On November 10, 1821, the First Cry of Independence in the small, interior town of Villa de los Santos, occurred in Panama. The November 10 date has since become Panama’s “Cry of Independence Day” in the country. November is a month of independence celebrations in Panama, but the November 10 celebration marks the first signs of the struggle for separation from Spain.
“When do we say enough is enough?” asked California Senator Kamala Harris after Devon Patrick Kelley murdered 26 churchgoing Texans in cold blood, last Sunday.
“The terrifying fact is that no one is safe so long as Congress chooses to do absolutely nothing in the face of this epidemic,” argued Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy.
President Trump, on the other hand, not only pointed out that criminals will violate gun laws to acquire weapons, he speculated that had Stephen Willeford, the former National Rifle Association instructor, not come upon the scene, armed, “instead of having 26 dead, you would have had hundreds more dead.”
After previous mass shootings, Democrats pushed legislation that, even if it had been the law, would not have prevented that particular killer from obtaining the weapons. This time it’s different, since the killer should not, by current law, have been allowed to purchase the firearms he used. Kelley’s conviction for domestic violence, while serving in the Air Force, disqualified him.*
But the Air Force did not do its job, failing to report his record to the FBI. So the background check found . . . nothing.
“The Pentagon has known for at least two decades about failures to give military criminal history information to the FBI,” the Associated Press informed, “including the type of information the Air Force didn’t report about the Texas church gunman. . . .”
The Obama administration, through its command of the military, failed to execute the law designed to keep guns out of dangerous hands. And it sounds like this failure dates back to Bush and Clinton days.
Where does the buck stop?
We don’t need gun control; we need government control.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Note also that the murderer, as Ben Shapiro recounted at National Review: “escaped from a mental institution in 2012, threatened his superior officers and attempted to smuggle weapons onto a military base to carry out those threats, cracked the skull of his infant stepson, beat his wife, abused a dog.”
The courageous and strong man repulses oppression, defends his life, his liberty, and his property; by his labor he procures himself an abundant subsistence, which he enjoys in tranquillity and peace of mind. If he falls into misfortunes, from which his prudence could not protect him, he supports them with fortitude and resignation; and it is for this reason that the ancient moralists have reckoned strength and courage among the four principal virtues.
On November 9, 1979, NORAD computers and the Alternate National Military Command Center in Fort Ritchie, Maryland, detected an apparent massive Soviet nuclear strike. After reviewing the raw data from satellites and checking the early-warning radars, the alert was cancelled.
“All animals are equal,” wrote George Orwell, “but some animals are more equal than others.”
That was the regime’s final slogan in Orwell’s allegorical novella, Animal Farm . . . and it currently serves as the operating principle for local government.
Well, at least in Washington, D.C., our country’s pig trough.
Washington Post reported that the District of Columbia’s Board of Ethics and Government Accountability spelled out the details of its official reprimand of Kaya Henderson, the former chancellor of D.C. Public Schools.
Henderson, the article explained, “violated the city’s Code of Conduct by granting permission for some people — including a White House official, an employee of the mayor’s office, a district principal and a former classmate — to choose the school they wanted their children to attend even though other D.C. families had to go through a competitive lottery system.”
Using one’s position of trust to hijack a public benefit and gift it to one’s cronies at the expense of everyone else is clearly corrupt. Henderson deserves more serious repercussions than a belated reprimand, especially since she has already moved on professionally. She now works as “a distinguished scholar in residence at Georgetown University,” researching “racial justice.”
Ms. Henderson offered weighty reasons for her cronyism. Regarding her special treatment for City Administrator Rashad Young, she offered that D.C. officials “do not necessarily get paid as much as we should.”
Young’s annual salary? $295,000 a year.
Did you also notice she said “we”? As chancellor, Henderson was paid a mere $284,000 a year.
Being “more equal” is nice. It’s especially nice to be friendly with those “more equal” folks, who can bestow a little more-equal-ness on you.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
“Knowledge is the conformity of the object and the intellect.”
Montana was admitted into the United States federal union as the 41st state on November 8, 1889. On the same date in 1960, John F. Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon in one of the closest presidential elections of the 20th century, becoming the 35th president of the United States.
Roger Stone is suing Twitter for kicking him out.
Without saying exactly why they booted him, Twitter implies that the reason is abusive language. For his part, Stone accuses the social media giant of targeting right-wing tweeters while letting left-wing tweeters off the hook for the same or worse alleged wrongdoing.
I’ll stipulate that Stone is justified in accusing Twitter of rank, ideologically motivated hypocrisy in applying its micro-blog policies. But he’s wrong to sue.
As I have argued before — indeed, just yesterday — government should not regulate Internet forums and should not compel Twitter or other firms to provide a soapbox for anybody else. The only relevant legal issue here is whether Twitter has violated a contract. But Twitter does not agree to let anyone use its services unconditionally. And I don’t think that Stone is alleging any violation of contract.
Our right to freedom of speech does not include the right to force others to give us access to their property in order to exercise that freedom. Nor do the rights of any individuals to use and dispose of their own property disappear if they happen to create a very big and successful enterprise. There are many ways to try to make Twitter pay for bad policies without using force against the company, including boycott and direct competition.
I agree with the guy who said that one’s right to freedom is not contingent upon a guarantee “that one will always do the right thing as others see it.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
The U.S. Congress overrode President Richard M. Nixon’s veto of the War Powers Resolution on November 7, 1973. This resolution ostensibly limits presidential power to wage war without congressional approval, hence Nixon’s veto. Nowadays, however, it is often referred to as the expansive terms for the “Imperial President’s” license to engage in military conduct, and a dereliction of congressional duty to direct the United States’ foreign policy and warfare.
That individuals have no inherent obligation to do things for the benefit of others does not entail that they will be selfish or that they cannot bind themselves contractually, such as in marriage. On the contrary, it is the dependency state that has undermined the family by playing the husband’s role in ‘one-parent families.’ The church and the state by their natures compete with the power of the family. In fact, the original aspirations of these institutions is typically to destroy family life if only they can. . . . The market, by comparison, will considerably reinforce the family if it is only allowed to do so.