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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An administrative law judge in Georgia could decide as early as this week whether voters in the state convinced him Barack Obama’s name should be removed from the 2012 presidential ballot because he is not qualified to hold the office.

But win, lose or draw, the fight isn’t going to be over, as other cases are erupting across the nation, with challenges being raised anew even in Obama’s own adopted political network in Illinois.

The Georgia hearing was before Judge Michael Malihi, and while none of the lawyers who appeared in the proceedings was willing to predict what the decision will be, several did confirm that Malihi had considered simply granting them a default victory, because Obama and his lawyers expressly stated they would not participate in a hearing to provide evidence that he is qualified to be on the ballot.

A default presumably would have meant a recommendation from the judge that Obama’s name be stricken from the ballot, a decision which would head for review immediately by Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp.

He, however, was the one who warned Obama of the “peril” of not participating in the hearing when Obama and his attorney had asked that the event be canceled.

Whatever the outcome in Georgia, the issue is gaining traction in other states, too, including Alabama, Tennessee, Arizona, New Hampshire, and even Illinois, Obama’s home political base.

There, in a complaint recently filed by Stephen F. Boulton of McCarthy Duffy LLP and Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation, their client is asking for a change in state law to allow the vetting of political candidates.

Obama isn’t even mentioned by name, but don’t think for a minute that the requested change wouldn’t include his candidacy.

The plaintiff is Sharon Meroni, who long has fought inside the system for a way to challenge the candidacies there. In her new case, filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County, she is petitioning for a judicial review of the state’s election procedures as they exist now.

Targeted are the state Board of Elections, members of the board, several county clerks and others, including candidates Dan Duffy and Amanda Howland.

Meroni, a registered voter in the 27th Legislative District in the state, said her concern is that “only candidates qualified for office under the Illinois and United States Constitutions appear on the ballot.”

The state’s primary is in March.

The case alleges the candidates did not provide sufficient proof that they are U.S. citizens as required to hold the office being sought “as is required by the Illinois Constitution of 1970.”

State officials refused to remove the names from the ballots, so Meroni has gone to court. Granting ballot access, she said in the complaint, “is contrary to law, against the manifest weight of the evidence, arbitrary and capricious, and a denial of the rights of the petitioner.”

Kreep told WND the way the system is established in Illinois it essentially allows political parties to determine who runs for office, and unless voters find out about a filing and can assemble a formal objection within five days, their concerns are dismissed.

And the system has no procedure for verifying the eligibility of candidates, he said.

That particular issue has been in the headlines for the past four years, since before Obama’s 2008 election victory, because of the questions that remain over his eligibility. The U.S. Constitution demands a “natural born citizen” be president and the Founders probably thought that to be the offspring of two citizen parents when they wrote the term.

But Obama’s father never was a citizen. There also are those who contend he was not even born in the United States.

Kreep said the Illinois procedures make it virtually impossible for candidates to be challenged for their eligibility.

He said there likely will be raised in other states concerns similar to those in Illinois, where “barriers now in existence … bar voters from reasonable investigation of the citizenship of a candidate.”

That’s simply a deprivation of the constitutional right to due process, he said. The case seeks a declaration that the political maneuvers are unconstitutional.

There also have been assembled campaigns specifically to encourage voters to file eligibility complaints about candidates with states. One such effort is the Obama Ballot Challenge, which lists contacts for state elections offices across the country.

It is, of course, the states that actually run elections; a national election is just the compilation of the results from the 50 states.

“A candidate that is not legally qualified to be on the ballot, such as Barack Obama, steals votes from other candidates who are legally on the ballot,” the site advises.

WND previously reported that cases already have been begun in New Hampshire, where state officials rejected the claims; Alabama, Tennessee and Arizona.

The newest round of court actions do not try to have a judge determine Obama is not qualified for the Oval Office and remove him from it, they simply challenge his eligibility for the 2012 election.

Many of the cases cite Minor v. Happersett, a U.S. Supreme Court opinion from 1875 that said a “natural born citizen” would be a person whose parents both were citizens.

“This complaint does not request any injunction against any state or federal government official. Instead this complaint asserts that the private entity, Defendant Democratic Party, intends to act negligently or fraudulently in a manner that will cause irreparable harm to the plaintiffs, to the states, and to the citizens of the United States,” said one of the filings.

It continued, “Because Mr. Obama has admitted that his father was not a U.S. citizen, and because this fact has been confirmed by the U.S. State Department, any reasonable person with knowledge of these facts would doubt Mr. Obama’s constitutional qualifications. Therefore, any representation by the Democratic Party certifying said qualifications would be negligent, absent further evidence verifying Mr. Obama’s natural-born status.

“Plaintiffs further request an injunction prohibiting the Democratic Party from making any representation to any state official asserting, implying, or assuming that Mr. Obama is qualified to hold the office of president, absent a showing by the party sufficient to prove that said representation is not negligent.”

Van Irion, lead counsel for Liberty Legal Foundation, also is working on several of the issues, and has brought the question in court in Arizona.

“We picked the Arizona court for several reasons, but the main one being that it is part of the 9th Circuit. The 9th Circuit has indicated in dicta that an FEC-registered presidential candidate would have standing for this type of suit,” he said. The organization is working with John Dummett, a Liberty Legal Foundation member who is a candidate for the office of president in the 2012 election.

Irion said the other lawsuit was filed in state court in Tennessee.

“The focus of the state-court suit is to prevent certification to the Tennessee Secretary of State. This suit puts greater emphasis on the negligent misrepresentation/fraud aspects of a certification from the DNC. It includes more facts regarding Obama’s Indonesian dual citizenship and fraudulent Social Security Number,” he said.

He said if the cases succeed, the Democrats would not be able to list Obama as their candidate for 2012.

“Neither lawsuit discusses Obama’s place of birth or his birth certificate. These issues are completely irrelevant to the argument. LLF’s lawsuit simply points out that the Supreme Court has defined ‘natural-born citizen’ as a person born to two parents who were both U.S. citizens at the time of the natural-born citizen’s birth. Obama’s father was never a U.S. citizen. Therefore, Obama can never be a natural-born citizen. His place of birth is irrelevant,” Van Irion’s group said.

WND also has reported that Maricopa, Ariz., County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has launched a formal law enforcement investigation into concerns Obama may submit fraudulent documentation to be put on the state’s election ballot in 2012.

Other attorneys involved in the Georgia case are J. Mark Hatfield and Orly Taitz.

Hatfield has told WND that the goal is for a court determination on the definition of “natural born citizen,” which then could be applied directly to Obama’s candidacy.

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At the end of Sunday mass at the church this writer attends in Washington, D.C., the pastor asked the congregation to remain for a few minutes.

Then, on the instructions of Cardinal Archbishop Donald Wuerl, the pastor proceeded to read a letter.

In the letter, the Church denounced the Obama administration for ordering all Catholic schools, hospitals and social services to provide, in their health insurance coverage for employees, free contraceptives, free sterilizations and free “morning-after” pills.

Parishioners were urged to contact their representatives in Congress to bring about a reversal of President Obama’s new policy.

Now, not only is this a battle the Church must fight, it is a battle the Church can win if it has the moral stamina to stay the course.

In forcing the Church to violate its own principles, Obama has committed an act of federal aggression, crossing the line between church and state to appease his ACLU and feminist allies, while humiliating the Catholic bishops.

Should the Church submit, its moral authority in America would disappear.

Now, undeniably, the church milquetoast of past decades that refused to discipline pro-abortion Catholics allowed the impression to form that while the hierarchy may protest, eventually it will go along to get along with a Democratic Party that was once home to most Catholics.

Obama’s problem today is that not only is he forcing the Church to violate her conscience; he dissed the highest prelate in America.

In November, New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, held what he describes as an “extraordinarily friendly” meeting with Obama at the White House.

The president assured the archbishop of his respect for the Church, and the archbishop came away persuaded Obama would never force the Church to adopt any policy that would violate her principles.

Ten days ago, Obama sandbagged the archbishop.

He informed Cardinal-designate Dolan by phone that, with the sole concession of the Church being given an extra year, to August 2013, to comply, the new policy, as set down by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, will be imposed. All social and educational institutions of the Catholic church will offer health insurance covering birth control, or face fines.

“In effect, the president is saying we have a year to figure out how to violate our consciences,” said Archbishop Dolan, who went on:

“To force American citizens to choose between violating their consciences and forgoing their health care is literally unconscionable. … This represents a challenge and a compromise of our religious liberty.”

Where do Obama and Sebelius get the power to do this?

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, signed into law on March 23, 2010, the colloquial name for which is “Obamacare.”

NARAL Pro-Choice America is celebrating the new policy. Planned Parenthood’s president, Cecile Richards, calls it a “health-care issue … based on what’s best for women’s health.” Others have argued that many Catholic women practice birth control.

But that Catholics choose to ignore doctrine does not justify the U.S. government imposing on Catholic institutions a policy that violates Catholic teaching.

Even Washington Post liberal E.J. Dionne, in a Jan. 30 column titled “Obama’s Breach of Faith,” charges that the president “threw his progressive Catholic allies under the bus. …

“Speaking as an American liberal who believes that religious pluralism imposes certain obligations on government … the Church’s leaders had a right to ask for broader relief from a contraception mandate that would require it to act against its own teachings.”

Why did Obama do it?

Facing a close race for a second term, Obama chose not to antagonize his left. Yet he must have known that siding with them meant leaving Archbishop Dolan with egg all over his face. Obama, calculatedly, came down on the side of those he believes to be more crucial to his re-election.

This affront should tell the Catholic hierarchy, if they did not already know, where they stand in the party of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Kathleen Sebilius. And where they sit – in the back of the bus.

Yet if the bishops will look upon this crisis of conscience, this insult, as an opportunity, they can effect its reversal and recapture a measure of the moral authority they have lately lost.

Not only should the bishops file suit in federal court against the president and Sebelius for violation of the constitutional principle of separation of church and state, they should inform the White House that no bishop will give an invocation at the Democratic Convention.

Then, they should inform the White House that in the last two weeks of the 2012 campaign, priests in every parish will read from the pulpit at Sunday mass a letter denouncing Obama as anti-Catholic for denying the Church its right to live according to its beliefs.

If Obama loses the Catholic vote, he loses the election.

The White House will come around, fast. Rely upon it.

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Cheers for Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) for standing up to President Obama on his unconstitutional recess appointments.

]]> http://www.antiobamablog.com/2012/01/this-week-in-washington-january-30-2012/feed/ 0 http://www.antiobamablog.com/2012/01/free-birth-control-vs-freedom-of-religion/ http://www.antiobamablog.com/2012/01/free-birth-control-vs-freedom-of-religion/#comments Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:00:28 +0000 Admin http://www.antiobamablog.com/2012/01/free-birth-control-vs-freedom-of-religion/ From NRO Articles:

When Pliny the Younger was a provincial governor in the Roman Empire, he wrote a letter to Emperor Trajan asking whether he should execute Christians who refused to burn incense in worship of the emperor. Pliny, in keeping with the customs of the empire, did not care about forcing Christians to believe that the emperor was a god. But in public they had to behave as if they did. Thus, the Christians were in the dock not so much because of their faith in a risen Christ as over their willful refusal to declare themselves part of the reigning social order.

I thought of Pliny when I read that the Obama administration, in creating specific rules to implement Obamacare, will require all employers (with a very narrow exemption discussed below) to offer their employees health insurance that provides FDA-approved contraception, female sterilization, and other “reproductive” services free of charge — even if the employer is a religious organization and doing so violates its doctrine. I also recalled the times that President Obama and other members of his administration have supported “freedom of worship.” However, as in Pliny’s time, “freedom of worship” is not the same thing as “freedom of religion.” The former means that one may believe whatever one wants and worship privately without interference, whereas the latter allows one freedom to live in the world at large consistent with one’s faith tenets, even if they are not endorsed by the state.

Because the administration is knowingly forcing (primarily Catholic) religious organizations to pay for medical services to which they are theologically opposed, the new rules represent a frontal assault on freedom of religion at an institutional level. This is no small matter. To date, public controversies over “conscience” in health care have mostly involved individuals — e.g., doctors, nurses, pharmacists — whose personal morality or religious convictions conflicted with the provision of certain medical procedures or substances. For example, pharmacies in Washington State and Illinois have litigated over the right of owners to refuse to dispense contraception on religious grounds. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the pharmacies and in favor of a state regulation (since withdrawn for reconsideration) requiring them to dispense legally prescribed medications. An Illinois state court took the opposite view in a similar case.

But the free-birth-control rule goes much further than creating a potential conflict between the general law and individual religious beliefs. Rather, the rule targets the right of religious organizations to conduct their public activities consistently with their religious dogma and moral values — except within the narrow confines of an actual church, synagogue, mosque, temple, or monastery.

This isn’t an accident. The preliminary rule, which will remain unchanged in the final version, created a very narrowly tailored religious exemption (page 46,623 of the Federal Register). To qualify for exemption as a “religious employer,” an organization must meet four criteria:

1. The “inculcation of religious values” is “its purpose.”

2. It “primarily employs persons who share its religious tenets.”

3. “It primarily serves persons who share its religious tenets.”

4. It is a non-profit organization under sections of the code that “refer to churches, their integrated auxiliaries, and conventions or associations, as well as to the exclusively religious activities of any religious order.”

Lest there be any doubt of the limited nature of the exemption, the proposed rule states, “Specifically, the Departments seek to provide for a religious accommodation that respects the unique relationship between a house of worship and its employees in ministerial positions.”

Thus, the group health insurance covering nuns in a Catholic religious order would probably not have to cover contraception. But insurance provided by the same order’s elementary school probably would. Ditto a hospital established by the nuns.

Even more telling: Despite much screaming from opponents, the Department of Health and Human Services has refused to broaden the religious exemption in the final rule — forcing religiously founded organizations to violate their parent church’s teachings, a frontal assault on the freedom of faiths to operate institutional outreach organizations consistent with their beliefs. If this rule stands, it won’t end there. If Catholic organizations can be compelled by federal diktat to violate their religious tenets, so can other religious organizations in different contexts.

Some have argued that a recent 9–0 Supreme Court ruling allowing a Lutheran church to fire a minister who in a secular organization would have been protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act provides shelter against the free-birth-control rule. I think not. That case was not about “freedom of religion,” as I have defined it here, but “freedom of worship” — the Court ruled that churches are free to decide on the criteria for appointing and releasing their own ministers and individual leaders without interference. But the free-birth-control rule isn’t about the “ministerial exception.” Rather, it imposes a legal duty on faith organizations to comply with the values of the state whenever they engage in public action or charitable enterprise among the general society.

In fact, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius declared that the Obama administration intends not only to force churches to do what the state directs, but even to speak as the state directs. From Sebelius’s official statement about the promulgation of the new rule:

We intend to require employers that do not offer coverage of contraceptive services to provide notice to employees, which will also state that contraceptive services are available at sites such as community health centers, public clinics, and hospitals with income-based support.

Thus, the Obama administration is attacking even freedom of worship by forcing exempt organizations to tell their employees where and how they can violate church teaching.

The birth-control rule is the latest and most egregious example of government forcing religious organizations to conform their operations to reigning secular moral values. In this sense, faith organizations are being compelled to participate in a metaphorical Caesar worship. As in the Roman Empire, the government will allow religious organizations general freedom of worship, but, increasingly, not freedom of religion. Pliny would approve.

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]]> http://www.antiobamablog.com/2012/01/free-birth-control-vs-freedom-of-religion/feed/ 0 http://www.antiobamablog.com/2011/11/mother-jones-media-matters-dodge-on-lynching/ http://www.antiobamablog.com/2011/11/mother-jones-media-matters-dodge-on-lynching/#comments Wed, 02 Nov 2011 22:49:00 +0000 Admin http://www.antiobamablog.com/2011/11/mother-jones-media-matters-dodge-on-lynching/ From The American Spectator and The Spectacle Blog:

There they go again.

The American left, caught in the act of brandishing their
electronic rope for yet another conservative black man, is busy
dodging their long and horrendous history of racism.

Mother Jones
tries to turn attention from the left’s abysmal record on
lynchings — high tech or with a rope — by re-visiting my
criticism of ex-Agriculture official Shirley Sherrod. My point back
then, of course, was that Ms. Sherrod cited a Supreme Court case in
which she claimed the Court said her relative was lynched. I read
the case. The words “lynch” or “lynching” appeared exactly nowhere
in the case. Ms. Sherrod, surprise, finally emerged as just another
standard left-winger who, sadly, employs race and state to push a
progressive agenda. That was my criticism and it stands.

But the Sherrod incident highlights exactly why leftist
publications are so wildly excitable on the subject of lynching, as
Media Matters is here
as it foams about (the list is long) Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity,
Ann Coulter, Matt Drudge, Monica Crowley, Peter Johnson Jr., Greg
Gutfeld, Brent Bozell, Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit and
yours truly. All of us having in our individual fashion called them
out on their wretched history. (Note to Media Matters: You missed
Mark Levin. Get on the stick over there.)

The American left has a brutal and vivid centuries-long
history on race, as we have previously detailed at length
here and
here. This is a political faith that has historically exhibited
a mind-bending addiction to judging their fellow Americans by skin
color. The point the left didn’t want to go anywhere near in the
Sherrod case is that Sherrod’s relative was beaten to death –
brutally — by the local sheriff, and in 1940s Georgia sheriffs
were part of the Democratic political machinery. And the Supreme
Court case was judged by a lifetime Klan member — Justice Hugo
Black. So whether it was the sheriff on the bottom rung of justice
or the Supreme Court at the top rung, the long hand of the
progressive/racism tie was operating. That tie literally beat a
black man to death — and then sat favorably in judgment of his
killers. Progressives are well on record as having supported
slavery, segregation, lynching, the Ku Klux Klan (which actually
ran the 1924 Democratic Convention known to history as the “Klan
Bake”) and every race-based approach to life right on down to
today’s belief in racial quotas and refusing to prosecute the Black
Panther voting rights case in Philadelphia for racial reasons. (See
J. Christian Adams book
Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice
Department.)

To cite one of a gazillion examples, here is the
Republican view of lynching as expressed all the way back in 1924
in its platform of that year:

We urge the Congress to enact at the earliest possible date a
federal anti-lynching law so that the full influence of the federal
government may be wielded to exterminate this hideous crime.

And the Democrats? How did they stand on the lynching issue?

We condemn the efforts of the Republican Party to nationalize
the functions and duties of the states.

Get that? This was the left’s response to the GOP on lynching.
In other words: buzz off. We’re busy lynching black men,
particularly if we catch them associating with white women. Take
your anti-lynching law platform and stuff it.

And, but of course, this anti-anti-lynching plank was
seamlessly tied together with every progressive nostrum of the day,
right down to assailing the GOP for taking campaign funds from
“predatory interests.” The same blather promoted by today’s
progressives in the Citizens United case.

In short?

This is what the left does. Today with Herman Cain,
yesterday with Clarence Thomas, long yesterdays ago with a 1924
platform that essentially issued a coded endorsement of their right
to lynch the uppity black men of their day. And with Shirley
Sherrod’s relative Bobby Hall — who, by the way, was a black man
from Georgia just like Herman Cain.

Nothing has changed this tie between progressives and
racism. The latter is used to drive the policies of the
former.

It was true in 1924. It was true in the 1940s’ Bobby Hall
case. It is true today.

And all you have to do to see the modern version of this
at work is keep your eye on the double-standard being used with the
black Herman Cain and that used to ferociously defend the white
liberal Bill Clinton, the latter accused by three women
successively of rape (Juanita Broaddrick), groping (Kathleen
Willey), and dropping his pants with a request to “kiss it” (Paula
Jones).

What’s unfolding here is a dramatic stripping bare of the
progressive double standard on race and sex. Why? Precisely because
conservatives are fed up with letting these people get away with
the double game. The spotlight is now on.

Make my day: read Mother Jones and Media
Matters.

Where the 21st century version of the sentiments of 1924
progressive/racism ties are carefully updated and skillfully
presented for all to see.

Herman Cain may be President of the United States. He may
never be President of the United States.

But he damn well isn’t going to be lynched for trying to
be President of the United States.

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]]> http://www.antiobamablog.com/2011/11/mother-jones-media-matters-dodge-on-lynching/feed/ 0 http://www.antiobamablog.com/2011/11/boehner-keeps-the-faith-on-congress%e2%80%99-constitutional-role/ http://www.antiobamablog.com/2011/11/boehner-keeps-the-faith-on-congress%e2%80%99-constitutional-role/#comments Wed, 02 Nov 2011 21:30:52 +0000 Admin http://www.antiobamablog.com/2011/11/boehner-keeps-the-faith-on-congress%e2%80%99-constitutional-role/ From The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation:

Two years ago, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D–CA) shocked many Americans by dismissing a question about Obamacare’s constitutionality with the flippant retort: “Are you serious? Are you serious?” So much for the oath she swore to “support and defend” the Constitution. By comparison, the current Speaker of House, John Boehner (R–OH) demonstrates that he takes his oath far more seriously. Raising concerns about Obama’s recent decision to bypass Congress and unilaterally change student loan…



Click the title to read the full post.

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]]> http://www.antiobamablog.com/2011/11/boehner-keeps-the-faith-on-congress%e2%80%99-constitutional-role/feed/ 0 http://www.antiobamablog.com/2011/11/ryan-schools-obama-on-america/ http://www.antiobamablog.com/2011/11/ryan-schools-obama-on-america/#comments Wed, 02 Nov 2011 17:08:00 +0000 Admin http://www.antiobamablog.com/2011/11/ryan-schools-obama-on-america/ From The American Spectator and The Spectacle Blog:

At the Heritage Foundation last week, House Budget Committee
Chairman Paul Ryan demonstrated why he doesn’t need to be running
for President to be framing the debate for 2012. He delivered there
on October 26 a breathtakingly beautiful speech on Saving the
American Idea, which defines the Spirit of 2012.

He began, “The mission of the Heritage Foundation is to
promote the principles of free enterprise, limited government,
individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong
national defense. These are the principles that define the American
idea. And this mission has never been timelier, because these
principles are very much under threat from policies here in
Washington.”

Ryan, a disciple of and former staffer for the late Jack
Kemp, then explained, “What makes America exceptional — what gives
life to the American Idea — is our dedication to the self-evident
truth that we are all created equal, giving us equal rights to
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And that means
opportunity.”

Since the early 1700s, America has been the land of
opportunity, offering world leading prosperity, stemming from world
leading freedom. And millions and millions of the dispossessed, the
homeless tempest tossed, and their progeny now totaling hundreds of
millions altogether, have voted for that American Dream with their
feet, crossing oceans, deserts, rivers, and mountain ranges to get
here. As I discuss in my recent book, America’s Ticking
Bankruptcy Bomb:

Which leaves the question, why did they come? And why do they
still come?…. Well, it’s not for the Food Stamps, or the public
housing, or even Social Security and Medicare. America’s world
leading prosperity dates all the way back to the early
18th century. The roots of that prosperity can be seen in the
Declaration of Independence, which recognizes the God-given right
of each man and woman to the pursuit of happiness. That is why
they came. They came because America has always been the land of
freedom and prosperity and opportunity. They came because of the
American Dream, that in this nation every man and woman enjoys the
freedom and opportunity to rise to achieve their dreams, regardless
of family background, class, race, or religion.

Ryan frames the question now facing us in 2012: “Have
those periods of unprecedented prosperity in America’s past been
the product of our Founding principles? Or, as some would argue,
have we made it this far only in spite of our outdated values? Are
we still an exceptional nation? Should we even seek to be unique?
Or should we become more like the rest of the world — more
bureaucratic, less hopeful, and less free?”

Or as I write in my book regarding America’s heritage of
world leading prosperity:

Is that over now? Is America just another nation now, like
Greece, as President Obama has suggested? In fact, just like
Greece? Is the American Dream done? Is that what is meant by the
“New Normal”? Or is that just a phrase to provide political cover
for the realities of a new socialism, where everyone as Churchill
explained shares equally in the curses of misery, rather than
unequally in the blessings of capitalism?

Ryan then discussed at Heritage how Obama is answering these
questions for 2012:

To my great disappointment, it appears that the politics of
division are making a big comeback. Many Americans share my
disappointment — especially those who were filled with great hope
a few years ago, when then Senator Obama announced his
candidacy….Do you remember what he said? He said that what’s
stopped us from meeting our greatest challenges is, “the failure of
leadership, the smallness of our politics — the ease with which we
are distracted by the petty and the trivial, our chronic avoidance
of tough decisions, our preference for scoring cheap political
points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working
consensus to tackle big problems.

Imagine if Obama had been true to his political rhetoric
from 2008. Suppose he had been true to his promise that his
economic program would involve a “net spending cut,” several
trillion dollars of wasted unnecessary spending ago. Suppose he had
truly been a non-partisan President working with both parties to
enact a truly effective economic recovery program, like Reagan,
lifting up the poorest of Americans with booming economic
prosperity. Suppose like Ryan, Obama had adopted the inclusive,
pro-growth, prosperity vision of Jack Kemp.

Contrary to the abusive rhetoric of left-wing-extremist
know nothings in media and entertainment, some of them literally
clowns, Obama would be so universally beloved that we would be
clearing space for him on Mt. Rushmore right now. Instead Obama
played us with rhetoric promising prosperity and recovery, when all
along he planned to deliver dependency on his political machine
instead.

Ryan explained his disappointment with Obama in
devastating detail:

Nearly three years into his presidency, look at where we
are now:

Petty and trivial? Just last week, the President told a
crowd in North Carolina that Republicans are in favor of quote
‘dirtier air, dirtier water, and less people with health
insurance.’ Can you think of a pettier way to describe sincere
disagreements between the two parties on regulation and health
care?

Chronic avoidance of tough decisions? The President still
has not put forward a credible plan to tackle the threat of
ever-rising spending and debt, and it’s been over 900 days since
his party passed a budget in the Senate.

A preference for scoring cheap political points instead of
consensus-building? This is the same President who is currently
campaigning against a do-nothing Congress, when in fact, the House
of Representatives has passed over a dozen bills to help get the
economy moving and deal with the debt, only to see the President’s
party kill those bills in the do-nothing Senate.

Note that you never saw President Reagan attacking his opponents
this way. He engineered a truly revolutionary rollback of decades
of runaway liberalism on a bipartisan basis with the House of
Representatives controlled by liberal Democrat majorities for his
entire Presidency.

Obama is so divorced from the reality of America and his
own policies, that he calls essential relief from the regulatory
tsunami he has unleashed on America being for “dirtier air, dirtier
water, and fewer Americans with health insurance.” Do you see yet
why booming economic recovery is now two years overdue, and nowhere
in sight?

The President, indeed, is now denouncing what he calls
“the Republican Congress.” Maybe it is true his Democrat base is so
out of the loop they don’t know that the Democrats have continued
to control the U.S. Senate for going on six years now. But the
President is going to be sorely schooled on Election Day to find
that the great majority of the American people are, in fact, not
that stupid, and cannot be so easily misled by rhetoric that is so
dishonest that it can only be described as dishonorable.

Ryan noted that the House already not only proposed but
passed a 2012 budget this year that would have put the budget on a
path to balance and the economy on the path to prosperity. “But
instead of working together where we agree, the President has opted
for divisive rhetoric and the broken politics of the past. He is
going from town to town, impugning the motives of Republicans,
setting up straw men and scapegoats, and engaging in intellectually
lazy arguments, as he tries to build support for punitive tax hikes
on job creators.”

Exhibit A: between Republicans and moderate Democrats,
there are strong majorities in both houses of Congress for
individual and corporate tax reform exactly as proposed in Ryan’s
House budget. That involves a top 25 percent income tax rate for
families earning over $100,000 a year, with a 10 percent rate below
that, and generous personal exemptions of $10,000 per family
member. And it involves an internationally competitive corporate
tax rate of 25 percent, closer to the rates in Communist China, the
European Union and our neighbor to the north, Canada. These
policies would provide the tax framework for booming economic
growth.

But Obama has done nothing to work on that, even though
his own Simpson-Bowles Commission proposed quite similar reforms.
That Commission was another sham for Obama to pose as a deficit and
spending cutter, when his intentions all along have been just the
opposite. That was yet another example of what I have called
Obama’s calculated deception, taking advantage of what he is sure a
majority at least doesn’t know and won’t find out.

Instead, “The tax increases proposed by Senate Democrats
and endorsed by the President — when combined with the new taxes
in the health care law, and the President’s other tax preferences
– would push the top federal tax rate to roughly 50 percent in
just 14 months, while doing nothing to promote job creation. This
tax increase on so-called millionaires and billionaires would
actually constitute a huge tax hike on the nation’s most successful
small businesses.”

Ryan finally cuts to the heart of the President’s economic
fallacies in saying:

The President has talked a lot about math lately. He’s been
saying that, ‘If we’re not willing to ask those who’ve done
extraordinarily well to help America close the deficit…the math
says…we’ve got to put the entire burden on the middle class and the
poor.’ This is really a stunning assertion from the President. When
you look at the actual math, you quickly realize that the way out
of this mess is to combine economic growth with reasonable spending
restraint. Yet neither of these things factors into the President’s
zero-sum logic.

Ryan here is actually counterproductively polite. In 2007,
before Obama was even elected President, after nearly 40 years of
Reagan Republican tax policy, the top 1 percent of income earners
paid more in federal income taxes than the bottom 95 percent of
income earners combined. The bottom 40 percent of income
earners as a group on net paid exactly zero percent of federal
income taxes. Yet President Obama is running around the country
telling us that Republicans want to put the entire tax burden on
the middle class and the poor.

This rhetoric is far worse than just wrong, or in error.
It is dishonorable calculated deception. It is so divorced from
reality that no other conclusion can be drawn.

Paul Ryan didn’t say the following, but I will. What
understanding Ryan’s speech reveals is that while Barack Obama was
born in Hawaii half a century ago, he is not culturally an
American. Raised during his formative years in the Indonesian
public schools, where he learned to appreciate the beauty of the
Islamic call to prayer, he was kept isolated from mainstream
America the rest of his life. That is why he doesn’t understand the
meaning and beauty of traditional American prosperity, and has no
clue as to how to restore it.

Worse, his model for political machine domination of
America is based not on restoring prosperity, but on fostering
dependency on government. That is why he is not and never has been
on track to restoring booming economic growth, which on the
historical record of America is now long, long overdue. Rush
Limbaugh has been right all along.

Worse still, traditional American prosperity is actually
morally embarrassing to Obama. These are the reasons why it is not
coming back until he and his co-conspirators are removed from
power.

That alienation you feel is because America is under
foreign occupation right now, by the hopelessly outdated
intellectual forces of Marxism rooted in the Eastern Europe of over
100 years ago. America doesn’t need to be transformed. America
needs to be restored. This is a Paul Revere moment, and every one
of you needs to be deputized to bring the word to everyone you
know, so that 2012 may be the year of the Rebirth of
America.

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]]> http://www.antiobamablog.com/2011/11/ryan-schools-obama-on-america/feed/ 0 http://www.antiobamablog.com/2011/11/one-year-later-obama-still-isn%e2%80%99t-listening/ http://www.antiobamablog.com/2011/11/one-year-later-obama-still-isn%e2%80%99t-listening/#comments Wed, 02 Nov 2011 15:00:00 +0000 Admin http://www.antiobamablog.com/2011/11/one-year-later-obama-still-isn%e2%80%99t-listening/ From NRO Articles:

One of the largest landslide elections in the history of the United States took place one year ago today. Free-market Republicans, riding a wave of public anger at bailouts, stimulus, and big-government programs, swept into power, capturing 63 seats and control of the U.S. House of Representatives, not to mention six U.S. Senate seats and over 675 state-legislative seats all over the country — with control of 21 state legislative chambers shifting to GOP hands. It was a truly historic landslide that the American people rightly expected would put an end to the Obama agenda that had been fundamentally transforming America before our eyes. Politicians and pundits alike looked on in awe. But one man was unconvinced: Barack Obama.

The day after the election, Obama held a press conference to spin the meaning of the historic landslide. He explained: “I think we’d be misreading the election if we thought that the American people want to see us for the next two years relitigate arguments that we had over the last two years.”

Keep reading this post . . .

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]]> http://www.antiobamablog.com/2011/11/one-year-later-obama-still-isn%e2%80%99t-listening/feed/ 0 http://www.antiobamablog.com/2011/10/elena-kagans-old-doj-e-mails-on-obamacare-kept-private/ http://www.antiobamablog.com/2011/10/elena-kagans-old-doj-e-mails-on-obamacare-kept-private/#comments Sun, 16 Oct 2011 08:13:49 +0000 Admin http://www.antiobamablog.com/2011/10/elena-kagans-old-doj-e-mails-on-obamacare-kept-private/ From NewsBusters.org blogs:

U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle, a Clinton appointee, has ruled that the Justice Department does not need to release emails Solicitor General Elena Kagan sent from her DOJ email account to people in the White House—in which she discussed her recusal decisions as solicitor general—because the emails were “used for a purely personal objective.”

CNSNews.com and Judicial Watch were seeking public release of the emails through lawsuits filed under the Freedom of Information Act. The “purely personal objective” cited by the judge was Kagan’s goal of being confirmed to the United States Supreme Court. At issue is whether Kagan must recuse herself as a Supreme Court Justice when the cases challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare reach the court.

Kagan was the Obama administration’s solicitor general—charged with defending the administration’s positions in federal court cases–at the time President Obama’s health-care plan was enacted and when Virginia and Florida filed lawsuits against that health-care plan in federal court.

Internal DOJ emails that CNSNews.com did obtain via FOIA revealed that in January 2010 Kagan had personally assigned her then-top deputy, Neal Katyal, to handle the anticipated lawsuits against Obama’s health-care plan. The emails also showed that Katyal at that time believed Kagan “definitely” wanted her office involved in the administration’s defense against those legal challenges.

Katyal later signed Justice Department briefs countering lawsuits filed against Obamacare and argued some of the cases in federal court.

Under federal law—28 U.S.C. 455—any “justice, judge or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might be reasonably questioned.” The law further states that any justice “shall also disqualify himself … where he has served in governmental employment and in such capacity participated as counsel, adviser or material witness concerning the proceedings or expressed an opinion concerning the merits of the particular case in controversy.”

On May 25, 2010, CNSNews.com filed a FOIA request with the Justice Department asking for any communications to or from then-Solicitor General Kagan, or records of any meeting she personally or electronically attended, that involved any of three things: 1) discussion of pending health-care legislation, 2) any legal challenge to the health-care bill signed by President Obama, and 3) any discussion of the question of whether Kagan ought to recuse herself from involvement in any particular case in her role as solicitor general due to the prospect that it might later come before her were she confirmed to a seat on a federal court.

When the Justice Department failed to respond to CNSNews.com’s FOIA request by late November 2010, the Media Research Center (MRC), of which CNSNews.com is a division, filed suit against the department in federal court.

In a subsquent search of Kagan’s email files pursuant to CNSNews.com’s FOIA request, the Justice Department found 8 documents that represented a chain of emails that had gone back and forth between Kagan and officials at the White House on May 17, 2010—a week after Obama had nominated Kagan to the Supreme Court.

In addition to Kagan herself, parties to the email chain included, among others, White House Counsel Robert Bauer; Ronald Klain, Vice President Joe Biden’s chief of staff; and Joshua Earnest, a White House spokesman.

“These documents consist of an email exchange between Kagan, in her capacity as a nominee to the United States Supreme Court, and staff members of the Executive Office of the President,” the Justice Department said in a “Vaughn Index” it submitted to the federal court listing documents it was declining to release in response to CNSNews.com’s FOIA.

“The email exchange concerns drafting and revising a proposed answer Kagan might give to a possible question she might be asked, during the Senate confirmation process, about recusal decisions as Solicitor General,” the Justice Department told the court. “A review of the hearing record of Ms. Kagan’s confirmation by the U.S. Senate reveals that the question at issue in this email exchange was never asked or answered.”

The Justice Department argued that it did not have to release these emails because they were not “agency documents” but “personal” ones.

“The emails at issue here do not concern the ‘official duties’ of the OSG, but rather concern then-Solicitor General Kagan’s nomination to fill a seat on the United States Supreme Court,” the Justice Department told the court.

“Further,” the Justice Department said, “contrary to plaintiff MRC’s suggestion, emails SG Kagan sent or received concerning her nomination were not ‘created by the OSG’ but rather sent or received by SG Kagan in her personal capacity as a nominee to the Supreme Court rather as opposed to her official capacity as Solicitor General.”

Judge Huvelle agreed with the Justice Department that Solicitor General Kagan’s emails to the White House “about recusal decisions as Solicitor General”—as DOJ had described the emails—were indeed personal and not governmental.

“However,” Judge Huvelle wrote in an opinion issued Thursday, “S.G. Kagan’s correspondence was not relied upon by the OSG in carrying out its business, but rather was used for a purely personal objective … As such, the relevant factors compel the conclusion that the withheld documents were personal, not attributable to the agency, and therefore were not ‘agency records.’”

Read more on Kagan and the MRC lawsuit at CNSNews.com.

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