Twitter
LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSIONPosted by Ron Coleman on November 7, 2007
Instapundit quotes Senator former President Hillary Clinton: “The federal government should be making immigration policy and that’s what I’m going to try to do as president again.”
Hmm. Well, then, now that we’re being all out front about this, is it time to deploy the 22nd Amendment?
Posted in Jocularity, Politics and Poker | 6 Comments »
Posted by Ron Coleman on November 6, 2007
Okay, I bust Chris’s chops sometimes — well, this one is funny!
Posted in Jocularity, O Mores!, Politics and Poker | 3 Comments »
Posted by Ron Coleman on November 6, 2007
This story in the Telegraph is damning. Whether or not the facts are accurately reported, it’s another pebble in the growing avalanche of perception — fueled by his dithering before entering the race — that Fred Thompson doesn’t really want to be President all that badly.
That’s not a bad reflection on him. The problem with most of these clowns is that they do want it that badly. Fred is, from what I can tell, a mensch who sometimes does politics. That means he’s someone I can actually like and respect.
But it is a poor omen for his campaign.
Posted in Politics and Poker | 9 Comments »
Posted by Ron Coleman on November 6, 2007
Two juxtaposed items on Instapundit (this blog is, after all, part of Glenn Reynolds’s comments section) —
unintentionally, it seems:
posted at 08:46 AM by Glenn Reynolds
posted at 08:22 AM by Glenn Reynolds
You’re with me, right? What does Republican President Ron Paul do?
Posted in Politics and Poker, Stragety | 16 Comments »
Posted by Ron Coleman on November 6, 2007
A New York state criminal court judge, not unexpectedly, rejects the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in Parker v. District of Columbia, and rules that Rashawn Handsome has no “a constitutional right to bear arms [that] protected his keeping three unlicensed handguns in his
apartment,” according to the New York Law Journal (subscription required) :
In refusing to follow Parker, Judge Gerstein noted that the ruling’s conclusion is at odds with the holdings of nine other circuits and the last U.S. Supreme Court decision to address the issue, U.S. v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939). All those rulings concluded that the Second Amendment, rather than creating a personal right to bear arms, circumscribes potential efforts by the federal government to curb state militias.
While the Second Circuit has not directly addressed the issue, Judge Gerstein wrote, it observed in a 1984 ruling that “the right to possess a gun is clearly not a fundamental right” (U.S. v. Toner, 728 D.2d 115).
The U.S. Supreme Court in Miller and the nine circuits agreeing with it, Judge Gerstein noted, all considered the prefatory clause of the Second Amendment controlling.
In its entirety, the Second Amendment reads: “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.”
Mr. Handsome’s argument relying on the Parker case to overturn New York’s law “requires rejection of viable Supreme Court precedent and half of the [Second] Amendment’s text,” Judge Gerstein wrote.
The New York decision is here. It may not do justice to the learned opinion or the level of complexity surrounding this issue, but it is certainly a full-bore gun control opinion. In short, it rejects the assertion that there is any independent right to bear arms except in connection with the establishment of a “well-regulated militia” or that the right to bear arms could be numbered among the fundamental individual rights of the Constitution such as free speech. On the one hand, the New York Times quoted former Chief Justice Warren Burger as saying, “The Second Amendment doesn’t guarantee the right to have firearms at all,” and calling the individual rights view “one of the greatest pieces of fraud — I repeat the word ‘fraud’ — on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.” In the same article, however (hat tip to Instapundit), no less a liberal light — and considerably more respected legal scholar than Burger, who was not really regarded as an intellectual heavyweight — comes to the exact opposite conclusion.
Judge Gerstein’s opinion does note that, unlike the D.C. statute that was overturned, the New York statute does not purport to be a total ban, merely a (draconian) licensing and regulation scheme. That means that even if, in the fantasy world of gun rights enthusiasts (such as myself — why, some day I may even see a real gun thingy up close), the Supreme Court were to take up and affirm the Parker decision, this New York law would probably be unaffected.
Posted in Lex scripta, Politics and Poker | 10 Comments »
Posted by Ron Coleman on November 5, 2007
Melanie Phillips, via Instapundit:
One of the most conspicuous features of British anti-Semitism is that the British deny its existence. The Parliamentary inquiry received only a muted response. Both Mann and Richard Littlejohn, a journalist whose TV program on the subject aired in July 2007, encountered people who, when discovering their concern about anti-Semitism, said: “Oh, I didn’t know you were Jewish.” But Mann and Littlejohn aren’t Jewish. As Littlejohn noted, the implication was that no non-Jew would ever identify anti-Semitism, and therefore that anti-Semitism was generally a figment of the Jewish imagination. When I proposed to write a book about it, I was turned down by every mainstream publishing house. “No British publisher will touch this,” one editorial director told me. “Claiming there is anti-Semitism in Britain is simply unsayable.” . . .
Britons also tend to suspect that Jews use the charge of anti-Semitism to divert attention from Israel’s crimes. This is why, for so many in Britain, the suggestion that anti-Semitism is enjoying a renaissance seems not only false but sinister. Outraged to be accused of peddling bigotry, they begin to hate those who level that charge—who, they conclude, are part of a conspiracy against truth.
This is a long-time beat for Melanie Phillips, but in fact there is nothing at all controversial in what she is saying (i.e., the facts she cites) except as to her conclusion. Anyone observing what has happened in Western Europe for the last five to ten years knows it, and in the Jewish community it is well known that England and France are simply not hospitable to Jews, at least not conspicuous Jews, any more.
Phillips also notes the coded use of the term “neoconservatives” to refer to the “Jewish conspiracy,” a transparent phenomenon that nonetheless is consistently ignored even by Jews who, like the self-satisfied Britons and Frenchmen who are above bigotry, would rather not admit what is happening. (UPDATE: Maybe ignored a little less.)
It’s somewhat scary. Vigilance helps; but only God controls the world, and there are no obvious answers on the natural axis, anyway. It is not an extermination scenario, à la Nazi Germany; that comparison is facile, too. Anyway, it is facile to tell people living in England or France to pick up and move, despite having families, homes, communities and
businesses there. And where to? Immigrating to the US is very difficult these days, unless you do it illegally — not an option for intact families with jobs, credentials and bona fides. Israel is not an option for most people; it is very difficult for people from Western civilization to adapt to, and is itself a highly polarized and stressed-out society.
The good news is that Britain and France are democracies with imperfect, but still well established, constitutional traditions. There is no telling what sort of impact a national leader willing to admit to the existence of this phenomenon in these countries, and to face it head on, could accomplish. No such leadership has been forthcoming, despite what one can only posit are the Jewish puppet-masters’ best efforts. But what other hope, in this world, is there?
Posted in Euroids, Oppression, Past is prologue | 21 Comments »
Posted by Ron Coleman on November 5, 2007
An op-ed in the Wall Street Journal:
Democrats in Congress face institutional hurdles to challenging the president. Senate Democrats have a majority well short of the 60 votes needed to block Republican filibusters on issues — such as national security — where the president’s party is united behind him.Also, Democratic senators represent more diverse constituencies than House members, whose districts are mostly safe. Yet even in the House, Democratic leaders know their narrow majority rests on the few members from moderate swing districts who may be imperiled by sharp left turns.
It is much easier, by contrast, for Democratic presidential candidates to jockey for positions on the left — as many supporters demand — before moving toward the political middle ground after they have won the nomination. All the major Democratic presidential aspirants, including the
four senators with a vote on the issue, oppose Mr. Mukasey, just as they have also enunciated a tougher antiwar stance than their congressional wing.
In short, childish, simplistic slogans such as “out of Iraq now” and “impeach Bush” may — unfortunately — work great in elections, but they’re no way to govern, and none but the most childish and simplistic legislators try to govern by them. Our best hope: The far left, which in fact lives by these slogans in its fantasy world, breaks off its support of Democrats who govern like moderates, and put it behind a vain third party effort. More likely, though, is that they’ll go back to the well with those same institutional Democrats, and get fooled again.
UPDATE: “Heh.”
Posted in Politics and Poker | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Ron Coleman on November 4, 2007
Socialized education not only fails its constituency miserably — witness today’s utterly uneducated, and essentially ineducable, masses. As this article at Chicago Boyz aptly points out, it and its class allies also constantly sing a refrain blaming the very imbecility of the supposedly brainless proletariat, and its easy manipulation by The Man (currently embodied by President Monkey), for every political and electoral ill (i.e., election of a Republican, for starters) visited on the commonwealth:
This rant ascribes motivations to the right but the belief that
capitalism wants a mindless populace seems not just elitist but stupid. What time warp are they in that they believe modern manufacturers are best served by automatons or service businesses by self-absorbed, illiterate clerks?
Given the monopolistic politics of America’s teacher’s colleges, this seems a bit disingenuous. But it is a lack of imagination, a lack of self-consciousness – indeed, a lack of intelligence. . . .
This is a nice point, though I would extend the concept of “monopolistic politics” to the entire education establishment, including teachers’ unions and public school boards. But the heart of the argument is very powerful: Who is it that keeps pumping out this unskilled, obese and civically unengaged cannon fodder of the military industrial complex, at an ever-increasing price? It is this very monopoly.
Many conservatives believed, at some time in the past 20 years, that major tax reform would take place during their lifetimes. It is clear that will never happen, short of revolution. Public education reform is every bit as onerous a task, and no less important for this country’s future. Both projects require, if there is any hope of success, complete destruction of the existing systems, and both face insuperable political and institutional obstacles.
It’s getting to be that being conservative, and really thinking about these issues, is pretty radical.
UPDATE: Actually, add a third Impossible Dream: Cleaning up — or cleaning out — Foggy Bottom (via IP).
Posted in Sisyphus | 3 Comments »
Posted by Ron Coleman on November 3, 2007
Instapundit’s traffic last month: 7 million pageviews. That is staggering!
Posted in Blogophilia | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Ron Coleman on November 2, 2007
And you’d soon by talking real money — even for Facebook — unless, of course, the half a billion supposdly raised last month was never there at all.
Yes, the ground floor is a long way down: “Accel has invested $12.7 million in Facebook for an 11 percent stake now worth $1.65 billion . . .” But still — it’s all good fun, but how does it make money, exactly?
Posted in Gelt | 3 Comments »
