Jul
3

Time magazine's cover story shows the U.S. Constitution and asks, "Does it still matter?" Reading this story, we kept waiting for Emmanuel Goldstein to show up for the Two Minutes of Hate. It was difficult to discern whether we were reading Time, or Orwells' 1984.

It portrays the Constitution as an outmoded document that we should ignore to whatever extent is expedient to pursue someone's vision of a better society: "We cannot let the Constitution become an obstacle to a future with a sensible health care system, a globalized economy, and evolving sense of civil and political rights."

The story shows all sorts of poll questions that present a false choice, such as, "The 14th Amendment says that any person born in the U.S. automatically becomes a U.S. citizen... Should [it] be revised?" The Citizenship Clause says no such thing, because it adds that anyone "not subject to the jurisdiction" of the U.S. is not a citizen.

That's why children of foreign ambassadors, prisoner soldiers and heads of state born here do not become citizens. The question is how broad that "jurisdiction" clause is. Could Congress exclude illegal aliens? It's an active debate in legal circles, with no clear answer.

Instead, the questions should have included: "Are you more interested in the Constitution today that you were four years ago?" "Do you agree or disagree with candidates discussing the Constitution more in their campaign speeches this year?" "Are you now aware that the Constitution only vests the federal government with power of specific areas of life, leaving the states sovereign to decide all other issues?"

Or questions on enduring constitutional principles. "Do you agree with the Supreme Court's 1803 pronouncement that any law contrary to the Constitution is null and void?" "Every government officer (including every judge) takes an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Should they apply its original meaning to current challenges?"

Does the Constitution still matter? Look at huge crowds of Americans cheering at rallies, whether it's a spending protest or a pro-life rally. It matters to them, and they vote.

The story was so riddled with distortions that it obscured its message. For example, it says we must raise the debt ceiling because, "the idea that we can default on our debt is not only reckless; it's probably unconstitutional." It twists a provision from the 14th Amendment that has nothing to do with the debt ceiling.

The reality is, revenue government collects every month so vastly exceeds our debt payments that we could easily meet our monthly obligations. We would just have to cut discretionary spending on other programs. But it's deceptive to suggest that not raising the ceiling automatically causes default, and it's wrong to suggest it's unconstitutional.

The most disappointing part of the article mischaracterizes the Obamacare legal fight. It says Obamacare's individual mandate requiring you to buy health insurance is constitutional because government takes your money in taxes and requires you to buy car insurance.

The writer obliviously ignores that the Constitution expressly creates a federal government of enumerated powers. The feds can tax you because of the Taxing Clause of the Constitution (though even then only four types of taxes are legal -- not the mandate). And states have authority to make you buy car insurance under state police power, but if the feds required it, such a law would be illegal because the feds have no police power.

Since there is no Healthcare Clause in the Constitution, the feds try cramming it in the Commerce Clause. That's the whole fight: Whether Congress can control your personal decisions whenever Congress declares such decisions impact interstate commerce.

Every decision in your life has some tangential relationship to interstate commerce. Does that mean the Constitution allows the government to control your every decision? It makes a mockery of the concept of limited government.

The story concludes, "The Constitution serves the nation; the nation does not serve the Constitution." The connotation is that we shouldn't be too slavish in our fidelity to the Constitution.

Like the rest of this article, its conclusion misses the point. The Constitution serves the American people as an unbreakable constraint on those in power, dictating their duties and the limits on their authority. The Constitution serves We the People by requiring every government official to take an oath to obey its every word.

The picture art at the outset of Time's story showed the Constitution cut in dozens of narrow vertical strips. Clearly it had been run through a paper shredder.

Evidently this is wishful thinking for some on the Far Left. The only problem is that it's false. Interest in the Constitution is resurgent, and that renewed interest is the key to America's renewal in our third century.

Ken Blackwell and Ken Klukowski are fellows at the American Civil Rights Union, on faculty at Liberty University, and authors of Resurgent: How Constitutional Conservatism Can Save America.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Six weeks after Arnold Schwarzenegger revealed he had fathered a child out of wedlock, wife Maria Shriver filed divorce papers Friday to end their marriage of 25 years.

The former television journalist and Kennedy family heiress cited irreconcilable differences but offered no additional details about the breakup.

She also did not list a date when the couple separated, although they announced they had done so on May 9.

A week later, the former California governor and one-time action star admitted he fathered a child with a member of his household staff years ago.

The filing, which Shriver signed nearly two weeks ago, signals an end to a union that began with a storybook wedding on a spring day in 1986 in Cape Cod and brought together a bodybuilder and rising action star and a princess of the Kennedy clan, herself an up-and-coming network newscaster.

They apparently entered marriage with no plans that it would end. Shriver's filing does not indicate the couple had a premarital agreement.

That means Schwarzenegger's earnings from a career as a Hollywood megastar, which allowed him to forgo a salary as governor and commute by private jet to Sacramento, likely will be evenly divided with his estranged wife.

Shriver is seeking spousal support but any amount would be determined later, either through a settlement agreement or by a judge. The divorce is expected to be handled mostly behind closed doors.

Several of Schwarzenegger's biggest hits, including "Predator," "True Lies" and the blockbuster sequel "Terminator 2" were made during his marriage to Shriver.

Shriver became an award-winning television journalist but put her career on hold when Schwarzenegger ran for governor.

Economic disclosure forms filed when Schwarzenegger left as California governor in January show he has interests in at least eight entities each worth $1 million or more. An exact tally of his wealth is impossible to calculate.

The forms also show he still retains rights to intellectual property from his days as a fitness guru and movie star.

Shriver's holdings are more modest but are listed in the disclosure as being worth more than $1 million. She is a member of the Kennedy family and a beneficiary of some of its assets in addition to owning rights and royalties from her work as an author, the filings show.

In recent months, she has appeared in videos posted on YouTube in which she talks about stress in her life, the weight of expectations and the search for faith in a troubled world.

Shriver and Schwarzenegger have four children together, including two sons who are still minors. Shriver's petition seeks joint custody of the teens, who are 17 and 13.

Schwarzenegger's spokesman Adam Mendelsohn declined comment in an email. Shriver's attorney Laura Wasser did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment. Her spokesman Matthew DiGirolamo declined comment.

Shriver stood by her husband's side as he ran for California's governorship in 2003, even after the Los Angeles Times reported accusations by several women that they had been groped by the movie star.

Schwarzenegger later said he "behaved badly sometimes" and was twice elected to the governorship.

He failed to fix the state's chronic budget problems and left office in January with an eye toward environmental projects and a return to the big screen.

One of his projects was an animated collaboration with comic book legend Stan Lee titled "The Governator," but the project was shelved after Schwarzenegger admitted fathering the child out of wedlock. He has disappeared from the public eye in recent weeks and has not announced any plans to resume acting.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

This is an article written by Jennifer L. Schenker, a veteran journalist who has been covering technology in Europe for 25 years, writing for publications such as the Wall Street Journal Europe, Time Magazine, the International Herald Tribune and BusinessWeek. She currently runs Informilo an on-line magazine about the global tech sector.

Candace Johnson, an American who helped pioneer the satellite industry on the Continent, was dubbed ?The Satellady? in a 1996 Economist article. A career as a trailblazer also earned her a few other labels: she was called ?the most dangerous woman in Europe? by an angry media mogul after she foiled his plans to build a cartel and ?Enemy No. 1? by Germany?s Deutsche Telekom when she won a landmark case against the company for illegal subsidies of data networks.

Johnson says she has earned all of these titles over the course of a 35- year career in the tech industry by ?always trying to create something new? and usually breaking monopolies in the process.

?What I am really most proud of is that I made SES (Societe Europeene des Satellites) become the world's largest satellite system at the time and the premier satellite system today and that I was able to create other companies, all of which contributed to the advancement and democratization of access totelecoms, media and Internet for the world,? says Johnson.

Johnson is now playing a big role in investing in Europe?s start-ups, arguing that if Europe wants to ensure its economic prosperity everyone is going to have to do its part to keep young entrepreneurs from moving elsewhere. To that end, she is president of Johnson Paradigm Ventures (JPV) which is a principal founding shareholder with AXA, Caisse des Depots, Bayerische Landesbank, and the SPEF of Sophia Euro Lab, Europe?s first trans-border early-stage investment company based in Sophia Antipolis.  JPV is also a principal founding shareholder in London-based Ariadne Capital, headed by Julie Meyer.

Building innovative infrastructure that democratizes new types of services remains her core mission. Through her global investing activity started ten years ago, Johnson, now 58, has widened her scope of expertise to include clean tech and med tech and has been actively involved in financing such companies as the Blue H Group, which operates deep-water off-shore wind farms, Nheolis, a home-turbine energy company, and CertiNergy, France?s first B2B2C energy-credit trading company as well as Quotient Diagnostic and AboDiag, life-sciences technology and services companies.

Johnson is one of some 80-plus scheduled speakers at DLDWomen, a conference in Munich June 29-30 organized by Burda Media. The conference, which focuses on women?s influence on developments in technology, media and markets, is expected to attract 500 women in business and the arts.

The speakers, who include top female executives at companies such as Google, HP and IBM, haven?t just climbed corporate ladders, they have honed their skills by doing everything from bicycling across Siberia to driving solar-powered race cars through the Australian Outback.

Career of Candace Johnson

Johnson?s path has taken more than a few interesting turns of its own. After growing up in Hawaii and graduating from Punahou, the same Honolulu high school later attended by U.S. Present Barak Obama, Johnson went on to earn five degrees in music, includinga bachelors degree from Vassar College and masters degrees with honors from France?s Sorbonne and Stanford Universities.Through an early job as a producer at a U.S. classical music station, she met her husband, Adrien Meisch, a classical pianist and diplomat 23 years her senior, who was then serving as Luxembourg?s ambassador to the U.S. (The two celebrated their 30^th wedding anniversary this year.)

From the start Johnson had no intention of becoming a demure tea-serving ambassador?s wife.  While still in her 20s she joined a small broadcasting business, created a satellite distribution network for them and sold it within a year for several million dollars, earning a commission equal to three years salary. So when Meisch was posted back to Europe in 1982 and the prime minister?s chauffeur took her on the tour of the Grand Duchy, Johnson started thinking about how she could help the country she would soon call home, which was in the middle of a steel crisis.

Never one to think small, she proposed that Luxembourg launch its own satellite and made good on her promise to make it happen. Johnson used the broadcasting company commission to work without pay, concentrating all of her time on putting together a group of private investors to fund Astra, the first privately owned European television satellite and SES as well as obtaining the frequencies, putting a management team in place, and negotiating with the satellite and launch companies. Later, while on the board, she architected and implemented SES Global. Today, SES is Luxembourg?s largest taxpayer.

The satellite business was a natural one for Johnson. Her father, General Johnny Johnson, was the head of telecommunicaitons for the U.S. armed forces and ran telecoms policy in the White House under Presidents Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and later, at age 57, was recruited by venerable Silicon Valley venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers to help select and then manage interesting communication start-ups.

There was not only talk about satellites at the Johnson family dinner table. Architects of the Internet such as Vint Cerf were regular guests, says Johnson. Her father also taught her how to have a head for busienss. When, as a little girl, she told her farther she wanted to run for class president, he told her she would need a marketing plan and taught her how to design one. Anytime she wanted to do a project he would tell her to create a business plan and again, showed her how it was done. So, for Johnson, entering the tech business didn't require any special training in engineering or bsuiness. But it did require moxie.

Johnson is credited with helping Astra flourish by fighting a lonely battle on SES' board to block Europe's biggest broadcasters from taking over the company and suppressing smaller, new channels - a role that earned her the "most dangerous woman in Europe" title.

Seventeen years after she started SES in 1983 an 15 years after it was actually incorporated as a company she stayed with SES on the board to help build it to be not only number one in Europe but also to architect and implement a plan for SES Global, thus creating the world's largest satellite system at the time.

 ?It took an amazing effort to make SES Global happen since there was much internal opposition and once I pushed it through everyone was so mad at me,? says Johnson. ? I had to fight for five years to get all my efforts recognized and it was for this that the Grand Duke and the Prime Minister gave me the Commander of the Luxembourg Order of Merit after they had already given me the Officer of the Couronne de Chene for having started SES.?

Creating ASTRA also frightened politicians and companies alike.  Recently, when Johnson saw Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Germany?s legendary former foreign minister, she says his first  remark in seeing her after 10 years was that the late Francois Mitterand, France?s President from 1981 to 1995, complained to him that she  was  ?selling Europe?s skies to America.?   Johnson retorted, ?No, as you can see with SES Global I made Europe?s skies global, something Mitterand and the industrial policies of all European governments could never do.?

Johnson also started a venture to use satellites to buest telecom monopolies in Europe, launchign Teleport Europe in 1990. Within 18 months it became Europe's biggest independent private trans-border satellite communications network. Johnson convinced some of Europe's biggest companies to invest, including Germany's RWE and Vebacom.

The investors asked her to come and run the company. "I told them I am not going to work for you - I am going to sit at the shareholder's table with you," JOhsnon recalls. This took some doing as making a physical person rather than a company a shareholder in such a venture, was highly unusual, but Johnson stuck by her guns and was given a 1% share. When Loral, a subidiary of Orion Network systems, an international satellite communications provider, announced it wanted to buy Teleport Europe, RWE and Vebacom agreed by Johnson refused to sell. She continues to own 1% of the company, which is now known as Loral Skynet.

Johnson?s next high profile venture was Europe Online. The vision, in 1993, was to do just that ? to get Europe online by pioneering the delivery mechanisms that would enable Europeans to receive Internet-based interactive entertainment via their PCs and televisions.  Johnson patented the digital delivery of content via satellite but gave her idea to a consortium that included Burda Media, AT&T, Pearson, Matra and a group of Luxembourg banks.  The company morphed into a content play and ultimately failed.  Johnson says she learned a lot from her experience with Europe Online (she bought back the name at an auction and still owns the URL) ?When you are an entrepreneur you have to implement your idea at the beginning ? you can not expect others to do it for you,? she says.

Johnson remains an integral part of the Internet and communications sectors and is a fervent promoter of women in these businesses. She is a founder of the Global Telecom Women?s Network (GTWN), which will celebrate its 20^th anniversary in March 2012. Still going strong, she and her colleagues at GTWN hosted a breakfast at the Mobile World Congress last February that attracted some of the industry?s highest flying female executives, including Qualcomm Executive Vice President Peggy Johnson and Xin Fanfei, vice president and executive director of China Mobile.

As thanks for decades of effort, Johnson has been decorated not only in Luxembourg but also as an Officer of the German Bundesverdienst Kreuz 1. Klasse for her work in de-regulation, innovation, privatization, and globalization at Astra, Teleport Europe and Iridium, (she helped that global satellite company obtain its global frequencies and country codes while serving as it vice president worldwide) and for the creation of the VATM, Germany?s private telecom operator?s assocation.

Johnson is the second recipient ever of the UN-sponsored World Teleport Associations? ?Founders Award? and received the ?Lifetime Achievement Award? along with Vinton Cerf and Tim Berners Lee from the World Communication Awards in 2002.

That?s not all. In 2006, she created the Festival of the Fourth Dimension, the world?s first festival of the Arts, Technology, and Sciences, which has since become a major French government global initiative for Industrial Innovation and Creativity (Pole ICI) of which she is the first vice-president, the President being a French government official

In her personal capacity, Johnson is a member of the Supervisory Boards of Paris-based Iris Capital and Turkey?s Inovent; a founding member and former president of the Board of the Sophia Business Angels in Sophia Antipolis, France; and founding president of three multi-million Euro investment vehicles, Succès Europe, Croissance Europe and Innovation Europe, together with Meeschaert Gestion Prive. Johnson has also been instrumental in the creation of the Galata Business Angels in Turkey, the Luxembourg Business Angels and most recently, the Cologne Business Angels. She is a foundering member of all three groups.

Johnson is also a member of the board of governors of EDHEC, France?s largest business school, the University of Haifa in Israel, Sabanci University in Istanbul, Turkey, and a Senior Enterprise Fellow for the University of Essex in England, working together with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to bring entrepreneurship around the world.

Her advice to other women? ?Choosing something that makes you go beyond yourself is exciting and allows you to reach new horizons,? she says. ? Spoken like a true Satallady.

NEW YORK — It's the toughest ticket in town, but on Friday afternoon, a big bunch of very faithful, very appreciative fans got to see The Book of Mormon? at no cost.

The critically revered Tony Award-winning musical staged a ninth performance this week for the faithful. As it happens, Mormon has been holding a daily lottery since its first preview, offering 20 tickets at 32 bucks a shot. From May 10 to June 14, winners and losers alike were placed in another lottery ?some 13,000 entrants, some of whom had tried 20 or 30 times to win tickets.

Among the fortunate in the capacity crowd of more than 1,000 were friends Emma Hartman and Claire Whitehouse, both 18, of Manhattan, who had tried only once. "Claire has really good luck," said Hartman, who had bought the cast recording of Mormon? which in June became the first Broadway cast album to crack the Top 10 on Billboard 200 albums chart since 1969's Hair? but was waiting till after she had seen the show to check it out.

The numerous older attendees included Ellen Weinkrantz, 59, of Brooklyn, who had tried several times. She was drawn "by the reviews, the hype, all that. I follow everything that's going on in theater, and as a theater person, how can you not see this?"

Ed Gedvila, 46, of Tuxedo Park, NY, and daughter Madeline, 12, had more diverse and specific reasons for being there. "We're big fans of comedy musicals," the elder Gedvila said. "We've seen Spamalot, The Addams Family? loved it. And we love SouthPark, too. Trey Parker and Matt Stone are comedy geniuses; anything they touch is going to be worth seeing."

Bobby Lopez, who co-conceived the show and collaborated on its book and score with Parker and Stone, addressed the audience just before the curtain. He thanked everyone and noted that the performance was being taped "for posterity" by the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

"So lower your expectations," Lopez said jokingly. "We can't all fulfill each other's fantasies."

The wild applause that preceded his entrance and followed musical numbers suggested that no one was being let down. At intermission, Liz Wilson, 30, who had traveled from Philadelphia, declared the show "hilarious."

Her mother, Barbara Wilson, 60, said she had mixed feelings about the language and the less-than-reverent treatment of "someone else's religion." (She identified herself as Catholic.) "But I have to say, there are great songs, great dancing. It's everything you come to see a musical for."

Victoria Beckham has her hands full, but with her fourth child ? a girl ? due next week and the upcoming launch of her spring 2012 Victoria by Victoria Beckham dress collection, the fashion designer is ready to take on even more.

?As any working mum out there knows, it really is like juggling glass balls when you?ve got the kids and a husband to look after, and you?re passionate about your career,? Beckham, 37, tells Women?s Wear Daily.

?But I wouldn?t have it any other way. I?m blessed.?

Turning her attention from her line to her soon-to-be daughter?s growing wardrobe, Beckham admits her baby?s closet is already fully stocked.

?But not in an obnoxious way at all,? she adds. ?I love the French clothes for little girls. I like little girls to look like little girls.?

But while she may be looking forward to showing off her daughter?s style, there is one thing Beckham won?t be displaying anytime soon: her baby bump.

?I?m not really one of those people that likes to go out and pose and flaunt being pregnant. Not like there?s anything wrong in that. I?m so proud to be pregnant and I feel so blessed and so happy, I really do,? she explains.

?But I?m just not that kind of person. So, no, I won?t be taking my clothes off. I don?t think anyone needs to see that, other than my husband [David Beckham]. Absolutely not.?

? Anya Leon