It was fun while it lasted.

233 years, children, since the Declaration of Independence. 222 years since the ratification of the US Constitution. A noble experiment at representative democracy. It was a nice run.

But it all ended on June 26, 2009.

The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war. On June 26, 2009, Congress declared war on the American people.

June 26, 2009 is the day the US House of Representatives passed cap-and-trade. Warren Buffett says "it's a huge tax and there's no sense calling it anything else. I mean, it is a tax. So it -- and it's a fairly regressive tax." Rep. John Boehner calls it a "pile of shit." But it is far worse than that.

Like I said Thursday, cap-and-trade is the most vile piece of legislation ever considered by Congress. With its passage on Friday, it has become a declaration of war by Congress on the American people.

Boehner had this to say after the vote:

"Today, in what will be remembered as the defining vote of the 111th Congress, House Democrats passed a 1,500-page national energy tax bill that no one even had the chance to read. The American people have the right to know what is in this legislation and, more importantly, what impact it will have on middle-class families and small businesses. In just an hour, we raised serious questions about the true consequences of this legislation for Americans' jobs and all of our economy.
"Speaker Pelosi's national energy tax is a bureaucratic nightmare that will cost families more than ever for electricity, gasoline, food, and other products, and cost millions of American workers their jobs. This is a tax on anyone who drives a car, buys an American-made product, or flips on a light switch. It will drive up energy costs, send millions of jobs overseas to countries like China and India, and place an especially heavy burden on rural America. Republicans believe there is a better way. Our American Energy Act is the fastest route to a cleaner, more reliable energy future. By increasing environmentally-safe energy production, promoting alternatives like nuclear and clean-coal technologies, and encouraging increased efficiency, this alternative legislation will create more jobs, lower energy costs, and clean up our air and water.

"There's a big difference between the heartland and San Francisco when it comes to Speaker Pelosi's national energy tax. Today, House Democrats made the decision to stand with left-wing special interests rather than with families and small businesses in their districts that will lose so much because of this national energy tax. The American people will not forget this vote."

But that's not all:

In the hours before passage, Rep. Geoff Davis, a Republican from Kentucky, said the cap-and-trade bill represented the "economic colonization of the heartland" by New York and California. Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) called the bill a "scam" that would do nothing but satisfy "the twisted desires of radical environmentalists." Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.) called it a "massive transfer of wealth" from the United States to foreign countries.

So what will this POS do?

America’s biggest oil companies will probably cope with U.S. carbon legislation by closing fuel plants, cutting capital spending and increasing imports.

Under the Waxman-Markey climate bill that may be voted on today by the U.S. House, refiners would have to buy allowances for carbon dioxide spewed from their plants and from vehicles when motorists burn their fuel. Imports would need permits only for the latter, which ConocoPhillips Chief Executive Officer Jim Mulva said would create a competitive imbalance.

“It will lead to the opportunity for foreign sources to bring in transportation fuels at a lower cost, which will have an adverse impact to our industry, potential shutdown of refineries and investment and, ultimately, employment,” Mulva said in a June 16 interview in Detroit. Houston-based ConocoPhillips has the second-largest U.S. refining capacity.

The same amount of gasoline that would have $1 in carbon costs imposed if it were domestic would have 10 cents less added if it were imported, according to energy consulting firm Wood Mackenzie in Houston. Contrary to President Barack Obama’s goal of reducing dependence on overseas energy suppliers, the bill would incent U.S. refiners to import more fuel, said Clayton Mahaffey, an analyst at RedChip Cos. in Maitland, Florida.

“They’ll be searching the globe for refined products that don’t carry the same level of carbon costs,” said Mahaffey, a former Exxon Corp. refinery manager.

Prices Seen Rising

The equivalent of one in six U.S. refineries probably would close by 2020 as the cost of carbon allowances erases profits, according to the American Petroleum Institute, a Washington trade group known as API. Carbon permits would add 77 cents a gallon to the price of gasoline, said Russell Jones, the API’s senior economic adviser.

“Because it’s going to be more expensive to produce the stuff, refiners will slow down production and cut back on inventories to squeeze every penny of profit they can from the system,” said Geoffrey Styles, founder of GSW Strategy Group LLC in Vienna, Virginia. “We will end up with less domestic product on the market and a greater reliance on imports, all of which means higher, more volatile prices.”

U.S. motorists, already facing the steepest jump in gasoline prices in 18 years, would bear the brunt as refiners pass on added costs, Exxon Mobil Corp. Chief Executive Officer Rex Tillerson told reporters after a May 27 meeting in Dallas.

Democrats in the House plan to bring the climate bill to a vote as soon as today. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, stopped short of predicting victory at a press conference yesterday, saying she was making progress in building support for the bill.

Carbon Allowances

“U.S. refineries get 2 percent of allowances to cover any increases in costs they may incur,” said Drew Hammill, a spokesman for Pelosi.

Drivers, airlines and trucking companies would pay an additional $178 billion annually, or about $560 for each man, woman and child in the U.S., according to the API, whose 400 members include Irving, Texas-based Exxon Mobil and the U.S. unit of Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Europe’s largest oil company.

“That kind of price impact would significantly hurt the competitiveness of U.S. refiners versus importers,” said Glenn McGinnis, chief executive officer at Arizona Clean Fuels Yuma, a Phoenix-based company that’s attempting to build the nation’s first new refinery in three decades.

Such estimates and talk of rising imports are scare tactics that oil companies are using to wheedle concessions from lawmakers, said John Coequyt, the Sierra Club’s chief lobbyist in Washington. Refiners are trying to gain relief on carbon- permit costs that’s meant for manufacturers such as steelmakers that are threatened by foreign competition, he said.

‘Saber Rattling’

“It’s definitely saber rattling, and it’s a hell of a threat,” Coequyt said. “The strategic value of this is pretty obvious. They want to qualify for rebates under the competitiveness test, which of course they do not.”

GSW’s Styles, a former Texaco Inc. refinery and trading manager, said the risks are real. Plants unable to turn a profit under the new rules would be closed, he said.

The permit-cost imbalance would open the door for overseas refiners, such as India’s Reliance Industries Ltd., owner of the world’s largest crude-processing complex, to ship more fuel to U.S. oil companies, said Bill Holbrook, spokesman for the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association in Washington.

“It’s going to give domestic refiners a distinct disadvantage,” said Holbrook, whose trade group represents such fuel makers as Chevron Corp. and Valero Energy Corp.

Acquisitions Possible

Companies such as San Antonio-based Valero, the biggest U.S. refiner, will respond by stepping up efforts to acquire overseas plants that can ship fuel to their home market, said Brian Youngberg, an analyst at Edward Jones & Co. in Des Peres, Missouri. Valero said last week that it will continue to seek acquisition opportunities after Total SA bought the stake it had agreed to purchase in a Netherlands refining venture.

Carbon costs will stress fuel makers already coping with slumping fuel demand and higher costs to meet a federal mandate for increased ethanol use, said Roger Ihne, an energy client portfolio leader at Deloitte Consulting in Houston. Stricter mileage standards that take effect in 2011 will squeeze demand further, he said.

About 2 million barrels of daily U.S. refining capacity will shut down because carbon costs will be several times the operating profits for some plants, Ihne said. That’s equivalent to 12 percent of the nation’s fuel-making capacity. Jones, the API economist, said there could be as much as 3 million barrels of idled processing capacity.

Plants at Risk

“There’s no question there are some marginal refiners that probably will not survive,” said Exxon Mobil’s Tillerson, whose company has the largest worldwide refining capacity. “They may go out of business.” Exxon Mobil derived 18 percent to 24 percent of its profit from refining in the past five years.

Neither Tillerson, 57, nor ConocoPhillips CEO Mulva, 63, said how their companies would respond to climate rules like those in the Waxman-Markey bill. The legislation would cap emissions and create trading of allowances that polluters would need to meet their requirements.

Chevron CEO David O’Reilly, 62, said in a June 11 speech that the bill is “unnecessarily complex” and would be more damaging and less transparent than a carbon tax.

Chevron, based in San Ramon, California, fell 92 cents to $65.95 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading and has dropped 11 percent this year. Exxon Mobil, down 14 percent for the year, slid 83 cents to $69.05. ConocoPhillips fell 14 cents to $41.62, extending its year-to-date decline to 20 percent. Valero is down 24 percent for the year after dropping 21 cents to $16.48.

Reliance on Imports

Refiners and brokers already import 3.12 million barrels of gasoline, diesel and other fuels each day, enough to supply every car, truck, train, airplane, boat and oil-burning power plant in Africa, U.S. Energy Department figures showed.

Those cargoes are in addition to the 9.76 million barrels of raw crude delivered to U.S. ports daily to supply refineries and chemicals plants. Foreign shipments of crude, gasoline and other fuels provide 66 percent of the petroleum burned in the world’s largest economy, according to the Energy Department.

Carbon prices will soar as U.S. refiners compete with each other and other industrial companies for a limited number of allowances, said Bill Durbin, head of carbon research and global energy markets at Wood Mackenzie.

Durbin, a former policy official in the Energy Department during the George H.W. Bush administration, said permit prices may top $100 a ton. Oil companies and their products emit more than 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year in the U.S., according to the Energy Department.

“If you can import fuels without the same carbon costs as domestic refiners, you will have an advantage,” Durbin said. “Does that open the door for offshore refiners? I think it does.”

The Heritage Foundation had this to say:

It is clear that cap-and-trade is very expensive and amounts to nothing more than an energy tax in disguise. After all, when you sweep aside all the complexities of how cap and trade operates--and make no mistake, this is the most convoluted attempt at economic central planning this nation has ever attempted--the bottom line is that cap and trade works by raising the cost of energy high enough so that individuals and businesses are forced to use less of it. Inflicting economic pain is what this is all about. That is how the ever-tightening emissions targets will be met.

The only entities directly regulated by Waxman-Markey would be the electric utilities, oil refiners, natural gas producers, and some manufacturers that produce energy on site. So, the good news for the rest of us--homeowners, car owners, small-business owners, farmers--is that we won't be directly regulated under this bill. The bad news is that nearly all the costs will get passed on to us anyway.

What are those costs? According to the analysis we conducted at The Heritage Foundation, which is attached to my written statement, the higher energy costs kick in as soon as the bill's provisions take effect in 2012. For a household of four, energy costs go up $436 that year, and they eventually reach $1,241 in 2035 and average $829 annually over that span. Electricity costs go up 90 percent by 2035, gasoline by 58 percent, and natural gas by 55 percent by 2035. The cumulative higher energy costs for a family of four by then will be nearly $20,000.

But direct energy costs are only part of the consumer impact. Nearly everything goes up, since higher energy costs raise production costs. If you look at the total cost of Waxman-Markey, it works out to an average of $2,979 annually from 2012-2035 for a household of four. By 2035 alone, the total cost is over $4,600.

Beyond the cost impact on individuals and households, Waxman-Markey also affects employment, and especially employment in the manufacturing sector. We estimate job losses averaging 1,145,000 at any given time from 2012-2035. And note that those are net job losses, after the much-hyped green jobs are taken into account. Some of the lost jobs will be destroyed entirely, while others will be outsourced to nations like China and India that have repeatedly stated that they'll never hamper their own economic growth with energy-cost boosting global warming measures like Waxman-Markey.

Since farming is energy intensive, that sector will be particularly hard-hit. Higher gasoline and diesel fuel costs, higher electricity costs, and higher natural gas-derived fertilizer costs all erode farm profits, which are expected to drop by 28 percent in 2012 and average 57 percent lower through 2035. As with American manufacturers, Waxman-Markey also puts American farmers at a global disadvantage, as other food-exporting nations would have no comparable energy-price raising measures in place.

Overall, Waxman-Markey reduces gross domestic product by an average of $393 billion annually between 2012 and 2035, and cumulatively by $9.4 trillion. In other words, the nation will be $9.4 trillion poorer with Waxman-Markey than without it.

It should also be noted that the costs are not distributed evenly. Low-income households spend a disproportionate share of their incomes on energy, and thus would be hit harder than average by Waxman-Markey. Of course, the bill has provisions to give back some revenues to low-income households, but it is likely that these rebates will amount only to some portion of each dollar that was taken away from them in the first place in the form of higher energy costs and higher costs for other goods and services. Waxman-Markey also disproportionately burdens those states, especially in the Midwest and South, that still have a substantial number of manufacturing jobs to lose, as well as those that rely more heavily than others on coal for electric generation. In addition, because the bill raises energy costs, it hurts rural America much more than urban America. Rural Americans, farmers and non-farmers, spend an average of 58 percent more on energy as a percentage of income than their urban counterparts, and those costs would go up.

In conclusion, it's not surprising that support for Waxman-Markey is heaviest in those parts of the country, the urban centers in the West Coast and Northeast, that are least harmed by it. Even there, the economic damage would be bad enough, but the citizens in the rest of the country and their representatives should really be asking many tough questions about the economic impact of cap and trade.

Boehner tries to simplify this new slavery legislation, as much as it can be simplified:


And all as the "science" behind global warming ... er, "climate change" is proving to be even more fraudulent than Barack Obama's election by ACORN, so fraudulent that the EPA has had to silence analyses that rip the "climate change" theory to pieces.

Which explains the rush to pass cap-and-trade:

As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to pass a climate-change bill, the Australian Parliament is preparing to kill its own country's carbon-emissions scheme. Why? A growing number of Australian politicians, scientists and citizens once again doubt the science of human-caused global warming.

Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as "deniers." The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.

In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country's new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country's weeks-old cap-and-trade program.

The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. -- 13 times the number who authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world's first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak "frankly" of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming "the worst scientific scandal in history." Norway's Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the "new religion." A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton's Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists' open letter.)

The collapse of the "consensus" has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.

Credit for Australia's own era of renewed enlightenment goes to Dr. Ian Plimer, a well-known Australian geologist. Earlier this year he published "Heaven and Earth," a damning critique of the "evidence" underpinning man-made global warming. The book is already in its fifth printing. So compelling is it that Paul Sheehan, a noted Australian columnist -- and ardent global warming believer -- in April humbly pronounced it "an evidence-based attack on conformity and orthodoxy, including my own, and a reminder to respect informed dissent and beware of ideology subverting evidence." Australian polls have shown a sharp uptick in public skepticism; the press is back to questioning scientific dogma; blogs are having a field day.

The rise in skepticism also came as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, elected like Mr. Obama on promises to combat global warming, was attempting his own emissions-reduction scheme. His administration was forced to delay the implementation of the program until at least 2011, just to get the legislation through Australia's House. The Senate was not so easily swayed.

Mr. Fielding, a crucial vote on the bill, was so alarmed by the renewed science debate that he made a fact-finding trip to the U.S., attending the Heartland Institute's annual conference for climate skeptics. He also visited with Joseph Aldy, Mr. Obama's special assistant on energy and the environment, where he challenged the Obama team to address his doubts. They apparently didn't.

This week Mr. Fielding issued a statement: He would not be voting for the bill. He would not risk job losses on "unconvincing green science." The bill is set to founder as the Australian parliament breaks for the winter.

Power Line puts it more succinctly:

Global warming zealots are a bit like Iran's mullahs. They are fanatically devoted to a series of false propositions. Unable to win an open scientific debate, they consistently resort to bullying and brute force to suppress their opposition. Once again, we see the Obama administration taking the lead in this regard, putting political ideology above scientific truth and demanding that all others do likewise.

Stephen Green paraphrases Churchill to put it even more succinctly: Never Have So Few Stolen So Much From So Many to Achieve So Little.

And yet, though cap-and-trade will impoverish the American people -- but not lawmakers in Congress -- and is based on fraudulent science, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Henry Waxman are insistent on ramming this down our throats. And these people are supposed to be looking out for you? Supposed to protect you? Not now. They are no different from the Iranian mullahs, using the force of arms of the state to impose a religion on you, in this case, radical environaziism.

This is a declaration of war on the American people by Congress. By cap-and-trade, Congress and the White House now seek to hurt you, reduce your standard of living, to make your life much more difficult. And for what? Environaziism.

So now we must fight back.

RedState identifies Democrats now thought vulnerable because of their vote on cap-and-trade, many of whom should have known better. So, too, should these eight Republicans who voted for cap-and-trade:


So, let's be clear on this, children. By cap-and-trade, Congress has declared war on you, the American people. Time to invoke Darth Sidious:


Every single lawmaker who supports cap and trade is an enemy of the Republic.

Do what must be done. Do not hesitate. Show no mercy.

Just because

I like Emmanuelle Vaugier.

Simple truths

Tomorrow the US House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on cap-
and-trade legislation. Let's be clear on what cap-and-trade actually is.

Never before in the history of the Republic has Congress (or even
Parliament before independence) considered a new law or program that
is as vile or even remotely as vile as cap-and-trade.

Never before in the history of the Republic has Congress considered a
measure that is so fully designed and intended to punish and hurt the
American people as cap-and-trade.

Never before has Congress so willfully considered using its power
against the American people as with cap-and-trade.

Make no mistake. Cap-and-trade is evil, the closest this country will
come to slavery since the Civil War, only this time it will be the
entirety of the American people who will be reduced to destitute
slaves to serve an imperial government and an environmental Naziism
that has become for all intents and purposes a religion.

Supporting cap-and-trade is utterly inexcusable. Any congressional
representative who actually votes for cap-and-trade will effectively
renounce their oath of office and declare themselves an enemy of the
American people and our way of life for which we have worked, fought
and died for over 200 years.

It has come to this.

Govern yourselves accordingly.

Judgment Day

in Iran. Gateway Pundit and Hot Air have details. Just keep scrolling.

A message to the Iranian people

Fighting to recapture their once-great civilization from the
destructive regime of the scummullahs: the American people stand with
you in your fight for freedom. Our woefully incompetent president and
his allies in Congress may not, but the American people stand with you.

Iran news roundup

Events in Iran seem to be headed in a positive direction, at least if you consider an overthrow of the scumullahs a positive, as I do. But we've seen this before and nothing has come of it, so I'm not getting my hopes up. Still ...

Los Angeles-based Ardeshir Arian has a nice roundup of news from the Iran Press News Agency. Some of the gooder stuff:

From Tehran and Tabriz to Mash’had, Esfahan, Kerman, Shiraz, Sanandadj, Babol, and many other cities and towns across Iran people are out in the streets, rioting against the Khomeinist regime’s election results, chanting “Death to the Dictators.”

[...]

Entekhab News Agency reported on late Saturday night (June 13) that the other three candidates, Ahmadinejad’s opponents, Mir-Hossein Moussavi, Mehdi Karoubi, and Gholam-Hossein Karbashchi, are now all under house arrest. This report adds that thirty of the journalists who write for the newspaper Etemad’eh Melli (National Trust), owned by Karoubi, are all now also under arrest.

Tehran University and several of its dorms are also surrounded by anti-riot security forces that are armed with weapons and various forms of chemicals and gases. Also from the vicinity of Tehran University sounds of explosions can be heard and it is reported that cars and buses are being set on fire ([1] video of bus burning).

Demonstrations are now being organized for Tuesday, June 16, 2009, in front of all the Iranian embassies, consulates, and interest offices around the world, in every major international city and the international media is being called upon to cover these protests. Already on Sunday, June 14, groups of Iranian dissidents and fellow supporters from various countries of residence have begun protesting in front of the Iranian embassies both in Rome and in Copenhagen.

It is also reported that the police freely tasered pedestrians in the street who spent too much time in one area or didn’t walk along fast enough. There are widespread reports of police and security forces, around Tehran and other big cities where there have been demonstrations, who are not Iranian and either speak Persian with a very pronounced Arab accent or speak no Persian at all.

There are also reports that special guard forces from the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) have stormed several hospital emergency rooms in order to arrest some of the individuals who were severely injured during demonstrations. It is said that the guards were confronted with doctors and nurses, refusing them access to their patients. However, due to the presence of the guards and as a result of the time the hospital staff was forced to spend fighting the guards off, the patients were unable to receive the necessary care. In some cases where the guards were forced to leave, the injured did receive the required medical attention.

Reports from various sources around Tehran claim that a minimum of 900 people were arrested and taken to Evin Prison’s wards 240 and 7, which are areas of sequestration and seclusion. Human rights activists also note that the Judiciary and MOIS began moving all the prisoners from Evin’s infamous ward 209, solitary confinement, out to the public wards and they’ve prepared and emptied out that ward in preparation for new arrests.

[...]

There are also ongoing calls for protests around Tehran, Esfahan, Shiraz, Tabriz, Rasht, Mash’had, and Ahvaz. The protests are entitled “Let’s Turn Ahmadinejad’s Victory into Hell for Him.”

Ahmadinejad, who spoke at a press conference today, said: “Free elections in Iran are the true voice of the people of Iran and that this election was a huge slap in the face of those ‘world powers.’” He added: “The nuclear issue is a done deal and is no longer inevitable. The people of Iran will stand up to the bullying; the days where a few arrogant countries got to designate the fate of the nations of the world have come to an end.”

[...]

After President Ahmadinejad declared victory, his challenger Mirhossein Mousavi’s camp publicly charged the government with massive election fraud and vote-rigging.

Currently, Mousavi and his family and many others in his camp are under house arrest.

The arrest took place when Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who gave a public endorsement of the official election results, refused to answer Mousavi’s telephone calls and Mousavi and his followers began to walk towards Khamenei’s quarters. It was there he was told there were court orders for his arrest and he was turned back to his house, surrounded by security forces. Prominent members of Mousavi’s key advisers and staff, including clergy, have also been arrested.

Angry protests have been taking place in cities across Iran. In addition to Tehran, protests have reportedly been taking place in Karaj, Mashad, Saari, and Sanandaj. Messages are being passed asking people to keep their doors open for protesters to seek sanctuary from police attacks.

Many gas stations are closed, with police guarding them. Universities, traditionally hotbeds of unrest, are the focus of protests and police response in numerous cities. Cellphone communications have been shut down and many websites filtered. In addition, landlines are out of commission.

In response to Khamenei’s support for Ahmadinejad’s version of the election results, influential politician and former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, a longtime Ahmadinejad rival, has threatened to resign from all his positions.

Reports are circulating that Venezuela has sent anti-riot troops to Tehran to help Ahmadinejad, joining Hezbollah members from Palestine and Lebanon who are employed by the Islamic government as anti-riot police — the reason such forces are being brought in is that some of the Iranian police are unwilling to hit people as ordered and some are even joining the protesters.

Hmmmm. Perhaps based on the same sources as Arian, Michael Ledeen has some interesting nuggets:

Reports that some of the thugs doing the “crowd control” are foreigners, who speak Arabic, not Farsi. These seem to be Hezbollah people, from both Lebanon and Syria.

Rumors that Venezuelan security personnel are also participating, although this is unconfirmed.

It does seem that some Revolutionary Guards have refused to participate in the crackdown; some have reportedly gone over to the protesters. This of course is a key indicator, but it will be extremely difficult to get accurate information.

Roger Simon calls this "a defining moment for Barack Obama."

These same despicable mullahs are the ones that arm the terrorists of Gaza (Hamas) and Lebanon (Hezbollah)and instigate their activities. It is time for Obama to take that much more deeply into account and stop sounding like a Jimmy Carter clone. He should refocus away from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which will only be resolved when Hamas loses power, and onto the issue of Iranian freedom, the much larger issue for the world. It would be inspiring to see the American president, in his words at least, standing by the side of those Iranian students.

Yet, what is Obama doing to help these protesters for freedom? Nothing. Worse than nothing, he is saying he will negotiate with the despicable Iranian regime. As if negotiation with these people has any hope of being fruitful. For us.

But of course, we can expect Barack Obama to be sympathetic to people who steal elections. It's the same atmosphere he grew up in, after all. It's the Chicago Way.

Making the world safe for democracy

Sidney Crosby lifts the cup after defeating Detroit in game 7 of the Stanley Cup final. (Matt Freed/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

My Pittsburgh Penguins -- America's Team, Defenders of Western Civilization and All That Is Good About America ... and STANLEY CUP CHAMPIONS!!!

Latest addiction

Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings for PS2. Problem is, it's very
buggy. Been playing it for an hour and it has already crashed twice.

Cawfee Talk

Tawlk amongst yourselves. I'll give you a topic:

Vigilante justice is better than no justice.

Discuss.

No constitutional right to self-defense?

There was considerable discussion this past week about the 7th Circuit's decision in NRA v. City of Chicago, the challenge to the Chicago handgun ban. The primary holding of the case is that under Supreme Court Precedent, the Second Amendment protecting the right to keep and bear arms is not incorporated against the States. Eugene Volokh outlines the core of the holding:

Cruikshank, Presser, and Miller [v. Texas] [late 1800s Supreme Court precedents -EV] rejected arguments [for applying the Second Amendment to the states -EV] that depended on the privileges and immunities clause of the fourteenth amendment. The Slaughter-House Cases, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 36 (1873), holds that the privileges and immunities clause does not apply the Bill of Rights, en bloc, to the states.... [P]laintiffs contend that we may use the Court’s “selective incorporation” approach to the second amendment. Cruikshank, Presser, and Miller did not consider that possibility, which had yet to be devised when those decisions were rendered. Plaintiffs ask us to follow Nordyke v. King, 563 F.3d 439 (9th Cir. 2009), which concluded that Cruikshank, Presser, and Miller may be bypassed as fossils.... Another court of appeals has concluded that Cruikshank, Presser, and Miller still control even though their reasoning is obsolete. Maloney v. Cuomo, 554 F.3d 56 (2d Cir. 2009) [that's the nunchaku case in which Judge Sotomayor was on the panel -EV]. We agree with Maloney ....

Repeatedly, in decisions that no one thinks fossilized, the Justices have directed trial and appellate judges to implement the Supreme Court’s holdings even if the reasoning in later opinions has undermined their rationale. “If a precedent of this Court has direct application in a case, yet appears to rest on reasons rejected in some other line of decisions, the Court of Appeals should follow the case which directly controls, leaving to this Court the prerogative of overruling its own decisions.” Cruikshank, Presser, and Miller have “direct application in [this] case”. Plaintiffs say that a decision of the Supreme Court has “direct application” only if the opinion expressly considers the line of argument that has been offered to support a different approach. Yet few opinions address the ground that later opinions deem sufficient to reach a different result. If a court of appeals could disregard a decision of the Supreme Court by identifying, and accepting, one or another contention not expressly addressed by the Justices, the Court’s decisions could be circumvented with ease. They would bind only judges too dim-witted to come up with a novel argument.

Anyone who doubts that Cruikshank, Presser, and Miller have “direct application in [this] case” need only read footnote 23 in Heller. It says that Presser and Miller “reaffirmed [Cruikshank’s holding] that the Second Amendment applies only to the Federal Government.” The Court did not say that Cruikshank, Presser, and Miller rejected a particular argument for applying the second amendment to the states. It said that they hold “that the Second Amendment applies only to the Federal Government.” The Court added that “Cruikshank’s continuing validity on incorporation” is “a question not presented by this case.” That does not license the inferior courts to go their own ways; it just notes that Cruikshank is open to reexamination by the Justices themselves when the time comes. If a court of appeals may strike off on its own, this not only undermines the uniformity of national law but also may compel the Justices to grant certiorari before they think the question ripe for decision. State Oil Co. v. Khan, 522 U.S. 3 (1997), illustrates the proper relation between the Supreme Court and a court of appeals. After Albrecht v. Herald Co., 390 U.S. 145 (1968), held that antitrust laws condemn all vertical maximum price fixing, other decisions (such as Continental T.V., Inc. v. GTE Sylvania Inc., 433 U.S. 36 (1977)) demolished Albrecht’s intellectual underpinning. Meanwhile new economic analysis showed that requiring dealers to charge no more than a prescribed maximum price could benefit consumers, a possibility that Albrecht had not considered. Thus by the time Khan arrived on appeal, Albrecht’s rationale had been repudiated by the Justices, and new arguments that the Albrecht opinion did not mention strongly supported an outcome other than the one that Albrecht announced. Nonetheless, we concluded that only the Justices could inter Albrecht. See Khan v. State Oil Co., 93 F.3d 1358 (7th Cir. 1996). By plaintiffs’ lights, we should have treated Albrecht as defunct and reached what we deemed a better decision. Instead we pointed out Albrecht’s shortcomings while enforcing its holding. The Justices, who overruled Albrecht in a unanimous opinion, said that we had done exactly the right thing, “for it is this Court’s prerogative alone to overrule one of its precedents.”

The court's reasoning here is very, very questionable. Volokh, a law professor at UCLA, discusses the problem(s):

I don't think this reasoning (from Judge Frank Easterbrook, joined by Judge Richard Posner and Judge William Bauer) does justice to the plaintiffs' arguments. "Selective incorporation" isn't just a different "line of argument" for incorporation -- it is an argument under a different constitutional clause, the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (something the opinion doesn't mention). The late 1800s cases rejected direct application of the Second Amendment to the states, and incorporation via the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. They didn't discuss in any detail whether state restrictions on the right to bear arms were potentially unconstitutional under the Second Amendment as incorporated via the Due Process Clause -- the very clause through which most of the Bill of Rights was later incorporated.

And I know of no precedents holding that lower courts must reject arguments against a statute under one constitutional clause just because similar statutes have been upheld against challenges under a different constitutional clause. Such arguments under different constitutional clauses don't call on the lower court "to overrule one of [the Court's] precedents," because the precedent deals only with an earlier clause. For instance, when the Court held that the mandatory federal Sentencing Guidelines generally violate the Jury Trial Clause, it wasn't overruling its past precedents that upheld the Guidelines against separation of powers challenge; it was considering a different constitutional challenge.

Likewise, when the Court held that closing a criminal trial, even with the defendant's permission, presumptively violated the First Amendment, it wasn't overruling the then-one-year-old precedent that upheld such a closure against a Public Trial Clause challenge. And when the Court held that preferences in city-funded construction contracts for city residents violated the Privileges and Immunities Clause of Article IV, it wasn't overruling the then-one-year-old precedent that upheld such preferences under a Commerce Clause challenge. And lower courts would similarly not have been barred from adopting such arguments, because they wouldn't have been trying to "overrule" a past precedent. See, e.g., Waters v. Churchill, 511 U.S. 661, 678 (1994) (plurality opinion) ("[C]ases cannot be read as foreclosing an argument that they never dealt with.") (citing United States v. L.A. Tucker Truck Lines, Inc., 344 U.S. 33, 38 (1952)); see also Miller v. California Pac. Med. Ctr., 991 F.2d 536, 541 (9th Cir. 1993) ("It is a venerable principle that a court isn't bound by a prior decision that failed to consider an argument or issue the later court finds persuasive.").

Volokh's argument might actually be too technical, for through the court's holding here, the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution can basically be legislated away by each individual state. Federal constitutional law usually sets a baseline for state actions in that the states can expand on the constitutional rights granted, but cannot limit them. For example, freedom of speech in California is much more expansive than that of the U.S. Constitution. This decision really is out there in terms of con law.

But there is potentially far worse in this holding:

Suppose a state were to decide that people cornered in their homes must surrender rather than fight back — in other words, that burglars should be deterred by the criminal law rather than self help. That decision would imply that no one is entitled to keep a handgun at home for self-defense, because self-defense would itself be a crime, and Heller concluded that the second amendment protects only the interests of law-abiding citizens. See United States v. Jackson, 555 F.3d 635 (7th Cir. 2009) (no constitutional right to have guns ready to hand when distributing illegal drugs).

Our hypothetical is not as far-fetched as it sounds. Self-defense is a common-law gloss on criminal statutes, a defense that many states have modified by requiring people to retreat when possible, and to use non-lethal force when retreat is not possible. An obligation to avoid lethal force in self-defense might imply an obligation to use pepper spray rather than handguns. A modification of the self-defense defense may or may not be in the best interest of public safety — whether guns deter or facilitate crime is an empirical question — but it is difficult to argue that legislative evaluation of which weapons are appropriate for use in self-defense has been out of the people’s hands since 1868.

Again, Volokh boils it down: This decision allows lethal self-defense, even against threats of death, serious bodily injury, rape, and kidnapping, to be made crime. His reasoning:

Note that the court's argument isn't simply that lethal self-defense could be constitutionally limited to situations where it's genuinely necessary to protect against (say) death, serious injury, rape, or kidnapping. Rather, the argument must be that lethal self-defense could be constitutionally barred altogether. Otherwise the court's argument that "That decision would imply that no one is entitled to keep a handgun at home for self-defense, because self-defense would itself be a crime, and Heller concluded that the second amendment protects only the interests of law-abiding citizens" wouldn't work: The argument rests on the assumption that guns would be unusable to "law-abiding citizens" because "[lethal] self-defense would itself be a crime."

Likewise, the argument is not only that certain tools for lethal self-defense could be barred. That's the conclusion that the panel is trying to reach by arguing (I repeat) that lethal self-defense could itself be made a crime. (I read "self-defense" as meaning "lethal self-defense" in context.)

Now not all bad laws, even evil laws, are unconstitutional laws. And the lower court cases (all of them pre-Heller, except Brett, N. v. Community Unit School Dist. No. 303, 2009 WL 424546 (N.D. Ill. 2009)) are indeed split on whether there is a constitutional right to self-defense. But it seems to me that the case for such a right — including a right of lethal self-defense when necessary to prevent death, serious bodily injury, rape, and kidnapping — is very strong, even under the narrowest accepted test for recognizing constitutional rights (the Glucksberg test, from the decision that rejected a claimed right to assisted suicide).

Self-defense is not merely a constituional right, but a human right. I cannot believe that the Founders did not have this essential human right in mind when they crafted the Constitution. If the courts cannot find it, then something is seriously wrong with the courts.