Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

The Second Amendment

Of course it secures the right to carry a gun. It’s astounding that anyone would argue otherwise.

[Update a few minutes later]

Eugene Volokh analyzes the ruling:

I think the Ninth Circuit majority’s analysis is correct on this, and the dissent’s is mistaken. The dissent keeps stressing that the case should be about whether the California ban on concealed carry is constitutional, and that Heller says that the concealed carry ban is indeed constitutional. But the California ban on concealed carry is part of a general scheme that bans the great bulk of all carrying in public for self-defense (unless one has a permit that the police may choose not to grant). It is this general scheme that violates the Second Amendment, even if a ban on concealed carry that left people free to carry openly would not do so.

The California ban was just an attempt to get around the Second Amendment, and even the Ninth Circuit recognized that.

Business, Economics, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Arbitrary Health-Care Mandate

79 Comments

“My whim is my command“:

…the sudden demand that businesses stop adjusting for regulatory policy is nearly the height of hypocrisy for this administration, which has repeatedly offered short-term gimmicky tax credits for business decisions that boost its policies, including an ill-considered credit for hiring that ended up costing taxpayers millions for hiring decisions that would have been made anyway. Suddenly, the Obama administration has to take action outside of the law because employers respond to regulatory signals more predictably than one-off credits.

In other words, it’s a demonstration of arbitrary power, of precisely the kind predicted by Hayek. And it’s no longer just opponents of the ACA noticing.

At National Journal, Major Garrett blasted the latest unilateral changes in enforcing statutory law by noting, “The Affordable Care Act means what it says and says what it means. Until it doesn’t. … [T]he arbitrary is the norm.”

The editorial board at The Washington Post blasted Obama for his “increasingly cavalier approach to picking and choosing how to enforce this law. “ Garrett’s colleague Ron Fournier and the Daily Beast’s Kirsten Powers both declared their patience at an end to the arbitrary changes and continuing incompetence from the Obama administration – and all of these people support the law in principle.

The attempt to create a command economy in the health-insurance market has failed, in the same manner that Hayek predicted, and resulted in the same arbitrary use of power to attempt to compensate for those failures. The demand for businesses to “self-attest” that they aren’t following standard business principles foreshadows the later stages of unreality that will take from F. A. Hayek to George Orwell on a long enough continuum.

This is what tyranny looks like.

[Update a while later]

“Obama is legislating without the legislative branch. This is corrosive of self-government, counter to our constitutional system and contemptuous of the rule of law.”

Nothing new for him.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

My Twitter Battle With Anil Dash

1 Comment

I had one of the dumbest back and forths of my life last night, in response to this post.

I simply pointed out that he was being sexist, which quickly devolved into non sequiturs and straw men, and ultimately resulted in my being accused of lying and being “threatened and insecure.” It was pretty funny, actually.

[Update a while later]

This seems related somehow: thoughts on the sexism (and other “isms”) of Robert Heinlein and Orson Scott Card:

With Resnick and Malzberg the backlash was faster and louder and even a lot of their number thought (privately) that they were off their rocker. With Card, I think only the choir thinks he’s “a fascist.”

And with Larry… There is no word for this. It’s like a Chihuahua trying to hold onto a car by the back bumper. They have not only bit off more than they can chew, they’ve bit off more than they can… bite. In tactical terms it’s getting involved in a landwar in Asia or going up against a Sicilian when death is on the line.

But wait, there’s more. The other reason they’re getting crazier and crazier and trying to enforce group conformity more and more is that they are no longer in possession of the bully pulpit. It used to be due to quirks of distribution and culture in NYC that got get bought and properly distributed you had to be a darling with a “not Baen” house. Oh, Baen had bestsellers, but they were more a midlist house.

So advances with other houses were bigger, and prestige was immeasurably higher.

Well… The times they are achanging. The collapse of the chains; amazon; the internet where people can find out about books that were publishing put paid to the cozy gentleman’s arrangement of yore. Even when these people are getting published, their advances are smaller, and they have to compete with all the great unwashed for sales. They no longer feel their own specialness.

Yup.

Space

Cis-Lunar Space

9 Comments

I think that to the degree people think of that phrase at all, they assume it’s in the vicinity of the earth-moon system, but technically, of the Lagrange points, only L-1 is part of it. L-2 is in trans-lunar space, and I’m not sure how you’d characterize Ls 3, 4 and 5. The thought was prompted by this post on transgendered and cisgendered people.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!