A good start

There is a an old joke that goes something like (where X is lawyers/politicians/ethnic-slur/etc.):

Q: What do you call a bus load of X that drives off of a cliff?
A: A good start.

While I’m sympathetic to someone who has lost their job, probably through no or little fault of their own, I think of this as pretty much the same way:

The Chicago Sun-Times has laid off its entire photography staff, and plans to use freelance photographers and reporters to shoot photos and video going forward, the newspaper said.

A total of 28 full-time staffers received the news Thursday morning at a meeting held at the Sun-Times offices in Chicago, according to sources familiar with the situation. The layoffs are effective immediately.

This is the same paper that still employs Mary Mitchell even after she said this:

There’s no telling how many guns would be taken off the street in gang- and drug-plagued neighborhoods if police were to set up roadblocks and search everyone going into those areas.

For those of you who argue that what I am proposing violates basic civil rights, forget it.

When you go to an airport or into most schools, you have to walk through a metal detector.

This is the same paper that publishes editorials like these with no author name:

Editorial: Reject concealed gun bill

…we shudder at the thought of the concealed-carry bill scheduled for a vote Friday in the Illinois House. The bill not only would allow concealed firearms to be carried throughout the state, but it also would overturn the assault-weapons ban in Chicago and Cook County, as well as other laws aimed at keeping guns out of criminals’ hands. In all, 109 home-rule governments would see their gun laws nullified. Gov. Pat Quinn came out strongly against the bill late Thursday.

Editorial: No more concessions on gun bill

We doubt many gun control proponents in the state Legislature ever thought they could vote for a concealed-carry bill that not long ago would have been a gun advocate’s dream.

At this point, gun-safety advocates must draw a line. No more concessions.

If the editors of that paper were writing “Reject mixed race marriage bill” and “No more concessions on segregation” and advocating warrantless searches of homes looking for mix-race couples they would, and rightly so, have trouble getting their newsprint delivered through the hordes of protestors.

That they and their ilk in Chicago steadfastly adhere to beliefs, proven false decades ago and in 49 other states, that it is appropriate to deny specific enumerated rights even after being told by the courts to change their ways is proof positive of their bigotry. Their advocating of the continuing and expanding infringements of basic human rights has contributed to the needless deaths of hundreds if not thousands of people over the years. I look forward to the Sun Times going bankrupt, the assets sold off, and the entire staff laid off. I would love to see their buildings torn down, then gun ranges, gun shops, and gun and ammo factories built in their place. Then offer the editors and management jobs cleaning the toilets in the gun establishments and tell them they should be thankful they aren’t in prison.

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5 thoughts on “A good start

  1. It was stupid for them to let go of all their photographers. It’ll end up costing them more in the long run.

    • Yup. they’d have been better off recycling their editorial staff, replacing them with newer, younger, cheaper people who wouldn’t automatically continue the same failed practices that are crushing print news media. . .

      • Yes. Keep the photographers and can the “journalists”, the subscription to AP, Reuters and UPI, and the opinion editors. If they switched to, say, a weekly rotogravure (who remembers that term?) with pictures of local charity events and such and swore off news and opinion entirely they might be able to stay in business.

  2. This is an argument we should be making more often. A “NO GUNS” sign is the moral equivalent of “WHITES ONLY” or the gelber stern.

  3. 18 USC § 241. . . “[I]njure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate”.

    “Threaten” and “intimidate” appear to imply some threat of physical violence, as the statute further speaks of going into houses, kidnapping, aggravated sexual abuse and death as bases for increased penalties, but the word “injury” is broadly construed in the law so no physical injury is required. One can injure someone’s reputation, for instance, and lawyers are always objecting to burdensome discovery requests as “oppressive”, so this statute is applicable to wrongs that do not include coming in the night to scare someone into not asking for desegregation, for instance.
    And “conspiracy”! For the conspiracy to be complete, all there needs to be is an agreement and an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy. There is no need to actually go on the premises of the object of one’s conspiracy, for example. Buying the sheets or perhaps even just looking up the address and calling the others would be enough of an overt act. In the case of the right to effective self-defense, there is enough behind the scenes discussion to provide all the evidence of agreement and overt acts one would ever need.

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