Photo by Pargon
We need a vibrant and growing economy, but we are being led by someone who believes in all things that make America mediocre.
Declaration of Independence
The 26th annual Martin Luther King, Jr. National Holiday celebration sponsored by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) held at the New York Sheraton last night was a remarkable event in the midst of all the babble about discourse and civility. Of course it was civil; it would not be any other way, but considering the venom that has flowed in the past year with charges from racism during the health care debate to causing the Tucson shootings it struck a very different and positive tone.
On the December 17, 2010 edition of the O’Reilly Factor, Bill had a debate with two ladies of the liberal persuasion. One of them was Dr. Caroline Heldman, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Occidental College. Asked what the government owes its citizens, Dr. Heldman responded, “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Let me stop there before continuing the quote. Those are our founding ideals as stated in the Declaration of Independence. It followed from the Founders’ belief that “all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
I still find myself in awe of our Founding Fathers who created our form of government. The competing ideas that they sifted through to come up with our Constitution and the safeguards in it is wondrous. The designs upon it by the progressives is by equal measure disturbing.
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal, newly elected Republican Congressman from Hawaii Charles Djou called Birthright Citizenship a GOP Achievement. And to think I was happy to hear Mr. Djou was elected in an unusual special election where he ran against two Democrats simultaneously. They split the vote and he won. Birthright Citizenship is not a GOP achievement it is an accomplishment of judicial activism, pure and simple. Mr. Djou says, “The Citizenship Clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment provides that a person born in the United States is automatically a citizen, regardless of the race, ethnicity or citizenship of his parents.” Where the hell does it say that?
The Amendment actually reads, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.” These, so called conservatives, like the first part of the clause but seem to go ignorant or blind at the second part. If you are a Constitutional Originalist, you look to the meaning of the Constitution first in the actual text, then to any information that you can glean from what was discussed at the time of its passing. This is a case where that information could not be any clearer.
Senator Jacob Howard of Ohio was the author of the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment. He said:
“[E]very person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not [emphasis added] , of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons. It settles the great question of citizenship and removes all doubt as to what persons are not citizens of the United States. “
How much clearer could “not include aliens” be? Aliens are outside the jurisdiction of the United States and are subject to their home country.
Linda Chavez, who presents as her conservative credentials that she served in the Reagan and Bush administrations, points to English Common Law as the basis of the Birthright Citizenship. Since under Common Law you are immediately and forever a citizen of the place of your birth. However, with the Declaration of Independence we did away with that custom of English Common Law. Under Common Law, you could not renounce your citizenship, and if we are still under that law, we are still all Englishmen. It was also one of the causes of the War of 1812. The British did not recognize our process of Naturalization. They were stopping our merchant ships and taking off sailors they deemed to still be English citizens and pressed them into service in the Royal Navy. The concept that Ms. Chavez is arguing supports Birthright Citizenship is from feudalism, where the serfs belonged to the land. They received the lord’s protection and in return gave their lord a lifetime of service.
At the time of passage of the 14th Amendment, whose purpose was to grant citizenship to the freed slaves, the debate was whether it would also confer citizenship on the American Indians. Under Mr. Djou’s logic and Ms. Chavez’s they were born here, it was automatic. But it wasn’t. Not because of discrimination but because they were members of their tribes which were considered sovereign nations. The United States signed treaties with them. In the Supreme Court case Elk v Wilkins the court ruled:
“Indians, born within the territorial limits of the United States, members of and owing immediate allegiance to one of the Indian Tribes, an alien though dependent power, although in a geographical sense born in the United States, are no more born in the United States and ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof’ …than the children of subjects of any foreign government born within the domain of that government, or the children, born within the United States, of ambassadors or other public ministers of foreign Nations.”
That was the law until 1898 in the Supreme Court case United States v Wong Kim Ark, where the majority used the Common Law argument to ignore what was written in the text of the Amendment, what was discussed at the time of the Amendment by the author of the Amendment and its supporters and the prior Supreme Court case. This is judicial activism at its baldest. In the dissenting opinion by Chief Justice Fuller he made it clear:
“when the sovereignty of the Crown was thrown off and independent government established, every rule of the common law and every statute of England obtaining in the colonies, in derogation of the principles on which the new government was founded, was abrogated.”
The American Revolution did away with that definition of Birthright Citizenship under the Common Law.
So along comes Lindsey Graham, who can’t decide if he is for open borders or against them, so his suggestion to amend the Constitution to end Birthright Citizenship sounds somewhat hollow. It is also irrelevant. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution clearly grants the Congress the power “To establish an (sic) uniform Rule of Naturalization..” This does not require an amendment, just a simple clarifying law that Birthright Citizenship does not exist in the United States.
The irony is that the 14th Amendment was created to make it more difficult for future Congresses to repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which said pretty much the same thing as the 14th Amendment and it was changed with the stroke of the pen of an activist Supreme Court. Perhaps we need to consider the idea of Mark Levin in that perhaps we need to have a legislative veto of Supreme Court decisions. If the role of the Supreme Court is to interpret laws written by Congress, why not let Congress with a two-thirds vote, explain what the Supreme Court misinterpreted?
If you have been following the Obama administration closely it’s hard to be surprised by some of the things that they do but… never say never. Yesterday, Michael Posner whose title is, are you ready for this, Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor brought up in discussions with China, the recent law passed in Arizona to control the number of illegals flooding into that state. This is a law that was passed to address this and the previous administration’s miserable failure to control the border.
The Chinese had counterpunched in response to a report on Human Rights issued by the State Department, as required by U.S. law, that was particularly critical of China, North Korea, and Iran and their restrictions on the Internet, other communications means and their treatment of minorities in their respective countries. This is what the Chinese said:
“The United States not only has a terrible domestic human rights record, it is also the main source of many human rights disasters worldwide,” the Chinese report said, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
“Especially a time when the world is suffering serious human rights disasters caused by the global financial crisis sparked by the U.S. sub-prime crisis, the U.S. government has ignored its own grave human rights problems and reveled in accusing other countries.”
So, after being required by law since 1976 to issue an annual report on Human Rights and not wanting to be excoriated by Congress if they made it a puff piece, our socialist leaning administration felt it necessary to walk it back in meetings with the Chinese by bringing up the new law in Arizona, “early and often”.
The Chinese must have been stunned with their good fortune. Here was the Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, going out of his way to point to a new immigration law passed in Arizona to say America might be encouraging discrimination. Here is the question from a reporter and Secretary Posner’s response:
QUESTION: Did the recently passed Arizona immigration law come up? And, if so, did they bring it up or did you bring it up?
ASSISTANT SECRETARY POSNER: We brought it up early and often. It was mentioned in the first session, and as a troubling trend in our society and an indication that we have to deal with issues of discrimination or potential discrimination, and that these are issues very much being debated in our own society.
The Chinese, who under Mao killed millions of their own citizens, force families to have abortions after their first and only child is born, forcefully relocated peasants to Beijing to build the Olympic facilities and them sent them back to their farms, refuse to let information flow to their citizens over the Internet, completely dominate and subjugate Tibet, and we are criticizing our own behavior to them for passing a law in Arizona?
In testimony before Congress after publicly making remarks that the new Arizona law is discriminatory and may trigger a lawsuit from the federal government Attorney General Eric Holder admitted that he had not read the Arizona law. The Arizona law takes up all of ten pages and the Attorney General has not found the time to read it, but somehow knows the law is discriminatory.
In testimony before Congress Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano also admitted that she had not read the bill. The speedy Secretary, who was quick to point out that things were running swell at the Department of Homeland Security after a Muslim extremist in an Army uniform killed thirteen at Fort Hood and that the Times Square bomber was a “lone wolf” before investigators found numerous international ties, wasn’t quick enough to read the ten page law before testifying to Congress.
This is an administration and Congress that can crank out thousands of pages of laws that will change the landscape of liberty in America and then rams them through without reading them and cannot read a ten page law before declaring it discriminatory. It makes you wonder if anyone in this administration knows how to read, which would explain a lot about their ignorance of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
I’ll bet you thought I would be writing about Roland Burris, the senator appointed by Governor Rod Blagojevich under dubious circumstances. No, Senator Mary Landreau of Louisiana just sold her vote on the senate health care bill to Harry Reid for $100 million.
Here is what was reported by ABC News.
On page 432 of the Reid bill, there is a section increasing federal Medicaid subsidies for “certain states recovering from a major disaster.”
The section spends two pages defining which “states” would qualify, saying, among other things, that it would be states that “during the preceding 7 fiscal years” have been declared a “major disaster area.”
I am told the section applies to exactly one state: Louisiana, the home of moderate Democrat Mary Landrieu, who has been playing hard to get on the health care bill.
In other words, the bill spends two pages describing would could be written with a single world: Louisiana. (This may also help explain why the bill is long.)
Senator Harry Reid, who drafted the bill, cannot pass it without the support of Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu.
How much does it cost? According to the Congressional Budget Office: $100 million.
But don’t worry, the talking heads in the lame stream media will soon be circling the wagons saying that Senator Landreau didn’t personally get any money, she got it for her state. But where did the money come from? Your pocket, my pocket, and your children’s and your grandchildren’s pocket. In short, Harry Reid is using the coercive power of the IRS to take your property and give it to Louisiana so that a deeply flawed health care bill will get passed and Mary Landreau can get re-elected. Seems fair to me. Does it seem fair to you? Isn’t that what makes you proud to be an American? The arrogance of this Congress and administration are incomprehensible. They see Tea Parties across the country rising up to protest their out of control spending. They get blasted when then go home for their summer recess. Poll after poll says the country is opposed to the stimulus package, cap and trade, the health care bills, but they just keep rolling on.
Let me quote from the Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness — That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
“But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their Future Security.”
These are troubling times. We cannot allow these abuses to continue without speaking out loudly and strongly. Our government has gotten far too big and out of control. It’s time to shrink it back to where the Founding Fathers envisioned it: limited and unobtrusive.
a “wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.” — Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address
“It’s not that I want to punish your success. I want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance for success, too. My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody. I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” — Barack Obama speaking to Joe “The Plumber” Wurtzelbacher and explaining the virtue of taxing successful businessmen and women more.
“We want to take money and put it back in the pocket of middle-class people.” “It’s time to be patriotic … time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut.” — Joe Biden in an interview during the presidential campaign [emphasis added].
Now, tell me, which of the three quotations above move you? Which of them speaks to you of the greatness of America?
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence speaks eloquently about freedom. While recognizing the need for government he believed that that which governs least governs best. Government’s main purpose is to “restrain men from injuring one another.” So we need some basic laws for to protect freedoms of the minority while recognizing the right of the majority to govern. For that we have the Bill of Rights. We need some basic laws to be able to create and enforce contracts. We need national defense to protect us from enemies foreign and domestic. Some pretty basic things. Other than that which is spelled out in the Constitution, stand back and let each man and woman live in freedom to pursue their own happiness.
Barack Obama
Obey
Contrast that to Barack Obama’s conversation with Joe Wurzelberger. Joe asked him why, as he works 10 to 12 hour days with no guarantee of success or income to build his business and create jobs, candidate Obama, should he become president, would want to take more from Joe in taxes. Obama says, it’s not that he wants to punish Joe, but he needs to take the fruit of Joe’s labor and give it to someone else so that they can be successful too. He doesn’t ask Joe for the secret of his success. He doesn’t ask him how he can keep going for 10 to 12 hours per day. He basically says, this is going to be a new America and you keep working, Joe, but remember part of what you make, I take, and I give it to whom I decide needs it more than you do, because we won.
Joe Biden
Joe “Buck a Day” Biden, doesn’t even try to spin what they plan on doing. He basically gets in your face and says he is going to take money from those who are successful and put it in the pocket of the middle class and then tries to shame the audience by saying it would be un-patriotic to object. This comes from a millionaire who gives about $1 per day to charity from his own pocket. He doesn’t define who the middle class is, that is for the political class and his cronies to decide, most likely based on where the most votes are to keep them in power.
The Decline of America
When you consider the heights of principle from which this country was founded, with ideals enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, to the depths we have sunk today, with little more than bag men going around shaking down legitimate businesses and citizens to pay for a massive expansion of government and control over our lives, with the smug, pompous politicians in Washington directing the smallest detail of our lives. It is truly sad.
Lady Liberty weeps.
Another massive piece of legislation passes the House of Representatives dubbed Cap and Trade, with 300 new pages added at 3AM on the day of the vote. Now, I like to read and if you give me a real page turner I hate to put it down, but I am hard pressed to remember ever knocking off a 300 page book in one day. When I was in telecommunications and becoming a subject matter expert on access tariffs, I had to get up and walk around or get a cup of coffee after every ten pages just to clear my head. So a piece of legalese that is over 1,000 pages would probably take me a month to slog through.
But this is not about me. Go ask how many Representatives (Salary $174,000 per year) actually read what they were voting on and see what kind of answers you get back. If you keep asking, “No, but did you read it?” it will be great fun to see the squirming and hear the double talk. This morning on Fox News Carol Browner, Obama’s energy czar, was asked if she read the bill. She responded that she was very familiar with it. She was asked again if she read it, and she said she read vast portions of it. The host responded, “So you didn’t read it?” To that remark Ms. Browner took umbrage, “That’s not fair!…” she began.
Don’t They Get It
With a major piece of legislation that can destroy our liberties and burden us and our children with the cost for years, these overpaid, narcissistic, arrogant employees of ours, don’t even read what they are voting on. Let’s take Ms. Browner for example, accepting that she is not in Congress and therefore didn’t vote on the bill. Even if she read 99.9% of the bill, what if the 0.1% of the bill that she didn’t read said, “ignore all of the preceding material, and raise Congress’ salaries 10%.” If anyone has ever been told to read the fine print on a contract or got snagged because you didn’t, you know that if you didn’t read all of it, you don’t know what you just voted on. Even Henry Waxman, one of the sponsors of the bill admits, he didn’t read it.
Brevity is the Key
When I was studying computer science I learned that perfection in a program was not reached when there was nothing more to put it, but when there was nothing more to take out. The beauty of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution is that they can be read in their entirety on your lunch break. I believe the legislation that created the Interstate Highway System in the Eisenhower Administration ran 29 pages. This created a massive public works project like we have never seen before, in just 29 pages. Why are these people in Washington if not to represent us? Drafting a bill that runs over 1,000 pages is to pack it with favors for special interests that will then help those who approved it get re-elected. It is all about power. Getting it, keeping it, expanding it, all at our expense.
Tea Party anyone?
How much time do we have left before Joe Biden’s prophesy comes true that within six months of taking office Obama, and by extension we, will face an international crisis? Well, unless you haven’t been paying attention, I think he will hit his mark before his 100 days are up.
Obama and Biden and the rest of their supporters have confused the difference between being liked and being respected. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, while ambassador to the UN called the world, “A Dangerous Place.” When trying to be a leader in a world that is dangerous, it is far better to be respected than liked.
The Obama Feel Good Tour
As President Obama tours the world and grovels at the feet of the Europeans, the Saudis, and Latin American dictators, trying to “repair the damage,” done by President Bush, our enemies are licking their chops. The Europeans flocked to see him, touch him, kiss him, but when he asked for a commitment of more troops for Afghanistan, how did they respond? Awkward silence and an offer of 5,000 troops to train police while at the same time an insistence that the “world” should have some say in the regulation of the U.S. economy.
While President Obama achieved his goal of improving the U.S.’s likability quotient, pirates were taking ships on the high seas, North Korea sent an ICBM over Japan, Iran celebrated Nuclear Technology Day, and the Taliban made inroads in Pakistan. How did the popular leader respond? To North Korea, he scolded that actions have consequences and words have meaning and proposed more words from the UN to be piled on top of the words the North Koreans are already ignoring.
Disarmament
To continue with the feel good groove, we have stopped calling terrorists terrorists. Their acts are now to be called Man Caused Disasters and I guess the terrorists themselves are to be called Man Caused Disaster Causing Men (or Women). After all, we don’t want them to be offended by being called terrorists. Isn’t that was caused 9/11? It was merely a response to our bad behavior, no? Our lack of likability?
There is no longer a War on Terror. It’s an Overseas Contingency Operation. We don’t want to raise Osama bin Laden’s sensibilities thinking we might be at war with him, but we do need contingency planning in case something happens. As a further show of good faith, let’s start re-writing the Al Qaeda training manual for them by telling them exactly what kind of interrogation techniques we use so that they can best prepare the training of their members to resist them. Of course, we already swore we would never use them again anyway, but we have to make sure they are prepared for the infidel’s trickery. Repeat after me: “I am not going to drown. I am not going to drown. I am not going to drown.” There, it’s simple, now they can resist even our most diabolical torture. But we shouldn’t forget to tell them that if an interrogator so much as raises his voice they should do the following:
- Ask for a lawyer
- Insist on having their Miranda rights given to them in both English (so their lawyers can verify it) and in their native tongue
- A clean, untouched by infidels hands, copy of the Koran
- Immediate transport to the United States
- A green card
- A path to citizenship
- A tenured professorship at the college of their choice
If that doesn’t get them to lay down their arms, what will?
Respect Not Likability
The only time the United States is both respected and liked is when the bullets are flying and the United States is saving the hides of our new friends. When the shooting stops or it is confined to a theater far away from the talkers, the United States will be disliked but, however begrudgingly, respected.
Ronald W. Reagan may have been liked personally in private but when the klieg lights were on, he was “an amiable dunce,” and “a cowboy.” But Reagan stood firm and put Pershing II missiles in Europe against all protests. Such steadfastness led to the eventual arms negotiations and winning the cold war. At the moment President Reagan took the oath of office, the Ayatollahs in Iran released the American hostages they held for 444 days. They respected that Reagan would act, not just talk.
George W. Bush was not liked. He was another cowboy, one who was inarticulate to boot. But he was respected. After 9/11 the world respected that he would hunt down and kill America’s enemies. After the Iraq invasion, Libya publicly shut down their nuclear program. Quadaffi didn’t want to be next. President Bush kept America safe for seven years after 9/11. Now, this Congress and this President want set aside over 200 years of precedent and to put them on trial for doing that.
Preparing for Our Enemies
President Obama plans to keep America secure by cutting our defense budget by 25%. He plans on a staggering increase in our national debt and selling it to the Chinese. Picture the Chinese doing to the USA what Obama did to General Motors. Can you just see the head of the Chinese Communist Party saying to Obama, “Well, we own you now. You’re fired.”
Can this Juggernaut be Stopped?
On April 15th over 1 million people gathered at Tea Parties around the country to protest the growth of government, the taking of our liberty and out of control taxes. The Obama main stream media largely ignored the event, or willfully disparaged it.
A recent Rasmussen poll, “85% of mainstream Americans say the government has too much money and power, just 2% of the political class agree.” If they have no bread, let them eat cake! The poll went on to say, “51% of Americans have a favorable view of the Tea Parties but the political class strongly disagrees.” {emphasis added} How more out of touch with the people can they be? How more arrogant in their shameless grab for power can they be?
I will end this post, my friends, with a quotation from the Declaration of Independence.
“WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness — That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
July 4, 1776
I hope to see you at the Tea Party on July 4, 2009
