Question for Republicans: Donald Trump??

A question for Republicans just now.

How?

How in the name of all that is good and sane and intelligent and true is Donald J. Trump your candidate?

How is he your presidential candidate?

The highest office in the nation. Easily, arguably the most powerful position on the planet, given our nation's economy, relative to the rest of the world alone, but also given that he would be Commander in Chief of the most powerful, expensive, weapons-laden military force in the world?

How?

Let's go over his traits.

He's sexist.

Former Donald Trump Executive: 

'He's a Supreme Sexist'

Donald Trump’s Unconscious, Unending Sexism

He's misogynist.

Donald Trump has one core philosophy: 

misogyny

He's deeply, deeply racist.

Here Are 13 Examples Of Donald Trump 

Being Racist

He's homophobic.

Trump courts the homophobes

He's a simpleton, frankly.

Donald Trump speaks like a sixth-grader

Donald Trump Talks Like a Third-Grader

Donald Trump's approach to terrorism 

is simplistic — and seductive

The North Face Just Destroyed Trump's 

Simplistic Opinion On Jobs

He's wrong about any number of topics, both national and international.

Donald Trump gets a basic fact wrong about black Americans

Everything Donald Trump Says About Syria 

Is Crazy, Wrong, or Both

He has courted and even praised Russia's leader, Vladimir Putin.

Donald Trump lavishes praise on 'leader' 

Vladimir Putin

He's a widely known and repeated liar, publicly and privately.

Donald Trump's 'Big Liar' Technique

The weekend America's newspapers 

called Donald Trump a liar

With all his bankruptcies--is it 4 or 6?--he's a horrible businessman. And that's supposed to be one of his BEST traits.

Donald Trump's Many Business Failures, 

Explained

Trump, the Bad, Bad Businessman

And geez, he's even fighting you all. He's fighting what is supposed to be his own political party.

Donald Trump Attacks Paul Ryan and 'Disloyal Republicans'

Donald Trump launches war on Paul Ryan, slams Republican Party

And he's been doing it through the entire campaign. This next link is from back in May of this year.

Donald Trump keeps attacking fellow 

Republicans

And with all that, rather understandably, there are plenty, plenty of you who cannot and do not support Mr. Trump, your own candidate.

More Than 160 Republican Leaders Don't 

Support Donald Trump

So much of him and his candidacy is unparalleled, unprecedented in the history of our nation, it's so bad and apparent.

It's one thing if you all did this to yourselves but you're proposing to do this, to unleash him, on the rest of us, on the entire nation. Heck you're proposing unleashing this deeply dangerous man on the world.

Truth be told, at this point, even given all the above, I could go on about him, about Trump and what other, additional, ugly, negative traits he has but for now, here, I'll stop with these.

About what other candidate for the presidency of our nation could this have ever been said? One of them, maybe but all of them? There's no one, no one. Go all the way through our history, no presidential candidate has ever been this phenomenally bad and/or so unfit for this office.  Again, no one.  Warren G. Harding, bad as he turned out to be wasn't this bad.

So I ask you Republicans---how in the love of God and nation and all that is good is this your candidate for the presidency of our United States?  We all know how we got here but how could you let this happen? And a lot of you aren't even apologetic about it. A lot of you are STILL supporting this man.

We know you've all been "party firsters", putting the success of your political party ahead of the nation's best interests and for years. It's obvious. For the last nearly 8 years, you've obstructed anything and everything our twice-elected President has put forward, nation and people be damned, because you wanted your party to somehow "come out on top." Sure. That's obvious.

But none of us thought you would go this far or this low, to even propose, let alone try to elect someone of Donald Trump's character and low abilities to the highest office in our nation.

No one.  We no way thought you would go this far. Heck Dan Quayle, Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney and George W. Bush weren't this bad.  (Well, truth be told, Sarah Palin was this bad but she was only the Vice Presidential candidate and we knew those two didn't have a chance).

So please, now, at this point, we're only 28 days away from this election, again, for the love of God, will you please, please all come back from the brink and somehow, somehow fix this? Take Trump off your ticket, put in someone else, admit defeat, give it up, lose this election and let's all move on. It's for even your own good but especially for the good of the nation.

And yes, we know you won't do it but we're this desperate. We thought we'd ask, anyway.

So here's a thought. Once Mr. Trump is beaten so badly, so thoroughly this November 8 in the polls, once he and all of you are cast out (and frankly disgraced, once you see the votes against him and you), as you most surely will be, won't you all join us back in the world of sanity and, again, intelligence? Won't you, once again, work for the better of the entire nation and not just your political party? Please? You used to compromise and work together with others, with (shudder), Democrats.

It would be good for all the people, sure, but heck, it would even be good for you, good for your party, good for your brand. You used to be for Unions and higher wages and and the middle- and lower-classes and Social Security and just, all around, the good and growth and health of ALL the people, not just the already-wealthy and corporations.

Won't you join us?

Please?

We Need To Be Better Than This, America

Since when do we tolerate and take seriously a presidential candidate for whom articles can be written about how many insults they've thrown out?

This, from The New York Times today:

Donald Trump's Twitter Insults: The Complete List (So Far)

How and why did we lower our standards to this point?

More importantly, can't we be smarter than this?

Shouldn't we?

And as if that isn't bad enough, from the front-runner in the polls from the Right Wing and Republican Party, there's also this:

The GOP Candidates Are Shockingly 

Uninformed About Foreign Policy

This is no way to run a nation, folks.

Links:  Tucker Carlson reveals incredibly vulgar first encounter with Donald Trump

Murdoch: GOPers Must Be Looking Forward to Debate ‘Without Donald Getting All Attention’

RNC Chair: ‘It Doesn’t Matter’ if Trump Sits Out Debate

Biden Tells Dems the GOP Presidential Field Is ‘A Gift from the Lord’

Saudi Billionaire Responds to Trump’s Photoshopped Attack: ‘I Bailed You Out Twice’

Links:  Trump's most notable insults

10 times Donald Trump insulted groups this fall

All the people Trump has insulted in September so far

All the people Donald Trump insulted in 2015

Donald Trump Finds New City to Insult: Brussels 

Quote of the day--on our nation's current state

From Paul Krugman's latest post in The New York Times :

1.  “Madness of the GOP is the central issue of our time”

"In the short run the point is that Republican leaders are about to reap the whirlwind, because they haven’t had the courage to tell the base that Obamacare is here to stay, that the sequester is in fact intolerable, and that in general they have at least for now lost the war over the shape of American society. As a result, we’re looking at many drama-filled months, with a high probability of government shutdowns and even debt defaults.

Over the longer run the point is that one of America’s two major political parties has basically gone off the deep end; policy content aside, a sane party doesn’t hold dozens of votes declaring its intention to repeal a law that everyone knows will stay on the books regardless. And since that party continues to hold substantial blocking power, we are looking at a country that’s increasingly ungovernable."

Interesting, fun, sad, true article on Google and Kansas City right now

All that potential, right?

The Google Fiber Space showroom in Kansas City, Mo.*

Courtesy of Google

What Do You Do With the World's Fastest Internet Service?

"...Google’s gigabit initiative, called Google Fiber, has sparked a round of questions across the tech industry. Is Google looking to become an Internet service provider? Does it simply want to spur other ISPs into providing faster service? And why wire Kansas City rather than, say, Silicon Valley or New York? And, finally, why gigabit Internet—what does Google expect people to do with the world’s fastest broadband service?

In this piece, I’ll focus on the last two questions: What has it been like for the people of Kansas City to live and work with the world’s fastest Internet?"

The sad and true part:

To be sure, this was pretty cool. And yet it wasn’t mind-blowing. Indeed, it felt a little underwhelming. After all, who needs to play five HD videos at the same time? If that’s Google’s best demo of its superfast service, what does it suggest about what regular people will do with it? What’s more, the demo didn’t even begin to approach the limits of Google Fiber—with five HD videos playing simultaneously there were still hundreds of megabits left on the pipe. When I got back home a few days later, I replicated the same test on my home broadband line and experienced only a few hiccups.

And this gets to the fundamental problem with Google Fiber: It’s totally awesome, and totally unnecessary. During my time in Kansas City, I spoke to several local businesspeople, aspiring startup founders, and a few city boosters. They were all thrilled that Google had come to town, and the few who’d gotten access to the Google pipe said they really loved it. But I couldn’t find a single person who’d found a way to use Google Fiber to anywhere near its potential—or even a half or quarter of what it can do. It was even difficult to find people who could fully utilize Google Fiber in their imaginations. As hard as people tried, few could even think up ways to do something truly amazing with the world’s fastest Internet.

The fun, interesting, even good part, especially for Kansas City since we got some good press here:

But I also saw small signs that people are beginning to think about ways to get this cycle rolling. Unbeknownst to most techies in Silicon Valley, Kansas City has a thriving startup scene, and a few local entrepreneurs have been trying to attract smart people to the city to make use of Google Fiber. Ben Barreth, a Web developer, recently purchased a modest house in one of the first neighborhoods to be wired with Fiber. He calls it the “Home for Hackers,” and he’s letting smart techie types from outside the city live in the house rent-free for three months.

It's a good and even important read, even for the internet world, more broadly, let alone for us Kansas Citians.

What it tells us, ultimately, is that we need to come up with reasons and ways to use this technology.

We need to get busy, people. This technical advantage we have won't last long.

Link: https://www.facebook.com/farhad.manjoo

The latest on the Pope--and possible scandal

From Slate magazine on an Italian media source:

You know what the sudden, surprising, once-every-700-years story of the pope’s resignation needed? What every dramatic story line does: a gay blackmail twist. And so the Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica this week reports on a very tangled web that claims to have brought down a pope, under the irresistible headline “Sex and career, blackmail in the Vatican: Behind the resignation of Benedict XVI.” It’s like “Pretty Little Liars” for octogenarians.

The paper says that Benedict made his decision to step down on Dec. 17, just one day after he received a revealing 300-page dossier from a trio of elderly cardinals. He’d assigned them to investigate last year’s scandal involving a slew of leaked confidential Vatican documents and letters that purported to show corruption and internal conflict within the Holy See.  The “Vatileaks” mess was just another of the embarrassments the church has faced during Benedict’s reign — including a money laundering investigation and record-breaking settlements in sex abuse lawsuits. But the leaks were a particularly personal humiliation to the pontiff — the documents in question had allegedly been stolen by his own butler Paolo Gabriele. Gabriele later told investigators he released the documents “for the good of the Church.” “I was sure that a shock, perhaps by using the media, could be a healthy thing to bring the Church back on the right track,” he explained in his earnest pretrial testimony.

Now, La Repubblica says that the trio of cardinals, who’ve been looking into the matter since last year, revealed to the pope a faction within the Vatican “united by sexual orientation” that had been subject to “external influence” of a “worldly nature.” (The paper helpfully explains this is Vatican-speak for blackmail.) A source it says is close to the cardinals who prepared the report told La Repubblica, with equal poetic obscurity, “Everything revolves around the non-observance of the sixth and seventh commandments.”

The Vatican has neither confirmed nor denied the newspaper story, though skeptics in the more pro-Benedict camp have been quick to question it. Writing in the Irish Independent, Gerard O’Connell said the conspiracy accusations made “Dan Brown look like an amateur” – even while acknowledging that rumors of “the existence of a gay lobby and blackmail” have swirled around the Vatican for years.

It just keeps getting juicier and juicier.

The Pope is lucky, that's for sure.  All he'll have to do is stay within the marble mansion that is the Vatican and no government, authorities or police should be able to touch him.

It will interesting to see if the world ever really learns the truth and if so, the sooner the better.

More links:  Money, Sex Scandal May Be Linked to Pope's Resignation

Papal resignation linked to inquiry into 'Vatican gay officials'

 

Vatican scandal cited in Pope resignation

 

Italian Paper: Benedict Quit Amid Cardinal Scandal

Big, ugly, inefficient government?

Or people working together?

From Slate.com:

"Massachusetts tops the nation in fourth and eighth grade education, has the lowest child and teen mortality rates, the lowest percentage of uninsured residents, and the second-highest per capita personal income in the country.

Maybe the liberals there are doing something right?"

Link: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/05/massachusetts_is_the_best_state_in_the_union_.single.html

One more group Republicans are pushing away

The Republicans add yet one more group to their long list of people who shouldn't belong to the group and who, of course, shouldn't vote for or with them. Up to now it's been Blacks, Hispanics and gays, now they add women. Well, women who are for their own rights and reproductive rights, anyway. God bless their pointy little heads. Links: http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/02/virginia_ultrasound_law_women_who_want_an_abortion_will_be_forcibly_penetrated_for_no_medical_reason.html; http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/02/how-the-gop-went-back-to-the-1950s-in-just-one-day.php

I'm so old...

...I remember all of these: 10 Brand Names Gone, But Not Forgotten Link: http://www.mainstreet.com/article/smart-spending/10-brand-names-gone-not-forgotten?obref=obinsite

Paul Krugman: so right on 9/11

Writing this week on--what else?--the 9/11 anniversary, Nobel Prize-winning economist, writer, columnist and teacher Paul Krugman wrote the following in The New York Times: "What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful," he wrote. "The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons." As I said, he couldn't be more right on this. Trouble is, people are attacking him for it and the column. When you combine the fact that, as I've written here before, that George W. Bush was warned about just such an attack more than a month earlier in a Presidential Daily Brief and he totally, utterly and completely shirked his duties and responsibilities by ignoring it, on top of his making political hay on this and using it to unilaterally and unprovokedly attack Iraq, which had nothing to do with this at all, it merely further proves Mr. Krugman to be absolutely correct in his brief statement. Links: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/the-years-of-shame/; http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2011/09/12/get_krugman_.html?wpisrc=twitter_socialflow

Universal health care first in Massachussetts, now Vermont

Like it or not now, Mitt Romney did the right thing, years ago, as governor of Massachussetts, when he helped push through and pass a universal health care-type structure in that state.

Good for him.

Now all he has to do is live it down in his attempt to become our next president.

So first Massachussetts, and now Vermont is getting it, too:

Green Mountain Dreams

The not-so-secret plan to bring Canadian-style health care into America via Vermont

By David Weigel  Wednesday, May 11, 2011
The people who want America to adopt a single-payer health care system like to tell a story. It's about how universal care had a demo in one of Canada's less populous provinces, where it proved so popular and successful that the rest of the country couldn't help but copy it. "Saskatchewan was the first province in Canada to get universal health care," said Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., outside Capitol Hill on Tuesday. "The most beloved Canadian is Tommy Douglas, who started it."In the early 1960s, under Premier Tommy Douglas, the rural Canadian province introduced something like Medicare that covered everyone. Panic and protests ensued. The province had to import doctors temporarily to cover for the ones who'd gone on strike. But the plan worked. It was popular. By the end of the decade, all of Canada had the plan. And in 2004 Douglas was named the "greatest Canadian" in a poll, surging past Wayne Gretzky, Pierre Trudeau, and the bassist from The Tragically Hip. So that part's not hyperbole, either.McDermott was telling this story partly to explain why he hadn't just wasted his time. He and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., had just rolled out the latest version of their single-payer plan, theAmerican Health Security Act (PDF). There was not much media present; there were no other members of Congress. Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., cast a quizzical look at the event as he passed by walking his dog. The first question to McDermott and Sanders was about why they thought they could pass single-payer health care in 2011 when it couldn't win enough votes even when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress in the last session.The answer: They didn't. But the state of Vermont will. On May 26, Gov. Peter Shumlin of Vermont is expected to sign legislation that will create universal coverage in the state—eventually. Vermont will use subsidies from the Affordable Care Act to help create a Canada-style system. And its system, or so the theory goes, will become so popular and cheap that the rest of America will want to copy it.So good for them--good for Vermont.  And Massachussetts, for that matter.  At least they have the beginnings of a more fair and equitable health care system.Now for the rest of us.Just don't hold your breath.Additional, final and important side note:  To requote, here, the current Pope Benedict XVI as he addressed House Speaker--and fellow Catholic--John Boehner, regarding this issue:  "In January, the Pope personally wrote to Boehner regarding the new Speaker’s opposition to health care reform, saying, “I have been scandalized that a great and religious country like yours has taken so long to guarantee health care as a right.”That's pretty powerful right there.
Links:  http://www.slate.com/id/2293634/?from=rsshttp://thinkprogress.org/2011/05/11/catholic-scholars-letter-boehner/

Calling all Libertarians!

To our Libertarian brothers and sisters--y'all are gonna' love this:

Belgium's World Record

The European country has gone nearly 300 days without a government.  By Brian Palmer, Slate Magazine

Belgium tied Iraq on Tuesday for a very special world record: Number of days without a new government. (It's been 289 days since the inconclusive June 13, 2010, election.) Has living without a government made any difference to the Belgian people?


Not really. It's not quite accurate to say the country is without a government. In parliamentary systems like that of Belgium or the United Kingdom, the existing ministers remain in office when Parliament is dissolved in anticipation of an election. In the event that the elections are inconclusive, the ministers continue to perform their functions. They can't undertake controversial new initiatives, because they don't have a parliamentary majority to approve it, but they can accomplish administrative tasks. The Belgian federal government has a fairly limited portfolio by European standards, dealing mainly with defense, foreign relations, social security, and the judiciary. In these areas, it's been able to manage. For example, Belgium sent four F-16 jets and 150 military personnel to help with the Libyan no-fly zone.


Quick, Sevesteen!  Fly to Belgium and enjoy!

Link to original post:  http://www.slate.com/id/2289797/?from=rss

For anyone and everyone against this president: What to say about Libya

Link to original:  http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/03/23/libya_response_chart/whatToSayAboutLibya.jpg

Slate magazine is asking the right questions

From Slate today:

Nuclear's Age

How do inspectors ensure the safety of older nuclear reactors?

Good idea.

I think now is a great time to ask, personally.

Link to original story:  http://www.slate.com/id/2289016/?from=rss

The biggest--and most overlooked--event of the last year, bar none

Submittal:  The Stuxnet virus was the single-biggest event of the last year, barring anything even worse that wasn't actually released to the public's attention.


First, what Stuxnet is, from Wikipedia:  Stuxnet is a computer worm targeted at industrial equipment^[1] that was first discovered in July 2010 by VirusBlokAda, a security firm based in Belarus. While it is not the first time that hackers have targeted industrial systems,^[2] it is the first discovered worm that spies on and reprograms industrial systems,^[3] and the first to include a programmable logic controller (PLC) rootkit.^[4][5] It was specifically written to attack Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems used to control and monitor industrial processes.^[6] Stuxnet includes the capability to reprogram the PLCs and hide its changes.^[7]


Next, then, on the ramifications of this new "computer worm":


Russian digital security company Kaspersky Labs released a statement that described Stuxnet as "a working and fearsome prototype of a cyber-weapon that will lead to the creation of a new arms race in the world."


Perhaps the ultimate tribute to it was by a computer security expert who called its advent—and the swath of destruction it cut through Iran's nuclear program—"an Oppenheimer moment" in the history of hacking. A moment in which malware viruses had made the leap from troublemaking but controllable depredations to potentially unstoppable, history-changing weapons, their capabilities miles ahead of their predecessors', the way the first nuclear weapon Oppenheimer built at Los Alamos left mere TNT in its wake and shadowed the world we live in with the threat of cataclysmic extinction.


Computer-security experts who have handled the most complex "malware" virus infections are agog.


More:


But an Oppenheimer moment means more than a quantum leap in the power and deceptiveness of the virus. It means dramatic geopolitical ramifications. If the original Oppenheimer moment may have guaranteed that WWII would end with the horrific Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings, the Stuxnet Oppenheimer moment may have bequeathed us an unexpected last-minute reprieve from what seemed like a potential outbreak of nuclear warfare. Consider the fact that Stuxnet disabled Iran's key nuclear facilities (and infected an estimated 60,000 of its computers) just at the moment whenthe Israelis were giving out signals that they were prepared to use air strikes on Iranian facilities, using whatever weapons it took (and, of course, they have an undeclared nuclear arsenal), to prevent Iran from getting the bomb. Whatever you think of the Israeli position, there was little doubt they'd do it if there were no other options, and in doing so risk not only Iranian retaliation but nuclear retaliation from Iranian sympathizers in Pakistan's military, which all-too-loosely controls Pakistan's "Islamic bomb," the generic term for the 60 to 100 nuclear warheads the Pakistanis possess.


Finally, on what nearly happened last year, it is thought:


"The world was on the verge of a regional nuclear war with unknowable further consequences. 


Until Stuxnet did its work."  --Ron Rosenbaum, from his article "Stuxnet and the triumph of hacker culture", Slate Magazine


This last quote, above,  is, by itself, pretty remarkable, I think, for what it suggests we came perilously close to--I wonder how many other such events we've almost had--but what's also remarkable is the term "regional nuclear war".  Yeah, right.  As if.  There would--will?--be nothing "regional" about a nuclear war, anywhere in the world, but particularly if it begins in the Middle East, let there be no doubt.


Apparently the Middle East, at least, nearly literally blew up in nuclear war last year, folks.  


The good news is that nuclear war was averted.


The bad news is that now a "pandora's box" of computer virus "missiles" and all that entails are now released on the world.


Let's hope it's all in humankind's favor... forever and ever, amen.




Have a good weekend, y'all.


Try to think happy thoughts.


Link to original article:  http://www.slate.com/id/2281938/?from=rss
Link to definition of Stuxnet:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet

Quote of the day--on our banana republic

"You no longer need to travel to distant and dangerous countries to observe such rapacious inequality. We now have it right here at home — and in the aftermath of Tuesday’s election, it may get worse.
The richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976. As Timothy Noah of Slate noted in an excellent series on inequality, the United States now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana."  --Nicholas Kristof, Columnist, The New York Times




Link to original post:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/opinion/07kristof.html?_r=1&WT.mc_id=OP-SM-E-FB-SM-LIN-OBR-110810-NYT-NA&WT.mc_ev=click

Guest entry on guns

JURISPRUDENCE

Gun Points

History reveals a long-standing local authority to regulate guns. Shouldn't that matter?

By Saul Cornell, Justin Florence, and Matthew Shors
Posted Monday, March 8, 2010, at 6:00 PM ET

During last week's oral argument in McDonald v. City of Chicago—the term's blockbuster gun law case—Justice Antonin Scalia was quick to move away from arguments about the Constitution's "text and history" and instead took solace in the judge-made "substantive due process" doctrine he has long attacked. Why was this champion of "originalism" so quick to embrace this modern and amorphous judicial doctrine, at the expense of his express preference for carefully considering the text and history of the 14th Amendment? Some scholars argue that it was to avoid relying on the 14th Amendment's "privileges or immunities clause" (which Scalia lambasted as "the darling of the professoriate"). But another possible reason for Scalia's move is that it's simply impossible to square his broad view of the right to bear arms with the history of the 14th Amendment itself. If the justices take a hard look at the actual history of gun regulation in America, then they will recognize that expansive gun rights vis-à-vis states and localities have never really had a place here.

The McDonald case is the court's first opportunity to consider whether the 14th Amendment prohibits states and cities from enacting certain gun regulations. Two years ago, in Heller v. District of Columbia, a divided court decided that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms. But it reserved the question of whether that amendment limits only the federal government for another day. Justice Scalia's view, set forth in Heller, is that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear certain types of arms unrelated to militia service. By relying on the substantive due process doctrine to "incorporate" the Second Amendment into the 14th, Justice Scalia could ensure that the same right would apply against states and cities, not just a federal protectorate like the District of Columbia.

The problem for Scalia, and for those who want to expand gun rights and also stay faithful to the history and text of the Constitution, is that this view cannot be reconciled with the history of the 14th Amendment. In the years before and after the adoption of the amendment, numerous states and cities—motivated by the danger posed as firearms and other deadly weapons became smaller—enacted laws banning the carrying and possession of certain dangerous weapons, including handguns. In other words, there is ample historical evidence showing that at the time the 14th Amendment was ratified, states had broad authority to enact nondiscriminatory gun-safety regulations. We submitted an amicus brief to the court describing dozens of these laws, but just a few examples suffice to make this point: In 1879, Tennessee outlawed the carrying of "any … belt of pocket pistol, revolver, or any kind of pistol, except the army or navy pistol," including on a person's own farm. And in 1876, Wyoming barred anyone from "bear[ing] upon his person, concealed or openly, any fire-arm or other deadly weapon, within the limits of any city, town or village." And beginning in 1872, you had to check your firearm at the jurisdictional door before even entering the town of Wichita, Kan.

This Reconstruction-era regulation by states and localities was hardly new. Near the time of the Founding, several states regulated the storage of gunpowder in order to protect against fires, in some cases effectively banning the possession of loaded weapons in the home. As Justice John McLean explained in1847, in light of the "explosive nature of gunpowder, a city may exclude it" as an "[act] of self-preservation."

New state Constitutions adopted during the Reconstruction era explicitly codified states' power to regulate guns alongside a right to bear arms. In Texas, for instance, a constitutional convention in 1868 (the same year as the ratification of the 14th Amendment) subjected "the right to keep and bear arms" to "such regulations as the legislature may prescribe." Utah's 1889 Constitution provided that "the Legislature shall regulate the exercise of this right by Law." Justice Scalia asserted during oral argument that "something like 44 States currently have in their constitutions protection of the right to bear arms," but he ignored that at the time the 14th Amendment was ratified, these provisions went hand-in-hand with others providing for state gun regulation.

When state and local gun laws were challenged in the era of the ratification of the 14th Amendment, courts regularly held that these restrictions passed constitutional muster. For example, Tennessee's Supreme Court observed in 1871 that the right to bear arms in that state's constitution could "be subordinated to such regulations and limitations as are or may be authorized by the law of the land," and the Arkansas Supreme Court upheld in 1876 that state's ban on carrying pistols as a proper "exercise of the police power of the State without any infringement of the constitutional right" to bear arms.

When the existence of these laws was mentioned in passing by Chicago's counsel at oral argument, Justice Scalia suggested that the laws at the time of the 14th Amendment did not concern "handguns in the home." But as the examples above demonstrate, that is not so. And state courts repeatedly upheld those laws against constitutional attack.

During argument last week, the court struggled to balance a state or city's right to regulate guns with the Second Amendment right to possess them, without seeming to grapple with the fact that such regulations have been on the books since the Reconstruction period (and before). Several Justices asked the advocates whether there was any basis for concluding that the 14th Amendment protected some kind of right to bear arms, but a right that nevertheless permitted states to adopt more flexible and robust laws than Heller permitted of the federal government. History provides overwhelming support for the proposition that states and cities, through their elected representatives, have the authority to balance the public safety interests impacted by the possession and use of dangerous weapons such as handguns.

As John Bingham, the leading drafter of the 14th Amendment, wrote in an 1867 speech, the new Amendment "would maintain intact the powers of the national government and State governments—the one for general defense and protection, the other for local administration and personal security." The 14th Amendment prevented states from discriminating against the rights of certain classes of people, but states could (and did) continue to enact neutral laws banning classes of weapons. Although Justice Scalia did not appear to be interested in this history, there's no reason the rest of the court can't become Originalists this time around.


Saul Cornell is the Paul and Diane Guenther Chair in American History at Fordham University. Matthew Shors is a partner and Justin Florence an associate in the Washington office of O'Melveny & Myers LLP. Cornell was lead scholar and Shors and Florence co-authors of an amicus brief submitted to the court in this case.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2247264/