Obama has put “boots on the ground” in Syria after promising 16 times that he would not put “boots on the ground” in Syria. Our Nobel Peace Prize winner seems to have trouble staying out of wars.
U.S. Sends Ground Troops to Syria. Here Are 3 Reasons Why That’s Bad.
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Washington Post scribe Dana Milbank is panicked about the “chaos on Capitol Hill.”
He hyperventilated, in a recent column, concerning the difficulty Republicans are having in choosing a new Speaker of the House, after the announced resignation of current Speaker John Boehner (R‑Ohio), then the sudden withdrawal from the race by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R‑Calif.), and now the reluctance of Rep. Paul Ryan (R‑Wisc.) to seek the post.
We’re informed of the speaker’s importance — “second in line to the presidency” and “key to national security and domestic tranquility” — as if Milbank, alone, has access to a Constitution.
Yet, is it really “chaos” or continued gridlock that’s bothering our company-town columnist?
If it were, Milbank wouldn’t focus his attacks solely on conservative Republicans for their unwillingness to “compromise” (read: surrender). Both Democrats and so-called establishment Republicans seem equally adamantine.
According to Milbank, these conservative “hardliners” and “zealots” constitute “a rough crowd” who employ “thuggish tactics.” Why, they have “hijacked the chamber”!
How so?
They had the audacity to not always vote lockstep with Speaker Boehner; they balked at supporting the Speakership for Rep. McCarthy; and (heavens!), they even dared communicate their viewpoint to voters in McCarthy’s home district.
Could free political speech still be allowed by law?
Milbank reviles the “efforts by conservative groups to depose [McCarthy] before he ever took the throne.”
Depose? Throne?
Milbank even laments that Eric Cantor “would have been speaker today” had only voters in his district not voted for somebody else. Pesky voters!
Methinks Mr. Milbank has been lounging around the halls of power a tad too long.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
As the leading Republican candidate for the presidency ascends into the air in a helicopter filled with kids, and makes his most astute declaration yet — “I am Batman” — it becomes clearer than ever how distracting these presidential campaigns are.
Much of American Big League politics is theatrics, with some pandering for good measure. Of course, all people running for the presidency are by definition over their heads, at best … posturing attention-seekers at worst. Fretting about what they believe and “would do” if voted in as President of these United States is mostly a waste of time. Experience tells us that what they promise is perhaps the least likely outcome of all.
What is more effective? Affecting the political environment by getting together with like-minded folk to advance principled causes closer to home. As a side effect of your activism, a successful issue in a single city or region — especially one that spreads — can have a dramatic influence on present and future presidential wannabes.
With organization and consistent activity at the local level, your voice can be heard. But you have to do something. That activity doesn’t have to be to “run for office”; you can turn up the volume by proposing (and sometimes opposing) ballot initiatives, constitutional and charter amendments in the state, county and city where you live.
There is so much to be done at this level that could create political climate change, which in turn would invariably make federal-level candidates better, that it seems a shame to see us so focused on long shot bets.
Citizens have more power than they exercise. But folks in government aren’t exactly falling all over each other in the rush to help citizens participate and realize their potential.
Take juries. There are few more awesome responsibilities than sitting on a jury. And one of the things you can do, as a juror, is to refuse to follow the law or the judge, instead making your decision contrary to the immediate, official directive. Disapprove of a bureaucracy’s “legal” prosecution of an individual or group? Judge the law as well as the facts. Acquit.
Glenn Reynolds, writing in USA Today, shows that this practice has a long, honorable history in our country — he not unreasonably mentions how northern abolitionists fought the Fugitive Slave Act — and, if you, the juror, push it, “there’s nothing anyone can do about it…
Of course, prosecutors have essentially the same power, since they’re under no obligation to bring charges against even an obviously guilty defendant. But while the power of juries to let guilty people go free in the name of justice is treated as suspect and called “jury nullification,” the power of prosecutors to do the exact same thing is called “prosecutorial discretion,” and is treated not as a bug, but as a feature in our justice system.
Reynolds concisely makes the case that jury nullification is, itself, a designed feature of our American constitutional tradition, and not nearly so buggy as “prosecutorial discretion.”
Why? Its tendency is to liberate us from usurping government action.
Prosecutors’ “discretion” (on the other hand) gives folks in government more power over our lives. And ruins many.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Two wrongs don’t make a right.
It’s simple but true. And, as a corollary, let me add that using the power of the federal government to harass individuals or groups one happens to dislike or disagree with is wrong.
You might recall that our Declaration of Independence rebuked King George for sending “hither swarms of Officers to harass our people.” Or consider the recent civil-rights-violating behavior of the IRS against conservative groups during President Obama’s administration.
Yesterday, I proposed to end all taxpayer subsidies to Planned Parenthood. Obviously, I’m not a fan of the organization. And neither are the Republican presidential candidates — especially Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.
“Planned Parenthood had better hope that Hillary Clinton wins this election,” Jindal boasted at last week’s JV presidential debate hosted by Fox News, “because I guarantee you that under President Jindal, January 2017, the Department of Justice and the IRS and everybody else that we can send from the federal government will be [looking] into Planned Parenthood.”
Speaking with reporters after the debate, Mr. Jindal doubled down, suggesting there might also be a role for the Environmental Protection Agency and perhaps other tentacles of the federal Leviathan.
Jindal has removed Planned Parenthood from Louisiana’s Medicaid program. That’s within his legitimate power. But directing an assault against anyone using the IRS and other federal agencies is both wrong and … against the law.
It promises not change but the same rotten, rights-robbing, goon-squad government we have now. Just with a different color shirt.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Something happened 800 years ago yesterday, something of note.
The much-loathed and legendary — but real-life — King John signed a document with his barons that limited his power. It was later called the “Magna Carta,” the great charter.
Strange history. It was signed, made a big deal of, and then quickly repudiated. But it was never completely dead, possessing a zombie afterlife, and eventually helping give birth to the Enlightenment idea of limited government, as well as to the United States Constitution.
Most of the document is concerned with the king’s relationship with his subordinate (and insubordinate) barons. There’s a lot of power-wrangling in it, it’s all about divvying up prerogatives and responsibilities and taxes and fees. But it does contain a few passages of note (I’ve listed them on my “Today in Freedom” feature, in the past, and revive one for today’s).
My friend Sheldon Richman quotes scholar John Millar (1735 – 1801), one of Adam Smith’s most illustrious students, to put the document in its best perspective: “A great tyrant on the one side, and a set of petty tyrants on the other, seem to have divided the kingdom … who, by limiting the authority of each other over their dependents, produced a reciprocal diminution of their power.”
They were selfish men, Millar notes, not much concerned with ordinary folk, “But though the freedom of the common people was not intended in those charters, it was eventually secured to them.…”
Britain and then America stumbled onto liberty — a general and shared freedom — by the jealousy of competing powers.
We, the people, win when our “rulers” are divided, not united.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
