This week has been a pretty dramatic one both legislatively and judicially.

The bad news is that with the complicity of the NRA, Carolyn McCarthy was able to get her NICS "enhancements" passed through the House.  In general principle, we are all in favor of keeping firearms out of the hands of the mentally ill.  But we just disagree with this bill in how it goes about doing so.   Alan Korwin does a good job of summarizing why this bill is bad.  Let's hope we can get this bill amended in the senate to be less arbitrary and give citizens fair recourse to regain their rights.

You've all heard by now that the illegal amnesty bill failed to gain cloture and is dead.  I don't know why Bush staked himself so firmly on this issue.  Will this loss hasten the lame duck period? 

It hasn't gotten much press that the appropriations committee has voted 19-10 to strengthen the Tiahrt amendment to include penalties of incarceration for LEO who use gun trace information for any purpose other than investigating a specific crime.  The fight to repeal Tiahrt has become one of the main legislative priorities of the gun bigots this year.  Committee member Lautenberg was committed to repealing the Tiahrt amendment.  Despite what the enemies of liberty will tell you, the Tiahrt amendment does not impede law enforcement from tracing the origin of a gun used in a crime.  Case in point: the day after the VT shooting, the press had the full in identity of the FFL's who had sold Cho the handguns from the police.  Tiahrt prevents cities from going on fishing expeditions and launching lawsuits against dealers and manufacturers.  Something the gun grabbers won't tell you is that the ATF and the FOP are opposed to the release of gun trace data.

Another big event in DC was the SCOTUS this week nullified part of the McCain-Feingold act.

Finally, the Democrats have chosen their next big legislative battle to be reestablishing the fairness doctrine to the FCC.  Democrats couldn't have picked a worse issue to than trying to bring down talk radio.  Not only have the mobilized the tens of millions of conservatives in this country who listen to talk radio, but they've taken the low road on the free speech issue.  Their position is essentially that free political speech is what they will allow you to say.