Tuesday, March 25, 2008

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.

We're the Only Ones Making a Mountain Out of an Ant Hill Enough

Video from a dashboard camera showed Ramon Hernandez as he was handcuffed, with his face in an ant bed, and shocked with a Taser 11 times. He was also kicked and punched more than a dozen times.
Because, you know, we're "The Only Ones," and it's our job as soldier ants to guard the colony.

We're the Only Ones Stonkered* Enough

A POLICE officer who admitted to drinking at least 18 beers before going on duty to carry out a breath test has not been disciplined.

Instead, Senior-Constable Adam Reedy has been promoted – despite telling a court last month about a wild night in Cunnamulla that ended with him knocked unconscious after trying to arrest a woman.

...After the test he drank two rums at the Club Hotel and about 12.45am declared himself on duty to arrest local woman Corrinne Mitchell, who he says spat on him, sparking a fight that ended in Reedy being flown to Toowoomba Hospital for treatment.

Sounds like a perfect Down Under Only One, eh, mate?

*

A Mitigating Circumstance?

The insane procedures required by the TSA demands that our pilots to lock and then un-lock their .40 side arms was and is a solid recipe for disaster. Did the TSA deliberately create this bizarre and unconventional Rube Goldberg firearm retention system hoping for this result? The sordid history of the FAA and TSA’s total resistance to the concept of arming pilots to protect Americans is in itself a scandal.

Putting a gun into a holster and then threading a padlock through the trigger and trigger-guard is required every time the pilots enter or leave the cockpit.
Looks like there's more to this story. It's time to find out who was responsible for initially proposing and then ramming this requirement through--as well as his qualifications and credentials that made others think it was a good idea.

A Virginia Settlement

Families of those killed in the Virginia Tech shootings have until March 31 to say whether they'll accept a settlement that would include $100,000 each and the chance to question the governor and university officials about the shooting...
That'll sure solve everything.

Plus we'll have closure.

[Via Chris Horton]

Tit for Tat in St. Paul

The RNC Welcoming Committee (RNC-WC), an anarchist and anti-authoritarian organizing body based in the Twin Cities, announced today that it has ordered tasers for each of its members and friends. The announcement comes on the heels of last month’s St. Paul City Council approval of a St. Paul Police Department (SPPD) request for 234 tasers.
I doubt there's a word of truth in it, but that's actually a pretty funny and creative response--for a bunch of commies.

[Via MacEntyre]

We're Number 22!

The United Kingdom has been ranked as one of the most stable and prosperous countries in the world, beating the United States, France and even Switzerland in a global assessment of every nation’s achievements and standards.
Right.

And what makes America Number 22?

Mr Le Mière said that the US had fallen down the scale, although it still scored an average of 93 out of 100, partly because of the proliferation of small arms owned by Americans...
Right.

Mr Le Mière? Excuse moi? Time for your fitting...

[Via Paul W. Davis]

We Have a Winner

I just won a sweet Remington sps 30-06!
Chris Horton walks away with a prize from that calendar contest we talked about a while back.

The Right Kind of Gun Rights?

Reasonable self-defense leaves room for firearms regulation. Exotic and highly destructive weapons could be restricted or banned, because no one needs a machine gun or grenade launcher for protection against ordinary crime.

...Most of the government's gun laws, in fact, would have no trouble passing the self-defense test (as the Heartland Institute calls it in an amicus brief), because most gun laws are reasonable and don't leave people defenseless. As for the insurrectionary purpose of the Second Amendment, the Court could either repudiate it explicitly or pass over it in silence, consigning it to irrelevance.

The self-defense test is good policy, because it aligns the Second Amendment with modern needs and sensibilities. It is good law, because it rescues the amendment from being a dead letter or an embarrassment.

Jonathan Rauch, the only thing irrelevant and embarrassing in this debate is you.

This is what happens when you let the "moderates" drive the bus--they can't find enough of "those people" to run over. It's happened with the "Big Tent" Republicans, and it's happening in the gun rights movement--with the complicity of many who claim political expansion through compromise is more important than fidelity to principles and core constituency.

You would think as someone who champions rights (or at least exploits that perception) for a disaffected minority, Rauch would be more sensitive to first alienating and then abandoning any "subculture." But strict constructionists are an embarrassment. And those militia yahoos? Forget it! Besides, he says, borrowing a line from the Brady Playbook, "No one needs a machine gun."

There were once urbane dandies like Jonathan in 1920's-era Berlin. Many were literate, fashionable, sophisticated...and we know what happened 10 years later under an administration that deemed them "socially aberrant."

But Jonathan is no student of history. Jonathan thinks it can't happen here. Why, the very idea would be laughable if it wasn't such an embarrassment.

Because, you see, the "insurrectionary purpose" according to Jonathan, is "a dead letter." If we bring it up, we relegate the Second Amendment to "irrelevance."

But what Jonathan and those like him can't (or won't) answer are some questions I've addressed before:

[W]hat about human nature has changed?

In a century that has seen two world wars, continual violent political upheaval, genocide and systemic, brutal tyranny and repression, has humanity truly demonstrated a benevolence and maturity that distinguishes our era from those that preceded us? In a culture that breeds gang warfare, rampant violence, city-crippling riots and a national murder rate measured in the tens of thousands, how can anyone credibly claim that the need for individual defense is a relic of the past?

And ultimately, what is this "outdated" Second Amendment really about, if not the preservation of a free people when all other options to defend life and liberty have been exhausted? Against all enemies, individual and aggregated, foreign and domestic. Here is where we must face the core meaning of the awesome power and responsibility that this "obsolete" right places squarely in the hands of the people. Because, ultimately, what this right guarantees you is not a gun, but a choice. A choice, in the final analysis, to submit to evil or to fight it, literally.

You'd never know that if your only exposure to "gun rights" was from great thinkers like Jonathan. And isn't it curious how the reach of such people is always so much longer and their voices so much louder than those of we the embarrassing?

What we haven't established with Jonathan is if he's a willful subversive or just a blind fool. But in the end, it doesn't matter. All we really need to know is if we continue allowing ourselves to be led by him and his kind, he'll be proven right. The Second Amendment will be a dead letter, consigned to irrelevance.

Me, I plan on continuing to be an embarrassment as long as I draw breath.

[Via Carl S]

We're the Only Ones Invading the Suburbs Enough

Manslaughter, rape, assault. A recent spate of allegations against police officers on the outskirts of New York City has raised fears that a big-city problem has invaded the suburbs.
I thought a "spate" was three--but then they go on to call it a "cluster," although, thank goodness, at least it's not a "trend."

My favorite line:
Lieberman wondered if training was at fault.

I don't know how I've managed to get by all these years--I'm certain I've never had specific formal classes to teach me that rape, manslaughter and brutality are wrong, but I've somehow never felt inclined to go that route...

Guess I just don't have what it takes to be an "Only One."

Oh, and get ready, "suburbs." You asked for it and now you're going to get it.

And how.

[Via Declan]

This Day in History: March 25

Upon requisition of the Marine Committee of Congress for thirty stand of Arms, or two Wall-Pieces and twenty-six Muskets, for the fitting out the Brigantine Lexington for the protection of the trade of this coast, by order of the Board Robert Towers, Commissary; was directed to deliver said number of Arms to Captain Barry, or his order.