Here Comes the Judge

I've argued previously (though not on this blog) that the Second Amendment makes no sense if it's not construed as granting an individual right to bear arms. Opponents of this view typically invoke a strand of Constitutional originalism: the Second Amendment says you have a right to form militias, not have a gun for self-defense. (Politics makes strange bed-fellows; progressives who suddenly discover the value of Constitutional originalism.)

My argument for the individual right to bear arms is grounded in the absurdity of granting folks the right to band together to form militias but denying the right in the case of a solitary individual. If gun toting militias are protected by the Second Amendment, a fortiori should individuals.

But my argument has a flaw, which I've recently come to realize; namely, that the "militia" language in the Second Amendment is interpreted as a statement about federalism: the states, under the "militia" reading, have the right to form militias. This makes more sense. And, alas, it leaves unanswered the separate question about whether the right to bear arms extends to individuals for the purposes of self defense (the right in both cases -- individual or state -- is essentially intended as protection against tyranny).

Anyway, the Heller decision last year upheld the individual rights interpretation of the Second Amendment. As might be expected it was cheered by opponents of Gun Control. Interesting, however, that conservatives like George Will have questioned the Heller decision. Will points to 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Wilkinson's argument that Heller, like, over three decades ago, Roe v. Wade, uses the ambiguous wording of the Constitution as license for judicial subjectivity. With Heller, we get an individual gun right from the ambiguous language of the Second Amendment. With Roe v. Wade, we get a right to privacy that exists somehow in the due process clause of the 14th Amendment ("under the penumbra" is I think the famous phrase).

Wilkinson argues that judicial subjectivity is not the bromide for Constitutional ambiguity; rather, the matter should shift to legislation:

"...when a right's definition is debatable, generous judicial deference should be accorded to legislative judgments -- particularly those of the states, which should enjoy constitutional space to function as laboratories for testing policy variations."


I hate to admit it, but I tend to agree.

Happy New Year

I probably shouldn't post this, but...

Happy New Year! The most uneventful New Year celebration ever. I tried to be festive but had no enthusiasm for it, and ended up snoozing and watching bad T.V. By way of contrast, the best New Year celebration I had was in Seattle in 1995 (to be 1996).

I was in Pioneer Square for the countdown, which was packed with the merriest of folks, cheering beyond all reasonableness. I remember lifting the champaign to the sky and counting down with hundreds of my suddenly closest friends. What fun, that night.

Later I lost my leather jacket in a bar, and ended up staying with a woman named "Gretchen" details about which I'll omit. In the morning I awoke to a new year, in a new bed, and by noon was walking in rare sunlight (I remember it was sunny in Seattle) back to my apartment, which was across town and I guess at least three miles away. Gretchen didn't have a car. It was, I think, a New Year to remember, loosely stated.

In my old age and married with kids now, I just sort of nod off, watching Andersen Cooper in ear muffs and a bunch of now silly looking revelers cheering and whooping and hollering. Many have Gretchen stories, by now, too. They will, some day, many of them, recall with great fondness the first moments of 2009.

Margin of Error

I've started investigating the predictions made by GW believers, and in particular how the predictions have changed over the years. It turns out that the predictions, as I expected, are all over the map: the climate will get hotter in the next 100 years, but who knows by how much, and who can say what'll happen? This isn't of course how it's pitched. But it's what the numbers are telling us. Allow me to explain.

The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) predicted a rise of mean global temp by 9 to 12 degrees Celsius in 1990, then .8 to 3.5 degrees Celsius in 1996, then 1.4 to 5.8 Celsius in 2001. There are a couple of points here. One, the absolute differences between the three predictions are huge, a fact that ought to worry anyone who's invested much of their intellectual energies into believing that we know what we're saying. Two, the relative differences (the low to high predictions for each year) are huge, as well. In the 2001 predictions, converting to Fahrenheit gives us a range of 2 to 10 degrees. What the heck? This effectively says nothing; even simpleton GW skeptics like me can see that an eight degree range allows for vastly different weather scenarios.

We might forgive the blatant variations in these predictions by noting that they all point to some warming trend (although, after my unscientific survey of this debate, I'm inclined to believe that the climate will be cooling, not warming, in the next 100 years-- but who knows?). True. But I wouldn't plan your picnic around these numbers, because if you look at them, they tell a clear story: who knows?

Source: http://weathersavvy.com/Q-Climate_Global_PredictionsAccurate.html

Ms. Buttu Says All

This Hamas Israel thing. On CNN Rich Sanchez interviewed first the Israel ambassador to the UN, then former PLO legal advisor Diana Buttu, to get both sides, you know. American above-the-fray media. Wow. These folks know how to bicker. Screw the facts. Ms. Buttu, in response to Sanchez's question "But don't the Israelis have a right to defend themselves?", makes a couple of interesting points, that I'll take the time to dissect.

One, the rocket attacks from Hamas didn't have "explosive heads", unlike the Israeli rockets.

Oh, yes, Ms. Buttu, you went to law school to say that? Nice. As if Hamas was mindful of Israeli lives, pulling off the war heads from the rockets before lobbing them willy-nilly into civilian neighborhoods, soccer fields, etc. Wouldn't want to unduly injure anyone. Is she serious? I'm pretty sure if Hamas had a Number 2 pencil with a nuclear tip they'd figure out a way to smuggle it into an Israeli grade school in hopes of exterminating some Jewish children. Give me a break.

The reality is, Hamas is literally throwing missiles into civilian areas of Israel in hopes of killing anyone. And Ms. Buttu, you know it. Shame on you. I'll be nice and merely give you the dumb ass comment of the year award.

Two, this lobbing of missiles into civilian neighborhoods is justified, because Israel has been waging a Nazi-like war against Palestinians, with military missions into Gaza, having the effect of cruelly denying Palestinians their freedom (how does that work?) Man, it sounds bad. But let me sum it up for those uninitiated into the perpetual Palestinian-Israel conflict: the Jews intend to live here! And they have a military! And they use it when we try to slaughter them! Damn Israel! Damn them when they strike back!

Great. So the best I can tell from Ms. Buttu's comments is that, after her barrage of legalistic, emotive words, the reality is that Israel is actually trying to be a sovereign nation in the Middle East, and it patrols the borders of the Gaza Strip, and actually intends not to perish but to try to insure the security of its citizens.

This conflict, if an alien were to come down and hear both sides of it dispassionately, would so far skew in favor of Israel's targeted strikes in reaction to the mayhem-intending Hamas actions that "hearing both sides" would become a joke. There's no equivalence, and the world knows it. Hamas hates the Jews. And how dare the Jews try to live near Hamas (or in the Middle East generally). Sanchez did his best to hear both sides; in the end, what I've said here is just exactly what both sides said. Sans perhaps the legaleeze.

Saltless in Seattle

Seattle and in general the Pacific Northwest has been deluged this year with snow. The enviro wizards in Sea-town managed to dump tons of sand all over the streets to create traction for hapless motorists, a questionable tactic motivated largely by the desire to avoid using salt. Too bad sand is worse for the environment than salt (but, doesn't it seem that salt should be, well, worse than sand?). The experts have proclaimed that salt "degrades marine life", while not offering details. In the meantime, the six thousand tons of sand dumped over Seattle roadways are choking out the insect populations, negatively affecting local streams. Damn.

2008, Bummer for GW Believers

The planet cooled this year, compared with the last eight (which makes it accurate to proclaim "it's the coolest year in the 21st century!"). This is fine for a punch line. But what's the deal? The Guardian article cites a team of researchers from Kiev University that predicted, back in March, "...that natural variation would mask the 0.3C warming predicted by the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change over the next decade. They said that global temperatures would remain constant until 2015 but would then begin to accelerate."

Great, but problem is, I've been Googling around and finding lots of cock-sure predictions by GW believers that the warming is already accelerating, not going into a flat period before it unleashes its fury sometime later (type in "global warming accelerating" for about a thousand assurances from the GW "experts" that we're screwed). So, are we leveled off until 2015, after which we'll begin our Warming Acceleration? Or are we accelerating right now, and 2008 is some weird anomaly, to be replaced by a warmer 2009, and an even warmer 2010, and so on? What the heck's going on? I'm sure the experts can explain.

The reality is, Global Warming is B.S. (oh, I mean IMHO it's B.S.), and the point will be made clear enough in the years that follow by nature itself. My guess is that we're headed for cooler temperatures this century. I could be wrong (of course), and given that I'm trying to maintain some degree of epistemic humility, I'll hold off, for now, launching a Web site dedicated to shaming everyone into investing in technologies that warm our planet and shield us from the new Ice Age to come...

Global Warming!

I have a puzzle about Global Warming! (I'm now including the exclamation to further capture the added drama that typically attends the phrase). It's the observation that C02 levels have, in times past, been high, yet the climate then was actually cooling. In other words, the temp graph was trending down as the carbon dioxide levels were trending up. The GW folks have some ready made explanations for this, mostly centered on the catch-all "it's complicated" dismissal (translation: you stupid skeptics, you're either not scientific or just plain crazy!), with perhaps some additional whiz-bang sciency sounding stuff about how A, B, C, and sometimes D can vary with levels of This, That, and The Other. Don't worry about all of this, however. Just remember that it's complicated. And butt out. (Of course, it's complicated should stick to the GW believers as much as to the skeptics. It's complicated is double-edged, after all.)

This debate, whenever I've had enough of the Dark Knight (will this movie ever end?) and I'm thinking about something that fires everyone up, but that smells like a three day old fish, I always end up back at Global Warming! And when the discussion ping pongs back and forth long enough to exhaust the easy points and counter points, we inevitably end up back at "But what are the costs of inaction?" (no, this isn't the runup to the Iraq War all over again). As if we'll all be for coal plants and China and pollution and Hummers unless we believe that we can predict the future of the weather.

I will end me post with this however: if anyone can tell me what the weather will be like in a few decades, I'd like to discuss the stock market. You might just be my best friend.