ATF says Tennessee's Firearms Freedom Act has no force in law

Story here. Nice. I hope this really picks a fight. Instapundit says the ATF is on solid legal grounds but that it won't play well.

I know the past 70 years of Federal behavior has been to ignore Washington's limitation to regulating only interstate commerce, so Glenn might be talking about precedent, but I've still got to think the state is the one on solid legal ground by both the meaning and letter of the Constitution. It defends Tennessee's intrastate firearms from Federal regulation.

I say, bring back nullification!

Lamar Alexander's proposal on GM ownership

Put the stock certificates in individual taxpayers' names. Interesting. Get it out of the hands of the government and back into private hands. It's certainly better than what's going on now, anyway.

Obama to Tennessee GOP: lay off. Tennesee GOP to Obama: pthllbt!

Well, well. Obama doesn't want his wife to be discussed in the presidential campaign. Yet another item to put into the increasingly long list of things that'll be considered dirty, low-down attacks by his camp. I think if he wants to make discussion of his wife off-limits (in principle, that's a fine idea), then she ought to stop running down our country. She does that while campaigning for him, and she can't help but make herself an issue. This would have been the same with any candidate's wife or husband. If Laura Bush, of all people, or Barbara Bush (the two most nonpolitical First Ladies we've had in decades) had campaigned for their husbands and said that America was a "mean" place, or that seeing people supporting their husbands had made them "really proud" of their country for the first time in their adult lives, then you bet they'd have become political liabilities. You don't run down America and expect to be off-limits as a potential First Lady.

With that in mind, I think the Tennessee GOP's YouTube video welcoming Michelle Obama to Nashville is an excellent way of poking fun at her, and rather gently, too. It doesn't slam her but simply lets her words speak for themselves, interspersed with comments by patriotic Tennesseeans on what they love about America. Very nicely done.

Georgia tries to sieze a piece of Tennessee

Given the ongoing drought across the South, I'd expect a bit of desperation, but this attempt by Georgia to redraw the Tennessee border takes the cake. The idea is that a border survey done in 1818 was inaccurate, putting the border about a mile too far to the south. It's intended to be the 35th parallel.

Nobody would have pursued this, if it weren't for the drought that's struck Georgia (as well as Tennessee, I'll note). If the border were moved northward, part of our Nickajack Lake (outside Chattanooga) would lie within Georgia, giving them access to a bunch more water right there.

Now moving an interstate border around in the early 19th century, when few people lived there, is one thing. But trying to fudge with it now, when lots of people have property running up to the state line, would cause a lot of problems!

I suspect this won't go anywhere. Tennessee's not allow it. The people who live in Tennessee now (but would become Georgians if the border were changed) are absolutely going to refuse to it. And even if we did agree to let it be redrawn, before anything ever got done, the drought would hopefully be over, and the real reason for pursuing the matter would be gone.

Also take a look at the comments of "dajedikidd" (2/8/2008 11:57:36 PM). He seems to know about surveying, and he gives good advice on the fact of errors (you'll always have measurement errors) and why you don't necessarily redraw a line because of them.