ETHICS RULES ARE ONLY FOR REPUBLICANS: Shouldn’t @ABC News explain their @GStephanopoulos policy to their viewers? How can he cover the Clinton scandals with his clear conflict?
Archive for 2015
April 27, 2015
VIRGINIA POSTREL: Breaking Moore’s Law? Does Not Compute.
KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND (D-NY): America’s Most Gullible Senator, Or Its Most Dishonest?
CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: State restrictions on concealed carry by noncitizens are unconstitutional.
A federal district court in North Carolina held Friday that North Carolina may not discriminate against permanent resident noncitizens in issuing licenses to carry concealed guns. (Messmer v. Harrison.) The U.S. Supreme Court’s D.C. v. Heller decision said that general bans on concealed carry of guns are constitutional, because the have been around in many states starting with the early 1800s. But the Supreme Court held that state laws discriminating against noncitizens — even as to activities that aren’t themselves constitutional rights — usually violate the Equal Protection Clause. That seems to be the court’s rationale in this case.
I think the court’s result is quite right, and other courts have recently held the same, see Smith v. South Dakota (D.S.D. 2011); Say v. Adams (W.D. Ky. 2008); Jackson v. Eden (D.N.M. 2014). And there are older precedents supporting that, too: People v. Rappard (Cal. Ct. App. 1972) and State v. Chumphol (Nev. 1981). State v. Vlacil (Utah 1982), did uphold a ban on noncitizens’ possessing guns (not just carrying them concealed), but I think that was a mistake.
Note that none of this affects bans on gun possession by illegal aliens; such bans have been uniformly upheld. It also doesn’t affect bans on gun carrying or gun possession by noncitizens who are legally here but aren’t permanent residents — a category that includes not just tourists but also people who have lived here for many years, for instance on work visas that let them work in a particular job. Federal law generally bans gun possession by such non-permanent-residents; it doesn’t violate the Equal Protection Clause, because courts have said that the federal government may generally discriminate against noncitizens, but it might violate the Second Amendment, at least as applied to gun possession and not concealed carrying. I know of no cases that have dealt with the federal non-permanent-resident possession ban.
Plus: “A possibly surprising fact: The South Dakota and Kentucky cases were brought by the local ACLU chapters; though the ACLU generally views the Second Amendment as not securing an individual right to own guns (and thus disagrees with the Supreme Court), local chapters are apparently willing to challenge some discriminatory gun laws.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: LSU To Draft Insolvency Plan As Jindal Cuts Loom. “Exigency, declared when schools face insolvency, would allow the state’s flagship institution to restructure and fire tenured faculty.”
THE HILL: Cruz warns of ‘liberal fascism’ targeting Christians.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Saturday said Democrats had gone to extremes in their persecution of Christians.
“Today’s Democratic Party has decided there is no room for Christians in today’s Democratic Party,” he said at the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition summit in Waukee, Iowa.
“There is a liberal fascism that is going after Christian believers,” the 2016 GOP presidential candidate continued.
“It is heartbreaking,” Cruz argued. “But it is so extreme, it is waking people up.”
“Liberal fascism.” What a catchy term!
Plus: Rubio: ‘The wrong people’ run America.
“Our nation is on the verge of another American century,” Rubio said. “It begins by turning the page on leaders trapped in yesterday.” . . .
Rubio cited flaws in Obama’s economic and foreign policies as the cause of fears over dwindling U.S. influence. First and foremost, the Florida lawmaker argued, were outdated notions towards America’s jobs market.
“Adjusting to the 21st century means understanding that automation and technology have ultimately changed the nature of work,” he charged.
Rubio next criticized Obama’s actions on the world stage. The president’s chief misstep, he claimed, was his tentative pact with Iran on its nuclear energy program.
“We can’t be a strong country if we are ambivalent towards our allies and accommodating of our enemies,” he said.
“How can it be that our president shows more respect for the Ayatollah in Iran than our allies in Israel?” Rubio added of Obama’s interactions with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader.
“There has always been evil, but never in so many places and in so many ways,” he concluded of the global atmosphere.
America has the worst political class in its history. The White House Correspondents’ Dinner’s sole positive function is to make that abundantly clear.
“POVERTY KILLS:” Rand Simberg on the tragedy of Nepal.
ANOTHER PIECE OF PARODY THAT’S SO CLOSE TO REALITY IT’S NOT EVEN PARODY, WHICH ONLY MAKES IT BETTER: Eric Holder Takes $77 Million Job With JPMorgan Chase. Or worse. . . .
NEWS FOR THE LEFT: Witch-Hunts Are Not Reality-Based.
ANDREW KLAVAN: Actors Quit ‘Ferguson’ Because ‘Truth is Subjective!’
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: What LSU Portends for the Future of Legal Education. “When we are trying to figure out what is going to happen with law schools we need to think through what is going to happen with universities. Regardless of what law schools do, if they become financial burdens on their host universities it can be expected that the universities will initiate actions. One is the bankruptcy variation such as reported in relation to LSU in the Boston Globe and the other is the closing of the law school in its entirety and termination of its faculty en masse. The latter approach may be as strategically cynical as closing a school for 3-5 years and then reopening as a new school after ridding the university of faculty during a period in which the demand for new law graduates may increase again.”
Yep. “Financial exigency” lets you override tenure for economic reasons. If economic conditions change, there’s nothing stopping schools from starting over, with new, cheaper hires. Accreditors might be a speed bump, but if more than a couple of schools do this, the accreditors will roll over. They have to have someone to accredit, after all.