4/22/2006
First Parenting Battle Scar
I was wrestling with Jr on the floor. He jumped off me and disappeared from my field of view. I looked over to see what the Mrs. was doing with #2 for just a second. Next thing I knew a toy fire engine impacted my chin at high velocity. Resulted in a nasty gash on the chin.
Jr. got a spanking. I think knowing he actually hurt Daddy scared him though.
Permalink
|
4/21/2006
The Ninth Circuit Strikes Again
From Volokh (can we please put him on the Ninth Circuit?) via Gwa.45
Sorry, Your Viewpoint Is Excluded from First Amendment Protection
Long story short, Judges Reinhardt and Thomas' opinion says that a school can bar a student from wearing a shirt that carried an anti-gay message.
Volokh:
This is a very bad ruling, I think. It's a dangerous retreat from our tradition that the First Amendment is viewpoint-neutral. It's an opening to a First Amendment limited by rights to be free from offensive viewpoints. It's a tool for suppression of one side of public debates (about same-sex marriage, about Islam, quite likely about illegal immigration, and more) while the other side remains constitutionally protected and even encouraged by the government.
Basically, what this ruling says is that minorities have a right that the rest of us don't: the right not to be offended. And agents of the state have the power to protect them from being offended.
I think Reinhardt (one of Carter's mistakes that still curses us) and Thomas should move to England, where political correctness is already a state religion. They'd feel more at home there.
Judge Kozinski, who should have gone to SCOTUS instead of Alito, dissented.
Quotes from Judge Kizinski, not from this case, but just because they need to be said every now and then:
When a particular right comports especially well with our notions of good social policy, we build magnificent legal edifices on elliptical constitutional phrases -- or even the white spaces between lines of constitutional text. But, as the panel amply demonstrates, when we're none too keen on a particular constitutional guarantee, we can be equally ingenious in burying language that is incontrovertibly there.
-----------
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.
Permalink
|
4/18/2006
100 Years Ago Today
EDITED: The original post has been found factually incorrect. Embarrassingly, I got my own family history wrong. What follows comes from my mother's cousin, the son of the oldest of my great aunts.
--------
On April 18, 1906, Grandpa was working as a Commercial Baker with Young and Swain. That's why he and Grandma were up that morning at 5:12 am. Grandma was fixing Grandpas breakfast when the quake hit. Grandpa grabbed the kerosene lamp off the kitchen table to keep it from falling over. After breakfast Grandpa went to work. Which had to be close because he walked every day. After arriving at work Young and Swain sent every one home because there was no electricity or water.
They were living on 17th St below Market, Grandma said by the time Grandpa got back from work,people were moving onto their block, setting up camp in the middle of the street. Coming in with Carts and packs on their backs.
Their house didn't sustain any damage, but by the afternoon they got concerned as the fire was coming up towards their house. People were still coming and setting up camp on their street. They put Dorothy in a Wheel Barrow and went up to Twin Peaks. Only staying overnight, they went back to the house on 17th St. In that time span, the milk they bought for Dorothy had been preserved with Formaldehyde because of the lack of any refrigeration. It made Dorothy very ill and she almost died.
Grandma said the Fire Department had no water because all mains in the storage tanks were broken. In an effort to stop the spreading fire, they were using Dynamite, blasting homes in an effort to create a fire break. That did more damage than the quake. In the end it was the width of Van Ness that really stopped the fire.
-------
My great aunt, then 3 years old, spent the night, and several following, in a park in San Francisco. My great grandmother was pregnant with my other great aunt. (My grandmother wouldn't be born until 1909.
Luckily, the fire spared my great grandfather's grocery store. Once the fires were out, they went home, cleaned up the store, and went back to their lives. They were lucky.
My family, you might say, hasn't learned. My entire immediate family lives in two of the most earthquake prone areas in America: the San Francisco Bay area, and the Seattle area. My great aunt lived in San Francisco until she passed in 2000 at age 97.
Permalink
|
4/16/2006
Obligatory BAG Day Revelation
I did my taxes long ago, and since I'm TDY, it snuck up on my for a bit. Even worse, TDY ends tomorrow, and my camera got buried a couple of days ago.
But, just for the record, my BAG Day purchase, actually made a couple of weeks ago (the procrastination diety ate the pictures) is a 1944 vintage Remington Rand M1911A1.
If Oly Arms wasn't backordered so bad (I placed the order in Feb), I'd have a completed 9mm AR (actually my wife's b-day present) to go with it. But the receiver isn't done yet.
Permalink
|
|
|
