Opinion: In today’s pages: Guns and gambling
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Columnist Joel Stein is up nearly $200 from day-trading on elections. UC Irvine School of Law dean Erwin Chemerinsky and Reason senior editor Brian Doherty face off on yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling on guns. Chemerinsky calls it a case of conservative judicial activism, and Doherty says the gun rights fights isn’t over yet:
The right at issue -- an ancient right, preserved but not created by the 2nd Amendment -- is that of self-defense. The gun-control debate will continue, but it is a blessing that the court has refused to deny us the means of protecting our homes and families.
The editorial board isn’t pleased with the ruling, but says it could have been worse:
Gun-rights advocates will focus on what they will see as the magic words in Justice Antonin Scalia’s opinion for a 5-4 majority: ‘There seems to us no doubt, on the basis of both text and history, that the 2nd Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms.’ Though a bit wordy for a bumper sticker, in isolation it could have been composed by the National Rifle Assn.But Scalia immediately added this qualification: ‘Of course the right was not unlimited, just as the 1st Amendment’s right of free speech was not.’
The board also takes seven GOP Senators to task for blocking Bush’s foreign aid programs, one of his proudest legacies, and criticizes California for considering spending on bureaucracy instead of kids’ healthcare.
On the letters page, La Verne’s Mitchell Harris has a question for black supporters of Barack Obama: ‘If a black person votes for Obama primarily because he is black, isn’t that the same as a white person refusing to vote for Obama because he is black? Isn’t that properly called racism?’
*Cartoon by Tom Toles, Washington Post