“Rights” were once something retained by an educated citizenry, and the government was restrained by the Constitution from infringing upon those rights. Now, apparently, “rights” are things that the someone has and someone else wants, and the enraged citizenry demands that the federal government secure those “rights” for them.
Well, I want my…
Read More »
The following commentary about the state of learning and teaching of government and political science in our public schools (excerpt below) crossed the Designated Conservative’s digital desk this week. It is another excellent posting by…
Being President of the United States is a heady experience, and it can be very hard to stay humble and grounded – especially when a President comes into office with an excessively positive opinion of himself to start with…. Hopefully this video, once Homeland Security alerts him to it, will help our President stay more grounded in reality.
Please stay with it – the payoff is at the end:
You are here, Mr. President (on Earth that is – not the Moon!)
Here we go. Thanks Pam Byrnes! Of course, it has to be our fine Ann Arbor area state reps who once again lead the way into the type of chaos and contention visited upon California until Proposition 8 was upheld…. It’s great to see our legislators working hard to stir up trouble and spend more of the state’s bountiful financial resources on stuff we don’t need…. Pam, this is settled law in Michigan, and the 30 or so other states where the voters have actually had the opportunity to vote on the subject. Please don’t re-open this can of worms….
The most important and lasting civil rights-related changes in the U.S. have come through either direct votes of the people, or through their representatives in state legislatures or the U.S. Congress. Examples include the Civil War-era constitutional amendments and Civil Rights Act of 1871, women’s sufferage (19th amendment), Voting Rights Act of 1965, etc.
What offends me as an American and a voter is when unelected judges short-circuit democracy by legislating from the bench. When judges legislate from the bench we are as likely to get a Dred Scott-like decision as we are a Brown v. Board of Education one. Anything that has to go through the scrutiny of a public vote or legislative action is more likely to stand the test of time.
I trust the people and our elected representatives far more than I trust our Supreme Court to make good law and public policy. It is for this reason that I fear for my country and Constitution if…
The following is an extended excerpt from an item that crossed the Designated Conservative’s RSS Feed this afternoon from Connor’s Conundrums (click here to read the whole piece). I disagree with his conclusion about Mr. Lincoln, but he makes a compelling argument about the origins of our Obamiforous federal government (emphasis and bullet points are mine).
When one considers that President Obama styles himself as a more hip student of Lincoln, it raises the question:
Read More »
Excerpted from WorldNetDaily:
Legislator to colleagues: ‘Your laws not authorized by Constitution‘
By Chelsea Schilling
Sponsored by Rep. John Shadegg, R-Ariz., H.R. 450, or the Enumerated Powers Act, states, “Each Act of Congress shall contain a concise and definite statement of the constitutional authority relied upon for the enactment of each portion of that Act. The failure to comply with this section shall give rise to a point of order in either House of Congress. …”
When he introduced the proposal Jan. 9, Shadegg gave a House floor speech reminding his colleagues of limited authority granted in the 10th Amendment of the United States Constitution.
It states, “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.”
“What that means is that the Founding Fathers intended our national government to be a limited government, a government of limited powers that cannot expand its legislative authority into areas reserved to the states or to the people,” Shadegg said. “As the final amendment in the 10 Bill of Rights, it is clear that the Constitution establishes a Federal Government of specifically enumerated and limited powers.“
“This measure would enforce a constant and ongoing re-examination of the role of our national government,” he said. “… It is simply intended to require a scrutiny that we should look at what we enact and that, by doing so, we can slow the growth and reach of the Federal Government, and leave to the states or the people, those functions that were reserved to them by the Constitution.”
Shadegg said the act would perform three important functions:
- It would encourage members of Congress to consider whether their proposed legislation belongs in the federal level in the allocation of powers or whether it belongs with the states or the people.
- It would force lawmakers to include statements explaining by what authority they are acting.
- It would give the U.S. Supreme Court the ability to scrutinize constitutional justification for every piece of legislation. If the justification does not hold up, the courts and the people could hold Congress accountable and eliminate acts that reach beyond the scope of the Constitution.
“(T)he Constitution gives the Federal Government only 18 specific enumerated powers, just 18 powers,” Shadegg noted.
“Let me be clear,” he said. “Virtually all the measures which go beyond the scope of the powers granted to the Federal Government by the 10th amendment are well-intentioned. But unfortunately, many of them are not authorized by the Constitution. The Federal Government has ignored the Constitution and expanded its authority into every aspect of human conduct, and quite sadly, it is not doing many of those things very well.”
While many believe government “can do anything,” that is not what the Founding Fathers intended for the nation, Shadegg contends.
WND columnist Henry Lamb has been urging voters to contact (your) representatives and ask directly if they will co-sponsor and vote for the Enumerated Powers Act, or explain why not – in writing.
Lamb suggested the act become the theme song of the tea parties taking place around the nation.
“Nothing short of massive public pressure will force congressmen to take a position on this important bill.” Lamb wrote. “Nothing short of a return to the Constitution can save this great nation.”
Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., chairs the House Rules Committee, and Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., chairs the House Judiciary Committee – where the act was referred Jan. 9 and remains today.
“Both of these committee chairs should be bombarded with phone calls and e-mails asking that H.R. 450 be brought to the House floor for a recorded vote,” Lamb wrote.
UPDATE: Like all breaking web-stories that are in their early hours of existence, it can be difficult to separate fact from rumor and hoax. The following story has proponents and detractors. Some insist it is a hoax (I hope so!), while others insist it’s accurate (please, no…).
Isn’t it terrifying that the mere idea of the Obama Administration taking such an action is even remotely plausible?!!
UPDATE 2: This story/hoax/rumor apparently originated from a Bloomberg Business News story entitled “China Needs U.S. Guarantees for Treasuries, Yu Says“ (excerpt below)
China should seek guarantees that its $682 billion holdings of U.S. government debt won’t be eroded by “reckless policies,” said Yu Yongding, a former adviser to the central bank. …
China may voice its concerns over U.S. government finances and the potential for a weaker dollar when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visits China on Feb. 20, according to He Zhicheng, an economist at Agricultural Bank of China, the nation’s third-largest lender by assets. …
“In talks with Clinton, China will ask for a guarantee that the U.S. will support the dollar’s exchange rate and make sure China’s dollar-denominated assets are safe,” said He in Beijing. “That would be one of the prerequisites for more purchases.”
UPDATE 3: The American Thinker has posted additional background on this issue on their website (click here).
UPDATE 4: Leave it to the folks at World Net Daily to get the straight scoop. The Secretary of State’s office says no way – this is so untrue (or words to that effect). I’m glad to hear it. However, I’m still left with my earlier troubling thoughts - Isn’t it terrifying that the mere idea of the Obama Administration taking such an action is even remotely plausible?
ORIGINAL POST:
This is truly insane, if true: (hat tip to Atlas Shrugs and LiveLeak.com for this)
FEDS GRANT EMINENT DOMAIN AS COLLATERAL TO CHINA FOR U.S. DEBTS!
Beijing, China
Sources at the United States Embassy in Beijing China have just CONFIRMED to me that the United States of America has tendered to China a written agreement which grants to the People’s Republic of China, an option to exercise Eminent Domain within the USA, as collateral for China’s continued purchase of US Treasury Notes and existing US Currency reserves!
The written agreement was brought to Beijing by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and was formalized and agreed-to during her recent trip to China.
This means that in the event the US Government defaults on its financial obligations to China, the Communist Government of China would be permitted to physically take — inside the USA — land, buildings, factories, perhaps even entire cities – to satisfy the financial obligations of the US government.
Put simply, the feds have now actually mortgaged the physical land and property of all citizens and businesses in the United States. They have given to a foreign power, their Constitutional power to “take” all of our property, as actual collateral for continued Chinese funding of US deficit spending and the continued carrying of US national debt.
This is an unimaginable betrayal of every man, woman and child in the USA. An outrage worthy of violent overthrow.
I am endeavoring to obtain images or copies of the actual document but in the interim, several different sources both in the US and in China have CONFIRMED this to me.
More details as they become available. . . . . spread the word ASAP.
This designated conservative has a hard time contemplating such a betrayal of our national sovereignty by a sitting President and Secretary of State as an actual fact. I sincerely hope that there is nothing to the story, because if true such an action absolutely meets the U.S. Constitution’s definition of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Such an agreement would be unconstitutional, treasonous, and an impeccably impeachable offense. Of course, so is deliberately trashing the U.S. economy (the Generational Theft Act of 2009, universal health care, $Billions for ACORN, the Pork-Laden Omnibus Spending bill, and the nearly $4 Trillion 2010 Budget proposal), damaging national security (withdraw from Iraq, cutting defense spending, Illegal Alien Amnesty II, etc. etc.), and the rest of the rush-to-implement Democrat Party agenda.
The Great American ship of state is being deliberately steered into the path of a huge Depressocratic iceberg of economic ruin. by an unqualified President who cannot even confirm his constitutional eligibility to hold the office! This is what happens when we hand the keys to the government to children! (sigh)
Even as we bask in the remarkable success of the Chicago Tea Party movement this week, we can easily contemplate the ship of state sinking beneath our feet….
As Captain Obama, First Mate Pelosi, and crewmates Reid, Schumer, and Dr. Frankendodd push passengers from the “flyover state” class aside in their rush to the lifeboats, can’t you almost hear the choir of designated conservatives singing that old lament, “The Buoyancy of Experience“?….
VIDEO UPDATE: Senator Tom Coburn’s passionate speech on the out-of-control spending by the Democrat Congressional leadership:
UPDATE: The Gateway Pundit’s “The Obama Disaster– 50 Days That Changed the World” is a great new post on this same topic. Here’s an excerpt:
50 Days That Changed the World
…It’s hard to imagine we’re only 50 days into the Barack Obama Presidency.
- Obama and Pelosi’s stimulus bill was the largest spending bill in the history of the planet.
- He’s lost at least 3 administration nominees due to tax fraud (and) promoted a tax cheat to run the IRS and Treasury.
- He’s insulted America’s greatest ally, Great Britain (and) reneged on missile agreements with allies Poland and the Czech Republic.
- His administration has already met with the murderous Assad Regime from Syria.
- Obama told US soldiers and marines in Afghanistan, “We’re losing.” Obama has already discussed holding peace talks with the Taliban.
- The Dow has dropped faster under Obama than any other new president in 90 years.
- Obama’s adds more to the debt than all previous presidents — from George Washington to George W. Bush — combined.
- Team Obama announced easing restrictions with communist Cuba. Meanwhile, democrats further restricted free trade with ally Colombia.
ORIGINAL POSTING:
The Designated Conservative has been enjoying more light bedtime reading this evening, this time from David Limbaugh.
Here are some excerpts from his recent article entitled “The Usurpers are Winning” (the emphasis and bullets are mine):
America’s founders believed that federal power was a necessary evil that would swallow the liberties their ancestors left Europe to obtain unless it was severely limited. But today we seem to have forgotten that freedom cannot survive the unrestrained governmental encroachments that are raining down daily from our nation’s capital.
You needn’t have a master’s in history to realize that America is the freest and most prosperous nation in the history of the world because its prescient framers devised a constitution that would maximize liberty by imposing restraints on government.
And you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to grasp that unless we put the brakes on our out-of-control federal government soon, we will go the way of all other great nations before us.
While there has long existed a tension between liberty’s usurpers and watchdogs, rarely have the usurpers been in such ascendance…. But why can’t they be honest about what they’re doing?
Those with nothing to hide don’t mask their intentions in deceitful language, such as…
- calling a mostly pork bill a “stimulus bill that has absolutely no pork,”
- a bill eliminating secret ballots in union voting “the Employee Free Choice Act,”
- Marxist programs “measures to strengthen capitalism,”
- taxpayer-funded health care “free medical coverage,”
- across-the-board cuts in defense spending “shoring up our national defenses,”
- aggressive, exclusive partisanship “a spirit of bipartisanship,”
- a plan to triple the national budget right before “trimming it back” to levels grossly above where you started “fiscal conservatism,”
- government suppression of political expression “the Fairness Doctrine,”
- appointing one tax cheat after another and lobbyist after lobbyist “a new era for ethical government,”
- a government that singles out and attacks its influential critics “a government of the people.”
In the name of compassion, or economic stimulus, the federal government gets its tentacles into our local business and begins to micromanage our lives from Washington, whether in education, commerce or even executive salaries for private corporations.
Who knows, the usurpers might even have the audacity to try to micromanage decisions of local governments once they dole out money they steal from taxpayers and their offspring to fund this stimulus ruse.
Click here to read the full article by David Limbaugh, or copy and paste the following website into your web browser: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=89829.
Mr. Limbaugh’s comments reminded me forcefully of George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984. Check out “Teach Like It’s 1979” for more about this scary thought, including links to some great posts by A Conservative Teacher.
It fascinates me (in a dark humor sort-of-way) that it was a conservative tyranny (as personified by their Devil himself, Ronald Reagan) against which my very liberal high school teachers warned me…
…yet it turns out to be liberalism run-amok that is well on its way to creating the very conditions Mr. Orwell wrote about!
The irony would be lost them, unfortunately.
UPDATE: Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs has another first class update on the issues and history behind Senator Obama’s refusal to make public those documents that would lay this issue to rest. I was especially intrigued by the reference to some of Obama’s Chicago attorney friends’ efforts dating back two years to try and remove the reference to “natural born” citizen from the Constitution. Why would they even bring this up if there was no question regardingBarack Obama’s eligibility to serve as POTUS?
UPDATE 2: The deeper I look into Barack Obama and this “natural born” citizen business, the more of a “sticky wicket” it seems to become for Mr. Obama. Now, a group of Washington state residents have sued to have Obama’s votes set aside because is is not a natural born citizen, AND because he ran under a false name. According to this local news article, Barack was adopted by his step-father while living in Indonesia as a child, and took “Barry Soetoro” as his legal name. What a swamp! Barry/Barack Soetoro/Obama, step up and be a man – either provide the proof of natural born citizenship or admit that you cannot and take the consequences! (thanks to Atlas Shrugs for the reference)
Original post:
So, here we are days away from the Electoral College’s constitutionally required meetings in the 50 states (with Michigan’s 17 Democrat-Obama/Biden electors scheduled to gather in Lansing), and the questions about where Barack Obama was born are still percolating around the Internet. Why? Because the United States Constitution says that to be eligible to serve as President of the United States, a person must be a natural born citizen.
What does “natural born citizen” mean? Under U.S. law, it means:
If President-elect Obama was born in Kenya (as rumors and Kenya’s sealing of Obama’s records suggest), then he is ineligible to serve as President. Things get even weirder if one includes the other Internet rumor that Obama’s mother renounced his U.S. citizenship when they lived in Indonesia.
This is why I have avoided discussing this topic, until an American Thinker article entitled “Why the Barack Obama Birth Certificate Issue Is Legitimate” caught my eye today. Author “Joe the Farmer” analyzes the whole mess, from archaic Hawaiian state laws to the latest evaluation of the various lawsuits putting pressure on Obama to release his original Certification of Live Birth (which is apparently different from the alleged Certificate of Live Birth that has been posted on various websites.
Why get all worked up about this? Shouldn’t Barack Obama be allowed to become our 44th President since he was elected by a majority of U.S. voters? The same could be said for others, like star California Governor Schwartzenegger (who came from Austria as an adult) and our own Michigan star Governor Jennifer Granholm (who moved from Canada as a child). However, the Constitution has the final say. That’s why it is important – to uphold the Constitution, something which virtually all public officials in this country swear (or affirm) to do, including Senator Obama.
The Supreme Court will very soon take up this issue, which may come as a surprise to those that get their news from CNN and MSNBC. President-elect Obama and his legal advisors have had weeks and even months to lay this mess to rest by simply making public the documentation needed to show he satisfies the constitutional requirements – but he hasn’t done it yet! I’m amazed that the Democratic National Committee didn’t require exactly this before he stepped out on the stage in Denver to accept the nomination. It seems like that is nothing more than doing the necessary due diligence to avoid this sort of constitutional “buyer’s remorse!”
More than 145,000 Americans have signed an online petition asking Barack Obama to release documentation proving his status as a natural born U.S. citizen before the Electoral College meets to certify his election to the highest office in this land. In a constitutional republic, that is an eminently reasonable thing for the people to expect before Mr. Obama accepts the high office of President.
UPDATE: The intent of this idea of going “cold turkey” on the federal income tax is really all about restoring the constitutional balance between the federal government, state governments, and the people. The founding fathers viewed the potential of the federal government to accumulate power and trample on freedom and liberty with trepidation. In response, the authors of the constitution and Bill of Rights included as many checks, balances, and fences around federal authority as possible.
One of the natural limitations on federal power was the ability to tax. Limited federal revenues naturally limited federal power. This began to change with the passage of the 16th Amendment. The federal-state-people relationship turned virtually upside-down in the wake of the New Deal, World War II, and especially with the Great Society social-welfare explosion of the 1960s and 70s.
The only way to begin the process of restoring the proper federal/states constitutional balance is to…
 | designated conservat… on Movie Reviews |
 | Carol on Movie Reviews |
| designated conservat… on VICTORY UPDATE: Washtenaw Coun… |
