Yesterday, in a gratingly stupid post, Steve “Mister Furious” Perry at MNMon said (with emphasis added):

Bribes — more commonly known as signing bonuses — are “one of the main reasons why the Army has been able to meet its recruiting goals in spite of the ongoing specter of serving in Iraq,” [author Michael] Massing writes.

He would seem to be one of those lefties who “supports the troops” because “it’s a good place to put all the people who are too dumb to be me” – but that’s not really the point.

One would think that if the troops were just a bunch of bribed mercenaries, this would not be the case:

According to Army statistics … 70 percent of soldiers eligible to re-enlist in 2006 did so — a re-enlistment rate higher than before Sept. 11, 2001. For the past 10 years, the enlisted retention rates of the Army have exceeded 100 percent. As of last Nov. 13, Army re-enlistment was 137 percent of its stated goal.

You wouldn’t think a poor, “dumb” kid who came to the service out of desperation would stick around after they loaded up on bonuses and swag. Would you?

People have commented, here and elsewhere, about the tone the Monitor has taken since Perry – former City Pages editor back when it was known as a place with some damn fine journalism sprinkled in among the ofay hipsterism – took over. What was once a genial, well-meaning and frequently dumb group propagandablog has turned into a shrill, shallow, gratingly obvious vehicle that would seem to be trying for a slice of the Kos/MyDD market, with a nasty stupid streak and an appetite for uncritically gurgitating press releases.

I’m trying to figure out where it was that Steve “Mister Furious” Perry made the switch from “good journalist and editor” to a sort of intellectual Alexandra Dupre.

Via Roosh:

By the way – in an era in which the prolific solo-blogger on a mission seems to be endangered, Roosh is becoming a daily stop (indeed, via them miracle of the feed reader, he already is).

Go forth and fail to read him no more.

For those of you who were afraid the retirement of Mark “The Wege” Gisleson would make the local Sorosphere a kinder and gentler place – well, don’t worry. Steve “Mister Furious” Perry is more than happy to take up the slack – and watch his credibility crash harder than Lieutenant Commander McCain’s A4 Skyhawk:

While we await the release of John McCain’s medical file–which his campaign has pledged to disgorge by next month–I took a look through press accounts of McCain’s last release of medical information, during his 2000 run for the White House.One eye-opener: McCain’s startling claim that he believes the five years he spent as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam were actually a boon to his mental health and temperamental stability.

It’s clear that Perry has given up being a “journalist” (he used to be a good one), and is auditioning for a job as a writer snarksmith on the “Daily Show”.

Since modifying and controlling ones’ behavior was a prime survival skill among American POWs in North Vietnam, it’s clear that Perry knows no more about this subject than Dan Haugen knows about the law or Molly Priesmeyer knows about business.

And I’d have to wonder – would Perry bring the same tact, intellect and sensitivity to the table if a woman ran for office and testified to having been raped? (“That’s a stupid question, Mitch. Of course he would! If she were Republican!”)

One wonders how Steve Perry’s “behavior” would fare (he’s, um, notoriously “prickly”) if he spent a weekend in jail on a traffic warrant, much less five and a half years of torture, solitary confinement and the sort of systematic degradation most Americans couldn’t comprehend even if the Daily Mold were still in operation?

Given McCain’s enduring and well-known fondness for calling his Senate colleagues names and telling them to fuck themselves, what are we to make of this?

That it’d be cool to stick Perry in a room with McCain for five minutes? (And since when does Perry, the guy who hired Mark Gisleson at the City Pages in ’04, get the vapors about a little rudeness and cussing?)
I never thought it would be possible, but…:

• The Minnesota Monitor is getting crappier by the day
• Jeff Fecke may be the most credible, conscientious reporter on the staff these days.

Perhaps it’s time to start a “MNMon Dead Pool”. Even Soros has gotta realize he’s wasting his propaganda dollar.

Although we can hope not.

(And could someone have a word with them about their spaghetti display code, their torquemadian comment engine, and their “Junior’s First Website, 1996” design?).

I was going to write something about the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.

But, as is often the case, Jeff Kouba at TvM does it better.

Excerpt:

Bush was laying out the case that diplomacy means nothing if it isn’t backed up with a stick. Tea and crumpets do not make thugs and terrorists shake in their boots.

Hillary and Barack and the craven party they represent want to go back to those days of feckless diplomacy where dictators quickly figure out that there are no real consequences for aggressive violence. This is really what we’re voting on in November. What are we going to tell the world? Will we say as a nation we still have the resolve to see this through, or we will signal retreat?

Go read it.

The times were dire.

The good people were dispirited.

Evil silliness seemed to reign supreme, and threatened to overwhelm the good people and their lives.

The people cried out for a hero.

And from the east southwest, to the skirl of a plastic Viking horn, one arose:

Join me and other Freedom Loving Americans who stand in support of our Troops at the Lake Street/Marshall Ave. Bridge on the 5th Anniversary of the Liberation of Iraq. The Anti-war Kooks will be there. Let’s show ’em that they do NOT hold the majority opinion.

Bring signs, American Flags, Bells, Horns,

Enge – the irrepressible one-man conservative counterprotest movement – will be gadflying the “peace” protest at the Marshall-Lake Bridge from 5-6 tonight.

Enge was responsible for one of my favorite moments in my radio career. Four years ago, at the helm of the Engemobile (a stake-bed pickup festooned with right-leaning banners and flags, and a big honking sound system), Enge was gadflying one of the Smugosphere’s “peace” protests at Summit and Snelling. He called in to the NARN broadcast, then in progress.

I asked him to turn the Engemobile’s sound system over to AM1280, and drive through the intersection slow down in the middle of the crowd of “peace” demonstrators.

He flipped the station on, cranked the speakers, and maneuvered into the crowd.
“Grow up, take a bath, and get a job!

Great to have ya back, Enge. 5PM is a byatch, but I’ll give it my best shot.

George Clooney leaps into action over Tibet:

If his previous form is anything to go by, the Tibetans should soon be able to count on the support of Hollywood star George Clooney in their struggle for freedom. After all, the man anointed by the media as the “heartthrob with a conscience” must have been pretty outspoken about China’s indirect responsibility for the on-going genocide in Darfur, right?

Well, not really. Here’s Clooney’s latest attack on China regarding Darfur delivered in his capacity as “ambassador” for Olympic partner and official timekeeper Omega:

“I have talked with Omega (about China) for over a year and will continue to talk to Omega,” Clooney told BBC Sport.“I have and will go to the places I and China do business and ask for help.”

You hear that, President Hu? Not so brave now, are we, People’s Liberation Army? Gorgeous George is going to “continue to talk to Omega.” He’s going to “go to places” and “ask for help.”

We’ve yet to hear from Clooney on the specific issue of Tibet, but he’ll surely take an even stronger stance than he has over Darfur, given that this time Chinese are doing the shooting themselves, rather than merely supplying the ammunition.

We can perhaps hope for something along the lines of the blistering attack Clooney launched on Nestle last year, when it was politely pointed out that his commercial activities on behalf of a company that’s been criticised for its policies in the third world didn’t sit well with his self-appointed role as global crusader for the oppressed.

Here’s the full, unedited transcript:

“I’m not going to apologize to you for trying to make a living every once in a while. I find that an irritating question.”

Okay, it wasn’t that blistering. However, Clooney has on other occasions been genuinely outspoken in his condemnation of perceived injustices — namely those he feels have been committed by the United States, and specifically by the Bush administration.

Not that this is anything new – or even confined to the past eight years.

The violence in Tibet piles on yet another to boycott the Beijing Olympics (a few months ago, we noted the gag order being placed on Olympic athletes forbidding them from criticizing China and its totalitarian policies).

And there’s finally some talk of doing…well, something:

Moves to punish China over its handling of violence in Tibet gained momentum Tuesday, with a novel suggestion for a mini-boycott of the Beijing Olympics by VIPs at the opening ceremony.

Such a protest by world leaders would be a huge slap in the face for China’s Communist leadership.

France’s outspoken foreign minister, former humanitarian campaigner Bernard Kouchner, said the idea “is interesting.”

Kouchner said he wants to discuss it with other foreign ministers from the 27-nation European Union next week. His comments opened a crack in what until now had been solid opposition to a full boycott, a stance that Kouchner said remains the official government position.

The idea of skipping the Aug. 8 opening ceremony “is less negative than a general boycott,” Kouchner said. “We are considering it.”

I’m all for negative, but it’s a start.

This post will tie together a bunch of my favorite topics:

1. what I do for a living,
2. bad reporters,
3. upholding capitalism against ignorant droogs
4. worse reporters, and
5. bashing the Sorosmedia.

Let’s start at the top.

I design things for a living – usually software. Now, when you’re designing things that might have to be used by more than one type of person – software, stores, appliances, marketing websites, airliner safety equipment or what have you – you realize that it’s impossible to design something one way that works equally well for every possible consumer; if you try, you get a lowest-common-denominator that works well for nobody.

So, rather than try to design something that amalgamates an approach to every possible user, one technique is to develop a “User Persona” – a “biography” of the person (or small set of people) for whom the system has to work. For example, if you’re designing an airline cockpit, the design has to work perfectly for pilots; everyone else is secondary. Other designs are more complicated; a luxury sports car might be designed around a 45-year-old, upper-middle-class, upwardly-mobile, racially-indeterminate mortgage broker named “Pete” – all design nuances will answer the question “What would Pete want”. If it works perfectly for “Pete” – who is the “stereotype” of the person to whom the product is aimed, and who is most likely to buy the car – then it’ll be just fine for everyone else.

This technique is used in all sorts of processes – including designing retail marketing, store design, and even sales training systems. When you only have so much time and money to spend on designing something – a website, a store, a package, a cockpit – you have to focus your efforts on the right consumer.

It just makes sense.

———-

After Dan Haugen’s little gaffe the other day in the MNMon – where he wrote “Minnesota’s gun laws could be worse – look at this bozo in Tennessee who’d make guns legal in bars”, not knowing that guns are legal in bars (under certain strict conditions) in Minnesota – I got to thinking – do MinMon reporters actually research what they write about?
We’ll come back to it.

———-

Remember a few years ago, when the local dextrosphere got the vapors over Best Buy Corporation “profiling” customers That Best Buy would focus on customers with “money” and “the intention to buy”, as opposed to “bargain-hunters” who shopped only for “marked-down crap”, with an intention to “spend less time earning more money?”

The writer equated it with racial profiling – a nice, facile point that was, also, completely wrong.
Which brings us to Molly Priesmeyer, the Lindsay Lohan of the local Sorosphere. She’s on the story – a few years late:

Do blue hairs like Blu-Ray? Who cares? They’re cheap. Let’s focus on “Ray,” the bulls-eye Best Buy customer and “techno-tainment” enthusiast with a kid’s heart and wads of cash to spare. Niche marketing doesn’t get any uglier than the customer profiles created by the folks at hometown corporate behemoth Best Buy. And the good folks over at The Consumerist have a leaked internal PowerPoint presentation that renders every customer who walks into a Best Buy big-box shop an ambulatory stereotype.

Note to Lindsay Molly: if this is the first you’ve heard of this particular trend of marketing, it means you’ve never bought a used car.

Remember a few years ago when Best Buy’s lenses turned every customer into an angel or devil? Devils care about saving money—avoid those lame Beezlebubs. These new drooling drones, if they’re even worth an employee’s time, just need a good shaking (and some action movies) so that every last penny drops from their pockets.

Priesmeyer’s writing seems to be unable to proceed beyond facile stereotypes.  I mean, does what does she think every single sales-oriented business, or even salesman, does every time they look at a potential customer?

And, while we’re at it, does Ms. Priesmeyer have even a shred of evidence that there’s anything unethical or, dare we say, racist or sexist or anythingotherist about this?

(And – since a little bird once told us that Priesmeyer’s infamous hatchet job on the Center of the American Experiment dinner honoring Powerline was a result of Steve “Mister Furious” Perry telling her to take out all the “fair” stuff and be more anti-Republican and less objective, I have to ask:  is Priesmeyer that hard-up for a job?)
So why does the MNMon have people who know nothing about the law writing about law, and nothing about business writing about business?

Oh, yeah – people who know nothing about journalism…

I mean, Mol-Mol? Even Jeff Fecke has learned to get his basic facts straight.

I’m grabbing a sandwich and a mug of soup between meetings, and am just starting to look at some of the commentary on the Heller arguments.

And cross your fingers, but this could be good news:

In an argument that ran 23 minutes beyond the allotted time, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy emerged as a fervent defender of the right of domestic self-defense. At one key point, he suggested that the one Supreme Court precedent that at least hints that gun rights are tied to military not private needs — the 1939 decision in U.S. v. Miller — “may be deficient” in that respect. “Why does any of that have any real relevance to the situation that faces the homeowner today?” Kennedy asked rhetorically.

Anything that pounds a stake through the heart of Miller – one of the most deeply-flawed constitutional “precedents” of the past 100 years – so that I never have to listen to another spinny-eyed Clarence-Darrow-wannabee laboriously cite it as “the law of the land” will be a very good thing.

With Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and Justices Samuel A. Alito, Jr., and Antonin Scalia leaving little doubt that they favor an individual rights interpretation of the Amendment (and with Justice Clarence Thomas, though silent on Tuesday, having intimated earlier that he may well be sympathetic to that view), Kennedy’s inclinations might make him — once more — the holder of the deciding vote.

That’s the good part.

There’s also this bit:

There also remained a chance, it appeared, that Justice Stephen G. Breyer, one of the Court’s moderates, would be willing to support an individual right to have a gun — provided that a ruling left considerable room for government regulation of weapons, particularly in urban areas with high crime rates.

Which, of course, has worked so well.

This is, of course, the big reason conservatives need to turn out this fall.

If the Court were ultimately to rule that the Second Amendment’s promise of a “right to keep and bear arms” embraces a personal, individual right of self-defense at least in one’s home, it might also have to address what, if any, limits government might put on that right, and what constitutional standard to use in judging whether a particular law’s limitations would be valid. Thus, it was no surprise that many of the exchanges on Tuesday dwelled on both of those issues, with no sign of anything close to a consensus on the answers.

Stay tuned.

I didn’t get to hear Obama’s “I Am Not A Racist” speech, but Jay Reding did:

Rhetorically, this is brilliant stuff. But like everything else that Obama says, once one gets past the wonderful words, the message itself is largely meaningless. Sen. Obama admits that Rev. Wright is a racist with a deeply disturbing view of America. Yet he won’t back down from him (any more than he already has). On one hand, he thinks that this country needs to have a conversation about race—on the other, he is siding with people who preach a gospel of racial division.

Sen. Obama just can’t have it both ways.

It’s a given that the nation needs a “conversation about race”. Framing the conversation is the hard part.

Maybe we need a referee…

UPDATE: E-Mo at Hot Air:

It’s essentially a non-distancing distancing, akin to the non-apology apology. He excuses Wright’s anti-American rhetoric with a mixture of rationalizations. Wright gets a pass because he served in the military, because he grew up in another generation that apparently hated America, and because he does good work in other areas. Obama also makes the curious claim that rejecting Wright means rejecting the entire black community — something other black churches might see as rather presumptuous. Obama essentially argues that the same kind of anti-Americanism can be found in all black churches, and speaks at length about how the legacy of racism and Jim Crow makes this incendiary rhetoric ubiquitous.

Is that true? Hardly. Black ministers have flocked to the airwaves over the last few days to vehemently deny that kind of argument. However, Obama has little choice but to argue this, because he needs to cast his situation as having little choice in spiritual venues.

All generalizations are false, including this one – and Ed’s. Is it true that this racial rhetoric is common in Afro-American churches? No, but where it’s present, it is very prominent. There is (or has fairly recently been) at least one Baptist church in Saint Paul, and another in Minneapolis, that I’d cautiously classify as being in the same rhetorical category as Wright. If there were such an identifiable undercurrent of paranoid racism in a white denomination, they would be a (justifiable) uproar.

Now, the First Amendment defends their right to preach whatever they want, and I’ll defend that right (not “to the death” – Patton said my job is to make the other poor dumb SOB die for his country, and I’m cool with that) – but nothing about the First Amendment immunizes people from criticism.

Barack Obama’s association with his long-time minister and spiritual advisor, Jeremiah Wright, has dealt him the first genuine challenge of his heretofore substance-free campaign. How will Obama get away from his twenty-year association with a conspiracy theorist and racist?

Just like Ringo Starr got through lesser troubles; with a little help from his friends. In this case, friends in the Democrats’ bought-and-paid-for cottage industry in propaganda mills.

Like Steve Perry at the MNMon:

Like any spiritual adviser worth his or her keep, Jeremiah Wright Jr. has led Barack Obama to a place he did not want to go but needed to go

That’s right. It was Wright’s “leadership”! Wright and Obama intended for things to come to this pass!
Perry sniffs at Obama’s previous un-PC badthink on race:

Back in March 2007, Obama delivered a speech (full text) on the legacy of the civil rights movement in Selma, Alabama, in which he claimed that the efforts of the 1950s and ’60s “took us 90 percent of the way there. We still got that 10 percent in order to cross over to the other side.”

Really? 90 percent? Most of black America likely would not agree.

Don’t you just love it when upper-middle-class white boys put on their “Guilty White Liberal” badge and speak for Black America? What would Barack Obama know about it, anyway?

Thus Obama faces peril on both sides on both sides of the racial divide that white America by and large believes to be a thing of the past.

Actually, the answer is most likely somewhere well between that of the Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton poverty-pimp line, and the pollyannaish view that many in “White America” (as if there is such a thing) would like to take. Finding that answer would likely involve doing something that Perry and his lily-white, liberal-guilt-wracked little rag are ill-equipped to do; listen to actual black people that aren’t spoon-fed to him by those who stand to benefit from a few more generations of black misery – the ones that are pulling Perry’s strings.

Either way, the question deserves better attention than it gets from either side.

Americans who care about genuine civil liberties for Americans are watching the Supreme Court today for the Heller case arguments.

Clayton Cramer – one of the best Second Amendment bloggers out there – writes about the line of people waiting, sleeping outside the Supreme Court overnight in sleeping bags to try to get seats in the Court:

I only found one person in line willing to defend DC’s position–and she was a lawyer with Legal Community Against Violence who had written their brief. I had a heck of a time getting her to defend what the Second Amendment did protect. She agreed that it did protect some kind of an individual right–but exactly what, she wasn’t prepared to articulate. She seemed focused primarily on the idea that whatever it protected, the Fourteenth Amendment could not incorporate the Second Amendment against the states–and that DC was not part of the federal government, and therefore the Second Amendment didn’t restrict DC government–only the federal government.

I sense a monumental victory coming for us when their side can’t come up with an argument better than this.

Here’s hoping.

We won’t know until June, of course – which means three glorious months of parsing oral arguments on the web.

I can hardly wait.

That gives us a few months to try to teach Hugh Hewitt about the Amendment…

The great meme in the Minnesota media is that there’s a great, purple sea of people out there, just waiting for “moderate” politicians to tap their boundless energy.  (Of course, in the DFLMedia, Larry Pogemiller is a “moderate”, while Tim Pawlenty is a “conservative extremist”).
Over at True North, Andy Aplikowski shows us a poll that indicates real Minnesotans aren’t buying it:

There’s a new poll out showing that so far the tax and spend agenda of the DFL controlled Legislature is not going over too well with the public. You can view the poll results here.

In a month in which the Strib has been running active, conniving interference for the DFL and the RINOs who voted with them on the Transportation bill, to say nothing of beating the drums for the notion of trying to tax our way out of recession, this poll should be welcome news for conservatives:

58% disapproval for the Legislature

63% oppose the transit Tax bill

I love this next bit, and hope it haunts Lori Sturdevant’s nightmares:

50% Minnesotans won’t vote for someone who voted for the transit Tax increase

58% of Minnesotans support the common sense solution to solving the Budget Deficit with out raising taxes.

Doh! Ka-BLAMMO.

Andy notes:

This is not a sign of success for the DFL’s handling of the People’s business in the State Legislature. This is also a great sign of why liberal Republicans should not be treated with kid gloves. They are on the wrong side of the party line as well as that of public sentiment.

It might – might – be an early sign that conservative hopes of a backlash against the DFL’s arrogant money grab, and the DFLMedia’s active ass-kissing, will lead to a backlash this fall.

Eat your veggies and say your prayers, conservatives.

I mean, in this bit here?

Oddly, I think my stepson got quoted in exactly this same piece, ten years ago.

Kara McGuire at the Strib notes the Fed has released the dates that we’ll be getting our “economic stimulus checks”.

Bad policy? Maybe, but good news for early May, ifyacatchmydrift.

And now – the Jack Pine Community Center is calling it quits:

Twin Cities radicals and activists will lose one of their most beloved meeting grounds when the Jack Pine Community Center closes its doors this week. Citing a lack of “sufficient energy to make the Jack Pine financially feasible,” the group has decided against renewing the lease to its East Lake Street location.

Opened in April 2006, the Jack Pine sought to provide “a child-friendly and sober radical space” and resource center…The space also hosted organizing and networking events for individuals planning to protest at the upcoming Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

I figured it’d be something more like “their landlord evicted them for damaging the place”.  I’m actually almost gratified to see the owner blame “lack of activist energy”.

The last full day of operation for the Jack Pine will be Friday, March 21, with a closing party to be held on Saturday.

Count on a commemoration on the NARN this weekend.

The Minnesota Monitor – the local George Soros joint – continues its spiral from “amateur left-leaning news blog” down to “irredeemable propaganda mill”.

Last week, I busted Andy Birkey uncritically passing on talking points from Citizens for a Supine “Safer” Minnesota (not to mention Jim Backstrom’s out-and-out lies).

While neither Andy Birkey nor the MNMon have respnded to my methodical destruction of the article, they have added a new layer of critical excellence to the story.  

A bill to expand the self-defense definition that lets gun owners use deadly force failed a House committee vote yesterday. Rep. Tony “Stand Your Ground” Cornish, R-Good Thunder, says he still might try inserting the legislation as an amendment into another bill. Among other things, it would eliminate the requirement to retreat before firing on someone threatening.

As I noted in my earlier piece, there is no such requirement. Indeed, Minnesota law might be clearer if there were; what we have is a rather nebulous, open-to-interpretation requirement to make “reasonable” efforts to avoid using lethal force. Whether Dan Haugen’s lack of understanding is willful, or indeed irrelevant under the circumstances (if all you’re doing is passing on propaganda, really, a trained monkey can do the writing), their continued failure to understand the proposal they’re criticizing bespeaks a yawning credibilty gap.

But the job of the journalist (or “Citizen Journalist Fellow”) isn’t necessarily to know everything; it’s to explain things well – if necessary, by using “sources”, people whom the reader can reasonably expect to know something the journalist doesn’t.

And Dan Haugen does exactly that!

It could be worse. A lot worse. Last night the Colbert Report introduced us to a state senator from Tennessee who wants to legalize guns in bars.

Colbert.

Er…yeah. So – Fake news from a fake pundit, as a spinoff from a fake story using false statements from (mostly) phony authorities.

Now that’s meta!

Does Dan Haugen know that guns are “legal in bars” in Minnesota, already?  That if the bar isn’t posted for “no guns”, and the legal carry permit holder’s blood alcohol level is below .04 (the legal limit to carry a firearm – which is half of the limit for driving), it’s perfectly kosher?  (And that in four years there has been not one single problem with a legal permittee and his/her gun in a Minnesota bar?)

Has Dan Haugen , ace “Citizen Journalist”, done even that much research into this issue, or just gotten it all from the Colbert Report and Citizens for a Supine “Safer” Minnesota?

I’m guessing “b”.

DC Vs. Heller goes to court this week.

Despite mountains of scholarly research, enough books to fill a library shelf and decades of political battles about gun control, the Supreme Court will have an opportunity this week that is almost unique for a modern court when it examines whether the District’s handgun ban violates the Second Amendment.

The nine justices, none of whom has ever ruled directly on the amendment’s meaning, will consider a part of the Bill of Rights that has existed without a definitive interpretation for more than 200 years.

“This may be one of the only cases in our lifetime when the Supreme Court is going to be interpreting the meaning of an important provision of the Constitution unencumbered by precedent,” said Randy E. Barnett, a constitutional scholar at the Georgetown University Law Center. “And that’s why there’s so much discussion on the original meaning of the Second Amendment.”

Of course, the “collective right” case is completely intellectually bankrupt, and has been recognized as such even by Laurence Tribe, the dean of liberal con-law wonks. But it wouldn’t be the first time the SCOTUS entertained a bankrupt notion with complete credibility.

The outcome could roil the 2008 political campaigns, send a national message about what kinds of gun control are constitutional and finally settle the question of whether the 27-word amendment, with its odd structure and antiquated punctuation, provides an individual right to gun ownership or simply pertains to militia service.

If the right “of the people” to keep and bear arms is a collective right, then the First Amendment rights “of the people” to free assembly only refers to legislatures.

The stakes are obviously high for the District, which passed the nation’s strictest gun-control law in 1976, just after residents were granted the authority to govern themselves. It virtually bans the private possession of handguns, and requires that rifles and shotguns in the home be kept unloaded and disassembled or outfitted with a trigger lock.

The law’s challengers — security guard Dick Anthony Heller is the named party in the suit — say the measure has been an abysmal failure at cutting crime or stanching the city’s homicide rate, and a success only in depriving the law-abiding of a ready weapon for protection. The District contends that banning handguns is a logical decision in an urban setting, where more guns would result in more killings.

While the SCOTUS will make its ruling with no reference to actual criminological facts, ones’ lobotomy would have to be botched pretty badly to not notice that the only way “gun-free” DC could get “more kililngs” is if they required their criminals to use grenades and flamethrowers.

The city’s lawyers argue that the Second Amendment does not provide an individual right and that, even if it does, the amendment is not implicated by legislation that concerns only the District of Columbia.

One wonders, then, if the rights to speak, worship, assemble and publish are similarly free of Constitutional pollution?

[Libertarian lawyer Robert] Levy and lawyers Alan Gura and Clark Neily were able to persuade the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit last year to do what no other federal appeals court had ever done: strike down a local gun-control ordinance on Second Amendment grounds.The amendment says that “a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed,” and all but one of the circuits that had considered the issue previously had interpreted it as providing a gun-ownership right related only to military service.

But Senior Judge Laurence H. Silberman, a conservative icon, wrote for a 2 to 1 panel that the amendment provides an individual right just as other provisions of the Bill of Rights do. And because handguns fall under the definition of “arms,” he wrote, the District may not ban them.

The Supreme Court’s endorsement of an individual right would be a monumental change in federal jurisprudence, but perhaps not surprising. Even a small but growing group of liberal constitutional scholars — “against my political instincts,” in the words of Harvard law professor Laurence H. Tribe — have endorsed the individual-right view.

But even fundamental rights are subject to government restrictions, and whether the justices are ready to decide on the reasonableness of the District’s ban could be the crucial question of the case.

And that’s the crux of the matter; getting the official interpretation of the badly-written amendment officially recognized as an “individual right” will change the definition of “reasonable”; any law that prohibits “the people” from doing what the Amendment intended – protecting them from enemies criminal, trans-national and elected – is always reasonable if you start from the assumption that the individual’s right to defend himself and his community is granted by our creator, rather than official fiat.

(The standard-issue strawman you’ll see bandied about, by the left and even some conservatives who should know better, is “if you toss out the notion of reasonable restriction, then people will be able to buy machine guns”.  For starters – if you take a law-abiding person that’d never harm a fly but in legal self-defense, and put a machine gun (or howitzer, or flamethrower or grenade or nuclear weapon) in their hands, you’ll have a guy with a machine gun who wouldn’t harm a fly except in self-defense).

Unfortunately, support for this vacuous strawman came from a source I’d have hoped was unlikely:

The city received an unlikely lifeline from the Bush administration, which told the court that the amendment provides an individual right but that the appeals court erred in deciding that the District’s ban was automatically unconstitutional.

“If adopted by this court,” Solicitor General Paul D. Clement wrote in the government’s brief, “such an analysis could cast doubt on the constitutionality of existing federal legislation prohibiting the possession of certain firearms, including machineguns.”

And in a wonky, legal context, Clement was right. And my response is “so friggin’ what? If you have a law that infringes a constitutional liberty, you defer to the liberty first, and figure out the legal trimmings later – presuming there’s actual potential a real plague of law-abiding citizens owning machine guns, which are expensive to buy and feed; horses are probably cheaper.

(Although in the unlikely even the SCOTUS does blow things that far open, put me down for an HK21…)

Clement said that the District’s law may well be unconstitutional, but that the case should be returned to lower courts for “application of a proper standard of review” and to permit “Second Amendment doctrine to develop in an incremental and prudent fashion.”

Which, again, makes some wonkish, academic legal sense. But the state’s deprivation of the law-abiding citizen’s right to defend himself isn’t wonkish and academic; criminal scum roam DC freely, undeterred by academic canoodling or the citizenry.

Gun rights supporters were furious about the government’s position, and Vice President Cheney went so far as to join a friend-of-the-court brief that specifically rejects the administration’s view. Levy said returning the case to lower courts would be a “death knell,” and his team has urged the court to apply “strict scrutiny” to any government action that would restrict gun ownership.

Said Gura: “What we want to do is take prohibition off the table.”

Gura is, of course, correct.

The case is complicated by the District’s secondary argument that the Second Amendment is not implicated by legislation that applies only to the District of Columbia.

The challengers have received a broad array of political support, signs of the strength of the gun rights movement: More than 31 states and a majority of the House and Senate have signed friend-of-the-court briefs.

Including, it must be noted, Minnesota’s DFL attorney general Lori Swanson.  For now, anyway.

Among the presidential candidates, Republican Sen. John McCain signed on, while Democratic Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton did not.

Both of the Democrats, aware of the NRA’s power among America’s vast silent majority, will shy away from making any waves; they’ll likely model their approach after Bill Clinton’s; hide behind vagaries like “I support hunting!”, while slipping gun control into many tangentially-related issues.

The real takeaway, of course, is that the Second Amendment movement can not get complacent. We’ve won an amazing chain of victories in the past fifteen years, since the nadir of the “Assault Weapon” Ban and the ’94 “Crime” Bill. But even though the orcs are against the ropes, this ruling could make it possible for them to come out swinging again, should it go badly.

If the SCOTUS upholds Heller, or even sends it back to the federal courts on scrutiny grounds, what it means is that both sides of this debate will have to start doing what all of us Real Americans have had to do for the last forty years; take their case out in front of the people and try to convince legislatures, one legislator at a time, that their notion of good law passes constitutional muster.  Granted, we gun nuts are used to this; it’s the other side that relies on courts to do their legislating for them.

All you gun nuts out there have to stay involved – keep your NRA dues paid, get involved with GOCRA and CCRN-MN (the organizations that brought you Concealed Carry Reform in Minnesota, and have proved among the most successful grassroots political organizations in Minnesota in my adult lifetime), write and call your legislators, show up at committee hearings to show the Legislature that Real Americans have, do and will always outnumber the grabbers – and, above all, win over the skeptical one at a time.

Stay tuned to your regional Second Amendment bloggers for updates as Heller wends its way. Joel Rosenberg, Carnivore at TvM, and of course Clayton Cramer for all the news the media and the Sorosphere don’t want you to get.

UPDATE:  Pointed to the correct Clayton Cramer blog…

I’ve said it in the past; conservatives need to engage the world of art. Not as opponents, necessarily (although there is much to criticize in art – both in specific pieces of it, songs and paintings and plays and what-not, but the way art is practiced in our society, especially the big, grant-driven institutional “arts” organizations) and consumers, but as participants.

And I’ll stand by that.

That said, I believe a strike force from “Complete Rejection of Asinine Performance-art” (CRAP), with tear gas and attack dogs, would have been better and more appropriate in responding to this bit here.

“ooh, look – a cynical critique of the hustle and bustle of the hopeless bourgeois life. We, the artists, who exist an a more noble plane, will silently mock their exertions, then scamper, giggling, away, wrapped in our smug sense of superiority”.

OK, maybe this bit caught me in a bad mood. It happens.

Discuss amongst yourselves – the only ground rule is that nobody may use the term “Neo-Con” even once.

But don’t get me started on that vacuous publicity-monger Spencer Tunick. Definitely tear gas and dogs for him.

UPDATE:  You’re right.  I was wrong.  I wrote the above after a crappy day. 

Objection withdrawn. 

Except for the Spencer Tunick bit. 

Guns aren’t  the only issue on the conservative docket.  Far, far from it. 

And, truth be told, the rights of the law-abiding gun owner aren’t strictly a “conservative” issue, or at least a Republican Party issue, anyway.  The Minnesota Personal Protection Act would not have passed without support from a solid bloc of DFLers – almost entirely outstate (where, to be fair, the Second Amendment movement has the power to tilt races against the orcs). 

And for all his many, many, many faults, former Attorney General Mike Hatch at least seemed to do his best, in most cases I can recall, to do no harm to the law-abiding gun owner.

This bit here was the last thing I expected to read, though; Joel Rosenberg, like a lot of us, is looking and hoping for politicians from both the major parties with integrity on Second Amendment issues:

Hopes are too often dashed in the light of reality, but sometimes, sometimes . . .

Sometimes you get Lori Swanson as Attorney General.

I like that she’s got skeet shooting as a hobby, as I think it’s a cool hobby, and wish I had the time to take it up.  That’s cool, but it’s unimportant.

What’s important is that during her tenure she’s been protecting your rights, under the law, and is taking the silly Appeals court decision in the Edina church case to the Supreme Court.  She’s been a major force among the many state AGs who have signed on to the side of truth, justice, and the American way in the DC gun ban case.

All of this is true, and very much worth noting.  Having a “D” after one’s name doesn’t necessarily put someone on the bad side of this issue – outside the metro, at least.

Of course, I think Joel goes a bit far:

Me, I’m thinking that Governor Lori Swanson has kind of a nice ring to it.

Let’s not get carried away, here.  While the “D” doesn’t necessarily mean “lobotomized as re the Second Amendment”, it comes with some nasty baggage.

Still, let’s give credit where it’s due.

Thanks, AG Swanson. 

Brad Carlson spent a gorgeous Saturday afternoon wandering about where madness dwells – at “Youth Against War and Racism’s” “anti-war” rally in (where else) Uptown Minneapolis:

I took the liberty of mingling amongst the young skulls full of mush outside an Army recruiting station on the corner of Lyndale Avenue and Lake Street. The group who calls themselves Youth Against War and Racism (slogan: “We’ve never met a pierced orifice we didn’t like.”) gathered at High Noon to chant endless vapid slogans.

As such, I took the opportunity to record video footage.

He did!

Expect lots of these, as the local patchouli-and-outrage industry warms up for September and the RNC Convention in Saint Paul.

I imagine during the convention that the Army Recruiting Station at Lake and Lyndale will draw tens of thousands of protesters – mostly U of M insta-radicals who have no idea how to find Saint Paul.

Today on the Northern Alliance Radio Network:

• Volume I “The First Team” – Chad, John and Brian will do their thing from 11-1.
• Volume II “The Headliner” – Ed is back!  Let’s face it – no shortage of material this week.
• Volume III, “The Final Word” – King joins Michael from 3-5.

So tune in to all six hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of sanity. On the air at AM1280 in the Metro, or streaming at AM1280’s Website, or via podcast at Townhall.

Remember when candidate George Bush appeared at Bob Jones University – whose namesake has all sorts of wacky ideas about all sorts of PC subjects?

Or when John McCain appeared with Rev. Hagee, the anti-Catholic firebrand? 

A certain segment of America’s media and punditry jumped up and down like poo-flinging monkeys.  “Polarizing!”, they cried. 

So I wonder what they’ll say about this?:

Obama has written and spoken about being inspired by the preaching of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., and his calls to “spur social change.” The title of Obama’s second book, “The Audacity of Hope,” which essentially launched his presidential bid, was taken from a sermon by Wright.

Baptized in Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ, Obama has been an active member for two decades, regularly attending services with his family under Wright’s spiritual mentorship.

Some of Wright’s sermons, which often address themes of white supremacy and black repression, have come under scrutiny by those who interpret them as racially divisive. Such preaching, they believe, polarizes Americans rather than unites them.

“Wright’s preaching does promote a sort of racial exclusivity,” said Michael Cromartie, vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington.

“Statements that suggest you cannot truly understand God unless you are black or poor are exclusive.”

Remarks attributed to Wright that were posted on audio files on the Internet and cited in press accounts earlier this year may have prompted the criticism.

“Fact number one: We’ve got more black men in prison than there are in college.

“Fact number two: Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run.

“We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns and the training of professional killers. … We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God. … We conducted radiation experiments on our own people. … We care nothing about human life if the ends justify the means.

“And … And … And! God! Has got! To be sick! Of this s***!”

But here’s the big question:  does he hate gays?

UPDATE:  Well, Obama doesn’t, anyway.

Via Anti-Strib, I caught this:

Catch the party affiliation, there?

So who’s gonna tell Suzy Clueless?

The next installment in Hot Gear Friday was Sweden’s answer to the M1 Garand – the AG42, better known in the US as the Ljungman, after its designer.

And better known to me as “my first real rifle”.

Developed in 1942, during World War II, as the Swedes realized they were going to need something a little more modern than their early-century Mausers, the Ljungman was ahead of its time in many areas – for better or worse.

A fairly conventional design in many ways, with a 10-round box magazine (usually loaded with the same five-round Mauser-pattern stripper clips that the Swedish Mauser bolt-actions used), it had one feature well-known to any current American serviceman; its operating system used direct gas impingement.

Where a conventional gas system uses a piston in a tube next to the barrel (like the tube above the barrel in the infamous AK47), the Hakim’s gas tube directly vents back into a little cup-shaped gas-catcher on the front of the bolt carrier – much like the operating system on the American M16 rifle and M4 carbine. The blast of gas pushes the bolt carrier back, camming the bolt (a tipping bolt, similar to the FN49 or the FN-FAL, and very unlike the rotating-lock M16-pattern bolt) out of its locking recess to open the action. It’s simple and fairly rugged – provided you’re using decent ammo. With 6.5mm Swedish Mauser, that’s rarely a problem. But for the Ljungman’s most famous descendant, the “Hakim” (an Egyptian rifle in 7.92mm Mauser caliber, built with the same machinery the Swedes used for the Ljungman, which Sweden sold to Egypt in the late forties), it’s been rather a different story; the widely-varying quality of 7.92 ammo can yield weak rounds that won’t cycle the action, or – worse – extra-powerful ammo that’ll push the bolt carrier back so violently that the extractor will rip the rim right off the round, causing a nasty jam that usually takes a cleaning rod and a lot of swearing to clear.

But in 6.5mm Mauser – a ballistically-sweet if fairly small round – the Ljungman was a joy to fire; fairly reliable, bone simple to maintain (for me; given the problems the M16’s similar system has had, I have no idea how it’d have fared tramping through some north-Swedish bog), and a joy to shoot.