There are many reasons why the United States Supreme Court must overturn the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision holding that former President Trump is barred from the presidential ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which purports to prohibit a person who has engaged in “insurrection” from holding office.
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The American system does not require unanimity. In fact, its design presumes deep disagreement on matters of morality and policy.
This is why questions like religion are left to individual conscience, and why most policy is left to states or even smaller units, where the law’s touch will not be felt as harshly, because it reflects the more similar values of a smaller group. Finally, regardless of who has the reins of the federal government, the Constitution renders a great deal of substantive activity off limits, as exemplified by the Bill of Rights.
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Robbing a bank is a crime everywhere. But in some places and times you could become a criminal just by growing vegetables, feeding the homeless, playing poker or working without a government-mandated license.
African immigrant Tedy Okech risked arrest when she started working as a hair braider. She learned the craft in her youth by practicing on her mother and sisters. When she settled in Idaho in 2005, she found neighbors willing to pay for her skills. Soon she had a thriving side gig, which supplemented her income as a part-time insurance agent.
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There is great irony in the violence directed against pregnancy centers since the leak and then official release of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision. Reports of vandalism and destruction include graffiti such as “if abortions aren’t safe neither are you” and firebombing.
Pregnancy centers across America offer many services to women and men, their unborn children, and children post-birth—including pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease testing, ultrasounds, counseling, diapers, clothing, medical referrals for healthcare or community resources, and parenting classes. These services are provided free and funded by donations.
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A total of 39 statewide ballot measures were certified for the 2021 ballot in nine states, 24 of which will be decided by voters on Nov. 2.
Question 1 was designed to stop the New England Clean Energy Connect (NECEC), a 145-mile long, high-voltage transmission line project that would transmit around 1,200 megawatts from hydroelectric plants in Quebec to electric utilities in Massachusetts and Maine. Construction of NECEC began after the project received a presidential permit on Jan. 15, 2021. The ballot initiative would prohibit the construction of high-impact electric transmission lines in the Upper Kennebec Region, retroactive to September 16, 2020, thus prohibiting Segment 1 of NECEC. Segment 1 was permitted to begin construction on May 13, 2021.
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All my life I’ve felt a bond with places and with people.
Growing up in Boonville, North Carolina, population then about 600, I went to elementary school and the Methodist church, knew many of the merchants in town—Harvey Smith, grocer and mayor for many years, Donald the barber, Mr. Weatherwax who owned the pharmacy and was kind enough to let me read comic books on the premises, and a dozen more adults—and relished my friends and their families. Boonville’s red clay and rolling hills are as much a part of me as any genetic code.
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Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich condemned the National Archives Records Association’s (NARA) decision to label documents with a “harmful language” alert.
Brnovich demanded that NARA immediately remove the warning labels from documents including the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights, in a Sept. 10 letter to the agency first obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The warning labels only serve to further divide Americans, the attorney general said.
“This is shameful action from the National Archives, and the misguided ‘alerts’ should be taken down immediately,” Brnovich wrote to U.S. Archivist David Ferriero. “There is nothing ‘harmful’ about our founding documents. These inspired writings governed the formation of our new country in the late 18th Century and provided the roadmap for it to grow into the greatest nation in history.”
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The ubiquitous term “paradigm” and the concept of “paradigm shifts,” were popularized by the historian and philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn. He used them to characterize, roughly, a scientific theory’s fundamental elements and the changes in fundamental elements that occur with scientific revolutions and changes in theory.
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The deep divisions plaguing our country may find a remedy in the most unlikely of places: the Bill of Rights. Ratified 229 years ago on December 15, 1791, the first 10 amendments to the Constitution are known collectively as the Bill of Rights. There is little public commemoration of December 15, in contrast to the tradition of celebrating two famous dates in the history of the United States—the Fourth of July, the day that the Declaration of Independence was adopted in 1776, and September 17, the day that the members of the Constitutional Convention signed the Constitution in Philadelphia in 1787. Yet, of the three documents, the Bill of Rights is perhaps the one most invoked by citizens and advocates in everyday life.
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