Saturday, June 28, 2008

Supreme Court Takes Second Amendment Out Of D.C.’s Crosshairs

By Anthony Leone

Many Second Amendment supporters are cheering as the Supreme Court ruled yesterday that the nation’s capital had no right to restrict honest citizens from owning hand guns.

The controversial 32-year-old ban was held by gun control advocates as the ultimate, yet delusional, weapon to preventing crime and something that the rest of the nation should be doing.

However, the advocates always became silent when people mentioned how dangerous Washington, D.C. was because of the ban. This is because the ban did not stop criminals from obtaining guns from different areas and bringing them into the nation’s capital.

But this bit of common sense was lost to leading gun control advocate Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who said this about the ruling:

“I believe the people of this great country will be less safe because of it.”

And this is despite the fact that Washington, D.C., was once this nation’s murder capital. Apparently, Feinstein had her fingers in her ears on her way into the Senate during this time.

Many people are pleased with the ruling, because now honest citizens can start defending themselves against lawbreakers who do not follow the rules, hence their name, lawbreakers.

People like Feinstein do not have a clue as to what is really happening in places that have gun control. England has a strict gun ban and all it resulted are criminals still using guns or knifes to rob and murder their defenseless victims.

A dose of reality is needed for those who honestly believe that restricting decent Americans of their Second Amendment rights is a way to handle crime. And another dose is needed for those who believe that adding another law on top of similar ones will help matters.

Let’s enforce the laws that we have now and make sure that the criminals are punished and not honest folks.

Maybe if politicians like Feinstein did something about the crime in Washington, D.C., then law-abiding citizens would not have the need to purchase firearms to protect themselves.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Kucinich’s Impeachment Quest May Hurt Obama’s White House Bid

By Anthony Leone

Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich introduced 35 articles of impeachment against President Bush. But his quest to remove the President from office may hurt presumed Democratic nominee Barack Obama’s own quest to win the 2008 election.

What was the reaction by his fellow Democrats? They pretty much opposed the former presidential candidate’s futile efforts. In fact, Democratic leaders are expected to table the resolution by referring it to the Judiciary Committee, where they hope it will be buried and forgotten.

The articles deals with such things as the Iraq war, global warming, allegedly holding American citizens and “foreign captives” (let’s call them terrorists) illegally, voting rights, and President Bush’s handling of Hurricane Katrina, just to name a few. But let’s focus on the Iraq war.

Now, let’s forget a few things about why the impeachment will fail, such as how the U.N. never enforced its own resolutions against former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, so no one knew if he really had his weapons of mass destruction. Or that the U.N. voted in agreement to the resolution that Saddam still had WMD.

Or how former President Bill Clinton ordered Operation Desert Fox to deal with Saddam’s weapons programs, after Iraq failed, again, to provide U.N. weapons inspectors with an honest account of them. Or how there were reports that Saddam shipped his WMD to Syria before the 2003 war.

But let’s remember that a great number of Democrats who said many times during the buildup of the war that Saddam was a danger to America and the world with his deadly weapons. Did they lie too? They saw the same information that the President saw. So, does that mean there will be an impeachment for Bush and the Democrats?

And more importantly, this will not only shatter Obama’s chances for the White House, but the Democrat’s as well. Why?

Obama was strongly against going into Iraq from the very start. And here is a speech he gave in October 2002 at an anti-war rally that will probably come back to haunt him:

“(Saddam) has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity. He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him,” the possible future president said nearly six years ago.

Now, if Kucinich’s goal is to get rid of President Bush from the White House, it could also rid the Democrats’ goal from getting into it.

This is why House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer and fellow Democrat and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have said that they would not pursue impeachment charges against the President. Because not only will it air the Democrat’s dirty laundry that a good number of them voted to give President Bush the power to go to war, but it will show how they are not unified if their presumed nominee was against going to war.

And more importantly, Obama’s speech is a huge weapon against him. He said that Saddam had WMD and knew that Saddam was a threat to the world and that U.N. resolutions were useless against the bloody dictator. But he didn’t think removing him was important enough for America’s safety.

Wow. What a thing to say. Because the Republicans can highlight this speech and point to Obama’s global inexperience and how he should not be the one to answer the phone about a national security threat at 3 a.m.

Granted, I believe the President should have handled the war better. He should have given the U.N. weapons inspectors a lot more time before considering military use. His administration should not have allowed retired generals and other former military leaders to sell the war to TV networks. But it still boils down to one thing: At the time, we found ourselves in a global terror war and we needed to know once and for all whether or not Saddam had those weapons. And because Kucinich opened up this can of worms, the Democrats are going to have a hard time putting the lid back on.

Kucinich is the little engine that shouldn’t. He either does not realize or care that he is sabotaging his party’s chances for the White House. And Kucinich is showing how ineffective Obama will be as a Commander-In-Chief.

Kucinich’s impeachment crusade is like Don Quixote’s battle with the windmill: There is nothing there that warrants these charges.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Solutions Needed To Help Troubled Youth

By Anthony Leone

Many around the world were shocked when they learned that a 25-year-old Japanese man allegedly used his truck to run down a group of people, jumped out of his vehicle and stabbed 18 people, killing seven in Tokyo.

In fact, knife attacks have become too familiar in Japan, once proud of its low crime rates. This past March, there was a random stabbing outside a train station in Tokyo and in January of this year, five people were hurt in another stabbing attack, reports Reuters.

Over in the United Kingdom, The Times did a feature article on teen-agers and how they deal with gangs and knife attacks, which are becoming too common. Just looking at someone the wrong way or telling another teen what town they are from can result in a “shanking” or stabbing.

The residents of the two countries believe they share a common link to the cause of crime: No one will listen to them.

The teen-agers in the United Kingdom claim that the police are accusatory towards them, especially towards black youths, and the Japanese believe that the family structure is deteriorating.

“Recently, peoples’ relationships have become strained,” 29-year-old Taishi Ikeda, of Japan, told Reuters in an interview. “There’s no-one to talk to when you’re troubled.”

Granted, there are many factors for the decline of society, such as economics, politics, trouble in the home, or just the individuals themselves. The list certainly goes on and on.

Trying to find a solution will not be easy for this problem. Knee-jerk reactions are not going to help, such as the one from Japan’s top government spokesman Nobutaka Machimura, who suggested tighter restrictions on obtaining survival knives, like the one allegedly used by the 25-year-old man.

Some people believed that tighter or even complete gun control in the United Kingdom and Japan would drastically reduced violent crime. However, it just made criminals seek out other weapons to harm or kill innocent citizens.

Either tougher new laws or enforcement of current laws can be productive in punishing criminals. However, more is needed to reach out to youths before they find their way into a dead end alley with a person holding a sharp instrument of death in his hand.

Politicians and police should make more of an effort to helping or improving social programs to keeping kids off the streets. They should also make sure that counselors are on hand to help discuss the problems that most young people, and even young adults, are facing.

But while we feel sorry for the terrible conditions that troubled youths and young adults find themselves in, it should not excuse any crimes that they commit. Wrong is wrong and it should be punished.

But there needs to be more recognition on the solutions to prevent these people from finding themselves in a hopeless situation.

Sure, there are many youths who do great good and go unnoticed. And it’s important to recognize the good deeds done by others to show us all that there is a lot of hope left in this world.

However, showing the negative is just as important, because it shows where we as a society and as a people are failing and how we need to address and fix these problems.