Spewage Warning

Spewage Warning

Reader Phil B., my Brit expat reader now living in New Zealand, sent me a link to the latest “Hitler learns of . . .” video. This is a meme that just keeps on giving, but this one is one of the better (and timely) efforts IMHO. As Phil warned,

All food and drink at least 6 feet away from the computer, please …

http://static.photobucket.com/player.swf?file=http://vidmg.photobucket.com/albums/v99/smallestminority/HitlerFindsOutScottBrownWon.flv
The original YouTube link is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4aQCiRjvZY

Edited to add:

We Live in the Presence of Greatness

We Live in the Presence of Greatness

Quote of the Day:

It’s 1974. No legal academic is thinking seriously of the Second Amendment; there is just a vague belief that it has something to do with the National Guard.

The NRA has about 600,000 members, and has no ILA. One person, as I recall, handles all political and legal affairs. The Cincinnati revolt that would create the modern NRA lies in the future (it came in 1977, arising out of problems revealed in 1976). Harlon Carter is enjoying retirement in Green Valley AZ, where he can shoot rifles out his back window. Neal Knox is a magazine editor in Prescott. I’m a law student.

That was how it stood, 36 years ago. Glad that I lived to see Heller, and now McDonald.

— David Hardy, Of Arms and the LawTrip back in the time machine

Thank you David. I’m glad you helped get us here. On to McDonald v. Chicago!

Quote of the Day – NRA Overreach Edition

Quote of the Day – NRA Overreach* Edition

The NRA, the same people who tried to derail Parker v. D.C. (which later became D.C. v. Heller) has announced that the Supreme Court has granted their motion to allow them to participate in the upcoming oral argument of McDonald v. Chicago. The email I received this morning states:

“We are pleased with the Court’s decision to grant our motion,” said Chris W. Cox, NRA’s chief lobbyist. “NRA’s solitary goal in McDonald is to ensure that that our fundamental, individual right to keep and bear arms applies to all law-abiding Americans, regardless of the state in which they live. We are hopeful that the Court will share our view that the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment clearly intended to apply the Second Amendment to the States.”

It goes on to say that the NRA will be represented by former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement.

According to The Volokh Conspiracy, there’s been a little exchange between Clement and Heller litigator Alan Gura:

The end of the (Blog of Legal Times) post includes some interesting commentary by both Clement and Gura. First, Clement comments:

“I think the grant of the NRA’s motion may signal that the Court is interested in ensuring that all the avenues to incorporation, including the due process clause, are fully explored at the argument. Of course, I look forward to working with Alan.”

Gura responds, showing his typical civility and grace:

“The suggestion that I wouldn’t present all the arguments to the Court was uncalled for. I hope that this time Paul understands that handgun bans are unconstitutional.

As the BLT notes, the dig against Clement reflects the brief he filed as Solicitor General in 2007 arguing on behalf of the United States that the D.C. handgun ban was not necessarily unconstitutional.

The bolded portion is today’s QotD. Give ’em hell Alan!

(* In the interests of full disclosure, I am a Patron member of the NRA. That’s two steps above Life and one below Benefactor. But I hardly think they walk on water and their farts don’t stink.)

They’re Dropping Like Leaves

Just damn. Robert B. Parker has died, and I just found out about it. Last year we lost Michael Crichton.

I have said that three authors bear primary responsibility for my socio-political outlook: Robert A. Heinlein, John D. MacDonald, and Robert B. Parker. These three men wrote books about how men ought to behave – Heinlein in damned near everything, MacDonald with his Travis McGee series, and Parker with his Spenser books. I’ve enjoyed Parker’s other works, but I’ve collected every one of the Spenser series so far (one more is due out this year), even the later ones of questionable quality. Like David and Jerry, I believe his best work was An Early Autumn, the one Spenser novel I got my wife to read, and she said she liked.

Damn, no more Spenser, no more Hawk, no more Belsen, Quirk, Sunny Randall, Jesse Stone.

Just damn. Another good storyteller gone.

UPDATE: In a related bit, Roberta X points, via Alger, to where SciFi author Sarah A. Hoyt waxes eloquent on Robert Anson Heinlein and his effect on her life. Ms. Hoyt is one of those who is an American because she thinks she’s American:

…more important than his themes or his political inclinations, or his preoccupation of the moment was his determination that the human mind should be free…free to examine and discover. Free to know. Free to find the truth. Which is why I perceived him—first in rejection, and later in embrace—as the quintessential American writer. His values were—always—of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. The primacy of the individual over the state or the church or the coercive group. It could be argued that having been educated in Heinlein I had to become an American citizen. In fact, had become one, in all but name and law long before I landed on these shores.

Welcome, Ms. Hoyt, and to all the others out there who are “willing to give up what you used to be in order to be one of us.”

Quote of the Day – Politics Edition

This is not the QotD, it’s the prelude:

President Obama is a beguiling but confounding figure. As he has said of himself: “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.” (”The Audacity of Hope.”) It is indeed audacious that he should proclaim this consciously disingenuous attribute. And, as one reads his inaugural address, it is hard not to conclude that it was shrewdly crafted to perpetuate such confusion.

Run-of-the-mill politicians try to hide their duplicity. Only the most gifted of that profession brag that they intend to confound and confuse the public. Such an effort is beyond ingenious – it is brazenly ingenuous. — Tony Blankley, The Washington Times, Obama’s Blank Screen, 1/27/2009

THIS is the QotD:

When folks on the left or center-left express disillusionment and dismay that President Obama hasn’t governed as some sort of pragmatic non-ideologue who unites the country, takes the middle road, and keeps the pork and yuck out of government, it seems to me that the fault lies not with Obama. It lies with the people who bizarrely believed Obama would do otherwise in the first place.

There was never any objective, factual basis for believing that President Obama would be any other way than what we are seeing. Apparently, a large chunk of Obama’s voting base consisted of people who invented some sort of counterfactual, reality-immune fantasy in their head and then voted for that fantasy when ticking ‘Obama’ on their ballots. I’m sure there are plenty of valid criticisms to be made of President Obama, but the fact that the real President Obama doesn’t correspond to naive, irrational voters’ fantasies doesn’t strike me as one of them.Rhymes with Cars and Girls, The Disillusioned Center-Left’s Case Against Obama: He’s Just Not Living Up To All That Stuff We Made Up About Him In Our Heads

In the run-up to the election, no one was interested in objective, fact-based analysis of candidate Obama – least of all the media, whose job it (normally) is to provide such analysis. Instead, they too projected what they wanted upon his blank screen, and thrills ran up their legs when he spoke, regardless of whatever duplicitous, disingenuous words emerged from his mouth.

In the words of a man Obama once swore he could not disown (but later did), Obama’s CHICKENS, are coming home to ROOST!

Not that it’ll make much of a difference.

Hat tip to Vanderleun for the second quote, who adds in another piece:

I’d like to get off of Obama as a constant subject. I really would. It’s just that the man is a walking, non-talking, wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling, gaffe and lie machine. I’ve been watching presidents since Eisenhower and I’ve never seen one one-tenth as twisted as this one.

And we’ve got three more years of this to look forward to.

Cleaning/Organizing

I should do it more often.

I’ve been cleaning up my reloading area, trying to sort through all the stuff I’ve accumulated over the past several years. I have reloading bench where I keep my dies, a lot of components and tools, and then I have a fairly sizeable cabinet on wheels where I keep more components, loaded ammo, etc. The place has gotten to be a real mess, and it finally hit that threshold that makes me want to clean it up and organize it.

I’ve found 50 rounds of .30 Carbine, 250 rounds of .45ACP and 200 rounds of .357 Magnum I didn’t know I had, plus fifteen rounds of 12 gauge 00 buck, and 100 Hornady 75 grain .224″ BHTP Match bullets I had no idea were in that cabinet. (They should have been in the reloading bench.) I have also discovered I have a LOT more .357 and .38 brass than I need, so I’ll be taking the excess with me to the range tomorrow next Sunday (match was rescheduled) to give away to whoever wants it. I even have a box of .44 Magnum brass, about 50 pieces. I haven’t owned a .44 Magnum in several years, and that was a T/C Contender barrel.

It’s like Christmas!

Happy 155th B’day, JMB!

Happy 155th Birthday, John Moses Browning!

This is also the 101st anniversary of the Tottenham Outrage, which I posted about last year.

Given the fact that 2009 was a record-breaker for firearm sales in the United States (thanks Barry!), I’d say we’re safe for at least a few more years from America following (formerly) Great Britain down the civilian disarmament path. And while Tam extolls JMB’s classic M2 heavy machine-gun design, I have to give the nod to his timeless 1911 – a gun built by more manufacturers today than even the ubiquitous AK-47.

Someday that tank commander may have a pintle-mounted cyan-spewing 2-cm. tribarreled plasma cannon, but people will still be shooting Pepper Poppers with 1911s chambered in G_d’s own .45ACP.

(Edited to change the JMB’s age. He was born in 1855, not 1845. Thanks Chris.)