Secession Is in Our Future

"... once it becomes clear that a majority of the states — and specifically those that are the most productive — are seceding, the remaining states of Old America will have to consider their options. Would they want to bail out the corporations, the unionized public-school teachers, municipal workers, and the UAW, and the bankrupt states of California and New Jersey, among others, when the burden falls much more heavily onto them?"

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by Clifford F. Thies | Mises Institute

Can states secede? There are three levels on which this question can be answered:

the inalienable right of secession,
the international law of secession, and
the US law of secession.

All three say yes.

The Inalienable Right of Secession

The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America invokes the self-evident truths that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain [un]alienable rights, that governments are formed to protect these rights and gain their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that when a government becomes abusive of these rights, it is the right — no, it is the duty — of the people to alter or abolish that government.

To say governments were formed to protect the rights of men would be historically incorrect. Almost all governments were formed by ruthless men exerting their will over others through the use of force. Some governments, over time, evolved toward the rule of law, perhaps only because their rulers saw that this would sanction their own continued enjoyment of the wealth that they possessed. In some instances, this evolution involved one or more "revolutions" in which those who were governed were able to better establish the rule of law.
The language of the Declaration should not be construed as an argument about the historical origins of government but, rather, as what would be true and just to an enlightened person, namely, that as persons and as communities of persons, we have the right and the duty to alter or abolish governments that become abusive of our rights. As Benjamin Franklin once put it, "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God."

The concept of an inalienable right of secession was not original to the American Revolution. It can be traced to the scholastics, to Reformation politics, and to the most ancient Greek and Hebrew writings. Without going into a dissertation on the subject, let me simply point to the flag of the state of Virginia, which was designed by Thomas Jefferson. It depicts a female warrior (Athena) standing atop a slain tyrant (Zeus).

According to legend, Zeus, the greatest and most terrible of the gods, was supposed to be the god of law, yet he was himself lawless. When he heard that he would sire a child who would destroy him, he swallowed his wife whole to prevent it. But the child grew within him and then burst from him fully grown. This child was Athena, the goddess of victory, liberty, and peace. And, she did indeed slay her father. It should be easy to see, in this legend, how the rule of law might be established from a government formed through the use of force.

Now, does a massive increase in taxes, in spending, and in the federal deficit constitute such an abuse of the rights of men as to justify secession... Read more>>>>

The Voter Choice Plan

Howard Roark and I have recently expressed ourselves on a post at Yall Politics about Mississippi's election system. Here's my comment from this morning:

You understand that I’m only proposing nonpartisan elections ("open primaries")[1] for our LOCAL (municipal and county) elections. Most of our municipalites, of course, elect their officials in the spring of the year following the presidential election, while our county officials are elected at the same time as our state officials, in the year preceding the presidential election.

Nonpartisan elections ("open primaries") would indeed save the taxpayers money. They would also make campaigns less expensive to conduct, which would encourage more candidates to run.

In addition, “open primaries” for local elections would remedy two recurring situations in Mississippi: (1) All or most of the candidates for mayor run in one party’s primary, while all of the candidates for council member run in the other party’s primary. Thus residents of that ward or district can vote for mayor OR council member, but not both.

(2) All or most of the candidates for county offices run in one party’s primary. Hence anyone in that county who votes in the other party’s primary for state offices misses out on voting for his county officials. In 2007, for example, all of the candidates for county offices in Hinds County ran in the Democratic primary; in Rankin County, on the other hand, almost all of the county candidates ran in the Republican primary.

Suppose my proposal were in place for our 2011 state and county elections. Here’s how it would work: Voter Choice Plan.

BTW, Howard, you were fantastic in ‘The Fountainhead.’

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[1] All candidates, including independents, run in the same election. If no one gets 50-plus percent, the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, meet in a runoff.

I Still Hate You, Sarah Palin

The Republicans bring a knife to a gunfight, and lose again.

"... stop thinking of the Democratic Party as merely a political party, because it’s much more than that. We’re not just the party of slavery, segregation, secularism, and sedition. Not just the party of Aaron Burr, Boss Tweed, Richard J. Croker, Bull Connor, Chris Dodd, Richard Daley, Bill Ayers, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and Emperor Barack Hussein Obama II. ... . Rather, think of the Democratic Party as what it really is: a criminal organization masquerading as a political party."

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by David Kahane | National Review Online | July 7, 2009

One of the most terrifying moments of my political life came last summer at the Republican convention in St. Paul. No, I don’t mean seeing John McCain careering around the Xcel Energy Center like Eyegore in Young Frankenstein, his face frozen in a Lon Chaney Sr. rictus grin as he reached across the aisle to his erstwhile friends in the media and got his hand bitten off. Rather, I’m referring to the aftermath of Sarah Palin’s outrageous acceptance speech, which whipped up the Rotary Club delegates into a frenzy of white-boy fury that not even heckling by a brave Code Pink embed could deter. Truly a fascist classic and one that sent shivers down our collectivist spines.

Even worse was the glaze of horror on the phizzes of the assembled heroes of the Mainstream Media. Andrea Mitchell — yes, the very same Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington, whose employer saw no conflict of interest at all when she married then Fed pooh-bah Alan Greenspan — stood there gaping like a frog while the rest of the assembled Finemans and Matthewses and Olbermanns scurried around like roaches when the light gets turned on: What the hell just hit us? For one horrible moment, it looked as if the carefully crafted plans of David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, George Soros, and the Second Chief Directorate, first department, of the old KGB were about to [go awry].

Not only were we offended at the sheer effrontery of McCain’s pick: How dare the Republicans proffer this déclassée piece of Wasilla trailer trash whose only claim to fame was that she didn’t exercise her right to choose? Where were her degrees from Smith or Barnard, her internships at PETA, the Brookings Institution, or the Young Pioneers? We were also outraged that the Stupid Party had just nominated a completely unqualified candidate nobody had ever heard of, a first-term governor of Alaska whose previous experience consisted of a small-town mayoralty. As opposed to our guy, Barry Soetoro of Mombasa, Djakarta, and Honolulu, a first-term senator nobody had ever heard of, whose previous experience had been as a state senator (D., Daley Machine) in Illinois. After eight long, illegitimate, lawless years of &*^%BUSH$#@! tyranny, how dare you contest this election?

And so the word went out, from that time and place: Eviscerate Sarah Palin like one of her field-dressed moose. Turn her life upside down. Attack her politics, her background, her educational history. Attack her family. Make fun of her husband, her children. Unleash the noted gynecologist Andrew Sullivan to prove that Palin’s fifth child was really her grandchild. Hit her with everything we have: Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, taking a beer-run break from her quixotic search for Mr. Right to drip venom on Sister Sarah; post-funny comic David Letterman, to joke about her and her daughters on national television; Katie Couric, the anchor nobody watches, to give this Alaskan interloper a taste of life in the big leagues; former New York Times hack Todd “Mr. Dee Dee Myers” Purdum, to act as an instrument of Graydon Carter’s wrath at Vanity Fair. Heck, we even burned her church down. Even after the teleological triumph of The One, the assault had to continue, each blow delivered with our Lefty SneerTM (viz.: Donny Deutsch yesterday on Morning Joe), until Sarah was finished.

You know what? It worked! McCain finally succumbed to his long-standing case of Stockholm Syndrome (“My friends, you have nothing to fear from an Obama presidency”), Tina Fey turned Palin into a see-Russia-from-my-house joke, “conservative” useful idiots like Peggy Noonan and Kathleen Parker hatched her, and finally Sarah cried No más and walked away. If we could, we’d cut off her head and mount it on a wall at Tammany Hall, except there is no more Tammany Hall unless you count Obama’s Tony Rezko–financed home in Chicago. And it took only eight months — heck, Sarah couldn't even have another kid in the time it took us to destroy her. That’s the Chicago way!

Yes, my friends, it’s once again time to quote Sean Connery’s famous speech from The Untouchables, written by David Mamet — the lecture the veteran Chicago cop gives a wet-behind-the-ears Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner, back when he was a movie star) while they sit in a church pew. “You want to get Capone? Here’s how you get him..." Read more>>>>

California's "Open Primary" Proposal

California will have a measure on the June 2010 ballot for nonpartisan state and congressional elections, which are popularly called "open primaries." This Louisiana-style system eliminates party primaries and has all candidates, including independents, run in the same election. The top two vote-getters, regardless of party, advance to the runoff.

I had my umpteenth exchange on this issue at Ballot Access News with Jim Riley of Texas, who thinks the "open primary" is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Here are some excerpts from my comments there:

I asked this question, which Jim has not answered: Do you think parties should let non-members serve as delegates to nominating conventions?

Personally, I think independents should be allowed to vote in party primaries, but that’s rightly up to each party-- except in the states (Mississippi and Texas, for example) which force parties to let non-members into their primaries.

The direct primary election had its origins with the Democratic Party of Crawford County, Pennsylvania, in 1842. In the early 1900s, states began requiring parties to hold primaries to nominate their candidates.

About 100 years ago, the oxymoronic “nonpartisan primary” came into usage, around the time that municipalities started using nonpartisan elections. “Party primary” is actually redundant, but it’s necessary to add “party” to differentiate it from a “nonpartisan primary.”

In California's current setup: in the event that a party does not invite independents into its primary, an independent may change his registration as late as 15 days prior to the primary.

I believe that, for state and federal offices, political parties should be able to perform their basic function of officially nominating candidates; the party primary, to be sure, is the most democratic method of nomination.

When parties nominate by convention or caucus, of course, grassroots citizens can only vote directly in the general election.

I see that you’re now calling the “open primary” the “Voter-Choice primary.”

Despite the fervent hopes of you and some others, political parties are here to stay.

Senate Puts FDA in Charge of Tobacco

"No one seems able or willing to connect the dots on the link between smoking and freedom. ... smoking is used as an excuse for the government to tell you what you can do on the street, in restaurants - even in your own home. What's more, it's the government telling companies and business owners what they can and cannot do."

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by William Campbell Douglass, M. D.

The hammer has officially been dropped on smoking. The U.S. Senate has passed a vote that will give the FDA the power to regulate the tobacco industry. For years I've bemoaned our nation's slide toward an outright ban on tobacco. And with the passing of this vote, that slide is now moving at a blinding speed.

So be ready to kiss your cigarettes goodbye … along with some other personal freedoms, to boot.

Of course, the anti-smoking types are very excited - this is the massive victory they've been working towards for decades. And naturally, these freedom-crushing zealots are predicting the usual "success" that they believe will surely result from FDA regulation. They foresee a drastic decline in the number of "smoking deaths" each year, and prophesize that healthcare costs "caused" by tobacco will drop by a whopping $100 million.

I suspect they're pulling these figures out of thin air. But what the heck, they sound impressive.

And you can be sure that President Obama will ... sign this bill in a hurry the second it lands on his desk. After all, he's already effectively socialized (sorry … "bailed out") the auto industry. Why not add the tobacco industry to the growing list of American industries that are falling under the control of the government here in the People's Republic of the United States?

When the law eventually goes into effect, it will give the FDA the power to mandate a lower nicotine content in cigarettes - clearly the first step on the way to an outright ban.

Many people see my pro-tobacco stance as my most controversial. It's considered blasphemy for a physician to actually be for tobacco these days. But aside from the fact that I believe tobacco and smoking have been unjustly vilified by lobbyists both within and without the healthcare field, I believe the issue of tobacco has become bigger than health. It's about personal freedom.

Few people realize how precariously close we are to losing... Read more>>>>

Coulter on Obama and Iran

by Ann Coulter | June 24, 2009

On Iran, President Obama is worse than Hamlet. He's Colin Powell, waiting to see who wins before picking a side.

Last week, massive protests roiled Iran in response to an apparently fraudulent presidential election, in which nutcase Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner within two hours of the polls closing. (ACORN must be involved.)

Obama responded by boldly declaring that the difference between the loon Ahmadinejad and his reformist challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi, "may not be as great as advertised."

Maybe the thousands of dissenters risking their lives protesting on the streets of Tehran are doing so because they liked Mousavi's answer to the "boxers or briefs" question better than Ahmadinejad's.

Then, in a manly rebuke to the cheating mullahs, Obama said: "You've seen in Iran some initial reaction from the supreme leader" -- peace be upon him -- "that indicates he understands the Iranian people have deep concerns about the election."

Did FDR give speeches referring to Adolf Hilter as "Herr Fuhrer"? What's with Obama?

Even the French condemned the Iranian government's "brutal" reaction to the protesters -- and the French have tanks with one speed in forward and five speeds in reverse.

You might be a scaredy-cat if... Read more>>>>

Texas Democrats Kill Voter ID

Associated Press | May 27, 2009

AUSTIN, Texas -- Texas Democrats are declaring victory in the partisan battle over tightening voter identification laws, but their 5-day filibuster left hundreds of bills dead.

And it threatened to spark a special session this summer.

But a midnight deadline Tuesday night for the voter ID bill came and went in the House, and leaders from both parties said the controversial election reform had gone down in flames.

Rep. Jim Dunnam of Waco, leader of the House Democrats, said the measure appears to be dead in the House this session.

Republican House Speaker Joe Straus, of San Antonio, maintained his trademark hands-off approach as midnight approached and mostly left the public relations job to Republican Rep. Larry Taylor, chairman of the House Republican Caucus.

Taylor said Democrats would pay a hefty price for killing off the voter ID legislation and inflicting "a lot of other casualties in that process."

The Messiah Anoints Sotomayor

From CNNPolitics.com:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Obama has chosen federal Judge Sonia Sotomayor as his nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, two sources told CNN on Tuesday.

Sotomayor would be the first Hispanic U.S. Supreme Court justice if confirmed.

Obama plans to announce his nominee at 10:15 a.m. ET Tuesday, sources told CNN.

Sotomayor, a 54-year-old judge on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, was named a U.S. District Court judge by President George H.W. Bush in 1992, and was elevated to her current seat by President Clinton.

Supporters say that appointment history, along with what they call her moderate-liberal views, would give her some bipartisan backing in the Senate.

A senior White House official said that Sotomayor was "nominated by George Bush -- then Bill Clinton -- [and has] more judicial experience than anyone sitting on the court had at the time they were nominated."

But she has suffered through recent stinging criticism in the media and blogs from both the left and right over perceived -- some defenders say invented -- concerns about her temperament and intellect.

"Judge Sotomayor is a liberal judicial activist of the first order who thinks her own personal political agenda is more important that the law as written," said Wendy Long, counsel to the conservative Judicial Confirmation Network.

"She thinks that judges should dictate policy and that one's sex, race and ethnicity ought to affect the decisions one renders from the bench. ... She has an extremely high rate of her decisions being reversed, indicating that she is far more of a liberal activist than even the current liberal activist Supreme Court."

However, the senior White House official said Sotomayor has had "99 percent of her decisions" upheld by a higher court.

Some Hispanic groups expressed concern after a skit last week on "Late Show With David Letterman" compared Sotomayor with a noisy Spanish-speaking judge on a popular TV courtroom show that settles petty legal disputes.

Obama said Saturday he wants intellectual firepower and a common touch in the next Supreme Court justice and said he doesn't "feel weighed down by having to choose ... based on demographics."

Obama's nominee will replace retiring Justice David Souter, who announced this month he would step down when the court's current session ends this summer.

There had been wide speculation that Obama would name a woman to the court, which has one female justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Obama also had been under pressure to nominate a Hispanic justice to the court.

Obama's nomination will have to be confirmed by the Senate Judiciary Committee and the full Senate.

The nominee is not expected to have difficulty being confirmed in the Democratic-controlled Senate in time for the new court session in October.

The president has said he hopes to have hearings in July, with the confirmation completed before Congress leaves for the summer.

Cows, the Constitution, and the Ten Commandments

COWS

Is it just me, or does anyone else find it amazing that during the mad cow epidemic, our government could track a single cow, born in Canada almost three years earlier, right to the stall where she slept in the state of Washington? And they tracked her calves to their stalls. But they've been unable to locate 15-20 million illegal aliens wandering around our country. Maybe we should give each of the aliens a cow...

THE CONSTITUTION

Instead of helping Iraq draft a constitution... why didn't we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it has worked for over 200 years, and, besides, we're not using it anymore.

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

The real reason that we can't have the Ten Commandments posted in a courthouse is this: You cannot post 'Thou Shalt Not Steal,' 'Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery,' and 'Thou Shalt Not Lie' in a building full of lawyers, judges and politicians... It creates a hostile work environment.

~~ Author unknown

The Closed Primary in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania, which registers voters by party, had party primaries last Tuesday. The Scranton Times Tribune editorializes against the state's closed primary system.

"[Voters registered as independents or with minor parties] are allowed to vote in primaries only on ballot questions, rather than for candidates. There were no statewide questions to be answered by voters Tuesday, and only a few local questions in isolated jurisdictions.

"The Legislature, which comprises only Republicans and Democrats, continues to restrict primary voting to only Republicans and Democrats. ... ."

In 1986, the U. S. Supreme Court gave parties the right to invite independents to vote in their primaries (Tashjian v. Republican Party of Connecticut). Neither major party in Pennsylvania does. Thus the legislature cannot stop the parties from letting independents vote, but it can prohibit the parties from inviting members of opposing parties into their primaries. The Pennsylvania legislature obviously does prohibit the latter.

"Even though the primary technically just nominates members of each party, the parties don't pay for the process; the taxpayers do. Registering with a minor party or as an independent does not exempt disenfranchised voters from their share of the primary election's cost."

In 1995, the 8th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that, when the state compels parties to hold primaries, the state, in effect, must pay the costs of those primaries (Republican Party of Arkansas v. Faulkner County). If a state were to stop requiring parties to conduct primaries, the parties would likely stop doing so, due to the expense. They would instead nominate by convention or some other method, and grassroots citizens would only be able to vote in the general election.

"Judicial and school board candidates are allowed to 'cross-file' - to seek Democratic and Republican nominations - under the theory that allowing them to do so will diminish political influence in those races. The practical result is that many candidates win both nominations, effectively being elected to office in the primary."[1]

Pennsylvania's primaries are in May (April in presidential election years), and independent candidates have until August 1 to qualify for the November ballot. Also, the state allows unrestricted write-ins in both the primaries and the general election.

Many U. S. jurisdictions have nonpartisan judicial elections: there are no party primaries, and all candidates run in the same election. Mississippi, for example, has nonpartisan state and county judicial elections.

A Pennsylvania citizen who wants to vote in a major party's primary should simply register with that party. In 2004, several thousand union members changed their registrations from Democratic to Republican in order to vote for Senator Arlen Specter in the GOP primary.

Ironically, Pennsylvania is the state where the direct primary election originated in 1842. The pioneers were the Democratic Party of Crawford County, in the northwestern part of the state.

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[1] California allowed cross-filing from the early 1900s until 1959. Two well-known politicians who took advantage of it were the Republicans Earl Warren and Richard Nixon. Warren won both major party nominations for governor in 1946, while Nixon did likewise for the U. S. House in 1948.

"Doomsday for the Republicans"

Someone named "TurnLeft" had the comment below on a post at YallPolitics about the possibility that Mississippi governor Haley Barbour will run for president in 2012. My response to his comment follows.

"All this talk of Barbour for President is so silly. He wouldn’t have a chance, besides ANY Republican wouldn’t have a chance against President Obama thank goodness. Republicans want a new image but it would only be a wolf in sheep's clothing, same ole white Sunday school voters crowd. Republicans have excluded everyone else. Everything I read is doomsday for the Republicans. I think alot of people are in denial over a Republican comeback. It’s not going to happen."

You must have one hell of a crystal ball, since you know for certain what will happen in 2012. Look for Obummer’s multi-trillion dollar spending orgy to cause major inflation, starting 12-18 months from now. If, as seems likely, the economy is in the tank by 2012, the Republicans may have a cakewalk against the Big B. O.

“Everything I read is doomsday for the Republicans.”

Where did you read that-- in the Daily Kooks? Those of us who were around in 1964 remember similar dire predictions about the Republican Party after Senator Barry Goldwater lost 44 states to President Lyndon Johnson. In 1966, the Republicans gained 47 U. S. House seats and also picked up Senate seats and governorships. And the GOP regained the White House in the 1968 election.

According to the current polls, the Republicans have an excellent chance of retaking the Virginia and New Jersey governorships this fall. If they do, that will be a harbinger of more electoral successes.

Democratic senator George McGovern lost 49 states in the 1972 presidential election, and President Ronald Reagan carried 49 states over the Democrat Walter Mondale in 1984. It’s a funny thing: We didn’t hear cries of “doomsday” for the Democrats back then.

The "Democrat" Party

Certain people-- lots of them nowadays-- routinely refer to the party founded by Thomas Jefferson as the "Democrat" Party. Not only is this petty, it's also historically inaccurate.

Jefferson started it as the Republican Party, and it later was known as the Democratic-Republican Party. Andrew Jackson was the first president (1829-1837) to be called a Democrat, and the delegates to the 1840 national convention officially gave it the name it has had ever since: the Democratic Party.

Two Mississippi newspapers, the Natchez Democrat (1865) and the Woodville Republican (1823), are named for the same party (several other papers in the Magnolia State feature "Democrat" in their titles).

To be sure, if the Democrats were completely honest, they would call themselves the Socialist Democratic Party.

Which reminds me: The Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks made up the Social Democratic Party in Russia. The Bolsheviks ("the larger") were the majority and more extreme wing, while the Mensheviks ("the littler") were the minority wing. I suppose if the Mensheviks had become the majority, the two factions would have had to trade monikers.

At any rate, in 1919, the Bolsheviks were renamed the Communist Party.

Today's Republican Party, incidentally, was founded in 1854. The site and date most generally credited are Ripon, Wisconsin, on March 20 of that year.

Should We Abolish Second Primaries?

The more I consider instant runoff voting (IRV), the more I like it. Simply put, it's a way to guarantee that a candidate gets 50-plus percent in a party primary without requiring the voters to make a second trip to the polls. IRV can also be used in general elections. Moreover, it saves the taxpayers thousands of dollars per election cycle as well as reducing the costs of campaigns.

Mississippi is one of only 10 states that has party runoff (or second) primaries; all except Kentucky and Oklahoma are in the South.[1] In the early 1900s, when states began mandating that parties hold primaries, most elections in the South were decided in the Democratic primary. Hence second primaries were necessary to ensure that no one was elected with a small plurality of the vote.

An op-ed in The State newspaper advocates replacing South Carolina's second primaries with IRV. Its authors are state Rep. Bill Herbkersman and Rob Richie, executive director of FairVote.

"... tested out with good results in North Carolina, instant runoff voting determines a majority winner in one efficient election."

As I recall, North Carolina has been experimenting with IRV in 10 counties, which strikes me as a good approach.

"Voters gain the option to rank candidates in order of preference rather than select only one choice. If no candidate wins with a first-choice [50-plus percent], the two candidates with the most votes advance to the instant runoff. Ballots that were cast for eliminated candidates are added to the totals of the runoff candidates according to which runoff candidate is ranked next on the ballot."

From what I've read of the working of IRV in various places, the candidates are generally more respectful of each other in the campaign, since each hopes to be the second choice of the other candidates' supporters.

"Instant runoff voting is used in countless private organizations because it is recommended in Robert’s Rules of Order. It has been adopted to replace two rounds of voting in jurisdictions in California, Florida, Minnesota, North Carolina and Tennessee."

Some 70 percent of Memphis's voters recently approved IRV for that city. Memphis already had nonpartisan municipal elections, in which all candidates run in the same election. So IRV will reduce the total number of voting rounds from two to one.

As the article details, there is almost always a big drop-off in the turnout for the second party primary.[2]

It's also worth noting that Mississippi Republicans have only had one second primary for governor-- the 1991 runoff between Kirk Fordice and state auditor Pete Johnson. Of course, for an office other than president, the Republicans' very first contested primary was the 1972 U. S. Senate race, in which Gil Carmichael defeated James Meredith.

Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link to the op-ed.

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[1] Kentucky's party runoff provision is for the office of governor only. It took effect in 1995 and has never been used; it's likely to be eliminated before the 2011 state elections. Louisiana only has party runoffs for the U. S. Congress, since that state does not have party primaries for local or state offices.

[2] Georgia is the only state that has party primaries AND runoff general elections. In the hotly-contested December 2, 2008 runoff general election for U. S. senator, the turnout was 54 percent of the turnout for the November 4 general election.

Hawaii Republicans Fail to Act on Open Primary

The Hawaii Republican Party held its state convention on the weekend of May 15-17. Ballot Access News is now reporting that a proposed resolution calling for a semi-closed primary did not reach the floor for a vote. Some party members want to be able to block Democrats from voting in GOP primaries.

Hawaii is currently one of eight states with "open primary, private choice." There is no party registration, and each primary voter picks a party in the secrecy of the voting booth.

The challenge of Idaho's state-mandated open primary (Idaho Republican Party v. Ysursa) is pending in U. S. district court. A ruling should shortly be handed down in that case.

Also, the Greenville County (SC) Republican Party recently filed suit in federal district court against South Carolina's open primary law (Harms v. Hudgens).

Hawaii's Republican state executive committee could bring a lawsuit against the state-mandated open primary. So could the Hawaii County GOP, which unanimously approved a resolution for a semi-closed primary. It seems unlikely, however, that any such action will be taken before a decision comes down in the Idaho case (both Hawaii and Idaho are part of the 9th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals).

From the Hawaii Free Press: "A second proposal backed unanimously by the Hawaii County Republican Convention — to establish a [semi]-closed Primary system for the [nomination] of non-Presidential Republican candidates – was not forwarded to the State Convention by the Hawaii GOP Rules Committee. Its backers are continuing to work for approval at a future convention."

Pete Hamill on A. J. Liebling

The Library of America interviews Pete Hamill about A. J. Liebling (1904-1963):

Liebling: The Sweet Science and Other Writings is The Library of America’s second Liebling volume. The first collected his wartime correspondence and his postwar memoir, Normandy Revisited. This new volume collects the five non-war books Liebling wrote after returning from overseas. How is his writing here different from the first volume?

In this volume we see Liebling’s writing expand with the confidence, delight, and exuberance of the years after the war. In some ways, the style is more baroque, perhaps idiosyncratic, but that was true to Liebling’s character. He was a gourmand of words, in addition to food. He could be feisty: you see that in "The Wayward Pressman" columns collected in The Press. And he retained his taste for "low" culture too: boxers and corner men, con men and cigar store owners, political hacks and hack drivers. They’re all celebrated in these pages. It was no accident that when Albert Camus came for the first time to New York in 1946, Liebling didn’t guide him through the Metropolitan Museum. He took him to Sammy’s Bowery Follies. Camus was enthralled.

In January 2003 Sports Illustrated ranked The Sweet Science as #1 of the 100 best sports books ever, hailing Liebling as "pound for pound the top boxing writer of all time.… Liebling’s writing is efficient yet stylish, acerbic yet soft and sympathetic." What makes Liebling’s writing on boxing so great?

Above all, he had sympathy for the fighters, and those rogues and craftsmen who helped shape them. As a young man, Liebling had taken his own lessons as a boxer. He learned the hard way how difficult an apprenticeship each fighter must serve, how much skill was involved, how much discipline and will. He knew that the toughest prizefighters could be the gentlest of men. He knew that the toughness they exemplified was not the same as meanness, nor still another version of the loudmouth with a pea-sized heart. The prizefighter was a living example of the stoic virtues Liebling saw growing up in New York, then during the Depression, and most of all, among those who fought World War II. He expressed that sympathy without ever lapsing into sentimentality.

The period The Sweet Science covers, from June 1951 to September 1955, seems to have been a golden age of boxing. Liebling gets to witness the twilight of Joe Louis, the rise of Rocky Marciano, the comeback of Sugar Ray Robinson, the enigma of Archie Moore, and the dramatic ups and downs of the careers of Jersey Joe Walcott and Floyd Patterson. Liebling contends that television’s success in popularizing boxing also killed its local farm system. Do you agree? And is it the dramatis personae who make The Sweet Science so special?

Liebling was absolutely right about the collapse of the farm system. I was a young fight fan during that same period and saw fight cards at St. Nicholas Arena, the Eastern Parkway Arena, Sunnyside Gardens, and Fort Hamilton, in addition to the old Madison Square Garden. Within about ten years, most had vanished. Television was just one of the reasons. But also, the times had changed. The hard times of the thirties were good for boxing. The Great Depression toughened people. Fighters developed "heart," which meant learning how to absorb pain, not just inflict it. After the war everyone felt competitive and it took dozens of bouts for a fighter to get established. The great Sugar Ray Robinson had 70 fights over seven years before he got a title shot. The old pool of talent was changed too. Poor kids who might have become fighters now had other options, many of them flowing from the GI Bill. In the slums, heroin was working its evil ways.
By the 1970s, kids with 15 professional fights were fighting for championship titles and ending their careers at the age of 22. The level of skill that comes with experience inevitably began to fade. There’s no bench anymore and no way to find out who’s coming along. Almost nobody now can name the heavyweight champion of the world (there seem to be about four of them). The era of The Sweet Science was certainly a glorious and memorable time, but it wasn’t the only golden age. Unfortunately, Liebling only got to cover Ali’s early career and never witnessed the fierce tragedy of Mike Tyson.

There are so many choice pieces in this collection I have to ask whether you have any favorites?

The level of excellence is so high, I really don’t have a single favorite. Often, in need of a shot of vitamins, I take down any Liebling book, open it to a random page and start reading. Now I can do that with just this single volume or its predecessor containing his marvelous reporting on World War II. I cherish the entire Earl Long book, most of Between Meals, and the portrait of Colonel Stingo. Each boxing piece is superb, although I am always knocked over by his account of the Marciano-Moore fight ("Ahab and Nemesis") and his introduction to The Sweet Science. Even now, with newspapers vanishing everywhere, there is still much to be learned from his press pieces, not simply about the imperfect craft of writing and reporting, but about close reading. Joe Liebling died when he was 59. I wish he had lived to be 80.Read more>>>>