Recently in Law Category

I learned this morning that the Spanish unemployment rate is 24%. So why are going down the path of European economic policies, Mr. President?

Dick Lugar. I used to like him a lot. Several decades ago. He really cut me to the marrow, though, when the National Reciprocity for Concealed Carry Weapons nearly passed. He was one of the few Republican, if not the only one, who voted against it. This bill would have granted a person the right and privilege of being treated with respect when it came to his being able to have a sidearm concealed on his person--as long as he had a valid license to do so from his home state.

There were a few problems with it, but they were minimal in my opinion. One was Vermont didn't require a permit at all to do so for non-felons.

Acting on orders from Chuck Schumer--Doesn't she know she represents NH, not NY?--Jeanne Shaheen also voted against H.R. 822, which I hope comes back to bite her on the arse. It lost by two votes in the U.S. Senate.

But with Lugar's loss to a real conservative, it seems as though we're one step closer to the Second Amendment being treated like a marriage license or a driver's license.

A co-worker sent this to me. It has to be one of the more interesting attempts (and a successful one) for beating a traffic ticket. This is something right out of the old TV show Numbers.

I can attest to the fact that math can help you beat a ticket.

On one occasion in the distant past I received a speeding ticket in the town of Braintree, Massachusetts. The police officer who cited me said I was doing 65mph in a 40mph zone. There was only one problem: the car I was driving at the time would have had to been able to accelerate from 0 to 65 mph in under 4 seconds. (I had just pulled out of a side street and onto the road in question a couple of hundred of feet from the officer's cruiser. But since I was driving a 1979 Dodge Omni with a 1.7 liter 4-banger, that feat of acceleration was impossible.

As the officer was writing up the ticket I noticed his radar was still on and more than once in a 1 minute period registered speeds well in excess of 40mph along the road in question. I found that interesting considering there was not one single vehicle on the road when the radar displayed the speeds. Looking closer at where the officer was set up I realized what was happening.

After getting permission to leave my vehicle for a moment, I pulled out my ever present 100' tape measure and started taking some measurements, specifically the distance of his cruiser from the side of the road (he'd flagged me down), the distance from the side of the building he'd used to shield his presence from cars coming down the road, and the distance of that building from the elevated highway behind and to one side of where he'd parked his cruiser. I also asked the officer for the make, model, and serial number of the radar system he was using to measure speeds. (Fortunately he didn't seem to mind. I guess he thought I was just wasting my time.)

To make an already long story short, I decided to fight the ticket.

The day of my court appearance arrived and I showed up with my ammunition: two poster boards- one with a diagram of the 'scene of the crime', showing the distances of all of the pertinent objects including the side street I'd pulled out of, the location of the cruiser, the building he'd been next to, and the distance to the highway; and the other with the same diagrams now overlaid with lines of sight and some equations. I also had a copy of the data sheet for the radar unit the officer used, some other literature from the manufacturer, and a textbook, in this case Skolnick's Radar Systems Handbook.

When my case was called, I made my presentation to the judge after the prosecuting officer made his case. After explaining my diagrams, the measurements I made, and asking the police officer if he thought the diagram was reasonably accurate (he admitted it was), I brought out the second poster board with the second set of diagrams and equations and showed how the officer's radar wasn't measuring speeds along the road I'd been traveling, but the highway behind him. The diagram showed the width of the beam emitted by the radar, how more than half of the radar energy was being reflected back to the elevated highway, and that the speeds the officer was measuring was that of the traffic on the highway.

At this point the judge asked me my profession.

"I'm a radar systems technician for [Really Big Defense Contractor]."

I was found not guilty.

The police now have been granted SCOTUS imprimatur for conducting strip searches on anyone arrested, including the most minor of misdemeanors.

The four liberal justices opposed this. As a libertarian conservative, I consider the libs to be correct on this. With the explosion of laws, many of us wittingly violate a felony or two a day. Even three, says Harvey Silvergate.

There is this thing called the Fourth Amendment to the Bill of Rights that's increasingly being trashed in our ruinous WOT. And stop and frisks certainly should be deemed un-Constitutional when there's no probable cause to do it, other than a cop's vague suspicions.

HT: Radley Balko's "All Your Cavities Belong to Us"

Today was the first day of arguments about the constitutionality of Obamacare in front of the Supreme Court. The entire thing comes down to whether the federal government has the power to force its citizens to purchase goods and services against their will. It is the individual mandate within Obamacare that is attempting to do just that. The government contends that both the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause within the constitution give it just that power. Opponents claim they do not.

The best hope that we have is that the Court decides the individual mandate is unconstitutional. If it does not it opens the door to even more federal abuses as the government will be forcing its citizens to engage in commerce or actions the populace does not wish to do.

Should the Court decide in the federal government's favor I expect there to be immediate calls for a constitutional convention to address this issue as many of the states will see even more if their sovereign powers being usurped by an even more overreaching and uncaring socialist government. Or, worst case, some states will see their very existence as separate sovereign entities threatened and will secede from the Union, perhaps forming their own nation. I expect a lot of states in the so-called "flyover country" would be the first to threaten such action. I would like to think that my own home state of New Hampshire would do likewise, being the Live Free or Die state.

Once again it seems Texas is leading the way.

The Texas legislature passed a "loser pays" bill that, if signed by Governor Rick Perry, will change the nature of lawsuits within the Lone Star State. (Yes, I know I'm a few days behind the news on this one, but I've been busy, OK?)

Essentially, if you bring a lawsuit in Texas and the jury finds against you, you pay the other side's costs (and attorney's fees I assume). If you bring a law suit and win, the defense pays your costs. The goal is to end frivolous lawsuits, and encourage more people to settle short of trial. Both are excellent goals IMO.

Many may argue that this kind of tort reform will do nothing but hurt the little guy. But far too often the little guy gets screwed even if he wins because it is his lawyer who will reap a large payoff. (Many tort lawyers take on clients on a contingency basis, meaning they get a percentage of any money the court awards the complainant, usually a large percentage.)

While "Loser Pays" will likely reduce the number of frivolous lawsuits, it will also see the "shotgun" approach to lawsuits disappear as well. A shotgun suit lists everyone even remotely connected to the case as a respondent based on the idea that some will settle out of court rather spend the money to defend themselves even though they have no real liability. An example: A consumer is injured by a defective product made by the ABC Company. The injured party sues ABC Company and anyone even remotely having anything to do with ABC Company, including XYZ Freight Trucking Inc. All XYZ did was haul ABC Company's product from a warehouse to a number of retail establishments. XYZ didn't design the product. XYZ didn't make the product. XYZ neither sold or marketed the product. All they did was what they were contracted to do - pick up boxes of the product at a warehouse and deliver it to stores someplace else. Yet somehow the complainant's lawyer figures they have as much culpability as ABC Company, so names them as a co-respondent in the injury suit.

As ludicrous as that scenario sounds, it has actually happened and a trucking company was found to be liable for some of the damages even though all they were hired to do was deliver the goods. They had no way of knowing those goods would hurt anyone, nor should they have had to know. But with Loser Pays, such shotgun approaches will be too risky because even if the complainant wins against one respondent, they could lose against the others and have to pay their legal fees, possibly wiping out any awards made by the court.

That works for me.

In a post by Matt Patterson, he tries to make the case for jobs that have been lost during this deep recession never returning. While it may be true that some types jobs may be gone forever, it is not inevitable that the total number of jobs will decline from here on out. Through the process of "creative destruction", one kind of job was replaced by a different one. But as Patterson writes, at least one economist thinks this pattern will no longer be true.

In his penetrating new book The Great Stagnation, economist Tyler Cowen warns that this may have been a temporary and anomalous phenomenon. Cowen calls the period from roughly the early 19th to the mid-20th centuries the era of "low hanging fruit." According to Cowen, technological advances in this period were relatively easy to produce and exploit, resulting in a staggering explosion of living standards.

But by around 1970, most of this low hanging fruit had been plucked and growth rates began to slow. Indeed, growth rates are "lower today than before 1973, no matter what exact numbers you settle on for the absolute living standard." Cowen sees this fact directly tied to the innovation plateau that was reached around the same time: "The United States produced more patents in 1966 (54,600) than in 1993 (53,200)," he notes. "Meaningful innovation has become harder, and so we must spend more money to accomplish real innovations, which means a lower and declining rate of return on technology."

--snip--

This digital depressant trickles all the way down to old fashioned companies. McDonald's recently announced it will do away with cashiers in many of its European restaurants, replacing them with touch-screen ordering systems. This innovation may (or may not) make ordering your Big Mac a faster experience, but it will definitely eliminate countless opportunities for young and low-skilled workers.

On his last point, couldn't it be the cost of labor in Europe is artificially high due to government mandates and labor laws that replacing expensive humans with less expensive technology makes economic sense? When government and labor laws make it more expensive to hire people for what would otherwise be minimum wage jobs, then how can it be a surprise to anyone that businesses like McDonald's won't hire them? (It's not all that different than what we see happening here every time the Leftists in Congress beholden to the labor unions raise the minimum wage. Each time that happens, joblessness among those seeking entry level jobs goes up because small businesses have a tougher time justifying the added expense, particularly during times of economic hardship.)

One commenter hit the nail on the head, detailing why Cowen's claim about the decline of the American economy is inevitable is absurd.

We are inventing more things, faster than ever before. The past innovations "destroyed jobs" -- and made society wealthier and created new jobs, different jobs, to replace those that had gone before. This is nothing but the song of the Luddites.

HOWEVER...

For that process of creative destruction to work, it is necessary to ALLOW the new jobs and new industries to be created. And THAT, not some illusory "low hanging fruit", is what has been changing over the last generation or two. The regulatory burden on new industries has climbed ever higher.

Right now, in laboratories around the U.S. people are working on fusion power, cheap space travel, synthetic fuel from algae, sensors for automated medical diagnosis, and so on, and on, and on.

And if we lived in a free country, sooner than you think, some of those would be part of our everyday lives. The decision to decline is a CHOICE -- not a fate.

Unfortunately our fate is in the hands of people within government who really don't like America all that much and are working as hard as they can to cripple its innovative and robust economy in an effort to make it more egalitarian (at least by their definition). Unfortunately we've seen the results of such socio-economic experiments before, and they've always turned out poorly for everyone involved...except the ruling class, of course. (And even then, some have seen their fiefdoms crumble away and leave them as destitute as the rest of their fellow countrymen.)

Unless we can break the government imposed malaise on our economy, we will indeed see those jobs lost over the past few years gone for good, with no new jobs to replace them, and we will indeed decline as a nation.

I first made mention of the NLRB's action against Boeing this past Sunday. Here's a little bit more, along with some words from Governor Nikki Haley on the matter.

********************

If we need even more proof President Obama is assuring his union supporters receive payment for services rendered, then all we need to do is look how one of his recess appointees to the National Labor Relations Board, one Lafe Solomon by name, has decided to do things the Chicago Way.

Solomon, a former SEIU labor leader, has decided Boeing Aircraft Company has denied his union brethren the chance to extort more money from the company, filing a complaint stating Boeing 'retaliated' against the International Association Of Machinists and Aerospace Workers by building its second 787 Dreamliner plant in right-to-work state South Carolina. He wants Boeing to abandon it's billion dollar plant just outside Charleston and move the operation to Washington State.

But we must ask the question, does the federal government, and more specifically, an as-of-yet unconfirmed and wholly union-owned member of the NLRB have the right to tell a private company where it can site its factories and build its products? Apparently this union stooge seems to think so. Never mind that federal law nor the Constitution gives the NLRB the power to do so.

It might be a different story if Boeing had closed down the existing Dreamliner plant in Washington State and moved it lock, stock, and barrel to South Carolina. But that's not the case. Instead, since the existing plant did not have the capacity to meet the demand, Boeing decided to build a second plant. And because the aircraft manufacturer had problems with union strikes and work slowdowns in the past, they decided to build the new plant someplace where such shenanigans were not likely take place. Hence, their decision to build the plant in South Carolina.

Is it any wonder why Boeing made that move?

But that didn't sit well with Solomon, so he decided he'd put a stop to it. But not one worker in Washington State has lost a job due to the South Carolina plant. Not one. In fact Boeing has hired around 2000 more workers to help meet its delivery schedules. So how can the NLRB claim the company has retaliated against the union?

What's worse is that President Obama has decided to remain mum on the subject, giving tacit approval to Solomon's actions.

Writes South Carolina governor Nikki Haley:

While silence in this case can be assumed to mean consent, President Obama's silence is not acceptable--not to me, and certainly not to the millions of South Carolinians who are rightly aghast at the thought of the greatest economic development success our state has seen in decades being ripped away by federal bureaucrats who appear to be little more than union puppets.

This is not just a South Carolina issue, and President Obama owes the people of our country a response. If they get away with this government-dictated economic larceny, the unions won't stop in our state.

Reading some of the comments to Governor Haley's WSJ opinion piece made by pro-union readers makes me wonder if they really understand the law and the Constitution. Unfortunately the answer appears to be no.

One kept making references to international agreements and UN resolutions as justification for forcing Boeing to knuckle under to the unions. Never mind that those agreements and resolution have no power under the Constitution. Never mind that those same agreements and resolutions do not require anyone to join a labor union even if they don't want to do so. Nothing in those agreements or resolutions forbid right-to-work laws, though that hasn't stopped one commenter from implying that they do.

Read the whole thing, particularly the comments as that's where the meat of the subject can be found.

The battle between Wisconsin Republican lawmakers (including governor Scott Walker) and the public sector unions continue.

It seems the unions have decided to borrow a page or two out of old-time union playbook by sending letters to small businesses that, in effect, tell them "Support us and our cause...or else." Gee, it didn't take them long to resort to extortion to get their way, did it? While the unions could have claimed there was a misunderstanding, the union executive who sent the letters says he means what he wrote, so there's no possibility they can claim such a misunderstanding. The gist of the letter:

Dated March 28, 2011, the letter is addressed to "DEAR UNION GROVE AREA BUSINESS OWNER/MANAGER," in Racine County. And it begins with this warm greeting: "It is unfortunate that you have chosen 'not' to support public workers rights in Wisconsin. In recent past weeks you have been offered a sign(s) by a public employee(s) who works in one of the state facilities in the Union Grove area. These signs simply said 'This Business Supports Workers Rights,' a simple, subtle and we feel non-controversial statement given the facts at this time."

We doubt "subtle" is the word a business owner would use to describe this offer he is being told he can't refuse.

The missive concludes by noting that, "With that we'd ask that you reconsider taking a sign and stance to support public employees in this community. Failure to do so will leave us no choice but do [sic] a public boycott of your business. And sorry, neutral means 'no' to those who work for the largest employer in the area and are union members."

The threat is implicit: put a sign supporting us in your window or we'll make sure it will negatively affect your business.

How...how...mob like. Vito Corleone would be proud.

Are we sure we want people like this to be working for us? Better yet, do we want them to have this kind of power over us?

Since this 'incident' the union has been back-peddling, removing signs from the businesses that knuckled under to the union extortion. But that doesn't undo the fact that they threatened business owners into 'supporting' them, meaning they've lost any credibility or moral high ground. They proven themselves be nothing more than thugs.

It wouldn't surprise me to find they've opened themselves to prosecution under RICO statutes. But somehow I doubt the US Attorney General will direct federal prosecutors to investigate such matters, considering his track record when it comes to dealing with corruption and coercion.

I had a Google alert on a major religious figure that took me to a Saint Louis newspaper. And I read this. When I read a brief description of the horrific sexual crimes and murder before clicking on the link, I already suspected certain facts that I'm not allowed to talk about because of political correctness.

Brandon McGuire is a textbook case for the validity of the death penalty. It annoys me to no end how my parish priest is so energetic speaking out against it. After nineteen centuries of Catholic teaching and support from Sacred Scripture, it's a difficult sell for me.

But what really sparks my noggin is the piece of human garbage received murder in the second degree--big stuff--for the unintentional murder (so far as I can tell) of the unborn baby.

Our legal system is now officially so incoherent on the legal status of the foetus that I think first principles desperately need to be applied. Either it's a life, or it isn't. Why does everything hinge on the woman's desire?

I strongly desire to carry concealed in Washington, DC, a Constitutionally protected activity (I've been appointed by God as the Secret Service agent for my wife and four small children.), but that wouldn't get me anywhere if I were caught.

Reading this Instapundit outrageousness that strongly indicates there is no equality under the law--some people are more equal than others--I think it's high time for conservative sensitivity training.

And it's an indication how socialist DemoRATS have become when a liberal like Harper Lee and her wonderful book, _To Kill a Mockingbird_, has so much relevance today. But the tables have turned.

Where's our Gregory Peck? It's almost too late. It's demographics, baby. And to think in 1994 Republicans, lead by Newt, completely dropped the ball in not abolishing affirmative racism.

Are these law enforcement personnel out on Long Island using their badges as a means to "harass us and eat of our substance"? Taking a look at the case of Nancy Genovese, I'd have to say yes.

After her arrest for supposedly posing a terrorist threat by taking pictures of a tourist attraction outside a public airport, being subjected to an illegal search and seizure, theft of $5300 in cash, confiscation of her camera and other personal belongings in her car (which have not been returned), being denied her right to an attorney, being imprisoned based upon false testimony by one of the arresting officers, she was interviewed by the FBI and found to be no threat. But the Suffolk County Sheriff's Department still held her in custody for some time, but finally released her, dropping the charge of criminal trespass (the only thing which she was charged). How can someone 'criminally trespass' on a public right of way, to whit, a public road?

Did she take this sitting down? Nope. She filed a $70 million lawsuit against the Town of Southampton, Suffolk County, and various other county and town officers and officials.

Now here's a bit of irony: the Town of Southampton town attorney failed to respond to the suit in a timely fashion, causing the town to default.

How did this happen? According to the now former town attorney "he forgot" to file the town's response to the suit. Genovese asked for a summary judgment against the town, but was denied by the court.

Here's more on the Genovese case, including an overhead view where the 'terrorist' incident took place.

There's an excellent Cato Institute instructive video about recording the police with cameras, including relevant recent examples of police excess and even brutality.

I believe that in NH police may be audio or video recorded only with their consent--even when they are on duty in a public place. I don't think that's liberal enough.

Cameras are everywhere. They can be used to enforce accountability and promote transparency. Certainly not bad things.

I've been having a rather lively discussion with one of my regular readers/commenters about the ongoing battle in Wisconsin between the governor, GOP legislators, a majority of voters, and the public sector unions. She seems to think it's just fine for the taxpayers to fund an unsustainable entitlement (she really likes the great pensions the state and local union employees will be collecting), while ignoring the facts of what she's supporting and what it really costs.

Robert Costrell gives us a breakdown of just one part of the public sector compensation in Wisconsin: teachers. (UPDATE: Link HTML was incorrect so it didn't display. Fixed now.)

The average Milwaukee public-school teacher salary is $56,500, but with benefits the total package is $100,005, according to the manager of financial planning for Milwaukee public schools. When I showed these figures to a friend, she asked me a simple question: "How can fringe benefits be nearly as much as salary?" The answers can be found by unpacking the numbers in the district's budget for this fiscal year.

You never see that in the private sector. Why? Because businesses couldn't afford it and it would make them uncompetitive both in the domestic and world market, assuming they would even survive.

As I mentioned to her in a comment to this post, quoting from Costrell's piece, Wisconsin teachers pay nothing towards their pensions. Not a penny. The taxpayers pay for it all. How is it they get away with this? I can explain it in two words: collective bargaining. Hold on to your hats (or should I say wallets) because there's more. Lets' take a look at health care benefits:

Under the current collective-bargaining agreements, the school district pays the entire premium for medical and vision benefits, and over half the cost of dental coverage. These plans are extremely expensive.

This is partly because of Wisconsin's unique arrangement under which the teachers union is the sponsor of the group health-insurance plans. Not surprisingly, benefits are generous. The district's contributions for health insurance of active employees total 38.8% of wages. For private-sector workers nationwide, the average is 10.7%.

I wish my employer paid 100% of my health care benefits, but I know that won't happen because they can't afford it. They can't tap the taxpayers to pay for it all. And even if they could, the taxpayers couldn't afford it...hey, wait a minute! That sounds almost like...ObamaCare! And it won't work for the same reason.

I could go on and on, but it might be better if you Read The Whole Thing yourself.

From the perversion of the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, we have the dubious practice--almost wholly unheard of in the rest of the world--of babies being granted automatic citizenship when born to mothers here illegally. Think about it for a second.

Howard Sutherland has the background, and it has got to stop. Ann Coulter's colorful op-ed is also worth a read, called "Justice Brennan's Footnote Gave Us Anchor Babies."

Has the next in a series of death blows been visited upon ObamaCare? If the recent decision by Federal Judge Roger Vinson striking down ObamaCare is any indicator, then the answer is a resounding "Yes!"

As Judge Vinson took pains to emphasize, the case is not really about health care at all, or the wisdom--we would argue the destructiveness--of the newest entitlement. Rather, the Florida case goes to the core of the architecture of the American system, and whether there are any remaining limits on federal control. Judge Vinson's 78-page ruling in favor of 26 states and the National Federation of Independent Business, among others, is by far the best legal vindication to date of Constitutional principles that form the outer boundaries of federal power.

ObamaCare mandated every citizen must buy health insurance in order to remain a citizen on good standing, in effect forcing people into an economic activity - buying a service from a provider whether they want to or not - and justifying it under the Commerce Clause. The judge wasn't buying it, nor the governments claim that even inactivity is really economic activity, particularly in light of the fact that citizens can't buy health insurance across state lines, therefore the activity isn't considered interstate commerce. (In case you aren't aware, the Commerce Clause in the constitution deals with regulating interstate commerce as a means of preventing one state from putting up barriers to trade with other states.) The government really tried to stretch the meaning of the Commerce Clause into areas it was never meant to cover.

Ironically, congressional Democrats of the 111^th Congress may have laid the foundations of the law's own destruction.

Judge Vinson also went beyond the Virginia case in striking down the entire ObamaCare statute--paradoxically, an act of judicial modesty. Democrats intentionally left out a "severability" clause if one part of the bill was struck down, and the Administration repeatedly argued that the individual mandate was "essential" to the bill's goals and mechanisms and compared it to "a finely crafted watch." Judge Vinson writes that picking and choosing among thousands of sections would be "tantamount to rewriting a statute in an attempt to salvage it."

As such, severability allows for one portion of a statute in question to be struck down as unconstitutional without affecting the rest of it. Without it, if one portion is struck down, the entire statute is struck down. Should Judge Vinson's decision survive appeal, and if required, Supreme Court review, ObamaCare will be dead.

So much for Nancy Pelosi's dismissal of ObamaCare's constitutionality.

Vinson went deeper, also addressing the backdoor use of the Necessary and Proper Clause to justify the government's actions.

Judge Vinson flatly rejected the administration's attempt to escape the restrictions of the Commerce Clause by appealing to the Necessary and Proper Clause. His decision acknowledges that, while reforming an insurance market is a regulation of commerce, Congress cannot artificially create its own "free rider" crisis in the insurance market and then use that crisis to justify an otherwise unconstitutional mandate as "necessary and proper" to save the market from collapse.

So, in effect what the government was trying to do was create a health care crisis, and then use that crisis to implement control over the health care system. It sounds almost like the old Mob "protection" racket: "Gee, that's a nice health care system you've got there. It would be a shame if anything were to happen to it...." It's almost like something out of The Untouchables. (Hey, didn't that take place in Chicago? And isn't Obama a creation of the Chicago political machine? I'm just sayin'....)

The decision has affected at least one state not part of the suit.

Here in New Hampshire, Republican House leaders have called on the Executive Council to reject a proposed $610,675 consulting contract that would lay the groundwork for implementing the provisions of ObamaCare.

...Gov. John Lynch (sic) press secretary Colin Manning said the council may not get the chance to take up the contract at their meeting -- it could be pulled from the agenda by Lynch or withdrawn from consideration by Insurance Commissioner Roger Sevigny.

"My understanding is that it will not come up for a vote," Manning said late Tuesday.

If the council does vote to reject the contract, Lynch cannot override the vote.

While the previously Democrat majority legislature and Executive Council would have likely gone along with this effort, the present legislature - a heavy GOP super-majority in both the House and Senate - and the all Republican Executive Council, are likely to block any action or funding for such an effort, particularly in light of Judge Vinson's decision. With a return to fiscal sanity in Concord, it is highly unlikely the legislature or the council will go along with something that will eventually lead to millions being added to the budget deficit already facing the state.

It seems ObamaCare is on the path to a well deserved death.

UPDATE: David Harsanyi delves into the claims by the White House that Judge Vinson's decision was nothing more than judicial activism.

Writes Harsanyi:

Co-opting conservative terms like "judicial activism" is a cute way of trying to turn the tables on those who have some reverence for the original intent of the Founders.

--snip--

Vinson may be overruled, but his decision is cogent and persuasive and doesn't seek out excuses for abuse. His ruling asks for the kind of government restraint that judges rarely have the appetite to call for, even though, need I remind you, "judicial activism" in the defense of liberty is no vice.

Apparently judicial activism is only proper when a decision expands the power of progressives working to weaken individual rights in favor of more control by the state, ignoring the Constitution or creating new rights out of thin air.

You know the Canadian justice system is screwed up when a homeowner confronts three men throwing Molotov cocktails at his home and is arrested for defending himself.

It seems the Canadian government has got some seriously screwed up people in their Parliament, making it illegal for their citizens to defend themselves against dire threats to them, their families, and their property.

The incident began six years of trouble for Mr. Thomson that culminated early one Sunday morning last August when the 53-year-old former mobile-crane operator woke up to the sound of three masked men firebombing his Port Colborne, Ont., home.

"I was horrified," he said. "I couldn't believe it. I didn't know what was happening. I had no idea what was going on."

So Mr. Thomson, a former firearms instructor, grabbed one of his Smith & Wesson revolvers from his safe, loaded it and headed outside dressed in only his underwear.

"He exited his house and fired his revolver two, maybe three times, we're not sure. Then these firebombing culprits, they ran off," said his lawyer, Edward Burlew.

What's ironic is that Thomson had surveillance video of the incident, showing the arsonists setting Thomson's house ablaze and Thomson exiting his home and firing the two or three gunshots. When Thomson showed the video to the police, they arrested him on the charge of careless use of a firearm.

It must be noted Mr. Thomson is an expert marksmen, meaning if he wanted to hit and wound or kill the miscreants, he could have. Instead, he showed restraint, aiming to miss and to drive the arsonists off. I would say that he wasn't careless at all. Instead he was exercising his god-given right to defend himself.

I will be one of the first people to admit that I rarely do the speed limit on limited access highways like the Interstates. I know I'm not the only one otherwise I wouldn't be getting passed all the time when I'm on them. (I won't do over 65 in the trusty F150 because at the moment it needs a front end alignment and at that speed it shimmies a bit.)

The speed limits on most of the Interstates is still too low. Here in New Hampshire the speed limit was 70 MPH until the National Maximum Speed Limit (NMSL) was imposed upon the motoring public back in 1974. The speed limit is presently 65 and it's too low. I know of few motorists that travel that speed on I-89, I-93, or I-95. Most are doing 70 or even 75. That tells me the speed limit is too slow,. Apparently. The NMSL became one of the most ignored laws on the books since Prohibition because it artificially lowered the speed limits on highways designed for much higher speeds. It was changed in 1985 to allow speeds of 65 MPH and repealed in 1995. Yet the speeds are still too low on some highways. To illustrate this, here's a little video showing exactly that, by way of Say Uncle:

It is becoming increasing apparent the TSA has no regards for their own rules. This video is but one example of the ignorance of some TSA personnel when it comes to their own procedures. What's worse is the TSA supervisor seen in this video is the worst of the bunch, ignoring federal law and imposing his own rules.


And we want to entrust our safety to these people? Frankly, they make it less likely that I'm going to take a commercial flight anywhere, even for work.

(H/T GraniteGrok)

Bill Whittle addresses American Exceptionalism, something we know our present President doesn't like and has been working hard to destroy. But I think Obama will find that while he may dent it a bit, he doesn't have the wherewithal to overcome the sheer inertia of American Exceptionalism. American know-how and those providing it will always find a way around those in this country working hard to bring about its downfall.

One thing I found interesting: With only 5% of the world's population, American produces 24% of the world's GDP, which is 3 times more than China produces even though it has over 4 times as many people.

Bill Whittle tackles yet another myth about the Tea party, specifically immigration and racism. As Bill tells us, far too many Tea party detractors have labeled us "stupid uneducated Neanderthals. We're white trash rednecks, knuckle-dragging proto-Nazis, KKK-loving violent extremists ready to execute anyone who won't bend their knee to the upcoming Christian theocracy...Oh, and we're domestic terrorists." We've also been accused of being anti-immigration. We're not. We're anti-illegal immigration. There's a big difference.

I'll let Bill explain it as he does so far better than I can.


I must admit I like his suggestion about going to Jessica Alba's or Lady Gaga's house and showing them up for the hypocrites they are.