Some hope for the High Court

No matter who wins the White House in November the Democrats are going to control the Senate and that means that even if McCain wins and then acts completely against character and attempts to appoint rock-solid conservatives in the mold of Scalia and Thomas he will not be able to do so. There will simply be too much Democrat resistance.

Of course we know what kind of people Obama will appoint in that he has already told us that Ruth Bader Ginsberg is his ideal for a Supreme Court justice.

However all is not lost.

IF there are enough Republicans left in the Senate to filibuster a judicial appointment (not certain, but at least very possible) then there is a strategy which could work very much in our favor. The one drawback is that it will require the Republicans in the Senate to stick together and exhibit extraordinary political courage.

I pause here to let the reader stop laughing.

Here is what we do. When the next president (whether it's Obama appointing a clone of Ginsberg or McCain "facing facts and appointing someone who can be confirmed") appoints someone who would not only reverse Heller but also state that the Constitution says that we can't even own pointy things (like they're doing in the UK even as we speak) the Republicans just filibuster the nomination.

We know that there are two far left moonbats on the court who are hanging on by their fingernails in order to have a Democrat choose their replacements. These two simply can't hold out for another four years.

With one nomination blocked the court becomes 4 conservatives to three liberals with Kennedy losing the power to be the swing vote. All he will be able to do is make the majority or be the one who makes it tied. When the other leftist has to quit or just dies one day in his office the Republicans block the vote on his/her replacement as well.

That way there are four conservatives against two liberal activists with Kennedy completely irrelevant.

Of course if Obama wins the Republicans would have to work to block the Senate from adjourning so that he couldn't make a recess appointment (the way the Democrats are doing now to keep Bush from making recess appointments).

In this scenario the four conservative justices could then undo much of the damage which has been done by generations of activists.

Is any of this likely? Probably not. After all it depends on the Senate Republicans acting with courage and conviction and staying unified against everything the mainstream media can throw at them.

But it could work.

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.

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.

The High Court gets another one right

From The Washington Post:

The Supreme Court yesterday issued a broad ruling limiting presidential power and the reach of international treaties, saying neither President Bush nor the World Court has the authority to order a Texas court to reopen a death penalty case involving a foreign national.

The justices held 6 to 3 that judgments of the International Court of Justice, as the court is formally known, are not binding on U.S. courts and that Bush's 2005 executive order that courts in Texas comply anyway does not change that.

The decision, written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., was a rebuke to the government in a case that involved the powers of all three branches of government, the intricacies of treaties and the international debate over the death penalty.

It placed the president on the side of Ernesto Medell¿n, a brutal murderer, and the rulings of the World Court, and against the authority of his home state's courts.

Texas's high court had rejected the World Court's judgment that it "review and reconsider" Medell¿n's conviction because he is a Mexican national and was not advised after his arrest that he could meet with a consular from his country, as the Vienna Convention requires.

Even though the administration disagreed with the World Court's decision -- and has withdrawn from the international pact that gave it force -- Bush nonetheless issued a memorandum ordering the Texas courts to rehear Medell¿n's case.

But Roberts wrote that neither the Optional Protocol of the Vienna Convention nor the operative part of the United Nations Charter creates binding law in the absence of implementing legislation from Congress.

And he wrote that the government had not made the case that Bush had the power to issue a directive that "reaches deep into the heart of the state's police powers and compels state courts to reopen final criminal judgments and set aside neutrally applicable state laws."

Joining Roberts were the justices who are most consistently conservative: Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.

President Bush has always been the willing bitch of whichever corrupt graftocrat happens to be the current president of Mexico. Unfortunately John McCain's entire record on US/Mexico relations indicates that if he is elected nothing will change.

Fortunately we have a conservative majority on the Supreme Court which will last even if two or three justices retire over the next four years.

The NYT on the Second Amendment case

From The New York Times:

When reading this keep one thing in mind. The writer of the NYT article is Linda Greenhouse. Ms. Greenhouse specializes in covering the Court and her writing is believed by many to set the tone for the entire media in covering cases before the High Court. Many believe that the phenomena of justices "growing in office" (which means becoming more liberal and activist) is a result of the judges wishing to receive favorable coverage in the elite media. It is a measure of Ms. Greenhouse's partisan effectiveness that this had been termed the "Greenhouse Effect".

For a hard-line left-liberal like her to take such an even tone in reporting on this story is a measure of exactly how far the debate on the Second Amendment has changed in the favor of firearms rights over the past twenty years or so.

WASHINGTON — A majority of the Supreme Court appeared ready on Tuesday to embrace, for the first time in the country’s history, an interpretation of the Second Amendment that protects the right to own a gun for personal use.

This is ridiculous. The writings of the Founding Fathers demonstrate clearly to anyone not willfully blind that they (who were the writers and adopters of the Constitution, after all) interpreted the Second Amendment as an individual right.

That may be the easy part.

The harder question in the case challenging the District of Columbia’s handgun ban is what kind of restrictions the government could constitutionally place, in the name of public safety, on the newly recognized right. The answer to that question, on which the outcome of the case will turn, was less clear.

This is the question. Even Second Amendment hard-liners like myself believe that the state does have the authority to place some restrictions on the right to own and carry (keep and bear) firearms. For example persons who have been convicted of violent felonies and or who have been found by competent authorities to be insane should not have access to firearms. I also believe that the term "arms" as used in the Amendment can be reasonably restricted to firearms and should not be seen as broad enough to include nuclear weapons, nerve gas or biological agents.

However "reasonable" restrictions do not include any fee so high as to be a hardship upon someone making minimum wage. It does not include a waiting period longer than the amount of time it takes to obtain a criminal background check. And "reasonable" deffinately does not include giving the government the ability to outlaw entire classes of firearms like handguns, machine guns or .50 caliber rifles.

The argument was lively and intense, running 22 minutes over its allotted hour and 15 minutes. Despite “starting afresh,” as Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. put it, on a subject the court had not addressed since 1939, the justices appeared at least as well informed as the lawyers on minute details of English and American legal history. The relevance of that history, on which both sides have their distinguished experts, remains to be seen.

There was also a good deal of linguistic dissection of the Second Amendment’s text: “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 amendment’s first clause confirms that the right is militia-related,” Walter Dellinger, arguing for the District of Columbia, told the court near the beginning of his argument.

The District is appealing a ruling by the federal appeals court here last year that adopted the individual-rights view of the Second Amendment and declared the handgun ban unconstitutional.

Mr. Dellinger asserted that at the time the Second Amendment was drafted, “the people” and “the militia” were essentially synonymous; therefore, he said, the amendment, its two clauses properly interpreted, gave people the right to own weapons only in connection with their militia service.

That assertion promptly ran into objections.

Doesn’t the argument that the people and the militia were one and the same “cut against you,” Chief Justice Roberts asked. If the militia included everyone, he continued, “doesn’t the preamble that you rely on not really restrict the right much at all?”

Bingo Justice Roberts!

Tacking slightly, Mr. Dellinger, a former acting solicitor general, replied that the focus should be on “the scope and nature of the right that the people have.”

“It is a right to participate in the common defense,” he added.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, whose vote may well be crucial to the outcome of the case, District of Columbia v. Heller, No. 07-290, disagreed. The purpose of the first clause, with its militia reference, was simply to “reaffirm the right to have a militia,” he said, while the second made clear that individuals had the right to own guns.

In his questions throughout the argument, Justice Kennedy insisted that the amendment’s framers wanted to assure the ability of “the remote settler to defend himself and his family against hostile Indian tribes and outlaws, wolves and bears and grizzlies and things like that,” as he phrased his concern with self-defense at one point.

That Justice Kennedy took this position in his questioning is hugely significant. Kennedy is the swing vote who will likely be the pivot around which the outcome of this case will turn. That he is aggressively backing both and individual rights and a pro self defense position is all but a guarantee that the Court will rule that the 2nd is an individual right.

And Justice Antonin Scalia told Mr. Dellinger that “the two clauses go together beautifully” if the Second Amendment was understood as an effort to guarantee that militias would not be “destroyed by tyrants.” The proper reading, Justice Scalia said, is, “Since we need a militia, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

I never had any doubt that either Scalia or Thomas, the two finest Justices to have sat on the court in its entire history, would do the right thing.

Skipping on to the current administration's presentation to the Court:

The lawyer in the middle, both literally and figuratively, was Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, whose time slot for argument fell between those of the two principal advocates. In accordance with the brief he filed for the government, Mr. Clement supported the individual-rights view and took no position on the statute’s constitutionality. But he criticized the lower court as having approached the issue too categorically. And he cautioned the court against writing an opinion so broad as to jeopardize federal gun regulations.

“The Second Amendment talks about the right to bear arms, not just a right to bear arms,” Mr. Clement said. “And that pre-existing right always coexisted with reasonable regulations of firearms.”

As in his brief, which angered some members of the Bush administration for not supporting the appeals court’s approach, Mr. Clement said the government was particularly concerned that federal restrictions on machine guns not be undermined.

Under the lower court’s analysis, he noted, categories of weapons that would have been considered “arms” by the Second Amendment’s drafters could not be banned today. He added that it would be hard to argue that machine guns did not fall into such a category, “given that they are the standard issue weapon for today’s armed forces and the state-organized militia.”

Consequently, he said, the justices should use a standard more relaxed than the “strict scrutiny” that the lower court applied in evaluating restrictions on gun ownership. Selecting a standard to accommodate sufficient regulation is important, he said, adding, “In our view, it makes a world of difference.”

I congratulate Mr. Clement for speaking the truth in recognizing that the 2nd Amendment protects the right of the people to own military weapons like machine guns. However I damn him to the lowest circle of hell for attempting to convince the High Court to rule in a way which he admits runs contrary to the Constitution.

Did not this man, when taking his oath of office as Solicitor General, place his hand upon the Holy Bible and swear to protect and defend the Constitution? Has he not just forsworn that oath and committed an impeachable offense? This is not a case of a public official having a different interpretation of the Constitution. This is a plain case of a public official saying, in so many words, that "the Constitution says this, but I urge the Court to ignore it and do something else". He is damned out of his own mouth. He has a right to hold an anti-constitutional opinion under the First Amendment but there should be no place for him in the US government as long as he holds it.

And if he is standing before the court giving George W Bush's opinion as president then there should be no place in the US government for him as well.

While the Court can do whatever it pleases it appears that they are primed to issue a better ruling than most Second Amendment activists had hoped for.

Another look at the High Court's look at the 2nd Amendment

WASHINGTON (AP) - Americans have a right to own guns, Supreme Court justices declared Tuesday in a historic and lively debate that could lead to the most significant interpretation of the Second Amendment since its ratification two centuries ago.

Governments have a right to regulate those firearms, a majority of justices seemed to agree. But there was less apparent agreement on the case they were arguing: whether Washington's ban on handguns goes too far.

The justices dug deeply into arguments on one of the Constitution's most hotly debated provisions as demonstrators shouted slogans outside. Guns are an American right, argued one side. "Guns kill," responded the other.

Inside the court, at the end of a session extended long past the normal one hour, a majority of justices appeared ready to say that Americans have a "right to keep and bear arms" that goes beyond the amendment's reference to service in a militia.

Several justices were openly skeptical that the District of Columbia's 32-year-old handgun ban, perhaps the strictest in the nation, could survive under that reading of the Constitution.

"What is reasonable about a total ban on possession?" Chief Justice John Roberts asked.

Walter Dellinger, representing the district, replied that Washington residents could own rifles and shotguns and could use them for protection at home.

What Dellinger did not say was that DC's law requires the rifles and shotguns to be locked at all times and makes no exception for their use in self defense. The second a DC resident unlocks her shotgun to fend off a serial rapist she breaks the law.

A ban on handguns is stupid, misguided and unconstitutional. A ban on making a legally owned firearm ready for self defense is demoniacally evil.

Good news from the High Court

From Financial Times:

The US Supreme Court appears ready to rule that Americans have a constitutional right to keep a gun in their home for self-defence, a ruling that could help Republicans in the upcoming presidential election.

Hearing the most important gun rights case in nearly 70 years, the justices on Tuesday spent 98 minutes engrossed in a lively debate about British and American legal traditions relating to the right to bear arms, especially in self-defence.

By the end of Tuesday’s session, it appeared clear that a majority of the court would rule that the US constitution protects the right of individual Americans to “keep and bear arms” – but that federal, state and local governments will retain some powers to regulate firearms.

At issue in the case is the constitution’s second amendment, which includes ambiguous language about gun rights. It says “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 language of the Second Amendment is "ambiguous" only to the willfully ignorant.

The justices sparred over whether those words guarantee the right of individual citizens to bear arms, or only the collective right to bear arms in a state militia.

A majority of the nine justices, including the crucial “swing” justice Anthony Kennedy, who often holds the balance of power on the court, appeared to believe the amendment guaranteed an individual right to weapons.

Justice Kennedy repeatedly insisted that the amendment must have been intended to allow citizens to protect their frontier homes and families against dangers such as attacking Indians or bears, and should provide a similar right to protect the modern home.

With the retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor Kennedy has become the swing vote and has been moving to the right somewhat. With him on the right side it is almost impossible that the court could rule that the 2nd is a "collective right".

The case before the court involves a Washington DC law making it a crime to have any kind of firearm that is ready to fire, either a handgun or a loaded rifle or shotgun, and is among the strictest gun control laws in the US.

Dick Anthony Heller, an armed security guard, sued the District after it rejected his application to keep a handgun at his home for protection. The top court is reviewing a federal appeals court ruling that struck down the DC law and broadly interpreted the right of individuals to bear arms.

The most difficult question for the court is: what kind of laws can governments pass to restrict the constitutional right to keep and bear a gun?

The question which should be before the court is whether government can pass any kind of laws to restrict the constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

Chief Justice John Roberts made clear that the DC law would not meet his test as a reasonable regulation of firearms ownership. “What is reasonable about a total ban on possession of handguns?” he asked. But several other justices defended the ban as a reasonable response to the crime problem in America’s capital city.

There is nothing reasonable about disarming the victims of crime.

Mr Heller’s lawyer said the court could find that Americans have an individual right to own guns but still allow governments to regulate some types of weapons, such as machine guns, and who can own them.

The fact is that because of decades of liberal judicial activism the court can do anything it damn well pleases, including strike down every gun control law in the nation. However if the court chooses to apply a strict interpretation to the 2nd it will rule that military type weapons are the class of firearms most protected by the amendment.

Political analysts said a ruling in favour of gun rights could help Republicans, especially in a close general election.

This is likely true. McCain's sycophants and kool-aid drinkers have been beating the Supreme Court drum as loudly as they can. It is offered as the best reason for conservatives to hold their nose and vote for the Benedict Arnold of the Senate.

It would be a more convincing argument if McCain had not single-handedly put together the infamous "Gang of 14" deal which prevented the Senate's rules from being changed to disallow the filibuster on judicial appointments. As things stand now McCain's efforts guarantee that any genuine conservative he might nominate for the High Court will be blocked by Senate liberals.

This will force the withdrawal of the conservative in favor of a "nominee who can be confirmed" which will mean that any justices appointed during a McCain administration will be approved by Ted Kennedy, Chuck Schumer and Patrick Leahy. Which is, I firmly believe, exactly what McCain intended all along.

Supreme Court to take up 2nd Amendment case

From The Washington Post:

The Supreme Court announced yesterday that it will determine whether the District of Columbia's strict firearms law violates the Constitution, a decision that will raise the politically and culturally divisive issue of gun control just in time for the 2008 elections.

The court's examination of the meaning of the Second Amendment for the first time in nearly 70 years carries broad implications for gun-control measures locally and across the country.

The District has the nation's most restrictive law, essentially banning private handgun ownership and requiring that rifles and shotguns kept in private homes be unloaded and disassembled or outfitted with a trigger lock. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit declared it unconstitutional last year, becoming the first appeals court to overturn a gun-control law because of the Second Amendment.

For years, legal scholars, historians and grammarians have debated the meaning of the amendment because of its enigmatic wording and odd punctuation: "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."

Gun-rights proponents say the words guarantee the right of an individual to possess firearms. Gun-control supporters say the words convey only a civic or "collective" right to own guns as part of service in an organized military organization. The Bush administration said in 2002 that it supports the individual-rights position.

Robert A. Levy, a scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute who has spent years planning a challenge that would reach the Supreme Court, called the court's decision to take the case "good news for all Americans who would like to be able to defend themselves where they live and sleep."

"And it's especially good news for residents of Washington, D.C., which has been the murder capital of the nation despite an outright ban on all functional firearms since 1976," he said.

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) has said the District's up-and-down homicide rate would have been higher without the ban, and that the law is a locally supported move to protect police officers, children and other victims of gun violence.

"It's the will of the people of the District of Columbia that has to be respected," Fenty said at a news conference with D.C. Attorney General Linda Singer and several D.C. Council members. "We should have the right to make our own decisions."

The truth is that there is no real controversy over the meaning of the Second Amendment. All one need do is look at both the state of laws restricting firearms ownership in the early Republic and read the actual writings of the Founders on the subject of firearms ownership.

As far as early American laws restricting firearms ownership there were none at the federal level and at the state level the only "gun control" laws were those aimed at keeping slaves from having firearms (and not even all states had those). For a free man there were no restrictions on how many or what type of arms a person could own. In those days if a man wished to buy or build a ship of the line and outfit it with 80 cannon, or assemble an entire division of field artillery in his back yard the law had nothing to say about it.

The fact that the only laws limiting who might own firearms considered acceptable were those aimed at disarming slaves gives us a clue as to how the framers saw the right to keep and bear arms. It was for free men to be armed and for slaves to be disarmed.

Of course if you look at what the Founders actually said about the subject of arms any reasonable doubt is dispelled:

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms. . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." -- Thomas Jefferson

The Constitution preserves "the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation. . . (where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." -- James Madison

"[A]rms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. . . Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them." -- Thomas Paine

"The great object is, that every man be armed." -- Patrick Henry

"And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peacable citizens, from keeping their own arms. . ." -- Samuel Adams

"... whereas, to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them..." -- Richard Henry Lee

"... of the liberty of conscience in matters of religious faith, of speech and of the press; of the trail by jury of the vicinage in civil and criminal cases; of the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus; of the right to keep and bear arms.... If these rights are well defined, and secured against encroachment, it is impossible that government should ever degenerate into tyranny." -- James Monroe

No honest person who understands the plain meaning of language can have the slightest doubt that the intention of the men who wrote and ratified the Constitution was to recognize and protect an individual right to own firearms.

The only hope the left has of disarming, and thereby enslaving, the American population are Supreme Court judges who will be willing to break their oath of office by ruling based on their opinion rather than the Constitution or else be too cowardly to issue a ruling that will have the Washington Post and the New York Times say disparaging things about them.

John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and David Souter can be counted upon to do the wrong thing no matter what the consequences. Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia can be counted upon to do the right thing no matter what the consequences. John Roberts and Samuel Alito will most likely do the right thing (right thing being defined as ruling in a way which upholds original intent). The wild card is Anthony Kennedy.

Kennedy was appointed to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan and was once thought to be a conservative. However at some point a strong animosity seemed to develop between Kennedy and the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist. This seemed to push Kennedy to take positions which opposed Rehnquist, who was a political and judicial conservative. This caused Kennedy to more and more align himself with the far left judicial activists on the court.

Since Rehnquist's death and the installation of John Roberts as Chief Justice Kennedy has began to recover some of the judicial conservatism which originally made him attractive to Ronald Reagan. However his long sojourn in the intellectual and moral wasteland of the Left has left its marks upon his soul.

Kennedy is going to find himself the swing justice in the upcoming Second Amendment case. Given the unquestionable smallness of character of a judge who would alter his judicial philosophy and harm his nation by bad rulings just because of a personal feud with a coworker I have some misgivings about the upcoming case.

If I can figure out that Kennedy is going to be the key man in this case others can as well. The left-liberal mainstream media is going to do everything in their power to influence him. Expect the Washington Post to start giving Kennedy a hand-job that won't stop until the day the ruling is made public.

Our best hope is to hammer on the fact that the consensus of respected constitutional scholars over the past 20 years has solidified around the fact that the Second Amendment recognizes an individual right. In addition to being the simple truth it will bring home to Kennedy that only judicial lightweights continue to cling to the "collective right" interpretation. Bring it home to Kennedy that issuing a ruling which will make the left happy will result in him going down in history as a second rate legal mind and his vanity compel him to do the right thing.

Thomas opens up

From The Drudge Report:

In his first television interview, in which he discusses his childhood, his race, his rise to Supreme Court Justice and his job on the nation's highest court, Clarence Thomas says the real issue at his controversial confirmation hearings 16 years ago was abortion. Saying the issue was "the elephant in the room," Thomas also tells Steve Kroft that the hearings he called at the time a "high tech lynching" harmed the country. The interview will be broadcast on 60 MINUTES, Sunday Sept. 30 (7:30-9:00 PM/ET, 7:00-9:00 PM /PT) on the CBS Television Network.

Thomas, whose Supreme Court positions on abortion issues have been conservative, says the confirmation hearings in which he was accused of sexual harassment by a former employee -- allegations he continues to deny -- were really about abortion. "That was the elephant in the room... That was the issue. That is the issue that people are apparently so upset about," he tells Kroft. "[That is the issue] that you determine the composition of your Supreme Court and your entire federal judiciary, it seems now," says Thomas.

He says the hearings harmed the accuser, Anita Hill, himself, and ultimately the country by setting a precedent manifested in other highly charged, media-infused events such as the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton. "The process harmed her. It harmed me and we see sort of the precedent of this kind of thing begin to harm even people like President Clinton," Thomas believes. "Things are out of control. That's not good for the country. It's not good for the court," he continues, "What are we going to look like years from now if we can't get people confirmed because everybody gets to attack them. They get to draw and quarter them," he says.

In the interview, Thomas also expresses an opinion of his accuser for the first time in public, saying of Hill, who waited 10 years to accuse him, "She was not the demure, religious, conservative person that they portrayed. That's not the person I knew," Thomas says. "She could defend herself, let's just put it that way... She did not take slights very kindly and anyone who did anything, she responded very quickly," he says. When Kroft rejoins, "Didn't take 10 years?" Thomas replies, "It didn't take 10 minutes."

I haven't watched 60 Minutes in well over 10 years, but I'll make an exception for this.

Political war looms over the Supreme Court

From NewsMax:

Democratic Sen. Charles E. Schumer said Friday that the Senate should not confirm another U.S. Supreme Court nominee under President Bush "except in extraordinary circumstances.”

"We should reverse the presumption of confirmation,” Schumer told the American Constitution Society convention in Washington, reported The Politico. "The Supreme Court is dangerously out of balance. We cannot afford to see Justice Stevens replaced by another Roberts, or Justice Ginsburg by another Alito.”

According to the Washington Post, Schumer declared that his decision not to lead a successful filibuster in January 2006 of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's nomination was one of his "greatest failings" as a senator.

Schumer said that after watching the work of the newly constructed "Roberts court" the past 18 months, he would block any future Supreme Court nominee of President Bush's should a vacancy arise between now and January 2009.

Gee, wouldn't be nice if we had pulled the trigger on the "nuclear option" which would have changed the Senate rules to mandate an up or down vote on judicial nominees rather than allowing them to be filibustered?

We had the votes back then after all. Who was it who took it off the table? Oh, I remember. It was crazy John McCain and his detestable little butt-boy Lindsey Graham. Them along with 5 other backstabbing traitorous RINOs and 7 Democrats who were happy to help screw the Republican majority.

How is the McCain candidacy polling in the Republican primaries? Can't tell since I left my microscope back at the lab.

Of course if one of the leftist judges assumes room temperature then that will leave the court leaning sharply to the right and if two of them go tits-up the conservatives can run wild, at least until January 2009.

That would be something. Chuck Schumer going down in history as the man who enabled the overturn of Roe v Wade.

A sobering thought

"We are one justice away from a Supreme Court that sees racial discrimination as no big deal so long as it is done for politically correct ends. Something to keep in mind in 2008."

Evidence indicates that Kennedy, the new swing vote, is going to be more conservative than O'Connor was. This is good, but wouldn't it be better if there were no "swing vote". If we just had a solid majority of Supreme Court justices who believe that it is wrong for a judge to make up the law as he goes along?

There are at least two, and probably three, left-wing judges on the High Court who want very badly to retire due to age and health. If Hillary Clinton wins in '08 two will retire within the first year, especially if she has a Democrat controlled Senate to work with on confirming their replacements.

Given the fact that the Court's solid conservatives are comparatively young and in good health it is possible that all of the leftist justices could go in order to give Hillary (or Barack for that matter) the chance to pack the court with liberals young enough to last for 20 or 25 years.

Factor in the fact that Kennedy is 70 and that Hillary might get reelected and the possibility of a 5 judge left-wing majority that could last until 2035 or 2040 is a possibility. What would the nation look like after 30 more years of absolutely unrestrained judicial activism by black-robed socialists?

I would really rather not find out. This fact and this fact alone makes me contemplate holding my nose and voting for Julie Annie (I would need an entire bottle of Wild Turkey as well as a clothespin). However he seems to be moving further to the left every day and I am not sure that I would trust him any more than Mrs. Bill Clinton to pick judges.

It is a real quandary.

Perhaps the only hope the nation has other than Fred Thompson is a military coup?

Rescuing the ungrateful

From The Washington Post:

A divided Supreme Court yesterday restricted the ability of public school districts to use race to determine which schools students can attend, a decision that could sharply limit integration programs across the nation.

The nine justices split decisively along ideological grounds, with a five-justice majority ruling that school admission programs in Seattle and Louisville violated the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection to individuals. Educators said the decision may lead many districts to drop efforts at racially balancing schools.

In a dramatic 45 minutes on the final day of the court's term, three justices took turns reading sometimes-biting opinions that portrayed the ruling as either the natural affirmation or a bitter betrayal of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education desegregation decision of 1954.

"Before Brown, schoolchildren were told where they could and could not go to school based on the color of their skin," Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for a plurality that included Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. "The school districts in these cases have not carried the heavy burden of demonstrating that we should allow this once again -- even for very different reasons."

He added: "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."

OK, keep this in your minds and then consider this, also from The Washington Post:

NEWPORT, R.I., June 28 -- He looked uncharacteristically dejected as he approached the lectern, fiddling with papers as he talked and avoiding the sort of winking eye contact he often makes with reporters. And then President Bush did something he almost never does: He admitted defeat.

"A lot of us worked hard to see if we couldn't find a common ground," he said an hour after his immigration plan died on Capitol Hill. "It didn't work."

[. . .]

"Sand is flowing out of the hourglass," said Fred I. Greenstein, a Princeton University scholar on the presidency, who was struck by the gloomy tone of Bush's televised statement. "He looked much less like the kid on the cover of Mad magazine without a care. . . . He looked very angry and almost having difficulty getting the sentences out. That seems to me to contrast with some of the early stages" of his presidency.

As I have said before President Bush is a man who when he gets an idea in his head believes it tenaciously, even when all logic and fact indicate that it is not true. And whatever else you can say about him he is a man of immense personal integrity in that when he believes himself to be in the right he will move ahead regardless of any cost. These facts have to be putting Mr. Bush in a very bad mood now, however I believe that we, the people of the United States have just given the president the greatest gift which he could have possibly received in these closing months of his presidency.

We have given him a legacy of which he can be proud and for which history will not curse him.

Had the amnesty bill passed the Senate and House and been delivered to him he would surely have signed it into law. Upon doing so he would have felt intensely proud of himself and believed that no matter how unpopular the measure was at the present that in time it would be seen as the greatest act of compassionate statesmanship since Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

What would have happened instead is that the already immense drain on the economy imposed by the anywhere from 12 to 30 million illegal aliens would have increased exponentially as the newly legalized residents began bringing in their families and all of them began signing up for social services. The downward pressure on US wages would have increased as even more low wage workers flooded into the labor market and as the aliens began to gain citizenship the nation's political culture would have rapidly began to change.

Gone would have been the fairly even left/right split which characterizes the electorate today. A split which prevents either party from fully enacting its agenda (bad, in that it prevents Social Security privatization, medical savings accounts and the Fair Tax - good, in that it prevents socialized health care, surrender in Iraq and the complete repeal of the First and Second Amendments). Newly minted Mexican-American citizens would have flocked to the party of the Left which would have offered both them and the nation of Mexico (to whom their true loyalty would have continued to belong) the most in domestic socialist giveaways and the most in foreign aid giveaways.

As the United States began its inevitable slide first into European-style socialism and then into Latin American-style chaos the blame would have fallen not on John McCain and The Killer of Mary Jo Kopechne and Harry Reid and Lindsay Graham it would have fallen squarely on George W Bush as the prime mover and chief instigator of America's downfall.

However as things stand now George W Bush's most lasting achievement in office will be the way in which he avoided the enormous errors of both his father and Ronald Reagan in appointing wretchedly bad justices to the Supreme Court and managed to change the culture of the Court in a way which is real, significant, lasting and highly positive.

Even the Harriet Meiers disaster was born out of a desire to avoid the mistakes of previous Republican presidents by appointing someone who was personally known to the President and in whom he felt he could place absolute trust to not "grow in office" (translation: turn sharply to the left).

If George W Bush had succeeded in his efforts to grant amnesty to the alien criminals among us and effectively erase the border between the US and Mexico he would have gone down in history as the man who destroyed the United States of America. Now he will be remembered as the man who restored constitutional sanity to an out-of-control Supreme Court whose judicial activism was threatening to undermine the nation's respect for the rule of law and strip the federal government of its legitimacy.

I know that Mr. Bush will not see things this way now. In fact he will probably never see things this way. In the world which he inhabits (major portions of which exist only in his own head) he will see this as a stinging defeat and as a severe blow to the nation and he will go on believing this long after logic and fact indicate that it is not true. But whatever George W Bush thinks of us, the American people, right now the fact remains that we just guaranteed that his name won't be remembered alongside Jack Murtha, Benedict Arnold and Judas Iscariot.

Not bad for a bunch of snaggletooth hillbilly retards drinking moonshine out of mason jars in our tarpaper shacks and singlewides out on the edge of the city dump.

Another win for the good guys

From The Washington Post:

The Supreme Court yesterday substantially weakened restrictions on the kinds of television ads that corporations and unions can finance in the days before an election, providing special interest groups with the opportunity for a far more expansive role in the 2008 elections.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote the 5 to 4 decision, saying the McCain-Feingold campaign finance act's prohibition against the use of a candidate's name in such ads in the days before an election was an unconstitutional infringement on the groups' rights to advocate on issues.

"Discussion of issues cannot be suppressed simply because the issues may also be pertinent in an election," Roberts wrote. "Where the First Amendment is implicated, the tie goes to the speaker, not the censor."

Unfortunately the Court did not simply rule all of McCain-Feingold unconstitutional, but this ruling effectively guts it and leaves the situation set up perfectly for follow up cases which will eradicate the last vestiges of evil lunatic John McCain's attempted repeal of the First Amendment.

John McCain comments on the Supreme Court ruling.

Credit where credit is due

From The Washington Post:

In the final days of the Supreme Court's term, the stage is set for the divisions that narrowly but decisively split the justices on social issues to be on full display.

The court has already decided more cases on 5 to 4 votes this term than in all of last term -- some of them favoring the court's liberal wing, more won by the conservatives. This week, the opportunity is there for the court reconstituted under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. to make a bold statement.

The cases remaining concern some of the most divisive of social and policy questions: the use of race in public school admission programs; the constitutionality of advertising restrictions in the McCain-Feingold campaign finance act; whether ordinary taxpayers have the right to sue over what they perceive to be violations of the separation of church and state.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the only member of the court to be in the majority in all 16 of this term's 5 to 4 decisions, has sided more consistently with conservatives in recently announced cases.

The result has been important rulings providing more protection for employers fighting claims of past discrimination, limits on prisoner rights and death penalty appeals, and the term's signature decision -- reversing the court's jurisprudence on abortion restrictions to uphold the federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act.

The conservative opinions, with the exception of the abortion ruling, have been for the most part low-key in tone and shaped by what the authors said was a strict reading of congressional statutes. The liberal justices have responded in unified dissents to amplify their unhappiness.

One thing before I get to my main point; the fact that a WaPo writer calls the liberal justices LIBERAL rather than moderate or mainstream is in itself a small victory.


Like many conservatives I am angry with George W Bush and deeply disappointed in his performance in office. He has signed wretched and appalling legislation like the McCain-Feingold law which places unconstitutional and unacceptable limits on our First Amendment rights.

He has sat back passively while the left has attacked the war effort. He has utterly failed to communicate to the American people, in any clear and understandable way, the reasons why we are fighting and why we must continue to fight. He has failed to communicate in any clear or consistent way the realities of the situation in Iraq. The results of his failure to effectively challenge the enemies propaganda organs (otherwise known as the mainstream media) is that the average American thinks the was is already lost.

The president has engineered the largest expansion of federal entitlement programs since the Great Society era with his ruinously expensive prescription drug benefit.

He failed to act in any meaningful way to restrain the out of control spending of the Republican congress which greatly contributed to the Democrat takeover last November.

And last comes the most important reason to burn with fury. The president has worked tirelessly to reform the nation's immigration laws to open our borders to virtually unlimited immigration from Mexico and grant amnesty to the 12 - 32 million illegal aliens already infesting our country. If the president is successful in this he will have destroyed the Republican Party and doomed the nation to an invertible slide into poverty and dysfunctionality on a scale with any other Third World nation.

However we should also remember that there are things the president has done well and one of them is picking Supreme Court justices. If the outrage of the general public can beat back the political class's effort to fundamentally alter the makeup of the electorate to create a permanent left-liberal majority the change in the composition of the court engineered by George W Bush will have positive results which outweigh and outlast all of his negatives.

New Justice starts to earn his keep

From The Washington Post:

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. made it clear as he began taking questions at yesterday's National Italian American Foundation luncheon that he couldn't reveal any of the Supreme Court's forthcoming opinions.

But did he at least give a hint?

Two of the court's biggest remaining cases focus on the First Amendment, and while Alito didn't mention either, he did make it clear that any restrictions on speech face a high hurdle with him.

"I'm a very strong believer in the First Amendment and the right of people to speak and to write," Alito said in response to a question of "where's the line" on what can be posted on the Internet. "I would be reluctant to support restrictions on what people could say."

The newest justice, who was protective of speech rights as an appellate judge, added that "some restrictions have been held to be consistent with the First Amendment, but it's very dangerous for the government to restrict speech."

Alito's vote is expected to be influential and perhaps decisive in two of the court's biggest cases concerning free-speech restrictions.

One is the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case in which the court is examining whether a principal violated the rights of a student who unfurled that message along a parade route across from the school. It's considered the most important student speech case to reach the court in decades.

And the court is also deciding a challenge to a part of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law that says corporations, unions and special interest groups may not name federal candidates in ads broadcast in the run-up to elections. A group called Wisconsin Right to Life says that is an unconstitutional infringement on free speech.

In the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case the students at a high school which was located on the route which the Olympic Torch was taking were dismissed from class during the last period and told to assemble along the sidewalk to greet the Torch as the runner passed by. Kids from schools all over the area were being bussed in to line the parade route as well.

When the Torchbearer ran by a student named Joseph Frederick unrolled a banner which said "Bong Hits 4 Jesus". The principle of the school saw it and suspended Frederick for violating the school’s policy of promoting illegal substances at a school-sanctioned event.

There are good arguments which can be made for both sides in this case and it will be interesting to see how the court rules.

In the case of McCain-Feingold let us hope that Alito joins a new majority in driving a stake through this monster's heart once and for all.

Supreme Court upholds ban on partial birth abortion

From The Washington Post:

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court upheld the nationwide ban on a controversial abortion procedure Wednesday, handing abortion opponents the long-awaited victory they expected from a more conservative bench.

The 5-4 ruling said the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act that Congress passed and President Bush signed into law in 2003 does not violate a woman's constitutional right to an abortion.

The opponents of the act "have not demonstrated that the Act would be unconstitutional in a large fraction of relevant cases," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion.

The decision pitted the court's conservatives against its liberals, with President Bush's two appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, siding with the majority.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia also were in the majority.

It was the first time the court banned a specific procedure in a case over how _ not whether _ to perform an abortion.

See, I told you so. We are winning and now is not the time to surrender by choosing a pro-choice liberal to be the Republican nominee for the 2008 presidential race.

And to give credit where credit is due, thank you George W Bush for putting two good originalist justices on the Supreme Court.

This decision may well provide a good indication of the ideological direction of the court with its new makeup. With the retirement of O'Connor, who possessed the instincts of a legislator not a judge and therefore sought to be a balancing influence on the court by acting as the "swing vote", the court may become consistently conservative in its judicial outlook.

If this is true it would bode well for the prospects of firearms rights with a Second Amendment case headed for the high court in relation to the D C gun ban which was recently overturned by the D C Circuit Court of Appeals.