RANCHO SANTA FE, CA., March 3, 2011 – In the category of Certifiable Personalities, today’s Final Jeopardy answer is “Muammar al-Gaddafi, Charlie Sheen and many of our politicians have this in common” … and remember to respond in the form of a question. Bet it all! It wouldn’t take a Watson to get this one right. Alex … what is “Clinical Narcissism?” Correct! You’re our new Jeopardy Champion! The judges would have accepted “lunacy” as well. That seems to be the state of “leaders” and celebrities these days.
There’s no truth to the rumor that CBS and Libya are negotiating a trade: Charlie bringing his “genius” to Libya in return for Gaddafi reprising the lead role in Two and a Half Men. Libya likes the deal because Sheen has promised not to bomb its citizens … at least for a little while … and CBS likes the deal because it wants a more stable, less egotistical star.
Unfortunately, we often don’t have as many attractive options when it comes to our politicians. Besides, it’s also getting harder to locate them. They don’t even vote “present” at the State level anymore.
We’re nearing a time when we may need to cast our votes for officials in neighboring States. For example, Wisconsin and Indiana residents might be required to vote for officials in Illinois … where their politicians end up anyway.
If reducing our National Debt is really a big deal, let’s start by eliminating the Supreme Court. The President can just declare what’s constitutional, and the Department of Justice can selectively enforce the law according to the President’s pronouncements.
In that same regard, we could eliminate the Legislature as well. If the President can decide what’s constitutional without the intervention of the Judicial Branch of our government, why not assume that we no longer need the Legislative Branch to vote on the law in the first place? Let’s just eliminate the middleman!
Since the Tenth Amendment is pretty much being ignored, we can stop wasting time and money on State legislatures as well. Again, let’s just let the President determine whether an issue is an “assault” by one party on another and be done with it.
We can declare our borders “safe” as well … regardless of the facts. We actually need illegal immigrants to continue to provide a disproportionate percentage of our prison population. Otherwise, we’ll have to include penitentiaries in the President’s economic recovery strategy of selling underutilized federal buildings. Have you ever tried to sell a prison? It’s not easy!
There’s also the issue of protecting the collective bargaining rights of public sector employees. If the President would just step up and directly address this, it might allow us to do away with Republicans and Tea Partiers. Another huge cost savings! Then again, he might have to explain why he hasn’t done away with the ban on collective bargaining among federal workers that was imposed by the Carter Administration.
If we didn’t need the Department of Justice to be in a position to not enforce federal law, we could do away with it as well. Recently, the Department of Homeland Security prosecuted and won a case in which the judge’s verdict permitted the DHS to shut down three websites that were found guilty of providing child pornography. The DHS quickly shut down the three sites … along with about 84,000 other unrelated sites that were terminated by accident. Hey, the government needed a way to test the Internet “kill switch” the Administration’s been pushing to have approved, and this might have been as good a way as any to do it.
Luckily, we can still waste money on a parole hearing for Sirhan Sirhan. He says he doesn’t remember killing Robert F. Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel back in 1968, and he’s hoping that we won’t remember either. His attorney believes a second gunman killed Kennedy despite what the videotapes clearly show and the eyewitnesses observed. It may be the same guy that took the shot from the grassy knoll a few years before. Parole is a long shot though, as Sirhan Sirhan will have to express responsibility and remorse for a crime he says he doesn’t remember. Then again, perhaps the ACLU will enter the fray and petition for his release on the grounds that his constitutional rights have been violated as an oppressed illegal alien.
Okay … enough of this! It’s time for The Common Sense Czar to return us to the reality of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Here are his common-sense fixes:
- Elected Officials: Show up for work or we’ll replace you … just like we do when private sector employees don’t show up for work.
- Department of Justice: Go back to enforcing the law as it stands … on a non-selective basis. Leave it up to the Judicial Branch to strike down laws that are unconstitutional and allow the Legislative Branch to draft new laws subject to judicial review.
- President Obama: Go back and read the notes you must have had when you were a Senior lecturer on Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago. Check out the first three Articles so you’ll have a little more clarity on the separation of powers between the three Branches of government. Then, reread the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.
- Border Integrity: Let Afghanistan sort out its own problems. Bring our troops back, line them up on the border, and tell them to pretend they’re still in Afghanistan.
- Public Sector Union Employees: Collectively bargain to your heart’s content … wages, benefits, pensions … who cares? Let federal employees join a union as well if they so choose. However, let’s pass a law that indexes their wages, benefits, pensions, etc. to the average compensation packages of the private sector. Since taxpayers are effectively the public sector’s equivalent of shareholders, no one is getting rich off the fruits of public employees’ labor. The risk of mistreatment just isn’t there. And since these jobs exist to serve the public interest, let’s go with the theory that “all men are created equal” and eliminate the lifetime pensions, etc. that went away in the private sector two or three decades ago.
- Department of Homeland Security: Focus on preventing terrorists, drugs, and illegal aliens from entering our borders rather than identifying three child pornography websites. The Department of Justice can handle that issue if it gets back to doing its job.
- Sirhan Sirhan: We’re going to take you off the parole list … along with Charlie Manson. It’s just a waste of time and money. If you do get out, you might want to audition for the Two and a Half Men gig. It’s a long shot, but Gaddafi is only a 2:1 favorite.
See how easy it is when you apply common sense? The Man Who Would Be King was just a movie; a film adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s short story. Let’s stop putting the entire burden on a single individual. If our Founding Fathers wanted a King, they would have called for one and scrapped the whole “Constitution” idea. So, let’s restrict the exercise of “clinical narcissism” to Charlie and Muammar and get back to enjoying a Republic.
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T.J. O’Hara is an internationally recognized author, speaker, and strategic consultant in the private and public sectors. In 2012, he emerged as the leading independent candidate for the Office of President of the United States and the first nominee of the Whig Party in over 150 years.
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This article first appeared in T.J. O’Hara’s recurring column, The Common Sense Czar, in the Communities Section of The Washington Times.