On December 6, 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, banning slavery in all states and territories. On 1917 on this date, Finland declared independence from Russia.
Vladimir Nabokov completed his controversial novel “Lolita” on the Sixth of December in 1953, and would soon find himself embroiled in censorship and related publishing difficulties, though with no trouble in the United States when it was eventually published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons in 1958.
It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising their sovereignty.
“Thanks, but no thanks.”
So says Michigan State Representative Tom McMillin to President Barack Obama.
In response to the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and its aftermath, and then the non-indictment of the officer involved, and its aftermath, President Obama requested that Congress fund a new $263 million Justice Department spending package. Part of the spending, a total of $75 million, would put federal dollars toward outfitting 50,000 local policemen with body cameras.
Rep. Tom McMillin, a Rochester Hills Republican, has introduced House Bill 5970 to require all gun-toting state and local police in Michigan to wear body cameras. The legislation would mandate that video footage be destroyed within weeks except in cases where police use force, make an arrest, a complaint is filed or a request is made by a citizen.
McMillin thanks Obama for supporting the idea of body cameras, but the state rep argues that “providing body cameras to state and local police officers in Michigan isn’t a proper role of the federal government,” adding: “We could figure out how to pay for it here in Michigan.”
“Frankly, the feds have put me and my kids in enough debt,” he says, “I wouldn’t want them adding to it.”
Great point. Plus, the federal government really doesn’t have to pay for every single thing that happens in this world.
I’ve advocated the cameras, calling them “justice vision.” Where tried, the video system has served to protect citizens and police and improve public confidence.
But doing the right thing in our hometowns doesn’t require a Washington bribe.
That’s Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
On December 5, 1933, nationwide alcohol Prohibition in the United States ended after Utah became the 36th U.S. state to ratify the 21st Amendment to the United States Constitution, thus establishing the required 75 percent of states needed to enact the amendment that overturned the 18th.
On December 4, 1783, at Fraunces Tavern in New York City, General George Washington formally bade his officers farewell.
A woman starts a new job. She has experience in accounting, learning, getting things done; no experience in that particular job in that particular office. Within days, though, she impresses her new boss with her skill and productivity. She knows what to do and she’s doing it.
True story.
Perplexed? Shocked? Can’t happen?
If that’s your response, I’m betting that you’re not anybody who has ever had to leave one job and start another — and make yourself worth your salary in that new job.
I’m betting that you are, rather, a would-be permanent officeholder facing term limits who has just been telling a reporter how long it takes — years, right? — to get the lay of the land. Then, just as you’re figuring out the difference between a bill and a law, boom! comes your term limit. Ergo, no matter how effectively term limits foster electoral competition or thwart political corruption, they must be repealed or at least drastically diluted.
Is that your story?
If so, I suggest that you resign and make way for a more conscientious student of life and work.
Leaders find ways to get a handle on complexities, to prioritize, to delegate. To the extent that knowing about the budget, lawmaking procedures, and so on would be helpful before starting the lawmaker job, how about studying up beforehand? If the budget is confusing, how about talking to policy analysts or accountants? I could get you in touch with some good ones.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Our country may be likened to a new house. We lack many things, but we possess the most precious of all — liberty!
We all know about the Salem Witch Trials. But much more recently another, not-dissimilar-enough anti-witch craze plagued us. Remember “recovered memories”? Mass child sex abuse? Satanic rites?
Most of it was nonsense.
Frances and Daniel Kellar operated a day care business, and found themselves on the wrong end of this particular crowd madness. They were successfully prosecuted, as a fascinating Austin-American Statesman article relates, without any real evidence,
after three young children accused them of dismembering babies, torturing pets, desecrating corpses, videotaping orgies and serving blood-laced Kool-Aid in satanic rituals so ghastly, their names became synonymous with evil.
It was the early 1990s, when a cottage industry of therapists, authors and investigators argued convincingly — and, in hindsight, absurdly — that a national network of secretive cults was preying upon day care children for sex and other horrors.
Why fall for such tall tales?
Over at Reason, Elizabeth Nolan Brown characterizes the age in which the Kellars were railroaded as “at the height of American moral panic over just who was watching the children.”
So: guilt. Parents rightly feel a duty to care for their children. Outsourcing that job makes us uncomfortable. Those who feel guilty tend to lash out at others, imputing a far greater guilt.
It’s a theory, anyway.
The truth is that the Kellars were not guilty. Their accusers recanted; the evidence against them proved spurious or mistaken.
Released from prison last year, they now seek to be completely exonerated, declared innocent. It’s hard to get folks in government to admit they were wrong.
We, on the other hand, can honor their innocence by not allowing mass hysteria to corrupt justice under our watch, today and tomorrow.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
The best form of government is that which is most likely to prevent the greatest sum of evil.
On December 3, 1989, the leaders of the two world superpowers, the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, declared an end to the Cold War, at a summit in Malta. A little over two years later not only had the Cold War ended, the Soviet Union was itself dissolved.