Category: links

The story that won’t go away, because the government just won’t let up. Click on over to Townhall.com, for today’s sad iteration of government overreach. Then click back here for a little more perspective:

• Washington Post: ‘Free-range’ family again at center of debate after police pick up children
• Common Sense with Paul Jacob: Well-Substantiated Insanity
• Townhall: “Trickle-down Tyranny,” by Paul Jacob
• Facebook: I Stand with the Meitivs against CPS
• Bethesda Magazine: “A Timeline of the Incidents Involving the Free-Range Meitiv Kids in Montgomery County”
• ABC News: 911 Call of Man Reporting Children
• Washington Post: “Parents rally around ‘free-range family’ with petitions, protest plans”
• Huffington Post: “Free Range Parents Danielle and Alexander Meitiv Need to Stop Fighting and Put Kids’ Safety First”

How best to describe a whopping campaign fundraising effort? How about not assume that big is bad, or that it is the voters who are being shortchanged? We know who really loses when candidates collect surprisingly huge donations.

This weekend, I point fingers at the real losers. Click on over to Townhall, then back here, for an eye-popping amount of further reading:

• NPR: The Diane Rehm Show – Friday, April 10, 2015
• Bloomberg Politics: “New Ted Cruz Super-PACs Take in Record Haul,” by Mark Halperin
• Neil King, Jr. – Bio for 66th Annual Conference on World Affairs
• Washington Post: “Yes, Ted Cruz super PACs are expected to rake in $31 million….in a single week”
• Townhall: “With the Boss, But Without the First Amendment,” by Paul Jacob
• Townhall: “Let’s Repeal Freedom of Speech?,” by Paul Jacob

A new report is in: billionaires are still doing well at the federal trough.

I’m not for it. Are you? More interestingly, what do progressives have to say? Can they mount a principled case against such subsidy? No. See the column.

Oh, and read about the report, too. (Click here.)

Freedom is under assault, under siege. It’s not just from terrorists. It’s from the people we’ve assigned to protect our freedoms.

And, worse yet, the tyranny comes not just from the Big Guys in the nation’s imperial capital. Our local governments have picked up the tyranny bug. Welcome to Kafka’s America. Er, Amerika. Er, our America, today. (Kafka’s literary Amerika was a comic fantasy. But his nightmare of impenetrable bureaucracy, from The Trial, is becoming our reality.)

Click on over to Townhall. Then come back here for solidarity’s sake. Oh, and further reading:

• Washington Post: “‘Unsubstanitated’ child neglect finding for free-range parents”
• Townhall: Paul Jacob, “The Social Security Collection Agency”
• Washington Post: George Will, “Rein in IRS”
• Christian Science Monitor: Edward Snowden a hero to many young Americans, poll suggests
• Townhall: Paul Jacob, “Some Courage Required”
• FactCheck.org: National Debt
• U.S. Debt Clock

I have readers who think I am just plain wrong about vaccines. They say there is no such thing as herd immunity, and that vaccines are dangerous. I do not deny that there can be side-effects. And I’m certainly no expert. But I don’t see how you can argue against the evidence of how vaccines beat so many diseases down to insignificance in the 20th century. And then, as resistance to vaccination has grown in recent years, the coming back of of those diseases into the school populations and the even the general population.

So I reiterate the thesis struck last week, in more detail, on Townhall. Pace my critics. (You will have to do a lot more explaining to do.) Click on over to Townhall for the full column, and then back here to give me grief, or (better yet!) support!

Oh, and some more viewing and reading:

• Greg Gutfeld and The Five, “Why ‘gun-free zones’ is liberal for ‘sitting duck’’ — The Fox News show segment that anchors my comments.
• John Lott, Jr., “Take a gun to the mall”
• John Lott, Jr., “The Cruelty of Gun-Free Zones”
• Merriam-Webster, “celerity” (defined)
• Anthony J. Draper, “Cesare Beccaria’s influence on English discussions
  of punishment, 1764–1789” (PDF)
• Paul Jacob, “The Herd That Has the Immunity” — about herd immunity per vaccination, and the nation’s issues with disease and fighting it.