Mission statement:

Armed and Safe is a gun rights advocacy blog, with the mission of debunking the "logic" of the enemies of the Constitutionally guaranteed, fundamental human right of the individual to keep and bear arms.

I can be reached at 45superman@gmail.com.You can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/45superman.

Monday, February 25, 2008

Defending Cheney (how'd I get into this position?)

A Washington Post editorial of a few days ago, "Mr. Cheney's Government," puts me in the odd, uncomfortable, and probably unprecedented (for me) position of feeling compelled to defend Dick Cheney. WaPo's editorial board clearly takes exception to Cheney's decision to join the majorities of both houses of Congress in signing an amicus brief in the District of Columbia v. Heller case, on the side of gun rights.

This month Mr. Cheney joined a brief filed by 305 lawmakers in the Supreme Court case over the constitutionality of the District's gun control laws. A federal appeals court struck down the gun ban -- the most far-reaching in the nation -- as unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.
I suppose "far-reaching" is one way to put it, although "draconian" seems rather more descriptive.
The problem is, Mr. Cheney's position puts him at odds with the administration's official stance in the case.
I wonder if WaPo's editors would have a "problem" with Cheney being at odds with the administration over anything else. Somehow, I doubt it.
Rather than rubber-stamp the lower court decision, Solicitor General Paul D. Clement is arguing that the Second Amendment bestows an individual right but that "protection of individual rights does not render all laws limiting gun ownership automatically invalid."
I wonder if Clement has figured out a way to reconcile that with shall not be infringed, yet. Setting that question aside, though, Heller comes nowhere near challenging "all laws limiting gun ownership"--as noble and worthy a goal as that would be, Heller aims much lower--overturning the total ban of all handguns (and any other firearm in operable condition) in Washington D.C.
Mr. Clement worries that adopting the rationale of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit could invalidate a host of federal gun control laws; he argues for a more flexible approach that would, for example, allow a court to consider public safety concerns when analyzing the constitutionality of a firearms regulation.
"Flexible" in "analyzing the constitutionality" referring, apparently, to the kind of flexibility that allows one to determine the Constitutionality of a law without being tied down to the actual, pesky text of the Constitution.
Mr. Cheney's move appears unprecedented; it is irresponsible, selfish and unnecessary.
I don't pretend to know what motivated Cheney to sign the brief. Perhaps, as War on Guns contends, it's just part of some "Good Cop/Bad Cop" ploy to mollify gun owners who have expressed outrage at Clement's, well . . . outrage. That could be, although I think even that might be giving this administration too much credit for cleverness.

In the end, though, Cheney is the president of the Senate, and is perfectly within his rights to sign on with legislators who disagree with "The Decider's" administration's position. His crime, apparently, was doing so in one of the few instances when the Washington Post's editors agree with the Bush administration.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't you just hate it when your least favorite hog is the one that discovers the truffle?

Kurt '45superman' Hofmann said...

That sums it up just about perfectly--as you generally do, SA.

Anonymous said...

Well, Sebastian's least favorite hog just outed him. I found the fungus in the ground.

But it doesn't have the delicacy or taste of a truffle.

We have had a couple of heated discussions over there, where I finally decided to treat them the same way they treated me. They blinked and ran.

A friend of mine had asked at one time if the tunnel vision and pure apologist attitude of Sebastian toward the betrayals by the NRA were not the product of a secret alliance of which Sebastian was not forthcoming.

I had not thought so. This last round of vitriol, to which I contributed, has convinced me, my friend was right, and what we had was not an honest difference of opinion, but rather the attempt by a self-anointed elite to control the dynamic of protest so as to keep the problem and ensure their continued relevance.

After refusing to politely accept the scorn heaped upon me for stating my position and responding in like manner to which I was repeatedly subjected, I find I can no longer access Snowflakes In Hell.

I sort of expected this from moral cowards. What I did not expect was that incompetence would reveal a heretofore secret alliance. Everytime I tried to access the site and find out if I had received and answer to my question about the concert in Louisville, I was redirected here after receiving an ERROR URL NOT FOUND message. http://www.nraila.org/

I have to say I am disappointed to find that a self-anointed rights advocate is merely an empty husk, but Hell, I was betrayed by his parent, why should I expect he fell far from the tree?

Kurt '45superman' Hofmann said...

I really don't see Sebastian as a Quisling type, although his faith in both the NRA and the current version of the Republican Party is hard for me to fathom.

I'm sorry to see how ugly things got over there, but you still have David and me to hang around with ;-).

me said...

So they are arguing for a socialized mind? One that must take the "best for all" view the invariably leads to "best for none"?

If, for instance, Bush was still pounding bottle after bottle and he was going to drive home...much like teddy or the rest of his klan, the WaPo would argue that ol' dead eye should just go along with that because the president knew better? I repeat WTF?

SA: I have computer issues for a couple days and I miss all the fun. You got a tazer for asking the wrong question and not compromising. They'd rather be "discussing the issues on this blog" then doing something...at least you know who you CAN'T count on when the time comes.

Anonymous said...

Thank you gentlemen.

Even more importantly H.Hobbit is that we also know exactly how to own them, don't we? But why would we want to?