Here’s Why the NRA Won and Gabby Giffords and Mike Bloomberg Lost | Mother Jones

And as a partial counterpoint to the WSJ article on the same subject, I post this for your consideration.  In a nutshell, the progressives at Mother Jones see gun supporters in the same bile-green light of disgust and noblesse oblige as they have always.   Mother’s view of the NRA, however, as some disembodied corporate entity unrelated to the will (and money) of a large number of American patriots is logically dissonant.  I.e.:

Money, a tragic moment, and public support do not equal political power

Mother Jones —By Andy Kroll | Thu Apr. 18, 2013 1:45 PM PDT

On NBC’s Meet the Press last month, National Rifle Association honcho Wayne LaPierre, the face of the American gun lobby, delivered this message to New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg: “He’s going to find out that this is a country of the people, by the people, and for the people, and he can’t spend enough of his $27 billion to try to impose his will on the American public. He can’t buy America.” The day before, Bloomberg had announced that he would spend $12 million of his own money on an ad blitz pressing members of Congress to pass new legislation expanding background checks for gun purchases. LaPierre went on national television to tell the mayor that all those millions wouldn’t make the difference in the fight in Congress over new gun laws.

Guess what? LaPierre was right…

There Ain’t No More Middle-Ground | Sultan Knish

“There is no more neutrality in the world,” said Black Panther leader, civil rights activist and fun-loving rapist; Eldridge Cleaver. “You either have to be part of the solution, or you’re going to be part of the problem– there ain’t no more middle ground.”

We live in Eldridge Cleaver’s world now, a world with no more middle ground. Where not doing anything does not mean you will be left alone. This is no longer a nation founded on the curious premise that the government should leave people alone unless they are causing problems.

That peculiar idea was held by a nation of farmers and merchants who fled religious persecution, and whose great contribution to human history was the notion that governments shouldn’t be all-powerful and that everyone should mind their own business when it comes to other people’s affairs. Our present-day rulers revile them as racist slave owners who only cared about money, but they also happen to be racist slave owners who only care about money, and they have far more of both.

Homeland Security: You’re All ‘Militia Extremists’ Now | PJMedia

A recently published “lexicon” distributed to thousands of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) targets citizens concerned about their Second Amendment rights and the steady encroachment of the federal government, categorizing such as “militia extremists.”

The “lexicon,” marked Unclassified/For Official Use Only (FOUO), is dated November 10, 2011, and was sent out by email to law enforcement and homeland security agencies on November 14 by LaJuan E. Washington of the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis.

We have exclusively posted the DHS “lexicon” here... via PJ Media