I HAVE A SHORT PIECE ON HELLER, the Second Amendment, and the problems it poses for the Court’s unenumerated rights jurisprudence available right here.

FIRST SPITZER, THEN MCGREEVEY, NOW THIS

The thunderous applause was still ringing in his ears when the state’s new governor, David Paterson, told the Daily News that he and his wife had extramarital affairs.

In a stunning revelation, both Paterson, 53, and his wife, Michelle, 46, acknowledged in a joint interview they each had intimate relationships with others during a rocky period in their marriage several years ago.

We’re approaching a national Too Much Information crisis. It’s almost enough to make you long for the reticence and hypocrisy of the Victorian era. But it’s not too much information in every respect, since the story offers another chance to play Name That Party! — though a close reading of the sidebar sort of answers the question. But only sort of . . .

THE EXAMINER: Let the Sun Shine In.

Sen. Hillary Clinton’s responses were featured Monday on the Sunshine Week Web site. Clinton told the Sunshine Week survey that she believes “in an open, transparent government that is accountable to the people. Excessive government secrecy harms democratic governance and can weaken our system of checks and balances by shielding officials from oversight and inviting misconduct or error.”

She promised to “make it clear to everyone in the Executive Branch that I expect my administration to be open and responsive to the public.” She further promised to appoint an attorney general of similar mind, to roll back President Bush’s executive order making release of presidential documents dependent upon the whims of former chief executives, and to put federal contracts and budgets online. Finally, according to Sunshine Week, she promised that if elected she would “prospectively” release names of donors to the Clinton presidential library and the Clinton foundation.

Neither Barack Obama nor John McCain has responded to the Sunshine Week survey, but Clinton is uniquely positioned to demonstrate good faith by delivering on her promised openness now, instead of after the election.

Indeed.

HERE’S MORE ON HELLER from Randy Barnett in the Wall Street Journal:

The Second Amendment protects an individual right. In the 1960s, gun control advocates dismissed the Second Amendment as protecting the so-called “collective right” of states to preserve their militias — notwithstanding that, everywhere else in the Constitution, a “right” of “the people” refers to an individual right of persons, and the 10th Amendment expressly distinguishes between “the people” and “the states.” Now even the District asserts the new theory that, while this right is individual, it is “conditioned” on a citizen being an active participant in an organized militia. Therefore, whoever wins, Heller won’t be based on a “collective” right of the states.

Still, a ruling upholding an unconditioned individual right to arms and invalidating the ban is unlikely to have much effect on current gun laws. Here’s why:

Read the whole thing. And query: Would a win for the DC position create a constitutional obligation on the part of the states to maintain an active militia? Or, at least, allow states that chose to do so to immunize their member citizens from Federal gun laws on Second Amendment grounds? That topic is explored in more depth in this (relatively short) article from the William and Mary Law Review.

BYRON YORK:

Speaking of “God damn America,” if you read only the New York Times — if that were your only source of news — you might not even know that Wright had uttered those words. A Nexis search shows that the only place Rev. Wright’s “God damn America” proclamation has been reported in the Times was in Bill Kristol’s column yesterday. That column was noticed mostly for a factual error — Kristol repeated a claim from an inaccurate NewsMax report — but as serious as that was, it seems that Times readers should at least thank Bill for telling them what the news pages would not.

Indeed.

ROBERT LEVY on the Heller case.

Even if the court believes that a ban on an entire class of protected weapons can sometimes be justified, it should conclude that regulations like those in Washington are subject to strict judicial scrutiny: government, if challenged, would have to demonstrate that restrictions serve a compelling state interest, will be effective at attaining the desired goal, and do not unnecessarily compromise Second Amendment rights..

Read the whole thing. And Clayton Cramer has pictures of the Harry Potter-like line of people waiting to hear today’s oral argument.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: How Did I Get Iraq Wrong? I didn’t!

RUSH HOUR TRAFFIC? Blame the Neocons!

“THIS SHOULD NOT BE A CHURCH, this should be a mosque.”

WHAT TO DRINK for St. Patrick’s Day.

TONY DYE discovers the long run.

OUCH. Ron Fournier writes: “Both Obama and his wife, Michelle, ooze a sense of entitlement.”

TERRY HEATON ON MEDIA: It’s always about the money.

SPITZER V. UNITED STATES: A constitutional right to hookers.

NORM GERAS explains modern journalism.

IN THE MAIL: Tara Ross & Joseph Smith’s Under God: George Washington and the Question of Church and State.

IN BRITAIN, collecting DNA from “potential offenders” as young as 5.

JAMES LILEKS TOOK THE BAIT that I dangled in this post. The results are, of course, genius.

POLL: Iraqis see progress. Good.

BUT I THOUGHT RED-LIGHT CAMERAS WERE ALL ABOUT SAFETY:

DALLAS – Dallas has turned off about 15 red-light cameras used to monitor busy intersections. The city said the cameras are failing to generate enough red-light-running fines to justify their costs.

Dallas lawmakers originally estimated a gross yearly revenue of about $15 million for the system. The city is about $4 million below that estimate.

Safety second, revenue first, apparently. The numbers on Knoxville’s redlight cameras don’t look so good either.

JAMES JOYNER on legalizing prostitution.

COLLEGES HEART EARMARKS. “The result is a delicate dance in which universities recognize that competitive grant processes are the preferable route to obtaining funding yet continue to lobby their state delegations to support specific projects or initiatives.”

SO IS THIS GOOD NEWS, OR BAD NEWS? LAPD Has a “Wrong Door” Team to Fix Botched SWAT Raids. “The fact that there’s a permanent unit in place to deal with wrong-door raids (and the reporter’s seeming nonchalance about it all) suggests that we’ve reached to the point where innocent people occasionally getting terrorized—and should they have the temerity to reach for a gun to defend themselves—possibly killed, is basically an understood and accepted consequence of fighting the drug war. That’s pretty unsettling.”

HAS THE DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY GONE beyond spin?

Bill Clinton says relax and enjoy it. Indeed.

JERRY POURNELLE REVIEWS Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism. “Goldberg’s book is an anomaly: serious students of political science shouldn’t find anything here they didn’t already know. Alas, I had to say ‘shouldn’t’, because a very great number of people who consider themselves serious students of political science will be shocked and astonished.”