In my Townhall column today – The fickle finger of fairness? – I took President Obama at his word: “No bailouts, no handouts, and no copouts.” But as seen in this week’s video, below, others (like ABC’s Jake Tapper) think Obama is practicing class warfare to distract from all his landmark legislative achievements – which are so incredibly unpopular one might question the use of the word “achievement.”
“Hello? Uh, hello? Hello, Dmitri? Listen, I can’t hear too well, do you suppose you could turn the music down just a little? [pause] Oh, that’s much better. . . . Now then, Dmitri, you know how we’ve always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the bomb. [pause] The BOMB, Dmitri! The hydrogen bomb! Well now, what happened is, uh, one of our base commanders, he had a sort of, well, he went a little funny in the head. You know. Just a little…funny. And uh, he went and did a silly thing. Well, I’ll tell you what he did, he ordered his planes…to attack your country. Well, let me finish, Dmitri. Let me finish, Dmitri. Well, listen, how do you think I feel about it? Can you imagine how I feel about it, Dmitri? . . . I’m just calling up to tell you something terrible has happened. It’s a friendly call. Of course it’s a friendly call. Listen, if it wasn’t friendly, you probably wouldn’t have even got it. They will not reach their targets for at least another hour. [pause] I’m sorry too, Dmitri. I’m very sorry. All right! You’re sorrier than I am! But I am sorry as well. I am as sorry as you are Dmitri. Don’t say that you are more sorry than I am, because I am capable of being just as sorry as you are. So we’re both sorry, all right? All right.”
On Jan. 29, 1861, Kansas entered the Union as the 34th state and as “free state.” The struggle between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces in Kansas was a preview to the bloodshed of the Civil War. In 1854, Kansas was organized as a territory with popular sovereignty to decide the issue of slavery. Both sides drafted constitutions and the political battle erupted in massive violence that earned the area the name “Bleeding Kansas.” The violence continued through the Civil War. In 1863, pro-slavery forces burned Lawrence to the ground, murdering nearly 200 men.
On Jan. 29, 1964, Stanley Kubrick’s black comic masterpiece, “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” opened in theaters to both critical and popular acclaim. The movie’s popularity was evidence of changing attitudes toward the concept of nuclear deterrence. And it was very funny.
On Jan. 28, 1981, President Ronald Reagan lifted the federal government’s remaining domestic petroleum price and allocation controls in the United States, helping to end the 1979 energy crisis and begin the 1980s oil glut.
“If we were directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we would soon want for bread.”
“The draft or draft registration destroys the very values our society is committed to defending.”
On Jan. 27, 1973, President Richard Nixon’s Secretary of Defense, Melvin R. Laird, announced an end to the military draft in favor of a system of voluntary enlistment. Since 1973, the United States armed forces have been known as the All-Volunteer Force. However, the Selective Service System, the federal agency that would administer a military draft, continues to be funded and American males continue to be forced to register for the draft.
Last November, Marylanders went to the polls. In addition to choosing candidates to administer their government as well as delegates to legislate for them, there was a ballot question on whether to call a constitutional convention, which, if voters so chose, would provide an opportunity to propose fundamental reforms.
Well, voters so chose. A solid majority — 54.4 percent — voted Yea.
But the Maryland Legislature isn’t setting up the convention.
In a Baltimore Sun op-ed, J.H. Snider, president of iSolon.org, tells the history of the constitutional convention provision in Maryland’s 1851 Constitution: “From 1851 until 1930, the majority required to convene a con-con was interpreted and implemented to mean an ordinary majority.”
But in 1930, when a majority said yes to a convention, the legislature balked, claiming that a convention required a supermajority of all citizens voting in the election. In other words, those not voting on the convention issue were counted as Nay votes.
A legal challenge was brought, but failed, because the counsel to the General Assembly provided, according to Snider, “a remarkably selective and biased interpretation of the con-con debates” for the court. In 1950, again a simple majority called a convention, again legislators shut their ears and, this time, a federal court case failed to decide the matter.
Snider supports a convention as the “best hope for fixing Maryland’s democratic deficits, including its inherently corrupt redistricting system and its legislators’ defiance of popular sentiment on legislative term limits.”
So, he’s suing the Old Line State government “to force it to convene the con-con a majority of Marylanders voted for on Nov. 2, 2010.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Our rights are guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. But words alone don’t defend those rights; people do.
Every day our First Amendment rights to speak out and to petition are put to the test.
A little over a week ago, Dave Roland, the Director of Litigation for the Freedom Center of Missouri, got a phone call at 1:00 am. Two volunteers circulating a petition on a public street in St. Charles had been detained by police, cited for “soliciting without a permit.” The ballot measure they were petitioning for was to legalize marijuana — and tax and regulate it like alcohol and tobacco. Some of their petitions were confiscated.
Roland and his wife Jenifer Ziegler Roland, the center’s executive director, went to bat for these two citizens and their constitutional rights, contacting St. Charles City Attorney Mike Valenti.
Faced with the prospect of a lawsuit, Valenti quickly dismissed the charge against the two petitioners.
“Police officers should know that this right may be freely exercised on public sidewalks,” said Mrs. Roland, “but if the police make a mistake, municipal attorneys ought to follow Mr. Valenti’s lead and correct the constitutional violation as quickly as possible.”
When a woman outside Philadelphia’s Constitutional Convention asked Ben Franklin what kind of government had been created, Franklin famously replied, “A Republic, madam, if we can keep it.”
We can keep it. Thanks to people such as the Rolands at Missouri’s Freedom Center.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
“The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”