On November 10, 1821, the First Cry of Independence in the Villa de los Santos (a small town in the interior of the country) occurred in Panama. The November 10 date has since become Panama’s “Cry of Independence Day” in the country. November is a month of independence celebrations in Panama, but the November 10 celebration marks the first signs of the struggle for separation from Spain.
Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.
More details on the ballot title fraud in Arkansas. Click on over to Townhall.com (or here, mirrored on this site). Come back here. Make the circuit complete.
* This article in a magazine for policy makers makes no mention of the ballot wording, which specifically did not say that the measure was “extending” term limits, but instead said the measure was “setting term limits.”
Hundreds of millions of dollars in unfunded pensions. The full story from Reason TV:
On November 8, 1965, Queen Elizabeth gave her Royal Assent to The Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965, formally abolishing the death penalty in the United Kingdom.
Last night on Stossel, the show’s eponymous host reminded his panel that Ann Coulter wanted to drown folks who vote for Libertarian candidates in close races where the Republican victory could be hurt. Deroy Murdock came down on Coulter’s side, saying that Libertarian votes did sometimes harm Republican candidates, as just happened, he said, in Virginia.
Stossel wonders if that’s true; there are reasons to suspect that Libertarian “third party” candidates draw also from Democrats and mostly from independent voters — and that many of the latter wouldn’t have voted at all.
But Stossel and his panelists did not bring up a simple solution to the whole problem, something I wrote about last year in my column “In Defense of Spoilers.” The Libertarian Party seems here to stay. And if Republicans want to do something about it, they could “open up the electoral system”:
They should work with open-minded, fair-play Democrats and end first-past-the-post elections in the United States. There are several ways to go: ranked voting methods, from Instant Runoff Voting to proportional representation, ending the election of Representatives from gerrymandered districts, electing them, instead, “at large.”
Ranked Choice Voting, especially, has advantages. We vote our preferences, and our preferences are counted.
If you prefer the Libertarian over the Republican, and the Republican over the Democrat, you vote that way, and your preference for “best” doesn’t destroy your support for “the good” or the possibly “good enough.”
Democracy doesn’t need to rest on the insane rubric of “the best is the enemy of the good.”
So, Republican majority, change it. And stop complaining.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Voting is the engine that drives our democracy. It needs a 21st Century update. We need to move past partisanship and start to see the humanity in people.
The U.S. Congress overrode President Richard M. Nixon’s veto of the War Powers Resolution, on November 7, 1973. This resolution ostensibly limits presidential power to wage war without congressional approval.
On November 6, 1844, the Dominican Republic adopted its first constitution.
On the same date in 1913, Mohandes K. Gandhi was arrested for participating in a march of Indian miners in South Africa.
As we make sense of this week’s sea change — of the Great Shellacking Democrats took on Tuesday — some caution is in order.
In 2006, voters did not choose the Democrats because of what they were or what they promised, but because of what they weren’t: corrupt, clueless Republicans. Now, Republicans should remember that they were mainly chosen because they aren’t Democrats: that is, hopelessly narrow-minded, self-righteous, and corrupt.
So, what should Republicans do?
Maybe it’s not to start out of the gate by repealing Obamacare, which its namesake would simply veto.
In Alaska, Oregon, and Washington, DC, voters approved the legalization of recreational marijuana use. In California, with Proposition 47, Golden State voters ushered in a new regime, downgrading many, many drug violations and former felony crimes to misdemeanor status.
This is the people of the states leading.
They are rejecting the “get tough” approach both parties have supported for decades, an approach that has had the dubious result of being most popular with public prison workers’ unions and the private prison lobby
Opposing drug use may be socially “conservative.” Politically speaking, however, granting government nearly unlimited police powers, and without regard to objective results, is not.
If the Republicans want to lead in Washington, they should follow the people in these bellwether elections. Back them up. End the Drug War and, with it, the Prison-Industrial Complex. Return criminal justice back to the states, where the Constitution originally put it. And where modifications can be more easily made.
Return to federalism. Return to reason.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.