Tag: Dick Durbin

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First Amendment rights media and media people national politics & policies U.S. Constitution

Dick Durbin’s Dangerous Idea

Politicians think in terms of institutions. If you identify yourself as an individual, a mere citizen, pfft: you’re nothing. But say you are from a lobbying group, or a government bureau, or a news organization — suddenly you matter.

That’s even how they interpret the Constitution.

They are wrong.

Back in May, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin expressed doubt whether “bloggers, or ‘someone who is Tweeting,’ should be given media shield rights.” He believes a big unanswered question looms:

What is a journalist today in 2013? We know it’s someone that works for Fox or AP, but does it include a blogger? Does it include someone who is tweeting? Are these people journalists and entitled to constitutional protection?

Durbin thinks he’s both clever and profound to ask “21st century questions about a provision in our Constitution that was written over 200 years ago.”

But he is actually missing the whole enchilada, the point of the Constitution.

First, our two-​century old freedoms don’t have an expiration date. Second, individuals have rights, not “institutions.” And not because we belong to a group. Either everyone has a basic right, or no one does.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds countered Durbin’s institutional prejudice with a fine piece in the New York Post, where he takes a common sense position: “a journalist is someone who’s doing journalism, whether they get paid for it or not.”

Reynolds reminds us that, in James Madison’s time, “it was easy to be a pamphleteer … and there was real influence in being such.”

Just so for today’s Tweeters and bloggers.

Hey: as far as I’m concerned, you’re being a journalist just for commenting on this at ThisIsCommonSense​.com.

I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies too much government

Unkinder Cuts

The Republicans’ proposed cuts to the federal budget are called “deep” in Washington. So deep that Democrat Sen. John Kerry called them terrible, and Illinois Senator Dick Durbin protests that “Republicans are unfairly and unwisely placing the burden of spending cuts on domestic programs. Durbin tells Fox News Sunday he’s ‘willing to see more deficit reduction, but not out of domestic discretionary spending.’”

The Democrats have offered, instead, a shallower set of cuts, of $6.5 billion from domestic spending, hardly a tenth of what the Republicans offer.

But what the Republicans offer is only 5 percent of the budget deficit. Not the budget, mind you, just the Godzilla-​sized deficit.

I’m curious where Durbin wants to cut. He’s offered no reduction in domestic “mandatory spending,” which is made up chiefly of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest on the debt. Barring repudiating the debt, where would he attack the budget?

That leaves one huge hunk open for paring down: war spending. But realize that shutting down our entire military, zeroing it out, wouldn’t completely close this deficit. To make substantial Defense Department cuts, we’d have to extricate ourselves from wars abroad or pull our troops out of Europe and Japan and Korea, etc. All things I think we can, should and must do.

Talk is cheap, and awfully vague. “A terrible idea”; “unfairly and unwisely” … as if our current budget mess wasn’t the result of a thousand terrible ideas … and unfair and unwise spending galore.

The Republicans’ proposed cuts are disappointing. The Democrats’ objections? Witless.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.