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February 10, 2012
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Mark Clayton: How did Anonymous hackers eavesdrop on FBI and Scotland Yard?
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Victoria Kim: Immigrant-smuggling ring used black drivers to avoid racial profiling
February 2, 2012
Jim Carney: Wrong number call may have saved her life
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Tina Susman: For woodchuck rescuer, every day is Groundhog Day
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Jeannine Stein: Mental illness struck one in five U.S. adults in 2010: Report
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Fred Weir: Putin: Multiethnic Russia cannot survive as a US-style 'melting pot'; must find its own way
Susan Johnston: 5 Sneaky Coupon Strategies Consumers Should Watch Out For
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Caroline B. Glick: America lost most in 'Arab Spring'. Sadly, many voters still don't grasp the extent
Warren Richey: Drug criminal scores win in GPS ruling from conservative-leaning high court
Erika Bolstad: Black conservatives gather to talk about gaining strength
January 23, 2012
Melissa Dribben: Jewish voters to play a key role in Florida's Republican primary
Jordan Rau: In quest to grow, Catholic hospital system will announce this morning its break from church
Ali Safi: U.S. envoy gives Taliban terms for peace talks
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Frank J. Gaffney Jr.: No-kidding red lines: U.S. response to an Iranian nuke may be bluster, but Israel's won't be
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Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz: Thriving through touch: Gentle massage helps older people with low mobility improve in mind and body
January 12, 2012
Warren Richey: Landmark Supreme Court ruling a 'resounding win' for religious groups
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John Fauber : Statins found to raise diabetes risk in postmenopausal women
Katy Hopkins : Consider This Before You Pay for an Online Degree
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Shari Roan: Millions of atrial fibrillation sufferers at risk for devastating, but preventable, stroke
Tom Hussain: Pakistan -- recipient of more than $21 billion in civilian and military aid -- speeds pursuit of Iranian pipeline, defying US
David G. Savage: High court signals it won't be loosening TV's 'indecency' rules
Stephen Ceasar: Oklahoma's Islamic law amendment can't go into effect, court rules
January 10, 2012
Reza Kahlili: From an ex-CIA spy: US must exploit new split in Iran's Revolutionary Guard
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January 9, 2012
Michael Doyle: Put through legal hell over dream home, couple fought back hard --- all the way to Supreme Court
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Jewish World Review
Dec. 29, 2009 / 13 Teves 5770
Memo to the House: Adopt the Filibuster
By
John Stossel
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
The filibuster is sure taking its lumps these days. New York Times
columnist Paul Krugman says "the Senate and, therefore, the U.S.
government as a whole has become ominously dysfunctional". The Democrats won the White House and
Congress last year and should have had no trouble passing the health
care overhaul, yet "the need for 60 votes to cut off Senate debate and
end a filibuster a requirement that appears nowhere in the
Constitution, but is simply a self-imposed rule turned what should
have been a straightforward piece of legislating into a nail-biter. And
it gave a handful of wavering senators extraordinary power to shape the
bill."
Why is this "dysfunctional"? I assume Krugman would praise the
filibuster if a President Palin and Republican Congress were ramming
bills through. Regardless of what senators in the 19th century had in
mind, the filibuster is a wonderful antidote to the tyranny of the
majority. It's no argument against it to say that the statists' favorite
piece of legislation didn't fly through smoothly enough. They'll have to
come up with a better case than that.
There is no greater threat to individual freedom and autonomy than
government. The threat from private freelance crime is small potatoes
compared to the daily usurpations of the state, with its taxation,
regulation, privilege-granting, inflation and war. Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon's immortal passage has never been topped:
"To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed,
law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at,
controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by
creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do
so. To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction
noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered,
assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden,
reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility,
and in the name of the general interest, to be place(d) under
contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from,
squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first
word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted
down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged,
condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all,
mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored."
That just about covers it.
So I favor any procedural methods that can slow down government's
legislative juggernaut. During the health care debate, commentators
often referred to the lawmaking process as sausage-making, a reference
to this quote, usually misattributed to Otto von Bismarck but spoken by
poet John Godfrey Saxe: "Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect
in proportion as we know how they are made."
What those commentators overlooked is that it's the taxpayers who get
ground up.
Of course, the filibuster and other stalling methods can be used to stop
bills that would advance liberty, like tax cuts and the repeal of
restrictions. But I'll play the odds. On any given day, what is Congress
more likely to do: violate or expand liberty? As 19th-century New York
Judge Gideon Tucker put it, "No man's life, liberty or property are safe
while the legislature is in session."
Libertarian science-fiction writer Robert Heinlein had a good idea. One
of his novels depicted a bicameral legislature with one chamber needing
a supermajority to pass laws and the other needing only a minority of
votes to repeal them.
By the standard of protecting freedom and keeping government caged,
that's not a bad idea. It should be easier to repeal laws than to pass
them.
After all, look at what Congress has been up to lately. Our "leaders"
are on the verge of passing a Rube Goldberg-like contraption that would
raise insurance prices, compel everyone to buy insurance, increase
America's debt, destroy jobs and limit innovation. Low-income people, as
usual, will get the worst of it despite the politicians' boast that
they are "covered."
If any piece of legislation is worthy of procedural burial, this is it.
One need not be a fan of Republicans to be pleased that they gave the
filibuster a try.
So let's not kill the filibuster. In fact, I have a better idea: Let's
extend it to the House.
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© 2009, by JFS Productions, Inc.
Distributed by Creators Syndicate, Inc.
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