Recently in Politics Category

There are some surprising twists in our interminable Washington election.

Republican John Koster has come from behind to take the lead in the Second Congressional District race by 160 votes, and is likely to end up beating incumbent Rick Larsen. The good news for Larsen is that the total Democrat vote is over 50 percent; the good news for Koster is that independents who didn't vote in the primary will likely swing his way in the general.

Of course, Koster won the primary in 2000, too: but Larsen ended up winning the general. But it was an open seat in 2000, and that the incumbent might finish second in the primary is really bad for Larsen.

Similarly, incumbent Democratic Senator Jean Berkey (38th LD) is coming in third in her primary, and is likely to be eliminated from the general election ballot. At 32.24% of the vote, she's falling behing Conservative candidate Rod Rieger at 32.63%, and fellow Democratic candidate Nick Harper at 35.13%.

According to Jerry Cornfield at The Herald, she'd be the only incumbent for the state legislature to fail to get to the general election this year. More incumbents, like Sound Politics troll Geoff Simpson, are likely to lose in the general, though.

From the Democratic Party: "The only thing Boehner seems serious about is raising campaign cash. After the speech, he told reporters that he's prepared to help Republicans spend $50 million to win back Congress. ... Democrats have a different plan. We're asking supporters like you to make a contribution to the By the People Fund." How dare Boehner say he's trying to raise money! We're different: we want to raise money!

As I mentioned yesterday, Rick Larsen criticized John Koster for saying good things about the Tea Party, even though Larsen himself has recently gone to a Tea Party candidate forum to try to get their votes.

And Larsen has twice criticized Koster over oil -- once saying Sarah Palin's endorsement of Koster would bring in money from oil companies, and then attacking Koster for wanting to drill more -- even though Larsen's the only candidate in the race to receive money from an oil company: BP.

And this morning I noticed that, despite attacking a display of flags from our nation's history that included the Confederate flag (which, last I checked, is part of our nation's history), Rick Larsen was at a presentation of those exact flags last summer. He's sitting next to the presenter, 38th LD candidate Hugh Fleet, in the fourth image in the slideshow.

Did Larsen tell the veterans in attendance of his disdain for showing the Confederate flag in a historical context? Probably not, just like he didn't tell the Tea Party members of his disdain for them, nor tell BP how much he hated oil companies when he took their money.

OK, actually, I am being too hard on Rick: he certainly, as a smart and rational person, does not hate Tea Party members or oil companies, nor does he have any problem with showing the Confederate flag in a historical context. He just dishonestly implies otherwise when it comes time to attacking his opponent.

This video from WA-2 Democratic incumbent Rick Larsen is hilariously sad in its level of desperation and deception.

Larsen first implies, incredibly, that just because -- like hundreds of millions of Americans -- Republican challenger John Koster thinks favorably of the Tea Party movement, that therefore he is a racist whackjob.

I wonder if Rick Larsen told the people of the Tea Party events he attended that he thought they were all racist whackjobs. (Larsen right now has a link on his own web page to an article about the event he attended, where, apparently, Larsen didn't have the cajones to tell the attendees how he really felt about them. This reminds me of the time Larsen attacked Sarah Palin for using the word "target" in a political context, while linking to a Seattle Times article on his web site using the same language. You'd think he would be more careful about that sort of rookie mistake.)

Then Larsen -- who is the only candidate in the race who has received a campaign contribution from BP -- actually attacks Koster for doing what Obama did: saying we need more domestic oil drilling, shortly before the BP accident happened. It's a fair comment on Koster's views, but it's also something the head of his own party agreed with at the time, just a few months ago.

And then Larsen turns back to attacking the Tea Party as racist as a means to attack Koster, even going so far as to show a Confederate flag juxtaposed against "Koster's" parade entries: but that flag was one of many different flags that was part of a larger historical flags presentation, and in no way advocates that flag in particular. And despite what the video claimed, it wasn't even Koster's parade entry, it was the county GOP's.

The sad thing is that Larsen is ruining his own good name with his blatantly dishonest attacks. So many people have told me, "Rick Larsen's a good guy, I just disagree with his politics." Implying that Koster is racist just because a tiny minority of people in a nationwide movement are racist is the exact opposite of being a "good guy." It's being a damned liar.

But I guess Larsen has nothing else to say. He can't run on his own record of record debt and deficit; he can't attack Koster for things he has actually done or said in his long career; he can only attack Koster by dishonestly taking pictures out of context and implying he is guilty of crimes committed by people he's never met and has nothing to do with.

John Koster's first TV ad is up. It's mostly to introduce him to the voters who don't yet know him, especially up in the northern part of the Congressional District 2.

I have a new idea for restructuring our federal government.

Ministers with the power to restrict government activity.

The Minister of Shut Up, for example, has the power to force anyone in government, including the President, to shut up. So when the President says, "My predecessor's failed policies are to blame for the recession," the Minister tells him to shut up. This will greatly increase the quality of our public discourse.

There's also a Minister of Liberty who has the power to overturn or restrict any government action that violates civil liberties, and a Minister of Financial Responsibility that can veto any spending that isn't covered by revenues.

Now, here's the important part: obviously, these positions are only as useful as the people who hold those positions. So if you appoint them, or elect them popularly, you have a big problem. Politicians would appoint people who would not restrict their actions, and the people would elect people who would allow the government to do what they want government to do. It gets us nowhere.

So we will have a popular vote, but the only people who get to vote are people who have a real interest in upholding the restrictions involved. So only people intolerant of bull get to vote on the Minister of Shut Up. Only civil libertarians could vote for Minister of Liberty. And only fiscal conservatives get to vote for Minister of Financial Responsibility.

You might wonder then, what about the liberals? What do they get to vote for? It's only fair that everyone should get to vote for some position, but it seems like at least two of those positions are tilted heavily to the right, and we don't want liberals to feel left out. So, we need a position for them to vote for that is involved in very actively pursuing large government, in taking care of everyone's needs, in fighting against liberty, and so on.

We already have one: President.

So liberals get to decide what government will do, independents get to tell people to shut up, libertarians get to restrict government from hurting our liberty, and conservatives get to say what we won't spend money on because it's too expensive. Everyone gets to vote for only one thing.

I have not decided yet how best to determine whether someone really is a civil libertarian or liberal or what-have-you. Maybe some sort of lie detector test, or maybe just force everyone to pick one position to vote for: they will vote for the position they care most about, which will be the one that is actuated to push their interests, whether it is making government do things, securing liberty, keeping fiscal sanity, or just telling everyone else to shut up.

I think it could work.

Sam Taylor over at The Bellingham Herald quotes a John Koster press release titled "Larsen Votes to Create Permanent Bailout Culture."

Taylor says, "I've already blogged on here that the truth is far different, that the verbatim language of the measure sets up mechanisms for the institutions themselves to pay for any restructuring (not taxpayers). The New York Times also has a good, in-depth piece on how that restructuring works, too, over here."

But the problem is that -- as that very New York Times piece clearly points out -- "The bill will still allow the government to fashion ad hoc remedies in the case of a failing financial institution. ... [I]t appears there is enough wiggle room in the bill and elsewhere in the laws that the government will still be able to structure unique one-off solutions in any financial crisis." The taxpayers, according to the NYT article, very well may be on the hook: "Even if it is not money, backdoor federal assistance in one form or another may arguably still be provided to other parties to permit them to arrange a private deal."

Taylor ignores those facts and instead hyperfocuses on two things: the phrase in Koster's press release headline (which does not even appear in the text of the press release) that Rick Larsen voted "to create permanent bailout culture," and that the bill sets up a system so that the taxpayers won't foot the bill. As to the latter, the NYT piece addresses it sufficiently to make the point: "there are provisions that would still encourage government deal-making," and "while the bill forbids the use of taxpayer money to 'prevent the liquidation of any financial company,' there is always latitude in times of crisis to stretch the law as was done during the financial crisis." To argue that there won't be bailouts still happening just doesn't pass the smell, laugh, or fact test, and even his own link to the NYT says Taylor is wrong. Yes, going through restructuring in the bill might not result in taxpayer funding, but there's many other ways to provide "assistance."

As to the former, what Koster's press release actually said was the bill "will likely open the door for permanent taxpayer-funded bailouts for Wall Street." Far from being not "the truth" -- given the fact that even the NYT says that deal-making, wiggle room, ad hoc remedies, latitude, and backdoor assistance will still encouraged, allowed, and arguably still provided -- it's a perfectly reasonable belief to have. We know from history that "give an inch, take a mile" is the rule of the day in DC, as in most political circles. Believing that if they can bail out, they will bail out, is not remotely unreasonable.

If you believe bailouts are good, fine. But let's not pretend that -- like Obama said -- this bill prevents them from happening, or that it is somehow not "the truth" to believe that, under this bill, bailouts will be encouraged.

My candidate for Congress in WA-2, Republican John Koster, pointed out today that the infamously crooked Charlie Rangel has, according to OpenSecrets, contributed $24,000 to incumbent Democrat Rick Larsen. Larsen is tied for receiving the 15th most money, out of the entire Congress, from Rangel.

That can't be good for Larsen.

According to FEC reports, over the last decade Rangel's National Leadership PAC gave Larsen $17,000, and Rangel's candidate committee gave Larsen another $7,000.

Could be worse, though; he could've received $24,000 from Nancy Pelosi, too. Oh wait: he did (from her candidate committee and her "PAC to the Future").

I kid. I think tying Larsen to Pelosi is a. accurate, and b. will justifiably hurt him, but honestly, I don't care that she gave him money. That's how politics works. Same thing with Rangel: Larsen may not have known Rangel was corrupt. But he should do the right thing and, now knowing the money was in part the fruit of corruption, he should do something good with it.

From the EFF press release:

"We believe Gov. Gregoire's climate change executive order is an unconstitutional order," said Michael Reitz, director of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation's Constitutional Law Center, who represents the taxpayers in this case. "Gov. Gregoire violated the doctrine of separation of powers by snatching a failed bill out of the legislative process and issuing it in the form of an executive order. If the governor wants to pass laws, she's in the wrong branch of government."

I can't yet speak to the claims in detail, but the complaint claims that the executive order "directs state agencies, local governments, planning councils, business representatives, and other entities to take specific actions and to implement new responsibilities and processes."

If that's true, the EFF has a strong case. My guess is that the case will rest on how true that is, because, certainly, while the governor has some authority, without specific statutory or constitutional grant, to tell state agencies what to do, it's limited; and more certainly, she has no such authority to tell anyone else what to do.

Rep. Rick Larsen said last week that getting less money from individual contributions than challenger John Koster "shows that folks across Northwest Washington support my efforts."

According to FEC filings, in the first quarter of 2010, Larsen raised $97,244 from individuals, compared to Koster's $163,188. In the second quarter, just ended in June, Koster still outpaced Larsen in individual contributions, $203,493 to $197,573.

The bulk of Larsen's money during this campaign -- 57% of it, almost $600K -- has come from political action committees (PACs), and most of that has come from out of state, despite Larsen's decrying of the mere possibility of significant out-of-state funds going into Koster's campaign. This quarter, for the first time this cycle, Larsen's individual contributions outpaced his PAC contributions, but it still was less than Koster's.

Koster pulled in only $9500 from PACs (which includes the $5000 from Sarah Palin's PAC), which accounts for only 2.5% of his total. Certainly, it would be nice to have the political connections and high profile Larsen has to rake in that kind of PAC money, but clearly, "folks across Northwest Washington" are so far -- like me -- picking John Koster over party-line Democrat Rick Larsen.

Coming on the heels of a couple of polls that put Koster well ahead of Larsen -- an internal and an external -- it's not looking great for the five-term Democrat. Koster is breathing down his neck, and it's hard to see how Larsen isn't very worried right now.

(P.S. I was on Orcas Island over the weekend, and so was Rick Larsen. I didn't see him -- or his signs -- but I did see many Koster signs between the Ferry and Moran State Park.)

President Obama, as he has for years, said again the other day that it was the failed Bush policies that got us into our economic mess.

But from all of his campaigning on that a couple of years ago, through now, I've never heard him explain exactly which Bush policies got us into this mess, and how they did it. He's handwaved at tax cuts, but he's never explained how tax cuts caused any economic problems other than, at worst, a higher deficit (which Obama has massively increased, through his vote for TARP in the Senate, then the stimulus and second TARP, and the health insurance bill, and so on). He's mentioned changes in bank laws that happened under Clinton.

What else? Someone out there please enlighten me.

John Burbank, executive director of the Economic Opportunity Institute, thinks of the children and says, "Taken together, these four initiatives will cost our state -- and our children -- half a billion dollars in public investments every two years, undermining our children's prospects for education and economic opportunity. That isn't patriotic. It is just plain wrong."

Burbank lies throughout his piece -- for example, saying that privatizing liquor sales will result in more teenage deaths (which isn't warranted by the facts), and repealing the new candy-and-soda tax will result in more obesity and diabetes (which is literally impossible, unless people would ingest more candy and soda after the tax is repealed than before it was in place) -- but his biggest lie is the one the Democrats tell us all the time: that a reduction in general funds means a reduction in funding for education.

They constantly remind us that it is the constitutional "paramount duty" of our state to provide for education for children; what they don't like to note is that this necessarily means that spending money on anything other than education, while education is not being fully funded, is unconstitutional. And that means that if education is underfunded, the Democrats who run the legislature, and the Democratic Governor, are violating the Constitution.

The fact is, they want to cut education, because that's the best way to get people to want to raise taxes. But when they cut education below what they believe is constitutionally required, they are violating the very Constitution they pretend they need to raise taxes to uphold.

I defy Burbank to think honestly about what the Founders would have said is patriotic. He will find that taxing candy, controlling all liquor sales, and deceptively using "the children" to justify all manner of tax increases was not what they had in mind.

The Patriots were contrasted in the Revolution to the Loyalists. The Loyalists supported the central British government, including its high taxes, and backed -- and participated in -- British propaganda. They thought resistance to British rules was morally wrong. They feared the crowds who were angry at the government. They were pessimistic, disbelieving that people could govern themselves.

Burbank, like many of today's progressives, doesn't sound like a Patriot to me. He sounds like a Loyalist.

Our Washington State Constitution was amended for the fourteenth time, in 1930, to read:

All taxes shall be uniform upon the same class of property within the territorial limits of the authority levying the tax and shall be levied and collected for public purposes only. The word "property" as used herein shall mean and include everything, whether tangible or intangible, subject to ownership.

In 1933, the Supreme Court of Washington decided Culliton v. Chase, saying:

It would certainly defy the ingenuity of the most profound lexicographer to formulate a more comprehensive definition of "property." It is "everything, whether tangible or intangible, subject to ownership." Income is either property under our fourteenth amendment, or no one owns it. If that is true, any one can use our incomes who has the power to seize or obtain them by foul means. ... No more positive, precise and compelling language could have been used than was used in those words of our fourteenth amendment. It needs no technical construction to tell what those words mean. The overwhelming weight of judicial authority is that "income" is property and a tax upon income is a tax upon property.

That is: income is property, therefore an income tax must be uniform, therefore it is unconstitutional to put an income tax solely on the rich.

Now, fast forward some 80 years. Bill Gates Sr. dislikes this decision. He wants to tax the incomes of only the rich, through I-1098. So he gets Hugh Spitzer to write an analysis for Gates' Tax Alternatives Report almost 10 years ago.

Spitzer wrote with the intent of attacking this longstanding precedent, saying, "The lead opinion in Culliton stated that Aberdeen had held that income is property, that a tax on income must therefore be uniform, and that a nonuniform income tax violated Washington's Constitution. As it happens, Aberdeen did not decide that income was a form of property, at least not under the Washington Constitution."

Now, Aberdeen had relied on two opinions that had been overturned, and so itself may be considered inoperative. That, plus Spitzer's assertion that Culliton relied on Aberdeen for its definition of income as property even though Aberdeen didn't do that, should sink Culliton. Right?

Flummery.

Spitzer correctly notes that Culliton claims Aberdeen decided "that income was property for the purposes of taxation," but it's perhaps telling that Spitzer, in his article, never mentions the fact that our Constitution's definition of property was changed between Aberdeen and Culliton, and that Culliton makes explicit reference to that change in the very context Spitzer was referring to:

After the decision by this court in the Aberdeen Savings & Loan Assn. case, supra, deciding that income was property for the purposes of taxation, the people adopted the fourteenth amendment, supra, which made it a part of the fundamental law of the state.

(Emphasis added.)

So even if Aberdeen didn't say that income is property for the purposes of taxation under our Constitution, and even if Aberdeen is no longer operative anyway, Culliton explicitly recognizes that after Aberdeen, the Fourteenth Amendment to our state's Constitution does say that income is property for the purposes of taxation, that "Income is either property under our fourteenth amendment, or no one owns it. ... No more positive, precise and compelling language could have been used than was used in those words of our fourteenth amendment."

If Aberdeen never existed, Culliton would still stand on its own. When discussing the law from other states, Culliton says:

None of the decisions from other states have any bearing upon the law before us, because of our peculiarly forceful constitutional definition and the difference in their constitutional authorization or restriction.

It doesn't say "because of our peculiarly forceful precedents," but refers explicitly to the amended Constitution. It continues:

We have no constitutional provision authorizing taxation of income as one thing and property as another. We have only the constitutional provision that property "shall mean and include everything, whether tangible or intangible, subject to ownership." Until we have such a constitutional amendment, the hands of the people, as well as the legislature, in enacting laws, are tied.

And:

It is perfectly obvious that, when the proponents of initiative No. 69 framed the act, they lost sight of our constitutional definition in the fourteenth amendment. The declaration in the law of a purpose to tax all annual incomes as such and not as "property," cannot override the constitution. It is also clear that the people when legislating, the legislature, and the courts, are and should be bound by the limitations, restrictions, definitions and prohibitions of the constitution. It is the fundamental law of the state.

It is simply not possible to read this decision and come away with the idea that it is not entirely supported by -- in the compelling opinion of the Court -- the text of the Constitution. Even though it mentions Aberdeen as support, it quickly notes -- and reiterates many times -- that it is the Constitution's definition of property that is inescapably holding.

Bill Gates, Sr. is going to waste a massive amount of taxpayer dollars putting up a blatantly unconstitutional initiative, and I just hope that he actually believes the nonsense that Culliton was based on bad precedent rather than the text of the Constitution.

There was a lot of talk today from the Democrats accusing the conservative justices of "judicial activism." What they really mean, of course, is that the justices come up with decisions the Democrats dislike.

The Lily Ledbetter case, for example: one Senator today opined, "what should Lily Ledbetter have done?" She was implicitly arguing that the Court ignore the law and let Ledbetter sue: but the job of the court is to apply the law. To allow Ledbetter to sue would have been activist: it would have been ignoring the law and doing what you think is best instead of following the law.

Senator Franken and others attacked the "activism" of the Citizens United case, which essentially ruled only that government cannot restrict free political speech just because of who is saying it. This is "activist"? To them, yes, it is, because they believe strongly in the obligation of government to restrict speech they dislike: Franken went so far as to argue that without government censorship, we wouldn't have the Clean Air Act or seatbelt laws. Putting aside the question of whether that's accurate, it certainly doesn't make the censorship justified, not in a free country. Down that path necessarily leads to government doing literally whatever it wishes, without any restrictions whatsoever, if it believes it is doing it in the best interests of the country (including torture, warrantless wiretapping, withholding habeas corpus, and so on).

But the most remarkable thing about today, for my money, is that Justice Stevens gave us -- in one of his last opinions, the dissent on McDonald v. Chicago, the gun case -- showed us what actual judicial activism looks like.

Stevens says that the 14th Amendment protects liberty, ensuring that "a measure of dignity and self-rule will be afforded to all persons," and gives some examples: Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Griswold, and so on. He also notes that "perfect state/federal congruence" is only required on matters "at the core" of the relevant constitutional guarantee.

Whether or not our liberty to use contraception or have abortions is protected in the states by the 14th Amendment, what is critical to note is that he sees these things -- which everyone agrees are not in the Constitution -- are "at the core" of constitutional guarantees, but the Second Amendment -- which is actually in the Constitution -- is not. He says, "firearms have a fundamentally ambivalent relationship to liberty," ignoring the fact that keep and bearing them is a liberty itself, and never explaining why the fact that guns -- like speech and religion and, dare I say it?, abortion -- can cause harm has any bearing on the case before him.

Stevens notes, "Recognizing a new liberty right is a momentous step. ... Sometimes that momentous step must be taken; some fundamental aspects of personhood, dignity, and the like do not vary from State to State, and demand a baseline level of protection." But how seriously can we take him when he denies a baseline level of protection for an existing liberty right? Not at all. He adds, "... sensitivity to the interaction between the intrinsic aspects of liberty and the practical realities of contemporary society provides an important tool for guiding judicial discretion."

And there you have it, folks. Ignore every other damned thing Stevens said in his dissent. He couldn't care less about any of it. All that matters to him is allowing government to ban guns, because he thinks that is a good thing. He goes into some detail about why the right to keep and bear arms is "different," but never says how they are legally or constitutionally different, although we know the answer: it's different because Stevens likes the rights to abortion and speech, but not the right to guns. He says owning a handgun is not "critical to leading a life of autonomy, dignity, or political equality." But my copy of the Constitution says it is an essential and guaranteed liberty, and damn Justice Stevens if he tries to take it away from me.

Literally, nothing else Stevens says in his dissent matters, because at the end of the day, no matter what the facts of the case, he would be "sensitive" to "political realities of contemporary society" and rule that States are allowed to ban handguns, simply because he doesn't care about protecting that particular right.

This is what true judicial activism looks like: flat-out ignoring the law, your own stated political philosophies and precedents, and common sense, and coming up with completely extra-legal ways to disallow someone from doing what the law clearly says they can do.

Judicial activism is, at essence, ignoring the law and replacing its guidance with your own opinion. Judicial activism is hatred of the rule of law, which "limits" us too much. Far better, in their opinion, to let some people in robes be "sensitive" to "reality" and determine what the law should be on the fly, instead of following the protections we've had in place (and ignored) for hundreds of years.

Not to criticize any justices in particular -- because I understand the culture and processes of the Supreme Court -- but it is shameful of our system that we could only get a single Supreme Court Justice to agree that "the Second Amendment is ... fully applicable to the States ... because the right to keep and bear arms is guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment as a privilege of American citizenship."

As I guessed, the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment applies to the states, but through "due process" instead of "privileges or immunities."

Of course, what's even more amazing is that a fundamental right of the people of the United States was found not to be a fundamental right by four of the nine justices. This position is only possible to hold -- if you understand the law -- by denying the Heller decision, or by denying the selective incorporation precedent through which rights are "incoporated" to the states by due process.

Either way, it amounts to the same old song: the liberals on the Court hate the rule of law. They care only about their chosen outcomes. The caselaw is absolutely, utterly, undeniably, clear: we have a fundamental federal right to keep and bear arms (Heller), and such fundamental rights, through due process, are applied to the states. There's nothing more to it. You have to deny those settled principles of law to dissent in this case. You have to be a consequentialist who hates the rule of law, setting it aside whenever you don't like its outcome.

That's what these four justices are. Sotomayor has proven herself now, as Stevens, Ginsburg, and Breyer did before her. To wit, Justice Stevens, in his dissent, actually argued against the Second Amendment itself, calling it an "injustice," comparing it to slavery and the subjugation of women: we can't just willy-nilly grant historical rights through the 14th Amendment, because look at these other EVIL historical rights we used to have (implying, of course, that gun rights are also evil).

I don't think more needs to be said than this. On the one side we have people standing up for what the Constitution actually says and means, and on the other, we have people denying our fundamental constitutional rights just because they don't like them.

Thankfully, liberty prevailed and the Second Amendment has taken its proper role as applying to the states, even though it's nearly a century-and-a-half since the 14th Amendment was ratified with that explicit intent.

The Supreme Court held, 8-1 (only Thomas dissenting) that disclosure of referendum petitions, in general, does not violate the First Amendment. The door is left open to further litigation to see if a narrower case may find in their favor.

There's seven opinions from the nine justices and I've not read them yet. I'm sure the folks behind R-71 aren't happy, but it's not over for them yet.

I was listening to Obama tonight. He said, “Because there’s never been a leak this size at this depth, stopping it has tested the limits of human technology.” I thought, What about alien technology? He continued: “That’s why, just after the rig sank ...” You contacted aliens? “... I assembled a team of ...” Aliens?! “... our nation’s ...” Secret alien contacts?!? “... best scientists and engineers. ...” Dang.

In attacking Sarah Palin's endorsment of challenger John Koster (R), incumbent WA-2 Congressman Rick Larsen (D) said, "A Palin endorsement means John Koster is opening his campaign war chest to a potential landslide of out-of-state contributions; contributions that will fund his campaign to eliminate the help seniors are getting to pay for prescription drugs, privatize Social Security, and protect the lax regulations that led to the BP oil spill." (emphasis added)

Those sure sound like awful things, even if his misrepresentations of Koster's campaign were true. But as Jerry Cornfield at The Herald points out, 65 percent of Larsen's contributions come from PACs, most of which are out of state, and has received several thousand from oil companies. Only three percent of Koster's money has come from PACs (in fact, Koster's raised more money from individual contributions than Larsen, since his announcement in January), and of that PAC money, none of it is associated with the oil industry.

I guess Larsen is just trying to use fiery rhetoric to prevent Koster from becoming more like Larsen himself.

Larsen also accused Palin of doing something wrong by using the extremely common "target" rhetoric regarding political races: "She even uses crosshairs in her literature, upping the rhetoric and literally taking aim."

Wow! She EVEN used CROSSHAIRS! LITERALLY taking aim! Shocking, especially since on Larsen's campaign web site, he links to a Seattle P-I article titled "Larsen: Big turnout for House target," without implying there's anything wrong with the former newspaper's use of the word.

I demand that Rick Larsen condemn the Seattle P-I for upping the rhetoric with its use of a word that has been commonly used in political races since before anyone of us was born! And then I demand that Rick Larsen condemn himself for putting such vile rhetoric on his campaign home page. Despicable.

No, not Brian Baird, Bryan Baird.

At the state GOP convention last Friday, people were abuzz with news that the incumbent Democrat might have reneged on his promise to not seek another term, and had filed as an independent. Alas, it had not happened: instead, a 24-year-old kid filed, even though he would not turn the constitutionally mandated age of 25 until next March (which means, of course, that he'd likely have been eligible to run if not for the Twentieth Amendment ... yet again, the Constitution disenfranchises a minority).

Baird filed, and then the Secretary of State's office returned his fee, having been told they couldn't legally accept his filing.

It makes me wonder why there isn't an automated system for catching that sort of thing. The candidates file by computer, and all the State has to do is check the birthdate, and automatically reject a filing by someone who doesn't meet the age requirement. It's not hard.

But then again, Secretary Sam Reed's office still refuses to do this basic, simple, obvious, automatic check for voter registrations, too, which is why we've had underage children voting in recent years.

His name is Bob Etheridge, a Democratic* Congressman from North Carolina. After being asked a simple (though perhaps loaded) question on a sidewalk, the Democratic* Congressman -- in the words of the NRCC -- "lost it" and assaulted the questioner: an unnamed, self-professed, college student. The Democratic* Congressman grabbed the person on the wrist, and later on the neck; he repeatedly asked, "who are you;" and then he lied that he had a "right to know" who the student is.

Frankly, I am more disturbed by the lie than by the physical assault. The physical assault, while disturbing, was a one-time incident, resulting in only a temporary loss of liberty to the victim. Such a lie, though, from an elected official of the federal government -- a Democratic* Congressman -- could be used to permanently deprive someone of his First Amendment rights.

Thinking more about it, though, I wouldn't be surprised that a Democratic* Congressman didn't know that we have a First Amendment right to anonymity, since the Democratic* Party has spent so much time in the last couple years assaulting our First Amendment rights (saying groups of people lose their right to speech when they exercise their right to associate, for example).

OK, maybe that was overly partisan. It's not like some Republican politicians don't have First Amendment problems too (John McCain did help author the bill I am referring to, after all). But I get really angry about government assaults on liberty, whether corporate assaults on corporate liberty (lockstep Democratic* opposition to the rights of filmmakers), or individual assaults on individual liberty (a Democratic* Congressman assaulting an individual on a sidewalk).

I agree with some of the commenters I've seen that the Democratic* Congressman should be removed from office as soon as possible. Practically speaking, that may mean just waiting until November, of course. It's notable that currently, Democratic* Congressman Bob Etheridge's election web site is not responding.

*Note that I used the proper form of the party name here. As an adjective, the word is "Democratic," not "Democrat." I took great pains to make sure everyone knows that this is a "Democratic" official, not merely a "Democrat" official: that he is, in fact, an elected member of Congress that belongs to the Democratic Party. (You're welcome!)

I was visiting some friends in Portland, Oregon, and I was told about an incident at the local Red and Black Cafe, in which a police officer was asked to leave because their customers (sorry, "collective members") do not feel safe around police.

Said the co-owner (which I assume, as this IWW closed shop is "worker-owned" and "collectively managed," is simply one of the baristas) said, "If there's a police officer there, I wouldn't feel safe in that situation. I would feel worried that the officer might Tase the person or potentially shoot them for having a mental health issue."

I suggest they add "wearing a law enforcement uniform non-ironically" to their list of prohibited behviors ... as long as "fostering inane and irrational paranoia" is still protected.

Regardless, what's clear is that they agree with Rand Paul that the right of private discrimination, while often an abomination, is protected by our Constitution. And because that view is "inherently racist," well ... I regret to report that these lovely people in Portland are racists.

Tomorrow I will be going to the WSRP Convention and at 3 p.m. there's a Consitution and Policy Workshop and a Citizen-Journalism Workshop.

The former's description reads:

This workshop is tailored to individuals wishing to learn more about constitutional principles. Listen to experts on our U.S. and state constitutions, discuss our founding documents, and learn how to analyze the constitutionality of proposed laws.

Tired of not seeing topics you care about reported? Do you want to develop better writing and research skills? Learn how to do just that from top bloggers, political commentators, and newsmakers in the region.

I don't know which to go to. (I signed up for both.)

Barack Obama, inaugural address: "In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted, for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame."

Nancy Pelosi, this month: "If you want to be creative and be a musician or whatever, you can leave your work, focus on your talent, your skill, your passion, your aspirations because you will have health care."

When Rand Paul says it is unconstitutional for the federal government to prohibit private businesses from discriminating based on race, he's right, arguably (which I will get to in a moment).

But when he says it is not, in this day and age, necessary for government to prevent segregation of private businesses, he's undeniably right.

There is no conceivable reality where we'd see such significant racial, sexual, ethnic, religious, or "gender identity" discrimination in this country that would result in rampant segregation or loss of significant opportunities for minorities. It just isn't rational. Overwhelmingly, the people of this country are aghast at such discriminatory practices, which means businesses overwhelmignly won't do it, both because businesses are (usually) run by those same people, and because their customers are also those same people.

To say we need government for this purpose is, quite simply, denying this obvious and unassailable reality of life in America in 2010.

As to the constitutional question, we can disagree about the legitimacy of it. We cannot disagree, however, that Paul's view is well-founded in the text and history of the Constitution. My personal view -- having been born well after the Civil Rights Act was passed -- is that perhaps, at the time, the constitutional right to freedom of association, and the right of states to make their own laws on such matters, were worth bending due to the centuries of government-sponsored institutional discrimination that had left a whole race of people significantly disadvantaged throughout nearly all facets of society.

I can't make that judgment one way or another, but I can see the arguments on both sides. Living in 2010 and not in 1964, I lean toward liberty rather than government control, but I can't judge the 1964 mindset.

But again, we no longer live in such a time where -- government or not -- any group of people is significantly disadvantaged due to their race, religion, ethnicity, gender, or "gender identity." That simply doesn't exist anymore. That's not to say discrimination doesn't happen: of course it does. But no group is significantly disadvantaged because of what little discrimination remains in our society.

Some people might say "that's easy for you to say, a middle class protestant white male." Shrug. I am a conservative Christian in an industry largely controlled by atheists, agnostics, and liberals. I live on the West Coast, which many project to be majority Hispanic within my lifetime, and certainly within the lifetime of my first- and second-generation descendants. If this were about ME ME ME, I'd probably be putting all the protections for ME in place that I could.

I simply believe in liberty, and that any restrictions on liberty must be backed up by a damned good reason; and that furthermore, when we add or continue restrictions without a damned good reason, we set precedents that endanger other liberties. We see this in the Civil Rights Act itself: we gave up the right to discriminate based on certain categories, and this has justified taking away our right to discriminate based on other things, like -- in Washington -- "expressions" of "gender identity." The violations of our liberty in Social Security and Medicare and growing wheat have led to justifying Obama's health insurance mandate. And so on.

I won't insult anyone's intelligence by trying to prove that the views I am expressing are not racist. Only a moron -- like Cokie Roberts, on This Week today -- could possibly think these views are racist. George Will, however, is not a moron, but he's still wrong: on the same program he expressed the view that we reasonably gave up one right (the right to discriminate in some personal affairs) for another (the right to not be discriminated against).

Setting aside that this doesn't make much sense on the face of it (taking away my actual right to give someone else a "right" that isn't an actual right isn't a reasonable tradeoff), if we think this is reasonable, then it can be used to justify almost any government theft of our rights. Imagine if in 1964 we outlawed "hate speech," and then Rand Paul in 2010 said we should allow people to say hateful things. Surely we'd have just as many people today complaining about Paul, saying how racist it is for him to suggest such a thing, and how our right to say hateful things was replaced with a right to not have hateful things said about us.

Then again, to many liberals, hate speech laws are a good thing. This boggles my mind, but so do many things that many of them believe.

Again, I can't say whether we were right or wrong in 1964. But certainly it's wrong now, simply because it is a patently unnecessary restriction on liberty. That said, there's no point in trying to repeal this particular blue law. It's not going away any time soon -- though we can hope -- and for most people, it doesn't cause us any problems (except for the lucky few who are wrongly prosecuted for false claims of discrimination). That's why many blue laws stay on the books: most people don't care enough to try to get rid of them.

I'd like someone to try to explain how this makes financial sense. Fourteen electric cars, powering them for $32K apiece, when just plugging them into the existing electrical grid would cost, by my estimate, less than a thousand dollars a year at $0.06 per kWh. It would take more than 30 years to break even.

Realistically though, it would be a lot less, likely. At 20K miles per car, using 0.2kWh per mile, it would be $240 per year per car, taking more than 130 years to break even.

I hope there's something more to this story, like, maybe they are going to power the Comcast Arena with the solar panels, too. I fear not, however.

I wonder what Rick Larsen thinks about this?

Inspired by various people who make dumb comparisons that sound like they make sense, solely for the purpose of making some grander insinuation, is my new song, Hitler and Obama. Enjoy!

Initiative 1068 would legalize marijuana for all adults in Washington State.

Marijuana is a terrible product. Other than the people who use it strictly for medicinal reasons, it has no positive uses. People who use marijuana for other purposes are wasting their lives. It has no place in society, and I shun anyone who is under its destructive influence. It can ruin the lives of the people who use it, and bring down friends and family along with them.

I think I've said pretty much all of the negative things to say about it. Therefore, marijuana should be legal.

(Did I just blow your mind, man?!)

Unfortunately, it seems to me this initiative would legalize the public use of marijuana, which I cannot support. It is unacceptable to me to legalize the substance in such a way that people will be free to blow marijuana smoke into the shared air of children and adults who do not wish to breathe it in. Therefore I plan to oppose I-1068.

This is not a minor issue. I am assured by Philip Dawdy, one of the people behind I-1068, that "the legislature will be falling over themselves to regulate this kind of stuff." He says "they will and I can assure you we'd want them to," but that's not good enough. Assurances are not actual laws.

Apart from the direct potential health hazard of secondhand marijuana smoke, there's also the possibility (however unlikely) that it could trigger a positive drug test.

Not until criminal penalties are in place for public use of marijuana, can I support a law making marijuana use generally legal.

Dawdy says our laws for initiatives don't allow him to tackle both issues in one initiative. I don't know if that's true, but if it is, then he should have run two initiatives.

Come back with a better way to protect the public from the direct effects of this private activity, and I'll probably support it. But I won't support this: it's bad law.

Note that I am not alone in this. I was actually planning to support this initiative until it hit me that it would not regulate public use. Then, while preparing this piece, I found that the ACLU has the same basic objections I do. When a conservative little-l libertarian and the ACLU are both against a marijuana legalization initiative, that should make you think twice if you're prone to supporting it.

Yesterday, in the final U.S. Supreme Court case heard by Justice John Paul Stevens, my good friend Larry Stickney and his group, Protect Marriage Washington, squared off against Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna in Doe #1 v. Reed to determine whether public disclosure of petition signatures is routinely allowed under the First Amendment; that is, whether such dislosure should be done only under strict scrutiny, narrowly tailored to serve a government interest, or, whether the state can simply release the signatures upon a normal request for public records.

You may recall the events that led to this case: Stickney and his group got R-71 on the ballot last year, which attempted to kill the "everything but marriage" law for gay couples. Pro-gay activists threatened him and his family, and others who publicly supported repealing that law. Some groups requested lists of the petition signators, with the obvious intent to harass and open them up to threats, which has an undoubtable "chilling effect" on whether people will sign petitions in the future.

You can make a strong case for keeping these signatures out of the public. The question is whether the First Amendment has anything to say about it, or whether states should be free to make their own policies.

Attorney James Bopp represented the John Does and Protect Marriage Washington. He drew comparisons -- and important distinctions -- to other disclosures, such as campaign finance and voter affiliation, noting that specific and overriding government interests were involved.

I won't get too far into the details, you can read the transcript itself -- which is more interesting than I thought it might be -- I think Justice Scalia sums up my view:

"And in light of the fact that for the firstcentury of our existence, even voting was public ... the fact is that running a democracy takes a certain amount of civic courage. And the First Amendment does not protect you from criticism or even nasty phone calls when you exercise your political rights to legislate, or to take part in the legislative process. You are asking us to enter into a whole new field where we have never gone before."

He continues: "Didn't you have some options, too? Have you started a referendum to repeal the -- the [Washington] law that requires disclosure? ... [T]he people [of] Washington evidently think that this is not too much of an imposition upon people's courage, to -- to stand up and sign something and be willing to stand behind it. Now, if you don't like that, I can see doing it another way. But -- but the people of Washington have chosen to do it this -- this way. And you are saying that the First Amendment absolutely forbids that."

I feel very badly about these terrible people who threatened the Stickney family. I think our laws do not do enough to protect them by going after mentally unstable scum like John Bisceglia who use explicitly violent and targeted rhetoric to quiet free speech. And I think maybe our laws should exempt petition signatures from the Public Records Act, and instead rely on a separate process for verification.

But I don't see how our federal Constitution has anything to do with it.

Liberals have put up Initiative 1077 to give us a massive new income tax for individuals earning over $200,000.

It's nominally an obvious attempt at class warfare, to increase the tax burden on "rich" people while slashing it for everyone else, since it also includes a big property tax cut.

But it's worse than that: it's really an attempt to simply distract people from the terrible job the Democrats have done, and from voting for Republicans.

The bill is obviously and blatantly unconstitutional. And due to its specific severability language, if the unconstitutional part is ruled unconstitutional, the whole thing would be thrown out. The proposed law states unqeuivocally that certain income levels are taxed at different rates, which clearly violates the constitutional prohibition on non-uniform taxes upon the same class of property. The state has found consistently for 80 years that income is property. Therefore, you can't do that.

The initiative gives lip service -- but it's nothing more than that -- to the idea that in 1933 the state Supreme Court ruling "ultimately relied on United States supreme court cases that have long since been overruled." The larger case perhaps did, but the part of the case that ruled income as property did not. That was completely specific to our own state Constitutiuon. They go on to say the ruling "treated Washington's graduated income tax, as then drafted, as a nonuniform property tax," as if to imply this tax is different, but it's clearly not: the very fact that it was graduated -- as this proposed tax is -- was the point.

There's really not much more to say here. It's so obviously unconstitutional -- in terms of the stated text of the State Constitution, and longstanding precedent -- there can really be only two reasons to try: to force a court challenge and change precedent, or to distract people from the elections.

It's most likely both. It will almost certainly fail to overturn precedent, though will waste our time and money in the attempt. Whether it succeeds in distracting us is up to us.

I keep hearing that the health insurance reform bill will take a certain dollar from us if we don't buy insurance, or a percentage of our income, whichever is higher.

I can't find this in the original bill. It just gives a dollar amount.

I look for it in the reconciliation bill, and I see what appears to be modifying existing income tax rates, codified in Section 5000A(c)(2)(B). The problem is, in the original bill, I see no (B) in 5000A(c)(2) as created by H.R. 3590, Sec. 1501(b) ... let alone clauses i, ii, or iii. And I am sure I am in the right place, because the reconciliation bill goes on to modify 5000A(c)(3), and that's all there in the original bill.

Well, not all of it. It says in H.R. 4872 that it is changing $750 to $695, but $495 to $325. But there is no $325, it's $350. So I search on $495 and find that in Sec. 10106 -- an amendment -- $350 was changed to $495. Also, (B) was added to 5000A(c)(2), which increased the tax penalty percentage further.

Gotta love it when the text of a bill modifies an earlier section of the same bill. So even reading the bill you can't understand what the bill says unless you read the entire bill because it goes back on itself.

Speaking of going back on itself ... since this represents a very large income tax increase on families making less than $250K -- if they choose to not have health insurance -- it's also Obama going back on himself when he promised he wouldn't raise such taxes. Yes, he already violated that promise in many other ways, such as with the tobacco tax, but after election he revised his original promise to refer only to taxes on income, even though it was originally for all federal taxes, and this one is explicitly on income.

A few days ago, Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz incorrectly told her constituents, "We actually have not required in this law that you carry health insurance."

She went on to say it's a choice in how you file your taxes, not a requirement.

She either didn't read and understand the law, or she's lying. Section 1501 of the law she voted to pass amends Subtitle D of the IRS Code, adding a new Section 5000A, which is titled, "Requirement to Maintain Minimum Essential Coverage." The very first words of 5000A are, "An applicable individual shall for each month beginning after 2013 ensure that the individual, and any dependent of the individual who is an applicable
individual, is covered under minimum essential coverage for such month."

The law itself, that she voted for and supposedly read, says, unequivocally, that people (unless they are exempted, such as Indians and Amish and incarcerated prisoners) are required to have health insurance.

Ironically, Wasserman Schultz said on her Facebook page a few days earlier: "A FACT Check: Members of Congress and the health insurance reform bill? Apparently some people don't know that the health insurance reform bill we just passed REQUIRES that Members of Congress and their staff to obtain the same health insurance plans created by the law (some states might offer different plans) or through... the Exchange (market or purchasing pool) created in the law."

And, apparently, some people (ahem) don't know that the same bill REQUIRES all non-exempt people to obtain health insurance.

UPDATE: Just after I wrote this, Wasserman Schultz was on Crossfire with Chris Matthews and she repeated the same line: there is no requirement, it's simply a different way to file your taxes. She's an intelligent woman, she's had a few days to fix her error, and she's still repeating this clearly false statement, so I'm calling it: she's not merely ignorant, she's lying.

The Democratic Senate Campaign Committee (DSCC), of which Senator Patty Murray is the fourth ranking member, and HA Seattle, run by our friend Goldy, have been spreading the inane claim that Dino Rossi has been involved in "shady" dealings and transactions.

Of course, none of it backed up by a single fact, and attorney James Rigby's letter to HA puts all of the "shady" nonsense to rest. The letter can be summed up with: "if you have evidence no one else has, then provide it; otherwise, you're simply making it up." Here's the money quote: "I know more about Maestro and Heide's shady dealings than probably anybody alive. You don't know what you are talking about when you assert that Dino Rossi has any connection to their wrongdoings. Your tactic is guilt by association plain and simple."

Rossi sent a letter to Murray asking her to ask her DSCC to pull back. She didn't respond, and chose to lie instead, saying "This is an issue between Mr. Rossi and the DSCC." If Murray were not highly ranked in the DSCC, that might fly, but she is obviously heavily invovled in what the DSCC is doing.

The DSCC also lied, saying "Significant questions remain unanswered surrounding your business deals, associates and what you have been doing since you last waged a campaign for public office." But no such questions exist, and if they do, the DSCC certainly isn't asking them. Instead they are hoping that by throwing enough insinuations against the wall, something will stick.

And the funniest part is that Rossi has not even announced whether he is running for the Senate against Murray at all, and the only real sign that he might be running is that he hasn't said he isn't. But this is enough for them to be so scared that they have to resort to manufacturing complaints against him. And that they won't back up their lies, but just keep reasserting them as if repetition makes truth, is telling.

You've probably seen this, but I can't pass up pointing it out. Many liberals hate the rule of law -- and by this, I mean they despise the notion that we should follow the law, and instead they want us to just go by what they think is best at the time (a.k.a., the rule of man) -- but few admit it so clearly as Rep. Phil Hare (D-IL).

111th Congress
2nd Session
H.R. ____________

To provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduce the growth in health care spending, and for other purposes.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Mr. Rangel introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on _______________

                                A BILL

To provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduce the growth in health care spending, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE
(a) Short Title.--This Act may be cited as the "Affordable Health Care for America's Future Act".

SECTION 2. REQUIREMENT FOR SUPPORTING CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATES
(a) Findings.--Congress makes the following findings:

  (1) In general.--The individual responsibility requirement provided for in this section is commercial and economic in nature, and substantially affects interstate commerce, as a result of the effects described in paragraph (2).

  (2) Effects on the national economy and interstate commerce.--The effects described in this paragraph are the following:

    (A) The requirement regulates activity that is commercial and economic in nature: economic and financial decisions about how and when campaign donations are made, and which candidates are financially supported.

    (B) Only members of the Democratic Party voted for health care reform.

    (C) Health insurance and health care services are a significant part of the national economy.

    (D) The requirement will add millions of new consumers to the health insurance market, increasing the supply of, and demand for, health care services.

  (3) Supreme Court Ruling.--In United States v. South-Eastern Underwriters Association (322 U.S. 533 (1944)), the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that insurance is interstate commerce subject to Federal regulation.

(b) In General.--Subtitle D of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 is amended by adding at the end the following new chapter:

"CHAPTER 49--SUPPORT OF CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATES
"Sec. 5000C. Requirement for supporting congressional candidates.

"(a) Requirement for supporting congressional candidates.--An applicable individual shall, for each month beginning after 2010 ensure that the individual contributes to an authorized Democratic Party candidate the minimum contribution for such month.

"(b) Shared Responsibility Payment.--

  "(1) In general.--If an applicable individual fails to meet the requirement of subsection (a) for 1 or more months during any calendar year beginning after 2010, then there is hereby imposed a penalty with respect to the individual in the amount determined under subsection (c).

  "(2) Inclusion with return.--Any penalty imposed by this section with respect to any month shall be included with a taxpayer's return under chapter 1 for the taxable year which includes such month.

"(c) Amount of penalty.--

  "(1) In general.--The penalty determined under this subsection for any month with respect to any individual is an amount equal to 1/12 of the applicable dollar amount for the calendar year.

  "(2) Applicable dollar amount.--For purposes of paragraph (1)--
    "(A) In general.--Except as provided in subparagraphs (B) and (C), the applicable dollar amount is $250.

    "(B) Phase in.--The applicable dollar amount is $100 for 2014 and $150 for 2015.

    "(C) Mitigation.--The applicable dollar amount shall be increased by 200 percent of the total contributions made by applicable individual to other nonauthorized political or public advocacy groups."

I will say up front, clearly, for all to hear: violence, and threats of violence, in response to to the health insurance bill, are wrong. Categorically wrong. And anyone making such a threat, or committing such a violent act, should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

That said, however, such threats and even people acting on such threats is not merely unsurprising, but absolutely inevitable. And far from being, as Nancy Pelosi said, against "the American way," they are firmly rooted in American politics from the very beginning of our nation (and I'm not just referring to the Revolution, either).

This is very simple.

Every person has the right to self-defense, to protect their rights from being violated by others. However, if every person acted out in self-defense against every encroachment of rights, we'd have chaos. So if a neighbor poisons your dogs, you don't shoot him or trash his yard. You go to the authorities: the police, the courts, and so on.

That is how we maintain an orderly society.

In this case, however, it's the government that is violating our rights. We entrust a significant portion of our right to self-defense to government, and they abuse that by stealing from us.

Of course, the right thing to do in this case is to work through the political system to fix the problem, to protect our rights from government encroachment. But for very legitimate and rational reasons, many people believe that's no longer a reasonable option. Year after year, more of our rights are taken from us, and with few exceptions, one those rights are gone, they don't come back.

So when the organizations you entrust the defense of your rights to is the organization violating your rights, and you believe you have no recourse left, you're going to consider reasserting your right to self-defense of your rights.

This is inevitable. Not that everyone will do it, of course, but in a nation of 300 million people, some will. Even if people don't think of it in those terms precisely, it's how the reasoning basically goes. It's wrong most of the time -- including in the case of the health insurance debate -- but it will happen, and pretending that it's some anomaly or outside of the American tradition is stupid. It would be nice if it were outside the American tradition, but that's just not reality.

Indeed, such violent reactions as we've seen are so completely and obviously inevitable that I assume the Democrats, long ago, knew the reactions would happen (how couldn't they?) and planned to take political advantage all along. If they are surprised by the reaction, they are, quite frankly, completely incompetent.

And for those who whine about this sort of thing happening more from the right than the left, I don't know if it's true. I've certainly seen many death threats toward Republicans in my days, and even in the last year we've seen many violent acts at health care town halls from Democratic supporters.

But I will say that because of how the parties break down philosophically, with the left being much more likely to take away the rights and property of other people, a violent response is therefore more likely in that direction. But we see the same thing from the left, too: the man in Bellingham who last year threatened violence because he saw his rights as a gay man being violated; radical blacks in the 60s fighting for their actual civil rights as human beings; and so on.

Their violent acts and threats were not justified either. But that some people will respond violently when government, the institution sworn to defend people's rights, are the ones violating their rights. It makes them feel helpless, which drastically increases the liklihood that they will lash out violently in reaction.

It's the way the world works and we shouldn't act surprised, and, when appropriate -- such as now -- we should point out that if government didn't steal from us, it wouldn't be getting that sort of reaction in the first place.

Of course, some on the left are going to say I am condoning violence, even though I'm clearly not. Just as broad government theft of rights inevitably results in violence, so too does speaking candidly about it inevitably result in lies.

It's the way the world works.

On KING 5 News tonight, Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna pointed out that the obvious fact that the policy of the health insurance bill is irrelevant to whether or not it's legal. He was asked, if the provisions in the bill are thrown out by the courts, won't that gut the bill? But that can't possibly be relevant to the lawsuit, which is just about whether or not those provisions are legal.

Our system, in theory, follows the rule of law, not an ends-justifies-the-means consequentialism that ignores what the law says if the people in charge happen to like the result.

But when his Governor, Christine Gregoire, had her turn to speak, she refused to actually explain why she thought the bill wasn't unconstitutional. She asserted it without explanation, and instead devoted her entire time to explaining why she thinks the bill is a good idea.

The bill could be the best idea in the world, but if it violates the Constitution, it cannot stand as it is. That's how our system works, as a former attorney general should know. And as any lawyer should know, the government has no authority to force people to buy a product just because those people happen to be alive. That not only violates the First, Fourth, Fifth, Tenth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution, as well as Article I, Section 8, but it subverts the entire nature of limited government established by the people of the United States of America. And worst of all, it denies the self-evident and unalienable human rights noted in the Declaration of Independence.

That Gregoire tries to divert attention away from the obvious constitutional questions involved, and focus instead on the completely irrelevant notion of whether it's a good bill, is prima facie evidence that she doesn't even care whether the bill violates the Constitution.

While I am on the subject, I draw your attention to a letter to the editor I had published in the Seattle P-I way back in 2007, on this very subject:

Hillary Clinton wants to force everyone to pay for health care insurance, especially those who need it the least. The less you use it, the more you help pay for everyone else.

You have a tax on your property, on your sales, on your income, but this is worse. Those other taxes are based on things you do; this is a tax on just existing, on breathing. The government forces you to pay money for that.

Clinton and the Democrats want to tax you for being alive, tax you when you die, and use that money to kill you before you're even born.

Boy, I got vision, and the rest of the world wears bifocals.

The health insurance reform bill should be opposed on many grounds. The most obvious to those of us who put a priority on liberty is that it violates our rights: our right to not buy insurance, our right to buy whatever insurance products we want, our right to not offer certain benefits as employers, and more.

Another big problem, if you're pro-life, is that the bill pays for abortions. The Democrats have been saying all along they would not pass a bill that pays for abortions, but they lied. This bill does precisly that, because it pays for insurance coverage that pays for abortions. There's no wiggling out of this lie.

Speaking of big lies, the Democrats have been saying their health insurance reform would cut the deficit. Obama said he wouldn't vote for it unless it did. But it only cuts the deficit because they cut out the Medicare "doctor fix" ... which they are going to pass separately later. So no, this bill -- combined with the portion they cut out of the bill, which they say they will pass this summer -- increases the deficit.

Of course, Democrats will say "we were talking about THIS bill, not the separate 'doctor fix' bill," but letting them get away with that argument would allow any Congress to make any major legislation reduce the deficit: just cut out the parts that increase the deficit, pass them separately, and surprise! You saved money!

Democrats who vote for this because it reduces the deficit are lying ... unless they plan to vote against the "doctor fix." But we know that the Democratic leadership and Obama plan to support it, so at the very least, we know they are lying about deficit cuts.

For most people, though, the biggest problem is that it simply doesn't do anything good for most Americans, becase costs don't come down. The CBO says premiums stay essentially static, with or without this bill. Literally, the Democrats have been touting a bill to address the high cost of health insurance, without actually reducing the cost of that insurance.

Anyone who votes for this bill is voting for deficit increases, tax increases, and a complete absence of actual cost-cutting.

There's a lot more that can and has and should be said about this bill, but these are the primary reasons why the Democrats are killing themselves in the elections this November.

To most people, it's obvious that the White House line -- that people should like the health insurance bill because it has something in it that they like -- is idiotic.

It's entirely intuitive that just because you like one thing, doesn't mean you'll like something else that happens to include it. I've drawn the analogy that just because a bill that kills cute puppies cuts taxes, doesn't mean people who like low taxes will also like the puppy-killing bill.

George Will, on Sunday, used the analogy that he likes sauerkraut and ice cream, but doesn't like sauerkraut ice cream. I think that analogy isn't bad, but the point would be made better if he didn't like sauerkraut (as I don't): it's not that we like individual mandates and tort reform, but just not together; it's that we don't like individual mandates at all, and they end up ruining anything they're mixed with.

Will's analogy prompted a friend to quote: "It's got raisins in it. You like raisins." If you don't know what that refers to, watch this clip.

Mr. President, we see your health insurance plan as a big pile of green goo that comes alive after you've given it to us, and no amount of raisins is going to make us like it. The more we look at your plan, the less well we feel, and we'd really like to be excused.

This serves as both a perfect analogy to the White House line on their health insurance reform bill, and a chance to encourage people to see Better Off Dead again, or for the first time.

Oh and while I am talking about movies and the health insurance bill, recently, pundit Torie Clark compared the film Ishtar to the health insurance bill, saying "they spent millions and millions and millions of dollars on it you heard so much about it and when people actually started seeing it they said that this is terrible."

But it's not true. People who actually saw Ishtar -- except for people in "the business," including professional critics -- pretty much liked it. If you haven't seen it, you should. It's quite funny, though harder to find than Better Off Dead.

It's a little hard to find -- since it's not yet on the bill's page -- but the proposed substitute for the income tax bill is available under that page's Committee Materials link.

It's not an amendment, but a completely different bill. You'll want to look at Section 401 ("For income earned on or after January 1, 2011, a tax is imposed at the rate of four and five-tenths percent on all taxable income of resident individuals and on all individuals deriving income from sources in Washington for each taxable year.") and Section 504 ("There is allowed from taxable income the following standard deductions. ...").

However, there is no severability clause: so if that's the case and Section 504 is found to be unconstitutional, the whole thing would get thrown out. That is made explicit in Section 1202. That's the only good news here. Perhaps they changed the severability clause from last year's version because of exactly this criticism: that it would end up as a tax on everyone if the standard deductions were found unconstitutional, which is likely, if the Court follows longstanding precedent.

As a refresher, our State Constitution, in Article VII, Section 1, says, "All taxes shall be uniform upon the same class of property within the territorial limits of the authority levying the tax. ..." And our Court has consistently ruled that money is property (having found this because, I presume, it is obviously true). So without overturning many decades of precedent and finding that money is not property, the only way to make this fly would be to rule that different levels of income are property, which would be even more twisted than finding that money isn't property.

Or they could just completely take leave of their senses and find that a standard deduction that is, by the words of the people who authored it, explicitly designed to target specific taxpayers (thus violating the spirit and letter of the Constitution), is nevertheless "uniform" because "the tax is on everyone, but it just exempts certain amounts for everyone."

Recession. Massive unemployment. Tax increases. Higher health insurance costs. Property values in the toilet. Loans impossible to get for most people. And today the WA Senate announces that they want to force car insurance rates higher, for an auto theft surcharge (makes you wonder who the actual thieves are).

And students who have never had a job or paid taxes -- along with teachers who have never worked in the private sector -- are protesting that we aren't giving them enough free money for college educations most of them probably won't use and don't need.

If you really want a college education, I am highly in favor of it. A college education can be a great way to prepare you for the real world. You know what's another great way of preparing for the real world? Learning how to pay for things yourself, if you really want them.

But I have enough to pay for already without covering your Higher Ed Fantasy Camp.

Did the Democrats give any signal, at all, that they would be willing to take out any significant provision of their health care bill?

It seems to me that if not, it's hard to make a claim they were trying to compromise or be bipartisan.

Many people, in both parties, think that the legislative act is one of buying votes. From beginning to end.

They make sure you vote for the bill by putting something in it you want, whether it's a Bridge to Nowhere, the "Cornhusker Kickback," the public option, individual mandates, or whatever.

They don't seem to consider that some people will vote against the bill for what is in it, rather than what is not in it.

We saw this in display all day long with Obama and the Democrats saying over and over again that they have and would put in the bill what the Republicans want, and all the Republicans need to do is accept what the Democrats want. In this way, we have compromise, and there would be peace in the land.

But if what the Democrats want is something the Republicans are philosophically opposed to, then it's not compromise: it's surrender. And the Democrats know this. They know the Republicans cannot support an individual mandate, for example.

Real compromise involves subtraction, usually moreso than addition.

If the Democrats really cared about bipartisanship they would not try to add things to the bill to buy Republican votes, but they would offer to remove things from the bill that prevent Republicans from supporting it.

I am not implying the Republicans are perfectly principled and wonderful people. You wouldn't respect me if I did. I wouldn't respect myself. But there are lines they won't cross; the Democraic proposal has some of them; the Democrats know this; and they insist on Republican agreement anyway.

Now, I do accept the idea that this all could be part of the process, and the Democrats will eventually work with the Republicans by dropping the things that the Republicans will not support. But it doesn't look like it that's going to happen.

When a "compromise" "bipartisan" proposal includes ideas the Republicans cannot possibly support, according to their principles -- most obviously forcing everyone to buy health insurance, but also forcing people and businesses into a new "health insurance exchange," punishing people for buying services the government doesn't think they should have, and so on -- then it's not bipartisan. It's not a compromise.

The White House is going through great pains to say, "hey look at all the Republican ideas we included in our plan!" But that's not enough. They could include everything the Republicans want, but if it also includes things Republicans cannot support, then Republicans will oppose it.

For those who don't get it, try this analogy: a bill that cuts taxes, but that also forces dog owners to kill the cutest puppy of every litter, won't get support from conservatives. They like the tax cut; they don't like forcing people to kill cute puppies.

The individual mandate cannot be supported by the Republicans. Period. Adding in Republican ideas to a bill Republicans cannot support doesn't make it bipartisan: cutting out the things Republicans cannot support makes it bipartisan. And the White House has shown no willingness to do that.

Also, I'd like to point out that Obama is still making the claim, "Nothing in the proposal forces anyone to change the insurance they have. Period." But that's a lie. An individual mandate does precisely this. A mandate sets a minimum level of coverage, and forces people under that level -- through punishment of hefty fine, up into thousands of dollars per year for many people -- if they don't meet it. If you have insurance that does not meet that minimum standard, you are being forced to change it. Period. Obama is lying.

The Mackinac Center predicts that the cigarette tax will make half of all cigarettes illegally smuggled in to Washington State.

I don't know if that's true or not, but what I do know is that over half of Gregoire's proposed $605m tax increases are "sin taxes" (on candy, gum, bottled water, carbonated beverages, and tobacco); I know that these "sin taxes" will serve -- and are designed -- to discourage the behavior being taxed; I know Gregoire knows these things; and, therfore, I know that Gregoire's prediction of $345m in revenue from these taxes is dishonest.

I also know, by the way, that if our state hadn't abandoned Priorities of Government, they couldn't lie to the people and say they need these taxes to fund "vital services": they would have to be honest and say they can already fund "vital services" with the money they have, because PoG would require them to fund those things first. Instead, they choose to fund non-vital things first, so they can strengthen their case for tax increases for "vital services."

And while I'm at it, I also know that if Gregoire and the Democrats had kept spending to 10-15 percent in her first term, instead of the 33 percent we actually had, we would not have to raise taxes to fund anything today.

As usual, this whole thing is just long-term scheming to get bigger, and bigger, and bigger government. "Never let a crisis go to waste."

Mike Reitz at EFF gives a good writeup of the Supreme Court of Washington's decision in State v. Sieyes, which -- in essence -- says that our federal Constitution (through the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment) guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms, but not necessarily for minors.

The court did not actually rule that minors do not have such rights, but basically asserted that they weren't convinced they did. Civil libertarian Justice Richard Sanders wrote for the majority, saying, "we keep our powder dry on this issue for another day."

The current doctrine of selective incorporation -- which I've many times discussed -- was a travesty designed to prevent the plain language, and explicitly stated intent of the authors of, the Fourteenth Amendment from taking effect. Indeed, the sponsor of the Fourteenth Amendment in the Senate said at the amendment's introduction that "[t]he great object of the first section of this amendment is, therefore, to restrain the power of the States and compel them at all times to respect these great fundamental guarantees," which include "the freedom of speech and of the press; the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the Government for a redress of grievances, a right appertaining to each and all the people; the right to keep and to bear arms; the right to be exempted from the quartering of soldiers in a house without the consent of the owner," and so on.

Applying the Second Amendment to the States was part of the stated purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment. And the language is clear.

Sanders didn't write about this century-old travesty, but instead applied existing federal standards for incorporation, and demonstrated quite clearly and convincingly that the Second Amendment meets those standards.

New Chief Justice Barbara Madsen agreed with the decision in "result only," while Justice Debra Stephens wrote a concurring opinion claiming that she too agreed with the result -- that minors are not found to have gun rights -- but asserted that the decision to incorporate the Second Amendment was not warranted by the case, particularly in light of this summer's pending decision in the federal Court, because "I do not believe this is an instance where there is anything to be accomplished" by doing so. This could betray biases on both sides: perhaps Sanders wishes to contribute to the discussion the federal Court will be having, and Stephens does not.

Conservative Justice James Johnson dissented with the decision, for though he agreed with the incorporation part of the decision, he -- perhaps giving weight to Stephens' complaint of lack of restraint -- disagreed with the part of the decision regarding minors.

The main point here is what level of scrutiny to apply to our right to keep and bear arms. Johnson argued for strict scrutiny, the notion that in order to override someone's Constitutional rights, there must be in order to serve a compelling state interest, the law must be narrowly tailored to serve that interest, and it must use the least restrictive means to serve that interest. Under strict scrutiny, surely the case would have been found in favor of gun rights for minors; however, the question I have is whether minors should get strict scrutiny applied to them. Johnson is right, however, that the Washington Court does apply strict scrutiny to minors, so it seems in violation of precedent to not do so here.

Sanders responded that the Supreme Court itself refused to define a level of scrutiny for Second Amendment matters. It's curious, though, that Sanders punts on scrutiny because of an explicit lack of federal Court guidance, but forges ahead with incorporation despite the same lack of guidance, especially in light of the coming decision later this year. This makes me think even more that Sanders wants to, if he can, contribute to the federal Court's decision to incorporate.

I've not spoken much about this, because there's many arguments to be made for or against whether Umar Farouq Abdulmuttalab should be tried in criminal court or military court; whether he should have been read his rights soon after being taken into custody, or later, or not at all.

But I am struck by how terribly illogical the administration's defense of its actions has been. One official claimed they had to Mirandize him because the Constitution required it, which just isn't true, and there's precedent to prove it (and no caselaw to argue the contrary).

Joe Biden repeated the latest talking point the other day, that, well, the military tribunals have released two of the three people who were tried in them, so obviously, they don't work very well! The logical contortions behind this argument are astounding.

Biden's argument first asks us to believe that three is a reasonable statistical sampling from which to draw any conclusions, which on its face, is ridiculous. But if you look at who those three people are, it becomes even more ridiculous. All three were charged with, and covincted of, providing material support for terrorism. In addition, Salim Hamdan was charged with, and acquitted of, conspiracy. He, along with Australian David Hicks, were sentenced to 66 and 84 months in prison, respectively, because the crime is not as severe as actual terrorism.

The other person tried was Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, who was convicted for -- in addition to providing material support -- conspiracy and solicitation to commit murder. This is obviously a more servere crime, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

So if we actually follow Biden's argument here -- that we should look at the past results of the tribunals as indicators for what will happen in the future -- then, in fact, we should expect that someone like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who actively planned and participated in killing thousands of civilians, will be convicted and subjected to, at least, life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

How sad is it that when someone looks at your own argument, it actually disproves the point you were making?

Moreover, Biden clearly frames the administration as active in trying to prosecute and jail terrorists, but at the same time, he is framing the fact that two of the three people tried and convicted by the military tribunals as some sort of failure that he wants to avoid with civilian trials.

But if Salim Hamdan being sentenced to only 66 months in jail, and being free today, is such a failure, then shouldn't we at least ask the Obama administration why it hired Hamdan's lawyer, Neal Katyal, as the principal Deputy Solicitor General of the United States?

Again, I am not saying we should not use civilian law enforcement methods for investigation and trial of these people. There's arguments for, and against. But it does make me question how strong Obama's case is when he keeps making such terrible arguments to support it.

Says DNC head Tim Kaine in a fundraising letter: "It's a breathtaking display of public hypocrisy. At least 116 Republican governors, senators, and representatives have spent the past year railing against the Recovery Act, while simultaneously requesting funds to create jobs in their districts and taking credit for projects at ribbon-cutting ceremonies."

So according to the Democrats, if you oppose certain funding, but then -- when you lose the vote to kill that funding -- want to make sure that your district -- full of taxpayers who are paying for that funding -- gets its fair share of that funding ... you're a hypocrite.

This, obviously, makes no sense. I am opposed to Social Security; but I am paying into it, and I will take what is legally mine when it comes time. I was opposed to Obama's (extremely tiny) tax credit last year, but I will take my fair share of it. Many Democrats were opposed to the Republican tax cuts for all American income tax payers, because they also cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans ... but those same wealthy Democrats took those tax breaks.

Only a moron could believe that taking your fair share of a program you didn't want, but that you're paying for, is hypocrisy. Unfortunately for Tim Kaine, I am taking him at his word, that he believes what he says, which means he's pretty dumb.

Obama and College
President Obama wants more control over education, but he doesn't really understand education.

It's scary enough that Obama wants to further violate the Constitution by dictating (either with carrots or sticks) what kids should be learning, as if what Washington or Oregon schools teach -- or when they teach it -- is any of the federal government's business. (And I opposed Bush's "No Child Left Behind" so chill out.) And Obama has said all along that everyone should get some post-K-12 education for at least a year (for the "good of society" to get a "better workforce"), which again, is none of the federal government's business.

But what's really depressingly scary is that Obama either has no clue how higher ed works, or ... perhaps worse, he does, since that would mean he is intentionally manipulating the cost of college upward, probably with the intent of controlling it like he wants to control health care.

Under Obama's plan, students who get "loans" will only have to pay back a small portion of them. Not only does this create a disincentive to get a good job after college (since the more money you make, the more you have to pay back on your loan), but it dramatically increases the actual cost of education, which Obama says is the reason we need to cover the costs in the first place.

The reason why higher ed costs so much, why it's increased dramatically faster than the rate of inflation, is because of government aid, not in spite of it. Obviously, when students don't pay the costs directly, they are more likely to pay a higher price. (This well-known effect happens in health care all the time, too.) You get a government loan: why not pay whatever the school is asking? Especially since, thanks to Obama, you will only pay a fraction of the value of the loan and only over 20 years.

And the college therefore has every incentive to charge as much as they can get government to pay: it uses the extra money to build new buildings and add all sorts of programs that get even more students to want to attend at even higher prices, bringing in even more government dollars.

Many of Obama's allies say they want to end subsidies for large corporations, but that's precisely what our system of student loans is. Never mind the fact that the actual value of a college education has been steadily decreasing.

Washington State and "Ample Provision"

What is the value of a year of college? For my money, a lot less than the $30,000 it costs for many schools. It's a complete ripoff. You can learn as much -- more, really -- for a small fraction of that price, and end up a better (and wealthier) person for it.

Of course, education cannot be measured in dollars. That doesn't stop some people from trying, though: a recent ruling in a court in Washington State claimed that the state had to spend more money on education because it was not fulfilling its constitutional "paramount duty" to make "ample provision" for education.

It should be obvious to everyone who understands any math concepts more advanced than "two dimes and a nickel equal a quarter" that because education cannot be measured in dollars, therefore "ample provision" for that education also cannot be measured in dollars. In other words, you can increase the quality of education without increasing the dollars being spent.

There's no evidence that there is not enough money being spent on education: there's only evidence that the quality of education being provided is insufficient. It is an incredible leap of logic to then say "since the quality of education is bad, therefore we need to spend more money." It assumes something we know, for a fact, is false: that money and education are directly correlated; that more money equals better education, less money worse education, and same money same education. It's nonsense.

And even if more money needed to be spent, one thing that should be pointed out -- and therefore I point it out -- is that anyone who says that Washington State taxes need to be increased to pay for education is lying. Period.

For it to be true, the state must not be funding anything else. The state's "paramount duty" -- the thing it must do first, above all else -- is to make "ample provision" for education. As long as the government is spending money on other programs, it therefore must not need to raise taxes for education: it can (and constitutionally, must) take money from other programs if it needs more for education. It's the other stuff that might "need" more money justifying increased taxes.

Of course, if the voters were told that their taxes were being raised for the state's "Say WA?" ad campaign and art in new buildings, they'd never get the support they needed to raise taxes.

Which is why they lie.

There's nothing new under the sun. Five years ago, the Republicans were using recess appointments to avoid (then unprecedented) Democratic filibusters. Now we're looking at a reversal. Then, Democrats lambasted Bush for undermining democracy with his use of the recess appointment; now, surely, Republicans will do the same to Obama.

I do love Harry Reid's completely incredible claim that while recess appointments under Bush were an "an end run around the Senate and the Constitution," now he supports them because, well, "what alternative do we have?"

How about ... not doing what you believe is an "end run around the Senate and the Constitution?" No one is forcing Obama to do what you believe is an "end run around the Senate and the Constitution."

Unless of course, you never actually believed that. Which is, of course, true.

Please, Senator Reid, realize that no one, of any political stripe, believes you when you pretend that this is not pure partisanship. And let's be further clear here that never before in our history had judicial nominees been blocked from a vote by filibuster until the Democrats, led in part by Reid, did it under Bush. So not only is Reid being a hypocrite, but let's face facts here: in this war over nominees, he started it.

Not that the Republicans are blameless, of course. There's more than enough blame to go around.

For those who want to end filibusters, my plan has been -- for many years -- and remains this: end the ability of Senators to block a vote on anything, using the filibuster. There's various ways to do this, but the key point is this: change the rule now, but don't have it take effect for two more legislative sessions. So if you do it now, it would take effect in 2014. That way no one knows who would be in the majority or minority by the time the rule change takes effect.

There's ten questions on the 2010 census questionnaire. I believe several of them cannot legally be required, and I won't be answering them.

The Constitution says on the subject:

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.

The point here is twofold: a. that the federal government gets to count us, and b. that they can do it in such manner the law directs. Implied in the latter part, of course, implies "that doesn't violate the Constitution." Otherwise, they could just make pass a law that says "no one may criticize the Census," and it would not violate the First Amendment.

That's obviously silly, but it's the argument they actually make when they say they can require us to provide any information they choose to force us to provide, despite the fact that the Constitution says they cannot.

There's four types of questions on the form. The first is the explicitly constitutional one: the number of people living there; the second is about whether those people sometimes live elsewhere; the third type is individual identification: name, phone number; the fourth is demographic information for the purposes of tailoring government programs: age, sex, gender, and home ownership.

The first type of question is obviously legitimate, speaking directly to the point of the census as explained in the Constitution. The second is arguably legitimate, as it can aid in preventing double-counting.

The third type -- personal identifying information -- is arguably legitimate as well, for the same basic reason: helping to get an accurate count. Naming each person can aid the respondent in listing all the people properly, and the phone number might be used for clarification if necessary.

The fourth type, though ... it's pure nonsense. In fact, the federal government explicitly states the purpose is all about government programs, instead of enumeration. The constitutional purpose of the census is not served. This questions can, arguably, still be allowed and required, however, if any other part of the constitution is not violated in the process.

Unfortunately for the government, however, the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments do protect my right to privacy. Government cannot compel this extra-constitutional information from me without following due process, and "passing a law" is not due process.

So in the end, I'll only be answering the questions about how many people live here. I am undecided whether I will provide any names of the people living here. The justification is shaky, and it's arguable either way. I'll give them my phone number, though. The Census Bureau will be free to call me and ask for clarification, which will include recitations of relevant portions of the Constitution and legal precedents like Griswold v. Connecticut.