I was not sympathetic to the assumption that criminals had radically different motivations from everyone else.
Categories
Author: Redactor
Categories
Minnesota becomes a state, May 11
On May 11, 1858, Minnesota was admitted as the 32nd U.S. State. Other May 11th events include Luxembourg’s gaining independence in 1867, and Klaus Barbie going on trial in Lyon, 120 years later, for war crimes committed during World War II.
Categories
Townhall: The Conyers Comedy
When politicians fail at the petition process, citizen activists can enjoy the last laugh. For the Conyers re-election campaign, call it a Detroit irony.
Rush on over to Townhall.com, then come back here for the full reading list:
- Detroit News: Conyers’ next step may be write-in effort after clerk says he’s short signatures
- Detroit Free Press: Ex-U.S. Rep. Thaddeus McCotter testifies staffers assured him petitions taken care of
- Buckley v. American Constitutional Law Foundation
- Bogaert v. Land
- Citizens in Charge Blog: MI Legislature Repeals Residency Law After Lawsuit
Categories
Video: Chuck “Privilege”
Young Ms. Julie Borowski confronts a popular (and quite maddeningly ill-mannered) popular slogan — at least on campuses and in the blogosphere, “Check your privilege”:
Freedom battles tyranny across the globe, with the right to speak out politically essential for freedom to prevail.
A decision handed down this week by U.S. District Judge Rudolph T. Randa, in a case brought by Eric O’Keefe and Wisconsin Club for Growth, inspires much hope to protect speech and prevent tyranny here in America.
O’Keefe, the group and “all or nearly all right-of-center groups and individuals in Wisconsin who engaged in issue advocacy from 2010 to the present” were targeted by the Milwaukee County District Attorney and others in a bizarre, secretive politically-motivated criminal investigation. Armed agents raided homes at dawn, seizing computers, mailing lists, files, etc.
O’Keefe and conservative state leaders were then slapped with subpoenas (demanding all their documents) and a gag order. This effectively silenced them from talking about the investigation. Under the circumstances, these groups found themselves unable to raise funds or engage in political activity since.
The thrust of the case against them was the mere assertion that spending on TV ads about collective bargaining or other issues was campaign spending for Governor Scott Walker. Judge Randa found no evidence of express advocacy for Walker and, therefore, no lawful basis for the outrageous persecution.
“The plaintiffs have been shut out of the political process merely by association with conservative politicians,” his decision read, adding a warning that, historically, “attempts to purify the public square lead to places like the Guillotine and the Gulag.”
O’Keefe’s Wisconsin Club for Growth spends what some call “dark money” — donors are not disclosed — but the judge explained that our constitutional system cherishes and protects the free discussion of political ideas by groups like O’Keefe’s as possibly “the best way . . . to address problems of political corruption.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Categories
John Brown born
On May 9, 1800, abolitionist revolutionary (and, technically, terrorist) John Brown was born. In 1883 on this date Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset was born.
Categories
José Ortega y Gasset
All modern art begins to appear comprehensible and in a way great when it is interpreted as an attempt to instill youthfulness into an ancient world.
We want safe foods and drugs. But should we want the Food and Drug Administration? Or more regulation from it?
We can use third-party investigations of the nature and effects of pharmaceuticals; but a government agency doing the investigating sure has its drawbacks. The bureaucracy’s coercive regulations and costly mandates should certainly not trump individual judgments about whether one may use a drug.
The FDA exists, however, and its massive presence in modern medicine isn’t going away any time soon. Luckily, some of its decisions are better than others. And now that it has authorized sale of the painkiller Zohydro ER, we can say it made the right call here.
The rightness of the decision is highlighted rather than contradicted by mounting political pressure to reverse it.
U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat, and U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell, a Republican, are among those demanding that Zohydro be outlawed. Their main complaint seems to be that the drug’s very effectiveness makes it more addictive, and more prone to abuse, than other painkillers. Officeholders from 29 states have chimed in to demand a ban.
I don’t know the ratio of benefits to risks in taking this drug. I know that if I’m writhing in pain, and other painkillers can’t do much to alleviate it, but Zohydro ER can, I want the freedom to decide for myself whether the benefits are worth the risks.
We have the right to make such decisions about our own lives.
In the meantime, FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg deserves credit for resisting political demands that the agency rescind its approval.
My prescription for her? Don’t back down.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Categories
Estonian blow-up, Hayek’s birthday
On May 8, 1899, Austrian-English economist and philosopher Friedrich August von Hayek was born. He signed the bulk of his books written in the English language as “F.A. Hayek,” and is best known for “The Road to Serfdom,” “The Constitution of Liberty,” “The Fatal Conceit,” and many essays, several of them which are widely cited, including “Individualism, True and False” and “The Use of Knowledge in Society.”
Years earlier, on the same date in 1873, English philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill died. Now best known for “On Liberty” and “Utilitarianism,” Mill’s letters were edited into book form by Hayek.
On May 8, 1946, two Estonian school girls (Aili Jõgi and Ageeda Paavel) blew up the Soviet memorial which stood in front of the Bronze Soldier in Tallinn.
Categories
José Ortega y Gasset
Life is fired at us point blank.