Tag Archives: freedom

Zhang Dejiang Inspects

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Zhang Dejiang, Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, and so the number three man in the People’s Republic of China’s government is on an inspection tour of Hong Kong this week.  The Wall Street Journal‘s op-ed on the matter has a surprisingly naïve subtitle: …it’s a chance for China’s No 3 to hear local voices.

There’s this instead, though.

Officials say that 6,000 police will be on patrol and equipped to lock down roads and walkways whenever Mr Zhang moves about during his three-day stay.

And

Media interviews won’t be allowed during official events.

And the kicker:

The private purpose of Mr Zhang’s visit is to “inspect” Hong Kong, as state media put it, and to consider whether to give Mr [pro-Beijing Chief Executive of Hong Kong Leung Chun-ying] Leung a second five-year term.

Because Zhang and the PRC government will decide that, not the citizens of Hong Kong.

Doesn’t look to me like there’s much listening going on.

Yes, It Does

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The 9th Circuit is going to release, soon, its ruling on a lawsuit that involves California’s claim that it can mandate that firearm manufacturers incorporate safety devices into their firearms.

Anthony Hakl, a lawyer for the state, said the gun-rights groups sought to establish a constitutional right to purchase any handgun of one’s choice from whomever one chooses.

“No such right exists,” he wrote in a September brief.

It’s impressive that a highly trained lawyer should make such a statement with a straight face.  Alternatively, it’s depressing that our law schools do such a poor job of teaching our Constitution.

Here’s the 2nd Amendment on the matter:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Nothing in there about safety mechanisms, nor is there anything that addresses one way or the other the purchase of any handgun of one’s choice from whomever one chooses.

Here’s the 10th Amendment:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

There is no power to limit the sources of our Arms delegated to the United States by our Constitution.  Even the power to require us to license our Arms is a power merely to require us to know how to use—to be safe—with them.  Notice that, too: we have to be safe, not our Arms have to be safe in our stead.  Although it’s true enough that a safe weapon helps us be safe with them, it’s our responsibility to be safe, not the responsibility of an inanimate object.

Now, here’s the 9th Amendment:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

As noted above, there is no power to limit the sources of our Arms, either delegated or enumerated (a delegation by our ratification).  That’s a power retained by the people.  That’s a power retained by We the People.  The ability to purchase any handgun of one’s choice from whomever we might choose is already long established in our Constitution.

Only a Progressive lawyer would seek to rewrite the Constitution in so blatantly obvious a way.

Maryland’s Anti-Gun Law

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…is back before the 4th Circuit, this time for an en banc hearing, after an earlier 3-judge panel had vacated the prior trial court’s ruling upholding the law.  At issue is Maryland’s

Firearm Safety Act of 2013 banned possession of firearms designated as “assault weapons,” a broad category that includes dozens of types of high-capacity weapons, including the popular AR-15 rifle.  Maryland also banned sales and purchases of ammunition magazines of more than 10 rounds among other provisions.

The Maryland Attorney General, Douglas Gansler (D), is arguing

…AK-47s, the state argues, are “suited, for military-style assaults,” not sport shooting or self-defense….

This is an utterly disingenuous argument that only the Left and its anti-gun nuts could make.  The government has no legitimate interest in the purpose for which an American citizen might choose to keep and bear Arms, only that that right shall not be infringed.

Full stop.

Futile Gestures

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President Barack Obama (D) sent the guided missile destroyer USS William P Lawrence to sail to within

12 nautical miles of a land feature in the South China Sea known as Fiery Cross Reef[.]

Fiery Cross Reef is a terraformed “island” that the People’s Republic of China has transformed and on which it’s built a 10,000 foot runway and associated military support buildings; the facility is in the Spratly Islands in the southern part of the South China Sea, a body the PRC has seized, occupied, and been claiming as an inland PRC lake.

The sailing is the

third time in less than a year that the US has conducted so-called freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea in an effort to challenge what the US sees as the excessive maritime claims of China and other nations to the islands there.

Obama presents this as a brave and bold challenge to the PRC and a brave and bold assertion of the excessivity of those Chinese claims.  Indeed, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Russel wondered out loud,

If the world’s most powerful navy cannot sail where international law permits, then what happens to the ships, the navy, of a smaller country?

But stopping at the 12-mile limit is not an assertion of a right to sail where international law permits; on the contrary, it’s an acknowledgment of the PRC’s claims to the island(s), if not a tacit admission of the PRC’s claim to the entire Sea.

Notice:

The choice of Fiery Cross for the US warship’s operation was likely part of the US signal.  Last month, a high-ranking Chinese general visited Fiery Cross, marking the highest-level Chinese military official to visit any of the islands in the South China Sea in recent years.

The better time to make this sailing—to 12 miles or to my limit—would have been while General Fan Changlong, Vice Chairman of the PRC’s Central Military Commission, was visiting the island.

If Obama were truly interested in sailing where international law permits, he’d have our Navy sail as close to each of those islands as navigable waters physically permit, and he’d have our Navy also do it in conjunction with the navies and fishing and other commercial shipping of the other nations surrounding the South China Sea.

Stopping at 12 miles is futile for everyone except the PRC.

Free Assembly

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Beginning with the freshman class that enters in fall 2017, Harvard University students will no longer be allowed to hold leadership positions in campus groups while also maintaining membership in the exclusive, single-gender final clubs that dominate the school’s social scene.

And

The policy barring students from holding leadership positions in official groups while being members of what the school calls “unrecognized, single-gender social organizations,” also extends to the younger fraternities and sororities.  Students will also not receive the dean’s endorsements for elite scholarships and fellowships if they’re found to be members of the groups.

Whatever happened to freedom of association?  It’s true enough that Harvard is a private institution, but as the Supreme Court has held about private enterprises on a number of occasions vis-à-vis other venues, it has enough of a public institution characteristic—accepting a broad reach of students, just as any other private business, a store for instance, accepts a broad reach of customers—that it needs to act like one here.

It’s also true enough that the 1st Amendment’s right of the people peaceably to assemble only enjoins the Federal government.  However, the principle is no less valid in its applicability to a university.