2010 – Page 197 – Shall Not Be Questioned

A Debate We Know All Too Well

If you’ve followed the carry movement around the country, you all know that sometimes there are sometimes “issues” with what’s a public place, locations that are exempt from laws, and related matters. Turns out we’re not the only ones.

A decades-long dispute between Hare Krishnas and the Los Angeles International Airport over soliciting donations appears to be nearing a resolution, as the California Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday over whether the airport is a public place.

The International Society for Krishna Consciousness of California argues that the airport is much like a public park, and should therefore be open to solicitors.

California’s other major airports are supporting Los Angeles’ position that airports are private property. …

The Los Angeles City Council passed a law in 1997 prohibiting the receiving of donations at the city-owned airport.

As Tony Woodlief said: “… anyone who ever enjoyed ‘Airplane!’ kind of has to be rooting for them just a little.”

I’m rooting for them. Not because I want a flower, but because I find it hard to believe the argument that the entire airport property can be owned by the city and yet somehow private. It’s publicly owned, it’s a public place. Obviously, I would agree there can be restrictions such as the secure areas, and reasonable bans should be allowed. The city probably owns offices, but I don’t believe that it means we get to play frisbee with out dogs down the corridors of those offices. But having a higher burden of proving a restriction is reasonable is not a bad thing.

Not News You Want to Read

Since I’ve been reading briefs, I haven’t completed my normal rounds of blog visits today. So it was a bit of a startle to get an email trackback from Wyatt titled Requiem for a Friend. I immediately knew.

As Wyatt mentions, we met the Prof only once, but it was a good few hours of conversation & cheesesteaks. He was a great guy, and he will be missed.

Kamikaze Iguanas?

This just cracks me up:

Record lows across South Florida are literally freezing the invasive iguana in its tracks. …

Scientists said these seemingly suicidal lizards are a result of South Florida’s record cold weather. Iguanas prefer temperatures in the 80s and 90s. With Wednesday morning’s temperatures at around 35 degrees, a handful of lifeless lizards hung from branches and fell to the ground.

While these iguanas appeared dead, experts said they are not. When temperatures drop below 40 degrees, iguanas go into a type of hibernation in which their bodies essentially turn off, only allowing the heart to pump blood. When the temperature rises above 40 degrees again, the iguanas are revived. …

While the lizards’ comatose state provides a perfect opportunity to reign in the invasive species, Magill had a warning.

“I knew of a gentleman who was collecting them off the street and throwing them in the back of his station wagon, and all of a sudden these things are coming alive, crawling on his back and almost caused a wreck,” Magill said.

Philadelphia Comes Out Against McDonald

In a surprise to no one, when Philadelphia can’t find money to hire police officers and needs to close fire houses, they did find money to make sure they were represented in a brief pleading that the Court doesn’t make them honor the Bill of Rights. In fact, Philadelphia couldn’t be satisfied having just the city’s name on the brief, they also made sure that they put their police department’s name on it, too.

Incorporation would result in an unwarranted intrusion by the Federal Government into a field that falls exclusively within the Statesâ€™ police powers. The States have a paramount interest in protecting their citizens and property from loss of life, injury and damage occasioned by violence and breach of peace. Even if each individual enjoys the right to bear at least some sort of arms for self-defense, the exercise of that right carries with it the risk of violence and breach of peace, which the States naturally would want to minimize for the good of the community as a whole. (emphasis added)

Is anyone surprised by a city that won’t follow state laws or pay attention to the state constitution wants a pass on the federal limits on power, too? And for you uppity people who want the right to defend yourselves, well, they just need to make sure your rights are simply minimized.

Pennsylvania Anti-Gun Advocates Come Out in McDonald

Previously, 13 Representatives and both Senators from Pennsylvania signed on to the pro-McDonald Congressional brief. Only two members out of the other six of the Pennsylvania delegation have decided to formally stand on the wrong side of history.

It isn’t a shock that Congressmen Bob Brady (D, PA-01) and Chakah Fattah (D, PA-02) joinedÂ Carolyn McCarthy’s brief filed in favor of upholding Chicago’s gun ban. In it, the Congressmen made the bizarre arguments that federal restrictions on fully automatic firearms dating from the 1930s clearly show that the current handgun ban is constitutional. To further their â€œevidence,â€ they cite previous federal laws that merely acknowledge the existence of state firearms laws â€“ such as those banning the use of firearms by violent felons â€“ as reason to consider an outright ban to be legal. In fact, the entire premise of their brief seems to be that the existence of some laws that pertain to guns clearly means that gun bans are fine and dandy. They seem to forget the Court made clear inHeller that bans are not merely legally debatable restrictions. While I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on tv, I do have to wonder how any attorney could write that brief with a straight face.

The following Pennsylvania Representatives were too scared to take any side in the case:

Kathleen Dahlkemper (D, PA-03)
Joe Sestak (D, PA-07)
Allyson Schwartz (D, PA-13)
Mike Doyle (D, PA-14)

I started to wonder if old Joe Sestak finally realized he was far too left-wing for Pennsylvania. Then I realized that he probably never saw the memo to sign up for McCarthy’s brief since he is campaigning full-time (literally).

So What is Fast Eddie’s Excuse?

By now everyone here has likely heard of Rep. Alan Grayson, the infamous target of MyCongressmanIsNuts.com, and general all around political bonehead. The guy is trying to make his name by winning the prize for “Biggest Asshole in All the History of Congress.” But Jim Geraghty offers up this insight from a political veteran:

I heard from a veteran Republican strategist who had been involved in races in this district years back, and he offered the theory that Grayson’s off-his-meds schtick stems from his early realization that he was near-certain to be a one-term congressman. He was greatly helped by the Obama wave in this district, and suburban central Florida isn’t a natural territory for a lawmaker who sounds like a commenter on Daily Kos. With nothing to lose, Grayson is going out with a bang, holding nothing back and hoping his outlandish statements win him some other public platform. (Already, Grayson’s on MSNBC more frequently than the peacock logo.)

My first thought: What’s Ed Rendell’s excuse?

See, our fine Governor has no problem opening his mouth just as wide as Alan Grayson. He says out loud that state workers should worship him and erect shrines to him in their homes. He also informs the press that he thinks women who choose not to have children “have no life.” So tell me again, what’s his excuse?

Virginia Looking to Abolish Gun Rationing

It’ll be a fight, for sure, but the Virginia legislature looks more pro-gun than it did, and they have a pro-gun Governor in Bob McDonnell:

Del. Scott Lingamfelter, R-Woodbridge, is proposing to do away with the Gov. Doug Wilder-era policy that limits a person to buying a single gun a month, arguing the rule “has run its course.”

“I don’t think it’s been a very effective policy,” Lingamfelter said. “It hasn’t done much to prevent crime; it has done a lot to affect commerce.”

All the changes look good though, but Virginia will be the second state to repeal gun rationing because it doesn’t work (the other is South Carolina). Before the one-gun-a-month law, gun control advocates bitched about Virginia being a prime source of crime guns. After one-gun-a-month, they are still bitching. It doesn’t work. It’s time for the law to go.

Editorial Favoring Concealed Carry Reform in Iowa

Surprising that the Des Moines Register is willing to run a pro-right-to-carry op-ed, in this case by the Iowa Sportsmen’s Federation Executive Director Craig Swartz. Sounds like they are running a good media operation for getting this timely editorial placed in the state’s major paper. Good on them.

Scalia Defends His Position

Looks like he did so at a speech for the Mississippi College School of Law. Sadly they don’t go much into what he said about the Second Amendment, but they do cover Scalia’s warnings about appeal to international law. I have to agree with this part too:

Scalia also said that he was worried by a mounting trend of appointing career judges to the judiciary. Scalia, 73, is a former appeals court judge, but he had also worked in private practice, as a law professor and in the administration of President Gerald Ford before Ronald Reagan nominated him to the Supreme Court in 1982.

“Every aspect of your career broadens your outlook and the insights that you would have. It’s good for the Court to have people with varied backgrounds. One of the things I’m concerned about is that in recent years, nobody who has been appointed has come from another bench,” Scalia said.Â […]

[…] Calling European judges “the most blinkered bureaucrats,” Scalia said that career judges in European systems can develop a sympathy for the government’s side of a case, having worked for the government their entire professional lives.

“You contrast that with the Anglo-Saxon system, where in the most important courts the judges not only have not been spending their whole life with their snout in the public trough, they’ve been suing the government,” Scalia said. “They’ve been defending their clients against the government. (It’s) a different mind, a different mindset.”

I would love to have someone on the bench who’s built a career out of suing the government. Maybe someday a future president can put Alan Gura on the Court :)

Blogoversary

Man, has it really been 3 years? Though, it seems like a long way from where I started out. I wouldn’t have remembered if it wasn’t for the notice that my domain was about to expire. That was even before I met Bitter. I think my motivations for blogging back then were different, and I think this blog has certainly evolved a lot since the beginning.

In the beginning I started to blog just because I had something to say, and Bitter (who I had just started talking to) said I’d be good at it. So I figured I’d try to impress her. Originally I wasn’t much concerned with having my own voice, or writing style, if you will. I wasn’t much concerned with how my blog would fit in with the community. I was interested in attracting the attention of the larger blogs, and getting them to help me grow an audience with links, and I owe a tremendous amount of my success as a gun blog to SayUncle, Instapundit, Tam, Dave Hardy and Bitter (back when she was gun blogging over there instead of here).

After blogging for a while, you kind of get a sense where you fit in to the community, and what your strengths and weaknesses are as a blogger. I think I’ve developed Snowflakes In Hell to the point where it’s a reasonable source of political and legal analysis focused specifically on firearms policy and law, with a bit of a local focus on Pennsylvania issues in particular. This has brought me deeper into this issue than I ever really wanted, or imagined I’d be starting out.

But I also think I’ve made some mistakes in the past three years. A scrappy, confrontational style of debate probably helped me get noticed as an upstart blog, but I don’t think it’s always been an asset as a more established blog. I know I’ve rubbed more than a few people the wrong way when that was not really my intention. I’m also frustrated by how difficult it is to use blogs and forums to coordinate and promote local, targeted, grassroots activism. There are people out there who use new media effectively for this purpose, and it’s something we’ve been experimenting with, and trying to learn what works and what doesn’t. Despite my skepticism of Open Carry as a public relations tool, those guys have a winning formula when it comes to recruiting, keeping and mobilizing a dedicated core set of volunteers. While I’ve often been critical of their methods, I greatly admire what they’ve been able to accomplish in creating an issue identity, and building dedication to it. The Tea Party movement is another phenomena that’s cropped up, which is a great example of a core set of activists being able to mobilize large numbers of people. Something I’ll be thinking in year four of Snowflakes in Hell is how to take the strengths of these movements, and apply them in other contexts. See what works, and what doesn’t. 2010 will be a telling year for freedom advocates, and for gun rights. Let’s hope we’re celebrating after November.