Showing posts with label Protecting America. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Protecting America. Show all posts

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Highlights: the Cato Institute Eviscerates Obamacare's Individual Mandate

Among many Amici Curiae ("Friend of the Court") briefs filed during the Obamacare fight, the Cato Institute's (PDF) is among the most interesting and powerful. Its highlights are well worth reading.

Question Presented


Can a limited government to whom a free people have delegated only certain enumerated powers commandeer that people into purchasing a product from a private business pursuant to its power to pass laws “necessary and proper for carrying into execution” the authority to “regulate Commerce . . . among the several States”?

Summary of Argument


The individual mandate exceeds Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce under existing doctrine. The outermost bounds of this Court’s Commerce Clause jurisprudence—the “substantial effects” doctrine—stop Congress from reaching intrastate non-economic activity regardless of its effect on the economy. Nor can Congress compel someone to engage in commerce, even if it purports to do so as part of a broader regulatory scheme.

The Constitution does not permit Congress to conscript citizens into economic transactions to remedy the admitted shortcomings—which the government usually terms “necessities”—of a hastily assembled piece of legislation...

...Although the Necessary and Proper Clause allows Congress to execute its regulatory authority over interstate commerce, it is not a blank check permitting Congress to ignore constitutional limits by manufacturing necessities and commandeering citizens to do its bidding... The individual health insurance mandate is not constitutionally warranted simply because it is “necessary” to make other legislation function properly. Indeed, any law “necessary” or otherwise—that purports to compel otherwise inactive citizens to engage in economic activity is unconstitutional.

While the government emphasizes the “uniqueness” of the healthcare market and the wisdom of the legislation, “this case is not about whether the Act is wise or unwise…in fact, it is not really about our healthcare system at all. It is principally about our federalist system, and it raises very important issues regarding the Constitutional role of the federal government.

...Moreover, what Congress is trying to do here is literally unprecedented, as recognized even by the lower courts that ruled for the government. “Congress has never exercised its commerce power in this way, and nothing suggests that this tradition reflects 200 years of self-restraint.” ... “The Government concedes the novelty of the mandate and the lack of any doctrinal limiting principles.”

The Congressional Budget Office agrees: “The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States." Nor has Congress ever before imposed on everyone a civil penalty for declining to participate in the market. And never before have courts had to consider such a breathtaking assertion of power under the Commerce Clause. Even in Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942), the federal government claimed “merely” the power to regulate what farmers grew, not to mandate that people become farmers, much less to force people to purchase farm products. Even if not purchasing health insurance is considered an “economic activity”—which of course would mean that every aspect of human life is economic activity—there is no constitutional warrant for Congress to force Americans to enter the marketplace to buy a particular good or service...

...The explicit purpose of Article I is to grant Congress certain enumerated powers and then strictly limit them. James Madison, the architect of our system of government, famously observed that “[i]n framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

...Thus, Article I gives Congress only certain legislative powers “herein granted,” Articles II and III check those powers, and the Tenth Amendment emphasizes that all other powers remain with those who breathed life into the new government in the first place: the sovereign “people of the United States.” The Framers believed that limiting federal power, and reserving the “residual” power in the hands of the states and the people would help “ensure protection of our fundamental liberties” and “reduce the risk of tyranny and abuse.”

...Given the Framers’ clear intent to establish a limited government of enumerated powers, it is unsurprising that this Court has consistently reaffirmed that the federal government does not enjoy a general police power. ... The Court should not now break with this well established and foundational American principle.

It is both telling and tragic that our hopes for individual sovereignty in this country now rest in the hands of one or two individuals on the Supreme Court.

And if Obama is reelected, he will likely have the chance to further stuff the court with doctrinaire radicals like Elena Kagan. And this Republic would be doomed.


Saturday, February 11, 2012

Must-Read Transcript -- Breitbart at CPAC: This Is Not Your Mother's Democratic Party

Transcript by Biff Spackle, Junior Cub Reporter:

Right now, my Twitter feed is already calling me a big fat homosexual. Hello, children at home. No, your Dad's not gay. That's how the Left rolls.

Everybody asks me: why do you retweet? Why do you do that? ...In fact, there's probably no one in the world I respect more than Professor Hugh Hewitt and the other day he took me aside. He said, "I don't think you should do that, Andrew." Well, Professor Hewitt, on this issue I disagree.

Because they've held over our heads -- with contempt -- the false narrative of their innate tolerance. The least tolerant people you'll ever meet in your entire lives -- I know it, I live it every day. And I retweet it to remind them that I know exactly who they are.

...This is my war cry for 2012. You need to join me in my war against the institutional left.

This is not your mother's Democratic Party... duh! John Podesta and George Soros? This is not your mother's Democratic Party You know whose party it is? ...I have a thesis about who we're fighting against on the hard left... [In college] I had no idea these [left-wing academics] people were actually serious about the malarkey they were teaching. The post-structuralist, politically correct garbage.

Unfortunately in 2004, the radical Left [executed] a coup d'etat of the Democratic Party. And basically kicked a person -- that four years was called 'the standard-bearer of decency in the Democratic Party'. And that person was Joe Lieberman.

That was the end of the Democratic Party. And in 2010, the DLC went under.

There's no such thing as a moderate Democrat. And so what do we get now, in Barack Obama?

In this election we're going to vet him


I've got videos, by the way, and in this election we're going to vet him. I've got videos. This election we're going to vet him. From his college days, to show you why racial division and class warfare are central to what 'hope and change' was sold in 2008.

The videos are going to come out. The narrative is going to come out: that Barack Obama met a bunch of silver pony-tails [left wing academics] back in the 1980s, like Bill [Ayers] and Bernadine Dohrn who said "one day, we're going to have the presidency.'

And the rest of us slept while they plotted and they plotted and they plotted. And they oversaw hundreds of millions of dollars in the Annenberg Challenge, from real capitalists, who gave it to their children and their children's children [who] then became communists. We've got to work on that...

Barack Obama is a radical and we should not be afraid to say it. And Barack Obama was launched from Bill and Bernadine's salon... it became self-evident to me that [Obama enjoyed] many a meal there... And don't tell me, ABC, CBS and NBC that I can't posit that theory, because it is a self-evident truth. Just like it was a self-evident truth that he was with Jeremiah Wright. And just as it was a self-evident truth that when he was at Harvard, he was advocating for the worst of the worst to join the faculty. Radicals. Radicals at "Beirut on the Charles".

And that who's in the White House. And that's who's outside right now [the Occupy movement] telling you that you don't have a right to be here. They would squelch your free speech just as easily as they do at Harvard, Vassar, Yale, Wesleyan - they're a bunch of totalitarian freaks.

The media can no longer be called objective journalists


And they pal around with our friends in the mainstream media. I always thought the media leaned to the left... but when they act like a Provost at a politically correct university and tell people to shut up, [then] no longer can they be called objective journalists. They're playing for the other side.

They've been part of demonizing good and decent people. They tried to defeat the Tea Party and when they failed, just like when they tried to create a [leftist] Rush Limbaugh and they failed with Air America, they want what they can't have. They wanted what they could not have and what did they create?

They created the "Occupy Movement". What is the Occupy Movement, you may ask? It's a natural, organic group of people -- you've never seen before in your life. Wait a sec-- these exact people protested against you at the GOP Welcoming Committee in 2008-- and two of them were arrested for planting Molotov cocktails. [These] are radicals against the police, radicals against you, exactly like Occupy, the same exact people, the same people who organized "Camp Casey" in Crawford, these are the same exact people who went down the highway at the end of the summer when Katrina happened, created Occupy New Orleans.

It's the same radicals, they've been in your life since 'Senator Obama' became part of your vocabulary. They are at war with you. They attack you. They throw eggs at you. And -- guess what? -- the media looks the other way. You're domestic terrorists, you know. Janet Napolitano warned me about that.

Yet when this group emerged, what happened? ...This is my thesis: the anti-war movement was never about anti-war. It was a Saul Alinsky community-organizing tool to get Barack Obama and the Left elected. It went away immediately.

The Occupy Movement is the Definition of Un-American


And the mainstream media created a narrative... Time Magazine's "Person of the Year... this is the anti-war movement! How do I know this? Because if I told this to ABC, CBS and NBC, they'd tell me it's a conspiracy theory -- that it's just a bunch of organic people. There's no organization going on, even though we have the emails to prove it. Or the undercover videos of Natasha Leonard of The New York Times organizing with the radicals. No, that didn't mean anything!

Bernadine Dohrn pointed out to me when I was snarkily asking 'What ever happened to the anti-war movement?', she let loose an affirmation of everything I know to be true. She said, "Well, that's not true... it's more or less what Occupy Wall Street is." And the mainstream media refuses to tell you that these are the same shock troops that have been ... instigating [against] us, instigating riots against the police, these people are the definition of un-American.

I don't care who our candidate is


You want a unity speech? I'll give you a unity speech. I don't care who our candidate is.

I haven't since the beginning of this... ask not what the candidate can do for you, ask what you can do for the candidate!

And that's what the Tea Party is.

We are there to confront [the radical left] on behalf of our candidate!

I will march behind who ever our candidate is. Because if we don't, we lose.

There are two paths! There are two paths! One is America, the other is Occupy! One is America, the other is Occupy! And I don't care, and along the way... I've realized over the last three years that the Republican Party and the conservative movement is not what ABC, CBS and NBC put on the screen.

They try to portray you in the worst possible light... and when I travel around the United States meeting people in the Tea Party who care -- black, white, gay, straight -- anyone that's willing to stand next to me to fight the progressive left, I will be in that bunker, and if you're not in that bunker 'cause you're not satisfied with this candidate, more than shame on you. You're on the other side.

Erick Erickson -- you listening?


Thursday, February 09, 2012

Best Illustration Ever: Democrat Color Wheel!

Spotted (and shamelessly ripped off) from the peerless Moonbattery (update: the original came from The Looking Spoon):

And I couldn't resist creating the equivalent version for the real Republican Party (not big government Statists, but Constitutional conservatives and the Tea Partiers):

Bold differences, sharp contrasts.

Which is why I support Rick Santorum for President. The nattering nabobs and paid lackeys can decry Santorum as a big government hack all they want. I'll let the various conservative groups we care about rank him: judge for yourself.


Hat tip: BadBlue.com.

Sunday, February 05, 2012

Alaskan Fishing Lodge Sign o' the Day


Hat tip: Wanda.

Newt Gingrich: How Romney won "should sober every Republican in the country"

PJMedia's Tatler characterized Newt Gingrich's concessionary press conference in Nevada last night as "odd". I just watched it and don't agree. In fact, I thought one particular interrogatory was especially insightful (hat tip to Biff Spackle for the transcript):

Question: Mr. Speaker, have you considered that voters just aren't buying what you're selling? You've been on the ballot now in five states and you've won one, but you've lost four. And you also talk about debates, but you've had 18 of them and generally you've been considered to have done well in them, but still that hasn't shown up in the polls?

Gingrich: I'm not going to defend the outcome in a state where I was outspent five to one. And I'd suggest you're sophisticated enough to understand that the idea that taking a state where the other guy spent five times as much money, and many of his ads were false as by both the Wall Street Journal and National Review, that maybe that's not a very accurate measure.

When it was an entirely positive campaign, up through mid-December, I was ahead by 12 points in Gallup. And this may happen again. I was actually ahead in Gallup a week ago. So I think in a few more weeks, I'll be ahead in Gallup again.

Question: But is that just ignoring the reality of the campaign? He has gone negative, it's working...

Gingrich: So the "reality of the campaign", to use your words, is that he has gone negative and it is working. And what I am asserting to you is that, over time, I don't believe the American people will approve of a campaign which actually suppresses turnout.

I think it's amazing that if you look in Florida, every county that I carried in Florida had an increased turnout; every county that Romney carried in Florida had a decreased turnout. Now that should sober every Republican in the country.

If the only way Romney wins is suppressing turnout, how's he going to do that in the fall?

If the only way he wins is outspending someone five-to-one, how's that going to apply to a campaign against Obama, who's going to outspend him?

Those are damned good questions.


Saturday, February 04, 2012

Sure, Why Not? Congress "Calls for Accelerated Use of Drones in U.S."

I don't see how anything could possibly go wrong with this.

A House-Senate conference report this week called on the Administration to accelerate the use of civilian unmanned aerial systems (UAS), or “drones,” in U.S. airspace.

The pending authorization bill for the Federal Aviation Administration directs the Secretary of Transporation to develop within nine months “a comprehensive plan to safely accelerate the integration of civil unmanned aircraft systems into the national airspace system.”

...[It also calls for tests] in cooperation with NASA and the Department of Defense, expanded use of UAS in the Arctic region, development of guidance for the operation of public unmanned aircraft systems, and new safety research to assess the risk of “catastrophic failure of the unmanned aircraft that would endanger other aircraft in the national airspace system.”

The Department of Defense is pursuing its own domestic UAS activities for training purposes and “domestic operations,” according to a 2007 DoD-FAA memorandum of agreement. (“Army Foresees Expanded Use of Drones in U.S. Airspace,” Secrecy News, January 19, 2012.)

Because drones are necessary to ensure citizens are driving the right electric cars, using the right light bulbs and bathing with legal shower heads.

The circle of liberty grows ever smaller around us, my friends.


Friday, February 03, 2012

Shock: People of All Religions Abandoning Democrat Party in Droves

But Pew Research didn't poll Militant Quakers, so maybe they're the exception:

As the 2012 presidential election approaches, the partisan affiliations of the electorate have shifted significantly since 2008. In surveys conducted in 2011..., 34% of registered voters described themselves as Democrats, down four points compared with 2008 (38%). Over the same period, the percentage of voters describing themselves as Republicans has held steady at 28%, while the total saying they are politically independent or have no partisan preference has risen four points (from 34% in 2008 to 38% in 2011).

...A new analysis shows that the share of voters identifying with or leaning toward the GOP has either grown or held steady in every major religious group. This includes both religious groups that are part of the GOP’s traditional constituency as well as some groups that have tended to be more aligned with the Democratic Party, including Jewish voters...

Among white evangelical Protestants (a traditionally Republican group), support for the GOP has grown from 65% in 2008 to 70% today. The GOP has also posted gains among Mormons, with 80% now saying they identify with or lean toward the Republican Party. Republican gains are also apparent among white mainline Protestants (who were evenly divided between the parties in 2008 but who now favor the GOP by a 12-point margin) and white non-Hispanic Catholics (among whom an eight-point Democratic advantage in 2008 has become a seven-point Republican advantage at the end of 2011). Even Jewish voters, who have traditionally been and remain one of the strongest Democratic constituencies, have moved noticeably in the Republican direction; Jewish voters favored the Democrats by a 52-point margin in 2008 but now prefer the Democratic Party by a significantly smaller 36-point margin. There has been less change in the partisanship of black Protestants and the religiously unaffiliated, two other strongly Democratic groups.

The analysis shows that across several religious groups, the move toward the GOP has been at least as large – if not more pronounced – among those under age 30 as among those 30 and older. White evangelicals under 30, for instance, are now more heavily Republican than those over 30 (82% vs. 69%); in 2008, by contrast, the partisan preferences of younger evangelicals closely matched those of evangelicals over age 30. And among white non-Hispanic Catholics under age 30, support for the GOP has increased from 41% in 2008 to 54% in 2011.

Jesse Jerkson and Al "No So" Sharpton hardest hit.


A Conservative Alternative to the Drudge Report?

BadBlue News ServiceSenator Fred Thompson says that "Romney has Drudge (top news source) in back pocket."

While that may or may not be true, there appears to be an alternative news aggregator that seems to be taking off. BadBlue.com monitors the social networks to determine which news stories are getting the most "buzz". It runs 24/7/365 monitoring hundreds of news sites and (most importantly!) blogs.

Here's how it looked when this post was created:

Unlike the Drudge Report, you can find the top stories that are trending now, over the last 24 hours, the last week, or even the last month.

You can even track the popularity of each story over time. Here's an example:

Need a list of stories from each news source? Here are the top stories from Ace of Spades:

Check it out and, if you like it, bookmark BadBlue and follow its updates on Twitter at @BadBlueNews.

Now conservatives have a choice.


Wednesday, February 01, 2012

Gallup approval numbers show potentially 'huge Obama loss'

From their lips to God's ear:

Gallup released their annual state-by-state presidential approval numbers yesterday, and the results should have 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue very worried. If President Obama carries only those states where he had a net positive approval rating in 2011 (e.g. Michigan where he is up 48 percent to 44 percent), Obama would lose the 2012 election to the Republican nominee 323 electoral votes to 215.

Gallup adds:

Overall, Obama averaged 44% job approval in his third year in office, down from 47% in his second year. His approval rating declined from 2010 to 2011 in most states, with Wyoming, Connecticut, and Maine showing a marginal increase, and Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Minnesota, New Jersey, Arizona, West Virginia, Michigan, and Georgia showing declines of less than a full percentage point. The greatest declines were in Hawaii, South Dakota, Nebraska, and New Mexico.

Take nothing for granted. It will take every bit of energy; every friend, colleague and family member we can convince; and every bit of divine providence we can muster to save this republic.


Hat tip: BadBlue.com.

Monday, January 30, 2012

The Most Audacious Armed Robbery in History -- and Those Who Would Sit Out an Election

The Democrats' 2009 Stimulus package was, in my estimation, the most audacious armed robbery in world history. Literally hundreds of billions of dollars were stolen from American taxpayers -- and generations yet unborn -- to reward Democrat campaign contributors.

Solyndra was only the most basic example of these crimes. In fact, though you wouldn't know it from reading the funny papers, a whole series of "green energy" companies are in varying stages of collapse. For the most recent example, please consider: "Another Stimulus-Backed Energy Company Files for Bankruptcy":

After months of financial turmoil, an Energy Department-backed lithium ion battery company has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company, Ener1, received a $118 million grant from DOE in 2010 as part of the president’s stimulus package. The money, which went to Ener1 subsidiary EnerDel, aimed to promote renewable energy storage battery technology for electrical grid use.

Oh, and don't forget about Beacon Power:

Beacon Power Company received $39 million of its government-guaranteed loan before it filed for bankruptcy. Beacon Power developed new technology that supposedly provides energy storage designed to help the intermittent solar and wind power be used by power grids, which need stable power to remain reliable.

Not to mention Amonix:

Just seven months after California-based solar power company Amonix Inc. opened its largest manufacturing plant, in North Las Vegas, the company’s contractor has laid off nearly two-thirds of its workforce... Amonix received a $5.9 million investment tax credit through the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act in 2010...

I've got a million of 'em. In fact, that's why I created "The Handy-Dandy EnergyGate Cheat Sheet" -- to keep track of all the wanton criminality associated with the "green collar" jobs that are disappearing faster than a double-chocolate brownie placed in front of Michael Moore.

I would wager $1,000 that a complete investigation of each "green energy" company and its backers -- by third-party, forensic accountants -- would expose a web of ties linking those who benefited to some of the Democrat Party's largest donors. Cause that's the way they roll.

The most shocking aspect of these crimes is that the White House privately admitted that the Stimulus had nothing -- Nuh. Thing. -- to do with rescuing the economy. A recently revealed, December 15, 2008 memo from Obama's senior economic adviser Larry Summers to the president stated explicitly that the suggested spending packages were not about rescuing the economy... they were about rewarding Obama's backers.

The Stimulus is an ongoing crime perpetrated by the Democrats against the American people.

And why do I call this thievery an "armed robbery"? Said simply, Obama and his minions plundered America's wealth -- indebting an untold number of future generations in the process -- using the force of law. This is, as Bastiat put it, "legal plunder."

It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.

What are the consequences of such a perversion? It would require volumes to describe them all. Thus we must content ourselves with pointing out the most striking.

In the first place, it erases from everyone's conscience the distinction between justice and injustice.

No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain degree. The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.

Bastiat was describing, more than 150 years before they came to power, the 111th Congress and President Obama.

While I support Rick Santorum in this primary process, I don't care if a crippled kangaroo is the GOP candidate. I will vote to oust Obama and to begin to save this precious country. Those who want to "sit it out" in protest should consider the impact of their inaction on subsequent generations, who we've already condemned to an ominous future. If collapse is what you seek, remember that this generation -- our generation -- will be forever marked as those who lost America.

This theft will not stand. It must not stand. And I will walk on broken glass and hot coals to vote this failed president out of office in November, while bolstering the number of true conservatives in Congress. It's the least we can do. So stop bitching about Mitt Romney, the GOP establishment, or the fact that your latte isn't hot enough. We've been at this for little more than two years. And Rome wasn't built in a day.

You and I, we've got a country to save.


Sunday, January 29, 2012

Due to popular demand...

Several bloggers requested that I create some buttons or sidebar badges for the new BadBlue news service. Okay, it wasn't several. It was one. But still...

To use this beauty:

Just copy this text and paste it into your template.


Or to use one of the following buttons, simply click the one you want, then copy the text in the HTML block below to paste into your template:

350 pixels wide
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HTML to use in your template:

If you don't know what BadBlue is, click here. Basically, it's a news service for the rest of us, completely automated using social networking chatter as the barometer for promoting news stories. So far it seems to be catching on.

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Florida Tea Party Leaders Endorse Newt Gingrich

Floridians: I urge you not to allow the Beltway establishment to bully, threaten or scare you. Mitt Romney is the weakest GOP candidate of the bunch and Florida's Tea Party leaders see that threat clear as day.

"The Florida Tea Party Coalition With Newt" endorsed the former House speaker on Thursday, saying they would "help defeat Massachusetts Moderate Mitt Romney and then President Barack Obama."

“It is clear to me and many others in the tea party movement that Newt is the Reagan conservative that America needs,” said Peter Lee, founder and director of the East Side Tea Party of Orlando.

Lee was joined by statewide tea leader Patricia Sullivan, who said, “I stand with Newt because I know he will stand up to the establishment and insist on fiscal reforms."

In all, more than 30 Florida-based tea activists signed on to the coalition. The geographically diverse representatives ranged from the Panhandle to Broward County.

Separately, the TEA Party of Florida, the only political tea party registered with the state Division of Elections, endorsed Gingrich.

The GOP establishment's -- and, specifically, Mitt Romney's operatives' -- unconscionable attacks on Gingrich should motivate every undecided primary voter to support Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum.

And I'm glad Florida's Tea Party leaders are playing hardball with the RINO mushes who won't fight Obama as hard as they fight conservatives.


Related: Debunking the Beltway Hacks' Latest Spin: Gingrich Will Harm Down-Ticket Republicans

Friday, January 27, 2012

Maps: Exploiting America's Treasure Trove of Energy, Before and After the Obama Presidency

I think this is what President Obama called a "blueprint" in his State of the Union address.

Today in Las Vegas, the President repeated his energy talking points from Tuesday's State of the Union speech.

Oil and gas leases takes years to develop, but the administration is claiming credit for an uptick in domestic oil and gas production that is a result of previous administration policies and increased production on private lands. [h/t Geoffrey Styles]

The administration's oil and gas exploration "blueprint" adds virtually no new production and takes years of potential energy off the table. This map made by the Senate Republican Policy Committee illustrates what new oil and gas exploration was permissible prior to President Obama taking office, and how his administration’s policies have changed it:


As an aside, are these maps racist? Perhaps we should ask Leonard Pitts.


Thursday, January 26, 2012

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

FDR Didn’t Bomb The Death Camps, Obama Won’t Bomb Iran [Dan from NY]

Dan from NY:



As more and more evidence accumulates that shows FDR and the allies knew about Hitler's death camps and decided not to bomb them, the more and more Obama’s unwillingness to take the atomic bat out of Iran’s hands starts looking like déjà vu all over again. Of course, there is one (and only one) big difference between now and then: Israel was born and has been blessed with the wherewithal to crush the Iranian viper in its infancy, before it becomes lethal. What’s yet to be determined, though, is whether Israel has the will to carry out its G-d-given mission. We should get our answer before the year is out.


Sunday, January 22, 2012

Egotistical, bombastic embarrassment claims Newt Gingrich is... an embarrassment

For a guy who has never done anything at the national level; who has a personal cameraman following him around to capture those special "YouTube moments" where he confronts public sector union members; and who has taken troubling positions on gun control, illegal immigration, judges, global warming, and Obamacare (to name but a few), it takes real hubris to pillory Newt Gingrich.

I speak, of course, of Chris "Krispy Kreme" Christie, one of the darlings of the RINO establishment, who is doing his level best to sandbag conservatives.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Sunday dubbed Mitt Romney’s showing in South Carolina “clearly disappointing,” but quickly turned his focus to Newt Gingrich, saying he has been “an embarrassment to the party.”

Christie, a key Romney surrogate in his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, blasted Gingrich on NBC's "Meet the Press" for his ethics violation fine and losing the speakership in the House, saying that “sometimes past is prologue... Newt Gingrich has embarrassed the party over time. Whether he'll do it again in the future I don't know, but Gov. Romney never has,” Christie said on NBC's “Meet the Press.”

"I mean he was run out of the speakership by his own party, he was fined $300,000 for ethics violations. This is a guy that has had a very difficult political career at times, and has been an embarrassment to the party," Christie added.

...While Christie has pointed to Romney’s difficulties in connecting with people before, he said Sunday it’s due to Romney being a “reserved guy.” He then turned to what he deemed Gingrich’s liabilities... “Strategic adviser? That is the oldest Washington dodge in the book. That's because he didn't want to register as a lobbyist,” Christie said.

...Christie also addressed the vice presidency question once again, saying, “If I'm approached I will listen, but my inclination, I want to make it very clear, is that I want to stay governor of New Jersey."

News flash, Krispy: you ain't gonna be the VP. And, by the way, Newt Gingrich has accomplished 20 times more for the conservative movement and the Republican Party than you have.

The results of Gingrich's ethics probe are publicly available; they involve a course that Gingrich taught at Kennesaw State College while serving in Congress. The trouble revolved around the fact that the course was backed by a tax-exempt group. Gingrich taught Constitutional, conservative values, which the IRS found were “consistent with its stated exempt purposes.”

The whole thing was a political setup. And doesn't Newt's "ethics violations" seem quaint given the likes of Maxine Waters, Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, Diane Feinstein, and the rest of the modern miscreants of Congress who have mysteriously made millions in office?

So, Krispy, I'd advise you to keep your pie-hole shut. You're the embarrassment -- and we're not going to let you try to tear down conservatives in pursuit of a VP slot that you'll never get.


Debunking the Beltway Hacks' Latest Spin: Gingrich Will Harm Down-Ticket Republicans

The latest folderol emanating from the utterly embarrassed Beltway elites -- many of whom were surreptitiously on the Romney payroll -- is that Newt Gingrich's poor "likability" scores will harm down-ticket Republicans.

If history is any indicator, this is about as accurate as their mantra-like predictions, repeated ad infinitum, that Mitt Romney would run away with the nomination because of his "electability".

Rasmussen Reports explains what Obama's failed presidency really means to down-ticket Democrats:

Going into the final weekend of [Jimmy Carter's 1980] campaign..., Gallup had Carter’s Republican opponent, Ronald Reagan, up three points. Harris had him up five points, while Newsweek and The Washington Post had Carter up one.

But at the end, the bottom fell out for Carter. “I’ve never seen anything like it in polling,” said Pat Caddell, Carter’s pollster. What was a close race turned into a big Reagan lead in the last hours of the campaign; he ended up winning 489 electoral votes and a 51%-41% victory over Carter. Likely aiding Reagan at the end was the one and only debate between the two, held just a week before the election, when Reagan memorably asked voters “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” ...With Carter captaining the Democratic ship, election night in 1980 was Titanic-esque. Democrats lost 12 Senate seats and 33 House seats.

...Given the divided control of the government, some commentators we respect have noted the possibility of a total switcheroo in Washington next year: President Obama loses the presidency, the Republicans take the Senate and the Democrats re-take the House.

That, of course, is possible. But it would be a first in the modern history of the republic: Since 1860, an incumbent president has never lost the White House in the same election that his party won control of either house of Congress from the other party. Similarly, the House and the Senate flipping in opposite directions has never happened in the same election in the same timeframe. In other words, regardless of what happens in the presidential race, a scenario in which Democrats captured the House next year and Republicans captured the Senate would be, in a word, historic.

So history tells us that Democrats need Obama to roar back and win a second term in order to flip the House. And even that might not be enough.

So when Karl Rove, who has yet to reveal any financial interests he may have vested in one or more of the GOP candidates, next opines about Newt's "likability", you can take his "analysis" with a giant grain of salt.

Say, a 31 percentage point-sized grain of salt.


Friday, January 20, 2012

Mark Levin's Ameritopia -- the Complete Epilogue in Plain Text Format

Ameritopia, Mark Levin's latest bestseller, had sold 50,000 copies in two days time as of last night. The book's epilogue -- a brief synopsis of its key themes -- is available in PDF format (hat tip: Dan Riehl). I converted it into text format (actually HTML) because I detest the delays and clunkiness associated with PDFs.

My premise, in the first sentence of the first chapter of this book, is this: “Tyranny, broadly defined, is the use of power to dehumanize the individual and delegitimize his nature. Political utopianism is tyranny disguised as a desirable, workable, and even paradisiacal governing ideology.”

Plato’s Republic, More’s Utopia, Hobbes’s Leviathan, and Marx’s workers’ paradise are utopias that are anti-individual and anti-individualism. For the utopians, modern and olden, the individual is one-dimensional—selfish. On his own, he has little moral value. Contrarily, authoritarianism is defended as altruistic and masterminds as socially conscious. Thus endless interventions in the individual’s life and manipulation of his conditions are justified as not only necessary and desirable but noble governmental pursuits. This false dialectic is at the heart of the problem we face today.

In truth, man is naturally independent and self-reliant, which are attributes that contribute to his own well-being and survival, and the well-being and survival of a civil society. He is also a social being who is charitable and compassionate. History abounds with examples, as do the daily lives of individuals. To condemn individualism as the utopians do is to condemn the very foundation of the civil society and the American founding and endorse, wittingly or unwittingly, oppression. Karl Popper saw it as an attack on Western civilization. “The emancipation of the individual was indeed the great spiritual revolution which had led to the breakdown of tribalism and to the rise of democracy.” Moreover, Judaism and Christianity, among other religions, teach the altruism of the individual.

Of course, this is not to defend anarchy. Quite the opposite. It is to endorse the magnificence of the American founding. The American founding was an exceptional exercise in collective human virtue and wisdom—a culmination of thousands of years of experience, knowledge, reason, and faith. The Declaration of Independence is a remarkable societal proclamation of human rights, brilliant in its insight, clarity, and conciseness. The Constitution of the United States is an extraordinary matrix of governmental limits, checks, balances, and divisions, intended to secure for posterity the individual’s sovereignty as proclaimed in the Declaration.

This is the grand heritage to which every American citizen is born. It has been characterized as “the American Dream,” “the American experiment,” and “American exceptionalism.” The country has been called “the Land of Opportunity,” “the Land of Milk and Honey,” and “a Shining City on a Hill.” It seems unimaginable that a people so endowed by Providence, and the beneficiaries of such unparalleled human excellence, would choose or tolerate a course that ensures their own decline and enslavement, for a government unleashed on the civil society is a government that destroys the nature of man.

On September 17, 1787, at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Delegate James Wilson, on behalf of his ailing colleague from Pennsylvania, Benjamin Franklin, read aloud Franklin’s speech to the convention in favor of adopting the Constitution. Among other things, Franklin said that the Constitution “is likely to be well administered for a Course of Years, and can only end in Despotism as other Forms have done before it, when the People shall become corrupt as to need Despotic Government, being incapable of any other. . . .”

Have we “become corrupt”? Are we in need of “despotic government”? It appears that some modern-day “leading lights” think so, as they press their fanatical utopianism. For example, Richard Stengel, managing editor of Time magazine, considers the Constitution a utopian expedient. He wrote, “If the Constitution was intended to limit the federal government, it sure doesn’t say so. . . . The framers weren’t afraid of a little messiness. Which is another reason we shouldn’t be so delicate about changing the Constitution or reinterpreting it.” It is beyond dispute that the Framers sought to limit the scope of federal power and that the Constitution does so. Moreover, constitutional change was not left to the masterminds but deliberately made difficult to ensure the broad participation and consent of the body politic.

Richard Cohen, a columnist for the Washington Post, explained that the Constitution is an amazing document, as long as it is mostly ignored, particularly the limits it imposes on the federal government. He wrote, “This fatuous infatuation with the Constitution, particularly the 10th Amendment, is clearly the work of witches, wiccans, and wackos. It has nothing to do with America’s real problems and, if taken too seriously, would cause an economic and political calamity. The Constitution is a wonderful document, quite miraculous actually, but only because it has been wisely adapted to changing times. To adhere to the very word of its every clause hardly is respectful to the Founding Fathers. They were revolutionaries who embraced change. That’s how we got here.” Of course, without the promise of the Tenth Amendment, the Constitution would not have been ratified, since the states insisted on retaining most of their sovereignty. Furthermore, the Framers clearly did not embrace the utopian change demanded by its modern adherents.

Lest we ignore history, the no-less-eminent American revolutionary and founder Thomas Jefferson explained, “On every question of construction, carry ourselves back to the time when the constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.”

Thomas L. Friedman, a columnist for the New York Times and three-time Pulitzer Prize recipient, is even more forthright in his dismissal of constitutional republicanism and advocacy for utopian tyranny. Complaining of the slowness of American society in adopting sweeping utopian policies, he wrote, “There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today. One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century.”

Of course, China remains a police state, where civil liberties are nonexistent, despite its experiment with government-managed pseudo-capitalism. Friedman’s declaration underscores not only the necessary intolerance utopians have for constitutionalism, but their infatuation with totalitarianism.

It is neither prudential nor virtuous to downplay or dismiss the obvious—that America has already transformed into Ameritopia. The centralization and consolidation of power in a political class that insulates its agenda in entrenched experts and administrators, whose authority is also self-perpetuating, is apparent all around us and growing more formidable. The issue is whether the ongoing transformation can be restrained and then reversed, or whether it will continue with increasing zeal, passing from a soft tyranny to something more oppressive. Hayek observed that “priding itself on having built its world as if it had designed it, and blaming itself for not having designed it better, humankind is now to set out to do just that. The aim . . . is no less than to effect a complete redesigning of our traditional morals, law, and language, and on this basis to stamp out the older order and supposedly inexorable, unjustifiable conditions that prevent the institution of reason, fulfillment, true freedom, and justice.” But the outcome of this adventurism, if not effectively stunted, is not in doubt.

In the end, can mankind stave off the powerful and dark forces of utopian tyranny? While John Locke was surely right about man’s nature and the civil society, he was also right about that which threatens them. Locke, Montesquieu, many of the philosophers of the European Enlightenment, and the Founders, among others, knew that the history of organized government is mostly a history of a relative few and perfidious men co-opting, coercing, and eventually repressing the many through the centralization and consolidation of authority.

Ironically and tragically, it seems that liberty and the constitution established to preserve it are not only essential to the individual’s well-being and happiness, but also an opportunity for the devious to exploit them and connive against them. Man has yet to devise a lasting institutional answer to this puzzle. The best that can be said is that all that really stands between the individual and tyranny is a resolute and sober people. It is the people, after all, around whom the civil society has grown and governmental institutions have been established. At last, the people are responsible for upholding the civil society and republican government, to which their fate is moored.

The essential question is whether, in America, the people’s psychology has been so successfully warped, the individual’s spirit so thoroughly trounced, and the civil society’s institutions so effectively overwhelmed that revival is possible. Have too many among us already surrendered or been conquered? Can the people overcome the constant and relentless influences of ideological indoctrination, economic manipulation, and administrative coerciveness, or have they become hopelessly entangled in and dependent on a ubiquitous federal government? Have the Pavlovian appeals to radical egalitarianism, and the fomenting of jealousy and faction through class warfare and collectivism, conditioned the people to accept or even demand compulsory uniformity as just and righteous? Is it accepted as legitimate and routine that the government has sufficient license to act whenever it claims to do so for the good of the people and against the selfishness of the individual?

No society is guaranteed perpetual existence. But I have to believe that the American people are not ready for servitude, for if this is our destiny, and the destiny of our children, I cannot conceive that any people, now or in the future, will successfully resist it for long. I have to believe that this generation of Americans will not condemn future generations to centuries of misery and darkness.

The Tea Party movement is a hopeful sign. Its members come from all walks of life and every corner of the country. These citizens have the spirit and enthusiasm of the Founding Fathers, proclaim the principles of individual liberty and rights in the Declaration, and insist on the federal government’s compliance with the Constitution’s limits. This explains the utopian fury against them. They are astutely aware of the peril of the moment. But there are also the Pollyannas and blissfully indifferent citizens who must be roused and enlisted lest the civil society continue to unravel and eventually dissolve, and the despotism long feared take firm hold.

Upon taking the oath of office on January 20, 1981, in his first inaugural address President Ronald Reagan told the American people:

If we look to the answer as to why for so many years we achieved so much, prospered as no other people on earth, it was because here in this land we unleashed the energy and individual genius of man to a greater extent than has ever been done before. Freedom and the dignity of the individual have been more available and assured here than in any other place on earth. The price for this freedom at times has been high, but we have never been unwilling to pay that price. It is no coincidence that our present troubles parallel and are proportionate to the intervention and intrusion in our lives that result from unnecessary and excessive growth of government. It is time for us to realize that we are too great a nation to limit ourselves to small dreams. We’re not, as some would have us believe, doomed to an inevitable decline. I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.

So, my fellow countrymen, which do we choose—Ameritopia or America?

Buy a copy and pass it on. Drop some knowledge on your family, friends and colleagues. These are perilous times. And November is coming.


Tuesday, January 17, 2012

The 'Give the Mullahs a Case of the Squirts' Ticket

That sound you hear in the distance is Debbie Wasserman-Manhands' head exploding.

I find it especially interesting that the Republican establishment keeps telling us that the nomination is a fait accompli for Mitt Romney; yet, somehow, the man can't seem to get even 40 percent of the vote. And, with proportional delegates in the states, the race remains wide open.

Further, Florida gets only half of its delegates this year because it jumped the primary line. So I encourage Newt and Rick to keep at it. When their respective constituencies combine forces, I predict a very unhappy Karl Rove.


You know you're gonna have to face it, you're addicted to news

A couple of noteworthy enhancements to BadBlue.com should make it easier for news junkies to explore current events. Oh, sorry. In case you've been out of town, the news site TrendingRight.com is now called BadBlue. BadBlue is a news service that monitors the social networks to determine which stories are getting the most "buzz". It's kind of like a real-time Drudge Report, only more centrist (heh!).

Now, for the enhancements. You'll notice that each story includes a small tag that indicates the source of the story (the blue arrow points to an example, below).

Clicking on that name will give you a list of the most popular stories from that site.

One other note: the small icon -- which represents a hyperlink -- is a permanent link (or permalink) to a comments page.

For you bloggers out there, if you ever want to check out the popularity of all of your posts in the BadBlue database, just bookmark the following link (obviously, change the red text to your domain rather than Nice Deb's :-)...

http://badblue.bitnamiapp.com/d.php?did=nicedeb.wordpress.com

So check out BadBlue when you have a chance and let Biff know what you think!