[jcranmer]

It's pretty funny to watch people try to justify "literal" readings of the text, since they often focus on interpreting just one piece of text and ignore the effects of the analysis on the rest of the text.

The First Amendment very clearly binds only Congress in its literal reading: it begins "Congress shall make no law..." And there is no literal text in any subsequent amendment that might cause incorporation to the states--the Fourteenth Amendment only literally incorporates the Fifth Amendment, and that by literal repetition of the text.