Thankfully, some people say No. This week, Mozilla, a free software community, launched a public campaign called stopwatching.us demanding that Congress reveal the full extent of NSA’s spying programs. Stopwatching.us has already gathered over 100,000 signatures. Campaign supporters include a number of large organizations, ranging from Greenpeace USA, a liberal environmental group, to the conservative Tenth Amendment Center to the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Alex Fowler, who leads privacy and public policy for Mozilla, explains his concerns with NSA’s surveillance programs as follows:

There are a number of problems with this kind of electronic surveillance. First, the Internet is making it much easier to use these powers. There’s a lot more data to be had. The legal authority to conduct electronic surveillance has grown over the past few years, because the laws are written broadly. And, as users, we don’t have good ways of knowing whether the current system is being abused, because it’s all happening behind closed doors.

Other companies are trying to increase the transparency of government requests for private data. For instance, Google sent a letter addressing this issue to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Robert Mueller, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Also, Facebook recently revealed some details about government requests for private data, including how Facebook received between 9,000 and 10,000 such requests between June and December of 2012. Facebook offered the following reason for just now disclosing these requests:

Requests from law enforcement entities investigating national security-related cases are by their nature classified and highly sensitive, and the law traditionally has placed significant constraints on the ability of companies like Facebook to even confirm or acknowledge receipt of these requests – let alone provide details of our responses.

In the name of security, surveillance of citizens by governments and private entities across the globe is increasing. However, citizens should stop governments and private entities from violating their digital privacy. Governments in particular always have many “good reasons” to violate people’s rights to privacy and liberty. But, as Benjamin Franklin said, “They [sic] who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Thus, citizens shouldn’t kiss private data goodbye but should preserve it.

Fights over the definition of a word in debates stem from the fact that the person who controls a debate’s language controls the debate itself. For example, in the debate over abortion pro-lifers fight an uphill battle in part because pro-abortionists refer to an unborn baby as “a fetus,” “tissue,” and “it.” Even pro-lifers tend to use these terms in casual conversations about abortion.

Skilled politicians and thinkers, recognizing the benefits of linguistic control of an issue, often manipulate language to serve their ends. Before the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks called for “Peace, Land, and Bread,” which brilliantly appealed to Russian peasants’ desire for these goods. Architects of the French Revolution used the slogan “Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite” (“Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”), exploiting French commoners’ desire to overthrow their government and class system. And today pro-abortion activists use the phrase “safe, legal, and rare” to describe their supposed goal for abortion, no matter how illusory the fulfillment of that slogan has been in reality.

Of course, when rival debaters use the same word(s) to defend their respective positions, linguistic chaos can ensue. For example, discussions about same-sex marriage often degenerate into shouting matches, since both sides of the debate have conflicting definitions of marriage.  Supporters of same-sex marriage tend to define marriage as a legal contract granting recognition of a consensual relationship, while opponents of same-sex marriage tend to define marriage as an institution for the stable rearing of children. Linguistic conflict can also occur in economic debates. For example, liberals consider “spending cuts” to be a reduction in the rate of increase in government spending, whereas libertarians or conservatives view “spending cuts” as actual reductions in government spending.

Advocates of liberty should never yield the linguistic high ground to opponents, since winning the linguistic war is half the battle in any debate.

(a)  President Barack Obama
(b)  President George W. Bush
(c)  Chief Justice John Roberts
(d)  President Franklin Roosevelt

The answer is (d) President Franklin Roosevelt.

Roosevelt’s responsibility for ObamaCare is not limited to the big-government mentality that he fostered as president.  His responsibility originates from a bill he advocated 76 years ago that failed in Congress but nevertheless helped change history.  But before I examine Roosevelt’s responsibility, here’s why the other three choices are wrong.

Obama is the obvious choice, but he was merely a big-picture player.  He didn’t concern himself with the details of ObamaCare, and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others led the public debate about ObamaCare. Also, in spring 2012 Obama stayed on the sidelines while the Supreme Court decided ObamaCare’s constitutionality.

Bush has some responsibility with his failure to vet Roberts thoroughly before nominating him to head the Supreme Court. For instance, Bush didn’t discover that Roberts would approve such a massive federal violation of liberty and state jurisdiction as ObamaCare. Nevertheless, Bush was reasonable to expect that Roberts, a former Federalist Society member, would preserve federalism and reject such unconstitutional laws as ObamaCare.

As the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Roberts upheld ObamaCare with a long and nonsensical decision.  Thus, he certainly has much responsibility for instituting ObamaCare. Per year, ObamaCare’s individual mandate “taxes” individuals $695 and families $2,085 for not purchasing health insurance. According to Roberts, even though Congress has no enumerated power to regulate health insurance as with the individual mandate, the individual mandate is constitutional because Congress can “lay and collect taxes.”

However, despite these arguments for Obama, Bush, and Roberts having responsibility for ObamaCare, Roosevelt has the most responsibility because of the judicial mess he created as president.  In the mid-1930s, Roosevelt faced a Supreme Court that was overturning key parts of his New Deal and other “progressive” laws. A Supreme Court decision that irked Roosevelt was a 1936 case called United States v. Butler.  Butler struck down a regulatory “tax” in the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) that taxed agricultural production, such as cotton production, to raise the prices of agricultural goods.  The court ruled that Congress has no power to regulate agricultural production or tax for that purpose. After all, Congress has only a few enumerated powers, such as the powers to regulate interstate commerce and provide a navy. With a rationale that Roberts should have applied to ObamaCare, the Supreme Court declared the following (emphasis added):

[AAA] is a statutory plan to regulate and control agricultural production, a matter beyond the powers delegated to the federal government. The tax…[is a ] means to an unconstitutional end. . . [R]esort to the taxing power to effectuate an end which is not legitimate, not within the scope of the Constitution, is obviously inadmissible.

Roosevelt decided that, if he couldn’t beat the Supreme Court, he would change it by cramming it with favorable justices.  In early 1937, Roosevelt proposed his notorious “court-packing” plan that would have given him six more judicial nominations. This court-packing plan ultimately died, but Roosevelt helped convince the Supreme Court to change its decisions regarding federal power.

Although the Supreme Court has never overruled Butler’s limitation on federal taxing power, the court began ignoring Butler’s holding.  While the Senate debated the court-packing plan in March 1937, the Supreme Court decided Sonzinsky v. United States.  Without mentioning Butler, Sonzinsky began a process of subtle backtracking from Butler’s stern warning about federal regulations masquerading as taxes.  Sonzinsky upheld a federal tax on firearms dealers, declaring that “an Act of Congress which on its face purports to be an exercise of the taxing power is not any the less so because the tax is burdensome or tends to restrict or suppress the thing taxed.”

In addition to its shift from Butler, Sonzinsky sidestepped a 1935 decision called United States v. Constantine that invalidated a federal “excise tax” on people who sold liquor in violation of state laws.  In Constantine, the court rejected the “excise tax” because “the [tax’s] purpose is to usurp the police powers of the state.”  Without overruling Constantine, Sonzinsky declared the court would not try to determine the true purpose of a federal tax.  Thus, if a federal regulation purports to be a tax, then the federal regulation is constitutional.

Sonzinksy led to the outcome of United States v. Kahriger (1953), which upheld a federal tax on gamblers.  Kahriger relied on Sonzinsky’s allowance for the Court to ignore the true purpose of a federal tax.  Also, Kahriger relegated Butler to a footnote without giving weight to Butler’s holding that any federal tax must not be a camouflaged attempt to regulate an activity that is beyond Congress’ enumerated powers.

Similar to Kahriger, Roberts’ decision upholding ObamaCare dismissed Butler.  Roberts acknowledged that Butler was among “[a] few of our cases” that invalidated punitive taxes “designed to regulate behavior otherwise regarded at the time as beyond federal authority.”  But then Roberts used Kahriger to justify ignoring the true purpose of ObamaCare’s “tax.” The true purpose is to “improve” public health by regulating the personal choice of buying health insurance, which Congress has no constitutional power to regulate. Thus, we can now see the trail of expansion of federal power vis-à-vis the tax power that began with Roosevelt’s actions and has continued with Roberts’ decision upholding ObamaCare.

Obama, Bush, and Roberts have varying degrees of responsibility for ObamaCare.  However, Roberts kept ObamaCare alive because the Supreme Court expanded federal power after Roosevelt’s court-packing plan in 1937. Thus, Roosevelt is the person most responsible for ObamaCare. If you failed the quiz above, you can retake it.

On May 8, however, the U.S. Department of State demanded that Defense Distributed cease publishing gun blueprints on the company’s website. The State Department alleged the blueprints, which already have 100,000 downloads, may violate the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which restrict export of weapons information. So far, Defense Distributed has obeyed the State Department’s demand.

Pandora’s box has already been opened.

First, Defense Distributed discovered how to make guns available to everyone in the world. Using photocopiers or computers, people have been able to copy books, MP3 files, computer software, and other items without limit. Now, using 3-D printers, people can copy guns without limit. The neologism for such items is “non-scarce goods.” Jeffrey Tucker and Stephan Kinsella define these as “[things] in demand that can be replicated without limit…with no additional copy having displaced the previous copy and with no degradation in the quality of the copied good from the original good…I can have one, you can have one, and we can all have one.” Non-scarce goods are likely to hasten an age of abundance.

Second, Defense Distributed’s printed gun shows that the right to keep and bear arms can overlap with freedom of the press. The Second Amendment protects “the right of the people to keep and bear arms,” which is an individual right. The First Amendment protects “freedom of …the press.” Based on UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh’s landmark research on press freedom, I’ve argued before that “the press” was meant to refer to any communications technology, such as today’s office printers or blogs.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the founders did not understand “the press” to be one discrete set of people, like the mainstream media, bloggers, or even pamphleteers. Press freedom belongs to the average Jane as much as to any reporter. As people can use 3-D printers for a variety of purposes, including the printing of signs and the publication and replication of art, the First Amendment surely protects the product of 3-D printers. Thus, the First and Second Amendments protect the printing of guns.

Printed guns show the folly of such gun-control laws as universal background checks on potential gun buyers, because anyone can now print guns at home. As Defense Distributed notes, any attempts to rid society of guns “will [now] require tyranny.” By invoking ITAR, the State Department is preventing Defense Distributed from publishing gun blueprints. However, as printed gun specs are non-scarce goods that the First and Second Amendments protect, any American could still have, to paraphrase rapper M.I.A., “more guns than the KGB.”

I’ll start remixing.

The Foundation for Economic Education originally published this article.

Her plight is the merely the most recent in a series of similar cases.

Jason Helveston of Orlando was confronted with a similar problem when the Florida city demanded he uproot the many varieties of vegetables growing in his front yard garden. The reason? Section 60.207 of the city’s Land Development Code concerning the legal requirements for residential landscaping was violated.

Alerting the authorities of the infraction was Helveston’s neighbor, Pedro Padin, who said that the gardener’s house “looks like a farm.” Padin was concerned about the garden’s potential negative effect on the value of his own property.

Ultimately, after a legal battle with the city, Helveston was allowed to keep his vegetable patch. The founder of Kitchen Gardeners International, Roger Doiron, said of the case, “This isn’t about a single garden; this is about the right to garden.”

What Doirin’s statement ultimately alludes to, however, is not some inalienable right to drag a hoe through the ground and sow seeds; rather, it rejects the abrogation of private property rights.

Last summer, the garden battle sprouted in Karl Tricamo’s own backyard—or front yard, rather. He was ordered by the city of Ferguson, MO, to remove his corn, tomatoes, sorghum, and other crops.

Of the zoning codes cited for the city’s action against Tricamo, Ferguson’s city manager, John Shaw, said, “At the end of the day, they’re there to protect homeowners and to protect their property value.”

Front yard gardens may indeed reduce property values. But are gardens violations of property rights?

Long have legal systems conflated property rights and property values, assuming the latter to be an immanent part of the former. American courts have perpetuated this fallacy, establishing the precedent that “property…may be violated without the physical taking of property” if an act “destroys it or its value” (Jacobs, 98 N.Y. 98, 105 (1885)).

Pragmatic effect notwithstanding, this position is not logically feasible within the framework of a theory of private property. Property rights exist to prevent conflict over scarce resources by protecting the physical integrity of goods against unwanted physical damage and invasion. More broadly, property rights ensure that the owner of a physical good is free to use his property so long as he does not interfere with others’ abilities to do the same.

The preservation of property value, however, is not a right. Economist Hans-Herman Hoppe explains as follows:

[I]t is easy to recognize that nearly every action of an individual can alter the value (price) of someone else’s property…When A changes his relative valuations of beer and bread, or if A himself decides to become a brewer or baker, this changes the value of the property of other brewers and bakers. According to the view that value damage constitutes a rights violation, A would be committing a punishable offense vis-à-vis brewers or bakers.

Perhaps I decide to go on a low-carb diet; accordingly, I reduce my consumption of bread. My realignment of my relative valuation of bread obviously has a negative effect on the baker from whom I previously bought bread. Yet, even if my actions reduce the overall demand for bread, so long as I do not physically harm the baker’s goods or prevent him from using them, I do not violate his property rights.

Hoppe continues with the following:

While a person has control over whether or not his actions will change the physical properties of another’s property, he has no control over whether or not his actions affect the value (or price) of another’s property. This is determined by other individuals and their evaluations.

Returning to the garden situations, Padin, Helveston’s neighbor in Orlando, obviously has a low valuation of front yard gardens and is concerned that potential buyers of his property may as well. His property value—that is, the collection of several individuals’ subjective evaluations of his physical goods—may indeed be higher in the absence of Helveston’s garden. Nonetheless, he has no right to a higher property value.

If, in some way, a garden physically damages a neighbor’s property, then the gardener has violated his neighbor’s property rights and should be held liable. But if aesthetic taste is the only thing violated, and property value is the only thing diminished, then no argument for the removal of the garden based on property rights can be logically conjured up.

The Washington Times Communities originally published this article.

Despite being supported by different sides of the political spectrum, abortion and gun control share several striking similarities. For one, very few Americans support a complete abortion ban, just as very few citizens support a ban on all guns. Only 15-20% of Americans want abortion completely banned while about 10-15% want all citizens banned from owning guns.

Also, most Americans want abortion and gun ownership limited in some fashion. For example, around 75% of Americans oppose partial-birth abortion and around 80-90% support laws requiring background checks on potential gun buyers.

However, the federal government imposes comparatively few restrictions on gun ownership and abortion because Americans vacillate between mild support of and mild opposition to major restrictions. Thus, Congress rarely makes sweeping changes in policy regarding these issues. Shocking incidents such as Gosnell’s alleged abortions and the Sandy Hook shooting can shift public opinion for a short time. Nevertheless, these shifts rarely last, since the speed of the modern news cycle forces even the most compelling stories off the air after several weeks of frenzied coverage.

A final similarity between the issues of gun control and abortion is that the chief successes of abortion opponents and gun control supporters have occurred in state legislatures. So-called “red” states impose numerous restrictions on abortion but rarely restrictions on gun ownership while so-called “blue” states enact few abortion restrictions but many strict gun controls.

Despite these similarities, there are major political differences between abortion and gun control. Democrats usually seek gun control but not abortion restrictions while Republicans typically favor abortion restrictions and not gun control. Also, the mainstream media has in large measure sided with Democrats on both of these issues and often resorts to misleading polls in reports about gun control and abortion.

There are also differences in constitutionality regarding gun control and abortion restrictions. The Second Amendment explicitly protects the “right of the people to keep and bear arms,” so nearly all gun control is unconstitutional.  However, no part of the Constitution explicitly protects the right to abortion, which means all abortion restrictions should be constitutional.  Even “pro-choice” advocates agree the Supreme Court used terrible logic in Roe v. Wade, the decision that legalized abortion in America.

The issues of abortion and gun control illustrate the limits of using federal power to change divisive but established policy. Without a substantial congressional majority or widespread public support induced by such tragedies as Gosnell’s abortion practices or the Sandy Hook shooting, supporters of greater restrictions on abortion and guns can achieve little success on the federal level.

In June 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that most of ObamaCare is constitutional under Congress’ tax power.  According to PLF, this ruling means that ObamaCare was a bill for raising revenue.  PLF alleges that the Senate originated ObamaCare by “amending” a House bill titled the Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009.  Among other decrees, this act granted tax credits to service members seeking their first homes.  The Senate’s amendment completely replaced the title and text of the Service Members act with ObamaCare, leaving only the bill’s label of “House Resolution (H.R.) 3590.”  PLF, which calls such an amendment the “gut-and-amend” procedure, contends that the House and not the Senate should have originated ObamaCare.

In defense of ObamaCare, the Department of Justice (DOJ) argues that “the Senate may amend a House bill in any way it [the Senate] deems advisable, even by amending it [the bill] with a total substitute, without running afoul of the Origination Clause.”  DOJ further argues that ObamaCare wasn’t a bill for raising revenue because ObamaCare’s main purpose is to improve the U.S. health care system and not to raise revenue.

PLF isn’t challenging DOJ’s claim that the Senate can amend a House bill that isn’t a bill for raising revenue by completely replacing the bill’s title and text: “[PLF] does not challenge the gut-and-amend procedure generally.”  PLF is challenging only “the constitutionality of a bill for raising revenue [ObamaCare] which originated in the Senate through the use of … [the gut-and-amend procedure].”  However, if the U.S. district court rules that ObamaCare wasn’t a bill for raising revenue, then PLF’s case could appear doomed.  To strengthen PLF’s case, this article argues that according to the Origination Clause, the Senate can’t amend any House bill, whether a bill for raising revenue or not, with the “gut-and-amend” procedure.

Article 1, Section 5 of the Constitution reads, “Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings.”  This provision gives the Senate and House control over their rules of proceedings, including how the respective chambers handle bill amendments in general.  In the Senate and House, the current rules of procedure actually allow one chamber’s amendment on another chamber’s bill to completely replace the bill’s title and text.  Congress calls such an amendment an “amendment in the nature of a substitute” or a “complete substitute.”

However, the Supreme Court has held that, while Congress has much latitude in establishing its rules of proceedings, these rules can’t violate a part of the Constitution.  And as I’ve argued in a previous article, the Origination Clause requires that any Senate amendments on House bills, whether bills for raising revenue or not, be parts and not complete replacements of bills.

For this discussion, the relevant portion of the Origination Clause is “the Senate may propose … amendments as on other Bills” (emphasis added).  As I noted in my previous article, in more complete language, this portion appears to read, “the Senate may propose … amendments on House bills for raising revenue as on other Bills.”  Thus, the Origination Clause says any Senate amendments must be “on” House bills for raising revenue and all other House bills.¹  It’s important to note that this relevant portion of the Origination Clause doesn’t read, “[T]he Senate may propose … amendments as determined by the Rules of its Proceedings,” or even “[T]he Senate may propose … amendments as the Senate can do with other House bills.”  Clearly, the Origination Clause’s phrase of “on … Bills” is important and has a limiting purpose.

I’ve argued before that according to Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language (1755), the most widely used dictionary at the Constitution’s ratification, the Founders understood “on” to mean, among other definitions, “noting addition or accumulation” and “noting dependence or reliance.”  The Founders understood a “bill” to be “a law presented to the parliament [or congress], not yet made an act,” with a “law” being “a rule of action” or “a decree, edict, statute, or custom, publically established as a rule of justice.”  Thus, according to the Founders, a Senate amendment on a House bill must be an addition or attachment to a House “rule of action, decree, edict, statute, or custom.”  As an amendment, ObamaCare wasn’t an addition or attachment to a “rule of action, decree, edict, statute, or custom” from the House’s Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009.  Therefore, ObamaCare violates the Origination Clause.

Of course, the Origination Clause’s main purpose isn’t to specify the congressional procedure to amend bills.  As PLF notes, the Founders included the Origination Clause in the Constitution to keep the power to raise taxes strictly in the House, which, with its elections every two years in local districts, is the chamber of Congress most accountable to voters.  Nevertheless, the Origination Clause’s phrase of “on … Bills,” although a subtle command that Senate amendments on House bills be parts and never replacements of House bills, is a part of the Constitution’s text.

This article’s view that Senate amendments on House bills must actually be “on … Bills” is consistent with the procedures for bill amendments between chambers in Thomas Jefferson’s A Manual of Parliamentary Practice: For the Use of the Senate of the United States.  Jefferson published this manual in 1803.  From 1797 to 1801 he used his manual as, in his role as vice president of the United States, presiding officer of the Senate.

During this time, members of Congress had much uncertainty about the best practices for congressional procedures.  As the Founders modeled the U.S. Congress on the British parliament, Jefferson’s manual prescribes British parliamentary practices that he felt were relevant to the U.S. Congress.  Many scholars actually view Jefferson’s manual as the best publication on British parliamentary practices for that time.  Thus, Jefferson’s manual can help illuminate which British parliamentary practices, such as procedures for bill amendments between chambers, the Constitution may have preserved.  Aside from the Constitution itself, Jefferson’s manual may be the best Founding-era source to discover the Founders’ understanding of what could be bill amendments between chambers.

Discussing in-chamber amendments on bills, such as senators’ amendments on other senators’ bills, Jefferson said there’s much latitude for what can constitute an amendment.  For instance, Jefferson said that “[a]mendments can be made … to totally alter the nature of the proposition” and that “a new bill may be ingrafted by way of amendment[.]”  However, when discussing one chamber’s amendments on another chamber’s bills, such as Senate amendments on House bills, Jefferson makes no reference to the possibility that one chamber’s amendment can completely replace the title and text of another chamber’s bill.  Rather, Jefferson stated that “[w]hen either House … sends a bill to the other, the other may pass it [the bill] with amendments” (emphasis added).  Jefferson’s specification that “the other may pass it [the bill] with amendments” may highlight the British parliament’s practice for bill amendments that the Founders were prescribing for Senate amendments on House bills by including the phrase “on … Bills” in the Origination Clause.

Johnson’s dictionary defined “with” as in “pass it [the bill] with amendments” as, among other definitions, “in [the] company of,” “in partnership,” “noting connection,” “upon,” and “in appendage; noting consequence or concomitance.”  According to Johnson, “concomitance (or concomitancy/concomitant)” meant “together with another thing” and “conjoined with; concurrent with; coming and going with, as collateral.”  So according to Jefferson’s manual, one chamber’s amendment on another chamber’s bill must be “in [the] company of” or “conjoined with” the bill and can never completely replace the bill.  It’s perhaps telling that Jefferson’s discussion of bill amendments between chambers didn’t contain any of the following statements:

• “When either House … sends a bill to the other, the other may pass an amendment(s) without the bill[.]“
• “When either House … sends a bill to the other, the other may pass an amendment(s) instead of the bill[.]“
• “When either House … sends a bill to the other, the other may pass an amendment as a substitute for the bill[.]“

This article’s view that Senate amendments on House bills must actually be “on … Bills” is also consistent with the First Congress’ Joint Rules of the Two Houses, which the Senate and House passed in 1789.  The Senate and House agreed to these rules under their power in Article 1, Section 5 of the Constitution to determine their rules of proceedings, and these joint rules were Congress’s first.  The Joint Rules of the Two Houses‘ rule regarding bill amendments, which lasted until 1876, mostly described how to settle differences between chambers regarding an amendment and not what could constitute a bill amendment.  The joint rule reads as follows (emphasis added):

That in every case of an amendment of a bill agreed to in one House, and dissented to in the other, if either House shall request a conference, and appoint a committee for that purpose, and the other House shall also appoint a committee to confer, such committees shall, at a convenient hour, to be agreed on by their Chairman, meet in the Conference Chamber, and state to each other, verbally, or in writing, as either shall chuse, the reasons of their respective Houses for and against the amendment, and confer freely thereon.²

However, notice that this joint rule for bill amendments contains no language suggesting that “an amendment of a bill” between chambers can completely replace a bill’s title and text.  In fact, the most relevant definition from Johnson’s dictionary of the word “of” in the context of “an amendment of a bill” appears to be “concerning; relating to.”  This definition indicates that one chamber’s amendment “of” another chamber’s bill must be part of the bill and can’t become a complete substitute of the bill.

The Origination Clause’s requirement that Senate amendments on House bills actually be “on” House bills, whether bills for raising revenue or not, is a subtle constitutional requirement regarding congressional proceedings.  However, given the original meaning of the Origination Clause’s phrase of “on … Bills” that this article articulates, this requirement is clear.  Also, this requirement is consistent with the procedures for bill amendments in Jefferson’s Manual of Parliamentary Practice from 1803 and the joint rule between the Senate and House regarding bill amendments that lasted from 1789 to 1876.

Of course, legal scholars should obtain more evidence from the Founding era, such as Founders’ discussion of bill amendments before the Founding and further discussion of British parliamentary practices regarding bill amendments between houses, to verify this article’s claims.  Nevertheless, according to this article, ObamaCare wasn’t an amendment “on” a House bill for raising revenue or any other House bill.  Thus, contrary to DOJ’s claims, ObamaCare runs afoul of the Origination Clause.  PLF should start making this argument.

American Thinker originally published this article.

¹ As the Senate and House are equal chambers of Congress, one could argue that the Origination Clause’s requirement that Senate amendments must be “on” House bills also requires House amendments to be “on” Senate bills.

² Researcher’s Note: I obtained this joint rule from the Journal of the House of Representatives of the United States, which, along with the Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, may be the best record of the First Congress’s proceedings.  See the House’s journal entry on April 17, 1789. Some congressional records don’t list this joint rule regarding bill amendments as a rule from 1789′s Joint Rules of the Two Houses.  However, this discrepancy may be because of poor recordkeeping in Congress.  One example of a poor congressional record is this Senate record (scroll to page 4) from 1790 that lists 1789′s Joint Rules Between the Houses but excludes the joint rule regarding bill amendments.  I obtained this Senate record from Early American Imprints. Regardless, later congressional records, such as this entry (see footnote 2) from Hinds’ Precedents of the House of Representatives of the United States, Volume IV (1907), list this joint rule regarding bill amendments as originating from 1789.  Thus, it’s clear that Congress passed this joint rule in the First Congress.

Once among the 10 wealthiest countries in the world, Argentina has been declining for decades due to the lack of economic freedom. Dictatorships under the appearance of democracy have made Argentina’s economy one of the world’s most oppressed ones. According to the Heritage Foundation’s 2013 Index of Economic Freedom, Argentina ranks 160^th out of 177 countries.

But why should Americans care?

Last February in the Washington Times, Nita Ghei called Argentina a textbook example of what a country’s economy shouldn’t be like. With the following passage, Ghei warned that the United States could be following Argentina’s footsteps:

Here in the United States, the problem is eerily similar. We enjoy great abundance of natural resources and a historic dominance over rival economies. Yet our government is squandering this bounty, headed on a course of reduced economic freedom. At least we still have time to learn from the mistakes of others before we share the Argentine fate.

The Argentinian government even tries to hide its damage to the economy.  For instance, the government redefined “inflation” to hide actual inflation.  Also, the government impairs Argentineans from traveling abroad. As Argentinean pesos are almost useless in foreign countries, an Argentinean citizen planning to visit the United States usually needs to purchase U.S. dollars for his or her trip. However, according to the rules of Argentina’s Federal Administration of Public Income, citizens can no longer purchase U.S. dollars.  This policy is tantamount to saying “You’re banned from leaving Argentina!”

U.S. citizens working in Argentina face a similar situation, as the Argentinean government is banning them from converting their earnings in pesos to U.S. dollars. This policy prevents workers from controlling their legitimate income.  It’s now the Argentinean government that decides how workers, whether Argentinean or American, can spend their income.  As an American, can you imagine not having the liberty to travel beyond U.S. borders with your own money?

Recently, Argentineans have made some amazing achievements, such as Argentinean Cardinal Mario Bergoglio becoming the new Pope and Princess Máxima Zorreguieta Cerruti becoming the next Queen of the Netherlands.  However, the Argentinean administration’s socialist tendency remains a burden for the country’s economy, which unfortunately has few stories of successful entrepreneurs, investors, and small business owners.

As with many other European and Latin American countries, Argentina is following a socialist path.  But rather than producing a state of equality where everybody has the best opportunities to progress, this social path makes everyone equally poor.  Well, maybe not everyone is equally poor, as the political leaders progressively increase their wealth.

Could the South American trend toward socialism reach the United States?  While many Americans value civil liberties, watch out! Economic freedom in America is also under fire, and economic freedom is necessary for personal freedom.  Nevertheless, Americans shouldn’t be hopeless.  Not at all!  Let’s go liberty, let’s go property! Hear, Americans, the sacred cry: Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!

-Union General William Sherman, 1863

Should the U.S. government or military censor wartime information in national security’s name? In my recently published article “Avoiding Bloodshed? US Journalists and Censorship in Wartime” in War & Society, I argue the answer is no and that any withholding of wartime information by U.S. journalists should be voluntary.

Focusing on World Wars I and II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and Persian Gulf War, my article also examines censorship of U.S. journalists in wartime and, from war to war, trends in types of censored information. My article further answers whether any censorship has avoided bloodshed or been legitimate.

I begin with World War I because it was the first U.S. war with large-scale censorship. During earlier American wars, such as the Revolutionary War and Mexican War, communications and printing were slow and so journalists couldn’t keep up with war’s pace. Thus, for the most part government and military officials were unconcerned with wartime reporting. However, by the Civil War many journalists used telegraphs, so news spread more quickly. Multiple reports of war information, such as battle plans, angered such Union generals as William Sherman. Nevertheless, in the Civil War there was no official, widespread censorship of war information. In the Spanish-American War, military personnel routinely censored journalists’ telegraphs for mentions of “projected movements of bodies of troops, naval vessels, and transports.”

In World Wars I and II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and Persian Gulf War, the government or military used varying methods of censorship.  For instance, in World Wars I and II the government suppressed journalists with the Espionage Act of 1917, which banned publication of such information as “false statements with intent to interfere with the…success of the military”; the Post Office blocked the distribution of publications in the U.S. mail; and military personnel censored thousands of journalists’ communications sent through the war zones.  In the Korean War and Persian Gulf War, journalists in war zones had to submit all their articles, photos, and videos for censorship review before publication.  During the Vietnam War, a federal court blocked several newspapers from publishing articles about the Pentagon Papers that disclosed, among other revelations, decisions by U.S. officials to secretly escalate the war.  These injunctions ranged from five to fifteen days.

Nevertheless, in all five wars the government or military did perhaps most censorship with long lists of censorship rules that the government or military forced journalists to follow. For instance, in World War II the lists for journalists operating in the United States were called the Code of Wartime Practices for the American Press (for print journalists) and Code of Wartime Practices for American Broadcasters (for radio broadcasters). These lists banned revelation of such information as troop movements, statistics on critical war supplies, and locations of bomb shelters in the United States. The government forced compliance with these lists by threatening more censorship of journalists in general using the Espionage Act, the Post Office’s mail censorship, and other methods. For journalists operating in war zones, the military had a separate list that prohibited release of such information as inaccurate information, information embarrassing to the United States, and effects of enemy fire on targets in war zones. Journalists who violated the military’s rules faced possible detainment, expulsion from a war zone, or suspension or revocation of accreditation to cover war operations.

In each war, much and sometimes perhaps most censorship was unrelated to protecting national security. For instance, in World War I a court convicted communist leader Rose Stokes of violating the Espionage Act for writing in the Kansas City Star, “I am for the people[,] and the Government is for the Profiteers.” In World War II, the Post Office blocked issues of X-Ray (Indiana) in the U.S. mail after it declared Pearl Harbor “sunk the hopes of Jewry in this country — and the world forever, Amen and Amen.” In the Vietnam War, President Lyndon Johnson ordered the Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate CBS broadcaster Morley Safer for “[c]ommunist ties” after he reported a story critical of U.S. Marines fighting in Vietnam.

From war to war, there has been little consistent consensus expressed in censorship rules on specific types of war information.  As my article’s Appendix shows, of 120 types of information that the government or military censored between the five wars only the following five (4%) types of information were in censorship rules in all these wars:

• Information on future military operations/military plans/secret war plans
• Movements of troops, warships, fighter planes, ships, or rails
• Statistics on critical war supplies
• Effectiveness of the enemy’s camouflage, cover, deception, direct and indirect fire, intelligence collection, or security measures
• Aerial photos/views of sites of military importance

Most specific reporting restrictions lasted only one or two wars. For example, the Vietnam War had several rules unique to that conflict, including bans on revealing the number of air strikes and identification of enemy weapon systems used to down friendly aircraft.  And in only World Wars I and II, the rules banned mention of harbor defenses and merchant ships’ departure times. Why was there so little consistency from war to war? Among other reasons, changes occurred from war to war in the types of threats facing the U.S. military, homeland, civilians, or allies (e.g., artillery, submarines, or A-bombs).

Numerous censorship rules from World Wars I and II and the Korean War may now seem excessive or silly, such as rules banning mention of information that is inaccurate, injurious to the morale of U.S. citizens, embarrassing to the United States, or that vilifies U.S. armed forces. Nevertheless, throughout all five wars many of the censorship rules were legitimate and surely have avoided bloodshed, such as rules banning mention of troop locations, information about U.S. harbor defenses, activities of friendly guerillas, and operations and methods of U.S. intelligence in war zones.

Regardless, my article concludes that to most legitimately ensure safe reporting and avoid censorship of information unrelated to national security in any future U.S. wars, the U.S. government or military should do the following:

Without forcing journalists or threatening to force their compliance…the government or military [sh]ould issue all journalists… a list of potentially dangerous types of war information. Such a list would have no stipulations mandating journalists agree to censorship rules to cover war operations or, if there were violations, that journalists face possible detainment, expulsion from a war zone(s), or suspension or revocation of accreditation. There could be no censorship of journalists in the United States or war zones by, say, threatening enforcement of the Espionage Act or having a review system of correspondents’ articles, videos, and photos by public affairs officers. In such a war, rules’ rationales, such as Sun Tzu’s following rationale for concealing war plans in The Art of War, may help journalists distinguish when it would be safe versus possibly dangerous to report certain war information:

The spot where we intend to fight must not be made known; for then the enemy will have to prepare against a possible attack at several different points; and his forces being thus distributed in many directions, the numbers we shall have to face at any given point will be proportionately few.

Thus far in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the government has issued U.S. journalists operating in the United States no censorship rules. Nevertheless, throughout both of these wars journalists operating in Afghanistan and Iraq have been following censorship rules that the Department of Defense (DOD) and military devised. The rules have banned release of such types of information as details of search and rescue missions, the effectiveness of improvised explosive devices, and identifiers of enemy prisoners of war. Of course, these journalists have been under the usual threat of losing access to cover war operations for rule violations. However, it’s not too late for the DOD and military to issue all U.S. journalists a voluntary list of “censorship” rules for rest of these wars.¹

¹ Some readers may be alarmed that this article espouses absolute freedom for journalists to report war information, even if a report could hurt national security.  However, as I’ll argue in a future article, the past censorship of war information by the U.S. government and military has violated the original meaning of the First Amendment’s “freedom of…the press.” My suggestion that, in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and any future U.S. wars, the government or military should issue journalists a voluntary list of “censorship” rules would comport with this original meaning. Readers who may want the “freedom of…the press” to have a national security exception should be prepared to ignore the original meaning of “freedom of…the press” and accept other violations of press freedom.

For one, the Constitution permits capital punishment if there’s “due process” of law.  However, this punishment is inconsistent with the “unalienable” right to life that the Declaration of Independence articulated:

[A]ll men…are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Also, Ron Paul once aptly said, “Government should never be able to do anything you [as an individual] can’t do. If you can’t steal from your neighbor, you can’t send the government to your neighbor to steal for you.” This guiding principle, although perhaps imperfect in application for such situations as jailing murderers, can be applied to capital punishment. If individuals can’t kill for revenge or punishment, then the government shouldn’t be able to do so.

Furthermore, states have imposed capital punishment on some innocent inmates. Just consider Kirk Bloodsworth, a Marylander convicted in 1984 for raping and killing a 9-year-old girl in Baltimore. He spent nine years in prison, serving two on death row. In 1992, he arranged for DNA testing, which revealed his DNA didn’t match the DNA found at the crime scene.

Lastly, capital punishment by a state isn’t necessarily a “just” punishment for murderers. At the very least, as Murray Rothbard argued in The Ethics of Liberty, the victim’s heirs and not the state should decide if the murderer should receive death as punishment.

Maryland and other states continue to violate the right to life in other ways, such as with legalized abortion and euthanasia. However, Maryland’s repeal of capital punishment is a positive step.