Matt Christiansen peers underneath the “negligent, maybe even maliciously deceptive” mainstream press accounts of the most recent FBI hate crime report. What is there? Well, the facts are very different from what journalists are saying:
This weekend at Townhall.com — how to vote to protect one’s state from the meddling hands of insiders and politicians.
Click on over to Townhall. Then come back here for more reading:
This column will appear on this site on voting day.
Paul Jacob
Sneaky. Low-down. Poltroons.
Click on over to Townhall for this weekend’s highlights reel on how politicians do it, how they sucker-punch the people.
Then come back here for the raw footage:
El Dorado News-Times: Arkansas Supreme Court disqualifies term limits proposal
KARK: Mike Huckabee Talks Capitol Corruption, Term Limits
Arkansas Times: Ethics rules? Legislators hate them
Governing: Fed Up by Corruption, Arkansas Voters Could Revisit Term Limits
Townhall (Paul Jacob): The Deceivers
Common Sense with Paul Jacob: The Natural State of Politicians
Common Sense with Paul Jacob: Memphis Politicians Cheating Voters
Daily Memphian: Not No, But Hell No
Commerical Appeal: Why not write city ballot questions in plain English?
IVN: Jennifer Lawrence Warns Memphis Voters, “You’re About to be Blindsided by Your Own Government”
Common Sense with Paul Jacob: Graceless Memphis Politicians
Common Sense with Paul Jacob: Nashville’s Trojan Horse
Common Sense (video): Note on Nashville (at Global Forum)
Paul Jacob’s weekly columns debut most Sundays on Townhall.com, and are archived on ThisIsCommonSense.com on Tuesdays.
“…a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government…”
–Thomas Jefferson, 1801
One of my more persistent critics on this site asked, last week, why I might believe anything the current president says — considering all the lies.
For reasons of decorum I won’t repeat his exact wording.
The odd thing about the comment was not the vulgarity, though (unfortunately). It was the idea that I was relying upon belief in Donald Trump’s veracity. The whole point of my commentary regarding Trump’s handling of trade and foreign policy was to read between some lines.
I try never to believe anything … er, everything … any politician says.
In Donald Trump’s case, though, there are lies and there are fictions and there are exaggerations. And corkers … and “negotiating gambits.” Separating the wheat from the chaff from the grindstone is not always easy.
Based not only on some of what he says, but also on results-thus-far from the EU negotiations, Trump’s idea of “fair trade” appears to be multilateral free trade. But he has chosen a bizarre method to get there: the threat of high-tariff protectionism — which in the past has led to multilateral protectionism, not free trade.
Trump sees everything as a contest. Trade isn’t a contest as such. It’s win-win. But trade negotiations are contests. And Trump’s game of chicken is dangerous.
Regarding foreign policy generally, though, he seems to be playing a more familiar game: we can outspend everybody. The recent increase in Pentagon spending is bigger than Russia’s annual military budget!
So, who pays? Americans in
That’s awfully daring of him. For us.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Photo from Max Pixel
The relationship between the First and Second Amendments is closer than commonly believed.
This is especially clear in the 3D gun printing story, the subject of yesterday’s Common Sense, “Progressive Designs.” As I finished the copy, a news story broke: U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik “muzzled Defense Distributed with a court order,” as Declan McCullagh puts it.
And then, as McCullagh goes on, a mirror site appeared. Though Cody Wilson, the man behind Defense Distributed, immediately took his plans offline, “the Calguns Foundation, the Firearms Policy Coalition, and other civil rights groups” published plans for “AR-15, AR-10, Ruger 10 – 22, Beretta 92FS, and other firearms” on their sites.
This made my footnote especially relevant, for it was there that I noted that “plans like this have been available on the not-exactly-easy-to-access Dark Web for some time.” And now Cody Wilson’s precise “freely downloadable computer-aided design (CAD) files,” though “dark” on his site, are bright elsewhere.
McCullagh admits that though it is certainly “possible that Defense Distributed may lose this legal skirmish and be prevented from returning its instructions to the DEFCAD site,” since such plans are now everywhere, and not easily stoppable, constitutionally, the “Second Amendment, it turns out, is protected by the First.”
Which is, of course, natural enough — for the Second Amendment’s protections of self-defense has held power-lusting politicians at bay, keeping Americans freer than citizens anywhere else. What other country has better free speech protections?
All freedoms help each other, reinforce each other.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
