Author: Redactor

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall Second Amendment rights

A Voter Revolt

The signatures are in: 16,199 of them — twice as many as needed to initiate the first recall election of a state lawmaker in Colorado history.

The target of voter ire? Senate President John Morse. He ticked off his El Paso County constituents by spearheading the recent triple whammy of gun control legislation that neatly bypassed Colorado voters earlier this year.

You may remember the controversy. The three bills in question, signed by the governor as emergency legislation so that no voter referendum was possible, elicited widespread negative reactions in the state, including nearly every county sheriff in Colorado publicly opposing the bills.

So, why did the sheriffs oppose the legislation, while Democrats in the legislature passed the bills?

Like state legislators, sheriffs are elected. But, unlike legislators, sheriffs deal with self-defending citizens qua citizens, as well as criminals and victims, on a regular basis. Such experience brings a different perspective, and makes sheriffs more skeptical of blunt legislative solutions.

Traditionally, Democrats — despite the fondness demonstrated by their party constituencies for increased government control over private weapons — tend to treat the issue of “gun control” with some modicum of care. At least, those in the mid-west and western states tend to.

But Senator Morse did not.

Morse won the senate seat back in 2010 by fewer than 350 votes, with a Libertarian Party candidate racking up 1,320 votes — almost 5 percent. Libertarians are strongly pro-Second Amendment. Yet, Morse treated his narrow victory as a call for sweeping change. A mandate!

He may reap the “reward” for such “courage.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

George Mason

Our All is at Stake, and the little Conveniencys and Comforts of Life, when set in Competition with our Liberty, ought to be rejected not with Reluctance but with Pleasure.

Categories
ideological culture national politics & policies too much government

A Matter of Trust

You don’t trust President Barack Obama?

No faith in the massive federal bureaucracy? Do you lack confidence in Congress representing your interests? How much do you trust the federal courts that handle secret requests from the Department of Justice . . .and then issue secret decisions based on the judge’s secret interpretation of the law?

Be advised: President Obama finds “your lack of faith disturbing.”

“If people can’t trust not only the executive branch, but also don’t trust Congress and don’t trust federal judges to make sure we’re abiding by the Constitution, due process, and rule of law,” Obama told reporters in response to the public uproar to a leak of classified information suggesting that the detailed phone records of every American have been seized by the National Security Agency, “then we’re going to have some problems here.”

Agreed. Problems galore. The morning paper reads like a dystopian novel.

Are we really supposed to feel protected by a federal judge in a secret court wherein only the government is represented?

Or represented by Congress, for goodness sake?! Only a few congressmen are told, and those sworn to secrecy.

The Obama Administration incredibly calls this set-up “an unprecedented degree of accountability and transparency.”

There are compelling national security interests, upon which our rights must be balanced, the president explains. But in our constitutional system, as I argued at Townhall.com yesterday, there is no more compelling national interest than that the government fully obey the Fourth Amendment — and the entire document, please.

Thank you.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

John Hospers

People speak of “the public interest.” But what is the public interest? Strictly speaking, there is no such thing. There is only the interest of each individual human being. There are interests that many or all people share, but these are still the interests of individuals. When politicians say that something is “to the public interest,” they usually mean it serves the interests of some people but goes against the interests of others — and usually the interests of the people with the most political pull win out. Is it to the public interest for some to be forced to die so that others may be saved? Is it to the public interest for a hundred crazed men to lynch one man in the public square? Is it to the public interest for all the citizens of the nation to be taxed to pay for a federal dam in one section of it? In Sweden it takes a couple eight years on the average before they can obtain an apartment of their own (owned by the government, rented by them); but they are not supposed to complain, because “it’s in the public interest.” Just as there are only individual rights, so there are only individual interests.

Categories
Thought

John Hospers

By far the most numerous and most flagrant violations of personal liberty and individual rights are performed by governments. The major crimes throughout history, the ones executed on the largest scale, have been committed not by individuals or bands of individuals but by governments, as a deliberate policy of those governments, that is, by the official representatives of governments, acting in their official capacity.

Categories
links

Townhall: “We’re going to have some problems here”

Obama does a Darth Vader impersonation. (Forget Palpatine.) See this weekend’s Common Sense column. Come back here for more reading.

Or, in this case, viewing: “New York Times Changes Its Tune” (Greg Gutfeld and Giraldo Riviera on Fox)

You can read something, too . . . this, the latest poop from the Post about PRISM.

Oh, and then there’s that all-important Star Wars reference:

http://youtu.be/Zzs-OvfG8tE

Categories
video

Video: Lying about spying?

Oversight is worse in the national security bureaucracy than it is in the IRS:

Categories
Thought

Richard Henry Lee

The constitution ought to secure a genuine militia and guard against a select militia… all regulations tending to render this general militia useless and defenseless, by establishing select corps of militia, or distinct bodies of military men, not having permanent interests and attachments to the community ought to be avoided.

Categories
Thought

Richard Henry Lee, Second Continental Congress

Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved. That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign Alliances. That a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective Colonies for their consideration and approbation.

Categories
ideological culture

A Smear Is Not an Argument

Given that former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates has been so frequent a target of smears himself, one would hope he’d be loathe to engage in same.

But at a recent forum, the software maestro was less than his moral best when asked about the book Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa, by Zambian writer Dambisa Moyo. Gates, now a full-time philanthropist, charged that Moyo “didn’t know much about aid” (a topic she’s been investigating for years) and that “books like that are promoting evil.”

Moyo’s book considers the long-term effects of non-emergency aid. She argues that it can encourage corruption and discourage the development of free enterprise. For example, when Western aid organizations distribute large quantities of mosquito nets, they can put a native seller of mosquito nets out of business.

Moyo is not arguing against all aid regardless of circumstances (as Gates seems to assume), but rather against ongoing or “structural” aid that fosters long-term dependency, lines the pockets of dictators, and makes it easier to defer basic reforms. Her diagnosis may be arguable. But Gates didn’t argue. He just smeared the woman and her book.

Evil? For considering costs? Cause and effect? The long run?

Businessmen are lucky, so to speak: They exist in a system that tells them when they are doing well, no matter what critics say. Gates thrived at Microsoft, despite choruses of critics. Now he has entered a field dominated more by good intentions than accepted standards of output. Hence the ugly nature of this dispute, and perhaps why he eschewed what Moyo identifies as “logical counter-argument.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.