Rush Limbaugh has had his conservative talk show renewed until 2016.
The Drudge Report notes that his “earnings now pace him ahead of the annual salaries for network news anchors: Katie Couric, Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer - combined!”
I think this tells us something, although I’m not exactly sure what.
We can only hope that what happens in England stays in England.
Why not just take a DNA sample of everyone that comes through the door and be done with it.
As could have been predicted, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on Heller that affirms that the US 2nd Amendment actually does mean that US citizens have an individual right to gun ownership has brought the “sky is falling crowd” out in force.
Toronto’s rabidly anti-gun Mayor David Miller took time out from closing gun clubs in his city to deplore the US decision.
A United States Supreme Court decision yesterday that struck down a handgun ban in Washington is bad news for Toronto, Mayor David Miller said.
“The easy supply of handguns in the U.S. leads directly to people being killed in Toronto,” he told reporters. “It’s that direct.”
He decried the U.S. court ruling, a 5-4 decision that confirmed the right to own guns for self-defence and hunting, as “very unfortunate.
“We have to redouble our efforts,” said the mayor, who launched an on-line petition in April calling on the federal government to ban handgun ownership in Canada.
Of course it is unlikely that the good mayor had any real insight into the background of the issue and gave no explanation as to how he thought the decision would impact on Toronto, but it did give him another opportunity to rant in public.
Of course Wendy Cukier President of Canada’s Coalition for Gun Control, surfaced as expected to warn of dire possible consequences from the decision, saying:
“While there are no legal implications for Canada, if the ruling leads to a relaxation of controls in the U. S., this could increase the flow of illegal guns to Canada.”
But mainly the shrill screams of doom and danger came from the usual suspects in the U.S.
Calling the US Supreme Court decision”misguided”, the Council of the District of Columbia discussed ways that they could minimize the effect of the decision on their current gun laws.
The city’s job was made more difficult by the court’s failure to provide any real clues as to what are permissible government restrictions on gun owners. As The Post’s Robert Barnes observed, the court raised as many questions as it answered in terms of what can be outlawed. Working in the District’s favor, though, are strong laws on the books that were seemingly untouched by the court’s ruling. For example, the District’s system of gun registration, which predates the 1976 ban on handguns, is among the strictest in the nation. Not only does it set requirements for who can own a gun, it also requires being fingerprinted, passing tests and completing an application certified by police. Council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large), whose public safety committee will hold a hearing Wednesday on the decision, rightly wonders whether ballistics tests or a reasonable waiting period might also be appropriate.
Chicago’s Mayor Richard Daley also reacted to the decision with a fine bit of rhetoric.
Daley called the ruling “very frightening” and vowed to vigorously fight any attempt to invalidate the city’s ban.
“Does this lead to everyone having a gun in our society?” Daley asked while speaking at a Navy Pier event. “If [the justices] think that’s the answer, then they’re greatly mistaken. Then why don’t we do away with the court system and go back to the Old West, you have a gun and I have a gun and we’ll settle it in the streets?”
As well as Chicago’s police chief.
Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis also criticized the decision. “From a law enforcement perspective, this will no doubt make a police officer’s job more challenging than it already is, particularly since a firearm is used in 75 percent of all murders committed in the city of Chicago,” Weis said.
From the Chief’s comments, obviously the City’s current gun laws aren’t keeping guns out of the hands of the criminal element. But then they’re probably working to keep them out of the hands of law-abiding citizens.
It was noted that there was a certain amount of hypocrisy in Daley’s position with the Mayor and other city officials being protected by armed bodyguards.
New York City’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg tried to put a more positive spin on the decision.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, whose advocacy against illegal gun trafficking has been a centerpiece of his political identity, responded cautiously to the Supreme Court’s ruling this morning that the United States Constitution protects an individual’s right to have a gun, not just the right of the states to maintain militias.
Trying to portray the ruling as largely theoretical, the mayor said the ruling would not jeopardize the work of his coalition, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, to advocate for stricter gun-control laws.
New York City had filed an amicus curiae brief in support of a 1976 District of Columbia law that made it practically impossible for an individual to legally possess a handgun in the District. However, the mayor declined to portray the Supreme Court decision as a defeat.
Dave Kopel disagrees.
Regarding gun carrying, Heller might, arguably, mean that New York City would have to follow a similar policy to Connecticut (and 39 other states): issue permits to carry a concealed handgun for lawful defense if the applicant is over 21, and passes a fingerprint-based background check and a safety class.
At the least, Heller indicates that gun carry licensing may not be “enforced in an arbitrary and capricious manner.” This is a problem for New York State’s carry licensing law, as Suzanne Novak detailed in a 1998 article in the Fordham Urban Law Journal. New York state law sets essentially no standards to guide local officials in deciding whether to issue carry permits.
The problem is acute in New York City. Celebrities, the ultra-wealthy, and the politically influential get carry permits. But many of the people who need them the most — such as stalking victims, or crime witnesses who have been threatened by the criminal’s friends — often do not. Even if New York City is not required to go as far as Connecticut, the City does need much less favoritism and much more objectivity in its administration of carry permits.
And then there was the Chicago Tribune editorial calling for the 2nd Amendment to be repealed.
But amid all of the hysteria and the cries of doom and gloom from the anti-gun crowd and the accusations of right wing activism on the part of the Court, Glenn Reynolds over at Instapundit noted the following:
I’M WRITING A SHORT PIECE ON HELLER FOR NORTHWESTERN, and something became clear to me as soon as I started writing: What’s most striking about Heller is that absolutely everybody — majority and dissents — says the Second Amendment protects an individual right.
It’s true that the dissenters’ view of that right is somewhere between “minimalist” (to be charitable) and “incoherent” (to be accurate). But nonetheless, all nine Justices specifically said the right is individual, and thus rejected the “collective right” position on the Second Amendment, a position that’s been the mainstay of gun-control groups, newspaper editorialists, and lower federal courts for decades, and one that was presented by those adherents as so obviously correct that those arguing for an individual right were called “frauds” and shills for the NRA.
Yet the collective right theory could not command a single vote on the Court when actually tested. It was, it seems, a paper tiger all along.
Regardless, the Heller decision is only the first step in a long legal process that will over many years and in many courts further define what the US Supreme Court has set into motion.
George Carlin died on June 22nd at the age of 71. I wasn’t going to blog on this, but this morning I heard part of his comedy rant on death while listening to NW NPR. I saw Carlin in Las Vegas a good many years ago and the bit I heard on the radio brought back just how funny the guy was.
So: George Carlin on death.
Just watching the US Women’s Open and Annika Sorenstam, playing in possibly her last Open and having a terrible final round, holes her 3rd shot into the par 5 18th for an eagle. Didn’t make a damned bit of difference to the outcome, but what an emotional and dramatic TV moment. It’s a golf shot that will be shown on TV sports clips for years to come.
Macleans Magazine has issued a press release regarding the Canadian Human Rights Commision’s dismissal of the complaint brought against it by the Canadian Islamic Congress.
The complaint was based on the accusation that MacLeans Magazine had published a number of Islamophobic articles most notably an excerpt from Mark Steyn’s book America Alone.
A complaint was originally filed with the Ontario Human Rights Commission which ruled that it did not have jurisdiction. However in doing so they summarily convicted MacLeans with their comments.
While freedom of expression must be recognized as a cornerstone of a functioning democracy, the Commission has serious concerns about the content of a number of articles concerning Muslims that have been published by Maclean’s magazine and other media outlets. This type of media coverage has been identified as contributing to Islamophobia and promoting societal intolerance towards Muslim, Arab and South Asian Canadians. The Commission recognizes and understands the serious harm that such writings cause, both to the targeted communities and society as a whole. And, while we all recognize and promote the inherent value of freedom of expression, it should also be possible to challenge any institution that contributes to the dissemination of destructive, xenophobic opinions.
A complaint was also filed with the BC Human Rights Tribunal which heard the case over a 5 day period beginning on June 2nd, 2008, which was live-blogged by columnist Andrew Coyne here, here, here, here, here and here.
A decision has yet to be rendered on this one.
I wonder if the Canadian HRC’s dismissal of the case is based on the realization that they may have bitten off more than they can chew. This case has drawn a great deal of unwanted publicity as to how arbitrary and one-sided their process is and they may rightfully be afraid that the government may be moved to reduce their power.
Which is exactly what the provincial and federal governments should do. Any government organization with the power to impact people’s lives to the extent that the HRCs can do, with the mantra that ‘truth is not a defence’, need to be severely curtailed.
Interestingly enough, I cannot find any reference on the Canadian Human Rights Commission’s website that refers to their dismissing the case against MacLeans. I’ll keep looking.
The U.S. Supreme Court issued their decision in the District of Columbia v Heller and in a 5 to 4 decision came down in favour of the individual right to own a firearm.
An article on Yahoo News reported:
In the majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia said the Second Amendment protected an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.
However, the reporter couldn’t resist putting a bit of negativity into the article, nothing which had any relevance to the decision.
The ruling came the day after a worker at a plastics plant in Henderson, Kentucky, used a handgun to shoot and kill five people inside the factory before killing himself, the latest in a series of deadly shooting sprees across the country.
The United States is estimated to have the world’s highest civilian gun ownership rate. Gun deaths average 80 a day in the United States, 34 of them homicides, according to Centers for Disease Control data.
But then it was ever thus.
Some cautions were noted over at the Volokh Conspiracy.
Although Justice Scalia’s majority opinion in Heller firmly establishes the Court’s recognition of an individual right to bear arms, it also lists a large number of “presumptively valid” firearms regulations, including “longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.” The opinion also recognizes the validity of “the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of “‘dangerous and unusual weapons.’” Many of these exceptions to the right to bear arms could potentially be used to swallow up the rule. Most obviously, “laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms” could easily be drafted in ways that make the purchase of firearms prohibitively difficult or expensive for most ordinary citizens. For example, Justice Scalia emphasizes that the right to bear arms is historically rooted in the right to self-defense. State and local governments could potentially enact laws requiring would-be gun purchasers to provide extensive and specific evidence that they really do need a firearm for self-defense before allowing them to purchase guns.
Actually, there is a lot of commentary on the Heller Decision over at the Volokh Conspiracy that is worth the read.
Dave Kopel has initial comments here.
You can bet your boots that lawyers working for anti-gun administrations are already burning the midnight oil looking for ways to subvert this decision.
On the positive side U.S. gun owners have received a powerful statement of their rights of ownership, but they haven’t seen the end to the battle. The courts will be busy in years to come.
I don’t know why this amused me, but it just did:
She’s a daddy’s girl.
But don’t think this year’s Miss Tennessee is a pushover.
Ellen Carrington, 21, who was crowned Miss Tennessee on Saturday night, has a concealed weapons permit.
“I have a Smith & Wesson .40-caliber,” Carrington told reporters on Sunday, “(with a) silver top and black body.”
A Jackson native and senior at Union University, Carrington decided to get the permit because she was spending a lot of time traveling to and from Nashville at night. She said spending time at shooting ranges with her father, Pat, helped create an even deeper bond between the two.
Kind of made me think of the movie Miss Congeniality.
Thanks to Instapundit for the pointer.
Lorrie Goldstein has written an excellent series of articles on global warming dissenters, which unfortunately no longer have links but his latest article lays out the politics of the issue.
First, Canadians care about this issue, passionately. I’ve never had as strong a response from readers as I’ve had to these columns in more than 20 years of column-writing.
Second, most politicians, regardless of party, don’t know what they’re talking about.
They don’t understand the theory of anthropogenic global warming, or what is known with confidence and what isn’t.
They don’t know the difference between the Earth’s natural greenhouse effect and man-made greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
They don’t realize the economic dislocation involved in moving from a carbon-based to a carbon-free economy.
Most care about the issue only in so far as it can help them get elected, which, given the implications and what’s at stake for ordinary citizens, is recklessly irresponsible.
Most politicians don’t know what the Kyoto accord says.
Read it all.
News today that Tiger Woods is going in for more surgery on his knee which ends his season for 2008. He also has a double stress fracture to his left tibia,
Things were much more serious than spectators and commentators realized during the U.S. Open, although Tiger was obviously in real pain. All of which makes his win at the 2008 U.S. Open all the more remarkable.
Woods has competed in 7 events this year has won 5 of those tournaments. However reports are that it is unlikely that he will be back in action before 2009.
Hopefully he will make a complete recovery and be able to return to top form.
