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As parents began Monday to bury the young victims of last week’s elementary school massacre, US President Barack Obama offered more than words of comfort. He offered words of hope and the promise of action on gun control. speaking at a memorial service Sunday for the 20 children and six adults who died at the hands of an armed gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown CT on Friday, he said, “In the coming weeks, I’ll use whatever power this office holds… in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this”. In a country that constitutionally guarantees the right to bear arms, and where gun control is an emotionally-charged political quagmire, the question is, “How much can Obama do on his own?”
The call for immediate action echoed on radio talk shows, social media sites, and media reports from coast to coast. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an outspoken advocate of gun control, called on Obama to make tightening gun restrictions his “number one” agenda. On Sunday, on NBC’s Meet the Press, Bloomberg said, “I think the president should console the country, but he’s the commander-in-chief as well as the consoler-in-chief. It’s time for the president, I think, to stand up and lead and tell this country what we should do”. Joyce Cordi, who covers business and government issues for the blog-sharing platform Policymic, wrte, “President Obama should issue an executive order TODAY that places immediate absolute limits on the type and quantity of ammunition that can be purchased at-retail by an individual”.
However, it’s not that easy. John Hudak, an expert on presidential powers and a fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, a non-profit research organization, in an interview with RIA-Novosti, said, “The president’s fairly restricted in his ability to unilaterally change gun policy in the USA because of existing state and federal law. There’s not much he can do from the standpoint of executive action”. Obama… like all US presidents before him… has the authority to use executive orders, a privilege that originated under President George Washington and allows the commander-in-chief to issue a legally-binding order to federal agencies. However, there are restrictions on the kind and scope of orders a president can issue.
Eric Freedman, distinguished professor of constitutional law at Hofstra University Law School, said in an interview with RIA-Novosti, “He’s supposed to be sure the existing laws are being enforced, but he can’t make new laws. If it’s legal to carry a Saturday night special in a park, then nothing the president can do will make it illegal, but if something’s already illegal, then he can choose to enforce it more vigorously”. The most aggressive actions on gun control… like a ban on assault weapons or large ammunition clips… would require legislation that passes both the US Senate and the House of Representatives before the president signs them into law.
Nevertheless, gun control experts said that there are gun control laws already on the books that have languished, including limits on the possession of guns by felons and mental patients, and the ability to run data checks on people who apply for weapons permits. The president could significantly increase investigations and enforcement that would have an immediate effect, Freedman said. “The president can order the relevant enforcement agencies to ratchet up their priorities and can shuffle funds within those agencies to make it happen. He could have a fairly significant impact because you could get some dangerous people and weapons out of circulation, but also because high visibility campaigns have a deterrent effect and would provide political cover for state officials who want more enforcement without the political risk”. He also said Obama is likely in the coming days and weeks to announce, with some fanfare, enforcement of the existing legislation and push to reinstate the ban on assault weapons that expired under President Bush. Freedman added, “The odds are that he’ll consider this fairly low-hanging fruit”.
Experts say Obama is also likely to mandate a broader national policy on school security measures, and push for a more effective coverage of mental health care nationwide. Hudak said, “Through these smaller steps, he can build momentum for bigger change”. Both Hudak and Freedman said that such changes are likely to come sooner, rather than later.
18 December 2012
Maria Young
RIA-Novosti
Voices from Russia 
Please Don’t Lecture Russia
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THIS was the REAL USSR… any questions?
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When I first visited Russia more than 30 years ago, it was still part of the USSR. The idea of any independent or critical press, of open debates in a parliament, or of popular demonstrations against government policies that would bring scores of thousands of people into the streets of Moscow, was inconceivable then. Today, Russia has many critics in the West, who accuse it of sliding back into dictatorship. What is their proposed solution? Usually, it is to criticise Russia and its leaders and try to strong-arm them into adopting policies of greater democracy and alleged greater respect for human rights.
These attitudes stem from a pervasive faith shared by liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans in the USA that’s so pervasive, that its greatest believers are totally unaware of how much they’re in thrall to it. They believe that democracy is the only acceptable political system around the world, and that, consequently, the USA should wage a ceaseless ideological crusade, not resting until, at least, all the major nations of the world share the same limitless blessings of a perfect democratic system.
Now, I’m all in favour of democracy myself… I prefer living within a fully-democratic system rather than under a communist, fascist, or repressive theocracy. However, I’m against waging wars to imposing the American, or any other, democratic system, on other nations. I’m equally opposed to a purely-ideological foreign policy that would treat the governments of the world purely according to how Freedom House and similar bodies grade them according to how it assesses their freedoms. This is hardly an anti-American position. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Quincy Adams, and modern Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George Herbert Walker Bush, and Bill Clinton believed and acted exactly the same way.
Ironically, the history of the West and the USA over the past three-quarters of a century exposes the dangerous folly of such self-righteous fantasies. Britain and the USA only won World War II against Nazi Germany because they were allies with the USSR under Iosif Stalin. I believe that not one in 100,000 Americans alive today knows or remembers that it was the Red Army, not the American or British forces, which liberated the Nazi extermination complexes of Auschwitz and Majdanek in Poland.
Nor did Western pragmatism… or hypocrisy… end with the destruction of the truly-evil Third Reich. Many still hail President Nixon as an American statesman and peacemaker for his détente policy with the USSR and his outreach to China. Not all the repercussions of the Watergate scandal that forced him to resign can take that away. Yet, Nixon, like Reagan after him, supported the two most corrupt régimes on the planet for decades, which ground hundreds of millions of their unfortunate peoples into degradation and despair. These were the kleptocratic dictatorships of Indonesia under President Suharto and Zaïre (today called the Democratic Republic of the Congo) under President Mobuto Sese Seko.
Russia has come an amazingly long way since I first visited it in the spring thaw season of 1982. That doesn’t mean its political system is the same as those of the USA or the major nations of Western Europe. However, it’s no Indonesia under Suharto or Zaïre under Mobutu either. What’s more, the USA never had any trouble getting along with them. All the moral lecturing of Russia by Western critics misses two crucial points.
First, even if Russia were to relapse back into some form of strict authoritarian government… and so far it hasn’t… that wouldn’t make war or conflict with the USA or the West inevitable. The USA, the British Empire, and the communist USSR were reliable and exceptional successful allies to each other throughout World War II. Then, the USA and the USSR successfully steered clear of any direct conflict in the 44 years of the Cold War from 1945 to 1989. It wasn’t easy; at times, they came dangerously close to war. Second, ensuring Russia remains a democracy won’t be a guarantee of peace with Russia, even if such a starry-eyed, ill-defined, reckless, and irresponsible policy such as intervening in Russia’s internal affairs could ever succeed. For throughout modern history, democracies have often waged war on other countries, including on other democracies. The idea that the best guarantee of world peace is a world filled with, and dominated by, democracies is just another myth.
What the USA and Russia really need is a serious dialogue between their top leaderships aimed at defusing tensions and managing real and unavoidable conflicts of interest. Both nations need to work hard on identifying their areas of mutual interest, and expanding them. The last thing American and other Western leaders need to do is to cave into the mounting hysteria from the think-tanks and the armchair strategists churning out their endless morally-outraged columns for the op-ed pages, and embrace a policy of ideological criticism and name-calling against Russia. The two thermonuclear superpowers need to respect each other and improve their cooperation… the peace of the world demands it.
9 March 2013
Martin Sieff
Voice of Russia World Service
http://english.ruvr.ru/2013_03_09/Please-don-t-lecture-Russia/
Editor’s Note:
Orthodox people should note that Victor Potapov, Alexander Webster, James Paffhausen, and Rod Dreher have sold out to the American Consumerist Dream and to the American Democratic Fantasy. They’re Sergianists (those who suck up to the powers-that-be for the scraps that fall from the high table) of the foulest and worst sort. They’re part of the “mounting hysteria from the think-tanks and the armchair strategists churning out their endless morally-outraged columns for the op-ed pages, and embrace a policy of ideological criticism and name-calling against Russia”. Potapov was/is an open US government propagandist. Webster and Dreher are “stink-tankers”; Paffhausen is tied to the American Enterprise Institute (one of the most Far Right stink-tanks in the District). In short, these people are traitors to the Orthosphere, and we must treat them accordingly.
You can follow HH and his support of Social Justice… or you can follow the above sell-out jabronies who’re supporters of “Greed is Good” and “The Race Goes to the Swiftest” (that’s what support of the contemporary Republican Party means). I’ve chosen… it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know where I stand… by the way, I’m far from alone…
BMD