Common Sense with Paul Jacob

Answering Liberty’s Call

Our rights are guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. But words alone don’t defend those rights; people do.

Every day our First Amendment rights to speak out and to petition are put to the test.

A little over a week ago, Dave Roland, the Director of Litigation for the Freedom Center of Missouri, got a phone call at 1:00 am. Two volunteers circulating a petition on a public street in St. Charles had been detained by police, cited for “soliciting without a permit.” The ballot measure they were petitioning for was to legalize marijuana — and tax and regulate it like alcohol and tobacco. Some of their petitions were confiscated. Dave Roland fields a question.

Roland and his wife Jenifer Ziegler Roland, the center’s executive director, went to bat for these two citizens and their constitutional rights, contacting St. Charles City Attorney Mike Valenti.

Faced with the prospect of a lawsuit, Valenti quickly dismissed the charge against the two petitioners.

“Police officers should know that this right may be freely exercised on public sidewalks,” said Mrs. Roland, “but if the police make a mistake, municipal attorneys ought to follow Mr. Valenti’s lead and correct the constitutional violation as quickly as possible.”

When a woman outside Philadelphia’s Constitutional Convention asked Ben Franklin what kind of government had been created, Franklin famously replied, “A Republic, madam, if we can keep it.”

We can keep it. Thanks to people such as the Rolands at Missouri’s Freedom Center.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Tags Dave Roland, Freedom Center of Missouri, Jenifer Ziegler Roland

Thought

Albert Einstein

“The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”

Today

Soviets liberate Auschwitz

Post author By Redactor
Post date January 26, 2012
No Comments on Soviets liberate Auschwitz

On Jan. 26, 1945, Soviets troops entered the network of Nazi concentration camps in Auschwitz, Poland, freeing the survivors and revealing to the world the horrors perpetrated there. Auschwitz was a group of three major camps and 40 smaller “satellite” camps. At Auschwitz II, or Birkenau, established in October 1941, the SS created a complex of 300 prison barracks, four “bathhouses” where prisoners were gassed, and cremating ovens. When the Red Army arrived, they found 648 corpses and more than 7,000 starving survivors, as well as storehouses filled with hundreds of thousands of women’s dresses, men’s suits, and shoes that the Germans did not have time to burn.

Accountability general freedom national politics & policies

Against Regimentation

On Monday, Senator Rand Paul got caught in a contretemps with the TSA. He was not in transit to or from his work in Congress, so he couldn’t enlist constitutional protection from being detained.

And detained he was.

Well, the TSA insists that he was not “at any point detained,” but what he says is this:

I was detained by the Transportation Security Administration . . . for not agreeing to a patdown after an irregularity was found in my full body scan. Despite removing my belt, glasses, wallet and shoes, the scanner and TSA also wanted my dignity. I refused.

I showed them the potentially offending part of my body, my leg. They were not interested. They wanted to touch me and to pat me down. I requested to be rescanned. They refused and detained me in a 10-foot-by-10-foot area reserved for potential terrorists.

Both Senator Paul and his father, Congressman Ron Paul, have criticized the TSA. They echo those 19th century classical liberals who had a word for the kind of treatment that modern security-obsessed Rand Paul makes a statement governments inflict upon a (too willing) populace: “regimentation.” What’s more regimenting than being forced to wait in lines, holding shoes in hand, emptying the contents of pockets into institutional-gray trays, submitting to a variety of scans and gropes?

There have got to be better ways of securing big ol’ jet airliners. Why not apply greater legal liability to airlines for safety, and let them figure out more customer-friendly methods of keeping terrorists out of cockpits?

Any government security effort ought to focus on spotting and stopping terrorists . . . without sacrificing everyone’s freedom and dignity.

It’s Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Tags Rand Paul, regimentation, Ron Paul, security, terrorism, TSA

Thought

Gen. George S. Patton

“A good plan violently executed right now is far better than a perfect plan executed next week.”

Today

Battle of the Bulge ends

On Jan. 25, 1945, the Battle of the Bulge, a major German offensive launched toward the end of World War II through the densely forested Ardennes mountain region of Wallonia in Belgium, and France and Luxembourg on the Western Front, came to an end. Allied reinforcements, including General Patton’s Third Army, along with better weather, which permitted air attacks on German forces and supply lines, sealed the failure of the offensive. The Battle of the Bulge was the largest and bloodiest engagement that Americans fought in World War II, with 840,000 men committed to the battle, and 89,000 casualties, including 19,000 killed.

Thought

Winston Churchill

“Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fall, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour!’”

ideological culture individual achievement too much government

Skipping the Political Pomp

Post author By Redactor
Post date January 24, 2012
21 Comments on Skipping the Political Pomp

Tim Thomas is the All-Star goaltender for the Boston Bruins, winners of the National Hockey League’s 2011 Stanley Cup — which “was won by defense as much as by offense,” President Barack Obama said yesterday at a White House event honoring the team:

Tim Thomas posted two shutouts in the Stanley Cup finals and set an all-time record for saves in the postseason, and he also earned the honor of being only the second American ever to be recognized as the Stanley Cup playoffs MVP.

But Thomas wasn’t there to hear the president’s praise. He chose not to attend, explaining cogently in a statement:
Tim Thomas

I believe the Federal government has grown out of control, threatening the Rights, Liberties, and Property of the People. . . . This is in direct opposition to the Constitution and the Founding Fathers vision for the Federal government.

Because I believe this, today I exercised my right as a Free Citizen, and did not visit the White House. This was not about politics or party, as in my opinion both parties are responsible for the situation we are in as a country.

Boston Bruins President Cam Neely explained that Thomas’s “views certainly do not reflect those of . . . the Bruins organization.”

Sportswriter Joe McDonald charged that “when the president of the United States invites you . . . you go and represent the team,” and that “Thomas instead chose to represent himself.”

Yes, as Thomas admitted: “This was about a choice I had to make as an INDIVIDUAL.”

His quiet, conscientious choice to stay home — no news conference or interviews — was heard loud and clear by me.

It’s Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Today

Apple Macintosh debuts, Chruchill dies

Post author By Redactor
Post date January 24, 2012
No Comments on Apple Macintosh debuts, Chruchill dies

On Jan. 24, 1984, the first Apple Macintosh computer went on sale. Earlier this month, Apple, Inc.’s value on the stock exchange rose to $400 billion – more than the value of the entire national economy of Greece.

On Jan. 24, 1965, Winston Churchill died in London at the age of 90. As Prime Minister, Churchill led Great Britain through the Second World War. He later won a Nobel Prize for Literature for his six-part history of the war. In 1946, Churchill warned about the danger of Soviet communism, saying in a speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, that “an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.“

Thought