…is not compatible with the American Mission Statement set forth in the Declaration of Independence.
The Gosnell trial was telling, not only because it revealed a physician running a charnel house that would have to sterilize with a squad of flamethrowers before it could pass inspection as meat-packing plant, but until Katie Pavelich shamed her colleagues into actually reporting on the story, the indifference to it in the legacy media was just as disgusting. While the verdict found the butcher guilty on three counts of murder in the case of babies delivered alive, then nearly beheaded when he “snipped” their spinal cords, even now the usual suspects have engaged in some serious creativity to avoid referring to these babies as babies, since doing so might spark some viewers/readers to consider the weighty question of why exactly a murder verdict is appropriate for children who were only seconds earlier still inside their mothers and fair game for the good doctor to dispatch with relish.
Gosnell’s clinic was by all accounts unsanitary and extremely filthy. This doesn’t just indicate a disregard for the babies he enjoyed dispatching, but a disregard for his “patients”, who were routinely infected with STDs as a result of unsterilized equipment. On its own, it is a stinging indictment of the laughable mantra “Safe, Rare, and Legal”, but coupled with such horrors as jars filled with babies feet, and baby corpses stuffed in a freezer, the evil on the inside becomes physically manifest.
And yet, much like the Bene Geserit Reverend Mother in Lynch’s DUNE whispering “The Spice Must Flow…”, Klanned Murderhood is out, unrepentantly claiming that Gosnell is the exception, making sure that the real questions never get asked because “The [Taxpayer] Money Must Flow.”
We can’t encourage murder for hire by pretending that it’s ok if we call it part of some greater right of “privacy” and then expect that the evil that it is won’t be manifested by the practitioners. It was easy to convict Gosnell because he used the scissors, but the fact is that we’re all guilty for perpetrating the fiction that the taking of the most innocent lives among us is a legitimate “women’s health” procedure. Two go in and one comes out (sometimes) is NOT a health procedure, no matter what the ghouls with the bloody upturned palms tell us.
Conscious efforts to reduce the native population (through systematic abortion for convenience + hubristic junk science creating the impression that the hoi poli are killing the planet)
+
“gun control” that won’t do a thing to stop bad actors but WILL make it difficult or next to impossible for the average citizen to be legally armed
= new aristocracy with a population just big enough to serve but never big enough to be a threat.
Helen Keller could see this, and yet apparently we have rocket surgeons in the US Senate who can’t…or can they?
What do you get for the kleptocratic statist who has everything?
Your children.
MSNBC host and whackjob (BIRM) Melissa Harris-Perry wants you to know that we don’t spend enough on education because we just don’t realize that our children belong to everyone.
Of course, when you are aligned with a mindset that thinks it acceptable to kill your own children, it was probably inevitable to look upon other people’s kids as a resource for redistribution. Afterall, it’s hard work maintaining a culture of filth, stupidity, and subservience when those most in favor of it have fewer children than those who oppose it. And the idea that we need to pay even more to a system that already is failing and giving us dumb kids is precious. But than, government is the only place where incompetence, illogical, and failure is rewarded. The saddest part of this is that the majority of the people on the receiving end of this pitch are the product of …public schools, and will likely accept the opinions of the “experts” on this matter. All it typically takes is saying that “IT’S FOR THE CHHHHIIIIIIIILLDREN!!!111!!!”
Next, who can forget that classic Obama knee-slapper “I do think that at a certain point, you’ve made enough money.”?
Well, it was probably only a matter of time before our great father Obama would let us know that “At some point, you’ve saved enough money.” too. And thankfully, under his watch, government is right there to tell us when that is.
President Obama’s budget, to be released next week, will limit how much wealthy individuals – like Mitt Romney – can keep in IRAs and other retirement accounts.
And remember, comrade, the government has NEVER arbitrarily changed the definition of “wealthy” when there was money to be confiscated taxed. Like when the 16th Amendment was passed to tax only “the wealthy”.
The proposal would save around $9 billion over a decade, a senior administration official said, while also bringing more fairness to the tax code.
The magic of government accounting…that fantastic world where taking someone else’s earnings, levying a not-insignificant handling charge, then distributing it to some one who didn’t earn it, or spending it on such profound endeavors as alcoholism rates among Chinese hookers, and federally funded sex-education classes for Kindergarteners is “bringing fairness to the tax code”. It should go without saying that what is being “saved” is the government’s ability to buy votes with someone else’s money.
The senior administration official said that wealthy taxpayers can currently “accumulate many millions of dollars in these accounts, substantially more than is needed to fund reasonable levels of retirement saving.”
Ahh, yes. That new benchmark of “fairness”, an arbitrary determination of the OWNER’S “needs”, decided entirely by a government that refuses to live within our means…meaning that it is really talking about ITS needs. (Those lavish vacations and hookers and blow for the Secret Service don’t come cheap, doncha know) While this same mantra has met with limited success among people who refuse take responsibility for their own safety, and don’t want YOU to either, I think it’s safe to say that government’s determination of “need” in this matter will meet with even less success than the drumbeat about not “needing” a Sig or a Glock or an AR for hunting.
Under the plan, a taxpayer’s tax-preferred retirement account, like an IRA, could not finance more than $205,000 per year of retirement – or right around $3 million this year.
I can remember when $250,000 a year was the government’s benchmark for “rich”. Can you?
Romney, Obama’s 2012 opponent, had an IRA several to many times that amount, leading to questions about how the former Massachusetts governor was able to squirrel away so much money in that sort of retirement account.
The problem is not everyone donates money to the President like the heads of Solyndra, Sun Power, and other “green energy” graft schemes. Sometimes, they actually earn it through hard work. And this is why this Administration is clueless about finances. Because it NEVER occurs to them that while you might be limited in annual contributions to IRAs, not all IRAs are simply glorified bank accounts. Some are managed investments, that take risks with the money in order to get increased returns. But again, unless you made your fortune from government or your association with it, all these people see is money that they want.
And for your last thought…
I was eating lunch today and reading about another gun manufacturer that made the decision to leave one of the states that has gone full retard after Sandy Hook and passed blatantly unconstitutional gun “control” laws. As this had been going on for a few weeks now, I have had a certain measure of amusement in watching this, but then I thought “If I were totalitarian narcissist with delusions of adequacy who chaffed at the restraints that the Constitution necessarily placed on me, and I might want to resort to a desperate ultra vires act against an industry that could be a threat to me realizing my aspirations of power, would I want to have to “seize” facilities scattered across states in all regions of the country, or would I want to only have to concentrate on one region?
Suddenly, it was less amusing than it had been a few minutes before.
Somewhere between the shampoo and the soap, I was pondering Sheriff Slow Joe Biden’s remarks about the Administration’s current gun control push and the President’s laughable remarks about “shaming” those who oppose further infringements on the right to bear arms by a government that was explicitly prohibited from engaging in the infringements which already exist.
Putting aside the issue of someone spending our money to have his children vacation at lavish resorts in the Bahamas and in Sun Valley when the economy is still in the tank and millions of American families can afford no vacation at all, let alone separate vacations for their children, I couldn’t help but consider that we have hundreds of “gun control” laws on the books now that simply aren’t being enforced. I realize that our leftist betters who are always considering new ways of justifying the Federal government’s various attempts to circumvent the restrictions that the Constitution clearly places on it would justify these past ineffective measures as tacit decisions by “We the people” to allow the government the authority to infringe where no infringement was allowed. I can even accept that there may be a measure of truth to this, as some people certainly would have been willing to surrender a measure of liberty for the illusion of security, much in the same way that the frog doesn’t really consider that the water he’s in just got a little hotter. However, I’m not sure that we should accept the idea that liberty ensured by restrictions on Federal authority can be conceded by means of a “passive” waiver, that is to say, by not enforcing that restriction when a clearly prohibited authority is clearly usurped, when that act of usurpation in and of itself is not so onerous as to warrant an immediate, and vehement denial. Such a belief cannot be logically defended, and if accepted, would fundamentally change the relationship between “We the people” and our government, and for the same reasons, the Federal government should be equally denied from arguing laches as a defense to any attempt to reassert the restrictions that have never been Constitutionally relaxed or rescinded.
Even the “Constitutional Scholar-In-Chief” understands that the Constitution ensures liberty by restricting what the Federal Government can and cannot do, even if he cannot help but to reveal his bias against that by referring to it by calling it a “charter of negative liberties” and lamenting that it prevents the Federal government from doing certain things for us. (One of the inherent flaws in this viewpoint being revealed when you consider that when he is talking about “us” he only means some of “us”.) If we were to accept that infringements that were enacted in another time were now acceptable, and allowed the Federal government the authority to enact even more infringements as long as it could justify them as “reasonable”, then all those who want an all-powerful state have to do is have a strategic long-term plan, and the will to carry it out in a creeping incrementalism over a period of decades in which emotionalism is used to justify the nibbles being taken from individual liberty, while at the same time, it can be asserted as the picture takes shape, that continuing infringements can be justified because it was allowed in the past…or because the Courts refused to uphold past challenges. Essentially, such a philosophy fosters an adversarial relationship between the state and those who would be governed by it, because the state could, in time remove all restrictions lawfully imposed on it by the nation’s bylaws without ever calling for an upfront and open national referendum on the restriction itself. As long as the state succeeds with its initial usurpation of that which was deliberately withheld from it, no further usurpation can ever be stopped; as long as they get away with it once, they would legally be allowed to get away with it again, while those who believe that they have been guaranteed such rights are slowly stripped of them, and rendered powerless to prevent it because their rights were not asserted from the start. To allow this to either our representatives, or to nine (really less than nine) unelected men and women who are not in any way accountable for such extrajudicial activity is completely contrary to the idea of limited government on which this nation was founded, and encourages those who seek power, those of malicious intent, and those who are jealous of individual liberty, and the disparate impact that results from people being free to make their own choices about how they live, to subvert this founding principle at every opportunity. Ultimately, it isn’t about safety, it is about control.
This is why despite having an entire Federal agency, with what would be an awesome name for a store, devoted to enforcing the infringements on the Second Amendment that previous generations mistakenly permitted, we still have crimes committed with guns in this country. It is why despite the fact that we have hundreds of laws criminalizing the ownership of certain firearms, and relating to the transfer, and use of firearms in crimes, crimes are still committed with guns in this country. It is why, despite clear evidence of many of these crimes being broken in a manner that reveals itself to these Federal minders who are so empowered for our “safety” and “security” that the prosecution for these violations is shockingly, dare I say criminally low. Against this stew of contradictions, and the constant drumbeat for more laws that the Federal government is still specifically prohibited from engaging in in the first place, one can only conclude that this drive is about control, and the ability to, through selective enforcement, prosecute certain people for engaging in activities that by the letter and the spirit of the organic law of this nation, remains, and always has been perfectly legal.
We need to say “NO!” “HELL NO!”, and “ABSOLUTELY NOT!” until our self-appointed betters either come by the power they keep trying to assume for themselves honestly, by amending the bylaws, so that EVERYONE gets a say in the process, or until they get the message.
Gun-fearing wussies and overbearing government control freaks continue to see an asterisk where none exists, in a determined effort to make the Constitution their own personal stumbling block like the living stone Peter wrote about in the second chapter of his first epistle.
First, we have New Jersey Police and CPS officials who executed a late-night, warrantless raid on the home of Shawn Moore, an NRA-Certified firearms instructor and range safety officer, who also teaches hunter education courses for the state of New Jersey this past Saturday night. What could warrant such extraordinary action? He posted a picture of his 11-year-old son, posing with a .22 caliber hunting rifle on Facebook. His son has a New Jersey hunting license. The authority’s excuse for trampling on Mr. Moore’s Fourth Amendment rights was an anonymous call to CPS as a result of the photo. Apparently this was such a great indicator of child abuse that it caused the authorities to run out on a Saturday night to conduct this raid in such a hurry, that they forgot to get a warrant! Thankfully, Mr. Moore’s attorney didn’t forget about the Fourth Amendment, and when the authorities demanded to get inside Mr. Moore’s gun safe “to see if all his weapons were properly registered” (registration isn’t required in New Jersey), Mr. Moore’s attorney reminded them that if they didn’t have a warrant, they could go pound sand. The authorities were undeterred, attempting their typical “if you don’t cooperate with us, it looks suspicious” coercion, but Mr. Moore was having none of it. It is reported that the Moores are considering suing the authorities. I suggest a Section 1983 Civil Rights suit…the kind that carries personal liability for the offenders. It’s well-past time to send a message to these people that they do not get to intimidate and harass law-abiding citizens who are simply exercising their rights.
Second is this “opinion” piece from the Los Angeles Times posted on Facebook by my friend and fellow patriot, Gary Graham. It contains the same tired leftist lily-guilding casting people who believe that rights worth having are rights worth defending as “belligerently ignorant” and “filled with intractable hatred”, despite the fact that people who spout such nonsense in attempts to infringe or restrict the legitimate Constitutional rights of others are the ones most often proving themselves “belligerently ignorant” and so full of hate for others who engage in activity that they do not approve of…a trait so serendipitously displayed by this line from the story:
What can be done to reverse this tide of belligerent ignorance? Not much. The typical patriot acts within his free-speech and 2nd Amendment rights, and in fact most patriot activity consists of venting steam by meeting with like-minded Neanderthals and firing off blog posts threatening civil war. Yet such blather tends to get under the skin of the Timothy McVeighs of the world. These groups should be closely monitored, with resources adequate to the task, even if it means shifting some homeland security money from the hunt for foreign terrorists.
The contempt they have for the document drips off of the statement I bolded there. And the bit about “getting under the skin of the Timothy McVeighs of the world” strikes me as a dangerous and determined flirtation with irony poisoning, considering that they are the local paper for an industry that makes its money from peddling all manner of violence, with firearms and without, and studiously deflecting any suggestion that its product might in some way contribute to the senseless violence that some claim is epidemic in our society. But again, to the minds of these rocket surgeons, this is but another problem to be solved by an expansion of domestic government surveillance, because everyone knows that the way to save a free society is to curtail its freedoms whenever possible.
Some days, there is NEVER enough facepalm for the inconsistencies and illogical pontificating that pass for thinking. Ambassador Soval would certainly raise an eyebrow.
I was driving home from work the other day, listening to Mark Levin, and an ad came on that had a father helping his little girl learn how to tie her shoes. After she did it, Tom Selleck came on, and said “Sometimes, the smallest things make the biggest impact in our children’s lives. Take time to be a Dad. This message brought to you by fatherhood.gov.”
I couldn’t believe it. FATHERHOOD.GOV??? It had to be a joke.
Sadly, it wasn’t.
I came home and typed www.fatherhood.gov into my computer’s web browser.
One of the graphics I saw was the one above. Another had a picture of the President with his daughters, and the message below invited me to take the fatherhood pledge. I paused, choking down the irony of a man who’s only political stands of any import before becoming the President were centered around maintaining abortion, and resisting palliative care for children who survived their mother’s attempts to murder them pressing me to “Take the Fatherhood Pledge”.
Then I scrolled to the bottom of the website, and saw these words:
This is an official U.S. Government Web site managed by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
The agency that DEMANDS employers provide abortion, abortifacients, and birth control, even when doing so goes against their religious beliefs, and which persists in the fantasy that giving taxpayer money to Planned Parenthood helps poor and low-income women get mammograms actually sponsors a website purporting to teach American men to be better dads.
With OUR tax money.
The same government which has managed to destroy the black family, (and has inflicted damage on all families) is now telling men how to be dads. How is this acceptable? How is it that the Federal government, even without everything it has done to destroy families, has the right to deign to tell men how to be fathers? It isn’t the government’s job to tell me how to be a Dad…and the fact that it sees fit to do so with my money simply adds insult to injury. The family is not the government’s sphere of influence, especially in light of the fact that there is so little that the government can do efficiently. This is the embodiment of the concept of government breaking your legs, then putting you in a cast and telling you how lucky you are to have it. Add to the concept what government has done to make war on the family, and yes, erode parental authority, and there is simply no moral basis which government can stand on to defend this. And in the meantime, I’m sure this extended middle finger to any parent with a brain is nowhere near the list of things to be cut in the miniscule curtailment in the growth of government known in the White House as SEQUESTERGEDDON!!!111!!! Not when they can mess with airtravel instead….you know…for the CHIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLLLDDDDDRRRREEEEENNNNNNNN!!!!!
I’m sure when my kids are still living in my house when they are 40, dreaming of the day when they can afford to move out to an 800 sq. ft. efficiency apartment all their own, I’m sure that they’ll thank Obama for the usurpation of authority never granted to the government and the deficit spending that make the offensive government lily-guilding like FATHERHOOD.GOV possible. They’ll have a future full of much diminished prospects, but at least they’ll have the memory of Dad helping them learn to tie their shoes because government told him to do it.
Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat’s recent piece on a Washington Senate Bill that would permit the local Sheriffs to enter the homes of assault weapons owners to ensure that their weapons are “properly secured” got some traction this weekend.
Of course, when he contacted sponsors of the 8 page bill about this provision, one of the sponsors, state Senator Adam Kline said:
“I made a mistake,” Kline said. “I frankly should have vetted this more closely.”
Except that it doesn’t appear to be a mistake at all.
Senator Kline was a sponsor of an assault weapons bill in the 2009-2010 session which contained the EXACT SAME PROVISION. From Bill 6396:
(5) In order to continue to possess an assault weapon that was legally possessed on the effective date of this section, the person possessing the assault weapon shall do all of the following:
(a) Safely and securely store the assault weapon. The sheriff of the county may, no more than once per year, conduct an inspection to ensure compliance with this subsection;
(5) In order to continue to possess an assault weapon that was legally possessed on the effective date of this section, the person possessing the assault weapon shall do all of the following:
(a) Within ninety days following the effective date of this section, submit to a background check identical to the background check conducted in connection with the purchase of a firearm from a licensed gun dealer;
(b) Unless the person is prohibited by law from possessing a firearm, immediately register the assault weapon with the sheriff of the county in which the weapon is usually stored;
(c) Safely and securely store the assault weapon. The sheriff of the county may, no more than once per year, conduct an inspection to ensure compliance with this subsection;
Senator Kline didn’t “make a mistake”. Senator Kline has trouble with understanding the meaning of the words “…shall not be infringed.” Senator Kline has a HISTORY of supporting gun registry, and warrantless searches of the homes of law-abiding citizens. Senator Kline doesn’t like freedom, and as such isn’t fit to hold office. (Nor is his co-sponsor in this endeavor, Senator Kohl-Wells.) It bears noting that these bills are almost identical, further demonstrating that this wasn’t a mistake; it was deliberate.
This bill would violate Sections 2, 7, and 24 of the Washington Constitution and the 2nd and 4th Amendments of the United States Constitution. The repeated sponsors of this bill are not fit to hold office.
Immigration is the single largest example of this Administration’s lawlessness, and one that hurts states, and their citizens because of the Administration’s crass and cynical belief that it can cash in on votes if it decides that these laws aren’t worth enforcing. This was demonstrated when Arizona, a state on the front line of the ongoing “soft invasion” (touted by “civil rights” groups like Mecha, which view this “reconquista” of “Aztlan” as a legitimate end) passed the notorious SB 70, which mirrored existing Federal immigration law, drawing attention to a huge problem being created by uneven enforcement/lack of border and immigration enforcement in border states.
Rather than addressing the problem by actually starting to enforce or vigorously enforcing borders and the immigration laws, the administration, through its top legal official, Attorney General Eric Holder, took it upon itself to instead sue the state of Arizona, claiming that Arizona could not enforce the law that the Administration clearly would not, based on the idea of Federal preemption. This rather absurd notion was made more absurd by the fact that the state actually DID have a role in enforcing the law as it existed. This was an extraordinary moment in American Politics. Never before had an Administration so brazenly made an argument that could be succinctly stated as “We cannot have the states telling us to actually do our jobs, and enforce the laws regarding immigration.”
While it certainly implicates issues of Federalism, it is the rhetorical equivalent of poking oneself in the eye with a fork. Many of the loudest voices of support of the Administration on this matter also support the concept of ”Sanctuary Cities”, where municipal government service providers and law enforcement are not allowed to investigate the immigration status of individuals in their care or custody, and actually would find themselves in legal trouble and more than likely jobless if they were to do so. Federalism is cited as support for this policy. Only to those contemptuous of the law, could the notion that Federalism allows local governments to purposely ignore immigration law, but doesn’t allow a state to enforce it when it is being harmed by the failure of the Federal government (which has primary and Constitutional authority to do so, but has also delegated much of its powers of enforcement to state and local government) to do so.
Not content to simply poke its thumb in the eye of states looking to protect their borders when the federal government has blatantly abdicated its duty to do so, the Administration kicked it up a notch when the President announced that his administration would stop deporting certain classes of illegal immigrants. Some Obama apologists suggested that the announcement was little more than an exercise of prosecutorial discretion. This is of course simply crap, because while those in charge of prosecution do have the authority to prioritize their activities, this does not enable them to selectively enforce the law, especially when doing so directly and indirectly harms “the governed” to whom they report. Nor does the excuse that the government has limited resources with which to prosecute the offense make sense…not when there is apparently no limit on Federal spending for numerous activities which it isn’t specifically authorized to do, and when there is obviously no limit on what the taxpayer can be expected to spend for the leisure time of the President and his family.
What makes this “there are simply too many of them here to enforce the law” argument so offensively wrong is the fact that the Federal government only has a small list of specifically enumerated jobs, and among them is defense of the nation. You cannot say that this duty has been adequately performed if you do not have control of the border. Given the fact that there is no lack of money for any number of things that the Federal government has absolutely no business doing, perhaps it’s long past due for Congress and the President to stop trying to buy votes from people who don’t think enough of our laws to actually follow them, and focus their attention on doing the duties that “We the People” actually assigned to them. Yes, it’s harder to create a constantly underachieving dependent class when they spend our money on the things they are actually supposed to be doing, but given how much the average taxpayer has had to reprioritize their personal spending so that the Federal government can carelessly redistribute what they make, it really isn’t too much to ask.
“Law is order in liberty; and without order, liberty is social chaos.”
-Archbishop Ireland
“If you decide to move to another country and live within its laws you don’t express a disregard of the essence of its culture. It’s a form of aggression.”
-V.S. Naipaul
“Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may.”
-Daniel Webster
“Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before they destroy them.”
“This is something I’ve struggled with throughout my presidency. The problem is that I’m the president of the United States, I’m not the emperor of the United States. My job is to execute laws that are passed.”
-Barack Hussein Obama
“The sovereign is called a tyrant who knows no laws but his caprice.”
-Voltaire
“If we resort to lawlessness, the only thing we can hope for is civil war, untold bloodshed, and the end of our dreams.”
-Archie Lee Moore
Barack Obama has long uttered self-congratulatory rhetoric about his administration being “Historic” and “Unprecedented”, which for the most part is true, but not for the reasons he likes to feel good about while taking one of his historic and unprecedented number of lavish vacations on our dime. Never has an administration ever been more contemptuous of the law as this one.
Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution requires of the President that “ he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,”, and yet this self-styled “Constitutional Scholar” has failed to exercise a basic and fundamental duty of the President as assigned by law.
On or after the first Monday in January but not later than the first Monday in February of each year, the President shall submit a budget of the United States Government for the following fiscal year. Each budget shall include a budget message and summary and supporting information. The President shall include in each budget the following:
The law has required the President to submit a budget since The Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, which might raise the possibility that this law is somehow racist, but seeing as how we did not have a black President until the election of William Jefferson Clinton in 1992, I think we can safely discount this possibility, and Obama’s many apologists will have to find a different excuse for his failure to perform this legal requirement of office all but one year of his tenure.
I find his failure to do so somewhat puzzling, as he lamented how the Constitution operates as “a charter of negative liberties” that constrains the federal government, rather than empowers it. (How the fact that this is a feature and not a bug has managed to evade such a distinguished Constitutional scholar surely is a mystery for the ages, along with how he has so far managed to not recognize that the Declaration of Independence was the charter, and that the Constitution was the bylaws. Maybe he was too busy with his duties leading the Harvard Law Review to pay attention that semester.) Surely for someone who bristles as much as he appears to at the idea of what he is not permitted to do, the thought of being able to propose and submit a budget would be a remarkable opportunity. Alas, this is obviously not the case. Apparently budgets are for little presidents…the ones who don’t promise “fundamental change”.
However, this is not an end to President Obama’s casual disregard for the law (or at least the ones he doesn’t like). His administration’s role in the GM and Chrysler bankruptcies lead to events which flipped the bird to long-standing bankruptcy law, and destroyed longstanding principles underlying secured transactions and principles of commercial credit.
But this was not the end of The President’s disrespect of the law. He also took it upon himself to disregard the notion of separation of powers and determine for himself when the Senate was in recess, so he could appoint, without their certain rejection, appointees that would not be consented to by the Senate.
Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution states:
He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.
This specifically does not give the President the right to determine when the Senate is in recess, as each house, and each house alone, is responsible for determining the rules of its proceedings, as set forth in Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution.
Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members, and a Majority of each shall constitute a Quorum to do Business; but a smaller number may adjourn from day to day, and may be authorized to compel the Attendance of absent Members, in such Manner, and under such Penalties as each House may provide.
Yet the President felt compelled to take it upon himself to determine that the Senate was in recess, despite the Senate assertions otherwise, so as to effect appointments of officials without the Senate’s advice and consent. First in the case of Richard Cordray, to lead his new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and then Sharon Block and Richard Griffin to the National Labor Relations Board. While Obama apologists propose that it was the Senate violating the Constitution by conducting pro-forma sessions, that appeared to have no other purpose other than blocking the President’s ability to make recess appointments, the fact remains that the Constitution unequivocally gives the Senate the authority to make its own rules.
Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behavior, and, with the Concurrence of two-thirds, expel a Member.
This means that the President did not have any lawful remedy to his complaint other than a resort to the Courts, for a ruling on whether or not the Senate’s actions comported with the Constitution. (And it is quite likely that the courts would have deferred to the Senate’s judgement by finding the action to be in the nature of a “political question”, which until Bush v. Gore, the courts have long decided by not making any decision whatsoever.) Once again, the President is the one who acted in an unlawful manner…a concept clearly not driven home to the administration, based on this ludicrous assertion by Administration Spokesclown Jay Carney:
Carney attends Teh Peepuls Skool of Law N Stuf, which makes him uniquely qualified to state this rather remarkable assertion. At least I hope so, because his Wiki bio states that he has a B.A. in Russian and Eastern European Studies from Yale University. I find it interesting that his boss is not as certain, as he has quietly resubmitted two of the not-recess appointed official’s names for confirmation by the Senate.
Sadly, this is not the full extent of this administration’s lawlessness, which will be demonstrated in Part II.
I confess, I was having a hard time getting too worked up over the leaked DOJ White Paper describing the legality of the Administration policy for assassinating American citizens abroad who are supposedly actively working against our interests. But then I was asked by a serious person I take seriously to write about it “from a lawyer’s perspective”.
So I read it, and I find myself in what seems to me to be an odd place with regard to it: opposing another lawyer who I respect a lot…Mark Levin. Earlier this week, I was listening to Mr. Levin when I was driving home from work, and he was talking about how he thinks that the media that is actually talking about it (as the usual suspects have been expectedly silent on the matter) is wrong, and that as a Constitutional scholar, he has no problem with it. As I listened with a measure of surprise to him talking about it, I wondered what it was that was in the white paper that left him so unconcerned about it (because I hadn’t yet read it). My takeaway was that the conservative media’s opinion on it tries to take war off the battlefield and put it in the courtroom, which is what we expect the left to do, with the abortive attempt to give Kalid Sheik Mohammed a civilian trial, and to have civilian proceedings for GITMO detainees as well, and because these al-Qa’ida leaders, US Citizens or not, are trying to kill us.
I remain unconvinced, largely because in this case, Mr. Levin is wrong. (And with this statement, my chance to ever have him sign my copies of Men In Black, and Liberty and Tyranny go straight down the toilet.) And someone needs to say so, even if he is unlikely to take notice, or care.
Why is the estimable Mr. Levin wrong? I’m glad you asked.
First, the KSM trial, and a lot of GITMO detainees are NOT citizens. I know it has been Demcong policy for decades to devalue the worth of citizenship, spearheaded by their constant attempts to give away many of the benefits to those who have not earned it, or made any attempt to lawfully attain it, and bolstered by their constant cultural attempts to balkanize us with “identity politics” and the inevitable hyphens that accompany it, and their moral relativism, which stubbornly maintains that there is nothing exceptional about being American, and there is nothing that makes our culture better than anyone else’s, despite the sometimes frantic attempts people from other nations will make to come here, and live and breathe FREE. But if the essence of American conservatism is an appreciation of the freedoms we have guaranteed to us, then it also means that citizenship means something.
This isn’t a new idea, and it isn’t even a uniquely American idea. In the Bible, the Apostle Paul was a Roman citizen. His ministry was offensive to Rome, and in some cases, breached the Pax Romana…an offense worthy of death for those who weren’t citizens. But in Paul’s case, it meant that he had rights that not every person who lived in the Roman Empire had. Among those were the right of a citizen to not be summarily executed on the authority of a government functionary. And today, nations recognize that citizenship affords rights and privileges, and these are not casually given away to those who do not have that status. Heck, even Mexico treats its citizens much differently than non-citizens. Don’t believe me? Try to sneak into their country along their southern border. Accepting the idea that any citizen can be targeted for assassination on the say so of the President, or ”an informed, high-level official of the U.S. government”, even within the framework of the test set forth in the White Paper is unacceptable because it further cheapens the concept of citizenship.
Mr. Levin is also wrong with his argument that to oppose the practice and adhere to the idea of due process is trying to drag war into the courtroom the same way that leftists would like. Resistance to an assassination protocol for American citizens is distinguishable from an abortive and ill-conceived attempt to try KSM in Manhattan if for no other reason than KSM is NOT an American citizen, and as such does not have the same due process rights as a citizen. While there are instances where a representative of the government may end up killing a citizen without due process, those situations are NOT necessarily ones where death of that citizen is the reason why that action is taken. Suicide by cop doesn’t happen because the cop has marked the citizen for death. It happens because that citizen (or not, in some cases) does something to deliberately put someone else in danger, and the police have to act in order to protect the public, or themselves. A U.S. citizen who is on a battlefield shooting at our forces could likewise expect that they are going to be killed, but again, the difference is that there was not a mission planned and dedicated to the sole purpose of ending that citizen’s life.
The White Paper itself sets forth the following test for determining if it’s ok for our federal government to snuff a U.S. citizen in a foreign country:
“In the view of these interests and practical considerations, the United States would be able to use lethal force against a U.S. citizen, who is located outside the United States and is an operational leader continually planning attacks against U.S. persons and interests, in at least the following circumstances:
(1) where an informed, high-level official of the U.S. government has determined that the targeted individual poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States;
(2) where a capture operation would be infeasible—and where those conducting the operation continue to monitor whether a capture operation becomes feasible; and
(3) where such an operation would be conducted with applicable law of war principles.”
Of course, this standard raises all manner of questions that should be asked. “Who is “an informed, high-level official”? A Cabinet Officer? A member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? A czar? The Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service? The Senate Majority Leader? The standard as it is set forth in the White Paper is incredibly nebulous. The Imminent Threat standard as set forth in the White Paper raises questions as well. On page 7, the White Paper makes clear that this requirement “does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future.” While this was followed by a somewhat unconvincing argument that such a burden would reduce American defensive options, the explanation really goes off the rails at the end.
(what constitutes an imminent threat “will develop to meet new circumstances and new threats….It must be right that states are able to act in self-defense in circumstances where there is evidence of further imminent attacks by terrorist groups, even if there is no specific evidence of where such an attack will take place or of the precise nature of the attack.).”
Got that? We use the word “imminent” without defining it, claim self-defense without having to prove what we’re defending against, because we think that people who don’t like us are going to do something bad, somewhere, at some time. Sure. That’s certainly enough to allow government to deprive a citizen of their right without due process.
The next question is “Who is it who is monitoring who decides if capture is feasible?” This is a fair question, if only because this administration has proven to not necessarily be inclined to give much credence to the military’s recommendation on various operation that it has been tasked to accomplish. I’m not sure that there is much incentive for the “informed, high-level official of the U.S. government” to consider an option that isn’t as easy as using a Predator drone and smoking the citizen.
Finally, if this is “to be conducted with applicable law of war principles”, aren’t we back to bringing the war into the courtroom, just as Mr. Levin wants to avoid? Hasn’t one of the main arguments against the war in Afghanistan been the rules of engagement that have hampered and even endangered our soldiers?
The White Paper also goes to great lengths to point out that the policy applies to “senior operational leaders of al-Qa’ida or an associated force”. Who decides who is a senior operational leader? Who decides what is an associated force? And why is this process not subject to some kind of oversight?
While the White Paper lays out a legal foundation establishing the legality of this practice sufficient enough to give cover to a Wise Latina Woman or Laney Kagan, I cannot support it, not only for the reasons stated above, but also for the reasons not stated by Mr. Levin, or the authors of the White Paper.
I discussed this for a while with a friend who believes that this policy is just fine, because guys like Al-Zwahiri have “committed treason” against this country, and acted in a fashion that is inconsistent with citizenship by plotting to kill Americans. My problem with this is that Treason is actually the only crime set forth in the Constitution, and the standard of proof is specifically set forth in the Constitution, in Article 3, Section 3:
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
While treason is punishable by death, unless you are killed in the act of committing it, the state may only impose this penalty if you are convicted of it. While this standard was drafted before the due process requirements of the 5th and 14th Amendments, it comports with them. And, unless you are a naturalized citizen, a conviction for treason will NOT result in the loss of your citizenship, as only naturalized citizens may be involuntarily stripped of their citizenship. The only way for a natural-born citizen to lose their citizenship is by renunciation according to 8 U.S.C. 1481(a)(5).
Finally, my last objection is my lack of trust in government. Government has proven to us time and again that there is no power that it won’t abuse at some point. And we currently have an executive branch that doesn’t respect the Constitution as it is, whether it is determining for itself whether or not Congress is in recess for the purpose of making appointments, or by brazenly declaring that the President decides who is “entitled” to Second Amendment rights. I would have trouble trusting a different administration with such a nebulous authority to abrogate basic Constitutional rights, let alone one that believes that the President can determine who is entitledto exercise Constitutional rights. Citizenship means more than that, or we have allowed them to render it worth little or nothing at all.
"I want these “…and I’m a communist” dumbshits to have a Coming to Jesus moment that they will NEVER forget. I want them staring in to the eyes of every American who knows that government has very specifically designated roles, and are fed-up to their eyeballs with the overeaching, paternalistic, oppressive monster that the Left (with help from the establishment Right) set loose on us. I want those greedy, lazy, control-freaky bastards quaking with fear when they are met with an electorate determined to wrest their liberties, including the right to fail, back from a government that would enslave us all to the service of a soul-killing mediocrity. I want their asses so horrifiyingly and memorably whipped that the mere memory will cow a century’s worth of socialist/communist/marxist acoyltes into an ashamed silence."
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"When a strict interpretation of the Constitution, according to the fixed rules which govern the interpretation of laws, is abandoned, and the theoretical opinions of individuals are allowed to control its meaning, we no longer have a Constitution, we are under the government of individual men, who for the time being have power to declare what the Constitution is according to their own views of what it ought to mean."--Justice Curtis, Dissent, Dred Scott v. Sanford
"The very idea of power, and the right of the people to establish government, presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established Government. All obstructions to the execution of its laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberations and actions of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency."- George Washington
The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.
-Plato
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
-Plato
Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.
-Plato
