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Herman Cain Breaks With NRA On The Second Amendment

By Ian Millhiser posted from ThinkProgress Justice on Jun 10, 2011 at 11:34 pm

In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer earlier this week, former pizza executive and GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain took a surprisingly liberal view on gun control:

BLITIZER: Let’s talk about gun control. Do you support any gun control?

CAIN: I support the Second Amendment.

BLITZER: So you don’t? What’s the answer on gun control?

CAIN: The answer on gun control is I support, strongly support, the Second Amendment. I don’t support onerous legislation that’s going to restrict people’s rights in order to be able to protect themselves as guaranteed by the Second Amendment.

BLITZER: Should states or local governments be allowed to the gun situation . . .

CAIN: Yes

BLITZER: So the answer is yes?

CAIN: Yes. The answer is yes, that should be a state’s decision.

Watch it:

Cain’s position — that Congress can’t regulate guns but states can — not only places him well to the left of the NRA, it also places him at odds with the Supreme Court. In McDonald v. Chicago, the justices held 5-4 that the Second Amendment applies equally to the states and to the federal government.  So any gun control law that Congress could not enact also cannot be enacted by state or local governments as Cain would prefer.

Cain’s relatively moderate stance on gun control also places him well to the left of the Republican Party. Senate Republicans savaged Justice Sonia Sotomayor during her confirmation hearings because she took the Herman Cain position on gun control while she was a lower court judge — although Sotomayor’s decision was the correct one because it came down before the Supreme Court changed its interpretation of the Second Amendment in McDonald.

To be fair to Cain, however, it is much more likely that he simply doesn’t know anything about the Second Amendment than that he actually is staking out a somewhat liberal position on guns. In his first Sunday show interview, Cain exposed his utter ignorance of foreign policy by not understanding what the Palestinian “right of return” is. Cain launched his campaign with a speech that mixed up the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. He claimed that Congress is powerless to regulate bankruptcy, even though the Constitution says exactly the opposite. And he embraced a wildly unconstitutional plan to force Islamic federal employees to swear a loyalty oath.

In other words, Cain is clearly more interested in making the Constitution up as he goes along than in actually following it.

Green Movement Spokesperson: Iran ‘Regime Would Really Like For Someone To Come Drop Two Bombs On Natanz’

By Ali Gharib on Jun 10, 2011 at 5:30 pm

Many Iran hawks who claim to support Iran’s embattled opposition Green Movement say a military attack on Iran would spur the population there to overthrow the regime. Neoconservative Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin, who advocates for airstrikes, wrote that “an attack would serve as a tipping point rather than a rallying point.” Another neocon, Reuel Marc Gerecht of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, an admirer of the Iranian opposition, recommended Israel launch strikes against Iran in the Weekly Standard last year. He wrote:

Too much has been made in the West of the Iranian reflex to rally round the flag after an Israeli (or American) preventive strike… Neither the Israelis nor anyone else need fear for the Green Movement.

But there is a serious knowledge gap in Washington about what the Green Movement inside Iran is. Today at a forum with a close adviser of Green Movement leader and presidential candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi, a very different view — from  someone from the actual Green Movement inside Iran — came to the fore.

Ardechir Amir Arjomand, an Iranian lawyer who’s now the secretary and spokesperson of a Green Coordinating Council, said an attack would likely hurt the Green Movement and help the cadre currently atop the Iranian government. Asked after the forum by ThinkProgress about keeping the “military option on the table” and drawing up attack plans, Arjomand said:

The regime would really like for someone to come drop two bombs on Natanz [an Iranian nuclear facility]. This would then increase nationalism and the regime would gather everyone and all the political parties around itself.

At a conference Tuesday convened by the Arms Control Association, an analyst from the RAND Corporation, Iran expert Alireza Nader, expressed an almost identical sentiment. After briefly introducing some of the current rifts in the Iranian polity — between the establishment and the Green Movement and even recently exposed rifts within various conservative factions in power — Nader said:

[T]hese internal divisions in Iran really blunt Iran’s ability to project power in the Middle East and it keeps the Iranian regime very preoccupied.  It can’t focus its efforts outward.

And this potentially provides U.S. leverage in following more successful strategy toward Iran and pressuring Iran through sanctions, for example.  But a military strike on Iran could reverse all of that.

What a military strike could do is unite all Iran’s various factions and personalities around the supreme leader.

If Iran hawks want to argue that Iran poses a security threat to U.S. allies in the region and an attack is necessary, they should do that. But they shouldn’t make disingenuous arguments that they’re doing it for the Green Movement.

NEWS FLASH

Syrian Helicopter Gunships Fire On Pro-Democracy Demonstrators | Reuters reports: “Syrian helicopter gunships fired machineguns to disperse a large pro-democracy protest in the town of Maarat al-Numaan on Friday, witnesses said, in the first reported use of air power to quell protests in Syria’s uprising.” One witness told Reuters by telephone that “at least five helicopters flew over Maarat al-Numaan and began firing their machineguns to disperse the tens of thousands who marched in the protest.”

NEWS FLASH

Norway Announces Withdrawal From Libya Campaign | Outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Wednesday asked five NATO members (Germany, Spain, Poland, Turkey and the Netherlands) to boost their contributions in the air campaign against Muammar Qaddafi’s government in LIbya. U.S. officials even singled out Denmark and Norway for “punching above their weight.” However, Norway announced today that “it will scale down its fighter jet contribution in Libya from six to four planes and withdraw completely from the NATO-led operation by August 1.”

Pawlenty Isn’t Concerned That Al Qaeda Trying To Exploit Lax U.S. Gun Laws

By Ben Armbruster on Jun 10, 2011 at 12:40 pm

Any individual in this country, regardless of criminal history, can go to a gun show and buy a firearm because law does not require private dealers to conduct a federal criminal background check on the buyer. This is exactly what American-born al Qaeda spokesperson Adam Yahiye Gadahn urged the terrorist group’s followers to do last week in a YouTube video and to use them to murder Americans.

GOP presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty weighed in on the issue yesterday at the Shooting Sports Summit in Louisville, Kentucky. When local news station WHAS11 asked Pawlenty specifically about the al Qaeda video, the former Minnesota governor said he does not support putting any new gun control laws on the books:

WHAS11: Does that concern you at all? And does that change at all our stance on the accesability of firearms?

PAWLENTY: I’m a strong supporter of the Second Amendment It says what it says, which is we should have the right to keep and bear arms. [...] As they take airplanes and kill 3,000 of our fellow citizens and some are trying to get weapons of mass destruction, I think that’s where the main focus for us should be, not whether they get handguns and of course we need to have appropriate laws for that as well. … I’m not proposing new restrictions on firearms in America.

Watch WHAS11′s report:

While Pawlenty seems to be happy to give what he appears to think is the NRA line on the al Qaeda gun show loophole video, the powerful gun lobby isn’t talking. ThinkProgress has repeatedly asked the National Rifle Association to comment on the video, but we have yet to receive a response.

Rohrabacher To Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki: Repay The U.S. For Invading Your Country

By Ben Armbruster on Jun 10, 2011 at 11:10 am

Weeks after Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi’s violent crackdown on anti-government forces there, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) introduced a resolution offering support for the rebels, saying they “should be considered the legitimate representatives of the Libyan people.” But in Doha yesterday, as part of a brief Middle East trip, the California Republican withdrew that support. Why? Because apparently the rebels won’t repay the U.S. for expenses incurred in helping them take down Qaddafi. “This lack of gratitude is shocking; this is not a good thing for their course,” he said.

But today in Baghdad, Rohrabacher took it a step further, telling the Iraqis — whose country the United States invaded by choice — that they must also repay the U.S. for invading their country, the AFP reports:

“Once Iraq becomes a very rich and prosperous country…we would hope that some consideration be given to repaying the United States some of the mega-dollars that we have spent here in the last eight years,” Rohrabacher told journalists at the US embassy in Baghdad.

“We were hoping that there would be a consideration of a payback because the United States right now is in close to a very serious economic crisis and we could certainly use some people to care about our situation as we have cared about theirs.”

On Libya, the local Qatari English language news site the Peninsula noted that “the revolutionaries have not made any commitment to return the expenses by the US on Libya as it could be used by Muammar Gaddafi as propaganda against the rebels.”

Rohrabacher “raised the issue in a meeting with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki” although the AFP did not report what would most likely have been Maliki’s bemused response. But it’s beyond absurd for Rohrabacher to demand that Iraq pay back the United States for, in retired Gen. Colin Powell’s terminology, “breaking” its country. If anyone is responsible for that, it’s George W. Bush.

NEWS FLASH

Sadr-sponsored ‘Poetry Competition of the Iraqi Resistance’ | “All in the Sadrist movement are able to hold a weapon and fight Americans. But not all Iraqis are good at cultural resistance,” an official from radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr’s movement told the New York Times. The solution? A “Poetry Competition of the Iraqi Resistance.” No digs against politicians or sects were allowed, but one of the contest’s rules raised questions about artistic integrity: entries “must paint an impressive and beautiful picture of the resistance movement.” Sample entries spoke of “dirty American(s),” “honor and glory,” and “Najaf sand.”

By Ali Gharib on Jun 10, 2011 at 10:00 am

National Security Brief: June 10, 2011

By ThinkProgress on Jun 10, 2011 at 9:00 am

Outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in his final policy address at a European think-tank that NATO risks “collective military irrelevance” unless its European members boost their military spending.

Haaretz has acquired Israeli Foreign Ministry cables that show the Ministry urging its diplomats to convey the message that the formation of a Palestinian state by the UN would delegitimize Israel and damage the prospects for future peace talks.

Pakistan’s army Chief called for U.S. military aid to be replaced with civilian assistance, an announcement reflecting recent criticism of Pakistan’s armed forces.

Egypt’s economy has slowed to an annual growth rate of 2 percent, an economic standstill in a country where a poorly performing economy and inequities helped fuel public support for the toppling of Hosni Mubarak’s government. The 18 day revolution brought a stop in foreign investment and badly damaged Egypt’s sizable tourism industry.

With no deal yet to keep U.S. forces in Iraq beyond the end of this year, politicians and military commanders there said the country’s own forces remain dysfunctional as chains of command are skirted in favor of centralized control by Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki.

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters that “at least 2,400 Syrians had crossed into Turkey to flee the violence. Refugees and aid officials said thousands more remained trapped on the Syrian side.”

Britain’s Middle East minister Alistair Burt, issuing warnings about post-Gaddafi Libya, refused to rule out the possibility of international peacekeeping forces. “[T]he UN plainly has a role,” he said.

As the Libyan rebels slowly gain international recognition, a cohort of the countries intervening there pledged more than a billion dollars to aid them, though the money still faces legal hurdles.

The European Union will have a new member state. The EU commission today approved Croatia’s application to join the Union, which will likely begin in 2013.

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