Thu, Jun 26 2008
DARN RIGHT!
The reason the framers insisted on the citizenry have the right to bear arms was to give them a way to protect themselves from all threats, including a government that would subjugate them!
Supreme Court says Americans have right to guns
WASHINGTON, Associated Press - Americans can keep guns at home for self-defense, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday in the justices' first-ever pronouncement on the meaning of gun rights under the Second Amendment.
The court's 5-4 ruling struck down the District of Columbia's ban on handguns. The decision went further than even the Bush administration wanted, but probably leaves most federal firearms restrictions intact.
District of Columbia Mayor Adrian Fenty responded with a plan to require residents of the nation's capital to register their handguns. "More handguns in the District of Columbia will only lead to more handgun violence," Fenty said.
[Note: bullshit - studies show over and over that communities that encourage legally armed citizenry show a marked DROP in gun-related violence. Criminals think twice if they believe a victim and/or bystander has the ability to blow their fucking heads off.]
The court had not conclusively interpreted the Second Amendment since its ratification in 1791. The amendment reads: "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."
The basic issue for the justices was whether the amendment protects an individual's right to own guns no matter what, or whether that right is somehow tied to service in a state militia.
Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said that an individual right to bear arms is supported by "the historical narrative" both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted.
The Constitution does not permit "the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home," Scalia said. The court also struck down Washington's requirement that firearms be equipped with trigger locks or kept disassembled, but left intact the licensing of guns.
Scalia noted that the handgun is Americans' preferred weapon of self-defense in part because "it can be pointed at a burglar with one hand while the other hand dials the police."
Scalia's opinion dealt almost exclusively with self-defense in the home, acknowledging only briefly in his lengthy historical analysis that early Americans also valued gun rights because of hunting.
The brevity of Scalia's treatment of gun ownership for hunting and sports-shooting is explained by the case before the court. The Washington law at issue, like many gun control laws around the country, concerns heavily populated areas, not hunting grounds.
In a dissent he summarized from the bench, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the majority "would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons."
He said such evidence "is nowhere to be found."
Justice Stephen Breyer wrote a separate dissent in which he said, "In my view, there simply is no untouchable constitutional right guaranteed by the Second Amendment to keep loaded handguns in the house in crime-ridden urban areas."
Joining Scalia were Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas. The other dissenters were Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter.
Gun rights supporters hailed the decision. "I consider this the opening salvo in a step-by-step process of providing relief for law-abiding Americans everywhere that have been deprived of this freedom," said Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association.
The NRA will file lawsuits in San Francisco, Chicago and several of its suburbs challenging handgun restrictions there based on Thursday's outcome.
Chicago mayor Richard Daley said he didn't know how the high court ruling would affect the city, but said that the ruling was "a very frightening decision." He predicted an end to Chicago's handgun ban would spark new violence and force the city to raise taxes to pay for new police.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a leading gun control advocate in Congress, criticized the ruling. "I believe the people of this great country will be less safe because of it," she said.
The capital's gun law was among the nation's strictest.
Dick Anthony Heller, 66, an armed security guard, sued the District after it rejected his application to keep a handgun at his Capitol Hill home a short distance from the Supreme Court.
"I'm thrilled I am now able to defend myself and my household in my home," Heller said shortly after the opinion was announced.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled in Heller's favor and struck down Washington's handgun ban, saying the Constitution guarantees Americans the right to own guns and that a total prohibition on handguns is not compatible with that right.
The issue caused a split within the Bush administration. Vice President Dick Cheney supported the appeals court ruling, but others in the administration feared it could lead to the undoing of other gun regulations, including a federal law restricting sales of machine guns. Other laws keep felons from buying guns and provide for an instant background check.
Thursday's decision was embraced by the president, said White House press secretary Dana Perino. "This has been the administration's long-held view," Perino said. "The president is also pleased that the court concluded that the D.C. firearm laws violate that right."
White House reaction was restrained. "We're pleased that the Supreme Court affirmed that the Second Amendment protects the right of Americans to keep and bear arms," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said.
Scalia said nothing in Thursday's ruling should "cast doubt on long-standing prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons or the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings."
In a concluding paragraph to the his 64-page opinion, Scalia said the justices in the majority "are aware of the problem of handgun violence in this country" and believe the Constitution "leaves the District of Columbia a variety of tools for combating that problem, including some measures regulating handguns."
The law adopted by Washington's city council in 1976 bars residents from owning handguns unless they had one before the law took effect. Shotguns and rifles may be kept in homes, if they are registered, kept unloaded and either disassembled or equipped with trigger locks.
Opponents of the law have said it prevents residents from defending themselves. The Washington government says no one would be prosecuted for a gun law violation in cases of self-defense.
The last Supreme Court ruling on the topic came in 1939 in U.S. v. Miller, which involved a sawed-off shotgun. Constitutional scholars disagree over what that case means but agree it did not squarely answer the question of individual versus collective rights.
Forty-four state constitutions contain some form of gun rights, which are not affected by the court's consideration of Washington's restrictions.
The case is District of Columbia v. Heller, 07-290.Thu, Jun 26 2008
UN-SUPERSIZE ME
""They want to increase the price without the consumer realizing..... manufacturers are "hoping you won't notice"."
On the plus side of inflation, we'll have forced portion control. On the minus side, corporations are just trying to bamboozle us some more in order to boost profits. Again. As always.
US manufacturers beat inflation by selling less for same price
WASHINGTON (AFP) - As Americans struggle with soaring fuel and food prices, it must come as a relief that the cost of some items in their shopping baskets are staying the same. Or are they?
While the price of some processed food may be staying put, the amount Americans get for their money is surreptitiously shrinking as manufacturers shrink quantity sizes.
"There's a grocery shrink ray that has been unleashed on supermarkets across America," Ben Popken of Consumerist.com, a consumer information website, told AFP.
"Manufacturers have kicked up the stun rate of the shrink gun this year because of rising oil prices and the rising costs of commodities like grain and milk," Popken told AFP.
Hellmann's mayonnaise -- a vital ingredient in the egg- or tuna-salad sandwiches that feature prominently in US bag lunches -- has seen its jar trimmed from 32 ounces to 30 ounces, Dean Mastrojohn, the US spokesman for Unilever, the global conglomerate that makes Hellmann's, told AFP.
Country Crock margarine tubs were reduced by around six percent, from three pounds to two pounds 13 ounces, and Breyers ice cream by 14 percent from 56 ounces to 48 ounces, Mastrojohn said.
"Package size reduction is mainly focused on the US, and is only one of our responses to dramatic input cost increases," he said.
"It's a last resort, with several other approaches coming first," Mastrojohn added.
Package-trimming is thinly disguised price-boosting, not to mention underhanded, said Deirdre Cummings, legislative director at consumer advocacy group MASSPIRG.
"They want to increase the price without the consumer realizing. The way they do that is with a smaller package, but when they put that package out, they don't advertise that it's smaller," Cummings said.
"So many times, they put 'new improved package' on the label but they would never put 'new, improved and smaller'," she said.
Popken said manufacturers are "hoping you won't notice".
"Some of them do it at the same time as they change the package design. They're hoping to distract you with a new feature, but fail to tell you that, oops, by the way, it happens to be smaller," he said.
Breakfast cereal boxes have become smaller; orange juice jugs have shrunk.
Consumer advocacy website Mouseprint.org has posted photos of the new, sleek, smaller Tropicana orange juice jug alongside the older jug to illustrate how some manufacturers try to sneak what is effectively a price hike past the consumer.
"While (consumers) may notice the shape is different, they may not realize they are getting almost a cup less of OJ. According to one supermarket dairy manager, the price has stayed the same," Mouseprint, which was founded by consumer lawyer Edgar Dworsky in 2006, wrote.
Tropicana defended the shrinkage, saying on Mouseprint.org: "Oil costs have skyrocketed. Oil is used to make plastic bottles, fuel our factories, and ship our juice across the country in refrigerated trains and trucks.
"We had the choice to either increase prices or downsize the bottle. We chose to downsize the bottle but add value" with a new flip-top cap and sleek shape, it said.
The price of navel oranges increased from around 90 cents in January to nearly 1.01 dollars in May, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
The price of petrol rose from 3.10 dollars to 3.81 dollars in the same period, BLS data showed.
Even restaurant fare has been hit by the shrink ray, but different establishments handle inflationary pressure in different ways.
Popken's local pizzeria has upped prices, he said.
"Instead of cutting the pie into 12 slices instead of 8, they've increased prices, and right by the counter they have clipped news articles which say that because of the rising price of wheat and milk, pizza places are having to increase their prices," he said.
"I think that's a much better way to go about it, instead of trying to sneak one across."
Meanwhile, Consumerist reported that some restaurants and bars are using thick-bottomed glasses to serve beer -- shaving two fluid ounces off the usual 16-ounce serving size.
"People are going to get really upset about shrinking beers. You can take away our cereal, but you can't take away our beer," warned Popken.All news articles and images provided under the Fair Use Notice.