The Constitutional concept of incorporation (known more formally as the Doctrine of Incorporation) basically says that the restrictions on government action held against the federal government by virtue of the Constitution and more specifically the Bill of Rights, are also held to restrict actions by state and local governments. Quoting from the Basics Project regarding the incorporation of the provisions of the 1st Amendment:
The vehicle used to accomplish this result was the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which provides that, “No State shall deny any person life, liberty or property without due process of law.” Focusing on the word “liberty” in the clause, the Supreme Court expanded it to include various provisions of the Bill of Rights, thereby making the restrictions against the Federal government in the Bill of Rights applicable to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment. In this way, for example, freedom of the press was incorporated into the word “liberty” of the Fourteenth Amendment, thereby giving the Federal judiciary the final say on the scope and meaning of this freedom at both the State and Federal level through its power of judicial review.
(Emphasis is theirs.) What this means is that state and local governments are every bit as restricted from curtailing your freedom of speech or religion or peaceful assembly as is the federal government. Since the Doctrine was first applied, many other Amendments have been incorporated, including the 4th, 6th and parts of the 5th and 8th. (The 2nd and 3rd have been incorporated in some circuits and held not incorporated in others, a condition known as a split circuit.) At issue in the matter of incorporation is whether the protections of the US Constitution extend to citizens in their interaction with all levels of government or only with the federal.
The matter of incorporation with regard to the 2nd Amendment has reached a critical stage. Faced with an electorate that is growing less supportive of “gun control” measures, opponents of 2nd Amendment rights are seeking to use the courts to enact policies they cannot do by winning elections. Last year’s Supreme Court decision in Heller v. DC answered the question finally as to whether a citizen’s right to keep and bear arms is an individual one or only as part of a collective. As the Heller decision states, it’s an individual one. Having lost that avenue, localities that saw DC’s draconian gun ban fall sought to have the decision construed narrowly and held to be effective only against federal actions. In other words, they want the 2nd Amendment to remain unincorporated.
For the same reasons as most reasonable people consider the incorporation of the provisions of the 1st Amendment to be proper, supporters of 2nd Amendment rights believe that amendment should also be incorporated. An American’s right to keep and bear arms should not be restricted based solely upon his residence zip code. As I noted, the 2nd Amendment was held incorporated by one Circuit – the 9th – but has been held unincorporated by others – the 7th and most recently the 2nd. An appeal of the case ruled upon in the 2nd Circuit has been filed by the NRA to the Supreme Court asking for them to grant certiorari so as to take the case for review and also to rule that the 2nd Amendment is incorporated nationwide. Today an amicus brief, or “friend of the court” brief, was filed by 33 State Attorneys General supporting the NRA’s request and asking the Court to hold the 2nd Amendment incorporated.
Two-thirds of the nation’s attorneys general have filed an amicus brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to grant certiorari in the case of NRA v. Chicago and hold that the Second Amendment applies to state and local governments through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This bi-partisan group of 33 attorneys general, along with the Attorney General of California in a separate filing, agrees with the NRA’s position that the Second Amendment protects a fundamental individual right to keep and bear arms in the home for self-defense, disagreeing with the decision recently issued by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
The list of states who joined in this brief are: Alabama, Alaska, arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wyoming. It should be noted that California has also fined an amicus brief on their own but are making the same requests.
I am extremely pleased to see that Virginia’s Attorney General, Bill Mims, was a signatory on this brief. Well done, sir, and the same goes to all of those AG’s who joined in the effort.
July 7th, 2009
Posted by
ricjames |
2nd Amendment, Law, Politics |
3 comments
From the aviation genius who floated the idea of making you pay to go to the bathroom on one of their flights, Michael O’Leary of Ryanair is suggesting they might implement a “standing” class of passenger service. And by “standing” I mean if you buy one of those tickets you’re going to be standing instead of sitting.
Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary wants passengers to stand on the budget airline’s flights, in a bid to pack in more people and boost profits.
Passengers would pay less to huddle next to what have been described as “bar stools”, with seatbelts around their waists.
O’Leary has already held talks with US plane manufacturer Boeing about designing a jet with standing room.
It’s bad enough to have to sit in some airlines’ coach sections and contend with the elbows and shoulders of passengers seated on either side of you. Consider the appeal of being on a flight for an hour or two mashed standing against fellow passengers. In a seat, at least, you’re guaranteed the space between the armrests if nothing else. In O’Leary’s vision you’re going to be contending with your fellow passengers for as much room as it takes to fully inhale. Forget about setting your drink, snack, or magazine down anywhere.
Something else to consider. The seat belts in the airline seats are a safety joke to those professionals who understand the forces put on people during emergency maneuvers (or simply during a loss of pilot control) at the speeds aircraft attain these days. However, the fact that you’re in contact with the seat tends to offer you some stability and ability to withstand harsh accelerations and decelerations. If you’ve ever been standing on a bus or a subway train, you know that stability isn’t there regardless of whether you’re holding onto a rider strap or not. Those effects you felt were on vehicles traveling at well under 100 mph. The average commercial jet can’t stay flying at speeds of less than double that and most of them are traveling at 3-5 times that speed. The forces you’ll experience even entering choppy air are going to make the subway look smooth as glass. From the sounds of the plan, you’ll have a “seatbelt” tying you around the middle to what amounts to a post. Experience a sudden deceleration in that position and you might just get folded in half.
Thanks, but no thanks. I hope the plan isn’t approved because it’s not safe but even if it is, you’ll never catch me on one of those planes.
July 7th, 2009
Posted by
ricjames |
Aviation, Economy |
one comment
The surviving pages of the oldest known example of the written Bible are being assembled in 1 place for the first time in 150 years of study. The Codex Sinaiticus is a Greek-language transcription consisting of about 400 pages of prepared animal skin and, reports say, containing a complete copy of the New Testament, parts of the Old Testament, and books of the apocrypha. The 4th-Century work had been split up to locations in Britain, Russia, Egypt, and Germany for research and have not been available in 1 place for viewing since then. Now, courtesy of the Internet, all of the pages complete with transcriptions are available for viewing at the web site I’ve linked above.
Juan Garces, the Codex Sinaiticus project manager, said putting the book online was a “definitely a historical moment.”
“It’s special because it’s the oldest almost completely preserved bible,” Garces said.
Garces said the only other Bible that rivals Codex Sinaiticus in age is the Codex Vaticanus, which was written around the same time but lacks parts of the New Testament.
“It’s such an important book — that’s why it should be accessible,” Garces said. “If you would have liked to see it before you would have had to travel to four countries in two continents. If you want to see the manuscript right now all you have to do is go online and experience it for yourself.”
I’ve been to the site and looked over some of the pages. I don’t read Greek so I can’t actually read the parchments but the restoration/preservation efforts have clearly been extensive. The text appears quite sharp in some places and is very readable throughout. There are large sections of the parchment that have been destroyed by time, of course, but that’s the magic of our information systems in this age. We can capture the images of those pages and both preserve and disseminate the writing to all parts of the world at the speed of broadband. (Well, mostly at that speed in any case.)
This is great work and a real positive use of our technology. Kudos to those who have worked on this are owed.
July 7th, 2009
Posted by
ricjames |
History, Human Interest, Religion |
no comments
Back when I was in elementary school I remember seeing charts in gym class called “height/weight” charts. They were easy to use: you looked up how tall you were and then you could see how much you were supposed to weigh. Weigh more than that and you were too fat. (Things were pretty black and white in elementary school back then.) I recall very clearly one year when the medical community finally spoke out against their use. They were overly simplistic, they said, and failed to account for such obvious items as the fact that muscle and bone had higher densities and weighed more than fat. Those arguments rely on scientifically sound facts and conclusions and the use of the old height/weight charts faded into the dustbin of history.
Until, that is, some bright bulb somewhere repackaged it for the 21st century. Today they call it the “Body Mass Index” or BMI. It’s pretty simple to use when you have the charts: you look up how tall you are and cross-reference your weight to get which of 4 categories you fall into – underweight (ba-har-har-har), ideal, overweight, and obese. Despite the fact that it’s the bloody CDC pushing the use of this garbage, it has exactly the same issues as the old height/weight charts.
I always knew the BMI should really stand for “bogus mass index” but I lacked the point-by-point items to address just how bogus it was. Until now, that is, thanks to (can’t believe I’m saying this) the National Public Radio (NPR). Keith Devlin writes an article there titled, “Top 10 Reasons Why The BMI Is Bogus.” Just a sample from the list:
1. The person who dreamed up the BMI said explicitly that it could not and should not be used to indicate the level of fatness in an individual.
The BMI was introduced in the early 19th century by a Belgian named Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet. He was a mathematician, not a physician. He produced the formula to give a quick and easy way to measure the degree of obesity of the general population to assist the government in allocating resources. In other words, it is a 200-year-old hack.
…
4. It gets the logic wrong.
The CDC says on its Web site that “the BMI is a reliable indicator of body fatness for people.” This is a fundamental error of logic. For example, if I tell you my birthday present is a bicycle, you can conclude that my present has wheels. That’s correct logic. But it does not work the other way round. If I tell you my birthday present has wheels, you cannot conclude I got a bicycle. I could have received a car. Because of how Quetelet came up with it, if a person is fat or obese, he or she will have a high BMI. But as with my birthday present, it doesn’t work the other way round. A high BMI does not mean an individual is even overweight, let alone obese. It could mean the person is fit and healthy, with very little fat.
The logic item I’ve listed above is a problem with the application of the BMI to individuals not necessarily with the BMI itself. Of course, the problem with the BMI is that it’s scientifically, physiologically wrong as I referenced above. What makes this less of an example of effectively harmless quackery and more of a real problem is the fact that insurance companies and even some private firms are basing decisions on extending services and job offers on this idiocy. I’ll admit that I’m no where close to ideal weight but the fact of the matter is that methods used to actually measure my body fat have shown a significantly lower level of fat than the BMI is implying. My body type is just heavier, my bones and muscle mass weighing more than the equivalent volume of body fat. A person over 6 feet tall and ripped like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime comes up with the same BMI as I do and the only 6-pack you’re going to see on me is the the one with the diet soda label I’m carrying out to the car from the local Wegmans.
The only reason the BMI is seeing use is that it’s simpler to use than methods that show the actual percentage of body fat on an individual and it’s cheaper, besides. We aren’t going to get anywhere by slapping an “obese” label on people, particularly when that label is being applied to people whose fitness levels are well above the norm. We should be advocating the use of methods than can show truly individual measurements and stop using the method we’ve already tossed out once and whose creator warned us should not be used in this fashion.
July 7th, 2009
Posted by
ricjames |
Human Interest, Medicine, Politics |
one comment
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