To wit: “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” is an early song in The Sound of Music, which won the 1965 Academy Award for Best Picture. In the song, several nuns at an abbey in the Austrian mountains summarize the problems with the novice Maria (Julie Andrews): Maria is too physically active, athletic and outdoorsy. She is too expressive emotionally, particularly about her happiness. She is flighty, and late for everything except meals. She has a good heart, but does not listen well to advice from her elders, and she is highly self-directed: “How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?” The harsh nun, Berthe, calls Maria “a headache” and “a demon.” Newsweek’s subhead take’s Berthe’s role, calling Palin “bad news for the GOP–and everyone else too.”
The Mother Superior knows better: Maria is no bad-news demon. Rather, Maria is someone who lives the Good News, and whose talents, energy, and will-power are going to waste in the abbey. So she ships Maria off to a job outside the abbey–a job for which Maria is totally unprepared, and a job at which Maria’s predecessors have failed. After a rough start, Maria becomes a great success, due to her common sense, kind heart, wisdom, and readiness to defy convention. In the process, Maria also stands up to foreign totalitarian aggressors (winning the support of even her staunch critic Berthe), fortifies the nationalist sentiments of her country against those aggressors, and leads the people in her care to safety and freedom.
Ergo, the question “How do you solve a problem like Sarah?’ provides its own answer, at least to people who know the film from which the song comes: Make her the President of the United States.
I’m not arguing for or against Palin for President–just observing that, as is so often the case, the Palin-hating media are less clever than they think, and end up inadvertently making her stronger.
Tags: Sarah Palin, The Sound of Music
Question two was “In light of the off-year election results, what’s the bigger political priority for the Democratic/Republican Party right now?” Eighty-six percent of the Left said that motivating the base should be the biggest Democratic priority. Sixty-seven percent of the Right said that the biggest Republican priority should be winning independents. I volunteered the Republicans need to do both: “As C.S. Lewis once remarked about the faith vs. works debate: ‘It does seem to me like asking which blade in a pair of scissors is most necessary.’ Winning parties motivate their base and win independents — as McDonnell and Christie both did.”
Tags: National Journal
The Exodus story is America’s story. Moses is our real founding father. The pilgrims quoted his story. Franklin and Jefferson proposed he appear on the U.S. seal. Washington and Lincoln were called his incarnations. The Statue of Liberty and Superman were molded in his image. Martin Luther King, Jr., invoked him the night before he died. Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama cited him as inspiration. For four hundred years, one figure inspired more Americans than any other. His name is Moses.
I will say that Feiler’s thesis is not at all startling to some of us who have studied religious rhetoric in American history. As when in 1858 Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, one of the founders of Reform Judaism in America, declared that the American Independence Day was a second Passover: “the fourth of July tells us the glorious story of the second redemption of mankind from the hands of their oppressors, the second interposition of Providence in behalf of liberty, the second era of the redemption of mankind, the second triumph of right over might, justice over arbitrary despotism, personal and legal liberty over the power of the strongest and most warlike.”
When Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were chosen by the Continental Congress in 1776 to design a Seal of the United States, both proposed an image of the Exodus. Adams described the picture: “Moses standing on the Shore, and extending his Hand over the Sea, thereby causing the same to overwhelm Pharaoh who is sitting in an open Chariot, a Crown on his Head and a Sword in his Hand. Rays from a Pillar of Fire in the Clouds reaching to Moses, to express that he acts by Command of the Deity. Motto, Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.”
Second Amendment advocates had no trouble seeing the connection between the iconic images of Moses parting the Red Sea (in the film The Ten Commandments) with an upraised staff, and NRA President Charlton Heston proclaiming liberty throughout the land while holding high the Kentucky Rifle. Regardless of whether a viewer is inspired or annoyed by the juxtaposition, it’s another example of how, even in the 21st century, the story of Moses and the Exodus continues to play an important role in American public life.
Tags: bloggingheads.tv, Bruce Feiler, Moses
For the other question, both Left and Right reversed their positions from last June. Sixty-five percent of the Left now think it is “somewhat likely” that Congress will pass Cap & Trade. Sixty-five percent of the Right now thinks passage is “very” or “somewhat” unlikely. So both Left and Right have become more optimistic in the past few years. Objective proof that “hope” is on the rise.
I was in the minority of the Right who thought C/T somewhat likely: “The bill will see lots of ‘no’ votes from Blue Dogs and from other Democrats who represent energy-producing states. But there may be enough support from urban/suburban Republicans for something to pass.” Certainly a C/T bill that included lots of the ideas which John McCain has proposed, and which greatly cut back on the rent-sales that appear in the House-passed bill, the bill would be nearly unstoppable.
Thanks to the Committee to Free the Leningrand Three, the remaining three were all released by 1985.
In a recent column, my father explained some of the Committee’s unusual tactics. First, they did not adopt the standard legislative approach of merely getting a resolution adopted. A resolution is a one-time thing, but the Committee aimed for continuing pressure. Colorado legislators were invited to join the Committee, which eventually comprised 95 of Colorado’s 100 state representatives and senators. Every member was required to write personal letters, not form letters, to the Soviet authorities, and to the prisoners. Bishop (who started in the House, and then went on to a long tenure in the Senate) made sure the Committee members kept up the writing.
More information about the samoletchiks and the campaign to free them can be found in recent articles in the Boston Globe and in the Intermountain Jewish News.
State and local officials who want to support international human rights often have a difficult time finding ways to act effictively without running into conflicts with the federal government’s primary role in foreign relations. The Committee to Free the Leningrad Three provides a good model for constructive local action with global consequences. Today, there are many prisoners of conscience around the world who could be saved by state and local American government activism.
Tags: Jerry Kopel, Tilman Bishop
Will take place in the Canadian House of Commons today, at approximately 5:30 p.m., Eastern Time. Bill C-391 is a private member’s bill (by Candice Hoeppner of Portage—Lisgar, Manitoba) to repeal Canada’s failed and extremely expensive long gun registry.
Background information about the registry is available in this short presentation from Prof. Gary Mauser, a magazine article by Mauser, and in Mauser’s journal articles on the politics and efficacy of the registry, and in some articles I have written about Canada.
For the last two decades, Canada has been the test bed of the international gun prohibition movement. Repressive ideas from Canada have been exported around the world by the international gun prohibition lobby, which is vastly better at international coordination than the other side.
Repeal of the Canadian registry would, accordingly, be of tremendous global significance. Repeal would also shatter the claim by the Canadian gun prohibition lobby that gun control in Canada is an irreversible ratchet.
If the House votes for repeal today, then there will be committee hearings on Bill C-391, followed by another vote in the House, followed by Senate consideration.
You can follow a webcast of the House of Commons by going here.
Tags: Gary Mauser
Virginia: Either Deeds (B rating) or McDonnell (A) were sure to be a big improvement over outgoing Governor Kaine. Deeds lost the NRA endorsement by supporting closing of the (non-existent) “gun show loophole.” In the Attorney General race, Republican Ken Cuccinelli (A+) handily defeated a D-rated Democrat who advertised very aggressively on the gun show issue. Incumbent Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling (A+) trounced an F-rated challenger.
In the Virginia House of Delegates, five Republican challengers with A ratings ousted Democratic incumbents rated F,F,B,B,B. A C-rated Republican also unseated an F Democrat incumbent. The House of Delegates already had a fairly solid pro-Second Amendment majority, so the major change in Virginia is a new Governor who, like former Governor and current Senator Mark Warner (Dem.), will sign rights-enhancing legislation passed by the legislature.
By far the most prominent gun control advocate on the ballot this year was Jon Corzine (F). This summer, Corzine twisted lots of legislative arms to win enactment of gun rationing (“one-handgun-a-month”), a silly law that is even sillier in New Jersey, where every handgun purchase requires advance permission from the local police chief. With Christie replacing Corzine, New Jersey gun owners can hope for benign neglect rather than active hostility. The New Jersey Assembly appears to be unchanged.
In sum: A bad night for advocates of gun show restrictions. Another fine night (as were election nights 2006 and 2008) for Democrats with A ratings from NRA. And good news for Second Amendment advocates in blue New Jersey and purple Virginia.
We then study two failed arms embargos: Zimbabwe, and the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Zimbabwe is currently under a European Union embargo, but there is no UN embargo because Mugabe’s principal diplomatic allies, China and South Africa, have blocked UN action. Moreover, the South African government has flagrantly violated South Africa’s own gun control law (which was imposed by the currently-ruling party), which forbids South Africa to authorize arms transfers to human rights violators. If South Africa will not obey its own laws, there is no reason to assume that it will obey treaty law created by the UN.
The eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo is under a United Nations embargo, impsed by the Security Council. But the embargo has been violated by smuggling conducted by most of the nations which border the DRC, and even by UN “peacekeepers” in the DRC. Thus, the ATT might, at most, lead to more nominal embargos of arms; but nothing in an ATT can have greater force in international law than a Security Council order already does. Accordingly, the ATT will be of little or no use in achieving its purported objective. To the contrary, the ATT may be positively harmful, since it will probably declare a “right” of governments to acquire arms. This “right” could be used to claim that arms embargos outside the ATT system (e.g., unilateral embargos by the US, or the EU) are violations of international law.
Tags: Arms Trade Treaty, United Nations
I wrote: “All these will be big, but the ballooning deficit and the unemployment rate will probably be of interest to the largest number of voters. Afghanistan/cap-and-trade/health care will probably motivate lots of base activists from both sides.”
The second question was “On balance, does the White House’s decision to take on Fox News help or hurt President Obama?” Eighty-seven percent of the Left, but only 18% of the Right thought it helped. I was among them: “It turns out that all those folks with ‘dissent is patriotic’ bumper stickers who worried about the president trying to shut down criticism were just a little ahead of their time. Obama’s stature is diminished in the short run, but Fox’s reporting is so harmful to the WH (Van Jones, Anita Dunn, etc.) that they may have figured some short-term cost is worth it if they can convince the more pliant folks in the MSM not to follow up those stories.”
Tags: National Journal
Smart move by Christie, since his sense of humor about himself softens his prosecutorial image (which independent candidate Chris Daggett has exploited in TV commercials) as an angry guy whose solution to everything is putting somebody in prison. For the still-undecided voters (a group which tends to be ill-informed about politics), Christie’s quips show him as a guy who knows who he is, and who does not take himself overly seriously, who admits his own weaknesses, and who has a sense of humor.
Tags: fat, New Jersey
Question 2 asked “Could you see yourself supporting a cap-and-trade bill if it included significant incentives for nuclear energy?” On the Left, 61% said yes. On the Right, I was the only one who said yes. I reasoned, “The last 10 years of real-world climate data have shown that the professional hysterics and their predictions are wrong. However, the last 10 years have also demonstrated the growing dangers of U.S. energy dependence on dictatorships like Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. So it’s possible (but unlikely) that a C&T bill with a strong nuclear energy component might significantly reduce U.S. dependence on dictators’ oil, and therefore be worth supporting for national security reasons.” I do realize the nukes in themselves are not the answer to foreign oil dependence, since only a small percentage of our electricity comes from imported oil. But it’s still possible (albeit very unlikely) that a C&T bill could do a great deal to reduce American dependence on dictator oil.
The October 9 poll (which I didn’t post about at the time) asked, “If major health care legislation clears Congress this year, will it include a public option?” Seventy-two percent of the Left and 57% of the right said it would. I was in the majority: ““If one presumes that the bill will pass, near-unanimous support will be needed from the Dems’ left wing. They will figure out some new euphemism for the government-run program, to attempt to provide plausible deniability for moderate Dems.”
The other question “If unemployment continues to rise, should Congress pass another stimulus package?” Eighty-nine percent of the Left thought so, while 93% of the Right disagreed, including me: “The ‘stimulus’ is like a guy who is nearly broke from credit card debt deciding to cheer himself up by getting a new credit card and running up even more debt.”
That’s the title of my forthcoming article in the Connecticut Law Review; a revised version is now available. The article suggests that, under Heller, bans on guns at schools are constitutional. However, as a policy matter, gun prohibition on campuses turns them into targets for criminals, particularly mass killers. The response of anti-gun groups is to warn about the dangers of 18-year-olds carrying AK-47 rifles to keggers. For the record, I do not think that anyone should take an AK-47 (or any other gun) to a kegger. However, there are sensible policies that avoid the dangerous extremes of creating a cluster of thousands of defenseless victims, or teenagers bringing machine guns to keggers. For example, adult employees of the school who already have been issued concealed carry licenses by the state should not be barred from licensed carry while on campus. A professor at a medical school who lawfully carries a licensed concealed handgun throughout the state is not going to suddenly turn into a violent criminal if he also carries while on campus.
Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, Rep. Cliff Stearns, and Rep. Ron Paul say “no,” and have sent a letter to the President asking him to request congressional consent, which they expect would be speedily given. They point to the example of President Theodore Roosevelt, who created a committee, including the Chief Justice, to hold Roosevelt’s Nobel Peace Prize money in trust until he left office. After leaving office, Roosevelt asked for congressional consent to disburse the money to particular charities.
Article I, § 9, clause 8, of the Constitution states that “no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”
When Roosevelt won the Peace Prize, there was apparently no controlling statute. Today there is: 5 USC § 7342 (titled “Receipt and disposition of foreign gifts and decorations”) sets out the conditions under which foreign gifts can be accepted without a separate action of Congress. The statute applies to an “employee,” which includes “the President and the Vice President.”
A “foreign government” includes ” any agent or representative of any such [foreign] unit or such organization, while acting as such.” Since the Nobel Peace Prize committee is, as the Representatives note, appointed by the Norwegian Storting (the legislature), it would seem to be within the scope of the statute.
A “gift” is “a tangible or intangible present (other than a decoration) .” A “decoration” includes a ” medal, badge, insignia, emblem, or award.”
By the statute, Congress explicitly consents to employee receipt of gifts of “minimal value,” which is “means a retail value in the United States at the time of acceptance of $100 or less.” The statute authorizes the Administrator of General Services to make regulations to adjust “minimal value” to reflect changes in the Consumer Price Index, beginning in 1981, and reflecting CPI changes in the previous three years. Roughly speaking, $100 in 1978 is about $327 today.
A Peace Prize laureate receives a diploma, a 196-gram gold medal, and a large check (10 million Swedish crowns in 2007). The spot price of gold is $33 a gram, so the medal and the check obviously do not qualify for the “minimal value” exception. The diploma, as a piece of paper, could, although not if it were delivered with an expensive frame.
In the statute, Congress also formally “consents” to an employee receiving and keeping “a decoration tendered in recognition of active field service in time of combat operations or awarded for other outstanding or unusually meritorious performance, subject to the approval of the employing agency of such employee.” The diploma and the medal both fit within the definition of “decoration.” As President, Obama is the head of his own “employing agency,” and therefore can approve his receipt of the medal and the diploma.
The check is not a “decoration” and is of much more than “minimal value.” Employees may not accept gifts of more than minimal value. However, there are various exceptions, and the relevant one is that a gift may be accepted “when it appears that to refuse the gift would likely cause offense or embarrassment or otherwise adversely affect the foreign relations of the United States, except that– (i) a tangible gift of more than minimal value is deemed to have been accepted on behalf of the United States and, upon acceptance, shall become the property of the United States.” It would seem to be within the foreign policy discretion of President Obama to determine that refusing the Nobel check could cause offense, embarrassment, or an adverse effect on foreign relations.
Then, “Within 60 days after accepting a tangible gift of more than minimal value,...an employee shall– (A) deposit the gift for disposal with his or her employing agency; or (B) subject to the approval of the employing agency, deposit the gift with that agency for official use.” Accordingly, it would appear that President Obama must turn the check over to the United States government, for official use. I have not researched whether there are regulations detailing precisely how gifts which a President receives are to be disposed. It would appear that President Obama cannot personally give the Nobel money to charity.
Thus, it seems clear that the statute already supplies the constitutionally-required congressional consent for President Obama to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, and no further action by Congress is needed, provided that President Obama signs the check over the government, as the statute requires.
UPDATE: One disadvantage of VC’s new platform is that we can no longer award the coveted Green Border to especially good comments. Such honor is due to the commenter who brought up 5 C.F.R. sec. 2635.204(d). This is part of a regulation covering all gifts received by federal employees–not just gifts covered by the Constitution’s requirement of Congressional approval of gifts from foreign princes. The relevant portion of the regulation states that a federal employee can keep money from an achievement prize he is awarded, if the award is given regularly according to written standards. An example in the regulation is “an employee of the National Institutes of Health may accept the Nobel Prize for Medicine, including the cash award which accompanies the prize, even though the prize was conferred on the basis of laboratory work performed at NIH.”
I don’t think this regulation helps Obama, although, as I explained above, the statute provides him with all he needs. First, keeping the prize money is allowed only if the prize is awarded “by a person who does not have interests that may be substantially affected by the performance or nonperformance of the employee’s official duties or by an association or other organization the majority of whose members do not have such interests.” As has been widely discussed on the Internet, the Norwegian committee is obviously trying to influence U.S. foreign policy in a particular direction, and is making the award in part to further those interests. Second, the Nobel Prize for Medicine is awarded by an institute affiliated with a Swedish university hospital. This is very different from the Peace Prize committee, which is picked by the Norwegian Parliament. Alternatively, if the Institute counts as a Swedish government agent because the Swedish government owns the hospital (I don’t know if they do), then the example in the regulation is wrong. A regulation cannot over-ride a statute or the Constitution. The Constitution requires congressional permission; the statute provides congressional permission in certain circumstances. The executive branch, by writing a regulation for itself, cannot expand the scope of the congressional permission.
Tags: Barack Obama, Nobel Peace Prize
That was the subject of a recent symposium at Denver University’s law school. The DU Law Review’s online publication, DUProcess, published several short articles on the topic. I wrote on Connecting Laypeople with the Law Through Blogs, and began: “Blogging is creating a Golden Age of legal scholarship. For the first time in the memory of any living person, legal scholarship is now connecting with an audience beyond the world of law professors and legal professionals.” I argued that law blogging provides readers with much better coverage of important appellate cases than does the MSM, and as an example pointed to Dale Carpenter’s VC posts on gay marriage cases. I also suggested that comment threads on legal blogs provide people with an opportunity that, in the olden days, mostly belonged only to on-campus law students: having a serious, enjoyable pro/con discussion of legal issues. Checking on Westlaw, I found that of the 291 law review citations to the Volokh Conspiracy, five were to comments. Lastly, I suggest that law blogging continues a salutary trend which began nearly four centuries ago:
Starting around 1250, courts in England began operating in French. After hundreds of years, the legal language had turned into something called “law French,” which was a confusing amalgam of English and of a French that no French person would ever speak. The new American colonists jettisoned law French. In America, the law was stated positively in statutes written in straightforward English comprehensible to ordinary people.
The writing of statutes in plain English was one of the methods by which the Americans ensured that the law was under the control of the people, rather than imposed from above. One of the causes for the cynicism which many modern Americans feel about government in general, and law in particular, is the degree to which the laws Americans must obey have become as incomprehensible to a normal, literate American as law French was to a normal, literate Englishman.
Scholarly legal blogging is a wholesome, constructive development, in the tradition of the plain English statutory writing of our American ancestors four hundred years ago. By making law, and legal scholarship, more accessible to the lay public, law bloggers are reconnecting American law with the American people.
In the same symposium, Sam Kamin writes briefly on how professors use law blogging to enhance their traditional writing. Alan Chen discusses the use of blogs in faculty hiring or promotion. Student Joe Aguilar explains Race to the Bottom, DU’s joint faculty-student blog on corporate governance.
If you’re interested in the role of blogs in legal education, you might also enjoy Of Empires, Independents, and Captives: Law Blogging, Law Scholarship, and Law School Rankings by J. Robert Brown, Jr., and David I. C. Thomson’s book Law School 2.0: Legal Education for a Digital Age. Thomson argues that the new electronic media can–and should–lead to more profound changes in legal education than anything that has occurred in the last hundred years. If you want to check out some of the book’s ideas before buying, a 2008 paper by Thomson sets up the issue, and another paper details how legal writing can be taught well in an online-only class.
Categories: Academia, Internet, Law schools, Legal professor
This spring I will be adjunct teaching at Denver University, Sturm College of Law. The course is “Advanced Topics in Constitutional Law: Fourteenth and Second Amendments.” The course will be mainly 14th Amendment, plus some Second Amendment (which is happens to be a good topic with which to study 14th Amendment original intent/meaning and incorporation), plus shorter treatment of the rights in Article I, sections 9–10; Article IV Privileges & Immunities, 9th Amendment, and 13th Amendment. The course is for second and third year students, who have already had a 1st-year constitutional law class, which was mostly about constitutional structure (commerce clause, separation of powers, etc.). One textbook will be Gun Control & Gun Rights, which I co-authored for NYU Press in 1999. For the main casebook, I am undecided, but leaning strongly towards Randy Barnett’s. Please supply comments about Con Law textbooks which you have used, and their various virtues and flaws. Of course I am especially interested in the pro/con user experience for the Barnett book.
Categories: Uncategorized
That’s the title of my new book, scheduled for publication December 4. It’s now available for pre-order on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble. In an 11-minute podcast on iVoices.org, Jon Caldara and I discuss the book. It’s a collection of essays on firearms law and policy, and many other liberty issues and heroes. Topics are as old as ancient Israel and Rome, and as new as the United Nations gun control efforts and post-post-modernism.
Categories: Uncategorized
An e-mail from KnifeRights.com reports that the “Senate has passed the conference report for the fiscal year 2010 Homeland Security Appropriations Bill with our amendment to the Federal Switchblade Act intact.” The bill now goes to President Obama for his expected signature. The bill makes technical changes in the definitions of the Federal Switchblade Act. In particular, under the revised statute, a “switchblade” is not: “a knife that contains a spring, detent, or other mechanism designed to create a bias toward closure of the blade and that requires exertion applied to the blade by hand, wrist, or arm to overcome the bias toward closure to assist in opening the knife.”
Earlier this year, the Customs Bureau had proposed revising several of its previous rulings; the effect would have been to bring a very large percentage of folding knives under the Switchblade Act. Knife Rights–with strong assistance from the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) and from the National Rifle Association–led a public mobilization which garnered widespread, bi-partisan congressional support. At first, the citizen activism resulted in Customs halting its proposed regulatory change. Because the Switchblade Act’s original language is very broad, Knife Rights then worked for a permanent resolution to the problem, by clarifying the statute.
A citizen group with a shoestring budget, Knife Rights was founded in 2006. Today’s action is an impressive accomplishment for such a new organization.
Tags: Knife Rights, Knives
This week´s National Journal poll of leading political bloggers had three questions. In the first, Left bloggers were asked “on health care reform, what outcome would most benefit Democrats in the 2010 midterms?” Right bloggers were asked the same question about Republicans. Nobody picked the Baucus bill as likely to lead to the best political outcome for one party or the other. The vast majority on the Left said that something like the House Committee bills would most benefit Democrats. A slender majority on the Right said that the passing nothing would most benefit Republicans. I disagreed, and wrote, “The worse the better, from a purely political viewpoint; so passage of something like HR 3200 would be best for Republicans in 2010. But for the physical and fiscal health of the American people, the alternative approaches proposed by Cato and the Independence Institute would be far better.”
The second question asked Left bloggers how worried they are that Democrats are alienating independents. Right bloggers were asked the same question about Republicans. The Left was more worried about this than the Right. This made sense to me, as I wrote ““The national Democrats are alienating independents so fast that the Republicans can’t keep up.”
The final question asked “On balance, does winning the Nobel Peace Prize help or hurt President Obama’s image at home?” Almost all the Left thought it helped, and most all the Right thought it hurt. I agreed with the latter: “Even the strong Obama supporters who I’ve talked to think the prize was ridiculous. For swing voters, it highlights Obama’s rhetoric/achievement gap. The principle that good intentions and sincere effort are good enough for a Nobel prize suggests that Sarah Palin’s autobiography should win her the Nobel Prize in Literature.”
Categories: Uncategorized
So argued the eminent Fourth Circuit Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, III, in Of Guns, Abortions, and the Unraveling Rule of Law, recently published in the Virginia Law Review. In Unraveling Judicial Restraint: Guns, Abortion, and the Faux Conservatism of J. Harvie Wilkinson, III, Nelson Lund and I disagree, arguing that none of Judge Wilkinson’s comparisons to Roe are accurate, and that Heller is no more of an “activist” decision than any other decision protecting an enumerated right. The final version of our article, forthcoming in the University of Virginia Journal of Law and Politics, is now available on SSRN.
Tags: Constitutional History, Scalia
The seven deadly sins are lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. Numbers one and three have felled many politicians in recent memory. But in the New Jersey governor’s race, #2 appears to be affecting the race. A recent ad by incumbent Democratic Governor Jon Corzine accuses Republican challenger Chris Christie of “throwing his weight around” by using his position as U.S. Attorney to escape punishment for dangerous driving. The ad’s wording, along with the photos of Christie, is an obvious double-entendre about Christie’s heft. The political website 538 surveys all current Governors for their fatness, with accompanying pictures. A new poll from Public Policy Polling find that 4% of New Jersey voters are more likely to vote for Christie because of his weight, while 19% are less likely. Notably, among that 19%, the majority are not current Corzine supporters.
So what do you think? Is it legitimate to consider a candidate’s enormous weight? Only if the weight is a result of sin #2, rather than of some medical condition? Is it more important, less important, or equally important as any of the other deadly sins? Is Jon Corzine the right guy to be raising questions about dangerous driving?
New Jersey, by the way, has the 8th-lowest state obesity rate in the U.S., according to CalorieLab. In the Colorado, which has the lowest national rate, in four decades that I have been following Colorado politics, I cannot remember any candidate as heavy as Christie winning any statewide office. Maybe somebody can point out a Board of Regents election in 1970, but in Colorado, Christie’s size would definitely be a political disadvantage. Although, personally, I think that Christie’s much bigger disadvantage is that he has run an extremely vague campaign, hoping to win mainly on the strength of not being Jon Corzine. As the PPP poll shows, being “not Corzine” is a definite advantage in New Jersey, but perhaps not sufficient in itself.
Categories: Uncategorized
The decision is here, and includes extensive analysis of 19th and early 20th century state laws (and court decisions upholding them under state constitution RKBA provisions) against juvenile handgun possession, or sale of handguns to juveniles. The decision also rejects a challenge that the federal ban on simple possession in one’s own home exceeds congressional authority under the power to regulate interstate commerce. In Taking Federalism Seriously: Lopez and the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, 30 Connecticut Law Review 59 (1997), Glenn H. Reynolds and I argued that the interstate commerce power should not be used to regulate intrastate activity, especially activity involving controversial social issues like firearms or abortion. In a 1999 Issue Paper for the Independence Institute, I wrote a brief section (Part VII) which presents some policy arguments against the federal aw. As you’ll see by reading the First Circuit case, there are good reason why the juvenile delinquent should not have owned a gun. But I that there is a less restrictive alternative than the federal approach.
Categories: Commerce Clause, Constitutional History, Criminal Law, Guns
In a new podcast from iVoices.org, I explain McDonald v. Chicago to Independence Institute President Jon Caldara. This is an 11 minute audio, which presumes that the listener is entirely new to the whole idea of incorporation. If you’ve got much more time on your hands, here’s an 86 minute video of my presentation on essentially the same subject in early September to the Triple Nine Society. That presentation too presumes no prior knowledge of the subject, but it spends a long time taking setting out the background, from Barron v. Baltimore, to Reconstruction, to substantive due process, to the present. Sophisticated watchers will note that I mistakenly said “Privileges and Immunities” sometimes when I should have said “Privileges or Immunities.” And I usually referred to the impending Supreme Court case as NRA v. Chicago, expecting that that Court would grant cert. in both NRA v. Chicago and McDonald v. Chicago, and the that popular name for the consolidated cases would probably be the former. I was wrong, as the Court granted cert. in McDonald only, and has made no decision in NRA, perhaps keeping that case in reserve in case some unexpected problem developed with McDonald. The very beginning of the video is cut, so it opens a minute or two into the presentation.
Categories: Guns, Supreme Court
In this week’s National Journal poll, the political bloggers were asked to grade the Congressional leadership. Left-leaning bloggers were asked to grade the Democrats, and Right-leaners were asked the grade the Republicans. The Left gave the Democrats a C. The Right gave the Republicans a C+. I gave the Republicans a B, and wrote “Doing a solid job opposing Obama’s out-of-control deficit spending and his attempts to impose federal control on matters that are constitutionally the decisions of individuals or the states. If the Republicans had been similarly firm with Bush’s over-spending and over-federalization, there might be many more of them in Congress today.”
Question two asked, “On balance, would sending more troops to Afghanistan be a political plus or minus for President Obama?” Sixty-five percent of the Right, but only 15 percent of the Left thought it would be a political plus. I voted “plus,” and wrote “In the long term, for both the president’s political standing and for America’s security, victory in Afghanistan is a large plus, and defeat is a disastrous minus.”
Categories: Uncategorized
