Patrick Files Anti-Gun Bill

From our friends at the NRA:

Yesterday, Governor Deval Patrick filed legislation that would severely curtail the rights of gun owners in the Commonwealth. The bill entitled, “An Act to Reduce Firearm Violence,” is in essence a repeat performance of Chapter 180 of the Acts of 1998.

Among other things, this bill would:

* Limit firearm purchases to one per 30-day period;
* Require the private transfer of all firearms to be conducted through a federally licensed firearms dealer, and;
* Allow the Colonel of the Department of State Police to destroy surrendered firearms instead of auctioning them for sale.

If you don’t remember, Chapter 180 of the Acts of 1998 created some of the most confusing and ill-advised set of gun laws in the country. The vast majority of those new laws attacked lawful gun owners and did little, if anything, to address violent crime. Since enactment, the only result has been an 85% decrease in the number of lawfully licensed gun owners in Massachusetts and a dramatic increase in crime.

Please contact your State Legislators TODAY and respectfully urge them to oppose this ill-conceived attack on our Second Amendment freedoms. Governor Patrick can be reached by phone at (617) 725-4005 or (888) 870-7770 (in-state), by fax at (617) 727-9725, or visit http://www.mass.gov/?pageID=gov3utilities&sid=Agov3&U=Agov3_contact_us to send email. To identify your State Representative and State Senator and to find contact information, please click here.

Senator Kerry Cancels Campaign Appearances

If it’s all just a “misunderstanding” and a “botched joke,” why is Senator John Kerry canceling campaign appearances?

Senator John Kerry, reeling from the fall out over a remark that he calls a “botched joke,” has canceled campaign appearances with Democratic congressional candidates, Bloomberg news reports.

Democrats are distancing themselves from the 2004 presidential nominee.

According to Bloomberg:

Kerry won’t appear today in Mankato, Minnesota on behalf of Tim Walz, a Democrat challenging Republican Representative Gil Gutknecht. The decision to cancel “ultimately” was Kerry’s, said Walz spokeswoman Meredith Salsbery.

Bruce Braley, a Democrat running for Iowa’s 1st congressional seat, asked Kerry not to campaign with him tomorrow, the Quad-Cities Times reported. Braley thought Kerry’s remarks were inappropriate, the paper said, citing Braley spokesman Jeff Giertz.

Kerry also won’t appear today in Philadelphia with U.S. Senate candidate Bob Casey, ABC News reported. Casey’s race to unseat Republican Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania could be pivotal to Democrats’ hopes to gain control of the Senate.

Tennessee Representative Harold Ford Jr., who is locked in a close race for retiring Majority Leader Bill Frist’s Senate seat, called on Kerry to apologize.

“Whatever the intent, Senator Kerry was wrong to say what he said,” Ford said in a statement.

More Democrats are distancing themselves from the man who failed to unseat President Bush in 2004.

“Sen. Kerry’s remarks were poorly worded and just plain stupid,” said Montana Senate President Jon Tester, a Democrat trying to unseat GOP Sen. Conrad Burns. “He owes our troops and their families an apology.”

“I’m sorry he did what he did. But I think the issue … we want to make sure it doesn’t confuse the subject of the war in Iraq,” Democratic Rep. Ben Cardin, running for Senate in Maryland, said on CNN.

Senator Kerry has become quite the tar baby. Of course, once again, Kerry and his people are blaming everyone else but themselves for the canceled campaign appearances.

“We made a decision not to allow the Republican hate machine to use Democratic candidates as proxies in their distorted spin war,” Wade said.

Keep at it… just keep at it.

UPDATE: Dick Cheney: Kerry was for the joke before he was against it.

Getting Sirius About Deval Patrick and Ben LaGuer

Tonight, at about 10:20pm I’ll be doing an interview on “Cam and Company” with Cam Edwards on NRAnews.com and Sirius Satellite Radio to talk about Deval Patrick and Ben LaGuer.

Hack-A-Rama: Lawmakers Go on Taxpayer-Funded Trip

Would you believe that Senate President Bob Travaglini, Speaker of the House Salvatore DiMasi and nine other legislators left Massachusetts for a 4-day trip Nashville, TN for a “conference,” paid for by us, the taxpayers?

Bay State taxpayers shelled out $158,000 this year to help fund the annual meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures, which is being held at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center in the heart of Music City. In all, the NCSL received nearly $8 million in taxpayer dollars this year from all 50 states and several U.S. territories.
[...]
The luxurious, $300-a-night Gaylord Opryland Resort is encased in climate-controlled glass atriums and includes 9 acres of lush gardens, winding rivers, a 44-foot waterfall, laser-light shows and tours aboard Delta flatboats.

As enraging as this is, it seems unfathomable that they would leave the state to stay a posh resort after snubbing veterans and leaving such important legislation, like the Welcome Home Bill, still unpassed.

I guess when it comes to spending taxpayer dollars, they’d rather spend it on perks for themselves (like a useless conference, or a few games of golf, Mr. Speaker?) than for our troops fighting for freedom overseas.

UPDATE: DiMasi’s challenger Kenneth Procaccianti, has called for an immediate end to all taxpayer-funded junkets for politicians “until the legislature reconvenes to immediately restore in-state college tuition help for soldiers and passes reforms in auto insurance and tax laws.” Procaccianti calls the $158,000 junket “a slap in the face to every hard-working resident of Massachusetts.”

“If the Speaker and his pals can blow hundreds of thousands of tax dollars at the Grand Ole Opry, then they certainly have the time to return to work for just one day and help our brave soldiers get an affordable college education here in Massachusetts,” said Procaccianti.

If elected, Procaccianti says he would introduce “a more expansive ban on taxpayer-funded junkets for elected and appointed officials, citing a “mile-long laundry list of taxpayer abuse” by the legislature, which he says includes: “refusal to enact sweeping competition-based auto insurance reform; rejection of a voter ballot-approved referendum to reduce the state income tax rate to 5 percent; over $100 million of additional Big Dig debt that could be passed on to the public with new toll hikes; and after record sales results from last weekend’s only annual sales tax holiday, reluctance to directly compete with tax-free New Hampshire and create new jobs.”

“If government can’t look the taxpayers, students and soldiers of our state in the eye and say it has done everything possible to make living here more affordable, then the lavish perks of elective and appointed office must come to an abrupt end.”

For more on Kenneth Procaccianti, visit his campaign website.

John Tierney Lacks Power In Congress, But Takes Plenty of Free Trips

The Salem News, the hometown paper of Rep. John Tierney, reported earlier this week on the excessive amount of free trips he has taken.

Congressman John Tierney has taken nearly $50,000 worth of privately funded trips in the past five years, including two visits to Cancun, Mexico, a Valentine’s Day stay in Jamaica and a 2005 trip to China that was among the most expensive taken by a member of Congress.

Five of the seven trips were funded by the nonprofit Aspen Institute, which paid for travel, lodging and meals for both Tierney and his wife, Patrice. The institute flew the Tierneys to Mexico and Jamaica for conferences on education, to Finland for a conference on political Islam and to China for a conference on U.S.-China relations.

Tierney was hardly the only member of Congress to visit exotic locations on someone else’s dime. According to a Center for Public Integrity report released this week, the average member of Congress has taken $70,000 in privately funded trips in the past five years, with some legislators going on dozens of trips worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Congressman Barney Frank topped the Massachusetts delegation, taking trips worth more than $125,000 since 2000.

One of Tierney’s trips was particularly notable, however. A weeklong trip to China last year cost more than $20,000, making it the seventh most-expensive trip taken by any member of Congress that year, according to Political Money Line, a nonprofit group that tracks money in politics. It was also the most expensive trip taken by any single Massachusetts representative in the past five years.

Tierney may have felt at home in the Communist country, but his spokeswoman Brooke McNally insists these trips are related to his committee work.

Rick Barton, John Tierney’s Republican challenger in this years election, calls the trips “suspicious.”

“The timing of a couple of these trips is a little bit unusual,” Barton said. “Cancun on spring break and Montego Bay on Valentine’s Day. … I’m just puzzled as to why a conference on education reform needs to take place in a tropical resort.”

Like other Democrats, Tierney justifies the trips by saying that they are not funded by lobbyists, but rather, a non-profit group called the Aspen Institute, which is the number one sponsor of Congressional junkets on which mostly Democrats participate. Non-profit groups would have been exempt from the travel ban in the Democrats’ proposed lobbying reform bill earlier this year — which Tierney sponsored.

McNally insists that Tierney is “abundantly cautious” in choosing any trips, and noted that the Aspen Institute dubs itself a non-partisan think tank. Considering the Aspen Institute is the number one sponsor of trips taken by Democrats, it’s no wonder Tierney and rest of his party specifically excluded non-profits from their reform package.

Following the initial story, John Tierney had to go on defense over these trips. In a follow up story, Tierney cited the sponsors “non-partisan” nature.

Tierney noted that the Aspen Institute accepts no money from lobbyists, corporations or individuals and invites both Democrats and Republicans to its conferences.

“You think you could really get Democrats and Republicans to go somewhere that’s biased?” Tierney asked.

However, the Aspen Institutes sponsors trips for a significantly larger number of Democrats than Republicans. Nearly 70% of what the Aspen Institute spends for these trips goes to Democrats. Rick Barton also questioned the alleged unbiased nature of the group.

But Barton questioned the institute’s unbiased nature, noting that its board of trustees includes registered lobbyists and its conferences involve more Democrats than Republicans. And Barton said that whatever the true nature of the trips, they create an appearance of impropriety.

But Tierney’s travel issues don’t end there.

Tierney said he chooses trips that are relevant to his work in Congress. He attended three Aspen conferences on education reform because he serves on the House Education Committee. He also attended a conference in Finland on political Islam — the conference was originally meant to take place in Turkey — which he said was relevant to his work on the Intelligence Committee. As for his trip to China last year, Tierney said it covered a variety of issues, including education, trade, security and human rights.

The Finland trip on political Islam he attended, which he claimed was relevant to his work on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), took place June 27, 2003 to July 3, 2003… John Tierney was not put on that committee until January 26, 2005.

Tierney also takes an disproportionate number of free trips compared to his power rank in Congress.

According to AmericanRadioWorks, John Tierney ranks an impressive 132 out of 638 for Congressional privately-funded travel. Yet, he ranks a dismal 323 out of 438 for Congressional power.

There is plenty of questionable activity going on with John Tierney. Between taking a huge amount in free trips despite his lack of power, especially such trips like Cancun during spring break and Montego Bay on Valentine’s Day with his wife, and being caught lying about his trip to Helsinki, Finland for work on a committee he was not on at the time, Tierney has some explaining to do.