Finally. After almost 70 years, the Supreme Court has agreed to decide a case that may decide, once and for all, whether the Second Amendment confers an individual right to bear arms.

I believe it does. The Second Amendment provides:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

There are three principal views: The individual view, collective view and an intermediate one.

Under the individual view, a person has a personal right to bear weapons or arms regardless of whether they are members of any militia or engaged in military service or training. We therefore may bring claims or defend claims based on that right, just as we can with other provisions of the Bill of Rights, such as the right to free speech or right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.

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Former Press Secretary Scott McClellan's forthcoming book contains these paragraphs about the leak of Valerie Plame's identity:

The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

"There was one problem. It was not true.

"I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration "were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President's chief of staff, and the president himself."

Valerie Plame Wilson responds: [More...]

Speaking for me only.

This is not only disappointing and shameful, it is stupid:

I believe I have the right kind of experience to be the next President. With a war and a tough economy, we need a President ready on Day One to bring our troops home from Iraq and to handle all of our other tough challenges. Now voters will judge whether living in a foreign country at the age of 10 prepares one to face the big, complex international challenges the next President will face.

Hillary supporters will defend this by saying it was a response to this statement from Obama:

Probably the strongest experience I have in foreign relations is the fact that I spent four years living overseas when I was a child in southeast Asia."

That does not wash for me. Now it is a supremely stupid statement from Obama but that does not excuse Hillary's use of it to attack Obama personally. Never more comofrtable than in the mud, John Edwards jumps in:

Now we know what Senator Clinton meant when she talked about ‘throwing mud’ in the last debate. Like so many other things, when it comes to mud, Hillary Clinton says one thing and throws another.

The Edwards campaign is pathetic AND shameful. But this entire campaign is now one of the worst in history. Dems cover themselves in shame. Again.

Well, you knew this was coming.

Obama made the disclosure while working a crowd at Central High School here, after delivering an education policy speech. A man, Ralph Hoagland, asked Obama—who was mingling and shaking hands-- if Oprah was going to stump for Obama in New Hampshire.

“First she’s coming to Iowa,” Obama told Hoagland, who in 1963 was a co-founder of what is now the giant CVS pharmacy chain. “But we’ll talk about it. We’ll get her up here.”

Was it a planted question? Hoagland is "a member of Obama’s Northeast Steering Group, which is heavily involved in fund-raising. He hopes to bundle together $100,000 for Obama..."

Here's Hoagland's reasoning, or is it Obama's?

Oprah Winfrey can help, Hoagland said, “because I think that Oprah can say to women ‘you do not have to vote for the first woman president. Vote for what you need.”

So, is Obama now resorting to the gender card?

So here they come again, spouting nonsense about race, intelligence (definition please?) and IQ (the measurement you can improve, prvoing just how innate it is.)

My preferred response echoes Atrios.

A more learned response from Brad DeLong.

Good for Obama. He's not running from his early experimentation with drugs, including cocaine, and alcohol. He also says he was a "goof-off."

We've come a long way from the "But I didn't inhale" days.

It's official. The DNCC has announced the hotels the various state delegations will be staying at for the Democrats' convention in August. Here's the list (no link yet, received by e-mail):

STATE/TERRITORY HOTEL
Alabama - Doubletree Denver Stapleton
Alaska - Four Points Sheraton Denver Southeast
American Samoa - Radisson Southeast
Arizona - Hyatt Regency Denver Tech Center
Arkansas - Marriott Denver South at Park Meadows
California - Adam's Mark
Colorado - Grand Hyatt Downtown
Connecticut - Marriott Denver Tech Center
Delaware - Marriott South at Park Meadows
Democrats Abroad - Red Lion Denver Central
District of Columbia - Crowne Plaza, Downtown
Georgia - Doubletree Denver Stapleton
Guam - Sheraton Denver Tech Center
Hawaii - Marriott Denver South at Park Meadows
Idaho - Sheraton Denver Tech Center
Illinois - Marriott City Center, Downtown
Indiana - Sheraton Denver Tech Center
Iowa - Courtyard by Marriott, Downtown
Kansas - Doubletree Denver Tech Center
Kentucky - Hilton Garden Inn, Downtown
Louisiana - Radisson Stapleton Plaza

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Bump and Update: An online petition to help the Servanos is here. If you are from Pennsylvania, or neighboring area, please go on over and sign. Also, here's their lawyers' letter (pdf) to Homeland Security.

*****
Original Post: 11/17/07

Meet Pedro and Salvacion Servano, a married Filipino couple who have been in the U.S. for 25 years.

Pedro Servano, 54, is a prominent family doctor in an underserved area of central Pennsylvania. His 51-year-old wife runs a grocery store and bakery..... Pedro Servano works at Geisinger Medical Group in Selinsgrove, where he has about 2,000 patients.

Two of their four children graduated from Temple University, while one is in high school and another is in middle school. Several years ago, the Servanos bought and renovated two properties in nearby Sunbury. Salvacion Servano recently opened a small grocery store there, selling Asian goods and baked items.

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Yesterday, I wrote about John Edwards' slippage in Iowa. Normally, I do not take great stock in polls this far out (yes, it is still too far out to take polls too seriously), especially the famously difficult to poll Iowa Caucus. My reasons for thinking the latest Iowa poll was not so much the numbers, as the fact that Edwards has dropped while Obama has risen since the end of July. Edwards now lacks a POSITIVE narrative for his candidacy for the critical last phases of the campaign. He has become the "attack Hillary" candidate (as opposed to being the Not Hillary candidate, the position he has now ceded without a shot to Barack Obama.)

At MYDD, Jerome Armstrong sees it differently:

Chiming in, it's great that the pollsters are now adding whether the voters attended the 2004 caucuses or not . . . I would tend to bank more on those that caucused in '04 . . .

With due respect to Jerome, I think he misses a very important point here, on the night of the caucus, the differences between previous caucus goers and first timers is simply not that great - both in choices and participation. For example, in 2004, the entrance polling showed:

What's the going speaker's rate for a disgraced Bush Administration official? For former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, his talk at the University of Florida yesterday cost the school $40,000.

It probably made the boos and jeers easier to swallow:

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales endured screams of "criminal" and "liar" during a speech at the University of Florida on Monday evening.....Early in his speech, two people climbed on the stage in hoods. Gonzales stopped talking for a few minutes as police led them away without incident, though there were several outbursts from the crowd.

The hooded demonstrators were charged with interruption of a public event, said Steve Orlando, a university spokesman. Several other people were ejected for yelling, and more than a dozen people stood for most of Gonzales' hour-long speech with their backs toward him.

Gonzales must really be hurting for legal fees.

It's time for the Tuesday Open Thread. I've got court and last minute prep to get ready for the TL kid's return to Denver for the holidays.

Here's a place for readers to keep us abreast of the news and to post your thoughts. Please use the buttons on top of the comments box to put your link in html format.

Thanks, and I'll be back soon.

CBS news writers may be the next to strike. Today, they authorized the Writers Guild to call a strike on their behalf.

CBS news writers, graphic artists and other staffers who work for the network's television and radio news operations voted by a wide margin to authorize a strike against their employer, the Writers Guild of America announced today.

Of the 300 employees who cast ballots in last week's special election, 81% backed a labor stoppage to protest working for more than 2 1/2 years without a contract.

Radio would be hit big time:

If a labor stoppage were to occur, all-news radio stations such as Los Angeles' KNX-AM (1070) and KFWB-AM (980), Chicago's WBBM-AM and New York's 1010 WINS and WCBS-AM probably would be the hardest hit, as they would lose the staff that pens their news and headlines.

The tv writers' strike and the Broadway stagehands strike continues.