June 27, 2008

6/27: Let Freedom Cling!

In a landmark decision 6/26, SCOTUS (in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller) overturned DC's controversial, long-standing ban on handguns. More significantly, the 5-4 ruling held for the first time that the Second Amendment protected the right of an individual -- not just a militia -- to bear arms.

Barack Obama, in response to the ruling: "I have always believed that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to bear arms, but I also identify with the need for crime-ravaged communities to save their children from the violence that plagues our streets through common-sense, effective safety measures. The Supreme Court has now endorsed that view, and while it ruled that the D.C. gun ban went too far, [the court] acknowledged that this right is not absolute and subject to reasonable regulations enacted by local communities to keep their streets safe."

John McCain: "I applaud this decision.... Unlike Senator Obama, ... I was pleased to express my support and call for the ruling issued today. Today's ruling ... makes clear that other municipalities like Chicago that have banned handguns have infringed on the constitutional rights of Americans. Unlike the elitist view that believes Americans cling to guns out of bitterness, today's ruling recognizes that gun ownership is a fundamental right -- sacred, just as the right to free speech and assembly."

OBAMA: Backfire!

As a long-time advocate of gun control, Obama faced immediate criticism from across the political spectrum for his endorsement of the Heller ruling.

NRO's Yuval Levin: "The past two days of Supreme Court decisions have shed a bright light on Obama's rightward pivot for the general election. ... Today, revising a long held position on gun control, he agrees with Justice [Antonin] Scalia's reading of the Second Amendment.... If only the Court could overturn Roe before the election, Obama would become a pro-lifer."

Liberal blogger Ezra Klein thought Obama's stance was "disappointing." Klein: "[The Obama camp] flipped its position on the constitutionality of the DC handgun ban (were they once said Obama believed the ban unconstitutional, now they say he has no position on it). ... He's going to get hit for opportunism, but this is more the campaign being inartful than illiberal."

Beyond the debate over whether Obama's true stance on gun control and his sincerity regarding Heller, bloggers debated what implications the ruling might have in the fall.

Kevin Drum: "So that's that: the one-worlders at the UN can't take away your guns anymore. ... On another note, this is the latest in a whole bunch of high-profile 5-4 Supreme Court rulings this term. I wonder if that means that the composition of the court will be an even bigger campaign issue than it otherwise would be? My guess is yes."

Eugene Volokh: "[The 5-4 split] should be useful to either of the Presidential candidates who wants to make either gun control or gun rights into an election issue -- my guess is that this is more likely to be McCain. Expect McCain ads in states where there are likely many pro-gun swing voters stressing, 'your constitutional right to keep and bear arms hangs by one vote.' Also expect fundraising letters to likely pro-gun contributors stressing this at length."

On the other hand, many bloggers argued that the Heller decision actually defused the powder-keg issue of guns, particularly since the culture wars are widely expected to have a much smaller impact in this election than WH'04.

CQ's Taegan Goddard: "[The ruling] is not exactly a win for Republicans -- even though it went farther than even the Bush administration hoped. By re-affirming that Americans have a right to own guns for self-defense and hunting, the court effectively takes the gun issue out of the fall campaign. Republicans will now have a very hard time arguing that if you elect Democrats they will take away your guns."

HuffPo's Sanford Levinson: "[A]s a partisan Democrat, I confess to being relieved that the dissenters did not prevail, for the upholding of the D.C. ordinance would, in effect, have served as a massive in-kind campaign contribution to John McCain."

Chris Cillizza: "[I]t would be a mistake to assign too much political importance to today's decision. Gun rights are, by and large, a niche issue with little ability to move the political meter. In the most recent Post-ABC national poll, just one percent of voters said that guns and/or gun control were the most most important issue in the election."

MyDD's Todd Beeton: "The problem for McCain here is that rehashing bitter gate is pretty much all he has because he and Senator Obama really aren't all that far apart on this issue. ... By essentially agreeing with McCain, Obama takes gun control off the table as a wedge issue and leaves McCain with very little to point to distinguishing between their positions."

Even if McCain is able to make hay with the Heller decision, Weekly Standard's Richelieu cautions him: "The McCain campaign should be careful how they handle the Court's decision on handguns. While the Second Amendment in general is a winning GOP issue, the handgun aspects of it are more problematic with swing voters. In the end, this election will be decided by white females and ticket-splitting independents. The handgun issue is no huge winner among this group. McCain should applaud the decision, but tread carefully."

SCOTUS II: Is Obama Becoming An Obamacon?

The hoopla over Heller overshadowed the blog commentary regarding the other big SCOTUS decision this week: Kennedy v. Louisiana, which, in another 5-4 ruling, overturned a state law allowing for the execution of child rapists. Again, Obama tried to diffuse a potentially explosive issue by siding with the Court's conservatives (who had sought to uphold the statute).

Liberal bloggers were moderately disappointed with Obama, who has a long record of opposing the death penalty.

Klein: "Some disappointing legal positioning from the Obama campaign in the past few days, as Obama put out a statement disagreeing with [the Kennedy ruling] ... (if Obama's position were adopted, it would be the first time since the 60s that criminals have been put to death for crimes that don't include murder).... Child rape is horrendous, but it's actually particularly tricky from a prosecution standpoint, as the evidence is often from unreliable witnesses, pressured children, and decades-old statements, but juries are (rightly!) appalled by the very thought and tend to want to apply the maximum punishment. ... Obama could have condemned the crime in the strongest terms ('As a father, I'd want to personally gut anyone who harmed a child...') but still opposed the constitutionality and wisdom of the state widening the circumstances under which they're willing to take life."

But most bloggers tended to defend Obama. Many questioned the very premise that because he is generally a critic of the death penalty, he must defend it in all cases.

TNR's Jeffrey Rosen: "Many liberals may be inclined to view Barack Obama's [stance] as the worst kind of poll driven pandering. ... I disagree. In fact, Obama's support for the execution of child rapists wasn't invented for the presidential election; it dates back to The Audacity of Hope, where he wrote: 'While the evidence tells me that the death penalty does little to deter crime, I believe there are some crimes--mass murder, the rape and murder of a child--so heinous, so beyond the pale, that the community is justified in expressing the full measure of its outrage by meting out the ultimate punishment.' His longstanding opinion on the death penalty is a particularly nuanced one."

Even though Obama sided with the SCOTUS conservatives, some conservative bloggers remained cynical.

Goldberg: "Well, shouldn't it tell us something that the judges he wants to reinforce with like-minded colleagues, AKA the liberal wing, voted in ultimate empathy with the rapist of an 8 year-old girl, and not the girl herself? To his credit -- or to the credit of his realpolitik advisers -- Obama came out against yesterday's decision. But, that doesn't change the fact that he would appoint judges who would vote the same away and has voted against judges who voted the right way."

NORTH KOREA: Not Going South After All

On 6/27, Pres. Bush made the startling announcement that his administration is removing "Axis of Evil" North Korea from its official list of terrorist nations. The gesture was given in response to North Korea's cooperation in beginning to dismantle its nuclear program.

The blogosphere generally hailed the announcement, but the McCain and Obama camps remained relatively quiet. NRO's Jim Geraghty: "Neither candidate has a great deal to say about the recent announcement from the White House regarding North Korea; the tone of both is 'trust, but verify.'"

He then went on to tweak Obama: "I will note that McCain's seems a little clearer on what he wants to see going forward. McCain says that if the deal announced checks out, he's amenable to 'easing' sanctions on North Korea. Obama's, by comparison, has some mushy generic sentences like, 'This is a step forward, and there will be many more steps to take in the days ahead. Critical questions remain unanswered.' In the end, he too wants to verify the North Korean claims and if so, some sanctions can be removed. He warns that if the claims aren't verified, then we have go get tough by reinstating the sanctions. And then consider even more sanctions! (That'll show 'em.)"

The liberal blogosphere -- in a rare feat -- praised the Bush administration for its rapprochement with North Korea.

Joe Klein: "Congratulations to George W. Bush for finally making the correct choice--diplomatic engagement, regional talks that enabled quiet unofficial contacts with the North Koreans, which then led to direct negotiations--in resolving this dispute."

Matt Yglesias: "The excellent news out of East Asia is that Ambassador Chris Hill has not only managed to strike an okay deal with the North Koreans over their nuclear program, but also triumphed over administration hawks and gotten Bush to do the sensible thing. For a while now, Bush has been tilting in a reasonable direction with regard to the DPRK (after years-worth of screw-ups that have forced us to accept a much worse deal than we could have had years ago), a direction that John McCain has denounced in favor of the only approach he knows -- coercion, escalating conflict, and the risk of war. And, indeed, since at least 1999 McCain has been calling on us to reject pragmatism in Korea in favor of war ... But good for Bush and good for Ambassador Hill."

Many bloggers saw the diplomatic victory as a testament to Obama's own approach to diplomacy.

Steve Clemons: "Barack Obama's inclination towards engagement with problematic leaders around the world now is now buttressed by an experience of the George W. Bush administration. Too bad so much of the rest of America's foreign policy portfolio didn't get this same kind of attention."

Phillip Carter: "It's hard to find words to describe the significance of this diplomatic breakthrough -- and the irony that one of the Bush administration's greatest foreign policy successes would come via diplomacy, and not force. ... What I'm hearing through the grapevine is that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan required so much attention from senior decision makers that it allowed career diplomats and junior political appointees to do their work in East Asia. In essence, the six-party talks needed less attention to work well, so that diplomats and national leaders could get down to business without all of the posturing that goes along with highly public diplomacy. This may or may not be true, but it's an interesting view of how diplomacy can work."

Despite the bipartisan praise for Bush, some neoconservative bloggers were critical of the move towards peaceful diplomacy with North Korea.

Claudia Rosett: "It needs the talents of Stanley Kubrick to do justice to the complete Cuckoo's Nest that American policy on North Korea has become. The State Department wants a nuclear deal, President Bush wants a North Korea peace legacy. And like the hellbent bomber pilot played by Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove, undeterred by any last whisper of sanity, oblivious to the realities of the situation, and apparently beyond the reach of any recall code, Condi Rice just keeps barreling on, homing in on that bull's-eye moment, yeeee-hah! -- oh, criminy, that ended in mushroom clouds. Well, this could too."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Annie Get Your Gun

Atlantic's Megan McArdle: "I'm hardly the first person to make this observation, but I don't know why it isn't noted more often: guns are the only weapon that equalizes strength between attacker and attacked. It's the only time when men's greater speed, strength, and longer reach make no difference; if you pull the trigger first, you win. This is an enormous social advance. I am all for strengthening the social contract (and law enforcement) so that fewer men commit rape, assault, or robbery. But until human nature has improved so radically that grievous bodily harm has passed from living memory, I don't understand why more feminists don't push for widespread gun ownership."

LEST WE FORGET: Performance Enhancing Guns

New Scientist: "When Olympic sprinters dash down the track in Beijing this August, the fastest athlete may not take home the gold medal. ... Sound from the starter's gun is known to take longer to reach athletes who start from the outside lanes than their competitors on the inside. Now a new study suggests that competitors nearest the gun have another advantage -- the loudness of the bang shocks them into starting more quickly. Together, these extra boosts may amount to more than a tenth of a second in some races, which is easily enough to make the difference between gold and silver."

Posted by Chris Bodenner at June 27, 2008 02:25 PM