Another Second Amendment Setback--at least temporarily

On Wed.,  Justice Kennedy denied  without explanation, a request to block enforcement of a Sunnyvale CA ordinance limiting the capacity of ammunition magazines (more than 10 rounds).

Next Big First Amendment/campaign contribution Decision.

The Court's Citizen's United  First Amendmentdecision infuriated the left and Obama.  Personally, I thought it was true to First Amendment values.  A new potential blockbuster decision could be released shortly.  The case is McCutcheon v. FEC.  The Left loves the First Amendment except when it may benefit their opponents. The ACLU's hypocorisy towards civil rights is exemplfieid by its failure to support the Amendment and the split in the organization over the  Citizen's United decision and the McCutcheon case.  The Right becomes solicitous when they see a potential advantage.  I personally find this self-righteous hypocrisy offensive.

CBS Reporter resigns because of Employer's liberal bias

 CBS news reporter Sharyll Attkisson resigned because of the strong left-lean of her network.  This lean among all the major networks (except Fox which leans right) has been obvious for years.  When are these folks going to gain some integrity and start behaving in a more ethical fashion?  These folks are supposed to be news reporters, not propagandists.

Recommended Read: Tuschman's "Our Political Nature."

I can personally recommend this book, which is subtitled "The Evolutionary Origins of What Divides Us."  The author is an evolutionary anthropologist.  If you are interested in ideology, politics, political polarization, personality and political attitudes, evolution and attitudes/personality, etc.,  this is a book for you.  There are lots of current examples and the book helps make sense of them.  The author is not a biological determinist and also shows how other factors are influential.  However, the author misses some important points about authoritarianism and generally fails to deal with left-wing authoritarianism.  However, there's no need for me to reinvent the wheel, read this review from the Economist.

The exclusionary rule in danger

This author argues that the federal constitutional exclusionary rule has been badly weakened and even its existence may be in jeopardy.  Conservatives on the Court, often joined by Kennedy, have been slowly gutting it for years.  We badly need the rule.  I agree with the Court's liberals on this one.

Great aticle on "democracy."

“The Economist” is one of my favorite publications.  It’s relatively price, but well worth it if you want to get beyond the simple-mindedness of most of the media.  It’s generally ideologically balanced and usually doesn’t worry about political correctness.  The March 1, 2014 issue (pp. 47-53) on the problems of democracy world-wide is outstanding.  Some excerpts follow:

” Democracy is going through a difficult time. Where autocrats have been driven out of office, their opponents have mostly failed to create viable democratic regimes. Even in established democracies, flaws in the system have become worryingly visible and disillusion with politics is rife.  . . .“Freedom House reckons that 2013 was the eighth consecutive year in which global freedom declined, and that its forward march peaked around the beginning of the century.”

 “All over the world, including the U.S., the “biggest challenge to democracy, however, comes neither from above nor below but from within—from the voters themselves.  . . .  Democratic governments got into the habit of running big structural deficits as a matter of course, borrowing to give voters what they wanted in the short term, while neglecting long-term investment. France and Italy have not balanced their budgets for more than 30 years. The financial crisis starkly exposed the unsustainability of such debt-financed democracy.”

 The “most striking thing about the founders of modern democracy such as James Madison and John Stuart Mill is how hard-headed they were. They regarded democracy as a powerful but imperfect mechanism: something that needed to be designed carefully, in order to harness human creativity but also to check human perversity, and then kept in good working order, constantly oiled, adjusted and worked upon.”

”The power of the state needs to be checked, for instance, and individual rights such as freedom of speech and freedom to organise must be guaranteed. The most successful new democracies have all worked in large part because they avoided the temptation of majoritarianism—the notion that winning an election entitles the majority to do whatever it pleases.”

“But reformers need to be much more ambitious. The best way to constrain the power of special interests is to limit the number of goodies that the state can hand out. And the best way to address popular disillusion towards politicians is to reduce the number of promises they can make. The key to a healthier democracy, in short, is a narrower state—an idea that dates back to the American revolution. “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men”, Madison argued, “the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” The notion of limited government was also integral to the relaunch of democracy after the second world war.”

Gun Control: A new method courtesy of the Syrian government.

Assad's brutally oppressive government has come up with a new strategy to disarm at least some portion of the opposition. 

New U.S. Supreme Court 4th Amend decision:

According to  Findlaw.com: " Fernandez v. California, No. 12-7822
The rule of Georgia v. Randolph, 547 U. S. 103 (2006), that the consent of one occupant to a search is insufficient when another occupant is present and objects to the search, does not extend to the very different situation in this case, where consent was provided by an abused woman well after her partner, the defendant, had been removed from the apartment they shared."

I have mixed feelings on this one.  However, I disagree. I think the missing partner still has a reasonable expectation of privacy to the same extent as the occupant in Ga. v. Randolph.

Supreme Court refuses to hear gun cases

In a continuing dereliction of its duties, the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear 3 gun rights cases. 

Drug Lord "El Chapo" captured in Mexico

Juan "El Chapo" Guzman leader of Mexico's most powerful drug cartel was nabbed (again) after escaping in 2001.  The capture is a major victory for Mexico's President. However, this is just the beginning.  We'll see what happens (another escape, extradition, etc.)

Protests and Violence in Venezuela; Gender and politics

Anti-government unrest in the Ukraine has gotten most of the recent headlines, but it looks like the socialist Nirvana in Venezuela is headed in the same direction.  Anyone who thinks that there is no such thing as left-wing authoritarianism suffers from serious delusions.  Some interesting politically incorrect observations:  Female Venezuelans seemed to be disproportionately involved in pro-Chavez and now pro-Maduro demonstrations.  According to this AP report "The crowd made up mostly of women danced in the street and carried photos of the late president Hugo Chavez."  Many are shown over the years clutching pictures of Chavez.   Perhaps the pictures have replaced rosaries for many.  Studies show that women tend to be more liberal, pro-socialist, and  anti-gun etc. than men. According to Wikipedia:
"The various polls (Gallup, CBS, Times Mirror Center, Time, CNN) all found women and men to divided, ranging from 10-25 percentage points, on all of the following issues ^[7]

• Increased role of government
• U.S. military intervention
• Healthcare and welfare
• Firearms restrictions
• Affirmative action to achieve racial equality"

Brazil: 9 killed in ATM shootout

Bizarre crime in Rio.  The gang was using dynamite to blow up cash machines. And we thought crime was bad in the U.S.

Supreme Court case on use of deadly force to stop vehicle pursuit

Shortly, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral argument on a case that may provide clearer rules on when police can use (and can get qualified immunity) when deadly force is used  to stop a suspect fleeing in a vehicle.  The incident began with a traffic stop for a busted headlight and ended around 10 minutes later with multiple police officers firing a total of 15 rounds into the fleeing vehicle. Killed were the driver, Donald Rickard, and his passenger, Kelly Allen, both of whom were unarmed.  The case is Plumhoff v. Rickard.

The George Zimmerman media Ideological/ethical train wreck rolls on.

This article tells it like it is.  The Left will continue to use the Zimmerman case to stoke the fires of racial animosity. Self-defense and the Second Amendment individual right  have long been anathema to the Left.  Questionable and unlawful "self-defense" cases will get great amounts of publicity as the smear campaign against the natural law right of self-defense rolls on.   Lawful uses of deadly force, which greatly outnumber the faulty self-defense cases, will be ignored as they do not fit in with the Left's ideology.   This is a great website. 

Victory for Second Amendment Rights

The Ninth Circuit handed the Second Amendment a victory when it invalidated San Diego's requirement that concealed carry applicants are required to show "good cause".  San Diego officials contended that one's personal safety was not a good cause.

Transparency International: website on government corruption around the world.

Please check out Transparency International and its fight against government corruption around the world.  Believe it or not, the U.S. comes out relatively clean. See this description of American corruption. With regard to politics: "Government and politicCorruption among government and political figures remains a concern. From fraud and embezzlement charges to the failure to uphold ethical standards, there are multiple cases of corruption at the federal, state and local level. Recent high profile scandals have involved councilmen in California and the District of Columbia, as well as mayors in New Jersey and an Illinois governor. Money laundering convictions and ethics violations by U.S. Congress representatives have also furthered citizen distrust."

New NYC mayor refuses to join former mayor's anit-gun mayors group.

New York City's new republican mayor refuses to join former mayor Michael Bloomberg's anti-gun mayor's group. A victory for Second Amendment values.   Wouldn't it be nice if Bloomberg gave the money he spends on all this anti-gun propaganda to a charity that could use it,  e.g. Salvation Army.  Of course ideology usually trumps altruism. 

Speak out and take action against government electronic snooping.

Consider this program  by the ACLU. 

Potential Second Amendment Cases for Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court needs to clarify a number of  crucial issues left remaining after its civil rights landmark decisions in Heller and McDonald.  Among these are:
1.  What is the standard of review? ( Strict scrutiny, intermediate scrutiny, rational basis?)
2.  What does "bear arms" mean in the Second Amendment?  To  what extent does the right apply outside the home?
3.  What types of weapons are protected?  What does "arms" mean in the Second Amendmet?

Hopefully, the Court will decide one or more of these cases that have been appealed to it.

TIH: The Hampton Roads Conference 1865

We are still in the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, by far the most costly war in American history. The costs and consequences were suffered for  decades later.  Unfortunately, there seems to be little public interest.  What a shame!  Here's a short clip from History.com about a little-known, but extremely significant event, the Hampton Roads Conference.

On February 3, 1865, President Lincoln  and Secretary of State Seward met with three Confederate officials, including Vice President Stephens ), to discuss the possibility of negotiating an end to the  Civil War.which had begun almost four years earlier in April 1861. The Hampton Roads Conference, which took place on a steamboat near Hampton, Virginia, was a failure, as Confederate negotiators were not authorized to accept any settlement other than Southern independence, which Lincoln refused to discuss.  It was delusional to think that, after 4 years of a horrible war, Lincoln and he Union would give the Confederacy what they wanted. The war continued for another two agonizing months. 

Although there are various interpretations of who was at fault for this failure, it was delusional for the Confederacy to think that at this point in the war they had any chance of victory.  Their failure led to the unnecessary loss of  lives and property and additional suffering.  A great moral wrong!

Dumbing down American public education

If you have been following the topic, you probably know by know that public education K-grad school is a disaster area.  Dumbing down is not only politically correct for the left, but, although there are exceptions, has become a nationwide curse.  For example, a high school teacher interviewed by the New York Times related:
 "This is a real conversation I had with a failing student who was being quite sincere in her comments: ‘I know you’re a really good teacher, but you don’t seem to realize I have two hours a night of Facebook and over 4,000 text messages a month to deal with. How do you expect me to do all this work?’ When I collect homework at the beginning of class, it is standard out of a class of 35, to receive only 8 to 10 assignments. If I didn’t give half-credit for late work, I think most would fail.”
(See the link for an excellent article on this topic) The push for more economic equality will only exacerbate the problem as it stresses that everyone needs a college degree to succeed.  This, of course includes those who cannot do college level work. 
Want some proof, see this article on grade inflation in American colleges and universities.  For an excellent explanation of at least part of the dynamics see this insightful article on the "low-low" contract between faculty and students.  I highly recommend this piece.
  Don't give a bachelor's degree for community-college level work. It's time we stop cheating the students, their parents the taxpayers and the nation.  If you offer a degree make sure it is at an approrpriate level of difficulty. 

Town hasn't bought law books for cops since 2006

When cities overspend and then have to cut back, law enforcement takes its hits too.  Unfortunately, this is usually bad news for justice and the people's rights.  According to the Denver Post, this small, financially strapped town that is also in the middle of a police scandal  "hasn't even bought new law books for its officers since 2006."  Let's hope the officers bought their own, but it shouldn't be their responsibility to do so.  Where do these town find these "leaders?"

Constitutional Amendment needed to protect privacy

As you  probably know by now, Obama basically passed the buck to Congress to try to take the NSA monster. It's too bad he values our privacy so little. It seems like just about every week we find out about some new super-duper spying technique they have developed.  This  excellent  article about James Madison, libertarianism, the Fourth Amendment, etc. argues that we need a constitutional amendment to limit government spying.  The Fourth Amendment and existing protections don't go far enough.  I second that motion.

Unusual criminal prosecution off farmers

It is very rare to see farmers criminally charged for selling bad produce that results in deaths. This is one such case. 

Ideological indoctrination and successful public education don't mix

The way to fix badly failing high schools in high-poverty urban areas is NOT to introduce an ideological theme, whether it is left- or right-wing.  Students at this beleaguered high school were subject to a "social justice" approach which included out-of-state field trips to explore civil rights issues.  As this was going on, achievement test scores fell.  Needless to say, that principal is no longer there.  Where do they find these people? 

Sunday Football and Domestic Violence

According to the Denver Post, 1/18 p. 1A)
"David Card and Gordon Dahl, researchers who studied football and police reports from 1995 to 2006, looked specifically at the games' impacts on domestic violence.
"The main thing we found was Sundays with football games are typically pretty bad for domestic violence," said Card, an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley. "Part of the reason is that people are home, drinking."
They considered Las Vegas odds, which predict which team will win and by how much. Upset losses, the most painful kind, led to an 8 percent increase in police reports of domestic violence against women in the home, the study found."


Read more: Denver police on alert for violence after Broncos-Patriots game - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_24934240/denver-police-alert-violence-after-broncos-patriots-game#ixzz2qlt0AKKv

Administrative lapses and Arapahoe High Murder

Recent revelations by an Arapahoe High School security guard suggest administrative apathy and a lack of proactivity at Arapahoe High School where a student openly carrying a shotgun entered the school and murdered another student.  Among the allegations are that administrators discouraged staff from reporting on troubled students, ignoring warning signs and attempting to stifle criticism.   See also this article. 

Mexican troops attempt to disarm sef-defense groups

Honest Mexicans are often caught in a terrible dilemma.  The government cannot or will not defend them against the cartels and their hangers-on.  The villagers arm and organize and then the army tries to disarm them.  They describe themselves as self-defense groups.  Media and other sometimes use the term "vigilante" which can have a negative connotation.  As reported by the New York Times (A6 1/15/14):

"Self-defense groups said four civilians were killed in the village of Antúnez when soldiers were confronted by a large crowd.   The government confirmed one death."

"The government’s policy was intended to curb all armed groups in the state, but the soldiers’ actions seemed directed at the self-defense forces alone, except in Apatzingán, the stronghold of the Knights Templar (drug cartel), where soldiers and the police surrounded City Hall."

The Mexican government has tough choices to make and has to tread a fine line.  However, when government fails its basic obligation to protect its citizens, the citizens have a right to defend themselves.  My sympathies lie with the citizens.

Political corrupton in Chicago

There is good evidence of ties between Chicago politicians and Chicago street gangs.  And they tell us we need more gun control?  Thanks to GEJ for the link.

Chicago's gun sale and transfer law violated Second Amendment

Chicago's ban on firearms sales and even some interpersonal and family transactions was struck down by a federal judge.  It was obvious from the beginning that this law was invalid and was just another example of the lawlessness of Chicago's leaders who have consistently thumbed their nose at the Supreme Court and the law of the land.  However, this is just the beginning of what could be a long drawn out battle. Justice has been delayed, but  hopefully will not be denied. Stay tuned.