Just tell the truth, and they’ll accuse you of writing black humor.
Charles Willeford, personal motto, quoted in Marshall Jon Fisher, “The Unlikely Father of Miami Crime Fiction,” The Atlantic Monthly, May 2000.
In the words of Yogi Berra, the recently deceased baseball great: “It’s déjà vu all over again.”
We’ve followed the incredible case of Dr. Annette Bosworth extensively this year. She was convicted of twelve felony counts of petition fraud for circulating petitions that were signed at her medical office by patients (and her sister), while the doctor was in the Philippines on a medical mercy mission.
I don’t defend Dr. Bosworth signing that affidavit, stating that she witnessed those signatures, but I also don’t see criminal intent. Her attorney advised her it was lawful and all the signers were legitimate voters who truly wanted her to run for the U.S. Senate. Talking about felony fraud in such a case seriously misses the forest for the trees.
Bosworth wasn’t sentenced to prison time, thankfully.
But she lost her medical license.
Let’s hold people accountable, but not with an over-the-top vengeance likely to scare the average citizen away from political participation altogether. That’s been my message to South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley.
What about déjà vu?
Today, in a Pierre courtroom, Annette’s husband, Chad Haber, will be arraigned on felony charges for signing as the circulator on a petition with two signatures affixed when he was with his wife on that medical trip.
AG Jackley loudly proclaims that this is not his indictment; it was filed by a county prosecutor. But anyone who didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday knows how these things tend to work.
Haber challenged Jackley last election and the feud is well known and long-running. Being a prosecutor requires judgment, something Jackley lacks . . . as he will no doubt prove in court.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
“This is the contradiction of racism, colonialism, and all forms of tyranny: in order to treat a man like a dog, one must first recognize him as a man.”
Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason, 1960
War without any declaration — or even a legal authorization of force from Congress — is the modern way, Constitution be . . . ignored. Both Obama and Congress fudge it. The better never to confront reality.
Click on over to Townhall.com. Then come back here for this weekend’s draught of common sense:
On October 25, 1806, the German philosopher known as Max Stirner was born — as Johann Kaspar Schmidt. Stirner developed a radical individualism, which under the name of “egoism” became culturally chic in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with proponents as different as composer Richard Strauss and journalist Benjamin R. Tucker. In addition to Der Einzige und sein Eigentum, a major work that was famously attacked by Karl Marx at great and hysterical length, he translated Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and Jean-Baptiste Say’s Traite d’Economie Politique into German.
Stirner died in 1856. His best-known representation, the caricature above, was sketched by his opponent among the Young Hegelians, Friedrich Engels. His most famous book, usually translated as The Ego and Its Own, became, in the words of art critic Herbert Read, “stuck in the gizzard” of Western culture.
This report came two days before an American soldier was killed in combat in Iraq.
https://youtu.be/1p7khnhzdrc
“We will freedom for freedom’s sake, in and through particular circumstances. And in thus willing freedom, we discover that it depends entirely upon the freedom of others and that the freedom of others depends upon our own.”
Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism,
1946
Congo-Brazzaville’s president, Denis Sassou Nguesso, is quite the statesman.
He’s actually done what many an illustrious American pol with an obsession about “campaign finance” would merely like to do, but cannot (that darn First Amendment!): prohibited all talk about politics prior to the next election.
Indeed, the government has shut down the Internet and cellular SMS services, simply to prevent undue influence prior to the upcoming votes. Democracy requires a veil of ignorance, we’re told, and Nguesso’s taken that august philosophical scheme to its logical conclusion: no information running through the information superhighway of the modern age . . . at gunpoint.
And like many a long-term American insider, he’s balking at term limits, too. He has served his legally limited two terms. So he and his fellow statesmen put a referendum onto the upcoming ballot to overthrow them.
Just so he can serve longer.
Think of the sacrifice! He really must be looking out for his earnest and ardent supporters.
But he didn’t stop there. To fulfill his mandate, and continue in office, he has to entreat the people to overturn Congo’s mandated retirement age. At 71, he’s now too old to legally run, even if he were a first-termer.
Trifecta! — a pol so insistent at continuing his life of never-ending public service that he fights against ageism, term limits, and the corrupting influence of free speech!
I’m sure he has many, many secret sympathizers in our Congress, and in the legislatures of our several states.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
“They said, ‘We’re going to build this, and you can’t stop us.’ The bristles went up on the back of a lot of people’s heads, and we thought, ‘Hey, let’s just see what we can do.’”
Dan Coffey, Kansas City Star, October 12, 2015
Don’t worry comrades!
Click here for a high resolution version of the image (suitable for sharing and using as a screensaver):
