Now that all congressional races have been decided, here the final tallies for how the election affected Second Amendment support in Congress, according to the NRA’s top federal lobbyist Chuck Cunningham:

19 of 25 U.S. Senate candidates endorsed by the NRA-Political Victory Fund won their races. The net gain is +7 votes (Ark., N.H., N.D., Oh., Penn., W.V., Wisc.) with no offsetting losses. 

After the 2008 elections, there were 43 Senators with an A rating from NRA, 2 with a B, 9 with a C, 12 with a D, and 34 with an F. The changes in the new Senate will be +7 A, +1 C, –7 D, and –1 F.

The 12 pro-gun Senate freshmen are:  John Boozman (Ark.), Marco Rubio (Fla.), Jerry Moran (Kan.), Rand Paul (Ky.), Roy Blunt (Mo.), Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), John Hoeven (N.D.), Rob Portman (Oh.), Pat Toomey (Penn.), Mike Lee (Utah), Joe Manchin (W.V.) and Ron Johnson (Wisc.).

In the U.S. House, 227 of the 283 endorsed by NRA-PVF won. 

After the 2008 elections, there were 226 Representatives with an A rating, 18 B, 14 C, 22 D-rated, 151 F, and 4 ? (had refused to answer questionaire). The new House will be +36 A, –7 B, - 1 C, –9 D, –16 F, — 3 ?.

There were 29 districts where the grade improved: AZ-1, AZ-5, AR-2, FL-8, FL-22, FL-24, ID-1, IL-8,IL-10, IL-14, IL-17, KS-3, MI-7, NV-3, NH-1, NJ-3, NY-13, NY-19, NY-24, NY-25, NY-29, NC-2, OH-1, OH-15, PA-3, PA-7, PA-8, SC-5 and WA-3. In 3 districts the grade declined: AL-7, HI-1 and LA-2.

The NRA identifies 86 pro-gun House freshmen:  Martha Roby (AL-2), Mo Brooks, (AL-5), Paul Gosar (AZ-1), Ben Quayle (AZ-3), David Schweikert (AZ-5), Rick Crawford (AR-1), Tim Griffin (AR-2), Steve Womack (AR-3), Jeff Denham (CA-19), Scott Tipton (CO-3), Cory Gardner (CO-4), Steve Southerland (FL-2), Rich Nugent (FL-5), Daniel Webster (FL-8), Dennis Ross (FL-12), Allen West (FL-22), Sandy Adams (FL-24), David Rivera (FL-25), Rob Woodall (GA-7), Austin Scott (GA-8), Raul Labrador (ID-1), Joe Walsh (IL-8), Adam Kinzinger (IL-11), Randy Hultgren (IL-14), Bobby Schilling (IL-17), Marlin Stutzman (IN-3), Todd Rokita (IN-4), Larry Bucshon (IN-8), Todd Young (IN-9), Tim Huelskamp (KS-1), Kevin Yoder (KS-3), Mike Pompeo (KS-4), Jeff Landry (LA-3), Andy Harris (MD-1), Dan Benishek (MI-1), Bill Huizenga (MI-2), Justin Amash (MI-3), Tim Walberg (MI-7), Chip Cravaack (MN-8), Alan Nunnelee (MS-1), Steven Palazzo (MS-4), Vicky Hartzler (MO-4), Billy Long (MO-7), Joe Heck (NV-3), Frank Guinta (NH-1), Charlie Bass (NH-2), Jon Runyan (NJ-3), Steve Pearce (NM-2), Michael Grimm (NY-13), Nan Hayworth (NY-19), Chris Gibson (NY-20), Richard Hanna (NY-24), Ann Marie Buerkle (NY-25), Tom Reed (NY-29), Renee Ellmers (NC-2), Rick Berg (ND-AL), Steve Chabot (OH-1), Bill Johnson (OH-6), Steve Stivers (OH-15), Jim Renacci (OH-16), Bob Gibbs (OH-18), James Lankford (OK-5), Mike Kelly (PA-3), Pat Meehan (PA-7), Mike Fitzpatrick (PA-8), Tom Marino (PA-10), Lou Barletta (PA-11), Tim Scott (SC-1), Jeff Duncan (SC-3), Trey Gowdy (SC-4), Mick Mulvaney (SC-5), Kristi Noem (SD-AL), Chuck Fleischmann (TN-3), Scott DesJarlais (TN-4), Diane Black (TN-6), Steve Fincher (TN-8), Bill Flores (TX-17), Quico Canseco (TX-23), Blake Farenthold (TX-27), Scott Rigell (VA-2), Rob Hurt (VA-5), Morgan Griffith (VA-9), Jaime Herrera (WA-3), David McKinley (WV-1), Sean Duffy (WI-7) and Reid Ribble (WI-8).

International Adoption: The Human Rights Position is an article in Global Policy by Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Bartholet. A response article from Paulo Barrozo of Boston College Law School amplifies some of her points.

In brief: UNICEF has been at the forefront of pressuring national governments to set up so many hurdles as to make international adoption rare and extremely time-consuming. The result is that children languish in miserable, hellish orphanages for years. During the critical early months and years in which interaction with loving parents is essential to a child’s normal brain development, the children are neglected and left in squalor.

According to Bartholet, all this is a violation of international treaties about the rights of children, which one might expect UNICEF, of all entities, to be especially scrupulous about obeying. Besides, you don’t need to be an international lawyer to see the flaws of policy that leaves children in terrible orphanages, or as menial servants and de facto slaves in “the community,” rather than in loving homes.

In a 2007 article, I discussed UNICEF’s record in propagandizing for Palestinian terrorism, and its collaboration with the North Korean dictatorship and with the Saddam Hussein regime.

So in short, if you want to give to a charity which does not spend any money on harming children, UNICEF is a poor choice. Unfortunately, UNICEF has a ready supply of funds from good-hearted, uninformed people. American schoolchildren “trick or treat for UNICEF” without realizing that some of the money they raise will be spent on terrorist training camps, or on lobbying to keep children trapped in horrible orphanages. If you followed David Post’s advice to watch the outstanding soccer game between Madrid and Barcelona, you saw that the Barcelona players had “UNICEF” on their jerseys. Some transatlantic airlines, including Aer Lingus, subject passangers to long commercials (broadcast on the airplane’s public address system) urging people to put their leftover foreign change into special envelopes for UNICEF. Instead, I wrote a note on the special envelope explaining why I was not donating.

It’s great for children, sports teams, or airplane passengers to raise money to help poor children in the Third World. But when you donate to UNICEF, some of your money is  helping to keep neglected and helpless children separated from parents who would give them the love and the care that they need.

In Spanish, there are many nouns which end in a “o” if referring to a male, and “a” if referring to a female. For example: chico/chica (child), maestro/maestra (teacher), hijo/hija (son/daughter). The nouns are pluralized with an “s”. So a group of boys is “chicos”; and a group of girls is “chicas”. In  a mixed group, the male version is always used. So when we are talking about 99 girls and 1 boy, it’s “chicos”. To some people, the masculinization of mixed plurals seems unfair.

While in Spain last month, I found that some Spaniards have invented a new plural form. When writing about a mixed group of boys and girls, they write chic@s.   Pretty clever, in my estimation. Except for the problem of auto-correct trying to convert the word into an e-mail address. The new letter “@” is not yet part of formal usage. I read a variety of newspapers, and never saw the @ used as a letter. But on the Madrid subway, some cars have slim TV monitors attached to the center poles, and those televisions show short news items and commercials, along with captioning. On one news report, I did see the “@” used in the captioning for a mixed-gender plural.

In other Spanish alphabet news: The Spanish Royal Academy has voted to remove “ch” and “ll” from the official Spanish alphabet. Further, the names of two other letters have been changed. “V” is now prounounced (in Spanish) “uve” rather than “ve”. Further, “Y”, which is traditionally called “i-griega” (“Greek i”) may now also be called “ye”.

UPDATE: Although the use of “@” as a letter is new to me, some commenters point out that it’s been around at least since the 1990s.

The Independence Institute’s Future Leaders Program. As a law student, you would work directly for me or for Rob Natelson (retired U. Montana constitutional law professor, and perhaps the most knowledgeable person in the world about American legal thought and practice in the Founding Era).

The Independence Institute is a think tank, not a public interest law firm. However, we do sometimes get involved in important constitutional cases, and my recent interns have worked on cases such as McDonald v. Chicago. We are involved in the constitutional challenges to ObamaCare, and plan to stay involved all the way to the Supreme Court. That said, your work at Independence Institute would probably involve more time helping with Issue Papers, op-eds, law review articles, and other publications than it would with brief-writing.

Peruta v. San Diego is one of several cases challenging sheriff misapplication of California’s concealed handgun carry licensing statute. The case features Chuck Michel as lead attorney for plaintiffs. The case does not assert that California’s statute requiring a license to carry a concealed handgun for protection is unconstitutional. Rather, the argument is simply that the statute specifies that licenses should be issued to qualified applicants (training, good moral character) who have “good cause.” Pursuant to Heller, lawful self-defense is not only good cause, it is the best possible cause. The case has already survived a motion to dismiss.

Along with Prof. John Eastman, I filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Independence Institute, Law Enforcement Alliance of America, Doctors for Responsible Gun Owners, and the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence. The arguments are:

 I. The case can be decided without a standard of review, because near-total prohibition of a constitutional right is never constitutional.
II. A “reasonable” regulation is one that does not eliminate the exercise of a right, but instead is narrowly tailored, is based on a significant government interest, and leaves ample alternatives.
III. The state court cases approvingly cited in Heller expressly affirm the right to carry.
IV. Twentieth century state courts decisions affirm the general right to carry for lawful self-defense.
V. McDonald specifically addresses and prohibits mass deprivation of the right to bear arms.

Constitutional mistakes just keep coming out of the Denver Post.

One was the editorial board’s assessment that “ObamaCare” is somehow constitutional.

Two more mistakes have just come from Post columnist Mike Littwin. In his Oct. 23 profile of the Tea Party Littwin wrote, that “the founders’ visions were often in complete opposition.”

Actually, the Founders’ visions were remarkably consistent — their disagreements were about how best to achieve common goals. Those common goals included a limited, republican federal government held to trust-style standards and protecting personal liberty. (American dissenters from those goals were called “Tories” and fled the country or dropped out of public life after the Revolution.) You can find the details in my new book The Original Constitution: What It Really Said and Meant.

Littwin returned with another column on October 27, in which if he didn’t make an error, he certainly left an mistaken impression.

He wrote “It was only recently that O’Donnell was laughed at by a group of law students . . . for saying that the separation of church and state was not guaranteed by the First Amendment. It’s an old argument, since the words themselves aren’t in the Constitution. But it was Thomas Jefferson, one of your more important founders, who did say exactly that in an 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists concluding that the First Amendment built ‘a wall of separation between Church & State.’”

What Littwin apparently doesn’t understand is that “separation of church and state” meant something different to Jefferson than it means in discourse today.

Today the term is used for the view that both federal and state governments must divorce themselves from all religious recognition, even at the risk of seeming anti-religion. Believers in this view are called “strict separationists.”

That was hardly Jefferson’s view, since when he was governor of Virginia he supported religious holidays and blasphemy laws.

Actually (as most recent scholarship confirms), the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment meant only that the federal government could not establish a national church or otherwise favor some religions over others. My own research on the subject appears here.
[For the future, please note that Jefferson is not a very reliable source of constitutional meaning anyway, since he was in France when the Constitution was drafted and ratified.]

Senate candidates Ken Buck and Christie O’Donnell have gotten a lot of flak for saying they don’t buy the current notion of “separation of church and state.” Critics have tried to portray this as an opinion that is somehow looney or extremist. If so, then the current Supreme Court of the United States is looney or extremist, because it doesn’t agree with strict separation, either.

Glenn Beck often does great research and reporting on stories that the rest of the media fail to cover. His deconstruction of the Woodrow Wilson administration is long overdue. However, his reporting is sometimes inexcusably sloppy. All the more so considering that Beck, a television host on a major network, is not exactly bereft of research resources. Consider, for example, the ballot initiative in Portland, Maine, to allow legal resident non-citizens to vote in municipal elections. (See issue #4.) On the October 25 TV show, Beck incorrectly characterized the proposal as allowing illegal aliens to vote.

It took me just a few minutes of web searching to find the actual text of the Portland initiative. It was irresponsible, and a gross dereliction of journalistic duty, for Beck and his staff to smear Portland’s reputation without having invested the minimal time to research the story properly.

It would have been even better if Beck, whose show often features good research on American history, to acknowledge that in the 18th and 19th centuries, many states and municipalities allowed voting by non-citizen immigrants. See, e.g., this report by the Center for Immigration Studies, an organization which favors much stronger policies against illegal immigration, as well as greater restrictions on legal immigration.

As a policy matter, I agree with the CIS in opposing state or local voting by legal resident non-citizens. But there’s no excuse for Beck making the patently incorrect claim that Portland is considering an initiative to allow voting by illegal aliens. Every journalist, from the lowliest blogger to media superstars like Glenn Beck, should conscientiously strive for factual accuracy. Across the political spectrum, the media too often fall short of factual accuracy. Because Mr. Beck appears to sincerely believe in “restoring honor,”  and particularly because Mr. Beck often delivers his stories in a mode of high dudgeon, it would be better if he were especially scrupulous about factual accuracy.

A few items I wrote this week for other sites: Examination of the gun issue in the competitive 2010 U.S. House races, for The New Ledger. Analysis of the denial of the motion dismiss in the 20-state lawsuit against Obamacare.

For “Who Said, You Said,” a Colorado political website, an article on Time magazine misreporting, but then properly correcting, Rep. Betsy Markey’s voting record on the health care federalization bills. And a piece criticizing the Denver Post for its coverage of the evidence-free charges of felony conduct made against the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Next Tuesday, the Encyclopedia Britannica website will feature several essays on marijuana law and policy, including one in which I look at the unsavory origins of the federal prohibition.

I respectfully request quotes and citations for 1st-time California gubernatorial candidate Ronald Reagan being called an “extremist” (or something similar) during his 1966 campaign, in which he unseated incumbent Pat Brown (father of Jerry Brown). Any reputable citations in books, newspapers, etc., would be fine. Video, if such video exists, would be especially great. Thanks!

A few weeks ago, I returned to my beloved University of Michigan, for a law school class reunion. This time, I stayed an extra day, in order to speak to law students at a lunchtime event on Monday, organized by the U of M Federalist Society. Michigan Prof. Richard Primus provided some thoughtful commentary on my presentation, and the FedSoc organization was outstanding. Anyway, the extra 36 hours on campus was a great opportunity to walk many miles revisiting the immense Michigan campus, the U of M’s beautiful Arboretum, and Ann Arbor.

The campus visit reminded me of how much of the education I received at the University of Michigan took place outside the Law Quad–even though the quantity and quality of education received inside the Quad were excellent. My start as a journalist during law school was writing theater reviews, and then op-eds for the Michigan Daily.  Unlike some Daily alumni, I’ve never won a Pulitzer Prize, but like all Daily writers, I benefited from the opportunity to work for a solid daily newspaper with a circulation of 18,000.

Other law school friends who got outside the Law Quad also had great experiences. One friend played interscholastic rugby. My 1L roommate found a small church in Ann Arbor, which at the time was holding services in a room at the YMCA. My roommate was a very studious fellow, even by law school standards, but the church drew him towards something more important. After serving as a JAG officer in the Air Force, he became an ordained minister.

Even if the university beyond the law school doesn’t help you discern a vocation or avocation, you’ll still find lots of theater, music, museums (including mini-exhibits in classroom buildings), guest lectures on topics other than law, and so on. Not to mention intramural and spectator sports.

Not every law school enjoys the good fortune of being located on a flagship research university campus with 41,000 students. But if your law school does share a campus with a university, it’s almost certain that there’s something there for you to enjoy. The law school experience can be all-consuming, especially during the first year. If you take the time to explore your university, you’ll give yourself a helpful mental change of pace, and have some fun. And as the Grateful Dead put it in Box of Rain, “Maybe you’ll find direction around some corner where it’s been waiting to meet you.”