Speaking of friggin' morons

Does this imbecile really believe this stuff? I mean I know that his party is in bed with the eco-Nazis but does he really believe their bilge?

Listen up friends this is what you get when you put Democrats in power. They want the price of gas to be over $4.00 per gallon. They want it to be too expensive to drive a private automobile. They want to force you to live in large cities like rats in an overcrowded cage. They want you riding public transportation so that they can tell you when, where and how to go. They want to make you dependent so that they can wield power over you. By the way, this is also why they want socialized medicine and gun control and over the top welfare benefits. The more handouts you take the weaker you become and the more easily controlled you will be.

They say that drilling now wouldn't bring the price of gas down right now but when will these "clean, carbon-free, renewable energies" that they gibber about bring the price of energy down? We know how to mine coal, drill for oil, build nuclear power plants and we are very close to developing a way to easily extract the oil from oil shale.

We don't have any idea how to build a solar cell that converts anything but the smallest part of the spectrum into electrical power nor do we have the slightest idea how to build genuinely efficient wind or tidal power generators. If we did we would already be doing it.

The fact is that saying that new technology will make oil obsolete is like saying that one day we will mine the asteroid belt for its mineral wealth. A true statement but something that is somewhere off in the future - how far off in the future we have absolutely no way of knowing. RIGHT NOW we need energy that we can count on, that we understand and that our technology is already able to provide and that means oil.

So Drill Here, Drill Now and Pay Less. Go sign the petition!

Gives driving under the influence a whole new meaning

It is certainly a vintage vehicle. And now Prince Charles's beloved Aston Martin DB6 is running on vintage too.

A nice little white from a vineyard in Wiltshire, to be precise.

As part of cutting his carbon footprint, the prince has converted the 38-year-old classic car - a 21st birthday present from the Queen - to run on 100 per cent bioethanol fuel distilled from surplus British wine.

Well at least someone has found a good use for British wine.

Seriously, what a friggin' moron, inbred jug-eared freak.

Blogs for Borders video blogburst

Our weekly vlog -- video podcast on illegal immigration and border security issues. In this weeks edition...

Budget Woes? Several states are cutting benefits for citizens, are they missing something obvious?

100% Preventable! Americans continue to pay the bloody price for open borders! When will the madness end?

The Other War: Mexican drug cartel hitmen assassinate a Phoenix drug dealer. Is there a Mexican military connection?

Download for your ipod here.

Our friend John Monti is facing yet another bogus legal challenge (learn more here) and he could use our support. Make sure to join his Facebook group and hit the tip jar!

Click on image

If you'd like to sponsor a show contact us here.

This has been the Blogs For Borders Video Blogburst. The Blogs For Borders Blogroll is dedicated to American sovereignty, border security and a sane immigration policy. If you’d like to join find out how right here.

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I'm back

Sorry about not posting anything yesterday. Nothing was wrong I just took the day off.

Posting may be a little light this week due to the fact that Friday is a holiday and I will need to try to do five days work in four.

British moonbat wrings hands over Mugabe

In politics as in our personal lives, just six words comprise one of the commonest falsehoods around. Those six words are: “It can't go on like this.” But it can. I've come to the melancholy conclusion that in Zimbabwe it must.

This weekend there will be voices in our Prime Minister's ear suggesting how in one bound he might cast off his dithering reputation. To help to broker the toppling of Robert Mugabe (they will whisper) might be just the sort of history-making that rescued Margaret Thatcher from doldrums at home, before Galtieri invaded the Falklands. In The Times this week Lord (Paddy) Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon suggested that intervention may become necessary. Mr Brown will think hard about this; list the pros; list the cons; dither; and finally decide it's all too difficult.

Well let's hear it for dithering. Beware the widely held opinion that all we need is Robert Mugabe's head on a stick. In Iraq we called this the decapitation strategy, and duly secured the required head - Saddam's - on the right stick. Then it all went wrong. The ingredients necessary for a liberal democracy were not, it turned out, there. Why should things be different in Africa?

Zimbabwe Rhodesia is not Iraq and Mugabe is not Saddam Hussein, however the Rhodesian people would be extremely lucky if they were. Because contrary to what this limy nitwit thinks the war in Iraq has been all but won. The Iraqi government is making great strides and the streets of Baghdad are well on their way to becoming safer than those of Washington DC.

Sadly the current state of Rhodesia is the inevitable and predictable result of putting left-wing Marxists in charge of the country. The people (black and white) of both Rhodesia and South Africa would have been far better off it the Western nations hadn't come down with a collective case of the vapors at the thought of white governments ruling over black people and had just minded their own business.

Oh, what's the limy nitwit's answer to it all?

"I have none. To rescue Zimbabwe is beyond not our capacity, but our will. We can only wail and wring our hands."

You wail and wring your hands sugarplum. I'll occupy my time by trying to warn people that this is what happens when you listen to the left about, well anything.

Model falls to death in Manhattan

A stunning supermodel leaped from her swank downtown apartment to her death today in an apparent suicide, officials said.

Ruslana Korshunova, 20, whose face has graced the cover of French Elle and Russian Vogue, apparently jumped from her ninth-floor apartment in her Water Street building in the Financial District just before 2:30 p.m.

"I heard what sounded like a gunshot or a bomb or an explosion," said a stunned Con Ed worker talking to a cop nearby before the beauty leaped.

"I looked down the street, and I say to the cop, 'Did that person just get hit by a car?' " said the worker, who identified himself only as Patrick, 32, of Brooklyn.

The two men raced over. "Her arms were crushed," Patrick said. "Her head was on the left side and blood was coming out in a pool."

Cops said there were no signs of a struggle in the apartment.

The window from which she fell had a balcony, which had construction netting around it that appeared to have been cut.

The 5-foot-8 head-turner has been featured in ads for DKNY, Vera Wang and Christian Dior among others and was hailed as "the next big thing" in a profile in Vogue three years ago.

"She's one of the sweetest, nicest people you'll ever meet," said a friend, who did not want to be identified by name.

"I'm still in shock. The world lost a great person."

The lithe looker has been a mainstay at Fashion Week in the Big Apple and London, working with all-star designers Jill Stuart, Betsey Johnson, Rosa Cha, Lela Rose and Libertine.

The pal said that Korshunova had just returned from a modeling gig in Paris and seemed to be "on top of the world."

"There were no signs," he said. "That's what's driving me crazy. I don't see one reason why she would do that."

Two words: Russian Mob.

Saturday Morning Cartoon

Another WWII era Superman cartoon. Produced by the Fleischer studios, the same outfit that brought you Popeye and Betty Boop cartoons.

The Council has spoken

The Watchers Council was once again able to meet in the open this week due to the fact that our intelligence operatives have determined that Hillary Clinton's agents are too busy trying to scrounge money to pay off her campaign debt to worry about taking vengeance upon the Council for its part in her defeat.

This weeks winning Council post was South Africa's Neville Chamberlain by The Razor. Here is a sample:

Thabo Mbeki has sat silently while his country is flooded with refugees fleeing the economic and social collapse of South Africa’s northern neighbor Zimbabwe. Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s liberator turned oppressor lost the parliamentary elections held in March, then scrambled his thugs to action to make sure that his loss wouldn’t be repeated in the run-off to be held Friday. While international pressure against Mugabe mounted, Mbeki resisted joining the chorus of condemnation and use the leverage his nation has over Zimbabwe to get Comrade Bob to relinquish power. Instead Mbeki pursued a “soft-softly” conciliatory approach, telling the rest of the world, in particular the US and the UK, to but out of what he considered to be an “internal matter.”

The winning non-Council post was Why You Should Apologize -- Ineffectively and Dishonestly -- For What You Didn't Do by Classical Values. Here is a sample:

I understand why people are emotional about slavery, especially if they read the chilling details of what their ancestors actually did. But -- notwithstanding the incessant demands of the guilt machine -- I see a major problem with any of them apologizing, for the simple reason that they can't apologize.

An apology is personal in nature. I cannot apologize for the actions of someone else -- not even my father or my mother. If they were to have hurt people, sure, I could acknowledge what they did and feel compassion for their victims, but I cannot apologize. This is further compounded when there are no living malfeasors, and no living victims. Suppose my great-great grandfather had murdered someone. I can't think of anything more absurd than hunting down the murder victim's descendants and telling them that I "apologize" for the crime of my great-great grandfather. Moreover, they'd be in no position to accept my meaningless apology. Any such apology by me would thus be an idle act, and a phony, disingenuous one, with a goal of alleviating nonexistent guilt.

Apologizing for what was not done by the apologist is thus an extreme form of dishonesty, because it is an admission of guilt that is not there, by people who did not do it, to people who are not their victims.

It makes about as much sense as demanding that "the Jews" apologize for killing Christ.

Such apologies are logically impossible and cannot erase guilt -- neither the original guilt attributable to the guilty parties, nor the phony guilt their descendants do not share. But because they don't work, a single apology would be one too many, while a million apologies would never be enough.

Once started, these apologies might become self-perpetuating, though.

Perhaps that's the whole idea.

In both cases go and read the rest.

Today in history

Today in 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian thrones, was assassinated with his wife in the Bosnian town of Sarajevo, by Gavrillo Princip, precipitating First World War.

Tonight's Music

Michelle Malkin posted this as part of her tribute to Heller and I thought it was a good idea.

They equalize for women too

Megan McArdle wonders why feminists don't embrace firearms ownership:

I'm hardly the first person to make this observation, but I don't know why it isn't noted more often: guns are the only weapon that equalizes strength between attacker and attacked. It's the only time when men's greater speed, strength, and longer reach make no difference; if you pull the trigger first, you win.

This is an enormous social advance. I am all for strengthening the social contract (and law enforcement) so that fewer men commit rape, assault, or robbery. But until human nature has improved so radically that grievous bodily harm has passed from living memory, I don't understand why more feminists don't push for widespread gun ownership.

The answer to Ms. McArdle's question comes quickly in the comments section when a moonbat named Susan responds with a bunch of anti-gun boilerplate statistics about how a gun in the home is 3,528,854,921.258 times more likely to kill a family member than an intruder. Susan then tops off her tirade of ignorance with this gem:

Even if one were to hand-wave away all the statistics, it's difficult to imagine a situation in which you'd be able to locate key, gun, and bullets, and load and aim credibly if under attack.

I will pause to let the reader stop laughing hysterically.

Only the heir to the throne of the kingdom of the idiots keeps his home defense gun unloaded and locked up - unless he lives in an area ruled over by left-wing morons like New York City. And even then I would wager that a great many of the Big Apple's privately owned handguns rest in the nightstand fully loaded with the trigger lock nearby. After all how would the cops ever prove that it wasn't unloaded and locked when you heard the goblin breaking down the door?

Susan then brings up a legitimate issue:

If you think you'll walk around with a loaded gun, you should visit a place like Texas where it's legal but no businesses will let you enter with a gun.

As I said this is a legitimate issue, but the problem is businesses which do not wish to allow their customers to exercise their God-given rights on their premises. The answer to this problem is to amend the regulations insurance companies must abide by so that they can no longer penalize businesses who refuse to ban lawfully armed customers. That and legislation granting businesses absolute indemnification against law suits relating to their permitting customers to bear arms on their property. Those two things would remove the major incentives that businesses have to post "no guns allowed" signs on their property.

It would also be nice to have laws which forbid places of public accommodation to discriminate against the legally armed in the same why that they are forbidden to discriminate against blacks, Jews, gays and so on.

Ms. McArdle is correct in believing that women should embrace firearms ownership. There was a little poem praising the Colt revolver that was popular in the old West. Be not afraid of any man, No matter what his size, When danger threatens, call on me, And I will Equalize.

A firearm equalizes the woman with the man, the old with the young, the disabled with the fit and the lone person with multiple assailants. In feudal Japan firearms were outlawed because a peasant with a gun could easily kill a highly trained Samurai warrior. This is precisely why they are so beloved by the America people.

The new Obama commerical

I found this over on The People's Cube and it was too good not to share:



This is a parody of TruthThroughAction.org's short film, Blue Balled. The original film, horribly edited, has a message so badly cobbled together that to parody it is like whacking a pinata with a boat oar, sans blindfold. But we couldn't resist. The film is so self-satisfyingly smug it has a virtual "kick me" sign on it.

Could Heller defeat Obama

Among the other various side effects of the Heller ruling the Supreme Court has handed a very large and brightly wrapped gift to the GOP in the form of a very large wedge issue:

From The Politico - In a landmark decision that returns the gun control debate to the forefront of the presidential race, the Supreme Court on Thursday overturned the District of Columbia's restrictive ban on handguns and declared for the first time an individual right to possess a gun.

The D.C. gun ban had prohibited residents from keeping handguns inside their homes and required legal guns like hunting rifles to be registered and kept unloaded in a locked area.

The Republican National Committee and John McCain's campaign seized on the ruling and used it to frame Democrat Barack Obama as a radical liberal on the issue of gun rights, in the first step toward a media and advertising push in more rural battleground states that “highlights that Barack Obama is the most anti gun candidate in American presidential history,” according to RNC spokesman Danny Diaz.

“This issue is a big fat wedge in target states,” said Matt McDonald, a senior adviser to McCain, citing Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and West Virginia. “Obviously it is an issue where he is at odds with working-class voters.”

In the long term, McDonald said the McCain campaign planned to highlight Obama’s past stances on gun issues to “fit into the narrative that we are looking at for Barack Obama: one, that is he coreless and, two, he's unwilling to stand up for issues that risk his political future."

The Obama campaign distanced itself Thursday from a statement made last year to the Chicago Tribune that "Obama believes the D.C. handgun law is constitutional." Spokesman Bill Burton said that the statement "was not worded as well as it could have been" and that Obama believes that generally the Constitution "doesn't prevent local and state governments from enacting their own gun laws."

. . . In regard to Thursday's Supreme Court ruling, the Obama campaign released a statement saying, "As president, Barack Obama will continue to respect the constitutional rights of law-abiding gun owners, and for voters who have concerns about this issue, they will find real comfort in Sen. Obama’s record.

The trouble is that Sen. Obama's record offers absolutely no comfort to people who care about the constitutional rights of gun owners.

Power Line reports - The RNC has collected a wealth of information on Obama's positions and statements on the right to bear arms here. Obama supported the D.C. handgun ban that the Supreme Court found unconstitutional in Heller. John Lott says that Obama once told him, "I don't believe that people should be able to own guns." In 1996, when he was running for the Illinois State Senate, Obama submitted a questionnaire in which he answered questions about gun control. Obama said that he favored a ban on handguns; click to enlarge:


So, Obama believes that the Second Amendment recognizes a right to possess firearms, but would outlaw the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns and "assault rifles" (which are simply semi-automatic rifles which happen to look like military weapons).

Power Line also directs us to NRO where Jim Geraghty writes this:

In the issue of gun owners' rights, we're reminded of one more time an Obama claim didn't line up with the facts. In the Philadelphia debate, Obama denied that he had said on a questionnaire that he favored a handgun ban, saying "No, my writing wasn't on that particular questionnaire, Charlie. As I said, I have never favored an all-out ban on handguns." FactCheck.org dug into that claim extensively, and concluded it was misleading.

But beyond that, the gun rights issue is one area where we have an extensive Obama record to examine. He lived in a city that effectively banned handguns, and in his entire career there as a community organizer, a state legislator, and a U.S. senator, there is no record of Obama ever suggesting he had a problem with that policy. Though inaction, he made clear he saw nothing unconstitutional about a de facto ban on handguns.

And this:

Obama’s audacity on this issue goes even further.

Obama was named a director of the Joyce Foundation in late 1994, and remained in that position until late 2002.

During Obama’s tenure with the Joyce Foundation, donations to anti-gun groups increased dramatically. For example, in 1997 and 1998 the Violence Policy Center received $221,000 and $360,000 from the Foundation; those grants and donations increased to $1 million in 2000 and $800,000 in 2002. In all, during Obama’s tenure, the group received $15 million from the Joyce Foundation.

The Violence Policy Center, despite its name, never seems all that concerned with beatings, stabbings, immolations or explosions. No, they’re completely focused on gun violence, and they can effectively be called an anti-gun or pro-gun control organization.

Lest anyone think I’m mischaracterizing their objective analysis, note that their web site touts themselves as “the most aggressive group in the gun control movement.” Also note studies like their one from 2000 entitled, “Unsafe in Any Hands: Why America Needs to Ban Handguns,” which declared the idea that the Constitution would forbid a national handgun ban a “pure myth.” Also note the organization’s subtly-titled book, Every Handgun is Aimed at You: The Case for Banning Handguns.)

It’s not just the VPC. The Joyce Foundation also provided several large grants to the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, which can also be safely described as an anti-gun or pro-gun control organization. Besides their role in “litigation designed to change the way guns are designed, marketed, distributed, and sold,” the center perpetually argued that guns in the home were more dangerous than protective.

In 1996, the foundation Obama directed approved $662,525 in grants to the Johns Hopkins Center, and by 2001, they gave another $600,000.

In the wake of today’s ruling, you’re going to hear Barack Obama claim passionately that he believes in the Second Amendment and that he is a friend to gun owners. It will be interesting to see how he can rectify that with his efforts to fund books like Every Handgun is Aimed at You: The Case for Banning Handguns.

There is absolutely no question that Barack Obama is an enemy of gun owners and the Second Amendment. When you think about it there is almost no chance that he could be anything else. Almost his entire life has been spent in the cloistered halls of the extreme left. From his upbringing in Hawaii, possibly the most left-wing state in the Union, to his university education to his career as a "community organizer" (Marxist race-pimping demagogue) and his attendance at the church of racist Black Liberation Theology believing lunatic Jeremiah Wright to his marriage to the angry bitter America-hating Michelle Obama has simply never been exposed to anything other than the venomous doctrines of the loony left. Like the Palestinian child brought up literally from birth to be a suicide bomber what real chance has he ever had to develop a not-insane political philosophy?

Republicans ought to be able to use this issue along with drilling for oil off shore and in ANWAR to win the White House and drastically limit their losses to Democrats in the House and Senate. However the Party's unfortunate choice of a standard bearer this time out seriously hampers their ability to do so.

We are all familiar with McCain's past support for bans on offshore oil drilling and his still adamant opposition to drilling in ANWAR and his endorsement of the global warming hoax but what many do not realize is that McCain also has a well deserved reputation among gun owners' rights activists as an enemy of gun owners and the Second Amendment.

Chuck Baldwin writes this on the Gun Owners of America website:

Nowhere is McCain's chicanery and duplicity more jeopardous than in the area of the right to keep and bear arms. On issues relating to the Second Amendment, John McCain is a disaster! For example, the highly respected Gun Owners of America (GOA) rates McCain with a grade of F-. McCain's failing grade is well deserved.

John McCain sponsored an amendment to S. 1805 on March 2, 2004 that would outlaw the private sale of firearms at gun shows. According to GOA, the provision would effectively eliminate gun shows, because every member of an organization sponsoring a gun show could be imprisoned if the organization fails to notify each and every "person who attends the special firearms event of the requirements [under the Brady Law]."

John McCain also sponsored an Incumbent Protection provision to the so-called "Campaign Finance Reform" bill, which severely curtails the ability of outside groups (such as GOA) to communicate the actions of incumbent politicians to members and supporters prior to an election.

The GOA report of the 106th Congress reveals that out of 15 votes relating to the right to keep and bear arms, Senator John McCain voted favorably only 4 times. Put that into a percentage and McCain's pro-Second Amendment voting record is a pathetic 27%.

In addition, GOA warns that John McCain supported legislation that would force federal agents to increase efforts in arresting and convicting honest gun owners who may inadvertently violate one of the many federal anti-gun laws, which punish mere technicalities, such as gun possession.

For example, if John McCain's proposed legislation were to become law, a gun owner who travels with a gun through a school zone or who uses one of the family handguns to go target shooting with a 15-year old could be sent to prison. And a person who uses a gun for self-defense could be sent to prison for a mandatory minimum of five years.

John Lott observes ". . . on issues such as regulating gun shows, banning less expensive guns and so-called assault weapons, and requiring gunlocks, McCain has supported central portions of the gun-control agenda. Indeed, in a couple cases, McCain authored the proposed legislation himself."

Even anti-gun loon Josh Sugarman acknowledges in a backhand way that McCain has been a useful tool of the gun control movement - In June 2001, McCain was attacked in the NRA's America's 1st Freedom magazine over his campaign finance reform package. The magazine's cover story asked, "Like to think your opinion counts? Under the guise of reforming election funding, Sen. John McCain and others are attempting to muzzle your voice concerning critical national issues--including the Second Amendment." The article adds, "McCain was led down a path by a Senate Democratic leadership that is doing all it can to keep the super-senator beholden....[T]hey want a Senate Majority of radical Democrats, who would prove an unprecedented threat to the Second Amendment. John McCain is their Judas goat--leading the sheep to slaughter." The following month's issue warned, in an article titled "What's Happened to John McCain?," that "The gun control debate in Washington has hit center stage because Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has now become one of the premier flag carriers for the enemies of the Second Amendment."

Fairness demands that I point out the McCain has never supported an outright ban on handguns as Obama has. However it is going to be difficult for McCain to really pound in the wedge which will split places like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana off from the Democrat party by merely being the least radical in his support for various gun control measures.

It is highly ironic that the GOP in choosing its candidate strategically (the only Republican who could win in an environment where Republicans are hated) may have picked the only one of their primary contenders who cannot effectively exploit either of the two great issues upon which the campaign could well turn.

This should serve as an example of the folly of trying to use a snapshot of the current political feelings in the nation to plan for or predict the results of an election which will take a year or more in the future (or even a few months, for that matter).

The political climate in this nation is so mercurial that three weeks might as well be a decade and a year might as well be a millennium. The lesson the GOP needs to take from this is that the best nominee, regardless of what the mood of the nation seems to be on any given day, is a solid conservative with a solid track record and good communication skills. Trying to play prophet and pick your nominee on how you think the voters will feel on election day based on what polls tell you they are feeling today is a losing strategy.

Tonight's Music

Here is some damn fine pipping from Neal Anderson of Rathkeltair.

Praise for Heller

Commentary on the Heller decision is already flooding the net. Here is the press release put out by Americans for Limited Government:

June 26^th, 2008, Fairfax, Virginia— Americans for Limited Government today praised the Supreme Court’s decision in Heller v. D.C. “as a refreshing return to personal freedom, a reminder to the revisionists that the Constitution is neither out of date, nor out of vogue.”

In addition, ALG President Bill Wilson called upon 88-year-old Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens to “do what is right and honorable and resign now from the seat he has held too long and abused so badly.” Said Wilson, “In referring to Mr. Stevens’ convoluted reasoning as ‘grotesque,’ Justice Scalia summed up in a word Mr. Stevens’ entire career. He is clearly out of touch, out of sync, and, as demonstrated by his dissenting opinion in Heller, now barely coherent.”

In the historic 5-4 Heller ruling, the high court affirmed a lower court’s ruling that the District of Columbia’s gun ban is unconstitutional, violating the individual right to bear arms. Said Justice Scalia in writing the majority opinion, “Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.”

“This is a major victory for the citizens of the District of Columbia, and the rest of the nation,” said Wilson. “For far too long, citizens in certain parts of this country have been denied their constitutional rights. We commend the Supreme Court on this decision, and we trust it will mark the beginning of the end for misguided jurisprudence that views the Constitution as, in Jefferson’s words, ‘wax in the hands of the Judiciary’.”

In writing the majority decision, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that, “[W]e find that [the textual elements of the Second Amendment] guarantee the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation.”

Both parties in this case had argued on the basis of the meaning of the Second Amendment itself. D.C. had argued that the right to keep and bear arms only applied to State militias. But the Court ruled against that logic: “The prefatory clause does not suggest that preserving the militia was the only reason Americans valued the ancient right; most undoubtedly thought it even more important for self-defense and hunting.”

Wilson agreed, “D.C.’s argument – and Mr. Stevens’ defense of it -- never even measure up to the basic rules of grammar, let alone the basic rule of law. The operative clause the Second Amendment has always been the right of the people to keep and bear arms. What is stunning to me is that the decision was so close.”

Wilson was guarded against overly praising the Court, “The Supreme Court has definitely been up and down with important decisions these past few years, with horrible rulings in both Kelo and the McCain-Feingold challenge, but this one they certainly nailed. In addition to commending the 5 justices ruled in favor of Mr. Heller, we would also like to praise the brave citizens who challenged D.C.’s unconstitutional law for their courage and patriotism. George Mason and Patrick Henry would be proud.”

Wilson added, “Nonetheless, Americans for Limited Government is very pleased with this decision protecting citizens’ rights to own and carry guns, and importantly that the case was decided on a textual basis. For too long the Court has done everything except rule on the basis of what the Constitution clearly says. Justice Scalia’s opinion, therefore, is a breath of fresh air for all Americans who value the rule of law.”

A great day!

The Supreme Court today ruled that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution means exactly what it says.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Americans have a right to own guns for self-defense and hunting, the justices' first major pronouncement on gun rights in U.S. history.

The court's 5-4 ruling struck down the District of Columbia's 32-year-old ban on handguns as incompatible with gun rights under the Second Amendment. The decision went further than even the Bush administration wanted, but probably leaves most firearms laws intact.

The court had not conclusively interpreted the Second Amendment since its ratification in 1791. The amendment reads: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

The basic issue for the justices was whether the amendment protects an individual's right to own guns no matter what, or whether that right is somehow tied to service in a state militia.

Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for four colleagues, said the Constitution does not permit "the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home."

In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the majority "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."

He said such evidence "is nowhere to be found."

The "evidence", you drooling moron, is to be found in a document called "The Constitution". For supporting evidence you can look at every single fraking thing that any and all of the people who wrote and ratified the Constitution had to say about the ownership and carrying of firearms.

Joining Scalia were Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas. The other dissenters were Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter.

No surprises there, unless you find it a bit amazing that Kennedy did the right thing.

The issue caused a split within the Bush administration. Vice President Dick Cheney supported the appeals court ruling, but others in the administration feared it could lead to the undoing of other gun regulations, including a federal law restricting sales of machine guns. Other laws keep felons from buying guns and provide for an instant background check.

Let us pray that the fearful ones were entirely justified in their fears and that Heller becomes the crowbar which dismantles the entire unconstitutional structure of gun control laws in this nation. The only citizens who should be deprived of their right to keep and bear (own and carry) arms are violent felons, young children outside the supervision of their parents and the insane.

SCOTUSblog has these quotes from the Heller Decision:

“Logic demands that there be a link between the stated purpose and the command.”

“We start therefore with a strong presumption that the Second Amendment right is exercised individually and belongs to all Americans.”

“the most natural reading of ‘keep Arms’ in the Second Amendment is to “have weapons.”

“The term was applied, then as now, to weapons that were not specifically designed for military use and were not employed in a military capacity.”

“Putting all of these textual elements together, we find that they guarantee the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation.”

“Thus, we do not read the Second Amendment to protect the right of citizens to carry arms for any sort of confrontation, just as we do not read the First Amendment to protect the right of citizens to speak for any purpose.”

“The prefatory clause does not suggest that preserving the militia was the only reason Americans valued the ancient right; most undoubtedly thought it even more important for self-defense and hunting.”

“It was plainly the understanding in the post-Civil War Congress that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to use arms for self-defense.” [This refers to the unconstitutionality of laws forbidding freed slaves from owning firearms]

“In sum, we hold that the District’s ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment, as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense. Assuming that Heller is not disqualified from the exercise of Second Amendment rights, the District must permit him to register his handgun and must issue him a license to carry it in the home.”

For my money this is the most significant language in the opinion. If the District MUST permit Heller to own his handgun and to allow him to keep it in his home assembled and loaded for the purpose of self defense then the District is prohibited from establishing a sham purchase permit system where everyone is welcome to apply but in practice no one but the politically connected are actually granted the permits.

Under the Supreme Court's language anyone in the District who is not disqualified under the Second Amendment MUST be allowed to own a gun and self defense is, all by itself, a valid reason for that ownership.

This is potentially huge because if this ruling is held to apply to the states (as any ruling on the First Amendment would) then this will radically transform the firearms laws in places like New Jersey, New York City, Chicago and San Francisco (Diane Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi won't be the only ones there with handguns anymore).

You will also notice that Justice Scalia wrote about "carrying weapons" in the same context as owning weapons. This might very well lay the groundwork for making the entire nation "shall issue" with regard to concealed handgun permits.

Tom Goldstein, writing on the SCOTUSblog summarized the ruling this way:

Individuals have a constitutional right to possess a basic firearm 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.

Patterico has this to say:

5-4. Let that sink in, folks. Even though it was expected, it’s now official. Ponder it for a moment.

If the Democrats had appointed just one more Justice to the U.S. Supreme Court, there would be no individual right to possess firearms in the United States of America.

I agree completely. That is why it so breaks my heart that we don't have a Republican running for president this time around. BTY, I'll have more to say about McCain and the Court later today.

Download the entire Heller Decision here.
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I'll be celebrating tonight with a glass of 12-year-old scotch and a fine cigar. Then Saturday I'm off to the range for some celebratory cap-busting! Post a comment and tell us how you plan to celebrate.

Tonight's Music

Sharon and the band went to Dolans Warehouse in Limerick and, over two nights in July, recorded material for a double live cd and a dvd. As well as the band (the cream of Irish musicians) supplemented by banjo virtuosos Gerry O'Connor and Mary Shannon and Solas's Winnie Horan...Sharon invited along a whole cast of guests, composed of established Irish talent as well as showcasing new talent. Included on this incredible guest list are Damien Dempsey, Declan O'Rourke, Dessie O'Halloran, Jon Kenny, Mundy and Roesy....and introducing Jack Maher and The Brennan Sisters. The band are Robbie Casserly, Paul Moore, James Delaney, Jim Murray, Jack Maher, Richie Buckley. This incredible show which runs for over two hours not only reinforces Sharon talent as a top Irish star but also showcases her ability as a producer and arranger.

The CD Sharon Shannon, Live at Dolans is available by clicking the link.

VDH wants credit to be given where credit is due

Recent studies showing a decline in global incidents of Islamic terror have been interpreted as solely a Middle-East intramural affair. Sometimes the good news is said to be a naturally occurring phenomenon. We are supposed to believe that American policies of counter-terrorism at home have been of little value, if not McCarthyesque. Beefed-up security, the fight against the terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the cultural creation of a repugnance — and penalty — for jihadism (as in contrast to the 1990s), have likewise supposedly played no role.

But surely the catalyst for the decline in terrorist incidents worldwide was the radically different response of the U.S. to terrorism and 9/11 that finally brought jihadism into an open-shooting war against the West (e.g., cf. the Left’s “creating terrorists”), in which the terrorists are losing the battle-space, along with the hearts and minds of those in the Middle East — as their own websites and cries of anguish attest.

The successful toppling of Saddam was followed in short order by the shutdown of Dr. Khan’s atomic shop, the surrender of WMDs by the Libyans, and the supposed sidetracking of the Iranian nuclear bomb program (at least according to the National Intelligence Estimate) — and yet no one thought the timing of all these events was odd (even when Ghaddafi himself reportedly connected his decision to abandon a weapons of mass destruction program to Saddam’s fate).

By the same token, the rise of governments that are sympathetic to the U.S. in France, Germany, and elsewhere in Europe is never associated with a shared and growing worry over Islamic radicalism — or a grudging, often private acknowledgment of the U.S. role abroad in beating back jihadism. How surreal to see a constitutional government in Iraq, with broad popular support, fighting and defeating terrorists and insurgents of both the Wahhabi and Iranian brand — at a time when the consensus is that Iraq only made terrorism much worse. As we’ve seen from recent events, there are many governments abroad that deserve criticism, whether in China, the Sudan, or Burma, but Iraq is not one of them.

So these are upside-down times when facts and events on the ground simply do not support the general pessimism of the Western media, the serial publication of gloomy he-did-it,-not-me memoirs about the post-9/11 supposed failures, and the shrill rhetoric of the Democratic primaries.

In general, the hard efforts of the last six years against radical Islam — that bore fruit by the radically changed atmosphere in Iraq, the decline in terrorism worldwide, the lack of a follow-up to 9/11, and polls that showed a marked fall in approval for al Qaeda, bin Laden, and the tactic of suicide bombing — are explained away in various ways. The common theme, however, is that one never mentions the efforts of the bogeyman George Bush.

[. . .]

We have not won the war on terror, but we are starting to see how the combination of domestic security, international cooperation, military action, cultural ostracism of those who condone terrorism, and promotion of constitutional government in the Middle East can, and will, marginalize and eventually defeat the jihadists. We know this not just by the anguished complaints of the Islamists themselves, and real progress on the ground — but also by the mantra of increasingly ossified critics who still insist that things are either worse, or were never that bad, or abruptly got better on their own.

Some of the most loyal and effective allies the jihadists have had have been American Democrats in elected office, the academy and the media. When will we "ostracize" them?

The nation was at war and Pelosi, Reid, Murtha, Obama, Clinton, The New York Times, The Washington Post, MSNBC, CNN, the broadcast networks, almost the entire faculties of the Ivy League and a great many other state and private colleges and universities along with Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, Lew Rockwell and so many others did everything but strap on explosive belts themselves and try to blow up Marine Corps recruiting stations in an effort to make us lose.

When do they get handed the bill for their treason?

I don't mean legal action. I mean when do the people of the United States tell these abominable people that although they have the right to go on living here (one of the liberties protected by the military whose defeat they attempted to engineer) that their fellow citizens will not extend to them the normal respect and inclusion which we normally treat those with whom we must share our national living space?

Blogs For Borders Video Blogburst

Our weekly vlog -- podcast on illegal immigration and border security issues. In this weeks edition...

The Other War: As Mexico melts down are we next?

100% Preventable! Americans continue to pay the bloody price for open borders. When will the madness end?

John Monti's false accusers take a second bite at the apple, we report and tell you what you can do to help!

Download for your ipod here.

As mentioned in the final story our friend John Monti is facing yet another bogus legal challenge (learn more here) and he could use our support. Make sure to join his Facebook group and hit the tip jar!

Click on image

If you'd like to sponsor a show contact us here.

This has been the Blogs For Borders Video Blogburst. The Blogs For Borders Blogroll is dedicated to American sovereignty, border security and a sane immigration policy. If you’d like to join find out how right here.

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Miss Ann is talking

That means that YOU are listening!

Liberals dismiss studies that show a link between abortion and breast cancer, claiming they are biased because the people promoting the studies are "anti-choice."

For the same reason, no one should believe the Democrats' "energy" policies.

Democrats couldn't care less about high gas prices. The consistent policy of the Democratic Party, going back at least to Jimmy Carter, has been to jack up gas prices so we can all start pedaling around on tricycles.

Environmentalists are constantly clamoring for higher gas taxes as the cure-all to their insane global warming theory. Clinton proposed a 26-cent tax on gas. John Kerry said it should be 50 cents. Gore endorsed the Malthusian proposal of Paul and Anne Ehrlich in "The Population Explosion" that gas taxes be raised gradually to match prices in Europe and Japan.

The result is consumers now pay about 46 cents per gallon in gasoline taxes. That's not including taxes paid directly to the government by the oil companies and passed onto consumers. As the inestimable economist John Lott has pointed out, in the past 25 years oil companies have paid more than three times in taxes what they have made in profits.

B. Hussein Obama's response to soaring gas prices is to have the oil companies collect even more money from us at the pump, proposing a "windfall profits tax" on oil companies. "Corporate taxes" sound like taxes on rich people, but all they do is force corporations to collect taxes on behalf of the government.

Democrats have worked hard to ensure that Americans pay as much for gas as Europeans do. After a quarter-century of gas tax hikes, a ban on drilling for oil and a complete destruction of the nuclear power industry in America, I guess liberals can declare: Mission accomplished!

In response to skyrocketing gas prices, liberals say, practically in unison, "We can't drill our way out of this crisis."

What does that mean? This is like telling a starving man, "You can't eat your way out of being hungry!" "You can't water your way out of drought!" "You can't sleep your way out of tiredness!" "You can't drink yourself out of dehydration!"

Seriously, what does it mean? Finding more oil isn't going to increase the supply of oil?

It is the typical Democratic strategy to babble meaningless slogans, as if they have a plan. Their plan is: the permanent twilight of the human race. It's the only solution they can think of to deal with the beastly traffic on the LIE (Long Island Expressway).

How do liberals propose we acquire the energy required for the economic activity and production that results in light appearing when they flick a switch? The larger enterprise involved in producing that little miracle eludes them.

Liberals complain that -- as B. Hussein Obama put it -- there's "no way that allowing offshore drilling would lower gas prices right now. At best you are looking at five years or more down the road."

This is as opposed to airplanes that run on woodchips, which should be up and running any moment now.

Moreover, what was going on five years ago? Why didn't anyone propose drilling back then?

Say, you know what we need? We need a class of people paid to anticipate national crises and plan solutions in advance. It would be such an important job, the taxpayers would pay them salaries so they wouldn't have to worry about making a living and could just sit around anticipating crises.

If only we had had such a group -- let's call them "elected representatives" -- they could have proposed drilling five years ago!

But of course we do pay people to anticipate national problems and propose solutions. Some of them -- we'll call them Republicans -- did anticipate high gas prices and propose solutions.

Six long years ago President Bush had the foresight to demand that Congress allow drilling in a minuscule portion of the Alaska's barren, uninhabitable Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). In 2002, Bush, Tom DeLay and the entire Republican Party were screaming from the rooftops: Drill! Drill! Drill!

We'd be gushing oil now -- except the Democrats stopped us from drilling.

Drilling on only 0.01 percent of ANWR's 19 million acres was projected to produce about 10 billion barrels of oil. From all domestic sources combined, we currently produce about 1.8 billion barrels of oil per year. To a layperson like myself, 10 billion barrels seems like a lot of oil.

The other party -- plus John McCain -- ferociously opposed drilling in ANWR, drilling offshore or drilling anyplace else. Instead of Drill! Drill! Drill!, their motto could be: Kill! Kill! Kill!

They refuse to believe our abortion studies? I refuse to believe they care about Americans having to pay high gas prices.

I have spoken before of how much I hate the left. This kind of thing is why.

As I've said before, someone wake me up when it's legal to start shooting them.

Have a midday laugh

Part 1



Part 2

The great comic Emo Phillips in Chicago all the way back in 1983.

Today is the day

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court is meeting to issue opinions in some of the seven cases it has yet to decide.

Major cases still unresolved include the ban on handguns in Washington, D.C., whether people convicted of raping children can be given the death penalty and the $2.5 billion punitive damages judgment against Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) for the Exxon Valdez disaster.

I have to leave in a few minutes so I will likely hear the outcome of the Second Amendment case on the radio.

Like most people I have been expecting the Court to rule that the Second Amendment recognizes an individual right. After all that is the only ruling possible unless the court wants to completely trash the Constitution and make up their own law from the bench.

I pause now to let the reader consider some of the insane 5-4 rulings that the High Court has already released this year.

So far this morning they have ruled the wrong way on the issue of whether those who rape children can be put to death and the right way on reducing the damages that Exxon must pay in regard to the Exxon Valdez accident.

I find myself growing apprehensive.


UPDATE:

Drudge has a cryptic note on his website indicating that the 2nd Amd. ruling will be released tomorrow.

I fully expect them to hold this one till last regardless of how they rule it will be the most explosive announcment they have made since Roe v Wade.

Give these a look

The Watchers Council nominations are in for this week:

Council links:

1. More Quincy
   Done With Mirrors
2. Moonbat Kucinich Wants to Impeach Bush
   The Colossus of Rhodey
3. Left Continues Denigration of McCain's Military Service, POW Heroism
   Rhymes With Right
4. South Africa's Neville Chamberlain
   The Razor
5. Dick Morris Gets One Right
   Hillbilly White Trash
6. The Whole Shebaa-ng
   Soccer Dad
7. Gay Pride Week
   Bookworm Room
8. Afghanistan Update
   The Glittering Eye
9. My ANWR Photo Gallery
   Cheat Seeking Missiles
10. Warped
    Joshuapundit
11. And on the Seventh Day, He Rested
    Wolf Howling
12. Paradise, Favorites, and the Evaluation Headgame
    The Education Wonks

Non-council links:

1. "Declaring Independence from a 'Broken System' By Breaking a Promise..." [UPDATED]
   AmbivaBlog
2. 'Not My Fault'
   The New York Times
3. Is There A Pattern Here? If So, Is There A Name For It?
   Discriminations
4. Alcoholism Progression
   Dean's World
5. The Card
   Stop the ACLU
6. Building Walls
   Shira bat Sarah
7. Obama's Lack of Ordinary Modesty
   American Thinker
8. Big Gains in Iraq?
   Abu Muqawama
9. The Zimmerman Telegram and the Captured Saddam Documents
   Flopping Aces
10. The Unconscious Roots of Media Bias
    ShrinkWrapped
11. An Almost Unfathomable Ignorance of History
    Brits At Their Best
12. Why You Should Apologize -- Ineffectively and Dishonestly -- For What You Didn't Do
    Classical Values
13. Money Grubbing Tax Grabbers
    The QandO Blog
14. Rep. Keith Ellison Brings Obama Back On Track
    Pondering Penguin

It isn't inconsistent when you know what he really wants

Jonah Goldberg calls out Pat Buchanan over his new WWII revisionist book:

Americans are a moral people. They will not sustain a foreign policy rooted in a cold pragmatism that averts its gaze from the tragedy of a little country to maintain cordial relations with its oppressor. Churchill said long ago: “The belief that security can be obtained by throwing a small state to the wolves is a fatal delusion.”

What neocon mouthed this idealistic pabulum? Paul Wolfowitz? Bill Kristol? Doug Feith? Why, Patrick Buchanan, of course. In 1990, America’s most famous living “isolationalist” denounced President George H. W. Bush for not helping a tiny country threatened by a totalitarian regime.

Buchanan wasn’t talking about Kuwait, a tiny country famously invaded by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq that year, but about Lithuania, threatened by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

When wolves fed on Kuwait, Buchanan became the “cold pragmatist,” arguing that America should indeed avert its gaze from the tragedy of that little country. “There are only two groups that are beating the drums for war in the Middle East,” Buchanan infamously announced in 1990, “the Israeli Defense Ministry and its amen corner in the United States.”

Now, Buchanan has a new book out, Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War, in which he argues that a war-lusting Winston Churchill blundered horribly by making war on Nazi Germany, ostensibly to defend Poland from the Nazi wolf.

It would have been better, Buchanan argues, for Britain and the United States to have maintained cordial relations with the allegedly rational Adolf Hitler and let the Nazis have Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe. This would have allowed Britain to keep its empire, Buchanan insists, and that would have been just grand.

But Buchanan is also the author of A Republic, Not an Empire. In that earlier polemic, he passionately insisted: “It is time to let go of empire.” The United States is a “completed nation,” meaning we are no longer in need of immigrants, international trade or the alliances that add up to imperialism in his eyes. Of course, Buchanan’s notion of a “completed nation” wouldn’t preclude us from getting rid of Puerto Rico and adding a few Caucasian provinces of Canada to our territory.

My point here is not to play “gotcha” with Buchanan’s writings. But Buchanan claims to be a man of abstract foreign policy rules — in his case, the notion that we must act from objective national interest. As a result, he has earned a strange new respect among antiwar liberals and self-described realists for his opposition to the war in Iraq in recent years. He is a man of principle, we’ve been told.

In reality, Buchanan is a wonderful example of how those who claim to follow a strict set of abstract foreign policy rules are often just disguising their own biases. A strict and objective application of our national interest isn’t the principle he’s upholding. No cold pragmatist he. Buchanan’s not following anything here other than the loyalties of his own heart.

Here’s another example of Buchanan’s inconsistency: America should help Croatia fend off Slobodan Milosevic because “Croatia is not some faraway desert emirate,” the America First reenactor explained in 1991. “It is a ‘piece of the Continent, a part of the main,’ a Western republic that . . . was for centuries the first line of defense of Christian Europe.” The following year, he argued that the beleaguered Bosnians should twist in the wind. Kuwait? Wolf fodder. Lithuania, not so much. Israel? Take a guess.

Buchanan is hardly alone in failing to apply his principles uniformly. Consider The New Republic. For years, the liberal magazine that once passionately advocated the invasion of Iraq has been backtracking furiously into the mainstream antiwar fold. And yet, in the wake of the Burmese cyclone in May, its editors argued that “even though our standing in the world has been severely diminished by Iraq, we should at least be debating intervention in Burma.” So much for the evils of “wars of choice.”

This is an old story. William Jennings Bryan was a hero of pacifists and anti-imperialists, even though he volunteered to fight in the Spanish-American War, arguing that “universal peace cannot come until justice is enthroned throughout the world. Until the right has triumphed in every land . . . government must, as a last resort, appeal to force.” Then-Secretary of State Bryan cemented his antiwar credentials when he resigned from Woodrow Wilson’s “crusade” for democracy.

I’m a big believer in abstract rules, but when it comes to foreign policy, there is only one to which everyone adheres: America should be a good country and do what’s right. That’s the real meaning of the “national interest.” It’s fortunate for humanity that America’s and Britain’s definition of good and right in the 1940s differed with Buchanan’s creepy version of the national interest.

Mr. Goldberg doesn't come out and say it but there is a consistent unifying theme to Buchanan's foreign policy opinions.

He hates Jews.

Buchanan doesn't want us to fight Muslims because they hate Jews as much as he does.

9/11? Well that was our fault because we support Israel. If we would just get our heads right and help the Muslims exterminate all the Jews then they wouldn't hate us any more.

And as for WWII and Hitler? We were wrong to go to war against the Axis because if we had just let Hitler alone he would have served the world by wiping out all those dirty stinking subhuman Jews.

See, no mystery about Buchanan's motives. It's is easy to tell where someone is coming from if you know where it is that they want to go.

Mundy with Sharon Shannon performing Galway Girl. This single shot up to #1 on the Irish charts.

Michelle Malkin presents us with some wisdom

Rich Lowry at NRO believes John McCain needs a new advisor such as Bill Kristol to help him focus on the “big picture” and end his constant zig-zagging on issues.

With all due respect, adding another Beltway political strategist to the McCain camp isn’t going to fix an un-fixable the problem. It’s not fundamentally flawed messaging, it’s a fundamentally flawed candidate. The sooner Republicans reconcile themselves to that, the better.

I couldn't agree more and for me "reconcile" means recognizing that when McCain won the Republican nomination that conservatives, the Republican party and the nation lost. McCain's victory in the Republican primary means that there is no possibility of a good (or even non disastrous) outcome to the November election.

Well there are three ways to get a good or at least not totally ruinous outcome this November. One would be if God decides not to answer Jeremiah Wright's prayer and damn America. The Almighty could show his continued goodwill toward the USA by dropping a moderately small asteroid onto wherever the first presidential debate is being held. Another would be a military coup or massive civilian uprising which the military declines to interfere with. And finally rank and file Republicans might decide to descend upon the Republican convention and intimidate the delegates into dumping McCain and brokering an outcome which would give the GOP a real conservative nominee.

My preference would be for the last. The look on crazy John's face as he had the nomination taken away from him again by the hated conservatives would be priceless.

I know. . . but a man can dream can't he?

Best movie line ever

We lost a great and perceptive man when Mr. Hope passed away.

Oh brave new world

H/T: KisP

See, not everyone in Hollywood is a fool

Pregnant Mary Lynn Shooting Gun


Now that she's quite pregnant, 24's Mary Lynn Rajskub is doing what any red-blooded American mother would do—getting into firearms! As the adorable actress explains, "I have a family to protect."

H/T: The Dowager Viscountess

Tonight's Music

Rathkeltair performing The Night Visit.

Do you suppose

We know that the next president is going to be either John McCain or Barack Obama . McCain hates Bush with a raging fury over his loss to Bush in the 2000 Republican primary. He described Bush as incompetent and stupid and has spent the last eight years attempting to undermine Bush in every area except the war in Iraq (and amnesty for alien criminals).

B. Hussein Obama has promised to have his Justice Department look into whether Bush can be charged with "war crimes".

It is safe to say that regardless of the outcome of the election Mr. Bush knows that he is going to be replaced by a man who hates him and wishes him harm.

So in light of all that do you suppose that as they pack up to leave the White House that George and Laura will steal china, silverware and art objects the way that Bill and Hillary Clinton did?

Do you suppose that George W Bush's staff will trash the work areas of the White House, pry the "O" or "M" keys off their computer keyboards or glue them down with superglue and leave pornographic photographs tucked into the paper cassettes of copiers and printers (and from one report I heard leave piles of human feces in chairs) the way that Bill Clinton's staff did when they vacated the White House for the Bush team?

Whatever Mr. Bush's faults and mistakes it has been nice for the past eight years to have an administration made up of adults as opposed to spoiled children.

George Carlin dead

From The Washington Post:

George Carlin, 71, the much-honored American stand-up comedian whose long career was distinguished by pointed social commentary that placed him on the cultural cutting edge, died last night in Santa Monica, Calif.

His death was reported by the Reuters news agency and on the Los Angeles Times Web site. He had long struggled with health problems and a heart condition dating to the 1970s.

Carlin was selected last week by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to receive this year's Mark Twain Prize, a lifetime achievement award presented to an outstanding comedian.

Over a career of half a century, Carlin placed himself in the forefront of comic commentators on the American scene. He was particularly known for an album that referred to what he described as the seven words that could not be used on television.

The playing of the album on a radio station led to a case that went to the Supreme Court, and the material was judged indecent but not obscene. The legal controversy brought about the enunciation of a rule permitting a ban on certain material when children are most likely to be in the audience.

The case was one of the highlights of a career that included TV and radio performances, including HBO specials and many comic albums.

The New York-born performer, who also was an Air Force veteran, once summed up his approach:

"I think it is the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately."

Carlin's entertainment career began in 1956 at a radio station in Shreveport, La. while he was in the service.

In the early 1960s, he began his one-man act, and his live appearances and the albums he recorded proved highly popular.

His wife Brenda, predeceased him. They had a daughter, Kelly. A second wife survives him.

I remember listening to Carlin's routines back in the '70s and finding them hilarious but it seemed that as more years passed he became much less funny and a great deal more bitter. I suppose that his great flaw was that he did the one thing that you absolutely cannot do if you want to be a good comic, he took himself too seriously.