It’s Neil Gorsuch. You can check out his profile on SCOTUSBlog here. As John Richardson noted earlier today, he’s not written any opinions on the Second Amendment, but he’s in the same mold as Scalia, except for not being very fond of Chevron Deference, which is fine by me. We don’t know exactly where he stands on the Second Amendment, but given his overall judicial philosophy, I’d find it doubtful he’d be against us. That will need to come out in the hearings.
Speaking of the hearings, I fully expect this to go nuclear, meaning the Republicans will have to eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees the same as they were eliminated for lower court nominees by the Dems. I think they should do it, because they can be absolutely assured the Dems will do it if they control the Senate again in the future. They pretty much said they would. Don’t give GOP lawmakers room to be fools and unilaterally disarm.
It’s important to remember, Scalia was the strongest justice on the Court for the Second Amendment. Replacing him with someone just as solid is just not going backwards. I would have preferred someone with a record on the Second Amendment. We never had records on Roberts or Alito, but they both voted with us when it counted. Alito and Thomas are strong on this issue. Either Roberts or Kennedy, or both, are softer supporters. We need to get one more vote on there before we’ll be moving ahead.
UPDATE: NRA is endorsing the choice out of the gate. My guess is they have talked to him, and the speed of the release means they knew about it before it was announced.
The PA Game Commission has approved hunting with semi-automatic rifles:
For deer and bear, full-metal jacket rounds are not permitted and semi-automatics used for big game are limited to a five-round magazine capacity. The measure also carries a sunset provision that expires on June 30, 2020 to allow for a board review the measure.
Limited five rounds in the magazine or five round magazines? Though, I’m guessing a blocked 10 or 20 round mag would work if not.
I guess we’re not the only ones with this problem. Hey Pat, you know how we were telling you that none of the gun control people endorsing you were EVER going to actually vote for you, because none of them actually cared about the issue beyond its usefulness in promoting other progressive causes? Well …
Thanks for your patience last week. Another client deadline. Same work I was doing before the holidays. But work is a nice distraction from places like Facebook, which show the country is becoming even more divided. I’m starting to think about avoiding Facebook altogether. People who supported Hillary just won’t get over it and go back to their lives. I like politics, but I don’t want a steady diet of it in social media, which to me is for keeping up with friends and family. In the past I’ve blocked people who only share anti-Obama memes and other ridiculous stuff. Now I’m having to block ridiculous anti-Trump memes, but it’s not just a small handful of people. I see very few people worried about the division this is creating. Our issue is kind of fading into the background, which is probably good because then we can make progress:
I decided to take a look in the immediate post-election era to see what we were talking about here eight years ago. I think it’s kind of a fun thing to do. Basically, I was talking people on my side down from the ledge a lot. What worries me today is I only see the madness feeding on itself. Then, I believed that madness was a distraction, and would imperil serious efforts to stop the new Administration:
Morning after election: “That is all. Get ready folks, we are in for some dark, dark times.” Actually, if you had told me then where we’d be now at the start of a new Administration, I wouldn’t have believed you. We opposed Obama when he came after us and we came out on top every time. I figured we’d win some and lose some. I think we were helped greatly by the fact that neither Obama nor Bloomberg have any understanding of the gun culture in this country.
“Barack Obama is my President.” “What I mean by that is I’m giving him a chance.” I still think he sucked, but the “Not my President” crap I see from the left now is still just as obnoxious when I was seeing it from the right eight years ago.
Gun control supporting folks in the media were calling us crazy for thinking then President-Elect Obama wanted to do gun control, except for the fact that it was in his transition platform. He actually left us alone, for the most part, during his first term, if you recall. Even signed a few pro-gun measures (admittedly under duress, since they were attached to “must pass” bills).
“Obama Will Overreach” Boy, he sure as hell did, didn’t he? People who wanted to see gun control after Sandy Hook could have easily gotten some if they hadn’t overreached. Hell, we preemptively offered to reform the background check system and apply it to all transfers, and they rejected that because it wasn’t radical enough. So we took our respective sides, fought it out, and they lost.
I was looking back over my archives. This is something I don’t like to do, because my beliefs have evolved somewhat, and my blogging style today isn’t quite the same as it was back then. In some cases I’d like to reach through the screen and smack my then self. But what I was talking about in the post-Obama inauguration period is a sharp contrast to the nuttery I’m seeing on social media today:
Discussing his inauguration speech. I have to admit, I didn’t even listen to or read Trump’s. Funny in that one I wondered why Obama mentioned a new relationship with the muslim world, knowing that would set off people on the right. Little did I know trolling the right would be his shtick.
I also noticed the day before Obama’s inaugural is when I launched a Facebook presence for the blog. That’s also, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence, when dialog in this country started to head downhill.
Maybe it’s just because I’m used to being disappointed by the occupant of the White House, it’s hard for me to get as worked up over the Administration change as much as everyone on Facebook. I was reading Sarah Hoyt’s article about “Surviving the Cult” and glanced briefly at the comments. This really caught my eye:
I feel like I’m being constantly gaslighted by people I have, well, had, some respect for, joked with, met, and suddenly they’ve all gone crazy left as though they’re trying to win some kind of loon contest. And I must have just been really naive not to have seen it years ago.
Yep, and while I’m aware that this has reenergized the loony right, the center seems to be disappearing. Embrace the crazy! It’s quickly becoming the zeitgeist of our age.
We did litigate the Colorado magazine limitations in the 10th Circuit. The District Court upheld the ban, but that ruling was thrown out by the Circuit Court because they argued none of the plaintiffs had standing to sue. Judge Gorsuch didn’t have anything to do with that case, so the best we can do is the quote from SCOTUSBlog link above:
Together §§ 922(g) and 924(a)(2) operate to criminalize the possession of any kind of gun. But gun possession is often lawful and sometimes even protected as a matter of constitutional right. The only statutory element separating innocent (even constitutionally protected) gun possession from criminal conduct in §§ 922(g) and 924(a) is a prior felony conviction. So the presumption that the government must prove mens rea here applies with full force.
I think more will have to come out in the confirmation hearing, but his position on that case makes him promising. We will have to replace one of the liberals to move forward. Otherwise I’m afraid we’re just going to create more bad precedent in the circuit courts that the Supreme Court will leave in place when they refuse to hear the case.
A monument dedicated to women on the site of the largest complex of buildings owned exclusively by women seems like it would be a great place to stop and pay some respect during the Women’s March, doesn’t it?
It was, if you define paying respect by climbing up the monuments to slap on signs, clothing, and hanging crap off of the outstretched hands. If respecting the property means stomping over flower beds, kicking the greenery up, pushing through the bushes, leaving trash strewn about, and apparently also smearing paint on statues, then sure, lots of respect was paid to the monument and buildings owned by women. (The paint apparently isn’t visible in the videos below because they were shot after signs were placed on top, but I’ve seen it mentioned by several who visited the site later.)
The buildings owned exclusively by women since the empty city block across from the White House lawn was purchased more than 100 years ago – before women could even vote in this country – and are home to the Daughters of the American Revolution. DAR is non-partisan and apolitical. I know women in the group who are far more conservative than I’ll ever be and far more liberal than I’ve ever been. And yet we have a few things in common – a sense of respect for American history and values, and we’re always volunteering for something in our communities.
In fact, the monument that was “decorated” by the marchers is dedicated to the founders who spelled out that DAR was supposed to be a community service organization. Our current goal for recorded service in our community is 19 million hours collectively doing meaningful service – not writing checks or showing up to a gala for a cause – in 3 years. The 19 number comes from the fact that our final year of recording hours will be the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment.
I’ve seen marchers defend the mess they left on sidewalks by saying that the City wanted to handle clean up so they wouldn’t have as many trashcans that could be a security risk. Assuming that’s accurate, this mess is not on a sidewalk. In fact, much of it is not even on concrete. It’s in bushes and dropped over gardens. It’s on private property that women have to pay to clean. So all those complaints about the gender wage gap? A man is on video calling for people to leave their trash that women who make less will have to pay to have cleaned. That flower he laughs about kicking out of the ground, sure it’s just one bloom. But those gardens are paid for by women. So much for respect.
Inside those halls, if the people in the video had any interest in history, they would find a museum that primarily runs exhibits relating to women’s connections to history and craft. They would find collections put together by volunteers and staff (paid by women) dedicated to documenting the rich history that covers this country’s recent immigrants to the Revolution’s minority patriots. They would find out about how a group of women raised money to plant entire forests in every state – many of which are still preserved public green spaces today. Instead of actually showing even a reasonable level of respect for those efforts, they spread paint on our monuments and leave their trash behind as a “shrine” for women to clean up. (At least a past national officer reported that the paint seems to have been water based and was removed without further damaging the statue.)
But I have to say that it’s not just the marchers who left their trash behind in an effort to force non-partisan groups into partisan political debates, it’s also the reaction afterwards. Needless to say, the images of this vandalism have been shared widely in various DAR groups online. Some of the liberal members of the group are trying to put a positive spin on the intention, but also recognize that this is a man who is organizing some level of vandalism on our statues and that it will require women’s funds to clean up. I have seen some who have asked their fellow marchers to contribute to those expenses by donating to the DAR’s building maintenance fund in recognition of the fact that it wasn’t appropriate to leave everything behind for a private, non-political group that wasn’t involved to clean up.
Then there are those members who participated who I’ve seen demanding women who share information about the clean up efforts be banned from the organization. Their argument being that DAR is non-political, so a post about cleaning up the trash and paint left on our property by a political march is considered political because it makes their cause look less than perfect. Newsflash ladies, every movement has a**holes. If you’ve been involved in real grassroots action before, you know this. Call them out on their bad behavior and do what you can to correct that image. Instead, they want to silence those who are expressing disappointment in bad behavior. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to believe that a shared American value should include that even when you’re passionate about an issue, trespass and vandalism of private property is inappropriate.
It’s the SIG P320. The contract is worth $580MM, and they will be fielding it in 2017. Caliber will be 9mm. I feel like SIG is a good choice. What do you think?
