A lot of idiots claim that the NRA wants everyone to be armed. They’ve never advocated that, as far as I know, but there is a case to be made for it.
[Update a while later]
It’s not new, but Glenn Reynolds co-wrote a paper on this a while ago.
Category Archives: Law
The Vegas Massacre
Yes, based at least on initial reports, it does appear to be very, very strange.
[Update later afternoon]
The Vegas shooting and the attack of the carrion crows.
Every.Single.Time.
[Tuesday-morning update]
Mass shootings are a bad way to understand gun violence.
And Nick Gillespie says that this is the time to defend the Second Amendment and less-strict gun control. Because gun control is not, and has never been, the solution.
I have a crazy idea that if you’re going to propose a policy or law in response to a tragic event, you should have to explain how it would have actually prevented that event. Everything this guy did and used was already illegal, as far as I can tell.
The Blockchain Economy
A useful primer on the cryptoeconomy, which will have tax collecters and regulators quaking in their jackboots.
The Left
…is sitting on the biggest crime ever committed by a sitting president.
As many have pointed out, this is the Democrats’ Watergate, where the president actually committed the crimes of surveillance and siccing the IRS on his political enemies (unlike Nixon, who simply attempted to). Beyond that, one of the reasons why Lynch refused to let Clinton be prosecuted is that it would have almost certainly implicated Obama as well.
[Late-morning update]
Unmasking, yet another abuse of power. It may not have been illegal per se, but it was certainly that.
That Tennessee Church Shooting
I was wondering if anyone had been carrying. Apparently not: “The usher ran and got his gun and held the gunman at gunpoint.”
If he hadn’t had to go get it, it could have ended sooner.
Maxine Waters
Impeachment is whatever Congress says it is.
Well, pretty much, yeah. This isn’t right, though:
“Bill Clinton got impeached because he lied,” Waters declared. “Here you have a president who I can tell you and guarantee you is in collusion with the Russians, to undermine our democracy. Here you have a president who has obstructed justice, and here you have a president that lies every day.”
…Unless Trump can be accused of “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors,” he cannot be impeached.
While Waters claimed Clinton was impeached for “lying,” he was actually impeached for perjury — lying under oath.
Actually, he was impeached for multiple counts of obstruction of justice, including not just perjury, but suborning perjury from others via bribes and physical threats to a woman’s family, for the purpose of preventing someone he’d sexually harassed from getting a fair trial.
The Lying Obama Administration
Yes, it looks like they did spy on Trump, just like they did with Sheryl Atkisson.
[Update a few minutes later]
What we still don’t know about the Obama administration’s unmasking. I think it’s unlikely that it will turn out to be innocuous. I agree with Rush Limbaugh that this (combined with the IRS abuse) is much worse than Watergate.
[Update a few more minutes later]
Samantha Power sought to unmask Americans on an almost-daily basis. And hey, remember when Clapper (you know, the guy who lied about spying on other Americans) categorically denied wiretapping the Trump campaign?
[Update a couple minutes later]
Congress needs to learn more about how the FBI interfered with the 2016 campaign. This, not what the Russians did, is the real scandal.
[Saturday-morning update]
This is Obama’s Watergate, in which he (so far) got away with what Nixon could only dream of doing.
And the FBI is still stonewalling:
I can’t imagine why Speaker Ryan wouldn’t want to get to the bottom of the apparent misuse of the FBI by Barack Obama and his corrupt Department of Justice. But this is what I really don’t understand: the FBI is part of DOJ, which is run–in theory, at least–by the Attorney General. Why doesn’t Attorney General Jeff Sessions simply order the FBI to comply with the House Intelligence Committee’s subpoena, promptly?
If we had real journalists, instead of Democrat operatives with bylines in the WH press corps, they’d be asking Sarah Huckabee Sanders that question every day.
Freedom Of Expression
Mr. Phillips, 61, grew emotional as he talked about the case.
“I have no problem serving anybody — gay, straight, Muslim, Hindu,” he said. “Everybody that comes in my door is welcome here, and any of the products I normally sell I’m glad to sell to anybody.”
But a custom-made wedding cake is another matter, he said.
“Because of my faith, I believe the Bible teaches clearly that it’s a man and a woman,” he said. Making a cake to celebrate something different, he said, “causes me to use the talents that I have to create an artistic expression that violates that faith.”
Mr. Mullins and Mr. Craig, speaking in the kitchen in their Denver home, rejected the distinctions Mr. Phillips drew.
“Our story is about us being turned away and discriminated against by a public business,” said Mr. Mullins, 33, an office manager, poet, musician and photographer.
Who would want to have a wedding cake provided under legal duress? It’s totalitarian.
The “Dreamers”
Roger Simon says they shoud stay, but never vote.
I had a slightly different take on it several years ago. The vote should be a privilege to be earned, not automatically granted.
Whistleblower Or Wrongdoer?
Jonathan Turley: The White House is right about Comey’s potential criminality.
Whatever respect I’d ever harbored for Comey has evaporated over the past year and a half.