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Down in the depths of the Conservative Political Action Conference are the booths showcasing the sponsors, co-sponsors and exhibitors. In perhaps the most prominent position, just to the left as you enter the exhibit hall after taking the escalator down, is Google's booth.

The booth sits next to NewsMax Media, a Republican news site, and across from the Heritage Foundation. Just to the right is a Tea Party booth. To get to Google's booth you have to walk by a large display put up by another sponsor, the National Rifle Association. Google is the only major American corporation that paid the $20,000 fee to be full sponsors.

I went up and spoke to to a couple of the young men that were operating the Google booth on Friday morning.

"I wasn't a part of the process," said Zachary Yeremian, when I asked him why Google had chosen to sponsor CPAC instead of just buying a less expensive co-sponsor or exhibitor booth, "We have no idea," he said. Yeremian said the booth was being used to show conference attendees how to use Google Plus and also to promote their new election page google.com/elections.

For its part, Google issued a statement saying the event was attractive because half the audience was under 25 and heavy users of technology. Yeremian gave me the Google representative's email who arranged the sponsorship, but she didn't respond to my questions.

Yeremian was careful not to weigh into the possible public relations issues Google's presence at CPAC may cause.

"We're not trying to advocate for anything," said Yeremian, "We're just here to promote google.com/elections and Google Plus."

There were only a few other major corporations that sponsored booths at CPAC: Koch Industries and Altria, the holding company that owns Phillip Morris, were listed as specialty sponsors and AOL and Microsoft/ElectionMall had bought a $5,000 co-sponsorship booth, according to the list of sponsors.

The majority of the other sponsors and co-sponsors were attending CPAC to push forward their ideological issues or companies. Co-sponsors included Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, Christians United for Israel, FreedomWorks, The American Petroleum Institute, Tea Party Patriots and the New York State Conservative Party.

But in the way back of the hall, at the exhibition booths, there were some real characters. Back there I found a mannequin adorned with body armor and a fake m-16. There was a booth selling books by Glenn Beck, Scott Rasmussen and Herman Cain. A second amendment advocate told me, "guns are the civilian defense weapon." A student at the Students for Life of America booth told me he didn't support abortions for women who were raped, "Two wrongs don't make a right, even though the rapist is a criminal, the child is still innocent."

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To quote Lawrence O'Donnell from his show back in February, Wayne LaPierre is "Washington's lobbyist in favor of murderers' rights, always to use the gun of their choice." There is no better summary of a man who ensures his $1.27 million salary every year by being a paid serial liar in defense of arms dealers, which groups such as the Violence Policy Center have made clear again and again.

So it should be no surprise that when faced with the rights of Americans to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, or those of Mexican Drug Cartels, he comes down squarely on the side of the latter, as pointed out by Media Matters:

Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association (NRA), has been on a media blitz trying to defend an NRA lawsuit that attempts to block an executive rule aimed at keeping guns out of the hands of cartels and criminals. The new rule would require gun stores along the border with Mexico to report to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) when a person purchases multiple long guns, such as the cartel favorite AK-47.

ATF agent and Fast and Furious whistleblower Peter Forcelli, whom the NRA has previously cited as an expert on tactics, disagrees with LaPierre. Forcelli told Political Correction that the "vast majority of ATF agents support the reporting requirement, because they know how it works."

Of course it works. It is common sense that it would work, except manufacturing doubt--from the oil companies to the tobacco pushers to the gun runners--is what these guys do. Common sense and science are their enemies. They might save a few lives, but then LaPierre might only make $1.1 million per annum.

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*Conservatives from The Weekly Standard and The Daily Caller admit to host of The Big Picture, Thom Hartmann, that closing the gun show loophole would be a good idea.

Somehow, between breathless fanboy posts alerting his readers to the every movement of Rick Perry (he sure is dreamy!), The National Review's Kevin Williamson found time to prostrate himself (not once, but twice) before National Rifle Association (NRA) talking points, support the interests of al-Qaeda, and fit multiple lies all into one little screed.

Pretty impressive work, especially when you factor in his limited availability. I mean, those Rick Perry posters aren't going to just stare at themselves.

In these pieces, al-Qaeda Tool Williamson did what gun fetishists and NRA apologists always do when inconvenient truths about the blood already on their hands, or yet to come, are presented to them: He threw out random vituperation (even attacking one of his colleagues at NRO who happens to have more common sense than he could ever possess--he must be an absolute joy to work with!), and some misdirection that would make Houdini proud.

My problem, of course, is that I don't much like wannabe-bullies. Especially those who view the NRA like David Vitter does a lady-of-the-night with extra Huggies in hand, even more so when they lie and attack my friends at Media Matters on an issue I work on and care about, with Bachmannian reasoning to boot. So I thought I might respond, you know, for fun.

The crux of our story is that Adam Gadahn, the American-born al-Qaeda spokesman, made a statement that was 90% correct about the easy availability of firearms for terrorists in the US (because of people like Williamson and the NRA), so this al-Qaeda Tool, of course, chose to focus on the 10% that wasn't accurate. Here is our own David Neiwert's explanation of what set off this jack-in-the-box originally:

That popping sound you hear is the heads of NRA loyalists exploding from massive cognitive dissonance, all because of the release this week of a video showing a spokesman for al-Qaeda, Adam Gadahn, urging would-be jihadis to go out and stock up on as many guns as they can get their hands on -- through the gun-show loophole

So what do you do when you're a shill for the NRA and have to explain why you don't support the simple common sense of 69% of NRA members and 85% of Americans, (in a poll conducted by known liberal Frank Luntz for Mayors Against Illegal Guns) all of whom want to close the Gun Show Loophole? The one that Al Qaeda thug Gadahn spoke about. The one that has allowed everyone from Hezbollah to Pentagon shooter John Patrick Bedell to the Columbine killers to arm themselves--and provided a nice source of income for Timothy McVeigh. The one that sadly, as the thug Gadahn points out, would allow any Ayman al-Zwahiri to walk into a gun show in the 33 states that have not closed it, and buy a gun from "private sellers" without any kind of background check.

What you do is lie of course, and portray private sales of firearms as "Uncle Bubba," deciding "to swap his deer rifle to Otis for $100 and a case of Bud."

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There is simply no understanding the prevalence of gun violence in America - as evidenced by the recent attempted assassination of a congresswoman during a mass shooting - without discussing the nefarious role played by the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Once an organisation primarily concerned with the education and training of sportsmen, in a coup that came to be known as the Cincinnati Revolt in 1977, hardliners took over the leadership and believed that any gun regulation would take us down a slippery slope to Khmer Rougism.

In the years since, unlike the US in the wake of the 1968 assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy - or for that matter Australia after the Port Arthur Massacre - the response to senseless gun violence has been to discuss everything from the rhetoric on our airwaves to the weather outside.

But any public conversations regarding restricting who has access to guns has been considered verboten (although, thankfully, this time some cracks are beginning to show).

This is largely because the NRA's duping its own members, which we'll discuss below, and coming to the realisation that the real money was in actually protecting the rights of gun manufacturers, which we'll discuss in Part II of this series.

If the NRA leadership is not radical, they certainly see the benefit in playing radicals on TV in order to enrich their financial benefactors who produce and sell the weaponry of death.

In the 1990s, in a climate of fear and paranoia that produced the Oklahoma City bombing, they were all too happy to refer to the government authority that tries to enforce gun laws, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco & Firearms (ATF), as "jack-booted thugs". This led former president George H.W. Bush to resign his membership.

They then decided to up the ante by accusing former president Bill Clinton of murder and saying he "had blood on his hands" - all for the crime of supporting background checks at gun shows - which is among the many legislative proposals to reduce gun violence that they have repeatedly blocked.

Others include a ban on high-capacity magazines, banning sales to those on terrorist watch lists, and fully funding the aforementioned ATF (think about the latter when they say they want to "strengthen existing gun laws" after each new tragedy).

In fact, just a few days after the mass shooting in Tucson it was reported by Ryan Reilly from TPMMuckraker that a "jihadist" in America who was... "a moderator and contributor on Islamic extremist web forums, posted songs praising suicide bombers, discussed his jihad fantasies in the open..." was able to get an AK-47, no questions asked.

Emerson Begolly, the "jihadist" in question, responded when queried about this with laughter and facetiously exclaimed that "someone at the FBI showed up to work drunk". Perhaps, but if they were, it was only because the NRA forced them to do keg stands.

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Why does this annoy me so much? According to Mother Jones, there's been a positive breakthrough in Congress' effort to roll back parts of the Citizens United decision and put light on funders of advertising and direct mail campaigns by outside groups.

House Democrats today reached a deal with the National Rifle Association that would roll back parts of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, the widely disdained legal precedent that opened the floodgates to corporate-funded political ads. The Dems' deal would require groups like the US Chamber of Commerce to disclose the top funders of their political ads, but would create loopholes for the NRA and other membership groups.

According to Politico, the deal would exempt any organization with over one million members in existence for more than ten years with members in all 50 states. They'd also have to raise less than 15% of their funds from corporate sources.

Assuming these requirements were met, they would not have to disclose the funding source behind the ad.

I realize that unions fall into the definition, but the NRA has not exactly been a shrinking violet when it comes to astroturfed campaign efforts. Giving them a pass bothers me almost as much as giving the US Chamber of Commerce a pass.

I can also imagine about sixty different ways for the US Chamber to walk around these exemptions. They're already putting a full-court press on small businesses to become part of the organization. Most small businesses are not incorporated. While I'm certain it will take awhile for that 15% funding requirement to be met, I'm not at all certain the US Chamber wouldn't find a way to meet it.

There is a little voice in my head which gets louder with every passing day. It screams this: There really isn't much excuse for any entity who is so passionate about political issues and candidates that they're willing to spend millions to elect/defeat them to actually STAND UP AND SAY SO.

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Sarah Palin takes her circus act back in the road and hits the NRA for yet another bronco busting vitriolic act.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin warned NRA members Friday that President Barack Obama wants to gut the Second Amendment and told a separate gathering that "mama grizzlies" will help Republicans win this November, sweeping away the Democratic agenda.

Palin, a potential 2012 presidential candidate, told National Rifle Association members during their annual meeting that the only thing stopping Obama and his Democratic allies from trying to ban guns is political backlash.

"Don't doubt for a minute that, if they thought they could get away with it, they would ban guns and ban ammunition and gut the Second Amendment," said Palin, a lifelong NRA member who once had a baby shower at a local gun range in Alaska. "It's the job of all of us at the NRA and its allies to stop them in their tracks."Gun enthusiasts have trumpeted fears that their rights would erode under a Democrat-led White House and Congress, but President Barack Obama has largely been silent on issues such as reviving an assault weapons ban or strengthening background checks at gun shows. Obama also signed a law allowing people to carry loaded guns in national parks... read on ...

This is just what we need: Another Republican flamethrower sending messages to gun cranks and anti-government paranoids. Has she started reading the news yet? If she did, then she could have come across a freedom fighting gun lover like Richard Poplawski, who executed three police officers in Pittsburgh. His delusions are driven by right-wing gun fanatics spewing lies which manifested itself in murder because, as he saw it, "Obama wanted to take away his guns."

Richard Andrew "Pop" Poplawski's ex-girlfriend said he dragged her by the hair and threatened to shoot her. He slept with a gun under his pillow in a basement room filled with firearms and ammunition, convinced that Jews controlled the media and President Obama was scheming to take away his arsenal, friends and relatives said Saturday

She included so many other lies in her speech, but I don't have the energy to debunk them all. Who does?

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I must say that I was truly honored--humbled if you will--to have the former demi-term Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, contact me and ask me to write her speech for today's family-friendly event--the NRA annual convention in Charlotte, North Carolina [it must be all the nice things I've said about her. She even agreed to allow me to share with you an early copy. So here you go:

Palin Speech

Thanks you! Thank you!! I am proud to be here today in the Palmetto State! And I'm so honored to be speaking to you, the real Americans who make up the Natural Rifle Association!

There are some scary things going on here out there in this country of ours. The liberal elites, you know, and their allies in the lamestream media, they'll tell you that guns are dangerous. Ya know, its guns, and not their liberal ideas, like preparation of church and state, abortion and laws against drunk snowmobiling that've really caused inrest in our streets.

Well, I'm here to tell you they're wrong. Guns don't kill people. People kill guns. So I am so proud to be delivering this massage in front of an organization that predicted what the liberals would try and do, an organization that had the foreskin to warn us about how they'd destroy our great country.[wink]

Now I am not going to take too much of your time, because I have two more events tonight that will each pay me a cool 100K for winking and offering folksy platitudes about things I don't really understand--but let me single out a few examples of what I'm talkin 'bout.

Lately there have been attempts to take guns away from those the big government liberals call "suspected terrorists." That's right. Some of them have even called the NRA terrorists, which makes no sense--most NRA members are white!

The liberal elites whine about a "terrorist gap," which allowed the shootings to occur at Fort Hood, Fort Dix and allowed the Times Square attempted bomber to get a gun. They think that good Americans shotgunning beers at bars in Georgia and Virginia shouldnt be allowed to carry assault weapons, they empathize with polls that make it clear that a majority of Americans don't want TEC-9s in their faces when they drink their lattes at Starbucks, even though we all know that numbers are Communist. I mean listen to these liberal lies:

A majority of Americans oppose people carrying loaded guns openly in public. More feel unsafe than feel safer - and a third feel much less safe with that knowledge, according to a poll conducted for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence by respected polling firm Lake Research Partners.

The last thing I'll say on this is that, I mean seriously folks, how could an event where Oliver North is speaking after me be held by a group that supports arming terrorists? [wink, extend leg so calf is fully visible]

Then there's the oil-hating left. I mean, while we hear all this jibber-jabbering about the Gulf of Texaco spill, I'd like to ask, has anyone in the Obama Administration even tried threatening the oil with an ole six-shooter yet? Didn't think so.

I mean c'mon folks, it's not like our addiction to oil is endangering our national security, economy, health or environment here. Sure, I know former Vice President Al Gore pointed this out:

[...both the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the CO2 spill into the global atmosphere are causing profound and harmful changes--directly and indirectly. The oil is having a direct impact on fish, shellfish, turtles, seabirds, coral reefs, marshes, and the entire web of life in the Gulf Coast. The indirect effects include the loss of jobs in the fishing and tourism industries; the destruction of the health, vitality, and rich culture of communities in the region; imminent bankruptcies; vast environmental damage expected to persist for decades; and the disruption of seafood markets nationwide.

And, of course, the consequences of our ravenous consumption of oil are even larger. Starting 40 years ago, when America's domestic oil production peaked, our dependence on foreign oil has steadily grown. We are now draining our economy of several hundred billion dollars a year in order to purchase foreign oil in a global market dominated by the huge reserves owned by sovereign states in the Persian Gulf. This enormous and increasing transfer of wealth contributes heavily to our trade and current-account deficits, and enriches regimes in the most unstable region of the world, helping to finance both terrorism and Iran's relentless effort to build a nuclear arsenal.

The profound risk to our national and economic security posed by the prospect of the world's sudden loss of access to Persian Gulf oil contributed greatly to the strategic miscalculations and public deceptions that led to our costly invasion of Iraq, including the reckless diversion of military and intelligence assets from Afghanistan before our mission there was accomplished.

I am far from the only one who believes that it is not too much of a stretch to link the ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and northwestern Pakistan--and even last week's attempted bombing in Times Square--to a long chain of events triggered in part by our decision to allow ourselves to become so dependent on foreign oil.]

But you know how I know that the liberals are wrong on this once again? Because I saw where they said that pollution could even lead to cases of angina. And I may just be a humble woman from Wasilla, but I know the environment has nothing to do with a woman's lady parts.

OK, I am about half-way done with my speech. Which means I'm finished. As Rush Limbaugh would say satirically, you know, see ya later retards. [wash notes off hand; put new ones on; leave]

*Not following Cliff Schecter on Twitter could likely lead to the 7th sign of the apocalypse

**Full Disclosure: Cliff Schecter consults on issues surrounding gun safety and protecting the environment.

From the Center for Public Integrity, some very interesting news. This sort of undercuts Obama's "let's make the Blue Dogs happy" strategy, doesn't it?

It’s official. The Blue Dog’s fundraising slowdown was not just a symptom of the dog days of summer. Newly released public disclosure forms indicate that over September, the coalition’s PAC took in its smallest monthly total yet this year.

Our analysis of the fiscally conservative and increasingly influential Blue Dog Coalition and its funding noted that the group’s political action committee had averaged more than $176,000 in receipts from other PACs over the first half of 2009. Their monthly haul dropped to a surprisingly low $27,000 in July, rebounded somewhat in August, and but then dropped again to just $12,500 in September.

That September money came from just three donations — $5,000 from accounting and professional services giant Ernst & Young’s PAC, $2,500 from the Food Marketing Institute PAC, and $5,000 from the National Rifle Association of America Political Victory Fund.

After raising $1.1 million from January to June, the committee raised less than $87,000 between July and September — less than it brought in during any one of the preceding five months. And in just three months, the Blue Dog PAC’s monthly fundraising average dropped by more than $50,000 — probably not the sort of fiscal conservatism the 52-member coalition was hoping for.

Oh, darn. I was really looking forward to getting on my horse and going cross-country with my trusty six-shooter. Oh well!

Personally, I think the idea was a great one. In a time of constant right-wing hate directed against an African-American president, why wouldn't you want those patriots to take their guns across state lines? Why, a teabagging party, anti-abortion rally or a revolution might break out:

An amendment that would have allowed gun owners to carry their weapons across state lines fell just short of passage Wednesday in a vote that revealed deep divisions among the Senate's Democrats.

Supporters included all but two Republicans and 20 Democrats, but the vote of 58 to 39 in favor fell two short of the 60 needed to defeat a filibuster.

Despite its defeat, the amendment, sponsored by Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), demonstrated the continuing power of the National Rifle Association and the gun rights issue in Congress. Rather than a setback, those backing the effort consider the vote a sign of strength for the Second Amendment and are planning more gun-related amendments to other legislation throughout the year. Afterward, Thune said he hopes the Senate will "reconsider this important issue" later this year.

It split not only Democrats, many of whom got to the Senate by supporting gun rights, but also the caucus's leadership: Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.), campaigning for reelection in 2010, voted yes, while his top lieutenants, Sens. Richard J. Durbin (Ill.) and Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), led the push by liberal Democrats against the measure.

Offered as an amendment to the annual defense authorization bill, the legislation would have allowed people to carry concealed firearms across state lines, provided they "have a valid permit or if, under their state of residence" they "are entitled to do so." It was considered one of the most far-reaching federal efforts ever proposed to expand gun-permitting laws.

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Sen. Orrin Hatch doggedly pursued Sonia Sotomayor today on a series of questions about the Second Amendment, since the matter of gun rights -- especially the evil President Obama Secret Plan to Take Your Guns Away -- is probably the biggest legal issue on the minds of most Utahns.

As you can perhaps see from the excerpts, Sotomayor handled them all ably (one of the rulings Hatch raised, she pointed out, was a very narrow case involving nunchucks and not guns). At one point, she had to point out that Hatch essentially wanted her to issue a ruling on cases that she might actually have before her on the Supreme Court, so she couldn't answer those.

Nonetheless, you can rest assured that the National Rifle Association and the various gun fetishists out there -- convinced that their gun rights actually are what keep us safe from government tyranny -- will find whatever she says unconvincing and denounce her anyway.

Last night, Wayne LaPierre of the NRA was on Glenn Beck's show, and he made it abundantly plain that they were going to go through the pretense of listening to Sotomayor patiently before they denounced her.

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Essentially, the NRA is demanding that Sotomayor prejudge all her Second Amendment cases and pay fealty to their often cockamamie legal positions, or else they will denounce her.

Count on more of the same from the Senators they have in their pocket. Orrin Hatch being one of the more prominent.

The only thing amusing about it is realizing just utterly impotent they all really are.