Tag Archives: freedom

Children and Gun Control

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In the aftermath of the Newtown shootings, the Left cynically is using children as weapons in their charge against weapons.  Here’s an example.  And the six-year-old miscreant Had Been Warned, too.

At Silver Spring, MD’s, Roscoe Nix Elementary School, Assistant Principle Renee Garraway sent a six-year-old boy’s parents “a letter” alleging that he’d

“threatened to shoot a student” and that he had been spoken to earlier about similar behavior.

The “threat,” it turns out, came in the middle of a game a boy and a girl classmate had been playing.  He pointed his finger at her and said “Pow.”

In the letter, according to The Washington Post,

an assistant principal had warned one parent that the child’s behavior could lead to a suspension.  At school, a counselor “had an extended conversation” with the child to emphasize “the inappropriateness of using objects to make shooting gestures[.]”

Because today it’s inappropriate for children to play games that children have been playing harmlessly for thousands of years.  And

an assistant principal had talked to the boy about the “seriousness” of the issue[.]

Despite that, according to the school district’s lawyer, Judith S Bresler,

…after the meeting with the counselor and assistant principal, [the boy] chose to point his finger at a female classmate and say “Pow.”

Why, the heinous, disobedient, little six-year-old monster.  We’ll show him.  And they suspended the little hand-totinggun-toting criminal for a day.

Montgomery County schools spokesman Dana Tofig chimed in:

[S]uspending a student is a serious matter, and that is especially true of a student who is in our early grades.

So, it’s an especially serious matter for a child to play Cowboys and Indians.  Oh, wait—there’s one of the Left’s code words.  Prolly ought to suspend him for his next move, playing Unarmed Settlers and Indians, too.  Or would an extended arm, with the other hand back by one’s ear, also be an illegal weapon?  Probably not.  Too bad, too; the school would miss out on two-fer in that game.  Or a triple play, if the child playing the role of the Indigenous American also weren’t actually one.

All of this actually happened in mid-December, shortly after the Newtown shootings (it’s only coming to light now because the family has been forced to file a formal appeal with the school, the first move in bringing the matter to court, over the school’s intransigence), so a measure of hysteria might be expected, as the family’s lawyer, Robin Ficker, noted.  But these school officials are grown, rational, trained adults.  They know better.

That’s what makes it especially appalling that these folks are using children in their war on weapons.

Do Away with our Constitution

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That’s what Louis Michael Seidman, writing in the New York Times last week, wants to do.  He claims to have been teaching Constitutional law for quite a long time, but that’s hard to believe, after reading his epistle (though, in fact it’s true–at Georgetown, where he teaches Constitutional law, but from this writing, it seems to me he teaches very little of the Constitution).  On the other hand, another great Constitutional scholar, Ezra Klein, agrees with him.

Here are some of Seidman’s…rationales.

Imagine that after careful study a government official—say, the president or one of the party leaders in Congress—reaches a considered judgment that a particular course of action is best for the country.  Suddenly, someone bursts into the room with new information: a group of white propertied men who have been dead for two centuries, knew nothing of our present situation, acted illegally under existing law and thought it was fine to own slaves might have disagreed with this course of action.  Is it even remotely rational that the official should change his or her mind because of this divination?

Well, since that disagreement actually was centered on what the Constitution, the supreme Law of the Land, allows, yeah, he would have to give up his divination.  Especially since the Constitution was designed to maximize the likelihood that he represents American citizens, his collective bosses, and to ensure that their view of what is best for the country outweighs his own.  Suppose, contra, that after a careful study a government official—say, the president or one of the party leaders in Congress—reaches a considered judgment that a particular course of action is best for him personally.  Should that judgment be allowed to stand?

Constitutional disobedience may seem radical, but it is as old as the Republic.  In fact, the Constitution itself was born of constitutional disobedience.  When George Washington and the other framers went to Philadelphia in 1787, they were instructed to suggest amendments to the Articles of Confederation, which would have had to be ratified by the legislatures of all 13 states.  Instead, in violation of their mandate, they abandoned the Articles, wrote a new Constitution and provided that it would take effect after ratification by only nine states, and by conventions in those states rather than the state legislatures.

And how terrible that was.  Instead of being approved by the conclave of diplomats that was all that the Congress was under the Articles, or by unanimous approval of 13 disparate and independent States’ legislatures, it was approved by something far closer to the people themselves—those conventions, which were selected by an especially broad franchise of voters and one far more broad than the franchise that was allowed to select Seidman’s precious legislators.  It was the Sovereign people who ratified the new Constitution, thereby explicitly validating the decisions of those constitutional disobeyers.  Moreover, the remaining four States were not bound by a Constitution which their citizens did not ratify; they were free to go their own way, as the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations did for quite a few years before seeing the political and economic advantages of joining the union.  That separate way also included the option of continuing under the Articles, with a Congress now consisting of diplomatsdelegates from those four States, and a new effort at amendment.  In the end, though, the citizens of all thirteen States individually and separately ratified the Constitution, adding to the validation.

No sooner was the Constitution in place than our leaders began ignoring it.  John Adams supported the Alien and Sedition Acts, which violated the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech.  Thomas Jefferson thought every constitution should expire after a single generation.  He believed the most consequential act of his presidency—the purchase of the Louisiana Territory—exceeded his constitutional powers.

And all of these men’s relevant actions or failures to act were overridden by the existence of that Constitution—which also acts as a brake against Seidman’s “considered judgment” government official.  Moreover, that these men had feet of clay (including his slave owners) is an argument for holding government men fettered by a Constitution, not for allowing them freedom to run riot.  As one of those disdained “white propertied men who have been dead for two centuries, knew nothing of our present situation, acted illegally under existing law and thought it was fine to own slaves” but who could foresee the future of a society governed by men, noted,

If men were angels, no government would be necessary.  If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.  In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

Thus, that document that some find confusing because it was written more than one hundred years ago.  And which has stood us in good stead since was ratified.

Returning to Seidman’s words:

Before the Civil War, abolitionists like Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison conceded that the Constitution protected slavery, but denounced it as a pact with the devil that should be ignored.

Neither that they were abolitionists or that they “conceded” anything did not make them right.  In the event, slavery should have died out (literally) by 1808, but the slave States reneged on that bargain.  In the end, the Constitution was Amended, after that Civil War, to explicitly abolish slavery.  The argument simply to ignore the law was found as wanting then as it is now.

The fact that dissenting justices regularly, publicly and vociferously assert that their colleagues have ignored the Constitution…should give us pause.  The two main rival interpretive methods, “originalism” (divining the framers’ intent) and “living constitutionalism” (reinterpreting the text in light of modern demands), cannot be reconciled.  Some decisions have been grounded in one school of thought, and some in the other.  Whichever your philosophy, many of the results—by definition—must be wrong.

Nor need the two schools be reconciled.  Judicial activism is wrong.  Judges’ oaths of office commit them, on their honor, to uphold the Constitution, not to amend it ab ecclesia de banco.  Moreover, the Constitution is a living document, as Seidman and his “living constitutionalists” aver; however, it is that same Constitution’s Article V which shows how it thrives and evolves.  As one of Seidman’s living constitutionalists, Justice Robert H Jackson, said, the Constitution (Jackson actually was referring to the Bill of Rights) is not a suicide pact.  Jackson was right; however, what is suicide is deviating from the Constitution—including altering it without the requirements of Article V.

I could go on, but that’ll do for now.  The rest of his diatribe is of a piece.

In the end, our Constitution is all that stands between us as a nation of laws and us as a nation governed by a few men who make the laws; it is all that stands between us as a nation whose government protects those individual rights, liberties, and duties that are part of our Creator’s endowment and us as a nation whose government presumes to grant (or withdraw) our rights, liberties, and duties.

If Seidman is dissatisfied with our Constitution, I’d like to see the text of his proposed Amendment(s).  Article V, after all, as he well knows, is how our Constitution lives.  That our Constitution causes so much frustration by getting so far in the way of facile “solutions” is one of its strengths.  In the end, if he can’t convince mere men of the greatness of his ideas, perhaps his ideas aren’t so great.

Oh, one more thing.  Seidman opens his piece with this:

[A]lmost no one blames the culprit: our insistence on obedience to the Constitution, with all its archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil provisions.

But nowhere in the rest of writing does he name any of those “evil provisions,” or even any of the “archaic, idiosyncratic” ones.  That’s the integrity of leveling a charge and then declining to support it.

Obama’s Freedom

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From a person calling herself Jezebel comes this:

Ugh, you rubber cement-huffing nincompoop….

Anyway, I’m all for Hobby Lobby (and all other organizations that think birth control is totes gross) ignoring the law.  If they keep this up for long enough, we won’t have to worry about the fiscal cliff.

And I suppose that now’s as good a time as any to confess publicly that “Hobby Lobby” is the nickname I’ve given my vagina.

Name calling as pseudo-logic.  How very Progressive of her.

And this pseudo-argument from Think Progress, in their post misleading titled “Hobby Lobby To Deny Contraception To Employees, Ignoring Court Order:”

This ignores two obvious points—first, that Plan B is not an ‘abortion-inducing’ drug, as Hobby Lobby claims, and second, that the company may well end up paying more to avoid covering contraception than they would simply providing access.  It also takes a twisted view on the ‘Freedom of Religion’ argument; the company is actually forcing its owner’s religious beliefs on all employees, no matter their personal religious views.

I’ll ignore their first point as irrelevant (Look! Shiny!) and proceed to their second, which is blatantly cynical.  Think Progress actually is arguing in all seriousness that religious freedom—any freedom—is solely a pecuniary, fiscal thing, having nothing to do with principle or morality.  How little the Left understands individual liberties and duties.  How little the Left understands the threat to their own freedoms Big Government represents.

But their argument begins and ends with a disingenuously false premise.  Of course, the owners of Hobby Lobby are not at all denying contraception to their employees, nor are they imposing their own religious beliefs on anyone.  Those employees remain free to obtain birth control on their own, to obtain contraceptive “coverage” from other insurers, to engage in any other activity, all in accordance with their own religious beliefs.

Moreover, this refusal to participate in the HHS intrusion inflicts no other harm on their employees, either, including the costs of contraception now to be borne by those employees.  Sandra Fluke’s foolish remarks notwithstanding, contraception is freely available, and nearly free, for instance for $7/mo at any Walmart.  Condoms (the forgotten contraceptive) are just as cheap.

Hobby Lobby’s owners are simply exercising their 1st Amendment rights (that conveniently ignored clause that says, “Congress shall make no law…prohibiting the free exercise [of religion].”)  They’re simply declining to participate in a market for materials their religious beliefs hold to be immoral, while not at all impacting the ability of anyone else to participate in exactly that market.

But there’s another problem here.  When Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor refused a request from Hobby Lobby for a temporary injunction staying enforcement of HHS’ contraception insurance rule pending adjudication of the primary case, she continued the injustice rather than mitigated it.  In the balance was whether Hobby Lobby’s owners should be forced to suffer enormous economic damage or to violate their religious teachings, and so to suffer enormous moral damage, against whether Hobby Lobby’s employees should be required to go elsewhere for extremely low cost contraception and emergency contraception.  And this balance would have been purely temporary: resolution through the courts is in progress.

Sotomayor’s reasoning is instructive.

While the applicants allege they will face irreparable harm if they are forced to choose between complying with the contraception-coverage requirement and paying significant fines, they cannot show that an injunction is necessary or appropriate to aid our jurisdiction[.]

No.  $1.3 million in daily fines aren’t at all “irreparable harm.”  The moral damage of violating religious principles isn’t harmful at all.  After all, holding at bay that irreparable harm isn’t at all necessary or appropriate to aid the Court’s jurisdiction.  Never mind that it is the purpose of the Court to decide cases in accordance with the law—here the Constitution—and so to minimize overall damage.

And

Even without an injunction pending appeal, the applicants may continue their challenge to the regulations in the lower courts.

But pay, in the meantime, the frightful fiscal or moral cost that Sotomayor so casually dismisses.

Instead, Justice Sotomayor’s ruling said, “Kneel and bend your neck, sucker.  We already know the right answer.”  She carefully chose not to take the low cost—morally, fiscally, or legally—path.

But that’s freedom, Progressive style—Obama style.  Do it our way; we’ll take care of you.  But if you’re really so stupid as to disagree with us, we’ll vilify, demonize, you.  Because, in the first place, logic has no place in the discussion, and in the second place (yes, as in secondarily), your freedom is ours to determine.

Update: A Federal district judge appears to have a better understanding of relative costs and legal efficiency than does our Supreme Court Justice:

US District Judge Lawrence Zatkoff ruled Sunday in favor of Tom Monaghan and his Domino’s Farms Corp., near Ann Arbor.  Monaghan, a devout Roman Catholic, says contraception isn’t health care but a “gravely immoral” practice.

Zatkoff granted Monaghan’s emergency motion for a temporary restraining order until a final decision is made in the case.

The Fiscal Cliff “Deal”

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It’s a bad deal, and the Republicans in the House should vote it down.  Indeed, they should refuse even to take up the bill until the Senate has actually voted on the budget bill which the House passed in spring of last year, which would obviate all of this, or on the House-passed fiscal cliff solution from last September (which CBSNews claims doesn’t address the fiscal cliff, even though it significantly reduces Federal spending).

If the House Republicans accede to this deal, there’ll be no meaningful spending cuts, no chance for deficit elimination, no chance for debt pay down, the coming debt ceiling “negotiations” notwithstanding.  No, the Republicans will only be confirming their failure in summer of 2011, and their Senate failure last night, and solidifying their habit of folding under pressure.  And so it will be easy for them to fold, yet again, in two months’ time.

But quite aside from that political failure, they will be creating an economic and social failure: there is no need for the Federal government to receive yet more revenue.  Yet allowing the government to expand its raids on the private pocketbook, they will be condemning Americans to existence as government wards.  After all, President Barack Obama is on record in his victory speech yesterday as saying he intends to use this tax increase to fund additional “welfare,” rather than to pay down the debt, and as saying he wants yet more tax increases in the next round of talks—with which to expand “welfare.”

Even the chump change spending cuts in this deal represent abject surrender for the emasculated party.  The deal agrees to slip the sequester by two months, but that only achieves a spending cut of $24 billion.  That’s one surrender, but it could have been choked down in favor of dealing seriously with spending in the coming debt ceiling debate.  However,

Republicans had insisted the cuts of $24 billion be offset with savings in other areas.  The White House wanted some of the offset to be in the form of tax increases, not just other spending cuts.

Republicans folded (there’s that habit, again).

The deal pays for delaying the sequester with a mix of new taxes and spending cuts[.]  …$12 billion would come from a shift in the rules affecting workplace-based 401(k) plans.

A tax increase from which President Barack Obama’s union allies are carefully shielded, no matter their incomes.

This is a bad deal.

Kill it.

NLMSM Strikes Again

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Just two days before Christmas last week, The Journal News kindly advised all readers of the locations of gun owners, and of the locations of their unarmed neighbors, in the two New York counties of Westchester and Rockland.  The JN‘s Putnam County outing is pending.

They write, with an absolutely straight face, in justification of this invasion of privacy:

Anyone can find out the names and addresses of handgun owners in any county with a simple Freedom of Information Law request….

So they thought they’d do the home robbers, second-story men, and leftist anti-gun kooks a civic favor by outing these private citizens themselves, and save those others the trouble.

The good citizens of New York know better, and they object to this arrogant abuse of journalistic”…practice.

One objected:

Do you fools realize that you also made a map for criminals to use to find homes to rob that have no guns in them to protect themselves?

Another

You have just destroyed the privacy of these law abiding citizens and by releasing this list, you have equated them to that of sex offenders and murders.

And another:

These are law abiding gun owners, they are no danger to anyone except for criminals.  And with this information you have made them targets for both criminals and anti gun lobbyist who i am sure are going to treat them like monsters.

And another:

Tom King, president of the New York Rifle & Pistol Association, said the release of additional pistol-permit information [beyond the currently releasable name and address] would endanger gun owners, some of whom have valuable collections of weapons.

You’re giving a shopping list to criminals.  Does it matter if you own 47 guns or you own one gun?  Everybody likes to think that someone who has all of these guns is evil, that there’s some nefarious reason they have all these guns.  There are collectors.

And another:

Paul Piperato, the Rockland county clerk, said he’s always uneasy providing it.

You have judges, policemen, retired policemen, FBI agents—they have permits.  Once you allow the public to see where they live, that puts them in harm’s way.

Only a fool thinks judges and law enforcement personnel don’t have a plethora of enemies.

And there’s the hysteria and illogic of the anti-gun folks.  Jackie Hilly, New Yorkers Against Gun Violence Executive Director, insists

You don’t have more success with more guns.  You certainly don’t want our schools turned into armed camps.

Never mind that armed guards, or teachers or school staff trained and armed, don’t make the schools “armed camps.”  This is just an hysterical exaggeration.

Never mind that, presently, we give more protection to our banks and the money therein than we do our children.

Never mind that when the bad man comes and seconds count, the police will be only minutes away.  Absent an armed presence at the scene of the murders, the killing just goes on until the police can, finally, get there.

Never mind, even, that guns are not involved at all in one-third of mass killings.

The Journal News, though, in all of its wide-eyed innocence, is careful to point out that their reporter

Dwight R. Worley owns a Smith & Wesson 686 .357 Magnum and has had a residence permit in New York City for that weapon since February 2011.

But his dot isn’t on the map of gun owners and of unarmed homes that the NJ so kindly published.  Oh, wait—Worley isn’t in the counties he outed; he’s in NYC.  How convenient.

Merry Christmas