Everyone is born with genius, but most people only keep it a few minutes.
Edgard Varèse, as quoted by Martha Graham, Dance Observer, Volumes 24-27 (1957), p. 5.
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Edgard Varèse
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Selma March & Limited Terms
On March 21, 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., led 3,200 people on the start of the third and finally successful civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.
Nearly two decades earlier, the Twenty-second Amendment (Amendment XXII) of the United States Constitution, passed Congress. The date was March 21, 1947. The amendment, ratified on February 27, 1951, set a term limit for election and overall time of service to the office of President of the United States. This was an obvious reaction to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s more than three terms in office.
The first section of the amendment reads as follows:
No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President, when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.
Trying to find justice in the justice system is sometimes like panning for gold in a dry river. But what ho, hey, we’ve found some.
Victoria Taft points us to “a federal judge who believes in justice” . . . or a reasonable facsimile thereof.
Recently, California District Court Judge Cormac Carney chastised a purportedly anti-crime department of the Department of Justice for prosecuting two men who “became members of a group characterized as ‘white supremacist’” for alleged violence while carefully ignoring the often worse conduct of Antifa and BAMN members.
Carney dismissed the federal charges against the two men.
He argued that “prosecuting only members of the far right and ignoring members of the far left leads to the troubling conclusion that the government believes it is permissible to physically assault and injure Trump supporters to silence speech. . . .
“At the same Trump rallies that form the basis for Defendants’ prosecution, members of Antifa and related far-left groups engaged in organized violence to stifle protected speech.”
There’s something wrong when people who had been holding a peaceful event full of speeches and flag-waving are prosecuted — not just prosecuted, but selectively prosecuted — for defending themselves when violent leftists show up and act violently.
If a speaker commits an actual crime, sure, he should be punished, in a proportionate way and without regard to the ideology of the speaker. Equal justice under the law, that’s all.
How about it, Justice Department? Care to earn your name?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Joseph Henrich
More individualistic countries are also richer, more innovative, and more economically productive.
Joseph Henrich, The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous (2020).
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Uncle Tom’s Cabin
On March 20, 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published.
I’d like to ban the Communist Party — in China. But TikTok — here?
The app’s possible use as spyware and worse by Chinese Communist Party operatives should be
“Lawmakers and regulators in the West have increasingly expressed concern that TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, may put sensitive user data, like location information, into the hands of the Chinese government,” explains The New York Times. “They have pointed to laws that allow the Chinese government to secretly demand data from Chinese companies and citizens for intelligence-gathering operations.”
This concerns me enough to not be on TikTok, but while we smell smoke, I see no smoking gun.
And banning Tik Tok has every appearance of doing what the CCP would do — and did with Facebook and YouTube and X (formerly known as Prince — er, Twitter). Not to mention being unconstitutional.
The TikTok ban that passed the House last week — with only 50 Democrats and 15 Republicans voting No — if passed by the Senate and signed by the President, would set up another level of surveillance and Internet control that would be used against American citizens beyond users of this social media
It comes down to good ends not justifying evil means, in this case an all-out government attack upon freedom of speech and press.
There are things the federal government could do — and already has done — to limit TikTok’s influence. Last year, the U.S. (along with Canada) banned it from all government devices.
This didn’t even require an act of Congress. Arguably, Trump could have done this with Facebook and Twitter on federal government devices when it became clear that these platforms were being used to orchestrate partisan speech control.
And, of course, a general social cause against TikTok could be engaged without threat of force. Political leaders owe it to the people to speak out.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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House of Lords
On March 19, 1649, England’s House of Commons passed an act abolishing the House of Lords, declaring it “useless and dangerous to the people of England.”
This was during Oliver Cromwell’s rule as Lord Protector, after the execution of Charles I. The House of Lords did not again meet until the Convention Parliament of 1660, under the Restoration of the monarchy.
If a man appears as a witness, but withdraws his oath, he must make payment, to the extent of the value in litigation of the case.
The Code of Ur-Nammu, 21st century B.C.
Argentina’s new president promised to take a chainsaw to the high taxes and controls that have been killing the country’s freedom and prosperity.
He has had successes. One of his decrees removed rent controls, and as a result the supply of rentals has jumped and rents have dropped.
But Milei cannot simply issue decrees to free up markets. He’s got to go through the legislature. And Argentina’s Senate recently rejected a mammoth Milei-issued emergency decree to deregulate the economy apparently in one fell swoop—revising or killing some 300 regulations.
The Financial Times reports that Milei’s coalition, La Libertad Avanza, “controls less than 10 per cent of Senate seats.” Many of the “centrist” senators could have helped pass Milei’s reforms over the objections of the adamantly leftist members. But these centrists profess to have constitutional reservations about the decree.
The real problem is probably that there is still a very large constituency for the subsidies and grift that have impoverished so many Argentinians.
The decree remains in effect until the House votes on it too. Milei’s administration is negotiating with the lawmakers of that chamber and with others who may have an impact on their vote.
If President Milei loses this fight in the near term, he must keep reminding voters why he can’t do more to lift them out of poverty and serfdom. His election to the presidency was a huge political change. But it’s not the only one Argentina needs.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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The Hammer
We are a nationwide organization of people looking for clues.
Owen “The Hammer,” of the “Hammered Out” YouTube channel, in “‘Twin Peaks’ Explained, Part Three: Cooper Cooper Cooper,” describing the “Twin Peaks” fanbase. The next line is “We are a federal bureau of investigation.”