Gun regulations endorsed by the Founders

From a website called "The Conversation":

I have been researching and writing about the history of gun regulation and the Second Amendment for the past two decades. When I began this research, most people assumed that regulation was a relatively recent phenomenon, something associated with the rise of big government in the modern era. Actually, while the founding generation certainly esteemed the idea of an armed population, they were also ardent supporters of gun regulations.Consider these five categories of gun laws that the Founders endorsed.
#1: Registration (required) #2: Public carry (generally prohibited) #3: Stand-your-ground laws (not allowed unless retreat not possible) #4: Safe storage laws (sometimes required) #5: Loyalty oaths ("The right to bear arms was conditional on swearing a loyalty oath to the government. Individuals who refused to swear such an oath were disarmed.")

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Spanish Nun Questions Mary’s Virginity

What is the price one pays when one suggests that sex is a necessary precursor to having a baby? Death threats! What follows is apparently deserving of the death sentence, according to the NYPost:

“I think Mary was in love with Joseph and that they were a normal couple – and having sex is a normal thing,” Caram told the Chester in Love Show, according to the Guardian. “It’s hard to believe and hard to take in. We’ve ended up with the rules we’ve invented without getting to the true message.”
According to the article, these sort of free-thinking questions also require an apology or, at least, that is what Sister Caram felt compelled to do. The take-away: It is apparently the safer practice to proclaim that Mary got pregnant without having sex.

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Defining Rape and Disparaging Women

With the #MeToo movement in full bloom, it is apparent that the discussion we are now having about consent and the contentiousness of this discussion have not moved much since 1993, when Katie Roiphe wrote "Date Rape's Other Victim" in the NYT.  I am in general agreement with Roiphe's analysis. Like many important issues today, we have divided into tribes and locked horns. Regarding this particular issue of consent, it is apparently impossible for many people to see that expanding the notion of rape beyond physical threats and physical coercion can only be done at the risk of denying that women have commensurate intelligence, communication skills and autonomy as men.  Here is an excerpt from Roiphe's 1993 article:

This apparently practical, apparently clinical proscription cloaks retrograde assumptions about the way men and women experience sex. The idea that only an explicit yes means yes proposes that, like children, women have trouble communicating what they want. Beyond its dubious premise about the limits of female communication, the idea of active consent bolsters stereotypes of men just out to "get some" and women who don't really want any. Rape-crisis feminists express nostalgia for the days of greater social control, when the university acted in loco parentis and women were protected from the insatiable force of male desire. The rhetoric of feminists and conservatives blurs and overlaps in this desire to keep our youth safe and pure. By viewing rape as encompassing more than the use or threat of physical violence to coerce someone into sex, rape-crisis feminists reinforce traditional views about the fragility of the female body and will. According to common definitions of date rape, even "verbal coercion" or "manipulation" constitute rape. Verbal coercion is defined as "a woman's consenting to unwanted sexual activity because of a man's verbal arguments not including verbal threats of force." The belief that "verbal coercion" is rape pervades workshops, counseling sessions and student opinion pieces. The suggestion lurking beneath this definition of rape is that men are not just physically but also intellectually and emotionally more powerful than women.

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How important is a college education?

This article by Peter Coy in Bloomberg makes a strong case against the "need" for college education for most people.

[M]ost of us don’t need to understand the Krebs cycle or the Peloponnesian War. Honestly, how much do you remember, let alone use, from Spanish or chem or calculus? For many students, college is mostly about jumping through hoops on command to show potential employers you’re ready, willing, and able to jump through hoops on command.

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Sessions: OK to jail people because they are poor

Op-ed from the NYT:

Last week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions retracted an Obama-era guidance to state courts that was meant to end debtors’ prisons, where people who are too poor to pay fines are sent. This practice is blatantly unconstitutional, and the guidance had helped jump-start reform around the country. Its withdrawal is the latest sign that the federal government is retreating from protecting civil rights for the most vulnerable among us.

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