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The useful thing about This Week's George Stephanopoulos interview with Philadelphia's impressive top cop Charles Ramsey is how sensibly Ramsey responds to the idea that having civilians with weapons on the scene of the Aurora massacre would have protected them. Do listen to the interview - he also talks about how sensible gun control would make his job a lot easier:

Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey worried that the deadly mass shooting spree in Aurora, Colo. will “fade into the background” and nothing will be done to put in place “reasonable gun control laws” to reduce gun violence across the country.

“For me the question has been, you know, what will change as far as any gun control legislation in the wake of Aurora, Columbine, Virginia Tech, Ft. Hood – I mean, the list goes on and on,” Ramsey told me this morning on “This Week.” “And unfortunately, in my opinion, the answer is absolutely nothing.”

“There will be a lot of talk, there will be a lot of discussion, there will be some debate,” said Ramsey, who leads the fourth largest police department in the country. “But this will fade into the background, like all those other instances that have occurred, unfortunately, and people will just go on and continue to be able to get their hands on guns and continue to inappropriately use those guns to commit violent acts on the streets of our cities.”

Ramsey blamed a “lack of courage” at the federal level for failing to put in place stricter gun control laws, especially on restricting Internet sales and banning assault weapons.

“I have an issue with people being able to buy ammunition and weapons on the Internet… I don’t know why people need to have assault weapons,” Ramsey said. “There needs to be reasonable gun control put in place. And we talk about this constantly, and absolutely nothing happens, because many of our legislators, unfortunately, at the federal level, lack the courage to do anything.”

Ramsey acknowledged that “gun control isn’t going to totally stop this sort of thing from happening,” but he said it would reduce gun violence that he and other law enforcement face as “a daily occurrence.”

*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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Before the midterms, digby wrote this prophetic afterthought at the end of one of her posts:

But then these news outlets are all making huge profits from the right wing buy out of our democracy, so maybe it's just the price of doing business.

In this week's The Nation, there's a great article about the emergent money-media complex and the impact it has not only on our elections, but on how issues and politicians are presented by the corporate media who stand to gain much from the megabucks spent on elections.

To some extent, this is a story as old as the nation itself. Founding father John Jay thought "those who own the country ought to govern it." The battle to establish a credible system of "one person, one vote" instead of "one dollar, one vote" has been a running theme in American history. The stakes have always been the same: the less democratic our elections, the more corrupt our governance. But the current moment sees the country accelerating toward the edge of a cliff. "We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both," observed Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. America is being put to the Brandeis test: democracy or plutocracy. The money-and-media election complex is creating a radically different electoral landscape than anything Americans have known since the Gilded Age. That landscape is characterized, pundits tell us, by an "enthusiasm gap." No kidding. Americans are not stupid. They knew their relatively paltry contributions, and even their votes, were unlikely to stop a $4 billion onslaught. To those bankrolling the system, voter cynicism and apathy are welcome. The more that the 2008 surge of youth participation in electoral politics dissipates, the better for them. Their interests are best served by narrowing the range of debate and participation, since that makes it easier to buy the government. As much as commentators like Jon Meacham might want to believe that "we are now living with a political class which has a financial and cultural interest in conflict rather than in governing," the hard truth is that we have a corporate class that funds electoral conflict for the purpose of forging a political class that will govern in its interest

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Our skewed and cynical election process takes a toll on those most committed to those who fight hardest for ethical and open elections.

The emerging money-and-media election complex is perfectly designed to make participants conform or suffer the consequences. It should come as no surprise that some of the most troubling results of 2010 involved the defeats of independent players of both parties who had battled hardest for clean politics and ethical government—Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, the leading progressive Democratic reformer, was defeated, as was Representative Mike Castle, a moderate Republican beaten in Delaware's GOP Senate primary by Tea Party heroine Christine O'Donnell. Nor should it get better in 2012. "It's a bigger prize in 2012, and that's changing the White House," says Robert Duncan, chair of American Crossroads. "We've planted the flag for permanence, and we believe we will play a major role for 2012."

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It's beginning to emerge that the two men who shot and killed two police officers and wounded two more before being killed themselves in West Memphis, Arkansas, on Thursday were probably white supremacists from a small operation in southern Ohio. Why they opened fire on the cops remains a mystery, but this could be an important developing story:

Two police officers were fatally shot and another two were wounded Thursday in two separate shootings allegedly by the same suspects in West Memphis, Arkansas, police said.

The two suspects, who were using an assault weapon, were themselves fatally shot, said Inspector Bert Shelton, who is assigned to city hall for the West Memphis Police Department.

The incident began around 11:36 a.m. (12:36 p.m. ET), when West Memphis patrolman Bill Evans made a traffic stop on a white minivan traveling eastbound on I-40 at Airport Road, said Bill Sadler, public information officer for the Arkansas State Police.

After the vehicle exited the Interstate onto an off-ramp near College Avenue, Sgt. Brandon Paudert arrived on the scene as backup, Sadler said.

"It is our belief that Officer Evans was shoved to the ground by one of the suspects in the minivan and gunfire was directed at both officers," Sadler said.

The suspects then fled, driving east in the minivan, leaving one man dead and the other fatally wounded.

Within minutes, officers from other agencies -- including the Arkansas State Police and the Arkansas Fish and Game Commission -- began to converge on the area, looking for the suspects, he said.

About 90 minutes later, a minivan believed to be the one that had been seen leaving the shooting site was spotted in a parking lot of a nearby Wal-Mart, Sadler said.

There, it was approached by Crittenden County Sheriff Dick Busby and Chief Enforcement Officer W.A. Wren, who were traveling in the same vehicle, he said.

Both men were wounded in a gunbattle initiated by the suspects, who were using a long rifle and a handgun, Sadler said.

It turns out that the white van you see in the video was registered to an old Aryan Nations church in the small town of New Vienna, Ohio:

The two gunmen connected to the shootings in West Memphis that left two West Memphis police officers dead Thursday, drove a van that's registered to a church in Ohio. According to records with the Ohio Department of Motor Vehicles, the plates on the gunmen’s van are registered to “House of God’s Prayer” in New Vienna, Ohio.

The church was once affiliated with Harold Ray Redfeairn, a white supremacist preacher who died in 2003. Redfeairn was a leader of the Aryan Nation. He was also convicted of trying to kill a cop in 1979. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups across the country, Redfeairn was sentenced to four consecutive seven-year minimum terms for attempted aggravated murder, but was paroled in 1991.

It cannot be proven the gunmen are tied to the Aryan group, but the van used by the suspects in this shootout was never reported stolen. The vehicle’s plates were renewed last summer, and set to expire next month.

The two shooters have been identified, but not much is known about them yet:

People claiming to be relatives of the two, however, told The Commercial Appeal they could identify them from numerous videos and photographs taken at the crime scene and available on Memphis media websites. They identified the men as Jerry Kane, 45, of Ohio and his 16-year-old son, Joseph.

Kane's own website this morning bears a note indicating the two were "shot down" by law enforcement in West Memphis.

The Commercial Appeal could not independently confirm the suspects' identification.

Attempts to verify the information led to a woman named Donna Lee in central Florida who said she was married to Jerry Kane and that Joe, as she called him, was her 16-year-old stepson. She wanted to emphasize Joseph Kane is a minor. She said the white minivan belonged to Jerry and was positive from photos and videos from the scene that the two unidentified dead suspects were Jerry and Joe Kane -- and that the dog she saw exiting the minivan was a labrador-rottweiler mix named Olie.

Another man, Jake Jefferson, said he was a nephew of Jerry Kane's and said he was positive that the dead person he saw in news accounts was 16-year-old Joe Kane, that the white minivan had belonged to Jerry for some time and they traveled the country helping people with mortgage and foreclosure issues. He also said he recognized the dog, and that Jerry and Joe had spent a month with him at his home in the Phoenix area over Christmas.

Jefferson and Lee both said Joe's mother had died previously. Jefferson said they traveled with a box of her ashes in the van.

"That's them," he said. "And why do I think they fired on police? Because they must have believed the police were going to fire on them."

The Internet company that hosted a website devoted to Jerry Kane's business has now published a memorial page that says "Jerry Kane & Joe Kane. Father and son killed in W. Memphis." At the top of the site it says, "Funds are now needed to bring Jerry and Joe back to Florida and for their funeral costs."

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