Wherein, he uses a teleprompter to address 6th-graders:
Now, I don’t know about you, but when I took public speaking classes in middle school and high school, there was one rule — don’t sit there and read straight from your notes.
What’s next, he’s going to go into their algebra classes with a TI-89 graphing calculator to solve math problems?
Hat Tip: Reason
Smoking bans to get extended — Los Angeles wants to ban smoking on outdoor patios. Here’s the justification:
“We have an opportunity, folks, to extend and continue the great fight to get people out of the habit of smoking, to continue to protect the public health, which is really one of our main focuses and our responsibilities,”
One wonders… In the state of California, why don’t they just make cigarettes illegal? Why beat around the bush?
By driving a stake through the heart of McCain-Feingold:
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that corporations may spend as freely as they like to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress, easing decades-old limits on business efforts to influence federal campaigns.
By a 5-4 vote, the court overturned a 20-year-old ruling that said companies can be prohibited from using money from their general treasuries to produce and run their own campaign ads. The decision, which almost certainly will also allow labor unions to participate more freely in campaigns, threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states.
(…)
The justices also struck down part of the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill that barred union- and corporate-paid issue ads in the closing days of election campaigns.
As I’ve said many times before, the only campaign finance regulation that we need is full and complete disclosure.
Every candidate for Federal office should be required to disclose all contributions and disbursements and a regular basis (possibly even more frequently than the quarterly reports that are now the law), and that information should be easily available to the public so that people can know where a candidate’s money comes from and where it goes. After all, isn’t that what the First Amendment is really all about — let the information out and let the public decide what to think about it ?
Here’s the full opinion and dissent:
I’d like to claim that I’m not one to pick nits — but I’d be lying. So here is exhibit 10,483 in the “Brad takes part of a post he agrees with and spins it way out of context.”
The base post is about marriage and in support of gay marriage. But I found this analogy somewhat off:
What opponents of same-sex marriage cannot explain is how exactly same-sex marriage undermines the institution of marriage. It broadens the definition, to be sure; but that definition still includes opposite-sex marriage. We broadened the definition of voting when we allowed non-landowners, women, minorities, and 18-year-olds to vote. Democracy is a process of broadening; it’s an evolutionary thing.
You see, there’s a difference. Allowing gays to marry does not make my marriage to my wife any less meaningful. Just as the ability to find gay content on the likes of Gay Fuck Tube and similar sites, doesn’t stop straight men from enjoying the pornographic material of their preference. Allowing gays to marry does not infringe upon any of my natural rights. In fact, while I have no problem with gays (and have several gay friends), it doesn’t change the way anyone might think about gays. Gay marriage doesn’t stop homophobes from being homophobes just like Loving v. Virginia didn’t stop racists from hating blacks.
Democracy, though, is far less tolerant. The masses of the nation can democratically infringe upon my rights. They can forcibly seize more of my earnings as “taxes”. They can impose regulations on every aspect of my life, including how much water my toilet can flush. And worst of all, they hold in their power the ability to determine who I may or may not choose to marry. I’m lucky enough to be in the “politically favored” rather than the “minority” status on that one, but that doesn’t in any way change the nature of democracy. While I don’t oppose the expansion of voting on fairness grounds (it should be clear that I’m against democracy on its own merits), every expansion of voting only widens the pool of people who think they can tell me what I can and cannot do.
I don’t like the idea of comparing gay marriage to democracy. After all, one of the two should be opposed. Just not the one most people think.
Virgina Senator Jim Webb offers up one of the best perspectives on Scott Brown’s win tonight:
Calling the race “a referendum not only on health care reform but also on the openness and integrity of our government process” Webb said Democrats need to hold off on further action until Brown is formally sworn in to the chamber.
“It is vital that we restore the respect of the American people in our system of government and in our leaders. To that end, I believe it would only be fair and prudent that we suspend further votes on health care legislation until Senator-elect Brown is seated,” he said.
At the end of the day, I don’t believe health care has much to do with Scott Brown’s win. It may be the issue of the day, but Brown put out a message that resonates much more deeply in the American soul:
GERGEN: If this bill fails, it could well be another 15 years before we see another health care reform in Washington. Are you willing under those circumstances to say ‘I’m going to be the person. I’m I’m going to sit in Teddy Kennedy’s seat, and I’m going to be the person who’s going to block it for another fifteen years.
BROWN: Well, with all due respect it’s not the Kennedy seat, and it’s not the Democrats’ seat — it’s the people’s seat. And they have a chance to send someone down there who’s going to be an independent voter and an independent thinker and to look out for the best interests of the people of Massachusetts.
A month ago, this election was not even on the political radar. Martha Coakley was bound to win because the Democrats were entitled to Ted Kennedy’s seat. It was obvious that the seat would be passed from the Lion of the Senate to a political heir apparent, carrying forth his will for the next two years. How could it be any other way?
The Democrats made the mistake of making public their sense of entitlement. They pounded the idea that it was Ted Kennedy’s seat into the ground. They won in 2008 and they would keep winning. They believed they had the modern equivalent of the Chinese “Mandate of Heaven“.
The people of Massachusetts were ready to begrudgingly accept the inevitability of a Coakley win as little as two weeks ago. Then they heard a message that was as old as the American Republic: Heed no royalty. Scott Brown started campaigning for “the people’s seat” while the king-makers in the Democratic political machine were still crowing about their entitlement to “Ted Kennedy’s seat”.
But the message resonated even more deeply than that. The last decade has been one of secrecy and back-room deals designed to enrich and empower politicians at the expense of the ordinary citizen. Fourteen months ago, Barack Obama won an election on his promise to change that. So far, he has failed to live up to that promise. The people see a government united under a single political party that believes it is entitled to plow through an agenda without scrutiny from the average citizen.
Scott Brown, by running for “the people’s seat” and promising to be “the 41st vote against Obamacare”, provided the people of Massachusetts a chance to send Washington a message on secrecy and entitlement. The message was clear: enough is enough. What are the odds that the triumvirate at the top of the Federal government will heed it?
