Entries for March 2006

The following comes from the Gallup organization:

Americans are about as likely to identify as Republicans as they are Democrats according to a review of recent Gallup polls. However, once the leanings of independents are taken into account, the Democrats gain an advantage. Democrats have been on par with, or ahead of, Republicans in party identification since the second quarter of 2005.

My U.S. News column this week is on immigration, and since I wrote it (Friday deadline), the playing field has changed. Late on Friday afternoon, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed, by a 12-to-6 margin, a bill with border-security provisions (less stringent than in the House bill passed last December) and with legalization and guest worker provisions (not covered in the House bill at all).

I greatly admire the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz. He covers the media and covers it well. I think he makes every effort to be fair and open-minded and succeeds with only minor exceptions—I'm sure many people would say he does a better job at it than I do. One day some years ago, he wrote an article that included a description of me as a "right-leaning columnist."

Twenty-two years ago, Charles Murray published Losing Ground, in which he advocated abolishing all welfare payments. Even those who were attracted by its reasoning, and by Murray's always elegant writing, considered it wildly unrealistic and wholly out of line with political reality. I was among that group; as Charles reminded me at a book party for his latest offering last night, I wrote something favorable about it in the Washington Post, which I can't find on the Internet.

The Federal Election Commission has passed a rule leaving blogs free of regulation. This is a victory for bloggers both left and right who feared being placed under the federal campaign finance laws. But it could be undone by later regulations, and Congress should pass the pending bill that would guarantee them freedom of expression.

Here is a definitive piece on Europe's problems from the "Brussels Journal" blog. Meanwhile, young French protesters decry the law that would allow people under 26 to be fired in their first two years on a job on the grounds they would have to do what their bosses asked and say that instead, they want "a real job." That is, one in which you don't really have to work.

Over the veto of Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, the Kansas Legislature has passed a law allowing law-abiding citizens to obtain permits to carry concealed weapons.

By my count, this makes Kansas the 39th state with such a "concealed-carry" law, which requires in most cases that the applicant has no criminal record (or civil restraining orders) and has been trained in using guns safely.

Governor Sebelius expressed some of the concerns that concealed-carry weapons opponents have often voiced (I shared them myself, when Florida became the first state to pass such a law in 1987): that there would be shootouts in the streets, that road rage would escalate into gunshot deaths.

The experience of states with concealed-carry weapons laws seems to have proved that these concerns are unwarranted. Ordinary law-abiding citizens, it seems, behave responsibly when they carry guns, just as they do in other respects. Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm opposed that state's concealed-carry law when it was passed in 2001 (she was attorney general at the time) but has since said that fears about it had not been justified. She recently signed a law allowing those with a permit to carry a pistol to lend their guns to others with such permits.

While people in Washington talk about gun control as a response to violent crime, the legislatures in most states have gone in the other direction.