The Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution, limiting Presidents to two terms, was ratified on February 26, 1951.
February 26 marks the Dominican Republic’s Independence Day.
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John Hancock:
“Security to the persons and properties of the governed is so obviously the design and end of civil government, that to attempt a logical proof of it would be like burning tapers at noonday, to assist the sun in enlightening the world.”
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Prussia, feb 25
In Law #46 of February 25, 1947, the Allied Control Council formally proclaimed the dissolution of Prussia.
[mks_dropcap style=”letter” size=”60″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#000000″]I[/mks_dropcap] don’t know if Juan Williams is right about who qualifies as America’s most influential thinker on race. But I hope he is.
In a Friday Wall Street Journal op-ed, Fox News’s liberal-leaning political analyst and author of Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary (1998), argues that our country’s most important influencer of thought on race is neither some current and trendy academic writer nor our current president (or his outgoing attorney general). Instead, it is none other than Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
While more famous figures of African-American descent have dominated the news talk shows and airwaves and popular consciousness, Justice Thomas has gone about “reshaping the law and government policy on race by virtue of the power of his opinions from the bench.” While previous African-American racial activists and thinkers have striven to defend the rights of black people, Justice Thomas, “the second black man on the court, takes a different tack. He stands up for individual rights as a sure blanket of legal protection for everyone, including minorities.”
Opposed to “perpetual racial tinkering,” Thomas has marshaled Frederick Douglass’s words to make his case: “What I ask for the Negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice.” And justice, in Clarence Thomas’s judgment, does not entail a constant rescue-worker attitude towards minorities, or other disadvantaged folks. It requires nothing other than equality of rights before the law.
And perhaps some hard work on the part of the disadvantaged.
Hats off, then, to Juan Williams for recognizing the importance of Thomas’s common sense contention that “black people deserve to be treated as independent, competent, self-sufficient citizens.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Arthur Latham Perry
What is called the Progress of Civilization has been marked and conditioned at every step by an extension of the opportunities, a greater facility in the use of the means, a more eager searching for proper experdients, and a higher certainty in the securing of the returns, of mutual exchanges among men.
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Arthur Latham Perry
What is called the Progress of Civilization has been marked and conditioned at every step by an extension of the opportunities, a greater facility in the use of the means, a more eager searching for proper experdients, and a higher certainty in the securing of the returns, of mutual exchanges among men.
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John Hancock
[T]he powers reserved by the people [under the Constitution] render them secure, and until they themselves become corrupt, they will always have upright and able rules.
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Marbury v. Madison, Feb 24
On February 24 1803, the Supreme Court, in Marbury v. Madison, established the principle of judicial review.
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The Problem With Socialism…
“The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”
—Margaret Thatcher
For a high resolution version (perfect for use as a screensaver), click on the image below to open in new window. Also, please do feel free to share with your friends. Spread the seeds of liberty!
[mks_dropcap style=”letter” size=”60″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#000000″]T[/mks_dropcap]he “tiny house” movement has gained momentum. More and more people — especially young people and childless people — see the virtue of very small houses. They are cheaper, can be made energy-efficient, have an almost necessarily smaller “environmental footprint,” and are mobile.
And I can see the attraction. For one thing, a tiny house would be easier to clean than what I have. For another? Snug. Many of the efforts are very cleverly designed and built. And certainly for young singles, they make a great deal of sense.
But, wouldn’t you know it, there is a problem here. Government.
Urban housing authorities, zoning boards, and the like, have not exactly been accommodating to this new development.
Which is, in its way, typical, and typically frustrating. After all, many of the reasons folks are looking to tiny houses result from government regulation in the first place. City, metro and county governments have been so poorly accommodating to diversity in housing demands that costs have risen horribly.
This is all explained over at Reason, which draws the bureaucratic environment of the nation’s capital in relation to tiny homes: “they’re illegal, in violation of several codes in Washington D.C.’s Zoning Ordinance. Among the many requirements in the 34 chapters and 600 pages of code are mandates defining minimum lot size, room sizes, alleyway widths, and ‘accessory dwelling units’ that prevent tiny houses from being anything more than a part-time residence.”
This leaves Reason’s featured tiny home owner in yet another bad-government-induced limbo: “allowed to build the home of his dreams — he just can’t live there.”
We need tiny government. Or at least tiny-accommodating government. Really… both.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.