We will be showing the 9-part short film series Kids Aren’t Cars, which takes a deeper look into the state of public education in America, and the reasons why we are falling behind the rest of the world. The film highlights examples from Midwestern states and shows the impact organized labor and the assembly-line system has had on educating our children.

Reception starts at 6 pm, with the movie starting at 6:30 pm. The film will be followed by a brief discussion with the Independence Institute’s Education Policy Center’s Ben DeGrow and Pam Benigno.

This event is FREE and open to the public – so please invite family and friends to help us celebrate school choice week!

To learn more about the movie and watch a trailer, check out the Kids Aren’t Cars website: http://www.kidsarentcars.com/trailer.html

Facebook page can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/events/260743213990716/

It’s not surprising that a corporation which is currently pro-Che was pro-Hitler, far more so than many other German businesses during the Third Reich. As recounted in Cecil Adams’ “The Straight Dope”:

Daimler-Benz . . . avidly supported Nazism and in return received arms contracts and tax breaks that enabled it to become one of the world’s leading industrial concerns. (Between 1932 and 1940 production grew by 830 percent.) During the war the company used thousands of slaves and forced laborers including Jews, foreigners, and POWs. According to historian Bernard Bellon (Mercedes in Peace and War, 1990), at least eight Jews were murdered by DB managers or SS men at a plant in occupied Poland.

UPDATE: Regarding Eugene’s post, immediately above. My own view would be that a corporation is a collection of individuals (and, I agree with him, therefore entitled to free speech and other constitutional rights); in the same sense, a human body is a collection of cells. Over time, all of the individuals in a corporation may change; likewise, the collection of cells that constitute “David Kopel” is today very different from the collection that constituted “David Kopel” 45 years ago. Yet the corporate body, like the human body, has a continuing existence as the same entity. (That’s one of the benefits of incorporation.) Corporations sometimes have cultures or other enduring traits that distinguish them even while their individual members may be replaced. It would be accurate to say that Yale Law School is a corporation that places far higher value of scholarly prestige than on teaching ability, and this was true not only today, but also 40 years ago, even though the Yale faculty is now entirely different. (Yes, to be precise, Yale Law School is just a unit within the larger corporation of Yale University.) None of the original personnel at National Review magazine are still there, but one can find many similarities between the corporate culture and mission of NR in 1955 and 2011. That the various corporations of the Ivy League schools discriminated against Jews in the 1920s is, in my view, of some relevance in understanding their current discrimination against Asians. That Mercedes-Benz was, compared to other German corporations, unusually supportive to Hitler then, and is similarly unusual (compared to other German corporations) in its attitude towards Che today, suggests that the corporation may lack an internal self-regulator which recognizes the wrongfulness of extolling totalitarian thugs.

Mister Ed (1961-66). Mister Ed is a talking horse who belongs to a human named Wilbur, and will speak only to him. Wilbur attempts to conceal Mr. Ed’s ability from the neighbors.

McHale’s Navy (1962-66). In the South Pacific during World War II, PT boat Lt. Commander McHale and the crew of PT-73 work hard at having fun, to the dismay of Captain Binghamton.  Concealed in their barracks is a Japanese prisoner of war named “Fuji,” who gratefully serves as their houseboy. Keeping Fuji hidden from the American officers is the subject of several episodes, but it is not as central to the show as are the secrets in the other shows on this list.

My Favorite Martian (1963-66). After a Martian scientist’s spaceship crashes, Tim O’Hara rescues him. Tim invites the Martian (whose real name is Exigius 12½) to live with him, and passes him off as Tim’s “Uncle Martin.”

Bewitched (1964-72). Samantha is a beautiful witch who is married to advertising executive Darrin Stephens. They live in the suburbs, and often face challenges trying to conceal Samantha’s powers from the nosy neighbors and Darrin’s boss.

My Mother the Car (1965-66). David Crabtree’s deceased mother is reincarnated in a 1928 luxury automobile. She speaks only to him, through the car radio. He must conceal the car’s secret from the world, especially Captain Manzini, who is determined to acquire the antique.

I Dream of Jeannie (1965-70). Jeannie is a beautiful 2,000 year old genie who lives with astronaut Tony Nelson. Tony and his best friend Roger must conceal Jeannie’s existence from everyone else, especially the commanding officers at NASA.

Another theme of some sitcoms of the period is the family of freaks who do not know that they are freaks:

The Beverly Hillbillies (1962-71). After the Clampetts accidentally strike it rich by discovering oil on the Ozark property, patriarch Jed moves them to Beverly Hills. They retain their rural dress and customs, and seem to have little or no idea how aberrant they are in urban California. Their innocent good nature keeps them (except for the half-witted skirt-chaser Jethro) out of trouble most of the time.

The Munsters (1964-66). The father looks like Frankenstein, his father-in-law is a vampire, and so on. Living with them is their niece Marilyn, who is an ordinary human college student, and whom the rest of the family considers to be a freak, but they are very nice to her. Marilyn apparently is unaware that the Munsters are different from everyone else.

The Addams Family (1964-66). A family of wealthy eccentrics with paranormal abilities and a strong taste for the macabre enjoys life in their mansion. Again, they have no clue how bizarre they are.

So in 1965-66, when there are only three national networks producing TV series, we have in a single television season five shows built around the concealment of character with a unique trait. (Or six, if you include the McHales’s Navy subplot), and three shows about extremely strange families who think they are normal.

So my question to the commenters is “Why?” Were these shows an unintentional avant garde, extolling the pleasures of non-conformity and the virtue of tolerance to Middle America? Except for “My Mother the Car,” all the shows were at least moderately successful for a while, and Beverly Hillbillies and Bewitched garnered top ratings. So was the American public subconsciously looking for validation for non-conformity? Or is there some other explanation?

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.

First up is Ken Buck talking about his organization Balance America.

Then Linda Gorman talks about the exploding Medicaid costs in Colorado:

Comedy may be Shakespeare’s first play, and it has many of the elements that appear in his later comedies. A pair men are identical twins, separately shortly after birth. Each man has a servant, and servants are also identical twins. Each twin pair not only looks alike, they have the same name. The twins from Syracuse (modern Italy) show up in Ephesus (modern Turkey) and much confusion ensues from mistaken identity. There are some small fights, then a big one, and in the last scene, everything is straightened out, and everyone lives happily ever after.

While modern scholars credit Comedy with more social and political complexity than did some earlier scholars, and there’s plenty of witty dialogue, it’s fair to saw that Shakepeare’s comedy-writing skills improved after this early effort.

Among the virtues of the CSF’s production this season is an excellent set, which nearly rises to the level of being a character. Impressively, the same set is also used for CSF’s parallel production of Romeo & Juliet. The entire cast is hard-working and energetic; the two actors who play the servants (Dromio 1 and Dromio 2) have vivacious comic energy. All the costumes are very good, and help the audience remember who’s what.

However, the CSF’s version of Comedy of Errors appears to have made its artistic decisions based on the recommendations of Eric Cartman, the puerile 4th-grade boy from the South Park cartoon:

“OK, most people can’t understand Shakespeare, because it has too many words. So you need to crank up the visual humor. First, put in a lot of farts and fart jokes. In fact, put in a really long fart that is so powerful that everyone on stage passes out. The audience will love it.” (They did.)

“Then, do a lot of pointless stuff that has almost nothing to do with the play. After intermission, have one of the characters throw bags of goldfish crackers to the audience.”

“Every good play has lots of dick humor. So one of the characters should stick a fish doll in pants, and have it hanging down for most of the show. Also, if another character says something about sex, he should grab his thing while he says it.”

“You know that scene where the wife has an argument with the prostitute that her husband has been visiting? They should pretend that they’re sumo wrestlers. Because everyone knows that sumo wrestlers are almost the funniest thing in the world. Except for farts.”

“Speech impediments are funny too. Whenever the Duke of Ephesus speaks, he should add an extra syllable for any word ending with ‘s’. So he says ‘Ephesus’ as ‘Ephesus-es’. That will be just as hilarious in Act 5 as it is in Act 1.”

“Finally, the style for most of the play should be Three Stooges. Except these days, people actually hitting each other would upset the audience. So just use a lot of fake punches, and have somebody clack two boards together at the moment of impact.”

Early in the play, one character marvels, “This is the fairyland.” Yet the CSF’s production of Comedy works relentlessly to dispel  theatrical enchantment, to constantly break through the fourth wall, and to remind the audience at every opportunity that they are watching Shakespeare-for-people-who-thought-Shakespeare-for-Dummies-was-too-hard-to-read. Compared to this Saturnalia of moronic vulgarity, Blazing Saddles seems like, well, a Shakespeare play.

Please supply data, and feel free to comment on data that has been supplied by other commenters. But don’t use the comments just to speculate.

2. From Edmund Burke’s Mar. 22, 1775, speech to Parliament:

Sir, during that state of things, Parliament was not idle. They attempted to subdue the fierce spirit of the Welsh by all sorts of rigorous laws. They prohibited by statute the sending all sorts of arms into Wales, as you prohibit by proclamation (with something more of doubt on the legality) the sending arms to America. They disarmed the Welsh by statute, as you attempted, (but still with more question on the legality) to disarm New England by an instruction. They made an Act to drag offenders from Wales into England for trial, as you have done (but with more hardship) with regard to America.

Does anyone know of good sources discussing the attempted disarmament of the Welsh, and whether it was successful?

Commenters: please stay on topic.

Born in 1931, Volkmer got his start in politics helping his mother campaign in Jefferson City, Missouri, for the re-election of President Franklin Roosevelt. Having passed the bar exam even before he graduated from the University of Missouri Law School, Volkmer quickly entered public service, first as an Assistant Attorney General for the State, and then in the United States Army. He was elected Prosecuting Attorney for Marion County in 1960, and then State Representative in 1966. During his ten years in the Missouri legislature, he earned the same reputation that he would have have in Congress. An “energetic blunt-talking lawyer” and “a maverick,” in the words of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Volkmer led the way on a major reorganization of the executive branch of state government. As the Republican minority leader later recalled, “Volkmer was the brains for all of us. He understood the issue of reorganization better than anybody in the Legislature. We all looked to him for leadership, including me. I don’t like to say that, darn it, because he’s a Democrat. But it’s true.”

Volkmer also sponsored Missouri’s open meetings law, protection for the secret ballot, the modern version of the Missouri tax code, and the then-new food stamp program.

He won the first of his ten terms as a United States Representative in 1976. During 20 years in Congress, Volkmer accomplished much, but his greatest work was the McClure-Volkmer bill, formally known as the Firearms Owner’s Protection Act (FOPA).

The federal Gun Control Act of 1968 set up a comprehensive system of national gun laws; to implement the law, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms was created in the Treasury Department. (Previously, the Bureau had been a Treasury “Division.”) Republican Richard Nixon became President in 1969, and the BATF’s enforcement of the Gun Control Act was consistent with Nixon’s loathing of guns. As Nixon later told William Safire (a New York Times columnist who had once been a Nixon speechwriter), “Guns are an abomination,” and handguns should be outlawed. Under Nixon, BATF routinely and persisently engaged in extreme abuses–including entrapment (such as telling a particular gun dealer that something was legal, and then arresting him for doing it); confiscation, forfeiture, and destruction of firearms belonging to law-abiding gun owners and dealers; and a prosecution strategy aimed at technical violations rather than at genuine criminals.

The problems were exacerbated by a top-level culture of mismanagement and employee abuse at BATF, as documented by the National Association of Treasury Agents, an employee-rights organization for law enforcement officers within the Treasury Department. (Today, the organization is named the National Association of Federal Agents, since much of Treasury law enforcement was moved to the Department of Justice in 2003.) BATF management tended to reward the agents who were most aggressive against easy targets (entrapment victims, and so on), and to punish agents who tried to focus on interstate criminal gun smuggling and other activities of gun criminals.

Reform was plainly needed, and so the Firearms Owner’s Protection Act was introduced in Congress. In the House, Democrat Volkmer was the lead sponsor, while the Senate sponsor was Republican James McClure of Idaho. (McClure passed away this February.)

Initially, FOPA was bottled up. House Judiciary Chairman Peter Rodino, a zealous anti-gun advocate, refused to allow any hearings. Even after Republicans took the U.S. Senate in the 1980 elections, Majority Leader Howard Baker did not bring FOPA to the floor. But at least the FOPA sponsors could get committee hearings. One of the most important of these was before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution. The 7-member subcommittee unanimously concluded that BATF was habitually engaging in “conduct which borders on the criminal. . . [E]nforcement tactics made possible by current firearms laws are constitutionally, legally and practically reprehensible. . . . [A]pproximately 75 percent of BATF gun prosecutions were aimed at ordinary citizens who had neither criminal intent nor knowledge, but were enticed by agents into unknowing technical violations.”

The 75% figure came from Vernon Acree, a former United States Commissioner of Customs, who had been hired by the NRA to conduct a study of BATF prosecutions in Virginia and Maryland. As for BATF’s denials, the Subcommitte found:

The rebuttal presented to the Subcommittee by the Bureau was utterly unconvincing. Richard Davis, speaking on behalf of the Treasury Department, asserted vaguely that the Bureau’s priorities were aimed at prosecuting willful violators, particularly felons illegally in possession, and at confiscating only guns actually likely to be used in crime. He also asserted that the Bureau has recently made great strides toward achieving these priorities. No documentation was offered for either of these assertions. In hearings before BATF’s Appropriations Subcommittee, however, expert evidence was submitted establishing that approximately 75 percent of BATF gun prosecutions were aimed at ordinary citizens who had neither criminal intent nor knowledge, but were enticed by agents into unknowing technical violations. (In one case, in fact, the individual was being prosecuted for an act which the Bureau’s acting director had stated was perfectly lawful.) In those hearings, moreover, BATF conceded that in fact (1) only 9.8 percent of their firearm arrests were brought on felons in illicit possession charges; (2) the average value of guns seized was $116, whereas BATF had claimed that “crime guns” were priced at less than half that figure; (3) in the months following the announcement of their new “priorities”, the percentage of gun prosecutions aimed at felons had in fact fallen by a third, and the value of confiscated guns had risen. All this indicates that the Bureau’s vague claims, both of focus upon gun-using criminals and of recent reforms, are empty words.

Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on the Constitution, The Riqht to Keep and Bear Arms, 97th Congress, 2d sess., Senate Doc. 2807 (February 1982).

Finally, in 1985 a Senate vote was allowed on FOPA, and it passed 79–15. Democrats voted 30–13 in favor, with “ayes” coming from Senators such as Joe Biden, George Mitchell, John Glenn, and Al Gore.

But things looked much worse in the House. Judiciary Chairman Peter Rodino declared FOPA “dead on arrival” in House. The crime subcommittee, which had jurisdiction over FOPA, was headed by William Hughes (D-N.J.), a staunch and effective anti-gun advocate. Both the Crime Subcommittee and the Judiciary Ccommittee  had long been carefully screened to keep off almost all Democrats who supported the Second Amendment. And even if FOPA somehow made it out of Judiciary, there would only be a vote on the floor of the House if the Rules Committee allowed one, and the Rules Committee would never defy House Speaker Tip O’Neill (D-Mass.), who had a perfect anti-gun voting record.

What came next would be Harold Volkmer’s finest hour. The one way that Volkmer could free the McClure-Volkmer bill from the committees was to convince at least half the members of the House of Representatives (218 of 435 members) to sign a discharge petition. Attempts to win a discharge petition almost never succeed. At the time, a Representative’s signature would be kept secret until there were 218 signers, but once the signers were revealed, the House leadership would know who had defied their wishes. Volkmer had to convince dozens and dozens of his fellow Democrats to stick their necks out on behalf of Second Amendment rights. Volkmer also had to win over Republicans to support his bill, a skill which he had already mastered in Missouri, and which he used well in Washington.

Volkmer succeeded. By early 1986, it was clear the Volkmer was getting close to victory. Key to his success were not only his political talents, but also his deep and thorough understanding of the bill. He didn’t have to pass the bill to find out what in it; he knew the bill inside-out, and what each sentence of the bill meant for fixing particular, documented problems in gun law enforcement. As a result, he could readily rebut BATF and gun prohibition lobbyists who tried to convince wavering Representatives that FOPA was unncessary or dangerous.

Unable to stop Volkmer, Judiciary Chairman Rodino tried to head off the discharge petition by voting out an alternative bill by Rep. Hughes, which made from tepid reforms, and which also substantially expanded federal gun control. Speaker O’Neill promptly brought the Rodino-Hughes bill to the House floor for a vote. The debates took place on April 9–10, 1986. Volkmer led the charge against Rodino-Hughes. He won a motion to strike the entire bill below the enacting clause, and to substitute the language of FOPA.

While the vote on motion to strike was fairly close, the final passage of FOPA turned into a rout. FOPA passed the House 292–130; House Democrats voted 131 in favor and 115 opposed. On May 19, 1986, President Reagan’s signature made McClure-Volkmer the law of the land.

FOPA begins by declaring “The Congress finds that — (1) the rights of citizens (A) to keep and bear arms under the second amendment to the United States Constitution; (B) to security against illegal and unreasonable searches and seizures under the fourth amendment; (C) against uncompensated taking of property, double jeopardy, and assurance of due process of law under the fifth amendment; and (D) against unconstitutional exercise of authority under the ninth and tenth amendments; require additional legislation to correct existing firearms statutes and enforcement policies.” Pub.L. 99–308, sec. 1(b). 

Line by line, FOPA significantly strengthened statutory protections of the Second, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments. FOPA remains one of the most far-reaching laws ever enacted by Congress to safeguard constitutional rights.

Arizona attorney David Hardy worked closely with Rep. Volkmer, Sen. McClure, and the National Rifle Association in the drafting and passage of FOPA. Last week Hardy unveiled a new website which provides the full legislative history of FOPA. As reflected by citations in the U.S. Supreme Court and the federal circuits, Hardy is clearly the nation’s leading scholar of FOPA.

For the next 10 years, Harold Volkmer continued to play a leading role in Congress defending Second Amendment rights, and in fighting against the increasingly powerful alliance of gun prohibition groups with the Clinton White House.

Harold Volkmer’s devotion to the Bill of Rights was not a political expedient; it was the cause to which he dedicated his life. After he left Congress, the members of the National Rifle Association overwhelmingly elected him to their Board of Directors, on which he served for the next 12 years. There, he provided the NRA with sound and canny advice on legislative matters. 

While still a member of Congress, Volkmer became a member of the Board of Trustees of the NRA Civil Rights Defense Fund, and was for many years the chair of the organization. Even after his chairmanship, he continued to serve as a Trustee, and while on his deathbed last week, he was busy studying and making recommendations on case proposals that had been submitted to the Fund for consideration.

Missouri Democratic Senator Thomas Eagleton nicknamed Harold Volkmer “The Roadrunner” for how much Volkmer got done every day.  Very true, but even this understates what Volkmer accomplished. Over a lifetime devoted to good government and civil rights, Harold Volkmer fought the good fight, finished the race, and kept the faith.

One day perhaps, there will be a stone monument honoring Harold Volkmer. But the true monument to Harold Volkmer has already been standing for a quarter-century, and it is found all over the United States–in the homes of law-abiding firearms owners and in firearms stores where the Second Amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights are freely exercised, uninfringed by the abuses and usurpations which Harold Volkmer put to an end. Harold Volkmer truly was a Hero of the Constitution.

Several federal statutes, collectively known as “The Antideficiency Act,” provide additional safeguards. 31 U.S.C. secs. 1341–42 & 1511–17. The original version of the Act dates back to 1820. Act of May 1, 1820, ch. 52, §6, 3 Stat. 567, 568. The current Act makes it a crime for a federal employee to pay out money without prior Congressional authorization.

In 1990, Congress amended the Antideficiency Act:

An officer or employee of the United States Government or of the District of Columbia government may not accept voluntary services for either government or employ personal services exceeding that authorized by law except for emergencies involving the safety of human life or the protection of property. This section does not apply to a corporation getting amounts to make loans (except paid in capital amounts) without legal liability of the United States Government. As used in this section, the term “emergencies involving the safety of human life or the protection of property” does not include ongoing, regular functions of government the suspension of which would not imminently threaten the safety of human life or the protection of property.

31 U.S.C. 1432. See also 31 U.S.C. 1515(b) (“an emergency involving the safety of human life, the protection of property, or the immediate welfare of individuals.”). The exception does not mean that the federal government may pay for the services, but it does mean that the federal government may incur an obligation to pay for these services later. Attorney General Opinion, August 16, 1995 (Asst. A.G. Walter Dellinger).

According to a continuing legal education document by Kenneth Allen, (FAFL GLASS-CLE 6–1, Federal Publications LLC, available on Westlaw), the following activities may continue even in the absence of an appropriation. First two items which are not part of the 1342 exception: “National security activities,” and contracts payments from available funds. And under section 1342: “Medical care of inpatients and emergency outpatient care,” “Activities essential to ensuring continued public health and safety, including safe use of food, drugs, and hazardous materials,” “Border and coastal protection and surveillance,” “Protection of federal lands, buildings, waterways, equipment, and other government property,” “Care of prisoners and other persons in the custody of the United States,” “Law enforcement and criminal investigations,” “Emergency and disaster assistance,” “Activities essential to the preservation of the essential elements of the money and banking system of the United States, including borrowing and tax collection activities of the Treasury,” “Activities that ensure production of power and maintenance of the power distribution system,” and “Activities necessary to maintain government-owned research property.”

 I am not an expert on the Antideficiency Act, but I hope that the above provides a starting point in considering what federal activities might continue in the absence of a continuing resolution. Commenters with expertise are welcome to supply clarifications and corrections.