EckerNet.Com

Bottom line : The iPhone sucks…it\’s already behind everything else currently out there.  The first step to getting out of a cult is admitting you\’re in one.

blah blah blah blah blah….enjoy the links.

I love bacon….to put it mildly, and to be honest all I look upon all pork products with great desire, but especially bacon.  So it\’s greatly disturbing to find out the National Pork Board is stupid enough to believe unicorns actually exist…a belief they held so strongly as they felt the need to get their lawyers involved.

In related news, ThinkGeek is awesome.

Obama wants to impose a bank tax as part of reform??  Obama, let me explain something….business, including banks, don\’t pay taxes.  They simply chalk them up to cost of doing business and their customers ultimately bear that price.  When you impose so many taxes that customers are no longer willing to pay the increased price for what is the same service, that business fails and those jobs are lost.  And as Biden would say \”we\’re not gonna get those jobs back\” and \”that\’s a big fucking deal\”.

I don\’t think it can be disputed that the Obama administration has spent more time worrying about the jobs of illegal aliens, than they have about the jobs of real Americans.

Obama\’s thuggery is useless in fighting the spill?  Well color me surprised….it\’s been so useful elsewhere.

The Moocher Index….actually kind of surprised that Minnesota isn\’t higher in the ranking.

Again police arresting people for recording them…despite being in a public area.  Not sure where these thugs in uniform got the idea that they were special, but this belief needs to be quashed immediately, as it has no place in a democratic society.

Awesome, now apparently there are part of the US entirely within control of Mexican gangs.  Yup no reason to enforce our borders or anything.  In fact things are so peachy why should start suing our own states for trying to defend themselves.

Remember when Obama promises no taxes will be raised on those earning less than $250,000???  Well like all of his promises, this one too has an expiration date…and it just expired.

Remember when people were rejoicing because we\’d finally have a President that understood the latest technologies….then why is he getting his Twitters all mixed up??  Once again it\’s time to play \”What if Bush had said/done this??\”.

Oh goody, ObamaCare is going to crap out so Obama wants to save it by imposing price controls….because those have worked…..well never, anywhere.

I\’ve never been a big fan of Senator Kyl, but his rebuttal to moron-of-the-week Peggy West is classic.

My old boss and I used to rib each other quite a bit.  He would give me crap about something I was working on and I\’d frequently come back with \”Smartass\”.  His rebuttal was always the same, \”Better than being a dumbass\”.  And there\’s truth to it, because in order to give me crap in the first place, he had to know what I was talking about and understand it well enough to know how to poke at me.  Biden would do well to remember that.

Boehner\’s New Media Director insults both New Media and the grassroots in general.  If these are the people leading the Republican Party what chance do we have to capitalize on this huge surge of the grassroots.  Nick Schaper would do well to remember his job wouldn\’t exist without either New Media or the grassroots.  I\’ll certainly remember it when his boss comes calling for donations.

Well here we are again, trying to determine if the bastard stepchild of the Bill of Rights will finally get the respect our Founding Fathers gave it.  Finally the Supreme Court handed down their ruling on Heller – Part II (aka McDonald vs Chicago).  It\’s not quite the ruling I hoped for but it is the ruling I expected:

It’s also quite possible, that the US Supreme Court will maintain an extremely focused view of this case, and only address the incorporation issue, and leave the definition of “reasonable regulation” completely untouched.  In fact, I increasingly believe that will be the case.  Throughout it’s history the US Supreme Court has abhorred the idea of sweeping changes and landmark decisions, preferring an incremental approach to interpreting the law.  That’s not together an unwise approach to things…in fact it’s the approach Republicans are advocating right now in relation to health care reform.

So arguments begin on Tuesday, and SCOTUS has already indicated they will not release the audio of the arguments, only written transcript at the end of the day, so look for that.  And expect a very narrow ruling on this issue, that likely will not define reasonable regulation, but instead will leave that for a future case, just as Heller did.

My biggest issue with Heller was that while it declared the Second Amendment established an individual right to firearms, it also specified that some reasonable regulation was okay but did not specify what reasonable was.  McDonald vs Chicago took basically the same approach, it incorporated the right but left the degree of regulation fairly open-ended.

First of all, the right to keep and bear arms is described as a fundamental right by the majority, which invokes the idea that strict scrutiny should be applied to any legal regulation of that right.  On the other hand the court specified that this ruling should not be interpreted as ending state\’s \”experimentation with reasonable firearms regulations.\”  It\’s far from clear which standard will be applied by the lower courts….in fact in his dissenting opinion, Justice Steven declares :

Today’s decision invites an avalanche of litigation that could mire the federal courts in fine-grained determi nations about which state and local regulations comport with the Heller right….under a standard of review we have not even established.

He\’s right on both points.  This will result in an avalanche of legal challenges to local and state regulations.  And nobody has defined what standard should be applied, or even given a vague outline of what is likely to pass scrutiny.  Although the second half of this analysis actually does a fairly good job of divining how various types of regulations are likely to be interpreted.

There was also something in this decision for the legal nerds out there.  While Alito found the Second Amendment was incorporated via the Due Process clause, which was the basis for the majority opinion.  Justice Thomas also declared that Privileges and Immunities Clause applied, which is, to put it bluntly, astonishing as it overturns roughly 140 years of legal opinion, when the Slaughter-House cases smothered the Fourteenth Amendment in it\’s infancy.  It also puts the court on the road to an originalist reading of the Bill of Rights.  The fact that Thomas\’s opinion on the Privileges and Immunities Clause went unchallenged will set legal scholars into near orgasmic delight at the possibilities for the future.

In the meantime we can prepare ourselves for a almost endless stream of lawsuits as virtually ever gun-control law and firearm regulation in the country is challenged.  Far from setting the matter straight, McDonald has simply opened the flood gates for years of deliberation in the lower courts until we\’re back here for a very loose definition of what legal standard should be applied.

Cya again in a few years.

[Crossposted at True North]

Turns out one of the longest serving members of Congress (and that\’s saying quite a bit) has taken ill and reports are that it\’s fairly serious.

Sen. Robert C. Byrd, who holds the record as the longest-serving member of Congress, is seriously ill in a Washington-area hospital.

The West Virginia Democrat\’s office says the 92-year-old lawmaker has been in the hospital since late last week.

At first he was believed to be suffering from heat exhaustion and severe dehydration. But his office says in a statement doctors have examined Byrd and other medical conditions have developed. His condition is described as serious.

Now politics can always be a brutal arena….one in which words like Nazi, fascist, socialist and communist are freely tossed around…often with little to no support for such claims.  However, I\’m firmly of the belief that there are many things more important than politics…family and health being high on that list.  And that when such things are threatened, you put aside your political differences and if you can find something nice to say, you shut your mouth.

So with that in mind, I\’d like to extend my deepest sympathy and best wishes to the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) over learning that one of their former leaders has taken ill and is in serious condition.

From the mouths of jackasses…or at least the part of….comes this gem from Rep. Maxine Waters (D), who threatens to socialize the entire oil industry before she catches herself.

Either she figured out the US public has already figured it out or she accidentally let her true agenda slip.  Either way, it\’s a classic example why it\’s best to just let Democrats talk, eventually they can\’t help themselves.  Also kind of amusing that after she catches herself she attempts to rephrase it, but her rephrasing essentially amounts to the same thing.

The kids filed back into class Monday morning. They were very excited. Their weekend assignment was to sell something, then give a talk on productive salesmanship.

Little Sally led off: \”I sold girl scout cookies and I made $30,\” she said proudly, \”My sales approach was to appeal to the customer\’s civil spirit and I credit that approach for my obvious success.\”

\”Very good,\” said the teacher.

Little Jenny was next:

\”I sold magazines,\” she said, \”I made $45 and I explained to everyone that magazines would keep them up on current events.\”

\”Very good, Jenny,\” said the teacher..

Eventually, it was Little Ernie\’s turn.

The teacher held her breath …

Little Ernie walked to the front of the classroom and dumped a box full of cash on the teacher\’s desk. \”$2,467,\” he said.

\”$2,467!\” cried the teacher, \”What in the world were you selling?\”

\”Toothbrushes,\” said Little Ernie

\”Toothbrushes!\” echoed the teacher, \”How could you possibly sell enough tooth brushes to make that much money?\”

\”I found the busiest corner in town,\” said Little Ernie, \”I set up a Dip & Chip stand and gave everybody who walked by a free sample.\”

They all said the same thing, \”Hey, this tastes like dog poop!\”

Then I would say,\”It is dog poop. Wanna buy a toothbrush?\”

\”I used the governmental approach of giving you something shitty for free, and then making you pay to get the shitty taste out of your mouth.\”

How is it that the parade I wasn\’t worrying about because I had over a month to plan became the parade I have less than two weeks to plan?

How about you make this easy for me, anyone want to walk in the Apple Valley parade on Sunday, July 4th?

We\’ll feed you afterwards!!  Yeah, you heard me, free food and pop.

Any of you bloggers out there running WP upgraded to the 3.0 yet?  Curious what your thoughts are??

I\’m waiting to upgrade because I figure it\’ll take awhile for plugins and templates to be updated for the new API and I\’ll let them work the initial bugs out first.  But curious if there are any early adopters out there with impressions so far.

Recently some of the media was trying to push the meme that the border wasn\’t really that violent, we\’re just fine.  Turns out a lot of people on the border disagree.  And for those of you unfamiliar with the border issue, this is a good video to get a sense of what things are like for those on the border.

Takeaway phrase from the video clip is that the government has abandoned them…..which is completely true.  And it\’s not even a partisan thing, or at least it shouldn\’t be.  Both Republicans and Democrats are guilty, but seems like only the Democrats and a few token RINOs are against fixing that.