Quotation of the Day – June 27, 2022

[At the state level:] Under the terms of the [Pennsylvania] commonwealth’s new constitution [of 1776], the right to bear arms joined with militia service was constitutionally guaranteed; the right to bear arms in an individual capacity was a natural and common law right that the legislature could proscribe.

[At the federal level:] The [second] amendment provided that Congress could never deprive people the right to own firearms in the dispatch of their obligation to fulfill militia service. The right to own a gun for individual self-protection was different — a matter of common law that … could be expanded, modified or taken away by legislation.

The court’s majority is cherry-picking its history, grasping for any historical example that props up the end it hopes to achieve.

– Joshua Zeitz, The Supreme Court’s Faux Originalism.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/06/26/conservative-supreme-court-gun-control-00042417

Quotation of the Day, June 11, 2022

“In my time in publishing, I have commissioned and edited books by people who, frankly, I thought were bonkers, or at least very, very wrong. I have published open-borders ideologues, unreconstructed Marxists, people who think that animals should be allowed to vote, anarchists, naked protestors, ‘last Japanese soldier in the jungle’-style Blairites: the whole gamut. My old firm published books by Lacan, despite the fact that only precisely one employee understood a word that the mad old dear was on about.” – Capel Lofft, self-described editor, Tory Socialist and High Church Anglican who likes a drink, a pie and a hearty rendition of “God Save the Queen”, in: “The Critic” from June 8 of this year. Publish and be cancelled | Capel Lofft | The Critic Magazine

Quotation of the Day, June 10, 2022

“Oh, the comfort — the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person — having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with the breath of kindness, blow the rest away.” – Dinah Craik, nineteenth-century English poet and novelist. Sent by Sylvia Aust of Rochester, NY, to Frank Bruni, who highlighted it in his NYT newsletter. This is not the reaction one can count on when one blasts out a tweet to thousands of followers.