Right Side of the RainbowNews and commentary on law and politics by a right-of-center, gun-owning, gay Texan.Ceremonial unboxing of the iPhone- July 11, 2008 I stood in line for three hours to get this phone. And then, to activate it, I spent another two and a half hours trying to access the iTunes store, which is buckling under the weight of today&8217;s traffic. But I got it done. Get yours. You&8217;ll love it.http://rightrainbow.com/archives/2008/07/ceremonial_unbo.html Goodbye .Mac; hello MobileMe! Update: Or not!- July 10, 2008 Attention fellow Mac enthusiasts! In preparation for Friday&8217;s launch of iPhone3G, Apple has begun the transition from .Mac to MobileMe. I took this screen shot, which shows .Mac offline, at 11:11 p.m. CT. MobileMe will offer push email, push contacts and push calendar. Update at 9:30 p.m. July 10: Evidently Apple is having trouble migrating .Mac to MobileMe, as MobileMe has been online today only in spurts. It makes you wonder: Did Apple abandon OSX for Vistahttp://rightrainbow.com/archives/2008/07/goodbye_mac_hel.html Here&146;s why you buy insurance before you need it- July 9, 2008 When your house is on fire, it&8217;s too late to buy fire insurance: If Senator John McCain&8217;s radical plan for remaking American health care is to work, he will have to find a way to cover people like Chaim Benamor, 52, a self-employed renovator in this Baltimore suburb. Mr. Benamor never found it necessary to buy insurance before having a mild heart attack last year and now, 13 years shy of Medicare, has little hope of doing so. The heart attack left Mr. Benamor with a $17,000...http://rightrainbow.com/archives/2008/07/heres_why_you_b.html Dont take economic advice from teenagers- July 8, 2008 Moral vanity in children is expensive.http://rightrainbow.com/archives/2008/07/dont_take_econo.html The Supreme Court goofed- July 6, 2008 The Washington Post calls on the court to correct a mistake. Of course, the justices were never actually interested in the national consensus; they were interested only in the consensus among themselves. So admitting they were wrong about the law is a moot point.http://rightrainbow.com/archives/2008/07/the_supreme_cou_2.html Ignorance about handguns- July 5, 2008 Do people know that the word handgun is not inconsistent with the word semiautomatic Or that most of the handguns Americans own are semiautomatics Reports like this one make me wonder. True, all handguns aren&8217;t semiautomatics. Some are revolvers. But many people seem to think that semiautomatic means Uzi or AK-47. It doesn&8217;t. I own four handguns, including two Glocks. All are semiautomatics. Except for the sights, which I replaced with ones that illuminate in the dark, my Glocks are.http://rightrainbow.com/archives/2008/07/ignorance_about.html Appeals court rules for pro-life group- July 4, 2008 A federal appeals court says an anti-abortion group may display near public schools images of aborted fetuses: &8220;The government cannot silence messages simply because they cause discomfort, fear or even anger.&8221;http://rightrainbow.com/archives/2008/07/appeals_court_r.html A case in need of judicial activism- July 1, 2008 I believe in judicial restraint. I believe, as Justice Scalia wrote, that a &8220;text should not be construed strictly, and it should not be construed leniently; it should be construed reasonably, to contain all that it fairly means.&8221; I believe that when judges substitute their policy preferences for the commands of the law, they exceed their authority and undermine our democracy. I believe jurists should exercise judgment, and not will. But now and again, a perfectly constitutional...http://rightrainbow.com/archives/2008/06/a_case_in_need.html |