Daily Archives: March 9, 2012

The Democratic incumbent is campaigning hard for four more years. He's been less vigorous in explaining what he'd do with them

The Republican presidential candidates have spent months throwing out ideas for what they'd do if elected cut taxes, reform Medicare, roll back regulations, build moon colonies but President Obama has been rather vague about what he would do if he wins re-election in November. That fuzziness has left Obama's allies to "project their brightest hopes on him," while allowing rivals to warn of second-term plans that "range from dour to near-apocalyptic," say David Fahrenthold and Peter Wallsten in The Washington Post. Here, seven predictions of what Obama might do or try to do if voters keep him around through January 2017:

1. Embrace the cause of same-sex marriageObama has been "evolving" in his views on gay marriage since at least December 2010, says Max Markham at PolicyMic, but if he's re-elected, he'll have to stop evolving and "unequivocally come out in favor of same-sex marriage." A growing number of powerful Democrats now endorse same-sex marriage laws, and the public is increasingly on board. In his first term, Obama oversaw the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell"; he will "contribute to the repeal of the discriminatory Defence of Marriage Act in his second term."

SEE MORE: Obama's Spotify playlist: 7 things it says about his campaign

2. Pass strict new gun lawsIt's no surprise that "gun sales have rocketed"as Obama's re-election odds have improved,says Steve Watson at Infowars.com. Many gun-loving Americans want to stock up while they can, fearing that Obama "will use a lame duck presidency to fulfill promises to gun control advocates to take a bite out of the Second Amendment." Obama clearly wants four more years to "destroy" the right to bear arms, NRA chief Wayne LaPierre told the Conservative Political Action Conference in February. "All that first-term lip service to gun owners is part of a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters."

3. Kill the Bush tax cutsOne of the first issues a re-elected Obama would have to face is the future of the Bush tax cuts, set to expire at the end of 2012, says Noam Schrieber atThe Daily Beast. It's no secret that Obama wants to roll back the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, while potentially keeping the lower tax rates for families making $250,000 a year or less. But remember, in 2009, Obama briefly flirted with the idea of letting all the tax cuts lapse. And "having been tempted to end all of the Bush tax cuts in 2009, the president would only find the idea more attractive were he to win a second term," especially as the pressure to cut the deficit grows more intense.

SEE MORE: Obama's re-election bid: 6 reasons he's still in trouble

4. Champion civil libertiesMy swooning predictions that "Obama would be our first civil libertarian president" have been met with "plenty of disappointments," like the TSA "naked body scanners" debacle, says Jeffrey Rosen in The New Republic. "If Obama wins a second term, I hope re-election gives him the freedom to redeem that unfulfilled promise" by appointing committed civil-libertarian judges and federal regulators. He will also need to meet the challenge of protecting both our privacy and free speech rights in an age where "Google and Facebook are in a race to track consumers as ubiquitously as possible."

5. Play defenseAs the historian H.W. Brands noted, "every president that history deems great was re-elected, but no second term goes well," says Erica Grieder atThe Economist. So let's not expect much from Obama 2.0. "Most likely, the president would focus his energy on protecting the programs that Congress enacted in his first term, namely health care," says presidential historian Julian Zelizer at CNN. He would also likely push narrower, achievable projects like rebuilding infrastructure.

SEE MORE: Obama's 'billion-dollar' campaign: Did the fundraising hype backfire?

See the original post here:
What would President Obama do with a second term?

To: LEGAL AFFAIRS AND STATE EDITORS

BELLEVUE, Wash., March 8, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Second Amendment Foundation is delighted that the Washington State Supreme Court has unanimously denied the City of Seattle's petition for review in the case of Winnie Chan v. City of Seattle, a legal action brought by SAF, the National Rifle Association and five individual plaintiffs.

The decision affirms the state's long-standing preemption law and two lower court rulings, thus preventing the city from banning firearms from city parks property.

It was the third straight loss for the city, which had first attempted to ban firearms from park facilities under former Mayor Greg Nickels, in open defiance of Washington State's model preemption statute. Following its initial loss in King County Superior Court, the city, under Nickels' successor, Mayor Mike McGinn, appealed its loss to the State Court of Appeals. That court also ruled unanimously against the city, which petitioned the state high court last year for review.

"We are proud that the State Supreme Court panel, led by Chief Justice Barbara Madsen, unanimously rejected Seattle's flagrant attempt to override state law and violate the civil rights of citizens living in or visiting the city," said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. "Mayor McGinn and the City Council should be ashamed that they pursued this pipe dream in an effort to turn the city into a banana republic. By letting the appeals court ruling stand, other anti-gun officials in city and county governments are on notice that they simply cannot ignore state law."

"We are equally proud of our partners in this important legal action," he continued. "We were joined by the NRA, Washington Arms Collectors, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, and five courageous citizens. Our plaintiffs were willing to stand up to the city and public officials who seem determined to transform Seattle into a political gulag where a civil right can be dismissed at will in the interest of political correctness."

"And finally," Gottlieb stated, "we are all very proud of our legal team led by Steve Fogg and Molly Malouf at Corr Cronin. They did a marvelous job, not only for their clients, but for the citizens of this state, whose civil rights apply everywhere, whether the City of Seattle likes it or not."

The Second Amendment Foundation (www.saf.org) is the nation's oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and legal action group focusing on the Constitutional right and heritage to privately own and possess firearms. Founded in 1974, The Foundation has grown to more than 650,000 members and supporters and conducts many programs designed to better inform the public about the consequences of gun control.

SOURCE Second Amendment Foundation

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SAF Hails WA High Court Denial of Seattle Gun Ban Appeal

Lyle DennistonThis is another in a continuing series of posts in which Lyle Denniston provides responses based on the Constitution and its history to public statements about the meaning of the Constitution and what duties it imposes or rights it protects. Todays topic: The expanding scope of the Second Amendment.

This is a monumentally important decision. The federal district court has carefully spelled out the obvious, that the Second Amendment does not stop at ones doorstep, but protects us wherever we have a right to be.

-Alan M. Gottleib, executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation, in a public statement, March 5, commenting on a federal judges new ruling that the right to have a gun extends beyond ones home.

Mr. Gottleib is certainly right that the ruling on March 2 by U.S. District Judge Benson Everett Legg of Balitmore was of major importance, although that decision did not decide something that was already obvious, and it did not extend as far as the Second Amendment Foundation had hoped in bringing the case (Woollard v. Sheridan). Judge Legg said he had no choice but to reach a broad rulingone that other courts, and, indeed, the U.S. Supreme Court itself, have not yet been ready to reach.

Of all the next-level questions that were stirred up by the Supreme Courts rulings in 2008 and 2010first recognizing a personal right to have a gun under the Second Amendment, and then extending that to gun control laws all across the Nationthe most significant was whether that right was available only within ones home, or whether it reached at least some places in public.

The Court emphatically recognized the right as a part of the right of self-defense, but the right initially was found to exist only within a persons private home, and the Court declined to say whether it might ultimately go further. The Court did say that states could limit access to guns in sensitive public places and to persons prone to violence.

Since those first rulings by the Justices, gun rights advocatesincluding the Second Amendment Foundation, a Bellevue, Wash., advocacy organizationhave been suing in case after case, seeking to expand the right. So far, that effort has had only limited success. Three times within recent months, in fact, the Supreme Court has declined to hear cases seeking to extend the right beyond the home. In fact, one of the cases it bypassed involved the same Maryland state law that Judge Legg has now partially struck down. The fact that the Justices do not hear a particular issue, of course, does not bar lower court judges from facing it, when they feel they must, as Judge Legg did.

Marylands gun licensing law is frankly designed to reduce the number of guns circulating in society, so that law bars carrying a gun in a public place without a permit, and it puts fairly tight limits on who can get a permit. One of those limits requires a permit applicant to prove they have a good and substantial reason to have a gun, such as a fear of danger.

That restriction, Judge Legg concluded, goes too far. A law that burdens a constitutional right, by simply making it harder to exercise that right, he decided, is not closely enough related to public safety concerns to justify it. He thus invalidated that particular restriction. He did so using a more tolerant standard of constitutionality. The Second Amendment Foundation had wanted to have the ruling establish that any limit on gun possession outside the home had to satisfy the most rigorous constitutional test. The judge declined.

But the nullification of that one restriction in the law was not what was most significant about the ruling, and it was not unique: other courts have applied the same constitutional standard to gun laws.

Read the rest here:
Constitution Check: Is the right to have a gun gaining new protection?