To some, apparently, it is. Moron of the Day award goes to Jeffrey Quick, who argues that jurors who vote to convict drug dealers are no different from Nazis who murdered Jews by the millions. Both followed orders, dontcha know.

This post could use a little updating.

I realize how dangerous it it can be to simultaneously disagree with John Lott, David Kopel, David Hardy, Uncle, Countertop, Allah and every other heavy hitter except maybe Clayton Cramer and Patterico, but frankly, I’m having a hard time getting too worked up over the U.S. Government’s brief on Heller. Yes, I would have preferred to see the Administration call for strict rather than heightened scrutiny. No, I don’t think it makes a tinker’s damn of a difference. DC’s ban would easily be struck down under either test. Rather than worry about that relatively minor detail, worry about the big picture: will the Supreme Court affirm the individual right to bear arms at all? If it does, thank the Bush Administration for appointing a Solicitor General who argued eloquently in favor of it, and for appointing two of the Justices who helped to make it happen. If it doesn’t, then arguing over which test the Supreme Court should use to enforce that nonexistent right makes about as much sense as debating what the crew of the Titanic should have done with all those extra lifeboats they didn’t have.

UPDATE: Further thoughts from Jan Crawford Greenberg and Patterico.

Why do elevators display the letters “EZ” instead of a floor number when they zip past the floors they don’t stop on? Do the letters stand for something, like maybe “extra zippy?” Or do they market to people who are so dumb that it’s really hard to ride on an elevator that stops on floors you might not want to get off on?

A few observations from tonight’s debate:

• It’s official: Fred? is finally a Presidential candidate. He’s got my vote, and may even lose the obligatory question by the middle of his first term if he wins.
• Who the hell got the brilliant idea to invite Rong Paul to the debate?
• On the flip side, Why The Silence?^® from his favorite spammer, Richard Viguerie, who just last week bashed FoxNews for not wanting to invite Mr. Constitution to the debate?
• Speaking of idiots, how long will it take for Paul Slansky to write an op-ed in the L.A. Times bashing John McCain for falsely believing that Thomas Jefferson was a 20th Century Iraqi citizen murdered by Saddam Hussein?
• On the flip side, why is no one taking McCain to task for his equally ludicrous claim that “comeback” is an adjective?

Richard Viguerie spams:

“I am dismayed that the Fox News Channel apparently plans to bar Ron Paul from its January 6 presidential debate. I have not yet declared my support for any candidate, but I find this action inexcusable.”

Understandable, given that the guy’s a crank, whose supporters have long been doing to online polls what Viguerie himself does to everyone’s inbox. Birds of a feather, I suppose.

“Ron Paul is a traditional limited-government conservative in the grand tradition of Robert A. Taft, Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan.

Yeah, it’s too bad Goldwater’s famously dovish “if we’d just act a little nicer, the communists wouldn’t exist” foreign policy pronouncements cost him the election. On the other hand, President Reagan ushered in a brand new era with his time-honored “I’m not sending my troops anywhere in the world without a war declaration, and then only if it’s written on a John-Birch-Society-approved form” slogan, which left that imperialist Jimmy Carter in the dust. I sure am stoked to see Paul picking up the torch now.

In the latest Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll, he is ahead of Fred Thompson in New Hampshire. Yet Fox News is inviting Thompson and barring Ron Paul.

Earth to Viguerie: we’re electing the President of the United States, not the President of New Hampshire. Show me a single scientific national poll in which the fake Republican candidate bests the only real conservative in the race, and then we’ll talk. Until then, keep your pearls of wisdom to yourself, or at least confine them to your own web site and to the mailing lists of those who have actually asked to join it. Just because Congress says you “CAN-SPAM,” doesn’t mean you should.

UPDATE: More on Paul’s brilliant conservatism in the molds of Goldwater and Reagan here and here.