n November 14, 2011, the Supreme Court agreed to review the constitutionality of President Obama’s health-care act. The central question is, What limits does the Constitution — specifically, the Commerce Clause — impose upon the federal government’s exercise of power? This health-care act is the defining legislation of the president’s term, and the issue of limited government is at the very heart of the debate between Obama and his opponents. The political, economic, and constitutional stakes are very high. These arguments before the Court will provide a dramatic — and perhaps even decisive — backdrop for the 2012 election.

Constitutional crises of this magnitude are not without precedent. Indeed, the seeds of this case can be found in the court battles of the 1930s and 1940s, as Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation challenged traditional constitutional bounds. Supported by record congressional majorities, FDR and his fellow Democrats passed a blizzard of programs designed to alleviate the economic hardship of the Great Depression — and to alter the very fabric of the U.S. capitalistic system.

The 1932 Democratic platform, largely written by the party’s 1924 nominee, John W. Davis, was a clear statement of conservative, Jeffersonian principles, but FDR abandoned this platform during his first hundred days in office. So radical were the changes that by 1935, conservatives — Democrats and Republicans alike — agreed with Davis when he wrote, “If the structure of this Government is to be preserved, the courts must do it.”

As conservatives looked in desperation to the judiciary for relief, Davis was their logical leader. A highly esteemed former solicitor general under President Wilson, former ambassador to Great Britain, former president of the American Bar Association, and senior partner at one of New York’s premier law firms, Davis commanded respect from all quarters of the political and legal spectrum. As a founder of the bipartisan, anti–New Deal Liberty League in 1934, Davis repeatedly wrote to his supporters, “I believe in the Constitution of the United States; I believe in the division of powers that it makes. I believe in the right of private property, the sanctity and binding power of contracts; the duty of self-help. I am opposed to confiscatory taxation, wasteful expenditure, socialized industry, and a planned economy controlled and directed by government functionaries. I believe these things to be inimical to human liberty and destructive of American ideals.”

Sensing the gravity of the crisis, Davis seized every opportunity and expertly wielded every legal weapon at his disposal to thwart the New Deal. Publicly labeling the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) “a bribe to farmers,” he signed the amicus curiaebrief and successfully led the fight that ultimately resulted in the court’s 6–3 ruling that the AAA was unconstitutional. He successfully opposed the Public Utility Holding Act in the lower courts and led the fight against it within the American Bar Association. Davis personally argued the unconstitutionality of the Frazier-Lemke Bankruptcy Act and the National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act before the Supreme Court.

When Roosevelt responded to these courtroom defeats by setting forth his infamous court-packing scheme in 1937, it was Davis who advised the New Deal’s congressional opponents in defeating the measure. By the late 1930s, he had earned the New Dealers’ enduring enmity, and he wore with pride their sobriquet, “Public Enemy Number One.”

During the course of these battles, Davis repeatedly warned that “paternalism fastens its grasp upon the country, and, little by little, the practice of local self-government fades away. Baptize a scheme, even the most fantastic, with a high-sounding and attractive title, and it will elicit the public support.” Of the failure to limit government, he admonished, “Nothing but mischief, to my way of thinking, can come from any government attempting tasks which lie beyond its power to accomplish.” Ever clear about the indivisibility of property rights from human rights, Davis contended, “The two are not antagonistic. History furnishes no instance where the right of man to acquire and hold property has been taken away without the complete destruction of liberty in all its forms.”

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Now is a particularly dangerous moment for American national security interests. Not just because threats are growing. Not just because the current administration is making a historic bungle from China to Iraq to Iran to Russia to Europe to Mexico to our historic allies in the Middle East — both Jewish and Muslim. All that would be bad enough.

But the greatest threat to our national security, at the moment, is the manifest indifference of the voting public to these foreign threats — and the silence on them from our alleged leaders. It's understandable.

---

The devil has our economy by the throat, and Americans (when they think about politics) are focused on what Washington should do — or should stop doing — to defeat our domestic economic threat.

Obviously, the public is in no mood to go looking for foreign devils. Every 27-year-old junior Washington political operative knows this is a political season to advise candidates to talk about jobs, jobs, jobs. And they should.

But it is precisely when the public cries out for taking care at home that true statesmen must stand up and warn the public if there are foreign dangers brewing. A few Republican senators are trying to be heard, warning the public of the consequences of the dangers of a predatory China, the further weakening of our military and the White House's retreat from Iraq. But there is little evidence that the public — even the GOP public — cares much.

For example, in a matter of weeks the congressional super committee assigned to reduce the deficit will determine whether it gets its job done or pulls the trigger that would cut defense spending another $600 billion.

If such a cut were to be carried out, it could by itself determine — adversely to America — the coming geo-strategic struggle between the U.S. and China. To contain Chinese ambitions, we are going to need, among other things, a much stronger Navy, not a much weaker one. Of course, navies take years to build up (they can be sunk or turned to rust more quickly) and such a drastic budget cut would inevitably reduce our Navy to ineffectiveness in East Asia.

Last week, the super committee and the nation should have heard — but did not — a rousing warning cry about China and explicitly connecting it to the $600 billion cut.

What am I talking about, you might wonder? Well last week, as Europe struggled to raise sufficient cash to manage the Greek debt default, they sent an emissary to China to seek money. Der Speigel, the leading German news magazine reported: “One day after European leaders announced a plan to boost their euro backstop fund to 1 trillion euros, China indicated it may attach conditions to any money it invests. One of those stipulations — that Europe stop criticizing Beijing's monetary policy — could strain trans-Atlantic relations.”

The price of Chinese money will be European silence of China's predatory trade practices. The Der Speigel quote suggested that such a demand would strain trans-Atlantic — that is, United States-European — relations.

But not a peep was heard form our government or, to the best of my knowledge, from any senior Washington politician of either party.

This should have sent shock waves across America. It also should have been thrown down at the door of the super committee to not disembowel our defense budget in the face of the coming danger.

The very mention of the idea that Europe, with a quarter of the world's economic activity, might agree to be silenced in what will probably be the No. 1 international issue of the next decade — Chinese economic predation — should have set off alarm bells. It also strongly suggests a greater burden that may fall on our military and naval capacity.

Of course, the Chinese have good reason to expect such passivity. As the British Oxford scholar Nigel Cliff recounts in his current book “Holy War”: “Between 1405 and 1433 the Ming emperors staged a spectacular piece of seaborne theater. Seven floating embassies had arrived in the Indian Ocean under the command of Admiral Zheng He…The First fleet alone comprised 317 ships manned by 27, 870 sailors, soldiers, merchants, physicians, astrologers and artisans. At its head were 62 nine-masted treasure ships, and yet in a display of munificence that would have utterly baffled Europeans, the ships were designed not to receive treasure but to dispense it. As they sailed into the harbors …they disgorged huge quantities of silks, porcelain, gold and silver wares and other marvels of Chinese manufacturing. Such terrifying munificence invariably had the intended effect: In the space of a few years, the envoys of 37 nations rushed to pay homage to the emperor at Beijing.”

It may not be popular at the moment for our elected and aspiring officials to warn a threadbare public that we will have to spend more, not less on our defense if we are to guard our freedoms and future prosperity.

But giving the public hard advice in hard times is what distinguishes temporarily unpopular statesmen from historically reviled political hacks.

Tony Blankley is executive vice president of Edelman public relations in Washington. Email him at TonyBlankley@gmail.com. To find out more about Tony Blankley and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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The Islamic democracy project is nothing if not beguiling. From Clinton’s Orwellian “peace process” through Bush’s cloying “freedom agenda” to Obama’s contortion of an Islamist ascendancy into “the Arab Spring,” the dream teems with self-congratulation, so much so that its debilitating downsides go unseen and unaddressed. Thanks to the Islamic Republic of Iran, that situation has just gone from dangerously delusional to dangerous, period.

The list of downsides is long. There is the rudimentary problem that democracy promotion does not work. As a national-security strategy, it is irrelevant to our threat environment.

Keep reading this post . . .

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All those Occupiers holding their “End the War!” signs better march on over to the White House.

President Obama just announced he’s sending U.S. troops to central Africa to fight something called “the Lord’s Resistance Army.”

The letter to House GOP Speaker John Boehner:

TEXT OF A LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT
TO THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
AND THE PRESIDENT PRO TEMPORE OF THE SENATE

October 14, 2011

Dear Mr. Speaker: (Dear Mr. President:)

For more than two decades, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA)
has murdered, raped, and kidnapped tens of thousands of men,
women, and children in central Africa. The LRA continues to
commit atrocities across the Central African Republic, the
Democratic Republic of the Congo, and South Sudan that have a
disproportionate impact on regional security. Since 2008, the
United States has supported regional military efforts to pursue
the LRA and protect local communities. Even with some limited
U.S. assistance, however, regional military efforts have thus
far been unsuccessful in removing LRA leader Joseph Kony or his
top commanders from the battlefield. In the Lord’s Resistance
Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act of 2009, Public
Law 111-172, enacted May 24, 2010, the Congress also expressed
support for increased, comprehensive U.S. efforts to help
mitigate and eliminate the threat posed by the LRA to civilians
and regional stability.

In furtherance of the Congress’s stated policy, I have authorized
a small number of combat-equipped U.S. forces to deploy to
central Africa to provide assistance to regional forces that are
working toward the removal of Joseph Kony from the battlefield.
I believe that deploying these U.S. Armed Forces furthers U.S.
national security interests and foreign policy and will be a
significant contribution toward counter-LRA efforts in central
Africa.

On October 12, the initial team of U.S. military personnel with
appropriate combat equipment deployed to Uganda. During the next
month, additional forces will deploy, including a second combat-
equipped team and associated headquarters, communications, and
logistics personnel. The total number of U.S. military personnel
deploying for this mission is approximately 100. These forces
will act as advisors to partner forces that have the goal of
removing from the battlefield Joseph Kony and other senior
leadership of the LRA. Our forces will provide information,
advice, and assistance to select partner nation forces. Subject
to the approval of each respective host nation, elements of these
U.S. forces will deploy into Uganda, South Sudan, the Central
African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The support provided by U.S. forces will enhance regional
efforts against the LRA. However, although the U.S. forces are
combat-equipped, they will only be providing information, advice,
and assistance to partner nation forces, and they will not
themselves engage LRA forces unless necessary for self-defense.
All appropriate precautions have been taken to ensure the safety
of U.S. military personnel during their deployment.

I have directed this deployment, which is in the national
security and foreign policy interests of the United States,
pursuant to my constitutional authority to conduct U.S. foreign
relations and as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive. I am
making this report as part of my efforts to keep the Congress
fully informed, consistent with the War Powers Resolution (Public
Law 93-148). I appreciate the support of the Congress in this
action.

Sincerely,

BARACK OBAMA

# # #

***

FYI. The push for military intervention here is supported and spearheaded by GOP Sen. James Inhofe. Background here.

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A little while back, I composed a list of the
ten greatest “state-actor” threats to American security
interests, both at home and abroad. I ranked Iran #2, given their
reckless bellicosity, nuclear ambitions and willingness to fight
America by proxy.

Conspicuously absent from my security metric was the Islamic
Republic’s most diabolical catspaw: A 56-year old, naturalized
Iranian-American divorcee who sells used cars for a living in
Corpus Christi, TX.

If in fact Manssor Arbabsiar was involved in a high-stakes plot
to assassinate the Saudi ambassador by blowing up Café Milano,
it’s probably because he was dead broke and could use the
money. Described by friends and neighbors as untrustworthy and
disorganized, this international man of mystery was apparently
involved in several used car lots, and a failing fast-food outlet
at a local strip mall. Most of his properties were up for hock, or
recently sold. A criminal mastermind, he ain’t. Court records
reveal a 2001 arrest for theft regarding some business deal gone
sour.

Of course, charges were later dropped, so maybe I’m not giving
him enough credit.

All this sounds considerably less diabolical than
White House claims that “an Iranian American, operating in
Texas and acting at the behest of the elite al-Quds Force,
attempted to co-opt a Mexican drug cartel to assassinate Saudi
Arabia’s senior diplomat… before bombing the Israeli embassy in the
nation’s capital.” Pretty scary, huh?

While the latter makes for good press, the former sounds utterly
half-baked. Given Arbabsiar’s curriculum vitae, I’d have guessed he
was shooting his mouth off to Mexican drug-runners and DEA
informants because he heard ATF and Eric Holder were
giving away free guns and ammo, and figured he could turn a
tidy profit.

If the best Iran can muster is a used-car salesman who couldn’t
shut up about his connections to the Iranian military, I ranked
them way too high on my list of prospective threats.

Beyond that, the mission
doesn’t fit Iran’s M.O.

Despite thirty-two years of rabid anti-Americanism and “Great
Satan” chants, the Supreme Leader has never ordered a hit on U.S.
soil. In the past, when understudies have been employed, they’ve
been seasoned task-men, operating within the ranks of allied
organizations such as Hizbullah or the Muslim-Bosnian
government.

Let’s put it this way: I’d be shocked to learn the Iranians
decided to staff up at amateur hour to conduct a high-profile
attack against their three most significant enemies.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney stated that “senior
levels of the al-Quds Force were engaged in the plotting.” Attorney
General Holder stressed that high level officials in the Iranian
government “were responsible for this plot.” Fair enough. But I’m
going to side with President Bush’s leading expert on Iran,

Hilary Mann Leverett, who has explained that “What we’ve seen
unfold makes no sense in terms of Iran’s national security
strategy.” If Iran wanted to hit Israel or the Saudis, there seems
little reason to take the fight to the District of Columbia. Plus,
a plot like this smacks of desperation. Iran is already a regional
power broker and a would-be member of Club Nuke. Leave this sort of
nonsense to Yemen or Sudan.

With little to gain, and too much to lose, why ruffle any
additional feathers by attempting the most dramatic assassination
in recent memory, while simultaneously enraging your nuclear bête
noire in Israel? None of this makes any sense.

Which begs the question… if Arbabsiar wasn’t a legitimate proxy,
why cast him as one? Well, for the past two days, every news outlet
in America, Europe and the Middle East has run spectacular
headlines focused on the stunning allegations and wild speculation
about the U.S. response.

I suppose the fact that these accusations against Iran broke on
the same day Senate Democrats joined their Republican counterparts
to quash President Obama’s jobs bill (after weeks of Barry’s
barnstorming) could just be a coincidence… not to mention Eric
Holder’s appearance today before the House Oversight and Government
Reform Committee to explain the sale of thousands of firearms to
known and suspected straw buyers for the big, bad cartels in
Mexico.

Some might suggest that these two black eyes for the Obama
administration are clearly related to a spotty charge of proxy
terror brought against a 56-year-old fall guy. I guess much like
the Iranian terror plot, my cynicism doesn’t mean it isn’t
true.

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A US government informant acting as a member of the Zetas, a drug cartel in Mexico, helped thwart an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States on American soil. Now Obama’s top national security aides are seeking new international sanctions against Iran. Pepe Escobar, correspondent for the Asia Times, tells us who’s to gain from the situation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFQO60H6fSU

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(National Journal) – President Obama threatened on Wednesday to veto any bill that would restrict insurers from paying for abortions, saying it goes too far. “Longstanding federal policy prohibits federal funds from being used for abortions, except in cases of rape or incest, or when the life of the woman would be endangered,” the White House said in a statement…

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James Carafano

Examiner Columnist

NOTE TO COPY DESK: Do not send to web site, print edition only

“It sure is hell to be president.” Harry Truman spoke from experience.

One of his worst days was April 14, 1950. That’s when the National Security Council delivered a highly classified, 58-page report calculating the forces needed to fight the Cold War. Truman…

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Barack Obama responded to Republican charges of “class warfare” by saying he’s proud to be “a warrior for the middle class.”
But what battles-or even skirmishes-has he ever won for working families? By what measure…

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I should note right from the start that I like Stu Rothenberg as a pundit and a political handicapper: he’s a pretty bright person and he has a lot of experience. But Rothenberg is also very much plugged into the professional political establishment… and sometimes, it shows. Case in point: Rothenberg’s otherwise spot-on analysis about the travails of Barack Obama these days has what I will charitably call a ‘howler.’

This president, like Presidents Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush before him, learned the lesson that every investment fund manager knows: Evidence of past performance doesn’t guarantee future results.

And now the president, who is expected to raise close to $1 billion for his re-election campaign, who faces a Republican field widely mocked as undistinguished and who can rely on the same team of brilliant political gurus who masterminded his 2008 victory, suddenly finds his re-election in doubt.

Two howlers, actually: the first is the frankly unsupported-by-historical-evidence assumption that Barack Obama ever learns a lesson on anything. The second is that Barack Obama’s past performance should have justified any expectations in the first place.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way: yes, Obama beat McCain in 2008. Which is to say, Obama beat a Republican candidate who was too tired to fight, too slow to realize that his signature issue (national security) was temporarily downgraded, and too inflexible to switch gears away from the campaign that McCain expected to run against Hillary Clinton; and Obama did this in the atmosphere of a sudden collapse in the economy, at the worst possible moment for the GOP*. Congratulations. Huzzah. Feel the magic — but since then? Well, let’s just say that the magic had a very, very short half-life:

• December 2, 2008. GA-SEN runoff election. Saxby Chambliss goes from 49/46 in the original election to 57/43 in the runoff. This would be about the time where I realized that Obama was not a machine.
• December 6, 2008. LA-02 & LA-04 runoff elections. If you remember - I do — the shocking result was not that Cao won in LA-02; it was that Fleming did in LA-04. LA-04 Especially noteworthy because it represented Obama’s first tentative foray into using his political capital.
• March 30, 2009. NY-20. I bring it up because Rothenberg did in passing: and I’d like to note that going from a comfortable 62/38 win in the general to a 50/50 squeaker win in the special does not actually speak well for the President’s underlying aura of electoral baraka. And again, I wouldn’t have brought it up if Rothenberg hadn’t inexplicably used it as an example.
• November 3, 2009. NJ-GOV and VA-GOV. Yeah, that was the day that a lot of people started saying this in public. Not so much because of Virginia — everybody knew that DOOM had arrived for Deeds fairly early — but because Obama went to bat for Corzine… and struck out.
• May 21, 2010. HI-01 special election. This was the one that more or less made up for the GOP base’s throwaway of NY-23 in order to make it clear that it was time to take the Republican grassroots more seriously; and Charles Djou’s win there obscured just how badly Obama and the Democrats messed up the organizational side of things by trying to push Case over Hanabusa.
• November 2, 2010. The 2010 Midterm elections. And how well did Barack Obama do there, in his first real test to see whether he could bring in supporters?

You tell me.

I bring all of this up to point out something: not every one of us believed that Barack Obama was all that, or ever all that. He didn’t impress me as a candidate, he doesn’t impress me as a President, and at the rate things are going he won’t impress me as a campaigner next year. And I didn’t need to wait until September of 2011 to gear up towards telling him ‘no:’ I was already starting to do it in February of 2009. Or November of 2008, depending on how you look at it. So I guess that what I’m trying to point out here is… while I understand that Stuart Rothenberg is a little surprised at how badly things have turned out for the President — and the people who are stuck having to rely on the President — I’m not exactly sure why Rothenberg’s surprised that Obama could be defeated in 2012.

Wasn’t it obvious in 2008?

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*I would like to note for the record, by the way, that the unemployment rate and average price of gas has more or less doubled since then. Which is why you’re going to see a lot of “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” commercials next year.

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