Article on McDonald online

Nice work on an excellent theme; great coverage of historical antecedents, well done and very perceptive. I am awed and would have commented sooner but - just as it took so long to write - it also took awhile to read.

Your exhaustive analysis - stripped down to it's essentials - seems to prove beyond doubt that people in a position to do so will tend to come up with an outcome they wish to see, and then bend the reasoning to fit that outcome - with varying degrees of success.

The McDonald case seems to boil down to, "You wanna do incorporation? We'll show you incorporation!" The payback of the right? Exactly! This stuff works both ways.

Aside from some truly ghastly decisions such as Reynolds v Sims 1964, which destroyed the upper houses of the states and forever wrecked the delicate rural-urban balance so necessary to a stable society, I think it's mainly been the religion clause of the 1st Amendment and the right of "privacy" (abortion) that have been a problem since they've been used to restrict one right (free exercise) and legalize what some would call murder and most people don't like that.

Whatever the deprecations of the Warren Court, the general acceptance of incorporation has become a accepted fact of American life. In a time of ever-increasing regulation and government intrusion, people seem to like having some iron-clad rights reserved for them and there will probably be more of the same but from a Libertarian-Conservative viewpoint - Hurray!

As you again point out, this new "all-purpose" reasoning will probably be the wave of the future. The tortured upholding of ObamaCare by Roberts seems to show that.

I think we've reached the point where the Supremes are accepted as a final arbiter simply because - in this time of hardened political positions - we just want a decision - whatever it is. Never mind precedent, original intent or whatever else, we just want a ruling. All the more reason to control - to whatever extent possible - who gets on the court in the first place. It's all political now.

As far as firearms, my main regret is that both Heller and McDonald still require some form of application and approval from the authorities - not good. If I remember correctly, didn't Scalia rather wistfully comment that he would have ruled for possession as a right but this was not applied for by either petitioner. In the meanwhile, there are several challenges working their way to the Supremes as we speak. How do you think they will do?