Snowflakes in Hell

I’ve been battling a cold for the past week, and have so far managed to avoid buying any Sudafed to help with the congestion, but I finally got tired of feeling stuffed up, so I broke down and forked over my license and John Hancock to buy a pack of the good stuff.

I just have one thing to say about Sudafed PE: it sucks! The PE apparently stands for Placebo Effect, because I’m not convinced that crap does a damned thing. It certainly doesn’t clear me up. The government, and any Congress Critter who voted for this, can take all the packs of Sudafed PE I’ve bought, and and stuff them where the sun don’t shine.

I don’t care if people make methamphetamines from pseudoephedrine containing products, I really don’t. What I buy is between me and the pharmacist who’s selling it to me, and as far as I’m concerned, the politicians can keep their noses out of my f**king business. Fork over my license and sign forms because I have a stuffy nose? Piss off.

I feel bad for the kid behind the counter though, because clearly he has been abused over this. I felt the need to make the comment “You’d think I was buying plutonium or something.” as I affixed my signature to his government watch list. He ran through a rehashed script, in a rather defensive tone, “People are using to make meth. It’s a new law. It’s not just us. It’s every pharmacy counter in the country.” So I said “I know, I just still think it sucks.” I guess I should have just kept my mouth shut, it wasn’t his fault, and I wasn’t trying to rag on him.

Americans in early times would have brought out the tar and feathers for any politician who had this much gumption. Two centuries ago, Pennsylvanians, over a 9 cent a gallon excise tax on whiskey, engaged in outright rebellion, which got so out of hand that Washington himself lead federal troops into Western Pennsylvania to put down the uprising. What have we become? We’ve gotten too accustomed, as Americans, to bending over for the politicians. From time to time, they need to be reminded who they work for. So write your Congress Critter, and tell them, in very nice, polite and eloquent prose, that how you treat a stuffy nose is none of his damned business. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll bring the tar, and you can bring the feathers!

It’s not my intention to make this a group blog, but I will invite guest bloggers from time to time to blog about things that I have no expertise on, but that I think would be of interest to folks. To that end, my first guest blogger will be my friend Brad, who will blog about The Philadelphia Eagles. Brad is an escapee from the People’s Republic of Massachusetts, and currently resides with his wife and kids in Chester County, PA, so at heart, he’s really still a Patriots fan, but we won’t hold that against him.

Time for a new category titled “Things I Don’t Understand”, where I chronicle things that just have never made sense to me. The first one is why so many people on the left hate Ann Althouse, and make a regular point of harassing her.

Prof. Althouse has always struck me as being gracious and amiable, and about as far away as one can get from being an left/right ideologue. So why does the left want to crucify her so? Seriously, if you hate Ann, you should hate me a lot more, because I’m more right-of-center than Ann is, but I’ll bet I couldn’t attract a fraction of the wrath she does. Why? That’s something I don’t understand.

I think the people running around out there trying to cause trouble for Prof Althouse need to a) get lives, and b) take a long hard look at yourself, because you’ve become as estranged from reality as Paris Hilton is from chastity.

In a move that feels much like Brady Grading Time, where we shoot for a low grade, Advocates For Butting Their Noses Where They Don’t Belong, notes:

They let motorcyclists ride without helmets, haven’t cracked down on seat-belt use, and still allow distracting carloads of passengers to ride with inexperienced drivers.

They have, however, landed hard on drunken drivers.

All in all, Pennsylvania lawmakers have done a mediocre job of keeping motorists out of harm’s way, a national traffic-safety advocacy group said in a report released yesterday.

In a fourth annual state-by-state report card, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety placed Pennsylvania among 31 states that have advanced, but not nearly enough, in their highway safety laws.

New Jersey scored better, ranking among 16 states that have adopted most or all of the 15 safety measures deemed important by the coalition of insurance, consumer, health, safety and law enforcement organizations.

New Jersey scored better, so I’ll make that reason number 2823 I’d rather spend the rest of my life with my head in a pile of manure than live in that state. Keep up the good work Pennsylvania! Hopefully our new Democratic legislature will tell these ninnies to go to hell, but I won’t hold my breath.

So if I may borrow some style from from Kim Du Toit, if you happen to know anyone who works with the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, make sure to give them a swift kick in the nuts.

It seems that the Philadelphia mayoral race might come down to who’s been shot the most. For the record, I’ve never thought Dwight Evans to be a bad guy. I don’t agree with him most of the time, but I think he’d make a better mayor than John Street. I’d hate to think that being shot scores you sufficient political points in Philadelphia politics that the candidates feel compelled to recall these incidents to gain advantage over each other in the race.

Sorry, but color, me, skeptical. The cartoon is right about one thing though. It’s not just Democrats that want to close the gun show “loophole”. It’s Republican Mike Castle of Delaware spearheading the effort! So Mike, if you or any of your staffers come across this post, I’d just like to point out how much you suck, and that I’m really glad I don’t live in Delaware.

Pro-Gun Progressive seeks some feedback on the issue of of National Concealed Carry Reciprocity:

Lots of folks on our side of the issue are wary of the Feds deciding who carries and who doesn’t, which doesn’t strike me as unreasonable. I think much of this stems from the fact that shall issue CCW laws have thankfully found their way on to the books in all but a handful of states. If you live in one of those states, you’ve already got what you want and would understandably not be all that eager to have the Feds step in. If you live in NJ, IL, MD, or NY, you might be a bit more willing to look to the Feds for some help.

I live in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, about 10 miles from Trenton. Needless to say, I conduct quite a lot of business in New Jersey, such as buying liquor and beer, but also other things, and I would dearly love not to have to think “I left the pistol at home right?”, every time I cross the border. It’s 7 years in prison over there for forgetting if you get pinched. It would also have been nice if, on my travel to Virginia last month, I didn’t have to stop at the Delaware/Maryland border, put my pistol and ammunition in separate locked hard sided containers to be FOPA compliant, only to reverse the process after crossing into Virginia 40 minutes later. People in The South and West (minus California), don’t have to worry about this, because you can drive for days without having to worry about the law changing remarkably. Criminals don’t have to worry about this either, because they don’t give a crap about the law.

So the law would benefit me, but I’m still opposed to it as it stands, because the federal government simply has no power under the commerce clause of the constitution to force one state to accept another state’s law, and the proposed bill that I saw relied on the fact that the gun once moved in interstate commerce as the hook to give Congress regulatory power. I’ve heard this called “The Herpes Theory” of the commerce clause, and I think Congress and the Courts should renounce it, because it obliterates the distinction between what is local and what is national, that the constitution was meant to preserve in the first place. It seemed that The Supreme Court in United States vs. Lopez had rejected this argument, but quite a lot of federal gun laws still rely on it. Given the Raich decision, perhaps The Court is retreating from Lopez, but I’d like to hope Raich was only a bump in the road toward a more limited reading of Congress’ commerce power.

So what national reciprocity would I support? I think Congress could use two powers to allow it. It could use it’s militia powers to allow any licensed person to carry anywhere in the US as a national defense measure. In a world filled with asymmetrical warfare, this isn’t really such a far fetched notion. Alternately, the Fourteenth Amendment says:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. … The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. … The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

So Congress can just declare the remaining state’s restrictive statutes null and void under the Fourteenth and Second Amendments, and be done with it.

But we all know that’s never going to happen. Considering how much federal gun laws are based on herpes commerce clause theory, I’m afraid I have to come out against this one even if it benefits us. Unless, of course, passing it makes The Court rediscover the wisdom they originally displayed in Lopez, and clearly retreat from the herpes theory once and for all.