beinning to sound like some dementia's creeping in -- losing impulse control, just blurting out stupid shit directly reflecting what he really 'thinks', stuff that he used to have the (minimal) sense to disguise/cloak in some level of dressed-up, defensively abstract rhetoric -- he's (further) devolving into just another out-and-out muttering old crank -- some lucky street corner awaits
"Obviously the [Second] Amendment does not apply to arms that cannot be hand-carried — it’s to keep and “bear,” so it doesn’t apply to cannons — but I suppose there are hand-held rocket launchers that can bring down airplanes. That will have to be decided."
I will be the last person to insist that any American citizen of any stripe - fundamentalist, evangelical, Buddhist, Baptist, capitalist, anarchist, atheist, supremacist, survivalist, or just barking mad - should be denied the right to carry unnecessarily dangerous, technologically advanced, military-style assault weapons. "Carry," as in "bear." As long as you can carry it, you can bear an arm. It's your right, as Justice Scalia said. (He also said that if Americans cannot be mandated to buy brocolli .. http://bigthink.com/praxis/supreme-irony-justice-scalia-on-broccoli-masturbation-and-the-constitution .., they can't be mandated to buy insurance. Which clearly shows, I think, the breadth and scope of his legal mind.)
"Guy with the brocolli? Shit, I lost 'im."
Unlike my neighbor Zeno and the lion's share of my fellow citizens, I am not an amateur Constitutional scholar. I have no opinion on the question whether this right is contingent on the larger social institution of maintaining a "well regulated militia," or whether it is a right simpliciter, given without prior condition by a benign and trusting God to all his (American-only) children without regard to creed, intellectual and moral competence, mental soundness, medical and criminal background, list of current medications, knowledge of the general workings of a gun, or training in the use thereof. All you have to do, in short, is be able to pick it up.
"I got a herd here - how many pounds do you want?"
Right thinking Americans will anticipate a liberal outcry at Justice Scalia's interview ..
.. with Chris Wallace earlier today. The problem is not, as usual, all that serious. I know this because any internet search of "grenade launcher" turns up a host of virtual warfare wikis in which virtual grenade launchers destroy only virtual landscapes, virtual rooms in virtual buildings in virtual cities. Virtual grenade launchers do not kill virtual people. Virtual people do. And video games, as our liberal friends already know, are protected free speech. .. http://www.webpronews.com/jon-stewart-supreme-court-violent-video-game-ruling-2011-07
Virtual room destroyed by virtual grenade launcher
So I guess, as I said earlier, just being able to pick the thing up is the same as "carrying" it? I mean, say you picked it up but then it was too heavy to walk with it. You picked it up but you couldn't take a step, like a Russian weightlifter who forgot to take his steroids. Would that be carrying it? Or just "picking it up?" And are they the same?
Forgot his steroids
Here lies a slippery slope, Antonin my boy. Could I wheel a 50-gallon drum of fertilizer bomb into my anger management class on a furniture dolly and be said to legally bear arms? I guess we'll have to wait for the Supreme Court to rule on that.
Michael Tomasky, writing in the Daily Beast .. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/06/21/michael-tomasky-on-america-s-robed-radicals-on-the-supreme-court.html .., had the last word on Antonin Scalia: "In the 1960s, Nino Scalia would’ve ended up teaching at Notre Dame law school (where he belonged) — a crackpot speaker on a marginal rubber-chicken circuit that mainstream America could have blissfully ignored, instead of sitting on the highest court in the land imposing his 16th-century will on the rest of us."
Ordinarily, U.S. Supreme Court justices avoid television interviews, leaving the cameras for politicians. Justice Antonin Scalia apparently prefers a higher-profile approach.
The two covered a fair amount of ground, including Scalia's argument that there's "no way" the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate should be regarded "as a tax." (Those who can afford coverage but refuse to buy it pay a tax penalty on their tax returns.) They also touched on gun control, and Scalia's belief that firearms protected under the Second Amendment must be "hand-carried." He added, in reference to the law, "It's to keep and bear, so it doesn't apply to cannons."
What about "handheld rocket launchers that can bring down airplanes"? Scalia said it's unclear whether that's protected, and "it will have to be decided." I'll look forward to it.
But of particular interest to me was Scalia's opposition to privacy rights. Unprompted, the justice noted his opposition to reproductive rights, and it led to this exchange:
WALLACE: What about the right to privacy that the court found in known 1965?
SCALIA: There is no right to privacy. No generalized right to privacy.
WALLACE: Well, in the Griswold case, the court said there was.
SCALIA: Indeed it did, and that was -- that was wrong.
In case anyone needs a refresher on Griswold, the Supreme Court, in a 7-to-2 ruling in 1965, struck down a Connecticut law that restricted married couples' access to birth control. The court majority, in a landmark ruling, said such statutes are impermissible -- they violate Americans' right to privacy.
Yesterday's exchange didn't break new ground, but it was a noteworthy reminder that far-right jurists on the high court still have a problem with Griswold, even a half-century later.
For Scalia, if a state wants to restrict married couples' access to contraception, there are no rights afforded by the Constitution that say otherwise. "There is," he said, "no right to privacy."
It's a fanciful dream, but I'd love for this to be an issue in the 2012 presidential race.
Jenni: "I've never felt this way before but it's a scary time to be a woman. Mitt Romney is so out of touch."
Voiceover: "Mitt Romney opposes requiring coverage for contraception. And Romney supports overturning Roe versus Wade. Romney backed a bill that outlaws all abortion even in cases of rape and incest."
Jenni: "There's so much we need to do. We need to attack our problems not a woman's choice."
House GOP continue fight against health care for women
The Rachel Maddow Show July 31, 2012
Rachel Maddow talks with Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., about the Republicans’ attempts to yet again block women from accessing expanded reproductive health care.
GOP launches 'fight-to-death rebellion' against birth control
The Rachel Maddow Show August 1, 2012
On Wednesday, Rep. Mike Kelly’s compared women receiving expanded heath care coverage, which includes a mandate that requires insurance plans to cover birth control options, to the attacks of Pearl Harbor and the September 11, 2001 attacks. Has the GOP gone overboard on women’s health issues? MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow discusses.
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