OBAMA'S PLAN FOR GUN CONTROL
By
NWV News writer Jim Kouri
Posted 1:00 AM Eastern
March 2, 2009
© NewsWithViews.com
NewsWithViews.com participated in a press teleconference regarding President Obama's plans for gun control.
As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama deliberately and repeatedly lied to America's 90 million gun owners across the country when he insisted that he would not try to take away anyone's firearms, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said during a press teleconference on Friday.
CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, reacting to Thursday's remarks by Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder that the president will seek to reinstate the ban on semi-automatic firearms, said Obama "knew he was lying to the nation because his own web site touted his plan to revive the gun ban and make it permanent."
"We warned America that Obama's 'support' for the Second Amendment was empty rhetoric," he stated, "and now Holder's disclosure has confirmed it. Obama was lying, and now gun rights may be dying."
Several times on the campaign trail, Obama told voters "I'm not going to take your guns away." He said it at rallies in Duryea, Pennsylvania and in Boise, Idaho. He also told a news conference that "Lawful gun owners have nothing to fear... I think people can take me at my word."
"Right now," said Gottlieb, "I wouldn't take Obama's word if he said it rains a lot in Seattle. Apparently, law-abiding gun owners have nothing to fear unless they own sport-utility rifles, semiautomatic shotguns, handguns and any other firearm that Obama and his anti-gun attorney general don't like."
"Thanks to Eric Holder, who has been far more honest than his boss about his anti-gun philosophy, it is now clear that the new president doesn't support the Second Amendment at all," he observed. "American gun owners should remind Democrats in Congress that the Second Amendment means what it says, especially when the president doesn't."
The gun-rights protectors aren't the only ones sounding the Obama -Holder alarm. The National Legal and Policy Center, an organization that achieved success as a plaintiff in the 1993 lawsuit to open the meetings and records of Hillary Rodham Clinton's health care task force, criticized President-Elect Barack Obama for selecting Eric Holder as his Attorney General. NLPC promotes ethics in public life, and sponsors the Government Integrity Project.
According to NLPC President Peter Flaherty, "Holder is not ethically qualified to serve as Attorney General. His track record is not one of independence or objectivity. Instead, he has been guided by politics and self-interest."
On December 21, 1994, federal Judge Royce Lamberth, who presided over the litigation to open the health care task force, asked Holder, who at the time was the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, to investigate Ira Magaziner for possible perjury and criminal contempt of court. He also suggested that Attorney General Janet Reno should appoint an independent counsel to investigate.
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Reno announced on March 3, 1995 that she would not appoint an independent prosecutor. On August 3, 1995 Eric Holder announced that he, too, would not prosecute Magaziner.
Magaziner, who headed up the task force, asserted to plaintiffs in a March 3, 1993 statement that no outsiders, or non-government employees, were taking part in the task force. When task force documents were later produced, it was obvious that dozens of outsiders had taken part. It was not a small point. The presence of outsiders would trigger the Federal Advisory Committee Act, requiring that task force meetings be opened to the public. Magaziner's claim stood for several months. Magaziner and other participants in the task force took no action to expose it or to correct the record.
An example of an outsider was Lois Quam, a vice-president of United Health Care Corporation, a for-profit managed care provider. United Health Care stood to financially benefit from the decisions of the task force, not to mention the reams of inside information to which she would become privy.
Quam's participation also helped fuel a controversy directly involving Hillary. The Clintons were investors in a closely held limited partnership called ValuePartners 1, which held a block of United Health Care stock. The partnership shorted a number of health-related stocks including United Health Care. At the time of his death, Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster was in the process of putting the Clinton's health care stocks into a blind trust, a task not completed until July 26, 1994.
At the time, NLPC accused the Clinton administration of a cover-up. Both Reno and Holder were appointed by Clinton, and Reno owed her job to Hillary. Additionally, the Washington Post reported in January of 1995 that Holder was under consideration by Clinton for appointment to a federal judgeship.
Flaherty concluded, "When Reno said she would not appoint a special prosecutor, it was even more appropriate for the case to be handled by the U.S. Attorney with jurisdiction. That was Holder and he should have acted. Holder's failure to pursue Magaziner made a mockery of the law."
After earning notoriety as a student activist and business consultant, Magaziner became the senior advisor for policy development for President Clinton, especially as chief healthcare policy advisor. He now serves as chairman of the William J. Clinton Foundation's international development initiatives, which are at the forefront of non-governmental organizations in addressing Global Health and Environmental issues.
During his college years at Brown University, Magaziner was one of the two architects of the "New Curriculum," a liberal academic approach which includes no core requirements aside from the concentration the student pursues. Magaziner excelled academically at Brown and in 1969 was named valedictorian of his class.
"This is the type of people being appointed to positions of power in the Obama Administration," warns political strategist Mike Baker. "Is there any wonder that gun control would be a major policy issue? These people know they must disarm Americans."
In addition to his failure to prosecute Magaziner, Holder also refused to prosecute anyone involved in the Branch Davidian Massacre in Waco, Texas, an operation given the greenlight by his boss Janet Reno.
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"While Holder had no problem having many Americans murdered by federal law enforcement, his heart bleeds for terrorists and enemies who have been captured on the battlefield," said Baker.
"The only thing he learned from the brutality in Waco is that it would have been easier if the occupants of that compound were disarmed prior to the military-style operation," he added.
