“To consider the judges of the Superior Court as the ultimate Arbiters of Constitutional questions would be a dangerous doctrine which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. They have with others, the same passion for party, for power, and for the privileges of their corps—and their power is the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the Elective control. The Constitution has elected no single Tribunal. I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves.”
– Thomas Jefferson
During the ratification debate (over the Constitution) when addressing the Supreme Court one of the leading Anti-Federalists wrote (http://historydelivered.blogspot.com/2011/03/anti-federalist-debate-about-supreme.html) , “There is no power above them to control any of their decisions. There is no authority that can remove them, and they cannot be controlled by the laws of the legislature. In short, they are independent of the people, of the legislature, and of every power under heaven. Men placed in this situation will generally soon feel independent of heaven itself.”
Today (July 28, 2012) we crossed a threshold; we passed a tipping point and are no longer at the edge of the abyss. We are careening down the cliff into the fearful embrace of totalitarianism. An over the top Supreme Court has given the green light to an out of control Progressive Administration, and as of today there are no checks and there is no balance. Something must be done to preserve liberty or the United States we have loved will become the one we have dreaded. An all-powerful central government will continue to grow and bend all things to its will. We must return to the literal definition of constitutional government or this living document will be the death of freedom and the graveyard of liberty. Dr. Robert Owens
The American public is so ignorant of and distant from fundamental principles that they don’t even know how to think in fundamental terms anymore. All they can think about is how it affects them personally, viewing everything in terms of how they’d like things to be, and not in terms of how they should be, and how they were meant to be. Without moral fundamentals, the rule of law can and will become so bastardized in time that a nation ends up with a rule such as the two just handled down from Olympus. Then when everything goes to hell in a hand basket, it’s finally discovered that it happened because things were not as they *must* be in order to prevent self-centered self-aggrandizement and betrayal of moral fundamentals from becoming the norm among the dependent-class of all ages. A.R.Nash
Judging by the fact that no President yet has refused the grossly overgenerous benefits they receive for life, (like Congressmen) so one must conclude that we have never yet had a truly conservative person serve as President in our life-time. They would probably all have vetoed a bill to reign-in the largess that so wonderfully benefits themselves. How do you get the foxes that guard the hen house to reign-in their authority over the hen house? You can’t without voting in people openly the enemy of the Washington status quo ARN
The LOST Sinkhole By George Will June 24, 2012
There they go again. Like those who say climate change is an emergency too obvious and urgent to allow for debate, some proponents of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, aka the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), say arguments against it are nonexistent.
Five former Republican secretaries of state (Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, James Baker, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice) support LOST, saying in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, “we would strengthen our capacity to influence deliberations and negotiations involving other nations’ attempts to extend their continental boundaries.” But would such influence be wielded vigorously by some administrations? And would this influence be superior to existing U.S. influence, particularly that of the U.S. Navy?
Donald Rumsfeld, who is five times more persuasive than these former secretaries of state, opposes LOST because it “remains a sweeping power grab that could prove to be the largest mechanism for the worldwide redistribution of wealth in human history.” It “would regulate American citizens and businesses without being accountable politically to the American people.” Which makes it shameful that the Chamber of Commerce is campaigning for LOST through an organization with the Orwellian name The American Sovereignty Campaign.
If the Navy supports LOST because the civilian leadership does, fine. But if the Navy thinks it cannot operate well without LOST, we need better admirals not better treaties. Here is an alternative proposal for enhancing the lawfulness of the seas: Keep the money LOST would transfer to ISA and use it to enlarge the Navy. http://patriotpost.us/opinion/13883
(c) 2012, Washington Post Writers Group
When Harry Truman was President of the United States, he had a sign on his desk in the White House that said: “The buck stops here.” If Barack Obama had a sign on his desk, it would say: “The buck stops with Bush.”
Does anyone seriously believe that short dresses, exposing bony knees, make women look more attractive?
In most discussions of the problems of American public schools, the low intellectual quality of people who come out of our schools of education is the 800-pound gorilla that keeps getting ignored. Such teachers cannot give their students intellectual abilities that they themselves don’t have. In liberal logic, if life is unfair then the answer is to turn more tax money over to politicians, to spend in ways that will increase their chances of getting reelected. Thomas Sowell
In America today just like in Lake Woebegone every child is above average and every child gets a trophy. We may score low in international grade comparisons but we rank number one in self-esteem. In other words American students may not be doing well but they think they are.
In societies that rob Peter to pay Paul the stage before all the Peters change their names to Paul is typified by government bean counters picking winners and losers. This process discourages producers and encourages non-producers assuring you get less of the former and more of the latter. As an educator I have a belief that if you don’t teach someone to do something right you are teaching them that doing it wrong is acceptable. Dr. Robert Owens
n another little reported story, Representative Allen West (R-FL) wrote a strongly worded letterto B. Hussein, protesting the unjustified turning over of a terrorist, Ali Musa Daqduq, responsible for the torture and murders of five American soldiers, who was then released by an Iraqi court. This while three American soldiers sit rotting in Ft. Leavenworth for the crime of giving a terrorist a bloody nose while capturing him. Anti-military, anti-American.
By the way, the contrast between retired Lt. Col. Allen West and dope-smoking, cocaine-snorting, booze-lapping Barak “Barry” Hussein Obama-Soetoro couldn’t be clearer. West is a genuine black American, with a distinguished career in the Army where he was awarded a Bronze Star, three Meritorious Service Medals, three Army Commendation Medals (one with Valor), and a Valorous Unit Award. He grew up in inner city Atlanta, in the same neighborhood as Martin Luther King. He went to public schools and state colleges, not expensive, elite private schools. He has two master’s degrees, is an articulate patriot, and is proudly and outspokenly pro-capitalist and pro-American.
While Obama-Soetoro tries to pretend he has nothing to do with the actions of the corrupt Holder Injustice Department, he is Holder’s boss. Ergo, everything Holder does is with the direct or tacit approval of the “president.” This includes the Fast and Furious gun-running debacle that led to the murders of two American federal agents and several hundred Mexican citizens. The Anti- President by Michael Oberndorf
“I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate (the) grave evils (of capitalism), namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow-men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.” Albert Einstein, ‘Why Socialism?,’ 1949
And what do you do with free thinkers and free spirits? What do you do with solitary innovators? What do you do with those who want to be stars? or to be left alone, or to not work at all, or who oppose the government’s policies of redistribution? Do you ignore their disruptive behavior and protests? Or do you order then to be silent? Do you fine them? Do you charge them and arrest them? Do you “re-educate” them? Or do you simply do what the Cambodian Khmer Rouge did and kill them by the millions?
The spiritual descendents of Roger Williams were Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, a State which had the Congregational Protestant Christian denomination established as the official State Church from 1639 to 1818.
Of course the liberals are pleased with the Supreme Court’s ruling on the AZ law. What the left wing liberals are simply saying is Thank you Supreme Court for allowing us to let illegals into our country, commit crimes against our hard working tax paying citizens, live of the government with numerous entitlements, run drugs into our country, and have the privilege of having no ID, and lastly vote for us good Democrats so that we can stay in power and continue to screw the hell out of tthe American people, as well as giving us the daily privilege that being in power allows us to continue to kiss Obama’s ass every day for our continued political nourishment. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Alright folks, line up for your daily ass kissing of our Marxist/socialist president. Let us continue his quest to rebuild America into a country depending on public assistance, crappy educational system, an economy in the dumpster, and our religious and social institutions hollowed out empty edifices. We don’t even have the pundits around anymore to crap on those good liberals and their political agenda. Life just isn’t exciting anymore . Thank the Supreme Court for their decision which supports a no nothing, corrupt government, run by the most corrupt and ignorant president in our history. All I can say is “There goes the neighborhood” er….I mean “There goes the USA”. JMAYO MD
It’s sad but true that Americans no longer put much value in the words of the Constitution and what it says about the limits of power on government. After all, it is the document that protects us from tyranny.
Maybe you don’t think America is in any danger of becoming a tyranny. Perhaps you believe we are truly a free society. If so, explain to me how the legislative and executive branches of government can conspire to ignore the strict constitutional limits on their authority by criminalizing common interactions between U.S. citizens?
Explain to me how politicians in Washington can interfere in common economic transactions between consenting adults? Isn’t this one of the principled arguments against Obamacare, for instance?
Explain to me where the Constitution empowers the federal government to stick its nose in the private financial business of otherwise law-abiding citizens? I’m quite sure our Founding Fathers who gave us our Constitution would see this as a blatant example of tyranny – as immoral, perhaps, as anything imposed by the crown of England.
This is the problem with debates about whether the minimum wage should be increased. In fact, the debate over the establishment and enforcement of a federal minimum wage should have ended before it began. Two questions should always precede any such debate:
- Is it moral? Is it constitutional?
The minimum wage law clearly flunks both tests. by Joseph Farah ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Fatherhood: The Foundation of Liberty “The foundation of national morality must be laid in private families… In vain are Schools, Academies, and Universities instituted, if loose principles and licentious habits are impressed upon children in their earliest years… The vices and examples of the parents cannot be concealed from the children. How is it possible that children can have any just sense of the Sacred Obligations of Morality or Religion if, from their earliest Infancy, they learn their mothers live in habitual infidelity to their fathers, and their fathers in as constant infidelity to their mothers?” –John Adams 1778
When recalling my early trials with my father, I’m reminded of a great quote attributed to Mark Twain: “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”
These four contexts for “father” — God the Father, my own earthly father, my role as father to my children, and the legacy of our forefathers — combine to create a rich and abiding sense of what fatherhood means, what it should look and feel like in heart and practice.
But for tens of millions of Americans from broken homes, the consequences of failed fatherhood are the enormous obstacles their children must endeavor to overcome in relationships with their Creator, with their own spouses and children, and in their ability to honor their forefathers’ legacy.
Understanding the critical role fathers play in the welfare of the family as the fundamental building block of society has been understood throughout the history of man. In 295 B.C., Mencius wrote, “The root of the kingdom is in the state. The root of the state is in the family. The root of the family is in the person of its head.” http://patriotpost.us/alexander/13813 Mark Alexander
Aristocat| 6.29.12 @ 2:59AM
Great quote from Rand Paul: “Just because a few judges say something is constitutional, that does not make it constitutional.” ObamaCare is unconstitutional because it is too vague, too confusing, too tyrannical, gives power to unelected bureaucrats like Sibelius, was passed by illegally bribing Senators, was not even read by those voting for it, violates the 10th Amendment because its provisions are not granted to the federal government, violates the freedom of association of private citizens, forces doctors to become employees of the state, forces patients to become wards of the state, and changes the United States into a dictatorship. Other than that, it’s fine.
It seems that with each passing month – dare I say, each passing day – the ideology of personal responsibility is rapidly becoming an outdated concept in this country. The more observant I become the more awareness I gain regarding the shear deficiency most people seem to have concerning their own accountability. “Do it for me. Please eliminate my propensity for consistently making poor decisions by severely limiting and/or giving me no choices at all.” John Rocker
Of political parties or factions George Washington warned, citing in his farewell address :However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.
Thomas Jefferson, who penned the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, wrote roughly 40 years later in 1816 to Samuel Kercheval:
“We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers.”
The Seeds of Destruction 
As a nation we are divided between those who want to strive to achieve and those who thrive because they receive. The Progressives have bred generations of passive takers who believe they are entitled to the fruit of others’ labor. They pay no taxes so they don’t care how high taxes go. Dr. Robert Owens
“The Law” is a pamphlet published in 1850 by Frenchman Frédéric Bastiat. A classical liberal “economist, statesman and author,” Bastiat castigated his countrymen for becoming “the most governed, the most regulated, the most imposed upon, the most harnessed, and the most exploited people in Europe.”
Bastiat saw France as a society that “receives its momentum from power”; a passive people who “consider themselves incapable of bettering their prosperity and happiness by their own intelligence and their own energy.”
“Enforced Fraternity Destroys Liberty,” he proclaimed. In fact, it is impossible for me to separate the word fraternity from the word voluntary. I cannot possibly understand how fraternity can be legally enforced without liberty being legally destroyed, and thus justice being legally trampled underfoot.”
“So long as they expect everything from the law, their relationship to the state [will be] the same as that of the sheep to the shepherd.”
A blistering report claims Joe Paterno and other top Penn State officials concealed what they knew about Jerry Sandusky’s sexual abuse of children. The report chronicled a culture of silence that extended from the president down to the janitors in the football building. Even before 1998, football staff members and coaches regularly saw Sandusky showering with boys but never told their superiors about it. In 2000, after a janitor saw Sandusky performing oral sex on a boy in the team shower, he told his co-workers. None of them went to police for fear of losing their jobs.
Reporting the assault “would have been like going against the president of the United States in my eyes,” a janitor told Freeh’s investigators. “I know Paterno has so much power, if he wanted to get rid of someone, I would have been gone.” He went on to assert that “football runs this university.”
“The Freeh report confirms that at the highest level, Penn State officials, including the university president and head football coach, knew that Sandusky was a child predator, but made the deliberate and reprehensible decision to conceal his abuse. They chose to protect themselves, Penn State’s brand and image, and their football program instead of children.”
“The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure.” — Albert Einstein
gtavenger
it seems as though the conservative justices may have been trying to overturn marburry… that would have been HUGE, but roberts clearly didnt want that. overturning marburry would have been the greates win for the american people since the revolutionary war. by saying the mandate was constitional under the 16th amendment ignores the fact that congress has no enumerated power under art. 1 sec. 8 to regulate health care at all. overturning marburry would have affirmed that and also would necassarilly have eliminated over half the federal government. the commerce clause has been used to justify the epa, the dea, the dept. of agriculture, energy, transportation, hhs, commerce… the list goes on and on. these are the thing that roberts just made even more difficult to eliminate, if not impossible.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/06/the_chief_justice_done_good_comments.html#disqus_thread#ixzz20V0LuRTn
[This is an example of the kind of competence that predominates even more in the field of politics, elective office, and bureaucracy.]
In a mix-up, a woman is pregnant with another couple’s twins.
“Mix-up” is a word best left out of sentences involving another word: pregnancy. But the two are making headlines together following yesterday’s report that a woman in Rome became pregnant with twins after undergoing fertility treatment—except the embryos she was implanted with weren’t those of her and her partner.
The woman wasn’t alerted to the issue until she was three months along. The AFP reports [http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/04/13/italian-women-who-underwent-fertility-treatment-pregnant-with-wrong-embryos/] the switch somehow happened on Dec. 4 at the Sandro Pertini Hospital in Rome.
Four couples received treatment that day, and it’s unclear whether any other improper pregnancies resulted. There’s also no word on how the mix-up came to light, though Rome’s health authority said it learned there was “genetic incompatibility” between the parents and embryos on March 27.
The country’s health ministry is now investigating, and no further implantations are being done at the clinic. It’s far from the first time this has happened: In 2009 [http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/unintended-surrogate-mom-wrong-embryo-faces-heartbreak-birth/story?id=8675885] an Ohio woman implanted with the wrong embryos gave birth to a baby boy then handed him over to his biological parents; a 2000 in-vitro mix-up saw a San Francisco woman implanted with another couple’s embryos as well. [http://www.nbcnews.com/id/5603277/ns/health-womens_health/t/woman-awarded-million-embryo-mix-up/#.U0va11fAYyc]
The Chronicle reports [http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Biology-technology-in-conflict-2679916.php] that the doctor immediately realized his mistake but didn’t reveal it; Susan Buchweitz learned of this mistake 10 months after birth after a whistle-blower tipped off the Medical Board of California.
The biological father of her son sued for custody, and was granted shared custody in 2005. (It’s not the only alarming pregnancy story in the news this week.)