That is, the government has entered a brief requesting that the Supreme Court not hear an appeal from the Fifth Circuit Court’s ruling in the Emerson matter, which reversed and remanded a decision of a federal circuit court judge.
Which, if SCOTUS sees it the way the Justice Department does, would mean Dr. Emerson would have to go back to “square one,” to federal court. Mind you, Emerson already had been acquitted in state court on the business that got this whole mess started. It was only through the good offices of the ex-Mrs. Emerson that made this "a federal case."
Yet, if SCOTUS decides not to enter this case, Emerson would be remanded, retried on felony gun possession under federal statute 18 USC 922 (g) (8). And the RKBA/reasonable regulation issue would never be surfaced, communicated, freely deliberated, let alone decided in the name of the people, who are supposedly in charge of this whole regime; and of/by/for/to whose interest the regime is supposedly constituted in the first place.
Not to mention that federal District Court Judge Samuel Cummings – who wrote an absolutely brilliant and trenchantly researched opinion on the RKBA as a personal right -- would be effectively, “officially disgraced” by the Supreme Court under this set of facts. Which would prove inconsistent with the Justice Department’s recent declaration of the Second Amendment as pertaining to an individual liberty.
[Personally, Judge Cummings is a judge I’d dearly love to see promoted to a higher bench. To make an “outcast” or “outlaw” of Judge Cummings would establish a terrible precedent, IMHO, a serious loss for individual constitutional liberties. (Plus I hear there are all kinds of vacancies these days, in the Appeals courts especially. Thanks to the Democrat-controlled Senate.]
Mind you, Emerson already had been acquitted in state court on the business that got this whole mess started. (Possible Tenth Amendment claims hanging in the wings here….)
But I digress. Let’s go to some basic facts, and then to the relevant timeline:
FACTS:
(1) Attorney General John Ashcroft had a nasty confirmation hearing before the Senate, in which he swore to uphold the laws of the land as written. Fortunately there were enough honorable Democrats in that body at the time who, notwithstanding their unfortunate party connection, could see that the man really meant what he said, and so helped confirm him to office.
(2) The Emerson case is a Reno Justice Department case; that is, a Bill Clinton case. Neither Reno, nor Clinton, nor the Democrat party at large have demonstrated any particular concern about the niceties of constitutional law in recent times. So much so that they have not hesitated in the least from passing laws depriving individual citizens of their constitutional right to keep and bear arms – a right founded, not in a government grant, not in a positive law, but in the nature of the basic requirements of a human person living in reality. This class of low-lifes is what got us numerous federal judges who seem to view the U.S. Constitution as an encumbrance to the establishment of a “better order” for human social and civil life. But what this “better order” is supposed to be – that is what is always left perfectly vague.
(3) This is the “mess” Ashcroft inherited. Coming “into the stream” of established “constitutional reality,” given the political circumstances, he swore before the Senate to uphold federal law as he found it.
And I think he has paid his debt to that principle. Consider:
Timeline:
(1) Timothy Joe’s (seemingly deranged) wife Sacha decides to have a fling with her hairdresser (c. 1988) then decides to divorce Timothy Joe. (I gather Sacha is now married to the hairdresser.)
(2) Unsurprisingly, Timothy Joe is not exactly ecstatic about this news.
"No one would care" about what Tim-Joe thinks, except for the fact that sometime in 1988, he had purchased a Beretta pistol – to add to his extensive gun collection of over 25 pieces by then. When he bought said Beretta pistol (which he kept in the desk of his professional medical office) he signed an ATF form which stated, in “mouse type” of some 4- or 5-point size – that he “duly” understood that he may not legally possess a firearm while under a domestic (restraining) order, according to federal law. By signing this form, Emerson – if he ever read the footnote diligently in the first place, and could have been reasonably expected to remember its actual text for very long thereafterwards – seemingly sealed his fate as a citizen of the United States of America – at least that version thereof which seems to be so popular with the “bookmakers” these days.
Must take a breather for now. Will have to get on with the Timeline – and its significance and various ramifications – later.
This snake has got a lot of twists and turns....
Just want to leave you with a thought: From such soap-opera banalities as this do “federal cases” arise every now and then. I feel like I’m presenting “soap opera” here. Tell you what – that’s probably calling it pretty close to home!
Part 2 tomorrow if anyone feels like coming…. Best, bb.