Wednesday, May 27, 2009

A little perspective, please?

So my email inbox is all full up now with spam about Uzbekistani mail-order brides, herbal love nostrums, and every pro-2nd Amendment organization from Armed Females of America to Zoroastrians for Concealed Carry warning me that "zomg Obama's nominated an antigunner for the Supreme Court!!!1!!eleven!"

Well, no duh there, Sparky. What did you think he was going to do? Dig up Charlton Heston's corpse and nominate him?

My favorite so far was the urgent request that I hurry and go vote in a poll asking "Should the U.S. Senate confirm Sonia Sotomayor to be a judge on the Supreme Court?" at KABA.com. Unsurprisingly, the results were about as close as asking "Ice Cream or Brussels Sprouts?" on aisle 5 at Toys 'R' Us. (Oddly, fourteen kids had voted for Brussels Sprouts. Out of a couple thousand.)

With Souter retiring, we're losing a sure opponent of the right to keep and bear arms, and it's pretty much a given that whoever replaces him amongst the Nazgul will be ready to step in and fill the gap. If we're lucky, their feelings towards firearms will only be mild antipathy rather than active loathing.

20 comments:

Borepatch said...

The sense of urgency is a little, well, late. Last October was the time.

I think that's what you said.

Tam said...

To be fair, it's not like the previous guy was a whiz in the Supreme Court nominating department, either.

New Jovian Thunderbolt said...

but voters did get him to withdraw a crappy nominee. not to say if voters got Obama to withdraw THIS one if the next one would be better for us.

fast richard said...

This is one of the biggest reasons I voted for the other guy last fall. Our hand-wringing over the court would be a little less pointless had he won. There would be some chance of nominees not actively hostile to the constitution.

(Faint praise more the other guy, I know.)

Tam said...

It's hard to say with any certainty, though. Look at the history of Souter...

Brad K. said...

I like the way Oh! Bummer! managed to insult the entire Supreme Court with his nomination announcement.

Barack Hussein Obama clearly stated that Ms. Sotomayer had more experience and wider experience than anyone now serving on the Bench. Hah! That should make everyone respect her, and get those other inexperienced folk ready and eager to work with Sotomayer to fix those niggling problems standing in Obama's way.

Well, I can hope. I hope.

But I would still like to know what pressure Obama tried to exert on the High Court that irritated Souter into retiring. I wonder if he has updated his passport yet.

Matt G said...

You nailed my own feelings on this, Tam.

AdaM said...

Oooh, a zombie Charlton Heston. Well, his "cold dead hands" speech would be appropriate...

:D

staghounds said...

Funny how all those sudden changes of outlook when they hit the Supreme Court only go in one direction.

And I also notice how Judge Sotomayor's Hispanicity has somehow made the journalistic experts forger Justice Cardozo's racial background.

Oh, wait- I forgot, people actually FROM Hispania aren't Hispanic, for U. S. racial hyg-, uh, classification purposes.

I feel sorry for her in a way.

I'd hate to think that the most important things about me were the geographical source of my parents' DNA and the reproductive equipment they assigned to me nine months before I was born.

Anyone who thinks that those things define someone is a racist, sexist jackass.

But for her, they seem to be a big part of her skill set and marketing brand.

Tam said...

Lynda Carter is a woman of Mexican ancestry, and she stopped a bullet cold, made the Axis fall, changed their minds, and changed the world. She is obviously more qualified than Sotomayor.

Wonder Woman for the Supreme Court!!!

Anonymous said...

So is the 2nd Ammendment truly the only consideration? By that I mean if a candidate for the Supreme Court viewed everything else exactly as you personally believed, but felt that the 2nd Ammendment gave widespread, but limited gun ownership rights, would that be enough to reject them? And conversely, if zombie Moses was nominated, but felt that the government should be involved a lot more in your personal lives, would you approve?

Tam said...

"So is the 2nd Ammendment truly the only consideration?"

Find where I said that. I dare you.

If anything, my post was the opposite of your whining, anony-mouse comment.

My name's in the open, but then I have the courage of my convictions, a scarce commodity in this age of digital mice.

Anonymous said...

Er.. actually I was not implying that you did say that. I was asking a question, and interested in the response. Many here give the impression that 2A is the only issue that matters, just wondering if that was truly the case. Hell, many are single issue voters, doesnt make them bad, or wrong. I just wondered who here was one.

Brad K. said...

Anonymous 3:26,

I look at it this way.

The bill of rights, including the 2nd amendment right to keep and bear arms, is intended to protect citizens and states from tyrants.

When all goes well, that isn't an issue. But create the environment where a tyrant could flourish, and we invite one to develop.

The Democrat-led Congress has had 6 years to push their "citizens deserve no defense against us" agenda. Now Barack Hussein Obama wants to get more done. Like Jimmy Carter before him, his agenda sounds almost reasonable, except for the parts about redistributing wealth (confiscating what he wants), about retaining rights of redress and grievance, and, oh, yeah, the ability to defend yourself in case of corrupt officials.

Granted, the last time this was required was the 1940's in Athens (Tennessee?). But we all know how well the Mexican drug cartels have been prevented from distributing their violence to every American city. The thugs are armed with heavy weapons, including automatic rifles and grenades provided by our Department of Defense (contrary to public announcements about legal gun sales).

Note, I find the ability, agility, and willingness of the Obama administration to flat-out lie, not just shade the truth, to be distressing. One of the more prominent recent lies was about the weapons pipelines from the US Dept of Defense, to Mexican army and police, to deserting Mexican army and police, to selling the weapons to the drug cartels. Obama lied about the automatic weapons that got to the Mexican drug cartels.

So degrading one of the primary checks and balances on the President and Congress, the ability of the Supreme Court to hold government accountable to the constitution - yes. For me, any nominee willing to pervert any part of the US Constitution would be grounds for me to oppose that nomination.

staghounds said...

1. A Supreme Court Justice is like a cow.

It doesn't matter how a SCJ feels about abortion, taking private property to give it to cronies, warrantless vehicular searches based on probable cause, the ability of congress to tell me how much corn I can grow to feed my pigs or how much I have to pay my yard man, whether I can read Lady Chatterly's Lover, or if a State can prohibit child labour, segregate its schools or execute someone who committed the most awful crimes imaginable on the day before his eighteenth birthday. Those are all settled questions.

So, for example, a Justice who thought the RKBA was collective, AND thought my way on all those other issues, would be a net loss since he couldn't alter precedent on them.

Heller solved nothing, because it's all about the standard of review for regulations. That's wide open.

(I have no hope, either. If a majority would have written a strict standard of review, we'd have it.)

So, the Justice is like a cow- it doesn't matter how pretty she is, how pleasant her lowing, or whether she won the talent contest at the state fair.

It's all about the milk.

2, The 2a is as Kosinski says a doomsday provision. The only time we MIGHT use our guns is if it looks like the Warsaw Ghetto.

And unless it DOES look like that, f/when gun confiscation laws are passed, we will obey them- just like we obeyed the Jim Crow laws. I can't think of a time in history that a free society decided to disarm itself and there was resistance, three percenter talk notwithstanding.

So ultimately, we have to try to get such laws prevented by having the ones that limit our rights overturned.

Anonymous said...

Very nicely done Staghounds. What little I have read about the nominee suggests that she is not as much an activist as everyone thinks, but thats immaterial. Thats about as good a defense of single issue voting as I have ever read. I factually voted for W for Governor based on that single issue myself. A pleasure to read a good defense of it.

Don said...

Meh.

I was lucky enough to be having lunch at the same table as Alan Gura in Chicago yesterday when Sotomayor came up. His response amounted to a "meh." As far as he's concerned, she's a vote he can't get, replacing a vote he couldn't have gotten, and the merits of his cases haven't changed. She'll vote Souter's vote, so no sense getting too worked up over it.

(I'm not a name dropper, I just seize any opportunity to mention famous or semi-famous people I've met.)

B Smith said...

Nazgul. heh. I am SO stealing that, although I don't really believe they're ALL in thrall to the Dark Lord ( um...Melanin-Blessed Lord? Lord of Color? gulp.)
They are black-robed, high-priest types who seem to cause great anxiety, if not outright dread and terror when they convene... :-D

staghounds said...

Thank you for the compliment.

Anonymous said...

Of course she's anti-2nd Amendment; she a bush/obamaite.
The fact that she's a racist who has already proven that she will MAKE law(and feel goood about it)based on the racial characterics of the plaintiff/defendent is what I am really not fine with.
emdfl

Bush - the family that just keeps giving it to us...