United Liberty

Dear Piers Morgan,

We get it.  You, a British citizen and a subject of the Crown, are not a supporter of gun rights.  This is something we understand perfectly well.

However, I feel that as a fellow journalist, I need to reach out and let you know that I’m on to your little tricks.  Frankly, if this is the best you’ve got, maybe you should rethink your position on gun rights…or at least quit making it such a point on your show.

The first trick was to shout down reasonable debate when you had Larry Pratt on your show.  Pratt, the executive director of Gun Owners of America, went on your show to have a reasonable discussion, and you shout him down with tactics more akin to Bill O’Reilly’s.  Every time he opened his mouth to counter your points, you were rude and drowned him out.

Time and time again, you called Pratt names like “stupid,” while countering with no facts of your own.  You were as unprofessional as I have ever seen, and with Kieth Olbermann and O’Reilly still in my memory, that’s saying something.

Last night, you had Alex Jones on your show.  Ostensibly, it was about the petition to have you deported.  For the record, I did not sign it and did not support it.  Freedom of speech is freedom for all, or else it’s freedom for none.    Jones started it, and you had him on your show.  Unsurprisingly, the topic went over to gun control.

It’s still far too early in the game to take polls seriously, though it’s hard to ignore them either. Polls really matter around 60 days away from an election. But given how Mitt Romney’s selection of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) for his running mate was supposed to be a political loser from the word “go,” polls are showing that he has received a bit of a bounce.

While Gallup may not show a bounce for Romney in its national tracking poll, other polls aren’t backing that up. Via Hot Air comes numbers from Ohio and Virginia, two very crucial states in the upcoming presidential election, showing good news for Romney. The numbers, however, also show positives for Obama in Colorado and Florida:

Romney has seen the largest gain in Ohio, a state we have seen bounce between the campaigns over the last few months. Today, the GOP ticket leads by 2 points (46% to 44%), compared to July when President Obama led the state 48% to 45%. Romney also gained ground in Virginia – today, he and Paul Ryan hold a 3-point advantage in the race (48% to 45%), while Romney trailed by 2 points in July.

However, President Obama has seen improvements in Colorado and Florida. In Colorado, the Obama-Biden ticket now leads 49% to 46%, an increase from a 1-point lead in July. In Florida, the Democratic ticket trails by just 1 point (48% to 47%), compared to a 3 point deficit in July…

It’s been another interesting week in the battle for the Republican nomination for president. Rick Perry continues his free fall as Herman Cain benefits from a substantial amount of press coming off his straw poll win in Florida. Of course, Romney stands to benefit from this as he hasn’t had much of a tea party appeal.

In this latest version of our Power Rankings, Cain and Newt Gingrich are moved up, Bachmann drops down into the bottom tier. And while may disagree with this, Romney moves back to the top.

The News

If you were able to sit through the entire debate, I think you deserve an award. Seriously, that was rough. There wasn’t much in the way of substantive answers. And outside of Rep. Ron Paul, who is focusing his message on monetary policy and non-interventionist foreign policy, no one really seemed to want to separate themselves from the pack last night. There was a lot of agreement and no fireworks.

CNN’s John King, who served as the debate’s moderator, did a terrible job. He spent most of the evening utting “uh huh” behind the answers given by each question. Just before commercial breaks he asked candidates if they preferred “Conan or Leno,” “Elvis or Johnny Cash” and “Coke or Pepsi.” CNN will be hosting a Tea Party debate on September 12th, let’s hope they workout the kinks between now and then.

Michele Bachmann: Even though she contradicted herself on a couple of occasions - for example, saying that she wouldn’t interfere with state marriage laws, but yet supports a Federal Marriage Amendment; Bachmann, who used the debate as an opportunity to announce her candidacy, actually came across fairly well as far as communicating her message. I’d say she was in top three debate “winners.” By the way, Bachmann’s House seat seems to be up in the air. If she’s actively running for president, she can’t run for re-election. However, she has until June 2012 to make a decision.

We’ll be covering the debate sponsored this evening by CNN, WMUR and the Manchester Union Leader beginning at 7:30pm. The candidates participating this evening are Rep. Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, former Speaker Newt Gingrich, Rep. Ron Paul, former Gov. Tim Pawlenty, former Gov. Mitt Romney and former Sen. Rick Santorum.

Gary Johnson, who served two-terms as Governor of New Mexico, was not invited to the debate even though he met CNN’s criteria.

And before you watch the debate for tonight, here is some suggested reading: Dave Weigel has a report from the Granite State, AmSpec’s Jim Antle has a few quick thoughts on each candidate, The Hill offers five things for us to watch for this evening and a preview of tonight’s debate from The New York Times.

Recently, the TEA Party movement celebrated its first anniversary. At first the TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party activists were dismissed as a few grumpy right-wingers upset that America elected a black president. They were given little credence beyond being an amusing political side show. That soon changed. On April 15th hundreds of thousands of average Americans showed up at protest rallies across the nation, outraged at the “stimulus” package of goodies doled out to special interests, liberal activism organizations and Democrat pet projects. CNN reported that a few thousand people showed up at the rally in Atlanta, but I was there and can assure you that it was close to ten-fold that amount. It was shoulder-to-shoulder for about four blocks in one direction, not counting the people on the side streets.

Once they could no longer be dismissed as a fringe element, TEA Party activists were labeled as “Astro-turf” (fake grass roots), accused of being flunkies of Big Corporate America, mindlessly doing the bidding of their masters. They were accused of being a fabrication of FOX News and the Republican Party. They were accused of being everything except what they are…average Americans, generally with traditional conservative values, who were fed up over 20 years of Bush-Clinton-Bush politics, two political parties who paid only lip service to the people they claimed to serve while engaging in a bacchanalian orgy of political perks, who had finally been pushed over the edge by a pork-laden spending bill of almost $800 billion. They were saying “Enough is enough!”, and they were going to make their voices be heard.

CNN is out with a new poll that shows that, for the first time since he took office most Americans disagree with Obama on major issues:

WASHINGTON (CNN) – For the first time since he took over in the White House, Americans don’t see eye to eye with President Barack Obama on the important issues, according to a new national poll. But the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey does indicate that a majority approve of how Obama’s handling his duties as president.

According to the poll, which was released Tuesday, 48 percent of people questioned say that they agree with Obama on the issues that matter most to them, with 51 percent saying no. That’s a switch from April, when 57 percent said they agreed with the president on important issues, with 41 percent disagreeing.

“Obama is facing crunch time on a number of controversial issues, from health care to financial regulation to cap and trade to Afghanistan,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “The fact that most Americans no longer agree with him on important issues makes his task harder.”

The numbers are similar if you look at similar polls from Rasmussen:

As Lou Dobbs notes, there is a movement, primarily among the Islamic member nations in the United Nations, to pass a binding resolution that would mandate national legislation in sovereign nations making it a crime to offend members of a religion.  On the surface, this appears to be a resolution promoting tolerance, but it is obvious that it is aimed squarely at the freedom of speech available in Western nations.  Dobbs is joined by Vanity Fair journalist, Christopher Hitchens, to discuss the totalitarian desires of the UN to control thought by eliminating free expression.

CNN is reporting that Palin is ready to “bust free” of the constraints placed upon her by the struggling McCain campaign and all I have to say is, “Thank goodness!”