I am sure that Bart Stupak would say that the life of the fetus trumps a woman's right to choose. Michael countered that notion with a (glib but effective) counter argument: "if you are against abortions, don't have one." But when it comes to the Second Amendment, he seems perfectly comfortable with the government throwing up arbitrary and capricious regulations that impede the legitimate exercise of a fundamental Constitutional right.

If Moore chooses to sneer at the NRA, that's his choice. I am not an NRA member myself, so that's not my fight. But Moore is using his considerable (relative to, say, my own) media influence to cavalierly dismiss the 2nd Amendment as negligible. I think that he undermines his whole defense of liberties (in the forms of reproductive freedoms and LGBT equality) when he does so.

I am an American and a Democrat who believes that we should stand up for all liberties we possess: explicit and implied, traditional and expanded, past, present, and future. That's my problem with Michael Moore's idiotic mis-step of last night.

-app