Unclean! Unclean!

Here's something I never thought I'd say: I find myself agreeing with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas about something.

>>>cough<<< >>>choke<<< >>>gasp<<< >>>wheeze<<<

He wrote the dissent in the Court's recently published decision allowing people convicted of a crime overseas to own a gun in the good ol' US of A.

The vote was 5 to 3 . . . Chief Justice Rehnquist was receiving chemo back in November, when arguments in this case were heard, and did not participate in the decision. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote the majority decision. Joined by Justices Stevens, O'Connor, Souter, and Ginsburg, he said that a US law prohibiting felons convicted in "ANY court" (emphasis added) from owning guns applies to domestic crimes only. The majority thought that since protections for defendants are fewer and less effective overseas than they are in our own court system, it would be unfair to hold that against them here.

If Congress wanted the law to apply to foreign convictions, too, it should rewrite the law to say so, Justice Breyer concluded.

Justice Thomas, rightly in my opinion (and majorly shocking to me to admit that), said "any" means "any," which includes foreign courts. If Congress had meant for foreign courts to be exlcuded, it would have said "any domestic courts" (emphasis added). His exegesis of the statute's language certainly is less tortured--and less tortuous--than the majority's, and therefore preferrable to it. [It's rulings such as the majority's in this case that fuel the fires of complaint about "activist" judges. Why do we have to give the neocons ammunition? They shoot anyway. Making it easier for them to make their case is just plain stupid!--Ed.]

God help me, but he's right on this one!

The humor/irony/weirdness of the ruling in this case comes from this: the majority, with the exception of Justice O'Connor (who hails from Arizona, where bars have signs outside saying "Check your weapons at the door"), normally would be expected to limit gun possession wherever possible. The dissenters, on the other hand, usually prefer to felicitate access to guns, given their interpretation of the Second Amendment. The respective opinions in this case ensure the opposite real world outcome of the various justices' previously-acknowledged stances on gun control.

To further the humor/irony/weirdness, the felon in question answered "no" to the question whether he'd ever been convicted of a felony on the federal form he had to fill out to get his guns in the US. At the time he filled out the form, he'd just been released on parole from prison in Japan, where he'd--get this!--done time for violating Japanese gun laws.

Should anyone with so little respect for law anywhere have any access to guns? I would hope not! The alternative makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

While the Supremes' majority decision in this case overturns our felon's conviction for possession of the guns, I do not know whether it had any effect on his conviction for lying on the form. The news reports once again were woefully inadequate. >>>sigh<<<

Sp the real world fallout from this case, while alarming, has yet to be fully felt. Nevertheless, it already makes me think of Cornwallis's army band playing "The World Turned Upside Down" at Yorktown. Or REM's "It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)." Except I don't feel fine. I feel as though I've fallen through Alice's looking glass into a wonderland where the Mad Hatter is named Breyer.