Breitbart reporter Milo Yiannopoulos’ sold-out speech had to be canceled when 150 masked men went on a rampage blocking traffic, vandalizing the University, attacking police, and assaulting individuals who came to hear the speech.
Amending the New York State Constitution is no easy task. It could be achieved by calling a state constitutional convention, but that would expose other clauses of the constitution to possible amendment. A more narrowly focused amendment dealing solely with abortion could be accomplished if two successively elected legislatures passed an identical amendment bill that would then be referred to the voters. The earliest this could all be completed is 2019.
Not only might the time-consuming amendment process be too late to head off any US Supreme Court action on the issue, it night be futile. The 1973 Roe v. Wade decision overrode numerous state laws on the ground that the US Constitution’s right to privacy took precedence over any state’s laws. A Court decision reversing Roe v. Wade could find ample justification within the US Constitution to override state laws or constitutions. For example, the victims of the abortion procedure are subjected to cruel punishment (death) without being found guilty of a crime. This would appear to violate both the Fifth and Eighth Amendments.
The complaint by Kim Atkins, board chair of Planned Parenthood Empire State Acts, “that such an action by the Supreme Court would violate states’ rights” bears an ironic similarity to arguments made by Sen. John Calhoun (D-SC) on behalf of the South’s “peculiar institution” of slavery in 1838 and Sen. William Fulbright (D-Ark) on behalf of segregation in 1964.
A new study—Talking to Foreign Fighters: Insights into the Motivations for Hijrah to Syria and Iraq by University of Waterloo sociologist Lorne L. Dawson, and George Washington University Program on Extremism Fellow Amaranth Amarasingam—found that religion played the biggest role in spurring Muslims to join the jihad against unbelievers.
Betsy DeVos, Trump’s nominee to head the US Depart6ment of Education, was assailed in Senate committee hearings for her past association with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). FIRE’s positions in opposition to school suppression of freedom of speech and in support of transparent due process procedures for school disciplinary actions drew harsh opposition from Sen. Bob Casey (D-Penn).
The year-to-year rate of growth in personal income in the United States was lower during President Obama’s recently completed two terms than at any other period recorded in this country’s history. In the last year of the Bush Administration the growth rate was 4.7%. In the last year of the Obama Administration the rate fell to 3.4%. This contrasted especially unfavorably to the average 9.5% annual increases during the Reagan years.
Of course, the actual level of income over the eight Reagan years rose by more than 100%. The actual level of income over the Obama years rose by a more modest 37%. Perhaps the divergent economic policies of low tax rates and less regulation of Reagan’s Administration compared to the higher tax rates and more regulation of the Obama Administration played a role.