Hannan Rips The Prime Minister a New One

Daniel Hannan, a British Conservative member of the European Parliament, delivered this speech-- three minutes, 28 seconds long-- on March 26, 2009, to the face of Gordon Brown, the Labour prime minister of Great Britain.

I hope the day comes-- soon-- that an American leader summons the moxie to speak this bluntly to President Barack Hoover Obama.

It's too bad Hannan cannot move to the United States and run for president, since our Constitution requires that the chief executive be native born.

Oh I forgot! Hasn't the current occupant of the White House thus far failed to produce conclusive evidence that he was born in the United States (not to mention the Messiah's failure to make his college records available)?

At this posting, there have been nearly two-and-a-half million viewings of Hannan's speech on YouTube. Click here to watch it for yourself.

Click here to visit Hannan's blog.

Washington Law For Same-Sex Unions

Washington is one of the states whose citizens have the power to veto bills enacted by the legislature. The opponents of same-sex civil unions have circulated petitions for a referendum on the domestic partnership law passed by the legislature. On July 28, these backers of the referendum brought a lawsuit asking that the names and addresses of the petition signers be kept private. Today the U. S. district judge issued a temporary restraining order, protecting the signers' privacy until the case has been decided (Protect Marriage Washington v. Reed, 3:09-cv-0546).

Ballot Access News says: "There have been few precedents on whether the names and addresses of people who sign petitions should be considered a public record. Some states provide by law that the records are not public, but most states do not. ... . No one knows yet if the petition has enough valid signatures. Proponents submitted 138,500 signatures. They need 120,577 valid signatures, so it seems somewhat likely the petition will fall short."

Thus it's possible that the referendum will not qualify for the ballot, but the signers' identities will be made public anyway, putting them at risk for harassment. That would, in my view, be outrageous.

2008 Election Returns Published

The clerk of the U. S. House of Representatives has published a 77-page booklet entitled, "Statistics of the Presidential and Congressional Election" (you'll see a little white "Zoom" box at the top of the page, which can be used to enlarge the print. The box shows "45%" when you first get to the PDF).

A few notes on the Mississippi returns: In the presidential election, "Independent" is Ralph Nader, while the Reform Party nominee is Ted Weill of Tylertown, Mississippi.

The special election for U. S. senator-- like all special elections in Mississippi-- was nonpartisan, and there were no party labels next to the candidates' names on the ballot. The booklet correctly put "No Party Affiliation" next to Ronnie Musgrove's name, but it incorrectly put "Republican" next to Roger Wicker's name.

Some 25,000 more Mississippians voted for president than for U. S. representative.

Some 46,000 voted for president but did not vote in the Wicker-Musgrove Senate race. Some 42,000 more voted for president than in the U. S. Senate contest between the Republican Thad Cochran and the Democrat Erik Fleming.

Notably, some 3,500 more voted in the Cochran-Fleming race than in the hotly-contested Wicker-Musgrove match-up, despite the fact that there was little doubt that Cochran would win his sixth term. This would seem to indicate that some people were turned off by the negative tone of the Wicker-Musgrove race.

Thanks to Ballot Access News for the link.

Arlo Guthrie is a Ron Paul Republican

by Deborah Solomon

As one of the iconic figures of the ’60s counterculture, are you surprised by the fuss that is being made over the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock music festival, at which you performed? Do you think Woodstock is overrated?

No. We’re still talking about it. How many other events from 1969 are we still talking about?

Maybe Woodstock was nothing more than a glorified party at which white kids from the suburbs discovered camping and smoking pot in the rain.

If it had been just that, that would have been fun enough, but the truth is it wasn’t that. There were all colors of kids and varieties of kids, and these were the very same kids who had been brought up to believe in grade school that when you see the big white mushroom cloud, be sure to get under the desk quickly.

You don’t believe there was any real threat of the world ending in a nuclear conflagration?

It was a real threat. But the response to it was crazy. At some point, these kids grew up and said, “What?” They realized that the people who are teaching you and the people who are in positions of authority are actually insane.

[... .]

You’re a New York native, right?

Yes, I was born in Coney Island. The Holy Land.

Will you be performing your best-known song, “Alice’s Restaurant,” a long, talky, antiwar ballad initially inspired by a trip you made to the town dump in Stockbridge, Mass., one Thanksgiving?

Garbage has been pretty good to me. But I won’t be performing the song. It’s a half-hour, and performing it is like being in the same half-hour “Groundhog Day” movie every night of your life. Most of the audience that follows me is already sick of hearing of it. Read more>>>>

A New Term Limits Initiative For Mississippi

On June 3, Dr. Godfrey Garner of Edwards in Hinds County filed a proposed initiative, No. 30. This measure is for term limits, but, unfortunately, it includes U. S. senators and representatives as well as state and local officials. In U. S. Term Limits v. Thornton (1995), the U. S. Supreme Court said that an individual state cannot term limit its congressional delegation; the U. S. Constitution would have to be amended. This 5-4 ruling struck down congressional term limits laws in 23 states.

Since Mississippi’s initiative process took effect in 1993, the term limits proposals of 1995 and 1999 are the only initiatives that have qualified for the ballot, and both were voted down. I recall that one of the large farmers’ organizations poured a lot of money into ads to defeat at least one of these measures. The ads did an excellent job of "muddying the water" on the issue.

From his perch in Scott County, columnist Sidney Salter chirped loudly in opposition to term limits. Smiling Sidney obviously prefers being governed by an elite group of professional politicians.

Thanks to Majority in Mississippi for calling this to my attention.

Progressive Hopes

Watch Joe Sobran on YouTube.

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"'I have a dream,' proclaimed Martin Luther King Jr., whose 'dream' was inspired by his reading of Marx and other progressive prophets. Like countless visionaries, he was unaware of Michael Oakeshott's admonition: 'The conjunction of ruling and dreaming generates tyranny.' Which might serve as the epitaph for the twentieth century."

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by Joseph Sobran

"Once socialism is established," George Orwell predicted in the 1930s, "the rate of mechanical invention will be greatly accelerated." I read Orwell's prophecy during the 1980s and was struck by how ludicrous it seemed. After more than half a century of socialist economies (including Communist ones), not a single new invention — not so much as a can opener — had been produced. Socialism had only impoverished every country where it existed, and had moreover totally stifled the creative faculties. Nobody could have foreseen how bleak it would actually prove.

All of which is even truer of the purest form of socialism, Communism. Even the few remaining Communists are somewhat chastened, having witnessed the repudiation of Stalin and Mao by their successors. The "New Soviet Man," the Five-Year Plan, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, Building a New Society — all these old slogans sound like grimly ironic epitaphs. "I have been over into the future, and it works," burbled Lincoln Stevens, arriving home from Moscow in the 1920s. The only good news for the Commies and their fellow travelers is that they have never been called to account, a la Nuremberg, for the colossal crimes they committed, ignored, and defended. But we tend to forget how long even most anti-Communists took Communism's insane promises seriously.

As we bid adieu to the twentieth century, it seems worthwhile to review not only its achievements and atrocities but its hopes. Time after time its optimistic expectations have been rendered absurd by events. A whole book keeping score of twentieth-century enthusiasms is long overdue; meanwhile, a brief account will have to suffice.Of World War I it may be enough to quote the archoptimist Woodrow Wilson's description of it as the "war to end all wars." Marshall Foch more sanely called the Versailles Treaty "a 20-year truce." The historian Harry Elmer Barnes even more prophetically spoke of "perpetual war for perpetual peace."

At the 1943 Tehran Conference, the three archcynics — Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin — adopted Wilsonian language
to promise a postwar world of eternal peace, liberty, and justice: "Emerging from these cordial conferences, we look with confidence to the day when all peoples of the world may live free lives, untouched by tyranny, and according to their varying desires and their own consciences." It's doubtful that anyone took this verbiage seriously; but by then utopian democratic jargon had become standard issue, even (or especially) for the bloodiest despots.

Catholics may recall the high hopes for liturgical reform in the wake of the Second Vatican Council of 1962-65. The vernacular Mass and the relaxation of old disciplines were supposed to inspire a new piety in the laity, who were given a larger role in the rites, including the freedom to receive the Eucharist in their hands — traditionally regarded as a desecration. The upshot, as such observers as James Hitchcock and Michael Davies noted many years ago, was... Read more>>>>

A Proposal From 1968

John Bell Williams of Raymond vacated his seat in the U. S. House after his election as governor of Mississippi. In the February 27, 1968 special election to fill the seat, Charles Evers of Fayette, field secretary of the state NAACP, shocked many by finishing first against the six white candidates. In the March 12 runoff, Charlie Griffin of Utica, longtime administrative assistant to Congressman Williams, defeated Evers decisively.

"(Alarmed at the possibility that a minority candidate might be elected to office in a general election, where the candidate with a plurality[1] would win regardless of how many were on the ballot, the Mississippi House of Representatives in April, 1968, adopted H. B. 8... . This bill would supplement the usual party primaries in August by establishing a "preferential election" to be held on the Tuesday after the second Monday in October. This October ballot would list all the candidates for the office, identifying them by party or independent status. If no candidate polled [50-plus percent], then the two receiving the highest number of votes would have their names placed on the ballot in the November... election, to be held as usual on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in [November].

"(This meant there would never be more than two candidates on the [November] ballot, and assuming only one could be black, it would assure that the heavier voting whites would elect a white candidate. Any candidate receiving [50-plus percent] of the votes cast in a preferential election would have his name only placed on the ballot in the [November] election.

"(The House-passed bill was killed in the Senate Elections Committee)."[2]

I'm going to have to do some research on this, but it sounds like this provision would have been for state and county offices only, since those are the only offices for which we have party primaries in August. And when Mr. Johnston says "all the candidates" would be listed on the October ballot, that surely would not include the ones who were eliminated in the August party primaries. Otherwise, what would be the point of holding party primaries?

The new October election would actually be a general election requiring 50-plus percent to win. The November election would then be a runoff general election. If the October election were indeed a preferential election, the voter would get more than one choice per office; if that's the case, he doesn't specify how many choices.

Even if this bill had been passed by the Senate and signed by the governor, the U. S. Department of Justice would almost certainly have rejected it under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

Mississippi has long had a provision that, to win a statewide constitutional office, a candidate must (1) receive 50-plus percent of the vote, AND (2) carry at least 62 of the 122 state House districts. Otherwise, in the following January, the state House of Representatives chooses between the top two vote-getters.

Vermont is the only other state that has a similar provision. In that state, when no candidate gets 50-plus percent, the choice is made by a joint session of both houses of the legislature.

Georgia is the only state that has party primaries AND runoff general elections. When no candidate gets 50-plus percent in the general election, the top two finishers meet in a runoff general election. This applies to partisan local, state, and congressional offices.

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[1] The highest number is less than 50 percent.

[2] Erle Johnston, Politics: Mississippi Style (Forest, Mississippi: Lake Harbor Publishers, 1993), pp. 201-202.

Fewer Yellow Dog Democrats

Ballot Access News has a post on a recent special state legislative election in north Alabama, which the Republican won with 60.5 percent of the vote. The Democrats had held this seat since the 2002 election.

In the last paragraph, the piece states that in four Southern states-- Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas-- the same party has had the most seats in the legislature since the 1880s. Several of us commenters noted that the Republicans briefly had a majority in the Mississippi Senate several years ago.

Trent Hill of Baton Rouge, Louisiana wrote, "Each of these states simply have a lasting hatred for the Republican party that is based on Reconstruction."

Here is my response:

In Mississippi, most of that old hatred for the Republican Party is gone. This is evidenced by the fact that the state has not voted Democratic for president since it went narrowly for Jimmy Carter in 1976.[1] The Magnolia State has gone Republican in nine of the last 10 presidential elections, and the GOP now has both U. S. senators and all of the statewide elected officials except the attorney general.

The black vote, of course, routinely goes 90-plus percent Democratic, and that’s the big reason the Democrats have nominal control of the legislature. A candidate in a district with a sizable black population knows he would be kissing off a big chunk of the vote if he ran as a Republican.

Governor Haley Barbour usually gets his way with the legislature, especially the Senate, where the Republican lieutenant governor appoints the committees.

I haven’t yet compared the figures from 2008 and 2007, but there are usually some 300,000 more voters in the presidential race than in the previous year’s governor’s election. I’m convinced that the big majority of those additional voters support the GOP presidential nominee.[2]

I am also curious as to how many 2008 Mississippi voters simply marked their ballots for president and left the rest of the races blank.

I hope that someone reading this will be able to furnish this data.

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[1] Prior to 1976, the last Democratic presidential nominee to carry Mississippi was Adlai Stevenson in 1956. The state voted in 1960 for a slate of unpledged electors, who wound up voting for Senator Harry Byrd Sr. of Virginia. In 1964, the Republican Barry Goldwater carried the state with 87.1 percent, and in 1968, the independent George Wallace of Alabama won the Magnolia State with 63.5 percent.

[2] To win a statewide race in Mississippi, a Republican usually needs at least 70 percent of the white vote. Despite the Democrat Barack Obama getting 96 percent of the black vote last November, the Republican John McCain carried the state with 56 percent of the overall vote.

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>>>>