The supposed Russia/NRA/GOP connection was based prosecutors now admitting that they misunderstood a joke? Seriously?

For weeks, prosecutors made sure to fuel stories of an attractive Russian spy ensnaring older men with sexual favor.  Now, the Justice Department admitted in a court filing that they had been “mistaken” in interpreting what joking emails as serious offers. 

Federal prosecutors have admitted that they wrongly accused Maria Butina, a Russian citizen now in custody on charges of illegally acting as a foreign agent, of offering to trade sex for a job as part of a covert effort by Russian government officials to infiltrate Republican circles in the United States. 

In a court filing late Friday, prosecutors in the United States attorney’s office in Washington acknowledged that they had been “mistaken” in interpreting what were apparently joking text messages between Ms. Butina and a friend who had helped her renew her car insurance. 

Ms. Butina was charged this summer with conspiracy and illegally acting as an agent of the Russian government in what prosecutors have claimed was a secret campaign to try to influence high-level Republican politicians, including Donald J. Trump, both as a candidate and after his election. Denied bail, she is now in custody in the detention center in Alexandria, Va. . . .

“I’m glad they walked it back, but in a lot of ways, the damage is already done,” Robert N. Driscoll, Ms. Butina’s lawyer, said in an interview. In court filings, he has argued that his client engaged in innocent political activity but has now been falsely portrayed as a villain in a sensationalized spy drama. “A simple Google search using the phrase ‘Maria Butina and sex’ yields over 300,000 hits,” he said. . . .

Please note that in this story there is no mention of the NRA. Take some of the New York Times previous headlines:

Wife of Former NRA President Tapped Accused Russian Agent 

Maria Butina Loved Guns, Trump and Russia. It was cover 

Timeline of Suspected Plot to Infiltrate NRA, GOP

NRA's proposal for school safety

A copy of their report is available here.  From Fox News:

Hutchinson, though, did call for the creation of a 40-60 hour training program for armed officers. To accompany that, his group proposed a "model" state law that would allow certain personnel who have undergone this training to carry weapons on school grounds.  

"This is not talking about all teachers," he said. "Teachers should teach."  

The 225-page report also called for states to require schools to conduct a safety assessment and for a pilot program to be created assessing mental health as a pre-indicator for violence. . . .

Besides being costly, having armed officers at schools makes them a target for these killers.  There is a big benefit if the killers don't know who they have to worry about.

David Kopel might be in some trouble regarding his congressional testimony because he forget to tell people he got over $100K a year from NRA

Obviously this is a hit piece, but it still may damage his ability to testify in the future, mainly because he apparently didn't tell people on the Hill about this.

One witness, David Kopel, who testified on January 30, identified at the hearing as a law school adjunct professor, received more than $108,000 in grants from the NRA’s Civil Rights Defense Fund in 2011. Another witness, David T. Hardy, testifying Wednesday as a private attorney in Tucson, Arizona, received $67,500 in grants from the same NRA Civil Rights Defense Fund in 2011. . . .

I wonder whether this will also effect his ability to write op-ed pieces on gun issues.  Remember the problems that Jonathan Gruber got in for not acknowledging the money that he was getting from the Obama administration.  The WSJ would have required Gruber to note in his op-ed pieces that he was getting $400,000 total from the Obama administration.  Kopel getting $100,000 a year for many years seems like it should have also been listed.

Do I believe that Kopel changed his views for $100,000 a year?  No, of course not, but again the problem is that Kopel apparently didn't tell Republican staff whether he had any conflicts of interest.

UPDATE:  It turns out that Kopel may have gotten even more money.  It looks like he received an average of about $173,750 per year from 2004 to 2011.

And FOX31 Denver has found that Kopel has received $1.39 million in grant money from the N.R.A. Civil Rights Defense Fund between 2004 and 2011. The group continues to fund Kopel, although tax information from 2012 and 2013 isn’t yet available. . . .

Paul Krugman on owning guns for self-defense

From Krugman's appearance on ABC's This Week:

“What strikes me is we've actually gotten a glimpse into the mindset, though, of the pro-gun people and we've seen certainly Wayne LaPierre and some of these others. It's bizarre,” he said. “They have this vision that we're living in a ‘Mad Max’ movie and that nothing can be done about it, that America cannot manage unless everybody's prepared to shoot intruders, that the idea that we have police forces that provide public safety is somehow totally impractical, despite the fact that, you know, that is, in fact, the way we live.” 

 “So, I think that the terms of the debate have shifted,” he added. “Now the craziness of the extreme pro-gun lobby has been revealed, and that has got to move the debate and got to move the legislation at least to some degree.” . . .

Critical discussion of Fox News Sunday and their interviews about gun control

When issues like the attacks in other places such as movie theaters are raised, why not talk about all the attacks in gun-free zones?  For movie theaters, LaPierre could point to this discussion about the Aurora attack.  A more detailed discussion is available here.

I also don't understand why LaPierre can't correct the record on some of the claims being made.  The claim that "1.7 million prohibited people have been prevented from buying a gun" what they really mean is that "1.7 million people have been initially denied buying a gun."  Remember the five times that the late Sen. Ted Kennedy missed flights because his name was on the "no fly" list? This method of counting would be the equivalent of saying that the "no fly" list stopped five flights by terrorists. Sen. Kennedy may have been kept off those flights, but he still flew on later planes.

The problem is that at least 95% of these initial denials are false positives and that is just the tip of the iceberg.  After these initial denials are made, there is an initial review process in which 94% of the cases are dropped.  No discretion is allowed in this review stage.  If the person purchasing a gun was a prohibited individual who attempted to buy a gun, that is a crime and the investigation should be moved on to the next stage.  There was a 2004 survey of the cases that were then referred to local BATF field offices and that found that over 22 percent of those cases were still false positives.  There could be other cases, but at that point the annual reports become extremely murky.  We know for example in 2010 that there were 76,000 initial denials, 62 of those were eventually referred to prosecutors, prosecutors went ahead with 44 cases, and there were 13 convictions.  Yet, these numbers are an obvious overestimate as they say they might drop cases where the prohibited offense is "old," but strangely some of the cases that they go forward with have involved cases with prohibitions that are over 4 decades old.

Boy, that NRA sure makes a lot of donations, right?

The Washington Post has this set of graphics illustrating the NRA's corrupting influence on politics.  In 2011-2012 election cycle, the NRA gave almost $600,000 spread across 236 Republican candidates (an average of $2,473 per candidate) and $74,000 to 25 Democrats.

Pretty impressive numbers until you look at donations by other groups such as lawyers.  I would have liked to have found donations by just trial lawyers, but these donations are still lopsided towards Democrats by a huge amount that completely dwarfs donations by the NRA.  Still, I suspect that the Washington Post isn't going to run a similar spread on these numbers.  Just donations to Democratic Senator Killibrand dwarfs the NRA's donations by 3.2 times.

Ann Coulter on the NRA's Wayne LaPierre

The Daily Caller discussion on Ann Coulter discussing Wayne LaPierre's appearance on Meet the Press a week ago is available here.

NRA gives endorsements to pro-gun Democrats

The NRA has been giving endorsements to both Republicans and Democrats this election. The ratio in the House races is by about 3-to-1. Republicans are grumbling that the Democrat endorsements that the NRA is making are in precisely those races where there endorsements will make the most difference. Would the NRA rather have Speaker Pelosi or the Republicans in charge of the House? Anyway, here is the line up of endorsements:

US Senate:
23 Republicans
2 Democrats

US House:
197 Republicans
61 Democrats

Governor:
19 Republicans
3 Democrats


Lt. Gov:
9 Republicans
2 Democrats

AGs:
14 Republicans
6 Democrats

State Senate:
509 Republicans
143 Democrats

State House:
1916 Republicans
588 Democrats

Obama campaign tries to get NRA ads pulled

Not content to make its case to the public, the Obama campaign is threatening legal action from its general counsel to make television stations stop running the ads. The Obama campaign cites FactCheck.org and the Washington Post. Yesterday I ran a piece that showed that both of those sources were completely wrong in their claims (see also this). Click on these scanned images of the cease and desist letters to make them larger and readable.

More problems with FactCheck.org

My piece on Fox News yesterday only went through the points in FactCheck that were said to be false or misleading or unsupported. I didn't go through the points where they said were "partially true" or "mostly true."

"Expand the Clinton Semi-Auto Weapons Ban to Include Millions More Firearms"
Here is just part of the Illinois Assault Weapons Ban that Obama supported. Note that the federal ban banned a gun if it had two of the following features. This bill banned guns that had just one of these features.

(B) a semiautomatic rifle that has an ability to
____________________________________________________
13 accept a detachable magazine and has any of the
_________________________________________________________
14 following:
__________
15 (i) a folding or telescoping stock;
____________________________________
16 (ii) a pistol grip that protrudes
_______________________________________________
17 conspicuously beneath the action of the weapon;
_______________________________________________
18 (iii) a bayonet mount;
_______________________
19 (iv) a flash suppressor or barrel having a
_______________________________________________
20 threaded muzzle; or
___________________
21 (v) a grenade launcher;

"Restore Voting Rights for Five Million Criminals Including Those Who Have been Convicted of Using a Gun to Commit a Violent Crime"

I can't figure out why this is only "mostly true." The claim says "including," not all or even most, and FactCheck's own discussion claims that some people with felony convictions have committed gun crimes.

Jeff Bishop has this summary of some other comments.

New Analysis piece up at Fox News: Analysis: Fact-Checkers Fall Short in Criticizing NRA's Anti-Obama Ads

The full piece can be found here:

Guns have become an important issue for Barack Obama’s campaign. Starting around the Pennsylvania primary, Obama and his campaign surrogates began strenuously assuring gun owners that he supports gun ownership, and it appears to be paying off. A poll in August showed that John McCain only led Obama among hunters by only 14 percentage points, just about half the 27-point lead that President Bush held over John Kerry in 2004. If McCain had a similar lead, he would be ahead in most polls, particularly in many battle ground states.

This past weekend, Joe Biden campaigned in southwest Virginia calling any notion that Obama wanted to take away people’s guns “malarkey.” Brian Schweitzer, Montana Democratic governor, previously told reporters that Obama "Ain't ever going to take your gun away." Obama regularly makes similar statements -- at least about rifles and shotguns.

Yet, the NRA, which has given the voting records of both Obama and Biden an “F” rating, has a quite different view, and has started a $15 million ad campaign to warn people about what it regards as Obama’s and Biden’s records. One mailer from the NRA says, "Obama would be the most anti-gun president in American history."

Critical news stories have been run on the NRA’s ads in the Washington Post, FactCheck.org, CNN, and many other places. ABC’s Jake Tapper and CBS’s Brian Montopoli posted stories that merely stated what the NRA ads said.

The Washington Post describes its own Fact Checker report as giving the NRA “spot three out of four Pinocchios for its claims that Obama would take away guns and ammunition used by hunters.”

The Dallas Morning News describes FactCheck.org as saying that “NRA ads and mailers that say Obama wants to ban handguns, hunting ammo and use of a gun for home defense are false.”

CNN labeled the ads as “Misleading” and claimed that “While Obama has supported some measures to limit gun rights, he has backed nothing on the scale suggested in the ad.”

Brooks Jackson, who authored the FactCheck.org piece with D'Angelo Gore, was extremely upset about the NRA ads. Jackson told FOX News that: “They are lying. This is what they do. This is how they make their money. Do these people have no shame? They are just making this up. I just wish that they would tell the truth.” He said that their ads were “one of the worst examples of lying” that he had “ever seen.”

But what are the facts? . . .

My analysis piece makes it "above the fold."