...but are Supreme Court justices entitled to their own facts?
The call for impeachment in comments is a little harsh, but shouldn't there at least be a call for extreme embarrassment and apology? I mean, this was a fundamental plank in the foundation of the dissent, and none of the justices, or their clerks, caught it?
It makes one wonder how unfactually based many of their other opinions are. And it really emphasizes that "opinions" are all they are, which is a pretty sad commentary on the state of the SCOTUS. Unfortunately, an Obama would appoint more just like them.
[Update a few minutes later]
Jim Lindgren writes that Breyer's dissent is self refuting.
If you're waiting for me to be surprised, don't hold your breath. This court is an embarrassment. Or at least a minority of it is.
From a previous post: "Stevens doesn't dispute that the Second Amendment protects an individual right, but he finds the scope of that right limited to using weapons for certain military purposes."
Huh? In what way does an individual, taken by himself, use a weapon for a military purpose? No man is an army. The second amendment was clearly intended to guarantee the individual right to keep and bear arms, and the primary purpose for which an individual needs to be armed is for self defence.
At the time the constitution was drafted, people, as individuals, owned guns, and it was understood that a man's defence was ultimately his own responsibility (this was certainly the case on the frontier), and everyone knew this.
Good points, and an interesting link.
Of course it goes both ways--ie the liberal justices don't have a monopoly on such mistakes. IIRC, Scalia's dissent on the Boumediene also cited information that turned out to be false (that the military had found that 30 former Guatanamo prisoners had "returned to the battlefield", when it turns out that some of those who were counted had merely written editorials to the NYT, or participated in filming a lefty flick about their experiences). But it's easier to see stupidity like that when the ruling or dissent is one you disagree with.
In my case, I have to say that the SCOTUS rulings on Heller and Boumediene are two of the most positive signs I've seen lately. :-)
~Jon
One thing that's interesting is that apparently this same mistake happened to the 9th Circuit Court and they had to retract a ruling. If someone looked only at the original ruling, that might account for the mistake.
It's probably taken out of context (which just goes to prove that journalists don't have a clue about our founding documents), but my jaw dropped at this statement attributed to Justice Stevens:
[the majority]would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons.
Uh...yeah. That's what the Bill of Rights is all about, you know: limiting the "tools" (laws and police and jails and such) available to elected officials wishing to regulate this and that or whatever. Obviously the Second Amendment is indeed deliberately designed to limit the tools available to elected officials. That's hardly in question. What was debated was how the SA limited those tools; whether the tool of an outright ban was available, or only lesser tools like registration and licensing requirements, et cetera.
I mean, wow. Good thing we have one or two judges left who do indeed think the purpose of the Constitution was to limit the tools government has to do stuff to us.
What's a little scary is that quite a lot of citizens -- perhaps even the majority -- would actually agree with this statement, even if it was taken out of context. They really do believe the purpose of the Constitution is affirmative, that it sets out the purpose of government and explains what government can and should do, rather than proscriptive, that it sets out what government cannot do.
Jon, I find one error far more egregious than the other, and not because of who made it, or which side it was on. Can you guess why?
They really do believe the purpose of the Constitution is affirmative, that it sets out the purpose of government and explains what government can and should do, rather than proscriptive, that it sets out what government cannot do.
Well, the purpose of the Constitution itself does set out the purpose of government and explain what it can and should do. The proscriptive part is the Bill of Rights (which has since been extended by amendment, but not all amendments are such extensions).
Except the "Tipton 3" lied about their actual experience, as the Lie Lab proved; at the very
least, following the narrative of the Birmingham
AQ manual, those involved in Nalchik and Morocco
were still caught or blown up in those locations;
those killed by Saleh Abdallah al Ajmi at Camp Inman in Mosul, back in March; are still dead. This Court has shown a remarkable disrespect to
precedent; clearly evident in Kelo, a decision only the Sheriff of Nottingham could love. The
Kennedy case in Louisiana, is almost as much a legal atrocity as the crime itself. And Hamdi, Hamdan, & Bomedienne, are increasingly more twisted denials of the actual law; re military tribunals, they didn't even bother to cite ex parte Merryman, which at least acknowledges part of their case.
You said that "Or at least a minority of [the Supreme Court] is [an embarrassment]".
I don't know if I can agree with "minority". We have four people who are just plain ideologues, who will vote for increased evil and decreased civil rights every chance they get. They are an embarrassment, true, but they aren't the only ones. But Kennedy is in many ways actually MORE of an embarrassment because he actually does have a brain, but only uses it on about every other decision. That makes five, which is not a minority.
RH