Is there a turn in the tide regarding gun rights? As a result of the recent Supreme Court ruling on 2nd Amendment rights, a DA in Wisconsin will not prosecute certain state laws restricting the use or carrying of firearms. Some of the laws he will not prosecute include:

prohibiting uncased or loaded firearms in vehicles;  prohibiting the carrying of concealed weapons, including firearms;  prohibiting the possession of firearms in public buildings;  and prohibiting the possession of firearms in establishments where alcohol may be sold or served.

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Besides not letting them learn to read, black slaves couldn’t own guns either. Justice Clarence Thomas likens restrictions to the 2nd Amendment to tactics used by racists. From his opinion on the McDonald v. Chicago suit,

Militias such as the Ku Klux Klan, the Knights of the White Camellia, the White Brotherhood, the Pale Faces and the ’76 Association spread terror among blacks. . . . The use of firearms for self-defense was often the only way black citizens could protect themselves from mob violence.

By the way, Otis McDonald, of McDonald v. Chicago, is black.

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And lastly, regarding the 2nd Amendment, a cogent and well thought out argument. Excerpt,

In no other country, at no other time, has such a right existed. It is not the right to hunt. It is not the right to shoot at soda cans in an empty field. It is not even the right to shoot at a home invader in the middle of the night.

It is the right of revolution.

Written not by a Tea Partier or Right-wing Gun Nut, but by a very liberal author at Daily Kos.

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Well, if we can’t ban gunsmoke, then how about… smoke?

Under the new law, smoking is prohibited in indoor and outdoor areas frequented by the public, including sidewalks, parking garages, bars, restaurants, stores, stadiums, playgrounds and transit centers. Lighting up outside is also banned in places that are within 20 feet of indoor areas.

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There won’t be any smoke around our family meal, though. In Family Meal as Therapy, we read,

…there is something about a shared meal–not some holiday blowout, not once in a while but regularly, reliably–that anchors a family even on nights when the food is fast and the talk cheap and everyone has someplace else they’d rather be. And on those evenings when the mood is right and the family lingers, caught up in an idea or an argument explored in a shared safe place where no one is stupid or shy or ashamed, you get a glimpse of the power of this habit and why social scientists say such communion acts as a kind of vaccine, protecting kids from all manner of harm.

At risk to my standing at my place of employment, I make it a point to have dinner with my family. It matters.

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What about Jeremiah 29:10? Never read a Bible verse; especially Jeremiah 29:11.

From Rajan’s book Fault Lines, I summarize the latter part of the first chapter (sub-titled “A Short History of Housing Credit”). From Rajan, before we embark on this little history:

But much of the profit stemmed from their low cost of financing, deriving from the implicit government guarantee, and this was a critical political vulnerability.

On average, these entities accounted for 54% of the market across the years, with a high of 70% in 2007. He (Pinto) estimates that in June 2008 the mortgage giants, the FHA, and various other government programs were exposed to about $2.7 trillion in sub-prime and Alt-A loans, approximately 59% of the total loans in those categories. It is very difficult to reach any other conclusion than that this was a market driven largely by government, or government influence money.

Two weeks of links to catch up!

Closing Guantanamo; big priority during the campaign, not so much now.  (Well, especially since even Democrats don’t even want to do it.)

The Obama administration turned down using Dutch oil skimmers because they couldn’t meet our stringent government environmental regulations on how pure the decontaminated water was that they dumped back into the Gulf of Mexico, right on-sight of the spill.  Instead, we transport the oily water to facilities and decontaminate it there.  Huge efficiency drop during a major catastrophe because, ironically, of environmental regulations.  Read the whole article for more things we turned down that could have averted a lot of this problem.

Our own Treasury Secretary is ignorant of economic history.  Timothy Geithner said this at the latest G-20 summit:  “One of the mistakes made in the 1930s was that countries pulled back their recovery efforts too soon, prolonging the Great Depression.”  However, precisely the opposite happened.  Recovery efforts failed, lasted too long, and that’s what prolonged the Great Depression.  NewsBusters has the charts.

School vouchers improve graduation rates. Now we have a government study to prove what common sense already told us.

Sharia Law in the UK:  Dogs barred from buses so as not to offend Muslims.

Democrats have decided that there will be no budget this year.  Hey, at least (this time) they’re being honest about it.  I guess they’ll just spend until it doesn’t feel good anymore.  Or until they’re voted out.  Whichever comes first.

In Venezuela’s socialist paradise, the government’s Food Ministry rounds up 120 tons of rice because it might be sold above regulated prices.  At the same time, 80,000 tons of food was found rotting in government warehouses.  Government efficiency at its finest.

Another example of bait-and-switch in the passage of ObamaCare.  Obama rejected the idea that the individual mandate was a tax increase, but in defending it from state lawsuits, the administration does classify it as a tax increase.  This way, the mandate falls under a law that forbids the states from interfering in tax collections.  In addition, “an early draft of an administration regulation estimates … a majority of workers—51 percent—will be in plans subject to new federal requirements….”

If your 11-year-old asks a particular Massachusetts school for a condom, they’ll get it, no questions asked.  Also, parents objections will not be taken into consideration.  Actually, there’s no real age limit on the policy; any kid can get one.  Only in Massachusetts.  For now.

And finally, all that hard work pays off, but not the way you thought it would.  (From Chuck Asay.  Click for a larger version.)

We are being fed the line from the Administration and Keynesian/neo-Keynesian economists that what we don’t need now government spending sanity, but more stimulus. So here’s the background and then the question …

A leading if not the primary cause of the current recession is the result of 20 years of government stimulus in the form of the government push for low/middle income housing. Now the difference there is during the last 20 years the government stimulus has been in the form or high risk loans which were then repackaged and sold to large banking establishments and foreign investors. This is to be distinguished from the current stimulus which comes in the form of government giveaways which are underwritten by large banking establishments and foreign.

Just had to point this out.  Since at least January, Glenn Reynolds has been noticing how often the term "unexpectedly" keeps showing up in news reports about the economy, either by the administration or by the reporters themselves.  Examples:

Jan. 8:  Employers unexpectedly cut jobs in December, even after the stimulus.

Feb. 4:  The number of newly laid-off workers filing initial claims for jobless benefits rose unexpectedly last week.

Mar. 31:  Private payrolls dropped unexpectedly fell in March.  (Though at some point, the word "unexpectedly" was excised later.  Perhaps they realized Glenn was on to them.)

Jun. 5:  The withdrawal of federal tax credits for home buyers led to a steeper-than-expected [aka unexpected] plunge in May home sales in much of the U.S., as the housing market struggles to wean itself from government support.

Jun. 11:  Sales at retailers unexpectedly fell in May.

The first few pages of this search will give you an idea of how often this comes up.

Y’know, after all this "unexpected" bad news after the stimulus, you’d think that they’d try something different.  Instead they want to do the exact same thing.  That’s government for you.

Timothy Dalrymple, in his second article of a series on the Tea party, asks this question.  (His first was; is it a social justice movement?  More are coming.)  He asks this particular question because of a similar question asked by Jim Wallis, he of Sojourners and the Christian Left. 

Dalrymple notes that, for starters, that for a guy who doesn’t like to be caricatured (and who does?), Wallis certainly uses it to make his points.  Some excerpts from Dalrymple:

The first sleight of hand comes in the phase, "Tea Party Libertarianism." Wallis poses the question: "Just how Christian is the Tea Party movement — and the Libertarian political philosophy that lies behind it?" Yet not all Tea Party supporters are Libertarians, and Wallis twists the Libertarian "political philosophy" beyond recognition.

[…]

How, then, does Reverend Wallis describe the "political philosophy" of the Tea Party? Wallis likens the Tea Partiers to the murderous Cain, who believed or pretended to believe that he was not his brother’s keeper.

[…]

Finally (I will deal with the racism charge in the third part of this series), Wallis condemns the Tea Party’s "preference for the strong over the weak" through its "supreme confidence in the market" — indeed, in a "sinless market" that has no need for oversight or regulation. The values of the Tea Party do not honor "God’s priorities" but "the priorities of the Chamber of Commerce."

These are powerful claims. They are also patently absurd. Only those who are already conditioned to expect the worst of political conservatives can believe that this represents a fair and honest account of the beliefs and values of the Tea Party movement. Would any Tea Partier — any single one, out of the millions across America who support or participate in the movement — actually accept this definition? It is an astonishing distortion of the Tea Party message to reduce it to "just leave me alone and don’t spend my money."

Rather than painting the movement with the brush of Rand Paul, Reverend Wallis might have consulted the polling data that shows what the majority of Tea Party supporters believe. He would have found a reality that defies the caricature.

Dalrymple proceeds to deal with these caricatures one by one, showing that Wallis either has no idea what the Tea Partiers really stand for, or who they really are.  Dalrymple does a good job of being moderate in his pronouncements, noting, in many places, that neither side, Wallis nor the Tea Partiers, inhabit the extreme positions they each are often accused of, and does a great job of explaining what’s really going on in conservatives’ heads.  Example:

What also needs to be refuted is the notion that resistance to higher levels of taxation is necessarily selfish. To resent a tax hike (or the prospect of one) is not to neglect the needy, and to wish to retain control over the funds one has secured in order to care for one’s family is not necessarily selfish. Conservatives generally are more generous with their giving than liberals, yet they resent it when a distant bureaucracy extracts their money in order to distribute public funds to the special interest groups on whose votes and donations they rely. Conservatives would prefer that care for the needy remain as local and personal as possible. Jobless Joe is more accountable to use the money he is given wisely, and to strive to become self-sufficient as swiftly as possible, when he receives that money from the members of the church down the street. This is not to deny that government services are needed, but it is to refute the notion that "taxed enough already" is a slogan of economic narcissism.

So, is this a Christian movement?  Dalrymple’s answer is a solid "yes and no".  I’ll let you read the whole thing to get his complete take on it, but answering this provided another point of moderation between the two sides.

In the New York Times poll, 39% of Tea Party supporters identified themselves as evangelicals or "born again," and 83% identify as Protestant or Catholic. If Wallis were correct in his description of the philosophy that undergirds their movement, then these conservative Christians would be abandoning the essential ethical principles of their faith. Yet this is hardly the case. What separates Jim Wallis from the Tea Partiers is not a difference of moral quality, or the presence and absence of compassion, but a different vision of the society that biblical love and justice require.

This is a much more sober description of the differences that in Wallis’ article.  In it, he labels some of the (supposed, caricatures) values of the Tea Party as "decidedly un-Christian", while at the same time saying he wants to "have the dialog".  In reality, he’s made up his mind already.  Dalrymple, arguing from the Right, gives both sides a benefit of the doubt that Wallis doesn’t seem to be willing to do.

Well, I’ve started reading Raghuram Rajan’s Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy, and have gotten through the overview/introductory chapter and the first chapter as well. Mr Rajan in his analysis of the current recession blames it on what he terms “fault lines” where competing interests and actions of different organization, nations, and other groups, which taken by themselves individually are understandable and rational when they interact at their “boundaries” create phenomena he likens to the fault lines of geology. The first chapters of this book describe the major players and how they contributed to the recession and why what they were doing was rational and in their best interest. 

As much as General Stanley McChrystal’s comments in his Rolling Stone magazine interview may accurately reflect the military’s view of Obama as Commander-in-Chief, he was wrong to make them to the news media.  He’s not the policy maker; Obama is. 

I disapproved of this sort of behavior under George W. Bush, and I want to say for the record that I disapprove of it under Barack Obama. 

That is all.

In his (always excellent) column yesterday, James Taranto noted that, earlier this month, President Obama was calling small-government conservatives hypocrites for expecting the government to lead in the Gulf oil spill issue.

In an interview with Politico, the president said: "I think it’s fair to say, if six months ago, before this spill had happened, I had gone up to Congress and I had said we need to crack down a lot harder on oil companies and we need to spend more money on technology to respond in case of a catastrophic spill, there are folks up there, who will not be named, who would have said this is classic, big-government overregulation and wasteful spending."

The president also implied that anti-big government types such as tea party activists were being hypocritical on the issue.

"Some of the same folks who have been hollering and saying ‘do something’ are the same folks who, just two or three months ago, were suggesting that government needs to stop doing so much," Obama said. "Some of the same people who are saying the president needs to show leadership and solve this problem are some of the same folks who, just a few months ago, were saying this guy is trying to engineer a takeover of our society through the federal government that is going to restrict our freedoms."

Got that? If you didn’t support Obama’s effort to take over the health-care system, you’re a hypocrite if you expect him to lead in a crisis, and the oil spill is the fault of the minority party in Congress for its hypothetical opposition that hypothetically deterred Obama from taking hypothetical preventive measures.

Obama makes it clear that he has no idea at all what the Tea Partiers are all about (or he does, and feigns ignorance to make some political points).  Small government types are actually more correctly labeled "right-sized government" types.  It just doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as easily. 

Our Constitution enumerates the powers of government, and was written with a particular role of government in mind.  Our Founding Fathers, understanding man’s fallen nature as revealed in the Bible and seeking to restrain the inevitable power grab that all governments throughout history had tended towards, tried to restrain the beast while still providing enough power to do the job it was intended to do.

And so the Tea Partiers seek to restore government to that role and restraint.  It so happens that this proper size of government is quite a bit smaller than what we have now, so "smaller government" is a good enough label for now.  And the health care takeover is just the latest and most blatant attempt to "super-size" this beast.

But comparing opposition to the health care bill with criticism of the federal government’s handling of the Gulf oil spill is like comparing apples with prime numbers.  One is not what our Constitution intended (and some are making the case that it doesn’t allow it at all), especially requiring all citizens to purchase something and penalize them if they don’t.  The other is an interstate crisis that the federal government is specifically for. 

In this case, Obama has been dithering while Louisiana tried to get booms or barrier islands to block the oil.  He didn’t use a well-tested and very effective method to clean things up early on.  He turned down offers of help from 17 countries.  He’s used this disaster to push for ethanol subsidies that have been panned by both Republicans and Democrats alike for, among other things, shrinking the food supply in poor countries.

Are those of us "small government" types hypocritical to suggest we get leadership from our President in a time of crisis?  No, we’re not, and either the President knows this but is willing to use this situation to score political points, or he’s hopelessly ignorant about his critics. 

In the meantime, we’re stuck with a community organizer in the Oval Office who won’t or can’t or doesn’t know how to lead.  BP deserves what it gets (and likely more) as the fallout from this spill continues, but President Obama is likely to be protected by his party and what supporters he still has left.  (Hey, when you’ve lost James Carville, you’ve lost a lot of the Left.)  It’s a teachable moment.  Is the President in class?

A typical reason couples live together before getting married is that, supposedly, this will allow them to find out if they are compatible and thus ensure their marriage lasts longer.  But a new study says, nope, they are less likely to stay married.

Read my lips; no new taxes on those making $250,000 or less.  Well, we may soon add to the many exceptions since that promise was made, “unless you own a home”.

The revolving door between the MSM and the Democratic Party.  Oh, that liberal media.

If the Gulf oil spill had happened on Bush’s watch, do you really think the environmental groups would be as virtually silent as they are now?  (Me neither.)

Remember how the UN climate change panel was supposed to be the result of boatloads of scientists in agreement?  Turns out the boat was a dingy.

And from the “Beware of Governments Bearing Gifts” department:

Churches and other faith-based organizations that receive government funds, beware. In an agreement that will be enforced by a federal court, government agencies in New York have agreed to monitor the Salvation Army to ensure that it doesn’t impose religion on the people its serves through its tax-funded social services.

The agreement just effects the Salvation Army’s social work in New York, but it’s more than a cautionary tale for religious groups in this era of government-backed faith-based initiatives. “With this settlement, government is watching out,” co-counsel Deborah Karpatkin of the N.Y. Civil Liberties Union said in a statement. “It will not fund religious organizations to proselytize to recipients of government-funded social services.”

The Salvation Army’s social services are intended to be an expression of faith in God and love for fellow man, but if they are prevented from doing the former while performing the latter, they’re being hobbled.  My suggestion has always been to avoid government money at all costs.

Isn’t government supposed to enforce the laws it makes?   Well, it looks like the Obama administration has a bit more leeway.

How’s that Gitmo-closing promise coming along, 5 months after its due date?  “The House Armed Services Committee has dealt a blow to President Obama’s hopes to shutter the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, by unanimously approving legislation that would prohibit creating a detention center inside the United States.”  Aren’t there one or two Democrats on that committee?

The Hollywood Left just loves their socialists.

American filmmaker Oliver Stone said Friday he deeply admires Hugo Chavez but suggested the Venezuelan president might consider talking a bit less on television.

Promoting his new documentary “South of the Border” in Caracas, Stone heaped praise on Chavez, saying he is leading a movement for “social transformation” in Latin American. The film features informal interviews by Stone with Chavez and six allied leftist presidents, from Bolivia’s Evo Morales to Cuba’s Raul Castro.

“I admire Hugo. I like him very much as a person. I can say one thing. … He shouldn’t be on television all the time,” Stone said at a news conference. “As a director I say you don’t want to be overpowering. And I think he is sometimes that way.”

(We’re not entirely sure whether Stone said “director” or “dictator” at th end there.  Either can be overpowering.)

When the director of the Congressional Budget Office directly refutes cost-saving claims of the President and his Budget Director, it’s worth noting.  Even the NY Times (finally) notices.

How’s that “smart diplomacy” workin’ for ya’?  Please remember; speeches are no substitute for sound policy.

Marry a Jew, lose your citizenship.  Can armbands with the Star of David be far behind?  Tell me again, who are the bad guys in the Middle East peace situation?

How did the pollsters do predicting the recent primary results?  About as good as expected, which isn’t saying much.  And the Daily Kos fired its official pollster, Research 2000.  Turns out they skewed left.  Now who would have thought that?  This time, however, it was downright embarrassing.

And finally, Chuck Asay on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  (Click for a larger image.)

Mr Obama is in a pickle. He “says” he is thinking morning, noon, and night and obsessing about the what to do about the oil leak in the Gulf. And there’s a little problem here. A subterranean tactical (20-40 kiloton) nuclear device activated in the vicinity of the leak would stop the leakage with almost no danger of any excess nuclear material being released to the environment. I’m betting this won’t be done. Why?

• Mr Obama is religiously anti-nuclear. He holds to an unstated (unexamined?) ivory tower plan toward a nuclear free world. Using a nuclear device to stop one of the larger modern ecological disasters has no part in that plan. The notion that a nuclear device might do anything but harm would be a fatal flaw for his dream.
• If it works then it would have worked it two months ago. Which means the longer we wait to do that … the more obvious that doing it earlier would have been better is all the more compelling. Which is why, now two months down the road this won’t be done. Every day, every hour makes the chance of acting decisively less easy.

So remember, as you look at pictures of ecological impacts of the oil spill in the upcoming months. Mr Obama could have fixed this and even prevented it but didn’t because it would hurt his case for non-proliferation and because it would make him look a little stupid.

So when you gaze on the gulf disaster you’re looking at the results of Mr Obama’s pride and folly.

In the superb movie "Awakenings", Leonard Lowe (Robert DeNiro) is woken up from his catatonic state by a drug administered by Dr. Malcolm Sayer (Robin Williams).  All goes well until Leonard starts to exhibit some side effects.  While this is happening, he insists that Dr. Sayer continue to film him, which Sayer is doing as part of the research.  We see Leonard from the perspective of the movie camera, almost yelling at it, "Learn from me!  Learn from me!"

It’s hard to watch this experiment demonstrating, in the body of Leonard, what could be a huge flaw in what otherwise appears to be a promising treatment for his illness.  It is a turning point in the story.

We are at such a turning point in another medical story, but I wonder if we’ll notice it and learn from it.

Pressured by an aging population and the need to rein in budget deficits, Canada’s provinces are taking tough measures to curb healthcare costs, a trend that could erode the principles of the popular state-funded system.

Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, kicked off a fierce battle with drug companies and pharmacies when it said earlier this year it would halve generic drug prices and eliminate "incentive fees" to generic drug manufacturers.

British Columbia is replacing block grants to hospitals with fee-for-procedure payments and Quebec has a new flat health tax and a proposal for payments on each medical visit — an idea that critics say is an illegal user fee.

And a few provinces are also experimenting with private funding for procedures such as hip, knee and cataract surgery.

It’s likely just a start as the provinces, responsible for delivering healthcare, cope with the demands of a retiring baby-boom generation. Official figures show that senior citizens will make up 25 percent of the population by 2036.

"There’s got to be some change to the status quo whether it happens in three years or 10 years," said Derek Burleton, senior economist at Toronto-Dominion Bank.

"We can’t continually see health spending growing above and beyond the growth rate in the economy because, at some point, it means crowding out of all the other government services.

"At some stage we’re going to hit a breaking point."

A government handout (or, really, a redistribution of wealth)  running way over budget?  (See "Stop the ACLU" for a discussion of costs in the Canadian system that the Democrats pretend they can keep at half.)  Why do we keep hearing this tune and yet be surprised when it ends exactly the same way?  Why do politicians say that this kind of system will reduce costs when…

Ontario says healthcare could eat up 70 percent of its budget in 12 years, if all these costs are left unchecked.

The answer for Canada is cut back on benefits, which they’re seriously considering.  But that is fraught with trouble.

Scotia Capital’s Webb said one cost-saving idea may be to make patients aware of how much it costs each time they visit a healthcare professional. "(The public) will use the services more wisely if they know how much it’s costing," she said.

"If it’s absolutely free with no information on the cost and the information of an alternative that would be have been more practical, then how can we expect the public to wisely use the service?"

That’s the problem with separating the payment from the service.  It’s not absolutely free; it’s paid for with huge national taxes.  But thinking it’s free, or even just using it more knowing that you won’t be charged more, creates additional demand that the system can’t handle.

But once you’ve made that mistake, there’s no going back.

But change may come slowly. Universal healthcare is central to Canada’s national identity, and decisions are made as much on politics as economics.

"It’s an area that Canadians don’t want to see touched," said TD’s Burleton. "Essentially it boils down the wishes of the population. But I think, from an economist’s standpoint, we point to the fact that sometimes Canadians in the short term may not realize the cost."

These economic decisions are now even more political than they ever were, but the thought of damaging something so much identified with Canada is just unthinkable.  So Canada must either go bankrupt, reduce services, or raise taxes.  And all this from a program that was supposed to reduce costs. 

This, folks, is the future of ObamaCare(tm) if it gets implemented or, worse, if the removed provisions get implemented piecemeal later on.  Canada is suffering from the experiment.  Learn from it.