TOM GOLDSTEIN ON HELLER:

Individuals have a constitutional right to possess a basic firearm (the line drawn is unclear, but does not extend to automatic weapons) and to use it in self-defense. The government can prohibit possession of firearms by, for example, felons and the mentally ill. And it can also regulate the sale of firearms, presumably through background checks.

The opinion leaves open the question whether the Second Amendment is incorporated against the States, but strongly suggests it is. So today’s ruling likely applies equally to State regulation.

I’m just on a quick break. I’ll read the opinion — all 157 pages — and comment later.

UPDATE: Bob Owens notes some less thoughtful commentary.

IN THE MAIL: Greg Egan’s long-awaited Incandescence.

And, by the way, a lot of folks wanted to know how I liked S.M. Stirling’s The Scourge of God. I liked it quite a lot — it’s consistent with the earlier Change books, which have all been good — though it’s an intermediate work in the storyline, kind of a Two Towers if you will.

I’M TEACHING A BAR REVIEW CLASS THIS MORNING, but ScotusBlog will be covering the Supreme Court’s opinions, including the eagerly awaited Heller ruling. Meanwhile, by way of background: Here’s a brief piece on the case I wrote a while ago. And here’s a lengthier Second Amendment primer.

I expect that there will be a lot of discussion over at The Volokh Conspiracy as soon as the opinion is out, too. I’ll add my bit later, when I’m done lecturing on the Tennessee Constitution. Which, by the way, provides many useful insights into how the Second Amendment analysis ought to be done. Did the Supreme Court get things right? We’ll know soon enough! Er, well, you’ll probably know a bit before I do, today. . . .

HAVING TROUBLE attracting engineers to military programs? Apparently, the pay’s too low, the timelines are too long, and the bureaucracy is too high.

WAY BEYOND ETHANOL: A look at the future of biofuels. “The key to the next generation of biofuels isn’t growing in a field; it’s mutating in a lab. By swapping natural genes in yeast and bacteria for synthetic ones, scientists have tricked the microbes into producing hydrocarbons—creating, in essence, billions of tiny refineries to turn simple sugars into environmentally friendly diesel, gasoline, jet fuel and biocrude.” Bring it on.

WHY MARS IS LOPSIDED: “The lopsided shape of Mars may well be a result of a cataclysmic impact of a Pluto-size meteor billions of years ago, three teams of scientists are reporting. That would suggest that the lowlands of Mars’s northern hemisphere are a single gigantic impact crater, the largest crater in the solar system.”

SUPPORTING THE TROOPS with an online telethon. Check it out.

SHERMAN MCCOY, eat your heart out.

ILYA SOMIN on women and science fiction.

JON STEWART: Enemy of the State.

Tom Maguire has more.

AIRBRUSHED!

AXIS OF EVIL — TWO DOWN, ONE TO GO? Pyongyang Submits Nuclear Declaration; U.S. to Lift Some Trade Sanctions, Remove North Korea from Terror List. Stay tuned.

SUBPRIME SIX UPDATE: IN THE HARTFORD COURANT: Dodd Deserves Financial Scrutiny.

And in the Grand Forks Herald: Conrad still has questions to answer. Local media continue their preeminent role in this scandal, though the national media are starting to catch up.

NINA TOTENBERG’S INEXCUSABLE IGNORANCE: Just heard her doing a bit on Heller in which she said that the Supreme Court has always construed the Second Amendment as a collective right. That’s just plain false, and at this stage she should really know better.

WIRELESS INTERNET in new Chrysler cars? Works for me. Various idiots are against the idea, but, well, they’re idiots. I already have Internet in my cars thanks to EVDO.

JERRY POURNELLE: “Obama says McCain was silly to offer his prize. Kennedy didn’t offer a prize. He built NASA and had the government spend $30 billion dollars. I don’t know what would have happened had Kennedy instead offered $15 billion tax free to the first American to land on the Moon and return, but had he done that it might have worked out better than NASA: we might not have built an enormous standing army of development scientists who conceived Shuttle as full employment insurance. . . . Government can try to influence the future, and should, but government often mucks things up. Prizes and X Projects are ways that have been effective in the past. Of the two, prizes have the least effect on everything else: they don’t build bureaucracies, and nothing is paid unless the technology is developed and demonstrated.”

Prizes, of course, played a very important role in the development of aviation, something of which Obama’s speechwriters are probably ignorant. They might find some useful information here, and here.

UPDATE: More on prizes here.

GETTIN’ SWEATY WITH Jennifer Love Hewitt.

NO PEACE IN LEBANON: More from Michael Totten.

DOG BITES MAN: “A European charity organization, Save The Children UK, accused humanitarian aid workers and UN peacekeepers of sexually abusing and sexual trafficking children in several war-torn and food-poor nations.”

MORALITY AS A LUXURY GOOD: That’s a subject that Megan McArdle has been writing about, and it also comes up in this review (from Nature) of Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s novel Lucifer’s Hammer. “The authors’ main theme is that, comet or no, a civilization has the morality its machinery allows it to afford.”

That, of course, is why prosperity and progress have strong moral components, though hairshirt types often treat both as mere self-indulgence.

WHAT HAVE THEY DONE to our beautiful narrative?

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: “If Obama wants energy independence through alternative fuels, why doesn’t he back imported sugar-based ethanol?”

They say it’s because he’s in the pocket of Archer Daniels Midland, et al. “ADM is based in Illinois, the second-largest corn-producing state. Not long after arriving in the U.S. Senate, Obama flew twice on corporate jets owned by the nation’s largest ethanol producer. Imagine if McCain flew on the corporate jets of Exxon Mobil.”

SUBPRIME SIX UPDATE: Winners, Losers, and “Friends.”

Democratic Sens. Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Kent Conrad of North Dakota still rank high in the loser category. They had to admit that they received special treatment on mortgage loans from Countrywide. They insist they had no idea they got a break—everybody else in the country is saying, “gimme a break.” Conrad is chairman of the Senate Budget Committee and Dodd is chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. They are two very powerful senators whose committees have jurisdiction over Countrywide’s business. It turns out they were also “Friends of Angelo,” as revealed by Conde Nast Portfolio Magazine. That’s Angelo as in Angelo Mozilo, chairman and CEO of Countrywide.

It’s a pretty seedy story: When Conrad was looking to buy his Delaware beach house in 2002, he called his good friend, former Fannie Mae CEO James Johnson, Conde Nast reported. Mozilo happened to be in Johnson’s office and Johnson handed the phone to him. Countrywide financed the beach house and, later, an investment property of Conrad’s. Mozilo instructed a subordinate via email to “(T)ake off 1 point” and in another email wrote, “Make an exception due to the fact that the borrower is a senator.” Dodd never spoke directly to Mozilo, but Dodd was aware that his two Countrywide mortgages were in a “VIP section.” Dodd says he assumed that was just some kind of “courtesy.” The Senate Ethics Committee is investigating.

Incidentally, Johnson is the same guy who was briefly tasked by Obama to vet potential running mates. Johnson stepped aside when it was revealed that he had received preferential loans from Countrywide.

As of this writing, 17 senators still haven’t responded to Politico.com’s request for information on their mortgages.

Read the whole thing. Meanwhile, here’s a followup from Portfolio Magazine.

Plus, Angelo’s Ashes: “Countrywide Financial is becoming more of an embarrassment for Bank of America just days before it completes a takeover of the mortgage lender. At the same time, the Senate is pushing ahead with sweeping legislation on housing while facing questions about why some of its members received below-market-rate mortgages from Countrywide.”

UPDATE: Bill Allison notes that Bank of America wrote the bailout bill, but observes: “Given that Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., doesn’t know what the interest rates are, it’s probably better that he’s not writing the bills anyway.” Contra Allison, however, I did note this the other day.

JEEZ, I’M WATCHING BILL O’REILLY TALK ABOUT OIL “SPECULATORS” and he’s making a fool of himself. He absolutely doesn’t understand futures markets.