20030514

Guard bummer
My trips to Cheyenne are coming to an end. I will spend a few weeks this summer to read Hank the Cowdog to my girls, take a few road trips, work with a few rifles, and start job-hunting.

I will be temping for another entity beginning midsummer, on a military pay status known as MPA (translation not available at this writing). That means a new Schlumberger combined access card with all the bennies, and a new stack of business cards. The insiders' term is Guard-bumming, or working on a succession of active duty or manday periods rather than holding down a continuous job.

During that time, though, I will be sleeping in my own bed, continuing to read Hank to Firstborn and Middlechild, and developing the resume.
Clandestine Mobile Media Access Platform update
The Dell notebook's 6GB drive has been scrubbed clean and reloaded with Lycoris.
Am blogging through Mozilla at the moment.
A few hardware items remain to be cleared up, namely the CD-ROM and the detachable floppy. All else seems to be tits.

Then a repartition and an installation of Win98 or 2k to run the stuff I really bought this platform for in the first place.

20030511

While I'm at it
Hearty agreement with Will Baude about attempts to amend Senate rules governing the filibuster.
. . . after nine days, any filibuster can be broken by 51 votes. Even if the time limit were double or triple that, I think that this completely obliterates the purpose of the filibuster rule. Let us be clear about something. The filibuster was not designed to ensure "full and fair debate".

Emphasis mine. The Senate as a legislative body is supposed to put a specific minority, the population of a smaller state, on equal footing with those of larger states. The filibuster is one form of leverage to accomplish that end.
The filibuster ain't broke.
Less than optimistic
In fact, I'm full-blown ambivalent about the prospects of Silveira v Lockyer if it goes on to the Supreme Court.

If conflicting Circuit court rulings on the Second Amendment force the Supremes to rule on the question of whether it protects an individual right, they will probably find a way to answer that yes, the Second Amendment is an individual right, but that it can be so thoroughly circumscribed by State and Federal law as to have no meaning.

The ruling would have to discuss the purpose of the Second Amendment, which is a reset button. Judge Kozinski's description of the right protected (not granted) by this amendment, necessarily puts a choice before any other judge who must rule upon it. What judge would rule that a person has a right to challenge with force a hypothetically tyrannical government that might be paying that judge's salary?
What judge would rule that a person has a right that therefore pre-exists the government?
What judge would rule that people should be allowed to make arrangements today, in case of a possible tomorrow "where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees"? What judge would admit that he or she could someday be cowardly or irrelevant?
What judge would rule that the great unwashed masses have an explicit right to access a reset button that could put all them out of their robes, their chambers, their jobs?

I admit that I know few judges, and only a handful of attorneys. Like most people I've had unkind things to say about them as a class, until I needed one, and since recanted on those unkind utterances. But are there many more judges whose opinions agree with Kozinski's? Are there many judges and lawyers who can visualize a time or a circumstance wherein a Doomsday provision would be needed?

If there are, I owe them apologies and gratitude. And pose a further question: what would it take? what would make a judge reach for that reset button himself? I know, I know, courts examine specific real cases and will not rule on hypotheticals.

Side note: Kozinski's dissent is also the first place I have seen a convincing distinction between a State's power and so-called States' rights.