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Posts Tagged ‘Constitution’

Constitution!? We Don’t Need No Stinking Constitution!

by Flyovercountry ( 390 Comments › )
Filed under Barack Obama, Politics at June 20th, 2012 - 2:00 pm

Whenever Congress refuses to act, Joe and I we’re going to act, In the months to come, wherever we have an opportunity, we’re going to take steps on our own to keep this economy moving.

President Barack Hussein Obama – February 2012

That little quote right there, actually uttered by the 44th President of the United States earlier this year should send chills down the collective, (pun definitely intended,) spines of every American Citizen that actually possesses functioning grey matter. This was a formal declaration by our duly elected chief executive that he fully intends to spend the remainder of his hopefully single term as President operating outside of the confines imposed upon that office by our founding documents. There will be some defense offered by the liberals I’m sure, that would state that this was merely a political speech designed to energize his carefully selected and arranged poly chromatic audience. To that I have this reply, he has been living it. He has demonstrated, really since January of 2011 that he feels no compunction at all with handling his official duties as if the Constitution were a mere annoyance to be discarded like a spiritual adviser caught damning America during one of his many recorded sermons espousing the virtues of Black Liberation Theology. He has been busy using executive fiat to create law without the pesky input of the Legislative Branch of our government and has shown repeatedly, absolute contempt for the role of the Judiciary. He has in fact, operated as if he were coronated king rather than inaugurated President.

What I find amusing is how the liberals of our country, including by the way one Barack Hussein Obama, had been relentlessly accusing George w. Bush of doing the same exact thing, without any actual instances to highlight the charge mind you, while they remain eerily silent on the subject while their man literally ignores our founding documents.

George W. Bush was excoriated as a dictator for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Whether you agree with those uses of our national defense services or not, there remains one non deniable point of fact. President Bush went to and received from Congress overwhelming bipartisan support for both of those uses of our military. Through out his entire Presidency, he continued to ask for and receive permission from Congress, even after his party lost the majority in both chambers, for continued congressional authorization for everything he did as Commander in Chief of our armed forces. Barack Obama has not yet asked congress for any type of authorization for his usage of our military, which includes by the way major operations in Libya and our role in a coup which occurred there.

Congress refuses to pass cap and trade? No problem for the President who has found executive fiat in his tool chest. All he need do is direct his appointees to declare every single mud puddle from Maine to the Aleutian Islands to be a wetland, declare that there exists some species of mosquito different from all of the rest, and there you have it, cap and trade inflicted upon American businesses with out a single Congressional vote in favor of the new law.

The President’s political side failed to convince sufficient numbers of Americans to agree with the surrender of our national sovereignty by singing the Kyoto accords? Don’t worry, he’ll simply use the Department of Energy as a bludgeon for the prevention of any domestic energy production. So, even though the purpose that having a Department of Energy was sold to the American People was to, “provide a platform for which our domestic energy production would be sufficient to ensure the we would never again be held hostage to the lawless whims of the Arab world,” President Obama has successfully changed that mission, to the point where a federal judge has actually taken the extraordinary step issue a contempt order for his unilateral shut down of drilling in the Gulf. A place by the way where I am still waiting for any actual evidence of any negative environmental impact to emerge. It should also be noted that many other nations are drilling in those and many other of the world’s waterways where our President has shut us down, including Mexico, Cuba, Viet Nam, North Korea, Brazil, Venezuela, Columbia, and even Russia.

This past week, another fiat order was issued and one that was even more disturbing in its application than any of the other edicts issued by the Obama Regime to date. I am speaking of the immigration order pronounced by the Obama Regime. The reason why this one stands out as the most egregious to date is that most Americans agree with his position on this particular issue. It is that fact that makes this so dangerous and perhaps one of the more dangerous aspects of a Presidency which can be argued to be a 4 year attempt to destroy the nation as we all know it.

Let me start here. I am pro immigration. Any one who has spent more than 15 minutes studying economics will tell you quite eloquently, the importance of allowing for an extremely open immigration policy and for allowing further, an extremely friendly free trade policy. The lens of history is crystal clear on this point, our nation’s greatest boom of economic wealth came during a time when we allowed for unfettered immigration into our fold. Anywhere in history, when you see vast increases in per capita wealth, you will also find societies accepting openly any and all comers into their midst. The only time that this truth falters is when social welfare programs are introduced into the mix, and those programs only present a problem, in the context of immigration, when non citizens are allowed to participate in them.

With that being said the, “how he did it,” here is important. Barack Obama proposed this to Congress, and was defeated. Rather than with working with Congress on one of the compromises he promised us while campaigning, our President decided that an end run was in order. More specifically, an end run on one of the precious few issues today where he probably enjoys the support of a majority of our fellow citizens. The President who ran on a platform of Hopety Change, rethinking the way in which our current elected leaders fail so often to work with one another amicably and instead cynically pander to their base and demonize the opposition, took his Presidential toys and went home. Barack Obama promised to put an end to wanton enmity, and further promised that he alone would be able to bridge the gap between disparate factions constantly at war in the world’s greatest deliberative body.

If there were one issue where he should have been able to achieve this lofty goal, or at the very least one issue where he could have laid claim to having achieved this lofty goal, this issue was it. A majority of Americans want to see our immigration issues fixed. Most Americans want people, and in large numbers, to be able to come to America and to be free to participate in the American Dream. No matter if you agree with the policies objectives or not, any objective analysis could not possibly be positive about how it was achieved. Our President met with failure during his first attempt. He then quit. He then threw a temper tantrum and circumvented the Constitution. All on an issue where even the other side wants to see him succeed with this particular piece of legislation. In what possible universe would this square with the promise of the new improved Hopety Change way of reaching past our philosophical differences.

The reason this is so bad is that it establishes a dangerous precedent. He chose this issue as a part of his parade of fiat precisely because he knows that a majority of Americans agree with him on this point. As a matter of fact, his new policy fiat looks an awful lot like legislation offered up by Tea Party favorite, Marco Rubio. So much so in fact that Rubio has been all over the news shows saying as much. So why the end run, when it is pretty obvious that he could get this done easily within the confines on his office as dictated by our Constitution?

Here is where his cynicism really shines through. He picked this precisely because he knew he had broad support, if not in Congress, then in the population at large. What is dangerous here is that he may be allowed to get away with this one. His hope is that since people by and large agree with the adoption of this policy, they will be willing to over look the fact that how it was accomplished is in fact in violation to the laws governing how laws are instituted. In fact, he chose to pass up one of the precious few legislative victories possible for him in order to test the path of executive fiat.

Anyone willing to do that, must me removed from office.

Cross Posted at Musings of a Mad Conservative.

Our Founding Documents Under Siege.

by Flyovercountry ( 168 Comments › )
Filed under Politics, Progressives at July 6th, 2011 - 11:30 am

First, have a good laugh with me. This is from ABC’s Sunday Morning Show, and this is what is passing for intelligent debate from the left side these days.

Just a few thoughts. The authors of the Constitution were not interested in predicting the future. No, they did not know about telephones, better and more effective weapons such as drones or assault rifles, or even jet air travel. This matters not as to how the constitution should be interpreted. The Constitution provides the framework of our government, and how best to limit the scope of that government and keep it accountable to the people. Taken in that context, and reading what the framers of our beginning had to actually say on these very subjects, (we after all are not having this argument with the left in a vacuum, as those authors of this extraordinary document did tell us all what they meant,) the only possible argument the leftist panel has is that the Constitution does not say what they want it to say. It does not give an elite ruling class carte Blanche to inflict their vision of a Worker’s Paradise upon us whether we want it or not. Not a single person on this panel of Braniacs was able to answer Will’s question about whether the commerce clause would not be interpreted to mean that there was now, in effect, not a single check on the power of congress to do whatever congress wanted to do. Ie. does Congress literally now have limitless power under the current interpretation of the commerce clause. Bear in mind, that according to Hamilton, the commerce clause was only intended to insure that the various states would not be able to coin and mint their own currency and use the various currencies to inflict hidden taxes upon each other. Notice also, that was the very last Will was to be included in the discussion. It just won’t do to have the token conservative speak once he has embarrassed the remainder of the panel with a coherent thought. The remainder of the clip is pretty much the same kind of argument stated in various ways. The founding fathers had no way of knowing how much smarter than the rest of us the progressives of today would be, so therefore they would have welcomed the creation of a ruling elite class, blah, blah, blah. This little bit of drama in which the faux intellectuals discuss how outdated and impractical our founding document is was perfectly timed to coincide with Time’s little front page gem in which the managing editor of Time, Richard Stengel, used his heavyweight magazine’s power to advocate that we as a nation should just scrap that pesky constitution thing anyway.

This weekend, also in time for the fourth, a day in which we celebrate our Declaration of Independence, someone pointed this out to me. it comes to us from Think Progress, a Soros funded outfit.  In case you are not aware of who George Soros is, he is the owner of the Democrat Party.  a few fun snippets from their argument that our split from English rule was actually an event owned by all of the good people who live on mother Gaya’s Earth.

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them,a decent respect to the opinions of mankindrequires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

So now, according to Think Progress, we need the world’s approval, and the approval of Nature itself to have our little nation here.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

That sounds familiar.  O.K., I can live with that.  But what do the newly added lines mean anyhow?  Glad you’ve asked.

By saying that it is a self-evident truth that all humans are created equal and that our inalienable rights include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, our Founding Fathers were telling us that we are all in this together, that we are interdependent, that we have a moral duty to protect these inalienable rights for all humans. President Lincoln, perhaps above all others, was instrumental in making clear that the second sentence of the Declaration was “a moral standard for which the United States should strive,” as Wikipedia puts it.
It is the laws of Nature, studied and enumerated by scientists, that make clear we are poised to render those unalienable rights all but unattainable for billions of humans on our current path of unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions. It is the laws of Nature that make clear Americans can’t achieve sustainable prosperity if the rest of the world doesn’t, and vice versa.

O.K., now we’re cooking.  What this means, is that even if our economic and political system have allowed us to enjoy the greatest success the world has ever seen in terms of creating wealth and improving the living standard of every one of our citizens.  Even though our poor enjoy a better living standard of anyone in the third world who would be considered middle or in some instances upper class, we have no right to enjoy that success until the remainder of the world will be able to match that standard.  In order to have the remainder of the world match our standard by allowing their citizens the same freedoms and free market systems which we enjoy, we should make this happen by destroying our own economy.

Hat tip Lobo91

Cross Posted at Musings of a Mad Conservative.

Meet The Democrat Leadership Series, Jesse Jackson Jr. (D) Mars.

by Flyovercountry ( 185 Comments › )
Filed under Democratic Party, Humor, Politics, Regulation at March 10th, 2011 - 8:30 am

First Watch the clip:

I saw this one at Hot Air and then again at Ace of Spades. It took me a while to quit laughing. Allaphundit asks a probing question which got me thinking.

The most fun part of this thought experiment (apart from figuring out how to pay for it, natch) is imagining the sort of insane lobbying wars that would erupt if the feds suddenly decided to start outfitting huge swaths of the population with specific goods. Not only within industries — e.g., which lucky PC company will get the federal contract for 10 million laptops for kids? — but among industries, as manufacturers across the land try to explain why owning their product rises to the level of a fundamental right. Imagine Anthony Kennedy declaring for a 5-4 SCOTUS majority that the Due Process Clause guarantees you a Cuisinart. A glorious day for America, my friends.

After the fit of laughter, I realized that this dolt actually got himself elected to congress from Illinois’ Second District.  Besides being filled with thoughts of trying to declare Chicago a separate nation, or possibly even a foreign planet, It worries me that until November of 2010 he represented the majority party in American politics.  Have we really progressed to this point in our collective thinking?  clearly there is a stark difference between left and right in our world today.  The Constitution lies at the crux of this difference.  For the first time in my life, the political left is openly admitting that they do not believe our founding documents should be followed.  Chris Matthews has called it racist.  President Obama went on NPR as recently as 2002 and whined that our founding fathers did not address redistributive justice, (whatever in the hell that is.)  Supreme Court nominees are being picked by our current President and confirmed by our current Senate based not on their adherence to or interpretation of the Constitution, but upon their ability to empathise with a pet group of declared societal victims.  This goes well beyond those transgressions however.  This speech entertains the notion that any commodity can be legislated into being a basic right and paid for from the public largess.  If your believe that I am merely a worry wart, I will ask you two questions.  One, did you hear any congressman laughing, as we did at Jackson’s idiocy?  Two, do you realize that our current Health Care Law is this exactly? 

Buy up plenty of shares of Oester stock, they make Cuisinarts.

Crossposted at Musings of a Mad Conservative.

When Did We Stop Teaching Civics In Our Schools?

by Flyovercountry ( 218 Comments › )
Filed under Democratic Party, Healthcare, Politics, Progressives at January 19th, 2011 - 4:30 pm

Crossposted at Musings of a Mad Conservative

Every once in a while, something is said on C-Span which makes me chuckle out loud.  The left’s brightest representative, (ie. a true idiot,) Congress Woman Sheila Jackson Lee, a moonbat from Texas gave me such a moment yesterday.  In arguing against the House’s measure to repeal Obamacare, Ms. Lee stated that repealing a Law, which a Federal Court ruled as being unconstitutional, was itself unconstitutional.  Her Claim was that it violates the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.  When you stop laughing, read on.

Where to start with this one.  First, I have included as a stand alone page on this blog, purely for fun, a civics quiz administered by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. This quiz was failed by the American Public in general by an average score of 54%.  It was failed by our elected political leaders by an average score of 49%.  That means that Sheila Jackson Lee, Moonbat from Texas should not be lecturing anyone on the Constitution.  You’re right, that’s too easy an out, and it’s not fair to assume that Sheila scored at or below the average of her fellow classmates.  Perhaps we should look at her arguments.
Here is the link to C-Span from yesterday. Lee’s comments start at 1:34:35, and it is possible to move the cursor straight to that point in time.  The Government’s servers are top notch.

Here is a partial transcript of Lee’s comments:

“The Fifth Amendment speaks specifically to denying someone their life and liberty without due process,” she said in a speech on the House floor moments ago. “That is what H.R. 2 does and I rise in opposition to it. And I rise in opposition because it is important that we preserve lives and we recognize that 40 million-plus are uninsured.
She continued, “Can you tell me what’s more unconstitutional than taking away from the people of America their Fifth Amendment rights, their Fourteenth Amendment rights, and the right to equal protection under the law?”

Lee moves on from there to my favorite debate tactic of the left, anecdotal stories of woe and want.  Defeating each anecdotal argument is tedious, because all they have to do is come up with another story, which may or may not be true, but only needs to sound plausible.  This method of debate is specious at best and deserves nothing but contempt.  Every Democrat Presidential Candidate Since at least Carter has employed this tactic, and every Democrat congress critter uses it daily.  It relies strictly on emotion, which is fitting, as emotional appeals is the entirety of the Democrat Platform anyhow.  On to other parts of Sheila’s argument.  For reference, here are the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments:

Amendment V.
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise
infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of
a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval
forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of
War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for
the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb;
nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness
against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property,
without due process of law; nor shall private property be
taken for public use, without just compensation.

Amendment XIV.

(Note: Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution was modified by
Section 2 of the 14th Amendment.)

SECTION 1.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States and
subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United
States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall
make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges
or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall
any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property,
without due process of law; nor deny to any person within
its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

SECTION 2.

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several
States according to their respective numbers, counting the
whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians
not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for
the choice of electors for President and Vice President of
the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive
and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the
Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants
of such State, [being twenty-one years of age,]* and
citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except
for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of
representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion
which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the
whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in
such State.

SECTION 3.

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress,
or elector of President and Vice President, or hold
any office, civil or military, under the United States, or
under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a
member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States,
or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive
or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution
of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or
rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the
enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds
of each House, remove such disability.

SECTION 4.

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized
by law, including debts incurred for payment of
pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection
or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the
United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt
or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion
against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation
of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and
claims shall be held illegal and void.

SECTION 5.

The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate
legislation, the provisions of this article.
*Changed by Section 1 of the 26th Amendment.

Passed by Congress June 13, 1866. Ratified July 9, 1868.

Let me start by making a simple observation.  we do not live in a vacuum.  The authors of our Constitution wrote extensively to help us understand what their intentions were.  These writings are called the Federalist Papers, and are available in every public library in the country.  When we discuss Socialized Health Care, we have examples of countries who have tried it, and can witness the results for ourselves.  So, when we see that 57% of British Citizens have performed woodshed tooth extractions, we see the actual results of offering free dental care to every citizen in the country.  (A woodshed tooth extraction refers to pulling one’s own tooth, without the aid of a dentist.)  In our context, the Federalist papers make it clear that the rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights are considered negative rights.  That is, they are things which the government, any government, could not inflict upon the citizenry.  They are not a list of entitlements, which the citizens should expect to be handed.  Lee’s argument is that, the right to life, liberty, property, means that the citizens are entitled to receive any commodity from the government which would be deemed necessary by the courts to achieve such ends.  When the Constitution was written, the founders made it abundantly clear that each person was responsible for forging their own path.  The Fourteenth Amendment was put in her idiocy for a different reason.  The current argument concocted by the left, is that the Fourth and Fifth Amendments only applied to the Federal Government prior to the Fourteenth Amendment being passed.  The Fourteenth was passed solely as a post Civil War Reconstruction Amendment.  The entire purpose was to make it unconstitutional to deny citizenship to former slaves on the basis that they weren’t citizens before the Civil War.  It also contained provisions to deny paying debt issued to the confederacy by foreign nations, and to prevent officers serving in the confederate army from attaining rank in the Union Army.  I disagree with this interpretation that the Bill of Rights would not be enforced at the State level should the Fourteenth be repealed.  Currently, the Fourteenth is the source for the anchor baby loophole in our immigration laws.  This is the real reason the left wants it kept.  If the Fourteenth Amendment produced Republican voting anchor babies, you could bet your bottom dollar that Sheila Jackson Lee and he cohorts would be screaming from the rooftops to repeal the sucker.

Exit question:  Is Sheila Jackson Lee respected by her fellow Democrats, or do they find her idiotic as well?