As I predicted yesterday, the US Supreme Court just overturned 150 years of legal precedent, interpreting for the first time the Second Amendment to grant an unambiguous individual right to bear arms. Good thing too, as you never know when that drunk stranger passed out on your couch might wake up, so better safe than sorry.
Let this be a lesson to those who think the Supreme Court isn’t one of the top issues in this presidential race. While the court just reinterpreted the Second Amendment by a single vote margin, they’re also a single vote away from dismantling the Fourth Amendment, and overturning Roe v. Wade.
NRA executive director Wayne LaPierre called this decision the “opening salvo,” and no doubt he chose his violent words carefully. Pack the bench with a couple more of those Federalist Society justices and it might be prudent for us liberals to start availing ourselves of some of those guns.
UPDATE:
In another 5-4 decision:
The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down the “millionaire’s amendment” as an unfair way to help opponents of wealthy candidates who spend from their personal fortunes.
The law allows candidates to receive larger contributions when their wealthy opponents spend heavily from their personal fortunes.
Understand, the millionaires amendment didn’t limit how much self-financed candidates could spend on their own campaigns, it merely increased the limits their opponents could raise. But you know, anything that attempts to even the political playfield between the very wealthy and the rest of us is a violation of the First Amendment in the eyes of a court that views money to be more speech than, well, speech.
Thank you Ralph Nader!
The decision on handguns was a good decision. More guns mean less crime.
Aaron @1: Raises the question, if Gore hadn’t picked a conservative to run with, would fewer people have defected to Nader?
There may be a lesson in this for Obama, now that he’s realigning his views to seem more mainstream by supporting the death penalty and domestic spying. It’s interesting to me that what was once conservative is now considered mainstream–“considered,” because the American people can’t possibly be as conservative as mainstream Democrats assume.
Goldy,
As far as millionaires and how they spend their money goes, I remind you that George Soros, one of the richest assholes in the world, is firmly in your “progressive” camp. Would you want to restrict how he spends his money to support the same causes and candidates that, presumably, you and the rest of the usual suspects here also support?
Rich people have the right to spend their funds as they choose, regardless of whether or not it’s to the “progressives'” liking.
About time; good decision.
YP @ 3
Where do you place Dems like the DLC in that “mainstream” spectrum? What do you consider Kucinich? Where do you place Blue Dogs?
While searching for the decison today, I stumbled upon another ruling today regarding the Snohomish County PUD’s case to invalidate long-term energy contracts entered into in the midst of the Enron energy market manipulation. This is separate from the Enron case, which Snohomish PUD won and which Sen. Cantwell was instrumental in protecting the win in Congress against Republican attempts to overturn the result by statute (by changing the Bankruptcy rules).
This case is hard reading, with lots of regulatory jargon. The District Court had upheld the contracts based upon precedent requiring a very strong presumption in favor of the contract’s validity. The Ninth Circuit disagreed and sent it back for review again. On appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, the court disagreed with most of the Ninth Circuit’s reasoning, but still sent it back for review on other grounds.
Morgan Stanley Capital Group Inc. vs. PUD No. 1 of Snohomish County
So the Snohomish County ratepayers won’t yet have to pay several times their current rates to fatten the wallets of a wall street investment firm that, according to every investigation to date, engaged in market manipulation as part of the California energy market explosion at the start of this decade. But they’ve still got another round of battles ahead of them, including a re-fight before the District Court and the regulatory agency, and probably another round of appeals.
It’s nice to know that Snohomish County PUD is being so aggressive in protecting their ratepayers. Some other utilities might well have just shrugged and passed on the costs to their consumers. That’s another argument in favor of a PUBLIC utility, rather than private ones.
This was a 5-2 decision, with Scalia writing the opinion, joined by Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito. Ginsburg concurred, agreeing with the result but not the marjority’s reasoning. Stevens and Souter dissented. Roberts & Breyer didn’t participate.
For those of you who have Comcast cable, I recommend you select channel 888, got to “Community,” and choose “Marijuana: Let’s Talk.” It’s a 30-minute discussion of how ridiculous and hurtful the prohibition against marijuana has been for the past 70+ years. They also have a website, MarijuanaConversation.org, and I’m considering making a donation.
150 years of legal precedent? BS…
Prior to 1900, nobody even debated the issue. Miller was 1938 and it was the last USSC decision regarding the 2nd Amendment. READING analysis of Miller also pointed out the very specific nature of that argument. From BO’s statement, “Today’s ruling, the first clear statement on this issue in 127 years, will provide much-needed guidance to local jurisdictions across the country.”
This decision finally clears up the issue that there is no “collective” right stuck in the middle of 9 other individual rights in the Bill of Rights.
I find it ironic that the judges that dissented are considered “liberals” because in their words “would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons.”
Hell yes, the framers of the constitution limited the government. They had seen first hand what government could impose on the citizens without a check on governmental power. A true liberal would appreciate the limitations on government. Socialists, communists and totalitarians fear a state without enough power to keep the proles in line.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the range.
Would you want to restrict how he spends his money to support the same causes and candidates that, presumably, you and the rest of the usual suspects here also support?
Did you read the post, dipwad? The ammendment doesn’t limit millionaire spending. It allows opponents to raise more money over limits to be competitive with millionaires.
That being said, money should be taken out of politics – period.
Let me get this straight.
It’s too dangerous to allow me (a U.S. citizen) to talk to my business colleagues (U.S. citizens) while they are on an overseas business trip without the federal government listening in, because to do otherwise would be to throw the country at the mercy of the terrorists.
But to prohibit carrying an easily concealable firearm in our nation’s capital “during a time of war” is an assault on our essential freedoms?
Gimme a break.
Here is a link to the elections financing decision:
Davis vs. Federal Election Commission
And here is the link to the 2nd Amendment Decision:
District of Columbia et. al. vs. Heller
(Warning: I started to send this one to print so I could read it later at my leisure, but it’s 157 pages long, including the dissents, so I think I’ll just read it online).
Something tells me that the young blacks in this video who shot this Muslim man on Friday night aren’t Republicans.
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/vid.....ideosearch
Arm up fellow liberals. Those Republican eavesdroppers will one day be looking for slightest excuse (a visit to HA.org will suffice) to declare you an “enemy combatant”, deny habeas corpus and then “rendition” you off to some unknown place where you’ll be treated to “enhanced interrogation” or as rompin’ Rudy put it, “intensive questioning”.
And then after you’re sufficiently “debriefed” and given a trial before a military commission you’ll spend a indeterminate amount of time at hard labor in a facility run by a well-connected Republican no-bid contractor.
It’s the cheap-labor neo-conservative Republican dream.
Thank you Justice Scalia for allowing us non-Republicans to fight the machinery of Republican governance with a hand gun!
Too bad Justice Kennedy seems to be the only member of the Supreme Court to support ALL of the amendments in the Bill of Rights. We could use more justices who uphold ALL of the constitutional rights. Right now, we have four justices who consistently support only the so-called “conservative” constitutional rights, four justice who consistently support only the so-called “liberal” constitutional rights, and Justice Kennedy.
Thanks to Justice Kennedy, we have 5-4 margins supporting both the 2nd amendment right to keep and bear arms, and the 8th amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual disproportionate capital punishment. The other 8 justices did a total flip-flop on these two issues, basically because the 2nd amendment was viewed as “conservative” and the 8th amendment viewed as “liberal”.
YLB @10,
No, most of the trolls don’t actually read my posts. That would make it too difficult to refute me.
@14 Oh come on, YLB… Only in your most paranoid fantasies… Conservatives/Libertarians mostly want to be left alone, not run a prison camp. The kind of delusional bullshit you’re spouting is more likely to come from some rogue government entity, such as BATF, than any particular ideology. And do note, that in their particular case, the abuses were just as rampant under the Clinton Administration, as the Bush.
So, let me get this straight. The bill of rights which enumerates civil liberties in the course of limiting government power was somehow meant to give governments more right by restricting personal freedoms?
Or that a fledgling democracy formed by men who were so opposed to tryanny that they were against a standing army did not want people to be able to carry guns?
say what you’d like about FISA, but it was Bush’s supreme court nominees that made the difference on this one. He’s done far more to protect the integrity of the constitution than any nazi liberalist could ever dream.
Real Mark @6:
It’s hard to place individuals against the mainstream because their public personae get too mixed up in it. Kucinich is not a mainstream politician, but he holds some mainstream views and many that are definitely not mainstream.
Thinking in terms of issues like the death penalty, for example, while polls show that Americans support it, when Governor Ryan of IL came out against it, I seem to remember that he was attacked by conservatives, but there was not an overwhelming outcry from the mainstream of the country. I haven’t researched it, but I don’t recall his head being asked for (that would come later with all the corruption charges). What he did changed the whole conversation about capital punishment, however.
If Democratic politicians continue to assume that if they don’t follow poll results exactly they will be labeled “liberal” and therefore not get elected, we’ll continue to have the perception of what mainstream is defined in conservative terms on many issues.
re 4: …and their political opponents should also be able to spend as much money as they can raise — even if it’s MORE than the millionaire’s fortune.
re 18: Some examples, please, Squarehead.
@14 “Arm up fellow liberals.”
Most of the liberals I know are armed to the teeth.
@14 “Those Republican eavesdroppers will one day be looking for slightest excuse”
I’m sure that was a wet dream for a whole lot of the troll types. But you leave out how perverted they are and what they dream of doing to your children and to your farm animals.
@17 “Oh come on, YLB… Only in your most paranoid fantasies… Conservatives/Libertarians mostly want to be left alone, not run a prison camp.”
What YLB says is quite true of many of today’s commie-fascist conservatives. But the pendulum swings, you’re headed back towards irrelevancy, and I feel good about that.
@18 “nazi liberalist”
More right-wing fascist bullshit. The state of denial of American fascists these days is always good for a laugh.
@11
Check and mate. Thank you sir.
17 – Private companies run prisons now I-Burn. The prison population is bursting at the seams. Do you approve of this “growth industry”?
Do you also approve of illegal warrantless wiretapping of citizens, the military commissions act, denial of habeas corpus, “enhanced interrogations” and other abominations?
This has all happened under a so-called conservative Republican administration and is exactly why a majority of Americans want nothing to do with so-called “conservative” Republicans.
@25
As it happens, I do not approve.
However, I also object to the characterization of the Bush Administration as “conservative”. They aren’t, or at least as I, or most conservatives I know, would recognize. Nor are they the Republicans of which I became familiar when young. Conservatives are not inherently evil, any more than are Liberals. Unfortunately, power/government attracts the kind of pragmatic, ethically challenged statists who are.
Bureaucracy, and government in general, seek to expand their reach. Like a biological organism, growth means life. With that growth, and the consequent accrual of power, comes the urge to use it, proactively and reactively. You libs may get to find that out, since you’ve had a couple of decades to forget.
I am morally certain that in four years, or eight years, we’ll be talking about the latest government outrages, no matter who takes the prize in November.
All political bullshit aside, I have no problem with the ruling. Yes, we have advanced as a society and civilization, from something just slightly beyond hunter-gatherers to our tech-obsessed society of instant gratification. But whether we like it or not, we (‘we’ being the civilian populace) need to remain armed to protect ourselves. The DC handgun band was silly and destined to fail, and the only way such a ban would work would require such police presence that would, no matter how benign, would essentially be the ‘tyranny’ our country’s forefathers took up arms against in the first place.
I could give a fuck about the NRA. They’re nothing more than a fundraising and propaganda arm of the GOP. And the whole ‘first salvo’ bullshit is another symptom of their inherent foot-in-mouth syndrome, the same bilious flow that made Bush 41 resign his NRA membership in the wake of the Wackos-in-Waco standoff. But on this occasion, I find myself in the unenviable position of being on their side.
IMHO, the onus is on law enforcement, and how they handle the illegal guns they seize in the course of busitng crooks. Don’t sell them, like we’ve all seen. Just destroy them, if they’re not doing so already.
NOTE: Forthose of you who don’t know, these are my three definitions of ‘gun control’:
1. Guns should be the hands of legal, law-abiding citizens who wish to own them and use them responsibly.
2. Guns should not be in the hands of those who do not qualify as either legal or law-abiding, and should not be forced upon those who do not wish to own them.
3. Use both hands when necessary. No one’s gonna call you out if you use both hands to shoot, and that whole gangsta holding-the-pistol-sideways crap is only gonna get you a bad shot and a broken wrist.
@27 that whole gangsta holding-the-pistol-sideways crap is only gonna get you a bad shot and a broken wrist.
Personally, I hope that if ever I have a firearm pointed in my direction, the person doing so is doing that exact thing. Good chance they will miss. I won’t.
Excellent ruling!
I’d hate to have to sell my handgun collection!
We have protection in every room…except the shitters!
Proper gun control: A steady hand and good judgement.
It’s a good decision, but the more important need is for those of us who are armed to always know that a gun is a deadly weapon, not a toy. Never even touch it without good justifable reason.
For a limited time only, a special present you can give your loved ones who live in D.C.!!!!
Police Find WWII Flak Cannon in Garage
I learned to shoot when I was six. I participated in my first shooting competition when I was eight. I learned how to shoot and care for an M14 when I was fifteen (through an ROTC program at my school). I could rate Marksman without trying very hard, on a weapon with which I was not very familiar. I don’t hunt, but I still target-shoot on occassion.
But I don’t see any reason to keep an assault-style rifle in my house (a shotgun works better in confined conditions). I don’t carry a pistol because my old scoutmaster told me not to carry one unless I was prepared to pull it, and if I was going to pull it out I had better be shooting it immediately thereafter (in case the other guy had a gun too). After thinking it through, I figured I’d be better off just not carrying one.
That being said, I think the Court was wrong in not linking the militia clause with the right-to-arms clause (the court’s decision basically ignores and renders the first part meaninless, which is a no-no in legal and Constitutional interpretation (Wherever possible, a court should interpret a law in a manner which presumes that the makers intended that each part has a purpose).
I also think that the “right-to-bear-arms” is subject to the reasonableness test, like all other rights granted under the Bill of Rights. After all, the First Amendment doesn’t allow you to yell fire in a crowded theatre with impunity, nor does it prevent ALL searches and seizures. Likewise, the local governments should have the right to impose reasonable restrictions on handgun possession.
We all know the Ninth Circus is the most overturned court! The most liberal stacked federal court!
@33 So fucking what? Not all courts can be stacked with your commie-fascist right-wing activist judges.
I am having a hard time lately supporting Obama. Today I learned he was for hand gun control when he was an Illinois senator and then lied today saying he supported the supreme court 2nd amendment. I may sit this one out altogether. He supports the ban on partial birth abortion.
Obama has also referred to pregnancy as punishment: youtube.com/watch?v=GbZJYWjkAPo
So Steve, You support banning handguns to law abiding citizens. Well I hope some crazed doped up burglar doesn’t shoot you.
@36 How troll-like of you – making shit up, then whining about it. Break into my house and you’re dead, Puddy. It’s as simple as that.
So, Goldy, how does it feel to be the one labeled an extremist?
Steve, what am I making up IDIOT?
I don’t do drugs; you’re good friends do. You have nothing I want, but your friends the criminals may want it!
Isn’t bybygoober an abortion survivor?
Yes he is!
Goldy,
If you ever call me a troll again, I’ll run you down and kick your fucking ass so hard that your nuts will pop out your nose.
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_a.....44>Over the past two decades, it has slowly dawned on Democrats (well except for the regretfully unaborted goldfuck) that gun control is a losing issue for them.
What are you smoking? 150 years of precedent? In your dreams. It has always, except to the whaky nutrocks, been an individual right. Just as every amendment that uses the words “the right of the peope” (The First comes immediately to mind.) has been interpreted as an individual right.
So conservatives want to save the babies and
kill the bad guys and liberals want to kill the
babies and understand the bad guys. God, liberals are so fucked up not to mention they
like cock shoved in their asses. You slimy
fucks are the ones the terrorists want to kill
by the way (in case no one has told you yet).
Elect Obama and your day will come sooner than
you can imagine. Open dialogue. HA HA HA Ha
So conservatives want to save the babies and
kill the bad guys and liberals want to kill the
babies and understand the bad guys. God, liberals are so fucked up not to mention they
like cock shoved in their asses. You slimy
fucks are the ones the terrorists want to kill
by the way (in case no one has told you yet).
Elect Obama and your day will come sooner than
you can imagine. Open dialogue. HA HA HA Ha
Primary reason to vote McCain. Sucks for you doesn’t it Goldy. There’s that dastardy constituion in the way of you totalitarians implementing the Fairness Doctrine and Gun Control.
Maybe if someone ever threatens your daughter’s life and you can’t defend her you will get a clue. Doubtless it would take something of that magnitude to wake you up from your collectivist stupor.
And money is speech. You are just bummed you don’t have it.
They said “Can’t you read? The Constitution says the same thing it said in 1791.”