Maureen Dowd, "Sheriff Andy of Albany": Or "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly"?

Gun control and Obama's nomination of Chuck Hagel for secretary of defense appear to be the order of the day on the op-ed page of The New York Times. However, did you ever notice how "progressive" columnists such as Nicholas Kristof, who advocate stringent gun control laws, are indifferent to an Iran armed with nuclear weapons? Whereas it is indeed important to prevent psychopaths from obtaining Bushmasters and indulging themselves in mass murders, why is it that people such as Kristof don't seem to care if a lunatic Iran, which hangs homosexuals, stones women to death, persecutes Baha'is, oppresses Kurds, threatens Israel with annihilation, bankrolls Bashar al-Assad and Hezbollah, and funds terrorist acts around the globe, gets hold of the bomb and holds the world hostage?

Although Maureen Dowd did not weigh in on the Hagel nomination beyond observing a lack of diversity in Obama's proposed second term cabinet (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2013/01/maureen-dowd-we-offer-more-than-ankles.html), she is obviously not shy about expressing her opinion about gun-control legislation. In her latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Sheriff Andy of Albany" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/20/opinion/sunday/dowd-sheriff-andy-of-albany.html), Dowd observes with admiration how New York Governor Andrew Cuomo "shoved through tough gun-control legislation so blindingly fast that some state senators had scarcely read the bill, and the N.R.A. conceded that it had no time to thwart it." Dowd next ponders whether Cuomo might be shooting for the presidency in 2016:

"The N.R.A. and Greg Ball, a Republican state senator, denounced the New York law as a product of the governor’s 2016 ambition, although it could hurt Candidate Cuomo in places like Nevada, Colorado and Florida.

The governor doesn’t have the president’s public magnetism. But Cuomo, who devotes a lot of time to wining, dining and wheedling legislators, is far more deft at carrots, sticks and baby-talk than President Obama is. It’s a fascinating — and open — question about whether those skills could work the same way to jolt comatose Washington."

Well, 2016 is a long way off, and my guess is that Hillary and Biden will almost surely seek to head Andrew off at the pass. We might even have a scene reminiscent of the climax in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly," where Blondie, Tuco and Angel Eyes engage in a showdown in the center of a cemetery, i.e., what will be left of the US economy if there is no let-up to the recesssion and Obama continues to add to the federal deficit.