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Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Kelo, outraged Americans are trying to confiscate private property belonging to Justices David Souter and Stephen Breyer and convert it to “public use.” This is all well and good.
But as Perry de Havilland notes, there are others whose property is equally ripe for taking under eminent domain: “local politicians who collude with property developers.”
Adam C at Red State:
On Friday, the Senate passed a slew of major bills. Looking specificially at the Transportation Bill and Energy Bill it is clear that despite the well-earned reputation of fiscal conservatism, Republicans seem determined to match or surpass the 1960-1980s Democrats on pork barrel politics.
As regular readers of this blog know, I’m all for vigorously enforcing the Nation’s immigration laws. But we don’t have to be assholes about it.
I missed this when it came out two days ago. If you missed it too, I commend it to your attention, especially if you’ve worried that John G. Roberts Jr. is a David Souter in waiting.
(Thanks to Professor Bainbridge.)
The drug war, reloaded:
NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico — The United States is closing temporarily its consulate in this lawless Mexican border city after rival drugs gangs clashed with bazookas, hand grenades and heavy machine-gun fire.“A violent battle involving unusually advanced weaponry took place between armed criminal factions last night in Nuevo Laredo,” U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza said on Friday.
He said he was ordering the consulate in Nuevo Laredo closed for all of next week and would only open it up again if the security situation improved.
Garza called on Mexico to swiftly bring the situation under control.
And how exactly should the Mexicans do that, Tony? By carpet bombing the gawd damn city? The Mexican army already occupies Nuevo Laredo and has since June when gunmen killed the police chief.
The cartels are fighting over smuggling routes, routes made necessary — and fantastically profitable — by our war on drugs. The war itself adds to the drug barons’ riches by inflating the price of their goods. The price of every product that comes to market reflects not only the costs of production, but also the risks undertaken by the producer. The drug war has not stopped the trafficking of drugs. But it has made drug trafficking risky. Risk = markup.
This is not to say that all risk is unappealing. Quite the contrary. Consider, for example, loan sharking banks that issue credit cards to “high-risk” consumers. These banks compensate themselves for risky lending practices by charging exorbitant interest rates. For both banks and drug cartels, the rewards of risk are often attractive.
Like money lending, drug trafficking would of course be profitable even if legal. But we’ve enhanced its profitability such that men resort to bazookas and hand grenades to control supply lines.
By the way, comments are now re-enabled.
I’m one of a relatively small number of bloggers who are implementing the beta version of Movable Type 3.2 as it’s rolled out. (If you’re brave, you can join us.) In fact, I’m currently running off of a nightly rebuild of the beta, which is to say a test version of the test version. Umm, hmm.
So far, though, everything is going smoothly, except for the trouble I’m having with some plugins, including MT Blacklist and Conversation Killer, neither of which is working.
Also, as part of the upgrade, we’re freshing our templates — or least we’re freshing our default templates. As you will have noticed if you’ve attempted to comment or look through the archives, I have yet to restore the customization of all of my templates. This explains why those pages look “naked.” I plan to fix this whenever the mood strikes me. It hasn’t struck yet.
In the meantime, if you experience any bugs or notice other odd behavior from the site, please let me know.
Associated Press (via Yahoo News):
WASHINGTON - The Senate voted Friday to shield firearms manufacturers, dealers and importers from lawsuits brought by victims of gun crimes, a measure opponents said had been ordered up by the gun lobby.The 65-31 vote passed a bill that supporters said protects the industry from financial disaster and bankruptcy caused by damage lawsuits.
“This bill says go after the criminal, don’t go after the law-abiding gun manufacturer or the law-abiding gun seller,” said bill sponsor Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho.
Much is made these days about the GOP’s internal divisions, which are indeed real. But Republicans aren’t the only ones squabbling among themselves:
Now that the IRA has agreed to lay down their arms, maybe the Democrats will take a cue. With polls showing President Bush at historically low levels of support and his administration mired in an unpopular war and internal scandal, the Democrats have shown no ability seize the moment. For months, Democratic strategists have been warning their leaders to get a message — any message. And for months, Democrats have been floundering.This week the floundering gave way to open warfare. The labor movement broke in two, the battle between the left and centrists flared up again and Democrats in Congress imploded over a consultant who has been working pro-bono for two years trying to re-brand the party. Americans Coming Together, the Democratic front group that massively organized the grassroots in 2004 now looks more like Americans Coming Apart, downsizing its operations and concentrating on research until money and support can be found.
Charles Krauthammer:
The American response to tightening up after London has been reflexive and idiotic: random bag checks in the New York subways. Random meaning that the people stopped are to be chosen numerically. One in every five or 10 or 20.This is an obvious absurdity and everyone knows it. It recapitulates the appalling waste of effort and resources we see at airports every day when, for reasons of political correctness, 83-year-old grandmothers from Poughkeepsie are required to remove their shoes in the search for jihadists hungering for paradise.
He’s right, of course.
And please don’t tell me, as one reader did, that Timothy McVeigh wasn’t a young Muslim man, as if this makes the case against profiling. So what? How many young male terrorists of whatever derivaton have we caught by searching elderly black women? As Krauthammer notes, even if we don’t always know who we’re looking for, we know who we’re not looking for:
You object that either plan — giving special scrutiny to young Islamic men, or, more sensitively, just eliminating certain demographic categories from scrutiny — will simply encourage the jihadists to start recruiting elderly Norwegian women.Okay. We can handle that. Let them try recruiting converts, women and non-usual suspects for suicide missions. That will require a huge new wasteful effort on their part. And, more important, by reducing the pool of possible terrorists from the hundreds of millions to, at most, the tens of thousands, we will have reduced the probability of an attack by a factor of 10,000. Those are far better odds at far less cost to us in money and effort. And infinitely less stupid.
Wall Street Journal:
Speaker Dennis Hastert had barely waited for dawn to break after the midnight Cafta vote before he directed the House to pass a $286.4 billion highway bill. He expects Mr. Bush to sign this because it is “only” $2.4 billion more than the President’s 2005 veto limit, which is “only” $28 billion more than his 2004 veto limit of $256 billion, which was “only” a 17% increase over the previous six-year highway spending level. “Only” in Washington could spending so much money be considered an act of fiscal discipline.The bill is all about “jobs, jobs, jobs,” declared Mr. Hastert, and he’s right if he’s referring to the Members’ re-election prospects. The House version alone contained 3,700 special earmarks, doled out liberally across state and party lines.
Read the rest, including word that agrigiant Archer Daniels Midland — motto: “We’re resourceful by nature” — is among the big winners in the just-passed energy bill.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you’ll go ahead and reach for your ankles, we can get started:
The US House of Representatives on Thursday approved a massive energy plan that provides huge tax breaks and subsidies to energy companies, but is predicted to only modestly reduce gas prices and US reliance on oil.
Oh well, in that case …
(Thanks to How Appealing.)
Still further proof that there’s always more than one way to skin a cat:
BOISE, Idaho — A southwest Idaho county filed a racketeering lawsuit against agricultural companies accused of hiring illegal immigrants — an attempt to recoup money the county says it has spent on the workers.The lawsuit by Canyon County commissioners alleges four agricultural companies and a nonprofit have taken part in an “illegal immigrant hiring scheme,” and that the county has paid the cost of medical care, jails and schools.
The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court on Wednesday claims the companies violated the federal Racketeering and Corrupt Organizations Act, which allows winning plaintiffs to receive triple damages.
It’s the first time a government entity has used RICO to demand damages from businesses for the costs of allegedly illegal employees, say legal experts, including Notre Dame law Professor G. Robert Blakey, one of the authors of the law.
“Illegal immigration is not a victimless crime. It has cost Canyon County millions of dollars, and we expect to recover it,” said Howard Foster, an attorney representing the county.
The lawsuit was spearheaded by Commissioner Robert Vasquez, who previously tried to get Canyon County declared a disaster area due to illegal immigration and tried to charge Mexico $2 million for what he said had been spent on medical services and jail for illegal immigrants. Both those efforts failed.
A grandson of Mexican immigrants, Vasquez now is campaigning for U.S. Congress.
The lawsuit names as defendants Syngenta Seeds, Sorrento Lactalis, Swift Beef Co. and Harris Moran Seed Co. and the nonprofit Idaho Migrant Council.
The four companies, which together employ hundreds of people in Canyon County, are accused of knowingly hiring hundreds of illegal immigrants, partly through agreements with worker recruiting companies.
All five defendants either declined to comment on the suit or denied wrongdoing.
The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act is found at 18 U.S.C. §1961 et seq.
Paul Sperry in the New York Times:
Truth be told, commuters need to be most aware of young men praying to Allah and smelling like flower water. Law enforcement knows this, and so should you. According to a January 2004 handout, the Department of Homeland Security advises United States border authorities to look out for certain “suicide bomber indicators.” They include a “shaved head or short haircut. A short haircut or recently shaved beard or moustache may be evident by differences in skin complexion on the head or face. May smell of herbal or flower water (most likely flower water), as they may have sprayed perfume on themselves, their clothing, and weapons to prepare for Paradise.” Suspects may have been seen “praying fervently, giving the appearance of whispering to someone. Recent suicide bombers have raised their hands in the air just before the explosion to prevent the destruction of their fingerprints. They have also placed identity cards in their shoes because they want to be praised and recognized as martyrs.”
Senate majority leader Bill First, R-TN, grows a set:
WASHINGTON — Until lawmakers vote on a top-priority gun rights bill, nothing else happens in the Senate. And that includes Congress’ prized monthlong vacation.That’s the way Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has toughened up his style in the final days before the August break was to begin, learning from last year to leave no room for gun control advocates to derail legislation limiting lawsuits against the gun industry.
Frist, R-Tenn., used Senate parliamentary procedures Wednesday to keep Democrats from dooming the measure with an amendment that would offend the National Rifle Association.
[…]
… emboldened by a four-seat GOP gain in last November’s elections, Frist this week cleared the floor of the $491 billion defense bill and replaced it with the gun liability bill sponsored by Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho.
The bill would prohibit lawsuits against firearms manufacturers, dealers and importers for damages resulting from the unlawful use of a firearm or ammunition. It provides for some exceptions.
[…]
Frist’s maneuver put Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., in the unusual position of supporting both Craig’s bill and his fellow Democrats’ right to change it with amendments. Not even during the Senate’s debate on judicial filibusters did Frist play such hardball, Reid said.
“It’s not in keeping with how he’s done business here,” Reid said. “I’m surprised.”
Me too. Pleasantly.
Washington Post:
A bitterly fought trade accord with six Latin American nations won House passage by the narrowest of margins this morning after Republicans held the vote open well past the usual 15 minutes to muster enough members of their party to ensure approval.When time for the vote on the Central American Free Trade Agreement expired at 11:17 p.m., the nays outnumbered the yeas by 180 to 175. But, a few minutes past midnight, the GOP leadership, ignoring Democratic protests that the rules were being violated, had rounded up enough votes to win by 217 to 215.
The House vote was effectively the last hurdle — and by far the steepest — facing CAFTA, which will tear down barriers to trade and investment between the United States, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.
U.S. News & World Report:
Senate Democrats and Judiciary Committee minority staffers are miffed that conservative bloggers appear to have more information about Bush Supreme Court nominee John Roberts than they do.
“They’ve got material out there that we don’t know about,” complained Sen. Edward Kennedy, who’s leading an effort to force the White House to turn over any documents it has on Roberts.
Other Democrats said that they believe the White House is providing supportive bloggers with information that paints Roberts only in a positive light. Kennedy, speaking to reporters last Friday, said that he was unaware of the prolific GOP blogging on behalf of Roberts until his wife pointed it out.
Do the Democrats mean to say that they don’t supply their bloggers with information? I doubt that’s true. But if it is, it’s not very smart.
(Thanks to Blogs for Bush.)
A rare instance of the pruning of the corporate welfare tree:
WASHINGTON — Key lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives said on Wednesday that they intend to scale back a government program backing terrorism insurance even as members of both chambers pledged to renew the program.“From my view, we can’t continue to underwrite this indeterminate risk at these levels while the (insurance) industry enjoys significant levels of profitability,” said House Republican Rep. Richard Baker, chairman of the capital markets subcommittee.
The U.S. insurance industry is lobbying for renewal of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA), which was seen as critical to sustaining the construction industry and the economy generally after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, when insurers were reluctant to offer coverage.
The law, which provides government reimbursement in the event of catastrophic losses caused by acts of terrorism, expires at the end of this year. But the Treasury Department said recently that the law should not be renewed in its current form, because taxpayers’ exposure must be reduced.
For now, the Government backstop protects industry against aggregate losses above $5 million. In other words, the industry collects all of the premiums while you and I shoulder most of the liability.
The Bush Administration proposes raising the backstop to $500 million.
While New York City is performing random bag searches, why not random surgery as well? Or random house dousing?
I’m reminded of what an Israeli general said: “The United States doesn’t have a homeland security system. It has a system for bothering people.”
(Thanks to Ace of Spades HQ.)
Associated Press (via Houston Chronicle):
MEXICO CITY — The U.S. State Department is renewing a travel advisory that warns American citizens of violence in Mexico, especially along the U.S. border, the U.S. ambassador said today.In a statement, U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza defended the advisory, the third he has requested this year. He said more than 100 violent deaths along the border since June and the killings of 18 Nuevo Laredo policemen convinced him the warning was still necessary.
Of course, you know why there’s a sudden uptick in violence along the border, don’t you?
Well, have you?
Washington Post:
A new study by a liberal Washington think tank puts the cost of forcibly removing most of the nation’s estimated 10 million illegal immigrants at $41 billion a year, a sum that exceeds the annual budget of the Department of Homeland Security.
Okay. But how much would it cost to make a few high profile arrests (and to pay for the subsequent incarceration) of employers who hire illegals? That’s the more sensible question.
The prospect of a prison term can concentrate the mind — and it can do it for a lot less than $41 billion annually.
Jeffrey Toobin in The New Yorker:
When the Supreme Court reconvenes, in October, presumably with a Justice Roberts in the junior seat, the Court will return to the “homosexual agenda.”
Mr. Toobin refers here to the legal battle over the Solomon Amendment, which directs the Government to withhold funds from universities that prohibit recruitment by the military. Several law schools, which now bar on-campus recruitment to protest the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, brought suit to have the Amendment overturned. The schools claim it infringes on their First Amendment rights.
The Supreme Court — with a newly seated Justice Roberts in attendance — will hear oral argument in the case on November 29. The law schools should expect to lose. There is, after all, a difference between constitutional rights and public benefits. The former are guaranteed; the latter are contingent on the mercies of Congress. Among other things, the First Amendment guarantees our right to express our opinions; it doesn’t guarantee that Congress will subsidized them.
Associated Press (via MSNBC):
CHICAGO — The Teamsters and a major service employees union on Monday bolted from the AFL-CIO, a stinging exodus for an embattled movement struggling to stop membership losses and adjust to a rapidly changing working environment.In a decision that AFL-CIO President John Sweeney labeled a “grievous insult” to labor’s rank-and-file, the Teamsters union and the Service Employees International Union, two major federation affiliates, said they decided to leave.
[…]
Many union presidents, labor experts and Democratic Party leaders fear the split will weaken the movement politically and hurt unionized workers who need a united and powerful ally against business interests and global competition.
Two other unions — United Food and Commercial Workers and UNITE HERE, a group of textile and hotel workers — joined the Teamsters and the SEIU in boycotting the convention, a step widely seen as a sign that they are also poised to leave the AFL-CIO.
(Editorial cartoon courtesy of Cox & Forkum).
WASHINGTON — The White House signaled on Monday that President George W. Bush may bypass the Senate and appoint John Bolton, his embattled nominee for U.N. ambassador, to the post temporarily as hope faded for a Senate vote on the nomination.A recess appointment could be announced as early as Friday night, immediately after the Senate is scheduled to adjourn for the monthlong August recess, congressional aides said.
As one for whom the blessing of American citizenship came as birthright, this is humbling:
BAGHDAD — A total of 147 foreign-born US military personnel serving in Iraq gathered inside a former Saddam Hussein palace to be granted US citizenship.In a mass ceremony the soldiers, sailors, and airmen, along with one marine and a navy medic, simultaneously raised their right hands and swore to “support and defend the constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
Those sworn in as US citizens came from 46 countries, with the single largest group born in Mexico (27), followed by the Philippines (15), Jamaica (nine) and Nicaragua (eight) and Nigeria (five).
Other nations of origin included China, India, Taiwan and Vietnam. There was even one Iraqi-born soldier.
The ceremony, in the giant indoor rotunda of the Al-Faw palace, in Baghdad’s Camp Victory military base, was led by Lieutenant General John Vines, the commander of the Multinational Corps in Iraq.
[…]
“Welcome into that exclusive club called American citizenship,” Vines told the group.
Did you know that 45,000 permanent alien residents now serve in the U.S. armed forces? Since November 2003, the law has, quite rightly, made it easier for them to become citizens.
Associated Press (via CBS News):
Sales of existing homes set a new record in July with home prices shooting up at the fastest pace in nearly 25 years.The National Association of Realtors reported that existing homes were sold at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 7.33 million units last month, a gain of 2.7 percent from the May sales pace.
The torrid sales pace helped to push the median price of an existing home up to a record of $219,000 last month, a gain of 14.7 percent from the median, or midpoint, for prices a year ago. That was the biggest jump in prices since November 1980.
In a week in which Fox News referred to John G. Roberts Jr. as “running” for a seat on the Supreme Court, I suppose it shouldn’t surprise us that the Washington Post likewise cannot distinguish between the political and the judicial.
Perhaps in an effort to calm the nerves of quaking liberals, the Post undertakes to show that Judge Roberts might not be as politically conservative as most assume — “But if he was conservative in the studious, religious, clean-cut sense, it was not clear he was politically conservative” — as though this were relevant to what we can expect from him as a justice on the Nation’s highest court:
“You know, I must have had a thousand lunches with John, and I can’t think of a single thing he’s said that would specify his politics,” says [E. Barrett] Prettyman, [Robert’s close friend and colleague]. “We were all under the impression that he’s a conservative, but he always talked generalities. He’s not the type to lay it all out.”
But if John Roberts is the judicial conservative that his record strongly suggests him to be, then his personal political views, whether liberal or conservative, are irrelevant. For he will not use his power as a Supreme Court justice to conflate his political views with the law. He will not, in other words, use the Constitution or federal statute as a pretext for transcribing his own political preferences into public policy.
Here’s an example of what I mean. You and I may believe that the war on drugs is a colossal waste of money and a infringement on personal choice. Accordingly, we may believe drugs should be legalized. But at least for now, drugs are not legal, and nothing in the text, design or history of the Constitution requires the Government to make them legal. The former is our policy view; the latter is the law. You see the difference, yes? If you can honor that difference while exercising the power of a judge, you’re a judicial conservative. And according to the people who know him, so is John Roberts:
“John was extremely careful and deliberate,” says [Larry] Robbins, now the lead partner of a Washington firm. “He studied every word, because he believed that words had consequences . If he had a political agenda, it escaped my radar.”
[…]
John F. Manning, who worked in the solicitor general’s office and is now a Harvard Law School professor, says that if Roberts had one consistent value, it was deference to political branches. “I think that’s a strong value for him. He doesn’t think the Supreme Court should promiscuously overrule political decisions.”
[…]
Mit Spears, a Roberts colleague in the Reagan administration, says Roberts believes judges should be “dispassionate arbiters of balls and strikes,” as opposed to “bomb-throwers.” “People who think the Supreme Court should lead the way in society are in for a bitter disappointment,” Spears said.
And:
“I don’t really feel like I know his politics,” says H. Christopher Bartolomucci, a Hogan & Hartson partner who has worked closely with Roberts. “My sense is he’s conservative, but he never talked about it. He’s certainly conservative in the sense of respect for the text, caution, adherence to the precedent, deference to the government as opposed to social engineering.”
For all I know, John Roberts is a flaming political liberal, although his long association with Republican governance makes that unlikely. But if he knows the difference between the role of legislator and the role of judge, I don’t care about his politics — and neither should you. Here’s the key question: as a Supreme Court justice, could John Roberts distinguish between what the law is and what he thinks the law should be?
His record and the people who know him say the answer is an emphatic yes.
Ace, you’re a riot, bud.
News.com:
A new poll says about a quarter of British Muslims sympathise with the motives of the London bombers, if not their methods.And the survey in London’s Daily Telegraph shows one-third of British Muslims believe Western society is immoral.
The poll asked Muslims if they felt the July the 7th suicide attacks in which 56 peopled died were justified, and six per cent said they were.
71 per cent said they weren’t justified at all, and 11 per cent said they weren’t justified on balance.
But asked whether they had sympathy with the feelings and motives of the four British Muslim bombers, 13 per cent said they had a lot of sympathy and another 11 per cent had a little.
(Thanks to Israpundit.)
Richard A. Posner, blogger and judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit:
The limited consumer interest in the truth is the key to understanding why both left and right can plausibly denounce the same media for being biased in favor of the other.
LOL!
By the way, you’ll find Judge Posner’s blog here. As it happens, his most recent entry is on “The law and economics of gay marriage.”
(Your Honor, might I suggest you download and install Smartypants 1.5, which is not a reference to your remarks above but rather to an MT plugin capable of correcting your blog’s distorted text formatting.)
The twin virtues of restraint and humility are now on their way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Could someone check to see whether Hell has frozen over?
Full opinion here. I especially liked this:
Sometimes a car being driven by an unlicensed driver, with no registration and stolen tags, really does belong to the driver’s friend, and sometimes dogs do eat homework, but in neither case is it reasonable to insist on checking out the story before taking other appropriate action.
This is a test of the upgrade to MT 3.2b2.
In some precincts of the rabid Left, the moonbats are now suggesting that Judge John G. Roberts Jr. is gay.
The “evidence” for this “observation” of Judge Roberts’ sexuality rests exclusively in mendacious stereotype. But even were it true, what’s the point? To appeal to the supposed homophobia of the president’s conservative supporters? To give Sen. Robert Bryd a reason to vote against confirmation? To use homosexuality — or, in this case, the fiction of homosexuality — as a weapon against a man? Were we talking race instead of sexual orientation, everyone would recognize this as rank bigotry.
Will sane, self-respecting gay liberals sit for it?
(On the upside, I take this whisper campaign, as loathsome and homophobic as it is, as proof that the “opposition research” on Judge Roberts has come up dry.)
The vote was 257-171.
Even if you’ve never before called your congressman and never call him again, please call just this once and voice your opposition to this neo-Stalinist bill, which is now working its way through the U.S. House.
Whether you’re a conservative or a liberal, you will find much in H.R. 1528 to appall you. And unless we raise hell now, it’s going to become law.
The number to the Capitol switchboard is 202-224-3121. Call and ask for your congressman’s office. If you don’t know the identity of your congressman, learn it here.
H.R. 1528 is a direct attack on your liberty:
This sweeping bill would impose harsh federal mandatory sentences for very low-level drug offenses. The bill attempts to require Americans to become informers against one another. As federal legislation, the bill far exceeds the scope of legitimate federal action, and is extremely intrusive into the privacy of the home. The bill also directly threatens the Second Amendment.
Firearms manufacturers have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the constitutionality of a District of Columbia ordinance imposing strict liability on gun makers:
The statute imposes liability, for example, when an out-of-state manufacturer … sells a gun to a federally licensed retailer who then sells the firearm to the local police chief where — maybe years later — it is stolen during a burglary and illegally smuggled into the District where it is misused by a criminal to shoot someone. Liability against the manufacturer in this example is automatic and absolute because the act imposes liability “without regard to fault or proof of defect,” according to the lawyers for the firearms manufactirers.“There is simply no way to avoid liability, except to go out of business — precisely the law’s intent and practical effect,” said Lawrence G. Keane, senior vice president and general counsel to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade association for the firearm industry.
A trial court ruled that the “Assault Weapon Manufacturing Strict Liability Act” violated the Commerce Clause. But the D.C. Court of Appeals — not the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the court on which Supreme Court nominee John Roberts now sits — reversed and said crime victims could sue gun makers under the Act.
The Insurance Journal has more.
When are gun makers going to stop selling firearms to city and state governments that adopt legislation hostile to their industry? Let the D.C. police department go without a firearms supplier and then see how long it takes for the city council to get it together.
(Thanks to Of Arms & the Law.)
ADDED — I should mention here that Senate action is now pending on S. 397, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which would immunize gun makers from suit for the conduct of criminals. You can reach your senators and urge a “yes” vote on S. 397 by calling 202-224-3121.
The city of Denver, Colorado is killing pets …
Once he takes his seat on the Court, it won’t be long until we get an idea of what Justice Roberts thinks of Roe — or at least of Casey, Roe’s progeny. On November 30, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear argument in Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood and “consider the constitutionality of a New Hampshire law that prohibits a minor from obtaining an abortion unless her parents are notified first.”
Unlike similar laws in other states, New Hampshire’s “doesn’t include an exception to the parental-notification requirement for cases in which the minor’s health is at risk.”
The case in on appeal from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit, which invalidated the law for running afoul of the “undue burden” test set forth by Justice O’Connor in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992).
By the way, even if we assume that John Roberts would vote to overrule Roe — an assumption I don’t make — that decision is in no imminent danger. There would still be five votes on the Court for preserving Roe.
Washington Post:
The White House and its allies opened their campaign to confirm Judge John G. Roberts Jr. to the Supreme Court with a mix of soft-sell persuasion and hard-pitch pressure yesterday as Senate Democrats plotted strategy for responding to a nomination they conceded could be hard to defeat.
[…]
An array of interest groups on the left began mobilizing opposition to Roberts, but reticent Senate Democrats demonstrated little eagerness for an all-out war against him. Some Democratic senators laid the groundwork for a struggle focused on prying loose documents related to Roberts’s career in government and using any resistance by the administration against him. Yet as the day progressed, Democrats seemed increasingly resigned to the notion that they cannot stop his appointment.
Prediction: Roberts wins confirmation with at least 85 votes.
I couldn’t help but to notice during yesterday’s announcement that Mr. Bush was smirking more than usual. You noticed too, yes? Well, there was a reason for it. John Robert’s 4-year-old son, Jack, decided to break dance:
Another picture here.
Might I suggest the White House disseminate these photos as widely as possible? Is there any better way to ingratiate the nominee with the American people?
(Thanks to Michelle Malkin.)
