If you stay up until at least 9:00 PM on Friday nights then you might as well be watching the Independence Institute’s public affairs television show Devil’s Advocate at 8:30 PM on Colorado Public Television 12. Check it out tonight as host Jon Caldara is joined by Durango Herald reporter Joe Hanel and Denver Post reporter Tim Hoover for a look at current political goings on around the state by the reporters who cover Colorado.

Re-broadcast Monday at 1:30 PM.

Yesterday the Independence Institute held a press conference here in Golden to illustrate the job destroying results if Proposition 103, Sen. Rollie Heath’s tax hike, passes this November. Like I say in the video below, we wondered, “how in the world can we show the domino effect of job loss if Prop 103 passes? People’s jobs will fall like dominoes! How do we show this???” Well, after much thought and some whiskey, we finally came up with the perfect illustration… LET’S KNOCK THOUSANDS OF DOMINOES DOWN! So I got on the phone and called up 5-time domino world record holder Robert Speca to see if he wanted to come to Colorado to knock some dominoes down. Thankfully, he said yes and within a day, he was out near our offices in Golden setting up thousands upon thousands of dominoes to represent all of the jobs that will be lost if Prop 103 passes.

Yesterday at 2pm, we held the press conference and I was the lucky guy who got to push the first domino over. It was REALLY fun! In total, Robert the “Domino Wizard” set up 5,500 dominoes, with each domino representing TWO jobs lost due to this tax increase. Take a look at the video below to see the job killing destruction Prop 103 will wreak on our economy. Prop 103: Colorado’s job killing tax increase:

Fox31’s political reporter Eli Stokels also covered our event. Here is the article and video they took. You’ll notice in the video that Eli Stokols makes a mistake. He says that only 1,100 jobs will be lost because of Prop 103. Oops. It’s actually 11,000. Eleven thousand. Big difference.

The American Revolution took place because of various abuses of the rights of Americans by the British government. So when we seek to understand the rights of citizens in the nation that was created by that Revolution, one useful guide is looking at the negative example of what the Americans were revolting against. For example, Justices have looked at the revolution-provoking use general warrants (Henry v. United States, 1959),  unrepresentative government as exemplified by (but not limited to) taxation without representation (Texas v. Johnson, 1989, Rehnquist dissenting),  and violation of the right to trial by jury, via use of vice-admiralty courts (Parklane Hosiery v. Shore, 1979, Rehnquist dissenting).

More broadly, as the 2d Justice Harlan wrote in his oft-quoted dissent in Poe v. Ullman, when the Court is “supplying of content” to constitutional ”liberty,” the Court should have “regard to what history teaches are the traditions from which it developed as well as the traditions from which it broke.”

Can commentators supply some additional examples, either regarding specific issues, or general Poe-like rules? Citations to Supreme Court cases are welcome, but also welcome are citations to other sources who are regarded as guides for constitutional understanding–such as Abraham Lincoln, or influential commentators.

Because of Dave Kopel’s dedication and hard work over the last couple decades, there are hundreds, if not thousands of people in the Washington DC and Chicago areas who would have been shot and killed, but instead will live full and fruitful lives. These people can thank folks like Dave Kopel who helped shape the decisions in McDonald v. Chicago and DC v. Heller – where handguns and the self-defense they bring, became legal once again. New evidence has surfaced that shows the crime rate has plummeted in both cities since the monumental Supreme Court decisions came down. Therefore, many people owe their lives to the work Second Amendment scholars like Dave Kopel did to help turn the tide in favor of gun (self-defense) rights.

Thanks Dave! Our cities are much safer places thanks to you.

Here are the last couple of episodes we’ve done on my TV show the Devils Advocate.

Scott Gessler joined me to talk about mail ballots and active vs. inactive voters:

Amy Oliver from our Energy Policy Center joined me to talk about NREL and the green jobs scam:

This past Friday, we had a lively debate about my town of Boulder’s municipalization dreams.

What an event! I can’t begin to describe to my readers how incredibly epic our Constitutional Law event was last month. Our two resident ConLaw scholars Dave Kopel of the University of Denver Law School and Rob Natelson, formerly of the University of Montana Law School wow’ed the crowd with their presentations. We completely sold out the Antlers Hilton auditorium down in Colorado Springs with hundreds of liberty loving nerds who wanted to learn more about the supreme law of the land – our Constitution. In case you missed it, or wanted to relive it again, we’ve got the entire event posted on YouTube. You can find the playlist here.

I also wanted to post the schedule of the event that you will see on the videos, including the lecture titles from Rob and Dave. Here is what was presented in order:

Below are the 4 videos from the event:

PART 1:

PART 2:

PART 3:

PART 4:

Tune in to the Independence Institute’s public affairs tv show Devil’s Advocate tonight for a debate over the City of Boulder’s upcoming energy municipalization ballot initiative. Host Jon Caldara is joined by Susan Perkins from Renewables Yes (in favor of municipalization) and Boulder City Council candidate Mark Gelband (opposed). That’s tonight at 8:30PM on Colorado Public Television 12. Re-broadcast on Monday at 1:30PM.

One way to judge might be to consider which casebooks played a mjor role in getting their particular subject widely adopted as a class in American law schools. Among the top contenders might be: Ernst Freund, Cases on Administrative Law (1911); and Richard W. Jennings & Harold Marsh, Securities Regulation: Cases and Materials (1963).

Ranking even higher, I would suggest, would be a casebook that not only get the subject into the law schools, but plays an important role in creating new lawyers who will, during their careers, significantly change the existing law on the subject. On the real-world influence scale, can anything top Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Herma Hill Kay & Kenneth M. Davidson, Text, Cases, and Materials on Sex-Based Discrimination (1974)?

Commenters, what do you think should make the honor roll of most influential casebooks of all time?

The Independence Institute’s dynamic scoring study on the impact of the upcoming sales and income tax increase ballot initiative, Proposition 103, on jobs and the economy in Colorado has been published and cited in both print and television news. Here is a round-up thus far.

The study has been cited in newspaper editorials in opposition to Prop 103 by both the Colorado Springs Gazette and the Pueblo Chieftain.

The study has also been cited in television news coverage of Prop 103 here by CBS4, and here by 9News.

Opinion pieces excerpted from the study have appeared here in the Denver Business Journal, here in the Summit Daily newspaper, and here in the Salida Mountain Mail newspaper.

The President also said that he did not believe “in the literal truth of the creed as it is recited in the orthodox evangelical churches.” He did, however, believe that Jesus had set forth an outstanding system of moral precepts.

Although the general views above were shared by Thomas Jefferson, the President quoted above was William Howard Taft, who served from 1909-13, and later as a very good Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Americans today tend to congratulate themselves for being more tolerant and open-minded than their ancestors of a century or two ago. Yet those earlier Americans elected the great Jefferson twice, and elected Taft once. Taft is not today remembered as a great President, but he at least he did much less harm to the United States than the man who succeeded him, Woodrow Wilson.

I find it disgusting that a Gallup Poll found 22% of Americans (18% of Republicans, 19% of Independents, and 27% of Democrats) say that they would not vote for a well-qualified candidate of their party who happened to be a Mormon. That’s actually an increase compared to 17% who gave the same answer in 1967.

If some Christians want to take the theological view that Unitarians, or Mormons, or, for that matter, Catholics are not true Christians, that’s their privilege, and it’s very legitimate source of religious debate. I don’t think that whether a candidate fits a voter’s definition of orthodox Christianity is a legitimate basis for voting for a public official.

Kudos to Mitt Romney, in his speech today at the Values Voters summit, for denouncing the “poisonous language” of Bryan Fischer, another invited speaker at the event, who makes the idiotic claim that the First Amendment was not intended to protect non-Christians.