I have an opin­ion on the whole “Cor­doba House” issue, but it isn’t well informed. I’d like it to be. There­fore, I’m request­ing read­ing mate­r­ial or other evi­dence on, among other issues, the nature of Islam and of this project. I also want a trans­la­tion sug­ges­tion for the Koran (or how­ever you care to spell it). Prefer­ably a schol­arly trans­la­tion which takes the time in exten­sive foot­notes to explain its word choices, and was not trans­lated by any­one who might have motive to use trans­la­tion to obscure, mar­gin­al­ize, or empha­size for cer­tain effect. Take as granted that I have read most every­thing web-​​​​present Objec­tivists [ . . . ]

Read the Rest...

The Supreme Court decided McDon­ald v. Chicago, the sequel to D.C. v. Heller, this morn­ing. A major­ity held that the Sec­ond Amend­ment applies to state and local gov­ern­ments and threw out Chicago’s ban on hand­guns. A plu­ral­ity of four Jus­tices (Alito, Scalia, Roberts, Kennedy) held that the Sec­ond Amend­ment is incor­po­rated by the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amend­ment, and avoided address­ing the ques­tion of whether the Slaugh­ter­house Cases, which long ago cas­trated the other half of the 14th Amend­ment, the Priv­i­leges or Immu­ni­ties Clause, should be recon­sid­ered. One Jus­tice, Jus­tice Thomas, wrote a sep­a­rate opin­ion con­cur­ring in the judg­ment, but assert­ing [ . . . ]

Read the Rest...

One who would defend the [Con­sti­tu­tion] must share his fox­hole with scoundrels of every sort, but to aban­don the post because of the poor com­pany is to sell free­dom cheaply. It is a fair sum­mary of his­tory to say that the safe­guards of lib­erty have often been forged in con­tro­ver­sies involv­ing not very nice peo­ple. Kopf v. Skyrm, 993 F2d 374, 308 (4th Cir. 1996). Judge Hall was writ­ing about the Fourth Amend­ment, but the sen­ti­ment applies most admirably to the First Amend­ment as well, as another 4th Cir­cuit panel noted recently in Sny­der v. Phelps, 580 F.3d 206 (4th Cir. 2009). In [ . . . ]

Read the Rest...

[Royal per­son­ages] do not have the right to receive phys­i­cal obei­sance from Amer­i­can cit­i­zens. Miss Man­ners has had to issue the decree many times now that Amer­i­can ladies should not curtsy [ed: nor should Amer­i­can gen­tle­men bow] to roy­alty, and there are still those who do so at every avail­able oppor­tu­nity. They are in error, not only in the mat­ter of world eti­quette, but of geog­ra­phy, physics and ancient and mod­ern his­tory. . . . Bend­ing the knee is the tra­di­tional ges­ture of an infe­rior to a supe­rior. . . . The curtsy is but one form of the ges­ture of ador­ing a sov­er­eign. . . . Thus, those who [ . . . ]

Read the Rest...