Author: Redactor

Categories
general freedom

The Motorhome Diaries

The Motorhome Diaries, or MHD, is a documentary project by Jason Talley, Pete Eyre, and Adam Mueller. 

Jason are both former heads of Bureaucrash, a website that lampoons government bureaucracy and big, intrusive government in general. This crew has been touring the U.S. with his crew to interview fellow freedom fighters. The video annals of their journey are posted at the motorhomediaries​.com website. Interviewees include David Nolan, founder of the Libertarian Party, and Congressman Ron Paul, last year’s most interesting Republican presidential candidate.

Now the MHD team is documenting not freedom fighters, but, apparently, the fighters of freedom fighters. 

In Jones County, Mississippi, a police officer pulled them over allegedly because he had trouble reading their vehicle’s tags. Soon the police demanded to know “where the drugs are,” and began ripping the trailer apart. There were no drugs.

Adam was handcuffed for trying to tape the proceedings. The other two were also detained. Jason managed to send a few Twitter messages to supporters while all this was happening, and received an outpouring of support. At the moment, the situation remains unresolved.

I know only one side of the story. But the blow-​by-​blow account posted at the MHD website is chilling. Visit and see for yourself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights Ninth Amendment rights Tenth Amendment federalism U.S. Constitution

Sotto Voce Sotomayor

Last week, former Congressman and presidential candidate Bob Barr sent out a simple admonishment to his Twitter list: “Let’s have a real debate on Judge Sotomayor, not hysterics.…”

Unlikely. Appellate Judge Sonia Sotomayor is precisely the kind of jurist to divide us. She’s said things that seem racist and sexist and absurd. But, then, if I criticize her for those things, her supporters will call what I say racist or sexist or absurd.

And none of us want racism, or sexism, much less absurdity.

Let’s try sympathy, instead. It’s not easy to promote a constitutional philosophy consistent and widely acceptable at a time when much of what the federal government does belies — abridges — repudiates! — the Constitution itself.

Take the First Amendment. It begins, “Congress shall make no law …” No ambiguity. And yet Congress makes all sorts of law regarding speech, including regulating speech about politics, negating the whole point of the First Amendment. 

What part of “no law” don’t today’s jurists understand? In many cases it’s the part where the states have power to fashion their own solutions to problems. It’s called the Tenth Amendment. And it’ usually ignored by all mainstream legal experts, along with the Ninth.

I’d like to have a quiet debate on this. Sotto voce, you might say. The opposite of hysterically loud.

That would be more important, even, than a debate about Judge Sotomayor.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom

Twitter Not Always Annoying

You’ve probably heard of Twitter, now that Oprah has. It is a “micro-​blogging” tool that lets you keep in touch with people by sending messages of 140 characters or less, maybe 30 words. Senders are supposed to answer the question, “What are you doing right now?”

This sounds like a lot of people telling each other they’re hunting for a renegade sock or catching the bus. But people and imagination being what they are, savvy practitioners assure us that Twitter has been put to a very wide variety of uses, not all of them snooze-worthy.

I was sold as soon as I heard how it was used last year to help get innocent men out of jail.

James Karl Buck, an American grad student, was arrested in April 2008 while covering an anti-​government protest in Egypt. So was his translator, Mohammed Maree. Conciseness being the better part of valor, Buck sent a one-​word “tweet” to his “followers” on Twitter. To wit: “Arrested.”

Recipients knew that Buck was in Egypt covering a political demonstration. So comprehension was immediate, action swift. Soon, Buck’s college hired a lawyer to represent him. Soon thereafter he sent another message: “Released.”

His Egyptian translator, Mohammed Maree, was not so lucky. Buck worked hard to help his friend. Twitter was one of his tools. Three months later, Mohammed was free as well.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Smash Hack Attacks

Add one more news story to all the others about how your private data is not secure in any database.

In May, a gang of hackers demanded $10 million ransom in exchange for not posting the personal information of millions of Virginia residents on the Internet. 

Yikes, I’m from Virginia!

The Virginia Department of Health Professions confirms that there was indeed a recent breach of its servers.

If marauders get your name, birthday, and social security number, they can make life a living hell for you. Some of these jokers commit crimes in the name of the identity they stole. Guess who ends up getting arrested.

No, the databases are not secure. Still, Big Brother keeps trying to compel us to stick all our private data in one huge database to be tethered to a national ID card. The latest approach is to require all state ID cards to follow federal data and biometric protocols. And then link every state database together until it’s all one big database. The fate of this federal project is uncertain, since — thank goodness — some state governments are refusing to play along. But the feds will keep trying.

If the government succeeds, cyber terrorists would need to pull off only one big hack attack to jeopardize the privacy and security of every card-​carrying American. 

I’m against being forced to be a sitting duck. How about you?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
responsibility tax policy too much government

March to Bankruptcy

I have warned, before, about the upcoming double-​barrel crisis aimed at the U.S. financial system: The insolvency of the U.S. government itself, as entitlement debt can no longer be kept afloat by FICA withholding, and as Treasury debt can no longer be maintained on a monthly basis simply because it has grown too big.

Last week our entitlement system’s trustees said that the current recession is so undermining Medicare Part A that payments for elderly care will fail in eight years, with Social Security itself imploding in less than 28.

That is, if the economy doesn’t get worse.

Medicare Part B, covering doctors’ visits and outpatient care, and Part D, covering prescriptions, are right now insolvent, sucking money from general revenues.

This crisis rushes closer, even as our president insists on reforming health care in ways that will almost certainly add new entitlements — which will also have to be paid for. 

President Obama says that more government will do the opposite of what it’s done in the past. Until now, government involvement in medicine has increased costs and prices. Now he says what he’ll do will make for more “efficiency.”

Why do politicians believe in the magic of their new programs rather than the history of their old ones?

Why is it that, in politics, irresponsibility rises to the top? 

However you answer that, the march to bankruptcy is picking up pace.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
term limits U.S. Constitution

Replacing Souter

Supreme Court Justice David Souter is retiring. Apparently, Washington life doesn’t suit Souter, and, frankly, that’s the best thing I’ve heard in his favor.

A lot of people now speculate on whom our president will nominate, and how it will impact our country’s future. What will Congress do with the candidate? Will the ugly maw of politics sully the whole process … again?

One insight to glean from the second-​guessing, speculation, and rumination is how sad it is that so much power rests on one selection.

When our leaders select a Supreme Court justice, they are selecting someone for life, really. Very few justices do as Souter has done, retire early, before their grasp on law and philosophy and politics might have dimmed a bit.

And that means that the job — already strategically important — becomes the Pearl of Great Price around which a lot of ugly politics scrambles.

How much better it would be were the Constitution amended to set terms for the justices, and limits to those terms!

Why not set terms to something like, say, eight years, and limit them to two? Sixteen years is plenty enough time in this office, way too much in most others.

Such a limit would make the position a little less crucial, and the turnover in the Court more evenly rotating.

And, thus, the appointment process a little less hysterical and ugly.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.