Call For Sanity

  It is June of 2025, and there is a bill in Congress called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which was adopted by the House of Representatives in May and is targeted for Senate approval by July 4.  The Congressional Budget Office has estimated it would add as much as $2.8 trillion to the debt over 10 years.   I have written in the past about the looming debt crisis Has A Deficit of $1 Trillion Been Worth It?  (2009) $23,000,000,000,000  (2019) We have no longer have deficits of $1 trillion, instead averaging over $2 trillion annually, with a record deficit exceeding $4 trillion during the COVID-19 pandemic.  The debt is well beyond $23 trillion from just six years ago, having soared to $36 trillion in 2025. Before we talk about solutions, lets see what we can learn from history. A Brief History Lesson A New Nation Pays Off Her Debts The United States as a fledgling nation had $75 million in war debt from the American Revolution (1776-1783) and a Gross ...

Gun Control Recent mass shootings have once again ignited debate about "military style" semiautomatic rifles such as the AR -15.  Should they be banned outright, as they were for a period from 1994 to 2004 under the now-expired  F ederal Assault Weapons Ban ? See my previous post  Defending the 2nd Amendme nt  for my thoughts in general on the subject of the solution to senseless gun violence. This post is focused more specifically on an approach to regulating gun ownership that balances the concerns about access to weapons that are most often used in mass shootings with the constitutionally protected right to own guns. The 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says the following: " A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." So, while gun ownership is protected, the amendment also says that the people form a militia that is expected to be "well-regulated....

The Novel Coronavirus SARS-COV-2, which is what causes the COVID-19 disease, has dominated our lives and transformed our society in the months since the pandemic took hold in the United States in march.  After putting life on hold in so many ways for the last several months, things were starting to improve, but then numbers started to climb again. Illinois Governor Pritzker put the entire state back on tier 3 despite the number of severe cases being isolated to certain areas and demographic groups. Is it necessary? We know the virus is dangerous, especially to the elderly and those with certain medical conditions. It is critical that we protect those people, and part of doing so requires limiting the spread. Masks Yes, most masks won't protect you very well, but mostly they are worn to protect others if you are sick, to help avoid spreading it to others where it will eventually reach someone at high risk.  Also, people are contagious if they are presymptomatic and can spr...

Every time there is a high profile gun-related crime, there are renewed calls for increased gun control.  Some even suggest that the 2nd Amendment should be abolished, or at least modified, to allow for greater regulation. So, I think we should look at whether the intent behind the 2nd Amendment is still relevant today. Let's start with the actual text of the law: A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. What does this mean? A well-regulated Militia What is a "well-regulated Militia"?  How much regulation is intended, and what, exactly, was intended by the term "militia"? Militia in the eyes of the people in September of 1789, when the Bill of Rights was sent to the states for ratification? Militia I have no problem quoting from Wikipedia, in this instance, as the article has several citations and is curated by passionate people on both s...

The hot topic of the day in the United States is the impeachment hearings in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the likely impeachment of President Trump.  On one hand you have Democrats and others saying the president has committed and impeachable offense by asking the Ukrainian government to investigate possible corruption related to Joe Biden's son.  On the other hand you have many Republicans and others saying nothing illegal happened, so there is nothing warranting impeachment. Let's start by looking at previous presidential impeachments. Presidential Impeachments Andrew Johnson After the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, his vice president, Andrew Johnson, became president.  Johnson was a Democrat, selected by Lincoln because he supported preserving the union and would help to unify a divided country. However, Johnson opposed Republican plans for reconstruction in the post-war South, and he vetoed leglislation granting rights to former slaves.  ...

The national debt is fast approaching $23 trillion, and there no longer seems to be a major political party determined to address that problem. How big is a trillion? We hear words like billion or trillion thrown around on the news like they are talking about a billion as pocket change and a trillion as the cost of a house. These numbers are not bigger than most people can truly comprehend. How big is a trillion? For starters, just look at it: $1,000,000,000,000 That's a lot of zeros!  If you're middle class in this country, you might make $100,000, while a college student with a decent job might make $10,000  Let's look at those together: $1,000,000,000,000                  $100,000                    $10,000 Here's another way of looking at it: 1 million seconds is about 11.5 days, 1 billion seconds is about 32 years, and a trillion seconds is equal to 32,000 years. ...