Law Profs Tout Qualified Immunity for
Unconstitutional Gun Restrictions
Posted By: zoidberg, 8/2/2023 12:58:33 PM
Some ideas are so terrible that combining them into a cocktail of awfulness makes rotten sense. So it is with gun control and qualified immunity: Why not mix impunity for violating basic rights with denial of a specific right so as to maximize the harm? At least, that's the inspiration that struck two law professors who propose qualified immunity for enforcing even overtly unconstitutional gun control measures. While the duo sees the idea as much as a means of weakening officials' protections from liability as for promoting restrictions on private arms, it's a dangerous innovation that could entrench authoritarianism.
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zoidberg"
Some ideas are so terrible that combining them into a cocktail of awfulness makes rotten sense. So it is with gun control and qualified immunity: Why not mix impunity for violating basic rights with denial of a specific right so as to maximize the harm? At least, that's the inspiration that struck two law professors who propose qualified immunity for enforcing even overtly unconstitutional gun control measures. While the duo sees the idea as much as a means of weakening officials' protections from liability as for promoting restrictions on private arms, it's a dangerous innovation that could entrench authoritarianism.
A couple of years ago, an "80 percent" receiver I purchased refused to accept parts, let alone chamber and fire cartridges, until my son and I drilled and milled it to completion; that's because unfinished firearms are not firearms. For a long time, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) agreed. But, pressured by the Biden administration, the ATF tried to extend firearms regulations to a lot of things that aren't guns but could, with work, become one. Now a federal judge is injecting some sense, ruling in a lawsuit that bureaucrats can't just decide that inert objects are guns.
Believe it or not, people are reluctant to tell total strangers about their potentially controversial activities. In particular, Rutgers University researchers say, gun ownership is something many Americans decline to reveal when questioned by people they don't know. That's especially true of women and minorities newly among the ranks of gun owners amidst the chaos of recent years. Academics are unhappy that privacy-minded respondents impair their understanding of the world we live in, but such evasion is an inevitable consequence of decades of fiery debate and punitive gun policies.
Irked by Congress' failure to enact the gun control laws he favors, California Gov. Gavin Newsom is proposing a "28th Amendment" that would "permanently enshrine" those policies in the U.S. Constitution. This transparently partisan publicity stunt is wholly impractical and raises more questions than it answers. But Newsom's pitch for it nicely illustrates the dishonesty, emotionalism, divisive rhetoric, illogic, and magical thinking of politicians who promise that their half-baked gun control schemes will rescue America from fear of deadly violence.
Since the New York indictment of Donald Trump was unsealed last week, critics across the political spectrum have noted the legal problems with transforming one hush payment into 34 felonies. But in assessing the seriousness of this case, it is also relevant to ask who was injured by the former president's actions, a question that poses more of a puzzle than Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg suggests.
It’s always possible to be surprised. The indictment brought by Manhattan’s elected Democratic district attorney Alvin Bragg against Donald Trump is even worse than I’d imagined. Bragg’s indictment fails to state a crime. Not once . . . but 34 times. On that ground alone, the case should be dismissed — before one ever gets to the facts that the statute of limitations has lapsed and that Bragg has no jurisdiction to enforce federal law (if that’s what he’s trying to do, which remains murky).
There seems little doubt that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment of Donald Trump is imminent.(Snip)All that said, though, reports that Trump will be arrested on Tuesday are premature and probably inaccurate. They appear to have been generated by the former president himself and apparently are not based on discussions between the Trump camp and the DA’s office.
One of the funnier quirks of the Trump era is how closely the former president and his critics in the press mirror one another. From indulging in absolute gutter rhetoric to embracing rank illiberalism to promoting unhinged conspiracy theories, Trump and his press critics tend to have more in common than not. And right now, Trump and his media counterparts agree (albeit for slightly different reasons): Ron DeSantis is the worst.
Federal government interference has massively distorted American health care costs for decades. In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Joe Biden touted how the misnamed Inflation Adjustment Act (IRA) will further warp medical care costs by "finally giving Medicare the power to negotiate drug prices." The result is essentially putting price controls on prescription drugs. And price controls will do for prescription drugs what they do for all other products upon which they are imposed: create shortages, queues, black markets, and rationing.
A pregnant Texas woman who was ticketed for driving in the HOV lane suggested that Roe v. Wade being overturned by the Supreme Court means that her fetus counted as a passenger, and that she should not have been cited. Brandy Bottone was recently driving down Central Expressway in Dallas when she was stopped by a sheriff’s deputy at an HOV checkpoint to see whether there were at least two occupants per vehicle as mandated.
Joe Biden Is Too Old to Be President
18 replies
On the menu today: As President Biden continues to misstate his own policies, it is a painful sign that the next president must be someone who has enough youth and energy to handle the pressures of the job.(Snip)The next president should not be in his seventies . . . or his eighties. I realize that is age-ist, but the presidency is one of the hardest jobs in the world, and executing the duties of the presidency well requires someone who is in good physical and mental health, ideally with a lot of vigor and an ability to handle off-the-charts stress and a relentless workload.
When Sen. Marco Rubio (R–Fla.) was seeking the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, a local paper noted that he had "a long history speaking out against marijuana legalization." Given that history and the fact that Rubio's position is rejected by two-thirds of Americans, you might think he would be prepared to defend marijuana prohibition with cogent arguments. If so, you would be wrong.
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New York City Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan announced that illegal immigration has been ushering a new wave of tuberculosis and polio to the city.
In a citywide letter to physicians and healthcare administrators last week, Vasan said that the more than 50,000 illegal immigrants that have come to New York City since last year caused a spike in contagious diseases like tuberculosis and polio.“Many people who recently arrived in NYC have lived in or traveled through countries with high rates of TB,” he wrote, as reported by the New York Post.
Pope Francis began his four-day visit to Portugal for World Youth Day by blasting capitalism, populism, and insufficient attention to migrants and climate change.
“At a time when we are witnessing in many places a climate of protest and unrest, fertile terrain for populism and conspiracy theories, World Youth Day represents a chance to build together,” the pontiff told civil authorities and diplomats gathered in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon. (snip) “According to classical mythology, the ocean is a child of the sky (Uranus); its vastness leads mortals to look up and rise to infinity,” Francis said.
It was a rough month for FOX News.
For anyone who’s been paying any attention to what a post-Tucker Carlson landscape would look like at Fox News, two things are pretty apparent:
That landscape is pretty barren. The suddenly-beleaguered news network has lost so many viewers, its stock was downgraded.
Fox News is trying anything — or perhaps flailing about — in response to hemorrhaging viewers, including some shakeups to its primetime lineup.
Following all of the recent turmoil FOX News has lost the trust of American conservatives.
Only one-third of self-described conservatives trust FOX News the most. They may never gain back those former viewers. And it doesn’t appear to be a priority.
Jack Smith hasn’t charged Trump with
the Jan. 6 riots — but he wants to use
it as a judicial cudgel 20 replies
the Jan. 6 riots — but he wants to use
it as a judicial cudgel 20 replies
Of all the outrages in Biden special counsel Jack Smith’s latest indictment of Donald Trump — and there are many — the worst comes at the end of the 45-page screed’s Count One, the section titled “The Defendant’s Exploitation of the Violence and Chaos at the Capitol.”
This is where Smith waves the bloody shirt.
Smith intends to try Trump for the Capitol riot even though he hasn’t charged Trump for the Capitol riot.
No rioting charge. No allegation of criminal incitement. No seditious conspiracy, no insurrection, no crime of violence of any kind.
To levy such an allegation would have been untenable.
Smith’s indictment hides the ball, as did the like-minded.
A woman who is a current breast cancer patient was banned from her hospital over alleged "hurtful remarks" it claims she said about the "LGBTQ community." The patient, Marlene Barbera, was set to receive a mastectomy later this month. Barbera explained that the drama first began after she made a comment about being opposed to a trans pride flag that she spotted hanging in the waiting room of Richmond Family Medicine Clinic in Portland, Oregon. Since then, she has asked online if anyone is able to refer her to an attorney.
Working in law enforcement is a dangerous job, as is protecting the president of the United States. Being the personal chef to the president might be a close second, as these guys keep dying under eerie circumstances. In late July, Chef Tafari Campbell drowned while paddle boarding near the Martha’s Vineyard estate of former President Barack Obama (via Associated Press): Former President Barack Obama’s personal chef has drowned near the family’s home on Martha’s Vineyard.
Massachusetts State Police confirmed that the paddleboarder whose body was recovered from Edgartown Great Pond on Monday was Tafari Campbell, 45, of Dumfries, Virginia.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis has accepted California governor Gavin Newsom‘s challenge to debate.
The back-and-forth between the two governors began in June, when Fox News’ Sean Hannity asked Newsom if he would be willing to debate DeSantis.
“I’m all in. Count on it,” the California governor said.
“You would do a two-hour debate with Ron DeSantis?” Hannity replied.
“Make it three,” Newsom said.
On Wednesday evening, Hannity reiterated his proposal: “I floated the idea of a policy-based debate, you know, red vs. blue, red state vs. blue state, between Gavin Newsom and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.”
Moments later,
Chicago's new mayor Brandon Johnson took issue with a reporter for using the phrase 'mob action' to describe a rabble of up to 400 teenagers who trashed a 7-Eleven.
A huge crowd stormed the convenience store in the South Loop just after 9pm on Sunday and wreaked havoc with some looting items and others vandalizing it.
The large gathering resulted in the arrest of at least 40 people, aged 12 to 20, as police tried to get the situation under control. Mayor Johnson was addressing a wide-range of issues during a news conference on Wednesday including migrants, safety and the latest instance of teenagers gathering.
But he disagreed with
With military recruitment numbers down, it was probably only a matter of time before someone from the Washington swamp bruited the idea of restoring the military draft.
Joe Plenzler, whose biography here suggests he's more than a little familiar with the swamp, wrote an op-ed for Military.com, via Tom Knighton, calling for this: Which, no matter how seemingly palatable the modified proposal, is still a restoration of the military draft and all its unpopular aspects, done to boost military recruitment numbers.
NYC's Roosevelt Hotel is Cleared of migrants
who have been sleeping on the streets
for days 14 replies
who have been sleeping on the streets
for days 14 replies
The once-packed corner of midtown New York City where hundreds of migrants lived on cardboard and dirty sidewalks pleading to get inside the Roosevelt hotel to be processed was empty Thursday.
City officials remain tight-lipped on exactly how the street corner emptied in just a matter of hours and where the migrants are today.
The corner of East 45th Street and Vanderbilt Avenue in Manhattan had been the epicenter of the country's migrant influx. Hundreds lined the block hoping to get inside the makeshift processing center after coming to the area on buses from the south.
Massachusetts state police are covering up information about the drowning of Barack Obama's personal chef, labeling the incident an accident but continuing to withhold information under the guise of an 'ongoing investigation', DailyMail.com can reveal.
It's been 11 days since Tafari Campbell drowned in a pond bordering the former president's estate, but authorities are rejecting requests for even basic facts including the identity of the sole witness and the 911 caller.
The state is citing a Public Records Law exemption that allows police to withhold any information that could jeopardize an active investigation.
Two U.S. Navy sailors were arrested on national security-related charges related to allegedly sending sensitive military information to the Chinese Communist Party, federal officials said on Thursday.
“These individuals stand accused of violating the commitments they made to protect the United States and betraying the public trust, to the benefit of the [People’s Republic of China] government,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, said in a news release.U.S. Navy Sailor Jinchao Wei, an active-duty machinist’s mate on the amphibious U.S.S. Essex assault ship
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Despots wanna despot.