WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court agreed Wednesday to decide whether strict local and state gun control laws violate the Second Amendment, ensuring another high-profile battle over the rights of gun owners.

The court said it will review a lower court ruling that upheld a handgun ban in Chicago. Gun rights supporters challenged gun laws in Chicago and some suburbs immediately following the high court’s decision in June 2008 that struck down a handgun ban in the District of Columbia, a federal enclave.

The new case tests whether last year’s ruling applies as well to local and state laws.

While this is good news for hopeful gun rights activists it raises questions for die hard Constitutionalists. The dirty details of “incorporation” reveals some divisions among us. I’ve previously discussed my own thoughts on “incorporation”, but I can certainly understand the opposing viewpoint. The question came up earlier this year when the states rights argument was utilized by the anti-gun rights Senators in reference to the Thune amendment that would have permitted concealed carry reciprocity between the states.

The conventional wisdom is that the Supreme Court has a very good chance of voting in favor of 2nd Amendment incorporation. Perhaps, the more interesting thing, similar to Heller, will be what the majority opinion says at the conclusion of the case.

Last week McKinley appeared on Fox Business News channel after an editorial was published in the Wall Street Journal about his lawsuit.

The Constitution imposes on the government numerous burdens that we as individuals do not have. For example, I can tell my nephew to keep quiet at the dinner table because I don’t like what he said about grandma, but the First Amendment prevents the government from keeping him silent on a street corner when he criticizes it. Similarly, I can give a gift to some of my nephews and nieces because they are great kids, but I don’t need to give gifts of equal value, since I can spend my money on gifts however I wish. But the government has some burdens here that individuals do not. The Constitution requires that the government treat all persons similarly situated in a similar manner. This is the essence of “Equal Protection,” which the Constitution requires of the states and the federal government.

Napolitano goes on to cite case-law in which the Supreme Court has ruled that states may not deny people the right to an education based on citizenship status, and undoubtedly  “an education is in the same class of social benefits as providing health care.”  He points out that Obama with all his collegiate accolades certainly must know this.

Can anyone really suggest that the Harvard Law School-educated University of Chicago-employed professor of constitutional law did NOT know the law when he contended that the Congress can keep universal health care away from illegals? He must have known that, short of amending the Constitution to re-define “persons” and “Equal Protection”, whatever the Congress makes available by way of social services to the general population, it must make available to all persons.

There is no question that under the present law, Congress simply cannot pick and choose which “persons” to whom it will afford social benefits and to which “persons” it will not. How could the president not have known that?

Read Judge Napolitano’s article at FoxNews.com.

James Madison, who argued that to regulate meant to keep regular, would have shuddered at such circular reasoning. Madison’s understanding was the commonly held one in 1789, since the principle reason for the Constitutional Convention was to establish a central government that would prevent ruinous state-imposed tariffs that favored in-state businesses. It would do so by assuring that commerce between the states was kept “regular.”

The Supreme Court finally came to its senses when it invalidated a congressional ban on illegal guns within 1,000 feet of public schools. In United States v. Lopez (1995), the Court ruled that the Commerce Clause may only be used by Congress to regulate human activity that is truly commercial at its core and that has not traditionally been regulated by the states. The movement of illegal guns from one state to another, the Court ruled, was criminal and not commercial at its core, and school safety has historically been a state function.

Applying these principles to President Barack Obama’s health-care proposal, it’s clear that his plan is unconstitutional at its core. The practice of medicine consists of the delivery of intimate services to the human body. In almost all instances, the delivery of medical services occurs in one place and does not move across interstate lines. One goes to a physician not to engage in commercial activity, as the Framers of the Constitution understood, but to improve one’s health. And the practice of medicine, much like public school safety, has been regulated by states for the past century.

Read the full article here and be sure to tune in to the Judge’s now daily show, Freedom Watch, which runs Monday through Friday. The show is posted each evening at Foxnews.com/FreedomWatch and FreedomWatchOnFox.com. Today’s guests are Ron Paul, Tom Woods, and Walter Block.

In a 47-page judgement, U.S. District Judge Lorena Preska recently ruled that the Federal Reserve, America’s quasi-private central bank, must reply to Bloomberg News’s request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by August 31st.

The senior legal counsel for the FED, Ms. Yvonne Mizusawa, claims that the Fed and U.S. banks would suffer irreparable harm if details of the loan programs were made public.  The claim was initially filed by Bloomberg last year during the public outcry following October’s Banker Bailout.  So far the names of the recipients of over $2 Trillion USD in off-balance sheet transactions are secret.

Clearing House Association LLC, an industry-owned group in New York that processes payments between banks, filed a declaration that accompanied the request for a stay.  Per Bloomberg, Norman Nelson, VP and general counsel for the group, said, “Our members have accessed the discount window with the understanding that the Fed will not disclose information about their borrowing, especially their identity.”  The group consists of the following banks: ABN Amro Holding NV, Bank of America Corp., Bank of New York Mellon Corp., Citigroup Inc., Deutsche Bank AG, HSBC Holdings Plc, JPMorgan Chase Inc., UBS AG, U.S. Bancorp and Wells Fargo & Co.

The FED has the authority to create new money by writing a check on itself, a power that has been described as creating money “out of thin air.”  More details can be learned from this mini-series, “Fractional Reserve Banking in Pictures PART 1/2” and “Yes, Virginia, There Are No Reserve Requirements PART 2/2.”

My comments are simply that the FED may be correct in its assessment of the damage the information’s release may cause, but by no means should this be used as a sanction to hide from the public.  Readers of this column are very familiar with my views on the American banking system, as can be read in “The FDIC is Bankrupt” and “FDIC: “We Aren’t Bankrupt and Everything is A-OK”   This is shaping up to be a very important event and may affect your personal financial future.

August 27, 2009 by Jake Towne

The host Tom Gresham interviewed The Second Amendment Foundation’s Alan Gottlieb about the 9th Circuit Court’s decision to re-hear the case where it decided that the 2nd Amendment is incorporated to the states.

Gottlieb discusses the ramifications of the 9th’s decision. Interestingly enough he suggests it may not be a bad thing and he suspects the Supreme Court will take up the 2nd Amendment Incorporation question regardless of what the 9th does.

Listen to the audio below.

Download audio file (gresham-on-gottleib-incorp-08092009.mp3)

First, here is some audio from Guntalk, a weekly radio show hosted by Tom Gresham of Guntalk.tv, a wonderful resource for all gun-owners.

Gresham reveals the details of the previous incorporation-related cases and a new development that could have a bearing on whether or not the Supreme Court takes up the question. Before it was a no-brainer for the high court to hear the case, but now the 9th Circuit Court appears to be trying their hardest to make it a “brainer”. Listen to Gresham lay it all out in the audio below.

Download audio file (gresham-on-incorp-08022009.mp3)

Originally, the Constitution and Bill of Rights were a set of restraints on the federal government. The states pretty much had free reign on the laws they could enact. The states were governing themselves prior to the ratification of the Constitution. Our Founders (for the most part) tried to avoid trampling on states’ rights to self-govern. The amendments passed following the Civil War, particularly the 14th, set the stage for the trampling to begin.

In the 1890’s a series of Supreme Court decisions (for the first time) held that most of the Bill of Rights was enforceable against state governments. Applying the Bill of Rights to the states is called “incorporation”. The question then becomes should the Bill of Rights be incorporated (or apply) to the states?  (more details on Incorporation).

Upon first learning of the incorporation concept I was confused and had some questions. Didn’t the 10th Amendment make incorporation a non-starter? Then again, if the Bill of Rights was set up to enumerate (and protect) our own natural (or God-given) rights then how could those first 10 amendments not apply to the states? I’ve come to learn that there are at least two parallel universes where these kinds of questions get answered. There is reality where normal people live and work, and there is law where every letter of every word gets analyzed into oblivion.

The Supreme Court has ruled that just about every one of our first 10 amendments applies to the states. The 2nd Amendment is not the only exception but it is in the extreme minority. The Heller decision last year paves the way for the Supreme Court to rule in favor of incorporating the 2nd amendment to the states because of the following wording found in the decision:

“We find that they guarantee the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation. This meaning is strongly confirmed by the historical background of the Second Amendment. We look to this because it has always been widely understood that the Second Amendment, like the First and Fourth Amendments, codified a pre-existing right. The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it ’shall not be infringed.”

Since the court recognizes that the right to bear arms is a pre-existing right, that it existed prior to the Constitution, it appears I found an answer to one of my questions. Yes, the 2nd Amendment does enumerate a natural human right. Of course, we already knew it did. Now it seems the Supreme Court knows it too.

I’m not one to favor letting the federal government stomp all over states’ rights, but given the 10th Amendment, and the plain truth that the Bill of Rights protects rights we already have as human beings, I’m strongly in favor of incorporating the entire Bill of Rights.

The problem is that our federal government ventures outside the scope of the Bill of Rights when wielding power over the states. That list includes conducting raids and arresting non-violent drug offenders in California even when state law says it is legal, coercing the states to abide by the federally mandated 55 MPH speed limit in the mid-1970’s by threatening to hold back federal transportation funds, and many others.

Recently, an amendment to force reciprocity on states to allow concealed carry permit holders to cross state lines legally while carrying failed in the Senate. This is one of those cases that would never even come up had we been following the 2nd Amendment as written. The 2nd Amendment doesn’t distinguish between concealing a gun and carrying it openly. This is why I supported the amendment even though it could be argued that it usurps some states’ rights.

I’m in favor of any law that makes an effort to enforce, in whole or in part, the Constitution of the United States of America. Such efforts give me hope that someday it will be the supreme law of the land once again.

He wrote an excellent policy analysis released by the CATO institute in April called “Bright Lines and Bailouts: To Bail or Not to Bail, That is the Question“. I requested he summarize his actions leading up to the lawsuit, included below.

McKinley writes:

As part of the analysis for Bright Lines and Bailouts, we tried to answer the obvious question, why were these institutions bailed out. So we looked at the public pronouncements of the agencies involved such as the Treasury, Fed and FDIC. Most of these statements focused on the negative consequences that were avoided by taking the bailout route. However, they used vague phrases to describe the likely consequences, such as instability, contagion, fragility, disorderly, adverse, chaotic, disruption and many of those same or similar terms were used over and over again.

So we thought the logical follow-up question was what specific consequences did the Fed and the FDIC foresee from letting them fail outright? We didn’t know whether that was a string of bank failures or investment bank failures or non-financial institution failures or other consequences. We submitted Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests in November and December 2008 to the Fed with regard to Bear Stearns and AIG and to the FDIC with regard to Wachovia and Citigroup. FOIA is intended to assure that government agencies provide access to documents prepared internally and there are select exemptions to the release of certain types of information.

The FDIC was relatively responsive in the sense of focusing in on the precise information we requested and they determined that the information we wanted was in the relevant FDIC board meetings on September 29 (for Wachovia) and November 23 (for Citigroup). However, the board minutes they gave us from these meetings were heavily redacted and in every case where they discussed the negative consequences from failure the information was completely redacted.

The Fed only responded to the extent that they would give dates they expected to get the requested information by, first February 2, 2009 then early June 2009, then June 30, 2009. This led us to conclude that the Fed was not going to provide the information we wanted.

So on July 8, I brought suit against the FDIC and Fed in order to compel them to provide the requested information on the negative consequences that they thought would flow from allowing these large institutions to fail. This seems to be an important question to answer before the Obama Administration makes any changes to the current system of powers and authorities, as they have proposed expansions for both the FDIC’s and the Fed’s authority.

McKinley, showing he truly does care about transparency, has posted many of the documents and correspondence regarding his effort, including the heavily redacted document he received from the FDIC. Read them all here.

Make no mistake that is what Barack Obama wants to do. Whether he actually can accomplish it is another story. For more details on the new case and its history see this excellent article from Reason. Let’s all hope that the Supreme Court takes the case and does the right thing.

Ron Paul is one of the leading advocates of interpreting the 2nd Amendment as written. No surprise there, but does he actually put his money where his mouth is? Of course he does. Here are three gun-related bills he introduced a few weeks ago in the House:

H.R.3022 : To restore the second amendment rights of all Americans. This bill repeals various gun control laws already on the books, including background checks and child safety locks.

H.R.3021 : To repeal the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990 and amendments to that Act.

H.R.3023 : To provide for the safety of United States aviation and the suppression of terrorism. This bill would allow employees of airlines to carry guns in order to protect themselves and their passengers.

I especially like that last one. September 11th may have turned out differently had the pilots been armed. They say that 9/11 changed everything. Well, if pilots were armed it may have changed nothing. No justification for the Iraq war. No justification for the Patriot Act. No justification for warrantless wiretaps. And so on.

Gun control is certainly important but in the age of Obama there seems to be 3 major efforts that liberty lovers need to do everything in our power to stop. All of them directly affect our economy in bad ways. Together they are a recipe for economic armageddon.

1. Cap and Trade: This bill needs to fail in the Senate after already passing in the House. We all know why it’s a bad idea. In fact even some of those who voted for it in the House know it’s a bad idea but voted for it anyway. I wish Ron Paul would name names.
2. Government Health Care: Obama says the government is going to “compete” with the private sector. The market will react by forcing people toward using government health care until all the competitors are gone. Obamacare is really just a migration plan toward complete socialized medicine. How much is it going to cost to provide health care for 130 million more Americans and where will the money come from?
3. Stimulus, Part 2: There’s a renewed effort under way to push for another stimulus program. We haven’t even spent more than 10% of our previous stimulus money and we already want another one? Obama used fear tactics to push his first one through. It had to be done right then, yet months later we’ve only spent 10% of the money. The only effective shovel ready Obama project is the one that is shoveling bullshit from the White House directly into our ears.

Fighting this evil recipe for economic armageddon should be first on your liberty to-do list.

And on that “up” note here are this week’s random thoughts, tweets, and quotes:

• Inside every older person is a younger person wondering what the f**k happened. – @rebelyid on Twitter

• In the U.S. every day should be Independence Day. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty!

• I wonder how many would show up if we had a memorial/funeral for the Constitution. Not “celebrity” enough I guess.

• Screw Al Qaeda, there are at least three other Al’s that need to be stopped, Al Franken, Al Sharpton, and Al Gore.

• If people automatically think that strict adherence to the Constitution is “crazy” then Ron Paul will never be considered sane.

• G8 all agree to attempt to control the weather. Mother Nature laughs.

• I cringe at the word “regulation” more than any other imaginable swear word.

And finally, my favorite, passionate Frederic Bastiat quote:

Away with the whims of governmental administrators, their socialized projects, their centralization, their tariffs, their government schools, their state religions, their free credit, their bank monopolies, their regulations, their restrictions, their equalization by taxation, and their pious moralizations!

and with that… Have a wonderful weekend!

The former president of Merrill Lynch, John Thain, is not happy that he was fired from B of A, even though he left a very wealthy man. He does not refute Ken Lewis’ statements. He only argues that Lewis and the B of A folks knew what Merrill Lynch was worth when they bought it. He may have inadvertently opened a new can of worms for himself: Did he knowingly sell an asset to a public company, which had received a huge federal investment, for $17 billion less than he knew it was worth?

The failure of the president of B of A  to have revealed the risks of the acquisition to shareholders, as the law requires, and his failure to exercise the MAC clause were acts of fraud and directly violate laws enforced by the SEC. As for Paulson and Bernanke, they were participants in a criminal conspiracy to defraud B of A shareholders. We also now know that the Fed in DC and its regional bank in Richmond threatened to fire Ken Lewis and his management team if B of A did not follow through with the Merrill Lynch acquisition for the full $50 billion.  This is EXTORTION. It is the threat to perform a lawful act in order to compel a person to exercise his free will adverse to his own interests or his fiduciary obligations.  Unfortunately for Ken Lewis, “the government made me do it” is not a defense to a criminal indictment. Ken Lewis, Henry Paulson, John Thain, Ben Bernanke, and Jeffrey Lacker, the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, should all be prosecuted for extortion, conspiracy to extort, criminal fraud, and theft of honest services; and they should be imprisoned if convicted.

Today the union leader for the Rochester Private Fire Company ‘won’ a decision by a State judge that ceases the Company’s participation in Rochester City “Cool Sweeps”. In the past, the professional and volunteer firefighters of RPFC would give back to their customers and achieve inexpensive advertising to attract new customers by opening fire hydrants on hot and sticky summer days.

These events were naturally quite popular among children and made them admire the firefighters as role models. Some even showed signs of wanting to become firefighters when they grew up. It’s just another way the RPFC brought value to their community and improved the health of young Rochesterians in the face of dangerous weather.

Last week Judge Jean Doerr ruled that “such tasks represent duties ‘not inherent in the duties of firefighters,’ and therefore constitute an unfair work practice.” Unfair to whom? We’re not quite sure. Chief Firefighter and CEO of RPFC John Caufield said that he is “disgusted” with this decision and believes this ruling to be a public relations disaster.

Caufield told our reporter, “We loved [participating in] the Cool Sweeps. It’s great to be out there in the community. Firefighters have always done more than just fight fires. Pick up any children’s book and you’ll see depictions of us rescuing cats, helping children cross the street and volunteering for Senior Citizens. We don’t find these tasks to be demeaning and we certainly don’t find them to be outside of our duties. In fact, most of us became firefighters to help in any way we could.” Caufield is worried about how the competition might react and has vowed to appeal the decision.

The competition is reacting quickly to the news. The steering committee for West Brighton Fire Service Organization (WBFSO) announced today that they will be opening two new stations on the edge of the city to provide service to residents on the edge of the city. According to a press release WBFSO will be delighted to continue Cool Sweep operations for Rochester residents and will match existing rates in their new service areas.

Other competing fire companies are interested in expanding their coverage as well. The Gates Fire Corporation has announced plans to fast-track construction on a new station in the City. Their CEO announced “We recognize the huge misstep the RPFC has made here and we are reaffirming our commitment to our current customers to put their interests first.”

Although Cool Sweeps are on hold for now, Rochester is not expecting sweltering weather until next month, giving businesses, neighborhood associations and fire companies a window of opportunity to find solutions.

Originally posted on riseuprochester.org

As Scott McPherson of The Future of Freedom Foundation pointed out, similar to the right expressed in our Second Amendment, the English have a right to bear arms as expressed in English Declaration of Rights (1688).  Nonetheless, in 1997, handgun ownership was completely banned.

Given the leftist atmosphere in U.S. politics currently, alongside the wiggle room that Justice Scalia left in the Heller decision (”Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.”), we could be in trouble.  As McPherson puts it,

Don’t bet your life, or your children’s or grandchildren’s freedom, that 50 or a 100 years from now a sufficiently reconstituted and “progressive” Court won’t consider it a “reasonable restriction” of your “not unlimited” right to make firearms so difficult to obtain that armed self-defense becomes a thing of the past.

Government will become more arbitrary, restrained only by good sense and decency — virtues not commonly found in those holding great power. At that point, the American citizen becomes a subject — one step removed from a serf — then a slave. Whatever verbal calisthenics or contortions legislators or judges may employ to convince you otherwise, that was the greatest fear of the Founding Fathers, and the very reason early American statesmen demanded that the right to keep and bear arms “shall not be infringed” — period, end of discussion.

McPherson also explains our natural right to gun ownership in a way I’d not heard it before: we don’t need the 2nd Amendment to deem all federal gun restrictions illegal.

Freedom of speech, of the press, of the right to peacefully assemble, to petition for redress of grievances, to trial by jury, and to be secure from unreasonable search and seizure, and even a statement protecting rights not listed — all are found in the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. Even if there were no Second Amendment, the right to keep and bear arms would fall under the Ninth Amendment’s protection of unenumerated rights, but gun ownership was considered so important that it too was mentioned specifically.

Read all of Scott McPherson’s article here.