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Wednesday, August 03, 2005
Real special rights
Conservatives love to bash gays for seeking the "special right" to be treated like everyone else. A real "special right" would be treated like no one else. Conservatives have no problem conferring special rights on big donors:
How the manufacturers and sellers of two inherently dangerous products, guns and tobacco, were given the only two exceptions from our country's product safety requirements is incomprehensible and indefensible. It demonstrates, however, their extraordinary political and financial powers over a majority of members of Congress.
For me, the acid test of this legislation's true intent was the Senate's defeat, by a vote of 62-37, of the amendment offered by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and me, which established liability for "gross negligence that was a proximate (direct) cause of death or injury" to another person.
I was incredulous that anyone could oppose that standard of liability for negligence. Yet even that was unacceptable to the powerful National Rifle Association and, thus, to a majority of the Senate, including the other Minnesota senator.
Again, this special immunity from responsibility has absolutely nothing to do with the constitutional right of every law-abiding citizen to lawfully buy and own firearms.
...To his eternal disgrace, Sen. Norm Coleman voted every time as the National Rifle Association dictated, to defeat amendments and to pass this bill.
I disagree with Mark Dayton, author of the above, on one point. Smilin' Norm will disgrace himself far more deeply and memorably than for his lock-step support of the NRA.
Today's Republican party doesn't trust regular people. The people who sit on juries. Republicans don't want juries to decide how much having the wrong leg amputated damages a man or whether a gun dealer was negligent.
Juries have long been arbiters of common sense in this country. Juries aren't always right, of course, but they are the best solution we've found so far. I trust juries, and the regular folks sitting on them. Republicans -- Norm Coleman included -- don't give a damn what regular folks think when it might conflict with the agenda of the Republican donor class.
6 Comments:
Thanks for the modifier "Today's" used to describe the Republican Party. It used to be that being a Republican meant more than "I got mine, screw you!" Alas, since the Reagan Revolution, there aren't may real Republicans. What used to be known as a Republican is today probably more accurately described as Clinton Democrats. Anyway, the point is that it hasn't always been a bad thing to be a Republican.
By 
, at
5:20 PM
Yes, there were the Democratic Republicans - Jefferson, Madison, et al. They of course became just Demorats. Kidding aside, those guys I used to rail against in college are starting to seem pretty good by today's standards.
When the highest marginal tax rate was 90%, I think Republicans were right that the rate was too high and confiscatory. Unfortunately, as the highest rate has plummeted, today's Republicans continue to make the same argument despite the enormous change in facts.
My wife, Carjo, got in a flaming email war last night with a crazed friend of hers who got "born again" and lost all common sense in the process. It really set the nutjob and her "Christian husband" off the deep end when Carjo sent a banner that said "Jesus was a liberal". Anyway, she forced at least one of them to admit that the Rethuglican party of today is not even close to resembling the old G.O.P., especially regarding fiscal responsibility. And then they went off on another tirade on why tolerance is a bad thing. Jesus could be heard weeping from heaven.
By , at
10:45 AM
I keep waiting for someone to pick up the Jesus was a liberal meme and run with it. It seems like a pretty easy argument ot make based on my limited understanding of the NT. I'm willing to accept that Moses was a conservative tho.
Moses was an abolitionist, tho. Some of both.
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