David Boaz

Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler gives a maximum Four Pinocchios to the claim that Hillary Clinton was fired during the Watergate inquiry, which has gotten a lot of circulation on social media. He makes a detailed case that there is no evidence for such a firing. However, along the way he does note some unflattering aspects of her tenure there:

In neither of his books does Zeifman say he fired Clinton. But in 2008, a reporter named Dan Calabrese wrote an article that claimed that “when the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation.” The article quoted Zeifman as saying: “She was a liar. She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.”…

In 1999, nine years before the Calabrese interview, Zeifman told the Scripps-Howard news agency: “If I had the power to fire her, I would have fired her.” In a 2008 interview on “The Neal Boortz Show,” Zeifman was asked directly whether he fired her. His answer: “Well, let me put it this way. I terminated her, along with some other staff members who were — we no longer needed, and advised her that I would not — could not recommend her for any further positions.”

So it’s pretty clear that Jerry Zeifman, chief counsel of the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate inquiry, had a low opinion of the young Yale Law graduate Hillary Rodham. But because she reported to the chief counsel of the impeachment inquiry, who was hired separately by the committee and did not report to Zeifman, Zeifman had no authority over her. He simply didn’t hire her for the permanent committee staff after the impeachment inquiry ended.

Kessler also notes that Clinton failed the D.C. bar exam in that period. She never retook the exam (passing the Arkansas exam instead) and concealed her failure even from her closest friends until her autobiography in 2003.

And then there’s this:

Zeifman’s specific beef with Clinton is rather obscure. It mostly concerns his dislike of a brief that she wrote under Doar’s direction to advance a position advocated by Rodino — which would have denied Nixon the right to counsel as the committee investigated whether to recommend impeachment. 

That brief may get some attention during the next few years, should any members of the Clinton administration become the subject of an impeachment inquiry. Also in Sunday’s Post, George Will cites James Madison’s view that the power to impeach is “indispensable” to control of executive abuse of power. 

Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler gives a maximum Four Pinocchios to the claim that Hillary Clinton was fired during the Watergate inquiry, which has gotten a lot of circulation on social media. He makes a detailed case that there is no evidence for such a firing. However, along the way he does note some unflattering aspects of her tenure there:

In neither of his books does Zeifman say he fired Clinton. But in 2008, a reporter named Dan Calabrese wrote an article that claimed that “when the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation.” The article quoted Zeifman as saying: “She was a liar. She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.”…

In 1999, nine years before the Calabrese interview, Zeifman told the Scripps-Howard news agency: “If I had the power to fire her, I would have fired her.” In a 2008 interview on “The Neal Boortz Show,” Zeifman was asked directly whether he fired her. His answer: “Well, let me put it this way. I terminated her, along with some other staff members who were — we no longer needed, and advised her that I would not — could not recommend her for any further positions.”

So it’s pretty clear that Jerry Zeifman, chief counsel of the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate inquiry, had a low opinion of the young Yale Law graduate Hillary Rodham. But because she reported to the chief counsel of the impeachment inquiry, who was hired separately by the committee and did not report to Zeifman, Zeifman had no authority over her. He simply didn’t hire her for the permanent committee staff after the impeachment inquiry ended.

Kessler also notes that Clinton failed the D.C. bar exam in that period. She never retook the exam (passing the Arkansas exam instead) and concealed her failure even from her closest friends until her autobiography in 2003.

And then there’s this:

Zeifman’s specific beef with Clinton is rather obscure. It mostly concerns his dislike of a brief that she wrote under Doar’s direction to advance a position advocated by Rodino — which would have denied Nixon the right to counsel as the committee investigated whether to recommend impeachment. 

That brief may get some attention during the next few years, should any members of the Clinton administration become the subject of an impeachment inquiry. Also in Sunday’s Post, George Will cites James Madison’s view that the power to impeach is “indispensable” to control of executive abuse of power. 

Dilma Rousseff was never as popular as the president who anointed her as his successor. Despite her intelligence and diligence in numerous official posts, she lacked his warm personality and flair for campaigning. But she ran a very professional presidential campaign, with lots of celebrity supporters, and the vigorous support of her predecessor, and she won the election and became Brazil’s first female president. In office she pursued policies of easy money, subsidized energy, and infrastructure construction, which initially boosted her popularity. As is so often the case, though, those populist programs eventually brought inflation and a slide into economic contraction. Simultaneously, allegations of corruption and cronyism hurt her reputation. Impeachment proceedings were brought against her, focused on her mismanagement of the federal budget, particularly employing budgetary tricks to conceal yawning deficits. “Experts say Ms. Rousseff’s administration effectively borrowed some $11 billion from state banks, an amount equal to almost 1 percent of the economy, to fund popular social programs that have been a hallmark of the Workers Party’s 13 years in power.” Some said that such fiscal mismanagement and dishonesty were common in presidential administrations and should not result in impeachment. But the Senate convicted her and removed her from office, making her bland vice president the new president.

Thank goodness nothing like that could happen in our own country.

Dilma Rousseff was never as popular as the president who anointed her as his successor. Despite her intelligence and diligence in numerous official posts, she lacked his warm personality and flair for campaigning. But she ran a very professional presidential campaign, with lots of celebrity supporters, and the vigorous support of her predecessor, and she won the election and became Brazil’s first female president. In office she pursued policies of easy money, subsidized energy, and infrastructure construction, which initially boosted her popularity. As is so often the case, though, those populist programs eventually brought inflation and a slide into economic contraction. Simultaneously, allegations of corruption and cronyism hurt her reputation. Impeachment proceedings were brought against her, focused on her mismanagement of the federal budget, particularly employing budgetary tricks to conceal yawning deficits. ”Experts say Ms. Rousseff’s administration effectively borrowed some $11 billion from state banks, an amount equal to almost 1 percent of the economy, to fund popular social programs that have been a hallmark of the Workers Party’s 13 years in power.” Some said that such fiscal mismanagement and dishonesty were common in presidential administrations and should not result in impeachment. But the Senate convicted her and removed her from office, making her bland vice president the new president.

Thank goodness nothing like that could happen in our own country.

A new study says that New Hampshire is the freest state in the country, followed by Alaska, Oklahoma, Indiana, and South Dakota.

New York is the least free state by a large margin, followed by California, Hawaii, New Jersey, and Maryland.

For some readers, the immediate reaction will be that conservative states get the highest ratings and liberal states the lowest. That’s not quite true: New Hampshire and Alaska are generally regarded as libertarian-leaning more than conservative, and very conservative states such as Alabama and Mississippi score pretty far down.

It’s not that the study focuses just on economic freedom, as some analyses do. The “Freedom in the 50 States” report by political scientists William Ruger and Jason Sorens, just published by the Cato Institute, where I work, covers both economic and personal freedom, from taxes and regulation to imprisonment rates, gay marriage, and marijuana.

Maybe if the Supreme Court took economic liberties as seriously as personal freedom, the big Eastern and Western states would once again be the wide-open, fast-growing places they were when they got big and prosperous in the first place.

Those of us in cosmopolitan coastal states may still wonder if places like Oklahoma and Indiana are where we’d find the personal and economic freedom we crave.

Here’s one explanation: The federal courts prevent conservative states from taking away a lot of the freedoms they’d like to, while they’re much more tolerant of intrusions on freedom found in liberal states.

Take Oklahoma, for instance. Its personal freedom score improved in this edition of the report because in 2014 a federal judge struck down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage. In the next edition, lots of conservative states will have better scores because of the 2015 Supreme Court decision overturning all such state laws.

Marriage bans aren’t the only thing that conservative states are prevented from doing. Another federal court found that Oklahoma’s ban on considering sharia law in judicial decisions was religious discrimination in violation of the First Amendment. In 2008 the Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s law prescribing the death penalty for the rape of a child. Oklahoma, Texas, South Carolina, Georgia, and Montana also had such laws. Fourteen states, mostly in the South and once again including Oklahoma, had laws banning homosexual acts until the Supreme Court struck them down in 2003.

Go back another generation, and we recall the Court striking down laws requiring school segregation and banning interracial marriage.

In all these cases, federal courts, interpreting the U.S. Constitution, have prevented conservative states from denying their citizens’ individual rights. And thus those states get higher scores on the “Freedom in the 50 States” ranking.

Courts have been less likely to find that intrusions on freedom by liberal states violate the Constitution. States are generally free to set their own tax and regulatory policies. In 2005 the Supreme Court notoriously declined to restrict a local government’s power to take property through eminent domain.

In two decisions, in 2008 and 2010, the Court did limit a state’s ability to impose restrictive gun control laws. The 2010 decision, striking down a law in Chicago, improved Illinois’s ranking on personal freedom. More generally, the Second Amendment and the Court’s insistence on protecting the individual right to bear arms probably prevent some liberal Democratic states from enacting gun bans.

James Madison, the principal author of the Constitution, said that “independent tribunals of justice will consider themselves in a peculiar manner the guardians of those rights; they will be an impenetrable bulwark against every assumption of power in the legislative or executive.” Judges don’t get it right in every case, but over the years they have protected Americans’ rights and freedoms from lots of intrusions by legislatures and executives.

So take heart, my coastal cosmopolitan friends. Maybe the flyover states aren’t really more libertarian in spirit than the East and West coasts. Maybe they’ve just had their own bad ideas slapped down by the Supreme Court more often. And who knows, maybe if the Supreme Court took economic liberties as seriously as personal freedom, the big Eastern and Western states would once again be the wide-open, fast-growing places they were when they got big and prosperous in the first place.

A new study says that New Hampshire is the freest state in the country, followed by Alaska, Oklahoma, Indiana, and South Dakota.

New York is the least free state by a large margin, followed by California, Hawaii, New Jersey, and Maryland.

For some readers, the immediate reaction will be that conservative states get the highest ratings and liberal states the lowest. That’s not quite true: New Hampshire and Alaska are generally regarded as libertarian-leaning more than conservative, and very conservative states such as Alabama and Mississippi score pretty far down.

It’s not that the study focuses just on economic freedom, as some analyses do. The “Freedom in the 50 States” report by political scientists William Ruger and Jason Sorens, just published by the Cato Institute, where I work, covers both economic and personal freedom, from taxes and regulation to imprisonment rates, gay marriage, and marijuana.

Maybe if the Supreme Court took economic liberties as seriously as personal freedom, the big Eastern and Western states would once again be the wide-open, fast-growing places they were when they got big and prosperous in the first place.

Those of us in cosmopolitan coastal states may still wonder if places like Oklahoma and Indiana are where we’d find the personal and economic freedom we crave.

Here’s one explanation: The federal courts prevent conservative states from taking away a lot of the freedoms they’d like to, while they’re much more tolerant of intrusions on freedom found in liberal states.

Take Oklahoma, for instance. Its personal freedom score improved in this edition of the report because in 2014 a federal judge struck down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage. In the next edition, lots of conservative states will have better scores because of the 2015 Supreme Court decision overturning all such state laws.

Marriage bans aren’t the only thing that conservative states are prevented from doing. Another federal court found that Oklahoma’s ban on considering sharia law in judicial decisions was religious discrimination in violation of the First Amendment. In 2008 the Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s law prescribing the death penalty for the rape of a child. Oklahoma, Texas, South Carolina, Georgia, and Montana also had such laws. Fourteen states, mostly in the South and once again including Oklahoma, had laws banning homosexual acts until the Supreme Court struck them down in 2003.

Go back another generation, and we recall the Court striking down laws requiring school segregation and banning interracial marriage.

In all these cases, federal courts, interpreting the U.S. Constitution, have prevented conservative states from denying their citizens’ individual rights. And thus those states get higher scores on the “Freedom in the 50 States” ranking.

Courts have been less likely to find that intrusions on freedom by liberal states violate the Constitution. States are generally free to set their own tax and regulatory policies. In 2005 the Supreme Court notoriously declined to restrict a local government’s power to take property through eminent domain.

In two decisions, in 2008 and 2010, the Court did limit a state’s ability to impose restrictive gun control laws. The 2010 decision, striking down a law in Chicago, improved Illinois’s ranking on personal freedom. More generally, the Second Amendment and the Court’s insistence on protecting the individual right to bear arms probably prevent some liberal Democratic states from enacting gun bans.

James Madison, the principal author of the Constitution, said that “independent tribunals of justice will consider themselves in a peculiar manner the guardians of those rights; they will be an impenetrable bulwark against every assumption of power in the legislative or executive.” Judges don’t get it right in every case, but over the years they have protected Americans’ rights and freedoms from lots of intrusions by legislatures and executives.

So take heart, my coastal cosmopolitan friends. Maybe the flyover states aren’t really more libertarian in spirit than the East and West coasts. Maybe they’ve just had their own bad ideas slapped down by the Supreme Court more often. And who knows, maybe if the Supreme Court took economic liberties as seriously as personal freedom, the big Eastern and Western states would once again be the wide-open, fast-growing places they were when they got big and prosperous in the first place.