Category: media and media people

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First Amendment rights media and media people national politics & policies U.S. Constitution

Dick Durbin’s Dangerous Idea

Politicians think in terms of institutions. If you identify yourself as an individual, a mere citizen, pfft: you’re nothing. But say you are from a lobbying group, or a government bureau, or a news organization — suddenly you matter.

That’s even how they interpret the Constitution.

They are wrong.

Back in May, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin expressed doubt whether “bloggers, or ‘someone who is Tweeting,’ should be given media shield rights.” He believes a big unanswered question looms:

What is a journalist today in 2013? We know it’s someone that works for Fox or AP, but does it include a blogger? Does it include someone who is tweeting? Are these people journalists and entitled to constitutional protection?

Durbin thinks he’s both clever and profound to ask “21st century questions about a provision in our Constitution that was written over 200 years ago.”

But he is actually missing the whole enchilada, the point of the Constitution.

First, our two-​century old freedoms don’t have an expiration date. Second, individuals have rights, not “institutions.” And not because we belong to a group. Either everyone has a basic right, or no one does.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds countered Durbin’s institutional prejudice with a fine piece in the New York Post, where he takes a common sense position: “a journalist is someone who’s doing journalism, whether they get paid for it or not.”

Reynolds reminds us that, in James Madison’s time, “it was easy to be a pamphleteer … and there was real influence in being such.”

Just so for today’s Tweeters and bloggers.

Hey: as far as I’m concerned, you’re being a journalist just for commenting on this at ThisIsCommonSense​.com.

I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture media and media people

A Little More

“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt” goes the old saying. It’s a message completely unappreciated by the folks producing MSNBC’s Lean Forward spots, featuring various network stars spouting lame political talking points.

Go figure — in place of paid advertisements from real customers, the propaganda vignettes air frequently.

Months ago, I took issue with MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-​Perry for saying in one spot that “we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.”Melissa Harris-Perry

She was arguing for higher taxes so government can spend more money on education. I was anxious we not replace Mommy and Daddy with Big Brother.

Harris-​Perry is back for Round Two.

“Americans will always want some level of inequality,” she informs us, “because it’s a representation of a meritocracy.” Then the Tulane professor reassuringly adds, “People who work hard and sacrifice and save their money and make major contributions: we think that they should earn a little more. And they should have more resources. And that’s fine.”

No problem. You want to invent amazing new technology, develop life-​saving drugs, create inspiring art, produce incredible abundance? Fine. For your “work” and “sacrifice” and frugality and “contributions” Melissa Harris-​Perry is willing to permit you to have, well, “a little more.”

Emphasis on “little.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment ideological culture media and media people

Invasion of the Wrong-​Lesson Snatchers

A seeming lone gun nut sends threatening, ricin-​laced letters to New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and U.S. President Barack Obama.

“What’s in this letter is nothing compared to what I’ve got planned for you” is a typical line. “… Anyone wants to come to my house will get shot in the face. The right to bear arms is my constitutional God given right.”

Hmm. Perhaps one difference between the letter-​sender and most Americans who support the right to bear arms is that the latter would never prepare threatening poison-​laced letters?

That’s merely common sense, though; and some editorialists and other opinion-​lock-​and-​loaders lurched to another “obvious” conclusion. Clearly, they intimated, we have a gun nut allied in his nuttiness with Americans who also cite the Second Amendment provided by the gun-​nut Founding Fathers.

Guilt by association is a fallacy in any case. But there were at least two motives for writing such a letter. One, to assert a right to bear arms in so wacky and threatening a way that, presumably unbeknownst to one’s wacky self, one proves that one should be allowed nowhere near guns. Two, to frame an estranged, pro-​gun-​rights husband.

Shannon Richardson, an actress best known for playing a zombie on TV, told the FBI that her pro-​gun-​rights husband was probably the culprit. But mounting evidence soon pointed to her, not her husband. Uh oh …

My conclusion? Many opinion-​bearers should be a little more thoughtful and a little less zombie-​like when taking ideological aim.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture media and media people

No Humans Were Harmed

MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-​Perry says “no one was fundamentally harmed” by the IRS’s targeting of Obama-​unapproved applicants for tax-​exempt status. (Go to 4:00 of the video to skip the preceding lies.)

Elsewhere, detestable Bill Maher inquires: “Is it unreasonable [for IRS] to target an anti-​tax group?”

Good lord.

I’ve discussed the case of Frank VanderSloot, a wealthy businessman minding his own business preferring Romney to Obama when the Obama campaign attacked him for being a wealthy discredit-​worthy Romney supporter. VanderSloot’s operations were forthwith audited by several government agencies.

VanderSloot is a big fish. Catherine Engelbrecht is not.

Engelbrecht is one of many right-​leaning applicants for tax-​exempt status forced to deal with endless intrusive questions, the ostensible result of innocent mismanagement by harried low-​level IRS clerks. Her two political organizations are True the Vote, which combats voter fraud, and King Street Patriots, a discussion group.

As soon as Engelbrecht applied for tax-​exempt status, the FBI began investigating King Street Patriots. Then the IRS audited the couple’s tax returns. Then the agency began its rounds of grilling about True the Vote and King Street Patriots. Then the ATF audited the machine shop. Then OSHA came.

“No one was fundamentally harmed”? Do we need corpses?

Reports about the IRS’s special targeting of non-​liberal applications for tax-​exempt status indicate that many folks gave up on forming their organizations. Other attempts have been delayed for years. Such time-​wasting, money-​wasting, action-​stopping obstructionism makes it harder to pursue one’s mission during the run-​up to a national election, nyet?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
incumbents media and media people

Spring Cleaning

For the fifth year in a row, the Washington Post has offered readers a two-​page spread, “Spring Cleaning: 10 Things to Toss Out,” featuring ten people on what to cleanse from our society.

Also for the fifth time, the Post’s email asking for my “thing” was obviously snagged by my spam filter. Computers!

Still, ten is a number I can easily count to — here’s the Post’s list:

  1. Ben Bernanke? The measure carries! Wait … do we get to vote?
  2. Compliments? Really? Well … good try.
  3. Retweets are not endorsements? Skip.
  4. Flip-​flops? Wrong channel.
  5. Innovation? Love it. And yet I look forward to the new, upgraded version of any computer program like a shot of the Ebola virus with a long, dirty needle.
  6. Red Lines? Foreign Policy’s Editor Susan B. Glasser tossed out red lines, noting that in Syria “The ‘red line’ has been crossed … And Obama is backed into a predictable corner.” By all means, if the Great O cannot live up to his red-​line proclamations, let’s been done with such lines. And the color red, too.
  7. The term “Working Mother”? Meaning: ALL mothers are working mothers. Heck, I can testify; I probably made the mess.
  8. College Rankings? It’s unanimous.
  9. Texas? Couldn’t we just move the Dallas Cowboys from the Eastern Division of the National Football Conference so Washington doesn’t have to play them?
  10. Automatic Tax Withholding? This was Milton Friedman’s idea to get money into the government faster during World War II. Since regretted. But not going anywhere anytime soon.

Too bad that doggone email didn’t arrive, but let me present the eleventh thing to toss out: Career politicians.

Time again to clean both House and Senate.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
media and media people

Have You No Sense of Decency, Sir?

Some folks have all the subtlety of a whoopee cushion.

In a Washington Post column about the influence of freshman Senator Ted Cruz, Dana Milbank remarked that Cruz “is the same age Joe McCarthy was when he amassed power in the Senate.”

The reader is supposed to recognize in natal form a dangerous McCarthyesque demagoguery in Cruz, who is a vigorous and no doubt sometimes wrongheaded polemicist. Milbank offers no substantive comparison of the two men. He just let slip a hit-​and-​run innuendo, then raced away.

Why? I can’t read Milbank’s mind. Typically, though, smear artists defame a person in hopes that others will reel back in horror or contempt, thus diverted from relevant considerations of fact. Perhaps the smear-​wielder also wants the target to be cowed into silence.

Turnabout is fair play and underscores the silliness here. After the Instapundit blog linked to Milbank’s rapier-​like thrust, readers gave reciprocity a try. Christopher Arfaa came up with: “Dana Milbank will turn 45 next week, the same age as Walter Duranty was in 1929, when he secured an exclusive interview with Josef Stalin.” Jay Brinker proposed: “John Kerry is 69, the same age as Neville Chamberlin when he signed the Munich Agreement.” You get the idea.

Sounds easy to get caught in such a net.

I may as well admit it: I too am of a certain age — the same age at which any number of disreputable persons perpetrated some enormity or another.

All my known associates have regular birthdays as well.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.