Two from the Geek: one post each

because they both need individual attention. The first must have Lautenberg and his little friends blowing blood vessels:
But misdemeanors are different from felonies, which the Seventh Circuit noted: "We therefore assume that Skoien's Second Amendment rights are intact notwithstanding his misdemeanor domestic-violence conviction." The judges said that the ownership ban is life-long and sweeping, providing no way for a now-peaceable citizen to seek an exception: "The government has the burden of establishing a reasonable fit between its important interest in reducing domestic gun violence and the means chosen to advance that interest -- Section 922(g)(9)'s total disarmament of domestic-violence misdemeanants." (What they didn't point out, but could have, is that a law enacted in 1996 is not exactly "longstanding.")

The Seventh Circuit opinion, which now has shifted the burden of proof to the Justice Department through an "intermediate scrutiny" standard, was written by Diane Sykes, a George W. Bush appointee, and joined by William Bauer, a Ford appointee, and John Tinder, a George W. Bush appointee.
This is interesting, and a good start. And further along, he notes:
Quote:
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The constitutional question is more open than many CBSNews.com readers might suspect. C. Kevin Marshall, a former Bush Justice Department attorney who's of counsel to Jones Day in Washington, D.C., wrote a law review article earlier this year titled "Why Can't Martha Stewart Have a Gun?"

Its surprising conclusion: federal law's lifetime prohibition on non-violent felons possessing firearms is relatively recent and probably not consistent with the views of the Second Amendment's framers. In an age when Americans can be non-violent felons for possession of a short lobster or sharing MP3 files (other examples here), is a lifetime ban constitutional?

For other constitutional rights such as the First Amendment, it's relatively common to see acts of Congress struck down as going too far,
Insty has- along with a lot of other people- yelled about the idiocy of so many things being or becoming 'felony' crimes; that's supposed to be serious stuff, like robbery, not "You used an abbreviation on this form instead of spelling out 'Oklahoma' " bullshit. It's a waste of time and resources, and leads to abuses such as this.