The Freedom Bulletin

Alleged Craigslist killer Philip Markoff will go to trial on March 14, 2011 according to Suffolk County D.A. spokesman Jake Wark. The trial date was set at a brief hearing today, which Markoff did not attend.

The trial was originally supposed to start this month. I am still going to try to attend the trial in March and blog about it, but whether I’ll be able to or not depends on my schedule at work. I’ll keep you all posted!

The Supreme Court ruled today in McDonald v. Chicago that the Second Amendment applies to state and local governments in addition to the federal government. The case centered around Chicago’s ban of basically all handguns, which will likely be repealed as a result of the ruling.

The decision is not perfect – it allows some state and local gun restrictions, just not those that ban handguns entirely. Paul Helmke, the head of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Handgun Violence, was “reassured that the Court has rejected, once again, the gun lobby argument that its ‘any gun, for anybody, anywhere’ agenda is protected by the Constitution.” But this is still a victory for liberty because the court has upheld one of our fundamental rights, the right to bear arms, and sent a message to state governments that they cannot trample all over people’s freedoms just because they aren’t the federal government.

Ilya Shapiro of the Cato Institute wrote as much:

“The Fourteenth Amendment, coming on the heels of the Civil War, says clearly that never again would the Constitution tolerate state oppressions and that all individuals possess certain fundamental rights. And it is equally clear that the right to keep and bear arms is one of those deeply rooted fundamental rights, not least because the Framers thought so highly of it as to enumerate it in the Second Amendment.”

Otis McDonald, the Chicago grandfather and community leader who brought the lawsuit against his city, brought up another positive aspect of the decision, in addition to preserving freedom:

“This will make criminals think twice. If you have the right to have a handgun in your house, even if you don’t have a gun, that will give criminals a second thought, a third thought about breaking in to your house.”

Full text of the decision (PDF)

Gun pictures thanks to Adams Guns

On Cinco de Mayo, two high school students in California wore American flag t-shirts to school. The principal told them to either take the shirts off or wear them inside out, calling them “incendiary.” Now the two boys and their parents are suing the school system, claiming that the school’s actions violated their constitutional rights:

Kendall and Joy Jones; John and Dianna Dariano, parents of Matthew Dariano; and Kurt and Julie Ann Fagerstrom, parents of Dominic Maciel, are asking a judge to rule that what happened May 5 at Live Oak violated the First and Fourteenth amendments, and that the school district’s policy regarding student speech is too vague.

The suit also asks for “nominal damages” and to award attorneys’ fees.

The Morgan Hill Unified School District, Live Oak Principal Nick Boden and Assistant Principal Miguel Rodriguez are named as the defendants.

Some people might call this lawsuit frivolous, but I think it has merit. No one should be banned from showing pride in their country, even during the holiday of another country. So many teenagers try to be cool and fit in at all costs that it’s a breath of fresh air to hear about teens showing their patriotism and standing up for what they believe in. It’s too bad that the Fourth of July doesn’t fall during the school year, because it would be interesting to see if the school allowed students to wear Mexican flag t-shirts on America’s holiday.

Complaint (PDF), thanks to KSBW-TV via the Examiner

President Obama recently gave a speech praising the recently passed version of health insurance reform and warning insurance companies not to use the new law as an excuse to raise prices. But unless strong measures are taken to prevent this, “Obamacare” will actually cause the price of health insurance to rise.

I oppose Obamacare, primarily because it requires all Americans to have health insurance. In my opinion, this violates everyone’s rights because people have the right to decide how they want to spend their own money, as long as they don’t do anything that violates the rights of anyone else. But according to economic theory, the individual mandate has a bad side effect as well – it makes the cost of health insurance go up.

If you haven’t studied economics before, here are the basics:

Usually, the higher the price of a good, the less the demand. Makes sense, right? Also, the higher the price of a good, the higher the supply, because producers are more willing to make a product if they can sell it for a high price. The supply and demand curves (or lines) can be shown on a graph. The point where the two lines intersect is called the equilibrium. This represents the quantity and price that will be produced in a free market.

However, by requiring everyone to purchase a product (in this case health insurance), the government stops demand from responding naturally to price. The degree to which demand for a good responds to price is called price elasticity of demand. People will buy necessities such as food, water, or insulin for diabetics regardless of their price. In economics-speak, the demand for these goods is inelastic. The demand for things such as lattes, CDs, and stuffed animals is elastic, because people can live without them and therefore tend to buy less of them if the price goes up. When demand is perfectly inelastic, the demand curve looks like a vertical line.

By forcing everyone to buy health insurance, the government makes the demand artificially inelastic. The problem with this is that when demand is perfectly inelastic, price basically approaches infinity. If consumers are going to buy something no matter what it costs, you can bet that producers are going to charge a lot.

Bottom line: according to traditional economics, the individual mandate will make the cost of health insurance go up.

For the first time since current budget rules were enacted in 1974, Congress will not pass a budget blueprint this year. “It isn’t possible to debate and pass a realistic, long-term budget until we’ve considered the bipartisan commission’s deficit-reduction plan, which is expected in December,” said Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD). Instead, Congress plans to pass a “budget enforcement resolution,” which only concerns next year’s budget instead of planning for the next five to ten years, as a budget blueprint would.

I don’t know about you, but to me, this doesn’t look like a good sign for fiscal responsibility. Minority leader John Boehner (R-OH) seems to agree.