Not only did Arianna not recall hiking with Maria Bartiromo and Judy Miller, she doesn’t remember what an Aspen tree looks like apparently.

I’m no botanist, so I could be wrong, but I agree with Mac over at JOM, they’re certainly not “towering” if they’re aspens, and they look a whole lot like evergreens to me, which could explain why they have not gotten the suspicious linked roots memo.

Judy, it’s Scooter. Heh.

John Stossel has an excellent piece discussing gun legislation today.

Guns are dangerous. But myths are dangerous, too. Myths about guns are very dangerous, because they lead to bad laws. And bad laws kill people.

…

I wanted to know why the laws weren’t working, so I asked the experts. “I’m not going in the store to buy no gun,” said one maximum-security inmate in New Jersey. “So, I could care less if they had a background check or not.”

“There’s guns everywhere,” said another inmate. “If you got money, you can get a gun.”

Talking to prisoners about guns emphasizes a few key lessons. First, criminals don’t obey the law. (That’s why we call them “criminals.”) Second, no law can repeal the law of supply and demand. If there’s money to be made selling something, someone will sell it.

U.S. District Judge Harold Murphy says that having to show a photo id to vote amounts to a poll tax.

James Joyner makes the case.

Murphy’s ruling is absurd on its face if the state is giving the cards free. A tax of zero is not a tax!

[snip]

Regardless, preventing fraudulent voting is a perfectly legitimate government interest and the burden placed here is much more minimal than that placed on the right of free expression imposed by McCain-Feingold and other campaign finance reform efforts that have passed constitutional muster.

McGeHee: “Can anyone here say that the plaintiffs have a leg to stand on? I mean, with a straight face?”

KJ:

Want to buy a lottery ticket, a pack of cigs or can of beer? Show ID. This is simply too important to risk on not requiring a photo ID.

Want to vote? Come on in. Your belly button lint will suffice for ID, and any additional requirement is simply unconstitutional.

Brad Warbiany:

What’s really odd here is that Democrats, who have been screaming over the “stolen” election of 2000 are only concerned with how votes are counted, not with who’s allowed to vote. The same people who are so concerned with stolen elections are completely unconcerned with whether or not voting laws can be enforced

Neil Boortz (via Noahware):

Why did Democrats oppose the law in the first place? Because Democrats want people who are not legally entitled to cast votes to go to the polls on election day. Democrats know full well that illegal aliens, felons, non-citizens and others not qualified to vote are far more likely to vote for Democrats than for Republicans. In several states there are proposals to allow non-citizens, and in some cases illegal aliens, to vote in local elections, and in every case those proposals are being put forward by Democrats. Democrats believe that their political survival might well depend on their ability to generate illegal votes on election day.

Instapundit: “You still need [ID] to buy a beer.”

Southern Studies thinks it’s a good thing.

The plaintiffs included the NAACP, which pointed out in a press release some of the flaws in the bill, such as the fact that there was not a single office where the ID cards were for sale in the entire city of Atlanta:

So which is it, does the bill require that a citizen get an ID card which the state currently charges for? Or is it free? Seems to be a mixed story on this one.

The Storm Track has integrated a hurricane tracking map with Google Maps. It’s pretty slick, albeit a bit slow on the loading.

Patricia Bauer, a former WaPo reporter and bureau chief, is speaking up. (Via Deborah over at PLB)

Here’s the intro…

If it’s unacceptable for William Bennett to link abortion even conversationally with a whole class of people (and, of course, it is), why then do we as a society view abortion as justified and unremarkable in the case of another class of people: children with disabilities?

I have struggled with this question almost since our daughter Margaret was born, since she opened her big blue eyes and we got our first inkling that there was a full-fledged person behind them.

Whenever I am out with Margaret, I’m conscious that she represents a group whose ranks are shrinking because of the wide availability of prenatal testing and abortion. I don’t know how many pregnancies are terminated because of prenatal diagnoses of Down syndrome, but some studies estimate 80 to 90 percent.

Imagine. As Margaret bounces through life, especially out here in the land of the perfect body, I see the way people look at her: curious, surprised, sometimes wary, occasionally disapproving or alarmed. I know that most women of childbearing age that we may encounter have judged her and her cohort, and have found their lives to be not worth living.

To them, Margaret falls into the category of avoidable human suffering. At best, a tragic mistake. At worst, a living embodiment of the pro-life movement. Less than human. A drain on society. That someone I love is regarded this way is unspeakably painful to me.

This view is probably particularly pronounced here in blue-state California, but I keep finding it everywhere, from academia on down. At a dinner party not long ago, I was seated next to the director of an Ivy League ethics program. In answer to another guest’s question, he said he believes that prospective parents have a moral obligation to undergo prenatal testing and to terminate their pregnancy to avoid bringing forth a child with a disability, because it was immoral to subject a child to the kind of suffering he or she would have to endure. (When I started to pipe up about our family’s experience, he smiled politely and turned to the lady on his left.)

And…

And here’s one more piece of un-discussable baggage: This question is a small but nonetheless significant part of what’s driving the abortion discussion in this country. I have to think that there are many pro-choicers who, while paying obeisance to the rights of people with disabilities, want at the same time to preserve their right to ensure that no one with disabilities will be born into their own families. The abortion debate is not just about a woman’s right to choose whether to have a baby; it’s also about a woman’s right to choose which baby she wants to have.