so, SCOTUS struck down dc’s ban on handguns last week, in an opinion likely to create ripples across the country as more gun laws are challenged. an interesting article in the wsj law blog discussed the practical implications of the decision in terms of gun-buying in the city, the upshot of which seemed to be “nothing is going to change quickly.” the immediate reaction in the dc metro area seems to have been a flurry of interest among wannabe hand gun owners who are trying to buy guns in md and va.

given this backdrop (and the wsj interview particularly), a new development in the district caught my eye. the wapo reports that a new gun bill is being introduced by phil mendelson today. the liberalization of the city’s gun laws seems to be happening more quickly than i’d expected, but apparently not quickly (or liberally) enough for some.

alan gura, the attorney who argued against the gun ban before the supreme court, is apparently of the opinion that mendelson’s legislation doesn’t go far enough:

After looking at the draft yesterday, Gura said in an e-mail, “It’s a good start, but there are other issues with the code.”

In particular, he is concerned about the city’s decision to continue a ban on semiautomatic weapons, which he said is unconstitutional.

if i were a writer of very bad puns, i’d say gura was setting himself up for a heller ironic ending.

what with the democratic primaries now over (it’s only been five months? really? maybe we’ve been stuck in season 5, episode 18 of ST:TNG), we can all breathe a sigh of relief and relax for a little while. the media coverage of this has been a serious pain in the eyeballs, with non-issues getting even more play (remember the “hillary didn’t tip!” story? or how about the obama-ayers connection?) than you’d expect from our shock-and-bore mainstream press. what i’m really looking forward to, though, is the end of “what’s the matter, you don’t like [black men]/[white women]?” discussions.

my opinion of obama and hillary boils down to this: a jewish mother gives her son two shirts as a birthday present. the next time she sees him, he’s wearing one of them. she raises an eyebrow and asks, “what’s the matter, you didn’t like the other shirt?”

catch my drift?

virginia’s attorney general wants to end the recent trend of democratic governors by securing the gubernatorial spot for himself. he’s been distancing himself from kaine’s policies, invokes god and prayer in his richmond times-dispatch columns, and thinks that philip morris is a good corporate citizen.

what a peach.

now he’s appealing the 4th u.s. circuit court of appeals ruling in richmond medical center v. herring that virginia’s abortion law is unconstitutional.¹

that’s just great.
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¹ virginia, that great commonwealth, couldn’t content itself with the right-wing label “partial birth abortion” and came up with the even more inflammatory - and nonsensical - term “partial birth infanticide.” the cliff notes version of the decision is that carhart II, the scotus decision upholding the federal pba ban, hinged on the doctor’s intent to perform a standard d&e vs. an intact d&e; the virginia statute makes no such distinction and therefore is distinguished from carhart II as imposing an undue burden on a woman’s right to obtain an abortion.

ginsburg’s scathing dissent in carhart ii is a must-read - not only does she go after the majority’s opinion, but flays - nay, dismembers - the congressional findings and recitations in the act itself. i think my favorite paragraph (and it’s hard to choose just one) is this:

Revealing in this regard, the Court invokes an antiabortion shibboleth for which it concededly has no reliable evidence: Women who have abortions come to regret their choices, and consequently suffer from “[s]evere depression and loss of esteem.” … Because of women’s fragile emotional state and because of the “bond of love the mother has for her child,” the Court worries, doctors may withhold information about the nature of the intact D&E procedure. … The solution the Court approves, then, is not to require doctors to inform women, accurately and adequately, of the different procedures and their attendant risks. Cf. Casey, 505 U. S., at 873 (plurality opinion) (“States are free to enact laws to provide a reasonable framework for a woman to make a decision that has such profound and lasting meaning.”). Instead, the Court deprives women of the right to make an autonomous choice, even at the expense of their safety.

reading the paper this morning, i came across something that bothered me. i know, that’s nothing new. it is, in fact, why i’d stopped reading the paper for longer than i care to admit.

what bothered me this morning was this: the d.c. attorney general has fired ten attorneys. the primary motivation for the cuts was to close a budget deficit; the particular attorneys were chosen due to their substandard performance. several of the attorneys are members of a union,¹ which plans to challenge the terminations. the president of the union had this to say about the firings:

“it may be the way things are done at big law firms. i don’t think it’s a good way to run civil service.”

i’m boggling at that statement. it seems to me that big law firms are efficient, successful operations. why wouldn’t you want to run the civil service in the same way? granted, civil servants get paid a fraction of what an associate at a large firm can make, and if we can’t afford pay parity, there should be other inducements to attract the best and brightest to public service jobs. good health care, a decent pension plan, generous vacation benefits, perhaps. but i don’t think lax performance standards should be among them.
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¹ i’m philosophically pro-union, as i believe they rectify the inherent power inequality in the company/worker relationship. being an attorney myself, though, i wonder if attorneys need such assistance - we’re generally a well-educated (or perhaps just overeducated) bunch, capable of making rational decisions and by dint of our J.D., commanding comfortable salaries without the enhanced bargaining power of unions.

that said, i do think that contract attorneys should organize. not necessarily to secure better pay ($35/hour plus overtime isn’t anything to sneeze at, even in dc and nyc), but perhaps for better benefits and to minimize the profiteering of the temp agencies that place them. contract work is essentially white-collar piecework, where the attorneys are kept on a very short leash and working conditions can aggravate a host of chronic health problems. (no joke; just try sitting still for ten to twelve hours a day, staring at a computer screen, clicking clicking clicking away. and remember: these aren’t teenage gamers we’re talking about.)

that said, if contract attorneys were to unionize, it might just speed outsourcing doc review to places like india.

this article discusses the misogynistic cultural response to the clinton campaign.

most of the comments completely miss the point.

a pilot program to bypass customs! what could possibly go wrong?

it really makes a lovely juxtaposition with those haldol-happy ICE officers. anyone else think we were a more humane nation when we had the immigration and naturalization service, rather than immigration and customs enforcement?

i tell ya, i really should stop reading the morning paper.

i really need to stop reading the washington post in the morning. every time i do, it seems i find reason to blog.

take this report being released today by the ondcp, finding that “teenagers who smoke marijuana put themselves at risk for future mental illness and higher rates of depression.” sounds scary! but the report also states that “too often teens do not seek treatment for their depression, choosing instead to seek relief by smoking marijuana. they do not realize that pot can make their problems worse and can set them up for serious health consequences.”

that’s right. the white house report says that depressed teenagers who don’t get treated have a higher likelihood of growing up to be depressed adults. i call that one for the file marked “duh.”

or take this gem:

The report also found that teenagers who smoke marijuana at least once a month are three times more likely to have suicidal thoughts than non-users. It said that even though the percentage of teens who are depressed is equal to the percentage of adults who say they are depressed, teenagers are more likely to seek solace in marijuana or other illicit drugs.

add that to the previous information and what you have is the following: teens who aren’t treated for depression are likely to have suicidal thoughts. the causality of marijuana just isn’t borne out in the analysis presented in the washington post article. by their logic, i can safely assert that home schooling leads to smoking pot from corpses’ heads. (and thanks, james, for that link. i was eating lunch.)

*sigh*

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in other news, also reported by the wapo, it seems the u.s. commission of fine arts has its nose out of joint because the working model of the new mlk jr. memorial features “a stiffly frontal image, static in pose, confrontational in character.”

heaven forbid a man who led marches, who packed the mall, and who - yes - confronted the racism in america be depicted in full frontal suitedness, arms crossed.

but what the commission is really bent about, apparently, is the artistic style of the proposed piece: the commission sec’y, thomas leubke, wrote that “the colossal scale and Social Realist style of the proposed statue recalls a genre of political sculpture that has recently been pulled down in other countries.”

call me crazy, but i don’t think the sculptures to which he’s referring (saddam, anyone?) were removed out of aesthetic concerns. and in demanding that the dr. king sculpture be altered to evoke the “works of sculptors such as michelangelo and rodin,” leubke is completely missing the appropriateness of depicting dr. king in the social realist style: art that “belongs to the people and to the land and not to the exclusionary cliques of art world elites.” it almost seems that despite being sec’y of the fine arts commission, leubke is unfamiliar with the wpa.

ed dwight, a denver sculptor, has said the sculpture doesn’t look like dr. king. now that seems to be a more valid criticism.

dc is so bent on prohibiting its residents from owning handguns¹ it took the issue all the way to the supreme court.

now the city is going to arm its patrol officers with assault rifles.

while it’s arguably safer to have handguns in the hands of police officers than criminals, i don’t think that necessarily extends to the average law-abiding citizen. i’m left with the thought that this move must be in reaction to a concern (i’d say likelihood, but i haven’t read the transcript of the oral arguments or paid much attention to legal commentators’ opinions on the subject) that the lower court ruling on the dc gun control ordinance will be upheld by the supreme court or remanded to the lower court for a narrower review. “hey! let’s throw MORE high-powered guns at the problem!”

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¹ D.C. CODE §§ 7-2502.02(a)(4), 22-4504(a), AND 7-2507.02

apparently the bush administration thinks traffic jams violate a fundamental right of american citizens:

“it’s almost sort of un-American that we should be forced to sit and be stuck in traffic.” - d.j. gribbin, DOT general counsel & white house liaison

their solution? pull public financing of public transportation and use it as an incentive to prompt states to privatize roads. the hoped-for result? congestion-based tolls!

“the idea is to reduce traffic by discouraging some motorists from driving during peak hours.”

without continued investment in public transportation, those most likely to be discouraged will have no choice but to stay home or feel the pain of the tolls.¹ regressive tax much?

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¹ someone who is familiar with the northern virginia phenomenon of slug lines might argue that they are empirical evidence that the private sector will find a way to cope with congestion-based tolls. however, i tend to think this is a flawed comparison - the sluglines developed in response to fixed-time carpool lanes, where solo motorists ran the risk of a hefty fine if they were caught in the HOV lanes. in contrast, the toll “solution” lacks both the perceived risk of a high financial sting and the reliability of a set schedule.

UPDATED 26 january

note to self: if feeling like kvetching online in the next few days, grumble about the piss-poor quality of reporting in today’s wp article about moving marines from okinawa to guam, increasing the island’s population by approx. “40,000 service people, contract workers and dependents.”

don’t journalists do basic background research anymore?

this PDN article on the same topic does a much better job of breaking down the actual impact (and number of expected military & dependents) of the “troop surge” on guam. according to the PDN, the number of active duty military on guam will reach 18,930 - not quite a three-fold increase from the current number of military personnel, and only a 63% increase over the island’s 1990 military personnel population.¹ oh, and of those 40k “service people, contract workers and dependents” mentioned by the wapo, only 8k will be marines. and yet the wapo article maintains a drumbeat of, “the marines are coming! the child-raping marines are coming! the misbehaving marines are coming!”

additionally, it’s positively fascinating that while the wapo makes brief mention that “outside investors are descending on the island,” the PDN notes that at the head of the line is none other than KBR.^1.5 talk about the things that make you go hmmmmmm.

(snarky aside: now, really. what’s going to happen with the arrival of 8000 marines over the course of the next six years? strip clubs² that closed due to the military population decline in the 90s and 00s will reopen. once again, west coast strippers will flock to the island by the hundreds, dance for dollars and try to date servicemembers. bars and dance clubs that went dark will reopen for the same reasons.

the wapo article states, “The newcomers will be mostly young, mostly single men trained as warriors — and periodically looking for a big night out on a small island where most hotels and restaurants cater to the sushi-and-kimchi predilections of upper-middle-class Japanese and South Korean tourists.” the author forgot to add “and stripper” to the list of japanese and south korean tourist predilections; some strip clubs catered specifically to that demographic.)
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¹ population reference bureau, Guam Grew Younger, Poorer During the 1990s^a

^1.5 “With up to $15 billion planned for the U.S. military’s Guam buildup, the military-hosted Guam Industry Forum in August [2007] became a magnet for hundreds of off-island businesses. The likes of defense contractors General Dynamics, Kelogg Brown and Root, Northrop Grumman and Parsons Brinckerhoff attended. Investment banks Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns & Co. were also at the forum.”

² check out the strip clubs section of guam bars and nightlife - it’s a sad commentary on the decline in strippery from the 90s, when clubs like camelot, las vegas, runway 69 and dallas were still open. i think it was at dallas where a stripper - clad in nothing but a wrist cast - jumped off the stage and proceeded to beat the crap out of a guy who was hitting on her girlfriend. oh, wait. i probably didn’t mention that i lived on guam, did i? and no, i wasn’t a stripper. or a stripper’s girlfriend.

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^a i should also mention that one of my first post-highschool summer jobs was with PRB, so i was tickled to find this article on their site.