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NRA’s Kagan Gag Order

By: Curt Levey (Diary)  |  June 28th, 2010 at 10:21 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Yesterday, RedState’s Erick Erickson broke the story that

[T]he National Rifle Association’s management team has explicitly and directly told the NRA’s board they are prohibited from testifying about second amendment issues during the Elena Kagan confirmation hearings. …  [and] from coming out against Kagan in their individual capacity.

Matt Lewis of Politics Daily and I added some details this morning.  Matt notes that

[I]t appears obvious a major schism has developed between the NRA-ILA executive director and several members of the board of directors. As one board member told me, ‘The bottom line is Chris (Cox) wants to have all decisions go through him and have no board involvement in decisions about or communications with Congress. He was the problem with the DISCLOSE Act. He’s the issue re the SCOTUS nominees.’

Also, I expand on Erick’s thoughts about the connection between the NRA’s positions on Kagan and the DISCLOSE Act:

[I]n light of the NRA’s recent negotiation of a special carve out in the DISCLOSE Act, the controversial campaign finance bill, the NRA needs to be sensitive to putting politics above principle.

To be fair, NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre has a point when he explains the carve out: ‘If we don’t have our speech rights, it would mean the end of the Second Amendment.’  But in dealing with the Kagan nomination, LaPierre needs to be equally aware that the shift of a single vote on the Supreme Court would even more surely doom the Second Amendment.  Moreover, if the DISCLOSE Act becomes law, the fate of its crackdown on free speech will be decided by the Supreme Court.  And in Supreme Court decisions, there are no opportunities to negotiate carve outs.

. . . [I]f the NRA can venture beyond its traditional agenda into the First Amendment issues implicated by the DISCLOSE Act, surely it can weigh in on the Second Amendment issue of Elena Kagan’s gun rights record.

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COMMENTS

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  • Doc Holliday

    he “interviewed” Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton during the anti 2A Bush administration and never once asked her about the 2A ban in national parks. It was the Virginia Citizens Defense League that galvanized local pro 2A organizations to finally end this travesty. The NRA, as usual, glomed on at the end and tried to take credit.

    I think it is time for an NRA tea party insurrection.

    • hunter

      than a hopeful beginning.
      Kagan will turn out to be the most anti=freedom justice the Court has ever produced.
      Please note: while Obama’s ratings are low and falling, he is not reconsidering one aspect of his agenda, nor is he losing on any significant vote.
      Has even one thing he wants been denied him, at the end of the day?
      The sellout of the NRA is obvious and typical of organizations too long in the DC corruption.
      The really interesting question is how many other organizations we think of as either non-political or pro-freedom have actually been co-opted by lefties?
      Obama and pals have been thinking long and hard how to make sure they get their hope-n-change done.
      No negotiation, no hesitation, no reconsideration.
      If the SC goes much farther at all down the path it has gone too far down already, we will see overt censorship of political speech, overt suppression of protests, and more. While Obama is sorry for how America has been and is busy apologizing for what he hates, and unclear about who our foreign enemies are, he has no question in his mind about who the domestic enemies are. and a whole bunch of them post here.

  • thomasgipper

    Mr. Cox, here’s how it appears to me & probably the public: that the Democrats feared the NRA — that’s the only reason they agreed to a carve out. If they thought they didn’t have to have it, they wouldn’t have agreed. So you were negotiating from a position of strength, and could have buried the Disclose Act. But you snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and negotiated the lawyer’s exemption to the statute. To compound the error, you continue to kow-tow to the Democrats, silencing the NRA board and God-knows whomever else, on the Kagan nomination — Why? Since she’s a radical, anti-Second Amendment liberal, the only plausible explanation is that either you want to protect the NRA’s precious carve out in the Disclose Act or want to appease some Democrat pals of yours. But there’s no victory this election cycle. Either the Government or some other Soros-funded interest group is going to force the NRA to litigate the NRA’s exemption, force it to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, and they will try and get a temporary restraining order against the NRA purchasing TV advertisements, which they hope will last through this election cycle. That’s all they want. They’re going to try and have it both ways, regardless of what deal you think you struck. So, corporations silenced. NRA silenced. Kagan confirmed. Defeat. Due to the strategy of a myopic lawyer, outmanuvered into focusing too much on statutory exemptions, and not focused enough on principle? Where is the analysis wrong?

    • http://theminorityreportblog.com Repair_Man_Jack

      They have been subverted and are just another parasite on the inside the Beltway cocktail circuit. They are about as concerned with there avowed mission as the NEA. There future role will consist of serving as a Democratic Party money machine and propaganda organ. We’ve seen this crap a million times before.

      • http://theminorityreportblog.com Repair_Man_Jack
      • http://www.dcworksforus.com Kenny Solomon

        I’d comment on the article below, but I made a promise to myself to be a (fairly) good boy tonight.

        Oh….. and if it matters, I think you know I’m one of the people “kind of” informed on the machinations regarding our Second Amendment…….. A Demofraud candidate for Senate in Ohio – Somebody else please check into him and a relationship with something called “Handgun Control Inc.”. Maybe whoever does the deed can even run up a full diary on it all.

        I’d do it, but I really want to try and relax tonight and watch the rest of the Gamecocks/Bruins College World Serious (Game 2).

        Anyhoo…… Here’s the article from Cleveland.com…….

        Ohio’s Democrat Party Attempts To Obtain Privacy-Protected State Firearms Records.

        CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Ohio Democratic Party tried unsuccessfully this week to get information on all people licensed to carry concealed weapons in the Buckeye State.

        The state party sent letters to Ohio’s 88 sheriffs requesting the names and addresses of permit holders and the dates the licenses were issued. Ohio has about 211,000 permit holders.

        But neither the Democrats nor any other political party can get that information. The records are exempt from the public record laws.

  • bk

    So should people give money to the ACLU instead of to NRA-ILA?

  • http://truthupfront.blogspot.com jsanzone

    But it’s much more sinister than that.

  • jeff_h_morris

    Wayne LaPierre and especially Chris Cox are worse than useless, they take resources from honest patriots and use them to undermine our rights. Gun Owners of America is a much better advocate for the 2nd amendment. Dante has a slot in Hell for Chris Cox, right next to Judas, where Satan can gnaw on Cox’s head – forever.

  • jeff_h_morris

    Wayne LaPierre and especially Chris Cox are worse than useless, they take resources from honest patriots and use them to undermine our rights. Gun Owners of America is a much better advocate for the 2nd amendment. Dante has a slot in Hell for Chris Cox, right next to Judas, where Satan can gnaw on Cox’s head – forever.

  • http://www.ArchitecturalShots.com mdyou

    …bring nothing but heartache to our cause? Does the name alone convey shameless kowtowing to special interests for personal gain?

    As a Californian who believed in the other Chris Cox, I’m afraid. Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after us…

  • merryj1

    As soon as the NRA membership drops below the carve-out minimum, bye-bye special deal. I would strongly urge all NRA members to send in their cancelations, post haste.

  • RedBeard

    This mess cannot be blamed on “those guys” or turned into an “us vs. them” scenario as if the NRA is a monolithic enemy entity. The NRA is us, the members.

    This is no different than the ongoing fight to reform the GOP and rid it of liberals. It is a fight that can only be won from the inside. Leaving the NRA is the worst thing possible. To the contrary, we must round up many more new members who want to change things. Get involved.

    And to any conservative supporters of gun rights who are not now members of the NRA, joining the fight is easy.

    https://membership.nrahq.org/forms/signup.asp

  • TFS

    It’s pretty obvious that the NRA has been infiltrated with people who are leftists at heart. On principle alone, they should be fighting passionately for gun rights but aren’t. Why? Because they have a hidden agenda of their own.

    It’s not only the NRA but other conservative groups that have been infiltrated with these people. We need to: 1) Recognize that this has happened and be watchful for it and 2) Call these people out for who they really are.

    We really are in a battle for the conservative soul of the country. We are not only fighting nationally, but locally and group by group.

    The truth is that we completely and overwhelmingly outnumber them. They know it. Thus, they have to use stealth tactics.

  • conservative_faction

    n/t

  • hunter

    But you might consider adding a third point:
    take back the organization.
    AARP, the AMA, and now the NRA are on the list as officially anti-freedom, and supportive of extreme leftist agendas.
    It is time take back not only the Congress but the people’s organizations that speak for us.
    The USSC has created a new way for anti-freedom people to shut down groups of citizens by forcing private groups to accept anyone who wants to join, including those opposed to the private organization.
    Now we have the NRA and others being OK with censorship of free speech.
    these are dangerous times.

  • Zaber

    … tend to be conservative in nature. Their membership is not be represented fairly by their leaders, who are very left of center, while their membership is right of center. (Everyone remembers the AARP during the healthcare townhalls, dont they?)

    The members of those groups need to stand up and take their organization back from Obama’s puppets, or they need to find another organization that will represent their ideals properly, and take their dues and donations with them. There would be no NRA if all of the conservative members quit over this latest outage and formed a new organizations that wasnt beholden to the Obama administration.

    Obviously, thats much easier said than done.. but either they have to change their groups from within (and quickly), quit and find representation elsewhere, or they will continue to fund BS like this.

  • http://www.dcworksforus.com Kenny Solomon

    NRA on Disclosure Act: ?We Had to Put the 2nd Amendment Above the 1st Amendment?.

    http://www.breitbart.tv/nra-on-disclosure-act-we-had-to-put-the-2nd-amendment-above-the-1st-amendment

    ====================

    Let’s go over this one more time, shall we, class ?…….

    ……. The 1st Amendment wouldn’t exist without The 2nd Amendment and The 2nd Amendment wouldn’t exist without The 1st Amendment.

    The United States Of America wouldn’t exist without BOTH The 1st Amendment and The 2nd Amendment AS THEY ARE WRITTEN.

    Learn it.
    Know it.
    Live it.

  • thomasgipper

    Why just NASA? Why not the Congressional Budget Office? The auditors can join in prayers to Mecca. Why not the Health Care Financing Administration? Those bureaucracts could wear burkas. How about the National Dairy Board? They could have the famers do outreach to Hadith scholars. Seriously though, the only rocket outreach any real American wants is the ICBM that targets Medina the next time there is a heinous mass murder of our fellow Countrymen at the hands of Islamic radicals.

    But all this is typical for Comrade Obama’s apppointees. They are clueless & incompetent. But they just take orders from the top. No wonder we’re on day 76? in the Gulf – and the oil is still flowing, tens of thousands of barrels every day. Hey environmentalists, Bush would have stopped the spill weeks ago. He would have bombed it, no problem. But I suspect you environmentalists are ok with it. Never let a crisis go to waste: you got deep-water drilling stopped. No new permits in shallow water either. And now we learn the EPA has shut down 1/3 of the refineries in the United States. Economy fragile? Too Damn Bad. Comrade Obama is destroying the system. And our current deficit (1.4 trillion) is 4x that of Bush’s average deficit; and we’re bankrupting our children & grandchildren. For those of you who voted for Obama – what a smart pick. You really put that Ivy league education to good use.