Category: Common Sense

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Common Sense

Townhall: Out Like a Lamb?

This weekend at Townhall, I expand my thoughts from Thursday, on the whole Indiana RFRL controversy. Click on over to Townhall. But then back here, for I have by no means written the last word on the subject. Here is a wide variety of opinion:

Categories
Common Sense general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies

Lions and Lambs

LIons and Lambs

“March comes in like a lion, goes out like a lamb.”

Tell that to Indiana Governor Mike Pence, whose signing of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) into law at the end of March created a roaring controversy.

Does the law enable discrimination? Or protect religious freedom? Or both? Neither?

An Associated Press report explains: “Religious freedom laws like the one causing an uproar in Indiana have never been successfully used to defend discrimination against gays — and have rarely been used at all, legal experts say.”

Of course, discrimination continues. In 2014, a Texas restaurateur refused service to a gay couple. As a FindLaw​.com article explains, the 1964 Civil rights Act “only prohibits discrimination on the basis of color, race, religion, or national origin, and says nothing about sexual orientation.”

So some states, such as New Mexico and Oregon, added legal protections for sexual orientation. But that’s led to reverse violations of rights — facing a $150,000 fine, a bakery closed its shop after the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries ruled it violated a lesbian couple’s civil rights by declining to make a wedding cake; a New Mexico photographer was found guilty of violating the state’s Human Rights law for declining to photograph a gay couple’s commitment ceremony.

In times’ past, both state and private violence enforced invidious racial discrimination. Thankfully, those days are gone — cafes, hotels and stores are open to all.

But the civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination in public accommodations cases are distinct from forcing photographers or florists or flutists to personally participate in a ceremony they choose not to.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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LIons and Lambs

 

Categories
Common Sense folly media and media people national politics & policies

Cruz Country

Cruz Country

The cultural differences between left and right may be stronger than the political.

When Sen. Ted Cruz answered a question about his musical taste posed by a CBS news correspondent, and he announced that his preference switched after 2001, 9/​11, the leftosphere fell of its rocker and into convulsions.

Why?

He said he switched from listening to classic rock to country, and did so because the country music culture responded to the 9/​11 atrocity so much better than did rock-​and-​roll culture.

Confession: my musical tastes lean toward classic rock. But there’s no way I would get upset about a politician’s musical choices — unless he started listening to Wagner while reviving an interest in National Socialism.

But boy, on the left there was a lot of outrage and indignation. At least, Matt Welch of Reason quoted a good spattering of it, and I found more on Twitter and elsewhere. On Slate? Snark. A YouTuber tubed Cruz’s change as “pandering.” And in New York magazine, Jonathan Chait identified Cruz’s professed change-​of-​taste “an incredible testament to his personal willpower.”

Huh?

You may or may not like country music, or appreciate the last 30 years of it, or its origins, or its commercialization, or the twang, but that stuff’s really not that important.

A conservative found political reasons to change his listening habits. Wow. A matter  of self-​definition? Whatever. It neither builds up nor undermines his philosophy or program.

Though certainly Conway Twitty’s “It’s Only Make Believe” provides more than a cultural context for understanding much of what happens in Washington.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
Accountability Common Sense government transparency term limits

The Article V Path

Can Americans term-​limit Congress?

Twenty-​three states had passed term limits on their congressional delegations by 1995 — many while simultaneously term-​limiting state lawmakers.

Voters in most other states lack statewide initiative rights. But if the term limits passed by the 23 had been left alone, the pressure would have been enormous to bring term limits to the whole Congress.

Alas, in its 1995 Thornton decision, the Supreme Court ruled, five to four, that this method of building a more perfect union is constitutionally imperfect.

U.S. Term Limits currently backs an amendment that would originate in Congress to limit House members to three two-​year terms and senators to two six-​year terms. Just in case congressmen don’t get around to passing such an amendment, though, USTL has also endorsed the Article V path to term limits being promoted by Citizens for Self-Governance.

Article V of the Constitution authorizes states to call a constitutional convention if two thirds of them apply. In 2014, Georgia, Alaska and Florida did formally apply for a convention to consider term limits and other reforms. Lawmakers in many other states advocate similar applications. As with congressionally proposed amendments, any amendment offered by the states’ convention would then have to be ratified by three fourths of the states.

Is Article V a long shot? Yes. Every means of imposing congressional term limits has proven to be a long shot.

When we get there, it will be because one of the long shots paid off.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense general freedom individual achievement meme U.S. Constitution

Everything That Could Be Done

Patrick Henry

Two hundred forty years ago, the situation was dire. In the Virginia Colony, not too far from where I live, representatives to the Second Virginia Convention were debating the problems they were having with their “masters” in Britain — and the more dangerous, violent situation that was developing to the north.

Several days into the convention, Patrick Henry spoke. His speech was rousing. And it changed minds, concluding with the famous words “give me liberty or give me death!” — an ultimatum quite stark indeed.

Mr. Henry was for action, and waiting no longer. Addressing himself to the president of the convention, he said, “Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves longer. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on.” And they had done a great deal, engaging in

- petitioning

- remonstration

- supplication

and, Henry went on, had even “prostrated ourselves before the throne.” And they got worse than the cold shoulder for all their efforts. They got the brush-​off, the turn of the cold robe. Along with troops of occupation.

Hence the need for serious action.

Then, Americans were wrestling with the world’s most powerful nation: the British Empire. Today we again face the world’s most powerful empire: our own.

A federal regime similarly out of control in terms of spending and debt, arrogance and corruption, intrusiveness and incompetence. As if dictated by a know-​it-​all king of old, or a cabal of insiders acting as oligarchs.

Then it was a far-​off Parliament; today it is our own far out-​of-​it representatives … duly elected.

We are engaged in a sort of class war, insiders vs. outsiders, and it is the insiders who are bringing the country to the brink of collapse.

The biggest difference between 1775 and 2015? We haven’t done all we can. There is much more to do. And possibly even succeed before the doom of another financial collapse, sovereign debt crisis, or … worse.

It often seems a Herculean task, but as Mr. Henry implored, “Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power.”

Let’s join together to give ourselves, our loved ones, and generations hence liberty.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Read the entire speech here

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The Meaning of "Liberal"

 

Categories
Accountability ballot access Common Sense First Amendment rights general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall

Really Protecting Our Rights

Incentives matter. Which is why Ohioans have much to celebrate
this week.

Federal District Judge Michael Watson turned his previous temporary injunction against enforcement of Senate Bill 47 into a permanent injunction. That statue outlawed non-​residents from helping Buckeye State residents by gathering petition signatures for an initiative or referendum.

The case is Citizens in Charge v. Husted. Citizens in Charge — where I work — protects initiative rights. Jon Husted is the Ohio Secretary of State.

But Judge Watson went further, declaring Sec. Husted’s office liable for damages to one of our co-​plaintiffs, Cincinnati for Pension Reform. The judge found that “a reasonable official would have understood that enforcement of the residency requirement would violate plaintiffs’ First Amendment right to engage in political speech.”

Public officials have what’s known as “qualified immunity,” which protects them from liability when acting in good faith. A spokesman for Husted offered a defense: they were acting “on the assumption that the law is constitutional.”

“Some qualified-​immunity cases are difficult,” countered election-​law expert Daniel Tokaji. “Not this one.”

Ohio’s residency law was ruled unconstitutional in 2008, after Ralph Nader’s presidential campaign sued. In 2009, the previous secretary of state officially acknowledged the law unenforceable regarding all petitions. Yet, seeking to block citizen petitions, legislators passed it again, and Husted was quick to enforce.

Maurice Thompson of the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law, our attorney, cheered the “deterrence” this decision provides.

“If public officials from the governor down through the police know that they will be liable for enforcing an unconstitutional law,” he explained, “they are far more likely to take Ohioans’ constitutional rights seriously.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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