"Bailing out of 2008"

I've long been a Dave Barry fan, and he's hit the nail on the head again (or several of them) with his year-end column.

Merry Christmas 2008

What a wonderful and mostly relaxing Christmas holiday! We had a lovely service at our church on Christmas Eve, and John participated by doing a reading. Here is an excerpt (he has such a great reading voice doesn't he?):






On Christmas Day, we enjoyed the luxury of sleeping in late--itself always a treat. Then we headed up to Clay, Jenny, and Emily Perkins' house for a relaxing celebration of Christ's birth.




First, and most importantly, I got John to join me in wearing pajamas all day--it helped that he had fun new fuzzy pants with deer heads and a camo cap to wear with his fuzzy jacket.






Anyway, we then headed up north to Cave Creek for a family feast and gift exchange. First, the meal: smoked turkey and pork butt, a smattering of side dishes like cornbread casserole, baked beans, and sweet potatoes. YUM!







After the tasty meal, we had a white elephant-type gift exchange. As you can see, Tina was pretty happy with the gift Cole wound up with: Bailey's.

One of the gifts wound up being a lot of fun--once we figured out the instructions (thank you John).

After a fun round of Yahtzee free for all, we gals played some Rummikub while the guys spent quality time with the Wii. Cole and John boxed, and then John, Cole, Clay, and Logan all played doubles tennis.

All in all, it was quite a fun day. The only down side is that John has been fighting some sort of flu-like-bug for a few weeks now and it came back full force overnight. He's spent the majority of the last day and a half in bed. Hopefully all this sleep will get rid of this before we leave for New Mexico on Tuesday!

Finally, in case I missed anyone in the distribution of our Christmas letter, I thought I'd go ahead and post it on here...unfortunately we couldn't get the upload to work right so that you could read the letter. So let me know if you'd like me to email you a copy instead.

I hope all of you had a wonderful time celebrating and reflecting on the birth of Christ!

An Excellent Point

In my capacity as President of the Phoenix Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society, a little over a year ago we hosted Denver Post columnist and author David Harsanyi.

On Christmas Eve, David's column "Lassez-faire punditry" provided some excellent insights and thoughts regarding the current economic situation and the (IMHO) laughable claims of some (notably Ariana Huffington) that this economic situation is an indictment of the free market system. As Harsanyi documents, recent years have not by any means been years in which our economic system has been "free market":

The Federal Register, a list of regulations, reached an all-time high of nearly 79,000 regulations, up from nearly 64,000 in 2001. New regulations have mounted rather than diminished under the Bush administration.

Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, has studied regulatory spending and effectively squashed the "deregulation" mythology that is extensively peddled these days.

"Between fiscal year 2001 and fiscal year 2009," she writes, "outlays on regulatory activities, adjusted for inflation, increased from $26.4 billion to an estimated $42.7 billion, or 62 percent. By contrast, President Clinton increased real spending on regulatory activities by 31 percent, from $20.1 billion in 1993 to $26.4 billion in 2001."

De Rugy also points out that adjusted for inflation, regulatory spending under the category of finance and banking were cut by 3 percent under Bill Clinton and rose 29 percent under the imagined Bush deregulation binge.

Where are all the tributes to the laissez-faire economic boom of 1991-2000?

Instead, the far left has taken up concerted scare-mongering — much like they accuse the right of employing after 9/11 — to transform a short-term economic crisis into a radical long-term foundational alteration of our economy.

It's a great piece, and if you haven't encountered Harsanyi before then I highly recommend his book, "Nanny State."

Scary

Check out this poll for Second Annual Worst Prosecutor of the Year. I can't yet figure out who to vote for, but am certainly further depressed (see earlier blog on Bill of Rights Day) regarding the health of the Fourth Amendment.

Welcoming Katie to the Blogosphere

My step-daughter, Katie, is joining us in the blogosphere as she heads off to college. Welcome Katie! I've added a link to her "Onward and Upward" blog in my list. Check it out.

Here is Katie with her cousins Logan, Emily, and Kaitlyn.

Bill of Rights Day Recap

The Bill of Rights was ratified on December 15, 1791 and this past Monday we gathered in Phoenix to celebrate the 217th birthday of that document. We first heard from Patrick Henry, a primary author and supporter of the BOR.

We then read through the amendments as a group--an interesting experiment with 250 or more people in the room. Some interesting tidbits a lot of people today may not know:

* The Anti-Federalists, who opposed adoption of the U.S. Constitution in 1789, actually came up with a number of proposed amendments for the first Congress to consider. The House approved seventeen of them, and the Senate twelve of those. Ultimately the states considered 12 potential articles of amendment for ratification.

* The Bill of Rights, as ratified by the states, was not actually ten separate amendments when ratified--instead it was a single amendment with ten separate articles. Through re-printing and editing the articles became known as amendments.

* Without the promise of a bill of rights, folks like Patrick Henry stood in such strong opposition to ratification of our Constitution that it likely would not have been ratified.

Anyway...

After some history and a read through of the amendments themselves (which are available here and I recommend taking a moment to read through them yourself in their entirety), we began a discussion of the amendments' health and status these days. I'll just highlight those we discussed.

First Amendment: mixed reviews. We're living in the age of McCain-Feingold, one of the worst ideas in the history of politics, and a horrendous First Amendment violation. On the other hand, last term the Supreme Court gave us an encouraging decision in Davis v. FEC. In recent years, further, we had the incredibly important Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, correctly determining that the First Amendment presents no problem for school voucher programs.

Second Amendment: much of the conversation focused here. While this year brought the Heller v. DC opinion, which, for the first time, explicitly recognizing that this amendment protects an individual right to bear arms (and was not meant merely to provide arms to an organized militia), this amendment does not yet apply to the states. Further, the Court left open the ability of states to apply "reasonable" restrictions on the right to bear arms. What the government thinks of as "reasonable" tends to be overreaching in my experience, so it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Fourth Amendment: between the so-called war on drugs causing paramilitary police raids in which innocent people are killed, the Mississippi Medical Examinor shaming the entire state, and the spread of photo radar speed traps, well this is an amendment is serious trouble.

Fifth Amendment: the Supreme Court effectively cut the last clause out of this amendment in the 2005 Kelo v. New London decision allowing governments broad discression in the abuse of eminent domain. I imagine there are many other problems here, but this is the one we focused on. Not a particularly healthy amendment.

Ninth Amendment: we didn't really focus on this one, but I have to put something about it here as it's my favorite. In fact, I'll just go ahead and quote it here:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be
construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Note the very, very important "shall not be construed." Unfortunately, this is also not in good shape given the number of rights--particularly economic rights--courts, and even many people, don't believe deserve protection. For many examples check out IJ's work in the area of economic liberty.

Tenth Amendment: While in general we all agreed this is an amendment in trouble, there are the occasional rays of hope. For example, in the wake of the Kelo decision, very nearly every state in the union made an effort (some more effective than others) to ensure greater private property protection at the state level.

I hope anyone who has made it this far has found something new to learn in this post, and don't forget to take a moment next December 15 to think about our Bill of Rights.

Some Christmas Cheer

The lead up to Christmas has been pretty hectic for us with work and such, but a few things have kept us in the holiday spirit.

First, we had our Christmas program at our church. John sang in the choir and I served as the narrator for the program, which was a lot of fun and a great reminder of our purpose for celebrating Christmas.

Our Christmas Cantata was about the love of God; our small, talented choir sang seven songs and I narrated a few lines along the way.

John is really a talented and strong bass in the choir, so I've really enjoyed listening to him--at Christmas and whenever the choir sings.

Earlier this week we had a wonderful surprise: a beautiful Christmas centerpiece from the Tim, Bev, Heidi, and Heather Farmer in Colorado. Now that is a great way to put us in a holiday spirit!

Abe and Tom

My grandfather shared with me some excellent Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson quotes that are particularly relevant these days.

From our 16th President:

* You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.

* You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.

* You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.

* You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.

* You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.

* You cannot build character and courage by taking away men's initiative and independence.

* You cannot help men permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.

* You cannot emasculate the men and expect them to be manly.

And from our third President:
*A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to
take away everything you have.

*My reading of history convinces me that most bad government is the result of too much government.

*I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

*The democracy will cease to exist when Government intervenes to take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who are not.

[I must, as always, note here that America has not really ever been a democracy, contrary to how most refer to our great nation. This is a democratic republic, an important distinction. Of course Mr. Jefferson's principle still holds in my opinion.]

"School Choice Works!"

Earlier this week the Arizona Supreme Court heard argument in a major school choice case that IJ is litigating. A couple of years ago, the legislature passed two voucher programs to provide scholarships for children to use at the school of their (or their parents') choice. Only particular children are eligible for the scholarships: children who have been in foster care and children with federally recognized disabilities. In other words, two of the most vulnerable classes of children now have hope in Arizona for the education they desperately need.

Here is one child's story:



Naturally, the opportunity for parents to opt out of public schools that have failed their children in horrifying and shameful measure causes the teachers and school boards to go to court in order to take that opportunity away.

The People for the American Way (the ultimate oxymoron), the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, and the Arizona Education Association (our teachers' union), teamed up to challenge these scholarship programs with the noble goal of forcing these children back into the system that has already failed them. Really admirable.

They did so because Arizona's Constitution explicitly prohibits aid from the state directly to private schools (there are actually a few arguments, but this is the crux of the appeal). These fine folks who seek to dash the hopes of folks like Andrea Weck claim that by giving scholarships to parents that they can use at private schools, the state is directly aiding private schools.

So here's the fun part. Under federal law (the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act), public school districts can actually choose to send children with disabilities to private school. If a public school decides that it does not have the ability to provide a service that a child needs (a decision that usually only takes multiple years while the child remains unserved), the bureaucrats can choose to pay a private school to provide that service.

In other words, currently government bureaucrats are free to pay private schools directly to educate these children, but their greatest fear appears to be allowing parents the opportunity to make that same choice.

This is just shameful.

We always hear from the teachers' unions in particular that the big fear is any program that diverts money from the public schools risks damaging the public school system. That is not by any means the goal, but I guess my question is: if the public schools are so bad that every parent with the option would choose something, anything else, is that a system worth risking our children's future over?

Public school funding has been increasing MASSIVELY year by year for decades. By every possible measure, however, students in America have flatlined or decreased in knowledge and achievement. Certainly money is not the problem.

We all know something must be done, the question is whether or not we will have the courage to take bold steps and big risks to try new things. Will we allow generation after generation of children to langish in schools that have failed them hoping that perhaps by contuing to throw money at the problem one day in the distant future it will be solved?

I hope not. For the sake of children like Lexie, especially, I hope not.

More than 200 parents, children, and supporters rallied in front of the Arizona Supreme Court in support of these programs this week. Shouting over and over again, "School choice works!" Right they are.

That is the sort of thing that gives me hope for the education of our next generations.

Consider This

A little post-Thanksgiving, thought-provoking blog on the Pilgrims and private property rights available here (HT Ilya Somin).