Public Prayer Does Not “Establish Religion” (Townhall.com) November 28, 2011
Posted by daviddavenport in Radio Commentaries.comments closed
For years, clergy have led prayers to open sessions of the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives and the Board of Commissioners in Forsyth County, North Carolina. But according to a federal court, they can’t do that in Forsyth County anymore because it violates the Establishment Clause of the Constitution’s First Amendment.
The winds of postmodernism and diversity are trying to blow God out of the public square. Cases have challenged “under God” in the pledge of allegiance, “in God we trust” on our money, and now public prayer at county commissioner meetings.
The point of the Establishment clause was to prevent the government from establishing state religions, not to remove God from the public square entirely. Indeed, the Founders said that a free republic requires a virtuous people which, in turn, requires faith.
The case has now been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where we should all hope they have a better sense of history and the Constitution.
To listen to the audio please click on the link: http://townhall.com/talkradio/dailycommentary/629229
The Palestinian End Run (Townhall.com) November 4, 2011
Posted by daviddavenport in Radio Commentaries.Tags: International Law
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The Palestinian campaign for statehood marked one more notch towards
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victory when the U.N. cultural arm, UNESCO, voted to admit them to membership. But the win came at a high price—the U.S. will end its financial support, which comprises 22 percent of the agency’s budget.
There is an established and objective test for statehood, which Palestine does not meet. But in recent years, a competing postmodern approach says, if other nations think you are a nation-state and treat you as one, then you must be one.
It is this kind of international legal nonsense that Palestine is pursuing, seeking to get its statehood card punched by every international body and nation it can. The U.S. is right to oppose this end-run by vetoing it in the Security Council, voting against it elsewhere, and declining further funding to bodies that give into it. Otherwise international law reflects little more than the mood of international leaders on a given day.
To listen to the audio please click here: http://townhall.com/talkradio/dailycommentary/628327
National Popular Vote Interview (The John Batchelor Show 77 WABC) November 1, 2011
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David discusses the National Popular Vote movement.
GUESTS: David Davenport, Hoover; Jeff Foust, Space Review; Mark Schroeder, Stratfor; Bob Zimmerman, Behind the Black…
To listen to the podcast please click here: http://www.wabcradio.com/FlashPlayer/default.asp?SPID=33447&ID=2324604
Our Growing Government (Townhall.com) October 25, 2011
Posted by daviddavenport in Radio Commentaries.Tags: Education Policy
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Even as we live through the biggest recession since the Great Depression, we
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are also witnesses to the most expansive exercise of federal power since the New Deal.
Following massive federal intervention in the economy, and the unprecedented requirement that everyone buy health insurance, the Obama Administration continues its takeover of K-12 education in the face of Constitutional and legal constraints.
The latest is the Department of Education’s decision to issue waivers to states on some of the toughest “No Child Left Behind” requirements, but only if the states present plans the feds like for future reforms.
It’s one more step down the road of federalizing K-12 education, the one thing that almost anyone would say should be a state and local, not a federal, matter.
This growth of federal power is breathtaking and dangerous and needs to be stopped.
To hear the audio commentary, please click on this link: http://ht.salemweb.net/townhall/audio/mp3/93d037cd-aa59-4923-8299-49db63a93d9a.mp3
Vote of Confidence (Hoover Digest, 2011 No. 4) October 12, 2011
Posted by daviddavenport in Newspaper Columns/Essays.Tags: Presidential Elections
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Another presidential season, another attempted end run around the Electoral College. Let’s be careful. Even now, it has its uses.
While candidates are busy raising money and positioning themselves for the first primaries, one early maneuver in the 2012 presidential campaign is taking place in state legislatures: consideration of the National Popular Vote Bill. California recently became the eighth state to enact this legislation, which would form an interstate compact requiring member states to cast their electoral votes for the winner of the national popular vote, effectively eliminating the Electoral College without the transparency and burden of amending the U.S. Constitution.
But those who are frustrated by the Electoral College—especially Democrats who feel Al Gore unfairly lost the presidency in 2000—overlook the real benefits it provides, as well as its importance to our federalist system. State legislatures should count the cost very carefully before overthrowing the Electoral College in favor of a national popular vote.
For starters, a single national popular vote would alter the way presidential campaigns are conducted. Under the Constitution, there are really fifty-one separate state elections (plus the District of Columbia), and candidates compete aggressively in any state where they might win electoral votes. In the last week or two of a presidential campaign, candidates are likely to cross the country, seeking to win electoral votes in ten to fifteen key battleground states. This keeps the campaign alive in virtually every geographic region and in contested states both large and small. Candidates are forced to address regional issues and local voters as they seek to win the necessary electoral margin.
By contrast, a campaign that is based solely on the national popular vote would be conducted very differently. Candidates would concentrate their efforts in large metropolitan areas, where voters are highly concentrated, and the premium on impersonal media campaigning, whether through older media such as television or new media such as Facebook and Twitter, would greatly increase. Can one really argue that spending more money to capture digital media followers, and conducting more televised events in New York or Los Angeles, creates a better campaign for voters?
The problem of recounts, alone, should give a state legislator pause about voting for the National Popular Vote Bill. Votes must be counted and reported at some stage, and doing so at the state level means the extent of any recount is thereby limited. In 2000, for example, the Florida recount was difficult and lengthy, but nevertheless contained to one state. Imagine the likelihood, then, of a nationwide recount if state electoral votes were essentially irrelevant, as they would be under the National Popular Vote legislation. A national recount would certainly take many months to complete, creating uncertainty about identifying and seating a new president on a timely basis. Given the litigious nature of recent elections, such a prospect is hardly remote.
Ironically, one of the arguments in favor of the National Popular Vote Bill is that it would make every vote count and, in that sense, be fairer than the present system. But in the end, the new approach essentially trades one kind of fairness for another. Imagine, for example, a Virginia voter who is a Democrat and her state is carried by the candidate of her party. But if the Republican candidate wins the national popular vote, the elector in her state will actually cast “her” vote in favor of the Republican. What is fair, or even representative, about that? Such are the vagaries of tinkering with the two-hundred-year-old electoral system.
In a larger sense, this end run around the Electoral College would also kick down an important pillar of our system of federalism. The U.S. Constitution does not establish a pure democracy, but rather a federal republic. The genius of a republic is that while not every element is purely democratic, several checks and balances, as well as intentional balances of power, work together to make certain that the “cool deliberate sense of the community” is carried out, as it says in Federalist No. 63. Roles are assigned to both the people and the states. For example, the U.S. House of Representatives is based upon population and is referred to as “the people’s House,” but the U.S. Senate is based upon state representation. Similarly, in electing a president, there is a role for the people (the popular vote) and a role for states (the electoral vote). These checks and balances of constitutional federalism should not be easily bargained away by means of an interstate compact.
Indeed, those who feel the present system of voting is unfair have two constitutionally proper remedies, both of which are superior to the end run of the National Popular Vote Bill. First, they can amend the Constitution and eliminate the electoral system in a straightforward and transparent way. Of course, this would require an affirmative vote of two-thirds of each house of Congress and approval by three-fourths of the state legislatures, an intentionally difficult bar to reach.
A second, more readily available alternative is to encourage states to move away from their winner-takes-all method of allocating electoral votes. Under the Constitution, states are free to decide how to allocate their electoral votes, according to their popular vote. All but two states allow the winner of their popular vote to receive all the state’s electoral votes; the remaining two, Maine and Nebraska, allocate electoral votes according to the winner of the popular vote in each congressional district. This would address a primary concern of some who seek reform by making presidential elections more competitive in states where one party dominates electoral politics. For example, in California, a state rich in electoral votes but dominated by one party, allocating electoral votes by congressional district would create competition in many regions of the state and attract candidates to come more frequently and campaign. If electoral reform is needed, this would be preferable from almost any point of view.
The National Popular Vote Bill is gaining some bipartisan momentum by concentrating on the superficial fairness of a popular vote and by ignoring the practical advantages of the Electoral College and the deep and longstanding values of the federalist system. When states having enough electoral votes to win an election (270) have signed, the compact goes into effect. The bill raises sufficient constitutional questions that it will doubtless be challenged if and when it becomes effective. In the meantime, one can only hope that enough state governors and legislators will see through the superficial appeal of the bill and, as Benjamin Franklin urged, keep the republic.
To link to the article in the Hoover Digest, 2011 No. 4 please click here: http://www.hoover.org/publications/hoover-digest/article/95536
No Room for a Christian Worldview? (Townhall.com) October 10, 2011
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Perhaps you missed the story of the honors student in Texas who was
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suspended for telling a friend in German class that he was a Christian and believed homosexuality was wrong. Apparently it’s a topic the teacher liked to bring up and the student’s comment about his beliefs was—according to the teacher—not acceptable.
The winds of postmodernism and multiculturalism are blowing over traditional values in many places, and many fail to understand that, in the end, Christian values still have a valid place at the table. The First Amendment promises freedom of religion, not freedom from it.
When lawyers became involved, the honors student from Texas was restored to school and his alleged wrongdoing erased. But what a shame we have teachers and administrators who could get something so wrong in the first place. In adding new rights for people, it’s neither necessary nor proper to take rights from others, including Christians.
To listen to the audio please click here: http://townhall.com/talkradio/dailycommentary/624837
Prosecuting Israelis? (Townhall.com) September 30, 2011
Posted by daviddavenport in Radio Commentaries.Tags: International Law
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Many close observers ofPalestine’s bid for statehood at the U.N. believe their primary motive is to join the International Criminal Court and seek charges againstIsraelfor war crimes inGaza. But it’s not at all clear that will happen.
The Palestinian Authority has worked for over two years to get the ICC to bring charges and the Prosecutor rightly seems reluctant to wade into those political waters. Even at the U.N., the Secretary General has declined to comment on whether “observer state” status would permitPalestineto join the ICC, and some believe he will try to avoid the issue as long as possible.
The fact is that U.N. bureaucrats and international courts should not decide the complex diplomatic, political and military questions that characterize theIsraelandPalestineconflict. These should be, and whatever the U.N. decides about statehood, will ultimately have to be decided through diplomatic negotiations.
To listen to the audio please click here: http://townhall.com/talkradio/dailycommentary/622190
Governor could improve voters’ trust in government w/Lenny Mendonca (San Francisco Chronicle) September 28, 2011
Posted by daviddavenport in Newspaper Columns/Essays.comments closed
Gov. Jerry Brown says he has 600 bills on his desk, but many he will not sign because “there’s not 600 problems that we need those solutions for.” We suggest he locate and sign two bills, SB14 and SB15, that help solve two of his biggest problems: the annual budget mess and the lack of public trust in Sacramento’s leadership, which voters say are closely linked.
Performance-based budgeting, the focus of SB14, has been recommended in California by independent commissions for years. It requires the state to identify program objectives when it spends money, as well as how much meeting those objectives should cost, and requires analysis of whether these goals are met. This approach is not fancy or complicated – in fact, it’s Budgeting 101 in the private sector, and 25 states already use it in some form.
SB15 focuses on another big problem by requiring multiyear planning for budget revenues and expenses. The state needs tools to get a handle on its damaging boom-or-bust tax and spending cycles, and this is a good start. Again, you’d be hard-pressed to find major entities, public or private, that don’t do this, and it is high time it be required in California.
In one sense, these bills represent basic blocking and tackling, fiscal reforms that the state sorely needs. But at a broader level, signing them sends a message to frustrated Californians that Sacramento will get its fiscal house in order and begin to rebuild trust with the people. We co-chaired California’s first-ever statewide deliberative poll this summer, in which a scientifically selected, random sample of 412 Californians was given an in-depth opportunity to deliberate on the state’s problems and potential solutions. It wasn’t a pretty picture on the problem side:
– More than 2 out of 3 California voters question whether the Legislature can “get important things done.”
– Nine out of 10 voters don’t trust the Legislature to make difficult budgeting decisions without showing exactly how major new programs or tax cuts will be paid for.
– Voters believe 39 cents of every new tax $1 will be wasted.
Still, these weekend deliberators said, they have faith that things can be changed and improved, calling for precisely the kind of measures now on the governor’s desk, and then some:
– 83 percent said each annual budget should be accompanied by a long-term plan for revenue and expenses (as called for in SB15).
– 88 percent would require legislators to say how they will pay for new programs or tax cuts of $25 million or more.
– 84 percent would limit one-time revenue “spikes” to one-time expenditures, such as paying down debt or filling the state rainy-day fund.
In effect, Californians were saying to their Legislature: We want to trust but verify good fiscal practices. And, by the way, with greater transparency and controls of these kinds, the people said they were optimistic that many of the state’s problems could begin to be solved.
Perhaps California has embarked on a season of reform – beginning with redistricting and open primaries on the political side, and now with an opportunity to enact performance-based budgeting and long-term financial forecasting on the fiscal side. These small steps could be the tugboats that move our ship of state in a new direction, and begin restoring people’s trust and confidence in California governance.
David Davenport, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Lenny Mendonca, a director of McKinsey and Company, co-chaired the bipartisan California Deliberative Poll project (www.nextca.org).
This article appeared on page A – 10 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Gov. Jerry Brown has bills to sign but does he have the right bills? Hector Amezcua / AP
A Central Part of the Palestinian Identity (‘The Frank Gaffney Show’ Secure Freedom Radio) September 27, 2011
Posted by daviddavenport in Radio Interview Podcasts.Tags: International Law
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With JAMES ROCHE, ANDY MCCARTHY, DAVID DAVENPORT
Will the reality of a Russian government run by the admittedly authoritarian Vladimir Putin translate into a hurdle for the Obama administration? Frank opens today’s Secure Freedom radio with his thoughts on the subject. When Putin officially becomes President again, this will be the first time in Moscow since 2000 that Russia will acknowledge that there is no power center besides this one man. The Obama administration, as displayed in the past, is completely helpless in stopping this authoritarian rule from continuing. The current administration’s policy towards the Russian government has been based on appeasement of its leaders. Thus, Russian strategic forces are being upgraded with new weapons, as the United States must downgrade its own. By passing the New START treaty, the Obama administration has stopped any production for new nuclear technology and has only forced the US to cut up our long-range nuclear weapons. Why are we allowing such an atrocity to occur while the Russians are able to keep their short-range missiles?
Contributing Editor for National Review Online and weekly commentator on Secure Freedom Radio, Andy McCarthy discusses his desire and America’s need for a competent President during these trying times. In the words of Ambassador John Bolton, President Obama is the “First Post-American President,” who is rejecting American exceptionalism and innovation. McCarthy fears what Obama will do in the one and a half years that he has at the helm of American leadership. Now, in order to gain more financial backing for his re-election campaign, he is catering his policies more towards the Jewish minority. Hurting the situation, the President maintains an ignorant view of foreign policy in regards to Palestine. His administration believes that most Palestinians are in favor of an Israeli state, whereas data suggests that over 90% of Palestinians in their early teens through early 30s deny that Israel has a right to exist. How can our leaders expect the numbers to be any different when it is as central to the Palestinian identity that Israel needs to be destroyed as the First Amendment is to Americans?
Research Fellow and Counselor to the Director at the Hoover Institution, David Davenport gives us a legal lesson on the qualifications for statehood. Currently in international law, there is no clearly defined test to determine whether a territory is or is not a state. There is also no clear body that has the power to recognize a nation as such. However, there are four traditional criteria that determine the legitimacy of a state. The two most important of these criteria are that the state must have a clearly defined territory and have control over this territory. Palestine does not fulfill either of these requirements; therefore, it cannot be considered for statehood. Davenport thinks that the reason they are asking for statehood now is due to their frustration with the Two-State Agreement failing between the cracks.
To Listen to the Podcast please click: http://www.securefreedomradio.org/2011/09/27/a-central-part-of-the-palestinian-identity/
Obama Turns to Class Warfare (Townhall.com) December 19, 2011
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President Obama traveled to Kansas recently to tell Americans that inequality is “the defining issue of our time.” So with a nod to “occupy” protestors, Obama played the class card, calling for tax increases on the wealthy to fund programs for the middle class.
At one level, the President is framing the big issue of the election in his favor—that our economic problem is not government spending and deficits, but income inequality. It may not be the defining issue of our time, but he’d like it to be for his reelection.
He’s also coming down on the wrong side of the long debate in America between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in the 1800s, the French believe in equality and security whereas Americans believe in freedom.
The President says the Republican economic approach is old school, but there’s nothing older or more inappropriate than Obama’s European style socialism and class warfare.
To hear the audio please click here: http://townhall.com/talkradio/dailycommentary/630301