my random thoughts....

 
"It wasn't easy for my opponent to become the single most liberal member of the Senate. You might even say, it was hard work. But he earned that title -- by voting for higher taxes, more regulation, more junk lawsuits, and more government control over your life. And when the competition includes Ted Kennedy, that's really saying something. ... Last week in our debate, he once again came down firmly on every side of the Iraq war. He stated that Saddam Hussein was a threat and that America had no business removing that threat. Senator Kerry said our soldiers and Marines are not fighting for a mistake -- but also called the liberation of Iraq a "colossal error." He said we need to do more to train Iraqis, but he also said we shouldn't be spending so much money over there. He said he wants to hold a summit meeting, so he can invite other
countries to join what he calls 'the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.' He said terrorists are pouring across the Iraqi border, but also said that fighting those terrorists is a diversion from the war on terror. ... Senator Kerry is proposing policies and doctrines that would weaken America and make the world more dangerous. My opponent announced the Kerry doctrine, declaring that American actions in the war on terror must pass a 'global test.' ... My opponent's doctrine has other consequences, especially for our men and women in uniform. ... My opponent says he has a plan for Iraq. Parts of it should sound pretty familiar -- it's already known as the 'Bush plan.' ... Iraq is no diversion; it is the place where civilization is taking a decisive stand against chaos and terror -- and we must not waver."
--President George W. Bush


posted by Greg at 11:08 AM

 
"Whatever enables us to go to war, secures our peace."
--Thomas Jefferson


posted by Greg at 8:25 AM

 
"The most may err as grossly as the few."
--John Dryden
posted by Greg at 4:34 PM

 
Visit Patriot Petitions.

posted by Greg at 3:12 PM

 
Kids will get away with what they can get away with. But if young Willy Bob realizes that you really will keep him in on Saturday night, and some evil-minded football player will get his darling Sally Carol with the lovely blue eyes and golden hair and nine-pound braces, and park with her on deserted back roads, well, old Willy Bob will factor quadratics something fierce. Quadratics will become an endangered species, and hide under rocks.
Fred on Everything


posted by Greg at 2:05 PM

 
A while back I encountered a teacher wearing a button, "So many men, so little intelligence." (Clever, Sweet Potato. Maybe you'll be the first female chess grandmaster since Newton's wife invented calculus.) Want her teaching your son?
Fred on Everything

posted by Greg at 10:49 AM

 
"Gone is the Massachusetts of Pilgrims and Puritans, of Minutemen and Tea Parties, of John Adams and Calvin Coolidge. If the militias of Lexington and Concord showed up at the Fleet Center for the Democrat bash, they'd be branded a bunch of right-wing, racist gun nuts and forced to undergo sensitivity training."
--Don Feder


posted by Greg at 5:40 PM

 
"Education achievement was better when it was practiced in the little red schoolhouse and didn't come as it does today from the big White House and its Cabinet agencies. The billions wasted on education since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society has been a financial and educational disaster, not to mention a violation of the Constitution."
--Cal Thomas

posted by Greg at 12:28 PM

 
Jurors' Handbook: A Citizen's Guide to Jury Duty

Did you know that you qualify for another, much more powerful vote than the one which you cast on election day? This opportunity comes when you are selected for jury duty, a position of honor for over 700 years.

The principle of a Common Law Jury or Trial by the Country was first established on June 15, 1215 at Runnymede, England when King John signed the Magna Carta, or Great Charter of our Liberties. It created the basis for our Constitutional system of Justice.

JURY POWER in the system of checks and balances:

In a Constitutional system of justice, such as ours, there is a judicial body with more power than Congress, the President, or even the Supreme Court. Yes, the trial jury protected under our Constitution has more power than all these government officials. This is because it has the final veto power over all "acts of the legislature" that may come to be called "laws".

In fact, the power of jury nullification predates our Constitution. In November of 1734, a printer named John Peter Zenger was arrested for seditious libel against his Majesty's government. At that time, a law of the Colony of New York forbid any publication without prior government approval. Freedom of the press was not enjoyed by the early colonialists! Zenger, however, defied this censorship and published articles strongly critical of New York colonial rule.

When brought to trial in August of 1735, Zenger admitted publishing the offending articles, but argued that the truth of the facts stated justified their publication. The judge instructed the jury that truth is not justification for libel. Rather, truth makes the libel more vicious, for public unrest is more likely to follow true, rather than false claims of bad governance. And since the defendant had admitted to the "fact" of publication, only a question of "law" remained.

Then, as now, the judge said the "issue of law" was for the court to determine, and he instructed the jury to find the defendant guilty. It took only ten minutes for the jury to disregard the judge's instructions on the law and find Zenger NOT GUILTY.

That is the power of the jury at work; the power to decide the issues of law under which the defendant is charged, as well as the facts. In our system of checks and balances, the jury is our final check, the people's last safeguard against unjust law and tyranny.

A Jury's Rights, Powers, and Duties:

But does the jury's power to veto bad laws exist under our Constitution?

It certainly does! At the time the Constitution was written, the definition of the term "jury" referred to a group of citizens empowered to judge both the law and the evidence in the case before it. Then, in the February term of 1794, the Supreme Court conducted a jury trial in the case of the State of Georgia vs. Brailsford (3 Dall 1). The instructions to the jury in the first jury trial before the Supreme Court of the United States illustrate the true power of the jury. Chief Justice John Jay said: "It is presumed that juries are the best judges of facts; it is, on the other hand, presumed that courts are the best judges of law. But still both objects are within your power of decision." (emphasis added) " . . . you have a right to take it upon yourselves to judge of both, and to determine the law as well as the fact in controversy".

So you see, in an American courtroom there are in a sense twelve judges in attendance, not just one. And they are there with the power to review the "law" as well as the "facts"! Actually, the "judge" is there to conduct the proceedings in an orderly fashion and maintain the safety of all parties involved.

As recently as 1972, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said that the jury has an "unreviewable and irreversible power . . . to acquit in disregard of the instructions on the law given by the trial judge.... (US vs Dougherty, 473 F 2d 1113, 1139 (1972))

Or as this same truth was stated in a earlier decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Maryland: "We recognize, as appellants urge, the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by the judge, and contrary to the evidence. This is a power that must exist as long as we adhere to the general verdict in criminal cases, for the courts cannot search the minds of the jurors to find the basis upon which they judge. If the jury feels that the law under which the defendant is accused is unjust, or that exigent circumstances justified the actions of the accused, or for any reason which appeals to their logic of passion, the jury has the power to acquit, and the courts must abide by that decision." (US vs Moylan, 417 F 2d 1002, 1006 (1969)).

YOU, as a juror armed with the knowledge of the purpose of a jury trial, and the knowledge of what your Rights, powers, and duties really are, can with your single vote of not guilty nullify or invalidate any law involved in that case. Because a jury's guilty decision must be unanimous, it takes only one vote to effectively nullify a bad "act of the legislature". Your one vote can "hang" a jury; and although it won't be an acquittal, at least the defendant will not be convicted of violating an unjust or unconstitutional law.

The government cannot deprive anyone of "Liberty", without your consent!

If you feel the statute involved in any criminal case being tried before you is unfair, or that it infringes upon the defendant's God-given inalienable or Constitutional rights, you can affirm that the offending statute is really no law at all and that the violation of it is no crime; for no man is bound to obey an unjust command. In other words, if the defendant has disobeyed some man-made criminal statute, and the statute is unjust, the defendant has in substance committed no crime. Jurors, having ruled then on the justice of the law involved and finding it opposed in whole or in part to their own natural concept of what is basically right, are bound to hold for the acquittal of said defendant.

It is your responsibility to insist that your vote of not guilty be respected by all other members of the jury. For you are not there as a fool, merely to agree with the majority, but as a qualified judge in your right to see that justice is done. Regardless of the pressures or abuse that may be applied to you by any or all members of the jury with whom you may in good conscience disagree, you can await the reading of the verdict secure in the knowledge you have voted your conscience and convictions, not those of someone else.

So you see, as a juror, you are one of a panel of twelve judges with the responsibility of protecting all innocent Americans from unjust laws.

Jurors Must Know Their Rights:

You must know your rights! Because once selected for jury duty, nobody will inform you of your power to judge both law and fact. In fact, the judge's instructions to the jury may be to the contrary. Another quote from US vs Dougherty (cited earlier): "The fact that there is widespread existence of the jury's prerogative, and approval of its existence as a necessary counter to case-hardened judges and arbitrary prosecutors, does not establish as an imperative that the jury must be informed by the judge of that power".

Look at that quote again. the court ruled jurors have the right to decide the law, but they don't have to be told about it. It may sound hypocritical, but the Dougherty decision conforms to an 1895 Supreme Court decision that held the same thing. In Sparf vs US (156 US 51), the court ruled that although juries have the right to ignore a judge's instructions on the law, they don't have to be made aware of the right to do so.

Is this Supreme Court ruling as unfair as it appears on the surface? It may be, but the logic behind such a decision is plain enough.

In our Constitutional Republic (note I didn't say democracy) the people have granted certain limited powers to government, preserving and retaining their God-given inalienable rights. So, if it is indeed the juror's right to decide the law, then the citizens should know what their rights are. They need not be told by the courts. After all, the Constitution makes us the masters of the public servants. Should a servant have to tell a master what his rights are? Of course not, it's our responsibility to know what our rights are!

The idea that juries are to judge only the "facts" is absurd and contrary to historical fact and law. Are juries present only as mere pawns to rubber stamp tyrannical acts of the government? We the People wrote the supreme law of the land, the Constitution, to "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." Who better to decide the fairness of the laws, or whether the laws conform to the Constitution?

Our Defense - Jury Power:

Sometime in the future, you may be called upon to sit in judgment of a sincere individual being prosecuted (persecuted?) for trying to exercise his or her Rights, or trying to defend the Constitution. If so, remember that in 1804, Samuel Chase, Supreme Court Justice and signer of the Declaration of Independence said: "The jury has the Right to judge both the law and the facts." And also keep in mind that "either we all hang together, or we most assuredly will all hang separately.

You now understand how the average citizen can help keep in check the power of government and bring to a halt the enforcement of tyrannical laws. Unfortunately, very few people know or understand this power which they as Americans possess to nullify oppressive acts of the legislature.

America, the Constitution, and your individual rights are under attack! Will you defend them? READ THE CONSTITUTION, KNOW YOUR RIGHTS! Remember, if you don't know what your Rights are, you haven't got any!

Fully Informed Jury
Juror's Handbook and Jury Nullification


posted by Greg at 9:41 AM

 
At the end of World War II, America stood astride the world as the unchallenged military and economic power. The terrible might of Germany and Japan lay crushed in smoldering ruin. Great Britain, bled white by the near-total loss of two successive generations of their best and brightest, was in barely better shape. China was a collection of pre-industrial peasants fighting a bitter civil war, and nowhere in the rest of Asia, Africa and South America did there exist anything more than local defense militias.

Only the Soviets remained as a potent military force – and that force was essentially tactical, not strategic, in nature. While strong in tanks, artillery and men, it had no navy to speak of, and an air force consisting mostly of close support ground-attack aircraft such as the Il-2 Sturmovik. While effective against ground targets, the Red Army in 1945 had nothing resembling US heavy bombers such as the B-17, the B-24, or the magnificent B-29.

On the other hand, the United States not only had what was far and away the world’s preeminent Navy; we also had large numbers of long-range strategic bombers and swarms of highly-seasoned fighter escorts. We had a Marine Corps flush with victories: battle-hardened men who had invented through blood and horror the means to go ashore on enemy beaches and stay there. We had an Army whose courage and skill in battle was unsurpassed, and whose critical supply and ordinance staffs were, by far, the best in the world.

And, of course, we had the atomic bomb, and the will to use it.

History has never, and will never, record a time when such power existed in the hands of a nation, nor of a time when opposing forces were so weak and in such a state of disarray and abject surrender.

And these feared and ruthless Americans, a people who had incinerated cities in Europe and Japan and whose ferocity and tenacity on island jungles and French beaches had brought fanatical warrior cultures to their knees – what did these new conquerors of the world do?

They went home.

Eject! Eject! Eject!

posted by Greg at 2:07 PM

 
In war on terror, Geneva Convention doesn't apply
Jonah Goldberg
June 16, 2004

"There's a reason why we sign these treaties: to protect my son in the military," Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., hissed at the attorney general through his enormous teeth. "That's why we have these treaties, so when Americans are captured they are not tortured. That's the reason in case anybody forgets it."

Well . . . sorta.

The relevant reason we sign treaties like the Geneva Convention is so that other signatory nations do unto us as we would do unto them. That means we can't subject captured French soldiers to "Caddyshack II" and France can't subject our boys to Jerry Lewis marathons.

OK, perhaps I'm making too much light of a serious thing - torture. But then again so is Biden. The Geneva Convention is a contract, like all treaties. And contracts obligate those who sign them to certain behavior.

Hence, POWs from signatory nations are entitled to all sorts of stuff, including dormitories replete with educational and entertainment facilities and generous canteens run by POWs who receive a share of the profits.

As my colleague Rich Lowry and others have pointed out, many of these provisions are the vestiges of World War II - when millions of conscripts were thrown into a faraway conflict and, hence, deserved not merely humane treatment, but, in Lowry's words, "Hogan's Heroes" treatment.

And that's why White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez suggested in a 2002 memorandum that the Geneva Convention seemed "quaint" in the context of the war on terror.

But that's all beside the point for the moment. Because whether or not it's "quaint" for prison guards to behave like Sgt. Schultz ("I see nothink!") or not, one thing is clear: The Geneva Convention does not require countries who haven't signed it to do anything at all.

And guess what? Osama bin Laden has as much use for the Geneva Convention as he does for the new Lady Remington electric shaver.

So yeah, Biden is correct in all of his pious glory that the Geneva Convention protects military personnel like his son from being tortured - but it protects them from being tortured by other countries who have signed the Geneva Convention (By the way, Biden's son is quite safe as a stateside military lawyer - a fact Biden revealed after the useful sound bite was over.)

If you sign a contract with your neighbor agreeing that neither of you will plant stinky ginkgo trees on your property, that contract is binding on you and your neighbor. It's not binding for the guy who lives across the street.

Well, Osama bin Laden lives across the street. He lives outside our neighborhood, our community, our laws. He lives outside all of the rules of civilization, at war and peace. Every day, he violates the Geneva Convention before he has his second bowl of muesli. He blows up passenger trains and hijacks civilian aircraft. His henchmen don't wear uniforms, and they don't abide by any of the rules governing professional armies.

We've all seen countless WWII movies about how soldiers out of uniform can be shot as spies under the Geneva Convention. Well, all of al-Qaida's soldiers are spies. And they most emphatically do not provide their prisoners with ping-pong tables and dormitories. They cut off their heads and put the pictures on the Internet and TV. The same goes for Osama's allies and fellow travelers in Iraq.

The liberal punditocracy seems to think it's an obvious fact that the Geneva Convention should apply to the war on terrorism, even though the plain text of the Geneva Convention applies as much to the war on terror as it does to the battle between the Federation and the Klingon Empire.

Sen. Biden surely knows all of this. And so does John Ashcroft, whose son has actually served in Iraq. But why should the facts get in the way of some righteous bloviation in an election year?

Now, this doesn't mean that there aren't other rules governing the behavior of American soldiers, including the Uniform Code of Military Justice. This doesn't mean the military should be free to torture any belligerent who's not party to the Geneva Convention, or that there aren't real costs for American prestige to such behavior. And, no, this doesn't mean that those responsible for the Abu Ghraib fiasco shouldn't be punished.

But if you think the Geneva Convention is a wonderful thing, I don't understand why you would want to weaken it by saying there's no advantage to signing it. Al-Qaida and the Iraqi insurgents defy all the rules enshrined and symbolized by the Geneva Convention (and, often, the Koran) and yet administration critics piously demand that these thugs should be given all the benefits that come with being a signatory to it.

Well, if the barbarians get all of the benefits of the Geneva Convention without obeying any of its rules, then it becomes not merely quaint, not merely worthless, but a tool of those who wish to overthrow all it stands for.

©2004 Tribune Media Services

Town Hall


posted by Greg at 4:08 PM

 
America at Its Best
March 25, 2001
Speech by Eric Saul

So why was it you Nisei, second generation, born in America, were willing to volunteer for the Army from the plantations of Hawaii, often when you were considered second-class citizens, or from concentration camps in America? Your parents couldn't become citizens or own land, so land was put in your name. Before the war, you wanted to be doctors, lawyers, and professionals, but you couldn't. No one would hire you. So you worked on your family farms, flower orchards, and shops. You were often segregated in the Little Tokyos and Japantowns. You couldn't go where you wanted, be where you wanted, be whom you wanted.

Furthermore, your President, on February 19, 1942, signed an Executive Order that said you weren't Americans anymore, you were "non-aliens." So why did you join the army? Why did you become soldiers, and ironically become, of all things, the most decorated army unit that this country has ever produced?

There were words which your parents taught you:

--Giri and on: "duty," and "honor," and "responsibility." You had to pay back your debt to your country.

--Oyakoko: "love for family." Your parents couldn't become citizens, but you loved your families and you had to prove your loyalty at any cost. You used your bodies as hostages for your families to prove your love for democracy and justice when you volunteered from those camps.

--Kodomo no tame ni: "for the sake of the children." Many of you didn't have children at the time, but you knew you wanted to have families. And you knew that you didn't want your children to have to suffer as you did. You wanted your children to be able to be doctors, and lawyers, and professionals. If you went into the military, did your job, perhaps things would change. You knew it, and you fought for it. You even came up with your own regimental motto that's on this honored regimental flag in front of me. It was "Go for Broke." You set the tone for your own regiment, and lived up to its motto. You made democracy work. Because of your wartime record, your children can now be what they want in a country that you wanted for them.

--Enryo: "humility." There's an old Japanese proverb that says if you do something really good and you don't talk about it, it must be really, really good! You never talked about your wartime record. You didn't tell your children, you didn't tell your wives, and you didn't even tell the country.

--Gaman: "internal fortitude, keep your troubles to yourself. Don't show how you're hurting."

--Shikata ga nai: "sometimes things can't be helped." But other times, you have to go for broke, and you can change things.

--Haji: "don't bring shame on your family." When you go off to war, fight for your country, return if you can, but die if you must.

--Shinbo shite seiko suru: "strength and success will grow out of adversity."

When I was curator of the Presidio Museum, I wanted to know why you joined the Army. Why did you join from a concentration camp? A veteran from Cannon Company named Wally told me a story. His family was sent from Los Angeles to the Santa Anita racetrack, which was an Assembly Center for Japanese Americans. There, they were put in a horse stall. Before the war, they had a flower shop, they had their own home in Los Angeles, and they were a middle-class family. Now they were living for weeks in a horse stall that hadn't been cleaned when they moved in, and it stunk of horse manure. Wally's father said to him, "Remember that a lot of good things grow in horse manure." It did.

I remember hearing a story from a Chaplain Higuchi, the chaplain of the 442nd, who was from Hawaii. I asked him, "How could the Niseis have joined the Army under these circumstances? How could they have done what they did?"

Chaplain Higuchi said he himself couldn't understand, because he was from Hawaii and hadn't suffered the same discrimination. But his job as chaplain was to go through the pockets of the Niseis who had been killed in combat. He remembered going through the pockets of one mainland Nisei. In his wallet was a news clipping that told how the family farm had been burned down by racists near Auburn, California. Yet this Nisei still volunteered for the service. Chaplain Higuchi said that there was no medal high enough in this country to give to this Nisei who had been killed and was lying in front of him. Chaplain Higuchi had to write a letter home to his parents.

You Nisei fought for this country, your country. It has taken fifty-six years to get to this point, but you made democracy stand for what it really means. When you came home from the war, President Truman had a special White House ceremony for you. It was the only time that the President of the United States had a ceremony at the White House for a unit as small as a battalion. It was raining that morning in Washington, and Truman's aide said, "Let's cancel the ceremony."

Truman said to his aide, "After what those boys have been through, I can stand a little rain." He said to the Niseis, bearing their regimental standard with the motto of "Go for Broke," "I can't tell you how much I appreciate the opportunity to tell you what you have done for this country. You fought not only the enemy, but you fought prejudice and you won. You have made the Constitution stand for what it really means: the welfare of all the people, all the time." Lastly, he advised the Niseis to keep up that fight.

So in the 1980's you fought for redress. One of the reasons that redress passed so overwhelmingly in Congress was the overwhelming record of the100th/442nd and the MIS. The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 provided an apology for your parents and for your suffering. So on the battlefields of France, Italy and Germany, "Go for Broke" stood for the welfare of all of the people, all of the time.

You never lost faith in your country, and we are here today to celebrate that faith. The result of that faith is that your children can be anything that they want: professionals, doctors, and lawyers. The price that you paid for democracy was the highest combat casualty rate of any regiment that served in the United States Army. The 100th/442nd suffered 314% combat casualties. The 100th/442nd was an oversized regiment, with its own cannon and engineer company, and even its own artillery battalion. The four thousand men who started off in February of 1943 had to be replaced nearly three and one half times. Eventually, about 14,000 men would serve in the 100th/442nd.

I see many of my friends from I Company and K Company here today. In one battle alone, the battle for the Rescue of the Lost Battalion in October 1944, which you fought in, two thousand of you went in to rescue two hundred Texas soldiers who couldn't be rescued by their own division. You went and suffered almost a thousand casualties in that one battle alone, of almost five days of constant fighting. In K Company, you started off with 186 riflemen. By the time you reached the Lost Battalion, there were only eight men standing. I Company did worse. They started off with 185 men. By the time they reached the Lost Battalion, there were only four men still standing in the company. It was unbelievable! You rescued the Texas Lost Battalion, and for that you won two presidential unit citations. The army designated the Rescue of the Lost Battalion to be among the top ten battles fought by the U.S. Army in its 230-year history.

You Niseis ultimately won seven unit citations, and no other unit for its size and length has won that many presidential unit citations. Chet Tanaka counted how many citations and how many medals the 100th/442nd earned. Of the fourteen thousand men who served, there were eighteen thousand medals for heroism and service. You had become the most decorated unit in American military history for its size and length of service, and until recently almost no one knew your stories. You really hadn't told anyone, including your families or children. You were truly enryo. If you do something that is really good and you don't talk about it, it must be really good.

Toward the end of the war, in April 1945, the 5th US Army asked you to create a diversionary attack to help break the German Gothic Line. The US Army had three infantry divisions lined up to breach the Gothic Line, which protected the Po Valley and the entrance to Austria. And those three divisions couldn't do it-they were stalemated for six months. The Army then asked the 442nd, the "Go for Broke" Regiment, to break the stalemate. The commander and officers of the 100th/442nd said to the commander of the 92nd Division, "General Almond, we have a plan. We can create a diversionary attack and break the Gothic Line if you give us 24 hours."

The General figuratively fell out of his chair and said, "Impossible. We've had three divisions hammering away at the Gothic Line." The Germans had their best SS Divisions on the mountains and it was considered an impenetrable fortress. He told the Niseis to "Just create a diversionary attack and we'll do the rest." But you Nisei soldiers had your own plan. You were smart. Your average age was about twenty and your average IQ was 116, which was eight points higher than necessary to be an officer in the army. You were barely a hundred twenty five pounds soaking wet, but you were college-educated, and you were going to "Go for Broke."

So you climbed up that mountain called Mount Fogarito, which the Germans had so heavily fortified. You climbed it where they didn't expect you. It was nearly a 4,000-foot vertical precipice. You climbed the mountain that was unclimbable, in combat gear. The Germans couldn't possibly expect an attack from that point. From nighttime until dawn you climbed, almost eight hours. Men fell down as they climbed the mountain, and no man cried out as he fell, so as not to give away the position. At dawn you attacked, go for broke. You took the mountain and you broke the Gothic Line. It didn't take 24 hours, as you thought, or a few weeks, as the Army had planned. It didn't take six months. The U.S. Army reported that you broke the Gothic Line in only thirty-four minutes!

If the story of the 100th/442nd is unbelievable, there is a more unbelievable story. It is the story of the Military Intelligence and Language Service. More than 6,000 Niseis served throughout the Pacific in a super-secret branch of the military. Niseis provided the eyes and ears of intelligence and language skills that helped to break the stalemate in the Pacific. They broke secret codes, interrogated prisoners, provided valuable propaganda, and translated millions of documents to help win the war in the Pacific. By the war's end, General Willoughby, General MacArthur's chief of intelligence, declared that the Nisei shortened the war by two years and saved a million Allied lives. Never had so many owed so much to so few. I only wish that a million people could be here to hear your story and know of your service. I wish every American could know your story. We owe a great debt of honor to you Niseis for what you did for the country and for democracy. It is a debt that can never be repaid.

I am here to tell the story for your children, because I know you can't say it. It is a legacy that they must carry on and remember what you did for them and for all of us. Your legacy continues to protect us all. I remember during the Iranian crisis that there was talk of keeping Iranian Americans possibly in protective custody. Senators Daniel Inouye and Sparky Matsunaga said, "You can't do that. That's already been done, and you were wrong then." So your wartime service protects all of us.

You did make the Constitution stand for all of the people, all of the time. History works. You made it work, and you made it work for me, for your children, and for this country. President Ronald Reagan remembered, when he signed the bill enacting the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which was called House Resolution 442, that "blood that has soaked into the sands of a beach is all of one color. America stands unique in the world, the only country not founded on race, but a way, an ideal."

You Niseis came home, and became what you wanted. Eventually, many of you entered the professions and could go where you wanted and do what you wanted to do. You went about your lives, but you made sure that your parents could become citizens. By 1953, you saw your parents naturalized. Your parents had to wait, in some cases, sixty-five years to become American citizens. And that they could own land for the first time. And that others of Asian descent could own land for the first time. Your greatest success was that your children could be what they wanted to be, without the discrimination that you suffered.

Some of you became lawmakers and entered the House and the Senate. There were more than 590 laws in California in the 19th and the early 20th century against Asians. You fought a fight to make sure those laws were challenged and overturned one by one. We thank the Japanese American senators, Spark Matsunaga and Dan Inouye, veterans of the 100th/442nd, for doing that. We thank you for your providing the legacy upon which they could fight for those rights.

Justice prevailed, and your parents became citizens. We stand at a pinnacle of your history in your golden years. Redress passed and a nation apologized for a terrible injustice perpetrated against its own citizens.

A few months ago at the White House, President Clinton belatedly awarded 20 Medals of Honor to Japanese Americans. Clinton stated in his speech of the Niseis that "in the face of painful prejudice, they helped to define America at its best."

Last night I was speaking to one of my K Company friends, Tosh Okamoto, and he said to me, "You know, the awarding of the Medals of Honor to our boys is sort of the icing on the cake. I've sort of been angry for a long time at my country and what happened to us during the internment. Getting redress and the apology, and having the country recognize my buddies, lifted a cloud from my head. I now really feel like I'm truly American, and it was all worth it."

So this is the happy ending of the 100th/442nd/MIS story, and I thank you for sharing it with us. I salute you. God bless you. And tell your kids to tell the world!


posted by Greg at 9:50 AM

 
"The troops returning home are worried. 'We've lost the peace,' men tell you. 'We can't make it stick.' ... Friend and foe alike, look you accusingly in the face and tell you how bitterly they are disappointed in you as an American. ... Never has American prestige in Europe been lower.... Instead of coming in with a bold plan of relief and reconstruction we came in full of evasions and apologies.... A great many Europeans feel that the cure has been worse than the disease. The taste of victory had gone sour in the mouth of every thoughtful American I met."
--Life Magazine, January 7, 1946


posted by Greg at 9:38 AM

 
There is nothing in the Second Amendment that limits the purposes for which peaceable individual Americans "keep" any arms.


posted by Greg at 9:02 AM

 
. . . President Bush told the graduating class of the Air Force Academy that, indeed, this conflict could take decades to "win." "We are now about three years into the war against terrorism," he said. "This is no time for impatience and self-defeating pessimism. These times demand the kind of courage and confidence that Americans have shown before."

The Federalist has also argued consistently that we must keep the warfront on Jihadi turf in places like Iraq and Afghanistan -- lest they bring it back to ours. The President confirmed that strategic policy, noting, "Some say that by fighting the terrorists abroad since September the 11th, we only stir up a hornets' nest. But the terrorists who struck that day were stirred up already. If America were not fighting terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere, what would these thousands of killers do -- suddenly begin leading productive lives of service and charity? ... We are dealing here with killers who have made the death of Americans the calling of their lives. And America has made a decision about these terrorists: Instead of waiting for them to strike again in our midst, we will take this fight to the enemy."

from the Federalist

posted by Greg at 12:04 PM

 
"My wandering once took me up to an opium farm in the northern mountains where I had occasion to interview the local chieftain. At one point I asked him, since he grew the drug, if he did not use it himself. His answer was a decisive negative. 'Look over there,' he said. 'See that old man sitting in the shade? He has lived out his life. He can no longer see, nor hear, nor enjoy anything that makes life worth living. He needs the drug, and we give it to him. But I am young and strong and it is of no interest to me.' It is odd that our under-culture people in the West have not reached a similar conclusion."
_____

"My smashed elbow taught me many things. The splinters of the radial head had to be removed, but though the surgeon laid the arm wide open, he was for a long time unable to find all six pieces. This meant that the incision was wide open for a very long time, and post operative pain is strongly influenced by the duration of the open wound. This hurt. I cannot offer a comparison, but for several days after the operation I spent a lot of time up in Class 1, and was never below Class 2.

"The morphine was there, and addiction began to set in. In those days, antibiotics had to be administered every four hours, and so I had to be roused regularly and reminded of how much I hurt.

"I got cagey. In a naval hospital reveille is a thunderous occasion. At 6 a.m. everything comes violently to life. The lights go on, the blinds go up, the floors are swept, the polishers roar, and doctors and nurses march up and down the beds examining charts. This is not a time for sleep, so I got used to the idea of calling for relief some half hour before the horn blew, so I could lie there in a dreamy haze while the ward business conducted itself. I was developing addiction.

"The staff noticed this, of course, and as soon as clinically possible they sent me home 'cold turkey.' They were not thoughtful enough to inform my wife of the situation, and it was very hard on her. It is impossible for a patient suffering withdrawal to behave in a civilized manner. The euphoria that morphine produces is reversed, and any sort of sensual input is turned into a torment. A slamming door, a crying child, a barking dog are nearly unbearable. I got over it, of course, but it was certainly a learning experience. I know what a drug addict suffers, and I certainly know enough to stand well clear of the whole business."

--Jeff Cooper

posted by Greg at 12:54 PM

 
from The Federalist:

The President repeated, "Our enemies in Iraq are good at filling hospitals, but they do not build any. They can incite men to murder and suicide, but they cannot inspire men to live, and hope, and add to the progress of their country. The terrorists' only influence is violence, and their only agenda is death. Our agenda, in contrast, is freedom and independence, security and prosperity for the Iraqi people. And by removing a source of terrorist violence and instability in the Middle East, we also make our own country more secure."

"We are less safe because of his policies," Gore said of President Bush's choice to make war rather than serve subpoenas. Albert then took exception with the characterization of Iraq as "the central front in the war on terror," claiming instead that "it has unfortunately become the central recruiting office for terrorists." But Gore wasn't finished maligning our military: "As many as 37 prisoners may have been murdered while in captivity," Gore wildly charged. "Murdered"! Gore referred to the prisons holding suspected Jihadi terrorists as "Bush's Gulag," and he made the outrageous comment that "we need not reassure ourselves and should not congratulate ourselves that our society is less cruel than some others, although it is worth noting that there are many that are less cruel than ours."

Shame on you, Albert Gore ... shame on you.

Republican National Committee Communications Director Jim Dyke delivered an appropriately astringent reply: "Albert Gore served as Vice President of this country for eight years. During that time, Osama Bin Laden declared war on the United States five times and terrorists killed U.S. citizens on at least four different occasions including the first bombing of the World Trade Center, the attacks on Khobar Towers, our embassies in East Africa, and the USS Cole. Al Gore's attacks on the President today demonstrate that he either does not understand the threat of global terror, or he has amnesia."

posted by Greg at 11:46 AM

 
"Let's be clear. Any constitutional amendment denying the right of elected representation would accomplish what no terrorist could, namely striking a fatal blow to what has otherwise always been 'The People's House.'"
--House Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner, May 5, 2004

http://www.thelibertycommittee.org/cog.htm

posted by Greg at 9:51 AM

 
"He [Brian R. Chontosh, USMC] fought with the M16 until it was out of ammo. Then he fought with the Beretta until it was out of ammo. Then he picked up a dead man's AK47 and fought with that until it was out of ammo. Then he picked up another dead man's AK47 and fought with that until it was out of ammo."

http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/chontosh.asp


posted by Greg at 9:42 AM

 
"If we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known, that we are at all times ready for War."
--George Washington
posted by Greg at 9:31 AM

 
"Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purpose is beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
--Supreme Court Justice Brandeis

posted by Greg at 9:10 AM

 
I recently bought a copy of Herb Meyer's video "The Siege of Western Civilization" (http://www.siegeofwesternciv.com/). Among other things, he talks about how Judaism and Christianity reconciled themselves with the modern world several hundred years ago and as a result, they have been the source of very little trouble since.

Islam has yet to do so, and as a result it is the source of a great deal of trouble, especially as Muslims emigrate throughout the world.

Along these same lines, the January/February 2004 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine has an article called "The Saudi Paradox" by Michael Scott Doran that describes a schism among the rulers of Saudi Arabia. On one side is Crown Prince Abdullah, and on the other side is his half-brother Prince Nayef, the Interior Minister (who controls the secret police). Neither is yet powerful enough to capture the throne.

Abdullah is a proponent of Taqarub, or rapprochement between Muslims and non-Muslims. Nayef, on the other hand, supports Tawhid, which is closely related to jihad, and is very anti-American.

A Saudi journalist recently wrote that "we need an Islam reconciled with the other, an Islam that does not know hatred for others because of their beliefs or their inclinations. We need a new Reformation, a bold reinterpretation of the religious text so that we can reconcile ourselves with the world."

Of course this journalist was accused of apostasy by the hard-line clerics and sentenced to death.

What does this mean for us? It demonstrates that there are those who understand very well what is going on--Herb Meyer is one of them. It also indicates (to me, at least) that this fight is far from over, and it is going to get worse before it gets better.

I highly recommend that you order a copy of Herb Meyer's DVD. Watch it. Loan it to your friends and let them watch it.

posted by Greg at 2:15 PM

 
The Second Amendment of the Constitution clearly states that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Of course, the Constitution only applies to the Congress, not to the States; or does it?

William Rawle, who was offered the position of first US Attorney General by George Washington, made the following statement:

"In the second [amendment] it is declared, that a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state. . . .

"The corollary, from the first position, is that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

"The prohibition is general. No clause in the Constitution could by any rule of construction be conceived to give to congress a power to disarm the people. Such a flagitious attempt could only be made under some general pretence by a state legislature. But if in any blind pursuit of inordinate power, either should attempt it, this amendment may be appealed to as a restraint on both."

This clearly indicates that the Second Amendment was intended to restrict both the federal Congress and the State legislatures from infringing the right to keep and bear arms, which can only be an individual right.

However, that is not the whole story. Following the Civil War, several debates took place concerning the Freedmen's Bureau Bill, the Civil Rights Bill of 1866, and the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Both the Freedmen's Bureau Bill and the Civil Rights Bill specifically mentioned the right to keep and bear arms as an individual right, and even those legislators who were opposed to these bills recognized the right to keep and bear arms as an individual right. But the stated purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment is to put the same prohibition on the State legislatures as already existed on the Congress--a prohibition against violating the rights stated in the Bill of Rights.

That is worth repeating. The State legislatures do not have the power to infringe the right to keep and bear arms any more than does the Congress, thanks to both the Second and Fourteenth Amendments.

Writes Stephen Halbrook:

"Among other freedoms in the Bill of Rights, keeping and bearing arms was considered part of the definition of a citizen. Depicted as a civil right and a privilege and immunity in Dred Scott, the debates on the Fourteenth Amendment, and on related civil rights legislation, this liberty interest effectuated the defense and practical realization of the guarantees of 'life, liberty, or property.' This fundamental right under 'the laws' (that is, the Bill of Rights) also qualified for 'equal protection,' but never for deprivation, whether equal or unequal. To the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment, these universally recognized rights, too numerous to list individually, were to be protected by the all-inclusive language that they proposed.

"The Freedmen's Bureau Act declared that 'the constitutional right to bear arms' is included among the 'laws and proceedings concerning personal liberty, personal security,' and property, and that 'the free enjoyment of such immunities and rights' is to be protected. This again suggests that the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to incorporate the Second Amendment, so as to invalidate state infringements of the right of the people to keep and bear arms. The Fourteenth Amendment protects the rights to personal security and personal liberty, which its authors declared in the Freedmen's Bureau Act to include 'the constitutional right to bear arms.' To the members of the Thirty-Ninth Congress, possession of arms was a fundamental, individual right worthy of protection from both federal and state
violation.

"The arms that the Fourteenth Amendment's framers believed to be constitutionally protected included the latest firearms of all kinds, from military muskets (which were fitted with bayonets) and repeating rifles to shotguns, pistols, and revolvers. The right of the people to keep arms meant the right of an individual to possess arms in the home and elsewhere; the right to bear arms meant to carry arms on one's person. The right to have arms implied the right to use them for protection of one's life, family, and home against criminals and terrorist groups of all kinds, whether attacking Klansmen or lawless law enforcement. Far from being restricted to official militia activity, the right to keep and bear arms could be exercised by persons against the state's official militia when it plundered and killed the innocent.

"In the above sense, 'the constitutional right to bear arms' was perhaps considered as the most fundamental protection for the rights of personal liberty and personal security, which may explain its unique mention in the Freedmen's Bureau Act. To the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment, human emancipation meant the protection of this great human right from all sources of infringement, whether federal or state."

All quotes taken from Freedmen, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Right to Bear Arms, 1866-1876, by Stephen P. Halbrook, 1998.

This is not some academic political theory to be debated; this is history. Our history, our Constitution, our heritage, our liberty--all paid for by the blood of our forebears.


posted by Greg at 2:08 PM

 
"There is but one answer to be made to the dynamite bomb, and that can best be made by the Winchester rifle."
--Teddy Roosevelt, 1887

posted by Greg at 9:52 AM

 
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is
worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important that his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made so and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
--John Stuart Mill(1806-1873)

posted by Greg at 9:48 AM

 
"Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."
--Benjamin Franklin

Unfortunately, there are many people among us who do not believe that there is anything sacred about the US Constitution. The wisdom of the Founding Fathers who created the document and our form of government seems to be lacking from the vast majority of citizens these days. The fact remains that the constitution is the supreme law of the land, and we would do well to adhere to it. It "promises permanency," but only if we stick to the constraint that any changes that are needed must be made through the formal amendment process, and never through "reinterpretation" or by simply ignoring it.
posted by Greg at 12:41 PM

 
Subscribe to the Federalist now!

posted by Greg at 4:13 PM

 
I don't know if this is true, but if so, I like the way Gen. Pershing thought. It puts LCOL West's "offense" into perspective.

Once in U.S. history an episode of Islamic terrorism was very quickly stopped. It happened in the Philippines about 1911, when Gen. John J. Pershing was in command of the garrison.

There had been numerous Islamic terrorist attacks, so "Black Jack" told his boys to catch the perps and teach them a lesson. Forced to dig their own graves, the terrorists were all tied to posts, execution style. The U.S. soldiers then brought in pigs and slaughtered them, rubbing the bullets in the blood and fat.

The terrorists were terrorized; they saw that they would be contaminated with hogs' blood. This would mean that they could not enter Heaven, even if they died as terrorist martyrs. All but one was shot, their bodies dumped into the grave, and the hog guts dumped atop the bodies. The lone survivor was allowed to escape back to the terrorist camp and tell his brethren what
happened to the others.

This brought a stop to terrorism in the Philippines for the next 50 years. Pointing a gun into the face of Islamic terrorists won't make them flinch - they welcome the chance to die for Allah. Like Gen. Pershing, we must show them that they won't get to Muslim heaven (which they believe has an endless supply of virgins) but instead will die with the hated pigs of the devil.

posted by Greg at 5:41 PM

 
"'An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last,' Winston Churchill once said. The kingdom of Saudi Arabia is learning this the hard way. ... Long in denial about militancy in its homeland, the Saudi royal family finds itself in the terrorist crosshairs. It must, once and for all, directly confront its homegrown extremists and root them out. For Islamic fundamentalism poses a grave threat not only to the West, but to the Saudi kingdom as well. The Saudi government should immediately increase security at likely civilian targets and act more decisively on intelligence tips. Ignoring even one request from U.S. officials for better security before last week's attack would have been bad enough; the Saudis ignored five. It was no one-time lapse. Saudi authorities have been uncooperative in investigating past attacks against Americans, including the Khobar Towers bombing in 1996, which killed 19 airmen, and the Sept. 11th attacks. The kingdom reportedly spirited a number of its citizens out of the United States after 9/11 before it could be determined if they had information about the hijackers. ...Riyadh should shut off the unregulated flow of money leaving Saudi Arabia for the pockets of terrorists. ... Nineteen months into the antiterrorism war, Saudi Arabia is finally getting a wake-up call: No one is immune. The Saudis have pledged their full cooperation in the war on terrorism -- and the world deserves nothing less. It's high time we bagged this crocodile."
--Peter Brookes

posted by Greg at 2:44 PM

 
"Pribbenow appealed to freedom of speech and later argued that it would be the death of institutions like 157-year-old Rockford College if people stopped listening to ideas, however controversial they may be."
(from http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=32676)

Right. So, if some asshole gets invited to speak at my college graduation and starts a speech about homosexual relationships with young boys, or bestiality, or how people should get together to overthrow the government, or to lynch black people--I should respect the speaker's opinion and listen to the ideas presented, all in the name of diverstity of ideas and freedom of expression? Bullshit. We have brains so that we can be discerning, so that we can make judgments. The person who invited the speaker from the Times made a mistake, and he screwed up what should have been a great day for an entire graduating class.

posted by Greg at 12:20 PM

 
A World Without Guns
Be forewarned: It's not a pretty picture

By Dave Kopel, Paul Gallant, and Joanne Eisen of the Independence Institute
December 5, 2001 9:40 a.m.

Imagine the world without guns" was a bumper sticker that began making the rounds after the murder of ex-Beatle John Lennon on December 18, 1980. Last year, Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, followed up on that sentiment by announcing she would become a spokeswoman for Handgun Control, Inc. (which later changed its name to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, and which was previously named the National Council to Control Handguns).

So let's try hard to imagine what a world without guns would look like. It isn't hard to do. But be forewarned: It's not a pretty picture.

The way to get to a gun-free world, the gun-prohibition groups tell us, is to pass laws banning them. We can begin by imagining the enactment of laws which ban all non-government possession of firearms.

It's not likely that local bans will do the job. Take, for example, New York's 1911 Sullivan Law, which imposed an exceedingly restrictive handgun-licensing scheme on New York City. In recent decades, administrative abuses have turned the licensing statute into what amounts to prohibition, except for tenacious people who navigate a deliberately obstructive licensing system.

Laws affect mainly those willing to obey them. And where there's an unfulfilled need--and money to be made--there's usually a way around the law. Enter the black market, which flourishes all the more vigorously with ever-increasing restrictions and prohibitions. In TV commercials that aired last August, New York City Republican (sort of) mayoral candidate Mike Bloomberg informed voters that "in 1993, there were as many as 2 million illegal guns on the street." The insinuation was that all those guns were in the hands of criminals, and the implication was that confiscating the guns would make the city a safer place. What Bloomberg never explained was how he planned to shut down the black market.

So let's imagine, instead, a nationwide gun ban, or maybe even a worldwide ban.

Then again, heroin and cocaine have been illegal in the United States, and most of the world, for nearly a century. Huge resources have been devoted to suppressing their production, sale, and use, and many innocent people have been sacrificed in the crossfire of the "drug war." Yet heroin and cocaine are readily available on the streets of almost all large American cities, and at prices that today are lower than in previous decades.

Perhaps a global prohibition law isn't good enough. Maybe imposing the harshest penalty possible for violation of such a law will give it real teeth: mandatory life in prison for possession of a gun, or even for possession of a single bullet. (We won't imagine the death penalty, since the Yoko crowd doesn't like the death penalty.)

On second thought, Jamaica's Gun Court Act of 1974 contained just such a penalty, and even that wasn't sufficient. On August 18, 2001, Jamaican Melville Cooke observed that today, "the only people who do not have an illegal firearm [in this country], are those who do not want one." Violent crime in Jamaica is worse than ever, as gangsters and trigger-happy police commit homicides with impunity, and only the law-abiding are disarmed.

Yet the Jamaican government wants to globalize its failed policy. In July 2001, Burchell Whiteman, Jamaica's Minister of Education, Youth and Culture spoke at the U.N. Disarmament Conference to demand the "implementation of measures that would limit the production of weapons to levels that meet the needs for defence and national security."

And as long as governments are allowed to have guns, there will be gun factories to steal from. Some of these factories might have adequate security measures to prevent theft, including theft by employees. But in a world with about 200 nations, most of them governed by kleptocracies, it's preposterous to imagine that some of those "government-only" factories won't become suppliers for the black market. Alternatively, corrupt military and police could supply firearms to the black market.

We'd better revise our strategy. Rather than wishing for laws (which cannot, even imaginably, create a gun-free world), let's be more ambitious, and imagine that all guns vanish. Even guns possessed by government agents. And let's close all the gun factories, too. That ought to put the black market out of business.

Voilà! Instant peace!

Back to the Drawing Board
Then again.....it's not very difficult to make a workable firearm. As J. David Truby points out in his book Zips, Pipes, and Pens: Arsenal of Improvised Weapons, "Today, all of the improvised/modified designs [of firearms] remain well within the accomplishment of the mechanically unskilled citizen who does not have access to firearms through other means."

In the article "Gun-Making as a Cottage Industry," Charles Chandler observed that Americans "have a reputation as ardent hobbyists and do-it-yourselfers, building everything from ship models to home improvements." The one area they have not been very active in is that of firearm construction. And that, Chandler explained, is only because "well-designed and well-made firearms are generally available as items of commerce."

A complete gun ban, or highly restrictive licensing amounting to near-ban, would create a real incentive for gun making to become a "cottage industry".

It's already happening in Great Britain, a consequence of the complete ban on civilian possession of handguns imposed by the Firearms Act of 1997. Not only are the Brits swamped today with illegally imported firearms, but local, makeshift gun factories have sprung up to compete.

British police already know about some of them. Officers from Scotland Yard's Metropolitan Police Serious Crime Group South recently recovered 12 handgun replicas which were converted to working models. An auto repair shop in London served as the front for the novel illegal gun factory. Police even found some enterprising gun-makers turning screwdrivers into workable firearms, and producing firearms disguised as ordinary key rings.

In short, closing the Winchester Repeating Arms factory--and all the others--will not spell the end of the firearm business.

Just take the case of Bougainville, the largest island in the South Pacific's Solomon Islands chain. Bougainville was the site of a bloody, decade-long secessionist uprising against domination by the government of Papua New Guinea, aided and abetted by the Australian government. The conflict there was the longest-running confrontation in the Pacific since the end of World War II, and caused the deaths of 15,000 to 20,000 islanders.

During the hostilities, which included a military blockade of the island, one of the goals was to deprive the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) of its supply of arms. The tactic failed: the BRA simply learned how to make its own guns using materiel and ammunition left over from the War.

In fact, at the United Nations Asia Pacific Regional Disarmament Conference held in Spring 2001, it was quietly admitted that the BRA, within ten years of its formation, had managed to manufacture a production copy of the M16 automatic rifle and other machine guns. (That makes one question the real intent behind the U.N. Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All its Aspects, which followed several months later: the U.N. leadership can't be so daft as to fail to recognize the implications for world disarmament after learning of the success of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army.)

If this single island of Bougainville can produce its own weapons, the Philippine Islands have long had a thriving cottage industry to manufacture firearms--despite very restrictive gun laws imposed by the Marcos dictatorship and some other regimes.

It looks like we'll need to revisit our fantasy, yet again.

Okay. By proclamation of Kopel, Gallant, and Eisen, not only do all firearms--every last one of them--vanish instantly, but there shall be no further remanufacturing.

That last part's a bit tricky. Auto repair shops, hobbyists, revolutionaries--everyone with decent machine shop skills--can make a gun from something. This takes us down the same road as drug prohibition: With primary anti-drug laws having proven themselves unenforceable, secondary laws have been added to prohibit possession of items which could be used to manufacture drugs. Even making suspicious purchases at a gardening store can earn one a "dynamic entry" visit from the local SWAT team.

But laws proscribing the possession of gun-manufacturing items would have to be even broader than laws against possession of drug-manufacturing items, because there are so many tools which can be used to make guns, or be made into guns. What we'd really have to do is carefully control every possible step in the gun-making process. That means the registration of all machine tools, and the federal licensing of plumbers (similar to current federal licensure of pharmacies), auto mechanics, and all those handymen with their screwdrivers. And we'd need to stamp a serial number on pipes (potential gun barrels) in every bathroom and automobile--and everywhere else one finds pipes--and place all the serial numbers in a federal registry.

Today, the antigun lobbies who claim they don't want to ban all guns still insist that registration of every single gun and licensing of every gun owner is essential to keep guns from falling into the wrong hands. If so, it's hard to argue that licensing and registration of gun manufacturing items would not be essential to prevent illicit production of guns.

Thus, we would have to control every part of the manufacturing process. That would add up to a very expensive, complicated proposition. Even a 1% noncompliance rate with the "Firearms Precursors Control Act" would leave an immense supply of materials available for black-market gun making.

In order to ensure total conformity with the act, it's difficult to imagine leaving most existing constitutional protections in place. The mind boggles at the kinds of search and seizure laws required to make certain that people do not possess unregistered metal pipes or screwdrivers!

For example, just to enforce a ban on actual guns (not gun precursors), the Jamaican government needed to wipe out many common law controls on police searches, and many common law guarantees of fair trials. We'd have to trash the Constitution in order to completely prevent a black market in gun precursors from taking hold. Still, as the gun-prohibition lobby always says, if it saves just one life, it would be worth it.

But, what if, despite these extreme measures, the black market still functioned--as it almost always does, when there is sufficient demand?

It's time to seriously revisit our strategy for a gun-free world. Maybe there's a shortcut around all of this.

Okay. We're going to make a truly radical, no-holds-barred proposal this time, take a quantum leap in science, and go where no man has gone before. There may be those who scoff at our proposal, but it can succeed where all other strategies have failed.

We, Kopel, Gallant, and Eisen, hereby imagine that, from this day forth, the laws of chemical combustion are revoked. We hereby imagine that gunpowder--and all similar compounds--no longer have the capacity to burn and release the gases necessary to propel a bullet.

Peace for Our Time
Finally, for the first time, a gun-free world is truly within our grasp--and it's time to see what man hath wrought. And for that, all we have to do is take a look back at the kind of world our ancestors lived in.

To say that life in the pre-gunpowder world was violent would be an understatement. Land travel, especially over long distances, was fraught with danger from murderers, robbers, and other criminals. Most women couldn't protect themselves from rape, except by granting unlimited sexual access to one male in exchange for protection from other males.

Back then, weapons depended on muscle power. Advances in weaponry primarily magnified the effect of muscle power. The stronger one is, the better one's prospects for fighting up close with an edged weapon like a sword or a knife, or at a distance with a bow or a javelin (both of which require strong arms). The superb ability of such "old-fashioned" edged weapons to inflict carnage on innocents was graphically demonstrated by the stabbing deaths of eight second graders on June 8, 2001, by former school clerk Mamoru Takuma in gun-free Osaka, Japan.

When it comes to muscle power, young men usually win over women, children, and the elderly. It was warriors who dominated society in gun-free feudal Europe, and a weak man usually had to resign himself to settle on a life of toil and obedience in exchange for a place within the castle walls when evil was afoot.

And what of the women? According to the custom of jus primae noctis, a lord had the right to sleep with the bride of a newly married serf on the first night--a necessary price for the serf to pay--in exchange for the promise of safety and security (does that ring a bell?). Not uncommonly, this arrangement didn't end with the wedding night, since one's lord had the practical power to take any woman, any time. Regardless of whether jus primae noctis was formally observed in a region, rich, strong men had little besides their conscience to stop them from having their way with women who weren't protected by another wealthy strongman.

But there's yet another problem with imagining gunpowder out of existence: We get rid of firearms, but we don't get rid of guns. With the advent of the blow gun some 40,000 years ago, man discovered the efficacy of a tube for concentrating air power and aiming a missile, making the eventual appearance of airguns inevitable. So gunpowder or no gunpowder, all we've been doing, thus far, amounts to quibbling over the means for propelling something out of a tube.

Airguns date back to somewhere around the beginning of the 17th century. And we don't mean airguns like the puny Daisy Red Ryder BB Gun with a compass in the stock, longed for by Ralphie in Jean Shepard's 1984 classic A Christmas Story ("No, Ralphie, you can't have a BB gun--you'll shoot your eye out!").

No, we're talking serious lethality here. The kind of powder-free gun that can hurl a 7.4 oz. projectile with a
muzzle energy of 1,082 foot-pounds. Compare that to the 500 foot-pounds of muzzle energy from a typical .357 Magnum round! Even greater projectile energies are achievable using gases like nitrogen or helium, which create higher pressures than air does.

Before the advent of self-contained powder cartridge guns, airguns were considered serious weapons. In fact, three hundred years ago, air-powered guns were among the most powerful and accurate large-bore rifles around. While their biggest disadvantages were cost and intricacy of manufacture, they were more dependable and could be fired more rapidly than firearms of the same period. A butt-reservoir .31 airgun was carried by Lewis and Clark on their historic expedition, and used successfully for taking game. [See Robert D. Beeman, "Proceeding On to the Lewis & Clark Airgun," Airgun Revue 6 (2000): 13-33.] Airguns even saw duty in military engagements more than 200 years ago.

Today, fully automatic M-16-style airguns are a reality. It was only because of greater cost relative to powder guns, and the greater convenience afforded by powder arms, that airgun technology was never pushed to its lethal limits.

Other non-powder weapon systems have competed for man's attention, as well. The 20th century was the bloodiest century in the history of mankind. And while firearms were used for killing (for example, with machine guns arranged to create interlocking fields of fire in the trench warfare of World War I), they were hardly essential. By far, the greatest number of deliberate killings occurred during the genocides and democides perpetrated by governments against disarmed populations. The instruments of death ranged from Zyklon B gas to machetes to starvation.

Imagine No Claws
To imagine a world with no guns is to imagine a world in which the strong rule the weak, in which women are dominated by men, and in which minorities are easily abused or mass-murdered by majorities. Practically speaking, a firearm is the only weapon that allows a weaker person to defend himself from a larger, stronger group of attackers, and to do so at a distance. As George Orwell observed, a weapon like a rifle "gives claws to the weak."

The failure of imagination among people who yearn for a gun-free world is their naive assumption that getting rid of claws will get rid of the desire to dominate and kill. They fail to acknowledge the undeniable fact that when the weak are deprived of claws (or firearms), the strong will have access to other weapons, including sheer muscle power. A gun-free world would be much more dangerous for women, and much safer for brutes and tyrants.

The one society in history that successfully gave up firearms was Japan in the 17th century, as detailed in Noel Perrin's superb book Giving Up the Gun: Japan's Reversion to the Sword 1543-1879. An isolated island with a totalitarian dictatorship, Japan was able to get rid of the guns. Historian Stephen Turnbull summarizes the result:

"[The dictator] Hidéyoshi's resources were such that the edict was carried out to the letter. The growing social mobility of peasants was thus flung suddenly into reverse. The ikki, the warrior-monks, became figures of the past . . . Hidéyoshi had deprived the peasants of their weapons. Iéyasu [the next ruler] now began to deprive them of their self respect. If a peasant offended a samurai he might be cut down on the spot by the samurai's sword. [The Samurai: A Military History (New York: Macmillan, 1977).]"

The inferior status of the peasantry having been affirmed by civil disarmament, the Samurai enjoyed kiri-sute gomen, permission to kill and depart. Any disrespectful member of the lower class could be executed by a Samurai's sword.

The Japanese disarmament laws helped mold the culture of submission to authority which facilitated Japan's domination by an imperialist military dictatorship in the 1930s, which led the nation into a disastrous world war.

In short, the one country that created a truly gun-free society created a society of harsh class oppression, in which the strongmen of the upper class could kill the lower classes with impunity. When a racist, militarist, imperialist government took power, there was no effective means of resistance. The gun-free world of Japan turned into just the opposite of the gentle, egalitarian utopia of John Lennon's song "Imagine."

Instead of imagining a world without a particular technology, what about imagining a world in which the human heart grows gentler, and people treat each other decently? This is part of the vision of many of the world's great religions. Although we have a long way to go, there is no denying that hundreds of millions of lives have changed for the better because people came to believe what these religions teach.

If a truly peaceful world is attainable--or, even if unattainable, worth striving for--there is nothing to be gained from the futile attempt to eliminate all guns. A more worthwhile result can flow from the changing of human hearts, one soul at a time.

from http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel120501.shtml

posted by Greg at 9:52 AM

 
Dissent by Judge Kozinski

KOZINSKI, Circuit Judge, dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc:

Judges know very well how to read the Constitution broadly when they are sympathetic to the right being asserted. We have held, without much ado, that "speech, or . . . the press" also means the Internet, see Reno v. ACLU, 521 U.S. 844 (1997), and that "persons, houses, papers, and effects" also means public telephone booths, see Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967). When a particular right comports especially well with our notions of good social policy, we build magnificent legal edifices on elliptical constitutional phrases-or even the white spaces between lines of constitutional text. See, e.g., Compassion in Dying v. Washington, 79 F.3d 790 (9th Cir. 1996) (en banc), rev'd sub nom. Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702 (1997). But, as the panel amply demonstrates, when we're none too keen on a particular constitutional guarantee, we can be equally ingenious in burying language that is incontrovertibly there.

It is wrong to use some constitutional provisions as springboards for major social change while treating others like senile relatives to be cooped up in a nursing home until they quit annoying us. As guardians of the Constitution, we must be consistent in interpreting its provisions. If we adopt a jurisprudence sympathetic to individual rights, we must give broad compass to all constitutional provisions that protect individuals from tyranny. If we take a more statist approach, we must give all such provisions narrow scope. Expanding some to gargantuan proportions while discarding others like a crumpled gum wrapper is not faithfully applying the Constitution; it's using our power as federal judges to constitutionalize our personal preferences.

The able judges of the panel majority are usually very sympathetic to individual rights, but they have succumbed to the temptation to pick and choose. Had they brought the same generous approach to the Second Amendment that they routinely bring to the First, Fourth and selected portions of the Fifth, they would have had no trouble finding an individual right to bear arms. Indeed, to conclude otherwise, they had to ignore binding precedent. United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939), did not hold that the defendants lacked standing to raise a Second Amendment defense, even though the government argued the collective rights theory in its brief. See Kleinfeld Dissent at 6011-12; see also Brannon P. Denning & Glenn H. Reynolds, Telling Miller's Tale: A Reply to David Yassky, 65 Law & Contemp. Probs. 113, 117-18 (2002). The Supreme Court reached the Second Amendment claim and rejected it on the merits after finding no evidence that Miller's weapon-a sawed-off shotgun-was reasonably susceptible to militia use. See Miller, 307 U.S. at 178. We are bound not only by the outcome of Miller but also by its rationale. If Miller's claim was dead on arrival because it was raised by a person rather than a state, why would the Court have bothered discussing whether a sawed-off shotgun was suitable for militia use? The panel majority not only ignores Miller's test; it renders most of the opinion wholly superfluous. As an inferior court, we may not tell the Supreme Court it was out tolunch when it last visited a constitutional provision.

The majority falls prey to the delusion-popular in some circles-that ordinary people are too careless and stupid to own guns, and we would be far better off leaving all weapons in the hands of professionals on the government payroll. But the simple truth-born of experience-is that tyranny thrives best where government need not fear the wrath of an armed people. Our own sorry history bears this out: Disarmament was the tool of choice for subjugating both slaves and free blacks in the South. In Florida, patrols searched blacks' homes for weapons, confiscated those found and punished their owners without judicial process. See Robert J. Cottrol & Raymond T. Diamond, The Second Amendment: Toward an Afro-Americanist Reconsideration, 80 Geo. L.J. 309, 338 (1991). In the North, by contrast, blacks exercised their right to bear arms to defend against racial mob violence. Id. at 341-42. As Chief Justice Taney well appreciated, the institution of slavery required a class of people who lacked the means to resist. See Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393, 417 (1857) (finding black citizenship unthinkable because it would give blacks the right to "keep and carry arms wherever they went"). A revolt by Nat Turner and a few dozen other armed blacks could be put down without much difficulty; one by four million armed blacks would have meant big trouble.

All too many of the other great tragedies of history-Stalin's atrocities, the killing fields of Cambodia, the Holocaust, to name but a few-were perpetrated by armed troops against unarmed populations. Many could well have been avoided or mitigated, had the perpetrators known their intended victims were equipped with a rifle and twenty bullets apiece, as the Militia Act required here. See Kleinfeld Dissent at 5997-99. If a few hundred Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto could hold off the Wehrmacht for almost a month with only a handful of weapons, six million Jews armed with rifles could not so easily have been herded into cattle cars.

My excellent colleagues have forgotten these bitter lessons of history. The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid stories of gun crime routinely do. But few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed-where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.

Fortunately, the Framers were wise enough to entrench the right of the people to keep and bear arms within our constitutional structure. The purpose and importance of that right was still fresh in their minds, and they spelled it out clearly so it would not be forgotten. Despite the panel's mighty struggle to erase these words, they remain, and the people themselves can read what they say plainly enough:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

The sheer ponderousness of the panel's opinion-the mountain of verbiage it must deploy to explain away these fourteen short words of constitutional text-refutes its thesis far more convincingly than anything I might say. The panel's labored effort to smother the Second Amendment by sheer body weight has all the grace of a sumo wrestler trying to kill a rattlesnake by sitting on it-and is just as likely to succeed.

http://keepandbeararms.com/silveira/enbanc.asp

posted by Greg at 8:30 AM

 
"The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that... it is their
right and duty to be at all times armed...."
-- Thomas Jefferson to Justice John Cartwright, 1824
posted by Greg at 4:27 PM

 
"We are all anti-war -- and American troops in Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf represent the kind of protest that terrorists can understand."
--Thomas Sowell

posted by Greg at 4:41 PM

 
Liberals and Pacifists

People who claim that "violence never solves anything" or that "war must be avoided at all costs" clearly are not thinking, either by choice or by defect. If war must be avoided at all costs, then for example we should have accepted the "cost" of the Holocaust and the conquest of Europe by Hitler. That is absurd, as are the folks who parrot this foolish notion. War sometimes is necessary, and therefore violence sometimes does solve problems. The fact that some people are too cowardly to make the tough decision to go to war when necessary does not make their pacifism a model to follow; rather it makes them unfit for public leadership, especially leadership of the United States.

posted by Greg at 10:21 AM

 
"The violence began on Friday after Islamic preachers used their sermons to condemn the U.S.-led war against Iraq. . . ."
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/breaking_4.html

This sums up nicely why there can never be peace while Muslim extremists run amuck.

posted by Greg at 10:22 AM

 
There seems to be a trend in terrorism threat reporting. First, an incident occurs; then people say, "Why didn't you warn us?" Then we get more news coverage of warnings, plus the official alert level - and no one knows what to do. People think that local, state, and federal authorities do all of the work necessary to prepare for terrorist attacks or other disasters, but that is not true. Here are some things that regular people can do:

1) Be alert; know what is happening around you.
2) Keep up with current events; know what the current alert level is.
3) Be armed at all times. Implicit in this is getting training and maintaining proficiency with whatever arms you choose to bear.
4) Prepare emergency supplies -- a disaster kit, first aid kits, food and water, etc.
5) Support your country's efforts to fight back, even if it inconveniences you (for example, when war news negatively affects the economy). Show a united front against the enemy. Fly the flag, and mean it.
6) NEVER accept excuses for terrorism.

posted by Greg at 11:04 AM

 
"Those options include the possible basing of U.S. missiles on Australian soil and greater use of the joint Australia-U.S. space-tracking facility, Pine Gap, in central Australia.

This has raised fears that Australia's profile as a target for terrorist and military attack will be raised.

Australia has already contributed around 2,000 troops, fighter jets, navy frigates and other military equipment to the U.S.-led build-up of forces in the Persian Gulf ahead of a possible attack on Iraq.

Canberra also contributed troops to the war in Afghanistan, a situation which al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden says resulted in Australians being the key target of the October 12 Bali terrorist blast. More than 200 people died in that attack, including 88 Australians."

(from http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/auspac/02/27/australia.defense/index.html)

It seems ridiculous to me that people are afraid of doing what is right, for fear of potential consequences. If you live in a crime-infested neighborhood, do you walk softly for fear of offending the criminals, or do you take a stand against them?

Neither America nor Australia nor any other country should shrink from doing what must be done in the fight against terrorists because of potential reprisals by them. They are already attacking us; we must fight back. I don't care whether people hate us; when they attack us, they must die.

posted by Greg at 12:06 PM

 
Don't Tread on Me

You'd better not set your sights on me,
It just might spoil your victory.

You'd better turn and walk away,
Might learn to love another day.

Don't you dare forget your history.

Don't you dare,
Don't you tread on me.

posted by Greg at 3:31 PM