To most Americans the car, perhaps more than any other item, has long represented freedom and opportunity. But at a time where freedom, opportunities and liberties are being rapidly taken away by government, symbols of individual freedom become more important.

“Californians are driving more, which is bad for climate change,” reads theheadlinein the San Francisco Chronicle Thursday. The article is not an op ed, but was written by a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer, Kate… Read More

Criminals don’t register their guns with authorities. Despite this indisputable fact, the California Legislature recently passed 14 gun control bills, taking aim at citizens who legally own guns.

California lawmakers are ignoring the historic recall last week of two Colorado state legislators who backed new gun restrictions. And they are ignoring the Bill of Rights. Second Amendment

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed,” says the Second Amendment within the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution.

The gun control debate waged during the last eight months in the California Legislature has been an attack on the Second Amendment. Democratic lawmakers claim the… Read More

Having just finished the “Lion of LIberty: Patrick Henry and the Call to a New Nation” by Harlow Giles Unger I have been taken back to the great national debate over the powers of government. The discussions of the 1790s are very contemporary. After winning the revolutionary war the country was taken into the constant debate of how to empower and how to limit a national government. Patrick Henry as Governor of Virginia joined others in arguing against the ratification of the proposed constitution considering it granted far too many powers to a Federal government over the people and the states. In language prescient to today’s debate he warned of an out of control national government.

Sharing some of those concerns was James Madison and he promised the anti-constitutionalists that if the Constitution was ratified he would propose a Bill of Rights to protect individual liberties and to limit the national government. Elected to Congress from Virginia is 1790 he made good on that promise. But not all of his proposals were adopted. This made me curious as to what was left out.

The Madison package that was adopted actually consisted of 12 amendments. The… Read More