Christ Is Risen!

Happy Lent!

^{No blogging or commenting during Great Lent.}

⁹ For zeal for thy house has consumed me,
    and the insults of those who insult thee have fallen on me.
¹⁰ When I humbled my soul with fasting,
    it became my reproach.
¹¹ When I made sackcloth my clothing,
    I became a byword to them.
¹² I am the talk of those who sit in the gate,
    and the drunkards make songs about me.

Psalm 69: 9-12 

RSV

...Plus C'est La Meme Chose

Moscow, March 14, Interfax - The Moscow Patriarchate has not ruled out a possible meeting of the new Roman Catholic pontiff and the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, but said that disputes between the two Churches should be settled first.

'In my opinion, such a meeting is possible, but its time and place will depend primarily on how fast we will be able to resolve the conflicts dating back to the 1980s-90s,' head of the Department for External Church Relations Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, said at a press briefing in Moscow on Thursday, answering a question from Interfax.

These conflicts 'caused a major setback in the Orthodox-Catholic dialogue,' he said.

Stretching The Consitutional Privilege

Searching for relevance and an competitive advantage among consumers aged 18 to 44, the United States Postal Service is taking requests for celebrity stamps and rolling out postal fashions.

The Post Office has outlived its usefulness and should be shuttered. A view on the unconstitutionality of the Service is found here:

In his pamphlet, ;The Unconstitutionality of the Laws of Congress Prohibiting Private Mails,' [Lysander] Spooner highlighted the inefficiency guaranteed by the act of banning competition in postal service. Once there was an enforced monopoly, he stated, postal officials would 'feel few quickening impulses to labor' or 'to move at the speed that commercial interests require.' The consequence would be 'a cumbrous, clumsy, expensive and dilatory government system' that would be 'nearly impossible to modify or materially improve' except by opening it up once more to 'rivalry and free competition.'

But Spooner objected to a postal monopoly not merely or primarily because it cheated the public by requiring an extravagant fee for an inadequate service. His main objection lay in the argument that the monopoly violated individual and constitutional rights in at least three ways. First, Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution authorized Congress 'to establish post offices and post roads,' but it didn’t bar others from doing so as well. The power to create was not a power to prohibit. The Ninth Amendment states, 'The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.'

Second, freedom of the press included—and, indeed, required—the right to privately distribute material to whoever wished to read it. A government postal monopoly would be able to ban periodicals from using virtually the only legal channels of distribution. This control constituted a direct affront to the First Amendment.

Third, a monopoly post office that can control the flow of information inevitably would be used to political advantage by those in authority. In 'Private Mails,' Spooner argued, 'Its immense patronage and power, used, as they always will be, corruptly, make it [the monopoly post office] also a very great political evil.'

Ecrasez l'infame!

"Fire Two Blasts Outside The House"

Joe Biden becomes even more bizarre in his love affair with double-barreled shotguns:

Biden, the owner of two shotguns, has often used his firearm ownership in debates of the practicality of assault weapons. In a particularly offbeat moment today, he explained an imaginary scenario where trouble would come to his Delaware home:

'I said, "Jill, if there's ever a problem, just walk out on the balcony here, walk out and put that double-barrel shotgun and fire two blasts outside the house."'

Continuing the trope, Biden stated a shotgun would be easier to fend off an intruder than the civilian variant of an M-16 assault rifle.

'You don't need an AR-15,' he said. 'It's harder to aim, it's harder to use, and in fact you don't need 30 rounds to protect yourself,' he said.

'Buy a shotgun,' he concluded.

Luby's Massacre Survivor Testifies

Size And Republicanism

More Praise For "Stop And Frisk"

Yes, one could hypothesize, as Joe Biden does, a shooter, forced to reload after seven shots rather than 13, being tackled by a bystander. One could equally hypothesize a citizen with a seven-round clip running out of ammunition before stopping a mass shooter. This is why Congress, for good reason, usually prefers to pass laws in response to systematic evidence rather than hypothetical anecdotes.

The Sandy Hook problem is the suicidal, disturbed young male looking for a large number of defenseless civilians to mow down. The Chicago problem is crime-ridden neighborhoods in which gangs murder each other and anybody who gets in their way. These aren't the same problem, and possibly gun control offers no practical handle on either. But if you accept the unlikelihood of ridding America of its guns, as the gun-control movement now says it does, then one systematic proposition links the two.

That proposition can be stated as a question: In an America where at least 43 states now let a law-abiding citizen carry a concealed weapon, how should we protect ourselves in the fewer and fewer places where we are required to be unarmed?

This is from Holman Jenkins' latest opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal. He repeats what everyone else knows:  Enforcing gun laws against bad guys keeps unarmed good guys safe.

Quoting Jim Grant Is Always Worthwhile

'I think the Fed's actions are counterproductive,' he says. The Fed's intentions to jump start growth are actually working against the economy, Grant argues.

'If it were as easy as printing money or creating credit to levitate an economy or to reactivate business activity the world would have been richer many generations ago,' he says...

'It is not a characteristic American economy,' he explains. 'What we are missing is a dynamism, the entrepreneurial zest and vigor that has characterized this country'...

In fact, Grant believes the Fed's perpetual low-interest rate policy will lead to the next big economic crisis in this country: the bursting of the bond bubble.