The Review
(
Review) DAVID FREDDOSO has an interesting article in Human Events that chronicles the whole set of ethical questions and crises currently surrounding California Governor GRAY DAVIS.
There sure are a lot of large campaign contributions for Davis that just happen to coincide closely in time with decisions from the Davis administration that profited those donors.
(
Review) According to the UPI:
"A majority of the European Union's 15 nations are now expected to support President George Bush's plans for "regime change" in Iraq, and many of them are prepared to offer military support...Despite widespread forebodings of a serious split between the United States and its European allies over military action against Iraq, and public warnings against it by both French and German political leaders, a broad range of European experts agreed that their governments would comply."
Well, that's certainly a switch. If it's true, it means SADDAM HUSSEIN is a walking dead man.
(
Review) The families of 11 dead illegal immigrants are suing two Federal agencies for $41 million. They claim that because the Border Patrol and the US Fish and Wildlife service didn't put watering stations in the desert, they are liable for the deaths of the illegal immigrants.
The immigrants, it seems, tried to enter America illegally through the Arizona desert and they all died. So now, it's our fault because we didn't provide water that might have helped these people break the law successfully.
The interesting thing is that, even if the government HAD put the water stations in the desert, the nearest station would have been 12 miles and two mountain ranges away from the place where the immigrants died. So, they'd have died anyway.
Not that it matters to the plaintiffs.
(
Review) The LA Times is, as usual, completely wrong in their editorial on the DOJ's argument that the 2nd Amendment protects an individual right to own a gun. Let's take a closer look, shall we?
LAT:
So now Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft thinks he gets to rewrite the Constitution to reflect his personal opinions. His pronouncement this week that the 2nd Amendment guarantees individuals the right to own guns, despite six decades of federal policy and U.S. Supreme Court decisions to the contrary, is another audacious move by a man who mistakenly thinks his job is to make, not enforce, the law.
RESPONSE:
First, while it may be his personal opinion, it also happens to be the opinion of an increasing number of legal scholars, including Harvard's LAWRENCE TRIBE. It was also the settled, and entirely uncontroversial position of, well, everyone, from the time the amendment was passed in 1788 until about the 1930's.
And there haven't BEEN any Supreme Court decisions to the contrary. The reference here is probably to US v MILLER in 1939, about which, more in due course.
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LAT:
Since the 1930s, the federal government and the courts, including the Supreme Court, have spoken with one voice in declaring that people have no constitutional right to own a gun and that government can pass laws restricting gun possession.
DALE:
What the Federal government thinks is irrelevant. The text of the Constitution trumps the government's position, every time. The Government may think that criticizing the President should be a crime. So what?
As far as the whether it's an individual right, the Supreme Court has never addressed that subject. The last time a second amendment case came before the Supreme Court was US v. MILLER. In this case, Jack Miller was charged with violating the National Firearms Act of 1934 by transporting an unregistered, sawed-off shotgun across state lines in interstate commerce.
Justice McReynolds, writing for a unanimous Supreme Court, emphasized that there was no evidence showing that a sawed- off shotgun "at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia." And "[c]ertainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that its use could contribute to the common defense." Interestingly enough then, the Court implies that Miller might have had a valid argument had he been able to show that he was keeping or bearing a weapon that clearly had a potential military use.
In any event, Justice McReynolds described the purpose of the Second Amendment as "assur[ing] the constitution and render[ing] possible the effectiveness of [the militia]. McReynolds also stated that "the debates in the Convention, the history and legislation of Colonies and States, and the writings of approved commentators [all] [s]how plainly enough that the Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense."
Professor Sanford Levinson, writing in the Yale Law Journal, Volume 99 stated: "It is difficult to read Miller as rendering the Second Amendment meaningless as a control on Congress. Ironically, Miller can be read to support some of the most extreme anti-gun control arguments, e.g., that the individual citizen has a right to keep and bear bazookas, rocket launchers, and other armaments that are clearly relevant to modern warfare, including, of course, assault weapons. Arguments about the constitutional legitimacy of a prohibition by Congress of private ownership of handguns or, what is much more likely, assault rifles, might turn on the usefulness of such guns in military settings."
SO, the LA Times simply doesn't know what it's talking about, since MILLER is the ONLY Second Amendment case upon which the court has ruled in this century.
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LAT:
Ashcroft's "reasonable restrictions" language is so narrow as to turn 2nd Amendment law inside out by guaranteeing that individuals are entitled to own guns unless they fit a few defined exceptions.
RESPONSE:
Well...yes. That's what the words "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed" mean.
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LAT:
The attorney general is wrong in his characterization of federal law, which has historically elevated government's right to regulate weapons over individual rights.
RESPONSE:
The government has rights? When did that happen? I have a copy of the Constitution around here somewhere that says the government has some defined powers, but rights are individual freedoms inherent in the citizen. The government doesn't have a right to do a damn thing, except what we allow it to do. And one thing the government has no right to do, even if we wanted to allow it to, is to infringe the rights of the people.
The government is not some alien life form with it's own set of rights and privileges. The government is nothing more than the instrument by which we organize to accomplish things that are inconvenient to do individually. And, incidentally, to protect the rights of the citizens.
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LAT:
Ashcroft's tutorial on the 2nd Amendment is only his latest attempt to bully the nation into adopting his personal beliefs no matter what the law and court precedents say.
RESPONSE:
Well, actually, if he beleives that the Constitution actually says that, then I would say that it is his DUTY to promulgate that view. The view of previous administrations is irrelevant. Previous administrations may have believed that the Fourth Amendment doesn't actually require search warrants. Again, so what?
And court precedents say nothing about whether the right is an individual one. Well, actually, that's not true. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last year that the Second Amendment IS an individual right. And if the LA Times beleives that the Supreme Court has set a precedent, then they're simply wrong.
(
Review) EUGENE VOLOKH writes about the DOJ's decision to interpret the 2nd Amendment as protecting an individual right rather than a collective one. Despite, the wails about this from the left, this is, in fact, clearly the historical position on the right of gun ownership. The "collective right" argument is a 20th century reinterpretation of the amendment that is entirely contrary to the original understanding of the Amendment, and the unquestioned interpretation of it for 150 years after its promulgation.
As Volokh states, 'So the Ashcroft Justice Department may be going against the views of past Justice Departments, and of most federal courts of appeals, which have indeed endorsed the states'-rights view of the Second Amendment. But it's returning to a much broader consensus: the view, adopted throughout most of the nation's history, that the "right of the people to keep and bear arms" is as individual a right as "the right of the people to be secure . . . against unreasonable searches and seizures" or "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."'
(
Review) The DC Circuit Court of Appeals has unanimously ruled that PETER KIRSANOW is the rightful member of the US Civil Rights Commission, and says that VICTORIA WILSON's time is up. Commission Chair MARY FRANCES BERRY has been keen to keep Kirsanow off, in order to keep a larger liberal majority on the Commission. She says she may appeal this ruling to the Supreme Court.
Too bad Berry herself can't be rid of. She runs the commission like her own personal dog kennel, and silences dissent from committee members who disagree with her. It's time for her to go back to the private sector.
(
Review) The Senate and the Bush Administration have reached a deal on Trade Authority that may clear the way for the President to receive "Fast-Track" trade authority as early as next week, according to the NY Times.
That's all well and good, but considering the Administration's record on free trade so far, I'm not sure what the president will do--if anything--with fast-track authority once he gets it. So far, the Administrations main policy initiatives in the area of free trade (viz. steel, textiles and lumber), have been to eliminate it.
(
Review) Humorist LARRY MILLER has a biting and funny piece on the terrorists and their supporters in the Weekly Standard.
(
Review) In today's NY Times, BOB HERBERT drags out the same, old, tired arguments for gun control, because he's all in a snit over the Justice Department's stance that the second amendment guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms.
Herbert asks, "What America needs is more guns in the hands of more people, right?" Well, yes, Bob, that's exactly what America needs, if the people are law abiding citizens.
"I had a .45-caliber pistol hanging low on my hip many years ago when I was in the Army. And I can tell you, I'm not anxious to think about that kind of weapon (or something smaller and easier to conceal) being in the pockets and the purses and the briefcases and the shoulder holsters of the throngs surrounding me in my daily rounds in Manhattan," says Herbert. Mr. Herbert is apparently unaware of the research showing that states with concealed carry laws have lower crime rates than other states.
Herbert relates this from the Violence Policy Center, "The center has pointed out that in 1999, the most recent year for which statistics are available, 28,874 Americans were killed with guns. The Center somehow neglects to mention that over half of those people committed suicide, and that the academic literature shows that, in the absence of guns, people will simply choose other ways to kill themselves. But, of course, they don't care about suicide. They only include them because it makes the number twice as large, and presumably, twice as frightening.
Mr. Herbert's op-ed piece is, not to put too fine a point on it, a steaming pile of bushwah.
(
Review) The headline for this NY Post editorial says it all: "TIME'S UP, YASSER".
Actually, there are several more good things said in the editorial itself.
(
Review) Well, another GRAY DAVIS campaign contribution scandal appears to be brewing. According to the Frisco Chronicle:
"A company that won approval of a $453 million contract in 2000 to help California manage welfare cases gave $50,000 to Gov. Gray Davis' campaign within a day of hiring one of the governor's top fund-raisers as a lobbyist."
That Gray, he certainly loves his campaign donations, doesn't he? First Oracle, now Accenture.
And speaking of Oracle, it looks like they've got themselves embroiled in a similar scandal, all the way over in Florida (
Review)
Is this just how business with government is done?
(
Review) SALLY SATEL is a racially-profiling physician. And that seems to be a good thing.
(
Review) JAMES LILEKS has a fine anti-UN screed running over at The Bleat today.
(
Review) Despite the success of the 1996 welfare reform bill--which naysayers at the time said would be a catastrophe--LINDA CHAVEZ writes that the naysayers are out in force again, this time criticizing GEORGE W. BUSH's welfare reform proposals.
(
Review) ROBERT NOVAK writes that, after John Edwards messy self-immolation in front of TIM RUSSERT on Sunday, the Dems may now be stuck with Al Gore as the presidential standard-bearer again in 2004.
Can you say ADLAI STEVENSON? That's right. I knew you could.
(
Review) Just so you don't forget, FIDEL CASTRO is an evil man, in charge of an evil government. This is, after all, a country where people are imprisoned and tortured merely for the crime of being insufficiently servile to Castro.
(
Review WILLIAM SAFIRE wonders why the US government is so keen to dismiss reports that MOHAMMAD ATTA met with an Iraqi intelligence official in Prague. The Prague government stands by their intelligence service in confirming the meeting actually took place. So why does the US Government publicly refuse to acknowlege that the meeting actually occured? Interesting.
(
Review) ANN COULTER takes a look at the controversy surrounding the Bush Administration's judicial nominees, and gives it her own bitingly sarcastic spin.
(
Review) JOHN FONTE criticizes the Cato Institute for its stand on immigration. Now, I like Cato in general. In fact, I am a financial supporter of Cato. But, Cato's stance on immigration IS wrong, and Fonte explains why pretty clearly.
Libertarianism is wonderful for domestic policy: a maximum of personal freedom, and a minimum of government. Libertarianism is less applicable, however, to foreign and military matters, and it always will be, at least until the rest of the world becomes free, democratic, and libertarian as well.
A dogmatic utopianism, even of the libertarian stripe, is just as foolish and dangerous as the leftist utopianism that has been the major threat to world peace and progress for the last half-century.
(
Review) JOHN DERBYSHIRE, in an NRO article, explains why he just doesn't care about the Palestinians. Seems a bit of a tough judgement, but one that is hard to argue with, based on the mess that Arab nations have generally made of things over the past half-century.
(
Review) The religious left in America, by which I mean the Protestant denominations that belong to the World Council of Churches, have become mouthpieces for Palestinian terrorism.
Not that I'm surprised, of course. For years, these churches have been outspoken in their support for totalitarians of all stripes. They were cuddly with the Soviet Union, snuggled up to Fidel Castro's Cuba, and were positively giddy about the Nicaraguan Sandinistas. It never ceases to amaze me how these churches fawn over dictators whose usual religious views are expressed by banning freedom of religion and sending Christians to the Gulag, or whatever passes for it in their countries.
(
Review) In the National Post, MARK STEYN weighs in on the "massacre" at Jenin, now that even the Palestinians admit that those stories about "hundreds dead" were...well...a load of bull. Steyn writes:
"In the first days of Jenin "massacre" hysteria, I suggested on this page that the British press corps were being led up the garden path again by the usual bunch of wily natives. Two and a half weeks on, I see Yasser Arafat's Fatah organization has now come round to my way of thinking on this horrifying "war crime" and its mysteriously hard-to-locate "mass graves." The Israeli government's latest figures for Jenin put the death toll of Palestinians at 52. The Palestinians themselves put the death toll at -- wait for it -- 56.
That's right. 56. There are no missing zeroes on the end. The only missing zeroes are those gullible British and European hacks who swallowed that line about hundreds of dead civilians but have fallen mysteriously silent as the figures have been revised downward. The total of 56 dead was announced by Kadoura Moussa, the Fatah director for the northern West Bank, after four Palestinian Authority investigators reported their findings to him at his office in the camp. Unlike all those leathery flak-jacketed foreign correspondents, I'm no expert, but, just as a matter of interest, is a discrepancy of four enough to qualify as a "massacre"? Twenty-three Israeli soldiers died at Jenin, so the comparative death tolls sound less like a "massacre" and more like a -- what's the word? -- "battle."
So, riddle me this: Why is it that the press so quick to bite without blinking on practically any wild-eyed statement that a dictator wants to spit out, but they go over a public statement from a democracy--one with a competitive free press, at that--with a fine tooth comb like an overprotective mother searching a kid's head for lice? I mean, it's not like dictators have very good record about telling the truth. So what's the reason?
(
Review) The LA Times is calling for Enron's blood. Well, good for them.
And while we're at it, since we are getting ever more solid evidence that Enron was essentially a RICO outfit, maybe DICK CHENEY should turn over that Enron-related stuff to JOE LIEBERMAN's senate committee after all.
(
Review) Economist WALTER WILLIAMS celebrates the 25th Anniversary of the Cato Institute's founding.
Good place, Cato. I'm a financial supporter of it myself. It works for personal freedom and limited government, both of which, are good ideas.
(
Review) My old buddy FRANK GAFFNEY writes that we need to allow Israel the space to do what needs to be done.
I agree, as I've written elsewhere, the reason we still don't have Kamikazes bombing us is that we inflected a decisive defeat on the Japanese. Unpleasant military shocks are the best way to administer a dose of reality to a recalcitrant and agressive people.
(
Review) The Bush administration has told the Supreme Court for the first time that it believes the Constitution protects an individual’s right to possess guns, reversing the government’s longstanding interpretation of the Second Amendment.
Well, it's about time. For more information, see my essay on the Second Amendment, elsewhere in this site.
(
Review) JOHN PODHORETZ thinks, just as I do, that the way to peace in Jerusalem is through Baghdad.
(
Review) DINESH D'SOUZA has a very interesting article on Colonialism written for the Chronicle of Higher Education.
(
Review) SULAIMAN AL-HATTLAN, a Saudi journalist living in the US, writes in the Washington Post, that His country needs to reject fundamentalism and embark upon a course of reform. I couldn't agree more.
Notice, however, that he has to give this opinion in an American paper, rather than a Saudi one.
(
Review) Well, the State of California has found the Smoking Gun in their suit against Enron. Internal documents seem to show that Enron manipulated the California power market.
Although, not all the blame goes to Enron. California's whacky "de-regulation" scheme invited such abuses. So, in a sense, California got exactly what it asked for. Give a crook a chance to screw you, and that's exactly what he'll do. California has to take a look at the electrical industry again, and, this time, do it right, just like they should have done in the first place.
(
Review) THOMAS FRIEDMAN once again presents a thoughtful NY Times piece about the danger of the war on terrorism turning back the clock on American attempts to foster more democracy around the world.
And it's an important point to think about. During the Cold War, we dealt with all sorts of unsavory characters because, all things being equal, we rightly preferred to deal with unsavory characters who supported our cause than unsavory characters who supported the Sovs.
Countries such as Indonesia, with new, relatively unstable democracies need American support. Indonesians have tried to hamstring their military, because their dictators used it as an instrument of repression. But now, US military officials are asking that Indonesia loosen up on their military controls in order to get more military assistance from them on the war against terror.
It would be a crime for us to abandon our fight to encourage popular government around the world, in order to gain a short-term advantage in the war against terror. Over the long term, stable democratic governments are a greater boon to our national security.
(
Review) PETE DuPONT has taken a look at the Bush Administration's support of the new farm bill, and concluded that GEORGE W. BUSH has, once again, turned his back on the free market principles he was supposed to be all giddy for.
Those of us on the libertarian side have been saying for years that there isn't a dimes worth of difference between the Republicans and Democrats when you get right down to it. This administration has been ample proof of that. Bush has abandoned free trade on steel, lumber and textiles. And now he's ready to sign into law an additional $83 billion in farm subsidies, most of which will go to profitable conglomerates such as Con-Agra and ADM.
And, it will be you and me who'll end up paying an extra $4500 is new taxes, or higher food prices. As DuPont says:
"Farmers compose but 2% of the U.S. population, and one dollar in three of farm income comes from the federal government. The Heritage Foundation calculates that under the new bill there will be $462 billion in higher taxes and food prices over 10 years, costing the average household $4,377. Considering that it would cost but "$4 billion per year to guarantee every full-time farmer in America an income of at least 185% of the federal poverty line ($32,652 for a family of four in 2001)," why are we doing this? It's politics, of course, an effort to gain votes by spending federal money, not an unheard-of practice, but one rarely rising to this level of cost and complexity."
(
Review) The NY Post editorializes that its time to toss YASIR ARAFAT overboard as a partner for peace. He doesn't want peace, and negotiating with him is pointless.
(
Review) Yup, it appears that the suspect in PIM FORTUYN's assassination IS a leftist; a "vegan animal rights activist". Gotta love those vegans, with all their commitment to the sanctity of life, huh?
(
Review) HEATHER MacDONALD reports in City Journal that the recently-announced dumbing down of the the SAT may just be the beginning.
(
Review) ROD DREHER has a fantastic article on the assassination of PIM FORTUYN, and what it means about Dutch--and European--politics.
(
Review) NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF's piece in the NY Times points out, that despite all the talk about how poverty and hopelessness breed crime, terrorists appear, in general, wealthier and more highly educated than their societies as a whole. As Kristof points out:
"But Osama bin Laden's tricycle was probably gold-plated, and we all know that the 9/11 hijackers came from privileged backgrounds. Look at ETA in Spain, Red Brigades in Italy, Aum Shinrikyo in Japan, the I.R.A. in Ireland or Timothy McVeigh: they suggest middle-class alienation rather than third-world deprivation."
There are a lot of poor, oppressed people in the world. But, unlike the Arab Muslims, they aren't blowing up people in sidewalk cafes.
(
Review) JOSHUA MICAH MARSHALL writes in the NY Post about our new masters, the Saudis.
(
Review) The Times of London has some interesting questions to ask about the state of Europe in the aftermath of PIM FORTUYN's assassination:
"Why is it the most horrific acts of politically motivated violence committed against the West have come from Muslims, in the grip of a twisted fundamentalist version of their faith, who have enjoyed the freedoms, welfare benefits, educational opportunities and wealth Europe has to offer? And why do Western establishments temporise in the face of fundamentalist violence, from the EU’s funding of the infrastructure of terror in the Palestinian Authority to the lack of prosecutions against those who preach hate and recruit for jihads?"
Why, indeed.
(
Review) RICHARD HART SINNREICH writes in Today's Washington Post about how difficult it is to conduct military operations in urban areas without high civilian casualties. And he makes the important point that, when a defending force chooses to fight it out in a city among their own civilian population, they lose the right to complain about civilian deaths.
Just as Hamas loses the right to carp about the civilian death toll in Jenin, because they intentionally decided to fight it out there, with the specific intention of using civilians as human shields.
(
Review) Dutch right-winger PIM FORTUYN appears to have been whacked this morning. He was shot in the head in Hilversum.
This is not a good week for the European far right, it seems.
UPDATE: It's official. Fortuyn is dead, and police in Hilversum say they've got a suspect in custody.
Interestingly, while he was pretty far to the right in Europeans terms, Fortuyn probably wouldn't have been considered very right-wing here at all. Despite his anti-immigrant stance, he was pretty much a libertarian. The interesting thing is what happens to Dutch politics if it turns out he was bumped off by an immigrant. Fortuyn's point was that immigrants were a source of the rising crime in Holland, and that immigration needed to be stopped while current residents were assimilated into Dutch culture. Being popped by an immigrant would make Fortuyn's point morbidly clear.
UPDATE II: Dutch police say the assailant was a white Dutch male. Probably one of those "tolerant" European leftists. The interesting thing is that Fortuyn is considered so right-wing in Europe. He's an "anti-Immigrant" politician. What he really said about immigrants was:
"Large groups in the community are lagging behind in social and cultural terms. These groups often originate from countries which did not participate in the Judeo-Christian-humanist developments which have been taking place in Europe for centuries. These shortfalls in development are highly regrettable, as they result in a divide in society and form a threat to the functioning of our large cities. This must be tackled vigorously, on the one hand by paying extra attention to housing, schools and cultural education for these groups, but on the other by requiring these groups to make a maximum effort themselves. Cultural developments which are diametrically opposed to the desired integration and emancipation, such as arranged marriages, honour revenge and female circumcision, must be fought by means of legislation and public information. Discrimination against women in fundamentalist Islamic circles is particularly unacceptable. In a democratic society like ours, all citizens have the same rights and obligations, irrespective of race, gender, beliefs and nature. There is a division of Church and State in the Netherlands, and therefore also of mosque and state. Thanks to the division of powers (the executive, legislative and judiciary powers), citizens can develop themselves in relative freedom. Our hard-fought freedoms are worth protecting against increasing fundamentalism. We must carry out a study into whether the introduction of a social and military service for boys and girls of eighteen years of age or older can contribute to integration."
Actually, that sounds pretty even-handed to me.
(
Review) The LA Times points out an important part of the French Presidential fiasco, which is that France's institutions no longer respond to issues that animate the voters. If mainstream political parties aren't responding to voters' concerns, then extremist parties will seize on them, and continue to provide embarrassments to French politics.
(
Review) Well, Jaques Chirac has won another term as President of France in a landslide victory. But imagine how onerous today's vote was for French leftists. To get an idea, imagine being a liberal Democrat and having to vote for either Ronald Reagan or David Duke.
