Category Archives: Constitution Watch

Constitution Watch

Democrat Senator: B.O. Power Grab Underway

Byrd: Obama in power grab

Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), the longest-serving Democratic senator, is criticizing President Obama’s appointment of White House “czars” to oversee federal policy, saying these executive positions amount to a power grab by the executive branch.

In a letter to Obama on Wednesday, Byrd complained about Obama’s decision to create White House offices on health reform, urban affairs policy, and energy and climate change. Byrd said such positions “can threaten the Constitutional system of checks and balances. At the worst, White House staff have taken direction and control of programmatic areas that are the statutory responsibility of Senate-confirmed officials.”

While it’s rare for Byrd to criticize a president in his own party, Byrd is a stern constitutional scholar who has always stood up for the legislative branch in its role in checking the power of the White House.

This is interesting in several respects. It proves that at least SOMEBODY still knows how to read, and understand the Constitution.

It’s also different finding a leading Democrat warning about ANYTHING that B.O. does.

Also, not only is the Constitutional issue noted, there is the issue of the much-promised “transparency” taking it in the neck again:

“As presidential assistants and advisers, these White House staffers are not accountable for their actions to the Congress, to cabinet officials, and to virtually anyone but the president,” Byrd wrote. “They rarely testify before congressional committees, and often shield the information and decision-making process behind the assertion of executive privilege. In too many instances, White House staff have been allowed to inhibit openness and transparency, and reduce accountability.”

Hear, hear!

Constitution Watch

D.C. Congresscritter to be Created?

Although the Chief realizes that in our enlightened age of the Abomination Obamanation worrying about what the Constitution actually says is far out of fashion, he still offers the following:

Read the Constitution: D.C. is not a state

Which part of Article I, Section 2 do proponents of the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act of 2009 not comprehend? The Constitution of the United States clearly states that “the House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several states.” The Constitution created D.C. as the federal “seat of government” – not as a state. Therefore, D.C. cannot have a voting Member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Proponents are correct that the Constitution gives Congress the right to make all laws for the District. But that clearly does not permit Congress to substitute its will for that of the whole people to rewrite the Constitution. So, until the Constitution is amended to make D.C. a state, creating a voting representative for it as if it were a state would be “the most premeditatedly unconstitutional act by Congress in decades,” in the words of George Washington Law School professor Jonathan Turley.

There’s some further extension of this in the cited OpEd…it’s worth the read IMHO.

Sounds clear enough, at least to someone who can read, and properly attach actual meanings to words. Ooops. Apparently that leaves out much of the current Donk dominated People’s Congress….

Few roadblocks expected for D.C. voting rights bill

Congress is poised to grant the District of Columbia a legislator with full voting rights in the House of Representatives.

After failed attempts in previous years, a wide Democratic majority in Congress and a Democrat in the White House have paved the way for the possible success of the bill, but there is still a chance Senate Republicans could block it.

The legislation would add two members to the House roster — one from the District, the other from Utah — increasing its ranks to 437.

This is designed to throw a political bone to the Republicans, and all too sadly, a number of them are willing to roll over on command and accede to the Donks’ latest assault on the Constitutional order, which isn’t made any better by the application of this “bipartisan” fig-leaf.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a hint in all this of actually respecting the Constitution enough to do it the right way, with a constitutional amendment.

As a historical note, this sort of swapping of Congressional seats to maintain a superficial balance has happened before; most notably in the Missouri Compromise, allowing the admission of Missouri as a slave-holding state, along with Maine as a non-slave state.

It’s telling that the current state of the body politic is such that this kind of juggling of representation is the only thing that apparently allows the (illusory) continuation of political agreement.

UPDATE:

The Senate passed a key preliminary vote Tuesday morning for the District to get full voting rights in Congress. Senators voted 62-34 to take up the legislation. A final Senate vote to approve the legislation could come as early as Tuesday afternoon.

Sadness.

Constitution Watch, Culture Wars

Obamacracy: ANYTHING GOES?

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‘Anything possible,’ Obama tells joyous crowd

Two days from the White House, President-elect Barack Obama joined a vast throng Sunday at a joyous pre-inauguration celebration staged among marble monuments to past heroes. “Anything is possible in America,” declared the man who will confront economic crisis and two wars when he takes office.

So, what’s wrong with this? Sounds nice? Lots of possibilities? Right?

Er…what ever happened to Constitutional government? According to that ANYTHING is NOT possible…there are some definite limitations as to what any American government is allowed to do, even with a President Obama.

Unfortunately, the crop of politically ascendant LibDonks (admittedly the outgoing Bushites also) seem to have no cognizance if any restraint on their near-orgasmic response to the prospect of untrammeled government.

Constitution Watch

B.O.’s Commissars Alert for Dangerous Deviationism!

 THE WATCHERS ARE WATCHING US!

After an e-mail was sent out to various and sundry e-correspondants, clearly stating our opposition for various reasons to the ascension of B.O. to the Imperial Throne Presidency, this message was returned as one of the replies.  Apparently the recipient, in the finest tradition of stukachi and Chekists,  forwarded the admonition and warning of our original message to something calling itself the “Obama-Biden Watchdog Team” from <barackobama.com>(according to their e-mail header).

Taken from their reply:

Dear Friend,

Thank you for joining the fight against the lies, false attacks, and smear campaigns targeting Barack Obama and designed to create fear and division at a time that calls for unity and solutions. No one of us can put an end to these attacks, but together we can set the record straight.

We’ve received the message you sent and will evaluate it to inform the campaign’s pushback strategy to this growing problem. Please continue to send us each smear you receive — even if you receive the same one multiple times from different sources.

When possible, please forward messages just as they came to you, without changing the subject or sending the message as an attachment. And feel free to include your friends and family on the message you send us — if we’ve developed a response already, we’ll send it to everyone you included.

The last paragraph cited, recruiting informants so they can keep track of who their political enemy is, is particularly telling.

Part of a pattern? Well, after the warnings from the St. Louis area Donk party Prosecuting Attorneys that THEY were going to be watching too, and were prepared TO TAKE LEGAL ACTION against any deviationists opposing the coming Revolutionary Change that The One is preparing for the benighted masses…but perhaps I’m being unfair, and they’re drawing from a slightly different traditon:

2k8ad47d0443.jpg

In either case, there IS a pattern…but it doesn’t bear resemblance to anything recognizable as the 1st Amendment.

It has been argued that Obamesssiah is just seeking to lead us to “unity of purpose” for a change, after “the needless divisiveness of partisan bickering”…or words to that effect. Well, THAT fits an old pattern too:
unity.gif

Historically, we’ve been there, done that, and in the words of the late songwriter Warren Zevon…”it ain’t that pretty at all”

obamunists.jpg

I’ll move myself and my family aside
If we happen to be left half alive
I’ll get all my papers and smile at the sky
For I know that the hypnotized never lie

Do ya?

There’s nothing in the street
Looks any different to me
And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye
And the parting on the left
Is now the parting on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnight

I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again
Don’t get fooled again
No, no!

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss

…as the spiritual Weather Underground prepares to move into the White House to start the United Soviet States of Amerika…

Constitution Watch

A Taste of B.O.’s Planned United Soviet States of America?

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A couple of items, that to the historical-minded are all too evocative of the bad old days of the Soviet Union:

Michelle’s Boot Camps For Radicals

Election ’08: Democrats’ reintroduction of militant Michelle Obama in Denver was supposed to show her softer side. But it only highlighted a radical part of her resume: Public Allies.

What’s this about?

The pitch Public Allies makes on its Web site doesn’t seem all that radical. It promises to place young adults (18-30) in paid one-year “community leadership” positions with nonprofit or government agencies. They’ll also be required to attend weekly training workshops and three retreats….

But its real mission is to radicalize American youth and use them to bring about “social change” through threats, pressure, tension and confrontation — the tactics used by the father of community organizing, Saul “The Red” Alinsky.

And then, there’s Joe Biden…the other part of the Donks’ ticket:

Tasting GOP Blood

Election ’08: Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden says that, if elected, an Obama administration might pursue criminal charges against the Bush White House. This is how he plans to unite the country?

It was a common event, from the earliest days of the Soviet Union to purge, arrest, try, and execute the losers in policy disagreements. The reasoning ran, if your policy was rejected, it was because it would have been harmful to the progress of the Soviet Revolution…and therefore was treasonable!

Barack Obama insists he’s the one we’ve been waiting for to bring the country together. Yet, he and Biden are signaling their willingness — or is it their eagerness? — to criminalize political opposition.

“We will not be stopped from pursuing any criminal offense that’s occurred,” Biden said Monday at a Florida campaign stop. “If there has been a basis upon which you can pursue someone for a criminal violation, they will be pursued — not out of vengeance, not out of retribution, (but) out of the need to preserve the notion that no one, no attorney general, no president — no one is above the law.”

This follows Obama’s pledge last spring, before adopting his attack-dog running mate, that “If crimes have been committed, they should be investigated.”

This will play well with those segments of the Democratic Party where the hardware that keeps them hinged to reality has come loose. To treat their Bush Derangement Syndrome, nothing less than retaliation will do. And no matter how much Biden denies it, vengeance and retribution are driving the threats.

Is it really necessary to remind Democrats it is contrary to our system to imprison those with whom we don’t agree, that our republican form of government guarantees a peaceful transition of power? America is not a Third World dictatorship in which policy disputes are settled with the group in power throwing unpopular members of the other party into the cooler.

We agree with Biden that no one is above the law and said as much during Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial. But would Biden agree with us that the law shouldn’t be twisted so that it can be employed in vengeful and childish ways?

What can one say…these folks are a clear and present danger to our representative republic.

Keep your powder dry!

Constitution Watch, Culture Wars

Religious Test Applied to Palin?

Palin’s Church Questioned

This blogsite was apparently set up by someone specifically to go after Gov. Palin & her association with the pentecostal Assembly of God church, and was sent to me by an e-mail correspondent.  It stimulated this response, and in addition to sending this as the reply to the original e-mail, it seemed worthy of being posted in its own right.

http://juxtapostle.blogspot.com/2008/09/pentecostalism-palin-doctrine.html#Revelations

Well, while I admit that the A.G. & other pentecostal churches are not my cup of tea personally… I keep coming back to the one little thing in the Constitution that there is no religious test for office in the United States government.

The blogger who posted this, obviously has his own point of view, and is certainly entitled to it… but IMHO when he strongly infers that Gov. Palin (and others) who believe in this church are somehow psychologically unfit, he’s going down a road that should be avoided at all costs.

It was a long-standing practice in the old Soviet Union to label dissenters, including religious dissenters, as being insane, and thereby worthy of forcible “re-education treatments” including electric shock, drugs, and other “treatment” more akin to torture than to anything we would accept as any form of psychological medical treatment.  Things like this still happen in the (fortunately) few remaining Communist states, including the ChiComs.

Another consideration in this type of approach is that one man’s church, is another man’s cult (or worse).  This sword can cut in any direction.

At one stage in the U.S., similar attitudes led to widespread persecution and officially organized military attacks against the Mormons, which is the reason they went out to Salt Lake (which at the time they left was still part of Mexico) to escape U.S. persecution.  If you doubt it was that bad, in 1838 Governor Boggs of Missouri issued an official order to all Mormons to leave the state or be exterminated…and mobilized the state militia to do the job… pre-dating the similar activities of the Einsatzgruppen of the S.S. by over a hundred years.

Think it couldn’t happen again?  Remember Waco a few years back and the way that was handled with respect and moderation by Janet Reno et al?  At that time, as a Mormon, I was told to my face (by a fellow-sailor in the Naval Reserve!) that something like that would be entirely appropriate for “any cult”, including the “Mormon cult”.  Again…one opinion, but still reflective of an attitude willing to totally condemn AND ELIMINATE anyone with beliefs contrary to a point of view outside of the accepted “orthodoxy”.

Finally, to return to the topic of Governor Palin… we HAVE had experience with Assembly of God members in government before… and guess what?  We survived it!

Missouri elected Assembly of God member John Ashcroft to the Senate at least a couple times before he was appointed United States Attorney General.  Admittedly the liberals hated him too… and the same reaction drives the current wave of horror with which Palin is regarded on the part of the liberals and the so-called “mainstream” media.

Personally I alternate between laughing at their hysteria, and wanting to retch at the depths they are willing to go to to besmirch this woman and her family, in order to gain a political objective.

When Donk Veep Candidate seriously discusses the possibility of starting criminal actions against the current administration when they are out of office (because of their policy differences with the Donk party leftists), coupled with the M. Obama proposed setting up of government training centers to indoctrinate a political action force to promote “progressive” policies… a more immediate source of concern, at least ot those of us who don’t care for (at best) a form of Euro-socialism or (at worst) a smiley-face version of an American Soviet system.

Phew…this is getting long, so I’ll pull the plug for now.

Personally, I LIKE Palin.  Hey, she hunts her own meat!  What’s not to like!

As far as the libs’ hysterical opposition is concerned;  —- ’em if they can’t take a joke!

Constitution Watch

Censorship & Government Persecution: Obama’s SS Strikes!

Obama campaign confronts WGN radio

What are the Obamanistas attitude toward minor details of the Constitutional Law, like say, the 1st Amendment? “Every picture tells a story, don’t it?”

Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign organized its supporters Wednesday night to confront Tribune-owned WGN-AM in Chicago for having a critic of the Illinois Democrat on its air.

SHOCKING! Someone from the MSM that hasn’t bought into B.O.’s prospective ascension to the Imperial Throne? What else could they do than to attempt to cut out the heresy, root and branch, and cast the perpetrators into outer darkness – or at least off the air.

“WGN radio is giving right-wing hatchet man Stanley Kurtz a forum to air his baseless, fear-mongering terrorist smears,” Obama’s campaign wrote in an e-mail to supporters. “He’s currently scheduled to spend a solid two-hour block from 9:00 to 11:00 p.m. pushing lies, distortions, and manipulations about Barack and University of Illinois professor William Ayers.”

Kurtz, a conservative writer, recently wrote an article for the National Review that looked at Obama’s ties to Ayers, a former 1960s radical who later emerged as a school reform advocate in Chicago.

The magazine had been blocked in its initial attempts to obtain records from the University of Illinois at Chicago regarding a school reform initiative called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which Obama chaired and Ayers co-founded.

Obama critics were quick to suggest that political clout could be involved in seeking to protect Obama from embarrassment. The school later reserved its position and made the records available Tuesday.

After noting more of the details of the situation, the posting concludes with “Obama’s campaign has launched similar offensives against stations that have run campaign ads that it did not like.”

NRO has some more information…this is an op-ed, but it DOES also report some additional information about what’s going on.

Barack Obama, Aspiring Commissar

While the Obama coronation proceeds apace in Denver, it is in Chicago that Americans are getting a disturbing demonstration of his thuggish methods of stifling criticism.

They go on to conclude with this:

Kurtz has obviously hit a nerve. It is the same nerve hit by the American Issues Project, whose television ad calling for examination of the Obama/Ayers relationship has prompted the Obama campaign to demand that the Justice Department begin a criminal investigation. Obama fancies himself as “post-partisan.” He is that only in the sense that he apparently brooks no criticism. This episode could be an alarming preview of what life will be like for the media should the party of the Fairness Doctrine gain unified control of the federal government next year.

CRIMINAL charges? Hello? What happened to the 1st Amendment?

“Post-partisan?” Logically, this has to mean “one-party rule” (or is it “The One’s Party Rules”?)

Meanwhile, this stuff isn’t the only attempt to “control” the news that has affected the MSM:

ABC Reporter Arrested in Denver Taking Pictures of Senators, Big Donors
Asa Eslocker Was Investigating the Role of Lobbyists and Top Donors at the Convention

Police in Denver arrested an ABC News producer today as he and a camera crew were attempting to take pictures on a public sidewalk of Democratic senators and VIP donors leaving a private meeting at the Brown Palace Hotel.

Looks like the fix is in… it apparently wouldn’t do to show up Donk connections with the very same ilk of big-money types that their class-warfare neo-Bolshevik rhetoric loves to castigate.

What’s the flap about anyway?

Eslocker and his ABC News colleagues are spending the week investigating the role of corporate lobbyists and wealthy donors at the convention for a series of Money Trail reports on ABC’s “World News with Charles Gibson.”

Must be some real news in danger of actually being reported for a change.

If they are this aggressive now, can you imagine what these totalitarian minded apparatchiks would do if they were in charge of the FBI, BATF, CIA, etc.???

Yikes! Keep your powder dry!

Constitution Watch, Culture Wars

SD Abortion Debate on National Review Site

Ramesh Ponnaru posting on NRO’s THE CORNER site has given a Slate article a blast for, as he tags it:

SNEERING at SOUTH DAKOTA

I’ve long admired William Saletan’s work, and so I was taken aback by his post on South Dakota’s new informed-consent law on abortion, which has a much higher snark-to-substance ratio than I have come to expect from him. The law requires abortionists to tell women seeking their services that abortion “will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.” According to Saletan, the South Dakota legislators are “lying to women about their bodies.”

The post goes on to logically dismantle Saletan’s attempt at argument:

It’s actually a little hard to tease out Saletan’s argument. As far as I can make out, he has two objections to the word “separate” in the required message. First, he does not consider the embryo “separate” because, for example, it is implanted in and nourished by a mother’s womb. But obviously the word “separate” has multiple meanings; there is no contradiction or even tension in saying that an embryo is a being separate (=distinct) from the mother while also being within her. An infant is nourished by others without calling into question its separateness in the relevant sense.

Argument 1(b) is that the embryo isn’t separate because maternal RNA directs its growth. Saletan has made a big deal out of this point in the past. But his argument still makes no sense. Yes, the embryo’s RNA is derived from the mother and crucial to its development. So is half the embryo’s DNA. The other half is from the father, but the embryo is a being distinct from the father. So too is it distinct from the mother. Saletan’s argument is a bit like taking someone literally when he says that a baby has “his father’s eyes.”

Second, I think Saletan is trying to say that if the embryo is a separate being from the mother, then there can be no objection to removing it from the womb (and thus causing its death). The pro-life position collapses into logical incoherence. If the embryo is already separate, that is, what can be wrong with separating it from the mother? I hesitate to ascribe this position to Saletan because it seems so pathetic. Again, he is trading on the different meanings of the word “separate” as though ignorant of the way language operates. Rephrase the argument: “If the embryo is distinct from the mother, what can be wrong with physically removing it from the mother?” You can see that the argument has no force. In addition, abortion is not typically a mere removal of an embryo or fetus from the mother with the unfortunate side-effect of killing it. Killing it is almost always both the goal and the method of the procedure.

It’s always nice to see deft verbal rapier work, and the final conclusion is best of all:

In short, the rubes of South Dakota are right and the sophisticated sneerer is wrong.

Amen!

H/T to e-mail correspondent for this one.

Constitution Watch

B.O. Hijacks the Constitution! (Literally)

Obama won’t pay his bill

Here’s a report that illiustrates a degree of irresponsibility if not incompetence on the part of the Obamessiah’s campaign that turns him into a de facto hijacker of the Constitution, or at least 1800 copies of it.

For a man whose only qualification for the White House is his own claim to good judgment and good character, Obama is rapidly proving his claim is invalid on both counts.

On November 21, 2007, the Obama Campaign ordered 1800 pocket-size Constitutions from the National Center for Constitutional Studies, using Purchase Order number 11202007. The order was shipped to Obama For America Volunteer Headquarters, 300 W. Adams, 10th Floor, Chicago, Il, to the attention of Melissa McNeal. The phone number listed for McNeal was 312-506-0909. The order was placed by Becky Deignan, with copies to Bridget Gray and Melissa McNeal. The invoice total was $965.00.

Obama’s campaign has refused to pay for these Constitutions.

Despite repeated attempts to contact a responsible party in the Obama campaign, no response has been forthcoming, nor has the bill been paid.

Character counts.

Constitution Watch, Culture Wars

Yankees and Rebs Meet, Agree: “Let’s Split!”

Secessionists meeting in Tennessee

In an unlikely marriage of desire to secede from the United States, two advocacy groups from opposite political traditions — New England and the South — are sitting down to talk.

Tired of foreign wars and what they consider right-wing courts, the Middlebury Institute wants liberal states like Vermont to be able to secede peacefully. That sounds just fine to the League of the South, a conservative group that refuses to give up on Southern independence.

“We believe that an independent South, or Hawaii, Alaska, or Vermont would be better able to serve the interest of everybody, regardless of race or ethnicity,” said Michael Hill of Killen, Ala., president of the League of the South.

The interesting question in all this is that IF some state or states REALLY got enough support to push secession, would there be enough intestinal fortitude available to force it to not happen, as was the case in 1860? The Chief has to wonder. Also, imagine the field day the UN types would have standing up for “self-determination”, etc.

This sort of Balkanization in today’s world would greatly weaken the resiliance of Western Civilization in dealing with what would rapidly become an even more resurgent Islamofascist jihad, and thus be ultimately an evil.

Constitution Watch

UPDATE: Cong to Investigate Itself!

House Forms Special Panel Over Alleged Stolen Vote
GOP Assails Decision on Food Aid for Immigrants

OK. Even the Donk Congs have been waken up by the impact of the cluebat, with 3% congressional poll approval numbers, and the flap about the votegate situation have dictated that SOMETHING extraordinary had to happen to try to repair what little is left of congressional prestige.

The House last night unanimously agreed to create a special select committee, with subpoena powers, to investigate Republican allegations that Democratic leaders had stolen a victory from the House GOP on a parliamentary vote late Thursday night.

The move capped a remarkable day that started with Republicans marching out of the House in protest near midnight Thursday, was punctuated by partisan bickering, and ended with Democratic hopes for a final legislative rush fading. Even a temporary blackout of the House chamber’s vote tally board led to suspicions and accusations of skullduggery.

While Democratic leaders hoped to leave for their August recess on a wave of legislative successes, the House instead slowed to an acrimonious crawl that threatened to stretch the legislative session into next week.

The agreement to form a special committee was extraordinary. Such powerful investigative committees are usually reserved for issues such as the Watergate scandal and the funneling of profits from Iranian arms sales to the Nicaraguan contras in the 1980s. “I don’t know when something like this has happened before,” said House deputy historian Fred W. Beuttler. He called the decision “incredible.”

This CAN be good for the situation…but then again, based on recent history, one has to wonder.

GOP lawmakers had marched out of the House chamber about 11 p.m. Thursday, shouting “shame, shame” and saying that Democrats had “stolen” a vote on a parliamentary motion to pull an agriculture spending bill off the floor until it incorporated an explicit denial of federal benefits to illegal immigrants. The bill already would deny such benefits to illegal immigrants, and Democrats stressed that they won the vote fair and square. But a campaign has been launched, and the House has not fully recovered.

“Last night sent a clear message to the American people that there are people in this town who are willing to break rules and utilize extraordinary maneuvers just so that illegal immigrants can receive taxpayer-funded benefits,” said Rep. Brian P. Bilbray (R-Calif.). Anger-driven delaying tactics threw into uncertainty an agenda that was to include important votes on a huge energy bill, a defense spending bill and a terrorism surveillance measure before Congress’s departure for its month-long summer recess.

Given all this, House Speaker Squeaker SanFranNan Pelosi complained about…the GOP having the nerve to DARE to stand up for itself.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) accused Republicans of blatant obstructionism. “They’ve just been deluged by the success of the Democrats on behalf of the American people,” she said.

Uh…”deluged by the success of the Democrats…”????? Is THAT how they have reached 3% in the polls? This is clearly a case of poor situational awareness on the part of Squeaker Pelosi.