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Thought

Cormac McCarthy

There’s no such thing as life without bloodshed. I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom. Your desire that it be that way will enslave you and make your life vacuous.

Cormac McCarthy as quoted by Richard B. Woodward, “Cormac McCarthy’s Venomous Fiction,” The New York Times (April 19, 1992).

Categories
Today

Amendment XXII!

The Twenty-second Amendment (Amendment XXII) of the United States Constitution, which sets a term limit for election and overall time of service to the office of President of the United States, was ratified by the requisite 36 of the then-48 states of the union on February 27, 1951.

Congress had passed the amendment on March 21, 1947.

Categories
election law Voting

Logic Suppression

Georgia, election law, race, consequences, voter ID

“In any other area of life — boarding a plane at DSM, picking up Cyclone tickets at will-call, or even buying Sudafed — showing a photo ID is a non-event,” Luke Martz writes in the Des Moines Register. “It is the baseline of participation in a modern society.”

The Republican political consultant, who has “served as an international election observer in Europe and the Middle East,” compares Iowa’s election system with “the mess currently unfolding in Minnesota,” where “Gov. Tim Walz signed a law authorizing illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses.”

Mr. Martz points out the “logical fallacy,” which he says has “effectively undermined their own arguments against voter ID.” How so? “If activists believe requiring a document to drive is reasonable,” he argues, “then their claim that requiring a document to vote is a ‘racist barrier’ collapses.”

Indeed. He notes that the idea “that certain Iowans are somehow incapable of obtaining a free state ID” is precisely the “soft bigotry of low expectations,” highlighted by President George W. Bush decades ago.

Lastly, Martz addresses the “‘voter suppression’ narrative,” which “has always had one major flaw: reality.” 

Remember the hullabaloo over Georgia’s 2021 election law? Former President Sleepy Joe Biden called it “Jim Crow 2.0” and the politicians running Major League Baseball canceled the All-Star Game in Atlanta as punishment, only to see voter turnout in Georgia’s next election “more than 50% higher than in the previous midterm election of 2018.” 

Martz shares Iowa’s story, where “doomsayers predicted a collapse in participation” after passage of voter ID. “Instead, we saw the exact opposite. In 2018, the first general election with the law, Iowa saw its highest midterm turnout in decades. In 2020, we shattered records with over 1.7 million ballots cast.”

Let’s not suppress reality.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Willa Cather

The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young.

Willa Cather, One of Ours (1922).
Categories
Today

Dominican Independence

February 26th marks the Dominican Republic’s Independence Day.

Categories
defense & war tax policy U.S. Constitution

The Emergency Tariff Question

tariffs, Supreme Court, Congress, balance of power

As is often the case in Supreme Court decisions, in Learning Resources v. Trump it is the dissenters’ views that are most interesting. 

At issue? The president’s authority to impose tariffs, or alter them. Donald Trump — a life-long tariff proponent — took the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) as an excuse to levy broad new duties on imports from multiple countries. That act delegated to the executive the power to use tariffs as emergency foreign policy measures.

On February 20, the majority on the court gave a decisive No to the President’s use of IEEPA to impose tariffs.*

I generally oppose Congress delegating powers to the executive branch and support free trade. But what does the Constitution actually say? Could dissenters Kavanaugh, Thomas and Alito have a point?

Kavanaugh’s humungous written opinion claims that tariffs are a traditional, common, and lawful means of “regulat[ing] . . . importation” in foreign-policy crises; he says the majority’s narrow reading ignores text, history, precedent, and the special deference due the President in external affairs. “The text of IEEPA authorizes the President to regulate importation,” explains Kavanaugh, “and tariffs are a means of doing so.”

Thomas stresses that IEEPA’s emergency-declaration process provides political accountability, so judicial second-guessing is unwarranted. Further, he argues that from the Founding, “regulate importation” has always included duties; early Congresses and Presidents (Monroe, Jackson, etc.) routinely delegated and adjusted tariffs. While matters of rights cannot be delegated, Thomas argues that privileges can, and have, and that this has long been recognized in constitutional law.

The key question, as Kavanaugh advances, is the balance of power. “Congress retains the ultimate authority to clarify, amend, or repeal IEEPA,” he reasonably asserts, “if it believes the President’s exercise of emergency powers has gone too far.”

This issue became a federal court case because Congress is dysfunctional.

Which puts the issue back in our lap. Where voters can have some control. How? Through elections, pressure, or pushing . . . term limits.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Other avenues may remain open. And Trump is jumping on them.

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Thought

Cormac McCarthy

Our waking life’s desire to shape the world to our convenience invites all manner of paradox and difficulty.

Cormac McCarthy, Cities of the Plain (1998).

Categories
Today

Senator Revels

On February 25, 1870, the first African-American entered Congress to serve in the U. S. Senate.

Hiram Rhodes Revels (Sep 27, 1827 – Jan 16, 1901) was a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, a Republican politician, and college administrator. Born free in North Carolina, he later lived and worked in Ohio, where he voted before the Civil War. Revels (pictured above) was elected as the first African American to serve in the United States Senate, and was the first African American to serve in the U.S. Congress. He represented Mississippi in the Senate in 1870 and 1871 during the Reconstruction era.

Categories
crime and punishment initiative, referendum, and recall

Petition Cop Stop

citizen's inititive, Barney Fife, free speech

“Petition fraud investigator hired by Arkansas secretary of state’s office,” headlined an article in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, “checks canvassers at church.”

Patrick Hall was the government agent who whipped out his badge on a couple of Arkansans. Why? They had been wantonly using their First Amendment rights to petition their government last week outside Little Rock’s Unitarian Universalist Church.

“I did feel a little bit intimidated,” volunteer petitioner Julie Taylor acknowledged, after being questioned and ID’d by Barney Fife — er, Mr. Hall.

Samantha Boyd, a spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office, confirmed that Hall had stopped the petition circulators, demanding and photographing their IDs.

“Our office would like to emphasize that no one is ever required to provide proof of identification or engage with our employees,” she said, defending his actions, “it is voluntary,”

She further explained that Hall’s was a “non-law enforcement position created to organize any reports of petition fraud.” So, why brandish the badge? And what reports did he hope to “organize” by playing cop?

Amusingly, one of Officer Hall’s questions regarded whether Taylor needed to check his ID to collect his signature on her two petitions. While a statute requiring petitioners to view the government ID of every would-be petition signer had passed Arkansas’s legislature, it was recently blocked by a federal judge because it “likely infringed on First Amendment rights.”

So, here is Secretary of State Cole Jester’s office using a pretend policeman to harass citizens engaged in First Amendment activity in order to push compliance with a law that has been enjoined for its obvious unconstitutionality.

One of the petitions Taylor was carrying “would give citizens a fundamental right to sign and circulate petitions,” and — as the organization that sponsored it (Protect AR Rights) puts it — “protect the process from irregular, unauthorized, or politically motivated interference.”

Viva la initiative!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Calvin Coolidge

I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the Government. Every dollar that we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much the more meager. Every dollar that we prudently save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical form.

Calvin Coolidge, Calvin Coolidge, Inaugural Address (March 4,1925).