On the Left Coast, winos in ‘Frisco hate Sarah Palin more than they love their favorite beverage, if that beverage happens to be a Syrah called Palin. On the right coast, Moonbats in Maine (but I repeat myself) are equally frosted at news anchorwoman Cindy Michaels for having the gall to … um … look like Sarah Palin.

Time was when you could disenfranchise people for being that dumb. These days, you can’t even fart in their general direction.

Question: Is the U.S. Mint unconstitutional?

Answers:

1. Yes, absolutely. Ever since we went off the gold standard, the founding fathers have been rolling in the emanations and penumbras of their graves.
2. Maybe! After all, the Constitution does say you can’t coin money, right?
3. Probably not. Don’t see it myself, but I dunno, let’s just throw the idea out there and see what sticks.
4. No, dumbass. Anyone who stayed awake through high school civics knows that the states can’t coin money, but the federal government can.

Test results below the fold:
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I was originally planning a nuclear fisking on that garbage Hack“Fact” Check put out on Obama and guns, but others have beaten me to the punch in a well-deserved fisk-for-all, so instead I’ll focus on one particular aspect of their piece, the supposed refutation of the NRA’s accurate claim that Obama supports banning the use of firearms for home self-defense. Annenberg Political Fact Check (let’s call them “Annenberg Political” for short) non-explains their decision to label this true claim “false” thusly (links in original):

The NRA bases this overheated claim on a vote Obama cast on March 24, 2004, in the Illinois state Senate. He was one of 20 who opposed SB 2165. That bill, which passed 38 – 20 and became law, did not make it a crime to use firearms for self-defense, however.

That has got to be the most disingenuous use of the word “however” I’ve seen in any screed not written by Glenn Greenwald or Andrew Sullivan. No one ever claimed that SB 2165 itself criminalized the use of firearms for self-defense. The whole point of the NRA’s position – and mine, for that matter, and that of even most Democrats in the Illinois Senate at the time – is that Barack Obama’s opposition to SB 2165 effectively ratified the acts of rogue municipalities like Wilmette which criminalized self-defense with firearms by prohibiting them altogether.

Rather, it created a loophole for persons caught violating local gun registration laws.

Rather, it had nothing to do with registration (more on that in a sec) but anytime you see the word “loophole” on a web site purporting to deal only in facts, run. There is no objective definition of “loophole,” at least not when the alleged “loophole” was created deliberately rather than unintentionally. Inadvertent loopholes arise every now and then, but when the Legislature acts on purpose, the best that can be said about “loopholes” is that one man’s “loophole” is another’s reasonable limitation on an otherwise oppressive law. If Illinois’s baby step toward preemption is a “loophole,” what on earth would Annenberg Political call the much more comprehensive preemption laws in most other states (including such rootin’ tootin’ gun owners’ paradises as … er … California)?

It states that in any Illinois municipality where gun registration is required it shall be an “affirmative defense” if the person accused of violating the registration requirement can show that the weapon was used “in an act of self-defense or defense of another … when on his or her land or in his or her abode or fixed place of business.”

Annenberg Political made that up. The actual law, codified at 720 ILCS 5/24-10, says nothing about registration, which should come as no surprise seeing as its catalyst was the persecution of Hale DeMar, who was not charged with possessing an unregistered handgun (Wilmette had no procedure for registration), but for having a handgun, period. Here’s what the real, unvarnished, unannenbergized statute says:

It is an affirmative defense to a violation of a municipal ordinance that prohibits, regulates, or restricts the private ownership of firearms if the individual who is charged with the violation used the firearm in an act of self-defense or defense of another as defined in Sections 7-1 and 7-2 of this Code when on his or her land or in his or her abode or fixed place of business.

Unlike the would-be fact-checkers at Annenberg Political, the Illinois General Assembly forgot to even mention registration. No matter; Annenberg Political forges ahead, making up in smarm what they lack in substance:

Letting the owner of an unregistered firearm escape the penalty for failing to register is one thing, but it’s another thing entirely to make it a crime to use any firearm – registered or not – in self-defense.

Again, Hale DeMar had no opportunity to register his firearm. No Illinois ordinance of which I’m aware would have provided that opportunity; Wilmette certainly didn’t. This leaves only two possibilities:

1. Annenberg Political is run by a group of lazy hacks who have never heard of Hale DeMar or even bothered to read 720 ILCS 5/24-10 before weighing in on its supposed content.
2. Annenberg Political is run by a group of liars who have no intention of checking facts.

The bill came about after Hale DeMar, of Wilmette, Ill., shot a burglar who had invaded his home. At the time, Wilmette had an ordinance that prohibited owning handguns.

There went the first possibility.

Whom to hate more, mindless liberals or humorless conservatives?

Does anyone still believe a word that FactCheck.org says? And if so, why on earth?

‘Hat tip: TGirsch.

UPDATE: PGP has more.

UPDATE x2: Patterico fact-checks FactCheck.

Insty sez:

[Good health habits] are in fact very valuable: if you lose them, you also lose the chance at decades or even centuries more healthy life made possible by future advances in medical science.”

On the other hand, you also have to hedge against the possibility of being hit by a bus tomorrow. Luckily Chianti may help with both!

Indeed, Chianti can help with both. On the one hand, it can preserve your health and extend your lifespan for decades or, depending on new medical advances, centuries. On the other, it can also help you get hit by a bus tomorrow. In vino, ohcrapigothitbyabus, they say.

The New York Daily News quotes Stanford political “scientist” Paul Sniderman as saying that being black may cost Barack Obama 6 percentage points. The allegation seems to surface every time a black candidate is a major contender in a race: if he does worse than expected, racism is to blame. It’s often referred to as the “Wilder effect” because polls predicted Douglas Wilder would win by a comfortable margin but he ended up winning by a modest one, instead, leading the rest of the nation to dump on them racist southerners in Virginia rather than praise those progressive Virginians for being the first state in the country to elect a black governor by any margin at all. Others on the left coast describe it as the Bradley Effect, as Tom Bradley was supposed to win one, too, only to see his own popularity sink alongside that of the handgun ban initiative he supported early on.

Whether it’s the Bradley effect, the Wilder effect or anything else, the underlying assumption is always the same: if the polls failed to predict the election accurately, the polls were right and the election itself was wrong. We’re all supposed to assume, based on no evidence whatsoever, that poll respondents always tell the plain, unvarnished truth to a human being on the phone, only to return to their evil, racist ways in the voting booth when no one is watching. I submit that to the extent race is a factor in these discrepancies, it is political correctness, not racism, that is to blame. True racists have no reason to tell a pollster they’re voting for the black guy; all they have to do is tell them that they’re voting for the guy who they consider more qualified – and that guy just happens, conveniently enough, not to be the black guy. On the other hand, guilt-ridden liberals and squishy moderates may well tell the pollster what they think the pollster wants to hear, only to vote their conscience when no one is watching. It is this group that has a reason to say one thing to a person and another in the secret ballot box.

If McCain ends up winning this thing when the polls say he shouldn’t, or even losing by a narrower margin than Gallup, Rasmussen or even – cough – Zogby predict, watch for a new line of caterwauling over the Obama effect. Don’t believe it.

Last week I wondered aloud about how the Fed managed to get 20+ insurance departments to approve de facto take-overs in record time. Since then I’ve learned from semi-public sources that AIG’s insurers and their assets are not part of the deal. Apparently, they insurance companies we know as AIG are fully solvent.

Justin Levine, who considers himself too good for comments, has a nevertheless interesting post on the difficulty of being a free market advocate these days, at least when discussing financial markets. I don’t know where I come down on the bailouts, but I do know enough to take issue with his comments about insurance:

Here is an illustrative example: Like many states, California requires you to purchase car insurance in order to drive a car.

I trust that by “many,” Justin means “nearly all.” I’m only aware of three states that don’t require drivers to carry liability insurance (NH, VA and WI) and one of those three (VA) requires non-insured drivers to pay the state an annual driving-without-insurance fee instead. The reason is clear: driving without financial responsibility is irresponsible, as it puts others at risk, not just you.

However, there is no socialized car insurance industry.

Ever try running an auto insurance company?

You have to purchase the insurance from private players who are usually able to set their own prices and terms for their product.

I trust that by “usually,” Justin means “never.” Auto insurers in California can’t sell any insurance product without filing the rates and forms with the Department of Insurance, who in turn has broad power to reject any rate they consider either too high or too low (and yes, rates do get bounced for being too low; this is part of the reason why even though A.I.G. is borderline-insolvent, its member carriers aren’t). And in the case of auto insurance, they can’t even approve a rate if they want to unless it is based entirely on the driver’s safety record, number of miles driven annually (which insurers currently aren’t even allowed to verify, though this will soon change under PAYD), the number of years driving experience, and other factors the DOI has already approved by regulation, in that order. And don’t even get me started on the Good Driver law, which all but commits the insurer to covering a particular driver “till death do us part.”

Had it not been for this law, there would have been many periods in my life where I would not have bought insurance (because my car was a worthless piece of junk, and my personal assets weren’t all that much either — so it made economic sense for me to forgo insurance and risk the costs associated with a potential accident).

So now that you have a government law/regulation forcing you to buy a product from a private industry, does it make more sense to have the government thoroughly regulate the prices and policies of that industry to make sure that the consumer is protected from predatory market practices that the government has encouraged with its initial regulation? I say yes. For this reason, I’m glad that there is a California Insurance Commissioner that helps regulate the industry.

There are many good arguments for regulating the insurance industry, but the fact that a few discrete types of insurance are mandatory under certain circumstances is not one of them. Unless, of course, Justin is seriously contending that the DOI should have authority to regulate auto liability insurance, but only up to the amount required by law, while allowing pure capitalism for all risks above the minimum amount, along with laissez-faire comprehensive and collision coverage, regulation-free homeowners insurance (routinely required by lenders, but not by the government), free-wheeling health insurance (the DOI doesn’t regulate this in California, but the DMHC does, and somebody regulates it in every state), untrammeled malpractice insurance, and no regulations on almost any other kind of insurance except maybe mortgage insurance, and then only to prevent lenders from deliberately choosing policies with exceedingly high rates since they know they won’t have to pay anyway.

But I know many who would say no. They seem to argue that as long as there is “competition” among several insurance carriers, the law forcing you to buy insurance doesn’t constitute enough of an unfair market distortion for consumers such that it warrants further government regulation. [There are also a few nitwits who would actually argue that I can just make the “free market economic choice” to not drive in Southern California. Those people and I are simply on different planets when it comes to arguing economic policy.]

Not sure why those who oppose mandatory liability insurance in principle are not a completely different planet than those who openly admit they would have chosen not to carry liability insurance themselves, but if anyone who isn’t too good for comments can think of a coherent explanation why, I’d love to hear it.

Full disclosure: I work for an auto insurance company.

Some moron got a letter published in the Whizz-Urinal, arguing that we “can’t afford” to have an inexperienced, unqualified political neophyte one heartbeat away from the Oval Office, but apparently we can afford to have one in the Oval office. God, he’s dumb.