How James Madison can defeat Rudy Giuliani

One of the problems with judicial activism is that any right invented by the Supreme Court can be uninvented by the Supreme Court.

Take privacy rights.

The Republican presidential candidates are trying to.

If you watched the debate last night on CNN, you may have noticed the bland and calm manner in which the GOP presidential candidates discussed the necessity of overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, so the states can decide for themselves what criminal penalties to impose on women and their doctors.

You may not feel so bland and calm about that.

You are not alone.

But if you want to protect the constitutional right to privacy, you will first have to recognize that there is no constitutional right to privacy. It was imagined into the Constitution by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1965, and it can be imagined right out again if the justices get a case that persuades any five of them to reconsider the issue.

What we need, if we want to secure the right to privacy, is a constitutional amendment.

Ask yourself this: Why would the retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens or Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg threaten a woman's right to choose, but not her right to vote?

Here's the answer: Because a woman's right to vote is written in the plain language of the Constitution, put there by the 19th Amendment in 1920. A woman's right to choose, also known as the right to privacy in the first trimester of pregnancy, was invented by a divided Supreme Court in 1973.

As long as we allow Supreme Court decisions to substitute for constitutional amendments, our rights will be at risk every time a Supreme Court justice leaves the bench.

It's not just privacy that's at risk, either. The Constitution has never been amended to prohibit discrimination on the basis of race or gender. Modern scholars insist that the framers of the post-Civil War Fourteenth Amendment intended to prohibit racial discrimination, but they will have to explain why language that would have done so was cut out of the Civil Rights Bill of 1866 and killed in the subcommittee that was drafting the Fourteenth Amendment.

We should correct that ugly error and amend the Constitution to prohibit race and gender discrimination.

Perhaps you're saying, "Oh, that's not necessary." Fine. Have it your own way.

But remember that you said that the next time there's a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court, when there's panic in the air because the president promised to appoint judges who will strictly interpret the Constitution.

Remember it when you see sober and respected people and Senator Ted Kennedy openly warning that the next Supreme Court justice could be the vote that rolls back fifty years of progress on civil rights and women's rights.

Remember it when the presidential campaign turns to the issue of judicial nominations, and you hear scary warnings that some of the most important issues in American life are going to be decided by the vote of the Supreme Court justice who is appointed by the president who got the job because he won over five more Iowa farmers than the other guys and then eked out a victory in Ohio.

Remember that this is not the deal we signed. The framers of the Constitution deliberately excluded the judiciary from policymaking.

Instead of searching for test cases to bring to the Supreme Court and hoping for decisions that will secure our rights, we should amend the Constitution, the way George Washington and James Madison told us to.

Perhaps this kind of thinking has gone out of style.

Well, if Republicans succeed in getting Roe v. Wade overturned, the fashions may change in a hurry.



Copyright 2007


Source note: For details and citations on the 1965 and 1973 privacy decisions, and for more information on the Civil Rights Bill of 1866 and the drafting of the Fourteenth Amendment, please see the appendix to The 37th Amendment, "How the First Amendment Came to Protect Topless Dancing," at http://www.ExtremeInk.com/appendix.htm.

Editor's note: You may be interested in the essay, "Why There is No Constitutional Right to Privacy, and How to Get One," and "A Retirement Plan for Sandra Day O'Connor." You might also like to read the earlier post, "The cat, the bag, and Justice Scalia."

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A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Mosque

Now this is funny....



That's a picture of Haider al-Bahadli (the bride) and Abbas al-Dobbi (the groom), two terror suspects who were stopped by soldiers at a checkpoint north of Baghdad when their convoy attracted attention.

This is a picture of Jack Gilford (in the white) and Zero Mostel (in the red), in the 1966 musical comedy, "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum."



Larry Gelbart, if you're reading this, I will work for you for free on a sequel. Drop me a note at Susan@ExtremeInk.com.


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Hillary Clinton and the broken record

America Wants to Know had two glasses of wine at Thanksgiving and bet a cousin a hundred bucks that the Democratic party will lose fifty states next November if its nominee for president is Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The effect of the wine has long since worn off, and we still think so.

Seriously.

The Republicans would have to nominate Pat Robertson to lose to her.

Losing is one thing, you might think, but fifty states? How do you figure?

The Democrats have come close to it a couple of times. George McGovern lost 49 states to Richard Nixon in 1972 and Walter Mondale lost 49 states to Ronald Reagan in 1984.

And you may remember that in the two most-recent presidential elections, Al Gore and John Kerry were advised by their pollsters to distance themselves from Bill Clinton. For whatever reason that advice was given, and given twice consecutively, Hillary Clinton has a serious problem with key constituencies in key states.

That's if voter turnout is about the same as it was in 2000 and 2004.

Voter turnout is generally pretty low in U.S. elections, unless people are really upset.

Polls say something like half the country would never, ever, under any circumstances vote for Hillary Clinton.

That's another way of saying that a lot of people would be really upset at the thought that she might become president.

It's another way of saying that if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee, people will be coming out of their graves to vote against her.

People will be dragging their neighbors out of their houses and bringing them to the polls to vote Republican.

They will be standing in line at daybreak to vote Republican.

They will be rolling up on gurneys from the hospitals to vote Republican.

Meanwhile, Democratic voters will be driving in circles, looking for their polling place, on Wednesday.

Fifty states.

Bet on it.


Copyright 2007

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Looks like he's still got it

GQ magazine followed Bill Clinton around Africa earlier this year and the interview and photographs are on the magazine's web site.

Here's one of the images by photographer Brigitte Lacombe:



The former president told interviewer George Saunders that he never gets much sleep when he's in Africa, "mostly because I get excited, you know?"

There's never a special prosecutor around when you need one.




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A horrible Thanksgiving tradition

The Food Network just televised Emeril Lagasse's Thanksgiving salute to the troops.

The celebrity chef was in New Jersey to cook one of his dazzling holiday dinners for U.S. troops at McGuire Air Force Base and Fort Dix. The program was a salute to the troops who are giving up holidays with their families to fight the war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

At the end of the show, the credits said this: "Copyright 2003."

The show was produced in November, 2003.

It is 2007, and it is time we recognized something.

What is going on in Iraq and Afghanistan is not a war. If it was a war, we would have won it by now.

Take a look at this Associated Press photo by photographer Hadi Mizban:



Those men should be in police uniforms, not military uniforms.

This AP photo was captioned, "A small girl pauses as U.S. army soldiers patrol a street in Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, Nov. 15, 2007. Violence in Baghdad is running well below the levels of last year, with the death toll for both Iraqis and Americans falling dramatically for two months running."

While it is always welcome news that violence is down and death tolls are lower, it does not prove that U.S. policy is on the right track. It only proves that the United States military has become an effective police force on the streets of Baghdad.

Congratulations to them on a job well done. It should never have been their job in the first place.

The success of President Bush's policy should not be measured by the death toll in Baghdad or Kabul. The policy will be a success when U.S. troops are back in the U.S., and when Iraq and Afghanistan have governments that can stand on their own without carrying out massacres of their opponents.

There is no reason to think that is going to happen.

President Bush's policy is a failure.

Somebody in Washington had better get a grip on reality before Emeril Lagasse joins Burl Ives as a permanent holiday perennial.


Copyright 2007

Editor's note: You might be interested in the essay, "The Motive for War: How to Stop the Violence in Iraq" at www.SusanShelley.com.

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The strange but true source of extreme partisanship

NBC's Tim Russert interviewed Ronald Brownstein and Michael J. Gerson on his weekly show, which was shown this morning on one of NBC's cable networks. The former Los Angeles Times political reporter and the former adviser and speechwriter to President Bush have each written a new book expressing frustration with the state of politics in Washington, D.C.

Mr. Brownstein's book is titled "The Second Civil War: How Extreme Partisanship Has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America."

Mr. Gerson's book is called "Heroic Conservatism: Why Republicans Need to Embrace America's Ideals (And Why They Deserve to Fail If They Don't)."

For an hour, these three intelligent, knowledgeable men discussed the increasingly nasty partisan split in American politics, and how it prevents the federal government from addressing "issues Americans care about," as Mr. Brownstein put it, like health care and energy and immigration. Mr. Gerson lamented that partisanship keeps the government from taking bold action on great moral issues like disease in Africa. Mr. Russert expressed a yearning for the unified spirit of America during World War II.

All three men agreed that the bipartisanship which prevailed in Washington during the 1950s and 1960s is gone, and that the country is worse off for it. They blamed talk radio, the Internet, and Tom DeLay.

America Wants To Know holds a B.A. in history and was asked more than once, "A degree in history? What can you do with that?!"

You can't do much with it. But you can explain to Tim Russert, Ron Brownstein, and Mike Gerson that the extreme partisanship in Washington is a direct, unintended consequence of campaign finance reform.

It is no coincidence that the halcyon era of good feelings these men remember came to an end in the 1970s. The Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 and the post-Watergate amendments to that act in 1974 put strict limits on campaign contributions. A "loophole" that allowed unlimited donations to political party organizations was closed in 2002 with the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, also known as McCain-Feingold. As a result of the reforms, candidates who once could raise large amounts of money from a few donors were forced to raise small amounts from many donors.

Anyone who works on Madison Avenue could tell you that fear is an effective tool for separating people from their money.

If you have to motivate a lot of people to write small checks to your campaign, you have to conjure up images of scary enemies and dire consequences. A calm appeal to the spirit of compromise is not going to do it.

When was the last time you opened a direct-mail fundraising letter with the words "Reasonable people can differ" printed on the envelope?

Let's face it: paranoid, hostile, frightened groups are easy to find and even easier to shake down.

But then they're in the hallways with signs after you get elected.

Nothing's free.

Ayn Rand wrote, "A wrong premise does not merely fail, it achieves its own opposite." The premise of campaign finance reform is that disproportionate influence is achieved through large contributions but not through small ones.

If you watch the Democrats court MoveOn.org and the Republicans court pro-life religious conservatives, you may see that Ayn Rand was right.

It's time to re-think campaign finance reform. Unlimited contributions with prompt and full public disclosure might be the answer. Then again, the First Amendment says "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech." We could always try that.


Copyright 2007

Source notes:

The history of campaign finance reform is available online in many different places; this link will take you to Wikipedia for an overview and bibliography, this link will take you to the Hoover Institution's Public Policy Inquiry on Campaign Finance History.

The Ayn Rand quotation is from the essay,"Altruism as Appeasement," reprinted in The Voice of Reason, available at Amazon.com, the Ayn Rand Institute's bookstore, and many other booksellers.

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Barry Bonds and the Constitution

Barry Bonds was indicted today, accused of lying to a federal grand jury when he testified that he never knowingly used illegal performance-enhancing substances.

He could have told the grand jury that he was not going to answer their questions at all. He had that right under the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment, and he will have that right again during his trial.

But there's another constitutional issue involved in this investigation, and it's more important than whether Barry Bonds told the truth to a grand jury.

The federal government has no constitutional authority to ban performance-enhancing drugs.

This is not to say that performance-enhancing drugs should not be banned. But the U.S. Constitution does not give Congress the authority to ban them.

In 1919, Congress passed a law banning the manufacture, sale and transportation of alcoholic beverages; but because the Constitution did not give Congress the power to regulate alcohol, Prohibition required a constitutional amendment. The 18th Amendment was passed by a two-thirds vote of the House and the Senate and then ratified by the legislatures of three-quarters of the states. In 1933, Prohibition was repealed by the 21st Amendment in the same manner.

If a lab in California manufactures a drug and sells it to a person in California who uses it in California, the U.S. Constitution says it's up to California to make that a crime.

James Madison explained it this way: "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite."

This is more than just a detail from your high school government class. The Constitution's limits on the power of the federal government are there to protect our freedom from being gradually revoked by our own elected officials. Freedom isn't a slogan. It's a condition that exists under a government of limited power.

The federal government conducted a four-year investigation into the illegal distribution of performance-enhancing drugs, and many people have been questioned and searched and hit with enormous legal bills. The machinery of federal law enforcement is a powerful and potentially oppressive force.

An investigation alone, even without an indictment, can destroy lives.

That's why it's important for the American people to hold the government to the constitutional limits of its powers. Whether it's Barry Bonds or a cancer patient with a prescription for medical marijuana, the targets of federal law enforcement have the right to question whether the law they have broken is constitutional or not. We all should question whether the law is constitutional or not.

It may not be popular to point this out. Steroids can be very dangerous. But constitutional limits on the power of a democratically elected government are the difference between a free country and mob rule.

Read more about it in "Marijuana, Prohibition and the Tenth Amendment" at www.SusanShelley.com.

Copyright 2007

Source note: The James Madison quotation is from Federalist No. 45, available online at http://thomas.loc.gov/home/histdox/fed_45.html.

Editor's note: You may be interested in the earlier post, "Barry Bonds' Big Asterisk."


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Saying something nice about Nancy Pelosi

America Wants to Know is not in agreement with the politics or policy goals of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, but it's time somebody pointed something out.

Speaker Pelosi is a strong, powerful woman.

And not once, not once, has she accused her critics, or the nation, of being afraid of a powerful woman. Or being uncomfortable with a powerful woman. Or trying to bring down a powerful woman.

Not once has Nancy Pelosi told reporters that "the boys" are ganging up on her. Not personally. Not through a surrogate.

Speaker Pelosi does the job and takes the heat. She never uses gender as an excuse, as a cover, as a defensive or offensive weapon.

America Wants to Know salutes her for that. The next time Katie Couric and Hillary Clinton let it be known that the world is against them because they're strong women, somebody should show them what a strong woman looks like.


Copyright 2007

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier posts, "Hillary Clinton and the basic bargain," and "Bob Schieffer's elegant exit."

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Warren Buffett's big con

Warren Buffett told the Senate Finance Committee Wednesday that the estate tax is a good thing.

"Dynastic wealth, the enemy of a meritocracy, is on the rise," the billionaire investor said. "Equality of opportunity has been on the decline. A progressive and meaningful estate tax is needed to curb the movement of a democracy toward plutocracy."

Mr. Buffett's advice, and his touching concern for the future of democracy, might be very persuasive if not for one thing.

He's in the insurance business.

This is what Insurance Journal had to say about Mr. Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway company earlier this year:

Berkshire's insurance division generated nearly 49 percent of the company's earnings before taxes last year, and, perhaps more importantly, the insurance companies generate billions of dollars that Berkshire can borrow to invest.

"Insurance is the most important part'' of Berkshire, said Andy Kilpatrick, whose 1,848-page book on Buffett fills two volumes in the 2007 edition.

Besides insurance companies that sell directly to consumers, Berkshire owns several reinsurance companies, such as General Re, that mainly sell insurance to other insurance companies.

You may have heard the term "estate planning" sometime in your life, but unless you've got a very large estate to plan, you probably don't know that "estate planning" is a term for avoiding the payment of estate taxes, and that one of the most commonly used instruments for avoiding the payment of estate taxes is life insurance.

Life insurance proceeds are tax-free to the survivors who collect the benefits. The proceeds can also be protected from taxation inside a trust through a variety of complicated tax strategies.

The insurance industry makes a lot of money by convincing wealthy people to take large amounts of money out of other types of investments and pay it to insurance companies, which will pay out tax-free death benefits at the unfortunate hour, after taking a nice commission and making good use of the premium payments as investment capital.

But if there's no estate tax, there's no need for estate planning.

Now, you may not know how much money the insurance industry would lose if people stopped buying life insurance products for estate planning.

But Warren Buffett does.

Somebody should ask him.


Copyright 2007

Source note: Insurance Journal, May 4, 2007, "At Buffett's Diversified Berkshire Hathaway, Insurance Still #1" by Josh Funk.

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Eliot Spitzer throws it into reverse

New York Governor Eliot Spitzer said Tuesday night he is giving up on his plan to offer driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. The opposition is just too overwhelming, he told the New York Times.

The New York Times didn't argue with him about that:

"Mr. Spitzer’s abandoning of his plan comes as a poll released Tuesday by Siena College found that seven in 10 New York voters who had heard about the plan — and more than 80 percent of the 625 registered voters polled had — opposed it. It also found that for the first time, more people viewed the governor unfavorably than favorably."

Governor Spitzer could have saved himself a lot of grief if he had kept up with America Wants to Know, which read the tea leaves in June of 2006 and published a post titled, "A wall and a bus ticket: The new shape of immigration reform."

Political forecasting aside, it's mystifying that so many otherwise-savvy politicians don't understand why it's such a big deal to offer driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.

So here's a concise explanation for politicians who would like to understand why seventy percent of registered voters are against the idea.

1. We should take our laws seriously or we should take them off the books. People who are in the country illegally should not be given an official government document or identification card that recognizes their residency in the country as if they have some kind of a legal right to be here.

2. It's a bureaucrat's daydream that illegal immigrants will "come out of the shadows" and admit on a government form that they are in the country illegally. A more likely outcome is this: illegal immigrants will produce phony documents and get driver's licenses under false names. Instead of adding to security, driver's licenses will add to security headaches. Soon, thanks to political correctness and anti-discrimination laws, no one will accept anyone's driver's license as a form of identification, and national ID cards will be forced down our throats.

There, that wasn't so hard, was it? Tune in next week when we'll explain to politicians why they shouldn't drink the stuff under the sink.


Copyright 2007


Editor's note: You might be interested to read "How to Get Congress to Foot the Bill for Illegal Immigration, and Fast" at www.SusanShelley.com.

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Getting the jokes: Argus Hamilton on Countdown

Comedian Argus Hamilton appeared on Countdown with Keith Olbermann on Friday. If you're missing your favorite monologue during the Writers Guild strike, check out www.ArgusJokes.com.

Argus ran out of time before he could get to our favorite Ron Paul joke:

"GOP candidate Ron Paul took in four million dollars in donations Monday. The longtime Texas congressman and gynecologist vows to pull out of Iraq immediately and abolish the IRS. He is a lot like Reagan except those aren't his feet in the stirrups."

Here's the clip from MSNBC.


Missing the punchline

Read Argus every day at www.ArgusJokes.com or www.ArgusHamilton.com.


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Tabloid update: "Laura Calls Off Divorce!"

We promised to keep you up to date on the supermarket tabloid reports of the president's crumbling marriage, and in keeping with that pledge, we now bring you the highlights from this week's Globe.

The tabloid says Laura has called off the divorce after George agreed to all her demands. According to the Globe, the first lady demanded an end to "all talk of him and Condi" and to be "the only woman in his life." Mrs. Bush is also said to have demanded an escape from "the cookie-cutter image she's been forced into," and "a more visible role in the marriage and his administration."

The Globe gushes, "Her new power and prestige extends even to foreign policy, where with a concentrated zeal she has kept the pressure on crackpot potentates and criminal juntas and usurped the power formerly wielded by her love rival Rice!"

You gotta love this stuff.

America Wants to Know is a little skeptical that the first couple's marital troubles are behind them. Did you notice the romantic dinner the Bushes enjoyed this week as they celebrated their 30th anniversary? Formal attire, beautiful gowns, lobster bisque and lamb, a hundred and thirty-five guests -- oh, wait, that was the dinner for the president of France.

He's just gotten divorced, you know. He came to the White House alone. He kissed Laura's hand, and then her cheek, and then her other cheek.



And that was it for public displays of affection at the White House this week. The first couple's thirtieth wedding anniversary on Monday went by without even a mention on the White House web site.

That's not how it's generally done in politics. Wedding anniversaries are an opportunity to release nice pictures and little news items about romantic gifts in an attempt to goose the president's approval rating with people who find that kind of thing reassuring.

Not a word.

That marriage is so over.


Copyright 2007

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier tabloid updates, Laura's secret divorce diary" and "Bush marital turmoil."

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The fools at the Guild

America Wants to Know has some familiarity with the problems involved in talent union strikes (See "Actors Are Surer Bet to Win Ad Strike" and "The Screen Actors Guild and the Commercials Strike of 1978-79") and is sympathetic to the goals of the Writers Guild in its fight with motion picture and television producers.

But this strike is the biggest mistake since the merger of Time Warner and America Online.

The writers are angry and resentful that they were muscled into accepting a chintzy cut of DVD sales during earlier contract negotiations, and now that DVDs are about to follow eight-track tapes into the giant technology graveyard in the sky, the writers want a reasonable share of revenue from Internet and new media distribution of their work.

Here's a prediction: the writers will stay out on strike for six months, the TV schedule will groan under the weight of dancing celebrities, and in the final analysis, the writers will get nothing from Internet and new media distribution.

Here's another prediction: the companies that own studios and networks will spend a bottomless pit of money keeping up with the endlessly changing technological wizardry that allows TV shows and movies to be distributed on devices that look like props from Get Smart, only to discover that the secure encryption they paid fortunes to develop was just defeated by a fifteen-year-old boy in Amsterdam on a dare from two of his friends.

Here's another prediction: the advertisers that cheerfully sign deals to push their advertising into the faces of people who are using the Internet will learn that people don't really look at advertising on the Internet; and if they do, it's only to find the "Skip This Ad" button, because the blinking animation is slowing everything down or blocking the content that took ten minutes to find. And wait until advertisers find out how many of the Internet users they think are live people are actually click-fraud, robots, spiders, and various other human-free site-reading devices that will never buy a car or a new color laser printer.

It's just bad news all around.

The best way to make money on the Internet is to fool Wall Street investors into thinking you've got something that one day will make a lot of money on the Internet. Be sure to sell your stock before they find out the truth, which is that everybody using the Internet wants everything for free, and if you don't give it to them, somebody else will.

Here's some free advice for the Writers Guild. Let it go. Secure your pension and welfare benefits and get your money up front.


Copyright (like it helps) 2007.

Editor's note: You might be interested in this Los Angeles Times story from 11-8-07, "AOL Plunge Overtakes Time Warner Profit," by Times staff writer Thomas S. Mulligan.

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Cliff Notes for The 37th Amendment

This writer would like to thank all the teachers who have assigned The 37th Amendment: A Novel in their classes.

Recently it has come to my attention that many people are searching for Cliffs Notes for The 37th Amendment.

At this time, there are no Cliffs Notes for The 37th Amendment.

And now a word to all the people who are searching for a quicker way to read the book.

It's not Moby Dick, for goodness' sake. You'll like it. Just read it.

Honestly, you'll enjoy it. Have I ever lied to you before? All right, have I lied to you yet today?

Now a word to the people who object to the sex scenes in the book.

Let's see you write a book about due process of law and get anybody to read it.

However, if there are any teachers out there who would like to have their classes read The 37th Amendment but think it's a little too racy, drop me a note at Susan@ExtremeInk.com. If the demand is there, I'll publish a school edition that doesn't include the R-rated scenes.

Thanks again.

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Impeaching Dick Cheney

Rep. Dennis Kucinich introduced a resolution today calling for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney, and the House leadership was unable to kill it.

Apparently Republicans decided the debate over impeachment would so horrify the American people, Democrats would pay an enormous political price for it.

We'll see.

America Wants to Know called for the impeachment of Vice President Cheney back in July, when a new biography by Stephen Hayes revealed that the vice president illegally authorized the shoot-down of U.S. passenger planes over Washington, D.C., without even informing the president or the defense secretary until much later.

The vice president is not in the military chain of command. If the president is unreachable or incapicitated, the power to order the shoot-down of a plane belongs not to the vice president, but to the Secretary of Defense.

You can read that July 18 post, "Dick Cheney's impeachable offense," at this link.

America Wants To Know does not agree with Rep. Dennis Kucinich very often (okay, never), but we are forced to concede in this case that even a broken clock is right twice a day.

C-SPAN has links to the impeachment resolution, or click here.

Copyright 2007

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Ron Paul supporters pay troops' return fare

The Ron Paul campaign raised over $4 million in one day yesterday. "Earth-shattering, jaw-dropping" the campaign's e-mail said, and that was when the total was just $3.8 million dollars. The campaign said it took in more than 35,000 donations, 21,000 from new donors.

Ten-term Texas Congressman Ron Paul wants to reduce the amount of money America spends overseas on military installations and foreign aid, and use that money to reduce the deficit and keep programs like Social Security and Medicare solvent for all the people who depend on them.

He says the Iraq war was a mistake, begun without the constitutionally required declaration of war from the U.S. Congress. He says it is making the people of the United States less safe, not more safe. He wants to bring U.S. troops home immediately.

He is opposed to a nuclear first-strike against Iran.

He favors a return to sound currency so the purchasing power of the dollar doesn't decline every year and reduce your standard of living.

He favors less government, more freedom, and lower taxes. He wants to abolish the IRS and fund the federal government the way it was funded before the income tax was instituted early in the twentieth century.

He says the government would work a lot better if we would just follow the Constitution.

If you've ever paid ten dollars to see a movie, you didn't get as good a show as this would be.

Drop by RonPaul2008.com and pick up a button.


Copyright 2007

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier posts, "Why you should vote for Ron Paul," "Ron Paul's military secret" and "Ron Paul's good question."


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The trouble with waterboarding

President Bush threatened last week to leave the job of Attorney General vacant for the rest of his presidency if the U.S. Senate insists on asking his nominee for a legal opinion on the practice of waterboarding.

Some days it's hard to remember we're living in America and not in a George Orwell novel.

Just for the sake of sanity and clarity, let's review the problem with waterboarding (an "enhanced interrogation technique" that simulates the sensation of drowning), as well as the problem with denying terror suspects the right of habeas corpus, access to attorneys, and the rest of the ancient judicial protections that the Bush administration considers such a hindrance in the fight for freedom.

The problem is that they might have the wrong guy.

Now you have to ask yourself: What is your tolerance for mistakes?

If a suspect is wrongly accused and he is held for three weeks, or even three months, until the judicial system determines that he is the unfortunate victim of an error, you're probably okay with that.

But what if a suspect is wrongly accused and he is held forever in a prison outside the United States, with no access to courts or lawyers, with no rights, with no way to prove that he is innocent of any crime, real or imagined.

Are you okay with that?

What if a suspect is wrongly accused and he is interrogated with secret "techniques" that include the sensation of drowning and the terror of imminent death?

How does that sit with you?

Legal protections like habeas corpus do not exist to protect guilty people from justice. They exist to protect innocent people from wrongful imprisonment.

We do not know how many people have been picked up by agents of the United States government and subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques." We do not know how many of those people were fingered by someone who lied, possibly under duress. Everything in the war on terror is secret and there is no way to verify that what the government is doing in the name of keeping us safe is necessary or justified, or even legal.

Is that fine with you?

Maybe you feel a little overwhelmed by the question. No one wants to make a mistake and release a murderous terrorist who will kill hundreds or thousands of people.

That's why the U.S. Constitution does not ask you to answer that question. The framers of the Constitution carefully and thoughtfully devised a system to ensure that decisions about the use of government power were made by elected representatives who answered to the voters, and by judges who were protected from them.

One thing the framers did not do was allow the President of the United States to decide on his own when the country would go to war. "In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found," James Madison wrote in 1793, "than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department."

On Saturday, President Bush used his weekly radio address to warn that if the Senate continues to question Judge Michael Mukasey about secret interrogations, they would "guarantee that America would have no confirmed Attorney General during this time of war."

On the contrary, the Senate has both a right and an obligation to ask the President's nominee for Attorney General for his views on the legality of waterboarding and anything else the administration is doing in the war on terror. Only Orwell would have imagined that we would topple a dictator in Iraq and cave in to one in Washington.


Copyright 2007

Source note: James Madison, Letters of Helvidius, in Writings, ed. G. Hunt (New York, Putnam, 1900-1910) vol. 6, p. 174, quoted in Raoul Berger, Executive Privilege: A Constitutional Myth (Harvard Press, 1974) p. 65, 68-9. Here's a little more of the quotation:

Every just view that can be taken of this subject, admonishes the public of the necessity of a rigid adherence to the simple, the received, and the fundamental doctrine of the constitution, that the power to declare war, including the power of judging the causes of war, is fully and exclusively vested in the legislature; that the executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war; that the right of convening and informing congress, whenever such a question seems to call for a decision, is all the right which the constitution has deemed requisite or proper.

Editor's note: If you enjoy "what-if" fiction, you might be interested in The 37th Amendment, a legal thriller set in the year 2056, forty years after the U.S. Constitution is amended to repeal the guarantee of "due process of law."

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Barack Obama explains socialism

Four thousand supporters turned out for a rally with Senator Barack Obama in Durham, North Carolina, on Thursday. The Democratic presidential candidate said he would not take any questions, but he relented when a five-year-old girl named Hadassah Jones broke into tears. She was there as a correspondent for brandnewz.com.

According to the Associated Press story, Senator Obama gave the little girl a brief explanation of his plan for universal health insurance coverage and improved education. Then he explained his view that the wealthy should pay the expenses of people who are not wealthy:

"We've got to make sure that people who have more money help the people who have less money," Sen. Obama said. "If you had a whole pizza, and your friend had no pizza, would you give him a slice?"

Oh, my. He should have stuck to his plan to take no questions.

Senator Obama glossed right over the difference between a moral imperative to be kind to people and government force that throws people in jail if they refuse to pay up.

When a presidential candidate says "We've got to make sure," that is the language of government force.

Maybe the senator should have explained it to Hadassah this way:

"If you had a whole pizza, and your friend had no pizza, should you be expelled from school if you refuse to give him a slice?"

Or maybe he should have explained it this way:

"If your mommy and daddy worked very hard at their jobs and went to school at night so they could make enough money to give you everything you need, should they have to give that money to all the parents who dropped out of school and wasted their time, and to all the parents who spent their money on things that your parents passed up so they could support you?"

Or maybe he could have explained it this way:

"If you build a lemonade stand and buy lemons and sugar and pitchers and cups and stand out in the hot sun all day selling lemonade, and at the end of the day you have fifteen dollars, whose money is that? Is the answer the same if it's only two dollars? What if it's fifty dollars?"

This is not an argument over giving away a slice of pizza. This is an argument about the morality of collectivism. When Senator Obama, and almost all other politicians, make their arguments for fairness and compassion, they are advocating not voluntary charitable giving, but government confiscation of some people's property for the benefit of other people, chosen by the government on the basis of need, or perhaps voting record.

Do the fruits of your labor belong to you, or do they belong to the people who most need them?

And if they belong to the people who most need them, are you a slave to the needs of people you don't know and can't control?

Collectivism is not the opposite of capitalism. It's the opposite of freedom.

Even a five-year-old should know that.


Copyright 2007

Editor's note: You might be interested to read "The Tyranny of the Children" and "Defending Capitalism" at www.SusanShelley.com, and the recent post, "Barack Obama: 'We don't mind...'".


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The revolt at the State Department

Washington Monthly founder Charles Peters used to say that the unofficial motto of the Foreign Service was, "Never leave the cities where the good bars are."

That's what came to mind as the story broke this week that two hundred Foreign Service Officers jammed a town hall meeting at the State Department Wednesday to tell their employers they refuse to accept forced assignments in Iraq.

It's a "death sentence," one of them said bitterly.

On Thursday Congressman Duncan Hunter, a Republican presidential candidate who is also the ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, sent a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telling her to fire any Foreign Service Officer who refuses orders to deploy to Iraq. Rep. Hunter suggested that the State Department could find many brave volunteers for the diplomatic mission in the hospital beds at Walter Reed.

Rep. Hunter has a point. People who work for the State Department are obligated to carry out the wishes of the current administration, no matter how long they have worked there and no matter how wrong they believe the administration's policy to be.

But forcing State Department employees to choose between going to Iraq and quitting their jobs does not solve the underlying problem, which is that the policy is not working.

It's not starting to work. It's not working a little bit.

It's not working at all.

The reason it's not working is simple. We have tried to place a democratic government on top of a Stalinist economy.

In Iraq, the government owns the oil, the oil industry, and all the major industries of the country. They are called "state-owned enterprises." Here's what that means to an Iraqi: if you get on the wrong side of the government, you will not have a job.

Individuals in Iraq have no choice but to stay close to the nearest group leader and hope to get a share of the jobs and cash when the group secures control of the government.

It's an economic system that rewards blind loyalty. In practice, that means the people who plan and carry out the most effective attacks on the rival groups will be rewarded, or their survivors will be.

There is no path for an individual to achieve economic security. There is no private sector. There is no competitive market for labor. There is only the government, a Sopranos-style mob, rewarding loyal supporters and executing suspected traitors.

When the government owns everything, it cannot be otherwise. The most ruthless people rise to power and they will do anything to stay there.

But hold on a minute, you might say. Didn't millions of people turn out to vote in Iraq? Yes, they did. But under Iraq's economic system, elections are just another way to fight for all-or-nothing power. Of course the Iraqis voted. They voted the way their group leaders told them to vote. To do anything else would risk exclusion from the stream of cash that comes to loyal supporters when the group finally gets hold of the government's revenue.

The only thing that will bring peace and political stability to Iraq is full privatization of the state-owned enterprises. The government cannot own anything. It is worse than useless to propose partial privatization that gives a share of revenue to foreign companies while the rest goes to the Iraqi government. As long as the government receives the revenue from Iraq's industries, there will be a bloody struggle for control of the government.

It is time for Americans to stop demonizing capitalism and private industry profits. We, of all people, should know that America is not prosperous because Americans are smarter, or harder-working, or more religious, or blessed by God in ways that other people are not. America is prosperous because the government doesn't own the economy. America is prosperous because a free, private economy -- capitalism -- rewards innovation, hard work, trade, cooperation and investment instead of blind loyalty, frightened submission, and bloody vengeance.

If we want to get out of Iraq, we should not be sending Foreign Service Officers there. We should be sending capitalists. We should be sending business executives and financial experts and people who understand how to set up a private banking system and a working legal system to safeguard the private property of individuals. We should be using what influence we have left to pressure the Iraqi government to cash out and sell shares of the state-owned enterprises.

If we want to get out of Iraq, we should stop pretending that everything will be fine if the Iraqi government will just use its oil revenue to build schools and hospitals and day care centers. We should stop pretending that government officials can learn to be benevolent, caring, paternalistic saviors. We should stop pretending that Iraqi leaders will someday share oil revenue equally with their rivals.

If we want to get out of Iraq, we should stop acting like we lost the Cold War and stand up for private property and individual rights.

If we're not willing to do that, the Foreign Service Officers are correct. No American should be sent to die in Iraq.

Elect Ron Paul and bring them all home immediately.


Copyright 2007.

Editor's note: You might be interested to read "The Motive for War: How to End the Violence in Iraq" at www.SusanShelley.com.

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