For several years, Armslist filled an essential niche for gun owners across America. If you had a gun (or a gun-related item) that you no longer needed, and wanted to find someone local who would buy it, or perhaps trade it for something you’d like better — or if you were looking to save a little money by purchasing something used instead of new — Armslist was the place to go.
Ian Underwood
The Real Lesson of Roe v. Wade
When you make a federal case out of a state concern, you create a winner-take-all situation. If you think you’re going to win, that’s good, because you’ll win everywhere at once. But if the tide ever turns, it’s bad, because you lose everywhere at once.
Larger is the New Smaller
Suppose some people come to your home and tell you that, since you have too much money, and they don’t have enough, you have to give them some of yours; and if you don’t, they’ll hurt you. If they do this regularly, they don’t even need to continue with the threats, since the ongoing threat is implied.
Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right to Health Care
The major objection that Democrats seem to have about the prospect that Amy Coney Barrett will fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court is that she might be open to overturning the Affordable Care Act (ACA, also known as Obamacare) on constitutional grounds.
A Better Pledge
I have a friend, an immigrant from Israel, who recently moved to a new state, and put his kids in a new school, where they are being required to recite the Pledge of Allegiance every day.
Taxes Are the Price We Pay For…
I always cringe when I hear someone make the claim that ‘taxes are the price we pay for civilization’, when in fact, taxes are simply the price we pay for failures of imagination and character. It’s definitely a contender for the dumbest arguments in politics. Taxation is the McDonald’s of politics. You don’t go to … Read more
American ‘Exceptionism’
Suppose you checked your newsfeed one morning to see that a group of Syrian militia members had kidnapped democratically-elected Bashar al-Assad (who received 89% of the vote in his country), or that North Korean rebels has kidnapped democratically-elected Kim Jong-un (who received 100% of the vote in his country).
Why Doesn’t the Government Pay for Your Guns?
A while back, a meme was going around that clarified an important distinction between rights and entitlements, and nicely illustrated what kind of nonsense you get when you mix those up. It went something like this: What’s interesting is that if you change health care to education, it loses none of its validity:
It Depends on What the Meaning of ‘And’ is
I’m mystified by Nancy Pelosi’s plan to use the 25th Amendment to wrest power away from Donald Trump — if not before the election, then after. The amendment lays out three cases in which power might be transferred from a President to a Vice President.
Is ‘Necessary’ the Same as ‘Helpful’?
I was just listening to the Commissioner of Education tell a charming story about how a student with special needs was able to find a creative way to allow him to participate in a welding class at his local school. Like many of the stories he tells, it was heart-warming.
A Couple of Questions for His Excellency
His Excellency is apparently going around the state, attending meet-and-greets for Republicans running for office. There’s one in my area today, but I can’t attend because of prior commitments. However, I hope that at one or more of these events, someone will pose the following questions to him:
Biden’s Prep Session Leaked?
Rumor has it that someone from the Biden campaign made recordings of the candidate’s prep sessions, and leaked one of the recordings from late Tuesday afternoon. It reveals that in a last-ditch effort to minimize the risk that the candidate would misstate a fact, misremember an event, misidentify a person or location, or suffer some … Read more
It’s Not That Trump’s Taxes Should Be Higher, but That Other People’s Should Be Lower
We’re hearing a lot about how during some recent years, Donald Trump paid only about $750 in federal income taxes. His tax returns weren’t obtained from an official source, so they may or may not be genuine. But even if they are, and even if he paid only that much, the problem isn’t that he paid so little, but that other people have to pay so much. In particular, people who are trying to raise children.
It’s America That’s Exceptional, Not Americans
I was recently talking to a friend who moved from Israel to America about 30 years ago. He’s been building a career, raising a family — basically living the American dream. He said that one of the reasons he wanted to come here was that he grew up hearing about ‘American exceptionalism’.
What Will Biden Do When He Finds Out?
I was reminded, during the first presidential debate, of Emily Litella (a recurring character on Saturday Night Live, portrayed by Gilda Radner). Emily would appear during the Weekend Update segment of the show to reply to an editorial that she hadn’t quite heard correctly.
And the winner was…
Last night’s debate was anything but ‘presidential’. The only candidate who could be characterized as ‘the winner’ wasn’t even on the stage. It was Jo Jorgensen, the Libertarian Party nominee, who saw a surge in Google searches for information about her. Apparently, people are realizing that it would be better to have an adult as their president.
Confirmation should require closer to 12 minutes than 12 weeks
In the Age of the Internet, it’s no longer clear that there is any value in a Senate hearing to confirm a Supreme Court nominee. By the time the hearing begins, everything about the nominee is already known by everyone involved in the process. No question will be asked to which the answer is not already known.
At this point, the main purpose of a hearing seems to be to produce sound bites for senators who are up for re-election, rather than to change any senator’s mind about how he’s going to vote. This is true in particular for Democrats, who typically announce their opposition to a nominee even before the nominee’s identity is known.
ConVal Admits to Ripping Off Taxpayers
The superintendents of ConVal and other school districts made a remarkable admission in court recently. They claimed that the state adequacy aid of $3636 per student per year is too low, because they’ve calculated that the cost of providing an adequate education is actually $9929.
The Two-Budget Solution to the School Funding Problem
Many people don’t know it, but the state has definitively identified the amount of money that a school district should be spending on each student in the district: 198:40-a Cost of an Opportunity for an Adequate Education. – I. For the biennium beginning July 1, 2015, the annual cost of providing the opportunity for an … Read more
Would You Prefer the Breathing or the Non-Breathing Section?
I’m old enough to remember the days when the proprietor of a restaurant got to decide whether smoking would be allowed in his establishment, and how to manage the co-existence of both smokers and non-smokers. In many cases, a restaurant would be divided into two sections: Smoking and Non-Smoking. Upon entering (or making a reservation), a customer would declare his preference, and be seated accordingly.