HELLER VS D.C.

This is a news article with added commentary by my friend Mike Kemp. It just goes to show that we can't take our eyes off this Bush bunch for a second. They are ruthless.

Michael
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> Gun Battle at the White House?
>
> By Robert D. NovakThursday, March 13, 2008; Page A17
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>
>
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> In preparation for oral arguments Tuesday on the extent of gun rights
> guaranteed by the Second Amendment, the U.S. Supreme Court has before it a
> brief signed by Vice President Cheney opposing the Bush administration's
> stance. Even more remarkably, Cheney is faithfully reflecting the views of
> President Bush.

Utter crap. 'We really believe in the right of the people to keep and
bear arms (though it is abundantly clear that they don't believe in
ANY other 'right' supposedly possessed by the people) but it's those
meanies at the Court who are going to screw things up. And we have to
obey the court, don't we?' Rule of law and all....'

> The government position filed with the Supreme Court by U.S. Solicitor
> General Paul Clement stunned gun advocates by opposing the breadth of an
> appellate court's affirmation of individual ownership rights. The Justice
> Department, not the vice president, is out of order. But if Bush agrees with
> Cheney, why did the president not simply order Clement to revise his brief?
> The answers: disorganization and weakness in the eighth year of his
> presidency.

utter crap. I repeat-- this administration, and all others of all
stripes, as has been clearly demonstrated, do NOT believe in ANY
'rights'. This is nothing but an attempt to shore up the base of the
Reprobates, and perhaps play damage control before the fact of a
decision which supports the status quo ante.

> Consequently, a Republican administration finds itself aligned against the
> most popular tenet of social conservatism: gun rights, which enjoy much
> wider agreement than do opposition to abortion or gay marriage. Promises in
> two presidential campaigns are being abandoned, and Bush finds himself to
> the left of even Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama.
>
> The 1976 D.C. statute prohibiting ownership of all functional firearms was
> called unconstitutional a year ago in an opinion by Senior Judge Laurence
> Silberman, a conservative who has served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for
> the D.C. Circuit for 22 years. It was assumed that Bush would fight Mayor
> Adrian Fenty's appeal.

And have it suddenly realized that ALL their little house of cards was
coming tumbling and fluttering down? That the 34 'Machine Gun Act',
the 68 Gun Control Act, all the carry laws, permits, ALL of it was
suddenly moot? I've commented and commented and commented on this
before. We have a right, inalienable, or we do not. Their effort is to
weasel word a 'decision' that leaves everything status quo ante. No
right, just privilege, to be determined by the whims of our masters.

> The president and his senior staff were stunned to learn, on the day it was
> issued, that Clement's petition called on the high court to return the case
> to the appeals court. The solicitor general argued that Silberman's opinion
> supporting individual gun rights was so broad that it would endanger federal
> gun control laws such as the bar on owning machine guns. The president could
> have ordered a revised brief by Clement.
>
> But facing congressional Democratic pressure to keep his hands off the
> Justice Department, Bush did not act.
Utter crap.
> Cheney did join 55 senators and 250 House members in signing a brief
> supporting the Silberman ruling. Although this unprecedented vice
> presidential intervention was widely interpreted as a dramatic breakaway
> from the White House, longtime associates could not believe that Cheney
> would defy the president. In fact, he did not. Bush approved what Cheney did
> in his constitutional role as president of the Senate.

I would be interested in seeing how much money was spent on what high
powered lawyers to draft the 'gun control' part, the Clement part, vs
how much was spent to draft the senatorial/house brief. I bet the
senatorial/house one is just an emotional 'feel good' brief, the pro
gun control, pro regulation side is probably tightly reasoned on
'current Supreme Court thought'.

> That has not lessened puzzlement over Clement, a 41-year-old conservative
> Washington lawyer who clerked for Silberman and later for Supreme Court
> Justice Antonin Scalia. Clement has tried to explain his course to the White
> House by claiming that he feared Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Supreme
> Court's current swing vote, would join a liberal majority on gun rights if
> forced to rule on Silberman's opinion.

I thought the left was big on 'rights'. Even Lawrence Tribe of
Harvard, big 'liberal thinker', agrees with 'individual right to keep
and bear arms'.

> The more plausible explanation for Clement's stance is that he could not
> resist opposition to individual gun rights by career lawyers in the Justice
> Department's Criminal Division (who clashed with the Office of Legal Counsel
> in a heated internal struggle). Newly installed Attorney General Michael
> Mukasey, a neophyte at Justice, was unaware of the conflict and learned
> about Clement's position only after it had been locked in.

'Locked in' my ass. If _I'M_ running things, NOTHING I'm directly
opposed to leaves the office in an 'official' document. NOTHING.

> A majority of both houses in the Democratic-controlled Congress are on
> record as being against the District's gun prohibition. So are 31 states,
> with only five (New York, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey and Hawaii) in
> support. Sen. Barack Obama has weighed in against the D.C. law, asserting
> that the Constitution confers an individual right to bear arms -- not just
> collective authority to form militias.

'Confers?' Kiss my rebel ass. 'Militia'? The armed body of the
people.... if the individuals can't be armed, there can BE no militia.

> This popular support for gun rights is not reflected by an advantage in the
> oral arguments to take place Tuesday. Former solicitor general Walter
> Dellinger, an old hand at arguing before the Supreme Court, will make the
> case for the gun prohibition. Opposing counsel Alan Gura, making his first
> appearance before the high court, does not have the confidence of
> gun-ownership advocates (who tried to replace him with former solicitor
> general Ted Olson).

Oh, Mr. Neocon Supporter, Olson.

> The cause needs help from Clement during his 15-minute oral argument, but it
> won't get it if he reiterates his written brief. The word was passed in
> government circles this week that Clement would amend his position when he
> actually faces the justices -- which would be an odd ending to bizarre
> behavior by the Justice Department.

That is an understatement. 'Never mind what I wrote, your honor. I
changed my mind.'

And one more thing to consider-- if we have a 'right', then all the
prosecutions, all the seizures, all the fines, all the imprisonments
have been utterly lawless and unconstitutional and thus the
reparations will be monumental. All have been 'color of law'
prosecutions. That alone guarantees that no 'good decision' is going
to be reached.

Mike Kemp