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Opinion: In today’s pages: Guns, Coke and Congress

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Small-government conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg makes a startling argument on today’s Op-Ed page: We should make the House of Representatives bigger. A lot bigger, in fact; Goldberg says a Congress with 5,000 members would shake up our nation’s calcified two-party system and more closely approximate the kind of democracy the founding fathers intended.

UC Irvine School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, meanwhile, debunks arguments that the healthcare bills pending in the House and Senate would be unconstitutional. And obesity experts Kelly D. Brownell and David S. Ludwig argue in favor of a tax on sugar-sweetened sodas, which would help fund healthcare reform programs and lower healthcare costs by decreasing obesity and related ailments such as diabetes.

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On the editorial page, the board urges the Obama administration to consider backing new elections in Afghanistan or a transitional government, unless monitors can determine that the country’s Aug. 20 election was legitimate.

The editorial board also takes up a gun-rights case and argues, surprisingly enough, in favor of stronger protections for gun owners. Though the board favors measures to reduce gun violence, it thinks the Supreme Court should rule that the 2nd Amendment applies to states as well as the federal government. That’s because allowing states to ignore this part of the Bill of Rights could undermine the requirement that they abide by others.

Finally, the board notes that Comcast Corp.’s proposal to buy NBC Universal cuts against the grain of recent media deals, and its effect on the marketplace may be limited. But it will be interesting to watch how the combined company’s approach to the Internet might change.

* Cartoon by Rob Rogers / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

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