The Supreme Court just affirmed Heller - the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess firearms.

Posted by: Slublog at 10:18 AM | Comments (29)
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But, you know, the borders are already quite secure, thank you very much, allowing McCain to push for Amnesty on Day One of his Administration.

Allah Doubts: A murder was committed, definitely, but other key aspects of the story are not as well established.

Posted by: Ace at 10:17 AM | Comments (40)
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A lot of empty talk. Why, I was filled with all sorts of thoughts along these lines yesterday. But it's not going to happen.

True enough, if it did happen -- if the Louisiana state supreme court simply rejected the Supreme Court's decision and affirmed Patrick Kennedy's death sentence, and directed the governor to execute him as lawfully determined -- it would produce an absolutely scrumptuous constitutional crisis which would serve as shot across Anthony "Evolving Standards" Kennedy's bow and teach him an important lesson: The court's self-proclaimed supremacy over all other branches of government (including coordinate state courts) continues only due to the public's acquiesence to this strange state of affairs, and the Liberal Kennedy Court's aggressive envelope-pushing just might end that acquiesence.

But no one has any balls, so forget about it.

Speaking of not having any balls -- Bobby Jindal just signed a castration bill into law for recidivist sex offenders.

Wonder what our Evolving Standards of a National Consensus as Divined from Current European Traditions might have to say about that.

Posted by: Ace at 09:47 AM | Comments (24)
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Now I know why she's so pissed she's been recalled from Iraq. It's going to play hell with her dating life.

Here's Logan shooting her dirty, dirty whore-mouth off on The Daily Show. Half of what she says I agree with -- networks have cut back war coverage almost to nothing, the soldiers are largely forgotten, thanks to the non-coverage.

But her thrust seems to be that everything is still going atrociously in Iraq. She doesn't mention the success of the surge from what I can tell. Given that her big beef is that the networks aren't adequately informing the public about the war, you'd think she could take five minutes out from stealing other women's husbands to mention that.

Posted by: Ace at 09:37 AM | Comments (42)
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His ObamaBlog has been airbrushed from history.

Obama has a "very tight message," you know, as he told Muslim Rep. Keith Ellison. A tight message, but a wide circle of close associates. It's just not part of that "tight message" that you should know about them.

For good measure, he also tossed his previous support of the DC Handgun Ban under the bus, too. Why? Well, if this were a live issue, he'd be forced by the left to fight for it and continue advocating for the constitutionality of the gun ban. But with the Supreme Court having decided against that stance, there's not much he can do about it now, which frees him up to pretend he was in favor of gun rights all along. He thus courts the center/right while not really losing any support on the left, who are (mostly) sensible enough to know there's no point fighting for a lost cause. Especially a politically unpopular lost cause.

ConYang tallies up the bus victims, including those currently clinging to the bumper.

Posted by: Ace at 09:25 AM | Comments (19)
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This time the test was against an air-launched missile.

Dig this:

The soldiers didn't know when the target would be launched and manually engaged the target, which "brought increased operational realism" to the test, the agency release said.

35th success of 43 attempts since 2001, and the 29th success of the last 30 tries since 2005.

These "unproven" missile defense systems seem kinda stubborn to me.

via doubleplusundead

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 09:24 AM | Comments (15)
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The justices split 5-4 on ideological lines (with Kennedy joining the conservative justices). Justice Scalia wrote the majority opinion, as predicted. I'm surprised that Scalia managed to convince enough of his fellows to have a majority opinion, rather than dueling pluralities.

The ruling: the Second Amendment protects an individual right to have firearms. The prefatory clause, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,"merely announces the amendment's purpose, but does not affect the operative clause, "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

On my first skim of the lengthy opinions, it seems that the holding is limited to the federal government, for now. We'll have to wait for a later case to incorporate the holding through the Fourteenth Amendment to the states.

Justices Stevens and Breyer wrote dissenting opinions.

I will update with some key quotes in a minute. The opinion can be found here (PDF). Also, be sure to see Jack M.'s comments below.

First Update: While Justice Scalia seems poised throughout his discussion of the historical background of the Second Amendment to declare that it applies to the States as well as the federal government, he draws back from that conclusion in a footnote on page 48 of his opinion:

With respect to CruikshankÂ’s continuing validity on incorporation, a question not presented by this case, we note that Cruikshank also said that the First Amendment did not apply against the States and did not engage in the sort of Fourteenth Amendment inquiry required by our later cases. Our later decisions in Presser v. Illinois, and Miller v. Texas, reaffirmed that the Second Amendment applies only to the Federal Government.

The question not being presented, Scalia manfully restrained himself in a way that Kennedy could not in Boumediene. (Kennedy declared that Boumediene was a "special case" and went on to address issues not decided by the lower courts.) But it seems to me his note is giving states fair warning: the early understanding that the First Amendment did not apply against the states was overruled; the same is possible with the Second Amendment. And, as I said, his discussion of the Second Amendment's history leans strongly in favor of a like finding.

Second Update, More Legalish: The Court follows several recent cases in failing to make clear just what standard is being applied to invalidate the law. According to the dissenters, it's something greater than rational basis review and Scalia writes that the D.C. gun laws would "fail constitutional muster" under any of the standards of scrutiny. Does that mean that gun bans will be evaluated according to the almost always fatal strict scrutiny standard, or a more relaxed "intermediate" standard? It depends on who you ask.

Scalia seems to be leaving the question open (no doubt because the courts are about to enjoy a barrage of litigation over state and municipal gun restrictions. But Breyer, very clearly, is attempting to convince people that something less than strict scrutiny applies:

Respondent proposes that the Court adopt a “strict scrutiny” test, which would require reviewing with care each gun law to determine whether it is “narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling governmental interest.” Abrams v. Johnson, 521 U. S. 74, 82 (1997); see Brief for Respondent 54–62. But the majority implicitly, and appropriately, rejects that suggestion by broadly approving a set of laws—prohibitions on concealed weapons, forfeiture by criminals of the Second Amendment right, prohibitions on firearms in certain locales, and governmental regulation of commercial firearm sales—whose constitutionality under a strict scrutiny standard would be far from clear.

I think Breyer is a little quick to suggest that each of those restrictions would not pass strict scrutiny. Breyer himself once joined an opinion by Justice O'Connor which derided the phrase "strict in form, fatal in fact" as an exaggeration of strict scrutiny's true effect.

Third Update, My Final For The Day: Justice Stevens' dissent is interesting in that it acknowledges an individual right to firearms, but holds that the government can restrict that right based on the prefatory clause. He emphasizes that stare decisis requires that conclusion.

While stare decisis is not an inexorable command, the careful observer will discern that any detours from the straight path of stare decisis in our past have occurred for articulable reasons, and only when the Court has felt obliged ‘to bring its opinions into agreement with experience and with facts newly ascertained.’

Most appeals to hold to precedent are opportunistic. The interesting thing here is that Scalia has not explicitly overruled any prior cases.

That will be my last update of the day. I see that there are several noteworthy observations in the comments, both to this post and to the others about Heller, so poke around, folks, for the stuff I missed. I'll be back this evening, probably with more on this case and also on the campaign finance reform case that also came down today.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 06:20 AM | Comments (97)
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More to come.

UPDATE: 2nd Amendment protects individual right to possess a firearm per SCOTUSBLOG. Decision is 5-4.

UPDATE: Scotusblog:

Justice Antonin ScaliaÂ’s opinion for the majority stressed that the Court was not casting doubt on long-standing bans on gun possession by felons or the mentally retarded, or laws barring guns from schools or government buildings, or laws putting conditions on gun sales.

UPDATE: Opinion here.

UPDATE: Scotusblog quotes the syllabus:

Tom Goldstein - Quoting the syllabus: The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditional lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.

Update: Let Scalia be Scalia!

Some have made the argument, bordering on the frivolous, that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment. We do not interpret Constitutional Rights in that way...the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding. (Scalia, page

Update: Let Scalia be Scalia II!

Putting all of these textual operations together, we find that they guarantee the individual right to possess and carry weapons in the case of confrontation. This meaning is strongly confirmed by the historical background of the Second Amendment. WE look to this because it has always been understood that the Second Amendment, like the First and Fourth Amendments, codified a pre-existing right. The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of this right and declares only that it "shall not be infringed." As we said in US v. Cruickshank..."this is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it dependent in any manner upon that document for its existence. The Second Amendment declares that it shall not be infringed..."

UPDATE: Let Scalia be Scalia III!

But the enshrinement of certain Constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table. These include the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home. Undoubtedly, some think the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society in where our standing army is thr 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."

Rock on, Nino. Rock on!

Posted by: Jack M. at 06:15 AM | Comments (26)
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By a 293-129 vote.

The House passed the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (H.R. 6304), which includes "retroactive immunity to telecoms that provided private records to the feds sans warrants" by a hundred and sixty four votes.

How in the world could such an unpopular, oppressive measure clear the Dem majority House by that kind of margin?  The editors wonder.

The Dems comfort themselves by saying the law requires warrants from FISA courts. Except that the 1978 FISA law already gave the government 72 hours to do so. They can spy on us for a week without a warrant. Worse yet, the bill legitimizes the administration's spying program.

Bush and McCain are blamed.  Obama! (I'm officially adding the "!" now.  Ok, no one else has to do it but I am!) promises to try to strip the immunity out of the Senate version, but given the 105 Democrat "fo' shizzle" votes in the House, well in this case "both parties have failed them us".

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 09:51 PM | Comments (27)
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Under no circumstances is a child rape as "morally depraved" as murder?

Really?

Perhaps Anthony Kennedy didn't read his own fucking decision.

L. H. [the 8-year-old rape victim] was transported to the ChildrenÂ’s Hospital. An expert in pediatric forensic medicine testified that L. H.Â’s injuries were the most severe he had seen from a sexual assault in his four years of practice. A laceration to the left wall of the vagina had separated her cervix from the back of her vagina, causing her rectum to protrude into the vaginal structure. Her entire perineum was torn from the posterior fourchette to the anus. The injuries required emergency surgery.

"Evolving standards."

Okay.

Thanks to CJ.

PS: Since it's their bag, I asked the Newbusters guys to report on how completely the network newscasts embargoed this decision.

I already know the answer -- "almost entirely" -- but I figured I'd check.

The nets are running the most absurd stories intended to inflame the public in a liberal/populist direction -- the foreclosure mess is now killing puppies and kittens, too! (and no, I'm not exaggerating) -- but of course are very, very cautious when reporting on stories that might inflame public passions the other way.

Posted by: Ace at 08:27 PM | Comments (45)
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