Vin Suprynowicz

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In the July issue of “Imprimis” — an outreach publication of Michigan’s free-market-oriented Hillsdale College — Edward J. Erler, professor of Political Science at California State San Bernardino, challenges the prevailing wisdom that the 14th Amendment bestows “birthright citizenship” on the newborn child of any illegal alien who can manage to avoid deportation long enough to give birth — usually in a taxpayer-funded hospital.

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Considering the performance of the two elected obstetricians most recently in the national eye, it’s intriguing to speculate how much better off the country might be if we could send the 533 big spenders currently holding down seats in Congress on an extended world cruise, replacing them for a term or two with randomly selected members of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, requiring only that they read aloud Article I Section 8 of the Constitution (the powers of Congress) before taking their seats.

In the lower house, Texas Congressman and obstetrician Ron Paul — who recently made an abortive run at the GOP presidential nomination, receiving sizeable support only in freedom-loving Nevada — has received the honorific “Dr. No” for his determined opposition to allocations of tax money for purposes not authorized in the Constitution. That is to say, to most of the spending bills that now sail through Congress with hardly another discouraging word.

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There appears to be a conscious attempt underway to shift the grounds of the current American political debate in preparation for this fall’s presidential campaign.

Interestingly, this attempt to shift the goal lines (advancing the motionless Party of Big Government from their own 20 yard line to the other guy’s 20 by the simple expedient of moving the yard markers) comes from the political left, despite the fact that — if we’re to believe the bellowing leftist press of New York, Washington and Los Angeles — the socialists have nothing to worry about in November, since the nation is about to elevate the Most Liberal Senator in Washington to the presidency by acclamation — “The ‘Ayes’ have it! Now everybody go home!”

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If we had no armed central state to seize money from people against their will and fund the government schools, we’d have no tax-funded government schools.

The best teachers could still find work in places where parents pay tuitions voluntarily. Given free competition, the best of them would probably make more than they make now — though many would fail in competition against people with better-rounded experience and skills, the kind of people from whose tutelage our children could really learn to be ready to face the world, people generally unwilling to seek work in the current thought-control hive.

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Overturning two earlier rulings, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said last week an Arizona middle school assistant principal violated the constitutional rights of a 13-year-old inmate of his government youth propaganda camp (“public school”) by ordering her to be strip searched to determine whether she had in her possession a prescription-strength ibuprofen.

The 6-5 ruling by the San Francisco-based court — binding in nine states including Nevada — reinstated a lawsuit that a divided three-judge circuit panel threw out last year. The now-revived suit was brought by the parents of Savana Redding, who was an eighth grader at Stafford Middle School in southeastern Arizona when assistant principal Kerry Wilson ordered her out of math class and into his office to investigate whether she’d violated the school’s “zero tolerance” drug policy, which prohibits even over-the-counter medication.

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“A man wearing a T-shirt depicting a cartoon character holding a gun was stopped from boarding a flight by the security at Heathrow’s Terminal 5,” The BBC reported on June 1.

Brad Jayakody, from Bayswater, central London, said he was “stumped” at the objection to his Transformers T-shirt.

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For decades now, the green extreme has argued the industries that develop the nation’s natural resources for commercial use ought to be forced off the West’s “public” lands.

And they didn’t seem to much care which tactic did the job. If threatening huge “permit processing fees” or massive levies for “environmental cleanup” could shut down the mines and idle the miners that once gave America her needed lead, nickel, silver, and other minerals and metals, victory was declared.

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Where do you go to buy books?

“A big bookstore, of course.”

Why?

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Though some will always seek to make the Silver State more like oppressive and actuarially bankrupt California or New Jersey, Nevada is still blessed with a part-time Legislature, limited to working its mischief a mere 120 days in odd-numbered years.

As each of those biennial sessions draws to a close, a predictable scramble to pass huge omnibus spending bills ensues. In that 36 hours of chaos, bills are rewritten and rushed to the floor by lobbyists and lawmakers alike — promptly approved by delegates who can’t possibly have read all the details. Asked what they have just enacted, the more honest ones will admit, “We’ll just have to wait and see when it comes back from the printers.”

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On Monday June 30, more than 50 House Republicans asked the Environmental Protection Agency to reduce required ethanol production this year, saying a law requiring a fixed amount of corn liquor be blended into gasoline sold at the pump will boost already high corn prices in the wake of recent Midwestern floods.

“The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) is a significant factor in the increased cost of commodities, which is causing severe economic harm for low-income Americans and livestock producers,” the 51 lawmakers, led by Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia and the Agriculture Committee, wrote in a letter to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson.

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