“There’s two kinds of people in the world, the ones who need to be told and the ones who figure it out all by themselves.”
Tom Clancy, Without Remorse (1993), p. 231
Categories
Tom Clancy
The civil war is over!
I mean Nebraska’s civil war, a 23-year schism between its unicameral legislature and what’s known as the state’s “second house” — that is, the people, acting through the initiative and referendum process, often checking the power of the first house.
Hero of the day? State Senator Mike Groene of North Platte, who championed Legislative Bill 367. Kudos also to the 42-0 vote of the Nebraska Legislature that enacted the measure, as well as to Governor Pete Ricketts for signing it into law.
Groene, who has been politically active for years with the Western Nebraska Taxpayers Association, got into office as a result of term limits. His LB 367 reverses the state’s seven-year ban on paying petition circulators according to the number of signatures they gather. He convincingly argued that the ban had “really broken the back of people trying to take part in their government through the petition process.”
“It’s time for this body to call a truce,” Groene told fellow lawmakers, declaring that since term limits were first passed, citizens and their representatives had been locked in a “civil war.”
During that war, State Sen. Diane Schimek, a 20-year legislator about to be term-limited, successfully pushed legislation to restrict citizen petitions. Part of her measure was struck down as unconstitutional in Citizens in Charge v. Gale. Now the rest has been unanimously repealed by the state legislature.
Sen. Paul Schumacher of Columbus favored Groene’s bill, saying that legislators could use a more viable initiative check on their power. The unicameral’s attacks on citizen petitions were, he said, “reflective of a government that was afraid of its people.”
Now it’s peacetime in Nebraska.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Categories
The F-word Defined
The Manifesto of Fascist Intellectuals was first published in Il Mondo, then by most Italian newspapers on April 21, 1925 — the national, anniversary-day celebration of the Founding of Rome (ca. April 21, 753 BC). Nowadays, all sorts of people call other people “fascist,” often on the shakiest of rationales. It might be a good idea to look up this original document, for a good idea what politics’ “f-word” really means. Here is an excerpt:
Fascism was . . . a political and moral movement at its origins. It understood and championed politics as a training ground for self-denial and self-sacrifice in the name of an idea, one which would provide the individual with his reason for being, his freedom, and all his rights. The idea in question is that of the fatherland. It is an ideal that is a continuous and inexhaustible process of historical actualization. It represents a distinct and singular embodiment of a civilization’s traditions which, far from withering as a dead memory of the past, assumes the form of a personality focussed on the end towards which it strives. The fatherland is, thus, a mission.
Categories
Tom Clancy
“The difference between me and you is that I do good fiction.”
Bestselling author Tom Clancy, to news reporters at the National Press Club (May 18, 1999)
No reason anymore to even feign surprise at today’s police state insanities.
At Townhall yesterday, I bemoaned the six-hour kidnapping of a 10-year-old Maryland boy and his 6-year-old sister for the terrible crime of peacefully walking home from a public park. The children were grabbed just a couple blocks from their home . . .
. . . by police, who held them for over two hours before handing them to Montgomery County Child Protective Services.
It was hours before anyone contacted the panicked parents.
There’s no law prohibiting kids from walking down a public street, but bureaucrats are threatening this poor family over just that.
So, I guess we shouldn’t be shocked that when an 11-year-old boy disagrees with what he’s being taught in school about marijuana, and explains that his mother has used cannabis oil to treat her Crohn’s disease and his mother is not a criminal, (a) he’s going to be detained and grilled by authorities and (b) his mother may soon become a criminal.
A raid on Shonda Banda’s home indeed turned up two ounces of cannabis oil. Ms. Banda could be facing felony drug charges in Kansas, where she now lives, but she used to live in Colorado, where her use of cannabis oil would be legal.
The Washington Post’s Radley Balko identifies the absurdity: “a woman could lose her custody of her child for therapeutically using a drug that’s legal for recreational use an hour to the west.”
Today she has a custody hearing over her son.
The state “protection” being afforded the children in both of these cases isn’t protecting them. It’s terrorizing them.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Categories
New Amsterdam Jews
On April 20, 1657, freedom of religion was granted to the Jews of New Amsterdam (later New York City).
Categories
Tom Clancy
“What the government is good at is collecting taxes, taking away your freedoms and killing people. It’s not good at much else.”
Tom Clancy, as quoted by John Whitehead
Categories
Townhall: Surreal Silver Spring Again
The story that won’t go away, because the government just won’t let up. Click on over to Townhall.com, for today’s sad iteration of government overreach. Then click back here for a little more perspective:
- Washington Post: ‘Free-range’ family again at center of debate after police pick up children
- Common Sense with Paul Jacob: Well-Substantiated Insanity
- Townhall: “Trickle-down Tyranny,” by Paul Jacob
-
Facebook: I Stand with the Meitivs against CPS
-
ABC News: 911 Call of Man Reporting Children
-
Washington Post: “Parents rally around ‘free-range family’ with petitions, protest plans”
Categories
The Revolution Begins
On April 19, 1775, the American Revolution began when the “shot heard around the world” was fired between the 700 British troops on a mission to capture Patriot leaders Sam Adams and John Hancock and to seize a Patriot arsenal and the 77 armed minutemen under Captain John Parker waiting for them on the Lexington town green. The Battle of Lexington ended with eight Americans killed and ten wounded, along with one wounded British soldier.
In Concord, a couple of hours later, British troops were encircled by hundreds of armed Patriots. The British commander ordered his men to return to Boston without directly engaging the Americans, but on the 16-mile journey they were constantly attacked by Patriot marksmen firing at them Indian-style from behind trees, rocks, and stone walls. By the time the British reached the safety of Boston, nearly 300 soldiers had been killed, wounded, or were missing in action. The Patriots suffered fewer than 100 casualties. (See Liberty’s Kids for a video on these events, or the video featured on this page.)
On April 19, 1782, John Adams secured the Dutch Republic’s recognition of the United States as an independent government.
Categories
Tom Clancy
“Nothing is as real as a dream. The world can change around you, but your dream will not. Your life may change, but your dream doesn’t have to. Responsibilities need not erase it. Duties need not obscure it. Your spouse and children need not get in its way, because the dream is within you. No one can take your dream away.”
Tom Clancy, commencement address, Loyola University 1986 graduation