Tag Archives: rights

Public Keeping and Bearing

Posted on by
Reply

Our Constitution’s 2nd Amendment is brief and crystal clear:

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.

The Supreme Court has already ruled, several times, that a well regulated militia is an outcome facilitated by individuals keeping and bearing arms, it’s not the purpose of that. The Court has further clarified that to mean shall not be infringed is nearly all-encompassing, with only a few carefully enumerated locations that can bar individuals from bringing their firearms. That short list includes locations like polling places, post offices, public-accessible private facilities like places of business that post clear signs prohibiting them on the premises. New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc, et al. v Bruen is one example of this.

Hawaii wants to outlaw carrying firearms altogether, having devised and enacted a State law that bars carrying anywhere—private enterprises, even other folks’ homes—unless those places are explicitly posted permitting the carrying. As the Wall Street Journal‘s editors correctly note,

A shop could theoretically post a sign on the door—or the parking lot entrance?—saying it doesn’t object to concealed carry. But it’s easy to see why a proprietor might hesitate, since a “Pistols Welcome” banner might alienate other customers. Businesses have an incentive to accept whatever is the default.

Hence the effective ban on carrying firearms that the State is attempting. The State argues that

[a] default of no guns…fits Hawaii’s custom and “unique history,” dating to King Kamehameha III, who banned weapons in 1833.

Bruen, though, says otherwise.

[W]hen the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct, and to justify a firearm regulation the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.

The Nation’s historical tradition, not any particular State’s personal choice. Bruen is as crystalline as is our basic right under the 2nd Amendment. Hawaii’s statute needs to be struck down completely.

Tension?

Posted on by
Reply

The Supreme Court has taken up the question of whether Louisiana’s redistricting effort for its Federal Congressional representation is legitimate, or not. The Just the News‘ news writer, the unusually (for JtN) anonymous “Just the News Contributor,” posed the central question before the Supreme Court:

In Louisiana v Callais, the Supreme Court is confronted with a direct tension between two legal commands: the VRA’s mandate to protect minority voting rights and the Constitution’s limits on race-based decision-making by the state.

There is—or should be—no tension here. Our Constitution says this in Art VI:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land….

In Marbury v Madison, the Supreme Court made clear that conflicts between statute and Constitution must be resolved strictly and solely in favor of what our Constitution says, and every Supreme Court decision since has hewed to the ultimate supremacy of our Constitution. Any tension can exist only in the minds of activists and activist judges and Justices.

Nor can there be any half-measure wherein some level of race-based discrimination is OK. Any race-based discrimination or “preference” in political gerrymandering is too much and a violation of our Constitution. Here’s the 14th Amendment on the matter:

No State shall…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The clause does not say No State shall…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, except when it’s convenient to do otherwise.

Full stop.

“Multicultural”

Posted on by
Reply

A news writer for The New York Times, Peter Baker, in typical journalism guild, misstated American culture in an interview with the left-wing network PBS‘ Washington Week With the Atlantic, as excerpted by The Wall Street Journal.

One of the things that they’ve [the Trump administration] been very successful at, and I would expect to see more of, is their war on DEI, on the notion of diversity, equity and inclusion, the notion that diversity is an admirable goal, even if you don’t necessarily want quotas. They have managed in just a very short amount of time to create a new culture in the country—not just in the government, across the board—where private employers feel the need to retreat from DEI. And you’re going to see, I think, an acceleration of that in the second year…. I think the question, though, is in a multicultural country, at some point does that begin to go too far for people and by the midterms?

Leave aside Baker’s blithe assumption that there’s nothing intrinsically racist or sexist in DEI, which favors approved races and the approved gender at the direct, deliberate expense of disapproved races and the disapproved gender. Those favoring criteria, however far down the selection tree they might be, are explicitly and by design racist and sexist.

More than that, the United States is not a mix of race, of old-world cultures, of religions, or of whathaveyous. The Unites States is a nation of a single culture, one unified by a common belief in a basic system of intrinsic rights: to life, to liberty, and to the pursuit of happiness and of a limited government granted to which by our nation’s sovereign citizens only enough power and authority to protect those intrinsic and basic rights.

Baker’s bald claim that the United States is a multicultural country is as cynical as it is wrong.

Even that queen of European identity politics, Germany’s ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel, ultimately recognized that multiculturalism is an abject failure. And that’s something that Americans have known since our inception, if unevenly put or kept in effect.

So Much for Liberty

Posted on by
1

Contempt for ordinary citizens is the order of the day in the United Kingdom, which has fallen and can’t seem to get up.

[T]he [British] government is moving to allow jury trials for “indictable only” offenses such as murder and “either way” offenses with likely sentences of more than three years in prison. Judge-only “swift” courts will hear cases ranging from burglary and theft to sexual assault and stalking. Judges will also sit without a jury in fraud and financial cases deemed too complex for jurors.

This is…disappointing. It’s also a revival of the 350-year-old Bushell’s Case but with the addendum of eliminating the case’s question altogether. Bushell’s Case was a trial of a couple of government-defined religious miscreants during which the presiding judge refused to accept the jury’s acquittal verdict and jailed the ringleader, Edward Bushell, until he voted for the judge-approved verdict. That case was resolved on appeal in favor of Bushell and British commoners generally, extending as the appeal finally ruled habeas corpus to those commoners as well as the nobility.

Now the British government is moving to go beyond that presiding judge’s position and eliminate juries altogether in a vast number of cases. No juries, no verdicts that run counter to the government’s position.

This revival also is a clear expression of the contempt with which British government men and women hold their subjects: commoners are just too grindingly stupid to understand many kinds of cases, and so they must be led away so their Betters can handle them without any pesky commoner interference.

Juries? We ain’t got no juries. We don’t need no juries! We don’t have to show you any stinkin’ juries!

Religious Bigotry

Posted on by
Reply

West Virginia had a requirement that all school students get vaccinated against the Wuhan Virus (my term, not the State’s), regardless of religious views regarding vaccines or how the vaccines are structured or made or from any other religious perspective. The State permitted no religious opt-outs at all. Raleigh County Circuit Judge Michael Froble waved the BS flag at that requirement and has ruled that parents can, indeed, opt their children out of the vaccination program based on their religious beliefs.

The larger question is why a lawsuit and judicial ruling was needed in the first place.

Is the State’s bar of religious exemption demonstrative of religious bigotry by the relevant State officials? Not necessarily. Some religion-based objections aren’t actually based on religion, but those false assertions are quite rare. It is strongly suggestive of officials’ religious bigotry, though.