Rep. Alcee Hastings told a group of Jewish Republicans in Florida they should fear Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin because she has a gun and hunts.Standing along side Hilary Clinton, the Florida Democratic Congressman said, "Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don't care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks."
He then challenged the audience, "If Sarah Palin isn't enough of a reason for you to get over whatever your problem is with Barack Obama, then you damn well had better pay attention.
The audience was made up of Jewish and African-American Democrats and appeared receptive to the message.
Hastings, who supported Clinton during the primaries, told others like him, to accept that their candidate lost and "Get over it!".
Here is some right wing gun toting red neck view of the whole gun thing
Apparently Mr. Hastings, like so many Progressives, hasn't thought anything through when it comes to gun rights and advocacy.
Some history: the National Rifle Association (NRA) was founded in 1871 New York by two former Union officers, William Church and George Wingate, and had as its first President former Union General Ambrose Burnside, a Republican. In fact, 8 of the first 10 Presidents of the NRA were Republicans.
Following the post-Civil War slaughters of Black Republicans, most notably in 1868, America passed the Civil Rights Act of 1871, which was signed into law by Republican Ulysses S. Grant.
Propagandist Michael Moore famously attempted to fabricate a connection between the NRA and KKK by noting that the NRA was founded the same year the KK was banned. What he didn't say was that the KKK was founded by former Confederates, many of whom were Democrats. One of the early missions of the NRA was to get arms into the hands of Southern Blacks and train them so that Blacks could protect themselves and their families from predation. As a result, Black Americans swelled the rolls of southern NRA chapters.
Today, it's the NRA that supports the most basic right of every living thing: the right to self-defense. It is Progressives who oppose that right -- like Alcee Hastings and Barack Obama, who supports gun rights only for hunting and target shooting.
The proof of the pudding is in the tasting: name a city with strong gun control laws, and you will also likely name a city where young Black kids still die in droves from violence. Start with Washington, D.C. (where a draconian gun ban - recently overturned by the Supreme Court - was favored by Mr. Obama). From there, go to Detroit, Los Angeles, Oakland and maybe end in Chicago, where Progressives like Mr. Obama and his friend William Ayers are constantly advocating policies that destroy the lives, education and safety of Black adults and children.
When you're done in Chicago, look to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, or, go back in time to the Warsaw Ghetto. If there's a pro- self-defense advocate who only calls for White people to own a weapon, this writer is not aware of it.
In fact, despite the ridiculous smears of "fascism" Progressives are so quick to employ, many pro-gun advocates will point to such laws as the 1938 German Weapons Act, which forbade Jews from owning weapons, and made it easier for the National Socialists to murder them. For a month in Warsaw, however, 750 Polish Jews armed only with small arms smuggled into the ghetto exacted a heavy price on the German National Socialists for their genocidal ambitions.
Today, Israelis understand the value of a society well-trained in the use of a firearm, even if many of their cousins in America have forgotten the lessons of the past.
A simple question: what killed more children in the 20th century: domestic gun murders or governments acting against their own people? There is no contest. Yet Progressives ceaselessly insist that self-defense advocates are the least concerned when it comes to defending the lives of minorities, women and children.
The facts show that they couldn't be more wrong.
BIO of ALCEE HASTINGS
Alcee Lamar Hastings (born September 5, 1936) is a member of the House of Representatives representing Florida's 23rd congressional district.
Born in Altamonte Springs, Florida, Hastings was educated at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee; Howard University in Washington, D.C.; and Florida A&M University. He ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 1970, losing in the first primary to Lawton Chiles.
A Representative since 1993 and a Democrat, Hastings was a lawyer and judge of the circuit court of Broward County, Florida and of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida (1979 to 1989). He was impeached and removed from office for corruption and perjury. He is only the sixth federal judge to be impeached and removed from office in American history.
Impeachment
In 1981, Hastings was charged with accepting a $150,000 bribe in exchange for a lenient sentence and a return of seized assets for 21 counts of racketeering by Frank and Thomas Romano, and of perjury in his testimony about the case. He was acquitted by a jury after his alleged co-conspirator, William Borders, refused to testify in court (resulting in a jail sentence for Borders).
In 1988, the Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives took up the case, and Hastings was impeached for bribery and perjury by a vote of 413-3. Voters to impeach included Democratic Representatives Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, John Conyers and Charles Rangel. He was then convicted in 1989 by the United States Senate, becoming the sixth federal judge in the history of the United States to be removed from office by the Senate. The vote on the first article was 69 for and 26 opposed, providing five votes more than the two-thirds of those present that were needed to convict. The first article accused the judge of conspiracy. Conviction on any single article was enough to remove the judge from office. The Senate vote cut across party lines, with Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont voting to convict his fellow party member, and Arlen Specter voting to acquit.
The Senate had the option to forbid Hastings from ever seeking federal office again, but did not do so. Alleged co-conspirator, attorney William Borders went to jail again for refusing to testify in the impeachment proceedings, but was later given a full pardon by Bill Clinton on his last day in office.
Hastings filed suit in federal court claiming that his impeachment trial was invalid because he was tried by a Senate committee, not in front of the full Senate, and that he had been acquitted in a criminal trial. Judge Stanley Sporkin ruled in favor of Hastings, remanding the case back to the Senate, but stayed his ruling pending the outcome of an appeal to the Supreme Court in a similar case regarding Judge Walter Nixon, who had also been impeached and removed.
Sporkin found some "crucial distinctions" between Nixon's case and Hastings', specifically, that Nixon had been convicted criminally, and that Hastings was not found guilty by two-thirds of the committee who actually "tried" his impeachment in the Senate. He further added that Hastings had a right to trial by the full Senate.
The Supreme Court, however, ruled in Nixon v. United States that the federal courts have no jurisdiction over Senate impeachment matters, so Sporkin's ruling was vacated and Hastings' conviction and removal were upheld.
Candidacy for state office
In 1990, Hastings attempted to make a political comeback by running for the office of Florida Secretary of State, campaigning on a platform of legalizing casinos. In a three-way Democratic primary, he placed second with 313,758 votes, or 33%, behind newspaper columnist Jim Minter's 357,340 votes (38%) and ahead of former Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon John Paul Rogers' 275,370 votes (29%). In the runoff, which saw a large dropoff in turnout, Hastings lost to Minter in a landslide, 300,022 votes to 146,375. Minter would go on to lose the general election to incumbent Republican Jim Smith.
Congressional career
Hastings was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1992, representing Florida's 23rd district. After placing second in the initial Democratic primary for the post, he scored an upset victory over State Representative Lois J. Frankel in the runoff and went on to easily win election the heavily-Democratic district. He has not faced a serious election challenge since.
He is a member of the Congressional Black Caucus and was elected President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in July 2004. Today, as a Senior Democratic Whip, Hastings is an influential member of the Democratic leadership. Congressman Hastings is also a member of the powerful House Rules Committee and is a senior Member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI). On the HPSCI, Hastings is the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.
He was one of the 31 who voted in the House not to count the electoral votes from Ohio in the 2004 presidential election.
House Intelligence Committee controversy
After the 2006 United States House of Representatives elections, Hastings attracted controversy after it was reported that incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi might appoint him as head of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Pelosi reportedly favored Hastings instead of the ranking Democrat Jane Harman due to political differences and support for Hastings by the Congressional Black Caucus.
On November 28, 2006, Pelosi announced that Hastings would not be the Committee's chairman, and later she chose Silvestre Reyes instead. While Congressman Hastings was passed over to chair the committee he became chair of a sub-committee.
Controversial comments regarding Sarah Palin
On September 24, 2008, Hastings came under fire for controversial comments made regarding Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Hastings, speaking in Washington D.C. to a conference sponsored by the National Jewish Democratic Council, said "If Sarah Palin isn’t enough of a reason for you to get over whatever your problem is with Barack Obama, then you damn well had better pay attention. Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don’t care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks. So, you just think this through."
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