I‘ve never been a fan of waiting periods for gun purchases, but I’m warming to the idea of a pundit’s “Brady Bill.” Some political commentators could use a (voluntary) “cooling-off” period before they start using mass murder to score partisan points. That could have saved Jennifer Rubin, the Washington Post’s neoconservative blogger, some embarrassment over the weekend.
On Friday, before much was known about the horrific car-bombing and mass-shooting in Norway, she used the tragedy to argue against modest cuts to the Pentagon’s budget. Trimming the Defense Department’s budget — which accounts for nearly half the world’s military spending — would be “very rash … curbing our ability to defend the United States and our allies in a very dangerous world.” The slaughter in Norway was, she wrote, “a sobering reminder for those who think it’s too expensive to wage a war against jihadists.”
