ANTI-GUN JESSE JACKSON CAMPAIGN BRINGS PRO-GUN ACTION(Michael Pfleger inciting violence)

ANTI-GUN JESSE JACKSON CAMPAIGN BRINGS PRO-GUN ACTION
When Rev. Jesse Jackson protested a suburban Chicago gun store, he expected
to be arrested, but he didn’t expect it to spur a federal law being drafted to
stop him.
Late last month Jackson and a Catholic priest, Michael Pfleger, were arrested
and charged with trespassing for blocking the entrance to Chuck’s
Gun Shop in Riverdale, Illinois, so that customers could not go
where they had a right to go. Jackson plans on continuing the
protests and expanding them nationwide to gun shops and gun shows.
The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) immediately
began drafting federal legislation that would prevent anti-gun demonstrators from
blocking access to gun shops.
CCRKBA Public Affairs Director John Snyder said the draft bill doesn’t stop
Jackson or anyone else from peacefully protesting a gun shop. “We are, however,
seeking the same protection from interference that is now guaranteed by federal
statute to reproductive health services facilities.”
Snyder noted that it is illegal for pro-life activists to block access to
abortion clinics, “and it should be just as illegal for anti-gunners to block
access to gun shops.”
He added, “This is neither a First or Second Amendment issue but rather a
Fourteenth Amendment issue relating to equal protection.”
According to a Cybercast News Service report, three weeks before the protest
and arrest Pfleger told anti-gun activists they should find gun shop owner John
Riggio and “snuff him,” an unusually violent remark for a priest.
Jackson made an odd remark of his own after his arrest, telling the Chicago
Tribune, “I think people have the right to bear arms at a hunting reserve.”
That’s like telling inner-city voters they have a right to vote, but only
at a rural city hall.
Critics have noted that Jackson is selective in what he thinks is a civil
right. It’s like, “What’s mine is mine; what’s yours is optional.”
To Jackson, voting rights are civil rights, but gun rights aren’t civil
rights, even though both are protected by the same U.S. Constitution.
There’s no reasoning with such blindness, so the only recourse is to
Congress and a law to restrain his irrationality and that of like-minded
anti-gun zealots and demagogues who appeal to the prejudices of the populace.
Dave Workman, CCRKBA spokesman, said that “a couple of congressmen who
support the Second Amendment were giving it a pretty good look.”
CCRKBA’s John Michael Snyder is also known as the author of Gun Saint, the
story of Catholic seminarian St. Gabriel Possenti, who rescued Italian villagers
from a gang of terrorists in 1860 with a striking single-shot demonstration of
handgun marksmanship. Pope Benedict XV canonized him in 1920.
Snyder was particularly offended by Rev. Michael Pfleger’s call for the
protest crowd to “drag” gun shop owner John Riggio out “like a rat” and
“snuff him.”
Pfleger’s statement “is an absolute outrage,” Synder said. “He ought to
be defrocked. There are ecclesiastical penalties which can be invoked against
Pfleger. Hopefully, Chicago-area Catholics will demand that church authorities
initiate canonical proceedings against this loose Cannon.”
Several Members of Congress, meanwhile, are examining CCRKBA’s protest
bill to see about co-sponsors and the possibility of passage in a Democrat-
controlled House and Senate. Despite the odds, the bill has a chance.

Obama told a reporter from the Chicago Sun-Times that he had three spiritual mentors or counselors: Jeremiah Wright, James Meeks and Father Michael Pfleger.

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Obama's other spiritual mentors: Pfleger and Meeks

I saw this in a Christopher Hitchens article on Monday, but I didn't get around to posting about it until now. If the media bothers to confront Barack Obama on his other spiritual mentors, I'm sure he'll say he doesn't advocate their views, but Obama just keeps associating, if not seeking out, indidividuals with extremist ideas.

The thing that this gaggle of cranks and parasites has in common is the extreme deference with which it is treated by the junior senator from Illinois. In April 2004, Barack Obama told a reporter from the Chicago Sun-Times that he had three spiritual mentors or counselors: Jeremiah Wright, James Meeks, and Father Michael Pfleger—for a change of pace, a white Catholic preacher who has a close personal feeling for the man he calls (as does Obama) Minister Farrakhan. This crossover stuff is not as "inclusive" as it might be made to seem: Meeks' main political connections in the white community are with the hysterically anti-homosexual wing of the Christian right. If Obama were to be read a list of the positions that his clerical supporters take on everything from Judaism to sodomy, he would be in the smooth and silky business of "distancing" from now until November. And that is why he hopes that his Philadelphia speech, which dissociated him from everything and nothing, will be enough. He seems, indeed, to have a real gift for remaining adequately uninformed about the real beliefs of his "mentors."

Father Pfleger is a media gadfly in Chicago, and it's fair to call him a white Jesse Jackson, with whom he often attends protests. Two years ago, in a uniquely Illinois political firestorm, several members of a state hate crime panel resigned because a Nation of Islam was on that board. At that time there was significant pressure on Governor Rod Blagojevich to kick that person off the panel.

Pfleger defended the NOI member, Claudette Muhammad.

(Pfleger said) Blagojevich would generate enormous anger if he removed Muhammad from the commission.

"If you are not willing to stand up in difficult times, don't pretend to be a supporter of black issues, of the black community," Pfleger said. "Now is a test for him."

As for Meeks, in Chicago he's better known as a key cog in the Reverend Jesse Jackson's growing political machine that also includes his son and daughter-in-law.

Rev. Meeks, who holds a top leadership with Rainbow-PUSH, defeated William Shaw in 2002 to win the State Senate seat he now holds. Shaw, along with his twin brother, is a long time opponent of Jesse's South Side empire.

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