People Are Sending Checks For Thoughts And Prayers To NRA-Backed Republican Candidates

Many people are upset about Republicans who offer thoughts and prayers in response to mass shootings without offering any real solutions. A Michigan woman responded by sending a check made out for “thoughts & prayers” to a Republican Congressional candidate, indicating it was a campaign contribution. With Republicans believing that thoughts and prayers are sufficient, others have also followed in sending such contributions to Republicans backed by the NRA. Additional examples are collected here.

Democrats Have A Plan For 2018–Avoid Standing For Anything

First Read looked at the Democrats’ strategy for the 2018 election, which comes down to continuing to avoid standing for anything. They noted the chaos in the Trump administration, and showed how the Democrats plan to respond:

Given that chaos, Democrats believe they’ve discovered the kind of candidates that could be appealing to voters, especially those in red and purple areas, one year-plus into Trump’s presidency: candidates who project stability.

Think of Ralph Northam (military background, doctor, lieutenant governor) who won Virginia’s gubernatorial contest last November. Or think of Doug Jones (a former prosecutor who promised he could “work with Republicans better than Roy Moore can work with anyone”) in December’s Alabama contest. Or think of Conor Lamb (military background, former prosecutor) who’s running in this month’s special congressional election in a Pennsylvania district Trump won by 20 points in 2016.

It’s chaos vs. stability. It’s reality-show background vs. military/prosecutor backgrounds. And it’s excitement vs., well, a little boring.

Yes, it is boring. To just run on a platform of not being as chaotic as the Trump administration again fails to provide voters with positive reasons to vote Democratic. Republicans have won over the years by taking stands, even if they take the wrong positions, and sell voters on their beliefs.

This is hardly anything new. Democrats avoided standing for anything in the 2010 and 2014 midterms, and were beaten badly. In 2016, when voters wanted a change candidate, the nominated the most establishment, status-quo candidate possible, and couldn’t even beat Donald Trump.

On the other hand, Bernie Sanders, who has not been afraid to take a stand on the issues,  has led polls of the most popular politician in the country.

We have seen other examples of the cowardice of Democrats recently. Huffington Post reports:

The morning after the Oct. 1 mass shooting in Las Vegas, a member of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s press staff warned House candidates and their staffs not to “politicize” the shooting that day. Politicization, according to the DCCC official, included talking about gun violence prevention policy.

Instead they also advised, “any message today should be on offering thoughts/prayers for victims and their families.” Thoughts and prayers–exactly what many of us have mocked the Republicans for saying.

They took a similar position on health care with The Intercept reporting that the DCCC advised Democrats against supporting single payer healthcare.

Democrats also have avoided taking  positions against neocon interventionism and perpetual warfare, the drug war, or mass surveillance. Instead they have largely adopted the foreign policy of George W. Bush, and the anti-Russia hysteria of Joe McCarthy. Democrats might do well in 2018 in reaction to Donald Trump, but the party which stands for nothing does not give people any reason to stick with it once Trump is gone.

Republican Congressman Claims Jews Could Have Survived The Holocaust If They Had Guns

In the past I would periodically have posts just to highlight really dumb things said by politicians. Once Donald Trump began running, he both overshadowed dumb comments from all other sources, and made so many that I couldn’t attempt to blog on them all. Today I heard a comment from a Republican other than Donald Trump which was so absurd that I couldn’t let it pass without a post. According to Alaska Public Radio,  “Alaska Congressman Don Young argued against gun control by suggesting Jews might not have died in the Holocaust if they had been armed.”

This is an argument which conservatives have made in the past. Jonathan Greenblatt, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, responded to this argument in 2016 after it was made by Ben Carson:

  • Guns or lack of them did not cause the Holocaust. The Holocaust was the product of anti-Semitism and the moral failure and indifference of humans.
  • It is mind-bending to suggest that personal firearms in the hands of the small number of Germany’s Jews (about 214,000 remaining in Germany in 1938) could have stopped the totalitarian onslaught of Nazi Germany when the armies of Poland, France, Belgium and numerous other countries were overwhelmed by the Third Reich.
  • Despite the overwhelming military force of the Nazi regime, there were thousands of brave civilians — Jewish and gentile — who indeed often resisted with every fiber of their being. Unfortunately, arming every European Jew would not have been enough to stop an evil force that was only overcome by the military might of the Allies.

Young also supports allowing teachers to carry firearms–not that many have any desire to do so.

In other political news today, Hope Hicks announced she is resigning the day after she admitted to telling white lies. If Hope Hicks is resigning after telling white lies, shouldn’t Donald Trump resign for telling really big lies?

Stephen Colbert Responds To Donald Trump On Guns In Schools

The Explanation For The Number Of Mass Shootings In The United States

The New York Times looked at the question of why there are so many mass shootings in the United States compared to other countries:

When the world looks at the United States, it sees a land of exceptions: a time-tested if noisy democracy, a crusader in foreign policy, an exporter of beloved music and film.

But there is one quirk that consistently puzzles America’s fans and critics alike. Why, they ask, does it experience so many mass shootings?

Perhaps, some speculate, it is because American society is unusually violent. Or its racial divisions have frayed the bonds of society. Or its citizens lack proper mental care under a health care system that draws frequent derision abroad.

These explanations share one thing in common: Though seemingly sensible, all have been debunked by research on shootings elsewhere in the world. Instead, an ever-growing body of research consistently reaches the same conclusion.

The only variable that can explain the high rate of mass shootings in America is its astronomical number of guns.

There is far more in their full article but the primary factor comes down to the astronomical number of guns. If we agree that school shootings must be stopped, this leaves us with one conclusion. Something must be done about the number of guns. We can debate the specifics, and we can strive to find ways to allow those who use guns for legitimate reasons to still own guns, but any solution is going to require reducing the number of guns. Or do conservatives think that killing children is acceptable?

Conservatives will claim that restrictions on gun ownership violate the Second Amendment. I don’t take their selective adherence to Constitutional rights all that seriously when they are frequently the same people who are willing to see violations of First Amendment rights, with many outright opposing separation of church and state.

Reading “What Happened” So You Do Not Have To

Reading Hillary Clinton’s memoir, What Happened, is like reading a memoir from Jesse James which makes no admission that he ever robbed a bank. She talked about trivial matters from her life, repeated her excuses blaming everyone else for her loss, and gave virtually no recognition of her dishonest actions and lifelong opposition to liberal values behind the opposition to her. What Happened  was previously used as a book title by former Bush press secretary Scott McClellan. Maybe she reused this title because Jeff Flake beat her to reusing the philosophically more honest choice, Conscience of a Conservative. Of course that would assume that she has a conscience, but she showed no signs of having one.

It is hard to see the point in this book beyond finger pointing. Clinton wrote:

At first, I had intended to keep relatively quiet. Former Presidents and former nominees often try to keep a respectful distance from the front lines of politics, at least for a while. I always admired how both George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush avoided criticizing Bill and Barack, and how Bill ended up working with George H. W. on tsunami relief in Asia and Katrina recovery on the Gulf Coast. And with George W. in Haiti after the earthquake in 2011. That’s how it’s supposed to work.

She should have ended the book right there.

In a rare moment of honesty, Clinton showed how clueless she is in writing, “in terms of fighting the previous war, I think it’s fair to say that I didn’t realize how quickly the ground was shifting under all our feet.” The only shifting Clinton has shown with the times has been to move on from blaming everything on the vast right wing conspiracy to blaming the vast left wing conspiracy against her.

She might briefly admit to a mistake, but it is quickly followed with a major but as she places the blame on Russia, James Comey, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, or others. If she did mention something she did wrong, it was passed over as a minor tactical error, ignoring the magnitude of her ethical lapses.

This week Bernie Sanders has been pushing for comprehensive, affordable health care for all Americans. Hillary Clinton is pushing a book which attacks the left and questions the validity of our electoral process (which she previously attacked Trump for threatening to do). She has opposed Medicare for All based upon false claims, continuing her long history of working to undermine liberal ideas.

While she launched numerous bogus attacks against others, she feels that her mistakes are too trivial to be considered. She wrote, “The truth is, everyone’s flawed. That’s the nature of human beings. But our mistakes alone shouldn’t define us. We should be judged by the totality of our work and life.”  Judging Clinton by the totality of her work and life, we must include her repeated push for neoconservative wars and regime change, her repeated advocacy of violating our First Amendment rights, her social conservatism, her support for the corrupting influence of money in politics, and her use of her position for personal financial gain–including violating the ethics agreement she entered into before being confirmed as Secretary of State.

Hillary Clinton wrote about her concern for children. In the real world, Hillary Clinton has shown her concern for children in other countries by dropping bombs on them and defending the use of cluster bombs in civilian areas. There are also those who suffered from Bill’s welfare reform at home. However, “It was a hard call. Bill and I lay awake at night talking it over.”

Clinton shows no understanding of liberal or progressive values. While she mischaracterized Bernie Sanders’ platform as offering everyone a pony, it is actually Clinton who sees liberalism as little more than government giving out ponies, even if smaller ones than she believes Bernie Sanders would. She has no understanding of how true liberal and progressives would change the status quo, no concept of the human rights we defend, and no concept of what is wrong with her interventionist views.

Her ignorance of liberal concepts of human rights would explain how she totally misunderstood the warnings of George Orwell. To an authoritarian such as Hillary Clinton the lesson of 1984 is that we should not question our political leaders, the press, or experts:

Attempting to define reality is a core feature of authoritarianism. This is what the Soviets did when they erased political dissidents from historical photos. This is what happens in George Orwell’s classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, when a torturer holds up four fingers and delivers electric shocks until his prisoner sees five fingers as ordered. The goal is to make you question logic and reason and to sow mistrust toward exactly the people we need to rely on: our leaders, the press, experts who seek to guide public policy based on evidence, ourselves.

On the other hand, Clinton is quite skilled in using Orwellian techniques to attack her political enemies. She uses the same types of distortions against Bernie Sanders as she did during the campaign, and as she used against Barack Obama in 2008. I have already responded to some of the attacks against Sanders here, and also recommend this rebuttal of Clinton’s arguments by Les Leopold. While reading What Happened I came across another fallacious attack on Sanders. Clinton wrote, “After the election, Bernie suggested that Democrats should be open to nominating and supporting candidates who are anti-choice.”

No, that is not what happened at all. On the other hand, the Democratic establishment has shown how they are willing to ignore reproductive rights. Clinton herself has also been to the right of Sanders on the issue, including her support for parental notification laws and expressing a willingness to compromise with Republicans. This is not surprising in light of her personal social conservatism on the issue and her mantra of keeping abortion”safe, legal, and rare,” stigmatizing women who have had an abortion.

Her attempts to falsely portray Sanders as being to the right of her on abortion are similar to her claims of being to the left of Sanders on gun control, despite having run in 2008 as a “pro-gun churchgoer.” Of course while attacking Sanders and blaming him for her loss she overlooked the degree to which Sanders campaigned for her after the primaries were over. Her antipathy towards a fair democratic process includes a visceral objection to being challenged for political office.

Clinton was no more honest in discussing the scandals which rightfully harmed her campaign. For example, she misquoted from the State Department Inspector General report to falsely make it look like the report supported her actions in the email scandal. In reality, the Inspector General report said exactly the opposite in showing how she violated policy. As we saw during the campaign, she keeps repeating the same lies about the scandal, including the statements from James Comey, regardless of how often the media fact checkers show that she is outright lying.

She attempted to open up personally, but even then wasn’t entirely honest. Among the more unbelievable lines, Clinton wrote, “For me, fund-raisers were a little more complicated than other campaign events. Even after all these years, it’s hard for me to ask for other people’s money.”

Among the other personal discussions in the book, Clinton wrote, “Bill and I bought our home in 1999 because we loved the bedroom.” Now try to get that image out of your mind.

Actually what she wrote after this was quite tame, including a description of the vaulted ceiling, windows, and photos. And then, “After waking up, I check my email and read my morning devotional from Reverend Bill Shillady, which is usually waiting in my inbox. I spend a few minutes in contemplation, organizing my thoughts and setting my priorities for the day.” The rest of us will not be able to see the writings of Bill Shillady as his publisher has pulled his planned book, entitled Strong for a Moment Like This: The Daily Devotions of Hillary Rodham Clinton, due to plagiarism.

Of course, as was inevitable, I am seeing defenses of What Happened claiming that disagreements with Clinton’s book are based upon misogyny. What an intellectually and morally bankrupt viewpoint. Do such Clinton supporters have even a shred of integrity? I am just relieved that Hillary Clinton is not in the White House, leaving us to contend with claims that our objections to whatever war she wanted to start, or whatever violation of the First Amendment she was advocating, was based only on sexism.

Bad Day For Ivanka Brands; Good Day For Alternative Massacres And Guns

It is not a good day for Ivanka Trump’s businesses as efforts to stop sales of Ivanka Trump’s products in protest against her father appear to be successful. First Nordstrom announced they were dropping her shoes due to decreased sales in response to the #GrabYourWallet boycott. Next Neiman-Marcus announced they were dropping her jewelry line.

It is, however, a good day for fake massacres:

Senior Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway made a statement during a TV interview Thursday that pricked the ears of fact-checkers everywhere.

She told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews:

“I bet it’s brand new information to people that President Obama had a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalized and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre. It didn’t get covered.”

First of all, Obama didn’t ban the Iraqi refugee program.

Second, there’s no such thing as the Bowling Green massacre.

Another example of alternative facts from Kellyanne Conway. I’m looking forward to seeing The Little Golden Book Of Alternate Massacres. Then we can study the alternative holocaust in Donald Trump’s mind which didn’t involve Jews.

It is also a bad day for Israeli settlements, but more significantly a bad day for consistency in foreign policy, but a good day for people with severe mental illnesses who desire to buy guns. 

Plus, like every day under Donald Trump, I bet it will be a great day for the late night comics.

Many Americans View The Presidential Transition As Ominous

A large number of Americans are looking at the inauguration of Donald Trump with dread. Beyond ideological differences, there are concerns that Donald Trump does not respect the norms which have maintained our democracy.  E.J. Dionne calls this “the most ominous Inauguration Day in modern history.” He wrote, “Trump’s disdain for the democratic disposition we like our presidents to embrace was on display when he dressed down CNN’s Jim Acosta at that news conference last week. Trump’s tone, style and sheer rage (whether real or staged) brought to mind authoritarian leaders who brook no dissent.”

The Associated Press reports on how the presidency is about the change, also discussing Trump failure to respect established norms:

Polls over the past week show that Trump is poised to enter the White House as the least popular president in four decades. Democrats remain staunchly opposed to him, independents have not rallied behind him and even Republicans are less enthusiastic than might be expected, according to the surveys.

In his typical reaction to poll results he doesn’t like, Trump dismissed them as “rigged” in a Tuesday tweet.

It’s exactly that kind of tweet that worries governing experts, lawmakers and other critics, who argue that traditional practices of the presidency protect the health of the American democracy.

“With notable exceptions, we’ve had a political culture in which presidents largely respect a series of unwritten rules that help democracy and the rule of law flourish,” said Brendan Nyhan, a professor of government at Dartmouth College. “What’s striking about Trump is he flouts norms that have previously been respected by both parties on a daily basis. He calls things into question that have never been questioned before.”

Since winning the election, Trump has attacked Hollywood celebrities, civil rights icons and political rivals alike. He’s moved markets by going after some companies, while praising others.

He’s questioned the legitimacy of American institutions — appearing to trust the word of Russian President Vladimir Putin over the intelligence agencies he’ll soon oversee, engaging in personal fights with journalists as he assails the free press and questioning the results of the election, even though it put him in office.

With this backdrop, many Americans are more interested in the massive demonstrations expected for inauguration day than in seeing Donald Trump inaugurated. David Weigel points out that in the past, such as when George W. Bush was inaugurated, demonstrations were “dominated by the political fringe.” Now they being embraced by both the Democratic Party and the left:

Democrats and the broader left, recuperating from an election few of them thought they could lose, are organizing one of the broadest — and earliest — opposition campaigns ever to greet a new president. It began with protests in the hours after Trump’s victory, but it has become bolder since, marked most dramatically by nearly 70 Democratic members of Congress boycotting the inauguration itself…

This year, in his enhanced role as a messenger for congressional Democrats, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) successfully encouraged 70-odd rallies last weekend in support of the Affordable Care Act, organized on the ground by Democrats and labor groups. Local branches of the Working Families Party, which endorsed Sanders (and de Blasio) in 2016, have organized “Resist Trump Tuesdays,” in which activists have protested inside the offices of Republican legislators or filled the galleries of state legislatures. According to WFP spokesman Joe Dinkin, 450 community planning meetings took place the week before the inauguration.

Donald Trump has made many contradictory statements. While he has given reason to fear he might not respect our political norms, we really do not know yet what he will do. Adam Gopnik warns to be prepared for the worst possible scenario, and offers this advice:

What is to be done? In such a moment of continued emergency, the most important task may be to distinguish as rigorously as possible between new policies and programs that, however awful, are a reflection of the normal oscillation of power, natural in a mature democracy, and those that are not. To borrow from Woody Allen’s distinction between the miserable (something we all are) and the horrible (fortunately suffered by only a few), we must now distinguish resolutely between the sickening and the terrifying. Many programs and policies with which progressive-minded people passionately disagree will be put forward over the next few years. However much or strongly one opposes them, they are, like it or not, the actual agreed-on platform of a dominant national party. On the issue of gun control alone, we’ll get a Supreme Court that won’t reverse the bad decision of Heller, a legislature that will only further diminish sane controls on military weapons in private hands, likely an increase in open-carry laws, and all the murderous rest. All of this will cost kids’ lives and bring much misery.

One may oppose these things—and one should, passionately and permanently—but they are in no sense illegitimate. They are just wrong. They are also reversible by the same laws and rules and norms and judicial and, perhaps most of all, electoral processes that created them. If we want gun control, we need to get more people caring about it and more people in more places voting for it; we cannot complain because people who don’t want gun control don’t give it to us.

Assaults on free speech; the imprisoning of critics and dissidents; attempts, on the Russian model, likely to begin soon, to intimidate critics of the regime with fake charges and conjured-up allegations; the intimidation and intolerance of even mild dissidence (that “Apologize!” tweet directed at members of the “Hamilton” cast who dared to politely petition Mike Pence); not to mention mass deportations or attempts at discrimination by religion—all things that the Trump and his cohorts have openly contemplated or even promised—are not part of the normal oscillations of power and policy. They are unprecedented and, history tells us, likely to be almost impossible to reverse.

So we need to stiffen our spines and broaden our embrace, grasp tightly but reach out far. The conservatives who see Trump for what he is and are shocked by it—and there are many, though not as many as there should be—should be welcomed. We can postpone arguing about the true meaning of the Second Amendment while we band together to fight for the Constitution that precedes it…

The best way to be sure that 2017 is not 1934 is to act as though it were. We must learn and relearn that age’s necessary lessons: that meek submission is the most short-sighted of policies; that waiting for the other, more vulnerable group to protest first will only increase the isolation of us all. We must refuse to think that if we play nice and don’t make trouble, our group won’t be harmed. Calm but consistent opposition shared by a broad front of committed and constitutionally-minded protesters—it’s easy to say, fiendishly hard to do, and necessary to accomplish if we are to save the beautiful music of American democracy.

Trump Goes Nuclear And Clinton Channels Pence In Second Presidential Debate

No, the above picture does not show Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton singing a duet of Don’t Go Breaking My Heart or I Got You Babe. The second presidential debate (transcript here) was a perfect display of how absurd this year’s election is. It was inevitable that Donald Trump would come out the loser once it became clear that it would center around the recently released videotape of Donald Trump talking about abusing women.There was no possible way Hillary Clinton could lose this one.

Trump was more forceful, beating expectations and perhaps preventing the total collapse of his support. As it stands, he does trail by double digits. While it is very doubtful it will be enough to change the race, many of Trump’s attacks on Clinton might help him get more Republicans out to vote, although attacks on Hillary Clinton based upon Bill’s sex life are likely to backfire.

Clinton benefited from so little being said about the other major leak of the past few days–the emails released by Wikileaks which provided further verification of everything opponents of Clinton on the left thought about her. Clinton evaded the single question on this, first bringing up Abe Lincoln, and then the Russians. By the time she got through with her word salad, the actual question was long forgotten.

lincoln-clinton

Clinton also channeled the strategy of Mike Pence of denying the facts during the debate. This was most blatant when she repeated her false claim that the emails which were deleted were all personal.

Once again there were many falsehoods, probably far more from Trump. There were far too many to discuss. Trump getting the facts wrong is not news, but Trump getting it right is. He has been dinged by the fact checkers multiple times for his accusation that Hillary Clinton was behind the Birther movement. Some fact checkers even missed the fact that he corrected his account last night, and now got it right:

TRUMP: Well, you owe the president an apology, because as you know very well, your campaign, Sidney Blumenthal — he’s another real winner that you have — and he’s the one that got this started, along with your campaign manager, and they were on television just two weeks ago, she was, saying exactly that. So you really owe him an apology. You’re the one that sent the pictures around your campaign, sent the pictures around with President Obama in a certain garb. That was long before I was ever involved, so you actually owe an apology.

obama-turban

Clinton never explicitly claimed that Obama was not born in the United States or is a Muslim, but there were certainly rumors that her campaign was involved in spreading the smears which people in the Obama campaign believed were true. There is no question that the Clinton campaign did make a point of trying to suggest something foreign about Obama. As can be verified from The Guardian, the campaign did spread the above picture in 1988, which Trump referred to. The strategy memo from her campaign manager, Mark Penn, also made it clear in 2007 that it was part of their strategy to portray Obama as foreign. Besides what they would say about Obama, Clinton would routinely say in her speeches how she was “born in the middle of America to the middle class in the middle of the last century.”

The rare times that issues were brought up, the points went to Clinton. Trump repeated the standard GOP talking points about repealing Obamacare, but had no meaningful replacement plan. Clinton was also right about Trump’s tax plan primarily benefiting the wealthy, and in supporting background checks and closing the gun show loopholes (even if she did run as a pro-gun churchgoer in 2008).

Both Clinton and Trump Ignore Civil Liberties In Response To Terrorism

bill of rights

While Donald Trump’s disregard for civil liberties in response to terrorism has been rather obvious, one sad fact about the 2016 election is that Hillary Clinton isn’t much better. Mediaite points out a serious flaw in her views in response to a tweet from Clinton from earlier today: “If the FBI is watching you for suspected terrorist links, you shouldn’t be able to just go buy a gun with no questions asked.”

Clinton’s proposal and others like it have met with criticism from civil libertarians and legal scholars, who argue that you cannot constitutionally deny citizens their rights without proving that they are guilty in a trial. “We generally don’t take away rights based on suspicion” is how UCLA law professor and blogger Eugene Volokh puts it.

Clinton evidently disagrees, likely believing that we as a society ought to be wary of anyone being investigated by the feds, even in the absence of a conviction. At the very least, she seems to think we should ask pointed questions of those the federal government believes put the national security of the United States at risk through their actions.

Of course, Clinton’s comments come after the Orlando shooting Sunday morning, carried out by a perpetrator who was investigated by federal authorities but then removed from watch lists. So even if the federal government stops investigating a suspect, we may have to act on the assumption they broke the law anyway.

Mark Joseph Stern also discussed this at Slate:

America has an appalling, unconscionable, and unparalleled gun violence problem. The federal government has proven able in the past to pass gun safety laws—like rigorous licensing requirements and comprehensive backgrounds checks—that have proven to be quite effective at reducing gun violence. Much, much more can and should be done. For example, the federal government should also promptly repeal the outrageously unjust law that protects gun sellers across the country from legal liability when they negligently sell firearms to unqualified purchasers. And Congress should forbid manufacturers from selling weapons of war—guns that have no plausible purpose other than to slaughter vast numbers of humans in as short a time as possible.

 What Congress, or the next president, should not do, however, is forbid individuals on the FBI’s terrorist watch list from purchasing firearms. The problem here is largely one of precedent: The Supreme Court has said private gun ownership is protected by the Second Amendment of the Constitution. It has also ruled that the right to bear arms is a “fundamental right” under the 14th Amendment as a component of the “liberty” protected by the due process clause. As I explained in December:

The Supreme Court’s ahistorical, atextual reading of the Second and 14th Amendments as guarantors of an individual right to bear arms may be deeply flawed. But limiting any right, no matter how specious, based on undisclosed, mistake-ridden lists is even more unsound. The Constitution is anchored by the promise of due process; so long as gun ownership is considered an aspect of liberty, the government must not revoke it unilaterally, with no opportunity for appeal. Civil libertarians should push to abolish the terror watch lists, not expand their reach.

If the government can revoke your right to access firearms simply because it has decided to place you on a secret, notoriously inaccurate list, it could presumably restrict your other rights in a similar manner. You could be forbidden from advocating for causes you believe in, or associating with like-minded activists; your right against intrusive, unreasonable searches could be suspended. And you would have no recourse: The government could simply declare that, as a name on a covert list, you are owed no due process at all.

This is hardly the only civil liberties problem with regards to Hillary Clinton. During the 2008 campaign Hillary Clinton was the only Democrat who refused to sign a pledge to restore Constitutional liberties. All the Republican candidates, with the exception of Ron Paul, also refused to sign. She introduced legislation to make flag burning in protest a felony while in the Senate, and has used language quite similar to Donald Trump in showing a lack of respect for freedom of speech.

There is a special irony with Clinton equating being under FBI investigation with guilt here, considering that Clinton herself is under FBI investigation on other matters. By this logic, Clinton being under investigation should by itself be sufficient grounds to deny her the Democratic nomination. Of course it is much more reasonable to deny someone the nomination to be president than to deny civil liberties to large numbers of people. There has already been plenty revealed about her actions as Secretary of State which should disqualify her from consideration.