Daily Briefing 03/05/10

The return of the military commissions. An Obama/Holder promise with an expiration date. How unusual! Though there is precedent for it, I think that an attempt to try these guys before a military commission on the sovereign territory of the U.S. (after closing the Guantanamo detention center) is fraught with constitutional difficulties.

This supports my post a few days ago that there will be a health care vote. The Congressional leadership is ideologically blinkered and ready to lead their lemmings off the political cliff. Even if it costs them heavily in November, it’s a price they’re willing to pay to set the United States on a dysfunctional course of socialized economics and regulatory nannyism.

Excellent piece on what it means to have the right to keep and bear arms: “The notion that citizens have no good reason to be armed, because the State can protect them from violent crime, is one of the most dangerous lies Big Government has fed its subjects. The government reduces crime through the police and court systems, but no matter how tirelessly the police work, there is very little chance they can actively defend you from assault. There aren’t enough of them, and there never could be.”
“The right to protect yourself, and your family, from injury and death is an essential part of your dignity as a free man or woman. Without the First Amendment, you are a slave. Without the Second, you are a child. The Western nations which have abandoned this essential understanding of an individual’s right to self-defense have become rotting orphanages filled with dependent children….Losing the dignity of self-defense is part of the degeneration from master of the State to its client. As this dignity fades, the people and their government speak less of responsibilities, and more of entitlements. “

CNN’s Situation Room is likely to turn into the Situation Bunker. Looks like only people stuck at airports are still watching CNN.

Grab some popcorn or ice cream and a comfortable chair and let the follies begin: Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas opens the Democrats-against-Democrats election year spectacle. In other election news, Massachusetts Congressman William Delahunt (D) is retiring. Though this is a Democratic-leaning district (as probably every street in Massachusetts is), Republican Scott Brown easily won the district in his successful Senate run.