I could not think of something more that America needs. The government accountability office publishers reports all the time about government waste and malfeasance, but it is consistently, dare I say, pointedly, ignored. Having a separate independent agency, cast with investigating and prosecuting crime and criminals within the government itself would be amazing.
This would be good, right up until it itself becomes as corrupted as the entities is prosecutes. The problem is that 'unconstitutional' is in the eye of the beholder. Take for example the classic "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.". Does this mean all gun control laws are unconstitutional or does it mean that gun control laws are implicit in what it means to be a 'A well regulated Militia'; the army for example has a ton of rules about guns. Good arguments can be made for either of these views (and others). Interpretation is everything.
First off, you are too late for any comment about the text to hold any water. 2008 Heller and 2010 McDonald settled that. It is an individuals right to keep and bear, not collective, never was. One term that came from Heller was “dangerous and unusual”, make note of the and.
Next, well regulated never meant lots of regulations. It meant well trained and in good working order. 1800s Oxford dictionary.
> It is an individuals right to keep and bear, not collective, never was.
Prior to 2008 it was. New SCOTUS precedent doesn't magically change the past.
> Next, well regulated never meant lots of regulations. It meant well trained and in good working order. 1800s Oxford dictionary.
The 1766 definition reads:
"Properly controlled, governed, or directed; subject to guidance or regulations."
Textualism/Originalism is just cherry picking things like this to justify the decision the majority was going to make anyways, which is why someone sought out just the right definition from just the right source from decades after the drafting of the 2nd amendment.
It's weird that they had to resort to this, because you could totally make a convincing case for private firearm ownership based on state militias and how they evolved. There's room for guaranteeing the individual ownership right under the Militia act of 1903 - any male aged 17 to 45 is eligible for "unorganized" state militia service unconnected to the various state-level military branches. That apparently is not their desired outcome, so one presumes this is why they did not pursue this avenue.
>Prior to 2008 it was. New SCOTUS precedent doesn't magically change the past.
It really wasn't. Had Miller not be basically defaulted on by death, but decided anyhow... this would have been clear earlier. Just because you don't like it - never made it any less of an individual right... You know, the second one in the section where all the other individual civil rights are - or was that an organizing mistake on their part?
Your definition is very interesting in that it seems to be a clear case of revisionist history, or a complete fabrication. Post a link, please.
Because here are quotes using the term, and not one in the 1700/1800s implies regulation as in government regulation [0] [1]. Working properly, in good working order, effective.
Do me a favor and read the definition of Militia as writ in Article 1 section 8 of the constitution. Then give the Second Amendment another read, since that is what it is referring to with the usage of the word "Militia". Then go read the Militia acts of 1792/1795/1862 and finally 1903. It's all really straightforward, and each thing logically follows the next. Miller follows along in that vein. There's nothing revisionist about it; it's all really straightforward.
Where things get crooked in the reasoning is literally the Heller decision. Somehow it refers to the first Militia act with the decision referring to "able bodied men", while then concluding that "Militia" in the 2A does not actually mean "Militia". It's pretty bonkers.
You seem to be as willing to cherry pick as the conservative SCOTUS majority was in 2008. It's kind of nuts, because what I cited above, actually does already provide for private firearm ownership (with some boundaries around it). It's quite obvious that the reason for the much more convoluted reasoning in Heller is because the conservative majority wanted to greatly expand gun rights, and had to work backward from that goal to something that gave them enough of a fig leaf to ignore the (massive, self-evident) history of Militias and their regulation.
Now - if I needed more to support my point (which any honest reading would make clear that I don't), you can have a look at the influence the Federalist Society had on the Heller case:
Note the 2 members of the society who voted on Heller, and the extra ones which currently sit on the court. And also note the 2 additional members who have some sympathetic relationship to the group although are not explicitly mentioned as members. That gets you 4/5 of the 5 votes on Heller. 5 sitting SCOTUS as of this writing.
QED, Heller was highly partisan and a break from hundreds of years of precedent. You'd be hard pressed to make an honest case otherwise.
"Settled" means that it's never, ever going to change, because the composition of the court isn't going to change. At least not during my lifetime, and probably not yours.
It doesn't matter whether it's "justified". The Constitution means what five people on the Court say it means. And if that comes from talking to James Madison on the ouija board, the rest of us have to live with it.
In that sense, it's "settled". And our daily school shootings are just a fact that we have to accept.
Of the four court members under 60, three are conservative.
Of the remaining five members, it takes only two conservatives to ensure that the court remains that way. Assuming that future nominations are equally distributed, there's about a 2/3 chance that at least two will be conservative.
And let's just say that I don't think it will be randomly distributed. The existing court composition has a thumb on the scale of future nominees. The party that nominates conservative judges has won only one election outright this century, but until recently only one opposing candidate had been able to win -- including once because the Supreme Court directly stepped in.
It's harder to calculate just what that means, but I think it's sufficient to affirm that the odds are very long against being able to generally reverse this court's direction before Halley's Comet returns.
> "Settled" means that it's never, ever going to change, because the composition of the court isn't going to change. At least not during my lifetime, and probably not yours.
I am confident that the composition of the court will change, during my lifetime. I suspect yours as well.
FWIW, I do have a strong opinion on school shootings, of course. I am not comfortable with the assertion that there's something uniquely broken about Americans that means we can't have RTKBA. But if there is, I'm not confident that eliminating 2A would resolve the real problem.
You are allowed to be mad at a ruling you cannot change. Just don’t drag me into your feelings. Maybe it is overruled someday, that’s pretty rare. Maybe you can point to another amendment that made it almost 250 before being interpreted to say something, it does not?
I'm not mad at all. I have no feelings on the issue whatsoever, honestly.
But you're also wrong if you think there's meaningful precedent.
And BTW the entire Bill of Rights is the same age. All are subject to interpretation by the sitting Court.
...
FWIW, I would place 2A lowest on my list of important entries in the BoR though. They're all important because if one is threatened then they are all threatened, but I think 2A is probably net-harmful in the current world. If there was an A/B test, with and without, I'd choose without.
2A has transformed from this vaguely self-protective/deterministic right into this bizarro testament to machismo and the absurd idea that carrying makes one safer from fellow humans, and the frankly asinine idea that it's insurance against government overreach. The statistics, and clear thinking, prove otherwise. Are you that guy? Don't be that guy.
> the frankly asinine idea that it's insurance against government overreach
Why is it asinine? It is precisely intended to be the insurance of last resort against a government that turns tyrannical. If your claim is that the might of the US military is so overwhelming that a bunch of rednecks toting AR-15s could be of no match, well, Vietnam and Afghanistan both proved that a determined and armed population is actually quite hard to conquer even for the foremost military power.
The presence of "that guy" doesn't invalidate any Constitutional right. Neo-Nazis wanting to march through Skokie is "those guys" taking the 1st Amendment to the absurd. You could say that the Miranda warning arose as a result of "those guys" defense attorneys taking the 5th amendment to the absurd. They are all still rights held by the people.
It's almost not worth trying to explain it. Some people are wired in a way that makes taking care of their own fate terrifying and they're extremely happy to outsource that to a government they know full well to be inefficient and ineffective.
*Tanks and drones don't stand on street corners.* F18s can't enforce a curfew. No amount of equipment is going to control a population. We've seen it over. Now all of that is putting aside that anyone seriously thinks our military wouldn't crumble in a second if directed internally? They're reeling from kicking kids out that didn't want covid shots and failing to recruit, watch what happens when even Career Srgt Bootlicker is asked to open fire on a street that looks just like his back home.
I'm not interested in entertaining the idea I need firearms to stop the US military. I'm cautious I would need to protect mine against the people that would support something like that.
I'm pro-gun ownership but European. To me you're especially right about that part
> It meant well trained and in good working order.
In WV, I've seen people who barely knew how to handle hunting rifles, handle semi-automatique rifles. It's terrifying. Any hunter in my country seeing people handle firearms like those two would've reported them to have their license revoked and firearms locked until further training. (not that hunting permit/license are a big thing in the area btw, I think a lot are hunting kinda illegaly, but well, the woods are shared, and some really need basic training. ).
The court make-up isn't expected to change for decades. The previous President appointed three young members who will be there for a very long time, adding to three existing members. It will be many, many years before the composition of the court is likely to shift significantly.
>or does it mean that gun control laws are implicit in what it means to be a 'A well regulated Militia'
People who use this argument are disingenuous because they wouldn't argue the same thing about press being limited to printing presses or speech being limited to the spoken word.
Perhaps because "the press" means journalism in general any way you cut it and you need to be very disingenuous to say otherwise as the spirit of the terms is obvious.
Whereas "well regulated militia" absolutely doesn't mean "random redneck with a gun fetish" - the spirit is also obvious here.
People say the second amendment was made in the era of muskets so obviously an automatic rifle isn't what the founders were talking about
While the first amendment was made in the era of newspapers, so obviously the right to speech doesn't extend to Telegrams, Radio, TV, or Digital communication
It seems perfectly reasonable for someone from the 1700s to think "hmm, muskets, yeah, that's something everyone should have on hand", but then get sent forward to the 2000s, have modern firearms shown to them, and say "oh whoa, yeah, no way, that seems like a terrible idea".
It also seems perfectly reasonable for someone from the 1700s to think that freedom of speech and the press is a good idea, and then get sent forward to the 2000s, see all of our modern forms of communication and speech, and say, "yeah, that's just a reasonable evolution of things, and should be covered".
Obviously we'll never know; so far we can't do time travel, so we don't know what they'd think today. This is why I think this sort of reasoning about the constitution is kinda dumb. Even if we could divine what the Founders thought, frankly I don't think it's all that relevant. They are not exactly experts on how government should work. Yes, they did the best they could at the time, but with all the biases and issues of the time. As an example, they also thought that only white landowners should vote, but advocating for that today would get you smacked down pretty quickly.
And regarding 2A, it'd also be reasonable to expect that same person from the 1700s didn't actually think every random person should have a musket, but that only people who are a part of a "well-regulated militia" should have access to one.
It's worth mentioning that individuals could legally (and some did) own cannons and warships back then as well - it wasn't limited to muskets. The reference in the Constitution to "letters of marque and reprisal" refer to government licenses to attack and capture ships, ie a government license to be a pirate.
> And regarding 2A, it'd also be reasonable to expect that same person from the 1700s didn't actually think every random person should have a musket, but that only people who are a part of a "well-regulated militia" should have access to one.
It would not be reasonable to expect that. It's hard for most modern people to understand to what extent a gun was considered a necessary tool for non-urban people, which was a much larger proportion of the population.
The real problem we've run into is cultural. Americans used to run around with actual TOMMY GUNS without mass shootings. It's absolutely insane to think about how easily these people - many of them involved in criminal rings - could have killed hundreds of people if they had woke up one day and decided to. But they didn't.
Now we live in a broken and depraved culture and limiting gun access is about the only obvious tool we have to reduce the problem, or at least that symptom of it.
Not sure what the relevance of the above is. As I already said, people who say either of those are making a bad disingenuous argument.
I'm not saying either of those though, and didn't in my comment you responded to. I said that people who say a "well regulated militia" is not the same as "random individual who likes guns" are making an argument exactly in the intended spirit of the constitution.
Nothing to do with a disingenuous argument about "gun technology then vs now" or "press means just printing presses or newspapers".
So, yeah, if those rednecks form a actual state-run or even citizen-run militia they could have their guns, nice modern guns, in the context of that militia and for the purposes of that militia (and with the proper precautions and rules like police or army has for its guns).
I don't see where the constitutional's expression, as written, allows them to just have whetever guns they like as private individuals, even less so guns for fun and entertainment.
I'd go one better: what some document from 4 centuries ago says, should have no absolute hold to what the law is in a country 4 centuries later. It was what they came up with at the time, to respond to the problems of the time, as they saw them in the viewpoints of the time. All of them are dead now, and the demographics and issues are absolutely not even close to being them same.
Interpretation is an issue, just look at the way President Biden, and President Trump are being treated with regards to retention of classified documents. One is being prosecuted, the other is not. That's a very broad and public example, but the party in power typically does not prosecute its own.
One person retained said documents, bragged about having them, disclosed their contents to random, non-cleared people, lied about having declassified them, and then when the government asked them back, lied again and claimed he didn't have them, instructed his underlings to hide or destroy them, and obstructed the subsequent investigation.
The other person didn't realize he had them, returned them promptly when they were found, and cooperated with the ensuing investigation.
If you really think these two things are the same, I'm not sure you're going to have a productive conversation with anyone who wants to argue in good faith.
Also note that it's not just Biden who fell into that second category; Pence did as well. Funny how you didn't see the need to mention Pence. And good on him for also cooperating and returning what he had.
I agree. Of all the legal proceedings against Don, this is the most appropriate imo.
But... There is one thing that gives me pause about the Biden case. It is understood that Hunter had some capacity of access to the home [1]. Likely this overlapped with his hard drug and prostitute lifestyle. What are the chances that a state sponsored person managed entry to the house with Hunter and then had free reign of it while he slept or was in a drugged state? Does this factor into the risk assessment of the forgotten documents and culpability of Joe?
I admit I'm biased as I don't like Joe, so would prefer he is a one term president.
One is being charged with obstruction and retaining documents. There's no evidence of obstruction for Biden or Pence. If either of them told their attorney to "hide or destroy" documents then they would be receiving the same treatment.
This would be awful. Theft and bribery are already prosecuted aggressively. If anything, too much. It’s gotten to the point that high government officials can’t afford to be lobbied. Here they are, some of the most powerful people in the world, paid barely enough to live an hour drive away from DC, having to spend a fair bit of their personal income to go to lunch and dinner with leaders of private industry.
As for criminalizing “waste”, you start to get dangerously close to criminalizing politics itself. Then it just becomes about controlling DOJ and using it to go after your enemies (this is already too true).
The better thing to do would with regards to intelligence agency abuses would be to have more review of the decisions, mandatory discipline of rulebreakers, and prosecution of specific crimes committed for egregious cases. No need to generally criminalize every time a government official makes a bad judgment call.
You seem to be arguing that we have a system where theft and bribery are necessary in some way, and therefore we shouldn't prosecute it aggressively. Wouldn't we rather reform the system such that it makes theft and bribery less attractive?
No, I’m saying the definition of bribery has been stretched so far to include ballpoint pens, a $30 lunch or free attendance at a conference, at the same time that high officials are underpaid, so as to place an absurd financial burden on middle-class people holding high office. No one says that a CEO who meets a potential supplier who buys him lunch is being bribed. But if a politician does that, it’s a crime somehow. Frankly absurd.
Your comment brought to mind the number of IRS employees who are delinquent on their taxes. I think it really comes down to trust. You say that the government is already investigated enough, but I would contend that it's really the government investigating itself. If there is a separate, independent agency that investigates government and employee malfeasance, then at least there can be some check, accountability, and maybe transparency.
I can understand your focus with intelligent agency abusive, but I think the problem is much more systemic, and far greater than simply the intelligence agencies. People who work in the public trust should be held to a higher standard.
"According to the FY 2021 FERDI Annual Report, IRS employees had a 1.35 percent delinquency rate, compared to 4.93 percent for civilian workers throughout the Federal Government."
So IRS employees are now magically exempt from making mistakes in life, just because they're IRS employees? I think it's good that the rate of delinquency is lower for IRS employees, but I think expecting it to be zero is a bit much.
But sure, that should be fixed. Just like the 5% of other workers who should get their tax situation in hand. Just like how all the private citizens who are delinquent should get their tax situation in hand.
I'm not really sure how this oversight agency you advocate would even work. How would it be independent? Who would fund it? How would you ensure that its members aren't biased or influenced in any way? Ultimately these sorts of agencies are staffed by real humans, not automatons with perfect, disinterested software. I agree with the desire for this sort of thing, but I don't think it's at all practical.
> It’s gotten to the point that high government officials can’t afford to be lobbied.
Of all the sad things I’ve read today, this one is surely the saddest. Good thing it isn’t based on a reality I have observed… where do you think those billions “to” Ukraine are really going?
Members of congress are a small subset of government officials.
That they get away with corrupt behavior doesn't mean that people in the civil service should have to be anxious about trivial things. If a government employee can be influenced by something as minor as a pen or lunch, they are in the wrong line of work.
Same with congress.