Palin's complaint seems to be that Kennedy might be chosen not for ability but for her elite class.

Whereas Palin was explicitly chosen for her looks and trailer trash class (notwithstanding how much she was actually worth).

Neither one is/was chosen for ability or actual brain power or policies.

I guess the elephant's ass is calling the donkey's ass an ass.

"Guns that kill a large number of people at once?"

You mean like train crashes that kill large numbers of people at once -- airplanes? Cars?

Far more people die from ordinary stupid careless car accidents than are murdered, and most of the murders are criminals killing criminals, and most of those are from the War On Some Drugs.

Armor piercing bullets? You go to any gun store, but some armor piercing bullets, and report back here. You don't have any idea what you are talking about.

Semi-auto? What is your problem? Almost all conceal carry guns are semi-auto because they are flatter. Semi-auto rifles are the norm. Tell me how they hurt anybody more than the alternative. Better yet, show me you know what the alternatives even are.

You picked up some buzzwords from the Bradys. Too bad you don't know what they mean.

Here's a statistic. 2.4 million Americans used guns to scare off burglars, rapists, and other bad guys. It's an easy one to find, if you had cared to be informed before writing nonsense. I bet a whole lo of them were semi-autos.

I am really puzzled by gun control fanatics. If the restrictions they propose were suggested for printing presses (only flatbed manually powered ones existed back then) or the web (didn't exist at all), they and most of the nation would be up in arms. Yet somehow they can't see that the second amendment is just as much a part of the Bill of Rights as the other nine.

Regulated meant as in a well regulated clock. It has nothing to do with regulations.

As for militia, that's a laugh. The Bill of Rights was added because the anti-Federalists, the ones who opposed the new centralized government, wanted guarantees that the federal government would not usurp the inalienable natural rights of man. What earthly sense would it make to include an amendment guaranteeing a right to the government against the people? Of *course* it's an individual right against the government, just as freedom of speech and press and habeas corpus.

If you want something else to think about, consider that most of the other amendments say "Congress shall make no law" and thus were not binding on state governments. But the second amendment says "shall not be infringed" and that is a bpretyy big difference.

Those of you who see no need for citizens to arm themselves against governments, who think that is a quaint archaic notion, should investigate the Deacons for Defense and Justice. Google for them; wikipedia has a nice article. There is a wonderful book on them, and a made for TV movie which is not bad, altho of course most of the people and situations are composites, but accurate in spirit.

They were Louisiana blacks who, starting in 1964, decided to protect themselves from the corrupt KKK controlled city, county (parish!), and state governments, who stood by as boycott pickets were beaten unconscious and then arrested the beating victim when the KKK coward left the scene. Sheriffs and police chiefs led KKK caravans thru their neighborhoods scattering pamphlets, or shooting into black homes. That stopped when the blacks shot back, killing one or two, who the KKK took to a hospital across two state lines to avoid the humiliation of it being widely known that black men had fought back.

The Deacons also protected their kids, who were boycotting their segregated and inferior school, from being hosed down in the middle of winter, and patrolled the night camps during Dr. Martin Luther King's march from Selma to Mobile (or was it the othet way round?).

Read up on them, at least the wikipedia article if you don't have the time to rent the movie or read the book. This was only 40 years ago -- don't tell me it can't happen again.

How long did it take for Republicans to recover from the stigma of Hoover and what most people saw as his depression?

How long did it take Britain's Tories to recover from Blair (they haven't yet)?

How long will it take Republicans to recover from Bush's multiple disasters (as they truly are)?

The answer is at least two election cycles. The 2010 election is the Democrats unless they try anything serious with gun control, which is the only major talking point the Republicans have left after Bush's unprincipled reign threw out everything the GOP used to claim it stood for. The 2012 election is Obama's, because if the economy is still not back to normal, it will still be Bush's and the GOP's disaster, and if it is back to normal, it will be from Obama's efforts. But 2012 isn't a sure thing for Democrats in Congress, only Obama.

2014, now that is where the Democrats have the first real chance of screwing up big time. If Obama is feeling cocky and doesn't care about re-election, he may go crazy with gun control and bring the GOP back to life. It will also be six years since Bush, and time for memories to start fading, unless the economy is still in the tank and can be clearly blamed on GOP obstructionism.