Friday, August 30, 2013
Barker's Newsbites: Friday, August 30, 2013
Geezus... listening to John Kerry on the radio...
Folks... read the damn transcript when it comes out! We have complete incompetents running our government!
Kerry is - LITERALLY - babbling before the world!
Folks... what's it gonna take to get you "interested" in what this government is doing... and threatening to do... in our names...?!?!
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* THREE-PARTER... (Part 1 of 3)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323324904579043211012863876.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
Republicans are busy debating what gives them the most "leverage" in their fight to get rid of ObamaCare. One powerful tool, it happens, is an issue that few of them so far have wanted to talk about - the White House's recent ObamaCare bailout for members of Congress and their staffs.
The GOP has been largely mute on this blatant self-dealing.
* NO DOUBT BECAUSE RINOs SUPPORTED THE BAILOUT AS DEMS DID!
The party might use what's left of its summer recess to consider just how politically potent this handout is, and what — were they to show a bit of principle — might be earned from opposing it.
* AS IF MOST OF THESE SCUM EVEN KNOW WHAT A PRINCIPLE IS...
(*GUFFAW*)
The Affordable Care Act states clearly that all members of Congress and their staff must buy their health insurance through an ObamaCare exchange. The law just as clearly does not reconstitute the generous government premium subsidies that members and staff currently receive. Since most members and staffers earn too much to qualify for subsidies in the dreaded ObamaCare exchanges, they were looking at an enormous financial hit come January.
* AND THEY SHOULD HAVE TO TAKE IT!
Democrats in particular freaked out, and so the White House in early August conjured out of thin air a bailout for the political elite. The Office of Personnel Management announced — with no legal authority — that Congress could keep receiving its giant subsidies. Oh, and the OPM also declared that each member of Congress also gets to define which of his staff is covered by the law. Chances are many staffers will never have to deal with the exchanges at all. This deal ought to have led to a wild GOP protest, both on philosophical and legal grounds. Instead, there has been nary a peep of complaint.
* DIE, BOEHNER, DIE; DIE, MCCONNELL, DIE!
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 3)
The charitable explanation is that the announcement came after Congress had left for recess, giving Republicans little opportunity to unify around a response. The less charitable explanation is that Republicans themselves are under huge pressure from their own staffers to shut up and keep the subsidies flowing.
Few things infuriate Americans more than special privileges for Washington. The public could not care less that insurance hikes might lead to a Washington "brain drain." (Most would view that as progress.)
(*STANDING OVATION*)
Americans scrabbling for work, struggling to pay bills and facing soaring insurance premiums are not sympathetic to congressional complaints that the loss of their subsidies is "unfair." As word has spread about the White House "fix," a bipartisan fury has started to build at town-hall meetings, at rallies, and in letters and phone calls to Congress.
With a little fortitude, the GOP still has the opportunity to be on the right side of public opinion.
* NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE ABILITY OF REPUBLICANS TO SNATCH DEFEAT FROM THE JAWS OF VICTORY...
(*SMIRK*)
The White House's unilateral bailout is a tailor-made opportunity for the GOP to highlight, yet again, the administration's unequal application of its flawed health law: waivers for Democratic union buddies, exemptions for big business, and now a special handout to Mr. Obama's political class.
* YEP...
The special deal is also an opportunity to oppose, yet again, the White House's extralegal actions.
* YEP...
Mostly, it is an opportunity to insist that Democrats either fully experience their experiment in social engineering — by living without subsidies within the ObamaCare exchanges they created — or give every other American relief.
* WHICH WOULD OF COURSE TOTALLY DESTABILIZE THE MATH UPON WHICH OBAMA AND THE DEMS "SOLD" OBAMACARE IN THE FIRST PLACE!
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)
The reality is that Democrats, far more than Republicans, wanted this fix. They are terrified of their own creation.
Imagine forcing Democrats, daily, to justify this self-dealing — a gravy handout reviled equally by independent, Democratic and Republican voters. Imagine the House attaching to a must-pass piece of legislation, say, a provision that requires Congress and staffers and administration officials to live uniformly and subsidy-free in the ObamaCare exchanges, or give a pass to ordinary Americans. Let's see Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid handle that one.
* FOLKS... NOTE... THE AUTHOR OF THIS PIECE IS HALF A RINO HERSELF. NOTE HOW SHE KEEPS ON INFERRING THAT "EVERYONE" SHOULD GET A BRIBE AND SCREW THE RESULTENT ECONOMIC CHAOS?
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
A handful of Republicans — Sens. David Vitter and Mike Enzi, and Reps. Ron DeSantis and Shelley Moore Capito — are already calling for action. Any of their legislative approaches might serve as a starting point for a broader effort.
* I DOUBT "ANY."
Of course, for Republicans to take this route, they'd have to risk their own self-interest. The GOP is currently sniping over who has more "principles" in the fight against ObamaCare. Those advocating a defund provision for the law this fall seem willing to hold hostage the economy and American households as part of a shutdown fight.
* SEE, FOLKS... THERE IT IS... RINO "LOGIC" ON DISPLAY...
(*SMIRK*)
* "TALK" CONSERVATIVE; BUT ACT LIBERAL.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
Yet nothing would make a greater statement about principles than a GOP willingness to first hold its own financial self-interest hostage in a fight. If Republicans want to show that they "stand for something," this is it. If they really are willing to do "whatever it takes" to oppose this law, there would be no more meaningful way to prove it.
* NOW THAT I AGREE WITH!
* THREE-PARTER... (Part 1 of 3)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323665504579032752188578872.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
When the debt limit expires later this year, it will provide one of the few remaining opportunities to slow the Obama administration's expansion of government.
* LET'S NOT FORGET, FOLKS, WHILE THE DEMS CONTROLLED THE WHITE HOUSE AND BOTH HOUSES OF CONGRESS THROUGHOUT ALL OF 2009 AND 2010, REPUBLICANS TOOK BACK CONTROL OF THE HOUSE IN 2011. (THEN THERE'S THE SENATE WHERE AT THE SAME TIME AS THE DEMS RETAINED CONTROL, THEY DID LOSE THE POWER TO SIMPLY BREAK FILIBUSTERS AT WILL.)
* MY POINT... I NEITHER FORGET NOR FORGIVE THE RINOs FOR COOPERATING WITH THE DEMS ON EXPANDING GOVERNMENT.
The $831 billion 2009 stimulus package has morphed into trillions of dollars of permanent debt, with growth and jobs losing out.
* AND THAT WAS ALL ON THE DEMS...
Republicans should propose constructive restraint. If their proposals are rejected, they should allow the House to vote on another short-term increase in the debt limit while insisting that Democrats provide almost all the votes for bigger government.
* POLITICS AS USUAL.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 3)
On their present course, spending and debt are forecast to rise sharply starting in 2015, even with severe underfunding of national defense.
* AS REGULARS KNOW, I'M NOT "IN THE FOLD" WHEN IT COMES TO THIS "SEVERE UNDERFUNDING" CRAPOLA. NOPE... I LOOK AT IT AS "SEVERE OVERREACH."
Government health-care spending will more than double over the next decade to $1.8 trillion annually in 2023...
[A]nnual debt-service costs will quadruple to $823 billion as interest rates normalize.
* IMAGINE, FOLKS... THE EQUIVILANT WOULD BE SOMETHING LIKE A QUARTER OF YOUR INCOME GOING TO DEBT SERVICE WHILE STILL ADDING TO EXISTING DEBT VIA NEW DEFICIT SPENDING YEAR IN AND YEAR OUT. THAT'S WHAT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT!
Constitutional limits on the scope of federal activity have gone unenforced. Automatic entitlement spending sidesteps the constitutional requirement that "No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law."
* "SIDESTEPS." HMM. ME? I'D SAY "VIOLATES." AT THE VERY LEAST I'D SAY "VIOLATES THE SPIRIT."
Going a step further, Congress has embedded the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau inside the Federal Reserve, giving it access to limitless funding (up 80% from 2012 to 2013, reaching over $500 million) and no congressional control over spending, mission creep or staff.
(CFPB unionized on May 9 and is expected to have over 1,500 employees in 2014, double the number in 2012.)
* FOLKS... THESE BASTARDS - PRESIDENTS... CONGRESSES - HAVE "BROKEN" AMERICA.
This leaves the debt limit as the critical legislative vehicle to provide restraint. The debt-limit process is deeply flawed, however, because spending commitments are made before a vote to raise the ceiling. The process should be replaced with legislation establishing continuous spending restraint that escalates when the debt-to-GDP ratio rises above a ceiling. But President Obama, in his budget proposals, goes in the other direction, toward more spending and debt regardless of the debt-to-GDP ratio.
* YEP...
The best chance of restraining the buildup in national debt is for Republicans to create a menu of reasonable restraints on spending and debt and insist that the president also propose restraints. The menu should include procedures to slow the growth in entitlement spending. These could include a higher retirement age and two changes in the inflation formula, progressive indexing to limit the current escalation in the initial Social Security payments and chain-weighted CPI to slow the excessive compounding in the annual Social Security inflation adjustments.
Changes made now, even if they take effect in several years, would have immediate economic and market benefits by improving the debt outlook.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)
Also on the menu should be steps to make the debt limit more honest. In recent years, the Federal Reserve has incurred extra debt by buying higher coupon Treasury bonds at a premium. The statutory debt only includes the face value of Treasury bonds (say $100), but the Fed may have had to borrow $105 to buy the bond because yields have fallen since it was issued.
* NOW I KNOW THAT SEVERAL OF YOU WERE NOT AWARE OF THIS! SO ALLOW ME TO REPEAT:
The statutory debt only includes the face value of Treasury bonds (say $100), but the Fed may have had to borrow $105 to buy the bond because yields have fallen since it was issued.
* FOLKS... FEW AMERICANS KNOW HOW DEEPLY CROOKED THE SYSTEM IS.
The debt limit should reflect the cumulative premiums — already $200 billion and climbing fast — that the Fed includes in its liabilities.
(*NOD*)
The Treasury is planning to issue a new type of debt, floating-rate notes, that will cause a further understatement of the nation's fiscal burden.
(*SIGH*)
* PERHAPS IT IS TIME FOR THE MILITARY COUP AFTER ALL...
The notes will hold down the fiscal deficit in the short-term, benefiting current politicians because at first they would carry marginally lower interest rates than fixed-rate debt. But when interest rates rise, so too will interest payments on those floating-rate notes. Debt will go up faster than if Treasury had issued fixed-rate debt.
* ARE... YOU... READING... THIS...?!?!
The debt limit should also consider the burden the Fed is creating for future taxpayers by buying longer-term Treasurys with trillions of dollars in short-term Fed IOUs called excess reserves. The practice, unprecedented before 2008, also will escalate the deficit, and thus the national debt, when interest rates rise. That's because the Fed pays a floating interest rate on these IOUs.
* FOLKS... I KNOW MOST OF YOU ARE PROBABLY LOSING THE AUTHOR AT THIS POINT - I KNOW I'M CONCENTRATING REAL HARD TRYING TO KEEP UP - BUT BOTTOM LINE... THESE FRIGGIN' POLITICIANS ARE SCREWING US!
Without appropriate controls in the debt limit — such as a five-year floor on the effective maturity of the national debt that also takes into account floating-rate debt and the Fed's debt — Washington will be tempted to expand these practices rapidly. That would lower current interest expense at the risk of future deficits and debt, precisely the concern the debt limit is meant to address.
* ACTUALLY... IT'S PROBABLY PAST-DUE FOR THE MILITARY COUP.
Mr. Obama won't like these restraints, and he may decline to offer pro-growth alternatives. The Republicans need to have a stronger fallback position than the February debt-limit increase, which required the Senate to produce a budget or have Senate salaries withheld. (The result of this no-budget, no-pay law was a prompt but meaningless Senate budget and lots more debt.)
If the president rejects improvements in the debt limit, a plausible strategy for House Republicans is to permit a vote on a short-term increase, but only provide a small number of GOP votes. The Democrats would need to provide the majority and would be accountable to the electorate.
* BUT A HUGE PART OF THE ELECTORATE DOESN'T KNOW... DOESN'T CARE... AND WILL VOTE DEMOCRAT NO MATTER WHAT!
* THREE-PARTER... (Part 1 of 3)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-military-officers-have-deep-doubts-about-impact-wisdom-of-a-us-strike-on-syria/2013/08/29/825dd5d4-10ee-11e3-b4cb-fd7ce041d814_story.html?hpid=z1
The Obama administration’s plan to launch a military strike against Syria is being received with serious reservations by many in the U.S. military...according to current and former officers.
Having assumed for months that the United States was unlikely to intervene militarily in Syria, the Defense Department has been thrust onto a war footing that has made many in the armed services uneasy, according to interviews with more than a dozen military officers ranging from captains to a four-star general.
Current and former officers fear the potential unintended consequences of a U.S. attack on Syria. Former and current officers, many with the painful lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan on their minds, said the main reservations concern the potential unintended consequences of launching cruise missiles against Syria.
Some questioned the use of military force as a punitive measure and suggested that the White House lacks a coherent strategy.
(If the administration is ambivalent about the wisdom of defeating or crippling the Syrian leader, possibly setting the stage for Damascus to fall to fundamentalist rebels, they said, the military objective of strikes on Assad’s military targets is at best ambiguous.)
“There’s a broad naivete in the political class about America’s obligations in foreign policy issues, and scary simplicity about the effects that employing American military power can achieve,” said retired Lt. Gen. Gregory S. Newbold, who served as director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the run-up to the Iraq war, noting that many of his contemporaries are alarmed by the plan.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 2)
Marine Lt. Col. Gordon Miller, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, warned this week of “potentially devastating consequences, including a fresh round of chemical weapons attacks and a military response by Israel.” “If President Bashar al-Assad were to absorb the strikes and use chemical weapons again, this would be a significant blow to the United States’ credibility and [we] would be compelled to escalate the assault on Syria to achieve the original objectives,” Miller wrote in a commentary for the think tank.
* THERE GOES OBAMA'S "NO BOOTS ON THE GROUND" PLEDGE - OR AT LEAST THE LOGIC (OR LACK THERE OF) BUTTRESSING THE NAIVETE OF THE PRESIDENT'S LACK OF FORETHOUGHT.
A National Security Council spokeswoman said Thursday she would not discuss “internal deliberations.” White House officials reiterated Thursday that the administration is not contemplating a protracted military engagement.
* BUT THOSE WE BOMB - IF WE BOMB - MIGHT BE!!!
* SERIOUSLY, FOLKS... WE'RE DEALING WITH ABSOLUTE INCOMPETENTS...!!!
Still, many in the military are skeptical. Getting drawn into the Syrian war, they fear, could distract the Pentagon in the midst of a vexing mission: its exit from Afghanistan, where U.S. troops are still being killed regularly.
* YOU DON'T HEAR MUCH ABOUT THAT NOWADAYS, DO YOU...?
(*SIGH*)
A young Army officer who is wrapping up a year-long tour there said soldiers were surprised to learn about the looming strike, calling the prospect “very dangerous.” “I can’t believe the president is even considering it,” said the officer, who like most officers interviewed for this story agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity because military personnel are reluctant to criticize policymakers while military campaigns are being planned. “We have been fighting the last 10 years a counterinsurgency war. Syria has modern weaponry. We would have to retrain for a conventional war.”
* WAR... IS... NOT... A... VIDEO... GAME...
* TO BE NOTHING...
* OOPS! NOT CONCLUDING... IT'S GONNA BE A FOUR-PARTER...(PART 3 OF 4)
Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has warned in great detail about the risks and pitfalls of U.S. military intervention in Syria. “As we weigh our options, we should be able to conclude with some confidence that use of force will move us toward the intended outcome,” Dempsey wrote last month in a letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee. “Once we take action, we should be prepared for what comes next. Deeper involvement is hard to avoid.”
(*PURSED LIPS*)
Dempsey has not spoken publicly about the administration’s planned strike on Syria, and it is unclear to what extent his position shifted after last week’s alleged chemical weapons attack. Dempsey said this month in an interview with ABC News that the lessons of Iraq weigh heavily on his calculations regarding Syria. “It has branded in me the idea that the use of military power must be part of an overall strategic solution that includes international partners and a whole of government,” he said in the Aug. 4 interview. “Simply the application of force rarely produces and, in fact, maybe never produces the outcome we seek.”
* MEANWHILE... (READ ON!)
The recently retired head of the U.S. Central Command, Gen. James Mattis, said last month at a security conference that the United States has “no moral obligation to do the impossible” in Syria. “If Americans take ownership of this, this is going to be a full-throated, very, very serious war,” said Mattis, who as Centcom chief oversaw planning for a range of U.S. military responses in Syria.
The potential consequences of a U.S. strike include a retaliatory attack by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah — which supports Assad — on Israel, as well as cyberattacks on U.S. targets and infrastructure, U.S. military officials said.
* THE WHITE HOUSE...?!?! THE CAPITAL BUILDING WHEN CONGRESS IS IN SESSION...?!?!
(*RUBBING MY HANDS TOGETHER IN ANTICIPATION*)
* SERIOUSLY, FOLKS... EACH TIME OUR GOVERNMENT DECIDES TO KILL PEOPLE AND BLOW THINGS UP, THE PEOPLE DIRECTLY HARMED... THE INNOCENT PEOPLE... WHO DO YOU SUPPOSE THEY BLAME? WHO DO YOU SUPPOSE THEY SEEK TO RETALIATE AGAINST?
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 4 of 4)
“What is the political end state we’re trying to achieve?” said a retired senior officer involved in Middle East operational planning who said his concerns are widely shared by active-duty military leaders. “I don’t know what it is. We say it’s not regime change. If it’s punishment, there are other ways to punish.” The former senior officer said that those who are expressing alarm at the risks inherent in the plan “are not being heard other than in a pro-forma manner.”
* OBAMA DOESN'T LISTEN. HIS PEOPLE DON'T LISTEN. PEOPLE NEED TO UNDERSTAND THIS. I'M NOT DEFENDING REPUBLICANS... MANY OF THEM ARE AS BAD AS OBAMA AND CREW... BUT THE FACT REMAINS THAT OBAMA IS PRESIDENT. HE'S HEAD OF STATE AS WELL AS HEAD OF GOVERNMENT. THE OVAL OFFICE SHOULD BE OPEN TO REAL DISCUSSION - NOT SIMPLY THE GIVING OF ORDERS.
President Obama said in a PBS interview on Wednesday that he is not contemplating a lengthy engagement, but instead “limited, tailored approaches.”
* BUT WE'RE ALREADY IN A NEVER-ENDING WAR ON TERROR! THAT'S THE EXCUSE FOR EVERYTHING FROM NSA EAVESDROPPING ON AMERICAN CITIZENS TO AMERICAN CITIZENS BEING TARGETED FOR ASSASSINATION ABROAD TO THIS LATEST THREAT TO BOMB SYRIA!
* AGAIN... WHAT IF THE SYRIANS... WHAT IF OTHER POWERS INCLUDING CHINA AND RUSSIA DECIDE THAT THE BLOWBACK WILL BE NEITHER "LIMITED" NOR "TAILORED?" WHAT IF THE RESPONSE IS ESCALATION? WHAT IF THE RESPONSE IS HITTING A U.S. SOFT TARGET?
A retired Central Command officer said the administration’s plan would “gravely disappoint our allies and accomplish little other than to be seen as doing something.”
* THAT DOES INDEED SOUND LIKE OBAMA!
“It will be seen as a half measure by our allies in the Middle East,” the officer said. “Iran and Syria will portray it as proof that the U.S. is unwilling to defend its interests in the region.”
Still, some within the military, while apprehensive, support striking Syria. W. Andrew Terrill, a Middle East expert at the U.S. Army War College...
* "WITHIN THE MILITARY?" I CAN'T HELP BUT NOT THE AUTHOR AFFORDS TERRILL NO RANK.
(*SMIRK*)
...said the limited history of the use of chemical weapons in the region suggests that a muted response from the West can be dangerous. “There is a feeling as you look back that if you don’t stand up to chemical weapons, they’re going to take it as a green light and use them on a recurring basis,” he said.
* LET TURKEY DEAL WITH IT. LET SAUDI ARABIA DEAL WITH IT. LET EGYPT AND JORDAN DEAL WITH IT. LET THE FRENCH FOREIGN LEGION DEAL WITH IT FOR ALL I CARE!
An Army lieutenant colonel said the White House has only bad options but should resist the urge to abort the plan now. “When a president draws a red line, for better or worse, it’s policy,” he said, referring to Obama’s declaration last year about Syria’s potential use of chemical weapons. “It cannot appear to be scared or tepid. Remember, with respect to policy choices concerning Syria, we are discussing degrees of bad and worse.”
* THIS LIEUTENANT COLONEL NEEDS TO READ HIS CONSTITUTION.
* THREE-PARTER... (Part 1 of 3)
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/357047/pride-ignorance-firearms-charles-c-w-cooke
For the sneering consequentialists of the post-constitutional Left, Justice Antonin Scalia is a bogeyman among bogeymen and the Second Amendment is an exasperating relic. It should thus come as no great surprise that Scalia’s considered and thoughtful comments on the future of firearms law, offered in good faith during a speech in Montana last week, were met with brash and injudicious criticism.
As revenge for his responding to the question of whether private citizens could own rocket launchers with the modest answer that this “remains to be determined,” the Daily Kos went so far as to suggest that Scalia, whom the outlet called “Supreme Court Justice Fever Dream,” was a “crackpot” and “not right in the head.”
Over at the more moderate Daily Beast, meanwhile, Adam Winkler continued to lie about the nature of the Second Amendment, contending slipperily that the “insurrectionist understanding” is false and advancing without shame the smear that “Justice Scalia, that acclaimed lover of originalism,” is “taking his cues from the Tea Party rather than from the text and history of the Constitution.”
As it happens, Scalia’s view is not crazy at all.
* INDEED, RECALL THAT AT THE TIME OF FOUNDING COMMERCIAL SHIPS - PRIVATELY OWNED COMMERCIAL SHIPS - WERE OFTEN ARMED WITH CANNON.
* ALONG THE SAME LINES, I'M SURE IT WAS NOT UNCOMMON FOR PRIVATE WILDERNESS FORTS - COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISES TO SUPPORT THE FUR TRADING INDUSTRY - TO HOST CANNON FOR DEFENSE AGAINST INDIAN ATTACK.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 3)
The two most recent Second Amendment decisions — D.C. v. Heller, which confirmed the obvious truth that the Second Amendment recognizes an individual right that is not contingent upon a militia, and McDonald v. Chicago, which incorporated that right to the states — did not address in much detail the question of which weapons may be legitimately banned, leaving the bulk of that work for another day.
Progressives think they are being inordinately clever when they ask advocates of the right to bear arms, “So, can you have a nuclear missile?!”
They are being no such thing.
Like all informed people, Justice Scalia himself concedes that the right to bear arms is not infinite. For the weapon to be protected by the federal constitution, citizens must to be able to “keep” it and to “bear” it — and also to discriminate with it. This is why a handgun is quite obviously protected while a cruise or nuclear missile is quite obviously not. The Heller decisions also included a poorly defined “common use” provision that has not yet been properly tested. Nevertheless, a significant gray area remains.
Are the current federal restrictions on the sale of machine guns permissible? Can a state limit access to so-called “assault weapons” without violating the incorporated right? Can, per Scalia’s own example, the government prohibit private ownership of rocket launchers? These are serious constitutional questions — questions that, as an inevitable consequence of wading into the debate around an amendment that was left largely untouched for two centuries, the court will ultimately be required to address.
This, remember, is a constitutional issue. It is not a political one. Contra the zeitgeist, “constitutional” and “unconstitutional” are not synonyms for “things I like” and “things I don’t like,” but statements of legal fact. If the Constitution does prevent Congress from prohibiting rocket launchers, and if this is deemed by a supermajority to be ridiculous, then the Second Amendment can be changed via the usual channels. Until that time, it remains in force and it must be upheld as it was written.
Scalia is by no means outré when he contends that machine guns or rocket launchers may fall on the protected side.
* READ ON... THIS IS IMPORTANT...
A favorite, albeit cheap, argument of gun-control advocates is that “when the Second Amendment was written, there were only muskets!” Conservatives customarily react to this by pointing out that, while true, the jab relies for its power upon an absurd standard that doesn’t apply to anything else. (The First Amendment, for example, quite obviously applies to the Internet and to speech broadcast over the radio.) But the better way to look at this question is not to compare the personal weapons that the citizenry owned at the time of the Founding with the more powerful personal weapons available to the citizenry now, but to compare what personal weapons the citizenry had access to at the Founding with what personal weapons the military owned at the time of the Founding.
* DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU JUST READ? CONTINUE READING AND IT'LL BECOME CLEAR!
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)
If we grant that the Second Amendment covered muskets — which pretty much everybody does — we are granting that the Second Amendment originally applied to the top-end personal military weapons of the time, and that the authors of the Constitution were happy for free Americans to own the same personal weapons as did the government.
Sure, they may be “just muskets” now. But at the time?
George Orwell, who recognized the importance of all this, explained in his essay “You and the Atom Bomb” just how powerful citizens with muskets had been — and how that dynamic was changing: The great age of democracy and of national self-determination was the age of the musket and the rifle. After the invention of the flintlock, and before the invention of the percussion cap, the musket was a fairly efficient weapon, and at the same time so simple that it could be produced almost anywhere. Its combination of qualities made possible the success of the American and French revolutions, and made a popular insurrection a more serious business than it could be in our own day.
(*NOD*)
If we are supposed to apply the “musket” principle today, as the Left insists we must, we should be expanding, not contracting, the list of personal weapons that the people may own.
* YEP! THAT IS INDEED WHERE THE LOGIC LEADS!
* INDEED... BRINGING MY PREVIOUS COMMENTARY REGARDING PRIVATELY OWNED CANNON INTO THE DISCUSSION...
(*PAUSE*) (*SHRUG*)
Instead, because the Second Amendment refers solely to discriminating, bearable weapons that can be borne by a militia, great swaths of the U.S. Army’s arsenal will remain unprotected by the Second Amendment. But machine guns, powerful rifles, and, yes, rocket launchers may well not be in that group. Scalia is right: The next big question is “What are the People allowed?”
The Court may decide that the scope is limited, and it may decide that it is not. But it will decide. And no amount of historical illiteracy, obtuse outrage, or scurrilous accusations that its members are “not right in the head” will prevent it from doing so.
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