The Supreme Court will release its opinion on the McDonald v. Chicago gun ban case on Monday. The opinion will decide whether the 2nd Amendment applies to the states.
The first opinion that could emerge is a historic ruling on gun rights, resolving whether the Second Amendment restricts the gun-control powers of states, counties, and cities, and not just the federal government’s powers (McDonald v. City of Chicago, 08-1521). That’s because the author of the opinion (according to Tom’s analysis) could be Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. He is the most junior Justice likely to announce an opinion Monday, and opinions are usually released in reverse order of the authors’ seniority.
Most watchers believe the opinion will be against the gun ban and in favor of applying the 2nd Amendment to the states, but it will likely not be as far-reaching as most gun rights advocates would like. This puts it in similar territory as the Heller case. Tom Goldstein, offers his thoughts regarding the likely outcome, also from the SCOTUS blog, in a prediction article:
The next case is McDonald v. City of Chicago, which presents the question whether the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms is “incorporated” and therefore applies to state and local gun regulation. McDonald was argued in February, and the only Justice not to write from that sitting is Justice Alito. He therefore likely has the Court’s opinion.
Justice Alito was a member of the five-Justice majority that recognized a Second Amendment right outside the context of militia service in the Heller case. He therefore is a likely vote for finding incorporation. At oral argument in McDonald, Justice Alito seemed quite doubtful about the City’s efforts to suggest a narrow ground for ruling.
I predict that Justice Alito will write the Court’s opinion in McDonald recognizing that the Second Amendment is incorporated. But given Justice Alito’s sensitivity towards law enforcement, I doubt that the opinion will call into question a broad swath of firearms regulation.
We’ll post an update once the opinion is released tomorrow.
Last year I wrote about my own thoughts on “Incorporation” of the 2nd Amendment in this article.
My father taught me the golden rule at a very young age. It seemed so simple and reasonable to my young mind: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Today it seems so very libertarian to me. Back then it just seemed like common sense. Perhaps my life-long moderate Democrat father didn’t intend to plant libertarian seedlings in his eldest son’s mind at a young age, but he did just that.
I expect he may whisper to himself considering how I ended up politically, “My god, what have I created?”
I took the golden rule and ran with it.
A few years after I learned of the golden rule, I received an inflatable boat for my birthday. We lived in a community with a beach on one of the inlets of the Chesapeake Bay. A friend and I grabbed my new boat, ran down to the beach, put it in the water, and hopped in. It was a very windy day.
What if there was a third choice for reality-seekers? Something other than the red pill or the blue pill. What if there was a purple pill? The purple pill is the gateway drug to liberty for those that aren’t quite ready to have an ice-cold-water-on-the-face wake-up call. It is a soothing alarm clock that gradually opens eyes to the truth. Rand Paul is the purple pill.
He already has his foot in the libertarian door thanks to his father, Ron Paul. This gives him legitimacy and support from many of his father’s more libertarian-minded supporters. Yet he softens what many Hannity, Beck, and Limbaugh conservatives would call the crazy edges of his father. Ron Paul is a true red pill. There is no doubt about that.
Rand represents someone conservatives, Republicans, and even neo-conservatives can be comfortable supporting without wounding their own interventionist-minded pride. This becomes a problem for the more steadfast libertarians among the Ron Paul faithful who demand an A+ on the libertarian purity test.
Following up yesterday’s great interview on Rush Limbaugh with guest host Walter Williams, Rand Paul spoke with Sean Hannity today on Hannity’s radio show. Listen to it in two parts below.
Rand Paul has an opinion piece in Saturday’s Bowling Green Daily News where he attempts (and succeeds) to properly clarify his remarks on the Civil Rights Act that were mis-construed by so many following his landslide primary victory. He writes:
I am unlike many folks who run for office. I am an idealist. When I read history I side with abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglas who fought for 30 years to end slavery and to integrate public transportation in the free North in the 1840s. I see our failure to end slavery for decade after decade as a failure of weak-kneed politicians.
I cheer the abolitionist Lysander Spooner, who argued that slavery was unconstitutional 20 years before the Civil War. I cheer Lerone Bennet when he argues that the right of habeas corpus guaranteed in the Constitution should have derailed slavery long before the Civil War.
Only when the brave idealists, the abolitionists, finally provoked the weak-kneed politicians into action, did the emancipation proclamation come about. Our body politic has enough pragmatists, we need a few idealists.
Segregation ended only after a great and momentous uprising by idealists like Martin Luther King Jr., who provoked weak-kneed politicians to action.
In 2010, there are battles that need to be fought, and they have nothing to do with race or discrimination, but rather the rights of people to be free from a nanny state.
Michael Scheuer is not one to mince words when it comes to his writing, speaking, or beliefs. This article demonstrates it perfectly. This is a must read.
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Maddow and the Obamas: Killers of hope, spurs of rebellion
The attacks by MSNBC’s extremist Rachel Maddow on Rand Paul clarify a good deal for me. Ms. Maddow’s position is based on a sort of warmed over version of the 1920s’ Bloomsbury ideology: effete, secular, socialist, pacifistic, elitist, and libertine. The ideology is shared by her fellow MSNBC extremists Olberman and Matthews and by Mr. Obama and his acolytes. Anyone disagreeing with her and them is not just wrong but perverse, racist, badly educated, antiquarian, and could only come from the scum of the earth. What passes for political thought and philosophy among MSNBC’s neo-Bloomsbury extremists and team Obama reminds one of cheeses and flowers — those that stink the most, last the longest.
But, to be honest, MSNBC’s extremists and the Obamaites are not much different from Republicans in being arrogant elitists who regard Americans as ignorant rubes who are unaware of what is best for themselves and their country. What do we hear from the Republicans: they talk anti-abortion, do-nothing; talk controlling borders, do nothing; talk debt reduction, spend more; talk energy self-sufficiency, kiss the Saudis’ butt; talk support for the troops, get more killed in useless wars; talk about America’s independence, and lap up humiliation from Israel and Mexico.
Ms. Maddow-of-Bloomsbury, then, represents both parties in the sense that they both are telling Americans: “Trust us. We know what is best for you. Vote for us, shut up, and go home and watch television.”
There’s so much to say about the recent Rand Paul and Rachel Maddow event that it’s difficult to know where to begin. By now every reader of this site has probably seen Rand Paul’s appearance on Maddow’s show last week when he answered Maddow’s questions about the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with philosophy instead of soundbites. He answered like a libertarian academic rather than a Republican politician. I find this to be refreshing rather than flawed unlike most of the surface-dwelling progressives castigating and misrepresenting Paul following his remarks.
The question, as it pertains to the Civil Rights Act is, should the government make it illegal for a private business owner to discriminate or should consumers in the marketplace determine whether a private business owner stays in business due to his discriminatory practices?
Market forces, if they are truly free from regulation, produce equality far more pure than any government can create through force of law. Unfortunately, it is human nature to intervene and humans run the government so it is unlikely this assertion will ever become provable beyond doubt.
There are many people better than I am at arguing these points and defending Rand Paul on this issue.
Like my liberty-loving brethren I’m ecstatic tonight at Rand Paul completely trouncing Trey Grayson in the Kentucky Senatorial GOP primary, but what about tomorrow?
In between all of the surface-dwellers still attacking Paul because they think he was named after Ayn Rand (he was not), there is a mathematical hard truth that his campaign must come to grips with now that a new campaign is beginning. The numbers do not lie and they can be a bit sobering.
With 99.2% of the precincts reporting a full 167,286 more votes were cast in the Democratic primary than the Republican primary. Rand Paul’s total number of votes were less than the Democratic loser. Does this mean that Paul has an uphill battle for winning the general election against Democrat Jack Conway? Maybe, maybe not.
In the two-party charade that is American politics, our choices are limited. You’re either for the wars that exist, or you’re for the wars that exist plus a couple that don’t yet. You’re either for an increase in spending domestically, or an increase in spending abroad. You either want the Fed to increase the debt, or you want the Fed to monetize it. However, even in the few instances where the media and the party leadership tilt the fun house mirror to make the two sides look different, the truth is that they differ in execution – in which rights to usurp – rather than fundamental philosophy.
A shining example of a major party with phony principles is the “defense” of civil rights in America by the Democrats. You see, the Democrats want to protect civil rights. Countless party leaders have spoken out in outrage over the discrimination against minority groups. The Democrats of today support the right of marriage for all people, regardless of their sexuality. They want equal pay and equal opportunity for people of all backgrounds when it comes to employment or housing. In fact, according to their website: “Democrats will fight to end discrimination based on race, sex, ethnicity, national origin, language, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, and disability in every corner of our country, because that’s the America we believe in.” Few Americans would argue with the underlying principle: equal opportunity for all, and discrimination against none.
However, the same Democratic Party that wants equality of opportunity in marriage or the workforce would willfully overlook that equality when it comes to other choices that individuals might make. The philosophical principle of equal opportunity must necessarily mean free choice, lest it be inconsistent and hypocritical. Freedom to pursue the job that we want or the familial structure that we are most comfortable with must mean the freedom to choose what foods or drinks that we want to consume, or the freedom to decide manner in which we defend our own property, or the freedom to select the most appropriate form of health insurance for our families (even if it means no health insurance at all). As it turns out, though, the party that champions civil rights actually defends just a small subset of rights – those which will rally its base, scream injustice, and are not uncomfortable to defend.
You may recall my post discussing the recently released Wikileaks video that shows the American military might in all of it’s brash non-glory [Watch it]. Well, it appears there were at least two true heroes-in-waiting there that day.
Two former soldiers from the Army unit responsible for the Wikileaks “Collateral Murder” incident have written an open-letter of “Reconciliation and Responsibility” to those injured in the July 2007 attack, in which U.S. forces wounded two children and killed over a dozen people, including the father of those children and two Reuters employees.
Ethan Mccord and Josh Stieber deployed to Baghdad with Bravo Company 2-16 in 2007. Ethan was on the ground at the scene of the shooting, and is seen on the video rushing one of the injured children to a U.S. Vehicle; “When I saw those kids, all I could picture was my kids back home”. Ethan applied for mental health support following this incident and was denied by his commanding officer.
Josh Stieber was not at the scene of the shooting but says similar incidents happened throughout his 14-month tour; “The acts depicted in this video are everyday occurrences of this war.” Josh states that these casualties demonstrate the impact of U.S. military policy on both the civilians and the soldiers on the ground. [Read the rest here]
Why is this not front page news in every media outlet in America?
This letter reminds me of a video I put together during Ron Paul’s Presidential campaign of 2008 called “Troops Are Human”. I utilized a song by CC Carter called “Letter from Iraq”. You can watch it below.
Liberty Maven
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