It’s time, once again, for the Louis Renault Awards! As regular readers will recall, Captain Louis Renault berated Humphrey Bogart’s Rick in Casablanca, telling him he was “shocked, shocked!” to discover gambling going on in Rick’s Place. At that moment, he was handed his gambling winnings, which he quickly tucked away. In that spirit of inspired and shameless hypocrisy, let’s consider two recent developments:
The Daily Caller has revealed that President Obama, who is salivating over the possibility of disarming as much of the public as possible, signed a bill on 11-10-13 giving himself Secret Service protection for life. Prior law provided for such protection for only 10 years after leaving office.
This would be the same President Obama who would deny American educators and students armed protection in their schools while sending his daughters to a school that has many armed guards present at all times, not counting the Secret Service detail assigned to the presidential children.
I’m shocked, shocked!
But I’m not surprised. No rational person would deny a president or former president necessary protection, but one would hope that as an employee of the American people, any president would do nothing to deprive his employers of the ability to protect their lives and the lives of their loved ones. Mr. Obama obviously has no sense of irony or shame, and without a doubt believes that his life and that of his family is far, far more important than the lives of the pathetic, meaningless denizens of flyover country, God and gun clingers all. Why do such peasants deserve the same kind of firearms and magazines provided for the men and women protecting our royal family?
And I’m deeply shocked to discover that NBC’s David Gregory, who possessed and displayed a 30 round AR-15 magazine on air in an attempt to trip up NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre (he failed), will not be arrested or charged with possessing the magazine, which is worth a year in jail and a $1000 fine if possessed by commoners. The AP, Via Fox News, observes:
The city’s Office of the Attorney General, which handles low-level crimes, said criminal charges wouldn’t serve the public’s best interests even though possession of the magazine — capable of holding up to 30 rounds of ammunition — was clearly against local gun laws.
‘Influencing our judgment in this case, among other things, is our recognition that the intent of the temporary possession and short display of the magazine was to promote the First Amendment purpose of informing an ongoing public debate about firearms policy in the United States, especially while this subject was foremost in the minds of the public’ after the Connecticut school massacre and President Barack Obama’s address to the nation, D.C. Attorney General Irvin Nathan wrote a lawyer for NBC.
Still, Nathan said, there were other legal ways to prove the point and that ‘there is no doubt of the gravity of the illegal conduct in this matter, especially in a city and a nation that have been plagued by carnage from gun violence.’ He said it was a ‘very close decision’ to not bring charges.
NBC was very circumspect:
Meet the Press’ issued a statement Friday that said: ‘We displayed the empty magazine solely for journalistic purposes to help illuminate an important issue for our viewers. We accept the District of Columbia Attorney General’s admonishment, respect his decision and will have no further comment on this matter.
I’m doubly shocked, shocked! The media doesn’t want to comment about a story about the media? Who coulda thunk it?!
So now there appears, in the Nation’s capital, to be a journalistic exception to violating the law, particularly since the media provides the vital service of “help[ing] to illuminate an important issue [for viewers].” One can only imagine what Gregory could get away with in “illuminating” stories about rape, murder, or similarly “journalistic” matters of public interest.
D.C.’s firearm laws are, of course, idiotic and no one should be punished under such unconstitutional and politically charged statutes. However, many innocent citizens have been charged and convicted of similar and identical violations, and in many of those cases, their violations were entirely inadvertent and unintentional. Gregory and NBC asked for permission to violate the law, were denied, and went ahead anyway. It would be difficult indeed to imagine a better candidate for prosecution, particularly by a prosecutor’s office that persecutes with abandon other citizens running afoul of these laws.
As an arm of the Democrat party, NBC obviously benefits from Obama Administration crony corruption. What a surprise.
UPDATE, 2120 CST, 01-12-13: In 2004, while a state senator in Illinois, Mr. Obama voted against a law that would have provided an exception to draconian gun restrictions by allowing an exemption from prosecution for using a gun to defend one’s own home.
Keep in mind that as a state Senator, Mr. Obama voted “present” some 129 times, apparently to avoid leaving any political fingerprints. However, he was obviously more than willing to leave his finger and footprints on a vote denying Illinois citizens freedom from prosecution for the heinous crime of saving their lives and the lives of their families in their own homes.
I’m shocked, shocked!
And in the Delicious Irony department (a subsidiary of the Louis Renault Awards), we find a petition on the official White House blog (here’s a screen shot in case it mysteriously goes wherever most of the information requested of the most transparent Administration in history goes) proposing that since gun free zones have
done such a great job for our nation’s school children, that armed guards for the President, the VP and their families be abandoned and gun free zones be established instead. I’d demand the same be done for congress and all government functionaries. Hey, if it’s good enough for “the children,” surely it’s good enough for Mr. Obama!
I am getting a real cynical appreciation for the Media, Democrats and especially this president.
The new law also authorizes Secret Service protection for the children of former presidents until they turn 16.
Dear Ervin T. Bishop:
Thanks for your comment and welcome to SMM. You’re quite right; the Daily Caller link does provide that information.
If there is problem with a President having armed guards while ordinary citizens can not..
……..then there is a problem with high-profile buildings having a taxpayer-funded level of security that is higher than that for ordinary buildings.
It is not that the human life of a President is more important than the human life of an ordinary citizen. A reasonable approach is that a President or a high-profile building is significantly more likely to be in danger from the actions of terrorists and nutters. The extra security is a recognition of the major symbolic nature of an attack – and not related to the intrinsic value of the particular person or building.
.
The Gregory decision seems rational to me.
The OAG’s letter included “NBC should be made aware that OAG’s decision not to press charges in this matter was a very close decision and not one to which it came lightly or easily.”
Even though the incident was a clear breach of *the letter* of the law, the intent of the law could not rationally encompass the particular circumstances in advance.
The OAG letter is certainly not a ‘No worries – forget it’. It reads as a very severe warning.
Blind application of the letter of the law is the tryanny of bureacracy.
Dear SlingTrebuchet:
Thanks for your comment! I agree that an attack on an American president and/or his family carries great symbolic and political significance, however, the point remains that it is hypocrisy of the first order to be surrounded 24/7/265 by highly trained men and women armed with actual automatic weapons while working to deny common handguns and rifles to law abiding American citizens. While the death of Mr. John Smith of Flyover County, USA at the hands of a criminal does not have the political or symbolic significance of the death of a President, their lives are of equal value, and the unalienable right of self defense is bestowed with no less fervor on Mr. Smith than Mr. President by the Creator. Unless we are willing to say that only some people have the right to self defense, and/or that there are time and place limitations on the right–remember, the President’s life is protected 24/7/365 wherever he is–then the Second Amendment means what it says, just as the Supreme Court has twice ruled that it does. Therefore the law abiding may not be denied access to the weapons, ammunition and accessories in most common and accepted use, which absolutely includes semiautomatic handguns and rifles with standard capacity magazines rather than magazines arbitrarily limited in capacity, regardless of how scary they might appear to the weak willed.
Regarding Mr Gregory, who should not be the victim of blind application of the letter of the law: a man who knowingly and with specific intent violated that law, violated it after asking the police and being refused permission to violate it, or a man who was discovered with a few loose rounds of ammunition in his backpack, rounds he was unaware were present? Or perhaps a man who called the police to ensure that he was following the letter of the law in transporting a firearm through the District of Columbia, and who, despite following police advice and the law to the letter, was prosecuted vigorously?
I speak of course of only two famous cases of the abuse of the law by DC prosecutors. Obviously, the two citizens I mentioned not only had no intent to break the law, in one case, he actually took extraordinary steps to avoid breaking the law, and despite adhering not only to the letter and spirit of the law and arrested and prosecuted anyway. Fortunately, he was eventually acquitted of all charges, but that’s not the point.
By all means, remove idiotic, tyrannical laws that serve only to make Progressives feel good and that harm only the law abiding. But if we are to truly live under the rule of law, there is no one more deserving of prosecution than David Gregory and his enablers at NBC.