The International House of Bacon

Just because there’s so much information about it and stuff to think of, so just a bunch of random thoughts about it.

1) How sad that a principle (referring to Heller specifically) that really isn’t that difficult to grasp, and is only hampered by a 18th century language quirk, can only be retained by a 5-4 ruling. This isn’t to say that every issue should be 9-0, but something like this realistically should have been, and probably more of them.

2) I’m ultimately glad to see FEC v. Davis ruled the way it was - while the Court ultimately punted poorly on some of the campaign finance provisions early, I feel like that ruling leaves a really good opening for eventual real reform involving an actual protection of our speech. Soon…

3) If I have one issue with Heller, it’s, ironically enough, Scalia’s dissent. I’ve mostly skimmed it and read the highlights elsewhere, but it’s not the Scalia Unleashed! I was hoping for. My money would be on his being restrained in order to protect what was probably a clearly frail majority to begin with. Which, again, is sad - compromising on what are supposed to be inalienable rights? Sigh. But considering the recent(?) habit of concurring opinions neutering otherwise sound rulings, I suppose we should take what we can get.

4) On a similar tack, a lot of hand-wringing appears to be happening regarding the narrow scope of the ruling. I again choose to credit that to the possible political realities, but I also wonder if it was a scope issue. Yeah, I’d love for the Court to wake up and say that one’s inalienable rights don’t disappear once you’ve served time for your crime, for example, but I also can’t be sure that it ever would have happened with this case. So yeah.

5) This can’t go without saying, and this has to be addressed: Obama is on record as stating that Breyer, Souter, and Ginsburg are “models” for his type of justice, as “sensible.” Not surprisingly, these three were on the wrong side - the anti-Constitution side - of the two most obvious Constitutional rulings of the day yesterday. These are his models. This is what he thinks is “sensible.” Breyer penned a dissent in Heller, specifically, and that should trouble anyone who cares about the Constitution one lick. I’m not saying Thomas and Scalia are perfect - far from it, in fact - however, in terms of basic caring about the Constitution and the rights enshrined therein, there’s no one on the Court who appears to care more. And Obama wants their opposites. That’s a problem, period.

Some highlights from my Google Reader about the cases:

* From the Volokh Conspiracy, Orin Kerr on Heller’s limitations and Ilya Somin thinking in the context of Kelo, and Eugene Volokh offering his thoughts.

* Radley Balko is somewhat skeptical about Heller’s outcome.

* Jacob Sullum questions Scalia’s limits.

* RedState offers a general “quotes of the day” list regarding Davis

* Trevor Bothwell calls Heller a win/lose ruling.

* Ed Whelan at NRO highlights Stevens’s dissent (which was an embarassment) and Alito’s opinion, both regarding Davis.

Thoughts on Heller and Davis coming later on, scheduled to post around noon.

* Auto sales in China up big. More reason to remember that drilling is a necessity - there’s no way developing nations will be able to afford implementing the alternatives in the same time frame we will be able to.

* FiveThirtyEight highlights a recent Rasmussen poll showing similar favorables amongst identified party voters, but higher unfavorables for Obama. Combine this with 20% of Clinton voters not yet behind Obama, and there is a fairly interesting argument to be made about Obama having the base problem, and not so much McCain.

* Of course, if Obama keeps shifting positions with the blowing of the wind, he might have bigger problems than his base. His campaign, last, year, noted the Heller case and said that “Obama believes the D.C. handgun law is constitutional.” Obama himself never corrected the record, and it remained consistent with Obama’s state senate questionnaire and his work with the Joyce Foundation and the Violence Policy Center. Yesterday, hours before the ruling was released, it was reported that Obama’s campaign was running from that, now stating that the “statement was obviously an inartful attempt to explain the Senator’s consistent position.” Yes, Obama’s position appears to have been consistent - consistently against the Constitution, and consistently wrong.

* Dear John McCain, please keep Bobby Jindal out of your administration. I know he’s the most exciting Republican to come around in a while, but no one on the right needs him.

* Apparently, Hugo Chavez’s election scare not too long ago has resulted in a change for him. Instead of running campaigns now, he’ll just remove opposition candidates from the ballots.

* Lost in the shuffle? Another missile defense test success. The military is 35 of 43 since 2001, and has succeeded in 29 of the last 30 since 2005, with this being a successful test where the controllers had no clue where the missile was going. So much for this sort of thing “never working.” Remember, Barack Obama considers missile defense unproven and plans to cut spending on it. Maybe he’s right that we don’t necessarily need a missile defense program, but to claim that it’s unproven seems dumber by the day.

* Finally, a list of Hollywood’s top 10 worst kissers.