Ocassional Thoughts of an Independent Progressive Atheistic Humanist
Loved President Obama’s 2nd Inauguration speech given today. I heard the social contract in his words. In a post on my iHumanism blog I highlighted some of my favorite parts of the speech.
On Wednesday President Obama announced some initial plans to address the uptick in mass killings due to the ease of obtaining military style guns with high capacity ammunition clips. Of course the gun lobby lost their minds about it because they falsely believe that any regulation is equal to banning guns. The truth is, reasonable regulation will lower the chance of more Newtown type mass killings. Many of the screeching arguments used by the gun lobby are weak and don’t hold up to logic and reason.
I didn’t know who Aaron Swartz was before hearing about his death this weekend. I realized I had heard of him once his biography was reported when the story of his death spread across the Internet. It seems Swartz committed suicide and that action might have been the result of stress due to his upcoming trial for computer fraud and abuse. If convicted he was looking at least 35 to 50 years in federal prison. What crime did he commit with his computer? He “stole” information from behind a paywall that he believed should be free to the public since we paid for the creation of the information. While his death is tragic for his friends and family, his case shows how unbalanced our justice system can be.
The other day I saw on Twitter someone mentioned a possible solution to the gun debate that heated up after the mass murder in Newtown Connecticut. It basically said – Guns don’t kill people, ammunition does and the 2nd amendment doesn’t say anything about ammunition. What a great idea. We should ban ammunition. That would allow people to keep their guns and would reduce the chances of more mass murders.
Again here is the text of the 2nd amendment of the US Constitution:
Hurricane Sandy damage along New Jersey coastAnother natural disaster and another opportunity for the Republicans in Congress to be dicks about approving federal disaster aid. It happened with the tornado in Joplin Missouri and the recent Hurricane Sandy on the east coast. Republicans say that any disaster aid has to be offset by spending cuts. Not only is the demand hurtful to those who depend on the target of the cuts, the social safety net, but the GOP demand is stupidly irrational. Federal disaster aid comes back as increased tax revenue from spending by restored businesses and residential restoration work.
We’ve had several major natural disasters in the past few years like the tornado that hit Joplin Missouri in 2011 and Hurricane Sandy that hit the east coast in October. Each time Federal disaster relief funds were requested in Congress and each time some Republicans said they would only approve the relief aid if the money was offset by spending cuts elsewhere in the budget.