Author: Redactor

Categories
general freedom U.S. Constitution

The End the Bill of Rights Act

Yesterday, on ThisisCommonSense​.com, the “Today in Freedom” feature related that 220 years ago — on December 15, 1791 — Virginia’s ratification of the Bill of Rights made those first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution the law of the land.

Hooray! That’s worth remembering and celebrating.

But something else happened yesterday, worth remembering but not celebrating: Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act.

The Republican-​controlled House of Representatives [sic] had already passed the legislation. Yesterday, the Democratic-​controlled U.S. Senate sent the bill to a President Obama, waiting ready to sign it, with a whopping 86 to 13 vote.

This law says the government can arrest you on U.S. soil, shackle you, pull a hood over your face and hustle you out of the country to Guantanamo if someone somewhere in the government theorizes that you might be a terrorist.

But wait: The Fifth Amendment guarantees that you cannot “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The Sixth Amendment states quite clearly that “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial …”

Agreed, those proven to be terrorists are terrible people. But in a video posted on our website, Senator Rand Paul, who voted against this bill, pointed out, “Should we err today and remove some of the most important checks on state power in the name of fighting terrorism, then the terrorists have won.”

We can only triumph over terrorism with the Bill of Rights intact.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

Categories
Thought

Sam Adams

“Is it not high time for the people of this country explicitly to declare whether they will be freemen or slaves? It is an important question, which ought to be decided. It concerns us more than anything in this life.”

Categories
Today

Boston Tea Party

On Dec. 16, 1773, a group of Massachusetts colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians boarded three British ships moored in Boston Harbor and dumped 342 chests of tea into the water. Now known as the “Boston Tea Party,” the midnight raid was a protest against the Tea Act of 1773, a bill enacted by the British parliament to save the faltering British East India Company by greatly lowering its tea tax and granting it a virtual monopoly on the American tea trade.

Categories
Thought

Edward R. Murrow

“A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.”

Categories
Today

The Bill of Rights becomes law

On Dec. 15, 1791, Virginia’s ratification made the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, the law of the land. Anti-​Federalists, such as Patrick Henry, had pushed for the Bill of Rights to protect from encroachment on the rights of the people and the states from a federal government they believed the Constitution made too powerful.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Pacé Richard Dreyfuss

In Suffolk County, Massachusetts, a new wrinkle on the old Producers-like scam hit the spotlight as a grand jury indicted Daniel Adams, a film impresario with several films under his belt, on ten counts larceny and false claims to the state in the financing of two movies set in the Cape Cod area, The Golden Boys (2008) and The Lightkeepers (2009).

According to Boston​.com, Adams is charged with taking “advantage of a state incentive that allows film makers to apply for a tax credit equal to 25 percent of eligible production expenses. But prosecutors said he deceived the state about his expenses, claiming, for instance, that he paid [actor Richard] Dreyfuss $2.5 million, when in fact he paid him only $400,000.”

Adams has pleaded not guilty, and his legal standing is for a jury to decide.

More important is the general policy — funding movies is just not a legitimate use of tax money.

The only possibly legitimate argument for taxation is that the forcibly extracted money serves all the people it’s extracted from, by fulfilling very general, truly public interests. Making movies is not that.

One wag notes that “[t]he real crime is that a movie starring Richard Dreyfuss ever qualified for taxpayer funds in the first place.” That sounds almost like a criticism of Dreyfuss. Hey, I like the actor.

The point is that no film, either starring the greatest of greats or the least of unknowns, should be financed with conscripted money.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.