Category: national politics & policies

Categories
Accountability ballot access folly general freedom ideological culture initiative, referendum, and recall media and media people national politics & policies political challengers responsibility U.S. Constitution

Should Non-Citizens Vote?

voting, elections, democracy, illegal, aliens, migration, borders, citizens

“A lot of people would like to say this is an immigration issue. It’s really not,” offered Gary Emineth, the head of North Dakotans for Citizen Voting and a candidate for state senator.  

“It’s really about preserving the right for U.S. citizens, and in our case, North Dakota residents, to only be the voters in all elections across the state of North Dakota,” added Emineth. “And that’s why we want it in the constitution.”

Turning in more than 35,000 voter signatures on petitions last Friday, Emineth and others placed a constitutional amendment on this November’s ballot that, if passed, would make voting the exclusive right of U.S. citizens in North Dakota.

Elsewhere in the country, Emineth points out, non-citizens are already voting — in Chicago and San Francisco, and in 11 cities across Maryland. Moreover, campaigns are underway across the country to give non-citizens the vote — in California, Connecticut, New York City, Boston and Montpelier, Vermont.

Opponents claim the North Dakota measure is completely unnecessary, as the state doesn’t currently allow non-citizens to cast a ballot, nor has any city yet attempted to allow non-citizens to vote. But Emineth’s goal is to keep it that way.

Moreover, University of North Dakota Law Professor Steven Morrison acknowledged to The Forum in Fargo that “the proposed amendment does clean up what could be a grammatical loophole since the word ‘every’ doesn’t conclusively exclude non-citizens from voting. . . .”

It is a very simple proposition: Do you want voting to be the exclusive right of U.S. citizens? Or should non-citizens be allowed to vote?

Coming to a ballot near and Fargo.*

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* With some help from Liberty Initiative Fund.

 

PDF for printing

 

Categories
general freedom meme national politics & policies U.S. Constitution

Independence Day

independence, Fourth of July, freedom, Independence Day, 2018

independence:

noun

1. freedom from the influence, control, or determination of another. If a country has independence, it has its own government and is not ruled by any other country.

2. If a country has independence, it has its own government and is not ruled by any other country.

 

Happy Independence Day!

 

Categories
Accountability First Amendment rights folly general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies Regulating Protest too much government U.S. Constitution

Freedom “Weaponized”

free speech, First Amendment, censorship, freedom, liberty, rights, Justice Elena Kagan

Justice Elena Kagan has a way with words. The conservative majority on the court, she said after two recent rulings, is “weaponizing the First Amendment.”

What a phrase! But what does it mean?

“Conservative groups, borrowing and building on arguments developed by liberals,” explains The New York Times, “have used the First Amendment to justify unlimited campaign spending, discrimination against gay couples and attacks on the regulation of tobacco, pharmaceuticals and guns.”

First: if “liberals” now find themselves not supporting the idea of particular freedoms, or freedom in general, are they really “liberal”?

Second: “borrowing arguments” is what we expect to happen. Logic isn’t partisan.

Third: the point of the Bill of Rights is to “weaponize” the defense of freedom.

Remember, it is freedom of speech; freedom of the press; freedom of association; freedom of exercising one’s religion. The First Amendment weaponizes their defense by disallowing Congress from legislating against them.

Now, it has long been a “problem” that these listed freedoms blend together. They all work together or don’t work at all. And each points to freedom more broadly.

Kagan wants to read freedoms narrowly — though liberals historically have, indeed, read them broadly.

She’s objecting to two recent rulings. The first prohibits states from requiring pregnancy centers to talk up abortion options to their clients. An obvious free speech issue. The second prohibits governments from backing unions in their extraction of “agency fees” from non-members. An incontrovertible issue of freedom of association.

Kagan and The New York Times apparently think that “liberalism” means defending some freedoms in some contexts, but denying freedom in others.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

 

Illustration by Newtown grafitti

 

Categories
Accountability crime and punishment ideological culture media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies political challengers responsibility

Black Mask Terrorism

antifa, Portland, fascist, violence, Patriot Prayer group

I was in Arkansas on Saturday when the downtown streets of Portland, Oregon, “exploded into its worst protest violence of the Trump era,” as The Guardian explains. “More than 150 supporters of the far-right Patriot Prayer group fought pitched street battles with scores of anti-fascist protesters. In total, nine people were arrested.”

Notice that “Patriot Prayer” — a group sponsored by a Republican Senatorial candidate, and which says it stands for free speech — was labeled “far right” while the “anti-fascist protesters” were not called “far left.”

Characteristically, The Guardian vagues it up. “Violence suddenly ‘erupted,’” noted a Romanian YouTuber of the British rag’s evasiveness. “Who started it? We don’t know.”

Well, from the videos I saw it looked like the “anti-fascists” started it. The “patriots” were marching down the street when a young man, with helmet and backpack, and a young women, dressed in black, marshaled antifa mobs towards the legal march, and then stones and bottles were thrown, and explosives, too . . . into the Patriot Prayer rally.

Note: the Patriot Prayer group had filed the paperwork for the march; antifa had not. The Portland police did not protect the licensed marchers, but did revoke their license, telling everyone to disperse (threatening “duress” to the non-compliant) after the violence broke out.

If you did not carefully look at more than one video, you might be confused. Indeed, not all videos showed the crucial break from peace to violence.

So, what other clues might one look for?

In old cowboy movies, whoever ganged up masked, and wore black, were usually the bad guys.

Antifa — thanks for providing the clues: masks, black fighting gear, and Luciferian handsigns.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

 

Categories
Accountability crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility

Eighty-sixing Civility

Had Sara Huckabee Sanders been asked to leave the Washington, DC, Red Hen, rather than the restaurant of that name in Lexington, Virginia, things might’ve turned out a bit different. In the nation’s capitol, it is illegal to discriminate against customers for reasons of political affiliation.

Out in Lexington? Not so much. One can “86” a politico there with impunity, I guess.

A Yelp reviewer defended the restaurateur’s request not to serve President Trump’s Press Secretary. “Thank you for refusing to serve a person who lies to the American people for a living.”

Wait — I thought that is what all Press Secretaries do: present the official lie. Be that as it may, or not, objecting to one Administration and not another implicitly endorses the policies and lies of the Administration not censured. And the grounds given in this Red Hen cluckery — that the Trump Administration is racist, etc. — might possess a tad more plausibility had the Obama Administration not engaged in policies startlingly similar to the ones Trump and Sanders are blamed for.

The “right to refuse service to anyone” may be a right retained by the people, but since the Ninth Amendment is a dead letter, and the federal government, at least, does not recognize such rights when the refused parties fall into certain “protected groups,” talking about it at length is probably a waste of time.

While the anti-Trump side of the current political-cultural divide seems resolute in denying a right to refuse to bake specialty cakes for gay couples, refusing to serve standard meals to political enemies is apparently copacetic.

Which can only mean: that democratically elected and appointed government officials are not the right “protected group” — which is odd, isn’t it, when those doing the discriminating call themselves “Democrats”?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

PDF for printing

 

Categories
Accountability crime and punishment education and schooling national politics & policies responsibility U.S. Constitution

Will Feds Foil Foolish Licensing?

Marco Rubio, Elizabeth Warren, student, loan, debt, Florida, federalism, states, federal, law, college loan

It would be nice if the federal government used its often-abused authority over state and local governments to outlaw various forms of state and local oppression.

In his book Leviathan: The Growth of Local Government and the Erosion of Liberty, Clint Bolick argues that the federal government is not alone in hugely violating individual rights. Eminent domain, asset forfeiture, zoning, and occupational licensing are among the modes of sub-federal assault on the innocent. Even as policymakers in various regions of the land act to stop the worst of these abuses, they proceed unchecked elsewhere.

U.S. Senators Marco Rubio and Democrat Elizabeth Warren are the unlikely duo who may interrupt the now-common practice of depriving delinquent borrowers of student loans of their right to earn a living from certain trades. Rubio recently admitted on Twitter that as a Florida lawmaker, he once voted to allow the state “to suspend professional licenses of those who defaulted on student loans. I WAS WRONG. . . . How can they pay back if they can’t work?”

Yes, Rubio was wrong.

Senator Warren, for her part, agrees that the practice is “wrong and counterproductive.”

The bi-partisan duo’s bill would prohibit states from denying driver’s licenses and occupational licenses to borrowers who default on student loans.

I don’t think the legislation goes as far as it should, even in the delimited area of occupational licensing. The absurdities of occupational licensing go way beyond the scope of the proposed remedy.

But it’s a start.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

PDF for printing

 

Photos by Gage Skidmore and Edward Kimmel

 

Categories
crime and punishment general freedom national politics & policies privacy responsibility Second Amendment rights too much government U.S. Constitution

Don’t Bring Pepper Spray to a Gun Fight

pepper spray, gun violence, gun control, self defense, 2nd Amendment, rights, crime

“My students are my kids . . . and I want to be able to protect them just like I would protect my own son,” says the Oho teacher, who participates in a program called FASTER Saves Lives. (“FASTER” stands for Faculty/Administrator Safety Training & Emergency Response.)

Since 2013, FASTER Saves Lives has trained teachers and other school employees to carry and shoot firearms. Although many lawmakers and school officials around the country oppose letting teachers bear arms in the classroom, a growing number sanction the practice.

It makes sense. Is there any better way to prepare for the possibility of having to defend your life and your students’ lives against an armed assailant bent on mass murder? (We can set aside the notion that aspiring murderers will scrupulously respect gun-control laws.)

People do have counterproposals. Congressional candidate Levi Tillman urges arming teachers with pepper spray. Well . . . there are problems, as blogger Tom Knighton elaborates. How do you get close enough to use the pepper spray before the killer squeezes the trigger again? What if he sees you coming?

And suppose you do spray the attacker? He won’t be immediately incapacitated. He may even be unaffected.

Some brave people have stopped a gunman by tackling him in mid-rampage. Great . . . if you have the ability and opportunity to do that.

On the other hand, suppose you’re neither strong nor nimble but can shoot, carry a gun, and shoot back — when the assailant is on the floor, bleeding: no more threat.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Categories
Accountability crime and punishment general freedom government transparency individual achievement media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies privacy Snowden U.S. Constitution

Happy Birthday, Edward Snowden

Edward Snowden, birthday, surveillance, whistleblower, patriot, sacrifice, NSA

Edward Snowden turns 35 today and begins another year as a fugitive stuck in Russia.

Five years ago, he fled the country to Hong Kong, meeting with The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald and documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras to discuss documents he had released showing illegal National Security Agency collection of our phone records, social media posts and mega other metadata.

It is not merely Snowden who calls the NSA’s programs unconstitutional, or me, but how a federal judge ruled.

Remember when James Clapper, President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, wittingly misled Congress by claiming our private information was not being swept up, except “unwittingly.” We only know that Clapper fibbed because of what Snowden divulged.

“[T]he breaking point was seeing the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, directly lie under oath to Congress,” Snowden has explained. “There’s no saving an intelligence community that believes it can lie to the public and the legislators who need to be able to trust it and regulate its actions.”

Clapper is free, collecting his pension. Snowden has been indicted under the Espionage Act, which unconstitutionally limits his defense.

Snowden sure has paid for his courage. He was making very good money, and living with his girlfriend in Hawaii, when he decided he had a duty to alert us to our government’s lawlessness — at the cost of his livelihood, his future, his very life, perhaps.

While our leaders call him a traitor, I call him “friend.”*

Edward Snowden is a friend of every American who cherishes our Fourth Amendment right “to be secure in [our] persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

Freedoms the government was secretly stomping upon.

It is time to bring him home.**

Ed Snowden, thank you for your service. Happy Birthday!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* I feel a connection to Mr. Snowden, and have an inkling of what it’s like to do what you believe is right and to find yourself wanted by the government, on the run, far from home.

** Snowden deserves a presidential pardon. But he has said he would even return to face prosecution, provided the charges did not preclude him from defending his actions in open court.

 

PDF for printing

 

Categories
Accountability crime and punishment First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies political challengers Regulating Protest

Assaults Not Allowed

speech, argument, hate speech, minds.com, Bill Ottman, violence, free speech, tolerance

Have Americans forgotten that freedom makes getting along easier?

We do not all have to like each other. We do not even all have to be nice to each other. We just don’t have license to hit or hornswoggle our fellows. Hate speech may be bad, but it is hate assaults — not talk — that should be punished by law.

Yes, free people are at liberty to insult each other, call each other nasty names, even demean each other. And those insulted, besmirched, and dissed may return in kind or shrug the negatives off.

But we needn’t let it go at that.

Bill Ottman, founder and CEO of Minds.com, reminds us that there is more than one way to skin a hate. When coming across vile nonsense and worse, “the most important question is how we deal with these situations,” he writes.

We may be able to find the answer in the work of Daryl Davis, a famous blues musician with a hobby of  befriending members of the Ku Klux Klan. According to him: “Once the friendship blossoms, the klansmen realize that their hate may be misguided.” By having dinner with Klansmen, he has inspired over 200 members to give up their robes.

Ottman goes on to call for a concerted effort to reclaim a future for “internet freedom and human rights.” That’s a good idea.

Don’t accept the premise that, to get along, we must squelch speech. Instead, ignore disagreeable people trying to make us feel bad.

And look for ways to persuade those who hate us.

We can be adults about this. And keep freedom of speech.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

PDF for printing

 

Categories
Accountability crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies privacy Regulating Protest Second Amendment rights U.S. Constitution

Brownells Defends Itself

YouTube, guns, gun control, censorship, 2nd Amendment, censor, ban, school shootings

I’m glad to be able to say this: Brownells has, present tense, a YouTube channel. Especially glad because, on June 9, Google had shut that channel down without warning or explanation.

Brownells is a family-owned supplier of firearms, firearm parts and accessories, gunsmithing tools, and emergency gear. Well-known and well-regarded by shooters, hobbyists and gunsmiths, the company has a website and a YouTube channel that serves as a “portal to everything shooting and hunting,” as Pete Brownell explains.

Brownells’ YouTube channel is substantial, with almost 1,800 instructional videos and some 71,000 subscribers. Patrons stress that there’s nothing outré, radical, or offensive about the offerings — unless you’re reflexively anti-Second Amendment, I guess.

We’ve got no smoking gun in the form of an explicit admission from Google. But we may plausibly suspect that the firm terminated this YouTube channel for ideological reasons. Perhaps Google shot from the hip here in reaction to the recent spate of school shootings, without pausing to properly distinguish between promoting responsible gun ownership and promoting murder.

We may also never know whether Google expected Brownells to meekly accept the arbitrary snuffing of a resource it had spent so much time and energy developing. In any case, Brownells used Twitter and other forums to urge supporters to call Google and object.

The self-defense paid off. On June 11, Google undeleted the channel. The protests against injustice must have been too many to ignore.

YouTube is no longer a mere platform for video sharing. It has taken political controversy and complaints as excuses to editorialize.

Were it a government, I’d say “censor.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

PDF for printing