Bet you didn’t hear about this on the news did you?

Municipalities can’t ban people from owning handguns, court rules

San Francisco’s ban on handguns, blocked by a legal challenge since voters approved it in November 2005, suffered a possibly fatal blow Wednesday when a state appeals court ruled that local governments have no authority under California Law to prevent people from owning pistols.

The First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco agreed with a June 2006 ruling by Superior Court Judge James Warren, who said state laws regulating gun sales, permits and safety leave no room for a city or county to forbid handgun possession.

State courts have upheld some local restrictions, including prohibitions on the sale or possession of guns on public fairgrounds, Presiding Justice Ignazio Ruvolo noted in the 3-0 ruling. But in general, “when it comes to regulating firearms, local governments are well advised to tread lightly,” he wrote.

San Francisco’s ban was challenged by the National Rifle Association, whose lobbyist Chris Cox called Wednesday’s ruling “a big win for the law-abiding citizens and NRA members of San Francisco.”

Alexis Thompson, spokeswoman for City Attorney Dennis Herrera, said the ruling  was disappointing, “particularly in light of the continuing plague of handgun violence here in San Francisco.”

About that…so tell me, would the hand gun ban stop the violence?  No.  The fact is that using a handgun for violence is already a crime, so outlawing peaceful ownership is absolutely pointless.  Banning their guns from people who already are using them criminally is unlikely to have a measurable impact.

The city could ask the state Supreme Court to review the case. History would not be on the city’s side, however, as the state’s high court refused to review a 1982 ruling by the same appeals court striking down an earlier San Francisco ordinance that prohibited handgun possession in the city limits.

We shall see.  Newsbusters says:

When I read Ann’s heartfelt tribute to the passing of her father, I was of course not shocked at her characterization of him.

She certainly did not fall far from his tree. 

But I also knew, with certainty, that the liberals who despise her would soon make sport of it. something I equally certain she expected.

I was right:

Whether it’s Tony Snow’s cancer, the comparative good intentions of Hitler and Stalin, or the urgent need for a military coup, no one does “satire” like HuffPo. How bad is this one? So bad that even the blogosphere’s most notorious comment section is put off by it, although stick with the debate long enough and you’ll see it ends up where all progressive line-crossing eventually does, in a contest between the self-congratulatory “I’m tired of being morally superior to the wingnuts” and the equally self-congratulatory “we must remain morally superior to the wingnuts.” I didn’t read to the end but I’m pretty sure it ends in a draw.

So how bad is it really?  A few excerpts:

Ann Coulter Kills at Her Father’s Funeral

Ann Coulter’s father John died last week, and this week she honored his memory with a column containing not one, but two Ted Kennedy jokes. I know I’d be proud.

Note:  I am almost certain her dad would have been, from her description.  Moving on…

Such is a daughter’s grief. Think of her, then, as Ophelia with her violetless garlands, crossed with a real fucking hack.

But where’s the Hillary material? Come on. It’s right in front of you, Ann — dad’s dead… Hillary cries… you do the math.

Clearly, Ann’s not at the top of her game. So I’ve taken the liberty of going through the eulogy — cutting the Kennedy material — and punching up the rest.

The longest baby ever born at the Albany, N.Y., hospital, at least as of May 5, 1926, who grew up to be my strapping father, passed away last Friday morning.

Memeorandum has lots of various links, here and here about this spat.

The Clintons have made a few comments that are a bit hard to swallow, and their supporters have stepped in to defend them.

What Hillary supporter Robert L. Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television, said

Over the weekend, Black Entertainment Television founder Robert L. Johnson took the stage next to Hillary Clinton and smeared Barack Obama twice. (Video of Johnson’s comment here.) The Clintons–she and The Big He–and their operatives have been under fire for their race-baiting tactics and suggestive remarks about Obama’s admitted drug use.

Judging from Johnson’s remarks, the down-and-dirty Clintons have no intention of backing off.

 Bill himself took to the radio and made not only his case to defend his and her remarks, but to defend Johnson’s:

President Clinton Does More Damage Control on Black Radio 

In an interview Monday, President Clinton mounted a less-than-vigorous defense of comments a prominent supporter of Senator Clinton’s presidential bid, Robert Johnson, made which many interpreted as a reference to Senator Obama’s admission of drug use during his younger years.

The interviewer, Roland Martin of WVON-AM in Chicago, played Mr. Johnson’s statement Sunday in which he praised the Clintons for having “been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues since Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood - and I won’t say what he was doing, but he said it in the book…” Mr. Martin sounded incredulous about Mr. Johnson’s subsequent denial, in a statement issued by the Clinton campaign, that he was referring to drug use by Mr. Obama. “When you listen to that tone and the inflection, he was not talking about community organizing. It seems to me very clear what he was implying,” Mr. Martin said.

“Ironically, this is the first time I’ve heard it, what you just said,” Mr. Clinton said. “I listened to it on the tape and I think we have to take him at his word.”

Honestly, as I keep saying, you cannot make this up.

As this memory from September recalls:

Hillary Clinton in essence called Gen. Petraeus a liar when she remarked: “I think the reports that you provide to us really require the willing suspension of disbelief.” I wonder who wrote that line for her. It sounds like it came straight from James Carville, the former Clinton advisor. Earlier, Clinton had said: “I was against the Surge when it was first proposed.” Really? She voted for it. It’s funny how what Clinton says publicly, and what she does in the Senate are usually two different things.

And so her nuanced¹ position continues (emphasis mine):

Another one from MTP this morning, a day after the first fragile measure of political reconciliation passed the Iraqi parliament. Whom to thank? Not David Petraeus, whose claims of improved security and lowered sectarian tensions we were assured require “the willing suspension of disbelief.” Thank the Democratic candidates like Hillary Clinton — who opposed the surge, who opposed funding for the surge, who even opposed a symbolic resolution defending Petraeus from the “Betray Us” smear. It took the looming prospect of withdrawal by a Democratic president, she says, to finally get the Iraqis in gear, neglecting the fact that the election of the Democratic Congress in 2006 was also supposed to get them in gear and never quite did. Thus do the stars align for Hillary: the failure of her own party plus the success of an operation she dismissed produce a credit-taking opportunity only the dumbest Clinton supporter could fall for. The fact is, troop levels are increasingly out of her hands and nobody knows it better than the Iraqis she cynically pretends to be influencing: