• Guest: Stephen P. Halbrook, Research Fellow, The Independent Institute. Supreme Court second amendment case.


• Guest: Anthony Romero, National ACLU Executive Director. Their largest civil rights and liberties fundraising campaign in history.


• Guest: Rick Perlstein, author, "Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America".


• Guest: Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman. Update on his case. Transcript.


• Guests: Senator Mike Gravel and co-author Joe Lauria, "A Political Odyssey: The Rise of American Militarism and One Man's Fight to Stop It",

Topics, guests, upcoming events, quotes, links to articles, audio clips, books & bumper music.

Tuesday 17 June '08 show

• Amendment II
  "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."
  Constitution of the United States, final version, September 21, 1789 (ratified December 15, 1791).
  
• Quote:
  "This declaration of rights, I take it, is intended to secure the people against the maladministration of the Government; if we could suppose that, in all cases, the rights of the people would be attended to, the occasion for guards of this kind would be removed. Now, I am apprehensive, sir, that this clause would give an opportunity to the people in power to destroy the Constitution itself. They can declare who are those religiously scrupulous, and prevent them from bearing arms.
  
  What, sir is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty."
  Congressman Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, 1789.
  
• Quote:
  "With respect to the new Government, nine or ten States will probably have accepted by the end of this month. The others may oppose it. Virginia, I think, will be of this number. Besides other objections of less moment, she [Virginia] will insist on annexing a bill of rights to the new Constitution, i.e. a bill wherein the Government shall declare that, 1. Religion shall be free; 2. Printing presses free; 3. Trials by jury preserved in all cases; 4. No monopolies in commerce; 5. No standing army. Upon receiving this bill of rights, she will probably depart from her other objections; and this bill is so much to the interest of all the States, that I presume they will offer it, and thus our Constitution be amended, and our Union closed by the end of the present year."
  Thomas Jefferson.
  
• Guest: Stephen P. Halbrook, Research Fellow, The Independent Institute.
  "Dr. Stephen P. Halbrook has taught legal and political philosophy at George Mason University, Howard University, and Tuskegee Institute. He received his J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center and Ph.D. in social philosophy from Florida State University. The winner of three cases before the U.S. Supreme Court (Printz v. United States, United States v. Thompson/Center Arms Company, and Castillo v. United States), he has testified before the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Subcommittee on Crime of the House Judiciary Committee, Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, and House Committee on the District of Columbia."
  
  He's written several books on the right to bear arms including "The Founders