Categories
ballot access election law ideological culture

The Colorado Gambit Crushed

Colorado, Trump, election, democracy

The Supreme Court unanimously nixed the clever scheme to keep Donald Trump off the Colorado ballot. The court explained its actions in the second paragraph of its anonymously written March 4th ruling: “Because the Constitution makes Congress, rather than the States, responsible for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates, we reverse.”

That’s it. The 14th Amendment, which the Colorado gambit relied upon, does make Congress the instrument for preventing “an insurrectionist” from serving in office.

So Colorado’s ploy to rig the 2024 election out in the open has been stopped. And good thing, too, since the political repercussions could have been . . . harrowing. 

A lot of commentary and reporting on the ruling has been devoted to pushing what was not covered. Take the CNN article by John Fritz and Marshall Cohen, “Trump’s on the ballot, but the Supreme Court left key constitutional questions unanswered.” It is hard not to interpret such headlines as providing excuses to partisan Democrats — in this case those at CNN — who had put so much hope in Colorado’s (and other states’) taking of the Trump matter into their own hands. 

“But while the unsigned, 13-page opinion the Supreme Court handed down Monday decisively resolved the uncertainty around Trump’s eligibility for a second term,” the article explains, “it left unsettled questions that could some day boomerang back to the justices.”

True enough, but so what? Take the first mentioned: “Could Democratic lawmakers, for instance, disqualify Trump next January when the electoral votes are counted if he wins the November election?”

Well, no. 

The 14th’s third section does not list presidents as barred by insurrection: “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President,” it says. Electors of. But not the President and VP.

I’m sure the Supreme Court would be happy to expedite an opinion to that effect should the Democrats attempt anything that stupid.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

A. J. Ayer

No moral system can rest solely on authority.

Sir Alfred Jules Ayer, Humanist Outlook (1968), p. 4.
Categories
Today

The First American Bicameral

Bicameral, New England

On March 7, 1644, Massachusetts established the first two-chamber legislature in the American colonies.

One hundred thirty years later, to the day, British forces closed the port of Boston to all commerce.

Categories
crime and punishment Eighth Amendment rights general freedom

The Case of the Narrow Driveway

nanny state, regulations, government, bureaucrats

Sandy Martinez: mother of three, working hard to get by, whole life ahead of her — why would she sabotage it by failing to perfectly park her car in her narrow driveway such that two of the wheels edged onto the grass?

Think I’m making it up? 

No. It’s true. Some people get distracted and treat their grass as if it were gravel and let their car edge onto it.

Why’dja do it Sandy, huh? Why?

On the hand, it’s her property, so who cares? 

What difference does it make? 

Well, mucho . . . if you’re Lantana, Florida, which fined Sandy $101,750 for imperfect parking, $47,000 because of storm-inflicted fence damage, $16,000 for cracks in her driveway.

The good news is that Institute for Justice is litigating on behalf of Sandy Martinez and other homeowners being hit with plainly unjust fines for trivial code violations.

IJ argues that the state and local governments at fault are violating the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against excessive fines. And the Institute and its clients are winning. The U.S. Supreme Court has just ruled, in Timbs v. Indiana, that this Eight Amendment ban applies to cities and states as well as to the federal government. 

Many locales, perhaps including Lantana, Florida, may still try to get away with the grift despite this definitive ruling. But sooner or later, some judge will throw out the blatantly excessive fines and point to the recent Supreme Court decision.

Help is on the way, Sandy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Charles Dickens

Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There’s no better rule.

Mr. Jaggers in Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations (1860-61), Chapter 40.
Categories
Today

Svetlana Made a Break for It (& Paul made his debut)

Lana Peters

On March 6, 1967, Soviet Premiere Joseph Stalin’s only daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva (February 28, 1926 – November 22, 2011), defected to the United States. She later took the name Lana Peters, upon marriage to William Wesley Peters. The marriage was short-lived.

The March 6 date also marks term limits advocate and initiative organizer Paul Jacob’s birthday. He was born on the anniversary of the births of Michaelangelo, Cryano de Bergerac, and Alan Greenspan. He is also, obviously, the main reason that this site, ThisIsCommonSense.org, exists.

Categories
crime and punishment First Amendment rights general freedom

Did Steve Baker Commit Journalism?

Steve Baker, journalism, first amendment, free speech

The safest thing to do — politically, anyway — is plant yourself in a corner and sit still. But people tend to want to move around, live, do their jobs.

Steve Baker, reporter for Blaze Media, recently was forced to “self-surrender” to federal authorities for committing initially unspecified crimes.

Was doing his job the crime? 

His fed-embarrassing journalism about the January 6 “insurrection” and the way many people have been incarcerated for years for little more than trespassing — was that the crime?

As video of the not-always- innocuous but often-innocuous goings-on of January 6 has been released, Baker has been among those examining the record and noting apparent contradictions in the official story.

When he turned himself in to the FBI last Friday, he was facing charges that the FBI had flatly refused to divulge. But now the Blaze reports that, three years after January 6 “insurrection,” Baker is being charged for things like “entering [restricted areas] without lawful authority” or “parading . . . in a capitol building.”

Trespassing. Arrested for trespassing three years later? 

Or arrested for his reporting on the events of January 6 and its sequels over the course of those three years?

Before Baker turned himself in, the FBI did give him the information that he should arrive in shorts and flip-flops. So that, Glenn Beck writes, “it would be easier for them to put on the orange jumpsuit and ankle irons. Suffice it to say, he wore a suit and tie.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Murray N. Rothbard

It is not the business of the law to make anyone good or reverent or moral or clean or upright.

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Today

A Banned Book

On March 5, 1616, Nicolaus Copernicus’s book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, was placed on the Catholic Church’s Index of Forbidden Books. This censorship notwithstanding, the Earth continued to revolve around the Sun.

The book had been first published in 1543 in Nuremberg.

| In 1770, the Boston Massacre took place on March 5.

| Joseph Stalin, the longest serving leader of the Soviet Union, died at his Volynskoe dacha in Moscow on this date in 1953, after a cerebral hemorrhage.

| March 5 is magician Penn Jillette’s birthday.

Categories
folly political challengers

Pied Pipers, Again

Adam Schiff

In 2015, the Hillary Clinton campaign exhibited the hubris for which politicians have been associated since the dawn of civilization. 

Instead of relying on a strategy of promoting Hillary herself, Clinton insiders plied what they called “Pied Piper candidates,” Republican hopefuls who, they theorized, would shift mainstream candidates further “right,” thus making the ultimate winners unpalatable to enough general election voters to win Hillary the election. There were three they identified: Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, and Donald Trump. 

We know how this worked out.

In California, Democrats are returning to hubristic form.

The serpentine Adam Schiff, who is running to fill the slot formerly occupied by Senator Diane Feinstein, has directed $11 million in the primary “to elevate a GOP candidate,” according to The Washington Post. 

“The ads argue that Republican Steve Garvey — a congenial former pro baseball player for the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres who voted twice for Donald Trump but won’t say if he will do so again — is too conservative for California and highlight his recent surge, in an apparent effort to consolidate support for him on the right.”

The idea is to boost Garvey with Republican primary voters in hopes that Garvey takes the second of two spots available for the November election under California’s Top Two system, becauseSchiff’s people think Garveyis easier to defeat than liberal Democrat “Rep. Katie Porter, whom Schiff and his backers would prefer to avoid facing come November in this left-leaning state.”

But can this strategy really work in California? The ads portray Garvey as more Trumpian than he probably is, and recent polling suggests that Schiff and Garvey are now neck-and-neck.

A review of the Clinton metaphor, “Pied Piper,” shows how slippery the strategy can be. The “Pied Piper of Hamelin” is a cautionary tale. 

The Democrats’support may go the way of rats and children.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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