Fluffy Bunnies pt II

Kevin at the Smallest Minority does a really impressive job fisking these anti-gun editorials. I also end up with all kinds of stuff to read from his links.

They are getting desperate, aren't they? In today's Washington Post comes (anonymously) a near repeat of San Francisco Chronicle writer Kevin Fagin's recent gun confiscation paean "And That's the Trouble: The gun debate, personalized," which I fisked last week. One shot (so to speak) from the left coast, and now one from the right. Today's bit of utopic mendacity is entitled Killing Made Easy. Let us fisk:

Go and have a read. It's worth the time.

Gun Religion

Heh. I'm a Fundementalist Muslim.

Though I don't require the 1911, I really don't like most other handguns. I do like the Browning High Power. All except the 9mm load. I found I'm pretty good with it.

I'd love to try a Webley-Scott. I'd bet that would be fun.

GOP House Leadership Race

The race between Blunt, Boehmer, and Shadegg gets me to abusing a Groucho Marx quote. Any body that would want the position probably shouldn't be allowed to have it.

But since no one cares what I think, here are some commentary from Captain's Quarters and Professor Bainbridge .

NSA Evesdropping Defense from the DOJ

Ok I'm not that caffinated yet so I'll just quote the Executive Brief that Orin Kerr at the Volokh Conspiracy provides.

Here is the administration's argument in a nutshell:

First, the President has inherent constitutional authority to order foreign intelligence surveillance monitoring. The President's core job is to protect the country against foreign attack. The 9/11 attacks made this interest particularly strong: Al Qaeda is a clandestine enemy, and we need to gather intelligence to stop them. The Authorization to Use Military Force further emphasized this power: it brought foreign intelligence surveillance from Steel Seizures Category II to a Steel Seizures Category I, in which the President's authority is at a maximum. The AUMF confirms and bolsters the President's authority; under the test announced in Justice O'Connor's concurrence in Hamdi, foreign intelligence surveillance is a classic "fundamental incident of war" that the AUMF authorizes. The combination of the President's Commander-in-Chief power and Congress's explicit authoritization in the AUMF gives the President full authority to conduct this monitoring.

Further, the monitoring doesn't violate FISA and also complies with the Fourth Amendment. FISA itself is on fragile constitutional ground, and in any event the AUMF is a "statute" that authorizes the monitoring. Further, the so-called exclusivity provision of the wiretap act, 18 U.S.C. 2511(2)(f), doesn't trump this commonsense result. The legislative history of the section was focused on the notion of Congressional authorization, which the AUMF provided, and a contrary reading would create serious constitutional questions. The canon of constitutional avoidance requires construing the statutes to allow this sort of surveillance: the constitutionality of a statutory prohibition on such monitoring presents very difficult questions, as the NSA activities lie at the core of the Commander in Chief power. There are few guideposts here, and courts should construe the statute in a way to avoid having to reach these difficult constitutional questions. FISA is unconstitutional to the extent it directly interferes with the President's constitutional duty, and it would be prudent to construe the statute in a way that avoids these constitutional questions.

Finally, the monitoring program fits within the Fourth Amendment "special needs" exception. The rule here is reasonableness, which requires a balancing of governmental and privacy interests. The program is reasonable: the government's interest in thwarting a future attack is overwhelming, and the monitoring itself has been tailored and subject to considerable internal review.

I'm very thankful the Kerr wrote this. I winced heavily when I saw the .pdf. 42 dreadful pages of legalism that I probably don't have the resources to figure out. But it is on my weekend reading list.

Balkinization has a peice on topic as well. They go into how the case may come before the judiciary.

More Body Armor Discussion

From Intel Dump.

While it is true that the study showed the Marines killed in Iraq would have survived their wounds with extra body armor, that does not translate into "if they had more body armor we would have lost fewer Marines." We might have lost MORE.

and

Combat training quickly convinces you that in modern infantry fighting it is not enough to just use your "common sense." Common sense is often wrong. The easiest example is the battle drill for "react to a near ambush." If the enemy ambushes you from only a short distance away the correct and safest course of action is to rush right at them. This "breaks the back" of the ambush, preventing them from engaging you in a cross-fire. If you don't do that, instead seeking cover or running away, you will surely die. That is not at all an intuitive reaction, but we drill our soldiers to react that way because it is the right thing to do.

So it is with body armor - or the decision to forego wearing more of it. It might seem that increasing body armor protection is, as Gen. Clark puts it, a "necessary step," but he is saying he knows more about what ground commanders should do than the commanders on the ground know. That is micromanagment, and in combat it kills people.

Most of the entry is making the point that Clark's contention that congress should be making an investigation into the lack of armor, is micromanagement and will be putting field officers under a politically charged microscope for decisions made in the theater.

Main and Central has a piece on the quality of the armor and other issues on the company that supplies it.

One of those documents described an April 2002 evaluation by the New York Public Employee Safety and Health Bureau of 1,000 body armor vests that Point Blank had sold to the New York Police Department. 900--90 percent--failed the tests the were submitted to. Some vests were improperly sized, which would have left officers' abdomens exposed. Others failed to stop bullets they were designed to protect against.

Similar documented complaints of improper sizing were reported by U.S. military troops in Afghanistan.

I don't know if the police armor to military armor comparison can be carried, but I'm thinking it may be an indicator of issues that need investigation.

Main and Central also discusses other armor issues.

There is also a review of the present issue armor against a competitor at Defense Review.

And the Daily Kos screams Republican Corruption.

Now, if you had to hazard a guess as to who owns almost 6% of the shares of Armor Holdings, Inc. - shares with a current market value of $88,000,000.00 - who would you guess? Maayybeeee - a company owned by a top Republican campaign donor?

DING-DING-DING-DING DING!!!

What do we have for 'em, Johnny? Yes, that's right - you've won confirmation of your belief that the military procurement system in the U.S. armed forces is RIFE WITH CORRUPTION!!

Yep, it turns out that the company that has the exclusive contract to supply body armor to the Army and Marines is home to a very heavy-hitting Republican campaign donor. Foster Friess, individually and through various family members, has contributed more than $575,000 to Republicans in the previous three campaign cycles, and has chunked in $51,000 so far for 2006.

Of course, he has no evidence of wrong doing, just conjecture based on legal political contributions. I must say that the success of the armor maker isn't really an indicator of corruption. In fact, I'd have been surprised if a contractor, of any political standing, that won the contract to provide for the military, didn't become quite wealthy. The postulation of Pentagon failure to provide armor quickly and evidence of faulty armor seem to be arguments to forward their point.

I will say the link they provide to Soldiers for the Truth is disturbing though.

Two deploying soldiers and a concerned mother reported Friday afternoon that the U.S. Army appears to be singling out soldiers who have purchased Pinnacle's Dragon Skin Body Armor for special treatment. The soldiers, who are currently staging for combat operations from a secret location, reported that their commander told them if they were wearing Pinnacle Dragon Skin and were killed their beneficiaries might not receive the death benefits from their $400,000 SGLI life insurance policies. The soldiers were ordered to leave their privately purchased body armor at home or face the possibility of both losing their life insurance benefit and facing disciplinary action.

No reason for the order is stated or postulated. Makes you wonder though.

Hillary Moves to the Right of Bush: I Think

I keep reading this and I just don't know who this person is. They claim it's Hillary, but that doesn't sound right to me.

"I believe that we lost critical time in dealing with Iran because the White House chose to downplay the threats and to outsource the negotiations," Ms. Clinton said, according to a transcript of the speech published by The Daily Princetonian. "I don't believe you face threats like Iran or North Korea by outsourcing it to others and standing on the sidelines."

I did laugh when Victor Davis Hanson stated (on Fox) that if Bush had moved to be the primary force in working against Iran, instead of the EU3, Hillary would have called him a unilateralist. I think he's right there.

In her Princeton speech, Ms. Clinton spoke of the gravity of Iran's program in terms similar to those used by the Administration.

"Let's be clear about the threat we face," Ms. Clinton said. "A nuclear Iran is a danger to Israel, to its neighbors and beyond."

"We cannot and should not - must not - permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons," she said. "In order to prevent that from occurring, we must have more support vigorously and publicly expressed by China and Russia, and we must move as quickly as feasible for sanctions in the United Nations."

Heh. Bet that analysis irritated her.

I've actually liked the EU3 dealing with Iran. Not that their limp wristed methods will come to anything, but they are at least moving the diplomatic strides in the right direction. Slowly. It also makes it obvious that the US isn't bullying another Islamic country, since the EU3 are showing their great concern. With the US in Iraq, the EU3 at least play the diplomacy to the point where the UN can be pushed at least partly into some action.

The UN action will go nowhere for a while yet. I honestly think it comes down to Russia and China coming into the gang as active players against Iran, or at least neutral.

Gun Trafficking to Massachusetts

This was linked in a great rant at mAss Backwards. Go ahead and read there.

I'll just got a giggle with this line:

Although most illegal guns found in Boston in 2004 came from Massachusetts, police have traced more firearms to other New England states, including Maine, New Hampshire, and Connecticut, and Southern states such as Alabama, Florida, and Maryland.

Hmm. You mean Menino is blaming other state's laws for his gun violence, though most of those guns come from his own state whose gun laws are already too tight?

The whole story is of how two women illegally obtained guns in Alabama and brought them to Massachusetts to sell. You'd think the MassHole Politicos would have learned that the guns coming from the states that they keep blaming for their problems are also illegal. Changing the laws won't make those guns any more illegal.

Suicide Bomber Science

I saw this linked at Schneier.

SciAm article on the Murderciders.

The belief that suicide bombers are poor, uneducated, disaffected or disturbed is contradicted by science. Marc Sageman, a forensic psychiatrist at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, found in a study of 400 Al Qaeda members that three quarters of his sample came from the upper or middle class. Moreover, he noted, "the vast majority--90 percent--came from caring, intact families. Sixty-three percent had gone to college, as compared with the 5-6 percent that's usual for the third world. These are the best and brightest of their societies in many ways." Nor were they sans employment and familial duties. "Far from having no family or job responsibilities, 73 percent were married and the vast majority had children.... Three quarters were professionals or semiprofessionals. They are engineers, architects and civil engineers, mostly scientists. Very few humanities are represented, and quite surprisingly very few had any background in religion."

No big surprise here, at least for those in the blogsphere who have already seen these types of analysis.

But get this:

One method to attenuate murdercide, then, is to target dangerous groups that influence individuals, such as Al ?Qaeda. Another method, says Princeton University economist Alan B. Krueger, is to increase the civil liberties of the countries that breed terrorist groups. In an analysis of State Department data on terrorism, Krueger discovered that "countries like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, which have spawned relatively many terrorists, are economically well off yet lacking in civil liberties. Poor countries with a tradition of protecting civil liberties are unlikely to spawn suicide terrorists. Evidently, the freedom to assemble and protest peacefully without interference from the government goes a long way to providing an alternative to terrorism." Let freedom ring.

Schneier seems to think this is obvious. I wonder if he realizes that this is exactly the strategy that the Bush administration has been pushing? I guess for the most part I find Schneier to be very liberal. Which may be incorrect, but seems to be the voice of his blog.

Interesting information if you're interested.

Congressional Ethics Reform: Pathetic

I was going to link the NYTimes article, but it's just reporting of the name calling going on in Washington and doesn't really have any substance. I got this link from a piece at QandO.

Let's be honest here. The Democrats and Republicans have essentially proposed the same cosmetic standards chages that was to be expected. It's just an ethics version of the Assault Weaons Ban. Don't you think it's time for someone to be offended that the politicos think we are this stupid? (Well then, there are a lot of stupid citizens out there.)

The Democrats at least proposed one that is clearly worthwhile. The stand on Earmarks is at least an intelligent proposal. Julie Kesselman has a couple of articles on Earmarks at Townhall.com.

But back to the cosmetics. Here are the GOP proposals outlined.

GOP PROPOSAL

The House Republican lobbying proposal would:

• Ban privately financed travel for House members.

• Ban gifts worth more than $20, down from the current limit of $50.

• Bar former lawmakers who are lobbyists from the House gym and House floor.

• Cancel the pensions of House members who are convicted of felonies related to official duties.

• Double to two years the ban on former members of Congress or staffers lobbying their former offices.

Lame. Though I do like the one on canceling their pension. The only problem with that is that most of these politicians are already wealthy, so I doubt that would make much of a mark. I wonder why they think reform of multiple minor allowances would distract the public from noticing that they are hiding the real problems? I suppose it's because most of the time people take far too little notice of what those in power are doing.

Oddly enough, it really appears that this ethics thing should really come down to Campaign finance reform. (again)

Lawmakers are about to bombard the public with proposals that would crack down on lobbyists. Several prominent plans, including one outlined Tuesday by House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) would specifically ban meals and privately paid travel for lawmakers.

Or would they?

According to lobbyists and ethics experts, even if Hastert's proposal is enacted, members of Congress and their staffs could still travel the world at an interest group's expense and eat on a lobbyist's account at the priciest restaurants in Washington.

The only requirement would be that whenever a lobbyist pays the bill, he or she also must hand the lawmaker a campaign contribution. Then the transaction would be perfectly OK.

"That's a big hole if they don't address campaign finance," said Joel Jankowsky, the lobbying chief of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, one of the capital's largest lobbying outfits.

Oh and this one always makes me smile.

"Political contributions are specifically exempted from the definition of what a gift is in House and Senate gift rules," said Kenneth Gross, an ethics lawyer at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. "So, unless the campaign finance laws are changed, if a lobbyist wants to sponsor an event at the MCI arena or on the slopes of Colorado, as long as it's a fund-raiser it would still be fine."

So the lobbyist can pass on a bribe by paying a campaign contribution or by holding a fund raising event for the politician. I'm going to be that we never see these mentioned seriously anywhere at any time by either party.

Here's a solution. Let's go to the level of one rule. Politicians can take as much money (or gifts) from anyone at any time, BUT, they have to provide complete disclosure of the money (or gifts). They would then be required to follow the same requirements as Sarbanes-Oxley required of CEOs in reporting financial dealings of companies. They would be required to sign off, under penalty of law, that the reports of money (or gifts) are completely accurate.

Oh, wait, I think they should also have to have a website, funded by the politicians themselves that provides public access to the reports. The website would need to be accurate to within say a month of the most recent dealings.

Well, I can dream, can't I?

UPDATE:
Almost forgot about Common Cause. Here is a link to their comparison of the reforms being presented by all groups. Go to the Enforcement and Campaign Finance sections toward the bottom. Amazingly blank.

Journalism's Future

Here's an Op-Ed by a freshman journalism student. It's on guns and distorts the case so melodramatically that one wonders if this person even did any research.

Every day the public finds itself more acquainted with the misuse of guns, either by seeing it on the news, hearing about it from friends or watching it first hand. In the last couple of years, this has been becoming more and more of a problem whether it is children finding guns in their home, people getting into fights, thinking the only way to solve a conflict is with a gun or police not knowing when to use a gun and when not to.

Let's start with that bit about the police. That just doesn't jibe with reality. Police departments country wide have to put officers through training and ensure they have an understanding about conflict scenarios. If her conjecture is the shooting of the Penley boy was a result of the police not knowing what they are doing, she is completely incorrect. The rest of her characterizations of guns is again right out of the journalist's guide to guns. Don't mention anything about reasonable or real world uses, just villify the gun.

She goes on to describe the Penley case where a student brought an altered toy gun into school and pretended it was real and faced the police with it. I'll link an actual reasonable report on the case to note the Op-Ed distortions.

Op-Ed.

Meanwhile, Penley'’s father had been informed of the incident at once and came to the scene. He then told the officers that his son did not have a real gun - Penley'’s brother told the officers the same thing. The officers did not take the information they had received into consideration. That means the officers in charge knew from three people that the gun was not real. So, why they still did not believe them was probably just a precaution, or was it a miscommunication?

There are some leaps of imagination. None of the reports that I have found can say in any way if the officer on scene was notified of the possibility of the gun not being real. This student makes the case that they simply ignored the information. The officer in charge is not necessarily the one on the firing line. There also seems to be questions as to the timing of the information. From a news report:

The parents of a 15-year-old boy accused of terrorizing classmates with a pistol warned authorities that the weapon likely was fake before police shot him in a middle school bathroom, a family attorney said Saturday.

So you have what looks like a real gun pointed at you and someone says it's likely not real. You really want to risk your life on that?

She also contends that another student, Cotley, told police that the gun was fake. Odd thing is that he didn't know and didn't tell the police it was fake.

A student who grappled with a classmate over a gun says he told school officials he wasn't sure the weapon was real when he felt it pull apart, but law enforcement officers did not question him until after the other teen was shot.

Wasn't sure?

He said he told school officials he felt Penley's gun start to separate when he grabbed it, but did not talk to law enforcement officers until after the shooting.

"I wasn't really sure if it was a toy or a real gun," Cotey said.

Didn't say anything until after is pretty telling here, don't you think?

But back to the Op-Ed.

The outcome could have also been prevented if only the deputy who fired would have used common sense. Even if the gun was real, the officer could have shot Penley in a non-fatal area. The police seemed to overlook the fact that they were dealing with a child. They could have easily stopped the victim by shooting him in the leg, making him release the gun as he would have fallen to the ground.

There was no reason for the police to have carried out the situation as they did. The improper use of communication, common sense and gun control led to the horrible outcome, which sadly enough could have been prevented.

Clueless loser. And how many police have died from a wounding a threat? And since when does a leg shot make someone drop a gun. Especially if it is real.

This little waltz by a journalism student really makes one wonder why journalism in the real world is so bent. A little common sense and, god forbid, a little research would have gotten this person a little way to a commentary that would have been at least responsible. Can one actually think that this person as a reporter could give an accurate report on guns in any form?

SCOTUS and the NH Abortion Law

A unanimous decision. That's going to cause a buzz.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday gave New Hampshire a new chance to salvage -- though in a narrower form -- its law requiring that parents be notified if their teenaged daughter is seeking an abortion.

The Court, in a rare unanimous vote in an abortion case, ruled that lower courts may have gone too far in striking down the entire parental notice law, enacted in 2003. Declaring that pregnant teenagers sometimes need an immediate abortion to avert serious health problems, the Court said the New Hampshire law must be read to allow that when it occurs, which it suggested would be "in a very small percentage of cases."

If the law can be interpreted to make that exception, and still be in keeping with what the state legislature intended, the Court indicated, the remainder of the law may remain intact. The state law, as written, makes an exception for teenagers where an abortion is necessary to save the pregnant girl's life, but it does not make a health exception.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, in what may be her final ruling as a member of the Court, wrote the decision. She summed it up this way in the opening paragraph:

"We do not revisit our abortion precedents today, but rather address a question of remedy: If enforcing a statute that regulates access to abortion would be unconstitutional in medical emergencies, what is the appropriate judicial response? We hold that invalidating the statute entirely is not always necessary or justified, for lower courts may be able to render narrower declaratory and injunctive relief."

Though I suppose this one was fairly narrowly argued.

Plutonium to Pluto

I wish this thing would get off the ground. The Swampies are pulling their hair out and you just know they'll try something in the last minute.

More than eight years ago, hundreds of protesters chanted anti-nuclear slogans before NASA launched a spacecraft to Saturn carrying 72 pounds of plutonium fuel. The noise before this week's launch of a craft with a similar payload has been more muted. Only 30 anti-nuclear protesters showed up recently to oppose a plutonium-fueled mission to Pluto. The most raucous it got was when protesters tied colorful origami birds to the fence of the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

"Folks tend to forget," said protest organizer Maria Telesca of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space.

Ok, so maybe not this time.

Twenty-four pounds of radioactive plutonium is located in New Horizon's radioisotope thermoelectric generator, an aluminum-encased, 123-pound cylinder, 31/2 feet long and 11/2-foot wide, that sticks out of the spacecraft like a gun on a tank.

Inside the cylinder are 18 graphite-enclosed compartments, each holding 1 1/3 pounds of the plutonium dioxide. Similar generators previously have been used to power six Apollo flights and 19 other U.S. space missions.

NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy have put the probability of an early-launch accident that would cause plutonium to be released at 1 in 350 chances.

Who makes these odds? And why do they release them?

If there was an accident during an early phase of the launch, the maximum mean radiation dose received by an individual within 62 miles of the launch site would be about 80 percent of the amount each U.S. resident receives annually from natural background radiation, according to NASA's environmental impact statement.

Clairvoyance must be part of these people's repartee. That is a SWAG if I ever heard one. Wind variables, explosion variations, etc, could all vary the amount released and how it is spread.

Nice to see that CNN is informing the public on the absolute worst case scenarios. Wouldn't want to make anyone nervous.

More Gun News

A couple of bits gleaned from the GunBlogsphere.

From Alphecca we are notified of closure of U.S. Repeating Arms Co. Inc. That's depressing. I don't own one, but then I'm more into old guns more than anything.

And from SayUncle there is a piece on the ATF. Just read it yourself.

WaPo Call for Handgun Ban

Since the topic is handled starting at Alphecca, then going to SayUncle, and lastly at Ravenwood's Universe, I'll leave them to the commentary. They are all correct.

I found SayUncles comments very close to what I thought when I first read the Op-Ed.

Via Jeff, comes this:

There‚’s an obvious thread here that members of Congress choose not to see: The all-too-free flow of handguns, a warped way of life that cows presidents and members of Congress who ought to recognize that the availability of handguns is murderous. The problem is that Americans own 65 million handguns and the only effective safety measure would be a ban on these made-for-murder weapons. As writer Jenny Price noted in a Dec. 25 op-ed in The Post, only 160 of the 12,000 guns used to kill people every year are employed in legitimate self-defense; guns in the home are used seven times more often for homicide than for self-defense.

Two fabrications in one paragraph. The number is more like 700,000. I think Ms. Price only thinks legitimate self-defense involves killing someone.

That is pretty clear to me.

But this is just astounding in it's missing the point of consensual government.

Lawmakers know all this and know as well that handguns -- however exalted they seem to be in America -- should not be in general circulation. Political long shot that it may be, a national ban on the general manufacture, sale and ownership of handguns ought be enacted. It would not pacify kids or adults with violent tendencies, and it might not curb general criminal activity markedly.

Could this brilliant editor miss the point the elected politicos are put in place to do what the citizens voted them in place to do. Politicians are not kings or mothers. Consensual government means they do what the majority wants not what they feel like on a whim. When they do, they tend not to make it back into politics.

Of course, the editor has to pull the "it's for the children" argument out, and then quote a politician to try and prove the correctness of the argument.

Such a bill was proposed more than a decade ago by Sen. John Chafee (R-R.I.), who has since died. "I hear people say it's a radical proposal," he said then. "Well, I think to have the current situation is radical. No other country has anything like it." He described slaughter by handguns as killing in record numbers, threatening education and pushing the high costs of education even higher. So what's new today?

Hmm. Just because it's not done this way in other countries, doesn't make it wrong. Our present governmental structure isn't emulated elsewhere, and it usually appears to work okay. And why is it the education is the topic and not the right to self-defense? People were allowed to defend themselves long before a school ever existed. The arguments are just so very anemic.

Assisted Suicide and End of Life Care

Let's start with a warning.
I will not tolerate comments that are uncivil, off topic or unreasoned with this entry. Any such comments will be removed ASAP. Some commenters of the blogsphere have previously been completely unreasonable (not to mention illogical) and their comments will be eliminated, unheard, from any discussion.

This topic is hard enough to reason through without the tin-foilers throwing biblical verses about.

End of life care and it's relation to Assisted Suicide is a closely bound subject.

Today it doesn't command the same attention. Though opinions on the topic remain deeply divided, the debate has gradually shifted to a larger concern - the way America cares for people who are dying.

"The central issue, we all realize, is end-of-life care," said Dr. Ezekial Emanuel, chairman of the department of clinical bioethics at the National Institutes of Health. "Assisted suicide is really a sideshow."

For the vast majority of people who are terminally ill, the question is not whether they'll ask a doctor to help them end their life: It's whether anyone can relieve their depression and manage their pain, Emanuel said.

I've heard from many sources that pain management is too often the cause of the desire for assisted suicide. I've also heard that there are many reasonable ways to deal with pain at the level that is experienced by some terminally ill people. Personally, I have yet to see a terminally ill person who had reasonable pain therapy. I've seen four friends and relatives die from cancer and in the end stages they were so hopped up that they couldn't relate to anyone. Maybe they weren't getting the right therapy, but I find that to be unlikely.

The question I have is, how and who should be the ones to deal with pain therapy, and then assisted suicide if that is where the patient wants to take his last days? I have heard the ethical arguments of the physician not being part of assisted suicide. I can see that point of view. But if the doctor isn't going to be part of it, shouldn't there be an alternative? That person would be trained in the most advanced pain therapies, psychology and assisted suicide. This person would not be bound to saving life, but would be there to ease the transition at the end of life.

Personally, I see a viable case for having states license and regulate such a profession if their constituency should deem it desirable. In fact I would state that I see such a professional being in place to prevent the concerns of groups like this:

Critics see a much darker side to the issue. "Assisted suicide will discriminate against the old, the ill and the disabled," said Diane Coleman, president of Not Dead Yet, a Chicago-based disability rights group that filed an amicus brief supporting the government's effort to overturn Oregon's law. Vulnerable, expensive-to-treat patients will get medications to help them die because their lives won't be seen as worth living, she contends.

Depression, hopelessness and fear of becoming a burden are primary reasons why critically ill patients consider suicide, experts confirmed. Surprisingly, pain is a less important factor.

Horrible name for an organization by the way. It always makes me think of the dead cart scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

They are likely quite correct about the emotional burdens for the end of life, but I've not seen that personally. Everyone I saw die of cancer were in extreme pain. I wouldn't have known their emotional standing due to being completely out of reality on pain killers. Wouldn't a professional who is specifically trained to deal with the dying function to help relieve the depression and fear as well as the pain?

Of course, it all will come down to politics. A place where it really shouldn't.

"I think several states will now look at this," said Myra Christopher, president of the Center for Practical Bioethics. "Even though this matter has been resolved from a legal perspective in Oregon, significant moral and ethical issues remain and deserve rigorous discussion."

At the federal level, legal experts say the Supreme Court's relatively narrow ruling left the door open for Congress to act. Congress already has restricted the use of federal funds for assisted suicide - a ban that President Bush's predecessor, Democrat Bill Clinton, supported.

In writing the court's majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy noted that "the federal government can set uniform standards for regulating health and safety."

Personally, I hope the federal government stays out of the issue. Nothing like a politician to screw up what the citizen's want. Just look at the Schaivo case if you need an example. Control at the state level is more likely to give the regional differences an allowance for what each state's citizen's believe is right.

Finally, the whole topic of when to die must be left to the individual. They should be left in the position to decide when they want to check out. I don't agree with a sentiment that would force a person to live and suffer for the "good" of others. A person has self determination, and should be given the fullest allowances for control, when it's their life and the quality thereof that is being determined.

So there is a thought. Got something better? I don't want to hear "it's just wrong." Give me an alternative to dealing with the pain and emotional issues that are seen at the end of life.

Assisted Suicide and the Controlled Substances Act

The first thing that struck me as odd on the SCOTUS finding is pretty much laid out by Clarence Thomas.

Justice Clarence Thomas did write a dissenting opinion, saying it was "perplexing to say the least" to find the court interpreting federal drug law narrowly in this instance when only months ago, it upheld broad federal authority to prevent states from authorizing the use of marijuana for medical purposes.

I have to say I found the conflicts fairly hypocritical. Though, not being a lawyer, I probably am not subject to the warped legal logic that surrounds this whole mess. Perplexing indeed.

I suppose the difference comes down to the fact that the CSA has Marijuana as a Schedule I substance. (See the DEA website for the list.) That is:

Schedule I

-The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse.

-The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.

-There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision.

-Examples of Schedule I substances include heroin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), marijuana, and methaqualone.

So according to the law, no matter how out dated or foolish, they have placed Marijuana on the list as a substance of no "accepted" medical use. Funny how many doctors seem to be disagreeing.

So if doctors, regulated by the state, can use drugs for an unintended purpose [death], how is it that the federal government, in this case, can regulate the states control of doctor's prescription of another drug on the CSA?

Kennedy has several statements that I find disturbing.

"The authority claimed by the attorney general is both beyond his expertise and incongruous with the statutory purposes and design," Justice Kennedy said.

Is he trying to say you need to be a doctor to understand that the use of the drugs for the purpose of causing death is outside their accepted uses? I could swear that the vast majority of drugs were created to save lives. That would define their accepted use, as death is not the reason they were created.

Scalia appears to come to the same conclusion. (and I really should read the whole article before starting to write this.)

Justice Scalia, in his dissenting opinion, took issue with the argument that Congress could not have intended to delegate medical judgments of this sort to the attorney general. The legitimacy of physician-assisted suicide "ultimately rests, not on 'science' or 'medicine,' but on a naked value judgment," he said, adding, "It no more depends upon a 'quintessentially medical judgment' than does the legitimacy of polygamy or eugenic infanticide."

Justice Scalia said Mr. Ashcroft's action was "the most reasonable interpretation" of the statute because "virtually every relevant source of authoritative meaning confirms that the phrase 'legitimate medical purpose' does not include intentionally assisting suicide."

Then there is the issue of Ashcroft's interpretation of the CSA:

In his opinion, Justice Kennedy said that Mr. Ashcroft was claiming the "extraordinary authority" to declare as criminal actions that Congress had not designated as crimes, and that he was seeking "a radical shift of authority from the states to the federal government to define general standards of medical practice in every locality."

But Congress had no such intent in passing the Controlled Substances Act, Justice Kennedy said. "The structure and operation of the C.S.A. presume and rely upon a functioning medical profession regulated under the states' police powers," he said, adding that "Oregon's regime is an example of the state regulation of medical practice that the C.S.A. presupposes."

This strikes me as having some logic, since most of the CSA seems to be focused on addiction. Though there is much language regarding the "legitimate medical purposes." I'm going to call this a weak argument.

I suppose I'm going to remain perplexed on this portion of the topic as well.

More on the Marines and Inadequate Body Armor

Caught this link at the Volokh Conspiracy. I find lots of interesting stuff there.

This is from Defense Tech. It is a discussion that has comments stating that some in the military are questioning the usefulness of the newer armor, especially related to the extra weight causing restrictions to mobility.

Have a read.

ACLU on Guns - Well the ACLU of Texas

This is from the Volokh Conspiracy.

Not what I was expecting when I saw the title, but I'm truly stunned.

ACLU of Texas and Gun Rights:I think it's too bad that the ACLU takes a collective rights view of the Second Amendment, and generally doesn't do much to defend state constitutional rights to bear arms. (As readers of this blog might realize, I don't think they're evil or even hypocritical for disagreeing with my interpretation of the Second Amendment, or even for declining to defend the clearly individual state constitutional rights. They're entitled to pick and choose what rights they think are most important to defend, just as the NRA and my two favorite conservative/libertarian public interest law firms, the Institute for Justice and the Center for Individual Rights, are entitled to do the same. I just think the ACLU is mistaken in its views.)

In any case, though, I'm pleased that the ACLU of Texas is taking a pro-right-to-self-defense view; Scott Henson, director of the police accountability project for the ACLU of Texas, testified this Spring -- on the ACLU of Texas's behalf -- in favor of a proposal to let law-abiding citizens carry guns in their cars. The law ultimately passed, and Mr. Henson is now trying to check how well it's being implemented, by filing state open records act requests for any instructions that government agencies are giving police officers about the new law. Sounds like good work to me.

Isn't this one of the signs of the apocalypse? (just kidding)

ACLU Suit Over the NSA Spying

Saw this mentioned earlier on the web, but didn't realize who some of the plaintiffs were. Caught it discussed on Fox a bit later and learned a little more on law suites.

Two civil liberties groups in the US have taken legal action to block President George W Bush's domestic spying programme. The groups want an immediate halt to the "illegal and unconstitutional" eavesdropping on US citizens. The federal lawsuits were filed in New York and Detroit by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

and

Other plaintiffs include Greenpeace, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and UK journalist Christopher Hitchens.

Now the plaintiffs appear to be important according to Napolitano the suit should be dismissed immediately due to the "injury in-fact" test. I looked that one up. Was a bit difficult to find until I finally found the case that set the precedence. At least I believe it's the case.

We do not question that this type of harm may amount to an "injury in fact" sufficient to lay the basis for standing under 10 of the APA. Aesthetic and environmental well-being, like economic well-being, are important ingredients of the quality of life in our society, and the fact that particular environmental interests are shared by the many rather than the few does not make them less deserving of legal protection through the judicial process. But the "injury in fact" test requires more than an injury to a cognizable interest. It requires that the party seeking review be himself among the injured.

Yeah. My understanding is that the plaintiff must prove that they actually were injured and not just put forward that they think they've been injured.

Interesting. The ACLU suit can be found here.

I'm wondering why no law makers have made any request that the NSA stop their spying. I keep wondering if there was no outcry at the time of notification, or afterward, if the law makers and judges didn't really have an issue with the project. Or they were sufficiently convinced by the information provided that they had the power to carry on the spying.

On the NSA Spying topic, the NYTimes has an article here on the FBI anonymous sources saying that the results provided to them from the program were essentially a waste of time. The really interesting statement:

"It isn't at all surprising to me that people not accustomed to doing this would say, 'Boy, this is an awful lot of work to get a tiny bit of information,' " said Adm. Bobby R. Inman, a former N.S.A. director. "But the rejoinder to that is, Have you got anything better?"

The anonymous sources still bother me a great deal. Not knowing the motive of the sources makes the statements a bit questionable. I will say that the article does make you wonder if the resources are being most effectively used. I don't have any idea, but it would be interesting to have a GAO report on the effectiveness of the actions.

I really hope we get some actual information as to what is or has been occurring.

Benjamin Franklin at 300

Happy Birthday Ben.

They definitely chose the right person for the $100 bill.