Free In Idaho!

Thanks are due to our Idaho Senators and Representatives, for their support of the Congressional amicus curiae brief filed in the D.C. Second Amendment case before the Supreme Court.  Senator Crapo and Craig, and Representatives Simpson and Sali, joined Vice President Cheney and the 55 Senators and 250 House members who signed the brief favoring the individual right to keep and bear arms.

Congress has historically viewed the Second
Amendment as protecting from infringement the right
of the people at large to keep and bear arms. It has
further regarded ordinary, commonly-possessed rifles,
handguns, and shotguns to be constitutionallyprotected
arms. It has also passed regulations for
engaging in firearms businesses and to require
background checks on firearm transferees, and has
restricted certain dangerous categories of persons from
possession of firearms.99 None of these laws is called
into question by the lower court’s limited holding.

The standard for whether a right is
“fundamental” is whether it is “explicitly or implicitly
protected by the Constitution, thereby requiring strict
judicial scrutiny.” San Antonio Independent School
Dist. v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1, 17 (1973). The right of
the people to keep arms is obviously such a right. Yet
even if this Court applied a lower “reasonableness” test
as the standard of review, the District’s handgun ban
is unreasonable on its face. The lower court’s
categorical approach in holding a prohibition on
handguns to be unconstitutional per se was correct.

Where Congress has sought to restrict certain
firearms, some of which may have other characteristics
which overlap with handguns, it has defined them in
terms of specific categories.   A holding by this Court
that the District’s pistol ban violates the Second
Amendment would not apply to such firearms which
are restricted under other categories.

This case involves nothing more than the right
of law-abiding persons to keep common handguns and
usable firearms for lawful self-defense in the home.
Accordingly, no purpose would be served by remanding
this case for further fact finding or other proceedings.

Speaking of Bobby Jindal (see previous post), here is what Rush Limbaugh had to say to him, at the end of an interview he did with the new Governor for the Limbaugh Letter a couple months ago

you have just reestablished the Reagan model for people to follow, if they’ll just have the courage to do it, and I [clapping] applaud you.

I won’t do any pull-quotes from it because the whole thing is worth reading.  Here’s a link to the PDF.  Good read.  Good guy.  Good reason to be optimistic.

So, Fred endorsed McCain…

Fred Thompson, the one-time Republican presidential candidate, endorsed Sen. John McCain Friday, calling on the party to “close ranks” behind the presumed nominee. 

Fred is a conservative.  But he’s also a party man.  More of one than McCain, for sure.

“This is no longer about past preferences or differences. It is about what is best for our country and for me that means that Republicans should close ranks behind John McCain,” Thompson said in a statement reported by the Associated Press.

You knew that was coming, so it should be even less of a surprise than Romney suspending his campaign.  Thompson and McCain have been buds for a long time, which might explain why he wouldn’t go after the Maverick while he was still in the race.  But Fred’s endorsement doesn’t carry enough weight for me to change my mind.  John McCain has spent the last 7 years (or longer) going out of his way to NOT get along with conservatives.  He can preach the conservative message now all he wants, go to CPAC once a month with a couple busloads of supporters for all I care, he is not going to convince me that he will now somehow govern differently (read that “conservative”) from the Senator we’ve watched for the last many years.  For crying out loud, this is still the guy who was going to switch parties a few years back…

The endorsement now may help McCain to coalesce the factions of the party around him. Thompson, who represented Tennessee in the Senate for eight years, is thought of well in the South, an area that McCain has not done well in.

The endorsement might be enough for some.  That’s alright.  A cherished conservative principle is that every man has a duty to be fully convinced in his own mind, then he has the duty and the freedom to act accordingly, especially when it comes to voting.  But for me, McCain isn’t getting my vote on his own, nor is he getting it based on somebody else’s endorsement.  I’d have to say that about the only way I could vote for a McCain ticket would be if he put Fred in the Veep spot.  Or maybe Bobby Jindal, although it’s probably too early for a leap that high for Jindal.  But McCain and almost anyone else?  Nope.  And I’ll re-up with the NRA and one of the 2A groups with any spare cash I have for politics this year.  John has spent a long time telling me he doesn’t need me… fine by me.