Month: June 2008

Ilya Somin has a sobering post comparing gun rights to property rights:

With very few exceptions, the effort to strengthen protection for property rights was categorically opposed by the Court’s liberal justices. Any property rights case that got to the Court almost starts with four guaranteed votes in favor of the government. This has two important effects.

First, any division in the ranks of the conservative justices is likely to be fatal for property rights in the case at issue. For example, Justice Anthony Kennedy voted with the liberal justices in Kelo and several other important property rights cases, leading to important setbacks for property supporters.

This is why we must vote McCain to keep Obama out of the oval office.  McCain is far from perfect, but neither were the two Bush’s, which we would be facing a loss on Heller had it not been for electing them.

As with property rights, the ideological division on the Court also leaves any gains vulnerable to future reversal in the event that a Democratic president is elected. The liberal justices’ opposition to gun rights is also shared by the vast majority of liberal judges on the lower courts. If Obama (or any other Democrat) becomes president, they will likely appoint justices who share these views. Even if Obama does not make this issue a major priority in his nomination decisions, the fact that he will want to nominate justices who are liberal on other constitutional issues will ensure a strong likelihood that they would also embrace the dominant liberal position on this issue. This happened in the case property rights as well. Opposition to property rights was probably not a major factor in Clinton’s choice of Ginsburg and Breyer. Indeed, Clinton was among those who later vehemently denounced the Kelo decision. Nonetheless, these two justices turned out be property rights opponents (even in Kelo) precisely because Clinton did make a priority of appointing judges who are generally liberal, and such judges are likely to be anti-property rights.

Seriously, McCain sucks, except for the alternative.  Let’s not get complacent here, or this day will be all for naught.