The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
Harold Ford, based on NRA grades, was never a gun owner’s best friend. But as a C rated candidate in Tennessee, that’s not nearly anti-gun enough for Manhattan. Via Dave Adams at @VSSA, we find out that Ford is now declaring that record to be not representative of his new views.
I remain committed to promoting gun safety and handgun control, and I look forward to working with Mayor Bloomberg and Newark Mayor Corey Booker and their coalition to reduce handgun violence in cities across America.
If you want a head start on decreasing the Democrat’s majority in 2010, I would suggest that folks consider taking part in the money bomb for Massachusetts State Senator Scott Brown. On guns, he’s been good on the issues as long as I was following the minutiae of the Bay State’s gun control debates.
I don’t want to completely get your hopes up about this race. If you opened a dictionary, this would be the definition of long shot.
BUT, for those you who paid attention to the Massachusetts political scene several years ago, remember that his current Senate seat was formerly held by Cheryl Jacques. Remember her? He won that seat in a special election against her staffer, Angus McQuilken. So remember that anything is possible. So if you have a few spare bucks in your wallet today, lend a hand to the long shot campaign today. Let’s make sure that we don’t lose it because of a lack of resources in the last few days.
They always say that when your neighbor loses his job, it’s a recession. When you lose your job, it’s a depression. Did you know that when Ted Turner loses his job, it’s a national disaster on par with the losses and devastation of war?
The Time Warner-AOL merger should pass into history like the Vietnam War and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It’s one of the biggest disasters that have occurred to our country.
I lost 80 percent of my worth and subsequently lost my job.
Ted Turner, who is the nation’s single largest landowner and still sits on about $2 billion, considers one job loss to be a national loss on par with Vietnam. You’d think with all of that wealth, he could afford some class and decency. People losing job after job, families losing homes, and soldiers giving up their lives for our freedom are absolutely nothing compared to Ted Turner’s personal bank account being worth a paltry $2 billion because of a bad business deal. For Ted Turner, the nation should mourn his investment losses the same way they mourn a fallen hometown boy who returned from a far away land in a box with a flag draped over it. I’d say old Ted lost a little context on life.
The courts have ruled that you’re allowed to have some rights. But just a few, so don’t get uppity. (One judge apparently says you have no protection from full searches just because you do hunt and fish.)
The California Court of Appeal for the Fourth District on Tuesday ruled that a state agency may not pull over and search a motorist on a mere hunch that a lobster might be hidden in the vehicle. The court considered the case of Bounh Maikhio, a motorist stopped by Department of Fish and Game Warden Erik Fleet on August 19, 2007 at 11pm. That evening, Fleet had been spying through a telescope on the Ocean Beach pier in San Diego when he saw Maikhio put something into his bag.
Fleet testified that he did not “necessarily” suspect Maikhio of a crime because he had no way of knowing whether the man had been fishing legitimately or not. Regardless, Fleet waited until Maikhio had driven away from the pier to stop him. While searching through his car. Fleet found Maikhio’s bag, which contained a spiny lobster. Maikhio was handcuffed and cited for lobster possession during closed season.
The case is of particular interest because California Attorney General Jerry Brown argued that a state warden has the right to stop any driver “without reasonable suspicion that he committed any crime.” Maikhio, in contrast, could not afford to hire an attorney and was represented by the public defender’s office which argued no such authority existed. The appeals court agreed, citing a 1944 attorney general’s ruling. The court argued that wardens could enforce the law without harassing motorists. …
The court went on to explain that because the warden had no individualized suspicion that Maikhio had been involved in criminal activity, the stop was just as unconstitutional as setting up a roadblock to search every passing vehicle for lobsters. …
Justice Patricia D. Benke disagreed, arguing that Constitutional protections do not apply to motorists who may also be hunters or fishermen.
“Because of the highly regulated nature of hunting and fishing and the consequent diminished expectation of privacy of hunters and fisherman, there is no requirement in our statutes or under the Constitution that a game warden believe that any crimes have been committed or that any game regulations have been violated before exercising his or her powers of inspection,” Benke wrote in her dissent.
Does that mean a game warden can go search Benke’s house without any suspicion she actually committed a crime? Well, they can’t thanks to the decision of her fellow judges, but by her own logic, that would seemingly be allowed.
Given that people seemed to like our Gun Nut Merry Christmas tree, I figured I’d post a few more photos snapped of it before the ornaments came off.
If you’ve followed the carry movement around the country, you all know that sometimes there are sometimes “issues” with what’s a public place, locations that are exempt from laws, and related matters. Turns out we’re not the only ones.
A decades-long dispute between Hare Krishnas and the Los Angeles International Airport over soliciting donations appears to be nearing a resolution, as the California Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday over whether the airport is a public place.
The International Society for Krishna Consciousness of California argues that the airport is much like a public park, and should therefore be open to solicitors.
California’s other major airports are supporting Los Angeles’ position that airports are private property. …
The Los Angeles City Council passed a law in 1997 prohibiting the receiving of donations at the city-owned airport.
As Tony Woodlief said: “… anyone who ever enjoyed ‘Airplane!’ kind of has to be rooting for them just a little.”
I’m rooting for them. Not because I want a flower, but because I find it hard to believe the argument that the entire airport property can be owned by the city and yet somehow private. It’s publicly owned, it’s a public place. Obviously, I would agree there can be restrictions such as the secure areas, and reasonable bans should be allowed. The city probably owns offices, but I don’t believe that it means we get to play frisbee with out dogs down the corridors of those offices. But having a higher burden of proving a restriction is reasonable is not a bad thing.
Since I’ve been reading briefs, I haven’t completed my normal rounds of blog visits today. So it was a bit of a startle to get an email trackback from Wyatt titled Requiem for a Friend. I immediately knew.
As Wyatt mentions, we met the Prof only once, but it was a good few hours of conversation & cheesesteaks. He was a great guy, and he will be missed.
This just cracks me up:
Record lows across South Florida are literally freezing the invasive iguana in its tracks. …
Scientists said these seemingly suicidal lizards are a result of South Florida’s record cold weather. Iguanas prefer temperatures in the 80s and 90s. With Wednesday morning’s temperatures at around 35 degrees, a handful of lifeless lizards hung from branches and fell to the ground.
While these iguanas appeared dead, experts said they are not. When temperatures drop below 40 degrees, iguanas go into a type of hibernation in which their bodies essentially turn off, only allowing the heart to pump blood. When the temperature rises above 40 degrees again, the iguanas are revived. …
While the lizards’ comatose state provides a perfect opportunity to reign in the invasive species, Magill had a warning.
“I knew of a gentleman who was collecting them off the street and throwing them in the back of his station wagon, and all of a sudden these things are coming alive, crawling on his back and almost caused a wreck,” Magill said.
In a surprise to no one, when Philadelphia can’t find money to hire police officers and needs to close fire houses, they did find money to make sure they were represented in a brief pleading that the Court doesn’t make them honor the Bill of Rights. In fact, Philadelphia couldn’t be satisfied having just the city’s name on the brief, they also made sure that they put their police department’s name on it, too.
Incorporation would result in an unwarranted intrusion by the Federal Government into a field that falls exclusively within the States’ police powers. The States have a paramount interest in protecting their citizens and property from loss of life, injury and damage occasioned by violence and breach of peace. Even if each individual enjoys the right to bear at least some sort of arms for self-defense, the exercise of that right carries with it the risk of violence and breach of peace, which the States naturally would want to minimize for the good of the community as a whole. (emphasis added)
Is anyone surprised by a city that won’t follow state laws or pay attention to the state constitution wants a pass on the federal limits on power, too? And for you uppity people who want the right to defend yourselves, well, they just need to make sure your rights are simply minimized.
Previously, 13 Representatives and both Senators from Pennsylvania signed on to the pro-McDonald Congressional brief. Only two members out of the other six of the Pennsylvania delegation have decided to formally stand on the wrong side of history.
It isn’t a shock that Congressmen Bob Brady (D, PA-01) and Chakah Fattah (D, PA-02) joined Carolyn McCarthy’s brief filed in favor of upholding Chicago’s gun ban. In it, the Congressmen made the bizarre arguments that federal restrictions on fully automatic firearms dating from the 1930s clearly show that the current handgun ban is constitutional. To further their “evidence,†they cite previous federal laws that merely acknowledge the existence of state firearms laws – such as those banning the use of firearms by violent felons – as reason to consider an outright ban to be legal. In fact, the entire premise of their brief seems to be that the existence of some laws that pertain to guns clearly means that gun bans are fine and dandy. They seem to forget the Court made clear inHeller that bans are not merely legally debatable restrictions. While I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on tv, I do have to wonder how any attorney could write that brief with a straight face.
The following Pennsylvania Representatives were too scared to take any side in the case:
I started to wonder if old Joe Sestak finally realized he was far too left-wing for Pennsylvania. Then I realized that he probably never saw the memo to sign up for McCarthy’s brief since he is campaigning full-time (literally).