Tag Archives: government

A Ruling on the 2nd Amendment

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US District Judge Benson Everett Legg (Maryland District), in a Monday ruling has said that Maryland residents are not required, as a Marayland had had it, to convince authorities that they have a “good and substantial reason” to own a handgun.

Judge Legg wrote, among other things,

…the Court finds that the right to bear arms is not limited to the home. The signposts left by recent Supreme Court and Fourth Circuit case law all point to the conclusion that Woollard‘s ―claim to self-defense—asserted by him as a law-abiding citizen…—does implicate the Second Amendment, albeit subject to lawful limitations.

He went on [emphasis mine]:

A law that burdens the exercise of an enumerated constitutional right by simply making that right more difficult to exercise cannot be considered “reasonably adapted” to a government interest, no matter how substantial that interest may be.  Maryland‘s goal of “minimizing the proliferation of handguns among those who do not have a demonstrated need for them,”…is not a permissible method of preventing crime or ensuring public safety; it burdens the right too broadly.  Those who drafted and ratified the Second Amendment surely knew that the right they were enshrining carried a risk of misuse, and states have considerable latitude to channel the exercise of the right in ways that will minimize that risk.  States may not, however, seek to reduce the danger by means of widespread curtailment of the right itself.  “[E]ven the most legitimate goal may not be advanced in a constitutionally impermissible manner.”

At bottom, this case rests on a simple proposition: If the Government wishes to burden a right guaranteed by the Constitution, it may do so provided that it can show a satisfactory justification and a sufficiently adapted method.  The showing, however, is always the Government‘s to make.  A citizen may not be required to offer a “good and substantial reason” why he should be permitted to exercise his rights.  The right‘s existence is all the reason he needs.

Maryland’s Assistant Attorney General, Matthew Fader, says he’ll appeal, saying “we” disagree, and taking note of the “very important implications of the ruling for public safety.”  He’s wrong, though, on two counts: in the first place, the public safety is maximized by hewing to the Constitution, not by deviating from it.  In the second place, he apparently wasn’t paying attention to the Legg’s ruling:

States may not, however, seek to reduce the danger [of misuse] by means of widespread curtailment of the right itself.

Judge Legg has the right of it.

Our Feckless Foreign Policy

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The Progressive line on American foreign policy was first brought to light by Presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004 when he insisted, with a straight face, that America’s military policy must pass a “global test” before it can be implemented.  That’s a policy that’s alive and well in the present administration, as this exchange during last week’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing between Senator Jeff Sessions (R, AL) and Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, demonstrates (the exchange begins at about the 2:00 minute mark) [emphasis mine].

SESSIONS: Do you think you can act without Congress and initiate a no-fly zone in Syria without congressional approval?

PANETTA: …our goal would be to seek international permission, and we would come to the Congress and inform you and determine how best to approach this; whether or not we would want to get permission from the Congress, I think those are issues we would have to discuss as we decide what to do here.

SESSIONS: Well I am almost breathless about that because what I heard you say is, “we’re going to seek international approval and we will come and tell the Congress what we might do, and we might seek congressional approval” … Would you like to clarify that?

PANETTA: I have also served with Republican Presidents and Democratic Presidents who have always reserved the right to defend this country if necessary.

SESSIONS: But before you would do this, you would seek permission of the international authorities?

PANETTA: If we are working with an international coalition or NATO we would want to be able to get appropriate permissions in order to be able to do that.  All of these countries would want to have some kind of legal basis on which to act.

SESSIONS: What “legal basis” are you looking for?  What entity?

PANETTA: If NATO made the decision to go in, that would be one.  If we developed an international coalition beyond NATO then obviously some kind of UN security resolution would be the basis for that.

SESSIONS: So you are saying NATO would give you a “legal basis?”  And an ad hoc coalition of nations would provide a “legal basis?”

PANETTA: We would seek whatever legal basis we would need in order to make that justified. We can’t just pull them all together without getting the legal basis on which to act.

…

SESSIONS: I’m all for having international support, but I’m really baffled by the idea that somehow an international assembly provides a legal basis for the United States military to be deployed in combat.  I don’t think it’s close to being correct.  They provide no legal authority.  The only legal authority that’s required to deploy the U.S. military is the Congress and the president and the law in the Constitution.

PANETTA:  Let me, just for the record, be clear again.  When it comes to the national defense of this country, the President of the United States has the authority under the Constitution to act to defend this country, and we will.  If it comes to an operation where we’re trying to build a coalition of nations to work together to go in and operate as we did in Libya, or Bosnia, or for that matter, Afghanistan, we want to do it with permissions either by NATO or by the international community.

So, what do we have, then?  Panetta has gone even farther than Kerry, now insisting that “international permission,” rather than the Constitution (which includes authorization by Congress), is the “legal basis” for American use of our military capability in an international effort.  The administration seems to accept foreign control, foreign permissions, over whether we will use our military to conduct national defense activities in conjunction with foreign groups of countries; we have no authority of our own to employ our forces in that environment.  The President, intimates Panetta, executes his national defense obligations absent Congress’ involvement, although there is a willingness to discuss “whether or not we would want to get [Congressional] permission.”  Notice, also, that, even after Panetta’s “clarification,” neither the Constitution nor the Congress enter into it.  Ever.

It seems as though, given the entirety of Panetta’s responses, that he didn’t even understand the questions.

As Sessions said, international support is good.  But a sovereign nation needs no one else’s permission to use its military forces, either unilaterally or in concert with other nations.  Period.  That’s not the same as having an agreement with those others to engage in a joint action of some sort.  Those agreements, though, only outline the various responsibilities of the members of the coalition (ideally founded on the individual capabilities of those members); they do not constitute permission for employment.

At least General Martin Dempsey (those first two minutes of the video) understands for whom he works.

h/t Power Line

Qualified Opinions

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Do we allow those around here?  Even Massachusetts may be coming around.  Governor Duvall Patrick (D, MA) is looking at his state’s business regulations with a view to reducing their footprint on…business.  The Wall Street Journal is reporting that, among other things, he’s going to insist on what amounts to a business impact statement before a new regulation can go into effect.  The regulator proposing a new rule would be required to answer such questions as

Is this likely to encourage or deter the formation of business?

which is standard pap, but then Duvall cuts to the chase with a follow-up:

Who did you consult from the small business community to come to this conclusion?

Hmm….

The governor’s look includes rescission/tweaking of such regulations as a requirement that a hair salon owner selling her shop to an employee must first close down while the state processes associated paperwork, and a requirement that funeral directors must hire full-time apprentices only; part-timers are barred.  He’s also looking at an additional roughly 800 regulations across 60 state agencies.

Time will tell whether this is a serious look, or primarily politically useful tweaks, but it’s a promising start.

There is reason for skepticism.  Last year, President Obama made a big deal about the regulatory review process he was initiating.  That, though, has turned out to be a sham, consisting of minor changes to minor regulations without addressing his overall regulatory environment, which has been entirely anti-business.

Progressive Energy Subsidies

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John Hinderaker has a couple of slides from a Power Line post of his from the middle of last month that are instructive.  The first indicates the relative overt subsidy payments for a range of electric energy producer types.

In case you’re having trouble reading it, the salient parts are these: the figure shows Federal electric subsidies in dollars per MW-hr produced (2007 dollars).  The values on the left are for Natural Gas and Petroleum and for Coal at $0.25 and $0.44, respectively.  The values on the right are for Wind and for Solar at $23.37 and $24.34, respectively.  Those evil oil, natural gas, and coal companies get less than 2% of the subsidy Precious wind and solar companies get.

Pop quiz: which are the market-competitive companies?

There’s also this slide, which shows oil production rates over the last several years.  Recall its backdrop: President Obama’s claim that, on his watch, oil and gas production are up sharply.

The blue line indicates oil production on Federal land, and the Red line indicates production on private and State land.  The key interval is from 2007 on, when the Progressives had control of the Congress, followed shortly by Progressive control of the Executive Branch.  Notice that while production from private and State land was rising, production from Federal land was being driven down.  This, coupled with Obama’s slow-walking of Gulf deep water drilling permits; his refusal to allow new drilling, much less production beyond existing wells, into/from known oil deposits on Federal land; his EPA’s CO2 regulation over even a Progressive Congress’ objection; his killing of the Keystone XL pipeline; and so on, represent a far more powerful, and far more insidious, subsidy of his Precious “green” energy producers: active suppression of competition from production of cheap hydrocarbon-based energy from nearby sources.

Some subsidies are more equal than others.

This Is What A Progressive Government Stands For

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Our illustrious Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner had this to say in a recent The Wall Street Journal op-ed about the role of government in private decision making.  In setting up his meme, he described Bear Stearns’ risky investments and our own risky mortgage borrowing behavior.

Neither the Fed, nor any other federal agency, had the necessary comprehensive authority over investment firms…or the government-sponsored mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Regulators did not have the authority they needed to oversee and impose prudent limits…. And they had no authority to put these firms, or bank holding companies, through a managed bankruptcy.…

Household debt rose to an alarming 130% of income, with a huge portion of those loans originated with little to no supervision and poor consumer protections.

Hmm….  He decries the lack of government control over our businesses and our personal borrowing.  He decries government’s inability to bypass the bankruptcy court system (except for two dinosaur car companies, whose government regulation he doesn’t mention).

He insists that  Government knows better the risks, government knows better the decisions that ought to be made.  His solution, thus, is increased intrusive government management of our decisions and our businesses.  As to the costs of this, he dismisses them:

Are the costs of reform too high? Certainly not relative to the costs of another financial crisis. Credit is relatively inexpensive….

He omits to add that cheap credit is due entirely to artificially suppressed Federal Reserve Bank rates—through which the Federal government is imposing an extreme inflationary risk on our economy.  He omits to acknowledge that the financial institutions are under resumed government pressure to quit sitting on cash and to lend—by lowering credit standards again—another government-imposed risk to our economy.

Are these reforms complex? No more complex than the problems they are designed to solve.  And, it should be noted, most of the length and complexity in the rules is the result of the care required to target safeguards where they are needed, not where they would have a damaging effect.

He chooses complexify a fundamentally simple problem: let the experts in business and business risk—businessmen themselves, exercise their own judgment, and suffer the consequences of bankruptcy if their judgment is faulty—or if they have bad luck.  He doesn’t mention the fact that the same government that wants to insert its own lending judgment in the place of our own and our business enterprises is the same government that is still owed tens of billions of dollars by those two American car companies that can never be paid back—and that one of those dinosaurs isn’t even American anymore; it’s Italian.  He also complexifies what is truly straightforward: get government out of the way, streamline regulations, and keep only those that are useful, with no overlap or conflicts.  He also demonstrates a lack of understanding of the problem: if the targets of the safeguards need “length and complexity” to address, it’s because the regulators don’t understand the targets well enough to articulate them simply and clearly, so that, if actually needed, they can be “targeted.”  The very complexity is another government-created risk.

Is there some risk that these reforms will go too far with unintended consequences? That depends on the quality of judgment of regulators in the coming months as they flesh out the remaining reforms.

Indeed.  That’s another enormous risk imposed by a Know Better government.  Look for instance, at the performance of the NLRB and the EPA, two example regulatory agencies devoid of objective judgment.  These are Progressive regulators, but there’s no reason to believe that “conservative” regulators wouldn’t wind up just as abusive, just as lacking in judgment, albeit in another direction.  The problem here is the existence of the regulators, not their political agendas.  Today’s problem, though, is compounded by so many of the regulators being subject to no oversight.

And then there’s our health.  Over in the legislative branch, Nancy Pelosi called the just-defeated Blunt Amendment a

“devastating legislation” and “the latest ploy in the Republican agenda of disrespecting the health of American women.” Planned Parenthood claimed the “dangerous proposal” would have allowed “your boss”—yes, yours—to decide “which prescriptions you can get filled and which medical procedures you can have,” including cancer screening, maternity care and AIDS medications.

Of course, it was nothing of the sort.  It was simply an effort to restore choice to women’s (and men’s) health decisions.  Yet, as the WSJ points out,

The fact that Democrats don’t dare to accurately describe their own positions, or the regulations that they want to foist on everyone else, shows how extreme those positions and regulations really are.

 

This is, then, what the Progressive government stands for.  A big, intrusive Federal government making business decisions for Americans and our businesses and deciding our health issues for us.  All, of course, with the best of intentions: to protect us from ourselves, and to protect us from our foolish decisions and their outcomes.  But at what cost?

At the cost of our freedom to make stupid decisions, our freedom to make decisions with which our governmental Betters might disagree, and our freedom to profit from risky decisions, or safe ones, of our choosing and not of our Betters’.  At the cost of our freedom to decide for ourselves what our health care might—or might not—entail..

At the cost of our ability to make any of our own choices.  At the cost of honoring our responsibilities ourselves, rather than having them surrendered to government to handle for us.