Tag: America

Amusing

A Time For Choosing Again?

This is our must read of the day. Even though Reagan’s gave his speech in 1964, so much of it applies today. Truer words were never spoken and we need to heed them now more than ever.

Ronald Reagan’s 1964 speech, “A Time for Choosing,” arguably, was the pivotal moment when Reagan became the Reagan America knows. He gave “the speech,” as he often referred to it, not long after switching from FDR’s Democratic Party to the Republican Party of Lincoln. The theme of Reagan’s speech was that Americans had to choose between up versus down, freedom versus servitude, self-government versus bureaucratic fiat.

“The Founding Fathers knew a government can’t control the economy without controlling people,” Reagan explained, “and they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose.” So, he concluded, “we have come to a time for choosing.”

Reagan became Reagan by studying the political science of the American founding, without which he could not have ushered into American politics a new kind of conservatism, Reagan conservatism. Reagan sought to reign in government by recovering the authority of the Founders’ Constitution and the principles that informed it. He believed nothing less would save freedom in America.

Reagan’s challenge was to remind Americans of the importance and goodness of constitutional government in a time of constitutional darkness, a time when virtually all the leading intellectual and political lights in America had come to ignore or twist beyond recognition the meaning of the Constitution.

In this way, Reagan’s statesmanship paralleled that of Lincoln, who tried to preserve the principled ground of constitutional self-government — the idea that each human being is endowed by the Creator with equal, unalienable, natural rights — at a time when that idea was denied and ridiculed by most prominent minds in America.

Today, the lights of the Constitution have again grown dim, as the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats unfold what is amounting to be the most massive government budgetary and regulatory expansions in American history.

Everyone seems fixated on the costs associated with Obama’s corporate bailouts, universal healthcare, environmental regulations, and other items on his liberal to-do list. But few people, in or out of government office, ask whether these policies are constitutional. The reason, sadly, is that few people care.

Our challenge today of recovering the authority of the Constitution is greater than Reagan’s and perhaps even greater than Lincoln’s was. Since Roosevelt launched the New Deal in the 1930s, several generations of Americans have grown up knowing nothing but big, paternalistic government.

The feisty independence and healthy suspicion of government power that characterized the founding generation of Americans — think of the people who defiantly flew the flag with the coiled-up snake announcing, “Don’t Tread on Me” — is now mainly the stuff of boring history textbooks.

It’s no exaggeration to suggest that the Constitution itself has become radical. Most Americans today probably cannot imagine what truly constitutional government might look like—virtually the entire federal bureaucracy, for example, would need to be eliminated. That’s why the Constitution cannot be used as a club to smash unconstitutional proposals and programs, because no one cares. If you doubt it, ask Ron Paul how much success he’s had waving his pocket Constitution at every unconstitutional policy.

Still, the extravagant spending and regulating and interfering with the private sector economy happening in Washington DC today forces upon us a choice: Either we allow it to continue, or not. Either we choose to remove all limits on government power and scope in exchange for promised socialized security, or we choose a government that operates within certain limits and we accept certain responsibilities for ourselves. This is again a time for choosing.

If we do the former, if we trade freedom and limited government in the hope that bureaucratic “experts” can govern and provide for us better than we can govern and provide for ourselves, then let us be honest about what we are choosing. And let us acknowledge openly what Reagan and Lincoln and the Founders understood, that a government of unlimited power is less likely to provide security for us, more likely to threaten us.

If, however, we choose to limit our government, we need not even agree right now on what the limits are. Reasonable minds can differ on where the line should be that separates government power from private freedom. But if we can agree in principle that limited government is the only kind befitting a free people, then we can begin asking how we might limit government’s power.

A constitution, if recognized and obeyed, is a useful means for limiting government. And if well designed, a constitution can also help us identify and enjoy the ends of political society—justice, domestic tranquility, security from foreign and domestic threats, prosperity, freedom, all within the framework of a more perfect union. Indeed, a constitution is what we need most today. The good news is that we already have one. Let us choose to understand and defend it.

Source…

Amusing

Freedom Needs a Soldier

Happy Memorial Day Weekend.

The Battle Hymn of the U.S. Republic

“It is for ALL U.S. Republic Veterans. I hope these images set to this hymn, will help all U.S. Republic Citizens remember and see, “that ‘Freedom’ needs a soldier.”

Amusing

A Letter From Dodge Dealer George C. Joseph

This letter was written by a Dodge Isuzu dealer in Melbourne Florida. It highlights the fact that the Nationalization of America is no longer an idle rumor. The raping and pillaging of America and our Constitution is taking place with breakneck speed right before our very eyes. And now, for the million-dollar question… What are we going to do about it?

Read it and spread the word.

Letter from a Dodge dealer

letter to the editor

My name is George C. Joseph. I am the sole owner of Sunshine Dodge-Isuzu, a family owned and operated business in Melbourne, Florida. My family bought and paid for this automobile franchise 35 years ago in 1974. I am the second generation to manage this business.

We currently employ 50+ people and before the economic slowdown we employed over 70 local people. We are active in the community and the local chamber of commerce. We deal with several dozen local vendors on a day to day basis and many more during a month. All depend on our business for part of their livelihood. We are financially strong with great respect in the market place and community. We have strong local presence and stability.

I work every day the store is open, nine to ten hours a day. I know most of our customers and all our employees. Sunshine Dodge is my life.

On Thursday, May 14, 2009 I was notified that my Dodge franchise, that we purchased, will be taken away from my family on June 9, 2009 without compensation and given to another dealer at no cost to them. My new vehicle inventory consists of 125 vehicles with a financed balance of 3 million dollars. This inventory becomes impossible to sell with no factory incentives beyond June 9, 2009. Without the Dodge franchise we can no longer sell a new Dodge as “new,” nor will we be able to do any warranty service work. Additionally, my Dodge parts inventory, (approximately $300,000.) is virtually worthless without the ability to perform warranty service. There is no offer from Chrysler to buy back the vehicles or parts inventory.

Our facility was recently totally renovated at Chrysler’s insistence, incurring a multi-million dollar debt in the form of a mortgage at Sun Trust Bank.

HOW IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA CAN THIS HAPPEN?

THIS IS A PRIVATE BUSINESS NOT A GOVERNMENT ENTITY

This is beyond imagination! My business is being stolen from me through NO FAULT OF OUR OWN. We did NOTHING wrong.

This atrocity will most likely force my family into bankruptcy. This will also cause our 50+ employees to be unemployed. How will they provide for their families? This is a total economic disaster.

HOW CAN THIS HAPPEN IN A FREE MARKET ECONOMY IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA?

I beseech your help, and look forward to your reply. Thank you.

Sincerely,

George C. Joseph
President & Owner
Sunshine Dodge-Isuzu

Amusing

The President Who Hates His Country

Must read of the day!

In this article, Joan Swirsky tells the truth about the man that we see destroying our country. America has been sold a bill of goods by a street thug in an attractive suit.

What Obama doesn’t realize and didn’t take into account is the strength and determination of all the modern day America Patriots that oppose him.

In the last century, the impassioned words and actions of patriots like Winston Churchill – along with America’s heroic help and sacrifice – saved Europe. The eloquence and actions of “I’ve been to the mountaintop” Martin Luther King Jr. brought America to an unprecedented level of social justice.

The peerless oratory and tireless diplomacy of the man who would become Israel’s Foreign Minister, Abba Eban convinced the entire world that after the wanton murder of six-million Jews in the Holocaust its straggling survivors deserved their own state of Israel. The inspiring words and decisive actions of President Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War, tore down the Berlin Wall, and restored economic prosperity to America. The efforts of these towering figures resulted in a more highly-evolved world.

We have also seen the opposite in totalitarian leaders like Hitler, Mussolini, Fidel Castro, Pol Pot, Mao, and Saddam Hussein, among others, who exploited their masses, destroyed their economies, brought havoc, turbulence, grief and massive death within and outside of their countries, and made the world a more dangerous and threatening place.

The one thing all of these virtuous and evil men had in common was love for their respective countries, in fact a burning passion that superseded all else. The virtuous believed in freedom and democracy. The evil believed in subjugation of their peoples and lifetime tenures for themselves in order to actualize their goals of conquering their eternal enemies – Americans and Jews.

Today, we have a new crop of inveterate America- and Jew-haters, among them the Marxist leader of Venezuela Hugo Chavez, Nicaragua’s president Daniel Ortega, Iran’s “death-to-America-and-Israel” study-in-abnormal-psychology Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the ever-sabotage-America and anti-Semitic “leaders” of the 22-Arab states that surround Israel.

I have either read about or observed firsthand all of these people. Yet in my decades of commenting on the political scene, I cannot recall a single leader of any country or regime who has ever spoken negatively of his country or tolerated others speaking ill of the land or the people he represented

Until now

Bizarre and, yes, repugnant as it is to our essentially centrist country, America now has a president who has broken that time-honored tradition. Barack Obama, on the campaign trail and as the leader of the free world is the first U.S. president to proclaim to anyone within earshot that he, like his wife, is not proud of his country, and is all-too-willing to offer serial apologies – for America! – to Americans and foreigners alike.

As Ed Lasky writes: “We know that during the campaign [Obama] warned that criticism of his wife was `off-limits’. But criticism of America – well, that is fine.”

We also know that during his run for the presidency, Obama expressed sneering condescension towards all those bible-clasping, gun-owning yahoos who “cling” to those silly things, and that in Europe he consistently gave voice to America’s supposed “sins.” But all that pales in comparison to the clear contempt – looks more like hatred to me – that Obama feels for the United States of America and for its most revered founding document, the U.S. Constitution.

In just the first 100-days of his tenure, Obama’s words and actions have demonstrated that he is no friend of the country he leads. This is only a smattering of what happened on his recent three-continent trip abroad and to Mexico:

  • In France, Obama told his audience that America “has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive” toward Europe.
  • In Prague, Obama – in true utopian-kindergarten fashion – pledged “with conviction” that America will “seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” In other words, destroy big bad America’s ability to defend itself!
  • In London, Obama made clear that the world’s financial wealth was no longer made by those inferior leaders Roosevelt and Churchill, effectively ceding America’s leading role in creating and sharing wealth to nations that have never measured up to our country’s bountiful generosity or spirit of free-market entrepreneurship.
  • In Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, Obama sat passively while the Marxist Chavez handed him an American-bashing book and delivered another revile-America speech, while never once rising to defend our country.
  • In Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, Obama again sat passively while the Marxist Ortega blamed the United States for a century of what he called terroristic U.S. aggression in Central America, again emitting not a whisper of defense on our country’s behalf.
  • In Turkey, Obama said – incredibly and inaccurately – that America was not a Christian nation.
  • And in his recent trip to Mexico, Obama said that the escalating border violence was essentially America’s fault.

Scan you memory. Can you think of any other leader in world history who so consistently badmouths his own country, or fails to defend it? I can’t.

Wall St. Journal writer Dorothy Rabinowitz notes that Obama “had gone to Europe not as the voice of his nation, but as a missionary with a message of atonement for its errors. No sitting American president had ever delivered indictments of this kind while abroad, or for that matter at home. When [our allies] see Obama’s moral equivalence, they realize they are on their own and must cut their own deals to survive – understanding that multicultural trendiness is now a cynical cover for moral laxity and ‘can’t we all get along?’

Historian Victor Davis Hanson also noticed something odd about Obama’s apology tour. “Despite this fresh climate of atonement, there was a complete absence of a single apology from any other foreign leader…not a word came from Britain about colonialism…nothing from Germany on the Holocaust…not a peep from France about Algeria or Vietnam. Turkey was mum on the Armenian killings…Russia said nothing about the 30 million murdered by Stalin…Nothing came from China about the 70 million who perished under Mao…Mr. Medvedev said nothing about Putin’s brutish rule…We saw no concrete evidence of any help — or hope and change — from any foreign leader. Zilch.”

In addition, Hanson continues, “We hear nothing about our Gettysburg, or our entry into World War I. Iwo Jima and the Bulge are never alluded to. Drawing the line in Korea and forcing the end of the Soviet monstrosity are taboo subjects. That we pledged the life of New York for Berlin in the Cold War is unknown. Liberating Afghanistan and Iraq from the diabolical Taliban and Saddam Hussein is left unsaid. The Civil Rights movement, the Great Society, affirmative action, and present billion-dollar foreign-aid programs apparently never existed. Millions of Africans have been saved by George Bush’s efforts at extending life-saving medicines to AIDS patients — but again, this is never referenced.”

Blogger James Lewis says that Obama’s “obsessive need to put down his own country shows a stunningly ignorant man who has evidently never spoken to a concentration camp survivor, a Cuban refugee, a boat person from Vietnam, a Soviet dissident, or a survivor of Mao’s purges.”

And Media Research Center’s Brent Bozell adds, “Obama `gets’ the America-haters.”

Abandoning allies, Embracing enemies

“If you are a longtime enemy of the United States, count on a grand reception from the Obama administration. All is forgiven and, worse, forgotten,” write Dick Morris and Eileen McGann. “But if you have a track record as an ally or friend, you won’t get the right time of day.”

Of course apologists for Obama & Co. point to “progress” in our foreign policy, ignoring, as Caroline Glick points out, that “America’s betrayal of its democratic allies makes each of them more vulnerable to aggression at the hands of their enemies – enemies the Obama administration is now actively attempting to appease.” Glick lays out the cold hard facts:

  • Obama abrogated America’s strategic commitment to the defense of our ally Japan when his administration reacted to North Korea’s ballistic missile test by saying the U.S. would only shoot the missile down if it targeted U.S. territory.
  • Obama slapped our ally India when he refused to make ending Pakistan’s support for jihadist terror groups attacking India a central component of its strategy for contending with Pakistan and Afghanistan.
  • Obama failed to assure our ally Iraq that democracy and freedom will be secured before U.S. forces are withdrawn next year.
  • Obama de facto abandoned our allies in Eastern Europe when he announced his intention to forge a new alliance with Russia. “The Czech, Polish, Georgian and Ukrainian governments,” Glick says, “were quick to recognize that Obama’s strong desire to curry favor with the Kremlin and weaken his own country will imperil their ability to withstand Russian aggression.”
  • Obama “is sacrificing the U.S.’s alliance with our ally Israel “in a bid to appease the Arabs and Iran by supporting the immediate establishment of a Palestinian state,” which, Glick warns, “requires Israel to commit national suicide in exchange for `peace.’” Obama also made clear “that from the administration’s perspective, an Israeli strike that prevents Iran from becoming a nuclear power is less acceptable than a nuclear-armed Iran.” In addition, Obama sent Hamas $900 million of foreign aid, “channeled through the UNRWA, a United Nations front filled with Hamas operatives”
  • Obama slapped our ally England when he returned the bust of Winston Churchill to Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
  • Obama slapped our ally Colombia and its president Alvaro Uribe when he refused to submit the free trade deal with Bogota to the Senate.

“What a great time to be our enemy!” Glick exclaims. “What a terrible time to be our friend!”

And speaking about appeasing Iran, the Obama administration recently asked a federal judge to throw out a $6.6-billion class-action lawsuit against Iran filed by 52 American diplomats and military officials held hostage for more than a year at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran 30 years ago. Nothing like selling out Americans to make brownie points with a bloodthirsty dictator!

Barry Rubin explains: “Friends, especially in Europe, are pleased, applaud, but then add that they don’t have to give this guy anything because he is all apologies and no toughness. They like the fact that he is all carrots and no sticks. If, however, they are states more at risk…they worry that they cannot rely on the United States to help and defend them. Enemies or potential rivals…say that this guy is weak and defeated. He apologizes, offers unconditional engagements, and promises concessions…they’ll eat the carrots and, if possible, their neighbors as well.”

NY Post writer Ralph Peters, a former military intelligence officer, sums up the hate-America core tenets of the “Obama Doctrine” as follows:
(1) We’re to blame,
(2) Problems can be negotiated away,
(3) Problems that can’t be talked out can be bought off,
(4) Islamist terrorism doesn’t exist,
(5) It’s all our fault,
(6) Israel’s the obstacle to Middle East peace,
(7) Our nukes threaten world peace and we need to get rid of them,
(8) Our military is dangerous,
(9) Our intelligence services are even more dangerous than our military,
(10) It’s only torture if we do it, and
(11) Blame President George W. Bush.

Obama is clearly not satisfied with threatening the safety of our tried-and-true allies abroad. He is also determined to undermine the bedrock foundation of America’s security – our military and intelligence agencies. By disclosing interrogation memos – and planning to release photographs associated with military probes into prisoner abuse – he has betrayed every heroic person who risks his or her life for our country, and unforgivably given aid-and-comfort to enemies who seethe with virulent anti-Americanism and lust for our demise. And in the Department of Homeland Security’s infamous memo, he has called members of our military, among others, potential domestic terrorists!

“After September 1th, the general outcry was, ‘Why don’t we have better overseas capabilities?’” said Porter Goss, director of the CIA from September 2004 to May 2006. “I fear that in the years to come, this refrain will be heard again. It is certainly not trust that is fostered when intelligence officers are told one day ‘I have your back,’ only to learn a day later that a knife is being held to it.”

How horrifying to contemplate that it is the President of the United States himself who is wielding that back-stabbing knife!

Questioning Obama’s patriotism

Before the November election, legal scholar Henry Mark Holzer wrote – and scrupulously documented – a stunning indictment of Obama in which he stated that Obama’s repeatedly professed claim to be a patriot is “a fraud on the American people – and an insult to the countless true patriots who, for over two hundred years, have loved and loyally and zealously supported the United States of America.”

“Patriots,” Holzer concluded, “don’t associate with and derive sustenance from terrorists, America-haters and anti-Semites; they don’t countenance fixed elections; they don’t keep secrets from voters; they don’t intimidate their enemies; they don’t denigrate and degrade our military; they don’t gratuitously interfere with their government’s efforts to protect our country; and they don’t disdain the symbol of this great nation, which for over two centuries men and women have fought and died: the American flag. Whatever Barack Obama is, we can be certain that he is no patriot!”

The events that have followed Obama’s election, Holzer says, “have compounded the proof of the president’s lack of patriotism,” which he has recently spelled out in a follow-up article. A few of the many examples he provides of what “a patriotic American president does not do include:

  • Bankrupt this country and court massive inflation in order to implement his vision of a fascist/socialist nation.
  • Sit on his hands with a straight face while a South American thug insults his country.
  • Appoint America-haters to his cabinet.
  • Cozy up to a soon-to-be-nuclear-armed Iranian madman.
  • Impotently watch the probably-already-nuclear-armed North Korean Stalinists lob a ballistic missile across the Pacific.
  • Fail to stanch the flow of illegal aliens across the Mexican-United States border.
  • Cut the defense budget.
  • Strangle innovation during a serious recession by raising taxes.
  • Close Guantanamo Bay without a clue of how to handle the enemy combatants incarcerated there.
  • Publicly announce what measures military and CIA interrogators can use to extract information from terrorists.
  • Apologize to the world for what has made America great and grovel to persons, nations. and institutions unfit to shine our shoes!
  • Cede American sovereignty to the American-hating United Nations.
  • Defy the Second Amendment and a Supreme Court decision by making an end run that substantially reduces the supply of certain ammunition.
  • Repudiate the policy and practice of missile shield installation.”
Some dare call it treason

It is one thing to question a president’s patriotism, but even more serious to accuse him of treason. In an open letter to Obama on Treason, Walter Francis Fitzpatrick, III (U.S. Naval Academy, Class of 1975)minces no words in accusing the president of sending Army forces to Samson, Alabama, and Boston in violation of the Constitution. Here are excerpts of his letter:

“I have observed and extensively recorded invidious attacks by military-political aristocrats against the Constitution for twenty years. Now you have broken in and entered the White House by force of contrivance, concealment, conceit, and deceit. Posing as an imposter president and commander in chief, you have stripped civilian command and control over the military establishment…
“We come now to the reckoning. I accuse you and your military-political criminal assistants of TREASON. I name you and your military criminal associates as traitors. Your criminal ascension manifests a clear and present danger. You fundamentally changed our form of government. The Constitution no longer works….

“I identify you as a foreign-born domestic enemy. You are not my president. You are not my commander in chief.

Fitzpatrick is not alone. John Smith – a blogger on Townhall.com, titled a recent article “Obama Is a Traitor.” Commenting on the president’s release of the “torture” memos, Smith says:

“Given the actions of Barack Obama in recent days, one has to wonder how many soon-to-be released State secrets have been gathered by radical left-wing traitors and hidden in the dark recesses of Washington, awaiting the Manchurian Candidate’s command to publish them…

“The motivation for Obama’s recent intentional disclosure of Top Secret CIA memoranda…was an act committed solely to increase his own political power through appeasement of the radical left…or was it …guided by the twisted moral imperative uniquely embraced by the Left, which dictates that only those actions that serve to limit individual liberty, punish patriotism, and destroy the traditions and culture of the United States of America are good?…

“Were Obama’s actions motivated by a deeply rooted desire to harm this Nation?…

“Article III of the Constitution defines Treason against the United States as “… levying War against them or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort…”.

“Top Secret information is the highest level of classification that we have on a national level. By definition, such material, if made public, will cause “exceptionally grave damage” to national security…

“The willful disclosure of Top Secret information is an act of Treason against the United States….A sitting President of The United States of America has committed Treason.”

Fitzpatrick and Smith are among a rising tide of voices – in and outside of the military – who have observed with growing horror Obama’s proclivity to destroy our capitalist economic system, subvert the U.S. Constitution, endanger our military and intelligence services, and obsequiously embrace America’s sworn enemies.

Dr. Jack Wheeler, a consummate Washington insider, goes one step further. “The evidence that the President of the United States is a traitor is mounting. The evidence that the President of the United states is a mortal danger to America’s national security is mounting. The evidence that the President of the United States will not defend America from threats and insults from every two-bit fascist dictator in the world …is not only mounting, it is overwhelming.”

Writer Amy L. Geiger-Hammer states: “I do wonder if Obama should be called a traitor or just incompetent…does he ever talk about what a great country America is?”
And UK journalist Gerald Warner echoes that rising tide: “If al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the rest of the Looney Tunes brigade want to kick America to death, they had better move in quickly and grab a piece of the action before Barack Obama finishes the job himself. Never in the history of the United States has a president worked so actively against the interests of his own people – not even Jimmy Carter. Obama’s problem is that he does not know who the enemy is. To him, the enemy does not squat in caves in Waziristan, clutching automatic weapons and reciting the more militant verses from the Koran: instead, it sits around at tea parties in Kentucky quoting from the US Constitution. “

Is America Lost?

Multiple lawsuits to find proof that Obama is Constitutionally ineligible to be president are ongoing and will ultimately determine if he is an American or Kenyan or Indonesian or UK “natural-born” citizen. To this date, he has spent over a million dollars blocking the suits about his still-missing birth certificate, and there is increasing evidence that the birth certificate attested to by FactCheck.org, FightTheSmears.org, and DailyKos.com are forgeries. And of course we still have not seen Obama’s Selective Service record, medical records, multiple visas, college transcripts, et al.
If Obama is proven to be the fraud and interloper many suspect, every one of his edicts, bills, laws, dictates, Supreme Court selections, et al, will be overturned , leaving America to cope with serious problems – under the leadership of the incomprehensible Joe Biden – but nothing approaching this hate-America president’s far-left socialist domestic programs and appease-our-enemies foreign policy.
The huge national turnouts at the Tea Parties of April 15 were only the beginning of a movement that was spurred by ordinary Americans waking up to Obama’s destruction of our economy, his attempts to reshape America into a banana republic, the grave damage he’s inflicted on our military and intelligence services, and his unsavory predilection for embracing our enemies and apologizing non-stop for the most magnificent nation on earth.
In short, they are waking up to the president who hates his country.
Editor Charlotte Baker predicts that “the Tea Parties and other, more aggressive, protests will grow exponentially, and that the Obama juggernaut can and will be stopped.” It’s crucial, she says, “for all Americans to recall the history they learned in school – at least before the Left hijacked what used to be known as `education.’ The Europeans, Japanese and Russians were all taken over by one form or another of totalitarianism because their combined history was one of absolute rulers – kings, czars and `divine’ emperors. They were totally conditioned to tyranny. 
“But the monstrous anti-American gang that rigged the voting system on November 4, 2008– as they do routinely in Obama’s Chicago Machine politics – to push Obama into We-the-People’s White House, have shown – even before his inauguration – the kind of overreaching that arrogant tyrants always demonstrate. Hitler, Mao, Tojo and Stalin all got away with overreaching, but they weren’t brutalizing Americans.

“Tolerating totalitarianism is simply not in the genetic code – the DNA – of Americans!” Baker adds. “Freedom and Liberty run in our blood!”

Indeed!

Source…

Amusing

The Bill of Federalism: 10 Amendments to be Proposed to the States for Ratification

“The Bill of Federalism: 10 Amendments to be Proposed to the States for Ratification“

RESOLUTION FOR CONGRESS TO CONVENE A CONVENTION TO PROPOSE AMENDMENTS CONSTITUTING A BILL OF FEDERALISM


Whereas Article I of the Constitution of the United States begins “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States”;
and


Whereas the Congress of the United States has exceeded the legislative powers granted in the Constitution thereby usurping the powers that are “reserved to the states respectively, or to the people” as the Tenth Amendment affirms; and

Whereas the Supreme Court of the United States has ignored the meaning of the Constitution by upholding this usurpation of the powers of the several states and of the people;

To restore a proper balance between the powers of Congress and those of the several States, and to prevent the denial or disparagement of the rights retained by the people to which the Ninth Amendment refers, the legislature of the State of ________ hereby resolves that:

Congress shall call a convention to propose the following articles be added as separate amendments to the Constitution of the United States, each of which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when separately ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States:

[The Bill of Federalism]

Article [of Amendment 1] — [Limits of Federal Power]1
Congress shall make no law nor delegate any authority, pursuant to its powers in the eighth section of article I, respecting any activity confined within a single state, regardless of its effects outside the state or whether it employs instrumentalities therefrom; but Congress has power to reasonably regulate pollution between one state and another, and to define and provide for punishment of offenses constituting acts of war or violent insurrection against the United States.


Article [of Amendment 2] — [Unfunded Mandates and Conditions on Spending]2
The legislative power shall not be construed to allow Congress to impose upon a State, or political subdivision thereof, an obligation or duty to make expenditures unless such expenditures shall be fully reimbursed by the United States; nor shall the legislative power be construed to allow Congress to place any condition on the expenditure or receipt of appropriated funds unless the requirement imposed by the condition would be within its power if enacted as a regulation.

Article [of Amendment 3] — [Reserved Powers of States]3
Subject to the requirements of Article VI, every state has the power to regulate or prohibit any activity that takes place within its borders, provided that no state regulation or prohibition shall infringe any enumerated or unenumerated right, liberty, privilege or immunity recognized by this Constitution.

Article [of Amendment 4] — [Recision Power of States]4
Upon application of the legislatures of two thirds of the states, any law, regulation or order of the United States shall be rescinded.

Article [of Amendment 5] — [No Federal Death Tax]5
Congress shall have no power to lay and collect taxes upon personal gifts or estates.

Article [of Amendment 6] — [No Federal Income Tax]6
The sixteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed, and Congress shall have no power to lay and collect taxes upon personal incomes, consumption or expenditures, but nothing in the Constitution shall be construed to deny Congress the power to lay and collect an excise or sales tax that is uniform throughout the United States. This article shall be effective five years from the date of its ratification.

Article [of Amendment 7] — [Term Limits for U.S. Senators and Representatives]7
Section 1. No person who has been elected or served for a full term to the Senate two times shall be eligible for election or appointment to the Senate. No person who has been elected for a full term to the House of Representatives six times shall be eligible for election to the House of Representatives.
Section 2. No person who has served as a Senator for more than three years of a term to which some other person was elected or appointed shall subsequently be eligible for election to the Senate more than once. No person who has served as a Representative for more than one year shall subsequently be eligible for election to the House of Representatives more than five times.
Section 3. No election or service occurring before this article becomes operative shall be taken into account when determining eligibility for election under this article.

Article [of Amendment 8] — [Balanced Budget Veto]8
Section 1. For purposes of this article, the budget of the United States for any given fiscal year shall be deemed unbalanced whenever the total amount of the debt of the United States held by the public at the close of such fiscal year is greater than the total amount of the debt of the United States held by the public at the close of the preceding fiscal year.
Section 2. If the budget of the United States is unbalanced for any given fiscal year, the President may separately approve, reduce or disapprove any monetary amounts in any legislation that appropriates or authorizes the appropriation of any money drawn from the Treasury, other than money for the operation of the Congress and judiciary of the United States, and which is presented to the President during the next annual session of Congress.
Section 3. Any legislation that the President approves with changes pursuant to section 2 of this article shall become law as modified. The President shall return with objections those portions of the legislation containing reduced or disapproved monetary amounts to the House where such legislation originated, which may then, in the manner prescribed under section 7 of Article I for bills disapproved by the President, separately reconsider those reduced or disapproved monetary amounts.
Section 4. The Congress shall have the power to implement this article by appropriate legislation.
Section 5. This article shall take effect on the first day of the next annual session of Congress following its ratification.


Article [of Amendment 9] — [Protecting the Rights Retained by the People]9
The rights of citizens of the United States include all the enumerated and unenumerated liberties, and privileges recognized by this Constitution. Nothing in this constitution shall be construed to create any conclusive or irrebuttable presumption that a law, regulation, or order of the United States or of a State does not infringe such rights. In any case or controversy in which an abridgment of such rights is alleged, no party shall be denied the opportunity to introduce evidence or otherwise show that a law, regulation or order is an unreasonable restriction on such rights and therefore is unconstitutional.

Article [of Amendment 10] — [No Judicial Alterations of the Constitution]10
The words and phrases of this Constitution shall be interpreted according to their meaning at the time of their enactment, which meaning shall remain the same until changed pursuant to Article V.

1. As Congress has exercised powers beyond those delegated to it by the Constitution, the powers of states that were reserved by the enumeration of delegated powers have been usurped. The first proposed amendment restricts the power of Congress to prohibit or regulate wholly intrastate activity under the powers enumerated in Article I, Section 8, thereby leaving wholly intrastate activities to be prohibited or regulated by the several states, or be left completely free of any regulations as states may choose. And it negates two constructions adopted by the Supreme Court to expand the reach of Congress under the Necessary and Proper Clause—sometimes called the “Sweeping Clause”—of Article I: that Congress has power to regulate wholly interstate activity that either (a) “affects” interstate activity or (b) uses instrumentalities obtained from outside the state. Lest this restriction on federal power create any doubt, this amendment makes clear that Congress retains the power to regulate interstate pollution and the power to define and punish acts of war and insurrection against the United States, for example, the possession of weapons of mass destruction. This provision leaves untouched the delegated powers of Congress to regulate wholly intrastate activities to enforce civil rights as expressly authorized by, for example, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments; it only restricts the improper construction of the powers enumerated in Article I, section 8 to reach wholly intrastate activity.

2. The second proposed amendment addresses two sources of persistent federal overreaching. The first is federal laws mandating state action necessitating the expenditure of state funds without reimbursing the states for their expenditures. In this manner, the federal government can take credit for adopting measures without incurring the political cost of increasing taxes or borrowing. The second problem addresses is the use of federal spending to accomplish objects not delegated to the United States. For example, the 55 mph speed limit was imposed by the states by conditioning the receipt of federal highway funds upon compliance with this mandate. This amendment makes this type of condition on funding unconstitutional by requiring that any condition placed on the receipt of federal money be within the power of Congress to enact as a standalone regulation, such as the power of Congress to enforce civil rights that is delegated to it by Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment.

3. Since the Founding, states have been thought to have what is called a “police power,” but this power is not expressly enumerated in the text of the Constitution. The third proposed amendment explicitly recognizes the power of state government to regulate and prohibit activities within their borders. As specified in the Supremacy Clause of Article VI, no exercise of state power may conflict with any law enacted by Congress pursuant to its delegated powers or with any enumerated or unenumerated right guaranteed by the Constitution. At the same time it expressly protects the powers of states, it also recognizes the limitations imposed by the Constitution on those powers.

4. At present, the only way for states to contest a federal law, regulation or order is to seek an amendment of the Constitution by applying for a constitutional convention to propose amendments that would must then be ratified by three-quarters of the states. This proposed amendment provides an additional check on federal power by empowering the states to rescind any law, regulation or order when two thirds of state legislatures concur this is necessary. Such a power provides a targeted method to reverse particular Congressional acts, administrative regulations, and executive and judicial orders without permanently amending the text of the Constitution.

5. The fifth proposed amendment forbids Congress from maintaining a tax on estates, sometimes referred to as the “death tax,” or on gifts made during one’s lifetime. Among the many benefits of this provision is to allow businesses and farms to continue to remain in a family by avoiding the need to liquidate the business to raise funds to pay the estate tax.

6. The sixth proposed amendment ends the power of Congress to enact a personal income tax, or to allow circumvention of this restriction by means of a consumption or expenditure tax. Lest the prohibition on a consumption tax raises any doubt, the provision makes clear that Congress retains the power to impose an “excise” or sales tax that is “uniform” throughout the United States. Sometimes called a “fair tax,” a national sales tax would be paid by all persons residing in the United States, whether legally or illegally, without the need for intrusive reporting of their activities. As people buy and consume more, they would pay more taxes, but all their savings and investments would appreciate free of tax. To give Congress ample time to fashion an alternative revenue system, the implementation of this amendment is delayed for five years. Of course, Congress may end the income tax sooner if it so chooses.

7. The seventh proposed amendment establishes twelve year term limits for Senators and Representatives. In 1995, this proposal was introduced in Congress and was approved by the House by a vote of 227-204, short of the two-thirds necessary to propose such an amendment to the states. It phases in these limits by exempting the time already served by incumbent Senators and Representatives to be included in the calculation of the limits on their terms.

8. Many Americans have long desired both a balance budget amendment and a presidential line item veto. The Problems With Balanced Budget Amendments: Balance budget mechanisms that have been devised to date present three serious problems: They are highly complex, they typically contain numerous exceptions and loop-holes, and they lack effective means of enforcement. The Need for a Line Item Veto: The practice by Congress of aggregating thousands of lines of expenditures into “omnibus” appropriation bills has greatly diminished the veto power that the Constitution reposes in the President. Because of their reluctance to threaten a government shut down, Presidents are loath to veto such bills. Knowing this, Senators and Representatives can load spending bills with pork, knowing that Congress will never have to give an up or down floor vote to a particular line item and that the threat of a presidential veto is empty. By linking the goal of a balanced budget with a temporary presidential line-item veto, the eighth proposed amendment provides a real incentive for Congress to devise a balance budget; if Congress fails to do so, the President would then have a temporary line item veto power over any appropriation in the budget. For example, should Congress enact a budget with a deficit, the President could veto Congressional earmarks and be held accountable for failing to do so. The amendment also ensures that Congress will retain the same power to override any presidential line item veto as it currently has for a traditional veto. The operation and advantages of this measure over other balance budget amendments is explained in detail here: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-487es.html

9. The existing Ninth Amendment says that “The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” Since the 1950s, however, the Supreme Court has adopted a construction by which any restriction of what it calls the “liberty interests” of the people is upheld as constitutional unless the Court deems a particular liberty interest to be a “fundamental right.” In this way, it has foreclosed any citizen from presenting proof that a restriction on a liberty not deemed to be fundamental is unreasonable. Because enumerated rights such as the freedom of speech are typically considered fundamental and protected, while the unenumerated rights to which the Ninth Amendment refers are deemed unprotected “liberty interests,” the practical result of this is the denial and disparagement of the rights retained by the People in violation of the rule of construction provided by the Ninth Amendment. The ninth proposed amendment provides for the equal protection of all the liberties of the people, whether enumerated or unenumerated, without empowering judges to define unenumerated rights. Instead, whenever a person’s liberty is restricted, that person is allowed to present proof that the restriction is unreasonable and therefore unconstitutional. This amendment will focus on the reasonableness of the government’s justification for restricting liberty rather than on the precise definition of a particular unenumerated right.

10. The tenth proposed amendment ensures that the text of the Constitution remains the supreme law of the land by preventing judges from ignoring or changing the linguistic meaning of the text of the Constitution by “interpretation.” It requires that judges obey the text of the Constitution until it is properly changed by a constitutional amendment. A constitution that is ignored or systematically misinterpreted is a dead constitution. Only if the Constitution is actually followed can it accurately be considered as a “living constitution.”

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