As Independence Day approaches, let’s remember that our Founding Fathers created a marvelous document to protect individual freedoms from the aggressions of government.

We call this the Constitution.

But along The Chicago Way, there is another text, full of decrees. The dusty scroll must be buried deep in a vault at City Hall, because few, if any, have ever seen it.

Still, Chicagoans know its power. Some may call it the Edict of Shortshanks. Others call it The Mayoral Carta. But most refer to it simply by its common name:

The Daleytution.

And a few days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Chicago’s illogical handgun ban — thus rightly affirming the Second Amendment of the Constitution even here — Mayor Richard Daley had different ideas.

He’s now working on a new ordinance that is expected to allow only one handgun per registered “qualified” individual.

Other impediments to the Second Amendment are also being considered, including insurance, training courses, licensing fees and whatever else he can think of.

Daleytutional scholars understand the inherent conflict between the Constitution and the Daleytution. But they also know another thing: He’s the boss.

I’m not advocating Chicagoans stockpile hand grenades and howitzers. These issues about where to draw the line will be debated in the courts. But the Second Amendment couldn’t be clearer.

So at his news conference Wednesday, I asked: Excuse me, Mayor? Where in the Constitution does it say “one gun, one person”?

The man was prepared for my lofty legal theories.

“No, what is happening is that the Supreme Court has rendered that certain parts of the Constitution do not apply to local and state governments,” said Daley.

“We understand that, and now we have to fashion in regards to an ordinance, and everybody’s looking at that. … There will be hearings tomorrow and we’ll present the full thing to the hearing about it, and then, for Friday.”

That’s the day his “full thing” will get the aldermanic rubber stamp.

The mayor is correct that the court left the door open to local governments to regulate some aspects of gun ownership. But the justices probably didn’t realize that Daley will rip that door off its hinges.

The Second Amendment reads as follows: “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.”

However, the Daleytution takes a more subtle and nuanced view: “The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed, except when the mayor feels like it.”

Gun rights and crime often get mixed in the political soup, and sometimes the politics get racial, particularly in Chicago.

Daley has run out of money, so he can’t hire enough police to adequately patrol the streets. Even when the city coffers were full, he was fearful of flooding high-crime neighborhoods with cops. He has always been afraid of headlines about white cops shooting black teens.

Complicating his response lately has been the federal perjury trial of Jon Burge, a white ex-police commander convicted the other day of lying under oath when he denied torturing African-American suspects.

Daley was Cook County state’s attorney when Burge was allegedly beating confessions out of people and making cases in the 1980s. Back then, Daley campaigned for mayor twice as the law-and-order prosecutor candidate.

“Well, we did everything possible at that time, if you look back, you can change a lot of things,” Daley said Wednesday, again dodging the question of what he did about Burge, which was absolutely nothing.

A reporter asked: So what things would you change?

“No, a lot of things in my life. Not just that,” said the mayor.

Chicago’s handgun ban has been ridiculously ineffective. One recent weekend, some 50 Chicagoans were shot, and some 30 shot the next, most with handguns.

I asked Daley if the court’s decision has given him the ability to redirect the political heat regarding violent street crime back toward the justices.

“John, no, the heat will always be on my back,” he said. “You know, on my back, or my front, whatever you want to describe it. It’s always there. What I have said is that we are a country of laws, not a country of guns.”

For the 28 years of the Chicago handgun ban, law-abiding citizens couldn’t have handguns to defend themselves. Politicians can carry. One alderman even waved her pistol at a political meeting. Taxpayers subsidize the mayor’s phalanx of armed bodyguards.

Meanwhile, criminals carry guns because they’re criminals.

After the mayor’s news conference, I ran into Colleen Lawson, one of the plaintiffs in the handgun case against the Daley administration.

She and lawyer David G. Sigale were in the hallway. They said they’d challenge whatever restrictions Daley comes up with. I figure they’ll win.

“One of the greatest things that has come about as a result of our lawsuit is the awareness of citizens that things here in Chicago are not the way things are supposed to be,” Lawson said. “That the rest of the country doesn’t work like this. That it doesn’t have to be like this. That you don’t have to be bullied.”

What she doesn’t seem to understand is this: The rest of America has the Constitution. But Chicago has the Daleytution.

And that’s the law of this land.

Schwarzenegger suggests that there should be some measure of parity between the amount that Californians pay to support the federal government and the quantity of services or federal funding they receive in return. He might have a legitimate complaint on this score, if only we were still governed by the same constitutional provisions written in 1787 and ratified in 1791. The Founders understood, and concurred with Schwarzenegger, that the several independent, sovereign states should not be disproportionately burdened with the responsibility of funding the operation of the federal government. To protect against this, the apportionment clause (Article I, Section 2) was written to ensure that each state share the responsibility of providing for those federal activities enumerated in the Constitution, in direct proportion to the number of citizens residing in each state.

It is gratifying to see Schwarzenegger arrive at the Founders’ view of budgetary fairness some 219 years after the fact, but his argument comes 108 years too late. The Sixteenth Amendment effectively overrides the apportionment clause, and authorizes the U.S. Congress to levy direct taxes against individual incomes, “without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.” Not only does this amendment authorize Congress to tax some states more than others (with respect to their proportional populations), but as of this writing, no intrepid litigator has yet mounted a successful general welfare argument to prevent the feds from spending the proceeds just as disproportionately. You can hardly swing a dead cat these days without hitting someone who will argue that passage of the Sixteenth Amendment dealt a potentially fatal blow to both state sovereignty and individual liberty, and much progress could be made in restoring responsible governance and economic prosperity with the repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment. Nonetheless, since 1913, it has been the law of the land. Sorry, Arnold, but on this count, you lose — especially since California was among the earliest states to ratify the Sixteenth Amendment in January of 1911.

In response to Schwarzenegger’s claim that unfunded federal mandates are bankrupting his state, the most obvious question is, “So who’s fault is that?” To which specific federal mandates is the Governator referring? In his remarks on Friday, Schwarzenegger referred to mandates in the areas of health, education and welfare. Fascinating that he should choose these examples, since all are areas in which the politicians in Washington have no constitutional authority to govern, much less issue binding mandates (funded or otherwise). What Schwarzenegger is really saying is that he, as governor, the California legislature and thousands of their predecessors have voluntarily chosen to comply with one illegitimate federal mandate after another. Rather than take seriously their sworn obligation to preserve the integrity of their offices, and to defend the sovereignty of their state and the liberty of its citizens, Schwarzenegger, his counterparts and their predecessors have repeatedly taken the path of least resistance, and evaded the difficult work of doing the right thing. Now we are told that California must be saved, because it is “too big to fail”. This is like the couple in the house down the street losing their life savings to a con artist, and then self-righteously demanding that all of their neighbors pool their resources to compensate them for the loss. Thanks, but no thanks.

None of us living outside of California should imagine that our own state officials have shown greater responsibility than Schwarzenegger and his colleagues. Officeholders in every state have consistently refused to face down unconstitutional federal intrusion. The solution, however, cannot possibly come from the very same practices that created the mess in the first place. If states across the nation are unable to meet the costs of their own ill-advised obligations, where does Schwarzenegger expect them to find the surplus to help Californians meet theirs? He seems infected with the currently popular misconception that the federal government has its own supply of money to spend. To give Californians $6.9 billion, the federal government can either tax it away from the rest of us (leaving us less prepared to stave off our own collapse); borrow it from foreign lenders (leaving us and our descendants indebted to those with no inherent concern for our well-being); or simply print more money (destroying the economic value of everything we currently have). Unless folks in the Golden State know of some economic alchemy that Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, and John Maynard Keynes never imagined, there are no other options.

Despite the logic of the very argument he made on Friday, don’t expect Arnold Schwarzenegger or any other state governor to lobby for repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment anytime soon. However sensible this proposal may seem in principle, those wishing to be considered “mainstream” will inevitably yield to pressure to denounce the idea of repeal as a product of lunatic fringe thinking. With the resulting opportunities for disproportionate federal taxation, don’t expect state officials to exercise restraint in trying to curry federal favor, in the hope of landing a disproportionate share of the resulting proceeds. This pathetic effort to regain a few crumbs of the loaf already taken from their citizens at gunpoint keeps state officials jumping through whatever federal hoops Washington contrives, however constitutionally indefensible they may be.

We have little hope of untying this Gordian knot, but it may soon be cut by economic realities no politician can ignore forever. Over the past year, not a week has gone by without someone blogging or “tweeting”:

The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.

Usually attributed to Margaret Thatcher (perhaps apocryphally), this quote invariably expresses the frustration of those who think themselves unfairly burdened with the consequences of someone else’s irresponsibility. Faced with the unvarnished prospect of seeing their own state services slashed, while being taxed to maintain the existing basket of benefits Californians enjoy, citizens of other states may finally be ready to revolt against the federal spoils system that got us into this mess. Whether enough of us see the issues clearly or not, the economic reality is that we cannot all bail each other out. We’ve already run out of each others’ money.

There are a number of ideas in this world that should never be introduced to each other.

“Christian” and “rock” is one example. “Movie” and “wholesome” is certainly another. And, really, one thing we’ve always been able to count on is the boundless depravity of Hollywood. For this, I used to be grateful.

Obviously, those of us with even a tenuous grasp of decency or respect for the rule of law understand that filmmaker Roman Polanski — who, need we be reminded, alleged loaded up a 13-year-old with alcohol and Quaaludes before raping her in 1977 — should find himself putrefying in prison. Even actors must believe this, right?

No?

The subsequent skirmish over Polanski’s arrest — not exactly a momentous international incident — isn’t between right and left or blue state and red state or secularist and social conservative. It’s between a gaggle of actors and directors against everyone with a moral IQ above Woody Allen.

Harvey Weinstein, the noted producer of “Pulp Fiction,” has been one of Polanski’s staunchest defenders, claiming that the Polish director had already served his time (directing movies in Europe) and that we should trust his take on the situation because “Hollywood has the best moral compass, because it has compassion.”

Imagine, if you can, the impenetrability of this man’s iron-clad bubble. Weinstein’s success is predicated on dispensing tales from the darkest, twisted corners of the imagination. Don’t get me wrong, for this I am also grateful. Some of Weinstein’s ethically magisterial works, for instance, have included: “Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead” (tagline? “They can die quickly. They can die slowly. But they must die!”) and “Death Proof” (plot? “Two separate sets of voluptuous women are stalked at different times by a scarred stuntman who uses his “death-proof” cars to execute his murderous plans”).

Now, I ask you, if Weinstein possessed even a scintilla of decency, would he have subjected this nation to “The Nanny Diaries”?

When Weinstein began circulating a pro-Polanski petition after the director was apprehended in Switzerland, Allen — a man who, somewhat prophetically, carried on an affair with a teenager in his film “Manhattan” — immediately signed.

As did Martin Scorsese, a true giant of cinema, whose depiction of psychotics, mobsters, teenager prostitutes, drugs, mayhem and crass violence can only be called genius.

But moral? Compassionate? Not exactly.

Polanski himself made a name directing “Repulsion” (Plot? “Left alone when her sister goes on vacation, a sexually repressed young beauty goes insane with surreal fantasies of seduction and rape”) and “Rosemary’s Baby,” wherein a housewife is imbued with the devil’s spawn (co-starring Charles Grodin!).

I enjoy many of these charmingly decadent films for what they are: fantasy, titillating, coarse, absurd and escapist. There are few people who possess the talent to send us to a world where violence is without consequence; where serial infidelity is patched up with a couple of witty sentences; and where middle-aged men (often, incredibly, resembling the ones directing the film) can secure companionship from lithe 20-year-old beauties as effortlessly as they can jump from building to building chasing would-be terrorists.

The problem is that apparently many of these people have a problem distinguishing between art and reality. As well-known blogger Allahpundit recently twittered, “Word on the street: Polanski’s next film is so good, Europe’s going to let him (redacted) an eight-year-old. It’s THAT GOOD.”

Where are the average, serial-marrying, middling Hollywood immorals as their profession is sullied by the likes of Whoopi Goldberg, who asserts that Polanski wasn’t guilty of “rape rape” or Debra Winger, who calls the rule of law “Philistine thuggery”?

What is the average American to make of this incident? Despite the coverage, not much.

1. Hollywood denizens are extraordinarily out of touch.

2. We send them to jail when necessary.

3. Always, always ignore them unless they have a script in hand.

A single case sometimes shines a lurid light on an entire country, and the case of Fiona Pilkington does just that for contemporary Britain—both its population and its officialdom. A coroner’s inquest was recently held in the case, two years after the events in question.

On October 23, 2007, Pilkington, a single mother of low intelligence, used gasoline to set fire to her car, with herself and her 18-year-old, severely handicapped daughter inside. They both died in the conflagration.

The reason that she killed herself and her daughter was that local youths had abused them for years. They taunted her and her daughter for hours on end, standing and shouting outside their home, pelting it with bottles and stones, and repeatedly intruding into the garden. Pilkington, who was inoffensive, shy, and retiring, called the police a total of 33 times, but they did absolutely nothing, though they knew what was going on. The local chief of police issued an apology at the inquiry into the affair. If he had meant it, of course, he would have immediately resigned his post.

The deep spiritual sickness of contemporary Britain is evident in the following comment on the inquiry in the liberal newspaper, The Guardian: “Although much of the abuse centred on the taunts about the children’s disabilities, police failed to recognise it as a hate crime rather than simple antisocial behaviour, which would have made it a far higher priority.”

In other words, the seriousness of an offense committed in Britain now depends upon who the victim is. If a person is not of an identifiably protected group, he or she is not entitled to police intervention against abusive stone- and bottle-throwing youths. He is not entitled to protection at all.

The Guardian’s article appears to accept that such behavior, so long as it targets a member of an unprotected group, is merely undesirable—“anti-social” rather than obviously criminal. The rule of law is fast evaporating in Britain; we are coming to live in a land of men, not of laws.

In a stunning display of political cowardice, the Obama administration has decided not to seek specific congressional authorization for a prolonged detention statute for Guantanamo Bay detainees deemed too dangerous to set free. It’s the latest troubling flip flop by the president, an utter abdication of the lofty promises he made during his much-heralded National Archives Speech just this May.

This decision not only weakens U.S. detention policy, it will regrettably serve as an invitation to the courts to expand their role in national-security affairs — an area that is properly the province of the executive and legislative branches.

During the 2008 campaign, candidate Obama constantly criticized the Bush administration for “going it alone” and creating a law-free zone for the terrorist detainees at Guantanamo. He rebuked President Bush for his cowboy mentality, and his administration for making a “series of hasty decisions” after 9/11.

He led us to believe that he would take a different approach with respect to Guantanamo, putting America on a stronger legal footing while re-establishing our “tarnished” image abroad. Turns out it was just another feel-good speech, soon forgotten.

Addressing Bush’s “ad hoc legal approach” at Gitmo in his National Archives speech, Obama said, “I can tell you that the wrong answer is to pretend like this problem will go away if we maintain an unsustainable status quo.” He continued, promising to “reshape these [legal] standards to ensure they are in line with the rule of law . . . Our goal is to construct a legal framework for Guantanamo detainees — not to avoid one.”

Yet yesterday’s announcement that he won’t seek legislation specifically authorizing prolonged detention means he is embracing the very thing he was most critical of, and purposefully avoiding that which is most necessary: establishing a durable, long-term, and sustainable framework for legal detention, not just for detainees currently at Guantanamo, but for future high-value captures outside of Afghanistan.

Instead, he will rely on the current congressional Authorization of Use of Military Force, which authorizes the president to “use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks.” Thus, President Obama will decide who is to be detained, where, and for how long. Yet, when addressing this very issue in his National Archives speech, President Obama asserted, “In our constitutional system, prolonged detention should not be the decision of any one man.” Apparently, there is the Obama exception to the one-man prohibition.

So what is really going on here? To those of us who have either served in senior policy posts and dealt with these issues on a daily basis, or followed them closely from the outside, it is becoming increasingly clear that this administration is trying to create the appearance of a tough national-security policy regarding the detention of terrorists at Guantanamo, yet allow the courts to make the tough calls on releasing the bad guys. Letting the courts do the dirty work would give the administration plausible cover and distance from the decision-making process. The numbers speak for themselves.

Of the 38 detainees whose cases have been adjudicated through the habeas process in federal court in Washington, 30 have been ordered released by civilian judges. That is close to an 80 percent loss rate for the government, which argued for continued detention. Yet, how many of these decisions has this administration appealed, knowing full well that many of those 30 detainees should not in good conscience be let go? The answer: one.

Letting the courts do it for him gives the president distance from the unsavory release decisions. It also allows him to state with a straight face, as he did at the Archives speech, “We are not going to release anyone if it would endanger our national security, nor will we release detainees within the United States who endanger the American people.”

No, the president won’t release detainees; he’ll sit back and let the courts to do it for him.

And the president won’t seek congressional authorization for prolonged detention of the enemy, as he promised, because it will anger his political base on the Left. The ultra-liberals aren’t about to relinquish their “try them or set them free” mantra, even though such a policy threatens to put terrorists back on the battlefield.

Moreover, the president would have to spend political capital to win congressional authorization for a prolonged detention policy. Obviously, he would rather spend that capital on other policy priorities.

Politically speaking, it is easier to maintain the status quo and let the detainees seek release from federal judges. The passive approach also helps the administration close Gitmo without taking the heat for actually releasing detainees themselves.

Practitioners, scholars, policy wonks, and experts from across the political spectrum have written about the need for a prolonged-detention legal framework. Without it, there can be no long-term solution to the vexing problem of how to incapacitate stateless terrorists during the ongoing conflict.

President Obama’s decision to punt this issue will come back to bite America and our allies. It’s a missed opportunity to solve the detention issue once and for all.

U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made the following remarks on the Senate floor Tuesday regarding free speech in the health care debate:

“I rise to call my colleagues’ attention to a disturbing development in the health care debate.

“A colleague of ours has called for an investigation into a major health care company because this company informed its customers of its concerns about health care legislation that this colleague of ours introduced.

“As a result, the federal government has now told all companies that provide Medicare Advantage to seniors to stop communicating with their clients about the effects of that legislation — even telling them what they can and cannot post on their websites. This gag order, enforced through an agency of the federal government at the request of a Senator, is wrong.

“It started when a company based in my hometown of Louisville — Humana — had the temerity, in the eyes of some of our colleagues, to explain to its customers that if Medicare Advantage is cut, as the chairman’s mark requires, it may have to reduce benefits, which, of course, is a common sense conclusion.

“Mr. President, this is America: Citizens, either as individuals or grouped together in companies, have a fundamental right to talk about legislation they favor or oppose. That is the core of the First Amendment’s protections on speech. Unfortunately, this is part of a troubling trend of efforts to dismiss the concerns raised by the American people over the past few months.

“Over the summer, we saw American citizens who raised concerns about the health care proposals before Congress dismissed as ‘un-American’ by leaders in Congress. That’s bad enough, but using the full weight of the federal government’s enforcement powers to stifle free speech should trouble all Americans — and all of us — even more.

“We cannot allow government officials to target individuals or companies because they do not like what they have to say.

“This latest effort to squelch free speech raises several serious questions:

“Is this what we have come to as a country — that an individual or company can no longer factually advocate their position on an incredibly important public policy issue?

“Shouldn’t customers have a right to know the potential impact of a Congressional action?

“Is this what we believe as a Senate — that this body should debate a trillion-dollar health care bill that affects every American while using the powerful arm of government to shut down speech?

“Is this how citizens and companies can expect to be treated if health reform passes? That any health provider that disagrees with a powerful Senator will be subject to an investigation and a gag order?

“How is this any different than what the Washington Post and New York Times have done in lobbying for a reporter shield law? Would we stand by if the Judiciary Committee asked the FBI to investigate the media for taking positions on pending legislation we don’t agree with? Of course not.

“Humana is headquartered in my hometown of Louisville, and yes, I care deeply about its 8,000 employees in Kentucky. But this gag order now applies to all Medicare Advantage providers.

“I would remind my colleagues that I have spent my career defending the First Amendment rights of people to criticize their elected officials, including me. I would make the same argument if this were a company based in San Francisco or Helena or Chicago.

“The right to free speech is at the core of our democracy. Free citizens have a First Amendment right to petition their government for a redress of grievances. This gag order on companies like Humana and those in all our states, in my view, is a clear violation of that right. It’s wrong.

“Employers that warn their customers about the effects of legislation aren’t the ones who should be getting warnings here. Senators who threaten Americans’ First Amendment rights are.”