Sep
17
2010

Happy Constitution Day!

  • "Congress shall make no law…" Maybe they should have just stopped right there.

  • Speaking of the Constitution, Randy Barnett and William J. Howell propose the "Repeal Amendment":
    Any provision of law or regulation of the United States may be repealed by the several states, and such repeal shall be effective when the legislatures of two-thirds of the several states approve resolutions for this purpose that particularly describe the same provision or provisions of law or regulation to be repealed.
    Randy has more at Volokh. I'm usually not a fan of Tinkering with the Constitution, but I kind of like this.

  • At the "Torch", the blog of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), Azhar Majeed notes yet another school trampling the First Amendment:
    As the 2010 election season enters full swing, Grambling State University (GSU) is prohibiting its students and faculty members from engaging in a wide swath of constitutionally protected political expression. Today's press release details that the Louisiana public university has forbidden students and faculty from transmitting any "campaign solicitations" via the university's e-mail system, a ban that includes any message that "implies your support" for a political candidate.
    My day job is being a Computer Guy at a University which shall remain nameless, but is nonetheless Near Here; many of my duties involve various e-mail issues.

    So it would be interesting should a similar controversy show up at work. The U has a poor record in dealing with such matters; it sure would be entertaining if they tried to pull a Grambling.

  • The New Hampshire Primary is over, and we've seen a marked decrease in Bill Binnie ads. However, they've been replaced by the even more irritating Paul Hodes ad in which he claims to be "a real fiscal conservative".

    Were I with the Ayotte campaign, I would have already started writing the rebuttal, heavily relying on the Club For Growth:

    Politicians are notorious for massaging the truth in order to appear fiscally conservative to voters, but what Hodes is declaring is outright deception. Does a fiscal conservative vote for the $814 billion Stimulus, ObamaCare, Cap and Trade, the auto bailout, and Cash for Clunkers? Does a fiscal conservative co-sponsor Card Check? Does a fiscal conservative vote with the Democrat Party 94.7% of the time? Hodes said he "gets rid of the pork," but then why did he vote 62 separate times to "keep the pork?"
    And, if I had a few seconds to fill, I'd refer to Captain Ed. Sample:
    Hodes claims to refuse earmarks.  According to Citizens Against Government Waste, that's flat-out false.  Hodes took 28 earmarks in 2010 for a total of $51 million; he took 29 in 2009 for a total of $33.6 million; and in 2008, he took 35 earmarks for a total of $35.5 million.  Maybe Hodes thinks he can make that claim because he didn't take any in FY2011, but there's a reason for that -- the Democrats have failed to even start the budget process for FY2011, which starts in seventeen days.
    "And there are also many other lies which Paul Hodes told, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even Comcast itself could not contain the commercials that should be written. Amen."