Ann Coulter thinks the criminal-minded ACORNies in the Brooklyn video are guilty of criminal conspiracy. I’m not so sure. I don’t recall the ACORNies conspiring with each other on the tape, only attempting to conspire with two people they thought were a pimp and a prostitute but who actually weren’t. Can you have a conspiracy of one?

Heh.

Hat tip: PDB.

I think Adam Liptak has it right for the most part, as does David Hardy. i.e., that the five brave souls in Heller who ruled that people are “people” within the meaning of the Second Amendment will also rule that “shall not be infringed” means “shall not be infringed by federal or state government.” I also think it’s clear from the orals that the gunnies dodged a .50 caliber bullet when the Supremes awarded Paul Clement half of Alan Gura’s time. I’m glad the “privileges or immunities” argument was made, and won’t be the least bit surprised if Justice Thomas endorses it in a concurring opinion, but mark my words: it won’t carry the day; the traditional “due process” incorporation will. And when it does, I promise to be just as gracious in welcoming Chicago back to the Union as the North should have been after the last secession experiment went just as wrong.

Bill O’Reilly thinks it’s a “pretty extreme position” that the Bill of Rights remains in force when it snows in wintertime:

The next night he non-explained his position by noting that President Lincoln (and many others, but who’s counting) suspended habeas corpus. Never mind that habeas has nothing to do with the Bill of Rights, or that the part of the Constitution that does protect habeas, which is Article I, Section 9, clause 2 of the original Constitution, expressly provides that habeas may be suspended “when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it” while no comparable limiting language appears anywhere in the Bill of Rights. The mainstream view of the Constitution is whatever Bill O’Reilly tells you it is. Actually reading the damned thing is an extremist position.

One of the most oft-quoted – and IMNSHO lamest – arguments in support of First Amendment “Reform” is that draconian restrictions on campaign contributions and ads are okey dokey under the First Amendment because “money is not speech.” Technically, of course, it’s not, but has anyone seriously considered the implications of the theory that money can be divorced from what it is spent on? Let’s try applying McCain-Feingold logic to other cherished constitutional rights:

1. Congress can pass a law forbidding any resident of a state that voted for McCain/Palin in 2008 to spend any money on a marriage license or any aspect of a wedding. Courts have ruled that marriage is a fundamental right. May sound a bit tough on marriage, but no matter: money is not marriage!
2. DC and Chicago find a clever way around the ruling in Heller and the expected ruling in McDonald. Can’t ban handguns? No problem. Just pass an ordinance forbidding any resident to spend any money on any guns, ammunition, etc. No constitutional defect there; money is not guns!
3. No one likes a justice system that works for the rich but not the poor, so rather than having justice for The Rich (TM), let’s tax the hell out of everyone to pay for free legal services for all who meet specified criteria, and then make it illegal for anyone to pay an attorney on his own. No problem there; money is not due process!
4. OK, so maybe this “Money is not X” theory doesn’t work well outside the confines of the First Amendment. Well, surely it applies to the rest of the First Amendment itself, right? To test that theory, let’s pass a law providing for “clean” religion. To keep religions “clean,” the government will provide public funds to every religious organization that meets certain criteria, and then forbid every citizen to donate any of his own money to any of these organizations. No problem with that proposal, right? Money is not religion!
5. Last but by no means least, let’s not forget the most important constitutional right of all, the one the framers considered too important to even mention in the Constitution, the right to choose so long as that choice is to obtain an abortion. South Dakota gives up the losing battle of trying to ban it outright, and instead passes a new law making it illegal to spend any money on an abortion, or on transportation to or from another state for purposes of obtaining an abortion. Surely Justices Stevens, Breyer, Ginsburg and Sotomayor would have no problem with that law, right? Money is not abortion!

Or we can use a teensy bit of common sense and recognize, as only a bare majority of our nation’s top court did, that while money technically is only property, it is fungible property which, as a practical matter, embodies whatever it is you choose to spend it on. And when a restriction on money specifically targets money spent on the expression of political ideas, then money sure as hell is speech. Thank God that a bare minimum of Supreme Court Justices understand this.

Via Instapundit, I’d like to be the first to thank Elizabeth Edwards for just about guaranteeing that North Carolina will finally get with the program and abolish its ludicrous alienation of affection law. Once that happens – and mark my words, it will – that will leave Mississippi as the sole Southern state to hold on to this relic of the common law of England – a law so common that England itself had the good sense to abolish it eons ago. By way of comparison, Mississippi finally got around to abolishing slavery in 1995, so I expect them to get rid of A of A in 2112.

Much has been made over the “gun-show loophole,” which is really no more than the absence of a gun show exception to the general rule that licensed firearm dealers are required to conduct background checks on sales while private sellers are not. Now Philly is up in arms over the “Florida Loophole,” which allows Pennsylvania residents to carry concealed weapons with permits issued by reciprocal states, most commonly Florida, while the gunnies argue that the real loophole is a law allowing Philadelphia to impose all sorts of crazy restrictions on their own permits that are not generally provided for under state law, thereby providing the only real incentive to go out of state in the first place. Where the issue is controversial, as in these two examples, a meta-debate invariably arises over whether the “loophole” in question should indeed be considered a loophole. All this begs the question of what a “loophole” is.

Tam snarks that “loophole” is just a shorthand for “People Doing Legal $#!t I Don’t Like.” While amusing, I’m not sure this definition really works. On the one hand, I don’t think anyone in his right mind would dispute that a Massachusetts law that prohibits adults from disseminating “any matter harmful to minors,” including handwritten or printed materials but not emails or text messages contains a loophole. On the other, I have yet to hear even the most ardent gun control advocate refer to the expiration of the “assault” weapons ban or the lawful concealed carry with a permit from one’s state of domicile as a “loophole,” nor have I heard the safety Nazis who pine for the days of the national 55 mph speed limit describe today’s higher limits as a “loophole.” The difference is not so much between legal “stuff” I don’t like as between stuff I’m pretty sure the Legislature didn’t intend to be legal, either. Did the Massachusetts really mean to allow pedophiles to email or text messages to minors? If not, then the SJC has either gone completely off the deep end with their ruling, or they have uncovered a loophole. But if the Legislature really did intend this result, then it means the Legislature is batshit crazy, not that the resulting law (or lack thereof) should be considered a loophole.

Think of bugs vs. features. Not all features are good. Some, in fact, are quite bad, enough so that in a rare instance, the right bug might actually be good. It all goes to the programmer’s intent. Divining a legislature’s intent can be a bit trickier, of course, as one legislator’s bug may be another’s feature. If the final vote was close, it could be anyone’s guess whether closing the (alleged) loophole would have prevented the bill from passing. Then again, if someone offered an amendment to close the alleged loophole, and that amendment failed, then we have to presume that the legislature knew of the potential shortcoming of the law and deliberately enacted it anyway. We may never know what the Pennsylvania Legislature intended at the time they enacted the reciprocity law – were they thinking about Pennsylvania residents or not? – so the best evidence we’ll get is how the they address the alleged loophole (or, depending on your perspective, both of them) now that it’s been brought to everyone’s attention.

Experian is getting hit with a class action on the novel theory that false advertising in a domain name is false advertising. My heart bleeds.

Much political hay has been made of late over the McCarran-Ferguson Act, which is commonly but wrongly dubbed the “antitrust exemption” for insurers. Past efforts have been made to repeal McCarran-Ferguson entirely (Patrick Leahy is big on this), but the latest incarnation, H.R. 3596, would make piecemeal changes to the Act for health and medical malpractice insurance only. Decent arguments can be made pro and con, but for reasons that don’t lend themselves to sound bites, few of them are.

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Criminal conversations is neither a crime nor a conversation.

Discuss.