Seems Plain to Me….

Posted on January 25, 2006 by Alaska

You are the Plain Meaning Rule!  You interpret statutes according to what an ordinary speaker of English would understand from the text.  You’re upfront and direct.  You claim that you’re just following the rules, but often find a clever technicality to interpret the rules however you want.

Which Canon of Statutory Construction are You?
brought to you by quizilla

This is actually a pretty good quiz to demonstrate to non-lawyers that your mindset about the way you think the law should work probably shouldn’t be the same as your mindset about how you approach life generally. Unfortunately, lots of legal scholars seem to conflate the two. This is why much of the legal academy doesn’t like Justice Thomas’ and Justice Scalia’s opinions.

The other good thing is this is a very short quiz. Take it! I’ll bet lots of you come out as one of the more lefty rules of statutory interpretation (the Plain Meaning Rule is about as conservative as you can get, as far as interpreting statutes goes).

Hat Tip: Volokh.

Posted in Kewel! | 5 Comments

It’s Funny Cause It’s True

Posted on January 25, 2006 by Phil Kadath

Michelle Malkin has this post about the continuing fallout from Mayor Nincompoop’s racist ‘Chocolate City’ comments last week.

If you haven’t seen that post, you need to go over there and take a look at the accompanying photos of t-shirts that are on sale in New Orleans.

They show four examples of exactly who the people of Nawlins think are to blame.

And in the same vein, the Grouchy Old Cripple has some ‘Chocolate City’ art for you as well.

Posted in Kewel! | Leave a comment

RNS Quote of the Day

Posted on January 25, 2006 by Phil Kadath

To interpret the railroad history of the nineteenth century as “Proof” of the failure of a free market, is a disaterous error. The same error, which persists to this day, was the nineteenth century’s fear of “The Trusts”.

The most formidible of “The Trusts” was Standard Oil. Nevertheless, at the same time of the passage of the Sherman Act, a pre-automotive period, the entire petrolium industry amounted to less than one percent of the Gross National Product and was barely one-third as large as the shoe industry. It was not the absolute size of the trusts, but their dominance within their own industries that gave rise to apprehension. What the observers failed to grasp, however, was the fact that the control by Standard Oil, at the turn of the century, of the more than eighty percent of the refining capacity made economic sense and accelerated the growth of the American Economy.

Such control yielded obvious gains in efficiency, through the intergration of divergent refining, marketing and pipleine operations, it also made the raising of capitol easier and cheaper. Trusts came into existence because they were the most effective units in those industries which, being relatively new, were too small to support more than one large company.

Based on a paper by Alan Greenspan, given at the Antitrust Seminar of the National Association of Business Economists in Cleveland, on September 25th, 1961

Posted in Quote of the Day | Leave a comment

Range Hour

Posted on January 24, 2006 by Alaska

I finally got around to checking out the new rifle/pistol range that’s a five-minute drive from home. Headed over at lunch hour, paid $12 range fee (yikes!) and popped off a box of Dynamit-Nobel 9mm from my S&W 940 revolver.

I haven’t shot the 940 (about which I posted here) in more than eight months, and it showed. I also discovered that sight alignment and double-action trigger pulls aren’t helped by shivering. It was a bright sunny day, with temps up to 70 in direct sun, but the range is located atop a hill with not only a commanding view of the valley below, but a real affinity for winds. Did I mention that we’re located less than ten miles from the 6000-windmill Altamont Pass wind farm? There was a pretty constant wind of I’d say 15 mph or better coming straight on, and in the shade it got COLD. I’d have been much comfier in jeans & heavy socks, but the wind just knifed through my dress shirt & slacks. Next time I’m bringing gloves, hat and jacket!

The RM had a very nice-looking M1A set out on a bench for use during downtimes (rifles and pistols use the same range), and we chatted a bit. He hadn’t heard of Boomershoot, but sounded intrigued. He ended up convincing me to become a club member. With those range fees, I didn’t need much convincing. $85 initial dues, $60 annual renewal, and now my range fees will be only $6. That does get you a 3-hour block of time, so $2 per hour ain’t bad.

The best part is, it’s about ten minutes from the office. I can slim down by going shooting every day instead of eating lunch!

Posted in Have Gun, Will Travel | 8 Comments

Blatant Seattle Liberal Racism and Sexism

Posted on January 24, 2006 by Phil Kadath

The Seattle City Council chooses their own members by majority vote.

Yeah, take a second to wrap your head around that.

After Councilman Jim Compton resigned his position, 100 or so applicants submitted their applications for the position and the current members have narrowed their choices down to six.

All of them are women.

Only one is not a member of a racial minority.

Instead of being a ‘woman of color’, she is a lesbian.

Nothing against lesbians or anyone of any race, but it appears that the City Council were looking to fill a quota of sorts.

I guess that straight white men need not to have applied.

And for those who think I may be being unfair, I offer the first four paragraphs of this article.

Posted in Order of the imperial upraised middle finger. | 1 Comment

It’s Called a Meritocracy for a Reason

Posted on January 24, 2006 by Phil Kadath

With the trifecta of power held by the Democrats here in Washington (Governor, Senate and House), the pro-Affirmative Action types are warming up their arguments to deny the voters their state funded schools be free from the Affirmative Action schemes we voted away back in 1998,

1968 was a year of hope for African Americans wanting to study at the University of Washington.

Student leader Larry Gossett, now a King County councilman, helped lead a spring sit-in that persuaded administrators to throw open the UW’s doors to black students. Gossett and others fanned out across the state and recruited 127 black freshmen by the fall, tripling total black enrollment.

But nearly 40 years later, with a student body that has grown by one-quarter to almost 40,000, the reality of black enrollment at the UW has failed to live up to that early promise. This academic year, there are just 118 black freshmen in a class of nearly 5,000, the lowest number since 1999 and fewer even than when Gossett was recruiting.

The article goes on, insinuating either racism or ‘unfairness’ in the student selection process all the way throughout.

But it never accounts for how many black students apply or the percentage of those applicants who are accepted and even goes so far as to urge more ‘recruiting’ of black students.

Which leads me to ask: How racist is it to recruit based on color?

Posted in Academia and Other Nonsense | 2 Comments

I can pick my friends

Posted on January 24, 2006 by Phil Kadath

And I can pick my nose.

But (Barely) Governor Gregiore gets to pick which design will go on the back of our state’s quarter when it comes out in 2007.

Go here for the choices.

Posted in Armageddon, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Guilt by Association?

Posted on January 24, 2006 by Phil Kadath

So now the media is scrounging for pictures of Bush with Abramoff to try and taint Bush with the guy,

Although President Bush says he doesn’t recall meeting convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the two have reportedly turned up in photos together.

Both Washingtonian and Time magazines have reported the existence of about a half-dozen photos showing the two together.

Time reported on its Web site Sunday that its staff members have seen at least six photos featuring Bush and Abramoff, who has pleaded guilty to federal charges stemming from his lobbying practices and has pledged to cooperate with investigators. They appeared to have been taken at White House functions, according to the reports.

White house function pictures?

Kind of like this one found by The DANE of Hillary with convicted drug smuggler and friend of Castro Jorge Cabrera?

Posted in Color me confused | Leave a comment

Here’s Proof…

Posted on January 24, 2006 by Alaska

…that the Democrats’ much-publicized success in delaying the Alito committee vote until today was all about money.

Back on Thursday, January 12, one of my moonbat friends forwarded me a copy of an email he got from People for the American Way. (I suppose this is one of the advantages of living “behind enemy lines,” so to speak, in the San Francisco Bay Area — I can easily see inside their secret councils, don’tcha know.)

Anyway, this “Special Hearing Edition” datelined January 12, 2006 (that’s important), has a big ol’ begging button in their right column, stating

Already nearly 3,000 activist donors have helped us fight to get the truth out. We want to raise $40,000 more online to get ads on the air as the Senate Judiciary Committee moves to a vote on his nomination.

Well, okay, that’s a fairly straightforward plea for money. But the funny bit about this email is the accompanying message that’s s’posed to get your juices flowing enough to pony up the bucks:

Dear [my friend],

Momentum is shifting on the Alito nomination.   Senator Schumer’s aggressive questioning Tuesday evening reflected Democrat’s growing frustration with Alito’s inconsistent and inadequate answers, and yesterday several senators refused to let him get away with stonewalling.     At a news conference yesterday, they vowed “to keep digging until we get some answers.”

 Ralph G. Neas [President of PFAW]

I’m sorry, but “Momentum is shifting?” ROTFLMAO! As of January 12, 2006, everybody with half a brain had figured out that Alito was going to be confirmed. The only way he was going to be stopped was if he self-destructed in the hearings, and he didn’t. And this was pretty widely reported, too.

The reason the hearings degenerated into a bunch of repetitive, semantically empty name-calling from the Democrats was not so much that the Democratic Senators needed to satisfy the Kos Krowd of their True Believer Moonbat cred, but rather that the left-wing interest groups were screaming for the Dems on the committee to provide some sort of cover to allow the interest groups to continue their fundraising to “stop the Alito threat.” Hell, I remember Nina Totenberg, no friend of Alito’s, starting NPR’s coverage of the hearings with a comment about how a lot of it was going to be fundamentally about interest group fundraising, as everybody inside the Beltway already knew. And of course, she was right.

However, this seems to me to be a new low. I mean, during the Clinton years, I got my share of hyperventilating fundraising letters from the NRA, but they never misrepresented the actual truth on the ground to the extent PFAW did here.

Does anybody really believe this stuff? I guess 3,000 people did. Sadly, I’ll bet my friend was one of them.

If anyone would like a copy of the PFAW email, I’d be happy to forward it to you for your reading enjoyment. It’s worth a chuckle.

Posted in Too Stupid to Live, Useful Idiots | 4 Comments

RNS Quote of the Day

Posted on January 24, 2006 by Phil Kadath

We’re changing up today and will be featuring quotes from former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan.

Mr. Greenspan is a bit difficult to quote as he likes to take a page or two to solidify his points, but I think I have a few good ones here.

The world of antitrust is reminiscent of Alice’s Wonderland: Everything seemingly is, yet apparently isn’t simultaneously. It is a world in which competition is lauded as the basic axiom and guiding principle, yet “too much” competition is condemned as “cutthroat”. It is a world in which actions designed to limit competition are branded as criminal when taken by the businessmen, yet praised as “enlightened” when initiated by the government. It is a world in which the law is so vague that businessmen have no way of knowing whether specific actions will be declared illegal until they hear the judge’s verdict – after the fact.

Based on a paper by Alan Greenspan given at the Antitrust Seminar of the National Association of Business Economist in Cleveland on September 25th, 1961.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment