Analysis: Defining a right of self-defense

The Supreme Court’s historic argument Tuesday on the meaning of the Constitution’s Second Amendment sent out one quite clear signal: individuals may well wind up with a genuine right to have a gun for self-defense in their home. But what was not similarly clear in the hearing on District of Columbia v. Heller (07-290) was what kind of gun that would entail, and thus what kind of limitations government could put on access or use of a weapon. In an argument that ran 23 minutes beyond the allotted time, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy emerged as a fervent defender of the right of domestic self-defense. At one key point, he suggested that the one Supreme Court precedent that at least hints that gun rights are tied to military not private needs — the 1939 decision in U.S. v. Miller — “may be deficient” in that respect. “Why does any of that have any real relevance to the situation that faces the homeowner today?” Kennedy asked rhetorically.

With Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and Justices Samuel A. Alito, Jr., and Antonin Scalia leaving little doubt that they favor an individual rights interpretation of the Amendment (and with Justice Clarence Thomas, though silent on Tuesday, having intimated earlier that he may well be sympathetic to that view), Kennedy’s inclinations might make him — once more — the holder of the deciding vote. There also remained a chance, it appeared, that Justice Stephen G. Breyer, one of the Court’s moderates, would be willing to support an individual right to have a gun — provided that a ruling left considerable room for government regulation of weapons, particularly in urban areas with high crime rates.

 SCOTUS Blog

If looks could kill….Sergei Lavrov would be stone cold dead…D-E-A-D!

US-Russia fail to end missile defence dispute

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, flanked by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, told reporters that both sides had made “steady progress” on work to combat nuclear terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

“We also discussed some contentious issues where we haven’t reached agreement as of now,” Lavrov said after two days of talks that also involved US Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his Russian counterpart Anatoly Serdyukov.

“I’m talking primarily about missile defence and about the strategic arms reduction regime,” Lavrov said in a four-way press conference where all the participants grew stern at each mention of missile defence.

Yahoo/AFP

Hey Condi, if you need assistance, give me a call. I possess a really damn good glare. I don’t even blink, my dear.

Oh Sergei, You Ruskies have no juice man…Push the wrong button and your whole damn world will look like Chernobyl. Especially with GWB in his last few months. Regardless of what he said about Vlad, I’d imagine that Texan, has just about had it with pissants, like you. I know George is itching to see Ahmadinejad’s head on a silver platter. Give it a shot, Sergei.

Always wanted to ask…but didn’t ‘they’ name a fabric after you?

The world has lost another treasure

Arthur C. Clarke has died.

Co-author with Stanley Kubrick of Kubrick’s film “2001: A Space Odyssey,” Clarke was regarded as far more than a science fiction writer.
He was credited with the concept of communications satellites in 1945, decades before they became a reality. Geosynchronous orbits, which keep satellites in a fixed position relative to the ground, are called Clarke orbits.

My great love for science fiction was fed by these three: Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and Robert Heinlein. They’re all gone now.

It is hard to overstate the impact that these three authors had upon not just one, but at least two or three generations of scientist and engineers in the Anglosphere, particularly those of us who grew up in the 1950s through the 1970s. They wrote science fiction for both kids and adults; they also wrote non-fiction, usually science-related. The earliest novel I remember reading — somewhere around age 8, back in 1961 — was by Heinlein, and I read all three authors voraciously through elementary school, junior high, and high school. Each had his own voice and political point of view, but all three spoke to the power of knowledge, the benefits of science/engineering, and the necessity of intellectual honesty.

Vehicle with truly Great accessories. To bad the steering wheel is on the wrong side.

Gathering of Mustangs & Legends – Flag Jump. From one of the nicest persons, I’ve never met. El Paco (aka The Worlds Greatest Detective).

Ron James talkin’ Grizzly Bears roamin’ the Canadian Wild West…Thanks anyway, The Black Bear roamin’ through this place is big enough for me…And his ass is around three axe handles wide. Courtesy, J.M.

Blame Bingbing.

He made me do it.

Barack Obama: Toast

You can find just about anything on eBay

Via “crazy uncle” Derb

Being serious for a second – I know we all have brains not muddled by post-modern deconstructionist relativism here, trolls excepted, but many do not – I’m afraid Obama hit it out of the park on this one. Sure, we can parse his speech to smithereens, but the sad fact is, most can’t… and/or won’t. It was brilliantly constructed and delivered, and so was highly effective. Simple as that.

I mean, I was a State finalist in Extemporaneous Speaking back in high school, and I think Obama would have kicked my ass in any given contest. He really is that good. Fortunately or unfortunately.

Remarks of Senator Barack Obama: A More Perfect Union

In case one missed it…Fox News indicates THE below is Barack Hussein Obama’s “speech”

NO NO…Too wordy… Fox News You read it, if you haven’t.

Black churches and race relations

Jon Ham on Black churches and race relations:

“In 1970 I frequently attended a black church in Augusta, Ga., at the invitation of a college friend. Those were the days when whites attending a black church were welcomed with the kind of cross-racial generosity envisioned by Dr. Martin Luther King. When I attended services I was introduced and accepted sincerely. The sermons were about getting along, reaching out, living together.

“I’ve always felt the high-water mark of race relations in this country was round 1978 or 1979, before victimology kicked in and some black leaders decided that getting along was not as profitable as making whitey pay. It’s been downhill ever since. It never occurred to me until the Jeremiah Wright controversy that a major part of the problem might be black churches. I wonder what’s being said these days from that pulpit in Augusta, Ga.”

He also has some interesting updates on the Obama / Rev. White situation. If you don’t have the JLF “Right Angles” blog bookmarked yet, I highly recommend it.

FYYSFLT

The pussy pounding, glass-jawed yokel and lawyer extraordinaire, Wally Sear, is having conniptions that Tim Blair dared to increase his Interwebz traffic by about 2,000,000%. That cold-hearted conservative bastard!

In his never-ending quest to always be completely right, while still somehow being Left (and a Greenie… ew!), he’s been removing posts from his blog again. Pussy. They’re not even abusive. Here’s a PDF of the comments thread. For some reason, it looks vastly different now…

Wally, you’re a chicken-shit feline fornicator. And I mean that with the utmost love and attention to detail.

Oh, and pay your fucking parking fine. You broke the law.

Gotcha, Obama….Mickey Kaus

The Power of Early Souljah: In his Big Race Speech Tuesday, I hope Obama remembers the lesson of his breakthrough 2004 convention keynote address, which is a) say something conservative and anti-PC sounding; b) say it strongly and c) say it early. After that, you’ll have the doubters on your side and you can more or less be as doctrinaire-left as you want. But the longer you wait to say something heterodox,  the more heterodox to have the same effect.

In Obama’s 2004 speech, the Early Souljah moment that made it work came about a third of the way in:

… children can’t achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white. [E.A.]

Voters, including but not limited to the crucial white males and independents, heard that hard, unhedged dis of dysfunctional ghetto-poor identity culture–it pretty clearly isn’t whites doing the slandering Obama’s rejecting–and decided they liked this guy. A good way to introduce yourself as a different kind of African-American politician! After that, Obama could even sell them John Kerry.

Why do I worry Obama’s forgotten this lesson?

P.S.: There are plenty of potential Souljahs still around: Race preferences. Out-of-wedlock births. Three strike laws! But most of all the victim mentality that tells African Americans (in the fashion of Rev. Wright’s most infamous sermons) that the important forces shaping their lives are the evil actions of others, of other races. …

Slate

Quote Found

This pretty much sums it up:

“A John Wayne movie,” I said. “That’s what you [Europeans] were going to say, wasn’t it? We think war is a John Wayne movie. We think life is a John Wayne movie—with good guys and bad guys, as simple as that. Well, you know something, Mister Limey Poofter? You’re right. And let me tell you who those bad guys are. They’re us. WE BE BAD.
“We’re the baddest-assed sons of bitches that ever jogged in Reeboks. We’re three-quarters grizzly bear and two-thirds car wreck and descended from a stock market crash on our mother’s side. You take your Germany, France and Spain, roll them all together and it won’t give us room to park our cars. We’re the big boys, Jack, the original, giant, economy-sized, new and improved butt kickers of all time. When we snort coke in Houston, people lose their hats in Cap d’Antibes. And we’ve got an American Express card credit limit higher than your piss-ant metric numbers go.

“You say our country’s never been invaded? You’re right, little buddy. Because I’d like to see the needle-dicked foreigners who’d have the guts to try. We drink napalm to get our hearts started in the morning. A rape and a mugging is our way of saying ‘Cheerio.’ Hell can’t hold our sock-hops. We walk taller, talk louder, spit further, fuck longer and buy more things than you know the names of. I’d rather be a junkie in a New York City jail than king, queen and jack of all you Europeans. We eat little countries like this for breakfast and shit them out before lunch.”

– P.J. O’Rourke

How Did I Get Iraq Wrong? I didn’t…..Christopher Hitchens

If you can bear to keep watching this flickering newsreel, it will take you all the way up to the moment when Saddam Hussein, too, switches sides and courts Washington, being most in favor in our nation’s capital at the precise moment when he is engaged in a campaign of extermination in the northern provinces and retaining this same favor until the very moment when he decides to “engulf” his small Kuwaiti neighbor. In every decision taken subsequent to that, from the decision to recover Kuwait and the decision to leave Saddam in power to the decisions to impose international sanctions on Iraq and the decision to pass the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, stating that long-term coexistence with Saddam’s regime was neither possible nor desirable, there was a really quite high level of public participation in our foreign policy. We were never, if we are honest with ourselves, “lied into war.” We became steadily more aware that the option was continued collusion with Saddam Hussein or a decision to have done with him. The president’s speech to the United Nations on Sept. 12, 2002, laying out the considered case that it was time to face the Iraqi tyrant, too, with this choice, was easily the best speech of his two-term tenure and by far the most misunderstood.

The past years have seen us both shamed and threatened by the implications of the Berkeleyan attitude, from Burma to Rwanda to Darfur. Had we decided to attempt the right thing in those cases (you will notice that I say “attempt” rather than “do,” which cannot be known in advance), we could as glibly have been accused of embarking on “a war of choice.” But the thing to remember about Iraq is that all or most choice had already been forfeited. We were already deeply involved in the life-and-death struggle of that country, and March 2003 happens to mark the only time that we ever decided to intervene, after a protracted and open public debate, on the right side and for the right reasons. This must, and still does, count for something.

Slate

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

I’ve just about finished up with a v. busy day so I logged on to Andrew Bolt’s blog to see what’s what in the world, and am having a real “WTF?” moment over this comment in response to an article entitled “There go more Obama voters.”

AB’s entire post consists of just 2 short lines:

“Now Barack Obama’s mentor, advisor and pastor goes after Israel.

How on earth did Obama not see through this bum?”

And here is the reasoned response from someone calling himself or herself “Proud Aussie” :

Now granted, 3:27pm in Melbourne is just 4:27 in the morning in London, so maybe our “Proud Aussie” had just had a really big night and was still unwinding…

But, WTF?

.

UPDATE: Around 7 hours later… the comment has now been [snipped] from AB’s blog. I think I’ll leave it up here in its full glory as an object example of the mindset of a raving Lefty.

UPDATE 2: In comments on the site, Bingbing sez: FYYSFLT 🙂

Scary

Very, very scary!