Is this an opening against "May Issue" CCW?

Via Dave Hardy, news that a U.S. District Court judge is requiring that an Iowa sheriff take a basic course on the U.S. Constitution after denying a local activist a CCW permit because his views are unpopular.

This is a paradigm case, one in which the issues are very clear. But the problems Paul Dorr encountered are those of nearly everyone who is denied a CCW permit in a "may issue" state: a sheriff gets to decide, arbitrarily, based on extra-legal factors, whether you, too, can join the privileged few and discreetly carry a firearm. One can hope that legislators and judges in New York and California have taken note of the Dorr case.

Hours before McDonald: Will Chicago Democrats obey the law?

Chances are that the Supreme Court will apply the 2nd Amendment to the states (via the 14th) and overturn Chicago's handgun ban. Will Daley and the Democratic Party obey the law or will separate enforcement actions be needed? Remember: this is the party and administration that carried out the "terrorist bombing" of Meigs Field in defiance of the Feds, not over some Constitutional dispute or in support of human rights, but rather, to build a park.

Shouldn't the press stop calling the Brady Center for its opinion?

Read a national-interest news story on firearms law and chances are high that the reporter solicited and quoted the opinion of the "Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence" (formerly Handgun Control, Inc). In the early '90s, when they got the Brady Bill passed and signed into law and stood prepared to destroy American firearms culture and support for RKBA altogether by defining each part of a firearm as a "firearm" and restricting private ownership to 20 such "firearms", or even in 2000, when the group raised over $1.6MM to attempt to influence that year's elections, this made some sense.

Nowadays, it's not too much of a stretch to claim that the Brady Campaign has effectively zero support. To date in the 2010 fiscal year, the Brady Campaign (PAC) has raised only $2,500, putting them in the ballpark of e.g. a typical Prohibition Party presidential campaign or Libertarian Party candidate for anarcho-capitalist dogcatcher.

To be fair, the "Brady Center"--the side of the operation that isn't a PAC or a lobby group, brought in nearly $3 MM in 2008, according to the Better Business Bureau. For a "national" organization, that's pathetic. The ACLU Foundation (the non-lobbying side of that operation), to provide a point of contrast, brought in over $66 MM in 2007 and the National Parks Conservation Association raised $61 MM. Things have gotten so bad for the Brady Bunch that they're having a "fire sale" of sorts, selling a mailing list they previously told members they'd keep private.

The Brady Center's political Brady Campaign has withered away to nothing, and the "educational" Center itself was in 2008 operating on what, for a national organization of its visibility and former prestige, was a shoestring budget. (If the trend in Campaign fundraising correlates to that of the Center, one expects that this year the Center will see far less than $3 MM.) It isn't unfair to say that support for the Brady Campaign is nonexistent and that the Center isn't far behind; only a single donor was willing to pay the Campaign to do what it does, and the Center is able to raise but a minuscule sum.

Phoning Paul Helmke for a quote when writing a firearms-law news article is like giving equal time to a third-party paper candidate when covering local politics or phoning a conspiracist, unscientific crank when writing a piece on climate change. It's false balance. That a group that has faded to nonexistence gets equal time is a sign of bias against RKBA in the press if there ever was one. The Brady Campaign and Brady Center are no longer newsworthy and should not be treated as such.

Hat tip to Alan Korwin for the $2500 number--it took a bit of searching to find the source.

Capitalism and Freedom in 2010.

Over on Epinions, my review of Capitalism and Freedom is up. There's a bit too much chapter-by-chapter commentary, making it a more tedious read than it should be, but there's so much confusion about what's in this book that it's worth it.

Have a look at the dopey remark and ensuing exchange in the comments section. People who blame Friedman or Chicago School economics for Chile's early 1980s recession are ridiculous: since when did Chicago Schoolers advocate fixed exchange rates and government favortism of industries, in this case, copper. Moreover, it's about time--just as is the case with global warming denialists--that we start calling lies lies and liars liars. Anyone who believes that Friedman was "sent" to Chile, that Friedman advised the Pinochet government in any meaningful sense of the word, or that Pinochet was a Chicago School "True Believer" and that this motivated repression needs to be shamed, as none of these statements have any basis in fact. They were lies when student radicals made them up in the 1970s and they remain lies today. More than 30 years later, there's no excuse for believing them, especially with Wikipedia and dozens of articles setting the facts straight immediately available.

Query about "Austrian Economics": ("Bleg".)

From the perspective of modern economic science, as opposed to a provincial "Austrian" perspective, what, if any, were the lasting contributions of Ludwig von Mises?

Insight on the "Tea Party" phenomenon.

From Vishal Ganeshan:

Among Tea Party respondents, the President enjoys a 88% job disapproval rating. Further, 84% of respondents simply have an unfavorable opinion of him. That their overwhelmingly negative opinion of the President is largely divorced from his actual policies is disturbing, but it also brings to light one of the reasons for the GOP’s refusal to cooperate with the President and the Dems on any issue...the recipe for success is saying “no” to the President, regardless of the policy implications.

The whole article is worth reading.

Dumbing down of America, sartorial edition

While searching for wedding attire, originally deciding on morning dress (before the ceremony was moved to later in the day) I discovered that not a few companies call the morning coat/cutaway coat "Tuxedo Tails", and that they also call the "white tie" tailcoat "Tuxedo Tails".

Moreover, on a somewhat related note, the Homburg hat is sold on the Internet as the "Gangster" or "Godfather" hat. Given how the fedora was named, that almost makes sense.

Jacques Barzun considered the turning away from more prescribed forms of dress a symptom of a broader culture of "emancipation". What does one call "Tuxedo Tails" and "Godfather hat"? That doesn't seem to be the word for it.