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William Shatner. Not likely to rival Wil Wheaton in the epic contest for coolest post-Star Trek life. Still making a valiant showing on slashdot.

"It seems to me that you need to get a life."

Shatner! Master of dry humor!

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The White House has approved executing US citizens as a matter of policy, as long as they're working for Al Qaeda.

Well, that's interesting.

The spin is that any such action will wait for Presidential approval. However, the White House is not saying that it must wait for Presidential approval -- just that in practice it will. The underlying assumption is that the President has the right to authorize executions without court approval, under certain conditions.

I don't think this works. The justification is that Al Qaeda acts against American interests. There are plenty of NGOs that act against American interests. If Amnesty Internation convinces Britain to pressure the US on human rights issues, they'd be acting against American interests. By this precedent, the President would have the right to authorize executions of American members of Amnesty International.

Previously, such authorization has been reserved for cases where the American citizen is directly threatening the lives of other Americans or their allies. I.e., yes, on the battlefield you don't have to double check with a judge and jury. This goes somewhat outside that scope.

It's certainly true that the situation we're in as a nation is different than any we've been in before. We need new rules, as I've noted before. However, this one fails the sniff test.

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Via How Appealing: the Ninth Circuit today concluded that the Second Amendment confers no individual right to own and carry arms. (That link is a PDF.) I recommend reading the opinion if you're interested in such things. I suspect the language and arguments presented therein will be core to the gun control debate for some time, at least for those who are pro-gun control.

The argument seems to rest on the meaning of the phrase "keep and bear arms." Judge Reinhardt's opinion states that "bear arms" is a phrase used, historically, only in a military context. Quoting Aymette v. State, 21 Tenn. (2 Humph.) 154 (1840): "A man in pursuit of deer, elk and buffaloes might carry his rifle every day for forty years, and yet it would never be said of him that he had borne arms." Given that interpretation, he further reasons that the phrase would be nonsensical if the phrase "keep arms" had a wider interpretation than the phrase "bear arms."

I am brutally summarizing this, and I am not a lawyer. I really do recommend reading it if you intend to mention the ruling in polite company, or even form opinions on it for yourself.

Here's a sort of a counter argument. He doesn't include any actual reasoning beyond a list of cases which he claims contradict the Ninth Circuit decision. The first one cited is the same decision I quoted above; I think that he might have done well to at least explain why the decision supports him and not the Ninth Circuit. Naked argument by reference is so medieval. I am hoping to see more and better disagreement soon.

Glenn Reynolds links to an article of his which discusses the problems with the general class of argument made by the Ninth Circuit, which seems to be worth reading. It doesn't really address the decision, though. Note in particular page 30 of the decision, which postulates a sort of feudalistic state militia system in which the armies of the states are subject to federal control. This counters Reynolds' line of argument, which requires the state militias to be protection against a tyrannical federal government. (A pity. I'm sympathetic to that line of argument.)