I believe that in the end the truth will conquer.
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Townhall: Want Milk?
This weekend’s contribution to Townhall.com by Yours Truly concerns another one of those automated congressional time bombs. You know, like the “fiscal cliff” but less cliffy and more bomby. Head on over, and then back here, for a few links:
- Thomas Jefferson’s pithy contribution to the socialist calculation debate, here.
- The Washington Post’s “dairy cliff” article, here.
- What Jia Lynn Yang said, here.
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Video: Don’t Tell the Kids
Penn Jillette has some provocative things to say about how to talk to kids about school shootings and the like. And the provocation is not just his swearing:
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Langston Hughes
There are words like *Freedom*
Sweet and wonderful to say.
On my heart-strings freedom sings
All day everyday.
There are words like *Liberty*
That almost make me cry.
If you had known what I knew
You would know why.
Agenda-less improvement of Colorado’s constitution is the goal of a “group of Colorado’s top civic leaders, bipartisan in its makeup,” according to the Denver Post. All they want to do is correct constitutional inconsistencies.
The difficulty of getting the revisions is so acute that many of the state’s “top civic leaders” believe that it is time again to press for a constitutional-review commission empowered to send proposed changes to the voters directly, via multi-subject initiatives that can substantially revise, rather than simply amend, the state’s governing charter. (A single-subject rule obtains for hoi-polloi signature-gatherers.)
Must be nigh impossible to get a question on the ballot the way things stand now, eh? But — wait — one of the Civic Leaders pushing for a commission, Bob Tointon, laments that people “are frustrated by the issues that get on the ballot so easily in Colorado.” And Colorado’s Future, the main organization pushing for the commission, has always argued that it’s too darn easy for the mere people to post an initiative.
Which is it? It’s too hard to post a question onto the ballot, or too easy?
Both. It’s too easy for the general public to use the initiative process, but it’s too hard for Civic Leaders to scrub voter-approved initiatives out of existence.
Opponents of this elitist brainstorm worry that the proposed Super-Commission would seek to undermine the state’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR), a popular citizen initiative passed two decades ago limiting government spending and requiring voter approval of new taxes. The fear is legitimate.
The long-standing agenda of this cast of Civic Leaders is no secret: kill TABOR.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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John C. Calhoun
The interval between the decay of the old and the formation and establishment of the new constitutes a period of transition which must always necessarily be one of uncertainty, confusion, error, and wild and fierce fanaticism.
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John C. Calhoun
The very essence of a free government consists in considering offices as public trusts, bestowed for the good of the country, and not for the benefit of an individual or a party.
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Magazine Misfire
David Gregory, of NBC, is one of those folks who wants to prohibit not merely criminal acts, but also objects and products that can be used as aids in some of those acts.
It’s not an uncommon attitude. I know conservatives who want to prohibit smoking utensils such as bongs, because their main use tends overwhelmingly to be for smoking illegal substances. To find someone in the “main stream media” supporting a similar ban on objects — such as certain guns and types of ammunition — is hardly surprising.
On Meet the Press, December 23, Gregory interviewed the head of the NRA, pressing the spokesman to concede, “if it’s possible to reduce the loss of life, you’re up for trying it.” The man took the bait. Then Gregory switched the topic away from the NRA’s notion of placing armed guards in every school to . . .
Well, Gregory retrieved and held aloft a “magazine for ammunition that carries 30 bullets.” He hazarded that prohibiting such devices, leaving legal only smaller-sized magazines, might reduce loss of life.
“Loss-of-life reduction,” though, proves to be not much of a standard. There are many ways to reduce crime: imprison everyone in a criminal risk category, without trial, might do that very well. Perish that thought, though.
Many other innovations might seem plausible, as well, but nevertheless unleash counterproductive side effects.
What’s interesting about this case, though, is that Gregory held up a magazine that turns out to be illegal in Washington, DC, where Meet the Press is shot.
His “crime” is now under investigation.
I’m conflicted: On the one hand, he did nothing wrong. On the other hand, he supports such unprincipled laws, so . . . book him.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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John C. Calhoun
It is harder to preserve than to obtain liberty.
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Google Vindicated
In 2009, I noted that an Italian court was trying three Google executives for violating Italian privacy laws. The three soon received six-month suspended jail terms for being “too slow” to remove a video from YouTube that depicted the bullying of an autistic child. Google had pulled the video as soon as told about it.
The unjust conviction has now thankfully been reversed.
At the time, Google rep Bill Echikson complained that his colleagues had been convicted although they had neither uploaded the video nor reviewed it before it was posted.
A key word is “review.” Must any Internet host of user-posted content review such content before it is published or else risk incarceration? Of course, “hosted” content covers the gamut of Internet content. Few website publishers provide their own servers.
If a publisher must obtain special approval from Facebook, Google, WordPress or any other platform provider before tossing something onto the web, that’s the death knell for freedom of speech and press on the Internet. At best, the pace of publication would slow to a crawl. At worst, censorship by Web-service providers would become rampant — except when providers suspend their services altogether for fear of non-suspended jail time.
Perhaps if the bad Italian precedent had been allowed to stand, the worst would not have come to pass. Perhaps only rarely would we see a horrific conviction exploiting that precedent, and perhaps only in Italy. But why take even one step down that road?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.