Cox courting NRA

[1gobluedem]

Lovely:

Editorial Detroit Free Press 7-8-09

Your taxes at work for the NRA (and Cox)

When he isn’t running for governor, Mike Cox is Michigan’s attorney general. And it was in his capacity as the state’s top law enforcement officer that Cox announced with considerable fanfare Tuesday that his office has filed an amicus brief asking the U.S.
Supreme Court to strike down a strict gun control ordinance in Chicago.
If you are wondering how a man with two full-time jobs has time to worry about what local officials in Illinois are up to, the press release issued by the AG’s office (“Cox Joins NRA in Fight against Chicago Gun Ban”) provides a clue.
Get it? Michigan’s attorney general (did we mention he’s run­ning for governor?) is backing the National Rifle Association, which has the political clout to make or break gubernatorial wannabes like Cox and isn’t afraid to use it, in its valiant fight against Chicagoans who want fewer handguns in their city.
And just to show he’s not afraid to put your mon­ey where his political interests lie, Cox is deploying the AG’s own taxpayer-supported staff to do it.
Let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, that a panel of U.S. Court of Appeals judges got it wrong when they unanimously upheld Chicago’s gun con­trol ordinance.
Let’s suppose the citizens of Chicago (a city like Detroit, only larger and safer) violated the U.S. Constitution when they pro­posed to regulate the sort of weapons that people could carry in their city.
And just to be charitable, let’s forget that Michigan’s attorney general made his reputation as a homicide prosecutor in Detroit, where another fellow might have learned something about what the unregulated proliferation of handguns can do to a city.
Don’t Michiganders still have every reason to wonder what their attorney general is doing sticking his nose in Chicago’s fight?
The obvious answer is that Cox is in that fight to curry favor with the one of the nation’s most potent political lobbies. He wants his party’s gubernatorial nomination, and he’s pulling out all the stops to get it.
We just wish he would do it on his own time, and with his own money.