Categories
incumbents national politics & policies term limits

Old as the Hills

Congress, term limits, age limit,

“I’ll give up power when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.”

This is the operative principle for today’s politicians.

The examples are so obvious: 

  • Nancy Pelosi, born in 1940, continues to represent California’s 11th District despite having lost the Speakership for the second time, despite having spent nearly four decades in the House of Representatives. 
  • Senator Chuck Schumer, a decade younger than Mrs. Pelosi (and thus not yet an octogenarian), is still serving his fifth term as a senator from New York State.
  • Senator Dianne Feinstein demonstrated extreme mental fragility before dying in office at age 90 — after serving more than three decades.

There are Republican examples, too, but age, as The Wall Street Journal puts it, “is a bigger headache for Democrats than Republicans for one central reason: Democrats have a lot more old members.” While the median ages are nearly identical between the two parties, “of the 20 oldest House members elected in 2024, 16 were Democrats. In the Senate, where tensions over age are more subdued, nearly all of the oldest senators — 11 of the 14 who were older than 75 at the start of this Congress — were Democrats.”

This may strike a sense of dissonance, I know. The old cliché is that Republicans are tired old men and Democrats are wild young (and female) firebrands. But the true nature of the establishment doesn’t quite fit the old saws and preconceptions.

The Journal notes that 70 percent of Americans support an age limit on holding office.

Sure, as the next best thing to term limits! We know the crux of the problem is not age, it is the advantages of incumbency, and the length of time in power.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Midjourney and Firefly

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
Thought

Gore Vidal

It is the spirit of the age to believe that any fact, however suspect, is superior to any imaginative exercise, no matter how true.

Gore Vidal, “French Letters: Theories of the New Novel,” Reflections Upon a Sinking Ship (1969).
Categories
Today

Belated Amendment

On May 7, 1992, the State of Michigan ratified a 203-year-old proposed amendment to the United States Constitution, thereby fulfilling the terms of amending the document, adding it as 27th Amendment.

The amendment had been written by James Madison. He had presented it as part of the original twelve amendments that became the ten making up the Bill of Rights.

It bars the U.S. Congress from giving itself a pay raise until after the next election, so that voters have a chance to decide whether those voting for the raise would remain in Congress to receive it.

Categories
First Amendment rights ideological culture

Antidemocracy in Maine

Maine, legislature, censorship, freedom of speech, representation,

Laurel Libby, a Republican state legislator in Maine, has been censured by Democrats in the Maine House of Representatives for a February 17 social media post in which she expressed disapproval of allowing “trans” girls (boys) to compete in high school sports for girls.

The alleged reason for the censure? Her post mentioned the winner of a girls’ track championship who is publicly known to be the winner and publicly known to be male.

Censuring Libby for stating her views would be bad enough. But the legislature went beyond putting its disapproval (or the Democratic majority’s disapproval) on record.

Representative Libby isn’t being allowed to speak as a representative during session. And she’s not being allowed to vote until she apologizes. 

For stating her views on a public question. 

Nor was she even allowed to defend herself when the House voted along party lines 75-70 to censure her.

This qualifies as tyranny, another mile down the slippery slope of eroding — or dynamiting — democratic norms and practices. The tyranny is not that of an autocrat but of the majority. In this case, the tyranny of a majority of partisans in a legislature.

It is also an attack on free speech. As the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression observes, people elect representatives to “vote according to their conscience and express themselves freely on controversial topics.”

Rightly, Laurel Libby has refused to remove the Facebook post criticizing the policy of the Maine Principals’ Association. Wrongly, her constituents continue to be deprived of her voice and vote in the legislature.

She is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to redress this injustice. Let it act, and fast.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Midjourney and Firefly

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
Thought

Elon Musk

Generally the fraud starts out small, and they try to hide it. But then, year after year, if nobody stops the fraud, it gets more and more brazen, and every year it gets bigger, until they’re literally renting out stadiums.

Elon Musk, in conversation with Fox News host Jesse Watters, clarifying why DOGE altered Treasury’s payout system, requiring a receipt before payment is made. This discussion referred to a four billion dollar Department of Education fund. “Fraud at Scale,” May 1, 2025.
Categories
Today

Now Comes Good Sailing

On May 6, 1862, American author, philosopher and abolitionist Henry David Thoreau died, after many years of tuberculosis. 

Aware he was dying, Thoreau spoke his last words: “Now comes good sailing,” followed by two lone words, “moose” and “Indian.” Bronson Alcott planned the service and read selections from Thoreau’s works, and Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote the eulogy spoken at his funeral. 

His remains, as well as those of members of his immediate family, were eventually moved to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts.

His most famous works are An Essay on Civil Disobedience (1849) and Walden (1854).

Categories
election law Voting

Letting Noncitizens Vote?

illegal alien, voting, citizen, democracy, elections,

“All of us want to make sure only U.S. citizens are voting in our elections,” Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson told NBC’s Meet the Press before last year’s election. She assured the national audience that she and other Secretaries of State were following the law and “ensuring that only valid votes are counted in our states. 

“We are doing all that we can and more to ensure — as the facts show in all of our states — that only U.S. citizens are voting.”

Problem is, Secretary Benson did not ensure that only U.S. citizens voted in Michigan. Under her stewardship, we now know that noncitizens did indeed vote. 

Last November, a Chinese student at the University of Michigan registered and voted. The reason we know this is that the foreign student apparently thought better of it and asked officials for his ballot back. 

Too late, though, for Haoxiang Gao’s vote had already been counted. Last week, Gao missed a court hearing and a bench warrant was issued for his arrest. (Will Beijing send him back to stand trial?)

Since that one, lone, incredibly rare, don’t-worry-your-pretty-little-head-about-it incident, officials have discovered another 15 votes cast by noncitizens. 

Also last week in Michigan, House Joint Resolution B was defeated. This measure would have clarified only citizens as eligible voters, requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote and photo ID to vote. Democrats, including Secretary Benson (now a candidate for governor), opposed it fiercely.  

Yet, you guessed it, something else happened last week: Americans for Citizen Voting-Michigan filed an initiative petition to place the Citizen Only Voting Amendment, passed overwhelmingly so far in 14 states, on the ballot in the Great Lakes State. Polling back in January showed 82 percent of likely voters favor the measure. 

“Leaving holes in the process that easily allow noncitizens to vote disenfranchises citizens,” said Kurt O’Keefe, the committee’s treasurer. “We need to make sure that only U.S. citizens can vote in our elections. This initiative does the job.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

Note: I’m the national chairman of Americans for Citizen Voting. 

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Krea and Firefly

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
Thought

Gore Vidal

There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem.

Gore Vidal, Reflections Upon a Sinking Ship (1969).
Categories
Today

Endings

    On May 5, 1821, Napoleon Bonaparte, former emperor of France, died in exile on the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean.
    On the Fifth of May, 1945, a Fu-Go balloon bomb launched by the Japanese Army killed six people near Bly, Oregon.
   On May 5, 2023, the World Health Organization declared the end of the global health emergency that was the COVID-19 pandemic.

Categories
Update

$2.1 Trillion?

“Federal red ink now costs businesses more than $2.1 trillion per year, report says,” an article in The Washington Times tells us.

The cost of federal regulations has grown to more than $2.1 trillion per year, almost as much as the government’s annual haul from income taxes, according to a report released Thursday.

The report, released by the Competitive Enterprise Institute and titled “Ten Thousand Commandments,” outlined how the annual cost of red ink has steadily risen due to decisions made by presidents and Congress that impose new requirements and paperwork on businesses.

Mallory Wilson, “Federal red ink now costs businesses more than $2.1 trillion per year, report says,” The Washington Times (April 24, 2025).

“American households were found to pay on average more than $16,000 annually in these hidden regulatory taxes, which eat up 16% of income and 21% of household expenses,” Mallory Wilson reports. “That total exceeds household spending on health care, food, transportation, entertainment, apparel, services and savings, and is higher only than the cost of housing.”

The report is by Clyde Wayne Crews, Jr., and is the 2025 update of CEI’s ongoing coverage of the federal regulatory burden.

One of the most interesting sections of the report is near the very end:

Article I of the Constitution notwithstanding, administrative agencies, not Congress, do most of America’s lawmaking. Congress enacts weighty legislation but delegates the details to agencies. Agencies welcome this delegation and can use it to add to their powers in ways that often go beyond congressional intent.

This imbalance gives rise to the Unconstitutionality Index. The index is the ratio of rules issued by agencies to laws Congress passes.

The index is the featured image (see above) for this Update. Not a lot has changed in Washington — according to this measure, anyway — with the biggest increase in the number of regulations occurring in the first year of President Joe Biden’s term in office.