After being on vacation out of the country, I noticed how differently people perceive American politics. It amazed me, how many people expect the U.S. Federal Government to be the world's nanny. They should do this and they should do that. Why? How did we become everything to everyone? Most people and places that have their hand out, do not like us. So, with our faltering economy barely staying above water, why are we spending billions of dollars that we don't have? Our congress has waited until the last month before the Bush tax cuts expire to start debating it. And they wonder why many of them lost their jobs and have one of the lowest approval ratings in history. It drives me batty to see the congressional morons play politics with our future. Austan Goolsbee, Serving as Obama's Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, is simply a talking head for the liberals. I think he is incompetent. I saw him in an interview, he couldn't even tow the line for the liberal Obama administration. He reiterated what Nancy Pelosi said, where food stamps and unemployment are good for the economy. What business school did they go to? Keynesian economics has never worked, why does this administration push this concept, when they know it will not work? The unemployment report shocked the media today, when it rose to 9.8%. It didn't surprise any conservatives. We can not create jobs in an anti-business atmosphere. The federal government institutes laws, policies and regulations that makes it practically impossible to start small businesses and create new jobs or rehire laid off workers. This is so typical of a liberal democrat congress and White House. I.E. Johnson, Carter, Clinton and now, Obama. Read up on these Presidents. See what type of social and regulation programs they started. Republican President Richard Nixon started the EPA in December of 1970. That was such a mistake. It hasn't always been the democrats pushing big government, but some republicans have made many stupid and short-sighted policies. If the Bush Tax Cuts expire, this is what you can expect starting January 1, 2011.
- 10% tax bracket becomes 15% for the lowest wage earners
- 35% tax brackets becomes 40% for the highest wage earners
- A middle income family ($63K or more) will pay $1500 more
- A working married couple earning $300K will pay $4K more
- The marriage penalty will return
- The dividend tax will rise 39.6% from 15%
- Long term Capital gains tax will rise to 20% from 15%
- The estate tax will reset to 55%
- Where the benefits go? Single parents earning $25K will receive $2,300. $400 more than last year.
Needless to say, I don't trust the government. We find out this week the fed bailed out many large corporations like General Electric with taxpayer money. Remember the song, "Behind closed doors"? That should be the Obama administration's theme song. If the Bush tax cuts expire and the threat of Obamacare, the EPA instituting the carbon dioxide standards, the ban on oil drilling and the mounting deficit are components which retard economic growth and small business expansion. Stopping this onslaught of hinderances, only then, we will see the country emerge from this recession. Yes, I said recession. Call your representatives and voice your opinions.
Don't tax me, Bro!
I've been talking about this for a long time:
Chicken Crap:
'Constitutional Conservatism' is Not Negative, Radical, or Vague
By ADAM J. WHITE
Dec 3, 2010
In a short essay, New York Times editorialist Lincoln Caplan considers the increasingly popular conservative rallying cry, "constitutional conservatism." Caplan unsurprisingly tries to characterize the term as purely negative: "The phrase is used mainly in opposition," a response to perceived "danger" posed by liberal "solutions." Caplan tries to define the term as radical ("the phrase is connected to a radical vision") while simultaneously suggesting that the term hardly has a meaning at all ("the statement is a vague, highly selective catchall"). And ironically, he urges his readers not to "dismiss this increasingly used rallying cry," even while his own analysis turns the term into a straw man.
In fact, the term "constitutional conservative" need not be deemed negative, radical, or vague. Rather than starting, as Caplan does, with John Boehner, Sarah Palin, and "Tea Party members," Caplan should have started with the Hoover Institution's Peter Berkowitz, who may well have sparked the term’s modern emergence nearly two years ago in a Wall Street Journal essay, which he subsequently expanded into a Policy Review essay, appropriately titled, "Constitutional Conservatism."
Berkowitz – who one could not easily define as negative, radical, or vague – laid out constitutional conservatism not merely in terms of "liberty" but also "moderation." He urged conservatives to focus not merely on limited government but also on energetic government, invoking George W. Bush's compassionate conservatism no less than Goldwater's libertarianism.
And far from embracing right-wing radicalism, Berkowitz urged conservatives not to pursue "greater purity in conservative ranks" in either social conservative or libertarian terms. Citing public opinion polls, he urged that "down that path lies disaster."
Regardless of whether Berkowitz's moderate vision is shared by many or most "movement" conservatives, the fact remains that his vision of "constitutional conservatism" is a far cry from the radical, reactionary meaning assigned to the term by Caplan.
Charlie Rangeling the average American citizen:
Pathetic Funnies:
Question: What is the difference between what Randall Duke Cunningham was convicted of and what Charles Rangel committed?
Answer: Rangel is a democrat and Cunningham was a republican.
Sharia Law Is Already Here
By John Bennett
Sophisticated liberals have found humor in Oklahoma's recent ban on Sharia law. Along with humor, some have found offense in the bill. U.S. District Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange granted a temporary restraining order blocking the bill. Critics, such as the culturally aware Clarence Page, say that the OK measure is "a solution in search of a problem." Sharia law is not a threat. Page's evidence: There are only 15,000 Muslims in Oklahoma. It doesn't get much more convincing than that.
The deep thinkers at OpenLeft.com are equally informed: As Paul Rosenberg emphatically says, "there is zero evidence of sharia law having any influence on American law." Rosenberg is factually wrong. On the crucial factual matter of whether Sharia has been applied in our courts, he is unaware of what has occurred.
Sharia law has been applied in U.S. courts. There are at least seventeen instances of Sharia law being applied in eleven states, as Daniel Pipes has noted. Most notably, a NJ court held that a man did not commit rape because according to his belief in Sharia law, a man cannot rape his wife, since the wife serves him. So Sharia law was applied to the mental state element of the crime of rape. An American court actually adopted this barbaric reasoning:
[The defendant] was operating under his belief that it is, as the husband, his desire to have sex when and whether he wanted to, was something that was consistent with his practices and it was something that was not prohibited.
The resulting ruling was that a man was held not responsible for rape, where he would have been convicted without Sharia.
It's no comfort to say that a court of appeals overturned the NJ ruling. Judges are open to these arguments, and that is the beginning of Sharia victory if it is not stopped. Liberal judges will become, in their social circles, standard-bearers of enlightenment and cultural sensitivity for embracing the diversity of Sharia law. That is all the incentive they need to continue to use foreign standards to decide what our rights will be. Look no farther than Justice Ginsburg's incredible willingness to latch on to foreign precedents that confirm her preconceived policy preferences. If there is one multicultural lemming in a robe willing to betray our freedoms, that's one too many -- and we can be sure that there are many more who want to.
Every day, the news is full of examples of just how far Muslims will push. Take the infamous hijab at the Connecticut roller rink. A Muslim woman named Marisol Rodriguez-Colon -- soak in that cultural enrichment -- was asked to remove her medieval hood at a skating rink. The rink had a policy of no headgear because hats and scarves could cause injury on the floor. She claims that she needed to wear her hijab for "religious reasons." The "religious reasons" argument is the tip of the iceberg. If Muslims get to impose their practices and norms for "religious reasons," then they will reshape Western societies in their own medieval image.
Consider what else Muslims could demand at a roller rink for "religious reasons": For "religious reasons," males and females are to be separated from each other in public much of the time. For religious reasons, there must be no modern music to offend traditional ears. For religious reasons, there should be no pork products at snack bars. For religious reasons, homosexual skaters should be killed in one of many colorful ways -- a belief being taught to British Muslims.
If Marisol Rodriguez-Colon can force the roller rink to change its policy on headgear based on religious reasons, then why can't she change every other policy inconsistent with her creed? There is no way to say that all they want to do is change policy on headgear. There is no limit to what Muslims would force non-Muslims to do for "religious reasons." They want more; the radical leaders will demand the most, and they will take as much as they can get. Those two propositions are obvious. Don't be fooled by cringing sensitivity mantras about how moderates don't want to impose their views. Moderates can't stop multicultural appeasement judges from ruling in favor of radicals.
If radicals take as much as they can get, then headgear is one step on the path towards Sharia. There is nothing far-fetched about that prediction. It is the logical consequence of Muslim supremacy combined with Western cowardice.
Of course, this does not mean that each person who wants to wear their medieval headgear in public supports Sharia. What it means is that the headgear is the first step towards institutional acceptance and legal imposition of Sharia law. The same aggressive refusal to assimilate will carry out in other spheres of life. It will not be satisfied by wearing headgear. In fact, if the Muslim supremacists get their way with headgear, that will be a green light to them to make more demands -- demands that are more invasive, requiring even more fundamental changes to our society. That which gets rewarded gets repeated.
Most of us thought that we left the dark ages behind us, but a retrograde impulse is growing. We are far from the imposition of Sharia law, but not far enough. The habit of a liberty-loving people is to guard against any step, no matter how small, towards injustice. The first step toward injustice will guarantee a second step, and the zealots will take that step if they aren't stopped. The first step is never an accident or an exception; it's part of an established plan played out many times around the world. England is learning this tragic lesson as Sharia law makes women second-class citizens in divorce and child custody matters, according to a Guardian newspaper column. The only thing stopping Sharia will be the people willing to guard our liberty and culture. Things are best protected when they are jealously guarded. That is something that our founders knew very well.
Proactive defense of liberty and prevention of injustice are the reasons why Tennessee and Louisiana have already passed similar measures to Oklahoma's. At least twelve other states are considering such measures. Such policy is rank xenophobia, according to some, who contend that Islam is being unfairly singled out.
Sharia defenders should know that Islam is named specifically because Muslims single themselves out. Their leadership is uniquely comfortable forcing their religious practices and views onto other people. After a fitful two hundred years of protecting religious liberty in America, we have a sect seeking to impose its views in a way we haven't seen in a very long time. We should commend those who resist that imposition in advance.
Daft statement of the week:
It’s almost like the question of do you negotiate with terrorists,” Sen. Bob Menendez, NJ said.
Quote du jour:
"Chicken Crap" Speaker of the House elect John Boehner, speaking of the tax cut bill the democrats are floating.
Writings of Our Founding Fathers
Federalist Papers
The Treaty Making Power of the Executive
For the Independent Journal
Author: Alexander Hamilton
To the People of the State of New York:
THE President is to have power, "by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the senators present concur."
Though this provision has been assailed, on different grounds, with no small degree of vehemence, I scruple not to declare my firm persuasion, that it is one of the best digested and most unexceptionable parts of the plan. One ground of objection is the trite topic of the intermixture of powers; some contending that the President ought alone to possess the power of making treaties; others, that it ought to have been exclusively deposited in the Senate. Another source of objection is derived from the small number of persons by whom a treaty may be made. Of those who espouse this objection, a part are of opinion that the House of Representatives ought to have been associated in the business, while another part seem to think that nothing more was necessary than to have substituted two thirds of ALL the members of the Senate, to two thirds of the members PRESENT. As I flatter myself the observations made in a preceding number upon this part of the plan must have sufficed to place it, to a discerning eye, in a very favorable light, I shall here content myself with offering only some supplementary remarks, principally with a view to the objections which have been just stated.
With regard to the intermixture of powers, I shall rely upon the explanations already given in other places, of the true sense of the rule upon which that objection is founded; and shall take it for granted, as an inference from them, that the union of the Executive with the Senate, in the article of treaties, is no infringement of that rule. I venture to add, that the particular nature of the power of making treaties indicates a peculiar propriety in that union. Though several writers on the subject of government place that power in the class of executive authorities, yet this is evidently an arbitrary disposition; for if we attend carefully to its operation, it will be found to partake more of the legislative than of the executive character, though it does not seem strictly to fall within the definition of either of them. The essence of the legislative authority is to enact laws, or, in other words, to prescribe rules for the regulation of the society; while the execution of the laws, and the employment of the common strength, either for this purpose or for the common defense, seem to comprise all the functions of the executive magistrate. The power of making treaties is, plainly, neither the one nor the other. It relates neither to the execution of the subsisting laws, nor to the enaction of new ones; and still less to an exertion of the common strength. Its objects are CONTRACTS with foreign nations, which have the force of law, but derive it from the obligations of good faith. They are not rules prescribed by the sovereign to the subject, but agreements between sovereign and sovereign. The power in question seems therefore to form a distinct department, and to belong, properly, neither to the legislative nor to the executive. The qualities elsewhere detailed as indispensable in the management of foreign negotiations, point out the Executive as the most fit agent in those transactions; while the vast importance of the trust, and the operation of treaties as laws, plead strongly for the participation of the whole or a portion of the legislative body in the office of making them.
However proper or safe it may be in governments where the executive magistrate is an hereditary monarch, to commit to him the entire power of making treaties, it would be utterly unsafe and improper to intrust that power to an elective magistrate of four years' duration. It has been remarked, upon another occasion, and the remark is unquestionably just, that an hereditary monarch, though often the oppressor of his people, has personally too much stake in the government to be in any material danger of being corrupted by foreign powers. But a man raised from the station of a private citizen to the rank of chief magistrate, possessed of a moderate or slender fortune, and looking forward to a period not very remote when he may probably be obliged to return to the station from which he was taken, might sometimes be under temptations to sacrifice his duty to his interest, which it would require superlative virtue to withstand. An avaricious man might be tempted to betray the interests of the state to the acquisition of wealth. An ambitious man might make his own aggrandizement, by the aid of a foreign power, the price of his treachery to his constituents. The history of human conduct does not warrant that exalted opinion of human virtue which would make it wise in a nation to commit interests of so delicate and momentous a kind, as those which concern its intercourse with the rest of the world, to the sole disposal of a magistrate created and circumstanced as would be a President of the United States.
To have intrusted the power of making treaties to the Senate alone, would have been to relinquish the benefits of the constitutional agency of the President in the conduct of foreign negotiations. It is true that the Senate would, in that case, have the option of employing him in this capacity, but they would also have the option of letting it alone, and pique or cabal might induce the latter rather than the former. Besides this, the ministerial servant of the Senate could not be expected to enjoy the confidence and respect of foreign powers in the same degree with the constitutional representatives of the nation, and, of course, would not be able to act with an equal degree of weight or efficacy. While the Union would, from this cause, lose a considerable advantage in the management of its external concerns, the people would lose the additional security which would result from the co-operation of the Executive. Though it would be imprudent to confide in him solely so important a trust, yet it cannot be doubted that his participation would materially add to the safety of the society. It must indeed be clear to a demonstration that the joint possession of the power in question, by the President and Senate, would afford a greater prospect of security, than the separate possession of it by either of them. And whoever has maturely weighed the circumstances which must concur in the appointment of a President, will be satisfied that the office will always bid fair to be filled by men of such characters as to render their concurrence in the formation of treaties peculiarly desirable, as well on the score of wisdom, as on that of integrity.
The remarks made in a former number, which have been alluded to in another part of this paper, will apply with conclusive force against the admission of the House of Representatives to a share in the formation of treaties. The fluctuating and, taking its future increase into the account, the multitudinous composition of that body, forbid us to expect in it those qualities which are essential to the proper execution of such a trust. Accurate and comprehensive knowledge of foreign politics; a steady and systematic adherence to the same views; a nice and uniform sensibility to national character; decision, SECRECY, and despatch, are incompatible with the genius of a body so variable and so numerous. The very complication of the business, by introducing a necessity of the concurrence of so many different bodies, would of itself afford a solid objection. The greater frequency of the calls upon the House of Representatives, and the greater length of time which it would often be necessary to keep them together when convened, to obtain their sanction in the progressive stages of a treaty, would be a source of so great inconvenience and expense as alone ought to condemn the project.
The only objection which remains to be canvassed, is that which would substitute the proportion of two thirds of all the members composing the senatorial body, to that of two thirds of the members PRESENT. It has been shown, under the second head of our inquiries, that all provisions which require more than the majority of any body to its resolutions, have a direct tendency to embarrass the operations of the government, and an indirect one to subject the sense of the majority to that of the minority. This consideration seems sufficient to determine our opinion, that the convention have gone as far in the endeavor to secure the advantage of numbers in the formation of treaties as could have been reconciled either with the activity of the public councils or with a reasonable regard to the major sense of the community. If two thirds of the whole number of members had been required, it would, in many cases, from the non-attendance of a part, amount in practice to a necessity of unanimity. And the history of every political establishment in which this principle has prevailed, is a history of impotence, perplexity, and disorder. Proofs of this position might be adduced from the examples of the Roman Tribuneship, the Polish Diet, and the States-General of the Netherlands, did not an example at home render foreign precedents unnecessary.
To require a fixed proportion of the whole body would not, in all probability, contribute to the advantages of a numerous agency, better then merely to require a proportion of the attending members. The former, by making a determinate number at all times requisite to a resolution, diminishes the motives to punctual attendance. The latter, by making the capacity of the body to depend on a PROPORTION which may be varied by the absence or presence of a single member, has the contrary effect. And as, by promoting punctuality, it tends to keep the body complete, there is great likelihood that its resolutions would generally be dictated by as great a number in this case as in the other; while there would be much fewer occasions of delay. It ought not to be forgotten that, under the existing Confederation, two members MAY, and usually DO, represent a State; whence it happens that Congress, who now are solely invested with ALL THE POWERS of the Union, rarely consist of a greater number of persons than would compose the intended Senate. If we add to this, that as the members vote by States, and that where there is only a single member present from a State, his vote is lost, it will justify a supposition that the active voices in the Senate, where the members are to vote individually, would rarely fall short in number of the active voices in the existing Congress. When, in addition to these considerations, we take into view the co-operation of the President, we shall not hesitate to infer that the people of America would have greater security against an improper use of the power of making treaties, under the new Constitution, than they now enjoy under the Confederation. And when we proceed still one step further, and look forward to the probable augmentation of the Senate, by the erection of new States, we shall not only perceive ample ground of confidence in the sufficiency of the members to whose agency that power will be intrusted, but we shall probably be led to conclude that a body more numerous than the Senate would be likely to become, would be very little fit for the proper discharge of the trust.
PUBLIUS.
References:
Washington Times
http://www.hotair.com/
http://www.theblaze.com/
http://www.dailycaller.com/
http://www.americanthinker.com/
http://www.americanspectator.com/
http://www.drudgereport.com/
http://www.politico.com/
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/
http://www.wsj.com/
http://www.youtube.com/
http://www.weeklystandard.com/
http://www.nronline.com/
Library of Congress/Federalist Papers
Adam J. White
John Bennett
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