On December 8, 1927, one of the United States’ oldest think tanks was founded through the merger of three organizations that had been created by philanthropist Robert S. Brookings. Called the Brookings Institution, it would provide a blueprint for future work by research and advocacy organizations in the modern era.
On this date in 1974, a plebiscite abolished the monarchy in Greece.
The Justices seem split — on the “gay cake” case.
A Christian baker had no trouble selling a gay couple a pre-made cake, out of his showcase, but balked at selling a custom wedding cake of any kind. According to NPR’s Nina Totenberg, the couple understood that requesting a “gay” themed cake would go too far. But the baker’s refusal to decorate any wedding cake seemed unacceptable.
In Colorado, where the cake didn’t get made, there is a public accommodations law that says businesses must serve all customers regardless of race, religion, or sexual orientation. So Colorado went after the baker, the baker hired a lawyer, and Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission was heard by the Supreme Court this week.
Commonly billed as a conflict between First Amendment-guaranteed religious freedom* and the civil rights of citizens as defined and protected by a state law, it almost defies easy solution.
One could argue that the First Amendment right to freely associate (including the right not to associate) should extend to business. But that goes against legislation built up since the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which in many places ended an often violent racial segregation** no one wants back. However, a custom-made wedding cake is also expressive and therefore speech.
One could decide for Colorado on federalist grounds. And the late Justice Antonin Scalia, Ms. Totenberg tells us, argued that a general law not directed at a religion does not allow a specifically religious defense.
But one defense of the baker may work. The Colorado Civil Rights Commission has not applied its rulings equally. It sided with non-Christian bakers who refused to make cakes for Christians requesting Bible-verse cakes.
And that “takes the cake.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob
* In this regard, Justice Kennedy stated from the bench that it seemed to him “that the state in its position here has been neither tolerant nor respectful of Mr. Phillips’ religious beliefs.” Kennedy will likely be the swing vote.
** No small amount of this violence, segregation and discrimination was coerced by state laws in defiance of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Bill of Rights.
He who reigns within himself and rules passions, desires, and fears is more than a king.
On December 7, 1776, the Marquis de Lafayette arranged to enter the American military as a major general. On the same date in 1787, Delaware became the first state to ratify the United States Constitution.
The 1941 date marks, of course, “the day that will live in infamy,” when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.
When the definitive history of the 2016 presidential election is written, the central figure may turn out to be . . . a frog.
“Pepe,” to be precise.
The cartoon frog with red lips started out as a minor figure in a Matt Furie webcomic, but came to symbolize so much more.
“This iconic amphibian has been labeled a Nazi, condemned by a presidential candidate, and now is at the center of an important First Amendment battle in an era of unlimited replication, imitation, and mutation,” writes Zach Weissmueller in a highly entertaining story in Reason. “It’s a fight that involves the alt-right, Trump voters, a powerful Washington, D.C.-based law firm, and the anonymous online image board 4chan. . . .”
Mike Cernovich, the pro-Trump, anti-SJW publicity artist, has found himself at the center of the legal controversy. He’s hired a lawyer.
Oddly — or maybe not, politics and culture wars being what they are — the lawyer for Pepe’s creator makes much of the alt-right/hate group usages of Pepe:
“You can’t copy other people’s ideas and claim free speech,” says Tompros. “[The alt-right is] absolutely free to spout hate in some other form. We just don’t want them using Pepe the Frog to do it.”
Contra Furie’s lawyer, you are allowed to copy others’ ideas in a free society. Copyright is something a bit narrower. Trickier.
This fight over the satirical use of a Trickster figure may turn out to be a legal and cultural landmark. “Fair use” could come to mean what Mr. Cernovich’s lawyer argues, ideas “memed into the public domain.”
Meanwhile, to the many causes of Hillary Clinton’s cruel fate in 2016, we can add a cartoon frog.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Literature was not born the day when a boy crying ‘wolf, wolf’ came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels; literature was born on the day when a boy came crying ‘wolf, wolf’ and there was no wolf behind him.
Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature (1980).
On December 6, 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, banning slavery in all states and territories. One-hundred-and-nineteen years later, to the day, in 1984, Paul Jacob (of ThisIsCommonSense.com, LibertyiFund.org, and the Citizens in Charge Foundation) was arrested by the FBI for his refusal to register with Selective Service System (the draft people). The Government was probably not attempting to make a commemorative point about involuntary servitude.
In 1917 on this date, Finland declared independence from Russia.
Vladimir Nabokov completed his controversial novel Lolita on the Sixth of December in 1953, and would soon find himself embroiled in censorship and related publishing difficulties, though with no trouble in the United States when it was eventually published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons in 1958.
Months ago, Ballou High was widely lauded for posting impressive gains in graduation rates — from a abysmal 51 percent two years ago to a much less terrible 64 percent this year — and for the even more remarkable feat of getting every single graduate accepted by a community college or university.
“Pay-dirt!” I sarcastically proclaimed at Townhall.com.
But the real dirt was dug up by WAMU, a National Public Radio affiliate in the nation’s capital. What did Ballou students learn? How to cheat.
Well, that appears to have been the lesson plan, anyway.
In numerous interviews — many given on conditions of anonymity for fear of retribution — teachers charged they were pressured by the administration to give grades that students did not earn, so those students could nonetheless graduate.
“Last year, DCPS put school administrators entirely in control of teacher evaluations. . . .” And those evaluations, which grade teachers and administrators on student performance, can mean as much as $30,000 in bonus pay.
The incentive to cheat is both obvious and sizable.
The mayor and the chancellor of the D.C. Public Schools quickly announced an investigation, but regular observers suspect the usual “white-wash.”
“This is [the] biggest way to keep a community down,” protested one black teacher. “To graduate students who aren’t qualified, send them off to college unprepared, so they return to the community to continue the cycle.”
That tragic cycle is captured in public education’s corrupt cycle: promised reforms followed by false claims of progress . . . followed by the discovery of cheating.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Washington was worthy of honor because the last thing he had done with power was to resign it. Others grasped it, even abroad. George III said his retirement from the presidency, coupled with his resignation as Commander in Chief fourteen years earlier, “placed him in a light the most distinguished of any man living,” and that he was “the greatest character of the age.”
On December 5, 1933, nationwide alcohol Prohibition in the United States ended after Utah became the 36th U.S. state to ratify the 21st Amendment to the United States Constitution, thus establishing the required 75 percent of states needed to enact the amendment that overturned the 18th.