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Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
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Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 Never forget! I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
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Saturday, January 12, 2008
Snowthrowers, Global Cooling, My Driveway, & Chains Yes, these all fit together. The Corvette has been sitting quietly in its warm little garage, out of fear that it would get stuck on the driveway. Wednesday, we discovered that even the AWD Equinox wouldn't get up the driveway. There was just too much snow on top of too consistent a layer of ice. Most people would just shovel the driveway. Since my driveway is about 600 feet long.... Okay, so Thursday we decided that since there are no snowplow attachments for the Equinox (at least that I could find), the right solution was to buy a snowthrower. Astonishingly enough, Lowe's still had four snowthrowers in stock. We bought a Troy-Bilt 5.5 horsepower Storm 2 stage snowthrower. It has four forward gears and two reverse gears. It clears a path 24" wide. And yes, it breaks up ice. So the plan was: clear the driveway. Drop ice melt on the ice. And this is where the global cooling comes in. We went to Home Depot, and said, "Where's your big bags of ice melt?" "We're out. And so is the manufacturer." We went to Wal-Mart. Completely out. No idea when they will see more. It appears that the remarkable cold snap that the U.S. is experiencing right now has sucked up all available ice melt in this part of the country. (I assume ice melt is shipped everywhere in America to meet demand.) Anyway, if, like me, you come from a part of America where you have to drive several hours to see snow, much less shovel it, you may not think about snowthrowers, anymore than Idahoans think about car alarms. A snowthrower looks an awful lot like a rototiller. The one we bought has a four stroke gasoline engine that turns a set of blades that pick up the snow, and feed it to an augur that fires it up and out of what looks like a smokestack, which you can direct either left, right, or, if you are feeling particularly masochistic, straight ahead. The blades reach within an inch or so of the ground. You start it up much like a lawnmower, and aim it at your snowbank. (Ours has an electric starter that you plug into an extension cord if you don't feel like pulling the rope.) The left control runs the blades and augur. The right control is a weird mixture of a reverse clutch and accelerator. When you release it, the transmission disengages. When you depress it, it engages the transmission and increases power to the driving wheels. (I'm hoping that these are two separate functions, or the clutch won't last long if you use it at lower speeds.) It picks up snow and throws it with great enthusiasm. It is less enthusiastic about ice, but it will break up the frozen ice layer, along with whatever dirt and rocks it finds, and create the world's least attractive slushy. (Pretend it's chocolate chocolate chip slushy!) The ice tends to come up in big lumps, like 19th century sugar loaves, while the snow just flies! Anyway, it turns out that the first try on using the snowthrower to clear the driveway took a couple of hours to make two complete passes. I'm glad that I bought one that was driven, but even with this, both my wife and I have muscles that are sore in places that we didn't even know we had muscles. Even this still left long patches of ice, so we bought chains. (It's an AWD--so it takes two sets of chains.) Anyway, my wife has never put chains on a car before, so this was a new experience for her. I was dreading this quite a bit, largely because all of my memories of tire chains are unpleasant. The strongest memory was helping my father put chains on a 1967 Pontiac Ventura as we crossed the Siskiyou Summit from Oregon to California in 1971. It was cold. It was dark. We were at the side of I-5, with traffic going by at what, in retrospect, could not have been more than about 35 mph, but talk about a way to get your fingers cold and sore. Anyway, the chains made it possible for us to drive up the ice-covered driveway with only a little adrenalin rush, but the prospect of having to take them off and put them back on again each time we reached the base of our driveway was a bit much for my wife, so I decided to declare war on ice. I spent most of this morning and into the afternoon--perhaps three hours total--breaking up the ice, enough so that my wife was able to drive straight up the driveway, without drama. As I neared completion of the task, however, one rock managed to get stuck in the augur, preventing it from turning. This was an unpleasant task to remove, since it was a piece of granite (very useful for dulling high speed drill bits on, by the way), and eventually I could only get it out the same way that one of my lower wisdom teeth came out some years ago: by breaking it in place with a hammer and chisel. (And yes, the anesthetic was bearing to wear off by that point. I'm glad this snowthrower doesn't scream.) Labels: global warming I Need Your Help With the DC Suit Fifteen historians, some of them nationally prominent, have filed an amicus curiae brief arguing that the Second Amendment does not protect an individual right. Their names are: Jack N. Rakove, Saul Cornell, David T. Konig, William J. Novak, Lois G. Schwoerer, Fred Anderson, Carol Berkin, Paul Finkelman, R. Don Higginbotham, Stanley N. Katz, Pauline R. Maier, Peter S. Onuf, Robert E. Shalhope, John Shy, Alan Taylor. Their brief makes the claim: Amici Curiae, listed in the Appendix, are professional historians. They have all earned PhD. degrees in history, hold academic appointments in university departments of history, and specialize in the American Revolution, the Early Republic, American Legal History, American Constitutional History, Anglo-American Legal History, or related areas.For all their expertise, Rakove, Finkelman, Higginbotham, and Onuf were taken in by one of the grossest frauds in recent American history: Michael Bellesiles' Arming America, which set a new first: the first book to receive the Bancroft Prize--and then have it revoked. Robert F. Worth, "Prize for Book Is Taken Back From Historian", New York Times, December 14, 2002. The publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, subsequently withdrew the book from sale and pulped it (instead of remaindering it). Hillel Italie, Associated Press, “Publisher Stops History Book Publication,” January 7, 2003. Now, I ordinarily wouldn't see much point to embarrassing these people by pointing out that they were taken in by this tenured conman--after all, many professional historians were. But when you tell the Supreme Court, "Trust us! We're experts on this subject of the Second Amendment and guns in early America," it doesn't say much when it turns out that they were snookered by one of the grossest, most obviously fraudulent history books that I have ever seen--and this is a topic on which they are claiming to be experts! (And a law professor, James Lindgren, and myself, who is nobody, ended up spotting and exposing the fraud.) So here's what you can do: find any published reviews by any of the fifteen historians above of Arming America and send them to me, pronto. Here's what I have so far: From the dust jacket of Arming America: "We can hardly understand the context for the Second Amendment without first reading Arming America. No one previously has given us such an authoritative account of firearms in our history from the Colonial period through the Civil War." -- Don Higginbotham From the yellow wraparound band on review copies of Arming America: "Arming America is a myth-busting tour de force. Michael Bellesiles moves to the front rank of American historians with this deeply researched, brilliantly argued, energetically written, and timely book. It is an instant classic, one of the very most important works of historical scholarship published in recent years. In future years it will be impossible to talk about the role of guns in our civic culture without coming to terms with this superb study." Peter S. Onuf Highly favorable reviews of Arming America by Bogus appeared in Texas Law Review 79, no. 6 (May 2001): 1641-55; by Finkelman in Michigan Law Review 99, no. 6 (May 2001): 1500-19; by Anderson,“Guns, Rights and People,” Los Angeles Times Book Review, 17 September 2000, pp. 1-2. Jack Rakove has an especially embarrassing part in the Arming America scandal. Bellesiles thanked him: "Jack Rakove kindly went through the second draft with a keen eye and improved every page he read." Michael A. Bellesiles, Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), 583. When William & Mary Quarterly asked four prominent historians to review the controversy (which historians had ignored, until the concerns of Lindgren and myself received significant popular press attention), Jack Rakove wrote the only one of the four articles reviewing the book that chose not to say anything particularly negative about it, while the other three historians politely observed that it Arming America was severely flawed. Jack N. Rakove, "Words, Deeds and Guns: Arming America and the Second Amendment" [Forum: Historians and Guns], William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series, 59, 2002, p. 205-10; Randolph Roth, “Guns, Gun Culture, and Homicide: The Relationship Between Firearms, the Uses of Firearms, and Interpersonal Violence,” William & Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 59(1):224-7; Gloria L. Main, “Many Things Forgotten: The Use of Probate Records in Arming America,” William & Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 59(1):205-16; Ira D. Gruber, “Of Arms and Men: Arming America and Military History,” William & Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 59(1):217-22. Subsequent investigation--after the full extent of the scandal had been widely publicized among non-historians--led to Bellesiles resigning a tenured position at Emory University. Stanley N. Katz, Hanna H. Gray, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “Report of the Investigative Committee in the matter of Professor Michael Bellesiles,” July 10, 2002. So do your part: help me find every review these fifteen historians wrote of Arming America! UPDATE: Let me clarify that I can't hold Shalhope Constitutional Commentary (1999) paper against him. He operated based on what Bellesiles's 1996 Journal of American History paper claimed. While that paper, like Arming America, turned out to be fraudulent, it wasn't obviously and grossly so. Labels: gun history, gun rights Wednesday, January 09, 2008
San Francisco: No Rules City Government! First it was ignoring state law to have same-sex marriage. Then it was putting an initiative on the ballot to prohibit handguns--contrary to both state law and existing court decisions. From the January 9, 2008 San Francisco Chronicle: A state appeals court refused today to revive a ban on handgun possession in San Francisco, saying the measure that city voters approved in November 2005 conflicts with state law. Labels: gun rights Armed Pizza Delivery Drivers A few years back, there was a joke about how fast the police responded in big cities to life threatening emergencies that was intended to make a point about the effectiveness of the free market for solving problems. "Call 911. Order a pizza. See which gets there first." Okay, not a fair comparison. But there are so many incidents on the Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog involving pizza delivery drivers using a gun in self-defense that I'm adding a new label: pizza delivery drivers, of which there are now nineteen examples, which you can see by clicking here. And I'm tempted to update that joke. "Call 911. Order a pizza. The pizza guy will get there first, and is almost as likely to be armed." Labels: gun self-defense Idaho Public Teacher Pay The January 9, 2008 Idaho Statesman has an article about how Idaho public school teachers are paid that is quite startling, especially to those of us who are constantly hearing how poorly teachers are paid: What, exactly, does this mean? It means that they compared the salaries of teachers to other professions that require at least a college degree, and that involve working with people. You might argue about whether that list of other professions is the appropriate comparison, but the point of the study is that Idaho public school teachers are paid, relative to those other professions, not so differently from other states. This is to say that Idaho public school teachers aren't being treated significantly worse, relative to those other professions, than the average of public school teachers in other states. Salaries are low in Idaho for a lot of professions (not just school teachers) because the cost of living is low as well. If you live in the Boise area, you may find this hard to believe, especially with the increase in housing costs the last few years, but once you get out into the sticks, where a lot of Idahoans live, things are still really, really cheap. For example, I searched for 3 bedroom, 2 bath houses for sale in Twin Falls, and there were 84 houses for sale with asking prices of $150,000 or less. I generally think that teachers really aren't paid all that well for what they do, but at least part of this is because teachers in most school districts work nine months of the year. Yes, I know that they are generally doing preparation and continuing education classes during the summer, and they are often working more than 40 hours a week during the school year, but I know enough teachers to know that they aren't busy all summer long. Add 20% to a teacher's salary to make up for three months off and working perhaps 50 hours a week during the school year, and suddenly, teachers aren't paid all that poorly. This indicates that the Superintendent of Public Instruction's current proposal would make $31,000 a year the new minimum salary for teachers. Labels: public education Another Useful Historical Collection Online Hening's Statutes at Large, which is the collection of Virginia laws from 1619 through 1792. This is a necessary tool for historians, and for genealogists (which is apparently why this set is available online, and searchable). I don't have any easy way to verify its accuracy, but so far, the stuff that I have looked up in it matches the printed copy that I have used for research. Labels: history Trying To Provoke A War It has been apparent for some time that Iran wants a war with the U.S. This recent account from CNN suggests that the recent National Intelligence Estimate that concluded that there was not a current nuclear weapons program has reduced the Iranians to more direct efforts to start a war: The article also reports that the Revolutionary Guards have "taken command of Tehran's naval operations in the Persian Gulf." This is worrisome. Iran has a long history of supporting terrorism directed at the United States. Labels: terrorism Did The Second Amendment Return Power To The States? This is one of the claims that gets made by those who insist that it does not protect an individual right. They claim that it was to provide some protection to the states to maintain state militias. Houston v. Moore (1820) involved a question of federal vs. state control of the militia--and as my friend J. Norman Heath, "Exposing the Second Amendment: Federal Preemption of State Militia Legislation,” 79 U. Det. Mercy L. Rev .39 (2001), demonstrates, there is simply no evidence that anyone at the time recognized that the Second Amendment changed the existing relationships contained in Art. I, sec. 8. Houston v. Moore (1820) involved a Pennsylvania militiaman who was court-martialed under state law for failure to march when his unit was called into federal service. He challenged the authority of Pennsylvania to punish him for what he characterized as a violation of federal law. Throughout Justice Bushrod Washington’s decision, there are discussions of what power the Constitution grants to the federal government and the States with respect to the militia. Art. I, sec. 8 is repeatedly referenced—but not a word about the Second Amendment’s supposed protection of State authority or control over its militia.[1] It appears that neither side argued that the Second Amendment changed the relationships of Art. I, sec. 8. Justice Johnson’s concurring opinion also refers to Art. I, sec. 8, and shows that the Second Amendment changed nothing. The power of Congress over the militia is limited but by two reservations in favour of the States, viz. the right of officering and that of training them.[2] Justice Story’s dissent is about the question of concurrent authority. He does argue that the Constitution’s grant of authority to Congress over the militia does not preclude authority remaining with the States, unless the laws of each are contradictory.[3] Story does quote the Second Amendment (although he mislabels it the “fifth amendment”), but makes a point of observing that, The militia of several States may, at the same time, be called out for the public defence; and to suppose each State could have an authority to govern its own militia in such cases, even subordinate to the regulations of Congress, seems utterly inconsistent with that unity of command and action, on which the success of all military operations must essentially depend.[4]And It is conceded all on all sides, and is indeed, beyond all reasonable doubt, that all state laws on this subject are subordinate to those constitutionally enacted by Congress, and that if there by any conflict or repugnancy between them, the State laws to that effect are inoperative and void.[5]Even the Second Amendment, which Story admits “may not, perhaps, be thought to have any important bearing on this point”[6] does not grant the States any more authority over their militias than Art. I, sec. 8. [1] Houston v. Moore, 18 U.S. 1, 4, 5 (1820). See J. Norman Heath, "Exposing the Second Amendment: Federal Preemption of State Militia Legislation,” 79 U. Det. Mercy L. Rev .39 (2001), http://www.guncite.com/journals/heath.html, last accessed October 31, 2007, which provides a detailed treatment of these issues. [2] Houston v. Moore, 18 U.S. 1, 36 (1820). [3] Houston v. Moore, 18 U.S. 1, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53 (1820). [4] Houston v. Moore, 18 U.S. 1, 53 (1820). [5] Houston v. Moore, 18 U.S. 1, 56 (1820). [6] Houston v. Moore, 18 U.S. 1, 52, 53 (1820). And sixthly, That, agreeably to the constitution, the United States are to provide for organizing, arming, and discipling the militia, and for governing such part of them as many be employed in the service of the United States; reserving to the States, respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia, according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.This is exactly what Art. I, sec. 8 provides, and as is described in Houston v. Moore (1820). If the Second Amendment returned some authority or power to the states over their militias, or in some protected the state militias from federal government interference, no one seems to have told President Washington. This would seem a pretty damning piece of evidence for demolishing DC's claim in the current suit about what the Second Amendment did. Labels: gun history, gun rights Someone I Know Needs a Part-Time Job In Southeast Portland Experience: food service. Education: video production. He's a college student. If you know of such a job, let me know. I've Been Very Busy In case you have been wondering why I have had so little to say, it is because I have been hard at work on the law review articles I mentioned recently. I've received a number of helpful suggestions from Professor Volokh, and as a consequence, I have been reading 18th century British statutes (the ones that disarmed the Highlanders, and told them to stop wearing their traditional costume), and digging deeply into antebellum court decisions, then improving both of those articles. It turns out that along with all the antebellum state supreme court decisions about the right to keep and bear arms, there is at least one that I did not know about (found through Westlaw), State v. Schoultz, 25 Mo. 128 (1857): As to the instruction in regard to the constitution of Missouri, that the people's right to bear arms in defense of themselves cannot be questioned, and that no presumption ought to arise in the minds of the jury from the defendant's going armed with a pistol, it could not possibly aid the jury in their deliberations. This right is known to every jury man in our State, but nevertheless the right to bear does not sanction an unlawful use of arms.In addition, I found a number of decisions of both the state supreme courts, the Michigan Territorial Supreme Court, and a federal district court decision, that all referenced the right to keep and bear arms. Now, these other decisions were not about the right to keep and bear arms; they only referenced it as an example of individual rights comparable in importance to the rights that were actually the subject of the court cases. But even though a lawyer might dismiss these as obiter dictum, they do establish what judges understood that phrase "bear arms" to mean--and it was not exclusively military in nature. Herman v. State 8 Ind. 545 (1855) may be considered fairly typical. The question before the Indiana Supreme Court was whether a ban on making alcoholic beverages was constitutional or not—and the Court concluded that such a ban was unconstitutional, as a violation of the rights of property. In articulating the limits of legislative authority, the Court argued that the legislature’s authority to prohibit certain actions was restricted by the state constitution: It cannot so declare the holding of political meetings and making speeches, the bearing of arms, publishing of newspapers, &c., &c., however injurious to the public the legislature might deem such practices to be; and why? Because the constitution forbids such declaration and punishment, and permits the people to use these practices. So with property: the legislature cannot interfere with it further, at all events, than the constitution permits. In short, the legislature cannot forbid and punish the doing of that which the constitution permits; and cannot take from the citizen that which the constitution says he shall have and enjoy. In short, the Court held that the bearing of arms was an individual right, just as freedom of speech and freedom of the press were. If “bear arms” referred only to militia duty—something done for and by the authority of the legislature—it is extraordinarily odd that the Court would have included this in a list of individual rights that the legislature did not have the authority to prohibit. Labels: gun history, gun rights Snowbound It has been snowing all of yesterday--and we are a little unsure if even the wife's AWD Equinox will get us down the driveway. We walked to the mailbox yesterday--which provided our exercise for the day, and then some, but driving out might have to wait. Perhaps we need to buy some chains for the Equinox. And the Corvette? It's not going anywhere soon. Global warming, phooey. UPDATE: Someone who was born and raised here tells us that the last several winters have been unusually mild--this is a more typical Idaho winter. Perhaps those who claim that we are about to start the cold spell again because of solar output changes are correct. Monday, January 07, 2008
Defective DVDs My wife knew that I was a bit of a fan of 24--at least, the re-runs on cable--so she bought me the first two seasons of it on DVD. I have seen bits and pieces of seasons 3 and 4, so I had some idea what to expect. Still, the contrast between the first season, especially, and the seasons produced after 9/11, is quite dramatic. 24 is a very intense show. Two hours at a stretch is as much adrenalin rush as my wife and I can handle. I hope that it won awards for its editing and score, because it is extremely effective--especially the split-screen, real-time idea. Part of what I like about it, even though it leans towards bizarre conspiracy theories occasionally, with incredibly evil people within the government (at least in the first season), is that it does suggest the kind of really unpleasant situations that people working in counterterrorism probably deal with, at least occasionally. What do you do if there are many lives at stake, and you need to get a capture terrorist to give you information that you need? How far are you prepared to go? What level of brutality is acceptable to prevent (in season two) millions of lives at stake? Another nice aspect of the show is that it gives you some hint of how as intelligence flows upward, even if no one is trying to slant it, fine details and uncertainties tend to be crushed out. I don't know how much of season two's treatment of this was driven by the actual situation involving the WMD intelligence in Iraq, and how much is just realism about how bureaucracies work, but it is quite interesting, especially in retrospect. I am also pleased that it doesn't sugarcoat what kind of people the U.S. is fighting. The bad guys are human. They have human emotions, and they aren't just evil for its own sake; they have a cause that they believe in--and they are prepared to torture people to death for their cause. Within the limits of what can be shown on television (both because of broadcast standards and what people are prepared to watch), they manage to get across the evil that we are fighting. While the first season (written and filmed before 9/11) has Serbian bad guys, season two pulls no punches: the bad guys are Muslim terrorists, and justify the evil that they do in terms that Noam Chomsky and Ward Churchill would applaud. The technology in the show is, in places, almost real, and in other places, technodoubletalk that sounds good to people that don't know anything about computers or networks. But there's one technology that isn't right: part-way through season two, we noticed that the discs were getting a bit glitchy--and now, it won't get past one part. When I put the disc in the DVD player on my notebook--it has the same problem. There's no obvious scratches, dirt, or damage. Tomorrow, I am going to call up Fox Home Entertainment and ask them to replace at least this utterly useless disc--and how that none of the rest of the season are similarly suffering. Snow Drifts This is a noticeably heavier snow season than last year, but I am not going to use two years of data to prove global cooling. (That's why I am not Al Gore.)  Click to enlarge The snow drifts in front had a very noticeable line where the drift was highest some feet back from the house, about 8 1/2" deep.  Click to enlarge A little farther back, it was only about 4" deep.  Click to enlarge The Meaning of "Bear Arms" and Pistols As Protected Arms The gun control crowd has insisted for several years that "bear arms" in the Second Amendment, and most of the state constitutional guarantees, refers to the military use of weapons, and not to the private use of arms for self-defense. Professor Joe Olson and I have put together a law review article on the subject demonstrating that this is simply not the case. The documents of the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries demonstrate that not only did many English speakers use "bear arms" to refer to civilian uses of arms, but that English statutes did so. Even more importantly, statesmen who played significant roles in the creation of our government used "bear arms" to refer to civilian carrying of weapons. You can download the paper at Social Sciences Research Network. The abstract is here; you can download it here. Another paper by Joe Olson and I concerns whether pistols are properly understood as protected arms under the Second Amendment. The abstract is here; you can download it here. Labels: gun history, gun rights Sunday, January 06, 2008
What To Do Next In Pakistan I can't believe that this is being leaked to reporters out of anything but a calculated effort to either prepare public opinion here for it, or to warn Musharraf that it is time to roll the dice--while he still has some dice to roll. From the January 6, 2008 New York Times: Part of what has made Pakistan a rather peculiar ally is that while Musharraf got on board after 9/11 with our concerns, there are substantial factions of the Pakistani intelligence services and military that are either sympathetic to, or actively supportive of al-Qaeda. Musharraf, understandably, was afraid to push too hard in trying to crush al-Qaeda operations in the tribal areas of Pakistan along the Afghani border--areas that the central government doesn't really control. Push too hard, and al-Qaeda might successfully overthrow Musharraf, and gain control of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, with enormously destructive results. But it would appear that al-Qaeda may be reaching the point where Musharraf has nothing to do lose by pushing harder in the tribal areas, and allowing us to engage in operations against al-Qaeda inside Pakistan. Of course, that risks pushing neutrals within Pakistan into the al-Qaeda camp. This could get really ugly. But an al-Qaeda dominated Pakistani government would require us to either destroy their nuclear arsenal (which almost certainly can't be done in a subtle and bloodless way) or risk having them arrive in the U.S. via shipping containers. Threaded Adapters I am in the strange position of trying to find something that is effectively an adapter that lets you screw a 3/8"-16 bolt into a 1/2"-13 hole. This would be something that has external 1/2"-13 threads, and internal 3/8"-16 threads. Anyone know where to find such a beast? |
