Author: Redactor

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Common Sense

Welcome to Beijing

Many say that the Olympics are all about international competition and sportsmanship, nothing about politics. Or shouldn’t be.

But you can’t read about the Chinese government’s preparations for the Games without concluding that politics is involved here somewhere.

For one thing, officials have cracked down on beggars and disabled persons, who are being ordered off Beijing streets. Too unsightly, apparently. Also, it seems one of the quaint things Chinese citizens do is walk around in their pajamas in public. This too is outlawed during the Games.

Even dogs are on a tighter leash. Owners may now walk them only at certain times. And the canines better have their papers.

Foreign visitors are prohibited from displaying “religious, political, or racial banners.” Will the government be sending tanks against protesters?

Seven years ago, while bidding to host the Games, China promised that journalists would enjoy “complete freedom to report” — including unfettered access to the Internet. That’s now been tossed out the window, thanks to a recent “negotiation” with the International Olympic Committee. For example, reporters won’t be able to access Amnesty International or websites about Tibet.

Maybe China declared that if the IOC didn’t like the censorship, it could pack up and take the games somewhere else … figuring it was too late for the Committee to do anything but relent. But for the sake of freedom in this world, the Committee should have called the bluff.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense

You Picked on the Wrong Guys

Blazing trails can be fun and exciting. But sooner or later, along come the folks who want to put a damper on things. Regulate you. Even threaten you.

So it is with the wide open spaces of the Internet, where people go to speak their minds.

A website about New York politics called Room 8 received a subpoena from Bronx prosecutors, trying to force the publishers to help identify persons blogging at the site anonymously.

Such an attempt might be reasonable. Maybe it could help catch some criminal. As Ben Smith, a co-​founder of Room 8, puts it, “Was somebody found face-​down on their keyboard and the I.P. address was going to help identify the killer?”

Smith called the district attorney’s office to try to get more information. None was given. Not only that, the subpoena spoke ominously about how disclosure of the “very existence” of the subpoena would “impede the investigation.” Obstructing an investigation … can’t that can get you thrown in jail yourself?

Scary stuff.

If governments get away with such tactics, bloggers would be prevented from exercising their most potent weapon to fight injustice: anonymity. Anonymous writing helped foment the American Revolution. Letting governments, today, suppress such free speech amounts to a repudiation of this American idea.

The founders of Room 8 got themselves some lawyers. The subpoena, fortunately, has been withdrawn. Still no word on what the crime was.

Maybe speaking out of turn?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense

A Patriotic Petition

The shot heard round the world in 1775 was momentous. But it was only the beginning of a particular struggle to secure rights.

Advocates of the right to keep and bear arms won a great victory in the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision District of Columbia v. Heller.

This ruling, too, is a momentous event, and one that will ricochet.

And it, too, represents only the beginning of a struggle. The court’s decision leaves the door open to all sorts of possible qualifications and restrictions on the right to protect oneself. But the majority has given defenders of the Second Amendment a powerful weapon simply by acknowledging that this constitutional provision means what it says.

What’s next for those who care about this issue? One thing you can do is formally attest that you agree that the Second Amendment means what it says, and petition our nation’s lawmakers to accept this fact as well. The publishers of the Patriot Post have prepared an online petition to this effect.

It is posted at patriotpetitions​.us/second. If you add your John Hancock, you will be affirming that the Second Amendment “was established to define an individual ‘right of the People to keep and bear arms,’ and that there is no more important constitutional issue than that of defending the plain language and original intent of the Second Amendment.”

That’s hitting the bull’s‑eye.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense

Cattle-​Car Airport “Security”

One of the biggest post‑9/​11 policy blunders was the Sovietization of airport security.

Some TSA screeners try to be civil even as they grab your almost-​empty tube of toothpaste, as if there were a security risk there. A few seem to be in a permanent bad mood, ready to snarl if you give the least evidence of expecting civility.

You can actually be arrested just for “distracting” a TSA officer. What counts as an actionable distraction? Who knows? Let’s just say that despite all the new and mysterious “security” precautions, passengers with inquisitive minds are hardly secure from the security personnel themselves.

Alas, excuses for surliness are about to multiply. The TSA wizards are promising to install some 600 “behavior detection officers” in airports by the end of the year. Their job will be to interpret your facial twitches to see if you have bad intentions. I’m not kidding. Let’s say you manifest disgust with how the screeners are treating you. Hmm. Very suspicious.

Rampant rudeness is unavoidable in such a system. The TSA screeners do monotonous  work all day long, and any “mistake” or comment that someone makes may have been perpetrated 200 times already that day. And these irritated bureaucrats have the power to make life very tough for you. And me.

Let’s face it: A cattle-​car-​like security regime is going to treat people like cattle.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense

An Affirmative End to Preferences

Do you support negative action programs?

I didn’t think so. But you might be more inclined to support such programs if they’re labeled “affirmative action.”

Around the country citizens have been fighting to stop government programs that grant preferences to some citizens over others on the basis of their race or sex. To me, and apparently to most voters, such preferences are simply racist and sexist. Voters in California, Washington State, and Michigan have passed constitutional amendments to prevent such unfair practices in government programs.

Others protest that ending racial preferences will end all so-​called “affirmative action.” Well, that’s only true if such programs do indeed set up racial and gender preferences.

These protesters go on to demand that those campaigning to end these preferences must use their phraseology of opposing affirmative action. That is that these civil rights campaigns should say they are anti-​good, anti-​positive, anti-​affirmative action.

But ask yourself: affirmative for whom? A general hiring policy should never favor some people over others on grounds irrelevant to job performance.

Voters in Arizona, Colorado, and Nebraska will have a chance to decide this issue through citizen initiatives placed on their states’ ballots this November.

I trust they’ll vote affirmatively.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense

Bedbugs in their Bonnets

When Congress began meddling in interstate commerce, using the most generous criteria to justify federal interference in private business and state powers, critics with common sense argued that the ultimate result would be absurdity.

If Congress wasn’t made to stick to the powers Constitutionally enumerated, then there would be nothing Congress wouldn’t do!

The proponents of big government said, in effect, “Don’t be ridiculous.”

Yet the ridiculous is now the normal business of Congress. Recently, the august members of the House have been deliberating the “Don’t Let the Bed Bugs Bite Act of 2008.” This legislation would direct the Commerce Department to provide grants to eligible states to assist in the inspection of hotel rooms.

Representative G.K. Butterfield, a North Carolina Democrat, says that bed bugs, 50 years after being nearly eliminated, are back.

Hmmm. Since hotels depend on their reputations to make money, they have every incentive to fix this problem, without taxpayer help. Hotels should be financially responsible for their own inspections. If there is a role for local and state governments, it would be to streamline the court system to make it easier for afflicted customers to get compensation.

But Congress authorizing $50 million to solve their bed bug crisis? Butterfield insists “it’s not a joke.”

But it is. On us. Congress now defines commerce as extending to the traffic of bed bugs.

Oh, it’s nice that Congress worries about us so. But let’s kill bed bugs locally.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.