Today the Supreme Court ruled that it is impermissable for the District of Columbia to prohibit the possession or use of a handgun to defend the home. The decision is only 5-4. That means that the right of a citizen to defend his home with the most popular and useful weapon for this purpose is one vote away from extinction!
In fact this decision is a home run for Second Amendment fans. However, I write in the style one gets used to from the Left whenever a 5-4 decision goes their way. Fortunately, for them another 5-4 decision struck down a law allowing the death penalty for those who rape very y0ung children. So the ACLU can now say "The Right To Rape A Child Without Fear Of Death hangs by a thread!"
The deciding vote in these cases was Anthony Kennedy who thinks the Constitution protects anybody's right to kill somebody invading their home but does not allow the considered judgment of a legislature, after exhaustive due process, to end the life of a child rapist.
9 comments:
Is that a handgun in your pocket, JJV, or are you just happy to see me?
I just heard Obama on Bloomberg saying he agreed with the Supreme Court's handgun decision. He also is for the death penalty option for convicted child rapists, as am I (shocking, I know), though the Supreme Court nixed it.
Could this be a sign of the apocalypse? (Let me know if locusts start descending on DC.)
Obama is being a politician. He is for the identical law in Chicago struck down here. All the justices he would appoint would strike down the death penalty. The game is clear and he will play it. Talk right on these issues and have the Court's do the liberal dirty work, and then say its out of your hands.
Be careful which justice you criticize, JJV. It wouldn't break my heart if Justice Kennedy retired on January 21st, 2009.
Well, it might, depending on whom gets elected on November 4, Lietzy. (Personally, I'd love to see Thomas or Scalia go, and be replaced by, I don't know, Bill Clinton? ; )
In the meantime, how about a poll: "Who's Your Favorite Supreme Court Justice?"
You gotta have faith, J.
However, even assuming your doomsday scenario occurs, I still wouldn't shed a tear for having Kennedy off the Court. After Carhart and now Heller, he has proven that he is at least as bad as the rest of the lockstep Republican justices, and maybe worse. As JJV tacitly points out, Kennedy's method of judging seems to be to do whatever "feels" right to him, based upon his own horribly conflicted personal moral code and beliefs. As such, you get the child rapist decision (because the death penalty for a crime that does not involve death doesn't "feel" right to Kennedy's own sense of proportional justice), and Heller (where Kennedy blathered on and on in oral argument about the frontiersmen needing their guns for food, a complete non sequitur to the 2nd Amendment debate).
I have to agree with Lietzy. Outcome wise Kennedy being the "swing" is better than O'Conner but he's a boob who thinks his views are coterminous with what the Constitution requires. Carhart and Heller are bad examples because 1) the constitution recognizes no right to abortion, never mind partial-birth abortion and 2) it explicitly recognizes a right to firearms. However, I have no doubt Kennedy cames to those opinions with no consultation on what the Constitution or its ratifiers said.
What if McCain appoints Posner? Pro-abortion, brilliant but dangerous to the Left?
Posner would be an excellent Supreme Court justice. Having said that, there is no way he will ever be nominated, by either party.
I don't know, McCain with a Democratic Congress might actually find it a decent pick, though Posner is getting old.
Also a prediction, burglaries, rapes and killings in the home will go down after this decision. Anyone care for a wager on the rates of those crimes in D.C. two years from now compared to now?
Whether crime goes up or down in DC over the next several years (or any time period for that matter) it will most likely be impossible, and definitely foolish, to point to any one cause. Sorry to rain on your Manichean parade. Oh, who am I kidding, I'm not sorry one bit.
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