Who wants to smash up hordes of demons and undead with me?
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‘;..;’
Archive for June, 2008
Yet another “big case” this term was saved for last. District of Columbia v. Heller had been decided in favor of an individual right at the D. C. Circuit Court of Appeals in Parker v. District of Columbia, and the circuit court’s decision was affirmed this morning.
Justice Scalia with the majority opinion of the court, joined by the Chief Justice and Justices Alito, Thomas and Kennedy, with two dissents: one by Justice Breyer, joined by Souter, Stevens and Ginsburg, and the other by Stevens, joined by Breyer, Souter and Ginsburg.
Opinion here. An excerpt where Scalia destroys the dissent’s view of “arms” (on page 13 of Scalia’s opinion):
In any event, the meaning of “bear arms” that petitioners and JUSTICE STEVENS propose is not even the (sometimes) idiomatic meaning. Rather, they manufacture a hybrid definition, whereby “bear arms” connotes the actual carrying of arms (and therefore is not really an idiom) but only in the service of an organized militia. No dictionary has ever adopted that definition, and we have been apprised of no source that indicates that it carried that meaning at the time of the founding. But it is easy to see why petitioners and the dissent are driven to the hybrid definition. Giving “bear Arms” its idiomatic meaning would cause the protected right to consist of the right to be a soldier or to wage war—an absurdity that no commentator has ever endorsed. See L. Levy, Origins of the Bill of Rights 135 (1999). Worse still, the phrase “keep and bear Arms” would be incoherent. The word “Arms” would have two different meanings at once: “weapons” (as the object of “keep”) and (as the object of “bear”) one-half of an idiom. It would be rather like saying “He filled and kicked the bucket” to mean “He filled the bucket and died.” Grotesque.
Scalia’s conclusion (Page 64, emphasis mine):
In sum, we hold that the District’s ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment, as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense. Assuming that Heller is not disqualified from the exercise of Second Amendment rights, the District must permit him to register his handgun and must issue him a license to carry it in the home.
* * *
We are aware of the problem of handgun violence in this country, and we take seriously the concerns raised by the many amici who believe that prohibition of handgun ownership is a solution. The Constitution leaves the District of Columbia a variety of tools for combating that problem, including some measures regulating handguns, see supra, at 54–55, and n. 26. But the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table. These include the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home. Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.
Judicial Restraint. It’s a concept lost on too many Judges, and it is refreshing in a way. But this case, with that opinion, should have been 9-0, not 5-4. Further excerpts from Scalia’s opinion, as compiled by SCOTUSBlog’s Tom Goldstein, can be found here.
With the same 5-4 split as the Boumediene Gitmo detainee case earlier this month, the Supreme Court has struck down a Louisiana Statute, adopted in 1995, that made Child Rape a Capital offense.
Justice Kennedy has the opinion of the Majority, where they rely on “evolving standards of decency” in determining what is “Cruel and Unusual Punishment” as such is prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. Justices Stevens, Souter, Breyer and Ginsburg joined Kennedy’s rambling opinion.
Justice Alito provides the dissent, joined by the Chief Justice and Justices Scalia and Thomas.
The opinion and dissent can be found here. Ed Whelan of NRO’s Bench Memos has the details of the graphic crime that Kennedy et al find less grusome than murder. As Whelan notes:
Kennedy’s 36 pages of insufferable blather amount to little more than a declaration that the majority doesn’t think that capital punishment is ever a fair penalty for the rape of a child—“no matter,” as Justice Alito puts it in his dissent, “how young the child, no matter how many times the child is raped, no matter how many children the perpetrator rapes, no matter how sadistic the crime, no matter how much physical or psychological trauma is inflicted, and no matter how heinous the perpetrator’s prior criminal record may be.”
UPDATE: NRO has this editorial Thursday AM:
In his opinion Wednesday for a five-justice majority in Kennedy v. Louisiana, Justice Anthony Kennedy ruled that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishments” forbids imposition of the death penalty for the rape of a child. Or, rather, he ruled that the Court’s modern rewriting of the Eighth Amendment as a license for the Court to impose its “independent judgment” of “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society” yields that result. If any further evidence were needed that the Supreme Court’s death-penalty decisions have become entirely unmoored from the actual Eighth Amendment — as well as from the good sense of the American people — Kennedy’s opinion provides it.
It is with a heavy heart that I resign my position as President of the High School Chess Club…
What did I do now? Check under the fold.
The alternate title to this post is:
“I Blame YOU Siamese Sith” for leading me astray by telling me I simply had to buy a PS3 console, instead of an XBOX360!
Why have I turned on my personal video gaming guru?
Here’s why:
Stream Netflix Videos Instantly to XBOX360
Windows Vista only: Freeware Vista Media Center plug-in vmcNetFlix streams Netflix Watch Now videos to Windows Media Center extenders, including the Xbox 360. You can also manage your queue, browse movies, and do just about anything else you’d want from a Netflix plug-in. Previously mentioned MyNetflix incorporated all of these features, but so far it does not support streaming to extenders. If you’ve been tempted by the new Netflix streaming box but don’t want to throw down cash when you’ve already got a 360 in your home theater, vmcNetFlix is a sure winner. It’s in beta and still a touch buggy, but it’s very promising.
So if you’ve got an XBOX360 and a Netflix account, this is something worth checking out. I’m still waiting for a PS3 option. In the meantime, I’ve spent $99 on the Roku device, but I think my PS3 should be able to do this. Magically, without much effort, since it was practically reverse-engineered from recovered UFO technology.
Thank you, Internet.
SCOTUSblog’s Tom Goldstein, at 10:12 AM on today’s LiveBlog from the Court, speculates based on prior decisions and opinion authors from the March sittings that Justice Antonin Scalia is the likely author of the Heller vs District of Columbia, the 2nd Amendment case challenging D.C.’s ban on handguns.
Tom Goldstein - The only opinion remaining from the March sitting is Heller. The only Justice without a majority opinion from that sitting is Justice Scalia.
One would think this bodes good news for the gun rights crowd, given Scalia’s originalist nature. Scalia is not a monolith, though, and I see this as bad news for the cross-appeals by the five other residents that the lower courts found lacking standing.
Heller (the one of the six original plantiffs that the lower courts found had standing, and ruled in his favor) rests on the premise that the 2nd Amendment secures an individual right to bear arms, while D.C. rests on the theory it is not an individual right but a collective one. One would think Justice Scalia would be reading the 2nd Amendment as it stood at the time of its 1790 proposal and 1791 adoption - when individual gun ownership was a necessity for most of the country.
A small news story on the 10am WMAL AM-630 local news segment caught my attention - lost amidst the local talk outcry over Barack Obama declining public funds (first since Nixon to do so in the general election) and over the “Drill here, drill now, pay less” drive (See Newt’s American Solutions website), the State of Virginia will install changeable speed limit signs on the Capital Beltway.
Most Americans recall Roscoe on The Dukes of Hazzard, where he resorted to such tricks to catch thew Duke boys “speeding”.
Though the practical example of their intent is the German Autobahn, where some segments have signs capable of changing speed limits and other warnings based on conditions on the highway. A segment of the highway between Stuttgart and Munich comes to mind, particularly around a tunnel, and when the highway ends in Munich.
The Capital Beltway is a 65-mile circle, one that is primarily four lanes in each direction except for two small segments (the I-270 triangle is 3 lanes each, and the new Woodrow Willson Bridge currently only has 3 lanes each open, but the 2nd 6 lane span is almost ready to open). I can see the reasons why the want to go to changeable signs, but the question is how will the drivers in this area react?
Sunday’s Cup race at Michigan International Speedway (MIS), the Life-Lock 400, saw Dale Earnhardt Jr’s then-76 race winless streak finally come to an end.
It looked like it would end five races ago at Richmond, when Jr. was spun out while leading by Kyle Busch with less than 3 laps to go in the scheduled distance. It looked like it could have ended in the season-opening Daytona 500, after he won his 150 mile qualifier and the Bud Shootout (pole-sitter’s race), until a late call to stay out when others pitted may have cost him a shot at the win. As it was, he finished 9th, and would follow that up with a 2nd place finish at Las Vegas, and left Vegas with the most points after race-winner Carl Edwards failed post-race inspection, and was docked 100 points plus the 10 bonus points for the win when the Chase begins.
The streak might have been 13 races less had Brian Vickers not taken Jimmie Johnson and Jr. out on the backstretch on the last lap at Talladega in October 2006. Or it might have ended at Pocono last August, when Jr. sat on the pole and finished 2nd to Kurt Busch. Such is the nature in the Sprint Cup series, where wins are tough to secure.
Fresh Cracks...