1. Your Right To Self-Defense; 2. Your Right To Freedom of Speech

1. Your Right To Self-Defense:

The Supreme Court of the United States recently (Monday, June 28) issued its opinion on gun control, in McDonald, et al, v City of Chicago, Illinois. See opinion here in PDF; note: 214 pages.

It is interesting to read that Politico.com portrays the opinion in this fashion:

In a 5-4 decision, the justices ruled for the first time that the Second Amendment applies to state and local governments. The court ruling — which one gun advocacy group compared to the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion ruling — stemmed from cases challenging ordinances in Chicago and suburban Oak Park, Ill., that effectively ban the possession of handguns.

The court split along its usual ideological lines: the court’s more conservative justices — John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito — voted to extend gun rights, while Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor voted to hold the line against such arguments.

“Self-defense is a basic right, recognized by many legal systems from ancient times to the present day,” Alito wrote in the court’s majority opinion. The right to bear arms, he wrote, applied to the states because of the 14th Amendment, adopted in part to ensure uniform national standards of justice after the Civil War.

“It is clear that the Framers and ratifiers of the Fourteenth Amendment counted the right to keep and bear arms among those fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty,” Alito wrote.

The court’s majority suggested the ruling is a logical extension of the Supreme Court’s decision in 2008 declaring that the right to bear arms is an individual one — and not one that simply acknowledges the existence of state militias. However, in the new ruling, the justices did not give precise guidance about how broadly the right to bear arms applies, and which particular kinds of regulations might be unconstitutional.

I find it interesting to note that recent opinions written in which a respect for tradition and law is exhibited are -- oddly enough -- crafted within the framework of the this country's founding document, the Constitution, with a respect for the Bill of Rights.

Leftists and those determined to break the back of a strong United States baldly state the ruling will lead to greater violence in poor and minority communities.

Further, please consider and ruminate over this pull-quote from the dissent:

In the main dissenting opinion, Breyer wrote that he found “nothing in the Second Amendment’s text, history, or underlying rationale that could warrant characterizing it as ‘fundamental’ insofar as it seeks to protect the keeping and bearing of arms for private self-defense purposes.” Ginsburg and Sotomayor joined Breyer’s dissent.

Yes. You read it here first. Guilty Overeducated White People (GOWPs) are actually that stupid. And it shocks you that Sotomayor "joined Breyer's dissent"?

Yes. You read it here first. The Second Amendment is actually that confusing to them:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

As if "gun control" has worked so wonderfully well in, say, New York, DC and Chicago? Might one deign to suspect: perhaps that's the reason why the case was brought and heard in the first place? Because even poor law-abiding blacks have a right to self-defense, though they may not belong to a gang nor possess a criminal record?

Because they just want something of a level playing field when they dare to step outside their bullet-pitted homes for work or the grocery store or in their cars or at a decimated park? With their kids? Or their grandparents? Or their friends? Or their co-workers?

This case, you realize, isn't about gun rights for wide-open "flyover states." It revolved around those persons locked, packed and crowded, like dazed and stupefied rats demanding their Gubmint Tit, into the precise same urban settings into which your Leftist federal government would like to lock YOU. No matter where you are.

This time, they were momentarily defeated. To a degree. But SCOTUS left many doors open. If Conservatives or adherents of the Constitution think they've won a pyrrhic victory, they would be quite wrong. SCOTUS Leftists want nothing more than an "outcome-based" approach.

Realize: the Second Amendment is by no means "finally" decided. Oh no. Not remotely.

2. Your Right To Freedom Of Speech:

From techworld.com:

A US Senate committee has approved a wide-ranging cybersecurity bill that some critics have suggested would give the US president the authority to shut down parts of the Internet during a cyberattack.

Senator Joe Lieberman and other bill sponsors have refuted the charges that the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act gives the president an Internet "kill switch."

Instead, the bill puts limits on the powers the president already has to cause "the closing of any facility or stations for wire communication" in a time of war, as described in the Communications Act of 1934, they said in a breakdown of the bill published on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee website.

There were other continuing concerns:

One critic said Thursday that the bill will hurt the nation's security, not help it. Security products operate in a competitive market that works best without heavy government intervention, said Wayne Crews, vice president for policy and director of technology studies at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an anti-regulation think tank.

"Policymakers should reject such proposals to centralize cyber security risk management," Crews said in an e-mail. "The Internet that will evolve if government can resort to a 'kill switch' will be vastly different from, and inferior to, the safer one that will emerge otherwise."

Cybersecurity technologies and services thrive on competition, he added. "The unmistakable tenor of the cybersecurity discussion today is that of government steering while the market rows," he said. "To be sure, law enforcement has a crucial role in punishing intrusions on private networks and infrastructure. But government must coexist with, rather than crowd out, private sector security technologies."

In consideration:

On Wednesday, 24 privacy and civil liberties groups sent a letter raising concerns about the legislation to the sponsors. The bill gives the new National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications "significant authority" over critical infrastructure, but doesn't define what critical infrastructure is covered, the letter said.

I would posit this: if Mr Obama acquires the "lawful" authority to suspend the internet, then:

1. Why would he want to do this?

2. Would not that authority translate to any and every subsequent president, no matter their political bent?

Alex Jones actually makes an important point:

Fears that the legislation is aimed at bringing the Internet under the regulatory power of the U.S. government in an offensive against free speech were heightened further on Sunday, when Lieberman revealed that the plan was to mimic China’s policies of policing the web with censorship and coercion.

“Right now China, the government, can disconnect parts of its Internet in case of war and we need to have that here too,” Lieberman told CNN’s Candy Crowley.

While media and public attention is overwhelmingly focused on the BP oil spill, the establishment is quietly preparing the framework that will allow Obama, or indeed any President who follows him, to bring down a technological iron curtain that will give the government a foot in the door on seizing complete control over the Internet.

To me, it bottom-lines at this:

If government disagrees with the bulk of internet speech in the United States, it can SHUT IT DOWN for reasons of "security."

Ladies and gentlemen, how frightening is this?

George Orwell and Aldous Huxley are wagging their fingers at us, from their graves.

There WILL be a rising level of confrontation.

BZ