Did They Take Custody Of The Car, Too?

According to the Times (the real one–not that pretense of a newspaper in New York), the Cyclops (aka Mullah Omar) has been captured, but the US forces will not confirm it. Perhaps we’ll know more in the morning.

According to this report we have some data that strongly indicates that our memory capacity is indeed finite in a practical sense (i.e., we have to delete old memories to make room for new ones.

Interesting.

A useful discussion over at Instapundit (not to imply that Professor Reynolds is in the habit of discussing unuseful stuff) about gun registration and whether Ashcroft is following the law and the Constitution in not going through gun purchase lists looking for terrorists. In a previous post, Glenn mentioned that some of his pro-gun friends consider him “wet” because he believes gun registration to be Constitutional (though under the federal statutes he cites and quotes here, not legal).

This is an issue that continually rankles me (not gun registration, but the inability to distinguish between good ideas, and Constitutional ideas). Almost always, when discussing court decisions, each debater uses, as a center of gravity of the discussion, not what is legal or Constitutional, but what they want the outcome to be. I suspect that this is simply another symptom of the abysmal state of our educational system. Roe v Wade is a classical example of this. Supporters of the decision support it not because there’s a clear basis in the Constitution for it (even Ruth Bader Ginsburg is skeptical on that score), but because they want abortion to be universally legal, and the Constitution be damned. I oppose the decision not because I want abortions made illegal (though I do in fact believe that it should be left up to the states), but because I consider it an abortion of a decision, and one that sets an ugly penumbra of an emanation of a precedent.

I think that gun registration is a very, very bad idea, for reasons that have been discussed in length at many times in many places, but I agree with Glenn–it isn’t per se unconstitutional. It’s unfortunate that we can’t somehow segregate these two discussions from each other, because when they get entangled, as they inevitably do, it makes the issues that much harder to resolve.

A useful discussion over at Instapundit (not to imply that Professor Reynolds is in the habit of discussing unuseful stuff) about gun registration and whether Ashcroft is following the law and the Constitution in not going through gun purchase lists looking for terrorists. In a previous post, Glenn mentioned that some of his pro-gun friends consider him “wet” because he believes gun registration to be Constitutional (though under the federal statutes he cites and quotes here, not legal).

This is an issue that continually rankles me (not gun registration, but the inability to distinguish between good ideas, and Constitutional ideas). Almost always, when discussing court decisions, each debater uses, as a center of gravity of the discussion, not what is legal or Constitutional, but what they want the outcome to be. I suspect that this is simply another symptom of the abysmal state of our educational system. Roe v Wade is a classical example of this. Supporters of the decision support it not because there’s a clear basis in the Constitution for it (even Ruth Bader Ginsburg is skeptical on that score), but because they want abortion to be universally legal, and the Constitution be damned. I oppose the decision not because I want abortions made illegal (though I do in fact believe that it should be left up to the states), but because I consider it an abortion of a decision, and one that sets an ugly penumbra of an emanation of a precedent.

I think that gun registration is a very, very bad idea, for reasons that have been discussed in length at many times in many places, but I agree with Glenn–it isn’t per se unconstitutional. It’s unfortunate that we can’t somehow segregate these two discussions from each other, because when they get entangled, as they inevitably do, it makes the issues that much harder to resolve.

A useful discussion over at Instapundit (not to imply that Professor Reynolds is in the habit of discussing unuseful stuff) about gun registration and whether Ashcroft is following the law and the Constitution in not going through gun purchase lists looking for terrorists. In a previous post, Glenn mentioned that some of his pro-gun friends consider him “wet” because he believes gun registration to be Constitutional (though under the federal statutes he cites and quotes here, not legal).

This is an issue that continually rankles me (not gun registration, but the inability to distinguish between good ideas, and Constitutional ideas). Almost always, when discussing court decisions, each debater uses, as a center of gravity of the discussion, not what is legal or Constitutional, but what they want the outcome to be. I suspect that this is simply another symptom of the abysmal state of our educational system. Roe v Wade is a classical example of this. Supporters of the decision support it not because there’s a clear basis in the Constitution for it (even Ruth Bader Ginsburg is skeptical on that score), but because they want abortion to be universally legal, and the Constitution be damned. I oppose the decision not because I want abortions made illegal (though I do in fact believe that it should be left up to the states), but because I consider it an abortion of a decision, and one that sets an ugly penumbra of an emanation of a precedent.

I think that gun registration is a very, very bad idea, for reasons that have been discussed in length at many times in many places, but I agree with Glenn–it isn’t per se unconstitutional. It’s unfortunate that we can’t somehow segregate these two discussions from each other, because when they get entangled, as they inevitably do, it makes the issues that much harder to resolve.

Reader Charlie Banks weighs in on the Twelve Days Accounting Controversy via email:

Tricky conundrum regarding Lords a-Leaping, although I have a possible solution: such displays could easily pass as performance art. Of course, since there’s a Christmas theme the ACLU would have issues with government funding for such displays, so one might simply define the Twelve Lords cost as the average price of one ticket for a privately-sponsored performance art display. Or perhaps two tickets, if this unnamed “true love” loves the receiver as truly as he/she claims…

Well, it didn’t say they were explicitly Chistmas-oriented leaps (just what would those look like, he wondered inanely?)–they may be just garden variety. Surely even the ACLU can’t complain about giving tickets to a performance as a Christmas present?

A few more questions regarding other services: are the maids/drummers/pipers/etc. working at minimum wage, or are they backed by the farm worker/musician/etc. unions? And what of the ladies dancing…exactly what kind of dancing are we talking about here? Nine ladies tap dancing may not cost the same as, say, nine ladies lap dancing.

Lap dancing. Hmmmmm…now that’s what I would call true love, though (appropriately) not the kind of which Dr. Laura would approve…

It’s going to be slow posting today, and probably for the next week and a half–I’m suffering with a dial-up connection, and it’s my only phone line. I may take the time to do some longer, more thoughtful pieces.

According to Opinion Journal in reference to Administration civil liberties proposals:

Newspapers and TV networks pretended there was great “bipartisan” angst about all this, especially military tribunals, though the only conservative critics were libertarians they usually ignore.

I suspect that Bob “Drug War” Barr would be shocked to be described as a libertarian…

Just to show how mercurial the weather is down here, note that the storm is over, the sun is shining, and the wind has died back down to a balmy trade breeze.

All week, I’ve been wondering whether December 7th would be overshadowed, or enhanced by the events of three months ago. I seem to have an answer–commemorations of the sixtieth anniversary are now being performed in the context of this more recent atrocity. Fox and Friends (which I don’t normally hear because they’re on too early in the morning for me on the left coast) are discussing it now, and there’s apparently going to be an extensive special about it on Fox this weekend using old Movietone clips. They’re talking about the parallels between Pearl Harbor and WTC, particularly the breakdown in intelligence, and misperceptions of the enemy, that allowed both to happen. Did we get enough of a wakeup call to fix the problem this time?

As a reporter would say, only time will tell…