2010 – Page 72 – Shall Not Be Questioned

The Other Side of the Thin Blue Line

We see regularly on the blogosphere the police getting away with all manner of abuse, in terms of arresting quiet suburban couples who were mistaken for pot growing kingpins, or something like that, but there is also plenty of “never attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity” out there, and Wyatt’s true detective files are among those:

The officers bring everything up and tell us what happened. To a man, we say,Â â€œYou canâ€™t lock this guy up for this.â€ The officers reply that their sergeant told them to lock the man up. Naturally, we asked the officers if the sergeant was coming up here to explain why he did that, the officers replied no. Of course not, because the sergeant knows he was wrong.

Look, in the real world, yeah, this toad probably broke into the vehicle. In the legal world, however, nothing this person did can justify charging him with the theft. Not without a complainant, a witness, or some physical evidence. In the end, we had the toad identified, checked him for active warrants, then released him with no charges.

And because this idiot sergeant ordered his arrest, the toad could have a nice little lawsuit on his hands if he so desired. Only in Philadelphia.

There are plenty of cops out there trying to do the right thing in a world that is decidedly not clearly black or white. I don’t mean to trivialize true abuses of police powers, but quite often the line between the good and the evil is a thin line. That’s something that’s probably lost in this debate.

Top Shot: Eliminated

Its there’s one person I’ve been pulling for in the Top Shot series, since fellow blogger Caleb was eliminated, it’s been Kelly Bachand. He’s very well rounded and a natural shooter, and just seemed to be like the kind of guy who could unexpectedly prevail. But this week, after sending yet another competitor home, he got to go first.

It turns out in this challenge, going first was the last thing anyone wanted to. I thought Kelly was setting the standard with a minute and a half, but that’s what got him eliminated, along with along with Adam. When you’re the last two people sitting on the bench, the last thing you want is to be betting on J.J. Racaza making a mistake. That didn’t happen. Tough breaks for Kelly and Adam, but that’s the way the bullet cuts the fuse I guess.

The Stupid

It continuously amazes me how poor executive culture can sometimes be in large companies. My industry is full of it, and unfortunately has much farther to fall before a new generation can come along and start picking up the pieces. Clayton is speaking of an HP policy that doesn’t allow laid off workers to be rehired:

The reason was that Hurd found out that some divisions were laying off workers–then rehiring them a few months later, when they discovered, “Gee, no one else but Fred knows how this works!”Â His solution, rather than asking if perhaps he was pushing too hard to get costs down–was to adopt this absurd rule.

HP is busily hiring people at the moment for positions that I could easily do, and for considerably better pay than I now get.Â But Hurd’s stupid, peevish rule means this valley is filled with qualified engineers that can’t be hired back.Â Instead, HP has to hire people from elsewhere.Â Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Unintended consequences aren’t just for stupid government bureaucrats. CorporateÂ bureaucraciesÂ are no less infested with the same diseases. There is a tendency in Corporate America to still believe we’re in an economy ofÂ interchangeableÂ labor. This thinking is a relic of the industrial age. The vast majority of a corporations value is increasingly coming from intellectual capital, i.e. it’s people. There are certainly times when layoffs are necessary, and I wouldn’t argue that empire building isn’t a pervasive problem (as it’s been even in small places I’ve worked), but policies that don’t center around hiring the best people for the job are doomed to failure.

Contradictions

One of Joe’s cartoons got me thinking. Our opponents say we need special rules for guns in urban areas, because what works inÂ CheyenneÂ doesn’t necessarily work in Chicago, or something like that (because everyone knows Cheyenne isn’t a real city, like the ones wealthy lefties live in). But yet when we pushed to get some very large tracts of rural areas opened up for firearms possession, we’re mocked, told we’ll shoot people, and invading their quiet sanctuaries with our gun nuttery. If our strategy is any gun, anywhere, any time, as our opponents suggest we’re struggling for, they are at least guilty of no gun, nowhere, none of the time.

Newest Additions to Righthaven Suits

Clayton is reporting they are suing the Second Amendment Sisters now too.

A Solution to the UK Crime Problem

Now, just like Mexico, they can blame it all on weak gun laws in America.

7th Circuit Ruling on Felons

Yet another court has hinted that non-violent felons may be able to retain their Second Amendment rights. The Court ruled that as applied to Williams, who was a violent felon, was not unconstitutional, but said a non-violent felon might be able to prevail on 922(g)(1) being overly broad. What’s interesting to me is that Justice O’Conner was sitting on this panel by designation, and signed on to the unanimous opinion. It’s long been believed that O’Conner would have been a “no” vote on Heller had she not been replaced by Justice Alito upon her retirement from the Court. Her concurrence here is interesting, but offers little insight into how she would have voted on Heller, I think.

If you had told me …

… back in November of 2008 that in August of 2010, the head of the Brady Center would be upset with President Obama for parroting an NRA line of “better enforcement” I would have said you were nuts, but this is a strange world we live in. Things must be pretty gloomy at Brady HQ these days.

I will make a prediction that will cheer them up. Hillary is going to primary Barry in 2012. After the 2010 elections, she’ll be one of the first off this RMS Titanic of anÂ Administration. She’ll write a book preaching about howÂ incompetentÂ this Administration has been, and sell herself as the savior of modern progressivism. She might even return the Brady’s phone calls. I’m pretty convinced if the GOP takes back the House, she’s going to set herself up to unseat Barry in the 2012 primary.

The Importance of the Kagan Fight

I don’t think that anyone who is an enthusiastic observer of politics ever really believed that NRA was going to successfully derail Kagan. The main problem is,Â considerablyÂ more so than on legislative matters, party plays an important role in those kinds of votes. A vote against Kagan would have been portrayed as a critical failure of the Obama administration, and the word “failed administration” would have been bandied about in the media even more than it already is. They say a rising tide lifts all boats, but a sinking ships will generally take the rats down with it too. It was asking a lot of Democrats to vote against Kagan, and ultimately we only Ben Nelson’s “no” vote on Kagan. But it had to be done, and I don’t think we ought to go light on Senators like Bob Casey, who obviously aren’t as pro-gun as they’ve been claiming.

But a big reason that it did have to be done was as much for the Republicans as it was for the Democrats. I can’t imagine the federal judiciary is any different than any otherÂ hierarchy; where every District Judge imagines himself a Circuit Judge, and every Circuit Judge imagines himself a Supreme Court Justice. In that sense it’s very critical that Republicans understand that gun owners find anti-gun judges to be unacceptable for appointment or elevation on the federal bench. It’s not only important for Republican politicians to understand that, but for the current judges sitting on federal benches to understand that we’re prepared to scuttle any hope they may have of career advancement if they don’t rule correctly when it comes to the Second Amendment. So despite the fact that Kagan will be on the Court, and will likely be a reliable vote against us, I think there was value in the fight in terms of getting the vast majority of the Republican Party aligned against her. I can promise that Ben Nelson would have been a yes if NRA not opposed, along with more than a few Republican votes that were “no” instead of “yes.”

The Anti-Carry Bill that Won’t Die

It looks like the anti-gun politicians have learned a little something from the worst of New Jersey’s political traditions. When their bills are about to go down in defeat, they yank them from the floor. That way there’s never a real “no” vote against them, and they can keep pulling them up periodically to test the waters for any new votes.

This bill has to be defeated. Until Philadelphia stops abusing their authority over carry licenses, there’s no room to even talk about this subject.