Author: Paul Jacob

Categories
First Amendment rights

The Groundhog Day Ban

Sometimes the only way to make your point is to keep repeating yourself. So it is when explaining why the law requires educational institutions that receive federal funding, like Ward Melville High School, to allow clubs such as the one formed by17-​year-​old student John Raney in 2013.

Students United in Faith meets to discuss faith and to plan charitable endeavors. Last year, Ward Melville officials sought to ban the club because of its religious character, but retreated after getting a letter from the Liberty Institute (dedicated to “restoring religious liberty in America”).

Near the beginning of this academic year, the school again moved to ban the club. Again, Liberty Institute intervened, threatening a lawsuit. Again, the school backed off.

If it were a private school, say, Atheist High, the school would well be within its rights to say “don’t come here unless you are willing to forgo any religious club.” Those hypothetical school officials wouldn’t be violating anyone’s rights.

But a public school funded by taxpayer dollars? Well, if it provides for extracurricular activities like clubs, it is acting as a part of the government to violate the right of freedom of association when it arbitrarily bans a club.

So what’s next? Either the administrators at Ward Melville High will keep trying the ban until they can get away with it; or, having finally learned their lesson, they’ll leave the group alone.

Thank goodness students and parents have the Liberty Institute in their corner.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture national politics & policies

An Ebola Education

Sen. Mark Pryor (D‑Ark.) faces a tough re-​election contest. Following his campaign, MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt inquired: “Do you think the Obama Administration has done an appropriate job handling the Ebola crisis?”

The senator responded with the universal politician distress call: “Uuuhhhhmmmmmm.”

Then Pryor stumbled ahead: “I would say that … it’s hard to know, ah, because, um … I haven’t heard the latest briefing on that to know all … [inaudible] can somehow read the paper and all. My impression is that we have people over there both from CDC and other medical-​type people and even some engineers to try to build … um, you know, medical facilities. That’s what they need over there; they need the medical infrastructure.”

When Hunt asked whether the Administration had been “aggressive enough,” the senator returned to: “Uuhhhmmmmm. Again, I’d have to see the latest numbers.”

“Oh my god,” uber-​liberal host Mika Brzezinski reacted to Pryor’s stumbling. “She asked a gentle question … and the guy just collapsed.”

“What was that, Kasie?” laughed Joe Scarborough. “Why were those questions so hard for the senator to answer?”

“I was a little surprised …” Kasie chuckled, noting that Sen. Pryor had earlier run a ludicrous TV spot accusing his Republican opponent, U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton, of voting “against preparing America for pandemics like Ebola.”

One might think the incumbent senator actually followed and cared about the effort to combat a horrible disease that could kill untold people. Instead, it appears he knows Ebola only as a brickbat with which to slug a political opponent in hopes of staying in power.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
video

Video: What If There Had Been No Affirmative Action?

A man at a forum asks the operative question.

Michigan’s ban on racial and gender preferences, upheld this week by the SCOTUS, was passed by voters in 2006 through a citizen initiative led by Jennifer Gratz, now leading the XIV Foundation, and Leon Drolet, a former state legislator and activist. Ten years before that, Ward Connerly led a similar initiative petition effort in California, which is specifically addressed in the video.