FLE

Top court backs Texas over Bush The Supreme Court dealt a defeat to President Bush on Tuesday and ruled he does not have the "unilateral authority" to force state officials to comply with international treaties. Chief Justice John Roberts said the Constitution gives the president the power "to execute the laws, not make them." Unless Congress passes a law to enforce a treaty, the president usually cannot do it on his own, Roberts said. The case arose from an unusual dispute and unexpected intervention by Bush. The justices used it to make a strong statement about the limits of presidential power. The International Court of Justice in The Hague, acting on a lawsuit by Mexico, ruled the United States had failed to carry out its treaty duty to inform a native country when one of its citizens was arrested and charged with a serious crime. The decision pointed to 51 Mexican nationals who were under death sentences in Texas, California and several other states. It was unclear how this ruling could be enforced. But in a surprise move, President Bush in 2005 told Texas officials they must reopen and reconsider the cases of the Mexican-born murderers on Death Row. Bush, a former Texas governor, said he was acting "pursuant to the authority vested in me as president by the Constitution and laws of the United States." Texas officials refused to go along with Bush's order and fought him in court over the case of Jose Ernesto Medellin, facing the death penalty for killing two teens in 1993....
D.C. Gun Crackdown Meets Community Resistance A crackdown on guns is meeting some resistance in the District. Police are asking residents to submit to voluntary searches in exchange for amnesty under the District's gun ban. They passed out fliers requesting cooperation on Monday. Officers will go door to door asking residents for permission to search their homes. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said the "safe homes initiative" is aimed at residents who want to cooperate with police. She gave the example of parents or grandparents who know or suspect their children have guns in the home. Community leaders went door to door in Ward 8 Monday to advise residents not to invite police into their homes to search for weapons. "Bad idea," said D.C. School Board member William Lockridge. "I think the people should not open your doors under any circumstances, don't even crack your door, unless someone has a warrant for your arrest." Ron Hampton, of the Black Police Officers Association, said he doesn't expect many in the community to comply. f weapons are recovered, they will be tested and destroyed if they are not found to be linked to any other crimes....
Police limit searches for guns Boston police officials, surprised by intense opposition from residents, have significantly scaled back and delayed the start of a program that would allow officers to go into people's homes and search for guns without a warrant. The program, dubbed Safe Homes, was supposed to start in December, but has been delayed at least three times because of misgivings in the community. March 1 was the latest missed start date. One community group has been circulating a petition against the plan. Police officials trying to assuage residents' fears have been drowned out by criticism at some meetings with residents and elected officials. Officers may begin knocking on doors this week, officials said yesterday, but instead of heading into four troubled neighborhoods, as they had planned, officers will target only one, Egleston Square in Jamaica Plain, where police said they have received the most support. Police would ask parents or legal guardians for permission to search homes where juveniles ages 17 and under are believed to be holding illegal guns. Police would only enter homes into which they have been invited and, once inside, would only search the rooms of the juveniles. The goal, said Elaine Driscoll, spokeswoman for the Boston Police Department, would be getting weapons off the streets, rather than making arrests....
The Reasonable Weasel The Supreme Court is deciding whether a complete ban on all handguns in Washington, D.C. violates the second amendment of the Constitution, which says that "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed." You might think, if you have even passing familiarity with the word "infringe," that the answer is obvious. And indeed early reports indicate the Supremes will decide that you do, in fact, have an individual right to bear arms. That might seem like a victory for freedom, but the court won't stop there. They have to decide whether the handgun ban in D.C. is constitutional or not and how to decide what restrictions on weapons are legit. Safety locks? Individually-identified bullets? Waiting periods? Assault-weapon bans? No one knows how they will decide yet. But the readers of the Weekly deserve to know ahead of time, so I'll tell you: they'll use the reasonable weasel. They'll say any law has to be "reasonable." It's a trap. Whenever a politician says, "Let's be reasonable," the ghosts of the founding fathers reach for their guns. Who decides what is reasonable? If you allow the government to decide what is a reasonable violation of your rights, then you no longer have unalienable rights to be protected by your elected officials, you have privileges granted to you by your prison warden. The text of the Constitution is clear. "Shall not be infringed" does not mean "shall not be infringed unless the person doing the infringing thinks it's okay."....
'And every other terrible instrument' In a "move that surprised some observers," the Chicago Tribune reported Wednesday, attorney Alan Gura, appearing before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the federal guard who sued the District of Columbia in 2003, claiming he feels unsafe because he's not allowed to keep his guns at home, "appeared to concede large chunks of his argument, moving away from an absolutist position on gun rights." "He concurred, at one point, with Justice Stephen Breyer that a ban on machine guns or plastic guns" (whatever those are) "would be constitutional because those weren't the kind of arms normally carried by members of state militias in the early days of the United States." Was it a failure of nerve under pressure, or did somebody get to this guy? The statement above is like saying "freedom of the press" doesn't apply to newspapers printed on modern, high-speed electric presses -- only to handbills printed one at a time on an old-fashioned hand-cranker, because that's the only kind they had back in Ben Franklin's day. Under such a rule, you could forget about the First Amendment protecting the free-speech rights of ministers (or anybody else) broadcasting over TV and radio -- didn't have any of that stuff back during "the early days of the United States," either. Nor did they have the revolvers or semi-automatic pistols you were supposed to be arguing for, Mr. Gura. (1836 and 1894, respectively.)....
Reactions to the Supreme Court Hearings on the D.C. Gun Ban If you believe that you have a God-given or natural right to own a handgun, you may be able to point to at least one good thing that President Bush has done for you in the last seven years: nominating Justice John Roberts to the Supreme Court. The Chief Justice seemed very skeptical about arguments for Washington D.C.’s handgun ban as challenged in D.C. vs Heller during last Tuesday’s hearing, asking Walter Dellinger, who represents the city, “What is reasonable about a total ban on possession?” But while the Bush administration gave with one hand, it took with another. “I’m really disappointed in the Bush Administrations’ brief which would relegate that individual right to an inferior position,” says Frank DuBois, former New Mexico Secretary of Agriculture and editor of The Westerner website, which purveys and surveys all issues Western, old and new. DuBois is referring to U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement’s written argument for returning the case to the appellate court that initially struck down the ban. Columnist Robert Novak believes that Clement may have wanted to limit the scope of his argument against the ban, believing that Justice Kennedy would rule against an individual right to bear arms. Clement’s position was so far from the Bush administration’s, however, that Vice-President Dick Cheney sided with over 300 congressmen and senators on another argument requesting the Supreme Court declare the gun ban “unconstitutional per se,”—i.e. intrinsically unconstitutional, due to the clear meaning of the Second Amendment. But DuBois is cautiously optimistic, adding “It appears we have an excellent chance the Supreme Court will find an individual right to bear arms. I hope they will find those rights can only be limited by a ‘compelling state interest’”....Mr. Probasco is a great journalist. I mean, look who he's quoting. -:)
Gun paint company taunts Mayor Bloomberg with paints named after him A Wisconsin company that disguises deadly firearms with bright paints and camouflage has a new target: Mayor Bloomberg. Lauer Custom Weaponry, whose products were banned in the city in 2006 because they make dangerous guns look like innocent toys, is taunting the anti-gun mayor with a line of paints named "The Bloomberg Collection." The company - which named its purple hue after Barney, the dinosaur beloved by toddlers - is peddling a rainbow of candy-colored paints for each of the five boroughs. There's red for Manhattan, rose for the Bronx, blue for Brooklyn, green for Queens and orange for Staten Island. And as an extra slap - a stencil of the mayor's face for the barrel of the gun. Gun owners also can plunk down $129 for a "Bloomberg Collection EZ Camo Kit" to pimp out their semiautomatics and rifles with a brick wall and graffiti decoration. It's no joke. An outraged Bloomberg called gun-coloration kits "a tragedy in the making."....
D.B. Cooper's Parachute Possibly Found The FBI is analyzing a torn, tangled parachute found buried by children in southwest Washington to determine whether it might have been used by famed plane hijacker D.B. Cooper, the agency said Tuesday. Children playing outside their home near Amboy found the chute's fabric sticking up from the ground in an area where their father had been grading a road, agent Larry Carr said. They pulled it out as far as they could, then cut the parachute's ropes with scissors. The children had seen recent media coverage of the case — the FBI launched a publicity campaign last fall, hoping to generate tips to solve the 36-year-old mystery — and they urged their dad to call the agency. "When we went to the public, the whole idea was that the public is going to bring the answers to us," Carr said. "This is exactly what we were hoping for." A man identifying himself as Dan Cooper — later mistakenly but enduringly identified as D.B. Cooper — hijacked a Northwest Orient flight from Portland, Ore., to Seattle in November 1971, claiming he had a bomb. When the plane landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, he released the passengers in exchange for $200,000 and asked to be flown to Mexico. He apparently parachuted from the plane's back stairs somewhere near the Oregon border....