6/04/2004
Any Chance We Can Convince Al-Q to Fly a Plane Into This Convention?
Apparently, the Hate America crowd is having a "Take Back America" convention in DC this weekend. I think the first dishonest thing about this convention is the name. How can you asswipes take back something that isn't yours in the first place? You don't own America. You may think that you rightly deserve to rule over America, but most Americans, thank God, don't feel the same way. Me, I'd like to see the Libertarians or the GOP run on a platform of "Give Back America." Dynamite all the government functions that the Constitution doesn't say the government can do, make all the career government money sucks find real jobs, and give you, me, and Joe on the corner his tax money back.
The featured speaker last night was billionare Bush and America hater Georgoe Soros, the fuckhead who wants to get the corrupting influence of money out of politics so much (his Open Society Foundation gave $18 million to promote new campaign finance laws) that he's spent over $15 million to get Bush out of office. The Hildebeast stated correctly that "George Soros is using his considerable success in our democracy to make sure that his opinions are heard in the marketplace of ideas." Of course, he did that after using his considerable success to make sure that the opinions of others are not heard.I do find it ironic that this shithead so hates the very freedom that made it possible for him to make his billions.
I'll have more comments on Soros' anti-Bush and anti-America bile once I can find a transcript of his remarks. Not surprisingly, media coverage of his spew has been lax, since it probably wouldn't play to well in Peoria.
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CNN Student News uses Bush and Bin Laden as objects of the same lesson.
Best of the Web breaks the story. Hat tip to Ravenwood.
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6/03/2004
Random Musing
Cuba and North Korea are the last surviving commie thugocracies. Both received heavy backing from the Soviets, until the Soviets quit backing themselves. So why is it that Cuba and Castro are such a popular cause with American pinkos, while they pretty much ignore North Korea and Kim Jong Il, unless the Dear Leader threatens to nuke something?
And please don't tell me it's because Castro has better hair. Everyone on the planet, with the possible exception of glam rock hair bands, has better hair than Kim Jong Il.
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6/02/2004
Mad Ogre has a list of Kerry's votes against major weapon systems used by our military. It's a couple of pages long, and it's by no means all inclusive.
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Who Would You Nominate?
I don't do thread trolling for comments much (actually, I've never done one) but I will now.
If you take it as given (especially after they denied cert to Silviera) that the current SCOTUS is unlikely to hear and Second Amendment cases, much less overturn any laws, and also that one or more Justices likely won't make it through the next Presidential term, who would you nominate for the bench?
My top choices:
Justice Janice Rodger Brown of the California Supreme Court: great legal mind, strict constructionalist, self admitted Second Amendment absolutist.
Judge Alex Kozinski, 9th Circuit: "The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed—where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once. " Need I say more?
Also follow the thread I started on the same topic at The High Road
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6/01/2004
This is Who We Are Fighting
Hat tip to Little Green Footballs:
Nick Berg, an American from Philadelphia, was kidnapped and tortuously beheaded by Arabs in Iraq sometime in May. The murderers filmed the deed and proudly displayed the victim’s severed head.
After killing six Israeli soldiers in an attack on an armored vehicle in Gaza on May 11, the Arabs near the scene of the carnage gleefully held aloft human body parts in front of rolling cameras. One of the Arab terrorists was later interviewed on film with what appeared to be a human head in front of him.
The week before, after shooting at Tali Hatuel’s car, causing it to skid and stop, Arab terrorists walked over to the vehicle to finish the occupants off. They looked at the heavily pregnant mother and her four no-doubt frightened girls; the youngest was two years old. And then shot them all. At point-blank range. With sadistic satisfaction, they systematically murdered Tali Hatuel and her unborn son, as well as all of Tali’s daughters - Hila, age 11, Hadar, 9, Roni, 7, and two-year-old Meirav.
In Fallujah in March, crowds of townspeople dragged four American civilians out of their vehicles, shot or beat them to death, mutilated their bodies, dragged them through the streets, suspended them from a bridge and burned them.
And they danced and cheered.
With their children.
In Ramallah in 2000, two Israeli soldiers were kidnapped, beaten, stabbed countless times, had their eyes gouged out, and were literally disemboweled and dismembered by an Arab lynch mob.
The people - and I use the term loosely - who carried out the initial beatings threw one of the victims down to the waiting mob, where his face was further crushed with stones, feet, fists and even a heavy metal window frame. One Jew was set on fire and dragged along the street as Arab onlookers danced and cheered. Some of the butchers celebrated their crimes with the victims’ internal organs. One of the killers, famously captured on film, proudly displayed his blood-soaked hands to the cheering Ramallah crowd.
And it gets worse. In 2003, nearly two years later, Arab parents in Gaza cheered again when their little children dressed up as members of the Ramallah lynch mob, complete with hands painted blood red, for a kindergarten graduation ceremony.
Yes, they are barabarians.
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More thoughts on U.S. v. Miller
Many bloggers who blog on gun rights related themes, including myself, have been looking forward to the end of the Clinton Gun Ban on 13 September. Matt over at Triggerfinger has a more aggressive take, saying that wimply letting the ban expire should be looked on as a failure-that it should be taken to court and killed like the unconstitutional farce that it is.
I agree with Matt that the AWB is unconstitutional, and will note that the California state AWB, upon which the Clinton AWB was modeled, was challenged in court in Silviera v. Lockyer. SCOTUS denied cert to the case. At any rate, with less that 4 months until the ban expires, there isn't time for any case to move through the federal court system before it would be rendered moot.
But what of other gun control laws? Specifically, the National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934 and the 1986 ban on the manufacture of new, full auto weapons for civilians?
U.S. v. Miller (hereafter referred to as Miller) is the last time the SCOTUS spoke directly on the Second Amendment, and the decision is decidedly a mixed one. On one hand, the Court said that since the purpose of the Second Amendment is to ensure that the militia (composed of all citizens) are able to adequately arms themselves, it only protects those firearms suitable for military/militia use. This definition is a bit vague, given the wide variety of weapons in use by military forces around the world. But according to the Court, short barrelled shotguns (the type of weapon that Mr Miller was charged with illegally possessing) do not meet this definition. The NFA also required tax stamps for short barrelled rifles (less than 18") and weapons capable of fully automatic fire. When the NFA was enacted in 1934, the standard issue rifle of the U.S. military was the M1903 Springfield, a bolt action rifle. But today, the standard issue rifle is the M-16A2, a select-fire assault rifle capable of firing three round bursts, and many U.S. troops are issued M-14 rifles, M249 and M240 machine guns, which are all capable of full auto fire. So it would seem that this part of the NFA would fail to meet the test set forth in Miller. The 1986 law which bans the manufacture and sale of fully automatic weapons to civilians also fails to meet this test.
Further, given that the standard issue arm for most infantry units in the U.S. Army is the M-4 carbine, with a barrel length of only 14.5", and that the world's most common military rifle, the ubiquitous Kalashnikov, features a barrel length of 16", that portion of the NFA also fails the Miller test.
The NFA also requires a citizen to get permission for their local police chief of sherriff before they can get the required tax stamp for their machine gun or short barrelled rifle or shotgun. Can you say "prior restraint" boys and girls? Since when do citizens have to get police permission to exercise an individual right?
The best time for further challenges to the NFA would have been immediately after the Miller decision was issued. If that had happened, the 1986 machine gun ban and the 1994 AWB would probably never have come into existence. Now, due to a half-century of anti-gun and anti-liberty indoctrination in the nation's law schools, the task of a successful legal challenge is much more difficult. But I keep hoping that someone will try.
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5/30/2004
Do it again. Only HARDER!!
Kevin at Smallest Minority using that saying frequently when referring to the Leftist positions on gun control, but it actually covers the Leftist position on pretty much every government program that fails to live up to expectations (with the notable exceptions of national defense and intelligence.) Public schools underperforming? They need more money? Environmental regulation not bringing about the desired improvement? We need more regulations. Anti-poverty programs not getting rid of poverty? We need more money and more programs. And so on, and so on, until first you become France, and then eventually you become North Korea.
The latest case in point: an editorial in last Sunday's The State newspaper here in Columbia (forgive the lack of a link; I searched the paper's website and couldn't find the story): advocating an increase in the state minimum wage to help decrease poverty, particularly among blacks. Now, the minimum wage has existed for at least as long as I've been alive, but for some reason, like every other government anti-poverty program, it has failed to get rid of poverty.
Now, I personally object to the existance of any minimum wage at all, just on principle. It interferes with the freedom of contract between the employer and the employee, and doesn't let normal market forces do their thing.
Even if you take the existence of the minimum wage as a given, increasing the minimum wage isn't a smart thing. Let's look at what the paper proposed: increasing the state minimum wage from the federal $5.15 an hour to $7 an hour. This is dumb on several different levels. First of all, it's going to cause inflation, at least in South Carolina, for a couple of different reasons. First of all, increasing the minimum wage means people are going to have more money. On the surface, this is good, and most analyses don't go beyond this point. And that's where they run into trouble. Because when you have more money chasing the same amount of goods, the prices of those goods are going to go up. Viola, inflation. Now you're buying the same amount of stuff with more money, and you're no better (and actually, probably worse)off than before. Increasing the minimum wage will also cause inflation, and hurt the people it's supposed to be helping, from another direction to: it increases the cost of production. If Wal-mart has to pay all its employees more, it's going to have to charge more for the stuff it sells to maintain profitability. And now you're hurting the middle class people who shop at Wal-mart in addition to the poor people.
Increasing the minimum wage at the state level will also cause some jobs to move out of the state, especially in a relatively small state like South Carolina. The story in the paper tries to minimize this by noting that most of the minimum wage jobs are in restaurants, hotels, and retail stores that have to hire locally. But not all of them, and if a plant owner has to move to Georgia to stay in business, he will. South Carolina is already being hit hard by the loss of textile mill jobs, and increasing the minimum wage would only accellerate that trend. Also, fast food jobs may not leave, but there sure won't be as many new ones created.
But, increasing the minimum wage plays well when your audience doesn't think beyond first order effects, and it gives Leftists a wonderful class warfare bat to beat free marketeers over the head with come election time. So I fully expect SC to pull out his particualr gun and shoot themselves in the foot.
UPDATE: An excellent piece on the effect of minimum wage increases can be found at the Employment Policies Institute. Statistic most damaging to The State's position: "Studies from Cornell University and the University of Connecticut, for example, revealed that a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage — a fraction of even the Republican alternative — resulted in an 8.5 percent cut in employment for African-American young adults and teenagers. "
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