Archive for 2007

I CREDIT THE NEW DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS! Dow closes at 14,000 — and the S&P sets a new record, too. Cue more Kudlow gloating!

DAVID HARDY HAS MORE on developments in Parker v. District of Columbia, the case in which the D.C. Circuit overturned the District’s gun ban on Second Amendment grounds.

And I just ran across these comments from Prof. Mike O’Shea at Concurring Opinions:

There has been extensive and lively discussion of Parker, yet I think the legal commentariat has not quite grasped how momentous a cert grant would be. It’s not often that the Supreme Court takes up the core meaning of an entire Amendment of the Bill of Rights, in a context where it writes on a mostly clean slate from the standpoint of prior holdings. If the Court takes the case, then October Term 2007 becomes The Second Amendment Term. Parker would swiftly overshadow, for example, the Court’s important recent cert grant in the Guantanamo cases.

How many Americans would view District of Columbia v. Parker as the most important court case of the last thirty years? The answer must run into seven figures. The decision would have far-reaching effects, particularly in the event of a reversal.

Here is one way to think about the message the Supreme Court would be sending if it reversed the D.C. Circuit on the merits in Parker . . . That’s a comparison between the Court’s handling of the enumerated rights claim at issue in Parker, and its demonstrated willingness to embrace even non-enumerated individual rights that are congenial to the political left, in cases like Roe and Lawrence. “So the Constitution says Roe, but it doesn’t say I have the right to keep a gun to defend my home, huh?”

Read the whole thing.

DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY.

MORE PORK-BASED IDIOCY from the GOP. They’d have a great issue here, if they didn’t have so many pocket-stuffing greedheads in the caucus.

UPDATE: Dave Gamble offers a more upbeat assessment:

The fact that there are now Senators that will challenge earmarks, and the accompanying inferred belief on the part of these Senators that this behavior is seen as politically beneficial back home, are definitely signs of progress, no?

Good point — we’re way ahead of where we were a couple of years ago. But still . . . .

GUN CRIMES AT THE BOSTON GLOBE?

Old self-serving rule: “When the President does it, it’s not a crime.” New self-serving rule: “When a reporter does it, it’s not a crime.”

(Via Dave Hardy).

UPDATE: And look what the Globe didn’t tell its readers. Remember this when they go on about “journalistic ethics.” [LATER: Actually, this isn’t clear — see the update.]

ANOTHER UPDATE: No disclosure here.

MORE: More here.

ANTITRUST SCRUTINY for Google/Doubleclick. The tarnishing of Google’s corporate image — from Really Cool Guys to Ordinary Corporate Types — will no doubt intensify that scrutiny.

porkbustersnewsm.jpgPORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Here’s an update on the Murtha Mystery Earmark:

The Department of Energy is denying Rep. John Murtha’s (D-Pa.) claim that it supports his $1 million earmark request for a project in his district aimed at protecting the nation’s natural-gas pipelines.

Murtha attempted yesterday to quell criticism of a so-called mystery $1 million earmark to establish the Center for Instrumented Critical Infrastructure, a subsidiary of Concurrent Technology Corporation (CTC), a nonprofit technology innovation center in Johnstown, Pa., that has received millions of dollars in earmarks in recent years.

DoE spokeswoman Anne Kolton said yesterday the earmark is not a program that meets the department’s “mission critical” threshold, noting it was “inconsistent” with the department’s 2008 budget.

Anti-earmark crusader Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) challenged the earmark on the House floor Tuesday, asking if the “mysterious” Center for Instrumented Critical Infrastructure even existed because he and his staff couldn’t find a website for it. Flake’s challenge failed, 98-326.

In response to Flake, Rep. Pete Visclosky (D-Ind.), who chairs the spending subcommittee responsible for the project, admitted he didn’t know whether it existed.

Your tax dollars at work . . . though for whom, exactly, remains unclear.

AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE, we have annual faculty reviews even for tenured folks. I got mine, and once again I get the coveted “Exceeds Expectations” rating. Just like last year and the years before. Either I keep getting better, or their expectations keep getting lower . . . .

PRINCE SAVES THE NEWSPAPER INDUSTRY: Well, both the newspaper and music industries are looking for a new model . . . .

THE TERRORISTS’ MOST SHOCKING CRIME: Lying to the press! I mean, if you can’t trust terrorist mouthpieces, who can you trust?

THIS SEEMS UNWISE: “Democrats are trying to pull a provision from a homeland security bill that will protect the public from being sued for reporting suspicious behavior that may lead to a terrorist attack, according to House Republican leadership aides.”

HELP SOLVE A CRIME, over at Snapped Shot.

500 rounds of ammunition isn’t much, though. In Texas that’s what you keep in your glove compartment. [What about Tennessee? — ed. We’re better shots, so we don’t need as much ammo.]

UPDATE: As the ammo-count suggests, this bust turned out to be a . . . bust.

IN THE MAIL: Sandworms of Dune, in audiobook format. They’ve suddenly started sending me audiobooks; I wonder if that means the format is taking off?

WELL, THAT APPROACH HAS WORKED WITH DICK CHENEY: “As my Vice President, Jeff will preside over the US Senate, lead policy initiatives, and act as my personal anti-assassination insurance policy.”

NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATE warns of enviro-terrorist attacks. Well, the warning signs are already there.

WHERE WOULD YOU RATHER LIVE? Bunyanopolis? Or WalterMondalia? Either way, mass transit won’t help much:

This troubles those who want a compact metro laced together by mass-transit. Which isn’t going to happen. Even if you did run a line down to Lakeville, the people in Lakeville aren’t going to be headed downtown every day. They’ll work in Lakeville, or some other community on the perimeter of the metro, and even if we build light rail from Lakeville to Blaine, those million people will be here long before it’s finished.

As I’ve noted before, the “mass transit” approach harks back to the Gray Flannel Suit era, when masses of commuters all went to more or less the same place — into downtown in the morning, back out to the ‘burbs in the afternoon. It’s not like that now. And at any rate, the complaints about “sprawl,” when looked at closely, seem mostly to involve worries that some people are getting above themselves. That doesn’t bother me much.

GENERAL PETRAEUS ON HOW THE SURGE IS GOING. The full transcript is here. Every member of Congress should have to read this.

UPDATE: Richard Riley emails:

I agree with you that members of Congress could do worse than read what Petraeus said on the Hugh Hewitt show. I’m intrigued by your strong recommendation, however. As at least a couple of bloggers have pointed out so far (Yglesias and Zengerle), Petraeus was really quite careful not to back some of Hewitt’s wilder (in my opinion) views about the need to take the war to Iran, the press’s alleged ignoring of good news, etc. Instapundit has become associated, fairly or not, with a pretty uncomplicatedly hawkish position on Iraq and the GWOT generally. Are you telling us you accept Petraeus’s nuances?

Or at least defer to them. I’m not qualified to say whether Petraeus is right or wrong about all the details, but clearly members of Congress would do better listening to him in detail than to other people who know much less about the facts on the ground.

I don’t know what “uncomplicatedly hawkish” means, exactly: I want us to win, and I don’t have much patience with people who clearly put their domestic political agendas ahead of winning. If that’s “uncomplicatedly hawkish,” then I suggest we could use more of it.

THE LIGHTWEIGHT TASER FOR WOMEN (it comes in pink!) gets some attention at The New York Times. The article’s all about how dangerous it might be — even pepper spray gets a skeptical look, and they’re very unhappy that it’s for sale on Amazon — but the real story is the growing public interest in self-defense.

Of course, a Taser isn’t like a Star Trek phaser. How well does it work? Check out this video of Erik Sofge getting zapped.