Snowflakes in Hell

Via Instapundit:

Some people think it’s time to teach the party a lesson. Fine, but I thought 2006 was supposed to do that. Did they learn anything? Seems to me that things are about what they were when I put up my pre-mortem post that had Limbaugh exercised. (For that matter, did losing in 2000 and 2004 improve the Democrats? What, exactly, have they learned that led to the Hillary/Edwards/Obama offering? Are political parties capable of really learning?)

People will make up their minds closer to the date. Meanwhile, here’s a suggestion: If you care about saving the Republican Party, don’t blog about it. Get to work at the local and state level. Push your views, and find and promote candidates you like. Meanwhile, my earlier thoughts about culture and politics are still relevant. If you feel that way, then focus your energies there. But either way, don’t expect a candidate to be all you want. They seldom are, in my experience.

Read the whole thing, because it’s very true.

So it’s looking like this will be an election where, once again, we’ll be stuck having to choose the “lesser of two evils” rather than a candidate that we really want.

It’s not a situation I like any more than others, but I think in our political system, where coalitions happen at the party level, outside the structures of government, this is going to be the outcome more often than not.  The coalitions will coalesce around a candidate that doesn’t make anyone truly happy, but that offers each part enough to keep them from leaving.  Huckabee appeals to evangelicals, but his support outside of them is practically nonexistent.   Fred Thompson appeals to small government conservatives, but with not much appeal to the monied conservatives or independents.

I think McCain’s rise from the ashes has a lot to do with the fact that each part of the Republican base can probably settle for him, even if no one really loves him.  That appeal, combined with his inexplicable (to me, anyway) appeal to Democrats and Independents, is a big part of why he’s doing so well.

I don’t really want a McCain candidacy in 2008, but it wouldn’t offend me to the degree that would keep me from voting in the election.  I don’t really see any way out of voting for lesser of two evils candidates, because our system encourages it, really.  I’m not sure it’s unhealthy for The Republic either.

Howard Nemerov calls out some pretty strong media bias when it comes to citizens defending themselves.  In this case, a Texas CHL holder defending himself against a baseball bat wielding attacker that the media persistently described as a road rage incident.

What if Washington Post instead of publishing this editorial, had published this one, pretending for a second that the Heller case was not about guns, but about something else:

On Jan. 11, the DC Appleseed Center for Law and Justice filed a brief in the Supreme Court, asking the court to uphold the District’s segregation law in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller. Our brief was co-sponsored by the D.C. League of Women Voters, the D.C. Chamber of Commerce, the Federal City Council, DC for Democracy and the Washington Council of Lawyers.

All of these local organizations have one key interest in common: They believe that important public policy questions affecting District residents should be decided by local elected officials, not by the federal courts.

In Heller, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit struck down the District’s segregation law on the grounds that any law segregating blacks and whites is, necessarily, a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause. We believe this is wrong.

Nearly every state has a law dictating that blacks and whites must use separate facilities, such as public restrooms and drinking fountains. And those laws vary not only as to the kinds of places that are segregated, but where blacks may or may not go in many cases as well.

There are hundreds of state and local segregation laws. Each of those measures was enacted by local elected officials in response to local needs and desires. And each of those local governments is called on to balance people’s desire to not use the same facilities as blacks against the obligation to ensure blacks also have separate but equal facilities.

In the District — where race mixing is particularly acute — our elected mayor and council struck this balance by prohibiting blacks in certain public places for whites but permitting separate facilities for blacks. Congress could have overturned this decision, but it did not.

People in other parts of the country might have struck this balance differently. In fact, many jurisdictions have permitted blacks and whites to freely use the same facilities, and freely intermingle, when the District’s elected officials have not.

But the question is not what is the right policy for the District but who should make that policy. The standard the Supreme Court should apply in the pending segregation case is whether the District’s segregation law is reasonable. And “reasonable” means that the law is a reasonable public safety response to the city’s race problems, and protects residents’ right to separate, but equal facilities for the various races.

The plaintiffs in Heller would prefer a segregation law different from the one enacted by the D.C. Council. But the Supreme Court should not defer to the plaintiffs and use the Fourteenth Amendment as a vehicle for federal courts to micromanage race relations in this country.

Instead, as Justice Anthony Kennedy said in a case we quoted in our brief, local legislatures should be allowed to devise “various solutions” to local problems “where the best solution is far from clear.” That is what our mayor and council did. The Supreme Court should uphold their decision.

This country, thanks to the works of a certain man, that this day has been set aside in honor of, wisely rejected the notion that the federal government had no role to play when it came to ensuring equal protection under the law, and protecting fundamental rights of its citizens, all its citizens, regardless of state laws to the contrary.  Walter Smith should understand the dangers of reviving this kind of thinking where fundamental rights are concerned.  Sullying the constitution for the sake of local interests does not have a proud history and tradition in this country.  Let’s leave that practice in the past where it belongs.

Hat tip to War On Guns for the pointer.

Is it even possible to withdraw an Amicus Brief that’s been filed with The Supreme Court? I suppose The Administration could repudiate it, which I doubt you’ll see out of Bush, but I don’t know whether it could be withdrawn.  Even if it could, can you prevent the justices from reading it? I think the damage is done here, with no real way to punish the lame duck Administration.

I’d suggest we keep focused on 2008 here, but I’m not sure there’s much for gun rights folks to get excited about in a prize fight between Romney and McCain.

Well, OK, it shoots rubber bands, but this is pretty cool:

Ahab managed to wrangle himself a pass to the 2008 SHOT show, and will be reporting it on his blog.  I’m looking forward to it.

Classical Values has a pretty insightful comment about the latest no knock raid gone sour:

Incidents keep happening, and the only remedy I can see is to get rid of night time no knock warrants.

Otherwise, if they keep doing this, it will become another argument in favor of gun control.

No, seriously. Police will claim they “don’t feel safe” executing these no knock warrants, so to “avoid more such tragedies,” all citizens (beginning with those in “at risk neighborhoods”) should be disarmed.

Don’t laugh. It’s already a major unstated reason for dog control, especially “pit bull control.” The best protection you can buy against a home invasion SWAT team is being called the “number one dog of choice for drug dealers.” Sure, there’s a “loophole”; convicted criminals can still legally own dogs. So can ordinary citizens.

That will go doubly for people who have center fire rifles which soft body armor presents no obstacle to.  It’s a price that will be demanded to make it safer for the government to prosecute the War on Drugs.

… to defend our right to keep and bear Geiger Counters.  Fortunately it looks like there are other people in New York City’s government that aren’t as brain dead as Falkenrath, and aren’t as fascist as Bloomberg.

Protest Easy Guns (what exactly is an “easy gun” anyway?) is planning to descend on Richmond to lobby for bills to outlaw private sales.  They plan on protesting in groups of 32, to symbolize Virginia Tech victims, who were killed by a deranged lunatic who did not get his firearms through private sales.  I don’t get the logic either, but then again, this is a gun control group we’re talking about.

I think it was originally proposed by Mike Adams:

For the record, I am opposed to Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as a national holiday in the month of January or, for that matter, any other month. It isn’t that I oppose a national holiday celebrating the legacy of America’s greatest civil rights leader. I just don’t believe that King was our greatest civil rights leader. I believe that distinction belongs to John Browning.

Since John Moses Browning was born on January 23rd, 1855, it will be easy to make the transition from a Martin King to a John Browning national holiday. And it will be educational, too. Many gun owners are unaware that Browning sold 44 guns to Winchester including the Model 94 level action repeater. Guns based on the Model 94 design and chambered in 30-30 have probably killed more deer in North America than any other model before or since.

Now, I would not want to disparage John Browning’s stellar and unrivaled contributions to the design of the modern firearm, but I’m going to disagree with this, and suggest that this is one of the many ways gun rights advocates like to shoot themselves in the foot.

I strongly believe we need to keep gun rights in the main stream if we want the second amendment to be taken seriously, and for the right it protects to continue to be protected.  The more we look like a quirky subculture, and less like neighbors, friends, and co-workers, and other upstanding community members, the less ordinary folks are going to care about our rights when the politicians come for them.

Suggesting that Martin Luther King Day be replaced with John Moses Browning Day is one of those things that makes people look at us and think “Those people are nuts.”  We also don’t need to reinforce the negative stereotype of gun owners as being racists with this kind of crap.  I’m in favor of Martin Luther King Day remaining Martin Luther King Day.  I would not oppose a John Browning Day, but let’s not fan the flames of racial resentment by suggesting it replace a holiday that’s important to a lot of Americans.

Yes, today is Bitter’s birthday, and it’s driving her absolutely batty that I’ve been working on a nice birthday present for her (the kind that goes BANG!), and certain other bloggers know what she’s getting and she doesn’t. It’s going to have to be a little belated this year, as none of the local FFLs I know had one in stock, but Traction Control. That’s OK though, because she’s not really going to need it until spring.

Oh, also, yesterday was Aquarium Day.  For those that don’t get the reference, our first date was at the Baltimore Aquarium.