Fast and Furious Falling Apart

By Russ Vaughn | June 21, 2012 | American Thinker

 When BATF agents first blew the whistle on what is now known as Operation Fast and Furious, the rationale offered by DoJ for such an evidently foolish operation was that it was designed to allow BATF to track and prosecute the leaders of the Mexican drug cartels.  As more information surfaced from the Mexican government and the BATF’s Mexican bureau chief specifying that none of them knew anything of this operation, many of us who were paying a bit closer attention to the case immediately smelled the first foul scent of corruption.

The fatal flaw in DoJ’s explanation was this: if the Mexican authorities had not been brought into the operation, nor even the BATF’s own agents authorized to operate in Mexico, then the proffered DoJ justification made utterly no sense, for the simple reason that once those walked guns hit the south side of that border, there was absolutely no process in place to track them to their supposed targets.  Therefore, DoJ was patently misrepresenting its motive.  Why?

Thomas Sowell: The Immigration Ploy

By Thomas Sowell | June 19, 2012 | American Spectator

This is all about getting the Hispanic vote this November — but what about after November?

President Obama’s latest political ploy — granting new “rights” out of thin air, by Executive Order, to illegal immigrants who claim that they were brought into the country when they were children — is all too typical of his short-run approach to the country’s long-run problems.

Whatever the merits or demerits of the Obama immigration policy, his Executive Order is good only as long as he remains president, which may be only a matter of months after this year’s election.

People cannot plan their lives on the basis of laws that can suddenly appear, and then suddenly disappear, in less than a year. To come forward today and claim the protection of the Obama Executive Order is to declare publicly and officially that your parents entered the country illegally. How that may be viewed by some later administration is anybody’s guess.

The Democrat Race Lie

By Bob Parks | June 16, 2012 | Black and Right

This whopper deserves all the attention it can get. Again, it shows the ignorance and contempt of the electorate liberals depend on.

In 2010, Democrats gave their website a facelift and whitewash. Click on the screenshot above to see what they used to say about their civil rights history compared to now.

Obama Amnesty Plan: Catch, Release, Vote

By Rush Limbaugh | June 15, 2012 | RushLimbaugh.com

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  I have a name for this new Obama immigration policy. In case you haven’t heard, folks, very quickly. The regime today told the border agents: “If you catch young illegals, let ’em go and grant ’em work permits.”  No more deportation of illegal immigrants.  They are to be given work permits and they can stay in the country.  So what this is is “Catch, Release, Vote.”

JOHNNY DONOVAN:  And now, from sunny south Florida, it’s Open Line Friday!

RUSH:  That is exactly what this is: Catch, Release, Vote.

Executive Fiat: Obama Ignores Constitution in Display of Crass Political Calculus [Video]

Detroit: The Moral of the Story

By Kevin D. Williamson | Jun 8, 2012 | National Review

The Left’s answer to the deficit: raise taxes to protect spending. The Left’s answer to the weak economy: raise taxes to enable new spending. The Left’s answer to the looming sovereign-debt crisis: raise taxes to pay off old spending. For the Left, every deficit is a revenue-side problem, not a spending-side problem, and the solution to every economic problem is more spending, necessitating more taxes. The problem with that way of looking at things is called Detroit, which looks to be running out of money in about one week. Detroit is what liberalism’s end-game looks like.

Electricity Bills are About to ‘Necessarily Skyrocket’

By Derek Hunter | June 9, 2012 | Breitbart News

In January of 2008, then Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama, talking about his energy plan, told the San Francisco Chronicle, “When I was asked earlier about the issue of coal…under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket…” He wasn’t kidding.

While he was talking about his cap and trade plan, something that went nowhere in Congress, even when Democrats controlled it with a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, his objective of changing how we generate electricity hasn’t changed. Neither has his lack of concern for the cost to consumers.

Exposed: Wisconsin Democrats’ Plan to Smear Conservatives and Governor Walker [Slideshow]

Exposed: Wisconsin Democrats’ Plan to Smear Conservatives and Governor Walker

Unlike Obama, Scott Walker delivers

By Sen. Ron Johnson | May 31, 2012 | Politico

Scott Walker has lived up to his campaign promises, author says. | AP Photo

Starting Wednesday, most of the folks I know in Wisconsin will be looking forward to a well-earned respite from what seems like a permanent campaign.

Instead of taking a break from politics between elections, Wisconsin has for months been dealing with fugitive legislators, ugly protests, legal challenges and a series of recall contests allegedly aimed at overturning Gov. Scott Walker’s legislative agenda. There’s virtually no possibility that his successful reforms will be overturned, so one has to wonder: What exactly is the point of Tuesday’s recall vote?

The simple facts are the governor’s reforms have worked, and Wisconsin is open for business.

The Road to Recall: One Left-Wing Loss After Another in Wisconsin

By Joel B. Pollak | June 1, 2012 | Breitbart News

Tuesday’s recall election in Wisconsin is the culmination of a long political campaign waged by the left to reverse the results of the watershed 2010 election, and to prevent reforms that might be imitated elsewhere. These included: tax cuts for job-creating businesses, spending reductions to turn deficits into surplus, and collective bargaining reforms that freed state and local governments from the onerous cost of union benefits.

Recall 2.0: Unions Launch Effort to Recall LA Gov. Jindal

By Kevin Mooney | May 29, 2012 | Breitbart News

While media attention is understandably focused on the recall effort aimed against Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin, free market advocates should not lose sight of the pressure tactics applied against Gov. Bobby Jindal in Louisiana. This coming weekend “RecallBobbyJindal” will be holding petition signature drives throughout the state, which are not likely to get very far. But they are indicative of what reform-minded governors can expect when they secure policy changes that elevate taxpayer interests above union perks.

The NDAA: Just one more link in the chain of tyranny [Video]

By James Corbett | January 15, 2012 | Corbett Report

Each year, the United States Department of Defense budget and expenditures are approved by Congress, which must pass a National Defense Authorization Act in order to fund the DoD.

NDAA and the US Constitution (Parts 1-3) [Video]

This video series takes a critical look at the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) recently signed into law. This law is just the most recent example of our government using the justification of fear and the war on terror to remove the constraints on government power which are intrinsic to our Constitution. If you examine the ramifications of the changes, it becomes clear that the wisdom of the protections of civil liberties included in our constitution can and should be applied to the modern age.

New York Legislation Would Ban Anonymous Online Speech

By David Kravets | May 22, 2012 | Wired Magazine

Did you hear the one about the New York state lawmakers who forgot about the First Amendment in the name of combating cyber-bullying and “baseless political attacks”?

Proposed legislation in both chambers would require New York-based websites, such as blogs and newspapers, to “remove any comments posted on his or her website by an anonymous poster unless such anonymous poster agrees to attach his or her name to the post.”

Harvard Law, the Commerce Clause, and the Obamacare Mandate

By Jim Byrd | May 11, 2012 | Canada  Free Press

Harvard Law School Professor Einer Elhauge published an article in The New Republic titled, “If Health Insurance Mandates Are Unconstitutional, Why Did the Founding Fathers Back Them?” The foundation of his argument is the belief that the Militia Act of 1792 was a mandate to purchase a firearm, and the 1790 and 1798 acts by Congress requiring that ship owners purchase medical insurance for seamen, was a mandate forcing the citizens of the states to make a commercial purchase under the Commerce Clause.

Professor Elhauge presents as fact that these two mandates required engagement in commerce, thus setting 200+ years of precedent by the first Congress, “which was packed with framers,” as per his depiction. He then states, “Nevermind that nothing in the text or history of the Constitution’s Commerce Clause indicates that Congress cannot mandate commercial purchases.” The professor appears to subscribe to the oft employed licentious theorem of the Left that if it is not enumerated in Article 1, Section 8, then Congress can presume it has unfettered authority to mandate, tax, legislate, control, and dictate wantonly. But, plausibly, historically, and factually, that is neither the intent nor the spirit of Article 1, Section 8, as it was not an enumeration of what the government should or could do, but rather a very narrow set of limitations constraining what the government can do. What the government cannot do is mandate commercial purchases under the Commerce Clause, as that power was not enumerated, intended, nor would it have survived ratification. Perhaps a perfunctory history lesson of why the Constitution was created, and the purpose of the Commerce Clause, may be the antidote to apocryphal balderdash.

Liberals, progressives, and a particular genus of law professors are wringing their hands in animated intoxication regarding these two particular mandates cited by Professor Elhauge. And reinforcing Professor Elhauge’s theorem of mandated purchases under the Commerce Clause, the Left are evidencing case law functioning as unsanctioned amendments to the Constitution, or as unsanctioned legislation fabricated by American jurisprudence. This benighted infatuation with stare decisis, this judicial inbreeding of the Supreme Court assigning dominion of past Supreme Court rulings as surrogates for the Constitution, has resulted in the passing of deleterious and recessive traits to each Supreme Court progenitor. As with genetics, if the Supreme Court reaches a faulty decision, or flagrant political or agenda driven decision, this trait is passed down to each successive Supreme Court that is indentured by the judicial genetics of stare decisis. Professor Elhauge appears to be erroneously attesting that the first Congress, “which was packed with framers,” mandated that the citizens of sovereign states, states that ceded very few enumerated powers to the newly created federal government, were forced to engage in commerce ad libitum.

Before brandishing adulterate case law and phantom mandates, one question must first be answered: What was the purpose of adding the Commerce Clause to the Constitution?

One must delve much deeper than the burlesque Supreme Court assembled by FDR and its league of handpicked ideologues parading around as judiciously inclined justices. These robe wearing sycophants infected American constitutional jurisprudence with the New Deal, and especially Wickard v. Filburn. Wickard v. Filburn breached the boundaries of the Constitution by affording the federal government an almost immeasurable expansion of powers via the Commerce Clause. And if this unburdened scope of power was the original intent of the Commerce Clause, what was the point of the founders penning the remainder of the Constitution if it is subordinate to the Commerce Clause? Indeed, it is necessary to delve beyond FDR’s reign, beyond Professor Elhauge’s imaginary mandates of commerce, back to the Articles of Confederation and the commercial dysfunction between the states.

Prior to the ratification of the United States Constitution, the governing document of the United States was the Articles of Confederation. Of the myriad weaknesses of this document, the focus will be commerce and the militia, as these two areas are what Professor Elhauge perhaps employed in some fashion of palmistry to arrive at his supposition.

Prior to the American Revolution, colonial commerce was regulated by Great Britain, and to a greater extent in the years just preceding the Declaration of Independence. After independence was declared, the framework of colonial commerce changed, immediately going from regulated to unregulated. Without a structured and enforceable set of regulations to ensure the equitable and uninterrupted flow of the transportation of goods between the states, counterproductive trade barriers between the states arose and jeopardized the necessary commercial alliances of the states essential for sustainability of the nation. The states having the advantage of ports charged exploitative tariffs on goods that passed through their ports en route to and from the states without ports. This started a series of trade wars pitting states with ports against states without ports, with both sides charging counterproductive tariffs.

To compound the problems created by discordant commerce, the Articles of Confederation lacked the mechanism to provide and enforce a uniform monetary policy to protect commerce as well. Under the Articles of Confederation, the states had the authority to setup their own monetary systems and print their own currency.

Article III of the Articles of Confederation addresses the states entering into a “firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defense,” while Article VII addresses the appointing of officers of the land forces raised by the states, and Article VIII addresses the expenses and funding of “All charges of war, and all other expenses that shall be incurred for the common defense or general welfare.” The government did not have to power to raise an army for defense, and the government did not have to funds to honor Article VIII regarding paying expenses of defense, as the government was unable to even collect the taxes due to pay off the debt from the Revolutionary War. The states generally ignored the federal government regarding taxes, and the Articles left the government powerless to collect taxes.

Even though the states maintained their militias after the end of the war, the inability of the federal government to raise an army left the newly sovereign states vulnerable without a united military front. Even after the Treaty of Paris was signed, the forts in Northwest Territory remained under British control and occupation. The states were not enforcing nor abiding by the provisions of the Treaty of Paris, and the government lacked the power to compel them to do so.

Read the full article here.

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London 2012 Is Psychological Warfare [Video]

By Paul Joseph Watson | May 12, 2012 | Infowars.com

The London 2012 Olympics have barely anything to do with sport. Not only is Britain continuing pagan/Nazi traditions and symbolism, the event is also a police state showcase and a psychological warfare attack on the people.

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Five myths about America’s decline

By Ian Bremmer | May 3, 2012 | The Washington Post

 Challenging everything you think you know 

Drawn-out wars, economic struggles, exploding debt — it’s easy to point to these signs and conclude that America is in an irreversible decline; that after a good run, it’s time to hand the superpower baton to China or some other up-and-comer. Certainly, America faces big challenges, and it’s true that, economically, the United States was better off a decade ago. But those seeing decline as inevitable do not just ignore the nation’s history of resilience, they also misread the facts on the ground. America’s decline is a myth — and here are five common misconceptions worth dispelling.

1. The United States is no longer a superpower.

Certainly, countries such as China and Russia have more power than ever to obstruct U.S. foreign policy goals; their United Nations veto against intervention in Syria is one recent example. And the United States is increasingly unwilling to play the role of global cop, as it pares back its presence in the Middle East and fights over significant possible cuts to its defense budget because of Capitol Hill’s failure to reach a debt deal.

Even so, the United States is still the world’s only superpower, and so it will remain for the foreseeable future. Its economy is more than twice the size of second-place China’s. Only America can project military power in every region of the globe: It has a military presence in more than three-quarters of the world’s countries and spends more each year on defense than the next 17 nations combined. This security role lets Europe and Japan spend less on defense and more on other priorities. The U.S. Navy safeguards important trade routes, enabling global commerce, while American aid bolsters poor and disaster-stricken states.

2. America’s economic future is bleak.

Part of the reason the United States is less willing to engage abroad is because it has its hands full with economic concerns at home: spiraling federal debt, high unemployment, lower wages and a growing disparity of wealth.But while the U.S. economic outlook may not shine as bright as it once did, it is hardly grim. America’s higher education system is unparalleled, with a record 725,000 foreign students enrolled at U.S. universities last year. No country has a greater capacity for technological breakthroughs: The United States is the destination of choice for aspiring entrepreneurs, it’s the research and development center of the world, and Silicon Valley’s start-ups and venture capitalism are exemplary.On energy, innovation in unconventional oil and gas resources has been the biggest game-changer of the past decade, with U.S.-based companies leading the charge. The United States is now the largest natural gas producer in the world. It is also the world’s largest food exporter, giving America some leverage against food price shocks or shortages. Demographically, the United States is better off than other large economies. The U.S. population is expected to rise by more than 100 million by 2050, and the labor force should grow by 40 percent. Compare that with Europe, where the population is slated to shrink by as much as 100 million people over the same span, or to China, where the labor force is already contracting.

3. America’s political system is broken.

Gridlock in Washington makes all of America’s problems seem even more intractable. Many believe that Congress is too divided to ever pass meaningful legislation again. But let’s not forget that the first two years of the Obama administration saw more significant legislation passed — such as the stimulus, the health-care overhaul and the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reforms — than any period since the mid-1960s. Whether or not you like the direction in which Obama took the country, the system is hardly broken.

Read the full article here.

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How Liberals Successfully Silence Dissent

By Phil Elmore | May 3, 2012 | WND

Exclusive: Phil Elmore challenges conservatives to start fighting for keeps

Liberals adore the idea of silencing dissent. To this end, and because they believe they hold the moral high ground when contending with heartless, selfish, benighted conservatives, liberals will use a combination of intimidation, threats and dishonesty to destroy or remove any and all critics.

The Obama administration has tried several times to exploit this tendency among its more ardent followers. There was the White House email hotline, flag@whitehouse.gov; there was the running joke that was “AttackWatch” and its Twitter account; more recently, Obama’s flacks have been pushing the Orwellian “Truth Team.” Liberals are also abusing Twitter’s spam-reporting system to trigger automatic blocking of conservative Twitter accounts.

The goal, in every case, is to respond to the outrage that is political dissent in Obama’s America. The means is to threaten, to shout down and to shut up. Dare to express an opinion counter to Dear Leader’s Democratic Party line? Obama demands his violent and foul-smelling Occupy Wall Street rabble “get in your face” and yell at you until you stop talking. This is the “Coming Obama Thugocracy” Michael Barone predicted almost four years ago.

There was a time when liberals told us that criticizing judges for their extra-constitutional interpretations of the law was tantamount to agitating for those judges’ assassination. Today, those same liberals attack the United States Supreme Court if they suspect there exists even the possibility some of Obama’s unconstitutional legislation may be found so. When Democrats did not hold the White House, no less a lib luminary than Hillary Clinton famously screeched that we are Americans, and we have the right to disagree with any administration. Today, if you disagree with Obama, Democrat thugs are supposed to “get in your face” and explain to you the error of your ways.

There is no room for debate; there is no opportunity for discussion; there is no way even to argue, no matter how passionately. No, if you are a conservative, you are supposed to close your mouth-hole, and if you don’t like it, Obama voters can find some union thugs, some club-wielding racists, or some mob of whining communists to beat you until you can’t speak.

Conservatives and libertarians are in part to blame for this wretched state of affairs. We don’t fight well. We don’t stand up for ourselves, nor protect our own. We harrumph and we cluck and we shake our heads, refusing to challenge the logically flawed premises the libs foist on us. We agree with liberal useful idiots that Rush Limbaugh should not call a slut a slut, that what Mitt Romney does with his money is a greater outrage than what Barack Hussein Obama does with your money. We let the enemy frame the “debate.” We let our opposition set the terms. We never simply stand up and say, “I reject your flawed premise … and if you don’t get ‘out of my face,’ I will drop you where you stand.”

Read the full article here.

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The Empire of Poverty [Video]

By Daniel Greenfield | April 29, 2012 | Sultan Knish

Controlling a large number of people isn’t easy. The United States alone consists of 312 million people spread out across nearly 4 million square miles. Add on nearly 500 million for the population of the European Union and another nearly 4 million square miles of territory. Then pile on Canada with 34 million people and another 4 million square miles, Australia with 22 million and 3 million square miles and a few other stragglers here and there, and the postmodern rulers of the progressive empire have to cope with nearly a billion people spread out across 15 million square miles.

Large territories and large numbers of people are very difficult to govern. Structures tend to break down and people further away from the centers of power don’t listen to the boys at the top. The only way to make a going proposition of it is to consolidate as much power as possible at the center and the very act of centralizing power leads to tyranny.

The most direct chokehold possible is physical. China’s rulers, faced with vast territory and population, turned to the water empire. The modern West is quickly rediscovering a more sophisticated form of hydraulic despotism, cloaked in talk of saving the planet and providing for everyone’s needs.

Western resources are not innately centralized, which makes seizing control of them and routing them through a central point more difficult. This has to be done legislatively and has to be justified by a universal benefit or a crisis. One example of this is FDR’s Agricultural Adjustment Act which allowed the government to control wheat grown on a farm for private consumption. Another is nationalizing health care by routing the commercial activity of medicine through government organs. Both services and commodities can be controlled in this manner.

But the larger challenge is that the West is rich and a water empire depends on scarcity. Central control is much less potent if there is plenty of the commodity or service available. It’s only when shortages are created in bread or health care that the system really wields power by rationing a scarce commodity or service.

If a resource is scarce, then the water empire has to distribute it efficiently. But if a resource is widely available, then the water empire has to find ways of making it scarce, until the demand vastly outstrips the supply.

The modern water empire is dependent for its power on manufactured shortages. The rise of the progressive state was closely tied to its exploitation of shortages. Its challenge has been to win the race with industrial productivity by manufacturing shortages and destroying wealth faster than it could be created. While the machine of industry created wealth, the machine of government destroyed it. Today the machine of government is very close to winning the race, creating a state of permanent shortages.

Manufactured shortages are the great project of modern governments. This manufacture is done by prohibitively increasing the cost of creating and distributing products and services, by controlling the means of production in the name of wealth redistribution and by prohibiting the production on the grounds that it is immoral or dangerous. Over the 20th century the transition was made from the first to the second and finally to the third.

The third means of manufacturing shortages is the final trump card in the race between human ingenuity and government power. It began with pollution regulation and has reached the stage where all human activity, from a bike ride to the corner to a puff of exhaled air, is a form of pollution. The carbon footprint is to the human being what the Agricultural Adjustment Act was to wheat, a mandate for total central regulation of all human activity.

While the second means of manufacturing shortages only justified redistributing wealth, the third prevents its creation. It is the final lock of the water empire. When it slides into places, shortages become permanent and the Empire of Poverty rules over all.

The Empire of Poverty is the modern incarnation of the water empire, its feigned concern for social equality disguising its hunger for total power. With the third stage, the empire of poverty is mostly putting aside its pretense of controlling production in order to maximize human benefits from the products or services and is shifting over to controlling production in order to deny use of the products and services to those who need them.

Global Warming rhetoric is still couched in the usual social justice rhetoric, aimed at the poorer kleptocracies who are eager to join the line for a handout, but its logic is poverty driven. It is not out to create wealth, but to eliminate it, on the grounds that cheaply available food or electricity is an immoral activity that damages the planet.

Read the full article here.

Adam Taxin interviews Daniel Greenfield for a bit under five minutes about his Sunday, April 29, 2012 column, “The Empire of Poverty.”

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Why the Supreme Court Will Strike Down All of Obamacare

By Peter Ferrara | April 5, 2012 | Forbes

Barack Obama made a national laughingstock out of himself with his recent comments on the Obamacare law now before the Supreme Court. Obama said on Monday, “I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” (emphasis added).

President Obama is not stupid. But he thinks you are. He knows the Obamacare health care takeover was not passed by a strong majority. But he figures you’re so dumb he can rewrite recent history in plain sight. The law passed a House with a huge Democrat majority at the time by only 219-212. It did not get a single Republican vote, but the opposition was bipartisan.

The law also barely squeaked past a Senate filibuster despite an overwhelming 60 Senate Democrats, and even then humiliating buyoffs were necessary. Public opposition was so strong that the ultraliberal Democrat controlled Massachusetts, the only state to go for George McGovern in 1972, elected a Republican in a special election for Sen. Ted Kennedy’s seat, to terminate the Democrats’ filibuster-proof majority. That required final passage of the law improperly in violation of Congressional rules as a reconciliation measure, which is only to be used to clean up the budget and so cannot be filibustered.

And given that Obama is so certain you can’t remember what happened just two years ago, he is more than certain that you have never heard of the ancient history of Marbury v. Madison, where the 14-year old Supreme Court in 1803 took the then unprecedented step of overturning a provision of law adopted by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress, in the Judiciary Act of 1789. That case was where the Supreme Court first recognized its power of judicial review, under which it is empowered to strike down laws found unconstitutional. As the Wall Street Journal observed on Tuesday:

“In the 209 years since, the Supreme Court has invalidated part or all of countless laws on grounds that they violated the Constitution. All of these laws were passed by a ‘democratically elected’ legislature of some kind, either Congress or in one of the states. And no doubt many of them were passed by ‘strong’ majorities….probably stronger majorities than passed the Affordable Care Act.”

As a former constitutional law professor and President of the Harvard Law Review, Obama no doubt knows all about Marbury v. Madison and judicial review. But he figures he can safely assume a majority of you know nothing about it, and his party controlled media will not tell you anything concerning it at this inopportune moment. Hence, another classic example of what I have called Calculated Deception.

President Obama further assailed any Supreme Court decision ruling his Obamacare health care takeover unconstitutional as “judicial activism, or a lack of judicial restraint, that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law.” Alexander Hamilton disagreed over 200 years ago in Federalist 78, writing, “There is no position which depends on clearer principles, than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid. . . .”

Or, as the Wall Street Journal explained on Monday:

“Judicial activism is not something that happens every time the Supreme Court overturns a statute. The Justices owe deference to Congress and the executive, but only to the extent that the political branches stay within the boundaries of the Constitution. Improper activism is when the Court itself strays beyond the founding document to find new rights or enhance its own authority without proper constitutional grounding.”

The Journal added, “Far from seeking an activist ruling, the Obamacare plaintiffs aren’t asking the Court to overturn even a single commerce clause precedent.”

In my role as General Counsel of the American Civil Rights Union, I filed 3 amicus curiae briefs with the Supreme Court in the Obamacare litigation. I also filed amicus briefs in the lower federal courts in the cases in Virginia and Florida.

Read the full article here.

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Presidential Power Explained

By Bob Greenslade | Tenth Amendment Center

Let’s cut to the quick. I am sick and tired of hearing people get excited over the Republican presidential debates that seem to take place every other day. For the most part, they are a pathetic joke because they only perpetuate the usurpation of power. The general election debates in 2012 will be more of the same.

Under our system of government, the powers of the federal government and the president are defined and limited by the Constitution. You would never know that listening to the questions and analysis by media pundits. What’s next? Asking the candidates if they can use the powers of the federal government to part the Red Sea or resurrect the dead?

The group discussions that follow are equally troubling because they focus on perceptions and misconceptions concerning the powers and duties of the president. Hasn’t any one of these people taken a moment to review the Constitution before participating in a focus group or have they been so dumbed down by the education system that they are incapable locating the clauses in the Constitution?

Since presidential debates are an ongoing series of job interviews, how can the candidates apply for the office of president of these United States unless they know the 13 powers and duties of the president? If I were running the debates, each candidate would be given a piece of paper at the first debate and asked to write down the constitutional powers and duties of the president. The results would be announced before the first question was asked. Not only would it expose any imposters and tie ignorance to their tail, but it would educate the audience and frame the debate. It would also shine the light of usurpation on the sitting president for his transgressions.

That being said, the 12 original powers and duties of the president are:

Read the full article here.

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Judicial Review v. Judicial Activism

By Mark Alexander | April 12, 2012 | The Patriot Post

SCOTUS and Constitutional Authority

“No legislative act … contrary to the Constitution, can be valid.” –Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 78 (1787)

Last week, seeing that his signature legislative achievement was in jeopardy, Barack Hussein Obama fired a shot across the bow of the Supreme Court as it considered the constitutionality of his so-called “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” (a.k.a., ObamaCare). Obama warned the court against “judicial activism.”

“I am confident,” proclaimed Obama, “that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress. I just remind conservative commentators that for years what we have heard the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint. That an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. Well, this is a good example and I am pretty confident that this Court will recognize that and not take that step. … [T]hat’s not just my opinion, that’s the opinion of a whole lot of constitutional law professors and academics and judges and lawyers who have examined this law.”

Actually, as Obama knows well, the Supreme Court’s consideration of ObamaCare is not an example of judicial activism as Obama erroneously claims, unless the Court actually upheld the institution of socialized medicine as constitutionally compliant.

In fact, SCOTUS is exercising appropriate judicial review as outlined in Article III of our Constitution, and established as precedent in 1803 with the Court’s Marbury v. Madison decision under Chief Justice John Marshall. In that fundamental case, Marshall wrote, “The powers of the legislature are defined, and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken, or forgotten, the constitution is written. … [T]he framers of the constitution contemplated that instrument, as a rule for the government of courts, as well as of the legislature.”

Marbury v. Madison is often derided as the beginning of the end of Liberty. However, it certainly was consistent with our Framers’ intent, as Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 78: “[T]he courts were designed to be an intermediate body between the people and the legislature, in order, among other things, to keep the latter within the limits assigned to their authority. The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts. A constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by the judges as, a fundamental law. It, therefore, belongs to them to ascertain its meaning, as well as the meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body. If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between the two, that which has the superior obligation and validity ought, of course, to be preferred; or, in other words, the Constitution ought to be preferred to the statute, the intention of the people to the intention of their agents.”

The unfortunate consequence of the Marbury precedent is that it rendered the Constitution vulnerable to broad extra-constitutional interpretation, should the courts ever become highly politicized — as indeed they did in the 20th century, from FDR forward.

Judicial review was and remains a foundational component of republican federalism and was instituted to preserve Liberty. However, as Thomas Jefferson feared when warning the judiciary could become the “despotic branch,” the federal court’s checks and balances have been adulterated by judicial activists who, in the words of the venerable Senator Sam Ervin, “interpret the Constitution to mean what it would have said if [they], instead of the Founding Fathers, had written it.”

Thus, now, as Jefferson warned, “The Constitution [will be] a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please.”

Read the full article here.

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What if the Government Rejects the Constitution?

By Andrew Napolitano | April 11, 2012 | WND

 Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel and anchor of “FreedomWatch” on Fox Business Network. His most recent book is “It Is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong.”To find out more about Judge Napolitano and to read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com.

Andrew Napolitano asks rhetorical questions about all 3 branches dishonoring charter

What if the government never took the Constitution seriously? What if the same generation – in some cases the same human beings – that wrote in the First Amendment, “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech,” also enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made it a crime to criticize the government? What if the feds don’t regard the Constitution as the Supreme Law of the Land?

What if the government regards the Constitution as merely a guideline to be referred to from time to time, or a myth to be foisted upon the voters, but not as a historic delegation of power that lawfully limits the federal government? What if Congress knows that most of what it regulates puts it outside the confines of the Constitution, but it does whatever it can get away with? What if the feds don’t think that the Constitution was written to keep them off the people’s backs?

What if there’s no substantial difference between the two major political parties? What if the same political mentality that gave us the Patriot Act, with its federal agent-written search warrants that permit unconstitutional spying on us, also gave us Obamacare, with its mandate to buy health insurance, even if we don’t want or need it? What if both political parties love power more than freedom? What if both parties have used the Commerce Clause in the Constitution to stretch the power of the federal government far beyond its constitutionally ordained boundaries and well beyond the plain meaning of words?

What if both parties love war because the public is more docile during war and permits higher taxes and more federal theft of freedom from individuals and power from the states? What if none of these recent wars has made us freer or safer, but just poorer?

What if Congress bribed the states with cash in return for their enacting legislation Congress likes, but cannot lawfully enact? What if Congress went to all states in the union and offered them cash to repave their interstate highways, if the states only lowered their speed limits? What if the states took that deal? What if the Supreme Court approved this bribery and then Congress did it again and again? What if this bribery were a way for Congress to get around the few constitutional limitations that Congress acknowledges?

Read the full article here.

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State to Feds: We Won’t Cooperate

By Bob Unruh | April 10, 2012 | WND

Legislation defying Obama on track to become law

A Virginia proposal that declares state workers and resources will be unavailable should Barack Obama decide to exercise provisions in the newest National Defense Authorization Act regarding the detention of U.S. citizens has begun moving forward again.

House Bill 1160 was adopted by lawmakers last month, and the deadline for Gov. Bob McDonnell to address the controversy arrived last night. A spokesman in his office told WND today the governor recommended some adjustments to the proposal, and its chief sponsor in the statehouse says those will be made, and it then is expected to become law.

The bill addresses several obscure sections of the NDAA of 2012, which was signed into law by Obama in December. Those sections appear to allow unlimited detentions by U.S. military forces and federal law enforcement agencies of even U.S. citizens without charges or a court hearing.

The federal plan targets citizens who are classified as belligerents, or who are suspected of involvement in terrorist activities, and the chief sponsor of the Virginia plan, Delegate Bob Marshall, told WND that he was alarmed to find out that Obama specifically had wanted that section included in the law.

Marshall contends the federal law deprives citizens of the rights they are guaranteed under the U.S. and Virginia constitutions. Virginia’s detention prevention bill was adopted by wide margins, 37-1 and 96-4, in both houses of the general assembly.

Jeff Caldwell, a spokesman for McDonnell, today release a statement that explained what is going on.

“Over the past few weeks, Governor McDonnell has heard from a number of Virginians regarding House Bill 1160, sponsored by Delegate Bob Marshall. During the consideration of this legislation and since its passage, he has expressed both the shared concern that Virginia does not participate in the unconstitutional detention of U.S. citizens and the desire that this legislation does not impact legitimate law enforcement activities.

“Preserving public safety is the foremost priority of any government. Every day, state and local law enforcement personnel work together and work with the federal government to keep Virginians safe by fighting crime, responding to emergencies, and combating terrorism. The governor believes we must encourage and promote these collaborative efforts while ensuring that core constitutional principles enjoyed by all U.S. citizens are respected. He believes these standards are expected by all Virginians and want to take appropriate steps to reaffirm that position. In the governor’s view, this legislation now accomplishes that goal.

“Since the legislation’s passage, staff has worked with the patron to come up with amendments that will achieve the goal of not supporting unconstitutional detentions while preserving the ability of law enforcement and our state defense forces to carry out their responsibilities. The amendments Governor McDonnell sent down achieve those goals, and Delegate Marshall has expressed his support for them. The governor hopes the General Assembly will support them, as well.”

Marshall told WND that the governor had a couple of minor technical amendments, and then also wanted to address the need on occasion for a joint operation with the federal government on any of a number of possible issues.

When a U.S. senator noted that the federal plan originally included a provision preventing the president from detaining people, the “White House asked that that be removed. Obama then says ‘I won’t use this ability.’ … That’s odd. That’s troubling,” Marshall said.

Read the full article here.

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Obama to the Court: I’m Following FDR’s Playbook

By Ron Radosh | April 4, 2012 | PJ Media

Many have commented on President Barack Obama’s remarks on the Supreme Court this week, when he stated “I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically-elected Congress,” referring to the passage of the unpopular ObamaCare, and the chance that in June, the Supreme Court will rule it unconstitutional.

The Wall Street Journal ‘s editors took on the president’s claim that a negative Court ruling would be “unprecedented”:

Presidents are paid to be confident about their own laws, but what’s up with that “unprecedented”? In Marbury in 1803, Chief Justice John Marshall laid down the doctrine of judicial review. In the 209 years since, the Supreme Court has invalidated part or all of countless laws on grounds that they violated the Constitution. All of those laws were passed by a “democratically elected” legislature of some kind, either Congress or in one of the states. And no doubt many of them were passed by “strong” majorities.

The so-called Affordable Care Act, moreover, was not passed with any kind of a strong majority. Democrats pushed it through the Senate on a purely partisan vote, attaining only a drop more than the 60 needed to prevent a filibuster. And in the House the vote was 219-212, despite a Democratic majority.

Now, Obama is too smart to not know about Marbury v Madison. As a graduate of Harvard Law School and later a “senior lecturer” at the University of Chicago, he obviously knew this case very well. Indeed, most students whose high schools still have history or civics have heard about it way before college.

So if we accept that the president was not ignorant of basic constitutional law and the concept of separation of powers, then we have to come up with other theories to try to explain why he made this statement.

The most obvious is that he was both trying to inflame his base before the election and to threaten the Supreme Court justices in advance, especially Judge Anthony Kennedy, the supposed swing vote who many think might side with the liberal justices. The president also said the following while making his remarks:

Read the full article here.

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Is Obama ‘Dangerously Close To Totalitarianism?’ [Video]

IBD Editorials | April 05, 2012 | Investor’s Business Daily

Power: Given the president’s end-runs around Congress, his shredding of the Constitution and his assault on the authority of the courts, a second term free of electoral restraints may be a frightening prospect.

Judge Andrew Napolitano, a Fox News commentator, raised the question on Neil Cavuto’s “Your World” show Wednesday. And while it seems fanciful in light of the safeguards built into our democracy and its institutions, it recognizes the threat posed by the president’s policies and actions if left unchecked.

“I think the president is dangerously close to totalitarianism,” Napolitano opined.” A few months ago he was saying, ‘The Congress doesn’t count, the Congress doesn’t mean anything, I am going to rule by decree and by administrative regulation.’

“Now he’s basically saying the Supreme Court doesn’t count. It doesn’t matter what they think. They can’t review our legislation. That would leave just him as the only branch of government standing.”

Read the full article here.

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State Nullification

By Tom Woods | TomWoods.com

What Is It?

State nullification is the idea that the states can and must refuse to enforce unconstitutional federal laws.

Says Who?

Says Thomas Jefferson, among other distinguished Americans. His draft of the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 first introduced the word “nullification” into American political life, and follow-up resolutions in 1799 employed Jefferson’s formulation that “nullification…is the rightful remedy” when the federal government reaches beyond its constitutional powers. In the Virginia Resolutions of 1798, James Madison said the states were “duty bound to resist” when the federal government violated the Constitution.

But Jefferson didn’t invent the idea. Federalist supporters of the Constitution at the Virginia ratifying convention of 1788 assured Virginians that they would be “exonerated” should the federal government attempt to impose “any supplementary condition” upon them – in other words, if it tried to exercise a power over and above the ones the states had delegated to it. Patrick Henry and later Jefferson himself elaborated on these safeguards that Virginians had been assured of at their ratifying convention.

What’s the Argument for It?

Here’s an extremely basic summary:

1) The states preceded the Union.  The Declaration of Independence speaks of “free and independent states” that “have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do.” The British acknowledged the independence not of a single blob, but of 13 states, which they proceeded to list one by one. Article II of the Articles of Confederation says the states “retain their sovereignty, freedom, and independence”; they must have enjoyed that sovereignty in the past in order for them to “retain” it in 1781 when the Articles were officially adopted.  The ratification of the Constitution was accomplished not by a single, national vote, but by the individual ratifications of the various states, each assembled in convention.

2) In the American system no government is sovereign.  The peoples of the states are the sovereigns.  It is they who apportion powers between themselves, their state governments, and the federal government.  In doing so they are not impairing their sovereignty in any way. To the contrary, they are exercising it.

3) Since the peoples of the states are the sovereigns, then when the federal government exercises a power of dubious constitutionality on a matter of great importance, it is they themselves who are the proper disputants, as they review whether their agent was intended to hold such a power.  No other arrangement makes sense.  No one asks his agent whether the agent has or should have such-and-such power.  In other words, the very nature of sovereignty, and of the American system itself, is such that the sovereigns must retain the power to restrain the agent they themselves created.  James Madison explains this clearly in the famous Virginia Report of 1800.

Why Do We Need It?

As Jefferson warned, if the federal government is allowed to hold a monopoly on determining the extent of its own powers, we have no right to be surprised when it keeps discovering new ones. If the federal government has the exclusive right to judge the extent of its own powers, it will continue to grow – regardless of elections, the separation of powers, and other much-touted limits on government power. In his Report of 1800, Madison reminded Virginians and Americans at large that the judicial branch was not infallible, and that some remedy must be found for those cases in which all three branches of the federal government exceed their constitutional limits.

Read the full article here.

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Obama Puts Out Figurative Bounty on Supreme Court

By Rush Limbaugh | April 03, 2012 | RushLimbaugh.com

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Obama and his attack on the Supreme Court yesterday.  It happened toward the end of the program in the last half hour and it was happening on the fly.  I didn’t really have enough time to listen in detail to what Obama said, and thus I didn’t have a chance to, in detail, reply.  I’ve now listened to what Obama said.  I’ve got three sound bites here.When I got home yesterday at about six o’clock last night I got a flash encrypted message from a friend who says, “You know, somebody in the court leaked to Obama. That’s why he went out there and did this today. Somebody called him. He lost the vote, the preliminary vote on Friday. He lost it, and somebody leaked it.” And that became an active theory that began to be bandied about amongst a lot of people that I know. Because people were saying,

“Why go out,” as Obama did yesterday…? It was in the form of a question. We must remember that he was asked a question about this. He didn’t launch into this on his own, but once he got the question, it was, “Katie, bar the door,” and he was off to the races.

And the question everybody was asking is: “Why do this? Why attack the court? Why intimidate them, why threaten them if they had voted to uphold the mandate?” And I have an answer for that. See, I know these people. I know liberals. I don’t want that statement to sound bombastic. You people here — new listeners to the program — that’s not a braggadocios statement. It’s not bombastic. It’s not outrage or any attempt to shock. I just know them, and so when somebody asks me, “Why would Obama say that if he didn’t have to? If he had been told that the preliminary vote on Friday was in his favor, why take the attitude that he took?” There is an answer to that. I don’t know if it’s right, but there is an answer.

He’s a thug.

And again, I’m not trying to be provocative when I say this. I’m just quoting Bill Clinton, folks. Bill Clinton referred to Barack Obama as a Chicago thug during the 2008 presidential campaign. This after Clinton some years earlier had told Juanita Broaddrick, “Put some ice on that lip” after she said he raped her. (I mentioned that for this “war on women” that supposedly the Republicans are waging.) But there’s every possibility that Obama feeling his oats, being told that the vote went his way, would still go out and do this, ’cause he knows there are more votes to come. I’m not predicting it. I’m just saying I could understand it.

It’s easier to understand that somebody leaked to him that the preliminary vote went against him and that the mandate fell by whatever the preliminary vote was and that explains his attitude yesterday. But I can see him saying what he said if the vote went in his favor as well, as a means of further intimidation, making sure they don’t change their minds or whatever. You might say, “Well, how would that work? Wouldn’t that just kind of make them be more resistant?” The reason this is all a crock in the first place is that (and we will go through this as we play the Obama sound bites) it is obvious that to the left this is an entirely political process.

There’s nothing judicial going on here. There’s nothing legal. This isn’t even really about the Constitution. This is about politics, pure and simple, and Barack Obama’s reelection. It’s all it is. But he says things in these sound bites which you’ll hear coming up and they’re chilling to me. “The court has to understand…” “The court must understand,” is one of his sound bites. No, the court must not — does not have to — listen to you. What is this, “The court must understand”? That is a threat! How many of you think it possible that Obama will make a trip to the Supreme Court before the vote, before the final vote? Can you see it happening? I can.

I’m not predicting it. (interruption) You’re shaking your head. You don’t think it would ever happen? Why would he be…? Why would Obama visiting the Supreme Court between now and June be any more unconscionable than what he did yesterday? (interruption) It’s a visual? No! He’s just going up to say hi to Kagan. He’s going up to say hi to Kagan and Sotomayor, to see how they’re doing. (interruption) He called ’em out of the State of the Union right to their face. Remember that with Justice Alito? Anyway, let me take a break. We’ll come back and we will get into some of these sound bites and we’ll tear this down as it happened sometimes line by line. Mike, be prepared when I say, “Stop.” There might be some frequent stops and starts as we go through this.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Reuters was just as excited as they could be over what Obama did. “Obama Takes a Shot at the Supreme Court Over Health Care — President Obama took an opening shot at conservative justices on the Supreme Court on Monday, warning that a rejection of his sweeping health care law would be an act of judicial activism that Republicans say they abhor.” Warning? Warning? And Reuters is happy! (That’s right! You take it to these conservatives!) Judicial activism? You know, the debate is constantly held: “Is he really this ignorant or naive, or is this just strategic?”

Everybody knows that judicial activism is not what Obama is explaining it to be. Judicial activism is the court MAKING law. Judicial activism is the court WRITING law. What Obama is trying to say here is that the court will be engaging in judicial activism if it judges the law according to the Constitution. That’s not what judicial activism is. I know exactly what they’re doing. They’re trying to take this term, and they’re trying to redefine it publicly to fit their needs and redefine the language (as they constantly are). But, folks, I’m gonna tell you something. It is preposterous, and it’s even a little scary to hear such abject ignorance from a supposed constitutional scholar.

This is a man, Barack Obama, who was once paid to teach law, constitutional law, and he doesn’t even know the meaning of the term “judicial activism.” No one ever accuses any judges of judicial activism for following the Constitution! Judges are accused of judicial activism for not following the Constitution, for legislating from the bench, for writing their own law. This is basic knowledge. Now, maybe this is why we’ve never seen Obama’s grade transcripts, if he really doesn’t know the difference. But I suspect that he does know the difference, and I suspect that he’s trying to redefine terms here to fit. Because this has become a template argument for the left.

You remember Jeffrey Toobin? You talk about a guy who’s done a 180 here, turned on a dime. During the week of oral arguments, Jeff Toobin, CNN legal analyst, was in an abject panic. These people on the left… And again, ladies and gentlemen, this is the solid truth. They do not expose themselves to any ideological thinking other than their own. They have assumed that conservatism is racism, sexism, bigotry, homophobia, all of these cliches they attach to it. And they’re not interested in talking to anybody that they think is a conservative. They really are not familiar with other ideas. They don’t speak the language. We, of course, can speak liberalism as well as they do. We understand it.

Read the full article here.

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Rush Limbaugh: How to Respond to Obama’s Lies?

Rush Limbaugh | April 04, 2012 | RushLimbaugh.com

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is Jan Crawford.  She’s at CBS News.  She was on television this morning, CBS This Morning, reporting about the reaction to Obama’s remarks that the court, Supreme Court, should not overturn the health care reform law. CRAWFORD:  The president appears to be laying the groundwork to take on the court if it strikes down that law.  For the second straight day President Obama gave his take on what the Supreme Court should do:  uphold his signature domestic achievement.  Monday he seemed to suggest the court didn’t even have the power to strike down the law.  On Obama’s comments, Republicans pounced.

RUSH ARCHIVE:  What is this, the court must understand?  That is a threat.

CRAWFORD:  It went beyond talk radio.  Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell released a statement saying the president lacked fundamental respect for the separation of powers.  Yesterday afternoon the judges struck back.  A federal appeals court in Houston issued an order to the Justice Department to explain whether the president really meant the court had no power to strike down the law.

RUSH:  And that’s the key, and I just saw Attorney General Holder on television, (paraphrasing) “Of course we’re gonna respond. Of course it will be an appropriate response. And of course we understand Marbury v. Madison. Of course we understand the court’s final say-so on whether laws are constitutional. But we must remember that the court has always practiced deference,” said Holder. The court’s always been deferential.  So he’s trying to have it both ways.  “Oh, yeah, we understand the court strikes down laws of Congress.  They better not strike this one down.”  But, again, at the risk of being redundant, Obama knows that there’s judicial review. He knows that the court does this.  He’s not ignorant or stupid or uneducated.  What he did yesterday had nothing to do with the court, not purposely.

The unintended consequence is that he has shown a profound disrespect for the court, and he is relegating them to a status in his mind of being inconsequential.  They’re simply there to rubber stamp him.  And if they don’t rubber stamp him, they are in the crosshairs, and that’s his message to ’em.  They had better rubber stamp his health care bill, and if they don’t, then they’re targets.  And the way they’re targets is he’s telling the American people, “Those guys, those judges, they’re taking away your health care. They are the ones that are gonna make it so that you have financial ruin if you get sick.  They are taking away what I gave you.”  Ladies and gentlemen, it is so beneath the dignity of the ofice of the presidency.  It’s just striking, it really is.  It defies description.

I must be honest with you here.  We’ve faced this countless times before during the Clinton years with the Democrat Party and the people at the highest levels of their leadership showing total disregard and disrespect for traditions, ethics, just being polite, manners, showing respect.  And I don’t know about anybody else, but I’ve always struggled with how to react to it and how to explain it to people in a way that is persuasive.  I guess I’ve always struggled with the way to explain to people to pierce the partisanship.  ‘Cause I don’t need to persuade you.  You all know how atrocious this is.  You know how shameful, how embarrassing this is.  But his audience doesn’t, the people he’s speaking to you.

Read the full article here.

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The Vetting: Obama Channels Derrick Bell in Attack on Supreme Court

By Joel B. Pollak | April 3, 2012 | Breitbart

Much of the left seems inclined to shrug at President Barack Obama’s pre-emptive rebuke of the Supreme Court yesterday. One Democrat even urged Obama to attack the Court on the campaign trail if it overturned Obamacare.

A few liberals, however, realize that Obama’s attack is a threat to judicial independence, and ought to be condemned by all.

One such was Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post, who said she would “lament a ruling striking down the individual mandate,” yet chided Obama for “channeling tired critiques from the right about activist judges,” calling his attack “unsettling.”

Marcus was right about the danger, but for the wrong reason: judicial activism is not the issue here.

The president deliberately confused judicial activism–the wholesale manufacture of rights and laws by judges in accordance with their personal or political views–with judicial review, the power courts have to overturn unconstitutional legislation, which the Supreme Court has exercised since Marbury v. Madison (1803).

Obama’s assault on judicial review might seem bizarre–particularly coming from a former president of the Harvard Law Review, and a former lecturer in constitutional law at one of the nation’s most prestigious law schools–were it not for the fact that we now know of his connection to radical Critical Race Theory professor Derrick Bell.

Apparently, Bell had little interest in judicial review, since he believed the constitution itself to be racist. The Constitution allowed slavery to continue, after all, and even the post-Civil War amendments preserved the (unequal) institution of property, Bell argued. Therefore, he believed, pursuing racial equality through the courts was likely to be ineffective, and even counter-productive.

Bell’s ideas clearly left an impression on Obama, who assigned Bell’s textbook to his students at the University of Chicago. Obama’s own views about the constitution also bear a striking similarity to Bell’s.

In The Audacity of Hope, Obama’s second autobiography, Obama claimed that the Constitution “provided no protection to those outside the constitutional circle—the Native American whose treaties proved worthless before the court of the conqueror, or the black man Dred Scott, who would walk into the Supreme Court a free man and leave a slave.” (114)

Like Bell, Obama acknowledged, but rejected, “a school of thought that sees the Founding Fathers only as hypocrites and the Constitution only as a betrayal of the grand ideals set forth by the Declaration of Independence.” As an American “with the blood of Africa coursing through my veins,” Obama declared, he believed instead that the constitution itself was flawed, and that real change came about through radical, violent action by “the absolutists that have fought for a new order.” (116)

The power of judicial review is important to liberal legal scholars worldwide, but to radicals like Bell and Obama, even the boldest Supreme Court was limited by the fact that it operated within a constitutional system that needed to be transformed.

In 2008—days before the election, too late to make a difference–conservatives seized on newly-discovered remarks that Obama had made about the Supreme Court in an interview in January 2001 with Chicago’s local NPR affiliate, WBEZ-FM.

Read the full article here.

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The Ryan Test: Demagoguery Versus Ideas

August 12, 2012 By John Malcolm Leave a Comment

By Jonathan S. Tobin | August 11, 2012 | Commentary Magazine As John wrote earlier today, liberals are convinced that Mitt Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan to be his running mate offers them a golden opportunity to savage the Republicans about the Wisconsin congressman’s budget plans. Predictably, the New York Times delivered one of the first such salvos in its editorial posted […]

Smoking Obama’s Crack and Yearning for the Mud

August 12, 2012 By John Malcolm Leave a Comment

By Vanderleun | August 10, 2012 | American Digest [From 2008. Only the names have been changed because the target has changed.] This downward flight of intellectuals has been going on ever since the Romantic movement began its counter-revolution a couple hundred years ago. No matter how much they flap their lips it’s a fall, not […]