Court Rejects Gun-Rights Fringe Effort to Thwart Gun Ban

While overshadowed by the likely kangaroo court in the U.S. Senate on the impeachment of Donald Trump, Virginians are arguably witnessing precisely why common sense gun control laws are needed in the Commonwealth of Virginia after 26 years of Republicans pandering to every conceivable gun fanatic including allowing so-called "open carry" of weapons of war. Faced with probably cause to anticipate neo-Nazis and white supremacists and other out of state groups descending on Richmond - some hoping to spark a race war - the Governor of Virginia banned all guns from the Virginia Capitol grounds (Indeed, the FBI arrested some scary types - one with experience in explosives - who were headed to Richmond). Rather than put public safety first as the Governor had done, extreme gun rights groups - the misnamed Virginia Citizens Defense League and Guns for America, Inc. - filed a lawsuit today seeking to have the Governor's ban set aside.  Thankfully, the court rejected the extremists bid and upheld the Governor's gun ban.  All of this shows the lack of sane thinking on the part of the gun fetish crowd.  As one friend noted:

"arguing that a well armed society is a polite society while literally threatening death and violence isn’t very productive...maybe just the opposite. No doubt any associated legislation [before the legislature] will trigger (I’m so sorry) court cases...which is the appropriate path of challenging laws in our system of checks and balances."

Frankly, the more I see of the gun crowd, the tighter I want the gun control laws to be.  These people are dangerous and put their wants and whims - and need to bolster their inadequate manhood - ahead of the general public.   A piece in the Virginian Pilot looks at the Court's rejection of the gun extremists lawsuit. Here are article excerpts (read the whole article and note how Republicans' sole concern was kissing the asses of gun extremists):

A Richmond judge rejected a bid by gun-rights groups and residents Thursday to block Gov. Ralph Northam’s temporary ban on guns in Capitol Square.

The temporary injunction request, filed in Richmond Circuit Court, says Northam doesn’t have the authority to issue such a ban, and the ban violates Second Amendment rights and possibly the First Amendment.

[A]fter a hearing, Judge Joi Taylor denied the request, saying the governor has the authority to issue such an order under a state emergency services law and that the court should show deference to the executive on the issue.

Taylor wrote that the governor has the authority to enact the ban because he oversees the Department of General Services, an executive branch agency that controls Capitol Square. She cited a state code section that said he also had the authority to take "action from time to time” during emergencies to ensure safety.

On Wednesday, Northam announced the ban and state of emergency — which goes into effect Friday and ends Tuesday — saying intelligence officials had heard credible threats of violence expected Monday, when the Virginia Citizens Defense League holds its annual lobby day and rally to protect gun rights.

Those who filed the injunction request — Gun Owners of America, the Virginia Citizens Defense League and three Fairfax residents who are concealed carry permit holders and say the ban would violate their rights — can appeal the judge’s ruling, but Friday and Monday are state holidays, and courts will be closed. David Browne, the lawyer arguing for the injunction an hour after it was filed Thursday, said carrying a gun was a form of speech, and that people had a “right to peacefully assemble in the manner they see fit.” Toby Heytens, the state’s solicitor general, pointed to the credible threats of violence Northam said police received, and said the temporary ban was a way to prevent another event like Charlottesville, where in 2017 violence erupted from hate groups and a woman was killed.

He cited a New York Times article published Thursday that reported FBI officials arrested three suspected members of a neo-Nazi hate group amid allegations they planned to travel to the rally Monday.

Heytens argued the ban didn’t prevent anyone from assembling, speaking or petitioning their government, and argued simply carrying a gun isn’t considered free speech. While the hearing was going on Thursday, the Senate narrowly passed three of Northam’s proposed gun control measures: universal background checks on gun sales, allowing localities to regulate firearms in government buildings and parks, and limiting handgun sales to one a month.

It's time for sane Virginians to tell their legislators that they want sane and strict gun control laws. No more arming dangerous elements and putting the lives of the majority at risk. 

Jobs Growth Favors Democratic Counties

Each month when I read Virginia Business magazine, there is a common thread: cities and counties in the so-called urban crescent of Virginia are largely thriving while rural areas and Southwest Virginia are struggle.  With the expansion of Medicaid under Gov. Ralph Northam, many of these rural areas are less likely to lose their local hospitals, but this will not change the reality that younger Virginians are fleeing rural Virginia for the cities and their suburbs leaving those rural areas with an aging and declining population.  Meanwhile, due to the "God, guns and gays" fixation of the populace, most new businesses prefer to avoid the areas and, instead, locate in the more progressive urban regions of Virginia.  The result is that the downward spiral in rural Virginia - and rural America -  continues.  A piece at PBS News Hour looks at the reality that job grow even in a supposedly strong economy is mostly focused on progressive, Democrat voting areas.  Trump has not delivered to his rural supporters who continue to allow themselves to be swayed by Trump's racism and pandering to gun and religious extremists.  Here are excerpts:

On average for the year-ended this May, 58.5 percent of the job gains were in counties that backed Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016, according to an Associated Press analysis of monthly government jobs data by county.

Despite an otherwise robust national economy, the analysis shows that a striking number of Trump counties are losing jobs. The AP found that 35.4 percent of Trump counties have shed jobs in the past year, compared with just 19.2 percent of Clinton counties.

As more money pools in such corporate hubs as Houston, San Francisco or Seattle, prosperity spills over less and less to smaller towns and cities in America’s interior. That would seem to undercut what Trump sees as a central accomplishment of his administration — job creation for middle class and blue-collar workers in towns far removed from glitzy urban centers.

Job growth in Trump’s economy is still concentrated in the same general places as it was toward the end of Barack Obama’s presidency — when roughly 58.7 percent of the average annual job gains were in Democratic counties.

Yet the lack of transformative job growth in Trump areas hasn’t seemed to erode his support among Republicans, while hiring in Democratic areas have done little to improve his standing with those voters. For Trump’s core supporters, cultural issues such as gun rights, immigration and loyalty to the president have become dominant priorities.

But other issues preoccupy the minds of the party faithful in Trump strongholds such as Beaver County, Pennsylvania, northwest of Pittsburgh.

Chip Kohser, the county Republican chairman and the bristle-bearded founder of a farm share company, said his party members are rallying around their staunch opposition to gun control. “Our No. 1 motivating factor,” he said, “is Second Amendment issues.”

Since May 2017, Beaver County has lost 191 jobs. With the warmer summer weather, hiring is now on an upswing. But employers have fewer job applicants available as the labor force has shrunk by roughly 1,000 workers in the past 12 months, the result of decades of population loss that hit former steel towns such as Aliquippa, Beaver Falls and Midland.

The tax cuts haven’t stopped the outflow of people. Chatting over eggs, bacon and home fries, Kohser estimated that the tax cuts have added perhaps $1,200 to his annual household income and roughly the same to many others in the area — not likely enough on its own to rejuvenate the local economy.

Many of those forgotten men and women might cheer the president for slapping tariffs on imported goods to defend U.S. factory jobs or his vow to build a wall on the Mexican border to block illegal immigration. But for struggling communities waiting for jobs to be restored, Trump’s tax cuts — which were skewed toward corporations and wealthy individuals — have yet to deliver.

During the past year, the healthiest job gains have been in counties containing such vibrant cities as Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Seattle, all of them places that have favored Democrats.

Texas, which Trump won handily, reflects the geographic split in the economy. Within that state, Clinton — not Trump — won the counties that have accounted for bulk of that state’s job growth.

When the Pew Research Center asked voters in June to identify the nation’s most pressing issue, more of them chose immigration, race, political gridlock or Trump himself than the economy. The proportion of people who said the economy was their top priority fell to its lowest level in more than eight years.

Sixty percent of Americans told Pew that they see their midterm vote as an act of either supporting the president (26 percent) or opposing him (34 percent).

[C]onservatives and liberals have become more sharply split on such issues as confidence in the government and social institutions, religious participation and stances on marriage, sex and abortion.

In Pennsylvania, many Democrats see the choices made by Trump as putting democracy itself at risk. Their fears stem in part from his administration’s initial policy of separating refugee children from their parents and his seemingly deferential relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose nation interfered in the 2016 election, according to U.S. intelligence agencies.

“What I’m hearing daily is fear amongst people as to whether their democracy is slipping away from them,” said Nancy Mills, the Pennsylvania Democratic chairwoman. “I’m really hearing that more than anything else.”

[T]he economic growth he [Trump] promised would revitalize Beaver County may depend on its ability to attract immigrants as it did a century ago when the steel mills brought Germans, Italians and Eastern Europeans workers to the area.

Beaver County never fully recovered from the steel mill closures in the 1980s that caused the unemployment rate to spike at nearly 30 percent.

Many young workers with college degrees migrated east for Pittsburgh’s technology and medical care jobs. The result of this population flight is that Beaver County is rapidly aging, with a median age of 44.8 years old, compared with 37.7 nationwide and 32.9 in Pittsburgh.

Republican Rep. Keith Rothfus . . . said there was a clear path for generating job growth: Immigrants.  You look at areas of the country that are really thriving — there’s a significant immigrant population,” he said. “We need to do a better job of attracting immigrants here. This place was built on immigrants.”

But Rothfus has also been outspoken on the importance of tighter border security.  . . . As of now, Beaver County is still waiting on the job surge.

Rothus, like most Republicans and their supporters would rather pander to white nationals and bigots than speak the truth that GOP policies are harming their base economically.  Meanwhile, the bigotry of the GOP base makes their strongholds unattractive to the very businesses that they need to attract.  Nothing Trump says or does will change this reality. His supporters need to look in the mirror if they want to see the real cause of their problems.

Joe Scarborough - The GOP must dump Trump

The train wreck that is Donald Trump and the fetid swamp of insanity which is today's base of the Republican Party is becoming far too much for what few sane and decent Republicans. True Trump is the logical culmination of GOP policies and dog whistle race baiting and misogyny over the last decade and a half or more, but now that the result of their own policies have become consolidated in Trump, thinking Republicans are view Trump with revulsion and rightly so.  Trump's suggestion yesterday that gun rights lunatics might need to assassinate Hillary Clinton and/or federal judges seems to have been the final straw for some, including former GOP Congressman Joe Scarborough who calls for the GOP to remove Trump in an op-ed in the Washington Post.  Here are excerpts:

The Muslim ban, the David Duke denial, the “Mexican” judge flap, the draft dodger denigrating John McCain’s military service, the son of privilege attacking an immigrant Gold Star mother and the constant revisionism and lying about past political positions taken are but a few of the lowlights that have punctuated Donald Trump’s chaotic chase for the presidency.

Any one of these offenses would have disqualified any other candidate for president. But the Republican nominee remained competitive against a historically weak Democratic nominee on the promise of bringing radical change and dramatic disruption to Washington.

That appears to be changing. Post-convention polls show Trump falling behind by double digits both nationally and in must-win swing states like Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Virginia.

And the political ride will only get rockier for Trump in the coming days afterhe suggested that one way to keep a conservative Supreme Court after Hillary Clinton got elected would be to assassinate her or federal judges. 

We are in unchartered waters but that does not mean that the way forward is not clear. It is.

1. The Secret Service should interview Donald Trump and ask him to explain his threatening comments.

1. Paul Ryan and every Republican leader should denounce in the strongest terms their GOP nominee suggesting conservatives could find the Supreme Court more favorable to their desires if his political rival was assassinated.

1. Paul Ryan and every Republican leader should revoke their endorsement of Donald Trump. At this point, what else could Trump do that would be worse than implying the positive impact of a political assassination?

1. The Republican Party needs to start examining quickly their options for removing the Republican nominee.

A bloody line has been crossed that cannot be ignored. At long last, Donald Trump has left the Republican Party few options but to act decisively and get this political train wreck off the tracks before something terrible happens.