Doug Ross @ Journal
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I would vote for Donald Trump over the Democrat nominee in the event he is the GOP candidate. Because I would vote for a Sesame Street character over the Democrat. But remember: you will get what you pay for.
By Publius Huldah
Does our existing Constitution permit the federal government to spend money on whatever they want?
No! It contains precise limits on federal spending.
Federal spending is limited by the enumerated powers delegated to the federal government. If you go through the Constitution and highlight all the powers delegated to Congress and the President, you will get a complete list of the objects on which Congress is permitted to spend money. Here’s the list:
That’s what Congress is authorized by our Constitution to spend money on. Did I leave anything out? Take a few minutes and, armed with a highlighter, read carefully through the Constitution and see for yourself.
Congress is to appropriate funds to carry out this handful of delegated powers; and it is to pay the bills with receipts from taxes. 1
Pursuant to Article I, §9, clause 7, the federal government is to periodically publish a Statement and Account of Receipts and Expenditures. Citizens could use this Statement and Account – which would be so short that everyone would have time to read it – to monitor the spending of their public servants.
So that’s how our existing Constitution limits federal spending:
It was unconstitutional spending and unconstitutional promises (Social Security, Medicare, etc., etc., etc.) which got us a national debt of almost $19 trillion, plus a hundred trillion or so in unfunded liabilities.
Since the Constitution delegates to Congress only limited and narrowly defined authority to spend money; the Constitution doesn’t provide for a budget.
We never had a federal budget until Congress passed the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921. By this time, the Progressives controlled both political parties and the federal government.
The Progressives wanted a federal budget because they wanted to spend money on objects which were not on the list of delegated powers.
A balanced budget amendment (BBA) would substitute a budget for the enumerated powers, and thus would legalize the current practice where Congress spends money on whatever they or the President put in the budget.
The result of a BBA is to legalize spending which is now unconstitutional – it changes the constitutional standard for spending from whether the object is on the list of enumerated powers to a limit on the total amount of spending.
And because a BBA would permit Congress to lawfully spend money on whatever is put in the budget, the powers of the federal government would be lawfully increased to include whatever THEY decide to put in the budget.
So a BBA would fundamentally transform our Constitution from one of enumerated powers only to one of general and unlimited powers – because the federal government would then be authorized by the Constitution to exercise power over ANY object they decide to put into the budget.
You must read proposed amendments and understand how they change our Constitution before you support them.
All federal and State officials take an oath to support the federal Constitution (Art. VI, clause 3). When people in Congress appropriate funds for objects not listed in the Constitution; and when State officials accept federal funds for objects not listed, they violate their oath to support the Constitution. According to the PEW Report, federal funds provided an average of 30% of the States’ revenue for FY 2013. Look up your State HERE. Were those federal funds used to implement unconstitutional federal programs in your State?
Power over education, medical care, agriculture, state and local law enforcement, environment, etc., is not delegated to the federal government: those powers are reserved by the States or the People. Congress spends on objects for which it has no constitutional authority; and bribes States with federal funds to induce them to implement unconstitutional federal programs. It was the unconstitutional spending which gave us this crushing $19 Trillion debt.
We stop the unconstitutional and frivolous spending one can read about all over the internet.
We begin the shutdown of unconstitutional federal departments and agencies by selecting for immediate closure those which serve no useful purpose or cause actual harm such as the Departments of Energy, Education, Homeland Security, and the Environmental Protection Agency. 3
Other unconstitutional federal departments and agencies must be dismantled and their functions returned to the States or The People.
An orderly phase-out is required of those unconstitutional federal programs in which Citizens were forced to participate – such as social security and Medicare – so that the rug is not pulled out from American Citizens who became dependent. The phase-out could be funded by sales of unconstitutionally held federal lands.
The federal government is obligated (Art. I, §8, cl. 11-16) to provide for service related injuries suffered by our Veterans.
The Constitution delegates to Congress the power to appropriate funds for “post Roads” (Art. I, §8, cl. 7). While there may be room for argument as to what is included within the term, “post Road”; clearly, some federal involvement in road building is authorized by our Constitution. State dependence on federal highway funds might be reduced by eliminating or reducing federal fuel taxes, and the substitution of fuel taxes collected by individual States. And there is nothing immoral about toll roads.
Since our Constitution was written to delegate to the federal government only the few and defined powers enumerated in the Constitution, we don’t have to change the Constitution to rein in federal spending. The Constitution isn’t the problem – ignoring it is the problem. Let us begin to enforce the Constitution we have.
Endnotes:
1 Our original Constitution authorized only excise taxes & tariffs on imports (Art. I, §8, clause 1), with any shortfall being made up by an apportioned assessment on the States based on population (Art. I, §2, clause 3).
2 Compact for America’s (CFA) version of a BBA permits spending limits to be waived whenever Congress and 26 States agree. CFA’s version also authorizes Congress to impose a national sales tax and a national value added tax in addition to keeping the income tax! See THIS Paper.
3 George Washington’s Cabinet had four members: Secretary of State, Secretary of War, Secretary of Treasury, and Attorney General.
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By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media
Who ever heard of a presidential primary debate or town hall meeting opening with a kiss on the cheek between the moderator and the frontrunner? It’s safe to say that didn’t happen between Fox News’ Megyn Kelly and Republican frontrunner Donald Trump. And not just because he didn’t show up for Thursday night’s debate in Iowa.
But if you tuned in to the January 25 CNN Democratic town hall, you would have seen that kiss between the moderator Chris Cuomo, and Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton. And that was just for starters. The event featured softball after softball question in a continuous love-in for the candidates, but especially so for Mrs. Clinton. This was a far cry from the December CNN Republican debate.
Of course, the Cuomo family has a history of favoring Clinton. Chris Cuomo’s brother, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, recently helped introduce the former New York senator when she received a gun control award named after his father, Mario Cuomo, who had also served as New York governor. Governor Cuomo has also endorsed her presidential run.
So, with a moderator ready to play favorites, CNN abandoned all sense of objectivity.
“Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders on Monday drew their sharpest contrasts yet in hard-hitting final pitches to Iowa voters as the competitive race to win the first in the nation caucuses enters its last week,” reported CNN on January 26. It doesn’t report that it had stacked the deck.
“Secretary Sanders—or, Clinton, sorry,” said student Brett Rosengren as he was about to ask the final question of the night. “I can see why they gave you this question,” he continued. “I just wanted to know which of our previous presidents has inspired you most and why.” Why they gave you this question? Who was the “they” he was referring to?
Rosengren later said that he had posed the question himself, and submitted it to CNN. But it was CNN that chose his question, and it was CNN who directed that it should be asked of Hillary Clinton instead of Bernie Sanders (I-VT) or Martin O’Malley.
So CNN arranged easy questions for Hillary Clinton? What type, exactly, of town hall was this? This was, in reality, a stage-managed and produced love-in for Mrs. Clinton.
This is typical of how the left-wing, mainstream media abandon all impartiality and allow Democrats to answer supposedly spontaneous questions using teleprompters with predetermined answers. It’s reminiscent of the time that Democrat National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was caught reading an answer to a question off of a teleprompter during an appearance on MSNBC, when she butchered the world “misled” as “myzled” while on camera.
The orchestrated nature of these town halls, debates, and other appearances by the Democratic candidates exposes how the media have already made their choice for this year’s presidential election. All that is left is to ensure Hillary Clinton’s victory with as much endless cheerleading media promotion as possible, while ignoring her scandal-plagued career.
“Sec. Clinton, when you’re elected the next president of the United States, what will you say to Republican voters?” asked a member of the audience. Mrs. Clinton then led into an answer about how she wants “to be the president for everyone.”
Later, moderator Cuomo asked, “It makes them [Republicans] feel that, well, Secretary Clinton doesn’t like us. Why would she work with us?” Clinton’s answer devolved into a pronouncement that she would give Republicans “bear hugs whether they like it or not.”
CNN’s treatment of Sanders was equally superficial at times, with Cuomo asking him, “Do you think you are up to the whole job [of president]?” But Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks makes a strong case from the left that Sanders got much rougher treatment than Hillary.
It is Cuomo, and CNN, who are not up to the job of vetting the Democratic presidential candidates. However, the softballs from CNN were in sharp contrast to the hardball questions for the earlier Republican debate, with questions designed to cause the candidates to attack each other’s platforms. CNN queried the Republican candidates with questions that sometimes sounded more like accusations than debate openers.
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Donald Trump in December, “Is the best way to make America great again to isolate it from much of the rest of the world?”
“Governor [Jeb] Bush, you called Mr. Trump ‘unhinged’ when he proposed banning non-American Muslims from the United States,” Blitzer also asked. “Why is that unhinged?”
In contrast, CNN dealt very gingerly with two Clinton scandals: Benghazi and her mishandling of classified materials on her unsecured email server.
The Benghazi scandal poses a major obstacle to Hillary Clinton’s election. Yet, instead of a cutting question delineating the high stakes, Mrs. Clinton was asked by an audience member, “So, how are you planning on dealing with that [Benghazi issue] going forward, not only in the general election, but also if you became president working with Congress?”
This carefully phrased softball gave Mrs. Clinton an opening to blame Republicans for keeping the Benghazi issue alive. What is keeping the issue alive, however, is Mrs. Clinton’s and the administration’s stonewalling, preventing justice for the victims and accountability for an administration that blamed the attack on a YouTube video.
In her answer Clinton claimed that Democrats didn’t make the death of hundreds of American soldiers in Beirut (during the Reagan administration) a partisan issue, and that she had “put together an independent board to tell me as secretary of state what I needed to know and what we could do to fix it.”
The Accountability Review Board appointed by Clinton was far from independent, and failed to interview Secretary Clinton herself—despite her role in the administration’s decision to aid the al-Qaeda linked rebels in Libya, stymie the truce talks with Muammar Qaddafi, and refuse to properly secure the U.S. Special Mission Compound. In addition, she shares the responsibility for the dereliction of duty on the night of the attacks by failing to send available military assets to assist those who were fighting the jihadists, and for the decision to blame a YouTube video for the terror attack.
Yet even a question challenging Mrs. Clinton’s honesty was reworded as a question about supporter enthusiasm. “It feels like there is [sic] a lot of young people like myself who are very passionate supporters of Bernie Sanders,” asked audience member Taylor Gipple. “And, I just don’t see the same enthusiasm from younger people for you. In fact, I’ve heard from quite a few people my age that they think you’re dishonest, but I’d like to hear from you on why you feel the enthusiasm isn’t there.”
“Clinton tried to play the issue of millennials flocking to Sanders as a good thing, saying any kind of involvement in the election process is positive, but the truth is her campaign is starting to panic over a drop in poll numbers and Sanders’ domination in early states,” observed Katie Pavlich for Townhall on January 26.
Clinton’s email scandal has been one long drip, drip, drip of scandal exposing lie after lie. She took this opportunity to spin a number of the same falsehoods at the town hall. Cuomo asked Clinton about the timing of her apology for EmailGate, saying, “Yes, you apologized, but only when you needed to, not when you first could have. Fair criticism?”
Mrs. Clinton responded by falsely claiming, once again, that her unsecure server was set up so that she could conveniently use a single device. But, she insisted, “I’m not willing to say it was an error in judgment because what—nothing that I did was wrong.” That must be why the FBI has two ongoing investigations: one into her server and the other regarding possible public corruption.
Clinton should be apologizing not for the timing of her previous apology, but for allowing classified material, including Top Secret and Special Access Programs (SAP), on her private server where it was a sitting duck for hackers, and a genuine national security risk. And whether or not the material was marked classified at the time—which is how she defends herself—it was wrong and illegal.
But if mainstream media wishes were votes, Clinton would already have the presidency—no questions asked. There is a rotten double standard at CNN, and the rest of the mainstream media, which continue to ask hard-hitting questions of Republicans the likes of which they wouldn’t dare ask members of their favored party.
By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media
Donald J. Trump was insulted by Fox News chief Roger Ailes and says he will hold an alternative event rather than participate in Thursday night’s debate. But why won’t Trump stand up to Russia’s Vladimir Putin? A series of pro-Putin remarks by a potential leader of the Free World is a far more serious matter than whether Megyn Kelly is given the opportunity to question Trump.
The Trump-Putin relationship has been labeled a “bromance” involving two men who have a fondness for one another. It is very strange, considering that Putin runs a regime that has invaded Ukraine, intervened in Syria, and has enough nuclear weapons to destroy the United States. Russian government and media officials regularly threaten to incinerate the U.S.
Ironically, on the same day Trump was pulling out of a debate sponsored by Fox News, he was on the Fox Business Network telling anchor Maria Bartiromo that Putin “hasn’t been convicted of anything,” in reference to the British report that Putin’s regime killed KGB dissident Alexander Litvinenko in London. “Have they found him guilty? I don’t think they’ve found him guilty. They say a lot of things about me that are untrue, too.” The 329-page report said Putin “probably” ordered the hit, using the standard of probable cause in a case where direct eyewitness evidence was not forthcoming from the Moscow regime. A former KGB spy who ran the KGB’s successor, the FSB, Putin had to be directly involved in such a plot, carried out by Russian intelligence on British soil. After all, Putin rules the country like a virtual dictator.
Trump, who is quick to make charges and accusations against his political opponents in the U.S., had previously said, “I haven’t seen any evidence that he [Putin] killed anybody, in terms of reporters.”
Litvinenko’s murder in 2006 by radiation poisoning followed the assassination of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot four times, once in the head. She was the target of a failed poisoning attempt in 2004.
Trump, who claims to be a real conservative, has openly emerged as Putin’s preferred candidate and boasts about his endorsement from Putin, saying, “It is always a great honor to be so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond.” The remarks gave new meaning to the term “dupe,” or “agent of influence.” Putin had said about Trump, “He is a bright and talented person without any doubt—an outstanding and talented personality.”
The back-and-forth remarks of mutual admiration raise serious questions about whether Trump, if he is elected president, would be a security risk.
A savvy businessman, Trump is certainly not dumb. His attacks on political correctness and media bias have been applauded by conservatives. He’s been critical of Communist China’s trade practices and illegal immigration. On Russia, however, he acts like a propagandist for the Putin regime.
We have cited reports dating back to 1987, during the time of the old Soviet Union, demonstrating that Trump has been seeking business in Russia and attempting to build a “Russian Trump Tower” in Moscow. One of Trump’s contacts was Russian billionaire Araz Agalarov and his company, Crocus Group. He owned Crocus City Hall, where Trump’s Miss Universe finals were held in 2013. Crocus Group had been participating in real estate talks with Trump. A member of the Kremlin elite, Agalarov was given an outstanding citizen award by Putin at a ceremony held in the Kremlin. He has been called “The Donald Trump of Russia.” At a news conference in Moscow and a subsequent interview, Trump himself talked about how business was “booming” in Russia. “I mean, you look at what’s going on in Russia, in Moscow, you look at how it’s just booming and how well it does,” he said.
Clearly, Trump was fascinated by Russia’s economic opportunities.
But does Trump’s enthusiasm for Putin’s Russia go beyond business opportunities?
At his news conference on Tuesday, where he declared that he would drop out of the Fox debate, Trump was asked by CNN reporter Sara Murray about his attacking Bill Clinton over marital infidelity, and whether Trump’s own marital infidelity was an appropriate topic. “You can bring up whatever you want to bring up,” he said.
Since he extended the invitation, it would appear that Trump’s indifference to the evidence of the evil deeds of the Putin regime means that he has no knowledge of the KGB’s use of the “honey-trap.” As explained by former KGB general Oleg Kalugin, “In America, in the West, occasionally you ask your men to stand up for their country. In Russia, we just ask our young women to lay down.” Former FBI counterintelligence chief Frank Figliuzzi told the BBC that sexy Russian spy Anna Chapman was getting “closer and closer” to seducing a sitting member of President Obama’s cabinet. She was arrested and deported from the U.S. The documentary, “Russian Spies—Deceitful Beauties,” examines how Russia uses beautiful women to steal information and intelligence. One case involves a young Russian woman, Katia Zatuliveter, an alleged “honey-trap” spy in London who later went to work for the Russia Today (RT) propaganda channel. She denied being a spy, but former KGB officer Oleg Gordievsky said the 25-year-old woman was working undercover for Russian foreign intelligence, the SVR, and gathering information about British naval bases around the world.
One might say Trump’s personal life is his own, except for the fact that he has attacked Bill Clinton’s personal life and talks in his book, Think Big: Make It Happen in Business and Life, about the women he has “dated” over the years, including “the top models and most beautiful women in the world.” Trump, who has been married three times, wrote, “I have been able to date (screw) them all because I have something that many men do not have.”
The author of four books, including The Longest Romance: The Mainstream Media and Fidel Castro, Humberto Fontova suggests that ego is the explanation for Trump’s behavior and statements on Russia. He quotes KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov as saying back in 1985, “Ego-centric people who lack moral principles—who are either too greedy or who suffer from exaggerated self-importance. These are the people the KGB wants and finds easiest to recruit.”
Whatever the explanation, Trump’s pandering to Putin has to be addressed. As part of the National Review cover story headlined, “Against Trump,” former chief assistant U.S. attorney Andrew C. McCarthy commented that Trump did not have “a clue” about dealing with the problem of global terrorism, other than “leaving it in Vladimir Putin’s nefarious hands.” But how did this happen? Where do these views come from?
Serious journalists can’t sweep this matter under the rug.
Before he makes even more astonishingly ignorant statements about Putin’s Russia, Trump ought to take some time to read the British inquiry into the Litvinenko murder. Litvinenko was a target of his former comrades in the KGB because he exposed Russian links to organized crime, and even al-Qaeda. However, another possible motive in the murder was an article Litvinenko wrote claiming Putin was a pedophile. The article said:
After graduating from the Andropov Institute, which prepares officers for the KGB intelligence service, Putin was not accepted into the foreign intelligence. Instead, he was sent to a junior position in KGB Leningrad Directorate. This was a very unusual twist for a career of an Andropov Institute’s graduate with fluent German. Why did that happen with Putin? Because, shortly before his graduation, his bosses learned that Putin was a pedophile [sic]. So say some people who knew Putin as a student at the Institute…
Many years later, when Putin became the FSB director and was preparing for the presidency, he began to seek and destroy any compromising materials collected against him by the secret services over earlier years. It was not difficult, provided he himself was the FSB director. Among other things, Putin found videotapes in the FSB Internal Security directorate, which showed him making sex with some underage boys.
The odd spectacle of Putin quickly pulling up a boy’s white tank-top and kissing his belly raised eyebrows worldwide at the time it happened. Litvinenko had put the strange display in perspective. Putin claimed it was a spontaneous gesture of affection. “I wanted to cuddle him like a kitten and it came out in this gesture. He seemed so nice,” Putin said. On the other hand, Putin wants to appear macho. He rides horses while bouncing his bare chest for the cameras, and has posed shirtless while fishing.
In addition to his involvement in the Litvinenko case, questions are being raised about the mysterious death of Putin’s former media adviser in Washington, D.C. It appears that Mikhail Lesin, the founder of Russian propaganda channel Russia Today, was stealing money from Russia and laundering it in the United States. He was under pressure to inform to U.S. authorities about corruption by the Putin regime.
In that regard, the BBC Panorama show has run a program on “Putin’s Secret Riches,” noting how he gets a $100,000 a year salary but lives like a member of the super-rich. It is estimated that he is worth $40 billion.
Not surprisingly, RT is now featuring a story about how Putin is cracking down on corruption in Russia. Putin has even formed a Presidential Anti-Corruption Council.
Does Trump also deny that Putin is corrupt? If so, perhaps we know where Trump is getting his information about Russia. After all, his long-time adviser, Roger Stone, became a favorite of RT when Stone wrote a book using a KGB agent of influence as a source and accusing President Lyndon Johnson of ordering the murder of President John F. Kennedy.
Trump denies that Putin had Litvinenko killed. Does he believe Roger Stone’s theory that LBJ killed JFK?
You don’t have to be Megyn Kelly to want answers to this one. And what about those beautiful women in Moscow? Did Trump “date” any of them?
The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast and the results are in for this week’s Watcher’s Council match-up.
I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. – President James Madison
A republic, if you can keep it. – Benjamin Franklin
Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary. – Reinhold Neibuhr
This week we had tie in the Council category between Bookworm Room’s The single most important election issue in 2016: The Constitution! and Joshuapundit’s The Clinton E-Mail Scandal And How It Will End.
As Watcher, I get paid the big bucks to break ties like this.
My piece detailed exactly how Mrs. Clinton broke the law, endangered national security and discussed where the current FBI investigation is as well as my prediction for how this all will end, which may startle some people!
Andrea’s articulate and well written article explored in great detail her belief that the real issue in the coming election is strengthening our Constitution. Not only did I vote for it myself, but she definitely wins the honors this week as far as I’m concerned! Here’s a slice:
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
— Presidential Oath of OfficeIn 1992, James Carville famously hung a sign in Bill Clinton’s Little Rock campaign headquarters pointing campaign workers to Clinton’s most powerful campaign message: “The economy, stupid!” Today, in the run-up to the 2016 election, conservatives need to keep hammering their most powerful campaign message: “The Constitution!” After eight years of Obama’s savage disregard for the Constitution, the 2016 election is America’s last chance to return our Constitution to its rightful, and central, place in American politics.
In this essay, I hope to establish three things:
I. That the Constitution is a unique document that empowers individuals over government, making it the bedrock of American exceptionalism;
II. That Barack Obama has significantly damaged the Constitution’s preeminent position in American government, creating a dangerous imbalance in favor of an unlimited executive backed by a powerful, all-encompassing bureaucracy; and
III. That we must choose our next president very carefully in order to redress this imbalance lest we wake up one morning to find ourselves living under a permanent de facto dictatorship.
Part I
After winning the Revolution, America’s Founding Fathers had the unique opportunity to build a government from the ground up. Being educated men, they had several models from which to choose. They could replicate the British model, with its monarch, hereditary aristocracy, and House of Commons. They could attempt a commune of the type that the Pilgrims tried in 1620. Although that attempt almost killed the Pilgrims, the utopian impulse towards communism has continued to tempt revolutionaries ever since. They could try to put Plato’s Republic into effect and appoint themselves as the ideal Platonic ruling elite. They could even try the Judges approach from the Old Testament. They rejected all of those models.
The Founders’ genius lay in recognizing that all previous government models had a pyramidal structure, with power held only at the very top of the pyramid. This was certainly true of Britain which, beginning in 1066, had vested complete power in a hereditary monarchy. It took centuries for the aristocracy and landed gentry to chip away at the monarch’s authority, starting with the Magna Carta (1215) and finishing with the Glorious Revolution’s Bill of Rights (1689).
Ironically, thanks to the American Revolution, Parliament concluded that the British Bill of Rights, many parts of which the Founders incorporated wholesale into our Constitution, limited only the monarchy, but had no controlling effect on Parliament. In other words, Britain emerged from the American Revolution as pyramidal as before, only with Parliament at the top of the pyramid, not the King.
This same pyramidal pattern held true for all other governments the Founder’s studied. No matter the outcome of history’s wars and revolutions, government’s fundamental structure remained unchanged: Power resided at the top, with those citizens excluded from power enjoying limited freedoms and privileges — and those only at the whim of the ruling class. The Founders would therefore have been unsurprised to see that the 20th century’s communist revolutions, despite destroying the old ruling classes entirely, created governments no different from the ones they replaced – power was at the top, with the apparatchiks, and the people groaned in bloody servitude under what was just another self-appointed elite.
To prevent the tyranny of the elite – any elite – the Founders created an entirely new government structure, one never before tried: They broke governing authority into its constituent parts (legislative, executive, and judicial) and divvied that power amongst three different, but equal, branches of government. No government branch could act alone. The theory was that each branch would guard its power jealously, thereby keeping either of the other two branches from becoming dominant. These “checks and balances,” integral to our Founder’s design, were an elegant example of the old idea that it takes two thieves (or, in this case, three) to keep an honest bargain.
The Founders also went beyond creating a radically new government structure that diffused power throughout government to prevent the inevitable tyranny that flows from vesting all government power in one person or collective. In 1791, they enacted the Bill of Rights.
The philosophy underlying our Bill of Rights is not found in the Constitution itself, but in the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Throughout history, many have called themselves revolutionaries, but they are invariably just as power-hungry as the governments they’ve overthrown. The Founders, however, were true revolutionaries. Their new paradigm holds that a majority of citizens can voluntarily elect a legislature and abide by its laws; accept the executive’s enforcement of the laws (including punishments); and allow the judiciary to interpret the laws, if they have concluded that a particular set of political figures will best protect their life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. If, however, the majority of the people conclude that this same government no longer serves them well, they may reconstitute the government to make it more to their liking.
Being cautious men, and with Parliament’s gutting of the British Bill of Rights as a grim example of government overreach, the Founders did not feel that just a Declaration and Constitution were adequate protections for individuals. In 1791, the Founders enacted the Bill of Rights, explicitly spelling out the inviolate sphere of rights that each person possesses independent of government. Ironically, many of the rights are verbatim restatements of the same British Bill of Rights that Parliament had only recently nullified.
America’s Bill of Rights represents a complete inversion of the traditional power pyramid. In America, the governing power rests, not at the highest point of the pyramid, with kings and politicians, but in its base, which is comprised of individuals who possess inherent, unalienable rights. Because these individual rights are so important, they bear repeating here:
Amendment 1 – Freedom of Religion, Press, Expression.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Amendment 2 – Right to Bear Arms.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Amendment 3 – Quartering of Soldiers.
No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
Amendment 4 – Search and Seizure.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Amendment 5 – Trial and Punishment, Compensation for Takings.
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Amendment 6 – Right to Speedy Trial, Confrontation of Witnesses.
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
Amendment 7 – Trial by Jury in Civil Cases.
In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
Amendment 8 – Cruel and Unusual Punishment.
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Amendment 9 – Construction of Constitution.
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment 10 – Powers of the States and People.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Much more at the link.
In our non-Council category, the winner was Doug Ibendahl at Republican News Watch with National Review just handed Donald Trump the Election submitted by Puma By Design.
Mr. Ibendahl, a Chicago attorney was former General Counsel of the Illinois Republican Party. His contention is the the National Review,Weekly Standard and various movement conservatives HQ’d in New York City and Washington who just gratuitously attacked Donald Trump did him a huge favor by emphasizing his bona fides as an independent outsider unconnected to the GOP establishment. Based on the polls, he may very well be right.
Here are this week’s full results. The Noisy Room was unable to vote this week, but was not subject to the usual 2/3 vote penalty for not voting:
Council Winners:
Non-Council Winners:
See you next week!
Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum and every Tuesday morning, when we reveal the week’s nominees for Weasel of the Week!
And remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council and the results are posted onFriday morning.
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By: Renee Nal
New Zeal
Author and speaker Trevor Loudon spoke at the South Carolina Tea Party Coalition Convention this year along with Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, Ann-Marie Murrell of the Politichicks, KrisAnne Hall and many other conservative icons, and what an amazing speech it was!
Watch (Trevor speaks for the first 29 minutes, followed by Jim Gilmore):
By: Brent Parrish
The Right Planet
In October 2015, I posted an installment of Update Brazil with Jeff R. Nyquist and Allan dos Santos. They interviewed author and political researcher Trevor Loudon on the communist infiltration of the U.S. government that occurred over many years.
The accepted and popular history of communism is that ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall. But those of us who research and study the history communism know that nothing could be farther from the truth. If anything, socialism (i.e. communism) has only strengthened its grip on the West. This shouldn’t really come as a surprise to anyone, considering who are current president is, and the fact that we have a full-blown big “C” communist running for president on the Democrat ticket (i.e. Bernie Sanders).
Many people believe modern-day Russia has abandoned its communist past. But as I attempted to show in my aforementioned article, former KGB officer Vladimir Putin has never relinquished his communist roots; nor did Mikhail Gorbachev, for that matter. In 2000, Putin reinstated the Soviet national anthem when he took the helm of the Russian Federation (cf. Soviet Union). Many of the symbols of the Soviet regime still remain in place to this day.
Now, CNS News reports Vladimir Putin stated on Monday that he rather likes communism.
Via CNSNews.com:
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday he still likes the ideas of theoretical communism “very much,” and recalled that unlike many others he had not publicly destroyed his Communist Party membership card, but still keeps it at home.
“In contrast to many functionaries I did not throw my membership card away or burn it in public,” he told supporters in the southern city of Stavropol. “I still keep it at home.”
The Itar-TASS news agency quoted the former KGB official as saying that he had been rank-and-file member and not an office-bearer of the Communist Party.
“I cannot say that I was a hardline advocate of the communist ideology,” he said. “Yet my attitude to all this was very delicate.”
Putin said that while serving in the KGB he liked – and continues today to like – communist and socialist ideas “very much.”
Referring to the “Moral Code of the Builder of Communism” – a set of 12 rules every party member was expected to follow – he said the “wonderful ideas” resembled the Bible in many ways.
However, the reality was different in practice.
“The practical embodiment of these wonderful ideas in our country was very far from what the utopian socialists had proclaimed,” he said.
The comments came as Putin critically addressed, for the second time in five days, the legacy of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin.
Last Thursday, he caused a stir by saying, during a meeting of the Presidential Council for Science and Education, that Lenin had been responsible for ideas that led ultimately to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Putin said then that Lenin’s ideas like providing regions with autonomy “planted an atomic bomb under the building that is called Russia which later exploded.”
In his address in Stavropol on Monday – to activists of his Russian Popular Front movement – Putin reiterated those points, recalling that Lenin and his successor Joseph Stalin had disagreed on the matter, with Stalin arguing in favor of a unitary state.
Stalin was overruled, and Lenin’s model that allowed for the possibility of territories seceding led to the Soviet Union’s eventual breakup, he said.
(In his 2005 state of the nation address, Putin famously described the collapse of the Soviet Union as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century.”)
Putin also criticized Lenin for the execution of Russia’s last royal ruler, Tsar Nicholas II, along with his family and servants in 1918, and for killing large numbers of Orthodox priests.
“Why did they kill Dr. Botkin?” he asked, in reference to the slain court physician Eugene Botkin. “Why did they kill the servants, people of proletarian origin by and large?”
“What for? Just for the sake of concealing a crime,” Putin said.
Not too long ago, a friend of mine pointed out something that I had never noticed before. Aeroflot, one of the largest and oldest airlines in the world, is the flag carrier of the Russian Federation. It was founded in 1923. It is now a quasi-private enterprise. Aeroflot was the official national airline of the Soviet Union. Aeroflot is still considered the de facto national airline of Russia. Interestingly, Aeroflot still retains the hammer and sickle on its official logo to this very day, which can be seen below under the “A” and “E” below.
Another example of communist symbolism still present in Russia today is that of Mosfilm, one of the largest and oldest film studios in Russia and Europe. It, too, was founded in 1923. Below is a screencap of the opening credit for Mosfilm that appears in the 2012 Russian film “White Tiger.” Clearly present is the hammer and sickle being held aloft by the two statuesque figures of a man and woman (i.e. “the workers”), and the red star shining atop a building spire in the background.
Now, imagine, if you will, modern-day Germany still retaining the symbolism of the Third Reich. What do you think the international reaction would be? And yet the Soviet regime, which is responsible for the deaths of millions, has never been held to account for its monstrous crimes against humanity and its own people … quite the contrary.
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