| Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty April 25, 2014 Greetings from Indianapolis! Today at the National Rifle Association Annual Meeting, most of the big names come out to speak to the crowd at Lucas Oil Stadium. Speakers include Gov. Mike Pence, Sen. Dan Coats, Sen. Marco Rubio, Gov. Bobby Jindal, Sen. Rick Santorum and… Colts kicker Adam Vinatieri. One of these things is not like the other… USA Today has a fairly even-handed piece on the argument about whether the National Rifle Association is politically powerful because of money or because of manpower. I would note that there are a lot of causes with a lot of money that don't achieve their goals. Ask Presidents Steve Forbes or H. Ross Perot. The piece echoes a common answer in response to yesterday's question about why gun-rights-supporters have succeeded in persuading the public and lawmakers when other portions of the conservative movement have struggled: "They are prodigious fundraisers," said Robert J. Spitzer, chairman of the political science department at the State University of New York at Cortland. Spitzer calls the NRA "a classic single-issue group" that allows for a sharp focus in the face of sometimes strong public support for more gun control. It's tough to get distracted when you're a single-issue group. Everybody knows what they're for, everybody knows what the goal and the mission is, and everybody is on the same page. But Charlie Cooke reminded me of another factor: 32 percent of Democrats report having a gun in the home. The divide between the Democratic Party's elites and their grassroots may be sharpest on this issue. Finally, notice this… More than 100 mothers from across the country and more than 20 gun-violence survivors will come together on the sidelines of the NRA convention in Indianapolis this weekend to speak out for reforms to gun laws. … and this: By this weekend, an estimated 70,000 people will be in Indianapolis for the city's first time hosting the annual NRA Convention. Why Did Cliven Bundy Suddenly Become the Crusade Du Jour? The federal government has a lot of problems, growing ones, problems that endanger our liberty and threaten to make the Constitution effectively meaningless… but not everybody who's got a gripe with the federal government is a hero. I didn't keep an eye on the Cliven Bundy story much. Perhaps this comes from spending a good chunk of Thursday in Indianapolis with Charlie Cooke, but I'm left scratching my head as to why a good chunk of the conservative media decided to lionize the Nevada rancher, who has spent two decades refusing to pay the new bills to the Bureau of Land Management for his cattle grazing on public domain lands. Now everyone is dropping him like a hot potato once he started blurting out indefensible statements to a New York Times reporter that African-Americans were really better off under slavery. Some ask why the rancher's racist views would invalidate his claim that his rights are being infringed by the government. Bundy has — quite purposely — sought to become the face of a movement fighting over a lot more than just a dispute over cattle grazing fees. The man described what was occurring as nothing less than a "range war." If you want to be a leader, and you want others to follow you and fight alongside you (whether you mean metaphorically or physically) you have to be willing to be subjected to some scrutiny. If Bundy sees the world though such cracked lenses that he thinks African-Americans were better off living in slavery than in liberty, then everyone ought to contemplate just how accurately and wisely he's assessing the situation before him. Cooke wrote earlier this week: Which is to say that the stirring defenses of Bundy to which both Powerline's John Hinderaker and National Review's own Kevin D. Williamson have committed this week are all well and good, but that they ultimately conflate two questions that no ordered republic can have conflated for too long. Hinderaker rightly contends that the federal government has "squeezed the ranchers in southern Nevada by limiting the acres on which their cattle can graze" — the effect of which "has been to drive the ranchers out of business"; that, preposterously, "the federal government owns more than 80 percent of the state of Nevada," a number common in many Western states; and that, ultimately, "Cliven Bundy is just one more victim of progress and changing mores." These grievances serve as an indictment of the regulatory state, yes. But they do not serve as an executioner for our ailing rule of law. If Cliven Bundy's behavior is legitimized by the gravity of his circumstances, how many others may follow suit, singing his name as they go? Hinderaker concedes at the outset that "legally, Bundy doesn't have a leg to stand on," that Bundy's claim that the federal government does not own the land is flagrantly incorrect, and that Bundy has been relegated to defending himself because "no lawyer could make that argument." A guy legally "not having a leg to stand on" seems like a tough point to overcome. This was fought in the courts in 1998 and then again in 2013. When a law stinks, we Americans have a few options. We can live with it. We can try to elect new representatives who will change the law. We can challenge it in court, which Bundy did, unsuccessfully, more than once. Finally, the last step is that we can defy the law — but if you do, you have to accept the consequences of defying that law. Sometimes, that act of accepting the consequences — a fine or jail time — can stir others to the righteousness of your cause. Think of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Letter from Birmingham Jail. Really short version: The Bureau of Land Management might be a bunch of jerks, but they've had to defend their interpretation of the law in court multiple times and won every time. For what it's worth, my equally-brilliant colleague Kevin Williamson disagrees. His take, in a nutshell: There's no explaining away Mr. Bundy's remarks, and I abhor them, and am pleased that Rich Lowry and others have taken the time to address them. There's no explaining away the lawlessness of the Obama administration or the crimes of the IRS, either. A nation can survive its cranks, but not a criminal government. A final thought from my piece in the current print edition of NR: "Mr. Bundy is no doubt breaking the law, just as those lawless veterans were when they disregarded President Obama's theatrical barricades during the government shutdown. No good society can afford to make Mr. Bundy's example the general rule, but somewhere between his ranch in Nevada and the North Bridge in Concord is the place at which we say, 'Enough.' The terror of that is in the fact that every Timothy McVeigh thinks himself a Paul Revere — but still there are Paul Reveres, and times for Paul Reveres. A little sedition from time to time is like fireworks on the Fourth of July: inspiring, illuminating, and — do not forget it — dangerous." Mr. Bumble: "If that is the law, then the law is an ass!" Not every story has a good guy or a hero, and the media does a disservice when it tries to shoehorn events into this sort of simple narrative. Maybe Edward Snowden did American citizens a lot of good when he exposed the NSA's massive data-gathering effort against them, but he also exposed a lot of other U.S. secrets about how the NSA does good old-fashioned spying on foreign citizens and foreign countries who aren't entitled to Fourth Amendment protections. We're in the Very Best of Hands. Earlier this week I said "Jen Psaki is right" when she said the paranoid claims of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov were "ludicrous." But… her good week was short-lived. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki drew controversy Thursday night after she tweeted from her official account that she hoped Russia would "live by the promise of hashtag." 
Yeah. Great. Here's what's actually going on over in Ukraine: Amid fresh warnings from Russian President Vladimir Putin, pro-Russia separatist leaders of the so-called Donetsk People's Republic announced a mobilization of its forces in eastern Ukraine on Thursday in response to an anti-terrorist operation by Ukrainian authorities that has left five militants dead, Interfax Ukraine reports. Ukraine's Interior Ministry said on its website that the militants were killed at a checkpoint in Slovyansk, which is held by forces loyal to Kiev. The Interior Ministry described the dead as "terrorists." A spokeswoman for the Slovyansk insurgents, Stella Khorosheva, told the Associated Press she could confirm only that at least two pro-Russia fighters were killed during clashes. The Interior Ministry has distributed leaflets in the city advising the local population to stay calm and not carry out the orders issued by self-proclaimed separatist authorities. According to the ministry, the city's self-proclaimed mayor and local separatist leader, Vyacheslav Ponomaryov, has said those seen with the leaflet will be shot. But hey, we're deploying hashtags! ADDENDA: Heh: General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt today doubled-down on acknowledgements by his company that ObamaCare is hurting the business sector, saying in response to a question posed by the National Center for Public Policy Research, "there is still a lot of uncertainty in health care."
Immelt's statement followed a report by GE Senior Vice President and CFO Jeffrey S. Bornstein that a decline in the profitability of GE's previously-solid health care division over the last two quarters came about because "Hospitals and clinics appear to be delaying purchases and responses to the Affordable Care Act." Mr. Immelt also has referenced the health care market's recent "volatility." Will MSNBC report that? From Our Sponsor:
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