Tag: constitution

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Fifth Amendment rights Fourth Amendment rights national politics & policies

Time to Slap Grabby Hands

Civil Asset Forfeiture, theft, law enforcement, crime

Is the House of Representatives readying itself to do something to limit civil asset forfeiture initiated by federal agencies?

The legislation has emerged from the Judiciary Committee, so there is hope.

The Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration Act (FAIR) would impose substantial limits on federal civil asset forfeiture — on the power of officers to grab someone’s cash or other belongings on the unsupported suspicion that it was involved in a crime.

Currently, this power to steal based on zero evidence and zero due process remains untrammeled. And forfeited funds thus grabbed can then be spent by the agencies that did the asset-grabbing. 

Victims must spend years in the courts to get their stuff back, if they ever do.

FAIR would require “clear and convincing evidence” of wrongdoing. It would also prohibit law-enforcement agencies from being able to spend forfeited funds, eliminating a perverse incentive to rob people naïve enough to be carrying “too much” cash for whatever reason.

At National Review Online, Jill Jacobson says that the bill is “a step in the right direction” but doesn’t go far enough. Arguing on the premise of innocent until proven guilty, she insists “there is no reason why federal law enforcement should be seizing personal property from everyday citizens on tenuous suspicion.” 

Or even non-tenuous suspicion, I would add, for not everyone strongly suspected of doing wrong can be proven to have done wrong. And citizens caught on the wrong end of a government official’s steely gaze should not be regarded as a public resource. 

The reform isn’t finished until civil asset forfeiture is abolished altogether.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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election law general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall

Politicians Revolt Against Voters

Arkansas, citizen's initiative, voting, Democracy

“[C]urrently, in the state of Arkansas, out-of-state special interest groups that come to our state can try to change our laws and change our constitution,” Rep. Kendon Underwood, the Republican sponsor of House Bill 1419, testified “by just getting signatures from 15 counties.”

In the over 100-year history of citizen-initiated ballot measures in Arkansas, no initiative has ever qualified with signatures from only 15 counties. Zero. Moreover, to pass a statutory or constitutional initiative requires much more than merely gathering petition signatures; it mandates a majority vote of the people of Arkansas.

As for “out-of-state” special interests, the ballot issues referred by legislators last election received more such funding than the lone citizen-initiated measure. 

There’s more to unpack. 

“Changing” the state constitution is too easy? Well, HB-1419 hikes up the constitutional requirement that citizen petitions qualify in “at least 15 counties” to now 50 counties out of Arkansas’s 75 counties — a more than 300 percent increase. 

You read that correctly. Mr. Underwood’s proposes to amend the constitution with a simple statute. Textbook unconstitutionality. Yet, that statute has now passed both houses of the legislature and Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders says she will sign it.

In both 2020 and 2022, legislators placed constitutional amendments on the ballot to entice Arkansans to vote away their initiative and referendum power. Both times Natural State voters said no. One of the provisions defeated in 2020 would have increased the number of counties in which petitions must reach a threshold to 45.

After voters rebuffed legislators on those amendments, the politicians now decide to weasel their way around the constitutional restraint. 

My, they’re real politicians now!

Legislators also declared “an emergency” so HB-1419 will immediately go into effect, because there’s an urgent need “to enhance and protect Arkansans’ voice in the ballot initiative and referendum process.” 

Why not tell the Big Lie? They’ve told every other size.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom media and media people U.S. Constitution

We’ll Keep It

Constitution, news media, Trump

An answer is warranted. 

When a former president of these United States asks a question of such magnitude, as Donald J. Trump did last week on Truth Social, how can we not respond?

“So, with the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party,” Mr. Trump inquired, “do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION?”

Trump is, presumably, referring to Elon Musk’s recent release of information about FBI communications with Twitter during the 2020 campaign, with the Feds suggesting that stories about the Hunter Biden laptop were likely Russian disinformation — even though the FBI knew at the time that that it was Hunter’s laptop. For the FBI to work to discourage media platforms from providing such information to the public is deceptive and wrong. It should be investigated and, depending on the evidence, prosecuted to the full extent of the law. 

Such collusion is even more destructive of our democratic system when done with partisan political motives. Which may now be SOP at the Bureau.  

So, let’s answer Mr. Trump’s questions. “No,” per declaring him the winner and sending President Biden packing. And a no-go on a new election. Of course, there is one in 2024, and Trump is a declared candidate.

Yes, the news media is largely dishonest, drunk with their power and deluded into thinking they should keep information from us if it might make us vote contrary to their desires. Moreover, the Deep State is actively colluding with them (and vice-versa) to warp public opinion. 

Trump argues that this new information “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” He’s dangerously mistaken.

Who would “terminate” these laws and constitutional provisions? His dear friends in Congress, The White House, the FBI and DOJ? Unelected judges — who’ve already ruled against his campaign? A mob, pray tell?  

No, thanks. That Constitution? We’ll keep it. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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crime and punishment national politics & policies Second Amendment rights

A Mad Cycle

gun free zone, 2nd Amendment, guns, gun control. US Constitution

The cycle runs like this:

  1. Some (usually young) man shoots a number of people in a gun-free zone;
  2. Media people whip their viewers into a frenzy about the need for “common sense gun control laws” or a complete gun ban;
  3. Politicians scurry to “do something.”

Despite the fact that the Uvalde and Indianapolis mall shootings suggest contrary policies, Congress has just produced a law that actually takes a step . . . in the wrong direction, adding more penalties, for example, on top of existing penalties for convicted felons caught in possession of firearms.*

“Contrary to what you may have read or heard, the story of how that happened is not an inspiring example of bipartisan cooperation to protect public safety,” writes Jacob Sullum in Reason. “It is a dispiriting illustration of how the worst instincts of both major parties combine to produce policies that are neither just nor sensible.”

The deal gave R’s tougher sentences and D’s more gun control, and “both got to pretend they were doing something to prevent mass shootings.”

Not addressed? The insane policy, originally pushed by one Senator Joe Biden, of “gun-free zones.” As anyone with common sense knows, bad guys who want to make a statement by killing lots of people, prefer gun-free zones to other areas.

A more subtle aspect of the cycle is how the topic of gun legislation, as handled by politicians and major media propagandists, itself elicits broken men to break the law and kill, kill, kill.

What if the best way to break the cycle would be to accept the Second Amendment as a given and spurn every demagogue in Congress and the media who persists on defying the Constitution?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Neither the Uvalde nor the Indianapolis shooter were convicted felons.

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judiciary national politics & policies too much government

Emergency Effrontery

Joe Biden, Covid, Vaccines

The ruling was hardly shocking. Most constitutional scholars expected it, I think. That being said, the whole business is . . . shocking.

I refer to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals coming down hard against the Biden Administration’s vaccine mandate.

Say those words, “vaccine mandate,” reflecting on how it was “enacted” — not by act of Congress — and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s tortured justification for forcing private companies seems doomed.

At least if the Constitution retains any of its meaning.

“The stay,” explains Reason editor Jacob Sullum, “which the court issued on Friday evening, says OSHA shall ‘take no steps to implement or enforce the Mandate until further court order.’ It is officially a preliminary pause ‘pending adequate judicial review of the petitioners’ underlying motions for a permanent injunction.’ But the court left little doubt that it would grant those motions, saying ‘petitioners’ challenges to the Mandate show a great likelihood of success on the merits.’”

The administration’s desperate shoehorning of OSHA’s statutory ability to concoct an “emergency temporary standard” (ETS) is an act of effrontery. 

Sullum, in his detailed coverage, shows just how extraordinary and inapt the reliance upon the ETS is. The COVID-19 crisis cannot justify the mandate through the legal mechanism chosen. It is fairly obvious that, as the court put it, Biden’s decree “grossly exceeds OSHA’s statutory authority.”

Sullum quotes another judge’s concurring opinion to the effect that even a congressionally legislated mandate would be controversial, constitutionally.

But breathe easy: Nancy Pelosi’s and Chuck Schumer’s Congress has no interest in creating a rational and constitutional response to the crisis.

And our Congress? Well, it doesn’t exist.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies subsidy

Maxine and Nancy Sure Need Joe

Pelosi, Biden, Congress, Constitution, rent, moratorium

“We thought that the White House was in charge,” explained Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), after the Democratic majority had failed to act on a key pandemic subsidy.

 “Action is needed,” implored a panicky Speaker Pelosi in a statement also signed by the Democratic House leadership, “and it must come from the Administration.”

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-imposed moratorium [on home evictions] lapsed Sunday — five weeks after the Biden administration said it would extend the measure ‘one final month’ to July 31 and four weeks after the Supreme Court let the ban stand but signaled any new extensions would require Congress to act,” The Washington Post explained.

“But Congress didn’t act.”

Then, yesterday, President Biden responded to exhortations from his party’s left flank by announcing the CDC would extend the federal moratorium regardless of the unmet constitutional requirement.

“The bulk of the constitutional scholarship,” the president acknowledged, “says that it’s not likely to pass constitutional muster.” 

You don’t need to be a constitutional scholar to conclude that this sort of thing is wholly Pelosi’s bailiwick. But forget the Constitution, spending is the supreme law.

Also forgotten are the landlords devastated by the moratorium. They likewise have bills to pay. 

“Congress set aside nearly $50 billion to help families . . . pay the back rent they owe and avoid eviction,” National Public Radio reported. “But that money flowed to states and counties, which . . . have managed to get just a small fraction of the money to the people who need it.”

While the political “need” for bailouts directly resulted from government action — the pandemic lockdowns — blame for the current unconstitutional mess lies squarely with the Democratic Congress.   

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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