On September 22, 1862, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issued a preliminary proclamation that he would order the emancipation of all slaves in any state of the Confederate States of America that did not return to Union control by January 1, 1863. None returned, and the subsequent order, signed and issued January 1, 1863, took effect except in locations where the Union had already mostly regained control.
But it isn’t, for it rubs against the grain of the American legal tradition.
The pseudo-commonsense view appears nonsensical when boldly defended by the U.S. attorney’s office, which, The Texas Tribune informs us, argued that a “law to prohibit those under felony indictment from obtaining guns does not interfere with the Second Amendment ‘because it does not disarm felony indictees who already had guns and does not prohibit possession or public carry.’”
That argument boils down to this: if you retain some relevant gun rights, others may be taken away.
Compare it to free speech: if the government allows you to talk freely with your family, its regulation of your conversations with neighbors is hunky-dory!
“The Second Amendment has always allowed laws restricting the gun rights of groups viewed by legislatures as posing a public-safety risk,” the prosecution elucidated, “including those accused but not convicted of wrongdoing.”
But U.S. District Judge David Counts, introduced in every account of this I’ve read so far as “appointed by former President Donald Trump” — so that must be important, eh? — denies this. He found no historical precedent for disallowing the accused and indicted from buying firearms.
Therefore, based on the recent Supreme Court decision,* Judge Countssays the government has no case. It’s still innocent until proven guilty.
That is, governments may not “take away” our rights until convicted of a specific crime, punishment for which is loss of liberty.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* That U.S. Supreme Court case is New York State Rifle & Pistol Assoc. v. Bruen.
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Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm, but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
Thomas Stearns Eliot, The Cocktail Party (1948).
On September 21, 1897, the “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” editorial was published in the New York Sun. Note how long before Christmas this is. The Christmas season has long been a long affair.
Keywords: forced inclusion. The current political rage — thought to be a “right.”
Now, Yeshiva University, which calls itself “the world’s premier Torah-based institution of higher education,” does not accept homosexuality. It’s against the Law.
And by “the Law” they mean: the ancient Jewish scriptures.
For those of us who are neither Jewish nor gay, we might look upon both groups as “clubs.” And being in neither, we might just shrug; we aren’t going to be accepted in the either ranks and that’s just fine.
But some students at Yeshiva University tried to form an LGBT group on campus. The university resisted, the case went to court, and a court ordered the university to accept the group. And then last week, the Supreme Court refused to order a stay on the lower court’s order.
In reaction, Yeshiva University has suspended all campus club activities.
“Every faith-based university in the country has the right to work with its students, including its LGBTQ students, to establish the clubs, places and spaces that fit within its faith tradition,” the university’s president proclaimed. “Yeshiva University simply seeks that same right of self-determination.”
Since the right to “freedom of association” is part of the Bill of Rights, one might think this would be non-controversial in America. And settled law.
But one would be wrong. On both counts.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Science is neither a single tradition, nor the best tradition there is, except for people who have become accustomed to its presence, its benefits and its disadvantages. In a democracy it should be separated from the state just as churches are now separated from the state.
On September 20, 480 BC, Greeks defeated Persian forces in the battle of Salamis.
They told the New York Post that over the last 19 months, Facebook has been cooperating with the FBI to spy on “private” messages of users “outside the legal process and without probable cause.”
The targets were gun enthusiasts and those who questioned 2020’s election results.
“They [Facebook and the FBI] were looking for conservative right-wing individuals. None were Antifa types.”
According to the whistleblowers, Facebook flagged allegedly subversive private messages and sent them to the FBI to be studied by agents specializing in domestic terrorism.
Facebook provided the FBI “with private conversations which are protected by the First Amendment without any subpoena.” Subpoenas were then issued to obtain the conversations that Facebook had already revealed to the FBI.
According to one DOJ source: “As soon as a subpoena was requested, within an hour, Facebook sent back gigabytes of data and photos. It was ready to go. They were just waiting for that legal process so they could send it.”
Facebook has issued a denial. The FBI has issued a non-denial denial.
The allegations might seem very implausible but for the fact that as the November election approaches, the DOJ has been openly targeting Trump allies for claiming “that the vice president and/or president of the Senate had the authority to reject or choose not to count presidential electors.”
In short, for talking out of turn.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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When order is achieved among human beings by allowing them to interact with each other on their own initiative — subject only to the laws which uniformly apply to all of them — we have a system of spontaneous order in society.
Michael Polanyi, The Logic of Liberty (1951).
On September 19, 1778, the Continental Congress passed the first budget of the United States.
Congress last passed a budget in 1997.