Senate Accuses CIA of Spying

 

That headline should be funny

 

But it isn't:

 

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) accused the CIA of secretly removing documents, searching committee-used computers and attempting to intimidate Congressional investigators by requesting an FBI probe of their conduct — charges that CIA Director John O. Brennan disputed vigorously within hours of Feinstein’s extraordinary appearance on the Senate floor. Washington Post

"I have grave concerns that the CIA's search may well have violated the separation of powers principles embodied by the United States Constitution, including the speech and debate clause," she said.  "It may have undermined the Constitutional framework essential to effective congressional oversight of intelligence activity or any other government function.  The search may also have violated the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and an executive order that prohibits the CIA from conducting domestic searches or surveillance.

No Shit? 

 

The American intelligence community violating the Constitution?  Who'd have thunk?  A better question for Senator Feinstein may be, given all of the revelations about the American intelligence community's activities, why does this surprise you?

Who us?

"We weren't trying to block anything," Brennan said. "The matter is being dealt with in an appropriate way, being looked at by the right authorities, and the facts will come out," he added.  "But let me assure you the CIA was in no way spying on [the committee] or the Senate." NBC News

Meanwhile:

USN Vice Admiral Mike Rogers who has been tapped by Obama as the next head of the NSA responded to Senate questions for his confirmation hearing with:

"The telephone metadata program under Section 215 was designed to map the communications of terrorists so we can see who they may be in contact with as quickly as possible.  I believe that we need to maintain an ability to make queries of phone records in a way that is agile and provides results in a timely fashion. Being able to quickly review phone connections associated with terrorists to assess whether a network exists is critical.  I welcome dialogue"

Dialogue? How about "No"!

Obama Decree Aimed at the Illegal Immigrant Vote

The Obama Administration:  Constitutionally Ignorant

This term alone, the high court has ruled unanimously against the government on religious liberty, criminal procedure and property rights. When the administration can't get even a single one of the liberal justices to agree with it in these unrelated areas of the law, that's a sign there's something wrong with its constitutional vision.  (Why Obama Strikes Out in Court)

This statement from Heimatlandsicherheit Kommisar Janet Napoleonitano is exemplar of this administration’s bald-faced contempt for the constitution and the law:

Our nation's immigration laws must be enforced in a firm and sensible manner," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in a statement. "But they are not designed to be blindly enforced without consideration given to the individual circumstances of each case.” . (Obama Commands Immigration Laws be Loosened)

Is she stupid? Or evil? What is the symbol of justice? If a bureaucrat doesn’t like the law, she can’t just reinterpret it.

So Let it be Written, So Let it be Done!

I would have little problem with cutting some slack for people brought here illegally as children, were it not done via regal edict. Issues of this magnitude can only be accomplished by legislation, and only after we have put some controls on our border.  We are a democratic republic, not a dictatorship. 

What this will do is immediately attract more illegal immigrants hoping to cash in on the deal. 

"But Obama said they have to have to have lived here for five years! …” 

Illegal immigration is an industry based upon phony documentation. It will be easy enough to make anyone who arrives here eligible. They’re estimating 800,000 could take advantage of the program? I predict at least double that.

This is a play for the illegal immigrant vote by an administration that brazenly violates the constitution it swore to uphold.

Naked Tyranny

Is the 4th Amendment defunct?

The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, ruled that jails may strip search detainees being put into the general prison population.

Progressive screamers, horrified at Obamacare's poor performance before the court a week earlier, seized upon the ruling to impugn the court that they anticipate will knock down Obamacare as well.

It's an interesting tactic, sure to win over those who don't think too hard, but in reality the two cases are unrelated, each decided on its merits.  The one common factor in both cases is government power, but progressives don't want to go there.

Noah Feldman examines the Supreme Court ruling:

As a result, instead of arguing about dignity, the justices disagreed about the practical question of whether invasive strip-searches are reasonably necessary to serve the interests of the jails and prisons. Kennedy’s majority opinion said that they were.

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the strip-searches, however well-intentioned when first instituted, now function to humiliate people being put behind bars, sending the message that they are now essentially nonpersons, under the full control of the state.

Yet, it’s worth noting, not even Breyer argued that all strip-searches of people entering jail should be unconstitutional. There is a reason: Privacy, as we know it, is dying. The death is slow and gradual. But it is starting to look inevitable. Supreme Court justices, in general, and Kennedy in particular, rarely fight the trend of history. (Noah Feldman)

The linchpin to the Supreme Court decision was that law enforcement officers have a right to protect themselves and a duty to protect other detainees, and that trumps the rights of people introduced into a detention facility. That makes sense, but it doesn't get to the heart of the issue.

The Real Outrage

People are missing the true outrage here. A non-violent suspect was incarcerated for failure to pay a fine. With all the technology at our fingertips, we suffer under a medieval government. Proliferating policies and ever-expanding laws and police powers are making outlaws of us all, and we are increasingly being treated like hardened criminals by an arrogant, burgeoning police state. We are guilty until proven innocent.

Progressive fans of Big Government take note:

A government that can make you purchase health insurance can also strip you naked and make you squat and cough.

The Bill of Wrongs

Tuesday, I explained how there is nothing unconstitutional about bringing your religion into the public square and into debates about government, even if you're a president or senator.

"But, but but..."  sputter the leftwing Christophobes and anti-papist jihadis, "What's to keep Rick Santorum from implementing a theocracy, complete with a 16th Century inquisition with the hot pincers pulling out fingernails and women being burned for witchcraft?"

The US Constitution!  Defend it and it will defend you. The same 1st Amendment that safeguards our freedom of worship also prohibits religious zealots from hijacking government and using the federal seat of power to issue religious edicts.

Article 1, Section 8, lists the things the federal government may do: 

* Collect taxes to pay debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare
* Borrow money and regulate commerce with foreign nations and the several states
* Establish laws for immigration and bankruptcies
* Coin money and punish counterfeiters
* Establish post offices and patents
* Set up courts, punish pirates, declare war, raise armies and maintain a navy
* Exercise authority over the federal district and other federal properties

That's it, my liberal friends. Those are the powers delegated to the federal government by the people of these United States. And just in case the snakes tried to crawl out, the founders put this lid on it:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
-- 10th Amendment to the US Constution

The Constitution limits government's power, not the people's

Does anyone else find it troubling how progressives love pushing people around and telling us all how to live but will brook no criticism of government? It's especially entertaining how they do it while simultaneously crying about the imminent rightwingchristian takeover (which has been imminent since 1980, btw).

The constitution limits government and says nothing about how We The People should live.  The founders knew it wasn't government's place to tell people how much salt to put on their food; what kind of cars to drive; how to remunerate employees; what, when and where they may smoke; how many firearms we may own; let alone press taxpayers into the service of venture socialism and government funded crony crapitalism.

Congress Shall Make No Law...

In the Church-State debate sidebars that have broken out on the fringes of the 2012 culture wars, a common liberal argument recurs:

"You can’t have it both ways. You can’t demand government stay out of religion, and then attempt to insert your religion into debates about government. The Wall of Separation between Church and State applies to church as well as state."

That is wrong for a couple of reasons. First, there is no such thing as “a wall of separation” in the constitution. Here is what the First Amendment says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

So, contrary to progressive arguments, it is legitimate and constitutional to bring one’s religious values to the public square. You can even bring them to the House of Representatives, the Senate and the Presidency,  secure in the knowledge that you are a good American acting in accord with the US Constitution.

The second error in this statement is related to the first. The Constitution prohibits the federal government from establishing or prohibiting religion. It places no such strictures on citizens, so it doesn’t go both ways.

Consequently, We the People can have it both ways, freely exercising our religious rights in all public arenas while demanding government stay out of our business.

NY Times - Rick Santorum isn’t Crazy

Natural Rights and our Constitution

We've had some spirited conversations here over Church and State this past week.  I am thankful for all of you who visit here and contribute to the conversation.

I am writing this not so much to preach to the progressives, but to establish what I believe and why I believe it.  It scares me when I encounter people, especially conservatives, who believe our rights come from the constitution.  They do not.  I also want to say that I get wound up sometimes, but I genuinely respect the views of all my interlocutors and I greatly appreciate that you take the time to come here and debate.

A Living Document or Carved in Stone?

Progressivism depends upon a "living document" constitution, malleable and subject to modern reinterpretations, while strict constructionists insist the only valid manner of "reinterpretation" is to go through the amendment process.  I am a strict constructionist, but I can see the other side's point.

But anyway, here is my argument...

Natural Rights:  The Philosophical Foundation of our Constitutional Republic

Our founding fathers were born in the age of the divine right of kings.  The ruler was the lawgiver.  Some were tyrants about it, others were merely capricious, while some were downright enlightened in their rule. England's Glorious Revolution restored some power to the people, but Parliament came to be seen as capricious, issuing commands that violated personal sovereignty instead of discovering and enshrining broadly applicable principles as they existed among the people.

The founders based their political philosophy upon concepts explained in Locke's Second Treatise. All people possess the natural rights of life, liberty and property. Man exists in a state of nature, but as Hobbes observed, life there is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,"  so people gather in clans and communities where mores and societal norms spring forth and evolve.

Further, societies make rules to guarantee the rights of all. As such, Enlightenment minds considered "lawmaking" an abomination. "Law discovery" is a concept more fitted to a free people, for it presupposes that laws naturally exist by history and custom of a people. Lawmakers and judges merely discover and enunciate them as the need arises. A radical concept, but our founders were radical men.

Our Constitution Binds the Government, Not the People

They wrote the constitution to charge the federal government with specific responsibilites like national defense and regulating certain activities among the states. It was written to regulate the behavior of government, not that of the citizens. It was also written with man's natural rights in mind, which is why it is short on strictures on human behavior.

In the founders' minds, there were two spheres, the public and the private. Man is the sovereign of his personal sphere and government may not intrude upon it so long as a man does not intrude upon the personal sphere of another. Government may not compel a man to surrender property to another man, or press him into involuntary service unless it is specifically stated in the constitution, such as military service.

It is significant that the only positive rights mentioned in the constitution are legal rights that protect the citizen from the state, such as habeas corpus, representation, speedy trial, etc. All other rights mentioned are negative ones, essentially the right to conduct your own affairs as you see fit so long as you allow others to do the same.

There are no rights to food, or shelter or other material things. Indeed Hamilton and others argued against a Bill of Rights because they feared craven officials would use such a list to claim that other rights were excluded since they were not mentioned, or that listing them would give a pretext for government to claim to be the source of them and therefor subject to the whims of presidents and legislators.

We have no positive rights granting us the property of others

There is no right to health care, and there is no right to have others pay for it. It doesn't exist. To those who insist it does, I ask you then why you are not vociferously arguing against any religious exemption, especially the one that exempts churches from providing these services to employees? If it is a right, it may not be violated.

Does the federal government have the authority to tell a business to give things away?  That's what Obama's tissue-thin fig leaf of a compromise does.  It commands insurance companies to give stuff away.  If the government can do this, why not command grocery stores to give food away?  Better yet, solve the birth control issue by decreeing that all birth control products are free.  All someone has to do is walk in and take them.

This is the lala land we find ourselves in when government intrudes upon our personal sphere.  It has no business there, it violates the constitution, and leads to much illogic.  If goverment can tell you what kind of insurance you must provide your employees, why can't it tell you what kind of food to eat?

The reason it cannot is because nothing in the constitution authorizes it to invade the private realm of the individual.  To say otherwise is to expose us all to the whims of our elected officials and their army of bureaucrats.  It is tyranny.

Links:
Second Treatise of Civil Government - John Locke
US Constitution
Federalist Papers
See also Chapters 11, 12, and 14 of Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty (Sorry, no linky love!)

Attack on Catholic Church is an Attack on the Constitution

President Obama has decreed that the Catholic Church must provide birth control and abortifacients in the health care plans it offers to its employees

Here’s a statement from government suckerfish Planned Parenthood:

“This is good health policy and good economic policy,” said Dawn Laguens, vice president at Planned Parenthood. “It increases access to affordable birth control, but it is up to an individual employee to choose it or not. That’s very much the American way.” (El Lay Times – Contraceptive Mandate)

No.  It's not the American Way, as if a statist trained monkey raised and sustained on free taxpayer money would even begin to understand the concept. This is a terrible idea because it is a federal government telling private citizens what to do when it has no authority to do so.  A true free choice is one you make on your own and then pay for on your own without picking someone else’s pocket. That’s the American Way. The constitution was written to prevent such abuse.

Kevin Drum wrote that if you take government money you march to the government’s tune. It's a valid argument.  However, the violator here is not the Catholic Church; it is the US Government that is charged by We The People to be the guardian of our God-given rights. By ensnarling every last person in its tangled web, it has created a hopeless situation for anyone wanting to order their own lives and business free from the unblinking government gaze.

What gives the federal government the right to issue such dicta to churches? What gives it the right to command any organization or business in this way? What part of the constitution sanctions this?

The federal government is in bald-faced violation of the first amendment

You see, our rights are innumerable and bounded only by those outer limits where they interfere with the rights of others. Government’s rights are enumerated and limited; restricted by what that mandate from the people to their elected government, the US Constitution, says. This is what we need to be telling our politicians, our kids, and our family, friends, neighbors and coworkers who may have forgotten it. We also need to say it loud and proud when the smartass statist gargoyles in the press shove microphones in our faces at tea party rallies.

The US Constitution protects our God-given rights to life, liberty and property and it limits the actions the federal government may take against them. The very idea of mandating such everyday minutiae of our personal lives makes a mockery of our constitutional form of government.

Even Liberty's Defenders get it Wrong...

Oxymoronic ObamaCatholic Doug Kmiec proposes a speech Obama should give that admits the government was wrong. This phrase stuck out at me:

While the constitution doesn't mandate religious exemptions from general laws, I believe we should accommodate as many beliefs as possible and to the greatest extent possible without jeopardizing the purpose of the law. (Tim Reidy)

Firstly, we have no more general laws, as great jurists of England and the United states from centuries past would understand them. Our government no longer operates under the constitutional Rule of Law.  Rather, it now barrages us with stern commands and dictatorial edicts.

Religious Exemptions are a Warning Sign

Were our government’s lawmaking still in conformance with the constitution, there would be no requirement for “religious exemptions,” since the First Amendment bars government from prohibiting the free exercise of religion. The fact that our discussions of law and regulations are now so shot through with talk of exemptions is an indictment against our government and the craven batwinged legislators and bureaucrats who haunt its once-hallowed halls.

Federalist 84 eloquently expresses this concern, as Publius argues against a Bill of Rights. He saw the danger to all our rights that would be caused by enumerating certain of them. Hamilton proved to be quite prescient:

They would contain various exceptions to powers not granted; and, on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?

Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed?

I will not contend that such a provision would confer a regulating power; but it is evident that it would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretense for claiming that power. (Federalist 84)

Back when the constitution still mattered, honorable lawmakers would observe that this or that proposed legislation protrudes into the private lives of citizens, and thereby abandon the project.   Our post-constitutional government suffers no such scruples.  And the ignorant subjects stand up on their hind legs and applaud.

Caught Between Libertarianism and Conservatism

My Stupid Shirts

I have vowed that I would vote for the Sta-Puff Marshmallow Man over Obama, and if Newt gets the nomination, I'll get my chance to do so.

The only reason I can give for favoring Romney over Gingrich is that Romney is a capitalist, and Gingrich has been at the levers of governmental power his whole adult life.  I get the sense that at least Romney would know how to put the economy back together, even if his lustful statist urges worry me.

Santorum is qualified to be president, I think, but he worries me as well.  He's not just a statist, but a moralistic one.  And I share his moral values.  The difference between Santorum and I is that my Christian faith rules my life, but when discussing government and law, the US Constitution is my guide.  Nowhere does the constitution give government the right to dictate morals.

Libertarian-Conservative:  an Unstable Amalgam

Libertarianism and strict conservatism are not really compatible, and that explains much of the current GOP muddle.  Lured by the libertarian siren song, we've finally spat out the GOP's neither-hot-nor-cold conservative big government statism.

Modern-Day Republicanism is just progressivism with flags; moralistic we-say-so-ism dressed up in war and patriotism and religion.  In fact, it is damned near indistinguishable from Woodrow Wilson's Progressive conception of almost a century ago.

So now we find ourselves in a political cul-de-sac, heaping scorn on everyone who isn't Ron Paul, and yet unable to embrace the cranky small-government John the Baptist who has been crying out in the wilderness all these years.  Libertarianism lured us out of our ideological trenches, but now we are caught half-way, unable to embrace Paulism, which looks to conservatives almost indistinguishable from OWS.

There is a way out. Conservatives are on solid footing so long as we allow ourselves to be just as libertarian as the founding fathers. Any more than that, and we fall off of a cliff into a pit of incoherence and clashing incompatibilities.

Constitutionalism:  The Founders v. Ron Paul

Dr. Paul's constitutionalist claims strike me as trying to be more Catholic than the Pope.

George Washington invaded Canada, and as president he donned his military uniform to lead a militia army in putting down the Whiskey Rebellion. His protégé, Alexander Hamilton (one of the Federalist Papers authors) set up our nation's first central bank, and when a later congress voted against renewing it's charter, President Madison (another Federalist Papers author, and Father of the Constitution) established the Second Bank of America, another central bank. President Thomas Jefferson sent US Marines to the shores of Tripoli, and "The Last Founding Father" James Monroe's famous doctrine declared that any act by any European power to colonize any part of North or South America would be considered by the US government as an act of aggression to be met with military force.

Ron Paul is on the far side of the men who wrote the constitution and founded this nation.  Conservatives, like the founders, believe in an enduring moral order, and they are guided by custom and convention.  Libertarians clamor to tear down the wall; conservatives seek to know why it was put there in the first place before deciding to demolish it.

So its a tricky balancing act with a new equilibrium.  Some small government libertarianism of the founding father variety mixed in with a rediscovery of Russell Kirk Conservatism will put us back on solid footing.  Too bad no candidate fits the bill...  

Russell Kirk - 10 Conservative Principles
Gingrich: The Anti-Conservative
Gingrich vs Obama
My Stupid Shirts

Soft Secession

by Hugh Farnham

"...That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government."

Our relationship with the States' created agent, the Federal Government, is much like a marriage gone sour as Walter E. Williams points out. What was once a beneficial relationship has turned to one of spousal abuse, a nightly beat-down by the one in a wife-beater. As domestic victims, we have a choice: quietly leave, endure, or take drastic and violent measures.

President Lincoln tyrannically shut down the option of States outright divorcing the Federal Government. So what about a peaceful separation? If a spouse can't live in the same house without receiving abuse and scars, why not live apart? Separate beds, separate houses, but the same last name. Not a double espresso of Neo-Federalism, but a cup of Federal decaf, thanks.

Recently, Congress suspended Habeas Corpus and undermined the entire Bill of Rights - on the exact 220th anniversary of the adoption of the same Rights! Time would fail me to describe the myriad ways the Federal Government has overstepped its bounds and violated the 9th and 10th Amendments. Because of this train of abuses, America at this point is being described as "pre-revolutionary".

The idea of a Soft Secession has been building for some time. No wonder, the very foundation of this movement is enshrined in the Constitution itself. The idea of checks and balances, State's Rights, and limits to authority are all described in the Constitution.

Over 40 states have either passed or are in the process of passing state sovereignty resolutions and legislation.

So how could a State keep the Federales at arm's length? Vast swaths of the Federal Code unenforceable within freedom-loving States?

Isolate the Feds:

- Constitutional Sheriffs: Sheriff Mack has done great work in this area with his Constitutional Sheriff initiative. Is your Sheriff a Constitutional Sheriff?
- Fully Informed Juries: What if the jury members refused to convict because federal law is unjust and unconstitutional?
- States need to pass 10th Amendment Resolutions - with bite: Violations of State's Rights need to have mandatory jail time. Wyoming has this.
- Concealed Carry Rights: No permit needed concealed carry.
- States Rights Model Legislation: A poor man's Amendment process. If a plurality of states pass counter-federal legislation it is practically an amendment to the Constitution.

Cut Off The Coercive Financial Arm:

- State Banks: similar to North Dakota's State Bank
- Gold and Silver currency laws: Utah has just passed one
- A return of the concept of Allodial Property
- Federal taxes collected by, and potentially withheld by, the States themselves

Organization:

- Broadcast a common vision of what a Soft Secession would look like, and the benefits thereof to the citizens of that State
- An independent press that are not apologists for the police state
- County by county activists who would share this vision and stir up the people to make this a reality

I would encourage you to read two pieces by Walter E. Williams on this: Time for an Amicable Separation and Parting Company. If we don't act our future will closely resemble the fall of Rome - Martin Armstrong provides an excellent financial / historical analysis of this. They say history doesn't really repeat, but it does rhyme.

"All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force." -- George Orwell.

We are entering into a new phase with our abusive Federal spouse. The lies that once held us together are being exposed; all that is left now is naked force.

Why Government Doesn't Work

Government doesn't work because it was never meant to work the way liberal statists want it to work

The founders never envisioned 535 men and women, teamed with an imperial president and his coterie of unelected czars and a multi-million man bureaucratic army dictating rules on how the rest of us should live and arguing over how to split the loot.

Like mercy, the quality of liberty is not strained

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. (US Constitution, 9th Amendment)

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. (US Constitution, 10th Amendment)

They didn't put those amendments in there for the hell of it. The larger the collective, the more difficult it is to find solutions that satisfy everyone. Coercion and unhappiness will logically follow.

Western Hero - US Constitution

Multi-Failure

The federal government has attempted to be all things to everyone, and as a result it has become damn near useless to everyone, except the political class and the narrow interest groups they service

Do you own a Leatherman, a Gerber multi-tool or some other all-in-one gadget? They're pretty handy, especially when you're in the back forty and the carburetor needs an emergency adjustment, or you're out checking up on some remote equipment and end up having to fix something unexpectedly.

The pliers can double as a wrench, but you usually end up rounding off the bolt a little. The screwdriver will work in a pinch, so long as it doesn't fold up on you and pinch your finger or wreck the screw head because it's not exactly the right size... And the knife cuts pretty good while the rest of the tool cuts into your hand as you use it, and same for the file, saws, awls, openers and other gadgets these tools have incorporated into themselves.

Federal Government:  Multi-Tool Failure

Over the past half-century, Washington has insinuated itself into a thousand-and-one decisions that individuals or local governments are more than capable of making for themselves.

Which medicines can you buy? How efficient should your light bulbs be? Can your children’s school day begin with a prayer? Who qualifies for a mortgage? When do unemployment benefits run out? Can you pay an employee $5 an hour if that’s what his labor is worth? Should abortions be restricted? Is health insurance optional? Do artists or farmers or broadcasters require subsidies? Are you in charge of your retirement income? (Jeff Jacoby)

Mentioning the Enumerated Powers elicits titters among the sophisticated class, and that's too bad. Toqueville admired our ability to order our own lives at the local and personal level without the aid of an overweening government at every turn.

In Federalist No. 45, James Madison emphasized that, under the Constitution, the powers of the federal government “are few and defined,’’ while those left to state and local communities “are numerous and indefinite.’’ For the first 150 years or so of US history that was largely the case. But New Deal and Great Society liberalism has turned the framers’ careful arrangement inside out. Today, there is almost nothing in American life that Washington does not consider itself fit to regulate, control, ban, tax, or mandate. (Jeff Jacoby)

The Federal Government has gone from a beautiful, narrowly-focused instrument into a horribly bulky multi-use tool with 10 bajillion gadgets that tears your pockets open, injures you every time you try to use it, and is so damned bulky it cannot be employed for its intended purpose.

Clarence Thomas: Constitutional Hero

Clarence Thomas could end up destroying progressive statism

Walter Russell Mead writes that the left has gone from declaring Clarence Thomas a dunce to ringing all-hands-on-deck alarm bells over the horrible realization that this justice has been patiently sapping the very foundations of New Deal statism for over 20 years.  Shock and horror, ladies and gentlemen:  The left has finally realized, hopefully too late, that Justice Clarence Thomas is a brilliant constitutional scholar of formidable intellect.

What we didn’t know, and what the world at large didn’t know until very recently, was that the New Deal constitution was not as permanent or unalterable as it looked.  Intellectually its foundations were shaky, and after two decades of a Clarence Thomas-led assault, the constitutional doctrines that permitted the rise of the powerful federal government could be close to collapse.  (New Blue Nightmare:  Clarence Thomas)

The Sun Also Sets

In the case of the Second Amendment, the collapse has already come.  Back in my Pundit High days, anyone who dared to suggest that the Bill of Rights gave individuals the right to bear arms would have been laughed out of the class as an ignorant yahoo.  These days, that is the accepted view of the US Supreme Court and most of the legal profession.  The resurrection of the Second Amendment proves that the “dead letter” clauses of the Constitution can come back to life — and suggests that Clarence Thomas understands how this can be done.

Justice Thomas is the intellectual firepower that will eventually blow the Obamacare Battlestar Gallactica out of the sky...

...which is why liberals are screaming for him to recuse himself on such a flimsy premise:  His wife, instead of being an angry feminist footsoldier in progressivism's long march, instead has become a tea party activist.  Liberals hate how conservative male chauvenist pigs control their women, but hate it more when they don't.

The next topic for Constitutional revisionism is the expansive reading of the commerce clause that the New Deal judges used to justify the Roosevelt administration’s ambitious economic programs.  The Obamacare health reform depends on that kind of reading of the commerce clause; the penumbras must stretch pretty far for the Constitution to give Congress the right to require all Americans to buy private health insurance.  And if the commerce clause can be stretched this far, one must ask whether there is anything that the Constitution blocks Congress from doing.

The terrified left realizes that this is not the end of Thomas' efforts, but rather just the beginning...

The Second Amendment was a constitutional landmine for the left; the Tenth is a nuclear bomb.

A strict reading of the 10th Amendment would invalidate many expensive and expansive federal programs.  Thomas's cogent arguments in a few key cases could restore personal liberty to its rightful primacy and return us to a serious reading of the enumerated powers, finally arresting the progressives of all parties who have hijacked the ship of state.

Taken seriously today, that approach to the Constitution would change the way Washington does business.  Radically.  The list of enumerated powers is short and does not include, for example, health care, education, agricultural subsidies, assistance to the hungry or old age pensions.  Most of the New Deal and Great Society (with the interesting exception of civil rights laws which enforce the Civil War era amendments) would be struck down.  Whole cabinet departments would close.

Mead tempers expectations, saying none of this will happen tomorrow, if at all.  But it is the single greatest threat the all-encompassing progressive state has ever faced.  Even if nothing dramatic transpires, Justice Thomas has moved the intellectual football and advanced the cause of liberty, actually changing scholarly legal thought, and that will redound to our good for decades to come.

I've only given you a taste of this erudite and entertaining writer's article.  I recommend you go read the whole thing.  It will lift your spirits while enlightening you.  He couches this entire article in a Lord of the Rings theme, making the reading of such weighty matters an absolute delight.  

All quotes from:  New Blue Nightmare:  Clarence Thomas

Please go read the original Jeffrey Toobin article, Partners.  You will gain a great appreciation of just how badly Justice Thomas and his brilliant wife frighten the left.

Your Rights on a Jury

You have more power than a bad law... or even the Judge himself!

Our system of government was designed as one of checks and balances. One of those checks was the jury system, the right to be tried by an impartial jury.

The idea was that if the ballot box didn't work, (i.e. bad laws were passed and then enforced), the jury box could right the wrongs created. This was done to avoid the upheavals caused by reaching for another box – the ammo box.

The current judicial system holds jury’s rights in contempt, or in their words, “jury lawlessness”. The idea that one jury member could nullify a bad prosecution, (or should I say “persecution”?) sticks in the craw of statists in black robes. It wasn’t always like that.

Originally, the concept of a jury of your peers was a group of twelve local men who knew you in life. They were the ones who judged you, based upon lifelong experiences with you and the facts in the case. They also judged the law, its application and even the morality of the law itself. They judged the facts and the law.

They did not elevate a mere man in a black robe to God-like status. They believed that their trial decision would be judged at the end of their life by the eternal Judge himself.

In time a doctrine evolved here in the United States whereupon juries were given strict instructions to only judge the facts in a case and regardless of the morality of the law – higher minds and the elite would determine if laws were Constitutional. This flies in the face of the original intent of juries!

Weeding out Jury Members Who Know About Jury Nullification

Expect to be asked if you believe juries can disregard laws they believe are wrong if you are called to jury duty in a criminal trial. If you are selected, expect a stern judge to order you to judge only the facts in the case.

Personally, I would not admit knowledge of my rights. Let me tell you why.

“‘Tis no crime to lie to a liar.” Corrupt lawyers and judges have distorted the real reason we have juries – and privately, many would prefer the institution of juries to go away permanently, as is beginning in England.

That being said, if your wife and daughter were downstairs in the basement when an armed rapist breaks into your house, are you going to answer truthfully when the thug asks where the womenfolk are? Of course not.

In a similar way I don’t have a twinge of conscience when it comes to not being forthright to a prosecutor looking to weed out “lawless jury members”. In fact, I would consider it a badge of honor to derail a dirty prosecution for someone accused of violating one of our gun control laws innocently or a host of other federal laws that violate the Constitution.

I believe I will have to give account one day. If I was involved in sending someone to prison for violating an evil law, that will be held against me.

And what is a judge? An unholy hybrid of a politician and a lawyer. Tell me what is honorable about that, your Honor!

What can you do?

Get educated on the Fully Informed Jury. Spread the truth to your family and friends.

With the existing heap of federal and state laws, you most likely have committed (unknowingly) some felony. Perhaps even today. Who knows, some investigator with a quota to fill could get you thrown into jail – your only hope then is someone on the jury who knows his rights and has the guts to do the right thing.

Be the change you hope to see. Exercise your rights on a jury. Wisely. Spread the word – the life you may save may be your own.

- Hugh Farnham

Is Bobby Jindal Eligible to be President of The United States of America?

Bobby Jindal released his birth certificate a few weeks back, and I'm surprised it didn't get more press.

He was born in Louisiana, so he is a citizen by birth.  His parents were immigrants here on green cards.  Is he natural born?  It's an important question since Jindal is regarded as a potential future candidate for President of The United States.

Like President Obama, I'm no legal scholar.  I do know that despite the insistence of Obama haters who TYPE IN ALL CAPS, the issue is neither simple nor settled.

I have four presumably unbiased links below and all are inconclusive, because such a case has never been decided in a US court of law.  The US Constitution does not define "natural born citizen."

If anyone has some authoritative references, please share them in the comments section. 

Links:
US Constitution - Citizenship
FindLaw.com - Qualifications
Eugene Volokh - Natural Born Citizen Clause
Eugene Volokh - Correction about Natural Born Citizen Law

Why Obamacare is Unconstitutional

Progressives and their Democrat Party handmaidens have it upside down

We The People are sovereign over our own lives; government is the servant, not the master. 


The US Constitution does not give us rights; it protects those unalienable rights given to us by God.  The Federal Government is not the "boss" of the states or the people.  The US Constitution is the instruction manual that the Federal Government must follow, and it was dictated by We The People and the several states.

Ron DeSantis and Adam Laxalt have written an excellent article on why Obamacare is unconstitutional.  It is chock full of quotes from the founders talking about how the federal powers are few and defined, not indefinite.  They succinctly lay out their case using the words of the founders... 

As Madison famously explained in The Federalist No. 45, the "powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined." 

As a congressman, Madison warned against constructions of the Constitution that rendered the government "no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions." 

If inactivity can be characterized as commercial activity, then virtually anything is ripe for federal supervision, converting the Constitution into an "unlimited government," which is precisely what the Founding Fathers tried to prevent.  (American Spectator)

Such ideas embodied in our constitution are anathema to progressives and subversive to their cause.

Sacred Constitution

Another day, another lefty smear...

We on the right do not believe the constitution is "sacred," we do not have a constitution "fetish" and we do not revere the founding fathers as gods sitting upon Mount Olympus. God did not carve the articles with lightning bolts, and George Washington did not carry them down from Mt Vernon, beard turned white from the encounter. We also know our history and understand the great debates and compromises that went into crafting the document.

"Constitutionalism" Blocks the Progressive Agendas of All Parties
We also don't believe that the constitution should not be changed. We merely believe it stands as written and currently amended, and should not be violated. If you want to do something that contravenes it, you must follow the amendment process. Proto-progressives understood this, hence amendments to ban alcohol and institute an income tax. Nowadays, these pseudo-intellectual busybodies are too arrogant to debate with the grubby hoi polloi, so they use raw bureaucratic power to ram through their progressive projects.

The overblown rhetoric and ridicule is meant to diminish the conservative cause and mask the progressive's dangerous disdain for our foundational principles.

Michael Lind is just one of the legion of goosestepping foot soldiers who has written one more stupid article on the subject.  He follows the lefty catechism by first smearing everybody to the right of himself (which is now, tee hee hee, an expanding majority)...

"Now that the Republican Party, founded as a northern party opposed to the extension of slavery, is disproportionately a party of white Southern reactionaries"

He must have been out of the country, or out of his mind high on hopium this last election. It's entertaining and encouraging that the craven, clutching, shriveled band of leftists think over 60% of the country are toothless, racist hicks. That's a sure way to bring people to your side, Michael! Keep it up.

A "Living" Constitution
He then tiredly employs the boilerplate liberal arguments about how we worship the founders and their documents.  Ho hum. Charles Krauthammer gets to the heart of the matter. This is really a fight over what the constitution means:

"Originalism has grown to become the major challenger to the liberal "living Constitution" school, under which high courts are channelers of the spirit of the age, free to create new constitutional principles accordingly."

Progressives hate a strict interpretation of the constitution because it stands in their way, and that is exactly what the document is supposed to do. Democrats and Republicans have been violating the document for over 100 years, with the consent of black-robed mullas. Imagine if it were merely treated as a notional ideal; we would be living in a much less free and less prosperous nation.

The Constitution is predicated on the belief that we are all free people with God-given rights, and no other man, nor government may violate them. The statists have it ass-backwards, thinking our rights come from the government. The ink stained propagandists, like their partners in government, are frustrated to no end that "the experts" cannot twist and knead public policy to herd us like cattle and goosestep us all into a brighter progressive future.

Clarity over Agreement

This concentrated attack on conservatives by the liberal press is instructive. The press is not neutral; it is biased. They are now reduced to strawman arguments and comparing the Republicans choosing to not read the superseded parts of the constitution with the editor that has censored Twain's Huckleberry Finn.

“You’re not supposed to worship your Constitution,” (Democratic Congressman Jerrold) Nadler huffed. “You are supposed to govern your government by it.” (Quoted in Human Events)

Govern the government by the constitution? We'd settle for that! We drop the "worship," and government actually starts governing by the constitution. That's a deal liberty-lovers can live with!

We are winning, my fellow tea partiers. Indignant howls from the liberal press are our victory trumpets.

Progressives Hate the US Constitution

Progressives hate the tea parties and they hate the constitution.  These are the two principle impediments preventing them from finishing what Woodrow Wilson and FDR started.

"The Constitution was not made to fit us like a straitjacket. In its elasticity lies its chief greatness."

-- Woodrow Wilson

Liberal Propaganda Deconstructed

The liberal propagandists in the press tried branding us racists, but such blatant attacks don't work anymore, so they have adopted more subtle tactics.  EJ Dionne is the latest to deploy a deft combination I call the non-sequitur straw man.  Follow me as I deconstruct a piece of progressive propaganda.

Unlike God, the founders left us an amendment process

Dionne's neat rhetorical trick asserts that we tea partiers equate the US Constitution with the Holy Bible.  This is a neat trick because yes, we believe the constitution must be followed just as The Bible must be.  His unstated non-sequitur avers that since we equate the constitution with The Bible, we must also equate the founders with God Almighty.  This sets up the straw man argument that we worship the constitution and the founders.  It's a straw man because unlike God, the founders left us an amendment process.

Dionne starts out with an innocuous statement...

I offer the Republicans two cheers for their fealty to their professed ideals. We badly need a full-scale debate over what the Constitution is, means and allows -- and how Americans have argued about these questions since the beginning of the republic. This provision should be the springboard for a discussion all of us should join.

He plants a few little seeds of doubt there, but so far so good.  Next comes the premise for the non-sequitur straw man...

From its inception, the tea party movement has treated the nation's great founding document not as the collection of shrewd political compromises that it is, but as the equivalent of sacred scripture.

Note that this statement contains two elements, the first is plainly stated, the second one tacitly follows:  1) The constitution is a document like The Bible that government must obey; 2) Unstated:  If the constitution is the equivalent of sacred scripture, then the founders are the equivalent of an infallible God. 

Number 2 is the strawman that does not follow from the first statement.  Since EJ cannot argue with statement #1, he invents the non-sequitur strawman, statement #2, and then knocks it down: 

Yet as Gordon Wood, the widely admired historian of the Revolutionary era has noted, we "can recognize the extraordinary character of the Founding Fathers while also knowing that those 18th-century political leaders were not outside history. ... They were as enmeshed in historical circumstances as we are, they had no special divine insight into politics, and their thinking was certainly not free of passion, ignorance, and foolishness."

See how he sets up the straw man so he can knock down those crazy rightwingers who want to tea party like it's 1776?  EJ Dionne is too smart to really believe that we deify the founders, so all I can conclude is that he is engaging in a deliberate propaganda smear.   

Progressives are not out to destroy the tea parties; they have bigger fish to fry:

An examination of the Constitution that views it as something other than the books of Genesis or Leviticus would be good for the country.

Yes, let's knock that dusty bit of outmoded parchment off its pedestal.  Good progressives like EJ Dionne and Ezra Klein are just following in the footsteps of Progressivism's great grand daddy, Woodrow Wilson.  They can’t quite muster the intellectual starch of this racist scholar and failed statesman, but it’s just the right pitch for the MSNBC crowd.  It's neo-progressivism reduced to valley girl vapidity:

"The constitution is, like, so old, and full of, like, so many old words that are, like, spelled funny.  Bogus!  It's like totally irrelevant, totally!"

They want a living, breathing constitution, to which Dr. Walter E. Williams has the perfect riposte:

How many people would like to play me poker and have the rules be "living"? Depending on "evolving standards," maybe my two pair could beat your flush.

Indeed.  Those who crave power and control must have "living rules."  Oh, and they also want to hold the book, because some animals are more equal than others.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/01/03/celebrating_the_new_gop_majority_108404.html