Common Sense with 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.

Computers are only human . . . er, computers are only finite beings — that’s better — and can only do as much at any given time as their microprocessors, random-access memory, storage space, network connections, and software allow.

On a Wednesday in March, the computer database that takes earmark requests from Congress failed. In the words of Roll Call, “an overload of pork requests clogged the House Appropriations Committee’s Web site” and forced “an extension to the request deadline to next week.”

So our representatives are still at it. Let it not be said that they aren’t busy. They are so busy that they clog up computers with too many requests for data entry.

I could commiserate. I have had computer troubles too. I sometimes even resent the way my life is being run by the demands of technology. I don’t always feel liberated.

But for once I’m sympathizing with the poor, dumb machines. Too many requests for too much pork! It’s not their fault. They can only do what they do.

We should take our hats off and honor these computers. They’ve suffered much to accommodate Congress. Let’s thank them. In fact, thank goodness they’ve suffered failure before they completely tanked our economy.

Yes, we may have to pay the price for all the requests, and for all the computers . . . but we wouldn’t need upgrades if Congress could just keep its “generosity” with our money under control.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Years ago, Oregon House Speaker Jeff Merkley voted against Oregon’s charter school legislation. He lost.

Later, he and his wife applied to send two of their kids to a newly forming charter school. The school was late in starting up, so he lost again as the application wasn’t acted on.

But now that Willamette Weekly leaked the application, it’s getting lots of attention.

Merkley first denied the report. Then, when the actual applications were produced, well, he stopped denying.

It’s funny how politicians who vote lockstep with teachers’ unions and the establishment monopoly school system keep on undermining their own publicly espoused positions. They keep voting with their dollars and good sense in their private lives . . . against the bad sense of their official loyalties.

It’s a revelation of attitude: Merkley and other such politicians believe that choice is only for the few. Them.

Steve Buckstein, a founder of Oregon’s Cascade Policy Institute, puts the story in  perspective. He quotes a famous Supreme Court judgment from 1922, about an Oregon law to outlaw all private schools. The justices said No Way. And insisted that “the child is not the mere creature of the state.”

Too many politicians agree with this only when it comes to their own children. We could use their help making education better for all children. Schooling should be made to fit kids, not schools to fit . . . politicians’ re-elections.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Two years ago in Oklahoma, Riccardo Gino Ferrante was arrested for aiming a camera up a 16-year-old girl’s skirt while in a Target store. He was arrested and convicted of a felony.

Unfortunately, in mid-March four-fifths of Oklahoma’s Court of Criminal Appeals voted that no felony occurred.

Why?

Because “the person photographed was not in a place where she had a reasonable expectation of privacy.”

Now, being in a public place does remove or decrease one’s expectation of privacy. But ought that extend even to the private space WITHIN one’s clothing?

The court answered in the affirmative. As Judge Gary Lumpkin wrote in his dissent, “It is open season for peeping Toms in public places who want to look under a woman’s dress.”

This is judicial common sense in the age of Britney Spears? At least there’s still the knuckle-sandwich penalty someone might get.

If our court system can’t get this one right, everyone should agree that something’s wrong.

The judiciary must be independent. But it must be independent of the other branches of government, not detached from common sense, or all semblance of sanity.

Oklahoma legislators now seek to outlaw currently court-protected invasive and gutter photography. Should they also consider random intelligence testing for the judiciary? They have more than probable cause.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.