ACTION

No rest for the weary. Or those thinking they will get a good night's rest. Like me.

I just had tocheck my email before turning in. "Face-palm", "For the Love Of" "Serenity Now" and all that jazz.

First, if you do not have this information saved, written down, printed out, etc, please do it now. You will want to be making some phone calls first thing tomorrow.

• Contact info for elected officials: http://www.contactingthecongress.org/ , http://www.usa.gov/Contact.shtml
• Contact Your Governor: http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Governors.shtml
• Contact your Attorney General: http://consumerfraudreporting.org/stateattorneygenerallist.php
• Send Free Faxes and Emails: http://capwiz.com/caps/dbq/officials/, http://www.congress.org/congressorg/home/
• Tweet elected officials: http://www.integralcare.org/?nd=tweet , http://tweetcongress.org/

Let's begin with the Senate Version of CISPA and a cute little gun-control amendment being attached to it:

Congress threw us peasants a bone when PIPA and SOPA were stopped. It re-emerged with a news name, the "Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act" (CISPA). The House passed their version of CISPA back in April (H.R. 3523), 248 - 158. You can find out how your Representative voted here(which should be helpful to know in the upcoming Primary).

Now the Senate version, S3414 is being fast-tracked [Side Note: How about a bill to not allow any legislation to be passed during a Lame Duck Session. Fast track that one!]. Cloture passed for the bill on last Thursday by a vote of 84-11. I think many have beaten a dead horse about why this so-called "security" bill is a huge mistake, and yet another way to indiscriminately invade your privacy no matter what security measures you have taken. By how much, no one really knows but a select few. Maybe the bill has to be passed to know what is in it. Read this for opines by Heritage Foundation regarding the bill:
"Senate Cybersecurity Bill Gets Worse the More You Read It." Even if a miracle happened, and a couple of 'compromises' were added to it (the Franken and Wyden Amendments*, it is still a grab bag of items stripping away privacy rights, rather than actually successfully protecting United State's infrastructure from cyber threats. Before moving on, if you have a Twitter account, go here ==> "Stop Cyber Spying." It is a quick way to tweet your respective Senators that you oppose S 3414.

But how do you make a bad bill even worse? By having "well meaning liberals, democrats and progressives" in the Senate add an amendment in order to protect us from ourselves for we do not know what we do. Amendment S.A. 2575, the latest attack on our Second Amendment Rights (whoops - 'Gun Control') is sponsored by Democratic Sens. Frank Lautenberg (N.J.), Barbara Boxer (Calif.), Jack Reed (R.I.), Bob Menendez (N.J.), Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), Schumer and Dianne Feinstein (Calif.). S.A. 2575 would make it illegal to transfer or possess large capacity feeding devices such as gun magazines, belts, feed stripes and drums of more than 10 rounds of ammunition with the exception of .22 caliber rim fire ammunition. Obviously, this add-on is to take advantage of the recent horrific murders in Colorado as a way to further the gun-control agenda.

If the sponsors of this bill happen to know the following fact, they are assuming no one else does or care (unless you are one of those right-wingers 'clinging to your guns and religion!): The standard capacity for rifle magazines is thirty rounds, not ten.Furthermore, what is to prevent someone buying 10 round magazines and and practice reloading/tape two magazines together? Researching a little bit more, I discovered what is known as a "CA Legal 30-round magazine" which actually only holds a 10-round, but it can be easily converted to its original capacity. If an insane person (like the Colorado murderer) was living in California and planning on a mass murder, he could just modify it. Do we really think that any law would stop him?

Are we supposed to be gullible enough to assume creating more laws actually force criminals to finally turn over a new leaf? When you contact your Congresspersons, also point out:

• Mexico is among the top countries to that have the strictest gun control laws ~ for several years now! There have been 55,000 gun related homicides in Mexico over the last five years. In comparison, 58,000 American died during the entire Vietnam War that was waged with U.S. combat troops from 1961 until 1975.
• Within the United States, Chicago and Washington D.C. have the strictest gun laws. They do not allow any form of handgun carry. Including murder with firearms, the violent crime rate is among the highest in our country.
• In Chicago, twice as many people were murdered with firearms so far this month in Chicago than were murdered in the Aurora theater on July 20. But the Mayor is more concerned about not allowing a non-discriminating privately owned business that would bring in more jobs to the city whose CEO's personal opinions are in opposition to gay marriage. Go figure.

The National Research Council of the National Academies released a study with the aim of finding whether a causal relationship existed between homicide and gun ownership. It didn’t find one, and it said that the available research itself was lacking. "In summary, the committee concludes that existing research studies and data include a wealth of descriptive information on homicide, suicide, and firearms, but, because of the limitations of existing data and methods, do not credibly demonstrate a causal relationship between the ownership of firearms and the causes or prevention of criminal violence or suicide." In other words, none of the studies can prove causation. They merely examine the statistical association between gun availability and homicide.

United States, on a National level, the overall number of violent crimes have decreased even though we have/are going through the worse recession in history. States with liberalized gun laws have followed the national trend of decline, and there are others whose crime level has not changed. Then there are the states with restrictive gun laws where crime has either risen or leveled off, but then are others where crime has also declined.

If gun-control advocates justify their infringement on our Civil Rights - rights that are not subject to a majority vote, mind you - is crime control, there is no factual support for their reasons to reduce the power of or eliminate the Second Amendment, whose purpose is to protect our First Amendment. Gun control efforts hasn't been attributable to any meaningful decline.

So.....Gun control does not necessarily beget crime control. None of the studies can prove causation. They merely examine the statistical association between gun availability and homicide. And drug users, criminals and other "undesirable types" don't give damn about statistics.

*The Franken Amendment removes Section 701 from the S 3414. The section would provide companies with the explicit right to monitor private user communications and engage in countermeasures. The Wyden Amendmentrequires law enforcement officials to procure a warrant before obtaining location data from a person's cell phone, laptop or other gadgets.

Next Stop - Call the Senators Again About the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).

"Talk to the hand 'cos the ear ain't listening " That's the impression I am getting from some of the Senators in the Foreign Relations Committee.
What I really think it means is, "I am enjoying my ignorance. Please do not ruin it by discussing facts or logic with me."

This Treaty is an affront to the basic rights of parents - see here and here. Last Thursday (July 26th), the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted by a 13-6 margin to send the CRPD to the full Senate.

From Michael Ramey, Director of Communications & Research at ParentalRights.org:

ParentalRights.org opposes this treaty because it poses a threat to the traditional role of parents in the upbringing of their children with special needs, and because it sets the dangerous precedent of expressing social, economic, and cultural entitlements as legal rights and obligations.

Senators who stood with us to oppose ratificationof this treaty include: Senator Corker of Tennessee, Senator Risch of Idaho, Senator Lee of Utah, Senator Rubio of Florida, Senator DeMint of South Carolina, and Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma.

All ten Democrats and three Republican senators – Senators Richard Lugar (IN), John Barrasso (WY), and Johnny Isakson (GA) – voted in favorof the treaty.

Please Call Again

In light of this morning’s hearing, it is time to call your senators again. Even if you just called them yesterday, our effort starts over right now. Yesterday’s call was about the hearing; today’s call is about the floor vote.

In your own words, please give your senators the following message:
“I oppose ratifying the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. If our Reservations, Understandings, and Declarations are not air tight, the language of this treaty will severely damage the traditional role of parents with disabled children in making important decisions for their children. If they are not air tight, we could be obligating ourselves to sweeping changes in U.S. law to meet the demands of this treaty.
“And if our Reservations are air tight, and our nation takes on no new obligations under this treaty, then it makes no sense to adopt it. Our ratification will not make it any more binding on other countries, and it will not change the quality of the example we already set by domestic law. We are already leading the world. We do not need to spend the money every 4 years to ask for the U.N.’s opinion on how we are doing.
“I sincerely urge my Senator to oppose ratifying this treaty. The potential unintended consequences are too great a risk for a mere symbolic gesture.”

• Call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 and ask for your Senator by name; or
• Visit ParentalRights.org/States and click on your state. Your Senators’ D.C. phone numbers are listed at the bottom of your state’s page.

(If your senator voted to oppose CRPD, do not call their office – but send them an email thanking them for their position.)

Several senators clearly want the CRPD to pass. Right now only a few are standing up for the rights of parents by actively opposing it. But based on today’s hearing and the word from the Hill, there are still many senators undecided on this vote. So thank you for taking the time to call. Your voice can make a tremendous difference in whether or not this treaty gets the two-thirds vote required for ratification. We only need 34 “no” votes to stop it. So please call your senators today.

This image is not really relative to the post ~ I just really liked the image.
I want to try this with my dollar bill.