I only got to touch on it, but the most interesting thing about this topic is the underlying economies. Though I hope to get a chance to address Romer's points more thoroughly about what economic growth really is, this podcast from Econtalk is a pretty good primer.

That said, this article I wrote for E-Commerce Times gives a pretty good flavor of the types of problems we're helping high margin internet merchants solve.

And if it didn't come clearly through - I don't think we're in much of a recession when GDP growth remains north of 1%. I'm more worried about inflation.

Hat tip to Sanjay Sarathy and the folks at Chen PR for their assistance pulling this together.

When one takes those inflation differences into account it looks like the supposed increase in income inequality isn't there if the incomes are adjusted for the decile specific inflation rate.

First, the length, depth, and breadth of Scalia's majority argument to explain that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own and carry arms is going to be key moving forward. He is very dismissive of the opposition's attempt to find the word organized in the term Militia. I do wish Scalia would have pointed out that the militia includes (and probably was mainly referring to) unorganized militia which has become all able bodied adults (when it used to be all able bodied white males at the founding.) It's pretty clear to me that Scalia is personally unhappy with Ginsburg's decision not to join the majority. I join him in that thought as I had predicted that Ginsburg would side with the actual majority opinion.

The other item that really stood out was the length of argument spent on bearing arms. I realize that many would claim this is bearing arms only in the home based on the facts of the case but much of the opinion doesn't seem so limited.

As expected, machine guns are not protected by not being arms in common use at this time. As a good friend of mine pointed out that means that firearms law is going to be a lot like obscenity law now and turn a bit on "community standards" ala Miller v. California.

Scalia also expounded a bit on incorporation - a topic upon which I'll have more in a subsequent post.

The dissents are interesting for the fact that they are really hard to decode beyond, "well, we don't like this individual right." Note that all 4 dissenters believe that the Second Amendment protects some sort of individual right. I've told folks to cite this as a 9-0 decision that the Second Amendment protects and individual right and 5-4 on whether the DC ban violates it.

Also, this was a lot closer of a decision than it should have been. That said it has two key effects. It is exactly the win that our side was looking for - short of hope that we might get even more. Those in favor of civil rights are going to be able to use this decision to roll back senseless gun laws very effectively. Second, it probably hurt the Democrat's chances of taking the White House to some extent as a 6-3 decision would have allowed a lot of folks in the middle to more easily vote for Obama.

Finally, I want to point out how confusing the rhetoric around this issue actually is and make a couple of long term predictions. This article from the Philadelphia Daily News looks at first like it is anti-gun, but then it goes directly to a point I had been considering for quite a while. The real long term effect of the end of the anti-gun crusade is for politicians to now have to actually focus on the real causes of crime and violence. Speaking of the end of the anti-gun crusade, now that the ultimate goal of banning all guns is off the table, I expect funding for the anti-gun groups to start to contract and thus some of the smaller groups to close up shop as those groups who advocate restricting a constitutional right consolidate.

Update: I forgot to mention this article in Capitol Weekly where I got a couple of sound bites in.

Did I mention that I love Alan Gura? He's alread on to Chicago!

The only storm cloud on the horizon is a constitutional referendum on the November ballot.

The two most interesting diabolical thoughts I've heard today. This is a boon for McCain's chances to win California as it will drive conservative voters to the polls that would otherwise have been apathetic. Even if the referendum passes it may have the perverse outcome of making marriage unconstitutional for all parties as the equal protection violation remains even if the proposition passes.

However, the key thing today is this. Congratulations to those who love someone that they've not been able to legally commit to!

Enough. We need to recognize that the cultural jihadists hate our freedoms because those freedoms defy sharia, which they're determined to impose on us. So far, they have been far less successful at rolling back freedom of speech and other liberties in the U.S. than in Europe, thanks in no small part to the First Amendment. Yet America is proving increasingly susceptible to their pressures.

The key question for Westerners is: Do we love our freedoms as much as they hate them? Many free people, alas, have become so accustomed to freedom, and to the comfortable position of not having to stand up for it, that they're incapable of defending it when it's imperiled - or even, in many cases, of recognizing that it is imperiled. As for Muslims living in the West, surveys suggest that many of them, though not actively involved in jihad, are prepared to look on passively - and some, approvingly - while their coreligionists drag the Western world into the House of Submission.

But we certainly can't expect them to take a stand for liberty if we don't stand up for it ourselves.

This issue hits somewhat close to home as I've made it a bit of personal policy to make sure that speech that has been attempted to be supressed is posted here. That's knowing that there is a guy in Waziristan who used a former credit card number of mine to buy flights to London on a particularly interesting day. He posted here to threaten...

12031. (a) (1) A person is guilty of carrying a loaded firearm when he or she carries a loaded firearm on his or her person or in a vehicle while in any public place or on any public street in an incorporated city or in any public place or on any public street in a prohibited area of unincorporated territory.

That basically criminalizes openly carrying a loaded firearm any place that isn't extremely rural and further in the code there is an exception for hunting. What's most interesting is seeing why the law is there. For that I turn to this excellent set of photos from the LA Times:

Yep. That law is racially neutral... The Panthers did the same thing in Olympia Washington shortly after. They didn't get inside the building but the police response was far less reactionary. If I remember correctly, Washington abandoned their proposed law along the same lines.

I need to find a copy of the film, but there is a very funny moment where Willie Brown tries to remain neutral when the Panthers enter the chambers.

Update: This scholarly work has some more of the historical background.

She's mad because Canada has become the laughing stock of freedom.

Update 3/31/08 at 3PM: Liveleak has put the video back up after completing some security precautions. I am quite impressed and wanted to make sure kudos are given to those who deserve them.

My quick googling also doesn't show a direct correlation between oil and gold - which further lends some credence to this being more of a bubble and not currencies coming unglued from underlying value. Also note that I find the "peak oil" thesis relatively specious. One can see some inflation in the dollar in these charts but that smaller amount is not surprising even if it is annoying.

Always nice to take a moment for the first principals sanity check. Now to figure out where to short oil prices...

I did not expect Kennedy to be maybe the most impassioned advocate for gun rights outside of Gura. My initial response to Ginsburg's questioning was to think she was far more hostile than I expected. That said, that impression has moderated as I've looked and listened to the arguments a couple of more times. Also, I am surprised at Souter's hostility to a fairly wide individual right.

As we have 5 this is a case that the pro-gun side is going to win. The questions that remain are two fold. First, is it 7-2 or maybe even 9-0 on an individual right? I sensed some frustration from the pro-gun 5 and even Ginsburg about the currently skeptical justices. As an informed guess, I think Roberts is trying to put together a 9-0 but Souter and Stevens are holding out. I also expect that they're going to throw Miller into the dustbin of history where it belongs. The second question is what level of scrutiny and how do the votes on scrutiny break down. Ginsburg notes that the M-16 is the most protected arm in America under Miller. That said, they don't want to go there this time. I expect a 7-2 holding that Miller's done and the test is arms in common use - basically a slightly less faithful to Miller version of the DC Circuits ruling - call it a clarification of Silberman's reasoning. They'll point out that this does not hold anything about other arms as those are cases for future courts and aren't in front of them here. I also expect the Chief Justice to write it. He wants a wide and real Second Amendment holding that is long term politics proof - as it should be.

The two things that have annoyed me to no end are Gura criticism and machine guns. First, much of the Gura criticism starts out from individuals who had dreams that they would stand there at the counsel table and discuss Scalia's firearms collection. The number and size of the egos who've been attacking Gura is amusing to put it mildly. I've been repeating "Ego over the Republic" to too many comments and maneuvers. The good news is that once Gura is done winning, he'll be a rock star as he should be. Brett and I made sure that he wasn't buying his own drinks at this event.

Machine guns... Where to start. Brown v. Board of Education wasn't won in a day. It took decades for the African American civil rights movement to get from Jim Crow to real basic human rights. The good news is that we're not going to have to fight that long to really be done with securing the full meaning of the Second Amendment. Remember there was a time that the NAACP had to be happy with Plessy and separate but equal. Justice Kennedy, from not even 9 feet away, dared Alan Gura to say anything but "Yes your honor" to Kennedy's question about banning shipping machine guns in interstate commerce. Had Alan said anything else we could have kissed the right to keep and bear arms goodbye.

However, after this case is decided and the Second Amendment means something, the frame of reference will be reset. Modernizing and making NFA more shall issue is well within the federal legislative capabilities of NRA and others. For once we may finally be able to make some compromises that extend the right to arms because prohibition and rules that do not have an honest basis will not be constitutional. I'm betting that what we'll find is that we can use the 14th Amendment after incorporation to have a reasonable (as we'd define it) ability to get our NFA tax stamps - even in gun unfriendly places.

The other twist that I think is being under-reported is that the SG on balance helped us. He didn't get a lot of time on his intermediate scrutiny theory and to the extent he talked about it the court got him to agree that he probably doesn't have a problem with the DC Circuit's test - especially if it basically holds that strict scrutiny only applies to the common firearms stock. To stave off the comment, I'm aware that select fire M4s aren't common because of an arguably unconstitutional law but that is a fight for another day.

I live in California. I just want to protect the future ability for my kids to actually buy a semiautomatic handgun first. Secure that and then move forward.

Final thought: What happens to LCAV, Brady, and VPC? Will The Joyce Foundation shy away now that the real goal of an outright ban is out of reach?

The entire oral argument in MP3 is available from my webserver. There is also a broken down version here.

I'll post a full recap later as I want to talk to some of the principals tonight.

I'll post updates during the day on Tuesday. I'm either going to not have slept and gotten in or be well rested and catching the circus outside.

Scotusblog is going to be live blogging as well.