D.C. Bans Guns with Red Tape
The District of Columbia has made it legal for residents to own a handgun after being so ordered by the United States Supreme Court. But they're not making it easy. The plaintiff in the Supreme Court case that overturned Washington's strict 32-year-old handgun ban was among the first to arrive as the city started registering firearms. Dick Heller showed up early ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on July 17, 2008 11:51
Presidential Succession Crisis?
Bruce Ackerman has read a novel and heard unsubstantiated rumors and from these concocted a Constitutional crisis which he's convinced the folks at Slate to publish. New Yorker writer Jane Mayer's new book, The Dark Side, opens with a shocker. Apparently sometime in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan issued a "secret executive order" that in the event of the death of ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on July 15, 2008 18:04
Zoning Away the Constitution
Matt Yglesias points out that, the Supreme Court's historic ruling in Heller notwithstanding, DC residents still have no effective 2nd Amendment rights. As Rob Goodspeed explains it's all in the zoning. You can't legally buy a gun in DC because there are no gun stores here. And to sell a gun to an out-of-state resident, a gun shop needs to actually ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on July 14, 2008 12:36
Supreme Court as a Voting Issue
Dahlia Lithwick takes to the pages of FireDogLake to explain why, in her view, liberals are much less excited about the Supreme Court than conservatives: My own impression, having covered the past two presidential elections is that most liberals simply don’t vote with the composition of the Supreme Court in mind at all, or that it ranks somewhere in their top ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on July 7, 2008 16:00
Supreme Court Made Supreme Error in Child Rape Decision
A WaPo editorial takes the Supreme Court to task for a significant error in a recent decision: There was quite a goof in the court's 5 to 4 decision on June 25 banning the death penalty for those who rape children. The majority determined that capital punishment for child rape was unconstitutional, in part because a national consensus had formed against ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on July 6, 2008 09:27
Supreme Court Focus of 2008 Election
The NYT editorial board want you to know that they're very disappointed in the Roberts Court, particularly its upholding of Indiana's law requiring would-be voters to be able they are who they claim to be, allowing Kentucky to continue using lethal injection for convicted murderers who've exhausted seventeen years of appeals, and its ruling that the 2nd Amendment applies in ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on July 3, 2008 11:55
Addington Displays Contempt for Congress
David Addington, chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, was testifying under subpoena yesterday to the House Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties. He took great delight in being a complete jackass, as Dana Milbank details. Could the president ever be justified in breaking the law? "I'm not going to answer a legal opinion on every ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on June 27, 2008 09:56
Millionaire Penalty Struck Down by Supreme Court
McCain-Feingold, the signature legislation of the presumptive Republican nominee for president, took another blow yesterday as the Supreme Court struck down the so-called "Millionaire's Amendment" in yet another 5-4 decision. “Supporters of reasonable campaign finance regulation are now zero for three in the Roberts court,” said Richard L. Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. “This is a ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on June 27, 2008 07:46
Gun Control Irony Alert
Under the provocative headline "The Thugs Win the Case," WaPo columnist Colbert King sniffs of the Supreme Court's ruling yesterday in Heller, There's one group of District residents absolutely unfazed by today's U.S. Supreme Court ruling shooting down the District's strict handgun ban: the dudes who have been blowing away their fellow citizens with abandon since the law was put on ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on June 27, 2008 07:12
Female Gun Market?
Megan McArdle has some interesting thoughts on the Supreme Court's decision today overturning DC's handgun ban. As she readily admits, you can get better legal analysis elsewhere. This, however, is a unique contribution to the debate: There is a distressing lack of attention to the female market in gun companies. I want something with accuracy and stopping power, but ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on June 26, 2008 11:37
