Eric Raymond and I are on the same wavelength:

Gun owners who are (like me) libertarians and swing voters are in the same fix as SayUncle. Many of us have good reasons to loathe McCain; mine, as I’ve previously mentioned, is that I think BCRA (the McCain-Feingold campaign finance “reform” act) was an atrocious assault on First Amendment liberties. Others can’t stand McCain’s position on immigration, or the idiotic blather he tends to spew on economics-related subjects. But for those of us who think Second Amendment rights are fundamentally important, voting for anyone who would appoint more anti-firearms judges (a certainty from Obama given his past views) is just not an option.

That translates into votes for McCain. Probably including (though I shudder and retch at the thought) my vote. It’s not like there’s any chance Obama’s going to push for the repeal of BCRA. So I’m left with a choice between a candidate hostile to both my First and Second Amendment rights and one that supports the Second Amendment. (Normally I’d vote Libertarian, but the LP’s isolationist foreign-policy stance seems so batty after 9/11 that I can’t stomach that option in this cycle.)

Yup. One of the arguments that McCain will make with the bitter gun clingers is that he will be able to provide a Supreme Court that strongly, not narrowly supports gun rights. That’s going to be very important now as the various cases work their way through the courts to define the limits of the “newly found” (that is, one that has been there since the Founding, but which many have attempted to pretend didn’t exist for the past several decades) right.

I’ll bet that the Obama campaign does, too and worries about it. Hillary! supporters for John McCain:

I believe strongly that all of us should now unite for McCain because he needs all of badly…I am sure all of us won’t vote for Obama and then all of us want Hillary badly to return 2012…..

The only way to make sure that Hillary will be our President 2012 is to make sure that McCain will win 08….

You know that’s what Hillary! is thinking, regardless of the “Unity” speech.

[Afternoon update]

Here’s someone else who is bitter, though it’s not clear if he’s clinging to God and guns:

A senior Democrat who worked for Mr Clinton has revealed that he recently told friends Mr Obama could “kiss my ass” in return for his support.

A second source said that the former president has kept his distance because he still does not believe Mr Obama can win the election.

Whatever else you want to say about Bill Clinton, he’s not politically stupid. Though perhaps his judgment is slipping, based on the behavior in the campaign (which could in fact be a result of his heart surgeries). Either way, this isn’t going to help heal the rift.

The Canadian Human WrongsRights Commission has dropped the charges against MacLeans and Mark Steyn.

In a sense, it’s too bad. They were probably starting to feel the political heat. Now they will be free to go on and continue to abuse the free-speech rights of less prominent people, rather than being reined in as they should be.

[Update a few minutes later]

Ah, no worries. They can move right on to the next heretic:

Earle says Canadians are too politically correct.

“They pissed me off so I said some rude things. Does that mean I should go to court because … they were based on some kind of minority or discrimination or something-something?”

The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal will decide whether Earle’s comments, which the complainant Lorna Pardy claims were “homophobic,” violated the Human Rights Code on the basis of her “sex and sexual orientation.”

Earle is now looking for a lawyer and he’s hoping his newfound fame might help pay his legal bills. He’s planning a comedy fundraiser for next month.

The complainants, of course, will have their legal bills paid by the province. Not that the lawyer will do him any good. It is foreordained that he will lose.

Jim Geraghty has some observations:

It’s easy to wonder whether the candidate who talks about “real change” and pledges a government that will “heal the sick” and “stop the oceans from rising” actually knows how to get big things done – or whether he had the patience. Obama would seem to have the skills and brains to be a legendary community organizer, or state legislator, or U.S. senator. But momentous accomplishments in each of those positions take time, and at each level, Obama hit a wall, and turned his attention to a position of greater power.

This election will be about form (and glamour) over substance.

Jim Geraghty has some observations:

It’s easy to wonder whether the candidate who talks about “real change” and pledges a government that will “heal the sick” and “stop the oceans from rising” actually knows how to get big things done – or whether he had the patience. Obama would seem to have the skills and brains to be a legendary community organizer, or state legislator, or U.S. senator. But momentous accomplishments in each of those positions take time, and at each level, Obama hit a wall, and turned his attention to a position of greater power.

This election will be about form (and glamour) over substance.

I agree with Jonah Goldberg that George Bush did commit an impeachable offense when he signed McCain-Feingold. He took an oath of office to defend and uphold the Constitution, yet when confronted with legislation that he himself declared to be unconstitutional, he signed it anyway, and punted to the Supreme Court which (as has been the case much of late, though fortunately not yesterday) flubbed it as well. I wish that someone, like Karl Rove, had said, “You know, Mr. President, that’s a violation of your oath of office. It’s an impeachable offense.” But Karl Rove was never going to do that–the bill was perceived to be too popular.

I don’t think that he should have been removed from office for it, but he should have been impeached. It might have wonderfully concentrated his mind for future signings. And that of future presidents as well.

Of course, that was never going to happen, because the grounds of impeachment would have been that he signed an unconstitutional bill that Congress had passed, so why would they complain? It would have required that the Congress itself take the Constitution seriously, something that, as Jonah points out, hasn’t happened in decades. And of course, if they did, they never would have passed the abominable legislation in the first place and given the president an opportunity to violate his oath of office.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here’s a useful follow-up post on how disastrous the 17th Amendment has been:

The reason why Congress debated whether proposed legislation violated the U.S. Constitution in the 19th century is that U.S. Senators were elected by the state legislatures at that time. The U.S. Senate was a check on the power of the federal government by giving the states as a group a collective veto over proposed federal action. Any time a state governor or a powerful state legislator was unhappy about the federal government trampling on the prerogatives of a state, they could call their man in Washington and have him do something about this problem. A U.S. Senator knew he had to keep the governor and majority leaders in his state legislature happy or he was out of office. This meant keeping the federal government small and not going beyond the enumerated powers listed out in the U.S. Constitution. Also, it meant being able to explain the constitutionality of proposed legislation to a small number of very sophisticated constituents back home at the various state capitals.

The tragedy of the Civil War was that, in order to rectify the (perhaps unavoidable at the time) toxic nature of the founding, and grant universal freedom, it ended up significantly enhancing the power of the central government far beyond what the Founders ever envisioned.

…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.