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Friday, 2003 November 14, 08:14 — constitution

the limits of commerce

The world turned upside-down:

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals of San Francisco reversed the conviction, ruling that the congressional ban does not apply to homemade machine guns and their parts because they were never in the stream of commerce.

The court ruled that there was neither a transfer nor sale of the weapons or their parts, so Congress did not have the power under the Commerce Clause to regulate homemade guns crafted from scratch.

Robert Stewart was sentenced to five years imprisonment for being a felon in possession of firearms and of possessing illegal machine guns last year.

His attorney, Thomas Haney of Phoenix, said the decision doesn’t mean much for his client or for the gun movement. Few people have the skills to build a weapon from scratch, as Stewart did, Haney said.

Perhaps not (yet) — but that the Notorious Ninth reads the Commerce Clause narrowly, in a gun case of all things, is big news. (Link from Rational Review News Digest)

Punchline:

Stewart, meanwhile, faces about a 20-year sentence next week after being convicted this summer of soliciting a fellow prisoner at the Federal Correctional Institution in Phoenix to kill U.S. District Judge Roslyn Silver, the judge who last year sentenced him to five years on the weapons violations.

Eugene Volokh weighs in. Brett Thomas and Larry Solum debate the consequences for amateur marijuana growers.

Wednesday, 2003 November 12, 12:51 — blogdom, militaria

QotD

Unqualified Offerings have yet another forceful word to say about the conduct of the War of the Year:

Here is the thing you must understand about David Brooks and Max Boot and William Kristol and the whole “national greatness” gang. The “brutal measures” are not regrettable means to a noble end. They are a noble end. The national greatness types have been bemoaning America’s supposed softness and urging it to toughen up since the mid-1990s. The war on terror has simply been their opportunity to sell a preexisting product. That product is, chiefly, your sons and daughters, brothers, sisters and schoolmates shooting foreigners. Some of the foreigners shot may indeed be our enemies. Others may be the sons and daughters, brothers, sisters or schoolmates or our enemies. Or at least standing somewhere in the vicinity of where our enemies are or have been or may think about being. No matter. The real enemy is “decadence,” which is their word for liberty.

Wednesday, 2003 November 12, 12:04 — constitution, economics

another layer of transaction costs

Rasmusen on the value of liberty

What is wrong with government regulations? Well, first, of course, they are likely to be the result of special interests, and inefficient. But even good regulations have a cost that I don’t see mentioned: the cost of having to act carefully so as to avoid breaking the rules. In a society with numerous regulations, people spend a lot of time learning about the regulations.
. . . .
What I think the model might illustrate is that when lots of things are arbitrarily illegal, there are big transaction costs.

Tuesday, 2003 November 11, 23:00 — drugwar

Incident at Goose Creek

People are asking why the latest drug-war outrage has not resulted in tar and feathers, or at least some basic rock-throwing. Perhaps the potential ringleaders are worried about being prosecuted for terrorism?

Sunday, 2003 November 9, 01:06 — blogdom, me!me!me!, politics

two dimensions

Tim Lambert (Deltoid) is compiling a table of bloggers’ scores in a Political Compass quiz. I scored in the middle of the Right Libertarian quadrant, close to Will Wilkinson (The Fly Bottle). I suspect I’d be further left if some of the questions were worded differently.

Later: I wonder whether the creators of the Compass website are doing any factor analysis on the responses (analogous to that which produced the Animation of Congress) to check the validity of their scoring rules. (I also wish I had a clue about how factor analysis is done.)

Update!

2006: I didn’t record my exact score back then; so I did the quiz again just now and scored (+4.63, -5.85).

Saturday, 2003 November 8, 22:29 — race, security theater

the swarthy Canadian menace, II

A year ago Maher Arar, a citizen of Canada, was arrested at a New York airport on his way home, and deported to Syria. I suspected he’d never be seen again, but he is now back in Canada, much the worse for wear.

Nov.15: a longer story (New York Times)

Saturday, 2003 November 8, 12:13 — blogdom, drugwar

if youth knew, if age could

Jim Henley wrote a year ago:

Sadly, Unqualified Offerings changed its mind about drug prohibition well after it was too old to benefit personally.

That’s odd. Jim is a couple of mere weeks older than the Ogre, who remains convinced that a change in drug policy (particularly an amendment by shredder) would do him some good.

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