California Conservative

The Supreme Court finally delivered a sane ruling in striking down D.C.’s gun ban. As you’d expect, the majority and dissenting opinions were like a night and day difference. Here’s a sample of Justice Scalia’s brilliance:

1. Operative Clause.
a. “Right of the People.” The first salient feature of the operative clause is that it codifies a “right of the people.” The unamended Constitution and the Bill of Rights use the phrase “right of the people” two other times, in the First Amendment’s Assembly-and-Petition Clause and in the Fourth Amendment’s Search-and-Seizure Clause. The Ninth Amendment uses very similar terminology (“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people”). All three of these instances unambiguously refer to individual rights, not “collective” rights, or rights that may be exercised only through participation in some corporate body.

What Justice Scalia is saying is that simple English shouldn’t be mangled to the point that a former president asks what the meaning of the word is is. Justice Scalia said that the meaning of the Second Amendment is clear when you look at other examples in the Constitution. (more…)

When the final analysis is written about this year’s Democratic nominating process, this statement will surely be proven right:

Before this year’s historic campaign, poisoned at the root by overt and ugly sexism and covert and coded racism, Democrats have never been asked to choose quite so nakedly which absolutely necessary demographic they would like to do without. Here is the question, a cynic might suggest, that the Democratic Party must answer this summer: Do we want to lose because we drove away blacks or because we drove away white women?

Early in the process, GOP strategists rightfully worried about Hillary’s and Obama’s big turnouts. What’s needed, in my opinion, is something that happened right after George Bush’s re-election. That’s when the Nutroots pushed Howard Dean down the DNC’s throats. From Day One, disaster was predictable, even inevitable. The Nutroots saw the Clinton/DLC connection as GOP lite. The Clintons saw the Nutroots as McGovernite losers. In other words, they hated each other. (more…)

This morning, Margaret Carlson weighs in on the Philadelphia Fiasco. After recounting the charges and countercharges, she made this important observation:

Karl Rove was the big winner. His Politics About Nothing lives on. If you aren’t going to help the working man, tell him that the other condescending guy wants to take away his gun. Republicans show respect for all the things not under siege, his guns, his religion, his marriage, his patriotism, and hope no one homes in on jobs, foreclosures or health care.

I’ve never thought of Maggie Carlson as the brightest bulb in the Agenda Media’s chandelier. This observation confirms for me that my initial opinion was right. Why on God’s green earth did Ms. Carlson think about Karl Rove after watching the Democrat debate?

The first thing that popped into my head was that Democrats still fear Karl Rove to the point of being paranoid about him. It isn’t a stretch to say that Karl Rove gets blamed for the misfortunes of Democrats. Never mind the fact that they cast aside a real man of substance in Joe Lieberman because he wasn’t liberal enough. Nevermind the fact that they’re on the verge of picking the most unqualified presidential candidate in the history of the United States.

In Ms. Carlson’s mind, the Fiasco In Philadelphia didn’t happen because two radicals with barely a presidential qualification shared the stage. In Ms. Carlson’s mind, the Philadelphia Fiasco happened because Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos asked questions given them by Mr. Rove.

Ms. Carlson wants people to forget the disastrous answers both candidates gave on the Second Amendment. Here’s the exchange between Charlie Gibson and Barack Obama:

MR. GIBSON: Senator Obama, the District of Columbia has a law, it’s had a law since 1976, it’s now before the United States Supreme Court, that prohibits ownership of handguns, a sawed-off shotgun, a machine gun or a short-barreled rifle. Is that law consistent with an individual’s right to bear arms?
SENATOR OBAMA: Well, Charlie, I confess I obviously haven’t listened to the briefs and looked at all the evidence. As a general principle, I believe that the Constitution confers an individual right to bear arms. But just because you have an individual right does not mean that the state or local government can’t constrain the exercise of that right, and, you know, in the same way that we have a right to private property but local governments can establish zoning ordinances that determine how you can use it. And I think that it is going to be important for us to reconcile what are two realities in this country.

(more…)

This afternoon, the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller. Based on the questions that the strict constructionist jurists asked, it appears likely that DC’s gun ban law won’t be sustained. Here’s what Stephen Breyer asked:

Justice Stephen G. Breyer noted the number of people killed by handguns and asked if it was unreasonable for a “city with a very high crime rate to say ‘no handguns here.’”

Here’s how Chief Justice John Roberts responded to Breyer’s question:

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asked: “What’s reasonable about a total ban on possession?”

Here’s the Washington Post’s reporting that makes me believe that DC’s ban will be overturned:

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, often seen as the deciding vote on the divided court, immediately made it clear he did not accept the District’s arguments, and the views of a vast majority of federal appeals courts, that the Second Amendment provided only a collective right to gun possession in furtherance of military purpose.

The amendment states: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” (more…)

There has been another school shooting tragedy with five innocent victims dead.

Pundits are asking how such a thing could happen … after all, Northern Illinois University was as gun free zone. So, many are renewing the call for increased gun control, despite its dismal record of failure.

Typical of such flawed and dishonest thinking was a column by Los Angeles Times columnist Tim Rutten in the Feb. 16 issue. After rehashing a recent series of shootings ranging from Kirkwood, Mo., to Chicago, to Louisiana Technical College, Rutten has fingered the villain — the National Rifle Association. He blames what he calls “Second Amendment fundamentalists,” pressuring politicians. If not for them, he reasons, effective gun control laws could be enacted.

Guns, he maintains, “…make the malicious, the malcontent, and the mad powerful.”

What he doesn’t say is that is that it makes the crazies powerful because they know their intended victims are disarmed and helpless.

That is the legacy of “gun free zones.”

Rutten does note is that 12 states — Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia and Washington — are considering legislation allowing students, faculty and staff with concealed-weapons permits to carry weapons on campus. He calls this, “social idiocy.”

What he doesn’t note is that other school shooting incidents were halted when armed faculty members or students confronted the shooters. Pearl High School in Mississippi and Virginia’s Appalachian School of Law are two such examples.

Academic study also supports the premise that concealed-carry deters such shootings. University of Chicago Professor John Lott’s book “More Guns, Less Crime” clearly shows the correlation. As for the mass shooters, Lott notes, “Such people may be deranged, but they still appear to care whether they themselves will be shot as they attempt to kill others.”

He based this conclusion in part on finding that states that adopted nondiscretionary concealed-carry laws between the years 1977-92 virtually eliminated public mass shootings.

The evidence, both academic and empirical, is clear — more gun control laws and creating “gun-free zones” guarantee mass shootings will continue; concealed carry permits will stop them.

But recognizing this involves a degree of intellectual honesty that Rutten and his ilk lack. To use Rutten’s own phrase, they persist in the “social idiocy” of denying simple truth.

Forgive me if I don’t buy the Democrats’ mantra that they support the troops. That’s insulting, especially after reading this article. According to the article, Democrats are trying to ram though the Veterans Disarmament Act through Congress. They’ve already railroaded it through the House on a voice vote.

Hundreds of thousands of veterans, from Vietnam through Operation Iraqi Freedom, are at risk of being banned from buying firearms if legislation that is pending in Congress gets enacted.

How? The Veterans Disarmament Act, which has already passed the House, would place any veteran who has ever been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) on the federal gun ban list.

This is exactly what President Bill Clinton did over seven years ago when his administration illegitimately added some 83,000 veterans into the National Criminal Information System (NICS system), prohibiting them from purchasing firearms, simply because of afflictions like PTSD.

The proposed ban is actually broader. Anyone who is diagnosed as being a tiny danger to himself or others would have his gun rights taken away…forever. It is section 102(b)(1)(C)(iv) in HR 2640 that provides for dumping raw medical records into the system. Those names, like the 83,000 records mentioned above, will then, by law, serve as the basis for gun banning.

The notion that a military veteran’s Second Amendment gun rights would be vaporized by this legislation is insulting. The fact that their confidential medical records would be on a public database for all the world to see is even more insulting. It isn’t surprising that the bill is sponsored by Democrats who “support the troops but don’t support the war”: (more…)

According to David Bossie’s Washington Times op-ed, that’s who Fred Thompson is. Here’s what Mr. Bossie says on that matter:

Yet while Mr. Thompson is strongly conservative in word and deed, he is moderate and reassuring in bearing. When New York’s Sen. Hillary Clinton unleashes the Clinton attack machine against him, and she will, those tactics will fail. Mr. Thompson will rise above the stale negative politics of the 1990s. Americans immediately know Mr. Thompson is a man they can trust, and people of good will sense in him a firm and abiding character.

I have worked in the conservative vineyards for more than two decades. I have seen sham conservatives and ambitious hucksters come and go. I know how to tell the real thing. Fred Thompson is the real thing: a leader, a conservative, a man of honor and, of utmost importance in facing the combination of Mrs. Clinton and a leftist media, a communicator and, absolutely, a winner.

As more people get to know Sen. Thompson’s positions on the issues and the thought process that brought him to those positions, people will warm up to him. When they find out that Sen. Thompson is an old-fashioned Goldwater libertarian/conservative, people will flock to him. When they find out his strong belief in strict constructionist justices like John Roberts, movement conservatives will get excited about him. When they find out his plans for undercutting Iran’s mullahs, Lieberman Democrats will take a long, hard look at him.

One thing I know is that Hillary isn’t capable of running a forward-looking, positive campaign. That doesn’t fit her personality. She’s best suited for the role of traditional hatchetman VP candidate. (more…)

Today, Americans are getting together at parades, backyard barbecues and various other venues to celebrate the 4th of July. Truly appreciative people will celebrate the birth of the greatest nation in the history of the world.

What sets us apart is what makes America great. I remember reading about how Hubert Humphrey was fond of mentioning that America was the only nation in the history of the world to list the pursuit of happiness as a national priority in its founding documents.

That’s just one of the priorities spelled out in our nation’s Declaration of Independence. It’s worth the time to examine the other priorities, too:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The revolutionary nature of these principles often goes unnoticed. Before America’s Declaration, European countries said that power was given to the government, which then doled out limited amounts of power to that country’s citizens. The American Declaration that power started the citizens, who in turn gave limited amounts of that power to various governments, was as revolutionary as the declaration that the earth orbited the sun, not vice versa. It essentially stood conventional wisdom on its head.

Similarly revolutionary were the notions that all people were created equal, that the God of Nature gave them rights that couldn’t be denied, and that those rights included life, liberty of all types and the pursuit of happiness.

My first hope for you today is that you take some time to think about what a magnificent set of documents our Founding Fathers gave us. I’d submit that the greatest governing principles in the history of the world are contained in our founding documents.

My second hope for you today is that you think of whether we should take these founding documents at their word or if we should take them as simply guidelines that can be brushed aside for the ‘greater good’.

I submit that we should take the Declaration and the Constitution literally. I further submit that the only way we can stay true to our Founding Fathers’ ideals is to take these documents literally.

Technorati Tags: Declaration Of Independence, Constitution, Founding Fathers, Life, Liberty, Pursuit Of Happiness, Independence Day

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

It is by no accident that the 2nd Amendment (Right to Bear Arms) is found between the 1st (Free Speech) and 3rd (Privacy) Amendments. Munchkin Wrangler has posted one of the shortest and most eloquent arguments I’ve read in support of the Second Amendment:

Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force.

If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that’s it.

In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.

When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force.

The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year-old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year-old gangbanger, and a single gay guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.

Read more HERE.

(Hat Tip - Richard Holbrook)

If you haven’t been reading Stephen Hayes lately, you’ve been missing the best reporting on the Fred Thompson campaign. This article talks about the genuine groundswell of support that’s propelling his campaign. If this continues, it won’t take long for Fred Thompson to achieve frontrunner status. Here’s what I’m basing that opinion on:

Thompson’s wife Jeri, a savvy Republican strategist with Capitol Hill experience, asked Mark Corallo, an old friend and public relations guru, to see what he might do to raise her husband’s profile in Washington. Thompson had not altogether retired from politics when he left the Senate in January 2003: He was serving as chairman of the State Department’s International Security Advisory Board. He was a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a member of the U.S.-China Economic Security Review Commission, and a commentator for ABC Radio.

Corallo had left his job as spokesman at the Justice Department to open a media consulting firm and agreed to take on the low-intensity work as a favor and without pay. He quietly began to highlight Thompson’s activities, in particular calling attention to Thompson’s radio work. When the provocative radio commentaries were published on National Review’s popular website beginning in January 2007, other conservative websites began to link to them with some regularity, viral marketing, as they say in the online world, and arguably the informal beginning of Thompson’s campaign.

In early March, when Thompson acknowledged on Fox News Sunday that he was seriously considering a presidential run, support for a potential bid exploded. Thompson and his friends were flooded with phone calls from would-be supporters eager to start raising money. Public officials began to endorse Thompson without any promise that he would become a candidate, a risk in the trade-and-barter world of politics.

On April 7, Carl Bearden, the speaker pro tem of the Missouri House of Representatives, sent an email to colleagues expressing his support for Thompson and encouraging them to do the same. In time, 60 of the 92 Republicans in the Missouri House signed a petition backing a Thompson run. The lawmakers did so despite the fact that two of the state’s leading Republicans, Governor Matt Blunt and Missouri House speaker Rod Jetton, had endorsed Mitt Romney. (So confident is Bearden that he offered some good-natured smack-talk to Blunt and Jetton. “I told them to enjoy it while it lasts, because when Fred gets in, it’ll be over.”)

In Texas, Jerry Patterson, the colorful commissioner of the General Land Office (a statewide elected office that is more powerful than it sounds), began to circulate a petition encouraging Thompson to run. By late April, he had gotten the signatures of 58 Texas Republican lawmakers. “No other presidential hopeful from either party is close,” reported the Houston Chronicle. According to Patterson, that number now stands at 67, and includes 59 of the 81 Republicans in the Texas House.

As you can see, legislators are flocking to Thompson without Fred Thompson courting them the way that other presidential candidates have done. (more…)