“The jury has the right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy.”
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Jay born; PA ratifies US Constitution
On Dec. 12, 1745, John Jay was born. He later became the first Chief Justice of the United States.
On Dec. 12, 1787, Pennsylvania became the second state to ratify the U.S. Constitution, five days after Delaware became the first.
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“Patriotism means unqualified and unwavering love for the nation, which implies not uncritical eagerness to serve, not support for unjust claims, but frank assessment of its vices and sins, and penitence for them.”
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Alexander Solzhenitsyn born
On Dec. 11, 1918, Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was born in Stavropol Krai, Russia. His books The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich helped raise global awareness of the Soviet Union’s forced labor camp system. Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970. He was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974, but returned to Russia in 1994 after the Soviet system had collapsed.
The seeds of disaster can often be found in good intentions — a simple regulatory requirement designed to avoid disaster — as explained by economist Lawrence White:
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Ernestine Rose
“Carry out the republican principle of universal suffrage, or strike it from your banners and substitute ‘Freedom and Power to one half of society, and Submission and Slavery to the other.’”
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Wyoming first to grant women the vote
On Dec. 10, 1869, Wyoming territorial legislators passed a bill to make it the first state or territory to grant women the right to vote. At the time, men outnumbered women by a margin of six-to-one in Wyoming.
On Dec. 10, 1778, John Jay was elected president of the Continental Congress. Jay, who would later contribute to the Federalist Papers and be named the first chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, had resigned the Congress in 1776, opposing complete independence from Great Britain and refusing to sign the Declaration of Independence.
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Into Each Life…
Government is the chief social institution to regularly reduce itself to absurdity.
And by “reduce itself” I do not mean “diminish in size.” I mean “descend the moral ladder.”
Today’s absurdity has been building up for some time. An increasing number of states regulate and even outlaw the collection of rainwater for personal and industrial use:
As bizarre as it sounds, laws restricting property owners from “diverting” water that falls on their own homes and land have been on the books for quite some time in many Western states. Only recently, as droughts and renewed interest in water conservation methods have become more common, have individuals and business owners started butting heads with law enforcement over the practice of collecting rainwater for personal use.
Mike Adams, writing in Natural News, explains the rationale (very weak, even nonsensical) and rightly extrapolates the real meaning of such regulation: “It’s all about control, really.”
Yes. The “governmental mindset” is what you get in when you run for office, and run and run and run for re-election. Just as, if you have a hammer, problems tend to look like nails, for legislators (and their aides and allied bureaucrats) everything looks increasingly like a “government issue” demanding more government, and certainly more laws.
And so it is with rainwater. Politicians want every scarce good that they “provide” to belong to the government from start (clouds and rain, in the case of water) to finish (your kitchen sink, perhaps your gullet). So of course they want to prohibit you from collecting rainwater. That rain must dribble into public drains, enter creek and river, seep into the watershed, and be siphoned off in municipal wells and sold back to you.
Collecting rainwater is like not paying taxes! It’s unthinkable. For a politician.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Patrick Henry
“Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”
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Patriots gained control of Virginia
On Dec. 9, 1775, the Virginia and North Carolina militias defeated 800 slaves and 200 redcoats serving John Murray, earl of Dunmore and governor of Virginia, at Great Bridge outside Norfolk, ending British royal control of Virginia. The Tory survivors retreated first to Norfolk, then to Dunmore’s ship, where the majority died of smallpox.