The Right Stuff: What is money really?

By Jim McCully: Published July 11, 2022

Money is a medium of exchange, something of value for something of value. Historically, money has usually been gold or silver. Regardless, whatever was used people decided it had value in and of itself because they believed it did. In other words, intrinsic. Money took various forms over time. Usually, shiny attractive coins which evolved to attractive printed notes representing a stated value redeemable in precious metals deemed to have intrinsic value. Regardless of what was used, the system was well understood and universally accepted. Paper money was recognized as “real” too because it was backed by gold and/or silver.[..Read More]

The Right Stuff: Supreme Court decision does not ban abortions

By Roger Oberbeck:Published July 4, 2022: Daily Republic

The Supreme Court of the United States’ ruling on Roe v Wade and Casey does not ban abortions. It returns the decision about abortions to the voting citizens of each state via their elected representatives.

The important part of the SCOTUS ruling is as follows: “We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely – the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.” That clause has been held to guarantee some rights that are not mentioned in the Constitution, but any such right must be “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition and implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.” The right to abortion does not fall in this category. Indeed, when the 14th Amendment was adopted, three quarters of the states made abortion a crime at all stages of pregnancy. The abortion right is also critically different from any other rights that the courts held fall within the 1th Amendment’s protection of liberty. Roe’s defenders characterize the abortion right as similar to the rights recognized in past decisions involving matters such as intimate sexual relations, contraception and marriage. However, abortion is fundamentally different, as both Roe and Casey acknowledge, because it destroys what it called “fetal life” and what the law now describes as “unborn human being.”[...read more]

The Right Stuff: 25th Amendment a solution for lost leadership

By Earl Heal: published June 27, 2022

The Right Stuff column of June 20 examined actions of the Biden administration that violated constitutional law.

Procedure to remove the president from office requires House members, acting as a grand jury, to investigate a president’s actions to determine if causes for impeachment exist. If affirmative, the House will issue a Cause for Impeachment (indictment) to the Senate, which then is required to conduct a trial to determine conviction. Conviction requires a two-thirds vote.

An alternative to impeachment is provided by the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1967.

The original Constitution did not address various circumstances that would require filling a presidential vacancy. Before 1967, eight vice presidents replaced presidents who died in office. Two other cases illustrated the deficiency of guidance in place. President Woodrow Wilson was stricken by a stroke in October 1919 that left him paralyzed with limited speech. Wilson’s condition was hidden from the public, White House staff and Congress. Historian Dr. Howard Markel and others identified that Mrs. Wilson worked secretly as the nation’s chief executive officer, America’s first women president, through March 2021. After Lyndon B. Johnson replaced assassinated President John F. Kennedy, the nation had no vice president for 16 months until the next election’s inauguration.[.read more...]