The government didn’t argue the merits of requiring a photo ID or that the drug only be sold in locations with an on-site pharmacy, but Korman made clear why he found that to be an inadequate compromise: “You’re using these 11- and 12-year-olds to place an undue burden on women’s ability to access emergency contraception. If it’s an impediment to voting, it’s an impediment to get the drug.”

I agree with the judge.

I’m not a fan of Plan B.  I think that abortion is a moral wrong.  I’m especially not a fan of children experiencing statutory rape, becoming impregnated by their rapist, and then covering up the crime with a drug (potentially bought for them by their rapist.)

But, I’ll abide it.  That is what being in a free republic is about.  People are allowed to do things you don’t like, because that is what liberty costs.

I want equality, though.  If showing ID to get this drug is an impediment to the “right” to abortifactants, then showing ID is an impediment to your enumerated right to keep and bear arms.  Never mind background checks and form 4473s, this judge has just said that showing ID is an impediment to exercising a right.

So let’s do it.  No ID for guns.  No ID to exercise your right to travel by plane.  No ID to enter a federal courtroom.  If showing ID is an impediment to exercising a civil right, I welcome that development with open arms.

This is the best argument against gun control for a liberal.

Rick Perry is everything you fear in government.  I don’t have to list the reasons — you already know why you hate him.  Here is the problem you have:

Gun control will never disarm Rick Perry.

He’s the governor of a state.  That makes him the head of the Texas National Guard.  He’s the commander in chief of the state police.  He’s the head of the organized militia, the Texas State Guard.  In short, he’s one of the Only Ones that you will always be leaving a gun with.

Think of all the things you think Rick Perry is capable of.  Why in the world would you trust him with guns governing an unarmed populace? I agree with most of his politics and wouldn’t do it.

When you are thinking about government regulations, you have to remember that at some point in time, your worst political enemy is going to have his hands on the top office, and the regulations have to be crafted so that he can’t do anything too terrible with them.  Do you really trust your life to Rick Perry?

You want to impress me?  Dress up as Mohammed on the top part, with your pubes shaved into a crescent, and hand out rape whistles.  Then I’ll be impressed with your edginess.

No Catholic is going to come and chop your head off for dressing up like the Pope.

I’m glad he was able to do this before he died:

Police say the suspect purchased a knife inside the store and then turned it into a weapon. Smith’s employee Dorothy Espinoza says, “He pulled it out and stood outside the Smiths in the foyer. And just started stabbing people and yelling you killed my people. You killed my people.”

Espinoza says, the knife wielding man seriously injured two people. “There is blood all over. One got stabbed in the stomach and got stabbed in the head and held his hands and got stabbed all over the arms.”

Then, before the suspect could find another victim – a citizen with a gun stopped the madness. “A guy pulled gun on him and told him to drop his weapon or he would shoot him. So, he dropped his weapon and the people from Smith’s grabbed him.”

After all, if it saves “one life”, right?

If you don’t have a right to keep and bear arms while being rude to a cop, then you don’t have a right to keep and bear arms

Jack in a comment at Popehat.

First, we have the capture. I have absolutely no praise for American law enforcement on this point. They didn’t actively manage anything. Frankly, this isn’t unusual. The police rarely catch a criminal unless they fall into their laps. (Thankfully, most criminals are incredibly stupid and stumble into the cops’ laps all the time.) If a private citizen can’t hand the cops everything they need to solve the case, the case generally goes unsolved. That is exactly what happened here.

There are already calls for more government cameras. We don’t need them. It wasn’t a government camera that captured the scene. It was a private store’s camera. There were plenty of private cameras recording the scene. It was a televised event, so there were broadcast quality cameras recording the scene. (Incidentally, this is likely to be the case with all major terrorist events. If you want your bombing to have impact, news cameras have to capture it.)

So, when the private citizens give the government all the evidence they need — and in fact, in the case of Reddit, even identify the bombers for the FBI, so all the FBI has to do is identify them — then the manhunt starts. The authorities respond to their first contact (the MIT cop) and their second contact (the running gun battle where they, uh, let them get away) by putting an entire major metropolis on “lockdown.”

Now, let’s talk about that word. Lockdown. Where does it come from? Prisons. It’s a prison word. You put prisoners on “lockdown”, not free citizens. It’s how you end prisoner escapes and riots. It’s not how you treat a free city. In all fairness to the authorities, it was officially a shelter in place for most of Boston. They did send citizens to their home in the immediate area the suspects were believed to be in, and I can abide that. And you know what? I’m OK with the overall “shelter in place”. They can ask you to stay home. They can ask to look around your place. (The accounts that I heard were that if you said, “no, get a warrant” they said OK and left. That’s also proper.) But this media emphasis on “lockdown” — and make no mistake, the compliant media is as much, if not more, to blame for the shenanigans surround this incident — is out of line. We aren’t prisoners. We don’t get put on “lockdown”. If you have any concern for preventing indoctrination of your children, you won’t send them to schools that have “lockdowns” of the tiny prisoners as part of their plan.

What did this “lockdown” get them? Nothing. Jack shit. It was a complete waste of time and money — likely billions of dollars in lost productivity and sales. What did happen? As soon as they lifted the shelter in place, a private citizen walked his own property, realized that something was out of place, and found the suspect. He called the cops, they came, did some collective pants wetting, set up a few dozen perimeters, called in a helicopter, sent in a robot, and then shot hundreds of rounds at the citizen’s privately owned boat. To hit the suspect one more time. When he was already wounded. And had already been face to face with the private citizen, apparently already too wounded to attack him. Here’s the footage of the arrest:

The last thing that irks me is all the media talk about the suspect being an “enemy combatant.” This is bullshit. He’s not an enemy combatant.

First, he’s not the enemy. He’s an American citizen entirely within American jurisdiction. They didn’t find him in a foreign country. He’s not a foreign national. He’s an American citizen. They lost their chance to call him the enemy when he was naturalized on September 11, 2012. (No shit.) We don’t have “sorta citizens.” There’s no probationary period. When he took the oath, he’s in. He gets everything but the right to be president (which requires natural born citizenship.) If he was so dangerous, then we never should have allowed him the oath.

Second, he’s not a combatant. He wasn’t in a war zone. He was in Boston and Cambridge. The US Army didn’t pick him up. Posse Comitatus meant that the Army couldn’t go get him — because he wasn’t a combatant. This wasn’t a general insurrection. This was a couple of mouth-breathers who barely got some pressure cookers to explode. He’s not an enemy, he’s not a combatant, and we are not going to treat him as an enemy combatant. He’s a criminal. A terrorist also, but we have charges for that. Let’s put them to work.

Calling him an enemy combatant — legally, not the morons in the compliant media — starts us down a slippery slope that will end up making a lot of people like me “enemy combatant” when they never would have otherwise. The constitution addresses this — it’s the prohibition on Bills of Attainder. Congress cannot just “declare” Americans to be criminals and hold them. Neither can the Executive. That is the Judicial branch’s sole prerogative, and they are required to do so through due process and trials. No other way. If this clown is an “enemy combatant” then how far down does the bar slip? Does that mean that the Newtown shooter would have also been an enemy combatant? He killed more people. It was as much “combat” as this was. Who is next? How about Bradley Manning? He was certainly a combatant, as an active duty member of the armed forces. Let’s just “declare” him an enemy combatant and do away with all this messy “rights” business.

There’s a big reason that the media morons (I’m looking at you, Mark Davis) are caught up in this enemy combatant business. It’s the issue with Miranda rights currently being tossed around. The suspect hasn’t been read his Miranda rights or allowed to see an attorney. I’m fine with that — just don’t claim it is related to the enemy combatant doctrine. If he isn’t Mirandized, then we have a due process method to deal with that. It’s the exclusionary rule. Whatever he says before he is allowed an attorney is inadmissible. The end. It’s a strategic call for the prosecution. If they have enough evidence to convict him without a confession (and this is almost certainly true) then there is no reason to Mirandize him. Finish the questioning you need to do to determine if there is a wider conspiracy (and there likely is) and then hand him over to the lawyers. There is no reason to dirty this up with enemy combatant bullshit to do that. Just follow the damned rules.

Is that really so hard? Why is it that “follow the damned rules” seems to be the one thing no one in government can manage anymore?

• Pagers
• Compuserve
• “Run Forrest Run!” jokes
• The American Motors Corporation
• Uncle Jesse from Full House
• Slap Bracelets
• Crazy Taxi

And you aren’t even going to do that.  You’re just going to go to door.”

Russ Martin on The Russ Martin Show

It’s currently a crime to lie about the identity of a buyer when filling out forms about a gun purchase, but the act itself of giving the guns to crooks is not, the lawmakers argued.

“The absence of any federal law defining gun trafficking as a crime in this country is shocking,” Gillibrand in a statement Monday.

It’s not as shocking as lawmakers complete and total ignorance of the law.

18 USC 922(d)(1)-(9):

(d) It shall be unlawful for any person to sell or otherwise
dispose of any firearm or ammunition to any person knowing or
having reasonable cause to believe that such person -
(1) is under indictment for, or has been convicted in any court
of, a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one
year;
(2) is a fugitive from justice;
[continuing list of Prohibited Persons snipped]

The thing is, that’s not their game.  They don’t want to stop people from making straw purchases for criminals and other Prohibited Persons.  They want to make any “straw” purchase a crime.  This is the text of the bill:

‘Sec. 932. Straw purchasing of firearms

‘(a) Any person (other than a licensed importer, licensed manufacturer, or licensed dealer) who knowingly purchases any firearm for, on behalf of, or with intent to transfer it to, any other person, if that firearm has moved in or otherwise affected interstate or foreign commerce, or attempts or conspires to do so, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years or both. For purposes of this section, the term ‘purchases’ includes the receipt of any firearm from pawn or on consignment by a person who does not own the firearm.

‘(b) Subsection (a) shall not apply to any firearm that is lawfully purchased by a person–

‘(1) to be given as a bona fide gift to a recipient who provided no service or tangible thing of value to acquire the firearm, unless the person knows or has reason to believe such recipient is prohibited by Federal, State, or local law from possessing, receiving, selling, shipping, transporting, transferring, or otherwise disposing of the firearm; or

‘(2) to be given to a bona fide winner of an organized raffle, contest, or auction conducted in accordance with law and sponsored by a national, State, or local organization or association, unless the person knows or has reason to believe such recipient is prohibited by Federal, State, or local law from possessing, purchasing, receiving, selling, shipping, transporting, transferring, or otherwise disposing of the firearm.

Got that? They want to make it illegal to buy a gun “with intent to transfer it to, any other person”.  No time limitations.  No “don’t transfer it to Prohibited Persons.”  ANY OTHER PERSON.  If you buy a gun, and decide to flip it to your cousin in two weeks?  Straw Purchase!  20 years!  If you buy a gun here and there over a couple of years, and then decide to sell them off to buy a new car?  Straw Purchases!  20 years each!

This bill aims to make all guns non-transferable, now and in the future.

This is an intolerable act.

(Via Ace)

After Rep. Mike Hope, R-Lake Stevens, sponsored a gun background-check bill, he knew his lifetime “A” rating with the National Rifle Association would get a downgrade.

But he didn’t think the gun-rights group would blanket his district with anti-Mike Hope postcards. Nor stop speaking to him.

“It looks like I went straight from an A to an F,” Hope says.

Good. Make him famous, NRA.

(Via War on Guns)

Do you really think that there is any way they can do anything when dozens of “right-wing nutjobs” start doing what he’s doing all across the country?  Or even worse, all in one city?

You gun banners are playing with fire.