Reading the news this past week, one could easily conclude we have lost our minds as well as any remaining connection with our Founding Fathers. Three headlines thrice prove we are heading down three wrong roads.

Guns in the news

First, there was the Supreme Court's wrangling with the Second Amendment. Should it allow private citizens or only public servants ("state militias") "to keep and bear arms"?

Is someone joking? Could 27 words be any clearer?! "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."

Just because Washington, D.C., has a pistol problem (with its ban on handguns), the court shouldn't penalize the rest of the country by resetting national precedence based upon biased constitutional interpretation. The Bill of Rights either encompasses the privileges of every citizen in every amendment or none at all. Back then, even other contemporaneous state gun laws aligned with that federal measure.

As Chief Justice John Roberts asked, "If it is limited to state militias, why would they say 'the right of the people'? What is reasonable about a total ban on possession?"

Thomas Jefferson concluded, "A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference." That is why Jefferson could encourage his nephew Peter Carr, "Let your gun therefore be your constant of your walks."

God in the news

I was also saddened this past week to read about the comic in the University of Virginia's pre-Holy Week, -sanctioned student paper. The Cavalier Daily published a cartoon that pictured a naked man smoking a cigarette in bed with a woman in her underwear who asks, "Come on God, be honest – did you really get a vasectomy? I can't let Joseph find out about this." The man, who is now revealed as God, replies, "Well, Mary, you're f---ed."

How abhorring it is when the freedom of the press is abused to demean the biblical God and the most sacred couple in Christendom, especially right before Easter. If the cartoon depicted Allah or Muhammad, there undoubtedly would have been a national decry of bigotry. Yet it seems in vogue to disgrace Christianity, and so it was brushed under the rug of contempt and barely highlighted by any news agency.

One can only imagine how the eminent founder, Thomas Jefferson, might have regarded such a shameful posting. These types of religious polarities are the exact opposite of what he hoped for that academic institution. He actually expected a respectful unity in diversity on the campus: "And by bringing the sects together, and mixing them with the mass of other , we shall soften their asperities, liberalize and neutralize their prejudices, and make the general religion a religion of peace, reason, and morality" (To Thomas Cooper, 1822. ME 15:405).

Speak of God and prejudices in the news, I might as well throw in my two cents about Obama's relation to his pastor. My primary qualm is this: If Obama's patriotism doesn't prompt him to challenge his own pastor's extremist views for more than 20 years, how can we trust his judgment to confront extremists' views as president for the next four years? One's church and friends reflect one's values and beliefs. We simply can't trust that lack of judgment and inability to confront in the highest office of the land. Since the Revolutionary War and the Barbary Conflict, U.S. presidents have fought to counter anti-American sentiment. We need a president who can oppose unpatriotic radicals, not shrink back in the face of their adversity.