Lives in a Shoe

Who Runs the World? Scott Explains It All to You

 

 

When in the Course of Human Events...

One of the Founding Fathers, John Adams, predicted that Independence Day would become America’s greatest holiday. This is what he wrote to his wife Abigail on July 3rd 1776: “(This) the Second Day of July 1776 will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.” Adams got the day wrong, though. Congress voted for independence on July 2nd 1776, but didn’t approve the text of the declaration until the Fourth.

Former KGB Chief Alexandrov Oblast Named New FBI Head

TRY TO KEEP UP --

The Plantain has learned from highly questionable sources we made up that the Trump administration will name former KGB Chief Alexandrov Vladimir Oblast as the new FBI head.

 

Democracy: Two Wolves and a Sheep Voting on What's for Dinner.

...and some of us maybe do not remember our civics lessons so well.  The good folks at The Peoples Cube are here to help:

Now that everybody has discovered that we have an Electoral College and that the cat's out of the bag, so to speak, let's take a quick look at why we have what on the surface appears to be a quirky method of choosing our executive head.

  We all remember the Great Compromise, right?  That was when at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 two plans of representation were proposed, each with a legitimate argument in favor of it. Virginia, the most populous state, naturally thought a legislature in which states were represented by population was fair. After all, why should the clear majority of the people be effectively thwarted by a small state? The New Jersey delegates, needless to say, saw it differently. Each state should be represented equally. After all, why should a small state be rendered irrelevant by a domineering large state?  

So, what to do? A Connecticut delegate, Roger Sherman, seeing the justice of both positions, proposed that both could be done. He wasn't the first to conceive of the idea, but he did manage to persuade the Constitutional Convention to buy into the idea. Thus was born a bicameral (two house) legislature in which there would be a House of Representatives in which states would be represented by population, and a Senate in which states would be represented equally. For a bill to become law requires the approval of both houses.

The Electoral College is an extension of the Great Compromise. As James Madison put it in Federalist # 39, "The votes allotted to them are in a compound ratio, which considers them partly as distinct and coequal societies, partly as unequal members of the same society." This is why each state has a number of electors determined by a simple formula: # of representatives + # of senators = # of electors. This allows for a larger voice for the more populous states, but also prevents the less populous states from being rendered voiceless in choosing a president.

But why a group of electors? Alexander Hamilton put it this way in Federalist # 68, "They [the delegates to the Convention] have not made the appointment of the President to depend on any preexisting bodies of men, who might be tampered with beforehand to prostitute their votes; but they have referred it in the first instance to an immediate act of the people of America, to be exerted in the choice of persons for the temporary and sole purpose of making the appointment." In the context of hampering a foreign power from influencing our elections (The Russians! The Russians!), the electors are to be temporarily assigned the task of choosing the president and going home. That they are not in public office nor a permanent institution means they are less likely to be subject to corrupting influences.

In one of my Government classes, we discussed hopeful Oregonians wanting to secede from the Union and perhaps join with California, Washington, and British Columbia to form the new country of Cascadia (apparently they presume Canadians will have the same fervor for secession), and henceforth choose their president strictly by popular vote. One of my students, a freshman, pointed out that if they did, California would dominate all the presidential elections making the votes of the other regions irrelevant. Precisely.

Sobran Reminder

 

Getting Your Mind Right

Dear attorneys general, conspiring against free speech is a crime: Glenn Reynolds in USA Today:

I wonder if U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker, or California Attorney General Kamala Harris, or New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman have read this federal statute. Because what they’re doing looks like a concerted scheme to restrict the First Amendment free speech rights of people they don’t agree with. They should look up 18 U.S.C. Sec. 241, I am sure they each have it somewhere in their offices.

Here’s what’s happened so far. First, Schneiderman and reportedly Harris sought to investigate Exxon in part for making donations to groups and funding research by individuals who think “climate change” is either a hoax, or not a problem to the extent that people like Harris and Schneiderman say it is.

Read the whole article -- you need to pay attention.

 

 George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four described “crimethink” as entertaining thoughts unacceptable to the government. Decades ago, the U.S. Supreme Court anticipated this horrific hypothetical when Justice Robert Jackson wrote:

 If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.
— West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943)

 == Power Line, Scott Johnson

 

 

 

Keep An Eye On It

Circle April 24 on your calendar. 
Six years ago, Tax Freedom Day fell on April 12, five days before tax day. In 2016, Tax Freedom Day isn’t unti April 24; an astonishing 12 days later than in 2011, thanks to tax hikes including Obamacare.

 

 Some young people I know have no idea what Tax Freedom Day is.  For them, this quick explanation:  That is the day when you have earned enough, if all you earned until then is given to the government, for the remaining earnings of the year to be considered yours.  Keep an eye on government bloat and overreach because it matters.