Sen. Whitehouse: SCOTUS Recently “Discovered” the Individual’s Right to Bear Arms

This might be a slow week for me. Since this week is going to be dominated by the Kagan confirmation, I am not going to be writing as much because I refuse to write too much about them. Supreme Court confirmation hearings are nothing but a dog-and-pony show. Those that are being confirmed don’t ever really say what they think and tell the Senate what they’re really going to do once they get on the bench. So, I’d rather not write about something that is obviously kabuki.

Fortunately, I did find one gem from my new favorite senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.



He goes on to explain that he doesn’t want his judicial nominees to be activists and said that he was looking for “judicial restraint”, and if I didn’t know better, I would have sworn that he wanted a strict constructionist. Then, he goes on to rail on the conservative wing of the Supreme Court. He claims the THEY are the ones that are activists. He complains the Court has recently “witnessed the DISCOVERY of the individual’s right to bear arms” referencing the Heller decision, which affirmed the individual’s right to bear arms in DC. Then, he says that this is a right that had been “previously gone unnoticed by the Court for 220 years. Um, Sheldon, that’s probably because no level of government had ever tried to enforce an outright ban on guns until recently. Why would the Supreme Court have any reason to address blanket gun bans, if they didn’t exist before 1975? Before then, it was just understood that individuals had that right. There were no gun bans in the 1800’s. It was the activism of local lawmakers and lower court judges that recently discovered that the right to bear arms didn’t include individuals.

It gets especially rich, when he invokes abortion in his argument, considering that before 1973 there was no right to kill fetuses until the Court “discovered” one in Roe V Wade. Before 1973, it was just assumed that unborn babies had the same right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that everyone else did. I wonder if Whitehouse was just upset when the Court discovered that right. Somehow, I doubt it. It fits his political ideology unlike the incorporation of the Second Amendment on local governments.

Democratic RI Senator: We Need to Keep Spending Because of There Was a "Republican Debt Orgy" Under Bush or Something

There are a few points that Whitehouse made that deserves comment. The most obvious is claim that is hypocritical for Republicans to complain about deficit spending because of their “spending orgy” during the Bush years. Apparently, the fact that the Democrats controlled Congress for the past 4 years and Obama has increased the “spending orgy” by leaps and bounds over whatever Bush spent over the past year and a half is completely lost on the Democratic Senator from Rhode Island:

At $13 trillion, that figure has risen by $2.4 trillion in about 500 days since President Obama took office, or an average of $4.9 billion a day. That's almost three times the daily average of $1.7 billion under the previous administration, and led Republicans on Wednesday to place blame squarely at the feet of Mr. Obama and his fellow Democrats.

Spending three times as much as the previous administration did isn’t called cleaning up the mess. It is grabbing a shovel and digging us into a deeper ditch.

Of course, he used the same straw boogeymen of Bush and that every liberal uses to demonize the right. Bush hadn’t been around for the past 18 months and is a cheap hit. Second, Wall Street had little to do with the reason why the recession happened. The housing bubble bursting because of the Democrats’ deregulation of Fannie and Freddie is. That’s all I have to say about that. Really, that argument is old. 

Another hole in his argument that is completely eluding the Senator is when he argues that a $25 increase of benefits isn’t that big of a deal, and it isn’t that much money. He’s missing the forest for the trees here. Granted, an extra $25 for one family isn’t that much money. However, when you multiply that by how many people that would receive that extra $25, it is an exorbitant amount. For example, let’s just take his state of Rhode Island. By his own admission he has about 71.000 people unemployed in his state. If all 71,000 people received an extra $25, that would lead to an increase in spending of $1.775 million. Sorry senator that is not chump change. Now, let’s look at that extra money from the perspective of the recipient. Twenty-five dollar increase really won’t really mean much to them. Unless there’s a hole in the bottom of their shoes, a new pair of shoes is not necessary. Plus, $25 won’t buy them but a few extra groceries. It definitely won’t be the difference between starving to death and a adequate diet.

PS.

Should he really be emphasizing the 12% unemployment rate in his state, a state that is completely controlled by Democrats for decades? That is close to 3% higher than the national average. Does that the fact that their rate might be higher than the national average because of the policies of his own party more than the policies of the party that he is leveling his tirade against? Hmm!