Reading Comprehension Helps
Constitution, Second Amendment, self-defense and related issues
Now relegated to Blogblivion...Monday, July 24, 2006
Techno-Dork
Yeah.
Er, I killed a bunch of my e-mail, including a batch of stuff that didn’t get read. I switched computers and failed to tame the wild e-mail client. I tried to update and it got ugly. So if you’re thinking I’m being an even bigger asshole than usual because you didn’t hear from me...well, you’re right, just not in the way you were probably thinking. *sheepish grin*
I don’t have things squared away just yet but soon, soon, because I was smart enough to marry Mr. Computer Genius Guy. I impress myself like that sometimes.
I’m stepping away now before I make anything else disappear.
Sunday, June 04, 2006
We Don’t Need No Constitution, We All Prefer Thought Control
Via John Cole via Radley Balko, here is the latest case coming in a couple years to a Supreme Court near you. That should be completely unnecessary. It’s a cut and dried, cast in stone, no brainer case in which idiot California justices ruled 6-1 to castrate the Fourth Amendment.
Yup. Now if cops suspect you’ve been drinking and then driving, or can even pretend to suspect that, they can break and enter without a warrant, drag you from your bed, extract and test your blood.
Tell me the cops will never do this just because they can. Tell me they will only use it in hot-pursuit style, arriving at your house not long after you, having followed your sleepy drunken ass home from working late the bar.
Yeah, right.
So in a couple years we can look forward to the Supremes wisely correcting this clear Constitutional pillage, just as they did with Kelo.
Oh wait…
And hey, since I mentioned Kelo, let’s recap:
Kelo-related posts:
Will The Supremes And Bad Lawyering Perpetrate A Constitutional Travesty?
United States Constitution, 1788 - 2005: Promise Unkept
Bad Precedent
Additional Kelo Fallout Thoughts
Will the Money Be Followed?
Kelo and Raich: The Root of the Supreme Court Problem?
Olek V. New London Case
Kelo and "Fair" Value
Boycotting Can Be Hard
Becker and Posner on Kelo and Eminent Domain
Kelo, IOLTA and Drugs - Oh My
Sama on Kelo, Disney, and Boston's West End Tragedy
Was Kelo The Lost Battle That Won The War?
You Thought The Kelo Outcome Couldn't Be Worse?
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
I just love the sound of Steve Verdon ranting in the morning.
The topic this time? The destruction of playgrounds by the freaky safety nanny idiots. Steve and I don’t always agree (though this time we do!), but he can eviscerate a stupid argument with the best of them. Enjoy.
Thursday, April 20, 2006
But…but….but…
When the numbers don’t support your preconceived notions, the proper thing to do is assume your numbers are wrong:
The 2 percent decrease, reported by the National Center for Health Statistics, may be a surprise, because the American population is growing, aging and becoming fatter. Some experts said they suspected that the numbers might not hold up when a final report is released this year.
ROFL! “Some experts” are welcome to kiss my fat, healthy ass.
Major Decline in U.S. Deaths Is Recorded
Friday, July 15, 2005
More on mandatory health insurance
Thre’s a good back-and forth developing in the comments on this post about forcing people to buy health insurance. Steve has also posted a follow-up expanding his argument a bit. He seems convinced that since some of us disagree with him, we must not have understood his post. Or perhaps I’m not understanding this one?
In any case, the elaboration is helpful. And believe it or not, I read the whole entire thing!
Thursday, July 14, 2005
Damned stupid, irresponsible, non-rich people!
Looks like Steve Verdon and Mitt Romney think alike. All those damned irresponsible people who don’t buy health insurance need to be dealt with:
Believe it or not there are people out there who don’t buy health insurance on purpose. I think we should basically make such behavior punishable (yes, as in, “I’m sorry, you are just too stupid on this decision so the act of making a decision has been taken away. Now, pick your health insurance or we’ll get really nasty.")
After this baby comes, our health insurance bill every month will be more than our rent. And we don’t exactly live somewhere cheap. (N.B.--That’s without prescription coverage.) A couple grand a year that we likely won’t even qualify for isn’t going to help. Jay recently figured that our total healthcare expenses for the year will run over $11,000. You’ve got to make a hell of a lot of money before that becomes manageable. It’s insane to tell people that a significant percentage of their income just went “poof!” because you deem their choice of how to spend it *stupid*.
And you know, I object philosophically to the gubmint setting people’s spending priorities for them. To some extent they already do, since you have to pay your taxes before anything else or you can wind up in a pretty unpleasant situation. But the solution to the failure of one government program is rarely to institute another one, and that’s what this crazy-ass scheme does.
I also really hate to see anything that discourages self-employment and business creation, and you bet your sweet ass if it becomes a criminal matter not to carry insurance, and individual coverage continues to cost what it does, people like us are going to have to shut down the shop and go to work for the man. Going out on your own will be far too risky if another 10 or 15 percent or more of your income is dedicated to what the government says you must spend it on. That money might be the difference between getting off the ground or not, and it is not *stupid* to take the risk of getting sick in that time and use the money elsewhere. If you’re terrified that someone else might wind up paying, then make it impossible not to pay medical bills the way it’s impossible not to pay your tax bill or your student loans. But leave people the choice.
You know, I’m going to stop, because I could go on about this all fucking day. It’s wrong on a lot of levels, but I take it really personally because I live down here in the part of reality where living without insurance is an option that has to be considered. When it’s that or giving up a business that you’ve poured years of your life into, it doesn’t seem that bad. When it’s that or not paying the heating bill, it seems even better. And you’d better bet that if it ever gets between food and my babies’ mouths, I’ll tell anybody who tells me that I have a moral obligation to society to pay my health insurance bill first to go do something anatomically impossible with themselves.
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
For all of those who think we’re idiots to move right now, I offer this:
I just looked out my kitchen window, because I saw Creepy Guy (formerly known as Tinpot Redneck) pull up in his truck and I could hear him creeping around in the yard and I was a bit curious about what he needed to be over here at quarter after nine on a Tuesday night for, and discovered Creepy Guy staring right in the window at me.
*shivers*
I. Cannot. Move. Fast. Enough.
Anybody who has a problem with that can kiss my fat white ass.
Seriously.
There is absolutely no scenario in which it makes sense for the maintenence guy to be staring in my kitchen window. No scenario. Completely un-fucking-acceptable.
Period.
Friday, June 24, 2005
Kelo and Raich: The Root of the Supreme Court Problem?
I’ve so far made four posts on the topic of Kelo V. New London, and four updates to boot. They were:
United States Constitution, 1788 - 2005: Promise Unkept
Bad Precedent
Additional Kelo Fallout Thoughts
Will the Money Be Followed?
Well, five, if you count my being inspired about a Constitutional Convention and toying with the idea of snagging the relevant domain.
This is another such post regarding, or at least inspired by, the Kelo decision. It will not be the last, or even the last today. If the topic bores you, feel free to skip these, but it really should interest galvanize everyone, the caveat provided by Justice Kennedy notwithstanding.
Anyway, I mentioned, in an IANAL (nor do I play one on TV) sort of way, the bizarre practice the Supremes have followed in allowing bad precedent to build on bad precedent, with nary a nod to the “source code” in the Constitution.
As it turns out, Skip Oliva just recently posted about the problem of what is known as stare decisis; “the longstanding policy of common law courts to adhere to precedent irrespective of its merits.”
His post, at Mises Economics Blog, was inspired by Raich, which relied similarly to the later Kelo decision on bad precedent, rather than actual Constitutionality. As he told me yesterday:
Today’s Kelo decision only accentuates the need to deal with the problem of “stare decisis.”
I wanted to give this a proper post, rather than a quick link, so I delayed it until today.
This is not only not a new issue, it is downright ancient, and was in the thoughts of the founding fathers. He quotes at lenth from Thomas Paine, in small part:
Government by precedent, without any regard to the principle of the precedent, is one of the vilest systems that can be set up. In numerous instances, the precedent ought to operate as a warning, and not as an example, and requires to be shunned instead of imitated; but instead of this, precedents are taken in the lump, and put at once for constitution and for law.
Either the doctrine of precedents is policy to keep a man in a state of ignorance, or it is a practical confession that wisdom degenerates in governments as governments increase in age, and can only hobble along by the stilts and crutches of precedents. How is it that the same persons who would proudly be thought wiser than their predecessors, appear at the same time only as the ghosts of departed wisdom? How strangely is antiquity treated! To some purposes it is spoken of as the times of darkness and ignorance, and to answer others, it is put for the light of the world.
It’s an excellent post, and an excellent point being made. It concludes, remember pre-Kelo, with respect mainly to Raich at the time:
There is also the question, under a doctrine of precedents, whether even the Supreme Court can overrule its prior decisions. A number of justices have maintained over the years that after a certain period of time, an erroneous decision must be respected by the Court to prevent a loss of public confidence in the judiciary. This was the majority’s justification for reaffirming Roe v. Wade in 1992.
When faced with a decision as constitutionally baseless as Raich, the lower courts should make every effort to expose the flaws in the Supreme Court’s reasoning and precedents. Such behavior will no doubt be condemned as “judicial activism� by conservatives (and many leftists), but that is a false argument. True judicial activism occurs when a court exercises jurisdiction in a case without proper constitutional or statutory authority. That was the basic lesson of Marbury v. Madison. Similarly, a commitment to judicial restraint requires the federal courts to dismiss as unconstitutional any federal prosecution of a person accused of illegally growing marijuana for medicinal purposes, yesterday’s Supreme Court decision to the contrary notwithstanding.
Yet oh so applicable in either case, and beyond.
It makes sense that precedent was a known problem at the time of the Revolution. English common law was all about precedent. Whatever inspiration we may have drawn from it, this is the United States, not the United Kingdom.
Perhaps the Court forgetting who and what we are is the root of the problem.
Kelo-related posts:
Will The Supremes And Bad Lawyering Perpetrate A Constitutional Travesty?
United States Constitution, 1788 - 2005: Promise Unkept
Bad Precedent
Additional Kelo Fallout Thoughts
Will the Money Be Followed?
Kelo and Raich: The Root of the Supreme Court Problem?
Olek V. New London Case
Kelo and "Fair" Value
Boycotting Can Be Hard
Becker and Posner on Kelo and Eminent Domain
Kelo, IOLTA and Drugs - Oh My
Sama on Kelo, Disney, and Boston's West End Tragedy
Was Kelo The Lost Battle That Won The War?
You Thought The Kelo Outcome Couldn't Be Worse?
Friday, May 13, 2005
A Challenge
Ian Hamet seems to be back from his stint in the circus, and has returned with a bang. He has a challenge regarding the following text:
A well regulated Intelligentsia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and read Books, shall not be infringed.
Go check it out and respond if you will.
Friday, April 15, 2005
Rename Mount Diablo?
I sure hope not. I hate renaming things that got saddled with bothersome monikers.
Here’s the rationale:
“Words have power, and when you start mentioning words that come from the dark side, evil thrives,” Mijares told the Contra Costa Times. “When I take boys camping on the mountain, I don’t even like to say its name. I have to explain what the name means. Why should we have a main feature of our community that celebrates the devil?”
Celebrates?
Sigh.
Friday, March 11, 2005
McCain’s Gonna Love This
Via Kevin, there is now an Online Coalition site, representing bloggers of all political stripes, in an effort to keep the internet a zone in which the First Amendment still actually applies.
I’m the only signer of the petition from Massachusetts so far. Care to join me? Whatever state you’re from, it’s important to keep the modern day pamphleteers and partisan agitators at least as free as they were in colonial days.
See Kevin’s post for more details, or just go read the coalition page.
Friday, February 25, 2005
Will The Supremes And Bad Lawyering Perpetrate A Constitutional Travesty?
The Kelo attorney has absolutely no chance as long as even he claims Berman was a correct ruling. It was a different court. It was a different time.
If one Court could never bring itself to find that a previous Court had its head up its ass - segregation anyone? - we’d be in big trouble.
Then again, we’re in big trouble anyway. The Court is acting as The Government in this case, naturally siding with The Government. They just don’t get it.
The attorney starts out okay:
Scott G. Bullock represents the homeowners, and his first words to the court strike terror in the heart of anyone who looks into their backyard and sees the ghostly outline of the Target housewares section looming over the trees: “Every home, church, and corner store would produce more tax revenue if it was turned into a shopping mall,” he says. There can be no limit to what the state can condemn if the only requirement is that the proposed project improve the tax base.
Exactly. They are effectively going to allow any taking for any reason at any time from anyone. Oh, it may sound like there has to be a good reason, but we all know how these things go. And once this Court decides the 5th Amendment is void in that respect, how many decades before anyone has the gumption to revisit it before a new nine?
Then a scary exchange that makes one wonder why these people are Justices:
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg points out that the city is depressed; what’s wrong with efforts to “build it up and get more jobs?” Bullock says the condemned land in Berman was “blighted,” but this land is merely depressed. O’Connor, never one to tip her hand too early at argument, asks Bullock “What standard should we use to second-guess the legislature?” Bullock insists that once condemned land is passed off to private developers, it’s no longer going to “public use.” Justice Anthony Kennedy interrupts to observe that “everybody knew private developers were the beneficiaries” when slums were condemned in Berman.
Berman was wrong. There is no government right to take property for that reason. It doesn’t exist. A previous Court having said it does only hands the state a license to bring out the guns and violate the Constitution with impunity. It’s just one more “anybody who can read and doesn’t believe a vested interest in state power give a wink and a nod to creeping (soon to be galloping, at this rate) statism could come up with the correct ruling” decision.
Bullock, by supporting the erroneous Berman decision, undermines his own argument. What is “blighted”? Who decides? He has rendered the argument against private developers being the beneficiaries moot by supporting the Berman decision and treating Kelo as different.
Ginsburg’s question may be diabolical advocacy, but otherwise it makes her sound like any idiot off the street who will say “there otta be a law” in response to anything that sounds good to them, regardless of the larger consequences or Constitutional issues.
O’Connor is worried about second-guessing the legislature? Oh please. That’s the job of the Court. If other branches or levels of government step on the Constitution, stopping it is what the Court is there to do. If they aren’t violating anything, fine, of course you don’t second-guess anyone.
It’s a fascinating read, but it’s true that the outcome does not sound promising. It will become entirely a matter of sufficient localized political pressure on a case by case basis to prevent eminent domain abuses.
Or perhaps a new Amendment that is more specific. Apaprently the founders were too vague to prevent a sick statist impulse from taking hold. If you thought the Second Amendment was the only one suffering from lack of reading comprehension, the popular impulse to exert control on the each other, and educational institutions designed to keep people from realizing what’s being lost as the grip tightens, you were mistaken.
Kelo-related posts:
Will The Supremes And Bad Lawyering Perpetrate A Constitutional Travesty?
United States Constitution, 1788 - 2005: Promise Unkept
Bad Precedent
Additional Kelo Fallout Thoughts
Will the Money Be Followed?
Kelo and Raich: The Root of the Supreme Court Problem?
Olek V. New London Case
Kelo and "Fair" Value
Boycotting Can Be Hard
Becker and Posner on Kelo and Eminent Domain
Kelo, IOLTA and Drugs - Oh My
Sama on Kelo, Disney, and Boston's West End Tragedy
Was Kelo The Lost Battle That Won The War?
You Thought The Kelo Outcome Couldn't Be Worse?
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Will The Court Right Property Wrongs?
Via James Joyner, the Supremes are coming up on the case of government theft of private property for the purpose of turning it into different private property and increasing tax revenues.
I barely accept that eminent domain has any valid place in our government and sociaty as it exists, never mind how it more ideally ought to be. I’ve come to live with the idea of it being used for things like road construction.
That despite my initial horror as a child when I first learned that eminent domain existed; the earliest autonomic libertarian impulse I can expressly recall.
If the Supremes rule in favor of the wrongful taking, which I see no legal or moral basis for them to do, then this country is in rougher shape than I might have imagined.
Then again, there was no valid, conscionable reason for the 1954 ruling that let them bulldoze “blighted” areas either. To paraphrase Palpatine, “there is no property, only politics.”
I am also in the school of “if a regulation reduces the value of your property, it’s a recompensable taking” thought. If you buy some land and it has restricted use, that will be reflected in the price. No harm done. If you buy some land, then the use becomes restricted, you’re the one who takes the hit to the value if you want to sell it. You should get the difference, just as much as you should get at least the market value of the property if it is all taken. But I digress.
Thursday, February 03, 2005
Actually…
You know, I was just looking at the temporary version again here, and I think I will go back and have my license fixed. They’ve got my birthday wrong, too. In addition to my height and my middle inital. Sheesh. This after requiring four forms of identification...not to mention that I know I filled out the form right.
*primal scream*
Adventures in Registration
Perhaps if I have a chance later I’ll give y’all the whole rundown, because it really is funny. And the best part is that after I got home, Jay pointed out that they *still* had my middle initial wrong.
I’m leaving it as is. After all, I’m crazy, not insane. 
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
Ranty Rant
Acidman is right. This is scary. How can any family let their children get past the age of, say, twelve, without a working knowledge and appreciation of the First Amendment?
This is what we get for allowing the government to be involved in education. At all. Perhaps Horace Mann ought to start appearing on those lists people come up with now and then of people who did the most to ruin the country.
One of the best ways to bring out the libertarian in me is to pine for more spending, especially federal spending, on education, so the communist teachers union can waste even more to undereducate, indoctrinate, and fail to challenge our kids to think like the rational beings they start out as before being shipped off to government brain sausage factories. The foolish think they want more and more of that. The irresponsible are relieved they can step back from their kid’s lives. The controllingly clever know exactly the why and what of public education, better still accompanied by increasing federal bucks and mandates, and happily use the foolish and irresponsible to ensure things get worse and worse.
Augh.
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Lies, damned lies, and twisted interpretations.
Believe it or not, I’ve actually seen people argue that the US infant mortality rate is evidence of *too much* medicine, and that the reason that rates are lower in some suprising places is that because without doctors intervening in the natural processes of pregnancy and childbirth things go better.
Gotta say that I’m with the Coyote and Captain Ed on this one...there are several factors inflating statistics for the U.S. relative to other countries, and none of them are that capitalist doctors are evil people who kill babies with their degrees and their monitors and their big scary knives.
You know, this one gets my back up more than most. Might have something to do with the fact that if I had waited for a natural labor and a vaginal delivery, my daughter probably wouldn’t be here and I might not be, either. Probably has more to do with the irritation I’m wont to feel at the crazy fuckers who think everything was better in the Olden Days or the Way Nature Does It. Go look up how many women used to die in childbirth. Go take a look at the infant mortality statistics from a hundred years ago. Look at the percentage of children who survived to their fifth birthday. Then do whatever the fuck you want, because that’s your right. But don’t you dare say one word to me about having my baby in a hospital, attended by a doctor or doctors. Don’t give me that “vaccines cause autism” crap, and don’t try to convince me to feed my kid organic apple juice. M’kay?
Senility Or Worse On The Bench
We have this thing, it’s called the Constitution, and it has, you know, rules and limits on the government. Like unreasonable search and siezure being unacceptable, and a certain implicit expectation of privacy associated with those limits.
The court was aware of this when they ruled that authorities could not point see-inside devices, such as infrared detectors, at your house and gather valid evidence of anything.
The court somehow lost its collective mind in the interim, or in similar yet contrary prior rulings that they base this new one on, so now it is “legal” for drug sniffing dogs to check out your car at any old traffic stop or whatever other non-reason inspires the jackbooted thugs authorities in question.
Come on, “justices.” The war on drugs is hopelessly wrong. Why encourage it by trashing the very thing you are supposed to have the reading comprehension to uphold?