Snowflakes in Hell

The case SayUncle links to here rules that police can’t ask you for identification without a reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed.  I have a feeling this case, currently in the eighth circuit, might end up being useful in a case that’s developing here in Pennsylvania. Hopefully I’ll be able to post more about that later.

I’m really getting tired of these fascists:

Perhaps, then, the recent signs of violent times occasion an opportunity for broadening our collective sense of what ”rights” should be in terms of our social consciousness. Our political and judicial discourse would benefit from moving beyond a purely libertarian view of rights, which emphasizes freedom from governmental coercion or constraint, to incorporate also a dignitarian view of rights, which promotes freedom for the good of each other and for society as a whole. The challenge now before us is how to preserve personal independence and autonomy while also recognizing, as Prof. Mary Ann Glendon once wrote, ”that we are constituted in important ways by and through our relations with others, and that each of us develops our potential within a social network of obligations and dependencies.”

Sorry Reverend Dailey, you sir, can go to hell.  Inidividual liberty and freedom is social well-being.  Any government empored to create social well-being, empowered to do ulimited good, is by nature empowered to do unlimited evil.  If you’d like to live in a society like that, perhaps I can suggest Venzuela, or perhaps China.  But this country is founded on principles of limiting government for the sake of personal liberty, and if you don’t like that, get the hell out.

Based on this article, you would almost think a bottle of Mike’s Hard Lemonade is rat poison:

The Comerica cop estimated that Leo had drunk about 12 ounces of the hard lemonade, which is 5% alcohol. But an ER resident who drew Leo’s blood less than 90 minutes after he and his father were escorted from their seats detected no trace of alcohol.

“Completely normal appearing,” the resident wrote in his report, “… he is cleared to go home.”

But it would be two days before the state of Michigan allowed Ratte’s wife, U-M architecture professor Claire Zimmerman, to take their son home, and nearly a week before Ratte was permitted to move back into his own house.

The father, a Professor of Archeology at the University of Michigan, who doesn’t watch much television, apparently was unaware that it was alcoholic lemonade.  Easy mistake to make.

One 12 ounce bottle of hard lemonade isn’t going to hurt a 7 year old.  Hell, they used to tell parents to give whiskey to kids to fight teething pain (ask my dad about that one).  It was a simple mistake, and a bit of questioning should have revealed that, and that should have been the end of it.

Hat tip to Orin Kerr.

I can’t help but notice that these kinds of stories seem to come from states with high Brady rankings.

Via Glenn, I noticed this article talking about the entire Texas polygamy fiasco, and asking where the ACLU is in all of this.  The answer to me, is pretty clear.  It’s not George W. Bush perpetrating this outrage against people’s civil rights, so who’s to care?  If it can’t used it to beat those warmongering Republicans over the head, why does it matter?

The progressives’ defense of civil rights has become an utter joke, and it’s not just their willingness to throw the second amendment under the bus.  I’m not happy with Bush’s record on civil liberties at all, and for letting a weasel like Gonzalez run around for as long as he did.  But civil liberties violations don’t start and end with the Bush administration.

This law could be the bane of dirty old men in malls in the State of Maine.  Dr. Helen talks about whether this law, which basically seems to outlaw staring at children, won’t have unintended consequences.  Here’s my scenario:

A man is caught starting into a park with a set of binoculars where children are known to be congregating.  Surely that’s enough to creep out any parent who might come across it?  The police are called, and arrest the man for “visual sexual aggression”, in the face of a crowd of angry parents demanding something be done.  The man, a member of the local ornithological society, claims he was tracking a rare Rufous-capped Warbler.  The police don’t buy it, and he’s arrested and charged.  He’s ultimately acquitted in a jury trial, but the legal fees force him into bankruptcy, and he loses his life’s savings.

People need to develop a healthy skepticism of what those in power suggest will protect their children.  Legislators can pass laws.  That’s all they can do.  When your only tool is a hammer, a lot of things start looking like nails.  Voters need to consider that the legal system can ruin the lives of the guilty along with the innocent.  The reason I oppose this Maine law is the exact same reason I opposed the “Lost and Stolen” requirement.  We set the state’s burden of proof high for a reason, and we should look most skeptically on any proposal designed to allow the state to divine that a person clearly must be guilty, and to give the state tools to make an easy conviction based on that cognition, without having to meet the burden of proof for the more serious, but more difficult to prove offense.

UPDATE: Illspirit points out that the actual bill is not nearly what the reporter has lead us to believe.  After reading the actual text, I have no problem with said bill.  It only goes to show you should never believe anything you hear from a reporter.

… or maybe we can’t if you’re on property under the jurisdication of the National Park Service.  I smell a a lawsuit.

SayUncle points out that Wyoming is telling the feds to go to hell in regards to a lot of their less-than-civil-rights-respecting laws.  Montana did a similar action with federal gun laws.  These are largely symbolic gestures, because despite all this, Montana and Wyoming are still committed to being a functioning part of the United States.

But what if they weren’t?  What if the federal government crossed the Rubicon of gun control?  We often like to think that the federal government will meet mass resistance should the “knock on the door” ever come, but they probably won’t.  Lone individual action will not be how an onerous federal gun measure will be successfully resisted.  No doubt some individuals will try, with the end result being those individuals end up dead, possibly along with their families.  I don’t think the answer to the “Crossed Rubicon” problem lies in relying on that possibility.  The knock won’t likely come from men in jack boots, disarming people to ship them off in cattle cars and toss them into ovens.  It’ll come from a happy, smiling government that wants to take care of everybody, and surely you don’t need guns in such a happy utopia.

Most non-sociopathic human beings have powerful mental programming that prevents them from going against the tribe.  It’s easy to say “I’ll shoot any son of a bitch that comes for my guns.” from the comfort of a lounge or living room.  It’s quite another thing to actually do it; to put a fellow countryman in the cross hairs, one that’s likely to represent a government that looks more like Sweden than 1930s Germany, and actually pull the trigger.  It is not something the vast majority of law abiding people are capable of doing.  I have no doubt some will, but the numbers will be very small, too small to make any difference in the end.  Such action will likely strengthen the resolve of those who want to bring us paradise.

Whether we realize it or not, Wyoming and Montana are showing us how it could be done, effectively done.  They key to resisting an unconstitutional federal government is state action, but something more than mere symbolic action.  What if, for instance, Montana declared that federal gun control was invalid and unconstitutional, and threatened to arrest any federal agent who entered Montana to enforce it?  How far would the federal government be willing to press Montana?  What are other Americans willing to sacrifice in order to impose gun control on states that don’t want it?  In this hypothetical scenario, Montana would have to be deadly serious about enforcing their edicts.  Attempts by the federal government to impose control over the situation would need to be met with quite real threats of secession, along with the attendant violence that could go along with such an audacious move. Montana would essentially be asking the nation a very serious question “Are you so intent on gun control that you’re willing to risk the cohesion and integrity of the United States, and to risk violence against the citizens of several of our states to enforce it?”  Unless Americans change greatly, the answer to that is probably going to be no, and it would offer a peaceful way for the federal government to retreat back across the Rubicon.

This scenario offers three very important things — It offers people, who want to resist, the legitimacy of a functioning, lawful government to rally around, as an alternative to dying in a desperate, lone action.  It offers a means of collective confrontation with the federal government that wouldn’t have to turn violent except as a final resort, and finally it offers an opportunity for the proponents of gun control to back down from the brink.

The question second amendment advocates need to be thinking about isn’t “Where’s the line in the sand where I start shooting.” but “Where’s my line in the sand where I start lobbying my state government to stand up to this crap?”  We have to keep the spirit of defiance alive in our state cultures.  Secession has a lot of negative connotations to many people, since the last time we did it, it was in defense of slavery, but its possibility a critical aspect in the balance of power between the federal and state governments.  It is the ultimate trump card, one that must be played with utmost care, but it must be kept in play.  That’s tough in an age where all the states suckle at the federal teat, but if we’re to remain under a federal government limited by the a constitution, more states have to start acting like Montana and Wyoming, and be willing to tell the federal government to go to hell, with all the terrible consequences that statement could have if they were to one day be serious about it.

We all know Boston was looking at doing voluntary random searches, but according to Bruce they aren’t above doing involuntary random searches either.

Good to see they are standing up for free speech.

Cam Edwards has a good post up on the recent push by DC and Boston authorities to go door to door asking homeowners whether they can voluntarily search the house for drugs and guns:

This effort may end up leading to more violent crime. If it’s already leading to police being referred to as “vampires”, you’d have to think it’s not a great boon to establishing rapport between the beat cops and the people who live in these high-crime communities. It seems designed mostly to get positive press coverage rather than achieving any real benefit.

The politicians in D.C. have become so used to taking away liberty in the name of the common good that it’s fair to say they really don’t see anything wrong with this. And that’s the scariest part of all.

Indeed.

For folks who might live in Washington DC, I have a handy and timely doormat suggestion.

UPDATE: Check out this NBC 4 article:

If weapons are recovered, they will be tested and destroyed if they are not found to be linked to any other crimes.

A police spokeswoman said that if evidence of other crimes is found during voluntary searches, amnesty will be granted for that crime as well.

Nevermind the murderers and the rapists!  As long as we get that gun off the street everything will be peachy.  And they wonder why they can’t keep their crime under control.  These DC city politicians really do live in a fantasy world, don’t they?

h/t Instapundit

Or they’ll lock you up, in Ohio.

They have shut down a web site under pressure from Islamists:

h4rm0ny notes the furor over an anti-Islamic movie due to be released on the Web in the next week. After Pakistan disrupted YouTube worldwide over an interview with right-wing Dutch MP and filmmaker Geert Wilders, Network Solutions, acting as host as well as registrar, has suspended Wilders’s site promoting the 15-minute film “Fitna” (a Koranic term translated as “strife”).

The site now says:

This site has been suspended while Network Solutions is investigating whether the site’s content is in violation of the Network Solutions Acceptable Use Policy. Network Solutions has received a number of complaints regarding this site that are under investigation.

I don’t use Network Solutions, and now I can guarantee that I never will. We have to be willing to stand up to people who refuse to live peaceably among free citizens.

Radley Balko has a new article on the Chesapeake drug raid that went horribly wrong.  I think I blogged about that a few months ago when it first happened.

Remember the gun related t-shirt incident in Pennsylvania we talked about a few days ago?  Dave Hardy reminds us that NRA fought one of these cases already, and had this to say:

NRA had one of those cases, and won it. Had some fun with the school, pointing out that every classroom has the Virginia flag in it. A flag that depicts a woman holding a spear, a corpse at her feet, and the motto Sic Semper Tyrannis. Oh, and for some reason she has one breast bare. So nobody is allowed to have an image of a weapon, yet in every classroom there is an official image of one, indeed a depiction of homicide, capped with a threat to do, and a bit of nudity!

So much for zero tolerance eh?

Thanks to Rustmeister, who found it, it would appear that a Pennsylvania school is stifling student free speech:

Donald Miller III, 14, went to Penn Manor High School in December wearing a T-shirt he said was intended to honor his uncle, a U.S. Army soldier fighting in Iraq.

The shirt bears the image of a military sidearm and on the front pocket says “Volunteer Homeland Security.” On the back, over another image of the weapon, are the words “Special issue Resident Lifetime License — United States Terrorist Hunting Permit — Permit No. 91101 — Gun Owner — No Bag Limit.”

If I recall my first amendment law correct, which I might not, it’s lawful for schools to regulate dress code, but it has to do it in a content neutral manner.  In other words, it could proscribe all shirts that are not plain shirts of uniform color, it could proscribe an obscene t-shirt that could be construed as disruptive to the educational environment, but it can’t discriminate on dress based merely on disapproval of the content displayed on the shirt.

Looks like it to me.  I might not always agree with David’s approach to activism, but to suggest that he’s implicitly threatened anyone, or that his blogging activities might bring the wrath of federal law enforcement on him is offensive to not only the first amendment, but the very principles this country was founded on.

One of the things that has made me a bigger advocate of Open Carry than I have been in the past is that technology is making concealment harder and harder.

You can count on societies moving toward democratic totalitarianism to develop technologies such as this, but in some ways it’s inevitable.  It will be possible in the future to have near perfect enforcement of some laws.  We have to argue what kind of laws we are willing to live under.

SayUncle points to an article that shows the real problem with possessory crimes; you need police state tactics to enforce them.  California has cross referenced its criminal and mental health databases with its gun registration database, and is going from door to door.

While I don’t think there’s any constitutional obstacle to taking away civil liberties after due process of law, many of California’s laws, particularly it’s mental health gun prohibitions, do not have sufficient due process for me to be ok with these kinds of tactics.  Either way, I think this is way too gestapo like, and it’s a prime example of why I have issues with those who want enable government to track everything we do, especially activities the political elites thumb their noses at.  How many of the people California is rounding up are really legitimately dangers to society?  If they are so dangerous, why are they on the streets?  Are highly dangerous criminals really legally registering their firearms with the state?  Pretty clearly these folks aren’t neatly falling into the category of “law abiding gun owner,” but color me skeptical they are a real menace to a safe society.  I’m willing to bet this has almost no effect on crime in California, and police resources would be better spent going after truly dangerous criminals.

Last month I wrote a bit on how we could begin to restore liberty and limited government in this country by seizing key social institutions back from the progressives:

If we want to reverse the progressive slide, we have to make progress in academia, particularly in topics that tend to feed the political elite, such as political science, law, and economics. The good news is, we’ve pretty much won on economics, and I think we’re making progress in law.

This post by Ilya Somin over at Volokh talks about progress we’re making in the legal realm:

Steven Teles’ important new book, The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement, does an excellent job of analyzing and explaining the growth of non-liberal public interest law. He notes that the success libertarian and conservative public interest law groups was not foreordained. Indeed, early efforts in the 1970s and early 80s were mostly dismal failures. How did the founders of IJ and CIR turn things around? Teles notes two important causes: the second generation of libertarian public interest firms learned from the the strategies of their liberal predecessors and distanced themselves from business interests.

Read the whole thing.  IJ and CIR are worthy organizations that have shown demonstrated progress on the issue.  This is a generational fight, but I believe if we work hard enough, it’s winnable.

The ACLU has to be commended when they do right, and I have to admit, this video is pretty good.

Information technology is just getting too good, and we’re going to have to learn to live with other people knowing a lot about us, but we should be very fearful of a confluence of information technology in both public and private hands enabling a meddlesome government to be even more meddlesome.  It will be very hard, and I’m not sure even a net public good, to prevent private entities from sharing information, but we must be very wary of government getting into the game, especially if they decide to declare themselves the only provider of health care.

Hat tip to Michael Bane.

From John Derbyshire of National Review:

Wherever there is a jackboot stomping on a human face there will be a well-heeled Western liberal to explain that the face does, after all, enjoy free health care and 100 percent literacy.

All to effectively explains the difference between people who want liberty, and people who want to be relieved of its burden.

The Peruvian Police have some very menacing looking riot gear.  I’m not sure I’m comfortable with how they appear to be marching either.

Joe Huffman has a good post up on government information gathering on its citizens.  I think this is indeed something we have to be wary of, but only to the extent that the government can compel me to give them information.   The government, for instance, knows my income because they will lock me up for failing to file an income tax return.

But in an information based society government will be able to know a lot about its citizens.  Our government probably knows more about its citizens than any other government in history.  There won’t be much means to avoid that.  Conversely though, information technology also makes it possible to know more about our government than any other people in history.  I would encourage and recommend anyone who’s interested in this topic to read David Brin’s The Transparent Society.  Brin’s argument is essentially that technology is going to make information and surveillance technology ubiquitous, and there’s not much we’ll be able to do about it:

While this has the makings for an Orwellian nightmare, Brin argues that we can choose to make the same scenario a setting for even greater freedom. The determining factor is whether the power of observation and surveillance is held only by the police and the powerful or is shared by us all. In the latter case, Brin argues that people will have nothing to fear from the watchers because everyone will be watching each other. The cameras would become a public resource to assure that no mugger is hiding around the corner, our children are playing safely in the park, and police will not abuse their power.

No simplistic Utopian, Brin also acknowledges the many dangers on the way. He discusses how open access to information can either threaten or enhance freedom. It is one thing, for example, to make the entire outdoors public and another thing to allow the cameras and microphones to snoop into our homes. He therefore spends a lot of pages examining what steps are required to assure that a transparent society evolves in a manner that enhances rather than restricts freedom.

It’s a good read.  I don’t always agree with the book, but it makes you think.