Category: Common Sense

One of the two major-​party presidential candidates had taken to calling the other one “Dr. No,” for saying “no” to new oil drilling … until the so-​called “Dr. No” sorta/​kinda said Yes.

You may recall that “Dr. No” is the name of a James Bond villain. That moniker had already been awarded to another political figure, an actual doctor, Congressman Ron Paul. Dr. Paul votes “No” to any legislation that he believes flunks the test of constitutionality.

But there’s another Dr. No in Congress, Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, also a physician. He’s not as radical as Congressman Paul, but he’s certainly a thorn in the side of his free-​spending senatorial colleagues.

Senator Coburn has placed many so-​called “holds” on bills that would have passed by hurried voice vote. Other senators have exploited this same rule, but not as prolifically as Coburn — who is relatively new to the Senate but has enough initiative to study up on Senate procedures.

Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, recently tried to thwart Coburn by folding all the legislation he has blocked into one omnibus bill. The Republicans, perhaps shamed by Coburn’s insistence that legislation be considered thoughtfully rather than just flung into law, actually stuck by Coburn. Reid lost.

Coburn says he’s not a go-​along, get-​along guy when he thinks his colleagues are going the wrong way.

Sometimes “No” is the best medicine, especially in Congress.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the author of The Gulag Archipelago, a monumental chronicle of the horrors of the Soviet labor camps, has died at the age of 89 … seventeen years after the dissolution of the empire that treated him so brutally for so long.

In his last years Solzhenitsyn embraced President Vladimir Putin as a “restorer of Russia’s greatness.” A dubious endorsement, since some of this so-​called “greatness” has been achieved through the very kind of tyranny that Solzhenitsyn suffered. Putin has reversed much of the liberalization implemented since the fall of the Soviet Union, and can be crudely autocratic.

Frankly, much of Solzhenitsyn’s own philosophy is inconsistent with a fully free society. But one need not accept his whole world view to revere his achievement in so effectively exposing the inhumanity of Soviet communism.

We honor Solzhenitsyn for the literary work that earned him a Nobel Prize, yes. But we also honor his courage and tenacity in creating and promulgating his work, despite the Soviet government’s almost constant harassment of him.

The Soviet government first targeted Solzhenitsyn in 1945, when he was arrested for criticizing Stalin’s conduct of the war in a letter to a friend. He was sent to Lubyanka prison for beating and interrogation, then to a labor camp. Morally wrong, certainly. But also, from the Soviets’ own perspective, a huge blunder.

Solzhenitsyn admitted that before his tenure in the camps, he had not questioned the Soviet system. After that, he would help destroy it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

How long does it take for the wheels of justice to grind ’round to grab a corrupt politician? In Senator Ted Stevens’s case, the answer is “a long time.”

It took a year for the government to charge him with anything, after raiding his Alaska home on July 30, 2007.

Exactly one year later, the senator found himself indicted for failing to report over $250,000 in gifts, including a major renovation of his house courtesy of one of Alaska’s biggest oil field contractors.

I guess I should’ve said the word “alleged” somewhere. But anyone who has studied the career of Mr. Stevens knows that these charges were a long time coming. Back in 2003, I wrote a column for Townhall called “The appearance of corruption.” It was all about Stevens, a man who sure knows how money and politics can work hand in hand.

Corruption?

He’ll no doubt shout “No! No! No!”

But he’s been saying “Yes” to dubious deals for a very long time. He’s been in the Senate for 40 years.

As I wrote in that column I mentioned, the lesson applies, though, to more than just one Alaskan senator: What we have is a “Congress run by career politicians who wield the power of the federal government to thwart competition so they can enrich themselves and their special-​interest cronies.”

And that, folks, is corruption.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

The shot heard round the world in 1775 was momentous. But it was only the beginning of a particular struggle to secure rights.

Advocates of the right to keep and bear arms won a great victory in the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision District of Columbia v. Heller.

This ruling, too, is a momentous event, and one that will ricochet.

And it, too, represents only the beginning of a struggle. The court’s decision leaves the door open to all sorts of possible qualifications and restrictions on the right to protect oneself. But the majority has given defenders of the Second Amendment a powerful weapon simply by acknowledging that this constitutional provision means what it says.

What’s next for those who care about this issue? One thing you can do is formally attest that you agree that the Second Amendment means what it says, and petition our nation’s lawmakers to accept this fact as well. The publishers of the Patriot Post have prepared an online petition to this effect.

It is posted at patriotpetitions​.us/second. If you add your John Hancock, you will be affirming that the Second Amendment “was established to define an individual ‘right of the People to keep and bear arms,’ and that there is no more important constitutional issue than that of defending the plain language and original intent of the Second Amendment.”

That’s hitting the bull’s‑eye.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.