Categories
Update

The Predatory Congress Protected

The perverts, rapists and bullies in Congress showed their true colors this week — and the colors? Neither “red” nor “blue”: instead, full spectrum. That is, very bipartisan:

In a controversial move, 357 members of Congress, including 175 Republicans and 182 Democrats, voted to refer a resolution that would have forced the release of records related to sexual harassment claims against lawmakers to a committee, effectively killing the measure. The resolution, proposed by Rep. Nancy Mace, R-SC, aimed to direct the House Committee on Ethics to publicly release all records of investigations into members of Congress for sexual harassment, unwelcome sexual advances, and sexual assault. Critics argue this vote is an attempt to cover up misconduct and protect predators in Congress.

“Congress Votes to Keep Sexual Harassment Settlement Records Secret,” National Today (March 6, 2026).

Thomas Massie (R-Tenn.) insists that everyone who voted to “refer” the resolution did so knowing that their voted effectively killed it. He listed the names of the few good guys on X:

Representative Mace was not amused by the weak showing:

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Mar. 4, 2026) — Today, Congresswoman Nancy Mace (R-SC) issued the following statement after both Republicans and Democrats voted to kill her resolution which would have forced the public release of Congressional sexual harassment records.

“Both parties colluded today to protect predators. They voted to keep sexual harassment records buried, and they did it together.

“Every Member who voted against this resolution voted to protect the cover-up instead of the victims.

“This is the establishment in action, always protecting itself, never the victims. Ask yourself why. Remember their names when they ask for your vote.

We don’t want to hear a single Member who voted this resolution down utter the name of a single Epstein victim. You don’t get to bury sexual harassment records in Congress and then pretend you care about victims. Pick a side.

“The victims deserved better. The American people deserved better. Every Member who voted to keep these records buried voted to protect power over people. We won’t let it go and neither should you.”

Office of Congresswoman Nancy Mace (March 4, 2026).

Paul Jacob has written about the protected creeps in Congress, for this is not a new issue by any means.

Categories
Thought

John Cowper Powys

Once liberated from ambition, a person has nothing to lose by being taken for a fool.

‪John Cowper Powys, A Philosophy of Solitude (1933)‬, p. 57.

Categories
Today

The First American Bicameral

On March 7, 1644, Massachusetts established the first two-chamber legislature in the American colonies.

One hundred thirty years later, to the day, British forces closed the port of Boston to all commerce.

Categories
crime and punishment ideological culture Internet controversy

Run Rampant

conspiracy

We live in a great Age of Conspiracy Theories.

I’m not quite on board.

As the Internet grew up, with it came all the condemnations of conspiracy theories, run rampant. The Internet, we were told, was problematic in that not only was information readier at hand than ever before, but so was it easier to share and nurture all these goofy conspiracy theories.

You know: JFK was killed by someone other than Oswald, or also by others, in addition to Oswald. 

Or . . . UFOs are real, and the government is covering it up.

Or the Rothschilds are behind it all.

You know the kind of thing I’m talking about. 

Ick.

Yet: The government now admits that UFOs are real, implying that it was, ahem, lying in the past.

Further: As we uncover the grotesquerie in the Epstein Files, we learn that he proudly served Rothschild banking interests!

So let’s not get started on the JFK assassination.

One reason conspiracy theories are prominent is that we are uncovering so many conspiracies. Actual conspiracies. Like the Wuhan lab business, or the suppression of information about the mRNA “vaccines,” or . . . must we go on and on? 

I don’t like conspiracy theories. I said I’m not on board. We need to work towards a world not built for conspiracies. This means whittling down government, with its current vast powers to take and to “give.” And siphon off wealth at each step. While sidestepping transparency.

Ask yourself: Does our political-legal environment actually discourage conspiracies?

That question almost answers itself. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
Thought

W.B. Yeats

I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.

William Butler Yeats, speech (June 7, 1923), Seanad Éireann (Irish Free Senate), on the Censorship of Films Bill.

Categories
Today

Stalin’s Daughter Defected

On March 6, 1967, Soviet Premiere Joseph Stalin’s only daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva (February 28, 1926 – November 22, 2011), defected to the United States. She later took the name Lana Peters, upon marriage to William Wesley Peters. The marriage was short-lived.

The March 6 date also marks term limits advocate and initiative organizer Paul Jacob’s birthday. He was born on the anniversary of the births of Michaelangelo, Cryano de Bergerac, and Alan Greenspan. He is also, obviously, the main reason that this site, ThisIsCommonSense.org, exists.

Categories
general freedom ideological culture

Winning Through Identification

Javier Milei, Argentina, freedom, government

Argentina’s libertarian president, Javier Milei, perceives that many political battles amount to a clash between producers and thieves. Between those who work for living (using what sociologist Franz Oppenheimer called the “economic means”) and those who steal for a living (using the “political means”).

Politics can’t always be reduced to this conflict, of course. But it can pretty often — certainly in a country where socialists have been pulverizing the economy.

Now, this knowledge is not kept by Milei as a dark secret, about which he would be embarrassed to be caught mentioning to a select few supporters.

Milei is not coy! That we learned during his campaign for president; and, no matter what his ups and downs in office, he still seems to be just as candid, just as willing to blast his opponents, to their faces, for —

Well: “Listen up, you ignorant fools! ‘Social justice’ is theft. It implies unequal treatment before the law and is preceded by theft. You bunch of thieves! Criminals!”

Also: “The world has only two kinds of people: those who live off what others produce — that is, the parasites, that is, you — and those who produce everything that is possible in modern life.

“The true battle of our time is cultural, philosophical, and moral. It is about choosing the system that lifted millions out of poverty. It is about ceasing to be an immature nation that squanders the future to distribute benefits in the present. . . .”

Probably even better in the original Spanish.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
Thought

W.H. Auden

When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter, 
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

W.H. Auden, from Epigraph on a Tyrant (1939).
Categories
Today

Indexed!

On March 5, 1616, Nicolaus Copernicus’s book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, was placed on the Catholic Church’s Index of Forbidden Books.

This censorship notwithstanding, the Earth continued to revolve around the Sun.

The book had been first published in 1543 in Nuremberg.

| In 1770, the Boston Massacre took place on March 5.

| Joseph Stalin, the longest serving leader of the Soviet Union, died at his Volynskoe dacha in Moscow on this date in 1953, after a cerebral hemorrhage.

| Composer Sergei Prokofiev died on the same day as Stalin, but it took a while for anyone to take notice, so big was the news of the demise of the dictator. Prokofiev wrote seven symphonies, two violin and five piano concerti, nine piano sonatas and many other works, including operas, ballets, and film scores.

| March 5 is magician Penn Jillette’s birthday.

Categories
free trade & free markets regulation too much government

Thought Deserts

socialism, Mamdani, grocery store, economics

The U.S. is at war — a war that Trump had warned against; and UFOs/drones are again seen over New Jersey. But Senator Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) has something else on his mind, something a little closer to home: regulating grocery store pricing and marketing.

He has co-sponsored S. 3892, dubbed the “Stop Price Gouging in Grocery Stores Act of 2026.”

What is price gouging? Selling or offering items at a “grossly excessive price,” which the Federal Trade Commission is tasked with defining. But Luján’s real focus seems to be his distrust of surveillance in stores, which he fears will be used to adjust prices individually.

He somehow doesn’t mention why stores have increased surveillance of customers.

One word: thievery.

But Lujan isn’t alone, fecklessly fighting the food-market market. In Washington State and elsewhere, socialists and other politicians are trying to force grocers to stay open, even if their corporate owners have good reason to shut down a specific store. Seattle’s new mayor, Katie Wilson, says Seattle must not “allow giant grocery chains to stomp all over our communities, close stores at will, and leave behind food deserts.”

A south Tacoma neighborhood Safeway closed, so a state senator cooked up a bill to “give communities time to respond to grocery store closures.”

Truth is, of course, that grocery stores operate on slim margins. The more regulations piled on, and the more criminals you throw at them, the fewer groceries your community will have.

And the “liberals” who vote for such nonsense? They will not like the Mamdani stores they are left with — the subsidized product deserts that only now look good . . . 

In socialist dreams.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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