First, it was a pleasure to read in the majority opinion the comparison of the occurance of “the People” with other instances of individual rights clauses elsewhere in the Constitution.   It was also nice to see the court make a distinction between regulation and prohibition - that effective prohibition under the guise of regulation that rejects all applications is also contrary to the constitution.

Now the aftermath

Some gun control advocates continue to try to spin the Second Amendment as a law establishing a state priviledge rather than, as the framers and most of the state constitution conventions wanted, an enjoinment of the government protecting existing laws granting private weapon ownership.  Their argument alone gave me the drive to research further and I found the citations of the wikipedia article about the Second Amendment very telling. State ratification conventions in particular - several states included proposed drafts of a right to bear arms amendment in their ratifications and some refused to ratify the Constitution until that right was protected.

I think we need further case law.   Perhaps we need someone to test a ludicrous defense argument to reinforce self defense laws.   In most states lethal force is prohibited unless in the defense of imminent specific deadly threat to the defender’s person or other individuals.   An immediate specific painful but not lethal threat or a vague future threat doesn’t justify lethal force - if a prosecutor can argue that a reasonable person would have had a recourse other than violence, the victim can be prosecuted for unnecessary force.   Perhaps we need some assailant, charged and convicted of a greater crime over a victim who resisted, to argue for a mitigating factor in their sentence on the basis that their victim resisted:  if the victim hadn’t had armed resistance, the assailant might not have had to escalate their crime and would only have been guilty of a lesser crime in the face of a compliant victim.

The US also needs a strengthened restraining order law.   Presently a victim with a premeditated attacker that is enjoined by a restraining order gains no further benefit from that restraining order in the absence of law enforcement.   The only gain from a restraining order is a lowered cause for arrest by law enforcement - the civilian has no additional benefit unless law enforcement is present.  Violation of a restraining order should provide the victim (under the requirement of proof of violation of the restraining order) a lower barrier to lethal force.

The Centro is a good middle ground between a sub-qwerty crackberry keyboard, the wider units like the treo and blackjack, and the thin keyboard sliders from HTC and Helio.

What I think really needs to be investigated are…
the mothers of these two bimbos.

I picture someone like Lori Drew. A quick google for Megan Meier will reveal her criminally tragic story of internet bullying on the part of Lori Drew, the narcissist mother who drove Megan to suicide after Megan somehow wronged Drew’s perfect daughter.  I expect that Nisreen Swedberg’s mother is someone like Lori Drew who always told her she was perfect, always gave her whatever she wanted, and never told her anything along the lines of “No one likes a narcissist.”

In an interview promoting her film Penelope, Reese Witherspoon expresses the right idea. Witherspoon isn’t opposed to her kids getting exposed to some of the negativities in life - bullying, teasing, losing, or not getting the trophy.  If children are never challenged, never experience injustice, never have to work or struggle for praise, rewards, or justice, they end up like Nisreen - unable to understand why the world deals with shits like them by having the FBI put them in a room for a few hours.

Life is immitating art, again.  Cincinatti area teens Cheyenne Blanton and Joseph Nagle are in custody accused of several juvenile delinquency charges, pending the filing of formal charges (and I suspect determination of which can be filed as adult crimes) after beating and torturing another teenager who was recovering from brain surgery.  These two shits broke into the womans house apparently intending to steal the family car so they could flee from a court appearance one of ‘em was facing on other unrelated juvenile charges when the victim’s mother drove away in the car.  Left without the opportunity to commit the crime they intended to commit, they raided the kitchen and then went and woke up the victim to begin the assault.

This is what happens when you raise losers repeatedly telling them they’re special throughout their formative years.

In the late 80s some doctor donates sperm to a colleague with the verbal agreement that he has no rights or responsibilities toward the child.  Ignoring the whole ambiguity of verbal agreements, it’s already established that paternal liability is a responsibility to the child and minors (or even pre-borns) cannot enter a legal contract and as such cannot be bound by a verbal agreement with the mother.  Now that the child is facing college tuition, the mother is seeking child support.

Here’s where it gets bad…

The court has denied the donor’s request for a paternity test to contest paternity.  It apparently doesn’t matter if he happens to not be the genetic father.  The court has accepted the mother’s legal argument that behavior in the early years of the child’s life - sending cards and gifts signed “Dad” - in essence behaving like a father, establishes paternal liability.

We know from previous court rulings that: factual paternity cannot be escaped by way of contract; that paternity does not stop in the face of fraud (case where a fertility clinic worker performed oral on a male coworker, inseminated herself, and then sued for paternity - he couldn’t contest paternity on the grounds of no expectation of a child from oral sex, only for emotional damages by fraud);  that a DNA match can establish ambiguous legal fact (rapist successfully used the “my twin brother might have done it” defense); and now that DNA is irrelevant in paternity.

Does this legally establish the institution of “Gold Digger”?

Since the male’s genetic paternity isn’t necessary, it’s probable that fact of maternity isn’t necessary.  Since we’ve gotten two people found liable for the same paternity (woman has sex with two twin brothers in short order, sues one for paternity, he claimed it was the brother, court eventually may find both liable) I suspect it wouldn’t be necessary for a woman to prove fact of birth.  Child support is an economic function, not a biological function, and this case shows that parental behavior is sufficient, therefore the plaintiff female merely has to play the role of mother.

Perhaps we need to establish a legal sperm guardian, since males obviously have no legal protection over their sperm, to establish properly binding legal contracts over the uncontrolled behavior of our species’ spunky swimmers.

Despite recent decisions limiting bill of rights protections such as Morse v. Frederick (first amendment - limiting free speech for minors, so long as they stay in school) and Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada(fourth and fifth amendments - ruling that arrest for refusal to identify is reasonable and that forced self identification is not forced testimony), in Brendlin the court ruled that all parties in a stopped vehicle are, by the reasonable behavior of the average person, perceived to be seized and that no reasonable person would believe that stopped as such they have the completely clear an unfettered permission to depart and therefore are under Fourth Amendment protections.

While it does disturb me that the California Supreme Court overturned an apellate decision that the trial court erred when it denied a motion to suppress evidence obtained through an illegal search, I am encouraged to see that the SCOTUS decision overturning California’s decision was unanimous.  While W has done quite a number on most of the bill of rights, it’s nice to see that in at least this case the court decided in the favor of explicitly defining an expansion of the fourth amendment that had previously only been held in examples or non-specific opinions on fourth amendment cases.

So, shame on me. Shame on me for setting my expectations high enough for old W to let me down. Keep it up Shrub - pardon those who get caught lying for you, award no bid contracts to Halliburton, keep ignoring those pesky Bill of Rights protections, and go on flushing justice down the crapper. We’ll wait until 1/20/2009, maybe the next president will care about their oath.

Legal challenges successfully garnered him a writ of habeus corpus and voided sentence, but for some questionably explained reason, the Georgia attorney general decided that while his sentence will probably get reduced, his crime warrants a plea bargain to a lesser sentence, and that the legislature did indeed intend for his sentence to be reduced, the technicality of the court that voided his sentence not having legal standing to void the sentence from the trial court is reason to appeal the voided sentence and keep this guy in prison.  The attorney general stated that this current court does have judicial authority to issue a writ of habeas corpus, just not the authority to void the trial court sentence.  Of course the current court only voided the trial court sentence and didn’t issue a writ of habeas corpus because the voided sentence should have been enough to get this guy out of prison.  Since they didn’t issue the writ, and the attorney general appealed the void order, this poor sap has to stay in prison on a crime that no one feels he should continue to stay in prison for.

First, my camera (body only, I skipped the kit lens):
Canon Digital Rebel XT

and the lens I got with it right off the bat, my general lens:
Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Standard Zoom Lens

the vertical battery grip, which I use just for the extra grip surface and control buttons, but also provides more battery capacity:
Canon BG-E3 Battery Grip

a macro lens, for pet photography:
Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM Lens

The classic “standard” 50mm self instruction lens:
Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Lens

A wide angle lens, to deal with the sub-frame sensor cropping factor:
Canon EF 20-35mm f/3.5-4.5 USM Ultra Wide Angle Zoom Lens

and the flash:
Canon Speedlite 430EX Flash