My main conclusion from reading the [National Climate Assessment] report is this: the phrase ‘climate change’ is now officially meaningless. The report effectively implies that there is no climate change other than what is caused by humans, and that extreme weather events are equivalent to climate change.
Knowledge is the conformity of the object and the intellect.
It’s like jumping from ice floe to ice floe while being shot at. Great if you can reach the next slab of ice while the shooters pause to reload. But then what?
Having been caught targeting right-leaning applicants for tax-exempt status, the IRS decided to clear up the “ambiguity” in rules for tax-exempt organizations that had “led” to this “confusion.” The solution, they decided, should be to make it impossible for a tax-exempt organization that ever mentions political candidates or elections to avoid getting into trouble with the IRS.
No. What Americans needed post-scandal is what we have needed all along: more restrictions on the government, not on our freedom to speak out.
Persons of all political stripes saw the danger in the Draconian new rules IRS was proposing, resulting in an unprecedented 150,000 public comments — mostly negative. So the IRS is backing down for now . . . but says it will try again.
Not everyone is happy about the reprieve.
“This delay is deeply disappointing and a real setback for democracy[!!] and faith in government[!!!],” says Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer. “The only hope we have is when the IRS goes back, they don’t succumb to any form of political pressure and enact a very tough rule that will equally curtail liberal and conservative groups.”
“Only hope” for what? Equal-opportunity repression?
It bodes ill that any major political figure could be so open about wishing to stomp on our freedom of speech.
The battle for our basic rights is far from over.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
On May 27, 1863, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney of Maryland issued Ex parte Merryman, challenging the authority of President Abraham Lincoln to suspend the writ of habeas corpus in Maryland, the legal procedure that prevents the government from holding an individual indefinitely without showing cause. On May 25, John Merryman, a vocal secessionist, had been arrested in Cockeysville. Although military officials continued to arrest suspected Southern sympathizers, the incident led to a softening of the policy.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont socialist, has been all over the media discussing the VA scandal.
However, I can’t find Mr. Sanders reflecting on his own role in the fiasco.
Last September, Sanders argued, “The VA is making progress in reducing the disability claims backlog. I meet very often with General Shinseki, (and) with (VA Under Secretary) Allison Hickey to see the progress that they are making.”
Apparently Sanders, chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, needs new glasses.
As the public and the president were discovering the depth and breadth of the scandal, the Vermont senator moved quickly to defend the VA: “The Veterans Administration provides very high-quality healthcare, period. It’s not perfect.”
“Not perfect” indeed.
Sanders also warned of “a rush to judgment,” noting emphatically, “We don’t know how many veterans died.”
As the scandal spread nationwide, the good senator . . . freaked out. “There is right now as we speak a concerted effort to undermine the VA,” he told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes.
“What are the problems?” Sanders asked himself. “The problems is . . . you have folks out there now — Koch brothers and others — who want to radically change the nature of society, and either make major cuts in all of these institutions, or maybe do away with them entirely.”
How possible future cuts might prevent the VA from getting the job done at present remains unclear.
On Thursday, Sanders blocked Senate consideration of HR 4031, which had passed the House by a whopping bi-partisan 390–33 vote. The bill would have given the VA Secretary the power to replace managers who weren’t producing for patients.
Senator, let our vets go . . . let them escape the bureaucracy to seek the care they deserve.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
After logic we must proceed to philosophy proper. Here too we have to learn from our predecessors, just as in mathematics and law. Thus it is wrong to forbid the study of ancient philosophy. Harm from it is accidental, like harm from taking medicine, drinking water, or studying law.
While running for the Senate, Elizabeth Warren informed Lawrence O’Donnell and his MSNBC audience that she didn’t understand how Congressfolk could keep playing the stock market while in office. She trotted out the notion of stock management via blind trusts.
She and O’Donnell understand that members of Congress have apparently irresistible opportunity to leverage for their private benefit insider information and their power to change policy. It’s no secret: many a pol enters Congress as moderately upper middle class only to leave lining his coffin in gold.
“I realize there are some wealthy individuals — I’m not one of them — but some wealthy individuals who have a lot of stock portfolios,” she insisted.
Her clumsy, folksy “lot of stock portfolios” statement let her pretend not to be rich, when, in truth, she’s a multimillionaire living in a $5 million house . . . but with stock only in one company.
Politic precision.
In the Washington Examiner recently, Byron York explained her nuanced answer to the question of whether she was “going to run for president”:
Warren’s response was, “I’m not running for president.”
That’s the oldest lawyerly evasion in the book. Warren, a former law professor, did not say, “I am not going to run for president.” Instead, she said she is “not running,” which could, in some sense, be true when she spoke the words but no longer true by, say, later this year.
How Clintonian. She pretends not to be wealthy while running on “inequality,” and then — while pitching a campaign book — pretends not to be running for the presidency at all.
And misses the obvious anti-corruption planks: complete, minute-by-minute Web-based congressional investment transparency. And term limits.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
It is vain to do with more what can be done with fewer.
On May 25, 1810, citizens of Buenos Aires expelled Viceroy Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros starting the Argentine War of Independence.
On May 25, 1925, John T. Scopes was indicted for violating Tennessee’s Butler Act, which made it unlawful to teach evolution in any state-funded school. The Scopes Trial — formally known as The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes and informally known as the Scopes Monkey Trial — drew intense national publicity, as reporters flocked to Dayton, Tennessee, to cover the big-name lawyers representing each side. William Jennings Bryan, three-time presidential candidate for the Democrats, argued for the prosecution, while Clarence Darrow, the famed defense attorney, spoke for Scopes. Scopes was found guilty, but the verdict was overturned on a technicality and he went free.
Another scandal for the president. Another defeat for his beloved socialism.
See this weekend’s Common Sense column at Townhall.com . . . and then come back here for some backstory: