Holy crap! Is Maryland in play?

The Baltimore Sun seems to think so:

A respected group of political analysts on Friday declared Maryland's race for governor a "toss up."
The Cook Political Report said the contest between Democrat Anthony G. Brown and Republican Larry Hogan was too close to predict who would win, although they gave Brown a "slight advantage" in deep blue Maryland.
Those national analysts now twice revised the Democrats' hold on the governor's mansion, moving the race first from the "solid Democratic" category to "leaning Democratic," and now to "a toss up."
"Neither side thought they would be spending seven figures here, particularly this late in the race," the report said. "Democrats believe that they caught Hogan's surge, and have had enough time to define their own candidate. We tend to agree and believe that Brown enjoys a slight advantage, but polling and the barrage of television ads from both sides suggest that this belongs in Toss Up."

Hogan has been campaigning on financial issues, mostly involving jobs creation and rolling back some of Gov. Martin O'Malley's countless tax hikes. Brown, bless his heart, has been running as the guy who would continue O'Malley's record. Given the sharp downturn in O'Malley's approval ratings, it would appear that maybe that wasn't the best of strategies. Maryland is so heavily Democrat that it probably won't matter, but we can dream.

Maryland vs. Texas

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has been running ads in Maryland letting Maryland businesses know that Texas is a much more business-friendly state. Hard to dispute, really. Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley did a head-to-head event with Perry to attempt to refute Perry's claims. Given the tax rates, regulations and other barriers that exist in Maryland, O'Malley didn't have much to work with. It was a polite affair, however,  and no major fireworks came out of it.

Afterword, Perry apparently was at Morton's Steakhouse in Betheseda, where he said this:

In Texas, we pray for rain. In Maryland, they tax it.

Ain't that the damn truth. In Maryland, the motto is, "If you can dream it, we can tax it." And yeah, we have a fucking rain tax. I have to believe these ads might be effective:

It's not like gun ownership is a right or something

Oh, wait, yes it is. That, of course, did not stop Gov. Darth O'Malley, the evil overlord of the state in which I unfortunately reside, from signing the ludicrous gun-control law that his minions rammed through the one-party Maryland legislature this past session.  Basically, the law bans a bunch of weapons -- probably unconstitutional under recent Supreme Court jurisprudence, which protects ownership of firearms commonly owned and used for self-defense purposes, which includes every rifle Maryland thinks it just banned. And, of course, as the federal "assault weapon" ban showed, bans of this ilk accomplish nothing because almost no murders are committed with these weapons. There were two slayings in Maryland last year using rifles of any kind -- not clear whether the weapon in either case would fall under this stupid-ass law.

All this law does is impose more restrictions on law-abiding gun owners. Requirements to purchase certain weapons -- mostly handguns -- include registration, finger-printing and mandatory training. Registration serves only one purpose -- so the government knows who has a gun. Finger-printing, we used to believe, was for criminals. Guess not. Training? Fine, whatever, I'm sure it's a good idea in theory. In practice, Maryland probably will require a state-certified course offered only once a year. The purpose here is not to make things safer but to discourage gun sales, after all. Do you think criminals will register their guns, submit to fingerprinting or take the training course? Please. Gun control laws never address the criminal element; they only impact people who obey the law.

So let'stake a leaf from the liberal playbook. Why can't we all just get along?

If you tried to put restrictions like this on freedom of speech, libtards would go apoplectic. Just sayin'.