The Patriot Post Chronicle 3-3-2010

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The Patriot Post Chronicle 3-3-2010
From The Federalist Patriot
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The Foundation

"The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic." --Justice Joseph Story

Editorial Exegesis
Try putting this on your front door

"The year after the Supreme Court struck down the District of Columbia's handgun ban and gun-lock requirements, the capital city's murder rate plummeted 25 percent. The high court should keep that in mind ... as it hears oral arguments about a Chicago handgun ban. Gun controllers screamed to high heaven that impending disaster would follow the court's decision to junk some of the district's gun controls. One of those screaming the loudest was Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, who incorrectly predicted more gun freedom would lead to more death and Wild West shootouts. Instead, in Washington, murder rates rose when the handgun ban was in effect and fell once the regulations were removed. Chicago's 1982 ban faired no better. The forthcoming third edition of 'More Guns, Less Crime' shows that in the 17 years after a ban on new handguns went into effect, there were only two years when Chicago's murder rate was as low as it was in 1982. The Windy City's murder rate fell relative to America's other 50 largest cities before the ban and rose relative to them afterward. ... That increase in murder rates isn't surprising. Every time gun bans have been tried anywhere, murder rates have risen. Whether one looks at Ireland, Jamaica or England and Wales, the experience has been the same. Not only did murder rates fail to decline as promised, but the rates actually increased following gun bans. In general, gun-control laws disarm law-abiding citizens -- not criminals who don't care about the law. The lesson is that freedom and safety go hand in hand." --The Washington Times

Upright

"[Those] who run Washington, and their intellectual supporters, believe they have superior wisdom and greater intelligence than the masses. They believe they have been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. Like any other tyrant, they have what they consider good reasons for restricting the freedom of others." --economist Walter E. Williams

"In the Democrat leadership, we are not dealing with conventional politicians for whom the goal of being reelected is paramount and will rein in their radicalism. They want socialized medicine and all it entails about government control even more than they want to win elections. After all, if the party of government transforms the relationship between the citizen and the state, its power over our lives will be vast even in those cycles when it is not in the majority. This is about power, and there is more to power than winning elections, especially if you've calculated that your opposition does not have the gumption to dismantle your ballooning welfare state." --columnist Andy McCarthy

"One of the biggest reasons for higher medical costs is that somebody else is paying those costs, whether an insurance company or the government. What is the politicians' answer? To have more costs paid by insurance companies and the government. ... Having someone else pay for medical care virtually guarantees that a lot more of it will be used. Nothing would lower costs more than having each patient pay those costs. And nothing is less likely to happen." --economist Thomas Sowell

"While Barack Obama was making his latest pitch for a brand new, even more unsustainable entitlement at the health care 'summit,' thousands of Greeks took to the streets to riot. An enterprising cable network might have shown the two scenes on a continuous split-screen - because they're part of the same story. It's just that Greece is a little further along in the plot: They're at the point where the canoe is about to plunge over the falls. America is further upstream and can still pull for shore, but has decided, instead, that what it needs to do is catch up with the Greek canoe." --columnist Mark Steyn

"Too many Americans now believe that the checks they receive every month from the unemployment office -- like the checks they get from the welfare office, from Medicare, from Social Security -- are inalienable rights. They are not." --columnist Ben Shapiro

Insight

"Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing." --American essayist, philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

"The freedom now desired by many is not freedom to do and dare but freedom from care and worry." --American writer and historian James Truslow Adams (1878-1949)

Dezinformatsia

Apologists for ramming ObamaCare through: "What [Barack Obama] really wanted to do [with the health care summit] was convince the American people, and more importantly wavering Democrats in Congress, that the Republicans are the 'Party of No.' They won't compromise and he now has no choice but to move ahead with Democrats alone." --CBS's Chip Reid

"What the Democrats have to do now is pass the bill. Put back the public option, since it's their bill, and pass it.... The president has to drop his George B. McClellan mask and become Ulysses Grant. Be ruthless." --ABC's Sam Donaldson

"The Democrats in the White House who are pushing for this [reconciliation] strategy, pushing for passage, say that once this does pass, the country will get it. Democrats will be unified. They'll get a huge benefit." --ABC's George Stephanopoulos on ObamaCare

Arrogance: "President Obama is so much smarter and a better communicator than members of Congress in either party. The contrast, side by side, is almost ridiculous...." --The New Republic's Jonathan Chait

No spin? "One man's stand. A single Senator stops the whole Congress, denying thousands of people unemployment benefits. We confront him to ask why." --ABC's Diane Sawyer on Sen. Jim Bunning's (R-KY) hold on an extension of unemployment benefits to force Democrats to figure out how to pay for them under "pay-go" rules

Gut buster: "I think no one knows my politics." --ABC News left anchor Diane Sawyer

This week's "Leftmedia Buster" Award: "There's a good reason to stay pessimistic about deficits as far as the eye can see. It's called the 'news' media. Legislators who want to get re-elected will clearly want to avoid any spending decision that will create bad national publicity, and our news media, the manufacturers of bad national publicity, will send crying victims down the assembly line at the slightest thought of a social spending cut or freeze. Exhibit A is Sen. Jim Bunning." --L. Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center