On October 15, 1894, Alfred Dreyfus (1859 – 1935) was arrested for spying: The Dreyfus Affair began. And thus began a scandal that brought anti-Semitism into the cultural center.
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The Dreyfus Affair
Author: Redactor
Maryland election workers should definitely not have to wait a full two days after the November 8th General Election to begin processing mailed-in ballots.
At least, that’s my opinion.
It’s also the view of the Democrat-controlled General Assembly.
Plus, it’s the preference of the state’s Republican Governor, as well as what the State Election Board wants to do “[a]fter a primary cycle plagued by long delays arising from counting a surge of mail-in ballots.”
Accordingly, you might surmise that when the Maryland Court of Appeals recently agreed with a lower court that the Election Board was A-OK to count mail-in ballots early, before the election, I would applaud their ruling.
Instead: the Bronx cheer.
This decision undercuts something much more important than ballot-counting speed and efficiency. It destroys the rule of law.
There is a constitutional method for repealing or changing laws on the books, and in fact, as The Washington Post explained,“State lawmakers tried to change the law during this year’s legislative session when they passed a bill that would have permanently removed the provision. But, Gov. Larry Hogan (R), who said he supported counting mail-in ballots early, vetoed the bill, citing other concerns with the legislation.”
Thus, the state’s representative political process spoke, for better or worse. It may be “an outdated law,” as The Post charged, but if it isn’t violating anyone rights, it should not be jettisoned by a judge for the government’s momentary convenience.
Government officials should be required to follow the law, when as here they can, until changed.
Not merely do whatever they want to.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Vladimir Nabokov
Literature was not born the day when a boy crying ‘wolf, wolf’ came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels; literature was born on the day when a boy came crying ‘wolf, wolf’ and there was no wolf behind him.
Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature (1980).
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William Penn
On October 14, 1644, Willliam Penn was born. An English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania (the English North American colony and future Commonwealth of Pennsylvania), he was an early champion of democracy and religious freedom, notable for his good relations and successful treaties with the Lenape Indians. Penn died in 1718.
State legislators placed Proposal 1 on the Michigan ballot to weaken their own term limits. It would let current incumbents stay up to twice as long in a single office and allow termed-out former legislators to return.
Nonetheless, its elite backers insist that it makes term limits tougher.
To give proponents something to talk about other than this term limits scam, Proposal 1 also adds weak financial disclosure requirements for legislators — similar to (but weaker than) the rules that keep the U.S. Congress . . . so clean and honest.
“Never have so few applied so much lipstick to such a pig,” is how one Michigan term limits activist describes it.
That’s big lie #1 on the Great Lakes State ballot.
Big lie #2 is Proposal 2, leftists’ feel-good voting rights measure funded by $10 million (and counting) in outside dark money (which I thought they abhorred). It guarantees stuff like a ballot dropbox on every corner and free postage for mailing back absentee ballots, etc., etc., etc.
Its real purpose is to place a new right into the Michigan Constitution: The right to vote WITHOUT showing any official photo identification. In fact, no ID whatsoever. Instead, the amendment establishes that simply signing a statement that, aw shucks, you are who you say you are, is all that can be required.
With Proposal 2 making any actual voter ID requirement unconstitutional, what’s their pitch to Michiganders?
“Proposal 2 etches voter ID into our state constitution,” declares one television spot.
Another proclaims Proposal 2 puts “voter ID requirements” into “our constitution” to make elections “safe and secure.”
Michigan’s Etch-a-Sketchiest insiders are actually promoting a prohibition of voter I.D. as a demand for that very thing. That’s the audacity of . . . fraud.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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William Penn
Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men give them; and as governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined too.
William Penn, Frames of Government (1682).
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Albert Jay Nock
On October 13, 1870, American social critic and education theorist Albert Jay Nock was born. Nock was the author of a number of books, including Jefferson, the Man and Our Enemy, The State, but was probably most famous for his intellectual autobiography, Memoirs of a Superfluous Man, which was widely read and admired amongst conservatives in the 1950s and ’60s.
President Biden’s decision to pardon everyone federally convicted for a simple marijuana possession is not the true beginning of the end of the federal war on drug-taking people.
In 2018, the federal government legalized certain products with cannabinoids derived from hemp. That’s something, even if the feds still ban buying and selling marijuana.
On the other hand, for years many states have been legalizing pot, inspiring the federal government to somewhat slacken enforcement of its own pot ban — sometimes.
These developments constitute the beginning of the end for the federal war on drug-taking people.
Call Biden’s gesture the middle of the beginning. That it won’t be rapidly followed by full federal legalization of unapproved drugs or even marijuana is shown by the objections of other politicians.
Senator Tom Cotton laments that Biden is “giving blanket pardons to pot heads — many of whom pled down from more serious charges.”*
The argument would be equally valid if it were illegal to blow soap bubbles and some people had pled down from a charge of smashing windows to a charge of blowing soap bubbles. Granted, plea deals are often horrible, wrongly abetting the guilty and hurting the innocent. So reform the plea-deal regime.
But don’t criminalize non-crimes.
The real impact? The White House admits that “while no-one is currently in prison for ‘simple possession,’ a pardon for those who have convictions could allow better access to housing or employment.”
Call it a half-start at the middle of the beginning of the end.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Another lament is that Biden’s pardon is just cynical election-eve politics. Well . . . let’s have more such pandering to the people; it seems the only way to get good policy from bad politicians.
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Albert Jay Nock
The practical reason for freedom is that freedom seems to be the only condition under which any kind of substantial moral fiber can be developed — we have tried law, compulsion and authoritarianism of various kinds, and the result is nothing to be proud of.
Albert Jay Nock, “On Doing the Right Thing,” The American Mercury (1925).
Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, has often been lauded in this commentary — regarding SpaceX and the growth of private space travel, and recently for providing crucial internet access through his company’s Starlink satellites first to Ukraine and now for Iranian protesters.
I like that.
But the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) doesn’t like it at all. As Musk acknowledged last week in an interview with the Financial Times (FT), explaining that Chinese rulers wanted “assurances” he would not provide Starlink internet to the 1.4 billion people they actively repress.
With a Tesla plant in Shanghai, Musk is much more vulnerable to the dictates of Xi Jinping and the CCP than he is to Vladimir Putin or Iran’s Ayatollah.
“Tesla, though headquartered in the U.S.,” Forbes notes, “made about half of its cars last year in mainland China, the world’s largest auto market.”
Which amounts to an awful lot of leverage.
In that same FT interview, Musk floated a “solution” to the tensions between China, which threatens a military attack that might kill millions, and its target Taiwan, which overwhelmingly favors a war of resistance to CCP takeover and threatened re-education.
“My recommendation,” the usually innovative businessman told FT, “would be to figure out a special administrative zone for Taiwan [under China’s authority] that is reasonably palatable,” adding, “it’s possible, and I think probably, in fact, that they could have an arrangement that’s more lenient than Hong Kong.”
While the Chinese ambassador to the U.S. thanked Elon Musk for his idea, a senior Taiwanese official reminded, “The world has seen clearly what happened to Hong Kong.”
Does this brilliant businessman really think that the promise of a more “lenient” totalitarianism is any kind of solution?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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