Radioactive Communist Zombies

Sotomayor: Obama's Attack on The Second Amendment?

Bob Owens writing for Pajamas Media says Barack Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for Supreme Court justice is an "end run" on the Second Amendment (links original):

The recent landmark case District of Columbia v. Heller put an end to decades of arguments regarding the meaning of the Second Amendment. In a 5-4 decision, SCOTUS rejected the collectivist interpretation favored by gun control advocates such as President Obama, noting that the Second Amendment’s protection of the right of citizens to own firearms for private use is an individual right that predates the Constitution, with its authority tied directly to the natural right of self-defense.

Just six months after Heller, however, Sotomayor issued an opinion in Maloney v. Cuomo that the protections of the Second Amendment do not apply to the states, and that if your city or state wants to ban all guns, then they have the right to disarm you. Such an opinion seems to fly directly in the face of Heller, exposing Sotomayor as an anti-gun radical who will affirm full-on gun prohibitions and believes that you have no right to own a firearm, even for the most basic right of defending your family in your own home.

So is Obama, knowing that gun control is a loser at the ballot box, trying to set up and anti-Second Amendment Court in order to impose gun control by judicial fiat (much like same sex marriage is being rammed down the throats of Americans who don't want it)? 

We're Losing Our Atmosphere!

According to scientists, our atmosphere is slowly going away.  And it's not the fault of the U.S. or SUVs amazingly.  It's the Sun's fault.  National Geographic tells that:

Unlike, say, Mars's or Venus's, Earth's atmosphere was thought to be untouchable inside our protective magnetic field. But a new study says the sun is slowly "stealing" our atmosphere—and at a greater rate than on Mars or Venus . . . "We're, in fact, losing more oxygen and more hydrogen than even Venus is today," said Chris Russell, a professor of space physics at the University of California, Los Angeles.

It seems the solar wind is stripping oxygen and hydrogen from our atmosphere and flinging it to the stars.  Scientists thought for years our magnetosphere protected us but now it appears it's not only not protecting us, but aiding and abetting the Sun's actions:

Typically hailed as a protective buffer from the sun's brute power, Earth's magnetosphere is actually helping the sun's energized particles strip away a tiny fraction of Earth's atmosphere, the new study says.

Boy, this seems the kind of thing Al Gore could get worked up about.

But don't panic yet.  We have a few years left:

At the current rate, our present atmospheric inventory can last at least until the sun—midway through its life now—turns into a red giant and engulfs Earth, Russell said.

"At that point," he said, "the loss of atmosphere becomes moot."

And global warming will kill us all long before that happens, anyway.

Get a Life

(Hat Tip Olympia Business Watch)

Some people seriously need to get a life.

A survey shows that (at least in the U.K.) people are taking their work home with them, and then to bed with them.  Survey says:

Over a quarter of UK employees are so work obsessed they can't resist using a mobile device such as a laptop in bed before they go to sleep . . .The survey discovered that of those people who do work in bed, 57% do so for between 2 and 6 hours every week, little wonder that the survey also found that the majority of their bed companions found their partners' obsession with their mobiles "a very annoying habit". A staggering 8% of people admitted that they spend more time on their mobile devices during the evening than talking to their partners!

Taking your mobile device home I understand (and do), checking emails at home I understand (and do).  But taking it to bed?  That's just loony.

But this is the life as it's becoming, technology follows us everywhere.  It has embedded itself into our being.  How long until they'll just implant the device inside our brains? 

Now excuse me, I have to check my phone for emails.    

Wednesday Night Ramble (Part Three, I think)

No one big thing to blog about.

Sonia Sotomayor has claimed that being a Latina makes her a better judge than a white male.  Really, she said that, and I quote:

In a speech published in the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal in 2002, Judge Sotomayor offered her own interpretation of this jurisprudence. "Justice [Sandra Day] O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases," she declared. "I am . . . not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, . . . there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

Thomas Sowell has a rebuttal here:

If you were going to have open heart surgery, would you want to be operated on by a surgeon who was chosen because he had to struggle to get where he is or by the best surgeon you could find — even if he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and had every advantage that money and social position could offer?

If it were you who was going to be lying on that operating table with his heart cut open, you wouldn't give a tinker's damn about somebody's struggle or somebody else's privileges.

The Supreme Court of the United States is in effect operating on the heart of our nation — the Constitution and the statutes and government policies that all of us must live under.

I wouldn't blame your for reading the whole thing (but please come back when you're done).

My readership is off the past couple weeks about 30 - 40%.  I suppose I could blame it on the recession.

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu sees a black roof and he wants to paint it white (apologies to the Rolling Stones).  According to Planet Gore quoting AFP:

US Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Tuesday the Obama administration wanted to paint roofs an energy-reflecting white, as he took part in a climate change symposium in London.

The Nobel laureate in physics called for a "new revolution" in energy generation to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

But he warned there was no silver bullet for tackling climate change, and said a range of measures should be introduced, including painting flat roofs white.

Making roads and roofs a paler colour could have the equivalent effect of taking every car in the world off the road for 11 years, Chu said.

Planet Gore points out that in winter (in places that have winter) a black roof absorbs energy, cutting down on heating, and saving energy.  But also, it's the equivalent of stopping driving for 11 years?  Somehow I think someone moved a decimal place.

Speaking of Planet Gore, they quote from the May 28 issue of Nature magazine that a study has shown that up to 90% of VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) in the atmosphere come from  . . . trees and plants!  You know, the smell of a pine forest, that's VOCs.

I feel bad because I forgot to give a Hat Tip to Instapundit for yesterday's killer robot post.

Four Steps to Termination

What are the odds the robots will start killing humans?  Well, according to P.W. Singer writing in Slate, the odds are not great.  In fact, Singer lists four steps that have to happen for there to be killer robots trying to wipe out humanity.

One: The machines would have to have some sort of survival instinct.  And right now we are building them without survival instincts so that they can "take the hit" for humans:

Yet most of the focus in military robotics today is to use technology as a substitute for human risk and loss. We use the Packbot in Iraq because, as one U.S. military officer tells, "When a robot dies, you don't have to write a letter to its mother." It would serve the very opposite goal to give our robots any survival instinct.

Second: The robots would have to be more intelligent than humans while not possessing any human traits such as empathy. 

Third: The robots would have to be able to build, repair, refuel, function independently of humans:

For instance, the Global Hawk drone, the replacement for the manned U-2 spy plane, has the ability to take off on its own, fly to a destination 3,000 miles away, and stay in the air for 24 hours as it hunts for a terrorist on the ground. Then it can fly back to where it started and land on its own. But none of this would be possible if there weren't humans on the ground to fill it with gas, repair any broken parts, and update its mission protocols.

And finally, we'd have to build robots without a way to control them.  Not likely, says Singer:

Yet one has to hope that a generation that grew up on a diet of Terminator movies would see the utility of fail-safe mechanisms.

So the robots taking over the world and wipe out people is pretty unlikely, Singer apparently thinks (links original):

In my final judgment, however, The Terminator may not be the best guide for how a machine takeover might take place in the real world. Instead, another science fiction series, The Matrix, may be more useful. By this I don't mean that we can look forward to a future of humans living in jelly bubbles and Keanu Reeves' avatar running about in leather pants. Rather, the films give us a valuable metaphor for the technologic matrix in which we increasingly find ourselves enmeshed but barely notice.

You know, like reading and writing blogs.

Obama nominates Sotomayor for Supreme Court

This morning Barack Obama announced his pick to replace Souter on the Supreme Court.  He chose Sonia Sotomayor (yet another name my spell checker doesn't know).  Sotomayor is a Hispanic female.  Which begs the question: was she chosen due to her qualifications or due to her race and gender?  Was there not a more qualified white male available?  Or white female.  Possibly but doubtful.

Sotomayor said some good things this morning at her introduction:

I firmly believe in the rule of law as the foundation for all of our basic rights. 

For as long as I can remember, I have been inspired by the achievement of our founding fathers. They set forth principles that have endured for than more two centuries. Those principles are as meaningful and relevant in each generation as the generation before.

It would be a profound privilege for me to play a role in applying those principles to the questions and controversies we face today.

Which almost sounds like she might base her opinions on the Constitution, and not, oh, the latest fad of the left or foreign law.

But Ms. Sotomayor comes with some baggage that might give us a clue to how she'll rule from the bench.

In one case, she ruled fish must be protected no matter the cost.  The Wall Street Journal's Environmental Capital blog quotes from her decision:

The [Environmental Protection] Agency is therefore precluded from undertaking such cost-benefit analysis because the [best technology available] standard represents Congress’s conclusion that the costs imposed on industry in adopting the best cooling water intake structure technology available (i.e., the best-performing technology that can be reasonably borne by the industry) are worth the benefits in reducing adverse environmental impacts.

In other words, no matter how much it costs, no matter how many jobs it costs, the fish must be protected and the EPA can't look at a cost-benefit analysis.  This ruling was overturned by the current Supreme Court (Souter was a dissenter).

And the Wall Street Journal Law blog has a selection of her opinions and statements which paint a picture of an activist judge (links original):

For starters, there’s the speech she gave at Duke back in 2005. Click here for the YouTube video. The controversial quote: “Court of appeals is where policy is made. And I know this is on tape and I shouldn’t say that because we don’t make law . . . I know. . . I’m not promoting it, I’m not advocating it . . . ”

No, courts do not make policy, they enforce and interpret it.

She ruled that the 2nd Amendment doesn't apply to the states (like every other part of the Bill of Rights and the 8th Circuit just decided that it does, right down to the city level).

And probably her most controversial (so far) ruling was that New Haven Connecticut could throw out standardized tests for promotion of firefighters because whites scored better than minorities.  This one is probably going to the Supreme Court, too (where she'll be able to be wrong again).

Finally, the left-wing New Republic even has come out against Sotomayor.  Jeffery Rosen writes:

The most consistent concern was that Sotomayor, although an able lawyer, was "not that smart and kind of a bully on the bench," as one former Second Circuit clerk for another judge put it. "She has an inflated opinion of herself, and is domineering during oral arguments, but her questions aren't penetrating and don't get to the heart of the issue." (During one argument, an elderly judicial colleague is said to have leaned over and said, "Will you please stop talking and let them talk?") 

So this is who will probably be confirmed.  We're replacing a reliable liberal with a reliable liberal who happens to be Hispanic.  Suppose we couldn't ask for anything better from this crowd now in power.

Memorial Day 2009

North Korea Tests Nuclear Weapon

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK a/k/a North Korea) has tested another nuclear weapon.  For some reason, the Obama administration is surprised at this.  When no one did anything about North Korea's launch of a multistage missile that could carry a nuclear warhead to the shores of the U.S. mainland, Kim Jong Il must of decided (correctly) that both the UN and the U.S. do not have the backbone to stop him.  And the Obama administration has been trying to play nice with the DPRK (and Iran).  As Reuters reports:

Obama vowed when he took office to extend a hand to troublesome countries "willing to unclench your fist" but so far he has had little success with North Korea or Iran, which have continued to advance their nuclear programs and showed little interest in renewed dialogue.

Of course not.  We are doing nothing to make them want to negotiate.  In fact we are encouraging them by talk of "dialogue" rather than tough actions such as sanctions.

Kim knows he can test a nuke with impunity and in fact might even get some oil or food out of the deal as has happened in the past.  Obama's weak response to this:

Calling the nuclear test a violation of international law, Obama said, "North Korea is directly and recklessly challenging the international community."

He said his administration would work through the U.N. Security Council and the six-party talks on North Korea to address the issue.

Yes, those six-party talks worked so well:

Under the so-called "six-party" talks among the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States, North Korea committed in 2005 to abandon all its nuclear programs.

But North Korea lied.  And as long as the consequences of continuing his nuclear weapons program are none, Kim will continue to develop weapons able to destroy a city.  And now he has the missiles to hit the U.S. with, too (while the Pentagon is gutting missile defense to save money).

Iran and North Korea both see a weak opponent in Obama.  Countries such as that only understand strength.  Being nice to them is like trying to make nice with the Swine Flu.  And probably more deadly. 

A Tax by Any Other Name . . .

Waxman-Malarkey (I mean Markey) made it out of committee.  What's in this massive expansion of government?  The New Yuck Times reports:

The measure approved by the House committee runs more than 930 pages. It establishes a cap-and-trade program to control climate-altering emissions; dictates an increase in the use of renewable energy sources; and sets new efficiency standards for buildings, lighting and industrial facilities. It calls for a 17 percent reduction in emissions of heat-trapping gases from 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050.

It's the Cap and Trade provisions that are causing the most contention.  Some are calling it a tax.  Investors Business Daily talked to some who say that, yes, it's a tax:

Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Pa., a critic of the bill, [said]: People are correct to perceive it as a tax because there are "huge tax implications." After all, it raises costs for carbon emitters and takes those in as revenue.

"It is a perception that the public certainly understands. The question is, how widespread is that perception?" Doyle said.

How is it a tax?  By selling "carbon permits":

Initially most -- an estimated 85% -- of the permits would be given away by the government to ease the transition. The rest would be auctioned off. The revenue would go to the government.

Over time, fewer and fewer permits would be given away, making emitting carbon more expensive and creating a strong incentive to limit emissions. The bill seeks to reduce emissions by 80% by midcentury.

Democrats like Pelosi have called it a twofer: a way to clean the air and generate revenue for health care or other programs.

And anything that generates revenue is a tax.  And yes, it's a tax on business but they will just pass the costs on to the consumer so it will eventually hit your pocket book.

This bill had trouble getting out of committee and still has to go through the whole House and Senate.  Some Democrats oppose this so it's not a slam dunk.  But it's probably likely to pass in some form.

Is it too Early?

Is it too early to write off the Mariners?  Once (briefly) on top of the AL West they are now five games behind at .452.  They've lost seven of their last ten games.  They are looking pretty bad suddenly.

Can only hope this is the trend for the rest of the season.