Free Republic

     The Second Amendment secures a right of individuals generally, not a right of States or a right restricted to persons serving in militias.MEMORANDUM OPINION FOR THE ATTORNEY GENERALTable of ContentsIntroduction   The Unsettled Legal Landscape Textual and Structural Analysis "The Right of the People" "To Keep and Bear Arms" "A Well Regulated Militia, being Necessary to the Security of a Free State" Structural Considerations: The Bill of Rights and the Militia Powers The Original Understanding of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms The Right Inherited from England The Right in America before the Framing The Development of the Second...

For some reason, many in the Washington bureaucracy seem to think that spying on American citizens is a right of government. Obviously, it has not occurred to anyone in the White House, the spook agencies, the Department of Justice, and now even the Department of Defense, that they have no authority to be snooping on us. Absolutely none. The bureaucratically inconvenient words in the Fourth Amendment that supposedly limit their spying on citizens are: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no...