Thursday, April 5, 2012

POLITICAL DIGEST 04/06/2012 CONSERVATIVE

The Coming Collapse of the American Republic
All royalties go to a charity to help wounded veterans. E-Book available at Smash Words: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/59105
Please forward and post where possible.

Flashback: Constitution Prof Got Date of Constitutional Convention Wrong
Excerpt: When Barack Obama's delivered his infamous "race speech" in Philadelphia on March 18, 2008 that was designed to rid himself of the Jeremiah Wright controversy, his mainstream media fans gushed, declaring that it should be taught in schools. One of the reasons it has not been taught, however--aside from the fact that it was a total fraud--is that Obama betrayed his ignorance of the U.S. Constitution in the first few sentences:

Best books read so far in 2012
Civilization by Ferguson. Advice to War Presidents by Codevilla. Mohammad & Charlemagne Revisited by Scott. ~Bob.

Protecting American Workers
From union tricks. ~Bob.

Excerpt: In late 2010 and early 2011 George Zimmerman, the Hispanic Sanford, Fla., man who shot and killed 17-year-old black teen Trayvon Martin, publicly demanded discipline in a race-related beating case for at least two of the police officers who cleared him after the Feb. 26 altercation, according to records obtained by The Daily Caller.
Coke caves in face of Democratic boycott threat
Excerpt: Democratic officials Wednesday launched a two-pronged attack on states with new laws requiring identification before voting, the highlight being a call to boycott Coke, Walmart and others that back a leading organization pushing for voter ID laws. Coke was quick to react to the boycott threat, pulling support from the targeted group just five hours after it was called.

Joke from Leno
Looks like Obama now expects the Supreme Court to throw out his healthcare plan. Today he started calling it Bidencare.

Illinois Rep. Tim Johnson to retire
Excerpt: Rep. Tim Johnson (R-Ill.) will retire this year despite winning his GOP primary just a few weeks ago, The Hill has confirmed. During the redistricting process, in which Illinois lost a seat, Johnson's GOP-leaning district was made more Democratic by Dems, who controlled the process.

The Individual Mandate: Ineffective, Overreaching, Unsustainable, Unconstitutional and Unnecessary
Excerpt: The U.S. Supreme Court will continue to debate the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) over the next several months, but a great deal can be said about the law that has nothing to do with its noncompliance with the Constitution. Rather, much focus can be placed on its costliness, ineffectiveness and burdensome regulatory scheme, says Tom Miller, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. In terms of paying for an overhauled health care system, the individual mandate represents a truly innovative mechanism for hoodwinking the American public by hiding the true cost of the program.

Important: With Gas Prices High, U.S. Refinery Closures Hit Workers and Drivers
Excerpt: Sunoco is getting out of the refining business. If a buyer is not found for the sprawling facility, it will be shut down on July 1, just like the company's other old refinery 12 miles to the south, Marcus Hook, which was idled in December. Several weeks later, ConocoPhillips closed its adjacent refinery on the Delaware River. Together, the three refineries employed 1,200 workers represented by the United Steelworkers of America and nearly as many salaried and contract workers. They manufactured 50 percent of the petroleum fuels produced on the East Coast of the United States. (If we don’t get a pro-domestic-energy administration in Washington, you can bet on $10/gallon gas in a few years. Thank a Greenie as your family goes hungry. ~Bob.)

Another One: Taxpayers’ Green ‘Investment’ in Battery Company Withers
Excerpt: A123 Systems – the taxpayer-funded electric vehicle battery manufacturer that famously shipped duds to Fisker Automotive, which caused one of its luxurious Karma EVs to shut down just before a Consumer Reports test – is now the defendant in an investor class action lawsuit and its stock has tanked to below $1. Massachusetts-based A123 received more than $279 million in grants from the Department of Energy, most of it used to refurbish two plants in Livonia and Romulus, Mich., for the production of EV batteries. (Sorry, A123, investors no longer “get a kick out of you;” the spark is gone. NLPC is the National Legal and Policy Center. --Ron P.)

Green firms out of gas
Excerpt: The failures of the green-energy sector are piling up thick and fast.

Couple met and married within a month and stayed together for 65 years... only to be parted after home invader beat wife to death
Comment: In Oklahoma last Tuesday, Bob and Nancy Strait, who had been married for 65 years, had their home broken into by a black teenager (Tyrone Woodfork) unarmed except for a BB gun. The teenager beat and raped the 85 year old Nancy Strait to death. Her husband, a veteran of the 101st Airborne in WW2, is in the hospital struggling to make it. There will be no million hoodie march for Bob and Nancy, two mere white Americans. Their killer will have pro bono lawyers and innocence projects helping him until he's finally set free again. Certainly Obama will make no statement on how Nancy Strait could have been his grandmother or how Bob Strait could have been that uncle who "liberated Auschwitz ". Bob and Nancy Strait won't get the screeching coverage that Trayvon Martin got about white racism because a Hispanic neighborhood watch captain shot a black teenager. In fact isn't it sad that you will only find this story in a UK newspaper? –BW

Chrysler Got Legal Shield in Chapter 11
Excerpt: Stephen Mares's 1998 Dodge Caravan caught fire on a California highway 2½ years ago, temporarily trapping him and his two children after the minivan's fuel system leaked. He sued Chrysler, seeking punitive damages for burns he and his children suffered before escaping. But his efforts to hold Chrysler Group LLC legally responsible soon hit a roadblock: Chrysler is immune from new punitive-damage claims from any alleged manufacturing defects in vehicles sold before the auto maker's 2009 government-brokered restructuring.

Worth Reading: Freedom or Fairness in 2012?
Excerpt: These are the ancient arguments that once pitted the liberty of the American Revolution against the egalitarianism of the French, the statist visions of John Maynard Keynes against the individualism of Friedrich Hayek, and the tragic admission that we cannot be truly free if we are all forced to end up roughly equal versus the idealism that if we are all roughly equal then we are at last truly free. (This one-sentence excerpt shows why I love to read Hanson. Anyone else would’ve taken a whole paragraph or more, and still not said it any more clearly. Ron P.)

Beware the Taxmageddon
Excerpt: Brace yourself. In a mere 271 days, you and your fellow Americans will be hit with a tax hike the likes of which this country has never seen. The Washington Post aptly called the unprecedented $494 billion tax hike "Taxmageddon," and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke described it as a "massive fiscal cliff." Whatever your preferred imagery, it's a really big deal. Despite all the warnings, President Barack Obama has kept his silence while Congress has made no apparent effort to prevent this impending calamity to families and the economy.

Worth Reading: The Exploitation of Trayvon Martin By Shelby Steele
Excerpt: The absurdity of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton is that they want to make a movement out of an anomaly. Black teenagers today are afraid of other black teenagers, not whites.

Excerpt: Cuellar spoke about what he termed the “Physician’s Dilemma,” in which he blames the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 for diminishing the funds he and partners at his private medicine center receive.

Who needs WikiLeaks when our enemies have ObamaLeaks?
Excerpt: In a deliberate American campaign to scuttle any planned Israeli hit on Iran, the Obama Regime is leaking classified intelligence assessments and documents that rip deep into Israel’s most sensitive military zones. Nothing less than sabotage.

Rick Santorum Trails Mitt Romney In Pennsylvania, Poll Says
Excerpt: But the practical effect of poll numbers like these is greater than just providing a window into where the race currently stands. Santorum has a lot -- personally and professionally -- riding on his performance in Pennsylvania. And it's not unreasonable to see him feeling intense pressure to bow out of the contest out of concern that he'd suffer an embarrassing loss. (It's time for us to unite behind Romney. Is he perfect? Are you? Me, neither. We can invite him to Tea AFTER he wins in November. I never thought I'd be nostalgic for Jimmy Carter, but he was merely a well-meaning incompetent rather than an outright enemy. This year is a "must-win." Ron P.)

President Obama Locks Horns With Chief Justice Roberts Over Health Care Case
Excerpt: Obama's reference to Lochner served to limit the scope of his comments on Monday, when he expressed his confidence that "an unelected group of people" would not take the "unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress." That statement still set off a firestorm over whether he was denying the Supreme Court's power, accepted since the 1803 case of Marbury v. Madison, to do just that. (...) The Obama administration, for its part, doubled down on referencing Lochner to shape the constitutional and political narrative while the justices draft their opinions behind closed doors. (Huh. The administration expects public opinion to sway the Supreme Court’s decision? Why do they suppose appointments are for life? Unless they’re planning to fight it out in the streets. That might not work as well as they hope, either. Ron P.)

Verilli Not Administration's Worst Lawyer After All
Excerpt: The judicial branch isn't above the other two branches -- much less the states or the people. It is (one of my favorite words) "co-equal" to the other branches. Indeed, the judiciary was laughably described by Alexander Hamilton in The Federalist Papers as the "least dangerous" branch.

Egypt sends Christian student to jail for insulting Islam
Excerpt: An Egyptian court on Wednesday sentenced a 17-year-old Christian boy to three years in jail for publishing cartoons on his Facebook page that mocked Islam and the Prophet Mohammad, actions that sparked sectarian violence. (Don’t laugh. The Islamists are working through the UN to get any criticism of Islam banned in the west as hate speech. ~Bob.)

Barry: 'We’ve got to do something about these Asians coming in'
Excerpt: “We got to do something about these Asians coming in and opening up businesses and dirty shops,” Barry said in remarks first reported by WRC-TV. “They ought to go. I’m going to say that right now. But we need African-American businesspeople to be able to take their places, too.” (yet another racist black ‘leader,” but it’s against Asians, so okay. ~Bob.)

Excerpt: If you’ve ever tuned into to MSNBC weekdays between 11 a.m. and noon ET, you are likely to have seen at least one segment focused on a LGBT issue moderated by host Thomas Roberts. But sometimes, Roberts and company might be trying a little too hard to push these issues to the forefront. On his Wednesday broadcast, Roberts reported that technology juggernauts Apple and Microsoft were “marrying up” and taking on same-sex marriage opponent the National Organization for Marriage.

CNN: On Second Thought, Zimmerman Did Not Use a Racial Slur On 911 Call…
Excerpt: Of course they say this after their initial report was widely cited to drag Zimmerman’s name through the mud as a racist.

The L.A. Times Should Release the Khalidi Tape for Passover by Roger L Simon
Excerpt: Passover 2012, which starts at sunset Friday, will not be a particularly auspicious one for the Jewish people. Despite being superficially strong in many ways, Israel — the sole Jewish state — and Jews in general face more determined opposition than they have at any time since World War II. From terrorists in the South of France to professors at Boston’s Northeastern University, anti-Semitism is rife. Meanwhile, Iran, which repeatedly calls for the extermination of Israel, draws ever closer to nuclear weapons capability.

Obama and judicial review
Reflecting on the total absence of any published scholarship by Barack Obama as editor of the Harvard Law journal or as a "professor" at U Chicago Law School, I scoff at the idea that he is an expert on the subject. His statements indicate that he is as expediently partisan as any politician. In fact, Obama is a sophist in the worst sense of the term. A sophist in classical Greece was someone who for pay could orate equally well for both sides of a proposition. In Obama's case, most recently hectoring the Supreme Court about its obligation to respect legislative action, he turns 180 degrees from the positions he took on judicial review when as a legislator, he criticized laws enacted under Pres. Bush.

This blog reports the plagiarism and intellectual vapidity of Obama's course in constitutional law. The writer concludes that the unconvicted terrorist, Bernadette Dohrn put together a radical syllabus and that the class itself was a kind of coffee klatch: http://radiopatriot.wordpress.com/2012/03/28/barnhardt-on-obies-course-syllabus/.

Judicial review is enshrined in the concept of separation of powers that was expressly built in to our Constitution. Laws that do not conform to the Constitution have bee invalidated many times, even when passed by a large majority. (In the case of Obamacare, this was clearly not the case). http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/apr/3/obama-flunks-constitutional-law/

For a short summary of the correctness and need for judicial review in a constitutional democracy, see http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303816504577321522844781222.html?KEYWORDS=New+york+sun. The editorial cites Hamilton in Federalist 78, "It is far more rational to suppose, that the courts were designed to be an intermediate body between the people and the legislature, in order, among other things, to keep the latter within the limits assigned to their authority."

Judicial review was designed by our founders to protect the people from the tyranny of the executive and the legislature. --Cordially, Larry Greenberg

Social Economics 101 - Reagan Vs. Obama

It’s Not the Constitution, Stupid
This short piece may be the most important essay by Ledeen I’ve ever read. --Ron P. Excerpt: I don’t think that President Obama believes a word of his remarks about what the Supreme Court can or cannot do about any given piece of legislation. Attorney General Holder said as much today when he agreed that the Supremes are there specifically to protect against laws they consider unconstitutional.

However court rules, Price ready with alternative to Obamacare by Kyle Wingfield
Excerpt: When the Supreme Court last week heard arguments in the 26-state legal challenge to Obamacare, Georgia was well-represented. There was Sam Olens, who as our attorney general is one of the plaintiffs. And there was Tom Price, a leader in the effort to repeal and/or replace the law, however the justices rule.

Holder says court power to review laws 'beyond dispute'
I imagine a tense meeting at DOJ, with everyone avoiding each others eyes. Finally someone sighs, “Who will tell the President?” ~Bob.

Excerpt: Three children, all under the age of five, were ‘severely’ tortured by their teacher after they were caught plucking flowers from their madrassa’s garden.
Four-year-old Aasia, five-year-old Aqsa and four-year-old Junaid were beaten with sticks and were forced to lie under the sun with three bricks placed over their chests and legs after their teacher, Qari Asghar, got to know that they had plucked flowers from the garden. (Just hope it doesn’t make them Islamophobic. ~Bob.)

Humor with a dash of scathing
Excerpt: Steyn criticized recent diaper-awareness days across the country, and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) who put forward a Diaper Investment and Aid to Promote Economic Recovery Act last year. “That ship has sailed,” Steyn said. “That diaper has filled.”

Police Records cast doubt on hate crime
Excerpt: Search warrant records obtained Wednesday in the beating death of an Iraqi-American woman show a family in turmoil and cast doubt on the likelihood that her slaying was a hate crime. Shaima Alawadi, a 32-year-old mother of five, was apparently planning to divorce her husband and move to Texas when she was killed, a family member told investigators, according to the court documents. (The media was excited to have a real case of Islamophobia. Maybe not. ~Bob.)

DOJ, liberal groups that oppose voter ID require photo ID to enter their buildings
Excerpt: U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is currently blocking implementation of voter ID laws in South Carolina and Texas, claiming such measures are “unnecessary,” discriminatory and would make it harder for minorities to vote. But if you’re planning to visit Holder’s office in Washington, D.C., you better bring a photo ID. The Department of Justice has two armed guards stationed outside its headquarters to check IDs of anyone who wants to enter — employees and visitors. (Makes Holder a racist…but we knew that. ~Bob.)

Democrats Blackmail Coke and Walmart Over Voter ID Laws
Excerpt: Rep. James Clyburn, a Democrat from South Carolina is leading an effort to stop voter ID requirements. It seems that Coke and Wal-Mart support an organization that is pushing for ID laws and he wants. Clyburn is calling for a boycott of the companies, and the latest news is that Coke has caved by pulling support from the targeted group just five hours after it was called. Here’s what I think we should do. Let’s find out where Rep. Clyburn does his banking, claim to be James Clyburn, and when the teller asks for identification explain to him that if we don’t need an ID to vote we shouldn’t need an ID to bank.

More polar bears than ever, Canadian survey finds
Excerpt: The debate about climate change and its impact on polar bears has intensified with the release of a survey that shows the bear population in a key part of northern Canada is far larger than many scientists thought, and might be growing. (Since even the Warmists now admit that there has been no warming since 1995, how is GW melting the ice and killing the bears today? ~Bob.)

Ecotality Examined: Big Executive Bonuses as DOE Keeps Company Afloat
Excerpt: That additional award came in the middle of a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation that started at least as far back as October 2010. The investigation has targeted 18 individuals involved with the company, including its CEO Jonathan Read, his son Colin, the company’s vice president of corporate development, Colin’s wife and father-in-law, Ecotality’s senior VP of engineering, its former secretary and treasurer, a member of the board of directors, the director of stakeholder services at Ecotality North America, and numerous major Ecotality investors. (Your tax dollars supporting green crony capitalism. ~Bob.)

Daily Presidential Tracking Poll
Excerpt: The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows that 25% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty-three percent (43%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -18 … In a hypothetical Election 2012 matchup, Mitt Romney attracts 47% of the vote, while President Obama earns 45%.


--
Robert A. Hall

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