The_Law_of_Pizza

Without warning, the doorknob rattles. Slowly, it turns, and the door creaks open on the far side or the room.

In the dim shadow, you can make out the silhouette of a hunched and gnarled goblin, the cloying stench of his breath already in your nostrils.

The light of a candle flickers across him, and in one hand, you can see the deadly glint of his weapon - a Mark XIX MRI Desert Eagle, .50 Action Express.

His hand twitches, and the Ranger's head evaporates.

Roll for initiative.

What’s damaging is when the Court is extreme and ideological. ... That will be bad, bad, bad for public safety.

I'm not sure that this follows the way you are suggesting.

For the record, I do not own a gun, do not plan to buy a gun, and am generally in favor of restricting gun rights for safety reasons.

But the Supreme Court's job isn't to consider public safety. It's to opine on what the law is - good or bad. If the law needs to be changed to better balance public safety, then that's Congress' role.

I imagine that you would point out that Congress is currently deadlocked and not in a position to change the law to balance public safety. And I think you'd be right on that point.

But then to turn around and insist that the Court do this balancing act, because Congress won't, seems to be the very "ideological" bent that you're criticizing the Court for in the first place.

Personally, I think the charge of ideological brinkmanship on the part of the conservative justices is much better articulated by criticizing the Bremerton case.

There, the Court quite literally invented a fact pattern in order to reach the conclusion it wanted - which was to enshrine protection for public Christian prayer activity.

I think most historians would take issue with your conflating "a well regulated militia" as referenced by the Founders, and "militias" as separate organizations with rosters and membership.

I don't know that there's any serious historical disagreement on this point, but I'm happy to read them if you're aware of any.

My historical understanding has always been that "a well regulated militia," in this context, is referring to the whole body of fighting-age men in the country. It is saying that a country must have a well trained body of fighting men upon whom the country can call.

The idea that the Second Amendment is referring to rights held by independent chapters/groups/clubs seems, to my historical eye at least, to be a recent political invention by groups looking to reign in gun rights.

Again, as I stated elsewhere - I don't own a gun, have no intention of doing so, and generally support more gun control.

But I also have a problem with calling out the conservative justices for being idealogues while simultaneously trying to skirt the Second Amendment's plain meaning by playing fast and loose with history.

It is possible that the Second Amendment is simply bad law, and needs to be changed to keep up with the times.

But that would make it still valid law, and seeking to circumvent Congress with wild legal theories would seem to be the same sort of hypocrisy you're accusing the right wing of.

Hi Con,

I'm a financial services attorney - not in the real estate space specifically, but a lot of my practice overlaps with that and other markets.

A hot button topic today (though perhaps it has always been so) is affordable housing, and how we encourage development of and access to it as a critical resource.

My question for you is this: Do you think that entities like the FHLBs can actually help the affordable housing problem? And if so, how?

I have always been skeptical of traditional mortgage-related "help" offered to consumers, as it appears to me that, while they might help the individual borrower in the short term, these programs ultimately inflate the market such that everyone is stuck with higher prices in the long run.

People tend to calculate the house they can afford by reverse engineering it - they take what they can afford in a monthly payment, and then work it backwards to arrive at a total house value. Thus why interest rates effect the value of housing, as you well know.

So, my concern is that mortgage programs which make it easier for people to bid higher on property just inevitably get baked into the value of all property, and within a short period of time everybody is back to square one as prices have adjusted to include whatever subsidy you've introduced in the system.

Do you see any way around this fundamental problem? In your view, is there a place for mortgage programs and/subsidies in the quest for affordable housing?

That's why we have lawyers.

Hi there!

She should be fully covered and receive a nice settlement,

That's assuming that the guy who hit her has assets to go after. Can't get blood from a stone.