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Update

It Is The States

A post on X by Jack Tomczak gives us a story and a moral:

Judge rules that federal statute banning non-citizen voting is unconstitutional. The only way to address this is to amend the US Constitution with #uscva HJR152/SJR212.

An article on FoxNews fleshes out the story:

A Biden-appointed judge is being labeled an “activist judge” by conservative critics after ruling the federal government’s application of a law barring noncitizens from voting in elections violates the Constitution in a federal criminal case.

In a 31-page ruling, U.S. District Judge David Leibowitz of the Southern District of Florida dismissed federal charges against Chelsea Cox, a woman originally from Jamaica who voted in the 2020 presidential election despite not being a U.S. citizen. 

The ruling comes as the Trump administration has intensified efforts to prevent noncitizens from voting, including through federal prosecutions and attempts to verify citizenship on state voter rolls, sparking legal battles with Democratic-led states and voting-rights groups. 

The ruling is a great example of a federalist strict construction of the Constitution:

Leibowitz ruled that the Constitution gives states — not Congress — the authority to determine who qualifies to vote in elections, effectively ruling that a provision of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA) criminalizing noncitizen voting in federal elections is unconstitutional as applied to Cox.

“The Constitution commits to the States, and the States alone, the general power to set voter qualifications in federal elections,” Leibowitz wrote in his ruling. “This is clear from both the text of the document and the debates at the Constitutional Convention in 1787.”

One might argue, on that latter point, that the debates in the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia are not nearly as important as the debates in the state legislatures prior to ratification. But that is a quibble: the ratification conventions are more clearly federalist and state-centered than the fabled “Miracle in Philadelphia.”

So, as Paul Jacob has argued in these pages — most recently last Wednesday — the only legal way to prevent states from tallying non-citizen votes in federal elections is a constitutional amendment declaring it illegal.

Categories
Thought

Jack Woodford

Few human beings are proof against the implied flattery of rapt attention.

Jack Woodford (1894–1971), Strangers in Love (1934).
Categories
Today

SpaceShipOne

On October 4, 2004, SpaceShipOne became the first private craft to fly into space, thereby winning for Mojave Aerospace Ventures the Ansari X Prize for private spaceflight.

Categories
Update

Milei Now

Readers of Le Monde got what most readers got, this week, about Argentinian President Javier Milei: “In Paris, Argentinian President Javier Milei seeks investors to support his country’s struggling economy.” But is that it? Is that all there is?

No.

The big story a week or so ago was Milei’s statements about the United Nations. Breitbart’s headline is worth clicking on: “Javier Milei Blasts U.N. as ‘Useless,’ ‘Arrogant Parasites’ at General Assembly.”

Milei organized his new condemnation of the United Nations into three separate categories: what the U.N. “should have done but did not,” what “should not have done, but did anyway,” and comments on the United Nations’ stance on the advance of artificial intelligence. President Milei also condemned the Islamic regime of Iran over its attacks against Israel, emphasizing that Argentina is still demanding justice over the two terrorists attacks the country suffered in the 1990s from Iran through its proxy terror group, Hezbollah.

The New York Times has something to say, and it may have been written by a human: “As A.I. Fears Grow, President Milei Pitches Argentina as a Rules-Free Haven.”

“On artificial intelligence, Argentina will stand at the forefront of freedom,” Mr. Milei told the United Nations General Assembly in New York last week, while asserting the country’s “commitment to not preemptively regulate A.I.”

Mr. Milei, who has proposed creating “nonhuman corporations” run by A.I. agents, is seeking to lure foreign investments to build data centers in Patagonia. He also relentlessly posts A.I.-generated content on social media.

Reuters takes a step back and looks at the larger economic picture: “Argentina announces citizenship-by-investment program.”

Argentina will launch South America’s first citizenship-by-investment program, Economy Minister Luis Caputo said ‌on X on Friday.

Applications will open in the fourth quarter of 2026 and will offer citizenship through a non-refundable contribution of $350,000 or the purchase of an $800,000 public bond, the Economy Ministry said in a statement.

Maybe it is time to move to Patagonia? Make it a Giant move.

Categories
Thought

Virginia Woolf

My first assertion is one that I think you will grant — that every one in this room is a judge of character. Indeed it would be impossible to live for a year without disaster unless one practised character-reading and had some skill in the art. Our marriages, our friendships depend on it; our business largely depends on it; every day questions arise which can only be solved by its help. And now I will hazard a second assertion, which is more disputable perhaps, to the effect that on or about December 1910 human character changed.

I am not saying that one went out, as one might into a garden, and there saw that a rose had flowered, or that a hen had laid an egg. The change was not sudden and definite like that. But a change there was, nevertheless; and, since one must be arbitrary, let us date it about the year 1910. The first signs of it are recorded in the books of Samuel Butler, in The Way of All Flesh in particular; the plays of Bernard Shaw continue to record it. In life one can see the change, if I may use a homely illustration, in the character of one’s cook. The Victorian cook lived like a leviathan in the lower depths, formidable, silent, obscure, inscrutable; the Georgian cook is a creature of sunshine and fresh air; in and out of the drawing-room, now to borrow The Daily Herald, now to ask advice about a hat. Do you ask for more solemn instances of the power of the human race to change ? Read the Agamemnon, and see whether, in process of time, your sympathies are not almost entirely with Clytemnestra. Or consider the married life of the Carlyles, and bewail the waste, the futility, for him and for her, of the horrible domestic tradition which made it seemly for a woman of genius to spend her time chasing beetles, scouring saucepans, instead of writing books. All human relations have shifted — those between masters and servants, husbands and wives, parents and children. And when human relations change there is at the same time a change in religion, conduct, politics, and literature.

Virginia Woolf, Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown (1924).
Categories
Today

Declarations of Thanksgiving

On October 3, 1789, George Washington proclaimed Thursday November 26, 1789, a Thanksgiving Day. On the same date in 1863, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day.

Categories
crime and punishment Eighth Amendment rights regulation too much government

Fly the Cruel and Unusual Skies

Alaska, civil asset forfeiture, property, prohibition

Sometimes, cruel punishment is the usual, as in states like the People’s Republic of China. Everybody is a victim there. But entire ethnic or religious groups of people are routinely subjected to even more cruel tyranny than most Chinese people must put with.

If Americans aren’t yet in this situation — not for lack of trying by various local, state, and federal autocrats — one reason is that instances of cruel and unusual punishment can be fought in court. Which is what Ken Jouppi is doing with the help of the Institute for Justice.

What was Jouppi’s alleged crime? He let a passenger bring “visible” containers of beer on board his Cessna 206. Why is this a problem? The number of beer cans was 72, and the destination was a dry village, so you can imagine the horror involved!

The trial court determined intent as Jouppi being “willfully blind” to the contraband, but it may be that he just failed to leap into action when he noticed the beer . . . assuming he did. 

Jouppi was punished 13 years ago, a year after the “crime,” with three days in jail and a $1,500 fine. But that wasn’t good enough for the Alaska government, which tenaciously enforces local alcohol prohibitions — it demanded that Jouppi forfeit his $95,000 airplane. 

“Although that penalty seemed grossly disproportionate,” says Reason magazine, “the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that it did not violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on excessive fines.” 

Yes, this is a case of civil asset forfeiture, covered here for decades now.

Will the U.S. Supreme Court see reason? Regardless of the outcome, the process has also been the punishment, one that is both cruel and all too usual.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
Today

Stroke of Luck

On October 2, 1919, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson suffered a massive stroke, leaving him partially paralyzed, preventing him from reacting to the economic downturn following the Great War in a Progressive fashion — making his response de facto laissez faire. One insider, and skeptic of Progressive hubris, archly referred to Wilson’s incapacitation as “a stroke of luck.”

His successor in office, President Warren G. Harding, would go on to massively cut spending as well as taxes, and take on regulation as well. He also released Woodrow Wilson’s domestic war prisoners — ranging from journalists, ordinary folk to socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs — who had dissented from Wilson’s involvement in the war.

The Depression of the early 1920s, though as deep as the early 1930s, proved remarkably brief, thanks to Harding . . . and a stroke of luck.

On October 2, 1789, George Washington sent the proposed Constitutional amendments (the United States’ Constitution’s Bill of Rights) to the States for ratification.

Categories
Thought

Wharton

There are two ways of spreading light: to be
The candle or the mirror that reflects it.

Edith Wharton, “Vesalius in Zante (1564),” in North American Review (November 1902), p. 631.

Categories
crime and punishment prohibition regulation

Just Say Uncool

drug war, marijuana, prohibition, culture

Something curious has happened to the young, a new government report suggests: “the number of high school students who use marijuana has decreased by almost half — 44 percent — since states started enacting adult-use legalization.”

I’m quoting an article from September 22. In it, Marijuana Moment editor Tom Angeli repeatedly contrasts the decrease in teen cannabis use with the rise in state legalizations. “The new federal data, released on Monday, shows that 12.9 percent of high school students currently consume cannabis, which is defined as having used it at least once in the past 30 days. That’s down from 23.1 percent in 2011 — the year before the first U.S. states approved recreational marijuana legalization laws.”

Angeli reminds us of a standard argument against marijuana legalization: If marijuana is readily available, kids will increase usage of the ‘pernicious weed.’

Hasn’t happened!

But why?

It may be relevant to note that sexual activity among the young has gone way down. So has testosterone in boys; teen pregnancies are also in decline. 

Meanwhile, teen use of prescription drugs is way up. If your brain function is altered by one or more psychiatric medications, doctor prescribed, perhaps these compete with traditional psychoactive drugs, reducing demand.

Angeli insists, however, that “[p]rior research also suggests that marijuana use by young people has generally fallen in states that legalize it for adults.”

If this turns out to be true, we may have to accept his framing: a significant driver of drug use among young people is The Cool Factor, and legal drugs are not cool; prohibited drugs are. 

For decades, anti-drug activists used celebrities and cartoon characters to convince kids that “drugs aren’t cool.” 

Instead, legalization did the job.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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