Right Side of the Rainbow

Bulldogpundit links to this great story about a lawyer — he rose to deputy general counsel at the New York Life Insurance Co — who had to resign because … well, he doesn’t have a law license!

Says Bulldog:

The fact that this guy was obviously good enough to have made it as far as he did before he got caught proves what I’ve been saying for a long time - both law school (which the guy apparently went to) and the bar exam (which he must not have passed) are total wastes of time and have no bearing on whether or not someone is going to be a good lawyer.

I’d be willing to bet over half of all practicing attorney’s couldn’t pass the bar exam if they took it tomorrow (I know I couldn’t - and yes I passed the 1st time in both PA and NJ), because it has absolutely zero relevance to what they do to earn a living.

I could say the same thing about being a registered nurse. The only thing nursing school taught me was how to pass the NCLEX-RN, which I did on my first attempt in July 1994. I could not pass it today. But that’s okay because both the test and the education that prepared me to take it have nothing whatsoever to do with a being a nurse. Bulldog says he had to take a course in wills and trusts but it didn’t teach him how to write a will. I had to take a course in basic nursing procedures but it didn’t teach me how to operate an IV pump. In school, you learn a lot of theory. What you don’t learn is how to take care of patients.

You know how you learn to be a nurse? You learn by working in a hospital where experienced nurses teach you. Everything before that — the aptitude test, the interview, the coursework, the big exam — is just hoop-jumping, designed, I suspect, to maintain the salary-raising shortage of nurses.

Posted by Paul at 8:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Law professor Dale Carpenter shines a light on the conservative gay blogosphere.

Posted by Paul at 8:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Maybe there’s hope for Europe:

How different things look today. Dutch borders have been virtually shut. New immigration is down to a trickle. The great cosmopolitan port city of Rotterdam just published a code of conduct requiring Dutch be spoken in public. Parliament recently legislated a countrywide ban on wearing the burqa in public. And listen to a prominent Dutch establishment figure describe the new Dutch Way with immigrants. “We demand a new social contract,” says Jan Wolter Wabeke, High Court Judge in The Hague. “We no longer accept that people don’t learn our language, we require that they send their daughters to school, and we demand they stop bringing in young brides from the desert and locking them up in third-floor apartments.”

Posted by Paul at 1:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Wake up, Neo:

… radical young Muslim men are changing the realities of daily life for Jews and gays and women in Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Oslo and beyond. If you don’t care for the Yids, big deal; look out for yourself. The Jews are playing their traditional role of the canaries in history’s coal mine.

If you read nothing else today, please, read Mark Steyn.

Posted by Paul at 12:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

George Melloan, deputy editor of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, on the damage wrought by the drug war both at home and abroad:

The drug war has become costly, with some $50 billion in direct outlays by all levels of government, and much higher indirect costs, such as the expanded prison system to house half a million drug-law offenders and the burdens on the court system. Civil rights sometimes are infringed. One sharply rising expense is for efforts to interdict illegal drug shipments into the U.S., which is budgeted at $1.4 billion this fiscal year, up 41% from two years ago.

[…]

… a good case can be made that U.S.-sponsored efforts to eradicate coca crops in Latin America are winning converts among Latin peasants to the anti-American causes of Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. Their friend Evo Morales was just elected president of Bolivia mainly by the peasant following he won by opposing a U.S.-backed coca-eradication program. Colombia’s huge cocaine business still thrives despite U.S. combative efforts, supporting, among others, leftist guerrillas.

More seriously, Mexico is being destabilized by drug gangs warring over access to the lucrative U.S. market. A wave of killings of officials and journalists in places like Nuevo Laredo and Acapulco is reminiscent of the 1930s Prohibition-era crime waves in Al Capone’s Chicago and the Purple Gang’s Detroit. In Afghanistan, al Qaeda and the Taliban are proselytizing opium-poppy growers by saying that the U.S. is their enemy. The claim, unlike many they use, has the merit of being true.

[…]

An army of government employees now makes a living from the drug laws and has a rather conflictive interest in claiming both that the drug laws are working and that more money is needed. The challenge is issued: Do you favor legalization? In fact, most drugs are legal, including alcohol, tobacco and coffee and the great array of modern, life-saving drugs administered by doctors. To be precise, the question should be do you favor legalization or decriminalization of the sale and use of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines?

A large percentage of Americans will probably say no, mainly because they are law-abiding people who maintain high moral and ethical standards and don’t want to surrender to a small minority that flouts the laws, whether in the ghettos of Washington D.C. or Beverly Hills salons. The concern about damaging society’s fabric is legitimate. But another question needs to be asked: Is that fabric being damaged now?

The war on drugs undermines our liberties, crowds the prisons, bloats the bureaucracy, invites corruption, incites violence and antagonizes our allies. Moreover, we spend billions on it and lose billions more in unlevied taxes. And for what? For a losing drive to control choices that are not ours to make?

Americans, of all people, should know that the market will supply any felt demand. It is inevitable. (For stunning visual evidence of this, see these photos.) So the question isn’t whether we can win the war on drugs. We’ve already lost. The question is whether we’re going to stop banging our heads against the wall.

Posted by Paul at 12:35 PM | Permalink

Cops have an awful job. They really do. They deal mostly with the dregs of society and they’re usually not well paid. God bless ‘em. But some cops are first class A holes who do great damage to public trust in law enforcement.

Watch the video.

Among other things, you’ll see a cop threaten a man. While gripping his gun, he tells the man, “Take one step closer and see what happens.” Absent a legal justification for the threat of deadly force, that’s assault. The video needs to be shown to the civil rights or professional integrity division of the district attorney’s office in the county where that cop works.

(Thanks to Say Anything.)

Posted by Paul at 12:30 AM | Permalink

American Idol Contestants (Penis Division):

Ace Young

Bucky Covington

Chris Daughtry

(For the idea, thanks to Gay Patriot.)

Posted by Paul at 7:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

CNN:

The only Iraqi battalion capable of fighting without U.S. support has been downgraded to a level requiring them to fight with American troops backing them up, the Pentagon said Friday.

The battalion, made up of 700 to 800 Iraqi Army soldiers, has repeatedly been offered by the U.S. as an example of the growing independence of the Iraqi military.

The competence of the Iraqi military has been cited as a key factor in when U.S. troops will be able to return home.

That’s the bad news. Here’s the good:

The battalion is still deployed, and its status as an independent fighting force could be restored any day, Pentagon officials said. It was not clear where the battalion is operating within Iraq.

According to the congressionally mandated Iraq security report released Friday, there are 53 Iraqi battalions at level two status, up from 36 in October. There are 45 battalions at level three, according to the report.

Overall, Pentagon officials said close to 100 Iraqi army battalions are operational, and more than 100 Iraq Security Force battalions are operational at levels two or three.

An explanation of the levels:

“Level one” means the battalion is able to fight on its own; “level two” means it requires support from U.S. troops; and “level three” means it must fight alongside U.S. troops.

Posted by Paul at 6:30 PM | Permalink

Reuters:

President George W. Bush defended the Medicare prescription drug program on Saturday as a money-saving benefit for seniors, despite a barrage of criticism over the plan’s troubled roll-out.

Well, it may be a money-saving benefit for seniors (and wildly giddy news for the pharmaceutical industry). But at $1.2 trillion — umm, hmm, that’s trillion with a t — it’s the rape of the American taxpayer.

Posted by Paul at 6:16 PM | Permalink

CNN reports that a student at the University of Tennessee was ticketed after blowing his horn at a red light-running cop. The judge reduced the ticket to a warning, but told the defendant: “The horn blowing is not the real problem here; it’s that you were trying to correct the police and they didn’t need correcting.”

After noting that “the purpose of the horn is to prevent accidents, not admonish people,” law professor Eugene Volokh writes:

But trying to correct the police ought not be punished, whether or not the judge thinks the police need correcting. If, for instance, the government does make a practice of punishing horn blowing when it is meant to express disagreement with (“correct”) the police, but not when it’s meant to express disagreement with other drivers, that would be an abuse of government power, and likely unconstitutional. By saying that the problem isn’t the noncommunicative harm (needless noise) but the disrespectful communication (trying to correct the police), the judge is making a pretty serious mistake.

Yes.

From Houston v. Hill, 482 U.S. 451 (1987):

The incident that sparked this lawsuit occurred in the Montrose area on February 14, 1982. [Ray] Hill observed a friend, Charles Hill, intentionally stopping traffic on a busy street, evidently to enable a vehicle to enter traffic. Two Houston police officers, one of whom was named Kelley, approached Charles and began speaking with him. According to the District Court, “shortly thereafter” Hill began shouting at the officers “in an admitted attempt to divert Kelley’s attention from Charles Hill.” Hill first shouted: “Why don’t you pick on somebody your own size?” After Officer Kelley responded: “[A]re you interrupting me in my official capacity as a Houston police officer?” Hill then shouted: “Yes, why don’t you pick on somebody my size?” Hill was arrested under Houston Code of Ordinances, 34-11(a), for “wilfully or intentionally interrupt[ing] a city policeman … by verbal challenge during an investigation.”

Hill won the suit. According to the Court, ” … the First Amendment protects a significant amount of verbal criticism and challenge directed at police officers.” Surely it also protects a horn honk.

Posted by Paul at 3:14 PM | Permalink

The father of modern American conservatism, William F. Buckley Jr., says the war in Iraq is lost.

His assessment comes with this qualification:

The failure in Iraq does not force us to generalize that violence and antidemocratic movements always prevail. It does call on us to adjust to the question, What do we do when we see that the postulates do not prevail — in the absence of interventionist measures (we used these against Hirohito and Hitler) which we simply are not prepared to take? It is healthier for the disillusioned American to concede that in one theater in the Mideast, the postulates didn’t work. The alternative would be to abandon the postulates. To do that would be to register a kind of philosophical despair. The killer insurgents are not entitled to blow up the shrine of American idealism.

Posted by Paul at 8:36 AM | Permalink

In a comment to this post, “mAcChaos” asks, “Do you think RvW [Roe v. Wave] would get overturned if it was visited today? What would it take?”

I don’t have any special insight into how the justices think, but we can all do the math.

• Today the Court holds only two sure votes for the overruling of Roe; those votes belong to Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. (See Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992), Scalia, dissenting).

• We can surmise that the Court’s newest member, Justice Samuel Alito, is a probable vote to overrule Roe based on his statements and what we know of his judicial philosophy generally. If so, that puts the number to overrule at three.

• Chief Justice John Roberts is a big question mark. On the one hand, he’s a judicial conservative; on the other hand, he’s a … judicial conservative. In other words, we can be confident that as an original matter, Chief Justice Roberts would hold that the Federal Constitution does not guarantee a right to an abortion. But Roe is not an original matter. And many judicial conservatives value stability in the law, even when it means the preservation of error.

• The other five justices — John Paul Stevens, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Ruth Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer — are committed to what former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor described as the “essential holding” of Roe.

• So there are at least five, and maybe as many as seven, votes to sustain Roe.

• It’s possible, and even probable, that with the help of Justice Kennedy, the Roberts Court will uphold various restrictions on abortion, including a ban on partial-birth abortions. The Court operates on the view, articulated by Justice O’Connor, that the Government must not place an “undue burden” on the abortion right. Presumably this means some burden is due. But that’s as far as it’s going to go.

Finally, it can’t be said enough that even were the Court to overrule Roe today, that would only restore the status quo ante. In other words, the states would again be free to restrict or even ban the practice. And a few would. But do we really think that states like California or New York or Massachusetts are going to outlaw abortion? The odds are better than each of us will win the lottery.

Posted by Paul at 8:10 AM | Permalink

I don’t know whether the UAE port deal is a good thing or a bad thing. To know that, I’d have to know the particulars of the deal, the relationship of the particulars to port security and the weaknesses, if any, in that relationship. I don’t know these things, and I haven’t ready anybody else who knows them either. So the White House may well be right when it says critics of the deal are misinformed.

But as I indicated Monday, the Administration is not handling the controversy smartly, and now it faces a full-on Republican revolt; the president says he will crush it.

Oh, well. At least now we know what it takes to get Mr. Bush to veto something. (He’s never vetoed anything.) Here’s the recipe: 1) get Republicans upset about a perceived weakness in homeland security; 2) give Democrats room to run right on the issue; and 3) propose legislation to restore the GOP’s confidence in its signature issue. That Mr. Bush will veto.

Did Karl Rove go shooting with Cheney?

ADDED —

Rich Galen:

This port deal is not a national security issue. It is an issue of this administration having a continuing problem with understanding how these things will play in the public’s mind and not taking steps to set the stage so these things don’t come as a shock and are presented in their worst possible light.

That via Glenn Reynolds, who observes:

… we have a perfect storm brought about by the loss of confidence in the Administration’s backbone after their inadequate Cartoon Wars response, continuing fears of terrorism (at least now the Democrats won’t be able to say that it’s a case of Bush fanning the flames of fear) and lousy White House PR management.

Posted by Paul at 8:57 PM | Permalink

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed today to consider the constitutionality of a federal ban on partial-birth abortions. Three federal appeals courts have invalidated the ban. The Supreme Court should affirm the judgment but not the reasoning of the lower courts:

All of those courts cited a Supreme Court ruling in 2000 striking down Nebraska’s statute banning what opponents call “partial-birth abortions,” for want of a health exception, among other reasons. That was a 5-4 opinion with retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor voting with the majority.

Ours is a Government of enumerated powers, and the Constitution doesn’t say anything about Congress regulating abortion, even if the regulation includes a health exception.

On the other hand, the Nebraska statute at issue in 2000 should have been upheld. Unless a power is delegated to Congress or prohibited to the states, it is reserved to the states (see the Tenth Amendment); the Constitution does not deprive the states of the power to regulate abortion.

Of course, this is the quaint originalist view that the Constitution is law — a view with hardly any constituency on the Court. The justices do as they please. In this case, it will please a majority of them to sustain the federal ban on partial-birth abortions. The Court does not agree to review the correct application of its precedent unless it intends to unsettle that precedent.

ADDED —

Before someone points it out, let me acknowledge that it takes only four votes on the Court to grant certiorari, whereas it takes 5 votes to prevail. So it’s possible that were only four votes to hear this case and that there will not be a fifth vote to uphold the ban. But the four conservatives who voted to hear this case — and I think we can be sure it was the conservatives, and not the liberals, who voted to hear it — would not have done so unless they were pretty sure they could pick up another vote.

Posted by Paul at 6:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)

Since I ruled out Condi Rice as a candidate for the Republican nomination in 2008, the reader “Owlish,” in a comment to this post, solicits my predictions of who will seek the party’s nod.

Before I answer, one caveat: this early in the game, the only thing more useless than polling is speculation. But it’s fun to speculate. So here goes.

Were I to guess right now, I’d say the fight for the 2008 Republican nomination will come down to Sen. John McCain, R-AZ, and Sen. George Allen, R-VA. Based on what we can piece together today, these two men will, I think, emerge as the major contenders. If so, the conservative blogosphere will coalesce around Sen. Allen. (And this little blog will become all anti-McCain all the time.)

One more prediction. Regardless of who gets the GOP presidential nomination, if Lynn Swann wins his race later this year for governor of Pennsylvania, he’ll be the Republican vice presidential nominee.

Posted by Paul at 4:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Blowback:

In a rare display of unanimity that cuts across partisan and geographic lines, lawmakers in virtually every statehouse across the country are advancing bills and constitutional amendments to limit use of the government’s power of eminent domain to seize private property for economic development purposes.

The measures are in direct response to the United States Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 decision last June in a landmark property rights case from Connecticut, upholding the authority of the City of New London to condemn homes in an aging neighborhood to make way for a private development of offices, condominiums and a hotel. It was a decision that one justice, who had written for the majority, later all but apologized for.

The reaction from the states was swift and heated. Within weeks of the court’s decision, Texas, Alabama and Delaware passed bills by overwhelming bipartisan margins limiting the right of local governments to seize property and turn it over to private developers. Since then, lawmakers in three dozen other states have proposed similar restrictions and more are on the way, according to experts who track the issue.

Posted by Paul at 10:04 PM | Permalink

Video

Posted by Paul at 9:47 PM | Permalink

Houston Chronicle:

WASHINGTON — Growing numbers of Americans oppose a presidential bid by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., in 2008 — and favor a run by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — amid broad public willingness to elect a woman as president, according to a nationwide poll released Sunday.

The Presidents Day survey conducted for Hearst Newspapers by the Siena Research Institute of Siena College in Loudonville, N.Y., covered 1,120 registered voters and was completed Feb. 10.

Some 48 percent of survey participants said Rice “should run” for president at the conclusion of President Bush’s second term, an increase of 6 percentage points over a similar survey a year ago.

Clinton saw opposition to a presidential bid grow over the same period. About 44 percent of respondents now say Clinton “should not run” for president in 2008 — up from 37 percent who felt that way last year.

The country is ready for a woman as president. It’s ready for a black as president. It’s ready for a woman who’s black as president. But is it ready for a woman who’s unmarried, and has never been married, as president? (Do most Americans know Condoleezza Rice is single?)

Ms. Rice has been adamant that she’s not going to run, even though there’s every indication she’d be a formidable candidate. Is she worried she’d lose? If so, why?

I can’t help wondering whether her reticence is informed, at least in part, by the questions she would surely get about her private life were she to run. (What the media don’t ask of cabinet officers, they will ask of presidential candidates.) I’m not insinuating an answer to those questions, as Andrew Sullivan has. I’m really not. I don’t know the answer. But whatever it is, I can imagine a woman of Ms. Rice’s class and dignity not wanting to discuss her intimate life on national television. Not every American has bought into the Oprah culture.

My prediction: Condoleezza Rice will not be a candidate for president.

Posted by Paul at 4:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

George F. Will:

… the party in power in Washington has done much to earn a rebuke but the opposition party has done nothing to earn a reward. (Link)

Ain’t that it?

Posted by Paul at 3:50 PM | Permalink

Will Collier has a question for big media:

Here we have a credible allegation that an American citizen was attacked, beated and robbed in his own home by agents of a hostile foreign power because of his political views and activities.

Call me a press-hating fascist wingnut, but I think that’s a big story. That’s a page one, lead for a week, cover-of-Time-and-Newsweek story. Why the hell are you whining yourselves hoarse about how long it took the White House press corps to learn about a minor hunting accident?

Posted by Paul at 10:11 PM | Permalink

I may have to quit reading Mark Steyn. He’s coming ever closer to making me pee my pants:

So anyway David Gregory’s going bananas and yelling “I will yell!” and “Don’t be a jerk!” at the White House press secretary, and there’s more smoke coming out of his ears than from Ronald McDonald in Lahore, and I’m thinking, you know, maybe Karl’s latest range of Rovebots that he planted in American media corporations are just a wee bit too parodically self-absorbed to be plausible. And then this lady pipes up and asks, “Would this be much more serious if the man had died?”

Well, maybe. And maybe it would be even ever so much more serious still if, after peppering him with birdshot, Cheney had dragged him into a safe house in the Sunni Triangle and decapitated him with a rusty scimitar while shouting “Allahu Ahkbar!” and then sold the video to al-Jazeera.

Fortunately, the Washington Post had that wise old bird David Ignatius to put it in the proper historical context: “This incident,” he mused, “reminds me a bit of Sen. Edward Kennedy’s delay in informing Massachusetts authorities about his role in the fatal automobile accident at Chappaquiddick in 1969.”

Hmm. Let’s see. On the one hand, the guy leaves the gal at the bottom of the river struggling for breath pressed up against the window in some small air pocket while he pulls himself out of the briny, staggers home, sleeps it off and saunters in to inform the cops the following day that, oh yeah, there was some broad down there. And, on the other hand, the guy calls 911, has the other fellow taken to the hospital, lets the sheriff know promptly but neglects to fax David Gregory’s make-up girl!

Posted by Paul at 7:22 PM | Permalink

This, you may recall, is how the U.S. Supreme Court wants it:

LOS ANGELES — Violence erupted again between black and Hispanic inmates at the Southern California jail system where more than 100 inmates have been injured and two killed in a series of racially motivated brawls.

Six inmates were injured during Friday night’s fight at Pitchess Detention Center. Sheriff’s deputies took control by firing sting-ball grenades and “clear-out gas,” authorities said Saturday.

[…]

Sheriff’s officials will ask the district attorney’s office this week to file charges against 21 inmates allegedly involved in the violence, which first broke out Feb. 4. Some could face murder charges, authorities said

Whenever I read a story about prison violence, I think of Rodney Hulin. And when I think of Rodney, I think of the countless others like him who were damned by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Johnson v. Calfornia:

The Supreme Court ruled … that California must abandon its policy of assigning inmates to racially segregated cells for as long as 60 days when they arrive at new prisons — unless the state can prove it has no race-neutral way to prevent interracial violence.

A five-justice majority rejected the state’s contention that the court should defer to the judgment of the corrections officials who deemed the unwritten policy necessary to prevent members of race-based gangs from turning on one another in two-man cells. The state also argued that its policy affects members of all races equally. The court said California’s policy must withstand the same “strict scrutiny” as all other racial classifications.

Is it nice, your honors, to live in the rarefied world you inhabit?

For candor and rationality, we must turn as usual to Justice Thomas:

Time and again, even when faced with constitutional rights no less “fundamental” than the right to be free from state-sponsored racial discrimination, we have deferred to the reasonable judgments of officials experienced in running this Nation’s prisons. There is good reason for such deference in this case. California oversees roughly 160,000 inmates, in prisons that have been a breeding ground for some of the most violent prison gangs in America — all of them organized along racial lines. In that atmosphere, California racially segregates a portion of its inmates, in a part of its prisons, for brief periods of up to 60 days, until the State can arrange permanent housing. The majority is concerned with sparing inmates the indignity and stigma of racial discrimination. California is concerned with their safety and saving their lives. (Link)

Posted by Paul at 7:06 PM | Permalink

Have Republicans shot $1.2 trillion straight to hell?

Ponder it:

Older voters, a critical component of Republican Congressional victories for more than a decade, could end up being a major vulnerability for the party in this year’s midterm elections, according to strategists in both parties. Paradoxically, one reason is the new Medicare drug benefit, which was intended to cement their loyalty.

[…]

Many Republicans say they still believe that the drug program, by this fall, will be a net political advantage with millions of retired voters. But they acknowledge problems, including low-income people who fell between the cracks in the transition; the difficulties reported by many pharmacists in determining eligibility; and the general struggle of millions of retirees faced with a choice among 40 or more private drug plans, with different rules, lists of covered drugs and premiums.

[…]

… a new nationwide poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health research group, found that retirees were almost twice as likely to say they viewed the benefit unfavorably (45 percent) as favorably (23 percent).

Posted by Paul at 12:16 AM | Permalink

You can now get this blog’s feed delivered to your inbox.

See the sidebar to the right? Look near the top of it and you’ll find where it says “Enter your e-mail.” Do that and then hit “Subscribe me!” You’ll be taken to a confirmation page and two clicks later you’ll have a subscription with home delivery.

Okay, so it’s not really TimesSelect. But it’s not really $49.95 a year either.

Posted by Paul at 11:27 PM | Permalink

I’ve stayed loyal to Mr. Bush because he’s shown gumption in the fight against terrorism — which is to say in the fight for our lives and our way of life — and because, save for the Miers debacle, he’s kept his word to make high-quality, right-leaning judicial appointments, something I and many conservatives care a lot about.

But I think it’s now clear to all conservatives, except maybe for the Bush Bots, that not only is Mr. Bush not one of us — he’s a populist — he’s also done incalculable damage to our values and to the prospects of solidifying a Republican majority. If not for the Democrats’ lunacy, Mr. Bush’s GOP would be on the verge of a devastating rebuke from the voters, fueled in part by conservatives walking away in disgust. (As Jonathan Rauch puts it, “If the Democrats ever manage to revive their brand, watch out.”)

Posted by Paul at 5:02 PM | Permalink

See first instance of the return in the post below.

Do you like it, Jim? :)

Posted by Paul at 2:01 PM | Permalink

I’m pretty sure angry, conspiracy-minded leftists should not even handle guns. And I’m certain they should not conduct ballistics testing.

I was going to settle in and deconstruct this moonbat video, which purports to show a cover-up in the Cheney shooting. But I don’t have to. Dan Riehl has already done it.

By the way, the video comes from the same dude who claims that, as part of the Government’s high-tech plans to surveil you, your $20 bills will explode if you microwave them.

(Thanks to Pundit Guy.)

Posted by Paul at 1:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Jacob Sullum:

Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson wants to dispel “inaccuracies and stereotypes” about use of eminent domain for economic development, a practice the U.S. Supreme Court upheld in last year’s notorious Kelo v. New London decision.

Last fall Mr. Peterson told a Senate subcommittee that when the government threatens to condemn people’s property because it thinks someone else can make better use of it, “a majority of the time, most people agree to sell.”

Interesting. Given the choice between selling and fighting an expensive legal battle they will almost certainly lose, after which they will have to give up their land anyway, probably on less advantageous terms, most people “agree” to sell.

“Cities use eminent domain most often as a negotiating tool with property owners,” explained Mr. Peterson, speaking for the National League of Cities. “Just having the tool available makes it possible to negotiate with landowners.” Sure it does — in the same way having a gun available makes it possible for a bank robber to negotiate with a bank teller. (Link)

Posted by Paul at 10:30 AM | Permalink

I put the odds at 1 in 2 that a black American is on the Republican ticket in 2008.

Posted by Paul at 10:02 AM | Permalink

Relief:

Gasoline prices have slipped lower than $2 in a few places in a harbinger of lower prices nationwide.

The nationwide average has dropped to $2.269, down half a penny overnight, travel organization AAA said Thursday. Scattered stations already have posted prices starting with “1” rather than “2.” Users of a fuel-price website Thursday reported $1.96 gasoline near Minneapolis, for instance.

Averages in a number of metropolitan areas are likely to fall to less than $2, perhaps as soon as today. Corpus Christi, Texas, averaged $2.006, and several other metro areas were just a few cents more.

Posted by Paul at 6:00 PM | Permalink

So ya’ll already know I’m a big fan of the RSS reader FeedDemon. But I’m now more impressed with it than ever. Available in beta version, FeedDemon 2.0 is out, and folks, the thing is smokin’. We’re talking ass-on-fire fast. And it comes with a new interface that’s simple and clean.

Download it.

Posted by Paul at 4:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Reuters:

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court said on Friday it would hear arguments again on whether free-speech rights protect government whistle-blowers who claim retaliation for trying to expose possible misconduct at work.

The court gave no explanation why the case would be argued again, but with the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor the court could be deadlocked by a 4-4 vote, and new Justice Samuel Alito, a conservative, may be needed to break the tie.

Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog has the backstory:

The Garcetti case tests whether the First Amendment protects comments that public employees make in the course of performing their regular duties. It involves Richard Ceballos, a deputy prosecutor in Los Angeles County who wrote a memo to his superiors blowing the whistle on a flawed search warrant. He was taken off the prosecution team in the case, and transferred to a less desirable office; he contended this was in retaliation for his exercise of free speech rights.

The lead prosecutor at the time, Gil Carcetti, contended that, since the comments were made during the deputy’s normal duties, they should not be entitled to First Amendment protection under prior public employee speech precedents. The Ninth Circuit Court rejected that argument, finding that Ceballos’ comments were protected against retaliation.

The Court heard argument in the case early in the Term — on Oct. 12. The decision to order it re-argued may mean that the Court was closely divided as it deliberated on it, and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s departure in retirement had left the Court facing the prospect of a 4-4 split.

In any case heard but not yet decided while Justice O’Connor was still sitting, the Court could order reargument if the vote is tied. According to the Associated Press, roughly twenty cases were heard and not resolved before her retirement, but Garcetti is so far the only case to have been set for reargument.

What a head trip it must be for a new justice to have the U.S. Supreme Court rehear a case so that he can say what the law is!

By the way, what happens if the Court hears a case but one justice recuses himself and the remaining justices are equally divided? Answer below the jump.

The judgment under review stands.

Posted by Paul at 2:21 PM | Permalink

Charles Krauthammer on the Cheney affair:

Secrecy? This was hardly an affair of state. And it was hardly going to be kept secret. Arrogance? The media laying these charges are the same media that just last week unilaterally decided that the public’s right to know did not extend to seeing cartoons that had aroused half the world, burned a small part of it and deeply affected the American national interest. Having arrogated to themselves the judgment of what a free people should be allowed to see regarding an issue that is literally burning, they then go ballistic over a few hours’ delay in revealing an accident with only the most trivial connection to the nation’s interest or purpose. (Link)

I can’t think of any other episode, not even CBS Memogate, when the big media outlets have been as loathsome as they were this week. They reached a new high in low, and demonstrated conclusively that their judgment is untrustworthy.

Posted by Paul at 1:20 PM | Permalink

Pathology:

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A Pakistani cleric announced Friday a $1 million bounty for killing a cartoonist who drew Prophet Muhammad, as thousands joined street protests and Denmark temporarily closed its embassy and advised its citizens to leave the country.

Posted by Paul at 12:56 PM | Permalink

Amazing:

A Hawaii surgeon is being sued for malpractice after he intentionally inserted a sawed-off screwdriver instead of a titanium rod into a man’s back.

Robert Ricketson said he had no choice but to implant the screwdriver into the back of Arturo Iturralde, then 73. He said he did not have the titanium rods needed to complete the operation properly.

“I didn’t feel I could risk keeping him under anesthetic with an unstable spine for two more hours,” Ricketson, who is representing himself, told the jury during his opening statement this week. “There on the back table was a sterile, stainless-steel screwdriver the same diameter as the rods I intended to use.”

The screwdriver piece snapped days after the January 2001 surgery, and Iturralde underwent three additional surgeries to insert the proper titanium rods and to repair other complications. However, Iturralde was rendered a paraplegic and died two years later.

Ricketson was busted by the surgical nurses, who “retrieved [pieces of the screwdriver] from the trash and took them to a lawyer.”

Can you even imagine what joy must have filled that lawyer’s heart? After all, how often do OR nurses walk into his office bearing gifts?

I’m surprised Ricketson even took the case to trial, especially in light of this:

Iturralde’s family learned that before the botched surgery, Ricketson’s medical license had been suspended in Oklahoma and revoked in Texas, following a string of malpractice lawsuits and treatment for a narcotics addiction. He had also admitted to writing fake prescriptions to get drugs.

As I often remind my younger nursing colleagues, half of all doctors graduated in the bottom half of their class.

Posted by Paul at 12:46 PM | Permalink

This is hardly a surprise:

SARITA, Texas — The sheriff’s department closed its investigation Thursday into Dick Cheney’s accidental shooting of a hunting partner and said no charges will be filed.

The Kenedy County Sheriff’s Department issued a report that supports Cheney’s account of the weekend accident that wounded 78-year-old lawyer Harry Whittington. Whittington, interviewed in the hospital, also assured investigators no one was drinking at the time and everyone was wearing bright orange safety gear.

Sheriff’s dispatcher Diana Mata, speaking for the department, said the case is closed and no charges will be filed. She said Sheriff Ramon Salinas III, a Democrat, would have no comment on the report.

Well of course there aren’t going to be any charges. It was an accident, one that teaches yet another lesson about the rules of firearms safety. But that’s the end of it. There’s nothing here to warrant days of wall-to-wall national media coverage.

If you needed further proof that legacy media cannot be trusted to exercise sound judgment, this episode provides it. For the better part of a week now, the professionals have told you that a garden variety hunting accident was the most important story facing the Nation. Remember that whenever you read the headlines, will you?

Meanwhile, this from a true Texan:

Whittington said the shooting “was just an accident,” and he was concerned all the media attention would give hunting in Texas a bad image …

Posted by Paul at 5:14 PM | Permalink

Good grief! The media are showing their asses over the Cheney shooting “story,” aren’t they? It’s an orgy of self-indulgence.

When the vice president of the United States shoots someone, even accidentally, it surely merits a report. But as I write, this “story,” now three days old, is the lead at CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times. See for yourself:

Are we really supposed to believe this is the most important thing going on in the country?

And the big media outlets wonder why they have the credibility of used car salesmen…

Posted by Paul at 9:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Bloviation:

People who believe the Constitution would break if it didn’t change with society are “idiots,” U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says.

In a speech Monday sponsored by the conservative Federalist Society, Scalia defended his long-held belief in sticking to the plain text of the Constitution “as it was originally written and intended.”

“Scalia does have a philosophy, it’s called originalism,” he said. “That’s what prevents him from doing the things he would like to do,” he told more than 100 politicians and lawyers from this U.S. island territory.

According to his judicial philosophy, he said, there can be no room for personal, political or religious beliefs.

Scalia criticized those who believe in what he called the “living Constitution.”

“That’s the argument of flexibility and it goes something like this: The Constitution is over 200 years old and societies change. It has to change with society, like a living organism, or it will become brittle and break.”

“But you would have to be an idiot to believe that,” Scalia said. “The Constitution is not a living organism, it is a legal document. It says something and doesn’t say other things.”

Oh, get off it!

Whatever you think of originalism — agree with it, disagree with it, have no opinion of it — if you at least understand it, you know that Justice Scalia is not a faithful originalist. Indeed, you might be tempted to conclude that Justice Scalia is a hypocrite, willing to abandon his originalist principles when they inconvenience the result he seeks.

Gonzales v. Raich, commonly known as the medical marijuana case, presented the question whether the Commerce Clause empowers Congress to prohibit the intrastate cultivation and use of marijuana for medicinal reasons, as authorized by California statute. Whatever your view of medical marijuana, the originalist answer to the question with which the Court was confronted is clear. Congress may do no such thing. Justice Thomas explains:

Even the majority does not argue that respondents’ conduct is itself “Commerce among the several States.” Art. I, §8, cl. 3. Ante, at 19. Monson and Raich neither buy nor sell the marijuana that they consume. They cultivate their cannabis entirely in the State of California — it never crosses state lines, much less as part of a commercial transaction. Certainly no evidence from the founding suggests that “commerce” included the mere possession of a good or some purely personal activity that did not involve trade or exchange for value. In the early days of the Republic, it would have been unthinkable that Congress could prohibit the local cultivation, possession, and consumption of marijuana.

In a 6-3 vote, with Justice Scalia in the majority, the Court held that Congress could prohibit the local cultivation and use of marijuana. Perhaps you agree with the Court’s decision. But it’s not an originalist decision.

So what happened to Justice Scalia? Why did he go off the rails in Raich? I can’t prove anything, but here’s what I surmise. Justice Scalia is a socially conservative Roman Catholic. He doesn’t approve of drug use, even when its for medicinal reasons. In other words, he agreed with Congress and disagreed with the people of California. And because a principled application of originalism would have compelled him to put Congress in its place, and let the “pot heads” of California win, he just ignored his own principles. It suited him to do so.

Do you know what we call judges who allow their personal views to determine the outcome of a case? We call them activists.

Please, Justice Scalia: shut it.

Posted by Paul at 10:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)