Welcome to your Thursday open thread. Well, that last snowstorm was a bust, at least for Delaware. I saw actual sunshine yesterday! It was nice to get a taste of spring even if for only a few hours.
Steve Benen at Washington Monthly flags this story about the Koch brothers secret meeting last weekend. They have their own private security force just like Joe Miller.
In particular, Vogel noted the events in California over the weekend, with Koch-paid guards tracking resort guests deemed “suspicious,” and erecting a blockade to prevent cameras from filming arriving guests.
Inside the resort at the beginning of the conference, “there was an atmosphere almost of paranoia,” said Gary Ferdman, a Common Cause official.
Ferdman had reservations at the resort and stayed there Thursday and Friday night. He said he was told Saturday that his lunch reservations at the resort restaurant had been canceled and was urged to check out and leave promptly by a member of Koch’s large security detail.
Security manned every doorway and stairwell near the ballrooms where Koch events were held, and threatened to jail this POLITICO reporter while he waited in line at the resort’s cafe, after he stopped by a Koch conference registration table.
The resort grounds were “closed for a private function,” the resort’s head of security, James Foster told POLITICO, ushering the reporter outside, where private security guards, wearing gold lapel pins bearing Koch’s “K” logo, threatened “a citizen’s arrest” and a “night in the Riverside County jail” if the reporter continued asking questions and taking photographs.
The Kochs already have a reputation for being overly-secretive and heavy-handed in their tactics. I don’t imagine threatening a journalist while he waited in line at a hotel cafe is going to help.
As Jon Chait joked, “If those hired goons don’t dispel the image of the Kochs as sinister moguls, I don’t know what will.”
Freedom of speech means that RWNJs get to say what they want, free from criticism. How legal is it to have your own security force arrest people?
Remember how we talked about a bill introduced in South Dakota to require all adults to own a gun? The bill’s sponsor was trying to make a point about the Constitutionality of health care reform. Except we found out that George Washington did sign a law to require people to own a gun. TPM interviewed the bill’s sponsor with this new information.
So I called Wick, to ask his opinion. He affirmed to me that his bill is about making a statement. “The bill is really about Obamacare, and the fact that it’s unconstitutional.”
Does he think a gun mandate and the health care mandate are the same thing, I asked? “Yes,” he responded.
I then asked him whether he had an opinion on the gun mandate that was signed into law by Washington in 1792. “I wasn’t aware of it,” he said after a short pause. “Is it still on the books or has it been removed?”
I explained that the Militia Acts were amended many times over the course of this country’s history, and this provision was phased out a long time ago.
In the course of the interview, I asked whether this would change his opinion on individual mandates. “No,” he said. “I really don’t feel like a gun mandate would be constitutional under these circumstances.”
What does he mean by the circumstances?
“Well, it was shortly after the Revolutionary War, and it was before the War of 1812,” he said, “which may have been something that was on the radar screen — that they knew there could be another challenge coming from overseas. I’m not a history major, though.”
I’m not a history major, though.. Not truer words have been spoken.