Call For Sanity

Recently the Obama administration decided to deny Catholic institutions such as hospitals, clinics, etc. religious exemption from the requirement to provide free contraceptives to all employees, against the teachings of their faith. That was met with an outcry, so the president decided to change the rules to exempt those institutions but still require the insurance companies that they pay to provide health care (mandated by "Obamacare") to offer the contraceptives for free. In other words, it is a shell game, moving from requiring the employer to provide the contraceptives to requiring the employer's insurance company to provide the contraceptives as part of the policies that the employer funds. How is that an exception? The answer is that it is not. The political conservatives have cried out that this infringes on religious freedoms, while the political liberals have hailed the decision as a victory for women and ridiculed the conservatives as wanting to ban contracep...

I haven't posted in a long time, but I hope this one is worth the wait. In the past 222 years there have been thousands of proposed amendments to the U.S. Constitution, but thankfully only 27 have passed Congress and been ratified by the states. Six others have passed Congress but failed to be ratified by the states, with four of those still pending due to no deadline existing. I say "thankfully only 27" because the Constitution should not be changed lightly, only changing to address significant needs. Still, there are valid reasons to amend the foundational document of our republic, and I will list here a few that I would propose. These are my own ideas and not part of any national campaign, but I would love for a national campaign to form around any of these. In no particular order: 1. Limit taxing and spending authority to only what is needed within enumerated powers. "The United States shall not raise revenues nor incur debt for any purpose e...

Remember when the national debt (total money owed) reached $1 trillion, and everyone was concerned that our economy would collapse? Well, this week, our annual deficit (additional money borrowed just this year) crossed $1 trillion, and we're barely half way through the year. So, has all this spending of money we don't have, with near certainty of skyrocketing interest rates and/or hyper-inflation, managed to save our economy as promised, or is it just sending us toward disaster? Has anybody noticed unemployment has exceeded the projections that preceded the "stimulus" bill for what would happen if we didn't spend all that money? It certainly didn't save the jobs that were predicted. Funny, that's just what I and many others said would happen. So, why are we still planning to spend the rest of that money? What was spent so far hasn't helped. Neither has the promise of the rest of the spending helped. Now, if more of the money had been spent on i...

Where in the U.S. Constitution does it say there is a Constitutional mandate for the "separation of church and state"? Nowhere. The first amendment is the only reference to religion in the Constitution. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. What does this mean? It means quite simply that the Congress of the United States may not establish a national religion in the manner of the countries of Europe at the time, such as the relationship that the Church of England had to England or the Roman Catholic Church had to the Holy Roman Empire. It means that the Congress of the United States may not pass laws that restrict free exercise of religion, such as was the case in the countries of Europe at the time, most of which said that you must only...

The U.S. Constitution was intentionally designed to ensure a strong enough federal government to overcome the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation and keep the country from dissolving into anarchy while maintaining a government limited in its authority beyond the basic necessities. Yes, we need the federal government to provide for national defense. Yes, we need the federal government to oversee interstate commerce. Yes, we need the federal government to handle treaties with other nations. I could go on, but you can read the Constitution for yourself. However, take close notice at the 10th Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. So, why does our federal government get involved in things that the Constiution does not delegate to it? The answer is "because it can." How is this done? Well, mostly it is done by collecting massive amounts ...

[On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States officially overturned the January 22, 1973, decision by the same body. This opinion, which I authored in 2009,  explains my reasons for believing that this was an appropriate decision.] Whether you are for or against abortion rights, you should be against Roe v. Wade. Why? Because Roe v. Wade is a perfect example of the danger that judicial activism poses to the integrity of the U.S. Constitution. It is claiming to find something in the Constitution that just isn't there. Where in the Constitution is there a protection of personal individual freedom with regards to medical decisions, parental decisions, or even prohibition against murder? Nowhere. These matters are to be decided by elected legislatures, not appointed judges. If a legislature wants to make it legal for a woman to kill her child during pregnancy because the pregnancy has medical implications for the woman, that is within the powers granted by the Constituti...

The economic "crisis" of 2009 has been mischaracterized in the press and by the government.  For starters, President Obama likes to blame the "failed policies of the past 8 years" and particularly "the Bush tax cuts." That couldn't be farther from the truth. The tax cuts are actually what fueled the economic good times during his administration, and they held off the recession that would have otherwise come much sooner.  President Bush certainly has a share of the blame, though, because he signed all those wasteful spending bills full of pork. In fact, he didn't veto anything until the waning days of his administration. Then, he went so far as to push for the massive financial industry "bailout", which was exactly the wrong thing to do. Better to let those banks fail and let the economy start the process of recovery than to keep propping things up and subsidizing companies that can't survive on their own due to bad decisions.   The Re...