President Obama Apologizes to Kamala Harris, Can Still Mislead on Guns, Sequester, Propose a Budget No One Likes

On Wednesday in Denver, the
president made
several misleading comments about gun policies. The mainstream
media is increasingly
picking up on the fact that sequestration isn’t the
calamity his administration
promised. Both Republicans and Democrats are upset by the

president’s budget proposal, which also came two months late.
So what did the president apologize for today? Calling California’s
Kamala Harris, “by far the best looking attorney general in the
country.” Was Jack Conway
upset?

In fact, Jay Carney said the president called her to apologize
for the distraction the comments caused. Obama’s not a stranger to
the wheel of outrage, having apologized in 2008 for
calling a Michigan television reporter “sweetie.” At the LA
Times, Robin Abcarian
offered that the president’s remarks were more “wolfish” than
“sexist” but then pointed out the obvious, that looks matter. She
concluded by repeating that no one would’ve cared what the
“gorgeous” Sarah Palin had to say if she didn’t have good looks, a
familiar
trope used to diminish Palin’s political positions. Obama, of
course, didn’t do that this time. He even prefaced his comments on
Harris by calling her “brilliant” and “dedicated.” But he
apologized anyway.

And you can say you were there, when the president apologized

for innocent drone deaths
his foreign policy
his economic policies getting some things
wrong drawing attention to his opinion on a
politician’s good looks.

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What Other Types of Guns Can Sen. Feinstein Fail to Ban? What About Ones Made of Pixels?

Having
all but failed in her ill-considered, poorly argued efforts to
ban assault weapons (the usual caveat: whatever “assault weapons”
are), now California Sen. Dianne Feinstein seems ready to fail and
fail harder going after violent video games.

At a speech in San Francisco on Wednesday, she took her typical
aim against the National Rifle Association. But then she all but

joined the NRA in complaining about the
glorification of violence in video games. Via the Associated
Press:

Feinstein also encouraged the entertainment and video game
industries to take voluntary steps to produce products that do not
glorify big, powerful guns before Congress feels compelled to step
in. She mentioned that Adam Lanza, the 20-year-old man responsible
for the Sandy Hook Elementary School slayings, practiced shooting
both at a range with his mother and on a video screen.

Video games play "a very negative role for young people, and the
industry ought to take note of that," she said. "If Sandy Hook
doesn't do it, if the knowledge of these video games this young man
played doesn't, then maybe we have to proceed, but that is in the
future."

Well, we can all look forward to that future failure as well.
One: Just as with movies, the video game industry has a voluntary

ratings system that thoroughly documents a game’s contents and
recommends appropriate ages. Two: The Supreme Court has ruled that
the contents of video games are
constitutionally protected free speech in a case that
originated from Feinstein’s own state.

The idea of video games playing “a very negative role for young
people” is just unsupported nonsense without
foundation. Yesterday, when I wrote about film critic’s

Roger Ebert’s awkward relationship with the creative culture of
video games, I noted the gap between Baby Boomers and the younger
generations over the role of the medium in their lives. The
industry took Ebert’s dismissal of video games as a potential art
form as a challenge.

Feinstein’s poorly chosen words and vague threat will likely not
inspire much introspection. She doesn’t understand the medium at
all and clearly has no interest in understanding the medium. But
unlike Ebert, Feinstein has the power to shape government policy,
or at least try to, anyway. It would be interesting to see how the
heavily California-based video game industry would respond to
Feinstein actually trying to go after them.

Below, Reason TV highlights several extremely stupid
Congressional hearings where politicians presumed to justify
censorship against various forms of media:

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What do Movie People Say When Asked to Remove Guns from Films?

 

The new video from Project
Veritas - James O'Keefe's merry band of guerilla
filmmakers who have scored major hits on ACORN, NPR, and voter
fraud - is a compelling watch. From the YouTube writeup:

@Project_Veritas investigators urge Piers Morgan, Oprah
Winfrey's production company (Harpo), and Robert DeNiro's
production company (Tribeca) to help ban all guns from past and
future movies. With some disturbed murderers citing violent movies
as the impetus for their crimes, would Hollywood elites agree to
remove guns from their flicks #ForTheChildren? Or would money and
fame supersede their malleable ideology?

To that end, Project Veritas asks a bunch of
people involved in media and film if they would sign a petition to
delete guns from old and new movies. The answers...will surprise
you.

I'm less interested in the rank hypocrisy that surrounds debates
on the effects of popular culture on behavior and more interested
in the way that this video shows that by framing the debate
differently you might actually have a really interesting
conversation.

But wherever you stand on the issue of guns, violence, and
movies, if you've ever watched a Merchant Ivory movie, you will
enjoy this video.

And if Project Veritas's plan to delete guns from new and old
movies sounds implausible, recall the big push to airbrush smoking
out of movies and other forms of entertainment. (My favorite
contribution to that effort was Joe Esterhas's heartfelt but stupid
bit). Some years back, the U.S. government went full Orwell on
the stamp honoring bluesman Robert Johnson.
Click here for more egregious airbrushing of famous cigarettes
from photos.

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Chicago Makes It a Little Harder for You to Own a Gun--Unless You are a Cop

One more part of the general trend in attempts to make gun
ownership or purchasing just a little bit more expensive or
annoying on the margin, since, darn it, they can't seem to ban them
entirely, this time out of Chicago, as
reported by CBS Chicago:

a new $25-per-gun tax in Cook County went into effect on
Monday.

WBBM Newsradio’s Nancy Harty reports the new gun tax is
estimated to generate $600,000 a year for Cook County. The gun tax
ordinance includes an exemption for law enforcement officers who
purchase guns in the county.....

Another bureaucratic measure making gun ownership a potentially
huge legal burden for the innocent:

The county also has targeted straw purchasers – people who buy
guns legally, then sell them to others who can’t – by imposing
fines of up to $2,000 for failing to report the transfer, loss, or
theft of a gun.

Unsuccessful lawsuits tried to block the tax, which proponents
admitted was partially aimed at limiting the number of guns in
circulation, admitting a Second Amendment-violating goal, not just
a revenue one.

I wrote for Reason back in 2010 the detailed
history of the Supreme Court case McDonald
v. Chicago, in which it was established that indeed they
could not ban them entirely.

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J.D. Tuccille Discusses Culture War on HuffPost Live

Remember the 1990s, when Pat
Buchanan went mano a mano with Barney Frank in a duel to
the death over the drection of American society? No, neither do I.
Yet the supposed "culture war" between liberals and conservatives
keeps resurfacing as a concept, if only as a convenient way to
frame evolving views on social issues in a partisan red/blue way
sufficiently simplified so that even political journalists and
government officials can understand. I
appeared on HuffPost Live as part of a panel discussing just
where the so-called culture war has taken us. Mostly, in a
direction of greater tolerance and personal liberty, I would say,
on social issues from gay marriage to guns. On economics ... well
... that's up in the air.

On the panel, hosted by Ricky Camilleri, I was joined by Mark
Glaze, Director, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Matt Lewis of The
Daily Caller and The Week, and Vickie Henry, Senior
Attorney at the Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders.

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