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Common Sense crime and punishment folly general freedom ideological culture judiciary national politics & policies too much government

Just Doing Our Jobs?

I didn’t really want to talk about Kim Davis, County Clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky, who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-​sex couples. Last week, she got put in jail for not doing her job; this week, she got released.

Generally, I’m for people doing their jobs. Especially, those in government.

However, when they are instructed to do something destructive, I’d prefer they refrain. Unfortunately, government workers too often select the wrong things not to enforce. I could use a lot more “blue flu” over Drug War efforts, or stealing our property through civil forfeiture, or shooting pet dogs.

No such luck, usually.

Recently, a 17-​year-​old boy was charged, as an adult, for child pornography. But the “child porn” was a naked picture of his own body on his very own cell phone. A law designed to protect him from sexual exploitation was turned against him, making him a “sexual predator.”

The police and prosecutor in this North Carolina case didn’t really do their jobs.

In Washington County, Pennsylvania, a barbershop has been fined $750 for refusing to cut one woman’s hair. The owner claims he has nothing against doing women’s hair, but merely that this particular shop wasn’t set up to handle women’s typical hair concerns. Public servants fined him anyway.

Do we really need government to patrol beauty salons and barbershops for “discrimination” “crimes”?

After all, they cannot even patrol themselves coherently. Witness the messy case of Kim Davis, Democratic County clerk in rural Kentucky. About which I hope I need not say more.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Just Doing My Job, Collage, editorial

 

Categories
ballot access First Amendment rights general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall

Concerned and Confused

Why call it “political correctness,” when it’s simply “political” and so terribly incorrect?

Whatever we call it — “a totalitarian impulse” comes to my mind — placing Angela McCaskill on administrative leave from her job at Gallaudet University is just flat-​out wrong.

“It recently came to my attention that Dr. McCaskill has participated in a legislative initiative that some feel is inappropriate for an individual serving as Chief Diversity Officer,” Gallaudet President T. Alan Hurwitz wrote, last week, on the University’s Facebook page. McCaskill’s alleged transgression was to sign a petition to refer the Legislature’s same-​sex marriage law to the ballot for Maryland voters to decide, and potentially overturn.

Hurwitz didn’t mention any specific policy violated by McCaskill. Worse, while acknowledging her “right to sign a petition,” Hurwitz added, as if in clarification, that “many individuals at our university were understandably concerned and confused by her action.”

There appears to be much confusion at Gallaudet … about the meaning of freedom.

President Hurwitz, who faces criticism from both proponents and opponents of the same-​sex marriage referendum that started this fracas, claimed to be confident that a “resolution of this matter can be reached,” hazarding that it “will require that she and the university community work together to respond to the concerns that have been raised.”

A “resolution”? McCaskill has an attorney, and the greater likelihood is a large lump sum settlement for violating her civil rights.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.