Look on the bright side
TNR’s The Plank (as in maybe they should walk off of one) on Alito:
What should be far more troubling to Senate Democrats, however, is Alito’s 1996 dissent from a decision upholding the constitutionality of a federal law prohibiting the possession of machine guns. Applying the logic of the Constitution in Exile for all it’s worth, Alito insisted that the private possession of machine guns was not an economic activity, and there was no empirical evidence that private gun possession increased violent crime in a way that substantially affected commerce–therefore, Congress has no right to regulate it. Alito’s colleagues criticized him for requiring “Congress or the Executive to play Show and Tell with the federal courts at the peril of invalidation of a Congressional statute.” His lack of deference to Congress is unsettling.
On the bright side, it may be the first time that anti-gun ninnies acknowledge that a machinegun is actually different than an assault weapon.
Via Mike, who notes:
There are two kinds of people in the world, my friends… those who think that a Justice’s “lack of deference to Congress” is “unsettling” and those who think that it’s a primary requirement for the job. All the right people are pissed off tonight!
Meanwhile, I am happy to report that JoinTogether has apparently has stopped peddling anti-gun hysteria and closed their gun violence site (it’s just an archive now). The Million Moms are down to like, what, 24 members now? And Michael Barnes of the Brady Camp has supposedly quit, even though his name shows up on the Machine Gun Sammy press release. Good times, people, good times.
