Top Ten Additional Obama Executive Orders

President Obama released his much-hyped executive gun control orders today, and they were a big anti-climax: piddling initiatives like “Publish a letter from ATF to federally licensed gun dealers providing guidance on how to run background checks for private sellers” and “Launch a national safe and responsible gun ownership campaign.” The president will have to wait on Congress for the big stuff like banning “assault weapons” (good luck with that, Barry).

Well, piddling is what Obama does best. No doubt he’ll do more of it. Here then are my predictions for Top Ten Additional Obama Executive Orders:

#10 Income tax audit for that guy that was mean to him in 10th grade.

#9 Michelle Obama fat jokes now punishable by six years in Leavenworth.

#8 New Obamacare mandate: extra-large suppositories

#7 White House staff to be issued those cool Che Guevara hats.

#6 Raise the ethical standards of the administration by appointing new cabinet secretary Lance Armstrong.

#5 In order to receive federal education funds, school districts must replace Pledge of Allegiance with Obama National Anthem

#4 If Congress doesn’t raise the debt ceiling, no dessert.

#3 In honor of Elizabeth Warren, September is now National Fake Indian History Month.

#2 Twenty percent increase in Snausages for Piers Morgan.

And the #1 Additional Obama Executive Order…
Special 150% tax bracket for all citizens named “Rush.”

Michael Isenberg is the author of Full Asylum, a novel about politics, freedom, and hospital gowns. Check it out on Amazon.com.

The right to bear nuclear arms?

We’ll try to stay serene and calm,
When Alabama gets The Bomb.
– Tom Lehrer, Who’s Next

I'll start with a disclaimer: No, I don't advocate the violent overthrow of the United State government. And I never will, as long as we have free speech and fair elections. The following discussion is theoretical and historical only.

Photo source: Wikipedia

The tragic shootings in Colorado this weekend have predictably reopened the national debate about gun control. Nanny Bloomberg suggested that police go on strike until tougher gun laws are in place. Former Seinfeld star Jason Alexander tweeted for a ban on “assault style weapons.” “What purpose does an AR-15 serve to a sportsman that a more standard hunting rifle does not serve?” Mr. Alexander asked. “They are not the same as handguns to help homeowners protect themselves from intruders. They are not the same as hunting rifles or sporting rifles.”

But the Founding Fathers didn’t codify the right to bear arms in the Constitution to preserve our right to shoot deer and protect our flat screen TVs. They did it because they had just overthrown their government by violence, they thought it was a good thing, and they wanted to make sure their descendents could do the same if there were ever again “a long train of abuses and usurpations.” That this was how they thought is clear from The Federalist #46, where James Madison wrote, “Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of.”

In Mr. Madison’s day, the cutting edge of weapon technology was the muzzle loaded rifle. Adapting his reasoning to today’s weapons raises more questions than it answers. The consequences of a civil war - or of a lone madman - are far more horrific than they were in the eighteenth century. Is the goal to ensure that the people and the states (Mr. Madison’s “subordinate governments”) have military superiority over the federal government? If so, is it necessary, in Mr. Alexander’s words, to permit us to “all run out and purchase a tank, a grenade launcher, a bazooka, a SCUD missile and a nuclear warhead?" I suppose you could make the argument – if you’re not one of the people involved – that an occasional Aurora massacre is a reasonable price to pay to maintain our freedom. It’s impossible to make the argument that the occasional destruction of a city in a nuclear firestorm is reasonable.

Is it still possible and desirable to arm our people well enough to keep the feds at bay? And if not, what’s the “barrier against the enterprises of ambition” of the federal government?