All Postings from February 2004

The Transportation Security Administration may finally have gotten itself in real trouble. In an attempt to stop the pilots who have been licensed from talking members of congress or the media about their security concerns, the TSA warned that these disclosures "must be referred to TSA Internal Affairs for investigation." The TSA soon sent around another e-mail saying that the first one was a mistake, but it looks like the damage may have already been done. I am not surprised that Secretary Tom Ridge did not know about the threatening e-mails. I had a chance to talk with him last fall and I came away convinced that he really thought that arming the pilots was a good program. The impression that I had was that as Secretary he had a million fires to put out and that it was just a hard job to keep on the bureaucrats in line.

2/3/04
Seniors Pack Heat for Protection

A very brief write up on the Foxnews segment can be found here and an excellent video clip is available under the "Related Video" section to the right of the article. A brief interview with me is shown in the clip.

Right-to-Carry Law in Wisconsin defeated by one vote

After overriding the governor's veto in the state Senate, the state house failed to override the governor's veto by one vote. The surprise was that the one vote who was lost at the last minute was a Democrat who had been one of two house Democrats who had sponsored the right-to-carry bill since it was first introduced in Wisconsin. Apparently he voted to sustain the governor's veto because he has a leadership position in the party and he views it as his obligation to support the party line while he is in the leadership. A rather brief discussion of the whole issue can be found here.

A friend who follows these things closely in Wisconsin told me an interesting story about the vote in the state Senate. Apparently, a couple of Democratic senators had voted for the bill when it first came up, but they were going to flip to uphold the governor's veto. Another Democratic Senator who had voted for the bill was apparently under extreme pressure to also flip and was told that he did not vote to sustain the governor's veto he would lose his committee assignments. This Democratic Senator then went out and told the press about the threat and that we was going to do the right thing no matter what punishment the party imposed upon him. Those statements to the press apparently stopped the other two Democratic Senators from flipping because they were afraid that doing so would make it look like they too had caved into threats from their leadership. (Whether they had also received threats hasn't been discussed in the press so my friend doesn't know, but it all makes for an interesting story.)

2/1/04
Clip of ABC's 20/20 "Myth No. 3: Guns are Bad."

For those who missed John Stossel's program on "Myth No. 3: Guns are Bad" you can see it here. This is a very well done piece. Among other things, Stossel's people called up law enforcement in every right-to-carry state to find out whether they thought that crime had gone up after the right-to-carry laws were passed. Interestingly, not one of the law enforcement agencies in these states that had been contacted believed that crime had significantly increased.

For those who haven't been following the debate to pass right-to-carry in Wisconsin, the state House will vote on whether to override the governor on Tuesday. It was quite a surprise that the state Senate voted to override the governor. If the law passes, Wisconsin will be the seventh state to adopt significant right-to-carry reforms within the past year (this includes Alaska which went from a restrictive right-to-carry law to a Vermont style system). The vote in Wisconsin will be extremely close depending upon just one or two legislators.