Donald Trump And Religious Freedom

Sara Jerde at TPM succinctly summarizes Trump's problem:

During the town hall in New Hampshire, the audience member also said that President Obama was a Muslim. Trump was criticized for not defending Obama and Muslims to the audience member.

CNN "State of the Union" host Jake Tapper asked Trump on Sunday if he had a responsibility to "call out the hatred."

"Well we could be politically correct, if you want, but are you trying to say we don't have a problem," Trump said. "I think everybody would agree. I have friends that are Muslims. They're great people, amazing people. And most Muslims, like most everything, I mean they're fabulous people, but we certainly do have a problem."

Tapper asked him to clarify what the "problem" was.

"Well, you have radicals that are doing things," Trump replied. "It wasn't people from Sweden that blew up the world trade center, Jake."

I'm going to address Trump's problem... he's almost right when he says "we certainly do have a problem," but actually, HE "certainly do[es] have a problem" ... with an excerpt from Wikipedia on Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and his religion:

Jindal was raised in a Hindu household. He converted to Christianity while in Baton Rouge Magnet High School. During his first year at Brown University, he was baptized into the Roman Catholic Church. His family attends weekly Mass at Saint Aloysius Parish in Baton Rouge.

Raised Hindu; converted Christian in a magnet high school; baptized Roman Catholic and attends weekly Mass... now THAT is religious freedom, as protected in the First Amendment to the US Constitution. That Constitution does NOT say an American may practice "any Christian religion," nor indeed does it require an American to practice any religion whatsoever, or to refrain from practicing any religion whatsoever, as long as s/he does not violate ordinary secular laws (e.g., forget any notion you may have of engaging in ritual sacrifice of humans; that's still murder).

So Jindal, a stalwart Republican if there ever was one, gets to practice his religion... indeed, his long series of quite different religions over the years... and that's his right under the First Amendment. But according to Trump's audience member, uncorrected by Trump, a Muslim has no similar right: the audience member is certain that America's problem is specifically Muslims, not specifically terrorists.

The late great Thomas Jefferson would have been very surprised to hear an American citizen eliminate that right for Muslims (Jefferson called them "Mahometan," but demonstrably knew what and who they were), and with equal certainty intended the First Amendment to protect them. I guess Trump, like so many right-wing nutjobs, is only selectively fond of our nation's founders, and he disapproves of Jefferson and his liberality toward a wide variety of religions.

Religious Diversity in Symbols
(UU Flaming Chalice: 2nd row, 3rd symbol)

How do you know Trump, if elected, would not at some point disapprove of your religion, if you happen not to be Christian (as indeed I am not; I'm a Unitarian-Universalist)? What would he do about his disapproval? The question is not far-fetched: a few years back, an appointed elected Republican official in Texas issued an order removing tax-exempt status for Unitarians, whose membership historically included three or four American presidents. The order was quickly rescinded under considerable public pressure, but Texas GOPers would do it again in a millisecond if they had the chance.

What's your religious freedom worth to you? More to the point, what's YOUR religious freedom worth to Trump?

The Vanishing Fourth Amendment In The Post‑Constitutional Age

The Nation offers a survey article on the many ways the Fourth Amendment, the source of Americans' privacy rights, has been eviscerated in the post‑9/11 era, to the point at which practically none of the privacy rights we had in our youth are, in actual practice, protected today.

How does all this surveillance/dragnet/poking into private records work? Well, we don't know, because the mofos who do it won't tell us. Put simply, your secrets acquired by your government are available to them, but they're, ah... secret... from you. Got that?


(H/T Enfant, in comments.)

Supremes: In General, Cops Need A Warrant To Search Digital Content Of Suspect's Cell Phone

This decision is big. In it, a unanimous 9-0 Supreme Court (!!) holds that, with a few exceptions already long established in Fourth Amendment law, if you are carrying a cell phone when police apprehend you and search you, if they want to page through your phone directory, photos, emails, recent text messages, etc., they need a warrant. This recognizes the intrinsic difference between your cell phone and, say, the contents of your car's glove box: a glove box can easily contain a weapon that you could use to harm an arresting officer or a bystander; a cell phone, not so much. (There is of course a distinction between what the phone "contains" physically, e.g., a razor blade, and what the phone "contains" as digitally represented information about you.)

This is a most welcome decision. Until now, a cop searching the digital content of your cell phone could easily turn up more private information about you than s/he could in a similar search of, say, all your paper file cabinets in your home. Searches of paper documents are fairly easy to specify in ways that prevent "fishing expeditions"; more to the point, no one denies the Fourth Amendment applies to them. Searches of the digital content of your iPhone are intrinsically unrestricted by the nature of the device; they render the Fourth Amendment useless if no warrant is required for such a search.

I found this article by Dahlia Lithwick interesting; you may want to read it.

(H/T Enfant de la Haute Mer in comments to the preceding post for alerting me to this decision. I've been busy with housework and not doing my homework.)

AFTERTHOUGHT: emptywheel has other ideas altogether about what the decision may mean, and not all her conclusions point to actual benefits to civil liberties.

How The Global War On Terrorism Has Supplanted The American Bill Of Rights

Via l'Enfant de la Haute Mer in comments here, we have two versions of an excellent article by Peter van Buren, "RIP, The Bill of Rights" (at TomDispatch) and "How the ‘War on Terror’ Became a War on the Constitution" (at The Nation). Van Buren's thesis is that America has lived through two eras and into a third era of governance:

• a monarchy when America was England's colony, 
• a constitutional era after the American Revolution and for approximately two centuries, and 
• a post-constitutional era beginning (as I perceive it) not later than the presidency of Ronald Reagan and coming to fruition in the presidencies of Dick Cheney, er, I mean, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. 

We may call the last era the era of the imperial presidency, or the era of the unitary executive. The first and third eras bear a striking and painful resemblance to each other: unitary rule is always arbitrary rule, no matter what you call the chief executive. The difference is how he (in America it's always been a "he"; see many European examples of a "she" as chief executive) is chosen: a kingship is an hereditary position with the initial king allegedly chosen by God; a presidency is not hereditary but rather, um, er, not really elected by the people either, unless you consider monetary units as ballot-weighting units. Once an American president or a constitutional monarch takes office, the differences are few.

Van Buren has done such a fine job of exploring the particulars of America's government and its relationship (if any) to democracy that I hardly need repeat his work... you may productively give both his versions a good read.

‘Inadvertence’

The federal government's song-and-dance to avoid any public scrutiny of the charges in a terrorism case in Chicago has danced right outside the pale... and the appeals court is having none of it. Kevin Gosztola of FDL:

A federal appeals court in Chicago ordered a redo of an oral argument in a case where the government filed an appeal against a defendant’s access to secret surveillance records.

Adel Daoud, a young Muslim who was arrested outside a Chicago bar in an undercover FBI sting operation, is charged with “attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction” and “attempting to destroy a building by means of an explosive.” A district court judge granted his defense team access to “foreign surveillance materials” under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which was unprecedented.

On June 4, the 7th Circuit US Court of Appeals held argument on the government’s case for why the district court’s ruling should be reversed. The “public argument” part of the hearing was not recorded.

“By inadvertence, the device that makes a sound recording or the oral arguments of our cases was not turned on for the public argument in this case on Wednesday,” according to a court order issued on June 6. The court scheduled a new argument for June 9.

A do-over was ordered to dispel any perception of corruption.

...

"By inadvertence"? Awwww, gimme a break! If this was not a deliberate attempt to disrupt "a speedy and public trial, I'll eat my Uncle Sam red-white-'n'-blue hat. Clearly there is a policy... a secret policy... that no terrorism trial that comes before the FISA court or any appeal of such a trial will ever allow even the possibility of acquittal, even if that means running a drumhead trial in which the defendant's rights are not merely denied but just plain not even considered.

To repeat myself: this is not the United States of America I grew up in. After W.W.II, even the worst Nazis were subjected to fair trials in international courts. Now, the US will not even protect a terrorism defendant's constitutionally explicitly enumerated due process rights. The entire Obama administration should be ashamed of itself! Ashamed!

Marcy Wheeler Offers More Analysis Of The PCLOB Report

Here. emptywheel's assessment begins thus:

PCLOB tells us that the FISA Court approved a new automated query system (versions appear to have been in development for years, and it replaced the automated alert system from 2009) in late 2012 that permitted all the 3-degree contact chains off all RAS-approved identifiers to be dumped into the corporate store at once where they can be combined with data collected under other authorities (presumably including both EO 12333 and FAA) for further analysis.

[extended quote from the PCLOB report; please read at emptywheel's site at the link above]

...

On December 27, 2012, Jeff Merkley gave a speech in support of his amendment to the FISA Amendments Act that would push to make FISC decisions public. It referenced both the backdoor loophole (which John Bates extended to NSA and CIA in 2011, was implemented in 2012, and affirmed by the Senate Intelligence Committee in June 2012) and the language underlying the phone dragnet. Merkley suggested the government might use these secret interpretations to conduct wide open spying on Americans.

[another extended quote from Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR).]

...

The point, in brief, is that we are being forced to live under a secret law, and that secret law may be in direct conflict with our constitutional rights in the powers it secretly grants to the intelligence agencies. Please note how Sen. Merkley is compelled to tiptoe around the whole issue by stating things as conditionals because he is probably prohibited from stating them outright in a public forum.

Sen. Jeff Merkley

This is not the America I grew up in. That America at least once rejected firmly the secret spying on American citizens undertaken by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI for purposes that were never freely debated by Congress and authorized by the President, purposes whose constitutionality was highly questionable at best. Nearly five decades later, here we are again: different intelligence agency; vastly advanced technology... but the same old bullshit subverting the same rights and liberties of the American people. What is it going to take to put a stop to the American surveillance state? Will I... will any of us... live to see the day it is shut down for good?

---

AFTERTHOUGHT: To the best of my knowledge, I am no relation to Judge John Deacon Bates, or indeed to any other George W. Bush appointee.

Chris Hedges On 'The Criminalization Of Journalism'

Jaisal Noor, producer for The Real Network News, interviews the always plain-spoken Chris Hedges. I started to say "the indefatigable Chris Hedges," but honestly, Hedges looks as tired as I feel these days. It must be a terrible burden that he carries, largely on our behalf and for our education. Be that as it may, Hedges addresses the detention... face it, the criminal arrest... of David Miranda by British officials at London's Heathrow Airport, charging him with "espionage" and "terrorism" — i.e., journalism embarrassing to officialdom on both sides of the Atlantic. The interview is published both as a video and in print; it is worth viewing both forms. A couple of quotations:

...

NOOR: So, Chris, let's start off by getting your response to the British government accusing David Miranda, the partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald, who often collaborates with Greenwald, of, quote, espionage and terrorism and saying those were some of the reasons why they held him for hours on end at Heathrow without letting him speak to his lawyer or anyone else.

HEDGES: Well, they didn't just told him. They seized all of his electronic equipment--his computer, his phone--because they were looking for some of the files that [Miranda's partner Glenn] Greenwald has been using to publish his stories that were leaked by Edward Snowden. And this is just part of the criminalization of journalism which has taken place not only within the United States but within countries like Great Britain as well.

NOOR: Britain doesn't have the same safeguards for journalists as places like the U.S. do. ...

HEDGES: Well, there aren't any safeguards left within the United States as well. ... the security and surveillance state has the phone--all of the electronic communications of every journalist in this country. They've used the Espionage Act aggressively seven times, the last time being against Snowden, to make sure nobody does talk to the press to expose the inner workings of power.

So we once had, at least legally, more protection as journalists than were provided to journalists in Great Britain. But all of it's gone up in smoke, both here and there. ...

NOOR: Now, the NSA and its defenders, they cite 54 terrorist plots they have been able to supposedly thwart due to this massive spying. But a recent report by ProPublica found that the NSA was only able to provide evidence in four of those cases. Why do you think the NSA is not providing additional evidence for those remaining 50 cases?

HEDGES: Well, because they're lying. ...

What's interesting is that a lot of times when they lie, they get caught because of courageous whistleblowers like Snowden who expose their [lies]. ...

...

Please read and/or watch the rest. The interview is short and to the point.

A mere few years ago I began to wonder whether the United States could survive the beating it has taken at the hands of Americans who truly do not care for its founding principles as long as they control the nation's power... Dick Cheney, the PNAC gang, Karl Rove, etc. I don't wonder anymore: in the words of Leonard Cohen, "The war is over. The good guys lost." The Bill of Rights... especially the First Amendment's freedom of speech and press... is nothing but pen-scratchings on parchment; there is no substance to those freedoms in the era of presidents George W. Bush Dick Cheney and Barack Obama. To parody the title of another Hedges book, war is a farce that gives the U.S. beatings.

It was great while it lasted. I feel I owe an apology to Thomas Jefferson and to my father, both of whom did their damnedest to create and then preserve a nation where things were done right — thank goodness neither of them survived to see what my generation has done to it.

---

AFTERTHOUGHT: A couple of days ago I began reading Jeremy Scahill's new book, Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield. I have not read Scahill's other book, but I am reminded by his first chapter of Jane Mayer's The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals, a book which I went out and bought (used, of course) *after* I finished reading the library copy. One difference: the Scahill book is immense; you could use it to exercise your arms, pumping pulp instead of pumping iron. But the content is just as depressing as Mayer's excellent work. I may not be able to finish it...

You Knew This Would Happen Eventually: DoJ To Use Data From Warrantless Surveillance In Criminal Case

Warrantless searches aren't just for alleged terrorists anymore. Jeralyn of TalkLeft has the details from a New York Times article:

... the government intends to offer into evidence or otherwise use or disclose in proceedings in the above-captioned matter information obtained or derived from acquisition of foreign intelligence information conducted pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, as amended, 50 U.S.C. 1881a.

It's a sad day for anyone who ever depended on the Fourth Amendment to keep the government's nose out of their ordinary noncriminal business.

UPDATE: via the NYT article, it is, after all, a terrorism case: the charge is "providing material support to the Islamic Jihad Union, a designated terrorist organization based in Uzbekistan." It is still significant because the DoJ has only just begun a new policy of informing defendants if a link in the chain of evidence against them was obtained by surveillance without a warrant, in this case, wiretapping the defendant's phone calls. Damned nice of them to tell them, isn't it?

Victory For Privacy: Federal Appeals Court Rules Police May Not Conduct GPS Searches Without Warrant

Kevin Gosztola at FDL:

A federal appeals court has ruled that police must obtain a warrant in a case involving a “slap-on” GPS tracking device, where defendants had argued they were victims of searches that violated their privacy rights.

The court found the attachment of a GPS tracking device to a defendant’s van was not excused by the argument that law enforcement were acting in “good faith.” All evidence obtained from the search was ordered to be suppressed in the case.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) reacted to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision. “Today’s decision is a victory for all Americans because it ensures that the police cannot use powerful tracking technology without court supervision and a good reason to believe it will turn up evidence of wrongdoing,” ACLU staff attorney Catherine Crump said.

...

It's about time. Warrantless searches, under Bush Junior and then under Obama, have become almost the rule rather than the exception, to the point at which the Fourth Amendment almost doesn't exist anymore. Perhaps this will breathe new life into it, and discourage at least some cops from doing whatever they damned well please irrespective of the Bill of Rights.

Extraordinary Rendition: It's Not Just A Bush-Cheney Thing

Kevin Gosztola of FDL, yesterday:

Rendition of Libyan Terror Suspect: What If Abu Anas al-Liby Had Nothing to Do With the Embassy Bombings?

By: Kevin Gosztola Monday October 14, 2013 8:11 pm

A Libyan terror suspect kidnapped from Libya in a raid by US special forces on October 5 was transferred from the naval ship, where he was being detained and interrogated, into “law enforcement custody” over the weekend.

The Justice Department indicated in a press release that he was “brought directly to the Southern District of New York, where he has been under indictment for more than a decade.” He was expected to be brought before a judge on October 15.

Al-Liby is suspected of being involved in the bombings of US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

Last week, a chief federal public defender, David E. Patton, according to the Los Angeles Times, had pressed a federal judge to order that he be “brought to court immediately,” as he was aboard a ship being interrogated by the High Value Detainee Interrogation Group, which is a special task force of personnel from the Pentagon, FBI, CIA and other agencies. He had not been read Miranda rights, which he and other terror suspects have a right to be read if they are being prosecuted under US law. But a federal judge would not issue such an order and would not appoint a defense lawyer to represent him either.

A more critical issue is that al-Liby, whose real name is Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, may not be the dangerous al Qaeda terrorist the United States government believes he happens to be.

...

Please read the rest of Gosztola's post. It is a case study in our government's unconstitutional (indeed un-American) actions in extraordinary rendition cases.

I have read the Bill of Rights many times. I skimmed it one more time before writing this post. And with the possible exception of the 10^th Amendment (and it's hard to tell on that one), none of the enumerated rights apply only to US citizens. In particular, in this case, foreigners retain judicial due process rights as surely as citizens.

In spite of this, we see extraordinary rendition inflicted not merely by the admittedly evil George W. Bush and Dick Cheney but also by the allegedly more moderate Barack Obama. Refusing to read Miranda rights as a protection of due process? moderate? refusing to appoint a defense attorney? moderate? Not hardly! Our nation's founders are surely spinning in their graves.

And remember, this is process for a man who appears (to some people at least) to be trying to cooperate with the government... to be sure, acting in his own best interest (that's his right), and possibly having been a terrorist (that's to be determined by trial, not merely assumed without trial), but apparently trying to cooperate.

If our courts begin abducting people who are trying to cooperate (perhaps to prevent their testimony?), if our courts begin denying due process rights (guaranteed by our Constitution not just to citizens, but to people in general when under US jurisdiction), what possible confidence can we have that they will not turn the same extreme measures against American citizens when they find it convenient? And... what a time to decide to do this, while most of us are distracted by the government shutdown!

Niemöller nailed it in 1946, though he was speaking about German Nazis... in one variant, "First they came for the Jews..." Well, now they're coming for the alleged terrorists, and I'm damned if I will remain silent. Even a terrorist deserves a fair trial. Even a terrorist deserves a defense attorney.

UPDATE: from an AP article:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Four years after his failed effort to bring the 9/11 mastermind to New York for trial, President Barack Obama has reinstated the federal courthouse as America's preferred venue for prosecuting suspected terrorists.

His administration has done so by quietly securing conviction after conviction in the civilian judicial system. Meanwhile at Guantanamo Bay, admitted 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's case moves at a snail's pace.

...

Right. It's amazing how many convictions you can obtain if you refuse to appoint a defense attorney...

Lather Reince, Repeat: Priebus Claims IRS's Lois Lerner Must Be Guilty Of Something, Since She Invoked The Fifth Amendment

Tom Kludt of TPM:

...

Let's play anagrams!

During an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," [RNC Chair Reince] Priebus said that pleading the fifth "implies there are some criminal aspects" of the IRS scandal. John Heileman, a writer for New York Magazine who was sitting on the show's panel, cried foul at that characterization.

"But you don't need to plead the fifth if you've done nothing wrong," Priebus said.

"That's not true. That's not what the Fifth Amendment says," Heileman retorted.

Priebus ultimately toned down his interpretation of Lerner's action, saying it "raises questions." Heileman scoffed at the chairman's suddenly vague assessment of the situation.

As I've often stated, the entire GOP is utterly and willfully clueless about even the most basic principles embedded in the Bill of Rights.

Lerner takes oath

Google "lois lerner fifth amendment" and you'll notice immediately that most opinions on whether Lerner waived her right to invoke the Fifth Amendment split along political lines: for example, ABC's political blog The Note strongly implies she waived. But even the WSJ Law Blog concedes that, though ill-advised, Lerner's broad-brush denial of any illegal action on her part is unlikely to qualify as testimony under the Fifth Amendment.

Moreover, Committee Chairtroll Issa engaged in a bit of... let's be honest... entrapment of Lerner. From the linked ABC post:

...

Issa

... Rep. Darrell Issa, the Republican chairman of the committee, said he had not seen the document and asked Lerner to authenticate her answers.

The document was passed [to] Lerner, who put on her glasses to skim through it.

“This appears to be my response,” she said.

“So it’s your testimony?” Issa of California asked. “As far as your recollection, that is your response?”

“That’s correct,” Lerner answered.

Republicans on the committee quickly interjected, challenging that Lerner gave up her right to remain silent and should be compelled to answer questions from members.

...

If this were a fair trial in a court of law, and Issa were the judge, Issa's use of the word "testimony" alone would be enough to invalidate a claim of waiver of Fifth Amendment rights: using the word is clearly a form of entrapment. But a congressional committee is not a court, and Issa is an asshole not a judge. In any case, if Lerner is now forced to testify after a clear attempt to invoke her right to refuse testimony, no one in America will ever trust the protection of the Fifth Amendment again. And Priebus, also an asshole not a judge, will have the power to declare guilt in the face of an invocation of the Fifth Amendment. What a great day that would be for American legal tradition!

Res Miranda

Source: Wikipedia

The phrase usually means "a wondrous thing," and is familiar to me from its appearance in a glorious English Christmas carol from about 1420, There Is No Rose of Swich Vertu (i.e., in our English, Such Virtue). Apparently there are no musicologists or Mary-worshippers in the Obama administration's DoJ, and in cases of alleged terrorism, they have decided it is unnecessary to give Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev his Miranda warning, apprising him of his rights before questioning him about his alleged crimes.

This refusal violates even the Obama administration's own policy, first put forward in 2009 or 2010 in two cases of alleged terrorism, that such refusal to Miranda-ize (yes, "Miranda" has been verbed; no, I didn't do it first, because "verbing weirds language") is valid only if authorities are confronted with an ongoing threat to public safety. However horrific the Boston bombings were, it is difficult to make the case that the danger to the public is ongoing: one suspect is dead, the other is in custody, and no more bombs have been found.

For a presidential administration or its Justice Department, there is no more effective way to involve the ACLU promptly in a legal case than to violate, deliberately and publicly, the findings of the US Supreme Court. In this instance, the reference is to the 1966 case Miranda v. Arizona, and the issue at stake is a defendant's Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination:

... The person in custody must, prior to interrogation, be clearly informed that they have the right to remain silent, and that anything the person says will be used against that person in court; the person must be clearly informed that they have the right to consult with an attorney and to have that attorney present during questioning, and that, if they are indigent, an attorney will be provided at no cost to represent them.

And indeed the ACLU is jumping right in. From the above-linked TPM article:

The American Civil Liberties Union said the public safety exemption is invalid in this case. “Every criminal defendant is entitled to be read Miranda rights,” said ACLU director Anthony Romero. “The public safety exception should be read narrowly. It applies only when there is a continued threat to public safety and is not an open-ended exception to the Miranda rule.”

It doesn't get much more straightforward than that.

We'll see what happens, but I have a bad feeling that this could well jeopardize the prosecution of a defendant who might otherwise be nailed to the wall without much trouble.

(Damn. The man still looks like a child to me. I know; I know: children don't build and deploy bombs...)

Free 'States', Slave Patrols And The Second Amendment

Thom Hartmann, at Truthout, writes "The Second Amendment was Ratified to Preserve Slavery," and the evidence he presents appears to validate that statement. The amendment's use of "free State" instead of "free Country" (our Founders knew the difference) was inserted to obtain the vote of Virginia, a slave state, and to preserve Virginia's slave patrol, the militia of which the amendment speaks. Hartmann reminds us in that context that "[f]ounders Patrick Henry, George Mason, and James Madison were totally clear on that... and we all should be too." Read the rest of his documentation: it appears very likely to me that "free State[s]" rather than a "free Country" are what the 2^nd Amendment is really about, and that that "well-regulated Militia" referred to what was otherwise known as a "slave patrol." In those terms, it is not as noble an aim as it might seem under another interpretation.

If the 2^nd Amendment was inserted, not as a device to defend the nation, but rather as a means to uphold slavery in the slave states, then that amendment should have been abolished, or at least reinterpreted, when the 13^th and 14^th Amendments were ratified. Somehow that never happened, but the clear intent of those two amendments is the abolition of slavery in America... so it must happen. It is time to remove the ambiguity and interpret the 2^nd Amendment properly as an amendment supporting slavery... an amendment invalidated by the 13^th and 14^th Amendments.

This is going to put a few people's drawers in a knot...

(H/T Michael Moore. Article linked above is offsite, not on MichaelMoore.com.)

AFTERTHOUGHT: I find it interesting that so many of the commenters on the Hartmann thread seem unwilling to talk about guns, gun rights and slavery at all. Many of them are seeking a particular outcome, as have many Americans in general for over a century and a half. Antonin Scalia notwithstanding, we have a question of constitutional intent here, not a matter to be resolved by parsing constitutional text (at least not in today's English), and the question, to my thinking, must be resolved based on whether the 2^nd Amendment is compatible with the institution of slavery, which was abolished in the 13^th and 14^th Amendments. I'm not saying it's simple, but I am saying it is an issue of gun rights in the context of the abolition of slavery... and that if Hartmann is right, the 2^nd Amendment is in peril and has been so since ratification of the 13^th and 14^th Amendments. YMMV.