Category: links

In the face of terrorism and mass murder, some reach for their weapons — in self-defense.

Others reach . . . to take away our rights. Expanding on Friday’s thoughts, Your Column Sense columnist essays a new domino cascade, at Townhall.com. Click on over, then come back here, for more reading:

• NRA Statement on Terror Watch List Distortions
• USA Today: Ryan urges caution on gun legislation
• USA Today: Clinton takes on issue of terror suspects legally buying U.S. guns
• Breitbart: San Bernardino Destroys Gun Control Movement
• Carly Fiorina on MSNBC’s Morning Joe
• Diane Feinstein on 1995 Gun Ban: Mr. and Mrs. America, turn in your guns
• Cato: “The New McCarthyism,” by Dave Kopel
• New York Daily News: Toddler flagged on TSA ‘no-fly’ list
• Daily Mail: How YOU could end up on the No-Fly List
• Townhall: Let’s Repeal Freedom of Speech?

This week, Common Sense looks at the insanity of “cultural appropriation.” Which has reached a new low point of crazed nincompoopery in Ontario. See Sunday’s column on Townhall.com, by Yours Truly, Paul Jacob. Then come back here for further forays into the realm of modern progressive ideology gone completely off its rocker:

• Ottawa Sun: “Free Ottawa Yoga Class Scrapped Over Cultural Issues”
• Spiked: Patrick West – “Cultural Appropriation Will Eat Itself”
• The Spectator: Brendan O’Neill – “This obsession with ‘cultural appropriation’ is leading us down a very dark path”
• The Atlantic: Jenni Avins – “The Dos and Don’ts of Cultural Appropriation”
• YouTube: “Look . . . to their actions, not to their race.”
• Washington Post: The war on ‘microaggressions:’ Has it created a ‘victimhood culture’ on campuses?
• University of California: Recognizing Microaggressions
• Bloomberg View: Megan McCardle – “How Grown-Ups Deal With ‘Microaggressions”
• YouTube: “Sargon of Akkad” — “The Terror of Racism in Higher Education (#NationalOffendACollegeStudentDay)
• Wikipedia: Animal Farm
• Barstool Sports: Yale Administrator Explains To Protestors What “Free Speech” Means
• The Atlantic: “The New Intolerance of Student Activism”

• The Iroquois Confederacy and the U.S. Constitution

Government is supposed to defend our rights, including rights to property. Too often, our police departments merely steal. Play criminal themselves. Click on over to Townhall.com for the full story. Come back here for more reading . . . and viewing:

• Institute for Justice – TAKEN: New Report Finds Civil Forfeiture Laws Are Fueling Explosive Growth in Property Seizures
• Institute for Justice report – Policing for Profit: The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture
• Washington Post – Most Americans don’t realize it’s this easy for police to take your cash
• YouTube – Policing for Profit Visualized: How Big Is Civil Forfeiture?
• Washington Post – Radley Balko: The Booming Business of Asset Forfeiture
• Watchdog.org – CA’s bright spot on civil asset forfeiture overshadowed by federal entanglements
• New York Post – Jacob Sullum: Lame excuses for letting the cops be robbers
• Washington Post – Radley Balko: How much civil asset forfeiture will Holder’s new policy actually prevent?
• Washington Free Beacon – Feds Take $4.5 Billion Worth of Private Property From Americans in 2014

There is more to the Jon Woods story than previously essayed here on Common Sense. So click over to Townhall and learn. Some of it will be familiar, but the new information is interesting too.

Oh, and some background reading:

Wicked Mr. Woods is Out 

• NW Arkansas Democrat Gazette: Woods Leaving Springdale Senate Seat
• Talk Business & Politics: Woods drops out of Northwest Arkansas Senate race; Eads announces run for the open seat
• Arkansas Times: Jon Woods will not seek re-election to state Senate

Saving Term Limits

• Arkansas Democrat Gazette: Ballot proposal on term limits submitted
• Restore Term Limits
• Townhall: The Deceivers
• Ballotpedia: Issue 3

A Thoroughly Unethical Politician 

• Common Sense: Stop Phony Crony Pay Raise
• CFA: Senator Jon Woods and the demise of the Arkansas ethics law
• CFA: General Improvement Fund Award Attracts Investigators
• Calendar of Lobbyist Lunches for Arkansas Legislators
• Conduit for Action
• Common Sense: Who Needs Elections?

The change in China’s one-child rule policy demanded a Townhall.com. So click on over, and then come back here, for more reading.

And tell your friends and . . . enemies!

• CNN: China’s One-Child Policy to End
• National Geographic: How China’s One-Child Policy Backfired Disastrously
• Mei Fong’s website: Book – One Child: The Story of China’s Most Radical Experiment
• FEE: China’s One-Child Disaster
• China’s New Two Child Policy Will Not End Forced Abortion or Gendercide
• The Spectator: The brutality of China’s one-child policy is still shocking
• Sky News (YouTube): Forced Abortion to Meet China’s One Child Policy
• EWTN: Chapter 50 — Forced Abortion: Anti-Life Dream for the World
• YouTube: Vice-President Biden at Sichuan University
• The Conversation: China’s one-child policy helped women make a great leap forward – so what now?
• LA Times: China’s population and economy are a double whammy for the world

Marco Rubio said something more than a little true about his opposition party, the Democratic. It had to do with the media. But that truth explains a whole lot more than just the mechanics of the much-ridiculed presidential debates. Click on over to Townhall. Then come back here for more reading . . . and viewing.

• Daily Caller: Rubio – Hillary Clinton Has The Ultimate Super PAC Called ‘The Mainstream Media’
• Daily Caller: CBS Host Baffled That Rubio Would Say Clinton Lied About Benghazi
• YouTube: Jim Jordan GRILLS Hillary Clinton About Video
• Townhall: Let’s Repeal Freedom of Speech?
• Townhall: Her Majesty Hillary’s Speech Police
• Townhall: The (Un)Intended Consequences of Campaign Finance Regs
• Text of Senate Joint Resolution 19
• Reason: Democrats Fail to Amend the First Amendment
• YouTube: Hillary Clinton recalls SNL parody, “Does Obama want pillow?”
• Yahoo: What happened to SNL Obama pillow video?
• Politico:  “SNL” skits raise doubts about neutrality

War without any declaration — or even a legal authorization of force from Congress — is the modern way, Constitution be . . . ignored. Both Obama and Congress fudge it. The better never to confront reality.

Click on over to  Townhall.com. Then come back here for this weekend’s draught of common sense:

• NBC News: Master Sgt. Joshua Wheeler, U.S. Commando Killed in ISIS Raid, Ran to Gunfight
• HuffPost: Bernie Sanders Supports Keeping Troops In Afghanistan
• WSJ: “She Knew All Along” by Kimberley Strassel
• Fox News: ‘Serial liar’ – Families of Benghazi victims blast Clinton
• YouTube: Cong. Jim Jordan Grills Hillary Clinton on Benghazi
• Wall Street Journal: In Major Afghanistan Shift, Obama Drops Plan to Withdraw Most U.S. Forces
• Defense One: Only ‘4 or 5’ US-Trained Syrians Are Still in the Fight Against ISIS
• Weekly Standard: Obama Tonight: Yemen and Somalia are Models of Success (!)
• Common Sense: A Tunnel with No Light

Politicians like to spend citizens’ money. But what about those citizens? They tend to want to spend their own money, and not give it up to politicians to spend. Thus, one of the great political tensions of our time. Click on over to Townhall.com for this week’s foray into local politics and the idea of citizens being in charge.

Then come back here for more reading:

• Kansas City Star: Dan Coffey, spokesman for KC citizens group, fights City Hall with gusto
• Kansas City Star: Fight could be brewing over convention hotel petitions
• Kansas City Star: Kansas City streetcar plan stopped in its tracks
• Kansas City Star: Group delivers more signatures on petitions seeking vote on KCI plan
• KSHB TV-41: KCI panel meeting draws protestors at Union Station, one told to leave
• Wikipedia: Mayor Sly James
• Facebook: Citizens for Responsible Government

Click on over to Townhall.com for an expanded discussion of Wednesday’s Common Sense. Then come back here for more reading:

Hillary Clinton:

• The Daily Mail
• Powerline Blog

Emanuel Rahm:

• Chicago Tribune’s lawsuit
• more on the Trib lawsuit
• Yahoo story on public education corruption
• ABC News on the Chicago corruption story
• Chicago Tribune on Barbara Byrd Bennett
• Chicago Tonight covers Mayor Emanuel
• Chicago Tribune on emails
• Chicago Tribune CPS investigation
• WBEZ coverage

* As I mentioned in Wednesday’s Common Sense, and in full disclosure, my brother, Mark Jacob, works for the Tribune.

Thursday‘s Common Sense was too big a story to stay under 300 words. So, click on over to Townhall and get a bigger picture. If you come back here, you can follow the links to more on this curious conflict in American society, the conflict over “Little Free Libraries”:

• The book that should be in your library: Democracy in America
• Two online readers’ tools: Goodreads and LibraryThing
• “Regulating community: Local government cracks down on Little Free Libraries,” by Andrew Collins
• “Lincoln orders Little Free Library off church curb,” by Deena Winter
• “The Crackdown on Little Free Library Book Exchanges,” by Conor Friedersdorf
• “Little Free Libraries on the wrong side of the law,” by Michael Schaub
• “Little Free Libraries Legalized in Whitefish Bay,” by Jeff Rumage
• “Actor’s curbside library is a smash — for most people,” by Steve Lopez
• And of course check out the movement website: Little Free Library