McDonald v. City of Chicago

My second column for the news and information site, The Daily Caller, has been posted. “Greetings from the land of guns and religion” is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek look at the recent SCOTUS McDonald v. City of Chicago ruling of last week.

The court’s sweeping decision to uphold the right to keep and bear arms really took me by surprise. As we’ve been watching government slowly erode our freedoms and our privacy, my expectations have sunk so low that such a strong defense of the Bill of Rights came as a shock.

The lower courts will now have the very important job of protecting us from municipal and state laws that do not conform to the Supreme’s interpretation of the Second Amendment.

From the top to the bottom, this is the quintessential example of why making appointments to our courts is one of the most important and impactful of Presidential prerogatives.

Like many rulings lately, McDonald was a slim 5 – 4 victory. It will only take one more retirement before 2012 to tip the scales the other way.