Isaac Laquedem

Senator Alexander (and many others) will trust an alien with a gun, but not a car

Forty-six United States senators voted today against a bill that would have required background checks on people who want to buy guns in the United States, including Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker, both Republicans from Tennessee.

In 2007, Senators Alexander and Corker sponsored legislation to denounce states that issue driver's licenses to aliens in this country unlawfully, saying that allowing illegal aliens to carry dirver's licenses presents a risk to our national security.

This leads to the delightful conclusion that Senators Alexander and Corker, and many others, trust illegal aliens with guns but not cars.  They're apparently fine with undocumented immigrants going to the gun shows to buy guns as long as they take public transit to get there.

The Laquedem Plan to restore the original intent of the Second Amendment

The post-Newtown debate over gun control and the Second Amendment has pitted advocates of gun control against believers in the Second Amendment.  Proponents of gun control (generally the same group as opponents of mass killings) can't see the sporting purpose in allowing people to possess and use 25- and 50-round ammunition clips.  Opponents of gun control strongly object to federal and state governments limiting their ability to buy and own any sort of weaponry.

Some government restrictions on private armories apparently withstand a Second Amendment attack: for example, we can't own machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and tactical nuclear weaponry. If the Second Amendment protects individual rights as broadly as its backers say it does, then the government can't prohibit us from owning these useful items of destruction.

How, then, can the Supreme Court make a principled interpretation of the Second Amendment that protects the private right to own guns without opening the door to my homeowners' association acquiring first-strike capability?  It occurred to me that the doctrine of original intent, favored by Justices Thomas and Scalia, offers an answer. 

The doctrine of original intent states that the Supreme Court should interpret the constitution in accordance with the intent of the Framers -- that is, the original intent of the document -- rather than to accommodate changes in politics and society.  Not every justice agrees with this, but it is a useful starting point.

The Second Amendment states that as a well-regulated militia is necessary for defense, the right of the people to bear arms shall not be abridged.  Most people who talk about the Framers' intent focus on what is meant by a well-regulated militia, and argue that the right to bear arms should be limited to the right to bear arms as part of a well-regulated militia.  I suggest that we should look instead at the Framers' intent in using the words "defense" and "arms." 

"Defense" has a plain and simple meaning.  It means defending territory that one already possesses, rather than attacking territory that one does not possess.  People can defend their homes.  ("A man's home is his ammunition cache," as the saying might be revised to read.)  People can as part of a militia defend their counties and states from invasion and insurrection.  It's consistent with that reading to say that people can't take guns to schools and shopping centers.

Similarly, the term "arms" meant to the Framers single-shot rifles and pistols, swords, bayonets, catapults, and cannons.  "Arms" didn't include automatic and semi-automatic guns, tanks, rocket launchers, and nuclear bombs.  A creative legislature might adopt, and an alert judge might uphold, a gun control measure that protected the right of the people to keep flintlocks at home to protect themselves against intruders, and prohibited people from carrying weaponry on the street.  I think the judge could even quote from opinions of several conservative members of the Supreme Court to show that the prohibition is consistent with the original intent of the writers of the Constitution.  It would be an amusing and possibly worthwhile exercise.

Mark Twain helps Congressman Jerrold Nadler solve the looming debt ceiling crisis

As it does almost every year lately, the United States government is bumping up against the debt ceiling.  Congress sets the maximum limit on how much debt the federal government can issue.  Congress also commands the president to spend more than the government receives; that is, to run a deficit.  The administration can finance the deficit either by printing money or by borrowing more money, which increases the national debt.  Congress has approved raising the debt ceiling 11 times since 2001. 

Within a few months the government will have to print or borrow more money to pay for the spending that Congress has approved.  Several Republican representatives are making noises that the nation would be better off if the government shuts down when it hits the debt ceiling than if it borrowed to pay its bills.

Jerrold Nadler, a Democratic representative from New York, found a way in which the government could pay its bills without borrowing more money.  Possibly inspired by Mark Twain's story "The Million Pound Bank Note," and after some searching through our laws on coin and currency, he proposed that the Treasury mint a trillion-dollar coin in platinum and deposit it with the Federal Reserve.  Why the Treasury?  And why platinum?

The Federal Reserve Banks, not under the administration's control, print and issue our currency.  The Treasury hasn't issued paper money since 1968 when it gave up printing United States Notes.  The Treasury does, however, issue our coins, in denominations and with metal content strictly prescribed by statute.  All gold and silver coins, for example, must contain gold or silver that is worth more than the face value of the coin.  A $50 gold coin, for example, must contain 1.09 troy ounces of gold.  There's no profit to be made in making gold or silver coins.

The Treasury Department may, however, mint platinum coins of any denomination and weight that pleases the Secretary of the Treasury, including, in Mr. Nadler's proposal, a platinum coin with a face value of $1,000,000,000,000. 

Republicans in Congress (including Oregon's own Greg Walden) have lined up to oppose the trillion-dollar coin, though it's not clear whether they also oppose the government paying its bills.  An administration less charitable than the current one might offer to avoid the debt ceiling cliff by cutting federal spending in those states whose representatives vote against raising the debt ceiling.

Obama's health plan works -- just ask my aunt

Two years ago her doctor told the Aunt of the Left, who was bedridden and gravely ill, that she had only a few days to live.  Following her lifelong habit of questioning authority, the Aunt of the Left told her doctor that his schedule wouldn't work for her at all, as she needed to live long enough to see President Obama be re-elected.

At the time I didn't know how strongly the A. of the L. felt about President Obama, but I do now: she told me this story, quite cheerfully, a few weeks ago as we sat at her table sharing a pot of tea.  She's planning to be up and about on January 21 to watch the televised inauguration ceremonies.  I didn't think to ask her if she's changed doctors.

The Texas secession petition must be a Democratic plot; consider the effects

I hadn't known until this week that the White House website invites citizens to start petitions and gather signatures on line.  The United States has no initiative or referendum process, so the petitions are symbolic, but they perhaps give the President some idea of what Americans are thinking.

One fresh petition has gathered some public attention.  It's a petition to allow Texas to secede from the Union.  It's received 114,000 signatures so far, many more than any of the other state secession petitions. (People from other states have copied the Texas petition, including its grammatical and syntactical errors, to make petitions for their own states.)

Ostensibly prepared by conservatives unhappy with the election results, a little thought shows that the Texas secession petition must in fact be a plot of the Democratic Party.  Consider these facts:

1.    The Defense Department spends more in Texas -- $40 billion in 2009 -- than in all but two other states.

2.    The "fiscal cliff" will require automatic cuts in defense spending of $55 billion if Congress doesn't get its act together by December 31.

3.    Texas has 38 of the 538 electoral votes that elect our president.

4.    Texas last gave its electoral votes to a Democrat in 1976, when Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald Ford.  Since then Texas has voted for the Republican candidate in nine straight elections.

5.    Without Texas in the Union, there would be 500 electoral votes, and 251 votes would be needed to win.

6.    In that case, a Democratic candidate could lose Colorado, Virginia, Ohio, and Florida (the four states that Barack Obama won last week by the closest margins), but still be elected if he or she won the states that President Obama won by wider margins, which together have 263 electoral votes.

From the Democratic Party's point of view, allowing Texas to go its own way covers most of the automatic cuts in the defense budget and locks up the party's control of the White House for years to come.  It would also have the delightful side effect of perhaps giving Texans a different view of the immigration question when they're looking at the wall that the United States would build along Oklahoma's south boundary to keep them out.  It may not be a coincidence that at least half the signatures on the petition are from people in other states who are willing to see Texas leave.

Will Florida whip up another electoral hurricane? Shades of 2000!

With nearly 3.9 million Florida votes counted, President Obama leads Governor Romney by 1,885 votes, about 1/20 of 1% of the total.  For scale, the third-party candidates have received 58,026 Florida votes so far.  Even without hanging chads and a strong third-party candidate, the Florida winner may not be known for several days or weeks.

Nate Silver's last forecast gave 313 electoral votes to President Obama and 224 to Governor Romney.  Virginia (13 electoral votes), which he had called for Mr. Obama, is coming in toward Mr. Romney by about 4 points.  That changes the result to 300 for Mr. Obama and 237 for Mr. Romney.  Florida, which Mr. Silver had also called for Mr. Obama, albeit by a narrower margin of probability (50.3%) than any other state, has 29 electoral votes.  If Mr. Romney wins Florida, then the electoral college vote becomes 271for the President and 267 for Governor Romney: close enough to make the wills and whims of the individual electors something of great interest: a defection of two Democratic electors throws the election into the House of Representatives.

Isaac's election pre-mortem, Part I: the federal results

Anyone can analyze elections results the day after the election, but it takes genius, or maybe foolhardiness, to analyze the results before the votes are counted.  So, in a bold exercise in prepunditology, here is my analysis of today's national election results.  Whether my analysis is correct will become apparent in about 12 hours.

President Obama's narrow victory over Governor Romney simultaneously shows the good and bad sides of the Electoral College.  The President holds a razor-thin margin in the popular vote, which should hold up even after the provisional ballots in Ohio and the late ballots in New York and New Jersey are counted.  If our election were decided strictly on the national popular vote and the margin were any smaller, we could go weeks without knowing for sure who had won the election.  On the good side, the Electoral College provides certainty to the results state by state, so a delay in counting the vote in one state doesn't necessarily delay figuring out who won.  

On the bad side, the dividing of the vote into states meant that the candidates ignored most of the states and focused their campaigns, and their campaign promises, on six or eight swing states.  (It's similar to the reason we have to buy ethanol with our gasoline: the federal government pushes ethanol (manufactured from corn) into gasoline because Iowa has the earliest presidential caucuses.  It's a good thing that New Hampshire doesn't grow brussels sprouts.)  The rest of the country was irrelevant to the campaigns. 

The real message of the Presidential results is not to Mr. Obama, nor to Mr. Romney, but to the Republican Party.  This year the party nominated the most electable of its contenders, mounted a respectable campaign, and still lost, narrowly but clearly.  Mr. Romney could have defeated Mr. Obama if he'd run as Romney²⁰⁰³.  His problem was that to get nominated, he had to campaign as Romney²⁰¹², a man so far to the right as to be unelectable in the general election.  His volte-face or "pivot" from his primary positions to his general-election positions was so abrupt and violent as to be unbelievable, leaving voters wondering which version of Mr. Romney, if elected, would actually take office.

The party has to decide whether it wants to continue nominating unelectable candidates of ideological purity, such as Mr. Romney of the primaries, or center-right candidates who could win, such as Mr. Romney of the general election campaign.  (It also needs to give its men in Congress some lessons in remedial biology, and perhaps in theology also, but that's a rant that others have covered better.)  Until the Republican Party figures out how to nominate a Presidential candidate who doesn't have to reverse his or her positions to campaign among the Democrats and independents, it's going to be off on the margins of Presidential politics.

On the Congressional front, the voters left the Republicans in control of the House.  The Democrats lost ground in the Senate but retain control -- barely -- with Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, caucusing with them.  Vice President Biden will have to stay close to the Capitol to be available to break tie votes.

My next post will analyze the results of today's state races.

George Will says Romney will win 321 electoral votes; I say 500

George Will predicts that Mitt Romney will win 321 electoral votes tomorrow.  I think that Governor Romney can win 500 or more: 250 this year and 250 if he's nominated again in 2016.

Endorsements II: The congressional races, incumbents all

This year's congressional races offer no great surprises.  In only one race has a challenger raised any serious funding, and the serious funding is unaccompanied by serious ideas.  The incumbents all deserve another term.

In the First District, Democrat Suzanne Bonamici, a half-term incumbent elected to the seat after David Wu resigned, faces an unfunded challenge from Republican Delinda Morgan.  (The Center for Responsive Politics credits Rep. Bonamici with raising $2.4 million, and Ms. Morgan with $8,086.)  No one expects much from a brand-new representative coming in midway through the session, but Rep. Bonamici appears to be catching on quickly.  Ms. Morgan's campaign platform (here) states her support for "cut, cap, and balance," the conservative Republican approach to the nation's fiscal mess.  Interestingly, she goes beyond "cut, cap, and balance" to advocate repealing the Internal Revenue Code and (if I understand her rightly) replacing the income and estate taxes covered by the current Code with a national sales tax.

The problem with Ms. Morgan's proposal is that annual retail sales in the United States are about $4.5 trillion per year.  To fund a $2 trillion/year government (less than what we're spending now) would thus require a general sales tax of 40% or more, and shifting the tax burden from the rich and the middle-income to the poor and low-income.  Re-electing Rep. Bonamici is an easy call.

In the Second District, incumbent Republican Greg Walden ($2.5 million) has represented his district ably and should be returned to office.  His Democratic challenger, Joyce Segers, has raised only $30,000.  She links to a summary of Rep. Walden's voting record (here) that shows him to be more conservative than moderate, but by my interpretation in the left wing of the Republican party.  She makes no compelling case for replacing Rep. Walden, who appears to be in sync with the general views of his district.

Continental Europe has its "bicycle monarchs," as the British describe the low-pomp royal houses across the Channel.  The Third District has the bicycle congressman, the low-pomp Earl Blumenauer, the senior and most effective of Oregon's members of the House.  Being a policy wonk (a term he likely revels in), he's filled his Voter's Pamphlet page with five specific policy proposals, followed by the statement, "There are 35 others listed on my website.  Take a look."  Allowing that he has the luxury of being able to make specific proposals because he has the safest district in Oregon, he nevertheless deserves re-election.

The Fourth District hosts the only race with a well-funded challenger.  Incumbent Peter DeFazio ($1.2 million) faces a strong challenge from Republican Art Robinson ($1 million).  Rep. DeFazio represents the most politically diverse district in Oregon, covering liberal Eugene, working-class mill towns, and head-for-the-hills rightists: a tough balancing act.  Mr. Robinson's positions vary from the conservative to the bizarre: for example, here he says that "the Constitution does not permit paper money, only gold and silver," and says that "capital gains taxes and special laws stopped the use of gold and silver."  He does, however, accept campaign donations through the non-metallic means of Visa and MasterCard.  Voters who believe that the science of economics has progressed since the 18th century should re-elect Mr. DeFazio.

In the Fifth District, incumbent Kurt Schrader ($1.6 million) is opposed by Republican Fred Thompson and Pacific Green candidate Christina Jean Lugo.  Neither makes a convincing case for replacing Dr. Schrader, though they both appear to be serious, thoughtful candidates.  (It's a mystery to me why Republican donors have flocked to Mr. Robinson ($1 million) in the Fourth District and avoided Mr. Thompson ($22,000) in the Fifth District, and it suggests to me that it's possible to become rich without a grasp of the dismal science.)  The Fifth District should cheerfully return Dr. Schrader for another term.

Endorsements 2012 I: Mitt Romney* For President

The oddity of this year's presidential race is that the two major parties have nominated three candidates.  The Democrats have nominated the incumbent, Barack Obama, for another term, and he sailed through the primaries and caucuses in every state except West Virginia.  Mr. Obama's administration has begun, however,tentatively, to turn around the economy from the mess that he inherited from George W. Bush.  He authorized and achieved the capture and execution (let's not mince words) of Osama bin Laden.  He persuaded Congress to adopt a form of national health care, a party goal that had eluded several of his able predecessors.  He's nevertheless outclassed by one of his opponents.

The Republicans have nominated two men with similar names to face the President:  Mitt Romney²⁰¹² and MittRomney²⁰⁰³.  Of Mr. Romney²⁰¹² little need be said.  He seems a decent if mathematically challenged fellow who proposes to raise revenue and cut tax loopholes without increasing anyone's taxes, and wants to simultaneously increase military spending and cut the deficit.  On occasion I wonder if he is in fact a golem that resulted when the national Republican Party ventured into creating a life form perfectly suited to winning the nomination, as he is the Romney that sought and won the nomination.

The Republicans have sent out onto the campaign trail, however, not just Mitt Romney²⁰¹² but also Mitt Romney²⁰⁰³.  Mr. Romney²⁰⁰³ supports gun control and state-sponsored universal health care, opposes state limitations on women's rights, and closes tax loopholes even if the result is that the rich pay more.  He's well-suited to break the partisan gridlock on Capitol Hill.  He's much more near the nation's center than is Mr. Romney²⁰¹² and would govern fairly and impartially.  For those reasons I favor Mitt Romney²⁰⁰³ for the presidency this year, and would enthusiastically vote for him -- hence the asterisk in this post's title.

I received my ballot yesterday and looked forward to voting for Mr. Romney²⁰⁰³.  The problem is that only one Mitt Romney appears on my ballot, running with a Senator Ryan who appears to have been chosen by Mr. Romney²⁰¹². I don't know which Romney I would be helping to elect if I marked that oval, and Mr. Romney²⁰¹² is out of sync with the nation.  For that reason, although Mr. Romney²⁰⁰³ is my favored choice this year, I intend to vote to re-elect President Obama.