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BIASED SUPREME COURT: 1 Right, 3 Wrong! Eleanor Holmes Norton On 2nd Amendment & Supreme Court's 5-4 Decision Declaring DC's Gun Ban Unconstitutional + Rules In Favor Of Wealthy: You Gotta Read This!
BIASED SUPREME
COURT: 1 Right, 3
Wrong! Eleanor
Holmes Norton On
2nd Amendment &
Supreme Court’s 5-4
Decision Declaring
District Of
Columbia’s Gun Ban
Unconstitutional +
Rules In Favor Of
Wealthy: You Gotta
Read This One! - RI9
Tabacco: If for no other reason, the composition of the Supreme Court, which now has 7 of 9 members appointed by Republican presidents, is the main reason why no thinking person should ever consider voting for a Republican – ever!
There is a long-perpetuated FALLACY that it’s the
Republicans don’t believe that. Conservatives don’t believe that. Neoconservatives (QuasiCons) don’t believe that. The Religious Rapture Right doesn’t believe that. Haves and Have-Mores don’t believe that. Racists don’t believe that. George W. Bush doesn’t believe that. And John McCain doesn’t believe that. Why then do Democrats, Independents and honest, thinking people of all ilks fall for that Fallacy?
I will tell you why. When Bush says, “It’s your money! You should be able to spend it, not the government”. He isn’t talking to all of us. He isn’t even talking to all those groups, mentioned in the preceding paragraph. He is only talking to the Haves and Have-Mores. Everybody else assumes they are included in that Talking Point. That is what you are supposed to think. When the Talking Heads assert the FairTax is going to solve all our Tax Problems, they are speaking the same disingenuous propaganda. The FairTax will help the Haves and Have-Mores, not the Middleclass. They said Free Trade Agreements would help America. They omitted the key work “Corporate”.
And when you are told that the Supreme Court is infallible, fair and Constitutional, just remember that the Supreme Court, which declared “Separate but Equal” to be “Separate and Unequal” in Brown vs. Board of Education was the same group of 9, though not the same individuals, who previously had declared “Separate but Equal” to be Constitutional, fair and equitable. If you don’t understand that it’s the Constitution of the Group of 9, which counts most, you have your head in the sand.
GOP Conservatives understand how CRITICAL the composition of the Group of 9 is. That’s why they don’t like John McCain; they don’t trust his Conservative credentials when time comes for the president nominates a new Justice.
Conservatives don’t worry about Race, Real Estate, Abortion, Guns, the Flag, Gay Marriage, the Economy, Free Trade, FairTax, Outsourcing, Eminent Domain, Social Security, Welfare, Medicare, War, Lobbying, Earmarks, Pedophilia or Adultery. Their Litmus Test is ‘CONSERVATIVE’! A “true conservative” believes all the things that are important to them anyway. Once a Conservative Justice is appointed to the Group of 9, the rest will take care of itself.
Finally, remember that the Conservatives are not interested in whether something is Constitutional or not; they are only concerned with having their own way on everything. That is why religious leaders should never be allowed to have political power, either as a group or as individuals. Name a war, which did not have religious overtones or impetus! Personally, I would feel safer with an Atheist any day.
Justices End Executions for Child Rape
In another ruling, the Supreme Court struck down the death penalty for raping a child. In a five to four judgment, justices said prisoners can only be executed for murder or crimes against the state. The ruling overturns laws in six states including Louisiana where two men have been on death row after being convicted of child rape.
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/6/26/headlines#4
Tabacco: Ruling otherwise would be not only ridiculous; it might also lead to executions for homosexuality and lesbianism and/or for miscegenation. You laugh? I don’t know why. It has happened before. You never thought Torture would be permitted and extolled by the government of the United States of America either. But it is! And the year is 2008, not 1808!
Supreme Court Rejects D.C. Handgun Ban
In a historic ruling, the Supreme Court has struck down a handgun ban in Washington, D.C. On Thursday, justices ruled the Second Amendment enshrines the constitutional right of an individual to own and keep a loaded handgun at home for purposes of self-defense. The five to four decision overturns the 32-year old ban on handguns in the nation’s capital. It’s the court’s most significant ruling on the Second Amendment in nearly seventy years. Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty criticized the ruling but said it will be respected.
Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty: "As mayor, even though I am disappointed in the court’s ruling and believe as I have for the past year that more handguns in the district will only lead to more handgun violence, it is both important to respect the court’s authority and to act quickly and I have already directed the metropolitan police department to implement an orderly process to allow citizens to register handguns for lawful possession in their homes.”
Court Strikes Down Campaign Finance Rule on Wealthy Candidates
In another judgment, the Supreme Court struck down a key part of campaign finance reform regulating how wealthy candidates finance their campaigns. The so-called “millionaire’s amendment” forces candidates to disclose additional information and allows opponents to raise more money.
In a five to four ruling, the
court said the amendment is
unconstitutional because it
unfairly restricts wealthy
candidates.
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/6/27/headlines
June 26, 2008
Supreme Court Slashes Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Fine to One-Tenth of Original $5 Billion Ruling
The Supreme Court handed corporate America a major victory this week when it sharply reduced the amount of money Exxon Mobil has to pay in punitive damages for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. An Alaskan jury had initially ruled Exxon should pay five billion dollars in punitive damages but in 2006, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court cut the award of punitive damages in half. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court cut the amount of punitive damages again and ordered Exxon Mobil to pay just $500 million in punitive damages – one tenth of the original jury’s ruling.
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/6/26/supreme_court_slashes_exxon_valdez_oil
June 27, 2008
Supreme Court Strikes Down DC Handgun Ban
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/6/27/supreme_court_strikes_down_dc_handgun
In a historic ruling Thursday the Supreme Court voted that the Second Amendment enshrines the constitutional right of an individual to own and keep a loaded handgun at home for purposes of self-defense. The 5-4 decision to overturn the 32-year old ban on handguns in the nation’s capital is the court’s most significant ruling on the Second Amendment since 1939. We speak with Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D–DC).
Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, Democratic Congresswoman representing the District of Columbia.
Rush Transcript
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JUAN GONZALES: In a historic ruling Thursday the Supreme Court voted that the Second Amendment enshrines the constitutional right of an individual to own and keep a loaded handgun at home for purposes of self-defense. The 5-4 decision to overturn the 32-year old ban on handguns in the nation’s capital is the court’s most significant ruling on the Second Amendment since 1939.
In his majority opinion Justice Scalia said that the “right of the people to keep and bear arms” as enshrined in the Second Amendment applied not only to the “well regulated militia”, mentioned in the amendment, but also to individuals. He added, “It is not the role of this court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct”.
Tabacco: If the 2nd Amendment mentions “well regulated militia”, but does not mention “individuals”, then to infer that is both illogical and Unconstitutional! If the Founding Fathers wanted “individuals” included, I’m sure they knew how to spell that word!
Someone should pose to Antonin Scalia, “Why did the Founding Fathers omit the word “individuals” or a facsimile thereof in the 2nd Amendment, if that is what they intended?”
The dissenting justices strongly disagreed and called the decision “a dramatic upheaval in the law”. Justice Breyer wrote, “The decision threatens to throw into doubt the constitutionality of gun laws throughout the United States”.
AMY GOODMAN: President Bush welcomed the ruling, as did Senator John McCain, and Senator Barack Obama. The National Rifle Association applauded the ruling and said it marked QUOTE “a great moment in American history”. The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence criticized the decision and argued that it would “embolden criminal defendants, and ideological extremists, to file new legal attacks on existing gun laws”.
The ruling has also met with widespread criticism from lawmakers and the mayors of Washington, DC, and Chicago.
AMY GOODMAN: Congressmember Eleanor Holmes Norton represents the District of Columbia. She is speaking out about this decision and joins us now from Washington, DC. Welcome to Democracy Now!
REP. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON: Good morning. Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s great to have you with us. To start, can you respond to this ruling?
REP. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON: The ruling, I suppose, has very bad news and very good news. The good news is, for those who expected the worst, it could’ve been worse. First of all, it was narrow, 5- 4. And its wording left a lot of room still to regulate guns. The ruling holding amounts to three things. You can have a handgun in your home to be used only for self-defense. That means people shouldn’t go out and think they can have a gun and shoot it. If you were to and shoot it and it was not used for self-defense, for example, it would not come under the court’s decision. Moreover, it does not mean it is an individual’s right to have a gun; it is the right to have a handgun in your home and used in self-defense. It could have been worse.
The bad news is no handgun in your home is going to remain in your home. These handguns—first of all, handguns in the home, according to all the data, are used primarily for suicides and for friend-to-friend domestic violence. They are used or not particularly used, because huge accidents among grownups and children. Imagine people sitting in their houses getting a jump on a criminal. Most of the criminals in the District of Columbia do not enter houses when they think people are at home in the first place. In many ways, the decision was a huge stretch, a stretch around the Second Amendment itself because the Second Amendment starts saying exactly what it is about. It was about a country that was very afraid that creating a central government which would have an army, would leave the states disempowered to, in fact, handle themselves. The states were sure that these militias could always be armed. This court, which calls itself a conservative, strict constructionist court, simply reached around that, called it a preamble and said the use of the words “militia” and “people” was about individual rights. When you look at all of the amendments, six other amendments, the word “people” is used, it is referring collectively, usually to the States.
JUAN GONZALES: Congresswoman Holmes Norton, unfortunately, both political parties, it appears, as well as the two top Presidential candidates, in their platforms and their pronouncements, supported the court’s interpretation apparently.
REP. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON: Certainly not the court’s interpretation. Both political parties—I don’t know what you mean by political parties, I was not aware there is anything in the democratic platform about the Second Amendment. I can say to you the District gun law was consistent with the Second Amendment. It was the right to have a gun in your home. It had to be unloaded; it had to be a gun used for hunting. Even we have the strictest gun laws have never said an individual could not own a gun. In fact, what the gun radicals are saying is that there should be no regulation and the Second Amendment is like the First Amendment. It should be absolute, or near absolute. At least the court said it wasn’t absolute. If the District is doing its homework, and I assure you is, it will now proceed to write very, very strict gun laws, which I think can be done consistent with this decision.
JUAN GONZALES: It did state, though—it allows States and jurisdictions to continue to have restrictions or regulations for the sale and possession of handguns, correct?
REP. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON: That is very important question. Yes, for example, it said that the licensing requirements, registration requirements, could in fact be used. So that the District could say that everybody in fact had to register guns. It could have restrictions on who could own a gun. I would hope the District would not say that anyone over 18 should own a gun, not in this town, and I must say in major cities across the United States, where the greatest upsurge in gun violence has been among teenagers. I would hope they would say, at least 21. The decision said that, our law saying that guns had to have trigger locks on them left open the notion about trigger locks. It didn’t not say that the gun cannot be required to have a trigger lock; it said you had to be able to have a loaded gun in your house.a gun will be used precisely in the opposite way that the decision interprets. It says it is supposed to be used for self-defense. What is the experience? The experience is someone gets mad, knows he has a gun, goes out and gets it. We think that the guns will find their ways into the streets. Somebody will say, “I’m going to go in my house, I’m supposed to keep it in my house. I don’t think about the law.” He’s going to bring it out. He is having a dispute with his neighbor. The problem with all of this is having a loaded gun in your home, according to all the experience, means that We now have a huge new pool of guns, unless we write very, very strict regulations. I believe that the job of the District and other cities that have gun laws as strict as ours is to write regulations as strict as they possibly can, consistent with this decision. I think there are very, very strict gun laws that can now be written. And we shouldn’t hedge on it at all.
AMY GOODMAN: Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, Senator Obama responded saying today’s decision reinforces if we act responsibly, we can both protect the constitutional right to bear arms and keep our communities and our children safe. Your response?
REP. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON: I believe he must be saying, if we act responsibly with the required regulations.
AMY GOODMAN: He supported the decision.
Tabacco: Obama is running for president, Goddamit, Amy. If he said anything less, the GOP would hogtie him and defeat him with the soundbites because the public is disinformed, incapable of judging relative priorities, intellectually challenged and stupid! Since when do we confuse politicians’ mouths with prayer books!
If one president can be impeached because he got a blow job from a 21-year old woman and another president cannot be impeached because he initiated a war for profit by deliberately lying to the public, takes money under the table for initiating that war from the profiteers, and caused the deaths of over 4,000 American soldiers and 1.3 million innocent Iraqi citizens, all for profit, then how smart can we be!
Even with the pitifully uninformative MSM we now have and even without Tabacco, how high does your IQ have to be to smell out this Stinky, Treasonous Bush administration!
REP. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON: Yes, he supported the decision, and I regret that. I think essentially what is trying to do is say – I’ve always had this right, a Second Amendment right. He is from Chicago. A law of Obama’s Chicago, of Mayor Daly’s Chicago, is in many ways, like ours so that it now it is being challenged. It probably will fall behind this decision. I think, and even predicted that neither candidate would try to make a big issue out of this decision. They’re both essentially trying to appeal to independents because neither the Democrats nor Republicans decide Presidential contests anymore and have not for at least 25 years.
AMY GOODMAN: Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, I want to ask you one last question on the position of Barack Obama and a Supreme Court decision and that is the one the Supreme Court ruling the death penalty could not be applied to child rapists. Senator Obama disagreed with this decision. Though he has opposed the death penalty before. In this case, he said—I think the rape of a small child six or eight years old is a heinous crime and if a State makes a decision that under narrow limited well-defined circumstances the death penalty is at least potentially applicable, that does not violate our Constitution. Your response?
REP. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON: Well, since they have the last word, they say it does not violate the Constitution. If I were Barack Obama, who has the same position, I thought, on the Death Penalty, as I do, and the Supreme Court ruled in that way, I would have to concede that is now the law of the land and regret it. I think the Supreme Court has increasingly seen how isolated we are in having a death penalty, especially death penalty—at all, but especially the death penalty that takes in so many crimes. For those of us, who oppose the death penalty as I thought senator Obama did, we are quick to recognize the rule of law, but I do not see how you can say anything different from what the court said. The court said that the death penalty is used when the crime is essentially a crime against the state for the worst crimes. Many of these, rapes, they’re terrible, terrible things, in this case, a rape within the family, the notion of shaving your decision in this way, it seems to me, should be done very carefully. In my case, I would have to recognize what the court said, I do not agree with it and gone on. I understand he is in the middle of a campaign and does not want to make a big issue of it. I regret that it looks like he’s changing his position.
AMY GOODMAN: Congress member Eleanor Holmes Norton, we thank you for being with us. Congress member Eleanor Holmes Norton, she represents the District of Columbia. This is Democracy Now, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. I’m Amy Goodman. We’ll be back in a moment.
Tabacco: If I had ever owned a handgun, I’d be doing time in prison right now! Few people should be allowed to own and keep handguns. And fewer still should be allowed to procreate and raise children! To drive a car, you must at least have a license. To make a child requires only the inclination to have sex. Now the Supreme Court has taken us back to the Wild, Wild West of the 19th Century. Those, who are least qualified to own guns by temperament and personal bias and lack of self-control, will be the first to get them. I know myself. Under no circumstance, would I, as Firearms Officer, grant myself a license to go within 50 yards of any firearm or firearms seller!
Tabacco: I consider myself both a funnel and a filter. I funnel information, not readily available on the Mass Media, which is ignored and/or suppressed. I filter out the irrelevancies and trivialities to save both the time and effort of my Readers and bring consternation to the enemies of Truth & Fairness! When you read Tabacco, if you don’t learn something NEW, I’ve wasted your time.
In 1981's 'Body Heat', Kathleen Turner said, "Knowledge is power".
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