Can’t Ted Stevens find something better to do than this?

Not that you needed one, but here’s one more reason to hate Ted Rall: he thinks the fair use doctrine is a “canard.” Apparently, he’s having a private cat fight with David Horowitz, who profiled his idiocy along with that of many other left wing loons. Of this Rall says:

The very notion of this website, which reads a lot like those anti-abortion websites that listed abortion doctors whom the groups wanted to see assassinated, ought to be illegal.

Note the weasel words “reads like.” Does Horowitz’s site “read like” the anti-abortion web sites that list abortion doctors? Sure. For one thing, both are generally written in English, as opposed to, say Hindi-Urdu. For another, both identify individuals they don’t like and make truthful but unflattering statements about them. And both generally use HTML.

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You may remember Lee Boyd Malvo. He was one of those two black guys in the small green car who, according to some crackerjack police chief named after a moose, together equaled one white guy driving one large white truck who went around popping people in the greater D.C. area back in 2002 for target practice. Today was his lucky day. Courtesy of the Supreme “Court’s” decision, Malvo can’t be executed, either. Isn’t that special?

Meanwhile, here’s a thumbnail sketch of Christopher Simmons, that sweet, innocent Midwestern boy whose precious life was very nearly snuffed out by the State of Missouri before five members of the U.S. Supreme Court rode in to the rescue. Bear in mind, these facts are from the first two pages of the majority opinion, not from any of the four dissenters who would have had Simmons fry.

At the age of 17, when he was still a junior in high school, Christopher Simmons, the respondent here, committed murder. About nine months later, after he had turned 18, he was tried and sentenced to death. There is little doubt that Simmons was the instigator of the crime. Before its commission, Simmons said he wanted to murder someone. In chilling, callous terms he talked about his plan, discussing it for the most part with two friends, Charles Benjamin and John Tessmer, then aged 15 and 16 respectively. Simmons proposed to commit burglary and murder by breaking and entering, typing up a victim, and throwing the victim off a bridge. Simmons assured his friends they could “get away with it” because they were minors.

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Xrlq Goldstein offers an annotated version of Chris Rock’s recent attempts at political commentary.

Via PrestoPundit, the U.S. Supreme “Court” has just ruled it unconstitutional to execute a vicious thug who planned in advance to burglarize a neighbor’s house, kidnap her, hogtie her, throw her over a bridge and brag to his friends about how he’d get away with it because he was under 18. According to 5 members of what passes for a Supreme “Court” (and one that many moonbats deride as a “conservative” one, to boot), it is unconstitutional to do anything that is popular in Iran, Pakistan, China or Saudi Arabia but is not popular in too many other places. Except, of course, having a death penalty itself, which is also popular in Iran, Pakistan, China and Saudi Arabia but not in the Western “democracies” from whom we once declared our now-defunct independence. “Justice” Kennedy non-explains his departure from American jurisprudence thusly:

It is proper that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty, resting in large part on the understanding that the instability and emotional imbalance of young people may often be a factor in the crime.

Earth to Kennedy: “acknowledge” all you want, but when it comes to issuing a ruling under the U.S. Constitution, it is proper that you acknowledge that the U.S. law is what it is, not what The Overwhelming Weight Of International Opinion (except maybe those opinions that are popular in Iran, Pakistan, China and Saudi Arabia, not to mention Iraq, Kuwait, the entire continents of Asia and Africa, or for that matter, the U.S. itself). The only international opinion that should matter in interpreting the Eighth Amendment is whatever international opinion may have influenced its passage in 1791. If “Justice” Kennedy can produce an example of a single country that, as early as 1791, considered it “cruel and unusual” to execute any juvenile offenders at all, I’d be impressed. Not impressed enough to agree with his decision, mind you, but impressed nonetheless.

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