“Alleged” cocaine dealer left a welcome mat on his front door inviting cops to “come back with a warrant.” So they did. ‘Hat tip: DRJ.

Julie Cart of the Los Angeles Times celebrated PSH Day with a story titled “Guns are now permitted — but not necessarily welcomed — in national parks.” In its usual vein of editorializing while pretending to report the news, the story tells us that “the controversial law” (which was so damned controversial it sailed through a solidly Democrat Congress by a veto-proof majority, and was signed into law by the only President in history with a public record in support of banning handguns) took effect yesterday and now:

Visitors now can pack heat in any national park from Gates of the Arctic to Everglades, provided they comply with the firearms laws of the park’s home state[.]

Meaning, of course, if you are one of the three people who can legally carry a firearm in California, now you can carry at Yosemite, too. Yippee!

But opponents say guns don’t belong in the nation’s highly protected parks, where it remains illegal to fire a weapon or kill an animal and where employees, including most rangers, are unarmed.

The presence of guns, they say, could increase the chance of deadly accidents and up the ante in confrontations between park visitors or between visitors and wildlife.

Not a single opponent is cited by name, leading one to wonder whether the unnamed opponents consist of Ms. Cart herself, and maybe a few co-workers at the L.A. Times. Or maybe herself and Paul Helmke d/b/a The Brady Center To Prevent Gun Violence. He … um, I mean, they … can be relied on to say those things, and it only takes two to justify the use of the plural, so there we are.

The law, passed by Congress in May, reverses 94 years of National Park Service policy that generally allowed visitors to transport unloaded, disassembled weapons in the trunks of their cars.

Really! I knew it felt like 94 years since the Reagan Administration but had no idea it really had been that long. Where does the time go?

Weapons won’t be allowed in buildings where federal employees work, such as the Statue of Liberty and park visitors centers.

Bummer for Howard Stern and the two other guys who can carry a firearm in NYC. To everyone else, fuhgeddaboudit. If you can’t carry in Manhattan, you couldn’t carry at the Statue of Liberty even if the new rule did apply there.

Returning to manufactured-controversy-mode, Cart writes:

Critics, however, say there are as many potential complications as there are state and local gun laws.

Oh goody, now are we going to hear from an actual … um … critic?

David Barna, a National Park Service spokesman, said park websites are providing some guidance to visitors, but it is the responsibility of each gun owner to understand the laws of the state they are visiting.

Ouch, that was some scathing criticism there. Gun owners responsible for understanding the laws of the state they visit! Take that, gun lobby.

That could confuse visitors at the more than 30 national parks that span more than one state. The Appalachian Trail crosses 14 states. And though Yellowstone is mostly in Wyoming, parts of the world’s first national park also straddle the borders of Montana and Idaho, each of which has different weapons laws.

Wow, I’m so, like, confused. You mean to say that Montana, Idaho and Wyoming are three individual, like, states? They’re all right to carry states, and they all recognize each other’s permits and the most common out of state ones (e.g., Utah and Florida), the only question is which of them recognize permits from your state. So yes, you should check up on that before you travel, but the good news is that Wyoming, which is probably the first state you think about planning the trip, is also the one least likely to recognize your permit. If they do recognize it, chances are Idaho and Montana do, too (but look it up!).

Implementing the law will be particularly hard in California, which has more national park units than any other state and some of the nation’s most restrictive firearms laws.

Yeah, enforcing state law as written is so, like, hard! Jeebus.

Officials are scrambling to fully comprehend how the law will play out at national park units in California, from Redwood and Presidio, to Death Valley and Joshua Tree.

Scramble no more: just read your own state’s damned laws. That’s how the new federal law will play out in your state. Duh.

“Many of the details of the law are unknown at this time,” said Deputy California Atty. Gen. Alison Merrilees. “It won’t be crystal clear the day the law goes into effect.”

Or until someone in California bothered to actually read the law, whichever came first. Apparently the former.

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.

USA Today reports that DUI checkpoints in Cali are better at catching people who aren’t supposed to be driving under any circumstances than they are at catching people who just aren’t supposed to be driving right now because their BAC makes them almost as dangerous as sober drivers with cell phones. Apparently this is a bad thing, because people who aren’t supposed to be driving at all also aren’t supposed to be here, and we wouldn’t want any system in place that might catch them.

Meanwhile, Steve Lopez of the L.A. Times craps his pants over a ballot initiative that would allow insurance companies to … gasp … reward responsible drivers for keeping their auto insurance in force.

Time to play “spot the disconnect.” Sam Isaac Edwards (‘hat tip: Uncle) argues that since he himself is a dumbass who got liquored up and shot his fridge, no stone cold sober individual should ever be allowed to carry a weapon in any location where others might consume alcohol.

Coming next: a ban on driving cars while others on the road may be intoxicated.

Ace: Patrick Kennedy “won’t be seeking reelection, as he’s decided to spend more time with his dangerous narcotic diet pills.”

I never thought joke candidates won elections, particularly long shot ones, but Rhode Island Senator Patrick Kennedy thinks Scott Brown’s successful candidacy for U.S. Senate was a joke. Not sure whether to chalk this up to “takes one to know one” or whether Kennedy himself is in on the joke. After all, here’s a guy representing a state so puny and inconsequential that its very statehood is something of a national joke, and who owes his entire political career to sharing a surname with a dead guy who owed his entire career to two other dead guys, neither of whom would even be all that famous today if they had lived. And he’s also the guy who, during the special election our joke candidate handily won, could not even get the name right of the candidate he heartily endorsed, and who herself couldn’t spell the name of her own state. So I guess St. Patty is the authority on joke candidates.

Via Anwyn, a new study shows that laws prohibiting drivers from talking on hand-held cell phones, but not hands-free devices, have not reduced auto accidents in the four jurisdictions studied. On a wholly unrelated note, another study concluded that laws forbidding drivers to drive under the influence of scotch, but not bourbon, have failed to reduce the number of drunk driving accidents appreciably.

If there is one thing more American than apple pie, it’s the Constitution, but if there’s one thing even more American than that, it’s the Declaration of Independence. If we were all still British subjects, we could have drawn up the best Constitution in the world and it wouldn’t have done anyone a lick of good; it would be the Constitution of Nowhere. So harping on the idea of someone mixing up one with the other is, in my view, only marginally less lame than harping on someone confusing one article of the Constitution with another. The only thing even lamer than that is to harp on someone supposedly confusing the two when they actually didn’t. Leave it to Greg Hengler and Jim Hoft, Modern Conservative, Ed Lasky and Lord knows how many others, who proudly pounced on this alleged yawner during the STFU speech, in which The One said:

Abroad, America’s greatest source of strength has always been our ideas. The same is true at home. We find unity in our incredible diversity, drawing on the promise enshrined in our Constitution: the notion that we’re all created equal, but no matter who you are and what you look like, if you abide by the law, you should be protected by the law. If you adhere to our common values, you should be treated no different from anyone else. We must continually renew this promise.

Which Hoft and the rest helpfully dowdified down to:

We find unity in our incredible diversity, drawing on the promise enshrined in our Constitution: the notion that we are all created equal….

to imply that Obama had only talked about the premise that we were created equal and notabout the fact that we enjoy the equal proteciton of laws as a result. They proceeded to gloat about the non-fact that The One had supposedly confused the Constitution with the Declaration of Independence. In fact, as the word “notion” should have made clear to anyone listening for comprehension rather than for gotcha, he wasn’t quoting anything. The “notion” in question underlies both documents, but only the Constitution – not the Declaration of Independence – provides for equal protection of laws as a result. If The One had said exactly what he said, only citing “the promise enshrined in our Declaration of Independence” instead, Hoft et al. could just as easily have pounced on the reference to equal protection and accused Obama of having made the same screw-up in reverse. Only this one, unlike the technical foul alleged by Hoft and the gang, would actually have been substantively stupid. While it’s moderately neato that the Declaration of Independence talked of the principle that all men are created equal, it didn’t do a f’ing thing to guarantee anyone equality before the law. Anyone who doubts this should travel back in time to any point between 1776 and 1865, when the Declaration of Independence was in effect but the 14th Amendment was not, and ask the slaves how their “equal protection of laws” thing was working out.

I don’t see what the big deal is here. If a Senator can vote “not proved” and a President can vote “present,” why can’t a juror vote “meow?”