Every cause produces more than one effect.
Herbert Spencer, “Progress: Its Law and Cause,” The Westminster Review (April 1857).
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Herbert Spencer
Author: Redactor
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Gandhi & Yeltsin
On August 9, 1942, British forces arrested Mahatma Gandhi in Bombay, spurring the Quit India Movement into nationwide action.
In 1999 on this 221st day of the year, Russian President Boris Yeltsin fired his Prime Minister, Sergei Stepashin, and his entire cabinet.
Colorado mechanic Troy Lake, former and (we hope) future operator of Elite Diesel, was incarcerated by the Biden administration.
The 65-year-old fixed diesel vehicles. Unfortunately for him, he did so by removing EPA-mandated emissions systems that supposedly help keep the air clean. By forcing vehicles to recirculate exhaust, the systems also make it harder for them to function properly.
“I was just trying to help people. And the word got out all over the country that I could do it right.”
One customer was hauling calves when his truck almost caught on fire because of the EPA-mandated system. He removed the filter himself and paid Troy to fine-tune the engine.
Troy has seen school buses unable to move for hours because of problems caused by the filter.
He wasn’t fixing these vehicles “out of malice,” he protests. “I think all of us want cleaner air. [At this cost? No.] But when we’re putting people out of business, there’s got to be a common ground.”
In December 2024, a judge sentenced Troy to 12 months in prison and fined him $52,500 for “conspiracy to violate the Clean Air Act.” It could have been worse: up to five years and $250,000.
Now Troy and his friends want President Trump — who has been working to undo some of the worst regulatory impositions of the Obama and Biden years — to pardon Troy so he can get back to his life and business.
How about it, Mr. President?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Joseph Addison
There is no virtue so truly great and godlike as justice.
Joseph Addison, The Guardian (1713).
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Born & Died
Francis Hutcheson, philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment and a great influence on David Hume and Adam Smith, was born in Ireland on August 8, 1694. He died on his birthday in 1746.
Followers of Mahatma Gandhi launched the Quit India Movement against the British rule on August 8, 1942.
On the same day in 1974, President Richard M. Nixon resigned.
It would be nice if Wikipedia were suing to challenge the United Kingdom’s entire Online Safety Act, not just the provision that most directly targets Wikipedia.
Better something than nothing, however.
As Wikipedia describes it, the Act “creates a new duty of care for online platforms, requiring them to take action against illegal content, or legal content that could be ‘harmful’ to children where children are likely to access it. Platforms failing this duty would be liable to fines of up to £18 million or 10% of their annual turnover, whichever is higher.”
The Wikipedia Foundation objects to being classified as a category 1 service under the Act, a designation that imposes digital ID requirements on its contributors.
“Privacy is central to how we keep users safe and empowered,” says Phil Bradley-Schmieg, lead counsel for the Wikipedia Foundation. “Designed for social media, this is just one of several category 1 duties that could seriously harm Wikipedia.”
“Designed for social media” — in other words, do it to the other guys, not us.
“Volunteer communities working in more than 300 languages could be exposed to data breaches, stalking, vexatious lawsuits, or even imprisonment by authoritarian regimes,” Bradley-Schmieg adds.
True. But won’t those risks also be faced by those who surf in to say something on a social media platform and suddenly find themselves confronted with age-verification — ID — demands?
We need a tsunami of lawsuits against the UK’s global assault on privacy and freedom of speech.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Alfred Hitchcock
We do not recommend suicide as a way of life.
Alfred Hitchcock, in Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1965).
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First Purple Hearts
On August 7, 1782, George Washington instituted the Badge of Military Merit to honor soldiers wounded in battle, an award later renamed “the Purple Heart.”
Illustration: “Washington Crossing the Delaware,” Emanuel Leutze, 1851, Oil on canvas (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City), depicting an event in 1776, not 1782.
Censors are on the march . . . seemingly everywhere. Strike them down one place, they pop up three others.
Or, in the U.S., two: the House and the Senate.
“Earlier this year, U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren introduced a new pirate site blocking bill, titled the Foreign Anti-Digital Piracy Act,” we read at Torrent Freak, which goes on to tell us that, in late July, “a similar proposal was introduced by Senators Tillis, Coons, Blackburn, and Schiff. The bipartisan bill, titled Block Bad Electronic Art and Recording Distributors (Block BEARD), aims to introduce a legal mechanism for rightsholders to request site blocking orders.”
Ostensibly, the Block BEARD Act targets websites accused of harboring pirated materials.
But Reclaim the Net observes that the legislation would establish “a formal, court-approved process that could be used to make entire websites vanish from the American internet.” ISPs would have to obey orders to take down websites.
Once government has this new means of torpedoing websites, what counts as prohibition-worthy content could easily expand. The bill doesn’t require transparency, so the public would not have to be told what sites are being blocked.
Or why.
Or for how long.
Reclaim the Net points to how easily the “takedown notice” provision of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act has been weaponized to censor content in the name of protecting copyright. Everyone from artists to political activists have had content scrubbed because of DMCA notices for work “that clearly falls under fair use, commentary, or criticism.”
Platforms eager to avoid liability delete content even when a DMCA claim is clearly illegitimate. Then publishers must engage in a time-consuming legal process to maybe obtain permission to restore the censored material.
If the Block BEARD Act is enacted, suddenly whole websites, not just individual pages, could be unjustly disappeared so skittish ISPs can avoid liability. Can we trust the U.S. government — and various disgruntled people — to possess that power?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Francis Hutcheson
Whoever voluntarily undertakes the necessary office of rearing and educating, obtains the parental power without generation.
Francis Hutcheson, A System of Moral Philosophy (1755), Book III, Ch. II, § II.