Not a Literal Transcription of the ACB Hearings

Super Heroes for Our Time

Senator Di Fi Lets the Gun Control Cat Out of the Bag

Chuck Todd, of NBC/MSNBC fame asked California Senator Diane Feinstein, long time leader of the gun control crowd, “Let me ask you this: give me the slate of laws that if you could wave your wand and have enacted that could have prevented Vegas?”

Sen. Feinstein, to her credit replied, “I’m not sure there is any set of laws that could have prevented it.”

You've got to hand it to her! After all these years leading the charge for gun control, finally a rare moment of honesty! But that isn't stopping her from increasing the number of laws that will not deter criminals, will not deter mass shootings, but will make it more difficult for law abiding gun owners to keep and bear arms.

Forgive me if you've heard it before, but this is my favorite DI Fi story:

Shortly after Dianne Feinstein became mayor of San Francisco, in the wake of the Milk/Moscone shootings, Ms. Feinstein got a law passed in San Francisco making all handguns illegal within city limits. (This was overturned shortly thereafter by the California Supreme Court.)  I remember sitting in my car, listening to a Bay Area news station, KCBS, when they announced the passage of this law. By some coincidence (or the devious mind of the news director), the very next story was of a gunman who had robbed a liquor store in San Francisco using a sawed off shotgun.

Let's recap: It is illegal to make or possess a sawed off shotgun. It is illegal to use a sawed off shotgun in the commission of a crime: Armed robbery is illegal. If he fired any shots, it is illegal to discharge a firearm within city limits. Despite a number of his actions being illegal, mostly felonious, none of the laws on the books deterred this fellow from making his appointed rounds.

The idea that just one more gun law was going to reduce or eliminate gun crime is a fool's errand. Criminals by definition do not obey the law. That will not stop crusaders like Feinstein from adding to the minefield law abiding gun owners must traverse in the pursuit of maintaining their God given right of self defense.

Send in the Democrats (Don't Bother, They're Here!)

No wonder people think clowns are scary!

Assault weapons? Ban the bomb!

When arguing with gun control advocates, one of the arrows in their quiver (which, admittedly, is not a high capacity quiver!), is that, we have to do something , whether or not that something will actually help the problem or even exacerbate it. However,in spite of the foot stamping of Dianne Feinstein (D-Neverland), the so called "assault weapon" ban will not be a part of upcoming "gun safety" legislation, even though there was yet another example in the news recently of another deranged individual bent on mass murder.


This incident happened at the Orlando campus of the University of Florida. A spree shooter wannabee killed himself when his plan started to go awry. A college student with two guns, hundreds of rounds of ammunition... and here is the dirty little secret that the gun banners never want to mention in their grandiose plans to separate you from your firearms...and a backpack filled with explosives... Four to be exact. Four improvised explosive devices. "Bombs", to the uninitiated.

And the reason why I call it a dirty little secret, is because, if you think about it, anyone willing to break all the laws concerning the manufacture and possession of destructive devices, is not going to be deterred by a law against any particular style of firearm. In other words, exactly the sort of person they say they are passing these laws to stop. This would-be shooter carried four bombs. The Aurora CO theater shooter made bombs and incendiary devices to boobytrap his apartment, hoping to kill or injure police whom he knew would search his home after he was killed or captured.

Adding an addition law would not have deterred the Aurora shooter, but, even if he had been denied any of the legal firearms he possessed, how many more people might have died had he simply placed one of his explosive or incendiary devices at each of the exits of that theater?

Dianne Feinstein's slightly hysterical exclamation that no one needs a bazooka is pertinent to a discuss of firearms, only insofar as if someone so crazed or indifferent to law or human life decides to build one, how is an additional law making it illegal going to stop him?

Time for Dianne Feinstein to Quit Waving the Bloody Shirt of Harvey Milk

Just again, we saw it last week, Dianne the Indignant, droning on about how she is qualified to testify about gun violence, having seen it "up close and personal". Having the blood of her fellow members of the SF Board of Supervisors on her like some 'Red Badge of Superior Knowledge'. Please! A couple of months ago, I was in a hospital operating room, observing my surgeon perform arthroscopic knee surgery. And even though I was there and awake the whole time, with my surgeon giving me play by play of exactly what he was doing, I don't expect the AMA to coming calling on me anytime soon for my advice. I was a spectator there. I suppose, had I stuck my finger into one of the incisions to check my pulse, I may have been better qualified, as is Ms. Feinstein. What's up with that, anyhow? Who sticks their finger into a bullet wound to get a pulse? Did she excuse herself, waltz into the ladies' room to scrub in first?

If seeing bullet wounds and their effects "up close and personal" is qualification for setting gun control policy, shouldn't we ask the paramedics who arrived at the scene what their opinions were? They've undoubtedly seen more bullet wounds than Ms. Feinstein. How about the coroner? Does he get a say? Military corpsmen (that's pronounced "Core- men", Mr. President) see more trauma from bullets than the average city coroner. Let's let them decide!

Witnessing an accident by the side of the road, no matter how gruesome, does not qualify you to make decisions on highway construction, signage or guardrail construction, either. While it may have been quite traumatic for you, it does not confer any technical or legal expertise upon you.

The exact opposite case could be made, Ms. Feinstein, in the shooting of your colleagues, if after nearly 35 years, your emotions are riled up to this extreme, where you have to "cool off" after a few simple Constitutional questions, maybe you are too emotionally involved to make rational decisions about it? If you cannot control yourself, Ms. Feinstein, perhaps you should recuse yourself?

The legislative "solutions" you are pushing, would not have prevented the shooting at Sandy Hook, the shooting in the Aurora theater, or the shooting in City Hall in 1978. We all know your antipathy towards handguns, at least, towards those other than the one you happen to be carrying at the time. And your present rhetoric notwithstanding, you have stated that if it were within your power you would ban the private ownership of all guns.

Since you are pushing a "solution" that solves nothing of the problem of Sandy Hook, which supposedly was so great that the Senate was compelled to write a bill within a matter of weeks, when you and your fellow Senators have failed to produce a federal budget, required by the Constitution every year, for the last four years, and it solves nothing of the shooting of those men, whose bloody shirts you love to wave, why should we not see your actions as just one more bit of incrementalism when it comes to banning our Constitutionally protected firearms?

As sad as it is, the assassination of Harvey Milk and George Moscone benefited you personally, Ms. Feinstein. The sudden power vacuum at the top of the Board of Supervisors was filled by the supervisor with the blood stained fingers. You became Mayor of San Francisco, which gave you a larger platform to do things, like pass an un-Constitutional ban on handguns in your city, (which was fortunately overturned). It gave you a platform to run for higher office. But stop pretending that tragedy gave you any special insight into the Constitution or how to solve the problem of gun violence. It did not. That is evidenced by the shallow, knee jerk response you have to every shooting tragedy, whatever the cause and whatever the weapon. Waving the bloody shirts of Harvey Milk and George Moscone will not change that. It just makes you look like you haven't learned anything of use in the last thirty five years, except to play upon people's emotions.

Cross posted at LCR.

Dianne Feinstein -"I Am Not a Sixth Grader!"

One last thought on Dianne Feinstein's somewhat disgraceful performance. She famously declared that she was "Not a sixth grader". There were some who opined that being a sixth grader might be something she could still aspire to be. However, after she proclaimed she wasn't a sixth grader*, she proceded to act like one.

After indignantly defending her exclusion of all but about 2,000 weapons from the American public, she screeched

"What do they need? A bazooka???"

A bazooka, for the uninformed, is a WWII era equivalent of an RPG - rocket powered grenade. Bazookas, because they fire explosive devices, have been banned from the general public and highly regulated by the federal government since the 1930's - in fact, not long after Ms. Feinstein was born! For her to suggest, that to question her ban of some firearms, some as small as .22 caliber, suitable for plinking tin cans, with a weapon of war, capable of destroying armored tanks, goes beyond hyperbole IMHO. It was terribly inappropriate in a discussion of firearms to compare them to fighter jets, A-bombs or bazookas.

In other words, the type of uneducated, over-exaggerated, infantile argument that you might hear... on a schoolyard...outside an elementary school.




*I remember the old saying, "If you have to hang a sign on you saying you is, then you ain't."

Dianne Feinstein Still Hypocritical on Gun Bans

Dianne Feinstein, the poster girl for hypocrisy when it comes to gun control, has spoken again. For those of you new to this rodeo, Di-Fi, as mayor of San Francisco, passed a law banning all handguns in San Francisco. (While carrying her own concealed and licensed handgun). Aside from the folly of passing yet another law that criminals will ignore*, listen to her latest bit of hypocrisy. Now I heard this on the radio at least twice this AM, but after searching the Internet, have not been able to come up with audio or a transcript of this remark, so if you stumble across it, let me know and I will gladly post a correction or an apology, but what I heard was this:

"No one has yet to show me where an assault rifle is better for self defense than a handgun." -Dianne Feinstein (paraphrased)

My initial reaction was something along the lines of, who made you the final arbiter of what is or isn't acceptable for self defense? Does my car or deodorant or toothpaste have to pass the Di-Fi test before I'm allowed to buy them as well? This was the point Ted Cruz made in comparing the First Amendment to the Second: Are there only 2,200 books the government will allow us to have? Part of her tirade against Ted Cruz this AM was her blustering that she "respects" the Constitution:

"I have great respect for it... I've studied the Constitution myself. I am reasonably well educated..."

Well, again, let's recap: Dianne's handgun ban in San Francisco was overruled as...wait for it...un-Constitutional. Respecting it apparently means something different than "adhering to it" to Ms. Feinstein.

But, then, as I got to thinking about her statement, she implies that handguns are just fine and dandy with her, at least for self defense, it's just those nasty, black scary guns we need to get rid of! Except that, when she thought she had the power, she banned private ownership of handguns from the city where she was mayor. So is she saying, "No one has yet to show me where an assault rifle is better for self defense than a handgun, but we plan on taking them away, too!"

And last, but not least, Di-Fi telling an interviewer, that if she'd had the votes she would have banned all guns, period:


Dianne Feinstein Caught Lying About Her Past Gun Ban Intentions

Dianne Feinstein keeps trying to put lipstick on her gun control pig, but her record indicates that she is in favor of banning all guns. If she has to do it one at a time, that's okay, too. I've detailed elsewhere some of the moronic gun bans passed in California, just because they could. If Dianne Feinstein's "reasonable education" can't bring her any understanding or enlightenment about the Second Amendment, why should we trust her with any of the thousands of pages of laws these dim witted do-gooders crank out every year?




*On the day Di-Fi's handgun gun was passed, I was listening to KCBS radio out of San Francisco. The first story after announcing the handgun ban, was a story about a man who held up a liquor store with a sawed off shotgun. Let's recap: It's illegal to make a sawed of shotgun. It's illegal to possess a sawed off shotgun. It's illegal to transport a loaded shotgun in your vehicle. (Let's presume for the moment our crook didn't use an unloaded gun.) It's illegal to use any kind of shotgun in the commission of a robbery. That's a minimum of four felonies committed by this outstanding citizen of SF. What makes Di-Fi think that one more law on the books will deter the commission of violent crimes?

Bonus points if you can figure out WTF Di-Fi is talking about "imploding bullets":

I’ve seen the bullets that implode.

???

Cross posted at LCR.

Dianne Feinstein: It's 'Legal to Hunt Humans'

A lot of people have been trying to make some hay out of an admittedly stupid comment made by California Senator Dianne Feinstein. (Although, "stupid comment made by California Senator" is almost a tautology!) I do not think for one minute that she believes it is 'legal to hunt humans'**. Here's what she said:

"And yet it’s legal to hunt humans with 15-round, 30-round, even 150-round magazines. Limiting magazine capacity is critical because it is when a criminal, a drug dealer, a deranged individual has to pause to change magazines and reload that the police or brave bystanders have the opportunity to take that individual down.”

She was, IMHO, trying to make the point that criminals could use large capacity magazines, that they purchase legally, for the commission of their crimes. In her ardor to ban handguns, long guns, shotguns, and any accessories for those devices, she fails to notice that the hunting of humans IS illegal. How preposterous then, are we to assume that someone who would disregard the law insofar as taking another human life would be bothered by an infraction of some minor statute designed to limit his grossly illegal mindset?

Di-Fi's mistake wasn't in stating that hunting humans is legal, it's the fact that, to a miscreant, intent on violating one of the oldest and strictest of our laws, 'Thou shalt not murder', the fact that he might have to break a lesser law first, and obtain a larger capacity magazine, either through the black market, theft, 3D printer or some carefully cobbled bits of sheet metal and plastic from someone's garage or basement, and that such a law would deter him is ludicrous on its face.

I have six words for you Sen. Feinstein. I understand it has worked well in a number of states:

Use a gun, go to jail.

Doesn't matter whether you kill someone. Doesn't matter if you even fire it. If you carry a gun in the commission of a crime, you do hard time. Extend it to replicas and toys as well. If the victim of your crime thinks you were carrying a gun, same punishment applies. That's deterrence

Punish the criminal, not the tools he chooses to use. Disarming the law abiding is like getting a vasectomy because the neighbors are having too many kids. It's time to stop punishing all of society for the crimes of the few, and get serious about enforcing the crimes already on the books to rid the streets of violent criminals.

**She may have been confusing this with Obama's predator drone policy, too!

Cross posted at LCR.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein Responds on Benghazi

I recently wrote an email to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, regarding the scandals and cover up at Benghazi. The following is her reply, in full. I suffer no illusions that this was other than a blanket reply to all such inquiries.

Thank you for your letter about the terrorist attack on the American Consulate in Benghazi, Libya that killed four Americans, including our Ambassador to Libya. I appreciate your taking the time to write and welcome the opportunity to respond.
First, I must say that the United States has suffered a terrible loss. Ambassador Chris Stephens, Glen Doherty, Tyrone Woods, and Sean Smith laid down their lives in service to this country. I strongly believe that we owe it to them to determine what happened during the attack to bring those responsible to justice.
On November 15 and 16, 2012, the Senate Intelligence Committee, which I chair, held two closed hearings about the circumstances surrounding the Benghazi attack. The Committee will be holding more hearings on this topic, and I expect that there will be public findings coming out of this review.
Due to the classified nature of the hearings, I am not at liberty to comment specifically on them. In addition to reviewing the attack in Benghazi, we will also hold additional oversight hearings on threats posed to other U.S. government facilities in the Middle East and North Africa, to ensure that warnings are heard and properly heeded.
Again, thank you for your letter. Knowing your views is important to me, and I hope you continue to inform me of issues that matter to you. If you have any additional questions or concerns, please feel free to contact my office in Washington, D.C. at (202) 224-3841.

Sincerely yours,
Dianne Feinstein
United States Senator

Let me preface my remarks by saying that I have more respect for Dianne Feinstein than I have for most Democrats. Her stated position on the death penalty, for example, is to the right of most of her Democrat colleagues. Still, her positions on gun control and government spending, leave her as a pygmy among Lilliputians.

And while I appreciate her words of condolences and praise for the four who died in the attack, I find her response to be somewhat disingenuous as it applies to the role of the president on that day. If the president chooses to stonewall the country as to his actions on that day, it is incumbent upon Senators, like Ms. Feinstein to uncover the truth. We, the American people, and specifically the families of the fallen deserve to know the truth.

When asked what he knew and when he knew it, the president deflected, in the words of Jake Tapper, "saying he’s waiting for the results of investigations before making any conclusions about what went wrong." Only, there was no investigation required for the president to tell the American public what he knew. All it required was a backbone.

"Mr. President: Exactly when did you first become aware of the attack?" This question divulges nothing of national security. We know he was in the White House and not on some secret SR-71 flight* in preparation of an October surprise on Mitt Romney. I'm sure there are scribes and secretaries within the White House who could refresh his memory, had he forgotten the exact time. It's a simple question: When did you first learn of the attack? It does not require a committee to discover the truth. It only requires one man to tell us the truth. Why is he stonewalling?

Second, "Mr. President, exactly what were your orders and to whom when you first heard of the attack? With whom did you confer about any action to be taken?" Obama has responded in the past with:

...the minute I found out what was happening, I gave three very clear directives. Number one, make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to. Number two, we’re going to investigate exactly what happened so that it doesn’t happen again. Number three, find out who did this so we can bring them to justice. And I guarantee you that everyone in the state department, our military, the CIA, you name it, had number one priority making sure that people were safe.

Which minute would that have been, Mr. Obama? And, forgive me, but "doing whatever we need to" doesn't sound like a very clear directive to me. If I instructed you, for example, to 'fix' the economy by saying, "Don't just sit there, do something!", would you consider that a "clear directive"? Please be precise: Which specific directives did you give and to whom? If you gave specific orders that were not carried out, the American people deserve to know why.

And that is why I find Sen. Feinstein's letter equally equivocal. The things the American people want most to know, is not that which must be spoken of in "closed hearings" of a "classified nature" that she is "not at liberty to comment specifically on them". We would like to know whose boneheaded decision to was to keep a mission there, unprotected, while the rest of our Western allies were exercising the better part of valor and leaving the area because of the dangers presented. I believe this can be done without compromising intelligence assets either here or in the region.

Secondly, given additional warnings, and knowing the significance of the eleventh anniversary of 9/11, why were not additional precautions of any kind taken?

Thirdly, we need to know whether or not the Commander-in-Chief of the United States was diligent, negligent or derelict in his duties as C-in-C. What orders were given when and to whom. We do not necessarily need to know where or how many aircraft, SEALs or Rangers are standing by at any moment for such a mission as this. We do need to know if it was ordered and if not, why not?

And lastly, who was responsible for the execrable cover up and bogus story about the video, when our intelligence sources were warned of a terrorist attack and that there was no evidence of a "demonstration" that escalated over a video that practically no one knew about or had ever seen.

Nothing in those few questions should compromise national security. Much of the information can be elicited from just one man: Barack Obama. If he is not forthcoming, he should be subpoenaed to testify before Congress. He should not be allowed to stonewall this, merely because it might reflect badly on his character or job performance.

Feel free to call him to a closed session, but be prepared to reveal the truth to the American people when you are finished.


*The bogus "October Surprise", where George H. W. Bush, was accused, as a civilian, of commandeering a military spy plane to fly to Paris, when no other aircraft could have fit the time frame of the supposed conspiracy.

Cross posted at LCR.

"Will the Chair Yield Fifteen More Minutes to Mr. Glock?"

What is Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) Afraid of?

California Senator Dianne Feinstein, who incidentally looks good for 102, refuses to debate her Republican challenger Elizabeth Emken.


Even those liberal bastions ABC and the LA Times can't shame her into honest and open political discourse with her opponent. Personally, I don't thinks she's hiding any skeletons in her closet. I just think she may have trouble finding her closet!

More at The Blaze