A bipartisan group of lawmakers have introduced Senate Bill 157, titled the “Telecommunications Modernization Act of 2012.” The 71-page bill deregulates some local phone service and makes new assumptions about public policy. It redefines service providers and eliminates some corporate subsidies. It also repurposes an existing funding mechanism to achieve newly assumed public policy goals, and reshuffles winners and losers in the telecommunications industry. While the deregulation of some local
phone service may be tempting and long overdue, the cost of SB 157 as it is currently written is quite high. This well-meaning bill has some troubling unintended consequences.

The Governor’s Energy Office (GEO) of the State of Colorado spent a total of $121,652,884.75 from January 2008 to November 2010. This report aims to clarify and provide transparency to the GEO’s spending. Despite best efforts, the exact nature of many of the expenditures remains unclear.

America is in crisis: The constitutional system of checks and balances is failing to keep government within its proper bounds. No matter who is elected, the federal government remains unable to balance its budget, to perform basic tasks efficiently, or to respect constitutional limits. In response, a movement is arising to amend the Constitution to clarify the scope of federal power and impose additional restrictions upon its exercise. An ultimate goal is to revive the Founders’ view of the federal government as a fiscally responsible entity that protects human freedom.

Amending the Constitution to promote Founding-Era principles is well precedented. Most of the twenty-seven amendments adopted thus far served this purpose. The first eleven amendments were designed largely to enforce on the federal government the terms of the Constitution as its advocates represented them during the ratification debates of 1787-1790. The Twenty-First Amendment restored the control of alcoholic beverages to the states. The Twenty-Second restored the two-term presidential tradition established by George Washington. The Twenty-Seventh, limiting congressional pay raises, had been drafted by James Madison and approved by the first session of the First Congress (1789). In addition, several other amendments that changed the Founders’ political settlement did so to advance Founding principles. An example is the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery.

The year 2010 marked the bicentennial of independence for several Latin American nations, including Colombia. Colombians celebrated the bicentennial of their nation in Bogotá’s Plaza Bolívar underneath an inscription on the building that houses the Colombian Constitutional Court that reads “Colombianos, las armas os han dado la independencia, las leyes os darán libertad” Colombians, arms have given you independence, laws will give you liberty). These words, spoken by Colombian revolutionary Francisco de Paula Santander, express the important roles of arms and liberty in Colombia.1 Thus, it seems fitting to analyze one of the fundamental freedoms that Colombia adopted at its independence and has maintained throughout its turbulent existence: the right of the citizen to possess and carry arms.

This Issue Paper provides English translations of the current laws that regulate the possession of weapons in Colombia. Part I provides a brief overview of Colombian constitutional history and demonstrates how the freedom to possess weapons for personal and collective defense is an integral part of Colombia’s history. Part II offers an English translation of relevant articles from Colombia’s current constitution. Part III summarizes the present laws that regulate weapons in Colombia, the system of permits, and how the natural right of self-defense is viewed in Colombia. Part IV presents an English translation of the full text of the three laws that regulate the possession of weapons in Colombia.

Americans increasingly are realizing they have lost control of their federal government. Not only has that government broken nearly all constitutional restraint, but it
has saddled future generations with deficits and a debt of third-world proportions. Citizens have attempted various strategies to recover their government with only indifferent success. But they have not yet triggered the constitutional tool the Founders intended to be used in such crises: Amending the Constitution to save it, using the state-application-and- convention process.

The Founders included in the Constitution two methods of proposing amendments to the states for ratification: proposal by Congress and proposal by a “convention for proposing amendments”—essentially a drafting committee designed to put into acceptable form amendments suggested by the state legislatures. As this paper shows, the Founders included the latter method to enable the people to correct the system when Congress was unwilling or unable to do so.

This study focuses on the retiree health plan administered by the Colorado Public Employees’ Retirement Association (PERA). The PERA Health Care Program is a cost sharing multiple-employer plan. The “employers” in this context are the various governments that hire most public employees, such as public school teachers, fire fighters, police officers and state employees. Under this program, PERA subsidizes a portion of the premium for health care coverage, and the retiree pays any remaining amount of that premium. The Colorado legislature created the Health Care Trust Fund in 1999 to provide state subsidies to the Health Care Program.

Memorial Day matters because America matters. America matters because freedom matters.

With no limits on how the data collected can be used to coerce individual behavior, this bill poses a grave threat to both medical privacy and individual liberty.

Kopel's testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, regarding the Second Amendment record of Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

Government has no right to legislate how you build on your property.