Having It Both Ways

The government position filed with the Supreme Court by U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement stunned gun advocates by opposing the breadth of an appellate court's affirmation of individual ownership rights. The Justice Department, not the vice president, is out of order. But if Bush agrees with Cheney, why did the president not simply order Clement to revise his brief? The answers: disorganization and weakness in the eighth year of his presidency.

Right. Here's a telling snippet from Clement's oral argument (pgs. 27 - 48):

[W]e certainly take the position, as we have since consistently since 2001, that the Federal firearm statutes can be defended as constitutional, and that would be consistent with this kind of intermediate scrutiny standard that we propose. If you apply strict scrutiny, I think that the result would be quite different, unfortunately.

Who works for whom here? Tell me the "Vote Freedom First President" couldn't order his employee to reflect the will of the administration. Now tell me that he hasn't.

Where does that buck stop again?

Sleight of mind apologists might be able to convince the weak-minded-- and those committed to hearing no evil-- that this is merely a reflection of "disorganization."

Better that, I guess, than we're being played for suckers with an obvious and transparent "good cop-bad cop/playing both ends against the middle" con job.