evolution

The Kansas Board of Regents prevents that which has already been prevented:

TOPEKA | Kansas colleges and universities must make their campuses weapon-free and conduct criminal background checks before hiring any full-time employee, the Board of Regents decided Wednesday.

The board unanimously approved the two policies at its monthly meeting.

The weapons policy calls for the schools to post no-weapons signs at the entrance to each building on campus and to include the policy in the student code of conduct and on housing contracts.

Kansas law allows concealed weapons, but colleges and universities can prohibit them on campus by posting signs. Without the sufficient signage, a person licensed to carry a concealed weapon cannot be prosecuted. Missouri law prohibits concealed firearms on college or university property.

The carrying of any weapons, concealed or otherwise, on State of Kansas property has always been and remains banned. Nothing about the Kansas concealed-carry law — SB 418 in the 2006 session, passed over the veto of the Vice-President of All Our Hearts — changes that. The line in bold is just simply false in this circumstance.

I wondered whether or not these signs were an empty, showy gesture. Now I know.

Something smells. I mean, worse than Chinese food:

BEIJING (Reuters) - Police have found guns, dynamite, bullets and satellite receivers hidden in 11 Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in China’s northeastern Gansu province, state media reported on Wednesday.

The weapons caches were found over the past two days in monasteries of the Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, where riots between March 14 and 19 injured 94 people, Xinhua news agency said.

I suspect more Tibetan monks will be “found” with various exploding and chemically-propelled accoutrements. I would also not be surprised to one day read the news and find that the Dalai Lama has been “found” with six hookers in Nazi regalia and a Mini-DV camcorder.

Maybe this is where my “evil bastard” side comes out, but I’m having a little trouble seeing the point of the “Free Tibet” protests.

I mean, I get the idea — everybody (or most people) wants everyone else (or most others) to be free. I know I do. But in Tibet’s case, it’s never, ever, ever, ever going to happen.

For years, Tibet has been the cause celebre of Hollywood, the music industry, studentia, and other assorted groups. The Icelandic singer Bjork was recently threatened by the Chinese government for bringing it up at a concert she played in Shanghai.

Protesting Tibet is the ultimate in showy gestures, which explains why it’s so popular with the above groups. Perhaps it’s the guilt they feel about buying metric tons of cheap crap that bears the phrase “MADE IN CHINA”. Perhaps it’s for another reason, but I can tell you this: No one outside of Tibet is going to take one concrete step to make it happen.¹ No — no one outside of Tibet is capable of taking a single step to bring a free Tibet about.

Making a scene at the Olympics or during the torch run is not a concrete step, because China is large and powerful enough to do things more or less as it pleases at this point. It pleases China very much to keep Tibet under its thumb. That it not always be so is to be hoped for, but it will not happen during the lifetime of anyone that is alive now.

I don’t like it any more than you do. But neither you nor I can do a thing about it.

1. I don’t claim to know what that is, only that whatever it is, when it is identified it won’t be taken. [↩]

My Christmas list is already long enough, thank you very much.

There is so much commentary out there now about the landmark District of Columbia v. Heller case, in which the challenge is to Washington, D.C.’s total handgun ban, which was struck down by an appellate court some time ago. Decisions and opinions rendered in this case could reverberate in American jurisprudence and among advocates both for and against gun rights for generations to come.¹

The power of the Internet-as-raw information distribution center is on display, and I’m not fast enough to keep up with it right now. Here’s what I’ve put together so far.

The indispensable blog-source for all things Supreme Court is the excellent SCOTUSblog, which has put together a helpful index of its own coverage. They had correspondents in the courtroom as arguments from both sides were considered. The C-SPAN audio feed is here, the transcript is here, and the index has links to all sorts of opinion and analysis.

I was on record saying that the Court wouldn’t grant cert; i.e., wouldn’t hear the case, and I appear to have been proven wrong on that count. I haven’t read the transcript or listened to the audio, so I don’t have a solid basis upon which to rest my own analysis. I don’t imagine I’ll get to it tonight, because I’m still finishing restoring my PC, but based on what I’ve read so far it looks like the Supremes are going to leave the ban struck down. Any court capable of deciding Kelo the way they did is going to keep me up at night on this issue, but I hold out hope.

1. Which is why I have the shivering douche-chills about it. [↩]

What kind of crazy talk were you saying about “‘compassionate conservatives accept the moral premise of liberal-socialism’ … because they are just as much progressives as people who call themselves by that name”?

Kansas Republican Sen. Sam Brownback has teamed up with Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa to introduce a bill that would require the federal government to create physical activity guidelines for Americans of all ages.

The bill is a response to studies that link a lack of physical activity to rising obesity rates and skyrocketing health care costs, the senators said.

The senators announced their legislation at a joint news conference in Washington this morning.

Brownback said the bill, called The Physical Activities Guidelines for Americans Act, would direct the Department of Health and Human Services to prepare and promote physical activity guidelines similar to dietary and nutritional guidelines, commonly known as the Food Pyramid, which are updated every five years.

“Reducing America’s obesity rate and encouraging healthier living will alleviate a wide-range of health issues currently facing our nation’s youth,” Brownback said.

The rest is here. I suppose all they’ll have to do in the future is change the word “guidelines” to “requirements”. See how much easier that would be?

Now, bear in mind, it hasn’t been implemented yet, but ultimately I think that when it all plays out it will be struck down on First Amendment grounds. It was struck down this time due to the very provision that required the Attorney General to seek the Court’s opinion on its Constitutionality in the first place; the Court ruled that the provision violated separation of powers (which is also the correct decision).

No matter what you may think of Fred Phelps and his spawn — I am on record as wishing him and his entire family, right down to the last inbred grandchild, a painful and speedy death for the pain they have caused others during the last twenty-five years — this law is wrong and un-Constitutional, and should not be passed. If it is passed, then the only Constitutional thing for the Court to do is to strike it down.

Most of the Phelps matters can be dealt with by government actually performing one of the few key functions I’m willing to allow it these days — enforcing property rights. Topeka law enforcement officials have made it plain that they won’t touch Phelps or his kin, so that may be harder than it sounds; but that, according to the Founders, is one of the reasons government exists.

Of course, the upside is that other people and groups — such as the motorcycle veterans’ group that appeared to challenge Phelps antics all over the country — have these rights too. Just sayin’, is all.

I’ve heard that as many as nine other states are considering it as well. Good.

I’ve been busy this weekend what with playing Final Fantasy XII my exciting life, but I wanted to note this at RBA: the fact that one in 100 American adults is in prison.

That is insane. Our modes of criminal punishment do not make sense — we have taken discretion away from judges with mandatory minimums and sentencing guidelines; punishments, when they are warranted, do not fit the crime; and the “war on drugs” has of course progressed beyond insane.

I’ll have more to say about it soon. I’m not getting squishy here; rather, I seek a more effective means to harshly punish the worst sort of criminals while allowing those who might have just made a poor life decision causing minor harm to hopefully reclaim their lives.

I saw this on public television last night [IRONY BREAK: I got tired of a special on racial diversity so I switched to the other public television station and watched a documentary on the life and times at... Windsor Castle], and they billed it as something like an opportunity for openness and cultural exchange. The media has taken that ball and run with it — CNN calls it “historic”; the Beeb calls it “a remarkable display of cultural diplomacy”;

Really? I’d call it “neat, but barely noteworthy”. The people of North Korea — who, I might add, will be force-fed this performance on state radio and TV, which will take a break from its all-Kim Jong Il, all-the-time programming to carry it — will be disappointed to learn that you can’t eat a New York Philharmonic performance.

Certainly the Philharmonic players will remember it. I don’t mean to denigrate them — no doubt they are highly talented and among the best in the world. There’s no reason to think that they won’t put on a good show, and I’d imagine the people Kim handpicks to attend the event will have a good time, what with the Hennessy VSOP, the Pleasure Brigade, and one of the world’s finest orchestras.

The talk about “cultural openness” and such is just that — talk. A showy gesture, which the people who talk about such things are famous for. It will change nothing.

UPDATE [21:42]: Reuters: “a unique moment of unity.” Do journalists have some standardized “lofty cliche” handbook they consult at times like these?

UPDATE [21:49]: All of the news stories said that the orchestra wanted to open with “The Star-Spangled Banner”, but they opened the dress rehearsal with the North Korean anthem, followed up by the national anthem. Make of that what you will.