April 24, 2014
No federal law should oblige citizens, in their private and commercial transactions, to deal with people they don”t want to deal with. If I don”t want to bake you a wedding cake, or serve you at my lunch counter, I shouldn”t have to.
Wouldn”t that lead to a lot of”gasp!”discrimination? Yes, it probably would. So what? People will figure out ways to make money serving the discriminated-against. That’s the “free” in “free enterprise.”
7. Barring religious organizations from receiving federal funds or contracting in any way with federal agencies.
That”ll shut down the refugee-resettlement rackets. Why are outfits like Catholic Charities and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society getting tens of millions of dollars from the feds? How does this square with separation of church and state? It doesn”t. Shut off the spigot.
8. Amend Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to restrict birth citizenship to infants with at least one citizen parent.
Birthright citizenship is a dumb idea. It invites “obstetric tourism” and illegal immigration.
While we”re at it, let’s have an amendment . . .
9. . . . banning dual citizenship.
For goodness” sake!
10. Negating any power given to Congress in the Constitution if that power goes unexercised for five years.
I”m thinking here of Article III, Section 2, limiting the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court by “such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.” Use it or lose it, guys.
Wait a minute, you may say: What about the power to declare war in Article I, Section 8? You want Congress to declare war once every five years? What about the power of impeachment? What about . . . ?
Yeah, yeah. I want them to exercise their powers so they don”t forget they have them, as they appear to be doing. We could come to some arrangement with, say, Burkina Faso so that if nobody else needs declaring war against, we”d pro forma go to war with them. Fire a few rounds across the border into bushes, then have our ambassador sign a peace treaty.
As for the power of impeachment: If Congress can”t find one federal officeholder to impeach in five years, they”re not paying attention.
11. Mandate that any lecture presentation either be restricted to chalk, blackboard, and duster, or employ a federally accredited, licensed, and insured PowerPoint technician.
Frivolous? Possibly, but please give me this one. Yesterday I attended a lecture by an eminent cognitive scientist who spent half the time trying to find things on his MacBook while his audience sat fidgeting. Today I attended a lecture by a very well-known philosopher (name an anagram of DIDN”T NET AN EEL) who kept us waiting twenty minutes while techies tried to hook up his MacBook.
