Read this post »

Rights

This has been making the rounds quite a bit over the weekend, including some of our readers talking about it from an article earlier today. Quite a few people seem to be concerned (fair enough) or outright confused (including yours truly) over the situation where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was not read his Miranda rights before being [...]

Read this post »

Get off his damn lawn.

John McCain joked on Face the Nation yesterday that the US Senate’s reputation as the world’s greatest deliberative body was “the greatest exaggeration in history,” but his claim of the Senate’s purpose may run a close second.  In his joint appearance with Chuck Schumer yesterday, McCain told Bob Schieffer that he didn’t understand why some Republicans [...]

Read this post »

Trust.

Another good one via Mediaite. If you’re wondering why you should care what a deputy nanny of NYC thinks about drones, do note that Wolfson was a Clinton flack for years. He was a major player in Hillary’s 2008 campaign and might very well end up in a top position should she run in 2016, [...]

Read this post »

“We avow the First Amendment."

First Joe Biden can’t identify the article in the Constitution that authorizes the executive branch during a debate with Sarah Palin, and now Nancy Pelosi can’t identify which amendment recognizes the right to bear arms.  It’s bad enough that elected officials can’t properly identify the components of the foundational legal document of the United States [...]

Read this post »

Skepticism.

Since the Federal Assault Weapons Ban expired in September 2004, murder and overall violent-crime rates have fallen. In 2003, the last full year before the law expired, the U.S. murder rate was 5.7 per 100,000 people, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Report. By 2011, the murder rate fell to 4.7 per [...]

Read this post »

Hat trick.

So sue me. That schoolyard taunt may become political strategy, according to The Hill, as Democrats insist that the President can raise the nation’s debt limit unilaterally.  Why not get the courts involved by having Barack Obama do so and force Republicans to sue him in federal court? And you thought that the trillion-dollar coin [...]

Read this post »

Dropping.

There may or may not be fiscal-cliff action tonight — a Senate vote of some sort is likely, a House vote is not — so here’s your thread for Congress-watching and/or holiday revelry. Either way, drinking is mandatory. In lieu of a QOTD, let me leave you with an excerpt from the op-ed page of [...]

Read this post »

“Both the bible and the Constitution were well intentioned, but they are basically, inherently flawed."

And not just the Bible, but Piers Morgan wants to amend the Constitution, too. It’s a darn good thing that the CNN host needed work badly enough to emigrate to a place that he finds so disagreeable.  What did we ever do without him? I have no issue with the concept of amending the Constitution [...]

Read this post »

Ushering in a second new era of 'unprecedented openness in government'?

The fact that this was ever even an honest-to-goodness question, does not bode well for the Obama administration’s ostensibly ongoing efforts at improving transparency in a second term. From Politico: The Presidential Inaugural Committee has announced that President Obama’s official swearing-in will be open to the press, allaying the concerns of the White House press [...]

Read this post »

Choices.

Nothing surprising about this, but in case there was doubt, here’s Greg Sargent to dispel it: The Obama Justice Department is not saying whether it will address this question. But sources tell me the legal team representing the plaintiffs in the Proposition 8 case — Ted Olson, David Boise, and Ted Boutrous — plan to [...]

Read this post »

Meet the new boss.

Remember when the Egyptian army was supposed to be a check on the Brotherhood’s power, not an arm of it? As his proposed compromise faded and tensions mounted on Sunday, Mr. Morsi followed through on plans announced the day before to authorize the military to protect national institutions and polling places. His order, printed in [...]

Read this post »

Huzzah!

We’ve got to celebrate the freedom-endorsing little victories won by the Supreme Court while we’ve still kinda’-sorta’ got it (one shudders to think of what what the highest court in the land may look like after four more years of President Obama), and the justices logged one in favor of private-property rights with their unanimous [...]

Read this post »

Saying "that's only good for killing PEOPLE" is not a disqualifier

Once again the long running debate over gun control is being beaten into the ground in the wake of the maniacal attack in Colorado. So why drag it out further? Even after writing about it this weekend and sitting through hours of largely unbalanced coverage on television, there was something stuck in my proverbial craw. [...]

Read this post »

Solid.

Huh. Quite a cogent argument from Ice-T, the self-described “godfather of gangsta rap,” defending Americans’ gun rights following the shooting in Colorado on Friday. “It’s legal in the United States,” the rapper said. “The right to bear arms is because that’s the last form of defense against tyranny. Not to hunt. It’s to protect yourself [...]

Read this post »

"Public sentiment had swung"

We’ve already seen the sadly inevitable rush to capitalize on the tragedy in Colorado as an excuse to start passing strict gun laws, ranging from Bloomberg to Rendell and more. But as we sort through the aftermath of the disaster and the victims begin to pick up the pieces, is this opportunism going to result [...]

Read this post »

Penalties

“(T)he government’s tax power theory is far more radical than the Commerce and Necessary and Proper Clause theory precisely because the Supreme Court has generally deferred to any invocation of the tax power to raise revenue to spend for the general welfare. This normal deference is why the mandate’s defenders shifted the argument from the [...]

Read this post »

Is this what victory looks like?

I’m normally loathe to gainsay Charles Krauthammer on politics or on health care.  He has been one of the bright conservative lights in the commentariat for longer than I’ve been in the club at all, and normally I don’t find a need to dispute his point of view.  Today, though, I find his declaration of [...]

Read this post »

Back on offense.

It didn’t take long for the RNC to take advantage of the obvious political opening from yesterday’s Supreme Court decision.  They released a new one-minute spot intended for television that shows all of the denials from Barack Obama and other Democrats that ObamaCare was a tax, and reminds everyone that the Court now confirms that [...]

Read this post »

Victory?

Conservatives won a substantial victory Thursday. The physics of American politics — actions provoking reactions — continues to move the crucial debate, about the nature of the American regime, toward conservatism. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has served this cause… This victory will help revive a venerable tradition of America’s political culture, that of [...]

Read this post »

Power.

So, this is how I understand the Supreme Court decision on ObamaCare.  Congress wrote an individual mandate – to purchase approved health insurance – into the law.  President Obama spoke with great certainty of the provision being a mandate, and not a tax.  Congress didn’t write the mandate in words that would make it a [...]

Read this post »

“I know the Constitution. This bill is ironclad. It is ironclad.”

I’m not knocking her for her prediction — she thinks it’ll be 6-3 to uphold, as do I — but I can’t get over this bit. Did a politician who’ll forever be infamous for responding to a question about the constitutionality of the mandate by stammering “are you serious?” really say this? She was then [...]

Read this post »

Mainstreaming.

After a lengthy analysis of the Ron Paul influence evident at the Minnesota GOP Convention May 18-19 in St. Cloud (“Libertarian surge remakes state GOP,” May 20), the burning question for the Minneapolis Star Tribune Editorial Board was whether “a caucus-based political system that magnifies populist tides [and enabled Paul supporters to dominate the state [...]

Read this post »

Lies.

Remember, the fine print in his big “evolution” announcement a few weeks ago was that he was merely stating his personal opinion on SSM, not ushering in a new federal policy. Leave it to the states, he said, to handle this issue. But that too was a charade and I noted it at the time. [...]

Read this post »

Extreme much?

Like conservatives, law professor David R. Dow thinks it’s disappointing that the Supreme Court vote on the constitutionality of the Obamacare individual mandate will likely fall along partisan lines — but his disappointment stems from his utter conviction that the individual mandate is constitutional. He’s so convinced of it that he thinks any Supreme Court [...]

Read this post »