At the top of the
Just Third Way news this week is Dr. Norman Kurland’s interview with Dr. Deal
Hudson on the “Church and Culture” radio show on the Ave Maria Radio Network,
an affiliate of EWTN. Even if you’re not
Catholic or other Christian you will find the interview both entertaining and
instructive. In other news, we take a “legal
layman’s” view of President Trump’s tariff proposal:
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| Dr. Deal Hudson |
• Norman Kurland “Church and
Culture” Radio Interview. The Ave Maria Radio Network, an
affiliate of EWTN, will broadcast a prerecorded interview with CESJ’s president,
Norman G. Kurland, on the “Church and Culture” show with your host Dr. Deal
Hudson. Norm’s subject is the need for fundamental financial reform. The interview will air Saturday, March 10,
2018 at 4:00 pm EST (the second hour of the show, which starts at 3:00 pm) and
Sunday, March 11, 2018 at 8:00 am EDST in the U.S. (note the change from “EST”
to “EDST” due to the shift to “Daylight Saving Time”). To locate a
station that carries the show in your area in the United States, follow this link. If
you miss the show or can’t get it in your area, you can listen to it later on
the “Church and Culture” link.
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| Charles I Stuart, convicted of usurping parliament's power. |
• Trump’s Tariff. It used to
be said that everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything
about it. That also seems to be the case
with President Trump’s tariff proposals, which people seem to be taking as a fait accompli. There is a serious constitutional issue
involved here, however. The president —
the head of the executive branch of the government — has no power to tax. As it states in Article 1, Section 7, “All
Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives.” Now, if Article 1, Section 7 omitted the word
“all,” a case could be made that the executive has the power to impose a tariff
. . . a very weak case, admittedly, but still a case. The word “all,” however, necessarily precludes
any such act on the part of the executive.
Article 1, Section 8 is actually redundant to a certain extent, stating
under the enumerated powers that “The Congress shall have Power To lay and
collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises.”
The clear sense is that only
Congress shall have these powers. A “duty”
is “a tax or impost due to the government upon the importation or exportation
of goods.” A “tariff”? “[A] list or
schedule of articles on which a duty is imposed.” The only thing that makes sense in this
situation is that Congress is giving Mr. Trump enough rope to hang himself by allowing
him to make the attempt to usurp the powers of Congress, an unconstitutional
act, which would be grounds for impeachment.
Mr. Trump’s only defense in that case is that his advisors failed to
warn him (if that is in fact the case), which is not really a defense: Ignorancia iuris non excusat, “Ignorance
of the law is no excuse.” In that,
President Trump could actually count himself fortunate. When Charles I Stuart tried to circumvent the
power of the British parliament in 1649, they cut off his head for raising
money and spending it without the consent of parliament.
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| Malta, 1565, defense of Castle St. Elmo. |
• Ten Battles Every Catholic Should Know. Going solely by the rankings on Amazon, Ten Battles Every Catholic Should Know
has been doing remarkably well for a “first” book (at least from a major publisher). If you have not already obtained your copy,
do so and be sure to post a review.
• Shop online and support CESJ’s work! Did you know that by making
your purchases through the Amazon Smile
program, Amazon will make a contribution to CESJ? Here’s how: First, go to https://smile.amazon.com/. Next, sign in to your Amazon account. (If you don’t have an account with Amazon,
you can create one by clicking on the tiny little link below the “Sign in using
our secure server” button.) Once you
have signed into your account, you need to select CESJ as your charity — and
you have to be careful to do it exactly this way: in the
space provided for “Or select your own charitable organization” type “Center for Economic and Social Justice
Arlington.” If you type anything
else, you will either get no results or more than you want to sift through. Once you’ve typed (or copied and pasted) “Center for Economic and Social Justice
Arlington” into the space provided, hit “Select” — and you will be taken to
the Amazon shopping site, all ready to go.
• Blog Readership. We have had visitors from 37 different countries
and 48 states and provinces in the United States and Canada to this blog over
the past week. Most visitors are from the United States, South Africa, India,
the United Kingdom, and Peru. The most
popular postings this past week in descending order were, “News from the
Network, Vol. 11, No. 9,” “The Purpose of Production,” “Thomas Hobbes on
Private Property,” “Philosophies at War, V: The New Christianity,” and “On
Facing Facts, III: ‘It’s Not Our Way.”
Those are the happenings for this
week, at least those that we know about.
If you have an accomplishment that you think should be listed, send us a
note about it at mgreaney [at] cesj [dot] org, and we’ll see that it gets into
the next “issue.” If you have a short
(250-400 word) comment on a specific posting, please enter your comments in the
blog — do not send them to us to post for you.
All comments are moderated, so we’ll see it before it goes up.
#30#
