I suppose I'll start with what motivated this post. Lyle Denniston, famous for SCOTUSblog, wrote some weird editorial for Yahoo, in which he refers to himself in the third person, about the Second Amendment not being absolute, while implying Ted Cruz is an idiot for thinking otherwise. And almost immediately he takes a blogger better than he, and simultaneously Senator Cruz, out of context.
After summarizing Ted Cruz's questioning of Dianne Feinstein about the limits of Congress with regard to the Second Amendment, Denniston quotes Allahpundit of HotAir:
Harvard Law grad Ted Cruz is willfully deceiving the public into thinking the Second Amendment is more absolute than the Supreme Court says it is.Yep, that's all he quotes from Allahpundit. One very brief sentence, which is uncharacteristic of this blogger, which is highly suggestive of something else going on we're not seeing. He then pivots from this to the meat of his argument. Classy.
Now let me quote the next few sentences from Allahpundit's post at HotAir:
Why, clearly, Harvard Law grad Ted Cruz is willfully deceiving the public into thinking the Second Amendment is more absolute than the Supreme Court says it is. He’s acting like Heller never happened! Like I say, that’s what you might think if you watched Cruz-versus-Feinstein and nothing more. If you watched the rest of the Judiciary Committee hearing, you know better. [emphasis mine]Denniston even omitted the "Why, clearly" part. What a douche. I guess Denniston thinks he's pretty safe since Allahpundit can't really fight back for a few reasons: 1. Doing so on HotAir would seem petty and beneath the standards of that blog. 2. Allahpundit has to remain anonymous lest certain people find out who and where he is. I'll add he has legitimate reasons for remaining anonymous, as his pseudonym might suggest.
Well here at the Daily Mud, pettiness is something aspired to. As for Ted Cruz, what pray tell, was in the rest of the Judiciary Committee hearing? See for yourself:
Not only is Ted Cruz familiar with Heller, he was on the winning team.
And he correctly acknowledges such restrictions on the Second Amendment that Heller identified, such as the "current prohibition on fully-automatic machine guns." There you go. Ted Cruz just acknowledged that the Second Amendment is not absolute. Excuse me while I clean up this mess of straw Denniston so bravely fought.
And there's more.
Much more, but I'm just going to tackle one egregious deceit (or conceit, depending on how you look at it). Denniston claims that concerning the Second Amendment,
The almost universal understanding (until several modern scholars began questioning it) was that the right only applied to state militia organizations, like the modern National Guard.
Almost universal, meaning very, very few people understood it as a personal right to keep and bear arms. Until those modern scholars came along messing up the Constitution with their subversive ideas:
No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.1
Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American.2
Americans have the right and advantage of being armed - unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.3
A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves...and include all men capable of bearing arms.4
Darn those modern scholars!
I'm sure Mr. Denniston is a good guy, just not when he's lying and taking things out of context.
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1 Thomas Jefferson, 1776
2 Tench Coxe, 1788
3 James Madison, 1787
4 Richard Henry Lee, 1788
