First, the cloud: The Senate passed S. 160, the blatantly unconstitutional bill purporting to create a Congressional district in D.C.

Now, the silver lining: Not before Sen. Ensign inserted the Second Amendment Enforcement Act into this otherwise worthless bill, which would repeal the District’s post-Heller ordinances of dubious constitutionality, and of non-dubious overall badness, relating to guns. It would also allow DC residents to buy guns in either Maryland or Virginia.

Now, the real silver lining: as amended, the bill contains a severability clause, making it virtually certain that the pro-gun amendments would survive any constitutional challenges the phony Congressional district almost certainly won’t.

By “almost certainly,” of course, I mean “almost certainly if the challenge makes it to the Supreme Court while all four conservatives and the one sometime conservative are still on the court. Even so, the odds of even the most liberal court striking down the repeal of DC’s gun laws on any basis are slim to none. So as loathsome as this sausage making process may have been, right now the sausage itself is looking to be mighty tasty.

H/t: Uncly-Wuncly and Flakey-Wakey.

Nice spoof on those insulting commericals:

H/t: Concurring opinions.

HotAir reports that Rick Santelli has adopted one of the most annoying tactics of the left and claimed he was threatened by a White House which had in fact merely criticized him. Between this, the nuts who seemed to think the world would end (as opposed to merely sucking) if Obama became President and the überidiots who deny that he is the President now, I’m half tempted to switch gears. Rather than trying to rein in our own, let’s all start intentionally acting like complete and total asses from now through December 31. Then, on January 1, 2010, we can all take a deep breath, collectively declare 2009 “April Fool’s Year,” and start acting like adults again in time for the next federal election.

You in?

S. 160, a Senate bill to create a Congressional seat for the District of Columbia, has avoided a filibuster and will likely pass the Senate later this week. The bill takes advantage of a little-known provision of Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, which reads:

The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, or by the people of such other the hell crap as the Congress may legislate, and the Electors in each State or Non-State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature, unless such State or Non-State shall not be a State or shall not have a Legislature, in which case no qualifications shall be required.

Or something like that. Of course it’s no surprise they Democrats all voted for it. Sure, they take an oath to support “the Constitution” like everyone else, but everyone knows that half of them end their oath by quietly muttering “ha ha, just kidding” under their breath, while the other half speak liberal Democrat-language, in which the word “constitution” is merely a shorthand for “stuff I like” (cf. gun control and campaign finance reform are constitutional, see also abortion laws, school vouchers and the death penalty are unconstitutional). And I guess Orrin Hatch is that kind of girl, and seeing as his state gets an extra seat out of the deal, there’s no need to haggle over his price. But if Susan Collins hadn’t already pissed off enough Republicans already, she too threw her support behind this flagrantly unconstitutional bill, arguing that only the judicial branch, not the other two, is supposed to concern itself with the Constitutional concerns:

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who spoke in favor of the bill earlier this month, said the question of constitutionality should be resolved by the courts, not Congress.

“As a matter of fundamental fairness, I believe the residents of the District of Columbia should have representation in the House,” she said.

Which is understandable, I suppose, given that her constituents are all residents of the District of Columbia. Or whatever. Will someone please remind me why this nut even pretends to be a Republican? Or why those of us with a reason to call ourselves Republicans should care (apart from the fact that it would be much easier to oppose a Democrat who admits she’s a Democrat in the general election than to “primary” one who pretends to be one of us)?

Per the newbie shooter it takes three years of residency in the South, a gun safe, some ammo, some wine and a trip to Wal-Mart to make you officially Southern. Well, I got my ammo and my gun safe back in California, years before I moved north to the South, so the only thing that kept me from being a Southerner was the residency requirement. As of this instant I fulfilled it.

AntiVir sez it’s the TR/Crypt.XPACK.Gen trojan horse. Is it, or is AntiVir full of crap? And if the latter, is there some way to decrapify AntiVir and allow it to run?

Everyone from the corporate execs and the regulators on down seems to agree that credit default swaps like the ones that sank AIG are “like” insurance, but technically aren’t insurance, and therefore cannot be regulated as such. I can’t for the life of me figure out why. Section 1101(a)(1) of the New York Insurance Law defines an “insurance contract” as:

[A]ny agreement or other transaction whereby one party, the “insurer”, is obligated to confer benefit of pecuniary value upon another party, the “insured” or “beneficiary”, dependent upon the happening of a fortuitous event in which the insured or beneficiary has, or is expected to have at the time of such happening, a material interest which will be adversely affected by the happening of such event.

Paragraph (2), in turn, defines a “fortuitous event” as “any occurrence or failure to occur which is, or is assumed by the parties to be, to a substantial extent beyond the control of either party.”

My question to those wiser than myself, and to any other readers who may care to speculate, are as follows:

1. If I purchase a credit default swap from you on a mortgage note I own, how is that different from an insurance contract?
2. If I purchase a credit default swap on a mortgage note I do not own, how is that different from gambling?

My working theory is that this is the season where Jack Bauer finally dies, or at least Almeida-dies for a while, and Renée Walker will take his place. Mrs. X thinks she’s the next Nina Myers. What’s your theory?

Another day, another phony election “won” by a dictator. Move along, people, nothing to see here.