Never do any enemy a small injury for they are like a snake which is half beaten and it will strike back the first chance it gets.
Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (1513).
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Niccolò Machiavelli
On September 28, 2008, SpaceX launched the Falcon 1, the first private spacecraft to go into orbit around planet Earth.
An “X” post by a Trump spokesperson implicated the former president in a crime.
What followed implicates the U.S. Government in something far worse.
But first, to clarify:
- By “X” I mean “Twitter.” Remember, Elon Musk changed the name of his social media company.
- By “Trump” I mean, of course, Donald John Trump, former president of the United States running the same office, a man surrounded by armed guards at all times.
- By “crime” I mean an infraction of federal law, not a willful abuse of someone’s rights at common law.
- The crime in question is the act of receiving “any firearm or ammunition which has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce” by a person “under indictment . . . a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year.” Trump’s been indicted quite a number of times, recently, and therefore isn’t legally allowed to buy a gun.
The initial tweet said Trump admired a Glock that had his name stamped on it. It was the “Donald Trump edition,” gold-colored, retailing for under a thousand bucks. Trump’s on video saying he wants one of these handguns.
When X went all a-twitter with the implications, spokesman Steven Cheung took down his post and the campaign issued a corrective: “President Trump did not purchase or take possession of the firearm. He simply indicated that he wanted one.”
This is all explained by Jacob Sullum at Reason, who goes on to indicate that the law makes no real sense. The obvious absurdity of not allowing a well-guarded presidential candidate to guard himself with gun of any kind, that’s one thing. Flouting the Second Amendment by prohibiting the innocent, i.e. not yet proven guilty, from bearing arms, looks far worse — a policy of rights suppression.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Corrigendum notice: a correction was made late on the date of publication [Trump is not a “Jr.,” as originally stated].
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The greatest weakness of all weaknesses is to fear too much to appear weak.
Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Politique tirée de l’Écriture sainte (Politics Drawn from the Very Words of Holy Scripture, 1709).
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Congress on the Run
Lancaster, Pennsylvania — home to James Buchanan, Jr., the 15th president of the United States, and to congressman, abolitionist and “Radical Republican” Thaddeus Stevens — served, during the American Revolution, as the capital of the United States for one day, on September 27, 1777.
This occurred after the Continental Congress fled Philadelphia, which had been captured by the British. The revolutionary government then moved still further away, to York.
California is determined to give us the full bleak picture of totalitarianism, American-style.
Anticipating proposed SEC regulations, Newsom’s California is set to impose nonsensical mandates for reporting greenhouse gas emissions and “climate-related financial risk” that target companies with annual revenue of $1 billion or more (according to the terms of SB253) and $500 million or more (SB261).
Billion-dollar businesses will have to report all direct and indirect emissions, including emissions produced throughout a business’s supply chain. Business travel. Employee commutes. Penalties for failure to report could be as high as $500,000.
The cost is in time, money, privacy, freedom, with no benefits except to bureaucrats and politicians who enjoy bossing us around and destroying our ability to function.
These requirements are tyrannical in the same way they’d be tyrannical if required of you and me as individuals.
Do you know all about the emissions produced in delivering the water, electricity, electronics, gas, paper you use each month?
Care to drop everything you’re doing to find out?
And submit the data in a bureaucrat-satisfying format?
We already know what the results of California’s experiment will be. We already know that crushing freedom and giving unfettered power to slave-masters is not the road to wealth and happiness.
What we don’t know is exactly how far the Tarnished State’s aspiring totalitarians will go. But whatever the consequences, they’ll blame others . . . or just mutter “Good riddance, we didn’t want that prosperity and those evil businesses anyway.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Natural justice is a pledge of reciprocal benefit, to prevent one man from harming or being harmed by another.
Epicurus, Principal Doctrines, no. 31.
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Shays’ Constitution
On September 26, 1786, protestors shut down the court in Springfield, Massachusetts, beginning a military standoff and ushering in Shays’ Rebellion. This anti-tax revolt spurred a dramatic reaction on the part of the day’s politicians, including their attempts to reform the Articles of Confederation and to figure out better ways than high state taxes to pay off Revolutionary War debts. These efforts directly led to the adoption of a new Constitution.
§ Three years later, to the day, Thomas Jefferson was appointed the first United States Secretary of State; John Jay (pictured) was appointed the first Chief Justice of the United States; Samuel Osgood was appointed the first United States Postmaster General; and Edmund Randolph was appointed the first United States Attorney General — all under the new Constitution.
§ In 1960 on this date, John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon engaged in the first televised presidential campaign debates.
§ September 26 is celebrated, by some who know history, as “Petrov Day,” after Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov, who on this day in 1983 may have saved civilization by resorting to hunch. While serving as a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Air Defense Forces, he took the initiative to downgrade information from the USSR’s computerized early warning missile defense system that the United States had initiated a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union. He interpreted the warning as a false alarm. His hunch was correct; the U.S. had not initiated a first strike: the data he had received was misleading. A later investigation determined it was the result of high altitutde cloud interference with a satelite view of a U.S. Air Force base. Petrov was not rewarded for his decision, however. His decision showed up the military higher-ups and scientists to have concocted an extremely faulty system, so a reward would also have required some sort of punishment. He retired soon after with a very, very small pension.
Petrov died on May 19, 2017.
A scenario: You and millions of others are willy-nilly running toward a cliff.
You don’t want to go over the cliff; like Bartleby, you would prefer not to. But you’re caught in the surging mass. Enough of the stampeders think that it’s the greatest idea ever — long overdue, in fact.
But just as you’re coming within sight of the cliff, the Great Leader leading the charge raises his hand and asks to be heard.
“We have decided that we are running too fast toward the cliff. We need more time to make the transition. We will therefore reduce the speed of our blind hurtling toward the cliff by 11 percent.”
Fiction? No.
The above summarizes the amended policy of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak vis-à-vis how quickly policymakers will shove Britain’s industrial society over the proverbial cliff in the name of pretending to fine-tune global climate. Various bans on various things that people need in order to function will reportedly be slightly delayed so that people have more time to . . . pretend . . . to prepare.
It won’t become illegal to sell petrol (gas) and diesel vehicles so that buyers of new cars would be stuck with more expensive and impractical battery-powered cars until 2035.
Not 2030 as previously stated.
Instead of 100 percent of gas boilers being phased out by 2035, the new goal is 80 percent.
Off-grid oil burners will now be banned in 2035, not 2026.
Other slight delays of annihilative mandates are also in the works.
British people, enjoy your five-year and nine-year reprieves.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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William Henry Harrison
The only legitimate right to govern is an express grant of power from the governed.
William Henry Harrison, inaugural address (March 4, 1841); Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States from George Washington, 1789, to John F. Kennedy, 1961 (1961), p. 72. House Doc. 87–218.