A modest proposal: Invade!

I have a modest proposal regarding "comprehensive immigration reform". The answer to approximately 60% of the illegal immigration problem is clear. I'm not quite sure how to clean up the remaining 40%, but the majority, that 60%, can be handled simply by invading Mexico. The 31 separate Mexican states would then be incorporated into the existing 50, making for 81 United States of America. (The next logical step would then be to take over Canada, forming the United States of North America, but that's for another day.)

Let's face facts. Illegals come swarming up out of Mexico because of corruption, crime, and unemployment within Mexico. They come here for work which they can't find there, and in general they don't get shot for talking back to their supervisor. They work within a pseudo-hidden economy that is kept from view because "pro immigration" groups like it that way. These speakers for the little guy co-opt opponents of illegal immigration, like the late Caesar Chavez, in an effort to divert our attention from their own profiteering.

Corruption within Mexico reaches its tentacles into the United States. Illegals come here, get ensnared into working for slave wages, and in turn send over half of their earnings back to Mexico. Thus, billions of dollars are pumped into a dysfunctional Mexican economy to give it the illusion of "thriving". In order to keep this revenue flow intact, "pro immigration" tools fight all attempts to assimilate these workers into US society.

All this and more is solved if we point our military south, smile in that grand tradition of Teddy Roosevelt, and shout, "Charge!" We can even claim self-defense and retaliation because it's clear that they've already invaded us. Hola, Generalissimo, meet the A-10 Warthog!

Several immediate benefits come to mind. Mexicans will be introduced to what history reveals is the true engine of liberty and freedom, personal property rights. The few families that currently hold sway over all Mexican land will find themselves expunged. New land grants will be opened and history shows that as more and more people get to own the land they work, more and more people will discover freedom.

Ah, capitalism in all its glory.

Each of the 31 former Mexican states will establish their own, new state constitutions, and via incorporation their citizens will enjoy the benefits derived from the US Constitution's Bill of Rights. From such humble beginnings, the rule of law will sweep the land. Certainly some corruption will continue -- we're talking humans here, so perfection is an impossibility -- but for 90+% this will be a new age of liberty, freedom, and personal opportunity.

The existing 50 United States will benefit in ways too numerous to count. First, all of those Mexican illegals will, duh, become legal US citizens. They will immediately be entitled to at least the minimum wage. All those employers who heretofore kept the illegal employment secret...well, oopsee for them. All the authority and power of law enforcement can now descend on their sweat shops and the horrific "living" conditions they foist upon these workers. Turning a willfully blind eye and withholding enforcement will no longer be an option.

Next, the country as a whole will reap the benefit of acquiring the rights and assets of a standing member of OPEC. That's right, Mexico is an oil exporting country! Oh, sure, the various environmental moonbats will attempt to choke off this source of oil, much as they've choked off access to existing US oil supplies, but in the meanwhile we'll all reap the benefit of this oil supply. And speaking of those moonbats, we'll be doing them a favor because we can choke off (no pun intended) all those gross polluters that the current, corrupt Mexican government endorses.

The benefits go on and on. Did I even mention tequila? We'd finally have an adult beverage to bitch slap the world with, especially France. Keep your foo-foo champagne, Frenchie, we've got the holy agave plant!

One more benefit: Much of this country would learn a new and proper way to cook. Food is allowed to have character, people, and while I often can't stand the heat, the heavenly glory of chicken mole must be allowed to sweep the land. Ladies and gentlemen, spices are your friend. Fusing this with existing American barbeque will establish a new, possibly dominant world cuisine. Again, take that, ya lousy French chef, you and your cheesy sauces!

We would then only have to deal with the illegal immigration issue that Mexico is currently dealing with. Namely, all those illegals flooding up across Mexico's southern border the southern state borders of Chiapas, Tabasco, Campeche, and Quintana Roo. But, hey, we've got some experience with that problem, and it's a much smaller border.

This, my friends, is truly comprehensive immigration reform.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At Wart's End

If we are all very, very lucky, this will be the final Pirates of the Caribbean film. At World's End isn't awful, but it tries to be. It tries really, really hard.

Curse of the Black Pearl was a shocker. It was an almost-perfect combination of adventure, romance, horror, and comedy. Johnny Depp earned his Oscar nomination, and IMO should have won. As I wrote previously, CotBP was honest about pirates, especially as embodied by Jeffrey Rush's Barbossa. They were brutal and mean, and if they were occasionally comical it was to give them some redeeming characteristic. This was a high bar to match; neither sequel does.

Dead Man's Chest was a half-hour or more longer than it needed to be and turned its characters into clowns. Nice action sequences, though. AWE tops that. AWE is at least an hour longer than it needs to be and turns all the clowns into idiots, and assumes everyone in the audience is an idiot, too. It has plot convolutions that serve no purpose other than to burn time. Bigger action sequences, though.

The opening sequence, wherein it appears that an entire island is being hung by the gleeful 18th century ancestors of the Third Reich, is laughably insulting. Appalling seems so light a word. Who wrote this crap? Was this a slap at Bush? You listen to some guy monotone the things that Halliburton the East Indies Trading Company has declared "crimes" and you hear the litany of moonbat complaint against BushitlerCo.

Alas, that's wishful thinking because that might indicate some level of intelligence and imagination, both of which are lacking as AWE begins. Or ends, for that matter.

Things get interesting when the film rips off Terry Gilliam, wherein we find Jack Sparrow trapped in Davy Jones' Locker while the others sail to his rescue. Some lines are meant to be funny but actually serve to plug plot holes. For instance, if Tia Dalma can bring Barbossa back to life, why can't she bring Jack back? Answer: "Because Barbossa was merely dead." We then get an exposition on what that means. Sort of.

Depp's rendition of Sparrow tries to get back to where it was for CotBP, making it a bit better than what he did in DMC, but not by much. Bloom makes a convincing argument in favor of my opinion that his best acting was in Black Hawk Down, wherein he introduces himself, suits up, and then has the good grace to fall out of a helicopter and exit the film, stage right, silent and strapped to a stretcher.

While I find Knightly pleasing to the eye, she's becoming unwatchable if there's sound and motion attached. Her speech rallying the pirate lords is probably meant to echo Gibson's similar cry in Braveheart but spare me. These are pirates, for crying out loud. They don't fight for freedom, they fight for the pleasure of cutting your heart out. And her delivery is enough to make one shudder.

(Not that her speech was very convincing. Those brave and vicious pirate lords "Yar!" their agreement, hoist variations of the Jolly Roger...and then sit back and watch others do all the fighting.)

The film cheats and lies its way along. You should already know that the film is driven by the pursuit of Davy Jones' heart. In DMC, you stab the heart and Jones dies. Thus, if you possess the heart you control Jones and, by extension, the sea. In AWE, there's a bonus fate awaiting the man who welds the blade. It's perfectly natural that this should have been mentioned before, and that there's someone else who really controls the sea might have been mentioned, too. These inconsistencies are inexcusable given that Pirates 2 and Pirates 3 are actually the first half and second half of one loooong story. The film's writers act as though no one will notice.

Is there anything worthwhile in the film? Yes. I thought Rush was a hidden delight in CotBP, his Barbossa more than a match for Depp's Sparrow. He tones down the viciousness here, but he chews the scenery with such gleeful abandon it's a joy to behold. Bill Nighy as David Jones still rocks; horrifying and sympathetic at the same time. Naomie Harris is neat as Tia Dalma, even though she's given the thankless job of attempting to plug plot holes. Then there's Tom Hollander as Dick Cheney Lord Beckett; he exudes menace while never raising his voice above a conversational tone.

You can see every dime of the budget up on the screen. The production designs are excellent and the visuals often invoke a sense of awe that AWE is otherwise lacking. The battle around the maelstrom is simply a stunner, albeit one that goes on way too long. And earlier shot of a waterfall is nothing short of beautiful.

Hans Zimmer's music is an improvement over what he did for DMC. There are some memorable musical moments (alliteration is our friend), some of the best coming during that dreadful opening sequence or that dreadful Knightly speech. Nonetheless, the best music remains the bits that are re-does from CotBP, officially credited to Klaus Badelt; that music will always be remembered.

The problem with both sequels is that nothing in them, and not even in their sum and total, equals that amazing moment in CotBP when we first meet Captain Jack Sparrow, when he steps off his sinking dinghy and onto the dock at Port Royal. That moment has joined the pantheon of screen gems, right up there with "Rosebud", "We're gonna need a bigger boat", and "I made him an offer he couldn't refuse", and did so without a word being spoken. What do we have in AWE? Cuttlefish.

I wanted to like this film, so my disappointment is immense. Now I'm looking forward to robots in disguise. I hated the TV show, but the trailer for the film...wow!

Feist's 1 2 3 4

Simply amazing to see, neatly choreographed and one long, single take:

HT: Alarm! Alarm!

Update: Details on Leslie Feist and this video, right here.

Anticipating Pirates

The end begins...today!

Over at National Review Online, Frederica Matthewes-Green concludes her generally positive review of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End thus:

Less likeable is the absurd opening premise, that the East India Trading Company has gathered so much political power that they can suspend the laws on a Caribbean island and execute anyone who befriends a pirate. Perhaps we need a refresher course in what pirates are. Just as a carjacker steals your car, pirates steal your ship. A pirate ship would come alongside their victim, invade it, then kill and rape and throw overboard at random, keeping cargo and valuables for themselves. [...]

[T]he inference that the British government killed civilians in order to save merchandise from pirates is outrageous; governments killed pirates in order to save civilians, and it’s a good thing. ... This attempt to recast the underlying story as a conflict between romantic pirates and powerful corporations undercuts the dynamic necessary to give any pirate story a good jolting start. In the first film, the pirates were sexy bad guys; now they’re gentle people with seaweed in their hair. If by the next film they’re marching in protest outside Wal-mart headquarters, it may be earnest, but it won’t be much fun.

...and this is my biggest worry about the franchise, and bothers me about modern films in general. Every film has a point of view, every film expresses some comment on some level of morality. Don't deny it, it's just a fact.

This first hit me hard when I did something silly, I stopped to think about a silly and fun film, namely The Lost World: Jurassic Park. In the film, who is the "villain"? Clearly it's meant to be that weasel-faced bastard taking over the corporation. And what villainy is he engaged in? Why, that rotten guy is saving a company from bankruptcy and -- and this is his most egregious sin -- he wants to create a zoo. The villainy portrayed is the effort to round up wild dinosaurs to populate a zoo. Oh dear, how evil.

Now, villainy is not a necessary ingredient for a film, even one as silly as The Lost World. There really wasn't villainy in the original Jurassic Park. You had a greedy guy being exploited by a rival corporation and, as things must in these sorts of films, everything goes wrong. In The Lost World, though, the film is clearly painting the zoo collectors has morally bankrupt, while the eco-freak (Plan B) who "liberates" the animals is the "hero".

Plan B results in most of the zoo collectors being killed. Every death on the island can be traced directly to eco-freak's "liberation" of the captured animals, yet he's clearly portrayed as a hero. When evil industrialist nephew gets munched to death by baby t-rex, you can hear the righteous tone in the music. Justice in the first film is in Nedry's death and in the failure of Hammond's island. In the second, the notion of justice is turned upside-down. And don't say that the notion of "justice" wasn't a factor. Listen to the music, watch how its edited, see how clearly Spielberg presents who he thinks is good, and who he thinks is evil. And how evil gets his just desserts.

Feh.

Which brings me to the Pirates trilogy. In the first film, the pirates are mean, murdering bastards. You have a certain sympathy for their plight, for the curse they "live" under, but not much. The kill, they rape, they pillage, and they laugh while doing all the above. They are proper villains; they are, without a doubt, the bad guys.

Except for Captain Jack Sparrow. There's some question as to whether he's much of a pirate at all. He's more Bugs Bunny (deliberately, I hasten to add), with delusions of being a ship's captain. It's his lack of pirate ability that leads to the mutiny which gets him marooned which sets up the plot.

In the second film, he's even less of a pirate and more of a goof. Yes, yes, he's out for his own skin, but there's little thought or planning to his actions. (In Curse, he was always scheming; in Chest he chanced upon opportunities.) But ah, a new villain is introduced, Lord Beckett of the East India Trading Company. Oh again, the horror of this vile man. He wants to...trade! I love the moment when he's recruiting Will and the young Mr. Turner says something about taking the compass from Jack. His lordship says oh no, "Barter!" He actually loathes violence, preferring to negotiate, to barter, to buy what he wants.

Which is quite the opposite of pirate behavior, don't you think?

From this humble set up, though, his motion picture power leads where motion picture power is supposed to always lead, to being corrupt and unchecked. He's not doing a good thing by ridding the world of pirates, he's doing an evil thing. And the pirates? Well, they just want to live free, you know. Sometimes they have to kill you in order to support their free life style, but, hey, them's the breaks. Better that than that merchant dude, right? Better you should be beaten and robbed than shop at Wal-Mart, right?

So while I'll be seeing At World's End this Sunday (and they're anticipating a $200+ million Memorial Day Weekend take at the box office), and while I anticipate a thrill ride of a film, I also expect that I'll be quietly cringing at the morality it portrays, and at the film's cowardice. Because Curse of the Black Pearl was brave enough to have bad and rotten people, i.e., pirates, portrayed as bad and rotten people, something neither of its sequels has the stomach for.

Carter a la Hitchens

I like Christopher Hitchens, or at least as much as you can like someone you've never actually met. I enjoy what he writes and I like to hear him speak. There's a lot he and I disagree on (especially the subject of religion), but at least I know he'll have a well-thought position on whatever the topic is. He illustrates that you can disagree with someone on some points without loathing the entire person, which is the norm pervading much of the blogosphere and elsewhere.

Michael Novak makes much this same point in his review of Hitchens's latest, God is Not Great. Novak's review begins:

One of the writers whose courage and polemical force I highly admire is Christopher Hitchens. He gives frequent proof of a passionate honesty, which sometimes has obliged him to criticize ideological soul mates when he thinks they are wrong on some important matter. Many of our colleagues today pretend publicly to have no enemies on the Left out of a panicky fear that they might “help the wrong people” on the evil Right. Though always a man of the Left, Hitchens will have none of that.

Novak then takes Hitchens to task on many of the assertions Hitchens makes in the book. Wonderful stuff, not the least of which is that he stays on point, the review being more about the book and less the writer.

I was a little disappointed when I saw Hitchens join in the vitriolic parade "celebrating" Jerry Falwell's death, but today I read something that puts him back in form. Namely, his comments re Jimmuh Cahtuh, the worst president in US history (in my not-so-humble opinion), and especially Carter's laughable comments on the current Bush administration.

Leave aside the sophomoric slackness that begins a broken-backed sentence with the words "as far as" and then cannot complete itself. "Worst in history," as the great statesman from Georgia has to know, has been the title for which he has himself been actively contending since 1976. I once had quite an argument with the late Sen. Eugene McCarthy, who maintained adamantly that it had been right for him to vote for Ronald Reagan in 1980 for no other reason. "Mr. Carter," he said, "quite simply abdicated the whole responsibility of the presidency while in office. He left the nation at the mercy of its enemies at home and abroad. He was the worst president we ever had."

Now that is vintage Hitchens, and not just because I agree with him. He's not just engaging in beautifully constructed hyperbole, he's rattling off facts as well as opinion. If you need any confirmation of that you need only read Carter's "retraction" of his own statements.

Hitchens also stands up for Tony Blair, toward whom Carter was particularly vile (statements he did not retract or correct). Carter has said nicer things about the late, ungreat thug Arafat than Blair, which alone demonstrates his, er, questionable judgement.

HT: Hot Air.

Hollywood's obsession with hating Kazan

Mark Steyn comments on the death, last weekend, of Bernard Gordon.

In later years, the screenwriter led the protests against the very belated Oscar awarded to Elia Kazan in 1999. As Gordon wrote of Kazan in The Los Angeles Times, “He helped to support an oppressive regime that did incalculable damage to America and abroad.”

Interesting choice of word: "regime". And what about the regime you supported?

While commenting on Gordon, Steyn reproduces a column he wrote on the occasion of Kazan's death in 2003, which notes in part:

Kazan can make a claim to be the father of modern American acting, the man who brought Stanislavskian techniques to Broadway and then to the silver screen. Insofar as the young lions of our present-tense culture aspire to emulate any of the old guys, it’s not David Niven or even Jimmy Cagney who resonate, but Marlon Brando, James Dean, Rod Steiger – on all of whom Kazan was the greatest single influence.

And, aimed straight at modern liberal Hollywood's self-righteousness:

It’s no fun being a socially conscious movie star if nobody’s conscious of you. You want to be noticed. Not too noticed, not Salman Rushdie price-on-your-head noticed. But just a little bit of attention. And the only time any one in power paid any attention to the political views of Hollywood people was half a century ago. In an ideal world – or if you were making a movie on the subject – the fellows who were politically “persecuted” would be a little more talented, or at least prominent, and maybe it would be better if they weren’t subscribers to an ideology so thoroughly failed and so comprehensively rejected by anyone who’s had the misfortune to live under it. But those are mere nitpicky details next to the towering feeling of validation the latterday Hollywood activist derives from his McCarthy fetish. For the Richard Dreyfus generation, what Kazan did is an affront to their deep conviction of their own heroism.

Nor is the fact that Hollywood’s belief in its own heroism derives from a moment of colossal Hollywood cowardice any obstacle. The blacklist “victims” weren’t blacklisted by the government but by the studios – Warner Brothers, Paramount, Disney – the same folks who run Hollywood today. In 1999, when Penn and Dreyfus were up in arms over Kazan’s Oscar, old Lew Wasserman was still going to his office at Universal every day. Fifty years ago, had he chosen to, Wasserman and his talent agency could have broken the blacklist as decisively as he broke the studio system. But Wasserman and the suits were absolved and their sins sub-contracted to one elderly retired director: as former blacklisted screenwriter Norma Barzman told CNN, “Elia Kazan’s lifetime achievement is great films and destroyed lives, and even a third thing, which is a lasting climate of fear over Hollywood and maybe over the country.” Kazan became the crucible (if he’ll forgive the expression) of the industry’s institutional guilt over the McCarthy era.

To this day, Mrs Barzman thinks Kazan ratted because he had a half-million dollar deal lined up for On The Waterfront: Thus, Hollywood’s Communists were true to their principles; its anti-Communists were in it for the money. This would be mere condescension if On The Waterfront were an Esther Williams aqua-musical, but it’s rendered laughable by the fact that the film is instead the most cogent response to the likes of the Barzmans, beginning with the exquisite joke of its choice of analogy for Communist penetration in Hollywood: a waterfront union corrupted by racketeers. After all, until the director’s detractors began insisting that personal loyalty trumps all other considerations, the notion that “ratting” was the ultimate sin was confined mostly to the mob.

[Emphasis mine.]

The revision of history never ceases to amaze me, especially the Socialist/Communist renditions, and the incessant braying from Hollywood about how brave they are. The spectre is McCarthy is invoked constantly whenever Hollywood wants to illustrate standing up to "evil". Meanwhile, Hollywood forgets that it was the House Unamerican Activities Committee that investigated Hollywood. The House, as in representatives. McCarthy was a senator, and came along after the HUAC investigations and the notorious blacklist.

And Hollywood wants to carefully point the finger of j'accuse at Kazan and McCarthy, rather than at itself, where the blame truly lies. Some day (soon, I hope), Hollywood will give up on this self-obsession with "bravery" and get back to making truly brave, innovative, and entertaining films, of the sort that Kazan made.

Jerry Falwell

It's telling when one of the warmest and kindest comments regarding the death of Jerry Falwell comes from a pornographer:

I always appreciated his sincerity even though I knew what he was selling and he knew what I was selling.

So said Larry Flynt. Flynt rose to prominence when Falwell sued him for a parody ad that Flynt published in Hustler. The ad was, shall we say, less than flattering of Falwell. It's considered a landmark First Amendment case, in the respect that it created a parody defense against libel and slander suits.

What else Flynt said is even more amazing:

My mother always told me that no matter how much you dislike a person, when you meet them face to face you will find characteristics about them that you like. Jerry Falwell was a perfect example of that. I hated everything he stood for, but after meeting him in person, years after the trial, Jerry Falwell and I became good friends.

I find that an amazing comment on both men. Falwell clearly hated sin but, equally clear to an objective viewer, loved the sinner. In turn, that's almost exactly how Flynt saw Falwell.

The rabid left doesn't believe such an attitude is possible, and you can see the proof of that in their commentaries on Falwell's death. They are celebrating his death. For example, there was an anti-memorial held in San Francisco. They cheerily declare that Falwell is now roasting in Hell. Ah, such lovers of humanity.

For myself, I never paid enough attention to Falwell to have an opinion. However, I am moved by Joseph Loconte's obituary, which concludes:

Equally important, Falwell's political efforts united believers of wildly diverse religious views in common cause. America is defined by its pluralism, and yet it sustains a level of civic peace and democratic stability that is the envy of the world. It could be argued that Falwell's political activism is one of the reasons. Catholics, Baptists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Mormons, Jews, Hindus -- and, increasingly, Muslims -- work together peacefully on a range of social and moral issues. They've been doing so for the better part of a quarter century. That makes it less likely that they'll demonize one another in the future.

Falwell's critics -- such as Polly Toynbee of The Guardian or Susan Thistlethwaite of Chicago Theological Seminary -- like to compare his Christian fundamentalism to Islamic radicalism. They see the same brooding hatreds at work. "The world can no longer afford the kind of absolutist religion and politics Rev. Falwell helped to popularize," Thistlethwaite snapped. "It will literally be fatal."

Yet any calm reflection on Falwell's record exposes that characterization as pure sophistry. Falwell was strenuously opposed to abortion, for example, but he was quick to denounce any violence committed against abortion doctors and he supported programs for unwed mothers. He sometimes used inflammatory biblical language to describe the culture wars in America. But he utterly rejected any notion of a theocratic state or Christian jihad. What many of Falwell's critics find so offensive is the idea that religious ideals -- particularly those in the Judeo-Christian tradition -- should help shape our politics. That secularizing approach, so popular in so much of Europe, does not appear to be producing more humane or just societies. It cannot, in the end, sustain a democratic society.

Jerry Falwell had his faults, excesses, and ego. His style of politics has no doubt contributed to the public rancor over religion. But think about it: The most frightening outcome of his activism was not a cadre of suicide bombers, or a culture of nihilistic rage, or a network of terrorists plotting to destroy the foundations of Western civilization. The most frightening outcome of Falwell's activism was the mobilization of middle-class citizens to join school boards and city councils, to launch lobbying campaigns and voter-registration drives, to participate in local and national elections.

We call that democracy.

I doubt anyone can ask for a better epitaph than that.

Transformers?

Oh yeah, completely hooked by this. Bring it. I'm ready. The preview alone looks better than all of Spider-Man 3.

(And I was never a fan of the original TV series...)

Of Rights and Lefties

Jeff Kirvin writes on technology, PDA's, and the craft of writing. In these areas, his writing is often insightful, thoughtful, and even provocative. When he writes about politics, however, his writing becomes of a decidedly different nature, lacking insight, not very thoughtful, and purely reactionary. An example is his May 7th screed for gun control.

In prior posts, Jeff has complained loudly about government intrusions into personal liberties, but here his liberal ideology insists that this principle of personal liberty be shunned. You see, you don't need guns, only the government needs guns.

Start with his analysis of the 2nd Amendment to the United States Constitution, which he says is not an individual right at all. It speaks of a militia, and therefore me and thee don't get to own or possess firearms.

Take that reasoning to its logical end. There is no right to privacy in the US Constitution. That "right", however, is foundational to Roe v. Wade. If there is no right to privacy then Roe was decided wrongly.

Yet Roe is the law of the land. Why? Because the US Supreme Court said so. In prior cases, they ruled that the US Constitution does contain a right to privacy, that "specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by the emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance." (See Griswold v. Connecticut.)

You can't stop your Constitutional analysis at just reading the Constitution. I know that sounds strange, but that's the nature of law and there are centuries of jurisprudence to wade through. The majority of rulings from the District Courts of Appeal have found that the 2nd Amendment does embody an individual right to keep and bear arms. Sooner or later, the matter will again rise before the Court, but until then, Jeff's cavalier dismissal of the 2nd Amendment is simply wrong. (For a more in-depth discussion of the Court's 2nd Amendment views, see here.)

Jeff notes that the 2nd Amendment is obsolete, like "other parts of the Constitution that are irrelevant and out of date." Really? Which "other parts"? Portions of the Constitution don't simply "become" obsolete or irrelevant or even out of date. Those "obsolete" parts were amendments that were enacted and subsequently repealed. The core of the Constitution continues and forms the very basis of the United States.

Notably, none of the first 10 amendments to the Constitution has been modified or repealed or "become" obsolete. These amendments are collectively referred to as the Bill of Rights, and the 2nd Amendment should be studied in this context. The Bill of Rights do not so much grant individual rights as forbid the government from acting to curtail a right. For example, the 1st Amendment doesn't say you have a right to free speech; it says the government can't prohibit free speech. In short, these amendments don't tell you what you can do, they say what the government can't do.

Yet Jeff would insist that we treat the 2nd Amendment differently, as granting an allegedly obsolete individual right rather than limiting government prohibition. For someone who espouses a strong belief in personal, individual liberty, this is a very peculiar stance.

Given the 2nd Amendment, all other arguments become irrelevant. The canard that having a gun in your house increases your likelihood of being killed doesn't matter as it has no legal relevance. It also ignores the innumerous times that personally owned firearms are used each day in acts of self-defense or in defense of others. Those opposed to the personal ownership of firearms will insist that a gun is only "used" when it goes bang, but those who actually use guns know better. The law also knows better. A criminal doesn't have to shoot his gun to have it considered as having been "used" in the commission of a crime.

Jeff implies that you don't need a gun for self-defense, that you should defer to the government for your defense. This position ignores a long-standing rule of American law that states that since the government is obliged to protect society as a whole, it is not obliged to protect any single individual of that society. Therefore, you most emphatically have a right to self-defense, which at its core is what the 2nd Amendment is all about.

As for defense against an oppressive government, Jeff's example of Tiananman Square makes the point for the private ownership of firearms. The Chinese dissidents were unarmed and therefore easy prey. In contrast, note the terrorists we're facing in Iraq. It would appear there are better ways to stop a tank rather than just standing in front of it.

If you agree with Jeff and want to try to repeal the 2nd Amendment, have at it. Public debate is a marvelous thing. But don't just ignore or discount the law because you find it ideologically inconvenient.

Addendum: After I got most of this written, I read some of the comments to Jeff's post. One asks that if the 2nd Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear arms how does New York City constitutionally ban handgun ownership (the Sullivan Act). They get away with this because the US Constitution, in general, only applies to Federal acts. Under US federalism, the states are considered sovereign, entitled to their own constitutions and laws. Thus, the Bill of Rights does not directly apply. Most -- not all -- were made applicable via the 14th Amendment (see Incorporation). The US Supreme Court, as yet, has not seen fit to apply the 2nd Amendment to the states via the 14th.

On why we fight...

In light of events back at Fort Dix, what Andrew McCarthy writes should be mandatory reading: 

Al Qaeda is a powerful force. It is a sprawling, atomized, international network of cells. It has proved quite adept at orchestrating savage attacks. But the main danger it poses has never been the orders its generals give to its colonels and on down some regimented chain-of-command. If we had only to worry about members of al Qaeda carrying out orders of al Qaeda, the war on terror would be neither as uphill nor as infinite as it seems to be. The principal challenge posed by al Qaeda is that it spearheads the spread of a strong, though noxious, ideology.

It's not just about who we're fighting in Iraq and elsewhere, it's what we're fighting. Read the whole thing.

Spider-Man 3

It was Sam Raimi and Spider-Man who successfully brought a lone comic book hero to the big screen. More than Donner's Superman, more than Milius's Conan the Barbarian, more than Burton's Batman, Raimi's Spider-Man was the perfect translation of comic book to big screen. His achievement was only matched by Bryan Singer's X-Men, which had an entire crew of superheroes.

Raimi then did the incredible: He topped himself with a sequel, Spider-Man 2 (much as Singer did for himself with X2). Sequels, by definition, are never better than the original. And yet that's exactly what Spider-Man 2 was.

Alas, lightning does not strike twice. Spider-Man 3 isn't horrible, but it comes close. It is horribly disappointing. X3 had the excuse of being turned over to a hack director. Spidey 3 is just Raimi reaching a villain too far.

The plot goes something like this: Parker has become content with his dual nature and has come to love the adulation the city gives his Spider-Man alter ego. He plans on proposing to MJ. MJ, meanwhile, has a theatrical career which is tanking, something Parker is oblivious to. Meanwhile, we learn who really killed Uncle Ben. Meanwhile, that guy, while escaping from the police, stumbles into a random nuclear particle generator and is transformed into the Sandman. Meanwhile, Harry has decided enough is enough and is coming after Spider-Man as Green Goblin Jr. Meanwhile, an arrogant prick photographer is trying to horn in on Parker's territory. Meanwhile, the chief of police's daughter is alluring. Meanwhile, a meteorite falls to earth and a semi-intelligent, belligerent goo wanders about looking for someone it can transform into Venom.

I think that's all, or least the ones I can remember. These are all the starting points for plot threads. Each thread develops threads. Most go absolutely nowhere. They don't even make a nice, tangled weave. They look more like a hairball.

In case you lost count, the film ends up with three villains, and that's at least two too many. Now, without giving too much away, there's some wobble with one of the villains, so that leaves one who is completely useless, and that would be Sandman. He owes his existence to a terrible decision to rewrite history from the first film, namely the murder of Uncle Ben. Bad, bad, bad, bad and pointless move. From there, he's simply pointless in the film. Any lesson or point he might have had in the film to make has either already been made in Spidey 1 and 2, or is made in other ways within Spidey 3.

Remove Sandman and an overly long film tightens up all around. The immediacy of the climactic battle would have been better, and there would have been one less ending in a film that is exceeded only by Return of the King in having ending after ending after ending after... (Honest, people kept getting up, thinking the film was finally over, only to be surprised that it was doing an Energizer Bunny on them.)

Removing Sandman and correcting a "the butler did it" moment would have made this a decent-if-not-great capper to the Spider-Man trilogy. It has other issues. The action sequences are marvels to behold, but they suffer from Lucasitis, the digital filmmaker's driving need to do all sorts of impossible things with the camera POV. Not incredible, mind you, impossible. Problem is that they are so obviously impossible that they yank the audience out of the film as we realize it's all done in a computer. (This, in case you don't realize it, is A Bad Thing.)

Spider-Man 3 made a ton of cash its opening weekend. If it crashes 60% for its second weekend -- normally a horrifying thing -- it'll still set box office records. I expect that kind of crash, though, because the word of mouth around here isn't good.

It's important to remember that the bar here was set by Raimi himself. He made a pair of great Spider-Man films. He then made a set of bad decisions in an effort to top himself. Luckily, this might have been his last Spidey film, which means he can pick a different project for his next film. Which means he can again make me cheer.