Common Sense with Paul Jacob

How much more proof do we need that an attack on First Amendment rights is an attack on First Amendment rights? I’m talking about campaign finance regulations and particularly the latest addendum, McCain-Feingold.

It’s precisely the kind of speech most crucial to the preservation of a free society — political speech — which is repressed by the likes of McCain-Feingold.

Consider the treatment being accorded Citizens United, a conservative organization that produced a movie called Hillary: The Movie.

As a three-judge panel pointed out in its ruling against Citizens United, under McCain-Feingold an “electioneering communication” is any “broadcast, cable or satellite communication” that refers to a candidate for federal office within 60 days of a general election or within 30 days of a primary. Such “electioneering communications” are subject to “a host of restrictions.” Oh.

It gets worse. The U.S. Supreme Court has just declined to hear an appeal in the case. They are seven of the same nine justices who said McCain-Feingold passed constitutional muster when a challenge of it first hit their desk. But the First Amendment — which is a part of the Constitution, by the way — does not say that freedom of speech ends where campaigns begin. Obviously.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Say George Washington were alive today and trying to immigrate to our country. Should we let him in with open arms? Or deny him a green card because he participated in the American Revolution?

Have I gone nuts? No. It’s our immigration policy that’s stark raving mad!

Sure, Saman Kareem isn’t George Washington. He’s an Iraqi refuge who assisted the American military as a translator. After receiving numerous death threats (as well as glowing praise for his assistance), he was allowed to come to the U.S.

But recently he was denied permanent residence status here because of his involvement many years ago in groups seeking to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Kareem is a Kurd and apparently didn’t like Saddam’s poison gas attacks that massacred his entire family. Go figure.

But wait — I thought our USA didn’t much care for Saddam, either.

Well, one tribe in our government allows folks like Kareem entry into the country, but another tribe designates groups fighting their own governments as terrorist. No matter how evil and oppressive their governments may be.

Well, after the story about Kareem broke, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced they were putting these cases on hold to review their policies.

I hope they’ll decide George Washington was no terrorist. And likewise for the thousands of others fighting tyranny.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Are you ready to relinquish your Second Amendment rights yet?

Police in Boston and Washington, DC, have been soliciting “voluntary” compliance with gun control. The plan: go house to house searching for weapons.

Many residents are resisting.

In DC the disarmament drive is particularly gauche, since Washington’s handgun ban was recently overturned in federal court. The city has appealed the decision, now being mulled over in the U.S. Supreme Court. At the time of the lower court’s decision, DC resident Tom Palmer told MSNBC: “The fact is that the criminals don’t obey the law and they do have guns.” He noted that it’s law-abiding citizens who get disarmed by such laws.

This is the first time in 70 years that the Supreme Court is considering whether the Second Amendment’s statement that the right to keep and bear arms “shall not be infringed” means what it says. Let’s just hope the justices’ reading skills are up to par.

Boston and DC activists have been alerting citizens of their right not to let the police enter their homes without a warrant. The education effort is reasonable.

Police officers may formally ask permission to enter. But their unexpected appearance on one’s doorstep can be intimidating. People don’t always have the presence of mind to assert their rights in such a situation — rights they possess even when governments decline to recognize them.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Is politics a “blood sport”? It’s not supposed to be. But Detroit’s Channel 4 reports that folks called “blockers” are harassing voters who want to sign a petition.

The petition is to recall Michigan’s Speaker of the House Andy Dillon over his massive tax increase. People are hurting in Michigan. But legislators — led by Dillon — decided taxpayers should hurt more, so that spending could grow more than three-quarters of a billion dollars.

At The New Media Journal, Warner Todd Huston writes that “blockers scream at petition signers, calling them names, and hover menacingly over them making them feel threatened and intimidated.” Rose Bogaert of the Wayne County Taxpayers Association says, “They’re literally behaving like thugs out there.”

Who are these brutes? It turns out many of them are on the state payroll. In fact, they work for none other than Speaker Dillon.

Dillon’s office claims the blockers on his staff are doing this all on their own, taking vacation time. Yeah, right. Maybe now that they’ve been caught.

Leon Drolet, the head of the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance, isn’t buying that. Instead, he’s offering $250 a pop to identify each of these thugs.

Dillon’s tax increase was a travesty. The use of state workers to violate citizens’ most basic constitutional rights is, well, serious enough that you ought to find out more at MichiganRecalls.com.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

We take the most wondrous marvels for granted. We’re annoyed when we have to reboot our computers, for example. And how come we can only do 25 things at once on this magical machine, instead of 35 things?

I admit I’m the worst. But then I think, hey, at least we don’t have to wrestle with vacuum tubes and punch cards these days.

Same with vehicular transportation. You know, we’ve come a long way from the horse and buggy. We take the many convenient features of automobiles for granted.

Like cruise control. It comes to mind because of an article I stumbled across about Ralph Teetor, a mechanical engineer who invented automatic transmission, cruise control and many other enhancements of the driving experience.

Teeter realized the need for cruise control when he fell victim to his lawyer’s herky-jerky attempts to comply with the 35 mile per hour speed limit imposed during World War II. In 1945, he patented the invention and by the late ’50s it was being offered as an option in Chrysler models.

Another thing we take for granted is our eyesight. Something Ralph Teetor lost at the age of five. But that didn’t stop him from building his own one-cylinder car at age 12. He then went on to receive a Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering and make a career visualizing solutions to one tough problem after another.

That’s a story that reminds us that the world is not always blind to character and drive.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Every state in the union has a state bird. My state’s is the cardinal. Very red. Pretty. We have a state seal, a flag, and a flower. You’d think with these that legislators could let the matter of state symbols go at that.

But no. We also have a state insect, of all things. Our Virginia solons chose well on the latter, the tiger swallowtail butterfly. Beautiful. That nicely rounds out our symbols, no?

No. We also have a state fish and a state shell, as well. I kid you not. Think brook trout and oyster. Yum?

Yes, the state symbol act is pretty ridiculous. But until recently, I’d never thought about what all this is really for: the kids.

In Missouri, anyway, it has been the policy for children to suggest what should be the state bird, rock, composer, whatever. And then the legislature, in its slower working days, would consider the proposals.

Hey, it’s a way for kids to get involved in . . . uh, government. Sort of. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

But what can we make of the recent attempt in the Missouri legislature to make Budweiser the “state beer”?

Don’t worry, folks. Kids didn’t suggest it. This is entirely the work of adults in the legislature. I won’t say they’re drunk on power, but I won’t say they’re exactly sober, either.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Hawaii was the last state to join the union. But it was first in something important.

Way back, long before statehood, when a guy named King Kamehameha was in charge, Hawaii established equal rights without regard to race. Its first written constitution declared all men to be “of one blood.”

That was before our Civil War.

So, it is more than a little sad to see, after all the suffering racism has caused — and after the slow progress we’ve made — the first . . . er, fiftieth state, slide backwards.

A bill introduced into the U.S. Senate by Senator Daniel Akaka would create a new Native Hawaiian government, basing citizenship on racial identity. A person with one drop of pre-1778 native Hawaiian blood would be held separate from all others who live their lives in Hawaii.

Before the Hawaii Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Jere Krischel testified against the racial classification in the Akaka Bill:

My family has been in Hawaii for over 100 years. My extended family has been in Hawaii since before 1778. And all of my family deserves to be treated equally. Civil rights do not discriminate.

But race-obsessed politicians like Senator Akaka do discriminate. What would King Kamehameha say?

This is Common Sense. I’m not King Kamehemeha, I’m Paul Jacob.

Do you believe that exercising our democratic rights should be as tough as the Twelve Labors of Hercules? Even Hercules had trouble with those, capturing a hound from Hades and so forth.

No, it shouldn’t be such a chore. But in state after state, power brokers whine that it’s way too easy for voters to consider an initiative that legislators dislike.

Sure, there should be safeguards against electoral fraud. But this isn’t what politicians in, say, Michigan fret about.

According to one new proposal, by Michigan Senator Michelle McManus, a certain number of petition signatures should be collected in each of 83 out of 110 House districts.

The point of this formula? Only to force petition supporters to spend resources unproductively. There’s nothing “democratic” about the burden. Does election to some statewide office, like governor, require votes to be apportioned among districts according to such a formula?

Of course not.

Another notion is that constitutional amendments are so important that only the Michigan legislature should be allowed to place them on the ballot. This would presumably ensure that such amendments are properly “vetted.” Otherwise, “special interests” might have too much influence.

Wrong again. Initiatives are vetted by voters in the campaign before the election. The whole point of citizen initiative rights is to end-run “vetting” by biting and snarling politicians.

Sometimes I think Hercules had it easy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.