Michael Bryan posted by John Denker On Thursday Dec. 20th, House Speaker John Boehner was humiliated by his own party when they refused to vote for his proposal, the so-called Plan B, otherwise known as the Morning-After Bill. He should have known all along that this was a lose/lose/lose proposition. It set the threshold too high to … Read more
By The Writers of BlogForArizona
Since the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, we at Blog for Arizona have urged Ron Barber to take the lead in Congress in advocating for common sense gun laws. We wrote numerous posts and started a petition that now has over 400 signatures.
We have watched with deep admiration as Congressman Barber has taken increasingly strong stands on the subject and has occupied an ever more prominent place in the national conversation. His statement on December 19th (posted after the click) is an example of the kind of powerful, personal testimony we hoped to hear from him.
He should know that his constituents and supporters across Arizona, and the nation, stand firmly behind his efforts. Hopefully, this trend will continue, and we have increasing confidence it will. We know that if Ron speaks from his heart at every possible opportunity, millions of Americans will be moved and we just may wind up with sane gun laws as a result.
Read more after the click…
POSTS WILL CONTINUE BELOW
book review posted by John Denker The New New Deal is a recent book by Michael Grunwald. It is very interesting, important, informative, readable, thorough, and persuasive. It revolves around the so-called Stimulus Act of 2009. There are three parts to the story: (1) The economic collapse and the election in the autumn of 2008; … Read more
By Michael Bryan
President Obama addressed a memorial service for the victims of Sandy Hook. He spoke as a father, not a politician.
See the video after the click…
By Michael Bryan
Ask Ron Barber to lead on sensible gun policies.
Let me preface this post by stating a few facts: I am a gun owner, I am a sportsman (though much more so when I was younger, than now), I had a concealed carry permit (when such a thing was still required in AZ), and I am a prosecutor who has seen first-hand the tragic results of guns in the wrong hands.
The growing epidemic of mass shootings in this country now stands at 62 incidents since 1982, according to a Mother Jones magazine investigation. The nexus between gun laws becoming ever-more lax and poor mental health care and invervention has been and remains a major public safety issue in this country.
Yet Congress has done almost nothing to address the very real and present danger to public safety posed by the combination of madness and easily available weapons designed to kill many people very quickly.
Our political system has become so dysfunctional that even a problem that is murdering innocents on a regular basis cannot seem to be addressed. Our policy-making systems are so captured by special interests, so riven by ideological extremism, and so paralyzed by an unconstitutional and anti-democratic super-majority requirement in the Senate, that it seems naive to even hope that our leaders can propose and pass reasonable policies to slow the carnage.