There are words like *Freedom*
Sweet and wonderful to say.
On my heart-strings freedom sings
All day everyday.
There are words like *Liberty*
That almost make me cry.
If you had known what I knew
You would know why.
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Author: Redactor
Agenda-less improvement of Colorado’s constitution is the goal of a “group of Colorado’s top civic leaders, bipartisan in its makeup,” according to the Denver Post. All they want to do is correct constitutional inconsistencies.
The difficulty of getting the revisions is so acute that many of the state’s “top civic leaders” believe that it is time again to press for a constitutional-review commission empowered to send proposed changes to the voters directly, via multi-subject initiatives that can substantially revise, rather than simply amend, the state’s governing charter. (A single-subject rule obtains for hoi-polloi signature-gatherers.)
Must be nigh impossible to get a question on the ballot the way things stand now, eh? But — wait — one of the Civic Leaders pushing for a commission, Bob Tointon, laments that people “are frustrated by the issues that get on the ballot so easily in Colorado.” And Colorado’s Future, the main organization pushing for the commission, has always argued that it’s too darn easy for the mere people to post an initiative.
Which is it? It’s too hard to post a question onto the ballot, or too easy?
Both. It’s too easy for the general public to use the initiative process, but it’s too hard for Civic Leaders to scrub voter-approved initiatives out of existence.
Opponents of this elitist brainstorm worry that the proposed Super-Commission would seek to undermine the state’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR), a popular citizen initiative passed two decades ago limiting government spending and requiring voter approval of new taxes. The fear is legitimate.
The long-standing agenda of this cast of Civic Leaders is no secret: kill TABOR.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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John C. Calhoun
The interval between the decay of the old and the formation and establishment of the new constitutes a period of transition which must always necessarily be one of uncertainty, confusion, error, and wild and fierce fanaticism.
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John C. Calhoun
The very essence of a free government consists in considering offices as public trusts, bestowed for the good of the country, and not for the benefit of an individual or a party.
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Magazine Misfire
David Gregory, of NBC, is one of those folks who wants to prohibit not merely criminal acts, but also objects and products that can be used as aids in some of those acts.
It’s not an uncommon attitude. I know conservatives who want to prohibit smoking utensils such as bongs, because their main use tends overwhelmingly to be for smoking illegal substances. To find someone in the “main stream media” supporting a similar ban on objects — such as certain guns and types of ammunition — is hardly surprising.
On Meet the Press, December 23, Gregory interviewed the head of the NRA, pressing the spokesman to concede, “if it’s possible to reduce the loss of life, you’re up for trying it.” The man took the bait. Then Gregory switched the topic away from the NRA’s notion of placing armed guards in every school to . . .
Well, Gregory retrieved and held aloft a “magazine for ammunition that carries 30 bullets.” He hazarded that prohibiting such devices, leaving legal only smaller-sized magazines, might reduce loss of life.
“Loss-of-life reduction,” though, proves to be not much of a standard. There are many ways to reduce crime: imprison everyone in a criminal risk category, without trial, might do that very well. Perish that thought, though.
Many other innovations might seem plausible, as well, but nevertheless unleash counterproductive side effects.
What’s interesting about this case, though, is that Gregory held up a magazine that turns out to be illegal in Washington, DC, where Meet the Press is shot.
His “crime” is now under investigation.
I’m conflicted: On the one hand, he did nothing wrong. On the other hand, he supports such unprincipled laws, so . . . book him.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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John C. Calhoun
It is harder to preserve than to obtain liberty.
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Google Vindicated
In 2009, I noted that an Italian court was trying three Google executives for violating Italian privacy laws. The three soon received six-month suspended jail terms for being “too slow” to remove a video from YouTube that depicted the bullying of an autistic child. Google had pulled the video as soon as told about it.
The unjust conviction has now thankfully been reversed.
At the time, Google rep Bill Echikson complained that his colleagues had been convicted although they had neither uploaded the video nor reviewed it before it was posted.
A key word is “review.” Must any Internet host of user-posted content review such content before it is published or else risk incarceration? Of course, “hosted” content covers the gamut of Internet content. Few website publishers provide their own servers.
If a publisher must obtain special approval from Facebook, Google, WordPress or any other platform provider before tossing something onto the web, that’s the death knell for freedom of speech and press on the Internet. At best, the pace of publication would slow to a crawl. At worst, censorship by Web-service providers would become rampant — except when providers suspend their services altogether for fear of non-suspended jail time.
Perhaps if the bad Italian precedent had been allowed to stand, the worst would not have come to pass. Perhaps only rarely would we see a horrific conviction exploiting that precedent, and perhaps only in Italy. But why take even one step down that road?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Precious Gifts
There’s a quiet on Christmas morning . . . after Santa has come and gone . . . and the kids are still sound asleep . . . sugar plum fairies dancing to their gentle snoring.
A moment to stop and think.
I hope they’ll like their presents; they always do. There’s so much love my wife and I want to share, to give to them.
Of course, the biggest gifts are never under the tree. The most important being a staple home, with love, and the freedom for children to grow into themselves.
My parents gave me that . . . along with the bicycles and baseball gloves and some really good books. I’ve tried to be the same kind of parent.
Another incredible endowment I’ve enjoyed is to be born in a country “conceived in liberty.” A place where individual citizens are the sovereigns, creating government to be a servant and not a master. Land of the free.
What a gift!
But Tom Paine told us that, “What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly, ’tis dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”
Freedom is under siege. And, therefore, we who love freedom, grateful for our historic luck, must come together to protect our “expensive” gift.
Some may get discouraged after setbacks, but none of us got involved in politics because we like “the game” and figured we’d pile up a shelf of trophies. We’re engaged because we must be and we seek victories because, as Churchill once put it, “without victory, there is no survival.”
In 1776, on this very day, General George Washington and his soldiers of the American Revolution crossed the Delaware River to score a surprise military victory against the British at Trenton, New Jersey.
Thank goodness, for these brave patriots and their muskets. Three Americans gave their lives in the battle. To secure our liberty.
Today, the Gift has been handed to us. Not to play with on Christmas morning and forget about, not to let get broken without our fixing it, but to protect and defend and cherish.
My commentary strives to illuminate, to amuse and to motivate toward action, bringing citizens together. Citizens in Charge protects the initiative process — the best weapon citizens have to cut taxes, term-limit politicians, stop the drug war, protect property rights, and place limits on government. The Liberty Initiative Fund partners with leaders across the nation putting measures on the ballot to protect freedom and hold government accountable.
Thanks for your gifts to these efforts and to the many other important ones. We aim to protect the precious gift of freedom.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays!
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Alfred Marshall
The hope that poverty and ignorance may gradually be extinguished, derives indeed much support from the steady progress of the working classes during the nineteenth century.
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Cold as Ice
Well, it’s a few days after the much-ballyhooed End of the World, wherein the magnetic poles were (according to some less-than-astute prognosticators) supposed to flip — North would go negative, and South, positive — causing volcanoes, tidal waves, and all sorts of havoc.
But Christmas Eve has arrived on schedule, the Mayan calendar goes back to being as irrelevant as Isaac Asimov’s idea of a quarterly calendar that would “abolish the months,” and we can return to thinking about the upcoming magnetic pole flip in a scientific way, sans Apocalypse.
Indeed, on Christmas Eve, the only talk about poles is about Santa’s storied connection with the North.
But hey: don’t think Arctic, think Antarctic. The big story, today, is that Queen Elizabeth II, Diamond Jubilee monarch of America’s “Mother Country” (sorry, Mother), is getting a plot of land on the Frozen Continent named after her.
Yes, to celebrate her 60 years on the throne, she attended a cabinet meeting, and received 60 place mats, one for each year of “service.”
“Can’t have too many place mats,” somebody said. Or must’ve.
Then she was chauffeured over to the Foreign Office where she received the “fitting tribute” of a big triangle of forbidding land south of the Ronne Ice Shelf, which will be called Queen Elizabeth Land. I’m assuming it’s a tribute to her warmth of personality.
Frankly, I’d prefer the place mats. But then, having a stretch of land you will never visit named after you is its own kind of place mat. Just goes to show you that giving gifts is not easy. What do you give the Person who has everything?
That is, everything but relevance.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.