Not in so many words of course:

Huckabee defended his choice to grant the Arkansas felon clemency by insisting that Clemmons original sentence went too far.

“If he were a white kid from an upper middle class family he would have gotten a lawyer and some counseling,” Huckabee said. “But because he was a young black kid he got 108 years.”

Can someone find me a “white kid” — or any kid for that matter — that would have been given counseling for the combined offenses of: a) robbery and assault and battery; b) burglary of a state trooper’s home and grand larceny (including the theft of a firearm from the trooper’s home); c) possession of a gun in  school zone; and d) attempted aggravated assault against a bailiff using a padlock and assault and battery against his mother (the incompetent moron missed and hit his mother instead)?

Anyone? Bueller?

And, then we turn to the utter ignorance of Mike Huckabee regarding the United States Constitution.

Of course, Huckabee isn’t a huge fan of the current constitution and has stated that he believes that the constitution needs to be amended to “reflect ‘God’s standards'”. Apparently God’s big on letting repeated felons out of prison, at least that’s what Huckabee thinks.

But, as the constitution currently exists, there’s thing called the Sixth Amendment which reads:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

In Johnson v. Zerbst (304 U.S. 458 (1938)), the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled that there was a requirement that indigent defendants be appointed counsel in federal courts if they could afford their own. In Gideon v. Wainwright (372 U.S. 335 (1963)), that ruling was extended to state courts for all felony cases.

In short, the guy had an attorney!

But poor Mike Huckabee (or Dukakabee as some of my fellow bloggers refer to him) is so completely ignorant (or just lying, pick your poison), he attempts to obfuscate instead of taking responsibility for actions that he was responsible for.