URLs du Jour — 2014-10-01

Consumer Notice: du jour does not imply linked-to content is en date d'aujourd'hui. At least according to Google Translate.

  • For example, the origin of the list "11 ways to know when you live in a country run by idiots" is apparently unknown, lost in the mists of Internet plagiarism history, and there are a number of different mutations. Still, if you haven't seen it, it might as well have been written today. Sample:

    1. If you have to show identification to board an airplane, cash a check, buy liquor or check out a library book, but not to vote on who runs the government, you live in a country run by idiots.

    Ouch.

  • Which brings me to something from Drew Cline of the Union Leader, who interviewed New Hampshire's venerable Secretary of State, Bill Gardner. A problem is pinpointed:

    He has witnessed fraud with his own eyes, Gardner says. He tells anyone who will listen that the problem is real and pervasive. But few are listening.

    Gardner identifies two central reasons why New Hampshire is a haven for voter fraud. One is the way the state defines “domicile” for voting purposes.

    “We have all kinds of different durational requirements for residency,” he said. “You have to be here five years. You have to be here six months, depending on whether it’s a fishing license, welfare. The governor has to live here seven years. When Eisenhower came here in the 1950s, he couldn’t fish. They had to go to Maine.”

    But there is no residency requirement for voting. Many states — including Maine and Vermont — require that voters be residents. New Hampshire does not. […]

    Whoa, wait, what?!

    So add another item to the list: If your state has looser voting eligibility rules than its neighbors, and your Secretary of State identifies it a real problem, and nobody does anything about it, you live in a state run by idiots.

    [Of course, despite my daily reading of Granite Grok, which discusses voter fraud a lot, I was unaware that NH didn't require actual residency to vote here. So that may make me an idiot too.]

  • You have probably experienced glib liberals (gliberals?) trot out the talking point: Corporations aren't people! (For example.)

    Sounds good. Appealing to the lo-info voter. Except this banal truism is invariably the sole means of support for a further assertion: that corporations are not entitled to Constitutional rights.

    Ilya Somyin provides a useful rebuttal to this "argument". There's a good chance he'll convince you (or convince you further) of its essential bogosity. RTWT, but here's a sample:

    It is indeed true that corporations are not people. But those who own and operate them are. In modern society, people routinely use corporations for a wide range of activities. Numerous employers, churches, schools, newspapers, charities, and other organizations all use the corporate form. When they do so, their owners and employees should not have to automatically check their constitutional and statutory rights at the door.

    If we consistently apply the principle that corporations are not entitled to constitutional rights because they are not real people, then the government would be free to censor newspapers and TV stations that use the corporate form, including the New York Times and CNN. Similarly, it would be free to take corporate property without paying the “just compensation” required by the Fifth Amendment, or search it in ways that would otherwise be forbidden by the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. It could also regulate or ban services at houses of worship owned by the many religious organizations that use the corporate form. CNN, the New York Times, and the Catholic Church are no more “real” persons than  Hobby Lobby Stores is.

    Bottom line: You don't want to live in a country where corporations don't have Constitutional rights.

  • The "fact checking" website Politifact momentarily redeemed itself late last year when it awarded "Lie of the Year" to the Obamacare selling point: "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it." A fraudulent assertion that, had it been made in the private sector, would have been cause for indictments. So good for Politifact, right?

    Wrong, bunkie. Now, Guy Benson reports, Politifact has given a "False" rating to one of GOP Senate candidate Ed Gillespie's TV ads because the ad points out that his incumbent opponent was an eager repeater of the "Lie of the Year".

    The shamelessly twisted logic used by Politifact to justify their rating is painful to observe. (But Guy Benson does a worthy job of trying to untangle it.) I regret that I had ever considered them worthy of respect or credence.

  • Your tweet du jour:


Last Modified 2019-01-09 7:04 AM EDT