HELPFULLY POINTING DAVID ADDINGTON OUT TO Al Qaeda Terrorists. Reader C.J. Burch emails: “If this isn’t in a Republican television spot pronto the Republicans deserve to be run out of poltics and replaced with a living party.” Don’t hold your breath, C.J.
Archive for 2008
June 26, 2008
IS YAHOO! manipulating bloggers?
JIM LINDGREN: “I have been reading Justice Breyer’s dissent in Heller. I suspect that it may go down in history as one of the strongest arguments AGAINST balancing tests.”
GROTESQUE FACTUAL ERRORS IN STEVENS’ HELLER DISSENT: I noted this in an update below, but it deserves its own post. Really, amazingly shoddy work. Did the dissenters — or their clerks — even read the things they cited?
KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN: Now out in download and DVD. But is this exclusive arrangement a harbinger of things to come?
ERIC S. RAYMOND is blogging again.
SAYING GOODBYE to the White Lily Flour Company.
WHAT WHITE PEOPLE LIKE: Comparing people to Hitler. “Being a truly advanced white person means being able to speak with authority about pretty much any field of conversation- especially politics. In order for white people to streamline the process of knowing everything, all human beings can be neatly filed into one of two categories: People I Agree With, and People Who are Just Like Adolf Hitler.”
AN OLYMPIC CRACKDOWN in Beijing.
THIS IS CHARMING: “While the subprime mortgage crisis roils the market, a profusion of anti-Semitic rhetoric has exploded against companies like Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers Holdings on online message boards maintained by Yahoo.”
SPEAKING OF A SUPREME COURT THAT LOOKS LIKE AMERICA, Dahlia Lithwick offers this:
Anybody who believes the current Supreme Court looks like America needs to take a few more trips on a Greyhound bus. All the judges are white and/or old; most are both.
Clarence Thomas is white? Who knew?
UPDATE: Reader Tim Hartley emails:
I’m guessing her original sentence said “All the judges are white or old; most are both.” That’s not only better writing (I thought only engineers used the “and/or” circumlocution) but also correct, depending on whether you require people to be eligible for AARP or Social Security before declaring them old (Justice Thomas turned 60 earlier this week).
If you agree that “and/or” really does mean “one or both”, the second clause is redundant, but that doesn’t make the first any less correct.
Clarence Thomas isn’t “old” by any reasonable definition. He could probably kick my ass, and Barack Obama’s, simultaneously. And I’m just one year older than Barack Obama, who is very, very young and dynamic, according to the press . . . .
Meanwhile, Steve Hartley emails: “Anyone who believes that those riding a Greyhound Bus constitute an accurate representation of America’s demographics is simply an idiot.”
And Ken Wheaton emails, “I don’t know… last time I took a greyhound there were lots of old people on it.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Kyle Kveton writes:
Two questions:
1. In Dalia Lithwick’s world, is there only a 13 year difference between young (Sen. Obama is almost 47) and old (60 year old Justice Thomas)?2. Is the Greyhound bus of which she speaks the same one under which all of Sen. O’s friends, pastors and advisors are thrown?
PS– Please remind Ms. Lithwick we refer to the members of the Supreme Court as Justices, not judges (damn layers of fact checkers must have been out at an Obama rally when her piece went to press).
That would explain it.
WAFFLES: Obama backpedals on statement that D.C. gun ban was constitutional. I blame the staff!
PURE EXCITEMENT: Marcus Samuelsson Cookware Throwdown.
IF WE HAD “A SUPREME COURT THAT LOOKS LIKE AMERICA,” Heller would have been 7-2:
The Supreme Court’s ruling on Thursday that a District of Columbia ban on handgun ownership is unconstitutional appears to be solidly in step with public opinion. A clear majority of the U.S. public — 73% — believes the Second Amendment to the Constitution guarantees the rights of Americans to own guns. And almost 7 out of 10 Americans are opposed to a law that would make the possession of a handgun illegal, except by the police.
Or at least 6-3. Obviously, we need more diversity on the bench.
KNOXVILLE: “A great place to do nothing!”
ITUNES STANDS UP AGAINST weapons of mass destruction. Maybe this is why the North Koreans caved!
SETTING LAND SPEED RECORDS with the British Steam Car.
Based on a quick reading, the most shocking aspect of Justice Scalia’s opinion is his dismissal of those who read the Court’s 1939 decision in Miller as supporting a militia-related reading of the Second Amendment: “Miller did not hold that and cannot possibly be read to have held that†(p.49) even though many judges and scholars read it precisely that way.
Actually, I think Scalia is on pretty solid ground here, and I’m not sure that most of the people expressing the contrary view have actually read Miller.
UPDATE: Reader Jesse Michael emails:
As someone pointed out on David Hardy’s blog (http://armsandthelaw.com/archives/2008/06/stevens_dissent.php), that could extend to the four dissenting Justices themselves.
On page 2 of Stevens’ dissent, when referring to US v Miller and the National Firearms Act, he leads off with:
“Upholding a conviction under that Act, this Court held that…”
Of course, Miller was never convicted and US v. Miller certainly didn’t uphold any convictions. That’s just factually invalid.
How did Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer all miss that when US v Miller is the core precedent that the dissent was based on?
That’s right. Plus an embarrassing mistake about the origins of the National Guard. Amazingly shoddy work.
WELL, I WAS WRONG: I was one of many skeptics regarding Bob Levy’s efforts to bring the D.C. gun ban case. I didn’t think an individual-rights Second Amendment majority could be found on the Court yet. I was wrong, and he was right. And I’m glad!
I’M SKEPTICAL: “Householders will be warned today to expect five years of higher home energy bills to pay for a green power revolution.” Not that it can’t be done. I just doubt that it can be done by the British government. I hope I’m wrong.
POLITICAL INSIDER: Supreme Court Makes Guns a Non-Issue. That’s mostly right. Certainly Obama’s record of strong support for sweeping gun control would hurt him a lot more in a climate where gun owners felt more threatened.
The full opinion, by the way, is here. And some breakout quotes from the opinion here.
UPDATE: What’s going on in D.C.
And Megan McArdle comments:
It’s a little sobering to reflect what this decision might have looked like if Michael Bellesiles’ work hadn’t been so humiliatingly and thoroughly unmasked as a fraud. As it is, the dissenters apparently argue that this is overweening judicial activism, even though everything I know and have read about the crafting of the amendment makes a collective right interpretation pretty untenable.
Plus, much more over at The Volokh Conspiracy, where server problems seem to be under control now.
ALAN BOYLE: Black holes for beginners.