Bookworm Room

Back in 1989, Bay Area locals were stunned to learn of a horrific massacre up in Sonoma County:
[Ramon] Salcido, now 47, used a gun and knife to murder his wife, Angela Richards Salcido, 24; their daughters, 4-year-old Sofia and 22-month-old Teresa; his mother-in-law, Marion Richards, 47; her daughters, 12-year-old Ruth and 8-year-old Maria; and Tracey [...]

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Just in time for July 4th, the Supreme Court confirmed that the Second Amendment says what it means and means what it says.
I personally am not now, nor have I ever been, a gun owner.  I keep meaning to go the local firing range and take lessons (operating on the principle that, since I’m surprisingly [...]

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The alternative title for this post would have been:  You’re in prison, not a hotel.  From Best of the Web Today:

He Wouldn’t Hurt a Fly
Henry Boateng is an inmate in a Massachusetts State prison. He went to court arguing that his rights were being violated. Yesterday, a federal judge agreed:
Boateng, who has changed his name [...]

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No, Obama has not spoken lovingly about mass murderer Che Guevara. However, another prominent Obama supporter has made the two equivalent in a very obvious way: he has displayed in his office side by side posters of Obama (that socialist, artsy-fartsy looking poster) and (who else?) Che. Check out this Webloggin post [...]

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I’ve been finding very disturbing the intense hostility that conservatives direct against John McCain. So much so that I wrote a very long rant on the subject, which American Thinker was kind enough to publish and which I reprint below:
Perhaps because I’m a neocon, and not a dyed-in-the-wool, native-born conservative, I look at John [...]

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Marriage is not, and never has been, a personal right.  In Western society, it operates at two levels.  First, it functions at a religious level.  This is a deeply personal level, because in every religion, marriage is, or is equivalent to, a sacrament.  In America, you have the Constitutional right to be married in the [...]

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I went to law school in the days when students still took notes by hand. When I started practicing law, secretaries had computers at their desks, but no lawyers did. My first law firm used a “Wang” word processing system, which was really nothing more than a typewriter on the screen. The [...]

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Dennis Prager has a good column discussing what will be, in his view, the ramifications of the California Supreme Court decision creating a new right out of thin air.  One of the points he makes is that, in the future, to avoid charges of discrimination, homosexual relationships will have to be promoted equally with [...]

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Cliff Thier talks about the far-reaching implications of the Court’s (and the government’s) “fundamental rights” language.
The WSJ’s editors take on the election ramifications of the decision — a bit of unexpected, and undeserved, good luck for Republicans in a terribly managed campaign season.
As was to be expected, National Review quickly put together a whole catalog [...]

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Here’s the headline: “Judge admits mistake in kicking whites out of court.” Upon reading that headline, I assumed that this was going to be the familiar story about some crackpot anti-white judge who issued a ruling, a la the Jeremiah White mode of thinking, that blacks can’t get a fair trial with whites [...]

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Edward Whelan, after pointing out that a President Obama would have the potential to appoint up to six new Supreme Court justices, looks at Obama’s rhetoric about the Constitution and the law, and uses that information to explain clearly what type of justices Obama would appoint:
[I]n setting forth the sort of judges he would appoint, [...]

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Rick Moran takes a look at Obama’s dream Supreme Court.  Read Rick’s article, then make sure you vote for McCain.

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The Ninth Circuit, which is the laughing stock of the federal judiciary because it is overruled so often, did something bizarre yesterday: it issued a Constitutionally correct decision. Not only that, the decision meant that a citizens’ group will be able to engage in free speech that is contrary to the type of [...]

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I haven’t read the underlying decision, nor am I familiar with the case. Nevertheless, if you read the following, do you feel that the judge is acting as a judge or actually stepping in as a legislator?
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals today tossed new federal fuel economy standards for some sport utility [...]

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This is the third time in a month that a judge has struck down a hot topic policy that the Bush administration supports (this time it’s an immigration policy that got the ax) and it’s the third time that the judge was a Clinton appointee. This time the judge was Charles R. Breyer, [...]

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Back in 1991, I was a good, unthinking liberal soldier. I was appropriately horrified when George Bush nominated Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court and was just thrilled when Anita Hill fortuitously showed up. In my own defense, since I’m not a manipulative person, it never occurred to me that the whole thing [...]

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I am not conversant with the details of the Patriot Act, nor am I a Constitutional lawyer. I simply find it interesting that, more often than not, when a Federal District Court judge rules something about the Patriot Act unlawful, that judge is a Clinton appointee. The most recent case in point is [...]

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I just read that a federal judge has temporarily canceled the Patriot Act’s wire tapping provisions. I’m very much not a Constitutional lawyer, so I can’t comment on the validity of this decision at a legal level. Immediately upon reading that story, though, I was pretty willing to bet that Judge Victor Marrero, [...]

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History has its tipping points. I wonder if Britain or, rather, the ordinary British, have met another tipping point. A while ago, I blogged about the fact that, as Melanie Phillips points out in Londonistan, the rule of judges has gone insanely against ordinary Brits, with judges relying on the British Human [...]

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I believe I mentioned already that one of Melanie Phillips’ big points in Londonistan is what happens when judges become highly activist, get invested in some EU/UNabstract notion of “human rights,” and steadily erode away the rights of their own citizens in the inanely confident belief that the only humans with rights are those who [...]

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I’m on another vacation, sitting in a cyber cafe, working at a small computer with a microscopic keyboard, so it must be random thoughts day. Thank goodness DQ is doing the heavy lifting.
The first thing that caught my interest is what Mitt said at the debate, which I really liked:
But it was Romney forced [...]

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There’s been a lot of talk in today’s blogosphere about the way in the Left has responded to Chief Justice Roberts’ seizure, with the perfect example showing up at Wonkette’s website (h/t Independent Women’s Form):
Chief Justice John Roberts has died in his summer home in Maine. No, not really, but we know you have your [...]

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In my post about the field of front-running Republican candidates, I got a comment from someone who said that s/he could not possibly vote for Giuliani, because Giuliani is personally pro-choice. Further, the comment writer said (or implied) that this would hold true even if it boiled down to a race between Giuliani and a [...]

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If you’ve got a few minutes, take time to read this Atlantic Monthly interview with Chief Justice Roberts. It really does give one hope that he can lead the Supreme Court to a new era of sanity. Roberts has correctly diagnosed one of the Court’s major problems, which is the Justices’ prima donna [...]

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If you’re one of the disgruntled Republicans thinking of boycotting the polls, don’t. Today, Michael Medved offers eight reasons why you should support your local Republican candidates. Reason number one, standing alone, is good enough for me:

1. Judges. On April 20th of next year, Justice John Paul Stevens (arguably the most liberal member [...]

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