July 2004 Archives
On 14 September the Assault Weapons Ban will expire after 10 years. The bill was passed in 1994 and bans guns like the TEC-9, AK-47, and Steetsweeper and also prevents manufacturers from producing weapons with more than one “assault weapon” feature. (Read more about what is currently banned on the Brady Campaign website.)
The Senate has the votes to pass the renewal legislation, although the leadership wants to avoid a vote if at all possible and probably will be able to. However, the House does not have the votes to pass the bill and it is unlikely that they will be pressured to take up the issue without pressure from the White House, which is also unlikely. The president has said he would sign the bill if it came to him, but it doesn’t appear that he is going to make any effort to encourage the House to take action.
A surprise really, when you consider this is an election year and the NRA is dead set against the renewal of the AWB and is also a huge contributor to the Bush/Cheney campaign as well as many members of Congress.
Some fun facts about the NRA:
- In 2000 the NRA doled out $41.1 million in political contributions ($88 million in ‘89-‘02)
- The NRA maintains a list of organizations that are anti-gun. The list includes such insidious groups as the American Medical Association and the ACLU, and Oprah Winfrey
- Has a board member who said, “Â…no more than five to ten people in a hundred who die by gunfire in Los Angeles are any loss to society…”
- The NRA also wants Congress to pass legislation immunizing manufacturers and dealers of guns from lawsuits. (more on this later)
Norway is once again the greatest place on Earth, beating out 176 other countries to rank number one for the third year in a row in the annual UN Development Program list. Obviously the Norwegians have something going on up there in the arctic circle. The UNDP report says that the small population and high wealth level contributed to the first place position.
Read more on the official Norwegian website.
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Election Assistance Commission via the Department of Homeland Security has asked the Justice Deptarment to investigate what legal options there are for postponing elections in the face of a terrorist attack. Newsweek reports that
Ridge’s department last week asked the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel to analyze what legal steps would be needed to permit the postponement of the election were an attack to take place.
There is concern at the U.S. Election Assistance Commission that no agency of the federal government carries authority to postpone elections in the event of a national emergency. Unlike the State of New York, whose Board of Elections delayed primary elections in 2001 because they were scheduled to take place on 11 September.
My first reaction on hearing this was shock at the apparent gall of the current administration. At the risk of sounding like a crazy conspiracy theorist, I have to admit that some small part of me would not be shocked by any attempt of the Bush Administration to prolong his presidency due to national crisis. However, when the better part of my mind kicked in I realize that there is most likely no malicious intent behind the request.
Nonetheless, any move to postpone elections gives me pause. At first I thought that it would simply be illegal for the federal government to dictate the “times, places and manner of holding elections” because that authority is given to the legislature of each state. But one qualifier in the Constitution gives Congress the authority to change state regulations about elections, at least in the case of electing Senators and Representatives.
Article I, Section 4:
The times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing Senators.
The rules for the general election aren’t set out in the Constitution and so Congress can and does regulate the dates on which the election of the President and the Vice President occur.
Article II, Section 1, clause 3:
The Congress may determine the Time of chusing [sic] the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.
So, it’s not illegal to postpone the elections as long as Congress passes legislation giving authority to an agency of a person in the government. But is it a good thing to give anyone this authority? What will the requirements be for postponement? Who will exercise the authority? Will it be subject to political maneuverings?
In the end, the reasonable part of my mind tells me, if there was an attack on the day of the general election or perhaps a few days before it (depending on the severity) some mechanism for rescheduling should be in place. To my mind such a mechanism would
- set a new date automatically (perhaps 15 days later) with the option to delay further but no more than 45 days after the original election schedule. This would still allow time to meet the 20 January end of the terms of President and VP.
- limit the reasons for delay to real national crises, i.e. 9/11, attack on the Capitol or White House, etc.
- limit the trigger period to the day of the election, and maybe up to 3 days prior to the scheduled election date if logistics prevent elections for occuring
- only affect the election of the President and Vice President, each state should retain the authority to control the elections of its own Senators and Representatives since almost any attack would be localized to one or a few states.
I still have no answer for who should have the authority to pronounce an emergency, emergency enough. Perhaps the Supreme Court? The board of the Federal Elections Commission is more likely and relatively fairly appointed and split between parties.
The General Election is our opportunity to overthrow the government (any one, not specifically the current one) and replace it with one that acts as we want it to act. We need to make sure that is stays that way and does not devolve into a political tool to be wielded by those in power to their own advantage.
Last week President Bush gave a speech about AIDS to an audience in Philadelphia. The speech made headlines because Bush used the word ‘condoms’ in reference to preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS. His exact words were:
We can learn from the experiences of other countries when it comes to a good program to prevent the spread of AIDS, like the nation of Uganda. They’ve started what they call the ABC approach to prevention of this deadly disease. That stands for Abstain, Be faithful in marriage, and, when appropriate, use Condoms.
It sounds like the president was, in a roundabout way, advocating the use of condoms to prevent HIV infection. But the week before this speech was delivered the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) promulgated new regulations for AIDS education groups that accept federal money. The new guidelines limit the messages these organizations can distribute via “‘pamphlets, brochures, fliers, curricula,’ ‘audiovisual materials’ and ‘pictorials (for example, posters and similar educational materials using photographs, slides, drawings or paintings),’ as well as ‘advertising’ and web-based info” (see The Nation article).
The intent of the regs is to enforce the use of abstinence-only education. Indeed, they go so far as to require that sex-ed content include information about the “inneffectiveness of condoms.” This despite the fact that condom use is almost 100% effective at preventing HIV infection while abstinence-only education has proven wholly ineffective.
[James] Wagoner, [executive director of Advocates for Youth, a Washington-based coalition of youth service groups and the country’s leading exponent and provider of safe-sex education], contrasts the Bush war on the condom with its attitude toward seatbelts. “The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is constantly telling Americans, ‘Use Seatbelts!’ It’s all over their website. But the American College of Emergency Physicians concluded in a study that seatbelts fail to protect lives 55 percent of the time, and fail to protect health 45 percent of the time. For the Administration to engage in its constant drumbeat that condoms — which are not 100 percent effective for all sexually transmitted diseases but are nearly so for preventing AIDS — are ‘ineffective’ in HIV prevention, while promoting seatbelts as ‘effective,’ shows that the CDC’s anti-condom requirements are all about politics, not science.” And, says Mark McLaurin, HIV-prevention director for New York’s Gay Men’s Health Crisis, “The President’s faint nod to condoms in his speech is particularly galling in light of his CDC’s proposal to tie the hands of prevention providers.”
President Bush is setting aside programs that are saving people’s lives because he thinks it is his job to save their souls. It is maddening to see how much control social conservatives have over the policies of independent agencies of the federal government.
A study by Columbia University department of sociology chairman Peter Bearman followed the lives of 12,000 adolescents from 12 to 18 years old over a five-year period. Released in March, and partially funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the study found that while 59 percent of teenage males who did not pledge abstinence used a condom during sex, only 40 percent of abstinence-pledging boys used a condom. Bearman told the New York Times that telling teens “to ‘just say no’ without understanding risk or how to protect oneself from risk turns out to create greater risk” of HIV and other STDs.
Last Sunday was the annual New York City Pride Parade. Let me just say it was crazy — some of the floats are not fit for posting here, but there are a few pictures that are absolutely family-safe (because they are of me).
