'Obama and the Attempt to Destroy the Second Amendment'

[Janq]

Preface: Finally some _new_ news and not a rehash of what has already been told/reported numerous times via other media channels.

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As featured at PajamasMedia.com:

October 6, 2008 - by David T. Hardy

As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama must demonstrate executive experience, but he remains strangely silent about his eight years (1994-2002) as a director of the Joyce Foundation, a billion dollar tax-exempt organization. He has one obvious reason: during his time as director, Joyce Foundation spent millions creating and supporting anti-gun organizations.

There is another, less known, reason.

During Obama’s tenure, the Joyce Foundation board planned and implemented a program targeting the Supreme Court. The work began five years into Obama’s directorship, when the Foundation had experience in turning its millions into anti-gun “grassroots” organizations, but none at converting cash into legal scholarship.

The plan’s objective was bold: the judicial obliteration of the Second Amendment.

Joyce’s directors found a vulnerable point. When judges cannot rely upon past decisions, they sometimes turn to law review articles. Law reviews are impartial, and famed for meticulous cite-checking. They are also produced on a shoestring. Authors of articles receive no compensation; editors are law students who work for a tiny stipend.

In 1999, midway through Obama’s tenure, the Joyce board voted to grant the Chicago-Kent Law Review $84,000, a staggering sum by law review standards. The Review promptly published an issue in which all articles attacked the individual right view of the Second Amendment.

In a breach of law review custom, Chicago-Kent let an “outsider” serve as editor; he was Carl Bogus, a faculty member of a different law school. Bogus had a unique distinction: he had been a director of Handgun Control Inc. (today’s Brady Campaign), and was on the advisory board of the Joyce-funded Violence Policy Center.

Bogus solicited only articles hostile to the individual right view of the Second Amendment, offering authors $5,000 each. But word leaked out, and Prof. Randy Barnett of Boston University volunteered to write in defense of the individual right to arms. Bogus refused to allow him to write for the review, later explaining that “sometimes a more balanced debate is best served by an unbalanced symposium.” Prof. James Lindgren, a former Chicago-Kent faculty member, remembers that when Barnett sought an explanation he “was given conflicting reasons, but the opposition of the Joyce Foundation was one that surfaced at some time.” Joyce had bought a veto power over the review’s content.

Joyce Foundation apparently believed it held this power over the entire university. Glenn Reynolds later recalled that when he and two other professors were scheduled to discuss the Second Amendment on campus, Joyce’s staffers “objected strenuously” to their being allowed to speak, protesting that Joyce Foundation was being cheated by an “‘agenda of balance’ that was inconsistent with the Symposium’s purpose.” Joyce next bought up an issue of Fordham Law Review.

The plan worked smoothly. One court, in the course of ruling that there was no individual right to arms, cited the Chicago-Kent articles eight times. Then, in 2001, a federal Court of Appeals in Texas determined that the Second Amendment was an individual right.

The Joyce Foundation board (which still included Obama) responded by expanding its attack on the Second Amendment. Its next move came when Ohio State University announced it was establishing the “Second Amendment Research Center” as a thinktank headed by anti-individual-right historian Saul Cornell. Joyce put up no less than $400,000 to bankroll its creation. The grant was awarded at the board’s December 2002 meeting, Obama’s last function as a Joyce director. In reporting the grant, the OSU magazine Making History made clear that the purpose was to influence a future Supreme Court case:

“The effort is timely: a series of test cases - based on a new wave of scholarship, a recent decision by a federal Court of Appeals in Texas, and a revised Justice Department policy-are working their way through the courts. The litigants challenge the courts’ traditional reading of the Second Amendment as a protection of the states’ right to organize militia, asserting that the Amendment confers a much broader right for individuals to own guns. The United States Supreme Court is likely to resolve the debate within the next three to five years.”

(45:17-18; online link; slow).

The Center proceeded to generate articles denying the individual right to arms. The OSU connection also gave Joyce an academic money laundry. When it decided to buy an issue of the Stanford Law and Policy Review, it had a cover. Joyce handed OSU $125,000 for that purpose; all the law review editors knew was that OSU’s Foundation granted them that breathtaking sum, and a helpful Prof. Cornell volunteered to organize the issue. (The review was later sufficiently embarassed to publish an open letter on the affair).

The Joyce directorate’s plan almost succeeded. The individual rights view won out in the Heller Supreme Court appeal, but only by 5-4. The four dissenters were persuaded in part by Joyce-funded writings, down to relying on an article which misled them on critical historical documents.

Having lost that fight, Obama now claims he always held the individual rights view of the Second Amendment, and that he “respects the constitutional rights of Americans to bear arms.” But as a Joyce director, Obama was involved in a wealthy foundation’s attempt to manipulate the Supreme Court, buy legal scholarship, and obliterate the individual right to arms.

Voters who value the Constitution should ask whether someone who was party to that plan should be nominating future Supreme Court justices.

Source with multiple inline link citations; Pajamas Media » Obama and the Attempt to Destroy the Second Amendment

- Janq

[DefensiveCarry.com]

[miklcolt45]

Janq,

Thanks for posting that.

A good example of the character of the man, and the kind
of actions and attitudes we can continue to expect, regardless of the
outcome in Nov.

[retsupt99]

Preface: Finally some _new_ news and not a rehash of what has already been told/reported numerous times via other media channels.

---

As featured at PajamasMedia.com:

October 6, 2008 - by David T. Hardy

As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama must demonstrate executive experience, but he remains strangely silent...
Voters who value the Constitution should ask whether someone who was party to that plan should be nominating future Supreme Court justices.

Source with multiple inline link citations; Pajamas Media » Obama and the Attempt to Destroy the Second Amendment

- Janq

Janq...

A news flash of certain importance, but yet just another set of facts completely ignored by our news media...this country is being flushed down the sewer very quickly...

Thanks for the posting.

ret

[Bob The Great]

Good (and scary) read. I'll be passing this on - thanks.

[bandit383]

Not to sound doom and gloom...but the numbers are not adding up in favor of McCain. So unless some major revelation, smart minds/think tank types need to be planning congressional actions/support/ticket strategies to counter anti-
2A. Hence, it is congress that holds the key...and it will take dollars...lots of dollars.

[MP45CDE]

I commit to being a law abiding citizen until our ignorant hollywoodized citizens wind up legalizing abortion and abolishing the Second Amendment. Then, all bets are off.

Get your core defense weapons now while you still can and take your kids to church whenever the doors are open...while they're still open.

[bandit383]

Seems we are straying away from 2A as the discussion point...

Rick

[pgrass101]

Keep posts too the Second Admendment or the thread will be closed

[automatic slim]

It seems where the destruction of the 2A is concerned, money is no object as far as Obama is concerned. Just imagine, your tax dollars at work.

[Duisburg]

Obama, the most anti-gun presidential candidate in US History:

LiveLeak.com - Obama - The Most Anti-Gun Cadidate in History?

[vic2367]

buy your stuff now people,,
gotta feeling nobamas gonna be our next prez..
lets just hope we can at least control both houses

[1911luver]

I think is yet another reason for all gun owners to go out and vote on election day. Like our counterparts is Great Britain and Australia before us we have only ourself to blame if we lose our rights.

[raevan]

This is something I don't get. The supreme court uses these studies to make decisions. Why don't they read and study what was written by the people who framed the Constitution. I think that in the heller case this is what swayed the final decision. But still there were 4 that looked to the studies done by the Joyce Foundation. This is scary that what twisted ideas people have now can influence judges to want to rewrite the constitution.

[JAT40]

What guns? I don't have any guns, nor do I know anyone that owns any guns.