Tag: constitution

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general freedom national politics & policies political challengers too much government U.S. Constitution

Is That a Constitution in Your Pocket?

Khizr Khan, Pakistan, Democrat, convention, Democratic, Donald Trump, illustration

“We were blessed to raise our three sons in a nation where they were free to be themselves and follow their dreams.”

Those eloquent words came from the lips of Khizr Khan, the Pakistani immigrant who spoke at the Democratic National Convention last week about losing his son, Capt. Humayun Khan, to a suicide bomber in Iraq.

Describing his family “as patriotic American Muslims with undivided loyalty to our country,” and charging that, “Trump consistently smears the character of Muslims.” Khan asked Donald J. Trump a great question: “Have you even read the U.S. Constitution?”

Then, reaching into his suit pocket, Khan pulled out a copy, adding, “I will gladly lend you my copy.”

Yesterday at Townhall, I declared Khan my Person of the Week. Not just because Mr. Khan is fond of handing out pocket-sized copies of the U.S. Constitution and told the New York Times that his “real hero” is Thomas Jefferson, but because he asked a great question.

Let’s ask all the candidates. That question, for sure, and three additional ones:

  1. Do you favor repealing parts of the First Amendment to allow incumbent congressmen to regulate their own campaigns and their opponents’ in regard to raising and spending money?
  2. In the Heller case, the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment provides individuals a “right to bear arms” — will you appoint justices who agree or disagree with Heller?
  3. As president, will you issue an executive order instructing all federal agencies and police agents to cease any use of civil asset forfeiture?

I’ve got more questions. I bet you do, too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Khizr Khan, Pakistan, Democrat, convention, Democratic, Donald Trump, illustration

 

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crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies political challengers U.S. Constitution

Faces Veiled, Fallacies Unveiled

Gary Johnson, libertarian, burka, Common Sense, illustration

A real-life politician has admitted to having been wrong, even going so far as to dismiss his own previous comment as “stupid.”

He wasn’t abject about it — didn’t “apologize.” He simply explained how and why he had erred.

This . . . from a presidential contender.

No, it wasn’t Hillary Clinton, she of many errors and untruths. It wasn’t Bernie Sanders, whose love of Big, Intrusive Government is an error in and of itself. And it wasn’t Trump, known hyperbolist.

The erring politician? Gary Johnson, a former two-term Republican governor of New Mexico.

Johnson, who is currently running for the Libertarian Party presidential nomination, told Reason last year that banning the burqa would be a reasonable step in protecting the rights of women. Here in America.

Sound sort of Trumpian?

Earlier this month, Johnson retracted his statement. Last week on Fox Business Network’s Kennedy, he explained why prohibiting the face-veil wouldn’t work.

“We need to differentiate between religious freedom, which is [sic] Islam, and Sharia law, which is politics,” he said — and I add a “sic” there because he is obviously driving at this point: religious freedom means we cannot prohibit the religion of Islam, but Sharia law amounts to a religious intrusion into the legal and political realm. And thus must be opposed as “contrary to the U. S. Constitution.”

The reason Johnson had earlier floated the banning of the Islamic face-veil was to save women from Islamofascist enforcement of Sharia’s mandate to go around in public only when completely covered.

“We cannot allow Sharia Law to, in any way, be a part of our lives.”

I’m with him. Let’s hold tight to both religious and political freedom. And how refreshing for a politician to admit an error.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Gary Johnson, libertarian, burka, Common Sense, illustration

 

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First Amendment rights folly general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies privacy U.S. Constitution

Our Masters’ Malign Agenda

Constitution, Bill of Rights, Politics, Terrorism, populism, Common Sense

Reacting to terrorism, President Obama’s first thought? Scratch out the Second Amendment and the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of “due process” from the Bill of Rights. Why? To advance his mania for gun control.

Now comes Republican front-runner Donald Trump, one-upping the president. He wants to block any Muslim from entering the U.S. — whether immigrant, refugee or even tourist.

That’s after advocating a government database for tracking American citizens who are Muslim.

Terrorism is winning.

Ignore the Constitution? Disregard individual rights? Demonize an entire religion? Thus our leaders play into ISIS’s hands, encouraging Muslims worldwide to see the U. S. as their enemy.

Cooler heads must prevail. Or else. A Republican friend posted on Facebook that he “would gleefully vote for Hillary Clinton over Trump.” I just cannot muster any glee.

In fact, I’m beginning (again) to wonder if John Fund wasn’t on to something last June, when he wrote in National Review that “just maybe Trump is a double agent for the Left.”

Think “Manchurian Candidate.”

“It’s all very un-American,” my friend Suhail Khan, an American Muslim and conservative activist, told the Washington Post. “Our country was based on religious freedom.”

No more?

Surely, our experiment in limited government has not ended.

But we need to get serious.

We must demand a real commitment from any candidate seeking the country’s highest office. To be entrusted to execute our union’s laws, he or she must actually demonstrate allegiance to the rule of law.

That is, a willingness to fit one’s ego within the confines of the Constitution.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Constitution, Bill of Rights, Politics, Terrorism, populism, Common Sense

 

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crime and punishment education and schooling folly general freedom too much government

Under Their Thumb

Free Range Kids

What if police grabbed your children off the street and held them for five hours?

Alexander and Danielle Meitiv of Silver Spring, Maryland, have been investigated three times. First, when their children were discovered playing by themselves in a park a block from their home. The second time when police picked up the kids walking home from a park about a mile away. The third investigation was launched when the Meitiv’s 10-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter were arrested and held for five hours for walking home from a different park.

Nothing came of the first investigation. In the second, CPS originally found the couple guilty of “unsubstantiated neglect.” But last week, the Meitivs received a letter from Maryland’s Child Protective Services (CPS) now ruling out neglect in the second investigation.

Gee whiz, it’s good news. But the Meitivs still have investigation No. 3 to contend with. And CPS remains completely mum on whether the agency’s letter means the Meitivs and other parents can now freely allow their kids to walk to and from public parks and other venues.

Or not.

Can we really live in the “Land of the Free” and our children not be free to walk in public? What kind of freedom is that?

If the Constitution isn’t sufficient to stop police and child welfare [sic] agencies from snatching kids off the street, terrifying them, investigating their parents and threatening to take those children, we need to pass new laws granting children the right to walk down the street . . .

. . . as long as it’s okay with their parents.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Free Range Kids

 

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Common Sense general freedom individual achievement meme U.S. Constitution

Everything That Could Be Done

Patrick Henry

Two hundred forty years ago, the situation was dire. In the Virginia Colony, not too far from where I live, representatives to the Second Virginia Convention were debating the problems they were having with their “masters” in Britain — and the more dangerous, violent situation that was developing to the north.

Several days into the convention, Patrick Henry spoke. His speech was rousing. And it changed minds, concluding with the famous words “give me liberty or give me death!” — an ultimatum quite stark indeed.

Mr. Henry was for action, and waiting no longer. Addressing himself to the president of the convention, he said, “Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves longer. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on.” And they had done a great deal, engaging in

– petitioning

– remonstration

– supplication

and, Henry went on, had even “prostrated ourselves before the throne.” And they got worse than the cold shoulder for all their efforts. They got the brush-off, the turn of the cold robe. Along with troops of occupation.

Hence the need for serious action.

Then, Americans were wrestling with the world’s most powerful nation: the British Empire. Today we again face the world’s most powerful empire: our own.

A federal regime similarly out of control in terms of spending and debt, arrogance and corruption, intrusiveness and incompetence. As if dictated by a know-it-all king of old, or a cabal of insiders acting as oligarchs.

Then it was a far-off Parliament; today it is our own far out-of-it representatives . . . duly elected.

We are engaged in a sort of class war, insiders vs. outsiders, and it is the insiders who are bringing the country to the brink of collapse.

The biggest difference between 1775 and 2015? We haven’t done all we can. There is much more to do. And possibly even succeed before the doom of another financial collapse, sovereign debt crisis, or . . . worse.

It often seems a Herculean task, but as Mr. Henry implored, “Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power.”

Let’s join together to give ourselves, our loved ones, and generations hence liberty.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Read the entire speech here

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The Meaning of "Liberal"

 

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ideological culture

Too Fine a Point

Whatever one makes of the direction Egypt is headed, the most ominous headline I’ve seen, recently, is the one that is ostensibly optimistic: “Egypt: 98.1% of voters approve constitution.”

That was in USA Today.

It is not, of course, believable.

What do more than 98 percent of America’s voters agree on?

Transplant that radical supermajority to Egypt, where politics is often deadly, a coup recently took out the biggest faction — and with it, the previous working constitution — and where the major faction is associated with terrorism and street violence, and we are to expect a consensus like this?

The title defeats itself, undermines itself.

It might as well have said, “This Title Is a Lie,” except without the paradox.

Then again, with only 38.6 percent of voters going to the polls, that 98.1 figure takes on a new meaning. Could it be that, of 38.6 percent of eligible voters actually voting, the ones who did show up were nearly unanimous in their support of the new regime?

More likely, but still not likely at all.

Revolutionary politics is an ugly business. And what we are to make of what’s really happening in Egypt is beyond my ken. I just know that 98.1 percent of Egyptian voters do not approve of the constitution.

But if this kind of nonsense gets reported with a straight face in America, it should make us more circumspect about the other information we receive about conflicts overseas.

I’m 98.1 percent confident of that opinion. At least.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture too much government U.S. Constitution

The 14th Amendment Escape Clause?

Just as Tea Party representatives begin to bring the Constitution back into vogue, primarily to curb the power and spending of Congress, an innovative interpretation of the 14th Amendment floats around the capital, finding enthusiastic supporters amongst advocates of never-ending debt accumulation.

You see, Congress has limited the debt, by law, since 1917. And has raised that limit umpteen times (ten times this past decade). Now that Tea Party Republicans are using the debt limit to negotiate cuts in spending, the pro-spending forces are becoming frantic.

And clever.

Some of them now argue that Section Four of the 14th Amendment would allow the president to raise the debt limit without Congressional permission. After all, “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”

At first blush this makes some sense, until one realizes that the 1917 law is, in fact, “the authorization” mentioned in the very clause — at which point the argument collapses faster than the integrity of politicians in closed session.

Still, the idea of the Executive Branch interposing between Congress and the people — like “state nullification” interposed, in James Madison’s very words, between the federal government and the people — is worth thinking about. And Congress could reinstate the president’s power to “impound” funds designated by Congress that he judges not authorized by the Constitution.

But you won’t find pro-spending forces advocating that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies U.S. Constitution

Reading Comprehension

Never has the Constitution been read on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. And, boy, does our political situation show it.

When the 112th Congress convenes this week, the law of the land — the limited, enumerated powers granted to the federal government by “We the People” in this 223-year old document — will for the first time be spoken aloud for all honorables to hear. It’s a quick read, less than 5,000 words, and presumably cameras will be rolling, so we’ll know if any elected representative sticks finger into ear during the recitation.

A hat-tip to the Tea Party movement, this reading of the Constitution is a great way to remind our legislators that such a document actually exists.

Even better, a new rule will be proposed requiring every piece of legislation to have affixed a citation “where in the Constitution Congress is empowered to enact such legislation.”

Sure, Washington pundits have mocked this newborn constitutionalism, crying “gimmick!” One history professor called it “entirely cosmetic.” Tea Party activists are skeptical, too. As they should be.

Neither reading the Constitution nor declaring the constitutional authority for legislation amounts to magic. But, with a political process in which politicians rarely recognize any limits to their wizardry, a requirement that Congress specifically pay attention to whether its actions are permitted by the Constitution is, well, really good.

Will it lead to Congress actually abiding by the limits of our Constitution? It certainly couldn’t hurt.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture

Tea Readers

According to a New York Times article by Kate Zernike, the “Movement of the Moment Looks to Long-Ago Texts.” A strange way of saying that Tea Party folks are reading, learning, and studying ideas older than those of, say, Paul Krugman.

Tea Partiers are reading classics . . . but ones not recognized as such by the New York Times:

  • Frédéric Bastiat, The Law
  • F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom
  • Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

Huh? That third book serves as an oddity on the list. It’s a handbook on street-level ways to effect political change. The left’s loved it for years. Now it’s in the hands of people with scant interest in mass expropriation or heavy, vindictive regulation, or a vast, tax-funded gimme-gimme state.

The article cites the “Austrian School of Economics” — a brand of economics that includes many of the most important free-market thinkers — as an important force, but merely mentions its 20th century leader, Ludwig von Mises, as if a duty. Bastiat, a French economist who died before the school was founded, is lumped in with Mises and Hayek, perhaps because he’s so radically anti-taxation that the Times hopes by mentioning his ideas over and over, readers might dismiss him as a nut.

That could backfire. Some of the Times’s smarter readers might become curious, reading Bastiat and Mises and Hayek with the notion of learning something.

Maybe they’ll even read the Constitution.

Wow. What a revolutionary thought.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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term limits

Long Time (1996+12=2008) Coming

Been a long time coming. The twelve-year term limits law passed by Nevada voters in 1996 is finally taking effect.

Except for state lawmakers elected in 1996, that is.

Nineteen ninety-six plus twelve equals 2008. But in 1996, legislators seized on a technicality to claim that — unlike for other office-holders — for them the count didn’t start until 1998. That’s because, under Nevada law, state lawmakers take office the day after the election. Yet it takes more than a day to ratify ballot results. So the argument goes that it would be unfairly “retroactive” to include the 1996 term in the twelve-year limit.

Inspect the Nevada constitution, and you’ll see provisions stating that no person may be elected to legislative or other elective office who “has served in that office . . . twelve years or more. . . .” Nothing about starting the clock on the date the ballot measure is ratified.

But in 1996 politicians and courts pretended the new law was not retroactive, and got away with it.

Come 2008, non-legislative office-holders finally facing term limits scavenged for yet another technicality. They claimed that the law is unconstitutional and should be thrown out altogether. Fortunately, the Nevada Supreme Court didn’t play along with the latest scam, so Nevada voters must wait only two more years for state lawmakers to be ousted by it.

Better late than never.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.