April 7, 2009

Ask and yee shall receive.


In my assessment of Sarah Palin and her chances for 2012, I pointed out that she needed to work on the areas of foreign affairs and the military, by providing more detailed positions. Not only would it help her image with the country in general, but also allow conservatives to get a handle on what her personal beliefs are.

No sooner had I mentioned the need for her to step up in those areas, then this appeared on Hot Air;




“I am deeply concerned with North Korea’s development and testing program which has clear potential of impacting Alaska, a sovereign state of the United States, with a potentially nuclear armed warhead,” Governor Palin said. “I can’t emphasize enough how important it is that we continue to develop and perfect the global missile defense network. Alaska’s strategic location and the system in place here have proven invaluable in defending the nation.”
Nice! Let's hope it gets a little traction on the press.

2 comments:

  1. Her use of sovereign state is incorrect.

    See Wikipedia:

    Sovereignty is the right to exercise, within a territory, the functions of a state, exclusive of any other state, and subject to no other authority.[1] A sovereign is a supreme lawmaking authority.

    The U.S. is a sovereign state. Alaska, since it is subject to federal law, is not.

    Using the phrase "sovereign state" may have a nice ring to it in a PR statement, unfortunately it's use is incorrect.

    ReplyDelete
  2. In the classic definition, you are correct. However, there are arguments that such a classic definition is not correct.

    From http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=651381

    Discussion of the "sovereignty" of the several states appears to have reached a stalemate. In academic debates on this, "our oldest question of constitutional law," three general positions have been staked out. Classicists insist that the states cannot truly be "sovereign" because they do not exercise the formal prerogatives of a sovereign authority, namely exclusive and final, or supreme, power. Republicans posit that only "the People" can be truly "sovereign" under the Constitution. Skeptics argue that the concept of "sovereignty" never quite fit our constitutional framework to begin with, and that this empty, negative, lazy linguistic shortcut should be abandoned altogether. Despite the mostly negative academic reactions to the idea of "state sovereignty," the Supreme Court continues to emphasize state "sovereignty" in its federalism opinions. The Court, however, has failed to provide any conceptual framework for the concept.

    ReplyDelete

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